“Have any o’ the bairns told ye what Fergus’s unpleasant event was, Sassenach?” Jamie paused in the midst of a set of the exercises I had set for him, and I frowned at him.
“You’re just trying to get out of the lunges,” I said. “I know it hurts. Do it anyway, if you ever expect to walk without a stick again.” He gave me a long, level look, then shook his head.
“When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou,” he muttered.
I laughed.
“O, Woman, in our hours of ease,” I quoted back, “uncertain, coy, and hard to please. Where the devil did you get that one?”
“Roger Mac,” he said, gingerly bending his bad knee while easing his weight onto it. “Ifrinn!”
“Someone—or several someones—shoot you full of holes and fracture your sternum and you don’t make a peep,” I observed. “Ask you to stretch a few muscles …”
“I was busy dying,” he said through gritted teeth. “And if ye think it’s simple to talk wi’ a fractured sternum … Oh, God …”
“Just three more,” I coaxed. “If you promise to do your arm rotations and push-ups next, I’ll go and talk to Fanny. Germain’s spent a lot of time with her since he came back; if he’s told anyone, it will be her.”
He made a noise that I took for agreement, and I sponged his face with a damp towel and went to find Fanny. She was luckily in the root cellar, and alone.
“Oh,” she said, when I explained my curiosity. “Yes, he did. I asked him,” she added honestly. “He said he didn’t mind telling me, but he didn’t want his little sisters or the other girls to find out. I’m sure he didn’t mean you, though,” she assured me.
War was everywhere, and so it was no surprise to hear that Fergus’s new printshop in Wilmington had suffered the same sort of petty vandalism and anonymous threats shoved under the door as had happened in Charles Town. Nothing worse had happened, though, and the town as a whole was fairly quiet.
The family took good care to bolt their doors at night and latch their shutters, but they felt safe in the daytime.
“Germain and Mr. Fergus were working the press, he said, and his mam and the girls had gone out. Two men came in, and Germain went to the counter to see what they wanted.”
One man had said he wanted to see the proprietor, well enough. But the other had a short fowling piece under his coat and Germain saw it. He didn’t know what to do, but stuttered out that he’d fetch his father. He’d turned to go back to the press, when the first man quickly opened the hatch in the counter and pushed Germain to the floor. Both men ran through toward the back room where Fergus was working, but Germain managed to cling to the leg of the second man and shriek at the top of his lungs.
“He said he was looking straight up into the barrel of the gun,” Fanny said, her eyes wide with the telling. “He thought he’d be kilt any moment, and I suppose he might have been, save Mr. Fergus shot out of the back room with a ladle full of hot lead from the forge and flung it at the first man.”
Not unreasonably, the man had bellowed in pain and panic, turned and tried to run, blind, had tripped over Germain, still on the floor, and crashed into the second man, who was trying to raise his gun.
“Mr. Fergus grabbed hold of the gun with his one hand, Germain said, and they fought over it and the other man was crawling about the floor screaming. Then the gun went off and blew a hole in the ceiling, and there was plaster and pieces of wood everywhere. Germain was too scared to move, but his father had a big pistol in a holster and got it out and shot the man right in the head.” Fanny swallowed, looking a little ill. “And … then he told Germain to go in the back room and he did, but he looked out and saw his father kneel down and shoot the other man in the head, too. He said Mr. Fergus’s gun was a special two-barreled canon,” she added, obviously impressed by this detail. “Because he only has one hand.”
“Oh, dear Lord.” I felt almost as shocked as though I had seen it myself—the printshop splattered with blood and broken plaster, Fergus white-faced and shaking with reaction, and Germain frozen with shock.
“Germain and his papa had to haul the bodies out the back door into the alley before his mama and the girls came back. He said his little brothers were screeching in their cradle, but they couldn’t stop to do anything about it.”
They had put the bodies under some rubbish and then swept the shop and cleaned things as well as they could, and when Germain’s mama came home with the girls, his papa told Germain to take the girls to the ordinary and bring back food for supper. Mr. Fergus must have told Germain’s mama what happened, because she was gone when he came back, and then she came in a little while later and said something quiet to Mr. Fergus, and Germain heard a wagon in the alley that night and when he peeked out in the morning, the men were gone.
“Germain thinks it was the Wilmington Sons of Liberty who came and took the men away,” Fanny said seriously. “His papa knows all of them.”
“I … would suppose so,” I murmured, feeling somewhat thankful that at least Fergus and Marsali weren’t completely without support and protection. That knowledge did nothing for the ball of ice that had formed in my chest.
“I cannot leave undone the Work of Freedom to which I am called.”
“Oh, Marsali,” I said, under my breath. “Oh, dear.”
I WOKE TO the whisper of falling snow, and the strange gray snow-light seeping through the shutters. Peeping out, I saw the world of the forest—dark conifers and the sprouts of spring plants alike—robed in a pure and delicate white. It was a spring snow and would be gone in hours—but for the moment, it was beautiful, and I put my hand against the cold windowpane and breathed its freshness, wanting to be part of it.
Jamie was still asleep, and I made no move to wake him; Roger would tend the livestock this morning, assisted by the younger children. I tiptoed out of the room and made my way down to the kitchen, where Silvia and Fanny were sitting at the table, nibbling toast before beginning to make breakfast. Bree was dozing in the corner of the settle, Davy at her breast, making smacking noises as he nursed.
I yawned, blinked, and nodded, but didn’t join them. I’d made beef tea the day before and thought that perhaps a nice hot cuppa would hearten Jamie on his rising.
He’d had a bad night; one of those nights that everyone over the age of forty has now and then, when the body is beset by cramping muscles, aching joints, and sudden jactitations that jerk you from the edge of sleep as though you’ve been tossed off a gallows. And in his case, doubtless the sudden searing of his mostly healed wounds as he twitched and turned.
He was awake when I came upstairs, sitting on the edge of the bed in his shirt, rumpled, stubbled, and apparently still half asleep, his shoulders slumped, hands hanging between his thighs.
I set down the two cups I’d brought and ran a hand gently over his tousled hair.
“How do you feel this morning?” I said.
He groaned and opened his eyes a little more.
“Like someone’s stepped on my cock.”
“Really? Who?” I asked lightly.
He closed his eyes again. “I dinna ken, but it feels like it was someone heavy.”