The Fiery Cross, Page 88

  were cold, dark and unblinking.

  4c1. am made Governor of the colony of New York," Tryon said. "The letter of appointment arrived more than a month past. I shall leave by July to take up the new appointment; Josiah Martin is made Governor here in my room." He glanced from Jamie to me, and back. "So you see - I had no personal stake in this; no need to glorify my exploits, as you put it." His throat moved as he swallowed, but fear had been replaced now by a coldness equal to Jamie's own.

  "I have done what I have done as a matter of duty. I would not leave this colony in a state of disorder and rebellion, for my successor to deal withthough I might rightfully have done so."

  . He took a deep breath, and stepped back, forcing his hands to relax from the fists into which they had been clenched.

  "You have experience of war, Mr. Fraser, and of duty And if you are an honest man, you will know that mistakes are made-and made often-in both realms. It cannot be otherwise."

  He met Jamie's eyes straight on, and they stood in silence, looking at each other.

  My attention was jerked away from this confrontation quite suddenly, by the distant sound of a baby crying. I turned, head up, just as Brianna emerged from the tent-flap behind me, in a rustle of agitated skirts.

  "Jem," she said. "That's Jemmy!"

  It was, too. A disturbance of voices at the far side of the camp came closer, resolving itself into the round, flounced shape of Phoebe Sherston, looking frightened but determined, followed by two slaves: a man carrying two huge baskets, and a woman, with a wrapped and squirming bundle in her arms that was making a terrible racket.

  Brianna made for the bundle like a compass needle swinging north, and the racket ceased as Jemmy emerged from his blankets, hair sticking up in red tufts and feet churning in paroxysms of joyous relief. Mother and child disappeared promptly into the shadows under the trees, and a certain amount of confusion ensued, with Mrs. Sherston explaining disjointedly to a gathering crowd of interested onlookers that she had just become so distraught, hearing reports of the battle, so terrible, and she feared ... but Mr. Rutherford's slave had come to say all was well ... and she thought perhaps ... and so ... and the child would not give over shrieking ... so ...

  Jamie and the Governor, shaken out of their nose to nose confrontation, had also retired to the shadows; I could see them, two stiff shadows, one tall and one shorter, standing close together. The element of danger had gone out of their tite-A-tte, though; I could see Jamie's head bent slightly toward Tryon's shadow, listening.

  ". . . brought food," Phoebe Sherston was telling me, her round face pink with excited self-importance. "Fresh bread, and butter, and some blackberry jam and cold chicken and . .

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  "Food!" I said, abruptly reminded of the parcel I held under my arm. "Do pardon me!" I gave her a quick, bright smile, and ducked away, leaving her open-mouthed in front of the tent.

  Abet MacLennan was where I had left him, waiting patiently under the ood and jug of stars. He brushed aside my apologies, thanking me for the f

  beer. "Is there anything-?" I began, then broke off. What else could I possibly do for him?

  And yet it seemed there was something.

  "Young Hugh Fowles," he said, tidily tucking the parcel beneath the, wagon's seat. "They said he was taken prisoner. Would-would your husband maybe speak for him, d'ye think? As he did for me?"

  "I expect he would. I'll ask him."

  It was quiet here, far enough from the camp that the sounds of conversation didn't carry above the song of frogs and crickets, and the rushing of the creek. "Mr. MacLennan," I said, moved by impulse, "where will you go? After you've taken Joe Hobson back, I mean."

  He took off his hat and scratched his balding head, quite unselfconsciously, though the gesture was not one of puzzlement, but merely of one preparing to state something already settled in his mind.

  "Och," he said. "I dinna mean to go anywhere. There are the women there, aye? And the weans. They've no man, with Joe dead and Hugh prisoner. I shall stay."

  He bowed to me then, and put on his hat. I shook his hand-surprising him-and then he climbed aboard his wagon and clicked his tongue to the horse. He lifted his band to me in farewell, and I waved back, realizing the difference in him as I did so.

  There was still grief in his voice, and sorrow on his shoulders; and yet he sat upright on his errand, the starlight shining on his dusty hat. His voice was firm, and his hand likewise. If Joe Hobson had left for the land of the dead, Abel MacLennan had come back from there.

  Things had settled somewhat by the time I came back to the tent. The Governor and Mrs. Sherston were gone, with her slaves. Isaiah Morton slept, moaning now and then, but without fever. Roger Jay still as a tomb-figure, face and hands black with bruises, the faint whistle of his breathing tube a counterpoint to Brianna's murmured song as she rocked Jemmy.

  The little boy's face was slack, mouth pinkly open in the utter abandonment of steep. With sudden inspiration, I held out my arms, and Bree, looking surprised, let me take him. Very carefully, I laid the limp, heavy little body on Roger's chest. Bree made a small movement, as though to catch the baby and stop him sliding off-but Roger's arm moved up, stiff and slow, and folded across the sleeping child. Tinder, I thought, satisfied.

  Jamie was outside the tent, leaning against the hickory tree. When I had made sure of things inside, I came out to join him in the shadows. He raised his arms without speaking, and I came inside them.

  We stood together in the shadows, listening to the crackle of campfires and the crickets' songs.

  Breathing.

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  Great Alamance Camp Friday 17tb May 1771 Parole - Granville Countersign - Oxford

  The Governor impressed with the most affectionate sense of Gratitude gives Thanks to both d Soldiers of the Armyfor the Vigorous and Generous support tb= Him yesterday in the Battle near Ala-

  cc, it was to their Valour and steady Conduct that be owed under the man hty God, the signal Victory obtained over obstinate and Providence ofAlmig cy simpathises with the Loyalistsfor the infatuated Rebels,-His Excellen on but -when he reflects that the brave Men thatfell and suffered in the Actit f ,the Day, and the important fate of constitution depended an the success 0 He considers this Loss

  cred to their Kin

  Services thereby rend g and Country,

  (though at present the Cause of Affliction to their Relations and Friends) as a Monument of lasting Glory and Honor to themselves and Families.

  The Dead to be intcrrcd atfive OCIOck this Evening in the Front of the Park of Artillery, Funeral Service to be performed with Military Honors to r the si

  the deccased-after the Ceremony, prayers and Thanksgivingfi gnal Victory it has pleased Divine Providence Yesterday to Grant the Army over the Insurgents.

  PART SEVEN

  Alarms of Struggle and Fligbt

  A WHITER SHADE OF PALE

  RS. SHERSTON, with an unexpected generosity offered us her hospitality. I moved to the Sherston's large house in Hillsborough with Brianna, Jemmy, and my two patients; Jamie divided his time

  tween Hillsborough and the militia camp, which remained in place at Ala'mance Creek while Tryon satisfied himself that the Regulation had indeed been

  4ecisively crushed.

  ,, While I couldn't reach the bullet lodged in Morton's lung with my forceps, t didn't appear to be troubling him greatly, and the wound had begun to seal itself in a satisfactory fashion. There was no telling exactly where the bullet was, but plainly it hadn't pierced any major vessels; as long as it didn't move further, it was quite possible for him simply to live with the bullet embedded in his body; I had known a good many war veterans who had-Archie Hayes among them.

  I was not at all sure how stable my small stock of penicillin might prove to be, but it seemed to work; there was a little redness and seepage at the wound site, but no infection, and very little fever. Beyond penicillin, the appearance a few days after th
e battle of Alicia Brown, now enormously pregnant, was the most important boost to Morton's recovery. Within an hour of her arrival, he was sitting up in his cot, pale but jubilant, hair sticking up on end and his hand lovingly pressed against the writhing bulges of his unborn child.

  Roger was another matter. He was not badly injured, beyond the crushing of his throat-though that was bad enough. The fractures to his fingers were simple; I had set them with splints and they should heal with no trouble. The bruising faded fairly quickly from livid reds and blues into a spectacular array of purple, green and yellow that made him took as though he had just been exhumed after having been dead for a week or so. His vital signs were excellent. His vitality was not.

  He slept a great deal, which should have been good. His slumber wasn't restfiil, though; it had about it something unsettling, as though he sought unconsciousness with a fierce desire, and once achieved, clung to it with a stubbornness that bothered me more than I wanted to admit.

  Brianna, who possessed her own brand of stubbornness, had the job of forcing him back to wakeffilness every few hours, to take some nourishment and have the tube and its incision cleansed and tended. During these procedures, he would fix his eyes on the middle distance, and stare darkly at nothing, making the barest acknowledgement of remarks addressed to him. Once finished, his eyes would close again, and he would lie back on his pillow, bandaged hands

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  folded across his chest like a tomb-figure, with no sound save the soft, breathy whistle from the tube in his neck.

  Two days after the battle of Alarnance, Jamie arrived at the Sherston's house in Hillsborough just bef

  ore supper, tired from long riding, and covered with reddish dust.

  "I had a wee talk wi' the Governor today," he said, taking the cup of water I had brought out to him in the yard. He drained it in a gulp and sighed, wiping "He was fashed aboutM' all the tosweat from his face with a coat-sleeve.

  and of no mind to think about what happened after the battle do, -but I was of no mind to let it be."

  "I don't imagine it was much of a contest," I murmured, helping him to peel Off the dusty coat. -William Tryon's not even Scots, let alone a Fraser." That got me a reluctant half-smile. "Stubborn as rocks," was the succinct

  description of the Fraser clan I had been given years before-and nothing in the intervening time period had given me cause to think it inaccurate in any way.

  "Aye, well." He shrugged and stretched luxuriously, his vertebrae cracking from the long ride. "Oh, Christ. I'm starved; is there food?" He relaxed and lifted his long nose, sniffing the air hopefully.

  "Baked ham and sweet potato pie," I told him, unnecessarily, since the honey-soaked fragrances of both were thick on the humid air. "So what did the Governor say, once you'd got him properly browbeaten?"

  His teeth showed briefly at that description of his interview with Tryon, but I gathered from his faint air of satisfaction that it wasn't totally incorrect.

  "Oh, a number of things. But to begin with, I insisted he recall to me the circumstances when Roger Mac was taken; who gave him up, and what was said. I mean to get to the bottom of it." He pulled the thong from his hair and shook out the damp locks, dark with sweat.

  "Did he remember anything when you pressed him?"

  "Aye, a bit more. Tryon says there were three men who had Roger Mac captive; one of them had a badge for Fraser's Company, so of course he thought the man was one of mine. He says," he added, with irony.

  That would have been a reasonable assumption for the Governor to make, I thought-but Jamie was plainly in no mood to be reasonable.

  "It must have been Roger's badge that the man had," I said. "The rest of your company came back with you-all except the Browns, and it wouldn't have been them." The two Browns had vanished, seizing the opportunity of the confusion of battle to take their vengeance on Isaiah Morton and then to escape before anyone discovered the crime. They wouldn't have hung about to frame Roger, even had they some motive for doing so.

  He nodded, dismissing the conclusion with a brief gesture.

  "Aye. But why? He said Roger Mac was bound and gagged-a dishonorable way to treat a prisoner of war, as I said to him."

  "And what did he say to that?" Tryon might be slightly less stubborn than Jamie; he wasn't any more amenable to insult.

  "He said it wasna war; it was treasonable insurrection, and he was justified in taking summary measures. But to seize and hang a man, without allowing him to speak a word in his own behalf-" The color was rising dangerously in his

  The Fiery Cross 641

  face. "I swear to ye, Claire, if Roger Mac had died at the end of yon rope, I would have snapped Tryon's neck and left him for the crows!

  t the slightest doubt that he meant it; I could still see his hand, fitting I hadn

  it-self so out the Governor's neck above the silver gorget. I slowly, so gently, ab

  . ;,orondered whether William Tryon had had the slightest notion of the danger in ,hich he had stood, that night after the battle.

  He didn't die, and he isn't going to." I hoped I was right, but spoke as I could, laying a hand on his arm. The muscles in his f bulged firmly as orearm

  and shifted with the restrained desire to hit someone, but stilled under my breath, then another, as he looked down at me. He took a deep

  touch, Arummed his stiff fingers twice against his thigh, then got his anger under control once more

  11, so. He said the man identified Roger Mac as James MacQuiston, one "We

  of the ring-leaders of the Pegulation. I have been asking after MacQuiston," he added, with another glance at me. He was growing slightly calmer, talking. it surprise ye, Sassenach, to discover that no one kens MacQuiston, by "Would

  his face?" e nodded, the high color receding slightlY from his it would, and I said so. H

  chee s.

  an's words are there in the papers for all to "So it did me, But it's so; the rn t Hermon Hussee-but no one has ever seen the man, Not auld Ninian, no

  lators that I could find to speak to-though the band-no one of the Regu

  sure he added. lying low, to be

  most of them are

  t one of MacQuiston's speeches in type; he "I even found the Printer who se Aith a brick of said the script of it was left upon his doorstep one morning,

  cheese and two certificates of proclamation money to pay for the printing." ,Well, that is interesting," I said. I took my hand gingerly off his arm, but he seemed under control now. ,So you think 'James MacQuiston, is likely an assumed name."

  "Verra likely indeed." f thought, I had a sudden idea, Pursuing the implications of that fine 0 r to the Governor "Do you think that perhaps the man who identified Roge

  as MacQuiston might have been MacQuiston himse Jamie's brows went up, and he nodded slowly.

  "And he sought to shield himself, by having Roger Mac hanged in his Place? st arrest. Aye, that's a bormie ideaBeing dead is an excellent protection again

  vicious," he added judiciouslyif a trifle

  1 "Oh, just a trifle." s and fictitious MacQuiston than with He seemed less angry with the viciOU

  ubt as to what Tryon had done the Governor-but then, there was no do

  had moved -across the, yard to the well, There was a half-filled bucket sitwe brackish from the day's heat. He rolled UP his ting on the coping, warm and tied water from the bucket up into his face, sleeves, cupped his hands, and das

  iritly, spattering droplets into Mrs. Sherston's hythen shook his head vic,

  drangeas. "Did the Governor recall what any Of these men who had Roger looked like?" I asked, handing him a crumpled linen towel from the wc1l-coping. He

  aking his head. took it and wiped his face, sh

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  64

  Only the one. The one who had the badge, who did most of the talking. He said it was a fair-haired fellow, verra tall and well set up. Green-eyed, he thought. Tryon wasna taking careffil note of
his appearance, of course, bein' exercised in his mind at the time. But he recalled that much."

  "Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ," I said, struck by a thought. "Tall, f air-haired -cyed. Do you think it could have been Stephen Bonnet?"

  and green

  His eyes opened wide and he stared at me over the towel for a moment, face blank with astonishment.

  "Jesus," he said, and set the towel down absentmindedly. "I never thought of such a thing."

  Neither had 1. What I knew of Bonnet didn't seem to fit the picture of a Regulator; most of them were poor and desperate men, like Joe Hobson, Hugh Fowles, and Abet MacUnnan. A f

  ew were outraged idealists, like Husband and Hamilton. Stephen Bonnet might occasionally have been poor and desperatebut I was reasonably sure that the notion of seeking redress from the government by protest wasn't one that would have occurred to him. Take it by force, certainly. Vill a judge or sheriff in vengeance for some offence, quite possibly. But-no, it was ridiculous. If I was certain of anything regarding Stephen Bonnet, it was that he didn't pay taxes.

  "No." Jamie shook his head, having evidently come to the same conclusions. He wiped a lingering droplet off the end of his nose. "There's nay money anywhere in this affair. Even Tryon had to appeal to the Earl of Hillsborough for ftinds to pay his militia. And the Regulators-" He waved a hand, dismissing the thought of the Regulators paying anyone for anything. "I dinna ken everything about Stephen Bonnet, but from what I've seen of the man, I think that only gold or the promise of it would bring him to a battlefield. "

  "True." The clink of china and chime of silver came faintly through the open window, accompanying the soft voices of slaves; the table was being set for dinner. "I don't suppose there's any way Bonnet could be James MacQuiston, is there?"

  He laughed at that, his face relaxing for the first time.

  "No, Sassenach. That I can be sure of. Stephen Bonnet canna read, nor write much more than his name."

  I stared at him.

  "How do you know that?"

  "Samuel Cornell told me so. He hasna met Bonnet himself, but he said that Walter Priestly came to him once, to borrow money urgently. He was surprised, for Priestly's a wealthy man-but Priestly told him that he had a shipment coming that must be paid for in gold-for the man bringing it would not take warehouse receipts, proclamation money or even bank-drafts. He didna trust words on paper that he couldna read himself, nor would he trust anyone to read them to him. Only gold would do."

  "Yes, that does sound like Bonnet." I had been holding his coat, folded over one arm. Now I shook it out, and began to beat the red dust from its skirts, averting my face from the resultant clouds. "What you said about gold ... do you think Bonnet could have been at Alamance by accident? On his way to River Run, perhaps?"

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  643

  He considered that one for a moment, but then shook his head, rolling down the cuffs of his shirt.

  . 11 "It wasna a great war, Sassenach-not the sort of thing where a man might 'z!bc. caught up unawares and carried along. The armies faced each other for more d= two d les like a fishing seine; anyone could ays, and the sentry lines had ho

  nd it. And Alamance is nowhere near River ji-ave left Alamance, or ridden rou

  omeone who was No, whoever it was that tried to kill wee Roger, it was s

  ere on his own account." hoever he might be." "So we're back to the mysterious Mr. MacQuiston-w

  "Perhaps," he said dubiously.

  "But who else could it be?" I protested. "Surely no one among the Regulators could have had anything personal against Rogerl 7

  ed. "But we re no

  -ye wouldna, think so," Jamie admitt i going to know until the lad can tell US, aye?"

  AVTER suPPER-during which there was naturally no mention of MacQuiston,