The Fiery Cross (20 page)

Roger flushed, forgetting about bag-rot.

“Oh? I should say he favors his mother, mostly.”

Mrs. Bug pursed her lips, narrowing her eyes at Roger, then shook her head decidedly, and patted Jem on the top of his head.

“Not the hair, maybe, but the shape of him, aye, that’s yours, lad. Those fine broad shoulders!” She gave Roger a brief nod of approval, and kissed Jem on the brow. “Why, I shouldna be surprised but what his een will turn green as he ages, either. Mark me, lad, he’ll be the spit of you by the time he’s grown! Won’t ye, wee mannie?” She nuzzled Jemmy. “Ye’ll be a big, braw lad like your Da, won’t ye, then?”

It’s the usual thing folk say
, he reminded himself, trying to quell the absurd rush of pleasure he felt at her words.
The old wifies, they always say how a bairn resembles this one or that one
. He discovered suddenly that he was afraid even to admit the possibility that Jemmy could really be his—he wanted it so badly. He told himself firmly that it didn’t matter; whether the boy was his by blood or not, he would love and care for him as his son. He would, of course. But it did matter, he found—oh, it did.

Before he could say anything further to Mrs. Bug, though, Mr. Bug turned toward him, to include him courteously in the men’s conversation.

“MacKenzie, is it?” he asked. “And will ye be one of the MacKenzies of Torridon, then, or maybe from Kilmarnock?”

Roger had been fielding similar questions all through the Gathering; exploring a person’s antecedents was the normal beginning of any Scottish conversation—something that wouldn’t change a bit in the next two hundred years, he thought, wariness tempered by the comfortable familiarity of the process. Before he could answer, though, Jamie’s hand squeezed his shoulder.

“Roger Mac’s kin to me on my mother’s side,” he said casually. “It will be MacKenzie of Leoch, aye?”

“Oh, aye?” Arch Bug looked impressed. “You’re far afield, then, lad!”

“Och, no more than yourself, sir, surely—or anyone here, for that matter.” Roger waved briefly at the mountainside above, from which the sounds of Gaelic shouts and the music of bagpipes drifted on the damp air.

“No, no, lad!” Mrs. Bug, Jemmy propped against her shoulder, rejoined the conversation. “That’s no what Arch is meanin’,” she explained. “It’s that you’re a good long way from the others.”

“Others?” Roger exchanged a look with Jamie, who shrugged, equally puzzled.

“From Leoch,” Arch got in, before his wife seized the thread of talk between her teeth.

“We did hear it on the ship, aye? There were a gaggle of them, all MacKenzies, all from the lands south of the auld castle. They’d stayed on after the laird left, him and the first lot, but now they meant to go and join what was left o’ the clan, and see could they mend their fortunes, because—”

“The laird?” Jamie interrupted her sharply. “That would be Hamish mac Callum?” Hamish, son of Colum, Roger translated to himself, and paused. Or rather, Hamish mac Dougal—but there were only five people in the world who knew that. Perhaps only four, now.

Mrs. Bug was nodding emphatically. “Aye, aye, it is himself they were calling so. Hamish mac Callum MacKenzie, laird of Leoch. The third laird. They said it, just so. And—”

Jamie had evidently caught the knack of dealing with Mrs. Bug; by dint of ruthless interruption, he succeeded in extracting the story in less time than Roger would have thought possible. Castle Leoch had been destroyed by the English, in the purge of the Highlands following Culloden. So much Jamie had known, but, imprisoned himself, had had no word of the fate of those who lived there.

“And no great heart to ask,” he added, with a rueful tilt of the head. The Bugs glanced at each other and sighed in unison, the same hint of melancholy shadowing their eyes that shaded Jamie’s voice. It was a look Roger was well accustomed to by now.

“But if Hamish mac Callum still lives . . .” Jamie had not taken his hand from Roger’s shoulder, and at this it squeezed tight. “That’s news to gladden the heart, no?” He smiled at Roger, with such obvious joy that Roger felt an unexpected grin break out on his own face in answer.

“Aye,” he said, the weight on his heart lightening. “Aye, it is!” The fact that he would not know Hamish mac Callum MacKenzie from a hole in the ground was unimportant; the man was indeed kin to him—blood kin—and that
was
a glad thought.

“Where have they gone, then?” Jamie demanded, dropping his hand. “Hamish and his followers?”

To Acadia—to Canada, the Bugs agreed. To Nova Scotia? To Maine? No—to an island, they decided, after a convoluted conference. Or was it perhaps—

Jemmy interrupted the proceedings with a yowl indicating imminent starvation, and Mrs. Bug started as though poked with a stick.

“We mun be takin’ this puir lad to his Mam,” she said rebukingly, dividing a glare impartially among the four men, as though accusing them collectively of conspiracy to murder the child. “Where does your camp lie, Mr. Fraser?”

“I’ll guide ye, ma’am,” Duncan said hastily. “Come wi’ me.”

Roger started after the Bugs, but Jamie kept him with a hand on his arm.

“Nay, let Duncan take them,” he said, dismissing the Bugs with a nod. “I’ll speak wi’ Arch later. I’ve a thing I must say to you,
a chliamhuinn
.”

Roger felt himself tense a bit at the formal term of address. So, was this where Jamie told him just what defects of character and background made him unsuitable to take responsibility for things at Fraser’s Ridge?

But no, Jamie was bringing out a crumpled paper from his sporran. He handed it to Roger with a slight grimace, as though the paper burned his hand. Roger scanned it quickly, then glanced up from the Governor’s brief message.

“Militia. How soon?”

Jamie lifted one shoulder.

“No one can say, but sooner than any of us should like, I think.” He gave Roger a faint, unhappy smile. “Ye’ll have heard the talk round the fires?”

Roger nodded soberly. He had heard the talk in the intervals of the singing, around the edges of the stone-throwing contests, among the men drinking in small groups under the trees the day before. There had been a fistfight at the caber-tossing—quickly stopped, and with no damage done—but anger hung in the air of the Gathering, like a bad smell.

Jamie rubbed a hand over his face and through his hair, and shrugged, sighing.

“’Twas luck I should have come across auld Arch Bug and his wife today. If it comes to the fighting—and it will, I suppose, later, if not now—then Claire will ride with us. I shouldna like to leave Brianna to manage on her own, and it can be helped.”

Roger felt the small nagging weight of doubt drop away, as all became suddenly clear.

“On her own. You mean—ye want me to come? To help raise men for the militia?”

Jamie gave him a puzzled look.

“Aye, who else?”

He pulled the edges of his plaid higher about his shoulders, hunched against the rising wind. “Come along, then, Captain MacKenzie,” he said, a wry note in his voice. “We’ve work to do before you’re wed.”

I
PEERED UP THE NOSE of one of Farquard Campbell’s slaves, half my mind on the nasal polyp obstructing the nostril, the other half on Governor Tryon. Of the two, I felt more charitably toward the polyp, and I intended to cauterize
that
out of existence with a hot iron.

It seemed so bloody unfair, I thought, frowning as I sterilized my scalpel and set the smallest cauterizing iron in a dish of hot coals.

Was this the beginning? Or one of them? It was the end of 1770; in five years more, all of the thirteen Colonies would be at war. But each colony would come to that point by a different process. Having lived in Boston for so long, I knew from Bree’s school lessons what the process had been—or would be—for Massachusetts. Tax, Boston Massacre, Harbor, Hancock, Adams, Tea Party, all that. But North Carolina? How had it happened—how
would
it happen—here?

It could be happening now. Dissension had been simmering for several years between the planters of the eastern seaboard and the hardscrabble homesteaders of the western backcountry. The Regulators were mostly drawn from the latter class; the former were wholeheartedly in Tryon’s camp—on the side of the Crown, that was to say.

“All right now?” I had given the slave a good slug of medicinal whisky, by way of fortification. I smiled encouragingly, and he nodded, looking uncertain but resigned.

I had never heard of Regulators, but here they were, nonetheless—and I had seen enough by now to know just how much the history books left out. Were the seeds of revolution being sown directly under my own nose?

Murmuring soothingly, I wrapped a linen napkin round my left hand, took firm hold of the slave’s chin with it, poked the scalpel up his nostril and severed the polyp with a deft flick of the blade. It bled profusely, of course, the blood gushing warmly through the cloth round my hand, but evidently was not very painful. The slave looked surprised, but not distressed.

The cautery iron was shaped like a tiny spade, a bit of square, flattened metal on the end of a slender rod with a wooden handle. The flat bit was smoking in the fire, the edges glowing red. I pressed the cloth hard against the man’s nose to blot the blood, took it away, and in the split second before the blood spurted out again, pressed the hot iron up his nose against the septum, hoping against hope that I’d got the proper spot.

The slave made a strangled noise in his throat, but didn’t move, though tears poured down his cheeks, wet and warm on my fingers. The smell of searing blood and flesh was just the same as the scent that rose from the barbecue pits. My stomach growled loudly; the slave’s bulging, bloodshot eye met mine, astonished. My mouth twitched, and he giggled faintly through the tears and snot.

I took the iron away, cloth poised. No fresh blood flowed. I tilted the man’s head far back, squinting to see, and was pleased to find the small, clean mark, high on the mucosa. The burn would be a vivid red, I knew, but without the light of a scope, it looked black, a small scab hidden like a tick in the hairy shadows of the nostril.

The man spoke no English; I smiled at him, but addressed his companion, a young woman who had clutched his hand throughout the ordeal.

“He’ll be quite all right. Tell him, please, not to pick at the scab. If there should be swelling, pus or fever”—I paused, for the next line should be—“go to your doctor at once,” and that was not an option.

“Go to your mistress,” I said, instead, reluctantly. “Or find an herb-woman.” The present Mrs. Campbell was young, and rather muddleheaded, from the little I knew of her. Still, any plantation mistress should have the knowledge and wherewithal to treat a fever. And if it should go past simple infection and into septicemia . . . well, there was not much anyone could do, in that case.

I patted the slave’s shoulder and sent him off, beckoning to the next in line.

Infection. That was what was brewing. Things seemed quiet overall—after all, the Crown was withdrawing all its troops! But dozens, hundreds, thousands of tiny germs of dissent must linger, forming pockets of conflict throughout the Colonies. The Regulation was only one.

A small bucket of distilled alcohol stood by my feet, for disinfecting instruments. I dipped the cautery iron in this, then thrust it back in the fire; the alcohol ignited with a brief, lightless
piff!

I had the unpleasant feeling that the note presently burning a hole in Jamie’s sporran was a similar flame, touched to one of a million small fuses. Some might be stamped out, some would fizzle on their own—but enough would burn, and go on burning, searing their destructive way through homes and families. The end of it would be a clean excision, but a great deal of blood would flow before the hot iron of guns should sear the open wound.

Were we never to have a little peace, Jamie and I?

“THERE’S DUNCAN MACLEOD, he’s got three hundred acres near the Yadkin River, but no one on it save himself and his brother.” Jamie rubbed a sleeve over his face, wiping off the sheen of moisture that clung to his bones. He blinked to clear his vision, and shook himself like a dog, spattering drops that had condensed in his hair.

“But,” he went on, gesturing toward the plume of smoke that marked MacLeod’s fire, “he’s kin to auld Rabbie Cochrane. Rabbie’s not come to the Gathering—ill wi’ the dropsy, I hear—but he’s got eleven grown bairns, scattered over the mountains like seed corn. So, take your time wi’ MacLeod, make sure he’s pleased to come, then tell him to send word to Rabbie. We’ll muster at Fraser’s Ridge in a fortnight, tell him.”

He hesitated, one hand on Roger’s arm to prevent an abrupt departure. He squinted into the haze, reckoning up the possibilities. They’d visited three campsites together, and got the pledges of four men. How many more could be found at the Gathering?

“After Duncan, go across to the sheep pens. Angus Og will be there, surely—ye ken Angus Og?”

Roger nodded, hoping he recalled the correct Angus Og. He’d met at least four men of that name in the last week, but one of them had had a dog at heel, and reeked of raw wool.