THE WATER WAS COLD, but not numbing, and the pull of the tidal current wasn’t great yet. Still, the injury to his throat and the searing of the canebrake fire had left him much shorter of breath than he used to be, and Roger found himself obliged to bob to the surface and gasp for air with every three or four strokes.
Ruby lips, above the water, he sang ironically to himself, blowing bubb-les soft and fine . . . He drew in a gulp of air, and trod water, listening. He had headed toward the south side of the landing first, but had heard voices above, and so reversed direction. He was just under the north edge of the wharf now, hidden in the deep shadow by the Russians’ boat.
The smell of pigs was overwhelming, and he could hear muffled thumps and grunts from the hold, coming through the wood beside him. Christ, had they sailed that tiny craft all the way from Russia? It looked it; the wood was battered and dented.
No sound of voices nearby. It was raining hard, shushing into the Sound; that would help cover any racket he made. Ready, steady, go, then. He took a great lungful of air and launched himself into the rainy light beyond the landing.
He swam desperately, trying not to splash, expecting a musket ball between the shoulder blades every moment. He blundered into the weeds, felt the grasp and slash of sawgrass on arm and leg, rolled half-over, gasping, salt burning in the cuts, and then was on his hands and knees, crawling through the growth of marsh plants, black needlerushes waving over his head, rain pounding on his back, the water lapping just below his chin.
He stopped at last, chest heaving with the need for air, and wondered what in hell to do next. It was good to be out of the shed, but he hadn’t a plan for what happened now. Find Jamie, he supposed—if he could, without being caught again.
As though the thought had drawn attention to him, he heard the slosh and swish of someone walking slowly through the marsh nearby. Searching. He froze, hoping the rain would cover the sound of his breath, loud and rasping in his ears.
Closer. Damn, they were coming closer. He fumbled at his belt, but he had lost the dirk, somewhere in his swimming. He got one knee up under his chin, braced himself to spring and run.
The grass above him swept suddenly away, and he leaped to his feet, just in time to avoid the spear that sliced into the water where he’d lain.
The spear quivered in front of him, six inches from his face. On the other side of it, a black man gaped at him, eyes saucered in amazement. The Negro closed his mouth, blinked at him, and spoke in tones of deepest accusation.
“You ain’t no possum!”
“No,” said Roger, mildly. “I’m not.” He brushed a trembling hand down his chest, assuring himself that his heart was still inside it. “Sorry.”
PHILLIP WYLIE LOOKED a great deal different at home, Roger thought, than he did in society. Attired for pig-catching in loose breeks and a farmer’s smock, damp with rain, and minus any trace of wig, paint, powder, or patches, he was still elegantly slender, but looked quite normal, and reasonably competent. He also looked somewhat more intelligent, though his mouth did tend to keep dropping open, and he did insist on breaking into Jamie’s account with questions and expostulations.
“Lillywhite? Randall Lillywhite? But what can he—”
“Concentrate, man,” Jamie said impatiently. “I’m telling ye now, and I’ll tell ye more later, but he and yon sheriff are like to be carving up your Russians like a set of Christmas hams, and we dinna go and tend to the matter this minute.”
Wylie glared at Jamie, then looked suspiciously at Roger, who was standing under the cover of the forest, half-naked, soaking wet, and covered with blood-streaked mud.
“He’s right,” Roger croaked, then coughed, cleared his throat, and repeated it, more firmly. “He’s right; there’s not much time.”
Wylie’s lips compressed into a thin line, and he exhaled strongly through his nose. He looked round at his slaves, as though counting them; a half-dozen men, all carrying stout sticks. One or two had cane-knives at their belts. Wylie nodded, making up his mind.
“Come on, then.”
Avoiding the telltale crunching of the shell-road, they made slow but steady progress through the marsh.
“Why pigs?” He heard Jamie ask curiously, as he and Wylie forged ahead of the group.
“Not pigs,” Wylie replied. “Russian boars. For sport.” He spoke rather proudly, swishing his own stick through the thick grass. “Everyone says that of all game, the Russian boar is the fiercest and most wily opponent. I propose to release them in the woods on my property and allow them to breed.”
“Ye mean to hunt them?” Jamie sounded mildly incredulous. “Have ye ever hunted a boar?”
Roger saw Wylie’s shoulders stiffen under his damp smock at the question. The rain had slackened, but was still coming down.
“No,” he said. “Not yet. Have you?”
“Yes,” Jamie said, but wisely didn’t amplify the answer.
As they drew near the landing, Roger caught a glimpse of movement beyond. The smaller boat was pulling away.
“They’ve given up looking for me or the whisky, and sent their men away.” Jamie wiped a hand down his face, slicking the rain off. “What say ye, Wylie? There’s no time to lose. The Russians are in the main shed, on the wharf.”
Once decided, Wylie was no ditherer.
“Storm the place,” he said shortly.
He waved a hand, beckoning his slaves to follow, and headed for the landing at a trot. The whole party swerved onto the shell-road, thundering toward the wharf with a noise like an avalanche. That ought to give Lillywhite and Anstruther pause in their murdering, Roger thought. They sounded like an approaching army.
Barefoot, Roger kept to the marshy ground, and was in consequence slower than the rest. He saw a startled face peer out between the sheds, and quickly withdraw.
Jamie saw it too, and gave one of his wild Highland cries. Wylie jerked, startled, but then joined in, bellowing “Get out of it, you bastards!” Thus encouraged, the Negroes all began shouting and bellowing, waving their sticks with enthusiasm as they charged the landing.
It was something of an anticlimax to arrive on the wharf and find no one there save the captive Russians, who narrowly missed beheading Phillip Wylie when he imprudently shoved open the door to their prison without announcing himself.
A brief search of the Russian boat and the surrounding marsh turned up no trace of Lillywhite and Anstruther.
“Most like they swim for it,” one of the Negroes said, returning from the search. He nodded across the channel, toward the tangle of the sandbars, and fingered his spear. “We go hunt them?” It was the man who had discovered Roger, evidently still eager to try his luck.
“They didn’t swim,” Wylie said shortly. He gestured at the tiny beach near the landing, an empty stretch of oyster shells. “They’ve taken my boat, blast them.”
He turned away, disgusted, and began to give orders for unloading and penning the Russian boars. Chemodurow and his family had already been taken off to the plantation house, with the girls alternating between amazement at the black slaves and coy looks at Roger, who had retrieved his shirt and shoes, but whose breeches were still plastered to his body.
One of the slaves appeared from the shed with an armful of discarded weaponry, recalling Wylie temporarily to the duties of a host.
“I am obliged to you for your help in preserving my property, sir,” he said to Jamie. He bowed, rather stiffly. “Will you not allow me to offer you and Mr. MacKenzie my hospitality?” He didn’t sound thrilled about it, Roger noted, but still, he’d offered.
“I am obliged to you, sir, for your help in preserving our lives,” Jamie said with equal stiffness, returning the bow. “And I thank ye, but—”
“We’d be delighted,” Roger interrupted. “Thanks.” He gave Wylie a firm handshake, surprising him very much, and grabbed Jamie by the arm, steering him toward the shell-road before he could protest. There were times and places to be on your high horse, he supposed, but this wasn’t one of them.
“Look, ye havena got to kiss the man’s bum,” he said, in response to Jamie’s mutterings, as they slogged toward the forest. “Let his butler give us a dry towel and a bit of lunch, and we’ll be off while he’s still busy with his boars. I’ve had no breakfast, and neither have you. And if we’ve got to walk to Edenton, I’m no doing it on an empty belly.”
The mention of food seemed to go some way toward restoring Jamie’s equanimity, and as they reached the semi-shelter of the wood, a mood of almost giddy cheerfulness had sprung up between them. Roger wondered if this was the sort of way you felt after a battle; the sheer relief of finding yourself alive and unwounded made you want to laugh and arse about, just to prove you still could.
By unspoken consent, they left discussion of recent events—and speculation as to the present whereabouts of Stephen Bonnet—for later.
“Russian boars, for Christ’s sake,” Jamie said, shaking himself like a dog as they paused under the shelter of the wood. “And I doubt the man’s ever seen a boar in his life! Ye’d think he could manage to kill himself without going to such expense about it.”
“Aye, what d’ye think it must have cost? More money than we’ll see in ten years, likely, just to haul a lot of pigs . . . what, six thousand miles?” He shook his head, staggered at the thought.
“Well, to be fair about it, they’re more than only pigs,” Jamie said tolerantly. “Did ye not see them?”
Roger had, though only briefly. The slaves had been herding one of the animals across the dock as he’d emerged from the shed with his clothes. It was tall and hairy, with long yellow tushes that looked nasty enough.
It was emaciated from the long sea-voyage, though, its ribs showing and half its bristly pelt rubbed bald. It had obviously not got its landlegs yet, staggering and careening drunkenly on its ridiculous small hooves, eyes rolling, grunting in panic as the slaves shouted and poked at it with their poles. Roger had felt quite sorry for it.
“Oh, they’re big enough, aye,” he said. “And I suppose once they’re filled out a bit, they’d be something to see. I wonder how they’ll like this, though, after Russia?” He waved a hand at the damp, scrubby wood around them. The air was moist with rain, but the trees blocked most of the downfall, leaving it dark and resin-smelling under the low canopy of scrub oak and scraggy pines. Twigs and acorn caps crunched pleasantly under their boots on the sandy earth.
“Well, there are acorns and roots aplenty,” Jamie observed, “and the odd Negro now and then, for a treat. I expect they’ll do well enough.”
Roger laughed, and Jamie grunted in amusement.
“Ye think I’m jesting, aye? Ye’ll not have hunted boar, either, I suppose.”
“Mmphm. Well, perhaps Mr. Wylie will invite us to come and—”
The back of his head exploded, and everything disappeared.
AT SOME POINT he became aware again. Aware mostly of a pain so great that unconsciousness seemed immensely preferable. But aware too of pebbles and leaves pressing into his face, and of noises nearby. The clash and thud and grunt of men fighting in earnest.
He forced himself toward consciousness, and raised his head, though the effort made colored fireworks go off inside his eyes and made him want very badly to throw up. He braced himself on his folded arms, teeth gritted, and after a moment, his vision cleared, though things were still blurred.
It took a moment to make out what was happening; they were ten feet or so beyond the spot where he lay, with bits of tree and brush obscuring the fight. He caught a muttered “A Dhia!” though, among the panting and grunting, and felt a sharp pang of relief. Jamie was alive, then.
He got to his knees, swaying, and stayed there for a moment, his vision winking in and out of blackness. When it steadied, his head had fallen forward and he was staring at the ground. His sword lay a few feet away, half-covered with scuffed sand and leaves. One of his pistols was with it, but he didn’t bother with that; he couldn’t hold it steady, even if the powder were still dry enough to fire.
He scrabbled and fumbled, but once he’d got his hand wedged into the basket of the sword’s hilt, he felt a little better; he wouldn’t drop it, now. Something wet was running down his neck—blood, rain? It didn’t matter. He staggered, clutched a tree with his free hand, blinked away the blackness, took another step.
He felt like the boar, unfamiliar ground shifting and treacherous under his feet. He trod on something that rolled and gave way, and he fell, landing hard on one elbow.
He turned awkwardly over, hampered by the sword, and found that he had stepped on Anstruther’s leg. The Sheriff was lying on his back, mouth open, looking surprised. There was a large rip in his neck, and a lot of blood had soaked into the sand around him, rusty and stinking.
He recoiled, and the shock of it got him on his feet, with no memory of having stood up. Lillywhite’s back was to him, the linen of his shirt wet and sticking to his flesh. He lunged, grunting, then flung back, beat, riposted . . .
Roger shook his head, trying to clear it of the idiotic terms of swordsmanship, then stopped, gasping with pain. Jamie’s face was set in a maniac half-grin, teeth bared with effort as he followed his opponent’s weapon. He’d seen Roger, though.
“Roger!” he shouted, breathless with the fight. “Roger, a charaid!”
Lillywhite didn’t turn, but flung himself forward, feinting, beating away, lunging back in tierce.
“Not . . . stupid . . .” he gasped.
Roger realized dimly that Lillywhite thought Jamie was bluffing, trying to make him turn around. His vision was flickering round the edges again, and he grabbed for a tree, gripping hard to stay upright. The foliage was wet; his grip was slipping.
“Hey . . .” he called hoarsely, unable to think of any words. He raised his sword, the tip trembling. “Hey!”
Lillywhite stepped back and whirled around, eyes wide with shock. Roger lunged blindly, with no aim, but with all the power left in his body behind it.
The sword went into Lillywhite’s eye, and a slithering crunch ran up Roger’s arm, as metal scraped bone and went through to something softer, where it stuck. He tried to let go, but his hand was trapped in the basket-hilt. Lillywhite went stiff, and Roger could feel the man’s life run straight down the sword, through his hand, and up his arm, swift and shocking as an electric current.
Panicked, he jerked and twisted, trying to get the sword free. Lillywhite spasmed, went limp, and fell toward him, flopping like a huge dead fish as Roger wrenched and yanked, vainly trying to free himself from the sword.
Then Jamie seized him by the wrist and got him loose, got an arm around him, and led him away, stumbling and blind with panic and pain. Held his head and rubbed his back, murmuring nonsense in Gaelic while he puked and heaved. Wiped his face and neck with handsful of wet leaves, wiped the snot from his nose with the wet sleeve of his shirt.
“You okay?” Roger mumbled, somewhere in the midst of this.
“Aye, fine,” Jamie said, and patted him again. “You’re fine, too, all right?”
At length he was on his feet again. His head had gone past the point of pain; it still hurt, but the pain seemed a separate thing from himself, hovering somewhere nearby, but not actually touching him.
Lillywhite lay face-up in the leaves. Roger closed his eyes and swallowed. He heard Jamie mutter something under his breath, and then a grunt, a rustling of leaves, and a small thud. When Roger opened his eyes, Lillywhite was lying face-down, the back of his shirt smeared with sand and acorn hulls.
“Come on.” Jamie got him under the arm, pulled the arm over his shoulder. Roger lifted his free hand, waved it vaguely toward the bodies.
“Them. What should we do with . . . them?”
“Leave them for the pigs.”
Roger could walk by himself by the time they left the wood, though he had a tendency to drift to one side or the other, unable to steer quite straight as yet. Wylie’s house lay before them, a handsome construction in red brick. They picked their way across the lawn, ignoring the stares of several house-servants, who clustered at the upstairs windows, pointing down at them and murmuring to one another.
“Why?” Roger asked, stopping for a moment to shake some of the leaves from his shirt. “Did they say?”
“No.” Jamie pulled a soggy wad of cloth that had once been a handkerchief from his sleeve and swished it in the ornamental fountain. He used it to mop his face, looked critically at the resultant streaks of filth, and soused it in the fountain again.
“The first I knew was the thud when Anstruther clubbed ye—here, your head’s still bleedin’. I turned round to see ye lyin’ on the ground, and the next instant, a sword came at me out o’ nowhere, right across my ribs. Look at that, will ye?” He poked his fingers through a large rent in his shirt, wiggling them. “I ducked behind a tree, and barely got my own blade out in time. But neither of them said a word at all.”
Roger pressed the proffered handkerchief gingerly to the back of his head. He sucked air through his teeth with a hiss as the cold water touched the wound.
“Shit. Is it only that my head’s cracked, or does that make no sense? Why in Christ’s name try so hard to kill us?”
“Because they wanted us dead,” Jamie said logically, turning up his sleeves to wash his hands in the fountain. “Or someone else does.”
The pain had decided to take up residence in Roger’s head again. He was feeling sick again.
“Stephen Bonnet?”
“If I were a gambling man, I’d put good odds on it.”
Roger closed one eye in order to correct a tendency for there to be two of Jamie.
“You are a gambling man. I’ve seen ye do it.”
“Well, there ye are, then.”
Jamie ran a hand absently through his matted hair, and turned toward the house. Karina and her sisters had appeared at the window, and were waving ecstatically.
“What I want verra much to know just now is, where is Stephen Bonnet?”
“Wilmington.”
Jamie swung round, frowning at him.
“What?”
“Wilmington,” Roger repeated. He cautiously opened the other eye, but it seemed all right. Only one Jamie. “That’s what Lillywhite said—but I thought he was joking.”
Jamie stared at him for a moment.
“I hope to Christ he was,” he said.
103
AMONG THE MYRTLES
Wilmington
BY CONTRAST WITH FRASER’S RIDGE, Wilmington was a giddy metropolis, and under normal circumstances, the girls and I should have fully enjoyed its delights. Given the absence of Roger and Jamie, and the nature of the errand they were bound upon, though, we were able to find little distraction.
Not that we didn’t try. We lived through the creeping minutes of nights broken by crying children and haunted by imaginations worse than nightmare might be. I was sorry that Brianna had seen as much as she had, after the battle at Alamance; vague imaginings based on fear were bad enough; those based on close acquaintance with the look of ruined flesh, of smashed bone and staring eyes, were a good deal worse.
Rising heavy-eyed amid a crumple of discarded clothes and stale linen, we fed and dressed the children and went out to seek what mental respite might be found during the day in the distractions of horse-racing, shopping, or the competing musicales hosted once a week—on successive evenings—by Mrs. Crawford and Mrs. Dunning, the two most prominent hostesses in town.
Mrs. Dunning’s evening had taken place the day after Roger and Jamie left. Performances upon the harp, violin, harpsichord, and flute were interspersed with recitations of poetry—at least it was referred to as poetry—and “Songs, both Comick and Tragick,” sung by Mr. Angus McCaskill, the popular and courteous proprietor of the largest ordinary in Wilmington.
The Tragick songs were actually much funnier than the Comick ones, owing to Mr. McCaskill’s habit of rolling his eyes up into his head during the more lugubrious passages, as though he had the lyrics written on the inside of his skull. I adopted a suitably solemn expression of appreciation, though, biting the inside of my cheek throughout.
Brianna required no such aid to courtesy. She sat staring at all the performances with a countenance of such brooding intensity that it seemed to disconcert a few of the musicians, who eyed her nervously, and edged toward the other side of the room, getting the harpsichord safely between her and them. Her attitude had nothing to do with the performance, I knew, but rather with a reliving of the arguments that had preceded the men’s departure.
These had been prolonged, vigorous, and conducted in low voices, as the four of us walked up and down the quay at sunset. Brianna had been impassioned, eloquent, and ferocious. Jamie had been patient, cool, and immovable. I had kept my mouth shut, for once more stubborn than either of them. I could not in conscience side with Bree; I knew what Stephen Bonnet was. I would not side with Jamie; I knew what Stephen Bonnet was.
I knew what Jamie was, too, and while the thought of his going to deal with Stephen Bonnet was enough to make me feel as though I were hanging from a fraying rope over a bottomless pit, I did know that there were few men better equipped for such a task. For beyond the question of deadly skill, which he certainly had, there was the question of conscience.
Jamie was a Highlander. While the Lord might insist that vengeance was His, no male Highlander of my acquaintance had ever thought it right that the Lord should be left to handle such things without assistance. God had made man for a reason, and high on the list of those reasons was the protection of a family and the defense of its honor—whatever the cost.
What Bonnet had done to Brianna was not a crime that Jamie would ever forgive, let alone forget. And beyond simple vengeance, and the continuing threat that Bonnet might pose to Bree or Jemmy, there was the fact that Jamie felt himself responsible, at least in part, for such harm as Bonnet might do in the world—to our family, or to others. He had helped Bonnet to escape the gallows once; he would not be at peace until he had amended that mistake—and said so.
“Fine!” Brianna had hissed at him, fists clenched at her sides. “So you’ll be at peace. Just fine! And how peaceful do you think Mama and I will be, if you or Roger is dead?”
“Ye’d prefer me to be a coward? Or your husband?”
“Yes!”
“No, ye wouldn’t,” he said with certainty. “Ye only think so now, because ye’re afraid.”
“Of course I’m afraid! So is Mama, only she won’t say so, because she thinks you’ll go anyway!”
“If she does think so, she’s right,” Jamie said, giving me a sidelong look, with a hint of a smile. “She’s known me a long time, aye?”
I glanced at him, but shook my head and turned away, sealing my lips and staring out at the masts of the ships anchored in the harbor while the argument raged on.
Roger had finally put a stop to it.
“Brianna,” he said softly, when she paused for breath. She turned toward him, face anguished, and he touched her shoulder. “I willna have this man in the same world as my children,” he said, still softly, “or my wife. Do we go then with your blessing—or without it?”
She had sucked in her breath, bitten her lip, and turned away. I saw the tears brimming in her eyes, and the working of her throat as she swallowed them. She said no more.
Whatever word of blessing she had given him had been spoken in the night, in the quiet of their bed. I had given Jamie blessing and farewell in that same darkness—still without speaking a word. I couldn’t. He would go, no matter what I said.
Neither of us slept that night; we lay in each other’s arms, silently aware of each breath and shift of body, and when the shutters began to show cracks of gray light, we rose—he to make his preparations, I because I could not lie still and watch him go.
As he left, I stood on tiptoe to kiss him, and whispered the only important thing.
“Come back,” I’d said. He’d smiled at me, smoothing a curl behind my ear.
“Ye ken what I said at Alamance? Well, it’s no today, either, Sassenach. We’ll both be back.”