An Echo in the Bone, Page 80

  “A bed with your lovely wife in it, I daresay. Lucky man.” I was beginning to dislike this gentleman intensely. Jamie ignored both the comment and the mocking tone in which it was spoken, leaning forward to pour the last of the coffee into his cup. I could smell the bitter tang of it, even over the scent the buffalo robe had left on my shift.

  “Does the name of Willie Coulter recall itself to you?” the man asked abruptly.

  “I’ve kent several men of that name and that ilk,” Jamie replied. “Mostly in Scotland.”

  “Aye, it was in Scotland. On the day before the great slaughter at Culloden. But you had your own wee slaughter on that day, no?”

  I had been racking my memory for any notion of a Willie Coulter. The mention of Culloden struck me like a fist in the stomach.

  Jamie had been obliged to kill his uncle Dougal MacKenzie on that day. And there had been one witness to the deed besides me: a MacKenzie clansman named Willie Coulter. I had assumed him long dead, either at Culloden or in the difficulties that followed—and I was sure Jamie had thought likewise.

  Our visitor rocked back a little on his rock, smiling sardonically.

  “I was once overseer on a sugar plantation of some size, you see, on the island of Jamaica. We’d a dozen black slaves from Africa, but blacks of decent quality grow ever more expensive. And so the master sent me to market one day with a purse of silver, to look over a new crop of indentures—transported criminals, the most of them. From Scotland.”

  And among the two dozen men the overseer had culled from the ragged, scrawny, lice-ridden ranks was Willie Coulter. Captured after the battle, tried and condemned in quick order, and loaded onto a ship for the Indies within a month, never to see Scotland again.

  I could just see the side of Jamie’s face and saw a muscle jump in his jaw. Most of his Ardsmuir men had been similarly transported; only the interest of John Grey had saved him from the same fate, and he had distinctly mixed feelings about it, even so many years after the fact. He merely nodded, though, vaguely interested, as though listening to some traveler’s tale in an inn.

  “They all died within two weeks,” the stranger said, his mouth twisting. “And so did the blacks. Bloody pricks brought some filthy fever with them from the ship. Lost me my position. But I did get one thing of value to take away with me. Willie Coulter’s last words.”

  JAMIE HADN’T MOVED appreciably since Mr. X had sat down, but I could sense the tension thrumming through him; he was strung like a bow with the arrow nocked.

  “What is it ye want?” he asked calmly, and leaned forward to pick up the tin mug of coffee, wrapped in rags.

  “Mmphm.” The man made a pleased sound in his throat and sat back a little, nodding.

  “I kent ye for a sensible gentleman. I’m a modest man, sir—shall we say a hundred dollars? To show your good faith,” he added, with a grin that displayed snaggled teeth discolored by snuff. “And to save ye the trouble of protest, I’ll just mention that I ken ye’ve got it in your pocket. I happened to speak wi’ the gentleman ye won it from this afternoon, aye?”

  I blinked at that; evidently Jamie had had an extraordinary run of luck. At cards, at least.

  “To show good faith,” Jamie repeated. He looked at the cup in his hand, then at the Lowlander’s grinning face, but evidently decided that the distance was too great to throw it at him. “And to be going on with… ?”

  “Ah, well. We can be discussing that later. I hear ye’re a man of considerable substance, Colonel Fraser.”

  “And ye propose to batten on me like a leech, do ye?”

  “Why, a bit of leeching does a man good, Colonel. Keeps the humors in balance.” He leered at me. “I’m sure your good wife kens the wisdom of it.”

  “And what do you mean by that, you slimy little worm?” I said, standing up. Jamie might have decided against throwing a cup of coffee at him, but I was willing to have a try with the pot.

  “Manners, woman,” he said, giving me a censorious glance before shifting his gaze back to Jamie. “Do ye not beat her, man?”

  I could see the tautness in Jamie’s body subtly shifting; the bow was being drawn.

  “Don’t—” I began, turning to Jamie, but never got to finish. I saw the expression change on Jamie’s face, saw him leap toward the man—and whirled just in time to see Ian materialize out of the darkness behind the blackmailer and put a sinewy arm round his throat.

  I didn’t see the knife. I didn’t have to; I saw Ian’s face, so intent as almost to be expressionless—and I saw the ex-overseer’s face. His jaw dropped and the whites of his eyes showed, his back arching up in a futile attempt at escape.

  Then Ian let go, and Jamie caught the man as he began to fall, his body gone suddenly and horribly limp.

  “Jesus God!”

  The exclamation came from directly behind me, and I whirled again, this time to see Colonel Martin and two of his aides, as drop-jawed as Mr. X had been a moment before.

  Jamie glanced up at them, startled. Then in the next breath, he turned and said quietly over his shoulder, “Ruith.” Run.

  “Hi! Murder!” one of the aides shouted, springing forward. “Stop, villain!”

  Ian had lost no time in taking Jamie’s advice; I could see him darting toward the edge of the distant wood, but there was enough light from the many campfires to reveal his flight, and the shouts of Martin and his aides were rousing everyone in hearing; people were jumping up from their firesides, peering into the dark, shouting questions. Jamie dropped the overseer’s body by the fire and ran after Ian.

  The younger of the aides hurtled past me, legs churning in furious pursuit. Colonel Martin dashed after him, and I managed to stick out a foot and trip him. He went sprawling through the fire, sending a fountain of sparks and ashes into the night.

  Leaving the second aide to beat out the flames, I picked up my shift and ran as fast as I could in the direction Ian and Jamie had taken.

  The encampment looked like something from Dante’s Inferno, black figures shouting against the glow of flames, pushing one another amid smoke and confusion, shouts of “Murder! Murder!” ringing from different directions as more people heard and took it up.

  I had a stitch in my side but kept running, stumbling over rocks and hollows and trampled ground. Louder shouts from the left—I paused, panting, hand to my side, and saw Jamie’s tall form jerking free of a couple of pursuers. He must mean to draw pursuit away from Ian—which meant… I turned and ran the other way.

  Sure enough, I saw Ian, who had sensibly stopped running as soon as he saw Jamie take off, now walking at a good clip toward the wood.

  “Murderer!” a voice shrieked behind me. It was Martin, blast him, somewhat scorched but undaunted. “Stop, Murray! Stop, I say!”

  Hearing his name shouted, Ian began to run again, zigzagging around a campfire. As he passed in front of it, I saw the shadow at his heels—Rollo was with him.

  Colonel Martin had drawn up even with me, and I saw with alarm that he had his pistol in hand.

  “St—” I began, but before the word was out, I crashed headlong into someone and fell flat with them.

  It was Rachel Hunter, wide-eyed and openmouthed. She scrambled to her feet and ran toward Ian, who had frozen when he saw her. Colonel Martin cocked his pistol and pointed it at Ian, and a second later Rollo leapt through the air and seized the colonel’s arm in his jaws.

  The pandemonium grew worse. There were bangs from two or three pistols, and Rollo dropped writhing to the ground with a yelp. Colonel Martin jerked back, cursing and clutching his injured wrist, and Jamie drew back and punched him in the belly. Ian was already rushing toward Rollo; Jamie grabbed the dog by two legs, and, between them, they made off into the darkness, followed by Rachel and me.

  We made it to the edge of the wood, heaving and gasping, and I fell at once to my knees beside Rollo, feeling frantically over the huge shaggy body, hunting for the wound, for damage.

  “He’s not dead,” I panted.
“Shoulder … broken.”

  “Oh, God,” Ian said, and I felt him turn to glance in the direction from which pursuit was surely headed. “Oh, Jesus.” I heard tears in his voice, and he reached to his belt for his knife.

  “What are you doing?!” I exclaimed. “He can be healed!”

  “They’ll kill him,” he said, savage. “If I’m no there to stop them, they’ll kill him! Better I do it.”

  “I—” Jamie began, but Rachel Hunter forestalled him, falling to her knees and grabbing Rollo by the scruff.

  “I’ll mind thy dog for thee,” she said, breathless but certain. “Run!”

  He took one last despairing look at her, then at Rollo. And he ran.

  TERMS OF SURRENDER

  WHEN THE MESSAGE came from General Gates in the morning, Jamie knew what it must be about. Ian had got clean away, and little surprise. He’d be in the wood or perhaps in an Indian camp; either way, no one would find him until he wished to be found.

  The lad had been right, too; they did want to kill the dog, particularly Colonel Martin, and it had taken not only all Jamie’s resources but the young Quaker lass’s prostrating herself upon the hound’s hairy carcass and declaring that they must kill her first.

  That had taken Martin back a bit, but there was still considerable public opinion in favor of dragging her away and doing the dog in. Jamie had prepared himself to step in—but then Rachel’s brother had come out of the dark like an avenging angel. Denny stood in front of her and denounced the crowd as cowards, recreants, and inhuman monsters who would seek to revenge themselves upon an innocent animal, to say nothing of their damnable injustice—yes, he’d really said “damnable,” with the greatest spirit, and the memory of it made Jamie smile, even in the face of the upcoming interview—in driving a young man to exile and perdition out of their own suspicion and iniquity, and could they not seek to find within their own bowels the slightest spark of the divine compassion that was the God-given life of every man…

  Jamie’s arrival at Gates’s headquarters cut short these enjoyable reminiscences, and he straightened himself, assuming the grim demeanor suitable to trying occasions.

  Gates looked as though he had been severely tried himself—which he had, in all justice. The bland, round face never looked as though it had any bones, but now it sagged like a soft-boiled egg, and the small eyes behind the wire-rimmed spectacles were huge and bloodshot when they looked at Jamie.

  “Sit down, Colonel,” Gates said, and pushed a glass and decanter toward him.

  Jamie was dumbfounded. He’d had enough grim interviews with high-ranking officers to know that you didn’t start them out with a cordial dram. He accepted the drink, though, and sipped it cautiously.

  Gates drained his own, much less cautiously, set it down, and sighed heavily.

  “I require a favor of you, Colonel.”

  “I shall be pleased, sir,” he replied, with still more caution. What could the fat bugger possibly want of him? If it was Ian’s whereabouts or an explanation of the murder, he could whistle for that and must know it. If not…

  “The surrender negotiations are almost complete.” Gates gave a bleak glance to a thick stack of handwritten papers, perhaps drafts of the thing.

  “Burgoyne’s troops are to march out of camp with the honors of war and ground arms at the bank of the Hudson at the command of their own officers. All officers will retain their swords and equipment, the soldiers, their knapsacks. The army is to march to Boston, where they will be properly fed and sheltered before embarking for England. The only condition imposed is that they are not to serve in North America again during the present war. Generous terms, I think you will agree, Colonel?”

  “Verra generous, indeed, sir.” Surprisingly so. What had made a general who undeniably held the whip hand to the extent that Gates did offer such extraordinary terms?

  Gates smiled sourly.

  “I see you are surprised, Colonel. Perhaps you will be less so if I tell you that Sir Henry Clinton is heading north.” And Gates was in a rush to conclude the surrender and get rid of Burgoyne in order to have time to prepare for an attack from the south.

  “Aye, sir, I see.”

  “Yes, well.” Gates closed his eyes for an instant and sighed again, seeming exhausted. “There is one additional request from Burgoyne before he will aceept this arrangement.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  Gates’s eyes were open again and passed slowly over him.

  “They tell me you are a cousin to Brigadier General Simon Fraser.”

  “I am.”

  “Good. Then I am sure you will have no objection to performing a small service for your country.”

  A small service pertaining to Simon? Surely…

  “He had at one time expressed a desire to several of his aides that, should he die abroad, they might bury him at once—which they did, in fact; they buried him in the Great Redoubt—but that when convenient, he wished to be taken back to Scotland, that he might lie at peace there.”

  “Ye want me to take his body to Scotland?” Jamie blurted. He could not have been more astonished had Gates suddenly got up and danced a hornpipe on his desk. The general nodded, his amiability increasing.

  “You are very quick, Colonel. Yes. That is Burgoyne’s final request. He says that the brigadier was much beloved by his men and that knowing his wish is fulfilled will reconcile them to marching away, as they will not feel they are abandoning his grave.”

  This sounded thoroughly romantic, and quite like something Burgoyne might do, Jamie reflected. He had a reputation for dramatic gesture. And he was probably not wrong in his estimation of the feelings of the men who had served under Simon—he was a good fellow, Simon.

  Only belatedly did it dawn on him that the final result of this request…

  “Is… there some provision to be made for my reaching Scotland with the body, sir?” he asked delicately. “There is a blockade.”

  “You will be transported—with your wife and servants, if you like—on one of His Majesty’s ships, and a sum will be provided you for transporting the coffin once it has come ashore in Scotland. Have I your agreement, Colonel Fraser?”

  He was so stunned, he scarcely knew what he said in response, but evidently it was sufficient, for Gates smiled tiredly and dismissed him. He made his way back to his tent with his head in a whirl, wondering whether he could disguise Young Ian as his wife’s maid, in the manner of Charles Stuart.

  OCTOBER 17, like all the days that had gone before it, dawned dark and foggy. In his tent, General Burgoyne dressed with particular care, in a gorgeous scarlet coat with gold braid and a hat decorated with plumes. William saw him, when he went with the other officers to Burgoyne’s tent for their last, anguished meeting.

  Baron von Riedesel spoke to them, too; he took all the regimental flags. He would give them to his wife, he said, to be sewn inside a pillow and taken secretly back to Brunswick.

  William cared for none of this. He was conscious of deep sorrow, for he had never before left comrades on a battlefield and marched away. Some shame, but not much—the general was right in saying that they could not have mounted another attack without losing most of the army, so wretched was their condition.

  They looked wretched now, lining up in silence, and yet when fife and drum began to play, each regiment in its turn followed the flying colors, heads high in their tattered uniforms—or whatever clothing they could find. The enemy had withdrawn on Gates’s order, the general said. That was delicate, William thought numbly; the Americans would not be present to witness their humiliation.

  Redcoats first, and then the German regiments: dragoons and grenadiers in blue, the green-clad infantry and artillery from Hesse-Cassel.

  On the river flats, scores of horses lay dead, the stench adding to the somber horror of the occasion. The artillery parked their cannon here, and the infantry, rank by rank by unending rank, poured out their cartridge boxes and stacked their muskets. Some men were sufficient
ly furious as to smash the butts of their guns before throwing them on the piles; William saw a drummer put his foot through his drum before turning away. He was not furious, or horrified.

  All he wanted now was to see his father again.

  THE CONTINENTAL troops and the militia marched to the meetinghouse at Saratoga and from there lined up along both sides of the river road. Some women came, watching from a distance. I could have stayed in camp, to see the historic ceremony of surrender between the two generals, but I followed the troops instead.

  The sun had risen and the fog had fled, just as it had done every day for the last few weeks. There was a smell of smoke in the air, and the sky was the infinite deep blue of October.

  Artillery and infantry stood along the road, evenly spaced, but that spacing was the only uniform thing about them. There was no common dress, and each man’s equipment was distinctively his own, in form and how he held it—but each man held his musket, or his rifle, or stood beside his cannon.

  They were a motley crew in every sense of the word, festooned with powder horns and shot bags, some wearing outlandish old-fashioned wigs. And they stood in grave silence, each man with his right foot forward, right hands on their guns, to watch the enemy march out, with the honors of war.

  I stood in the wood, a little way behind Jamie, and I saw his shoulders stiffen a little. William walked past, tall and straight, his face the face of a man who is not really there. Jamie didn’t dip his head or make any effort not to be seen—but I saw his head turn just slightly, following William out of sight in the company of his men. And then his shoulders dropped just a little, as though a burden dropped from them.

  Safe, that gesture said, though he still stood straight as the rifle beside him. Thank God. He is safe.

  SANCTUARY

  Lallybroch

  ROGER COULD NOT have said quite what impelled him to do it, other than the sense of peace that hung about the place, but he had begun to rebuild the old chapel. By hand, and alone, one stone upon another.

  He’d tried to explain it to Bree; she’d asked.

  “It’s them,” he said at last, helpless. “It’s a sort of… I feel as though I need to connect with them, back there.”

  She took one of his hands in her own, spreading his fingers, and ran the ball of her thumb gently over his knuckles, down the length of his fingers, touching the scabs and grazes, the blackened nail where a stone had slipped and bruised it.

  “Them,” she repeated carefully. “You mean my parents.”

  “Yes, among other things.” Not only with Jamie and Claire but with the life their family had built. With his own sense of himself as a man—protector, provider. And yet it was his bone-deep urge to protect that had led him to abandon all his Christian principles—on the eve of ordination, no less—and set out in pursuit of Stephen Bonnet.

  “I suppose I’m hoping I can make sense of… things,” he’d said, with a wry smile. “How to reconcile what I thought I knew then with what I think I am now.”

  “It’s not Christian to want to save your wife from being raped and sold into slavery?” she inquired, a distinct edge in her voice. “Because if it’s not, I’m taking the kids and converting to Judaism or Shinto or something.”

  His smile had grown more genuine.

  “I found something there.” He fumbled for words.

  “You lost a few things, too,” she whispered. Not taking her eyes from his, she reached out, the tips of her fingers cool on his throat. The rope scar had faded somewhat but was still darkly visible; he made no effort to hide it. Sometimes when he spoke with people, he could see their eyes fix on it; given his height, it was not unusual for men to seem to be speaking directly to the scar, rather than to himself.

  Found a sense of himself as a man, found what he thought was his calling. And that, he supposed, was what he was looking for under those piles of fallen stone, under the eyes of a blind saint.

  Was God opening a door, showing him that he should be a teacher now? Was this, the Gaelic thing, what he was meant to do? He had plenty of room to ask questions, room and time and silence. Answers were scarce. He’d been at it most of the aftenoon; he was hot, exhausted, and ready for a beer.

  Now his eye caught the edge of a shadow in the doorway, and he turned—Jem or maybe Brianna, come to fetch him home to tea. It was neither of them.

  For a moment, he stared at the newcomer, searching his memory. Ragged jeans and sweatshirt, dirty-blond hair hacked off and tousled. Surely he knew the man; the broad-boned, handsome face was familiar, even under a thick layer of light-brown stubble.

  “Can I help you?” Roger asked, taking a grip on the shovel he’d been using. The man wasn’t threatening but was roughly dressed and dirty—a tramp, perhaps—and there was something indefinable about him that made Roger uneasy.

  “It’s a church, aye?” the man said, and grinned, though no hint of warmth touched his eyes. “Suppose I’ve come to claim sanctuary, then.” He moved suddenly into the light, and Roger saw his eyes more clearly. Cold, and a deep, striking green.