A Breath of Snow and Ashes (147 page)

I threaded my way through clumps of seamen and Marines, mechanically acknowledging their salutes, mind working furiously.

How? How was I going to speak to MacDonald alone? I
had
to find out what he knew about Jamie—if anything. Would he tell me, if he did know anything? But yes, I thought, he would; soldier he might be, but MacDonald was also a confirmed gossip—and he was plainly dying of curiosity at the sight of me.

The cook, a chubby young free black named Tinsdale, who wore his hair in three stubby braids that stuck out of his head like the horns of a triceratops, was at work in the galley, dreamily toasting bread over the fire.

“Oh, hullo,” he said amiably, seeing me. He waved the toasting fork. “Want a bit of toast, Mrs. Fraser? Or is it the hot water, again?”

“Love some toast,” I said, seized by inspiration. “But the Governor has company; he wants coffee sent. And if you have a few of those nice almond biscuits to go with it . . .”

Armed with a loaded coffee tray, I made my way toward the surgeon’s cabin a few minutes later, heart pounding. The door was open for air; evidently it wasn’t a secret meeting.

They were huddled together over the small desk, the Governor frowning at a wad of papers, these clearly having traveled some distance in MacDonald’s dispatch case, judging from the creases and stains upon them. They appeared to be letters, written in a variety of hands and inks.

“Oh, coffee,” the Governor said, looking up. He seemed vaguely pleased, plainly not recalling that he hadn’t ordered any. “Splendid. Thank you, Mrs. Fraser.”

MacDonald hastily picked up the papers, making room for me to set the tray down on the desk. The Governor had one in his hand; he kept hold of this, and I caught a quick glimpse of it as I bent to place the tray in front of him. It was a list of some sort—names on one side, numbers beside them.

I managed to knock a spoon to the floor, enabling a better look as I stooped for it.
H. Bethune, Cook’s Creek, 14. Jno. McManus, Boone, 3. F. Campbell, Campbelton, 24?

I darted a look at MacDonald, who had his eyes fixed on me. I dropped the spoon on the desk, then took a hasty step back, so that I stood directly behind the Governor. I pointed a finger at MacDonald, then in rapid succession clutched my throat, tongue protruding, grabbed my stomach with crossed forearms, then jabbed the finger again at him, then at myself, all the while giving him a monitory stare.

MacDonald viewed this pantomime with subdued fascination, but—with a veiled glance at the Governor, who was stirring his coffee with one hand, frowning at the paper he held in the other—gave me a tiny nod.

“How many can you be quite sure of?” the Governor was saying, as I curtsied and backed out.

“Oh, at least five hundred men, sir, even now,” MacDonald replied confidently. “A great many more to come, as word spreads. Ye should see the enthusiasm with which the General has been received so far! I cannot speak for the Germans, of course, but depend upon it, sir, we shall have all the Highlanders of the backcountry, and not a few of the Scotch–Irish, too.”

“God knows I hope you are right,” the Governor said, sounding hopeful, but still dubious. “Where is the General now?”

I would have liked to hear the answer to that—and a good many other things—but the drum was beating overhead for mess, and thundering feet were already pounding down the decks and companionways. I couldn’t lurk about eavesdropping in plain sight of the mess, so was obliged to go back up top, hoping that MacDonald had indeed got my message.

The captain of the
Cruizer
was standing by the rail, his first mate beside him, both scanning the shore with their telescopes.

“Is anything happening?” I could see more activity near the fort, people coming and going—but the shore road was still empty.

“Can’t say, ma’am.” Captain Follard shook his head, then lowered the telescope and shut it, reluctantly, as though afraid something might happen if he didn’t keep his eyes fixed on the shore. The first mate didn’t move, still squinting fixedly toward the fort on its bluff.

I remained there by his side, staring silently toward the shore. The tide shifted; I had been on the ship long enough to feel it, a barely perceptible pause, the sea taking breath as the invisible moon yielded its pull.

There is a tide in the affairs of men.
. . . Surely Shakespeare had stood upon a deck, at least once, and felt that same faint shift, deep in the flesh. A professor had told me once, in medical school, that the Polynesian seafarers dared their vast journeys through the trackless sea because they had learned to sense the currents of the ocean, the shifts of wind and tide, registering these changes with that most delicate of instruments—their testicles.

It didn’t take a scrotum to feel the currents that were swirling round us now, I reflected, with a sideways glance at the first mate’s securely fastened white breeches. I could feel them in the pit of my stomach, in the damp of my palms, in the tenseness of the muscles at the back of my neck. The mate had lowered his telescope, but still looked toward the shore, almost absently, his hands resting on the rail.

It occurred to me suddenly that if something drastic were to happen on land, the
Cruizer
would at once lift sail and head out to sea, carrying the Governor to safety—and me farther from Jamie. Where on earth might we end up? Charlestown? Boston? Either was as likely. And no one on that seething shore would have any notion where we had gone.

I’d met displaced persons during the war—my war. Driven or taken from their homes, their families scattered, their cities destroyed, they thronged refugee camps, stood in lines besieging embassies and aid stations, asking, always asking for the names of the vanished, describing the faces of the loved and lost, grasping at any scrap of information that might lead them back to whatever might be left. Or, failing that, preserve for a moment longer what they had once been.

The day was warm, even on the water, and my clothes clung to me with humid damp, but my muscles convulsed and my hands on the rail shook with sudden chill.

I might have seen them all for the last time, not knowing it: Jamie, Bree, Jemmy, Roger, Ian. That’s how it happened: I had not even said goodbye to Frank, had had no faintest inkling when he left that last night that I would never see him alive again. What if—

But no, I thought, steadying myself with a tighter grip on the wooden rail. We would find each other again. We had a place to return to. Home. And if I remained alive—as I most firmly intended to do—I
would
go back home.

The mate had shut his telescope and left; I hadn’t noticed his departure, absorbed in morbid thoughts, and was quite startled when Major MacDonald hove to alongside me.

“Too bad the
Cruizer
has nay long-range guns,” he said with a nod at the fort. “’Twould put a crimp in the plans o’ those wee heathen, eh?”

“Whatever those plans might be,” I replied. “And speaking of plans—”

“I’ve a kind of a griping in the wame,” he interrupted blandly. “The Governor suggested that ye might possibly have some sort of medicine to soothe it.”

“Did he indeed?” I said. “Well, come down to the galley; I’ll brew you a cup of something that will set you right, I expect.”

“DID YE KEN, he thought ye were a forger?” MacDonald, hands wrapped around a mug of tea, jerked his head in the direction of the main cabin. The Governor was nowhere in sight, and the cabin’s door closed.

“I did, yes. Does he know better now?” I asked with a sense of resignation.

“Well, aye.” MacDonald looked apologetic. “I supposed he knew already, or I wouldna have said. Though if I hadn’t,” he added, “he would have kent it sooner or later. The story’s spread all the way to Edenton by now, and the broadsheets . . .”

I flapped a hand, dismissing this.

“Have you seen Jamie?”

“I have not.” He glanced at me, curiosity warring with wariness. “I’d heard . . . aye, well, I’ve heard a great many things, and all different. But the meat of the matter is that ye’ve both been arrested, aye? For the murder of Miss Christie.”

I nodded briefly. I wondered whether one day I would grow used to that word. The sound of it was still like a punch in the stomach, short and brutal.

“Need I tell you that there is no truth to it?” I said bluntly.

“Not the slightest need, mum,” he assured me, with a fair assumption of confidence. But I sensed the hesitation in him, and saw the sideways glance, curious and somehow avid. Perhaps one day I’d get used to that, too.

My hands were cold; I wrapped them round my own mug, taking what comfort I could in its heat.

“I need to get word to my husband,” I said. “Do you know where he is?”

MacDonald’s pale blue eyes were fixed on my face, his own showing no more now than courteous attention.

“No, mum. But you do, I assume?”

I gave him a sharp look.

“Don’t be coy,” I advised him shortly. “You know as well as I do what’s going on on shore—probably much better.”

“Coy.” His thin lips pursed in brief amusement. “I dinna believe anyone’s called me that before. Aye, I know. And so?”

“I think that he
may
be in Wilmington. I tried to send word to John Ashe, and asked him to get Jamie out of the gaol in Wilmington, if possible—if he was there—and to tell him where I was. But I don’t know—” I waved a hand in frustration toward the shore.

He nodded, native caution at odds with his obvious desire to ask me for the gory details of Malva’s death.

“I shall be going back through Wilmington. I’ll make such inquiries as may be possible. If I find Mr. Fraser—shall I tell him anything, beyond your present situation?”

I hesitated, thinking. I had been holding a constant conversation with Jamie, ever since they took him away from me. But none of what I said to him in the wide black nights or the lonely dawns seemed appropriate to confide to MacDonald. And yet . . . I couldn’t forgo the opportunity; God knew when I might have another.

“Tell him that I love him,” I said softly, my eyes on the tabletop. “I always will.”

MacDonald made a small sound that made me look up at him.

“Even though he—” he began, then stopped himself.

“He didn’t kill her,” I said sharply. “And neither did I. I told you so.”

“Of course not,” he said hurriedly. “No one could imagine . . . I only meant . . . but of course, a man’s but a man, and . . . mmphm.” He broke off and looked away, the color high in his face.

“He didn’t do that, either,” I said through my teeth.

There was a marked silence, during which we avoided each other’s gaze.

“Is General MacDonald a kinsman of yours?” I asked abruptly, needing either to change the course of the conversation or to leave.

The Major glanced up, surprised—and relieved.

“Aye, a distant cousin. The Governor’s mentioned him?”

“Yes,” I said. It was the truth, after all; Martin simply hadn’t mentioned the General to
me.
“You’re, um, assisting him, are you? It sounded as though you’ve been having some success.”

Relieved to have escaped the social awkwardness of dealing with the question as to whether I were a murderess, and Jamie only a philanderer, or he a murderer and I his scorned and deluded dupe, MacDonald was only too eager to take the offered bait.

“Great success, indeed,” he said heartily. “I’ve gathered pledges from many of the most prominent men in the colony; they stand ready to do the Governor’s bidding at the slightest word!”

Jno. McManus, Boone, 3.
Prominent men. I happened to know Jonathan McManus, whose gangrenous toes I had removed the winter before. He likely
was
the most prominent man in Boone, if by that, MacDonald meant that the other twenty inhabitants all knew him for a drunkard and a thief. It was also probably true that he had three men who would go to fight with him if called: his one-legged brother and his two feeble-minded sons. I took a sip of tea to hide my expression. Still, MacDonald had Farquard Campbell on his list; had Farquard really made a formal commitment?

“I gather the General is not presently anywhere near Brunswick, though,” I said, “given the, er, present circumstances?” If he was, the Governor would be much less nervous than he was.

MacDonald shook his head.

“No. But he is not ready to muster his forces yet; he and McLeod do but discover the readiness of the Highlanders to rise. They will not call muster until the ships come.”

“Ships?” I blurted. “What ships?”

He knew he oughtn’t to speak further, but couldn’t resist. I saw it in his eyes; after all, what danger could there be in telling me?

“The Governor has asked for aid from the Crown in subduing the factionalism and unrest that runs rampant in the colony. And has received assurances that it will be forthcoming—should he be able to raise enough support on the ground to reinforce the government troops who will arrive by ship.

“That is the plan, ye see,” he went on, warming to it. “We are notified”—
Oh, “we” indeed,
I thought—“that my Lord Cornwallis begins to gather troops in Ireland, who will take ship shortly. They should arrive in the early autumn, and join wi’ the General’s militia. Between Cornwallis on the coast and the General comin’ doon frae the hills—” He closed thumb and fingers in a pinching movement. “They’ll crush the Whiggish whoresons like a pack o’ lice!”