“You and your men seem to think otherwise yesterday,” the corporal pointed out, a cautious tone in his voice.
“Ach, that.” Jamie was silent for a moment, then asked, with no apparent emotion other than mild curiosity, “Do ye ken Captain Stevens’s intent in calling upon me?”
“No, sir. And I don’ wish to know,” Jackson said firmly.
Jamie laughed. “Likely a wise choice. I willna tell ye, then, save to say it was a personal matter between him and me.”
“It looked that way.” Was that a hint of humor in Jackson’s voice? I was listening so intently that I’d paid no attention to the food I was holding, but the scent of bacon at close range was insistently seductive.
“Aye.” The hint of humor was stronger in Jamie’s voice. “I’m figuring that he didna drag the lot of you up here just to make a show of force for me. But there’s nothing else within fifty miles of this place—it’s nearly a hundred miles to the nearest town of any size, save Salem, and neither the Crown nor Captain Stevens would have business wi’ the Moravian brothers and sisters. Ye ken them?”
It was a casual question—ostensibly, I thought, and nibbled the crispy end of a rasher—and Jackson answered it likewise.
“I’ve been to Salem, once. You right, soldiers have no business there.”
“But they have business in the backcountry, apparently.”
Dead silence. Then I heard the faint squeak of my rocking chair, going back and forth, back and forth. Slowly. I swallowed the bacon, feeling a tightness in my throat.
For a roving company of British soldiers to have “business” in a general way, they must have intended one of two things—or possibly both. To rouse Loyalists, or to hunt, harass, and discomfit rebels. And a company of Black soldiers wouldn’t be sent to inspire Loyalists to form militias and turn against their neighbors. I glanced involuntarily at the ceiling above me, hearing in memory the crackle of wood and remembering the look of burning timbers, about to collapse.
But they wouldn’t burn this place—yet. Ulysses wanted it.
“If I was your prisoner,” Jackson said at last, slowly, “I wouldn’ have to answer your questions, is that right? I don’ know,” he added shyly. “I haven’ been a prisoner before.”
“I have,” Jamie assuredly him gravely, “and aye, that’s right. Ye have to tell your captors your name and rank, and the company ye belong to, but that’s all.” I heard the chair rock forward, and Jamie’s slight grunt as he rose to his feet. “Ye dinna even have to tell me that much, as my guest. But as ye honored me with your name and rank, and Captain Stevens told me your company, you’re square either way.”
I blinked at that. Perhaps he’d meant it casually, but “you’re square” was one of the coded phrases Freemasons used to identify one another; I’d heard it frequently in Jamaica when we had enlisted the local Lodge to help in our search for Young Ian. Were there black Freemasons in this time? Jackson made no reply, though.
“But I dinna suppose ye want to spend the next several weeks on my wife’s table. She’ll be needing it, sooner or later,” Jamie said.
“So.” His voice was slightly louder; he’d turned toward the door. “Say where ye’d like to go, Corporal, and someone will take ye there. In the meantime, let me go and see where your breakfast has got to.”
AFTER BREAKFAST AND a further brief discussion with Corporal Jackson, Jamie wrote a note and sent Jem up the hill to Captain Cunningham to deliver it. And two hours later, Lieutenants Bembridge and Esterhazy appeared at our door. I didn’t know what either the captain or Mrs. Cunningham had said to them, but neither one was battered, and when seen, they appeared to be working—somewhat uneasily—with each other. Just now, they both appeared rather nonplussed, and announced that they had come to escort our prisoner—er, guest—to the captain’s cabin. The captain had agreed—as the leading Loyalist on Fraser’s Ridge—to offer Corporal Jackson refuge until such time as he could be reunited with his company.
“He can’t walk,” Jamie advised them. “I’ll lend ye a mule.”
“He can’t ride, either,” I said. “You’ll need to make a travois for him.”
While the men went out to do this, I checked the corporal’s condition—feverish, but not a high fever, a certain amount of pain and some redness, but—I sniffed his leg discreetly—no overt infection, and I wrote up a medical note for Elspeth Cunningham, with a description of the injury and notes on care of the plaster cast. I offered him elevenses, which he refused, but he did drink another medicinal posset, involving an egg, cream, sugar, extract of willow bark, black cohosh, and meadowsweet, a good slug of whisky—and enough laudanum to fell a horse.
“You’re sure you want to go?” I asked, watching as he sipped the posset. “We’re happy to take care of you until you’re healed enough to rejoin your company.”
The corporal was heavy-eyed and his face was flushed, but he managed a smile.
“It’s bettah I go, madam. This Cap’n Cunningham, he can send to Cap’n Stevens, he will make provision for me to go to Charlotte.”
I shook my head dubiously. He was doing well enough, but being dragged uphill for two miles behind a mule while suffering from a broken leg wasn’t anything I’d wish on an enemy, let alone an innocent man. Still, it was his choice. I took my amulet bag from round my neck and opened it. The usual scent wafted out as I dipped my finger into it, earthy and unidentifiable but with an odd sense of reassurance.
“Well, let me give you back your High John the Conqueror,” I said, smiling as I plucked it out. “I hope you won’t need it on your journey, but just in case …”
“Oh, no, madam.” He waved a slow hand at me, pushing it away. “Its magic remain with me ’cause you have healed me with it—but it is part of your magic now.”
“Oh. Well … thank you, Mr. Jackson. I’ll take good care of it.” The hard little root was smooth and glossy, and my fingers caressed it briefly as I tucked it back into the amulet and tied the neck. He nodded approvingly, yawned suddenly and shook his head, then upended the posset cup and drained it. He put out his free hand suddenly, his fingers curling in invitation. I took it, automatically putting a finger on his wrist—pulse a little fast, but strong, and while his hand was very warm, it wasn’t alarming …
Then I realized that he was saying something, soft and slurred, but not English.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I bless you,” he said, blinking drowsily. He smiled and his fingers loosened and slid free. A moment later, he was asleep.
When we had seen the travois party safely off, and the girls and Jem had all gone off on their own errands, Jamie and I returned to the kitchen for a second breakfast.
He sat down gingerly, grimacing a little, but shook his head at my inquiring look.
“I’ll do. But I’ll maybe have a dram wi’ my parritch.” I looked at him narrowly.
“Have two,” I suggested, and he didn’t argue.
The big black-iron spider was hot in its bed of glowing charcoal, and I laid down several fresh rashers of bacon and broke the last of the eggs from the root cellar one at a time into a bowl to check that they were good before I dropped them into the sizzling fat. I could feel the house gradually settling back around us as the sense of intrusion and disruption faded. Still, the inside of my nose prickled at the smoke from the frying bacon, and the remembered smell of fire was sharp at the back of my throat.