Doing No Harm (26 page)

“This can wait for another day,” Douglas said.

“Nay, you’ll have it all now because I won’t speak of it again,” Joe told him. “All over the glen, cottages burned. Sellar and his troops set so many fires that the air was smoky. We got away with our clothes, a Bible, a few dishes, and two candlesticks. They herded us like dogs toward the coast.”

Olive leaped to her feet and ran from the shed. Joe retreated inside himself again. Douglas remembered coastal Spanish and Portuguese towns where one army or the other displaced ordinary people with the misfortune to be caught in the middle. A more compassionate captain had set him and his pharmacist mate ashore near Gibraltar to tend to the bruised, battered, and bewildered who had taken refuge in a convent. He had tended to their physical needs but was powerless to calm their minds or give them a reason to live. He still had nightmares from watching perfectly able-looking young women and children simply slide sideways and drop dead.

He looked up from contemplation of his hands to see Joe Tavish staring at him.

“What, no sympathy? No advice to read our Bibles and take comfort that things are better in heaven?” Joe asked, his voice thick with bitterness. “That’s w’the English told us on the docks. Smug and sanctimonious the lot ’a ye.”

“Give me some credit, Joe,” he snapped. “Lapdogs in English sitting rooms are treated better than you were. Don’t paint me with that brush because I do not deserve it.”

Carrying a dark green bottle and small glasses, Olive let herself back into the shed. Tight-lipped, she poured them each a drink. “Smuggler’s brandy,” she announced. “Papa said we would use it to toast me and my husband when I married someday. That never happened, and we need a wee dram now.”

They drank, Joe throwing his drink down his throat and breathing a sigh of relief. Olive swirled her little portion around in the glass, a slight smile on her face, so wistful. Maybe she was thinking of events in her life that hadn’t turned out the way she wanted. Douglas took a small sip and another, thinking of various wardroom toasts through the years, from “Glorious war” to “Beauty ashore.”

“No more,” Olive said. “Let’s save the rest for a happier occasion.”

“Finish the story, Joe,” Douglas ordered. “You were on the docks.”

“Aye, and such a scene that was.” He ran both hands across his face, digging in his nails. “The soldiers just herded people aboard until the captains protested. Some were bound for Canada, and the rest for Timbuktu, for all we knew.” He keened then, a low moan that set the hairs at attention on Douglas’s neck. “A remember one mam, calling and calling for her little boy—he couldna been a day over five—who was left behind on the dock. She pleaded for someone to help her. No one did. The wee fellow jumped in the water, desperate to reach his mam. Sank like a stone, he did.”

Olive sobbed out loud and Douglas gathered her close. He resisted the nearly overpowering urge to gather Joe Tavish close too, the man who had blacked his eye and dented a few ribs. From the look of him, bleakness hovering over him like a foul odor, Joe Tavish was beyond any comfort an English surgeon too proud of his skills could provide.

“They sailed, that ship and two others,” Joe continued in a voice hushed now, almost as if he couldn’t believe the horror of what he had witnessed. “Someone on the ship—heaven only knows how he smuggled’m aboard—unlimbered his bagpipes and played ‘Flowers of the Forest.’ We wept, they wept, and no one helped us.” Joe keened again.

“What … I don’t understand,” Douglas whispered to Olive.

“ ’Tis played at funerals alone,” she whispered back, her voice ragged. “Some call it ‘The Lament.’ ” She sang softly into his ear. “ ‘The Flooers o’ the Forest, that fought aye the foremost, the pride o’ oor land lie cauld in the clay.’ ” Her sigh was three parts sob. “We Scots are a tragic lot, Douglas. Remember when Flora said, ‘We needed a little help’?”

“Now’s the time, Olive.”

They sat in silence, listening to Joe Tavish lament the loss of everything, and all for the Countess of Sutherland’s sheep. When he finished, Douglas covered him with a blanket, tucking it around him.

“Sleep now, Joe,” he said. “We’ll sort out what we can in the morning.”

“You’ll make it all better?” Joe asked, his voice so bitter, and with good cause.

“Would that I could.” Douglas squatted beside the blanketed figure. “What I aim to do, and you will help me, is find some sweet revenge.”

“And how are we to do that?” Joe’s sarcasm was unmistakable.

“Ask me tomorrow night, for I intend to have a plan. And you will help me.”

Chapter 24

D
awn was coming, but a full
moon still lit the sky. They stood in silence together outside the shed. Olive knew it was well past time to drag herself upstairs into her own bedchamber, but she knew she would only stare at the ceiling until she heard Maeve laying a kitchen fire below and another day would begin.

Maybe Douglas had the same idea. He looked at her, his face so serious, and crocked out his arm. She tucked her arm through his and walked with him to the bridge.

“I’ll never sleep tonight,” he said a minute later as they both leaned their arms on the railing and watched the River Dee below.

“I have a feeling that you have seen yourself coming and going on many a morning,” she said.

“Aye. I rather thought those days were done, but here I am.” He stared downriver toward the docks where the fishing boats were neatly tied. She looked where he looked, thinking of their ordinary days in Edgar, one following pretty much the same. She thought of Joe Tavish in Glen Holt, where the sameness of two centuries had ended in eviction, flames, and death.

“It could happen to any of us,” she said. “We think it will not, but what proof do any of us have against people such as the Sutherlands?”

No answer. Douglas stared at the boats. Slowly, he stood upright again, his eyes still on the distant view, as far as she could tell, except that he seemed suddenly alert.

“Let’s go for a walk, Olive Grant,” he said. He crooked out his arm again and she twined her arm through his. “The moon is full and the sun is coming up anyway, so let’s take the path along the river.”

They walked in silence behind the row of houses like his with their back walls to the River Dee and then walked onto the fishing boat dock. He kept walking past shabbier homes now. Somewhere a child cried, which made him stop and listen for a moment and then continue on.

They walked until they reached the outskirts of Edgar, and she suddenly knew what he had in mind.
Is this even possible?
she thought.
Evidently I do not think big enough
.

They stood at the abandoned shipyard and dry docks. He tucked her arm closer to him. “Do you remember when the shipyard was active?” he asked.

“I must have been about ten years old,” she replied, after long thought. “I was never allowed to come down here. Papa said it was dangerous, and besides, he didn’t want me hearing such foul language.”

“Like Hadrian’s Wall?” Douglas teased, and she laughed.

“Oh, especially that one.” She looked across the yard. “Two really large bathtubs, eh?”

“As near as,” he replied. He looked and then nodded, as if pleased with what he saw. “The brick ones like these are called graving docks.” He pointed to the massive open gates. “A ship needing repair would sail in here, and the gates would close. Big pumps would take off the water and leave it dry. Talk about our modern age—the pumps in the Plymouth yards are steam-powered now.” He pointed to the uniform rows of open space in the masonry. “The shipwright runs in long poles that, in essence, balance the ship upright. Carpenters go down there once the water is gone and commence repairs. When it’s done, the gates open, water flows in and the ship sails away.”

He pointed to the second graving dock beyond, and the long wooden structure behind it.

“It’s probably full of mice and birds now, but that’s the shiphouse. You could build a right fine vessel in there, out of bad weather, and then slide it down the ways into … into the bathtub, and then out to sea, once it was masted and rigged. Nothing huge, mind, no frigates, but …” He stopped and his chuckle was self-deprecating. “You probably think I am a lunatic.”

“No, I do not,” she assured him.

“It shut down because … ?”

“We could ask Mrs. Aintree, or maybe even Lady Telford. Sir Dudley bought the whole thing, plus some other houses.” She hesitated and then realized that grand ideas shouldn’t be strangled at birth. All she had to offer was gossip, but there was probably some truth in there somewhere. “The talk about the village said that the shipwright, a man long dead, got into a fearful row with some of the fishing fleet captains. They took their repair business elsewhere—Dumfries, I think—and that was the first nail in the coffin.”

“And then the war probably enticed what builders remained to go to Clydeside near Glasgow,” Douglas suggested. “I do know that shipwrights in Plymouth and Portsmouth commanded a respectable wage, likely better than anything Edgar could offer. It was probably the same in Glasgow.”

She nodded and leaped closer to Douglas when a whole fleet of bats—one was too many—flew swiftly into the shiphouse. He put his arm around her.

“Only bats,” he whispered in her ear. “Aren’t you the brave lady who just shook Joe Tavish’s teeth until they rattled, bullying him into taking Christian charity?”

“Don’t remind me. That was not my shining moment,” she said, trying for dignity. “Bats are different.”

“I will concede that bats are different,” he said. “Just think, Olive: This shipyard and dry dock could employ a lot of men. Granted, our stubborn Highlanders might prefer to remain proud and starving.”

“Not if they see others making good money and working.”

He turned to face her. “Tell me honestly, Olive Grant: Is this going to look like a stupid idea once the sun is up and I have had some sleep?”

“It might,” she said cautiously. “No! It is a wonderful idea.”

He yawned. “I believe I could almost curl up among the bats …”

“Hang from the ceiling?”

“I suppose not.” He yawned again. “Such rag manners, Olive. Two hours of sleep, if I’m lucky, will enable me to check on Mrs. Aintree, then delouse Joe Tavish—horrors—then visit Lady Elsie Telford.”

“Do you know a shipwright?”

He started walking back, still holding her close. “That is the only sure entity of this decidedly sketchy plan. I know three. I also took a good look at the shipyards in Devonport before I left Plymouth. The demand has certainly dropped off, now that Boney is cooling his heels on St. Helena.”

She bid Douglas good night, or maybe it was good morning, from the middle of the street. She went up her own front steps and watched in amusement while Douglas just stood at his door, key in hand, as if wondering what his next move should be.
Just go inside and lie down
, she advised, from her side of the street. She smiled as he stared at the key in his hand, as if it had suddenly grown lichen, and then finally turned it in the lock.

Two hours was just enough to fool Douglas’s brain into thinking he had enjoyed sound sleep. A few minutes later, he stood over Mrs. Aintree, her eyes half open (matching his), her hand free of overmuch swelling.