“Dinna fash, Sassenach. Cunningham wants to hand me over to Patrick Ferguson and take the credit. It’s his best chance to make his name among the Loyalist forces.”
I nodded obediently, knowing as well as he did that the motive for starting a fight often had nothing to do with how things turned out.
He started for the door, then stopped, waiting for me. I came slowly to him, touched him. He hadn’t put on his coat yet, and his arm was solid and warm through the cloth of his shirt.
“Will it be today?” I blurted. Twice before, he’d left me on the edge of a battlefield, telling me that while the day might come that he and I would part—it wouldn’t be today. And both times, he’d been right.
He cupped my cheek in one hand and looked at me for a long moment, and I knew he was fixing me in his memory, as I had just done to him.
“I dinna think so,” he said at last, soberly. His hand fell away, my cheek suddenly cool where he’d touched it. “But I willna lie to ye, Claire; I think it will be an evil night.”
LODGE NIGHT, BY custom, began roughly two hours after supper, to let everyone digest their food, finish their evening chores, and make their way from wherever they lived. Some homesteads were a good five or six miles from the Meeting House.
Jamie urgently wanted to arrive early, both to anticipate any ambush and to have a quiet keek around, in case Cunningham had thought to post men in the nearby woods. He didn’t, though. He stopped at the stable to check the welfare of his kine, then paused by the pigpen and counted the shadowy, stertorous forms clustered in the straw, noting that the straw had best be changed this week.
Then he walked slowly up the hill toward the Meeting House. The weather had warmed abruptly and bats were flickering through the air between the trees, snatching insects too fast to see. Brianna had told him how they did it, and if he listened close, he thought he could sometimes catch their high-pitched cries, thin and sharp as broken glass.
Tom MacLeod stepped out of the trees and fell into step beside him with a quiet “Mac Dubh.” It gave him an odd feeling, sometimes, when one of his Ardsmuir men called him that. Memories of prison, the hard things—and they were hard—but also the fleeting, regular pulse of the kinship that had kept them alive and would bind them for life. And at the bottom of his heart, always, a faint sense of his father, the Black One whose son he was.
“Dean Urnaigh dhomh,” he whispered. Pray for me, Da.
He could hear men among the trees now, coming along the mountain trails in ones and twos and threes, recognized the voices: MacMillan, Airdrie, Wilson, Crombie, MacLean, MacCoinneach, two of the Lindsay brothers, Bobby Higgins, coming up behind him … He smiled at thought of Bobby. Bobby was one of the ten men he had told about tonight. Bobby hadn’t fought anyone save the occasional raccoon in some years, but he’d been a soldier and remembered how. And of the ten, for all he’d been an English soldier, Bobby Higgins was one of the men he would trust with his life.
He wasn’t given to vain regrets, but for a piercing instant, he thought how different this night might be if he had Young Ian by his side, and Roger Mac. If he had Germain and Jeremiah, too, waiting outside and ready to run for more help if it was needed.
At least ye won’t get any of them killed. He wasn’t sure if that was his own thought or his father’s voice, but it was a small comfort.
The Crombies and Gillebride MacMillan were waiting outside the Meeting House. So were several men he knew to be quiet Loyalists—maybe Cunningham’s, maybe not—but they’d likely not lift a hand to save him, if that’s what it came down to. He thought one or two of them looked at him oddly, but the light was dim through the oiled hides over the windows; he couldn’t say for sure, and put the thought away.
He made no move to go in yet; it was customary to have a wee blether outside before they settled down to business. He replied to conversation, and laughed now and then, but caught no more than the barest sense of what was said to him. He could feel Cunningham. Out in the dark trees behind his back, waiting.
He wants to see how many men I have.
Jamie wanted to see how many men Cunningham had—and who they were. And to that end, Aidan Higgins was hiding in the brush beside the main trail that led to the Meeting House from the western part of the Ridge, and Murdo Lindsay up near the trail that led from the eastern part. If any Cherokee came to take part in tonight’s doing, they’d come that way, and God and Murdo willing, he’d hear about it in time to take action.
109
De Profundis
MY RIGHT HAND WAS throbbing, in time with my heartbeat. The cut across my palm had healed, superficially, but it had been deep enough that the nerves in the dermis had been injured, and they woke every now and then to protest the insult. I turned the hand over, checking idly for swelling or the red streaks of belated blood poisoning, though I knew quite well there was nothing of that kind.
It’s just that broken things always hurt longer than you think they will.
Plainly I wasn’t going to sleep until—and unless—Jamie came home, more or less in one piece. I lit the small brazier in my surgery and fed the infant fire with hickory chips. “Like a bloody Vestal,” I muttered to myself, but I did feel a slight comfort from the burgeoning light.
I’d already checked and refurbished my field kit, in case of emergency. It hung on its accustomed nail, by the door. I’d put aside the Merck Manual; I couldn’t settle myself to read.
Bluebell and Adso had both wandered into the surgery to keep me company; the dog was asleep under my chair and Adso was draped over the counter, his big celadon eyes half closed, purring in brief spurts like a distant motorcycle being revved.
“Thanks for small mercies,” I said to him, just to break the silence. “At least Jamie will never break his neck riding a motorcycle.”
He might never do a lot of other things, too …
I cut that thought off short and, reaching over the cat, started taking bottles and jars out of the cupboard in a determined sort of way. I might as well take inventory: throw out things that were too old to be pharmaceutically active, make a list of things we needed next time Jamie went (yes, he will too go!) into a town, and maybe grind a few things, if only for the sake of pretending I was grinding Charles Cunningham’s face … or maybe the King’s …
Bluebell’s head came up suddenly and she gave a small hurf! of warning. Adso instantly uncoiled and leapt on top of the tall cabinet where I kept bandages and my surgical implements. Clearly, we had company.
“It’s too early,” I said aloud. He’d left the house no more than an hour ago. Surely nothing could have happened yet … But my body was far ahead of my thoughts and I had reached the front door before I completed that one. I hadn’t barred it after Jamie left, but I had shot the mortised-bolt lock and opened it now with a sharp, decisive thunk! It didn’t matter who had come to tell me what. I had to know.
I was startled, but not truly surprised.
“Elspeth,” I said. I stepped back, feeling as though I did it in a dream.
“I had to come,” she said. She was white as a ghost and looked exactly as I felt—shattered.
“I know,” I said, automatically adding, “Come in.”