Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)

FOUR DAYS LATER—it had taken more time than anticipated to find what was needed—Lord John Grey stood naked in the middle of a grove of mangoes, on a hill overlooking the hacienda of the Mendez family.

He’d seen the big house as they rode into the plantation, a sprawling establishment of rooms added over the years, odd wings sprouting from unexpected places, outbuildings scattered near it in an untidy constellation. One of the complicated constellations, he thought, looking down on it. Cassiopeia, maybe, or Aquarius. One of the ones where you just take the ancient astronomer’s word for what you’re looking at.

The windows in the main house had been lighted, with servants passing to and fro like shadows in the dusk, but he had been too far away to hear any of the noises of the place, and he was left with a queer sensation of having seen something ghostly that might suddenly be swallowed by the night.

In fact, it had been, in the sense that the hacienda was invisible from his present situation—and a good thing, too. His traveling clothes lay puddled on the leaf mold in which his bare feet were sunk, and small insects were treating his private parts with an unseemly familiarity. This caused him to rummage his pack first for the bottle of coconut–mint elixir and apply this lavishly before getting dressed.

Not for the first time—nor, he was sure, the last—he deeply regretted the absence of Tom Byrd. He was actually capable of dressing himself, though both he and Tom acted on the tacit assumption that he wasn’t. But what he missed most at the moment was the sense of solemn ceremony that attended Tom’s dressing him in full uniform. It was as though he assumed a different persona with scarlet coat and gold lace, Tom’s respect giving him belief in his own authority, as though he put on not only uniform but armor and office.

He could bloody use that belief just now. He swore softly under his breath as he struggled into the moleskin breeches and brushed bits of leaf off each foot before pulling on his silk stockings and boots. It was a gamble, but he felt that the chances of these men taking him seriously, listening to him, and—above all—trusting him would be increased if he appeared not just as a standin for Malcolm Stubbs but as the incarnation of England, as it were: a true representative of the king. They had to trust that he could do what he said he would do for them, or it was all up. For the hacendados—and for him.

“Wouldn’t do the bloody navy any good, either,” he muttered, tying his neckcloth by feel.

Done at last, his traveling clothes bundled into the pack, he heaved a sigh of relief and stood still for a minute to gather himself, settle into the uniform.

He’d had no idea mango trees grew to such a size; this was an old grove, the trees each more than a hundred feet in height, the leaves rising and falling gently on the evening breeze, making a sound like the sea overhead. Something slithered heavily in the fallen leaves near him and he froze. But the serpent—if that’s what it was—continued on its way, untroubled by his presence.

Rodrigo, Azeel, and Inocencia were where he had left them, no more than a hundred yards away, but he felt entirely alone. His mind had gone blank, and he welcomed that respite. Windfalls of unripe fruit knocked down by a storm lay all around like pale-green cricket balls in the leaves, but the fruit still on the trees had gone yellow—he’d seen it in the twilight as they came up into the grove—and had begun to blush crimson. Now it was dark, and he only sensed the mangoes when he brushed a lowlying branch and felt the heavy swing of the fruit.

He was walking, not having made up his mind to do so nor remembering the taking of the first step, but walking, propelled into motion by a sense that it was time.

He came down through the grove and found Rodrigo and the girls on their feet, in murmured conversation with a tall, spare young woman—Inocencia’s cousin, Alejandra, who would take them to the tobacco shed.

All of them turned to see him, and Alejandra’s eyes widened, gleaming in the moonlight.

“Hijo,” she said in admiration.

“Thank you, madam,” he said, and bowed to her. “Shall we go?”



HE’D IMAGINED IT vividly, from Malcolm’s account. The bulk of the big tobacco barn, the dark, the whispering of the drying leaves overhead, the sense of waiting men…What Malcolm hadn’t mentioned was the overpowering scent that lay in a cloud over the shed, a thick incense that reached out to grab him by the throat from thirty feet away. It wasn’t unpleasant, by any means, but it was strong enough to make him breathe shallowly for a moment—and he needed all the breath he could get.

Cano. That was the name of the man he must convince. Cano was headman of the slaves of the Mendez plantation. There was a headman from Saavedra, too, named Hamid, but Alejandra said that it was Cano’s opinion that counted most heavily among the slaves

“If he says yes, they all will do it,” she had assured Grey.

There was a great deal more to the barn’s atmosphere than the heavy scent of tobacco. He could smell the reek of constant sweat the instant he stepped inside—and the sharp, dark stink of angry men.

There was a single lantern burning, hung from a nail in one of the uprights supporting the high roof. It made a small pool of light, but the glow of it diffused much farther, showing him the men massed in the shadows. No more than the curve of a skull, a shoulder, the gleam of light on black skin, the whites of staring eyes. Below the lantern stood two men, turned to meet him.

There was no question which was Cano. A tall black man, wearing only short, ragged breeches, though his companion (and most of the men in the shadows, as a sidelong glimpse confirmed) was dressed in both breeches and shirt and wore a spotted bandanna tied around his head.

No question why, either. Gray scars mottled Cano’s back and arms like barnacle scars on an old whale—the marks of whips and knives. The man watched Grey approach and smiled.

Smiled to show that his front teeth were gone, but the canines remained, sharp and stained brown with tobacco.

“Mucho gusto, se?or,” he said. His voice was light and mocking. Grey bowed, very correctly. Alejandra had come in behind him, and she made the introductions in soft, rapid Spanish. She was nervous; her hands were twisted in her apron and Grey could see sweat shining in the hollows under her eyes. Which was her lover? he wondered, this man or Hamid?

“Mucho gusto,” Grey said politely, when she had finished, and bowed to her. “Madam—will you be so good as to tell these gentlemen that I have brought with me two interpreters, so that we can be assured of understanding one another?”