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“Dinna fash yourself, Sassenach. I’ll deal with it.” Squaring his shoulders once more, Jamie picked up the poker from the hearth and advanced purposefully on the bed-foot. The footboard was solid; there was a space of only a few inches between it and the wall. The rat must be trapped, unless it had managed to escape in the scant seconds between my scream and Jamie’s eruption from the quilts.

I got up onto my knees, ready to leap off the bed if necessary. Scowling in concentration, Jamie raised the poker, reached out with his free hand, and flipped the hanging coverlid out of the way.

He whipped the poker down with great force—and jerked it aside, smashing into the wall.

“What?” I said.

“What?” he echoed, in a disbelieving tone. He bent closer, squinting in the dim light, then started to laugh. He dropped the poker, squatted on the floor, and reached slowly into the space between the bed-foot and wall, making a small chirping noise through his teeth. It sounded like birds feeding in a distant bush.

“Are you
talking
to the rat?” I began to crawl toward the foot of the bed, but he motioned me back, shaking his head, while still making the chirping sound.

I waited, with some impatience. Within a minute, he made a grab, evidently catching whatever it was, for he gave a small exclamation of satisfaction. He stood up, smiling, a gray, furry shape clutched by the nape, dangling like a tiny purse from his fingers.

“Here’s your wee ratten, Sassenach,” he said, and gently deposited a ball of gray fur on the coverlet. Huge eyes of a pale celadon green stared up at me, unblinking.

“Well, goodness,” I said. “Wherever did
you
come from?” I extended a finger, very slowly. The kitten didn’t move. I touched the edge of a tiny gray-silk jaw, and the big green eyes disappeared, going to slits as it rubbed against my finger. A surprisingly deep purr rumbled through its miniature frame.

“That,”
Jamie said, with immense satisfaction, “is the present I
meant
to give ye, Sassenach. He’ll keep the vermin from your surgery.”

“Well, possibly very
small
vermin,” I said, examining my new present dubiously. “I think a large cockroach could carry him—is it a him?—off to its lair, let alone a mouse.”

“He’ll grow,” Jamie assured me. “Look at his feet.”

He—yes, it was a he—had rolled onto his back and was doing an imitation of a dead bug, paws in the air. Each paw was roughly the size of a broad copper penny, small enough by themselves, but enormous by contrast with the tiny body. I touched the minuscule pads, an immaculate pink in their thicket of soft gray fur, and the kitten writhed in ecstasy.

A discreet knock came at the door, and I snatched the sheet up over my bosom as the door opened and Mr. Wemyss’s head poked in, his hair sticking up like a pile of wheat straw.

“Er … I hope all is well, sir?” he asked, blinking shortsightedly. “My lass woke me, sayin’ as she thought there was a skelloch, like, and then we heard a bit of a bang, like—” His eyes, hastily averted from me, went to the scar of raw wood in the whitewashed wall, left by Jamie’s poker.

“Aye, it’s fine, Joseph,” Jamie assured him. “Only a wee cat.”

“Oh, aye?” Mr. Wemyss squinted toward the bed, his thin face breaking into a smile as he made out the blot of gray fur. “A cheetie, is it? Well, and he’ll be a fine help i’ the kitchen, I’ve nae doubt.”

“Aye. Speakin’ of kitchens, Joseph—d’ye think your lassie might bring up a dish of cream for the baudrons here?”

Mr. Wemyss nodded and disappeared, with a final avuncular smile at the kitten.

Jamie stretched, yawned, and scrubbed both hands vigorously through his hair, which was behaving with even more reckless abandon than usual. I eyed him, with a certain amount of purely aesthetic appreciation.

“You look like a woolly mammoth,” I said.

“Oh? And what is a mammoth, besides big?”

“A sort of prehistoric elephant—you know, the animals with the long trunks?”

He squinted down the length of his body, then looked at me quizzically.

“Well, I thank ye for the compliment, Sassenach,” he said. “Mammoth, is it?” He thrust his arms upward and stretched again, casually arching his back, which—quite inadvertently, I didn’t think—enhanced any incidental resemblances that one might note between the half-engorged morning anatomy of a man, and the facial adornments of a pachyderm.

I laughed.

“That’s not
precisely
what I meant,” I said. “Stop waggling; Lizzie’s coming in any minute. You’d better put your shirt on or get back in bed.”

The sound of footsteps on the landing sent him diving under the quilts, and sent the little cat scampering up the sheet in fright. In the event, it was Mr. Wemyss himself who had brought the dish of cream, sparing his daughter a possible sight of Himself in the altogether.

The weather being fine, we had left the shutters open the night before. The sky outside was the color of fresh oysters, moist and pearly gray. Mr. Wemyss glanced at it, blinked and nodded at Jamie’s thanks, and toddled back to his bed, thankful for a last half hour’s sleep before the dawn.

I disentangled the kitten, who had taken refuge in my hair, and set him down by the bowl of cream. I didn’t suppose he could ever have seen a bowl of cream in his life, but the smell was enough—in moments, he was whisker-deep, lapping for all he was worth.

“He’s a fine thrum to him,” Jamie remarked approvingly. “I can hear him from here.”

“He’s lovely; wherever did you get him?” I nestled into the curve of Jamie’s body, enjoying his warmth; the fire had burned far down during the night, and the air in the room was chilly, sour with ash.

“Found him in the wood.” Jamie yawned widely, and relaxed, propping his head on my shoulder to watch the tiny cat, who had abandoned himself to an ecstasy of gluttony. “I thought I’d lost him when Gideon bolted—I suppose he’d crept into one of the saddlebags, and came up wi’ the other things.”

We lapsed into a peaceful stupor, drowsily cuddled in the warm nest of our bed, as the sky lightened, moment by moment, and the air came alive with the voices of waking birds. The house was waking, too—a baby’s wail came from below, followed by the stir and shuffle of rising, the murmur of voices. We should rise, too—there was so much to be done—and yet neither of us moved, each reluctant to surrender the sense of quiet sanctuary. Jamie sighed, his breath warm on my bare shoulder.

“A week, I think,” he said quietly.

“Before you must go?”

“Aye. I can take that long to settle things here, and speak to the men from the Ridge. A week then, to pass through the country between the Treaty Line and Drunkard’s Creek and call a muster—then I’ll bring them here to drill. If Tryon should call up the militia, then …”

I lay quiet for a moment, my hand wrapped round Jamie’s, his loose fist curled against my breast.

“If he calls, I’ll go with you.”

He kissed the back of my neck.

“D’ye wish it?” he said. “I dinna think there will be need. Neither you nor Bree know of any fighting will be done here now.”

“That only means that if anything
will
happen, it won’t be a huge battle,” I said. “This—the Colonies—it’s a big place, Jamie. And two hundred years of things happening—we wouldn’t know about the smaller conflicts, especially ones that happened in a different place. Now, in Boston—” I sighed, squeezing his hand.

I wouldn’t know a great deal about events in Boston myself, but Bree would; growing up there, she had been exposed in school to a good bit of local and state history. I had heard her telling Roger things about the Boston Massacre—a small confrontation between citizens and British troops that had taken place the past March.

“Aye, I suppose that’s true,” he said. “Still, it doesna seem as though it will come to anything. I think Tryon only means to frighten the Regulators into good behavior.”

This was in fact likely. However, I was quite aware of the old adage—“Man proposes and God disposes”—and whether it was God or William Tryon in charge, heaven only knew what might happen in the event.

“Do you think so?” I asked. “Or only hope so?”

He sighed, and stretched his legs, his arm tightening about my waist.

“Both,” he admitted. “Mostly I hope. And I pray. But I do think so, too.”

The kitten had completely emptied the dish of cream. He sat down with an audible thump on his tiny backside, rubbed the last of the delicious white stuff from his whiskers, then ambled slowly toward the bed, sides bulging visibly. He sprang up onto the coverlet, burrowed close to me, and fell promptly asleep.

Perhaps not quite asleep; I could feel the small vibration of his purring through the quilt.

“What do you think I should call him?” I mused aloud, touching the tip of the soft, wispy tail. “Spot? Puff? Cloudy?”

“Foolish names,” Jamie said, with a lazy tolerance. “Is that what ye were wont to call your pussie-baudrons in Boston, then? Or England?”

“No. I’ve never had a cat before,” I admitted. “Frank was allergic to them—they made him sneeze. And what’s a good Scottish cat name, then—Diarmuid? McGillivray?”

He snorted, then laughed.

“Adso,” he said, positively. “Call him Adso.”

“What sort of name is that?” I demanded, twisting to look back at him in amazement. “I’ve heard a good many peculiar Scottish names, but that’s a new one.”

He rested his chin comfortably on my shoulder, watching the kitten sleep.

“My mother had a wee cat named Adso,” he said, surprisingly. “A gray cheetie, verra much like this one.”

“Did she?” I laid a hand on his leg. He rarely spoke of his mother, who had died when he was eight.

“Aye, she did. A rare mouser, and that fond of my mother; he didna have much use for us bairns.” He smiled in memory. “Possibly because Jenny dressed him in baby-gowns and fed him rusks, and I dropped him into the millpond, to see could he swim. He could, by the way,” he informed me, “but he didna like to.”

“I can’t say I blame him,” I said, amused. “Why was he called Adso, though? Is it a saint’s name?” I was used to the peculiar names of Celtic saints, from Aodh—pronounced OOH—to Dervorgilla, but hadn’t heard of Saint Adso before. Probably the patron saint of mice.

“Not a saint,” he corrected. “A monk. My mother was verra learned—she was educated at Leoch, ye ken, along with Colum and Dougal, and could read Greek and Latin, and a bit of the Hebrew as well as French and German. She didna have so much opportunity for reading at Lallybroch, of course, but my father would take pains to have books fetched for her, from Edinburgh and Paris.”

He reached across my body to touch a silky, translucent ear, and the kitten twitched its whiskers, screwing up its face as though about to sneeze, but didn’t open its eyes. The purr continued unabated.

“One of the books she liked was written by an Austrian, from the city of Melk, and so she thought it a verra suitable name for the kit.”

“Suitable …?”

“Aye,” he said, nodding toward the empty dish, without the slightest twitch of lip or eyelid. “Adso of Milk.”

A slit of green showed as one eye opened, as though in response to the name. Then it closed again, and the purring resumed.

“Well, if he doesn’t mind, I suppose I don’t,” I said, resigned. “Adso it is.”

19

THE DEVIL YE KEN

A week later, we—that is, the women—were engaged in the backbreaking business of laundry when Clarence the mule let out his clarion announcement that company was coming. Little Mrs. Aberfeldy leaped as though she’d been stung by a bee, and dropped an armload of wet shirts in the dirt of the yard. I could see Mrs. Bug and Mrs. Chisholm opening their mouths in reproach, and took the opportunity to wipe my hands on my apron and hurry round to the front, to greet whatever visitor might be approaching.

Sure enough; a bay mule was coming out of the trees at the head of the trail, followed by a fat brown mare on a leading rein. The mule’s ears flicked forward and he brayed enthusiastically in reply to Clarence’s greeting. I stuck my fingers in my ears to block the ungodly racket, and squinted against the dazzle of the afternoon sun to make out the mule’s rider.

“Mr. Husband!” Pulling my fingers out of my ears, I hurried forward to greet him.

“Mrs. Fraser—good day to thee!”

Hermon Husband pulled off his black slouch hat and gave me a brief nod of greeting, then slid off the mule with a groan that spoke of a good many hours in the saddle. His lips moved soundlessly in the framework of his beard as he straightened stiffly; he was a Quaker, and didn’t use strong language. Not out loud, at least.

“Is thy husband at home, Mrs. Fraser?”

“I just saw him heading for the stable; I’ll go and find him!” I shouted, above the continued braying of the mules. I took the hat from him, and gestured toward the house. “I’ll see to your animals!”

He nodded thanks and limped slowly round the house, toward the kitchen door. From the back, I could see how painfully he moved; he could barely put weight on his left foot. The hat in my hand was covered with dust and mud stains, and I had smelled the odor of unwashed clothes and body when he stood near me. He’d been a long time riding, and not just today—for a week or more, I thought, and sleeping rough for the most of it.

I unsaddled the mule, removing in the process two worn saddlebags half-filled with printed pamphlets, badly printed and crudely illustrated. I studied the illustration with some interest; it was a woodcut of several indignant and righteous-looking Regulators defying a group of officials, among whom was a squat figure I had no trouble identifying as David Anstruther; the caption didn’t mention him by name, but the artist had captured the Sheriff’s resemblance to a poisonous toad with remarkable facility. Had Husband taken to delivering the bloody things door-to-door? I wondered.

I turned the animals out into the paddock, dumped the hat and saddlebags by the porch, then trekked up the hill to the stable, a shallow cave that Jamie had walled with thick palisades. Brianna referred to it as the maternity ward, since the usual occupants were imminently expectant mares, cows, or sows.

I wondered what brought Hermon Husband here—and whether he was being followed. He owned a farm and a small mill, both at least two days’ ride from the Ridge; not a journey he would undertake simply for the pleasure of our company.

Husband was one of the leaders of the Regulation, and had been jailed more than once for the rabble-rousing pamphlets he printed and distributed. The most recent news I had heard of him was that he had been read out of the local Quaker meeting, the Friends taking a dim view of his activities, which they regarded as incitement to violence. I rather thought they had a point, judging from the pamphlets I’d read.

The door of the stable stood open, allowing the pleasantly fecund scents of straw, warm animals, and manure to drift out, along with a stream of similarly fecund words. Jamie, no Quaker, did believe in strong language, and was using rather a lot of it, albeit in Gaelic, which tends toward the poetic, rather than the vulgar.

I translated the current effusion roughly as, “May your guts twine upon themselves like serpents and your bowels explode through the walls of your belly! May the curse of the crows be upon you, misbegotten spawn of a lineage of dung flies!” Or words to that effect.

“Who are you talking to?” I inquired, putting my head round the stable door. “And what’s the curse of the crows?”

I blinked against the sudden dimness, seeing him only as a tall shadow against the piles of pale hay stacked by the wall. He turned, hearing me, and strode into the light from the door. He’d been running his hands through his hair; several strands were pulled from their binding, standing on end, and there were straws sticking out of it.

“Tha nighean na galladh torrach!”
he said, with a ferocious scowl and a brief gesture behind him.

“White daughter of a bi—oh! You mean that blasted sow has done it again?”

The big white sow, while possessed of superior fatness and amazing reproductive capacity, was also a creature of low cunning, and impatient of captivity. She had escaped her brood pen twice before, once by the expedient of charging Lizzie, who had—wisely—screamed and dived out of the way as the pig barged past, and again by assiduously rooting up one side of the pen, lying in wait until the stable door was opened, and knocking me flat as she made for the wide-open spaces.

This time, she hadn’t bothered with strategy, but merely smashed out a board from her pen, then rooted and dug under the palisades, making an escape tunnel worthy of British prisoners-of-war in a Nazi camp.

“Aye, she has,” Jamie said, reverting to English now that his initial fury had subsided somewhat. “As for the curse o’ the crows, it depends. It might mean ye want the corbies to come down on a man’s fields and eat his corn. In this case, I had in mind the birds pecking out the evil creature’s eyes.”

“I suppose that would make her easier to catch,” I said, sighing. “How near is she to farrowing, do you think?”

He shrugged and shoved a hand through his hair.

“A day, two days, three, maybe. Serve the creature right if she farrows in the wood and is eaten by wolves, her and her piglets together.” He kicked moodily at the heap of raw earth left by the sow’s tunneling, sending a cascade of dirt down into the hole. “Who’s come? I heard Clarence yammering.”

“Hermon Husband.”

He turned sharply toward me, instantly forgetting the pig.

“Has he, then?” he said softly, as though to himself. “Why, I wonder?”

“So did I. He’s been riding for some time—distributing pamphlets, evidently.”

I had to scamper after Jamie as I added this; he was already striding down the hill toward the house, tidying his hair as he went. I caught up just in time to brush bits of straw from his shoulders before he reached the yard.

Jamie nodded casually to Mrs. Chisholm and Mrs. MacLeod, who were hoicking steaming bales of wet clothes from the big kettle with paddles and spreading them on bushes to dry. I scuttled along with Jamie, ignoring the women’s accusing stares and trying to look as though I had much more important concerns to deal with than laundry.

Someone had found Husband refreshment; a plate of partially eaten bread and butter and a half-full mug of buttermilk lay on the table. So did Husband, who had put his head on his folded arms and fallen asleep. Adso crouched on the table beside him, fascinated by the bushy gray whiskers that quivered like antennae with the Quaker’s reverberating snores. The kitten was just reaching an experimental paw toward Husband’s open mouth when Jamie nabbed him by the scruff of the neck and dropped him neatly into my hands.

“Mr. Husband?” he said quietly, leaning over the table. “Your servant, sir.”

Husband snorted, blinked, then sat up suddenly, nearly upsetting the buttermilk. He goggled briefly at me and Adso, then seemed to recollect where he was, for he shook himself, and half-rose, nodding to Jamie.

“Friend Fraser,” he said thickly. “I am—I beg pardon—I have been—”

Jamie brushed away his apologies and sat down opposite him, casually picking up a slice of bread and butter from the plate.

“May I be of service to ye, Mr. Husband?”

Husband scrubbed a hand over his face, which did nothing to improve his looks, but did seem to rouse him more fully. Seen clearly in the soft afternoon light of the kitchen, he looked even worse than he had outside, his eyes pouched and bloodshot and his grizzled hair and beard tangled in knots. He was only in his mid-fifties, I knew, but looked at least ten years older. He made an attempt to straighten his coat, and nodded to me, then Jamie.

“I thank thee for the hospitality of thy welcome, Mrs. Fraser. And thee also, Mr. Fraser. I have come indeed to ask a service of thee, if I may.”

“Ye may ask, of course,” Jamie said courteously. He took a bite of bread and butter, raising his eyebrows in question.

“Will thee buy my horse?”

Jamie’s eyebrows stayed raised. He chewed slowly, considering, then swallowed.

“Why?”

Why, indeed. It would have been a great deal easier for Husband to sell a horse in Salem or High Point, if he didn’t want to ride as far as Cross Creek. No one in his right mind would venture to a remote place like the Ridge, simply to sell a horse. I set Adso on the floor and sat down beside Jamie, waiting for the answer.

Husband gave him a look, clear and direct for all its bloodshot quality.

“Thee is appointed a colonel of militia, I’m told.”

“For my sins,” Jamie said, bread poised in the air. “Do ye suppose the Governor has given me money to provide mounts for my regiment?” He took a bite, half-smiling.

The corner of Husband’s mouth lifted briefly in acknowledgment of the joke. A colonel of militia supplied his regiment himself, counting upon eventual reimbursement from the Assembly; one reason why only men of property were so appointed—and a major reason why the appointment was not considered an unalloyed honor.

“If he had, I should be pleased to take some of it.” At Jamie’s gesture of invitation, Husband reached out and selected another slice of bread and butter, which he munched gravely, looking at Jamie under thick salt-and-pepper brows. Finally, he shook his head.

“Nay, friend James. I must sell my stock to pay the fines levied upon me by the Court. If I do not sell what I can, it may be seized. And if I will not, then I have no choice save to quit the colony and remove my family elsewhere—and if I remove, then I must dispose of what I cannot take—for what price I may get.”

A small line formed between Jamie’s brows.

“Aye, I see,” he said slowly. “I would help ye, Hermon, in any way I might. Ye ken that, I hope. But I have scarce two shillings in cash money—not even proclamation money, let alone sterling. If there is anything I have that would be of use to ye, though …”

Husband smiled slightly, his harsh features softening.

“Aye, friend James. Thy friendship and thy honor are of great use to me, indeed. For the rest …” He sat back from the table, groping in the small shoulder bag he had set down beside him. He came up with a thin letter, bearing a red wax seal. I recognized the seal, and my chest tightened.

“I met the messenger at Pumpkin Town,” Husband said, watching as Jamie took the letter and put his thumb beneath the flap. “I offered to carry the letter to thee, as I was bound here in any case.”

Jamie’s brows lifted, but his attention was focused on the sheet of paper in his hand. I came close, to see over his shoulder.

November 22, 1770

Colonel James Fraser

Whereas I am informed that those who stile themselves Regulators have gathered together in some force near Salisbury, I have sent word to General Waddell to proceed thither at once with the militia troops at his disposal in hopes of dispersing this unlawful assemblage. You are requested and commanded to gather such men as you judge fit to serve in a Regiment of Militia, and proceed with them to Salisbury with as much despatch as may be managed so as to join the General’s troops on or before 15 December, at which point he will march upon Salisbury. So far as possible, bring with you flour and other provision sufficient to supply your men for a space of two weeks.

Your ob’t. servant,
William Tryon

The room was quiet, save for the soft rumbling of the cauldron over the coals in the hearth. Outside, I could hear the women talking in short bursts, interspersed with grunts of effort, and the smell of lye soap drifted through the open window, mingling with the scents of stew and rising bread.

Jamie looked up at Husband.

“Ye ken what this says?”

The Quaker nodded, the lines of his face sagging in sudden fatigue.

“The messenger told me. The Governor has no wish to keep his intent secret, after all.”

Jamie gave a small grunt of agreement, and glanced at me. No, the Governor wouldn’t want to keep it secret. So far as Tryon was concerned, the more people who knew that Waddell was heading for Salisbury with a large militia troop, the better. Hence also the setting of a specific date. Any wise soldier would prefer to intimidate an enemy rather than fight him—and given that Tryon had no official troops, discretion was certainly the better part of valor.

“What about the Regulators?” I asked Husband. “What are they planning to do?”

He looked mildly startled.