Drums of Autumn Read online

  “Not yet,” I whispered, clenching my fists in the silk of my petticoat. “I’ve only had him for a little while—oh, God, please, not yet!”

  As though in answer, the door swung open, and James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser came in, carrying a candle.

  He smiled at me, loosening his stock.

  “You’re verra light on your feet, Sassenach. I see I must teach ye to hunt one day, and you such a fine stalker.”

  I made no apology for eavesdropping, but came to help him with his waistcoat buttons. In spite of the late hour and the brandy, he was clear-eyed and alert, his body tautly alive when I touched him.

  “You’d best put out the candle,” I said. “The bugs will eat you alive.” I pinched a mosquito off his neck by way of illustration, the fragile body crushed to a smear of blood between my fingers.

  Among the scents of brandy and cigar smoke, I could smell the night on him, and the faint musky spice of nicotiana; he had been walking, then, amid the flowers in the garden. He did that when he was either distressed or excited—and he didn’t seem distressed.

  He sighed and flexed his shoulders as I took his coat; his shirt was damp with sweat underneath, and he plucked it away from his skin with a mild grunt of distaste.

  “I canna tell how folk live in such heat, dressed like this. It makes the savages look quite sensible, to be goin’ about in loincloths and aprons.”

  “It would be a lot cheaper,” I agreed, “if less aesthetically appealing. Imagine Baron Penzler in a loincloth, I mean.” The Baron weighed perhaps eighteen stone, with a pasty complexion.

  He laughed, the sound muffled in his shirt as he pulled it over his head.

  “You, on the other hand…” I sat down on the window seat, admiring the view as he stripped off his breeches, standing on one leg to roll down his stocking.

  With the candle extinguished, it was dark in the room, but with my eyes adapted, I could still make him out, long limbs pale against the velvet night.

  “And speaking of the Baron—” I prodded.

  “Three hundred pounds sterling,” he replied, in tones of extreme satisfaction. He straightened up and tossed the rolled stockings onto a stool, then bent and kissed me. “Which is in large part due to you, Sassenach.”

  “For my value as an ornamental setting, you mean?” I asked dryly, recalling the Wylies’ conversation.

  “No,” he said, rather shortly. “For keeping Wylie and his friends occupied at dinner, while I talked wi’ the Governor. Ornamental setting…tcha! Stanhope nearly dropped his eyeballs into your bosom, the filthy lecher; I’d a mind to call him out for it, but—”

  “Discretion is the better part of valor,” I said, standing up and kissing him back. “Not that I’ve ever met a Scot who seemed to think so.”

  “Aye, well, there was my grandsire, Old Simon. I suppose ye could say it was discretion that did for him, in the end.” I could hear both the smile and the edge in his voice. If he seldom spoke of the Jacobites and the events of the Rising, it didn’t mean he had forgotten; his conversation with the Governor had obviously brought them close to the surface of his mind tonight.

  “I’d say that discretion and deceit are not necessarily the same things. And your grandfather had been asking for it for fifty years, at least,” I replied tartly. Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, had died by beheading on Tower Hill—at the age of seventy-eight, after a lifetime of unparalleled chicanery, both personal and political. For all of that, I quite regretted the old rogue’s passing.

  “Mmphm.” Jamie didn’t argue with me, but moved to stand beside me at the window. He breathed in deeply, as though smelling the thick perfume of the night.

  I could see his face quite clearly in the dim glow of starlight. It was calm and smooth, but with an inward look, as though his eyes didn’t see what was before them, but something else entirely. The past? I wondered. Or the future?

  “What did it say?” I asked suddenly. “The oath you swore.”

  I felt rather than saw the movement of his shoulders, not quite a shrug.

  “ ‘I, James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser, do swear, and as I shall answer to God at the great day of judgment, I have not, nor shall have, in my possession any gun, sword, pistol, or arm whatsoever, and never use tartan, plaid, or any part of the Highland garb; and if I do so, may I be cursed in my undertakings, family, and property.’ ” He took a deep breath, and went on, speaking precisely.

  “ ‘May I never see my wife and children, father, mother or relations. May I be killed in battle as a coward, and lie without Christian burial, in a strange land, far from the graves of my forefathers and kindred; may all this come across me if I break my oath.’ ”

  “And did you mind a lot?” I said, after a moment.

  “No,” he said softly, still looking out at the night. “Not then. There are things worth dying or starving for—but not words.”

  “Maybe not those words.”

  He turned to look at me, features dim in starlight, but the hint of a smile visible on his mouth.

  “Ye know of words that are?”

  The gravestone had his name, but no date. I could stop him going back to Scotland, I thought. If I would.

  I turned to face him, leaning back against the window frame.

  “What about—‘I love you’?”

  He reached out a hand and touched my face. A breath of air stirred past us, and I saw the small hairs rise along his arm.

  “Aye,” he whispered. “That’ll do.”

  * * *

  There was a bird calling somewhere close at hand. A few clear notes, succeeded by an answer; a brief twitter, and then silence. The sky outside was still thick black, but the stars were less brilliant than before.

  I turned over restlessly; I was naked, covered only by a linen sheet, but even in the small hours of the night, the air was warm and smothering, and the small depression in which I lay was damp.

  I had tried to sleep, and could not. Even lovemaking, which normally could relax me into a bonelessly contented stupor, had this time left me only restless and sticky. At once excited and worried by the possibilities of the future—and unable to confide my disturbed feelings—I had felt separate from Jamie; estranged and detached, despite the closeness of our bodies.

  I turned again, this time toward Jamie. He lay in his usual position, on his back, the sheet crumpled about his hips, hands gently folded over a flat stomach. His head was turned slightly on the pillow, his face relaxed in sleep. With the wide mouth gentled by slumber and the dark lashes long on his cheeks, in this dim light he looked about fourteen.

  I wanted to touch him, though I wasn’t sure whether I meant to caress or to poke him. While he had given me physical release, he had taken my peace of mind, and I was irrationally envious of his effortless repose.

  I did neither, though, and merely turned onto my back, where I lay with my eyes shut, grimly counting sheep—who disobliged me by being Scottish sheep, cantering merrily through a kirkyard, leaping the gravestones with gay abandon.

  “Is something troubling ye, Sassenach?” said a sleepy voice at my shoulder.

  My eyes popped open.

  “No,” I said, trying to sound equally drowsy. “I’m fine.”

  There was a faint snort and a rustling of the chaff-filled mattress as he turned over.

  “You’re a terrible liar, Sassenach. Ye’re thinking so loudly, I can hear ye from here.”

  “You can’t hear people think!”

  “Aye, I can. You, at least.” He chuckled and reached out a hand, which rested lazily on my thigh. “What is it—has the spiced crab given ye flatulence?”

  “It has not!” I tried to twitch my leg away, but his hand clung like a limpet.

  “Oh, good. What is it, then—ye’ve finally thought of a witty riposte to Mr. Wylie’s remarks about oysters?”

  “No,” I said irritably. “If you must know, I was thinking about the offer Governor Tryon made you. Will you let go of my leg?”
r />   “Ah,” he said, not letting go but sounding less sleepy. “Well, come to that, I was thinking on the matter a bit myself.”

  “What do you think about it?” I gave up trying to detach his hand and rolled onto my elbow, facing him. The window was still dark, but the stars had dimmed visibly, faded by the distant approach of day.

  “I wonder why he made it, for the one thing.”

  “Really? But I thought he told you why.”

  He gave a brief grunt.

  “Well, he’s no offering me land for the sake of my bonny blue eyes, I’ll tell ye that.” He opened the eyes in question and cocked one brow at me. “Before I make a bargain, Sassenach, I want to know what’s on both sides of it, aye?”

  “You don’t think he’s telling the truth? About Crown grants to help settle the land? But he said it’s been going on for thirty years,” I protested. “He couldn’t lie about something like that, surely.”

  “No, that’s the truth,” he agreed. “So far as it goes. But bees that hae honey in their mouths hae stings in their tails, aye?” He scratched at his head and smoothed the loose hair out of his face, sighing.

  “Ask yourself this, Sassenach,” he said. “Why me?”

  “Well—because he wants a gentleman of substance and authority,” I said slowly. “He needs a good leader, which Cousin Edwin has obviously told him you are, and a fairly wealthy man—”

  “Which I am not.”

  “He doesn’t know that, though,” I protested.

  “Doesn’t he?” he said cynically. “Cousin Edwin will ha’ told him as much as he knows—and the Governor kens well I was a Jacobite. True, there are a few who mended their fortunes in the Indies after the Rising, and I might be one o’ those—but he has nae reason to think so.”

  “He knows you have some money,” I pointed out.

  “Because of Penzler? Aye,” he said thoughtfully. “What else does he know about me?”

  “Only what you told him at dinner, so far as I know. And he can’t have heard much about you from anyone else; after all, you’ve been in town less than a—what, you mean that’s it?” My voice rose in incredulity, and he smiled, a little grimly. The light was still far off, but moving closer, and his features were clearcut in the dimness.

  “Aye, that’s it. I’ve connections to the Camerons, who are not only wealthy but well respected in the colony. But at the same time, I’m an incomer, wi’ few ties and no known loyalties here.”

  “Except, perhaps, to the Governor who’s offering you a large tract of land,” I said slowly.

  He didn’t reply at once, but rolled onto his back, still keeping a grip on my leg. His eyes were fastened on the dim whiteness of the plaster ceiling above, with its clouded garlands and ghostly cupids.

  “I’ve known a German or two in my time, Sassenach,” he said, musing. His thumb began to move slowly, back and forth upon the tender flesh of my inner thigh. “I havena found them careless wi’ their money, be they Jew or Gentile. And while ye looked bonny as a white rose this evening, I canna think it was entirely your charms that made the gentleman offer me a hundred pounds more than the goldsmith did.”

  He glanced at me. “Tryon is a soldier. He’ll ken me for one, too. And there was that wee bit of trouble with the Regulators two year past.”

  My mind was so diverted by the possibilities intrinsic in this speech, that I was nearly unconscious of the increasing familiarity of the hand between my thighs.

  “Who?”

  “Oh, I forgot; ye wouldna have heard that part of the conversation—bein’ otherwise occupied with your host of admirers.”

  I let that one pass in favor of finding out about the Regulators. These, it appeared, were a loose association of men, mostly from the rough backcountry of the colony, who had taken offense at what they perceived as capricious and inequitable—and now and then downright illegal—behavior on the part of the Crown’s appointed officials, the sheriffs, justices, tax collectors, and so on.

  Feeling that their complaints were not sufficiently addressed by the Governor and Assembly, they had taken matters into their own hands. Sheriff’s deputies had been assaulted, justices of the peace marched from their houses by mobs and forced to resign.

  A committee of Regulators had written to the Governor, imploring him to address the iniquities under which they suffered, and Tryon—a man of action and diplomacy—had replied soothingly, going so far as to replace one or two of the most corrupt sheriffs, and issue an official letter to the court officers, regarding seizure of effects.

  “Stanhope said something about a Committee of Safety,” I said, interested. “But it sounded quite recent.”

  “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 King’s land. His Majesty had quite a lot of it, after all.

  “So you’re thinking about it.” We were by this time facing each other, and my hand lay over his, not in restraint, but in acknowledgment.

  He smiled lazily.

  “I havena lived so long by believing everything I’m told, Sassenach. So perhaps I’ll take up the Governor’s kind offer, and perhaps I will not—but I want to know the hell of a lot more about it before I say, one way or the other.”

  “Yes, it does seem a little odd—his making you such an offer on short acquaintance.”

  “I should be surprised to hear I am the only gentleman he’s so approached,” Jamie said. “And it’s no great risk, now, is it? Ye overheard me telling him I am a Catholic? It was no surprise to him to hear it.”

  “Yes. He didn’t seem to think that was a problem, though.”

  “Oh, I daresay it wouldna be—unless the Governor chose to make it one.”

  “My goodness.” My evaluation of Governor Tryon was rapidly changing, though I wasn’t sure whether for the better or not. “So if things didn’t work out as he liked, all he would have to do is let it be known that you’re a Catholic, and a court would take back the land on those grounds. Whereas if he chooses to keep quiet—”

  “And if I choose to do as he likes, aye.”

  “He’s much sneakier than I thought,” I said, not without admiration. “Practically Scottish.”

  He laughed at that, and brushed the loose hair out of his face.

  The long curtains at the window, hitherto hanging limp, suddenly puffed inward, letting in a breath of air that smelt of sandy mud, river water, and the far-off hint of fresh pines. Dawn was coming, borne on the wind.

  As though this had been a signal, Jamie’s hand cupped itself, and a slight shiver communicated itself from him to me, as the coolness struck his bare back.

  “I didna really do myself credit earlier,” he said softly. “But if you’re sure there’s nothing troubling your mind just now…”

  “Nothing,” I said, watching the glow from the window touch the line of his head and neck with gold. His mouth was still wide and gentle, but he didn’t look fourteen any longer.

  “Not a thing, just now.”

  8

  MAN OF WORTH

  God, I hate boats!”

  With this heart-felt valediction ringing in my ears, we swung slowly out into the waters of Wilmington harbor.

  Two days of purchases and preparations found us now bound for Cross Creek. With money from the sale of the ruby in hand, there had been no need to sell the horses; Duncan had been sent with the wagon and the heavier goods, with Myers aboard to guide him, the rest of us to take a quicker, more comfortable passage with Captain Freeman, aboard the Sally Ann.

  A craft of singular and i
ndescribable type, the Sally Ann was square-beamed, long, low-sided, and blunt-prowed. She boasted a tiny cabin that measured roughly six feet square, leaving a scant two feet on either side for passage, and a somewhat greater area of deck fore and aft, this now partially obscured by bundles, bags, and barrels.

  With a single sail mounted on a mast and boom above the cabin, the Sally Ann looked from a distance like a crab on a shingle, waving a flag of truce. The peaty brown waters of the Cape Fear lapped a scant four inches below the rail, and the boards of the bottom were perpetually damp with slow leakage.

  Still, I was happy. Cramped conditions or no, it was good to be on the water, away—if only temporarily—from the Governor’s siren song.

  Jamie wasn’t happy. He did indeed hate boats, with a profound and undying passion, and suffered from a seasickness so acute that watching the swirl of water in a glass could turn him green.

  “It’s dead calm,” I observed. “Maybe you won’t be sick.”

  Jamie squinted suspiciously at the chocolate-brown water around us, then clamped his eyes shut as the wake from another boat struck the Sally Ann broadside, rocking her violently.

  “Maybe not,” he said, in tones indicating that while the suggestion was a hopeful one, he also thought the possibility remote.

  “Do you want the needles? It’s better if I put them in before you vomit.” Resigned, I groped in the pocket of my skirt, where I had placed the small box containing the Chinese acupuncture needles that had saved his life on our Atlantic crossing.

  He shuddered briefly and opened his eyes.

  “No,” he said. “I’ll maybe do. Talk to me, Sassenach—take my mind off my stomach, aye?”

  “All right,” I said obligingly. “What is your Aunt Jocasta like?”

  “I havena seen her since I was two years old, so my impressions are a bit lacking,” he replied absently, eyes fixed on a large raft coming down the river, set on an apparent collision course with us. “D’ye think that Negro can manage? Perhaps I ought to give him a bit of help.”

  “Perhaps you shouldn’t,” I said, eyeing the oncoming raft warily. “He seems to know what he’s doing.” Besides the captain—a disreputable old wreck who reeked of tobacco—theSally Ann had a single hand, an elderly black freedman who was dealing alone with the steerage of our craft, by means of a large pole.

  The man’s lean muscles flexed and bulged in easy rhythm. Grizzled head bowed in effort, he took no apparent notice of the oncoming barge, but plunged and lifted in a liquid motion that made the long pole seem like a third limb.

  “Let him alone. I suppose you don’t know much about your aunt, then?” I added, in hopes of distracting him. The raft was moving ponderously and inexorably toward us.

  Some forty feet from end to end, it rode low in the water, weighed down with barrels and stacks of hides, tied down under netting. A pungent wave of odor preceded it, of musk and blood and rancid fat, strong enough to overpower temporarily all the other smells of the river.

  “No; she wed the Cameron of Erracht and left Leoch the year before my mother married my father.” He spoke abstractedly, not looking at me; his attention was all on the oncoming barge. His knuckles whitened; I could feel his urge to leap forward, snatch the pole away from the deckhand, and stave off the raft. I laid a restraining hand on his arm.

  “And she never came to visit at Lallybroch?”

  I could see the gleam of sun on dull iron, where it struck cleats along the edge of the raft, and the half-naked forms of the three deckhands, sweating even in the early morning. One of them waved his hat and grinned, shouting something that sounded like, “Hah, you!” as they came on.

  “Well, John Cameron died of a flux, and she wed his cousin, Black Hugh Cameron of Aberfeldy, and then—” He shut his eyes reflexively as the raft shot past, its hull no more than six inches from our own, amid a hail of good-natured jeers and shouts from its crew. Rollo, front paws perched on the low cabin roof, barked madly, until Ian cuffed him and told him to stop.

  Jamie opened one eye, then seeing that the danger was past, opened the other and relaxed, letting go his grip on the roof.

  “Aye, well, Black Hugh—they called him so for a great black wen on his knee—he was killed hunting, and so then she wed Hector Mor Cameron, of Loch Eilean—”

  “She seems to have had quite a taste for Camerons,” I said, fascinated. “Is there something special about them as a clan—beyond being accident-prone, I mean?”