64

SIGNAL FOR ACTION

Note, when on the March the discharge of three Pieces of Cannon will be the signal to form the line of Battle, and five the signal for Action.

—Order of Battle, Wm. Tryon

ROGER WALKED SLOWLY away from the Regulators’ camp, willing himself neither to run nor to look back. A few shouted insults and half-meant threats were hurled in his direction, but by the time he was well into the trees, the crowd had lost interest in him, drawn back into its buzzing controversy. It was past noon, and a hot day for May, but he found his shirt sweat-soaked and clinging to him in a manner more befitting July.

He stopped as soon as he was out of sight. He was breathing fast, and felt dizzy, slightly sick with the aftereffects of adrenaline. In the center of that ring of hostile faces, he hadn’t felt a thing—not a thing. Safely away, though, the muscles of his legs were trembling and his fists ached from clenching. He uncurled them, flexed his stiff fingers, and tried to slow his breathing.

Maybe a bit more like the night-time Channel and the anti-aircraft guns than he’d thought, after all.

He’d made it back, though; would be going home to his wife and son. The thought gave him a queer pang; bone-deep relief, and an even deeper grief, quite unexpected, for his father, who hadn’t been so lucky.

A slight breeze played about him, lifting the damp hairs on his neck with a breath of welcome coolness. He’d sweated through shirt and coat together, and his damp stock felt suddenly as though it would strangle him. He shucked his coat and pawed at the neckband, jerking it off with shaking fingers, then stood with his eyes closed and the piece of cloth dangling from his hand, breathing great draughts of air, until the momentary sense of nausea subsided.

He called to mind his last sight of Brianna, framed in the doorway, Jemmy in her arms. He saw her lashes wet with tears and the baby’s round solemn eyes, and felt a deep echo of the feeling he had experienced in the cabin with Husband; a vision of beauty, a conviction of joy that soothed his mind and eased his soul. He would go back to them; that was all that mattered.

After a moment, he opened his eyes, picked up his coat, and set off, beginning to feel more settled in body, if not in mind, as he made his way slowly back toward the creek.

He hadn’t brought back Husband to Jamie, but he had achieved as much as Jamie himself might have. It was possible that the mob—they were no army, whatever Tryon thought of them—would in fact fall apart, disperse now and go home, deprived of even the faint semblance of leadership Husband had provided. He hoped so.

Or they might not. Another man might rise out of that seething mob, one fit to take command. A thought struck him, with a phrase recalled from the confusion near the cabin.

“D’ye come to offer different terms than Caldwell has?” The man with the black beard had asked him that. And earlier, dimly heard through the pounding at the door of the cabin, as he stood in prayer with Husband—“There’s no time for this!” someone had shouted. “Caldwell’s come back from the Governor—” and someone else had added, in tones of desperation, “An hour, Hermon! He’s given us an hour, no more!”

“Shit,” he said, aloud. David Caldwell, the Presbyterian minister who had married him and Bree. It must be. Evidently the man had gone to speak with Tryon on the Regulators’ behalf—and been rebuffed, with a warning.

“An hour, no more.” An hour to disperse, to leave peaceably? Or an hour to reply to some ultimatum?

He glanced up; the sun stood overhead, just a bit past noon. He pulled on his coat and stuffed the discarded stock in his pocket, next to the unused flag of truce. Whatever it meant, that hour’s grace, it was clearly time to be going.

The day was still bright and hot, the smell of grass and tree-leaves pungent with rising sap. Now, though, his sense of urgency and his memory of the Regulators, buzzing like hornets, deprived him of any appreciation of the beauties of nature. Even so, some trace of peace remained deep within him as he made his way quickly toward the creek; a faint echo of what he had felt in the cabin.

That odd sense of awe had stayed with him, hidden but accessible, like a smooth stone in his pocket. He turned it over in his mind as he made his way toward the creek, largely oblivious to clutching brambles and brush in his path.

How peculiar, he thought. Nothing whatever had happened, and in fact the entire experience had felt quite ordinary—nothing otherworldly or supernatural about it. And yet, having seen by that particular clear light, he could not forget it. Could he explain it to Brianna? he wondered.

A trailing branch brushed past his face and he reached to push it aside, feeling even as he did so a faint surprise at the cool green gloss of the leaves, the odd delicacy of their edges, jagged as knives but paper-light. An echo, faint but recognizable, of what he had seen before, that piercing beauty. Did Claire see that? he thought suddenly. Did she see the touch of beauty in the bodies beneath her hands? Was that perhaps how—and why—she was a healer?

Husband had seen it, too, he knew; had shared that perception. And seeing it, had been confirmed in his Quaker principles, and had left the field, unable either to do violence or to countenance it.

And what of his own principles? He supposed they were unchanged; if he hadn’t meant to shoot anyone before, he could mean it still less, now.

The scents of spring still hung in the air, and a small blue butterfly floated past his knee with no apparent sense of care. It was still a fine spring day, but all illusion of tranquillity had vanished. The smell of sweat, of dirt and fear and anger, that seemed to hang in the air of the encampment, was still in his nostrils, mingling with the cleaner scents of trillium and water.

What about Jamie Fraser’s principles? he wondered, turning past the thicket of willow that marked the ford. He often wondered what made Fraser tick, drawn both by a personal liking for the man, and by his colder historian’s curiosity. Roger had made his own decision regarding this conflict—or had it made for him. He couldn’t in conscience intend harm to anyone, though he supposed he could defend his own life, if needful. But Jamie?

He was fairly sure that Jamie’s sympathies, as such, lay with the Regulators. He thought it likely also that his father-in-law had no sense of personal loyalty to the Crown; oath or no oath, surely no man could have lived through Culloden and its aftermath and emerged with any notion that he owed the King of England fealty, let alone anything more substantial. No, not to the Crown, but perhaps to William Tryon?

No loyalty of a personal nature there, either—but there was definitely an obligation felt. Tryon had summoned Jamie Fraser, and he had come. Given conditions as they stood, he had had little choice about that. Having come, though—would he fight?

How could he not? He must lead his men, and if it came to a battle—Roger glanced over his shoulder, as though the cloud of anger that hung over the Regulators’ army might be now visible, swelling dark above the treetops—yes, he would have to fight, no matter what his private feelings on the matter might be.

Roger tried to envision himself aiming a musket at a man with whom he had no quarrel and pulling the trigger. Or worse, riding down a neighbor, sword in hand. Smashing in Kenny Lindsay’s head, for instance? Imagination failed completely. No wonder that Jamie had sought to enlist Husband’s help in ending the conflict before it began!

Still, Claire had told him once that Jamie had fought in France as a mercenary, as a young man. He had presumably killed men with whom he had no quarrel. How—

He pushed through the willows, and heard their voices before he saw them. A group of women were working on the far side of the stream; camp-followers. Some crouched bare-legged in the shallows, washing, others were carrying wet laundry up the bank, to be hung from trees and bushes. His eye passed casually beyond them, then jerked back, caught by . . . what? What was it?

There. He couldn’t say why he had spotted her at all—there was nothing even faintly distinctive about her. And yet she stood out among the other women as though she had been outlined, drawn with black ink to stand out against the backdrop of stream and budding foliage.

“Morag,” he whispered, and his heart thumped suddenly with a small shock of joy. She was alive.

He was halfway through the screen of willows before it occurred to him to wonder what he was doing, let alone why he was doing it. It was too late by then, though; he was already out on the bank, walking openly toward them.

Several of the women glanced at him; a few half-froze, watchful. But he was only one man, unarmed. There were more than twenty women by the river, their own men nearby. They watched him, curious, but not alarmed, as he splashed across the shallow creek.

She stood stock-still, knee-deep in the water, her skirts kirtled high, and watched him come. She knew him, he could see, but she gave him no sign of acknowledgment.

The other women fell back slightly, wary of him. She stood among the darting dragonflies, strands of brown hair poking out from her cap, a wet smock held forgotten in her hands. He stepped up out of the water and stood before her, wet to the knees.

“Mrs. MacKenzie,” he said softly. “Well met.”

A tiny smile touched the corner of her mouth. Her eyes were brown; he hadn’t noticed that before.

“Mr. MacKenzie,” she said, and gave him a small nod. His mind was working, thinking what to do. He must warn her, but how? Not before all the other women.

He stood helpless and awkward for a moment, not knowing what to do, then, inspired, he stooped and seized an armload of dripping laundry where it swirled in the water near her legs. He turned and clambered up the bank with it, Morag following in sudden haste.

“What are ye doing?” she demanded. “Here, come back wi’ my clothes!”

He carried the wad of wet clothes a short way into the trees, then dropped them casually into a bush, mindful enough of the effort of washing not to let them drag in the dirt. Morag was right behind him, face flushed with indignation.

“What d’ye think you’re about, ye thievin’ clotheid?” she demanded heatedly. “Give those back!”

“I’m not stealing them,” Roger assured her. “I only wanted to talk to you alone for a bit.”

“Oh, aye?” She gave him a suspicious glance. “What about, then?”

He smiled at her; she was still thin, he saw, but her arms were brown and her small face a healthy color—she was clean, and she had lost the pallid, bruised look she had had on board the Gloriana.

“I wished to ask if you are well,” he said softly. “And your child—Jemmy?” To speak the name gave him an odd frisson, and for a split second he saw the image of Brianna in the doorway, her son in her arms, laid over his memory of Morag, holding her baby in the dimness of the hold, ready to kill or die to keep him.

“Oh,” she said, and the suspicion faded slightly, replaced by a reluctant acknowledgment of his right to ask. “We’re well . . . the both of us. And my husband, too,” she added pointedly.

“I’m pleased to hear it,” he assured her. “Very pleased.” He groped for something else to say, feeling awkward. “I—had thought of you now and then . . . wondered whether—whether everything was all right. When I saw you just now . . . well, I thought I’d ask, that’s all.”

“Oh, aye. Aye, I see. Well, I do thank ye, Mr. MacKenzie.” She looked up and met his eyes directly as she said it, her own gaze brown and earnest. “I ken what ye did for us. I’ll not forget; ye’re in my prayers each night.”

“Oh.” Roger felt as though some soft weight had struck him in the breast. “Ahh . . . thank you.” He had wondered, now and then, if she ever thought of him. Did she remember the kiss he had given her, there in the hold, seeking the spark of her warmth as some shield against the chill of loneliness? He cleared his throat, flushing at the memory.

“You—live nearby?”

She shook her head, and some thought, some memory, tightened her mouth.

“We did, but now—well, that’s no matter.” She turned, suddenly business-like, and began to take her wet clothes from the bush, shaking each one before folding it. “I do thank ye for your concern, Mr. MacKenzie.”

He was clearly dismissed. He wiped his hands down his breeks and shifted his feet, not wanting to leave. He must tell her—but having found her again, he was oddly reluctant simply to warn her and leave; curiosity bubbled in him—curiosity and a peculiar sense of connection.

Perhaps not so peculiar; this small brown woman was his relative, his own family—the only person of his own blood he had known since the death of his parents. At the same time, it was very peculiar, he realized, even as his hand reached out and curved around her arm. She was his many-times great-grandmother, after all.

She stiffened, tried to pull away, but he kept hold of her forearm. Her skin was cold from the water, but he felt her pulse throb under his fingers.

“Wait,” he said. “Please. Just a moment. I—I need to tell you . . . things.”

“No, ye don’t. I’d rather ye didn’t.” She pulled harder, and her hand slid through his, pulled free.

“Your husband. Where is he?” Belated realizations were forming in his brain. If she did not live nearby, then she was what he had first thought when he saw the women—a camp-follower. She was not a whore, he would stake his life on that; so she followed her husband, which meant—

“He is very nearby!” She backed up a step, eyeing the distance between herself and the remnants of her laundry. Roger stood between her and the bush; she would have to pass near him in order to retrieve her petticoats and stockings.

Realizing suddenly that she was slightly afraid of him, he turned hastily, grabbing a handful of things at random.

“I’m sorry. Your laundry . . . here.” He thrust them at her, and she reached to take them by reflex. Something fell—a baby’s gown—and both ducked to reach for it, cracking foreheads with a solid smack.

“Oh! Oh! Mary and Bride!” Morag clutched her head, though she still clasped the wet clothes against her bosom with one hand.

“Christ, are you all right? Morag—Mrs. MacKenzie—are you all right? I’m very sorry!” Roger touched her shoulder, squinting at her through eyes that watered with pain. He stooped to pick up the tiny gown that had fallen to the ground between them, and made a vain effort to wipe the smears of mud off the wet cloth. She blinked, eyes similarly watering, and laughed at his expression of dismay.

The collision had somehow broken the tension between them; she stepped back, but seemed not to feel threatened now.

“Aye, I’m fine.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes, then touched the spot on her forehead gingerly. “I’ve got a thick skull, my Mam always said. Are you all right yourself, then?”

“Aye, fine.” Roger touched his own forehead, suddenly and tinglingly aware that the curve of the browbone under his fingers was precisely echoed on the face before him. Hers was smaller, lighter—but just the same.

“I’ve a thick skull, too.” He grinned at her, feeling ridiculously happy. “It runs in my family.”

He handed her the mud-stained shirt, carefully.

“I am sorry,” he said, apologizing again—and not only for the ruined laundry. “Your husband. I asked about him because—is he one of the Regulators, then?”

She looked at him curiously, one brow lifted.

“Of course. Are ye not with the Regulation yourself?”

Of course. Here on this side of Alamance, what else? Tryon’s troops were drawn up in good military order on the field beyond the creek; over here, the Regulators swarmed like bees, without leadership or direction, an angry mass buzzing with random violence.

“No,” he said. “I’ve come with the militia.” He waved toward the distant smudge, where the smoke of Tryon’s campfires hung, far beyond the creek. Her eyes grew wary again, but not frightened; he was only one man.

“That’s the thing I wanted to tell you,” he said. “To warn you, and your husband. The Governor is serious this time; he’s brought organized troops, he’s brought cannon. Lots of troops, all armed.” He leaned toward her, holding out the rest of the wet stockings. She reached out a hand to take them, but kept her eyes on his, waiting.

“He means to put down this rebellion, by any means necessary. He has given orders to kill, if there is resistance. Do you understand? You must tell your husband, make him leave before—before anything happens.”

She paled, and her hand went reflexively to her belly. The wet from the clothes had soaked through her muslin dress, and he saw the small swelling that had been hidden there, round and smooth as a melon under the damp cloth. He felt the jolt of her fear go through him, as though the wet stockings she held conducted electricity.

“We did, but not now . . .” she had said, when he asked whether they lived nearby. She might mean only that they had moved to some new place, but . . . there were baby’s things in her wash; her son was with her here. Her husband was somewhere in this boiling of men.

A single man might pick up his gun and join a mob, for no reason beyond drink or boredom; a married man with a child would not. That spoke of serious disaffection, consequential grievance. And to bring both wife and child to war suggested that he had no safe place to leave them.

Roger thought it likely that Morag and her husband had no home at all now, and he understood her fear perfectly. If her husband should be maimed or killed, how was she to provide for Jemmy, for the new baby swelling under her skirt? She had no one, no family here to turn to.

Except that she did, though she did not know it. He gripped her hand hard, pulling her toward him, overcome with the need somehow to protect her and her children. He had saved them once; he could do it again.

“Morag,” he said. “Hear me. If anything should happen—anything—come to me. If you are in need of anything at all. I’ll take care of you.”

She made no effort to pull away, but searched his face, her eyes brown and serious, a small frown between those curving brows. He had an irresistible urge to make some physical connection between them—this time for her sake, as much as his. He leaned forward and kissed her, very gently.

He opened his eyes then, and lifted his head, to find himself looking over her shoulder, into the disbelieving face of his many-times great-grandfather.

“GET AWAY FROM MY WIFE.” William Buccleigh MacKenzie emerged from the shrubbery with a great rustling of leaves and a look of sinister intent upon his face. He was a tall man, close to Roger’s own height, and burly through the shoulders. Further personal details seemed inconsequent, given that he also had a knife. It was still sheathed at his belt, but his hand rested on the hilt in a significant manner.

Roger resisted his original impulse, which had been to say, “It’s not what you think.” It wasn’t, but there weren’t any plausible alternatives to suggest.

“I meant her no disrespect,” he said, instead, straightening up slowly. He felt it would be unwise to make any quick moves. “My apologies.”

“No? And just what the hell d’ye mean by it, then?” MacKenzie put a possessive hand on his wife’s shoulder, glowering at Roger. She flinched; her husband’s fingers were digging into her flesh. Roger would have liked to knock the hand away, but that was likely to cause more trouble than he had already.

“I met your wife—and you—” he added, “on board the Gloriana, a year or two ago. When I recognized her here, I thought to inquire as to the family’s welfare. That’s all.”

“He meant nay harm, William.” Morag touched her husband’s hand, and the painful grip lessened. “It’s right, what he says. Do ye not ken the man? It was him that found me and Jemmy in the hold when we hid there—he brought us food and water.”

“You asked me to care for them,” Roger added pointedly. “During the fight, that night when the sailors threw the sick ones into the sea.”

“Oh, aye?” MacKenzie’s features relaxed a trifle. “It was you, was it? I didna see your face, in the dark.”

“I didn’t see yours, either.” He could see it clearly now, and despite the awkwardness of the present circumstances, couldn’t help studying it with interest.

So this was the son—unacknowledged—of Dougal MacKenzie, erstwhile war chief of the MacKenzies of Leoch. He looked it. His was a rougher, squarer, fairer version of the family face, but looking carefully, Roger could easily spot the broad cheekbones and high forehead that Jamie Fraser had inherited from his mother’s clan. That and the family height; MacKenzie stood over six feet tall, nearly eye to eye with Roger himself.

The man turned slightly at a sound in the brush, and the sun lit those eyes with a flash of bright moss-green. Roger had a sudden urge to shut his own eyes, lest MacKenzie feel the same bolt of recognition.

MacKenzie had other concerns, though. Two men emerged from the bushes, wary-eyed and grimy with long camping. One held a musket; the other was armed with nothing but a rough club cut from a fallen limb.

“Who’s this, then, Buck?” the man with the gun asked, eyeing Roger with some suspicion.

“That’s what I mean to be finding out.” The momentary softening had disappeared, leaving MacKenzie’s face grimly set. He turned his wife away from him and gave her a small push. “Go ye back to the women, Morag. I’ll deal with this fellow.”

“But, William—” Morag glanced from Roger to her husband, face drawn in distress. “He hasna done anything—”

“Oh, ye think it’s nothing, do you, that a man should cheek up to ye in public, like a common radge?” William turned a black look on her, and she blushed suddenly crimson, evidently recalling the kiss, but stumbled on.

“I—no, I mean—that is—he was kind to us, we shouldna be—”

“I said go back!”

She opened her mouth as though to protest, then flinched as William made a sudden move in her direction, fist clenched. Without an instant of conscious decision, Roger swung from the waist, his own fist hitting MacKenzie’s jaw with a crack that jarred his arm to the elbow.

Caught off-balance, William staggered and fell to one knee, shaking his head like a pole-axed ox. Morag’s gasp was drowned by startled exclamations from the other men. Before he could turn to face them, Roger heard a sound behind him—quiet in itself, but loud enough to chill the blood; the small, cold snick of a hammer drawing back.

There was a brief pst! of igniting powder, and then a phfoom! as the gun went off with a roar and a puff of black smoke. Everyone jerked and stumbled with the noise, and Roger found himself struggling in a confused sort of way with one of the other men, both of them coughing and half-deafened. As he shoved his assailant off, he caught sight of Morag, kneeling in the leaves, dabbing at her husband’s face with a bit of wet laundry. William shoved her roughly away, scrambled to his feet, and headed for Roger, his eyes bulging, face blotched red with fury.

Roger spun on his heel, slipping in the leaves, and shook off the grip of the man with the gun, making for the shelter of the bushes. Then he was into the thicket, twigs and small branches splintering around him, raking face and arms as he thrust his way through. A heavy crashing and the huff of breath came just behind him, and a hand fastened on his shoulder with a grip of iron.

He seized the hand and twisted hard, hearing a crack of joint and bone. The hand’s owner yelled and jerked back, and Roger flung himself headlong toward an opening in the scrub.

He hit the ground on one shoulder, half-curled, rolled, broke through a small bush, and tobogganed down a steep clay bank and into the water, where he landed with a splash.

Scrabbling to find a foothold, he plunged and coughed and flapped upright, shaking hair and water from his eyes, only to see William MacKenzie poised at the top of the bank above him. Seeing his enemy thus at a disadvantage, MacKenzie launched himself with a whoop.

Something like a cannonball crashed into Roger’s chest and he fell back into the water in a mighty splash, hearing the distant shrieks of women. He couldn’t breathe and couldn’t see, but grappled with the twisting mess of clothes and limbs and roiling mud, churning the bottom as he strove vainly for footing, lungs bursting for air.

His head broke the surface. His mouth opened and closed like a fish’s, gulping air, and he heard the wheeze of his breath, and MacKenzie’s, too. MacKenzie broke away, floundering, and stood upright a few feet away, wheezing like an engine as water poured from his clothes. Roger bent, chest heaving, hands braced on his thighs and his arms quivering with effort. With a final gulp of air, he straightened, wiping away the wet hair plastered over his face.

“Look,” he began, panting, “I—”

He got no further, for MacKenzie, still breathing heavily himself, was advancing on him through the waist-deep water. The man’s face had an odd, eager look, and the moss-green eyes were very bright.

Belatedly, Roger thought of something else. The man was the son of Dougal MacKenzie. But the son also of Geillis Duncan, witch.

Somewhere beyond the willows, there was a deep booming noise, and flocks of startled birds rose screeching from the trees. The battle had begun.