The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle (624 page)

Panicked, he jerked and twisted, trying to get the sword free. Lillywhite spasmed, went limp, and fell toward him, flopping like a huge dead fish as Roger wrenched and yanked, vainly trying to free himself from the sword.

Then Jamie seized him by the wrist and got him loose, got an arm around him, and led him away, stumbling and blind with panic and pain. Held his head and rubbed his back, murmuring nonsense in Gaelic while he puked and heaved. Wiped his face and neck with handsful of wet leaves, wiped the snot from his nose with the wet sleeve of his shirt.

“You okay?” Roger mumbled, somewhere in the midst of this.

“Aye, fine,” Jamie said, and patted him again. “You’re fine, too, all right?”

At length he was on his feet again. His head had gone past the point of pain; it still hurt, but the pain seemed a separate thing from himself, hovering somewhere nearby, but not actually touching him.

Lillywhite lay face-up in the leaves. Roger closed his eyes and swallowed. He heard Jamie mutter something under his breath, and then a grunt, a rustling of leaves, and a small thud. When Roger opened his eyes, Lillywhite was lying face-down, the back of his shirt smeared with sand and acorn hulls.

“Come on.” Jamie got him under the arm, pulled the arm over his shoulder. Roger lifted his free hand, waved it vaguely toward the bodies.

“Them. What should we do with … them?”

“Leave them for the pigs.”

Roger could walk by himself by the time they left the wood, though he had a tendency to drift to one side or the other, unable to steer quite straight as yet. Wylie’s house lay before them, a handsome construction in red brick. They picked their way across the lawn, ignoring the stares of several house-servants, who clustered at the upstairs windows, pointing down at them and murmuring to one another.

“Why?” Roger asked, stopping for a moment to shake some of the leaves from his shirt. “Did they say?”

“No.” Jamie pulled a soggy wad of cloth that had once been a handkerchief from his sleeve and swished it in the ornamental fountain. He used it to mop his face, looked critically at the resultant streaks of filth, and soused it in the fountain again.

“The first I knew was the thud when Anstruther clubbed ye—here, your head’s still bleedin’. I turned round to see ye lyin’ on the ground, and the next instant, a sword came at me out o’ nowhere, right across my ribs. Look at that, will ye?” He poked his fingers through a large rent in his shirt, wiggling them. “I ducked behind a tree, and barely got my own blade out in time. But neither of them said a word at all.”

Roger pressed the proffered handkerchief gingerly to the back of his head. He sucked air through his teeth with a hiss as the cold water touched the wound.

“Shit. Is it only that my head’s cracked, or does that make no sense? Why in Christ’s name try so hard to kill us?”

“Because they wanted us dead,” Jamie said logically, turning up his sleeves to wash his hands in the fountain. “Or someone else does.”

The pain had decided to take up residence in Roger’s head again. He was feeling sick again.

“Stephen Bonnet?”

“If I were a gambling man, I’d put good odds on it.”

Roger closed one eye in order to correct a tendency for there to be two of Jamie.

“You
are
a gambling man. I’ve seen ye do it.”

“Well, there ye are, then.”

Jamie ran a hand absently through his matted hair, and turned toward the house. Karina and her sisters had appeared at the window, and were waving ecstatically.

“What I want verra much to know just now is, where
is
Stephen Bonnet?”

“Wilmington.”

Jamie swung round, frowning at him.

“What?”

“Wilmington,” Roger repeated. He cautiously opened the other eye, but it seemed all right. Only one Jamie. “That’s what Lillywhite said—but I thought he was joking.”

Jamie stared at him for a moment.

“I hope to Christ he was,” he said.

103

AMONG THE MYRTLES

Wilmington

By contrast with Fraser’s Ridge, Wilmington was a giddy metropolis, and under normal circumstances, the girls and I should have fully enjoyed its delights. Given the absence of Roger and Jamie, and the nature of the errand they were bound upon, though, we were able to find little distraction.

Not that we didn’t try. We lived through the creeping minutes of nights broken by crying children and haunted by imaginations worse than nightmare might be. I was sorry that Brianna had seen as much as she had, after the battle at Alamance; vague imaginings based on fear were bad enough; those based on close acquaintance with the look of ruined flesh, of smashed bone and staring eyes, were a good deal worse.

Rising heavy-eyed amid a crumple of discarded clothes and stale linen, we fed and dressed the children and went out to seek what mental respite might be found during the day in the distractions of horse-racing, shopping, or the competing musicales hosted once a week—on successive evenings—by Mrs. Crawford and Mrs. Dunning, the two most prominent hostesses in town.

Mrs. Dunning’s evening had taken place the day after Roger and Jamie left. Performances upon the harp, violin, harpsichord, and flute were interspersed with recitations of poetry—at least it was referred to as poetry—and “Songs, both Comick and Tragick,” sung by Mr. Angus McCaskill, the popular and courteous proprietor of the largest ordinary in Wilmington.

The Tragick songs were actually much funnier than the Comick ones, owing to Mr. McCaskill’s habit of rolling his eyes up into his head during the more lugubrious passages, as though he had the lyrics written on the inside of his skull. I adopted a suitably solemn expression of appreciation, though, biting the inside of my cheek throughout.

Brianna required no such aid to courtesy. She sat staring at all the performances with a countenance of such brooding intensity that it seemed to disconcert a few of the musicians, who eyed her nervously, and edged toward the other side of the room, getting the harpsichord safely between her and them. Her attitude had nothing to do with the performance, I knew, but rather with a reliving of the arguments that had preceded the men’s departure.

These had been prolonged, vigorous, and conducted in low voices, as the four of us walked up and down the quay at sunset. Brianna had been impassioned, eloquent, and ferocious. Jamie had been patient, cool, and immovable. I had kept my mouth shut, for once more stubborn than either of them. I could not in conscience side with Bree; I knew what Stephen Bonnet was. I would not side with Jamie; I knew what Stephen Bonnet was.

I knew what Jamie was, too, and while the thought of his going to deal with Stephen Bonnet was enough to make me feel as though I were hanging from a fraying rope over a bottomless pit, I did know that there were few men better equipped for such a task. For beyond the question of deadly skill, which he certainly had, there was the question of conscience.

Jamie was a Highlander. While the Lord might insist that vengeance was His, no male Highlander of my acquaintance had ever thought it right that the Lord should be left to handle such things without assistance. God had made man for a reason, and high on the list of those reasons was the protection of a family and the defense of its honor—whatever the cost.

What Bonnet had done to Brianna was not a crime that Jamie would ever forgive, let alone forget. And beyond simple vengeance, and the continuing threat that Bonnet might pose to Bree or Jemmy, there was the fact that Jamie felt himself responsible, at least in part, for such harm as Bonnet might do in the world—to our family, or to others. He had helped Bonnet to escape the gallows once; he would not be at peace until he had amended that mistake—and said so.

“Fine!” Brianna had hissed at him, fists clenched at her sides. “So you’ll be at peace. Just fine! And how peaceful do you think Mama and I will be, if you or Roger is dead?”

“Ye’d prefer me to be a coward? Or your husband?”

“Yes!”

“No, ye wouldn’t,” he said with certainty. “Ye only think so now, because ye’re afraid.”

“Of course I’m afraid! So is Mama, only she won’t say so, because she thinks you’ll go anyway!”

“If she does think so, she’s right,” Jamie said, giving me a sidelong look, with a hint of a smile. “She’s known me a long time, aye?”

I glanced at him, but shook my head and turned away, sealing my lips and staring out at the masts of the ships anchored in the harbor while the argument raged on.

Roger had finally put a stop to it.

“Brianna,” he said softly, when she paused for breath. She turned toward him, face anguished, and he touched her shoulder. “I willna have this man in the same world as my children,” he said, still softly, “or my wife. Do we go then with your blessing—or without it?”

She had sucked in her breath, bitten her lip, and turned away. I saw the tears brimming in her eyes, and the working of her throat as she swallowed them. She said no more.

Whatever word of blessing she had given him had been spoken in the night, in the quiet of their bed. I had given Jamie blessing and farewell in that same darkness—still without speaking a word. I couldn’t. He
would
go, no matter what I said.

Neither of us slept that night; we lay in each other’s arms, silently aware of each breath and shift of body, and when the shutters began to show cracks of gray light, we rose—he to make his preparations, I because I could not lie still and watch him go.

As he left, I stood on tiptoe to kiss him, and whispered the only important thing.

“Come back,” I’d said. He’d smiled at me, smoothing a curl behind my ear.

“Ye ken what I said at Alamance? Well, it’s no today, either, Sassenach. We’ll both be back.”

Mrs. Crawford’s assembly, held the next evening, boasted the same performers, for the most part, as had Mrs. Dunning’s, but had one novelty; it was there that I smelled myrtle candles for the first time.

“What is that lovely scent?” I asked Mrs. Crawford during the interval, sniffing at the candelabra that decorated her harpsichord. The candles were beeswax, but the scent was something both delicate and spicy—rather like bayberry, but lighter.

“Wax-myrtle,” she replied, gratified. “I don’t use them for the candles themselves, though one
can
—but it does take such a tremendous quantity of the berries, near eight pound to get only a pound of the wax, imagine! It took my bond-maid a week of picking, and she brought me barely enough as would make a dozen candles. So I rendered the wax, but then I mixed it in with the regular beeswax when I dipped the candles, and I will say I am pleased. It does give such a pleasant aroma, does it not?”

She leaned closer to me, lowering her voice to a confidential whisper.

“
Someone
said to me that Mrs. Dunning’s home smelt last night as though the cook had scorched the potatoes at supper!”

And so, on the third day, faced with the alternatives of a day spent cooped up with three small children in our cramped lodgings, or a repeat visit to the much-diminished remains of the dead whale, I borrowed several buckets from our landlady, Mrs. Burns, commissioned a picnic basket, and marshalled my troops for a foraging expedition.

Brianna and Marsali consented to the notion with alacrity, if not enthusiasm.

“Anything is better than sitting around worrying,” Brianna said. “Anything!”

“Aye, and anything is better than the stink of filthy clouts and sour milk, too,” Marsali added. She fanned herself with a book, looking pale. “I could do wi’ a bit of air.”

I worried a little about Marsali’s ability to walk so far, given her expanding girth—she was in her seventh month—but she insisted that the exercise would benefit her, and Brianna and I could help to carry Joanie.

As is usual in cases of travel with small children, our departure was somewhat prolonged. Joanie spit up mashed sweet potato down the front of her gown, Jemmy committed a sanitary indiscretion of major proportions, and Germain disappeared during the confusion occasioned by these mishaps. He was discovered, at the conclusion of a half-hour search involving everyone in the street, behind the public livery stable, happily engaged in throwing horse dung at passing carriages and wagons.

Everyone forcibly cleaned, redressed, and—in Germain’s case—threatened with death and dismemberment, we descended the stairs again, to find that the landlord, Mr. Burns, had helpfully dug out an old goat-cart, with which he kindly presented us. The goat, however, was employed in eating nettles in the next-door garden, and declined to be caught. After a quarter of an hour’s heated pursuit, Brianna declared that she would prefer to pull the cart herself, rather than spend any longer playing ring-around-the-rosy with a goat.

“Mrs. Fraser, Mrs. Fraser!” We were halfway down the street, the children, buckets, and picnic basket in the goat-cart, when Mrs. Burns came hurrying out of the inn after us, a jug of small beer in one hand, and an ancient flintlock pistol in the other.

“Snakes,” she explained, handing me the latter. “My Annie says she saw at least a dozen adders, last time she walked that way.”

“Snakes,” I said, accepting the object and its attendant paraphernalia with reluctance. “Quite.”

Given that “adder” could mean anything from a water moccasin to the most harmless grass snake, and also given that Annie Burns had a marked talent for melodrama, I was not unduly concerned. I thought of dropping the gun into the picnic basket, but a glance at Germain and Jemmy, pictures of cherubic innocence, decided me of the unwisdom of leaving even an unloaded firearm anywhere near them. I dropped the pistol into my berry-bucket, instead, and put it over my arm.

The day was overcast and cool, with a light breeze off the ocean. The air was damp, and I thought there was a good chance of rain before long, but for the moment, it was very pleasant out, with the sandy earth packed down sufficiently from earlier rains to make the walking easy.

Following Mrs. Crawford’s directions, we made our way a mile or so down the beach, and found ourselves at the edge of a thick growth of coastal forest, where scanty-needled pines mingled with mangroves and palmetto in a dense, sun-splintered tangle, twined with vines. I closed my eyes and breathed in, nostrils flaring at the intoxicating mixture of scents: mudflats and wet sand, pine resins and sea air, the last faint whiffs of dead whale, and what I had been looking for—the fresh, tangy scent of wax-myrtles.

“That way,” I said, pointing into the tangle of vegetation. The going was too heavy for the cart now, so we left it, allowing the little boys to run wild, chasing tiny crabs and bright birds, as we made our way slowly into the scrubby forest. Marsali carried Joan, who curled up like a dormouse in her mother’s arms and went to sleep, lulled by the sound of ocean and wind.

In spite of the heavy growth, the walking was more pleasant here than on the open beach; the wind-stunted trees were tall enough to give a pleasing sense of secrecy and refuge, and the footing was better, with a thin layer of decaying leaves and needles underfoot.

Jemmy grew tired of walking, and tugged on my skirt, raising both arms to be picked up.

“All right.” I hung a berry-bucket from one wrist, and swung him up, with a crackle and pop of vertebrae; he was a very solid little boy. He twined his sandy feet comfortably round my waist and rested his face on my shoulder with a sigh of relief.

“All very well for you,” I said, gently patting his back. “Who’s going to give Grannie a ride, hey?”

“Grand-da,” he said, and giggled. He lifted his head, looking round. “W’ere Grand-da?”

“Grand-da’s busy,” I told him, taking care to keep my voice light and cheerful. “We’ll see Grand-da and Daddy soon.”

“Want Daddy!”

“Yes, so does Mummy,” I murmured. “Here, sweetie. See that? See the little berries? We’re going to pick some, won’t that be fun? No, don’t eat them! Jemmy, I said
no
, do
not
put them in your mouth, they’ll make you sick!”

We had found a luxuriant patch of wax-myrtles, and soon spread out, losing sight of each other amid the bushes as we picked, but calling out every few minutes, in order not to lose each other entirely.

I had put Jemmy down again, and was idly contemplating whether there might be any use for the berry-pulp, once the myrtle berries were boiled to render the wax, when I heard the soft crunch of footsteps on the other side of the bush I was picking from.

“Is that you, darling?” I called, thinking it was Brianna. “Perhaps we ought to have our lunch soon; I think it’s maybe coming on to rain.”

“Well, it’s a kind invitation, sure,” said a male voice, sounding amused. “I thank ye, ma’am, but I’ve made a decent breakfast not long since.”

He stepped out from behind the bush, and I stood paralyzed, completely unable to speak. My mind, oddly enough, was not paralyzed in the slightest; my thoughts were running at the speed of light.

If Stephen Bonnet’s here, Jamie and Roger are safe, thank God.

Where are the children?