“I have no army business with the Cherokee, no,” Ulysses replied politely. “In fact, I think of retiring from the army soon. Perhaps I shall follow your example, Mr. Fraser, and set up for a landlord. But for the moment, sir, my business is with you—though this visit is a personal one, rather than an official call. As yet.”
“A personal visit,” Jamie repeated, and leaned back a little in his chair, tilting his head. “And what might your personal business be with me?”
“Your aunt,” Ulysses said, and leaned forward, eyes fixed on Jamie’s face. “Does she still live?”
I was taken aback but at the same time realized that I wasn’t really surprised at all. Neither was Jamie, who didn’t change his expression but took a long, slow breath before replying.
“She does,” he said. “Though I canna tell ye a great deal more than that.”
Ulysses’s expression had certainly changed. His face was vivid, charged with urgency. “You can tell me where she is.”
I couldn’t always tell what Jamie was thinking, but in this instance, I was reasonably sure we were thinking the same thing.
Jocasta had married one of Jamie’s friends, Duncan Innes—while still carrying on her long-term affair with Ulysses, as we learned much later. In the chaotic aftermath of events at River Run and the subsequent dramatic revelations, Ulysses had fled, Jocasta had sold River Run, and she and Duncan had moved to Nova Scotia, and thence to a small farm on St. John’s Island.
I knew that the British army offered freedom to slaves who would join their ranks, and obviously that was the path Ulysses had chosen with Lord Dunmore. Jocasta had secretly manumitted him years before, but officially recognized freedom was a much safer path, especially in North Carolina, where a slave freed by his or her master must leave the colony within ten days or be subject to recapture and sale.
So now he was a free man, by the goodwill of the British government. Completely and permanently free—so long as he wasn’t captured by Americans with other ideas. While that knowledge made me happy for him, I had a great many reservations.
Behind the bland mask of servitude, this man had lived for twenty years as the unknown master of River Run, and had killed without compunction. He had, very plainly, loved Jocasta Cameron passionately—and she, him. And now he had come looking for her again … Very romantic. And very unsettling. I recalled vividly the skeletal remains of Daniel Rawlings, sprawled on the floor of the mausoleum at River Run, and a ripple of gooseflesh ran up my back.
I glanced quickly at Jamie, who carefully didn’t look at me. He sighed, rubbed a hand over his face, then dropped it, meeting Ulysses’s eyes.
“I havena heard from my aunt anytime these five years past,” he said. “And I’ve heard little more about her save that she is still alive. And well. Or at least she was when I heard it from my cousin Hamish, when I met him at Saratoga. That will be three years past. And that’s the last I’ve heard.”
All of that was mostly true. On the other hand, we did know a bit more than that, as Jocasta now and then wrote to her old friend, Farquard Campbell, who lived in Cross Creek. But I could see why Jamie didn’t mean to set Captain Ulysses Stevens on a dangerous path toward an unwarned and literally unarmed—the poor man had only one—Duncan Innes.
Ulysses looked hard into Jamie’s eyes for a long minute; I could hear the ticking of Jenny’s tiny silver watch on the shelf behind me; she’d left it when she’d come down to lend a hand with combing and carding several fleeces the week before. At last, Ulysses gave a small grunt, which might have been either amusement or disgust, and sat back.
“I thought it might be like that,” he said mildly.
“Aye. I’m sorry not to have a better answer for ye, Captain.” Jamie pushed back his chair and made to rise, but Ulysses raised a pink-palmed hand to stop him.
“Not so fast, Mr. Fraser—or no, I beg your pardon; it’s General Fraser now, is it not?”
“No, it’s not,” Jamie replied shortly. “I resigned my commission in the Continental army and I’ve no connection with it anymore.”
Ulysses nodded, urbane as always. “Of course, forgive me. But there are some things harder to renounce than a commission, are there not?”
“If ye’ve more to say,” Jamie said, an edge in his voice, “say it, then go wi’ God. There’s nothing for ye here.”
Ulysses’s smile showed a missing pre-molar on one side, and a gray dead tooth beside it. “I do apologize, Mr. Fraser, but I think you’ll find you’re mistaken. I do have business here. With you.”
I let my breath out, then lost it altogether when he reached into his coat and produced a very official-looking document, sealed with red wax. Red wax, in my experience, was usually a bad sign.
“Read that, sir, if you will,” Ulysses said, and unfolding it, placed it carefully on the desk in front of Jamie.
Jamie raised his brows and looked at Ulysses for a moment, but then picked up the letter with a shrug and popped the seal off with the tip of the skinning knife he used as a letter opener. His spectacles were sitting on the desk, and he put them on with deliberate slowness, smoothing out the creases in the letter.
I could hear voices in the house; the girls had come back from the springhouse with the cheese for supper and the crock of butter we’d need for tomorrow’s baking. I caught a whiff of raspberries as Fanny’s footsteps passed the door, and the soft clank of her tin bucket, brushing the wall as she turned to call to Agnes. We’d make a fresh pie, then … if the berries survived a kitchen full of hungry boys …
Jamie said something very terrible in Gaelic, took off his spectacles, and gave Ulysses a look meant to set his wig on fire. I plunged a hand into my pocket for my own spectacles and took the letter from him.
It was sent from one Lord George Germain, secretary of state for the American Department. I’d heard quite a bit about Lord George Germain; John Grey had worked under him briefly as a diplomat and held a low opinion of the man. But that didn’t matter just now.
What did matter was that it had come to the attention of Lord George Germain, secretary of state, et cetera, that one James Fraser (known erstwhile in Scotland as Lord Brok Turch, a convicted and pardoned Jacobite) had, in the Year of Our Lord 1767, fraudulently obtained a grant of land in the Colony of North Carolina, by misrepresenting and disguising to Governor William Tryon his identity as a Catholic, such persons being prohibited by law from holding such grants.
I felt as though I were being suffocated.
It was true. Not that Jamie had misrepresented himself to Governor Tryon; the governor had known all about Jamie’s Catholicism but had turned a deliberately blind eye to it for the sake of getting Jamie’s help in settling—in more ways than one—the tumultuous North Carolina backcountry during the War of the Regulation. But it was undeniably true that Catholics were by law not allowed to receive land grants. And so …
I forced a breath and read on:
There being at present no duly-appointed Governor for the Colony of North Carolina, the Secretary of State for the Colonies now orders the aforesaid James Fraser to surrender the Grant of Lands thus fraudulently obtained, to Captain Ulysses Stevens of His Majesty’s Company of Black Pioneers, acting as Agent of the Crown, and vacate the Premises of the Grant (Location and Dimensions being described in the attached Document). Any Tenants presently living on the Grant may remain for the Space of one Year. After such Time, Tenants must leave or make Arrangement to deliver Rent as may be determined by the new Holder of this Grant.