Outlander [08] Written in My Own Heart's Blood Page 10

  The baby smacked her lips, hungry as her sisters. “And this will be wee Chastity, I make nay doubt?” he said.

  Mrs. Hardman gaped at him. “How did thee know the child’s name?”

  He glanced at Prudence and Patience, who were silently stuffing bread and meat into their mouths as quickly as they could eat. “Well, I havena yet met a lassie named Sobriety or Fortitude,” he said mildly. “The wean’s sopping; have ye a clean clootie for her?”

  There were two worn clouts hung to dry before the fire; she brought one, to find that Jamie had already unpinned the baby’s soggy nappie—that’s what Claire called them—and wiped the shit from her bottom, holding her tiny ankles in one hand.

  “Thee has children, I see.” Eyebrows raised, Mrs. Hardman took the soiled clout from him with a nod of thanks and dropped it into a bucket of vinegar and water that stood in the far corner.

  “And grandchildren,” he said, wiggling a finger in front of wee Chastity’s nose. She gurgled and went cross-eyed, kicking her legs enthusiastically. “To say nothing of six nephews and nieces.” And where are Jem and wee Mandy, I wonder? Can she breathe easy now, poor lassie? He gently tickled the baby’s soft pink foot, remembering the strangely beautiful, heart-wrenching blue tinge to Mandy’s perfect toes, long-jointed and graceful as a frog’s.

  “They’re just like yours,” Claire had told him, drawing a fingernail lightly down the sole of Mandy’s foot, making the long big toe spring suddenly away from the others. What had she called that?

  He tried it himself, gingerly, and smiled with delight to see it happen to Chastity’s chubby toes.

  “Babinski,” he said to Mrs. Hardman, with a sense of deep satisfaction at recalling the name. “That’s what it’s called when a wean’s great toe does that. A Babinski reflex.”

  Mrs. Hardman looked astonished—though much more so when he skillfully repinned the new clout and swaddled wee Chastity afresh in her blanket. She took the baby from him and, with an uncertain expression, sank down in the chair and pulled the ratty shawl over the baby’s head. Unable to turn over easily, Jamie instead closed his eyes to afford her such privacy as he could.

  REMEMBER PAOLI!

  IT WAS HARD TO wipe away the sweat with his hands tied and impossible to keep the stinging salt out of his wounded eye, so puffed and slitted that he couldn’t close it tightly. Water ran down his cheek in a steady flow, dripping off his chin. Blinking in a vain attempt to clear his vision, John Grey missed a fallen branch in his path and fell heavily.

  Those behind him on the narrow trail halted abruptly, with sounds of mild collision, jangling weapons and canteens, confusion and impatience. Rough hands seized him and hauled him up again, but the tall, rawboned man deputed to be his escort said only, “Watch your step, me lord,” in a mild tone of voice, and gave him a nudge down the path rather than a shove.

  Encouraged by this evidence of consideration, he thanked the man and asked his name.

  “Me?” The man sounded surprised. “Oh. Bumppo. Natty Bumppo.” Adding, after a moment, “Folks mostly call me ‘Hawkeye,’ though.”

  “I don’t wonder,” Grey said, half under his breath. He bowed, as well as he could whilst walking, and nodded at the long rifle that bobbed in a sling at the man’s back. “Your servant, sir. I deduce that you are a fine shot, then?”

  “Reckon that would be a good deduction, your lordship.” Bumppo’s voice sounded amused. “Why? D’you want something shot? Or somebody?”

  “I’m keeping a list,” Grey told him. “I’ll let you know when it’s complete.”

  He felt, rather than heard, the other’s laugh—the amusement was palpable, but it made little sound.

  “Let me guess who’s first on your list—the big Scotch fellow what put your light out?”

  “He’d be fairly high on the list, yes.” Actually, he couldn’t decide who he’d rather see shot first: Jamie Fraser or his own bloody brother. Probably Hal, all things considered. Rather ironic, if Hal ended up getting him shot. Though his captors seemed quite convinced that hanging was the preferred method.

  That reminded him of the uncomfortable bit of conversation that had preceded his being chivvied through the woods on a deer trail bountifully equipped with bramblish bushes, low-hanging branches, ticks, and biting flies the size of the ball of his thumb.

  “Would you happen to know what—or possibly who—Paoli is, Mr. Bumppo?” he asked politely, kicking a fir cone out of his way.

  “What’s Paoli?” The man’s voice was filled with astonishment. “Why, man, are you just come to this neck o’ the woods?”

  “Fairly recently,” Grey replied guardedly.

  “Oh.” Bumppo considered, carefully matching his lengthy stride to Grey’s shorter one. “Why, ’twas an infamous attack, to be sure. Your kinsman—Major General Grey, as they said—him and his troops snuck up by night to where General Wayne’s men were camped. Grey didn’t want to risk a stray flint sparking and giving them away, so he gives the order to take out all the flints from their guns and use the bayonets. Fell upon the Americans and bayoneted near a hundred men in their beds, in cold blood!”

  “Really?” Grey tried to reconcile this account with any recent battle he knew of, and failed. “And … Paoli?”

  “Oh. That’s the name of the tavern nearby—Paoli’s Tavern.”

  “Ah. Where is it? Geographically, I mean. And when, exactly, did this battle occur?”

  Bumppo’s prehensile lips pushed out in thought, then withdrew.

  “Be up near Malvern, last September. The Paoli Massacre, they calls it,” he added with a certain dubiousness.

  “Massacre?” Grey echoed. The engagement had taken place before his own arrival, but he’d heard it talked about—briefly, and not in terms of massacre, to be sure. But, then, perceptions of the event were bound to be different, depending upon one’s position in the matter. William Howe had spoken of it with approval—as a successful engagement in which a minimal number of British troops had routed an entire American division, with a loss of only seven men.

  Bumppo seemed disposed to share Grey’s opinion of the rhetorical nature of the name, albeit from yet a third perspective.

  “Well, you know how folks will talk,” he said, lifting one shoulder. “Ain’t what I’d call a proper massacre, but, then, ain’t many folk seen one, and I have.”

  “You have?” Glancing up at the tall, bearded ruffian, Grey thought it only too likely.

  “Was raised as an Indian,” Bumppo said, with visible pride. “By the Mohican, my own folks havin’ died when I were just a tadpole. Aye, I’ve seen a massacre or two.”

  “Indeed?” Grey said, innate courtesy obliging him to invite the man to elaborate, should he wish to. Besides, it would pass the time; they seemed to have been walking for hours, and no end in sight—not that he was eagerly anticipating the end.…

  As it was, Mr. Bumppo’s reminiscences passed the time to such good effect that Grey was surprised when Corporal Woodbine, in the lead, called the company to a halt at the edge of a fairly sizable encampment. He was glad enough to stop, though; he was wearing city shoes, not suited for the terrain at all, and they had worn through his stockings and rubbed his feet to blood and blisters.

  “Scout Bumppo,” Woodbine said, with a short nod to Grey’s companion. “You’ll take the company on to Zeke Bowen’s place. I’ll deliver the prisoner to Colonel Smith.”

  This statement gave rise to vocal discontent, from which Grey gathered that the company wished very much to accompany Woodbine, in order not to miss Grey’s execution, which they confidently expected to occur within moments of his delivery to the aforesaid Colonel Smith. Woodbine was firm about it, though, and with democratic mutterings and execrations, the militia moved reluctantly off under the guidance of Natty Bumppo.

  Woodbine watched them out of sight, then drew himself up, brushing a stray caterpillar from the breast of his shabby coat and straightening his disreputable hat.

  “Well, Lieu
tenant Colonel Grey. Shall we go?”

  NATTY BUMPPO’S reminiscences of the proper way to conduct a massacre had left Grey with the feeling that perhaps, by contrast, hanging was not the worst way to die. But while he hadn’t personally witnessed any firstrate massacres, he’d seen men hanged, very close to—and the memory of it dried his throat. The leakage from his eye hadn’t stopped completely but had lessened; the skin felt raw and inflamed, though, and the swelling gave him the annoying sense that his head was grossly misshapen. Still, he drew himself upright and strode chin out into the ragged canvas tent ahead of Corporal Woodbine.

  Colonel Smith looked up from his lap desk, startled at the intrusion—though not quite as startled as Grey.

  He’d last seen Watson Smith in his own sister-in-law’s drawing room in London two years ago, eating cucumber sandwiches. In the uniform of a captain of the Buffs.

  “Mr. Smith,” he said, recovering his wits first. He bowed very correctly. “Your servant, sir.” He didn’t bother trying to keep the edge out of his voice or his expression. He sat down upon a vacant stool without being invited and gave Smith as direct a stare as he could with one operant eye.

  Smith’s cheeks flushed, but he leaned back a little, gathering his own wits before replying, and returned Grey’s stare, with interest. He was not a big man but had broad shoulders and considerable presence of manner—and Grey knew him to be a very competent soldier. Competent enough not to reply directly to Grey but to turn instead to Corporal Woodbine.

  “Corporal. How comes this gentleman here?”

  “This is Lieutenant Colonel Lord John Grey, sir,” Woodbine said. He was near bursting with pride at his capture and placed Grey’s King’s warrant and Graves’s accompanying note on the rickety table with the manner of a butler presenting a roast pheasant with diamond eyes to a reigning monarch. “We caught him in the woods near Philadelphia. Out of uniform. Er … as you see, sir.” He cleared his throat in emphasis. “And he admits to being a cousin of Major General Charles Grey. You know—the Paoli Massacre.”

  “Really?” Smith picked up the papers but cocked an eyebrow at Grey. “What was he doing there?”

  “Having the shit beaten out of him by Colonel Fraser, sir—he’s one of Morgan’s officers. He said,” Woodbine added, with less certainty.

  Smith looked blank.

  “Fraser … don’t believe I know him.” Switching his attention to Grey, he addressed him for the first time. “Do you know Colonel Fraser … Colonel Grey?”

  The elaborate hesitation spoke volumes. Well, he hadn’t expected anything else. Grey wiped his nose as well as he could on a forearm and sat straight.

  “I decline to answer your questions, sir. They are improperly put. You know my name, rank, and regiment. Beyond that, my business is my own.”

  Smith stared at him, eyes narrowed. Smith’s eyes were rather attractive, a pale gray with black brows and lashes, very dramatic. Grey had noticed them when the man came to tea with Minnie.

  Woodbine coughed.

  “Er … Colonel Fraser said the man was his prisoner, sir. But he wouldn’t say what for, and when I pressed the matter, he … er … left. That’s when we searched Lord … er, the lord colonel here, and found his papers.”

  “He left,” Smith repeated carefully. “And you allowed him to leave, Corporal?”

  Woodbine was looking less confident in the virtue of his conduct but wasn’t the sort to be easily cowed, Grey saw. He lowered his brow and gave Smith a look of his own.

  “Couldn’t have stopped him, short of shooting him. Sir,” he added flatly. The flesh around Smith’s nostrils whitened, and Grey had the distinct impression that the Englishman must find his new command not quite what he’d been used to.

  The quarters certainly weren’t. While Smith’s Continental uniform was smart and well tended, and his wig in good order, his tent, while large, appeared to have been through several campaigns, being worn to the threads in places and patched in others. Not entirely a bad thing, Grey thought, briefly closing his eyes as a faint evening breeze came wafting through the walls of the tent, relieving the stifling heat. He had a noticeable headache, and even such minor relief was welcome.

  “Very well, Corporal,” Smith said after a moment, having evidently tried and failed to think of something new to ask. “Well done,” he added, offering a belated note of congratulation.

  “Thank you, sir.” Woodbine hovered, obviously loath to surrender his share of the excitement. “If I may ask, sir—what do you mean to do with the prisoner?”

  Grey opened his eye and a half, interested to hear what the answer might be, and found Smith eyeing him in what seemed a faintly carnivorous fashion. The turncoat smiled.

  “Oh, I’ll think of something, Corporal Woodbine,” he said. “You are dismissed. Good night.”

  SMITH GOT UP and came over to Grey, leaning down to examine his face. Grey could smell his sweat, sharp and musky.

  “Do you need a doctor?” he asked dispassionately, but without hostility.

  “No,” Grey said. Both his head and his side ached deeply, and he felt dizzy, but he doubted there was anything a doctor could do about either condition. And he found that after prolonged contact with Claire and her opinions, he had much less trust in physicians than heretofore—and he hadn’t had much to begin with.

  Smith nodded and, straightening up, went to a battered campaign chest and dug out two dented pewter cups and a stone bottle of what proved to be applejack. He poured two generous tots, and they sat in silence for a time, sipping.

  So close to Midsummer Day, it was still bright light out, though Grey could hear the rattle and shuffle of a camp beginning the evening routine. A mule brayed loudly, and several more answered it in raucous chorus. Wagons, then … perhaps artillery? He breathed deeply, nostrils flaring; an artillery company had a distinct smell to it, a sort of distillation of sweat, black powder, and hot metal, much more pungent than the scent of an infantry company with their muskets—the scent of searing iron seeped into an artilleryman’s clothes, as well as his soul.

  What came to him was not the stink of guns but the smell of roasting meat. It drifted through the tent, and his stomach growled loudly; he’d eaten nothing since the beer that had been his preliminary to a preempted meal. He thought Smith’s mouth twitched a little at the noise, but the colonel politely ignored it.

  Smith finished his drink, refilled both cups, and cleared his throat.

  “I will not plague you with questions, as you don’t wish to answer them,” he said carefully, “but in the interests of civil conversation, should you wish to make any inquiries of me, I should not take offense.”

  Grey smiled wryly.

  “Very gracious of you, sir. Do you wish to justify your present allegiance to me? I assure you, it’s unnecessary.”

  Small red patches sprang up immediately on Smith’s cheekbones.

  “That was not my intent, sir,” he said stiffly.

  “Then I apologize,” Grey said, and took another mouthful. The sweet strong cider was assuaging his hunger pangs as well as the pain in his side, though it admittedly wasn’t doing much for the dizziness. “What sort of question did you think I might ask? What is the current state of the Continental army? I could deduce that easily enough, I think, from the state of the gentlemen who captured me, and … other evidence.” He let his eyes roam deliberately around the tent, taking in the chipped pottery utensil under the lopsided cot, the tail of dirty linen straggling out of a portmanteau in the corner; evidently Smith had either no orderly or an inept one. For an instant, Grey felt a pang of nostalgia for Tom Byrd, the best valet he had ever had.

  Smith’s flush had faded; he gave a small, ironic laugh. “I imagine you could. It’s not much of a secret. No, I rather thought you might be curious as to what I propose to do with you.”

  “Oh, that.” Grey put down his cup and rubbed gingerly at his forehead, trying not to touch the swollen area around his eye. “Frankly, I’d forgotten, in
the surprise of seeing you. And the pleasure of your kind hospitality,” he added, lifting the cup with no irony at all. “Corporal Woodbine and his men appeared to think I should be promptly hanged, both on the charge of spying and on the more serious one of being related to Major General Charles Grey, who I gather is believed to have committed some atrocity at a place called Paoli.”

  Smith’s brow creased.

  “Do you deny being a spy?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Smith. I’m a lieutenant colonel. What on earth would I be doing, spying in a deserted wood? Well, deserted until Woodbine and his merry men showed up,” he added. His cup was empty; he stared into it, wondering how that had happened. With a small sigh, Smith refilled it.

  “Besides, I was carrying no documents of information, no secret writings—no evidence whatever of spying.”

  “Doubtless you committed to memory whatever information you had gained,” Smith said, sounding cynically amused. “I recall that you have a prodigious memory.” He gave a small snort that could perhaps have been called a snigger. “So sayeth Sally, nimble-fingered, as her grip upon his prick did linger …”

  In fact, Grey’s memory was quite good. Good enough to remember a dinner at which a number of officers from different regiments had been guests. When the gentlemen were at their port, Grey had—upon invitation, and to thunderous applause—recited entirely from memory one of the longer, and very scabrous, odes from Harry Quarry’s infamous Certain Verses Upon the Subject of Eros, copies of which were still eagerly sought and covertly passed around the circles of society, though the book had been published nearly twenty years before.

  “What on earth is there to spy on?” he demanded, realizing the logical trap too late. Smith’s mouth turned up at one corner.

  “You expect me to tell you?” Because the answer, of course, was that Washington’s entire force was likely on the move in his immediate vicinity, positioning for the move into Philadelphia—and, very possibly, for an attack on Clinton’s withdrawing troops.