“I hear. I will have no soldiers in my home.” He shook my hands off. “You should have gone on as I told you to do.”
“Then you would have come out swinging a sword and been killed. I had to warn you. Gentle words are all you need.”
He lifted the squalling children from their seats and America and I bustled them into the house, down the stairs into the rock basement, and then settled them on blankets as if we had planned something special all along. I raced to the kitchen and fetched treats for them, a jug of milk, a handful of candles in my pocket, and carried them down again. I placed all at the disposal of America, kissed each of my children though the littlest ones still wept and clung to me and it tore my heart to pull their wee fingers from my clothes and hair. I joined Cullah at the front door just as he tucked his claymore behind the cupboard and opened the door.
The soldier who had helped me turn the horse in the road stood there with a haughty sneer. “That’s a fine ’ow-de-ye-do,” he said. “Fine, indeed. Are you the owner of this house, then? Your name, sir?” Before Cullah could answer the soldier went on, “I’m Corporal Landon, charge ’o this company, sir, and these orders say you are to board six of us for six months. That’s the rule. Your house ’as been judged big enough for that.”
Cullah gritted his teeth.
I said, “Let me see that, Corporal.” I read the document and turned to Cullah. “Four months, Mr. MacLammond. Four months, Corporal.” He had a crooked nose and was missing one of the larger teeth right under his nose, so that he whistled when he spoke. Just another freebooter on land rather than sea.
“Four, then, Mistress,” he said, cocking his eye at America.
She slid behind the door and peered from its edge.
Cullah said, “That means you’d be here until after January? And, the man who wrote these orders for you, did he not reckon we have nine people already in this house, and another coming? Did he not think to ask whether every corner were already full?”
“I am a corporal, sir. I do as I am told. I do not ask the captain whether he ’as inquired of the ’ome owner of ’is available floor.”
I handed the man his paper. “I have no extra bedding or blankets and I will not do your washing.”
His eyes grew cold as he looked down at me, for he was a short man, but still taller than I. “It says billeting, Mistress. It means accommodating. Your orders are to accommodate six men ’ere in the ’ouse with food and warmth such as can be ’ad. We ’ave no beds on our backs as you can plainly see. An’ you let one o’ ’Is Majesty’s soldiers die of frost lying on your floor, it’s ’im that’ll pay with ’is neck stretched, I reckon.” He jerked his head at Cullah.
Cullah’s face did not change a whit, as if the threat meant nothing to him. “You will do your own washing and not burden my wife with your dirty drawers. You will keep clean in your person, and above reproach in every action. You will harm no person in my home and you will be polite, chaste, humble, and quiet. I will stand for no profanity under my roof nor in front of my family wherever they may be.”
The corporal put the folded order in his pocket. “You people are right ’andy with the orders. Men? Make off with the rest of you, to the next ’ouse.”
That would be Jacob’s house, I thought. Goody Carnegie’s collapsing house, empty and unkempt. I said nothing. If they meant to stay there, they would have to fend for themselves, indeed. My mind was already humming, trying to think where we should put them all. Six men in my house! Six men would fill up the house with no one else there, and there was America to think of, her young and untouched state, how to keep her safe from any ill-meant attentions. The stair to the attic could not be guarded from our room. She would have to sleep in the top room of our little tower. It was but a closet, meant to use to see across the landscape and down the road a small way, not large enough even for a girl as slight as America to stretch her legs. It was reachable by passage through our bedroom. I would put the children into two rooms rather than three.