“Culloden?” I said softly. “Has it come back again?” I actually hoped it was Culloden—and not Wentworth. He woke from the Wentworth dreams sweating and rigid and couldn’t bear to be touched. Last night, he hadn’t waked, but had jerked and moaned until I’d got my arms around him and he quieted, trembling in his sleep, head butted hard into my chest.
He shrugged a little and touched my face.
“It’s never left, Sassenach,” he said, just as softly. “It never will. But I sleep easier by your side.”
IN ANOTHER PART of Philadelphia, Ian, Rachel, Denzell, and Dottie have things on their minds besides military affairs. They’re collectively struggling with the logistics of Quaker marriage: Friends marry each other, without the need of ritual or clergy—but a marriage must take place before the Friends’ meeting, approved, witnessed, and supported by said meeting. While it’s known for a Friend to marry a non-Quaker, it’s not common and usually results in the Friend being put out of his or her meeting.
The situation is made more complex by the fact that Rachel and Denny have already been put out of their home meeting in Virginia, in consequence of Denny deciding to join the Continental army. Dottie has become a Friend but has no home meeting, either. And Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, the “weightiest” meeting in the colonies, takes a dim view of the Revolution and has advised Friends to cleave to the Loyalist view, as being the most conducive to the preservation of peace.
All of which makes the question of marriage with a Mohawk scout and a Rebel physician highly questionable.
The future is murky and full of risk, but:
[Ian] had concerns himself, certainly, annoyances and worries. At the bottom of his soul, though, was the solid weight of Rachel’s love and what she had said, the words gleaming like a gold coin at the bottom of a murky well. “We will marry each other.”
ON THE ROAD out of Philadelphia, William is riding the columns, carrying dispatches, taking note of incidents and emergencies, and handling as many of these as can be handled by one unarmed aide-de-camp.
The benefit of this occupation is that he’s too busy to brood for very long over his anomalous situation. And thoughts of his paternity, his name, his title, and such future prospects as he has are all driven from his mind by the sudden appearance of one Denys Randall-Isaacs—or simply Denys Randall, as he’s taken to calling himself, his Jewish stepfather being now dead.
Denys was last seen in Quebec, two years before, when he suddenly disappeared, abandoning William to a winter snowbound with nuns and voyageurs. This experience improved William’s hunting and his French but not his temper. Still, he holds on to this, out of curiosity as to what Denys wants.
Denys gives away nothing regarding his own situation or immediate plans but inquires as to whether William has spoken recently with Captain Richardson; upon hearing the answer, he strongly advises William to have nothing whatever to do with Richardson—and if possible to avoid even speaking with the man. Whereupon Denys spurs up and rides off, leaving William still more baffled.
THE CONTINENTALS ARE massing, militia troops arriving from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York to join Washington’s army. Among these is the 16th Pennsylvania, and, with them, Bert Armstrong, aka Lord John Grey.
His lordship’s ribs are not troubling him much, but his injured eye is; seemingly frozen in its socket, its attempts to focus with its fellow are giving him double vision and chronic, crippling headaches that make him grateful to stop for the night, able at last to lie down and rest his throbbing cranium.
Feeling too ill to eat, he puts his journeycake aside, only to hear a small, hungry voice inquire as to whether he means to eat that. He turns to discover a young boy, disheveled and tearstained—and as his wavering vision focuses on the boy’s face, he recognizes Germain Fraser. Who had—of course—defied parents and grandparents and come to join Jamie and the army, riding Clarence, the family mule.
A pair of no-goods came upon him in the wood, though, pulled him off and stole Clarence, leaving Germain to wander alone, until he saw the militia’s fire and—to his amazement—recognized Lord John, his erstwhile stepgrandfather. Despite shock, distress, and hunger, Germain is canny enough to say nothing, until he and Lord John are able to step away from camp together.
Still in the shelter of the woods, Grey put his hand on Germain’s shoulder and squeezed. The boy stopped dead.
“Attendez, monsieur,” Grey said, low-voiced. “If the militia learn who I am, they’ll hang me. Instantly. My life is in your hands from this moment. Comprenez-vous?”
There was silence for an unnerving moment.
“Are you a spy, my lord?” Germain asked softly, not turning round.
Grey paused before answering, wavering between expediency and honesty. He could hardly forget what he’d seen and heard, and when he made it back to his own lines, duty would compel him to pass on such information as he had.
“Not by choice,” he said at last, just as softly.
A cool breeze had risen with the setting of the sun, and the forest murmured all around them.
“Bien,” Germain said at last. “And thank ye for the food.” He turned then, and Grey could see the glint of firelight on one fair brow, arched in inquisitiveness.
“So I am Bobby Higgins. Who are you, then?”
“Bert Armstrong,” Grey replied shortly. “Call me Bert.”
He led the way then toward the fire and the blanket-humped rolls of sleeping men. He couldn’t quite tell, above the rustling of the trees and the snoring of his fellows, but he thought the little bugger was laughing.
AS THE COLONIALS begin to converge on the rendezvous point at Coryell’s Ferry, Clinton’s troops and the Loyalist refugees hurry onward, hoping to outrun danger. William, pausing to refresh himself in a creek, is taken unawares by a familiar voice: Jane, the young whore from Philadelphia, and her younger sister, Frances, known as Fanny. Jane tells him that the nasty Captain Harkness, who had threatened her, came back, and that the girls had therefore decided to flee with the army.
Jane returns William’s gorget—given by him to hire her for the night and save her from Harkness—and then suggests that he might show his gratitude by offering her and Fanny his protection and helping them to find a secure place once the army reaches New York.
“Don’t want much, do you?” he said. On the one hand, if he didn’t give her some assurance of help, he wouldn’t put it past her to fling his gorget into the water in a fit of pique. And on the other…Frances was a lovely child, delicate and pale as a morning-glory blossom. And on the third hand, he hadn’t any more time to spare in argument.
“Get on the horse and come across,” he said abruptly. “I’ll find you a new place with the baggage train. I have to ride a dispatch to von Knyphausen just now, but I’ll meet you in General Clinton’s camp this evening—no, not this evening, I won’t be back until tomorrow….” He fumbled for a moment, wondering where to tell her to find him; he could not have two young whores asking for him at General Clinton’s headquarters. “Go to the surgeons’ tent at sundown tomorrow. I’ll—think of something.”
REACHING CORYELL’S FERRY at last, Jamie prepare to confer with Washington, his second-in-command, General Charles Lee, and the other generals. Claire has other immediate concerns:
My chief concern was to get some food into Jamie before he met with General Lee, if the aforementioned indeed had a reputation for arrogance and short temper. I didn’t know what it was about red hair, but many years’ experience with Jamie, Brianna, and Jemmy had taught me that while most people became irritable when hungry, a redheaded person with an empty stomach was a walking time bomb.
While strolling the camp in search of food, she encounters an unexpected young Frenchman.
“Nonsense,” I said in French, laughing. “You aren’t a turnip at all.”
“Oh, yes,” he said, switching to English. He smiled charmingly at me. “I once stepped on the foot of the Queen of France. She was much less gracio
us, sa Majesté,” he added ruefully. “She called me a turnip. Still, if it hadn’t happened—I was obliged to leave the court, you know—perhaps I would never have come to America, so we cannot bemoan my clumsiness altogether, n’est-ce pa?”
He was exceedingly cheerful and smelled of wine—not that that was in any way unusual. But given his exceeding Frenchness, his evident wealth, and his tender age, I was beginning to think—
“Have I the, um, honor of addressing—” Bloody hell, what was his actual title? Assuming that he really was—
“Pardon, madame!” he exclaimed, and, seizing my hand, bowed low over it and kissed it. “Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette, à votre service!”
I managed to pick “La Fayette” out of this torrent of Gallic syllables and felt the odd little thump of excitement that happened whenever I met someone I knew of from historical accounts—though cold sober realism told me that these people were usually no more remarkable than the people who were cautious or lucky enough not to end up decorating historical accounts with their blood and entrails.
This encounter ends with the Marquis inviting Claire to join him at dinner—this proving to be a dinner for Washington, his second-in-command, Charles Lee, and the other generals, including Jamie, who is attended by Young Ian and Rollo. Claire’s opinion of the generals in general is favorable, though she is somewhat bemused by General Lee:
“Good Christ!” Lee apparently hadn’t noticed the dog before this and flung himself to one side, nearly ending in Jamie’s lap. This action distracted Rollo, who turned to Lee, sniffing him with close attention.
I didn’t blame the dog. Charles Lee was a tall, thin man with a long, thin nose and the most revolting eating habits I’d seen since Jemmy had learned to feed himself with a spoon. He not only talked while he ate and chewed with his mouth open, but was given to wild gestures while holding things in his hand, with the result that the front of his uniform was streaked with egg, soup, jelly, and a number of less identifiable substances.
Despite this, he was an amusing, witty man—and the others seemed to give him a certain deference. I wondered why; unlike some of the gentlemen at the table, Charles Lee never attained renown as a Revolutionary figure. He treated them with a certain…well, it wasn’t scorn, certainly—condescension, perhaps?
The dinner party concludes and Claire is sent off to sleep at a nearby house, while the officers make plans for what will likely be battle on the morrow. Unsettled by the tension running like a bowstring through the camp, Claire is unable to sleep and ventures out into the dark, where she runs into Denzell Hunter, out fetching a pitcher of beer for Dottie, who is attending a patient. Claire accompanies him back to the tent, and a period of medical adventure ensues, when the extremely intoxicated patient turns out to be pregnant. When things settle again, Denzell goes in search of the patient’s husband, leaving Claire, Dottie, and Rachel watching over the comatose woman.
At Dottie’s request, Claire gives the young women the benefit of a little premarital counseling.
“…and if he says, ‘Oh, God, oh, God,’ at some point,” I advised, “take note of what you were just doing, so you can do it again next time.”
Rachel laughed, but Dottie frowned a little, looking slightly cross-eyed.
“Do you—does thee—think Denny would take the Lord’s name in vain, even under those circumstances?”
“I’ve heard him do it on much less provocation than that,” Rachel assured her, stifling a burp with the back of her hand. “He tries to be perfect in thy company, thee knows, for fear thee will change thy mind.”
“He does?” Dottie looked surprised but rather pleased. “Oh. I wouldn’t, thee knows. Ought I to tell him?”
“Not until he says, ‘Oh, God, oh, God,’ for thee,” Rachel said, succumbing to a giggle.
“I wouldn’t worry,” I said. “If a man says, ‘Oh, God,’ in that situation, he nearly always means it as a prayer.”
Dottie’s fair brows drew together in concentration.
“A prayer of desperation? Or gratitude?”
“Well…that’s up to you,” I said, and stifled a small belch of my own.
The return of the men—with Jamie and with Mr. Peabody, the patient’s husband—breaks up the hen party, and the four young people carry Mrs. Peabody home, accompanied by her husband, leaving Jamie and Claire to share a precious half hour of solitude in the darkness of the medical tent.
“How long do you think we have?” I asked, undoing his flies. His flesh was warm and hard under my hand, and his skin there soft as polished silk.
“Long enough,” he said, and brushed my nipple with his thumb, slowly, in spite of his own apparent urgency. “Dinna hurry yourself, Sassenach. There’s no telling when we’ll have the chance again.”
He kissed me lingeringly, his mouth tasting of Roquefort and port. I could feel the vibration of the camp here, too—it ran through both of us like a fiddle string pegged tight.
“I dinna think I’ve got time to make ye scream, Sassenach,” he whispered in my ear. “But I’ve maybe time to make ye moan?”
“Well, possibly. It’s some time ’til dawn, isn’t it?”
Whether it was the beer and premarital explanations, the late hour and lure of secrecy—or only Jamie himself and our increasing need to shut out the world and know only each other—he had time, and to spare.
“Oh, God,” he said at last, and came down slowly on me, his heart beating heavy against my ribs. “Oh…God.”
I felt my own pulse throb in hands and bones and center, but couldn’t manage any response more eloquent than a faint “Ooh.” After a bit, though, I recovered enough to stroke his hair.
“We’ll go home again soon,” I whispered to him. “And have all the time in the world.”
That got me a softly affirmative Scottish noise, and we lay there for a bit longer, not wanting to come apart and get dressed, though the packing cases were hard and the possibility of discovery increasing with each passing minute.
At last he stirred, but not to rise.
“Oh, God,” he said softly, in another tone altogether. “Three hundred men.” And held me tighter.
NEXT MORNING, WE find William in conversation with his groom, Zebedee, who has a festering wound in his arm from a horse bite. No sooner does William instruct Zeb to go straight to the surgeons’ tent and have it seen to than the groom’s place is taken by the ubiquitous Captain Richardson. William neatly evades the captain’s pourparlers, but the captain has mentioned Lady John—and the mention of his erstwhile (and present, as he realizes with a sense of shock) stepmother brings fresh awareness of his impossible situation—and sudden strong memories of Mac, the groom whom he had loved at Helwater and who had given William a wooden rosary, and his own name:
He took a long, slow breath and pressed his lips together. Mac. The word didn’t bring back a face; he couldn’t remember what Mac had looked like. He’d been big, that was all. Bigger than Grandfather or any of the footmen or the other grooms. Safety. A sense of constant happiness like a soft, worn blanket.
“Shit,” he whispered, closing his eyes. And had that happiness been a lie, too? He’d been too little to know the difference between a groom’s deference to the young master and real kindness. But…
“You are a stinking Papist,” he whispered, and caught his breath on something that might have been a sob. “And your baptismal name is James.”
“It was the only name I had a right to give ye.”
He realized that his knuckles were pressed against his chest, against his gorget—but it wasn’t the gorget’s reassurance that he sought. It was that of the little bumps of the plain wooden rosary that he’d worn around his neck for years, hidden under his shirt where no one would see it. The rosary Mac had given him…along with his name.
With a suddenness that shocked him, he felt his eyes swim. You went away. You left me!
“Shit!” he said, and punched his fist so hard into th
e saddlebag that the horse snorted and shied, and a bolt of white-hot pain shot up his arm, obliterating everything.
PREPARATIONS CONTINUE ON both sides of the coming conflict. Jamie gives Ian his own pre-wedding advice, and William meets Jane and Fanny in camp and agrees to give them his protection, in return for their care of his young groom and orderly.
Lord John and Germain, entering the American camp with their militia company, are both surprised to see a familiar figure: Percival Beauchamp, aka Perseverance Wainwright.
He hadn’t seen Percy—ex-lover, ex-brother, French spy, and all-around shit—since their last conversation in Philadelphia, some months before. When Percy had first reappeared in Grey’s life, it had been with a last attempt at seduction—political rather than physical, though Grey had an idea that he wouldn’t have balked at the physical, either…. It was an offer for the British government: the return to France of the valuable Northwest Territory, in return for the promise of Percy’s “interests” to keep the French government from making an alliance with the American colonies.
He had—as a matter of duty—conveyed the offer discreetly to Lord North and then expunged it—and Percy—from his mind.
CLAIRE, IN HER position as surgeon to Jamie’s troops, prepares to inspect the new arrivals for suitability but also offers medical advice and minor treatment to the camp followers, the women and children accompanying the Continental army and militia. Going to her tent to fetch medicine, she discovers a young Continental surgeon named Captain Leckie rifling her medicine chest.
The ensuing conversation begins with Leckie’s conviction that Claire is a laundress and goes downhill from there:
“He is teething,” I agreed, shaking out a quantity of crumbled willow bark into my mortar. “But he also has an ear infection, and the tooth will come through of its own accord within the next twenty-four hours.”
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 29