“That would buy us a little time, at least.”
One corner of his mouth turned up.
“I like the way ye say ‘us,’ Sassenach.”
I flushed a little. “I’m sorry. I know it’s you that has to do the dirty work. But—”
“I wasna joking, Sassenach,” he said softly, and smiled at me. “If I get torn limb from limb doin’ this, who’s going to stitch me back together, if not you?”
“Don’t even joke about being torn limb from limb.”
He looked at me quizzically, then nodded, accepting it.
“Or … I can send back an answer tellin’ him I have my hands full wi’ the local Loyalists and I daren’t leave them loose to cause mischief on the Ridge. And that, Sassenach, is more than halfway true, but I dinna think I want either to say such a thing to Cleveland—nor do I want to put my name to such a thing on paper. Say I did write that—and that someone amongst Cleveland’s acquaintance then takes it into his head to send my wee note to the newspapers in Cross Creek?”
That was a good point, and my stomach curled a little. Putting his name to any sort of political document these days could be essentially painting a target on his back. On all our backs.
“Still … it’s not as though anyone in western North Carolina has any doubts as to your loyalties,” I objected. “I mean, you were one of Washington’s field generals.”
“Aye, I was,” he said cynically. “‘Were’ being the significant word. Half the folk who ken I was a general—for the span of a month or so—also think that I’m a traitorous poltroon who abandoned my men on the battlefield. Which I did. It wouldna surprise any of them to hear I’d turned my coat red.”
And joining the Overmountain men to harass and murder Loyalists would go some way toward restoring his reputation as a dyed-in-the-wool patriot, I supposed.
“Oh, nonsense.” I got up and came behind him, putting my hands on his shoulders and squeezing. “No one who knows you would think that for a moment, and I’d be willing to bet that most people in North Carolina never heard of Monmouth and haven’t got even the slightest idea that you fought there—let alone what really happened.”
What really happened. True, he technically had deserted his men on the field in order to keep me from bleeding to death—even though the battle had ended, and the men in question were all county militias whose enlistment was already up or due to be up the next day. Only the fact that he had formally resigned his commission—in writing, such as it was—at that point had kept him from being court-martialed. That, and the fact that George Washington was so furious with Charles Lee’s behavior on the field at Monmouth that he was unlikely to turn on Jamie Fraser—a man who had followed him through those fields and fought alongside his men with courage and gallantry.
“Take three deep breaths and let them go; your shoulders are hard as rocks.”
He obediently complied with this instruction, and after the third breath bent his head so I could knead the back of his neck, as well as his shoulders. His flesh was warm, and touching him gave me a reassuring sense of solidity.
“But what I likely will do,” he said into his chest, “is to send Cleveland and the others each a bottle o’ the two-year-old whisky, along wi’ a letter saying that my barley’s just been cut and I canna leave it to rot, or there’ll be no whisky next year.”
That made me feel considerably better. The Overmountain men were rebels, and some—like Cleveland—might be bloodthirsty fanatics, but I was sure that all of them had their priorities straight when it came to whisky.
“Excellent thought,” I said, and kissed the back of his neck. “And with luck, we’ll have an early winter with a lot of snow.”
That made him laugh, and the tightness in my lower back relaxed, though my hands felt empty when I took them away.
“Be careful what ye wish for, Sassenach.”
The light of the setting sun was behind him now, his profile black in silhouette. I caught the glint of light on the bridge of his long, straight nose as he turned his head, and the graceful curve of his skull—but what caught at my heart was the back of his neck.
He ran a hand beneath the tail of his hair, lifting it casually as he scratched his head, and the sun shone pure and white as bone through the tiny hidden hairs that ran down the ridge of muscle there.
Only an instant, and he pulled loose his ribbon and shook out his hair over his shoulders, a fading, still-dark mass of bronze and silver, sparking in the sun, and it was gone.
JAMIE’S NOLLE PROSEQUI to Benjamin Cleveland’s cordial invitation to come hunt Loyalists was evidently acceptable, for no further missives followed—and no one came by to set fire to our crops, either. That was just as well, as Jamie’s statement that his barley had been cut was anticipating the reality by a couple of weeks.
Now, though, the barley lay in sheaves in the fields and was being stuffed into sacks and hauled away for threshing and winnowing as fast as the available field hands—Jamie, me, Young Ian, Jenny and Rachel, and Bobby Higgins and his stepson Aidan—could manage. After a grueling day of working the harvest, we would stagger back to the house, eat whatever I had managed to put together in the morning—generally a stew made of greasy beans, rice, and anything else I could find in the bleary gray light of dawn—and fall into bed. Except Jamie.
He would eat, lie down before the hearth for one hour, then get up, dash cold water in his face, pull on the least filthy of his two work shirts, and go out to meet the militia in the big clearing below the house. He would set Bobby to drilling whoever had shown up, while he talked with the newcomers, persuading them to join, sealing their engagement with a silver shilling (he had sixteen left, hidden in the heel of one of his dress boots) and the promise of a mount and a decent gun. Then he would take over the drilling, as the light gradually seeped out of the land, drawn up into the last brilliance of the sky, and when the sun finally disappeared he would stagger up to bed and—with luck—get his boots off before collapsing facedown beside me.
Other men needed to tend to their harvest and butchering as well, though, so the attendance was spotty—and would be, he’d told me, until mid-October.
“By which time, I might possibly have a few horses and rifles in hand to give them.”
“I hope Mr. Cleveland’s friends all have harvests to look after, too,” I said, crossing the fingers of both hands.
He laughed and poured a ewer of water over his head, then set it down and stood for a moment, hands braced on the washstand, head down, dripping into the basin—and all over the floor.
“Aye,” he said, into the dark cavern of his long, wet hair. “Aye, they do.” He didn’t straighten up immediately, and I could see the depth of each slow breath as it swelled his back. Finally, he stood up straight and, shaking his head like a wet dog, took the linen towel I offered him and wiped his face.
“Cleveland’s rich,” he said. “He’s got servants to mind his fields and his stock and let him play hangman. I dinna have that luxury, thank God.”
53
First Foot
ON SEPTEMBER 16, OUR front door closed for the first time. It was a thing of beauty, solid oak, planed and sanded smooth as glass. Jamie and Bobby Higgins had put in the hinges and hung the door before lunch, and had finished installing the knob, lock, and mortise plate (the lock purchased at hideous expense from a locksmith in Cross Creek) just before sunset. Jamie swung the door closed with an impressive thud and threw the bolt with a ceremonious flourish, to the applause of the assembled family—which at the moment included Bobby and his three sons, invited to share supper with us and provide a little company for Fanny, as she missed Germain, Jem, and Mandy cruelly.