Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)

“Then she took his arm and said they should go back, and they did. But…” Tom coughed, his round face troubled, and looked at Rodrigo again.


“Rodrigo said Azeel told him on the way back to Havana what happened in the shed. What you said to that man, Cano, and what he said to you—about the people what owned the plantation.”

“Yes?” Grey paused in the act of buttering a chunk of bread.

Rodrigo said something quiet, and Tom nodded.

“He said something didn’t seem right while they were looking at the house. There were servants going in and out, but it just didn’t feel right to him. And when he heard what this Cano said to you—”

“No los mataremos,” Grey said, suddenly uneasy. “?‘We will not kill them’?”

Rodrigo nodded, and Tom cleared his throat.

“You can’t kill somebody what’s already dead, can you, me lord?”

“Already…no. No, you can’t mean that the slaves had already…No.” But a worm of doubt was taking up residence in his stomach, and he put the bread down.

“The…wind,” Rodrigo said, with his usual agonizing pause to find an English word. “Muerto.”

He lifted his hand, a beautiful, slender hand, and drew his knuckles gently beneath his nose.

“I…know…the smell…of death.”



COULD IT BE TRUE? Grey was too exhausted to feel more than a distant sense of cold horror at the notion, but he couldn’t dismiss it. Cano had not struck him as a patient man. He could easily imagine that the slave had grown frustrated when Malcolm didn’t appear soon enough and had decided to carry out his original plan. But then when Grey did come—Christ, he must have arrived on the heels of the…the massacre…

He remembered his sight of the hacienda: lights burning inside but so quiet. No sense of movement within; only the silent passage of the house-slaves outside. And the stink of anger in the tobacco shed. He shuddered.

He took his leave of Tom and Rodrigo but, too tired and shocked to sleep, then sought refuge in the sala, which seemed always to have light. One of the kitchen maids, undoubtedly roused by Tom, came in with a pitcher of wine and a plate of cheese; she smiled sleepily at him, murmured, “Buenas noches, se?or,” and stumbled back toward her bed.

He couldn’t eat, or even sit down, and after a moment’s hesitation went out again, into the deserted patio. He stood there for some time, looking up into the black velvet sky. What time was it? The moon had set and surely dawn could not be far off, but there was no trace of light save the distant stars.

What should he do? Was there anything he could do? He thought not. There was no way of telling whether Rodrigo was right—and even if he was (a small, cold feeling at the back of Grey’s neck was inclined to believe it)…there was nothing to be done, no one to tell who could investigate, let alone try to find the murderers, if murderers they were.

The city lay suspended between the Spanish and the British invaders; there was no telling when the siege would be successful—though he thought it would. The spiking of El Morro’s guns would help, but the navy must be informed, so as to take advantage of it.

Come dawn, he would try to leave the city with his mother and the children and his servants. He thought it could be managed easily enough; he had brought as much gold from Jamaica as he could, and there was more than enough left to bribe their way past the guard at the city gate.

What then? Exhausted as he was, he wasn’t even thinking, just watching dimly as the future unrolled in small, disjointed pictures: a carriage for his mother and the children and Azeel, himself on the stubborn white mule, two more animals for Tom and Rodrigo.

The slaves’ contract…if any of them had survived…freedom…the general could see to that…

Malcolm and the girl…he wondered dimly for a moment about Inocencia; why had Cano tried to kill her…?

Because she saw him try to kill you, fathead, some dim, dispassionate watcher in his skull observed. And he had to kill you, for fear you’d find out what they’d done at Hacienda Mendez…

Freedom…even if they’d?…but Cano was dead, and Grey would never know who was guilty of what.

“Not my place…” he murmured and shut his eyes.

His hand touched the breast of his shirt and found it stiff with dried blood. He’d left his uniform coat in the kitchen…perhaps one of the women could clean it. He’d need to wear it again, to approach the British lines in Cojimar…Cojimar…a brief vision of white graveled sand, sunlight, fishing boats…the tiny white stone fort, like a doll’s house…find General Stanley.

Thought of the general drew his fragmented thoughts together, a magnet in a scatter of loose iron filings. Someone to depend on…a man to share the burden…he wanted that, above all things.

“Oh, God,” he whispered, and moths touched his face, gentle in the dark.



HE WAS GROWING COLD. He went back inside to the sala and found his mother sitting there. She had taken the manuscript from the secretaire; it sat on the small table beside her, her hand resting on it and a distant look in her eyes. He didn’t think she’d noticed him come in.

“Your…manuscript,” John said awkwardly. His mother came back abruptly from wherever she had been, her eyes alert but calm.

“Oh,” she said. “You read it?”

“No, no,” he said, embarrassed. “I…I only wondered…why are you writing your memoirs? I mean, that is what it is, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” she said, looking faintly amused. “It would have been quite all right if you’d read it—you may read it whenever you like, in fact, though perhaps it would be better to wait until I’ve finished. If I do.”

He felt a small sense of relaxation at this. His mother was both honest and blunt by nature, and the older she got the less she cared for anyone’s opinion save her own—but she did have a very deep degree of emotional perception. She was reasonably sure that whatever she’d written wouldn’t embarrass him seriously.

“Ah,” he said. “I wondered whether perhaps you meant it for publication. Many”—he choked off the words “old people” just in time, replacing them with—“people who’ve led interesting lives choose to, er, share their adventures in print.”

That made her laugh. It was no more than a low, soft laugh, but nonetheless it brought tears to her eyes, and he thought it was because he’d inadvertently cracked the shell she’d built over the course of the last weeks and let her own feelings bubble back to the surface. The thought made him happy, but he looked down to hide it, pulled a clean handkerchief from his sleeve, and handed it to her without comment.

“Thank you, dear,” she said, and, having dabbed her eyes, shook her head.