A Breath of Snow and Ashes (152 page)

Mr. Buchanan was in there with Duncan now, and what had started out as a genial thrum of conversation was now showing signs of strain. She got up, relieved to feel only a slight residual clamminess now, and picked up the basin. She had the natural human inclinations toward eavesdropping, but lately, she had been careful not to hear anything but what she must.

Duncan and her aunt Jocasta were stout Loyalists, and nothing she could say by way of tactful urging or logical argument would sway them. She had overheard more than one of Duncan’s private conversations with local Tories that made her heart go small with apprehension, knowing as she did what would be the outcome of the present events.

Here in the piedmont, in the heart of the Cape Fear country, most of the solid citizens
were
Loyalists, convinced that the violence taking place to the north was an overblown rumpus that might be unnecessary, and if it was not, had little to do with them—and that what was most needed here was a firm hand to rein in the wild-eyed Whigs, before their excesses provoked a ruinous retaliation. Knowing that exactly such a ruinous retaliation was coming—and to people she liked, or even loved—gave her what her father called the grue: a cold sense of oppressive horror, coiling through the blood.

“When, then?” Buchanan’s voice came clearly as she opened the door, sounding impatient. “They will not wait, Duncan. I must have the money by Wednesday week, or Dunkling will sell the arms elsewhere; ye ken it’s a seller’s market the noo. For gold, he’ll wait—but not for long.”

“Aye, I ken that fine, Sawny.” Duncan sounded impatient—and very uneasy, Brianna thought. “If it can be done, it will be.”

“IF?” Buchanan cried. “What is this ‘if’? ’Til now, it’s been, oh, aye, Sawny, nay difficulty, to be sure, Sawny, tell Dunkling it’s on, oh, of
course,
Sawny—”

“I said, Alexander, that if it can be done, it will.” Duncan’s voice was low, but suddenly had a note of steel in it that she had never heard before.

Buchanan said something rude in the Gaelic, and suddenly the door of Duncan’s office burst open and the man himself popped out, in so great a huff that he barely saw her, and gave her no more than a brusque nod in passing.

Which was just as well, she thought, since she was standing there holding a bowl full of vomit.

Before she could move to dispose of it, Duncan came out in turn. He looked hot, cross—and extremely worried. He did, however, notice her.

“How d’ye fare, lass?” he asked, squinting at her. “Ye’re that bit green; have ye eaten aught amiss?”

“I think so. But I’m all right now,” she said, hastily turning to put the basin back in the room behind her. She set it on the floor and closed the door on it. “Are you, er, all right, Duncan?”

He hesitated for an instant, but whatever was bothering him was too overwhelming to keep it bottled up. He glanced about, but none of the slaves was up here at this time of day. He leaned close, nonetheless, and lowered his voice.

“Have ye by chance . . . seen anything peculiar,
a nighean
?”

“Peculiar, how?”

He rubbed a knuckle under his drooping mustache, and glanced round once more.

“Near Hector Cameron’s tomb, say?” he asked, his voice pitched only just above a whisper.

Her diaphragm, still sore from vomiting, contracted sharply at that, and she put a hand to her middle.

“Ye have, then?” Duncan’s expression sharpened.

“Not me,” she said, and explained about Jemmy, Angelina, and the supposed ghost.

“I thought perhaps it was Mr. Buchanan,” she finished, nodding toward the stair down which Alexander Buchanan had vanished.

“Now, there’s a thought,” Duncan muttered, rubbing distractedly at his grizzled temple. “But no . . . surely not. He couldna—but it’s a thought.” Brianna thought that he looked very slightly more hopeful.

“Duncan—can you tell me what’s wrong?”

He took a deep breath, shaking his head—not in refusal, but in perplexity—and let it out again, his shoulders slumping.

“The gold,” he said simply. “It’s gone.”

SEVEN THOUSAND POUNDS in gold bullion was a substantial amount, in all senses of the word. She had no idea how much such a sum might weigh, but it had completely lined Jocasta’s coffin, standing chastely next to Hector Cameron’s in the family mausoleum.

“What do you mean ‘gone’?” she blurted. “
All
of it?”

Duncan clutched her arm, features contorted in the urge to shush her.

“Aye, all of it,” he said, looking round yet again. “For God’s sake, lass, keep your voice down!”

“When did it go? Or rather,” she amended, “when you did find it gone?”

“Last night.” He looked round yet again, and jerked his chin toward his office. “Come in, lass; I’ll tell ye about it.”

Duncan’s agitation subsided a little as he told her the story; by the time he had finished, he had regained a certain amount of outward calm.

The seven thousand pounds was what was left of the original ten thousand, which in turn was one-third of the thirty thousand sent—too late, but sent nonetheless—from Louis of France in support of Charles Stuart’s doomed attempt on the thrones of England and Scotland.

“Hector was careful, aye?” Duncan explained. “He lived as a rich man, but always within such means as a place like this”—he waved his one hand around, indicating the grounds and messuages of River Run—“might provide. He spent a thousand pound acquiring the land and building the house, then over the years, another thousand in slaves, cattle, and the like. And a thousand pound he put to the bankers—Jo said he couldna bear the thought of all that money sitting, earning nay interest”—he gave her a small, wry smile—“though he was too clever to attract attention by putting it all out. I suppose he meant, maybe, to invest the rest, a bit at a time—but he died before that was done.”

Leaving Jocasta as a very wealthy widow—but even more cautious than her husband had been about attracting undue attention. And so the gold had sat, safe in its hiding place, save for the one ingot being gradually whittled away and disposed of by Ulysses. Which had disappeared, she remembered with a qualm.
Someone
knew there was gold here.

Perhaps whoever had taken that ingot had guessed that there was more—and hunted, quietly, patiently, until they found it.

But now—

“Ye’ll have heard about General MacDonald?”

She’d heard the name frequently of late, in conversation—he was a Scottish general, more or less retired, she’d assumed—who had been staying here and there, the guest of various prominent families. She
hadn’t
heard of his purpose, though.

“He means to raise men—three thousand, four—among the Highlanders, to march to the coast. The Governor’s sent for aid; troopships are coming. So the General’s men will come down through the Cape Fear valley”—he made a graceful swooping gesture with his hand—“meet the Governor and his troops—and pincer the rebel militias that are a-building.”

“And you meant to give him the gold—or no,” she corrected herself. “You meant to give him arms and powder.”

He nodded and chewed his mustaches, looking unhappy.

“A man named Dunkling; Alexander knows him. Lord Dunsmore is gathering a great store of powder and arms in Virginia, and Dunkling is one of his lieutenants—and willing to give up some of that store, in return for gold.”

“Which is now gone.” She took a deep breath, feeling sweat trickle down between her breasts, further dampening her shift.

“Which is now gone,” he agreed bleakly. “And I’m left to wonder what about this ghost of wee Jem’s, aye?”

Ghost, indeed. For someone to have entered a place like River Run, teeming with people, and to have moved several hundred pounds by weight of gold, completely unnoticed . . .

The sound of feet on the stairs caused Duncan to jerk his head sharply toward the door, but it was only Josh, one of the black grooms, his hat in his hand.

“Best we be going, Miss Bree,” he said, bowing respectfully. “If ye be wanting the light, like?”

For her drawings, he meant. It was a good hour’s trip into Cross Creek to lawyer Forbes’s house, and the sun was rising fast toward noon.

She glanced at her green-smeared fingers, and recalled the hair straggling untidily down from its makeshift bun; she’d have to tidy herself a bit first.

“Go, lass.” Duncan waved her toward the door, his lean face still creased with worry but lightened a little by having shared it.

She kissed him affectionately on the forehead and went down after Josh. She
was
worried, and not only about missing gold and prowling ghosts. General MacDonald, indeed. For if he meant to raise fighting men among the Highlanders, one of the natural places for him to go was to her father.

As Roger had noted to her sometime earlier,
“Jamie can walk the tightrope between Whigs and Tories better than any man I know—but when push comes to shove . . . he’ll have to jump.”

The push had come at Mecklenberg. But shove, she thought, was named MacDonald.

100

A TRIP TO THE SEASIDE

N
EIL FORBES, thinking it prudent to be absent from his usual haunts for a time, had removed to Edenton, with the excuse of taking his aged mother to visit her even more aged sister. He had enjoyed the long journey, in spite of his mother’s complaints about the clouds of dust raised by another carriage that preceded them.

He had been loath to sacrifice his sight of that carriage—a small, well-sprung affair, whose windows were sealed and heavily curtained. But he had always been a devoted son, and at the next post stop, he went to speak to the driver. The other coach obligingly dropped back, following them at a convenient distance.

“Whatever are ye lookin’ at, Neil?” his mother demanded, looking up from fastening her favorite garnet brooch. “That’s the third time ye’ve had a peek out thon window.”

“Not a thing, Mam,” he said, inhaling deeply. “Only taking pleasure in the day. Such beautiful weather, is it not?”

Mrs. Forbes sniffed, but obligingly settled her spectacles on her nose and leaned to peer out.

“Aye, weel, it’s fair enough,” she admitted dubiously. “Hot, though, and damp enough to wring buckets from your shirt.”

“Never mind,
a leannan,
” he said, patting her black-clad shoulder. “We’ll be in Edenton afore ye know. It’ll be cooler there. Nothing like a sea-breeze, so they say, to put the roses in your cheeks!”

101

NIGHTWATCH

Edenton

T
HE REVEREND MCMILLAN’S HOUSE was on the water. A blessing in the hot, muggy weather. The offshore breeze in the evening swept everything away—heat, hearth smoke, mosquitoes. The men sat on the big porch after supper, smoking their pipes and enjoying the respite.

Roger’s enjoyment was spiced by the guilty awareness that Mrs. Reverend McMillan and her three daughters were sweating to and fro, washing dishes, clearing away, sweeping floors, boiling up the leftover ham bones from supper with lentils for tomorrow’s soup, putting children to bed, and generally slaving away in the stuffy, sweltering confines of the house. At home, he would have felt obliged to help with such work, or face Brianna’s wrath; here, such an offer would have been received with drop-jawed incredulity, followed by deep suspicion. Instead, he sat peacefully in the cool evening breeze, watching fishing boats come in across the water of the sound and sipping something that passed for coffee, engaged in pleasant male conversation.

There was, he thought, occasionally something to be said for the eighteenth-century model of sexual roles.

They were talking over the news from the south: the flight of Governor Martin from New Bern, the burning of Fort Johnston. The political climate of Edenton was strongly Whiggish, and the company was largely clerical—the Reverend Doctor McCorkle, his secretary Warren Lee, the Reverend Jay McMillan, Reverend Patrick Dugan, and four “inquirers” awaiting ordination besides Roger—but there were still currents of political disagreement flowing beneath the outwardly cordial surface of the conversation.

Roger himself said little; he didn’t wish to offend McMillan’s hospitality by contributing to any argument—and something inside him wished for quiet, to contemplate tomorrow.

Then the conversation took a new turn, though, and he found himself paying rapt attention. The Continental Congress had met in Philadelphia two months before, and given General Washington command of the Continental army. Warren Lee had been in Philadelphia at the time, and was giving the company a vivid account of the battle at Breed’s Hill, at which he had been present.

“General Putnam, he brought up wagonloads of dirt and brush, to the neck of the Charlestown peninsula—you said you knew it, sir?” he asked, courteously turning toward Roger. “Well, Colonel Prescott, he’s there already, with two militia comp’nies from Massachusetts, and parts of another from Connecticut—was mebbe a thousand men in all, and dear Lord, was they a stench from the camps!”

His soft Southern accent—Lee was a Virginian—held a slight touch of amusement, but this faded as he went on.

“General Ward, he’d give orders to fortify this one hill, Bunker Hill, they call it, for an old redoubt atop. But Colonel Prescott, he goes up it and don’t care so much for the looks, him and Mr. Gridley, the engineer. So they leave a detachment there, and go on to Breed’s Hill, what they think is maybe better to the purpose, bein’ closer to the harbor.

“Now, this is all at night, mind. I was with one of the Massachusetts companies, and we marched right smart, then spent the whole night through, ’twixt midnight and dawn, diggin’ trenches and raising up six-foot walls about the perimeter.

“Come the dawn, and we skulked down behind our fortifications, and just in time, too, for there’s a British ship in the harbor—the
Lively,
they said—and she opens fire the minute the sun’s up. Looked right pretty, for the fog was still on the water and the cannon lit it up in red flashes. Did no harm, though; most all the balls fell short into the harbor—did see one whaleboat at the docks hit, though; stove it like kindling. The crew, they’d hopped out like fleas when the
Lively
took to firing. From where I was, I could just see ’em, hoppin’ up and down on the dock, a-shakin’ their fists—then the
Lively
let off another broadside, and they all fell flat or run like rabbits.”

The light was nearly gone, and Lee’s young face invisible in the shadows, but the amusement in his voice made a small rumble of laughter run among the other men.

“They was some firin’ from a little battery up on Copp’s Hill, and one or two of the other ships, they let off a pop or two, but they could see ’twan’t no earthly use and ceased. Then come in some fellows from New Hampshire to join up with us, and that was purely heartening. But General Putnam, he sends a good many men back to work on the fortifications at Bunker, and the New Hampshire folk, they’re crouched way down on the left, where they’s got no cover beyond rail fences stuffed with mown grass. Lookin’ at ’em down there, I was pleased as punch to have four feet of solid earthwork in front of me, I tell you, gentlemen.”

The British troops had set out across the Charles River, bold as brass under the midday sun, with the warships behind them and the batteries on shore all providing covering fire.

“We didn’t fire back, of course. Had no cannon,” Lee said with an audible shrug.

Roger, listening intently, couldn’t keep from asking a question at this point.

“Is it true that Colonel Stark said, ‘Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes’?”

Lee coughed discreetly.

“Well, sir. I couldn’t say for sure as no one said that, but I didn’t hear it myself. Mind, I
did
hear one colonel call out, ‘Any whoreson fool wastes his powder afore the bastards are close enough to kill is gonna get his musket shoved up his arse butt-first!’”

The assembly erupted into laughter. An inquiry from Mrs. McMillan, who had come out to offer further refreshment, as to the source of this merriment shut them all up sharp, though, and they listened with a fair assumption of sober attention to the rest of Lee’s account.

“Well, so, then, on they come, and I will say ’twas a daunting sight. They’d several regiments, and all in their different colors, fusiliers and grenadiers, Royal Marines, and a proper boiling of light infantry, all comin’ on over the ground like a horde of ants, and just as mean.

“I wouldn’t make great claim to bravery myself, gentlemen, but I would say the fellows standin’ with me had some nerve. We did let ’em come, and the first ranks weren’t no more than ten feet away when our volley cut into them.

“They rallied, came back on, and we cut them down again—like ninepins. And the officers—there was a powerful lot of the officers went; they were on their horses, see? I—I shot one such. He keeled over, but he didn’t fall off—his horse carried him away. Kind of lolling, with his head loose. But he didn’t fall.”

Lee’s voice had lost some of its color, and Roger saw the burly form of the Reverend Doctor McCorkle lean toward his secretary, touching his shoulder.

“They rallied a third time, and came on. And . . . we were most of us out of ammunition. They came on over the earthworks and through the fences. With their bayonets fixed.”

Roger was sitting on the steps of the porch, Lee above him and several feet away, but could hear the young man swallow.

“We fell back. That’s how they say it. We ran, is what we did. So’d they.”

He swallowed again.

“A bayonet—it makes a terrible sound, goin’ into a man. Just—terrible. I can’t say how it is, describe it properly. Heard it, though, and more’n once. Was a good many run straight through the body that day—skewered and then the steel pulled out, and they left to die on the ground, floppin’ like fish.”

Roger had seen—handled—eighteenth-century bayonets, often. A seventeen-inch triangular blade, heavy and brutal, with a blood groove down one side. He thought, quite suddenly, of the furrowed scar that ran up Jamie Fraser’s thigh, and rose to his feet. Murmuring a brief excuse, he left the porch, and walked down the shore, pausing only for a moment to shed his shoes and stockings.

The tide was going out; sand and shingle were wet and cool under his bare feet. The breeze rattled faintly among palmetto leaves behind him, and a line of pelicans flew down the shore, solemn against the last of the light. He walked a little way into the surf, small rippling waves that tugged at his heels, sucking the sand away beneath him, making him shift and sway to keep his balance.

Far out on the water of Albemarle Sound, he could see lights; fishing boats, with small fires built in sandboxes aboard, to light the torches the fishermen swung over the side. These seemed to float in the air, swinging to and fro, their reflections in the water winking slowly in and out like fireflies.

The stars were coming out. He stood looking up, trying to empty his mind, his heart, open himself to the love of God.

Tomorrow, he would be a minister.
Thou art a priest forever,
said the ordination service, quoting from the Bible,
after the order of Melchizedek.

“Are you afraid?”
Brianna had asked him, when he’d told her.

“Yeah,” he said softly, aloud.

He stood until the tide left him, then followed it, walking into the water, wanting the rhythmic touch of the waves.

“Will you do it anyway?”

“Yeah,” he said, more softly still. He had no idea what he was agreeing to, but said it, anyway. Far down the beach behind him, the breeze brought him now and then a snatch of laughter, a few words from the Reverend McMillan’s porch. They had moved on, then, from the talk of war and death.

Had any of them ever killed a man? Lee, perhaps. The Reverend Doctor McCorkle? He snorted a little at the thought, but did not dismiss it. He turned and walked a little further, until the only sounds were those of the waves and the offshore wind.

Soul-searching. It was what squires used to do, he thought, smiling a little wryly at the thought. The night before he became a knight, a young man would keep vigil in church or chapel, watching through the dark hours, lighted only by the glow of a sanctuary lamp, praying.

For what? he wondered. Purity of mind, singleness of purpose. Courage? Or perhaps forgiveness?

He hadn’t meant to kill Randall Lillington; that had been almost accident, and what wasn’t had been self-defense. But he had been hunting when he did it, had gone out looking for Stephen Bonnet, meaning to kill him in cold blood. And Harley Boble; he could still see the shine of the thieftaker’s eyes, feel the echo of the blow, the shards of the man’s skull reverberating through the bones of his own arm. He’d meant that, yes. Could have stopped. Didn’t.

Tomorrow, he would swear before God that he believed in the doctrine of predestination, that he had been meant to do what he had done. Perhaps.

Maybe I don’t believe that, so much,
he thought, doubt stealing in.
But maybe I do. Christ—oh, sorry
—he apologized mentally—
can I be a proper minister, with doubts? I think everyone’s got them, but if I’ve got too many—maybe ye’d best let me know now, before it’s too late.

His feet had gone numb, and the sky was ablaze with a glory of stars, thick in the black velvet night. He heard the crunch of footsteps among the shingle and the sea wrack nearby.

It was Warren Lee—tall and gangly by starlight, the Reverend Doctor McCorkle’s secretary, erstwhile militiaman.

“Thought I’d take a bit of air,” Lee said, his voice hardly audible above the hiss of the sea.

“Aye, well, there’s a lot of it, and it’s free,” Roger said as amiably as he could. Lee chuckled briefly in response, but luckily didn’t seem disposed to talk.

They stood for some time, watching the fishing boats. Then, by unspoken consent, turned to go back. The house was dark, the porch deserted. A single candle burned in the window, though, lighting them home.

“That officer, the one I shot,” Lee blurted suddenly. “I pray for him. Every night.”

Lee shut up abruptly, embarrassed. Roger breathed slow and deep, feeling the jerk of his own heart. Had he ever prayed for Lillington, or Boble?

“I will, too,” he said.

“Thank you,” said Lee very softly, and side by side, they made their way back up the beach, pausing to pick up their shoes, going back barefooted, sand drying on their feet.

They had sat down on the steps to brush it off before going in, when the door behind them opened.

“Mr. MacKenzie?” said the Reverend McMillan, and something in his voice pulled Roger to his feet, heart pounding. “You have a visitor.”

He saw the tall silhouette behind McMillan, and knew, even before Jamie Fraser’s pale, fierce face appeared, eyes black in the candlelight.

“He’s taken Brianna,” Jamie said without preamble. “Ye’ll come.”