Voyager (146 page)

Jamie’s hand tightened on my shoulder, but his voice betrayed no more than a mild interest.

“Aye, I believe ye, Ian. She made love to ye, then?”

“Love?” Ian sounded dazed. “No—I mean, I dinna ken. It—she—well, she got my cock to stand up, and then she made me come to the bed and lie down and she did things. But it wasna at all like it was with wee Mary!”

“No, I shouldna suppose it was,” his uncle said dryly.

“God, it felt queer!” I could sense Ian’s shudder from the tone of his voice. “I looked up in the middle, and there was the black man, standing right by the bed, holding a candlestick. She told him to lift it higher, so that she could see better.” He paused, and I heard a small glugging noise as he drank from one of the bottles. He let out a long, quivering breath.

“Uncle. Have ye ever—lain wi’ a woman, when ye didna want to do it?”

Jamie hesitated a moment, his hand tight on my shoulder, but then he said quietly, “Aye, Ian. I have.”

“Oh.” The boy was quiet, and I heard him scratch his head. “D’ye ken how it can be, Uncle? How ye can do it, and not want to a bit, and hate doing it, and—and still it—it feels good?”

Jamie gave a small, dry laugh.

“Well, what it comes to, Ian, is that your cock hasna got a conscience, and you have.” His hand left my shoulder as he turned toward his nephew. “Dinna trouble yourself, Ian,” he said. “Ye couldna help it, and it’s likely that it saved your life for ye. The other lads—the ones who didna come back to the cellar—d’ye ken if they were virgins?”

“Well—a few I know were for sure—for we had a great deal of time to talk, aye? and after a time we kent a lot about one another. Some o’ the lads boasted of havin’ gone wi’ a lassie, but I thought—from what they said about it, ye ken—that they hadna done it, really.” He paused for a moment, as though reluctant to ask what he knew he must.

“Uncle—d’ye ken what happened to them? The rest of the lads with me?”

“No, Ian,” Jamie said, evenly. “I’ve no notion.” He leaned back against the tree, sighing deeply. “D’ye think ye can sleep, wee Ian? If ye can, ye should, for it will be a weary walk to the shore tomorrow.”

“Oh, I can sleep, Uncle,” Ian assured him. “But should I not keep watch? It’s you should be resting, after bein’ shot and all that.” He paused and then added, rather shyly, “I didna say thank ye, Uncle Jamie.”

Jamie laughed, freely this time.

“You’re verra welcome, Ian,” he said, the smile still in his voice. “Lay your head and sleep, laddie. I’ll wake ye if there’s need.”

Ian obligingly curled up and within moments, was breathing heavily. Jamie sighed and leaned back against the tree.

“Do you want to sleep too, Jamie?” I pushed myself up to sit beside him. “I’m awake; I can keep an eye out.”

His eyes were closed, the dying firelight dancing on the lids. He smiled without opening them and groped for my hand.

“No. If ye dinna mind sitting with me for a bit, though, you can watch. The headache’s better if I close my eyes.”

We sat in contented silence for some time, hand in hand. An occasional odd noise or far-off scream from some jungle animal came from the dark, but nothing seemed threatening now.

“Will we go back to Jamaica?” I asked at last. “For Fergus and Marsali?”

Jamie started to shake his head, then stopped, with a stifled groan.

“No,” he said, “I think we shall sail for Eleuthera. That’s Dutch-owned, and neutral. We can send Innes back wi’ John’s boatie, and he can take a message to Fergus to come and join us. I would as soon not set foot on Jamaica again, all things considered.”

“No, I suppose not.” I was quiet for a moment, then said, “I wonder how Mr. Willoughby—Yi Tien Cho, I mean—will manage. I don’t suppose anyone will find him, if he stays in the mountains, but—”

“Oh, he may manage brawly,” Jamie interrupted. “He’s the pelican to fish for him, after all.” One side of his mouth turned up in a smile. “For that matter, if he’s canny, he’ll find a way south, to Martinique. There’s a small colony there of Chinese traders. I’d told him of it; said I’d take him there, once our business on Jamaica was finished.”

“You aren’t angry at him now?” I looked at him curiously, but his face was smooth and peaceful, almost unlined in the firelight.

This time he was careful not to move his head, but lifted one shoulder in a shrug, and grimaced.

“Och, no.” He sighed and settled himself more comfortably. “I dinna suppose he had much thought for what he did, or understood at all what might be the end of it. And it would be foolish to hate a man for not giving ye something he hasna got in the first place.” He opened his eyes then, with a faint smile, and I knew he was thinking of John Grey.

Ian twitched in his sleep, snorted loudly, and rolled over onto his back, arms flung wide. Jamie glanced at his nephew, and the smile grew wider.

“Thank God,” he said. “He goes back to his mother by the first ship headed for Scotland.”

“I don’t know,” I said, smiling. “He might not want to go back to Lallybroch, after all this adventure.”

“I dinna care whether he wants to or not,” Jamie said firmly. “He’s going, if I must pack him up in a crate. Are ye looking for something, Sassenach?” he added, seeing me groping in the dark.

“I’ve got it,” I said, pulling the flat hypodermic case out of my pocket. I flipped it open to check the contents, squinting to see by the waning light. “Oh, good; there’s enough left for one whopping dose.”

Jamie sat up a little straighter.

“I’m not fevered a bit,” he said, eyeing me warily. “And if ye have it in mind to shove that filthy spike into my head, ye can just think again, Sassenach!”

“Not you,” I said. “Ian. Unless you mean to send him home to Jenny riddled with syphilis and other interesting forms of the clap.”

Jamie’s eyebrows rose toward his hairline, and he winced at the resultant sensation.

“Ow. Syphilis? Ye think so?”

“I shouldn’t be a bit surprised. Pronounced dementia is one of the symptoms of the advanced disease—though I must say it would be hard to tell in her case. Still, better safe than sorry, hm?”

Jamie snorted briefly with amusement.

“Well, that may teach Young Ian the price o’ dalliance. I’d best distract Stern while ye take the lad behind a bush for his penance, though; Lawrence is a bonny man for a Jew, but he’s curious. I dinna want ye burnt at the stake in Kingston, after all.”

“I expect that would be awkward for the Governor,” I said dryly. “Much as he might enjoy it, personally.”

“I shouldna think he would, Sassenach.” His dryness matched my own. “Is my coat within reach?”

“Yes.” I found the garment folded on the ground near me, and handed it to him. “Are you cold?”

“No.” He leaned back, the coat laid across his knees. “It’s only that I wanted to feel the bairns all close to me while I sleep.” He smiled at me, folded his hands gently atop the coat and its pictures, and closed his eyes again. “Good night, Sassenach.”

In the morning, buoyed by rest and a breakfast of biscuit and plantain, we pressed on toward the shore in good heart—even Ian, who ceased to limp ostentatiously after the first quarter-mile. As we came down the defile that led onto the beach, though, a remarkable sight met our eyes.

“Jesus God, it’s them!” Ian blurted. “The pirates!” He turned, ready to flee back into the hills, but Jamie grasped him by the arm.

“Not pirates,” he said. “It’s the slaves. Look!”

Unskilled in the seamanship of large vessels, the escaped slaves of the Yallahs River plantations had evidently made a slow and blundering passage toward Hispaniola, and having somehow arrived at that island, had promptly run the ship aground. The Bruja lay canted on her side in the shallows, her keel sunk deep in the sandy mud. A very agitated group of slaves surrounded her, some rushing up and down the beach shouting, others dashing off toward the refuge of the jungle, a few remaining to help the last of their number off the beached hulk.

A quick glance out to sea showed the cause of their agitation. A patch of white showed on the horizon, growing in size even as we watched.

“A man-of-war,” Lawrence said, sounding interested.

Jamie said something under his breath in Gaelic, and Ian glanced at him, shocked.

“Out of here,” Jamie said tersely. He pulled Ian about and gave him a shove up the defile, then grabbed my hand.

“Wait!” said Lawrence, shading his eyes. “There’s another ship coming. A little one.”

The Governor of Jamaica’s private pinnace, to be exact, leaning at a perilous angle as she shot round the curve of the bay, her canvas bellied by the wind on her quarter.

Jamie stood for a split second, weighing the possibilities, then grabbed my hand again.

“Let’s go!” he said.

By the time we reached the edge of the beach, the pinnace’s small boat was plowing through the shallows, Raeburn and MacLeod pulling hard at the oars. I was wheezing and gulping air, my knees rubbery from the run. Jamie snatched me up bodily into his arms and ran into the surf, followed by Lawrence and Ian, gasping like whales.

I saw Gordon, a hundred yards out in the pinnace’s bow, aim a gun at the shore, and knew we were followed. The musket discharged with a puff of smoke, and Meldrum, behind him, promptly raised his own weapon and fired. Taking it in turns, the two of them covered our splashing advance, until friendly hands could pull us over the side and raise the boat.

“Come about!” Innes, manning the wheel, barked the order, and the boom swung across, the sails filling at once. Jamie hauled me to my feet and deposited me on a bench, then flung himself down beside me, panting.

“Holy God,” he wheezed. “Did I no—tell ye to—stay away—Duncan?”

“Save your breath, Mac Dubh,” Innes said, a wide grin spreading under his mustache. “Ye havena enough to be wasting it.” He shouted something to MacLeod, who nodded and did something to the lines. The pinnace heeled over, changed her course, and came about, headed straight out of the tiny cove—and straight toward the man-of-war, now close enough for me to see the fat-lipped porpoise grinning beneath its bowsprit.

MacLeod bellowed something in Gaelic, accompanied by a gesture that left the meaning of what he had said in no doubt. To a triumphant yodel from Innes, we shot past the Porpoise, directly under her bow and close enough to see surprised-looking heads poking out from the rail above.

I looked back as we left the cove, to see the Porpoise still heading in, massive under her three great masts. The pinnace could never outrace her on the open sea, but in close quarters, the little sloop was light and maneuverable as a feather by comparison to the leviathan man-of-war.

“It’s the slave ship they’ll be after,” Meldrum said, turning to look alongside me. “We saw the man-o’-war pick her up, three miles off the island. We thought whilst they were otherwise occupied, we might as well nip in and pick ye all off the beach.”

“Good enough,” Jamie said with a smile. His chest was still heaving, but he had recovered his breath. “I hope the Porpoise will be sufficiently occupied for the time being.”

A warning shout from Raeburn indicated that this was not to be, however. Looking back, I could see the gleam of brass on the Porpoise’s deck as the pair of long guns called stern chasers were uncovered and began their process of aiming.

Now it was us at gunpoint, and I found the sensation very objectionable. Still, we were moving, and fast, at that. Innes put the wheel hard over, then hard again, tacking a zigzag path past the headland.

The stern chasers boomed together. There was a splash off the port bow, twenty yards away, but a good deal too close for comfort, given the fact that a twenty-four pound ball through the floor of the pinnace would sink us like a rock.

Innes cursed and hunched his shoulders over the wheel, his missing arm giving him an odd, lopsided appearance. Our course became still more erratic, and the next three tries came nowhere near. Then came a louder boom, and I looked back to see the side of the canted Bruja erupt in splinters, as the Porpoise came in range and trained her forward guns on the grounded ship.

A rain of grapeshot hit the beach, striking dead in the center of a group of fleeing slaves. Bodies—and parts of bodies—flew into the air like black stick-figures and fell to the sand, staining it with red blotches. Severed limbs were scattered over the beach like driftwood.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God.” Ian, white to the lips, crossed himself, staring in horror at the beach as the shelling went on. Two more shots struck the Bruja, opening up a great hole in her side. Several landed harmlessly in the sand, and two more found their mark among the fleeing people. Then we were round the edge of the headland, and heading into the open sea, the beach and its carnage lost to view.

“Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.” Ian finished his prayer in a whisper, and crossed himself again.

There was little conversation in the boat, beyond Jamie’s giving Innes instructions for Eleuthera, and a conference between Innes and MacLeod as to the proper heading. The rest of us were too appalled by what we had just seen—and too relieved at our own escape—to want to talk.

The weather was fair, with a bright, brisk breeze, and we made good way. By sundown, the island of Hispaniola had dropped below the horizon, and Grand Turk Island was rising to the left.

I ate my small share of the available biscuit, drank a cup of water, and curled myself in the bottom of the boat, lying down between Ian and Jamie to sleep. Innes, yawning, took his own rest in the bow, while MacLeod and Meldrum took it in turns to man the helm through the night.

A shout woke me in the morning. I rose on one elbow, blinking with sleep and stiff from a night spent on bare, damp boards. Jamie was standing by me, his hair blowing back in the morning breeze.

“What?” I asked Jamie. “What is it?”

“I dinna believe it,” he said, staring aft over the rail. “It’s that bloody boat again!”

I scrambled to my feet, to find that it was true; far astern were tiny white sails.

“Are you sure?” I said, squinting. “Can you tell at this distance?”