IT WAS SOME WAY; I was out of breath and sweating from the exercise by the time I caught them up near the competition field. Things were just getting under way; I could hear the buzz of talk from the crowd of men gathering, but no shouts of encouragement or howls of disappointment as yet. A few brawny specimens stamped to and fro, stripped to the waist and swinging their arms to limber up; the local “strongmen” of various settlements.
The drizzle had started up again; the wetness gleamed on curving shoulders and plastered swirls of dark body hair flat against the pale skins of chests and forearms. I had no time to appreciate the spectacle, though; John Quincy threaded his way adroitly through the knots of spectators and competitors, waving cordially to this and that acquaintance as we passed. On the far side of the crowd, a small man detached himself from the mass and came hurrying to meet us.
“Mac Dubh! Ye’ve come, then—that’s good.”
“Nay bother, Robbie,” Jamie assured him. “What’s to do, then?”
McGillivray, who looked distinctly harried, glanced at the strongmen and their supporters, then jerked his head toward the nearby trees. We followed him, unnoticed by the crowd gathering round two large stones wrapped with rope, which I assumed some of the strongmen present were about to prove their prowess by lifting.
“It’s your son, is it, Rob?” Jamie asked, dodging a water-filled pine branch.
“Aye,” Robbie answered, “or it was.”
That sounded sinister. I saw Jamie’s hand brush the butt of his pistol; mine went to my medical kit.
“What’s happened?” I asked. “Is he hurt?”
“Not him,” McGillivray replied cryptically, and ducked ahead, beneath a drooping chestnut bough hung with scarlet creeper.
Just beyond was a small open space, not really big enough to be called a clearing, tufted with dead grass and studded with pine saplings. As Fergus and I ducked under the creeper after Jamie, a large woman in homespun whirled toward us, shoulders hunching as she raised the broken tree limb she clutched in one hand. She saw McGillivray, though, and relaxed fractionally.
“Wer ist das?” she asked suspiciously, eyeing us. Then John Quincy appeared from under the creeper, and she lowered the club, her solidly handsome features relaxing further.
“Ha, Myers! You brung me den Jamie, oder?” She cast me a curious look, but was too busy glancing between Fergus and Jamie to inspect me closely.
“Aye, love, this is Jamie Roy—Sheumais Mac Dubh.” McGillivray hastened to take credit for Jamie’s appearance, putting a respectful hand on his sleeve. “My wife, Ute, Mac Dubh. And Mac Dubh’s son,” he added, waving vaguely at Fergus.
Ute McGillivray looked like a Valkyrie on a starchy diet; tall, very blond, and broadly powerful.
“Your servant, ma’am,” Jamie said, bowing.
“Madame,” Fergus echoed, making her a courtly leg.
Mrs. McGillivray dropped them a low curtsy in return, eyes fixed on the prominent bloodstains streaking the front of Jamie’s—or rather, Roger’s—coat.
“Mein Herr,” she murmured, looking impressed. She turned and beckoned to a young man of seventeen or eighteen, who had been lurking in the background. He bore such a marked resemblance to his small, wiry, dark-haired father that his identity could scarcely be in doubt.
“Manfred,” his mother announced proudly. “Mein laddie.”
Jamie inclined his head in grave acknowledgment.
“Mr. McGillivray.”
“Ah . . . your s-servant, sir?” The boy sounded rather dubious about it, but put out his hand to be shaken.
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir,” Jamie assured him, shaking it. The courtesies duly observed, he looked briefly round at the quiet surroundings, raising one eyebrow.
“I had heard that you were suffering some inconvenience wi’ regard to a thief-taker. Do I take it that the matter has been resolved?” He glanced in question from McGillivray Junior to McGillivray Senior.
The three McGillivrays exchanged assorted glances among themselves. Robin McGillivray gave an apologetic cough.
“Well, not to say resolved, quite, Mac Dubh. That is to say . . .” He trailed off, the harried look returning to his eyes.
Mrs. McGillivray gave him a stern look, then turned to Jamie.
“Ist kein bother,” she told him. “Ich haf den wee ball of shite safe put. But only we want to know, how we best den Korpus hide?”
“The . . . body?” I said, rather faintly.
Even Jamie looked a bit disturbed at that.
“Ye’ve killed him, Rob?”
“Me?” McGillivray looked shocked. “Christ’s sake, Mac Dubh, what d’ye take me for?”
Jamie raised the eyebrow again; evidently the thought of McGillivray committing violence was scarcely far-fetched. McGillivray had the grace to look abashed.
“Aye, well. I suppose I might have—and I did—well, but, Mac Dubh! That business at Ardsmuir was all long ago and done wi’, aye?”
“Aye,” Jamie said. “It was. What about this business wi’ the thief-taker, though? Where is he?”
I heard a muffled giggle behind me, and swung round to see that the rest of the family McGillivray, silent ’til now, was nonetheless present. Three teenaged girls sat in a row on a dead log behind a screen of saplings, all immaculately attired in clean white caps and aprons, only slightly wilted with the rain.
“Meine lassies,” Mrs. McGillivray announced, with a wave in their direction—unnecessarily, since all three of the girls looked like smaller versions of herself. “Hilda, Inga, und Senga.”
Fergus bowed elegantly to the three.
“Enchanté, mes demoiselles.”
The girls giggled and bobbed their heads in response, but without rising, which struck me as odd. Then I noticed some disturbance taking place under the skirt of the oldest girl; a sort of heaving flutter, accompanied by a muffled grunt. Hilda swung her heel sharply into whatever it was, all the time smiling brightly at me.
There was another grunt—much louder this time—from under the skirt, which caused Jamie to start and turn in her direction.
Still smiling brightly, Hilda bent and delicately picked up the edge of her skirt, under which I could see a frantic face, bisected by a dark strip of cloth tied round his mouth.
“That’s him,” said Robbie, sharing his wife’s talent for stating the obvious.
“I see.” Jamie’s fingers twitched slightly against the side of his kilt. “Ah . . . perhaps we could have him out, then?”
Robbie motioned to the girls, who all stood up together and stepped aside, revealing a small man who lay against the base of the dead log, bound hand and foot with an assortment of what looked like women’s stockings, and gagged with someone’s kerchief. He was wet, muddy, and slightly battered round the edges.
Myers bent and hoisted the man to his feet, holding him by the collar.
“Well, he ain’t much to look at,” the mountain man said critically, squinting at the man as though evaluating a substandard beaver skin. “I guess thief-takin’ don’t pay so well as ye might think.”
The man was in fact skinny and rather ragged, as well as disheveled, furious—and frightened. Ute sniffed contemptuously.
“Saukerl!” she said, and spat neatly on the thief-taker’s boots. Then she turned to Jamie, full of charm.
“So, mein Herr. How we are to kill him best?”
The thief-taker’s eyes bulged, and he writhed in Myers’s grip. He bucked and twisted, making frantic gargling noises behind the gag. Jamie looked him over, rubbing a knuckle across his mouth, then glanced at Robbie, who gave a slight shrug, with an apologetic glance at his wife.
Jamie cleared his throat.
“Mmphm. Ye had something in mind, perhaps, ma’am?”
Ute beamed at this evidence of sympathy with her intentions, and drew a long dagger from her belt.
“I thought maybe to butcher, wie ein Schwein, ja? But see . . .” She poked the thief-taker gingerly between the ribs; he yelped behind the gag, and a small spot of blood bloomed on his ragged shirt.
“Too much Blut,” she explained, with a moue of disappointment. She waved at the screen of trees, behind which the stone-lifting seemed to be proceeding well. “Die Leute will schmell.”
“Schmell?” I glanced at Jamie, thinking this some unfamiliar German expression. He coughed, and brushed a hand under his nose. “Oh, smell!” I said, enlightened. “Er, yes, I think they might.”
“I dinna suppose we’d better shoot him, then,” Jamie said thoughtfully. “If ye’re wanting to avoid attention, I mean.”
“I say we break his neck,” Robbie McGillivray said, squinting judiciously at the trussed thief-taker. “That’s easy enough.”
“You think?” Fergus squinted in concentration. “I say a knife. If you stab in the right spot, the blood is not so much. The kidney, just beneath the ribs in back . . . eh?”
The captive appeared to take exception to these suggestions, judging from the urgent sounds proceeding from behind the gag, and Jamie rubbed his chin dubiously.
“Well, that’s no verra difficult,” he agreed. “Or strangle him. But he will lose his bowels. If it were to be a question of the smell, even crushing his skull . . . but tell me, Robbie, how does the man come to be here?”
“Eh?” Robbie looked blank.
“You’re no camped nearby?” Jamie waved a hand briefly at the tiny clearing, making his meaning clear. There was no trace of hearthfire; in fact, no one had camped on this side of the creek. And yet all the McGillivrays were here.
“Oh, no,” Robbie said, comprehension blossoming on his spare features. “Nay, we’re camped some distance up. Only, we came to have a wee keek at the heavies”—he jerked his head toward the competition field—“and the friggin’ vulture spied our Freddie and took hold of him, so as to drag him off.” He cast an unfriendly look at the thief-taker, and I saw that a coil of rope dangled snakelike from the man’s belt. A pair of iron manacles lay on the ground nearby, the dark metal already laced with orange rust from the damp.
“We saw him grab aholt of Brother,” Hilda put in at this point. “So we grabbed aholt of him and pushed him through here, where nobody could see. When he said he meant to take Brother away to the sheriff, me and my sisters knocked him down and sat on him, and Mama kicked him a few times.”
Ute patted her daughter fondly on one sturdy shoulder.
“They are gut, strong M?dchen, meine lasses,” she told Jamie. “Ve komm see hier die Wettk?mpfer, maybe choose husband for Inga or Senga. Hilda hat einen Mann already promised,” she added, with an air of satisfaction.
She looked Jamie over frankly, her eye dwelling approvingly on his height, the breadth of his shoulders, and the general prosperity of his appearance.
“He is fine, big, your Mann,” she said to me. “You haf sons, maybe?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” I said apologetically. “Er . . . Fergus is married to my husband’s daughter,” I added, seeing her gaze shift appraisingly to Fergus.
The thief-taker appeared to feel that the subject was drifting somewhat afield, and summoned attention back to himself with an indignant squeal behind his gag. His face, which had gone pale at the discussion of his theoretical demise, had grown quite red again, and his hair was matted down across his forehead in spikes.
“Oh, aye,” Jamie said, noticing. “Perhaps we should let the gentleman have a word?”
Robbie narrowed his eyes at this, but reluctantly nodded. The competitions had got well under way by now, and there was a considerable racket emanating from the field; no one would notice the odd shout over here.
“Don’t let ’em kill me, sir! You know it ain’t right!” Hoarse from his ordeal, the man fixed his appeal on Jamie as soon as the gag was removed. “I’m only doin’ as I ought, delivering a criminal to justice!”
“Ha!” all the McGillivrays said at once. Unanimous as their sentiment appeared to be, the expression of it immediately disintegrated into a confusion of expletives, opinions, and a random volley of kicks aimed at the gentleman’s shins by Inga and Senga.
“Stop that!” Jamie said, raising his voice enough to be heard over the uproar. As this had no result, he grabbed McGillivray Junior by the scruff of the neck and roared, “Ruhe!” at the top of his lungs, which startled them into momentary silence, with guilty looks over their shoulders in the direction of the competition field.
“Now, then,” Jamie said firmly. “Myers, bring the gentleman, if ye will. Rob, Fergus, come along with ye. Bitte, Madame?” He bowed to Mrs. McGillivray, who blinked at him, but then nodded in slow acquiescence. Jamie rolled an eye at me, then, still holding Manfred by the neck, he marched the male contingent off toward the creek, leaving me in charge of the ladies.
“Your Mann—he will save my son?” Ute turned to me, fair brows knitted in concern.
“He’ll try.” I glanced at the girls, who were huddled together behind their mother. “Do you know whether your brother was at Hillsborough?”
The girls looked at one another, and silently elected Inga to speak.
“Well, ja, he was, then,” she said, a little defiantly. “But he wasna riotin’, not a bit of it. He’d only gone for to have a bit of harness mended, and was caught up in the mob.”
I caught a quick glance exchanged between Hilda and Senga, and deduced that this was perhaps not the entire story. Still, it wasn’t my place to judge, thank goodness.
Mrs. McGillivray’s eyes were fixed on the men, who stood murmuring together some distance away. The thief-taker had been untied, save for his hands, which remained bound. He stood with his back against a tree, looking like a cornered rat, eyeteeth showing in a snarl of defiance. Jamie and Myers were both looming over him, while Fergus stood by, frowning attentively, his chin propped on his hook. Rob McGillivray had taken out a knife, with which he was contemplatively flicking small chips of wood from a pine twig, glancing now and then at the thief-taker with an air of dark intent.
“I’m sure Jamie will be able to . . . er . . . do something,” I said, privately hoping that the something wouldn’t involve too much violence. The unwelcome thought occurred to me that the diminutive thief-taker would probably fit tidily in one of the empty food hampers.
“Gut.” Ute McGillivray nodded slowly, still watching. “Better that I do not kill him.” Her eyes turned suddenly back to me, light blue and very bright. “But I vill do it, if I must.”
I believed her.
“I see,” I said carefully. “But—I do beg your pardon—but even if that man took your son, could you not go to the sheriff too, and explain . . .”
More glances among the girls. This time it was Hilda who spoke.
“Nein, ma’am. See, it wouldna have been sae bad, had the thief-taker come on us at the camp. But down here—” She widened her eyes, nodding toward the competition field, where a muffled thud and a roar of approval marked some successful effort.
The difficulty, apparently, was Hilda’s fiancé, one Davey Morrison, from Hunter’s Point. Mr. Morrison was a farmer of some substance, and a man of worth, as well as an athlete skilled in the arcana of stone-throwing and caber-tossing. He had family, too—parents, uncles, aunts, cousins—all of the most upright character and—I gathered—rather judgmental attitudes.
Had Manfred been taken by a thief-taker in front of such a crowd, filled with Davey Morrison’s relations, word would have spread at the speed of light, and the scandal would result in the prompt rupture of Hilda’s engagement—a prospect that clearly perturbed Ute McGillivray much more than the notion of cutting the thief-taker’s throat.
“Bad, too, I kill him and someone see,” she said frankly, waving at the thin scrim of trees shielding us from the competition field. “Die Morrisons would not like.”
“I suppose they might not,” I murmured, wondering whether Davey Morrison had any idea what he was getting into. “But you—”
“I vill haf meine lassies well wed,” she said firmly, nodding several times in reinforcement. “I find gut men für Sie, fine big men, mit land, mit money.” She put an arm round Senga’s shoulders and hugged her tight. “Nicht wahr, Liebchen?”
“Ja, Mama,” Senga murmured, and laid her neat capped head affectionately on Mrs. McGillivray’s broad bosom.
Something was happening on the men’s side of things; the thief-taker’s hands had been untied, and he stood rubbing his wrists, no longer scowling, but listening to whatever Jamie was saying with an expression of wariness. He glanced at us, then at Robin McGillivray, who said something to him and nodded emphatically. The thief-taker’s jaw worked, as though he were chewing over an idea.
“So you all came down to watch the competitions this morning and look for suitable prospects? Yes, I see.”
Jamie reached into his sporran and drew out something, which he held under the thief-taker’s nose, as though inviting him to smell it. I couldn’t make out what it was at this distance, but the thief-taker’s face suddenly changed, going from wariness to alarmed disgust.
“Ja, only to look.” Mrs. McGillivray was not watching; she patted Senga and let her go. “Ve go now to Salem, where ist meine Familie. Maybe ve find there a good Mann, too.”
Myers had stepped back from the confrontation now, his shoulders drooping in relaxation. He inserted a finger under the edge of his breechclout, scratched his buttocks comfortably, and glanced around, evidently no longer interested in the proceedings. Seeing me looking in his direction, he ambled back through the sapling grove.
“No need to worry more, ma’am,” he assured Mrs. McGillivray. “I knew Jamie Roy would take care of it, and so he has. Your lad’s safe.”
“Ja?” she said. She looked doubtfully toward the sapling grove, but it was true; the attitudes of all the men had relaxed now, and Jamie was handing the thief-taker back his set of manacles. I saw the way he handled them, with brusque distaste. He had worn irons, at Ardsmuir.
“Gott sei dank,” Mrs. McGillivray said, with an explosive sigh. Her massive form seemed suddenly to diminish as the breath went out of her.
The little man was leaving, making his way away from us, toward the creek. The sound of the swinging irons at his belt reached us in a faint chime of metal, heard between the shouts of the crowd behind us. Jamie and Rob McGillivray stood close together, talking, while Fergus watched the thief-taker’s departure, frowning slightly.
“Exactly what did Jamie tell him?” I asked Myers.
“Oh. Well.” The mountain man gave me a broad, gap-toothed grin. “Jamie Roy told him serious-like that it was surely luck for the thief-taker—his name’s Boble, by the way, Harley Boble—that we done come upon y’all when we did. He give him to understand that if we hadn’t, then this lady here”—he bowed toward Ute—“would likely have taken him home in her wagon, and slaughtered him like a hog, safe out of sight.”
Myers rubbed a knuckle under his red-veined nose and chortled softly in his beard.
“Boble said as how he didn’t believe it, he thought she was only a-tryin’ to scare him with that knife. But then Jamie Roy leaned down close, confidential-like, and said he mighta thought the same—only that he’d heard so much about Frau McGillivray’s reputation as a famous sausage-maker, and had had the privilege of bein’ served some of it to his breakfast this morning. Right about then, Boble started to lose the color in his face, and when Jamie Roy pulled out a bit of sausage to show him—”
“Oh, dear,” I said, with a vivid memory of exactly what that sausage smelled like. I had bought it the day before from a vendor on the mountain, only to discover that it had been improperly cured, and once sliced, smelled so strongly of rotting blood that no one had been able to stomach it at supper. Jamie had wrapped the offending remainder in his handkerchief and put it in his sporran, intending either to procure a refund or to shove it down the vendor’s throat. “I see.”
Myers nodded, turning to Ute.
“And your husband, ma’am—bless his soul, Rob McGillivray’s a real born liar—chimes in solemn-like, agreeing to it all, shakin’ his head and sayin’ as how he’s got his work cut out to shoot enough meat for you.”
The girls tittered.
“Da can’t kill anything,” Inga said softly to me. “He willna even wring a chicken’s neck.”
Myers raised his shoulders in a good-humored shrug, as Jamie and Rob made their way toward us through the wet grass.
“So Jamie promised on his word as a gentleman to protect Boble from you, and Boble promised on his word as a . . . well, he said as he’d keep clear of young Manfred.”
“Hmp,” said Ute, looking rather disconcerted. She didn’t mind at all being considered an habitual murderess, and was quite pleased that Manfred was out of danger—but was rather put out at having her reputation as a sausage-maker maligned.
“As though I vould effer make such shite,” she said, wrinkling her nose in disdain at the odorous lump of meat Jamie offered for her inspection. “Pfaugh. Ratzfleisch.” She waved it away with a fastidious gesture, then turned to her husband and said something softly in German.
Then she took a deep breath and expanded once more, gathering all her children like a hen clucking after chicks, urging them to thank Jamie properly for his help. He flushed slightly at the chorus of thanks, bowing to her.
“Gern geschehen,” he said. “Euer ergebener Diener, Frau Ute.”
She beamed at him, composure restored, as he turned to say something in parting to Rob.
“Such a fine, big Mann,” she murmured, shaking her head slightly as she looked him up and down. Then she turned, and caught my glance from Jamie to Rob—for while the gunsmith was a handsome man, with close-clipped, dark curly hair and a chiseled face, he was also fine-boned as a sparrow, and some inches shorter than his wife, reaching approximately to the level of her brawny shoulder. I couldn’t help wondering, given her apparent admiration for large men . . .
“Oh, vell,” she said, and shrugged apologetically. “Luff, you know.” She sounded as though love were an unfortunate but unavoidable condition.
I glanced at Jamie, who was carefully swaddling his sausage before tucking it back into his sporran. “Well, yes,” I said. “I do.”