THE CHILDREN WASHED, toothbrushed, kissed, and put to bed, their parents returned to the library, a dram of whisky, and the letter.
“An Italian gentleman?” Bree looked at Roger, one brow raised in a way that brought Jamie Fraser so immediately to mind that Roger glanced involuntarily at the sheet of paper. “Does he mean—”
“Charles Stuart? He can’t mean anyone else.”
She picked the letter up and read the postscript for perhaps the dozenth time.
“And if he does mean Charles Stuart, then the property …”
“He’s found the gold. And Jem knows where it is?” Roger couldn’t help this last taking on the tone of a question, as he cast his eyes toward the ceiling, above which his children were presumably asleep, wrapped in virtue and cartoon pajamas.
Bree frowned.
“Does he? That isn’t exactly what Da said—and if he did know … that’s an awfully big secret to ask an eight-year-old boy to keep.”
“True.” Eight or not, Jem was very good at keeping secrets, Roger thought. But Bree was right—her father would never burden anyone with dangerous information, let alone his beloved grandson. Certainly not without a good reason, and his postscript made it clear that this information was provided only as a contingency in case of need.
“You’re right. Jem doesn’t know anything about the gold—just about this Spaniard, whatever that may be. He’s never mentioned anything like that to you?”
She shook her head, then turned as a sudden puff of wind from the open window blew through the curtains, breathing immanent rain. Bree got up and went hastily to close it, then trotted upstairs to close the windows there, waving at Roger to see to those on the ground floor. Lallybroch was a large house, and unusually well provided with windows—the children kept trying to count them, but never came up with the same number twice.
Roger supposed he could go and count them himself one day and settle the matter, but was reluctant to do this. The house, like most old houses, had a distinct personality. Lallybroch was welcoming, all right; large and gracious, comfortably rather than grandly built, with the echoes of generations murmuring in its walls. But it was a place that had its secrets, too, no doubt of that. And hiding the number of its windows was quite in keeping with the sense he had of the house as being rather playful.
The windows in the kitchen—now equipped with modern refrigerator, Aga cooker, and decent plumbing, but still with its ancient granite counters stained with the juice of currants, the blood of game and poultry—were all closed, but he went through it nonetheless, and through the scullery. The light in the back hall was off, but he could see the grating in the floor near the wall that gave air to the priest’s hole below.
His father-in-law had hidden there briefly, during the days after the Rising, before being imprisoned at Ardsmuir. Roger had gone down there once—also briefly—when they had bought the house, and had come up out of the dank, fetid little space with a complete understanding of why Jamie Fraser had chosen to live in a wilderness on a remote mountaintop, where there was no constraint in any direction.
Years of hiding, of duress, of imprisonment … Jamie Fraser was not a political creature, and he knew better than most what the true cost of war was, whatever its presumed purpose. But Roger had seen his father-in-law now and then rub absently at his wrists, where the marks of fetters had long since faded—but the memory of their weight had not. Roger had not the slightest doubt that Jamie Fraser would live free, or die. And wished for an instant, with a longing that gnawed his bones, that he might be there, to fight by his father-in-law’s side.
The rain had started; he could hear the patter of it on the slate roofs of the outbuildings, then the rush as it came on in earnest, wrapping the house in mist and water.
“For ourselves … and our posterity,” he said aloud, but quietly.
It was a bargain made between men—unspoken, but understood completely. Nothing mattered but that the family be preserved, the children protected. And whether the cost of it was paid in blood, sweat, or soul—it would be paid.
“Oidche mhath,” he said, with a brief nod in the direction of the priest’s hole. Good night, then.
He stood a moment longer in the old kitchen, though, feeling the embrace of the house, its solid protection against the storm. The kitchen had always been the heart of the house, he thought, and found the warmth of the cooker as much a comfort as the fire on the now-empty hearth had once been.
He met Brianna at the foot of the stairs; she’d changed for bed—as opposed to sleep. The air in the house was always cool, and the temperature had dropped several degrees with the onset of rain. She wasn’t wearing her woolies, though; rather, a thin nightgown of white cotton, deceptively innocent-looking, with a small red ribbon threaded through it. The white cloth clung to the shape of her breasts like cloud to a mountain peak.
He said as much, and she laughed—but made no objection when he cupped his hands around them, her nipples against his palms round as beach pebbles through the thin cloth.
“Upstairs?” she whispered, and leaning in, ran the tip of her tongue along his lower lip.
“No,” he said, and kissed her solidly, quelling the tickle of the touch. “In the kitchen. We haven’t done it there, yet.”
He had her, bent over the ancient counter with its mysterious stains, the sound of her small grunts a punctuation to the rush of wind and rain on the ancient shutters. Felt her shiver and liquefy and let go, too, his knees trembling with it, so he fell slowly forward, clutched her by the shoulders, his face pressed into the shampoo-fragrant waves of her hair, the old granite smooth and cool beneath his cheek. His heart was beating slow and hard, steady as a bass drum.
He was naked, and a cold draft from somewhere raised gooseflesh down his back and legs. Brianna felt him shiver and turned her face to his.
“Cold?” she whispered. She wasn’t; she glowed like a live coal, and he wanted nothing more than to slide into bed beside her and ride out the storm in snug warmth.
“I’m fine.” He bent and scooped up the clothes he had thrown on the floor. “Let’s go to bed.”
The rain was louder upstairs.
“Oh, the animals went in two by two,” Bree sang softly, as they climbed the stairs, “the elephants and the kangaroos …”
Roger smiled. You could imagine the house an ark, floating on a roaring world of water—but all snug within. Two by two—two parents, two kids … maybe more, someday. There was plenty of room, after all.
With the lamp put out and the beating of rain on the shutters, Roger lingered on the edge of sleep, reluctant to surrender the pleasure of the moment.
“We won’t ask him, will we?” Bree whispered. Her voice was drowsy, her soft weight warm all down the side of his body. “Jem?”
“Oh? No. Of course not. No need.”
He felt the prick of curiosity—who was the Spaniard? And the notion of buried treasure was always a lure—but they didn’t need it; they had enough money for the present. Always assuming the gold was still wherever Jamie had put it, which was a long shot in itself.
Nor had he forgotten the last injunction of Jamie’s postscript.
Have it blessed by a priest; there is blood upon it. The words melted as he thought them, and what he saw on the inside of his eyelids was not gold ingots but the old granite counter in the kitchen, dark stains sunk so far into the stone as to have become part of it, ineradicable by the most vigorous scrubbing, let alone an invocation.
But it didn’t matter. The Spaniard, whoever he was, could keep his gold. The family was safe.
PART TWO
Blood, Sweat, and Pickles
LONG ISLAND
ON JULY 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia.
ON JULY 24, Lieutenant General Sir William Howe arrived on Staten Island, where he set up field headquarters at the Rose and Crown Tavern in New Dorp.
ON AUGUST 13, Lieutenant General George Washington arrived in New York to reinforce the fortifications of the city, which the Americans held.
ON AUGUST 21, William Ransom, Lieutenant Lord Ellesmere, arrived at the Rose and Crown in New Dorp, reporting—somewhat late—for duty as the newest and most junior member of General Howe’s staff.
ON AUGUST 22 …
LIEUTENANT EDWARD MARKHAM, Marquis of Clarewell, peered searchingly into William’s face, offering him an unappetizingly close view of a juicy pimple—just ready to burst—on the former’s forehead.
“You all right, Ellesmere?”
“Fine.” William managed the word between clenched teeth.
“Only, you look rather … green.” Clarewell, looking concerned, reached into his pocket. “Want a suck of my pickle?”
William just about made it to the rail in time. There was a certain amount of jocularity going on behind him regarding Clarewell’s pickle, who might suck it, and how much its owner would be obliged to pay for said service. This, interspersed with Clarewell’s protestations that his aged grandmother swore by a sour pickle for the prevention of seasickness, and plainly it worked, for look at him, solid as a rock …
William blinked watering eyes and fixed his vision on the approaching shore. The water wasn’t particularly rough, though the weather was brewing, no doubt about it. It didn’t matter, though; even the gentlest of up-and-down motions on water, the briefest of journeys, and his stomach promptly tried to turn itself inside out. Every damned time!
It was still trying, but as there was nothing left in it, he could pretend it wasn’t. He wiped his mouth, feeling clammy despite the heat of the day, and straightened his shoulders.
They would drop anchor any minute; time he was going below and badgering the companies under his command into some kind of order before they went into the boats. He risked a brief glance over the rail, and saw the River and the Phoenix just astern. The Phoenix was Admiral Howe’s flagship, and his brother the general was aboard. Would they have to wait, bobbing like corks on the increasingly choppy waves, until General Howe and Captain Pickering, his aide-de-camp, got ashore? God, he hoped not.
In the event, the men were allowed to disembark at once. “With ALL POSSIBLE SPEED, gennelmun!” Sergeant Cutter informed them at the top of his voice. “We’re going to catch the rebel whoresons on the ’op, so we are! And WOE BETIDE any man what I see lollygaggin’! YOU, there … !” He strode off, forceful as a plug of black tobacco, to apply the spurs to a delinquent second lieutenant, leaving William feeling somewhat better. Surely nothing truly terrible could happen in a world containing Sergeant Cutter.
He followed his men down the ladder and into the boats, forgetting his stomach entirely in the rush of excitement. His first real battle was waiting to be fought, somewhere on the plains of Long Island.
EIGHTY-EIGHT FRIGATES. That’s what he’d heard Admiral Howe had brought, and he didn’t doubt it. A forest of sails filled Gravesend Bay, and the water was choked with small boats, ferrying troops ashore. William was half choked himself, with anticipation. He could feel it gathering among the men, as the corporals collected their companies from the boats and marched off in good order, making room for the next wave of arrivals.
The officers’ horses were being swum ashore, rather than rowed, the distance not being great. William ducked aside as one big bay surged up out of the surf nearby and shook himself in a shower of salt spray that drenched everyone within ten feet. The stable-lad clinging to his bridle looked like a drowned rat, but shook himself off likewise and grinned at William, his face blanched with cold but vivid with excitement.
William had a horse, too—somewhere. Captain Griswold, a senior member of Howe’s staff, was lending him a mount, there having been no time to organize anything else. He supposed whoever was minding the horse would find him, though he didn’t see how.
Organized confusion reigned. The shore here was a tidal flat, and coveys of red coats swarmed amongst the sea wrack like flocks of shorebirds, the bellowing of sergeants a counterpoint to the shrieking of gulls overhead.
With some difficulty, as he’d been introduced to the corporals only that morning and did not have their faces firmly fixed in memory yet, William located his four companies and marched them up the shore into sand dunes thick with some sort of wiry grass. It was a hot day, sweltering in heavy uniform and full equipment, and he let the men take their ease, drink water or beer from their canteens, eat a bit of cheese and biscuit. They’d be on the move soon.
Where? That was the question preying on his mind at the moment. A hasty staff meeting the night before—his first—had reiterated the basics of the invasion plan. From Gravesend Bay, half the army would march inland, turning north toward the Brooklyn Heights, where the rebel forces were thought to be entrenched. The remainder of the troops would spread outward along the shore to Montauk, forming a line of defense that could move inward across Long Island, forcing the rebels back into a net, if necessary.
William wanted, with an intensity that knotted his spine, to be in the vanguard, attacking. Realistically, he knew it wasn’t likely. He was completely unfamiliar with his troops, and not impressed with their looks. No sensible commander would put such companies in the front line—unless to serve as cannon fodder. That thought gave him pause for a moment, but only a moment.
Howe wasn’t a waster of men; he was known to be cautious, sometimes to a fault. His father had told him that. Lord John hadn’t mentioned that that consideration was the major reason for his consent to William’s joining Howe’s staff, but William knew it anyway. He didn’t care; he’d calculated that his chances of seeing significant action were still a great deal better with Howe than fiddling about in the North Carolina swamps with Sir Peter Packer.
And after all … he turned slowly, side to side. The sea was a mass of British ships, the land before him crawling with soldiers. He would never have admitted aloud to being impressed by the sight—but his stock was tight across his throat. He realized he was holding his breath and consciously let it go.
The artillery was coming ashore, floating perilously on flat-bottomed barges, manned by swearing soldiers. The limbers, the caissons, and the draft horses and oxen needed to drag them were splashing up the beach in a thrashing, sand-spattered herd, neighing and lowing in protest, having come ashore farther south. It was the biggest army he had ever seen.
“Sir, sir!” He looked down to see a short private soldier, perhaps no older than William himself, plump-cheeked and anxious.
“Yes?”
“Your spontoon, sir. And your horse has come,” the private added, gesturing at the rangy light bay gelding whose reins he held. “Captain Griswold’s compliments, sir.”
William took the spontoon, seven feet long, its burnished steel head gleaming dully even under the clouded sky, and felt the weight of it thrill through his arm.
“Thank you. And you are … ?”
“Oh. Perkins, sir.” The private hastily knuckled his brow in salute. “Third company, sir; the Hackers, they call us.”
“Do they? Well, we will hope to give you plenty of opportunity to justify your name.” Perkins looked blank.
“Thank you, Perkins,” William said, gesturing the private off.
He took the bridle of the horse, joy rising in his heart. It was the biggest army he’d ever seen. And he was part of it.