2

LOAVES AND FISHES

WE HAD CHOSEN A SITE well off the main path, but situated in a small, rocky clearing with a good view of the wide creekbank below. Glancing downward through a scrim of holly bushes, I could see the flash of green-and-black tartans as the last of the soldiers dispersed; Archie Hayes encouraged his men to mingle with the people at the Gathering, and most were only too glad to obey.

I wasn’t sure whether this policy of Archie’s was dictated by guile, penury, or simply humanitarianism. Many of his soldiers were young, separated from home and family; they were glad of the chance to hear Scottish voices again, to be welcomed at a homely fireside, offered brose and parritch, and to bask in the momentary warmth of familiarity.

As I came out of the trees, I saw that Marsali and Lizzie were making a small fuss of the bashful young soldier who had fished Germain out of the creek. Fergus stood close to the fire, wisps of steam rising from his wet garments, muttering in French as he rubbed Germain’s head briskly with a towel, one-handed. His hook was braced against the little boy’s shoulder to keep him steady, and the blond head wobbled back and forth, Germain’s face quite tranquil, in complete disregard of his father’s scolding.

Neither Roger nor Brianna were anywhere in sight, but I was rather alarmed to see Abel MacLennan sitting on the far side of the clearing, nibbling a bit of toasted bread on a stick. Jamie was already back with the borrowed supplies, which he was unpacking on the ground next to the fire. He was frowning to himself, but the frown melted into a smile at sight of me.

“There ye are, Sassenach!” he said, rising to his feet. “What kept ye?”

“Oh . . . I met an acquaintance on the trail,” I said, with a significant look toward the young soldier. It was evidently not significant enough, since Jamie knitted his brows in puzzlement.

“The Lieutenant is looking for you,” I hissed, leaning close to him.

“Well, I kent that, Sassenach,” he said, in a normal tone of voice. “He’ll find me soon enough.”

“Yes, but . . . ahem.” I cleared my throat and raised my brows, glancing pointedly from Abel MacLennan to the young soldier. Jamie’s notions of hospitality wouldn’t countenance having his guests dragged away from under his rooftree, and I would have supposed that the same principle applied to his campfire as well. The young soldier might find it awkward to arrest MacLennan, but I was sure the Lieutenant would have no such hesitation.

Jamie looked rather amused. Raising his own brows, he took my arm, and led me over to the young man.

“My dear,” he said formally, “may I present Private Andrew Ogilvie, late of the village of Kilburnie? Private Ogilvie, my wife.”

Private Ogilvie, a ruddy-faced boy with dark curly hair, blushed and bowed.

“Your servant, mum!”

Jamie squeezed my arm lightly.

“Private Ogilvie was just telling me that the regiment is bound for Portsmouth, in Virginia—there to take ship for Scotland. Ye’ll be glad to see home, I expect, lad?”

“Oh, aye, sir!” the lad said fervently. “The regiment will disband in Aberdeen, and then I’m off home, so fast as my legs will carry me!”

“The regiment is disbanding?” Fergus asked, coming to join the conversation, a towel draped round his neck and Germain in his arms.

“Aye, sir. With the Frenchies settled—er, beggin’ your pardon, sir—and the Indians safe, there’s naught for us to do here, and the Crown willna pay us to sit at home,” the lad said ruefully. “Peace may be a guid thing, all in all, and I’m glad of it, surely. But there’s no denying as it’s hard on a soldier.”

“Almost as hard as war, aye?” Jamie said dryly. The boy flushed darkly; young as he was, he couldn’t have seen much in the way of actual fighting. The Seven Years War had been over for nearly ten years—at which time Private Ogilvie would likely still have been a barefoot lad in Kilburnie.

Ignoring the boy’s embarrassment, Jamie turned to me.

“The lad tells me,” he added, “that the Sixty-seventh is the last regiment left in the Colonies.”

“The last Highland regiment?” I asked.

“No, mum, the last of the Crown’s regular troops. There are the garrisons here and there, I suppose, but all of the standing regiments have been recalled to England or Scotland. We’re the last—and behind our time, too. We meant to sail from Charleston, but things went agley there, and so we’re bound for Portsmouth now, so fast as we can make speed. It’s late in the year, but the Lieutenant’s had word of a ship that may risk passage to take us. If not—” He shrugged, glumly philosophic. “Then we shall winter in Portsmouth, I suppose, and make shift as we can.”

“So England means to leave us unprotected?” Marsali looked rather shocked at the thought.

“Oh, I shouldna think there’s any great danger, mum,” Private Ogilvie assured her. “We’ve dealt wi’ the Frenchies for good and all, and the Indians willna be up to much without the frogs to stir them up. Everything’s been quite peaceful for a good time now, and doubtless it’ll stay so.” I made a small noise in the back of my throat, and Jamie squeezed my elbow lightly.

“Have ye not thought perhaps to stay, then?” Lizzie had been peeling and grating potatoes while listening to this; she put down the bowl of glistening white shreds by the fire and began to smear grease on the griddle. “Stay in the Colonies, I mean. There’s plenty of land still to be had, to the west.”

“Oh.” Private Ogilvie glanced down at her, her white kerch modestly bent over her work, and his color deepened again. “Well, I will say I’ve heard worse prospects, miss. But I am bound to go wi’ my regiment, I’m afraid.”

Lizzie picked up two eggs and cracked them neatly against the side of the bowl. Her own face, usually pale as whey, bore a faint pink echo of the Private’s rich blush.

“Ah. Well, it’s a great pity that ye should go awa so soon,” she said. Her pale blond lashes swept down against her cheeks. “Still, we’ll not send ye away on an empty stomach.”

Private Ogilvie went slightly pinker round the ears.

“That’s . . . verra kind of ye, miss. Verra kind indeed.”

Lizzie glanced up shyly, and blushed more deeply.

Jamie coughed gently and excused himself, leading me away from the fire.

“Christ,” he said in an undertone, bending down so I could hear him. “And she’s been a woman less than a full day, too! Have ye been givin’ her lessons, Sassenach, or are women just born wi’ it?”

“Natural talent, I expect,” I said circumspectly.

The unexpected advent of Lizzie’s menarche after supper last night had in fact been the straw that broke the camel’s back, with regard to clean clouts, and the precipitating event that had caused me to sacrifice my petticoat. Lizzie naturally had no menstrual cloths with her, and I didn’t want to oblige her to share the children’s diapers.

“Mmphm. I suppose I’d best begin looking for a husband for her, then,” Jamie said in resignation.

“A husband! Why, she’s scarcely fifteen!”

“Aye, so?” He glanced at Marsali, who was rubbing Fergus’s dark hair dry with the towel, and then back at Lizzie and her soldier, and raised a cynical brow at me.

“Aye, so, yourself,” I said, a little crossly. All right, Marsali had been only fifteen when she married Fergus. That didn’t mean—

“The point being,” Jamie went on, dismissing Lizzie for the moment, “that the regiment leaves for Portsmouth tomorrow; they havena got either time nor disposition to trouble with this business in Hillsborough—that’s Tryon’s concern.”

“But what Hayes said—”

“Oh, if anyone tells him anything, I’m sure he’ll send the depositions along to New Bern—but as for himself, I imagine he’d not much care if the Regulators set fire to the Governor’s Palace, so long as it doesna delay his sailing.”

I heaved a deep sigh, reassured. If Jamie was right, the last thing Hayes would do was take prisoners, no matter what the evidence to hand. MacLennan was safe, then.

“But what do you suppose Hayes wants with you and the others, then?” I asked, bending to rummage in one of the wicker hampers for another loaf of bread. “He is hunting you—in person.”

Jamie glanced back over his shoulder, as though expecting the Lieutenant to appear at any moment through the holly bushes. As the screen of prickly green remained intact, he turned back to me, frowning slightly.

“I dinna ken,” he said, shaking his head, “but it’s naught to do with this business of Tryon’s. If it was that, he might have told me last night—for that matter, if he cared himself about the matter, he would have told me last night,” he added. “No, Sassenach, depend upon it, the rioters are no more than a matter of duty to wee Archie Hayes.

“As for what he wants wi’ me—” He leaned over my shoulder to swipe a finger round the top of the honey pot. “I dinna mean to trouble about it until I must. I’ve three kegs of whisky left, and I mean to turn them into a plowshare, a scythe blade, three ax-heids, ten pound of sugar, a horse, and an astrolabe before this evening. Which is a conjuring trick that might take some attention, aye?” He drew the sticky tip of his finger gently across my lips, then turned my head toward him and bent to kiss me.

“An astrolabe?” I said, tasting honey. I kissed him back. “Whatever for?”

“And then I want to go home,” he whispered, ignoring the question. His forehead was pressed against mine, and his eyes very blue.

“I want to take ye to bed—in my bed. And I mean to spend the rest of the day thinking what to do to ye once I’ve got ye there. So wee Archie can just go and play at marbles with his ballocks, aye?”

“An excellent thought,” I whispered back. “Care to tell him that yourself?”

My eye had caught the flash of a green-and-black tartan on the other side of the clearing, but when Jamie straightened up and whirled round, I saw that the visitor was in fact not Lieutenant Hayes but rather John Quincy Myers, who was sporting a soldier’s plaid wrapped round his waist, the ends fluttering gaily in the breeze.

This added a further touch of color to Myers’s already striking sartorial splendor. Extremely tall, and decorated from the top down with a slouch hat stuck through with several needles and a turkey quill, two ragged pheasant feathers knotted into his long black hair, a vest of dyed porcupine quills worn over a beaded shirt, his usual breechclout, and leggings wrapped with strings of small bells, the mountain man was hard to miss.

“Friend James!” John Quincy smiled broadly at sight of Jamie, and hastened forward, hand extended and bells chiming. “Thought I should find you at your breakfast!”

Jamie blinked slightly at this vision, but gamely returned the mountain man’s encompassing handshake.

“Aye, John. Will ye join us?”

“Er . . . yes,” I chimed in, with a surreptitious look into the food hamper. “Please do!”

John Quincy bowed ceremoniously to me, sweeping off his hat.

“Your servant, ma’am, and I’m much obliged. Maybe later. Right now, I come to fetch away Mr. Fraser, though. He’s wanted, urgent-like.”

“By whom?” Jamie asked warily.

“Robbie McGillivray, he says his name is. You know the man?”

“Aye, I do.” Whatever Jamie knew about McGillivray, it was causing him to delve into the small chest where he kept his pistols. “What’s the trouble?”

“Well.” John Quincy scratched meditatively at his bushy black beard. “’Twas his wife as asked me to come find you, and she don’t speak what you’d call right good English, so may be as I’ve muddled the account of it a bit. But what I think she said to me was as how there was a thief-taker who’d grabbed holt of her son, sayin’ as how the boy was one o’ the ruffians who broke up Hillsborough, and meanin’ to take him to the gaol in New Bern. Only Robbie, he says no one’s takin’ a son of his anywhere, and—well, after that, the poor woman got right flustered and I couldn’t make out but one word to the dozen. But I do believe Robbie would ’preciate it if you’d come by and lend a hand with the proceedings.”

Jamie grabbed Roger’s bloodstained green coat, which was hung on a bush waiting to be cleaned. Shrugging into it, he thrust the newly loaded pistol through his belt.

“Where?” he said.

Myers gestured economically with one large thumb, and pushed off into the holly bushes, Jamie at his heels.

Fergus, who had been listening to this exchange, Germain in his arms, set the boy down at Marsali’s feet.

“I must go help Grand-père,” he told Germain. He picked up a stick of firewood and put it into the little boy’s hands. “You stay; protect Maman and little Joan from bad people.”

“Oui, Papa.” Germain scowled fiercely under his blond fringe and took a firm grip on his stick, settling himself to defend the camp.

Marsali, MacLennan, Lizzie, and Private Ogilvie had been watching the byplay with rather glazed looks. As Fergus picked up another length of firewood and plunged purposefully into the holly bushes, Private Ogilvie came to life, stirring uneasily.

“Er . . .” he said. “Perhaps I . . . should I go for my sergeant, do ye think, ma’am? If there’s like to be any trouble . . .”

“No, no,” I said hurriedly. The last thing we needed was for Archie Hayes and his regiment to show up en masse. This struck me as the sort of situation which would benefit strongly from being kept unofficial.

“I’m sure everything will be quite all right. It’s sure to be nothing but a misunderstanding. Mr. Fraser will sort it directly, never fear.” Even as I spoke, I was sidling round the fire toward the spot where my medical supplies lay, sheltered from the drizzle under a sheet of canvas. Reaching under the edge, I grabbed my small emergency kit.

“Lizzie, why don’t you give Private Ogilvie some of the strawberry preserves for his toast? And Mr. MacLennan would like a bit of honey in his coffee, I’m sure. Do excuse me, won’t you, Mr. MacLennan, I must just go and . . . er . . .” Smiling inanely, I sidled through the holly leaves. As the branches swished and crackled behind me, I paused to take my bearings. A faint chime of bells reached me on the rainy wind; I turned toward the sound, and broke into a run.

 

IT WAS SOME WAY; I was out of breath and sweating from the exercise by the time I caught them up near the competition field. Things were just getting under way; I could hear the buzz of talk from the crowd of men gathering, but no shouts of encouragement or howls of disappointment as yet. A few brawny specimens stamped to and fro, stripped to the waist and swinging their arms to limber up; the local “strongmen” of various settlements.

The drizzle had started up again; the wetness gleamed on curving shoulders and plastered swirls of dark body hair flat against the pale skins of chests and forearms. I had no time to appreciate the spectacle, though; John Quincy threaded his way adroitly through the knots of spectators and competitors, waving cordially to this and that acquaintance as we passed. On the far side of the crowd, a small man detached himself from the mass and came hurrying to meet us.

“Mac Dubh! Ye’ve come, then—that’s good.”

“Nay bother, Robbie,” Jamie assured him. “What’s to do, then?”

McGillivray, who looked distinctly harried, glanced at the strongmen and their supporters, then jerked his head toward the nearby trees. We followed him, unnoticed by the crowd gathering round two large stones wrapped with rope, which I assumed some of the strongmen present were about to prove their prowess by lifting.

“It’s your son, is it, Rob?” Jamie asked, dodging a water-filled pine branch.

“Aye,” Robbie answered, “or it was.”

That sounded sinister. I saw Jamie’s hand brush the butt of his pistol; mine went to my medical kit.

“What’s happened?” I asked. “Is he hurt?”

“Not him,” McGillivray replied cryptically, and ducked ahead, beneath a drooping chestnut bough hung with scarlet creeper.

Just beyond was a small open space, not really big enough to be called a clearing, tufted with dead grass and studded with pine saplings. As Fergus and I ducked under the creeper after Jamie, a large woman in homespun whirled toward us, shoulders hunching as she raised the broken tree limb she clutched in one hand. She saw McGillivray, though, and relaxed fractionally.

“Wer ist das?” she asked suspiciously, eyeing us. Then John Quincy appeared from under the creeper, and she lowered the club, her solidly handsome features relaxing further.

“Ha, Myers! You brung me den Jamie, oder?” She cast me a curious look, but was too busy glancing between Fergus and Jamie to inspect me closely.

“Aye, love, this is Jamie Roy—Sheumais Mac Dubh.” McGillivray hastened to take credit for Jamie’s appearance, putting a respectful hand on his sleeve. “My wife, Ute, Mac Dubh. And Mac Dubh’s son,” he added, waving vaguely at Fergus.

Ute McGillivray looked like a Valkyrie on a starchy diet; tall, very blond, and broadly powerful.

“Your servant, ma’am,” Jamie said, bowing.

“Madame,” Fergus echoed, making her a courtly leg.

Mrs. McGillivray dropped them a low curtsy in return, eyes fixed on the prominent bloodstains streaking the front of Jamie’s—or rather, Roger’s—coat.

“Mein Herr,” she murmured, looking impressed. She turned and beckoned to a young man of seventeen or eighteen, who had been lurking in the background. He bore such a marked resemblance to his small, wiry, dark-haired father that his identity could scarcely be in doubt.

“Manfred,” his mother announced proudly. “Mein laddie.”

Jamie inclined his head in grave acknowledgment.

“Mr. McGillivray.”

“Ah . . . your s-servant, sir?” The boy sounded rather dubious about it, but put out his hand to be shaken.

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir,” Jamie assured him, shaking it. The courtesies duly observed, he looked briefly round at the quiet surroundings, raising one eyebrow.

“I had heard that you were suffering some inconvenience wi’ regard to a thief-taker. Do I take it that the matter has been resolved?” He glanced in question from McGillivray Junior to McGillivray Senior.

The three McGillivrays exchanged assorted glances among themselves. Robin McGillivray gave an apologetic cough.

“Well, not to say resolved, quite, Mac Dubh. That is to say . . .” He trailed off, the harried look returning to his eyes.

Mrs. McGillivray gave him a stern look, then turned to Jamie.

“Ist kein bother,” she told him. “Ich haf den wee ball of shite safe put. But only we want to know, how we best den Korpus hide?”

“The . . . body?” I said, rather faintly.

Even Jamie looked a bit disturbed at that.

“Ye’ve killed him, Rob?”

“Me?” McGillivray looked shocked. “Christ’s sake, Mac Dubh, what d’ye take me for?”

Jamie raised the eyebrow again; evidently the thought of McGillivray committing violence was scarcely far-fetched. McGillivray had the grace to look abashed.

“Aye, well. I suppose I might have—and I did—well, but, Mac Dubh! That business at Ardsmuir was all long ago and done wi’, aye?”

“Aye,” Jamie said. “It was. What about this business wi’ the thief-taker, though? Where is he?”

I heard a muffled giggle behind me, and swung round to see that the rest of the family McGillivray, silent ’til now, was nonetheless present. Three teenaged girls sat in a row on a dead log behind a screen of saplings, all immaculately attired in clean white caps and aprons, only slightly wilted with the rain.

“Meine lassies,” Mrs. McGillivray announced, with a wave in their direction—unnecessarily, since all three of the girls looked like smaller versions of herself. “Hilda, Inga, und Senga.”

Fergus bowed elegantly to the three.

“Enchanté, mes demoiselles.”

The girls giggled and bobbed their heads in response, but without rising, which struck me as odd. Then I noticed some disturbance taking place under the skirt of the oldest girl; a sort of heaving flutter, accompanied by a muffled grunt. Hilda swung her heel sharply into whatever it was, all the time smiling brightly at me.

There was another grunt—much louder this time—from under the skirt, which caused Jamie to start and turn in her direction.

Still smiling brightly, Hilda bent and delicately picked up the edge of her skirt, under which I could see a frantic face, bisected by a dark strip of cloth tied round his mouth.

“That’s him,” said Robbie, sharing his wife’s talent for stating the obvious.

“I see.” Jamie’s fingers twitched slightly against the side of his kilt. “Ah . . . perhaps we could have him out, then?”

Robbie motioned to the girls, who all stood up together and stepped aside, revealing a small man who lay against the base of the dead log, bound hand and foot with an assortment of what looked like women’s stockings, and gagged with someone’s kerchief. He was wet, muddy, and slightly battered round the edges.

Myers bent and hoisted the man to his feet, holding him by the collar.

“Well, he ain’t much to look at,” the mountain man said critically, squinting at the man as though evaluating a substandard beaver skin. “I guess thief-takin’ don’t pay so well as ye might think.”

The man was in fact skinny and rather ragged, as well as disheveled, furious—and frightened. Ute sniffed contemptuously.

“Saukerl!” she said, and spat neatly on the thief-taker’s boots. Then she turned to Jamie, full of charm.

“So, mein Herr. How we are to kill him best?”

The thief-taker’s eyes bulged, and he writhed in Myers’s grip. He bucked and twisted, making frantic gargling noises behind the gag. Jamie looked him over, rubbing a knuckle across his mouth, then glanced at Robbie, who gave a slight shrug, with an apologetic glance at his wife.

Jamie cleared his throat.

“Mmphm. Ye had something in mind, perhaps, ma’am?”

Ute beamed at this evidence of sympathy with her intentions, and drew a long dagger from her belt.

“I thought maybe to butcher, wie ein Schwein, ja? But see . . .” She poked the thief-taker gingerly between the ribs; he yelped behind the gag, and a small spot of blood bloomed on his ragged shirt.

“Too much Blut,” she explained, with a moue of disappointment. She waved at the screen of trees, behind which the stone-lifting seemed to be proceeding well. “Die Leute will schmell.”

“Schmell?” I glanced at Jamie, thinking this some unfamiliar German expression. He coughed, and brushed a hand under his nose. “Oh, smell!” I said, enlightened. “Er, yes, I think they might.”

“I dinna suppose we’d better shoot him, then,” Jamie said thoughtfully. “If ye’re wanting to avoid attention, I mean.”

“I say we break his neck,” Robbie McGillivray said, squinting judiciously at the trussed thief-taker. “That’s easy enough.”

“You think?” Fergus squinted in concentration. “I say a knife. If you stab in the right spot, the blood is not so much. The kidney, just beneath the ribs in back . . . eh?”

The captive appeared to take exception to these suggestions, judging from the urgent sounds proceeding from behind the gag, and Jamie rubbed his chin dubiously.

“Well, that’s no verra difficult,” he agreed. “Or strangle him. But he will lose his bowels. If it were to be a question of the smell, even crushing his skull . . . but tell me, Robbie, how does the man come to be here?”

“Eh?” Robbie looked blank.

“You’re no camped nearby?” Jamie waved a hand briefly at the tiny clearing, making his meaning clear. There was no trace of hearthfire; in fact, no one had camped on this side of the creek. And yet all the McGillivrays were here.

“Oh, no,” Robbie said, comprehension blossoming on his spare features. “Nay, we’re camped some distance up. Only, we came to have a wee keek at the heavies”—he jerked his head toward the competition field—“and the friggin’ vulture spied our Freddie and took hold of him, so as to drag him off.” He cast an unfriendly look at the thief-taker, and I saw that a coil of rope dangled snakelike from the man’s belt. A pair of iron manacles lay on the ground nearby, the dark metal already laced with orange rust from the damp.

“We saw him grab aholt of Brother,” Hilda put in at this point. “So we grabbed aholt of him and pushed him through here, where nobody could see. When he said he meant to take Brother away to the sheriff, me and my sisters knocked him down and sat on him, and Mama kicked him a few times.”

Ute patted her daughter fondly on one sturdy shoulder.

“They are gut, strong Mädchen, meine lasses,” she told Jamie. “Ve komm see hier die Wettkämpfer, maybe choose husband for Inga or Senga. Hilda hat einen Mann already promised,” she added, with an air of satisfaction.

She looked Jamie over frankly, her eye dwelling approvingly on his height, the breadth of his shoulders, and the general prosperity of his appearance.

“He is fine, big, your Mann,” she said to me. “You haf sons, maybe?”

“No, I’m afraid not,” I said apologetically. “Er . . . Fergus is married to my husband’s daughter,” I added, seeing her gaze shift appraisingly to Fergus.

The thief-taker appeared to feel that the subject was drifting somewhat afield, and summoned attention back to himself with an indignant squeal behind his gag. His face, which had gone pale at the discussion of his theoretical demise, had grown quite red again, and his hair was matted down across his forehead in spikes.

“Oh, aye,” Jamie said, noticing. “Perhaps we should let the gentleman have a word?”

Robbie narrowed his eyes at this, but reluctantly nodded. The competitions had got well under way by now, and there was a considerable racket emanating from the field; no one would notice the odd shout over here.

“Don’t let ’em kill me, sir! You know it ain’t right!” Hoarse from his ordeal, the man fixed his appeal on Jamie as soon as the gag was removed. “I’m only doin’ as I ought, delivering a criminal to justice!”

“Ha!” all the McGillivrays said at once. Unanimous as their sentiment appeared to be, the expression of it immediately disintegrated into a confusion of expletives, opinions, and a random volley of kicks aimed at the gentleman’s shins by Inga and Senga.

“Stop that!” Jamie said, raising his voice enough to be heard over the uproar. As this had no result, he grabbed McGillivray Junior by the scruff of the neck and roared, “Ruhe!” at the top of his lungs, which startled them into momentary silence, with guilty looks over their shoulders in the direction of the competition field.

“Now, then,” Jamie said firmly. “Myers, bring the gentleman, if ye will. Rob, Fergus, come along with ye. Bitte, Madame?” He bowed to Mrs. McGillivray, who blinked at him, but then nodded in slow acquiescence. Jamie rolled an eye at me, then, still holding Manfred by the neck, he marched the male contingent off toward the creek, leaving me in charge of the ladies.

“Your Mann—he will save my son?” Ute turned to me, fair brows knitted in concern.

“He’ll try.” I glanced at the girls, who were huddled together behind their mother. “Do you know whether your brother was at Hillsborough?”

The girls looked at one another, and silently elected Inga to speak.

“Well, ja, he was, then,” she said, a little defiantly. “But he wasna riotin’, not a bit of it. He’d only gone for to have a bit of harness mended, and was caught up in the mob.”

I caught a quick glance exchanged between Hilda and Senga, and deduced that this was perhaps not the entire story. Still, it wasn’t my place to judge, thank goodness.

Mrs. McGillivray’s eyes were fixed on the men, who stood murmuring together some distance away. The thief-taker had been untied, save for his hands, which remained bound. He stood with his back against a tree, looking like a cornered rat, eyeteeth showing in a snarl of defiance. Jamie and Myers were both looming over him, while Fergus stood by, frowning attentively, his chin propped on his hook. Rob McGillivray had taken out a knife, with which he was contemplatively flicking small chips of wood from a pine twig, glancing now and then at the thief-taker with an air of dark intent.

“I’m sure Jamie will be able to . . . er . . . do something,” I said, privately hoping that the something wouldn’t involve too much violence. The unwelcome thought occurred to me that the diminutive thief-taker would probably fit tidily in one of the empty food hampers.

“Gut.” Ute McGillivray nodded slowly, still watching. “Better that I do not kill him.” Her eyes turned suddenly back to me, light blue and very bright. “But I vill do it, if I must.”

I believed her.

“I see,” I said carefully. “But—I do beg your pardon—but even if that man took your son, could you not go to the sheriff too, and explain . . .”

More glances among the girls. This time it was Hilda who spoke.

“Nein, ma’am. See, it wouldna have been sae bad, had the thief-taker come on us at the camp. But down here—” She widened her eyes, nodding toward the competition field, where a muffled thud and a roar of approval marked some successful effort.

The difficulty, apparently, was Hilda’s fiancé, one Davey Morrison, from Hunter’s Point. Mr. Morrison was a farmer of some substance, and a man of worth, as well as an athlete skilled in the arcana of stone-throwing and caber-tossing. He had family, too—parents, uncles, aunts, cousins—all of the most upright character and—I gathered—rather judgmental attitudes.

Had Manfred been taken by a thief-taker in front of such a crowd, filled with Davey Morrison’s relations, word would have spread at the speed of light, and the scandal would result in the prompt rupture of Hilda’s engagement—a prospect that clearly perturbed Ute McGillivray much more than the notion of cutting the thief-taker’s throat.

“Bad, too, I kill him and someone see,” she said frankly, waving at the thin scrim of trees shielding us from the competition field. “Die Morrisons would not like.”

“I suppose they might not,” I murmured, wondering whether Davey Morrison had any idea what he was getting into. “But you—”

“I vill haf meine lassies well wed,” she said firmly, nodding several times in reinforcement. “I find gut men für Sie, fine big men, mit land, mit money.” She put an arm round Senga’s shoulders and hugged her tight. “Nicht wahr, Liebchen?”

“Ja, Mama,” Senga murmured, and laid her neat capped head affectionately on Mrs. McGillivray’s broad bosom.

Something was happening on the men’s side of things; the thief-taker’s hands had been untied, and he stood rubbing his wrists, no longer scowling, but listening to whatever Jamie was saying with an expression of wariness. He glanced at us, then at Robin McGillivray, who said something to him and nodded emphatically. The thief-taker’s jaw worked, as though he were chewing over an idea.

“So you all came down to watch the competitions this morning and look for suitable prospects? Yes, I see.”

Jamie reached into his sporran and drew out something, which he held under the thief-taker’s nose, as though inviting him to smell it. I couldn’t make out what it was at this distance, but the thief-taker’s face suddenly changed, going from wariness to alarmed disgust.

“Ja, only to look.” Mrs. McGillivray was not watching; she patted Senga and let her go. “Ve go now to Salem, where ist meine Familie. Maybe ve find there a good Mann, too.”

Myers had stepped back from the confrontation now, his shoulders drooping in relaxation. He inserted a finger under the edge of his breechclout, scratched his buttocks comfortably, and glanced around, evidently no longer interested in the proceedings. Seeing me looking in his direction, he ambled back through the sapling grove.

“No need to worry more, ma’am,” he assured Mrs. McGillivray. “I knew Jamie Roy would take care of it, and so he has. Your lad’s safe.”

“Ja?” she said. She looked doubtfully toward the sapling grove, but it was true; the attitudes of all the men had relaxed now, and Jamie was handing the thief-taker back his set of manacles. I saw the way he handled them, with brusque distaste. He had worn irons, at Ardsmuir.

“Gott sei dank,” Mrs. McGillivray said, with an explosive sigh. Her massive form seemed suddenly to diminish as the breath went out of her.

The little man was leaving, making his way away from us, toward the creek. The sound of the swinging irons at his belt reached us in a faint chime of metal, heard between the shouts of the crowd behind us. Jamie and Rob McGillivray stood close together, talking, while Fergus watched the thief-taker’s departure, frowning slightly.

“Exactly what did Jamie tell him?” I asked Myers.

“Oh. Well.” The mountain man gave me a broad, gap-toothed grin. “Jamie Roy told him serious-like that it was surely luck for the thief-taker—his name’s Boble, by the way, Harley Boble—that we done come upon y’all when we did. He give him to understand that if we hadn’t, then this lady here”—he bowed toward Ute—“would likely have taken him home in her wagon, and slaughtered him like a hog, safe out of sight.”

Myers rubbed a knuckle under his red-veined nose and chortled softly in his beard.

“Boble said as how he didn’t believe it, he thought she was only a-tryin’ to scare him with that knife. But then Jamie Roy leaned down close, confidential-like, and said he mighta thought the same—only that he’d heard so much about Frau McGillivray’s reputation as a famous sausage-maker, and had had the privilege of bein’ served some of it to his breakfast this morning. Right about then, Boble started to lose the color in his face, and when Jamie Roy pulled out a bit of sausage to show him—”

“Oh, dear,” I said, with a vivid memory of exactly what that sausage smelled like. I had bought it the day before from a vendor on the mountain, only to discover that it had been improperly cured, and once sliced, smelled so strongly of rotting blood that no one had been able to stomach it at supper. Jamie had wrapped the offending remainder in his handkerchief and put it in his sporran, intending either to procure a refund or to shove it down the vendor’s throat. “I see.”

Myers nodded, turning to Ute.

“And your husband, ma’am—bless his soul, Rob McGillivray’s a real born liar—chimes in solemn-like, agreeing to it all, shakin’ his head and sayin’ as how he’s got his work cut out to shoot enough meat for you.”

The girls tittered.

“Da can’t kill anything,” Inga said softly to me. “He willna even wring a chicken’s neck.”

Myers raised his shoulders in a good-humored shrug, as Jamie and Rob made their way toward us through the wet grass.

“So Jamie promised on his word as a gentleman to protect Boble from you, and Boble promised on his word as a . . . well, he said as he’d keep clear of young Manfred.”

“Hmp,” said Ute, looking rather disconcerted. She didn’t mind at all being considered an habitual murderess, and was quite pleased that Manfred was out of danger—but was rather put out at having her reputation as a sausage-maker maligned.

“As though I vould effer make such shite,” she said, wrinkling her nose in disdain at the odorous lump of meat Jamie offered for her inspection. “Pfaugh. Ratzfleisch.” She waved it away with a fastidious gesture, then turned to her husband and said something softly in German.

Then she took a deep breath and expanded once more, gathering all her children like a hen clucking after chicks, urging them to thank Jamie properly for his help. He flushed slightly at the chorus of thanks, bowing to her.

“Gern geschehen,” he said. “Euer ergebener Diener, Frau Ute.”

She beamed at him, composure restored, as he turned to say something in parting to Rob.

“Such a fine, big Mann,” she murmured, shaking her head slightly as she looked him up and down. Then she turned, and caught my glance from Jamie to Rob—for while the gunsmith was a handsome man, with close-clipped, dark curly hair and a chiseled face, he was also fine-boned as a sparrow, and some inches shorter than his wife, reaching approximately to the level of her brawny shoulder. I couldn’t help wondering, given her apparent admiration for large men . . .

“Oh, vell,” she said, and shrugged apologetically. “Luff, you know.” She sounded as though love were an unfortunate but unavoidable condition.

I glanced at Jamie, who was carefully swaddling his sausage before tucking it back into his sporran. “Well, yes,” I said. “I do.”

 

BY THE TIME we returned to our own campsite, the Chisholms were just departing, having been capably fed by the girls. Fortunately, Jamie had brought plenty of food from Jocasta’s camp, and I sat down at last to a pleasant meal of potato fritters, buttered bannocks, fried ham, and—at last!—coffee, wondering just what else might happen today. There was plenty of time; the sun was barely above the trees, almost invisible behind the drifting rain clouds.

A little later, pleasantly full of breakfast, and with a third cup of coffee to hand, I went and threw back the canvas covering what I thought of as my medical supply dump. It was time to begin the business of organizing for the morning’s surgery; looking at jars of sutures, restocking the herb jars in my chest, refilling the large alcohol bottle, and brewing up the medicines that must be made fresh.

Somewhat depleted of the commoner herbs I had brought with me, my stock had been augmented by the good offices of Myers, who had brought me several rare and useful things from the Indian villages to the north, and by judicious trading with Murray MacLeod, an ambitious young apothecary who had made his way inland and set up shop in Cross Creek.

I bit the inside of my cheek, considering young Murray. He harbored the usual sort of nasty notions that passed for medical wisdom nowadays—and was not shy about asserting the superiority of such scientific methods as bleeding and blistering over the old-fashioned herbcraft that such ignorant crones as myself were prone to practice!

Still, he was a Scot, and thus possessed of a strong streak of pragmatism. He had given Jamie’s powerful frame one look and hastily swallowed the more insulting of his opinions. I had six ounces of wormwood and a jar of wild ginger root, and he wanted them. He was also shrewd enough to have observed that many more of the folk on the mountain who ailed with anything came to me than to him—and that most who accepted my cures were improved. If I had secrets, he wanted those, too—and I was more than happy to oblige.

Good, I had plenty of willow bark still left. I hesitated over the small rank of bottles in the upper right tray of the chest. I had several very strong emmenagogues—blue cohosh, ergot, and pennyroyal—but picked instead the gentler tansy and rue, setting a handful into a bowl and pouring boiling water on them to steep. Beyond its effects in easing menstruation, tansy had a reputation for calming nerves—and a more naturally nervous person than Lizzie Wemyss it would be difficult to imagine.

I glanced back at the fire, where Lizzie was shoveling the last of the strawberry preserves into Private Ogilvie, who appeared to be dividing his attention among Lizzie, Jamie, and his slice of toast—the greater proportion going to the toast.

Rue was quite a good anthelmintic, to boot. I didn’t know that Lizzie suffered from worms, but a good many people in the mountains did, and a dose would certainly do her no harm.

I eyed Abel MacLennan covertly, wondering whether to slip a quick slug of hellbrew into his coffee as well—he had the pinched, anemic look of one with intestinal parasites, in spite of his stocky build. Perhaps, though, the look of pale disquiet on his features was due more to his knowledge of thief-takers in the vicinity.

Baby Joan was wailing with hunger again. Marsali sat down, reached under her arisaid to unfasten her bodice, and set the baby to her breast, her lip clenched between her teeth with trepidation. She winced, gasped in pain, then relaxed a little, as the milk began to flow.

Cracked nipples. I frowned and returned to a perusal of the medicine chest. Had I brought any sheep’s-wool ointment? Drat, no. I didn’t want to use bear grease, with Joan suckling; perhaps sunflower oil . . .

“A bit of coffee, my dear?” Mr. MacLennan, who had been watching Marsali with troubled sympathy, extended his fresh cup toward her. “My own wife did say as hot coffee eased the pangs of nursing a wean. Whisky in it’s better”—his mournful jowls lifted a bit—“but all the same . . .”

“Taing.” Marsali took the cup with a grateful smile. “I’m chilled right through this morning.” She sipped the steaming liquid cautiously, and a small flush crept into her cheeks.

“Will you be going back to Drunkard’s Creek tomorrow, Mr. MacLennan?” she asked politely, handing back the empty cup. “Or are ye traveling to New Bern wi’ Mr. Hobson?”

Jamie looked up sharply, breaking off his conversation with Private Ogilvie.

“Hobson is going to New Bern? How d’ye ken that?”

“Mrs. Fowles says so,” Marsali replied promptly. “She told me when I went to borrow a dry shirt for Germain—she’s got a lad his size. She’s worrit for Hugh—that’s her husband—because her father—that’s Mr. Hobson—wishes him to go along, but he’s scairt.”

“Why is Joe Hobson going to New Bern?” I asked, peering over the top of my medicine chest.

“To present a petition to the Governor,” Abel MacLennan said. “Much good it will do.” He smiled at Marsali, a little sadly. “No, lassie. I dinna ken where I’m bound, tell ye the truth. ’Twon’t be to New Bern, though.”

“Nor back to your wife at Drunkard’s Creek?” Marsali looked at him in concern.

“My wife’s dead, lass,” MacLennan said softly. He smoothed the red kerchief across his knee, easing out the wrinkles. “Dead two months past.”

“Oh, Mr. Abel.” Marsali leaned forward and clasped his hand, her blue eyes full of pain. “I’m that sorry!”

He patted her hand, not looking up. Tiny drops of rain gleamed in the sparse strands of his hair, and a trickle of moisture ran down behind one large red ear, but he made no move to wipe it away.

Jamie had stood up while questioning Marsali. Now he sat down on the log beside MacLennan, and laid a hand gently on the smaller man’s back.

“I hadna heard, a charaid,” he said quietly.

“No.” MacLennan looked blindly into the transparent flames. “I—well, the truth of it is, I’d not told anyone. Not ’til now.”

Jamie and I exchanged looks across the fire. Drunkard’s Creek couldn’t possibly harbor more than two dozen souls, in a scatter of cabins spread along the banks. Yet neither the Hobsons nor the Fowleses had mentioned Abel’s loss—evidently he really hadn’t told anyone.

“What was it happened, Mr. Abel?” Marsali still clasped his hand, though it lay quite limp, palm-down on the red kerchief.

MacLennan looked up then, blinking.

“Oh,” he said vaguely. “So much happened. And yet . . . not really very much, after all. Abby—Abigail, my wife—she died of a fever. She got cold, and . . . she died.” He sounded faintly surprised.

Jamie poured a bit of whisky into an empty cup, picked up one of MacLennan’s unresisting hands, and folded it around the cup, holding the fingers in place with his own, until MacLennan’s hand tightened its grasp.

“Drink it, man,” he said.

Everyone was silent, watching as MacLennan obediently tasted the whisky, sipped, sipped again. Young Private Ogilvie shifted uneasily on his stone, looking as though he should like to return to his regiment, but he too stayed put, as though fearing an abrupt departure might somehow injure MacLennan further.

MacLennan’s very stillness drew every eye, froze all talk. My hand hovered uneasily over the bottles in my chest, but I had no remedy for this.

“I had enough,” he said suddenly. “I did.” He looked up from his cup and glanced round the fire, as though challenging anyone to dispute him. “For the taxes, aye? It was no so good a year as it might have been, but I was careful. I’d ten bushels of corn put aside, and four good deer hides. It was worth more than the six shillings of the tax.”

But the taxes must be paid in hard currency; not in corn and hides and blocks of indigo, as the farmers did their business. Barter was the common means of trade—I knew that well enough, I thought, glancing down at the bag of odd things folk had brought me in payment for my herbs and simples. No one ever paid for anything in money—save the taxes.

“Well, that’s only reasonable,” said MacLennan, blinking earnestly at Private Ogilvie, as though the young man had protested. “His Majesty canna well be doing wi’ a herd of pigs, or a brace of turkeys, now, can he? No, I see quite well why it must be hard money, anyone could. And I had the corn; it would ha’ brought six shillings, easy.”

The only difficulty, of course, lay in turning ten bushels of corn into six shillings of tax. There were those in Drunkard’s Creek who might have bought Abel’s corn, and were willing—but no one in Drunkard’s Creek had money, either. No, the corn must be taken to market in Salem; that was the closest place where hard coin might be obtained. But Salem lay nearly forty miles from Drunkard’s Creek—a week’s journey, there and back.

“I’d five acres in late barley,” Abel explained. “Ripe and yellochtie, achin’ for the scythe. I couldna leave it to be spoilt, and my Abby—she was a wee, slight woman, she couldna be scything and threshing.”

Unable to spare a week from his harvest, Abel had instead sought help from his neighbors.

“They’re guid folk,” he insisted. “One or two could spare me the odd penny—but they’d their ain taxes to pay, hadn’t they?” Still hoping somehow to scrape up the necessary coin without undertaking the arduous trip to Salem, Abel had delayed—and delayed too long.

“Howard Travers is Sheriff,” he said, and wiped unconsciously at the drop of moisture that formed at the end of his nose. “He came with a paper, and said he mun’ put us oot, and the taxes not paid.”

Faced with necessity, Abel had left his wife in their cabin, and gone posthaste to Salem. But by the time he returned, six shillings in hand, his property had been seized and sold—to Howard Travers’s father-in-law—and his cabin was inhabited by strangers, his wife gone.

“I kent she’d no go far,” he explained. “She’d not leave the bairns.”

And that in fact was where he found her, wrapped in a threadbare quilt and shivering under the big spruce tree on the hill that sheltered the graves of the four MacLennan children, all dead in their first year of life. In spite of his entreaties, Abigail would not go down to the cabin that had been theirs, would seek no aid from those who had dispossessed her. If it was madness from the fever that gripped her, or only stubbornness, he could not tell; she had clung to the branches of the tree with demented strength, crying out the names of her children—and there had died in the night.

His whisky cup was empty. He set it carefully on the ground by his feet, ignoring Jamie’s gesture toward the bottle.

“They’d given her leave to carry awa what she could. She’d a bundle with her, and her grave-claes in it. I ken weel her sitting down the day after we were wed, to spin her winding-sheet. It had wee flowers all along one edge, that she’d made; she was a good hand wi’ a needle.”

He had wrapped Abigail in her embroidered shroud, buried her by the side of their youngest child, and then walked two miles down the road, intending, he thought, to tell the Hobsons what had happened.

“But I came to the house, and found them all abuzzing like hornets—Hugh Fowles had had a visit from Travers, come for the tax, and no money to pay. Travers grinned like an ape and said it was all one to him—and sure enough, ten days later he came along wi’ a paper and three men, and put them oot.”

Hobson had scraped up the money to pay his own taxes, and the Fowleses were crowded in safely enough with the rest of the family—but Joe Hobson was foaming with wrath over the treatment of his son-in-law.

“He was a-rantin’, Joe, bleezin’ mad wi’ fury. Janet Hobson bid me come and sit, and offered me supper, and there was Joe shoutin’ that he’d take the price of the land out of Howard Travers’s hide, and Hugh slumped down like a trampled dog, and his wife greetin’, and the weans all squealin’ for their dinners like a brood o’ piglets, and . . . well, I thought of telling them, but then . . .” He shook his head, as though confused anew.

Sitting half-forgotten in the chimney-corner, he had been overcome by a strange sort of fatigue, one that made him so tired that his head nodded on his neck, lethargy stealing over him. It was warm, and he was overcome with a sense of unreality. If the crowded confines of the Hobsons’ one-roomed cabin were not real, neither was the quiet hillside and its fresh grave beneath the spruce tree.

He slept under the table, and woke before dawn, to find that the sense of unreality persisted. Everything around him seemed no more than a waking dream. MacLennan himself seemed to have ceased to exist; his body rose, washed itself, and ate, nodded and spoke without his cognizance. None of the outer world existed any longer. And so it was that when Joe Hobson had risen and announced that he and Hugh would go to Hillsborough, there to seek redress from the Court, that Abel MacLennan had found himself marching down the road along with them, nodding and speaking when spoken to, with no more will than a dead man.

“It did come to me, walkin’ doon the road, as we were all dead,” he said dreamily. “Me and Joe and Hugh and the rest. I might sae well be one place as anither; it was only moving ’til the time came to lay my bones beside Abby. I didna mind it.”

When they reached Hillsborough, he had paid no great mind to what Joe intended; only followed, obedient and unthinking. Followed, and walked the muddy streets sparkling with broken glass from shattered windows, seen the torchlight and mobs, heard the shouts and screams—all quite unmoved.

“It was no but dead men, a-rattling their bones against one anither,” he said with a shrug. He was still for a moment, then turned his face to Jamie, and looked long and earnestly up into his face.

“Is it so? Are ye dead, too?” One limp, callused hand floated up from the red kerchief, and rested lightly against the bone of Jamie’s cheek.

Jamie didn’t recoil from the touch, but took MacLennan’s hand and brought it down again, held tight between his own.

“No, a charaid,” he said softly. “Not yet.”

MacLennan nodded slowly.

“Aye. Give it time,” he said. He pulled his hands free and sat for a moment, smoothing his kerchief. His head kept bobbing, nodding slightly, as though the spring of his neck had stretched too far.

“Give it time,” he repeated. “It’s none sae bad.” He stood up then, and put the square of red cloth on his head. He turned to me and nodded politely, his eyes vague and troubled.

“I thank ye for the breakfast, ma’am,” he said, and walked away.