Written in My Own Heart's Blood, Page 8

  procured.

  “But it is somewhat necessary that I be nimble at present, Colonel,” Washington remarked, with an air of apology. “You’re aware, are you, that Clinton is withdrawing from Philadelphia?”

  A shock went through Jamie like a hot penny dropped on butter.

  “It—he—no, sir. I was not aware.”

  “I was just about to get to that,” Dan said tetchily. “No one lets me get one word in edgewise, I tell you.”

  “Well, now you’ve got one,” Washington said, amused. “You might get another, if you’re quick enough to speak before Lee gets here. Sit down, gentlemen, if you will. I’m expecting—ah, there they are.” Sounds from the dooryard indicated a number of horsemen arriving, and within a few moments the cabin was crowded with Continental officers.

  They were a creased and weathered lot, for the most part, dressed in motley bits of uniform, these coupled uneasily with hunting shirts or homespun breeches. Even the complete suits of clothes were mud-spattered and worn, and the smell of men who’d been living rough quite overcame the gentler domestic reeks of the cabin.

  Among the shuffling and excited greetings, Jamie spotted the source of the urinous smell, though: a thin-faced woman stood with her back pressed into a corner of the room, holding an infant wrapped in a ratty shawl against her bosom, her eyes darting to and fro among the intruders. A dark wet patch showed on the shawl, but it was plain the woman was afraid to move from her place to change the wean and instead shifted mechanically from foot to foot, patting the child to soothe it.

  “Colonel Fraser! Well met! Well met!” The voice jerked his attention away, and, to his astonishment, he found his hand being pumped with enthusiasm by Anthony Wayne—known quite openly by now as “Mad Anthony”—whom he had last seen a few weeks before the fall of Ticonderoga.

  “Is your wife well, sir, and your Indian nephew?” Wayne was asking, beaming up into Jamie’s face. Anthony was short and stocky, with the full cheeks of a chipmunk, but also equipped with a sharp, poking sort of nose over which his eyes did now and then seem to glow with fire. At the moment, Jamie was relieved to see them merely alight with friendly interest.

  “All well, sir, I thank ye. And—”

  “Tell me, is your wife near at hand?” Wayne moved a little closer and lowered his voice a bit. “I’ve been having the most damnable time with my gouty foot, and she did wonders with the abscess at the base of my spine while we were at Ti—”

  “Colonel Fraser, allow me to make you acquainted with Major General Charles Lee and with General Nathanael Greene.” George Washington’s voice drove a smooth Virginia wedge between himself and the base of Mad Anthony’s spine, to Jamie’s relief.

  Besides Washington himself, Charles Lee was the best equipped of the lot, wearing complete uniform from gorget to polished boots. Jamie hadn’t met him before but could have picked him out of a crowd as a professional soldier, no matter how he was dressed. An Englishman of the sort who seemed always to be smelling something dubious, but he shook hands cordially enough, with a clipped “Your servant, sir.” Jamie knew exactly two things about Charles Lee, both told to him by Young Ian: to wit, that the man had a Mohawk wife—and that the Mohawk called him “Ounewaterika.” Ian said it meant “Boiling Water.”

  Between Mad Anthony and Boiling Water, Jamie was beginning to feel that he should have spurred up and run for it when he met Dan Morgan on the road, but too late for regrets.

  “Sit, gentlemen, we have no time to waste.” Washington turned to the woman in the corner. “Have you anything to drink, Mrs. Hardman?”

  Jamie saw her throat move as she swallowed, squeezing the child so hard that it squealed like a piglet and started to cry. He felt several of the men, doubtless fathers, wince at the sound.

  “No, Friend,” she said, and he realized she was a Quaker. “Naught but water from the well. Shall I fetch you a bucket?”

  “Don’t trouble thyself, Friend Hardman,” Nathanael Greene said, soft-voiced. “I’ve two bottles in my saddlebag will do us.” He moved slowly toward the woman, not to startle her, and took her gently by the arm. “Come outside. Thee needn’t be disturbed by this business.” He was a heavy, imposing man, who walked with a noticeable limp, but she seemed reassured by his plain speech and went with him, though looking back with an anxious face, as though fearing that the men might set fire to the place.

  A quarter hour later, Jamie wasn’t so sure that they might not ignite the cabin by the sheer force of their excitement. Washington and his troops had been bottled up at Valley Forge for the last six months, drilling and preparing, and the generals were on fire to be at the enemy.

  Much talk, plans proposed, argued over, put aside, returned to. Jamie listened with half a mind; the other half was in Philadelphia. He’d heard enough from Fergus to know that the city was divided, with regular clashes between Patriots and Loyalists, these kept under control only by the presence of the British soldiers—but the Loyalists were a minority. The moment the army’s protection was withdrawn, the Loyalists would be at the mercy of the Rebels—and Rebels who had been suppressed for months were not likely to be merciful.

  And Claire … His mouth went dry. Claire was, so far as anyone in Philadelphia knew, the wife of Lord John Grey, a very visible Loyalist. And Jamie himself had just removed John Grey’s protection from her, leaving her alone and helpless in a city about to explode.

  How long did he have before the British left the city? No one at the table knew.

  He took as little part as possible in the conversation, both because he was estimating how fast he could reach Philadelphia on foot—versus the possibility of going out to the privy and stealing back the horse he’d just given Washington—and because he hadn’t forgotten what auld Dan had said to General Washington when he’d dragged Jamie in here. The very last thing he wanted was—

  “And you, Colonel Fraser,” Washington said. Jamie closed his eyes and commended his soul to God. “Will you do me the signal service of accepting command of Henry Taylor’s battalion? General Taylor fell ill and died two days ago.”

  “I … am honored, sir,” Jamie managed, thinking frantically. “But I have very urgent business … in Philadelphia. I should be happy to oblige ye, so soon as my business is accomplished—and I could, of course, bring back word of exactly how matters stand with General Clinton’s forces.” Washington had been looking severe during the first part of this speech, but the last sentence made Greene and Morgan hum with approval and Wayne nod his little chipmunk head.

  “Can you manage your business within three days, Colonel?”

  “Yes, sir!” It was no more than ten miles to the city; he could do that in two or three hours. And it wasn’t going to take him more than thirty seconds to take Claire out of that house, once he reached it.

  “Very well, then. You’re appointed to a temporary field rank of General of the Army. That—”

  “Ifrinn!”

  “I beg your pardon, Colonel?” Washington looked puzzled. Dan Morgan, who’d heard Jamie say “Hell!” in Gàidhlig before, shook silently beside him.

  “I—thank ye, sir.” He swallowed, feeling a dizzy wave of heat pass over him.

  “Though the Congress will have to approve your appointment,” Washington went on, frowning a little, “and there’s no guarantee as to what those contentious, shopkeeping sons of bitches will do.”

  “I understand, sir,” Jamie assured him. He could only hope. Dan Morgan passed him a bottle, and he drank deep, hardly noticing what was in it. Sweating profusely, he sank back on the bench, hoping to avoid any further notice.

  Jesus, now what? He’d meant to slip quietly into the city and out again with Claire, then head south to retrieve his printing press, perhaps establish a wee business in Charleston or Savannah until the war was over and they could go home to the Ridge. But he had known there was a risk; any man below the age of sixty could be compelled into militia service, and if it came down to it, he was likely a little safer bei
ng a general than a commander of militia. Maybe. And a general could resign; that was a heartening thought.

  Despite all the talk and the worrying prospects of the immediate future, Jamie found himself paying more attention to Washington’s face than to what he said, taking note of how the man talked and carried himself, so that he could tell Claire. He wished that he could tell Brianna; she and Roger Mac had sometimes speculated about what it might be like to meet someone like Washington—though having met a number of famous people himself, he’d told her that the experience was likely to prove a disappointment.

  He would admit that Washington knew what he was about, though; he listened more than he talked, and when he said something, it was to the point. And he did give off an air of relaxed authority, though it was clear the present prospect excited him very much. His face was pockmarked, big-featured, and far from handsome, but had a good bit of dignity and presence.

  His expression had become very animated, and he went so far as to laugh now and then, showing very bad, stained teeth. Jamie was fascinated; Brianna had told him they were false, made of wood or hippopotamus ivory, and he had a sudden dislocating recollection of his grandfather: the Old Fox had had a set of teeth made of beechwood. Jamie had thrown them on the fire during an argument at Beaufort Castle—and just for an instant he was there, smelling peat smoke and roasting venison, every hair on his body a-prickle with warning, surrounded by kinsmen who might just kill him.

  And as suddenly he was back, pressed between Lee and auld Dan, smelling sweat and exhilaration and, despite himself, feeling the rising excitement among them begin to seep into his blood.

  It gave him a queer feeling in his wame, to sit nay more than a foot away from a man whom he knew not at all but about whom he maybe kent more than the man himself.

  True, he’d sat with Charles Stuart many evenings, knowing—and believing—what Claire had said would happen to him. But still … Christ had told doubting Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen but have believed.” Jamie wondered what you called those who had seen and were obliged to live with the resultant knowledge. He thought “blessed” was maybe not the word.

  IT WAS MORE than an hour before Washington and the others took their leave—an hour during which Jamie thought repeatedly that he might just stand up, flip the table over, and run out the door, leaving the Continental army to make shift without him.

  He kent perfectly well that armies moved slowly, save when fighting. And clearly Washington expected that it would be a week or more before the British actually quit Philadelphia. But it was no use talking sense to his body, which as usual had its own measures of importance. He could ignore or suppress hunger, thirst, fatigue, and injury. He couldn’t suppress the need to see Claire.

  Likely it was what she and Brianna called testosterone poisoning, he thought idly—their term for the obvious things men did that women didn’t understand. Someday he must ask her what testosterone was. He shifted uncomfortably on the narrow bench, forcing his mind back to what Washington was saying.

  At long last, there came a rap on the door, and a black man put his head in and nodded to Washington.

  “Ready, suh,” he said, in the same soft Virginia accent as his master.

  “Thank you, Caesar.” Washington nodded back, then put his hands on the table and rose swiftly. “We are agreed, then, gentlemen? You’re coming with me, General Lee. I’ll see the rest of you in due course at Sutfin’s farm, save you hear otherwise.”

  Jamie’s heart leapt and he made to rise, too, but auld Dan put a hand on his sleeve.

  “Set a bit, Jamie,” he said. “You’ll need to know something about your new command, won’t you?”

  “I—” he began, but there was no help for it. He sat and waited while Nathanael Greene thanked Mrs. Hardman for her hospitality and begged her to accept a small recompense from the army for her civil reception of them. Jamie would have wagered a good deal that the coins he plucked from his purse were his own and not the army’s, but the woman took them, an acceptance too faint to be pleasure showing in her worn face. He saw her shoulders sag with relief as the door closed behind the generals and realized that their presence might have put her and her child in considerable peril, should the wrong people see uniformed Continental officers visiting her house.

  She glanced consideringly at him and Dan, but they seemed to trouble her much less, in their rough civilian clothes. Dan had taken off his uniform coat and folded it inside out, laying it on the bench beside him.

  “Feel any tongues of fire come down on your head just now, Jamie?” Dan asked, seeing his look.

  “What?”

  “Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you,” Dan quoted, and grinned wide at Jamie’s look of astonishment.

  “My Abigail’s a reading woman, and she reads bits o’ the Bible out to me regular, in hopes it’ll do some good, though ain’t much luck in that direction yet.” He took up the rucksack he’d brought in and dredged about in it, coming out with a folded sheaf of dog-eared papers, an inkhorn, and a couple of tattered quills.

  “Well, now that the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost are gone off about their own business, let me write you down the names of your company commanders, what-all you got in the way of militia, and where they all are, ’cuz it ain’t like they’re all in barracks—or even in the same village. Missus Hardman, might I trouble you, ma’am, for a drop of water for my ink?”

  Jamie bent his mind with difficulty to the business at hand, the better to dispatch it quickly, and within a quarter hour was gathering together the lists, made out in Dan’s slow, crabbed hand. Two hours to Philadelphia … maybe three …

  “Got any money on you to speak of?” Dan asked, pausing by the door.

  “Not a penny,” Jamie admitted, with a glance at the spot on his belt where his purse was normally fastened. He’d given it to Jenny to keep on the journey, as she delighted in making their small purchases. And this morning he’d been so much on fire to see Claire that he’d left the printshop with nothing but the clothes on his back and the packet of papers for Fergus. He spared an instant to wonder whether things would be different now, had he not been spotted giving the papers to Fergus and followed to Lord John’s house by the soldiers—and William—but there was no point in regrets.

  Dan pawed in his sack again, came out with a smaller bag and a clinking purse, both of which he tossed to Jamie.

  “A bit of food for your journey, and an advance on your general’s pay,” he said, and chortled with amusement at his own wit. “You’ll need to pay hard cash for a uniform these days; ain’t a tailor in Philadelphia will take Continentals. And woe betide you if you show up before his worshipfulness George Washington without being dressed proper. He’s a stickler for proper uniform, says you can’t expect to command respect without lookin’ like you deserve it. But I reckon you know all about that.”

  Dan, who had fought both battles of Saratoga in a hunting shirt, leaving his uniform coat hung over a tree branch in camp because of the heat, smiled broadly at Jamie, the scar on his upper lip where a bullet had torn through his face showing white against the weathered skin.

  “Fare thee well, General Fraser!”

  Jamie snorted but smiled nonetheless as he stood to shake Dan’s hand. Then he turned back to the litter on the table, stowing the papers and purse—and a stray quill that Dan had abandoned, overlooked—into the bag. He was grateful for the food; the scent of jerked meat and journeycake floated out of the canvas depths, and he could feel the hard shape of apples at the bottom. He’d left the printshop without breakfast, too.

  He straightened, and a pain like white lightning shot from the middle of his spine down the back of his leg to the sole of his foot. He gasped and collapsed onto a stool, his lower back and right buttock clenched with cramp.

  “Jesus, Mar
y, and Bride—not now,” he said between his teeth, and meant it somewhere between prayer and curse. He’d felt something small wrench or tear in his back when he’d hit John Grey, but in the heat of the moment it hadn’t seemed important. It hadn’t troubled him much walking—he’d barely noticed, with all there was on his mind—but now that he’d sat for a time and the muscles had chilled …

  He tried rising, carefully, collapsed again. Bent sweating over the table with his fists clenched, he said a number of things in Gaelic that weren’t at all prayerful.

  “Is thee quite well, Friend?” The woman of the house leaned near, peering nearsightedly at him in concern.

  “A … moment,” he managed, trying to do as Claire told him and breathe through the spasm.

  “Like labor pains,” she’d told him, amused. He hadn’t thought it was funny the first time and didn’t now.

  The pain eased. He extended his leg, then flexed it back under him, very gingerly. So far, so good. But when he once more tried to rise, his lower back was locked in a vise, and a pain that made him catch his breath stabbed down his buttock.

  “Have ye … anything like … whisky? Rum?” If he could just get to his feet … But the woman was shaking her head.

  “I’m sorry, Friend. I have not even small beer. Not even milk for the children any longer,” she added with a certain bitterness. “The army took my goats away.”

  She didn’t say which army, but he supposed it didn’t matter to her. He made a sound of apology, just in case it had been the Continentals or the militia, and subsided, breathing heavily. This had happened three times before—just the same sudden flashing pain, the inability to move. Once, it had taken four days before he could hobble; the other two times, he had got to his feet within two days, and while it had twinged sporadically for weeks, he’d been able to walk, if slowly.

  “Is thee ill? I could give thee rhubarb syrup,” she offered. He managed to smile at that, shaking his head.

  “I thank ye, ma’am. It’s no but a clench in my back. When it eases, all will be well.” The trouble was that until it eased, he was all but helpless, and the dawning realization of that gave him a sense of panic.

  “Oh.” The woman hesitated for a moment, hovering, but then the baby started to wail and she turned away to fetch it. A little girl—five or six, he thought, a stunted little creature—crawled out from under the bed and stared at him curiously.

  “Is thee going to stay to supper?” she asked, in a high, precise voice. She gave him an appraising frown. “Thee looks like thee would eat a lot.”

  He revised his estimate of the girl’s age to eight or nine and smiled at her. He was still sweating with the pain, but it was easing a bit.

  “I’ll not take your food, a nighean,” he assured her. “In fact, there’s a good loaf and some jerked meat in yon bag; it’s yours.” Her eyes went round as pennies, and he amended, “Your family’s, I mean.”

  She glanced eagerly at the bag, swallowing painfully as her mouth watered; he could hear the tiny gulp and it wrung his heart.

  “Pru!” she whispered, turning urgently toward the table. “Food!”

  Another small girl crawled out and stood beside her sister. They were both plain as fence posts, though they otherwise didn’t resemble each other much.

  “I heard,” the newcomer told her sister, and turned a solemn gaze on Jamie.

  “Don’t let Mam give thee rhubarb syrup,” she advised him. “It makes thee shit like the blazes, and if thee can’t get to the privy, it—”

  “Prudence!”

  Prudence obligingly shut her mouth, though she continued to look Jamie over with interest. Her sister knelt and rummaged under the bed, emerging with the family utensil, this a homely object of brown earthenware, which she presented gravely for his inspection.

  “We’ll turn our backs, sir, if thee should need to—”

  “Patience!”

  Red in the face, Mrs. Hardman took the piss pot from her daughter and shooed the little girls to the table, where—with a glance at Jamie to be sure he had meant it—she took the bread and meat and apples from his bag, dividing the food scrupulously into three parts: two large portions for the girls, and a smaller one for herself, put aside for later.

  She had left the chamber pot on the floor beside the bed, and as she eased him gingerly onto the corn-shuck mattress, Jamie caught sight of lettering painted in white across the bottom. He squinted to make it out in the dim light, then smiled. It was a Latin motto, encircling a vividly executed bee with a jovial expression and a pronounced wink. Iam apis potanda fineo ne.

  He’d seen the jest before—the brothel in Edinburgh where he’d once kept a room had been equipped throughout with utensils sporting a variety of Latin tags, most of them prurient, but some merely puns, like this one. It was a Latin sentence, if a foolish one—“Drink not the bee now”—but if read phonetically in English, ignoring the spacing, it read, “I am a piss pot and a fine one.” He glanced up at Mrs. Hardman in speculation but thought it was likely not her work. The absent Mr. Hardman must be—or have been, he thought, given the obvious poverty of the household, and he crossed himself unobtrusively at the thought—an educated man.

  The baby had waked and was fussing in her cradle, making small sharp yelps like a fox kit. Mrs. Hardman scooped the child out, pulling a worn nursing chair toward the fire with one foot. She laid the baby momentarily on the bed beside Jamie, opening her blouse with one hand, the other reaching automatically to save an apple that was rolling toward the edge of the table, nudged by a little girl’s elbow.

  The baby smacked her lips, hungry as her sisters. “And this will be wee Chastity, I make nay doubt?” he said.

  Mrs. Hardman gaped at him. “How did thee know the child’s name?”

  He glanced at Prudence and Patience, who were silently stuffing bread and meat into their mouths as quickly as they could eat. “Well, I havena yet met a lassie named Sobriety or Fortitude,” he said mildly. “The wean’s sopping; have ye a clean clootie for her?”

  There were two worn clouts hung to dry before the fire; she brought one, to find that Jamie had already unpinned the baby’s soggy nappie—that’s what Claire called them—and wiped the shit from her bottom, holding her tiny ankles in one hand.

  “Thee has children, I see.” Eyebrows raised, Mrs. Hardman took the soiled clout from him with a nod of thanks and dropped it into a bucket of vinegar and water that stood in the far corner.

  “And grandchildren,” he said, wiggling a finger in front of wee Chastity’s nose. She gurgled and went cross-eyed, kicking her legs enthusiastically. “To say nothing of six nephews and nieces.” And where are Jem and wee Mandy, I wonder? Can she breathe easy now, poor lassie? He gently tickled the baby’s soft pink foot, remembering the strangely beautiful, heart-wrenching blue tinge to Mandy’s perfect toes, long-jointed and graceful as a frog’s.

  “They’re just like yours,” Claire had told him, drawing a fingernail lightly down the sole of Mandy’s foot, making the long big toe spring suddenly away from the others. What had she called that?

  He tried it himself, gingerly, and smiled with delight to see it happen to