Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)

“Oh, that.” Malcolm glanced down indifferently. “It’s all right. My horse broke down a few miles from the city, and I had to walk some way before I got another.” Bending down with a grunt, he unbuckled the appurtenance and took it off—an action that Grey found oddly more disconcerting than sight of the stump itself.

The flesh was deeply ridged from the boot, and when Malcolm peeled the ragged stocking off, Grey saw that a wide ring of skin about the calf had been flayed raw. Malcolm hissed a little and closed his eyes, gently rubbing the end of the stump, the flesh there showing the pale blue of fresh bruising.

“Did I ever thank you, by the way?” Malcolm asked, opening his eyes.

“For what?” Grey said blankly.

“Not letting me bleed to death on that field in Quebec,” Malcolm said dryly. “That slipped your mind, did it?”

Actually, it had. There had been a great many things happening on and off that field in Quebec, and the frantic moments of grappling to get his belt loose and jerked tight round Malcolm’s spurting leg were just fragments—though vivid ones—of a fractured space where neither time nor thought existed; he’d been actually conscious that day of nothing beyond a sense of constant thunder—of the guns, of his heart, of the hooves of the Indians’ horses, all one and pounding through his blood.

“You’re welcome,” he said politely. “As I say—putting the social courtesies to one side for the moment, I came to inform you that a rather large British fleet is on its way to invade and capture the island. Am I correct, by the way, in my assumption that the local commander does not yet realize that war has been declared?”

Malcolm blinked. He stopped massaging his leg, straightened up, and said, “Yes. When?” His face had changed in an instant, from exhaustion and pain to alertness.

“I think you may have as long as two weeks, but it might be less.” He gave Malcolm what details he had, as concisely as he could. Malcolm nodded, a line of concentration deepening between his brows.

“So I’ve come to remove you and your family,” Grey finished. “And my mother, of course.”

Malcolm glanced at him, one eyebrow raised.

“Me? You’ll take Olivia and the children, of course—I’m very much obliged to you and General Stanley. But I’m staying.”

“What? What the devil for?” John was conscious of a sudden surge of temper. “Besides a pending invasion, my mother tells me there’s a bloody slave revolt in progress!”

“Well, yes,” Malcolm said calmly. “That’s mine.”

Before Grey could sort out a coherent response to this statement, the door opened suddenly and a sweet-faced black girl with a yellow scarf round her head and an enormous battered tin tray in her hands sidled through it.

“Se?ores,” she said, curtsying despite the tray, and deposited it on the desk. “Cerveza, vino rústico, y un poco comida: moros y cristianos”—she unlidded one of the dishes, loosing a savory steam—“maduros”—that was fried plantains; Grey was familiar with those—“y pulpo con tomates, aceitunas, y vinagre!”

“Muchas gracias, Inocencia,” Malcolm said, in what sounded like a surprisingly good accent. “Es suficiente.” He waved a hand in dismissal, but instead of leaving, she came round the desk and knelt down, frowning at his mangled leg.

“Está bien,” Malcolm said. “No te preocupes.” He tried to turn away, but she put a hand on his knee, her face turned up to his, and said something rapid in Spanish, in a tone of scolding concern that made Grey raise his brows. It reminded him of the way Tom Byrd spoke to him when he was sick or injured—as though it were all his own fault, and he therefore ought to submit meekly to whatever frightful dose or treatment was being proposed—but there was a distinct note in the girl’s voice that Tom Byrd’s lacked entirely.

Malcolm shook his head and replied, his own manner dismissive but kindly, and laid his hand on the girl’s yellow head for a moment. It might have been merely a friendly gesture, but it wasn’t, and Grey stiffened.

The girl rose, shook her head reprovingly at Malcolm, and went out, with a hint of flirtation in the sway of her skirts. Grey watched the door close behind her, then turned back to Malcolm, who had plucked an olive out of one dish and was sucking it.

“Inocencia, my arse,” Grey said bluntly.

Malcolm’s normal complexion being brick red, he didn’t flush, but neither did he meet Grey’s eye.

“Quite the usual sort of names they give girls, the Spanish,” he said, discarding the olive pit and picking up a serving spoon. “You find young women called all kinds of things: Assumpción, Immaculata, Concepción…”

“Conception, indeed.” This was said in a tone cold enough to make Malcolm’s wide shoulders hunch a little, though he still wouldn’t look at Grey.

“They call this moros y cristianos—that means ‘moors and Christians’—the rice being Christians and the black beans Moors, d’you see?”

“Speaking of conception—and Quebec,” Grey said, ignoring the food—though it smelled remarkably good, “your son by the Indian woman…”

Malcolm did glance at him then. He looked back at his plate, finished chewing, swallowed, and nodded, not looking at Grey.

“Yes. I did make inquiries—once I was mended. They told me the child had died.”

That struck Grey in the pit of the stomach. He swallowed, tasting bile, and plucked a bit of something out of the dish of pulpo at random.

“I see. How…regrettable.”

Malcolm nodded, wordless, and helped himself liberally to the octopus.

“Was it quite recent, this news?” The shock had gone through him like an ocean breaker. He remembered vividly the day when he had taken the infant—the child’s mother having died of smallpox, he had bought the boy from his grandmother for a blanket, a pound of sugar, two golden guineas, and a small cask of rum—and carried him to the little French mission in Gareon. The boy had been warm and solid in his arms, looking up at him from round, unblinking dark eyes, as though trusting him.

“Oh. No. No, it was at least two years ago.”

“Ah.” Grey put the piece of whatever-it-was into his mouth and chewed slowly, the sense of shock fading into an immense relief—and then a growing anger.

Not a trusting man himself, he had given the priest money for the child’s needs and told him this payment would continue—but only so long as the priest sent Grey a lock of the child’s hair once a year, to prove his continued existence and presumed good health.