La Grippe from The Fiery Cross
Copyright © 1999 Diana Gabaldon, The Fiery Cross. All rights reserved.

Jamie has been appointed a Colonel of militia by Governor Tryon, and charged with mustering a regiment from the men of the backcountry. He--along with Claire and Roger--are en route to Cross Creek, collecting men from the various farms and settlements as they go.]

We acquired half a dozen men who walked in from Salem, three from Akard’s Creek, and a pair of brothers from a tiny settlement called Burgoo. At the end of the week, we made camp for the night in the woods on [ ] Mountain, a mile or so above the settlement of Granite Falls. Several of the men wanted to push on, to reach the hamlet and the possibility of an inn--or at least a hospitable shed--but Jamie thought better to wait.

“I dinna want to scare the townsfolk,” he had explained to Roger, “riding in with a troop of armed men after dark. Better to announce our business by daylight, then give the men a day--and a night--to make ready to leave.” He had stopped then, and coughed heavily, shoulders racked with the spasm.

I didn’t like either the looks of Jamie nor the sound of him. He had the patchy look of a mildewed quilt, and when he came to the fire to fill his dinner-bowl, I could hear a faint wheezing sigh in every breath. Most of the men were in similar condition; red noses and coughing were endemic, and the fire popped and sizzled every few moments, as someone hawked and spat into it. I should have liked to tuck Jamie up in bed with a hot stone to his feet, a mustard plaster on his chest, and a hot tisane of aromatic peppermint and ephedra leaves to drink. Since it would have taken a brace of cannon, leg-irons, and several armed men to get him there, I contented myself with fishing up a particularly meaty ladle of stew and plopping it into his bowl.

“Edgar,” Jamie called hoarsely. He stopped and cleared his throat, with a sound like tearing flannel. “Edgar--d’ye take Paul and fetch along more wood for the fire. It’ll be a cold night.” It already was. Men were standing so close to the fire that the fringes of their shawls and coats were singed, and the toes of their boots--those who had boots--stank of hot leather. My own knees and thighs were near blistering, as I stood perforce near the blaze in order to serve out the stew. My backside was like ice, though, in spite of the old pair of breeks I wore under shift and petticoat--both for insulation and for the avoidance of excessive friction while on horseback. The Carolina backwoods were no place for a sidesaddle.

The last bowl served, I turned round to eat my own, with the fire at my back, a grateful flush of warmth embracing my frozen bottom.

“All right, is it, Ma’am?” Jimmy Robertson, who had made the stew, peered over my shoulder in search of compliment.

“Lovely,” I assured him. “Delicious!” In fact, it was hot and I was hungry. That, plus the fact that I hadn’t had to cook it myself, lent a sufficient tone of sincerity to my words that he retired, satisfied.

I ate slowly, enjoying the heat of the wooden bowl in my chilly hands, as well as the soothing warmth of food in my stomach.

The cacophony of sneezing and hacking in my rear did nothing to impair the momentary sense of well- being engendered by food and the prospect of rest after a long day in the saddle. Even the sight of the woods around us, bone-cold and black under growing starlight, failed to disturb me.

My own nose had begun to run rather freely, but I hoped it was merely the result of eating hot food. I swallowed experimentally, but there was no sign of sore throat, nor rattling of congestion in my chest. Jamie rattled; he had finished eating and come to stand beside me, warming his backside at the blaze.

“All right, Sassenach?” he asked hoarsely.

“Just vasomotor rhinitis,” I replied, dabbing at my nose with a handkerchief.

“Where?” He cast a suspicious look at the forest. “Here? I thought ye said they lived in Africa.”

“What--oh, rhinoceroses. Yes, they do. I just meant my nose is running, but I haven’t got la grippe.”

“Oh, aye? That’s good. I have,” he added unnecessarily, and sneezed three times in succession. He handed me his emptied bowl, in order to use both hands to blow his nose, which he did with a series of vicious honks. I winced slightly, seeing the reddened, raw look of his nostrils. I had a bit of camphorated bear grease in my saddle-bag, but I was sure he wouldn’t let me anoint him in public.

“Are you sure we oughtn’t to push on?” I asked, watching him. “Geordie says the village isn’t far, and there is a road--of sorts.”

I knew the answer to that; he wasn’t one to alter strategy for the sake of personal comfort. Besides, camp was already made and a good fire going. Still, beyond my own longing for a warm, clean bed--well, any bed, I wasn’t fussy--I was worried for Jamie. Close to, the sigh in his breath had a deeper, wheezing note to it that troubled me.

He knew what I meant. He smiled, tucking away the sodden kerchief in his sleeve.

“I’ll do, Sassenach,” he said. “It’s no but a wee cold in the neb. I’ve been a deal worse than this, a many times.” Paul heaved another log onto the fire; a big ember broke and roared up with a flare that made us step away in order to avoid the spray of sparks. Well baked in the rear by this time, I turned to face the fire. Jamie, though, stayed facing outward, a slight frown on his face as he surveyed the shadows of the looming wood. The frown relaxed, and I turned to see two men emerging from the woods, shaking needles and bits of bark from their clothes. Jack Parker, and a new man--I didn’t yet know his name, but he was plainly a recent immigrant from somewhere near Glasgow, judging from his speech.

“All quiet, sir,” said Parker, touching his hat in brief salute. “Cold as charity, though.”

“Aye, Ah hivny felt ma privates anytime since dinner,” the Glaswegian chimed in, grimacing and rubbing himself as he headed for the fire. “Might as well be gone aetegither!”

“I take your meaning, man,” Jamie said, grinning. “Went for a piss a moment ago, but I couldna find it.” He turned amid the laughter and went to check the horses, a half-finished second bowl of stew in one hand.

The other men were already making ready their bedrolls, debating the wisdom of sleeping with feet or head near the fire. “It’ll scorch the soles o’ your boots, and ye get too close,” argued Evan Lindsay. “See? Charred the pegs right out, and now look!” He lifted one large foot, exhibiting a battered shoe with a wrapping of rough twine tied round it to hold it together. The leather soles and heels were sometimes stitched, but more often fastened with tiny whittled pegs of wood or leather, glued with pine gum or some other adhesive. The pine gum in particular was flammable; I’d seen occasional sparks burst from the feet of men who slept with their feet too near the fire, when a shoe-peg suddenly ignited from the heat.

“Better than settin’ your hair on fire,” Ronnie Sinclair argued.

“I dinna think the Lindsays need worry about that overmuch.” Kenny grinned at his elder brother, and tugged down the knit cap he wore--like his two brothers--over a balding head.

“Aye, head-first every time,” Murdo agreed. “Ye dinna want to chill your scalp; it’ll go right to your liver, and then you’re a dead man.” Murdo was tenderly solicitous of his exposed scalp, being seldom seen without either his knitted nightcap or a peculiar hat made from the hairy skin of a possum, lined and rakishly trimmed with skunk fur. He glanced enviously at Roger, who was tying back his own thick black hair with a bit of leather string. “MacKenzie needna worry; he’s furred like a bear!”

Roger grinned in response. Like the others, he had stopped shaving when we left the Ridge; now, six days later, a thick scurf of dark stubble did give him a fiercely ursine look. It occurred to me that beyond convenience, a heavy beard undoubtedly kept the face warm on nights like this; I tucked my own bare and vulnerable chin down into the sheltering folds of my shawl.

Returning from the horses in time to hear this, Jamie laughed, too, but it ended in a spasm of coughing. Evan waited ’til it ended.

“How say ye, Mac Dubh? Heads or tails?”

Jamie wiped his mouth on his sleeve and smiled. Hairy as the rest, he looked a proper Viking, with the fire glinting red, gold, and silver from his sprouting beard and loosened hair.

“Nay bother, lads,” he said. “I’ll sleep warm enough laid sideways.” He tilted his head in my direction, and there was a general rumble of laughter, with a spattering of mildly crude remarks in Scots and Gaelic from the Ridge men.

One or two of the new recruits eyed me with a brief, instinctive speculation, quickly abandoned after a glance at Jamie’s height, breadth, and air of genial ferocity. I met one man’s eyes and smiled; he looked startled, but then smiled back, ducking his head in shyness.

How the hell did Jamie do that? One brief joke, and he’d laid public claim to me, removed me from any threat of unwanted advances, and reasserted his position as leader. “Just like a bloody baboon troop,” I muttered under my breath. “And I’m sleeping with the head baboon!”

“Baboons are the monkeys wi’ no tails?” Jamie asked, turning back to me from an exchange with Edgar about the horses.

“You know quite well they are.” I caught his eye, and his mouth curled up on one side. I knew what he was thinking, and he knew I did; the smile widened.

Louis of France kept a private zoo at Versailles, among the inhabitants of which were a small group of mandrill baboons. One of the most popular Court activities on spring afternoons was to visit the baboon quarters, there to admire both the sexual prowess of the male, and his splendidly multi-colored bottom.

One M. de Ruvel had offered--in my hearing--to have his posterior similarly tattooed, if it would result in such a favorable reception by the ladies of the Court. He had, however, been firmly informed by Madame de Montespan that his physique was in every way inferior to that of the mandrill, and coloring it was unlikely to improve matters.

The firelight made it difficult to tell, but I was reasonably sure that Jamie’s own rich color owed as much to suppressed amusement as to heat.

“Speakin’ of tails,” he murmured in my ear. “Have ye got those infernal breeks on?”

“Yes.”

“Take them off.”

“What, here?” I gave him a wide-eyed look of mock innocence. “You want me to freeze my arse off?”

His eyes narrowed slightly, with a blue cat-gleam in the depths.

“Oh, it’ll no freeze,” he said softly. “I’ll warrant ye that.”

He moved behind me, and the fierce shimmer of the blaze on my flesh was replaced by the cool solidness of his body. No less fierce, though, as I discovered when he put his arms round my waist and drew me back against him.

“Oh, you found it,” I said. “How nice.”

“Found what? Had you lost something?” Roger paused, coming from the horses with a lumpy roll of blankets in his arms, his guitar slung over one shoulder.

“Oh, just a pair of auld breeks,” Jamie said blandly. Under cover of my shawl, one hand slid inside the waistband of my skirt. “D’ye mean to give us a song, then?”

“If anyone likes, sure.” Roger smiled, the firelight ruddy on his features. “Actually, I’m meaning to learn one; Evan’s promised to sing me a silkie-song his grannie knew.”

Jamie laughed.

“Oh, I ken that one, I think.”

One of Roger’s eyebrows shot up, and I twisted slightly round, to look up at Jamie in surprise.

“Well, I couldna sing it,” he said mildly, seeing our amazement. “I ken the words, though. Evan sang it often and again, in the prison at Ardsmuir. It’s a bit bawdy,” he added, with that faintly prim tone that Highlanders often adopt, just before telling you something truly shocking.

Roger recognized it, and laughed.

“I’ll maybe write it down, then,” he said. “For the benefit of future generations.”

Jamie’s fingers had been working skilfully away, and at this point, the breeks--which were his, and thus about six sizes too large for me--came loose and dropped silently to the ground. A cold draft whooshed up under my skirt and struck my newly-bared nether portions. I drew in my breath with a faint gasp.

“Cold, isn’t it?” Roger hunched his shoulders, smiling as he shivered exaggeratedly in sympathy.

“Yes, indeed,” I said. “Freeze the balls off a brass monkey, wouldn’t it?”

Jamie and Roger burst into simultaneous coughing fits.

Sentry in place and horses bedded down, we retired to our own resting-place, a discreet distance from the circle by the fire. I had dug the largest rocks and twigs out of the leaf-mold, cut spruce branches, and spread our blankets over them by the time Jamie finished his last round of the camp. The warmth of food and fire had faded, but I didn’t begin to shiver in earnest until he touched me.

I would have moved at once to get under the blankets, but Jamie still held me. His original intent appeared intact--to say the least--but his attention was momentarily distracted. His arms were still clasped round me, but he was standing quite still, head up as though listening, looking into the murk of the wood. It was full dark; no more showed of the trees than the glow of fire reflected from the few trunks that stood nearest the camp--the last shadow of twilight had faded, and everything beyond was a depthless black.

“What is it?” I drew back a little, pressing instinctively against him, and his arms tightened round me.

“I dinna ken. But I do feel something, Sassenach.” He moved a little, lifting his head in restless query, like a wolf scenting the wind, but no message reached us save a distant rattling of leafless branches.

“If it’s no rhinoceroses, it’s something,” he said softly, and a whisper of unease raised the hairs on the back of my neck. “A moment, lass.”

He left me, the wind blowing suddenly cold about me with the loss of his presence, and went to speak quietly with Paul and Evan.

And what might he feel, out there in the dark? I had the greatest respect for Jamie’s sense of danger. He had lived too long as hunter and as hunted, not to sense the edgy awareness that lay between the two--invisible or not.

He returned a moment later, and squatted beside me as I burrowed shivering into the blankets.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve said we’ll have two guards tonight, and each man to keep his piece loaded and to hand. But I think it’s all right.” He looked beyond me, into the wood, but his face now was merely thoughtful.

“It’s all right,” he repeated again, more certainly.

“Is it gone?”

He turned his head, his lips curling slightly. His mouth looked soft, tender and vulnerable amid the stiff, ruddy wires of his starting beard.

“I dinna ken if it was ever there, Sassenach,” he said. “I thought I felt eyes upon me, but it could have been a passing wolf, an owl--or nay more than a restless spirit, a-roaming in the wood. But aye, it’s gone now.”

He smiled at me; I saw the flicker of the light that rimmed his head and shoulders as he turned, silhouetted by the fire. Beyond, the mellow sound of Roger’s guitar drifted to me above the crackle of the fire, as he picked out the notes of Evan’s song. Jamie slid into the blankets beside me and I turned to him, cold hands fumbling to return the favor he had done me earlier.

We shivered convulsively, urgent for each other’s warmth. I found him, and he turned me, ruffling up the layers of fabric between us, so that he lay behind me, his arm secure around me, the small secret patches of our nakedness joined in warmth beneath the blankets. I lay facing the darkness of the wood, watching the firelight dance among the trees, as Jamie moved behind me--behind, between, within, warm, big, so slowly as scarcely to rustle the branches beneath us. Roger’s voice rose strong and sweet above the murmur of the men, and the shivering slowly stopped.

I woke much later beneath a black sky, dry-mouthed, the rasping sigh of Jamie’s breath in my ear. I had been dreaming; one of those pointless dreams of uneasy repetition, that fades at once with the waking but leaves a nasty taste in the mind. Needing both water and relief of my bladder, I squirmed carefully out from under Jamie’s arm, and slid out from between the blankets. He stirred and moaned slightly, snuffling in his sleep, but didn’t wake.

I paused to lay a hand lightly on his forehead. Cool, no fever. Perhaps he was right, then--just a bad cold. I stood up, reluctant to leave the warm sanctuary of our nest, but knowing I couldn’t wait until morning.

The songs were stilled, the fire smaller now, but still burning, kept up by the sentry on duty. It was Murdo Lindsay; I could see the white fur of his possum-skin hat, perched atop what looked like a huddled pile of clothing and blankets. The anonymous Glaswegian crouched on the other side of the clearing, musket on his knees; he nodded to me, face shadowed by the brim of his slouch hat. The white hat turned in my direction too, at the sound of my step. I sketched a wave, and Murdo nodded toward me, then turned back toward the wood.

The men lay in a shrouded circle, buried in their blankets. I felt a sudden qualm as I walked between them. With the spell of night and dreams still on me, I shivered at sight of the silent forms, lying so still, side by side. Just so had they laid the bodies at Amiens. At Preston. Still and shrouded, side by side, faces covered and anonymous, for war will not look on the faces of the dead.

And why should I wake from love’s embrace, thinking of war and the sleeping ranks of dead men? I wondered, stepping lightly past the shrouded line of bodies. Well, that was simple enough, given our errand.

One blanket-wrapped form grunted, coughed, and turned over, face invisible, indistinguishable from the others. The movement startled me, but then one big foot thrust free of the blanket, revealing Evan Lindsay’s twine-wrapped shoe. I felt the anxious burden of imagination ease, with this evidence of life, of individuality.

It’s the anonymity of war that makes the killing possible. When the nameless dead are named again on tombstone and on cenotaph, then they regain the identity they lost as soldiers, and take their place in grief and memory, the ghosts of sons, of fathers and brothers. In the facelessness of uniforms, any man can die.

Perhaps this journey would be peaceful enough in itself, but I couldn’t burk the truth of what we were about. I had never heard anything of the North Carolina Regulators in my small dabblings in history, and so must assume that this present conflict was not going to amount to anything very notable. The conflict that was coming, though...the world would hear of that, and I stepped past the last of the sleeping men, as though walking through an evil dream not fully waked from.

I picked up a canteen from the ground near the saddlebags and drank deep. The water was piercingly cold, and the somber thoughts began to dissipate, washed away by the sweet, clean taste of it. I paused, gasping from the coldness, and wiped my mouth.

Best take some back to Jamie; if he wasn’t already wakened by my absence, he would be by my return, and I knew his mouth would be dry as well, since he was completely unable to breathe through his nose at the moment. I slung the strap of the canteen over my shoulder and stepped into the shelter of the wood.

It was cold under the trees, but the air was still and crystal clear. The shadows that had seemed sinister viewed from the fireside were oddly reassuring, seen from the shelter of the wood. Turned away from the fire’s glow and crackle, my eyes and ears began to adapt to the dark. I heard the rustle of something small in the dried grass nearby, and the unexpected distant boom of a bittern; there was a creek or a marsh somewhere nearby, then.

Finished, I stood still for a few minutes, enjoying the momentary solitude. It was very cold, but very peaceful. Jamie had been right, I thought; whatever might or might not have been here earlier, the wood held nothing inimical now.

As though my thought of him had summoned him, I heard a cautious footfall, and the slow, wheezing rasp of his breath. He coughed, a muffled, strangled noise that I didn’t like at all.

“Here I am,” I said softly. “How’s the chest?”

The cough choked off in a sudden wheeze of panic, and there was a crunch and flurry among the leaves. I saw Murdo start up by the fire, musket in hand, and then a dark shape darted past me.

“Hey!” I said, startled rather than frightened. The shape stumbled, and by reflex, I swung the canteen off my shoulder and whirled it by the strap. It struck the figure in the back with a hollow thunk! and whoever it was--certainly not Jamie--fell to his knees, coughing.

There followed a short period of chaos, with men exploding out of their blankets like startled jack-in-the-boxes, incoherent shouting, and general mayhem. The Glaswegian leaped over several startled bodies and charged into the wood, musket over his head, bellowing. Barrelling into the darkness, he charged the first shape he saw, which happened to be me. I went flying headlong into the leaves, where I ended inelegantly sprawled and windless, the Glaswegian kneeling on my stomach.

I must have given a sufficiently feminine grunt as I fell, for he paused, narrowly checking himself as he was about to club me in the head.

“Eh?” He put down his free hand and felt cautiously. Feeling what was unmistakably a breast, he jerked back as though burned, and slowly edged off me.

“Err..hm!” he said.

“Whoof,” I replied, as cordially as possible. The stars were spinning overhead, shining brightly through the leafless branches. The Glaswegian disappeared, with a small Scottish noise of embarrassment. There was a lot of shouting and crashing, off to my left, but I hadn’t attention for anything at the moment bar getting my wind back.

By the time I made it back onto my feet, the intruder had been captured and dragged into the light of the fire.

Had he not been coughing when I hit him, he likely would have gotten away. As it was, though, he was hacking and wheezing so badly that he could barely stand upright, and his face was dark with the effort to snatch a breath in passing. The veins on his forehead stood out like worms, and he made an eerie whistling noise as he breathed--or tried to.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Jamie demanded hoarsely, then paused to cough in sympathy.

This was a purely rhetorical question, since the boy plainly couldn’t talk. It was Josiah Beardsley, my potential tonsillectomy patient, and whatever he’d been doing since the Gathering, it hadn’t improved his health to any marked extent.

I hurried to the fire, where the coffeepot sat in the embers. I seized it in a fold of my shawl and shook it. Good, there was some left, and since it had been brewing since supper, it would be strong as Hades.

“Sit him down, loosen his clothes, bring me cold water!” I shoved my way into the circle of men around the captive, forcing them aside with the hot coffepot.

Within a moment or two, I had a cup of strong coffee at his lips, black and tarry, diluted with no more than a splash of cold water to keep it from burning his mouth.

“Breathe out slowly to the count of four, breathe in to the count of two, breathe out and take a drink,” I said. The whites of his eyes showed all round the iris, and spittle had collected at the corners of his mouth. I put a firm hand on his shoulder though, urging him to breathe, to count, to breathe--and the desperate straining eased a little.

One sip, one breath, one sip, one breath, and by the time the coffee was all inside him, his face had faded from its alarming crimson hue to something more approximating fish-belly, with a couple of faint reddish marks where the men had hit him. The air still whistled in his lungs, but he was breathing, which was a substantial improvement.

The men stood about murmuring and watching with interest, but it was cold, it was late, and as the excitement of the capture faded, they began to droop and yawn. It was, after all, only a lad, and a scrawny, ill-favored one at that. They departed willingly enough to their blankets when Jamie despatched them, leaving Jamie, Roger, and me to attend to our unexpected guest.

I had him swaddled in spare blankets, larded with camphorated bear’s grease, and provided with another cup of coffee in his hands, before I would let Jamie question him. The boy seemed deeply embarrassed at my attentions, shoulders hunched and eyes on the ground, but I didn’t know whether he was simply unused to being fussed over, or whether it was the looming presence of Jamie, arms crossed, that discomfited him.

He was small for fourteen, and thin to the point of emaciation; I could have counted his ribs when I opened his shirt to listen to his heart. No beauty otherwise; his black hair had been chopped short, and stood on his head in matted spikes, thick with dirt, grease, and sweat, and his general aspect was that of a flea-ridden monkey, eyes large and black in a face pinched with worry and suspicion.

At last having done all I could, I was satisfied with the look of him. At my nod, Jamie lowered himself to the ground beside the boy.

“So, Mr. Beardsley, ” he said pleasantly. “Have ye come to join our troop of militia, then?”

“Ah...no.” Josiah rolled the wooden cup between his hands, not looking up. “I...uh...my business chanced to take me this way, that’s all.” He spoke so hoarsely that I winced in sympathy, imagining the soreness of his inflamed throat.

“I see.” Jamie’s voice was low and friendly. “So ye saw our fire by chance, and thought to come and seek shelter and a meal?”

“I did, aye.” He swallowed, with evident difficulty.

“Mmphm. But ye came earlier, no? You were in the wood just after sundown. Why wait ’til past moonrise to make yourself known?”

“I didn’t...I wasn’t...”

“Oh, indeed ye were.” Jamie’s voice was still friendly, but firm. He put out a hand and grasped Josiah’s shirtfront, forcing the boy to look at him.

“Look ye, man. There’s a bargain between us. You’re my tenant; it’s agreed. That means you’ve a right to my protection. It means also that I’ve a right to hear the truth.”

Josiah looked back, and while there was fear and wariness in the look, there was also a sense of self-possession that seemed far older than fourteen. He made no effort to look away, and there was a look of deep calculation in the clever black eyes.

This child--if one could regard him as a child; plainly Jamie didn’t--was used to relying on himself alone.

“I said to you, sir, that I would come to your place in December, and so I mean to. What I do in the meantime is my own affair.”

Jamie’s brows shot up, but he nodded slowly.

“True enough. You’ll admit, though, that one might be curious.”

The boy opened his mouth as though to speak, but changed his mind and buried his nose instead in his cup of coffee.

Jamie tried again.

“May we offer you help in your business? Will ye travel a ways with us, at least?”

Josiah shook his head.

“No. I am obliged to you, sir, but the business is best managed by myself alone.”

Roger had been sitting a little way behind Jamie, watching silently. He leaned forward now, green eyes intent on the boy.

“This business of yours,” he said. “It’s not by any means connected with that mark on your thumb?”

The cup hit the ground and coffee splashed up, spattering my face and bodice. The boy was out of his blankets and halfway across the clearing before I could blink my eyes to see what was happening--and by then, Jamie was up and after him. The boy had circled the fire; Jamie leaped over it. They disappeared into the wood like fox and hound, leaving Roger and myself gaping after them.

For the second time that night, men erupted from their bedrolls, grabbing for their guns. I began to think the governor would be pleased with his militia; they were certainly ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice.

“What the hell...?” I said to Roger, wiping coffee from my eyebrows.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it so suddenly,” he said.

“Wha? Wha? What’s amiss, then?” bellowed Murdo Lindsay, glaring round as he swept his musket barrel past the shadowed trees.

“Are we attacked? Where’s the bastards?” Kenny popped up on hands and knees beside me, peering out from under the band of his knitted hat like a toad beneath a watering pot.

“Nobody. Nothing’s happened. I mean--it’s really quite all right!”

My efforts to calm and explain went largely unnoticed in the racket. Roger, however, being much larger and much louder, succeeded at last in quelling the disturbance and explaining matters--so far as they could be explained. What did a lad more or less matter? With considerable grumbling, the men settled down once more, leaving Roger and me staring at each other over the coffee-pot.

“What was it, then?” I asked, a little testily.

“The mark? I’m pretty sure it was the letter “T”--I saw it when you made him take the coffee and he wrapped his hand round the cup.”

My stomach tightened. I knew what that meant; I’d seen it before.

“Thief,” Roger said, eyes on my face. “He’s been branded.”

“Yes,” I said unhappily. “Oh, dear.”

“Would the folk on the Ridge not accept him, if they knew?” Roger asked.

“I doubt most of them would be much bothered,” I said. “It’s not that; it’s that he ran when you mentioned it. He isn’t just a convicted thief--I’m afraid he may be a fugitive. And Jamie called him, at the slionnach.”

“Ah.” Roger scratched absently at his whiskers. “Jamie will feel obliged in some way, then?”

“Something like that.”

Roger was a Scot, and--technically, at least--a Highlander. But he had been born long after the death of the clans, and neither history nor heritage could ever have taught him the strength of the ancient bonds between laird and tenant, between chief and clansman. Most likely, Josiah himself had no idea of the importance of the slionnach--of what had been promised and accepted on both sides. Jamie had.

“Do you think Jamie will catch him?” Roger asked.

“I expect he already has. He can’t be tracking the boy in the dark, and if he’d lost him, he would have come back already.” There were other possibilities--that Jamie had fallen over a precipice in the dark, tripped on a stone and broken his leg, or met with a catamount or a bear, for instance--but I preferred not to dwell on those.

I stood up, stretching my cramped limbs, and looked into the woods, where Jamie and his prey had disappeared. Josiah might be a good woodsman and hunter; Jamie had been one much longer. Josiah was small, quick, and impelled by fear; Jamie had a considerable advantage in size, strength, and sheer bloody-mindedness.

Roger stood up beside me. His face was slightly troubled, as he peered into the encircling trees.

“It’s taking a long time. If he’s caught the lad, what’s he doing with him?”

“Extracting the truth from him, I imagine,” I said. I bit my lip at the thought. “Jamie doesn’t like being lied to.”

Roger looked down at me, mildly startled.

“How?”

I shrugged.

“However he can.” I’d seen him do it by reason, by guile, with charm, with threats--and on occasion, by means of brute force. I hoped he hadn’t had to use force--though more for his sake than Josiah’s.

The coffeepot was empty; I bundled my cloak round me and went down to the stream to rinse and fill it, hung it to brew once more above the fire, and sat down to wait.

“You should go to sleep,” I said to Roger, after a few minutes. He merely smiled at me, wiped his nose, and hunched deeper into his cloak.

“So should you,” he said.

There was no wind, but it was very late, and the cold had settled well into the hollow, lying damp and heavy on the ground. The men’s blankets had grown limp with condensation, and I could feel the dense chill of the ground seeping through the folds of my skirt. I thought about retrieving my breeches, but couldn’t muster the energy to search for them. The excitement of Josiah’s appearance and escape had faded, and the lethargy of cold and fatigue was setting in.

Roger poked up the fire a bit, and added a few small chunks of wood. I tucked another fold of skirt beneath my thighs and pulled cloak and shawl close around me, burying my hands in the folds of fabric. The coffepot hung steaming, the hiss of occasional droplets falling into the fire punctuating the phlegm-filled snores of the sleeping men.

I wasn’t seeing the blanket-rolled shapes, though, or hearing the sough of dark pines. I heard the crackle of dried leaves in a Scottish oak-wood, in the hills above Carryarrick. We had camped there, two days before Prestonpans, with thirty men from Lallybroch--on our way to join Charles Stuart’s army. And a young boy had come suddenly out of the dark, a knife had glinted in the light of a fire.

A different place, a different time. I shook myself, trying to dispell the sudden memories: a thin white face and a boy’s eyes huge with shock and pain. The blade of a dirk, darkening and glowing in the embers of the fire. The smell of gunpowder, sweat, and burning flesh.

“I mean to shoot you,” he had told John Grey. “Head, or heart?” By threat, by guile--by brute force.

That was then; this was now, I told myself. But Jamie would do what he thought he must.

Roger sat quietly, watching the dancing flames and the wood beyond. His eyes were hooded, and I wondered what he was thinking.

“D’you worry for him?” he asked softly, not looking at me.

“What, now? Or ever?” I smiled, though without much humor. “If I did, I’d never rest.”

He turned his head toward me, and a faint smile touched his lips.

“You’re resting now, are you?”

I smiled again, a real one in spite of myself.

“I’m not pacing to and fro,” I answered dryly. “Nor yet wringing my hands.”

One dark eyebrow flicked up.

“Might help keep them warm.”

One of the men stirred, muttering in his wrappings, and we ceased talking for a moment. The coffeepot was boiling; I could hear the soft rumble of the liquid inside.

Whatever could be keeping him? He couldn’t be taking all this time to question Josiah Bearsdley--he would either have gotten what answers he required in short order, or he would have let the boy go. No matter what the boy had stolen, it was no concern of Jamie’s--save for the promise of the slionnach.

The flames were mildly hypnotic; I could look into the wavering glow and see in memory the great fire of the Gathering, the figures dark around it, and the sound of distant fiddles...

“Should I go to look for him?” Roger asked suddenly, low- voiced.

I jerked, startled out of sleepy hypnosis. I rubbed a hand over my face and shook my head to clear it.

“No. It’s dangerous to go into strange woods in the dark, and you couldn’t find him anyway. If he isn’t back by the morning--that will be time enough.”

As the moments wore slowly on, I began to think that the dawn might come before Jamie did. I was worried for Jamie--but there was in fact nothing that could be done before the morning. Disquieting thoughts tried to push their way in; did Josiah have a knife? Almost surely he did. But even if the boy was desperate enough to use it, could he possibly take Jamie by surprise? I pushed aside these anxious speculations, trying to occupy my mind instead with counting the number of coughs from the men around the fire.

Number eight was Roger; a deep, loose cough that shook his shoulders. Was he worried for Bree and Jemmy? I wondered. Or did he wonder whether Bree worried about him? I could have told him that, but it wouldn’t have helped him to know. Men fighting--or preparing to fight--needed the idea of home as a place of utter safety; the conviction that all was well there kept them in good heart and on their feet, marching, enduring. Other things would make them fight, but fighting is such a small part of warfare...

I began at last to nod off, waking repeatedly as my head jerked sharply on my neck. The last time, it was the feel of hands on my shoulders that wakened me, but only briefly. Roger eased me to the ground, wadding half my shawl beneath my head for a pillow, tucking the rest of it snug about my face and shoulders. I caught a brief glimpse of him in silhouette against the fire, black and bearlike in his cloak, and then I knew no more.

I don’t know how long I slept; I woke up quite suddenly, at the sound of an explosive sneeze nearby. Jamie was sitting a few feet away, holding Josiah Beardsley’s wrist in one hand, his dirk in the other. He paused long enough to sneeze twice more, wiped his nose impatiently on his sleeve, then thrust the dirk into the embers of the fire.

I caught the stink of hot metal, and raised myself abruptly on one elbow. Before I could say or do anything, something twitched and moved against me. I looked down in astonishment, then up, then down again, convinced in my muddled state that I was still dreaming.

A young boy lay under my cloak, curled against my body, sound asleep. I saw black hair and a scrawny frame, a pallid skin smeared with grime and grazed with scratches. Then there was a sudden loud hiss from the fire and I jerked my gaze back to see Jamie press Josiah’s thumb against the searing metal of his blackened dirk.

Jamie glimpsed my convulsive movement from the corner of his eye and scowled in my direction, lips pursed in a silent adjuration to stillness. Josiah’s face was contorted, lips drawn back from his teeth in agony--but he made no noise. On the far side of the fire, Kenny Lindsay sat watching, silent as a rock.

Still convinced that I was dreaming--or hoping that I was--I put a hand on the boy curled against me. He moved again, and the feel of solid flesh under my fingers woke me completely. My hand closed on his shoulder, and his eyes sprang open, wide with alarm.

He jerked away, scrambling awkwardly to get to his feet. Then he saw his brother--for plainly Josiah was his brother--and stopped abruptly, glancing wildly around the clearing, at the scattered men, at Jamie, Roger, and myself.

Ignoring what must have been the frightful pain of a burned hand, Josiah rose from his seat and stepped quick and soft to his brother’s side, taking him by the arm.

I got to my feet, moving slowly so as not to frighten them. They watched me, identical looks of wariness on the thin, white faces. Identical. Yes, just the same pinched faces--though the other boy’s hair was worn long. He was dressed in nothing but a ragged shirt, and he was barefoot. I saw Josiah squeeze his brother’s arm in reassurance, and began to suspect just what it was he had stolen. I summoned a smile for the two of them, then stretched out my hand to Josiah.

“Let me see your hand,” I whispered.

He hesitated a moment, then gave me his right hand. It was a nice, neat job; so neat that it made me slightly faint for a moment. The ball of the thumb had been sliced cleanly off, the open wound cauterized with searing metal. A red-black, crusted oval had replaced the incriminating brand.

There was a soft movement behind me; Roger had fetched my medicine-box and set it down by my feet.

There wasn’t a great deal to do for the injury, save apply a little gentian ointment and bandage the thumb with a clean, dry cloth. I was conscious of Jamie as I worked; he had sheathed his dirk and risen quietly, to go and rummage among the packs and saddle-bags. By the time I had finished my brief job, he was back, with a small bundle of food wrapped in a kerchief, and a spare blanket tied in a roll. Over his arm were my discarded breeches.

He handed these to the new boy, gave the food and blanket to Josiah, then clapped a hand on the boy’s shoulder, and squeezed hard. He touched the other boy gently, turning him toward the wood with a hand on his back. Then he jerked his head toward the trees, and Josiah nodded. He touched his forehead to me, the bandage glinting white on his thumb, and whispered, “Thank’ee, Ma’am.”

The two boys disappeared silently into the forest, the twin’s bare feet winking pale below the flapping hem of the breeks as he followed his brother.

Jamie nodded to Kenny, then sat down again by the fire, shoulders slumping in sudden exhaustion. I poured him coffee and he took it, his mouth twitching in an attempted smile of acknowledgement that dissipated in a fit of heavy coughing.

I reached for the cup before it could spill, and caught Roger’s eye over Jamie’s shoulder. He nodded toward the east, and laid a finger across his lips, then shrugged with a grimace of resignation. He wanted as much as I did to know what had just happened--and why. He was right, though; the night was fading. Dawn would be here soon, and the men--all accustomed to wake at first light--would be floating toward the surface of consciousness.

Jamie had stopped coughing, but was making horrible gurgling noises in an attempt to clear his throat--he sounded rather like a pig drowning in mud.

“Here,” I whispered, giving him back the cup. “Drink it, and lie down. You should sleep a little.”

He shook his head and lifted the cup to his lips. He swallowed, grimacing at the bitterness.

“Not worth it,” he croaked. He nodded toward the east, where the tufted pines were now inked black on a graying sky. “And besides, I’ve got to think what the hell to do now.”