Seven Stones to Stand or Fall Read online

  “Aye.” Jamie’s lips pressed tight at the sound of muted voices, the sudden meaty smack of flesh and a loud grunt. “I know.” He splashed water fiercely onto his face.

  The jokes had stopped. There was little conversation now, though Alexandre and Josef-from-Alsace began a random argument, speaking loudly, trying to drown out the noises from the road. Most of the men finished their washing and drinking in silence and sat hunched in the shade, shoulders pulled in.

  “Père Renault!” The captain’s voice rose, calling for the priest. Père Renault had been performing his own ablutions a discreet distance from the men but stood at this summons, wiping his face on the hem of his robe. He crossed himself and headed for the road, but on the way he paused by Ian and motioned toward his drinking cup.

  “May I borrow this from you, my son? Only for a moment.”

  “Aye, of course, Father,” Ian said, baffled. The priest nodded, bent to scoop up a cup of water, and went on his way. Jamie looked after him, then at Ian, brows raised.

  “They say he’s a Jew,” Juanito said nearby, very quietly. “They want to baptize him first.” He knelt by the water, fists curled tight against his thighs.

  Hot as the air was, Ian felt a spear of ice run right through his chest. He stood up fast and made as though to follow the priest, but Big Georges snaked out a hand and caught him by the shoulder.

  “Leave it,” he said. He spoke quietly, too, but his fingers dug hard into Ian’s flesh.

  He didn’t pull away but stayed standing, holding Georges’s eyes. He felt Jamie make a brief, convulsive movement, but said, “No!” under his breath, and Jamie stopped.

  They could hear French cursing from the road, mingled with Père Renault’s voice. “In nomine Patris, et Filii…” Then struggling, spluttering, and shouting, the prisoner, the captain, and Mathieu, and even the priest, all using such language as made Jamie blink. Ian might have laughed if not for the sense of dread that froze every man by the water.

  “No!” shouted the prisoner, his voice rising above the others, anger lost in terror. “No, please! I told you all I—” There was a small sound, a hollow noise like a melon being kicked in, and the voice stopped.

  “Thrifty, our captain,” Big Georges said, under his breath. “Why waste a bullet?” He took his hand off Ian’s shoulder, shook his head, and knelt down to wash his hands.

  THERE WAS A ghastly silence under the trees. From the road, they could hear low voices—the captain and Mathieu speaking to each other, and over that, Père Renault repeating, “In nomine Patris, et Filii…” but in a very different tone. Ian saw the hairs on Jamie’s arms rise, and Jamie rubbed the palms of his hands against his kilt, maybe feeling a slick from the chrism oil still there.

  Jamie plainly couldn’t stand to listen and turned to Big Georges at random.

  “Queue?” he said with a raised brow. “That what ye call it in these parts, is it?”

  Big Georges managed a crooked smile.

  “And what do you call it? In your tongue?”

  “Bot,” Ian said, shrugging. There were other words, but he wasn’t about to try one like clipeachd on them.

  “Mostly just cock,” Jamie said, shrugging, too.

  “Or penis, if ye want to be all English about it,” Ian chimed in.

  Several of the men were listening now, willing to join in any sort of conversation to get away from the echo of the last scream, still hanging in the air like fog.

  “Ha,” Jamie said. “Penis isna even an English word, ye wee ignoramus. It’s Latin. And even in Latin, it doesna mean a man’s closest companion—it means ‘tail.’ ”

  Ian gave him a long, slow look.

  “Tail, is it? So ye canna even tell the difference between your cock and your arse, and ye’re preachin’ to me about Latin?”

  The men roared. Jamie’s face flamed up instantly, and Ian laughed and gave him a good nudge with his shoulder. Jamie snorted but elbowed Ian back and laughed, too, reluctantly.

  “Aye, all right, then.” He looked abashed; he didn’t usually throw his education in Ian’s face. Ian didn’t hold it against him; he’d floundered for a bit, too, his first days with the company, and that was the sort of thing you did, trying to get your feet under you by making a point of what you were good at. But if Jamie tried rubbing Mathieu’s or Big Georges’s face in his Latin and Greek, he’d be proving himself with his fists, and fast, too. Right this minute, he didn’t look as though he could fight a rabbit and win.

  The renewed murmur of conversation, subdued as it was, dried up at once with the appearance of Mathieu through the trees. Mathieu was a big man, though broad rather than tall, with a face like a mad boar and a character to match. Nobody called him “Pig-face” to his face.

  “You, cheese rind—go bury that turd,” he said to Jamie, adding with a narrowing of red-rimmed eyes, “far back in the wood. And go before I put a boot in your arse. Move!”

  Jamie got up—slowly—eyes fixed on Mathieu with a look Ian didn’t care for. He came up quick beside Jamie and gripped him by the arm.

  “I’ll help,” he said. “Come on.”

  “WHY DO THEY want this one buried?” Jamie muttered to Ian. “Giving him a Christian burial?” He drove one of the trenching spades Armand had lent them into the soft leaf mold, with a violence that would have told Ian just how churned up his friend was if he hadn’t known already.

  “Ye kent it’s no a verra civilized life, a charaid,” Ian said. He didn’t feel any better about it himself, after all, and spoke sharp. “Not like the Université.”

  The blood flamed up Jamie’s neck like tinder taking fire, and Ian held out a palm, in hopes of quelling him. He didn’t want a fight, and Jamie couldn’t stand one.

  “We’re burying him because D’Eglise thinks his friends might come back to look for him, and it’s better they don’t see what was done to him, aye? Ye can see by looking that the other fellow was just killed fightin’. Business is one thing; revenge is another.”

  Jamie’s jaw worked for a bit, but gradually the hot flush faded and his clench on the shovel loosened.

  “Aye,” he muttered, and resumed digging. The sweat was running down his neck in minutes, and he was breathing hard. Ian nudged him out of the way with an elbow and finished the digging. Silent, they took the dead man by the oxters and ankles and dragged him into the shallow pit.

  “D’ye think D’Eglise found out anything?” Jamie asked, as they scattered matted chunks of old leaves over the raw earth.

  “I hope so,” Ian replied, eyes on his work. “I wouldna like to think they did that for nothing.”

  He straightened up and they stood awkwardly for a moment, not quite looking at each other. It seemed wrong to leave a grave, even that of a stranger and a Jew, without a word of prayer. But it seemed worse to say a Christian prayer over the man—more insult than blessing, in the circumstances.

  At last Jamie grimaced and, bending, dug about under the leaves, coming out with two small stones. He gave one to Ian, and one after the other, they squatted and placed the stones together atop the grave. It wasn’t much of a cairn, but it was something.

  IT WASN’T THE captain’s way to make explanations or to give more than brief, explicit orders to his men. He had come back into camp at evening, his face dark and his lips pressed tight. But three other men had heard the interrogation of the Jewish stranger, and by the usual metaphysical processes that happen around campfires, everyone in the troop knew by the next morning what he had said.

  “Ephraim bar-Sefer,” Ian said to Jamie, who had come back late to the fire, after going off quietly to wash his shirt out again. “That was his name.” Ian was a bit worrit about the wean. His wounds weren’t healing as they should, and the way he’d passed out…He’d a fever now; Ian could feel the heat coming off his skin, but he shivered now and then, though the night wasn’t bitter.

  “Is it better to know that?” Jamie asked bleakly.

  “We can pray for him by name,” I
an pointed out. “That’s better, is it not?”

  Jamie wrinkled up his brow, but after a moment he nodded.

  “Aye, it is. What else did he say, then?”

  Ian rolled his eyes. Ephraim bar-Sefer had confessed that the band of attackers were professional thieves, mostly Jews, who—

  “Jews?” Jamie interrupted. “Jewish bandits?” For some reason, the thought struck Jamie as funny, but Ian didn’t laugh.

  “Why not?” he asked briefly, and went on without waiting for an answer. The men gained advance knowledge of valuable shipments and made a practice of lying in wait, to ambush and rob. “It’s mostly other Jews they rob, so there’s nay much danger of being pursued by the French army or a local judge.”

  “Oh. And the advance knowledge—that’s easier come by, too, I suppose, if the folk they rob are Jews. Jews live close by one another in groups,” Jamie explained, seeing the look of surprise on Ian’s face. “They all read and write, though, and they write letters all the time; there’s a good bit of information passed to and fro between the groups. Wouldna be that hard to learn who the moneylenders and merchants are and intercept their correspondence, would it?”

  “Maybe not,” Ian said, giving Jamie a look of respect. “Bar-Sefer said they got notice from someone—he didna ken who it was himself—who kent a great deal about valuables comin’ and goin’. The person who knew wasna one of their group, though; it was someone outside, who got a percentage o’ the proceeds.”

  That, however, was the total of the information bar-Sefer had divulged. He wouldn’t give up the names of any of his associates—D’Eglise didn’t care so much about that—and had died stubbornly insisting that he knew nothing of future robberies planned.

  “D’ye think it might ha’ been one of ours?” Jamie asked, low-voiced.

  “One of—oh, our Jews, ye mean?” Ian frowned at the thought. There were three Spanish Jews in D’Eglise’s band—Juanito, Big Georges, and Raoul—but all three were good men and fairly popular with their fellows. “I doubt it. All three o’ them fought like fiends. When I noticed,” he added fairly.

  “What I want to know is how the thieves got away wi’ that rug,” Jamie said reflectively. “Must have weighed what, ten stone?”

  “At least that,” Ian assured him, flexing his shoulders at the memory. “I helped load the wretched things. I suppose they must have had a wagon somewhere nearby, for their booty. Why?”

  “Well, but…rugs? Who steals rugs? Even valuable ones. And if they kent ahead of time that we were comin’, presumably they kent what we carried.”

  “Ye’re forgettin’ the gold and silver,” Ian reminded him. “It was in the front of the wagon, under the rugs. They had to pull the rugs out to get at it.”

  “Mmphm.” Jamie looked vaguely dissatisfied—and it was true that the bandits had gone to the trouble to carry the rug away with them. But there was nothing to be gained by more discussion, and when Ian said he was for bed, Jamie came along without argument.

  They settled down in a nest of long yellow grass, wrapped in their plaids, but Ian didn’t sleep at once. He was bruised and tired, but the excitements of the day were still with him, and he lay looking up at the stars for some time, remembering some things and trying hard to forget others—like the look of Ephraim bar-Sefer’s head. Maybe Jamie was right and it was better not to have kent his right name.

  He forced his mind into other paths, succeeding to the extent that he was surprised when Jamie shifted, cursing under his breath as the movement hurt him.

  “Have ye ever done it?” Ian asked suddenly.

  There was a small rustle as Jamie hitched himself into a more comfortable position.

  “Have I ever done what?” he asked. His voice sounded that wee bit hoarse but none so bad. “Killed anyone? No.”

  “Nay, lain wi’ a lass.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Aye, that. Gowk.” Ian rolled toward Jamie and aimed a feint toward his middle.

  Despite the darkness, Jamie caught his wrist before the blow landed. “Have you?”

  “Oh, ye haven’t, then.” Ian detached the grip without difficulty. “I thought ye’d be up to your ears in whores and poetesses in Paris.”

  “Poetesses?” Jamie was beginning to sound amused. “What makes ye think women write poetry? Or that a woman who writes poetry would be wanton?”

  “Well, o’ course they are. Everybody kens that. The words get into their heads and drive them mad, and they go looking for the first man who—”

  “Ye’ve bedded a poetess?” Jamie’s fist struck him lightly in the middle of the chest. “Does your mam ken that?”

  “Dinna be telling my mam anything about poetesses,” Ian said firmly. “No, but Big Georges did, and he told everyone about her. A woman he met in Marseilles. He has a book of her poetry and read some out.”

  “Any good?”

  “How would I ken? There was a good bit o’ swooning and swellin’ and bursting goin’ on, but it seemed to do wi’ flowers, mostly. There was a good wee bit about a bumblebee, though, doin’ the business wi’ a sunflower. Pokin’ it, I mean. With its snout.”

  There was a momentary silence as Jamie absorbed the mental picture.

  “Maybe it sounds better in French,” he said.

  “I’LL HELP YE,” Ian said suddenly, in a tone that was serious to the bone.

  “Help me…?”

  “Help ye kill this Captain Randall.”

  Jamie lay silent for a moment, feeling his chest go tight.

  “Jesus, Ian,” he said, very softly. He lay for several minutes, eyes fixed on the shadowy tree roots near his face.

  “No,” he said at last. “Ye can’t. I need ye to do something else for me, Ian. I need ye to go home.”

  “Home? What—”

  “I need ye to go home and take care of Lallybroch—and my sister. I—I canna go. Not yet.” He bit his lower lip hard.

  “Ye’ve got tenants and friends enough there,” Ian protested. “Ye need me here, man. I’m no leavin’ ye alone, aye? When ye go back, we’ll go together.” And he turned over in his plaid with an air of finality.

  Jamie lay with his eyes tight closed, ignoring the singing and conversation near the fire, the beauty of the night sky over him, and the nagging pain in his back. He should perhaps be praying for the soul of the dead Jew, but he had no time for that just now. He was trying to find his father.

  Brian Fraser’s soul must still exist, and he was positive that his father was in heaven. But surely there must be some way to reach him, to sense him. When first Jamie had left home, to foster with Dougal at Beannachd, he’d been lonely and homesick, but Da had told him he would be and not to trouble overmuch about it.

  “Ye think of me, Jamie, and Jenny and Lallybroch. Ye’ll not see us, but we’ll be here nonetheless and thinking of you. Look up at night, and see the stars, and ken we see them, too.”

  He opened his eyes a slit, but the stars swam, their brightness blurred. He squeezed his eyes shut again and felt the warm glide of a single tear down his temple. He couldn’t think about Jenny. Or Lallybroch. The homesickness at Dougal’s had stopped. The strangeness when he went to Paris had eased. This wouldn’t stop, but he’d have to go on living anyway.

  Where are ye, Da? he thought in anguish. Da, I’m sorry!

  HE PRAYED AS he walked next day, making his way doggedly from one Hail Mary to the next, using his fingers to count the rosary. For a time, it kept him from thinking and gave him a little peace. But eventually the slippery thoughts came stealing back, memories in small flashes, quick as sun on water. Some he fought off—Captain Randall’s voice, playful as he took the cat in hand—the fearful prickle of the hairs on his body in the cold wind when he took his shirt off—the surgeon’s “I see he’s made a mess of you, boy….”

  But some memories he seized, no matter how painful they were. The feel of his da’s hands, hard on his arms, holding him steady. The guards had been taking him somewhere—he didn’t rec
all and it didn’t matter—when suddenly his da was there before him, in the yard of the prison, and he’d stepped forward fast when he saw Jamie, a look of joy and eagerness on his face, this blasted into shock the next moment, when he saw what they’d done to him.

  “Are ye bad hurt, Jamie?”

  “No, Da, I’ll be all right.”

  For a minute, he had been. So heartened by seeing his father, sure it would all come right—and then he’d remembered Jenny, taking yon crochaire into the house, sacrificing herself for—

  He cut that one off short, too, saying “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee!” savagely out loud, to the startlement of Petit Philippe, who was scuttling along beside him on his short bandy legs.

  “Blessed art thou amongst women…” Philippe chimed in obligingly. “Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, amen!”

  “Hail Mary,” said Père Renault’s deep voice behind him, taking it up, and within seconds seven or eight of them were saying it, marching solemnly to the rhythm, and then a few more…Jamie himself fell silent, unnoticed. But he found the wall of prayer a barricade between himself and the wicked sly thoughts and, closing his eyes briefly, felt his father walk beside him and Brian Fraser’s last kiss soft as the wind on his cheek.

  THEY REACHED BORDEAUX just before sunset, and D’Eglise took the wagon off with a small guard, leaving the other men free to explore the delights of the city—though such exploration was somewhat constrained by the fact that they hadn’t yet been paid. They’d get their money after the goods were delivered next day.

  Ian, who’d been in Bordeaux before, led the way to a large, noisy tavern with drinkable wine and large portions.

  “The barmaids are pretty, too,” he observed, as he stood watching one of these creatures wend her way deftly through a crowd of groping hands.

  “Is it a brothel upstairs?” Jamie asked, out of curiosity, having heard a few stories.

  “I dinna ken,” Ian said, with what sounded like regret, though Jamie was almost sure he’d never been to a brothel, out of a mixture of penury and fear of catching the pox. “D’ye want to go and find out later?”