The Fiery Cross (25 page)

“Oh!” he said again, in sudden understanding. “That kind of frazzled.”

“That kind of frazzled,” I agreed. I poked at the kettle with one toe. “I’d better take that back; I need to boil water so I can steep some willow bark. It takes a long time.” It did; it would take an hour or more, by which time the cramps would be considerably worse.

“The hell with willow bark,” he said, producing a silver flask from the recesses of his shirt. “Try this. At least ye dinna need to boil it first.”

I unscrewed the stopper and inhaled. Whisky, and very good whisky, too.

“I love you,” I said sincerely, and he laughed.

“I love ye too, Sassenach,” he said, and gently touched my foot.

I took a mouthful and let it trickle down the back of my throat. It seeped pleasantly through my mucous membranes, hit bottom, and rose up in a puff of soothing, amber-colored smoke that filled all my crevices and began to extend warm, soothing tendrils round the source of my discomfort.

“Oooooo,” I said, sighing, and taking another sip. I closed my eyes, the better to appreciate it. An Irishman of my acquaintance had once assured me that very good whisky could raise the dead. I wasn’t disposed to argue the point.

“That’s wonderful,” I said, when I opened my eyes again. “Where did you get it?” This was twenty-year-old Scotch, if I knew anything about it—a far cry from the raw spirit that Jamie had been distilling on the ridge behind the house.

“Jocasta,” he said. “It was meant to be a wedding gift for Brianna and her young man, but I thought ye needed it more.”

“You’re right about that.”

We sat in a companionable silence, and I sipped slowly, the urge to run amok and slaughter everyone in sight gradually subsiding, along with the level of whisky in the flask.

The rain had moved off again, and the foliage dripped peacefully around us. There was a stand of fir trees near; I could smell the cool scent of their resin, pungent and clean above the heavier smell of wet, dead leaves, smoldering fires, and soggy fabrics.

“It’s been three months since the last of your courses,” Jamie observed casually. “I thought they’d maybe stopped.”

I was always a trifle taken aback to realize how acutely he observed such things—but he was a farmer and a husbandman, after all. He was intimately acquainted with the gynecological history and estrus cycle of every female animal he owned; I supposed there was no reason to think he’d make an exception simply because I was not likely either to farrow or come in heat.

“It’s not like a tap that just switches off, you know,” I said, rather crossly. “Unfortunately. It just gets rather erratic and eventually it stops, but you haven’t any idea when.”

“Ah.”

He leaned forward, arms folded across the tops of his knees, idly watching twigs and bits of leaf bobbing through the riffles of the stream.

“I’d think it would maybe be a relief to have done wi’ it all. Less mess, aye?”

I repressed the urge to draw invidious sexual comparisons regarding bodily fluids.

“Maybe it will,” I said. “I’ll let you know, shall I?”

He smiled faintly, but was wise enough not to pursue the matter; he could hear the edge in my voice.

I sipped a bit more whisky. The sharp cry of a woodpecker—the kind Jamie called a yaffle—echoed deep in the woods and then fell silent. Few birds were out in this weather; most simply huddled under what shelter they could find, though I could hear the conversational quacking of a small flock of migratory ducks somewhere downstream.
They
weren’t bothered by the rain.

Jamie stretched himself suddenly.

“Ah . . . Sassenach?” he said.

“What is it?” I asked, surprised.

He ducked his head, uncharacteristically shy.

“I dinna ken whether I’ve done wrong or no, Sassenach, but if I have, I must ask your forgiveness.”

“Of course,” I said, a little uncertainly. What was I forgiving him for? Probably not adultery, but it could be just about anything else, up to and including assault, arson, highway robbery, and blasphemy. God, I hoped it wasn’t anything to do with Bonnet.

“What have you done?”

“Well, as to myself, nothing,” he said, a little sheepishly. “It’s only what I’ve said
you’d
do.”

“Oh?” I said, with minor suspicion. “And what’s that? If you told Farquard Campbell that I’d visit his horrible old mother again . . .”

“Oh, no,” he assured me. “Nothing like that. I promised Josiah Beardsley that ye’d maybe take out his tonsils today, though.”

“That I’d
what
?” I goggled at him. I’d met Josiah Beardsley, a youth with the worst-looking set of abscessed tonsils I’d ever seen, the day before. I’d been sufficiently impressed by the pustulated state of his adenoids, in fact, to have described them in detail to all and sundry over dinner—causing Lizzie to go green round the gills and give her second potato to Germain—and had mentioned at the time that surgery was really the only possible effective cure. I hadn’t expected Jamie to go drumming up business, though.

“Why?” I asked.

Jamie rocked back a little, looking up at me.

“I want him, Sassenach.”

“You do? What for?” Josiah was barely fourteen—or at least he thought he was fourteen; he wasn’t really sure when he’d been born and his parents had died too long ago to say. He was undersized even for fourteen, and badly nourished, with legs slightly bowed from rickets. He also showed evidence of assorted parasitic infections, and wheezed with what might be tuberculosis, or merely a bad case of bronchitis.

“A tenant, of course.”

“Oh? I’d have thought you had more applicants than you can handle, as it is.”

I didn’t just think so; I knew so. We had absolutely no money, though the trade Jamie had done at the Gathering had just about—not quite—cleared our indebtedness to several of the Cross Creek merchants for ironmongery, rice, tools, salt, and other small items. We had land in plenty—most of it forest—but no means to assist people to settle on it or farm it. The Chisholms and McGillivrays were stretching well past our limits, in terms of acquiring new tenantry.

Jamie merely nodded, dismissing these complications.

“Aye. Josiah’s a likely lad, though.”

“Hmm,” I said dubiously. It was true that the boy seemed tough—which was likely what Jamie meant by “likely”; simply to have survived this long by himself was evidence of that. “Maybe so. So are lots of others. What’s he got that makes you want him specially?”

“He’s fourteen.”

I looked at him, one brow raised in question, and his mouth twisted in a wry smile.

“Any man between sixteen and sixty must serve in the militia, Sassenach.”

I felt a small, unpleasant contraction in the pit of my stomach. I hadn’t forgotten the Governor’s unwelcome summons, but what with one thing and another, I hadn’t had the leisure to reflect on exactly what the practical consequences of it were likely to be.

Jamie sighed and stretched out his arms, flexing his knuckles until they cracked.

“So you’ll do it?” I asked. “Form a militia company and go?”

“I must,” he said simply. “Tryon’s got my ballocks in his hand, and I’m no inclined to see whether he’ll squeeze, aye?”

“I was afraid of that.”

Jamie’s picturesque assessment of the situation was unfortunately accurate. Looking for a loyal and competent man willing to undertake the settlement of a large section of wild backcountry, Governor Tryon had offered Jamie a Royal grant of land just east of the Treaty Line, with no requirement of quitrent for a period of ten years. A fair offer, though given the difficulties of settlement in the mountains, not quite so generous as it might have looked.

The catch was that holders of such grants were legally required to be white Protestant males of good character, above the age of thirty. And while Jamie met the other requirements, Tryon was well aware of his Catholicism.

Do as the Governor required, and . . . well, the Governor was a successful politician; he knew how to keep his mouth shut about inconvenient matters. Defy him, though, and it would take no more than a simple letter from New Bern to deprive Fraser’s Ridge of its resident Frasers.

“Hmm. So you’re thinking that if you take the available men from the Ridge—can’t you leave out a few?”

“I havena got so many to start with, Sassenach,” he pointed out. “I can leave Fergus, because of his hand, and Mr. Wemyss to look after our place. He’s a bond servant, so far as anyone knows, and only freemen are obliged to join the militia.”

“And only able-bodied men. That lets out Joanna Grant’s husband; he’s got a wooden foot.”

He nodded.

“Aye, and old Arch Bug, who’s seventy if he’s a day. That’s four men—and maybe eight boys under sixteen—to look after thirty homesteads and more than a hundred and fifty people.”

“The women can probably manage fairly well by themselves,” I said. “It’s winter, after all; no crops to deal with. And there shouldn’t be any difficulties with the Indians, not these days.” My ribbon had come loose when I pulled off the cap. Hair was escaping from its undone plaits in every direction, straggling down my neck in damp, curly strands. I pulled the ribbon off and tried to comb my hair out with my fingers.

“What’s so important about Josiah Beardsley, anyway?” I asked. “Surely one fourteen-year-old boy can’t make so much difference.”

“Beardsley’s a hunter,” Jamie answered, “and a good one. He brought in nearly two hundred weight of wolf, deer, and beaver skins to the Gathering—all taken by himself alone, he said. I couldna do better, myself.”

That was a true encomium, and I pursed my lips in silent appreciation. Hides were the main—in fact, the only—winter crop of any value in the mountains. We had no money now—not even the paper Proclamation money, worth only a fraction of sterling—and without hides to sell in the spring, we were going to have difficulty getting the seed corn and wheat we needed. And if all the men were required to spend a good part of the winter tramping round the colony subduing Regulators instead of hunting . . .

Most women on the Ridge could handle a gun, but almost none could hunt effectively, as they were tethered to their homes by the needs of their children. Even Bree, who was a very good hunter, could venture no more than half a day’s travel away from Jemmy—not nearly far enough for wolf and beaver.

I rubbed a hand through my damp locks, fluffing out the loosened strands.

“All right, I understand that part. Where do the tonsils come in, though?”

Jamie looked up at me and smiled. Without answering at once, he got to his feet and circled behind me. With a firm hand, he gathered in the fugitive strands, captured the flying bits, and braided it into a tight, thick plait at the base of my neck. He bent over my shoulder, plucked the ribbon from my lap, and tied it neatly in a bow.

“There.” He sat down by my feet again. “Now, as to the tonsils. Ye told the lad he must have them out, or his throat would go from bad to worse.”

“It will.”

Josiah Beardsley had believed me. And, having come near death the winter before when an abscess in his throat had nearly suffocated him before bursting, he was not eager to risk another such occurrence.

“You’re the only surgeon north of Cross Creek,” Jamie pointed out. “Who else could do it?”

“Well, yes,” I said uncertainly. “But—”

“So, I’ve made the lad an offer,” Jamie interrupted. “One section of land—wee Roger and myself will help him to put up a cabin on it when the time comes—and he’ll go halves with me in whatever he takes in the way of skins for the next three winters. He’s willing—provided you’ll take out his tonsils as part o’ the bargain.”

“But why today? I can’t take someone’s tonsils out here!” I gestured at the dripping forest.

“Why not?” Jamie raised one eyebrow. “Did ye not say last night it was a small matter—only a few wee cuts wi’ your smallest knife?”

I rubbed a knuckle under my nose, sniffing with exasperation. “Look, just because it isn’t a massive bloody job like amputating a leg doesn’t mean it’s a simple matter!” It was, in fact, a relatively simple operation—surgically speaking. It was the possibility of infection following the procedure, and the need for careful nursing—a poor substitute for antibiotics, but much better than neglect—that raised complications.

“I can’t just whack out his tonsils and turn him loose,” I said. “When we get back to the Ridge, though—”

“He doesna mean to come back with us directly,” Jamie interrupted.

“Why not?” I demanded.

“He didna say; only that he had a bit of business to do, and would come to the Ridge by the first week of December. He can sleep in the loft above the herb shed,” he added.

“So you—and he—expect me just to slash out his tonsils, put in a few stitches, and see him on his merry way?” I asked sardonically.

“Ye did nicely wi’ the dog,” he said, grinning.

“Oh, you heard about that.”

“Oh, aye. And the lad who chopped his foot with an ax, and the bairns wi’ milk rash, and Mrs. Buchanan’s toothache, and your battle wi’ Murray MacLeod over the gentleman’s bile ducts . . .”

“It
was
rather a busy morning.” I shuddered briefly in remembrance, and took another sip of whisky.

“The whole Gathering is talking of ye, Sassenach. I did think of the Bible, in fact, seeing all the crowd clamoring round ye this morning.”

“The Bible?” I must have looked blank at the reference, because the grin got wider.

“And the whole multitude sought to touch him,” Jamie quoted. “For there went virtue out of him, and healed them all.”

I laughed ruefully, interrupting myself with a small hiccup. “Fresh out of virtue at the moment, I’m afraid.”

“Dinna fash. There’s plenty in the flask.”

Thus reminded, I offered him the whisky, but he waved it away, brows drawn down in thought. Melting hail had left wet streaks in his hair, and it lay like ribbons of melted bronze across his shoulders—like the statue of some military hero, weathered and glistening in a public park.

“So ye’ll do the lad’s tonsils, once he comes to the Ridge?”

I thought a moment, then nodded, swallowing. There would still be dangers in it, and normally I wouldn’t do purely elective surgery. But Josiah’s condition was truly dreadful, and the continued infections might well kill him eventually, if I didn’t take some steps to remedy it.