An Echo in the Bone Read online

  stunted trees poking from a light-colored soil that scrunched under his boots. Then he heard water—waves lapping on a beach. The sea! Well, thank God for that, he thought, and hastened his steps toward the sound.

  As he made his way toward the sound of the waves, though, he suddenly perceived other sounds.

  Boats. The grating of hulls—more than one—on gravel, the clank of oarlocks, splashing. And voices. Hushed voices, but agitated. Bloody hell! He ducked under the limb of a runty pine, hoping for a break in the drifting fog.

  A sudden movement sent him lunging sideways, hand reaching for his pistol. He barely remembered that the pistol was gone, before realizing that his adversary was a great blue heron, which eyed him with a yellow glare before launching itself skyward in a clatter of affront. A cry of alarm came from the bushes, no more than ten feet away, together with the boom of a musket, and the heron exploded in a shower of feathers, directly over his head. He felt drops of the bird’s blood, much warmer than the cold sweat on his face, and sat down very suddenly, black spots dizzy before his eyes.

  He didn’t dare move, let alone call out. There was a whisper of voices from the bushes, but not loud enough that he could make out any words. After a few moments, though, he heard a stealthy rustling that moved gradually away. Making as little noise as possible, he rolled onto hands and knees and crawled for some distance in the other direction, until he felt it safe to rise to his feet again.

  He thought he still heard voices. He crept closer, moving slowly, his heart thumping. He smelled tobacco, and froze.

  Nothing moved near him, though—he could still hear the voices, but they were a good way distant. He sniffed, cautiously, but the scent had vanished; perhaps he was imagining things. He moved on, toward the sounds.

  He could hear them clearly now. Urgent, low-voiced calls, the rattle of oarlocks and the splash of feet in the surf. The shuffle and murmur of men, blending—almost—with the susurrus of sea and grass. He cast one last desperate glance at the sky, but the sun was still invisible. He had to be on the western side of the island; he was sure of it. Almost sure of it. And if he was …

  If he was, the sounds he was hearing had to be those of American troops, fleeing the island for Manhattan.

  “Don’t. Stir.” The whisper behind him coincided exactly with the pressure of a gun’s barrel, jammed hard enough into his kidney as to freeze him where he stood. It withdrew for an instant and returned, rammed home with a force that blurred his eyes. He made a guttural sound and arched his back, but before he could speak, someone with horny hands had seized his wrists and jerked them back.

  “No need,” said the voice, deep, cracked, and querulous. “Stand aside and I’ll shoot him.”

  “No, ’ee won’t,” said another, just as deep but less annoyed. “ ’e’s nobbut a youngun. And pretty, too.” One of the horny hands stroked his cheek and he stiffened, but whoever it was had already bound his hands tight.

  “And if ’ee meant to shoot ’im, you’m ’ve done it already, sister,” the voice added. “Turn y’self, boy.”

  Slowly, he turned round, to see that he had been captured by a pair of old women, short and squat as trolls. One of them, the one with the gun, was smoking a pipe; it was her tobacco he’d smelled. Seeing the shock and disgust on his features, she lifted one corner of a seamed mouth while keeping a firm grip on the pipestem with the stumps of brown-stained teeth.

  “ ’andsome is as ’andsome does,” she observed, looking him up and down. “Still, no need to waste shot.”

  “Madam,” he said, collecting himself and trying for charm. “I believe you mistake me. I am a soldier of the King, and—”

  Both of them burst into laughter, creaking like a pair of rusty hinges.

  “Wouldn’t never’ve guessed,” the pipe-smoker said, grinning round the stem of her pipe. “Thought ’ee was a jakesman, sure!”

  “Hush up, sonny,” her sister interrupted his further attempt to speak. “We bain’t going to harm ’ee, so long as ’ee stands still and keeps mum.” She eyed him, taking in the damage.

  “Been in the wars, have ’ee?” she said, not without sympathy. Not waiting for an answer, she pushed him down onto a rock, this liberally crusted with mussels and dripping weed, from which he deduced his closeness to the shore.

  He didn’t speak. Not for fear of the old women, but because there was nothing to say.

  He sat, listening to the sounds of the exodus. No idea how many men might be involved, as he had no notion how long it had been going on. Nothing useful was said; there were only the breathless half-heard exchanges of men working, the mutter of waiting, here and there the sort of muffled laughter born of nervousness.

  The fog was lifting off the water. He could see them now—not more than a hundred yards away, a tiny fleet of rowboats, dories, here and there a fishing ketch, moving slowly to and fro across water smooth as glass—and a steadily dwindling crowd of men on shore, keeping their hands on their guns, glancing continually over their shoulders, alert for pursuit.

  Little did they know, he reflected bitterly.

  At the moment, he had no concern for his own future; the humiliation of being an impotent witness as the entire American army escaped under his nose—and the further thought of being obliged to return and recount this occurrence to General Howe—was so galling that he didn’t care whether the old women had it in mind to cook and eat him.

  Focused as he was on the scene on the beach, it didn’t occur to him at once that if he could now see the Americans, he was himself visible to them. In fact, so intent were the Continentals and militiamen on their retreat that none of them did notice him, until one man turned away from the retreat, seeming to search the upper reaches of the shore for something.

  The man stiffened, then, with a brief glance back at his oblivious companions, came purposefully up across the shingle, eyes fixed on William.

  “What’s this, Mother?” he asked. He was dressed in the uniform of a Continental officer, built short and wide, much like the two women, but a good deal bigger, and while his face was outwardly calm, there were calculations going on behind his bloodshot eyes.

  “Been fishing,” said the pipe-smoker. “Caught this wee redfish, but we think we’ll throw ’im back.”

  “Aye? Maybe not just yet.”

  William had stiffened with the man’s appearance, and stared up at him, keeping his own face as grim as possible.

  The man glanced up at the shredding fog behind William.

  “More like you at home, are there, boy?”

  William sat silent. The man sighed, drew back his fist, and hit William in the stomach. He doubled up, fell off the rock, and lay retching on the sand. The man grasped him by the collar and hauled him up, as though he weighed nothing.

  “Answer me, lad. I haven’t much time, and ’ee don’t want me to be hasty in my asking.” He spoke mildly, but touched the knife at his belt.

  William wiped his mouth, as well as he could, on his shoulder and faced the man, eyes burning. All right, he thought, and felt a certain calmness descend on him. If this is where I die, at least I’ll die for something. The thought was almost a relief.

  The pipe-smoker’s sister put paid to the dramatics, though, poking his interrogator in the ribs with her musket.

  “If there was more, sister and I’d’a heard ’em long since,” she said, mildly disgusted. “They ain’t quiet, sojers.”

  “True, that,” the pipe-smoker agreed, and paused to remove her pipe long enough to spit. “This ’un’s only lost, ’ee can see as much. ’Ee can see he won’t talk to ’ee, either.” She grinned familiarly at William, displaying one remaining yellow dogtooth. “Rather die than speak, eh, lad?”

  William inclined his head a stiff inch, and the women giggled. No other word for it: they giggled at him.

  “Get on with ’ee," the aunt told the man, waving a hand at the beach behind him. “They’ll leave without ’ee.”

  The man didn’t look at
her—didn’t take his eyes off William’s. After a moment, though, he nodded briefly and turned on his heel.

  William felt one of the women behind him; something sharp touched his wrist, and the twine they’d bound him with parted. He wanted to rub his wrists, but didn’t.

  “Go, boy,” the pipe-smoker said, almost gently. “Before someun else sees ’ee and gets ideas.”

  He left.

  At the top of the beach, he paused and looked back. The old women had vanished, but the man was sitting in the stern of a rowboat, drawing rapidly away from the shore, now nearly empty. The man was staring at him.

  William turned away. The sun was finally visible, a pale orange circle burning through the haze. It was coming down the sky now, early afternoon. He turned inland and struck southwest, but felt eyes on his back for a long time after the shore had fallen out of sight behind him.

  His stomach was sore, and the only thought in his mind was what Captain Ramsay had said to him. Heard of a lady called Cassandra?

  AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE

  Lallybroch

  Inverness-shire, Scotland

  September 1980

  NOT ALL OF the letters were dated, but some were. Bree sorted gingerly through the half-dozen on top, and with a sense of being poised at the top of a roller coaster, chose one with 2 March, A.D. 1777 written across the flap.

  “I think this one’s next.” She had trouble taking a full breath. “It’s—thin. Short.”

  It was, no more than a page and a half, but the reason for its brevity was clear; her father had written the whole of it. His awkward, determined writing wrung her heart.

  “We are never letting a teacher try to make Jemmy write with his right hand,” she said fiercely to Roger. “Never!”

  “Right,” he said, surprised and a little amused at her outburst. “Or left, if you prefer.”

  2 March, Anno Domini 1777

  Fraser’s Ridge, colony of North Carolina

  My dearest daughter—

  We prepare now to remove to Scotland. Not forever, or even for long. My Life—our Lives—lie here in America. And in all Honesty, I should greatly prefer to be stung to Death by Hornets than set foot on board another Ship; I try not to dwell upon the Prospect. But there are two chief Concerns which compel me to this Decision.

  Had I not the Gift of Knowledge that you and your Mother and Roger Mac have brought me, I would likely think—as the great Majority of People in the Colony do think—that the Continental Congress will not last six Months, and Washington’s Army less than that. I have spoken myself with a man from Cross Creek, who was discharged (honourably) from the Continental army on account of a festering Wound in the Arm—your Mother has of course dealt with this; he screamed a great Deal and I was pressed into service to sit upon him—who tells me that Washington has no more than a few thousand regular Soldiers, all very poor in Equipment, Clothes, and Arms, and all owed Money, which they are unlikely to receive. Most of his men are Militia, enlisted on short Contracts of two or three Months, and already melting away, needing to return Home for the Planting.

  But I do know. At the same Time, I cannot be sure how the Things that I know will come about. Am I meant to be in some Way Part of this? Should I hold back, will that somehow damage or prevent the Success of our Desires? I often wish I could discuss these Questions with your Husband, though Presbyterian that he is, I think he would find them even more unsettling than I do. And in the end, it does not matter. I am what God has made me, and must deal with the Times in which He has placed me.

  While I have not yet lost the Faculties of Sight or Hearing, nor even Control of my Bowels, I am not a young Man. I have a Sword, and a Rifle, and can use them both—but I also have a printing Press, and can use that to much greater Effect; it does not escape me that one can wield Sword or Musket only upon one Enemy at a time, while Words may be employed upon any Number.

  Your Mother—doubtless contemplating the Prospect of my being seasick for several Weeks in her immediate Vicinity—suggests that I might enter Business with Fergus, making use of L’Oignon’s Press, rather than travel to Scotland to retrieve my own.

  I considered this, but I cannot in Conscience expose Fergus and his Family to Danger by making use of their Press for such Purposes as I intend. Theirs is one of only a few Presses in operation between Charleston and Norfolk; even were I to do my Printing with the utmost Secrecy, Suspicion would focus upon them in short order—New Bern is a Hotbed of Loyalist Sentiment, and the Origins of my pamphleteering would become known almost immediately.

  Beyond Consideration for Fergus and his Family, I think there may be some Benefit in visiting Edinburgh in order to retrieve my own Press. I had a varied Acquaintance there; some may have escaped Prison or the Noose.

  The second—and most important—Consideration that compels me to Scotland, though, is your Cousin Ian. Years ago, I swore to his Mother—upon the Memory of our own Mother—that I would bring him Home to her, and this I mean to do, though the Man I bring back to Lallybroch is not the Lad who left there. God alone knows what they will make of each other, Ian and Lallybroch—and God has a most peculiar Sense of Humor. But if he is to go back at all, it must be now.

  The Snow is melting; Water drips from the Eaves all Day, and Icicles reach from the Roof of the Cabin nearly to the Ground by Morning. Within a few Weeks, the Roads will be clear enough for Travel. It seems strange to ask that you pray for the Safety of a Voyage which will have been long completed by the Time you learn of it—-for good or ill—but I ask it, nonetheless. Tell Roger Mac that I think God takes no account of Time. And kiss the Children for me.

  Your most affectionate Father,

  JF

  Roger sat back a little, eyebrows raised, and glanced at her.

  “The French Connection, you think?”

  “The what?” She frowned over his shoulder, saw where his finger marked the text. “Where he’s talking about his friends in Edinburgh?”

  “Aye. Were not a good many of his Edinburgh acquaintances smugglers?”

  “That’s what Mama said.”

  “Hence the remark about nooses. And where were they smuggling things from, mostly?”

  Her stomach gave a small hop.

  “Oh, you’re kidding. You think he’s planning to mess with French smugglers?”

  “Well, not smugglers, necessarily; he apparently knew a good many seditionists, thieves, and prostitutes, too.” Roger smiled briefly, but then grew serious again.

  “But I told him as much as I knew about the shape of the Revolution—admittedly, not a lot of detail, it not being my period—and I certainly told him how important France would be to the Americans. I’m just thinking”—he paused, a little awkwardly, then looked up at her—“he isn’t going to Scotland to avoid the fighting; he’s pretty clear about that.”

  “So you think he might be looking for political connections?” she asked slowly. “Not just grabbing his printing press, dropping Ian off at Lallybroch, and beating it back to America?”

  She found the idea something of a relief. The notion of her parents intriguing in Edinburgh and Paris was much less hair-raising than her visions of them in the midst of explosions and battlefields. And it would be both of them, she realized. Where her father went, her mother would be, too.

  Roger shrugged.

  “That offhand remark about being what God made him. Ye ken what he means by that?”

  “A bloody man,” she said softly, and moved closer to Roger, putting a hand on his shoulder as though to ensure that he wouldn’t suddenly vanish. “He told me he was a bloody man. That he’d seldom chosen to fight, but knew he was born to do it.”

  “Aye, that,” Roger said, just as softly. “But he’s no longer the young laird who took up his sword and led thirty crofters to a doomed battle—and took them home again. He knows a lot more now, about what one man can do. I think he means to do it.”

  “I think so, too.” Her throat felt tight, but as much with pride as fear.r />
  Roger reached up and put his hand over hers, squeezing.

  “I remember …” he said slowly. “A thing your mother said, telling us about—about when she came back, and how she became a doctor. A thing your—Frank—that he said to her. Something about it being bloody inconvenient to the people round her, but a great blessing that she knew what it was she was meant to be. He was right about that, I think. And Jamie does know.”

  She nodded. She probably shouldn’t say it, she thought. But she couldn’t hold the words back any longer.

  “Do you know?”

  He was silent for a long time, looking at the pages on the table, but at last shook his head, the motion so small that she felt rather than saw it.

  “I used to,” he said quietly, and let go of her hand.

  HER FIRST IMPULSE WAS to punch him in the back of the neck; her second was to seize him by the shoulders, bend down with her eyeballs an inch from his, and say—calmly, but distinctly—“What the hell do you mean by that?”

  She refrained from doing either, only because both were likely to lead to a prolonged conversation of a sort deeply inappropriate for children, and both the kids were in the hall a few feet from the study door; she could hear them talking.

  “See that?” Jemmy was saying.

  “Un-huh.”

  “Bad people came here, a long time ago, looking for Grandda. Bad English people. They did that.”

  Roger’s head turned as he caught what Jemmy was saying, and he caught Brianna’s eye, with a half smile.

  “Bad Engwish!” Mandy repeated obligingly. “Make ’em cwean it up!”

  In spite of her annoyance, Brianna couldn’t help sharing Roger’s smile, though she felt a small shimmer in the pit of her stomach, recalling her uncle Ian—so calm, so kind a man—showing her the saber slashes in the wooden paneling of the hall and telling her, “We keep it so, to show the children—and tell them, this is what the English are.” There had been steel in his voice—and hearing a faint, absurdly childish echo of it in Jemmy’s voice, she had her first doubts regarding the wisdom of keeping this particular family tradition.

  “Did you tell him about it?” she asked Roger, as the children’s voices moved away toward the kitchen. “I didn’t.”

  “Annie’d told him part of it; I thought I’d best tell him the rest.” He raised his eyebrows. “Should I have told him to ask you?”

  “Oh. No. No,” she repeated, dubiously. “But—should we be teaching him to hate English people?”

  Roger smiled at that.

  “ ‘Hate’ might be pitching it a bit strong. And he did say bad English people. They were bad English people who did that. Besides, if he’s going to grow up in the Highlands, he’ll likely hear a few barbed remarks regarding Sassenachs—he’ll balance those against his memories of your mother; your da always called her ‘Sassenach,’ after all.”

  He glanced at the letter on the table, caught a glimpse of the wall clock, and rose abruptly.

  “Christ, I’m late. I’ll stop at the bank whilst I’m in town—need anything from the Farm and Household?”

  “Yes,” she said dryly, “a new pump for the milk separator.”

  “Right,” he said, and kissing her hastily, went out, one arm already into his jacket.

  She opened her mouth to call after him that she’d been joking, but on second thought closed it. The Farm and Household Stores just might have a pump for a milk separator. A large, bewilderingly crowded building on the edge of Inverness, the Farm and Household supplied just about anything a farm might need, including pitchforks, rubber fire buckets, baling wire, and washing machines, as well as crockery, jars for canning, and not a few mysterious implements whose use she could only guess at.

  She stuck her head into the corridor, but the kids were in the kitchen with Annie MacDonald, the hired girl; laughter and the wire clong! of the ancient toaster—it had come with the house—floated past the ratty green baize door, along with the enticing scent of hot buttered toast. The smell and the laughter drew her like a magnet, and the warmth of home flowed over her, golden as honey.

  She paused to fold up the letter, though, before going to join them, and the memory of Roger’s last remark tightened her mouth.

  “I used to.”

  Snorting ferociously, she tucked the letter back into the box and went out into the hall, only to be arrested by sight of a large envelope on the table near the door, where the daily mail—and the contents of Roger’s and Jemmy’s pockets—were daily unloaded. She grabbed the envelope out of the pile of circulars, pebbles, pencil stubs, links of bicycle chain, and … was that a dead mouse? It was; flattened and dried, but adorned with a stiff loop of pink tail. She picked it up gingerly and, with the envelope clasped against her breast, made her way toward tea and toast.

  In all honesty, she thought, Roger wasn’t the only one keeping things to himself. The difference was, she planned to tell him what she was thinking—once it was settled.