TWENTY-TWENTY
December 20, 1777
Edinburgh
THE PRINT ON THE PAGE sprang into focus, clear and black, and I exclaimed in startlement.
“Ah, close, then?” Mr. Lewis, the spectacle-maker, twinkled at me over his own spectacles. “Try these.” He gently removed the trial spectacles from my nose and handed me another pair. I put them on, examined the page of the book before me, then looked up.
“I had no idea,” I said, amazed and delighted. It was like being reborn; everything was fresh, new, crisp, and vivid. I had suddenly reentered the half-forgotten world of fine print.
Jamie stood by the shop’s window, book in hand and a handsome pair of steel-rimmed square spectacles on his long nose. They gave him a most unaccustomed scholarly air, and he looked for a moment like a distinguished stranger, until he turned to look at me, his eyes slightly magnified behind the lenses. He shifted his gaze over the top of them and smiled at sight of me.
“I like those,” he said with approval. “The round ones suit your face, Sassenach.”
I had been so taken with the new detail of the world around me that it hadn’t even occurred to me to wonder what I looked like. Curious, I got up and came to peer into the small looking glass hung on the wall.
“Goodness,” I said, recoiling slightly. Jamie laughed, and Mr. Lewis smiled indulgently.
“They are most becoming to you, ma’am,” he said.
“Well, possibly,” I said, warily examining the stranger’s reflection in the glass. “It’s just rather a shock.” It wasn’t really that I’d forgotten what I looked like. It was just that I hadn’t thought about it in months, beyond putting on clean linen and not wearing gray, which tended to make me look as though I’d been inexpertly embalmed.
I had on brown today, an open jacket of brown velvet the color of ripe cattails, with a narrow grosgrain ribbon in gold down the edges, over my new gown—this a heavy coffee-colored silk with a close-fitted bodice and three lace-edged petticoats to show at the ankle. We would not be long in Edinburgh, owing to the exigencies of getting the brigadier to his final resting place and Jamie’s eagerness to be away to the Highlands—but we did have business to conduct here. Jamie had said firmly that we could not appear as ragamuffins and had sent for a dressmaker and a tailor as soon as we reached our lodgings.
I stood back a little, preening. In all honesty, I was surprised to find how well I looked. During the long months of traveling, of retreat and battle with the Continental army, I had been reduced to my basic essence: survival and function. What I looked like would have been entirely irrelevant, even had I had a mirror.
In fact, I’d subconsciously expected to find a witch in the glass, a worn-looking woman with wild gray hair and a fierce expression. Possibly a long hair or two sprouting from the chin.
Instead… well, it was still recognizably me. My hair—uncapped but covered by a small, flat straw hat with a dainty bunch of cloth daisies on it—was tied up behind. But flattering small wisps curled round my temples, and my eyes were a bright clear amber behind the new spectacles, with a surprising look of guileless expectancy.
I had the lines and creases of my age, of course, but on the whole, my face had settled peaceably on my bones, rather than running away in jowls and wattles down my neck. And the bosom, with just a discreet shadow showing the swell of my breasts—the royal navy had fed us lavishly on the sea journey, and I had regained some of the weight I had lost during the long retreat from Ticonderoga.
“Well, not all that bad, really,” I said, sounding so surprised that Jamie and Mr. Lewis both laughed. I took off the spectacles with considerable regret—Jamie’s spectacles were simple steel-rimmed reading glasses, so could be taken at once, but my own pair would be ready, complete with gold rims, by the next afternoon, Mr. Lewis promised—and we left the shop to embark upon our next errand: Jamie’s printing press.
“WHERE’S IAN this morning?” I asked, as we made our way to Princes Street. He’d been gone when I awoke, leaving not a wrack behind, let alone any word of his whereabouts. “You don’t suppose he’s decided to run for it rather than go home?”
“If he has, I’ll track him down and beat him to a pudding, and he kens that perfectly well,” Jamie said absently, looking up across the park to the great bulk of the castle on its rock, then putting on his glasses—futiley—to see whether they made a difference. “Nay, I think he’s likely gone to the brothel.”
“At eleven o’clock in the morning?” I blurted.
“Well, there’s nay rule about it,” Jamie said mildly, taking off the glasses, wrapping them in his handkerchief, and putting them into his sporran. “I’ve been known to do it in the morning now and then. Though I doubt he’s bent on carnal knowledge just this minute,” he added. “I told him to go and see whether Madame Jeanne still owns the place, for if so, she’ll be able to tell me more, in a shorter space of time, than anyone else in Edinburgh. If she’s there, I’ll go and see her in the afternoon.”
“Ah,” I said, not really liking the notion of his going round for a cozy tête-à-tête with the elegant Frenchwoman who had once been his partner in the whisky-smuggling business but admitting the economy of the proposal. “And where would Andy Bell be at ten o’clock in the morning, do you suppose?”
“In bed,” Jamie said promptly. “Sleeping,” he added with a grin, seeing the look on my face. “Printers are sociable creatures, as a rule, and they congregate in taverns of an evening. I’ve never known one to rise wi’ the lark, save he’s got bairns wi’ the colic.”
“You’re proposing to roust him out of bed?” I asked, stretching my step to keep up with him.
“No, we’ll find him at Mowbray’s at dinnertime,” he said. “He’s a graver—he needs some light to work by, so he rises by noon. And he eats at Mowbray’s most days. I only want to see whether his shop’s burnt down or not. And whether the wee bugger’s been using my press.”
“You make it sound as though he’s been using your wife,” I said, amused at the grim tone of this last.
He made a small Scottish noise acknowledging the presumed humor of this remark while simultaneously declining to share in it. I hadn’t realized that he felt so strongly about his printing press, but after all, he’d been separated from it for nearly twelve years. Little wonder if his lover’s heart was beginning to beat at thought of being reunited with it at last, I thought, privately entertained.
Then again, perhaps he was afraid Andy Bell’s shop had burned down. It wasn’t an idle fear. His own printer’s shop had burned down twelve years before; such establishments were particularly vulnerable to fire, owing both to the presence of a small open forge for melting and recasting type and to the quantities of paper, ink, and similar flammable substances kept on the premises.
My stomach growled softly at thought of a midday dinner at Mowbray’s; I had very pleasant memories of our last—and only—visit there, which had involved some excellent oyster stew and an even better chilled white wine, among other pleasures of the flesh.
It would be a little time ’til dinner, though; laborers might open their dinner pails at noon, but fashionable Edinburgh dined at the civilized hour of three o’clock. Possibly we could acquire a fresh bridie from a street vendor, I thought, hastening in Jamie’s wake. Just to tide us over.
Andrew Bell’s shop was, luckily, still standing. The door was closed against the draft, but a small bell rang over it to announce our presence, and a middle-aged gentleman in shirtsleeves and apron looked up from a basket of slugs he was sorting.
“A good morning to you, sir. Ma’am,” he said cordially, nodding to us, and I saw at once that he was not a Scot. Or, rather, not born in Scotland, for his accent was the soft, slightly drawling English of the Southern colonies. Jamie heard it and smiled.
“Mr. Richard Bell?” he asked.
“I am,” said the man, looking rather surprised.
“James Fraser, your servant, sir,” Jamie said politely, bowing. “And may I present my wife, Claire.”
“Your servant, sir.” Mr. Bell bowed in return, looking rather bewildered but with perfect manners.
Jamie reached into the breast of his coat and withdrew a small bundle of letters, tied with a pink ribbon.
“I’ve brought ye word from your wife and daughters,” he said simply, handing them over. “And I’ve come to see about sending ye home to them.”
Mr. Bell’s face went blank, and then all the blood drained out of it. I thought he was going to faint for a moment, but he didn’t, merely grasping the edge of the counter for support.
“You-you—home?” he gasped. He had clutched the letters to his breast, and now brought them down, looking at them, his eyes welling. “How—how did she … My wife. Is she well?” he asked abruptly, jerking up his head to look at Jamie, sudden fear in his eyes. “Are they all right?”
“They were all bonny as doves when I saw them in Wilmingon,” Jamie assured him. “Verra much desolated by your absence from them, but well in themselves.”
Mr. Bell was trying desperately to control his face and his voice, and the effort reduced him to speechlessness. Jamie leaned over the counter and touched him gently on the arm.
“Go and read your letters, man,” he suggested. “Our other business will wait.”
Mr. Bell’s mouth opened once or twice, soundless, then he nodded abruptly and, whirling round, blundered through the door that led to the back room.
I sighed, and Jamie glanced down at me, smiling.
“It’s good when something comes right, isn’t it?” I said.
“It’s no made right yet,” he said, “but it will be.” He then pulled his new spectacles out of his sporran and, clapping them onto his nose, flipped up the counter flap and strode purposefully through.
“It is my press!” he exclaimed accusingly, circling the enormous thing like a hawk hovering over its prey.
“I’ll take your word for it, but how can you tell?” I came cautiously after him, keeping back my skirts from the ink-stained press.
“Well, it’s got my name on it, for the one thing,” he said, stooping and pointing up at something under it. “Some of them, anyway.” Leaning upside down and squinting, I made out Alex. Malcolm carved on the underside of a small beam.
“Apparently it still works all right,” I observed, straightening up and looking round the room at the posters, ballads, and other examples of the printing and engraving arts displayed there.
“Mmphm.” He tried the moving parts and examined the press minutely before reluctantly admitting that, in fact, it seemed in good condition. He still glowered, though.
“And I’ve been paying the wee bugger all these years, to keep it for me!” he muttered. He straightened up, looking balefully at the press. I had in the meantime been poking about the tables near the front wall, which held books and pamphlets for sale, and picked up one of the latter, which was titled at the top Encyclopedia Britannica, and below this, “Laudanum.”
Tincture of opium, or liquid laudanum, otherwise called the thebaic tincture, is made as follows: take of prepared opium two ounces, of cinnamon and cloves, each one drachm, of white wine one pint, infuse them a week without heat, and then filter it through paper.
Opium at present is in great esteem, and is one of the most valuable of all the simple medicines. Applied externally, it is emollient, relaxing, and discutient, and greatly promotes suppuration: if long kept upon the skin, it takes off hair, and always occasions an itching; sometimes it exulcerates it, and raises little blisters, if applied to a tender part: sometimes, on external application, it allays pain, and even occasions sleep: but it must by no means be applied to the head, especially to the sutures of the skull; for it has been known to have the most terrible effects in this application, and even bring death itself. Opium taken internally removes melancholy, eases pain, and disposes of sleep; in many cases removes hemorrhages, provokes sweating.
A moderate dose is commonly under a grain…
“Do you know what ‘discutient’ means?” I asked Jamie, who was reading the type set up in the form on the press, frowning as he did so.
“I do. It means whatever ye’re talking about can dissolve something. Why?”
“Ah. Perhaps that’s why applying laudanum to the sutures of the skull is a bad idea.”
He gave me a baffled look.
“Why would ye do that?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.” I returned to the pamphlets, fascinated. One of them, titled “The Womb,” had some very good engravings of a dissected female pelvis and internal organs, done from varying angles, as well as depictions of the fetus in various stages of development. If this was Mr. Bell’s work, I thought, he was both a superb craftsman and a very diligent observer.
“Have you got a penny? I’d like to buy this.”
Jamie dug into his sporran and laid a penny on the counter, glanced at the pamphlet in my hand, and recoiled.
“Mother of God,” he said, crossing himself.
“Well, probably not,” I said mildly. “Certainly a mother, though.” Before he could reply to this, Richard Bell came out of the back room, red-eyed but composed, and seized Jamie by the hand.
“You cannot know what you have done for me, Mr. Fraser,” he said earnestly. “If you can indeed help me to return to my family, I—I—well, in fact, I do not know what I could possibly do to show my gratitude, but be assured that I will bless your soul forever!”
“I’m much obliged to ye for the thought, sir,” Jamie said to him, smiling. “It may be that ye can do me a small service, but if not, I shall still be most thankful for your blessings.”
“If there is anything I can do, sir, anything at all!” Bell assured him fervently. Then a faint hesitation came over his face—possibly a recollection of whatever his wife had had to say about Jamie in her letter. “Anything short of… of treason, I should say.”
“Och, no. Well short of treason,” Jamie assured him, and we took our leave.
I TOOK A SPOONFUL of the oyster stew and closed my eyes in ecstasy. We had come a little early, in order to get a seat by the window overlooking the street, but Mowbray’s had filled up fast, and the clishmaclaver of cutlery and conversation was almost deafening.
“You’re sure he’s not here?” I said, leaning across the table to make myself heard. Jamie shook his head, rolling a sip of the cold Moselle around his mouth with an expression of bliss.
“Ye’ll ken well enough when he is,” he said, swallowing it.
“All right. What sort of not-quite-treasonous thing are you planning to make poor Mr. Bell do in return for passage home?”
“I mean to send him home in charge of my printing press,” he replied.
“What, entrust your precious darling to a virtual stranger?” I asked, amused. He gave me a mildly dirty look in return, but finished his bite of buttered roll before answering.
“I dinna expect him to be abusing her. He’s no going to print a thousand-run of Clarissa on her aboard ship, after all.”
“Oh, it’s a her, is it?” I said, vastly entertained. “And what, may I ask, is her name?”
He flushed a little and looked away, taking particular care to coax a specially succulent oyster into his spoon, but finally muttered, “Bonnie,” before gulping it.
I laughed, but before I could make further inquiries, a new noise intruded on the racket, and people began to put down their spoons and stand up, craning to see out of the windows.
“That will be Andy,” Jamie told me.
I looked down into the street and saw a small knot of boys and idlers, clapping and cheering. Looking up the street to see what was coming, I beheld one of the biggest horses I had ever seen. It wasn’t a draft horse but an enormously tall gelding, close to seventeen hands, so far as my inexpert eye could judge.
On top of it was a very small man, sitting up straight and regally ignoring the cheers of the crowd. He came to a stop directly below us and, turning round, removed a wooden square from the saddle behind him. He shook this out, revealing it to be a folding wooden ladder, and one of the street children ran forward to hold the foot of it while Mr. Bell—for it couldn’t be anyone else—descended to the plaudits of passersby. He tossed a coin to the child who’d held the ladder, another to a lad who’d taken his horse’s head, and disappeared from view.
A few moments later, he came through the door into the main dining room, taking off his cocked hat and bowing graciously to the calls of greeting from the diners. Jamie raised a hand, calling “Andy Bell!” in a resonant voice that cut through the thrum of talk, and the little man’s head jerked in our direction, surprised. I watched with fascination as he came toward us, a slow grin spreading over his face.
I couldn’t tell whether he had some form of dwarfism or had merely suffered badly from malnutrition and scoliosis in his youth, but his legs were short in proportion to his upper body, and his shoulders crooked; he barely topped four feet, and only the crown of his head—this covered by a very fashionable wig—showed as he passed between the tables.
These aspects of appearance faded into insignificance, though, as he drew close and I perceived his most striking attribute. Andrew Bell had the biggest nose I had ever seen, and in the course of an eventful life, I had seen a number of prize specimens. It began between his eyebrows, curved gently down for a short distance as though nature had intended him to have the profile of a Roman emperor. Something had gone amiss in the execution, though, and to this promising beginning, something that looked like a small potato had been affixed. Knobbly and red, it took the eye.
It took quite a few eyes; as he drew close to our table, a young lady nearby saw him, gasped audibly, and then clapped a hand over her mouth, this precaution being quite insufficient to quell her giggles.
Mr. Bell heard her, and without breaking his stride, he reached into his pocket, withdrew an immense papier-maché nose decorated with purple stars, which he clapped over his own, and, fixing the young woman with an icy stare, passed by.
“My dear,” Jamie said to me, grinning as he rose to his feet and extending a hand to the little engraver, “may I name my friend, Mr. Andrew Bell? My wife, Andy. Claire is her name.”
“Charmed, madam,” he said, removing the false nose and bowing low over my hand. “When did you acquire this rare creature, Jamie? And whatever would such a lovely lass want with a great, vulgar lout such as you, I wonder?”
“I lured her into marriage wi’ descriptions of the beauties of my printing press,” Jamie said dryly, sitting down and motioning to Andy Bell to join us.
“Ah,” said Andy, with a sharp look at Jamie, who raised his brows and widened his eyes. “Hmm. I see ye’ve been by the shop, then.” He nodded at my reticule, from which the top of the pamphlet I’d bought was protruding.
“We have,” I said hastily, pulling out the pamphlet. I didn’t think Jamie proposed to squash Andy Bell like a bug for having made free with his printing press, but his relationship with “Bonnie” was news to me, and I wasn’t sure quite how deep his sense of affronted proprietorship went.
“This is remarkably fine work,” I said to Mr. Bell, with complete sincerity. “Tell me, how many different specimens did you use?”
He blinked a little but answered readily, and we had a pleasant—if rather gruesome—conversation regarding the difficulties of dissection in warm weather and the effect of saline solution versus alcohol for preservation. This caused the people at the next table to end their meal rather hurriedly, casting veiled looks of horror as they left. Jamie leaned back in his chair, looking pleasant but fixing Andy Bell with an unwavering gaze.
The little engraver betrayed no particular discomfort under this basilisk stare and went on telling me about the response when he had published the bound edition of the Encyclopedia—-the King had somehow happened to see the plates of the “Womb” section and had ordered those pages to be torn out of the book, the ignorant German blatherskite!—but when the waiter came to take his order, he ordered both a very expensive wine and a large bottle of good whisky.
“What, whisky wi’ the stew?” blurted the waiter, astonished.
“No,” he said with a sigh, pushing back his wig. “Concubinage. If that’s what ye call it when ye rent the services of a man’s beloved.”
The waiter shifted his look of astonishment to me, then went bright red and, choking slightly, backed away.
Jamie fixed a narrow eye on his friend, now buttering a roll with aplomb.
“It’ll take more than whisky, Andy.”
Andy Bell sighed and scratched his nose.
“Aye, then,” he said. “Say on.”
WE FOUND IAN waiting at the small hotel, chatting with a couple of draymen in the street. Seeing us, he took his leave—and a small package, thrust surreptitiously under his coat—and came in with us. It was teatime, and Jamie ordered it to be brought up to our rooms, for the sake of discretion.
We had lashed out, rather, in the matter of accommodations, and had taken a suite of rooms. The tea was now laid out in the parlor, an appetizing array of grilled finnan haddie, Scotch eggs, toast with marmalade, and scones with jam and clotted cream, accompanying an enormous pot of strong black tea. I inhaled the fragrant steam from the table and sighed with pleasure.
“It’s going to be rather a wrench, going back to no tea,” I observed, pouring out for everyone. “I don’t suppose we’ll get any in America for another, what—three or four years?”
“Oh, I wouldna say that,” Jamie said judiciously. “Depends where we go back to, aye? Ye can get tea fine in places like Philadelphia or Charleston. Ye only need to ken a good smuggler or two, and if Captain Hickman’s no been sunk or hanged by the time we go back…”
I put down my cup and stared at him.
“You don’t mean you aren’t planning to go ho—to go back to the Ridge?” I had a sudden empty feeling in the pit of my stomach, remembering our plans for the New House, the smell of balsam fir, and the quiet of the mountains. Did he really mean to move to Boston or Philadelphia?
“No,” he said, surprised. “Of course we shall go back there. But if I mean to be in the printing trade, Sassenach, we shall need to be in a city for a time, no? Only ’til the war is over,” he said, encouraging.
“Oh,” I said in a small voice. “Yes. Of course.” I drank tea, not tasting it. How could I have been so stupid? I had never once thought that, of course, a printing press would be pointless on Fraser’s Ridge. In part, I supposed, I simply hadn’t really believed he would get his press back, let alone thought ahead to the logical conclusion if he did.
But now he had his Bonnie back, and the future had suddenly acquired a disagreeable solidity. Not that cities didn’t have considerable advantages, I told myself stoutly. I could finally acquire a decent set of medical instruments, replenish my medicines—why, I could even make penicillin and ether again! With a little better appetite, I took a Scotch egg.
“Speaking of smugglers,” Jamie was saying to Ian, “what is it ye have in your coat? A present for one of the ladies at Madame Jeanne’s?”
Ian gave his uncle a cold look and removed the small package from his pocket.
“A wee bit o’ French lace. For my mam.”
“Good lad,” Jamie said with approval.
“What a sweet thought, Ian,” I said. “Did you—I mean, was Madame Jeanne still in situ?”
He nodded, putting the package back into his coat.
“She is. And verra eager to renew her acquaintance wi’ you, Uncle,” he added, with a slightly malicious grin. “She asked would ye care to come round this evening for a bit of entertainment.”
Jamie’s nose twitched as he glanced at me.
“Oh, I think not, Ian. I’ll send a note saying we shall wait upon her tomorrow morning at eleven. Though ye’re free to take up her invitation yourself, of course.” It was clear that he was only teasing, but Ian shook his head.
“Nay, I wouldna go wi’ a whore. Not ’til it’s settled between Rachel and me,” he said seriously. “One way or the other. But I shallna take another woman to my bed until she tells me that I must.”
We both looked at him in some surprise across the teacups.
“You do mean it, then,” I said. “You feel… er… betrothed to her?”
“Well, of course he does, Sassenach,” Jamie said, reaching for another slice of toast. “He left her his dog.”