Roger couldn’t help turning to look at her himself; it was true. She had dark circles under her eyes, wisps of hair were coming down from her ponytail, and her skin was glowing like the wax of a lighted candle. She looked like a woman who’d had a long night—and enjoyed it.
As though by radar, her head turned and her eyes fixed on him, over Gayle’s head. She went on talking to Gayle, but her eyes spoke straight to him.
The doctor cleared his throat loudly. Roger jerked his attention away from her, to find Abernathy looking up at him, his expression thoughtful.
“Oh,” the doctor said, in a changed tone. “Like that, is it?”
Roger’s collar was unbuttoned, but he felt as though he were wearing a tie tied too tight. He met the doctor’s eyes straight on.
“Yeah,” he said. “Like that.”
Dr. Abernathy reached for the bottle of Lagavulin, and filled both glasses.
“Claire did say she liked you,” he said in resignation. He lifted one glass. “Okay. Slàinte.”
* * *
“Turn it the other way—Walter Cronkite’s orange!” Lenny Abernathy obligingly twirled the knob, turning the commentator green. Unaffected by his sudden change of complexion, Cronkite went on talking.
“In approximately two minutes, Commander Neil Armstrong and the crew of the Apollo 11 will make history in the first manned landing on the moon …”
The living room was darkened and packed with people, everyone’s attention riveted on the big TV as the footage shifted to a replay of the Apollo’s launch.
“I’m impressed,” Roger said in Brianna’s ear. “How did you fix it?” He leaned against the end of a bookshelf, and pulled her snug against him, his hands on the swell of her hips, his chin on her shoulder.
Her eyes were on the television, but he felt her cheek move against his own.
“Somebody kicked the plug out of the wall,” she said. “I just plugged it back in.”
He laughed and kissed the side of her neck. It was hot in the room, even with the air conditioner humming, and her skin tasted moist and salty.
“You’ve got the roundest arse in the world,” he whispered. She didn’t answer, but deliberately nestled her bottom against him.
A buzz of voices from the screen and pictures of the flag the astronauts would plant on the moon.
He glanced across the room, but Joe Abernathy was as hypnotized as any of them, face rapt in the glow of the television screen. Safe in the darkness, he wrapped his arms around Brianna, and felt the soft weight of her breasts on his forearm. She sighed deeply and relaxed against him, putting her hand over his and squeezing tight.
They would both be less bold if there were any danger to it. But he was leaving in two hours; there was no chance of it going further. The night before, they had known they were playing with dynamite, and been more cautious. He wondered if Abernathy would actually have punched him, had he admitted that Brianna had spent the night in his bed?
He had driven them down the mountain, torn between trying to stay on the right side of the road, and the excitement of Brianna’s soft weight, pressed against him. They’d stopped for coffee, talked long past midnight, touching constantly, hands, thighs, heads close together. Driven on to Boston in the wee hours, the conversation dying, Brianna’s head heavy on his shoulder.
Unable to keep awake long enough to find his way through the maze of unfamiliar streets to her apartment, he had driven to his hotel, smuggled her upstairs, and laid her on his bed, where she had fallen asleep in seconds.
He had himself spent the rest of the night on the chaste hardness of the floor, Brianna’s woolly cardigan across his shoulders for warmth. With the dawn, he’d got up and sat in the chair, wrapped in her scent, silently watching the light spread across her sleeping face.
Yeah, it was like that.
“Tranquility Base … the Eagle has landed.” The silence in the room was broken by a deep collective sigh, and Roger felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.
“One … small … step for man,” said the tinny voice, “one giant leap … for mankind.” The picture was fuzzy, but not through any fault of the television. Heads strained forward, avid to see the bulky figure making its ginger way down the ladder, setting foot for the first time on the lunar soil. Tears gleamed on one girl’s cheeks, silver in the glow.
Even Brianna had forgotten everything else; her hand had fallen from his arm and she was leaning forward, caught up in the moment.
It was a fine day to be an American.
He had a momentary qualm, seeing them all so fiercely intent, so fervently proud, and she so much a part of it. It was a different century, two hundred years from yesterday.
Might there be common ground for them, a historian and an engineer? He facing backward to the mysteries of the past, she to the future and its dazzling gleam?
Then the room relaxed in cheers and babbling, and she turned in his arms to kiss him hard and cling to him, and he thought perhaps it didn’t matter that they faced in opposite directions—so long as they faced each other.
PART THREE
Pirates
6
I ENCOUNTER A HERNIA
June 1767
“I hate boats,” Jamie said through clenched teeth. “I loathe boats. I view boats with the most profound abhorrence.”
Jamie’s uncle, Hector Cameron, lived on a plantation called River Run, just above Cross Creek. Cross Creek in turn lay some way upriver from Wilmington; some two hundred miles, in fact. At this time of year, we were told, the trip might take four days to a week by boat, depending on wind. If we chose rather to travel overland, the journey could take two weeks or more, depending on such things as washed-out roads, mud, and broken axles.
“Rivers do not have waves,” I said. “And I view the notion of trudging on foot for two hundred miles through the mud with a lot more than abhorrrrence.” Ian grinned broadly, but quickly exchanged the grin for an expression of bland detachment as Jamie’s glare moved in his direction.
“Besides,” I said to Jamie, “if you get seasick, I still have my needles.” I patted the pocket where my tiny set of gold acupuncture needles rested in their ivory case.
Jamie exhaled strongly through his nose, but said no more. That little matter settled, the major problem remaining was to manage the boat-fare.
We were not rich, but did have a little money, as the result of a spot of good fortune on the road. Gypsying our way north from Charleston, and camping well off the road at night, we had discovered an abandoned homestead in the wood, its clearing nearly obliterated by new growth.
Cottonwood saplings shot like spears through the beams of the fallen roof, and a hollybush sprouted through a large crack in the hearthstone. The walls were half collapsed, black with rot and furred with green moss and rusty fungus. There was no telling how long the place had been abandoned, but it was clear that both cabin and clearing would be swallowed by the wilderness within a few years, nothing left to mark its existence save a tumbled cairn of chimney stones.
However, flourishing incongruously among the invading trees were the remains of a small peach orchard, the fruit of it burstingly ripe and swarming with bees. We had eaten as much as we could, slept in the shelter of the ruins, then risen before dawn and loaded the wagon with heaping mounds of smooth gold fruit, all juice and velvet.
We had sold it as we went, and consequently had arrived in Wilmington with sticky hands, a bag of coins—mostly pennies—and a pervasive scent of fermentation that clung to hair, clothes, and skin, as though we had all been dipped in peach brandy.
“You take this,” Jamie advised me, handing me the small leather sack containing our fortune. “Buy what ye can for provisions—dinna buy any peaches, aye?—and perhaps a few bits and pieces so we dinna look quite such beggars when we come to my kinsman. A needle and thread, maybe?” He raised a brow and nodded at the large rent in Fergus’s coat, incurred while falling out of a peach tree.
“Duncan and I
will go about and see can we sell the wagon and horses, and inquire for a boat. And if there’s such a thing as a goldsmith here, I’ll maybe see what he’d offer for one of the stones.”
“Be careful, Uncle,” Ian advised, frowning at the motley crew of humanity coming and going from the harbor nearby. “Ye dinna want to be taken advantage of, nor yet be robbed in the street.”
Jamie, gravely straight-faced, assured his nephew that he would take due precaution.
“Take Rollo,” Ian urged him. “He’ll protect ye.”
Jamie glanced down at Rollo, who was surveying the passing crowds with a look of panting alertness that suggested not so much social interest as barely restrained appetite.
“Oh, aye,” he said. “Come along then, wee dog.” He glanced at me as he turned to go. “Perhaps ye’d best buy a few dried fish, as well.”
* * *
Wilmington was a small town, but because of its fortuitous situation as a seaport at the mouth of a navigable river, it boasted not only a farmer’s market and a shipping dock, but several shops that stocked imported luxuries from Europe, as well as the homegrown necessities of daily life.
“Beans, all right,” Fergus said. “I like beans, even in large quantities.” He shifted the burlap sack on his shoulder, balancing its unwieldy weight. “And bread, of course we must have bread—and flour and salt and lard. Salt beef, dried cherries, fresh apples, all well and good. Fish, to be sure. Needles and thread I see also are certainly necessary. Even the hairbrush,” he added, with a sidelong glance at my hair, which, inspired by the humidity, was making mad efforts to escape the confinement of my broad-brimmed hat. “And the medicines from the apothecary, naturally. But lace?”
“Lace,” I said firmly. I tucked the small paper packet containing three yards of Brussels lace into the large basket he was carrying. “Likewise ribbons. One yard each of wide silk ribbon,” I told the perspiring young girl behind the counter. “Red—that’s yours, Fergus, so don’t complain—green for Ian, yellow for Duncan, and the very dark blue for Jamie. And no, it isn’t an extravagance; Jamie doesn’t want us to look like ragamuffins when we meet his uncle and aunt.”
“What about you, Auntie?” Ian said, grinning. “Surely ye willna let us men be dandies, and you go plain as a sparrow?”
Fergus blew air between his lips, in mingled exasperation and amusement.
“That one,” he said, pointing to a wide roll of dark pink.
“That’s a color for a young girl,” I protested.
“Women are never too old to wear pink,” Fergus replied firmly. “I have heard les mesdames say so, many times.” I had heard les mesdames’ opinions before; Fergus’s early life had been spent in a brothel, and judging from his reminiscences, not a little of his later life, too. I rather hoped that he could overcome the habit now that he was married to Jamie’s stepdaughter, but with Marsali still in Jamaica awaiting the birth of their first child, I had my doubts. Fergus was a Frenchman born, after all.
“I suppose the Madams would know,” I said. “All right, the pink, too.”
Burdened with baskets and bags of provisions, we made our way out into the street. It was hot and thickly humid, but there was a breeze from the river, and after the stifling confines of the shop, the air seemed sweet and refreshing. I glanced toward the harbor, where the masts of several small ships poked up, swaying gently to the rocking of the current, and saw Jamie’s tall figure stride out between two buildings, Rollo pacing close behind.
Ian hallooed and waved, and Rollo came bounding down the street, tail wagging madly at sight of his master. There were few people out at this time of day; those with business in the narrow street prudently flattened themselves against the nearest wall to avoid the rapturous reunion.
“My Gawd,” said a drawling voice somewhere above me. “That’ll be the biggest dawg I believe I’ve ever seen.” I turned to see a gentleman detach himself from the front of a tavern, and lift his hat politely to me. “Your servant, ma’am. He ain’t partial to human flesh, I do sincerely hope?”
I looked up at the man addressing me—and up. I refrained from expressing the opinion that he, of all people, could scarcely find Rollo a threat.
My interlocutor was one of the tallest men I’d ever seen; taller by several inches even than Jamie. Lanky and rawboned with it, his huge hands dangled at the level of my elbows, and the ornately beaded leather belt about his midriff came to my chest. I could have pressed my nose into his navel, had the urge struck me, which fortunately it didn’t.
“No, he eats fish,” I assured my new acquaintance. Seeing me craning my neck, he courteously dropped to his haunches, his knee joints popping like rifle shots as he did so. His face thus coming into view, I found his features still obscured by a bushy black beard. An incongruous snub nose poked out of the undergrowth, surmounted by a pair of wide and gentle hazel eyes.
“Well, I’m surely obliged to hear that. Wouldn’t care to have a chunk taken out my leg, so early in the day.” He removed a disreputable slouch hat with a ragged turkey feather thrust through the brim, and bowed to me, loose snaky black locks falling forward on his shoulders. “John Quincy Myers, your servant, ma’am.”
“Claire Fraser,” I said, offering him a hand in fascination. He squinted at it a moment, brought my fingers to his nose and sniffed them, then looked up and broke into a broad smile, nonetheless charming for missing half its teeth.
“Why, you’ll maybe be a yarb-woman, won’t you?”
“I will?”
He turned my hand gently over, tracing the chlorophyll stains around my cuticles.
“A green-fingered lady might just be tendin’ her roses, but a lady whose hands smell of sassafras root and Jesuit bark is like to know more than how to make flowers bloom. Don’t you reckon that’s so?” he asked, turning a friendly gaze on Ian, who was viewing Mr. Myers with unconcealed interest.
“Oh, aye,” Ian assured him. “Auntie Claire’s a famous healer. A wise-woman!” He glanced proudly at me.
“That so, boy? Well, now.” Mr. Myers’s eyes went round with interest, and swiveled back to focus on me. “Smite me if this ain’t Lucifer’s own luck! And me thinkin’ I’d have to wait till I come to the mountains and find me a shaman to take care of it.”
“Are you ill, Mr. Myers?” I asked. He didn’t look it, but it was hard to tell, what with the beard, the hair, and a thin layer of greasy brown dirt that seemed to cover everything not concealed by his ragged buckskins. The sole exception was his forehead; normally protected from the sun by the black felt hat, it was now exposed to view, a wide flat slab of purest white.
“Not to say ill, I don’t reckon,” he replied. He suddenly stood up, and began to fumble up the tail of his buckskin shirt. “It ain’t the clap or the French pox, anyhow, ’cause I seen those before.” What I had thought were trousers were in fact long buckskin leggings, surmounted by a breechclout. Still talking, Mr. Myers had hold of the leather thong holding up this latter garment, and was fumbling with the knot.
“Damnedest thing, though; all of a sudden this great big swelling come up just along behind of my balls. Purely inconvenient, as you may imagine, though it don’t hurt me none to speak of, save on horseback. Might be you could take a peep and tell me what I best do for it, hm?”
“Ah.…” I said, with a frantic glance at Fergus, who merely shifted his sack of beans and looked amused, blast him.
“Would I have the pleasure to make the acquaintance of Mr. John Myers?” said a polite Scottish voice over my shoulder.
Mr. Myers ceased fumbling with his breechclout and glanced up inquiringly.
“Can’t say whether it’s a pleasure to you or not, sir,” he replied courteously. “But be you lookin’ for Myers, you’ve found him.”
Jamie stepped up beside me, tactfully inserting his body between me and Mr. Myers’s breechclout. He bowed formally, hat under his arm.
“James Fraser, your servant, sir. I was told to offer the name of Mr. Hector Camer
on by way of introduction.”
Mr. Myers looked at Jamie’s red hair with interest.
“Scotch, are you? Be you one of them Highlander fellows?”
“I am a Scotsman, aye, and a Highlander.”
“Be you kin to Old Hector Cameron?”
“He is my uncle by marriage, sir, though I have not met him myself. I was told that he was well known to you, and that you might consent to guide my party to his plantation.”
The two men were frankly sizing each other up, eyes flicking head to toe as they talked, appraising bearing, dress, and armament. Jamie’s eyes rested approvingly on the long sheath-knife at the woodsman’s belt, while Mr. Myers’s nostrils flared wide with interest.
“Comme deux chiens,” Fergus remarked softly behind me. Like two dogs. “… aux culs.” Next thing you know, they will be smelling each other’s backside.
Mr. Myers darted a glance at Fergus, and I saw a quick flash of amusement in the hazel depths before he returned to his assessment of Jamie. Uncultured the woodsman might be, but he plainly had some working knowledge of French.
Given Mr. Myers’s olfactory inclinations and lack of self-consciousness, I might not have been surprised to see him drop to all fours and perform in the manner Fergus had suggested. As it was, he contented himself with a careful inspection that took in not only Jamie but Ian, Fergus, myself, and Rollo.
“Nice dawg,” he said casually, holding out a set of massive knuckles to the latter. Rollo, thus invited, instituted his own inspection, sniffing industriously from moccasins to breechclout as the conversation went on.
“Your uncle, eh? Does he know you’re coming?”
Jamie shook his head.
“I canna say. I sent a letter from Georgia, a month ago, but I’ve no way to tell whether he’s had it yet.”
“I shouldn’t think so,” Myers said thoughtfully. His eyes lingered on Jamie’s face, then passed swiftly over the rest of us.
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