“Something blows up, the roof just flies off and the walls fall out. No great matter to put it up again.”
“So these are milling sheds—but surely that’s the mill?” Bree nodded at the stone building, quite evidently a mill, its waterwheel turning serenely in the golden light of late afternoon.
“Aye. Ye grind the charcoal, then the saltpeter—know what that is, do ye?”
“I do.”
“Aye, and the sulfur. Ye do that with water, aye? Melts the saltpeter and ye grind it all together; while it’s wet, it’ll not burn, will it?”
“No.”
Mrs. Patton nodded, pleased at this evident understanding.
“So then. Ye’ve got black powder, but it’s coarse stuff, with bits and pieces of uncrushed charcoal in it, bits o’ wood, bits o’ stone, rat dung, all manner o’ stuff. So ye dry that in cakes—we store those in the other shed—and then at your leisure, so to speak, ye crush and grind it—and that ye do out here in this shed, away from everything else, because it damn well will explode if ye happen to strike a spark whilst ye’re doing that—and if ye’ve made a cloud of it when the spark goes off, God help ye, ye’ll go up like a torch.”
The prospect didn’t seem to concern her.
“Then ye corn it—which means putting it through screens, to divvy it into different sizes. Finest corning is for pistols and rifles—that’s what ye’d want for hunting, mostly. The coarser sizes are for cannon, grenadoes, bombs, that class o’ thing.”
“I see.” It was a simple process, as explained—but judging from the state of Mrs. Patton’s apron and the singe marks on some of the boards in the shed, rather dangerous. She could probably manage to make enough powder for hunting, if they really had to, but dismissed the idea of trying to do it in large quantities.
“Well, then. What’s your price, for the sort of powder you’d use for hunting?”
“Hunting, is it?” Mrs. Patton had pale-blue eyes and gave Brianna a shrewd look out of them, then glanced at Mr. Shelby and her father, still conversing by the river. Why? she wondered. Does she think I need his permission?
“Well, my price is a dollar a pound. I sell for hard cash, and I don’t bargain.”
“Don’t you,” Bree said dryly. She reached into the pouch at her waist and came out with one of the thin gold slips that she’d sewn into her hems when she and the kids had come to find Roger. And she said a silent, absentminded prayer of thanks that they had found him, as she’d done a thousand times since.
“It’s not exactly cash, but it’s maybe hard enough?” she said, handing it over.
Mrs. Patton’s sandy eyebrows rose to the edge of her cap. She took the slip gingerly, felt its weight, and glanced sharply at Bree. To Brianna’s delight, she actually bit it, then looked critically at the tiny dent in the metal. It was stamped, but beyond the 14K and 1 oz., she didn’t think the markings would mean anything to Mrs. Patton, and apparently they didn’t.
“Done,” said the gunpowder mistress. “How many?”
AFTER SCRUPULOUS WEIGHING of both powder and gold, they agreed that one slip of gold was the fair equivalent of twenty dollars, and Brianna shook hands with Mrs. Patton—who appeared bemused but not shocked at the gesture—and made her way back to the wagon, carrying two ten-pound kegs of powder, followed by the two cousins, each similarly burdened.
Her father was still talking with Mr. Shelby but, hearing footsteps, turned round. His eyebrows rose higher than Mrs. Patton’s.
“How much—” He broke off and, pressing his lips together, took the kegs from her and loaded them into the wagon, along with the bags of rice, beans, oats, and salt that they’d traded for in Woolam’s Mill.
Finished, he reached for the sporran at his waist, but one of the cousins shook his head.
“She’s paid already,” he said, and with a brief tilt of the head toward Bree, turned and went back to the milling shed, followed by the other young man, who spared a look over his shoulder, then hurried to catch up with his cousin, saying something to him in a low voice that made the first man glance back again, then shake his head.
Her father said nothing until they were well out on the road toward home.
“What did ye use for money, lass?” he asked mildly. “Did ye happen to bring a bit when ye … came?”
“I had some coins—what I could get without too much fuss and expense—”
He nodded approvingly at that, but stopped abruptly when she withdrew another gold slip—it barely qualified to be called an ingot—from her pouch.
“And I got thirty of these, and sewed them into our clothes and the heels of my shoes.”
Her father said something that she didn’t understand in Gaelic, but the look on his face was enough.
“What’s wrong with that?” she asked sharply. “Gold works anywhere.”
He inhaled sharply through his nose, but the added oxygen seemed to be enough to enable him to get a grip on himself, for his jaw relaxed and the color in his face receded a little.
“Aye, it does.” The fingers of his right hand twitched briefly, then stopped as he shifted the reins a little.
“The trouble, lass,” he said, eyes fixed on the road ahead, “is just that. Gold does work everywhere. That’s why everyone wants it. And in turn, that’s why ye dinna want it to be widely known that ye have it—let alone in any quantity.” He turned his head toward her for a fraction of a moment, one eyebrow raised. “I would ha’ thought … I mean, from what ye told me about yon Rob Cameron … I thought ye’d know that.”
The quiet admonition made a hot flush burn up from chest to scalp, and she closed her fist around the slip of gold. She felt like an idiot, but also unfairly accused.
“Well, just how would you go about spending gold, then?” she demanded.
“I don’t,” her father said bluntly. “I try never to touch what’s hidden. For the one thing, I dinna feel it’s truly mine, and I’ll use it only in case of urgent need, to defend my family or tenants. But even then, I dinna use it directly.”
He glanced over his shoulder, and perforce, so did she. They’d left Patton’s well behind by now, and the road—a well-traveled one—lay empty.
“If I have to use it—and I will have to, if I’m to equip a militia—I shave bits away and pound them into small nuggets, rubbed in dirt and wiped down. Then I send Bobby Higgins, Tom MacLeod, and maybe one or two of the other men I’d trust with my family’s lives, each with a bittie pouchful. Not at the same time, not to the same place, and seldom to the same place twice. And they’ll change it, bit by bit, into cash—buying something and getting back the change in coin, maybe selling a nugget or two outright to a jeweler, changing a bit more with a goldsmith … and the money they bring back, that’s what I spend. Cautiously.”
That “trust with my family’s lives” made a hard nugget in her stomach. It was all too easy to see, now, the risk to which she’d just exposed Jem and Mandy and Roger and all the other inhabitants of the New House.
“Ach, dinna fash,” her father said, seeing her distress. “It’ll likely be fine.” He gave her a half smile and a brief squeeze of the knee. The horses were moving along at a much brisker pace now, and she realized that he was trying to get as far as he could away from the Powder Branch before nightfall.