She’d never before seen a look on his face as she did when he called back that song for her, but now, watching his back, straight and square as he rode before them, quite suddenly she felt what he had felt in the depth of that distant night, and understood why he found peace in silent spaces.
61
’Gin a Body Meet a Body …
“I’M OLDER THAN THIS place,” Jenny said, looking about with a disparaging eye as the wagon pulled up outside an ordinary. “This town looks as though ’twas thrown up yesterday.”
“It’s been here for the last twenty-five years,” Jamie said, wrapping his horse’s reins around the hitching post. “It’s older than Rachel, aye?” He smiled at his niece, but his sister snorted, edging backward out of her nest in the wagon.
“No age at all for a city,” she said dismissively.
“Crawling wi’ Loyalists, too,” said Young Ian, seizing his mother round the middle and swinging her down. “Or so I hear.”
“I hear that, too,” Jamie said, and gave the main street an eye, as though Loyalists might come darting out of the taverns like mice. “But I hear they havena got guns, nor yet a proper militia.”
Despite its relative youth, Salisbury was the largest town in Rowan County. It was also the seat of Rowan County, the closest town between Fraser’s Ridge and the Great Wagon Road—and the military fiefdom of one Francis Locke, a patriot. And one with guns and militia. That being so, Jamie settled Jenny, Rachel, and Oggy temporarily at a decent-looking ordinary with an expensive pot of strong coffee and a plate of stuffed rolls, sent Ian to buy provisions for the journey north, then went himself in search of Colonel Locke.
Once met, Jamie found himself disposed to like Francis Locke. A stocky, red-faced Irishman of about his own age, the man had a direct manner that appealed to him. He was a landowner, a businessman—and the commander of the Rowan County Regiment of Militia.
“One hundred and sixty-seven companies of militia we have on our rolls,” Locke said, with a certain grim satisfaction. “At present. From all over Rowan County—though none from the far backcountry as yet. I’d be glad to welcome you and your company, Mr. Fraser, should ye care to join us.”
Jamie gave him a cordial nod but refrained from committing himself, just yet.
“I’ll not yet have my company fully equipped, sir—though I expect to accomplish that before the snow flies and be ready for the spring.”
The British army surely would be.
Locke gave him the same kind of nod, with the same look of reservation. Locke knew perfectly well that Jamie wouldn’t admit his true state of readiness until he’d made up his mind about Locke and his regiment.
“How many men have you?”
“Forty-seven, at present,” Jamie replied equably. “I think we will have more, once the harvest is in.”
They were sitting in the City Tavern, with a pitcher of ale and a platter of small fried fishes. Tasty fare after three days of journeycake and boiled eggs, though the fish were equipped with an inconvenient number of small bones.
“Might I ask, sir—are ye maybe familiar with a man called Partland? Or Adam Granger?”
Locke’s heavy gray brows cocked upward.
“Nicodemus Partland? Aye, heard of him. From Virginia. Loyalist gadfly. Troublemaker,” he added offhandedly.
“He is that. But perhaps a bit more than a gadfly.” Jamie gave Locke a brief account of Partland’s appearance on his land—his connection with Captain Cunningham—and then of the rifles that Claire and Young Ian had confiscated. Jamie didn’t embellish that encounter, but he knew how to tell a story, and Locke was laughing at the end of it.
“Do ye manage the mounting of your men in the same fashion, Mr. Fraser?”
“No, sir. I make fine liquor and trade for horses where I find them.”
Locke blinked, drawing conclusions. Jamie had told Locke where Fraser’s Ridge was.
“Indians?”
Jamie inclined his head an inch.
“A few years back, I was an Indian agent for the Crown in the Southern Department—under Mr. Atkins and then Colonel Johnson. I still have friends among the Cherokee.”
The look of amusement came back into Locke’s weathered face.
“I take it ye don’t number Colonel Johnson among your friends just at present.”
“A friendship requires two parties of like mind, does it not?” When Jamie had resigned his commission, Johnson had threatened to have him hanged as a traitor—and meant it. Jamie chose another fish and bit into it carefully, disentangling small bones with his tongue and laying them neatly on the sheet of greasy, food-spattered newsprint that covered the table in lieu of a cloth. Claire wasn’t with him to deal with things if he choked.
The newspaper was The Impartial Intelligencer, and made him think of Fergus and Marsali. He made an instinctive move to cross himself at the thought of them and Germain, but stilled his hand before it lifted. Locke might well be a Protestant; no need to alienate someone he might need as an ally.
Jamie laid aside the staring head and backbone of the first fish and chose another. Ought he to give Locke one of the Masonic signs? Given his origins and situation, the man was likely Made. Not yet, he decided, watching Locke methodically engulfing his sixth fish. Locke seemed solid enough, but Jamie wanted to talk to a few of the militia colonels presently enrolled in the Rowan County Regiment before deciding whether—and how—to make an alliance. There were the Overmountain men to be considered, too; they were less official, less well armed, and less organized, but a damn sight closer to Fraser’s Ridge than Locke was, and if he needed help in a hurry, they could move quickly.
He put that thought aside. He’d do what he could and pray about the rest.
Locke leaned back, considering as he chewed his last fish slowly.
“Well, I trust we may in time be fast friends, Colonel. Given our commonalities, as you might say.”
Before he could agree to this sentiment, the door opened and Young Ian came in on the wings of a chilly draft that lifted the newspapers on the tables. The Murrays had best be on their way quickly, before the weather turned wet, he thought.
He introduced his nephew to Francis Locke, who glanced at Ian’s tattoos, then at Jamie with an interested cock of the brow.
“I’ve found us lodging wi’ a widow named Hambly, Uncle,” said Ian, ignoring Locke’s examination. “She says her supper will be ready in an hour, should ye care to sit down at her table.”
Locke made a hem sound of warning in his throat.
“The widow’s a kind woman and her house is clean, but she’s no sort of a cook, God bless her. Perhaps ye’d best bring your family to my house for their supper. My land lies outside Salisbury,” he added, seeing Jamie’s brow rise, “but I’ve a small house in town for convenience, and my wife’s a famous gossip. She likes nothin’ better than to meet new folk and turn ’em inside out.”
Jamie met Ian’s eye and they shared a look. “Five to one on my mother,” Ian’s face said, and Jamie agreed with a slight nod.
“We’ll join ye, sir, with great pleasure,” he said formally to Locke, and rose. “We’ll go and fettle the women, and join ye by six o’clock, if that suits?”