The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle (575 page)

“Were you in the fighting?” I asked, not looking at Abel MacLennan. He must have been with the Regulators, but there was no smell of gunpowder on him.

“No,” he said softly behind my shoulder. “I’d no wish to fight. I came wi’ Joe Hobson, Mr. Hamilton, and the others—but when it looked as though there would be fighting, I came awa’. I walked away, as far as the mill on the other side of the town. And then, when the sun went down, and no sign of Joe … I came back,” he finished simply.

“What now?” I asked. We both spoke softly, as though we might disturb the dead man’s slumber. “Shall we give you help to bury him? My husband—”

“Och, no,” he interrupted, still softly. “I’ll be takin’ him home, Mrs. Fraser. Though I thank ye for the kindness. If ye might spare a bit o’ water, though, or food for the way …”

“Of course. Wait here—I’ll get it.”

I hurried back toward our tent, thinking as I went of the distance to Drunkard’s Spring from Alamance. Four days, five, six? And the sun so hot, and the flies … but I knew the sound of a Scot whose mind was made up, and went without argument.

I took a moment to check the two men; both breathing. Noisily, painfully—but breathing. I had replaced the wet paper on Morton’s wound with a bit of oiled linen, stuck down round the edges with honey, which made an excellent seal. No leakage; very good.

Brianna still sat by Roger. She had found a wooden comb, and was combing out his tumbled hair, gently removing burs and twigs, working at the tangles, slowly and patiently. She was singing something under her breath—
“Frère Jacques.”
The bodice of her dress showed wet circles. She had gone out once or twice during the day to relieve the growing pressure of milk, but obviously it was time again. The sight made my own breasts ache with remembered strain.

She looked up and I caught her eye. I touched my breast briefly and nodded toward the tent-flap, eyebrow raised. She gave me a nod and a tiny smile, meant to be bravely reassuring, but I could see the bleakness in her eyes. I supposed it had occurred to her that while Roger might live, he would likely never sing—or perhaps even talk—again.

I couldn’t speak past the lump in my own throat; only nodded to her and hurried out again, the parcel under my arm.

A figure stepped out of the darkness in front of me, and I nearly ran bang into it. I stopped short with an exclamation, clutching the parcel to my chest.

“My apologies, Mrs. Fraser. I did not realize that you didn’t see me.” It was the Governor. He took another step, into the glow of light from the tent.

He was alone, and looked very tired, the flesh of his face furrowed and loose. He smelt of drink; his Council and the militia officers would have been toasting his victory, I supposed. His eyes were clear, though, and his step firm.

“Your son-in-law,” he said, and glanced toward the tent behind me. “Is he—”

“He is alive,” said a soft, deep voice behind the Governor. He whirled round with a smothered exclamation, and my head jerked up.

I saw a shadow move and take shape, and Jamie rose up slowly out of the night; he had been sitting at the base of a hickory tree, invisible in the dark. How long had he been there? I wondered.

“Mr. Fraser.” The Governor had been startled, but he firmed his jaw, hands folded into fists at his sides. He was obliged to tilt his head back to look up at Jamie, and I could see that he didn’t like it. Jamie could see it, too, and plainly didn’t care. He stood close to Tryon, looming over him, with an expression on his face that would have rattled most people.

It appeared to rattle Tryon, too, but he lifted his chin, determined to say whatever he had come to say.

“I have come to make my apologies for the injury done to your son-in-law,” he said. “It was a most regrettable error.”

“Most regrettable,” Jamie repeated, with an ironic intonation. “And would ye care to say, sir, how this … error … came about?” He took a step forward, and Tryon automatically took a step back. I could see the heat rise in the Governor’s face, and his jaw clench.

“It was a mistake,” he said, through his teeth. “He was wrongly identified as one of the outlawed ringleaders of the Regulation.”

“By whom?” Jamie’s voice was polite.

Small hectic spots burned in the Governor’s cheeks.

“I do not know. By several people. I had no reason to doubt the identification.”

“Indeed. And did Roger MacKenzie say nothing in his own defense? Did he not say who he was?”

Tryon’s lower teeth fastened briefly in the flesh of his upper lip, then let go.

“He … did not.”

“Because he was bloody bound and gagged!” I said. I had pulled the gag from his mouth myself, when Jamie had cut him down from the hanging tree. “You didn’t
let
him speak, did you, you—you—”

The lamplight from the tent-flap gleamed off Tryon’s gorget, a crescent of silver that hung round his throat. Jamie’s hand rose slowly—so slowly that Tryon plainly perceived no threat—and very gently fitted itself around the Governor’s throat, just above the gorget.

“Leave us, Claire,” he said. There was no particular threat in his voice; he sounded merely matter-of-fact. A flash of panic lit Tryon’s eyes, and he jerked backward, gorget flashing in the light.

“You dare to lay hands on me, sir!” The panic subsided at once, replaced by fury.

“Oh, I do, aye. As ye laid hands on my son.”

I didn’t
think
Jamie actually intended to harm the Governor. On the other hand, this was by no means merely an act of intimidation; I could feel the core of cold rage inside him, and see it like an ice-burn in his eyes. So could Tryon.

“It was a mistake! And one I have come to rectify, so far as I may!” Tryon was standing his ground, jaw tight as he glared upward.

Jamie made a sound of contempt, low in his throat.

“A mistake. And is the loss of an innocent man’s life no more than that to ye? You will kill and maim, for the sake of your glory, and pay no heed to the destruction ye leave—save only that the record of your exploits may be enlarged. How will it look in the dispatches ye send to England—sir? That ye brought cannon to bear on your own citizens, armed with no more than knives and clubs? Or will it say that ye put down rebellion and preserved order? Will it say that in your haste to vengeance, ye hanged an innocent man? Will it say there that ye made ‘a mistake’? Or will it say that ye punished wickedness, and did justice in the King’s name?”

Tryon’s jaw muscles bulged, and his limbs trembled, but he kept his temper in check. He breathed deeply through his nose, in and out, before he spoke.

“Mr. Fraser. I will tell you something that is known to a few, but is not yet public knowledge.”

Jamie didn’t reply, but raised one brow, glinting red in the light. His eyes were cold, dark and unblinking.

“I am made Governor of the colony of New York,” Tryon said. “The letter of appointment arrived more than a month past. I shall leave by July to take up the new appointment; Josiah Martin is made Governor here in my room.” He glanced from Jamie to me, and back. “So you see. I had no personal stake in this; no need to glorify my exploits, as you put it.” His throat moved as he swallowed, but fear had been replaced now by a coldness equal to Jamie’s own.

“I have done what I have done as a matter of duty. I would not leave this colony in a state of disorder and rebellion, for my successor to deal with—though I might rightfully have done so.”

He took a deep breath, and stepped back, forcing his hands to relax from the fists into which they had been clenched.

“You have experience of war, Mr. Fraser, and of duty. And if you are an honest man, you will know that mistakes are made—and made often—in both realms. It cannot be otherwise.”

He met Jamie’s eyes straight on, and they stood in silence, looking at each other.

My attention was jerked away from this confrontation quite suddenly, by the distant sound of a baby crying. I turned, head up, just as Brianna emerged from the tent-flap behind me, in a rustle of agitated skirts.

“Jem,” she said. “That’s Jemmy!”

It was, too. A disturbance of voices at the far side of the camp came closer, resolving itself into the round, flounced shape of Phoebe Sherston, looking frightened but determined, followed by two slaves: a man carrying two huge baskets, and a woman, with a wrapped and squirming bundle in her arms that was making a terrible racket.

Brianna made for the bundle like a compass needle swinging north, and the racket ceased as Jemmy emerged from his blankets, hair sticking up in red tufts and feet churning in paroxysms of joyous relief. Mother and child disappeared promptly into the shadows under the trees, and a certain amount of confusion ensued, with Mrs. Sherston explaining disjointedly to a gathering crowd of interested onlookers that she had just become
so
distraught, hearing reports of the battle, so terrible, and she feared … but Mr. Rutherford’s slave had come to say all was well … and she thought perhaps … and so … and the child would
not
give over shrieking … so …

Jamie and the Governor, shaken out of their nose to nose confrontation, had also retired to the shadows; I could see them, two stiff shadows, one tall and one shorter, standing close together. The element of danger had gone out of their
tête-à-tête
, though; I could see Jamie’s head bent slightly toward Tryon’s shadow, listening.

“… brought food,” Phoebe Sherston was telling me, her round face pink with excited self-importance. “Fresh bread, and butter, and some blackberry jam and cold chicken and …”

“Food!” I said, abruptly reminded of the parcel I held under my arm. “Do pardon me!” I gave her a quick, bright smile, and ducked away, leaving her open-mouthed in front of the tent.

Abel MacLennan was where I had left him, waiting patiently under the stars. He brushed aside my apologies, thanking me for the food and jug of beer.

“Is there anything—?” I began, then broke off. What else could I possibly do for him?

And yet it seemed there was something.

“Young Hugh Fowles,” he said, tidily tucking the parcel beneath the wagon’s seat. “They said he was taken prisoner. Would—would your husband maybe speak for him, d’ye think? As he did for me?”

“I expect he would. I’ll ask him.”

It was quiet here, far enough from the camp that the sounds of conversation didn’t carry above the song of frogs and crickets, and the rushing of the creek.

“Mr. MacLennan,” I said, moved by impulse, “where will you go? After you’ve taken Joe Hobson back, I mean.”

He took off his hat and scratched his balding head, quite unself-consciously, though the gesture was not one of puzzlement, but merely of one preparing to state something already settled in his mind.

“Och,” he said. “I dinna mean to go anywhere. There are the women there, aye? And the weans. They’ve no man, with Joe dead and Hugh prisoner. I shall stay.”

He bowed to me then, and put on his hat. I shook his hand—surprising him—and then he climbed aboard his wagon and clicked his tongue to the horse. He lifted his hand to me in farewell, and I waved back, realizing the difference in him as I did so.

There was still grief in his voice, and sorrow on his shoulders; and yet he sat upright on his errand, the starlight shining on his dusty hat. His voice was firm, and his hand likewise. If Joe Hobson had left for the land of the dead, Abel MacLennan had come back from there.

Things had settled somewhat by the time I came back to the tent. The Governor and Mrs. Sherston were gone, with her slaves. Isaiah Morton slept, moaning now and then, but without fever. Roger lay still as a tomb-figure, face and hands black with bruises, the faint whistle of his breathing tube a counterpoint to Brianna’s murmured song as she rocked Jemmy.

The little boy’s face was slack, mouth pinkly open in the utter abandonment of sleep. With sudden inspiration, I held out my arms, and Bree, looking surprised, let me take him. Very carefully, I laid the limp, heavy little body on Roger’s chest. Bree made a small movement, as though to catch the baby and stop him sliding off—but Roger’s arm moved up, stiff and slow, and folded across the sleeping child.
Tinder
, I thought, satisfied.

Jamie was outside the tent, leaning against the hickory tree. When I had made sure of things inside, I came out to join him in the shadows. He raised his arms without speaking, and I came inside them.

We stood together in the shadows, listening to the crackle of campfires and the crickets’ songs.

Breathing.

Great Alamance Camp
Friday 17th May 1771
Parole - Granville
Countersign - Oxford

The Governor impressed with the most affectionate sense of Gratitude gives Thanks to both Officers and Soldiers of the Army for the Vigorous and Generous support they afforded Him Yesterday in the Battle near Alamance, it was to their Valour and steady Conduct that he owed under the Providence of Almighty God, the signal Victory obtained over obstinate and infatuated Rebels,—His Excellency simpathises with the Loyalists for the brave Men that fell and suffered in the Action, but when he reflects that the fate of Constitution depended on the success of the Day, and the important Services thereby rendered to their King and Country, He considers this Loss (though at present the Cause of Affliction to their Relations and Friends) as a Monument of lasting Glory and Honor to themselves and Families.

The Dead to be interred at five OClock this Evening in the Front of the Park of Artillery, Funeral Service to be performed with Military Honors to the deceased—after the Ceremony, Prayers and Thanksgiving for the signal Victory it has pleased Divine Providence Yesterday to Grant the Army over the Insurgents.

P
ART
S
EVEN

Alarms of Struggle and Flight