Seven Stones to Stand or Fall

by Diana Gabaldon

  “What did you say, Tom?”

  Tom was piling up the empty dishes on the table but stopped to answer him.

  “I said, that word you said—huevón?”

  “Oh. Yes, I heard it from a young lady I met on the road from Cojimar. Do you know what it means?”

  “Well, I know what Juanito says it means,” Tom replied, striving for accuracy. “He says it means a chap what’s lazy because his balls are too big to stir himself.” Tom gave Grey a sidelong glance. “A lady said that to you, me lord?”

  “She was speaking to the mule—or at least I hope she was speaking to the mule.” Grey stretched himself, feeling the joints of his shoulders and arms pop, inviting the caress of sleep. “Go to bed, Tom. It will be a long day tomorrow, I’m afraid.”

  He paused on his way out, to look at the painting of the things with wings. They were angels, rendered crudely but with a simplicity that made them oddly moving. Four of them hovered protectively over an infant Christ, lying in his manger of straw, asleep. And where was Stubbs sleeping tonight? In a cold spring field, a dim tobacco shed?

  “God bless you, Malcolm,” he whispered, and went to seek his bed.

  A MODEST COUGH woke him, well after dawn, to find Tom Byrd beside his bed, holding a tray containing breakfast, a steaming cup of the local equivalent of tea, and a note from his mother.

  “Her Grace met Rodrigo and Azeel late last night,” Tom informed him. “Them being on the way back posthaste to fetch her, and happen as how she stopped at the same inn where they were stopping to water their horses.”

  “She—my mother—isn’t traveling by herself, surely?” At this stage of her life, he wouldn’t put it past her, but…

  “Oh, no, me lord,” Tom assured him, with a slightly reproachful look. “She took Eleana and Fatima and three good lads by way of escort. Her Grace ain’t afraid of things, but she’s no ways reckless, as you might say.”

  Grey detected a certain emphasis on “she’s” that he might have taken personally but chose to ignore it in favor of reading his mother’s message.

  Dear John,

  I trust Tom Byrd has told you that Olivia sent Word asking me to come to her at Hacienda Valdez. I met your two Servants at a Hovel somewhere on the Road, they being on their Way back with a similar but more detailed Message, this one written by the local Priest.

  Padre Cespedes says that nearly everyone in the House is affected by the Illness, which he—having seen many Occurrences of Fever during his Years serving God near the Zapata Swamp—is sure is not a relapsing Fever, like the tertian Ague, but is almost certainly the Yellow Jack.

  A small shock ran through him. “Fever” was a vague word, which might mean anything from a touch of the sun to malaria. Even “ague” might be a passing ill, easily shaken off. But “yellow jack” was stark and definite as a knife in the chest. Most of his army career had involved postings in northern climes; the closest he had come to the dread disease was the sight of ships—now and then—in Kingston Harbor, flying the yellow quarantine flag. But he’d seen the corpses being carried off those ships, too.

  His hands had gone cold, and he wrapped one around the hot pottery cup while he read the rest.

  Don’t come here, unless I write to say so. There is one thing to be said for the Yellow Jack, which is that it is fearfully quick. All will likely be resolved—one Way or the Other—within a Week. That may leave enough Time in which to execute your original Intent. If not…not.

  I think I will see you again, but should God will otherwise, tell Paul and Edgar, Hal and his family, that I love them, tell George—well, tell him that he knows my Heart and what I would say were we together. And for you, John…you are my dearest Son and I carry my Thought of you through all that lies before us.

  Your Most Affectionate Mother

  John swallowed several times before he could pick up the cup and drink from it. If she had ridden through the night, which seemed likely, she might be arriving at the plantation now. To meet…

  Grey said something very obscene in German, under his breath. He put the cup back and swung out of bed, thrusting the letter at Tom; he couldn’t speak coherently enough to transmit the contents.

  He had to piss, and did so. This elemental act gave him some semblance of control, and he shoved the utensil back under the bed and straightened up.

  “Tom, go and ask where the nearest doctor is to be found. I’ll dress myself.”

  Tom gave him a look, but not the look of profound doubt that might have been expected in response to his last statement. This was a very patient look, and one much older than Tom’s years.

  “Me lord…” he said, very gently, and set the letter on the chest of drawers. “If Her Grace wanted you to send a doctor, she’d’ve said so, don’t you think?”

  “My mother has very little faith in doctors.” Neither did Grey, but, dammit, what else was he to do? “That doesn’t mean one might not…help.”

  Tom looked at him for a long moment, then nodded soberly and went.

  John could indeed dress himself, though his hands shook so much that he decided to forgo shaving. Malcolm’s ghastly wig lay on the chest of drawers beside his mother’s letter, looking like a dead animal. Ought he wear it?

  Why? he wondered. He couldn’t hide his Englishness from the doctor. He probably should send Jacinto to talk to the doctor, in any case. But he couldn’t bloody stand to stay in the house, doing nothing. He picked up the now-lukewarm cup and drained the bitter contents. Christ, what was this stuff?

  He rubbed more of Tom’s coconut-oil concoction into his exposed skin, brushed his hair and bound it simply with a ribbon, then strode out to see what Tom had found out from the other servants.

  They were on the patio, which seemed the center of the house. The usual cheerful racket was much subdued, though, and Ana-Maria crossed herself and bobbed a curtsy when she saw him.

  “Lo siento mucho, señor,” she said. “Su madre…su prima y los ninos—” She waved a graceful hand outward, encompassing his mother, Olivia, and the children, then again inward, this time indicating all the servants around her, and laid the hand on her heart, looking at him with a great compassion in her softly lined face. “Tenemos dolor, señor.”

  He took her meaning clearly, if not every word, and bowed low to her, nodding to the other servants as he straightened.

  “Muchas gracias…” Señora? Señorita? Was she married? He didn’t know, so he just repeated, “Muchas gracias,” with more emphasis.

  Tom wasn’t among the servants; he’d likely gone to talk to Jacinto about doctors. John bowed again to the servants generally and turned toward the house.

  There were voices toward the front of the house, speaking very rapid Spanish, with an occasional baffled word from Tom edging its way into the conversation. Curious, John made his way past the sala and into the small vestibule, where he found Jacinto and Tom blocking the front door and heard a woman’s voice outside, raised in agitation, saying his name.

  “Necessito hablar con el Señor Grey! Ahorita!”

  “What’s going on?” He spoke sharply, and the two men turned toward him, allowing him a view of a yellow bandanna and the desperate face of Inocencia.

  She seized the moment and pushed her way between the butler and Tom, snatched a crumpled note from her bosom, and thrust it into Grey’s hand. Then she fell to her knees, clutching the hem of his coat.

  “Por favor, señor!”

  The note was limp with the sweat of her body, and the ink had blurred a little but was still clearly readable. There was neither salutation nor signature, and it was very short:

  I’m nabbed, old cock. Your ball.

  “WHAT DOES THIS MEAN, señor?” Jacinto had been reading the note over his shoulder, without the slightest attempt to pretend he wasn’t. “This is…not English, is it?”

  “It is,” he assured the butler, carefully folding the note and putting it in his pocket. He felt as though someone had punched him in the chest, very h
ard, and he had trouble catching his breath.

  It was English, all right—but English that no one but an Englishman would understand. And not even an Englishman like Tom—who was frowning at Inocencia in puzzlement—would know the meaning of that last, paralyzing sentence.

  Your ball.

  Grey swallowed, tasting the last bitterness of the breakfast drink, and made himself breathe deep. Then he stooped and raised Inocencia to her feet. She was gasping for breath, too, he saw, and there were tracks of dried tears on her cheeks.

  “The consul has been arrested?” he asked. She looked helplessly from him to Jacinto, who coughed and translated what Grey had said. She nodded violently, biting her lower lip.

  “Está en El Morro,” she managed, gulping, and added something else that Grey couldn’t follow. A quick back and forth, and Jacinto turned to Grey, his long old face very grave.

  “This woman says that your friend was arrested at the city wall last night and has been taken to El Morro. That is where the gobierno—the government, excuse me—where they keep prisoners. This…lady”—he inclined his head, giving Inocencia the benefit of the doubt—“she saw Señor Stubbs being taken to the governor’s office soon after dawn, and so she waited nearby and followed when they took him down to—” He broke off to ask Inocencia a sharp question. She shook her head and said something in reply.

  “He is not in the dungeon,” Jacinto reported. “But he is locked in a room where they put gentlemen when it is necessary to contain them. She was able to come and talk to him through the door, once the guards had left, and he wrote this note and told her to hurry and bring it to you at once, before you left the city.” Jacinto shot Grey a glance but then coughed and looked away. “He said you would know what to do.”

  Grey felt a black dizziness come over him and a prickle of rising hair on the back of his neck. His lips felt stiff.

  “Did he, indeed.”

  “YOU CAN’T, ME LORD!” Tom stared at him, aghast.

  “I’m very much afraid you’re right, Tom,” he said, striving for calm. “But I don’t see that I have any choice but to try.”

  He thought Tom was going to be sick; the young valet’s face was pale as the morning mist that blanketed the tiny garden where they’d gone for a bit of privacy. Grey was himself just as pleased that he hadn’t had a chance to eat breakfast; he recalled Jamie Fraser telling him once, in inimitable Scottish fashion, that his “wame was clenched like a fist,” a phrase that described his own present sensation to a T.

  He’d have given a lot to have Fraser beside him on this occasion.

  He’d have given almost as much to have Tom.

  As it was, he was apparently going into battle supported by a stuttering ex-zombie, an African woman of unpredictable temper and known homicidal tendencies, and Malcolm Stubbs’s concubine.

  “It will be fine,” he told Tom firmly. “Inocencia will provide an introduction to the ringleaders and establish my bona fides.” And if she failed to convince these men that Grey had any such qualifications, all of them would likely be for the chop within seconds: He’d seen machetes wielded with casually murderous ease yesterday—God, was it only yesterday?—by field hands on his way to Cojimar.

  “And Rodrigo and Azeel will be there to help me speak to them,” he added, with a little more confidence. To his surprise, when he had put the situation before them, the Sanchezes had shared a long marital look, then nodded soberly and said they would go.

  “Rodrigo’s a good ’un,” Tom admitted reluctantly. “But he won’t be no good to you in a fight, me lord.” His own fists had been clenched throughout the conversation, and it was clear that he had a higher opinion of his own abilities in that regard.

  Actually, Grey thought, he might be right. Used as he was to Tom’s constant presence, he hadn’t taken conscious notice, but his valet was no longer the pie-faced seventeen-year-old who had bluffed his way into Grey’s service. Tom had grown a few inches, and while not in Malcolm Stubbs’s class in the matter of bulk, he’d definitely filled out. His shoulders were square and his freckled forearms nicely muscled. However…

  “If it comes to that sort of fight, it wouldn’t matter if I had an entire company of infantry with me,” he said. He smiled at his valet with true affection. “And besides, Tom:—I cannot depend on anyone but you to see to things here. You must go with Jacinto to find a doctor—cost is no consideration; I’m leaving you with all of our English money, and there’s enough gold there to buy half of Havana—and then take the man to the Valdez plantation, along with any medicines he thinks useful. I’ve written a note to my mother—” He reached into his bosom and withdrew a small folded square, sealed with smoky candle wax and stamped with his smiling half-moon signet. “See that she gets that.”

  “Yes, me lord.” Tom glumly accepted the note and tucked it away.

  “And then find someplace nearby to stay. Don’t stay in the house; I don’t want you to be exposed to the fever. But keep an eye on things: Visit twice a day, make sure the doctor does what he can, give Her Grace any assistance she’ll let you give, and send back reports every day as to the state of things. I don’t know when I’ll get them”—or if— “but send them anyway.”

  Tom sighed but nodded.

  Grey stopped, unable to think of anything else. The casa was well awake by now, and there was a muted sense of bustle in the distant patio, a rising scent of boiling beans and the sweetness of fried plantains. He hadn’t told the house servants anything of his own unspeakable mission—they couldn’t help, and to know anything at all of it would put both himself and them in danger. But they knew about the situation at Hacienda Valdez, and he’d heard the murmur of prayers and the clicking of rosary beads when he’d passed by the patio a few minutes ago. It was oddly comforting.

  He reached out and clasped Tom’s hand, squeezing.

  “I trust you, Tom,” he said softly.

  Tom’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. His deft, sturdy fingers turned and squeezed back.

  “I know, me lord,” he said. “You can.”

  FOUR DAYS LATER—it had taken more time than anticipated to find what was needed—Lord John Grey stood naked in the middle of a grove of mangoes, on a hill overlooking the hacienda of the Mendez family.

  He’d seen the big house as they rode into the plantation, a sprawling establishment of rooms added over the years, odd wings sprouting from unexpected places, outbuildings scattered near it in an untidy constellation. One of the complicated constellations, he thought, looking down on it. Cassiopeia, maybe, or Aquarius. One of the ones where you just take the ancient astronomer’s word for what you’re looking at.

  The windows in the main house had been lighted, with servants passing to and fro like shadows in the dusk, but he had been too far away to hear any of the noises of the place, and he was left with a queer sensation of having seen something ghostly that might suddenly be swallowed by the night.

  In fact, it had been, in the sense that the hacienda was invisible from his present situation—and a good thing, too. His traveling clothes lay puddled on the leaf mold in which his bare feet were sunk, and small insects were treating his private parts with an unseemly familiarity. This caused him to rummage his pack first for the bottle of coconut–mint elixir and apply this lavishly before getting dressed.

  Not for the first time—nor, he was sure, the last—he deeply regretted the absence of Tom Byrd. He was actually capable of dressing himself, though both he and Tom acted on the tacit assumption that he wasn’t. But what he missed most at the moment was the sense of solemn ceremony that attended Tom’s dressing him in full uniform. It was as though he assumed a different persona with scarlet coat and gold lace, Tom’s respect giving him belief in his own authority, as though he put on not only uniform but armor and office.

  He could bloody use that belief just now. He swore softly under his breath as he struggled into the moleskin breeches and brushed bits of leaf off each foot before pulling on his silk stocki
ngs and boots. It was a gamble, but he felt that the chances of these men taking him seriously, listening to him, and—above all—trusting him would be increased if he appeared not just as a stand-in for Malcolm Stubbs but as the incarnation of England, as it were: a true representative of the king. They had to trust that he could do what he said he would do for them, or it was all up. For the hacendados—and for him.

  “Wouldn’t do the bloody navy any good, either,” he muttered, tying his neckcloth by feel.

  Done at last, his traveling clothes bundled into the pack, he heaved a sigh of relief and stood still for a minute to gather himself, settle into the uniform.

  He’d had no idea mango trees grew to such a size; this was an old grove, the trees each more than a hundred feet in height, the leaves rising and falling gently on the evening breeze, making a sound like the sea overhead. Something slithered heavily in the fallen leaves near him and he froze. But the serpent—if that’s what it was—continued on its way, untroubled by his presence.

  Rodrigo, Azeel, and Inocencia were where he had left them, no more than a hundred yards away, but he felt entirely alone. His mind had gone blank, and he welcomed that respite. Windfalls of unripe fruit knocked down by a storm lay all around like pale-green cricket balls in the leaves, but the fruit still on the trees had gone yellow—he’d seen it in the twilight as they came up into the grove—and had begun to blush crimson. Now it was dark, and he only sensed the mangoes when he brushed a low-lying branch and felt the heavy swing of the fruit.

  He was walking, not having made up his mind to do so nor remembering the taking of the first step, but walking, propelled into motion by a sense that it was time.

  He came down through the grove and found Rodrigo and the girls on their feet, in murmured conversation with a tall, spare young woman—Inocencia’s cousin, Alejandra, who would take them to the tobacco shed.