The Outlandish Companion Page 13

  Seeking solitude, Jamie and Claire find respite from the day’s adventures on the banks of the creek, and amid speculations about their uncertain future in this strange new land, find a temporary comfort in each other’s arms.

  MEANWHILE, BACK IN the future…

  A phone rings in the dark in Boston, awakening Brianna Randall. Roger Wakefield is calling from Scotland with news and a question: He will be in Boston next month for a historical conference; does she want to see him?

  The question is hesitantly asked, but promptly answered. Despite his unanswered letters, Roger has been much on Brianna’s mind—yes, she wants very much to see him. Hanging up with a pounding heart, Brianna is unable to go back to sleep. Roger is her chief link with the past; a past she is at once unable to forget and unwilling to contemplate.

  Roger shared with her the morning when her mother disappeared forever through the stone circle on Craigh na Dun; Roger, too, hears the stones. In the aftermath of that shocking bereavement, she found herself falling in love with Roger—and then tore away, both from necessity and from doubt. Her mother had confided her to Roger’s care; but Brianna would not bind him to her with the strands of obligation. If it were something more than that, though …

  If there might be a future for them … and that was what she couldn’t write to him, because how could she say it without sounding both presumptuous and idiotic?

  “Go away, so you can come back and do it right,” she murmured, and made a face at the words.

  But now Roger is coming back—with luck, to do it right.

  Their first sight of each other is enough to prove that the attraction still exists; a week spent in each other’s company merely reinforces the conviction, while still not solving their basic problem. Roger is a don at Oxford, Brianna still at university. Beyond the temporary separation imposed by their careers, Roger wonders whether they can find a way to be together, given the basic differences in their outlooks.

  Might there be common ground for them, a historian and an engineer? He facing backward to the mysteries of the past, she to the future and its dazzling gleam?

  Then the room relaxed in cheers and babbling, and she turned in his arms to kiss him hard and cling to him, and he thought perhaps it didn’t matter that they faced in opposite directions—so long as they faced each other.

  IN 1767, CLAIRE AND JAMIE and their small party of companions have reached Wilmington, North Carolina. Given the choice of trudging inland for two hundred miles, or making the journey up the Cape Fear River by boat, Jamie opts reluctantly for the faster journey over water, leaving Duncan to follow with the wagon, under the guidance of John Quincy Myers, a mountain man and local guide whom Claire encounters in the street in Wilmington.

  Myers informs Jamie that Jamie’s uncle by marriage, Hector Cameron, has died within the last year—but that his aunt Jocasta still lives at River Run, a plantation that lies north of Cross Creek. Deducing Claire’s expertise at healing, Myers’s attention then turns to his own difficulties.

  “Big purple thing,” he explained to me, fumbling his loosened thong. “Almost as big as one o’ my balls. You don’t think it might could be as I’ve decided sudden-like to grow an extry, do you?”

  “Well, no, I said, biting my lip. ”I really doubt it.“ He moved very slowly, but had almost got the knot in his thong undone; people in the street were beginning to pause, staring.

  “Please don’t trouble yourself,” I said. “I do believe I know what that is—it’s an inguinal hernia.”

  Unable to deal adequately with Mr. Myers’s medical problems in Wilmington, Claire promises to see what she can do surgically at a later date, and escapes to keep a date for dinner with the Governor of the Colony. Taking advantage of a distant family connection, Jamie has wangled the invitation in the hope of finding a buyer for one of their gemstones; he has no desire to present himself at his aunt’s door in rags.

  The dinner is successful in more ways than one; another of the guests, Baron Penzler, agrees to buy a ruby, thus providing the Frasers with much-needed capital—money both to supply their own needs, and to send back to Scotland, in partial payment of Jamie’s promise to Laoghaire, the woman he had (reluctantly) married, under the conviction that Claire was lost to him forever.

  Beyond the sale of the stone, though, the dinner party results in another interesting—and alarming—development. Governor Tryon, new to the Colony, but an able administrator, is actively seeking “men of worth” to settle the dangerous and unexploited backcountry of the Colony, by taking land grants from the Crown and sponsoring the settlement of the land by emigrants. Tryon offers Jamie such a grant, putting aside the minor consideration that Jamie is a Catholic—and as such, technically ineligible; only white male Protestants are allowed to hold land grants.

  “The offer is one of considerable interest, ”Jamie said formally. “I must point out, however, that I am not a Protestant, nor are most of my kinsmen.”

  The Governor pursed his lips in deprecation, lifting one brow.

  “You are neither a Jew nor a Negro. I may speak as one gentleman to another, may I not? In all frankness, Mr. Fraser, there is the law, and then there is what is done.” He raised his glass with a small smile, setting the hook. “And I am convinced that you understand that as well as I do.”

  “Possibly better,” Jamie murmured, with a polite smile.

  Initially bewildered by the alacrity of the Governor’s offer, Claire quickly grasps Jamie’s explanation of Tryon’s reasoning: Jamie is closely connected with the Camerons, a wealthy and influential family in the Colony. At the same time, Jamie himself is an “incomer,” with no existing ties or loyalties—save to the Governor, who is offering him land. Tryon knows Jamie for a soldier, and a man accustomed to command; who better to settle a part of the colony alive with unrest and the discontented agitations of the Regulators, an association of backcountry men with strong—and often violent—objections to the capricious and sometimes illegal behavior of the Crown’s appointees?

  “The trouble is damped down but not settled,” Jamie said, shrugging. “And damp powder may smolder for a long time, Sassenach, but once it catches, it goes off with an almighty bang.”

  Would Tryon think it worth the investment, to buy the loyalty and obligation of an experienced soldier, himself in turn commanding the loyalty and service of the men under his sponsorship, all settled in a remote and troublesome area of the colony?

  I would myself have called the prospect cheap, at the cost of a hundred pounds and a few measly acres of the Kings land. His Majesty had quite a lot of it, after all.

  The proposal bears little risk for Tryon; if Jamie doesn’t perform as the Governor desires, Tryon need only “discover” Jamie’s Catholicism, and a Royal court would revoke the grant.

  The risk to Jamie is substantial—even more than he himself realizes, or so Claire fears. She has seen his gravestone in Scotland; presumably this means he will die there. So long as he remains in the New World, then, he must be safe? Intriguing as the Governor’s proposal is, she feels it’s not worth the risk of losing Jamie. If he goes to Scotland to raise a band of emigrants to settle his land, he may never come back.

  At the same time, the prospect is undeniably tempting; to be once again what he once was—a laird, with land and tenants to care for and be sustained by. Claire decides to keep her silence—for now.

  If Jamie is tempted, he is also cautious. He wishes to see the land the Governor proposes to give him, and assess its prospects before making a decision. Besides, he is anxious to visit his aunt Jocasta—his mother’s widowed sister, the last survivor of the MacKenzies of Leoch. Jocasta Cameron may be able to tell him more of conditions in the Colony, and give him enough information to decide on his course of action.

  Jocasta Cameron’s estate, River Run, lies some two hundred miles north of Wilmington. Gritting his teeth, Jamie agrees to make the journey by river— much faster than the overland route. His dread of seasickness fades as the Sa
lly Ann makes its way up the Cape Fear—but mal de mer is not the only danger on the river.

  The Fraser party is wakened at dawn by an unwelcome intrusion: river pirates, led by their erstwhile acquaintance, Stephen Bonnet. Bonnet’s goal is the gems that they carry—but one of his associates spies Claire’s wedding rings, and tries to take them by force. Claire succeeds in swallowing her silver ring and thus preserving it, but the gold band that once linked her to Frank Randall is gone.

  Arriving before his only kinswoman penniless and ragged with travel is galling to Jamie’s pride, but they now have little choice. As it is, Jocasta’s welcome is more than warm—and their raggedness passes unremarked, for Jocasta Cameron is blind.

  The Widow Cameron greets her long-lost nephew with joy, making him welcome to her house and lands. While some part of her generosity is undoubtedly due to family feeling, Claire quickly realizes that Jocasta is also the last of the MacKenzies of Leoch—a family “charming as the larks in the field—but sly as foxes with it,“ as Jamie once remarked of his kin.

  Jocasta’s ulterior motives are slowly revealed. Widowed and blind, she must depend on the help of two men to run her large and thriving plantation: Ulysses, the black butler who serves as her eyes and runs her household, and Byrnes, the white overseer who acts as her hands, running the slaves, who do the profitable work of timbering and producing the valuable stores of turpentine, tar, pitch, and spars that River Run sells to the Royal Navy. Ulysses is a devoted and able servant; Byrnes is a violent, drunken sot, whose ineptitude has jeopardized the lucrative Naval contracts on which River Run depends.

  A terrible incident at the sawmill demonstrates Byrnes’s unfitness; an altercation with one of the slaves ends with the slave attempting to remove Byrnes’s head with a timber knife. Succeeding only in depriving the overseer of an ear, the slave is automatically condemned to death under the Colony’s law of bloodshed; any slave who sheds the blood of a white person must die, regardless of circumstance.

  Farquard Campbell, another plantation owner, has come in haste, to tell Jocasta what has happened, and to summon Jamie. As Jocasta’s nearest male relative, neither Jocasta, Campbell—nor Jamie himself— questions his responsibility to go and deal with the situation. Claire, though, has considerable reservations about the whole affair.

  “Execution? Do you mean to say you intend to execute a man without even knowing what he’s done?” In my agitation, I had knocked Jocasta’s basket of yarn over. Little balls of colored wool ran everywhere, bouncing on the carpet.

  “I do know what’s he done, Mrs. Fraser!” Campbell lifted his chin, his color high, but with an obvious effort, swallowed his impatience.

  “Your pardon, ma’am. I know you are newly come here; you will find some of our ways difficult and even barbarous, but—”

  “Too right I find them barbarous! What kind of law is it that condemns a man—”

  “A slave—”

  “A man! Condemns him without a trial, without even an investigation? What sort of law is that?”

  “A bad one, madame!” he snapped. “But it is still the law, and I am charged with its fulfillment. Mr. Fraser, are you ready?” He clapped the hat on his head and turned to Jamie.

  Arriving at the sawmill, the Frasers find they are too late, a lynching has already taken place. Jamie goes at once to deal with Byrnes and his assistants; Claire’s attention is for the gruesomely injured slave.

  Hastily assessing the situation, she realizes that while the man is terribly injured, there is a faint possibility that she might save his life—at least temporarily.

  No one was paying any attention to the true object of the discussion. Only seconds had passed—but I had only seconds more to act. I placed a hand on Jamie’s arm, pulling his attention away from the debate.

  “If I save him, will they let him live?” I asked him, under my breath.

  His eyes flicked from one to another of the men behind me, weighing the possibilities.

  “No,” he said softly. His eyes met mine, dark with understanding. His shoulders straightened slightly, and he laid the pistol across his thighs. I could not help him make his choice; he could not help with mine— but he would defend me, whichever choice I made.

  “Give me the third bottle from the left, second row,” I said.

  The third bottle from the left contains aconite, a quick and deadly poison.

  One-fiftieth grain will kill a sparrow in a few seconds. One-tenth grain, a rabbit in five minutes … I tried to hear nothing, feel nothing, know nothing but the jerky beat beneath my fingers. I tried with all my might to shut out the voices overhead, the murmur nearby, the heat and dust and stink of blood, to forget where I was, and what I was doing.

  Claire returns to River Run with Jamie, troubled not only by the experience at the sawmill but by her growing realization that Jamie’s bonds of kinship make him indeed a part of this society, with all its capacity for injustice, violence, and terror, as well as its promises of wealth and adventure. What Farquard Campbell has told them is true; Jocasta needs a man to deal with the harsh exigencies of the plantation’s affairs—and Jamie is, by blood and obligation—the natural choice.

  To complicate matters further, Lieutenant Wolff, who negotiates the quarterly Naval contracts, has offered marriage to Jocasta—not, as she tartly observes, from desire of her person, but rather in order to become master of River Run. So far, she has evaded the Lieutenant’s attempts, with the help of her old friend Farquard Campbell—but the Lieutenant is pressing hard, pointing out that Jocasta cannot run the plantation without a man, and threatening loss of the valuable Naval contracts.

  Caught in this delicate situation, Jocasta perceives Jamie’s arrival as the answer to prayer—and soon forms a plan. She will have a great party, she declares, to make her nephew and his wife known to the Scottish community of Cape Fear. To this end, every influential person in the area is summoned to River Run, and Claire and Jamie are outfitted with great splendor— though not without arousing some suspicions.

  Jamie clearly suspects that Jocasta is up to something; he tells Claire to stay alert, ready to create a diversion, should he signal to her during the dinner. However, Jocasta’s arrival forestalls his explanation, leaving Claire alert—but not knowing why.

  In the event, a diversion is provided, but not by Claire; the dinner party is interrupted by the dramatic arrival of Duncan Innes with John Quincy Myers—the mountain man having achieved a majestic state of drunkenness in anticipation of Claire’s performing surgery on his hernia. Faced with the prostrate form of her prospective patient, Claire is dubious about the wisdom of doing surgery with the assistance of whisky-induced anesthesia, but is persuaded. As Jamie observes, “He may ne’er have the nerve or the money to get that drunk again.”

  Performing a hernia repair on the dinner table, before the cream of Cape Fear society, may possibly not have been precisely what Jocasta Cameron had in mind by way of presenting her new niece socially, but it does make an impression—and effectively, if only temporarily, prevents the announcement of whatever scheme Jocasta may have had in mind herself.

  That scheme is shortly revealed; Jamie takes Claire outside to talk, leaving the unconscious Mr. Myers recovering in the care of a slave. The butler, Ulysses, had told Jamie what his mistress intended, just before dinner; with Jamie garbed in his dead uncle’s Highland dress, and sitting in Hector Cameron’s place at the head of the table, Jocasta meant to rise and announce before the assembled company that she was making Jamie her heir—laird of River Run.

  The prospect is glittering … but also daunting. River Run’s prosperity depends on the work of slaves, and Claire recoils from the prospect of being a slave owner— the more so when Jamie explains that they could not legally free the slaves of River Run, even after Jocasta’s death; in fear of an armed uprising, the North Carolina Assembly allows slaves to be manumitted only one at a time, and only by approval of the Assembly.

  Claire doesn’t see how she can pos
sibly live as a slave owner, but keeps quiet for the moment, unwilling to impose her own moral concerns on Jamie as he wrestles with the problem. He is, however, quite aware of her reservations—and has his own doubts about Jocasta’s offer, as well.

  “Her husband is dead. Whether she was fond of him or no, she is mistress here now, with none to answer to. And she enjoys the taste of power too well to spit it out.”

  He was plainly correct in this assessment of Jocasta Cameron’s character, and therein lay the key to her plan. She needed a man; someone to go into those places she could not go, to deal with the Navy, to handle the chores of a large estate that she could not manage because of her blindness.

  At the same time, she patently did not want a husband; someone who would usurp her power and dictate to her. Had he not been a slave, Ulysses could have acted for her—but while he could be her eyes and ears, he could not be her hands.

  No, Jamie was the perfect choice; a strong, competent man, able to command respect among peers, compel obedience in subordinates. One knowledgeable in the management of land and men. Furthermore, a man bound to her by kinship and obligation, there to do her bidding—but essentially powerless.

  Reaching the edge of the river, Jamie helps Claire into a small boat and rows up to the creek where the sawmill stands— taking a troubled survey of the kingdom he is invited to rule, and reminding both himself and Claire of the difficulties that rule entails.

  Disembarking at the sawmill, the Frasers find it standing eerie in the darkness, disquieting with the memory of blood. The mill is haunted by more than ghosts, though, and the smell of blood is real. A dying girl lies in the overseer’s bed, evidently the victim of a botched abortion … or of deliberate murder.