“Maybe nothing. I’ll come home by way of Pa’s house and we will talk.”
Cullah did not come home that night. Though Brendan slept, I could not. There was no moon, either, and though I hated to waste it, I kept a candle going the night through and dozed in my chair by the fire. Finally, in the early dawn, just as he and Jacob had once arrived at this place, the two of them came a-clattering in. Brendan was hard at work on his breakfast, so I said nothing when the two men laid their belts at their chairs and drew them to the fireplace. Much as I wanted to cry out at them to explain how they could have kept me in worry the night through, I meant, first, to wait for them to speak and, second, to keep Brendan quiet, for he was finished nursing and nearly asleep.
I laid the babe in his cradle and pulled the kettle from the hob. Then I poured hot water on the last of the tea leaves we owned. Market day I would have to get more.
Cullah at last said, “I have spent the night with Apollos Rivoire. He is a Freemason in Boston. Do you know what that means?”
“No.”
Jacob blew on the tea I poured for him. He said, “It means we are trying once again to fight the Hanoverians for the right to be our own people, have our own laws, and rule our own land.”
“War?” I said, too loudly. “Do you mean we shall have war with the British army?”
“Not here,” Cullah said. “Scotland. The Highlanders are rising. Forming up the clans to drive the British from their land. The French are our allies, and have always been. I, I gave them money to send over, Resolute. I had to do this.”
“And to do this you spent all night in Boston? Without thought of your wife and babe? How much money? Are we to be put out of our home for some pipe dream of your father’s? What of you, Jacob MacLammond? What part do you play in this? For Cullah would have no memories on which to draw. The dreams of free Scotland you have spoken about at our fire are your dreams, not his.”
Jacob snarled. “It is not a dream. It is God’s will.”
“How much money?” I demanded.
“Forty pounds,” Cullah said.
“Fort—” I sat hard in my chair, the feet out from under me. A year’s income gone on some barmy dream of an old man and his memories. “Forty pounds,” I said. “You did not think to speak to me before you ventured everything, no? Who is Rivoire?”
“The silversmith.”
I gripped the edges of my seat. “Oh. Fine company, then. Maker of wealthy people’s trinkets. He can afford to support something in a country across an ocean which we will never cross, on a land we will never see. He can throw money at windstorms for all I care.”
“I’ll hear no more about this, woman,” he said. “It is done.”
“Why did it take you the night through to do this? Where have you been?”
“We had to run from the soldiers and constables. We took swords he had made, pistols and muskets, clothing too, to a ship sailing for Mull. It left on the risen tide at midnight. The rest of the time we’ve spent coming home to you and now and then hiding, of course.”
I put a hand above my eyes and pressed against the pain throbbing there. “Smuggling muskets? Hiding? Now and then? Of course. A ship bound for Mull. With forty pounds of hard-earned gold belonging to us upon it. Well. So the silversmith makes swords in his secret workshop. And you two have been smuggling arms to a foreign kingdom. Cullah, the Scots want to overthrow King George? That is treason! You could both hang! And, oh, Eadan, whatever shall we do without your money?”
Jacob cleared his throat. “They are not after killing the king. George Second has nothing to fear. We want our own king of Scotland, James Stuart, returned to the throne. We want no English soil; we want our own land back. And this family shall do as we have already done without that money, for ’twas hid by me before we come here, lass.”
I stared hard at him, unable to keep my lower lip from protruding as if I were five years old. “I do not believe you. Cullah just said he gave our money.”
Jacob said, “Well and aye. I had put it away for Brendan’s school. But this—”
I poured out tears that surprised even me. Brendan stirred at the noise as I wept with full heartbreak. My son’s schooling had been sacrificed for Scotland’s king? No doubt some knock-kneed dimwit of illegitimate inbreeding got on a pox-eaten slattern by that devil Cromwell or one of his minions. I wished the ship to sink. I wished James Stuart, whoever he was, to hang. I wished Cullah MacLammond to fall down the well.
Cullah said, “The Rivoires are Huguenots,” in a reassuring tone.
That meant nothing to me. I cried all the harder, making quite a racket.
“We are invited to supper tomorrow. Some of the townspeople will be there. They are much eager to meet you, Ressie. You must.”
I was so angry I could hardly speak. At last I said, “What is a Huguenot?”
“A Frenchman.”
“I have a child to nurse.”