The Fiery Cross (187 page)

Not waiting, Duff reinforced his position by turning craftily to Marsali.

“There’s a lighthouse on the Island, ma’am. Ye can see a good ways out to sea from the top o’ that. See if any ships should be lyin’ off.”

Marsali’s hand dropped at once to her pocket, fumbling for the strings. I observed Germain solicitously poking a dead mussel over her shoulder toward Jemmy’s eagerly open mouth, like a mother bird feeding her offspring a nice juicy worm, and tactfully intervened, taking Jemmy into my own arms.

“No, sweetheart,” I said, dropping the mussel off the dock. “You don’t want that nasty thing. Wouldn’t you like to go see a nice dead whale, instead?”

Jamie sighed in resignation, and reached for his sporran. “Ye’d best call for another boat, then, so as we’ll not all drown together.”

IT WAS LOVELY out on the water, with the sun covered by a hazy layer of cloud, and a cool breeze that made me take my hat off for the pleasure of feeling the wind in my hair. While not quite flat calm, the rise and fall of the surf was peacefully lulling—to those of us not afflicted by seasickness.

I glanced at Jamie’s back, but his head was bent, shoulders moving in an easy, powerful rhythm as he rowed.

Resigned to the inevitable, he had taken brisk charge of the situation, summoning a second boat and herding Bree, Marsali, and the boys into it. Thereupon Jamie had unfastened his brooch and announced that he and Roger would row the remaining piretta, in order that Duff might put himself at ease and thus improve his chances of recollecting interesting facts regarding Stephen Bonnet.

“Less chance of me puking if I’ve something to do,” he muttered to me, stripping off his coat and plaid.

Roger gave a small snort of amusement, but nodded agreeably and shed his own coat and shirt. With Duff and Peter installed at one end of the craft in a state of high hilarity over the turnabout of being paid to be rowed in their own boat, I was told off to sit in the other end, facing them.

“Just to keep a bit of an eye on things, Sassenach.” Under cover of the wadded clothes, Jamie wrapped my hand around the stock of his pistol, and squeezed gently. He handed me down into the boat, then climbed down gingerly himself, going only slightly pale as the craft swayed and shifted under his weight.

It
was
a calm day, fortunately. A faint haze hung over the water, obscuring the dim shape of Smith Island in the distance. Kittiwakes and terns wheeled in gyres far above, and a heavy-bodied gull seemed to hang immobile in the air nearby, riding the wind as we sculled slowly out into the harbor mouth.

Seated just before me, Roger rowed easily, broad bare shoulders flexing rhythmically, obviously accustomed to the exercise. Jamie, on the seat in front of Roger, handled the oars with a fair amount of grace, but somewhat less assurance. He was no sailor, and never would be. Still, the distraction of rowing did seem to be keeping his mind off his stomach. For the moment.

“Oh, I could find myself accustomed to this, what d’ye say, Peter?” Duff lifted a long nose into the breeze, half-closing his eyes as he savored the novelty of being rowed.

Peter, who appeared to be some exotic blend of Indian and African, grunted in reply, but lounged on the seat beside Duff, equally pleased. He wore nothing but a pair of stained homespun breeches, tied at the waist with a length of tarred rope, and was burned so dark by the sun that he might have been a Negro, save for the spill of long black hair that fell over one shoulder, decorated with bits of shell and tiny dried starfish tied into it.

“Stephen Bonnet?” Jamie inquired pleasantly, drawing strongly on the oars.

“Oh, him.” Duff looked as though he would have preferred to put off this subject of discussion indefinitely, but a glance at Jamie’s face resigned him to the inevitable.

“What d’ye want to know, then?” The little man hunched his shoulders warily.

“To begin with, where he is,” Jamie said, grunting slightly as he hauled on the oars.

“No idea,” Duff said promptly, looking happier.

“Well, where did ye last see the bugger?” Jamie asked patiently.

Duff and Peter exchanged glances.

“Well, noo,” Duff began cautiously, “d’ye mean by ‘see,’ where it was I last clapped een on the captain?”

“What else would he mean, clotheid?” Roger said, grunting with a backward stroke.

Peter nodded thoughtfully, evidently awarding a point to our side, and elbowed Duff in the ribs.

“He was in a pot-house on Roanoke, eatin’ fish pie,” Duff said, capitulating. “Baked wi’ oysters and breadcrumbs on the top, and a pint of dark ale to wash it down. Molasses pudding, too.”

“Ye’ve a keen sense of observation, Mr. Duff,” Jamie said. “How’s your sense of time, then?”

“Eh? Oh, aye, I tak’ your meanin’, man. When was it . . . twa month past, aboot.”

“And if ye were close enough to see what the man was eating,” Jamie observed mildly, “then I expect ye were at table with him, no? What did he speak of?”

Duff looked mildly embarrassed. He glanced at me, then up at one of the circling gulls.

“Aye, well. The shape of the arse on the barmaid, mostly.”

“I shouldna think that a topic of conversation to occupy the course of a meal, even if the lassie was particularly shapely,” Roger put in.

“Ah, ye’d be surprised how much there is to say about a woman’s bum, lad,” Duff assured him. “This one was round as an apple, and heavy as a steamed puddin’. ’Twas cold as charity in the place, and the thought of havin’ such a plump, hot, wee bridie in your hands—meanin’ no offense to ye, ma’am, I’m sure,” he added hurriedly, tipping his hat in my direction.

“None taken,” I assured him cordially.

“Can you swim, Mr. Duff?” Jamie asked, his tone still one of mild curiosity.

“What?” Duff blinked, taken back. “I . . . ah . . . well . . .”

“No, he can’t,” Roger said cheerfully. “He told me.”

Duff gave him a look of outraged betrayal over Jamie’s head.

“Well, there’s loyalty!” he said, scandalized. “A fine shipmate
you
are! Givin’ me away so—ye should be ashamed of yersel’, so ye should!”

Jamie raised his oars, dripping, out of the water, and Roger followed suit. We were perhaps a quarter-mile from shore, and the water beneath our hull was a deep, soft green, portending a bottom several fathoms deep. The boat rocked gently, lifting on the bosom of a long, slow swell.

“Bonnet,” Jamie said, still politely, but with a definite edge. Peter folded his arms and closed his eyes, making it clear that the subject had nothing to do with
him
. Duff sighed and eyed Jamie narrowly.

“Aye, well. It’s true, I’ve no notion where the man is. When I saw him on Roanoke, he was makin’ arrangements to have some . . . goods . . . brought in. For what that might be worth to ye,” he added, rather ungraciously.

“What goods? Brought in where? And going where?” Jamie was leaning on his shipped oars, apparently casual. I could see a certain tension in the line of his body, though, and it occurred to me that while his attention might be fixed on Duff’s face, he was of necessity also watching the horizon behind Duff—which was rising and falling hypnotically as the swell lifted the piretta and let it drop. Over and over and . . .

“Tea-chests was what I took in for him,” Duff answered warily. “Couldna say, for the rest.”

“The rest?”

“Christ, man, every boat on this water brings in the odd bit of jiggery-pokery here and there—surely ye ken that much?”

Peter’s eyes had opened to half-slits; I saw them rest on Jamie’s face with a certain expression of interest. The wind had shifted a few points, and the smell of dead whale was decidedly stronger. Jamie took a slow, deep breath, and let it out again, rather faster.

“Ye brought in tea, then. Where from? A ship?”

“Aye.” Duff was watching Jamie, too, in growing fascination. I shifted uneasily on the narrow seat. I couldn’t tell from the back of his neck, but I thought it more than likely that he was beginning to turn green.

“The
Sparrow
,” Duff went on, eyes fixed on Jamie. “She anchored off the Banks, and the boats went out to her. We loaded the cargo and came in through Joad’s Inlet. Cam’ ashore at Wylie’s Landing, and handed over to a fellow there.”

“What . . . fellow?” The wind was cool, but I could see sweat trickling down the back of Jamie’s neck, dampening his collar and plastering the linen between his shoulders.

Duff didn’t answer immediately. A look of speculation flickered in his small, deep-set eyes.

“Don’t think about it, Duff,” Roger said, softly, but with great assurance. “I can reach ye from here with an oar, ken?”

“Aye?” Duff glanced thoughtfully from Jamie, to Roger, and then to me. “Aye, reckon ye might. But allowin’ for the sake for argyment as how you can swim, MacKenzie—and even that Mr. Fraser might keep afloat—I dinna think that’s true of the lady, is it? Skirts and petticoats . . .” He shook his head, pursing thin lips in speculation as he looked at me. “Go to the bottom like a stone, she would.”

Peter shifted ever so slightly, bringing his feet under him.

“Claire?” Jamie said. I saw his fingers curl tight round the oars, and heard the note of strain in his voice. I sighed and drew the pistol out from under the coat across my lap.

“Right,” I said. “Which one shall I shoot?”

Peter’s eyes snapped open, wide enough that I saw a rim of white show all round his black pupils. He looked at the pistol, then at Duff, then directly at Jamie.

“Give tea to a man name Butlah,” he said. “Work for Mist’ Lyon.” He pointed at me, then at Duff. “Shoot him,” he suggested.

The ice thus broken, it took very little time for our two passengers to confide the rest of what they knew, pausing only momentarily for Jamie to be sick over the side between questions.

Smuggling was, as Duff had suggested, so common in the area as to constitute general business practice; most of the merchants—and all of the small boatmen—in Wilmington engaged in it, as did most others on the Carolina coast, in order to avoid the crippling duties on officially imported goods. Stephen Bonnet, however, was not only one of the more successful smugglers, but also rather a specialist.

“Brings in goods to order, like,” Duff said, twisting his neck in order to scratch more effectively between his shoulder blades. “And in what ye might call quantity.”

“How much quantity?” Jamie’s elbows rested on his knees, his head sunk onto his hands. It seemed to be helping; his voice was steady.

Duff pursed his lips and squinted, calculating.

“There was six of us at the tavern on Roanoke. Six wi’ small boats, I mean, as could run the inlets. If we were each to be fetchin’ along as much as we could manage . . . say, fifty chests of tea all told, then.”

“And he brings in such a load how often—every two months?” Roger had relaxed a little, leaning on his oars. I hadn’t, and gave Duff a hard eye over the pistol to indicate as much.

“Oh, more often than that,” Duff answered, eyeing me warily. “Couldn’t say exactly, but you hear talk, aye? From what the other boats say, I reckon he’s got a load comin’ every two weeks in the season, somewhere on the coast betwixt Virginia and Charleston.” Roger gave a brief grunt of surprise at that, and Jamie looked up briefly from his cupped hands.

“What about the Navy?” he asked. “Who’s he paying?” That was a good question. While small boats might escape the Navy’s eye, Bonnet’s operation evidently involved large quantities of contraband, coming in on large ships. It would be hard to hide something on that scale—and the obvious answer was that he wasn’t bothering to hide it.

Duff shook his head and shrugged.

“Can’t say, man.”

“But you haven’t worked for Bonnet since February?” I asked. “Why not?”

Duff and Peter exchanged a glance.

“You eat scorpion-fish, you hungry,” Peter said to me. “You don’ eat dem, iffen you got sumpin’ bettah.”

“What?”

“The man’s dangerous, Sassenach,” Jamie translated dryly. “They dinna like to deal with him, save for need.”

“Well, see him, Bonnet,” Duff said, warming to the topic. “He’s no bad at all to deal with—sae long as your interest runs wi’ his. Only, if it might be as all of a sudden it
doesna
quite run with his . . .”

Peter solemnly drew a finger across his stringy neck, nodding in affirmation.

“And it’s no as if there’s warnin’ about it, either,” Duff added, nodding too. “One minute, it’s whisky and segars, the next, ye’re on your back in the sawdust, breathin’ blood, and happy still to be breathin’ at that.”

“A temper, has he?” Jamie drew a hand down over his face, then wiped his sweaty palm on his shirt. The linen clung damply to his shoulders, but I knew he wouldn’t take it off.

Duff, Peter, and Roger all shook their heads simultaneously at the question.

“Cold as ice,” Roger said, and I heard the small note of strain in his voice.

“Kill ye without the turn of an arse-hair,” Duff assured Jamie.

“Rip you like dem whale,” Peter put in helpfully, with a wave toward the island. The current had carried us a good deal closer to the land, and I could see the whale as well as smell it. Seabirds whirled and screamed in a great cloud over the carcass, swooping down to tear away gobbets of flesh, and a small crowd of people clustered nearby, hands to their noses, clearly clutching handkerchiefs and sachets.

Just then, the wind changed, and a fetid gust of decay washed over us like a breaking wave. I clapped Roger’s shirt to my own face, and even Peter appeared to pale.

“Mother of God, have mercy on me,” Jamie said, under his breath. “I—oh, Christ!” He leaned to the side and threw up, repeatedly.

I nudged Roger in the buttock with my toe.

“Row,” I suggested.

Roger obeyed with alacrity, putting his back into it, and within a few minutes, the keel of the piretta touched sand. Duff and Peter leaped out to run the hull up onto the beach, then gallantly assisted me out of the boat, evidently not holding the pistol against me.

Jamie paid them, then staggered a short distance up the beach and sat down, quite suddenly, in the sand beneath a loblolly pine. He was roughly the same shade as the dead whale, a dirty gray with white blotches.