Outlander [08] Written in My Own Heart's Blood Page 13

  “Dinna even think about it,” he said bluntly. “In my present condition, I couldna swive a dead sheep. To say nothing of which, I’m old enough to be your father, lass—and I’m marrit, forbye.”

  Her mouth quivered slightly, though he couldn’t tell whether with disappointment or relief. Her fingers relaxed, though, and her hand dropped to her side.

  “Ye dinna need to pay me for the food, lass,” he said. “It was a gift.”

  “I—yes, I know. I thank thee, Friend.” She looked aside, swallowing a little. “I only—I hoped that perhaps—thee might stay. For a time.”

  “I’m marrit, lass,” he repeated gently, then, after an uncomfortable pause, felt compelled to ask, “Do ye have such callers often?” It had been clear to him that the men were strangers to her—but she was not to them. They’d heard of the Quaker woman who lived alone with three young girls.

  “I take them to the shed,” she blurted, her face going redder than the flames made it. “After the girls are asleep.”

  “Mmphm,” he said, after another pause that lasted much too long. His eyes went to the cradle but then shot away. He wondered how long Mr. Hardman had been gone from home, but it wasn’t his business. Nor was it his business how she managed to feed her girls.

  “Sleep, lass,” he said. “I’ll keep watch.”

  MORNING AIR AWASH WITH ANGELS

  Next day

  JAMIE AWOKE TO THE smell of frying meat and sat up straight in bed, forgetting his back.

  “Lord have mercy,” said Mrs. Hardman, looking over her shoulder. “I haven’t heard a noise like that since the last time my husband, Gabriel, killed a pig.” She shook her head and returned to her cookery, pouring batter into an oiled cast-iron spider that sat in the coals, smoking and spitting in a baleful sort of way.

  “I beg your pardon, ma’am—”

  “Silvia is my name, Friend. And thine?” she asked, raising one brow at him.

  “Friend Silvia,” he said through clenched teeth. “My name Is Jamie. Jamie Fraser.” He’d raised his knees in the involuntary jerk that brought him upright, and now he wrapped his arms around them and laid his sweating face against the worn quilt that covered them, trying to stretch his recalcitrant back. The effort shot pain down his right leg and caused an instant sharp cramp in his left calf muscle, which made him grunt and pant until it let go.

  “I’m pleased to see thee sit up, Friend Jamie,” Silvia Hardman remarked, bringing him a plate filled with sausage, fried onions, and johnnycake. “Your back is some better, I collect?” She smiled at him.

  “Somewhat,” he managed, and smiled back as well as he could while trying not to groan. “You—have fresh food, I see.”

  “Yes, God be thanked,” she said fervently. “I sent Pru and Patience out to the main road at dawn to watch for wagons coming in to the market in Philadelphia, and they came back with a pound of sausage, two of cornmeal, a sack of oats, and a dozen eggs. Eat up!” She placed the wooden plate on the bed beside him, with a wooden spoon.

  Jamie could see Prudence and Patience behind their mother, industriously wiping sausage grease from their empty plates with chunks of johnnycake. Easing himself gingerly around in order to put his back against the wall, he stretched out his legs, picked up the plate, and followed their example.

  The food filled him with a surprising sense of well-being, and he put down the empty plate determined upon enterprise.

  “I propose to visit your privy, Friend Silvia. But I may need some assistance to rise.”

  Once on his feet, he found that he could make shift to stagger a few inches at a time, and Prudence and Patience at once rushed up to seize him by the elbows, in the manner of small flying buttresses.

  “Don’t worry,” Prudence advised him, squaring her puny shoulders and looking confidently up at him. “We won’t let thee fall.”

  “I’m sure ye won’t,” he said gravely. In fact, the little girls had a wiry strength that belied their fragile appearance, and he found their presence an actual help, as they provided something for him to hold on to for balance when it was necessary to stop—as it was every few feet.

  “Tell me about the wagons that go into Philadelphia,” he said at one such stop, as much to make conversation as because he required the information. “Do they come only in the early morning?”

  “Mostly,” Patience said. “They go back empty an hour or two before sunset.” She set her feet wider, bracing herself. “It’s all right,” she assured him. “Lean on me. Thee seems summat shaky.”

  He squeezed her shoulder gently in thanks and let her take a very little of his weight. Shaky, indeed. It was more than half a mile to the main road; it would take over an hour to totter that far, even with the girls’ assistance, and the likelihood of his back freezing again and stranding him midway was yet too high to risk it. To say nothing of the risk of arriving in Philadelphia completely unable to move. By tomorrow, though …

  “And did ye see soldiers on the road?” he asked, essaying a ginger step that shot pain from hip to foot. “Ow!”

  “We did,” Patience said, taking a tighter grip on his elbow. “Courage, Friend. Thee will prevail. We saw two companies of militia, and one Continental officer on a mule.”

  “We saw some British solders, too, though,” Prudence put in, eager not to be overlooked. “They were with a train of carts, going in the other direction.”

  “The other—away from Philadelphia?” Jamie asked, his heart jumping. Was the evacuation of the British army already begun? “Could you see what was in the carts?”

  Prudence shrugged. “Furniture. Trunks and baskets. There were ladies riding atop some of the carts, though mostly they walked alongside. No room,” she clarified. “Guard thy shirttail, Friend, or thy modesty will be at risk.” The morning was cool and breezy, and an errant gust of wind had risen up, bellying his shirt—wonderful on his sweating body, but definitely a risk to maiden eyes.

  “Shall I knot the tails between thy legs?” Patience inquired. “I can tie a granny knot, an overhand knot, or a square knot. My daddy taught me!”

  “Don’t be silly, Patience,” her sister said crossly. “If thee knots his shirt, how will he lift it to shit? No one can untie her knots,” she confided to Jamie. “She always makes them too tight.”

  “Oh, I do not, liar!”

  “Fie upon thee, sister! I’ll tell Mummy what thee said!”

  “Where is your father?” Jamie interrupted, wanting to stop the acrimony before they began pulling each other’s hair. They did stop and glanced at each other for a moment before replying.

  “We don’t know,” Prudence said, her voice small and sad. “He went a-hunting one day a year ago and didn’t come back.”

  “It might be that Indians took him,” Patience said, trying to sound hopeful. “If so, may be that he’ll escape one day and come home.”

  Prudence sighed.

  “Maybe,” she said flatly. “Mummy thinks the militia shot him.”

  “Why?” Jamie asked, looking down at her. “Why would they shoot him?”

  “For being a Friend,” Patience explained. “He wouldn’t fight, and so they said he was a Loyalist.”

  “I see. Was—er, I mean—is he?”

  Prudence looked at him, grateful for the “is.”

  “I don’t think so. But Mummy says Philadelphia yearly meeting told everyone that all Friends should be for the King, as the King would keep peace and the Rebels seek to break it. So”—she shrugged—“people think all Friends are Loyalists.”

  “Daddy wasn’t—isn’t,” Patience put in. “He used to say all kinds of things about the King, and Mummy would get worried and beg him to hold his tongue. Here’s the privy,” she announced unnecessarily, letting go of Jamie’s elbow in order to open the door. “Don’t wipe thyself with the towel; it’s for hands. There are corncobs in the basket.”

  JOHN GREY WOKE feverish and heavy-limbed, with a pounding headache, and a stabbing pain in his left eye when he trie
d to open it. Both his eyes were crusted and gummy. He’d been dreaming in vivid, fractured swaths, a confusion of images, voices, emotions … Jamie Fraser had been shouting at him, face dark with passion, but then something changed, some sort of pursuit began, and he fell back into queasy nightmare. They were running together through a bog, a sucking quagmire that pulled at his steps, and Fraser was struggling just ahead of him, trapped, shouting at him to go back, but he couldn’t, his feet were mired fast and he was sinking, flailing madly but unable to get a purchase on anything …

  “Gaah!” A hand shook him by the shoulder, startling him out of the morass. He pried his good eye open and saw the wavering form of a neat young man in a dark coat and spectacles, peering down at him in an oddly familiar way.

  “John Grey?” said the young man.

  “I am,” he said. He swallowed painfully. “Have I—the honor of your acquaintance, sir?”

  The young man flushed a bit.

  “Thee has, Friend Grey,” he said, low-voiced. “I am—”

  “Oh!” Grey said, sitting up in a rush. “Of course, you—oh. Oh, Jesus.” His head, disturbed by the abrupt change of posture, had apparently decided to fly off his shoulders and thump into the nearest wall. The young man … Hunter, he thought, finding the name turn up with an odd neatness among the chaos inside his skull. Dr. Hunter. Dottie’s Quaker.

  “I think thee had best lie down, Friend.”

  “I think I had best vomit first.”

  Hunter snatched the pot out from under the cot just in time. By the time he had administered water—“Drink slowly, Friend, if thee wishes to keep it”—and eased Grey back down on the cot, Colonel Smith was looming up behind him.

  “What do you say, Doctor?” Smith was frowning and seemed worried. “Is he in his right mind? He was singing last night, now he’s been moaning and saying odd things, and the look of him …” Smith grimaced in a fashion that made Grey wonder what the devil he did look like.

  “He’s badly fevered,” Hunter said, with a piercing look through his spectacles as he bent to take hold of Grey’s wrist. “And thee sees the condition of his eye. It would be dangerous to move him. A further extravasation of blood into the brain …”

  Smith made a discontented noise and compressed his lips. He nudged Hunter aside and bent over Grey.

  “Can you hear me, Colonel?” he asked, speaking in the slow, distinct manner one used with idiots and foreigners.

  “Ich bin ein Fisch …” Grey murmured beatifically, and closed his eyes.

  “His pulse is much disordered,” Hunter said warningly, his thumb pressing Grey’s wrist. His hand was cool and firm; Grey found the touch comforting. “I really cannot answer for the consequences should he be moved abruptly.”

  “I see.” Smith stood still for a moment; Grey could hear his heavy breathing but forbore opening his eyes. “Very well, then.” He gave a short, humorless laugh. “If Mohammed cannot go to the mountain, then the mountain will jolly well have to come here. I’ll send a note to General Wayne. Do what you can, please, to see that he’s coherent, Doctor?”

  HE COULD SEE Denzell Hunter out of his damaged eye; that was reassuring: he wasn’t blind. Yet. Hunter had removed his spectacles in order to peer more closely into the injured organ; he had very nice eyes himself, Grey thought—the iris just the light-brown color of the flesh of a ripe olive, with tiny streaks of deep green.

  “Look up, please,” Hunter murmured.

  Grey tried to oblige.

  “Ow!”

  “No? Look down.” This attempt was no more successful, nor could he move the eye to the right or left. It seemed to have solidified in its socket, like a hard-boiled egg. He put this theory to Hunter, who smiled, though in a rather worried way.

  “There is a great deal of swelling, to be sure. Whatever struck thee did so with a good deal of force.” Hunter’s fingers moved gently over Grey’s face, prodding here and there in a questioning manner. “Does this—”

  “Yes, he did. Don’t keep asking if it hurts; everything from my scalp to my chin hurts, including my left ear. What you said regarding extravasation of blood into the brain—did you mean it?”

  “It’s possible.” Hunter did smile at that, though. “But since thee has shown no disposition to seizure or unconsciousness—save that due to alcohol—and thee apparently walked for several hours following the injury, I think perhaps the probability is lower. There is bleeding beneath the sclera, though.” His cool fingertips brushed the puffy lid. “Thy eyeball is crimson, as is the lining of thy eyelid. It’s rather … dramatic.” There was a distinct tone of amusement in this, which Grey found reassuring.

  “Oh, good,” he said dryly. “How long will it take to go away?”

  That made the Quaker grimace and shake his head.

  “The blood will take a week to a month to clear; it’s essentially the same as mere bruising—the bursting of small blood vessels under the skin. What worries me is thy inability to move the eye. I think thee has a fracture of the bony orbit, which is somehow trapping the orbicularis muscle. I do wish thy wife was here; she has a much greater—”

  “My wife,” Grey said blankly. “Oh!” Memory and realization collided, and he felt a sudden leap of spirit. “She isn’t my wife! Not anymore,” he added, and found himself grinning. He leaned forward to whisper into Hunter’s astonished ear, “Jamie Fraser isn’t dead!”

  Hunter stared at him, blinked, put his spectacles back on, and resumed staring, obviously rethinking his appraisal of Grey’s brain.

  “He’s the one who hit me,” Grey said helpfully. “It’s all right,” he added at Hunter’s frown. “I was asking for it.”

  “God be praised,” Hunter whispered, breaking into a huge smile—apparently at the news of Fraser’s survival rather than Grey’s assurance of the morality of his actions. “Ian will be—” He broke off with a gesture indicating his inability to describe Ian Murray’s probable emotions.

  “And Friend Claire!” he exclaimed, eyes huge behind his spectacles. “Does she know?”

  “Yes, but—” Approaching footsteps made Grey hurl himself back onto the cot, with a completely authentic exclamation of pain. He shut his eyes and rolled his head to one side, groaning.

  “The mountain seems to be with General Washington,” Smith said, plainly disedified. Grey felt him come to a stop by the cot, bumping it with his legs. “Do what you can to see that he’s capable of travel by tomorrow, Doctor—we’ll load him into one of the wagons, if necessary.”

  Number 17 Chestnut Street

  HIS GRACE WOKE up in the morning red-eyed as a ferret and in roughly the same temper as a rabid badger. Had I a tranquilizing dart, I would have shot him with it without an instant’s hesitation. As it was, I prescribed a large slug of brandy to be added to his breakfast coffee and—after a brief struggle with my Hippocratic conscience—added a very small amount of laudanum to it.

  I couldn’t give him much; it depressed the respiration, among other things. Still, I reasoned, counting the aromatic reddish-brown drops as they plinked into the brandy, it was a more humane way of dealing with him than crowning him with the chamber pot or calling Mrs. Figg to sit on him whilst I tied him to the bedstead and gagged him.

  And I did require him to be both immobile and quiet for a short period. Mr. Figg, a preacher of the Methodist Society, was bringing round two young men of the society who were carpenters, to rehang the front door and nail boards over the shutters of the downstairs windows, in case of roving mobs. I’d told Mrs. Figg that of course she might confide our circumstances to her husband—I couldn’t very well stop her—but that perhaps he might be persuaded not to mention His Grace’s presence, in the interests of protecting Lord John’s safety and property—to say nothing of His Grace, who was, after all, Lord John’s presumably beloved brother.

  Mrs. Figg would cheerfully have handed the duke over to be tarred and feathered, but an appeal on Lord John’s behalf would always carry weight with her, and she nodded
in sober agreement. So long as His Grace didn’t draw attention to himself by shouting out of the upstairs window or hurling things at the workmen, she thought his presence could be concealed.

  “What you mean to do with him, though, Lady John?” she asked, glancing warily toward the ceiling. We were standing in the back parlor, conferring in lowered voices while Jenny administered Hal’s breakfast and made sure all the brandy-laced coffee was drunk. “And what if the army sends someone round to ask after him?”

  I made a helpless gesture.

  “I have no idea,” I confessed. “I just need to keep him here until either Lord John or my—er, Mr. Fraser—comes. They’ll know what to do with him. As for the army, if anyone comes asking after His Grace, I’ll … um … speak to them.”

  She gave me a look indicating that she’d heard better plans, but nodded reluctantly and went off to fetch her marketing basket. The first thing that happens in a newly occupied city is a shortage of food, and with the Continental army poised to descend on Philadelphia like a plague of locusts, the wagons that normally brought in produce from the countryside would likely be sparse. If either army was on the road already, they’d be seizing anything that came along.

  At the door, though, Mrs. Figg paused and turned around.

  “What about William?” she demanded. “If he comes back …” She was obviously torn between hope that he would come back—she was worried for him—and consternation at what might happen if he encountered his uncle in captivity.

  “I’ll speak to him,” I repeated firmly, and waved a hand toward the door.

  Running upstairs, I found Hal yawning over a nearly empty breakfast tray and Jenny fastidiously wiping egg yolk off the corner of his mouth. She’d spent the night at the printshop but had come back to help, bringing with her a battered portmanteau filled with possibly useful items.