I WOKE MUCH LATER beneath a blue-black sky, dry-mouthed, the rasping sigh of Jamie’s breath in my ear. I had been dreaming; one of those pointless dreams of uneasy repetition, that fades at once with the waking but leaves a nasty taste in mouth and mind. Needing both water and relief of my bladder, I squirmed carefully out from under Jamie’s arm, and slid out from between the blankets. He stirred and groaned slightly, snuffling in his sleep, but didn’t wake.
I paused to lay a hand lightly on his forehead. Cool, no fever. Perhaps he was right, then—just a bad cold. I stood up, reluctant to leave the warm sanctuary of our nest, but knowing I couldn’t wait until morning.
The songs were stilled, the fire smaller now, but still burning, kept up by the sentry on duty. It was Murdo Lindsay; I could see the white fur of his possum-skin cap, perched atop what looked like a huddled pile of clothing and blankets. The anonymous Glaswegian crouched on the other side of the clearing, musket on his knees; he nodded to me, face shadowed by the brim of his slouch hat. The white cap turned in my direction too, at the sound of my step. I sketched a wave, and Murdo nodded toward me, then turned back toward the wood.
The men lay in a shrouded circle, buried in their blankets. I felt a sudden qualm as I walked between them. With the spell of night and dreams still on me, I shivered at sight of the silent forms, lying so still, side by side. Just so had they laid the bodies at Amiens. At Preston. Still and shrouded, side by side, faces covered and anonymous. War seldom looks on the faces of its dead.
And why should I wake from love’s embrace, thinking of war and the sleeping ranks of dead men? I wondered, stepping lightly past the shrouded line of bodies. Well, that was simple enough, given our errand. We were headed for battle—if not now, then soon enough.
One blanket-wrapped form grunted, coughed, and turned over, face invisible, indistinguishable from the others. The movement startled me, but then one big foot thrust free of the blanket, revealing Evan Lindsay’s twine-wrapped shoe. I felt the anxious burden of imagination ease, with this evidence of life, of individuality.
It’s the anonymity of war that makes the killing possible. When the nameless dead are named again on tombstone and on cenotaph, then they regain the identity they lost as soldiers, and take their place in grief and memory, the ghosts of sons and lovers. Perhaps this journey would end in peace. The conflict that was coming, though . . . the world would hear of that, and I stepped past the last of the sleeping men, as though walking through an evil dream not fully waked from.
I picked up a canteen from the ground near the saddlebags and drank deep. The water was piercingly cold, and my somber thoughts began to dissipate, washed away by the sweet, clean taste of it. I paused, gasping from the coldness, and wiped my mouth.
Best take some back to Jamie; if he wasn’t wakened by my absence, he would be by my return, and I knew his mouth would be dry as well, since he was completely unable to breathe through his nose at the moment. I slung the strap of the canteen over my shoulder and stepped into the shelter of the wood.
It was cold under the trees, but the air was still and crystal clear. The shadows that had seemed sinister viewed from the fireside were oddly reassuring, seen from the shelter of the wood. Turned away from the fire’s glow and crackle, my eyes and ears began to adapt to the dark. I heard the rustle of something small in the dried grass nearby, and the unexpected distant hooting of an owl.
Finished, I stood still for a few minutes, enjoying the momentary solitude. It was very cold, but very peaceful. Jamie had been right, I thought; whatever might or might not have been here earlier, the wood held nothing inimical now.
As though my thought of him had summoned him, I heard a cautious footfall, and the slow, wheezing rasp of his breath. He coughed, a muffled, strangled noise that I didn’t like at all.
“Here I am,” I said softly. “How’s the chest?”
The cough choked off in a sudden wheeze of panic, and there was a crunch and flurry among the leaves. I saw Murdo start up by the fire, musket in hand, and then a dark shape darted past me.
“Hoy!” I said, startled rather than frightened. The shape stumbled, and by reflex, I swung the canteen off my shoulder and whirled it by the strap. It struck the figure in the back with a hollow thunk! and whoever it was—certainly not Jamie—fell to his knees, coughing.
There followed a short period of chaos, with men exploding out of their blankets like startled jack-in-the-boxes, incoherent shouting, and general mayhem. The Glaswegian leaped over several struggling bodies and charged into the wood, musket over his head, bellowing. Barreling into the darkness, he charged the first shape he saw, which happened to be me. I went flying headlong into the leaves, where I ended inelegantly sprawled and windless, the Glaswegian kneeling on my stomach.
I must have given a sufficiently feminine grunt as I fell, for he paused, narrowly checking himself as he was about to club me in the head.
“Eh?” He put down his free hand and felt cautiously. Feeling what was unmistakably a breast, he jerked back as though burned, and slowly edged off me.
“Err . . . hmm!” he said.
“Whoof,” I replied, as cordially as possible. The stars were spinning overhead, shining brightly through the leafless branches. The Glaswegian disappeared, with a small Scottish noise of embarrassment. There was a lot of shouting and crashing, off to my left, but I hadn’t attention for anything at the moment bar getting my wind back.
By the time I made it back onto my feet, the intruder had been captured and dragged into the light of the fire.
Had he not been coughing when I hit him, he likely would have gotten away. As it was, though, he was hacking and wheezing so badly that he could barely stand upright, and his face was dark with the effort to snatch a breath in passing. The veins on his forehead stood out like worms, and he made an eerie whistling noise as he breathed—or tried to.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Jamie demanded hoarsely, then paused to cough in sympathy.
This was a purely rhetorical question, since the boy plainly couldn’t talk. It was Josiah Beardsley, my potential tonsillectomy patient, and whatever he’d been doing since the Gathering, it hadn’t improved his health to any marked extent.
I hurried to the fire, where the coffeepot sat in the embers. I seized it in a fold of my shawl and shook it. Good, there was some left, and since it had been brewing since supper, it would be strong as Hades.
“Sit him down, loosen his clothes, bring me cold water!” I shoved my way into the circle of men around the captive, forcing them aside with the hot coffeepot.
Within a moment or two, I had a mug of strong coffee at his lips, black and tarry, diluted with no more than a splash of cold water to keep it from burning his mouth.
“Breathe out slowly to the count of four, breathe in to the count of two, breathe out and take a drink,” I said. The whites of his eyes showed all round the iris, and spittle had collected at the corners of his mouth. I put a firm hand on his shoulder though, urging him to breathe, to count, to breathe—and the desperate straining eased a little.
One sip, one breath, one sip, one breath, and by the time the coffee was all inside him, his face had faded from its alarming crimson hue to something more approximating fish belly, with a couple of faint reddish marks where the men had hit him. The air still whistled in his lungs, but he was breathing, which was a substantial improvement.
The men stood about murmuring and watching with interest, but it was cold, it was late, and as the excitement of the capture faded, they began to droop and yawn. It was, after all, only a lad, and a scrawny, ill-favored one at that. They departed willingly enough to their blankets when Jamie dispatched them, leaving Jamie and me to attend to our unexpected guest.
I had him swaddled in spare blankets, larded with camphorated bear grease, and provided with another cup of coffee in his hands, before I would let Jamie question him. The boy seemed deeply embarrassed at my attentions, shoulders hunched and eyes on the ground, but I didn’t know whether he was simply unused to being fussed over, or whether it was the looming presence of Jamie, arms crossed, that discomfited him.
He was small for fourteen, and thin to the point of emaciation; I could have counted his ribs when I opened his shirt to listen to his heart. No beauty otherwise; his black hair had been chopped short, and stood on his head in matted spikes, thick with dirt, grease, and sweat, and his general aspect was that of a flea-ridden monkey, eyes large and black in a face pinched with worry and suspicion.
At last having done all I could, I was satisfied with the look of him. At my nod, Jamie lowered himself to the ground beside the boy.
“So, Mr. Beardsley,” he said pleasantly. “Have ye come to join our troop of militia, then?”
“Ah . . . no.” Josiah rolled the wooden cup between his hands, not looking up. “I . . . uh . . . my business chanced to take me this way, that’s all.” He spoke so hoarsely that I winced in sympathy, imagining the soreness of his inflamed throat.
“I see.” Jamie’s voice was low and friendly. “So ye saw our fire by chance, and thought to come and seek shelter and a meal?”
“I did, aye.” He swallowed, with evident difficulty.
“Mmphm. But ye came earlier, no? You were in the wood just after sundown. Why wait ’til past moonrise to make yourself known?”
“I didn’t . . . I wasn’t . . .”
“Oh, indeed ye were.” Jamie’s voice was still friendly, but firm. He put out a hand and grasped Josiah’s shirtfront, forcing the boy to look at him.
“Look ye, man. There’s a bargain between us. You’re my tenant; it’s agreed. That means you’ve a right to my protection. It means also that I’ve a right to hear the truth.”
Josiah looked back, and while there was fear and wariness in the look, there was also a sense of self-possession that seemed far older than fourteen. He made no effort to look away, and there was a look of deep calculation in the clever black eyes.
This child—if one could regard him as a child; plainly Jamie didn’t—was used to relying on himself alone.
“I said to you, sir, that I would come to your place by the New Year, and so I mean to. What I do in the meantime is my own affair.”
Jamie’s brows shot up, but he nodded slowly, and released his grip.
“True enough. You’ll admit, though, that one might be curious.”
The boy opened his mouth as though to speak, but changed his mind and buried his nose instead in his cup of coffee.
Jamie tried again.
“May we offer you help in your business? Will ye travel a ways with us, at least?”
Josiah shook his head.
“No. I am obliged to you, sir, but the business is best managed by myself alone.”
Roger had not gone to sleep, but sat a little behind Jamie, watching silently. He leaned forward now, green eyes intent on the boy.
“This business of yours,” he said. “It’s not by any means connected with that mark on your thumb?”
The cup hit the ground and coffee splashed up, spattering my face and bodice. The boy was out of his blankets and halfway across the clearing before I could blink my eyes to see what was happening—and by then, Jamie was up and after him. The boy had circled the fire; Jamie leaped over it. They disappeared into the wood like fox and hound, leaving Roger and myself gaping after them.
For the second time that night, men erupted from their bedrolls, grabbing for their guns. I began to think the Governor would be pleased with his militia; they were certainly ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice.
“What in hell . . . ?” I said to Roger, wiping coffee from my eyebrows.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it so suddenly,” he said.
“Wha? Wha? What’s amiss, then?” bellowed Murdo Lindsay, glaring round as he swept his musket barrel past the shadowed trees.
“Are we attacked? Where’s the bastards?” Kenny popped up on hands and knees beside me, peering out from under the band of his knitted cap like a toad beneath a watering pot.
“Nobody. Nothing’s happened. I mean—it’s really quite all right!”
My efforts to calm and explain went largely unnoticed in the racket. Roger, however, being much larger and much louder, succeeded at last in quelling the disturbance and explaining matters—so far as they could be explained. What did a lad more or less matter? With considerable grumbling, the men settled down once more, leaving Roger and me staring at each other over the coffeepot.
“What was it, then?” I asked, a little testily.
“The mark? I’m pretty sure it was the letter ‘T’—I saw it when you made him take the coffee and he wrapped his hand round the cup.”
My stomach tightened. I knew what that meant; I’d seen it before.
“Thief,” Roger said, eyes on my face. “He’s been branded.”
“Yes,” I said unhappily. “Oh, dear.”
“Would the folk on the Ridge not accept him, if they knew?” Roger asked.
“I doubt most of them would be much bothered,” I said. “It’s not that; it’s that he ran when you mentioned it. He isn’t just a convicted thief—I’m afraid he may be a fugitive. And Jamie called him, at the Gathering.”
“Ah.” Roger scratched absently at his whiskers. “Earbsachd. Jamie will feel obliged to him in some way, then?”
“Something like that.”
Roger was a Scot, and—technically, at least—a Highlander. But he had been born long after the death of the clans, and neither history nor heritage could ever have taught him the strength of the ancient bonds between laird and tenant, between chief and clansman. Most likely, Josiah himself had no idea of the importance of the earbsachd—of what had been promised and accepted on both sides. Jamie had.
“Do you think Jamie will catch him?” Roger asked.
“I expect he already has. He can’t be tracking the boy in the dark, and if he’d lost him, he would have come back already.”
There were other possibilities—that Jamie had fallen over a precipice in the dark, tripped on a stone and broken his leg, or met with a catamount or a bear, for instance—but I preferred not to dwell on those.
I stood up, stretching my cramped limbs, and looked into the woods, where Jamie and his prey had disappeared. Josiah might be a good woodsman and hunter; Jamie had been one much longer. Josiah was small, quick, and impelled by fear; Jamie had a considerable advantage in size, strength, and sheer bloody-mindedness.
Roger stood up beside me. His lean face was slightly troubled, as he peered into the encircling trees.
“It’s taking a long time. If he’s caught the lad, what’s he doing with him?”
“Extracting the truth from him, I imagine,” I said. I bit my lip at the thought. “Jamie doesn’t like being lied to.”
Roger looked down at me, mildly startled.
“How?”
I shrugged.
“However he can.” I’d seen him do it by reason, by guile, with charm, with threats—and on occasion, by means of brute force. I hoped he hadn’t had to use force—though more for his sake than Josiah’s.
“I see,” Roger said quietly. “Well, then.”
The coffeepot was empty; I bundled my cloak round me and went down to the stream to rinse and fill it, hung it to brew once more above the fire, and sat down to wait.
“You should go to sleep,” I said to Roger, after a few minutes. He merely smiled at me, wiped his nose, and hunched deeper into his cloak.
“So should you,” he said.
There was no wind, but it was very late, and the cold had settled well into the hollow, lying damp and heavy on the ground. The men’s blankets had grown limp with condensation, and I could feel the dense chill of the ground seeping through the folds of my skirt. I thought about retrieving my breeches, but couldn’t muster the energy to search for them. The excitement of Josiah’s appearance and escape had faded, and the lethargy of cold and fatigue was setting in.
Roger poked up the fire a bit, and added a few small chunks of wood. I tucked another fold of skirt beneath my thighs and pulled cloak and shawl close around me, burying my hands in the folds of fabric. The coffeepot hung steaming, the hiss of occasional droplets falling into the fire punctuating the phlegm-filled snores of the sleeping men.
I wasn’t seeing the blanket-rolled shapes, though, or hearing the sough of dark pines. I heard the crackle of dried leaves in a Scottish oak wood, in the hills above Carryarrick. We had camped there, two days before Prestonpans, with thirty men from Lallybroch—on our way to join Charles Stuart’s army. And a young boy had come suddenly out of the dark; a knife had glinted in the light of a fire.
A different place, a different time. I shook myself, trying to dispel the sudden memories: a thin white face and a boy’s eyes huge with shock and pain. The blade of a dirk, darkening and glowing in the embers of the fire. The smell of gunpowder, sweat, and burning flesh.
“I mean to shoot you,” he had told John Grey. “Head, or heart?” By threat, by guile—by brute force.
That was then; this was now, I told myself. But Jamie would do what he thought he must.
Roger sat quietly, watching the dancing flames and the wood beyond. His eyes were hooded, and I wondered what he was thinking.
“D’you worry for him?” he asked softly, not looking at me.
“What, now? Or ever?” I smiled, though without much humor. “If I did, I’d never rest.”
He turned his head toward me, and a faint smile touched his lips.
“You’re resting now, are you?”
I smiled again, a real one in spite of myself.
“I’m not pacing to and fro,” I answered. “Nor yet wringing my hands.”
One dark eyebrow flicked up.
“Might help keep them warm.”
One of the men stirred, muttering in his wrappings, and we ceased talking for a moment. The coffeepot was boiling; I could hear the soft rumble of the liquid inside.
Whatever could be keeping him? He couldn’t be taking all this time to question Josiah Beardsley—he would either have gotten what answers he required in short order, or he would have let the boy go. No matter what the boy had stolen, it was no concern of Jamie’s—save for the promise of the earbsachd.
The flames were mildly hypnotic; I could look into the wavering glow and see in memory the great fire of the Gathering, the figures dark around it, and the sound of distant fiddles. . . .
“Should I go to look for him?” Roger asked suddenly, low-voiced.
I jerked, startled out of sleepy hypnosis. I rubbed a hand over my face and shook my head to clear it.
“No. It’s dangerous to go into strange woods in the dark, and you couldn’t find him anyway. If he isn’t back by the morning—that will be time enough.”
As the moments wore slowly on, I began to think that the dawn might come before Jamie did. I was worried for Jamie—but there was in fact nothing that could be done before the morning. Disquieting thoughts tried to push their way in; did Josiah have a knife? Surely he did. But even if the boy was desperate enough to use it, could he possibly take Jamie by surprise? I pushed aside these anxious speculations, trying to occupy my mind instead with counting the number of coughs from the men around the fire.
Number eight was Roger; a deep, loose cough that shook his shoulders. Was he worried for Bree and Jemmy? I wondered. Or did he wonder whether Bree worried about him? I could have told him that, but it wouldn’t have helped him to know. Men fighting—or preparing to fight—needed the idea of home as a place of utter safety; the conviction that all was well there kept them in good heart and on their feet, marching, enduring. Other things would make them fight, but fighting is such a small part of warfare. . . .
A damned important part, Sassenach, said Jamie’s voice in the back of my head.
I began at last to nod off, waking repeatedly as my head jerked sharply on my neck. The last time, it was the feel of hands on my shoulders that wakened me, but only briefly. Roger eased me to the ground, wadding half my shawl beneath my head for a pillow, tucking the rest of it snug about my shoulders. I caught a brief glimpse of him in silhouette against the fire, black and bearlike in his cloak, and then I knew no more.
I DON’T KNOW how long I slept; I woke quite suddenly, at the sound of an explosive sneeze nearby. Jamie was sitting a few feet away, holding Josiah Beardsley’s wrist in one hand, his dirk in the other. He paused long enough to sneeze twice more, wiped his nose impatiently on his sleeve, then thrust the dirk into the embers of the fire.
I caught the stink of hot metal, and raised myself abruptly on one elbow. Before I could say or do anything, something twitched and moved against me. I looked down in astonishment, then up, then down again, convinced in my muddled state that I was still dreaming.
A young boy lay under my cloak, curled against my body, sound asleep. I saw black hair and a scrawny frame, a pallid skin smeared with grime and grazed with scratches. Then there was a sudden loud hiss from the fire and I jerked my gaze back to see Jamie press Josiah’s thumb against the searing metal of his blackened dirk.
Jamie glimpsed my convulsive movement from the corner of his eye and scowled in my direction, lips pursed in a silent adjuration to stillness. Josiah’s face was contorted, lips drawn back from his teeth in agony—but he made no noise. On the far side of the fire, Kenny Lindsay sat watching, silent as a rock.
Still convinced that I was dreaming—or hoping that I was—I put a hand on the boy curled against me. He moved again, and the feel of solid flesh under my fingers woke me completely. My hand closed on his shoulder, and his eyes sprang open, wide with alarm.
He jerked away, scrambling awkwardly to get to his feet. Then he saw his brother—for plainly Josiah was his brother—and stopped abruptly, glancing wildly around the clearing, at the scattered men, at Jamie, Roger, and myself.
Ignoring what must have been the frightful pain of a burned hand, Josiah rose from his seat and stepped quick and soft to his brother’s side, taking him by the arm.
I got to my feet, moving slowly so as not to frighten them. They watched me, identical looks of wariness on the thin, white faces. Identical. Yes, just the same pinched faces—though the other boy’s hair was worn long. He was dressed in nothing but a ragged shirt, and he was barefoot. I saw Josiah squeeze his brother’s arm in reassurance, and began to suspect just what it was he had stolen. I summoned a smile for the two of them, then stretched out my hand to Josiah.
“Let me see your hand,” I whispered.
He hesitated a moment, then gave me his right hand. It was a nice, neat job; so neat that it made me slightly faint for a moment. The ball of the thumb had been sliced cleanly off, the open wound cauterized with searing metal. A red-black, crusted oval had replaced the incriminating brand.
There was a soft movement behind me; Roger had fetched my medicine box and set it down by my feet.
There wasn’t a great deal to do for the injury, save apply a little gentian ointment and bandage the thumb with a clean, dry cloth. I was conscious of Jamie as I worked; he had sheathed his dirk and risen quietly, to go and rummage among the packs and saddlebags. By the time I had finished my brief job, he was back, with a small bundle of food wrapped in a kerchief, and a spare blanket tied in a roll. Over his arm were my discarded breeches.
He handed these to the new boy, gave the food and blanket to Josiah, then clapped a hand on the boy’s shoulder, and squeezed hard. He touched the other boy gently, turning him toward the wood with a hand on his back. Then he jerked his head toward the trees, and Josiah nodded. He touched his forehead to me, the bandage glinting white on his thumb, and whispered, “Thank’ee, ma’am.”
The two boys disappeared silently into the forest, the twin’s bare feet winking pale below the flapping hem of the breeks as he followed his brother.
Jamie nodded to Kenny, then sat down again by the fire, shoulders slumping in sudden exhaustion. I poured him coffee and he took it, his mouth twitching in an attempted smile of acknowledgment that dissipated in a fit of heavy coughing.
I reached for the cup before it could spill, and caught Roger’s eye over Jamie’s shoulder. He nodded toward the east, and laid a finger across his lips, then shrugged with a grimace of resignation. He wanted as much as I did to know what had just happened—and why. He was right, though; the night was fading. Dawn would be here soon, and the men—all accustomed to wake at first light—would be floating toward the surface of consciousness.
Jamie had stopped coughing, but was making horrible gurgling noises in an attempt to clear his throat—he sounded rather like a pig drowning in mud.
“Here,” I whispered, giving him back the cup. “Drink it, and lie down. You should sleep a little.”
He shook his head and lifted the cup to his lips. He swallowed, grimacing at the bitterness.
“Not worth it,” he croaked. He nodded toward the east, where the tufted pines were now inked black on a graying sky. “And besides, I’ve got to think what the hell to do now.”