* * *
To start with he had only been looking for a business that would help to conceal and facilitate the smuggling. Possessed of a sizable sum from a recent profitable venture, he had determined to purchase a business whose normal operations involved a large wagon and team of horses, and some discreet premises that could be used for the temporary storage of goods in transit.
Carting suggested itself, but was rejected precisely because the operations of that business made its practitioners subject to more or less constant scrutiny from the Customs. Likewise, the ownership of a tavern or inn, while superficially desirable because of the large quantities of supplies brought in, was too vulnerable in its legitimate operation to hide an illegitimate one; tax collectors and Customs agents hung about taverns like fleas on a fat dog.
“I thought of printing, when I went to a place to have some notices made up,” he explained. “As I was waiting to put in my order, I saw the wagon come rumbling up, all loaded wi’ boxes of paper and casks of alcohol for the ink powder, and I thought, by God, that’s it! For excisemen would never be troubling a place like that.”
It was only after purchasing the shop in Carfax Close, hiring Geordie to run the press, and actually beginning to fill orders for posters, pamphlets, folios, and books, that the other possibilities of his new business had occurred to him.
“It was a man named Tom Gage,” he explained. He loosed his hand from my grasp, growing eager in the telling, gesturing and rubbing his hands through his hair as he talked, disheveling himself with enthusiasm.
“He brought in small orders for this or that—innocent stuff, all of it—but often, and stayed to talk over it, taking trouble to talk to me as well as to Geordie, though he must have seen I knew less about the business than he did himself.”
He smiled at me wryly.
“I didna ken much about printing, Sassenach, but I do ken men.”
It was obvious that Gage was exploring the sympathies of Alexander Malcolm; hearing the faint sibilance of Jamie’s Highland speech, he had prodded delicately, mentioning this acquaintance and that whose Jacobite sympathies had led them into trouble after the Rising, picking up the threads of mutual acquaintance, skillfully directing the conversation, stalking his prey. Until at last, the amused prey had bluntly told him to bring what he wanted made; no King’s man would hear of it.
“And he trusted you.” It wasn’t a question; the only man who had ever trusted Jamie Fraser in error was Charles Stuart—and in that case, the error was Jamie’s.
“He did.” And so an association was begun, strictly business in the beginning, but deepening into friendship as time went on. Jamie had printed all the materials generated by Gage’s small group of radical political writers—from publicly acknowledged articles to anonymous broadsheets and pamphlets filled with material incriminating enough to get the authors summarily jailed or hanged.
“We’d go to the tavern down the street and talk, after the printing was done. I met a few of Tom’s friends, and finally Tom said I should write a small piece myself. I laughed and told him that with my hand, by the time I’d penned anything that could be read, we’d all be dead—of old age, not hanging.
“I was standing by the press as we were talking, setting the type wi’ my left hand, not even thinking. He just stared at me, and then he started to laugh. He pointed at the tray, and at my hand, and went on laughing, ’til he had to sit down on the floor to stop.”
He stretched out his arms in front of him, flexing his hands and studying them dispassionately. He curled one hand into a fist and bent it slowly up toward his face, making the muscles of his arm ripple and swell under the linen.
“I’m hale enough,” he said. “And with luck, may be so for a good many years yet—but not forever, Sassenach. I ha’ fought wi’ sword and dirk many times, but to every warrior comes the day when his strength will fail him.” He shook his head and stretched out a hand toward his coat, which lay on the floor.
“I took these, that day wi’ Tom Gage, to remind me of it,” he said.
He took my hand and put into it the things he had taken from his pocket. They were cool, and hard to the touch, small heavy oblongs of lead. I didn’t need to feel the incised ends to know what the letters on the type slugs were.
“Q.E.D.,” I said.
“The English took my sword and dirk away,” he said softly. His finger touched the slugs that lay in my palm. “But Tom Gage put a weapon into my hands again, and I think I shall not lay it down.”
* * *
We walked arm in arm down the cobbled slope of the Royal Mile at a quarter to five, suffused with a glow engendered by several bowls of well-peppered oyster stew and a bottle of wine, shared at intervals during our “private communications.”
The city glowed all around us, as though sharing our happiness. Edinburgh lay under a haze that would soon thicken to rain again, but for now, the light of the setting sun hung gold and pink and red in the clouds, and shone in the wet patina of the cobbled street, so that the gray stones of the buildings softened and streamed with reflected light, echoing the glow that warmed my cheeks and shone in Jamie’s eyes when he looked at me.
Drifting down the street in this state of softheaded self-absorption, it was several minutes before I noticed anything amiss. A man, impatient of our meandering progress, stepped briskly around us, and then came to a dead stop just in front of me, making me trip on the wet stones and throw a shoe.
He flung up his head and stared skyward for a moment, then hurried off down the street, not running, but walking as fast as he could go.
“What’s the matter with him?” I said, stooping to retrieve my shoe. Suddenly I noticed that all around us, folk were stopping, staring up, and then starting to rush down the street.
“What do you think—?” I began, but when I turned to Jamie, he too was staring intently upward. I looked up, too, and it took only a moment to see that the red glow in the clouds above was a good deal deeper than the general color of the sunset sky, and seemed to flicker in an uneasy fashion most uncharacteristic of sunsets.
“Fire,” he said. “God, I think it’s in Leith Wynd!”
At the same moment, someone farther down the street raised the cry of “Fire!” and as though this official diagnosis had given them leave to run at last, the hurrying figures below broke loose and cascaded down the street like a herd of lemmings, anxious to fling themselves into the pyre.
A few saner souls ran upwards, past us, also shouting “Fire!” but presumably with the intent of alerting whatever passed for a fire department.
Jamie was already in motion, tugging me along as I hopped awkwardly on one foot. Rather than stop, I kicked the other shoe off, and followed him, slipping and stubbing my toes on the cold wet cobbles as I ran.
The fire was not in Leith Wynd, but next door, in Carfax Close. The mouth of the close was choked with excited onlookers, shoving and craning in an effort to see, shouting incoherent questions at one another. The smell of smoke struck hot and pungent through the damp evening air, and waves of crackling heat beat against my face as I ducked into the close.
Jamie didn’t hesitate, but plunged into the crowd, making a path by main force. I pressed close behind him before the human waves could close again, and elbowed my way through, unable to see anything but Jamie’s broad back ahead of me.
Then we popped out in the front of the crowd, and I could see all too well. Dense clouds of gray smoke rolled out of both the printshop’s lower windows, and I could hear a whispering, crackling noise that rose above the noise of the spectators as though the fire were talking to itself.
“My press!” With a cry of anguish, Jamie darted up the front step and kicked in the door. A cloud of smoke rolled out of the open doorway and engulfed him like a hungry beast. I caught a brief glimpse of him, staggering from the impact of the smoke; then he dropped to his knees and crawled into the building.
Inspired by this example, several men from the crowd ran up the steps of the printshop, and likewise disappeared into the smoke-filled interior. The heat was so intense that I felt my skirts blow against my legs with the wind of it, and wondered how the men could stand it, there inside.
A fresh outbreak of shouting in the crowd behind me announced the arrival of the Town Guard, armed with buckets. Obviously accustomed to this task, the men flung off their wine-red uniform coats and began at once to attack the fire, smashing the windows and flinging pails of water through them with a fierce abandon. Meanwhile, the crowd swelled, its noise augmented by a constant cascade of pattering feet down the many staircases of the close, as families on the upper floors of the surrounding buildings hastily ushered hordes of excited children down to safety.
I couldn’t think that the efforts of the bucket brigade, valiant as they were, would have much effect on what was obviously a fire well underway. I was edging back and forth on the pavement, trying vainly to see anything moving within, when the lead man in the bucket line uttered a startled cry and leaped back, just in time to avoid being crowned by a tray of lead type that whizzed through the broken window and landed on the cobbles with a crash, scattering slugs in all directions.
Two or three urchins wriggled through the crowd and snatched at the slugs, only to be cuffed and driven off by indignant neighbors. One plump lady in a kertch and apron darted forward, risking life and limb, and took custody of the heavy type-tray, dragging it back to the curb, where she crouched protectively over it like a hen on a nest.
Before her companions could scoop up the fallen type, though, they were driven back by a hail of objects that rained from both windows: more type trays, roller bars, inking pads, and bottles of ink, which broke on the pavement, leaving big spidery blotches that ran into the puddles spilled by the fire fighters.
Encouraged by the draft from the open door and windows, the voice of the fire had grown from a whisper into a self-satisfied, chuckling roar. Prevented from flinging water through the windows by the rain of objects being thrown out of them, the leader of the Town Guard shouted to his men, and holding a soaked handkerchief over his nose, ducked and ran into the building, followed by a half-dozen of his fellows.
The line quickly re-formed, full buckets coming hand to hand round the corner from the nearest pump and up the stoop, excited lads snatching the empty buckets that bounced down the step, to race back with them to the pump for refilling. Edinburgh is a stone city, but with so many buildings crammed cheek by jowl, all equipped with multiple hearths and chimneys, fire must be still a frequent occurrence.
Evidently so, for a fresh commotion behind me betokened the belated arrival of the fire engine. The waves of people parted like the Red Sea, to allow passage of the engine, drawn by a team of men rather than horses, which could not have negotiated the tight quarters of the wynds.
The engine was a marvel of brass, glowing like a coal itself in the reflected flames. The heat was becoming more intense; I could feel my lungs dry and labor with each gulp of hot air, and was terrified for Jamie. How long could he breathe, in that hellish fog of smoke and heat, let alone the danger of the flames themselves?
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Ian, forcing his way through the crowd despite his wooden leg, had appeared suddenly by my elbow. He grabbed my arm to keep his balance as another rain of objects forced the people around us back again.
“Where’s Jamie?” he shouted in my ear.
“In there!” I bellowed back, pointing.
There was a sudden bustle and commotion at the door of the printshop, with a confused shouting that rose even over the sound of the fire. Several sets of legs appeared, shuffling to and fro beneath the emergent plume of smoke that billowed from the door. Six men emerged, Jamie among them, staggering under the weight of a huge piece of bulky machinery—Jamie’s precious printing press. They eased it down the step and pushed it well into the crowd, then turned back to the printshop.
Too late for any more rescue maneuvers; there was a crash from inside, a fresh blast of heat that sent the crowd scuttling backward, and suddenly the windows of the upper story were lit with dancing flames inside. A small stream of men issued from the building, coughing and choking, some of them crawling, blackened with soot and dampened with the sweat of their efforts. The engine crew pumped madly, but the thick stream of water from their hose made not the slightest impression on the fire.
Ian’s hand clamped down on my arm like the jaws of a trap.
“Ian!” he shrieked, loud enough to be heard above the noises of crowd and fire alike.
I looked up in the direction of his gaze, and saw a wraithlike shape at the second-story window. It seemed to struggle briefly with the sash, and then to fall back or be enveloped in the smoke.
My heart leapt into my mouth. There was no telling whether the shape was indeed Young Ian, but it was certainly a human form. Ian had lost no time in gaping, but was stumping toward the door of the printshop with all the speed his leg would allow.
“Wait!” I shouted, running after him.
Jamie was leaning on the printing press, chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath and thank his assistants at the same time.
“Jamie!” I snatched at his sleeve, ruthlessly jerking him away from a red-faced barber, who kept excitedly wiping sooty hands on his apron, leaving long black streaks among the smears of dried soap and the spots of blood.
“Up there!” I shouted, pointing. “Young Ian’s upstairs!”
Jamie stepped back, swiping a sleeve across his blackened face, and stared wildly at the upper windows. Nothing was to be seen but the roiling shimmer of the fire against the panes.
Ian was struggling in the hands of several neighbors who sought to prevent his entering the shop.
“No, man, ye canna go in!” the Guard captain cried, trying to grasp Ian’s flailing hands. “The staircase has fallen, and the roof will go next!”
Despite his stringy build and the handicap of his leg, Ian was tall and vigorous, and the feeble grasp of his well-meaning Town Guard captors—mostly retired pensioners from the Highland regiments—was no match for his mountain-hardened strength, reinforced as it was by parental desperation. Slowly but surely, the whole confused mass jerked by inches up the steps of the printshop as Ian dragged his would-be rescuers with him toward the flames.
I felt Jamie draw breath, gulping air as deep as he could with his seared lungs, and then he was up the steps as well, and had Ian round the waist, dragging him back.
“Come down, man!” he shouted hoarsely. “Ye’ll no manage—the stair is gone!” He glanced round, saw me, and thrust Ian bodily backward, off-balance and staggering, into my arms. “Hold him,” he shouted, over the roar of the flames. “I’ll fetch down the lad!”
With that, he turned and dashed up the steps of the adjoining building, pushing his way through the patrons of the ground-floor chocolate shop, who had emerged onto the pavement to gawk at the excitement, pewter cups still clutched in their hands.
Following Jamie’s example, I locked my arms tight around Ian’s waist and didn’t let go. He made an abortive attempt to follow Jamie, but then stopped and stood rigid in my arms, his heart beating wildly just under my cheek.
“Don’t worry,” I said, pointlessly. “He’ll do it; he’ll get him out. He will. I know he will.”
Ian didn’t answer—might not have heard—but stood still and stiff as a statue in my grasp, breath coming harshly with a sound like a sob. When I released my hold on his waist, he didn’t move or turn, but when I stood beside him, he snatched my hand and held it hard. My bones would have ground together, had I not been squeezing back just as hard.
It was no more than a minute before the window above the chocolate shop opened and Jamie’s head and shoulders appeared, red hair glowing like a stray tongue of flame escaped from the main fire. He climbed out onto the sill, and cautiously turned, squatting, until he faced the building.
Rising to his stockinged feet, he grasped the gutter of the roof overhead and pulled, slowly raising himself by the strength of his arms, long toes scrabbling for a grip in the crevices between the mortared stones of the housefront. With a grunt audible even over the sound of fire and crowd, he eeled over the edge of the roof and disappeared behind the gable.
A shorter man could not have managed. Neither could Ian, with his wooden leg. I heard Ian say something under his breath; a prayer I thought, but when I glanced at him, his jaw was clenched, face set in lines of fear.
“What in hell is he going to do up there?” I thought, and was unaware that I had spoken aloud until the barber, shading his eyes next to me, replied.
“There’s a trapdoor built in the roof o’ the printshop, ma’am. Nay doubt Mr. Malcolm means to gain access to the upper story so. Is it his ’prentice up there, d’ye know?”
“No!” Ian snapped, hearing this. “It’s my son!”
The barber shrank back before Ian’s glare, murmuring “Oh, aye, just so, sir, just so!” and crossing himself. A shout from the crowd grew into a roar as two figures appeared on the roof of the chocolate shop, and Ian dropped my hand, springing forward.
Jamie had his arm round Young Ian, who was bent and reeling from the smoke he had swallowed. It was reasonably obvious that neither of them was going to be able to negotiate a return through the adjoining building in his present condition.
Just then, Jamie spotted Ian below. Cupping his hand around his mouth, he bellowed “Rope!”
Rope there was; the Town Guard had come equipped. Ian snatched the coil from an approaching Guardsman, leaving that worthy blinking in indignation, and turned to face the house.
I caught the gleam of Jamie’s teeth as he grinned down at his brother-in-law, and the look of answering wryness on Ian’s face. How many times had they thrown a rope between them, to raise hay to the barn loft, or bind a load to the wagon for carrying?
The crowd fell back from the whirl of Ian’s arm, and the heavy coil flew up in a smooth parabola, unwinding as it went, landing on Jamie’s outstretched arm with the precision of a bumblebee lighting on a flower. Jamie hauled in the dangling tail, and disappeared momentarily, to anchor the rope about the base of the building’s chimney.
A few precarious moments’ work, and the two smoke-blackened figures had come to a safe landing on the pavement below. Young Ian, rope slung under his arms and round his chest, stood upright for a moment, then, as the tension of the rope slackened, his knees buckled and he slid into a gangling heap on the cobbles.
“Are ye all right? A bhalaich, speak to me!” Ian fell to his knees beside his son, anxiously trying to unknot the rope round Young Ian’s chest, while simultaneously trying to lift up the lad’s lolling head.
Jamie was leaning against the railing of the chocolate shop, black in the face and coughing his lungs out, but otherwise apparently unharmed. I sat down on the boy’s other side, and took his head on my lap.
I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry at the sight of him. When I had seen him in the morning, he had been an appealing-looking lad, if no great beauty, with something of his father’s homely, good-natured looks. Now, at evening, the thick hair over one side of his forehead had been singed to a bleached red stubble, and his eyebrows and lashes had been burned off entirely. The skin beneath was the soot-smeared bright pink of a suckling pig just off the spit.
I felt for a pulse in the spindly neck and found it, reassuringly strong. His breathing was hoarse and irregular, and no wonder; I hoped the lining of his lungs had not been burned. He coughed, long and rackingly, and the thin body convulsed on my lap.
“Is he all right?” Ian’s hands instinctively grabbed his son beneath the armpits and sat him up. His head wobbled to and fro, and he pitched forward into my arms.
“I think so; I can’t tell for sure.” The boy was still coughing, but not fully conscious; I held him against my shoulder like an enormous baby, patting his back futilely as he retched and gagged.
“Is he all right?” This time it was Jamie, squatting breathless alongside me. His voice was so hoarse I wouldn’t have recognized it, roughened as it was by smoke.
“I think so. What about you? You look like Malcolm X,” I said, peering at him over Young Ian’s heaving shoulder.
“I do?” He put a hand to his face, looking startled, then grinned reassuringly. “Nay, I canna say how I look, but I’m no an ex-Malcolm yet; only a wee bit singed round the edges.”
“Get back, get back!” The Guard captain was at my side, gray beard bristling with anxiety, plucking at my sleeve. “Move yourself, ma’am, the roof’s going!”
Sure enough, as we scrambled to safety, the roof of the printshop fell in, and an awed sound rose from the watching crowd as an enormous fountain of sparks whirled skyward, brilliant against the darkening sky.
As though heaven resented this intrusion, the spume of fiery ash was answered by the first pattering of raindrops, plopping heavily on the cobbles all around us. The Edinburghians, who surely ought to have been accustomed to rain by now, made noises of consternation and began to scuttle back into the surrounding buildings like a herd of cockroaches, leaving nature to complete the fire engine’s work.
A moment later, Ian and I were alone with Young Ian. Jamie, having dispensed money liberally to the Guard and other assistants, and having arranged for his press and its fittings to be housed in the barber’s storeroom, trudged wearily toward us.
“How’s the lad?” he asked, wiping a hand down his face. The rain had begun to come down more heavily, and the effect on his soot-blackened countenance was picturesque in the extreme. Ian looked at him, and for the first time, the anger, worry and fear faded somewhat from his countenance. He gave Jamie a lopsided smile.
“He doesna look a great deal better than ye do yourself, man—but I think he’ll do now. Give us a hand, aye?”
Murmuring small Gaelic endearments suitable for babies, Ian bent over his son, who was by this time sitting up groggily on the curbstone, swaying to and fro like a heron in a high wind.
By the time we reached Madame Jeanne’s establishment, Young Ian could walk, though still supported on either side by his father and uncle. Bruno, who opened the door, blinked incredulously at the sight, and then swung the door open, laughing so hard he could barely close it after us.
I had to admit that we were nothing much to look at, wet through and streaming with rain. Jamie and I were both barefoot, and Jamie’s clothes were in rags, singed and torn and covered with streaks of soot. Ian’s dark hair straggled in his eyes, making him look like a drowned rat with a wooden leg.
Young Ian, though, was the focus of attention, as multiple heads came popping out of the drawing room in response to the noise Bruno was making. With his singed hair, swollen red face, beaky nose, and lashless, blinking eyes, he strongly resembled the fledgling young of some exotic bird species—a newly hatched flamingo, perhaps. His face could scarcely grow redder, but the back of his neck flamed crimson, as the sound of feminine giggles followed us up the stairs.
Safely ensconced in the small upstairs sitting room, with the door closed, Ian turned to face his hapless offspring.
“Going to live, are ye, ye wee bugger?” he demanded.
“Aye, sir,” Young Ian replied in a dismal croak, looking rather as though he wished the answer were “No.”
“Good,” his father said grimly. “D’ye want to explain yourself, or shall I just belt hell out of ye now and save us both time?”
“Ye canna thrash someone who’s just had his eyebrows burnt off, Ian,” Jamie protested hoarsely, pouring out a glass of porter from the decanter on the table. “It wouldna be humane.” He grinned at his nephew and handed him the glass, which the boy clutched with alacrity.
“Aye, well. Perhaps not,” Ian agreed, surveying his son. One corner of his mouth twitched. Young Ian was a pitiable sight; he was also an extremely funny one. “That doesna mean ye aren’t going to get your arse blistered later, mind,” he warned the boy, “and that’s besides whatever your mother means to do to ye when she sees ye again. But for now, lad, take your ease.”
Not noticeably reassured by the magnanimous tone of this last statement, Young Ian didn’t answer, but sought refuge in the depths of his glass of porter.
I took my own glass with a good deal of pleasure. I had realized belatedly just why the citizens of Edinburgh reacted to rain with such repugnance; once one was wet through, it was the devil to get dry again in the damp confines of a stone house, with no change of clothes and no heat available but a small hearthfire.
I plucked the damp bodice away from my breasts, caught Young Ian’s interested glance, and decided regretfully that I really couldn’t take it off with the boy in the room. Jamie seemed to have been corrupting the lad to quite a sufficient extent already. I gulped the porter instead, feeling the rich flavor purl warmingly through my innards.
“D’ye feel well enough to talk a bit, lad?” Jamie sat down opposite his nephew, next to Ian on the hassock.
“Aye…I think so,” Young Ian croaked cautiously. He cleared his throat like a bullfrog and repeated more firmly, “Aye, I can.”
“Good. Well, then. First, how did ye come to be in the printshop, and then, how did it come to be on fire?”
Young Ian pondered that one for a minute, then took another gulp of his porter for courage and said, “I set it.”
Jamie and Ian both sat up straight at that. I could see Jamie revising his opinion as to the advisability of thrashing people without eyebrows, but he mastered his temper with an obvious effort, and said merely, “Why?”
The boy took another gulp of porter, coughed, and drank again, apparently trying to decide what to say.
“Well,” he began uncertainly, “there was a man,” and came to a dead stop.
“A man,” Jamie prompted patiently when his nephew showed signs of having become suddenly deaf and dumb. “What man?”
Young Ian clutched his glass in both hands, looking deeply unhappy.
“Answer your uncle this minute, clot,” Ian said sharply. “Or I’ll take ye across my knee and tan ye right here.”
With a mixture of similar threats and promptings, the two men managed to extract a more or less coherent story from the boy.
Young Ian had been at the tavern at Kerse that morning, where he had been told to meet Wally, who would come down from the rendezvous with the wagons of brandy, there to load the punked casks and spoiled wine to be used as subterfuge.
“Told?” Ian asked sharply. “Who told ye?”
“I did,” Jamie said, before Young Ian could speak. He waved a hand at his brother-in-law, urging silence. “Aye, I kent he was here. We’ll talk about it later, Ian, if ye please. It’s important we know what happened today.”
Ian glared at Jamie and opened his mouth to disagree, then shut it with a snap. He nodded to his son to go on.
“I was hungry, ye see,” Young Ian said.
“When are ye not?” his father and uncle said together, in perfect unison. They looked at each other, snorted with sudden laughter, and the strained atmosphere in the room eased slightly.
“So ye went into the tavern to have a bite,” Jamie said. “That’s all right, lad, no harm done. And what happened while ye were there?”
That, it transpired, was where he had seen the man. A small, ratty-looking fellow, with a seaman’s pigtail, and a blind eye, talking to the landlord.
“He was askin’ for you, Uncle Jamie,” Young Ian said, growing easier in his speech with repeated applications of porter. “By your own name.”
Jamie started, looking surprised. “Jamie Fraser, ye mean?” Young Ian nodded, sipping. “Aye. But he knew your other name as well—Jamie Roy, I mean.”
“Jamie Roy?” Ian turned a puzzled glance on his brother-in-law, who shrugged impatiently.
“It’s how I’m known on the docks. Christ, Ian, ye know what I do!”
“Aye, I do, but I didna ken the wee laddie was helpin’ ye to do it.” Ian’s thin lips pressed tight together, and he turned his attention back to his son. “Go on, lad. I willna interrupt ye again.”
The seaman had asked the tavernkeeper how best an old seadog, down on his luck and looking for employment, might find one Jamie Fraser, who was known to have a use for able men. The landlord pleading ignorance of that name, the seaman had leaned closer, pushed a coin across the table, and in a lowered voice asked whether the name “Jamie Roy” was more familiar.
The landlord remaining deaf as an adder, the seaman had soon left the tavern, with Young Ian right behind him.
“I thought as how maybe it would be good to know who he was, and what he meant,” the lad explained, blinking.
“Ye might have thought to leave word wi’ the publican for Wally,” Jamie said. “Still, that’s neither here nor there. Where did he go?”
Down the road at a brisk walk, but not so brisk that a healthy boy could not follow at a careful distance. An accomplished walker, the seaman had made his way into Edinburgh, a distance of some five miles, in less than an hour, and arrived at last at the Green Owl tavern, followed by Young Ian, near wilted with thirst from the walk.
I started at the name, but didn’t say anything, not wanting to interrupt the story.
“It was terrible crowded,” the lad reported. “Something happened in the morning, and everyone was talking of it—but they shut up whenever they saw me. Anyway, it was the same there.” He paused to cough and clear his throat. “The seaman ordered drink—brandy—then asked the landlord was he acquainted wi’ a supplier of brandy named Jamie Roy or Jamie Fraser.”
“Did he, then?” Jamie murmured. His gaze was intent on his nephew, but I could see the thoughts working behind his high forehead, making a small crease between his thick brows.
The man had gone methodically from tavern to tavern, dogged by his faithful shadow, and in each establishment had ordered brandy and repeated his question.
“He must have a rare head, to be drinkin’ that much brandy,” Ian remarked.
Young Ian shook his head. “He didna drink it. He only smelt it.”
His father clicked his tongue at such a scandalous waste of good spirit, but Jamie’s red brows climbed still higher.
“Did he taste any of it?” he asked sharply.
“Aye. At the Dog and Gun, and again at the Blue Boar. He had nay more than a wee taste, though, and then left the glass untouched. He didna drink at all at the other places, and we went to five o’ them, before…” He trailed off, and took another drink.
Jamie’s face underwent an astonishing transformation. From an expression of frowning puzzlement, his face went completely blank, and then resolved itself into an expression of revelation.
“Is that so, now,” he said softly to himself. “Indeed.” His attention came back to his nephew. “And then what happened, lad?”
Young Ian was beginning to look unhappy again. He gulped, the tremor visible all the way down his skinny neck.
“Well, it was a terrible long way from Kerse to Edinburgh,” he began, “and a terrible dry walk, too…”
His father and uncle exchanged jaundiced glances.
“Ye drank too much,” Jamie said, resigned.
“Well, I didna ken he was going to so many taverns, now, did I?” Young Ian cried in self-defense, going pink in the ears.
“No, of course not, lad,” Jamie said kindly, smothering the beginning of Ian’s more censorious remarks. “How long did ye last?”
Until midway down the Royal Mile, it turned out, where Young Ian, overcome by the cumulation of early rising, a five-mile walk, and the effects of something like two quarts of ale, had dozed off in a corner, waking an hour later to find his quarry long gone.
“So I came here,” he explained. “I thought as how Uncle Jamie should know about it. But he wasna here.” The boy glanced at me, and his ears grew still pinker.
“And just why did ye think he should be here?” Ian favored his offspring with a gimlet eye, which then swiveled to his brother-in-law. The simmering anger Ian had been holding in check since the morning suddenly erupted. “The filthy gall of ye, Jamie Fraser, takin’ my son to a bawdy house!”
“A fine one you are to talk, Da!” Young Ian was on his feet, swaying a bit, but with his big, bony hands clenched at his sides.
“Me? And what d’ye mean by that, ye wee gomerel?” Ian cried, his eyes going wide with outrage.
“I mean you’re a damned hypocrite!” his son shouted hoarsely. “Preachin’ to me and Michael about purity and keepin’ to one woman, and all the time ye’re slinkin’ about the city, sniffin’ after whores!”
“What?” Ian’s face had gone entirely purple. I looked in some alarm to Jamie, who appeared to be finding something funny in the present situation.
“You’re a…a…goddamned whited sepulchre!” Young Ian came up with the simile triumphantly, then paused as though trying to think of another to equal it. His mouth opened, though nothing emerged but a soft belch.
“That boy is rather drunk,” I said to Jamie.
He picked up the decanter of porter, eyed the level within, and set it down.
“You’re right,” he said. “I should ha’ noticed sooner, but it’s hard to tell, scorched as he is.”
The elder Ian wasn’t drunk, but his expression strongly resembled his offspring’s, what with the suffused countenance, popping eyes, and straining neck cords.
“What the bloody, stinking hell d’ye mean by that, ye whelp?” he shouted. He moved menacingly toward Young Ian, who took an involuntary step backward and sat down quite suddenly as his calves met the edge of the sofa.
“Her,” he said, startled into monosyllables. He pointed at me, to make it clear. “Her! You deceivin’ my Mam wi’ this filthy whore, that’s what I mean!”
Ian fetched his son a clout over the ear that knocked him sprawling on the sofa.
“Ye great clot!” he said, scandalized. “A fine way to speak o’ your auntie Claire, to say nothing o’ me and your Mam!”
“Aunt?” Young Ian gawped at me from the cushions, looking so like a nestling begging for food that I burst out laughing despite myself.
“You left before I could introduce myself this morning,” I said.
“But you’re dead,” he said stupidly.
“Not yet,” I assured him. “Unless I’ve caught pneumonia from sitting here in a damp dress.”
His eyes had grown perfectly round as he stared at me. Now a fugitive gleam of excitement came into them.
“Some o’ the auld women at Lallybroch say ye were a wisewoman—a white lady, or maybe even a fairy. When Uncle Jamie came home from Culloden without ye, they said as how ye’d maybe gone back to the fairies, where ye maybe came from. Is that true? D’ye live in a dun?”
I exchanged a glance with Jamie, who rolled his eyes toward the ceiling.
“No,” I said. “I…er, I…”
“She escaped to France after Culloden,” Ian broke in suddenly, with great firmness. “She thought your uncle Jamie was killed in the battle, so she went to her kin in France. She’d been one of Prince Tearlach’s particular friends—she couldna come back to Scotland after the war without puttin’ herself in sore danger. But then she heard of your uncle, and as soon as she kent that her husband wasna deid after all, she took ship at once and came to find him.”
Young Ian’s mouth hung open slightly. So did mine.
“Er, yes,” I said, closing it. “That’s what happened.”
The lad turned large, shining eyes from me to his uncle.
“So ye’ve come back to him,” he said happily. “God, that’s romantic!”
The tension of the moment was broken. Ian hesitated, but his eyes softened as he looked from Jamie to me.
“Aye,” he said, and smiled reluctantly. “Aye, I suppose it is.”