Making calculations in his head, he nearly walked straight into Constable Jones, coming out of an ordinary with a half-eaten roll in his hand.
“Your pardon, sir,” they both said at once, and bowed in reflex.
“Heading back to the mountains, then, Mr. Fraser?” Jones asked courteously.
“Once I’ve done my wife’s shopping, aye.” Jamie had the list still in hand and gestured with it before folding it back into his pocket.
The sight of it, though, had brought something to the constable’s mind, for his eyes fixed on the paper.
“Mr. Fraser?”
“Aye?”
The constable looked him over carefully, but nodded, apparently thinking him respectable enough to question.
“The dead man ye came to look at last night. Would ye say he was a Jew?”
“A what?”
“A Jew,” Jones repeated patiently.
Jamie looked hard at the man. He was disheveled and still unshaven, but there was no smell of drink about him, and his eyes were clear, if baggy.
“How would I ken that?” he asked. “And why would ye think so?” A belated thought occurred to him. “Oh—did ye look at his prick?”
“What?” Jones stared at him.
“D’ye not ken Jews are circumcised, then?” Jamie asked, careful not to look as though he thought Jones should know that. He was trying hard not to wonder whether Claire might have noticed if the man who had touched her …
“They’re what?”
“Ehm …” Two ladies, followed by a maid minding three small children and a lad with a small wagon for parcels, were coming toward them, skirts held gingerly above the mud of the street. Jamie bowed to them, then jerked his head at Jones to follow him round the corner of the ordinary into an alley, where he enlightened the constable.
“Jesus Christ!” Jones exclaimed, bug-eyed. “What the devil do they do that for?”
“God told them to,” Jamie said, with a shrug. “Your dead man, though. Is he …”
“I didn’t look,” Jones said, giving him a glance of horrified revulsion.
“Then why d’ye think he might be a Jew?” Jamie asked, patient.
“Oh. Well … this.” Jones groped in his clothes and eventually came out with a grubby much-folded slip of paper, handing it to Jamie. “It was in his pocket.”
Unfolded, it had eight lines of writing, done carefully with a good quill, so each character stood clear.
“We couldn’t make out what the devil it was,” Jones said, squinting at the paper as though that might help in comprehension. “But I was a-showin’ of it to the colonel in the tavern this morning, and we was studyin’ on it and gettin’ nowhere. But Mr. Appleyard happened to be there—he’s an educated gentleman—and he said as how he thought it might be Hebrew, though he’d forgot so much since he learnt it, he couldn’t make out what it said.”
Jamie could make it out fine, though knowing what it said made little difference.
“It is Hebrew,” he said slowly, reading the lines. “It’s part of a Psalm … or maybe a hymn of some kind.”
This clearly rang no bells for Constable Jones, who frowned sternly at the paper as though desiring it to speak.
“What’s that last word, then? Might it be the name of who wrote it? It looks like it’s in English.”
“Aye, it is, but it’s nobody’s name.” The word, printed with the same care as the graceful Hebrew characters, was “Ambidextrous.” He left it to Colonel Locke to enlighten Constable Jones as to what that might be and handed back the paper, wiping his fingers on the skirt of his coat.
“Have a wee keek in his breeks,” Jamie suggested, and with a nod he took firm leave of Constable Jones, Salisbury, Francis Locke, the Rowan County Regiment of Militias—and the dead man.
Only three ounces of pins, ten loaves of sugar, and a mort of gunpowder stood between him and home.
65
Green Grow the Rushes, O!
Fraser’s Ridge
I WAS LISTENING WITH half an ear to the singing in the kitchen as I pounded and ground sage, comfrey, and goldenseal into an oily dust in the surgery. It was late afternoon, and while the sun fell warm across the floorboards, the shadows held a chill.
Lieutenant Bembridge was teaching Fanny the words to “Green Grow the Rushes, O.” He had a true, clear tenor that made Bluebell yodel when he hit a high note, but I enjoyed it. It reminded me of working in the canteen at Pembroke Hospital, rolling bandages and making up surgical kits with the other student nurses, hearing singing coming in with the yellow fog through the narrow open slit at the top of a window. There was a courtyard down below, and the ambulatory patients would sit there in fine—or even not-so-fine—weather, smoking, talking, and singing to pass the time.
“Two, two, the lily-white boys,
Clothed all in green, O—
One is one and all alone
And evermore shall be so!”
The fog-muffled song was often interrupted by coughing and hoarse curses, but someone could always carry it through to the end.
Elspeth Cunningham had been as good as her word. Lieutenants Bembridge and Esterhazy were eighteen and nineteen, respectively, lusty and in good health, and with Bluebell’s joyous assistance were making so much noise that I didn’t hear either the front door opening or footsteps in the hallway, and was so startled to look up from my mortar and see Jamie in the doorway that I dropped the heavy stone pestle straight down onto my sandaled foot.
“Ouch! Ow! Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ!” I hopped out from behind the table, and Jamie caught me by one arm.
“Are ye all right, Sassenach?”
“Do I sound like I’m all right? I’ve broken a metatarsal.”
“I’ll buy ye a new one next time I go into Salisbury,” he assured me, letting go of my elbow. “Meanwhile, I’ve got everything on the list, except … Why are there Englishmen singing in my kitchen?”
“Oh. Ah. Well …” It wasn’t that I hadn’t thought about what his response to two of His Majesty’s naval officers lending a hand to the domestic economy might be, but I’d thought I’d have time to explain before he actually encountered them. I rested my bottom against the edge of the table, lifting my wounded foot off the floor.
“They’re two young lieutenants who used to sail with Captain Cunningham. They were cast ashore or marooned or something—anyway, they lost their ship and it’s so late in the year that they can’t find a ship to join before March or April, so they came to the Ridge to stay with the captain. Elspeth Cunningham lent them to me for chores, in payment for my reducing her dislocated shoulder.”
“Elspeth, is it?” Luckily, he seemed amused rather than annoyed. “Do we feed them?”
“Well, I’ve been giving them lunch and a light supper. But they’ve been going back up to the captain’s cabin in the evening and coming down midmorning. They’ve repaired the stable door,” I offered, in extenuation, “dug over my garden, chopped two cords of wood, carried all the stones you and Roger dug out of the upper field down to the springhouse, and—”