49
Your Friend, Always
From Brianna Fraser MacKenzie (Mrs.)
Fraser’s Ridge, North Carolina
To Lord John Grey, c/o Harold, Duke of Pardloe, Colonel of His Majesty’s Forty-sixth Regiment of Foot, Savannah, Georgia
Dear Lord John—
I received your very gracious offer of a commission to paint the portrait of Mrs. Brumby, and I accept with great pleasure!
Thanks also for your offer of safe-conduct, which I also accept with gratitude for your thoughtfulness, as my husband and children will accompany me. My husband has important business to conduct in Charles Town, so we’ll proceed there first—though briefly!—and then come on to Savannah, reaching you, God willing and the creek don’t rise, as people say hereabouts (I’m told the saying was originally to do with the Creek tribe of Indians, who were rather belligerent, and who could blame them, but given the weather in the mountains, I think water is a much more likely impediment to travel), before the end of September.
That being the case, perhaps it would expedite matters if you were to send whatever we require in the way of a safe-conduct in care of Mr. William Davies of Charlotte, North Carolina. We’ll pass through Charlotte on our way to Charles Town (which, as I’m sure you know, is presently in the hands of the Americans). Mr. Davies is a friend of my father’s and will keep the documents safely for our arrival.
I can’t wait to see you again!
Your Friend, Always—
Brianna
50
Sunday Dinner in Salem
ROGER WAS STRUGGLING TO fit an iron hoop around the top of a large, potbellied, elderly keg that had been rebuilt, evidently having exploded at some time in the recent past from the internal pressure of decaying penguins, judging by the faint but evil smell that seeped from the stained wood. The weather was cool, but the sun was high and sweat was collecting in his eye sockets and prickling his scalp.
It was nearly lunchtime, but he had no appetite. He was getting dizzy from holding his breath. Nonetheless, he looked up hopefully when he heard footsteps coming down the trail from the springhouse. It wasn’t Bree or Fanny with a welcome sandwich and bottle of ale, though. It was his father-in-law, two large stoneware crocks clasped in his arms.
“They’ll smell ye comin’ a mile away,” Jamie remarked with approval, sniffing. He set down the crocks, from which a strong smell of sauerkraut was rising like some powerful Germanic genie, and glanced at the recalcitrant hoop. He squatted by the barrel, embraced it gingerly, and, turning his face away, squeezed as hard as he could, pressing the aged staves inward enough that the hoop could be hastily pressed down into place.
“Heugh!” he said, gasping as he stood up. “Spoilt fish?”
“At least.” Roger rose to his feet and stretched his back, groaning. “I don’t suppose that’s going to improve the smell much,” he said, nodding at the new keg.
“Well, it will still smell like sauerkraut,” Jamie said, unlidding one of the crocks. “But cabbage will mostly damp other smells, so the fish—or whatever it was—willna be so bad. Besides, Claire says your nose gets used to anything and then ye willna be bothered about it.”
“Oh, does she?” Roger muttered. His mother-in-law was not the one who was going to travel three hundred miles with a wagonload of reeking barrels and three children shouting, “Pee-yew!” all the way to the coast.
“Ronnie says the other two barrels were used for salt pork and blood sausage, he thinks. Ye’ll just smell like Sunday dinner in Salem,” his father-in-law said callously. “Is this one ready?”
“Aye.” Roger picked at a splinter in his thumb, watching covertly as Jamie peered into the depths of the barrel. He was rather proud of his work—and work it had been, too: fitting a false second bottom to the barrel, with just enough space for a thin—but rich—layer of gold underneath, and fitting it closely enough that it was unlikely to come loose if someone threw it on the ground.
“Oh, that’s braw!” Still peering inside, Jamie picked the barrel up, weighed it in his hands, and dropped it experimentally. It landed with a solid thud, upright. Jamie looked inside, looked up, and smiled. “Sound as a nut, Roger Mac.”
“Aye, well, Brianna helped me—with the template, I mean. And Tom MacLeod gave her the wood.”
“She didna tell him what for, I hope,” Jamie said, but with no real fear that she might have.
“She said she told him she thought of making a cradle for the Ogilvys.” Young Angus and his wife were expecting their first child, and thus were now the recipients of outgrown baby smocks, spare clouts, dummies, suckling bottles, and any amount of probably unwanted advice.
Jamie nodded in approval, and without further ado poured a pale-green cascade of fragrant sauerkraut into the barrel.
“Ye’ll need to be moving it to and fro, when ye travel,” he said, in answer to Roger’s unspoken thought that Jamie might have waited until the barrel was loaded onto the wagon before adding twenty pounds of fermented cabbage to the weight. “Best to try it whilst ye’re alone, in case anything’s like to come loose, aye?”
Another voluminous splash, and the sauerkraut oscillated gently three inches below the wood scar that showed where the lid would fit.
They stood looking thoughtfully into the aromatic mass, and the same notion occurred to both. He felt Jamie twitch, just as he himself thought that they’d best check to see if the false bottom had come loose under the force of the deluge. Jamie was already reaching for a suitable stick, which he handed Roger.
Roger probed the depths of the barrel, smiling a bit. It always gave him a wee sense of warmth when he suddenly shared an unspoken thought with someone. It happened now and then with Bree, once in a while with Claire—but surprisingly often with Jamie. Perhaps it was just that they’d worked often together, knew each other’s physical ways.
“Right, then. All sound.” Roger threw away the wet stick, picked up the lid and pressed it down into place, banged it tight with a mallet, and they finished the job with a final hoop. Crude, but effective.
Jamie stood back, nodding as he rolled down his shirtsleeves.
“Ken, if there’s the slightest danger, leave the barrels and run for it,” he said. “Ye’ll not have any trouble on the way—bar bandits,” he added as an afterthought. “Lord John’s wee pass should see ye safe through anything else. But when ye get to Charles Town …” He lifted one shoulder, and Roger’s stomach tightened.
Aye, Charles Town. Jamie had written—in a cipher that fascinated Roger—to Fergus, who would have something planned by the time they arrived—but what?
Jamie wasn’t concerned with Charles Town, though.
“See what Fergus has in mind; he’s a daring wee snipe, but he’s a father of five now, so he’s no as reckless as he used to be. But when ye come to Savannah,” he began, but then stopped, frowning. Whatever he was thinking, though, Roger wasn’t divining it.
“There’s a soldier called Francis Marion,” Jamie said abruptly. “A Continental officer. Claire said he’s known in—your time. The Swamp Fox, she said. He’s no called that just now,” he added hastily, “but if ye might have heard of him?”