Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone

59 Special Requests

JAMIE HANDED IAN A small, heavy purse.

“I can manage, Uncle,” he said, trying to hand it back. “We’ve horses, and I’ve got enough coin to feed us, I think.”

“You’d be happy enough to sleep in the woods along the way, and Rachel’s young and strong, and doubtless she’d do it for love of ye. But if ye think ye can make your mother travel seven hundred miles, sleeping by the side of the road and eating what ye can catch along the way … think again, aye?”

“Mmphm.” Ian acknowledged the reason in this, though he weighed the purse reluctantly in the palm of his hand.

“Besides,” his uncle added, and glanced over his shoulder. “There’s a favor I’d ask of ye.”

“Of course, Uncle Jamie.” Auntie Claire was out in the side yard, helping with the laundry; he saw his uncle’s eye rest on her, with a mingled look of affection and wariness that piqued Ian’s interest. “What is it?”

“Rachel says ye mean to stop in Philadelphia for a few days on your way, so that she can visit some of her Quaker Friends and go to a proper meeting.”

“Aye. So …?”

“Well. About five miles outside the city, along the main road, there’s a small lane—it’s called Mulberry; I’ve drawn ye a map, but ye can ask your way, too. There’s a wee falling-down sort of house at the end of the lane; that belongs to a woman named Silvia Hardman.”

“A woman?” Ian glanced involuntarily at Auntie Claire, too. She was laughing at something Jem had once said to her, her face flushed from the heat of the fire and her mad hair escaping from the scarf she had bound round her head.

“Aye,” his uncle said tersely, turning slightly so his back was to the launderers. “A Quaker lady, a widow wi’ three small girls. She did me a great service, before Monmouth, and since ye’ll be passing by, I’d like ye to see what her condition is, and no matter what it is, oblige her to take this.” He fished in his sporran and came out with another, smaller, purse.

Ian accepted it without question, putting it away in his own pouch. Uncle Jamie was frowning slightly, hesitant.

“Anything else, Uncle?”

“If—I mean—I dinna ken whether …”

“Whatever it is, a bràthair-mhàthair, ye ken I’ll do it, aye?” He smiled at Uncle Jamie, who relaxed and smiled back.

“I do, Ian, and I’m grateful. The thing is—Friend Silvia is a virtuous woman, but her husband was killed, maybe by the British army, maybe by Loyalists, maybe by Indians. He left her badly off, she’s no kin, and … there aren’t so many ways for a woman alone to provide for three wee girls.”

“She’s a hoor, then?” Ian had lowered his own voice, keeping an eye on the steam rising from the laundry kettle. Wee Orrie Higgins was minding Oggy and apparently trying to teach him to play patty-cake, though the bairn couldn’t manage more than waving his chubby arms and crowing.

“No!” Uncle Jamie’s face darkened. “I mean—she sometimes …”

“I understand,” Ian said hastily, suddenly wondering at the nature of the service Mrs. Hardman might have rendered his uncle.

“Not me, for God’s sake!”

“I didna think it was, Uncle!”

“Aye, ye did,” Uncle Jamie said dryly. “But beyond rubbing horseradish liniment into my backside and poulticing my back, the woman never laid a hand on me—or I on her, all right?”

Ian grinned at his uncle and raised both hands, indicating a complete acceptance of this story.

“Mmphm. So, as I said, I want ye to see what her condition is. It may be that she’s found a man to marry her—and if she has, you be damned careful about giving her the money so he doesna see; even if he’s a good man, he might assume things that aren’t true—” And here he gave Ian a hard look. “But if she’s entertaining men that come to her house, you find that out and make sure that none of them are threatening her or seem a danger to her or her wee lassies.”

“And if they are …?”

“Take care of it.”

I FOUND IAN in the springhouse, sniffing cheeses.

“Take that one,” I suggested, pointing at a cheesecloth-wrapped shape at the end of the top shelf. “It’s at least six months old, so it’ll be hard enough to travel with. Oh, but you might want some of the softer cheese for Oggy, mightn’t you?”

There were at least a dozen tin tubs of soft goat’s cheese, some flavored with garlic and chives—one adventurous experiment with minced dried tomatoes that I had severe doubts about—but four unflavored, for use in feeding people with digestive upset and for mixing in medicines that I couldn’t get anyone to swallow otherwise.

“Rachel thinks he might be teething,” Ian assured me. “By the time we reach New York, he’ll be gnawing raw meat off the bone.”

I laughed, but felt a sharp pang at the realization that he was right; by the time we saw Oggy again, he would likely be walking, perhaps talking, and fully equipped to eat anything that took his fancy.

“He might even have a proper name by that time,” I said, and Ian smiled, shaking his head.

“Ye never ken when a person’s right name will come—but it always does.” He glanced down to one side, by reflex. To where Rollo would have been.

“Wolf’s Brother?” I said. That was the name the Mohawk had given him when he became one of them. I was quite aware—and I thought Rachel and Jenny both knew it even better—that he had by no means stopped being a Mohawk, even though he’d come back to live with us again. He hadn’t stopped looking down at his side for Rollo, either.

“Aye,” he said, a little gruffly, but then he gave me a half smile and the Scottish lad showed through the tattoos. “Maybe another wolf will come find me, sometime.”

“I hope so,” I said, meaning it. “Ian—I wanted to ask you a favor.”

One eyebrow went up.

“Name it, Auntie.”

“Well … Jamie said that you plan to stop in Philadelphia. I wondered …” I felt myself blushing, much to my annoyance. His other eyebrow rose.

“Whatever it is, Auntie, I’ll do it,” he said, one side of his mouth curling. “I promise.”

“Well … I, um, want you to go to a brothel.”

The eyebrows came down and he stared hard at me, obviously thinking he hadn’t heard aright.

“A brothel,” I repeated, somewhat louder. “In Elfreth’s Alley.”

He stood motionless for a moment, then turned and put the cheese back on the shelf, and glanced down at the clear brown water of the creek rushing past our feet.

“This might take a bit of time to explain, aye? Let’s go out into the sun.”

60 Just One Step

JUST ONE STEP. THAT’S all it ever took, all it ever takes. Sometimes you see such a step coming, from a long way off. Sometimes you never notice, until you look backward.

Here it was, right in front of her. The door of her cabin—hers, her home, the home of her marriage, of her baby’s first months, of her realest life—was open to the morning and the round gold leaves of the aspens lay flat on the wood of the stoop, gleaming with dew as the dawn came up.

One step over the threshold that divided her small rag rug, with its quiet, homely blues and grays, from that pagan abandon of golds and greens and red outside, and her life here was over. They might come back—Ian had promised that they would, and she trusted that he’d do whatever he could to make it so—but even if they did, it would be a different life.

Oggy—perhaps he would be walking, talking, might have a different name by then. He wouldn’t recall this early life, the closeness of waking against her body in bed, turning at once to her breast and yielding up his separate existence so easily, becoming one with her as he’d been when she carried him inside, just for those moments while he fed from her again. Somewhere he might be weaned, on the road between now and then. He would be a different person when they came back. So would she.

Jenny came up beside her, her face bright and a pack with food and drink, handkerchiefs, clouts, and clean stockings under her arm. She glanced at Rachel’s face, then at the inside of the cabin, as though making an inventory. There was little enough to take note of: the rug, the bed and its trundle where Jenny slept, Oggy’s cradle. They had already given everything else away; what they needed would be given back or built again if they returned.

“Well, then, laddie,” Jenny said to Oggy. “This will be your first journey from home, aye? It’s my third. Just pay attention to me; I’ll see ye right.”

Oggy promptly leaned out of Rachel’s arms, reaching for his grannie, who laughed and took him.

“Ye’re fettled, m’annsachd?” she said to Rachel. “Is the sense o’ the meeting clear? Let’s be off, then, and see what lies ahead.”

THE FIRST STEP took them from the cabin to the Big House to take their leave. They’d said goodbye to Brianna and Roger and seen them off with their wagon full of children and contraband sauerkraut three weeks before—an experience that had made Rachel’s heart uneasy. Now she was inexpressibly relieved to see Jamie and hear that he intended to accompany the travelers on the three-day journey to Salisbury in the Piedmont, where they would find the Great Wagon Road that would take them north.

“I need to meet wi’ a few men there,” Jamie had said, with a casual reserve that she knew was meant to protect her own feelings. She knew his business was that of war, and he knew how much that troubled her, but she knew how much it troubled him and would not force him to say the things he was thinking, let alone the things he knew.

She’d felt moved to speak about it—the war—in general, in meeting. And then she’d talked about her brother, Denzell. A Friend from birth, as she was; a godly man, but also a doctor, and a man of conscience.

“Such men aren’t always comfortable to live with,” she’d said, half apologetically, but more than one woman had smiled in sympathy, knowing what she meant. “But I wouldn’t have him otherwise, thee knows. And he’s of the mind that God has called him to the battlefield—not to fight with a musket or sword, but to fight Death itself, in the name of Liberty.” She’d drawn a deep breath then, and added, “I have had word that my brother was captured, and is in a British prison. I’d ask thee all, please, to pray for him.”

They had nodded, solemn. And Jamie Fraser had crossed himself, which moved her.

Jamie nearly always came to meeting, but seldom spoke himself. He’d come in quietly and sit on a back bench, head bowed, listening. Listening, as any Friend would, to the silence and his inner light. When people felt moved of the spirit to speak, he would listen courteously to them, too, but watching the remoteness of his face on these occasions, she thought his mind was still by itself, in quiet, persistent search.

“I dinna suppose Young Ian’s told ye much about Catholics,” he’d said to her once, when he’d paused afterward to give her a fleece he’d brought from Salem.

“Only when I ask him,” she said, with a smile. “And thee knows he’s no theologian. Roger Mac knows more, I think, regarding Catholic belief and practice. Does thee want to tell me something about Catholics? I know thee must feel seriously outnumbered every First Day.”

He’d smiled at that, and it made her heart glad to see it. He was so often troubled these days, and no wonder.

“Nay, lass, God and I get on well enough by ourselves. It’s only that when I come to your meeting, sometimes it reminds me of a thing Catholics do now and then. It’s no a formal thing—but a body will go and sit for an hour before the Sacrament, in church. I’d do it now and then when I was a young man, in Paris. We call it Adoration.”

“What does thee do during that hour?” she’d asked, curious.

“Nothing in particular. Pray, for the most part. Say the Rosary. Or sit in silence. Read, maybe, the Bible or the writings of some saint. I’ve seen folk sing, sometimes. I remember once, goin’ into the chapel of Saint Joseph in the wee hours of the morning, long before dawn—almost all the candles were burnt out—and hearin’ someone playing a guitar, singing. Very soft, not playing to be heard, ken. Just … singing before God.”

Something odd moved in his eyes at the recollection, but then he smiled at her again, a rueful smile.

“I think that may be the last music I remember really hearing.”

“What?”

He touched the back of his head, briefly.

“I was struck in the heid wi’ an ax, many years gone. I lived, but I never heard music again. The pipes, fiddles, singin’ … I ken it’s music, but to me, it’s nay more than noise. But that song … I dinna recall the song itself, but I know how I felt when I heard it.”

She’d never before seen a look on his face as she did when he called back that song for her, but now, watching his back, straight and square as he rode before them, quite suddenly she felt what he had felt in the depth of that distant night, and understood why he found peace in silent spaces.

61 ’Gin a Body Meet a Body …

“I’M OLDER THAN THIS place,” Jenny said, looking about with a disparaging eye as the wagon pulled up outside an ordinary. “This town looks as though ’twas thrown up yesterday.”

“It’s been here for the last twenty-five years,” Jamie said, wrapping his horse’s reins around the hitching post. “It’s older than Rachel, aye?” He smiled at his niece, but his sister snorted, edging backward out of her nest in the wagon.

“No age at all for a city,” she said dismissively.

“Crawling wi’ Loyalists, too,” said Young Ian, seizing his mother round the middle and swinging her down. “Or so I hear.”

“I hear that, too,” Jamie said, and gave the main street an eye, as though Loyalists might come darting out of the taverns like mice. “But I hear they havena got guns, nor yet a proper militia.”

Despite its relative youth, Salisbury was the largest town in Rowan County. It was also the seat of Rowan County, the closest town between Fraser’s Ridge and the Great Wagon Road—and the military fiefdom of one Francis Locke, a patriot. And one with guns and militia. That being so, Jamie settled Jenny, Rachel, and Oggy temporarily at a decent-looking ordinary with an expensive pot of strong coffee and a plate of stuffed rolls, sent Ian to buy provisions for the journey north, then went himself in search of Colonel Locke.

Once met, Jamie found himself disposed to like Francis Locke. A stocky, red-faced Irishman of about his own age, the man had a direct manner that appealed to him. He was a landowner, a businessman—and the commander of the Rowan County Regiment of Militia.

“One hundred and sixty-seven companies of militia we have on our rolls,” Locke said, with a certain grim satisfaction. “At present. From all over Rowan County—though none from the far backcountry as yet. I’d be glad to welcome you and your company, Mr. Fraser, should ye care to join us.”

Jamie gave him a cordial nod but refrained from committing himself, just yet.

“I’ll not yet have my company fully equipped, sir—though I expect to accomplish that before the snow flies and be ready for the spring.”

The British army surely would be.

Locke gave him the same kind of nod, with the same look of reservation. Locke knew perfectly well that Jamie wouldn’t admit his true state of readiness until he’d made up his mind about Locke and his regiment.

“How many men have you?”

“Forty-seven, at present,” Jamie replied equably. “I think we will have more, once the harvest is in.”

They were sitting in the City Tavern, with a pitcher of ale and a platter of small fried fishes. Tasty fare after three days of journeycake and boiled eggs, though the fish were equipped with an inconvenient number of small bones.

“Might I ask, sir—are ye maybe familiar with a man called Partland? Or Adam Granger?”

Locke’s heavy gray brows cocked upward.

“Nicodemus Partland? Aye, heard of him. From Virginia. Loyalist gadfly. Troublemaker,” he added offhandedly.

“He is that. But perhaps a bit more than a gadfly.” Jamie gave Locke a brief account of Partland’s appearance on his land—his connection with Captain Cunningham—and then of the rifles that Claire and Young Ian had confiscated. Jamie didn’t embellish that encounter, but he knew how to tell a story, and Locke was laughing at the end of it.

“Do ye manage the mounting of your men in the same fashion, Mr. Fraser?”

“No, sir. I make fine liquor and trade for horses where I find them.”

Locke blinked, drawing conclusions. Jamie had told Locke where Fraser’s Ridge was.

“Indians?”

Jamie inclined his head an inch.

“A few years back, I was an Indian agent for the Crown in the Southern Department—under Mr. Atkins and then Colonel Johnson. I still have friends among the Cherokee.”

The look of amusement came back into Locke’s weathered face.

“I take it ye don’t number Colonel Johnson among your friends just at present.”

“A friendship requires two parties of like mind, does it not?” When Jamie had resigned his commission, Johnson had threatened to have him hanged as a traitor—and meant it. Jamie chose another fish and bit into it carefully, disentangling small bones with his tongue and laying them neatly on the sheet of greasy, food-spattered newsprint that covered the table in lieu of a cloth. Claire wasn’t with him to deal with things if he choked.

The newspaper was The Impartial Intelligencer, and made him think of Fergus and Marsali. He made an instinctive move to cross himself at the thought of them and Germain, but stilled his hand before it lifted. Locke might well be a Protestant; no need to alienate someone he might need as an ally.

Jamie laid aside the staring head and backbone of the first fish and chose another. Ought he to give Locke one of the Masonic signs? Given his origins and situation, the man was likely Made. Not yet, he decided, watching Locke methodically engulfing his sixth fish. Locke seemed solid enough, but Jamie wanted to talk to a few of the militia colonels presently enrolled in the Rowan County Regiment before deciding whether—and how—to make an alliance. There were the Overmountain men to be considered, too; they were less official, less well armed, and less organized, but a damn sight closer to Fraser’s Ridge than Locke was, and if he needed help in a hurry, they could move quickly.

He put that thought aside. He’d do what he could and pray about the rest.

Locke leaned back, considering as he chewed his last fish slowly.

“Well, I trust we may in time be fast friends, Colonel. Given our commonalities, as you might say.”

Before he could agree to this sentiment, the door opened and Young Ian came in on the wings of a chilly draft that lifted the newspapers on the tables. The Murrays had best be on their way quickly, before the weather turned wet, he thought.

He introduced his nephew to Francis Locke, who glanced at Ian’s tattoos, then at Jamie with an interested cock of the brow.

“I’ve found us lodging wi’ a widow named Hambly, Uncle,” said Ian, ignoring Locke’s examination. “She says her supper will be ready in an hour, should ye care to sit down at her table.”

Locke made a hem sound of warning in his throat.

“The widow’s a kind woman and her house is clean, but she’s no sort of a cook, God bless her. Perhaps ye’d best bring your family to my house for their supper. My land lies outside Salisbury,” he added, seeing Jamie’s brow rise, “but I’ve a small house in town for convenience, and my wife’s a famous gossip. She likes nothin’ better than to meet new folk and turn ’em inside out.”

Jamie met Ian’s eye and they shared a look. “Five to one on my mother,” Ian’s face said, and Jamie agreed with a slight nod.

“We’ll join ye, sir, with great pleasure,” he said formally to Locke, and rose. “We’ll go and fettle the women, and join ye by six o’clock, if that suits?”

MRS. LOCKE WAS a bright-eyed bird of a woman who asked blunt questions with the regularity of a cuckoo clock, but she was a good cook, and Jenny kept her engaged in a discussion of cheese making and the virtues of cow’s milk versus that of goats or sheep, while Rachel fed the bairn and Jamie and Ian asked questions about the regiment, all of which Locke answered readily.

Too far from the Ridge, Ian’s sidelong glance said, and Jamie looked down in agreement.

Locke seemed well organized, but even with the recent excision of Burke County, Rowan County still covered a vast area. If it was a matter of a large battle, with the militia assisting regular troops, like Monmouth, that was one thing: there’d be time to summon a number of Locke’s 167 companies. But for someone to send a rider to Salisbury, appeal to Locke, and from there summon help from surrounding areas to meet an unexpected and imminent threat to the Ridge, a hundred miles away? No.

Ian and Jamie had silently concluded that the Ridge was better off defending itself, and Ian had just raised an eyebrow to ask Jamie whether he meant to tell Locke so when a sound of footsteps came up the front steps and there was a rapid thumping on the door that stopped Mrs. Locke in mid-question.

The caller was a boy of fifteen or so, with the beginnings of a scanty beard creeping along his jaw like a fungus.

“Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” he said, bowing to Locke. “Constable Jones sent me to say as he’s found a body and will you maybe come and sit on it before it gets any riper?”

“Sit on it?” said Rachel, looking up in surprise.

“Aye, ma’am,” Locke said, getting up from the table. “I’m the county coroner, for my sins. Where’s this body, Josh?”

“In Chris Humphreys’s stable, sir. But ’twas found behind the Oak Tree tavern, to start with. Mrs. Ford wouldn’t let ’em bring it inside the tavern.”

“Oh.” Locke cast a quick look at the landlord, who crossed his arms and lowered his brow. “I suppose our host has similar feelings. I’ll go out to the stable and have a look. Will you wait, Mr. Fraser? Likely I won’t be long about it.”

“I’ll come with ye, if I may.” Jamie rose, making a small gesture indicating that Ian should seize the opportunity to take his leave. Jamie was mildly curious to see the dead man, but his main intent was to have an excuse to break up the party. He could see Rachel at the table, drooping with weariness, Oggy asleep in her lap, and his sister, while still upright, had been radiating waves of impatience in his direction for the last quarter hour.

62 A Stranger’s Face

THE STABLE WAS A respectable shed with four stalls, smelling of horse but presently empty save for a pair of trestles with a sheet of tin roofing laid across them. The body had been placed on this, a handkerchief laid over the face for decency, though it was too cold for flies.

Jamie crossed himself unobtrusively and offered a brief, silent prayer for the stranger’s soul.

“Any sign he was robbed, Mr. Jones?” Locke took out his own handkerchief and a small bottle. He shook several drops from this onto the cloth and pressed it to his nose in a practiced manner. Oil of wintergreen; the sharp smell prickled the hairs inside Jamie’s own nose, and a good thing, too. The stranger was ripe.

“Well, yes,” said the constable, with a touch of impatience. “If empty pockets and a cracked skull are sign enough for you.”

Locke plucked the damp handkerchief off the man’s face with two fingers and set it aside. Jamie felt his wame clench and rise.

The man had a shocking great wound in the side of his head, but that wasn’t what was making the sweat break out in a rush on Jamie’s body.

“You know this man, Mr. Fraser?” Locke had noticed his reaction.

“No, sir,” he said. His lips felt stiff, as though someone had hit him in the mouth. The man was strange to him, but the look of him was not. Not tall, but large, a heavy-boned man who had run to fat, his bloated stomach a great round swelling under his half-buttoned breeches, tapering down to too-small feet that had flattened and spread under the weight they were required to bear and burst the seams of the man’s worn shoes.

He’d seen those feet and those bursten shoon before—and likewise the dead, broad face, hairy jaw slack and eyes half open, dull and sticky under their lids. Seen it covered with dirt as he filled in the grave, shoveling fast lest he vomit again.

LOCKE, IN HIS office as coroner, told the constable to go and inquire of the tavern’s patrons and bring any potential witnesses to view—and hopefully identify—the body.

Jones shifted his weight, restive. “Whoever robbed him’s long gone. Think he must have been in that alley for two, three days at least, from the smell.”

“Tell me about it in the morning, Mr. Jones,” Locke said, and shrugged his coat closer. It was perishing in the shed, and his voice rose in a white cloud. Jamie felt the chill in the aching bones of his maimed right hand and closed it into a fist, which he thrust into the pocket of his greatcoat.

“Do ye have such occurrences often?” he asked Locke as they made their way back through the dark streets.

“More often than I’d like,” Locke replied grimly. “And more often than used to be the case.”

“War does bring out the worst in folk.” He hadn’t meant it as a joke, and Locke didn’t take it as one—merely nodded. He closed the door of the shed behind them and they walked in silence up the street.

Jamie declined the offer of a final dram, bade Locke farewell at his door, and asked him to give their thanks to his wife for the fine supper. The Widow Hambly’s house was two streets over; he’d pass the stable again on his way there.

THERE WAS A flickering light inside the stable; it spilled through the chinks between the boards, making a ghostly outline against the night. Jamie stopped dead at the sight, but curiosity and dread combined made him walk softly toward the door.

The door was ajar, and he saw a fantastical figure inside, an elongated shadow that moved sharply at the crunch of his footstep on gravel.

“Uncle Jamie?” It was Ian, holding a lantern, and Jamie’s heart slowed down.

“Aye.” He stepped into the shed. “Are Rachel and your mother settled, then?”

“Well, they’ve got to the Widow Hambly’s, all right. As Mrs. Locke kindly came with them, to bring a packet of food for tomorrow and stayed to tell the widow everything that was said over supper, I doubt they’ll find their beds before midnight.” He twisted a forefinger in his ear, in illustration.

“Which would be why you’re here,” Jamie said. “Ye consider this gentleman better company?”

Ian held out a flattened hand and oscillated it, indicating that the difference between Mrs. Locke and an ill-feckit corpse was negligible in terms of providing good company.

“I wanted to see what he looked like.” He raised one sketchy brow at Jamie. “And ye’re here because …?”

“I wanted to see what he looks like, again. I maybe didna get a clear keek at him, earlier.”

Ian nodded and moved aside, holding his lantern high above the body. They looked at it in silence. Jamie closed his eyes and took two or three deep breaths, despite the smell. Then he opened them again.

Was it? The stranger seemed different now than he had on first sight. Shorter. The neck was maybe longer, and it was scrawny, in spite of the bulging stomach. The other’s neck had been creased, two deep lines dividing the fat into rings. “Fat lumpkin,” his sister had called the man who’d raped Claire. The pressure in his chest eased a little, and he considered the face, carefully this time.

No. No, it wasn’t the same at all, and his belly hollowed with relief. The face was unshaven and had been for some time, but if he disregarded that, then … no. Nose and mouth were a different shape altogether.

“Ye thought ye might ken him, Uncle?” Ian was looking at him from the opposite side of the table, interested. “I thought that, too.”

“Did ye, indeed,” Jamie said, and the pressure in his chest was back. He resisted the urge to turn and look outside. Instead, he said in the Gàidhlig, “A man ye might have seen by firelight once before?”

Ian nodded, his gaze steady, and replied in the same language.

“The man whose filth defiled your fair one? Yes.”

That was as much a shock as finding Ian here, and it must have shown on his face, for Ian grimaced, then looked apologetic. “Janet Murray’s your sister, bràthair-mhàthair, but she’s my mother.” Dropping back into English, he added, “I’ll no say she canna keep secrets, for she does. But if she sees reason to speak, then ye’re going to hear what she has to say. She told me some weeks ago, when I came to say I was going to Beardsley’s trading post, and did she want anything. She told me to keep an eye out for the fellow.”

This eased Jamie a little, and he looked back at the dead stranger.

“We dinna want to say anything to her about this.”

“No, we don’t,” Ian agreed, and a faint shudder went over him at the thought.

“From curiosity,” Jamie said, returning to the Gàidhlig, “why did your mother tell ye about the mhic an diabhail?”

“If it might be that you needed my help in the killing, a bràthair mo mhàthair,” Ian said, with the trace of a smile. “She said I must not offer, but if ye asked, I must go with you. And I would have done so,” he added softly, his eyes dark in the lantern’s glow. “Without the telling.

“What do you think?” he said then, changing subjects with a nod at the stranger. “Plainly, it is not the same man. That man is dead?”

“He is.”

Ian nodded, matter-of-fact.

“Good. Do we think this one might be his kin?”

“I dinna ken, but this one is also dead, and I canna think his death”—Jamie nodded at the corpse—“can have aught to do with the other.”

Ian nodded in agreement.

“Then I think it hasna anything to do wi’ us, either.”

Jamie felt air in his chest, light and cold and fresh.

“He has not,” he agreed. Then, struck by a thought, asked, “How do ye come to ken what the—other—looked like?”

“The same as you, I expect. Went to Beardsley’s and asked after the man wi’ the birthmark. Dinna fash,” he added. “I didna make a meal of it; no one would remember.”

“No,” Jamie said flatly. No one would remember, because no one would ever see the man again, or think to look for him—he wasn’t the sort of man who had real business with anyone. He was the sort of man who lived and died alone. Save for his dog.

And even if someone thought to visit him, they willna find him. It wasn’t unusual for solitary men to disappear in the backcountry, their passing unremarked. Killed by accident, died of untended illness, wandered away …

They stood together for a moment, scrutinizing the stranger’s face. Jamie felt Ian relax, his decision made, and a moment later, Jamie also shook his head and stepped back.

“No,” he said, and Ian nodded and, leaning forward, blew out the lantern’s wick, leaving them in darkness with the smell of the dead man.

“Ye’re sure, yourself?” Jamie asked, not moving. Ian hadn’t asked him that, but he couldn’t help himself. Ian touched his shoulder.

“I’m sure this man is no concern of ours,” he said firmly. “Ought we to leave him with a blessing, though? He’s a stranger.”

They stood close together and murmured the short form of the death dirge. Jamie’s eyes were accustomed now to the dark of the shed, and he saw the words come out of their mouths in white wisps, insubstantial as the soul they blessed.

They left, and Jamie closed the shed door quietly behind them.

THE MAN WAS still in their minds, though, as they walked down the street. Not the dead man they had just left. The other.

“Ye didna go to look for him, did ye?” Jamie asked Ian as they turned in to the main street. “After ye learnt his name, I mean.”

“Och, no. I kent ye’d dealt with him.” They were near the square, and there was enough light from the taverns that he saw Ian glance at him, one brow raised.

“Ken, I had some business in the forest near the bottom of the Ridge, and I heard your horse comin’ along the wagon road just after dawn, so I went and looked. Ye had your rifle with ye and ye looked grim enough. I could tell ye were hunting, but it wouldna be an animal, of course, not on horseback.” Ian’s head turned briefly toward him.

“Ye didna look like ye needed help, but I said the prayer for ye, Uncle—for a warrior goin’ out.”

The knot between Jamie’s shoulder blades relaxed a bit. He found it oddly comforting to know that he had not in fact gone alone on that journey, even though he’d not known it at the time.

“I thank ye, Ian. It was a help, I’m sure.” The cold oppression of the shed had lifted with the advent of torchlights and the noise of the town, so they walked for a bit by silent consent, leaving the women time to settle themselves and put the bairn to bed.

The moon was well above the housetops of Salisbury, but there were still men abroad in the streets, and the place had a restless air about it.

They passed a group of men, twenty or so, faceless under the dark brims of their hats, but the moon lit a pale cloud of the dust kicked up by their boots, so it seemed they walked knee-deep through a rising fog. They were Scotch-Irish, talking loudly, noticeably drunk and arguing among themselves, and Jamie and Ian passed by unnoticed. Francis Locke had said there were a number of militia companies in the town; these men had the look of new militia—self-important and unsure at the same time, and wanting to show that they weren’t.

They crossed through the square and the streets behind it and found silence again amid the calling of owls from the trees near Town Creek. Ian broke it, talking low, halfway to himself and halfway not.

“Last time I walked like this—at night, I mean, just walking, not huntin’—was just after Monmouth,” he said. “I’d been in the British camp, wi’ his lordship, and he asked me to stay, because I’d an arrow in my arm—ye recall that, aye? Ye broke the shaft for me, earlier that day.”

“I’d forgot,” Jamie admitted.

“Well, it was a long day.”

“Aye. I remember bits and pieces—I lost my horse when he went off a bridge into one of those hellish morasses, and I’m never going to forget the sound o’ that.” A deep shudder curdled his wame, recalling the taste of his own vomit. “And then I remember General Washington—were ye there, Ian, when he turned back the retreat after Lee made a collieshangie of it?”

“Aye,” Ian said, and laughed a little. “Though I didna take much notice. I had my own bit o’ trouble to settle, with the Abenaki. And I did settle it, too,” he added, grimness coming into his voice. “Your men got one o’ them, but I killed the other in the British camp that night, wi’ his own tomahawk.”

“I hadna heard about that,” Jamie said, surprised. “Ye did it in the British camp? Ye never told me that. How did ye come to be there, for that matter? Last I saw ye was just before the battle, and the next I saw ye, your cousin William was bringin’ what I thought was your corpse into Freehold on a mule.”

And the next time he’d seen William had been in Savannah, when his son had come to ask his help in saving Jane Pocock. They’d been too late. That failure had been neither of their faults, but his heart still hurt for the poor wee lassie … and for his poor lad.

“I dinna mind most o’ that, myself,” Ian said. “I came in wi’ Lord John—we got arrested together—but then I walked out o’ the camp, meanin’ to go find Rachel or you, but I was bad wi’ the fever, the night goin’ in and out around me like as if it was breathin’ and I was walkin’ along through the stars wi’ my da beside me, just talkin’ to him, as if …”

“As if he was there,” Jamie finished, smiling. “I expect he was. I feel him beside me, now and then.” He glanced automatically to his right as he said this, as though Ian Mòr might indeed be there now.

“We were talkin’ o’ the Indian I’d just killed—and I said it put me in mind o’ that gobshite who tried to extort ye, Uncle—the one I killed there by the fire after Saratoga. I said something about how it seemed different, killing a man face-to-face, but I’d thought I ought to be used to such things by now, and I wasn’t. And he said I maybe shouldn’t be,” Ian said thoughtfully. “He said it couldna be good for my soul, bein’ used to things like that.”

“Your da’s a wise man.”

THEY WALKED BACK into town, easy with each other, talking now and then, but not of anything that mattered.

“Ye’ve got all ye need, Ian?” Jamie asked. “For the journey?”

“If I don’t, it’s too late now,” Ian said, laughing.

Jamie smiled, but the words “too late” lingered in the back of his mind. He’d part with the travelers at daybreak, see them onto the Great Wagon Road, and then they’d be gone—God knew for how long.

They were nearly to the Widow Hambly’s house when he stopped, a hand on Ian’s arm.

“I wasna going to ask, and I’m not,” Jamie said abruptly. “Because ye must be free to do whatever ye need to. But I find I must say a thing to ye, before ye go.”

Ian didn’t say anything, but made a slight adjustment of posture that gave Jamie his full attention.

“Ken, when Brianna brought us the books,” Jamie began carefully, “there was the strange one for the bairns, and a romance for me about … well, fanciful things, to say the least. And a medical book for your auntie.”

“Aye, I’ve maybe seen that one,” Ian said thoughtfully. “A big blue one, very thick? Ye could kill a rat wi’ that one.”

“That’s the one, aye. But the lass brought along a book for herself.” He hesitated; he’d never spoken to Ian about Claire’s life away from him. “It was written by a man named Randall. A historian.”

Ian’s head turned sharply toward him.

“Randall. Was his name Frank Randall?”

“Aye, it was.” Jamie felt as though Ian had rabbit-punched him, and shook his head to clear it. “How—did Bree tell ye about him? Her—her—”

“Her other father? Aye. Years ago.” He made a small motion with one hand, disturbing the dark. “Doesna matter.”

“Aye, it does.” He paused for a moment; he’d never talked about Randall with anyone save Claire. But he had to, so he did.

“I kent about him, from the first day I met Claire—though I thought he was dead, and in fact, he was, but …” He cleared his throat, and Ian reached into his pack and handed him a battered flask. Dark as it was, he felt the crude fleur-de-lis under his thumb. It was Ian Mòr’s old soldier’s flask, which his friend had kept from their time in France as young mercenaries, and the feel of it steadied him.

“The thing is, a bhalaich, he kent about me, too.” He uncorked the flask and drank from it; watered brandy, but it helped. “Claire told him, when she … went back. She thought I was dead at Culloden, and—”

Ian made a small noise that might have been amusement.

“Aye,” Jamie said dryly. “I meant to be. But ye dinna always get to choose what happens to ye, do you?”

“True enough. But Brianna told me her father was dead—so … he was, he is … really dead?”

“Well, I’d thought so. But the bugger wrote a damn book, didn’t he? The one Brianna brought wi’ her—to remember him by. I read it.”

Ian rubbed a thumb across his chin; Jamie could hear the scratch of the bristles, and it made his own chin itch.

“What the devil did he say in it?”

Jamie sighed and saw his breath, white for an instant in the dark. The moon had faded out of sight behind the clouds. They couldn’t stay out here long; Ian needed sleep before the journey, and Jamie’s bad hand was telling him that rain was coming.

“It’s about Scots, ken? In America. What they—we—did, what we’ll do, in the Revolution. The thing is … aye, well. There are a good many men named Jamie Fraser in Scotland, and I’m sure there are plenty here, too.”

“Och, ye’re in his book?” Ian straightened up, and Jamie made a negative gesture.

“I dinna ken, that’s the trouble. It might be me, and it bloody well might not be, too. He mentions my name fourteen times, but never makin’ enough of it to be able to tell whether it’s me or someone else. He never comes right out and says, ‘Jamie Fraser of Fraser’s Ridge,’ or ‘Broch Tuarach,’ or anything o’ that sort.”

“Why are ye worried, then, Uncle?”

“Because he says there’s going to be a battle nearby us—at a place called Kings Mountain. And Jamie Fraser’s killed in it. Will be, I mean. A Jamie Fraser.” Saying it aloud actually steadied him a little. It seemed ridiculous.

Ian wasn’t taking it that way, though. He gripped Jamie’s arm, close in the darkness.

“Ye think it’s you he means?”

“Well, that’s the devil of it, Ian. I canna say, at all. See—” His lips were dry, and he licked them briefly. “The man kent about me, and he had nay reason to love me. We—Claire and Bree and I—think Frank Randall knew that the lass would come back, to find her mother and me. And if he looked, in—in history—he’d maybe find us.”

Ian clicked his tongue in consternation—in just the way his father had, and Jamie smiled involuntarily.

“And if he did …”

“No man is objective about Claire,” Jamie said. “I mean—they’re just not.”

Ian made a wee fizzing noise of assent.

“Which isna to say everyone loves her …”

“A lot of us do, Uncle,” his nephew assured him. “But aye, I ken what ye mean.”

“Aye. Well, what I mean is—and I ken this sounds as though I’ve lost my senses and maybe I have—but … I’ve read his book, and by God, I think the man is talkin’ to me.”

Ian was silent for quite a while. The dim shape of a nightjar rose from the ground near their feet and shot off into the dark with a high, clear zeeek!

“And if he is talkin’ to you?” Ian said at last.

That scared him.

“If he is—and if the Jamie Fraser who dies at Kings Mountain is me … I just … I …” He couldn’t ask it. And for God’s sake, he was not afraid of dying, not so many times as he’d looked Death in the face. It was only—

Ian’s hand slid into his and clasped it firmly.

“I’ll be there with ye, Uncle. When does it happen? The battle, I mean.”

Relief coursed through him, and the breath he took went down to his feet.

“In about a year. October next, it will be. Or … so he says.”

“That’ll be plenty time enough for me to do whatever needs to be done in the North,” Ian said, then squeezed his hand and let it go. “Dinna fash.”

Jamie nodded, his heart full. In the morning he would bid them all farewell, but he would take his leave of Ian Òg now.

“Turn about, Ian,” he said quietly, and Ian did, looking out at the house across the street, dark save for the glow of a smoored hearth, visible at the edge of the shutters. He put a hand on Ian’s shoulder, and spoke for him the blessing for a warrior going out.

63 The Third Floor

IT WAS A BIG house. Roger and Bree were gone, and now Jamie had left to see Ian and Rachel and Jenny safely on their road. The house seemed even bigger now, with only two people and a dog in it.

Fanny, deprived of companionship, clung to me like a small cocklebur, her footsteps echoing behind me—and the tic-tic-tic of Bluebell’s behind hers—as I went to and fro from surgery to kitchen to parlor and back to surgery, the three of us always conscious of the vacant bedrooms overhead and the distant, shadowy, empty third floor high above, its walls a ghostly forest of studs, its glassless windows still covered by laths to keep out rain and snow until the vanished master should return to finish the jobs he’d left undone.

I’d invited her to share my bedroom, and we’d hauled in the truckle bed from the children’s room. It was a comfort to hear each other’s breathing in the night, something warm and quick, almost drowning out the slow, chilled breathing of the house around us—almost imperceptible, but definitely there. Especially at dusk, when the shadows began to rise up the walls like a silent tide, spilling darkness into the room.

Now and then I’d wake at dawn to find Fanny in my bed, curled against me for warmth and sound asleep, Bluey lying in a nest of quilts at our feet. The dog would look up when I woke, gently thwapping her feathery tail against the bedding, but she wouldn’t move until Fanny did.

“They’ll come back,” I assured her, every day. “All of them. We just have to stay busy until they do.”

But Fanny had never lived alone a day in her life. She didn’t know how to deal with solitude, let alone a solitude filled with the menace of one’s own thoughts.

What if—? was the constant refrain of her thoughts. The fact that it was also the refrain—if a silent one—of mine didn’t help.

“Do you think houses are alive?” Fanny blurted one day.

“Yes, I’m sure of it,” I said rather absently.

“You are?” Fanny’s round eyes jarred me back into the present. We were darning socks in front of the fire, having finished the morning chores and eaten lunch. We’d fed the pigs, forked dry hay for the other stock, and milked the cow and two goats—I’d have to churn butter tomorrow, leave aside a couple of buckets for cheese making, and send the rest of the extra milk downhill to Bobby Higgins for his boys.

“Well … yes,” I said slowly. “I think any place that people live for a long time probably absorbs a bit of them. Certainly houses affect the people who live in them—why shouldn’t it work both ways?”

“Both ways?” She looked dubious. “You mean that I left part of me at the brothel—and I brought part of the brothel with me?”

“Didn’t you?” I asked gently. Her face went blank for a moment, but then the life returned to her eyes.

“Yes,” she said, but she was wary now, and added nothing more.

“Who’s doing for Bobby and the boys this week, do you know?” I asked her. The neighbor women—and their daughters—who lived in easy walking distance had been taking it in turn to stop into the Higgins cabin every few days, to bring food, cook supper, and do small jobs of mending and housekeeping, lest the Higginses descend irretrievably into male slovenliness.

“Abigail Lachlan and her sister,” Fanny replied readily. “They always come together because they’re jealous of each other.”

“Jealous? Oh, over Bobby, you mean?” She nodded, squinting at the thread she was trying to put through the eye of her needle. The competition to become the next Mrs. Higgins was still discreet, civil, and unspoken, but becoming somewhat more defined. Bobby showed little sign so far of wanting to make a choice—or of seeming to notice the efforts made to ensnare his attention, though he always thanked the young women sincerely for their help.

“What you said about houses …” Fanny held her breath for a moment, then let it out with a small ah! of triumph when the thread went through the needle’s eye. “Do you think maybe Amy Higgins is still in the cabin? Haunting it, I mean, to keep other women away?”

That took me slightly aback—but the suggestion was made without any emotion beyond curiosity, and I answered it on the same terms. Right after Amy’s death, there had been occasional rumors about her being seen in the gorge where she was killed, or washing clothes in the creek—a very common occupation for Scottish or Irish female ghosts, and no wonder, as they’d likely spent most of their lives doing just that—but these had mostly ceased as the heavy work of autumn came on and people returned to their own preoccupations.

“I don’t know about the house itself. I’ve never felt anything of Amy when I’ve gone there since she died. But when someone dies, naturally the people they leave behind will still sense them. I don’t know whether you’d call that haunting, though; I think it’s maybe just memory and … longing.”

Fanny nodded, eyes intent on the heel of the stocking she was darning. I could hear the faint scrape of her needle on the wooden darning egg.

“I wish Jane would haunt me.” The words weren’t much above a whisper, but I heard it clearly enough, and my heart clenched.

The memory of that sort of wish—the bone-deep need to have contact of any sort, a longing that harrowed the soul, a hollowness that could never be filled—struck me so hard that I couldn’t speak.

Jamie had haunted me—in spite of all my efforts to forget, to immerse myself in the life I had. Would I have found the strength to come back, if he hadn’t remained as a constant presence in my heart, my dreams?

“You won’t forget her, Fanny,” I said, and squeezed her hand. “She won’t forget you, either.”

The wind had come up; I heard it rushing through the trees outside, and the glass window rattled in its frame.

“We’d better close the shutters,” I said, getting up to do so. The surgery window was the largest in the house and thus endowed with both external and internal shutters—both to protect the precious expanse of glass panes from bad weather and potential attack and to insulate the room against the creeping cold.

As I leaned out with the shutter hook in my hand, though, I saw a tall black figure hastening toward the house, skirts and cloak flying in the wind.

“You and your little dog, too,” I murmured, and risked a glance at the forest, in case of flying monkeys. A blast of cold air rushed past me into the surgery, rattling glassware and flipping the pages of the Merck Manual that I had left open on the counter. Luckily I’d taken the precaution of removing the copyright page …

“What did you say?” Fanny had followed me and stood now in the surgery door, Bluebell yawning behind her.

“Mrs. Cunningham’s coming,” I said, leaving the shutters open and closing the window. “Go and let her in, will you? Put her in the parlor and tell her I’ll be right there; perhaps she’s come for the slippery elm powder I promised her.”

So far as Fanny was concerned, Mrs. Cunningham probably was the Wicked Witch of the West, and her manner in inviting the lady inside reflected as much. To my surprise, I heard Mrs. Cunningham declining to sit in the parlor, and in seconds, she was in the door of the surgery, windblown as a bat, and pale as a pat of fresh butter.

“I need …” But she was sagging toward the floor as she spoke, and fell into my arms before she managed a whispered “help.”

Fanny gasped, but grabbed Mrs. Cunningham round the waist, and together we bundled her onto my surgery table. She was clutching her black shawl tight with one hand, holding on like grim death. She’d been gripping it against the wind so hard that her fingers had locked with cold, and it was a job to get the shawl loose.

“Bloody hell,” I said, but mildly, seeing what the trouble was. “How did you manage to do that? Fanny, get me the whisky.”

“Fell,” Mrs. Cunningham rasped, beginning to get her breath back. “Tripped over the scuttle, like a fool.” Her right shoulder was badly dislocated, the humerus humped and elbow drawn in against her ribs, the apparent deformity adding a lot to the witchy impression.

“Don’t worry,” I told her, looking for a way to ease her bodice off so I could reduce the dislocation without tearing the cloth. “I can fix it.”

“I wouldn’t have staggered two miles downhill through buggering brambles if I didn’t think you could,” she snapped, the warmth of the room beginning to revive her. I smiled and, taking the bottle from Fanny, uncorked it and handed it to Elspeth, who put it to her lips and took several slow, deep gulps, pausing to cough in between.

“Your husband … knows … his trade,” she said hoarsely, handing the bottle back to Fanny.

“Several of them,” I agreed. I’d got the bodice loose but couldn’t free the strap of her stays and instead severed it with a Gordian stroke of my scalpel. “Hold her tight round the chest, please, Fanny.”

Elspeth Cunningham knew exactly what I was trying to do, and gritting her teeth, she deliberately relaxed her muscles as far as she could—not all that far, under the circumstances, but every little bit helped. I supposed she must have seen it done on ships—that had to have been the source of the language she was using while I maneuvered the humerus into the correct angle. Fanny snorted with amusement at “grass-combing son of a buggering sod!” as I rotated the arm and the head of the humerus popped back into place.

“It’s been a long time since I heard language like that,” Fanny said, her lips twitching.

“If you have to do with sailors, young woman, you acquire both their virtues and their vices.” Elspeth’s face was still white and shone like polished bone under a layer of sweat, but her voice was steady and her breath was coming back. “And where, might I ask, did you hear language like that?”

Fanny glanced at me, but I nodded and she said simply, “I lived in a brothel for some time, ma’am.”

“Indeed.” Mrs. Cunningham drew her wrist out of my grasp and sat up, rather shaky, but bracing herself with her good hand on the table. “I suppose whores must also have both virtues and vices, then.”

“I don’t know about the virtues,” Fanny said dubiously. “Unless you count being able to milk a man in two minutes by the clock.”

I had taken a nip of the whisky myself, and choked on it.

“I think that would be classed as a skill rather than a virtue,” Mrs. Cunningham told Fanny. “Though a valuable one, I daresay.”

“Well, we all have our strong points,” I said, wanting to put a stop to the conversation before Fanny said anything else. My relationship with Elspeth Cunningham had warmed after Amy Higgins’s death—but only to a certain degree. We respected each other but could not quite be friends, owing to the mutual but unacknowledged realization that, at some point, political reality might oblige my husband and her son to try to kill each other.

WANTING TO AVOID further revelations from Fanny, I sent her to the kitchen to deal with the quails Mrs. McAfee had brought by earlier, in payment for the garlic ointment I’d given her for pinworms.

“I’ve always wondered,” I remarked, tying Elspeth’s sling. “What, exactly, does ‘grass-combing’ mean? Is it actual bad language, or just descriptive?”

She’d been holding her breath as I made the final adjustments but now let it out with a small sigh, gingerly testing the sling.

“Thank you. As to ‘grass-combing,’ it usually means someone who is either idle or incompetent. Why combing grass should imply either attribute is unclear, but it’s not actually bad language as such, unless the term ‘bugger’—sometimes multiple buggers—is attached. Though I can’t say I’ve ever heard it without ‘bugger,’” she added fairly.

“I daresay you’ve heard more than that, if you’ve been at sea. I think you may have shocked Fanny. Not the language itself, but that you don’t look like a whore.”

She snorted briefly.

“Women tend to be much freer in their speech when there are no men present, regardless of profession; surely you’ve noticed that?”

“Well, yes,” I said. “Including nuns.”

“Do you know any nuns? On a personal basis?” she asked, with a trace of sarcasm. Her face was beginning to show a tinge of color, and her breathing was easier.

“I did, once.” And in fact, while I’d seldom heard any of the sisters of the Hôpital des Anges say anything like “grass-combing bugger,” I’d certainly heard them mutter “Merde!”—and a few more colorful sentiments—under their breaths while dealing with the more trying aspects of practicing medicine among the poor of Paris.

And suddenly I had a vivid memory of Mother Hildegarde, who seldom said even “Merde,” but who had told me quite frankly that the King of France would expect to lie with me if I went to beg him for Jamie’s release from prison. And then she’d dressed me in red silk and sent me off to do exactly that.

“Merde,” I muttered, under my own breath. Elspeth didn’t quite laugh—probably because it would hurt her shoulder—but snorted a little.

“It’s been my observation,” she said, “that either sex is much more constrained in language when in the presence of the other than when they are solely in the company of their own kind. Save perhaps in brothels,” she added, with a glance toward the kitchen, where Fanny was singing “Frère Jacques” to herself while rolling quails in clay. “That is a remarkable child, but you must really try to persuade her not to—”

“She knows not to say things like that in public,” I assured Elspeth, and poured some whisky into a cup. “But you’ll be quite free to say anything you like tonight, because I’m not having you go back to your cabin in your condition.”

She gave me a considering look but then shoved a straggle of steel-gray hair behind one ear and acquiesced.

“I’m not sure whether by my ‘condition’ you mean injured or intoxicated, but in either case, thank you.”

“Shall I send Fanny up to your cabin to smother your fire?”

“No. I drowned it before I left, with a pitcher of cold tea. Quite a waste, but I couldn’t tell how soon I should be back.”

“Good.” I took her by her sound arm and helped her off the table. “I’ll help you upstairs to lie down for a bit.”

She didn’t argue, and I saw how much the injury and the journey to reach me had exhausted her. She lifted her feet with slow care, to keep from stumbling on the stairs. I parked her on one of the children’s beds, provided her with a quilt, a pitcher of cold water, and a stiff dram, then went down to help Fanny with the supper preparations.

Brianna had shown her how to pack quails in clay for baking in the ashes, but this was the first time she’d done it alone, and she was frowning at the row of pale clods and smears of mud on the table.

“Do you think that’s enough mud?” she asked me, dubiously. There was a long streak of clay down her cheek, and quite a bit in her hair. “If it’s not enough, Bree says, it will crack before they’re cooked and burn the meat, but if it’s too much mud, they’ll be raw inside.”

“I expect we’ll be too hungry to care much by the time they’re cooked,” I said, but gave one of the little packages a light squeeze and felt the clay give under my fingers. “I think we may have a few air pockets in the clay, though. Squish them—lightly—with your hands all over, to be sure we’ve got rid of all the air—otherwise, when the steam hits an air pocket, the quail—well, the package, not the actual quail—will explode.”

“Oh, dear,” Fanny said, and began determinedly squeezing the embedded quail. I drew breath and rubbed two fingers between my brows.

“Have you a headache?” Fanny asked, brightening. “There’s fresh willow bark; I could brew you some tea in a moment!”

I smiled at her. She was fascinated by herbs and adored all the grinding, boiling, and steeping.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” I said. “I’m fine. Just trying to think what the devil to eat with the quail.” Meals were the daily bane of my existence; not so much the constant work of picking, cleaning, chopping, cooking—though those activities were fairly baneful in themselves—but primarily the never-ending chore of remembering what we had on hand, and balancing the effort required to make it edible against the knowledge of what might spoil if we didn’t eat it right away. Bother nutrition; I crammed apples, raisins, and nuts into people more or less constantly, and poked green stuff down their reluctant gullets whenever I got the chance, and no one had died of scurvy yet.

“We have lots of beans,” Fanny said dubiously. “Or rice, I suppose … or maybe turnips? Er … neeps, I mean.”

“That’s a thought. Bashed neeps aren’t bad, so long as there’s butter and salt, and I know we have salt.” Two hundred and fifty pounds of it sheltering in the smoking shed, as a matter of fact. Tom MacLeod had brought it by wagon from Cross Creek last week—the year’s supply for the entire Ridge, in time for the hunting, butchering, and preserving. A meager eighty pounds of sugar, but I did have honey …

“Right. Baked quail with buttered bashed neeps, and—dried peas boiled with onion? Maybe a little cream?”

In the end, the three of us sat down an hour later to a very reasonable dinner—only one of the quails had exploded, and in fact, the smoky meat was very tasty, and the slightly burnt onions actually improved the creamed peas, I thought. There wasn’t much conversation, though; Fanny and I were tired to the bone and Elspeth Cunningham was old, tired, and in pain.

Still, she made an effort to be civil.

“Do you mean to tell me,” she said, looking round the enormous kitchen, “that there are only the two of you left to run this house?”

“The house and the livestock and garden,” I agreed, stifling a yawn with a jam-spread bannock. “And the butchering.”

“And the bees,” Fanny put in helpfully. “And all of Mrs. Fraser’s medicines to be made, and all the people she puts back togeth … Er … all the people she helps,” she ended, rather more tactfully than she’d begun.

“And the cleaning, too, of course,” Elspeth added, looking thoughtfully at the expanse of foot-marked wooden flooring that disappeared into shadow at the far end of the room. She glanced at me in a way I recognized at once: diagnosis.

Whatever she saw, she was tactful enough to keep it to herself, but she took the whisky bottle I pushed in her direction, nodded her thanks, and said, “I owe you a great deal, Mrs. Fraser. Please allow me to repay you—in part—by sending down one of my son’s lieutenants to take care of the more … manly chores, while your husband is away. Two of them will be coming next week, to stay with us for a time.”

I opened my mouth to refuse politely, but then met her eye—firm, but kindly—and then Fanny’s, pleading and hopeful.

“Thank you,” I said, and topped up her cup.

TALK WAS SMALL and desultory, and within half an hour Fanny had begun to yawn, and so had Bluebell, making a loud creaking noise when she did so.

“I think the dog wants to go to bed, Fanny,” I said, clenching my jaw to contain my own contagious yawn.

“Yes’m,” she murmured, and taking the candlestick I shoved into her hand, she wobbled slowly off to bed, Bluebell trudging in her wake with drowsy determination.

Elspeth made no move to go to bed, though I thought she must be dropping with weariness. I certainly was; too stupid with fatigue to think of any sort of conversational gambit. Luckily, none seemed to be needed. We just sat peacefully by the fire, watching the flames and listening to the wind howl through the empty attics overhead.

Suddenly, a door slammed, and we both jerked upright.

No other noise came down the stairs, though, and after a moment, my heart quit pounding.

“It’s all right,” I said.

Elspeth looked at me sharply. “Patrice MacDonald told me your third floor was unfinished. Her husband was intending to come and work on it this Friday.”

“True.”

“That noise didn’t come from the second floor. I’m sure of it.”

“No,” I agreed. “It didn’t.”

She stared at me, eyes narrowed. I sighed, wishing that I had coffee.

“All houses make sounds, Elspeth—especially big houses. My daughter could undoubtedly tell you why—I can’t, though I can guess now and then. All I can tell you is that when the wind’s in the east, we often hear that particular noise from the third floor.”

“Oh.” She relaxed a little, and took another sip of whisky. “Why do you not just leave that door shut, then?”

“There aren’t any doors on the third floor,” I said. “Yet.” I took a sip of my own. The whisky wasn’t Jamie’s special, but it wasn’t at all bad. I could feel it spreading through my middle in a soft cloud of warmth.

“Are you telling me,” Elspeth said, a few moments later, “that you consider an unfinished floor in a new house to be haunted?”

I laughed.

“No, I’m not. I don’t know what does make that noise, but I’m sure it isn’t a ghostly door of some kind. Really,” I added, seeing her still dubious. “Dozens of people have worked up there over the last couple of months, and none of them have died there—nor did any of them ever see or hear anything odd. And you know that’s true,” I finished, pointing my little finger at her, “because if anyone had, the whole Ridge would know about it by now.”

She’d been on the Ridge long enough to realize the truth of this and nodded, relaxing enough to resume drinking whisky. The tension in the room began to ebb, disappearing up the chimney in a wavering white stream of hickory smoke.

“The attic,” she said, after a few minutes of silence. “Why? It’s a remarkably large house, without adding a third floor.”

“Jamie insisted on it,” I said, with a one-shouldered shrug.

She made a noncommittal noise of acknowledgment and went on sipping. But her sparse gray brows were drawn together, and I knew she wouldn’t stop thinking about it.

“My husband is the Fraser of Fraser’s Ridge,” I said. “If there should ever be … an emergency of some kind that compelled some of the tenants to leave their homes, they could take temporary refuge here. I’ve had that happen before,” I added. “Had refugees in my kitchen—in the old house, I mean—for months. Worse than cockroaches.”

Elspeth laughed politely at that, but she wasn’t troubling to hide her thoughts, and I knew that she appreciated exactly what sort of emergency I had in mind.

“Your son,” I said, feeling that I might as well be blunt. “You believe him?”

She swallowed slowly and leaned back, seeming to look at me from a great distance, as one might regard a bear on a mountaintop: interesting, but no great threat.

“You mean, of course, what he told his congregation, about his son’s death. Yes, I believe him. It is a comfort,” she added softly.

I nodded, accepting this. The story had been a comfort to many more people than her—including me, I realized, with a small sense of surprise. But that wasn’t what I was getting at.

“I was thinking specifically of what his son said to him, that he—your son, I mean—would see him again in seven years’ time. Do you believe that? Or rather—does your son believe that?”

Because a man who believed beyond doubt that he would die on a certain date might just feel himself able to take risks before that date.

Elspeth made no bones about understanding what I meant. She sat silently looking at me, rolling the empty cup slowly between the palms of her hands, the air between us thick with the ghosts of barleycorn and burning wood. At last she sighed and, leaning forward, gingerly, put the cup on the table.

“Yes. He does. He’s adjusted his will so that I will be taken care of—should I outlive him, which I actually don’t plan to.”

I waited, silent. She must of course know that Jamie—and thus I—knew about the captain’s attempts to raise a militia unit of Loyalists. I didn’t think the captain could have hidden the gunrunning incident from her.

“Jamie won’t let him do it,” I said, and she glanced sharply up at me.

“Perhaps not,” she said, over-enunciating in the way that people do when slightly drunk. “But it won’t be up to your husband, in the end.” A small, lady-like belch interrupted her, but she ignored it. “General Cornwallis is sending an officer—a very effective officer, supported by the power of the Crown—to raise Loyalist regiments of militia throughout the Carolinas. To suppress local rebellion.”

I didn’t reply to this, but added an inch of whisky to both our cups, and raised mine to my lips. It seemed to pass straight through my tissues and into my dissolving core.

“Who?” I asked.

She shook her head slowly, and tossed off her whisky.

“And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where are the beast and the false prophet, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.”

“Indeed,” I said, as dryly as possible for someone marinated in single-malt Scotch. I wasn’t sure whether the devil she had in mind was Jamie, George Washington, or the Continental Congress, but it probably didn’t matter.

“Upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it,” I said, and ceremoniously threw the last few drops from my cup into the fire, which sizzled and spat blue for an instant.

“You know, I really think we should go to bed, Elspeth. You need your rest.”

64 Ten Loaves of Sugar, Three Casks of Gunpowder, and Two Needles for Sewing Flesh

AT EIGHT O’CLOCK THE next morning, the Great Wagon Road lay before them, a broad stretch of trampled red dirt, spotted with dung and bits of rubbish, but empty of travelers for the moment.

“Here.” Jamie pulled one of the pistols from his belt and handed it to his sister. Who—to Rachel’s surprise—merely nodded and pointed it at a broken wagon wheel left at the side of the road, checking the sight.

“Powder?” Jenny asked, sliding the pistol into her belt.

“Here.” Jamie took a cartridge box off his neck and swung the strap of it carefully over Jenny’s white cap. “Ye’ve enough powder and shot to kill a dozen men, and six fresh-made cartridges to give ye a head start.”

Jenny caught sight of Rachel’s face at “kill a dozen men” and smiled slightly. Rachel wasn’t reassured.

“Dinna fash, a nighean,” Jenny said, and patted her arm before settling the cartridge box into place. “I willna shoot anyone unless they mean us harm.”

“I—would greatly prefer that thee didn’t shoot anyone in any circumstances,” Rachel said carefully. She hadn’t eaten much for breakfast, but her stomach felt tight. “Not on—on our behalf, certainly.” But she’d cupped Oggy’s bonneted head at the thought, pressing him close.

“Is it all right wi’ you if I shoot them on my own behalf?” Jenny asked, arching one black brow. “Because I’m no standing for anyone molesting my grandson.”

“Dinna be fratchetty, Mam,” Ian said tolerantly, before Rachel could reply to this. “Ye ken if we meet any villains, Rachel will talk them into a stupor afore ye have to shoot one.” He gave Rachel a private smile, and she breathed a little easier.

Jenny made a guttural sound that might have been agreement or mere politeness, but didn’t say more about shooting anyone.

They had two good mules and a horse, a stout wagon filled with provisions, a box of clothes and clouts, and a dozen bottles of Jamie’s whisky hidden in a cache under the floorboards. This would be the center of her world for the next several weeks, and then … the North Country—and Emily. Wishing with all her heart that she and Ian and Oggy were in their snug cabin on the Ridge, Rachel put on a brave face when Jamie bent and kissed her forehead in farewell.

“Fare thee well, daughter,” he said softly. “I will see thee safe again.” A smile creased his eyes, and brief as it was, it gave her soul enough peace that she could smile back.

Jamie took Oggy, helped Rachel up onto the seat, kissed the baby, and handed him up as well. Jenny hopped up at the back and took her place in a cozy nest of blankets amid the provisions, and threw a kiss to her brother, who grinned at her. Ian clapped his uncle on the shoulder, climbed aboard, and with a slap of the reins, they were off.

People said you oughtn’t to look back when you left a place, that it was ill luck, but Rachel turned round without hesitation, watching. Jamie was watching, too, standing like a sentinel in the middle of the road. He raised a hand, and so did she, waving.

You never knew, when you took farewell of someone, whether it might be the last time. The least you could do was say you loved them—and she wished she had. She pressed her fingertips to her lips and, as they swung out to go around the first curve, threw a kiss to the distant figure, still standing in the road.

OGGY HAD FUSSED all night, and Jenny had stayed up to walk him round the floor. Consequently, as soon as Salisbury and the pang of parting from Jamie had passed, Jenny crawled into the back of the wagon, curled up among the bags and boxes, and fell sound asleep, Oggy cuddled beside her, dead to the world in his blanket.

This was the first opportunity Ian and Rachel had had for private conversation since the day before, and she asked him at once about the dead man that Constable Jones had found.

“Does thee know who he is?”

“Nay, no one does. Seems he was a stranger to the town.”

She nodded and squeezed his arm gently.

“Thee took a great time to learn that.”

“Aye, well. Uncle Jamie thought at first he might ken the man, so we went back to have another keek at him.”

He was always truthful with Rachel, and she with him—but he did take pains not to tell her things he knew she would find distressing, unless he thought it really necessary. What Jamie had told him about Frank Randall’s book could wait for a bit, he thought, but plainly the stranger bothered her, and he told her why the sight of the dead man had disquieted Jamie.

“Mrs. Fraser? Abducted and raped?” Ian could see she was appalled. “And your uncle thinks this stranger might have to do with the—the man who did it?”

“I dinna think it likely, nor does Uncle Jamie,” Ian said, as nonchalantly as he could. It wasn’t a lie, after all … “It’s only that the stranger bears a wee resemblance. If it should be he was the man’s kin, for instance …”

“If this man was his kin, then what?” Tiredness had shadowed Rachel’s eyes, but they were still clear as a trout stream.

Well, that was a good question. While he was searching for some reasonable answer, she asked another.

“Do you know where the man—the criminal—is? So that you might send him word of a dead kinsman?”

Ian concealed a smile. Rachel naturally would think that even a vicious rapist deserved to hear of a kinsman’s death—and would undoubtedly go herself to tell him, if necessary.

Fortunately, it wouldn’t be necessary.

“I dinna ken exactly what happened to him, but we’ve had certain word that he’s dead.” He made a quick note to get his mother alone and make sure she kent what was going on, lest she inadvertently tell Rachel just why they were sure the rapist was dead.

Rachel’s sigh lifted her breasts briefly, so the swell of them showed above her shift; Ian had the fleeting thought that when he talked to his mother when they stopped at an inn tonight, she might be induced to take Oggy out for air at some point.

“May God have mercy on his soul,” Rachel said, but her face had relaxed. “Does Mrs. Fraser know?”

“Aye, she does. I didna speak to her about it, but I think she’s … better in her mind for knowing it.”

Rachel nodded soberly.

“It would be terrible for her, to know he was alive. That he might … come back.” A small shudder passed through her, and she hugged her wrapper around her shoulders. “And terrible for Jamie, too. He must be relieved that God has taken the burden from them.”

“God works in mysterious ways, to be sure,” Ian said. She looked sharply at him, but he kept his face calm and after a moment, she nodded, and they left the subject of dead fat men behind them in the dust.

JAMIE HAD LITTLE business left to conduct in Salisbury; he’d got what he came for, in terms of making a connection with Francis Locke, and learned what he needed to. Still, Salisbury was a large town, with merchants and shops, and Claire had given him a list. He felt his side pocket and was reassured to hear the crinkle of paper; he hadn’t lost it. With a brief sigh, he pulled the list out, unfolded it, and read:

Jamie shook his head as he strolled down the street, mentally adding:

Someone had taken his and snapped the tip off it, and he strongly suspected Amanda, she being the only one of the children who could lie convincingly.

Aye, well, he had Clarence and the new mule, a sweet-paced light bay called Abednego, to carry it all home. And enough in miscellaneous forms of money and trade to pay for it all, he hoped. He wouldn’t dream of showing gold in a place like this; ne’er-do-wells and chancers would be following him back to the Ridge like Claire’s bees after sunflowers. Warehouse certificates and whisky would cause much less comment.

Making calculations in his head, he nearly walked straight into Constable Jones, coming out of an ordinary with a half-eaten roll in his hand.

“Your pardon, sir,” they both said at once, and bowed in reflex.

“Heading back to the mountains, then, Mr. Fraser?” Jones asked courteously.

“Once I’ve done my wife’s shopping, aye.” Jamie had the list still in hand and gestured with it before folding it back into his pocket.

The sight of it, though, had brought something to the constable’s mind, for his eyes fixed on the paper.

“Mr. Fraser?”

“Aye?”

The constable looked him over carefully, but nodded, apparently thinking him respectable enough to question.

“The dead man ye came to look at last night. Would ye say he was a Jew?”

“A what?”

“A Jew,” Jones repeated patiently.

Jamie looked hard at the man. He was disheveled and still unshaven, but there was no smell of drink about him, and his eyes were clear, if baggy.

“How would I ken that?” he asked. “And why would ye think so?” A belated thought occurred to him. “Oh—did ye look at his prick?”

“What?” Jones stared at him.

“D’ye not ken Jews are circumcised, then?” Jamie asked, careful not to look as though he thought Jones should know that. He was trying hard not to wonder whether Claire might have noticed if the man who had touched her …

“They’re what?”

“Ehm …” Two ladies, followed by a maid minding three small children and a lad with a small wagon for parcels, were coming toward them, skirts held gingerly above the mud of the street. Jamie bowed to them, then jerked his head at Jones to follow him round the corner of the ordinary into an alley, where he enlightened the constable.

“Jesus Christ!” Jones exclaimed, bug-eyed. “What the devil do they do that for?”

“God told them to,” Jamie said, with a shrug. “Your dead man, though. Is he …”

“I didn’t look,” Jones said, giving him a glance of horrified revulsion.

“Then why d’ye think he might be a Jew?” Jamie asked, patient.

“Oh. Well … this.” Jones groped in his clothes and eventually came out with a grubby much-folded slip of paper, handing it to Jamie. “It was in his pocket.”

Unfolded, it had eight lines of writing, done carefully with a good quill, so each character stood clear.

“We couldn’t make out what the devil it was,” Jones said, squinting at the paper as though that might help in comprehension. “But I was a-showin’ of it to the colonel in the tavern this morning, and we was studyin’ on it and gettin’ nowhere. But Mr. Appleyard happened to be there—he’s an educated gentleman—and he said as how he thought it might be Hebrew, though he’d forgot so much since he learnt it, he couldn’t make out what it said.”

Jamie could make it out fine, though knowing what it said made little difference.

“It is Hebrew,” he said slowly, reading the lines. “It’s part of a Psalm … or maybe a hymn of some kind.”

This clearly rang no bells for Constable Jones, who frowned sternly at the paper as though desiring it to speak.

“What’s that last word, then? Might it be the name of who wrote it? It looks like it’s in English.”

“Aye, it is, but it’s nobody’s name.” The word, printed with the same care as the graceful Hebrew characters, was “Ambidextrous.” He left it to Colonel Locke to enlighten Constable Jones as to what that might be and handed back the paper, wiping his fingers on the skirt of his coat.

“Have a wee keek in his breeks,” Jamie suggested, and with a nod he took firm leave of Constable Jones, Salisbury, Francis Locke, the Rowan County Regiment of Militias—and the dead man.

Only three ounces of pins, ten loaves of sugar, and a mort of gunpowder stood between him and home.

65 Green Grow the Rushes, O!

I WAS LISTENING WITH half an ear to the singing in the kitchen as I pounded and ground sage, comfrey, and goldenseal into an oily dust in the surgery. It was late afternoon, and while the sun fell warm across the floorboards, the shadows held a chill.

Lieutenant Bembridge was teaching Fanny the words to “Green Grow the Rushes, O.” He had a true, clear tenor that made Bluebell yodel when he hit a high note, but I enjoyed it. It reminded me of working in the canteen at Pembroke Hospital, rolling bandages and making up surgical kits with the other student nurses, hearing singing coming in with the yellow fog through the narrow open slit at the top of a window. There was a courtyard down below, and the ambulatory patients would sit there in fine—or even not-so-fine—weather, smoking, talking, and singing to pass the time.

The fog-muffled song was often interrupted by coughing and hoarse curses, but someone could always carry it through to the end.

Elspeth Cunningham had been as good as her word. Lieutenants Bembridge and Esterhazy were eighteen and nineteen, respectively, lusty and in good health, and with Bluebell’s joyous assistance were making so much noise that I didn’t hear either the front door opening or footsteps in the hallway, and was so startled to look up from my mortar and see Jamie in the doorway that I dropped the heavy stone pestle straight down onto my sandaled foot.

“Ouch! Ow! Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ!” I hopped out from behind the table, and Jamie caught me by one arm.

“Are ye all right, Sassenach?”

“Do I sound like I’m all right? I’ve broken a metatarsal.”

“I’ll buy ye a new one next time I go into Salisbury,” he assured me, letting go of my elbow. “Meanwhile, I’ve got everything on the list, except … Why are there Englishmen singing in my kitchen?”

“Oh. Ah. Well …” It wasn’t that I hadn’t thought about what his response to two of His Majesty’s naval officers lending a hand to the domestic economy might be, but I’d thought I’d have time to explain before he actually encountered them. I rested my bottom against the edge of the table, lifting my wounded foot off the floor.

“They’re two young lieutenants who used to sail with Captain Cunningham. They were cast ashore or marooned or something—anyway, they lost their ship and it’s so late in the year that they can’t find a ship to join before March or April, so they came to the Ridge to stay with the captain. Elspeth Cunningham lent them to me for chores, in payment for my reducing her dislocated shoulder.”

“Elspeth, is it?” Luckily, he seemed amused rather than annoyed. “Do we feed them?”

“Well, I’ve been giving them lunch and a light supper. But they’ve been going back up to the captain’s cabin in the evening and coming down midmorning. They’ve repaired the stable door,” I offered, in extenuation, “dug over my garden, chopped two cords of wood, carried all the stones you and Roger dug out of the upper field down to the springhouse, and—”

He made a slight gesture indicating that he accepted my decision and now would like to change the subject. Which he did by kissing me and asking what was for supper. He smelled of road dust, ale, and faintly of cinnamon.

“I believe Fanny and Lieutenant Bembridge are making burgoo. It has pork, venison, and squirrel in it—apparently you must have at least three different meats for a proper burgoo—but I have no idea what else is in it. It smells all right, though.”

Jamie’s stomach rumbled.

“Aye, it does,” he said thoughtfully. “And what does Frances make o’ them?”

“I think she’s somewhat smitten,” I said, lowering my voice and glancing toward the hall. “Cyrus came to call yesterday while she was serving the lieutenants lunch, and she asked him to stay, but he just drew himself up to about seven feet, glared at them, said something rude in Gaelic—I don’t think she understood it, but she wouldn’t need to—and left. Fanny went pink in the face—with indignation—and gave them the dried-apple-and-raisin pie she’d meant for Cyrus.”

“Is fheàrr giomach na gun duine,” Jamie said, with a philosophical shrug. Better a lobster than no husband.

“You don’t actually think that, do you?” I asked, curious.

“In the case of most lassies, yes,” he said. “But I want someone better for Frances, and I dinna think a British sailor will do. Ye say they’re leaving in the spring, though?”

“So I understand. Ooh!” I tenderly massaged the throbbing bruise on my foot. The pestle had struck smack at the base of my big toe, and while the original pain had receded a bit, trying to put my weight on the foot and/or bend it resulted in a sensation like hot barbed wire being pulled between my toes.

“Sit yourself down, a nighean,” he said, and pushed the big padded chair that Brianna had dubbed the Kibitzer’s Chair toward me. “I brought a few bottles of good wine from Salisbury; I expect one o’ those would make your foot feel better.”

It did. It made Jamie feel better, too. I could see that he’d come home carrying something, and I felt a small knot below my own heart. He’d tell me when he was ready.

So we sipped our wine—it was red—and felt together the gentle touch of the grape. I told him about Elspeth’s sudden appearance and our conversation after dinner. He told me about seeing Ian and Rachel and Jenny off, relieving his clear sense of sorrow at their parting with Jenny’s remark about her pistol.

“That took Rachel aback, as ye might suppose,” he said, eyes alight with amusement. “But then Young Ian steps in and says, ‘Dinna be fratchetty, Mam. Ye ken if we meet any villains, Rachel will talk them into a stupor afore ye have time to load.’”

I laughed, as much because the cloud seemed to be lifting from Jamie’s face as because it was funny.

“I hope Jenny doesn’t feel obliged to shoot what’s-her-name—Ian’s wife—”

“Wakyo’teyehsnonhsa,” Jamie said patiently, and I flipped a hand.

“Emily, then. You don’t suppose she’d try to—to get Ian back?”

“She didna want him when she put him out of her house,” Jamie pointed out. “Why would she now?”

I looked at him over the rim of my second—or possibly third—glass.

“How little you know of women, my love,” I said, shaking my head in mock dismay. “And after all these years.”

He laughed and poured the rest of the bottle into my glass.

“I dinna think I want to ken anything about any woman other than you, Sassenach. After all these years. Why, though?”

“She’s a widow with three small children,” I pointed out. “She put Young Ian out because he couldn’t give her live children, not because he was a bad husband. Now she’s got live children, she doesn’t need a husband for that purpose—but there are a lot of other things a husband’s good for. And I rather think Ian might be very good at some of those things.”

He looked at me thoughtfully, then tossed off the rest of his glass.

“Ye talk as though Young Ian had nothing to say about it, Sassenach. Or Rachel.”

“Oh, Rachel will have something to say about it,” I said, though I wasn’t sure what she might say. Rachel was neither timid nor inexperienced in the ways of the world, but meeting one’s spouse’s ex-wife might be more complicated than either she or Ian thought.

“Look at what happened when I met Laoghaire again,” I pointed out.

“Aye, she shot me,” he said dryly. “D’ye think Wakyo’teyehsnonhsa is likely to kill Rachel, rather than let her have Ian? Because I think my sister might have something to say about that.”

“She is a Mohawk,” I said. “They have rather different standards, I think.”

“They havena got different standards of hospitality,” he assured me. “She wouldna kill a guest. And if she tried, my sister would put a bullet through her head before ye could say … what is it ye could say?”

“Jack Robinson,” I said. “Though I’ve always wondered who he was and why that should be quicker to say than Fogarty Simms or Peter Rabbit. Is there more of that wine?”

“Aye, plenty.” He stood up and went to the door of the surgery, where he paused to listen. The singing in the kitchen had stopped, and there was just the murmur of conversation—interrupted by occasional laughter—and the rattle of plates.

“Will your foot stand the stairs, Sassenach?” he asked, turning to me. “I could maybe carry ye up, if not.”

“Upstairs?” I said, rather surprised. I glanced involuntarily toward the kitchen. “What, now?”

“Not that,” he said, with a brief smile. “Not yet. I meant the third floor.”

THE BENEFICIAL EFFECTS of half a bottle of wine were sufficient to get me up the stairs with Jamie’s supportive elbow, and I emerged into the open space of the third floor with a sense of exhilaration. There was a strong, cold breeze blowing from the east, and it swept away the last remnants of cooking, dog, sweaty young men, and left-too-long laundry from the house below. I spread my arms and my shawl flared out behind me like wings, my skirts pressed flapping round my legs.

“Ye look like you’re meaning to fly away, Sassenach,” Jamie said. “Maybe ye’d best sit down.” He sounded half serious but was smiling when I turned to look at him.

He had brought a stool up with him, along with the second bottle of wine. He hadn’t bothered with glasses but drew the cork with his teeth, sniffed the contents appraisingly, and then handed me the bottle.

“I dinna think decanting would improve it much.”

I was in no mood for niceties. The relief of having him home subsumed all minor considerations, and I wouldn’t have minded drinking water. Still, the wine was good, and I held a mouthful for a few moments before swallowing.

“This is wonderful,” I said, gesturing toward the view with the bottle. “I haven’t been up since we saw Bree and Roger off.” The memory of standing up here, watching their wagon disappear slowly into the trees, twisted my heart a little, but the Ridge spread out around us now in all its glory—and it was glorious, with flaming patches and sparks of autumn beginning to burn amongst the rippling cool dark greens and blues of spruce and fir and pine and sky. Here and there I could make out the white threads of chimney smoke, though the tossing trees hid the cabins themselves.

“Aye, it is,” Jamie said, though most of his attention was—naturally—focused on the timbers of the framing around us. The walls were skeletal but undeniably walls, and the rooftree and trusses creaked overhead. It was a remarkable feeling: to be inside a house and still outside, the solid floorboards under our feet marked with water stains from earlier rains and drifts of dry leaves caught in the corners of the framing timbers.

Jamie shook two or three of the uprights, grunting in satisfaction when they didn’t move.

“Well, those are no going anywhere,” he said.

“You built them,” I pointed out. “Surely you didn’t think they’d come loose?”

He made a noise indicating extreme skepticism, though I couldn’t tell whether he was skeptical of his own skills, the perversity of weather, or of the trustworthiness of building materials in general. Probably all three.

“I’ll maybe have time to get the roof on before snow flies,” he said, squinting up.

“And walls?”

“Ach. With a couple of men, I can do the outer walls in a day. Maybe two,” he amended, as a fresh blast of wind roared through the framing, whipping strands of hair out of the scarf I’d wrapped round it. “I can take my time with the plastering, over the winter.”

“It’s not as peaceful as the second floor when it was open,” I said. “But somewhat more exciting.”

“I dinna want the top of my house to be exciting,” he said, but he smiled and came to stand behind me, hands on my shoulders to keep me from blowing away.

“I don’t suppose we’ll really need it to be finished before spring,” I said, when the wind dropped enough to make speech possible. “None of our wanderers will be back before …” I trailed off, because in fact, there was no telling when—or if—everyone would come home. The war had already begun to move south, and the calming chill of approaching winter would be only a short delay of what was coming.

“They’ll be home safe,” Jamie said firmly. “All of them.”

“I hope so,” I said, and leaned back against him, wanting his firmness, of belief as well as body. “Do you think Bree and Roger have got to Charles Town yet?”

“Oh, aye,” he said at once. “It’s a bit more than three hundred miles, but the weather should have been fine for the most part. If they didna lose a wheel or meet a catamount, they’d make it in two weeks or so. I expect we’ll have a letter soon; Brianna will write to say that all is well.”

That was a heartening thought, in spite of the catamounts, but I thought the force of his belief was a little less.

“It will be fine,” I said, reaching back and wrapping a hand round his leg in reassurance. “Marsali and Fergus will be so happy to have Germain back again.”

“But—?” he said, having picked up the unspoken thought that came in the wake of my remark. “Ye think there’s something else that’s maybe amiss wi’ them?”

“I don’t know.” Looking over the vast spaces into which our family had vanished made the separation suddenly frightening. “There are so many things that could happen to them—and us unable to help.” I tried to laugh. “It reminds me of Brianna’s first day at kindergarten. Watching her disappear into the school, clutching her pink lunch box … all alone.”

“Was she afraid?” he asked quietly, gathering my flying hair into a bundle and tying his handkerchief round it.

“Yes,” I said, my throat tight. “She was very brave. But I could see she was afraid.” I leaned down and picked up the bottle of wine. “She’s afraid now,” I blurted.

“Of what, a nighean?” He came round in front of me and squatted down to look me in the face. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s her heart,” I said. And taking a deep breath, I told him about the atrial fibrillation.

“And ye canna fix it?” His brow was furrowed, and he looked over his shoulder, into the endless forest. “Is she like to die on the road?”

“No!” The sudden panic was clear in my voice, and Jamie grabbed my hand, squeezing tight.

“No,” I said, willing myself back into calm. “No, she isn’t. It’s almost never fatal; particularly not in a young person. But it’s—unpredictable.”

“Aye,” he said, after studying my face for a moment. “Like war.” He nodded toward the distant mountains, though his eyes didn’t leave mine. “Ye never ken for sure what will happen—maybe nothing, maybe not for a long time, maybe not here, not now—” His fingers tightened on mine. “But ye ken it’s there, all the time. Ye try to push it away, not think of it until there’s need—but it doesna ever go away.”

I nodded, unable to speak. It lived with both of us; with everyone, these days.

The wind had dropped, but so high up, there was still a cold breeze, breathing through my clothes. The warmth of the wine had faded from my blood, and Jamie’s hand was as chilled as mine—but his eyes were warm and we held on.

“Dinna be afraid, Sassenach,” he said at last. “There’s still the two of us.”

DESPITE THE COLD wind, we didn’t go down again immediately. While it was an exposed and vulnerable location, there was something comforting in the knowledge that if something was coming toward us, we’d see it in time to prepare.

“So what else did you do in Salisbury?” I asked, leaning back against him. “I know you bought cinnamon, because I can smell it. Was there any cinchona?”

“Aye, about half a pound. I took it all, as ye told me. I couldna get more than two loaves of sugar; it’s scarce, wi’ the blockade. But I did get pepper, too, and …” He let go of me to fumble in his sporran and came up with a tiny round brown thing, which he held out to me. “A nutmeg.”

“Oh! I haven’t smelled nutmeg in years!” I took it from him, cold-fingered and careful lest I drop it. I held it under my nose and breathed in. My eyes were closed but I could clearly see Christmas cookies and taste the thick sweetness of eggnog. “How much was it?”

“Ye dinna want to know,” he assured me, grinning. “Worth it, though, for the look on your face, Sassenach.”

“Bring me some rum tonight, and I’ll put the same look on yours,” I said, laughing. I handed back the nutmeg for safekeeping, noticing as he put it back a small, ragged-edged piece of paper sticking out. “What’s that? A secret communiqué from the Salisbury Committee of Safety?”

“It might be, if any of them are Jews.” He handed me the paper, and I blinked at it. I hadn’t seen Hebrew writing any time in the last forty-five years, but I recognized it. What was more peculiar, though, was the fact that it was Jamie’s handwriting.

“What on earth …?”

“I dinna ken,” he said apologetically, and took back the note. “A constable in Salisbury found it—not this, I dinna mean, but the original—on a dead body, and he asked me did I ken aught about it. I told him it was Hebrew, and I read it to him in English, but neither of us could tell what it had to do wi’ anything. I thought it was queer enough, though, that I wrote it out for myself when I got back to my lodgings.”

“Queer is a good word for it.” I couldn’t read Hebrew myself—Jamie had learned it in Paris, studying at the université, but there was one English word at the bottom of the note. “What does ‘ambidextrous’ have to do with anything, do you suppose?”

He shrugged and shook his head.

“The Hebrew bit is a sort of blessing for a house. I’ve seen it before, in Jewish houses in Paris; they put it in a wee thing called a mezuzah by the door. But ‘ambidextrous’ …” He hesitated, looking at me sideways. “The only thing I can think of, Sassenach, is that it’s a long word wi’ no repeating letters.”

The mention of Paris had at once reminded me of his cousin Jared’s house, where we had lived in the year before the Rising—and where he had spent his days selling wine and his nights—all too often—in intrigue and—

“Spying?” I said, incredulous. I knew almost nothing about codes, ciphers, and secret writing—but he did. He looked mildly embarrassed.

“Aye, maybe. I’m sorry, Sassenach; I shouldna have brought such a thing home. I was only curious.”

It was no more than a scrap of paper, and whatever message it might hold was certainly not meant for us—but it brought back those anxious days and nights in Paris, full of glamour, fear, and uncertainty—and then of sorrow, grief, and anger. I swallowed, hard.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, very softly, his eyes fixed on my face. Still looking at me, he opened his hand and held it out. The wind snatched the little note at once and whirled it away like a leaf, flying off the roof and into the deep woods beyond. Gone.

His hand was still open, and I took it. His fingers were as cold as mine.

“Forgiven,” I said, just as softly.

The slam was so sudden that I jerked my hand out of Jamie’s and whirled round.

“What did that?” I demanded, looking wildly to and fro.

“Likely a tree,” he said mildly. “Over there, I reckon—” He gestured toward the distant trees. “I’ve only heard it when the wind’s out of the east.”

“I’ve never heard a tree make a noise like a slamming door,” I said, unconvinced.

“If ye spent much time sleeping in the forest, Sassenach, ye’d hear them make as many sounds as there are animals on the ground near ye—and it’s often hard to tell the difference, if the wind’s blowing. They groan and scream and clatter and drop their limbs and hiss and squeal when they catch fire from lightning, and now and then they fall over with an almighty crash that shakes the ground. If ye paid attention to the racket, ye’d never sleep.”

“For one thing, I wouldn’t be sleeping much if I were in a forest, regardless. And for another, it’s broad daylight now.”

“I dinna think that matters to a tree.” He was openly laughing at me, and it absurdly made me feel better. He bent, picked up the bottle, and handed it to me. “Here, Sassenach. It will settle your nerves.”

I took a solid gulp, and it did. Somewhat.

“Better now?” he asked, watching.

“Yes.”

“Good. I said I had something to tell ye, aye?”

“Yes,” I said, eyeing him. “Why do I think it’s bad news?”

“Well, it’s no exactly bad,” he said, tilting his head. “But I didna want to be talking about it wi’ the sailors in earshot.”

“Oh, just dangerous, then. That’s a relief.”

“Well, only a wee bit dangerous.” He took back the bottle, had a quick swig, and told me about his meetings with Colonel Locke and his conclusions regarding the Rowan County militia.

“So,” he finished, “I said I’d got everything on my list, save the one thing—gunpowder.”

“Ah,” I said. “So you have guns—some, at least—courtesy of Captain Cunningham—”

“And with any luck, Roger Mac will get me more in Charles Town,” he interrupted. “But I’ve barely enough powder to keep us in meat for the winter. I couldna buy any in Salisbury, for Colonel Locke has requisitioned all of it for military use.”

“And if you joined the Rowan County super-militia, Colonel Locke would supply you. But you don’t want to do that, because then you’d need to answer his call and take orders from him.”

“I dinna mind taking orders, Sassenach,” he said, giving me a faintly reproachful look. “But it does depend who from. And if it were to be Locke … he’ll be taking the companies under his command toward battle, God knows where—but not anywhere near the Ridge. And I will not leave my home—or you—unprotected while I mind Locke’s business a hundred miles away.”

His mind was plainly made up, and for once I was in complete agreement with him.

“I’ll drink to that,” I said, lifting the bottle in salute to him. He smiled, took it, and drained it.

“Elspeth Cunningham and I shared a bottle of your second-best whisky,” I said, taking the empty bottle and setting it down under the stool. “We talked about her son. I told her that you wouldn’t let the captain raise a Loyalist militia under your nose, so to speak.”

“Nor will I.”

“Naturally not. But what she said in reply—and mind you, she was exhausted, in pain, and fairly well intoxicated by that time, so I don’t think she was lying—she said that it wouldn’t be up to you, in the end. Because General Cornwallis is sending an officer—a very effective officer, she said, and one supported by the power of the Crown—to raise Loyalist regiments of militia throughout the Carolinas. To suppress local rebellions.”

He stood quite still for a long moment, eyes creased against the wind, which had risen again.

“Aye,” he said at last. “Then it will have to be the Overmountain men—Cleveland and Shelby and their friends.”

“It will have to be them for what?”

He picked up the stool and empty bottle and shook his head, as though thinking to himself.

“I’ll have to make alliance wi’ them. They have an understanding wi’ Mrs. Patton to provide powder for them from her mill, and if I agree to stand with them in need, they’ll let her know to supply me. And they’ll presumably come to my aid, should I call.” I heard that “presumably” and moved close to him, feeling suddenly colder than before. He was essentially alone, without Roger or Young Ian at hand, and he knew that all too well.

“Do you trust Benjamin Cleveland and the rest?”

“Sassenach, there are maybe eight people in the world I trust, and Benjamin Cleveland isna one o’ them. Luckily, you are.”

He put an arm around me and kissed my forehead. “How’s your foot?”

“I can’t feel either of my feet.”

“Good. Let’s go down and warm ourselves wi’ a bit of the sailors’ burgoo.”

“That sounds di—” The word died on my lips as I saw a movement on the far side of the clearing below, at the head of the wagon road that led down behind Bobby Higgins’s cabin. “Who’s that?”

I groped automatically for my spectacles, but I’d left them in the surgery. Jamie looked over my shoulder, squinting against the wind, and made an interested noise.

It was a person on foot; I could see that much. And a woman, moving slowly, in the manner of someone putting one foot before another out of sheer determination.

“It’s the lassie who came to fetch ye to her mother’s childbed,” he said. “Agnes Cloudtree, was it?”

“Are you sure?” I squinted, too, but it didn’t help much; the figure remained a blur of brown and white against the darker dirt of the road. A stab of fear went through my heart, though, at the name “Cloudtree.” I’d thought often of the twins I’d delivered, of their mother’s stoic heroism … and the very peculiar circumstance of that birth; a circumstance made the more peculiar by the simplicity of it. I could feel the sense of that small body in my hands now. Nothing dramatic; no tingling or glowing. Just the sure and certain knowledge of life.

If this was indeed Agnes Cloudtree coming toward us, I hoped against hope that she hadn’t come to tell me that her small sister was dead.

“I think it’s all right, Sassenach.” Jamie had continued watching the small, dogged figure, his arm still round my middle. “I can see she’s weary—and no wonder, if she’s walked all the way from the Cherokee Line—but her shoulders are square and her heid’s unbowed.” The tension in his arm relaxed. “She doesna come in sorrow.”

WE OPENED THE front door in welcome, but stayed sheltering in the front hall from the wind until she should come closer. Fanny looked warily past Jamie’s elbow, at the small figure coming up the hill, and suddenly stiffened.

“She’s coming to stay!” she said, and looked accusingly at me.

“What?” I said, startled, and Fanny relaxed a little, seeing that my surprise at this remark was genuine.

“Th—she has her things.” She nodded at Agnes, who was now close enough that I could see her long, wispy blond hair escaping from a grubby cap. Agnes was indeed carrying a flour sack, the neck of it tied in a knot and the weight swinging like a pendulum as she walked.

“She’s likely bringing us something from her mother,” I said.

“Aye, she is.” Jamie’s eyes were fixed on her, interested. “Herself.” He glanced down at Fanny, who wore a slight frown. “Frances is right, Sassenach. Something’s happened, and the lass has left home.”

“Agnes!” I called, and came out and down the steps to meet her. “Agnes, are you all right?”

Her face was tired and grimy, but her eyes warmed when she saw me.

“Mrs. Fraser,” she said. Her voice was croaky, in the way of one who hasn’t spoken a word aloud in hours, or days, and she cleared her throat and tried again.

“I—it’s—I mean … I’m well.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” I reached out and took the flour sack from her—Jamie and Fanny had been right; I could tell from the feel of it that it held clothing, rather than a ham or a bag of onions. “Come in, child, and have something to eat; you look starved.”

Fanny eyed Agnes warily but went to fetch hot burgoo and some bread and butter when asked. Agnes ate hungrily, and we let her eat her fill without talking. As she began to show signs of slowing down, I exchanged a glance with Jamie that agreed I would ask the questions.

“How is your mother, dear?” I asked. “And would you like a bit of apple-and-raisin pie? I think there’s some left in the pie safe, isn’t there, Fanny?”

“Yes’m,” Fanny said. She hadn’t taken her eyes off Agnes since she’d entered the house, and was still eyeing her as though suspecting she might have come to steal the spoons, but she got up at once and went to get the pie.

“My mother’s well,” Agnes said, looking at me directly for the first time. Her face was strained and anxious, though, and another qualm of apprehension went through me.

“Your brothers? And …”

“My sister’s well,” she said, her face relaxing a little. “Thriving, Mam said to tell you. She’s near as big as her twin now, and eating like one o’ the piglets. My brothers always eat like pigs,” she added dismissively.

“I’m so glad to hear that,” I said, and warmth filled me. “About your little sister, I mean.”

I hesitated, not sure what to ask next, but her strength had come back with a little rest and food, and she straightened up on her stool, folded her hands on her knee, and looked at Jamie.

“I thank you kindly for the food, and I’ve come to ask for work, sir.”

“Have ye, then?” Jamie gave me a glance that said “See?” then smiled at her. “What sort of work did ye have in mind, lass?”

She looked rather nonplussed at that and spread her hands, frowning at them.

“Well … anything you need done, I suppose. Laundry?” she ventured, looking from Jamie to me and back. “Or maybe I could feed your animals or scrub the floors …” Everyone looked down at the kitchen floor, which was covered with dried muddy footprints at the moment; it had rained on and off all week.

“Mmphm,” Jamie said. “I imagine we can find enough for ye to do, lass. And we’ll give ye a bed and plenty to eat. But would ye tell me, then, why ye’ve left your family?”

A dull flush rose in her cheeks, and I knew what she was about to say.

“Your … um … stepfather, perhaps?” I asked delicately. She looked down and the flush got deeper. She nodded, once.

“He came back,” she blurted. “He always comes back. And mostly he’s all right for some time; he’s run out of drink and so long as there’s no money to buy more … it’s all right.” She took a deep breath and looked up, meeting Jamie’s eyes squarely. “It’s not what you’re thinkin’, sir; he hasn’t … you know.”

“I do,” Jamie said softly. “And I’m glad he hasn’t. But what has he done?”

She sighed.

“When he drinks, he gets angry and he … has ideas. So this time his idea was that we should all go into the Overhill people’s land and live in one of the villages there. My mother didn’t mind; she was glad to go to a place where there would be other women, people to be with and help.”

She looked at me, biting her lower lip.

“But I didn’t want to go. Aaron meant to marry me off to a friend of his in Chilhowee. He—we—don’t get on, him and me. He wanted me out of the house, and when I said I wouldn’t go and be married, he said I could suit myself but he was shut of me. And … he threw me out.” She’d kept a tight grip on her feelings so far, but a tear trickled down her cheek at this, and she swiped at it hastily, as though not wanting us to see it.

“I—I spent two days in the woods, sir. Not wanting to leave Ma and the little ones and not knowin’ what else to do. My brother Georgie snuck some food to me, and then finally Ma got out long enough to bring me my things—” She nodded at the forlorn little sack on the floor at her feet. “She said I should come to you. You were so kind and good to us, maybe …” She stopped and swallowed, hard.

“So I came,” she concluded, in a very small voice. She sat with her head bent. The room had grown dark by now, and the firelight flickered softly over her, as though the warmth reached out to her.

Fanny got up suddenly, came over to Agnes, and squatted down in front of her. She took Agnes’s hand in both of hers and patted it.

“Can you cook?” she asked hopefully.

66 Diaspora

I SNIPPED SEVERAL SMALL chunks of sugar off one of the loaves Jamie had brought back from Salisbury and carried them up to the garden, wrapped in my handkerchief. Long before I reached the garden itself, bees began to appear, circling me in interest.

“Just how far away can you smell it?” I asked. “Be patient; you’ll get your snack in a minute.” There were still flowers blooming on the mountain—asters, stonecrop, goldenrod, fall crocuses, Joe-Pye weed—but there were also caterpillars in a greater abundance than I was accustomed to, and the ones called woolly bears were noticeably larger and woolier than usual; sure sign of a hard winter, according to John Quincy, who ought to know. I wanted to make sure the bees would have enough honey to keep them ’til spring, so I augmented their diet with a treat of sliced fruit or sugar-water every few days.

Inside the garden—with the gate carefully closed against intrusions by deer or raccoons—I dipped water from the barrel with the shallow bowl I kept there and crumbled the sugar into it, stirring it with my finger. Bees at once lighted on the bowl, my clothes, the high stool I used as a workbench, and on my hand, their feet tickling with busy interest.

“Do you mind?” I said, shaking them off and carefully brushing a few strays from my face. I had had the forethought to wrap my hair in a cloth, having more than once had the unnerving experience of trying to disentangle a panicked bee from the floating strands.

“All right, then,” I said, putting down the dish of sugar-water with a sense of relief. “Go to it!” They didn’t need encouragement; bees were already clustered shoulder-to-shoulder on the rim of the dish, greedily sucking, then flying back to their hives—I had eight now, in the garden, and three more in the woods, all thriving—to be instantly supplanted by more.

“Well, then.” I stood back and watched them for a moment, with a sense of satisfaction. The thrum of their wings was a low, pleasant sound and I relaxed into the sense of the garden in early autumn, cool-leaved and pungent with the sharp scents of turnips, potato vines, and turned earth. I’d dug a deep trench for the spring peas along one side of the garden, one for pole beans on the other; Jamie or one of the girls would need to carry up a few baskets of manure for me to mix with the earth before filling them, so it could decay peacefully over the winter. A few late tomatoes glowed in the shadow of the northeast corner, and I went to pick whatever might be usable off the slug-tattered plants; they wouldn’t last much longer.

“So,” I said to a bee that had obligingly accompanied me to the tomato patch, “you already know about Roger and Bree and the children—I imagine you could smell the sauerkraut for miles. I hope they’ve made it to Charles Town by now and that things are all right between Germain and his family. I don’t think I told you about Rachel and Ian, though—they’ve gone off with Jenny—you know her, she was smelling like hickory nuts, goat’s milk, and bannocks the last time I saw her—to New York.

“Yes, that is a long way,” I continued, unrolling the small mat of woven reeds that I knelt on for weeding. “The only good thing is that there won’t be any more fighting up north—it’s all coming down here. But there was fighting up there, so they’ve gone to see Ian’s ex-wife and make sure that she and her children are all right. Rachel’s not happy about that, naturally, but her inner light obviously sees that Ian has to go, and so she’s going with him. With the baby,” I added, with a twinge of apprehension.

“Anyway, it’s quite the little diaspora—I suppose you’ll know what that is; you do it every day, don’t you?” But then you come back at the end of the day, I thought.

I said a quick prayer that our own busy bees would survive their adventures unscathed and make it back to our hive in the spring. Then I recalled Agnes.

“Oh, we’ve someone new. She’s called Agnes and at the moment she smells pretty strongly of lye soap and hyssop, because I had to nit-comb her hair, but I’m sure that’s only temporary—the smell, I mean; the nits are gone. I’ll bring her up tomorrow and introduce her to you.”

It was comforting to think that Fanny wasn’t rattling around in the big house by herself. She and Agnes had quite hit it off, after a brief initial wariness. When I’d left to come up to the garden, they’d been sitting on the porch braiding onions and garlic and speculating about Bobby Higgins’s marital prospects, since they could see the cabin below and Bobby repairing a rotted plank in the stoop, Aidan helping him, and the two little boys chasing each other round and round the cabin, shrieking.

“Would you have him?” Fanny had asked Agnes. “You had—I mean, have,” she corrected herself hastily, “little brothers, so maybe you could deal with the boys.”

“I could,” Agnes said doubtfully, laying a fresh braid of onions on the trug. “But I don’t know about him. Mr. Higgins, I mean. Judith MacCutcheon says the scar on his cheek is an M, and that stands for ‘Murderer.’ I think I’d be afraid to lie with a man who’s killed someone.”

“It’s easier than you think, child,” I said under my breath, recalling this.

Still, it was true that while the competition to be the next Mrs. Higgins continued, some of the young women—and some of their families—on the Ridge viewed Bobby with a slightly jaundiced eye, now that he was a widower and in the market for a wife. When he’d married Amy McCallum, taken on her sons Aidan and Orrie, and quickly produced little Rob, the community had come slowly to accept him. But now, when he might be marrying one of their daughters, they were seeing him again as a Sassenach and remembering that he had been a soldier—and a redcoat. And a murderer, with a brand on his face to testify to his crime.

I pushed aside the small pile of weeds—I had a row of such piles along the edge of the turnip patch, each more wilted and decaying than the one beside it. I kept them to prove to myself that I was, in fact, accomplishing something, though if I looked over my shoulder, it was apparent that the weeds were gaining on me. Jamie referred to the little heaps as my scalps—which, while he meant it to be funny, was actually not wrong.

There were other things to do today, though, so I rose, knees creaking, and rolled up my mat.

I picked up the basket of tomatoes, turnips, and herb cuttings and paused at the garden gate, looking down at the house. The girls had vanished from the porch, and the trug was gone, too—likely they’d gone to the root cellar with the onions.

Fanny was—we thought—thirteen now; Agnes fourteen. Girls did marry at such ages, but they weren’t going to if I—and Jamie—had anything to say about it, and we did.

A flicker of movement caught my eye through the trees. A woman … a young woman, in a blue-checked blouse and a gray skirt with an embroidered petticoat just showing beneath. Her head came into view and I recognized Caitriona McCaskill. She also carried a basket, and was headed downhill with a sense of purpose. Not everyone had reservations regarding Bobby Higgins.

“And what do you think of her?” I asked the bees, but if they had an opinion, they kept it to themselves.

67 Réunion

MANDY WAS BUG-EYED WITH excitement and incoherent—but by no means silent—about everything she saw, from the clouds of mosquitoes drifting around them, and flocks of birds that were presumably eating the mosquitoes, to black slaves at work in the rice fields.

“Uncle Joe!” she shouted, hanging half out of the wagon and waving madly. “Uncle Joe, Uncle Joe!”

“That’s not Uncle Joe,” Jem told her, grabbing the back of her pinafore. “He’s in Boston.” He glanced quickly at his mother, who nodded, thankful for the intervention. She and Roger had had a private talk with both Jem and Germain about slavery—and a slightly more private talk with Jem.

“Look, Mandy!” Germain had grabbed Mandy’s arm, turning her to see a huge blue heron looking disapprovingly at them from an undrained paddy, and no more was said about the men and women working with tiny hand scythes on the other side of the road, bending and stooping in the thick, hot air, harvesting the knee-deep yellowing grain.

On the outskirts of the city, they saw Continental soldiers.

“Lots of soldiers!” The boys were now hanging out of the wagon, pulling at each other’s sleeves to see a new marvel. Small canvas tents, only large enough to shelter a man from the rain, but hundreds of them, seeming to breathe as a breeze from the distant river fluttered through them. The breeze brought the sound of rhythmic shouting: men drilling, marching to and fro in a distant cleared square of trodden dirt, muskets on their shoulders. And then a pair of cannon, dark and lethal, on their limbers and ready to move, with their caissons full of crates of balls and barrels of powder. The boys were struck speechless.

“Jesus Christ.” Brianna, parochial-school girl that she was, seldom took the Lord’s name in vain, but this was a muttered prayer. Roger heard it and glanced at her.

“Aye,” he said, seeing what she was looking at. “They look harmless in a museum, don’t they?” His mouth tightened a little as he looked at the openmouthed boys, but he gave Brianna a wry smile and handed her the reins.

“Distraction,” he said briefly, and hoisted Mandy onto his lap, where he took a firm grip on her waist and began pointing out flights of snowy egrets and what just might be the hazy masts of ships in the distant harbor.

HOW LONG HAD it been since she’d seen a city? Brianna had been so keyed up when they came within sight of Charles Town that she’d scarcely noticed the city itself. She’d felt the heavy slosh of the sauerkraut barrels with every bump in the road, and when they reached the cobblestoned streets of Charles Town and the sloshing turned to a constant judder through the frame of the wagon, between nightmare visions of a barrel tipping out and bursting on the road and the necessity of keeping a grip on Mandy, she had little attention to spare.

But now, at last, they’d stopped. She felt weak-kneed, like someone stepping ashore after a long sea voyage, and thought she might smell of sauerkraut for the rest of her life, but such considerations weighed little against the relief of arrival. They’d had to leave the wagon in the yard of an inn and make their way on foot to the printshop. Charles Town had broad, gracious streets, but Fergus’s establishment lurked modestly on a smaller lane near the edge of the business district, tree-lined and pleasant, with several small shops about it—but not a street wide enough for wagons to pass each other.

Roger had given the inn’s ostler a few pennies to mind the wagon while they walked to the printshop, but he still felt uneasy at leaving it. On the other hand, the ostler had reared back, catching a whiff of sauerkraut, then spat on the cobbles and gave Roger a look indicating that a niggardly threepence was in no way enough for this.

The MacKenzies had long since ceased to notice the reek of fermenting cabbage, but their noses were twitching now, avid for the smells of a city—particularly the city’s food. They were near the river, and the scents of frying fish, chowder, and the briny whiff of fresh oysters mingled with the smell of grain and flowers and rose in an appetizing miasma around them.

“Oh, my God. Shrimp and grits?” Brianna’s stomach gave an audible growl, throwing all the children into giggles.

“What’s grits?” Mandy asked, sniffing hard. “I smell fish!”

“Grits are ground-up corn that’s been soaked in lye,” Roger told her absently. Hungry as he was, he was more taken by the houses, painted in brilliant blues and pinks and yellows like a kid’s crayon box. “Ye put butter or gravy on them.”

“Lye?” all three children chorused, aghast. All of them had been routinely threatened since babyhood not to go within a yard of the eye-watering lye bucket, Or Else.

“You wash the lye off it before you grind it up and eat it,” Brianna assured them. “You’ve eaten it before.” She glanced at Mandy, then at Roger. “Should we get something to eat before we …”

“No,” he said firmly, barely forestalling an outburst of enthusiasm from his troops. He was looking at Germain, who looked like he might throw up at any moment. “We need to go to the printshop first.”

Germain didn’t say anything, but swallowed visibly and licked his lips. He’d been doing that for the last couple of days; his lips were dry and cracked at the corners.

Brianna touched his shoulder gently.

“Je suis prest,” she said, and the look of apprehension lifted briefly from his face.

“You’re a girl, Auntie,” he said, with a roll of his eyes. “You have to say, ‘Je suis preste.’”

“You can’t make me,” she said, and laughed.

“There it is!” Jem said suddenly and stopped dead, pointing. It was across the street: a small building with its bricks painted blue and its shutters and door a vivid purple. A large window beside the door displayed an array of books, and above it hung a neatly lettered sign that said, FERGUS FRASER AND SONS, PRINTING AND BOOKS.

“Merde,” Germain whispered.

“Sons?” Jem asked, puzzled.

“Germain and his wee brothers, I expect,” Roger replied. He spoke matter-of-factly, but his own heart had suddenly clenched and then beat faster. He reached to take Germain’s hand. “Come on, Germain, we’ll go in first.”

THE DIRECTION OF the breeze changed and suddenly the smells of ink and hot metal from the open door breathed upon them, a warm invisible cloud surrounding them. Germain took a big gulp of it and coughed. Coughed again and cleared his throat, eyes watering—possibly not just from the acrid scent, Roger thought. He thumped Germain lightly on the back.

“Going to be all right, then?” he asked. Germain nodded, but before he could say anything, footsteps came pounding over the cobbles behind Roger and, with a shout of “Germain!” Fergus flung his arms about his son and snatched him hard against his chest.

“Mon fils! Mon bébé!”

“Bébé?” Germain said. His face was flexing through emotions ranging from astonishment to joy to pretended indignation, so fast that Roger could hardly read them—but there wasn’t any doubt as to what the boy really felt. His cheek was pressed tight to his father’s shabby waistcoat and now he turned his head, buried his face in his father’s heart, and sobbed with relief.

“Certainly, bébé,” Fergus said, softly, and Roger saw that tears were running down his own cheeks. He held Germain a little way away from him and said, “I see you are a man now, and yet when I look at you—always, always—I see you as I first saw you.” He let go, gently, and took an ink-stained handkerchief from his pocket. “Short, fat, and covered with drool,” he added, wiping his nose and grinning at his son.

Everyone laughed, including—after a brief, stunned moment—Germain.

“What’s going on out— Germain!” There was a flurry of skirts and Marsali rushed out of the shop and engulfed her wayward son.

Roger heard a small sound from Brianna and, stepping back, took her hand and held it hard.

“Mam! What’s—Eeeeeee! Fizzy, Fizzy, come see, it’s Germain!” Joan, small round face flaming with excitement, ran back into the shop and ran back an instant later, yanking her younger sister half off her feet.

Roger felt a small hand tugging on his breeches and looked down.

“Who’s dose?” Mandy asked, clinging to his leg and frowning suspiciously at the tearstained, laughing mob scene taking place before them.

“Our cousins,” Jem said tolerantly. “You know—just more family.”

SANCTUARY WAS BREE’S first thought at sight of the printshop, and the feeling continued to grow as the commotion of arrival gradually smoothed out into small eddies: the brief exchange of news, down payment on further conversation; water for washing; the orderly bustle of making supper; the less orderly business of eating it, with half the people sitting at the table and the others mostly under it, giggling over their bowls of rice and red beans; and then the washing-up and changing of clothes and clouts for bed, as the heat of many bodies and of the banked type-forge was gradually wicked away by a cool, dark breeze that rose from the river and ran through the house from the open back door to the open front door, harbinger of a peaceful night.

All of the children at last in bed, the adults sat down in the tiny parlor to toast their reunion with a bottle of very good French wine.

“Where did ye get this?” Roger asked, after the first sip. He lifted his glass to admire the color, sparkling like a ruby in the firelight. “I haven’t drunk anything like this since—since—well, I’m no sure I’ve ever drunk anything this good.”

Marsali and Fergus exchanged a marital glance.

“It’s likely better ye dinna ken,” she told Roger, laughing. “But there’s a wee bit more where that came from—dinna hold back!”

“Certainement,” Fergus agreed, and lifted his own glass to Roger. “You have brought home our prodigal. If you want to bathe in it, say the word.”

“Don’t tempt me.” Roger took a long, slow sip and closed his eyes, his worn face relaxing wonderfully.

Bree hadn’t drunk much wine since Amy Higgins’s death; the smell of grapes reminded her too much of that day among the scuppernongs, and the color of red wine was too much the color of blood, fresh in the sunlight. Even so, this wine seemed not so much to be swallowed as to dissolve right through her membranes and into her own sweet blood, and she felt her body gradually soften, easing back into its natural shape as the tension of the trip left her.

They’d made it.

So far, said the cynical back of her mind, but she ignored that. For the moment, everyone was safe—and together.

Germain hadn’t gone to bed with Jem and Mandy and his sisters; he was curled up beside his mother on the settle, sound asleep with his head in her lap, and she smoothed a hand gently over his tousled blond head, with a look of such tenderness on her face that it smote Bree in the heart.

She touched her breastbone lightly at the thought, but everything was peaceful within, a soft, regular THUMP-thump, THUMP-thump that would lull her to sleep in moments, if she let it. A brief squawk from the cradle by Fergus’s chair drove the notion of sleep out of her head, and she sat up quickly, a maternal surge rising straight up from belly to breasts with surprising force.

“If one goes, the other will, too,” Marsali said, sighing and reaching for her laces. “Hold my wine, will ye, Bree?”

She took the glass, warm from the fire and Marsali’s hand, and watched, half enviously, as Fergus handed one swaddled bundle to his wife, then bent to pick the other baby up from the cradle.

“This one’s wet,” he said, holding the little boy away from his body.

“I’ll change him.” Bree put the wine on the table and took the bundle from Fergus, who released his son with alacrity and sat down again with his own glass, looking happy.

There were clean clouts and rags on a shelf, and a small tin of some sort of ointment that smelled of lavender, chamomile, and oatmeal. She smiled, recognizing a version of Mama’s diaper-rash cream.

“Who do I have?” she asked, turning back the blanket to reveal a small, round, sleepy face and a slick of light-brown hair down the middle of the head.

“Charles-Claire,” said Fergus, and nodded at Marsali’s bundle. “That’s Alexandre.”

“Hello there,” she said softly, and the baby smacked his lips in a thoughtful sort of way and began to wiggle inside his wrappings. “Comment ça va?”

“Wah!”

“Oh, not that good, eh? Well, let’s see about it, then …”

TIRED AS THEY were, nobody wanted to go to bed. Brianna could feel sleep gently creeping up from her tired feet and aching shins, over her knees like a warm quilt. But there was much to be said, and after a lot of catching up with the current state of things on the Ridge, plus the welfare of all the people and animals there, they reached an explanation of their presence in Charles Town.

“It was mostly Germain,” Roger said, smiling at the sleeping boy and then at Marsali. “Once he’d had your letter, of course we had to come. And, um”—he darted a quick glance at Bree—“I think Jamie said he’d sent you a note?”

That made Marsali look sharply at Fergus, who made an offhand “It’s nothing” sort of gesture. Roger cleared his throat and continued. “But Charles Town is on the way, after all.”

“On the way where?” Fergus had relaxed into something like bonelessness, eyelids half shut against the smoke from the driftwood fire. Brianna thought she’d never seen him this way before—completely at peace.

“To Savannah,” Roger replied, with a touch of pride that warmed Brianna more than the fire. “Bree’s got a commission—to paint the wife of a rich merchant named Brumby.”

One of Fergus’s brows twitched up.

“Congratulations, ma soeur. Savannah … is this Monsieur Alfred Brumby?”

“Yes,” she said, surprised. “Do you know him? Or anything about him?”

“I see his name painted on any number of boxes and barrels on the wharves, as they pass from Savannah to Philadelphia and Boston. He’s an importer of molasses from the West Indies. And very rich in consequence, I assure you. Charge him anything you like for his portrait; he won’t blink.”

Brianna rolled a sip of wine around her mouth, enjoying the slight roughness on her tongue.

“Do I take it that ‘importer’ is a polite name for ‘smuggler’?”

“Well, no more than half the time,” Fergus said, with a slight Gallic shrug. “It is still legal to import molasses into the colonies—but naturally, there is a tax for doing so. And where you have taxes …”

“You have smugglers,” Roger finished, and belched slightly. “Pardon me. So are you saying that Mr. Brumby is importing molasses and smuggling it?”

“Mais oui,” Marsali said, laughing. “He pays his taxes on the barrels marked as molasses, and the barrels marked as salt fish or rice pass unremarked—and untaxed. So long as the inspector doesn’t smell them …”

“And as Monsieur Brumby is shrewd enough to pay him off, he doesn’t,” Fergus finished. He bent and fished about under the low table, coming out with another bottle, this one unlabeled. “Speaking of smells,” he said, squinting at Roger, “I do not wish to give offense by making personal remarks, but …”

“It’s sauerkraut,” Brianna said apologetically. “Speaking of smuggling …” She cleared her throat discreetly. She’d been on edge throughout their journey, in constant fear of the barrels breaking, leaking, falling to the ground, or calling undue attention to themselves, but her father had—no surprise—been right: nobody wanted to get near them. And now, safely arrived, well fed, and half drunk, she was inclined to feel some pride in their success.

When Roger mentioned the amount of gold that Jamie had sent, Fergus pursed his lips in a soundless whistle, and he and Marsali exchanged a look, tinged with warning.

“Da knows it’s dangerous,” Bree hastened to say. “He wouldn’t want you to put yourselves in any danger. But if you—”

“Pfft,” Fergus said, and pulled the cork. “In these times, there’s little one can do that isn’t dangerous. If I’m going to be killed for something, I should like it to be something that matters. If it’s entertaining, so much the better.”

Bree, watching Marsali’s face as he made this airy statement, thought that Marsali might have a few more private doubts, but she nodded, face sober.

“I’ll help him,” Roger assured Marsali, seeing her reservations. “Nobody will suspect me of being an arms dealer. Or at least I hope they won’t …”

“Roger’s about to be fully ordained,” Bree said, seeing their puzzled looks, and felt her usual affection and pride, tinged with fear, when the matter of Roger’s calling arose. “That’s the other reason for us coming to Charles Town. He has to meet with a—er—presbytery of ministers here, so they can examine him and make sure he’s still fit to be one.”

“And I’m sure that being caught in possession of three dozen guns stolen from the British navy will reassure them as to his moral character,” Fergus said, and laughed like a drain.

“The British navy?” Bree said, eyeing the collection of empty wine bottles on the table.

“Well, they’re the only ones who probably have a lot of guns they aren’t using all the time,” Marsali said, matching the Gallicness—or should that be Gallicity, Bree thought, her thoughts beginning to slur—of Fergus’s shrug.

“And if not, we will find someone who has.” Fergus ceremoniously refilled all the cups, set down the bottle, and lifted his own drink.

“To liberty, mes chers. Sauerkraut and muskets!”

BRIANNA AND THE kids slept like the dead, sprawled on the floor of the loft like victims of some sudden plague, fallen where they lay among the barrels of varnish and lampblack and the stacks of books and pamphlets. In spite of the long day, the emotional reunion, and the impressive amount of wine drunk, Roger found himself unwilling to fall asleep at once. Not unable; he could still feel the vibration of the wagon and the reins in his hands, and a sort of hypnosis lurked in the back of his mind, urging him to drop into a slow-moving swirl of rice paddies and circling birds, cobbled streets and tree leaves moving like smoke in the dusk. But he held back, wanting to keep this moment for as long as he could.

Destination. Destiny, if he could bring himself to think such a thing. Did normal people, ordinary people, have a destiny? It seemed immodest to think he did—but he was a minister of God; that was exactly what he believed: that every human soul had a destiny and had a duty to find and fulfill it. Just at this moment, he felt the weight of the precious trust he held, and wanted never to let go of the great sense of peace that filled him.

But the flesh is weak, and without his making any conscious decision to do so, he dissolved quietly into the night, the breath of his wife and his sleeping children, the damped fire below, and the sounds of the distant marshes.

68 Metanoia

ROGER’S APPOINTMENT TO MEET with the Reverends Mr. Selverson, Thomas, and Ringquist, elders of the Presbytery of Charles Town, had been arranged for three o’clock in the afternoon. Plenty of time to do a few errands and brush his good black suit.

For the moment, though, he sat on the bench outside the printshop, enjoying the morning sun and savoring the aftertaste of breakfast. Brianna had made French toast, to accompany the normal parritch and ham, and while Fergus had declared that no Frenchman would ever have conceived such a dish, he’d admitted that it was delicious, rich and eggy and slathered with some of the honey Claire had sent from her hives. It went some way to compensate for the lack of tea or coffee; as an American-occupied city, Charles Town had little of either. On the other hand, there was fresh milk, taken in trade from a dairywoman with a taste for ballads and the lurid confessions of felons about to be hanged.

Roger had read several of the latter screeds that Fergus had set aside for his customer the night before and had been fascinated, mildly repelled—and made somewhat uneasy.

A stack of these broadsides had been left on the breakfast table; he’d caught a glimpse of one headline as Germain had gathered them up and tapped the pages tidily into order before putting them in his bag:

No stranger to the excesses of the daily press—the things Fergus printed were in fact not that different in character or intent from the tabloid papers of his own time—he had been struck by one factor peculiar to this time: to wit, the fact that the condemned men (and the occasional woman) were always accompanied by a clergyman on their journey toward the gallows. Not just a private pre-execution visit to give prayers and comfort, but to climb Calvary alongside the condemned.

What would I say to him, he wondered, if I should find myself called to accompany a man to his execution? He’d seen men killed, seen people die, certainly; much too often. But these were natural—if sometimes sudden and catastrophic—deaths. Surely it was different, a healthy man, sound of body, filled with life, and facing the imminent prospect of being deprived of that life by the decree of the state. Worse, having one’s death presented as a morally elevating public spectacle.

It struck Roger suddenly that he’d been publicly executed, and the milk and French toast shifted at the sudden memory.

Aye, well … so was Jesus, wasn’t He? He didn’t know where that thought had come from—it felt like something Jamie would say, logical and reasonable—but it flooded him at once with unexpected feeling.

It was one thing to know Christ as God and Savior and all the other capital-letter things that went with that. It was another to realize with shocking clarity that, bar the nails, he knew exactly how Jesus of Nazareth had felt. Alone. Betrayed, terrified, wrenched away from those he loved, and wanting with every atom of one’s being to stay alive.

Well, now you know what you’d say to a condemned man on his way to the gallows, don’t you?

He was sitting there in the hot sunshine, trying to digest everything from French toast to the revelations of memory, when the printshop door opened beside him.

“Comment ça va?” Fergus emerged with Germain and Jemmy in tow and raised an eyebrow at Roger, who hastily removed the hand still curled into his stomach.

“Fine,” he said, getting up. “Where are you off to this morning?”

“Germain is taking the papers and broadsheets to the taverns,” Fergus said, clapping his son on the back and smiling at him. “And if you agree, Jem will go with him. A great assistance, and one I have missed sorely, mon fils,” he said to his son. Germain blushed but looked pleased, and stood up straighter against the heavy weight of the canvas sack on his shoulder, filled with copies of L’Oignon and sheaves of broadsheets and handbills advertising everything from a ship captain’s desire for sailors to join a Profitable and Happy Voyage to Mexico to a list of the Numerous Benefits of Dr. Hobart’s Famous Elixir, Guaranteed to Provide Relief from a laundry list of complaints, beginning with Constipation and Swelling of the Ankles. Roger glimpsed Inflammation of, but the list of inflamed parts disappeared into the recesses of Germain’s bag, leaving Roger to imagine the extent of Dr. Hobart’s powers.

“Can I go, Dad?” Jem had a smaller bag on his shoulder and was pink with excitement, though trying very hard to be grown up and dignified about the job.

“Aye, of course.” Roger smiled at his son and swallowed all the words of warning and good advice that rose to his lips.

“Bonne chance, mes braves,” Fergus wished the boys gravely, and Roger stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him, watching them stride firmly away, each with one arm wrapped protectively around his heavy bag to keep it from swinging. Jem, for all that he was taller than his cousin, was still a boy—but Germain seemed to have made one of those mysterious leaps by which children somehow alter themselves within the space of a night and rise up as a different version of themselves. The Germain of this morning was not grown up, but you could see the nascent young man beginning to emerge through his soft, fair skin.

Fergus sighed deeply, eyes fixed on his son as Germain disappeared around the corner.

“Good to have him back?” Roger asked.

“More than you can imagine,” Fergus said quietly. “Thank you for bringing him to us.”

Roger smiled, shrugging a little. Fergus smiled back, but then his gaze seemed to lengthen, looking over Roger’s shoulder. Roger turned to look, but the road was empty.

“When must you meet your inquisitors, mon frère?” he asked.

The word gave Roger a small qualm, but he didn’t think Fergus had used it in anything more than its most literal sense.

“Three o’clock,” he answered. “Is there something you’d like me to do in the meantime?”

Fergus looked him over carefully, but nodded, evidently finding his appearance in shirtsleeves, shabby waistcoat, and slightly worn breeches acceptable for whatever activity he had in mind.

“Come,” Fergus said, with a jerk of his head toward the distant water. “I may possibly have found milord’s guns. Bring a small amount of gold.”

He and Fergus had—with great care and a little help from Jem and Germain—decanted the sauerkraut into a variety of jars, bowls, and crocks in order to retrieve the gold—“Well, we dinna want to waste it, do we?” Marsali had said, reasonably—and hidden the gold in various places in the house. He stepped into the kitchen and abstracted a slip of gold from under a large and rather smelly cheese on top of the cupboard, hesitated for a moment, then took two more, just in case.

A BIG DANISH Indiaman was engulfing its cargo at the foot of Tradd Street as they passed. Boxes of salt fish, huge hogsheads of tobacco, bales of raw cotton, and the odd trunk, wheelbarrow, or coop of feather-scattering chickens in between, all lurched up the narrow gangway on the backs of sweating, half-naked men, to disappear into the black mouth of an open hatchway with the sporadic, gulping greed of a boa constrictor swallowing rats.

The sight of it made Roger want suddenly to duck out of sight and hide in the warehouse behind them. He remembered too well what it felt like to do that—over and over and over and over, hands blistered to bleeding, the skin flayed from your shoulders, muscles burning and the smell of dead fish and tobacco enough to make your head swim under the hot sun. And he remembered the sardonic eyes of Stephen Bonnet, watching him do it.

“Tote that barge, lift that bale—get a little drunk and you land in jail,” Roger remarked to Fergus, trying to make light of the memory. Fergus squinted at the heaving, staggering procession and shrugged.

“Only if you get caught.”

“Have you ever been caught?”

Fergus glanced casually at the hook he wore in replacement of his missing left hand.

“Not for stealing bales, non.”

“What about guns?”

“Not for stealing anything,” Fergus replied loftily. “Come, we want Prioleau’s Wharf; that’s where he berths.”

“He?” Roger asked, but Fergus was already halfway down the narrow street and he was compelled to walk fast to catch up.

Prioleau’s Wharf was a long, thin quay, and very busy, mostly with small boats tying up to unload fish—the city’s fish market was near at hand, and they were compelled to dodge small wagons and handcarts piled with gleaming silver bodies—some of them still flapping in a last desperate denial of death. The air was thick and humid, the smell of fresh fish and fish blood visceral and exciting, and Roger’s memories of the Gloriana’s and the Constance’s dank holds faded.

Fergus had dropped into a casual stroll and Roger did the same, looking to and fro—though he had no idea who or what they were looking for.

“Bonjour, mon ami!” Fergus hailed friends and acquaintances all the way down the wharf—he appeared to know everyone, and many of the men he greeted waved or called back, though few stopped working. He was talking in English, French—though French of a patois that Roger scarcely understood—and something that might be some Creole tongue, which he understood even less. He did gather, though, that they were in search of a man named Faucette.

Shakes of the head greeted Fergus’s questions, for the most part, but one squat black gentleman, nearly as broad as he was tall, paused in the act of gutting a fish—still alive and flapping—and replied in the affirmative, judging from his gestures, which ended in his pointing out to sea with his bloody knife.

“There he is.” Fergus waved his thanks to the fisherman and, taking Roger’s elbow, steered him farther down the pier.

The “he” in question was a small, nimble-looking boat with a single sail that had just appeared from the far side of Marsh Island.

It was a fishing boat, bringing in its catch—a single fish, but a fish that caused everyone nearby to drop what they were doing and rush to see it as soon as the boat lowered its sail and drifted alongside the wharf.

It was an enormous shark—quite dead, thank God—and longer than the boat; the great gray body buckled in the middle, head and tail protruding over prow and stern, the dreadful head—for it was a hammerhead shark—goggling like some horrible figurehead. The boat rode so low in the water that the wavelets from the quay lapped over the sides from time to time. The crew—there were only two men, one black, one of mixed race—were swarmed, both by gapers and by fishmongers bent on acquiring the prize.

“Well, this will take some little while,” Fergus remarked, displeased at the hubbub. “On the other hand, it will perhaps render Monsieur Faucette communicative—if he’s not too drunk to talk by the time I am able to get him alone.” He exhaled audibly through his nose, thinking, then glanced at the sun and shook his head.

“It will be hours. You’ll have to go, if you are to have time to change your clothes before you meet the press-biters.”

“The—oh, aye,” Roger said, hiding a smile. After all, what else would you call the members of a presbytery? “Well, then …” He reached into his waistcoat pocket and withdrew a folded handkerchief, concealing the gold slips inside it. “Gesundheit. Er … I mean, À vos souhaits.”

“À tes amours,” Fergus replied politely, delicately wiped his nose and tucked the handkerchief into his pocket. “Bonne chance, mon frère.”

69 More Entertaining Than Laundry

BRIANNA PULLED THE LEVER—Da had been right; it did take a good bit of force—and watched the paper flatten on the inked type. She realized she was holding her breath, and let it out deliberately as she pushed the bar back. Marsali raised the frame and smiled at the page with its clear black letters.

“There ye are,” she said, with a nod to Brianna. “Never a smudge. Ye’re a natural.”

“Oh, I bet you say that to all the printer’s devils.” Notwithstanding, Brianna felt a faint glow of accomplishment. “This is fun.”

“Well, it is,” Marsali agreed, peeling the paper off and carrying it carefully to the cords that crisscrossed one side of the room, where fresh sheets were hung for drying. “The first hundred times or so. After that …” She was already laying a fresh sheet of paper in place. “It’s still more entertaining than laundry, I’ll say that much.”

“And you with a nearly grown son and a husband who’s an ex-pickpocket. I’ve seen some entertaining laundry, turning out men’s pockets … Jem had a dead mouse in his, just day before yesterday. He said it was dead when he picked it up,” she added darkly, pulling the bar again. “Speaking of laundry—do you know where Roger and Fergus have gone? I’ve just brushed and sponged Roger’s black suit so he can wear it this afternoon, to talk to the elders, but he needs to be back in time to change.”

Marsali shook her head.

“I heard Fergus say something about ‘milord’s guns’ to Roger Mac, but nothin’ about where he meant to find them.”

Bree’s heart gave a quick bump at the word “guns.”

“I hope Fergus doesn’t get Roger defrocked before he’s even ordained,” she said lightly, hoping it sounded as though she were joking.

“Dinna fash,” Marsali said comfortably, stretching up to hang another freshly printed sheet. “Protestant ministers dinna wear frocks to start with.” They both laughed, and the fresh sheet, caught by a breeze from the door, suddenly wavered, came loose, and doubled on itself, just as Bree pulled the lever.

“Horsefeathers!” she said.

Marsali leaned over and plucked the crumpled damp sheet out of its frame with two fingers.

“There’s one for the kindling,” she remarked, dropping it into a large basket, half full of ruined sheets. “Does it ever seem strange to ye, to be marrit to a priest?”

“Well … yes. I mean, I sort of didn’t expect that. Not that I mind,” she added hastily. “I mean, it’s not as though he was going to be a—a—”

“Thief?” Marsali suggested, and her smile widened. “I kent what Fergus was from the start—he told me—and it didna matter a bit. I’d have had him if he’d said he was a highwayman and murdered folk on the road for their coin.”

Brianna thought her mother had mentioned that Fergus had been a highwayman at one point, but it seemed more tactful not to say so. After all, he wasn’t doing that now—so far as she knew.

“Mind,” Marsali said, drawing a new sheet of paper from its quire and sliding it into the press, “I was no but fifteen at the time, and besides, he was helpin’ Da, and I didna mind him bein’ whatever he was. Ken, now I know what the two o’ them were doing in Edinburgh, I’m no sure it wouldna be safer for him to have kept on smuggling liquor, instead of carryin’ on with the printing. Though I suppose either one can get a man hanged, these days.”

The press was a solid thing, but the satisfying thump when she pulled the lever sent a vibration through metal and wood and straight down her backbone.

“We call that the devil’s tail, did ye ken that?” Marsali said, nodding at the lever. A peep from the twins’ big cradle by the hearth made both women glance at it, suspending their motions for an instant, but no further noise came, and they resumed the rhythm of their work.

Marsali smiled when Félicité ran in from the backyard, apron strings flying and full of giggles, closely pursued by a red-faced Joanie, shouting things in a mix of French and Gaelic, and Mandy, screeching happily as she brought up the rear. They disappeared through the front door into the street, and Marsali shook her head.

“Dinna ask questions ye dinna want to hear the answer to,” she said in reply to Brianna’s unspoken look. “Nobody’s bleedin’ and I dinna think the house is afire. Yet.”

“Da told me the ink pads are made of dog skin,” Brianna said, obligingly changing the subject. “Is that true?”

“It is, aye. Ken dogs dinna sweat?”

“Yes. Lucky dogs.” She was sweating freely, as was Marsali. Even though it was September, the air was thick as a sodden blanket, and her shift clung to her like glue.

“Well, so. Ye’ve got wee pores in your skin, what the sweat comes out of, and since dogs dinna sweat, they havena got those, so the skin is finer and smoother, so better for puttin’ the ink on.”

Brianna turned one of the big ink-stained buffing pads over to look, though having never seen an implement made of human skin, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to tell the difference. The thought made a ripple of gooseflesh break out on her forearms, though.

“It’s important?” Marsali asked, fixing the fresh page in place. “This meeting Roger’s going to? I mean—he’s been ministering to folk for some time now, on the Ridge—surely they wouldna make him stop?”

“Well, I do hope not,” Brianna said dubiously. “The thing is, though, last time they just made him a Minister of the Word, and that means he was supposed to be able to christen babies and bury people—and he’s certainly been doing that. He was all set to be ordained, but then … things happened. Technically, he probably shouldn’t have been marrying people, but he did it—I mean, there was no one else to do it, and if he didn’t, they—the people who wanted to be married—would just be … er … living in sin. So he did.

“But they had sort of passed him, last time; he did qualify to be a Minister of the Word and Sacrament. It’s just that he missed being properly ordained because Stephen Bonnet kidnapped me. And he, um …” She felt an unpleasant feeling rising under her skin, something hot and cold together. Roger had told her—once—about the man he’d killed, but had never mentioned it again. Nor had she.

“I remember,” Marsali said, with sympathy. “But I dinna see how helping catch a villain like that would make Roger Mac no fit to be a minister.”

“Well, I’m sure they’ll see it that way, too.” They’d better, she thought fiercely. She had a lurking fear that a Catholic wife might prove to be a bigger impediment to Roger’s ordination than Stephen Bonnet’s affair had been. On the other hand, Roger had told the first presbytery about her, and while they’d hemmed and hawed quite a bit, they’d finally decided that being married to a Catholic was not quite as bad as having a wife who was a known murderess or a working prostitute. She smiled a little at the thought.

Their eventual acceptance had been accomplished by the persuasion of Davy Campbell, who had a certain fondness for her and Roger, he having married them, and then having taught Roger at his famous “log college,” to fill in the gaps in his classical education. But Davy was at his college in North Carolina, and thus of little use in the present situation beyond the letter of support he’d sent.

If she was honest, though, she was less worried about the elders than about her own ability to be a good wife for a minister. So far, it had been mostly all right; she could keep Roger fed, clothed, and with a roof over his head, but beyond that … what kind of help could she give him?

“Ye can stop now, a nighean.”

“What?” Absorbed in her thoughts, she’d been working the press like an automaton. Looking up, she saw the lines overhead thick with fresh pages, and Marsali smiling as she reached across the bed of the press to pull out the sticks of type.

“We’re done wi’ the first page. Why don’t ye go and see if the weans have killed each other, while I set the next one? And bring me some beer while ye’re at it, aye?”

70 A Sword in My Hand

ROGER RETURNED TO THE printshop to find both his wife and Marsali covered with ink and enmeshed in a cobweb of drying pages hung from the crisscrossing lines strung across the back of the shop. Brianna made to remove her inky apron in order to come and help him dress, but he waved her back and climbed the ladder to the loft, where he found his suit—somewhat worn at the edges and with the corner of the pocket darned, but definitely black—and a clean, starched, brand-new white neckcloth hanging from a hook under the owl-slits.

He dressed slowly and carefully, listening to the women’s talk and laughter down below, and the high-pitched echo of the three little girls, who were playing in the kitchen whilst keeping an eye on their baby brothers. It gave him a sense of warmth and tenderness, and a sudden longing for a home of their own. When we get back to the Ridge, he thought, maybe …

It had suited everyone’s convenience to live together in the New House after their return, and it was a lot easier to take care of kids when there were older children and other adults around to help—but maybe once he was ordained … And at the thought, he superstitiously crossed his fingers, then laughed to himself.

But it might be best. A large part of what he’d be doing would be talking to people, and while he still meant to go round house-visiting on the Ridge, he should have a place, maybe, with a wee room for a study, where he could talk to folk in private, and where he could keep records of births and marriages and deaths …

Thinking about the distant future lessened his apprehension of the more immediate future, and he came down the ladder briskly, just as the bell of a nearby church struck two.

“You’re early,” Brianna observed, pausing to wipe sweat from her forehead. “You look great, though!”

“Aye, ye do,” Marsali chimed in. “Just like a minister—only better-looking. All the Presbyterian ministers I know are auld and crabbit and smell like camphor.”

“They do?” Roger asked, amused. “How many do you know?”

“Well, one,” she admitted. “And he’s ninety-seven. But still—”

“Don’t get too close. You don’t have another clean shirt.” But Brianna still came within touching distance, and hands safely crossed behind her back, leaned far out to kiss him.

“Good luck,” she said, and smiled into his eyes. “It will be fine.”

“Aye. Thanks,” he said, meaning it, and smiled back. “I—think I’ll just sit outside for a bit. Gather my thoughts.”

“That’s good,” Marsali said approvingly. “If ye went walkin’ about for an hour, ye’d be wringing wet by the time ye got there.”

HE’D BEEN SITTING on one of the two benches outside—the one under the patchy shade of a palmetto—for a quarter of an hour, trying hard not to think too much, when Jem came wandering along the street, idly poking at things with the stick in his hand.

When he saw his father, though, he dropped the stick and came to sit beside him, swinging his feet. They sat together for a bit, just listening to the buzz of cicadas and the shouts of fishmongers from a distant pier.

“Dad,” Jem said, diffident.

“Aye?”

“Will you be different? After you get ordained?” Jem looked up at this, worry pinching the corners of his wide, soft mouth. God, he looks like Bree.

“No, mate,” Roger said. “I’ll always be your dad, no matter what. And I’ll still be just me,” he added, as an afterthought.

“Oh. Well, I didn’t think ye’d stop, exactly …” A smile touched Jem’s face like a stray sunbeam. “It’s only … what’s different? Because if nothing’s different—why do you want to do it? Why is it important?”

“Ah.” Roger leaned back a little, hands on his knees. The truth was that he rather expected to be different in some indefinable way, even though he also knew with certainty that he’d be the same.

“Well,” he said slowly, “part of it is that it’s formal. You ken Mairi and Archie MacLean back home at the Ridge, aye?”

“Aye.” Jem was eyeing him dubiously, wondering if this was going to make sense. Roger wondered that, too, but it was a legitimate question—and one that he thought might need answering more than once.

“Well, see, we had their wedding at Easter, but they came to it with their wee son, who was born in the autumn of last year. So they’d been living as man and wife for more than a year, even though they weren’t married.”

“Were they no handfast?” Jem’s brow wrinkled, trying to recollect.

“Aye, they were. That’s sort of my point. They made a contract with each other when they became handfast. Ye understand contracts?”

“Oh, aye. Grandda showed me the land deed the old governor gave him for the Ridge, and he explained why that was a contract. Two … er … parties? I think that’s what he said. The parties promise each other something and sign their names to it.”

“Ye’ve got it.” Roger smiled and was happy to get a smile back in return. “So then. Mairi and Archie had that contract, though it wasn’t written down, and what it said—have ye seen anyone get handfast? No? Well, when two people are handfast, they promise to live together as man and wife for a year and a day, and to—do the things a man and wife do, in the way of taking care of each other. And that’s a contract between them. But … when the year and a day are up, then they can decide if they want to go on living as man and wife or if they can’t abide each other and want to go their separate ways.

“So if they want to stay with each other … they do, but if there’s a minister at hand to marry them, they do that, and it’s the same sort of contract, but more … detailed … and it’s permanent. They promise to stay married.”

“Oh, is that what that means, ‘’til death us do part’?”

“Exactly.”

Jem was silent for a moment, turning this over in his mind. In the distance, a church bell rang twice and then was silent: the half-hour bell.

“So ye’ve been handfast to the Presbyterians and now ye’re going to marry them?” Jem asked, frowning a little. “Will Mam not mind?”

“No, she doesn’t,” Roger assured him, hoping it was true.

Another example occurred to him.

“Ye’ve seen your grandda ride out with his men now and then, aye?”

“Oh, aye!” Jem’s eyes grew bright at the recollection. “He says I can go with them when I’m thirteen!”

Roger swallowed his automatic “the hell you will,” and cleared his throat instead. Jamie Fraser had gone on his first cattle raid at the age of eight; in his view of life, as long as the boy’s feet reached the stirrups, why shouldn’t a thirteen-year-old be capable of keeping public order, socializing with Indians, and facing down Loyalist militias?

He’s got to learn sometime, he could hear Jamie saying, with that mild tone that belied the stubborn conviction behind the words. Better early than too late.

“Mmphm. Well. Ye’ve seen when they ride out, your grandda lifts his sword or his rifle as the signal to start?”

Jem nodded enthusiastically, and Roger was obliged to admit that seeing Jamie do that sent a small thrill down his own spine.

“Well, see, that’s the signal that the men are to follow him and go where he leads them. If they come to a place where they need to go in a certain direction, quickly, he’ll draw his sword and point it in the way they should go, so they can all follow at once and not get lost.

“He’s still just who he is—your grandda, and your mam’s father, and a good man—but he’s also got to be a leader, and when he does that, he wears his leather waistcoat and he has his sword in his hand, so everyone knows he’s the leader. He doesna have to stop and explain it to anybody.”

Jem nodded again, listening intently.

“So, that’s sort of what it’s like for me to be ordained. Folk will know that I’m … a sort of leader. Being ordained is—my sword, in a way.” And with luck, they might pay attention to what I tell them, now and then …

“Ohh …” Jem said, understanding dawning. “I see.”

“Good.” He wanted to pat Jem on the head, but instead shook his hand briefly and squeezed it, then rose. “I’ll need to be off now, but I’ll be back by suppertime.”

The smell of gumbo full of shrimp and oysters and sausage was seeping out of the printshop, oddly mixed with the smells of ink and metal, but enough to stir the gastric juices nonetheless.

“Dad?” Jem said, and Roger turned to look over his shoulder.

“Aye?”

“I think they should give you a real sword. You might need one.”

71 Rolling Heads

THEY’D FINISHED THE MOST urgent printing jobs and got everyone fed lunch—Germain and Jem had come back from their rounds with two loaves of day-old bread from the bakery and a bowl of shrimp fricassee from Mrs. Wharton’s ordinary.

“Mrs. Wharton says she wants the bowl back, Mam,” Germain said, conscious of his dignity and responsibilities as a bearer of the printed word.

“I’m thinking we’ll have melon tonight—they’re in season—and if they’re good, I’ll buy an extra one for ye to take back to her wi’ her bowl,” Marsali assured him. “Now—the wee yins have just been fed; they’ll sleep for an hour or two. You and Jem look after Mandy while we do the marketing, and I’ll make ye bridies for your supper.”

Mandy was miffed at not being allowed to go to the market with the Big Girls, but was substantially mollified by being given her own composing stick and a bag of type with which to spell out words, along with the assurance that Auntie Marsali would print whatever she made up onto a sheet of paper that she could keep.

“And if either of you try to get her to spell bad words, I’ll tell both your fathers and you won’t sit down for a week,” Brianna said to Jem and Germain. Germain looked piously offended at the notion. Jem didn’t bother, merely raising his brows at his mother.

“She knows every bad word I do already,” he pointed out. “Shouldn’t she ken how to spell them right?”

Familiar with Jem’s techniques, she refused to be drawn into philosophical discussion, and instead patted him on the head.

“Just don’t give her any ideas.”

“FISH LAST,” MARSALI said as they made their way down toward the seafront. “Vegetables and fruit usually come in early in the morning, so we’ll have to take what we can get at this time o’ day—but fish dinna keep the same hours as farmers do, so boats come in anytime they’ve got a decent catch, and our chances are still good. Besides, we dinna want to carry fish longer than we have to, not in this weather.”

Fergus had brought home a sack of potatoes and a braid of onions before breakfast, these taken in payment from some of his customers. Beans and rice were kept in large quantities in the pantry. For now, they meant to scavenge the produce markets for whatever fresh stuff was available, enjoying the fresh air and sunshine while doing so.

Late in the day as it was, the market was still busy, but not thronged as it likely had been at dawn. They made their way through stalls and wagons and the cries of vendors trying to get rid of the last of their wares and go home, sniffing the mingled scents of sun-warmed flowers, garlic, summer squash, and fresh corn in the ear.

“What are ye askin’ for your okra?” Marsali inquired of one young gentleman, fresh off the farm, judging from his smock and apron.

“A penny a bunch,” he replied, scooping up a bunch tied with string and holding it under her nose. “Picked fresh this morning!”

“And rode here under a load of potatoes, from the looks of them,” Marsali said, poking critically at a bruised green object. “Still, they’d make gumbo …. Tell ye what, I’ll take three for a penny, and ye’ll be on your way home the sooner.”

“Three for a penny, she says!” The young farmer reeled, the back of his hand pressed dramatically to his forehead. “Madam, would you see me ruined?”

“It’s your choice, no?” Marsali said, clearly enjoying the show. “It’s one more penny than ye’ll get if ye dinna sell it at all, and I dinna think ye will, sae bashed as it is.”

The girls, who had plainly seen their mother bargain merchants out of their stockings before, were shifting from foot to foot and looking round for more interesting fare.

Félicité suddenly perked up.

“Mam! There’s a new wagon comin’ in! And he’s got melons!”

Marsali at once dropped the questionable okra and hurried after her daughters, who had sped ahead to get a good place by the wagon the moment it stopped.

“Sorry,” Bree said apologetically to the young farmer. “Maybe later.”

“Hmph,” said the young man, but he had already turned away, lifting a bunch of limp green onions aloft in one hand, okra in the other, shouting, “Gumbo tonight!” at an oncoming pair of shoppers with half-empty baskets.

People—mostly women, though there were a few men, apprentices or cooks by their grease-stained smocks—were gathering quickly, pushing to get their hands on the melons first. Joanie and Félicité had bagged a good spot by the tailboard, though, where the melon farmer’s son was minding the wares. Marsali and Bree reached the girls just in time to prevent a large woman in a bonnet from shoving them out of the way.

Brianna poised herself with her bottom pressed firmly against the wagon and prepared to repel the competition, while the girls stood on tiptoe next to her, sniffing ecstatically. Bree drew a deep breath herself and gave an involuntary small moan of delight. The smell of a hundred ripe, fresh-picked melons was enough to make her light-headed.

“Mmm.” Marsali inhaled strongly and shook her head, grinning at Brianna. “Enough to knock ye over, no?” She wasted no more time in sensual wallowing, though, but put a hand on Joanie’s bony little shoulder.

“D’ye remember how I told ye to pick a ripe melon, a nighean?”

“Ye knock on it,” Joanie said, but doubtfully. Nonetheless, she reached out and tapped gingerly on a rounded shape. “Is that one good?”

Marsali rapped the same melon, sharply, and shook her head. “It’s one ye’d buy if ye meant to keep it for a few days, but if ye want one fit to eat for supper—”

“We do!” chorused the girls. Marsali smiled at them and rapped her knuckles lightly against Félicité’s forehead.

“It should sound like that,” she said. “Not hollow—but like what’s inside is softer than the outside.”

Joanie giggled and said something in Gaelic that Brianna interpreted as a speculation as to whether her sister’s head was filled with parritch. Her own maternal reflexes inserted a hip between the sisters before mayhem could ensue, and she reached into the wagon at random and scooped up a melon, inviting Joanie to try it.

Ten minutes of haggling and controlled chaos later, they made their way out of the scrum, carrying eight prime melons among them. The rest of the vegetables and fruit were acquired with relatively little incident, and after casting her eye over her hot and visibly wilting party, Marsali declared that they would sit down by the river and eat one of the melons, as a reward for their labors.

Brianna, who had a knife on her belt, did the honors and a blessed silence descended, broken only by slurping noises and the spitting of seeds. The atmosphere was liquid; her clothes clung to her and perspiration ran in trickles from her bundled hair down the back of her neck and dripped from her chin.

“How does anybody live here in the summertime?” she asked, wiping her face on a sleeve and reaching for another slice of melon.

Marsali shrugged philosophically.

“How does anybody live through the winter in the mountains?” she countered. “Sweat’s better than frostbite. And here, there’s plenty of food year-round; ye’re no livin’ off venison shot six months ago and pickin’ mouse droppings out of what corn ye’ve saved from the squirrels.”

“That’s a point,” Brianna admitted. “Though I’d think the army eats a good deal of what’s available, don’t they?” She nodded toward a column of marching Continental soldiers, coming down the street toward the drilling ground at the edge of town, muskets over their shoulders.

“Mmphm.” Marsali waved to the officer at the head of the column, who took off his hat and bowed to her as they passed. “I feel a deal safer wi’ them here, and they’re welcome to whatever they need.”

Something in her tone made Brianna’s scalp itch, and she thought suddenly of the fire in Philadelphia. Her mother said that no one knew whether it had been an accident or …

She choked that thought off.

“Do you have much trouble? With Loyalists, I mean?”

“Can we open another, Mam? Pleeease?” Joan and Félicité were shiny-faced with melon juice, but looking hungrily at the remaining heap.

“Speak o’ the devil,” Marsali muttered, but not to her daughters. Her eyes were fixed on a pair of men who had come out of a tavern on the far side of the street. They were young but full-grown and looked like workmen, their clothes rough and grubby at the edges, and one carried a canvas sack over one shoulder. They paused outside the tavern, looking up, and Brianna saw that they were inspecting the sign, this being a piece of canvas tacked over the original sign.

The canvas bore a rather unskilled rendering of a soldier in white wig and enormous epaulets sporting huge loops of yellow lace, and a caption informing passerby that this tavern was The General Washington. Bree had just time to wonder what the original name of the place had been, prior to the occupation of the city, before the young man with the bag had reached into it and emerged with a handful of ripe tomatoes. He shoved these into his companion’s hands, scooped out another handful of tomatoes for himself, and hurled them at the sign overhead, bellowing, “God save the King!” at the top of his voice.

“God save the King!” his friend echoed. His aim was less sure than the first young man’s, and two of his tomatoes splattered against the front wall of the tavern, while another fell to the roadway and smashed on the cobbles.

A corner of the canvas sign had come loose under the assault and now flopped down, revealing enough of the sign underneath as to make it a good bet that the place had previously been known as The King’s Head.

“I’ll find out their names, Mam. So you can put them in the paper,” Joanie said in a business-like voice, and hopping to her feet started purposefully across the street.

“Joanie! Thig air ais an seo!” Marsali also leapt to her feet, just in time to seize Félicité by the arm and keep her from following her sister. “Joanie!”

Joanie heard and hesitated, looking back over her shoulder, but the young vandals, who had rearmed themselves with more tomatoes, heard too. Flushed with excitement, they ran across the street, flinging tomatoes wildly at Joanie, who screamed in panic and raced for her mother.

“Back off!” Brianna shouted at the top of her own voice, just in time to catch a tomato smack in the middle of her chest, where it exploded in a splotch of red juice and slimy seeds. “What do you morons think you’re doing?”

Marsali had shoved the girls behind her and was standing her ground, fists clenched at her sides, white with fury.

“How dare ye attack my daughter?” she bellowed.

“Ain’t you the printer’s wife?” one young man asked. He’d lost his cap and his hair was standing up in matted spikes, sweat streaming down his face from heat and excitement. He narrowed his eyes at Marsali, then her girls. “Yes, you are! I know you, damned rebel bitch!”

“Friggin’ mudlarks,” his friend said, panting. He wiped his brow on a sleeve, then pushed the sleeve up, showing a reasonably brawny arm. “Let’s throw ’em all ’n the river. Teach the printer to mind his manners.”

Bree drew herself up to her full height—she had a good four or five inches on both young men—and took a step forward.

“You little pipsqueaks clear off,” she said, as menacingly as she could. They looked at her, surprised, and burst into laughter.

“Another rebel bitch, eh?” One young man grabbed her by the arm, fast and hard, and at the same moment, the young man with the bag let it drop off his shoulder and, gripping the strap, swung it and hit her on the side of the head.

She lost her balance, staggered, and fell. Squishy contents notwithstanding, the bag was heavy, and her nose and eyes watered from the sudden impact. The young men were hooting with laughter. The girls were both yelping and Marsali was trying to keep them behind her, hovering in obvious hopes of being able to kick one of the miscreants. She wasn’t able to get close to them before one had stooped and grabbed Brianna’s ankles, yanking her legs up.

“Grab her shoulders!” he shouted at his friend, who promptly did just that.

They half-dragged, half-carried her down the bank, behind the screen of willows that edged the river. She was struggling but couldn’t breathe. Her lungs didn’t work and she couldn’t find purchase with hands or feet from which to strike them.

“Buinneachd o ’n teine ort!” There was a sharp cry, and the man holding her shoulders dropped her.

Her lungs filled and she jerked her feet free and rolled away, scrambling up onto her knees, groping for a stone, a branch, anything with which to fucking hit somebody.

Marsali was breathing hard, teeth clenched, Brianna’s knife in her hand. Brianna’s eyes were still watering, but she made out Joanie and Fizzy on the bank above, each with a melon in her hands, and as she struggled to her feet, Félicité flung her melon as hard as she could. It struck the ground well short of the young men but rolled slowly downhill, coming to rest at the foot of a shrub of some kind.

The vandals roared with laughter, one of them dancing toward Marsali, feinting as though to grab the knife, slapping at her with his other hand as she hesitated.

Bree had got her body back and she rose, a solid rock in one hand, and pasted the jerk who’d held her ankles in the back with it, as hard as she could. The rock thunked home and he made a high-pitched noise and dropped to his knees, cursing breathlessly.

His friend looked back and forth between Marsali and Brianna, then stepped away, careless.

“You best tell your husband to mend his ways and mind what he prints in that paper, missus,” he said to Marsali. The glee of destruction had left him, though the anger hadn’t. He waved a hand at the girls, pressed close together in the shade of a willow. “You got a passel o’ punkin-headed young’uns. Might be as you could spare one, eh?”

Without warning, he darted forward and kicked the melon on the ground, bursting it into juice, seeds, and broken shards.

Brianna was frozen again, but so was everyone. After a long, long moment, the young man she’d hit with the rock got to his feet, gave her an evil look, then jerked his head at his friend. They turned and left, pausing only to pick up the canvas bag and shake the pulp of smashed tomatoes out onto the ground.

72 A Prayer to St. Dismas

ROGER STEPPED OUT OF the Reverend Selverson’s house into the sound of drums. He was in such a flurry of spirits that for a moment he had no notion of what he was hearing, nor why. But as he stood blinking in the light, he saw a Continental soldier come round the corner and walk toward him, not marching, merely walking in a business-like way, a large drum slung to the side, so as not to impede his stride, and his cadence every bit as pedestrian as his aspect.

A sense of motion in the streets, unhurried footsteps, and as the drummer passed him without a glance, he saw men coming round the same corner, some in uniform, strolling and talking in small groups, and he realized that they were coming from Half-Moon Street, from the taverns and eating houses. This was the evening drum—surely it’s not called “reveille” at night? Oh, no; it’s “retreat”—that summoned soldiers to return to their quarters, to eat, and to rest at end of day.

The printshop was in the St. Michael district, while the Reverend Selverson’s house was on the other side of the city. That’s why he hadn’t noticed the evening drum before; the army camp was on this side.

Even with this explanation, he felt a certain stirring at the sound of the drum. And why shouldn’t he? he thought. He was being summoned, too. Smiling at the thought, he put on his hat and stepped into the street.

He didn’t go back to the printshop at once, eager though he was to tell Bree his good news. He needed to be alone for a bit, to open his overflowing heart to God, and make a minister’s promises.

In late afternoon, the heat of the day had pressed the town flat. Only his joy could have made him oblivious to it; even so, the air was like breathing melted butter and he made his way to the waterfront, hoping for a breeze. The waterfront was never deserted, at any hour of the day or night, but at this time of day, most of the ships at anchor in the harbor had been unloaded, their goods receipted, the customs paid, and the sweating longshoremen retired to the nearest place of refreshment—which happened to be the Half-Moon tavern. He was tempted to slake his thirst before embarking on his private devotions—he hadn’t been unloading ships in this heat, thank God, but he wasn’t used to the coast and its tropical fugs, either—but there were priorities.

His priorities suddenly altered when he saw Fergus, who stood at the end of the quay, looking out across the water, this shimmering under the low sun like the surface of a magic mirror.

He heard Roger’s footsteps and turned to greet him, smiling.

“Comment ça va?”

“Ça va,” Roger replied nonchalantly, but then broke into an enormous involuntary grin.

“Ça va très bien?” Fergus asked.

“More bien than you can imagine,” Roger assured him, and Fergus clapped him on the shoulder.

“I knew it would be well,” he said, and then, digging his hand into his pocket, he came out with a handful of coins and folded warehouse certificates. “Half of this is yours—to buy a new black coat,” he said, looking critically at Roger’s present garment. “And a white neckcloth with the—” His hand and hook both smoothed his upper chest, indicating the presence of a Presbyterian minister’s white lappets.

Roger stared at the money, then at Fergus. “You made book on my passing the interview? What were the odds?”

“Five to three. Pas mal. Will you be ordained here, then?” He frowned slightly. “It should be all right if it’s soon.”

“I think it will be in North Carolina, maybe at Davy Caldwell’s church—or maybe here, if we can get enough elders to come. But what do you think is about to happen?”

“I am a journaliste,” Fergus said, with a slight shrug. His eyes were fixed on the masts of a distant ship, anchored out in the harbor beyond the river. “People talk to me. I know a few things that I would not put into the newspaper.”

“Such as?” Roger’s heart, still happy, had given an extra thump.

Fergus turned his back on the shimmering water and gave the quay a quick, casual—but very thorough—glance.

“I managed at last to get Monsieur Faucette more or less to himself, and while he was somewhat elevated in spirit, he was still making sense. Have you heard of the island of Saint Eustatius?”

“Vaguely. It’s out there somewhere.” He waved an arm in the general direction of what he thought was the West Indies.

“Oui,” Fergus said patiently. “It belongs to the Dutch. And the Dutch make and sell arms—on Saint Eustatius. Monsieur Faucette was born on the island and calls there regularly. His mother is a Dutchwoman and he has family there still.”

“So you knew Monsieur Faucette, and he—”

“Non.” Fergus shook his head. “I knew a shark fisherman from Martinique. He was caught up in a bad storm and his boat damaged; one of the merchantmen picked him up and they brought him here.”

Roger’s elation of spirit didn’t disappear, but it receded quickly from the front of his mind. He and Brianna had discussed both the necessity of telling Fergus and Marsali what the future held—might hold, he corrected himself uneasily—and when might be the best time to do that. In the joyous flurry of reunion and the heart-stopping imminence of his interview with the presbytery (the memory made his heart bounce high, in spite of the impending conversation), neither of them had wanted to venture onto the perilous ground of prediction … but clearly, it was time.

“When?” Roger asked warily. He was trying to recall the exact sequence of events that Frank Randall had described. The Siege of Savannah was going to happen soon—in early October—but was going to fail, remaining in British hands. But then came the Siege of Charles Town, and that one was going to succeed—leaving that city also in British hands.

“I spoke with him a week ago,” Fergus said, and smiled. “I bought the story of his adventures for sixpence, and we became friends. I bought him rum and we became frères de coeur. He spoke only French, you see, and while that is not uncommon here, real French people are. He hadn’t talked freely with anyone for six months.”

“And what did he freely tell you?” Roger’s fizz had died down again, pushed into the background by curiosity—and a small sense of dread.

“That he spoke a ship somewhere in the Windward Islands—a sloop, he said, a private boat. They had hauled to—are you impressed at my knowledge of nautical terms?”

“Very,” Roger said, smiling.

“Well, it was a lot of rum we drank.” Fergus glanced wistfully at the Half-Moon, but he also had priorities and turned back to Roger.

“Anyway, they had stopped to catch fish; there were schools of … tunny fish, I believe he said. The owner of the sloop drank rum with him, too, and told him that the French were sending a fleet in support of the Americans; he had seen the fleet and heard about them in a bar on Barbados—” He waved his hook, seeing Roger’s expression. “Don’t ask me how word came to be there; you know how gossip works.

“And,” he went on, “that their plan was to go to New York but that they were aware of the British’s machinations, to sever Philadelphia and Boston and New York from their food, so to speak.” He gestured with his hook from the nearby warehouses to a stretch of ripening fields across the river.

“So if it should happen that the British were already coming south, D’Estaing—he’s the French admiral,” he explained, “D’Estaing will sail at once to the south. And if what he told me is correct, the French ships will come here.”

Roger swallowed and wished he’d listened to his baser urges and had that drink first. “Actually,” he said, “they’re going to Savannah. The Americans are going to attack Savannah. Quite soon.”

Both of Fergus’s dark brows quirked up at that. Roger coughed.

“So that’s where the French are going,” Roger said. “To support General Lincoln’s troops at—”

“But General Lincoln is here!”

Roger waved a hand, still coughing.

“For the moment,” he agreed. “And he’ll leave a garrison here, of course. But he’s taking a lot of men to Savannah. They won’t succeed, though,” he finished, feeling apologetic. “But then they’ll come back here. And then General Cornwallis—I think it’s Cornwallis—will be coming down from New York. Clinton and Cornwallis will besiege the city and take it. And … erm … I’m thinking that perhaps you and Marsali might think of not being here when that happens?”

Fergus’s eyes were as close to round as they could possibly get.

“I mean,” Roger said. “It’s not like you can easily hide.”

That made Fergus smile, just a little.

“I have not forgotten how to become invisible,” he assured Roger. “But it’s much more difficult to make a wife and five children disappear. And I cannot leave Marsali to run the newspaper alone, not with two infants to feed and the town alive with soldiers.” He wiped a sleeve across his sweat-shiny face, blew out his cheeks, and sat down on a stack of white-dusted crates crudely labeled Guano with a slapdash brush.

“So.” He gave Roger a sidelong glance. “You are telling me that the British will possess both Savannah and Charles Town?”

“For a while. Not permanently—I mean, you, er, we will in fact win the war. But not for another two years.”

He saw Fergus’s throat move as he swallowed and the hairs rise on his lean forearms, bared by turned-back sleeves.

“You … um … Bree said she thought you … er … knew,” he said carefully. “About—Claire, I mean. And, um, us.” He sat down beside Fergus on the crate, careful to lift the skirts of his black coat away from the white dust.

Fergus shook his head—not in negation, but as one trying to shake its contents into some pattern resembling sense.

“As I said,” he replied, the smile returning briefly to his eyes, “I know a lot of things I don’t publish in the newspaper.” He straightened up, hand—and hook—on his knees.

“I was with milord and milady during the Rising, and you know”—he raised a brow in question—“that milord hired me in Paris, to steal letters for him? I read them—and I heard milord and milady talk. In private.” A brief smile twitched his mouth and disappeared.

“I didn’t truly believe it, of course. Not until the morning before the battle, when milord gave me the Deed of Sasine to Lallybroch and bade me take it to his sister. And then, of course … milady vanished.” His voice was soft, and Roger could see what he hadn’t realized before—the depth of Fergus’s feeling for Claire, the first mother he remembered. “But milord would never say that she was dead. He didn’t talk about her—but when someone pushed him—”

“His sister?” Thought of Jenny made Roger smile. So did Fergus.

“Yes. He would never say that she was dead. Only … that she was gone.”

“And then she came back,” Roger said quietly.

“Oui.” Fergus looked at him, thoughtfully examining his face, as though to make sure of the man he was talking to. “And plainly, Brianna and you are … what milady is.” A thought struck him, and his eyes widened. “Les enfants. Are they …?”

“Yes. Both of them.”

Fergus said something in French that was well beyond Roger’s ability to translate, and then fell silent, thinking. He reached absently between the buttons of his shirt, and Roger realized that he was touching the small medal of St. Dismas that he always wore. The patron saint of thieves.

Roger turned away, to give him some privacy, and looked out across the river, then farther, to the harbor itself and the invisible sea beyond. Oddly enough, the sense of peace with which he’d left the Reverend Selverson’s house was still with him, immanent in the drifting clouds of a mackerel sky, just going pink round the edges, and the quiet lapping of the water against the pilings beneath them.

Immanent, too, in the still figure of Fergus, hook gleaming on his knee and his shadow growing long across the quay. My brother. Thank you for him, Roger thought toward God. Thank you for all the souls you’ve put in my hand. Help me take care of them.

“Well, then.” Fergus sat up straight and reached into his bosom for a large ink-stained handkerchief, with which he wiped his face. “Wilmington, do you think? Or New Bern?”

“I’m not sure.” Roger sat down beside him on the crate and took out his own handkerchief, freshly washed this morning, now grubby with the day’s efforts. “There weren’t a lot of Scots there …” He broke off and cleared his throat. It was harsh with so much talking today, and explaining Frank—let alone his book—was well beyond his powers at the moment. “I think perhaps the British had a go at New Bern—some officer named Craig, he was Scottish—but if so, it’ll be quite late in the war.”

“Scots?” Fergus raised one brow at that, then brushed it away. “C’est bien faite. Perhaps Wilmington, then. Do you know when the British will arrive here?”

Roger shook his head.

“In the spring sometime, May, maybe. I don’t remember exactly when.”

Fergus sucked his lower lip for a moment, then nodded, decision made. He took his hand away from the medal.

“Perhaps Wilmington, then. But not yet.” He stood up and stretched himself, lean body arched toward the sky.

The air was still like treacle, but Roger’s spirit was refreshed.

“Then let’s have a pint of something and you can tell me where the guns are.”

“You’re sitting on them. But by all means, let’s have a drink.”

73 Stand by Me

ROGER’S ARRIVAL AT THE printshop with Fergus, Roger looking slightly dazed but enormously happy, caused so much commotion that it was some time before people could stop asking questions long enough for him to answer some of them.

“Yes,” he said at last, his white neckcloth taken off and carefully hung from one of the drying lines in the printshop, to avoid loss or the possibility of dirty fingerprints. “Yes,” he said again, and accepted a glass of cooking sherry—that being the most festive beverage available at the moment. “It’s official. All three of them agreed. I’ll be formally ordained in a church, and that may need to wait ’til spring—but I’ve been accepted as suitable to be a Minister of the Word and Sacrament.”

“Is that as good as being the Pope?” Joanie asked, staring at her uncle in newfound awe.

“Well, I don’t get a fancy hat or a shepherd’s crook,” Roger said, still grinning, “but otherwise … aye. Just as good. Slàinte!” He toasted Joanie and then the rest of them, and downed the sherry.

“Mind,” he said, his voice hoarse and eyes watering slightly, “it was a near thing for a bit.” He coughed and waved away the proffered sherry bottle. “Thanks, no, that’s enough. Everything went down well, all through the Latin, Hebrew, and Greek, knowledge of Scripture, and evidence of good character—even having a Catholic wife didn’t give them more than a moment’s pause.” He grinned at Brianna. “As long as I could swear in good conscience that I should never allow ye to persuade me into Romish practices.”

Brianna laughed. She was still trembling inwardly from the experience on the riverbank, but that seemed trivial, drowned by her joy in Roger’s happiness. Firelight gleamed in his black hair and gave his eyes a green spark. He glowed, she thought, he really did. Like a firefly dancing under the trees.

“What Romish practices did they have in mind?” she asked. She’d been sipping brandy, and now handed him her glass. “Slaughtering infants on the altar and drinking their blood?”

“No, just conspiring with the Pope, mostly.”

“To do what?”

“Ye’d have to ask the Pope,” he said, and laughed. “No, really,” he said, “the only thing that was a serious problem to them was the singing.”

“The singing?” she asked, puzzled. “Granted, Catholics sing—but so do you.”

“Aye, that was the problem.” His amusement came down a notch, but it was still there. “I dinna ken how they found out, but they’d heard that I sang hymns during services in church on the Ridge.”

“And they thought ye shouldna?” Marsali said, frowning. “Presbyterians dinna sing?”

“Not in kirk, they don’t. Not now.”

There was the briefest disturbance in the air at the words “not now.” Brianna saw Fergus and Marsali look at each other and neither one changed their expressions of tolerant amusement, but she’d felt it, like the prick of a thorn.

They know. She and Roger had never discussed it, but of course they did. Fergus had lived with her parents before the Rising and at Lallybroch after Culloden—when her mother had gone. And of course Young Ian and Jenny knew. Did Rachel? she wondered.

Roger didn’t act as though anything had happened; he was going on to tell what the various ministers had said about the sinful practice of singing on a Sunday, let alone in kirk! With imitations of each of the ministers’ pronouncements.

“So how did you answer these remarks?” Fergus asked. His face was flushed with laughter, and his hair had lost its ribbon and come mostly out of its plait, streaming over his shoulder in dark waves streaked with silver. Sharp-featured, and with deep-set eyes, he looked to Brianna like a wizard of some sort—maybe a young Gandalf, prior to turning gray.

“Well, I said that given the condition of my voice—and I told them how that happened …” He touched the white rope scar, still visible across his throat. “… I admitted to error, but said I didna think anything I’d done in church could possibly qualify as song. And I admitted to doing lined singing, the call and response—but that’s a legitimate thing to do in a Presbyterian kirk. And in the end, it was really only the Reverend Selverson who was truly concerned about it, and the others overbore him. Oddly enough,” he added, holding out his glass for whatever was being poured at the moment, “it was your da who made the difference.”

“As he often does,” Brianna said dryly. “What on earth did he do this time?”

“Just being who he is.” Roger leaned back, relaxed, and his eyes met hers, still amused but quieter, with a softness in their depths that said he’d like to be alone with her. “The Reverend Thomas made the point that as I was Colonel Fraser’s son-in-law, my being a fully ordained minister was bound to have a beneficial influence on the colonel and thus indirectly on a great many other souls, your da being their landlord. And the Reverend Selverson, as it turns out, actually knows your da and thinks well of him, despite him being a Papist, so …” He held out a hand, flat, and tilted it to show the turning of opinion in his favor.

“Well, Da’s a man that could use a priest, more than most,” Marsali said. Everyone laughed, and so did Brianna, but she couldn’t help wondering what her mother might have to say about that.

“IT’S ONLY TWO dozen guns,” Roger said, shucking his black coat in the loft before dinner. “But they’re rifles, not muskets. I’ve no notion of their quality, because they’re coated with grease and wrapped in canvas and buried under two hundred or so pounds of Jamaican bat guano, but—don’t laugh, I’m not joking.”

“I’m not,” she said, laughing. “Where on earth did they come from? Here, give me that, I’ll take it down and hang it in the airing cupboard—it smells like …”

“Bat guano,” he said, nodding as he handed her the limp, damp coat. “And sweat. A lot of sweat.”

She eyed his torso, and the white shirt now pasted to it, and turned to fetch a fresh—well, dry at least—shirt from the trunk.

“The guns?” she prompted, handing it to him.

“Ah.” He pulled the wet shirt off with a sigh of relief and stood for a moment, arms outstretched, letting the faint breeze off the river wash his naked flesh with coolness. “Oh, God. Guns … Well. Ye recall Fergus telling us about your Mr. Brumby importing half his molasses and smuggling the other half?”

“I do.”

“Well, it appears that molasses isn’t the only thing Mr. Brumby smuggles.”

“You’re kidding!” She stared at him, halfway between delight and dismay. “He’s running guns?”

“And likely anything else that will make him a profit,” he assured her, worming his way into the folds of the fresh shirt. “Your potential employer appears to be one of the biggest smugglers in the Carolinas, according to one Monsieur Faucette, who dabbles himself.”

“But Lord John thinks he’s a loyal Tory—Brumby, I mean.”

“He may actually be a Tory,” Roger said, turning back a cuff. “Though his loyalty is quite possibly open to question. We don’t know what he was planning to do with the guns, once he got them—but it isn’t likely that the British army is depending on Brumby to get them arms.”

Bree poured water into the ewer and handed him a towel, then closed the trunk lid and sat on it, watching as he swabbed sand and salt and the dust of Charles Town from his face and dried his loosened, sweat-soaked hair.

“So you’re saying the guns you and Fergus just acquired came from Saint Eustatius?”

“So says Monsieur Faucette, under the influence of a generous prompting of rum and gold. I don’t know how reliable information obtained by bribery may be, but I do know—or rather, Fergus does—that most professional smugglers are just that. Professionals, I mean; most of them aren’t doing it in order to support one side of the war against the other; they make money where they can, and often enough, from both sides. And as it happened, I’d given Fergus sufficient gold that he was in a position to grease Monsieur Faucette, who … er … facilitated a meeting between Fergus and the owner of a small trading vessel, who had just brought the guns to Charles Town from Saint Eustatius via Jamaica. Et voilà,” he ended, shaking out the towel with a flourish.

“Awriiiiiight,” Bree said, grinning. “So, if Mr. Brumby is really running guns for the Americans, at least we aren’t hurting him by stealing them to give them to Da.”

“I’m trying really hard not to consider the morality of the situation in any depth,” he said dryly, dropping the folded towel on the trunk beside her. “I’d like to at least make it through ordination before the Presbytery of Charles Town finds out about it.”

His wife made an obliging gesture, drawing her fingers across her lips in a zipping motion.

“So, what did you and Marsali do today?” he asked, to change the subject.

To his surprise, it was her face that changed.

“It—I don’t know how to say it, exactly.” She sent him a sidelong look, half puzzled, half ashamed. He sat down on a keg of varnish, leaned forward, and took her hand, long-fingered and cold, clasping it between his own. He didn’t try to say anything, but smiled into her eyes.

After a moment, she smiled back, though it was only a brief shadow at the corner of her mouth. She looked away, but the elegant, ink-stained fingers turned and linked with his.

“I was embarrassed,” she said, finally. “I haven’t been afraid of a man in a long time.”

“A man? Who? What did he do?” His own grip had tightened on hers at the thought of anyone hurting her.

She shook her head, looking away. Her cheeks were flushed.

“Just a pair of young … jerks. Loyalist jerks, no less.” She told him about the louts who had defaced the tavern’s sign and attacked her and Marsali.

“They didn’t really hurt us. They knocked me over—one of them pulled my feet out from under me, the bastard, and then they started dragging me toward the river, saying they’d thr—throw me in.” Her voice had thickened suddenly, and he heard the rage in it.

“There were two of them, Bree. You couldn’t have stopped them, together like that.” Jesus. If I’d been there, I’d have—

She shivered briefly and squeezed his hand hard.

“That—” she started, but had to stop and swallow. “That’s what Da said to me. After Stephen Bonnet raped me. That I couldn’t have stopped him, even if I’d fought.”

“You couldn’t,” he said at once. She looked down at her hand, and he saw that he’d squeezed it so hard that her fingers, which had been grasping his, had sprung loose under the force of his grip and were sticking out of his solid grasp like a bundle of crayons. He cleared his throat and let go.

“Sorry.”

She gave a small laugh, but not with any sense of humor in it.

“Yes,” she said after a moment. “That’s pretty much what Da did, only a lot rougher and on purpose.” The color had risen high in her cheeks, and her eyes were fixed on her hands, now clasped in her lap. “I wanted to kill him.”

“Stephen Bonnet?”

“No, Da.” She gave him a wry half smile. “He didn’t care. That’s what he was trying to make me do—try to kill him—so I’d believe I couldn’t do it, and so I’d have to believe that I couldn’t have done it. He humiliated me and he scared me and he didn’t mind if I hated him for it, as long as I understood that it wasn’t my fault.

“And I understand what you’re telling me, too,” she said, “I do.” And met his gaze straight on. “The thing is, though, I can usually make even men back up a little, or at least stop for a moment, and then I can either steer them into something else or make them go away. I mean—” She looked down her body and waved a hand. “I’m taller than most men, and I’m strong. When I’ve had trouble with some man on the Ridge, I’ve been able to face them down. So when that didn’t work this afternoon, I was—I didn’t expect that,” she ended abruptly.

It wasn’t a situation where tact would be helpful. He’d got a grip on his own fury; he couldn’t do anything about the boys—unless he saw the little bastards, and God help them if he did—but Brianna … he could maybe do something for her.

“On the Ridge,” he said carefully, “it’s not just your own physical presence—intimidating as that is to some men,” he said, with a brief grin. “When a man backs down, sometimes it’s down to you, all right—but sometimes it’s because your da is standing behind you.” He shrugged, careful not to add or me. “Metaphorically, I mean.”

She flushed red, her face drawing inward, and he made a conscious effort not to start back. A Fraser in an unleashed temper was a substance to be treated with caution, whether it was Mandy or Jamie. Easier if they were small enough that you could pick them up and take them somewhere quiet, of course, and/or threaten to smack their bottoms …

Luckily, while Jamie and Claire were as distinctive as night and day in terms of their personalities, both of them were logical and fair-minded, and their daughter had inherited both those traits.

She made a soft rumbling noise in her throat and drew a deep breath, her face relaxing.

“I know that,” she said, and raised her brows in brief apology. “I knew it, I mean. I hadn’t thought about it, though.”

“You did kill Stephen Bonnet,” he pointed out, in palliation. “He wasn’t afraid of your da.”

“Yes, after you and Da caught him and tied him up for me and the good citizens of Wilmington staked him out in the river.” She snorted. “It wouldn’t have mattered if I was scared stiff.”

“You were,” he said. “I was there.” He’d rowed her out over the shimmering brown water, in the early afternoon, in a small boat smeared with fish scales and the mud that made the river brown.

She’d sat across from him, the pistol in her pocket, and he could see her arm in memory, rigid as iron as she’d clutched the gun, and the small pulse in her throat, beating like a hummingbird’s. He’d wanted urgently to tell her again that she didn’t have to do this; that if she couldn’t bear the idea of Stephen Bonnet drowning, then he’d do it for her. But she’d made up her mind, and he knew she would never turn back from a job she thought was hers. And so they’d rowed out into the harbor, in a silence louder than the screams of waterbirds and the lap of the incoming tide and the echo of a gunshot not yet fired.

“Thank you,” she said softly, and he saw that her eyes glistened with tears that she wouldn’t let fall because she hated to be weak. “You didn’t try to stop me.”

“I would have, if I thought there was any chance ye’d listen,” he said gruffly, but both of them knew it wasn’t true, and she squeezed his hand, then let go and took a deep breath.

“Then there was Rob Cameron,” she said, “and the nutters who were lying in wait at Lallybroch, wanting to take the kids. I couldn’t have fought off the nutters all by myself—and thank God for Ernie Buchan and Lionel Menzies! But I did smack Rob on the head with a junior cricket bat and laid him out cold.” She glanced at him with the flicker of a real smile. “So there.”

“Well done,” he said softly, and managed with some effort to suppress both his resurgent rage at Cameron and his guilt for not being there. “My braw lass.”

She laughed, and wiped her nose on the back of her free hand.

“I already knew you were a good husband,” she said. “But you’ll be a great minister.”

She leaned forward then and he took her in his arms, feeling her weight warm and heavy with her trust.

“Thanks,” he said softly, against her hair. It was smooth and warm on his lips. “But I can’t be either one of those things alone, aye?”

For a moment, she was silent. Then she pulled back enough to look at him, her face tear-streaked but solemn now, and beautiful.

“You won’t be alone,” she said. “Even if God’s not there when you need Him, I’ll be there—standing just behind you.”

74 The Face of Evil

ROGER CLIMBED THE LADDER to the loft, surprising his wife, who was crawling about on her hands and knees.

“What are you looking for?” he asked.

“Mandy’s sock,” she replied, sitting back on her heels with a small groan. “You know how people say something or other is a backbreaking job? That’s not hyperbole when it comes to laundry. What are you looking for?”

“You.” He glanced over his shoulder, but the printshop below was vacant at the moment, though he could hear voices in the kitchen. “Fergus asked me to go with him on an errand, and he asked me to bring a knife. So I thought I’d give you this for safekeeping—you know, in case we’re going to meet a highway robber and get his life story for the front page,” he added, trying to make a feeble joke of it. His wife was having none of his humors, and heaved herself to her feet with a hand on a barrel of varnish, her eyes fixing him with a look of dark-blue suspicion.

She kept her eyes on him while taking the paper from his hand and unfolding it, glancing away only to read it.

“What is this?”

“It’s a warehouse certificate. You’ve seen them before, surely? Your da has a fistful of them in his strongbox.”

“I have,” she said, giving him a pointed look. “Why do you have a warehouse certificate to a warehouse in Charlotte?”

“Because so far as either I or Frank Randall knows, there won’t be any significant fighting in Charlotte. That’s where I sent the, um, guano. I thought nobody would notice, and nobody did.”

She gave the certificate a careful look, and he saw her note that he’d put her name on it as well as his. Under the circumstances, she didn’t seem to find that comforting.

“So,” he said heartily, “we’ll be back before supper. Oh—and Mandy’s sock is over there, under the candle snuffer.”

FEELING THAT IT didn’t behoove a not-quite-ordained minister to walk about in a black coat with a large knife on his belt in plain view, Roger put on his second-best coat, this being a rather shabby brown number with a visible mend in the sleeve and wooden buttons. Fergus viewed this with approval.

“Yes, very good,” he said. “You look as though you could do business.” The tone of his voice made it clear what kind of business he meant, but Roger assumed this to be a joke.

“Oh, so I’m meant to be your henchman?” He fell into step next to Fergus, who was wearing the same clothes he wore for printing, but with a blue coat little better than Roger’s over them.

“We will hope it doesn’t come to that,” Fergus said thoughtfully. “But it’s as well to be prepared.”

Roger stopped abruptly and grabbed Fergus’s sleeve, bringing him to a halt.

“Would you care to tell me just who we’re going to see? And how many of them?”

“Only one, so far as I know,” Fergus assured him. “His name is Percival Beauchamp.”

That didn’t sound like the eighteenth-century version of a gangster, a dangerous pirate, or a smuggler of uncustomed goods, but names could be deceiving.

“A soldier brought me a note last week,” Fergus said, presumably in explanation. “He was not in uniform, but I could tell. And I think he was from the British army, which I considered to be unusual.”

Very unusual. Though there were occasional red-coated soldiers to be seen in Charles Town now and then, these usually being messengers bound for General Lincoln’s headquarters, presumably with threatening missives urging the general to consider his situation.

Fergus waved the matter of the note-bearing soldier aside for the moment.

“The note was from Monsieur Beauchamp, saying that he was in residence in Charles Town for a short time and would request the honor of a brief visit at his hôtel.”

“Do you know this Beauchamp?” Roger asked curiously. The name rang a faint bell. “He can’t be a relative of Claire’s, can he?”

Fergus gave him a startled glance.

“Surely not,” he said, though his tone wasn’t quite that sure. “It isn’t an uncommon French name. But, yes, I know him.”

“I gather it isn’t altogether a cordial acquaintanceship?” Roger touched the knife on his belt; it was the Highland dirk that Jamie had given him, an impressive foot-long bit of weaponry with a carved hilt bearing the name of St. Michael and a small image of the archangel. He rather admired the capacity of Catholics to sincerely seek peace while pragmatically acknowledging the necessity for occasional violence.

A brief look of amusement flitted across Fergus’s saturnine features.

“Non,” he said. “But let me tell you. This Beauchamp has tried to speak with me several times, offering assorted things—but chiefly, offering me the truth—or what he says is the truth—about my parents.”

Roger glanced at him.

“Even an orphan must have had parents at one time,” Fergus said, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. “I have never known anything about mine, and I take leave to doubt that Monsieur Beauchamp does, either.”

“But if that’s the case, why pretend he does?”

“I don’t know, but I suppose we’re about to find out.” Fergus sounded grimly resigned to the prospect. He squared his shoulders, preparing to go on, but Roger’s hand hadn’t left his sleeve.

“Why?” Roger said quietly. “Why talk to him at all?”

The Adam’s apple bobbed in Fergus’s lean throat as he swallowed, but he met Roger’s eyes straight on.

“If I must lose my livelihood here, if I can no longer be a printer—then I must find a new place, or a new way to support my family, to protect them,” he said simply. “It may be that Monsieur Beauchamp will show me such a way.”

THE MYSTERIOUS MONSIEUR Beauchamp’s address was a grand house on Hasell Street, and Fergus’s knock upon the door was answered by a butler whose livery probably cost more than Bonnie the printing press. This worthy gave no sign of wondering why two vagabonds should have appeared on his master’s doorstep, but upon hearing Fergus’s name, bowed low and ushered them inside.

It was a hot day outside, and the thick velvet drapes at the windows were drawn to keep as much heat out as possible. They kept out all daylight as well, and the parlor into which they were shown was so dark that the single lamp on a table near the window glowed like a pearl inside an oyster.

Roger thought it was rather like being inside an oyster himself: surrounded by a slick, oppressive moistness, the constant touch of mucus on the skin. Granted, the room in which they had been shut was not as searing as the glaring cobblestones outside, but it wasn’t a hell of a lot cooler, either.

“Like being poached, instead of fried,” he whispered to Fergus, mopping his face with the lace-trimmed handkerchief he’d forgotten to exchange for a workman’s bandanna. Fergus blinked at him in momentary confusion, but before Roger could explain, the door opened and Percival Beauchamp walked in, smiling.

Roger didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but this chap wasn’t it. Beauchamp wasn’t French, for one thing. When he greeted them—with great courtesy—accepted Fergus’s introduction of Roger, and thanked them effusively for coming, his voice was that of an educated Englishman—but not one educated at Eton or Harrow. Roger thought that the traces of an underlying accent came from somewhere near the edges of the Thames—Southwark, or maybe Lambeth? He was dressed in the height of Paris style—or at least Roger assumed that must be what it was, with six-inch cuffs, a yellow silk waistcoat embroidered with swallows, and a lot of lace. He wore his own hair, though, dark and very curly, casually tied back with a plum-colored silk ribbon.

“I thank you for your kind attention, messieurs,” he said again. “Allow me to send for wine.”

“Non,” Fergus said. He pulled an ink-stained handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat pooling in his deep eye sockets. “This place is like a Turkish bath. I have come to hear what you have to say, monsieur. Say it.”

Beauchamp pursed his lips as though about to whistle, but then relaxed, still smiling, and gestured them to a pair of ornately brocaded chairs near the empty hearth. He also went to the door and, in spite of Fergus’s refusal, ordered some refreshments to be brought.

When a tray of pastries with a decanter of iced negus had been delivered, he asked the butler to pour out a glass for each of them and then sat down facing them. His eyes flicked over Roger, but all his attention was for Fergus.

“I said to you on a previous occasion, monsieur, that I wished to acquaint you with the facts of your birth. These are … somewhat dramatic, and I am afraid that you may find some of them distressing. I apologize.”

“Tais-toi,” Fergus said roughly. Roger didn’t understand all of what he said next, but it seemed to be an invitation to Beauchamp to shit something or other—possibly the truth?—out of his backside.

Beauchamp blinked, but sat back, took a sip of wine, and patted his lips.

“You are the son of le Comte Saint Germain,” he said, and paused, as though expecting a reaction. Fergus just stared at him. Roger felt a small rivulet of sweat run down the seam of his back like water from a melting ice cube.

“And your mother’s name was Amélie Élise LeVigne Beauchamp.” Roger heard Fergus’s sudden intake of breath.

“You know that name?” Beauchamp sounded surprised but eager. He leaned forward, his face intent, nacreous in the lamplight.

“J’ai connu une jeune fille de ce nom Amélie,” Fergus said. “Mais elle est morte.”

THERE WAS A moment’s silence, broken only by the distant, bustling hum of the house’s domestic staff.

“She is dead.” Beauchamp’s voice was gentle, but Fergus jerked a little, as though stung by a wasp. Beauchamp drew a long, careful breath, then leaned forward.

“You knew her, you said.”

Fergus nodded, once, a jerky movement quite unlike him.

“I knew her by name. I did not know she was my mother.” He caught Roger’s look of surprise from the corner of his eye and turned to face him, turning a shoulder to Beauchamp, the bringer of unwelcome news.

“There are many children born in a brothel, mon frère, despite unceasing attempts to prevent them. Those pretty enough to be salable within a few years are kept.”

“And the others?” Roger asked, not wanting to hear the answer.

“I was pretty enough,” Fergus replied tersely. “And by the time I did not bruise easily, I could take care of myself on the streets.” Looking down, Roger could see that the toes of Fergus’s shoes were dug hard into the carpet.

“Because there are children, there are whores with milk. Those who had—lost a child—would sometimes nurse other bébés. If a whore was called to attend a customer and her child was hungry, she would hand him to another jeune fille. The little ones called any whore ‘Maman,’” he said quietly, looking down at his feet. “Anyone who would feed them.”

He seemed indisposed to say anything else. Roger cleared his throat, and Beauchamp looked at him as though surprised to find him still there.

“How—and when—did Amélie Beauchamp die?” Roger asked politely.

“During an outbreak of the morbid sore throat,” Beauchamp said, in the same tone. “I—we—don’t know exactly when.”

“I see.” Roger glanced at Fergus, who was still staring at the branching pattern of the figured carpet, saying nothing. “And, um, Monsieur le Comte?”

Percival Beauchamp seemed to relax a little at this question.

“We don’t know that, either. Monsieur le Comte has often disappeared from Paris for varying lengths of time: sometimes days, sometimes months—now and then for a year or more, with no hint as to where he has been. But the last time he was seen was more than twenty years ago, and the circumstances of his disappearance so remarkable that the probability that he really is dead this time is sufficient that a magistrate would undoubtedly declare him to be defunct, should a petition to that effect to be filed by his heir.”

Damp with sweat as his hair was, Roger still felt it rise on his neck. Probably so had Fergus, who looked up sharply at this news.

“Unless my understanding of the law in France has changed of late, a bastard cannot inherit property. Or when you say ‘heir,’ are you talking of someone else?”

Beauchamp smiled at him, an evidently genuine smile of happiness, and, picking up a small silver bell from the tray of refreshments, rang it. Within moments, the door opened, letting in a welcome draft of air and light from the hallway, as well as a tall gentleman in a fine gray suit—but a suit of English cut, not French. Roger thought he must be a lawyer; he looked the part, with a leather folder tucked beneath one arm.

“Mr. Beauchamp,” he said, with a nod toward Percival. “And you, sir, must be Claudel, if I may use your original name.”

“You may not, sir.” Fergus was sitting bolt-upright and was getting his feet under him, clearly meaning to walk out. Roger thought that was likely a good idea and began to rise himself, only to be stopped by the newcomer, who held out a quelling hand, and with the other laid down his folder and opened it.

There was only one document inside, old, from its stained and yellowed appearance. It bore a large red-wax seal, though, and multiple signatures, signed with such flourishes that it looked as though a tiny octopus had dipped its legs in ink and walked across the page.

At the top of the document, however, the writing—in French—was clear and clerkish.

“You aren’t a bastard,” Percival Beauchamp said, smiling warmly at Fergus. “Allow me to congratulate you, sir.”

FERGUS KNITTED HIS brows, staring at the document, then flicked a sideways glance at Roger. Roger made a small hem noise in his throat, signifying willingness to follow any lead Fergus chose, but otherwise remained still. He regarded the iced negus; the decanter and glasses were filmed with condensation, and water droplets were beginning to slide down the curved glass. It would have gone down a treat in this steam bath.

Beauchamp and the lawyer were each holding a glass of the cold sugared port, eyes fixed expectantly on Fergus, ready to toast their revelation.

Fergus straightened up and got his feet under him.

“I may or may not be a bastard, gentlemen, but I am most certainly not a child.”

Roger thought that was a good exit line, and also got his feet under him, but Fergus didn’t stand up. He leaned forward and deliberately picked up a glass of the negus, which he passed under his nose with the air of a king compelled to inspect a chamber pot.

“Here,” he said to Beauchamp, who was watching this with his mouth slightly open. “Exchange glasses with me, s’il vous plaît.” Despite the overt politeness, it wasn’t a request, and Beauchamp, eyebrows nearly touching his hairline, obliged. Fergus silently indicated that Roger should likewise exchange drinks with the lawyer and this was done, Roger wondering—not for the first time—What the hell?

Fergus sat back in his chair, relaxed, and lifted his glass.

“To honesty, gentlemen, and honor among thieves.”

Beauchamp and the lawyer exchanged a nonplussed look, but then blinked and murmured the toast, glasses lifted an inch or so. Roger didn’t bother with the toast, but sipped and found the negus as good as he’d thought it might be. It slid beguilingly down his parched throat, cold and warming at the same time.

“Regardez,” Fergus said, as the glasses came down. The air was perfumed with ruby port and the spices used in the negus; the air in the sweltering salon became a little more tolerable.

“Since you are so familiar with my personal affairs, gentlemen, I presume you are aware that Lord Broch Tuarach employed me for a time in Paris, to obtain for him an assortment of useful documents. I therefore have seen many such things as that.” He lifted his glass to indicate the marriage contract on the table, infusing his voice with a touch of scorn.

“Milord Broch Tuarach also produced such documents, from time to time, as situations arose requiring them. I have seen it done, gentlemen, time upon time, and so you will give me leave to express some doubt regarding the … véracité of this particular document.”

One part of Roger’s mind was admiring Fergus’s performance, while another was noting in an abstract way that Jamie Fraser could never have been a forger: left-handed, but forced from childhood to write with his right hand—and that hand very recently crushed, at the time Fergus must be referring to. On the other hand, Fergus himself was a very accomplished forger, but he supposed that wasn’t something Fergus wanted to get around Charles Town society ….

The lawyer looked as though he’d been taxidermized by someone who hated him, but Beauchamp spluttered negus and began to protest. Fergus looked at Roger, who obligingly put back his coat to show his knife and set his hand on the hilt, keeping his face impassive.

Beauchamp froze. Fergus nodded approvingly.

“Just so. And so, gentlemen … say for the sake of argument that persons less discerning than I might accept the truth of this document. What did you propose to do, had I been willing to do that? Plainly, you had something in mind—something that Monsieur le Comte’s heir might accomplish for you, eh?”

Color was coming back into Beauchamp’s face, and the lawyer lost a little of his stuffing; they exchanged glances and some decision was made.

“All right.” Percival Beauchamp sat up straight and touched a linen napkin to his port-stained lips. “This is the situation.”

The situation, as explained by Beauchamp with minor interruptions from the lawyer, was that the Comte St. Germain, a very wealthy man, had owned—well, still did own, technically—a majority of the stock of a syndicate investing in land in the New World. The main asset of this syndicate was a large piece of land in the very large area known as the Northwest Territory.

Fergus managed to look as though he knew exactly what this was, and quite possibly he did, but it rang only faint bells of recognition for Roger. It was a lot of land in the far north and was part of what the French and Indian War had been fought over. And the British had won, he was pretty sure of that.

Evidently the French—or some portion of the French, whom Beauchamp referred to obliquely as “our interests”—were not so sure.

And now that France had officially entered the war in alliance with the Americans, Beauchamp’s “interests” had it in mind to take the first steps toward securing at least a foothold on the Territory.

“By establishing Mr. Fraser’s claim to it?” Roger hadn’t said anything to this point, but sheer astonishment compelled him. The lawyer gave him an austere look, but Beauchamp inclined his head gracefully.

“Yes. But the claim of an individual alone would not likely stand against the rapacity of the Americans. Therefore, our interests will assist Mr. Fraser in establishing colonists upon his land—French-speaking colonists, who would thus provide substance for a claim by France, once the war is over.

“Whereupon,” Beauchamp concluded, “our interests would purchase the land from you—for a significant sum.”

“If the Americans win,” Fergus said, sounding skeptical. “If they don’t, I fear your ‘interests’ will be in a precarious position. As would I.”

“They’ll win.” The lawyer hadn’t spoken since greeting them, and his voice gave Roger a start. It was deep, and assured, in contrast with Beauchamp’s light charm.

“You’re a rebel, are you not, Mr. Fraser?” The lawyer raised a brow at Fergus. “That is certainly the impression given by your newspaper. Have you no faith in your own cause?”

Fergus raised his hook and scratched delicately behind one ear.

“I assume you have noticed that the streets are filled with Continental soldiers, sir. Should I put my family in danger by advocating their confusion in print?”

He didn’t wait for an answer to this question, but rose suddenly to his feet.

“Bonjour, messieurs,” he said. “You have given me much to think about.”

ROGER FELT A strong inclination to be somewhere else, and thus didn’t question Fergus’s plunging suddenly into a narrow alley between two houses, running down it, and zigging through a gate into the backyard of what appeared to be a brothel, judging from the laundry hanging limply in the humid air. He was somewhat surprised when Fergus, with a cordial word to two black maidservants folding sheets, went up the back steps and entered the house without knocking.

“Mr. Fergus!” cried a young lady, running down the hall toward him. The girl—God, she couldn’t be more than twelve, could she?—flung herself affectionately into Fergus’s arms, kissed him on the cheek, and then turned her head coquettishly toward Roger.

“Oo, you’ve brought a friend!”

“Allow me to introduce my brother, the Reverend, mademoiselle. Reverend—Mademoiselle Marigold.”

“Of course she is,” Roger said, collecting his wits just in time to bow to the lady, who received his homage with a demure downward sweep of her shadowed eyelids.

“We get quite a number of Reverend gentlemen, sir,” she assured him, laughing gaily. “Don’t be shy. Remember, we’ve all seen one before.”

“One …” he began, rather stunned.

“Why, one clergyman,” she said, dimpling. “At least!”

She was dressed rather sedately—for a brothel, his mind amended. Which is to say, she was covered, even to her feet, which were clad in smart leather boots. He didn’t have time to consider what her function in the establishment might be—too expensively dressed to be a maid—before Fergus set her gently but firmly on her feet.

“Is the second-floor parlor available, chérie?”

Roger had a moment to notice that the girl was black, of a pale coffee color and with hair like smooth coils of molasses taffy. She was also somewhat older than he’d thought—perhaps in her late teens, and with a shrewd glint behind the playful air.

“If you don’t need it more than an hour,” she said. “Someone’s coming at four o’clock.”

“That will be sufficient,” Fergus assured her. “We only require a place to sit down and collect ourselves. Though I suppose a glass of wine might not be out of the question?”

She looked at him for a moment, head on one side like a bird estimating whether that fallen leaf might hide a juicy worm, but then nodded, matter-of-factly.

“I’ll send Barbara up with it. Adieu, mon brave,” she said, and, kissing her fingertips, applied them briefly to Roger’s surprised cheek before skipping off down the hall—which, he saw, was not unlike that of the house they had just come from, though the art on display was considerably better.

“Come,” Fergus murmured, touching his arm.

The second-floor parlor was a small, charming room, with French doors opening onto a small balcony, and long lace curtains that barely stirred in the heavy air when they stepped in.

“I am a son of the house, so to speak,” Fergus said, sitting down with a brief wave of the hand toward the door.

“I didn’t ask,” Roger murmured, and Fergus laughed.

“You needn’t ask if Marsali knows about this place, either,” he assured Roger. “I won’t say I have no secrets from my wife—I think every man must require a few secrets—but this is not one of them.”

Roger’s heart was beginning to slow down, and he fished out a semi-clean handkerchief with which to mop his face. He found himself avoiding the tiny patch Miss Marigold’s fingers had touched, and scrubbed it briefly before putting the hankie away.

“The men we have just left,” Fergus said, dabbing his own face. “I recognize them.”

“Yes?”

“The fop—this is Percival Beauchamp, though I believe he used another name—perhaps more than one. He has approached me more than once with a similar taradiddle—that I was the son of a highborn man, had title to land—” He made a very French grimace of disdain, and Roger, already entertained by his pronunciation of “taradiddle,” made a similar grimace in order to keep from laughing.

“Now,” Fergus went on, hunching closer and lowering his voice, “at that time, he was attending the Comte de La Fayette as some sort of aide-de-camp. I dismissed him—I had met him once before that, and refused to speak with him then—and he went so far as to threaten me. Chienne,” he added, with contempt.

“Chienne?” Roger asked, careful with the pronunciation. “You think he’s a female dog?”

Fergus looked surprised.

“Well, there are other words,” he said, and wrinkled his brow as though trying to summon a few, “but surely you noticed …?”

“Er …” A wave of heat that had nothing to do with the atmosphere rose behind Roger’s ears. “Actually, no. I just thought he was a, um, Frenchman. Ornamental, you know?”

Fergus burst out laughing.

Roger coughed. “So. Ye’re saying that Percival whatever-he’s-calling-himself is what people in Scotland might call a Nancy-boy. D’ye think that’s got anything to do with … the present situation?”

Fergus was still simmering with mirth, but he shook his head.

“Oui, but perhaps only because a man with such tastes—when they are known, and plainly they are—cannot be trusted, because he is always subject to the threat of public exposure. You must look at the man who controls him.”

Roger felt a touch of uneasiness. Well, in honesty, he’d been uneasy since they walked into the house on Hasell Street.

“Who do you suppose that is?”

Fergus glanced at him in surprise, then shook his head in mild reproof.

“I tell you, mon frère, you require a great deal more experience in the fields of sin, if you hope to be a good minister.”

“Ye’re suggesting that I send for Miss Marigold and ask for lessons?”

“Well, no,” Fergus said, giggling slightly. “Your wife would—but that’s not what I meant. Only that your own goodness, which is undeniable”—he smiled at Roger, with a warmth in his eyes that touched Roger deeply—“is one thing, but to help those of your flock who lack that goodness, you need to understand something of evil and thus the struggle that afflicts them.”

“I wouldn’t say you’re wrong,” Roger said warily. “But I know more than one man of the cloth who’s got himself in serious trouble while seeking that sort of education.”

Fergus lifted one shoulder, laughing.

“You can learn a great deal from whores, mon frère, but I agree that perhaps you should not make such inquiries alone. Still,” he said, sobering, “that’s not what I meant by evil.”

“No. But you said you’ve had passages with this Percival before. He didn’t strike me as—”

“He’s not. He’s a whore; he has likely been one all his life.” Seeing Roger’s expression, he didn’t smile, but one corner of his mouth lifted. “What is it they say? ‘It takes one to know one.’”

Roger felt a sudden contraction of his stomach muscles, as though he’d been lightly punched. He’d known that Fergus had been a child-whore in Paris, before encountering Jamie Fraser, who had engaged him as a pickpocket—but he’d forgotten.

“Monsieur Beauchamp is too old to sell his arse, of course, but he will sell himself. From necessity,” Fergus added dispassionately. “A person who has lived like that for a long time ceases to believe that they have any value beyond what someone will pay for.”

Roger was silent, thinking not so much of the recent Percival Beauchamp but of Fergus—and of Jane and Fanny Pocock.

“When you say ‘evil,’ though …” he began slowly.

“There were only two men in that room,” Fergus said simply. “Besides us, I mean.”

“Jesus.” He tried to think what the tall man had said or done that might have given Fergus the conviction—and it was a conviction, he could see that much in Fergus’s face—that the man was evil. “I can’t even remember what he looked like.”

“In my experience, the Devil seldom walks up and introduces himself to you by name,” Fergus said dryly. “All I can tell you is that I know evil when I see it—and I saw it on that man.”

Fergus stood up and went to the window, pulling back the lace curtain to look out. He drew a large black bandanna out of his pocket and wiped his face with it. “So the ink stains don’t show,” he said briefly, seeing Roger notice.

“So what do you plan to do about … this? If anything?”

Fergus exhaled strongly through his long French nose.

“You tell me that the city will soon fall to the British. These crétins offer me ridiculous daydreams. But”—he raised a monitory hook to stop Roger butting in—“they do have money, and they do mean business. I just don’t know what sort of business, and the guardian angel on my shoulder thinks I don’t want to find out.”

“Wise man, your guardian angel.”

Fergus nodded and was still, staring at the river in the distance as it went about its murky business. After a moment, he glanced at Roger.

“Brianna told Marsali that Lord John Grey had promised her a military escort to see her safely to Savannah.”

“Yes. But we don’t need it. No one’s going to bother a wagon full of children and sauerkraut.”

“Nonetheless.” Fergus stood up and shucked his coat, plucking the soaked linen of his shirt away from his chest. “Will you ask your wife to send a note to Lord John at once, please? Ask him to send his escort as soon as possible. We’re coming with you. I think the printing press might draw notice.”

75 No Smoke without Fire

BRIANNA WOKE SUDDENLY, IN the disoriented state that occurs when you’ve gone to sleep in a strange place and don’t recall immediately where you are. She’d been dreaming—of what? Her heart was racing, and any minute it was going to—

Damn! The wings started fluttering in her chest, like a flock of agitated bats trapped in her shift. She sat up, cursing under her breath, and struck herself hard in the chest, in hopes of startling her heartbeat back into regularity; sometimes that worked. Not this time. She swung her feet out of bed, planted them on the cold, damp floorboards, and took a deep breath, only to cough and let it out with a gasp.

“Roger!” she whispered as loudly as she could, trying to not wake the children to panic, and shook him by the arm. “Roger! Get up—I smell smoke!”

She remembered now where they were. They were sleeping in the loft, and with her eyes no longer clouded by sleep, now she could see the smoke she was smelling, white wisps slipping over the edge of the loft like ghosts, moving silently but with a horrifying speed.

“Jesus Christ!” Roger was up, naked and disheveled; she could see him in the dim cloud-glow from the owl-slits. “Bloody hell—go down and rouse everybody. I’ll grab the kids.” He was moving even as he said it, snatching a shirt off a stack of cheap Bibles.

A scream of pure terror from below split the air, followed by an instant of stunned silence, and then a lot of yelling, in French, English, and Gaelic, plus piercing shrieks from the babies.

“They’re roused,” she said, and pushing past Roger ran to scoop up Mandy, who was sitting up in her nest of quilts, squint-eyed and cross.

“You too noisy,” she said accusingly to her mother. “You woke me up!”

Brianna repressed the urge to say, “You can sleep when you’re dead,” and instead grabbed Esmeralda and shoved her into Mandy’s arms. She could hear Roger, behind her, trying to rouse Jemmy, who was dead to the world and planned to stay that way. “Come on,” she said to Mandy, who was slowly picking some sort of fuzz off her shift. “You can do that later. Hold on!”

With Mandy whining and clinging to her neck like a cranky gibbon and Esmeralda a solid lump mashed between them, she made her way one-handed backward down the ladder, bare toes curling to keep a grip on the foot-worn rungs. The smell of smoke was stronger now, but not choking, not yet … Tendrils rose past her toward the ceiling, coiling in slow-growing clouds under the beams as she looked up.

“Get out, get out!” someone was bellowing, louder than the rest, and as she hit the bottom of the ladder and turned, she saw Germain, wild with fear and furious with it, pulling one of his screaming sisters—by her hair—toward the door, kicking at the other who was scrambling round on the floor, evidently looking for something. “Va-t’en, j’ai dit!” he was shouting. “Move, salope! MOVE!”

“Germain!”

Marsali, white-faced, had both babies in her arms, a leather bag pressed between them. Germain heard her and turned, his face ten years older than he was, drawn with terror and determination.

“Je ne laisserai pas ça se reproduire,” he said to Marsali, and shoved Félicité hard toward the door, then bent and yanked Joanie off the floor, wrestling her outside as she wailed and struggled. There was a sudden loud crack and a thump; Brianna turned to see Roger and Jem in a heap on the floor, the ladder skewed sideways, a rung hanging loose where it had given way under their combined weights.

“Get up, Da! Mama, Mama!” Jem ran to her and clung. She grabbed him with one arm and hugged him hard, then let go and pushed him toward the open door. Damp night air whooshed into the room, a welcome freshness—and an instant danger, Bree saw, seeing the smoke whirl up in a frenzy as the cold air touched it. Roger was crouched on one knee at the foot of the ladder, trying to stand.

“Take Mandy outside,” she said to Jem, who was standing in the middle of the floor, looking lost. “Now.” And thrusting Mandy and Esmeralda into his arms, she ran to Roger and grabbed his arm, got a shoulder under it, and managed somehow to get him on his feet, and then they were shuffling and staggering like people in a three-legged race, bumping off counters and knocking over tables, books, papers …

My God, the whole place will go up like a torch …

And then they were outside in the street, all of them coughing, crying, touching each other, counting noses again and again.

“Where’s Fergus?” Roger asked, his voice rasping.

ROGER FOUND FERGUS a few moments later, at the back of the printshop, stamping out the last fragments of a small fire that had been built against the back door. The door itself was charred at the bottom, but the only remaining traces of the fire were a large black spot on the ground, a few scattered chunks of graying ember, and a small cloud of ashes and flecks of half-burnt paper that flew around Fergus’s stamping feet like a cloud of black-and-white moths.

“Merde,” Fergus said, noticing Roger.

“Mais oui,” Roger replied, coughing slightly from the drifting smoke. “One of your competitors?” He nodded at the half-burnt door, where someone had painted the words NEXT TIME in dripping whitewash.

Fergus shook his head, teeth clenched. His hair was standing on end and, like Roger, he wore nothing but a nightshirt, though he’d had the presence of mind to put on his boots before running outside. The fire was out, but Roger felt the heat from the smoking door on his bare legs.

“Loyalists,” Fergus said briefly, and coughed hard. Roger felt the tickle of smoke in his own throat and cleared it hard in hopes of quelling it; coughing still hurt.

“Marsali and Bree and the wee’uns are all right,” Roger said. Fergus nodded, cleared his throat, and spat into the ashes.

“I know,” he said, with a slight relaxation of his hard-lined face. “I heard them cursing. Les femmes sauvages.”

Roger hadn’t noticed the cursing, but he didn’t doubt it.

“Have they tried before?” he asked, lifting his chin at the paint-smeared door. Fergus lifted one shoulder in a Gallic shrug.

“Letters. Filth. A bag full of dead rats. Another bag with a live serpent—luckily it was a rattlesnake and not a cottonmouth. Marsali heard it before she picked the bag up.”

“Jesus Christ.” It was something between a curse and a prayer, and Fergus nodded, appreciating both.

“Les enfants savent qu’il ne faut rien toucher près de la porte,” he said matter-of-factly. He took a deep, slow breath and shook his head at the door. “This is—” His lips tightened and he glanced at Roger. “You know—milady and milord told you, I expect. What … happened to our little one. Henri-Christian.” The name came hesitantly, as though it had been a long time since Fergus had spoken it aloud.

“I do,” Roger said, a lump in his throat making the words come out low and choked. He cleared it, hard. “Fucking cowardly wankers!”

“If you care to call them that.” Fergus was white around the mouth. “Cowards, certainly. Canaille!” He kicked the door so hard that it juddered in its frame. Recovering from shock and panic, Roger found his own anger rising.

“Those shits! Setting a fire where your family lives, your kids!” And mine …

“As a warning, it’s much more effective than anonymous notes pushed under the door.” Fergus was breathing heavily and stopped to cough, shaking his head. He glared at Roger, eyes bloodshot with smoke. “If I find out who did this, I will tie them in a sack, row them out to sea, and throw them alive to the sharks, I swear it by the name of God and la Virgine.”

“I’ll help ye do it.” He’d have to, he thought; Fergus couldn’t row with one hand.

“Merci.” Fergus glanced bleakly at the corner of the house; the shrieks and crying of frightened children in the street on the other side had died down, smothered in the sounds of running footsteps and exclamations. “I will find out,” he said, suddenly calm. “But now I must go to Marsali.” Jesus, what the thought of another fire will have done to him and Marsali … the little girls … He felt his blood go cold in his veins at the thought. Fergus was watching his face. He nodded, his own face sober now, and together they went to find their wives and children.

THERE WAS A lot of clishmaclaver going on outside the printshop. Dawn was an hour off and there was barely enough light to see Marsali and Bree and all the kids, withdrawn to the far side of the street and huddled together in the dark like a herd of small bison.

Germain, with Jemmy stoutly by his side, was standing in front of the women and children, fists clenched and his face, too, looking as though he couldn’t decide whether to cry or pound somebody. Fergus exhaled through his teeth, clapped Germain on the shoulder, and went to take one of the twins from Marsali, who had them both in a death grip. Fergus said something very quiet to her in French, and Roger turned tactfully to Bree, who had sat down on the wooden sidewalk and gathered all three little girls around her. Fizzy was clinging to Bree’s shift and sniffing, and Joanie, who tended to be practical, was braiding Mandy’s hair.

“Ye all right?” Roger said, and rested his hand on Brianna’s head, her hair cool and damp in the morning fog off the harbor.

“Nobody died,” she said, and managed a small, shaky laugh. “Do you know what happened?”

“Sort of. Tell ye later, though.”

Other people were coming, some in their nightclothes, others on their way from or to work: bakers, tavern keepers, laborers, fishermen. Two whores hung about under a tree, whispering to each other and glancing from the printshop to the family.

Rather to Roger’s surprise, Fergus made no attempt at secrecy. He told everyone in turn exactly what had happened—and what he intended to do to the maudit chiens who had attacked his family and livelihood.

Roger, catching on, searched the faces as the light began to seep slowly through the fog, looking for anyone who seemed maliciously pleased, or too knowing. Everyone seemed honestly shocked, though, and one tall, handsome middle-aged woman who by her dress could be nothing other than the landlady of a prosperous tavern came up to Marsali and urged her to bring the babes along and come and have a bite of breakfast.

“On the house,” she added, looking at the children and quite obviously reckoning up the cost of their appetites.

“Well, I thank ye kindly, Mistress Kenney,” Marsali said. She glanced at Fergus and coughed a little. “If ye’ll give us a moment to go and put some clothes on?”

The remark caused Roger to realize that he was standing in the street barefoot, wearing nothing but a shirt. He helped collect the children, and as they started to trickle back across the street toward their threatened home, he saw that Marsali was carrying several slugs of type, evidently snatched from the type-case, under one arm. They looked heavy, and she let him take them from her, sighing with relief as he did.

“Ye do wonder what ye’d take, if the house was afire,” he said, trying to be humorous.

“Aye, well,” Marsali said, tucking in the blanket wrapped around the twin she was holding. “It smells that wee bit better than sauerkraut, aye?”

BRIANNA TOOK A handful of the dress she meant to wear and lifted it cautiously to her nose. She’d hung it on a peg in the airing cupboard, along with Marsali’s working dress and apron, hoping for the best. The cupboard itself was no more than a large box like a coffin stood on end, built against the bedroom wall and pierced with dozens of holes through the outside wall, to let the night air dispel as much of the scent of lampblack, varnish, ink, cooking grease, and infant spit-up as possible before the garments were resumed the next morning.

“All right?” Marsali inquired, tousled blond head emerging from her night-freshened shift.

“Well, it doesn’t smell very much like sauerkraut,” Bree said, inhaling strongly, and Marsali gave the breath of a laugh and reached into the cupboard, snagging her work gown, a butternut-gray homespun in a severe cut that made Brianna think privately of a Civil War uniform.

“Ye’ll be aired out fine by the time ye reach Savannah,” Marsali assured her. “And the soldiers willna care.” She handed Brianna a couple of petticoats and went on with her own dressing, fingers rapid with tapes, laces, and buttons. It was just before dawn and they were talking in whispers, not to wake the children before they had to. Downstairs, shuffling and muffled thumps and sniggers signaled Roger’s and Fergus’s preparations for the day.

The soldiers Lord John had sent were already outside; Brianna had seen them from the loft where the MacKenzies had been sleeping, a small group of men who stood together in the alley behind the shop. They’d taken up station a little distance from the house, smoking pipes that glowed briefly in the dark as they moved, and were murmuring to one another, shadowy figures noticeable as soldiers only by the long black shapes of their muskets, stacked together against a wall that had just begun to emerge from the night.

She couldn’t see them from the bedroom—window taxes being what they were, the only windows in the house were the large front windows of the printshop—but a faint scent of tobacco reached her through the holes of the airing cupboard and she exhaled sharply. It would be a long time before she quit smelling sauerkraut, but at least the reeking barrels wouldn’t be accompanying her and the kids to Savannah. Both whisky and the remaining gold, neatly repackaged as a crate of salt fish, had been discreetly spirited away to a warehouse whose owner was a Son of Liberty, and while she still had a few of the thin gold slips sewn into her clothes, it wasn’t enough gold to be really suspicious, even if someone discovered one of the slips.

Nowhere near enough to buy guns, she thought, and shivered, though Marsali had just poked up the bedroom fire. A muffled squawk from the next room made Marsali put down the poker and hurry off, loosening her freshly donned stays as the milk surged into her breasts—Bree saw the wet patches spring out on Marsali’s shift; she could feel it in sympathetic memory, her own nipples swelling against her stays.

“Mam?” said Jemmy, sticking his head into the room. The new fire caught the gleam of his hair and shadowed his bones, and quite suddenly she saw what he would look like, grown. Quick humor and a latent fierceness showed in his face, and the sight of it struck her to the heart.

Warrior. Oh, God …

She closed her eyes and sent a quick passionate plea to the Virgin Mother. Please! Keep him out of it!

A calming thought came, perhaps in response. Two years. Almost exactly two years to the Battle of Yorktown and the end of the war. Only two years. Jem was nine, and eleven would still be much too young to fight. She pushed away the sudden vision of a drummer boy …

“Yes, honey?” she said, tucking in the ends of her fichu. “Are you and Mandy ready?”

He shrugged. How was he supposed to know?

“Dad says will you need one of the pistols?” He spoke casually; it was no big deal. She’d been armed all the way from the Ridge and thought little of it—but now there were soldiers outside, enemy soldiers, waiting to take her and her children away.

“Tell him yes,” she said. “I think I’d better have one.”

76 A Thief in the Night

JAMIE WOKE UP HARD, his heart pounding and his mind full of shredded dreams. There was a faint memory of fury; he’d been fighting, wanting to fight someone … but it wasn’t anger pulsing through him, or not entirely … It was still black dark, the shutters closed and the air warm and bitter with the smell of ash from the smoldering hearth.

“Mmmf …” Claire stirred briefly beside him, then relaxed back into sleep with a sigh.

“Sassenach,” he whispered, and put a hand on the warm round of her hip. He felt guilt at rousing her, but his need of her was overwhelming.

“Ng?”

“I need to—” he whispered, already sliding down behind her, fumbling through the bedclothes, her night rail, his shirt—he rose up and yanked the shirt off, threw it on the floor, and then lay down again, pulled up her shift and put an arm over her, clutching her to him, urgent.

She gave a sleepy huff of surprise, but then made a small, accommodating movement of her naked backside and relaxed again, opening to him.

She was surprisingly slippery, as though she’d shared his lustful dream, and perhaps she had … He came into her as slowly as he could, but he couldn’t wait.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair, moving in her, unable to think, to talk …. “I have to …” She wasn’t quite awake, he could tell, but her body was compliant, yielding to his importunity. He quit talking and buried his face in her hair, holding her tight and rocking hard, her back hot against his chest and his cold skin rippling with gooseflesh as he felt the surge come and yielded to it, shuddering and gasping as it pulsed through him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered again, a few moments later. She reached back, groping blindly, found his leg, and patted him briefly. She yawned, stretched a little, and curled back into sleep, her bare bottom snug and warm in the damp curve of his thighs.

He fell asleep as though he’d been pitched headfirst down a well and slept without dreaming until he woke just before dawn—before the roosters.

He lay quiet, watching the faint light begin to glow between the shutters and enjoying the momentary sense of deep peace. Claire was still asleep, her breathing slow and even and her hair pouring over the pillow like smoke. The sight of her shoulder, bare where her night rail had slipped off, brought back the sense of that midnight urgency, and he felt a mingled sense of shame and exultation.

He hadn’t bothered looking for his shirt in the night, and his own shoulders were cold, the smoored fire not yet stirred. Moving carefully, so as to let her sleep while she could, he drew the quilt up over both of them, and lay still, eyes half closed.

His mind felt as lazy as his body, not forming real thoughts, but letting idle bits of fancy and memory drift through like leaves borne along on the current of a Highland burn. And among the remembered bits of dreams recalled, he saw a face. Black-rimmed spectacles, an open, searching face from the back of a book …

A face that rose above his own, without spectacles, searching, trying to fix his gaze, to make him look, look at what—

His eyes sprang open in shock. Outside, the first rooster began to crow.

“WHY DID YE never tell me that Frank Randall looked like Black Jack?” Jamie asked abruptly.

“What?” I’d wondered what was bothering him; he’d gone out before I was dressed and without his breakfast. Now it was past noon, he hadn’t been fed lunch, and he’d walked into my surgery without hesitance or greeting to ask me this?

“Well …” I tried to gather my thoughts enough to frame a coherent answer; plainly he needed as much truth as I could give him. “Well, to begin with—he didn’t, really. I mean—the first time I met Jack Randall, I was startled by the resemblance”—and a few times thereafter—“but that seemed to wear off. It’s—it was,” I corrected myself, “only a superficial physical resemblance, and once I was acquainted with Jack Randall …” A surprisingly cold sensation centered itself on the back of my neck, as though the gentleman in question were standing behind me, eyes fixed on me. “He didn’t remind me of Frank at all.”

I looked him over carefully. He’d been quite as usual the night before—or more so; he’d made love to me in my sleep, silently, quickly, and vigorously, and then had clasped me to his bosom and gone instantly to sleep with a murmured “Taing, mo ghràidh. I’m sorry.”

I’d fallen back asleep myself, almost at once, feeling a pleasant fricative glow in my inward parts and the slow, steady thump of his heart against my back. It wasn’t that he’d never done anything like that before, but it had been some time since he had.

“Besides,” I said slowly, “you’ve seen that photo of Frank on his book. Didn’t you see the resemblance for yourself then?”

“No.” He seemed to realize that he was looming over me, and with an impatient gesture, he pulled out one of my stools and sat down.

“No,” he repeated. “And now I’m wondering why not. It’s maybe what ye say—that what … Frank is—what he was,” he corrected himself, “shows in his face. Jack Randall hid himself, but once ye’d seen him look at ye like … what he was … ye’d never see him otherwise, no matter how fine his clothes or how civil his manner.”

“Yes.” I shivered involuntarily and reached for my green shawl, wrapping it round my shoulders as though it might be some protection from the memory of evil. “But—why did the family resemblance strike you now?”

“Mmphm.” The three remaining fingers of his right hand drummed soundlessly on his knee, and I could feel his struggle to put what he felt into words.

“Did something … happen?” I asked cautiously, thinking of that hasty midnight coupling. That seemed the only mildly unusual event I could recall, but I failed entirely to see any connection.

Jamie sighed.

“Aye. Maybe. I dinna ken for sure. It’s just … I was dreaming.” He saw me react to that and made a slight calming gesture. “Not one of the bad ones. Just bits of nonsense. I dreamed I was reading a book—well, I had been reading it, just before I came to bed.”

“Frank’s book, you mean.”

“Aye. What I was reading in the dream didna make any sense, but—it went in and out, ken, like dreams do? And it began to seem that the book was talkin’ to me, and then it was the man himself—just wee bits of conversation and then I’d be reading again, or … I was somewhere else.”

He rubbed a hand hard over his face; I couldn’t tell whether he was trying to erase the dream or bring it to the surface.

“I was looking into his face—seeing his eyes behind the spectacles. Kind. Decent. Tellin’ me things about history. And then I saw Jack Randall, sitting back behind his desk, lookin’ at me, mild and civil, like he might have been askin’ did I want sugar in my tea, but what he was asking was whether I’d rather be buggered or flogged to death.”

I leaned forward and took his hand; his fingers curled round mine at once and squeezed lightly in reassurance. It hadn’t been “one of the bad ones,” the dreams that left him sweating and unable to be touched.

“You knew it was a dream, then?” I ventured. “You weren’t … er … living in it, I mean?”

He shook his head, his eyes on the floor.

“No, but it was then I suddenly realized how much they looked alike, and I woke up wondering why ye’d never mentioned that.”

“Frankly, I—” I smiled, despite myself, and started over. “I mean, at first, I didn’t see any need, and later, I thought you might be … upset. Or worried. To know that the man I’d been married to looked so much like Jack Randall.”

He nodded a little, considering that.

“I might have been. And as ye say—nay point, after all. Ye were mine.”

He lifted his head as he said this, and while there was warmth in his eyes, his mouth had firmed in a very determined way.

“Oh!” I said, suddenly face-to-face with exactly what I’d blindly experienced in the musky depths of the night before. He’d wakened with Frank in his mind and had promptly laid claim to me. “So that’s why you kept saying you were sorry!”

He gave me a look in which sheepishness was mingled with a certain defiance.

“Well, I felt bad for wakin’ ye, but … I had to—to—” He made a brief but very explicit gesture with his thumb in the palm of my hand, which brought warm blood flooding to my face.

“Oh,” I said again. I noticed that he wasn’t asking if I’d minded. A moot point, since I hadn’t. I folded my fingers around his large, warm thumb. “Well.”

He smiled at me, leaned forward, and kissed my forehead.

“Claire,” he said softly. “You are my life. Fuil m ‘fhuil, cnàmh mo chnàimh.” You are Blood of my Blood, and Bone of my Bone. “If Frank felt as much for ye and kent I’d taken ye from him—and he did know I had—then he had good cause to try to damage or kill me.”

Sheer astonishment silenced me for a moment.

“You think—I mean … no.” I shook my head, hard. “No. Even if you’re right about that book—and I don’t think you are—how could he possibly know that Brianna would bring it to the past and that you’d see it? Beyond that … how could anything in a book kill you?

“And besides,” I added firmly, sitting up straight and folding my hands on my knee, “whatever resemblance your dream showed you, Frank was nothing like Jack Randall. He was a very good man. More important, he was an historian. He couldn’t—he really couldn’t—write something that he knew was false.”

Jamie was regarding me with a slight smile.

“I notice ye’re not saying that he didna value ye as much as I do.”

I would have given a lot to be able to make an appropriate Scottish noise in response to this, but some things were beyond my capabilities. Instead, I reached out and took his maimed hand between mine, lightly tracing the thick white scar where his fourth finger had been. I cleared my throat.

“You sent me back to him,” I said, trying to keep my voice from breaking. “When you thought it would be dangerous for me and the baby to stay. He knew you weren’t dead, and didn’t tell me.” I lifted his hand and kissed it.

“I’m going to burn that bloody book.”

77 City of Brotherly Love

IAN FOUND THE HOUSE where Uncle Jamie had told him, at the end of a ragged dirt lane off the main road from Philadelphia. Uncle Jamie had said it was a poor household, and it looked it. It also looked deserted. A few early snowflakes were falling in a desultory sort of way, but there was no chimney smoke. The yard was overgrown, the roof sagged, half its shingles split or curled, and the door looked as though whoever lived there was in the habit of entering the house by kicking it in.

He swung down from his horse but paused for a moment, considering. His uncle’s instructions were clear enough, but from the things Uncle Jamie hadn’t said, it was also clear that Mrs. Hardman might have occasional male visitors of a possibly dangerous disposition, and Ian wasn’t wanting to walk into anything unexpected.

He tied the gelding loosely to a small elm sapling that leaned drunkenly over the lane and walked quietly into the brush beyond it. He meant to come up to the house from the rear and listen for sounds of occupation, but as he rounded the corner of the house, he heard the faint sound of a baby’s cry. It wasn’t coming from the house but from a dilapidated shed nearby.

No sooner had he turned in that direction than the cry ceased abruptly, cut off in mid-wail. He kent enough about babes by now to be sure that the only thing that would shut an unhappy child up so abruptly was something stuffed in its mouth, whether that was a breast, a sugar-tit, or someone’s thumb. And he didn’t think this Mrs. Hardman would be feeding her wean in the shed.

If someone had stopped the baby crying, they’d likely already seen him. He’d taken the precaution of loading and priming his pistol at the end of the lane, and now drew it.

“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

The words were not shouted but hissed, somewhere around the level of his knees. He glanced down, startled, and beheld a young girl, crouched under a bush, a ragged shawl around her shoulders for warmth.

“Ah … I suppose ye’d be Miss Hardman?” he asked, putting his pistol back in his belt. “Or one of them?”

“I am Patience Hardman.” She hunched warily, but met his eyes straight on. “Who is thee?”

He’d got the right place, then. He squatted companionably in front of her.

“My name is Ian Murray, lass. My uncle Jamie is a friend o’ your mother’s—if your mam’s name is Silvia, that is?”

She was still looking at him, but her face had frozen in an expression of dislike when he mentioned Uncle Jamie.

“Go away,” she said. “And tell thy uncle to stop coming here.”

He looked her over carefully, but she seemed to be in her right mind. Homely as a board fence, but sensible enough.

“I think we may be talkin’ of different men, lassie. My uncle is Jamie Fraser, of Fraser’s Ridge in North Carolina. He stayed with your family for a day or two sometime past—” He counted backward in his head and found an approximation. “It would ha’ been maybe two weeks before the battle at Monmouth; will ye have heard o’ that one?”

Evidently she had, for she scrambled out of the bush in such a hurry as to snag both limp brown hair and ratty shawl and emerged covered with dead leaves.

“Jamie Fraser? A very large Scottish man with red hair and a bad back?”

“That’s the one,” Ian said, and smiled at her. “Will your mam be at home, maybe? My uncle’s sent me to see to her welfare.”

She stood as though turned to stone, but her eyes darted toward the house behind him and then toward the shed, with something between excitement and dread.

“Who is thee talking to, Patience?” said another little girl’s voice, and what must, from her resemblance to Patience, be Prudence Hardman poked a capped head out of the shed, squinting nearsightedly. “Chastity has eaten all the apples and she will not be quiet.”

Chastity wouldn’t; there was another high-pitched scream from the shed and Prudence’s head vanished abruptly.

Not a babe, then; if Uncle Jamie had met Chastity on his visit, she might be nearly two by now.

“Is your mother in the house, then?” Ian asked, deciding that he could wait to meet Chastity.

“She is, Friend,” Patience said, and swallowed. “But she is—is occupied.”

“I’ll wait, then.”

“No! Just—I mean—thee must go away. Come back—please come back—but go now.”

“Aye?” He eyed the house curiously. He thought he heard vague sounds within, but the breeze rustling in the surrounding trees made it hard to tell what was going on. Not that I couldna guess, wi’ the lassies out here shiverin’ in the shed …

But if Silvia Hardman was entertaining a caller, it might be best to wait until the man had left. Still, it troubled him to go away and leave the wee girls in such a state. Perhaps he could feed them, at least—

While he havered, though, Chastity took things into her own hands, screaming like a catamount and apparently kicking Prudence in the shins, for Prudence shrieked, too.

“Ow! Chastity! Thee bit me!”

Patience jerked, then ran for the shed, calling, “Be quiet, be quiet!” in an urgent voice, glancing frantically over her shoulder.

The door of the house was jerked open, slamming back against the wall within, and a large man wearing nothing but unfastened breeches came out, a leather belt in his hand and fury on his face.

“Goddamn you chits! You come out here! I’m gonna give you all what-for and I mean it!”

“Mr. Fredericks! Please, please—come back! The girls didn’t mean to—”

Without a second’s hesitation, Mr. Fredericks turned and slapped the woman behind him across the face with his belt.

Behind Ian, Patience let out a scream of pure rage and lunged for the porch. Ian caught her with an arm around her waist and put her behind him.

“Go to your sisters,” he said, and shoved her toward the shed. “Now!”

“Who the devil are you?” Fredericks had come off the porch and was advancing on Ian, sandy hair ruffled like a lion’s mane and a look on his broad red face that made his intentions clear.

Ian drew his pistol and pointed it at the man.

“Leave,” he said. “Now.”

Fredericks snapped the belt so fast that Ian scarcely saw it; only felt the blow that knocked the gun from his hand. He didn’t bother trying to pick it up, but grabbed the end of the belt as it rose for another blow and jerked Fredericks toward him, butting him in the face as he stumbled. Ian missed the nose, though, and Fredericks’s jawbone slammed into his forehead, making his eyes water.

He tripped Fredericks, but the man had his arms round Ian’s body and they both went down, landing with a thud among the dead leaves. Ian grabbed a handful and smashed them into the man’s face, grinding them into his eyes, and got his own leg up in time to avoid being kneed in the balls.

There was a lot of screaming going on. Ian got hold of Fredericks’s ear and did his best to twist it off while kicking and squirming. He heaved and rolled and got on top then, and got his hands round Fredericks’s throat, but it was a fat throat, slippery with sweat, and he couldn’t get a good grasp, not with the man hammering his ribs with a fist like a rock. Enough of this foolishness, said the Mohawk part of him, and he took his hand off Fredericks’s throat, grabbed a sturdy stick from the litter on the ground, and drove it straight into the man’s eye.

Fredericks threw his arms wide, went stiff, gasped once or twice, and died.

Ian moved off the man’s body, slowly, his own body pulsing with his heartbeat. His finger hurt—he’d jammed it—and his hand was slimy. He wiped it on his breeches, recalling too late that they were his good pair.

The screaming had stopped abruptly. He sat still, breathing. The snowflakes were coming down faster now, and melted as they touched his skin, tiny cold kisses on his face.

His eyes were closed, but he dimly perceived footsteps, and opened them to see the woman crouching beside him.

There was a wide red welt across her face; her upper lip was split and a trickle of blood had stained her chin. Her eyes were bloodshot and horrified, but she wasn’t screaming, thank Christ.

“Who—” she said, and stopped, putting her wrist to her wounded mouth. She looked down at the dead man on the ground, shook her head as though unable to believe it, and looked at Ian.

“Thee should not have done this,” she said, low-voiced and urgent.

“Did ye have a better suggestion?” Ian asked, getting some of his breath back.

“He would have left,” she said, and glanced over her shoulder as though expecting his nemesis to appear. “When he—when he had finished.”

“He’s finished,” Ian assured her, and moving slowly, got up onto his knees. “Ye’ll be Mrs. Hardman, then.”

“I am Silvia Hardman.” She couldn’t keep her eyes off the dead man.

“He’s Friend Jamie’s nephew, Mummy,” said a small, clear voice behind him. All three girls had clustered behind their mother, all of them looking shocked. Even the little one was round-eyed and silent, her thumb in her mouth.

“Jamie,” Silvia Hardman said, and shook her head. The dazed expression was fading from her face, and she dabbed at her swelling lip with a fold of the tattered wrapper she wore. “Jamie … Fraser?”

“Aye,” Ian said, and got to his feet. He was battered and stiff, but it wasn’t hurting much yet. “He sent me to see to your welfare.”

She looked incredulously at him, then at Fredericks, back at him—and began to laugh. It wasn’t regular laughing; it was a high, thin, hysterical sound, and she put a hand over her mouth to stop it.

“I suppose I’d best get rid of this—” He toed Fredericks’s body in the thigh. “Will anyone come looking for him?”

“They might.” Silvia was getting her own breath back. “This is Charles Fredericks. He’s a judge. Justice Fredericks, of the City Court of Philadelphia.”

IAN REGARDED THE dead Justice for a moment, then glanced at Mrs. Hardman. Bar that moment of unhinged laughter, she hadn’t been hysterical, and while she was paler than the grubby shift she wore, she was composed. Not merely composed, he noted with interest; she was grimly intent, her gaze focused on the body.

“Will thee help me to hide him?” she asked, looking up.

He nodded.

“Will someone come looking for him? Come here, I mean?” The house was isolated, a mile at least from any other dwelling, and a good five miles outside the city.

“I don’t know,” she said frankly, meeting his eyes. “He’s been coming once or twice a week for the last two months, and he’s—he was,” she corrected, with a slight tone of relief in her voice, “a blabbermouth. Once he’d got his—what he came for—he’d drink and he’d talk. Mostly about himself, but now and then he’d mention men he knew, and what he thought of them. Not much, as a rule.”

“So ye think he might have … boasted about coming here?”

She uttered a short, startled laugh.

“Here? No. He might have talked about the Quaker widow he was swiving, though. Some … people … know about me.” Dull red splotches came up on her face and neck—and looking at them, Ian saw the darker marks of bruises on her neck.

“Mummy?” The girls were all shivering. “Can we go inside now, Mummy? It’s awful cold.”

Mrs. Hardman shook herself and, straightening, stepped in front of the dead man, at least partially blocking the girls’ view of his body.

“Yes. Go in the house, girls. Build up the fire. There’s—some food in a valise. Go ahead and eat; feed Chastity. I’ll be in … presently.” She swallowed visibly; Ian couldn’t tell whether it was from sudden nausea or simple hunger at mention of food; the shadow of her bones showed in her chest.

The little girls sidled past the body, Patience with her hands over Chastity’s eyes, and disappeared into the house, though Prudence lingered at the door until her mother made a shooing gesture, at which she also vanished.

“I think we canna just bury him,” Ian said. “If anyone should come here looking for him, a fresh grave wouldna be that hard to find. Can ye get him dressed, d’ye think?”

Her eyes went round, and she glanced at the body, then back at Ian. Her mouth opened, then closed.

“I can,” she said, sounding breathless.

“Do that, then,” he said. He looked up at the sky; it was the color of tarnished pewter and still spitting a few random snowflakes. He could feel more coming, though; there was a sense of the North Wind on the back of his neck.

“I’ll be back before the evening comes,” he said, turning toward his horse. “Pack what ye can. That horse is his, I expect?” There was a fine-looking bay gelding twitching his ears under the sparse shelter of a leafless tulip tree; clearly it didn’t belong to the Hardman household.

“Yes.”

“I’ll need to use that one to move the body. But I’ll bring another to help carry you and your bairns.”

Silvia blinked and pushed a lank strand of hair behind her ear.

“Where are we going?”

He grinned at her—reassuringly, he hoped.

“I’m takin’ ye to meet my mother.”

IAN TOOK A bit of time riding toward Philadelphia. There was no shortage of suitable places for what he had in mind, but it was more than likely that he’d have to do it in the dark. Once he’d found it—a thicket of mixed oak and pine, with a towering single pine behind it that would be visible against even the night sky—he dismounted and scrabbled about until he found what he wanted. This he stuffed into his saddlebag and spurred up along the Philadelphia road.

He managed to hire a sturdy horse with a kind eye from a farm two miles out and returned with it to find the Hardmans wearing everything they possessed, with the remainder of their meager belongings wrapped up in a ratty quilt tied with string. Mrs. Hardman, he noticed, had a crudely made knife with a string-wrapped handle thrust through her belt. This seemed slightly odd for a professed Friend, but then he realized that it was likely her only knife, used for chopping vegetables, butchering, and digging in the garden. Likely she’d never considered stabbing anyone with it.

If she had, he thought, grunting with effort as he and Silvia manhandled the Justice over the saddle of his own horse, this fellow would have died long before now.

“All right,” he said, jerking the rope that bound the corpse tight. “Mrs. Hardman—”

“Call me Silvia, Friend,” she said. “And thee is Ian?”

“I am,” he said, and patted her shoulder gently. “Ian Murray. Can ye ride at all, Silvia?”

“I haven’t, for some years,” she said, biting her lip as she examined the horse he intended for her. “But I will.”

“Aye. This fellow doesna seem a bad sort, and ye won’t be galloping at all, so dinna fash too much about it. So. You’ll ride him, wi’ Prudence behind ye and Chastity before.” He thought the three of them together didn’t equal his weight, and he was not a burly man.

“Wait a moment. Thee should take this, I think.” Silvia reached down and picked up a leather valise from the ground. It wasn’t new but had clearly been a piece of some quality in its prime. It smelled of apples.

“Och,” he said, realizing. He glanced at the Justice’s horse, which wasn’t at all happy with its burden, but not disposed to create a ruckus—not yet, anyway. “It’s his?”

“Yes. He—brought us food. Every time he came.”

Her eye lingered on the awkward shape, but her face was unreadable.

“That’s no a bad epitaph,” he told her, taking the valise. “When my time comes, I hope mine is as good. Mount up. I’ll take care of this.”

He helped her up, then lifted Prudence, who squealed with excitement, and Chastity, who just stared, round-eyed, and sucked her thumb hard.

“Patience, ye’ll come wi’ me, aye?” He tied the bundle of possessions at the back of his saddle, boosted Patience up in front, then swung up behind her, a rope to the bridle of the Justice’s horse in one hand. He clicked his tongue to the horses and the grim little cavalcade lurched off into the lightly falling snow. None of the Hardmans looked back.

Ian did, feeling obscurely that a place where people had dwelt for a long time deserved at least a word of farewell.

The house was small and gray and beaten, its hearth cold and the fire long dead. And yet it had sheltered a family, had witnessed a meeting of the Continental generals, had given Uncle Jamie refuge when he needed it.

“Bidh failbh ann a sith,” he said quietly to the house. “Go back to the earth in peace. You have done well.”

Patience clutched the pommel like grim death and he could feel her shivering against him, despite the several layers of flimsy garments she wore.

“Have ye ever been on a horse before, lass?”

She nodded, breathless.

“Daddy would put me and Pru up on his nag now and then. But we never did more than walk round the yard.”

“Well, that’s something. Ehm … your father’s dead, I take it?”

“Maybe,” she said sadly. “Mummy thinks the militia shot him because they thought he was a Loyalist. Me and Pru think maybe Indians took him. But he’s been gone since before Chastity was born, so he’s likely dead. Otherwise, don’t you think he would have got free and come back to us?”

“I do,” Ian assured her. “But ken, Indians can be good folk. I’m a Mohawk, myself.”

“Thee is?” She turned round in the saddle to stare at him, with a combination of interest and horror.

“I am.” He tapped the tattooed lines that ran across his cheekbones. “They adopted me, and I lived wi’ them for some time. I stayed wi’ them willingly, mind—but I did come back to my family at last. Maybe your da will do the same.”

And if he did, he wondered, looking at the wraithlike shapes of Silvia Hardman and her daughters on the horse ahead of him, what would he do when he found out the shifts his absence had put his wife to?

And what shifts has Emily been put to, without a man? She’d have people, though … A Mohawk woman would never be alone in the way Silvia Hardman was alone, and that thought comforted him slightly.

When they reached the Philadelphia road, he dismounted carefully, led his horse up to Silvia’s, and tied a neck rope to the pommel of her saddle, in case Patience should lose hold of the reins.

“Ye’ll go on ahead,” he said to Silvia, and pointed down the road, which was broad, clear, and empty in the waning light. “Ye mustn’t be anywhere near me while I’m taking care of Mr. Fredericks.”

She shuddered at the name, casting a haunted glance back at the humped shape on the third horse’s back.

“With luck, I’ll catch ye up within half an hour,” he said. “There’s nay moon, but it’s a snow-lit sky; I think ye’ll be able to see the road, even after full dark. If anyone offers to molest ye, tell them your husband is behind ye and ride on. Give them your bundle if they want it, but don’t let them get ye off the horses.”

“Yes.” Her voice was high with fear, and she coughed to lower it. “We will. We won’t, I mean. Thank thee, Ian.”

HE TOOK THEM half a mile down the Philadelphia road, to be sure they could manage the horses. They were only walking, but ye never kent when something might happen, and he warned them about paying attention and keeping hold of the reins.

Patience’s eyes were round as saucers when he slid off and tucked the reins into her hands.

“Alone?” she said, in a very small voice. “I’m riding … alone?”

“Not for long,” he assured her. “And your mam will be holding the rope. I’ll be back, quick as I can.”

He untied Fredericks’s horse then and led the gelding in the other direction, well past the lane that led to the Hardman cottage. It was beginning to snow in earnest, but the flakes were small and hard and only skittered across the hard-packed road, the wind making thin white lines on the dirt.

Being in the open, in possession of a fresh corpse, was never comfortable, but it was particularly uneasy work when in the vicinity of white people, who were inclined to think everyone’s private business was also theirs. Luckily, the cold weather had kept the body from swelling, and it wasn’t making eerie noises yet.

There it was: the tall pine, black against the snow-lit sky. He’d trampled down a patch of brush on his previous visit and now led the horse carefully into it, and between two close-spaced saplings. The horse was suspicious, but did follow, and one of the saplings gave way with a crack.

“Good, a charaid,” he murmured. “Nay more than another minute, all right?”

Beyond the scrim of oak and pine saplings, the land plunged down into a small ravine. He’d counted the steps to the edge of it on his first visit, and a good thing; the light was poor and the ravine full of brush and straggly small trees.

He tied up the horse a safe distance from the edge, then untied Fredericks and hauled him off, dropping him to the ground with a thud like a killed buffalo. Ian dragged the late Justice to the edge of the ravine, then went back to the foot of the big pine to retrieve the broken dead branch he’d selected earlier. The stick he’d used before was clearly from a fruit tree; he pulled it out and put it in his pouch for later disposal.

He wondered whether there was a Gaelic charm or prayer to cover the disposal of the body of someone ye’d murdered, but if there was, he didn’t know it. The Mohawk had prayers, all right, but they didn’t bother much wi’ the dead.

“I’ll ask Uncle Jamie later,” he said to Fredericks, under his breath. “And if there is one, I’ll say it for ye. For now, though, ye’re on your own.”

He felt his way over the cold, hard face, located the empty eye socket, and drove the sharp end of his branch into it as hard as he could. The scrape of bark and wood on bone and then the sudden yielding raised the hairs across his shoulders and down his arms.

Then he dragged the body to the edge of the ravine and pushed it over. For a moment, he feared it wouldn’t move, but it slid on the pine needles and, after a long moment, rolled almost lazily, once, twice, and disappeared into the brush at the bottom with a muffled crunch that was scarcely to be heard above the rising wind.

He was tempted to keep the horse; if anyone noticed it, he could just say he’d found it wandering on the road. But if he—and the horse—were to remain in company with Silvia Hardman and her weans in Philadelphia, it was too dangerous, and he took the horse back to the road and bade it farewell with a slap on the rump. He watched it go, then turned round and began to jog up the road in the thickening snow.

78 Thee Smells of Blood

IAN HAD COME IN quietly—like an Indian, Rachel thought—sometime past midnight, crouching by the bed and blowing softly in her ear to rouse her, lest he startle her and wake Oggy. She’d hastily checked the latter, then swung her feet out of bed and rose to embrace her husband.

“Thee smells of blood,” she whispered. “What has thee killed?”

“A beast,” he whispered back, and cupped her cheek in his palm. “I had to, but I’m no sorry for it.”

She nodded, feeling a sharp stone forming in her throat.

“Will ye come out wi’ me, mo nighean donn? I need help.”

She nodded again and turned to find the cloak she used for a bedgown. There was a sense of grimness about him, but something else as well, and she couldn’t tell what it was.

She was hoping that he hadn’t brought the body home with the expectation that she would help him bury or hide it, whatever—or whoever—it was, but he had just killed something he considered to be evil and perhaps felt himself pursued.

She was therefore taken aback when she followed him into the tiny parlor of their rooms and found a scrawny woman with a battered face and three grubby, half-starved children clothed in rags, pressed together on the sofa like a row of terrified owls.

“Friend Silvia,” Ian said softly, “this is my wife, Rachel.”

“Friend?” Rachel said, astonished but heartened. “Thee is a Friend?”

The woman nodded, uncertain. “I am,” she said, and her voice was soft, but clear. “We are. I am Silvia Hardman, and these are my daughters: Patience, Prudence, and little Chastity.”

“They’ll be needing something to eat, mo chridhe. And then maybe—”

“A little hot water,” Silvia Hardman blurted. “Please. To—to wash.” Her hands were clenched on her knees, crumpling the faded homespun, and Rachel gave the hands a quick look—possibly she had helped Ian in his killing? The stone was hard in her throat again, but she nodded, touching the smallest of the little girls, a pretty, round-faced babe somewhere between one and two, more than half asleep on a sister’s lap.

“Right away,” she promised. “Ian—get thy mother.”

“I’m here,” Jenny said from behind her. Her voice was alert and interested. “I see we’ve got company.”

RACHEL WENT AT once to the sideboard and found bread and cheese and apples, which she distributed to the two older girls; the little one had fallen sound asleep, so Rachel lifted her gently and took her into the bedroom, where she tucked her in beside Oggy. The little girl was grimy and thin, her dark curls matted, but she was otherwise in good condition, and her sweet round face had an innocence that Rachel thought her sisters had long since lost.

The why of that became apparent directly.

Jenny had ignored food and brought Silvia Hardman hot water, soap, and a towel. Silvia was washing herself, slowly and thoroughly, her brows drawn together in concentration, looking at nothing.

Ian glanced briefly at her, and then explained the situation to Rachel and his mother simply and bluntly, despite the presence of the children. Rachel glanced at the little girls and raised her brows at her husband, but he merely said, “They were there,” and continued.

“So I got rid of him,” he concluded. “Ye dinna need to ken how or where.” One of the girls let out a little sigh of what might have been relief or sheer exhaustion.

“Aye,” Jenny said, dismissing this. “And ye couldna leave them where they were, in case someone came looking for the man and found him too close.”

“Partly that, aye.” Despite the hour and the fact that he had spent the previous day and half the night engaged in what must have been very strenuous activity, Ian seemed wide awake and in full possession of his faculties. He smiled at his mother. “Uncle Jamie told me that if Friend Silvia was to be in any difficulty, I was to take care of it.”

Silvia Hardman began to laugh. Very quietly, but with a distinct edge of hysteria. Jenny sat down beside her, put her arm around Silvia’s shoulders, and Silvia stopped laughing abruptly. Rachel saw that her hands, still wet and slippery with soap, were shaking.

“Does thee believe in angels, Rachel?” Silvia asked. Her voice was low and slightly distorted because of her swollen lip.

“If thee means Ian or Jamie, they would firmly abjure any such description,” Rachel said, smiling reassuringly and trying not to look away from the wide bruise that cut across Silvia’s face and made her eyes look strangely disconnected from the rest of her features. “But having known them both for some time, I do think God occasionally finds some use for them.”

79 Too Many Women

IN THE MORNING, JENNY took charge of the children so that Rachel could go with Silvia Hardman to talk to the “weighty Friends”—which was as far as a Quaker would go in attributing status to anyone—who were presently in charge of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, and see whether some provision of housing, work, or money might be arranged for the Hardmans’ succor. Ian would have accompanied them, but both Rachel and Silvia expressed doubt that his presence would be helpful.

“I don’t plan to mention the beast that thee killed,” Rachel had said to him privately. “Thus, thy testimony is likely to cause more trouble, not less. Besides, thee has business of thy own, does thee not?”

“Not my own, no,” he said, and kissed her briefly. “But I promised Auntie Claire I’d pay a visit to a brothel on her behalf.”

She didn’t turn a single dark-brown hair.

“Don’t bring home a whore,” she advised him. “Thee already has too many women.”

Elfreth’s Alley was not bad, as alleys in a city went. Hardly a proper alley at all, Ian thought, skirting a small heap of vomit on the bricks. It was wide enough that you could drive a wagon down it, and several of the houses had polished-brass doorknobs. Mother Abbott’s did, even though this was the back door of the establishment. But naturally the back door of a whorehouse would be used as much—if not much more than—the front.

There were two young whores sitting on the back steps, wrapped in cloaks, and he wondered whether they were there as advertisement or only taking a breath of air. It was crisp out and their breaths rose in white wisps, vanishing as they talked. One of them spotted him, and they stopped.

The taller one eyed him briefly, then leaned back, one elbow on the step behind her, and let her cloak fall back from one shoulder, showing a glimpse of pink skin above her shift, and the rounded weight of her breast through it. He smiled at her.

Her face changed, and he realized that she’d just noticed his tattoos. She looked wary, but she didn’t look away.

“Good day to ye, mistress,” he said, and her eyebrows shot up at his Scottish accent. Her friend sat up straight and stared hard at him. He came to a stop in front of them, tilted back his head, and looked up. The house rose above him, three stories of solid red brick.

“A good house, is it?” he asked. The whores exchanged glances, and he saw the short one shrug slightly, relinquishing him to her taller comrade, who straightened up but left her cloak hanging carelessly open. The cold made her nipples poke out, round and hard under the thin cotton.

“Very good indeed, sir,” she said, and gave him a practiced smile. She got her feet under her, preparing to rise. “Will you come in and have a drink to take the chill off?”

“Maybe,” he said, smiling at her. “But I meant, is it a good place for you ladies?”

Their faces went blank, and they stared up at him, mouths hanging open in astonishment. The short one, with disheveled blond hair, recovered first.

“Well, it’s better nor doin’ it out of a carriage, or havin’ a pimp what sends you into drinkin’ barns and boxing rings, I’ll say that much.”

“Trixie!” The tall brown-haired lass kicked at her companion and rose to her feet, smiling at him. “I’m Meg. It’s a good, clean house, sir, and the girls are all clean. Healthy … and well fed.” She cupped a hand under her very healthy breast in illustration.

He nodded and reached into his pouch, withdrawing his purse, plump with coin.

“I’m healthy, too, lass.”

The short one tossed her head.

“That’s as may be. Everyone says Scotchmen are mean.”

Her tall friend kicked her again, harder.

“Ow!”

“Scotsmen are canny, lass, not mean,” Ian said, ignoring this byplay. “We want value for money, aye—but if it’s value we get …” He tossed the purse lightly, catching it in his palm so the money chinked.

The tall lassie came down the steps and stopped in front of him, close, her cold nipples near enough that he imagined them pressing against his bare chest and felt the hairs there prickle.

Forgive me, Rachel, he thought.

“Oh, I can promise you value, sir,” she said, smiling through the wisps of her breath. “Whatever you desire.”

He nodded amiably, looking her frankly up and down.

“What I want, lass, is a girl with a good bit of experience.”

Her face changed at that, and he saw that he’d frightened her a little. Maybe not a bad thing.

“D’ye have any girls who’ve worked in the house for … oh, say, five years at least?”

“Five years?” the short one blurted. She scrambled to her feet, and at first he thought she meant to flee, but she just wanted a closer look at him. She looked him over with as much frankness as he’d displayed with her friend, but with an air of fascination as well.

“What on earth can a whore do that takes five years to learn?” She sounded as though she truly wanted to find out, and he looked at her with more interest. She might think he was a pervert, but she was game, and he was that wee bit shocked to find it aroused him more than Meg’s nipples. He cleared his throat.

“I’d like to ken the answer to that one, too, lass,” he said, smiling at her. “But what I want just now is a girl who kent Jane Pocock.”

80 A Word for That

THE STREETS OF PHILADELPHIA were filled with food—at least they were when the British army wasn’t occupying the city. It wasn’t, at the moment, and there were pies for sale, both meat and fruit, big salt-dusted German Bretzeln carried on sticks like a ring-toss, fried fish, sugar-dusted crullers, stuffed cabbage leaves, and buckets of beer, all available within footsteps of the building where the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends conducted most of its business.

Unfortunately, most of the available food wasn’t of a style or shape that would make throwing it against a wall very satisfying. Fuming, Rachel glanced to and fro, and settled on an apple seller.

“Here,” she said, handing one of the yellow-and-pink fruits to Silvia Hardman. Silvia looked at it in surprise, then lifted it uncertainly toward her mouth.

“No,” Rachel said. “Like this!” And turning on her heel, she drew back her arm and flung the apple as hard as she could against the trunk of a massive oak tree that stood in the park where they’d gone to gather themselves. The apple exploded into bits and juice, and Rachel drew a satisfied breath.

“Imagine it is the head of Friend Sharpless,” she advised Silvia. “Or perhaps that oaf Phineas Cadwallader.”

“Oh, him, to be sure.” Silvia’s face was as flushed as the apple, and with a little umph! she hurled her fruit at the tree, but missed.

Rachel ran to fetch it back, then guided Silvia closer to the tree.

“Put thy fingers so,” she said, “then draw thy arm back and fix thy eye firmly upon the spot thee has chosen. Then throw, but do not let thine eye stray.”

Silvia nodded and, taking a fresh grip upon the apple, faced the tree with the fire she should have shown to Friend Cadwallader, and let fly.

“Oh.” She made a small sound of pleased surprise. “I didn’t think I could.” She laughed, but self-consciously, looking over her shoulder. “I suppose this is sinfully wasteful, but …”

“Ask the squirrels if they think so,” Rachel advised, nodding toward one of these creatures, who had rushed down the trunk of the tree within seconds of the first impact and was now on the ground, stuffing itself with the fragments of their bombardment. Silvia looked, then glanced around. At least a dozen more were bounding across the grass, tails bushy with purpose.

“Well, then,” she said, and drew a deep breath. “Thee is right. I feel much calmer.”

“Good. Can thee eat?” Rachel asked. “I’m starved. Perhaps we might have a pie and discuss what to do next.”

The calmness at once disappeared from Silvia’s face, replaced with pale apprehension, but she nodded and obediently followed Rachel back onto the street.

“I should not have gone,” Silvia said, pausing after a bite or two of her beef-and-onion pie. “I knew what they would say.”

“Yes, thee told me, but I didn’t want to believe it.” Rachel bit into her own pie, frowning. “That people who profess charity and the love of Christ could speak in such a way! No wonder thy husband turned his back upon them.”

“Gabriel wasn’t one to stand what he thought of as interference,” Silvia agreed ruefully. “But thee can see their point, surely? I am in fact exactly what they said—a whore.”

Rachel wanted to contradict her on the spot, but having opened her mouth to do so, paused, then took another bite of flaky pastry and gravy.

“Thee had no choice,” she said, after chewing and swallowing.

“Mr. Cadwallader appeared to think I had,” Silvia said, a little tartly. “I should have married again—”

“But thee didn’t know whether thy husband was dead! How could thee marry?”

“—or come to the city and turned my hand to laundry or needlework—”

“Which wouldn’t pay thee enough to feed thyself, let alone thy daughters!”

“Perhaps Friend Cadwallader hasn’t found occasion to discover what the life of a laundress is like,” Silvia said. She finished her pie, and her bony shoulders slumped a little, relaxing in the late-afternoon sun. “I suppose we must look for the light within him and Friend Sharpless, mustn’t we?”

“Yes,” Rachel said reluctantly. “But I may require a few more apples and a bottle of beer before such a search might be effective.”

Silvia laughed, and Rachel’s heart rose to hear it. Silvia Hardman was battered, no doubt of it—but not yet broken.

“Still, it would have been good to be part of a meeting once again,” Silvia said wistfully. “I have not had such company or support in many years.”

Rachel swallowed her last bite and took hold of Silvia’s hand. It was slender, callused, and ill-used, bearing the burns and scars of unrelenting toil and many small household disasters.

“Wherever two or more of you are gathered in my name, there am I,” Rachel said, and pointed at Silvia, then herself. “One. Two.”

Silvia smiled, despite herself, and her true nature—kind and humorous—peeped out behind the wariness in her eyes.

“Then thee is my meeting, Rachel. I am blessed.”

IAN CAME BACK from his visit to Elfreth’s Alley in something of a brown study, oblivious to the shouts of dairymaids and beer sellers.

He’d thought he might have to expend considerable time and money in order to get the inhabitants of the brothel to talk, but the mere mention of Jane Pocock’s name had opened floodgates of gossip, and he felt as one might after being washed overboard from a ship and carried ashore in a flurry of foam and sharp debris.

Now he wished he had paid more attention to Fanny’s drawing of her sister.

The loudly stated opinion of Mrs. Abbott, the madam, was that Jane Pocock had been strange, plainly very strange, demented and probably a practitioner of Strange Arts, and how it was that neither she nor any of her girls had been murdered in their beds, she did not know. Ian wondered why a young woman with such skills would have been working as a whore, but didn’t say so, under the circumstances.

It took some time for the talk about the murder of Captain Harkness to die down, but Ian Murray did ken his way around a brothel, and when the flow diminished, he at once ordered two more extortionately priced bottles of champagne.

This altered the air of accommodation to something more focused but less vituperative, and within half an hour, Mrs. Abbott had retreated to her sanctum and the whores had reached their own silent accommodation amongst themselves. He found himself on the red velvet sofa common to such establishments, with Meg on one side and Trixabella on the other.

“Trix was friends with Arabella—Jane, I mean,” Meg explained. Trix nodded, doleful.

“Wish I hadn’t been,” she said. “That girl hadn’t any luck at all, and that kind of thing can brush off on you, you know. What are those things on your face?”

“Can it?” Ian touched his cheekbone. “It’s a Mohawk tattoo.”

“Ooh,” said Trix, with slightly more interest. “Was you captured by Indians?” She giggled at the thought.

“Nay, I went of my own accord,” he said equably.

“Well, me too,” Trix said, with an uptilted chin and a wave of the hand presumably meant to draw his attention to the relatively luxurious nature of her place of employment. “Not Arabella, though. Mrs. Abbott got her and her sister off a sea captain what didn’t have the scratch to pay his bill. Those girls were indentures.”

“Aye? And how long ago was that? Ye canna have been here more than a year or two yourself.” In fact, she looked to have been in the trade for a decade, at least, but minor gallantries were part of the expected pourparlers, and she laughed and batted her eyes at him in a practiced manner.

“Reckon it would have been six—maybe seven—years ago. Time flies when you’re havin’ fun, or so they say.”

“Tempus fugit.” Ian filled her glass and clinked his against it, smiling. She dimpled professionally, drank, and went on.

“Mind, I wasn’t but two years older than Jane …” Bat-bat. “Mrs. Abbott wouldn’t’ve bothered with them, save they were pretty, both of ’em, and Jane was just about old enough to … um … start.”

Ian was counting back; six years ago, Jane would have been about the age Fanny was now. Old enough …

After a few accounts of harrowing initial experiences in the trade, he managed to drag the conversation back to Jane and Fanny.

“Ye said a sea captain sold the girls to Mrs. Abbott. Do either of ye by chance recall his name?”

Meg shook her head.

“I wasn’t here,” she said. “Trix …?” She lifted a brow at her friend, who frowned a little and pressed her lips together.

“Has he come back here—since?” Ian asked, watching her closely. She looked startled.

“I—well … yes. I only saw him twice, mind, and it’s been a long while, so I maybe don’t recall his name for sure.”

Ian sighed, gave her a direct look, and handed her a golden guinea.

“Vaskwez,” she said without hesitation. “Sebastian Vaskwez.”

“Vas—was he a Spaniard?” Ian asked, his mind having smoothly transmuted her rendering to “Sebastiàn Vasquez.”

“I don’t know,” Trix said frankly. “I’ve never had a Spaniard—knowin’-like, I mean—wouldn’t know what they sound like.”

“They all sound the same in bed,” Meg said, giving Ian an eye. Trix gave her friend a withering look.

“He sounded foreign-like, no doubt about that. And no talking through his nose or that gwaw-gwaw sort of thing Frenchies do. I’ve had three Frenchmen,” she explained to Ian, with a small showing of pride. “Was a few of ’em in Philadelphia while the British army was here.”

“When was the last time Vasquez came here?” he asked.

“Two … no, maybe close to three years ago.”

“Did he go with Jane then?” Ian asked.

“No,” Trix said unexpectedly. “He went with me.” She made a face. “He stank of gunpowder—like an artilleryman. He wasn’t one, though; they’ve all got it ground into their skin and their hands are black with it, but he was clean, though he smelled like a fired pistol.”

A thought occurred to Ian—though thinking was becoming difficult. He wasn’t bothered by the fact that his body was taking strong notice of the girls, but arousal seldom did much for the mental faculties.

“Could ye tell if he was still a sea captain?” he asked. Both girls looked blank.

“I mean—did he mention his ship, or maybe say he was taking on crew, anything like that? Did he smell of the sea, or—or—fish?”

That made them both laugh.

“No, just gunpowder,” Trix said, recovering.

“Mother Abbott called him ‘Captain,’ though,” Trix added. “And ’twas clear enough he weren’t a soldier.”

A few more questions emptied both bottles, and it was clear that the girls had told him all they knew, little as it was. At least he had a name. There were sounds in the house, opening doors, heavy footsteps, men’s voices and women’s greetings; it was just past teatime and the cullies were beginning to come in.

He rose, arranged himself without shame, and bowed to them, thanking them for their kind assistance.

At the bottom of the stairs, he heard Trix call down to him and looked up to see her leaning over the rail of the landing above.

“Aye?” he said. She glanced round to make sure there was no one near, then scuttled down the stairs and took him by the sleeve.

“I know one thing more,” she said. “When Mother Abbott went to sell Arabella’s maidenhead, she hadn’t one, so they had to use a bladder of chicken blood.”

SILVIA SENT HER girls off with a tray loaded with food, to eat in the bedroom. Then she sat down at the table, where Jenny and Rachel had laid out thick slices of bread on which to serve the bacon and beans, they having no more than the two warped wooden plates that had been provided with their rooms.

Ian thought the smell of food might be enough to knock him over; he couldn’t recall the last time he’d eaten—he thought it might have been yesterday sometime, but he’d been too busy to notice. He broke off a corner of bread with a good bit of beans cooked with bacon and onions on it, shoveled it into his mouth, and made an involuntary sound that caused all the women to look at him.

“Ye sound like a starving wolf, lad,” his mother said, raising her brows.

Rachel laughed, and Silvia smiled, very gingerly. She ate the same way, owing to her split lip, and he thought, from the tentative way she chewed, that a couple of her teeth might have been loosened as well. If he’d had any compunction about killing Judge Fredericks—and he hadn’t—it would have vanished on the spot.

He felt much the same toward the so-called Friends of the Yearly Meeting. Rachel had told him a good bit about the nature of Quaker meetings, and he understood that while anyone was welcome to sit and to worship with them, it was a different thing to be part of the meeting: people were accepted only after consideration and conference.

There was something akin to the way a clan worked in this; there was an expectation of obligation that went both ways. So he could understand, he supposed, why the Friends of Philadelphia hadn’t simply scooped Silvia into their bosoms. Still, he resented them for it.

“Friends are ideally meant to be compassionate, peaceable, and honest,” Rachel said, frowning. “This does not mean that they reserve judgment, nor that they don’t possess strong opinions, which they are, of course, welcome to express.”

“And they gossip?” Ian asked. Rachel sighed.

“We do. I mean,” she added, “we discourage anything in the way of ill-natured gossip, spreading scandal or personal disparagement—but by the nature of a meeting, everyone knows everyone else’s business.”

“Aye.” Ian scraped a last bit of bread around the rim of the pot, salvaging the rest of the succulent juice. “Well, Friend Silvia’s business is none of theirs. Do ye have a notion what ye’d like to do, or where ye want to go, lass?” he asked, addressing Silvia. “We’ll help ye do it, regardless.”

“I wish to go with you,” Silvia blurted. A red tide surged up her thin neck and blotched her cheeks. “I know I haven’t any right to ask you—but I do.”

Rachel at once looked at Ian, and so did his mother. Well, he was the man, and it was his fault they were here, so he supposed he had a right to decide how many women he could reasonably juggle. Still …

“I do not wish to remain in Philadelphia,” Silvia said. She’d got hold of herself and her voice was steady. “Since Yearly Meeting knows who I am—both by name and reputation,” she added, with a slight note of bitterness, “I will find no acceptance here. Any meeting that took me in would soon realize their mistake. And while I could earn a living as an actual whore, I will not on any account expose my daughters to such a life.”

“Aye,” Ian said reluctantly. “I suppose ye’re right, but—we’re bound for New York, lass, and the country of the Hodeenosaunee.”

“That’s the Iroquois League,” Rachel put in. “More specifically, we’re bound for a small town called Canajoharie, inhabited by the Mohawk.”

“I suppose I might find a place somewhere before we reach Canajoharie. But if not—have the Mohawk any objection to whores?” Silvia asked, a small frown creasing the flesh between her brows.

“They dinna really have a word for that,” Ian said. “And if they dinna have a word for something, it’s no important.”

Oggy, who had been having an earnest conversation with his toes, looked up at this point, said “Da” very clearly, and then returned to his toes.

Ian smiled, then sighed deeply and addressed his son.

“Three women and three wee lassies. I’m sure ye’ll be as much aid to me as ye can, a bhalaich, but there’s no help for it. I’ll need another man.”

81 Still Imminent

IT HAD BEEN ONE of those beautiful autumn days when the sun is bright and warm at its zenith, but a chill creeps in at dawn and dusk and the nights are cold enough to make a good fire, a good thick quilt, and a good man with a lot of body heat in bed beside you more than welcome.

The good man in question stretched himself, groaning, and relapsed into the luxury of rest with a sigh, his hand on my thigh. I patted it and rolled toward him, dislodging Adso, who had alighted at the foot of the bed, but leapt off with a brief mirp! of annoyance at this indication that we didn’t mean to lapse into immobility just yet.

“So, Sassenach, what have ye been doing all day?” Jamie asked, stroking my hip. His eyes were half closed in the drowsy pleasure of warmth, but focused on my face.

“Oh, Lord …” Dawn seemed an eon ago, but I stretched myself and eased comfortably into his touch. “Just chores, for the most part … but a man named Herman Mortenson came up from Woolam’s Mill in late morning to have a pilonidal cyst at the base of his spine lanced and evacuated; I haven’t smelled anything that bad since Bluebell rolled in a decayed pig’s carcass. But then,” I added, sensing that this might not be the right note on which to begin a pleasant autumn evening’s rencontre, “I spent most of the afternoon in the garden, pulling up peanut bushes and picking the last of the beans. And talking to the bees, of course.”

“Did they have anything interesting to say to ye, Sassenach?” The stroking had edged over into a pleasant massage of my behind, which had the salutary side effect of causing me to arch my back and press my breasts lightly against his chest. I used my free hand to loosen my shift, gather one breast up, and rub my nipple against his, which made him clutch my arse and say something under his breath in Gaelic.

“And, um, how was your day?” I asked, desisting.

“If ye do that again, Sassenach, I’m no going to answer for the results,” he said, scratching his nipple as though it had been bitten by a large mosquito. “As for what I did, I built a new gate for the farrowing sty. Speakin’ o’ pigs.”

“Speaking of pigs …” I repeated, slowly. “Um … did you go into the sty?”

“No. Why?” His hand moved a little farther down, cupping my left buttock.

“I’d forgotten to tell you, because you’d gone to Tennessee to talk to Mr. Sevier and Colonel Shelby and didn’t come back for a week. But I went up there”—the sty was a small cave in the limestone cliff above the house—“a week ago, to fetch a jar of turpentine I’d left there from the worming, and—you know how the cave curves off to the left?”

He nodded, his eyes fixed on my mouth as though reading my lips.

“Well, I went round the corner, and there they were.”

“Who?”

“The White Sow herself, with what I assume were two of her daughters or granddaughters … the others weren’t white, but they had to be related to her because all three of them were the same size—immense.” Your average wild hog stood about three foot at the shoulder and weighed two or three hundred pounds. The White Sow, who was not a wild hog herself but the product of a domestic porcine line bred for poundage, was a good deal older, greedier, and more ferocious than the average, and while I wasn’t as good as Jamie at estimating the weight of livestock, I would have clocked her at six hundred pounds without a moment’s hesitation. Her descendants weren’t much smaller.

The sense of placid malignity had frozen me in place, and my skin rippled into instant gooseflesh at the memory of those small dark-red intelligent eyes, fixed on me from the pale bulk in the shadows of the cave.

“Did she go after ye?” Jamie ran a concerned hand over the curve of my shoulder, feeling the goose bumps. I shook my head.

“I thought she would. Every second I was there, and every second it took me to inch my way back into the light and out of the cave, I thought she was going to heave to her feet—they were all sort of … reclining in the matted straw—and run me down, but they just … looked at me.” I swallowed, and a new wave of horripilation ran down my arms.

“Anyway,” I finished, nudging closer to his warmth, “they didn’t eat me. Maybe she remembers that I used to feed her scraps—but I don’t know that she feels that kindly toward you.”

“I’ll take my rifle when I go up there,” he promised. “If I see them, we’ll have meat for the winter.”

“You bloody be careful,” I said, and nipped the flesh of his shoulder. “I don’t think you could get all three before one of them gets you. And I rather think that killing the White Sow might be bad luck.”

“Bah,” he said comfortably, and rolled over, pinning me to the mattress with a whoosh of down feathers. He lowered his head and nibbled my earlobe, making me squirm and muffle a shriek.

“Tell me about the bees,” he said, breathing warmly into my ear. “It may settle ye enough to fix your mind where it belongs, instead of on pigs.”

“You asked,” I said, with dignity, refusing to address the question of where my mind belonged. “As for the bees … I thought they’d hibernate, but Myers says they don’t, though they do stay inside their hives when it gets cold. But there are still late flowers in the garden, and they’re still at work. Just before I came down tonight—it was starting to get dark—I found two of them, curled up together in the cup of a hollyhock, covered in pollen and holding each other’s feet.”

“Were they dead?”

“No.” He’d moved off me but was still imminent. His hair was loose, soft and tumbled, sparking red and silver in the firelight, and I brushed it behind his ear. “I thought they were, the first time I saw it, but I’ve seen it several times since, and they’re just sleeping in the flowers. They wake up when the sun warms them and fly off.

“I don’t know whether it’s something like camping out for them, or whether they just get too tired to make their way back to the hive or are caught out by the dark and lie down where they can,” I added. “You mostly see single bees doing it, though. Seeing two of them together like that … it was very sweet.”

“Sweet,” he echoed, and threading his fingers through mine kissed me gently, tasting of smoke and beer and bread with honey.

“Do you know why they’re called hollyhocks?”

“No, but I suppose ye’re going to tell me.” One big hand ran down the side of my neck and delicately grasped my nipple. I returned the favor, enjoying the rough feel of the hairs around his.

“The Crusaders brought it back to England, because you can make a salve of its root that’s particularly good for an injury to a horse’s hocks. Apparently crusading is hard on the hocks.”

“Mmm … I wouldna doubt it.”

“So,” I whispered, flicking my thumbnail lightly, “‘Holly’ is an old spelling of ‘Holy’—for the ‘Holy Land’?”

“Mmphm …”

“And ‘hock’—well, for ‘hocks.’ What do you think of that?”

A subterranean quiver rippled through his body, and he lay down on top of me and eased both hands under my hips. His breath tickled warmly in my ear.

“I think I should like to sleep in a flower wi’ you, Sassenach, holding your feet.”

I reached to put out the candle and my mind settled where it belonged, in the warm heart of the firelit darkness.

I SLEPT THE sleep of the gardener, physical exhaustion leavened by tranquility, and dreamed—little wonder—of weeds. I was yanking them out of the ground at the foot of a vast bank of blooming pea vines, tossing the weeds over my shoulder and hearing them plink on the ground like coins, then realizing that it was raining …

I rose slowly out of my dream of slugs and rain-wet vegetables to realize that Jamie had got up and was using the tin chamber pot, having withdrawn to a polite distance by the window to do so. Knowing that his grandfather, the Old Fox, had suffered from an enlarged prostate, I was inclined to listen—as tactfully as possible—in case of any adverse indications, but the sound was reassuringly strong and well defined, and I closed my eyes and pretended to have just wakened when he crawled back into bed.

“Mm?” I said, and patted his arm. He lay down, sighing, and took my hand.

“What’s today?” he said. “Or what will it be, when the sun comes up?”

“What is—oh, you mean what’s the date? It’s October the seventh. I’m sure, because I wrote down October sixth in my black book when I did my notes after supper. Why?”

“A few more days, then. It’ll be the eleventh.”

“What happens on the eleventh?”

“According to your damned first husband, that’s when the Americans will lift their siege on Savannah.” He made a low, disgruntled noise in the back of his throat. “I should never have let Brianna go!”

I paused for a minute before answering, not sure of the ground.

“The city won’t be invaded,” I said, though I was uneasy, too. If we believe Frank’s book, and I suppose we must … “And you couldn’t have stopped her, you know.”

“I could,” he said stubbornly. “Or,” he added more fairly, “I could have stopped Roger Mac. And she wouldna go without him. And now the whole family’s there, God damn it.” He moved his legs restlessly, rustling under the covers.

“Yes,” I said, taking a deep breath. “They are. Including William.”

He stopped fidgeting abruptly and breathed through his nose for a bit.

“Aye,” he said at last, reluctantly. “I shouldna have done it, though—sent Bree into danger. Not even for William’s sake.”

A throaty call from a sleepy dove in the trees outside announced that the dawn was coming. No point in trying to soothe Jamie back to sleep, even if it was possible, and it wasn’t. His uneasiness was catching. I knew he was only second-guessing himself; all this had been discussed beforehand. Roger and Bree knew when the battle would happen—and that the city would not be taken. Even so, they’d have had time enough to leave the city, if things seemed too dangerous. And … despite his current edginess, Jamie did, in fact, trust John Grey to see them safe—or as safe as anyone could be, in a time like this.

“Jamie,” I said softly, at last, and touched his hand lightly. “No place is safe now. Not Savannah. Not Salisbury or Salem. Not here.”

He grew still. Not here.

“No,” he said softly, and squeezed my hand. “Not here.”

82 Jf Special

JAMIE CAME INTO THE surgery with three bottles of whisky cradled in one arm and another gripped with his free hand.

“Oh—presents?” I asked, smiling.

“Well, this one’s yours—or for your patients, at least.” He set the bottle in his hand on my counter, amidst the scatter of dried herbs, mortar and pestle, bottles of oil, and stacks of gauze squares. I dusted crumbs of goldenseal off my hands, picked it up, pulled the cork, and sniffed.

“I take it this is not the Jamie Fraser Special,” I said, coughing a little, and put the cork back in. “It smells like paint remover.”

“I might be offended at that, Sassenach,” he said, smiling. “Save that I didna make it.”

“Who did?”

“Mr. Patton. Husband of Mary Patton, who makes gunpowder in Tennessee County.”

“Really?” I squinted at the bottle, which was squat and square. “Well, I suppose one might need a dram at the end of the day, if you’ve spent said day grinding powder that might blow you to kingdom come at any moment. I do hope nobody there is drinking it to steady their nerves before going to work.”

“The man doesna drink whisky himself,” Jamie informed me, setting the other bottles on the table. “Only beer. Which accounts for the taste of it, I suppose. He’s selling it to the folk who come for his wife’s powder. Or so he says.”

I glanced at him.

“You think he’s selling it to the Indians?” The Powder Branch of the Wautauga River, where the Patton powder mill was located, was very near the Cherokee Treaty Line. Jamie lifted one shoulder briefly.

“If he isn’t now, he soon will be. Unless his wife stops him. She’s a good bit wiser than he is—and most of the money is hers. She buys land with it.”

“Well, that does sound prudent.” I looked at the three bottles stood on my surgery table. “Are those also from Mr. Patton’s still?”

“No,” he said, in a tone of mingled pride and regret. “These are the Jamie Fraser Special—the last three bottles. There are two more small kegs in the cave, and maybe one or two more back in the rocks—but that’s the end, until I can brew again.”

“Oh, dear.” The malting shed had been destroyed by the gang that had attacked the Ridge, and the thought of it made my stomach knot. The still itself had been damaged, too, but Jamie had been putting it in order, in the brief interstices of house building. “And then it still needs to be aged.”

“Ach, dinna fash,” he said, and picking up one of the Special bottles uncorked it and poured a dram into one of my medicine cups, which he handed me. “Enjoy it while ye can, Sassenach.”

I did, though my enjoyment of the dram was tempered by the knowledge that whisky was our main source of income. Granted, he likely had more of the lesser vintages—did whisky have a vintage? Possibly not …

Jamie interrupted these musings by reaching into his sporran, from whence he withdrew a small wooden object.

“I almost forgot. Here’s the wee bawbee ye asked me for.”

It was a cylinder, roughly two inches in diameter, three inches long, and tapered so that it was wider at the top. It had been carefully sanded and rubbed with oil, the sides glossy smooth, and the edges beveled and smoothed as well.

“Oh, that’s lovely, Jamie—thank you!” He’d made it from a piece of rock maple, and the grain swirled beautifully around the curve of the wood.

“Aye, nay bother, Sassenach,” he said, clearly pleased that I admired it. “What is it meant for, though? Ye didna tell me. Is it a toy for Amanda, or a teether for Rachel’s bairn?”

“Ah. No. It’s—” I stopped abruptly. I’d turned the object over in my hand and saw that he had—as he usually did with things he made—scratched his initials, JF, into the bottom of the piece.

“What’s wrong, a nighean?” He came to look, and taking my hand in his, turned it over so the peg lay exposed in my palm.

“Er … nothing. It’s just … Um. Well.” I could feel my ears getting warm. “It’s a, uh, present for Auld Mam.”

“Aye?” he looked at it, baffled.

“Do you happen to remember Roger telling me he’d been visiting up there and talked to her and she told him that when she, er, visited the privy, her … womb … fell out into her hand?”

He looked up at me, startled. Then his eyes returned to the thing in my hand.

“It’s, um, called a pessary. If you insert it into the—”

“Stop right there, Sassenach.” He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, lips pursed.

“It’s really beautiful,” I assured him. “And it will be perfect. It’s just—I thought—maybe having your mark on it would make her feel … self-conscious?” It had also occurred to me that Auld Mam, being Not Quite Right in the Head, might, conversely, feel special, singled out by Himself. Which was well and good, but might easily lead to her removing the pessary in company to show it off.

He gave me a look, reached out, and delicately tweezed the pessary from my palm with two fingers.

“Not nearly as self-conscious as it would make me, Sassenach, I tell ye. I’ll sand it off.”

83 The Forefeather of a Great Horned Owl

RACHEL’S FINGERS TREMBLED, TYING the knot of Oggy’s clout, and the end slipped out of her left hand, the clout came apart, and Oggy’s small penis, exposed to cold air, instantly stiffened and sent a jet of steaming urine a good three feet in the air, narrowly missing her face.

Ian, sitting on the bed half dressed beside his son, laughed like a loon. Rachel gave him a look of annoyance, and he stopped laughing, though the grin stayed on his face as he took the damp cleaning rag from her hand. He slid down onto the floor and began mopping up, saying something to Oggy in Mohawk. The words seemed to burrow under her skin, itching.

He’d been talking to Oggy in Mohawk more and more as they crossed into New York, drawing ever nearer to Canajoharie. Not that she blamed him. Patience and Prudence were enchanted by the sound of the language and could now say a number of useful things, including “Don’t kill me,” “Give me food,” “No, I don’t want to lie with you,” and “I belong to Wolf’s Brother, of the Wolf clan of the Kahnyen’kehaka, and he will castrate you if you molest me.”

She could hear them solemnly practicing these remarks in the next room, where Jenny was helping Silvia to get everyone dressed in what passed for their best. For today, they would reach Canajoharie.

She felt as though she’d swallowed a half pint of musket balls, these rolling heavily in her stomach. They had worried—well, she had—about encountering roving soldiers, random battles, or the men war cuts loose from society, but with the help of God, Ian’s skill at seeing things coming and avoiding them, and—no doubt—sheer blind luck, they had crossed seven hundred miles without meeting serious trouble. But today they would reach Canajoharie—and, just possibly, meet Works With Her Hands. “She was lovely. I met her by the water—a pool in the river, where the water spreads out and there’s not even a ripple on the surface, but ye feel the spirit of the river moving through it just the same.”

The musket balls dropped one by one into her entrails as she remembered Ian’s words. “She was lovely …”

And she had three children, one of whom might be Ian’s.

She closed her eyes and said a brief, fierce prayer of apology, with a request for quietness of mind and peace of spirit. She rested her hand on Oggy’s wriggling body, saying it, and the peace of spirit came at once. He was Ian’s son, without doubt, nor could she doubt Ian’s love for him—or for her.

“Ifrinn!” Ian exclaimed. She felt a sudden hot wetness bloom against the palm of her hand, and a dreadful stink filled the air. “We’ll never be away at this rate, laddie!”

As he hastily wiped and reclouted Oggy and Rachel mopped up the overflow, Ian turned suddenly, kissed her forehead, and smiled at her, his eyes tender above his tattoos.

Thank you, she thought toward God, and smiled back at her husband.

“I told thee that Friends have no doctrines, did I not, Ian?”

“Aye, ye did.” He cocked his head, waiting, and she raised a brow at him and handed him one of the wire fasteners Brianna called safety pins, with which to secure the clout.

“That does not mean that we therefore approve of all manner of behavior, merely because it’s the normal practice of others.”

“Mmphm. And, um, which normal behavior is it ye had in mind that ye willna stand for?”

“I had in mind polygamy.”

He laughed, and her spirit bloomed afresh.

THEY REACHED CANAJOHARIE in the afternoon, and Ian found them two rooms in a small, relatively clean inn and then sent a message, written in Mohawk, to Joseph Brant, one of the most powerful military leaders of the Mohawk—and a relative of Emily’s—introducing himself and asking audience. Before nightfall, an answer had come back, in English: Come in the afternoon and we will drink tea. I will be pleased to make your acquaintance.

“He’s well spoken,” Jenny observed, taking in not only the message but the paper it was written upon, which was handsome—and secured with a wax seal.

“Thayendanegea’s been to London, Mam,” Ian replied. “He probably speaks English better than you do.”

“Aye, well, we’ll see about that,” she said, but Patience and Prudence giggled and began to sing, “Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been? I’ve been to London to visit the Queen!”

“Has he been to London to visit the Queen?” Patience asked, breaking off.

“Your mam can ask him for ye,” Ian replied, making Silvia go pink to the ears.

Oggy would have to accompany them, as Rachel would burst if obliged to do without him for too long, but Silvia assured Rachel that Prudence and Patience could easily tend Chastity—and should anything untoward occur, such as the inn suddenly taking fire or an intrusion by bears, they were fleet of foot and could be trusted to take their sister along while making their escape.

Both Silvia and Jenny had offered to stay behind—and so had Rachel—but Ian was firm: they must all go with him.

“It wouldna be seemly for me to show myself alone, as though I have nay family. Thayendanegea would think me a pauper.”

“Oh,” said Jenny, raising a brow in interest. “So that’s it, is it? If ye can support a gaggle o’ women and children, that proves ye must have a wee bit o’ coin put away in your mattress?”

“That’s it,” he agreed. “A bit of ground, at least. Wear your silver watch, Mam, aye? And if ye wouldna mind wearing Rachel’s other cloak, Friend Silvia?”

None of the women had bright clothes, Jenny being still in her widow’s black, Silvia possessing only one dress without holes, and Rachel’s modest traveling wardrobe sporting nothing more ornate than a fur lining in her best cloak, Ian having insisted on it as a matter of survival rather than vanity. But they were all clean and decent, the fabrics good wool—and Jenny’s bodice was a heavy black silk, at least.

“And we havena got soil or animal leavings under our fingernails,” Jenny pointed out. “And we’ve good caps, though a bit of lace wouldna come amiss.”

Ian shook his head good-naturedly and put on three bracelets over the sleeves of his jacket, two of silver and one of polished copper. He bent to peer into the tiny shaving mirror the landlady had provided, in order to fix in his hair the spectacular blue and red feathers John Quincy Myers had brought him—from a “macaw,” Myers had said, though he was unable to describe what such a bird might look like, having never seen aught of it himself save a handful of feathers.

“Tell me again how to pronounce the gentleman’s name, will thee, Ian?” Rachel said, nerves getting the better of her.

“T’ay’ENDan’egg-e-a,” Ian replied, squinting into the mirror, hands busy behind his head. “But it doesna matter; his English name is Joseph Brant.”

“Brant,” Rachel repeated, and swallowed.

“And my—the woman we’ve come to see about—is Wakyo’teyehsnonhsa,” he added, with apparent casualness. He grinned at Rachel in the mirror. “Just so ye’ll ken when we’re talkin’ about her.”

Jenny sniffed and drew Rachel away to the outer room, to leave Ian space for his toilette, the bedroom being small and cramped.

“I shouldna imagine we’ll be talkin’ to her,” she said to Rachel under her breath as they emerged into the tiny parlor. “Or I’d be askin’ him how to say, ‘Clear off, ye brazen-faced trollop,’ in Mohawk. Though that’s maybe no just polite …”

“Possibly not,” Rachel said, feeling her spirit lighten a little. “If you find out, though, do tell me. Just in case.”

Jenny shot her a sideways look.

“And you a Friend,” she said in mock disapproval. “Though I suppose having the light o’ Christ inside her doesna necessarily keep a woman from bein’ a brazen-faced trollop …” She squeezed Rachel’s wrist with her free hand. “Dinna fash, lassie. The lad loves ye. Surely ye ken that?”

“I haven’t any doubt,” she assured Jenny. And she didn’t—truly, she didn’t. It was the children who troubled her. Emily’s children.

But this was Ian’s choice to make; it had to be. He came out of the bedroom then, resplendent. He was outwardly grave, but she could almost hear excitement humming in his blood. She had picked up her cloak but stood holding it, looking at him.

“Perhaps I should stay with the children. Surely thee should go alone, first?” she asked. “To—to—”

“No,” he said, in a tone indicating that he didn’t mean to argue about it, and swung Oggy up into his arms. “We’re invited to tea.”

TO HER EVERLASTING surprise, it was tea. A formal tea, in an elegant parlor, in a house that could have been built by a moderately successful Boston merchant. Joseph Brant was dressed rather like a merchant, too, in a good blue suit—though he wore a wide silver bracelet that clasped the blue broadcloth just above his elbow and had his hair plaited in a queue and tied with a lace from which dangled two small—but bright—red feathers.

Rachel thought that no one would have mistaken him for anything but what he was, no matter what his dress. He wasn’t a tall man, but had a broad-shouldered presence and a wide, square-jawed face with a firm, fleshy mouth and heavy black brows.

“I thank thee for thy kindness in receiving us,” she said, looking him in the eye as she smiled. Friends neither bowed nor curtsied, but she gave him her hand and he bowed low over it and rose with a look of interest on his face.

“You’re a Friend?” he said.

“I am,” she replied, and nodding toward Silvia, “as is my friend, Silvia Hardman.”

“Be welcome,” he replied, bowing low to each lady in turn, and lower still to Jenny. “Madam, I am honored.”

“Well, I’m no a Friend myself, sir,” she said. She eyed his feathers and jewelry. “But I’m friendly.” For the moment, her face said plainly.

Brant smiled at that—a genuine smile that reached his eyes.

“I am relieved to hear that, madam. I think I shouldn’t care to have you for an enemy.”

“No, you wouldna,” Ian assured him, straight-faced. “But by good fortune, we all come in peace. My uncle sends ye a token of his friendship.”

Jamie and Ian between them had decided on the gift for Brant, and Ian had had it made in Philadelphia: a handsome inkwell whose heavy crystal was banded with silver, this stamped with the four triangles that symbolized air, earth, fire, and water, and had upon the cap the two triangles lying atop each other, pointing in different directions, that stood for “all that is.” With it was a quill, also banded with silver, made from the forefeather of a great horned owl, supplied by Jamie.

Brant looked at the feather with interest, then at Ian. It was the first feather of the wing, the barbs shorter at one side, so that the feather had a long indented curve at the leading edge, while the barbs on the trailing edge were serrated, like a comb. It was this that let an owl fly silently, with no hint of its presence until it dropped suddenly out of the night to seize its prey. As a present, such a feather might be taken as compliment—or warning. Owls were a symbol of wisdom—but also might be harbingers of something dire or dangerous.

A woman had appeared in the wide doorway behind Brant, smiling. She was dark-haired and pretty, wearing a European dress in sprigged red calico, with a white fichu secured with a gold brooch in the shape of a butterfly.

“My dear,” Brant said, bowing to her with an elegant assumption of London manners, “may I present Okwaho, iahtahtehkonah, and his wife and mother? And their companion,” he added, with another bow toward Silvia. “My wife, Catherine,” he ended, with what seemed a rather casual flourish toward the woman in red, who gave him a sharp look but resumed her smile as she curtsied to the travelers.

She looked astonished when none of the women returned her salute, and she glanced at her husband, as if to ask whether he took note of this rudeness.

“They’re Quakers,” he said, with a small shrug, and her shoulders relaxed.

And Jenny Murray wouldn’t curtsy to the King of England, let alone a man she thinks is a Royalist assassin, Rachel thought, but kept her face pleasantly blank.

Catherine looked dubiously at Jenny, who could look inscrutable when she cared to, but wasn’t doing it at the moment. Mrs. Brant decided the younger women might be more approachable and turned to them, beckoning them to the table where tea was laid and bidding them to sit down.

“Are either of you by chance a peace-talker?” she asked, smiling as she took her own seat.

“I doubt it,” Rachel said cautiously, and looked at Silvia, who shook her head.

“I’m not,” she said, “but I have heard of them.” She turned to Rachel in explanation. “Since Friends are known to be impartial and dedicated to peace, some have been invited to conduct negotiations between … people in conflict?” she ended, with a dubious look at Catherine Brant.

“Yes, that’s right.” Mrs. Brant poured the tea through a silver strainer with flower-work around its rim, and a fragrant, half-familiar steam rose like a ghost.

“Tea!” Rachel said, involuntarily, then blushed. Thayendanegea grinned at her through the steam.

“It is,” he said, and raised one eyebrow. “Do I take it that you have not encountered tea in some time?”

That was a delicately pointed question. Ian was ready for it, though; he’d told Rachel that he meant to make no bones regarding politics, as there was no knowing how much Thayendanegea knew about them already.

“We have not,” Ian said easily, taking a bun from the flowered china plate offered him by a servant. “It makes my uncle sneeze.”

Brant’s eyes creased with humor.

“I have heard of your uncle,” he said. “‘Nine-Fingers,’ he’s called among some of the Iroquois?”

Rachel hadn’t heard that one, but either Ian had or he hid his surprise.

“Aye. The Tsalagi call him ‘Bear-Killer.’”

“A man of many names,” Brant said, amused. “And General Washington calls him friend, I believe.”

“He is a friend to liberty,” Ian said, with a shrug.

“It’s fine tea, to be sure,” Jenny said to Mrs. Brant, though she set her cup down undrunk. “And a handsome house. Have ye lived here for some time?”

Rachel didn’t know whether the word “liberty” was a signal agreed upon between mother and son, or merely the natural rhythm of a conversation that must necessarily hover between politics and politesse, but Catherine Brant answered Jenny’s question, and the women passed easily into talk about the house, the furnishings, and then—by way of the china patterns—food, at which point the conversation became truly cordial.

Despite a genuine interest in corn soup and frybread, Rachel kept an ear on the men’s conversation, which ranged easily between English and Mohawk. She caught a name now and then—she recognized Looks at the Moon’s Mohawk name, and “Ounewaterika,” the name the Indians gave General Lee. And then her ear caught the name she had been waiting for. Wakyo’teyehsnonhsa.

She tried not to listen and forced herself not to look at Ian. She felt, rather than saw, Jenny’s sharp glance at him.

It didn’t last long, whatever was being said about the woman, for after a little, Brant turned to her to ask after her brother, Denzell, whom he had met briefly in Albany, and the eddies of the table’s conversation converged into a smooth current.

Smooth enough, now that Works With Her Hands had been momentarily dealt with, that Rachel could draw breath and consider the peculiarities of this table and the man who owned it, who was chatting in the most amiable fashion now with Silvia Hardman, about turkeys.

How could they be sitting here, engaged in the most ordinary sorts of conversation, opposite a man of whom it was said that he had killed, and ordered to be killed, numbers of people?

You not only sit down to dinner with Jamie Fraser, you love and respect him, her inner light pointed out. Has he not done the same things?

Not to innocent people, she thought stubbornly. Though in fairness, she knew well enough that anything might be said of a man, without its necessarily being true.

And both of them have done what they’ve done because it’s war, I suppose … Her inner light was skeptical, but retreated at a sudden shift in the talk.

Brant had said something to Ian in Mohawk, in a casual tone, but with a sidelong glance at Rachel that made the hairs of her scalp prickle. Ian deliberately turned to one side, so she couldn’t see his face, and said something in the same language that made Brant laugh.

She became aware that Jenny, beside her, was giving Brant a very narrow look. And that Catherine Brant was watching them over the rim of her teacup, one brow raised. Seeing that Rachel had noticed, she set down the cup and leaned forward a little.

“He said that if Wolf’s Brother should find that he couldn’t keep two wives, he should know that Works With Her Hands has eighty-five acres of good bottomland in her own name—she is very good at farming. But Wolf’s Brother should not fear for your future”—she smiled at Rachel—“because a good peace-talker would be welcome at any hearth and Thayendanegea would himself offer to keep you.”

Despite her best intentions, Rachel’s mouth fell open.

“Oh—not that way,” Catherine assured her. “He means he would maintain you as a valued member of his household, not his bed.”

“Oh,” said Rachel, faintly.

Before she could think of a courteous rejection of either proposal, there was a cold draft from the hall as the front door opened, and soft footsteps in the hallway.

Everyone turned to look, and Rachel saw an older Mohawk man, still slender and upright, but with gray hair—this finely dressed with silver buttons and a pair of passenger pigeon wings dangling from a strand of braided blue thread—and a deeply weathered countenance, whose lines and dark eyes showed a man of self-assurance and deep humor. He bowed to the ladies, eyes creased with interest.

“Ah, there you are,” Joseph Brant said, sounding amused. “I should have known you couldn’t keep away from such visitors.” He rose and bowed likewise to the ladies. “Madame Murray, Madame Another Murray, and Madame … Hardman? Really, how strange … May I present to you the Sachem, my uncle.”

“Charmed, mesdames,” said the Sachem, whose accent hovered somewhere between educated English and French. “And you will be Okwaho, iahtahtehkonah, of course,” he added, with a cordial nod to Ian. “Yes, thank you,” he added to the servant who was bringing in another chair and another who bore serving plates, silver, and linen napkins. He sat down between Rachel and Jenny, smiling from one to the other.

Rachel wondered whether the Sachem’s appearance had been calculated, to entertain the women while Ian talked politics with Brant, but his conversation would have graced any drawing room, and within moments, his end of the table was enlivened by observations, compliments, and stories of all kinds.

Rachel was accustomed to watch people and listen to them, and was impressed by the Sachem: he asked intelligent questions and paid attention to the answers, but when pressed for his own particulars was sufficiently witty and entertaining as to—almost—keep her from dwelling on the implications of Brant’s remarks regarding multiple wives.

“D’ye have a name, sir?” Jenny asked. “Or were ye just born a sachem, and that’s it?” Rachel gave her mother-in-law a quizzical look. She knew very well that Jenny knew what a sachem was; Ian had spent the miles between Philadelphia and Canajoharie in explanations and descriptions of the Mohawk and their ways. She’d watched his face, alight with memory and expectation, and had spent those same miles torn between pleasure in his excitement and an unworthy wish that he wouldn’t look quite so delighted at the notion of returning to these people—who were, she reminded herself sternly, his people, after all …

“Oh, surely a person is entitled to more than one name,” the Sachem replied, his eyes creasing in amusement. “You have more names than Murray, I am certain—for after all, that one must have belonged to your husband.”

Jenny looked taken aback, but then realized, as Rachel had, that the Sachem was well enough acquainted with European custom as to have recognized her by her dress as a widow. Either that, Rachel thought, amused, or he’s a good guesser.

Her amusement vanished in the next instant when the Sachem took Jenny’s hand in his and said, quite casually, “He is still with you—your husband. He says to tell you that he walks upon two legs.”

Jenny’s mouth fell open and so did Rachel’s.

“Yes, I was born with it,” the Sachem said, smiling as he released Jenny’s hand. “But the name of my manhood—should you prefer to use it—is Okàrakarakh’kwa. It means ‘sun shining on snow,’” he added, his eyes creasing again.

“Blessed Michael, defend us,” Jenny said under her breath in Gaelic. “Aye,” she said in a louder voice, and drawing herself up straight, managed the ghost of a gracious smile. “Sachem will do fine for now. My name’s Janet Flora Arabella Fraser Murray. Ye can call me Mrs. Janet, if ye like.”

84 Fried Sardines and Strong Mustard

IF THE SACHEM KNEW anything else of an unsettling nature, he kept it to himself, instead telling them—in answer to their questions—that he had gone with his nephew to London, as companion and adviser, hence his familiarity with English and his fondness for tea and fried sardines with strong mustard.

It was a long and elaborate meal, and by the time they had reached the corn pudding with dried strawberries, Rachel’s breasts were beginning to tingle, pushing at her stays with increasing urgency. Now that Oggy could eat a little solid food, he nursed less often, and this sense of being about to burst hadn’t happened in some time.

She pushed the thought aside; think of Oggy for one minute more, and her milk would let down. She’d folded pads of cloth inside her stays as a precaution, but they wouldn’t withstand the gush for long. She caught Catherine’s eye and made a brief, questioning look with a nod of the head toward the door.

Catherine stood at once and, touching her husband’s shoulder with brief affection, beckoned Rachel with a nod to follow her.

“Oggy—my babe,” Rachel said, in the hallway. “Where is he just now?” She had been induced to let a young Mohawk girl mind Oggy while they had tea, but had no idea where the girl might have taken him.

“Oh,” said Catherine, with a little frown. “I saw Bridget take him outside a little while ago. Don’t worry,” she added kindly, seeing Rachel’s face. “He’s well wrapped up, and I’m sure they’ll come back soon.”

“Soon” wasn’t going to be soon enough; Rachel’s breasts were beginning to leak at just the thought of Oggy.

“In that case,” she said, trying to preserve her dignity, “may I trouble you to show me to the necessary?”

The necessary was outside, a well-tended brick structure, and Catherine left Rachel there with a smile. Rachel thanked her and hastily moved behind the privy. Privacy was necessary, but she didn’t mean to express her milk into a cesspit.

She managed the stays barely in time. One thought of her son, heavy and boneless in his absorption, the sudden hard pull of his suckling, and milk jetted from both breasts, spattering among the tattered red creepers that grew up the wall of the privy. She closed her eyes, sighing in relief, then opened them almost at once, hearing the creak of the privy door on the other side of the building, then footsteps on the path.

She had barely time to clutch her cloths to her exposed breasts before a man came round the corner of the necessary, stopping dead when he saw her.

“Wehhh!” he said, goggling at her. He was a white man, though very much tanned by the sun, like Ian. He had no tattoos, but wore clothes that were a combination of Indian and European dress, like Joseph Brant, though his garments were of a much lesser quality. He limped badly, she saw, and walked with a stick.

“If thee doesn’t mind, Friend, I would be grateful for a moment’s privacy,” she said, with what dignity was possible.

“What?” He jerked his eyes from her breasts and looked her in the face. “Oh. Oh, certainly. My pardon. Er … madam.” He backed slowly away, though he seemed unable to remove his eyes from her chest.

He turned hastily at the corner of the necessary and almost immediately collided with someone coming rapidly the other way. Rachel heard the impact, a feminine outcry, another Mohawk execration from the man, and then …

“Gabriel!” Silvia Hardman’s voice said in astonishment.

“Silvia!”

Rachel stood frozen, warm milk dribbling over her fingers.

Both voices together said, in tones of accusation, “What is thee doing here?”

“Lord, have mercy,” Rachel said, under her breath, and took two steps to the corner of the necessary, peering cautiously round it.

“I—I—” GABRIEL’S FACE was pale with shock, but Rachel could see that he bore the signs of work, long months of exposure to the sun, and the marks of starvation, not that long in the past. “I— Silvia? It is thee? Really thee?”

Silvia’s shoulders were shaking under her gray cloak. She lifted a trembling hand to her face, as though wondering whether it really was her.

“It … is,” she said, sounding doubtful, but the hand dropped, and she took a few steps toward her husband and stopped, staring at him. Her head tilted as she looked down, and Rachel saw that in addition to the stick he had dropped, he had a crutch tucked under one arm, and the leg and foot on that side were oddly twisted.

“What happened to thee?” Silvia whispered, and her hand went out toward him. He made a small, convulsive movement as though to take her hand, but then drew back.

“I—was taken. By Shawnee. They brought me north; one night I escaped. That made them angry, and they—chopped my foot in half.” He swallowed. “With an ax.”

“Oh, Christ Jesus, have mercy!”

“He did,” Gabriel said, mustering a very small smile from somewhere. “They didn’t kill me. I still had value as a slave. What—”

“Thee is a slave here?” Silvia was beginning to get a grip on her emotions; her voice held indignation as well as shock.

Gabriel shook his head, though.

“No. The Lord did protect me; the Shawnee sold me to a band of Mohawk who had with them a Jesuit priest—they were escorting him to a mission in Canada. He spoke only French, and I had little enough of that, but he bound and poulticed my wound and I showed him that I could write and figure, and he persuaded my captors that I would be worth more to a man of property than working someone’s fields.”

“Mr. Brant?” Silvia sounded utterly horrified, and Rachel was, too.

“Eventually.” Gabriel sounded suddenly tired, and the lines in his face showed stark. “I am—not a slave here, though. I am … free.”

Free.

The word hung in the cold morning air, glistening and sharp as an icicle. No one spoke for a moment, but the unspoken words were as clear to Rachel as if they’d been shouted.

Then why did thee not come home? Or at least send word that thee was not dead?

“Have—has thee been well, Silvia?” Gabriel stood still, leaning on his crutch. He wore no wig and the cold wind lifted his fine, thinning hair so it shimmered for a moment, like a fleeting halo.

Silvia laughed at that, a high, half-hysterical titter.

“No,” she said, stopping abruptly. “No, I have not. I had no money and little help. But I have kept my girls fed, as best I could.”

“The girls. Pru and Patience, they’re with you? Here?” The excitement in his voice was unfeigned, and Rachel’s shoulders relaxed a bit. Perhaps he had been constrained from leaving, even though no longer a slave.

“Prudence, Patience, and little Chastity,” Silvia said, with a note in her voice that dared him to ask. “Yes, they are with me.”

He froze for a moment, looking closely at her face. Even from the back, Rachel could easily envision what Silvia’s expression must be: shame, defiance, hope … and fear.

“Chastity,” he repeated, slowly. “When was she born?”

“February the fourth, in ’78,” Silvia replied clearly, defiance uppermost, and Gabriel’s face hardened.

“I take it thee married again,” he said. “Is thy … husband … with thee?”

“I did not marry,” she said through her teeth.

He looked shocked. “But—but—”

“As I told thee. I kept my children fed.”

Rachel felt that she really must not be witness to such painful intimacies between the Hardmans. But a dried honeysuckle vine had attached itself to her clothing and her feet were sunk in the remains of dead tomato plants; the wind had died suddenly and there was no way she could move in the midst of this ghastly silence without detection.

“I see,” Gabriel said at last. His voice was colorless, and he stood for several moments, hands knotted before him, clearly making up his mind about something. His face changed as he thought, and the emotions of anger, pity, shame, and confusion smoothed into a hard surface of decision.

“I did marry,” he said quietly. “A Mohawk woman, the niece of the Sachem. He is—”

“I know who he is.” Silvia’s voice sounded faint and far away.

Another long moment of silence, and Rachel heard the tiny clicking noise as Gabriel licked his lips.

“The … Mohawk have a different notion of marriage,” he said.

“I would assume they do.” Silvia still sounded as though she were a hundred miles away, taking part in this conversation by means of smoke signals.

“I could—I could … have two wives.” He didn’t look as though the prospect of dual matrimony was a pleasant one.

“No, thee can’t,” Silvia said coldly. “Not if thee thinks I would be one of them.”

“I shouldn’t think thee would judge me,” Gabriel said stiffly. “I have uttered no word of reproach for—”

“The look on thy deceitful face is reproach enough!” The shock had worn off, and Silvia’s voice cracked with fury. “How dare thee, Gabriel! How long has thee been here, with every facility for writing and communication, and thee sent no word? Had I been a respectable widow, and had thee not separated us from Yearly Meeting and other Friends in Philadelphia—I would have married again, deeply though I mourned thee.” Her voice broke and she breathed audibly, trying to regain her control.

“But no one knew whether thee was dead, detained, or … or what! I couldn’t marry. I was left with nothing … nothing … save that house. A roof over our heads. The army took my goats and trampled my garden, and I sold everything other than a bed and a table. And after that …”

“Chastity,” Gabriel said, in a nasty tone.

Silvia was upright as an oak sapling, fists clenched at her sides and trembling with rage. When she spoke, though, her voice was calm and ringing.

“I divorce thee,” she said. “I married thee in good faith, I loved and comforted thee, I gave thee children. And thee has abandoned me, thee has treated me in bad faith and intend to continue doing so. There is no marriage between us. I divorce and disown thee.”

Gabriel looked completely flabbergasted. Rachel understood that divorce was possible between Friends but had never known anyone who had done it. Had such a thing really just happened in front of her?

“You. Divorce me?” For the first time, anger flushed his face. “If anyone was to declare the union between us void—”

“I did not deceive my spouse. I did not commit bigamy. But I will say that our marriage is ended, and thee has no means by which to prevent me.”

Rachel had edged out of sight in reflex, a palm clutched over her mouth, as though she might exclaim in protest at the scene before her. She was preparing to steal away when Gabriel spoke again.

“Of course, I will keep Patience and Prudence,” he assured Silvia, and Rachel froze. She felt obliged to peek cautiously round the building again, if only to be sure that Silvia’s silence did not mean she’d dropped dead from shock or fury.

She hadn’t, though she had turned slightly, and it was plain from her congested face that only inability to choose among the words flooding her throat was keeping her from speaking.

“I missed them cruelly,” Gabriel said, and from the look on his face, he probably meant it.

“Thee naturally didn’t miss Chastity,” Silvia said, her voice trembling—with rage, Rachel was sure, though from the expression on Gabriel’s face, a mingled look of pity and exasperation, she didn’t think he’d diagnosed his wife’s mood correctly.

“I—do not condemn thee,” he said. “Whether it was … rape, or … or choice, thee—”

“Oh, most assuredly choice,” Silvia hissed. “The choice between spreading my legs or seeing my children starve! The choice thee left me with!”

Gabriel stiffened. “What—Whatever the cause of her birth, the child cannot be condemned or held guilty,” he said. “She holds the light of Christ within her, just as all men do, but—”

“But thee is unwilling to acknowledge Christ in her—or me, I suppose!”

Gabriel’s jaw clenched hard and he struggled for a moment, clearly seeking to control his exigent emotions.

“Thee interrupted me just now,” he said evenly. “I said I will keep Patience and Prudence with me. They will be happy, safe, and well cared for. But I will give thee a sum of money with which to maintain yourself and the—child.”

“Her name is Chastity,” Silvia said, just as evenly. “And thee knows why, though she never will, God willing.” She took an audible breath and breathed out a slow, dragon-like plume of white. “I shall most certainly keep her—and her sisters as well. I will not speak ill of thee to them; they deserve to think that their father loved them.” There was just the slightest emphasis on “think.”

“Thee has no right to take them from me,” Gabriel said. He didn’t sound angry now; only matter-of-fact. “Children belong to their father; it’s the law.”

“The law,” Silvia repeated, with contempt. “Whose law? Thine? The King’s? The Congress’s?” For the first time, she looked about her, over the spreading dark fields and the leafless trees, the houses in the distance, hazed with smoke. “Did thee not tell me that the Mohawk have a different view of marriage? Well, then.” She set her gaze on him again, eyes hard as stone. “I shall speak with thy master, and we will see.”

WITH THAT ULTIMATUM, Silvia turned and walked determinedly toward the house. Gabriel Hardman pursued her, his crutch thumping in his anxiety to catch her up, but if she heard his importunities at all, they had no effect.

Finding herself alone, Rachel shook herself violently, trying to dislodge her memory of the last few minutes, so as to let her feelings settle in some way. She went into the privy, and despite its dankly malodorous nature, she dropped the latch and felt a welcome sense of privacy and quiet surround her. The gentle workings of her own body eased her, too, with their quiet reassurance. Her brother, Denny, had told her once that Jews—a race much given to prayer—had special brief prayers to be recited on private occasions such as this, thanking the Creator for the untroubled working of bladder and bowels. That had made her laugh at first, but she thought now that there was good sense in it.

The tingling of her slowly re-engorging breasts made her aware of other workings, and she gave quick thanks for her child as she came out into the biting air.

“And for wee Chastity and her sisters, too,” she added aloud, realizing suddenly that the terrible scene she had just witnessed between the Hardmans was certain to draw three innocent children into its vortex. “Lord, they don’t even know about their father yet!”

She looked anxiously toward the house, but neither Silvia nor Silvia’s erstwhile husband was in sight. The door opened, though, and her own husband came out, his face lighting when he saw her.

“There ye are!” He lengthened his stride to reach her sooner and clasped her in his arms. “I thought maybe ye’d met a snake in the privy, ye took so long. Are ye all right?” he asked, looking at her face with sudden concern. “Did ye eat something that disagreed wi’ ye?”

“Not the food,” she said. She wanted to cling to him, but her breasts were so sensitive at the moment that she detached herself. “Ian—”

“The wee man’s roarin’ for ye,” he said, cocking his head toward the house. He was; Rachel could hear Oggy bawling from where they stood, and her breasts at once began to leak. She ran for the door, Ian on her heels.

“See,” Ian said to Oggy as she snatched him up, “I told ye Mammaidh wouldna let ye starve.” They were in the guest chamber Catherine had given them when Brant had delivered Wakyo’teyehsnonhsa’s message, and Rachel sank down on the bed, fumbling her stays loose with one hand. Oggy lunged for her, seized the available nipple like a starving alligator, and the shrieks abruptly stopped.

“The Sachem’s taken a fancy to my mother,” Ian said, in the sudden silence. “He’s challenged her to a contest—pistols at ten paces.”

“A contest, or a duel?” Rachel inquired, closing her eyes in the bliss of relief as her milk let down. The free breast was dripping, but she didn’t care.

“Either way, I’ve got five to one on Mam,” Ian said, laughing. “Her father taught her to shoot, and Uncle Jamie and my da took her on the moors to hunt rabbits and grouse when they were lads. She can hit a sixpence at ten paces, so long as the pistol is true.”

“With whom is thy bet? Joseph Brant, or the Sachem?”

“Oh, Thayendanegea, to be sure. What’s amiss, lass?”

She opened her eyes to see his face a few inches from hers; she could feel the heat of his body in the chilly room and nestled closer.

“I take it thee doesn’t know that Friend Silvia’s husband is here?”

Ian blinked.

“What—the man that’s supposed to be dead?”

“Unfortunately, he isn’t. But he is here. They met, just now, outside the necessary.”

“Unfortunately,” he repeated slowly, and raised one eyebrow. “Why would it be better for him to be dead?”

Rachel heaved a sigh that made Oggy grunt and latch on more ferociously.

“Ouch! I have no objection to the poor man going on living, it’s the ‘here’ that’s the problem.” She told him briefly what had happened.

“And what about Patience and Prudence?” she demanded, re-settling Oggy on her lap. “From what you told me of thy first meeting with them, they’re well aware of the straits in which their mother found herself and how she dealt with their circumstances. They clearly love her and are loyal to her, regardless. But now their father has come back, and they love him, too!”

“But they dinna ken yet—that he’s not dead and he is here?”

“They don’t.” Rachel closed her eyes and kissed Oggy’s small round head, soft with its scurf of silky dark hair. “I have been thinking how we might assist them and Friend Silvia, but I see no good way forward. Does thee have any notions?”

“I don’t,” he said. He went and looked out of the window. “I dinna see either of them. Not that I ken what the man looks like, but—”

“He limps badly and walks with crutches. The Shawnee who captured him cut half his foot off with an ax.”

“Jesus. No wonder he didna go home, then.”

“Silvia said she would speak with his—her husband’s master—I suppose she meant Joseph Brant. Perhaps they’re with him?”

Ian shook his head.

“Nay, they’re not. That’s what I came out to tell ye—Thayendanegea’s gone. I’d told him right off why I’d come, and when we’d finished wi’ eating, he said he’d go himself to Wakyo’teyehsnonhsa and arrange for me to see her.” He lifted his chin toward the window, where the pale afternoon light was coming in. “It’s eight miles, he said, but he’d be back for supper, if he left straightaway.”

“Oh.” The news was a shock, only because she’d quite forgot the small matter of Ian’s former wife. “That’s … very good of him.”

Ian lifted one shoulder.

“Aye, well, it’s manners to send word, if it’s a formal visit—and this is,” he added, glancing at her. “But ye’re right, it’s good of him to go himself. I dinna ken whether it’s respect for Uncle Jamie, or for Wakyo’teyehsnonhsa—”

“He thinks highly of her, then.” Rachel tried to make that a statement and not a question, but Ian was sensitive to tones of voice.

“She’s one of his people, his family,” he said simply. “She was with him in Unadilla, the last time I saw her. Long before you and I were wed.” He turned to the window again, shading his eyes against the light.

“Where d’ye think Silvia’s gone?”

No more than a moment’s thought supplied the answer.

“She’s gone to get her daughters,” Rachel said, with certainty. Ian stared at her.

“Is she in any condition to ride?”

“Absolutely not.” Agitation made Rachel stiffen, and Oggy dug his fingers into her breast in order to hold on. “Ow!”

“I’d best go find her then. Give Mrs. Brant my apologies about her dinner.”

85 A Moonlicht Flicht

IAN PAUSED TO PUT on his bearskin jacket—there was only a haze in the sky, but it was the lavender color that foretold snow, and the air was chilling fast—but didn’t bother to arm himself beyond the knife in his belt. Even if Gabriel Hardman was a lapsed Quaker, he didn’t think a maimed man on crutches would be a difficulty. He was glad that he hadn’t roached his hair for this visit; if he had to ride to Canajoharie and back in the cold and snow, his own pelt would serve him well enough.

He strode out of the house, heading for the barn where they’d left their horses. Silvia wasn’t a good rider, and even if she’d managed to saddle and bridle her horse alone, she wouldn’t have got far.

He’d heard the random bangs of pistol fire, but hadn’t paid attention. His mother hailed him, though, and he saw that she and the Sachem had had their contest: a grubby handkerchief was pinned to a huge, bare oak, perforated with singed and blackened holes.

Jenny was flushed from the cold, and her cap had come off when she threw back the hood of her cloak. She was groping behind her head in search of it, and laughing at something the Sachem had said to her, and despite her silver-gray hair, Ian, rather startled, thought she looked like a girl.

“Okwaho, iahtahtehkonah,” the Sachem said, seeing Ian. He smiled broadly, looking at Jenny. “Your mother is deadly.”

“If ye mean with a pistol, I expect so,” Ian replied, slightly squint-eyed. “She’s no bad wi’ a hatpin, either—should anyone give her cause.”

The Sachem laughed, and while Jenny didn’t, she sniffed in a way that indicated amusement. She arched a brow at Ian, turned—and then turned back, having seen something in his face.

“What’s happened?” she said, her own face changing in an instant.

He told them, briefly. It occurred to him that the old Sachem was not only Thayendanegea’s uncle but plainly had influence with him.

The Sachem didn’t interrupt or ask questions, and preserved an attitude of respectful attention, but Ian thought he found the account entertaining. As he brought the story to an end, though, it occurred to him also that the Sachem very likely knew Gabriel Hardman well and might feel loyalty toward him.

His mother had been thoughtfully cleaning her pistol while he spoke, ramming a cloth down the barrel with its tiny ramrod. Now she put the pistol back in her belt, folded the stained cloth, and tucked it into the cartridge box.

“We had a wager, did we not?” she asked the Sachem. He rocked back a little on his heels, a smile still lurking in the corners of his mouth.

“We did.”

“And ye admit that I won, I suppose. You bein’ an honest man?”

The smile grew plain.

“I cannot say otherwise. What forfeit do you demand?”

Jenny nodded in the direction of the house. “That you go with my friend Silvia, to talk with Mr. Brant. And that you see justice done,” she added, in the manner of an afterthought.

“You didn’t win by that much,” the Sachem said, with mild reproach. “But since she’s your friend, clearly you will go with her wherever she goes. And as you are also my friend—are you?” he interrupted himself, lifting one white brow.

“If it’ll make ye go with her, aye,” Jenny said impatiently.

“I will go with you,” the Sachem said, bowing. “Wherever you wish to go.”

THIS EXCHANGE DISTURBED Ian, but he hadn’t time to do more than give the Sachem a brief “trouble my mother and I’ll gut ye like a fish” look on his way to the barn. His mother caught the look and appeared to think it funny, though the Sachem kept a decently straight face.

Silvia was indeed in the barn, with the skewbald gelding named Henry that she’d ridden from Philadelphia, leaning against his warm bulk, face buried in her arms, as he calmly plucked mouthfuls of hay from a hanging net and chewed with a comforting, slobbery sound. The horse’s saddle and bridle lay on the ground at her feet.

Silvia looked up at the sound of Ian’s footsteps. Her face was blotched with weeping, her cap askew, and her limp brown hair uncoiled on one side and hanging down beside her ear, but she bent at once to seize the bridle from the ground at her feet.

“I was—was waiting—he was eating, I couldn’t bridle him while—” She gestured helplessly at Henry’s tack and the slowly champing jaws.

“And where d’ye intend going?” Ian asked politely, though that was clear enough. The question focused Silvia’s mind, though, and she drew herself upright, eyes bleared but fierce.

“To get my girls and take them away. Will thee help me?”

“And go where, lass?” Ian reached for the bridle, but she clung to it, desperate.

“Away!” she said. “It doesn’t matter, I’ll find a place!”

“Rachel said ye thought of taking the matter to Thayendanegea.”

“I did, yes. I was trying to decide,” she said, placing a hand on the horse’s neck. “Whether to wait for his return and ask for his judgment between me and Gabriel—or ride to the inn, fetch the girls, and run.” She was breathing like a runaway horse herself, and now stopped to mop her face and swallow. “If I waited—Gabriel might get help to pursue us, and should he catch us … I—I doubt I could prevent his taking the girls from me. And … what if Brant should take Gabriel’s side?” A belated thought struck her.

“Do the Mohawk believe that children are the property of the father?”

“No,” Ian said calmly. “If a woman puts her husband out of her house, or he leaves, her bairns stay with her.”

“Oh.” She sat down suddenly on the saddle and raised a trembling hand to tuck back the dangling hair. “Oh. Then perhaps …?”

“Perhaps it’s no Thayendanegea’s business,” Ian said matter-of-factly. “What goes on between a man and his wife is … what goes on between a man and his wife, unless it’s causin’ a stramash that bothers other folk. I mean, if ye shot your husband, that might cause a bit of a nuisance, but I dinna suppose ye mean to do that, bein’ a Friend and all.”

“Oh,” she said again. She sat for a bit, staring at the hay-strewn ground between her feet, and he let her sit.

“I should like to shoot Gabriel,” she said, and stared some more, her lips pressed tight together. Then she shook her head and got unsteadily to her feet. “But thee is right. I won’t.”

She drew a deep breath and reached for the bridle in his hand.

“But I must have my girls with me now. Will thee help me to go and get them?”

The light was fading fast and a wind with the cold breath of night came into the barn and stirred the scattered bits of straw along the packed-dirt floor. Ian merely nodded and bent to heave the saddle up.

“Go and fetch your cloak, lass. Ye’ll freeze, else.”

IT WAS LESS than an hour’s ride to the inn, but the sun had gone down, swallowed in a sudden bank of cloud that rose up from the trees like black bread rising. It began to snow.

Ian had put Silvia up before him, saying that she might become tangled in the rope leading their second horse. So much was true. It was more true that while she was no longer starved, she was still thin as an icicle and just as brittle, and he felt an urgent need to shelter her.

The wind had dropped, thank God, but the snow fell thick and silent, muting all sound and burdening the branches of the pines and fir trees. It was a good road, but he still pushed Henry a little, lest it disappear under the horse’s hooves. This wasn’t his country, and he didn’t want to go astray and end up spending the night in the woods with Silvia.

“I met Gabriel in Philadelphia,” she said, unexpectedly. “My parents were still alive then, and we belonged to the same meeting. They’d chosen someone else for me—a blacksmith who owned his own forge. Older than I by ten years, well established. A kind man,” she added after a pause. “With a house and property. Gabriel was a clerk, my own age, and earned barely enough to keep himself, let alone a wife.”

“Well, I was nay more than an Indian scout when I met Rachel,” Ian said, watching Henry’s misty breath flow back over the horse’s neck as they rode. “And a man of blood, forbye. I did own some land, though,” he added fairly.

“And thee had a family,” she said softly. “My parents both died within the year—smallpox—and there was no one left but me; I had no brothers or sisters. Gabriel had broken with his people when he became a Friend—he wasn’t born to it, as I was.”

“So ye only had each other, then.”

“We did,” she said, and fell silent for a bit.

“And then we had the girls,” she said, so softly that he barely heard her. “And we were happy.”

THE SNOW HAD stopped by the time they reached the inn, though everything in sight was lightly frosted, shining gold where lamplight fell through windows, silver in the fitful streaks of moonlight breaking through the clouds. Silvia let him lift her down from the horse, but when he made to come in with her, she put a hand on his chest to stop him.

“I thank thee, Ian,” she said quietly. “I need to talk with my daughters alone. Thee should go back to Rachel and thy son.”

He could see her thin, worn face in the changing light, one moment smoothed with shadow, the next strained with anxiety.

“I’ll wait,” he said firmly.

She laughed, to his surprise. It was a small and weary laugh, but a real one.

“I promise I shall not seize the girls and ride off into a blizzard alone,” she said. “I had peace to think while we rode, and to pray—and I thank thee for that, too. But it became clear to me that I must let Patience and Prudence see their father. I need to talk with them first, though, and explain what has happened to him.” Her voice wavered a little on “happened,” and she cleared her throat with a little hem.

“I’ll stay in the taproom, then.”

“No,” she said, just as firmly as he had. “I can smell the landlady’s supper cooking; the girls and I will eat together and talk and sleep—and in the morning, I will comb their hair and dress them in clean clothes and ask the innkeeper to arrange for us to be taken back in a wagon. Thee need not worry for me, Ian,” she added gently. “I shall not be alone.”

He studied her for a moment, but she meant it. He sighed and dug out his purse.

“Ye’ll need money for the wagon.”

86 Unwelcome Prophecy

IT WAS COLD, BUT the air of dawn was clear as broken glass and just as sharp in the lungs. Ian was hunting with Thayendanegea this morning, and they were following a glutton. Following, not hunting. Fresh snow had fallen in the night—was still falling, though lightly for the moment—and the animal was visible, a tiny black blot on gray snow at this distance, but moving in the stolid, rolling fashion that spoke of long patience, rather than the graceful diving lope of pursuit. The glutton, too, was following something.

“Ska’niònhsa,” Thayendanegea said, nodding at a patch of muddied snow, in which the curve of a hoofprint showed.

“Wounded, then,” Ian replied, nodding in agreement. A glutton wouldn’t take on a healthy moose—few things would—but it would follow a wounded one for days, patiently waiting for weakness to bring the ska’niònhsa to its knees. “He’d best hope the wolves don’t find it first.”

“Everything is chance,” Thayendanegea said philosophically, and brought his rifle down from its sling. The rifle notwithstanding, Ian thought the remark was not entirely philosophical. Ian tilted his head to and fro in equivocation.

“My uncle is a gambler,” he said, though the Mohawk word he used didn’t carry quite the same meaning as the English one. It meant something more like “one who seizes boldly” or “one who is careless with his life,” depending on the context. “He says one must take risks, but only a fool takes risks without knowing what they are.”

Thayendanegea glanced at him, slightly amused. And that wee bit wary, too, Ian thought.

“And how is one to know, then?”

“One asks and one listens.”

“And have you come to listen to me?”

“I came to see Wakyo’teyehsnonhsa,” Ian said courteously, “but it would be wasteful indeed to leave again without listening to a man of your experience and wisdom, since you are good enough to talk with me.”

The chuckle that came in response to that was Joseph Brant, not Thayendanegea, and so was the knowing look that came with it.

“And your uncle, of course, might be interested in what I have to say?”

“Maybe,” said Ian, equably. He was carrying his old musket; good enough for anything they were likely to find. They were passing through a growth of enormous spruce, and the snow was sparse beneath the prickly branches, the thick layer of needles slippery underfoot. “He told me to judge whether I should say to you what he knows.”

“I suppose you’ve decided to do so, then,” Brant said, the look of amusement deepening. “What he knows? He said this? Not what he thinks?”

Ian shrugged, eyes on the distant glutton.

“He knows.” He and Uncle Jamie had discussed it, and Uncle Jamie had finally left it up to him to decide how to tell it. Whether to pass it off as knowledge gained from Jamie’s time as an Indian agent and his connections with both the British government and the Continental army—or tell the truth. Brant was the only military commander to whom this particular truth could be told—but that didn’t mean he’d believe it. He was still a Mohawk, though, half-Irish wife and college education notwithstanding.

“My uncle’s wife,” Ian said, watching the words leave him in small puffs of white mist. “She is an arennowa’nen, but she is more. She has walked with a ghost of the Kahnyen’kehaka, and she has walked through time.”

Thayendanegea turned his head sharply as a hunting owl. Ian had nothing to hide and was unmoved. After a moment, Thayendanegea nodded, though the muscles of his shoulders did not relax.

“The war,” Ian said bluntly. “You have so far cast your lot with the British, and for good reason. But we tell you now that the Americans will prevail. You will, of course, decide what is best for your people in light of that knowledge.”

The dark eyes blinked, and a cynical smile touched the corner of his mouth. Ian didn’t press things, but walked on tranquilly. The snow squeaked beneath their boots; it was getting colder.

Ian lifted this head to sniff the air; despite the clearness of the air, he felt a sense of further snow, the faint vibration of a distant storm. But what he caught on the breeze was the scent of blood.

“There!” he said under his breath, gripping Thayendanegea’s sleeve.

The glutton had momentarily disappeared, but as they watched, they saw it leap from rock to rock, like water flowing uphill, and come to rest on a high point, from which it looked down, intent.

The men said nothing but broke into a swift jog, their breath streaming white.

The moose had fallen to its knees in the shelter of a cluster of dark pines; the strong scent of its blood mingled with the trees’ turpentine, eddying around them. The wolves would be here soon.

Thayendanegea made a brief gesture to Ian, to go ahead. This wasn’t a matter of bravery or skill, only speed. The animal had broken a hind leg—it stuck out at a disturbing angle, the splintered white bone showing through the hair, and the snow around it was splattered and speckled with blood.

Weakened as it was, it raised its chest free of the icy snow and menaced them—a young male, in its first winter. Good. The meat would be fairly tender.

Even young and weakened, it was still a full-grown moose, and very dangerous. Ian dismissed any notion of cutting its throat and dispatched it quickly with a musket shot between the eyes. The moose let out a strange, hollow cry and swayed empty-eyed to one side before collapsing with a thud.

Thayendanegea nodded once, then turned and shouted into the emptiness behind them. A few men had come out with them, ranging out to hunt and leaving them alone to talk, but they would still likely be in earshot. They needed to butcher the carcass before the wolves showed up.

“Go find them,” Thayendanegea said briefly to Ian, drawing his knife. “I’ll cut the throat and keep the glutton off.” He lifted his chin, indicating the high rock where the wolverine kept a beady-eyed watch.

As Ian turned to go, he heard Thayendanegea say, almost offhandedly, “You’ll tell this to the Sachem.”

So he was taking it seriously, at least. Ian was grimly pleased at that, but not hopeful.

Before he had run a hundred yards, he heard the crunch of a riding animal’s hooves, and rounding a bend in the trail found himself face-to-face with what had to be Gabriel Hardman, riding a big, rawboned mule with a mutinous eye. Ian took a step backward, out of biting range.

“I killed a moose,” Ian said briefly, and jerked his thumb behind. “Go help him.” Hardman nodded, hesitated for a moment as though wanting to say something, but swallowed it and snapped the reins against the mule’s neck.

THE MEN WENT back together, laden with meat and exhilarated with cold and blood. It was midmorning when they returned to the house, and Rachel was looking out for them, peering out of the front window. She waved and disappeared.

Ian saw Hardman come out of the barn, where the man had helped finish the butchering.

“May I ask,” Hardman said, giving Ian a direct look, “how it came to be that you were traveling with my—with Silvia and the … girls? I take it that you were not aware I was here, as plainly Silvia wasn’t.”

“No. I came to visit the woman who was once my wife,” Ian replied. No point in being secretive; the whole of Canajoharie would know about it by this afternoon, if they didn’t already. “I had word that she and her children were in Osequa when the attack there happened, and that her husband had been killed—but none of my friends kent anything of her condition. So I thought I would come and see.”

“Indeed.” Gabriel Hardman glanced at him, one eyebrow raised.

“I have a new wife,” Ian said equably, in reply to the eyebrow. “She’s with me, and so is our son.”

“So I understand,” Hardman said. “I hear that she is a Friend?”

“She is, and she’s told me that Friends dinna hold wi’ polygamy,” Ian said. “I didna have that in mind, but if I had, I wouldna have brought her with me.”

Hardman gave him a sharp look and a short laugh.

“Silvia told you, then. Why is she with you? Why did you bring her here?”

Ian stopped and gave Hardman a look of his own.

“She did a great service for my uncle, who sent me to see after her welfare. If ye want to hear the state in which I found her and her daughters, I’ll tell ye, man, and it would serve ye right if I did.”

Hardman reared back as though he’d been punched in the chest.

“I—I couldn’t—I couldn’t go back to Philadelphia,” he said, furious. “I was a prisoner—a slave!”

Ian didn’t reply to that, but looked deliberately around him—at the house, the woods, and the open road.

“I’ll leave ye here. Go with God,” he said, and walked away.

87 In Which Rachel Paints Her Face

BRANT HAD SEEN WORKS With Her Hands the evening before, and told Ian that she would welcome his visit today, in the afternoon.

“Ye’re goin’ with me,” Ian had said firmly to Rachel. “You and the wee man both. I’ve come to see to her welfare, not to court her; it’s right for my family to be with me. Besides,” he added, breaking into a sudden smile, “I dinna want ye back here by yourself, takin’ potshots wi’ the Sachem and imagining it’s me tied to the tree.”

“And why should I do that?” she asked, hiding her own smile. “What is there about thee visiting thy former wife by thyself that should give me a moment’s uneasiness?”

“Nothin’,” he said, and kissed her lightly. “That’s my point.”

She was happy that he wanted her to go, and in fact she felt no uneasiness whatever about meeting this woman who had shared her husband’s bed and body—and a good bit of his soul, too, from the little he’d told her of his dead children.

Ha, she thought. So I am to walk up to this woman, carrying Ian’s large, healthy, beautiful son. Plainly he wants her to see that—and I am ashamed to admit that I want that, too, but I do. It is not right that she should see my inner feelings, though. I am not come to triumph over her—nor cause her to doubt her wisdom in dismissing Ian.

Consideration of what she should wear for this occasion wasn’t vanity, she assured herself. It was a desire to look … appropriate.

She had only two dresses; it would have to be the indigo. Beyond that …

Catherine had taken her to the Sachem, who had listened carefully to her request and looked at her with the sort of keen interest she’d seen on Claire Fraser’s face—and Denny’s, for that matter—when presented with some medical phenomenon like a teratoma, a hollow tumor filled with teeth or hair. But the Sachem had nodded, and with great care had shown her how to make the paint from white clay and a handful of dark dried berries, soaked in what was likely deer urine from the smell, then ground into a blue paste and mixed with some of the white clay.

Catherine had watched the process, and when the pigments were prepared and approved by the Sachem, she had taken Rachel to her boudoir so that she might use the looking glass there to apply them neatly with a rabbit’s-foot brush.

Rachel had combed and tied her hair carefully back, then painted only the upper part of her face, from her hairline to just below the eyes, a solid white, and below that—after some thought—a narrow band of blue that crossed the bridge of her nose. Ian had told her some months ago—and Catherine Brant, though somewhat amused at her intent, had confirmed it—that to paint your face white in that manner meant that you came in peace, and that blue was for wisdom and confidence.

Rachel had wanted to ask Catherine whether she thought this course a wise one, but didn’t. She knew quite well it wasn’t, but the blue band was meant as an exhortation to those who saw it, as well as she who wore it.

“It is done?” Rachel asked; she’d asked before, and asked now only to hear reassurance. “Women do paint their faces, as well as men?”

“Oh, yes,” Catherine assured her. “Not war paint, of course, but to celebrate an occasion—a marriage, the visit of a chief, the Strawberry Festival …”

“An occasion,” Rachel said, with certainty. “Yes, it is.”

“Remarkable,” Catherine said happily, gazing over Rachel’s shoulder at her completed reflection in the mirror. “With those dark brows and lashes, your eyes are … startling. In a good way, to be sure,” she added hastily, patting Rachel’s shoulder.

WAKYO’TEYEHSNONHSA HAD A modest but good farmhouse on her land—and, like Thayendanegea, had a longhouse behind it, standing at the edge of the forest, so the wood and the hides and the leather thongs that bound it together seemed to melt into the trees.

Like a large animal lying in wait, Rachel thought.

She had met them in the yard before the farmhouse, invited them in, and offered them milk and whisky, with little sweet biscuits. Admired Oggy with what seemed great sincerity, and though she had blinked at sight of Rachel’s paint, treated her with a delicate respect, though never quite meeting her eyes.

She was lovely. Dressed in the Mohawk fashion of shirt and trousers of soft deerskin, decorated with a dozen small silver rings, small and still lithe, despite having birthed three living children and Yeksa’a, Ian’s stillborn daughter. Rachel thought they were much of an age, though Works With Her Hands bore the marks of weather and of sorrow in her face. Her eyes were still warm, though, and lively, and she met Ian’s glance often and fully.

The children had come in briefly, brought by an older woman who smiled at Ian. The two youngest, girls of maybe four and two, were lovely, with their mother’s soft dark eyes and solid, handsome faces that perhaps resembled their late father’s. Rachel refrained from looking too closely at the eldest boy—perhaps seven or eight—and successfully fought the temptation to look from the boy’s face to Ian’s.

He resembled his siblings, but didn’t look as much like them as they looked like each other, she thought. His face was lively, but charming rather than beautiful, and his eyes didn’t look like his mother’s. Dark, but with a glint of hazel that the others didn’t have. He was tall for his age, but thin.

“This is my eldest son,” Emily said, introducing the children with a smile of pride. “We call him Tòtis.” Tòtis looked curiously at the visitors, but seemed mostly interested in Oggy and asked his name, in English.

“He hasn’t yet got a real name,” Ian said, smiling down at the boy. “We called him for the governor of Georgia, a man named Oglethorpe, until his proper name should come.”

The children were taken away, and they made conversation over the food. After they had eaten, Works With Her Hands said she must go to the longhouse for a few moments—and invited Ian to come, saying that perhaps it had been a long time since he had been in such a place. She said nothing about Rachel, leaving it to her whether to come, too, but Rachel nodded politely and said she would feed Oggy and then perhaps follow them.

“I confess to curiosity,” she said, smiling directly at Works With Her Hands. “I should like to see the sort of place that my husband called home for so long a time.”

She had a very good idea as to Wakyo’teyehsnonhsa’s motive in inviting Ian to attend her in the longhouse. This was the setting in which Ian had first become attracted to her, the sort of place they had lived in together. The thought made her heart beat faster.

For the first time, she wondered whether Ian had desired her to come with him as a form of protection.

“God knows,” she said to Oggy, undoing her laces. “But we’ll do our best, won’t we?”

IAN COULD SMELL it long before she pulled back the bearskin that hung over the door of the longhouse. Smoke and sweat, a trace of piss and shit. But mostly the smell of fire and food, meat and roasted corn and squash, the tang of beer—and the smell of furs. He had done his best to forget the touch of cold winter on his skin and the smell of her smooth musky warmth in the furs. He shoved the memory aside now, with the ease of long habit, and stepped inside. But the heavy air touched him and followed him into the dark like a hand laid lightly on his back.

It was a small house, only two fires. Two women sat by one of them, tending a couple of pots, while three small children played in the shadows and a baby’s squeal was cut short by its mother putting it to her breast.

The squeal raised the hairs on his neck in reflex. Another memory, and one he had forgotten: Emily’s silent tears in the darkness, after the loss of each of their bairns, when she heard the mewling of new babes in the longhouse at night. But Oggy was older and louder. Much louder. Strong, and the thought comforted him.

She led him to her sleeping compartment and sat down on the shelf, gesturing him to sit beside her, against the dark soft mass of the rolled-up furs.

They were far enough from the women outside as not to be overheard unless they shouted, and he didn’t think it would come to that. The glow from the fires was enough, though, to see her face. It was beautiful; still young, but serious, and shadowed with something that he couldn’t name. It made him uneasy, though.

She looked at him for a long moment, unspeaking.

“Do you not know this person anymore?” he said quietly in Mohawk. “Is this person a stranger to you?”

“Yes,” she said, but with the trace of a smile. “But a stranger I think I know. Do you think you know this person?” Her hand touched her breast, pale and graceful as a moth in the semi-dark.

“Wakyo’teyehsnonhsa,” he whispered, taking the hand between his own. “I would always know the work of your hands.” It was rude to ask someone directly what they were thinking, save when it was men planning war or hunting, and he laid her hand back on her knee and waited, patient, while she gathered either her thoughts or her courage.

“What it is, Okwaho, iahtahtehkonah,” she said at last, using his formal name and giving him a direct look, “is that this person will marry John Whitewater. In the spring.” Well, so. Clearly she had taken Whitewater to her bed already; a man’s stink was noticeable in the furs behind him. It gave him an absurd pang of jealousy—followed by guilt at the thought of Rachel—and he wondered for an instant why it should be worse that now he kent the man’s name?

“This person wishes you happiness and good health,” he said. It was a formal statement, but he meant it and let that show. She drew breath, relaxed a little, and suddenly smiled back at him—a real smile, which held acknowledgment of what had been true between them and regret for what could be true no longer.

She put out her hand, impulsively, and he took it, kissed it—and gave it back.

“What it is,” she repeated, her smile lapsing into seriousness, “is that John Whitewater is a good man, but he dreams of my son.”

“Of Tòtis? What does he dream?” It was plain that the dreams were not good ones.

“He has dreamed that when the moon begins to wax, he sees a boy standing there”—she lifted her chin to point to the entrance of her sleeping compartment—“against the moonlight that comes from the smoke hole, and the boy’s face is not seen, but clearly it is Tòtis. Waiting. He dreams that the child comes, night by night, the light growing stronger behind him and the child growing bigger. And John Whitewater knows that when the moon is full, a man who is my son will come in to kill him.”

“Well, that’s not a good dream, no,” Ian said, in English. “Ye havena had this dream yourself?”

Emily grimaced and shook her head, and the live thing quivering in Ian’s backbone settled. He didn’t ask whether she believed that Whitewater had in fact dreamed this; that was clear. But if she had been dreaming the same thing, that would be very serious. Not that it wasn’t anyway.

“I have not shared his dream,” she said, so low that he barely heard her. “But when he told me … The next night I, too, had a dream. I dreamed that he killed Tòtis. He broke my son’s neck, like a rabbit.”

The live thing leapt straight up into Ian’s throat, and a good thing, too, as it stopped him speaking.

“This dream has come twice, and this person has prayed,” she said softly, going back to the Kahnyen’kehaka.

“This person prayed,” she repeated, looking up into his face, “and you are here.”

He was mildly surprised that he wasn’t shocked. Swiftest of Lizards had told him that old Tewaktenyonh had told him that he was the son of Ian’s spirit. Clearly she would have told Wakyo’teyehsnonhsa the same thing—or Emily had told the old woman.

“I thought perhaps I would have to send my son to my sister, in Albany,” she said. “But she has no husband now, and three children to feed. And I worry,” she said simply. “Things are very dangerous. Thayendanegea says that the war will soon be over, but his wife’s eyes say he does not believe it.”

“His wife is right.” Both of them were whispering now, though he could hear the murmur of the women talking at the end of the house. “My uncle’s wife is a …” There were words for magic, and foretelling, as he had used with Thayendanegea, but none of them seemed quite right now. “She sees what will happen. That’s why I came; I met Looks at the Moon and Hunting like a Glutton in the place where I live, and they told me of the massacre at Osequa, and your husband’s death. They didn’t know whether you were still with Thayendanegea’s people, nor how you and your children fared. And so I came to see,” he ended simply.

He didn’t realize that she’d been holding her breath, until she let it out in a long, deep sigh that touched his face.

“Thank you,” she said. “Now that you know—you will take Tòtis?”

“I will.” He said it without hesitation, even as he wondered how on earth he’d tell Rachel about this.

Emily’s relief touched him, and so did she, clasping his hand hard against her breast.

“If your wife will not have him at her fire,” she said, a note of anxiety creeping into her voice once more, “I am sure you will find a woman who will care for him?” That was done sometimes; if a man’s wife died and he married someone who didn’t get along with his children, he’d go to and fro and look until he found a woman who would either be his second wife or, if she was married, would care for his children in return for his providing her with meat and skins.

“Perhaps your mother?” Emily said, hope mingling with doubt in her voice.

“Neither my wife nor my mother would see any bairn starve,” he assured her, though his imagination was unequal to envisioning what either one was going to say. He squeezed her hand gently and let go. He already knew that he couldn’t explain Emily to Rachel; now he realized that he could never explain Rachel to Emily, either, and smiled wryly to himself.

“My wife is a Friend, ken? And she paints her face with wisdom.”

“I am a little bit afraid of her,” Emily said honestly. “Will you go and tell her—ask her—now?”

“Come with me,” he said, and stood up. It wasn’t until they had come out into the pale light of snow and fog that something occurred to him, and he turned to her.

“Ye said ye prayed, Emily,” he said, and she blinked at the sound of his name for her. “Who were ye praying to?” He asked it out of curiosity; some Mohawk were Christians, and might pray to Jesus or His mother, but she had never been a Christian, when he knew her.

“Everybody,” she said simply. “I hoped someone would hear.”

IAN SAW RACHEL walking toward the longhouse with Oggy when they pushed back the hide over the door, and Emily went out to her at once, inviting her in.

Rachel stopped for a moment, blinking into the darkness; then her eyes found Ian and she saw what she wanted in his face, for she smiled. The smile lessened, but still lingered, when she turned to Emily. It vanished when Ian told her about Tòtis, but only for an instant. He saw her swallow and imagined her reaching for her inner light.

“Yes, of course,” she said to Emily, and turned to the boy, warmth in her eyes. “He will always be your son, but I’m honored that he will be mine, too. I’ll certainly feed him at my hearth—all he wants, ever.” Ian hadn’t realized that his wame was clenched tight, until it relaxed and he drew a very deep breath. Tòtis had been eyeing Rachel with curiosity, but no fear. He glanced at his mother, who nodded, and he went to Rachel and, taking her hand, kissed her palm.

“Oh,” Rachel said softly, and caressed his head.

“Tòtis,” Emily said, and the boy turned and went to her. She hugged him close and kissed his head, and Ian saw the shine of the tears she wouldn’t shed until her son was truly gone. “Give it to him now,” she whispered in Mohawk, and lifted her chin toward Ian.

He’d been much too intent on their conversation to notice much about the furnishings, beyond the sleeping furs and their memories, but when Tòtis nodded and ran toward a large, lidded basket that stood in the corner of the compartment, half hidden under the ledge, he had a sudden notion what it held.

“Wake up!” Tòtis said, pushing the lid off and leaning into the basket. A soft thumping came from the depths, and the long creaking noise of a yawn. And then Tòtis stood up with a large, gray, furry puppy in his arms and a grin on his face, missing two teeth.

“One of the many grandsons of your wolf, Okwaho, iahtahtehkonah,” Emily said, with a smile to match her son’s. “We thought you should have someone to follow you again. Go ahead,” she encouraged Tòtis. “Give it to him.”

Tòtis looked up at Ian, still grinning. But as he came near, he turned, and holding the puppy up to Oggy said, “He is yours, my brother.” He’d spoken in Mohawk, but Oggy understood the gesture, if not the words, and squealed with joy, bending half out of Rachel’s arms in his urge to touch the dog. Ian grabbed him and sat down on the floor with him, and Tòtis let the wriggling puppy go. It leapt on Oggy and began kneading him with its paws, licking his face and wagging its tail, all at the same time. Oggy didn’t cry, but giggled and kicked his legs and squealed in the light of the fire. Tòtis couldn’t resist and joined in the scuffle, laughing and pushing.

Emily looked blank for a moment, but when Ian said, “Thank ye, lass,” she smiled again.

“So,” she said, “you named my son for me; let me do the same for yours.” She spoke gravely, in English, and looked from Ian’s face to Rachel’s and back again.

Ian felt Rachel stiffen and feared that this might be one too much for the inner light. The blue paint had begun to melt with her sweat in the heat of the longhouse and was spreading little blue tendrils and drops down her cheeks like budding vines. Her mouth opened, but she didn’t seem able to form words. He saw her shoulders straighten, though, and she nodded at Emily, who nodded seriously back, before turning her attention to Oggy.

“His name is Hunter,” she said.

“Oh,” Rachel said, and her smile blossomed slowly through the vines.

88 In Which Things Do Not Add Up

IAN DECLINED AN INVITATION to stay the night in the longhouse, to Rachel’s very apparent relief. He squeezed her hand, and when no one was looking raised it to his lips.

“Tapadh leat, mo bhean, mo ghaol,” he whispered. She knew that much Gaelic, and her face, a little strained under the blue and white streaks, relaxed into its normal loveliness.

She squeezed back and whispered, “Hunter James, and whatever the Mohawk is for ‘Little Wolf.’”

“Ohstòn’ha Ohkwàho,” he said. “Done.” He turned to make their farewells.

Tòtis would stay with his mother until the Murrays’ departure for the Ridge, and so it was only the three of them that returned to Joseph Brant’s house, riding in the wagon through the quiet, cold dark. The early storm had passed, and the light snow melted; the moon cast light enough to make the muddy road visible before them.

He thanked her again for agreeing to take Tòtis, but she shook her head.

“I grew up as an orphan in the home of people who sheltered me out of duty, not love. And while I had Denzell for some of those years, I wanted more than anything to have a big family, a family of my own. I still want that. Besides,” she added casually, “how could I not love him? He looks like thee. Has thee a clean handkerchief? I fear my paint is running down my neck.”

The house looked welcoming, all its windows lighted and sparks flying from the chimney.

“Does thee suppose Silvia and her daughters have come yet?” Rachel asked. “I had forgotten them altogether.”

Ian felt his heart jerk. He’d forgotten them, too.

“Aye, they have,” he said. “But the house is still standing. I expect that’s a good sign.”

EVERYONE SEEMED TO be at the back of the house; there was talk and laughter in the distance and the smell of supper hung appetizingly in the air, but only the servant-girl who let them in was in evidence.

Rachel begged him to make her excuses; she wanted only to feed Oggy, who, having slept in her arms like a small, heavy log all the way home, was now showing signs of life, and to go to bed.

“I’ll ask the cook to send ye a wee snack, shall I? I smell roast salmon and mushrooms.”

“Mushrooms have no smell unless they’re right under thy nose,” she said, yawning. “But yes, please.”

She vanished upstairs, and Ian turned to go and announce their arrival. As he did so, though, he heard footsteps on the landing above and turned to see Silvia, with Prudence and Patience, the girls gleaming with cleanliness, their hair tightly braided under their caps.

“Well met, Friends,” he said, smiling at the girls. They wished him a good evening, but were plainly in some agitation of mind, and so was their mother.

“Can I help?” he said quietly, as she stepped down beside him. She shook her head, and he saw that she was wound tight as the string of a top.

“We are well,” she said, but a nervous swallow ran down her throat, and she had a fold of her skirt still clutched tight. “We—are going to meet Gabriel. In the parlor.”

Patience and Prudence were clearly trying hard to preserve some sense of decorum, but it was just as clear that they were fizzing with a mixture of excitement and apprehension.

“Aye?” Ian said. He looked at Silvia and said, low-voiced, “Ye’ve talked to them, of course?”

She nodded and touched her cap to make sure it was straight. “I told them what has happened to their father and how he comes to be here,” she said. Her long upper lip pressed down tight for a moment. “I said that he will tell them … everything else.”

Or maybe not, Ian thought, but he bowed to them, ushering them toward the parlor. A small giggle escaped Prudence, and she clapped a hand over her mouth.

To Ian’s surprise, Silvia opened the parlor door and motioned the girls in, but promptly shut it after them. She leaned against the wall beside it, dead white in the face, eyes closed. He thought he’d best not leave her and leaned against the opposite wall, arms crossed, waiting.

“Papa?” one of the girls said inside the parlor, almost in a whisper. Her sister said, louder, “Papa,” and then both of them shrieked “Papa, Papa, Papa!” and there was the sound of feet thundering across a wooden floor and the screech of a chair’s legs as bodies struck it.

“Prudie!” Gabriel’s voice was choked, filled with joy. “Pattie! Oh, my darlings, oh, my darling girls!”

“Papa, Papa!” they kept saying, their exclamations interrupting each other’s half-asked questions and observations, and Gabriel said their names over and over, like an incantation against their disappearance. Everyone was crying.

“I missed you so,” he said hoarsely. “Oh, my babies. My sweet, dear babies.”

Silvia was crying, too, but silently, a crumpled white handkerchief pressed to her mouth. She motioned to Ian, and he took her arm, helping her down the corridor, for she walked as though drunk, bumping into the walls and into him. She wanted to go outside, and he grabbed a cloak from the hook by the door and wrapped it hastily round her, guiding her down the wooden steps.

He took her to the tree his mother and the Sachem had used for their shooting practice, observing absently that they—or someone—had been at it again, for the torn corner of a pink calico handkerchief flapped from a nail, the lower edges ragged and singed brown. There was a bench, though, and he sat Silvia down and sat beside her, his shoulder touching hers while she wept, shaking with it.

She stopped after a few minutes, and sat still, twisting the wet handkerchief between her hands.

“I keep trying to think of a way,” she said thickly. “But I can’t.”

“A way to—?” he began cautiously. “To let the girls stay wi’ their father?”

She nodded, slowly. Her eyes were fixed on the ground, where the thin snow was trampled and footmarks had scuffed through it, leaving a moil of dirt, snow, and slicks of half-frozen meltwater.

“But I can’t,” she said again, and blew her nose. Ian disliked the painful look of the wet handkerchief applied to her raw, red nose, and handed her a dry though paint-stained one from his sleeve. “Two of my daughters are his—but I have three. Even if—”

Ian made a small noise in his throat, and she looked at him sharply.

“What?”

“I’m sure he’d ha’ told ye himself, were ye on speaking terms,” Ian said. “But Thayendanegea told me this morning, that he has two wee bairns wi’ the woman he … ehm …” She’d have found out anyway, he argued silently, and she would, but he still felt like a guilty toad, a feeling not improved by the look of naked betrayal on her face.

“Does it help, to curse aloud?” she said at last.

“Well … aye. It does, a bit. Ye dinna ken any curses, though, do ye?”

She frowned, considering.

“I do know some words,” she said. “The men who … came to my house would often say wild things, especially if they’d brought liquor or … or if there was more than one, and they … quarreled.”

“Mac na galladh,” he muttered.

“Is that a Scottish curse?” she asked, and sat up straighter, the handkerchief still twisted in her hands. “Perhaps I should find it easier to say bad words in another language.”

“Nay, Gàidhlig cursing’s a different thing. It’s … well, ye make a curse for the occasion, ye might say. We really dinna have bad words, but ye might say something like, ‘May worms breed in your belly and choke ye on their way out.’ That’s no a very good one,” he said apologetically. “Just on the spur o’ the moment, ken? Uncle Jamie can turn a curse would curl your hair, without even thinkin’ about it, but I’m no that good.”

She made a small hough sound that wasn’t close to a laugh, but wasn’t crying, either.

“What was that thee said, then?” she asked, after a moment’s silence. “In Gaelic.”

“Oh, mac na galladh? That’s just ‘son of a bitch.’ Something ye might say by way o’ description, maybe. Or if ye can’t think of anything better to say, and ye have to say something or burst.”

“Mac na galladh, then,” she said, and fell silent.

“Thee need not stay with me,” she added, after a few moments.

“Dinna be daft,” he said amiably, and they sat together for some time. Until the back door opened, and the black form of a man on crutches showed for a moment against the light. The door closed, and Ian stood up. “God bless thee, Silvia,” he said softly, and squeezed her shoulder briefly in farewell.

He didn’t, of course, go far. Only into the shadows under a nearby larch.

“Silvia?” Gabriel called, peering into the dark. “Is thee here? Mrs. Brant said thee had gone out.”

“I am here,” she said. Her tone was perfectly neutral, and Ian thought it had cost her quite a bit to make it so.

Her husband stumped through the hay-strewn mud to the target tree and bent to peer at her in the shadow.

“May I sit down?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Say what thee must.”

He snorted briefly, but laid his crutches on the ground and straightened up.

“Well, then. I wish the girls to remain here. They wish this, too,” he added, after a pause.

“Of course they do,” she said, her voice colorless. “They loved thee. They have constant hearts; they still love thee. Did thee tell them that thee has married again, that thee has another family?”

There was silence, and after a moment of it, she laughed. Bitterly.

“And did thee tell them that thee would have nothing to do with their sister? Or has thee changed thy mind regarding Chastity?”

“Has thee changed thy mind regarding our marriage? I can have two wives, as I said. Perhaps thee could find a place nearby, where thee could live with the … the child, and Prudence and Patience would be able to visit. And I, of course,” he added.

“I have not changed my mind,” she said, her voice cold as the night. “I will not be thy concubine, nor will I let Patience and Prudence remain here.”

“I am far from rich, but I can—I will—manage the expense,” he began, but she cut him off, leaping to her feet, visible now in the faint light from the house.

“Damn the ‘expense,’” she said, furious. “After what thee said, thee expects that I will—”

“What did I say?” he demanded. “If I spoke out of shock—”

“Thee said I was a whore.”

“I did not use that word!”

“Thee didn’t have to! Thy meaning was clear enough.”

“I didn’t mean …” Gabriel began, and she rounded on him, eyes blazing.

“Oh, but thee did mean it. And whatever thee says now, thee would still mean it. If I were to go to thy bed, thee would wilt from thinking of the men who had come before thee, and be consumed with yet more anger against me for causing thy disgrace.”

She snorted, steam rising sudden from her nostrils.

“And thee would wonder whether those men were preferable to thee. Worry did I think of any of them when I touched thy body, did I think thee weak and disgusting. I know thee, Gabriel Hardman, and by this time, I know a good deal about other men, too. And thee dares … thee dares! …” She was shouting now and could be heard from the barn, surely. “Thee dares to tell me it’s godly and acceptable that thee should take more than one woman to thy bed, only because thee lives with folk who do such things!”

Gabriel was pale with anger, but had himself under control. He wanted his daughters.

“I apologize for what I said,” he said, between clenched teeth. “I spoke out of shock. How can thee blame me for speaking wildly?”

“Thee was not speaking wildly when thee said thee would take Prudence and Patience from me,” she replied.

“I am their father, and I will keep them!”

“No, thee will not,” she said evenly, and turned toward Ian’s tree. “Will he?”

Ian stepped out from behind the tree.

“No,” he said mildly. “He won’t.”

Gabriel licked his lips and huffed out a great white sigh.

“What are we to do, then, Silvia?” he said, plainly struggling for calm. “Thee knows the girls want to be with me as much as I wish to be with them. Whatever thee thinks of me at present—how can thee be so heartless as to take them from me?”

“As for thee, I expect thy other children will comfort thee,” Silvia said, in as nasty a tone as Ian had ever heard from her. She rubbed a hand over her face, hard, also striving for calm. “No. Thee is right in that, at least. I do know how much they love thee and I will never say anything to them that would blacken thee in their eyes. I think thee should tell them, though, about thy children here. They will understand that, but they will not understand why thee would keep the truth from them—and they are bound to find out sooner or later, though not from me.”

Gabriel had moved into the light as well, shuffling his lame foot. He had assumed an odd, mottled appearance, like an old birch tree whose bark is peeling off.

“I will not go and leave them here,” Silvia said, having regained some control of her emotions. “But I will write to thee when we have found a home, and thee may come to visit them. I will help them to write to thee, and perhaps they may come here to see thee again, if it seems safe.” She straightened her back and smoothed her pinafore.

“I forgive thee, Gabriel,” she said quietly. “But I will never be wife to thee again.”

89 The Filature

ALFRED BRUMBY DIDN’T LOOK like a smuggler, or at least not like Brianna’s notion of one. On the other hand, she was forced to admit that the only people she knew who were or had been professional smugglers were her father and Fergus. Mr. Brumby was a comfortably solid and beautifully dressed gentleman of medium height who, upon meeting her, had tilted his head back, shading his eyes as he looked up at her, and then laughed and bowed to her.

“I see that Lord John knows the value of a good artist,” he said, smiling. “Do you scale your commission by the inch, madam? Because if so, I may be obliged to sell my carriage in order to afford you.”

“I do indeed charge by the inch, sir,” she’d told him politely, and nodded at his diminutive wife. “But the basis would be the size of the painting, rather than the artist.”

He’d laughed heartily, and so had his very young wife—My God, Brianna thought, she’s barely eighteen, if that!—and then had turned to Roger, shaking hands and engaging him in lively conversation, while his wife, Angelina, knelt on the floor, careless of her fine dress, and talked to Mandy and Jem, then scrambled to her feet and invited them to come along and see their mother’s studio.

The arrangement offered by the hospitable Mr. Brumby was that the MacKenzies would live in his household during the length of Brianna’s commission and be treated as members of the family. By suppertime, everyone had been seamlessly absorbed into the Brumby household, which was a large and cheerful one, with many servants, an excellent cook, and Henrike, a large and very capable German maidservant who had been Angelina’s nurse and had insisted upon coming with her upon her marriage to Mr. Brumby.

“And how do you propose to pass your time, Mr. MacKenzie, while your wife is employed in painting?” Mr. Brumby asked over a delicious pork roast with brandied applesauce.

“I have various commissions to fulfill, sir,” Roger said. “On behalf of the Presbytery of Charles Town, who have entrusted me with various letters to deliver—and also a few small errands to perform on behalf of my father-in-law, Colonel Fraser.”

“Oh, indeed.” Mr. Brumby’s eyes grew bright through his spectacles. “I’ve heard of Colonel Fraser—as who has not? I was unaware that he makes whisky of such quality, though.” He nodded at the bottle Roger had presented to him before dinner; he’d brought it along to the table and continued to take small sips from a silver cup that the butler replenished—frequently—in the course of the meal. “Should he be interested in selling it to a wider market …”

Roger smiled and assured Mr. Brumby that Jamie made whisky only for his own personal use, causing Mr. Brumby to laugh loudly and give Roger an exaggerated wink and a finger alongside his nose.

“Very sensible,” he said, “very sensible indeed. Customs and excise taxes being what they are, it would hardly pay to offer it commercially, save at an extortionate price—and that, of course, has its own difficulties.”

Brianna enjoyed the dinner and was delighted by the house, which had been built by a fine architect. The effort of nodding appreciatively at each of the Brumbys in turn—for both of them talked incessantly, and frequently at the same time—was wearing her down, though, and she took the entrance of cigars and brandy for the gentlemen as her cue to rise and excuse herself to go and see that the children were still where she’d put them.

They had been tucked into trundle beds that had been set up in the commodious dressing room attached to the well-appointed guest room that had been assigned to the MacKenzies, and when looked in upon, they were both clean and sound asleep, having been fed earlier by the cook, Mrs. Upton.

“I could get used to this,” Roger said, yawning as he came in later, stripping off his coat. “You wouldn’t think there was an armed siege going on outside, would you?” The Brumbys’ house stood in Reynolds Square, opposite the filature—a facility for raising silkworms—and the plentitude of trees, including the large grove of white mulberry trees required for the diet of said silkworms, gave it a sense of enclosure and pastoral peace.

“You’re keeping track of the calendar, aren’t you?” Bree pulled her sleeping shift over her head, noting from the smell that she should talk to the Brumbys’ laundress tomorrow. “How many days until all hell breaks loose?”

“Less than three weeks,” he said, more soberly. “Your father didn’t give much detail on the battle, but we know the Americans will lose. The siege will be lifted on October the eleventh.”

“And you’ll be here and safely inside, right?” She raised her eyebrows at him, and he smiled and took her hand.

“I will,” he said, and kissed it.

90 The Swamp Fox

ROGER HAD DRESSED FOR his occasions. Luckily, the same black broadcloth suit, long-coated and pewter-buttoned, would do for both, since it was the only one he possessed. Brianna had plaited and clubbed his hair severely, and he was so clean-shaven that his jaw felt raw. A high white stock wrapped round his neck completed the picture—he hoped—of a respectable clergyman. The British sentries at the barricade on White Bluff Road had given him no more than a disinterested glance before nodding him through. He could only hope the American sentries outside the city felt the same lack of curiosity about ministers.

He rode out a good distance from the city before turning east and beginning to circle back toward the Americans’ siege lines, and it was just past noon when he came within sight of them.

The American camp was rough but orderly, an acre or so of canvas tents fluttering in the wind like trapped gulls, and the amazingly big French warships visible in the river beyond, from which every so often a volley of cannon fire would erupt with gouts of flame, setting loose vast clouds of white smoke to drift across the marshes with the scattered clouds of gulls and oystercatchers alarmed by the noise.

There were pickets posted among the yaupon bushes, one of whom popped up like a jack-in-the-box and pointed a musket at Roger in a business-like way.

“Halt!”

Roger pulled in his reins and raised his stick, white handkerchief tied to its end, feeling foolish. It worked, though. The picket whistled through his teeth for a companion, who popped up alongside, and at the first man’s nod, came forward to take his horse’s bridle.

“What’s your name and what d’you want?” the man demanded, squinting up at Roger. He wore a backwoodsman’s ordinary breeches and hunting shirt, but had army boots and an odd uniform cap, shaped like a squashed bishop’s mitre. A copper badge on his collar read Sgt. Bradford.

“My name is Roger MacKenzie. I’m a Presbyterian minister, and I’ve brought a letter to General Lincoln from General James Fraser, late of General Washington’s Monmouth command.”

Sergeant Bradford’s brows rose out of sight beneath his hat.

“General Fraser,” he said. “Monmouth? That the fellow that abandoned his troops to tend his wife?”

This was said with a derisive tone, and Roger felt the words like a blow to the stomach. Was this how Jamie’s admittedly dramatic resignation of his commission was commonly perceived in the Continental army? If so, his own present mission might be a little more delicate than he’d expected.

“General Fraser is my father-in-law, sir,” Roger said, in a neutral voice. “An honorable man—and a very brave soldier.”

The look of scorn didn’t quite leave the man’s face, but it moderated into a short nod, and the man turned away, jerking his chin in an indication that Roger might follow, if he felt so inclined.

General Lincoln’s tent was a large but well-worn green canvas, with a flagstaff outside from which the red and white stripes of the Grand Union flag fluttered in the wind off the water. Sergeant Bradford muttered something to the guard at the entrance and left Roger with a curt nod.

“The Reverend MacKenzie, is it?” the guard said, looking him up and down with an air of skepticism. “And a letter from General James Fraser, have I got that right?”

Christ. Did Jamie know of the talk about him? Roger remembered the moment’s hesitation when Jamie had handed him the letter. Perhaps he did, then.

“I am, it is, and you do,” Roger said firmly. “Is General Lincoln able to receive me?” He’d been meaning to leave the letter and come back for the reply—if there was one—after he’d spoken to Francis Marion, but now he thought he’d better find out whether Benjamin Lincoln shared this apparent negative view of Jamie’s actions.

“Wait here.” The soldier—he was a Continental regular, a uniformed corporal—ducked under the tent flap, kept closed against the chilly breeze. Through the momentary gap, Roger caught sight of a large man in uniform, curled up on a cot, his broad blue back turned to the door. A faint buzzing snore reached Roger’s ears, but apparently the corporal had no intention of trying to wake General Lincoln, and after a minute’s delay—for the sake of plausibility, Roger assumed—the corporal reappeared.

“I’m afraid the general’s engaged at present, Mr ….?”

“Reverend,” Roger repeated firmly. “The Reverend Roger MacKenzie. As General Lincoln isn’t available, could I speak with”—shit, what’s Marion’s rank now?—“with Captain Francis Marion, perhaps?”

“Lieutenant Colonel Marion, I expect you mean.” The corporal corrected him matter-of-factly. “You’ll maybe find him out by the Jewish cemetery; I saw him go that way with some chasseurs a while ago. You know where it is?” He gestured toward the west.

“I’ll find it. Thank you.” The guard seemed relieved to be rid of him, and Roger made his way in the direction indicated, holding his broad-brimmed hat against the tug of the wind.

The busy atmosphere of the camp was much at odds with the brief vision of its sleeping commander. Men were moving to and fro with purpose; in the distance, he saw a great many horses—cavalry, he realized with interest. What were they doing?

Forming up. He felt as though Jamie had spoken in his ear, matter-of-fact as always, and his stomach contracted. Getting ready.

This was October 8. According to Frank Randall’s book, the siege of Savannah began on September 16 and would be lifted on October 11.

For all the good that’s likely to do you, blockhead. For the thousandth time, he castigated himself for not knowing more, not having read everything there was to read about the American Revolution—but knowing, even as he reproached himself, that the chances of any book knowledge ever resembling the reality of his experience were vanishingly small.

A small squadron of pelicans dropped low in unison over the distant water and sailed serenely just above the waves, ignoring ships, cannon, horses, shouting men, and the rapidly clouding sky.

Must be nice, he thought, watching them. Nothing to think about but where your next fish is coming—

A musket went off somewhere behind him, a cloud of feathers burst from one of the pelicans, and it dropped like a stone, wings loose, into the water. Cheers and whistles came from behind him, these cut off abruptly by a furious officer’s voice, castigating the marksman for wasting ammunition.

Okay, point taken.

As though backing up the rifleman, there was a distant boom, followed by another. Siege cannon, he thought, and an uncontrollable shiver of excitement ran down his spine at the thought. Getting the range.

He lost his way briefly, but a passing corporal put him on the right path and came with him to the cemetery, marked by a large stone gateway.

“That’ll be Colonel Marion, Reverend,” his escort said, and pointed. “When you’ve done your business with him, one of his men’ll bring you back to General Lincoln’s tent.” The man turned to go, but then turned back to add a caution. “Don’t you be a-wandering about by yourself, Reverend. ’Tisn’t safe. And don’t try to leave the camp, either. Pickets got orders to shoot any man as tries to leave without a pass from General Lincoln.”

“No,” Roger said. “I won’t.” But the corporal hadn’t waited for an answer; he was hurrying back into the main body of the camp, boots crunching on white oyster shell.

It was close—a lot closer than he’d thought. He could feel the whole camp humming, a sense of nervous energy, men making ready. But surely it was too early for …

Then he walked through the high stone gate of the cemetery, its lintel decorated with the Star of David, and saw at once what must be Lieutenant Colonel Francis Marion, hat in hand and a blue-and-buff uniform coat thrown loose over his shoulders, deep in conversation with three or four other officers.

The unfortunate word that popped into Roger’s mind was “marionette.” Francis Marion was what Jamie would call a wee man, standing no more than five foot four, by Roger’s estimation, scrawny and spindle-shanked, with a very prominent French nose. Not quite what the romantic moniker “Swamp Fox” conjured up.

His appearance was made more arresting by a novel tonsorial arrangement, featuring thin strands of hair combed into a careful puff atop a balding pate and two rather larger puffs on either side of his head, like earmuffs. Roger was consumed by curiosity as to what the man’s ears must look like, to require this sort of disguise, but he dismissed this with an effort of will and waited patiently for the lieutenant-colonel to finish his business.

Chasseurs, the corporal had said. French troops, then, and they looked it, very tidy in blue coats with green facings and white smallclothes, with jaunty yellow feather cockades sticking up from the fronts of their cocked hats like Fourth of July sparklers. They were also undeniably speaking French, lots of them at once.

On the other hand … they were black, which he hadn’t expected at all.

Marion raised a hand and most of them stopped speaking, though there was a good deal of shifting from foot to foot and a general air of impatience. He leaned forward, speaking up into the face of an officer who topped him by a good six inches, and the others stopped fidgeting and craned to listen.

Roger couldn’t hear what was being said, but he was strongly aware of the electric current running through the group—it was the same current he’d sensed running through the camp, but stronger.

Jesus Christ Almighty, they’re getting ready to fight. Now.

He’d never been on a live battlefield but had walked a few historical ones with his father. The Reverend Wakefield had been a keen war historian, and a good storyteller; he’d been able to evoke the sense of a muddled, panicked fight from the open ground at Sheriffmuir, and the sense of doom and slaughter from the haunted earth of Culloden.

Roger was getting much the same feeling, rising up from the quiet earth of the cemetery through his body, and he curled his fists, urgently wanting the feel of a weapon in his hand.

The air was cool but humid, with a faint rumble of thunder over the sea, and sweat was condensing on his body. He saw Marion wipe his own face with a large, grubby handkerchief, then tuck it away with an impatient gesture and step closer to the chasseur officer, raising his voice and jerking his head toward the river behind them.

Whatever he’d said—he was speaking French, and the distance was too far for Roger to make out more than a phrase here and there—seemed to settle the chasseurs, who grunted and nodded amongst themselves, then gathered behind their officer and set off at a jog-trot toward the ships. Marion watched them go, then sighed visibly and sat down on one of the tombstones.

It seemed ludicrous to approach Marion with his questions under these circumstances, but the man had spotted him and lifted his chin inquiringly. Not much choice but to say hello, at least.

“Good afternoon, sir,” he said, bowing slightly. “I apologize for interrupting you. I can see that—” Lacking any sufficient words, he waved a hand toward the distant camp.

Marion laughed, a low sound of honest amusement.

“Well, yes,” he said, in an accent that seemed faintly tinged with the French he’d just been speaking. “It’s clear, isn’t it? I take it you didn’t know, though, or—?” One eyebrow quirked up.

“Or I wouldn’t be here,” Roger finished. Marion shrugged.

“You might have come to volunteer. The Continental army isn’t choosy, though I have to say that the occasional minister we get usually doesn’t wear his best clothes to fight in.” The look of amusement deepened as he looked Roger up and down. “So—why are you here, sir?”

“My name is Roger MacKenzie, and I am the son-in-law of General James Fraser, late of—”

“Really.” Both eyebrows were raised as high as they could go. “Fraser’s sent you as an envoy to General Lincoln, and they sent you to me because Benjamin’s asleep?”

“Not exactly.” He’d best just put it baldly. Whatever Jamie’s reputation with the Continental army was, his business with Marion was straightforward enough.

“I take it you know that General Fraser resigned his commission following the Battle of—”

“Monmouth, yes.” Marion shifted his scrawny buttocks on the stone. “Everyone knows by now, I should think. Is it true that he wrote his letter of resignation on the back of an ensign and sent him to Lee with a muddy shirt?”

“It was written in his wife’s blood,” Roger said, “but yes.”

That took the look of amusement out of Marion’s eyes. He nodded a little, the meager pouf of graying hair on top of his head stirring in the rising breeze, as though disturbed by the thoughts beneath it.

“I don’t know Monsieur Fraser as a man,” he said, “but I’ve talked with those who do.” He eyed Roger, head on one side. “What does he want with me?”

“He’s assembling a militia,” Roger replied, just as bluntly. “A partisan band. He doesn’t want to have anything further to do with the Continental army—and I imagine the feeling is mutual—but he does intend to fight.”

“I suppose he’ll have to.” It was a statement of fact, made with no emotion at all, but spoken here, with the air around them live and dangerous as a lightning storm, it struck Roger like a blow in the chest.

“Yes.”

“And he wants a—a liaison with the army, perhaps? A connection, but not a formal connection. Just so.” Marion’s lips were thin and bloodless; pressed tight together, they disappeared, making him look like a marionette with a hinged, carved jaw.

“He knows of you, too,” Roger said carefully. “That you have experience in forming militia units and … employing them effectively in a … a formal military context?”

“It’s much more effective to employ them outside that context,” Marion said, glancing toward the cemetery wall. There was a rising noise of horses and men, audible now that the guns had fallen silent. His large dark eyes turned back, focusing on Roger’s face. “Tell him that. He should keep his distance from the army. They will use his militia, certainly, they need every man they can get. But the risk to him—him, personally—is very great. If it had not been for Lee’s trial and La Fayette’s good word, Fraser would have been court-martialed himself after Monmouth; perhaps even hanged.”

Marion spoke casually, but Roger felt the scar on his throat tighten and burn beneath the concealment of his high white stock, and he had the sudden uncontrollable urge to fling his arms out, burst the memory of rope and helplessness.

He gulped air and tried to speak, but no words came. Instead, he turned violently on his heel, seized a stone from the ground, and flung it at the stone wall. It struck with a crack like a bullet, and a gull that had been sitting on the wall rose with a shriek and flapped away, dropping a large wet splatter of feces on the ground between the two men.

Marion looked at him with concern.

Roger cleared his throat and spat on the ground. He didn’t apologize; there wasn’t anything he could say.

“I’ll tell him,” he said, hoarse and formal. “Thank you for your advice, sir.”

He was trembling. The sense of something coming hadn’t gone away; it was growing. The ground seemed to be vibrating, but it must be only him.

A young lieutenant came through the gate beneath the Star of David, face lit with fear and excitement.

“They’re waiting for you, Colonel.”

Marion nodded to the boy and stood up.

“You can’t leave, I’m afraid,” he said apologetically to Roger. “It will begin soon. Do you want to fight? I can give you a good rifle.”

“I—no.” Roger touched the stock at his throat. Marion’s attention was focused on the sounds behind the cemetery wall. No, it wasn’t his imagination; the ground was vibrating. Horses. The horses … “But I—I’d like to help. If I can.”

“Bon,” said Marion softly, almost absently. He slid his arms into the sleeves of his coat and hitched it up on his shoulders, fingers twitching the lower buttons into place without looking. But his attention came back to Roger, just for a moment.

“Go back into camp, then,” he said. “And wait. If things go wrong, you can help bury us. Or if they go right, I expect.”

Marion looked toward the gate and shook his head slightly.

“I don’t have a good feeling about this, no,” he said, as though to himself, and went off, the young lieutenant falling into step behind him.

Roger hesitated for a split second, then followed, stretching his legs to catch up.

“I’m no good with a rifle,” he said. “But if you can give me a sword, I’ll go with you.” Marion cast him the briefest of glances, nodded, and made a small gesture to the lieutenant.

“Bon,” he said. “Come on, then.”

91 Besieged

BRIANNA WAS CUTTING UP a bit of fried chicken in the kitchen for Mandy when she heard a tapping at the window. She looked up in surprise to see Lord John outside, in uniform. He grimaced and nodded, indicating that he would like to come in out of the rain.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked, opening the door into the back garden. She’d had tea with him twice since their arrival, but hadn’t expected an informal visit.

“I wanted to see you for a moment,” he replied, stepping in and taking the towel she offered him, “but I can’t spare the time for civilities with Mr. or Mrs. Brumby. Thank you, my dear.” He took off his hat, wiped his face, and brushed at the shoulders of his blue cloak, then handed back the towel.

“I came to tell you that the siege will shortly be at an end,” he said carefully, glancing at Jem, Mandy, and Mrs. Upton, the cook.

“Really? That’s—” she stopped abruptly, seeing his face. “What … makes you think so?” she asked carefully, and he gave her a brief smile.

“The Americans have begun to move their guns,” he said.

“Oh, have they? Time enough!” Mrs. Upton said, eyes on the eggs she was whisking. “The master said as he thought the Frenchies and their ships would be off soon, they not wanting to be blown to bits by hurricanes.”

“Hurricanes?” said Jem, perking up. “Do they have hurricanes here?”

“Indeed we do, Master Jem,” Mrs. Upton said, nodding portentously at the rain-spattered window. “See that rain? You can tell how hard the wind’s blowing—see the drops run slant-wise down the glass? This time of year the wind comes up—and sometimes it doesn’t go back down. For days.”

“I know you haven’t much time,” Bree said, eyeing John, “but come along to my studio, will you? I’d like your opinion on something.”

“It would be my pleasure. Bonsoir, monsieur, mademoiselle.” He nodded to Jemmy, then solemnly picked up Mandy’s chubby hand—fork, chicken, and all—bowed over it, and planted a discreet kiss upon it that made her shriek and giggle.

“Mrs. Upton is correct, to a point,” he said to Bree, once they were safely down the hall. “D’Estaing does not want to lose half his fleet to a hurricane. But neither does he want to sail away without trying to get what he came for.”

“Meaning …?”

“Meaning that the Americans are indeed moving their smaller guns—but not back onto the ships. A large number of troops appear to be moving to the south of the town, circling round through the marshes, which is not something I personally would do, but styles of command vary.”

She’d clenched her hands without noticing; now she noticed and unclenched them with a small effort.

“You mean they’re going to try to—to take the city? Now?”

“They’ll certainly try,” he assured her. “I don’t think they’ll manage it, but they have quite a few more men than we do, which no doubt gives them a sense of optimism. Just in case—” He pushed back his cloak in order to reach into the haversack he had slung over his shoulder and pulled out a small bundle of cloth, folded into a packet and tied with string.

“It’s an American flag,” he said, handing it to her. “Hal took it off a prisoner. If—and I do mean ‘in the extremely unlikely event’—the Americans do get in, hang this out a window, or tack it to the front door.”

Roger. She swallowed. He’d been going to visit an elderly, retired Presbyterian minister who lived in the tiny settlement of Bryan Neck. With luck, he was nowhere near Savannah at the moment. But he had mentioned maybe going to see Francis Marion on Jamie’s behalf, if the Swamp Fox should be in the American camp … but … it wasn’t supposed to be now. … Her heart was beginning to thump erratically, and she put a hand on her chest to still it.

“They have more men, you said.” He was resettling his cloak, ready to go, but looked up at this. “How many?”

“Oh, somewhere between three and four thousand,” he said. “At a guess.”

“And how many do you have?”

“Not that many,” he said. “But we are His Majesty’s army. We know how to do this sort of thing.” He smiled, and rising slightly on his toes kissed her cheek. “Don’t worry, my dear. If anything drastic happens, I’ll come for you if I can.”

He had almost got to the back door before she shook off her sense of shock enough to run after him.

“Lord John!”

He turned at once, eyebrows raised, and she thought for an instant how young he looked. Excited at the nearness of battle. Roger. Oh, Lord, Roger …

“My husband,” she managed, breathless. “He’s on his way home, from—from an errand. He thought he’d make it for supper …?”

Lord John shook his head.

“If he’s not here now, he won’t be.” He saw the look on her face and added, “I mean, he can’t get into the city. The road is closed and the city is surrounded by abatis. But I’ll send word to the captain of the city guard. Remind me: What’s your husband’s name and what does he look like?”

“Roger,” she said, through the lump in her throat. “Roger MacKenzie. He’s tall and dark and he looks … like a Presbyterian preacher.” Thank God you wore your good clothes today, she thought passionately toward her absent husband.

Lord John had been fully concentrated on her words, but that made him smile.

“In that case, I’m sure no one will shoot him,” he said, and lifting her hand, kissed it briefly. “Au revoir, my dear.”

“Good …” she began by reflex, but then froze. He politely pretended not to notice, touched her cheek gently, then turned and went out, pulling down his hat against the rain.

THE SOFT LIGHT woke her, next morning. She lay for a moment, confused. What was wrong?

“Mummy, Mummy!”

A small curly black head with bright brown eyes popped up at eye level, and she blinked, trying to focus.

“Mummy! Mrs. Upton says there’s flapjacks ’n’ hash for breakfast! Hurry up!” Mandy vanished, and Bree heard both children thundering down the stairs, both evidently already dressed and shod. It was true: enticing smells of food and coffee were drifting up from the dining room below.

She sat up and swung her feet out of bed, and then it struck her. It was quiet. The guns had stopped. After five days of being jerked awake in the black predawn by the distant French ships practicing bombardment, today the house was rising peacefully, early sun seeping through the fog, calm as honey.

“Thank God,” she muttered, and crossed herself, with a quick prayer for Roger, and another for her father, her first father. She’d believed what he’d said in the book; the siege of Savannah would fail. But it was hard to have complete faith in history when it was exploding around you.

“Thanks, Daddy,” she said, and reached for her stays.

92 Like Water Spilled on the Ground, Which Cannot Be Gathered up Again

THE QUILL WAS LITTLE more than a blunt stub, the greasy feather mangled by dogged hands determined to send one last word. Roger had written more than one such word tonight, for the men who could not write or had no notion what to say. Now the camp lay sleeping—lightly—all around him, and he faced the same problem.

Dearest Bree, he wrote, and paused for a breath before going on. There was only the one thing to say, and he wrote, I’m sorry. But she deserved more, and slowly, he found his way.

I didn’t mean to be here, but I have the strongest feeling that here is where I should be. It wasn’t quite “Whom shall I send? Who shall go for us?”—but something close, and so was my answer.

God willing, I’ll see you soon. For now and for always, I am your husband and I love you.

Roger

The last few words were ghosts on the scrap of rough, rain-spotted paper; the last of the ink. His name was no more than scratches, but he supposed that was all right; she’d know who’d written it.

He let the ink dry and folded the scrap carefully. Then realized that he had no way to send it—nor any ink left with which to write Bree’s direction on it. The other letters had been given to Marion’s company clerk, now snoring under a blanket near one of the many watchfires, anonymous among the huddled, sleeping sheep.

With slow hands, he tucked it into the breast pocket of his coat. If he died in the morning, someone might find it on him. Francis Marion would survive this battle; Roger could trust him to send it on—to Jamie, at least.

He lay down on the squelchy ground, commended his soul to God, and was asleep.

THERE WAS A shimmer of light in the eastern sky, but fog lay so thickly on the marshes that the city wasn’t visible. It was easy to believe that it wasn’t there at all, that they’d lost their bearings in the dark and were now facing inland, away from Savannah. That when the order was given, they’d charge, yelling like banshees, straight out into peaceful farmland, startling sleeping cows and slaves at their work.

But the wet, sluggish air stirred, and suddenly Roger caught the scent of baking bread from the public ovens in Savannah; faint, but so heady that his empty stomach growled.

Brianna. She was there, somewhere in the fog with the fresh-baked bread.

Someone murmured something in French, too low to catch the words but evidently witty, for there was a ripple of laughter and the tension relaxed for a moment.

They were bunched into columns now, four columns, each column eight hundred strong. There was no need to keep quiet; the British certainly knew they were here. He could hear shouts from one of the redoubts at the edge of the city now, echoing oddly in the fog. Spring Hill, they called it. There was another redoubt, somewhere to the left, but he didn’t remember what that one was called.

It was cold, so early, but sweat trickled down the side of his face and he wiped it away, morning stubble rasping under his palm. The officers had all shaved before dawn, putting on their best uniforms like bullfighters preparing for the ring, but the men had risen from their blankets and bed sacks frowsty as scarecrows. Wide awake, though. And ready.

It’s the wrong day. Surely it’s the wrong day …

He shook his head violently. He was a historian, too—or had been. He of all people should know how imprecise history really was. But here they were, swallowed up in swirling fog, facing an invisible armed city at dawn. On the wrong day.

He drew a deep, trembling breath.

We’re going to lose this one.

Frank Randall said so.

His stomach clenched, hunger forgotten.

Lord, help me do what You want me to do—but in the name of Christ Your son, let me live through it.

“Because if You don’t, You’ll have my wife to answer to,” he murmured, and touched the hilt of his borrowed sword.

General Marion was bending down from his saddle, speaking French to two of the officers from Saint-Domingue—murky as it was, he was close enough to see the bright yellow of the officer’s lapels and cockades. Yellow-breasted sapsuckers, he thought.

They might as well be, too, for as much of their speech as he understood. Theoretically, Roger spoke French, but he didn’t speak this kind of French, full of hissing and glottal stops.

No one was trying to be quiet. Everyone knew what was about to happen, including the British garrison. The Americans and their allies had given up their position before the city, and—dragging their unwieldy cannon through the marshes, in the dark—had circled Savannah, the army gathering again before the two points where they might break through the city’s defenses, south of the Louisville Road.

Lord, help them. Help me help them. Please, deliver us.

And he knew it was a vain prayer and still he prayed with all his heart.

“Les abatis sont en feu!” He heard the shout above the rumble and murmur and clanking of the army, and felt the jolt of hope like a stroke of lightning in his heart.

Someone had managed to set the abatis on fire! The news was rocketing around the marshes, and Marion stood up in his stirrups to peer through the fog.

Roger licked his lips, tasting salt. The British knew how to defend against a siege; the whole city was encircled on the landward side by trenches liberally spiked with abatis, sharpened logs jammed into the earth, points outward.

He could smell smoke, different in character from the smell of the ovens or of chimney smoke from the town—a wilder, rougher kind of smoke.

But then the wind changed and the smoke died. There were groans and curses in multiple languages; evidently the fire had gone out, been extinguished by the English, failed to catch hold in the damp, who knew?

But the abatis remained, and so did the cannon, aiming from the ground between the redoubts. He stared in fascination as they faded slowly into sight. The fog was beginning to shred and orders were being shouted. The faint skirl of a bagpipe floated on the air; there were Highlanders in the redoubt. The black snouts of the guns poked through the thinning fog, and now there was another kind of smoke that he knew must be slow-match, to touch off the cannon.

It was time, and his heartbeat echoed in his ears.

“You go back if you want, Reverend.” It was Marion, bending down from his horse, his breath visible in the chilly air. “You aren’t sworn nor paid to be here.”

“I’ll stay.” He couldn’t tell whether he’d said that or only thought it, but Marion straightened up and drew his sword from its scabbard, resting the blade on his thigh. He had a blue tricorne on his head, but there were dewdrops in the puffs of hair that covered his ears.

Roger took hold of his borrowed sword, though God knew what he’d do with it. God knew. That was, in fact, a comforting thought, and for a moment he was able to draw a deep breath.

“Save your life, maybe,” Lieutenant Monserrat had said, handing it over yesterday. “Even if you don’t mean to fight.”

I don’t mean to fight. Why am I here?

Because they’re here. The men around him, sweating in the chill, smelling death with the scent of fresh-baked bread.

There was a roar from the first column that spread over the field, and he was seized by panic.

I don’t know what to do.

Mortars nearby fired with a sudden bomph! and he found that his knees and his hands were shaking and he urgently needed a piss.

You didn’t know what to do when the bear killed Amy Higgins, a voice that might have been his said inside his head. But you did something anyway. Things would have been worse if I hadn’t, I know that much. I have to go.

The first column suddenly began to run, not in tidy lines but a mob, surging toward the redoubt and the crack of musket fire, yelling their lungs out, some firing, some just running and screaming, a knife in one hand, clawing their way over the abatis, and they were falling as the bullets struck, those farther out knocked down like bowling pins by bouncing cannonballs. A panicked frog erupted suddenly from a patch of wiry yellow grass near Roger’s foot and landed in a puddle, where it vanished.

“I don’t like this, me,” Marion said, in a brief moment between explosions. He shook his head. “No, I don’t.” He raised his sword. “God be with you, Reverend.”

IT WASN’T GOD he found with him, but the next best thing. Major Gareth Barnard, one of his father’s friends, an ex–military chaplain. Barnard was a tall, long-faced man who wore his graying hair parted down the middle in a way that made him look like an old hound dog, but he’d had a black sense of humor and he’d treated Roger, thirteen years old, as a man.

“Did you ever kill anyone?” he’d asked the major when they were sat around the table after dinner one night, the old men telling stories of the War.

“Yes,” the major replied without hesitation. “I’d be no use to my men, dead.”

“What did you do for them?” Roger had asked, curious. “I mean—what does a chaplain do, in a battle?”

Major Barnard and the Reverend had exchanged a brief look, but the Reverend nodded and Barnard leaned forward, arms folded on the table in front of him. Roger saw the tattoo on his wrist, a bird of some kind, wings spread over a scroll with something written on it in Latin.

“Be with them,” the major said quietly, but his eyes held Roger’s, deeply serious. “Reassure them. Tell them God is with them. That I’m with them. That they aren’t alone.”

“Help them when you can,” his father had said, softly, eyes on the worn gray oilcloth that covered the table. “Hold their hands and pray, when you can’t.”

He saw—actually saw—the blast of a cannon. A brilliant-red flowering spark the size of his head that blinked in the fog with a firework’s BOOM! and then vanished. The fog blew back from the blast and he saw everything clearly for a second, no more—the black hulk of the gun, round mouth gaping, smoke thicker than the fog rolling over it, fog falling to the ground like water, steam rising from the hot metal to join the roiling fog, the artillerymen swarming over the gun, frenzied blue and brown ants, swallowed up the next instant in swirling white.

And then the world around him went mad. The shouts of the officers had come with the cannon’s blast; he only knew it because he’d been standing close enough to Marion to see his mouth open. But now a general roar went up from the charging men in his column, running hell-bent for the dim shape of the redoubt before him.

The sword was in his hand, and he was running, yelling wordless things.

Torches glowed faintly in the fog—soldiers trying to re-fire the abatis, he thought dimly.

Marion was gone. There was a high-pitched yodeling of some sort that might be the general, but might not.

The cannon—how many? He couldn’t tell, but more than two; the firing kept up at a tremendous rate, the crash of it shaking his bones every half minute or so.

He made himself stop, bend over, hands on his knees, gasping. He thought he heard musket fire, muffled, rhythmic crashes between the cannon blasts. The British army’s disciplined volleys.

“Load!”

“Fire!”

“Fall back!” An officer’s shouts rang out sudden in the heartbeat of silence between one crash and the next.

You’re not a soldier. If you get killed … nobody will be here to help them. Fall back, idiot.

He’d been at the back of the rank, with Marion. But now he was surrounded by men, surging together, pushing, running in all directions. Orders were being barked, and he thought some of the men were struggling to obey; he heard random shouts, saw a black boy who couldn’t be more than twelve struggling grimly to load a musket taller than he was. He wore a dark-blue uniform, and a bright-yellow kerchief showed when the fog parted for an instant.

Roger tripped over someone lying on the ground and landed on his knees, brackish water seeping through his breeches. He’d landed with his hands on the fallen man, and the sudden warmth on his cold fingers was a shock that brought him back to himself.

The man moaned and Roger jerked his hands away, then recovered himself and groped for the man’s hand. It was gone, and his own hand was filled with a gush of hot blood that reeked like a slaughterhouse.

“Jesus,” he said, and, wiping his hand on his breeches, he grappled with the other in his bag, he had cloths … he yanked out something white and tried to tie it round … he felt frantically for a wrist, but that was gone, too. He got a fragment of sleeve and felt his way up it as fast as he could, but he reached the still-solid upper arm a moment after the man died—he could feel the sudden limpness of the body under his hand.

He was still kneeling there with the unused cloth in his hand when someone tripped over him and fell headlong with a tremendous splash. Roger got up onto his feet and duck-walked to the fallen man.

“Are you all right?” he shouted, bending forward. Something whistled over his head, and he threw himself flat on top of the man.

“Jesus Christ!” the man exclaimed, punching wildly at Roger. “Get the devil off me, you bugger!”

They wrestled in the mud and water for a moment, each trying to use the other for leverage to rise, and the cannon kept on firing. Roger pushed the man away and managed to roll up onto his knees in the mud. Cries for help were coming from behind him, and he turned in that direction.

The fog was almost gone, driven off by explosions, but the gun smoke drifted white and low across the uneven ground, showing him brief flashes of color and movement as it shredded.

“Help, help me!”

He saw the man then, on hands and knees, dragging one leg, and he splashed through the puddles to reach him. Not much blood, but the leg was clearly wounded; he got a shoulder under the man’s arm and got him on his feet, hustled him as fast as possible away from the redoubt, out of range …

The air shattered again and the earth seemed to tilt under him; he was lying on the ground with the man he’d been helping on top of him, the man’s jaw knocked away and hot blood and chunks of teeth soaking into his chest. Panicked, he struggled out from under the twitching body—Oh, God, oh, God, he was still alive—and then he was kneeling by the man, slipping in the mud, catching himself with a hand on the chest where he could feel the heart beating in time with the blood spurting, Oh, Jesus, help me!

He groped for words, frantic. It was all gone. All the comforting words he’d gleaned, all his stock-in-trade …

“You’re not alone,” he panted, pressing hard on the heaving chest, as though he could anchor the man to the earth he was dissolving into. “I’m here. I won’t leave you. It’s gonna be all right. You’re gonna be all right.” He kept repeating that, kept his hands pressing hard, and then, in the midst of the spouting carnage, felt the life leave the body.

Just … gone.

He sat on his heels, gasping, frozen in place, one hand on the still body as though it were glued there, and then the drums.

A faint throb through the rhythmic sounds of gunfire. His bones had absorbed that without his noticing; he could feel the ebb when the first rank of muskets fell back and the surge when the second rank reached the edge of the redoubt and fired. Something in the back of his head was counting … one … two …

“What the hell,” he said thickly, and stood up, shaking his head. There were three men near him, two still on the ground, the third struggling to rise. He got up and staggered over to them, gave the live man his hand, and pulled him up, wordless. One of the others was plainly dead, the other almost so. He let go of the man he was holding and collapsed on his knees by the dying one, taking the man’s cold face between his hands, the dark eyes bleared with fear and ebbing blood.

“I’m here,” he said, though the cannon fired then and his words made no sound.

The drums. He heard them clearly now, and a sort of yell, a lot of men shouting together. And then a rumbling, squashing, splashing, and suddenly there were horses everywhere, running … Running at the fucking redoubts full of guns.

A crash of guns and the cavalry split, half the horses wheeling, back and away, the rest scattering, dancing through the fallen men, trying not to step on the bodies, big heads jerking as they fought the reins.

He didn’t run; he couldn’t. He walked forward, slowly, sword flopping at his side, stopping where he found a man down. Some he could help, with a drink or a hand to press upon a wound while a friend tied a cloth around it. A word, a blessing where he could. Some were gone, and he laid a hand on them in farewell and commended their souls to God with a hasty prayer.

He found a wounded boy and picked him up, carrying him back through the smoke and puddles, away from the cannon.

Another roar. The fourth column came running through the broken ground, to throw themselves into the fighting at the redoubt. He saw an officer with a flag of some kind run up shouting, then fall, shot through the head. A little boy, a little black boy in blue and yellow, grabbed the flag and then bodies hid him from view.

“Jesus Christ,” Roger said, because there wasn’t anything else he could possibly say. He could feel the boy’s heart beating under his hand through the soaked cloth of his coat. And then it stopped.

The cavalry charge had broken altogether. Horses were being ridden or led away, a few of them fallen, huge and dead in the marshy ground, or struggling to rise, neighing in panic.

An officer in a gaudy uniform was crawling away from a dead horse. Roger set the boy’s body down and ran heavily to the officer. Blood was gushing down the man’s thigh and his face, and Roger fumbled in his pocket, but there was nothing there. The man doubled up, hands pressing his groin, and saying something in a language Roger didn’t recognize.

“It’s all right,” he said to the man, taking him by the arm. “You’re going to be all right. I won’t leave you.”

“Bóg i Marija pomóżcie mi,” the man gasped.

“Aye, right. God be with you.” He turned the man on his side, pulled out his shirttail and ripped it off, then stuffed it into the man’s trousers, pressing into the hot wetness. He leaned on the wound with both hands, and the man screamed.

Then there were several cavalrymen there, all talking at once in multiple languages, and they pushed Roger out of the way and picked the wounded officer up bodily, carrying him away.

Most of the firing had stopped now. The cannon was silent, but his ears felt as though fire-bells were ringing in his head; it hurt.

He sat down, slowly, in the mud and became aware of rain running down his face. He closed his eyes. And after some time, became aware that a few words had come back to him.

“Out of the depths I cry unto you, O, Lord. O, Lord, hear my voice.”

The trembling didn’t stop, but some little time later, he got up and staggered away toward the distant marshes, to help bury the dead.

93 Portrait of a Dead Man

THE AIR STILL SMELLED of burning, and the onshore wind in the evening had added a faint stink of death to the usual smell of the marshes. But the battle was over, the Americans defeated. Lord John had turned up in the afternoon, stained with powder smoke but cheerful, to assure her that it was over, and all was well.

She didn’t think she’d screamed at him, but whatever she’d said had made his face set beneath the mottling of black powder, and he’d squeezed her hand hard and said, “I’ll find him.” And left.

The next day, she’d received a note from Lord John saying simply, I have walked the entire field, with my aides. We have not found him, neither dead nor injured. A hundred or so prisoners were taken, and he is not among them. Hal has sent an official inquiry to General Lincoln.

“We have not found him, neither dead nor injured.” She whispered that under her breath, over and over, throughout the day, as a means of keeping herself from going out to comb that bloody field herself, turning over every grain of sand and blade of saw grass. And in the evening, Lord John had come again, worn and weary, but with a clean face and a smile.

“You said that your husband meant to speak with a Captain Marion, so I went into the American camp with a flag of truce, looking for one. He’s now a lieutenant colonel, it seems, but he did speak with Roger—and he told me that Roger came off the field with him, unhurt, and went to help with the burial of the fallen Americans.”

“Oh, God.” Her knees had given way and she’d sat down, her feelings in chaos. He isn’t dead, he wasn’t hurt. And the feeling of relief at that was enormous—but instantly shot through with doubt, questions, and an abiding fear. If he’s alive, why isn’t he here?

“Where?” she managed, after a moment. “Where … did they bury them?”

“I don’t know,” Lord John said, his brow creased a little. “I’ll find out, if you like. But I think the burials must surely have been completed by now—there was considerable carnage on the field, but Lieutenant Colonel Maitland thinks there were not above two hundred killed. He was commanding the redoubt,” he added, seeing her blank look. He cleared his throat.

“I think that perhaps,” he said diffidently, “he might have then gone with the army surgeons, to help with the wounded?”

“Oh.” She managed to take a breath that completely filled her lungs; the first one in the last three days. “Yes. That—sounds very reasonable.” But why the hell didn’t he send me a note?

She gathered enough strength to get up and offer Lord John thanks and her hand. He took the hand, drew her in, and embraced her, his arms the first warmth she remembered feeling since Roger had left.

“It will be all right, my dear,” he said softly, patted her, and stepped back. “I’m sure it will be all right.”

BRIANNA VACILLATED BETWEEN being sure, too, and not being sure at all—but the balance of evidence seemed to indicate that Roger probably was (a) alive and (b) reasonably intact, and that semi-conviction was at least enough to let her return to work, seeking to drown her doubt in turpentine.

She couldn’t decide whether painting Angelina Brumby was more like trying to catch a butterfly without a net or lying in wait all night by a waterhole, waiting for some shy wild beast to appear for a few seconds, during which you might—if lucky—snap its photo.

“And what I wouldn’t give for my Nikon right now …” she muttered under her breath. Today was the first hair day. Angelina had spent nearly two hours under the hands of Savannah’s most popular hairdresser, emerging at last under a cloud of painstakingly engineered curls and ringlets, these powdered to a fare-thee-well and further decorated by a dozen or so brilliants stabbed in at random. The whole construction was so vast that it gave the impression that Angelina was carrying about her own personal thunderstorm, complete with lightning flashes.

The notion made Brianna smile, and Angelina, who had been looking rather apprehensive, perked up in response.

“Do you like it?” she asked hopefully, poking gingerly at her head.

“I do,” Bree said. “Here, let me …” For Angelina, unable or unwilling to bend her bedizened head enough to look down, was about to collide with the little platform on which the sitter’s chair was perched.

Once settled, Angelina became her usual self, chatty and distractible—and always in movement, with waving hands, turning head, widening eyes, constant questions and speculations. But if she was difficult to capture on canvas, she was also charming to watch, and Bree was constantly torn between exasperation and fascination, trying to catch something of the blithe butterfly without having to drive a hatpin through her thorax to make her be still for five minutes.

She had had nearly two weeks of dealing with Angelina, though, and now set a vase of wax flowers on the table, with firm instructions that Angelina should fix her eyes upon this and count the petals. She then turned over a two-minute sandglass and urged her subject not to speak or move until the glass ran out.

This procedure—repeated at intervals—let her circle Angelina, sketchpad in hand, making rough sketches of the head and neck, with quick visual notes of a ringlet coming down the curve of the neck, a deep wave over one of Angelina’s shell-pink ears … the morning sun was coming through the window, glowing sweetly through the ear. She wanted to try to catch that pink …

There was time, perhaps, to work on the arms and hands …. She had as much as she needed of the hair for now, and Angelina was wearing a soft gray-silk wrapper that left her arms bare to the elbow.

“Ooh! Are you painting me now?” Angelina sat up straighter, wrinkling her nose at the smell of fresh turpentine.

“I will be, soon,” Bree assured her, setting out the palette and brushes. “If you want to stretch for a few minutes, though, this would be a good time.”

Angelina made her way down to the floor, one hand minding her swaying hair and the other fanned for balance, and vanished without urging. Brianna could hear her clattering out into the sunshine at the back of the house, calling to Jem and Mandy, who were playing ball in the yard with the little Henderson boy from next door.

Bree drew a deep breath, savoring the momentary solitude. There was a strong touch of fall in the air, though the sun was bright through the window, and a single late bumblebee hummed slowly in, circled the disappointing wax flowers, and bumbled out again.

It would be winter soon in the mountains. She felt a pang of longing for the high rocks and the clean scent of balsam fir, snow, and mud, the close warm smell of sheltered animals. Much more for her parents, for the sense of her family all about her. Moved by impulse, she turned the page of her sketchbook and tried to capture a glimpse of her father’s face—just a line or two in profile, the straight long nose and the strong brow. And the small curved line that suggested his smile, hidden in the corner of his mouth.

That was enough for now. With the comforting sense of his presence near her, she opened the box where she kept the small lead-foil tubes she had made, the ends folded over to close them, and the little pots of hand-ground pigment, and made up her simple palette. Lead white, a touch of lampblack, and a dab of madder lake. A moment’s hesitation, and she added a thin line of lead-tin yellow, and a spot of smalt, the nearest thing she could get—so far, she thought with determination—to cobalt.

With the color of shadows in her mind, she went across to the small collection of canvases leaning against the wall and, uncovering the unfinished portrait of Jane, set it on the table, where it would catch the morning light.

“That’s the trouble,” she murmured. “Maybe …” The light. She’d done it with an imagined light source, falling from the right, so as to throw the delicate jawline into relief. But what she hadn’t thought to imagine was what kind of light it was. The shadows cast by a morning light sometimes had a faint green tinge, while those of midday were dusky, a slight browning of the natural skin tones, and evening shadows were blue and gray and sometimes a deep lavender. But what time of day suited the mysterious Jane?

She frowned at the portrait, trying to feel the girl, know something of her through Fanny’s words, her emotions.

She was a prostitute. Fanny had said her original drawing had been made by one of the … customers … at the brothel. Surely, then, it had been made at night? Firelight, then … or candlelight?

Her ruminations were interrupted by the sound of Angelina’s laughter and footsteps in the hallway. A man’s voice, amused—Mr. Brumby. And what’s he thinking just now? Is he pleased about the battle, or dismayed?

“Mr. Salomon is in my office, Henrike,” he was saying over his shoulder as he came in. “Take him something to eat, would you? Ah, Mrs. MacKenzie. A very good morning to you, ma’am.” Alfred Brumby paused in the doorway, smiling in at her. Angelina clung to his arm, beaming up at him and shedding white powder on the sleeve of his bottle-green coat, but he didn’t appear to notice. “And how is the work proceeding, might I ask?”

He was courteous enough to make it sound as though he really was asking permission to inquire, rather than demanding a progress report.

“Very well, sir,” Bree said, and stepped back, gesturing, so he could come in and see the head sketches that she’d done so far, arranged in fans on the table: Angelina’s complete head and neck from multiple angles, close view of hairline, side and front, assorted small details of ringlets, waves, and brilliants.

“Beautiful, beautiful!” he exclaimed. He bent over them, taking a quizzing glass from his pocket and using it to examine the drawings. “She’s captured you exactly, my dear—a thing I shouldn’t have thought possible without the use of leg-irons, I confess.”

“Mr. Brumby!” Angelina swatted at him, but laughed, flushing like a June rose.

Lord, that color! But there was no chance of it lasting long enough to study—she’d just have to fix it in mind and try later. She cast a longing glance at the tempting dab of madder on her fresh palette.

Mr. Brumby had a due regard for his own time, though, and thus for hers as well, and after a few more flattering remarks he kissed his wife’s hand and left to meet Mr. Salomon, leaving Angelina still an enchanting shade of pink.

“Sit down,” Bree said, hastily offering a hand. “Let’s see how much we can get done before our elevenses.”

The awe of actual oil paints—perhaps aided by the fumes of turpentine and linseed oil—seemed to calm Angelina, and while she sat with unusual rigidity, it didn’t really matter at the moment, and the studio was temporarily filled with a peaceful silence made up of small noises: children outside, dogs scratching and snuffling, muffled pot-banging and talk from the cookhouse, a thump of feet and murmur of voices overhead as the maids swept out the hearths, emptied the chamber pots, and aired the linens, the jingle and clop of wagons passing in the street.

A single distant boom came in on the breeze from the window and she stiffened for a moment, but as nothing further happened, she relaxed back into the work, though now with the thought of Roger hovering over her left shoulder, watching her paint. She imagined for a moment his arm about her waist and the hairs on the back of her neck prickled, in anticipation of warm breath.

The mantelpiece clock in the drawing room down the hall struck eleven in an imperious chime, and Bree felt her stomach gurgle in anticipation. Breakfast had been at six, and she could do with a slice of cake and a cup of tea.

“R oo wrkg n m mth?” Mrs. Brumby said, moving her lips as little as possible, just in case.

“No, you can talk,” Brianna assured her, suppressing a smile. “Don’t move your hands, though.”

“Oh, of course!” The hand that had risen unconsciously to fiddle with her densely sculpted curls dropped like a stone into her lap, but then she giggled. “Must I have Henrike feed me my elevenses? I hear her coming.”

Henrike weighed about fourteen stone and could be heard coming for some considerable time before she appeared, the wooden heels of her shoes striking the bare floorboards of the hall with a measured tread like the thump of a bass drum.

“I have got to paint that floorcloth you asked for,” Bree said, not realizing that she’d spoken aloud until Angelina laughed.

“Oh, do,” she said. “I meant to tell you, Mr. Brumby says he prefers the design with the pineapples, and could you possibly have it ready by Wednesday-week? He wants to have a great dinner for General Prévost and his officers. In gratitude, you know, for his gallant defense of the city.” She hesitated, her little pink tongue darting out to touch her lips. “Do you think … er … I don’t wish to—to be—that is—”

Brianna made a long, slow brushstroke, a streak of pale pink mingled with cream catching the shine of light on the roundness of Angelina’s delicate forearm.

“It’s all right,” she said, barely attending. “Don’t move your fingers.”

“No, no!” Angelina said, twitching her fingers guiltily, then trying to remember how they’d been.

“That’s fine, don’t move!”

Angelina froze, and Bree managed a gray suggestion of shadow between the fingers while Henrike clumped in. To her surprise, though, there was no sound of rattling coffee things, nor any hint of the cake she’d smelled baking this morning as she dressed.

“What is it, Henrike?” Angelina was still sitting rigidly erect, and while she’d been given permission to talk, she kept her eyes fixed on the vase of flowers. “Where is our morning coffee?”

“Da ist ein Mann,” Henrike informed her mistress portentously, dropping her voice as though to avoid being overheard.

“Someone at the door, you mean?” Angelina risked a curious glance at the studio door before jerking her eyes back into line. “What sort of man?”

Henrike pursed her lips and nodded at Brianna.

“Ein Soldat. Er will sie sehen.”

“A soldier?” Angelina dropped her pose and looked at Brianna in astonishment. “And he wants to see Mrs. MacKenzie? You’re sure of that, Henrike? You don’t think he might want Mr. Brumby?”

Henrike was fond of her young mistress and refrained from rolling her eyes, instead merely nodding again at Bree.

“Her,” she said in English. “Er sagte, ‘die Lay-dee Pain-ter.’” She folded her hands under her apron and waited with patience for further instructions.

“Oh.” Angelina was clearly at a loss—and just as clearly had lost all sense of her pose.

“Shall I go and talk to him?” Bree inquired. She swished her squirrel-fur brush in the turps and wrapped it in a bit of damp rag.

“Oh, no—bring him here, will you, Henrike?” Angelina plainly wanted to know what this visitation was about. And, Bree thought with an internal smile, seeing Angelina poke hastily at her hair, be seen in the thrilling position of having her portrait painted.

The soldier in question proved to be a very young man—in the uniform of the Continental army. Angelina gasped at sight of him and dropped the glove she was holding in her left hand.

“Who are you, sir?” she demanded, sitting up as straight as she possibly could. “And how come you are here, may I ask?”

“I came under flag of truce, to bring a message. Lieutenant Hanson, your servant, ma’am,” the young man replied, bowing. “And yours, ma’am,” turning to Brianna. He withdrew a sealed note from the bosom of his coat and bowed to her. “If I may take the liberty of inquiring—are you Mrs. Roger MacKenzie?”

She felt as though she’d been dropped abruptly down a glacial abyss, freezing cold and ice-blind. Confused memories of yellow telegrams seen in war movies, the memory of siege guns, and where is Roger?

“I … am,” she croaked. Angelina and Henrike both looked at her, grasped the situation at once, and Angelina rushed to support her.

“What has happened?” Angelina demanded fiercely, hugging Bree round the middle and glaring at the soldier. “Tell us at once!”

Henrike’s hands tightened on Bree’s shoulders, and she could hear the whisper of a German prayer behind her. “Mein Gott, erlöse uns vom Bösen …”

“Er …” The young man—he couldn’t be more than sixteen, Bree thought dimly—looked flabbergasted. “I—er—”

Bree got control of her throat muscles and swallowed.

“Has he been killed in battle?” she asked, with what calm she could muster. Oh, God, I can’t tell the kids, I can’t do this … Oh, God …

“Well, yes, ma’am,” the soldier said, blinking. “But how did you know?” The note was still in his hand, half extended. She broke free of the women and snatched it from him, scrabbling frantically to break the seal.

For a moment, the words, written in an unfamiliar hand, swam before her eyes, and her gaze dropped to the signature. A doctor, dear God … And then her eyes rose to the salutation.

Friend MacKenzie.

“What?” she said, looking up at the young soldier. “Who the hell wrote this?”

“Why, Dr. Wallace, ma’am,” he said, shocked by her language. Then, realizing, “Oh. He’s a Quaker, ma’am.” She wasn’t paying attention, though, having returned to the text of the letter.

Thy husband bids me give thee his best and tell thee that he will be with thee in Savannah in three days’ time, God willing. She closed her eyes and took a breath so deep that it dizzied her. He would have written to say so in his own hand but has suffered a minor dislocation of the thumb which prevents his writing comfortably.

He has departed on a brief but urgent errand for Lieutenant-Colonel Marion. In the meantime, he asks whether thee would come to the American camp at Savannah (the soldier who brings this under a flag of truce will escort thee), in order to perform an artistic service of generosity and compassion.

One of the most esteemed of the American cavalry commanders was killed in the battle, and General Lincoln is desirous of having some concrete memento of General Pulaski. Friend Roger offered consolation to the general’s friends, and upon hearing General Lincoln’s lamentation at having no lasting memorial, suggested that, as thee were close at hand, thee might be willing to come and make a drawing of the gentleman, prior to his burial.

At this point, astonishment began to overcome shock and she started to breathe more slowly. She was still light-headed and her heart was fluttering—she put a hand flat on her chest in reflex—but the words on the page had steadied.

Pulaski. The name was vaguely familiar to her; she must have heard it in school. One of the European volunteers who had come to join the American cause. There was something in New York named after him, wasn’t there? And now—now, today, not two hundred years in the past—he had died.

She became aware of Angelina, Henrike, and the young soldier, all staring at her with varying degrees of concern and anxiety.

“It’s all right,” she said. Her voice trembled, and she cleared her throat and shook her head to dispel the dizziness. “It’s all right,” she said again, more firmly. “My husband’s all right.”

“Oh …” Angelina’s face relaxed and she clasped her hands. “Oh, I’m so glad, Mrs. MacKenzie!”

Behind Angelina’s back, Henrike crossed herself solemnly, the fear ebbing from her eyes. The soldier coughed.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said apologetically. “I should have said, straight out. Only I never thought …”

“It’s all right,” Bree said. Her hands were damp, and she picked up a relatively clean rag to dry them, then folded the note carefully and tucked it into her pocket. Her heart was slowing and her brain was starting to work again.

“Mrs. Brumby … Angelina … I need to go with this gentleman. Just for a few hours,” she added quickly, seeing anxiety bloom again in Angelina’s big brown eyes. “It’s a request from my husband; something urgent that I have to do for him. But I’ll come back as quickly as ever I can. Do you think perhaps … the children?” She looked apologetically at Henrike, but the housekeeper nodded vigorously.

“Ja, I vill mind them. I—” The clank of the brass door knocker interrupted her, and she turned sharply. “Ach! Mein Gott!” She moved off with determination, muttering something under her breath that Brianna couldn’t interpret but assumed to be along the lines of “If it isn’t one damned thing it’s another …”

“I’ll have Cook pack you some food. And will Mrs. MacKenzie need a horse?” Angelina turned sharply to the young soldier, who blushed.

“I’ve brought a good riding mule for the lady, ma’am,” he said. “It’s—it’s not a great distance to the—to the camp.”

“The camp?” Angelina said blankly, interrupted in her mental preparations. “To the … American camp? Sure you don’t mean behind the siege lines?”

Well, this could get sticky …

“It’s a matter of friendship, Angelina,” Bree said firmly. “My husband is a minister; he knows a lot of people on both sides of this war, and it’s a friend of his, a surgeon named Dr. Wallace, who asked for me to come.”

“Dr. Wallace … oh! You don’t mean the Dr. Wallace, who operated on the governor?” Angelina was round-eyed by this time, alarmed but excited by the sense of emergency.

“I … possibly,” Brianna said, taken aback. “I haven’t met him yet. I’m sure that—”

“I wish to speak with Mrs. MacKenzie,” a deep male voice said from somewhere down the corridor. “My friend wishes to engage her for a portrait. Lord John Grey recommended that we call upon her—a mutual acquaintance. Please inform her that I have brought a letter of introduction, and—”

“Mein Gott,” Brianna said under her breath. John Grey? What on earth—

The gentleman—his voice was English, educated—was encountering resistance from Henrike. Brianna was already picking up pencils, charcoal sticks, shuffling together a box of things she might need to make the image of a dead man. There wasn’t time …

“Angelina,” she said, over her shoulder. “Could you maybe tell this man that I’ve been called away on an urgent errand? He can come back tomorrow—or … or maybe the next day,” she added doubtfully. No telling how long it might take.

“Of course!” Angelina headed purposefully for the hall, and Brianna closed her eyes and tried to think. The kids, first. At least she could tell them that Daddy was coming to see them soon. Then … what on earth to wear for a commission of this sort? It would have to be her rough painting gown, for riding a mule and whatever the conditions might be in a siege camp … Would they have trenches? she wondered.

The voices in the hallway had risen and there were more of them. Angelina and Henrike were arguing with what sounded like two men now, both of whom seemed set upon seeing Mrs. MacKenzie, come hell or high water.

There wasn’t time for this. Impatient, she stepped out into the hall, intending to send the visitors on their way. The morning sun flooded in through the open front door, silhouetting what seemed like a mob of shadow-people, black bodies, faceless heads, limbs outlined in sparking light as they moved. It was one of those sudden, beautiful sights that happen without warning, and she paused for a single heartbeat to fix it in her mind. Then one of the taller figures moved, turning, and she saw in outline the same long, straight nose, the same high brow that her fingers had drawn so recently.

“Wait!” she said. She had no memory of striding down the hall but was suddenly face-to-face with him and there was no more obscuring shadow, but morning sun lighting a shockingly familiar pair of blue and slanted eyes fixed on hers.

“Bloody hell,” he said, completely startled. “It’s you!”

“YOUR BROTHER?” ANGELINA was excited beyond all bearing. “And you didn’t know he was here, nor he you? How amazing!”

“Yes,” Bree said. “Yes … amazing.” In a daze, she extended a tentative hand toward him. William blinked once, grasped the hand, and bowed over it, kissing it lightly. The feel of his breath on her turpentine-chilled hand raised the hairs on her forearm, and she tightened her fingers on his. He straightened up but didn’t pull away; his fingers turned and covered hers.

“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” he said, and she could see—and feel—his eyes searching her face, just the way she was searching his.

“Oh, not at all,” she said, meaning quite the opposite. He caught that, smiled a little, and let go of her hand. “I—did you say that Lord John sent you?”

“Yes, he did, the conniving old sod. Er … begging your pardon, ma’am.” He took his gaze off her for a moment, turning toward the other gentleman. This was a tall, very broad young man of mixed blood, with a remarkable cap of close-cropped tight curls of a soft reddish brown.

“Allow me to present my friend, Mr. John Cinnamon,” William said. Angelina and Henrike curtsied immediately in a bloom of skirts. Mr. Cinnamon looked quite horrified, but after a quick glance at William, he bowed deeply and murmured, “Your most obedient servant … ma’am. And … er … ma’am.”

“Er … ma’am? Mrs. MacKenzie?” Lieutenant Hanson, quite eclipsed by William and Mr. Cinnamon, who were each a good foot taller than he was, struggled manfully to regain Brianna’s attention. “We must be going, ma’am, or we shan’t arrive in time for you to … er … do it.” He cleared his throat.

“And who are you, may I ask?” William was frowning at the lieutenant’s blue-and-buff uniform. “What on earth are you doing here?”

Bree cleared her own throat, loudly.

“Lieutenant Hanson came to fetch me for an urgent commission,” she said. “I—he’s right. We need to leave, as soon as I’ve packed my things and changed clothes. Told the children. Will you … come with me, back to my studio? We can talk while I put things together.”

BY UNSPOKEN CONSENSUS, William came alone, leaving his friend and Lieutenant Hanson to the tender mercies of Angelina and Henrike, who were already twittering about cakes, coffee, and perhaps slices of cold ham …

Brianna’s stomach gurgled at the thought of ham sandwiches, but she suppressed it for the moment and turned to William. My brother.

“I wanted to tell you,” she said at once, closing the door and standing with her back against it. “When we first met. Do you remember? On the quay in Wilmington. Roger—my husband—was with me, and Jem and Mandy. That was—I wanted you to meet them, see them, even if you didn’t know we were … yours.”

He looked away and put a hand on the table, touching the wood only with his fingertips. She felt the solid door against her shoulder blades and understood the need of physical support.

“Mine?” he said softly, looking down at the scatter of papers and brushes on the table.

“I should probably say something polite about ‘only if you want us,’” she said. “But it’s—”

“A bit late for that,” he finished, and looked up at her, his eyes wary but direct. “To lie about the truth, I mean.” His mouth turned up a little at one side, but she wasn’t sure it was a smile. “Particularly when it’s as plain as the nose on your face. And mine.”

She touched her own nose by reflex, and laughed, a little nervously. His nose was hers, and the eyes, too. He was tanned, though, with dark-chestnut hair clubbed in a queue, and while his face was very like her—their—father’s, his mouth had come from somewhere else.

“Well. I do apologize, though. For not telling you.”

He looked at her, expressionless, for the space of four heartbeats; she felt each small thud distinctly.

“I accept your apology,” he said dryly. “Though in all honesty, I’m glad you didn’t tell me.” He paused, then, apparently thinking this might sound ungracious, added, “I wouldn’t have known how to respond to such a revelation. At the time.”

“And you do now?”

“No, I bloody don’t,” he said frankly. “But as my uncle recently pointed out, at least I haven’t blown my brains out. When I was seventeen, I might have.”

A hot flush rose in her cheeks. He wasn’t joking.

“How flattering,” she said, and to avoid looking at him she turned and resumed the ordering of her sketchbox. She heard him snort a little, under his breath, and then his footsteps, close behind her.

“I apologize,” he said quietly. “I didn’t mean that with any derogatory reference to—to you, or your family …”

“Your family, you mean,” she said, not turning round. The silverpoint pencil? No, charcoal and graphite; silverpoint was too delicate for this.

He cleared his throat. “I meant it solely with regard to my own situation,” he said formally. “Which has nothing whatever to do with—”

He stopped abruptly. She swung round to look at him and found him staring at the portrait of Jane, propped against the wall, as though he had quite literally seen a ghost. He’d gone pale under his tan and his hands were half clenched.

“Where did you get that?” he said. His voice was hoarse, and he cleared his throat violently. “That picture. That … girl.”

“I made it,” she said simply. “For Fanny.”

He closed his eyes for an instant, then opened them, still fixed on the painting. He turned away, though, and she caught the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed, hard.

“Fanny,” he said. “Frances. You know her, then. Where is she? How is she?”

“She’s fine,” Bree said firmly, and, crossing the few feet of floor between them, laid a hand on his arm. “She’s with my parents, in North Carolina.”

“You’ve seen her?”

“Yes, of course—though actually, I haven’t seen her since early September. We stopped for a bit in Charleston—Charles Town,” she corrected, “to visit my … well, I suppose he’s my stepbrother, and Marsali, well, she’s sort of my stepsister, but they’re not exactly …”

The wariness had come back into William’s eyes. He didn’t pull away from her, though, and she felt the warmth of his arm through the cloth of his coat.

“Are these people also my relations?” he asked, as though fearing the answer might be yes.

“I suppose so. Da adopted Fergus—he’s French, but … well, that doesn’t matter. He was an orphan, in Paris. Then later Da married … well, that doesn’t matter, either, but Marsali—she’s Fergus’s wife—and her sister, Joan, they’re Da’s stepdaughters, so … um. And Fergus and Marsali’s children—they have five now, so they’d be …”

William took a step back, detaching himself, and put up a hand.

“Enough,” he said firmly. He pointed a long forefinger at her. “You, I can deal with. Nothing else. Not today.”

She laughed and picked up the ratty shawl she kept in the studio for work during the chilly hours of the morning.

“Not today,” she agreed. “I have to go, William. Shall we—”

“Your commission,” he said, and shook his head as though to settle his wits. “What is it?”

“Well, if you must know, I’m going to the American siege camp to draw pictures of a dead cavalry commander.”

He blinked—and then she saw his eyes lift, his gaze going to the portrait of Jane. The sun had moved, and the picture stood in shadow. She stopped, shawl halfway around her shoulders, startled by the look on his face. It lasted no more than a moment, though, and then he turned and picked up her sketchbox, tucking it under his arm.

“Are portraits of the dead a specialty of yours?” he asked, with a slight edge.

“Not yet,” she replied, with an equal edge. “Give me my sketchbox.”

“I’ll carry it,” he said, and reached to open the door for her. “I’m coming with you.”

94 Outriders

THE FOG OFF THE river had finally lifted, and the sun was warm.

To her relief, the mule Lieutenant Hanson had brought for her was tall and rangy; rawboned and rabbit-eared, but of a friendly disposition. She’d had visions of herself riding a wizened donkey, her feet dragging in the dust, surrounded by large men on big horses, towering above her. As it was, William and John Cinnamon both possessed sound but unremarkable geldings, and the lieutenant himself rode another, smaller mule. The lieutenant wasn’t happy.

“I am not allowing my sister to go unaccompanied into an army camp,” William had said firmly, untethering his own horse outside the Brumbys’ house.

“Mais oui,” Mr. Cinnamon said, and bent to give Brianna a foot up into her saddle.

“But—I will be escorting her! General Lincoln is expecting me to bring him Mrs. MacKenzie!”

“And Mrs. MacKenzie he will get,” she assured the lieutenant, settling her skirts and taking up the reins. “Though apparently with outriders.”

Lieutenant Hanson had given William a look of deep suspicion, and no wonder, she thought. William sat tall and easy in the saddle, and wore a shabby, travel-stained suit that hadn’t been fashionable to start with, but someone with much less experience than Lieutenant Hanson would have recognized him at a glance as a soldier—and not only a soldier. An officer accustomed to command. The fact that William’s accent and bearing were at odds with his very commonplace dress was probably even more upsetting.

The lieutenant’s thoughts were clear to her—and, she thought, probably to William, too, though his face was politely impassive. Was he a British soldier in mufti? A spy? Was he a British soldier looking to turn his coat and take up a commission with the Continentals? She saw Mr. Hanson’s gaze dart to the bulk of John Cinnamon, and away. And what about him?

But there was no choice; Lieutenant Hanson had been sent to fetch an artist, and couldn’t well come back without her. Shoulders hunched around his ears, he turned his mule’s head toward White Bluff Road.

“Tell me about General Pulaski,” Brianna suggested, coming up beside him. “It was only this morning that he was killed?”

“Oh. Er … no, ma’am. That is to say,” Hanson said, obviously striving for exactness, “he did die this morning, on the ship. But he—”

“What ship?” she asked, startled.

“The Wasp, I think it’s called.” Hanson cast a quick look over his shoulder and lowered his voice. “The general was shot up two days ago, runnin’ his cavalry in betwixt two batteries, but—”

“He led a cavalry charge … into cannon?” Evidently Lieutenant Hanson hadn’t lowered his voice quite enough, for the question came from William, riding close behind. He sounded incredulous and slightly amused, and Bree turned round and glared at him.

He ignored the glare, but urged his horse up toward Hanson’s mule. The lieutenant was carrying his flag of truce, and at this, moved it instinctively, pointing it at William in the manner of a jousting lance.

“I meant no insult to the general,” William said mildly, raising one hand in negligent defense. “It sounds a most dashing and courageous maneuver.”

“It was,” Hanson replied shortly. He raised his flag a little and turned his back on William, leaving brother and sister riding side by side, John Cinnamon bringing up the rear. Bree gave William a narrow-eyed look that strongly suggested he should keep his mouth shut. He eyed her for a moment, then looked away with a patently bland countenance.

She wanted to laugh almost as much as she wanted to poke him with something sharp, but lacking her own flag of truce, she settled for an audible snort.

“À vos souhaits,” Mr. Cinnamon said politely behind her.

“Merci,” she said, with equal politeness. William snorted.

“À tes amours,” Mr. Cinnamon said, sounding amused. Nothing more was said until they arrived a few minutes later at the edge of the city. A detachment of Scottish Highlanders was guarding the end of the street, even though the street itself was guarded by a couple of large redoubts dug by the British, visible on the side toward the river. The sight of the kilted soldiers, and the sound of their voices speaking Gaelic to one another, gave her a peculiar twisting sensation inside. A camp kettle was boiling over a tiny fire, and the scent of coffee and toasted bread made her mouth water. It was a long time since breakfast, and in the haste of leaving, they’d left behind Henrike’s packet of food.

She must have been gazing hungrily at a few men eating by the fire, for William nudged his horse nearer and murmured, “I’ll see you’re fed as soon as we reach the camp.”

She glanced at him and nodded thanks. There was nothing amused or offhand in his manner now. He sat relaxed in his saddle, reins loose in his hand as Lieutenant Hanson talked to the Scottish officer in command, but his eyes never left the soldiers.

They passed through the checkpoint in silence. She could feel the eyes of the soldiers on her skin, and the hair prickled on her scalp. The enemy …

The American siege lines lay no more than a quarter mile away, the camp perhaps a half mile beyond, but Lieutenant Hanson led them immediately inland, in order to circle the American redoubts and the French artillery, dragged overland from the ships. The guns were silent—thank God—but she could see them plainly, dark shapes beginning to emerge from the morning’s fog, still thick here near the river.

“You were telling me about General Pulaski,” she said, pushing up beside the lieutenant. She didn’t want to look at the cannon and think of Jem and Mandy in the city—or the holes and burnt roofs she’d seen in the houses of Savannah nearest the river. “He was on a ship, you said?”

The lieutenant had relaxed a little, once out of Savannah, and was pleased to tell her of the dreadful but gallant death of Casimir Pulaski.

“Yes, ma’am. ’Twas the Wasp, as I said. When the general went down, his men got him back directly, of course, but ’twas plain he was bad hurt. Dr. Lynah—he’s the camp surgeon, ma’am—took the grapeshot out of him, but then General Pulaski said as how he wanted to go aboard ship. I don’t know why—”

“Because the French aren’t going to hang about much longer,” William interrupted. “It’s hurricane season; D’Estaing will be nervous. I imagine Pulaski knew that, too, and didn’t want to risk being left behind, wounded, if—when, I mean—the Americans abandon the siege.”

Hanson turned in his saddle, pale with rage.

“And what would you know of such matters, you—you dandy prat?”

William looked at him as he might regard a humming mosquito, but answered politely enough.

“I have eyes, sir,” he said. “And if I understand aright, General Pulaski is—was—the Commander of Horse for the entire American army. Is that right?”

“It is,” Hanson replied, between gritted teeth. “So what?”

Even Bree could tell that this was purely rhetorical, and William merely lifted one shoulder in a shrug.

“I want to hear about the general’s cavalry charge,” John Cinnamon said, interested. “I’m sure he must have had a good reason,” he added tactfully, “but why did he do that?”

“Yes, I’d like to hear that, too,” Bree put in hastily.

Lieutenant Hanson glared at William and John Cinnamon, but after a muttered remark in which she caught only the words “… fine pair of backgammon players …” He stiffened his shoulders and fell back a little, so that Brianna could ride up alongside him on the narrow road. The countryside here was flat and open, but the earth was sandy and thickly grown with a sort of coarse, rough-edged grass that caught at the horses’ feet.

She could see that the road, though, had been heavily used of late. Hoofprints, footprints, horse droppings, wagon wheels … the road was churned and muddy, the verges trodden down by marching troops, moving fast. A sudden shiver went up her back as the wind changed and she caught the scent of the army. A feral smell of sweat and flesh, metal and grease, tinged with the stink of lye soap, manure, half-burnt food, and gunpowder.

Mr. Hanson had relaxed a little, seeing that he had his audience’s full attention, and was explaining that the Americans and their French allies had planned and executed an assault on the British forces at the Spring Hill redoubt—“You can see that from here, ma’am,” pointing toward the sea. As part of that assault, General Pulaski’s cavalry was to follow the initial infantry attack, “so as to cause confusion, d’you see, amongst the enemy.”

The cavalry charge had evidently accomplished that modest goal, but the overall attack had failed, and Pulaski himself had been cut down when caught in the crossfire between two British batteries.

“A great pity,” William said, with no sense of sarcasm whatever. Lieutenant Hanson glanced at him, but accepted the remark with a brief nod.

“It was. I heard that the Wasp’s captain meant to bury the general at sea—but one of his friends who’d gone aboard with him said, no, they mustn’t, and came ashore with his body just after dawn this morning, in a longboat.”

“Why would his friend not want him to be buried at sea?” she asked, careful not to imply any criticism with the question.

“His men,” William said, before Lieutenant Hanson could answer. He spoke with a sober certainty. “He’s their commander. They’ll need to bid him farewell. Properly.”

The lieutenant had risen slightly in his stirrups, ready to be indignant at the interruption, but hearing this, subsided and gave Brianna a brief bow.

“Just so, ma’am,” he said.

PAST THE ARTILLERY, they wound their way through an acre of so of mud-spattered tents and soldiers, the air around them a strange combination of sea tang, the acrid ghost of gunpowder, and a breath of autumn rot from the harvested fields beyond. Brianna took a deep, inquisitive breath and let it out hastily. Latrine trenches.

They were headed toward a cluster of large tents—this must be General Lincoln’s field headquarters—that billowed and moved gently in the morning air, like a group of friends with their heads together, talking. This pleasant illusion was shattered in the next instant, as a battery of cannon went off behind them.

Brianna started and jerked at the reins. Her mule, evidently used to this kind of thing, jerked impatiently back with a toss of his head. Lieutenant Hanson’s mule and the horses were less phlegmatic about the noise and shied violently, nostrils flaring.

“Getting rather a late start this morning, aren’t you?” William said to Hanson, bringing his horse round in a circle to calm it. And who taught you to ride, brother? she thought, seeing him. Lord John was a good horseman, but Jamie Fraser had been a groom at the estate where William had grown up.

“The fog,” Hanson replied shortly. “Cannon fire disperses it.” He turned his mule’s head toward one of the large tents. “Come. You’re to see Captain Pinckney.”

She found herself next to William, as they resumed their plodding advance, and leaned close to speak to him quietly.

“You said they’d left it late—the artillery firing, you meant?”

“Yes.” He glanced at her, one dark eyebrow raised. “You needn’t worry; it’s only a gesture.”

“I wasn’t—” she began, but stopped. She was worried, worried that perhaps her father had been mistaken, that the siege would continue … “Well, all right, I was,” she conceded. “What do you mean, a gesture?”

“They’ve lost,” William said, with a quick glance toward Lieutenant Hanson. “But they haven’t lifted the siege officially. Likely General Lincoln is arguing with D’Estaing about it.”

She stared at him.

“You seem to know a bloody lot about it, for a guy who just rode into town.”

“A guy?” The brow flicked higher, but relaxed as he dismissed this. “I was a soldier, you know. And I know what a military camp feels like, what it should feel like. This one is …” He lifted a hand toward the ragged rows of tents. “They aren’t admitting it—hence the bombardment—but … Tighten your rein; it’s coming again.”

It did, another volley of defiant artillery, but the mules and horses merely danced and snorted this time, not taken by surprise.

“But?” she said, neatly returning to her place at his side. He gave her a sidelong smile.

“But they know the end is coming,” he finished. “But as for my knowledge of the situation, I will admit it’s more than observation. My fath—” A brief, fierce grimace crossed his face and disappeared. “Lord John told me about the battle. He wasn’t in any doubt as to the outcome, nor am I.”

“So the siege is about to lift?” she persisted, wanting certainty.

“Yes.”

“Oh, good,” she said, and let her shoulders slump in relief. He gave her an odd, interested look, but said no more and urged his horse into a faster walk.

CAPTAIN PINCKNEY WAS perhaps thirty and probably good-looking, though sleeplessness and defeat had made him haggard. He blinked as Bree alighted from her mule without assistance and turned to greet him; she topped him by four or five inches. He closed his eyes for an instant, opened them again, and bowed to her with impeccable courtesy.

“Your most obedient, Mrs. MacKenzie, and I am to give you the utmost compliments of General Lincoln and the troops. I am also to convey his deep sense of obligation and gratitude for your kind assistance.”

He spoke like an Englishman, though she thought there was a southern softness in his vowels. She didn’t try to curtsy, but bowed to him in return.

“I’m very glad to help,” she said. “I understand there may be some urgency in the … er … situation. Perhaps you could show me where General Pulaski is at the moment?”

Captain Pinckney glanced at William and John Cinnamon, who had dismounted and handed their reins to the orderly accompanying the captain.

“William Ransom, sir, your servant.” William bowed and, straightening, nodded at Cinnamon. “My friend and I have come to escort my sister. We will remain, and see her back when her errand is finished.”

“Your sister? Oh, good.” Captain Pinckney looked substantially happier at the revelation that he wouldn’t be solely responsible for her. “Your servant, sir. Follow me.”

The guns went off again, a ragged volley. This time, she didn’t jump.

THE DEAD GENERAL lay in a small, worn green tent on the riverbank, apart from the camp. This placement might have been a sign of respect, but there was a practical aspect to it, too, as Brianna discovered when Captain Pinckney removed a crumpled but clean handkerchief from his sleeve and handed it to her before courteously raising the tent flap for her.

“Thank y— Oh, my God.” A few late flies rose sluggishly from the corpse, wafted on a rising stink that shrouded him more thoroughly than the clean sheet over his face and upper body.

“Gangrene,” William said behind her, under his breath. “Jesus.” John Cinnamon coughed heavily, once, and fell silent.

“I do apologize, Mrs. MacKenzie,” Pinckney was saying. He’d taken hold of her elbow, as though afraid she might either bolt or faint.

“I—It’s all right,” she managed, through the folds of the handkerchief. It wasn’t, but she stiffened her spine, tensed her stomach muscles, and edged up to the makeshift bier on which they’d laid Casimir Pulaski. William stepped up beside her at once. He didn’t say anything or touch her, but she was glad of his presence.

With a sidelong glance to be sure she wasn’t about to faint, Captain Pinckney drew down the sheet.

The general was pale, eyes closed, his skin faintly mottled with purplish undertones and a greenish tinge about the jawline. She’d have to adjust that; they might want a death portrait, but she was pretty sure they didn’t actually want him to look really dead—just … romantically dead. She swallowed and tasted the thick, sweetly nasty air, even through the cloth. She coughed, breathed out strongly through her nose, and moved closer.

“Romantic” is the word, she thought. He had a high brow (and a slightly receding hairline …), a small dark mustache, neatly waxed to make the ends turn up, and his features were an interesting mix of strength and delicacy. He had no expression; he must have lapsed into unconsciousness before he died (and a good thing if he did, poor man …).

“Did he—does he have a wife?” she asked, remembering her own feelings when she’d thought for an instant that Roger—

“No,” Pinckney said. His eyes were fixed on Pulaski’s face. “He never married. No money, of course. And no interest, really, in women.”

“His family in Poland?” Brianna ventured. “Perhaps I should make a likeness for them, as well?”

Captain Pinckney lifted his gaze then, but only to exchange a brief glance with Lieutenant Hanson.

“He didn’t speak of them, ma’am,” the lieutenant said, and bit his lip, looking down at the dead man. “He—” He swallowed, audibly. “He was kind enough to say that we—we were his family.”

“I see,” she said quietly, and did. “For all of you, then.”

She glanced down at the body, absently noting the details of the clean dress uniform in which they’d clothed him and wondering morbidly exactly where and how he’d been wounded. Could she ask?

There was a deep gash in Pulaski’s head, starting just above one temple, the wound a reddish black, with tiny crumbs of blackened skin along its edges. Looking closer, where the gash disappeared under the general’s hair, she thought she perceived … without thinking, she put out a finger and felt the cold skull give under her touch, light as it was. She heard Captain Pinckney draw in a sharp breath and hastily removed the finger.

“Grapeshot?” William asked, sounding mildly interested.

“Yes, sir,” Captain Pinckney replied, with an air of somber rebuke that she felt was aimed at her. “He was struck in several places—in the body and head.”

“Poor man,” Brianna said softly. She felt a strong urge to touch him again—to lay a hand gently on his chest, covered by the silver-banded red facing of his uniform—the uniform had a high collar, made of some kind of white fur … no, it was lambswool, lined with grubby pink velvet—but felt she couldn’t, under the censorious gaze of the captain.

“The doctor—our doctor—thought he might be saved.” Pinckney had lowered his voice discreetly, talking directly to William. “He was conscious, speaking … but he insisted upon being taken aboard the Wasp, and the navy doctor …” He cleared his throat explosively and took a deep breath. “It was the wound in his groin that went bad, or so I was told.”

“A great shame, sir,” William said, and clearly meant it. “A very gallant gentleman.”

“Yes, sir,” the captain said, and she could tell that he had warmed toward William.

“I understand that my sister is to make a likeness of the general,” William said, and she looked up. He nodded to her, then tilted his head toward the captain. “Would you tell Captain Pinckney what things you require for the task, sister?”

Hearing the word “sister” in his voice again gave her an odd little bloom of warmth in the middle of her chest.

“And while things are being prepared,” he added, before she could speak, “perhaps she might be given something to eat—we came at once in answer to General Lincoln’s request.”

“Oh. Of course. Certainly.” The captain looked over his shoulder. “Lieutenant Hanson—will you see to finding something for the lady and her escorts?”

“To be eaten somewhere else,” William said firmly.

LIGHT. THAT WAS the first thing. And somewhere to sit. A place to set her implements. A cup of water.

“That’s really all I need,” she said, with a glance back toward the silent tent. She hesitated for a moment. “I don’t know whether you were thinking that you’d like—eventually, I mean—like a painting of the general, or—or were you thinking just a drawing, or drawings? The message just said a likeness, I mean, and I can do whatever you like, though all I can do today is to make sketches and notes for a … more formal likeness.”

“Oh.” Captain Pinckney drew a deep breath, frowning, and she saw his eyes slide sideways for an instant, then back to her. He straightened his shoulders. “I don’t believe that has been decided as yet, Mrs. MacKenzie. But I do assure you that—that you will be compensated adequately for whatever … form the likeness may take. I will guarantee that personally.”

“Oh. I wasn’t worried about that.” She flushed slightly with embarrassment. “I hadn’t expected to be paid—er … I mean … I intended from the start to do this just as a gesture of … goodwill. In support of the—the army, I mean.”

All four men stared at her, with varying degrees of astonishment. Her flush grew hotter.

It hadn’t occurred to her that Lord John hadn’t told William she was a rebel. Dr. Wallace undoubtedly knew her political allegiance, but perhaps had thought it more discreet not to mention it. And she’d been staying in a Loyalist household in a city under British occupation, employed by a very prominent Loyalist.

Well, the cat was out of the bag now. She gave William a level look and raised one brow. He raised one back at her and looked away.

It was midafternoon; the light was going already; it would be dark in a couple of hours. There would be candles, Captain Pinckney assured her, as many as she wanted. Or a lantern, perhaps?

“Perhaps,” she said. “I’ll make as many sketches as I can. Er … how long …?” Given the stench of the dead man, she imagined they must be wanting to get him underground as quickly as possible.

“We’ll bury him with the proper honors tomorrow morning,” Captain Pinckney said, correctly interpreting her question. “The men will come this evening, after supper, to pay their respects. Um … will that be all right?”

She was taken aback, but only for a moment, imagining this process of visitation.

“Yes, perfectly all right,” she said firmly. “I’ll draw them, too.”

95 Pozegnanie

SHE SAT, UNOBTRUSIVE IN the shadows. Head bent, the soft shush of her charcoal lost in the clearing of throats, the rustle of clothing. But she watched them, in ones and twos and threes, as they ducked under the open tent flap and came to the general’s side. There each man paused to look on his face, calm in the candlelight, and she caught what she could of the drifting currents that crossed their own faces: shadows of grief and sorrow, eyes sometimes dark with fear, or blank with shock and tiredness.

Often, they wept.

William and John Cinnamon flanked her, standing just behind on either side, silent and respectful. General Lincoln’s orderly had offered them stools, but they had courteously refused, and she found their buttressing presences oddly comforting.

The soldiers came by companies, the uniforms (in some cases, only militia badges) changing. John Cinnamon shifted his weight now and then, and occasionally took a deep breath or cleared his throat. William didn’t.

What was he doing? she wondered. Counting the soldiers? Assessing the condition of the American troops? They were shabby; dirty and unkempt, and in spite of their respectful demeanor, few of the companies seemed to have any notion of order.

For the first time, it occurred to her to wonder just what William’s motive in coming had been. She’d been so happy at meeting him that she’d accepted his statement that he wouldn’t let his sister go unaccompanied into a military camp at face value. Was it true, though? From the little Lord John had said, she knew that William had resigned his army commission—but that didn’t mean he’d changed sides. Or that he had no interest in the state of the American siege, or that he didn’t intend to pass on any information he gained during this visit. “I was a soldier,” he’d said. Clearly he still knew people in the British army.

The skin on her shoulders prickled at the thought, and she wanted to turn round and look up at him. A moment’s hesitation and she did just that. His face was grave, but he was looking at her.

“All right?” he asked in a whisper.

“Yes,” she said, comforted by his voice. “I just wondered whether you’d fallen asleep standing up.”

“Not yet.”

She smiled, and opened her mouth to say something, apologize for keeping him and his friend out all night. He stopped her with a small twitch of fingers.

“It’s all right,” he said softly. “You do what you came to do. We’ll stay with you and take you home in the morning. I meant it; I won’t leave you alone.”

She swallowed.

“I know you did,” she said, just as softly. “Thank you.”

There was an audible stir outside. The procession of shuffling soldiers had stopped. She sat up straight and felt the two men behind her shift. She caught a low murmur from William.

“This will be General Lincoln, I expect.”

John Cinnamon made an inquisitive huffing noise but said nothing, and an instant later the tent flap was pulled well back and a very fat, stocky man in full Continental uniform, complete with cocked hat, limped in, followed by a close-packed group of officers in a variety of uniforms. It had begun to rain, and a welcome breath of cool, damp air came in with them.

She slipped her sketches into the writing desk and took out a few fresh sheets, but didn’t return to her work right away; she didn’t want to draw attention to herself. This … this was history, right in front of her.

Her heart had been quiet through the evening, but now it sped up and began to thump heavily, in an unpleasant way that made her worry that it was about to run amok. She pressed a hand hard against the placket of her stays, and mentally uttered a fierce Stay! as though her heart were a large, unruly dog.

The general stopped short beside the body, coughed—everyone did, the smell was growing worse, despite the cool night—and slowly removed his hat. He turned to murmur something to the man at his shoulder—a Frenchman? She thought Lincoln was speaking French, though very awkwardly—and she caught another whiff of rain and night, and saw the droplets that he shook from his hat make spots in the shadowed dust.

Lincoln beckoned three of the men forward. French, said the objective watcher in the back of her mind, and her pencil made rapid strokes, rough indications of embroidery, epaulets, full-skirted blue coats, red waistcoats and breeches …

The three men—naval officers?—stepped forward, one in front, his lavishly gold-laced hat held solemnly to his bosom. She heard William make a low humming noise in his throat; was this Admiral d’Estaing himself?

She leaned forward a little, not sketching now but memorizing, storing away the play of firelight through the tent’s wall on the officer’s face, the pitter of rain on the canvas above. The admiral—if that’s who he was—was slender but round-faced, jowly, but with oddly childlike wide eyes and a plump little mouth …. He murmured a few words in formal French, then leaned forward and placed a hand on General Pulaski’s chest.

The general farted.

It was a long, loud, rumbling fart, and the night was filled with a stench so terrible that Brianna huffed out all the air in her lungs in a vain effort to escape it.

Someone laughed, out of sheer shock. It was a high-pitched giggle, and for a moment she thought she’d done it herself and clapped a hand to her mouth. The tent dissolved into embarrassed, half-stifled laughter punctuated by gasps and choking as the entire rotting essence of General Pulaski’s insides filled the atmosphere. Admiral d’Estaing turned hastily aside and threw up in the corner.

She had to breathe … She grunted, as though the smell had punched her, and her stomach puckered. It was like breathing rancid lard, a fatty foulness that slicked the inside of her nose and throat.

“Come on.” William grabbed her by one arm, John Cinnamon by the other, and they had her out of the tent in a ruthless instant, knocking General Lincoln out of their way.

It was raining hard outside by now and she gulped air and water, breathing as deep as she could.

“Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God …”

“Was that worse, do you think, than the dead bear in the wood above Gareon?” John Cinnamon asked William, in a meditative voice.

“Lots,” William assured him. “Oh, Jesus, I’m going to be sick. No, wait …” He bent over, arms folded over his stomach, and gulped heavily for a moment, then straightened up. “No, it’s all right, I’m not. Are you?” he asked Brianna. She shook her head. Cold water was running down her face and her sleeves were pasted to her arms, but she didn’t care. She would have jumped through a hole in Arctic ice to cleanse herself of that. A slime of rotten onions seemed to cling to her palate. She cleared her throat hard and spat on the ground.

“My sketchbox,” she said, wiping her mouth and looking toward the tent. There had been a general hasty exodus, and men were scattering in every direction. Admiral d’Estaing and his officers were jostling down a footpath toward a large, lighted green tent that glowed like an uncut emerald in the distance. General Lincoln, his hat full of rain, was looking about helplessly as his adjutants and orderlies tried in vain to keep a torch lighted. General Pulaski’s resting place, by contrast, was deserted and pitch dark.

“He put the candles out,” said William, and sniggered very briefly. “Good thing the tent didn’t explode.”

“That would have been quite fun,” Cinnamon said, with obvious regret. “And fitting, too, for a hero. Still, your sister’s drawings … I’ll toss you to see who goes in to get them.” He fumbled in his pocket and withdrew a shilling.

“Tails,” said William at once. Cinnamon tossed, caught the coin on the back of his hand with a slap, and peered at it.

“I can’t see.” If there was a moon, it was covered with rainclouds, and the pouring night was dark as a wet black blanket.

“Here.” Brianna reached out and ran her fingertips over the wet, cold face of the coin. And it was a face, though she couldn’t tell whose. “Heads,” she said.

“Stercus,” William said briefly, and, unwinding his wet stock, rewound it around his lower face and plunged down the path toward the dark tent.

“Stercus?” Bree repeated, turning to John Cinnamon.

“It means ‘shit’ in Latin,” the big Indian explained. “You aren’t a Catholic, are you?”

“I am,” she said, surprised. “And I do know some Latin. But I’m pretty sure ‘stercus’ isn’t in the Mass.”

“Not one I’ve ever heard,” he assured her. “I thought you wouldn’t be Catholic, though. William isn’t.”

“No.” She hesitated, wondering just how much this man knew about William and the complications of their shared paternity. “You … er … have you been traveling with William for some time?”

“A couple of months. He didn’t tell me about you, though.”

“I suppose he wouldn’t have.” She paused, not sure whether to ask what—if anything—William had told him.

Before she could decide, William himself was back, gasping and gagging, the sketchbox under his arm. He thrust it at her, yanked the stock down off his face, turned aside, and threw up.

“Filius scorti,” he said, breathless, and spat. “That was the worst …”

“Mrs. MacKenzie?” A familiar voice came out of the darkness, interrupting him. “Is that you, ma’am?” It was Lieutenant Hanson, drenched to the skin, but holding a dark lantern. The rain plinked on its metal, and water vapor drifted through the slit of light.

“Over here!” she called, and the lantern turned in their direction, the rain suddenly visible needles of silver falling through the light.

“Come with me, ma’am,” Lieutenant Hanson said, reaching them. “I’ve found some shelter for you and your … um …”

“Thank God,” William said. “And thank you, too, Lieutenant,” he added, bowing.

“Of course. Sir,” Hanson said uncertainly. He lifted the lantern, showing them the path, and Bree thanked him and started down it, followed by William and Cinnamon. She heard a small noise from one of them, though, and turned round. Lieutenant Hanson had stopped, looking toward the tent where Casimir Pulaski lay in darkness.

Hanson lifted the lantern a little, in salute, and in a low, clear voice said, “Pozegnanie.” Then he turned with decision and came toward his waiting charges.

“It means ‘farewell’ in Polish,” he said to Brianna, matter-of-factly. “He used to say that to us, when he left us for the night.”

96 One Thing of Value

THE SMALL WOODEN STRUCTURE to which Lieutenant Hanson escorted them might originally have been a chicken coop, Brianna thought, ducking beneath the flimsy lintel. Someone had been living in it, though; there were two rough pallets with blankets on the floor, a chipped and stained pottery ewer and basin between them, and an enameled tin chamber pot in much better condition.

“I do apologize, ma’am,” Lieutenant Hanson said, for the dozenth time. “But half our tents have blown away and the men are holding down the rest.” He held his lantern up, peering dubiously at the dark splotches seeping through the boards of one wall. “It seems not to be leaking too badly. Yet.”

“It’s perfectly fine,” Brianna assured him, hunching out of the way so her two large escorts could squeeze in behind her. With four people inside the shed, there was literally no room to turn around, let alone lie down, and she clutched her sketchbox under her cloak, not wanting it to be trampled.

“We are obliged to you, Lieutenant.” William was bent nearly double under the low ceiling, but managed a nod in Hanson’s direction. “Food?”

“Directly, sir,” Hanson assured him. “I’m sorry there’s no fire, but at least you’ll be out of the rain. Good night, Mrs. MacKenzie—and thank you again.”

He squirmed past the bulk of John Cinnamon and disappeared into the blustery night, clutching his hat to his head.

“Take that one,” William said to Brianna, jerking his chin at the bed sack farthest from the leaking wall. “Cinnamon and I will take the other in shifts.”

She was too tired to argue with him. She laid down her sketchbox, shook the blanket, and when no bedbugs, lice, or spiders fell out, sat down, feeling like a puppet whose strings had just been cut.

She closed her eyes, hearing William and John Cinnamon negotiate their movements, but letting the low voices wash over her like the wind and rain outside. Images crowded the backs of her eyes, the trampled grass of the shoreline trail, the suspicious faces of the Highlanders at the edge of the city, the ever-changing light on the dead man’s face, her brother jerking his chin in exactly the way her—their—father did … dark streaks of water and white streaks of chicken shit on silvered boards in the lanternlight … light … it seemed a thousand years since she’d watched the morning sun glow pink through Angelina Brumby’s small sweet ear … and Roger … at least Roger was alive, wherever he was right now …

She opened her eyes on darkness, feeling a hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t fall asleep before you eat something,” William said, sounding amused. “I promised to see you fed, and I shouldn’t like to break my word.”

“Food?” She shook her head, blinking. A sudden glow rose behind William, and she saw the big Indian set down a clay firepot next to the stubby candle he’d just lit. He tilted the candle over the bottom of the upturned chamber pot, then stuck it into the melted wax, holding it until the wax hardened.

“Sorry, I should have asked if you wanted to piss first,” Cinnamon said, looking at her apologetically. “Only there’s no place else to put the candle.”

“No,” she said, and shook her head to clear it. “That’s all right. Is there anything to drink?” She’d drunk almost nothing during the day and evening and felt dry as a winter husk, in spite of the prevailing damp.

Lieutenant Hanson had managed to find several bottles of beer, some slices of cold roast pork, rimmed with grease, a loaf of dry, dark bread, a pot of strong mustard, and a large lump of crumbling cheese. She’d never eaten anything better in her life.

They didn’t talk; the men ate with the same single-mindedness as she did, and, the last crumb finished, she eased herself down flat on the blanket, wrapped her cloak around her, and fell asleep without a word.

She dreamed, caught in the uneasy chill between sleep and waking. She dreamed of men. Men as shadows, slow with grief. Men at work, their sweat running down bare arms, scarred backs … Men walking in ranks, their uniforms black with wet, splashed with mud, no telling who they were … a tiny boy rooting at her breast with great determination, unaware that he was helpless.

She woke every now and then, briefly, but seldom broke the surface of the dream and fell back slowly into sleep, with the scents of men and chickens lending odd, stumpy wings to a man flying upward into the sun …

She woke slowly to the sensation of wings beating in her chest.

“Shit,” she said, but softly, and pressed her palm hard against her breastbone. As usual, this accomplished nothing, and she lay still, breathing as shallowly as possible, hoping it would stop. She was lying on her side, and her brother’s face was a foot from hers, shadowed but visible as he lay asleep on the other pallet.

The rain had stopped, the wind had dropped, and she could hear water dripping from the eaves of the shed. Moonlight filtered through cracks in the boards, flickering on and off as clouds raced past. And the flutter in her chest eased and her heart bumped two or three times, then resumed its usual rhythm.

She took a cautious breath and sat up slowly, not to wake William, but he was dead asleep, long body sprawled limp with exhaustion.

“There’s water,” said a soft voice to her right. “Do you want some?”

“Please.” Her tongue clicked from dryness and she reached toward the vast shadow that must be John Cinnamon. He was sitting on the upturned chamber pot; he leaned forward and put a small canteen into her hand.

The water was fresh and cool, with a pleasant metallic taste from the tin, and she drank thirstily, just managing to stop without draining the canteen entirely. She handed it back, reluctantly, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Thank you.” He made a small grunt in response, and leaned back; the boards of the shed wall creaked in protest. Now she really did need to piss, she realized. Well, no way round it.

She got clumsily to her feet, and Cinnamon rose too, much more gracefully, and seized her by the arm to stop her falling.

“I—just—I’m going outside for a moment.”

“Oh.” He let go her arm, hesitant, and half-turned toward the upside-down chamber pot as though to right it.

“No, it’s all right. The rain’s stopped.” The door of the shed was stuck, swollen with the wet; he reached past her and freed it with a jolt of his palm. Fresh cold air rushed into the shed, and she heard a rustle as William stirred.

“I’ll go first.” Cinnamon whispered in her ear as he somehow slid past her. “You wait ’til I call.”

“But—” But he was gone, leaving the door slightly ajar. She cast a quick glance at William, but he had sunk back into slumber; she could hear a faint snore from the darkness and smiled at the sound.

As quietly as she could, she pushed the ramshackle door open and stuck her head out. The night spread overhead in a silent rush, bright-edged clouds racing past a bright half-moon.

She could hear the drip of water more clearly out here, falling from the leaves of a big tree that stood by the chicken shed. She could hear a steadier splash of water, too, and smiled again. John Cinnamon had taken the opportunity for discreet relief of his own.

She turned in the other direction and retired under the shadow of the big tree, in spite of the drips, where she accomplished her own business without ceremony.

“I’m just here,” she said, emerging in time to forestall Cinnamon’s calling her. He turned from the shed door sharply, then nodded, seeing her.

He made a slight inquisitive motion toward the shed, but she shook her head.

“Not yet. I need a little air.” She tilted back her head and breathed, grateful for the freshness of the night and for the stars appearing and vanishing overhead, vivid in the patches of black night scoured by the passing clouds.

John Cinnamon kept her company, though he didn’t speak. She could feel his presence, large and reassuring.

“Have you known my—my brother long?” she asked at last.

He lifted a shoulder in equivocation.

“Yes and no,” he said. “We spent a winter together in Quebec, when? Maybe three years ago. I was a guide for him, a scout. Then we met again by accident … three months ago? About that.”

“Where did you meet this time?” she asked, curious. “In Canada?”

“Oh. No. In Virginia.” He turned his head at a sudden cracking noise, but then dismissed it. “A broken branch falling. It was a place called Mount Josiah. Do you know it?”

“I’ve heard of it. What brought you there?”

He made a small humming sound, but nodded, deciding to tell her.

“Lord John Grey. Do you know his lordship?”

“Yes, very well,” she said, smiling at the memory. “Was he in Virginia, then?”

“No,” Cinnamon said thoughtfully, “but your brother was.”

“Oh. Was he looking for Lord John as well?”

“I don’t think so.” He stood silent for a moment, then added, “He was looking for other things. Maybe he’ll tell you; I can’t.”

“I see,” she said, wondering. Shocked—and moved—by meeting William, she hadn’t had time to wonder, let alone ask, what had led him to Savannah, why he had resigned his army commission, what he thought about his two fathers … what he thought about her. Who he was.

Her father had said almost nothing about William, and she hadn’t asked. Time enough, she’d felt. But the time had evidently come.

Still, she didn’t want to pry or discomfit John Cinnamon by asking whether—or what—he knew about Jamie Fraser.

“William said that he—or rather you—wanted a portrait made,” she said, changing to what seemed safer ground. “I’d be very happy to do that. Er … is it meant for some lucky lady?”

That surprised him, and he laughed, a low, warm sound.

“No, I don’t have a woman. I mean to send it to my father,” he said.

“Your father? Where is he?” The clouds had shredded and the light of a setting moon showed her his broad face, soft-eyed now, and thoughtful. He would be wonderful to paint.

“London,” he said, surprising her. He saw that he had surprised her and ducked his head, abashed.

“I am a bastard, of course,” he said, with a tone of apology. “My father was a British soldier; he got me on an Indian woman in Canada.”

“I … see.” There didn’t seem anything else she could say, and he gave her a small, shy smile.

“Yes. I thought—for many years, I thought that Lord John was my father. It was him who took me when my mother died—I was an infant—and gave me to the holy fathers at the mission in Gareon. He sent money for my keeping, you see.”

“That … seems very like him,” she said, though in fact she would never have thought of him doing such a thing.

“He is a kind man. Very kind,” he added firmly. “William brought me to Savannah to talk to him—William thought Lord John to be my father, too—and it was his lordship who told me the truth. My real father abandoned me; such things are common.”

His voice was matter-of-fact; probably such things were common.

“That doesn’t mean it’s right,” she said, angry at the unknown father.

He shrugged.

“But Lord John told me his name, and a direction. I know how to—to send the picture to him.”

“You want a portrait for a man who abandoned you? But—why?” She spoke cautiously. This young man was patently a realist; did he really think that a portrait of his half-breed child, now grown, would move the sort of selfish, coldhearted oaf who—

“I don’t think he will acknowledge me,” he assured her. “I don’t want him to. I don’t want money or anything he might value. But he has one thing that I want, and I hope that if he sees my face, he will give it to me.”

“What on earth is that?”

Even the dripping from the trees had ceased by now. The night was so still that she could hear him swallow.

“I want to know my name,” he said, so low she scarcely heard him. “I want to know the name my mother called me. He’s the only one who knows that.”

Her throat was too tight to speak. She stepped toward him and put her arms around him, holding him as his mother might have, had she lived to see him grown.

“I promise you,” she whispered when she could speak. “Your face will break his heart.”

He patted her back, very gently, and stepped back.

“You’re very kind,” he said. “You should sleep now.”

97 An Excellent Question

JOHN CINNAMON TACTFULLY LEFT William and Brianna soon after they had made their way back through the debris of the abatis line into the city, saying that he had business at the riverfront and would see William later at Lord John’s house.

“I like your friend a lot,” Brianna said, watching Cinnamon’s broad back disappear into the dappled sunlight of a square whose name she didn’t know.

“So do I. I only hope—” William checked himself, but his sister turned to him, a sympathetic expression on her face.

“Me, too,” she said. “You mean London, and this Matthew Stubbs?”

“Malcolm, but yes.”

“What sort of man is he?” she asked curiously. “Have you met him?”

“Yes, twice that I recall. Once at Ascot and once at one of my f—one of Lord John’s clubs.” He glanced at her to see whether she’d noticed, but of course she had.

“It’s okay—all right, I mean—to call Lord John your father,” she said, the expression of sympathy transferring itself to him. “Da wouldn’t mind.”

Blood rose in his cheeks, but he was saved from saying what he thought about Jamie Fraser’s preferences in the matter by Brianna’s instantly returning to the subject of Malcolm Stubbs.

“So, what’s he like, this Stubbs?”

He couldn’t help a smile at the suspicious tone of “this Stubbs.”

“To look at, very aptly named. Short and thick—with hair just like Cinnamon’s, though it’s a sort of a sandy blond. It may be gray by now, though,” he added. “He always wears a wig in public.”

She lifted her brows at him—thick brows, for a woman, and red to boot, but very expressive.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly, in response to the brows’ question. “There’s the one thing that might help. Pa—Papa, I mean,” he said, giving her a brief glare that dared her to comment, “told me that he has a black wife. Stubbs has, I mean,” he amended. “Not Papa.”

She blinked.

“In London?”

She sounded so shocked that he laughed.

“Why should the place make a difference? I imagine she’d be just as surprising here”—he waved a hand at the stately, shattered houses surrounding St. James Square—“if not more so.”

“Hm!” she said. Then, curiously, “Did he free her from slavery, and then marry her?”

“She wasn’t a slave,” William said, somewhat surprised. “My father said that he—he and Stubbs both, he meant—had met her in Cuba. Stubbs’s first wife had just died of some sort of fever, and he brought this woman—Inocencia, that’s her name, I knew it was some sort of Spanish virtue—brought her back to London with him and married her. Anyway,” he said, bringing the conversation back to its point, “I’m sure that Papa said Stubbs had children by this woman.”

“You mean he wouldn’t necessarily turn his back on John Cinnamon because of being …” She waved a hand, indicating Cinnamon’s noticeable Indian-ness.

“Yes.” William felt doubtful, despite the firmness of his answer. Having children of an unusual hue would cause comment, but wasn’t necessarily a scandalous thing, provided they were legitimate, which the junior Stubbses certainly were. Having an enormous and very obviously extra-legal adult Indian turn up and claim parentage might well be a horse of a different color. And he found that he very much wanted John Cinnamon not to be hurt.

Brianna made a clicking noise, and her horse moved obligingly out of the shade of the live oaks and into Jones Street. There were a large number of people out, William saw; overnight, the sense of fearful oppression had lifted with the siege, and while the smell of burning still tinged the air and broken tree limbs were scattered everywhere, people had to eat and business must be done. The normal tide of daily life was coming in apace.

“Will you go with him? To London?” Brianna asked over her shoulder. She nudged her horse with both heels, reining him out of the way of an oncoming wagon filled with barrels and sweetly smelling of beer.

“London?” William repeated. “I don’t know.” He didn’t, and let so much uncertainty show in his voice that his sister pulled up a bit to wait for him, then nodded toward a lane that ran behind the Baptist church, indicating that he should follow her.

“It’s not my business,” she said, as they passed into the cold shadow of the church, “but—what are you planning to do? I mean, now the siege is lifted, I suppose you can go anywhere you want …”

Excellent question.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “Truly, I don’t.”

She nodded.

“Well, you have options, don’t you?”

“Options?” he said. He was amused, but the word still gave him a sense that he’d swallowed a live eel. You have no idea, sister mine …

“Lord John says you own a small plantation in Virginia,” she pointed out. “If you didn’t want to go back to England, I suppose you could live there?”

“It’s possible, I suppose.” He could hear the doubt in his own voice, and so could she; she glanced sharply at him, eyebrow lifted.

“The place is a ruin,” he said, “though the fields have been kept in fairly good condition. But the war—” He gestured at the nearest house, pocked by cannonballs and its bright-blue paint scorched and fire-blackened on one side. “I think it might not just flow round me like a rock in the water, you know.”

Something odd moved over her face, and he looked at her in considerable surprise.

“You’ve thought of something?” he asked.

“Yes, but it’s not—I mean—it’s not relevant right this minute.” She waved away whatever the thought had been. “I know Lord John and your uncle—the duke still thinks of himself as your uncle, I know—”

“So do I,” William said, wryly, but with a small sense of relief at the thought. Uncle Hal truly was a rock, over whom floods and torrents had often passed, leaving him unmoved.

“They want you to go back to England,” Brianna said. “I was wondering, myself—you’re an earl; doesn’t that mean you have … people? Land? Things that need taking care of?”

“There is an estate, yes,” he said tersely. “I—what the devil?” His horse had stopped dead, and Brianna’s mount was trying to turn around in the alley, whuffling at some disturbing scent.

Then his feebler olfactory sense perceived it, too—a stink of death. A wagon stood at the end of the alley, its sides draped with black cloth, this threadbare and bleached by age into rusty folds. The wagon was unhitched, and there were neither horses nor mules in evidence, but a small group of roughly clad men, both black and white, stood in a patch of sun just beyond the alley’s mouth, in attitudes of watchful expectation.

There was a sound of voices in the distance, subdued, but several of them, a murmuring that was punctuated abruptly by a piercing wail that made the waiting men flinch and look away, shoulders hunched.

Brianna turned in her saddle, looking over her shoulder and gathering up her reins, evidently wanting to go back—but there were people coming into the alley behind them, mourners in dark veils and armbands. Bree glanced at William, and he shook his head and nudged his own horse toward hers, jockeying toward the side of the alley in order to give the newcomers space to pass. This they did, a few sparing a glance at the riders—one or two with eyes widened at sight of Brianna astride with her skirts hiked up and an indecent expanse of calf showing—but most so focused on present grief as to be indifferent to spectacle.

Movement near the wagon drew William’s attention back; they were bringing out the body—bodies.

He whipped off his hat, pressed it to his heart, and bowed his head. To his astonishment, Brianna did the same.

There were no coffins; this was a funeral of the poor. Two small bodies wrapped in rough shrouds were borne out on planks and gently lifted into the wagon.

“No! No!” A woman, who must be the children’s mother, broke from the arms of her supporters and ran to the wagon, trying to climb in, screaming, “Noooo!” at the top of her voice. “No, no! Let me go with them, don’t take ’em away from me, no!”

A wave of horrified, stricken friends closed round the woman, pulling her back, trying by sheer force of compassion to quiet her.

“Oh, dear God,” Brianna said in a choked voice. William glanced at her and saw that tears were running down her face, her eyes fixed on the pitiful scene, and he recalled with a shock the children he had heard playing outside the Brumby house—hers.

He reached out a hand and grasped her arm—she let go of the reins with that hand and seized his as though she were drowning, clinging for dear life, remarkable strength for a woman. Several men had come to take up the shafts, and the wagon’s wheels creaked into motion, the small procession beginning its mournful journey. The mother had ceased wailing now; she moved as though sleepwalking after the wagon, stumbling as her knees gave way every few steps in spite of the support of two women who held her up.

“Where is her husband?” Brianna whispered, more to herself than to William, but he answered.

“He’ll likely be with the army.” Much more likely, he was dead as well, but his sister probably knew that as well as he did.

Her own husband … God knew where he was. She’d avoided answering him when he’d asked, but it was apparent that MacKenzie was a rebel. If he’d been in the recent battle—but no, he’d survived that, at least, William reminded himself. She didn’t ask about him, while we were in camp … why the devil not? Still, he could feel a small constant tremor running through his sister’s hand, and he squeezed back, trying to give her reassurance.

“Monsieur?” A high-pitched voice by his left stirrup startled him and he jerked in the saddle, making his horse shift and stamp.

“What?” he said, looking down incredulously. “Who the devil are you?”

The small black boy—Christ, he was wearing the remnants of a dark-blue uniform, so he must be, or recently had been, a drummer—bowed solemnly. His face, ear, and hand were black with soot on one side, and there was a deal of blood on his clothes, but he didn’t seem to be wounded.

“Pardon, monsieur. Parlez-vous Français?”

“Oui,” William replied, astonished. “Pourquoi?”

The child—no, he was older than he looked; he stood up straight and looked William in the eye, maybe eleven or twelve—coughed up a wad of black phlegm and spat it out, then shook his head as though straightening his wits.

“Votre ami a besoin d’aide. Le grand Indien,” he added as an afterthought.

“Is he saying something about John Cinnamon?” Brianna asked, frowning. She brushed at the tears streaking her face and sat up straight, gathering her own wits.

“Yes. He says—I take it you don’t speak French?”

“Some.” She gave him a look.

“Right.” He turned to the boy, who was swaying gently to and fro, staring at something invisible, plainly in the grip of exhaustion. “Dites-moi. Vite!”

This the boy did, with admirable simplicity.

“Stercus,” William muttered, then turned to his sister. “He says a press-gang from the French ships heard Cinnamon speaking French to someone on the shore; they followed him and tried to take him. He got away from them, but he’s hiding—the boy says in a cave, though that seems unlikely … anyway, he needs help.”

“Let’s go, then.” She gathered up her reins and looked behind her, judging the turning space.

He’d almost given up being surprised by her, but evidently not quite.

“Are you insane?” he inquired, as politely as possible. “Steh,” he added firmly to his own horse.

“What language are you speaking now?” she said, seeming impatient.

“‘Steh’ is German for ‘stand still’—when talking to a horse—and ‘stercus’ means ‘shit,’” he informed her crisply. “You have children, madam—like the ones you have just been weeping over. If you don’t want yours to be similarly afflicted, I suggest you go home and tend them.”

The blood shot up into her face as though someone had lit a fire under her skin and she glared at him, gathering up the loose ends of her reins in one hand in a manner suggesting that she was considering lashing him across the face with them.

“You little bas—” she began, and then pressed her lips together, cutting off the word.

“Bastard,” he finished for her. “Yes, I am. Go home.” And turning his back on her, he reached down a hand to the boy and lifted him ’til he could get a foot on the stirrup and scramble up behind.

“Où allons-nous?” he asked briefly, and the boy pointed behind them, toward the river.

A large feminine hand grabbed his horse’s bridle. The horse snorted and shook his head in protest, but she held on.

“Has anyone ever told you that being reckless will get you killed?” she asked, imitating his polite tone. “Not that I care that much, but you’ll likely get this kid, as well as John Cinnamon, killed too.”

“Kid?” was all he could think of saying, for the collision of words trying to get out of his mouth.

“Child, boy, lad, him!” she snapped, jerking her chin toward the little drummer behind him.

“Quel est le problème de cette femme?” the boy demanded indignantly.

“Dieu seul sait, je ne sais pas,” William said briefly over his shoulder. God knows, I don’t.

“Will you bloody let go?” he said to his sister.

“In a minute, yes,” Brianna said, fixing him with a dark-blue glare. “Listen to me.”

He rolled his eyes but gave her a short, sharp nod and a glare in return. She sat back in her saddle a bit but didn’t let go.

“Good,” she said. “I walked up and down that shore nearly every day, before the Americans showed up, and my k—my children poked into every cranny in those bluffs. There are only four places that could possibly be called caves, and only one of them is deep enough that somebody Cinnamon’s size could have a hope of hiding in.”

She paused for breath and wiped her free hand under her nose, eyeing him to see if he was paying attention.

“I hear you,” he said testily. “And?”

“And that one isn’t a cave at all. It’s the end of a tunnel.”

The flush of temper left him abruptly.

“Where’s the other end?”

She smiled slightly and let go of the bridle.

“See? You may be reckless, but I knew you weren’t stupid. The other end is in the cellar of a tavern on Broad Street. They call it the Pirates’ House, and so far as I know from the talk in town, there’s a good reason for that. But if I were you—”

He snorted briefly and gathered up his reins. The end of the alley was clear now, emptied of wagon, mourners, and small shrouded bodies.

“You are my sister, madam,” he said, and with no more than an instant’s hesitation, added, “and I’m glad of that. But you’re not my mother. In fact, I’m not stupid, and neither is John Cinnamon.” He paused for an instant, then added, “Thank you, though.”

“Good luck,” she said simply, and sat watching as he turned and rode away.

BRIANNA DIDN’T LEAVE the alley at once. She watched William ride out, back stiff with determination, the boy clinging to his waist. From the looks of it, the child had never sat on a horse before, was terrified, and was damned if he’d admit it. Between him and William, she thought John Cinnamon might have chosen worse, in terms of allies. She quivered with the urge to follow William, not to let him go alone, but he was—damn him!—right. She couldn’t risk something happening to her, not with Jem and Mandy …

She gathered her reins and clicked her tongue; more people were coming through the square, toward the church. Soberly dressed, walking close together. This church had no bell, but one was ringing, tolling, somewhere across the city. More funerals, she thought, and her heart squeezed tight in her chest. Slowly, she rode out among the mourners and turned up Abercorn Street.

How many people can you worry about at once? she wondered. Jem, Mandy, Roger, Fanny, her parents, now William and John Cinnamon … She was still shaken by the dead children and their mother; this, on top of a night spent in the marshes with Casimir Pulaski, made her feel as though her skin were about to peel off. A sudden memory of her last sight of the general surged into her mind, and a high, completely unhinged giggle escaped her. Just as suddenly, bile rose in her throat and her stomach turned over. “Oh, God.”

She fought down the surge of nausea, but saw that people were staring at her and realized that, in addition to laughing like a loon, she was still clutching her tricorne in one hand, her hair blowing loose, and her legs scratched and mosquito-bitten, bare from knees to absurdly elaborate shoe tops—she’d taken off her wet stockings the night before and forgotten to find them in the morning. Suddenly embarrassed by the sidelong glances and whispers, she straightened up defiantly, shoulders back. A big hand clutched the bare calf of her leg, and she yelped and swatted whoever it was with her hat, making the horse shy violently.

Who it was was Roger, who shied violently, too.

“Christ!”

“Shi— I mean S-word!” she said, grappling her horse back under control. “What did you do that for?”

“I called, but ye didn’t hear me.” He slapped the horse companionably on the withers and reached up a hand to her. He looked tired, and his eyes were creased with worry. “Come down and tell me what the devil’s been happening. Did ye go to the American camp? I shouldn’t have asked ye to— God, ye look like death.”

Her hands were actually shaking, and in fact, she realized, she felt rather like death. When her feet touched the ground, she nearly fell into his arms, hugging him, and began to live again.

98 Minerva Joy

LORD JOHN RETURNED FROM a visit to the local hospital, where the British wounded—along with those Savannah inhabitants injured by flying splinters or house fires—were being treated, to find his brother sitting at his desk in the study, looking as though he’d been struck by lightning.

“Hal?” John said, alarmed. “What’s happened?”

Hal’s mouth opened, but only a small wheezing noise came out. There was an opened letter on the desk, looking as though it had traveled some distance through rain and mud, and possibly been trampled by a horse along the way. Hal pushed this wordlessly toward him, and he picked it up.

John dropped the letter as though it were on fire.

“Oh, Jesus. Hal …”

His brother had risen from the desk and was swaying, his face blank with shock and the same grimy, crumpled white as the letter.

John seized his brother, holding him as hard as he could. Hal felt like a tailor’s dummy in his arms, save for a deep shudder that seemed to pass through him in long, rolling waves.

“No,” Hal whispered, and his arms tightened round John’s shoulders with a sudden, convulsive strength. “No!”

“I know,” John whispered. “I know.” He rubbed his brother’s back, feeling the bony shoulder blades under the red broadcloth, repeating, “I know,” at intervals, as Hal shuddered and gasped for breath.

“Shh,” John said, rocking slowly from foot to foot, taking his brother’s reluctant weight with him. He didn’t expect Hal to shush, of course; it was just the only vaguely soothing thing he could think of to say. The next natural thing would have been to say, “It’ll be all right,” but naturally, it never would.

He’d been here before, he thought dimly. Not in a cluttered office; it had been in the sala of an old house in Havana, a painted angel with spread wings fading on the plaster wall, who watched with compassion as he held his mother as she wept over the death of his cousin Olivia and her small daughter.

His throat had a lump the size of a golf ball in it, but he couldn’t give way now, any more than he had done in Havana.

Hal was starting to wheeze in earnest; John could hear the gasp of his inhaled breath, the faint whistle as it went out.

“Sit down,” John said, and steered him to a chair. “You’ve got to stop now. Any more and you won’t be able to breathe and I bloody don’t know what to do about that. So you just bloody have to stop,” he added firmly.

Hal sat, elbows on his knees and head in his hands. He was still shuddering, but the first shock of grief had passed, and John heard him now blowing out his breath and hauling it in again in a rhythmic, measured way that must be the technique Claire Fraser had taught him for not dying of asthma. John was—not for the first time in their shared acquaintance—grateful to her.

He pulled up another chair and sat down, feeling as though his own insides had been scooped out. For a few seconds, he couldn’t think. About anything. His mind had gone completely blank. He was gazing beyond Hal to a small table, though, and on it was a bottle of something. He got up and fetched the bottle, pulled the cork with his teeth, and took a gulp of the contents, not caring what it was.

It was wine. He swallowed, breathed, then took Hal’s hand and wrapped it round the bottle.

“Dottie’s alive,” he said, and sat down. “Remember, she’s alive.”

“Is she?” Hal said, between breaths. “She was—is—ill. Very ill. He said so.”

“Hunter is a physician and a good one,” John said firmly. “He won’t let her die.”

“He let my granddaughter die,” Hal said passionately, forgetting to breathe. He coughed and choked, his grasp whitening on the neck of the wine bottle.

“The child was his daughter,” John said, taking it from him. “He didn’t let her die. People do die, and you know it. Stop talking and bloody breathe, will you?”

“I know … better … than any … one,” Hal managed, and succumbed to a fit of coughing. A hank of hair had come loose, and strands were sticking to his face. The dark hair was streaked with white; John couldn’t tell how much was powder.

Hal did know, of course. His first child had died at birth, along with its mother. That had been many years ago, but such things never went away altogether.

“Breathe,” John said sharply. “We have to fetch Dottie, don’t we? I can’t find her and then tell her first thing that you’re dead.”

Hal made a sound that wasn’t a laugh, but might have been if he’d had more breath. He pursed his lips and blew, though the resulting air was only a thread. Then his chest relaxed; it was no more than a fraction, but it was visible, and John took a deep breath of his own. Hal stretched out a hand toward the letter on the desk, and John fetched it for him.

He picked the ball gingerly apart, smoothing it flat on the table.

“Why didn’t … he fucking … write the bloody … date?” Hal demanded, straightening up and wiping a hand roughly down his face. “We’ve no … idea how long … it’s been since it—since it happened. Dottie could be dead by now!”

John forbore to point out that if that were the case, Hal’s knowing the date of Hunter’s letter would make no difference. It wasn’t a moment for logic.

“Well, we need to go and get her anyway, don’t we?”

“Yes, and now!” Hal flung himself round, wheezing loudly and glaring at the things around him, as though daring any of them to get in his way.

Perhaps just a little logic …

“I don’t know what the army would do to Hunter if they catch him,” John said. “But I know damn well what they’d do to you, should you just—go. And so do you,” he added needlessly.

Hal had got himself in hand. He glared at the letter, mouth tight and wet eyes burning, then looked up at John. He pursed, blew, and gasped, “Well, what does he mean … you can ‘discern’ his friend’s … name? Why you?”

“I don’t know. Let me see that again.” He took the letter, gently, feeling the weight of sorrow it bore. He’d seen enough letters stained with tears—sometimes his own—to know the depth of Hunter’s anguish.

He had a good idea what Hunter meant by “discern.” The man had traveled in company with Jamie Fraser, he knew that much—and he knew that Fraser had been a Jacobite spy in Paris, among other things. The word “spy” gave him a disturbing echo of Percy, but he pushed it aside, holding the paper up to the light, in case there should be secret writing in vinegar or milk—sometimes you could see the faint difference in reflection on the paper’s surface, even though the words would come into view only when heated.

It was simpler than that. There were words written on the back of the letter, written lightly with a pencil. It looked like a brief paragraph written in Latin. The words were indeed Latin, but strung together without meaning. Even Hal could have recognized it as a coded message, though he wouldn’t have known what to do with it.

He smiled a little, despite the seriousness of the situation. It was a cipher, with “friend” as the key.

Five minutes’ work gave him the name: Elmsworth, Wilkins Corner, Virginia.

“We’ll send William,” he said to Hal, with as much confidence as he could manage. “Don’t worry. He’ll bring her back.”

WILLIAM FELT AS though he’d been struck in the chest by a cannonball. His mouth opened and closed—he could feel it, automatic as the wooden jaws of a marionette—but nothing came out for a moment.

“That’s very terrible,” he managed at last, in a strangled croak. “Sit down, Papa. You’re going to fall.”

His father did look as though someone had cut his strings. Dead white, and his hand trembled when William pushed a glass of brandy into it. He looked round the inside of the little shed William shared with John Cinnamon as though he’d never seen it before, then sat down and drank the brandy.

“Well,” he said, coughed, and cleared his throat. “Well.”

“Not all that well,” William said, peering at him. “How’s Uncle Hal?” His own sense of shock was beginning to subside, though there was still an iron weight in his chest.

“As you might expect,” his father said, and took a deep, wet breath. “Off his head,” he added more clearly, having taken another large swallow. “Wanting to ride off directly and fetch Dottie himself. Not that I blame him.” He took another. “I want to do that, too. But I doubt that Sir Henry would see it that way. War, you know.”

War, indeed. Half the regiment was set to move on Tuesday, to join Clinton’s troops at Charles Town. The weight had shifted lower in his body, and he could breathe now.

“I’ll go, of course,” William said, and in a softer tone, added, “Don’t worry, Papa. I’ll bring her back.”

99 Is. 6:8

“I’M SORRY,” ROGER SAID at last. “I had to …”

“It’s all right,” she said, keeping her voice steady. “You’re back. That’s all that matters.”

“Well, maybe not all that matters,” he said, the ghost of laughter in his voice. “I haven’t eaten since breakfast yesterday and I smell like a rubbish fire.”

His stomach growled loudly in agreement and she laughed, letting go of him.

“Come on,” she said, turning back to her horse. “When we get to the house, just say hi to the kids and wash. I’ll go and tell Henrike that we need food—”

“A lot of food.”

“—a lot of food. Go!”

She found both Henrike and Angelina in the kitchen with Cook, buzzing excitedly. They pounced on her at once, wide-eyed and full of questions. Had Mr. MacKenzie seen the battle? Was he wounded? What had he said about the fighting? Had he seen General Prévost there, or Lord John?

She felt as though Angelina had punched her in the stomach. She knew Lord John had been in the battle, with his brother. She just hadn’t thought through what that meant. Of course they had fought. Whether either of the Greys had fired a gun or drawn a sword, they had undoubtedly given orders, helped light the fuse that had blown up and killed American besiegers.

She heard Lord John’s voice in memory, light and reassuring: “We are His Majesty’s army. We know how to do this sort of thing.”

All the blood had left her face and she felt cold and clammy. It hadn’t occurred to her that they would think Roger had been with the British army. But of course they would.

It hadn’t occurred to her that men she knew, liked, admired had killed other men for whom she felt the same, just days ago. She felt the cold, stinking darkness of the tent where Casimir Pulaski lay dead by lanternlight, and her right hand clenched, feeling the aching muscles and the film of sweat between the pencil and her skin as she’d sketched through the night, capturing sorrow, grief, rage, and love as the soldiers came to say farewell.

Pozegnanie.

She managed to ask for food to be sent, for someone to arrange a bath for Roger, and went up to her room, placing each foot carefully on the steps as she climbed the stairs. Roger’s discarded clothes lay on the floor by the window, and the acrid smell of war hung in the air.

Gingerly, she gathered up the remains of Roger’s black suit. It was filthy, coat and breeches mud-spattered from shoulder to knee, and gray sand sifted from the skirts when she shook it. There was a large, rough patch on the breast of the coat where something had dried, nearly the same color as the black broadcloth, but when she dabbed it with a wet rag, the cloth came away red and with a faint, meaty smell of blood.

There was something small and hard in the breast pocket. She hooked a finger inside and pulled out a brownish lump that proved to be a tooth, split, carious, and with half its root missing.

With a small huff of distaste, she set it on the table and returned to the coat—there had been something else in the pocket, a paper of some kind.

It was a small note, folded once and stuck together with the blood that had saturated the coat, but the blood had dried and she was able to separate the folds by delicate prying, flaking away the blood with the blade of her penknife.

She shouldn’t have been surprised; she’d smelled the powder smoke when she’d embraced him. Blood was a good deal more immediate, though. He hadn’t just been near the battle, he’d been in it, and she wasn’t sure whether to be more angry or more scared at the thought.

“What’s wrong with you?” she muttered under her breath. “Why, for God’s sake?”

She’d got the paper halfway open—far enough to see her own name. Very carefully, she broke the last of the dried blood and spread the stained and crumpled paper out on the table.

Slowly, she sat down on the bed, with its clean, safe counterpane and spotless pillows, and read it again. She sat for a few minutes, breathing slowly, deeply, calming herself.

She was by no means a Bible scholar, but she knew this passage; it turned up at least once a year in the readings at Mass, and the young priest who had taught religion at her school had used it when talking to the eighth-graders about vocations.

It was from Isaiah, the story in which the prophet is awakened from sleep by an angel, who touches a hot coal to his lips to cleanse him, to make him capable of speaking God’s word. She thought she knew what came next, but she rose and went down the quiet hallway to the library, where she knew she’d seen a Bible in the shelves. It was there, a handsome book bound in cool black leather, and she sat down and found what she was looking for with no trouble.

Isaiah, chapter 6, verse 8:

She could feel her lips moving, repeating “send me,” but they moved silently and the words rang only in her own ears.

Send me.

She sat down, the open book heavy on her knee. Her hands were sweating, but her fingers were cold, and she fumbled, turning the page.

“Jesus Christ,” she whispered. Roger had heard that call, and he’d answered it. She swallowed painfully, past the lump in her throat.

“You’re an idiot,” she whispered, but it was herself she spoke to, not him. She’d told him that she’d do everything she could to help him, if he was sure that being a minister was truly his vocation. She’d been schooled by priests and nuns; she knew what a vocation was. Only she hadn’t, really.

I’m sorry, he’d written in his note to her.

“No, I’m sorry,” she said aloud and, closing the book, sat for a few minutes, staring into the fire. The house was quiet around her, wrapped in that peaceful hour before the preparations for supper began.

She’d imagined him doing what he did on the Ridge, though more officially: listen to people who needed someone to hear them, advise the troubled, comfort the dying, christen children, marry people and bury them … but she hadn’t imagined him comforting men dying on a battlefield, in the midst of cannon fire, nor burying them afterward and coming home bloody, with a stranger’s shattered teeth in his pocket. But something had called to him, and he’d gone to do it.

And he had, thank God, come back to her. Come in need of her. She blew out a long, slow breath and, rising, went to slide the Bible back into its place.

“Well, there’s a rhetorical question,” she said. “There isn’t anybody else who can do that for him, is there?” She took a breath, and clean air from the sea came in through the open window.

“Send me.”

100 The Power of the Flesh

THE SIEGE WAS LIFTED, the city largely untouched by battle, save cannonball holes and minor fires in the houses closest to the fighting. Savannah was a gracious city, and its grace was still evident, as people resumed their lives with very little fuss.

John Grey picked up the handkerchief that Mrs. Fleury had just dropped for the second time and handed it back, again with a bow. He didn’t think it was flirtation—if it was, she was very bad at it. She was also a good quarter century his elder, and while she was still sharp of both eye and tongue, he’d noticed how the spoon rattled in her saucer when she’d picked up her teacup earlier in the afternoon.

If her hands were palsied, though, her mind was not.

“That girl,” she said, pursing her lips toward Amaranthus, who stood on the other side of the room, in conversation with a young man he didn’t know. “Who is she?”

“That is Viscountess Grey, ma’am,” Grey said courteously. “My brother’s daughter-in-law.”

Mrs. Fleury’s slightly red-rimmed eyes narrowed in closer inspection.

“Where’s her husband?”

Grey felt the usual qualm in his innards at mention of Ben, but answered smoothly.

“My nephew had the misfortune to be captured by the rebels at the Brandywine, ma’am. We have had little news of him since, but hope that he will soon return to us.” Even if it’s in a box … Hal couldn’t stand much more uncertainty—and he would have to write to Minnie soon.

“Hmph.” The old lady raised her quizzing glass—yes, definitely palsy; he could see the chain trembling against her bosom—and gave Amaranthus a fierce stare through it.

“That young lady don’t act much like she’s pining for him, does she?”

Frankly, she didn’t, but Grey didn’t want to discuss his niece-by-marriage with Mrs. Fleury, who had used her widowhood to advantage and was quite obviously an accomplished gossip.

“She bears up bravely,” he said. “Allow me to fetch you another cup of tea, ma’am.”

While on this errand, he contrived to pass within hailing distance of Amaranthus and William, who were chatting with each other beneath a large portrait of the late Mr. Fleury, bewigged and dressed in plum velvet. This fine impression of a successful merchant was slightly spoilt by the artist’s effort to add a prosperous paunch to an otherwise lean figure; the alteration had required a hasty adjustment to Mr. Fleury’s posture, careless overpainting causing it to appear that the gentleman possessed a ghostly third leg, which hovered uncertainly behind William’s left ear.

There was no impropriety in their poses at all, but he was strongly aware of a charged atmosphere between them. It was visible in the effort they made not to touch each other.

As Grey approached them, Amaranthus accepted a plate of cake from William with such delicacy of touch that he might have just fallen into a privy, whilst William smiled into her eyes with an expression that anyone who knew him could have read, and that Amaranthus certainly did.

Jesus Christ. Surely they haven’t … maybe not, but they’re bloody thinking about it. Both of them.

That was disturbing on multiple grounds. He quite liked Amaranthus, for one thing. And as William’s stepfather, he wanted to think the boy had been brought up better than to make addresses to a married woman, let alone his own cousin’s wife.

But he knew all too well the power of the flesh. Strong enough to be visible to Mrs. Fleury, at any rate.

“John,” said a soft voice behind him, and he stiffened.

“Perseverance,” Grey said, shaking his head as his erstwhile stepbrother came up beside him, smiling. “Never was a man so well named.”

“You’re looking well, John,” Percy said, ignoring this. “Blue velvet always suits you. You recall the suits we wore to our parents’ wedding?” The smile was real, deep in those soft brown eyes, and Grey was astonished and annoyed to feel it run straight down his backbone and tighten his balls.

Yes, he bloody remembered that wedding and those suits. And—as Percy so clearly intended—he remembered standing beside Percy in church as his mother married Percy’s stepfather, his hand and Percy’s touching, hidden in full skirts of royal-blue velvet, fingers slowly entwining, the touch a promise. One Percy had fucking broken.

“What do you want, Perseverance?” he asked bluntly.

“Oh, quite a lot of things,” Percy replied, the smile now reaching his lips. “But principally … I want to talk to Fergus Fraser.”

“You did,” Grey said, setting his half-empty glass on the tray of a passing servant. “At Coryell’s Ferry. I heard you. And I heard him,” he added. “He wasn’t having any of you then, and I doubt he’s changed his mind. Besides, what the devil do you think I could do about it, even if I wanted to?”

Percy’s smile remained, but his eyes crinkled in a way indicating that he considered Grey’s reply to be humorous.

“I had the pleasure of meeting your son in the summer, at Mrs. Prévost’s luncheon.”

No. For God’s sake, bloody no.

“And while I did indeed meet Mr. Fergus Fraser again briefly in Charles Town some little time ago, I had also the privilege of seeing General Fraser at close range during the pourparlers before Monmouth.”

“So?” Grey kept his own smile fixed blandly in place, though he was well aware that Percy could read in his eyes what he was thinking.

Percy blinked, coughed once, and averted his gaze, fixing it instead upon Mr. Fleury’s phantom leg.

“Bugger off, Percy,” Grey said, not unkindly, and went to fetch Mrs. Fleury’s tea.

The sense of warmth and faint sexual excitement remained with him, though, along with a disturbingly exhilarating sensation of Percy’s eyes on his back. It had been a good many years since he’d felt Percy’s touch, but he remembered it. Vividly.

He pushed the feeling firmly away. He wasn’t likely to succumb to Percy’s physical charms nor yet his clumsy blackmail. What if Percy did decide to go round telling the world that he thought William’s resemblance to a Scottish rebel general rather striking? It might stimulate gossip for a brief time, but William had left the army and remained an earl. His position couldn’t really be endangered. All William would need to do, should any question be asked of him, was to give the querent an icy stare and ignore them.

He was going to have to find out what Percy was up to, though, and why. A thread of heat ran down his back again, as though someone had poured hot coffee down his neckband.

Across the room, he saw Amaranthus’s long forefinger come to rest gently on William’s chest, pointing out something obvious.

HER FINGER RESTED—JUST barely—on the largest of the beetles on his waistcoat, a two-and-a-half-inch monster in brilliant-yellow silk with black-tipped horns. And, of course, tiny red eyes.

“Dynastes tityus,” she said, with approval. “The eastern Hercules beetle.”

“Really?” William said, laughing. “Dynastes tityus means, if I’m not mistaken, Tithean rebel. Was Hercules a Tithean?”

“A Titan, was he not?” Amaranthus tilted her head, lifting one brow. Her brows were soft but well marked, a darker blond than her hair.

“Yes. Perhaps that’s what the person who named this thing meant—but why rebel? Is this fellow known to be rebellious?” He looked down his nose at his chest—and Amaranthus’s long, slim index finger. Her wedding band glimmered on the fourth finger, and he took a deep breath that made her pointing finger sink slightly into the ochre silk. She smiled up at him, and slowly withdrew the finger.

“As to the beetle, I wouldn’t know. But you are, aren’t you?”

“Me? How do you mean?”

“I mean that you don’t intend to live your life to please other people’s expectations. Do you?”

That was a lot more direct than he’d expected—but then, she was startlingly direct.

“Your expectations?” he asked.

“Oh, no,” she said, dimpling. “I expect nothing, William. From you or anyone else.” She paused for an instant, and her eyes fixed with his. They were gray now that she wore violet satin, and translucent as rain on a windowpane. “Unless you refer to the modest proposal I made you?”

In spite of the internal struggle going on inside him, he smiled at her reference to Jonathan Swift—though in truth, her own proposal had been nearly as shocking as Swift’s satirical essay advocating infant cannibalism as a remedy for poverty.

“That was what I had in mind, yes.”

“I’m pleased to know that you’re considering it,” she said, and though the dimple had left her cheek, it was plainly audible in her voice.

He opened his mouth to deny that he was doing any such thing—but while he had firmly refused to think about her outrageous suggestion, he was aware that his body had already accomplished its considerations and was making its equally firm conclusions known to him.

He coughed and glanced casually around the room. Papa was talking to the French diplomat and not looking in his direction, thank God.

“Well.” He cleared his throat and folded his hands behind his back. “I don’t know that ‘consideration’ is the right word, precisely—but the matter is irrelevant for the moment. I came this afternoon to see you—”

“Indeed?” She looked pleased.

“In order to tell you that I am leaving in the morning and don’t know how long it may be until I return.”

She ceased looking pleased, and he regretted that, but there was nothing to be done about it.

“Come,” he said, and touched her hand, nodding toward the French doors, open to the garden. “I’ll tell you why.”

She caught his mood at once and gave a slight nod.

“Not together,” she said. “I’ll go first. Go and have a drink, then take your leave through the front door and walk round.”

HE FOUND HER, at length, at the far end of Mrs. Fleury’s enormous garden, contemplating a small grotto, in which a stone putto was urinating on a toad that sat in the middle of a carved stone basin, its round eyes gleaming black beneath the stream.

“It’s a real toad,” she remarked, glancing briefly at him before returning her attention to the amphibian in question. “A Scaphiopus of some kind. They live mostly underground, but they do like water.”

“Obviously,” William said, but he wasn’t letting her distract him, and without ado he told her about the letter Denzell Hunter had sent to Uncle Hal. She went white and pulled her cape tight across her body, as though stricken by a sudden chill.

“Oh, no. No. Oh, poor woman!” To his surprise, her eyes were full of tears. But then he remembered that she, too, had a child, and must at once have imagined losing Trevor in such fashion.

“Yes,” he said, a lump in his own throat. “It’s very terrible. Uncle Hal naturally wants Dottie here, where he can take care of her, make sure she’s safe. So I’m going to go and fetch her.”

“Of course.” Amaranthus’s voice was unaccustomedly hoarse and she cleared her throat with a small, precise “hem,” then let go of her cape, straightening up. “I’m glad that your cousin will be restored to her family—to be alone, with such a dreadful loss … How long do you think the journey will take?”

“I don’t know,” William said. “If everything goes smoothly, perhaps a month, six weeks … If it doesn’t—illness, bad weather, travel mishaps—troop movements …” As usual, he felt a slight pang at thought of the army, and the sense of constant purpose it embodied. “It could be longer.”

Amaranthus nodded. The toad suddenly inflated its throat and let rip an enormous, resonant whonk! It repeated this cry several times, as William and Amaranthus watched it in astonishment, then gave them an accusing look and shuffled out of its basin and away under a frond of something green.

Amaranthus giggled, and William smiled, charmed at the sound. The tension between them had broken, and he reached to draw the cape back around her shoulders, quite naturally. Just as naturally, she stepped into his arms, and no one could have said, then or afterward, whose idea the kiss had been, nor yet what followed.

101 On the Road Again

JOHN CINNAMON HEAVED WILLIAM’S saddlebags aboard the mare, then looked the animal over carefully, circling her with squinted eyes, trying to pick up her forefoot, attempting to tighten the cinch (and loosening it in the process), and generally annoying the horse. Cinnamon was somewhat embarrassed at being rescued from the Saint-Domingue navy and had been taking particular care not to be a nuisance since the adventure.

“She’s a good horse, but she’ll probably kick you if you don’t leave off pestering her.” William was amused, but also moved at Cinnamon’s clumsy solicitude. He knew Cinnamon wished to go with him—probably not trusting him to manage the task of retrieving Dottie by himself without being arrested, hanged by accident, or killed by highwaymen—but not enough to leave without his portrait being finished.

“It will be all right,” he said, clapping Cinnamon on the shoulder and bending to retighten the cinch. “It will be nearly winter by the time I get to Virginia. Armies don’t fight in winter. I’ve been in the army; I know.”

“Yes, imbécile,” Cinnamon replied mildly. “I know. Didn’t you tell me that the last time you were in the army you got hit on the head by a German deserter and thrown into a ravine, where you almost died and had to be rescued by your Scottish cousin that you hate?”

“I don’t hate Ian Murray,” William said, with some coldness. “I owe him my life, after all.”

“Which is why you hate him,” Cinnamon said, matter-of-factly, and handed William his own best knife, with the beaded sheath. “That, and you want his wife. Don’t tell me it will be all right. I’ve seen what kind of trouble you get into when you are with me. I’ll light a candle to the Blessed Virgin every day until you come back with your cousin.”

“Merci beaucoup,” William said, with elaborate sarcasm. “You don’t have that much money.” But he meant it, and Cinnamon grinned at him.

“Have you got a good thick cloak? And woolen drawers to keep your balls warm?”

“You look after your own balls,” William advised him, putting his foot in the stirrup. “Mind yourself, and do what my sister tells you.”

Cinnamon widened his eyes and crossed himself.

“You think I would dare to do otherwise?” he said. “That is a fearsome woman. Beautiful,” he added thoughtfully, “but large and dangerous. And besides, I want my portrait to look like me. If I made her angry …” He crossed his eyes and stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth.

William laughed, and tucking the knife into his belt, patted it and took up the reins.

“Serve you right, gonze. Adieu!”

Cinnamon shook his head.

“Au revoir,” he corrected soberly. “Et bon voyage!”

102 The Winds of Winter

BAR A FEW SHOWERS and one day of solid rain, the weather held and the roads were not bad. As for armies, though …

His job was to retrieve Dottie and bring her home. No one had mentioned her husband, who was presumably still an escaped prisoner of war. Granted, Denzell Hunter might be with Dottie in Virginia, but if he weren’t … He knew his cousin well; he knew Denzell Hunter well, too, and thought that once Dottie was safe, Hunter would likely have returned to the Continental army, as a matter of personal belief as well as military duty. Uncle Hal had shown him the official dispatches and told him what General Prévost supposed to be true, regarding both British and American troop dispositions. Winter was coming, and all hostilities had essentially ceased up north. Sir Henry Clinton had been lurking in New York since Monmouth, and George Washington—according to Hal’s dispatches, which his uncle had thought likely accurate—was still keeping the main body of his men in winter quarters in New Jersey.

One of Washington’s generals, though—Lincoln, the man who’d mounted the unsuccessful siege of Savannah—had gone north with his troops and was presently holding the city of Charles Town, and Clinton wanted it.

“So according to the latest, Sir Henry was intending to send some fourteen thousand troops down the coast to take the place, once D’Estaing’s frogs quit New York, but he was delayed by needing to go and protect Newport, which is where the frogs went next.” Uncle Hal had riffled through the small stack of dispatches, peering through his half spectacles. “And then the frogs bloody turn up here! You did say you thought you’d seen D’Estaing himself?”

“With my own eyes,” William assured his uncle, who snorted briefly.

“And we know that Lincoln left here after the siege failed and went up to hold Charles Town, which puts something of a stumbling block in Clinton’s path,” Lord John had put in.

“Being that winter is coming, Sir Henry’s intentions may have been further delayed by the weather—and the minor problem of housing his fourteen thousand troops, in case Benjamin Lincoln doesn’t immediately oblige by surrendering Charles Town. That being so, I’ve no idea what you might find if you go through Charles Town—or anywhere near it—but …”

“But it would be a lot faster to go through Charles Town than round it,” William finished, smiling. “Don’t worry, Uncle Hal. I’ll get to Virginia as quickly as I possibly can.”

Uncle Hal’s face, shadowed with tiredness and worry, relaxed into one of those rare, charming smiles that made you feel as though everything would be fine, because surely the world could not resist him.

“I know you will, Willie,” he said, with affection. “Thank you.”

William had therefore set out on his mission with a warm heart, stout boots, a good horse, and a purse full of gold, Uncle Hal meaning to ensure that he would lack for nothing in transporting Dorothea back to her father’s arms. Uncle Hal hadn’t happened to mention any role for Denzell Hunter in these transactions, but Lord John eventually had.

“He’s a Quaker, of course,” he told William, privately, “but he’s also a surgeon in the Continental army. And an escaped prisoner of war—he broke his parole, he says. He may be with Washington now, which means he’s likely in New Jersey. If he is, bloody leave him there and bring Dottie back with you at once, no matter what she says—or does—to you.”

“She’s a Quaker now, isn’t she?” William asked. “She won’t do anything violent.”

Lord John gave him a look.

“Somehow I doubt that religious conviction will be sufficient to overcome Dorothea’s familial tendencies toward high-handedness. Remember who her bloody father is.”

“Mm,” William said noncommittally. He was in fact recalling that the last time he had told a young Quaker woman—Denzell Hunter’s bloody sister, no less!—that she wouldn’t strike him, she had slapped his face. She’d also called him a rooster, which he rather resented.

William hadn’t given Denzell much thought during the discussion of Dottie’s rescue, but if he had, he would have come to the same conclusion as had Papa and Uncle Hal. He would, he thought, send word to Denzell as to Dottie’s whereabouts and well-being, at least.

William was feeling at once slightly heroic, sentimental, and magnanimous. This was largely due to his current feelings regarding Amaranthus, which were confused but suffusingly pleasant. Half of him urgently wished he had taken advantage of Mrs. Fleury’s summerhouse to accomplish the first step of the plan Amaranthus had suggested to him. The other half was rather glad he hadn’t.

In fact, he hadn’t, largely because of Dottie’s baby, and Amaranthus’s reaction to news of her death, which had abruptly made the child real to him. Before seeing Amaranthus’s sudden tears, he had himself felt the sadness of the situation, but it was an abstract sadness, safely distant from himself. But when Amaranthus wept for the child, he had been struck quite suddenly—and painfully—by the realization that she, little Minerva Joy, had been an actual person, one whose death had grievously wounded those who had loved her, for however short a time.

It was the tenderness engendered by this thought, as much as lust, that had made him touch Amaranthus, enter that kiss.

He touched his own lips with the back of his hand. Such a strange kiss, and somehow wonderful. For those few moments, when their lips had met and their bodies pressed together, kindling each other in the wet, chilly garden, it was as though some connection had been forged between them—as though he knew her now, in some way beyond words.

And he’d bloody wanted to know her a lot further—and she him. At one point, he’d slid his hand up the long bare thigh under her skirts, taken her mound in the palm of his hand, and felt the fullness, the slickness of her, wanting him. The pads of his fingers rubbed half consciously against his palm, tingling.

He swallowed and tried to put the memories of Amaranthus away. For now.

But the tenderness remained—and the thought of the baby. That’s why he’d stopped. Because it had suddenly occurred to him that what he was doing might in fact cause someone real to be born.

And that it somehow wasn’t right that he should oblige that someone to take on burdens that were—rightfully or not—his own to bear.

But if I married her, and didn’t go away if she fell pregnant … His son—God, what a thought, his son!—would still inherit Ellesmere’s title and Dunsany’s, but not until he was ready for it. He could prepare the boy, show him …

“Jesus.” He shook his head violently, driving out the thoughts, or trying to. The notion was new, frightening—and quite thrilling, in a way. He pushed it aside, his mind sliding back to its memories of Amaranthus and her soft blond brows, trickling water, pungent grass, and the gleaming black eyes of the watchful toad.

He barely noticed the miles pacing away beneath his horse’s hooves, and stopped only when darkness made the road disappear.

103 Virginia Reel

HE STOPPED FOR THE night in a hamlet some thirty miles north of Richmond. William felt the pull of Mount Josiah: He’d passed within a few miles of the road that would take him there, and for a few moments he was there in spirit, sitting on the broken porch with Manoke and John Cinnamon, eating fried catfish and pig meat smoked underground, the faint sweet scent of tobacco riding on the evening breeze.

He wondered briefly whether perhaps he should take Dottie there for a while. The weather was getting colder and rain more frequent; a newly bereaved woman weakened by illness surely oughtn’t to be required to ride through storms and mud for weeks. And if Manoke was still in residence, he and the Indian could easily repair enough of the house to give them shelter …

No. This was a fantasy, born of his own desire to sit still on his shattered stoop and think about things. He needed to get Dottie back to Uncle Hal as soon as possible, where she could be taken care of, heal in the bosom of her family. And, said a small treacherous voice in the back of his mind, you might just want to see Amaranthus again before too long.

“That, too,” he said aloud, and nudged his horse into a faster pace.

He had enough money to bring Dottie back by coach—but that was assuming a coach was to be had. The settlement of Wilkins Corner boasted three oxen, one mule, and a small herd of goats, plus the odd pig or two. There were only four houses, and a brief inquiry of a woman milking a goat sent him directly to the door of Fear God Elmsworth.

This gentleman proved to be in his eighties and quite deaf, but his much younger wife—only sixty or so—was able by shouting into his ear at a distance of two inches to get across to him William’s identity and mission.

“Dorothea, you say?” Mr. Elmsworth cocked a bushy brow at William. “What’s he want with her?”

“I … am … her … cousin,” William said, leaning down to address the old gentleman at the top of his voice.

“Cousin? Cousin?” The old man looked at his wife for confirmation of this unlikely statement, and receiving it, shook his head. “You don’t look nothin’ like her.”

William turned to the wife.

“Will you please tell your husband that Dorothea’s father is my uncle, and his brother is my stepfather?”

The woman heard this but was plainly baffled by the genealogical information, for she opened her mouth for a moment, then shut it, frowning.

“Never mind,” William said, keeping his patience. “Please, just tell Dorothea that I’m here.”

“Dorothea ain’t here,” said Mr. Elmsworth, somehow catching this. He looked puzzled and glanced at his wife. “Is she?”

“No, she isn’t,” said Mrs. Elmsworth, looking puzzled as well.

William took a deep breath and decided that shaking Mrs. Elmsworth until her head rattled wouldn’t be the act of a gentleman.

“Where is she?” he inquired, gently.

Mrs. Elmsworth looked surprised.

“Why, her brother came and fetched her, near on a month ago.”

WILLIAM HAD NODDED in automatic response to Mrs. Elmsworth, but then actually heard what she’d said and jerked as though stung by a bee.

“Her brother,” he repeated carefully, and both the old people nodded. “Her brother. What was his name?”

Mr. Elmsworth, who was now lighting his long-stemmed clay pipe, removed it from his mouth long enough to say, “Eh?”

“He don’t know,” Mrs. Elmsworth said, shaking her capped head in apology. “I was workin’ in the orchard when the man came, and by the time I came back, they’d gone away together. Dorothea left a sweet note, thanking us for looking after her, but she said nothin’ about her brother’s name in it, and my husband was too deaf to understand what they said, beyond them making signs to him.”

“Ah.”

It was possible that Mr. Elmsworth had misunderstood the situation entirely, William reflected, but it was just possible that it had been Henry. When last he’d seen Henry Grey, the man had been living in Philadelphia with a very handsome Negro landlady who might or might not be a widow, recovering slowly from having lost a foot or two of his guts after being shot in the abdomen. William supposed that Denzell might have paused in Philadelphia on his way to New Jersey and given Henry word of Dorothea’s presence, and either had asked Henry to go and fetch her or Henry had determined to do so on his own.

A sudden thought struck him, though, and he inflated his lungs, leaned down close to Mr. Elmsworth’s hairy earhole, and shouted, “Did he wear a uniform?”

Mr. Elmsworth started and dropped his pipe, which his wife fortunately caught before it could shatter on the floor.

“Goodness, young man,” he said reprovingly. “’Tisn’t manners to shout indoors. That’s what I was always taught as a young’un.”

“I beg pardon, sir,” William said, in a slightly lower tone. “Mrs. Hunter has … two brothers, you see; I wondered which it might be.”

Henry had been invalided out of the army, but his elder brother, Adam, the middle one of William’s three cousins, was captain in an infantry battalion.

“Oh, ah,” said Mrs. Elmsworth, and set about questioning her husband in a high-pitched howl, eventually eliciting a dubious opinion that the young fellow might have been in some sort of uniform, though with so many folk going about with guns and colored britches and fancy buttons these days, ’twas hard to say.

“We don’t hold with vanity, see,” he explained to William. “Being Friends, like. Not with armies nor guns, neither, save they’re for hunting. Hunting’s all right. Folk have to eat, you know,” he added, giving William a faintly accusatory look.

William kept his patience, there being no choice, and was rewarded with a more promising thought. He turned to Mrs. Elmsworth.

“Will you ask your husband, please—did the man who came for Dorothea resemble her?” For Henry and Benjamin were slender and dark-haired, like their father, but Adam looked like his mother, as did Dottie, both being fair-haired and pink-cheeked, with rounded chins and large, dreamy blue eyes.

Mr. Elmsworth had grown somewhat tense during the questioning and was puffing on his pipe with an air of agitation, but relaxed when this was put to him. He exhaled a great cloud of blue smoke and nodded, hard.

“He did, then,” he said. “Very like, very like.” Adam. William relaxed, too, and thanked the Elmsworths profusely, though they refused any gift of money.

As he prepared to take his leave, he had another thought.

“Ma’am—do you still have the note my cousin wrote to you?”

This request resulted in a quarter hour of fussing about the tiny house, picking up sticky jars of preserves and putting them down again, and concluding in Mr. Elmsworth’s belated recollection that he had used the note to light his candle.

“There wasn’t much to it, son,” Mrs. Elmsworth told him sympathetically, seeing his disappointment. “She only thanked us for keeping her, and said as how her brother would take her to her husband.”

IT WAS LATE in the day by now, and his horse was tired and in need of food, so despite his urge to ride off immediately, he reluctantly accepted the hospitality of the Elmsworths’ small barn for the night. They had invited him to share their supper as well, but having seen that their supper was to consist of a dab of cornmeal porridge with a few drops of molasses and a few slices of hard and curling bread, he assured them that he had a little food in his saddlebags and retired to the barn to see to Betsy’s needs before seeking the refuge of his own thoughts.

In fact, he had a bruised apple and a small chunk of hard cheese, this oozing grease and slightly moldy. He paid little attention to his sparse supper, though, his mind being occupied with what the devil to do next.

Adam. It had to be Adam. The problem was that he didn’t know where Adam was supposed to be. He’d not seen his cousin in more than a year, and such conversation as he’d had lately with Papa and Uncle Hal hadn’t touched on Adam at all, everyone being taken up with Benjamin’s death.

The last he had heard of Adam, his cousin was a captain of infantry, but (wisely, he thought) not in his father’s regiment. Hal’s sons had all concluded, early in their military careers, that their chances of remaining on good terms with their father depended on not serving under him, and they purchased their commissions accordingly.

“Well, start from the other end, then, ass,” he said impatiently. “The only way Adam would have found out where Dottie was, is from Denzell. We assume Denzell is with Washington, and Uncle Hal says that Washington is in winter quarters in New Jersey.”

All right, then. He belched slightly, tasting the sweet decay of the apple’s soft spots, and relaxed a little, hunching his greatcoat up round his ears and curling his toes inside his cold, damp boots. He didn’t need to know where Adam was or had been, if this reasoning was sound. But his guess was that Adam was with Clinton’s army in New York—if they still were in New York. If Clinton was intending to go take Charles Town, though, surely he wouldn’t be doing it so late in the year? Still, if the Hunters were not with Washington in New Jersey, Adam was his only source of information as to their whereabouts.

Betsy lifted her tail and deposited a steaming cascade of horse apples, two feet away from where William sat on an upturned pail. William leaned over and rubbed his frozen hands above the warmth, thinking.

He did wonder why Denzell had decided to send for Dottie, having placed her with the Elmsworths for safety, but that wasn’t important. His own choice seemed clear: either ride on to New York and look for Adam, go to New Jersey and look for Denzell, or turn round and ride back to Savannah and tell Uncle Hal what he’d learned.

He dismissed this last option.

It was roughly the same distance from where he was to either New York or New Jersey—about three hundred miles. He glanced out through the open half door at the cloudy sky. Maybe a week, if the roads were decent.

“Which they won’t be,” he said, watching small hard flecks of what wasn’t quite yet snow drift in to land on his hands and face, melting in tiny pinpricks of cold. “Nothing else to do, though, is there?”

THE NEW YEAR had come before William arrived at Morristown. He’d had plenty of time on the road to make his decision. And while he assured himself that Morristown was the logical place to begin his inquiries, since this was where Denzell was and Dottie would likely be with him by now, his conscience observed acidly that this decision was the counsel of cowardice as much as logic. He didn’t want to walk into Sir Henry Clinton’s headquarters as a shabbily dressed civilian and face the stares—if not the blunt questions—of men he knew.

He just didn’t.

Morristown itself boasted two churches and two taverns, with a cluster of maybe fifty houses and a large mansion near the edge of town. From the flags adorning this house, and the sentries before it, it was evidently now Washington’s headquarters. William wouldn’t mind seeing the fellow, but curiosity could wait.

Curiosity, though, caused him to ask someone on the town green why so many folk were waiting outside the churches, lined up and stamping their feet against the cold.

“Smallpox,” he was told. “Inoculations. General Washington’s orders. Troops and townspeople alike—like it or not. They been doin’ it in the churches every Monday and Wednesday.”

William had heard of inoculation for smallpox; Mother Claire had mentioned it once, in Philadelphia. Inoculation meant doctors, and Washington’s name meant army doctors. Thanking his informant, he strode to the head of one line and, tipping his hat to the person at the door, pushed his way inside as though he had a right to be there.

A doctor and his assistant were working near the baptismal font at the front of the church, using the altar for their supplies. The doctor wasn’t Denzell Hunter, but he was a place to start, and William strode purposefully up the aisle, drawing surprised looks from the people waiting.

The doctor, a fat gentleman with an eared cap pulled down over his brow and a bloody apron, was standing by the baptismal font, this structure having been temporarily topped with a wide piece of board on which were the tools of inoculation: two small knives, a pair of forceps, and a bowl full of what looked like very thin, dark-red worms. As William approached, he saw the doctor, his breath wreathing round his face, cut a small slit in the hand of a woman who had turned her face away, grimacing at the cut. The doctor swiftly wiped away the welling blood, picked up one of the worms, which turned out to be threads soaked in something nasty—smallpox? William wondered, with a brief shudder—with his forceps, and tucked it into the wound.

As the woman wrapped her hand in a handkerchief, William deftly inserted himself at the head of the queue.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” William said politely, and bowed. “I am in search of Dr. Hunter. I have an important message for him.”

The doctor blinked, took off his glasses, and squinted at William, then put them back on and took up his knife again.

“He’s at Jockey Hollow today,” he said. “Probably at the Wick House, but might be among the cabins.”

“I thank you, sir,” William said, meaning it. The doctor nodded absently and beckoned to the next in line.

Another inquiry sent him uphill to Jockey Hollow, a rather mountainous area—Washington was damned fond of mountains—where a scene of immense devastation spread before him. It looked as though a meteor had struck a woodland, shattering trees and churning the soil. The Continentals had cut down what had to be at least a thousand acres of trees—the stumps poked ragged fingers out of the mud, and bonfires of discarded branches smoked throughout the camp, each one with a fringe of soldiers holding out frozen hands to the heat.

Logs were piled everywhere, in a rude order, and William saw that in fact, sizable cabins were being built. This was clearly going to be a semi-permanent encampment, and not a small one.

Soldiers, mostly in plain dress or with army greatcoats, swarmed like ants. If Denzell was in there, it would take no little time to winkle him out. He walked up to the nearest bonfire and nudged his way into the circle of men around it. God, the heat was wonderful.

“Where is the Wick House?” he inquired of the man next to him, rubbing his hands together to help spread the delicious warmth.

“Up there.” The man—a very young man, perhaps a few years younger than William—jerked his chin, indicating a modest-looking house in the distance, on the crest of a hill. He thanked the boy and regretfully left the fire, smelling strongly of smoke.

The Wick House, despite its modest size, was plainly the property of a wealthy man: there was a forge, a grain mill, and a sizable stable nearby. The wealthy man either was a rebel or had been forcibly evicted, for there were regimental flags planted near the door and a blue-nosed sentry outside, clearly there to weed out unwelcome visitors.

Well, it had worked once … William put his shoulders back, lifted his head, and walked up to the door as though he owned the place.

“I have a message for Dr. Hunter,” he said. “Will I find him here?”

The sentry gave him a look from rheumy, bloodshot eyes.

“No, you won’t,” he said.

“May I inquire where he is, then?”

The sentry cleared his throat and spat, the gob of mucus not quite landing on the toe of William’s boot.

“He’s inside. But you won’t find him there because I’m not letting you in. You got a message, give me it.”

“It must be given into the doctor’s hands,” William said firmly, and reached for the doorknob.

The sentry took two steps sideways and stood in front of the door, musket held across his chest and his blue nose forbidding in its righteousness.

“You aren’t a-coming in, friend,” he said. “The doctor’s with Brigadier Bleeker, and he’s not to be disturbed.”

William made a low sound that wasn’t quite a growl. It didn’t affect Blue Nose, though, and he tried again.

“What about Mrs. Hunter? Is she in camp, perhaps?” God, he hoped not. He glanced over his shoulder at the sprawling mess below.

“Oh. Aye. She’s in there.” The sentry jerked a thumb backward, indicating the house. “With the doctor and the brigadier.”

“The brigadier … that would be …?”

“General Bleeker. General Ralph Bleeker.”

William sighed.

“Well, if I can’t go in, would you be so kind as to go inside and tell her that her cousin has come with a message for her husband? She can come out and get it, surely.”

It nearly worked. He could see doubt warring with duty on the man’s face—but duty won, and Blue Nose doggedly shook his head and waved a hand.

“Shoo.”

William turned on his heel and did so. He strode down the hill, not looking back—and turned aside as soon as the growth of shrubs and small trees hid him from the sentry’s view.

It took no little while to circle the hilltop and make his way carefully up through the grain mill, but he was able to blend in with the people waiting there to have their flour ground and could easily see the house. Yes, there was a back door. And no, glory be to God, there was no sentry—at least not right this moment.

He waited until the small crowd had stopped noticing him and stepped away in the half-furtive manner of a man going for a piss. Quick past the forge and up to the door, and … in.

He closed the back door behind him with a surge of pleasure.

“Sir?” He turned round, finding himself in the kitchen, and the cynosure of the gaze of a cook and several kitchen maids. The air was perfumed with the smell of roasting meat—there was a huge pig turning on the spit in the spacious hearth and his mouth was watering—but food could wait.

He bowed and lifted his hat briefly to the cook.

“Your pardon, ma’am. I’ve a message for the doctor.”

“Oh, he’s in the parlor,” said one of the younger maids. She looked admiringly up William’s body, and he smiled at her. “I’ll take you!”

“Thank you, my dear,” he said, and bowed ingratiatingly again before following her out.

The house was comfortable, but seemed to have quite a few people in it; he could hear voices and the sound of footsteps overhead—there was a second story over the back part of the house. The maid led him to a closed door and bobbed a curtsy. He thanked her again, and as he reached for the porcelain knob of the door, he heard the unmistakable sound of his cousin Dottie’s gurgling laugh, and his own face broke into a grin.

He was still wearing the grin when he stepped into the room. Dottie was sitting in a chair by the fire, some sort of knitting on her lap, her face full of lively attention as the man in Continental uniform standing by the hearth said something to her.

Denzell was there, too, by the window, but William scarcely noticed, frozen to the spot by the sound of the man’s voice.

“William!” Dottie exclaimed, dropping her knitting. The man by the hearth turned sharply.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, staring in shock. “What the devil are you doing here?” The blue of his coat gave his winter-pale-blue eyes a piercing glint.

William felt as though he’d been kicked in the stomach by a mule, but managed a breath.

“Hallo, Ben,” he said flatly.

104 General Fucking Bleeker

BEN LOOKED AT HIM with a cold formality and said, “That would be General Bleeker to you, sir.” That might have been taken as humor, but it bloody wasn’t, and wasn’t meant to be.

“Bleeker,” William said, making it almost a question. “All right, if you must. But Ralph?”

Ben’s face darkened, but he kept his temper.

“It isn’t Ralph,” he said shortly. “It’s Rafe.”

“One of Ben’s names is Raphael,” Dottie said pleasantly, as though making conversation over the tea table. “After our maternal grandfather. His name is Raphael Wattiswade.”

“Is?” William said, startled into looking at her. “I thought your mother’s father was dead.” He switched the look back to his cousin. “For that matter, I thought you were dead.”

Dottie and Denzell exchanged a brief marital look.

“I believe Friend Wattiswade has gone to some trouble to give that impression,” Denzell said, carefully not looking at Ben. “Will thee sit down, William? There is some wine.” Without waiting for an answer, he rose and gestured to his empty chair, going then to fetch a decanter from a small table near the door.

William ignored both the invitation and the chair. Ben was slightly taller than his father, but he was still six inches shorter than William, and William was not sacrificing the advantage of looking down on him. Ben stiffened, glaring up at him.

“I repeat, what the devil are you doing here?”

“I came to find your sister,” William replied, and gave Dottie a slight bow. “Your father wants you to come back to Savannah, Dottie.” Now that he had a chance to look at her, he thought Uncle Hal had been right to want that. She was very thin with dark circles under her eyes, her dress hung on her bones, and overall she looked like a fine piece of china with a crack running through it and a chip out of the edge.

“I told thee, thee shouldn’t have written to him,” she said reproachfully to Denzell, who handed her a glass of wine—and seeing that William was not about to accept the other one, sat down and took a sip from it himself.

“And I told thee that thee should go home,” Denzell replied, though without rancor. “This is no place for any woman, let alone one who—” He caught sight of Dottie and stopped abruptly. A hectic flush had risen in her cheeks and her lips were pressed tight. William thought she might either burst into tears or brain Denzell with the poker, which was near at hand.

Even odds, he concluded, and turned back to Ben, who had gone white round the nostrils.

“Step outside with me,” William said. “And you can tell me what the bloody hell you’re doing and why. And why I shouldn’t go straight back to Savannah and tell your father. If you feel like it.”

IT WAS COLD outside, and the sky lay low and heavy, the color of lead. William felt the itch of Ben’s eyes boring a hole between his shoulder blades.

“This way,” his cousin said abruptly, and he turned to see Ben push open the door to a large shed from which the warm, thick smell of smoke and grease floated out, surrounding them.

Inside, the smell was stronger, but the air was warm and William felt his hands tingle in gratitude; his fingers had been half frozen for days. The bodies of deer and sheep and pigs hung from the beams, streaks of fat showing gray and white through the slow drift of smoke from the trench below. Large gaps showed where meat had been taken away—to feed the officers occupying Wick House, he supposed, and wondered how Washington proposed to feed his troops through the winter. From his hasty appraisal of the camp-building in the hollow, there must be nearly ten thousand men here—many more than he’d thought.

“Adam said you’d resigned your commission.” There was a creak and a thud as Ben shut the door. “Is that true?”

“It is.” He eyed his cousin and shifted his weight a little. He didn’t have cause to suppose Ben would try to hit him, but the day was young.

“Why?”

“None of your business,” William replied bluntly. “So Adam’s still speaking to you, is he? Where is he, come to that?”

“In New York, with Clinton.” Ben jerked his head to the left. His face was pale in the gray light.

“Does it occur to you that you could get him in serious trouble, talking to him?—arrested and court-martialed, even bloody hanged? Or does that consideration not weigh against your new … loyalties?” William’s heart was still beating fast from the shock of finding Ben alive, and he was in no mood to mince words.

“How the fuck dare you?” William said, fury rising suddenly out of nowhere. “Never mind being a traitor, you’re a fucking coward! You couldn’t just change your coat and be straight about it—oh, no! You had to pretend to be fucking dead, and kill your father with grief—and what do you think your mother will feel when she hears it?”

Despite the dim light, he could see the blood rush into Ben’s face and his hands clench into fists. Still, Ben kept his voice level.

“Think about it, Willie. Which would my father prefer—that I was dead, or that I was a traitor? That would bloody kill him!”

“Or he’d kill you,” William said brutally. Ben stiffened but didn’t reply.

“So what was it?” William asked. “Rank, General Bleeker? It can’t have been money.”

“I don’t expect you to understand,” Ben said, through his teeth. He took a breath, as though to continue, but then stopped, eyes narrowed. “Or maybe you do. Did you come here to join us?”

“What—become Washington’s bum-licker, like you? No, I fucking didn’t. I came to find Dottie. Imagine my surprise.” He made a contemptuous gesture toward the blue-and-buff uniform.

“Then why resign your commission?” Ben looked him up and down, taking in the rough clothes and grubby linen, the thick boots with the woolen stocking tops turned down over them. “And why the devil are you dressed like that?”

“I repeat—none of your business. It wasn’t political, though,” he added, and wondered briefly why he had.

“Well, it was political for me.” Ben took a deep, deliberate breath and leaned back against the door. “Heard of a man called Paine? Thomas Paine?”

“No.”

“He’s a writer. That is, he was employed by His Majesty’s Customs and Excise, but got sacked and started thinking about politics.”

“As one does when unemployed, I suppose.”

Ben gave him a quelling look.

“I met him in Philadelphia, in a tavern. I spoke with him. Thought he was … interesting. Odd-looking cove, but … intense, I suppose you’d say.” Ben inhaled too deeply and coughed; William could feel the tickle of smoke in his own chest.

“Then, later, when I was taken prisoner at the Brandywine …” He cleared his throat. “I had occasion to read his pamphlet. It’s called Common Sense. And I talked with the officer with whom I boarded and … well, it is common sense, dammit.” He shrugged, then dropped his shoulders and looked defiantly at William. “I became convinced that the Americans were in the right, that’s all, and I couldn’t in conscience fight on the side of tyranny any longer.”

“You pompous twat.” The urge to hit Ben was growing stronger. “Let’s get out of here. I don’t want to go round smelling like a smoked ham, even if you don’t mind.”

This argument, at least, struck some remainder of sense in Ben. They went out, and Ben led the way downhill, but away from the town. They collected a few looks from men carrying lumber toward the camp, but Ben ignored them.

“If you’re a general, won’t people wonder why you haven’t got a flock of aides and toadies round you?” William asked the back of Ben’s neck and was pleased to see it flush, despite the cold. It was perishing out; snow had started to fall in thick, fast flakes that covered the dirty frozen humps of earlier storms.

“That’s why we’re going where no one will see us,” Ben said tersely, and stamped off down a trail of churned, cold-hardened mud, toward a large shed near a frozen creek. It was padlocked, and it took Ben some minutes to open it, both the key and his hands being cold and uncooperative.

“Let me.” William had kept his hands in his pockets, and while chilly, his fingers were still flexible. He took the keys from Ben and nudged him aside.

“What do the Continentals have that’s worth locking up?” he asked, though with no real intent to offend. Ben didn’t answer but pushed the door open, revealing the shadowy long shapes of guns. Cannon, four- and six-pounders, nine of them at a hasty count, and a couple of mortars lurking at the back. The Continental artillery park, apparently. The place smelled of cold metal, damp wood, and the ghosts of black powder.

“The smoke shed was a bit warmer,” Ben observed, turning to face William. “Let’s finish whatever business we have, before we freeze stiff.”

“Agreed.” William’s breath came white, and he was already beginning to long for the company of the dead swine and their fire. “I want Dottie to come with me, back to Savannah. Surely you can see she needs food, warmth … her family?”

Ben snorted, his breath puffing from his nostrils like that of an angry bull.

“Bonne chance,” he said. “Hunter won’t go, because he’s desperately needed here. She won’t leave him. QED.”

In spite of Ben’s obvious annoyance, there was something odd in his voice. Almost a longing, William thought, and the thought sparked the realization that had been slowly growing, unnoticed, in the back of his mind.

“Amaranthus,” he said suddenly, and Ben flinched. He bloody flinched, the lousy poltroon!

“Does she even fucking know you’re not dead?” he asked.

“Yes,” Ben said between his teeth. “It’s on account of her that I— Never bloody mind. I can’t make Dottie go, short of tying her up in a sack and loading her into a wagon. Do you think you—”

“What’s on account of your wife?” Your wife. The words curled up in his stomach like worms, and he closed his hand, feeling rounded heat and slipperiness in his palm. “Do you mean to say you told her what you were going to do, and she—”

“I was a prisoner! I couldn’t tell her anything. Not until—until it was done.” Ben had been glaring at him, but at this, looked away. “I—I wrote to her then. Of course. Told her what I’d done. She wasn’t pleased,” he added bleakly.

“Do tell,” said William, with as much sarcasm as he could manage. “Was it her idea to pretend you were dead? I can’t say I blame her, if so.”

“It was,” Ben said stiffly. His eyes were still fixed on the open black mouth of a nearby cannon. “She said … that I couldn’t let it be known that I was a traitor. Not just for her or my father’s sake—for Trevor’s. Father would—would get over me being dead, especially if I’d died as a soldier. He’d never get over me …”

“Being a traitor,” William finished helpfully. “No, he bloody wouldn’t. And little Trev wouldn’t have a good time of it as your heir, either, once he was old enough to understand what people were saying about you—and him. You’ve smeared your whole family with your excrement, haven’t you?” He was suddenly warm, his blood rising.

“Shut up!” Ben snapped. “That’s why I changed my name and had official word sent that I’d died, for God’s sake! I even went so far as to have a grave in Middlebrook Encampment marked with my name, should anyone come looking!”

“Someone did,” William said, anger hot in his chest. “I did, you bastard! I dug up the body in that grave, in the middle of the night, in the fucking rain. If you hadn’t picked a thief to bury in your stead, you might have got away with it, damn you—and I wish to God you had!”

Underneath the anger was a sharp pain in his chest. Just where the Hercules beetle had been, and Amaranthus’s long slim finger.

“Your wife—”

“It’s not your fucking business!” Ben snarled, red in the face. “Why couldn’t you keep your nose out? And what about my wife? What the hell do you have to do with her?”

“You want to know?” William’s voice came low and venomous, and he leaned toward Ben, fists clenched. “You want to know what I’ve had to do with her?”

Ben hit him. Hard, in the belly. He grabbed Ben by the arm and punched him in the nose. It broke with a satisfying crunch and hot blood spurted over his knuckles.

Ben was shorter and slighter, but he had the Grey family’s inclination to fight like badgers and count the cost later. William crashed backward onto one of the big guns, Ben at his throat, and heard the blue coat rip as his cousin tried seriously to throttle him. William was furious; Ben was insane.

With difficulty, William got a knee up between them and managed to break Ben’s grip long enough to rabbit-punch him in the back of the neck. Ben made a noise like a gut-shot panther, and lowering his head, butted William in the chest, knocking him over, then fell on him with both knees in William’s stomach. They were crushed together, wrestling in the narrow space between two gun carriages, and William’s knuckles were barked from hitting wood and metal as much as from hitting Ben in the mouth.

There was one moment, when he caught sight of his cousin’s face in a ray of light, when he truly believed that Ben meant to kill him.

Then, suddenly, the flurry of punches stopped and the weight lifted. Ben was standing up, swaying over him, dripping blood, and William realized, through the daze of fighting and the shadows of the cannon, that the light was coming through the open door of the shed, and there were voices.

“A saboteur,” Ben rasped, and spat blood. It struck one of the cannon and dripped slowly down the cold iron curve, falling onto William’s wrist. “Take him to the stockade. He’s to speak to no one. Take him, I said!”

WILLIAM WAS NOT a fussy eater, by any means, and the lukewarm beans and dry corn bread offered him after a very cold night in the stockade were ambrosia—and not too hard to chew, even with a sore jaw.

It really was a stockade, though a small one, with a block containing half a dozen brick-built cells inside a palisade fence and a guardhouse outside. There was no more than a six-inch hole in the bricks to provide light and air, and the cell might have been sunk in a wintry sea, the air cold, dim, and damp, swirling with mist that seeped in from the outer world. He swiped the last bit of corn bread round his wooden trencher and then licked the last of the bean juice off his fingers. He could have eaten three times as much, had it been available, but as it was, he washed it down with the quart of very small beer he’d been given, belched, tightened his belt, and sat down to wait on the wooden bench that composed the sole furniture of the cell.

He had bruises and scrapes aplenty, and his ribs hurt him when he breathed, but he’d slept the night through from sheer exhaustion and washed his face from a bucket this morning without flinching, though he’d had to break a solid half inch of ice on it first. The small injuries were nothing to bother him much. Other than as a reminder of his cousin Ben.

Logically, Ben should have William executed as a saboteur. This was obvious, as the only certain way to keep him from revealing the sordid truth about Brigadier Bleeker—to Uncle Hal, Aunt Minerva, Ben’s regiment, the London papers …?

Well, not the papers, no. Letting it become an open scandal would—as he’d told Brigadier Bleeding Bleeker—destroy the whole family.

He hadn’t been overstating it when he’d told Ben that he’d get Adam into trouble, either. Wait ’til Sir Henry found out that Adam had been conversing on the quiet with an enemy combatant! Because he would find out if they kept doing it, and the fact that said enemy was Adam’s brother would just make it worse. If that was known, it would be assumed by everyone that Adam was a turncoat as well, passing information to his brother.

He had a dim memory of his father telling him that a secret remained a secret only so long as just one person knew it.

The memory came with a vision of a deep, deep lavender sky, and Venus a bright jewel just above the horizon. That was it; they’d been lying on the quay at Mount Josiah, watching the stars come out while Manoke cleaned and grilled the fresh fish they’d just caught.

He breathed in nostalgically, half expecting to smell the dusty scent of flax and the mouthwatering richness of fish rolled in cornmeal and fried in butter. The lingering taste of the corn bread gave it to him for a moment, before withdrawing and leaving him with the smell of the slop bucket in the corner of his cell. He got up and used it, then straightened his clothes and splashed another handful of water onto his face.

The only thing he was sure of was that he wouldn’t have to wait too long. Ben wouldn’t dare keep him for long where people could become curious.

“And you couldn’t think of anything better than to call me a saboteur,” he said aloud to his cousin. “That’ll make everybody curious, you nit.”

William was curious, too, about what might happen next—but in fact not really worried that Ben would have him formally executed, much as he might like to. William’s mind paused on the picture of Ben’s face when Amaranthus had entered the conversation. Yes, he definitely had wanted to kill William right then and undoubtedly still did.

The thought of Amaranthus summoned her as though she stood before him physically, blue-gray eyes creasing with her smile. Tall and buxom, smelling of grape leaves, with a faint sweet aroma of rice powder and baby poo. And her long, slender, water-cool fingers touching his …

He squared his shoulders and blew out his breath. Time enough to deal with her when he was out of this place.

If Ben hadn’t had him shot at dawn, he wasn’t going to kill him. Aside from the fear that William would start shouting incriminating things on his way to the firing squad, there was Dottie. William had no doubt that she loved Ben and Adam and Henry; it was a close-knit family. But Dottie was fond of him, too—and beyond that, she was a Quaker now. Having spent some time traveling with Rachel and Denzell Hunter, William had considerable respect for Quakers in general, and while Dottie was what he thought was called a professed Friend rather than a born one, she certainly possessed enough native stubbornness to give any born Quaker a run for his or her money.

He was therefore not surprised when a guard abruptly opened the door to his cell an hour later and Denzell Hunter walked in, his scuffed physician’s bag in hand.

“I trust I see thee well, Friend,” he said. His voice was pleasant, neutral—but his eyes were warm behind their spectacles. “How does thee do this morning?”

“I’ve done better,” William said, with a glance at the door. “I’m sure a drink of brandy and a bit of Latin will fix me right up, though.”

“It’s a bit early for brandy, but I’ll do my best. Take off thy britches and bend over the bench, please.”

“What?”

“I mean to give thee a clyster to settle thy humors,” Denzell said, jerking his head toward the door. “Of course, ice water is not the best medium for the purpose …” He walked to the door and rapped sharply. “Friend Chesley? Will thee fetch me a bucket of warm water, please?”

“Warm water?” The guard had, of course, been standing just outside the door, listening. “Er … yes, sir … I suppose … you’re sure as you’re safe in there with him, sir? Maybe you’d best step out here while I get the water.”

“No, Friend, there is no danger,” Denzell said, motioning William to lie down on the bench. “He is suffering from an injury to the head, among other things; I doubt he can stand.”

There was a scraping noise as Chesley unbolted the door and peered suspiciously in. William emitted a faint moan and swooned, one hand pressed to his brow, the other trailing off the bench in a languishing sort of way.

“Ah,” said Chesley, and closed the door again. Footsteps crunched away.

“He didn’t bolt it,” William whispered, sitting up abruptly. “Shall I run for it now?”

“No, thee wouldn’t get far and it’s not necessary. Dottie is giving Benjamin his breakfast and convincing him that the best thing to do is to give orders for thee to be taken to General Washington’s headquarters; that’s the Ford house in Morristown. I am meant to be administering smallpox inoculations at the church this afternoon; I will therefore insist upon accompanying thee to Washington, to support thee in thy infirmity.” Here he paused to look William over, grinned briefly, and shook his head. “Thee looks convincingly battered. I think thee might suffer an effusion of blood to the brain and unfortunately die as a result before we reach the general.”

“A fine physician you are,” William said. “Ought I to have a fit and foam at the mouth, to be convincing?”

“Moaning loudly and soiling thyself will be adequate, I think.”

105 Four Hundred Miles to Think

THE ROADS WERE EITHER half-frozen slush or knee-deep mud, and the trees held their brown sticky buds tight to their twigs, refusing to let a single leaf poke its tender head out into this inhospitable climate. Still, William could feel the restlessness of the air; a sense of something alive and wild moving in the air between the soft, fat flakes of snow.

After parting from Denzell in Morristown, he’d resisted the strong impulse to go to Mount Josiah when he reached Virginia. He didn’t need solitude or contemplation now, though; the choice was clear enough, and all the thinking he needed to do could be done on horseback.

He’d had nearly four hundred miles and three weeks of riding to make up his mind, and it wasn’t nearly long enough. Good thing I’ve got another four hundred miles to think, he thought, grimly dismounting and picking up the horse’s mud-clogged left fore. Betsy had pulled up lame, and William hoped it was just a stone, and not a strain or a hairline crack in the bone. The thought of having to shoot her and leave her for the wolves and foxes was worse than the thought of walking for another thirty miles through ice and mud—but not by much.

Betsy was an obliging horse and let William squeeze her leg, feel his way down the cannon bone, and gently work her pastern joint. So far, so good. His fingers burrowed through the frozen mud caked thick around the mare’s hoof, his thumbs working into the frog—and there it was. A sharp stone, wedged solid beneath the edge of his shoe.

“Good girl,” he said, relief puffing out with his breath. He got the stone out, eventually, and walked Betsy for a bit, but the mare seemed sound, and they resumed their usual pace, going as fast as the road allowed. Weary of thinking, and hungry, William shoved all concerns beyond reaching a village before nightfall out of his head.

He succeeded, and it wasn’t until he’d looked after Betsy, eaten a decent supper, and retired to a fireless room and a cold, damp bed with a mattress stuffed with moldy corn husks that he resumed his cogitations.

Who first?

Every day he’d gone back and forth, back and forth in his mind, until his head buzzed and the road blurred before his eyes.

He was going to have to talk to all of them, but whom should he tell first? By rights, it should be Uncle Hal. Benjamin was his son; he had to know. But the thought of telling his uncle, of seeing realization wash over his haggard face … William had heard more than one English father declare fiercely that he should rather his son be dead than a coward or a traitor. How many of them really meant that, he wondered—and was Uncle Hal one of those who would?

His strong urge was to go to his own father first. Tell Papa everything, seek his advice, and … he smacked his fist into the squashy mattress. Whom was he trying to fool? He wanted to hand the burden of his knowledge over to Papa and let him tell Uncle Hal.

“Coward,” he muttered, turning restlessly over. He’d gone to bed fully dressed and in his greatcoat, only removing his boots, and moving destroyed the fragile layer of warmth he’d managed to build up.

Coward.

Without his consciously making a choice, it had gradually become clear to him, and now, in this clammy, dark, fireless room smelling of frozen sweat and burnt meat, that word at last gave him his answer.

Her. It had to be her.

He tried telling himself that this was the fair thing to do: Amaranthus needed to know first that he’d discovered Ben, in order to take whatever action she could to protect herself once the truth was known. But he’d had enough of lies and lying, and he’d be damned if he lied now to himself. She’d made a fool of him and damn near dragged him into her web.

He wanted to tell Amaranthus because he wanted to see the look on her face when he did.

Decision made, he went to sleep and dreamed of beetles with tiny red eyes.

WILLIAM TOOK HIS greatcoat off for the first time when he reached New Bern. It was raining, but it was a soft rain that smelled of spring and his skin yearned for air and freshness, and his limbs for a good stretch. It would need to be a good deal warmer before he took much else off, but he did find an inn with a stable for Betsy, and once having seen to the horse’s needs, he walked down to the shore, shucked his boots and filthy stockings with a sigh of relief, and walked out onto the cold, wet sand above the tide.

It was twilight and there was no one on the beach here, though he could smell a wood fire and boiling crabs from a distant cluster of shacks. His belly rumbled.

“I must be thawing out,” he said aloud, his voice sounding rough and cracked to his ears. He hadn’t consciously thought of food since recovering from the bang on the head in Morristown. Denzell Hunter had fed him then, insisting he eat something before setting out on the road home. He had tried to refuse, knowing that it was likely Denzell’s entire ration for the day—but hunger and Hunter’s insistence had won out. He’d eaten now and then, of course, on his way south, but without much noticing what.

He wished he had been able to persuade the Hunters to come back with him, but at least Dottie had written a letter for her parents. He touched the inner pocket of his coat and was reassured by the crackle of paper.

The wind had dropped, and there was no sound but the soft hiss of the tide coming in.

Thought of Dottie’s letter brought Uncle Hal to mind—not that he’d been far distant. The feel of sand underfoot and the sight of his own footprints, long and high-arched, like a series of commas following him down the beach, brought back again that conversation by the marsh in Savannah. Treason.

“At least there’re no bloody alligators,” he muttered, but looked over his shoulder by reflex, then snorted and laughed at himself. What with one thing and another, he’d given the quandary of his earldom not a single thought in weeks, and realized with some surprise that he felt at peace with himself and was reluctant to pick that burden up again. He didn’t care who he was—but he wasn’t the Earl of Ellesmere. He’d have to do something about that, but not now.

At least Amaranthus’s suggestion is right out. Not, he assured himself, that he would have taken her up on it in any case, but knowing that her husband was still alive quashed the notion out of hand.

The hand in question closed involuntarily, wet with rain, and he rubbed his fingers against his palm, erasing the memory of the kiss she’d left there, with a tiny warm touch from the tip of her tongue.

Damn Ben. Selfish sod.

A sudden rush of seawater surged up about his ankles, the cold running through his body like the electric shock from a Leyden jar, the water sucking the sand out from under his feet. He staggered back, blinking rain from his lashes and realizing that his shirt was damp and the shoulders of his jacket wet.

A lift of the air brought him once more the smell of food, and he left the beach, his footprints disappearing behind him as the tide came in.

106 The High Ground

TAKING POSSESSION OF THE high ground was one of the cornerstones of military strategy. Jamie’s da had told him that, once, when he and Murtagh had sat up late before the fire, drinking whisky and talking. Jamie had been hunched up on the floor in a corner with the dogs, hoping to be overlooked so he could stay and listen.

Neither man was unobservant, though, and they’d spotted him soon enough—but by then, they’d had a few drams and so his da had let him stay, now curled up next to Da on the settle, warmed by the fire and the heat of his father’s solid body, the big hand that wasn’t holding a whisky glass resting absently on Jamie’s back.

“Ye remember hidin’ in the bracken?” Murtagh was saying, his eyes glinting with memory. “Up on the hillside, waitin’ for the start of it?” A small rumble of laughter under his father’s ribs had tickled Jamie’s ear.

“I remember you standin’ up to piss and Enoch Grant behind ye pokin’ ye in the arse with the end of his bow and hissin’ like a snake through his teeth to make ye set down again. Not that ye did set yourself down,” Da added, fairly.

Murtagh had made a disgruntled hmph! and Jamie had ventured to ask what he’d done instead then?

The result was another, louder hmph! and his da laughed again, out loud this time.

“He turned round and pissed on Enoch Grant and then jumped down his throat and gave him laldy wi’ the hilt of his dirk.”

“Mm,” said Murtagh, clearly relishing the memory.

The hapless Grant had escaped worse injury, though, because just then the officers started shouting and the enemy—visible on the field at Sheriffmuir these last two hours—began to move.

“And a few minutes later, we popped out o’ the bracken like a swarm o’ brobhadan and the archers fired their arrows and those of us wi’ swords and targes ran down upon the Sassunaich,” Da said to Jamie.

“Aye, much good havin’ the high ground did us,” Murtagh said, glowering slightly. “I near as breakfast got an arrow in the back from our own men. It went through the sleeve o’ my shirt!”

“Well, ye did piss on Enoch Grant,” Da said reasonably. “What would ye expect him to do?”

Jamie smiled to himself, hearing the two of them talking, clear as day, and feeling in his bones the memory of the comfort of sleep coming for him, wrapped in the warmth of the firelit room at Lallybroch.

He was warm now, sweating from the climb, and he wasn’t sleepy. It was a small mountain, not even half the height of a Scottish beinn, but the sides were steep and thickly forested. He was following a cattle track across the face of the mountain—the local people grazed their stock sometimes on the top of the mountain, because there was a good meadow—but oak and maple saplings and a scurf of low bushes were creeping over it, and the track had vanished altogether by the time he made it to the summit through a screen of pines.

He stood at the edge of a long meadow, growing in a sort of saddle-shaped depression. It was late in the afternoon by now, and several deer were grazing at the far end, close to the shelter of the trees. One or two lifted their heads and looked at him, but he was still, and they went back to their business among the growing shadows.

There were rocky outcroppings near the edges of the plateau. Not large ones, but for a single rifleman, a decent vantage point—if you could make it that far and not be picked off struggling up the mountainside.

Aye, he could see well enough what Patrick Ferguson would think. With plenty of ammunition and a well-armed band of militia, it would be a simple matter to hunker down near the edges and fire downhill at the attackers.

Except, as Frank Randall had recounted it, this strategy would work only so long as the attackers were kept at a distance. Let them get too high, too close to the wee meadow, and Ferguson would switch to bayonet tactics at that point. But the problem was that the attackers who’d survived to get high enough and had eluded the bayonets would come over the edge with their weapons loaded and mow down the Loyalists who were fighting with unloaded guns equipped with butcher knives for bayonets. According to the damned book, Ferguson had little experience in battle—he’d been shot in the elbow in the only battle he’d fought, and the wound had crippled him—and he’d not understood either the terrain or the character of the men who would be climbing that mountain.

Randall hadn’t mentioned it, but Jamie was sure that Ferguson would have been using his own patented breech-loading rifle—he’d always use it, being unable to load a regular gun with his crippled elbow.

Strange to think of this man, this Ferguson, minding his own business somewhere just this minute, having no notion what was coming for him.

But you know the same is coming for you. A strange quivering ran down the backs of his legs, and he tensed his back and curled his fists to make it stop.

“Nay, I don’t,” he said defiantly to the shade of Frank Randall. “Ye’ve not been here; ye won’t be here. I’m no going to believe you just because ye wrote it down, aye?”

He’d spoken aloud and the deer had vanished like smoke, leaving him alone in the gathering twilight.

The evening was peaceful, but not the meadow. He’d brought his own disturbance with him, and the wind made long, rippling furrows through the grass, as though small creatures were being chased, running for their lives.

There ought to be some ritual for facing one’s death—and in fact, there were many, but none seemed quite appropriate for this situation. Lacking any other notion, though, he turned sunwise and walked the edge of the grass, making a circle completely round the mountaintop and the shades of the battle to come. The first sun charm to come to his mind was the deasil charm, said to bless a new child and protect him from harm.

William. Of course it would be William, always there in the back of his mind, the inner chambers of his heart. This might be the only thing of value that he could leave this child of his, and he let the prayer fill his heart as he said it aloud:

Wisdom of serpent be thine,

Wisdom of raven be thine,

Wisdom of valiant eagle.

Voice of swan be thine,

Voice of honey be thine,

Voice of the Son of the stars.

Sain of the fairy-woman be thine,

Sain of the elf-dart be thine,

Sain of the red dog be thine.

Bounty of sea be thine,

Bounty of land be thine,

Bounty of the Father of Heaven.

Be each day glad for thee,

No day ill for thee,

A life joyful, satisfied.

It was only as he left the mountaintop and started the slippery, rocky, awkward descent through the fluttering new leaves of the sugar maples that it occurred to him how much of that blessing had in fact been his. Had one of his parents said this charm for him when he was small?

“A life joyful, satisfied,” he murmured to himself, and let peace fill him.

It wasn’t until he’d reached the bottom of the mountain that he wondered whether, when he came to die, Da or his mother might be there to greet him.

“Or maybe Murtagh,” he said, and smiled at the thought.