An Echo in the Bone (113 page)

I heard voices outside: Jamie, talking casually with someone, and in the next moment he had ducked inside the tent.

“Sassenach,” he began, “can ye come and—” He stopped dead, seeing my visitor, and drew up a bit, with a formal bow. “Sir.”

I glanced back at the visitor, surprised; Jamie’s manner made it clear that this was a superior officer of some sort; I’d thought him perhaps a captain or a major. As for the officer himself, he nodded, friendly but reserved.

“Colonel. Your wife and I have been discussing the philosophy of endeavor. What do you say—does a wise man know his limits, or a bold one deny them? And which way do you declare yourself?”

Jamie looked mildly startled and glanced at me; I lifted one shoulder an inch.

“Ah, well,” he said, switching his attention back to my visitor. “I’ve heard it said that a man’s reach must exceed his grasp—or what’s a heaven for?”

The officer stared at him for an instant, mouth open, then laughed with delight and slapped his knee.

“You and your wife are two of a kind, sir!
My
kind. That’s splendid; do you recall where you heard it?”

Jamie did; he’d heard it from me, more than once over the years. He merely smiled and shrugged, though.

“A poet, I believe, but I’ve forgot the name.”

“Well, a perfectly expressed sentiment, nonetheless, and I mean to go and try it on Granny directly—though I imagine he’ll just blink stupidly at me through his spectacles and bleat about supplies.
There’s
a man who knows his limits,” he remarked to me, still good-humored but with a distinct edge in his voice. “Knows his own damnably low limits and won’t let anyone else exceed them. A heaven’s not for the likes of him.”

That last remark went beyond edgy; the smile had faded from his face, and I glimpsed a hot anger at the back of his pale eyes. I had a moment of disquiet; “Granny” could only be General Gates, and this man was plainly a disaffected member of the high command. I sincerely hoped Robert Browning and I hadn’t just landed Jamie in the middle of something.

“Well,” I said, trying to make light of it, “they can’t defeat you if you won’t give up.”

The shadow that had rested on his brow cleared and he smiled at me, merry-eyed once more.

“Oh, they’ll never defeat me, Mrs. Fraser. Trust me!”

“I will,” I assured him, turning to open one of my boxes. “Let me get the Jesuit bark for you…

er…” I hesitated, not knowing his rank, and he noticed, clapping a hand to his forehead in apology.

“My apologies, Mrs. Fraser! What can you think of a man who bursts into your presence, rudely demanding medicaments and failing even to introduce himself properly?”

He took the small package of shredded bark from my hand, retaining the hand itself, and bowed low over it, gently kissing my knuckles.

“Major General Benedict Arnold. Your servant, ma’am.”

JAMIE LOOKED AFTER the departing general, a slight frown on his face. Then he glanced back at me and the frown disappeared instantly.

“Are ye all right, Sassenach? Ye look as though you’re about to fall over.”

“I might, at that,” I said rather faintly, and groped for my stool. I sat on it and discovered the new bottle of laudanum on the table beside me. I picked it up, finding the solid weight of it a reassurance that I hadn’t imagined the gentleman who’d just left us.

“I was mentally prepared to run into George Washington or Benjamin Franklin in person at some point,” I said. “Even John Adams. But I didn’t really expect
him…
and I
liked
him,” I added ruefully.

Jamie’s brows were still up, and he glanced at the bottle in my lap as though wondering whether I’d been having a nip.

“Why should ye not like—oh.” His face changed. “Ye know something about him?”

“Yes, I do. And it’s not something I want to know.” I swallowed, feeling a little ill. “He’s not a traitor yet—but he will be.”

Jamie glanced back over his shoulder, to be sure we were not overheard, then came and sat on the patient’s stool, taking my hands in his.

“Tell me,” he said, low-voiced.

There were limits to what I
could
tell him—and, not for the first time, I regretted not having paid more attention to Bree’s history homework, as that formed the nucleus of my specific knowledge regarding the American Revolution.

“He fought on our—on the American side for some time, and was a brilliant soldier, though I don’t know any of the details of that. But at some point, he became disillusioned, decided to switch sides, and began making overtures to the British, using a man called John André as his go-between—André was captured and hanged, I know that much. But I think Arnold got away to England. For an American
general
to turn his coat… it was such a spectacular act of treason that the name ‘Benedict Arnold’ became a synonym for traitor.
Will
become, I mean. If someone commits some horrible act of betrayal, you call them ‘a Benedict Arnold.’ ”

The sick feeling hadn’t gone away. Somewhere—right this minute—one Major John André was happily going about his business, presumably without the slightest notion of what lay in his future.

“When?” Jamie’s fingers pressing mine drew my attention away from Major André’s impending doom and back to the more urgent matter.

“That’s the problem,” I said helplessly. “I don’t know. Not yet—I
think
not yet.”

Jamie thought for a moment, brows drawn down.

“I’ll watch him, then,” he said quietly.

“Don’t,” I said, by reflex. We stared at each other for a long moment, recalling Charles Stuart. It hadn’t escaped either of us that attempting to interfere with history could have serious unintended consequences—if in fact it could be done at all. We had no notion what it was that might turn Arnold from patriot—which he certainly was at the moment—to the traitor he would be. Was his fight with Gates the niggling grain of sand that would form the heart of a treacherous pearl?

“You don’t know what small thing might affect someone’s mind,” I pointed out. “Look at Robert the Bruce and that spider.”

That made him smile.

“I’ll gang warily, Sassenach,” he said. “But I’ll watch him.”

HAT TRICK

October 7, 1777

… Well, then, order on Morgan to begin the Game.

General Horatio Gates

ON A QUIET autumn morning, crisp and golden, a British deserter entered the American camp. Burgoyne was sending out a reconnaissance force, he said. Two thousand men, to test the strength of the American right wing.

“Granny Gates’s eyes nearly popped through his spectacles,” Jamie told me, hastily reloading his cartridge box. “And nay wonder.”

General Arnold, present when the news came, urged Gates to send out a strong force against this foray. Gates, true to form, had been cautious, and when Arnold requested permission to go out and see for himself what the British were about, had given his subordinate a cold look and said,

“I am afraid to trust you, Arnold.”

“Matters rather went downhill from there,” Jamie said, grimacing slightly. “The end of it all was that Gates said to him—and I quote ye exactly, Sassenach—‘General Arnold, I have nothing for you to do. You have no business here.’ ”

I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of the morning air. Was this the moment? The thing that had—or would—turn Benedict Arnold against the cause he had fought for? Jamie saw what I was thinking, for he lifted one shoulder and said simply, “At least it’s nothing to do wi’ us this time.”

“That
is
a comfort,” I said, and meant it. “Take care, will you?”

“I will,” he said, taking up his rifle.

This time, he was able to kiss me goodbye in person.

THE BRITISH reconnaissance had a double purpose: not only to see exactly where the Americans were—for General Burgoyne had no real idea; American deserters had stopped coming in long since—but also to acquire much-needed forage for the remaining animals.

Consequently, the leading companies stopped in a promising wheat field.

William sent his infantrymen to sit down in double rows among the standing grain, while the foragers began cutting the grain and loading it on horses. A lieutenant of dragoons, a black-headed Welshman named Absolute, waved from the other side of the field and called him to a game of hazard in his tent in the evening. He had just taken breath to call back when the man beside him let out a gasp and crumpled to the ground. He never heard the bullet, but ducked to the ground, calling out to his men.

Nothing further happened, though, and after a few moments they rose cautiously and went about their work. They began to see small parties of rebels, though, stealing through the trees, and William became conscious of a growing conviction that they were being surrounded. When he spoke of this to another officer, though, the man assured him that the rebels had decided to remain behind their defenses to be attacked.

They were soon undeceived on this point when, in mid-afternoon, a large body of Americans appeared in the woods on their left and heavy cannon opened up, slamming six-and twelve-pound balls that would have done great damage, were it not for the intervening trees.

The infantrymen scattered like quail, despite the calls of their officers. William caught sight of Absolute, pelting down the field through the wheat after a group of his men, and, turning, seized a corporal of one of his own companies.

“Gather them!” he said, and, not waiting for an answer, grabbed the bridle of one of the foragers’

horses, a surprised-looking bay gelding. It was his intent to ride for the main camp for reinforcements, for plainly the Americans were out in force.

He never got there, for as he pulled the horse’s head around, the brigadier rode onto the field.

JAMIE FRASER CROUCHED in the grove at the base of the wheat field with a group of Morgan’s men, taking aim as he could. It was as hot a battle as he’d seen, and the smoke from the cannon in the wood drifted through the field in heavy, choking clouds. He saw the man on the horse, a high-ranking British officer, to judge from his braid. Two or three others, juniors, were near him, also on horseback, but he had eyes only for the one.

Grasshoppers flew out of the field like hailstones, panicked by the trampling feet; one struck him in the cheek, buzzing, and he slapped at it, heart thumping as though it had been a musket ball.

He knew the man, though only by his general’s uniform. He had met Simon Fraser of Balnain two or three times, but when they both were lads in the Highlands—Simon was a few years younger, and Jamie’s vague memories of a small, round, cheerful wee lad who trotted after the older boys, waving a shinty stick taller than himself, had nothing in common with the stout, solid man who rose now in his stirrups, calling out and brandishing his sword, attempting to rally his panicked troops by sheer force of personality.

The aides were urging their mounts round his, trying to shield him, plainly urging him to come away, but he ignored them. Jamie caught a white glimpse of a face turned toward the wood, then away—plainly they knew the trees were full of riflemen, or could be, and were trying to keep out of range.

“There he is!” It was Arnold, crashing his small brown mare regardless through the heavy brush, his face alight with savage glee. “The generals!” he bellowed, rising in his own stirrups and throwing out an arm. “Shoot the generals, boys! Five dollars to the man who shoots yon fat bastard from his saddle!”

The random crack of rifle fire answered him at once. Jamie saw Daniel Morgan’s head turn sharp, eyes fierce at Arnold’s voice, and the rifleman started toward him, moving as fast as his rheumatism-crippled limbs would let him.

“Again! Try again!” Arnold smote a fist on his thigh, caught sight of Jamie watching him.

“You—shoot him, can’t you?”

Jamie shrugged and, lifting the rifle to his shoulder, aimed deliberately high and wide. The wind had turned and the smoke of the shot stung his eyes, but he saw one of the junior officers near Simon jump and clap a hand to his head, twisting in the saddle to see his hat roll away into the wheat.

He wanted to laugh, though his wame curled a bit, realizing that he had nearly shot the man through the head, entirely by accident. The young man—yes, he was young, tall, and thin—rose in his stirrups and shook a fist at the wood.

“You owe me a hat, sir!” he shouted.

Arnold’s high, piercing laugh echoed through the wood, clear over the shouting, and the men with him hooted and screamed like crows.

“Come over here, younker, and I’ll buy you two!” Arnold shouted back, then reined his horse in a restless circle, bellowing at the riflemen. “Damn your eyes for a crew of blind men, will nobody kill me that frigging general?”

One or two shots spattered through the branches, but most of the men had seen Daniel Morgan stumping toward Arnold like an animated tree, gnarled and implacable, and held their fire.

Arnold must have seen him, too, but ignored him. He jerked a pistol from his belt and fired sideways across his body at Fraser, though he could not hope to hit anything at that distance, and his horse startled at the noise, ears flat back. Morgan, who had nearly reached him, was obliged to jerk back to avoid being trampled; he stumbled, and fell flat.

Without an instant’s hesitation, Arnold leapt off his horse and bent to raise the older man, apologizing with a completely sincere solicitude. Which, Jamie saw, was unappreciated by Morgan. He thought old Dan might just give Arnold one in the stones, rank and rheumatism notwithstanding.

The general’s horse was trained to stand, but the unexpected shot over her ears had spooked her; she was dancing nervously, feet a-rattle in the drifts of dead leaves and eyes showing white.

Jamie seized the reins and pulled the mare’s nose down, blowing into her nostrils to distract her.

She whuffed and shook her head, but ceased to dance. He stroked her neck, clicking his tongue, and her ears rose a bit; his hand was bleeding again, he saw, but it was a slow seep through the bandage, not important. Over the solid curve of the mare’s neck, he could see Morgan, upright now and violently rejecting Arnold’s efforts to dust the leaf mold from his clothes.