The words blurred into spots before my eyes, and I dropped the letter back on the desk.
“You bloody reptile!” I said, looking at Ulysses. He ignored me.
“I would take prompt notice of that, if I were you, Mr. Fraser.” He nodded at the paper. “You see that there is no mention of prosecution, of fines or imprisonment. There might have been. I have the original agreement, signed by you, in the course of which it is stated that you are not a Catholic. And should you choose to ignore—”
The door opened, and Fanny’s neat capped head poked in.
“Sir, Agnes says are these men staying for supper?”
There was a moment of profound silence, and then Jamie rose slowly to his feet.
“They are not, a leannan. Go and say so, aye?”
He waited, still standing, until the door had closed again. I was now breathing so fast that white spots showed at the edge of my vision, but I saw his face very clearly.
“Leave my house,” he said quietly. “And do not come back.”
Ulysses stayed where he was, a faint smile on his face, and then rose too, very slowly.
“As I was saying, sir, I should obey that order promptly. For if you choose to ignore it, the army will have more than sufficient justification to come and burn this house over your head.” He paused, and turned to look deliberately at the door where Fanny had vanished. “Over all your heads.”
Jamie made a quick movement and Ulysses flinched, much to my pleasure. But Jamie had merely snatched the official letter from the desk. He crumpled it into a ball and, turning, hurled it into the hearth. Then turned again on Ulysses, with an expression that made the man stiffen.
He didn’t speak. Ulysses stooped swiftly and plucked the letter out of the smoldering ashes, shook it clean, then turned on his heel and went, back straight as a butler carrying a tray.
JAMIE SAT DOWN slowly, and set his hands very precisely on the desk in front of him, palms on the wood, ready to launch him into action. As soon as he’d decided what action to take.
There actually was an acting governor of North Carolina—Richard Caswell, whom we knew fairly well. He was not, though, a governor appointed by the British government; he’d been temporarily elected by the Committee of Safety appointed by the Provincial Congress; both of these rather fluid entities, but neither of them legitimate, so far as Lord George Germain was concerned.
“They can’t really …” I began, but stopped. They could. All too easily, and I swallowed, my skin prickling with sudden fear. The smell of fresh sawdust and oozing pitch had come in the front door with the gust of wind, from the spot by the red cedar tree where the men cut shims and adzed shingles for the roof. Wood. No one who’s lived through a house fire hears the word “burn” with any sense of equanimity, and I wasn’t feeling even slightly equanimous. Neither was Jamie.
“I don’t suppose it’s a forgery,” I said at last. “That letter.”
He shook his head.
“I’ve seen enough official documents to ken the seals, Sassenach.”
“Do you think—he’s responsible for it? Did he sic the government onto us? Could he?”
Jamie’s brows went up and he glanced at me.
“I imagine a good many folk know about it … but I doubt most of them have anything against me, and even fewer would be able to get the secretary’s attention for such a wee matter.”
“Mmm. Lord Dunmore, perhaps?” I suggested delicately. “He certainly wouldn’t care, but if he felt that he owed Ulysses something …”
The blood was rising in Jamie’s face, and his left hand folded into a fist.
“What was it the balgair said? That he thought of becoming a landlord himself?”
“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.” I looked hard at the battered surface of the desk, as though the gaudy letter was still there. “And he said he has the original document. Not ‘the government’ or ‘Lord Germain.’ Him.”
The British government was in fact in the habit of confiscating rebel property and bestowing it on their own lackeys—they’d done it all over the Highlands, after Culloden, and Jamie had saved Lallybroch only by deeding it to his ten-year-old nephew before Culloden.
A moment’s silence.
“Do I think he has more than those two men with him?” he asked, but he wasn’t asking me, and immediately answered his own question. “Aye, I do. How many, that’s the question …”
Whatever the answer was, it propelled him to his feet, a look of decision on his face. With an underlying layer of intent ferocity that I had no trouble distinguishing. I felt much the same, shock and fear fading into fury.
“That bastard!” I said.
He didn’t reply, but thrust his head out into the hall and bellowed, “Aidan!” in the direction of the kitchen.
BOBBY HIGGINS TURNED up first, his pale face flushed with alarm and excitement. He wasn’t a good horseman but could ride well enough on an open trail—and since the bear, he had resumed carrying a musket.
“Ian will be coming down, quick as he can,” Jamie told him, hastily saddling and bridling Phineas, the fastest of our three saddle horses. “And I’ve sent the lads to carry word to the Lindsays, Gilly MacMillan, and the McHughs. They’ll spread the word further, but they’ll come on here by themselves. You come wi’ me, and when we’re sure of the track, I’ll send ye back here to tell the others and lead them on to join me, aye?”
“Yes, sir!” Bobby said it by reflex, straightening his back. Once a soldier, always a soldier. Jamie clapped him on the shoulder and put his own foot in the stirrup.
“Away, then.”
He blessed whoever was in charge of the weather, be that saint or demon, for the rain had held off, and it was no trick to follow the trail of Ulysses and his two men on the muddy ground.
It shortly became evident that there were more than two men with Ulysses; Jamie and Bobby came upon a spot nay more than a mile from the house, where the marks in the churned-up mud made it clear that Ulysses had joined a band of twenty men, at least; maybe more.
“Go back to the house!” he shouted to Bobby, and waved a hand, encompassing the small clearing. “Tell Ian to bring as many men here as he can and leave word for the rest; a blind man could follow this lot!”
Bobby nodded, pulled down his hat, and set off uphill, leaning perilously back in his saddle, reins clutched to his chest. Jamie grimaced, but waved reassuringly when Bobby looked back over his shoulder. He only needed to stay on the horse as far as the house.
“Even if he falls off and breaks his neck,” he muttered to himself, reining round, “they can follow our track this far. If it doesna pour.” He looked upward, into a dizzying swirl of black clouds, and saw the flash of silent lightning. He counted ten before the roll of distant thunder reached him.
“Trobhat!” he said to Phin, and they set off downhill, following the black hoofprints still showing clear.
THE MOUNTED BAND was moving briskly, but not fleeing. And while there were sprinkles of rain on his face, the storm had not yet broken. Jamie kept well back, always with an ear behind him for his own men coming.
And come they did, to his unspoken but vast relief. He heard them and reined uphill to meet them out of earshot of the troops he was following—he supposed they must be regular British troops, for Ulysses wouldn’t go through the mummery of pretending to be a British soldier if he weren’t one. If they were, though, he’d have to go canny. He wasn’t wanting a physical fight; his infant militia weren’t up to taking on trained soldiers yet.