“Yeah,” Brianna said, very softly. “I do want him dead. But I want Da and Roger alive, more.”
Roger, of course, knows none of this. But he returns late one night after singing for a wedding, and going to write down the lyrics of a new song he’s heard, he comes across Brianna’s dream-book—her description of various vivid dreams she’s had. He is shaken by her description of one dream that makes it clear she has trouble reaching orgasm with him—and that her dreams are haunted by Stephen Bonnet.
PART 5: ’TIS BETTER TO MARRY THAN BURN
Jocasta and Duncan’s delayed wedding is finally to take place at River Run. A French priest from New Orleans has been imported to perform the ceremony, and the chief question in everyone’s mind is whether the bride (in her sixties) and groom (in his fifties) will share a bed, and much good-humored wagering is going on in consequence. Jamie backs Duncan at five to one—but Duncan is nowhere to be seen, and Jamie’s money may be in danger, if the bridegroom can’t be found.
The wedding is attended by everyone who is anyone, including Jocasta’s old friend Farquard Campbell, a justice of the peace, and Lieutenant Wolff of the Royal Navy—the Navy’s chief business contact with River Run and a rejected suitor of Jocasta’s (his motive being, as she acerbically observes, desire of her property rather than her person). In addition, a military stranger appears—one Major Donald MacDonald, brought by Farquard Campbell.
“Everyone” includes both those in sympathy with the Regulation movement—and those emphatically opposed. A fight between two such men threatens to lead to a free-for-all but is stopped by Major MacDonald, at Claire’s request. Hermon Husband, a prominent Quaker and leader of the Regulation, leaves the party, and James Hunter, another Regulator, tells Claire to tell Jamie that the Regulators are gathering at a big camp, up near Salisbury.
In conversation with MacDonald, Claire learns that he’s a half-pay soldier, in search of professional engagement. With no war, pickings are slim—but perhaps Governor Tryon might see the virtue in engaging an officer of experience to help in the training and disposition of the militia? Claire, obliged to the major for his help in stopping the riot, assures him she will speak to Jamie about an introduction.
Their conversation is interrupted by Phillip Wylie, a rich young plantation owner from Edenton who attempts to flirt with Claire.
Phillip Wylie was a dandy. I had met him twice before, and on both occasions, he had been got up regardless: satin breeches, silk stockings, and all the trappings that went with them, including powdered wig, powdered face, and a small black crescent beauty mark, stuck dashingly beside one eye.
Now, however, the rot had spread. The powdered wig was mauve, the satin waistcoat was embroidered with—I blinked. Yes, with lions and unicorns, done in gold and silver thread. The satin breeches were fitted to him like a bifurcated glove, and the crescent had given way to a star at the corner of his mouth. Mr. Wylie had become a macaroni—with cheese.
She tries to shoo him off, but he insists upon showing her his Friesians, beautiful black horses with silky, floating hair, which are garnering much admiring attention from the wedding guests.
Jamie appears suddenly at Claire’s side and detaches her from Wylie, then meets Major MacDonald, who begs a few moments’ conversation. Once in private, he tells Jamie that he understands Jamie has been seeking news of Stephen Bonnet—and he has some. Bonnet, it appears, has close ties with a number of the coastal merchants, including a Mr. Butler. These men are likely protecting Bonnet’s smuggling activities. This is interesting and perhaps ominous news to Jamie—for as MacDonald points out, while Jamie’s inquiries have spread far enough to hear something of Bonnet, by the same token, this means Bonnet undoubtedly knows that Jamie is looking for him. In answer to MacDonald’s matter-of-fact inquiry as to whether Jamie means to kill Bonnet, James tells MacDonald what Bonnet has done and agrees to give MacDonald a letter of introduction to the governor.
The news of Bonnet’s influential connections gives Jamie pause for thought—but it’s not a matter that can be dealt with at the moment, and the continued absence of Duncan is more pressing. So is Jamie’s growing desire for his wife. What with travel and the press of wedding guests at River Run, he hasn’t been able to bed her for a week.
Ever since she had shown him the sperms, he had been uncomfortably aware of the crowded conditions that must now and then obtain in his balls, an impression made forcibly stronger in situations such as this. He kent well enough that there was no danger of rupture or explosion—and yet he couldn’t help but think of all the shoving going on.
Being trapped in a seething mass of others, with no hope of escape, was one of his own personal visions of Hell, and he paused for a moment outside the screen of willow trees, to administer a brief squeeze of reassurance, which he hoped might calm the riot for a bit.
He’d see Duncan safely married, he decided, and then the man must see to his own affairs. Come nightfall, and if he could do no better than a bush, then a bush it would have to be.
At last he discovers Duncan, pale and sweating, who tells him he must speak to him. Duncan is impotent, as the result of an accident suffered when a cart horse kicked him in the scrotum as a young man. He had been regarding the matter of his marriage as a matter of business and convenience; it hadn’t dawned on him that Jocasta might expect…But having now heard the jests of the wedding guests, he’s in a panic.
Jamie promises to attend to the matter—which he does by sexually blackmailing Claire into talking to his aunt about Duncan’s problem.
He grinned down at me, stepping back and letting his kilt fall into place. His face was flushed a ruddy bronze with effort, and his chest heaved under his shirt ruffles….
“I’ll gie ye the rest when I’m ninety-six, aye?”
“You won’t live that long! Come here!”
“Oh,” he said. “So ye’ll speak to my aunt.”
“Effing blackmailer,” I panted, fumbling at the folds of his kilt. “I’ll get you for this, I swear I will.”
“Oh, aye. You will.”
Taking a break in the kitchen garden, Brianna is hailed by her father, lurking behind a bush. Jamie has found one of the servants, a black woman named Betty, out cold in the kitchen garden, reeking of drink, a fallen cup by her hand. The cup, however, contains not only the dregs of rum punch but also a strong whiff of laudanum. He fetches Brianna and, with her help, gets Betty up to the servants’ attic, where they lay her on the bed, speculating about her situation. While any servant might take advantage of the party to sneak a drink, the laudanum casts another light on the matter. Did Betty take it herself? Or was it in the cup, intended for someone else, when she abstracted and drank it? If so—for whom was it meant, and why? The cup was special, one of a set made as a wedding present by Jocasta for Duncan.
While Jamie sends Roger and Brianna to check for bodies in the bushes, Phillip Wylie reappears, to invite Claire to see a surprise. She follows him into the stables, where he shows her a tiny Friesian colt, which he tells her he has named for her—then follows up promptly by making a pass at her, seizing and kissing her. She wrenches herself away and storms out, running into Jamie—who delicately removes Wylie’s beauty mark from her face, demanding to know what she has been doing. Their incipient quarrel is aborted by spectators, and Jamie sends her off to speak to Jocasta.
I left Jamie in the parlor, and made my way up the stairs and along the hall toward Jocasta’s room, nodding distractedly to friends and acquaintances encountered along the way. I was disconcerted, annoyed—and at the same time, reluctantly amused. I hadn’t spent so much time in bemused contemplation of a penis since I was sixteen or so, and here I was, preoccupied with three of the things.
The objects in question belong to Jamie, Phillip Wylie, and Duncan Innes, of course, and Claire puts aside consideration of the first two in order to think about the third, wondering as to the physical basis of Duncan’s incapacity and whether anything might be done about it. For t
he moment, though, such matters are hypothetical, and finding Jocasta alone with the French-speaking priest, she confides Duncan’s problem, discovering both Jocasta and the priest sympathetic.
The priest inquires whether Jocasta still wishes to be married; impotence is a bar to marriage, since the sacrament can’t be consummated—but in view of the parties’ ages, clearly procreation is not God’s will in this matter, so…?
After only a moment, though, Jocasta stirred, letting out her breath in a deep sigh.
“Well, thank Christ I’d the luck to get a Jesuit,” she said dryly. “One of them could argue the Pope out of his drawers, let alone deal wi’ a small matter of reading the Lord’s mind. Aye, tell him I do desire to be married, still.”
This matter satisfactorily adjusted, Claire goes to attend the slave Betty, only to find her already attended, by Ulysses and one Dr. Fentiman, highlight of the medical profession of Fayetteville. The doctor is small, opinionated, and the worse for drink; he insults Claire and forces her to leave—but not before she’s found out what she wanted to know: Betty has taken opium, whether deliberately or not.
The wedding hour is reached, and the wedding is quietly and movingly accomplished, with only Jocasta’s immediate family as witnesses. The mostly Protestant friends and neighbors can join in the celebration of the marriage afterward, without the awkwardness of being compelled to witness a Popish ceremony.
Following the wedding, the festivities move into full swing. Jamie is thinking carnal thoughts of Claire—mingled with rage at Wylie—when he is approached by a man named Lyon, who, with singular ineptitude, tries to find out things about Jamie’s militia unit and ends up baldly propositioning him regarding his whisky-making operations. Wondering who has set this incompetent intriguer on him, Jamie extricates himself and goes to find his wife.
Their tryst is interrupted, though, by the reappearance of a dangerously flushed Phillip Wylie, who invites—or challenges—Jamie to play whist with him. Jamie promptly accepts, despite Claire’s certain knowledge that he hasn’t any money with which to play high-stakes whist. He agrees with her and asks for her gold ring to use as a stake. Infuriated, she takes off both rings and drops them into his palm before stomping off.
Ignorant of all this tension, Roger and Brianna have been enjoying the party, Roger singing and accepting the applause of the multitudes, Brianna enjoying the momentary respite from motherhood, as Jocasta’s body servant, Phaedre, is taking care of Jemmy. She and Roger meet outside the house and wander companionably toward the river.
“Did you find any of the guests passed out in the shrubbery?” she asked, her words muffled by a mouthful of mushroom pasty. She swallowed, and became more distinct. “When Da asked you to go and look this afternoon, I mean.”
He snorted briefly, selecting a dumpling made of sausage and dried pumpkin.
“Ken the difference between a Scottish wedding and a Scottish funeral, do ye?”
“No, what?”
“The funeral has one less drunk.”
While there may be a few feet sticking out of the shrubbery now, he says, none of the guests were missing or comatose during the afternoon. Their discussions, and their idyll, are rudely interrupted by a servant, rushing to find them; Jemmy has croup, and they hurry back to the house to take care of him.
Following all the alarms of the day, including Jemmy’s attack of croup, Claire falls into bed and almost at once into sleep—from which she’s roused by the feeling of someone playing “This Little Piggy” with her toes. The room is full of sleeping women, and the phantom foot-fondler disappears when some of them begin to stir. Claire rises and steals quietly out, to discover Jamie at the foot of the stair, in an advanced state of intoxication.
“What—” I began, whispering.
“Come here,” he said. His voice was low, rough with sleeplessness and whisky.
I hadn’t time either to reply or to acquiesce; he seized my arm and pulled me toward him, then swept me off the last step, crushed me to him, and kissed me. It was a most disconcerting kiss—as though his mouth knew mine all too well, and would compel my pleasure, regardless of my desires.
Jamie takes Claire to the barn, where, after a long-delayed and delightfully ferocious coupling, they fall asleep in the hay—though before doing so, Jamie returns both her rings, telling her that he’s won Wylie’s stallion, Lucas, at whist.
In the morning, he shows her the horse, telling her more about the evening’s events. The conversation is interrupted, though, by a servant, summoning Claire—something’s amiss with the slave Betty.
Something is more than amiss. The woman is hemorrhaging violently, in spite of the best efforts of Dr. Fentiman, and eventually dies messily. The two doctors stagger wearily downstairs, united in defeat, and have a moment of rapprochement despite their earlier mutual hostility. Phillip Wylie, red-eyed with sleeplessness and fury, pops up to denounce Claire for carrying on with Dr. Fentiman, who, outraged, dismisses Wylie as a puppy—thus enraging him more.
Claire has other things to think of than Wylie’s offended pride, though. She’s sure that Betty’s death was not a natural one and persuades Jamie—much against his will and better judgment—to help her with a crude autopsy that night. She has almost finished her work by lantern light, when their grisly secrecy is interrupted by—who else—Phillip Wylie, who opens the shed door and is horribly shocked by what’s going on inside.
He hasn’t time for remonstrances, though, for another man looms out of the darkness just behind him: Stephen Bonnet.
“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” I said.
A number of things happened at that point: Jamie came out from under the table with a rush like a striking cobra, Phillip Wylie leaped back from the door with a startled cry, and the lantern crashed from its nail to the floor. There was a strong smell of splattered oil and brandy, a soft whoosh like a furnace lighting, and the crumpled shroud was burning at my feet.
The shed proceeds to catch fire and burn to the ground, incinerating Betty’s body with it. Claire, hiding in the dark garden during the attendant confusion, succeeds in depositing in a jar what she has taken from the body—ground glass from Betty’s stomach; the proof that the woman has been murdered. As the noise begins to die down, another sound is heard—Jocasta’s voice from the house, screaming for help.
Jocasta is found in her bedroom, in her nightgown, bound hand and foot, with Duncan on the floor at her feet, out cold from a blow on the head with a candlestick. Freed, Jocasta explains that two or three men came into her room, knocked Duncan out, and then tied her up. The spokesman, “an Irishman,” she says, demanded that she tell them the whereabouts of the gold.
What gold? The Frenchman’s gold, replies Jocasta, and after checking to be sure that only her kin are present, she reluctantly tells them the story of the Jacobite gold: thirty thousand pounds in gold ingots, sent by the king of France to aid Charles Stuart’s bid for the thrones of Scotland and England. The gold arrived too late to be of help to Charles but was divided in three parts for safekeeping by the three men who brought it ashore: Jocasta’s brother Dougal MacKenzie, her husband, Hector Cameron—and a third man, who wore a mask and whose name she didn’t know.
Following the disastrous battle at Culloden and the death of the Stuart cause, Hector Cameron had loaded his share of the gold into a coach, along with his wife, and fled the country, using part of the gold to finance his acquisition of River Run. For twenty-five years, that gold has been a secret—but, somehow, Stephen Bonnet has discovered the secret and come for the gold.
Jocasta tells her fascinated family that she told Bonnet the gold was buried under the floor of the shed—hoping that he and his mates would be shocked by finding a dead body inside the shed and sufficiently taken aback as to give her time to struggle free of her gag and shout for help. As it was…
There seemed no more to say or to do. Ulysses came back, sliding discreetly into the room with a fresh candlestick and a tray holding a bottle of brandy
and several glasses. Major MacDonald reappeared briefly to report that indeed, they had found no sign of the miscreants. I checked both Duncan and Jocasta briefly, then left Bree and Ulysses to put them to bed.
Jamie and I made our way downstairs in silence. At the bottom of the staircase, I turned to him. He was white with fatigue, his features drawn and set as though he had been carved of marble, his hair and beard stubble dark in the shadowed light.
“They’ll come back, won’t they?” I said quietly.
He nodded, and taking my elbow, led me toward the kitchen stair.
After a brief stop by the kitchen for a jug of coffee and a crumb cake, Jamie leads Claire back to the stables, where they find Phillip Wylie locked in a loose-box, under Roger’s guard. Roger and Jamie interrogate Wylie, who claims to have had nothing to do with Bonnet’s sudden appearance and no knowledge whatever of the attack on Jocasta and Duncan. Naturally enough, Wylie resents the implications of this inquiry.
“You blackguard!” He rounded on Jamie, fists clenched. “You dare to imply that I am a thief?”
Jamie rocked back a little on his stool, chin lifted.
“Aye, I do,” he said coolly. “Ye tried to steal my wife from under my nose—why should ye scruple at my aunt’s goods?”
Wylie’s face flushed a deep and ugly crimson. Had it not been a wig, his hair would have stood on end.
“You…absolute…cunt!” he breathed. Then he launched himself at Jamie. Both of them went over with a crash, in a flurry of arms and legs.
Claire, enormously irritated with both of them, puts a stop to the fight by emptying the jug of hot coffee over them. In subsequent, calmer conversation, Wylie repeats firmly that he has no knowledge of Stephen Bonnet. He had come to the stables the night before intending to say a private goodbye to his horse, Lucas; seeing the lantern in the shed, he then went to investigate, only to be shocked by finding Claire in mid-autopsy. But, he adds with an odd defiance, while he knows nothing of Bonnet, he thinks Jamie won’t easily find him—Bonnet has absconded with Lucas.
The Companion to the Fiery Cross, a Breath of Snow and Ashes, an Echo in the Bone, and Written in My Own Heart's Blood Page 4