Written in My Own Heart's Blood

123 QUOD SCRIPSI, SCRIPSI

From Mrs. Abigail Bell, Savannah, the Royal Colony of Georgia

To Mr. James Fraser, Philadelphia, Colony of Pennsylvania

Dear Mr. Fraser,

I write in response to yours of the 17th inst., apprising my Husband of your return to America, which was forwarded to him by a Friend in Wilmington.

As you will see from the Direction of this Letter, we have removed from Wilmington to Savannah, the political Climate of North Carolina having become increasingly dangerous to Loyalists, particularly to my Husband, given his History and Profession.

I wish to assure you that your Press has been preserved in excellent condition but is not presently in use. My husband contracted a serious Ague soon after our arrival here, and it became evident that his Illness was of the periodic, or relapsing, Kind. He does somewhat better these days but is unable to sustain the difficult Labor of the printing Trade. (I will add, should you think of establishing a Business here, that while the Politics of the Place are a great deal more congenial to those of the Loyalist Persuasion than those of the northern Colonies, a Printer is exposed to much Unpleasantness, whatever his personal Beliefs.)

Your Press is presently stored in the Barn of a Farmer named Simpson, who lives a short Distance outside the City. I have seen it and assured myself that the Instrument is Clean, Dry (it is packed in Straw), and sheltered from the Weather. Please apprise me of your Desires, should you wish me to sell the Press and forward the Money to you, or should you wish to come and fetch it.

We are most appreciative of your Help and Kindness, and the Girls pray for you and your Family every Day.

Yours most Sincerely,

Abigail Bell

William Ransom, to His Grace Harold, Duke of Pardloe

September 24, 1778

Dear Uncle Hal,

You will be gratified to know that your paternal Instinct was correct. I am very pleased to tell you that Ben probably isn’t dead.

On the other hand, I haven’t the slightest Idea where the devil he is or why he’s there.

I was shown a Grave at Middlebrook Encampment in New Jersey, purported to be Ben’s, but the Body therein is not Ben. (It’s probably better if you don’t know how that bit of information was ascertained.)

Clearly someone in the Continental army must know something of his whereabouts, but most of Washington’s troops who were at the Encampment when he was captured have gone. There is one Man who might possibly yield some Information, but beyond that, the only possible Connection would seem to be the Captain with whom we are acquainted.

I propose therefore to hunt the Gentleman in question and extract what Information he may possess when I find him.

Your most obedient nephew,

William

Lord John Grey, to Harold, Duke of Pardloe

Charleston, South Carolina

September 28, 1778

Dear Hal,

We arrived in Charleston by ship two days ago, having encountered a Storm off the Chesapeake that blew us out to Sea, delaying us for several days. I’m sure you will not be surprised in the least to learn that Dottie is a much better Sailor than I am.

She also shows Promise as an inquiry Agent. First thing this morning, she discovered the Whereabouts of Amaranthus Cowden by the simple Expedient of stopping a well-dressed Lady on the Street, admiring her Gown, and then asking for the names of the better Dressmakers in the City, on the Assumption (as she later explained to me) that Ben would not have married either a plain Woman or one with no Interest in Fashion.

The third Shop we visited did indeed boast that Miss Cowden (she was calling herself Mrs. Grey, they said, but they knew her Maiden Name, as she was residing with an Aunt named Cowden) was a Customer, and they were able to describe her to me as a slight young Woman of middle Height, with an excellent Complexion, large brown Eyes, and abundant Hair of a dark-blond Hue. They could not, however, give me her Address, as the Lady had recently decamped to winter with Friends in Savannah. (The Aunt has annoyingly died, I find.)

Interestingly, she styles herself as a Widow, so apparently she was informed—and by whom? I should like to know—of Ben’s presumed Death, sometime after the Date of her Letter to you, as otherwise she would certainly have mentioned it.

I also find it interesting that she should be able to afford the Services of Madame Eulalie—and these to no little Extent; I succeeded in inducing Madame to show me her recent Bills—when her Letter to you professed her to be in financial Difficulties owing to Ben’s Capture.

If Ben is indeed dead and both the Death and the Marriage proved, then presumably she would inherit some Property—or at least the Child would. But she can’t possibly have taken such Legal Steps in the Time between her Letter to you and the Present; it could easily take that long merely to send a Letter to London—assuming that she had any Idea to whom it should be sent. And assuming also that whoever received it would not immediately have informed you.

Oh—she does possess an Infant, a Boy, and the Child is hers; Madame made her two Gowns and a set of Stays to accommodate the Pregnancy. Naturally, there’s no telling whether Benjamin is the child’s Father. She clearly has at least met Ben—or possibly Adam; she could have got “Wattiswade” from anyone in the Family—but that’s not Proof of either Marriage or Paternity.

All in all, an interesting Woman, your putative Daughter-in-law. Plainly our Path lies now toward Savannah, though this may require somewhat more investigative Effort, as we don’t know the Name of the Friends with whom she’s taken Refuge, and if she is indeed poverty-stricken, she won’t be buying new Gowns.

I hope to convince Dottie that she need not accompany me. She’s most determined, but I can see that she pines for her Quaker Physician. And if our Quest should be greatly prolonged . . . I will not allow her to be placed in Danger, I assure you.

Your most affectionate Brother,

John

General Sir Henry Clinton, Commander in Chief for North

America, to Colonel His Grace Duke of Pardloe, 46th Foot

Sir,

You are hereby ordered and directed to assemble and re-fit your Troops in whatever manner you deem necessary, and then to make Junction with Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell, to march upon the City of Savannah in the colony of Georgia, and take possession of it in His Majesty’s name.

H. Clinton

HAROLD, DUKE OF Pardloe, felt his chest tightening and rang for his orderly.

“Coffee, please,” he said to the man. “Brewed very strong, and quickly. And bring the brandy while you’re at it.”

124 BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE LETTERS Q, E, AND D

IT WAS, OF COURSE, unthinkable that we should sell Clarence.

“Do you think he weighs as much as a printing press?” I asked, looking at him dubiously. His tiny stable next to the shop had survived the fire, and while he wrinkled his nose and sneezed when the wind raised a whiff of ash from the charred remains of the printshop, he didn’t seem much affected.

“Substantially more, I think.” Jamie scratched his forehead and ran a hand up the length of one long ear. “D’ye think mules suffer from seasickness?”

“Can they vomit?” I tried to recall whether I’d ever seen a horse or mule regurgitate—as opposed to dropping slobbery mouthfuls of whatever they were eating—but couldn’t call an instance to mind.

“I couldna say if they can,” Jamie said, picking up a stiff brush and beating clouds of dust from Clarence’s broad gray back, “but they don’t, no.”

“Then how would you know if a mule was seasick?” Jamie himself got violently seasick, and I did wonder how he was going to manage if we did go by ship; the acupuncture needles I used to quell his nausea had perished in the fire—with so much else.

Jamie gave me a jaundiced look over Clarence’s back.

“Can ye no tell if I’m seasick, even when I’m not puking?”

“Well, yes,” I said mildly, “but you aren’t covered with hair, and you can talk. You turn green and pour with sweat and lie about, groaning and begging to be shot.”

“Aye. Well, bar the turning green, a mule can tell ye verra well if he’s feeling peely-wally. And he can certainly make ye want to shoot him.”

He ran a hand down Clarence’s leg to pick up the mule’s left front hoof. Clarence picked it up and set it down again very solidly, exactly where Jamie’s own foot had been an instant before. His ears twitched.

“On the other hand,” Jamie said to him, “I could make ye walk all the way to Savannah, pullin’ a cart behind ye. Think about that, aye?” He came out of the stall and closed the gate, shaking it to be sure it was securely latched.

“Mr. Fraser!” A shout from the end of the alley drew his attention. It was Jonas Phillips, presumably on his way home to a midday dinner from the assembly room, where the Continental Congress was still locked in struggle. Jamie waved back and, with a nod to me, walked down the alley. While I waited for him, I turned my attention to the jumble of items occupying the other half of the stable.

What little room there was besides Clarence’s stall was filled with the things the neighbors had managed to salvage from the remains of the print-shop. All of it had the sour reek of ash about it, but a few of the items might be salvaged or sold, I supposed.

Mrs. Bell’s letter had caused a certain reevaluation of our immediate prospects. Fergus’s press had definitely perished in the flames; the derelict carcass was still there, the metal parts twisted in a way suggesting uncomfortably that the thing had died in agony. Fergus hadn’t wept; after Henri-Christian, I didn’t think anything could ever make him weep again. But he did avert his eyes whenever he came near the ruins.

On the one hand, the loss of the press was terrible—but, on the other, it did save us the problem of hauling it to . . .

Well, that was another problem. Where were we going?

Jamie had assured me that we were going home—back to the Ridge. But it was late September, and even if we found the money to pay the passage for so many people—and Clarence—and were fortunate enough not to be sunk or captured by an English cutter . . . we would part company with Fergus and Marsali in Wilmington, then go up the Cape Fear River into the North Carolina backcountry, leaving Marsali, Fergus, and the children to go on alone to Savannah. I knew that Jamie didn’t want to do that. In all honesty, neither did I.

The little family was surviving, but there was no doubt that Henri-Christian’s death and the fire had left them all badly wounded. Especially Germain.

You could see it in his face, even in the way he walked, no longer jaunty and bright-eyed, eager for adventure. He walked with his shoulders hunched, as though expecting a blow to come out of nowhere. And while sometimes he would forget for a few moments and revert to his normal swagger and talk, you could see it when the blow of memory did come out of nowhere to send him reeling.

Ian and Rachel had taken it upon themselves to be sure that he didn’t slink away by himself; one or the other was always calling on him to come and help carry the marketing or go out to the forest to look for the proper wood for an ax handle or a new bow. That helped.

If Fergus went to Savannah to retrieve Bonnie, Jamie’s original press, Marsali would be hampered and preoccupied by advancing pregnancy and the difficulties both of travel with a family and then of establishing a new home, Fergus needing to devote himself to setting up the new business and dealing with whatever the local politics might be. Germain could so easily slip through the cracks in his family and be lost.

I wondered whether Jenny would go with them—or with Ian and Rachel. Marsali could certainly use her help, but I remembered what Marsali had said, and thought she was right: “Ian’s her youngest. . . . And she’s had too little of him.” She had; Ian had essentially been lost to her at the age of fourteen, and she hadn’t seen him again until he was a grown man—and a Mohawk. I’d seen her now and then, gazing at him as he talked and ate, with a small inward glow on her face.

I poked gingerly through the pile of remnants. Marsali’s cauldron had survived unscathed, though covered with soot. A few pewter plates, one half melted—the wooden ones had all burned—and a stack of Bibles, rescued from the front room by some pious soul. A line of washing had been hung out across the alley; what clothes were on it had all survived, though a couple of Fergus’s shirts and Joanie’s pinafore had been badly singed. I supposed boiling with lye soap might get the stink of fire out of the clothes, but I doubted that any of the family would wear them again.

Clarence, having finished his hay, was methodically rubbing his forehead against the top rail of his gate, making it rattle and thump.

“Itchy, are you?” I scratched him, then poked my head out of the stable. Jamie was still in conversation with Mr. Phillips at the mouth of the alley, though, and I went back to my explorations.

Under a pile of smoke-stained playscripts I found Marsali’s small chiming clock, somehow miraculously intact. It had stopped, of course, but emitted one small, sweet silver bing! when I picked it up, making me smile.

Perhaps that was a good omen for the journey. And, after all, even if Jamie and I—and Rachel and Ian—were to set out at once for Fraser’s Ridge, there was no chance of reaching the mountains of North Carolina before snow had closed the passes for the winter. It would be March, at the earliest, before we could turn inland.

I sighed, clock in hand, envisioning the Ridge in springtime. It would be a good time to arrive, the weather good for planting and building. I could wait.

I heard Jamie’s steps come down the cobbled alley and stop. Stepping to the open front of the stable, I saw that he’d paused at the place where Henri-Christian had died. He stood unmoving for a moment, then crossed himself and turned.

The solemnity left his face as he saw me, and he held up a small leather bag, smiling.

“Look, Sassenach!”

“What is it?”

“One of the Phillips boys found it, scavenging about, and brought it to his father. Hold out your hands.”

Puzzled, I did so, and he tilted the bag, decanting a small cascade of surprisingly heavy dark-gray chunks of lead—the type for a complete set of . . . I picked one out and squinted at it. “Caslon English Roman?”

“Better than that, Sassenach,” he said, and, plucking the letter “Q” from the pile in my hand, he dug his thumbnail into the soft metal, revealing a faint yellow gleam. “Marsali’s hoard.”

“My God, it is! I’d forgotten all about it.” At the height of the British occupation, when Fergus had been obliged to leave home to avoid arrest, sleeping in a different place each night, Marsali had cast a set of type in gold, carefully rubbing each slug with grease, soot, and ink, and had carried the pouch under her apron, in case she and the children should be likewise forced to flee.

“So did Marsali, I expect.” His smile faded a bit, thinking of the causes of Marsali’s distraction. “She’d buried it under the bricks of the hearth—I suppose when the army left. Sam Phillips found it when they were pulling down the chimney.” He nodded toward the charred spot where the printshop had stood. The chimney had been damaged by the wall falling in, so a number of men had taken it down, neatly stacking the bricks, most of which were intact despite the fire and could be sold.

I poured the type carefully back into the pouch and glanced over my shoulder at Clarence.

“I suppose a goldsmith could make me a set of really big acupuncture needles. Just in case.”

125 SQUID OF THE EVENING, BEAUTIFUL SQUID

Charleston, Royal Colony of South Carolina

LORD JOHN AND HIS niece, Dorothea, ate that night at a small ordinary near the shore, whose air was redolent with the luscious scents of baked fish, eels in wine sauce, and small whole squid, fried crisply in cornmeal. John inhaled deeply with pleasure, handed Dottie to a stool, and sat down himself, enjoying the moment of gustatory indecision.

“It’s that moment when you can convincingly imagine the delightful prospect of eating everything the establishment has to offer,” he told Dottie. “Momentarily untroubled by the knowledge that one’s stomach has a limited capacity and thus one must, alas, choose in the end.”

Dottie looked a little dubious, but, thus urged, she took a deep sniff of the atmosphere, to which the scent of fresh-baked bread had just been added as the serving maid came in with a great loaf and a dish of butter with a four-leafed clover—this being the name of the establishment—stamped into its oleaginous surface.

“Oh, that smells wonderful!” she said, her face lighting. “Might I have some, please? And a glass of cider?”

He was pleased to see her nibble hungrily at the bread and take a deep breath of the cider—which was aromatic enough to challenge even the squid, his own reluctantly final choice, though this was accompanied by a dozen fresh-shucked oysters to fill whatever crevices might remain. Dottie had chosen the baked hake, though she had only picked at it so far.

“I came down to the harbor this afternoon while you were resting,” he said, tearing off a wodge of bread to counteract the grated horseradish mixed with the oysters’ brine. “I asked about and found two or three small boats whose owners are not averse to a quick journey to Savannah.”

“How quick?” she asked warily.

“It’s little more than a hundred miles by water,” he said, shrugging in what he hoped was a casual manner. “Perhaps two days, with a good wind and fair weather.”

“Mmm.” Dottie cast a skeptical glance at the ordinary’s shuttered window. The shutters trembled to a blast of rain and wind. “It’s October, Uncle John. The weather is seldom predictable.”

“How do you know? Madam—might I have some vinegar for the squid?” The proprietor’s wife nodded, bustling off, and he repeated, “How do you know?”

“Our landlady’s son is a fisherman. So was her husband. He died in a gale—last October,” she finished sweetly, and popped the last bite of bread into her mouth.

“Such squeamish prudence is unlike you, Dottie,” he remarked, accepting the vinegar bottle from the proprietress and sousing his crisp squidlings. “Oh, God,” he said, chewing. “Ambrosia. Here—have one.” He speared one with his fork and passed it across to her.

“Yes. Well . . .” She regarded the squid-laden fork with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. “How long would it take to travel overland?”

“Perhaps four or five days. Again, with good weather.”

She sighed, lifted the squid to her mouth, hesitated, and then, with the air of a Roman gladiator facing an oncoming crocodile in the arena, put it into her mouth and chewed. She went white.

“Dottie!” He leapt up, knocking his stool over, and managed to catch her as she wilted toward the floor.

“Gah,” she said faintly, and, lunging out of his arms, bolted for the door, retching. He followed and was in time to hold her head as she lost the bread, cider, and the half-chewed squid.

“I’m so sorry,” she said a few moments later, as he emerged from the ordinary with a mug and a damp cloth. She was leaning against the most sheltered wall of the building, wrapped in his cloak, and was the color of spoiled suet pudding. “How disgusting of me.”

“Think nothing of it,” he said amiably. “I’ve done just the same for all three of your brothers, on occasion—though I somehow doubt from the same cause. How long have you known you were with child?”

“I became certain of it about five minutes ago,” she said, swallowing audibly and shuddering. “Dear Lord, I will never eat squid again.”

“Had you ever eaten squid before?”

“No. I never want to see another squid. Bother, my mouth tastes of sick.”

John, who was indeed experienced in such matters, handed her the mug of beer.

“Rinse your mouth with that,” he said. “Then drink the rest. It will settle your stomach.”

She looked dubious at this but did as he said, and emerged from the cup still pale but much improved.

“Better? Good. I don’t suppose you want to go back inside? No, of course not. Let me pay, and I’ll take you home.” Inside, he asked the landlady to make up a parcel of their abandoned supper—he didn’t mind eating cold fried squid, but he did want to eat; he was starving—and held this carefully to windward as they walked back to their lodgings.

“You didn’t know?” he asked curiously. “I’ve often wondered about that. Some women have told me they knew at once, and yet I’ve heard of others who somehow remained oblivious to their condition until the moment of birth was upon them, incredible as that seems.”

Dottie laughed; the cold wind had brought some of the color back to her cheeks, and he was relieved to see her spirits recovered.

“Do lots of women discuss their intimacies with you, Uncle John? That seems somewhat unusual.”

“I seem to attract unusual women,” he said, rather ruefully. “I also seem to have the sort of face that people feel compelled to tell things to. In another age, perhaps I should have been a confessor, if that’s the word. But returning to the point”—he took her elbow to guide her round a large pile of horse droppings—“now that you do know . . . what shall we do about it?”

“I don’t think anything actually needs to be done for about eight months,” she said, and he gave her a look.

“You know what I mean,” he said. “I doubt you wish to establish residence in Charleston until after your child arrives. Do you wish to return to Philadelphia—or New Jersey, or whatever godforsaken place Denzell happens to be at the moment—or shall I make arrangements to proceed to Savannah and remain there for some time? Or—” Another thought struck him, and he altered the look to one of seriousness.

“Do you want to go home, Dottie? To England, I mean. To your mother?”

Her face went blank with surprise, which gave way to a look of longing that broke his heart. She looked away, blinking back tears, but her voice was steady when she turned back to him.

“No,” she said, and swallowed. “I want to be with Denzell. All other considerations aside,” she added, managing a smile, “he knows how to deliver a baby. His cousin William is accoucheur to the Queen, and Denny studied with him for a time.”

“Well, that will be helpful,” Grey agreed, rather dryly. He had himself delivered a child once—completely against his will—and still had nightmares about it.

It was just as well that Dottie didn’t want to return to England, though. He’d suggested the notion on impulse but now realized that it might be more dangerous than any of the other alternatives. Since France had entered the war, all English shipping would be at risk.

“I’m thinking that we ought to go to Savannah, though,” Dottie was saying. “We’re so close, I mean—and if Ben’s wife is there . . . she might need our help, mightn’t she?”

“Yes,” he agreed reluctantly. There was a familial obligation. And, after all, unless he did take up residence in Charleston for the next eight months, there seemed no alternative to Dottie’s traveling, in whichever direction. Still . . . the thought of her giving birth here, him responsible for finding midwives and nurses . . . and then she and the child would need to be transported . . .

“No,” he said, more definitely. “Amaranthus—assuming she does exist—will have to muddle on by herself a little longer. I’m taking you back to New York.”

126 THE OGLETHORPE PLAN

Late November

SAVANNAH, UNLIKE MOST American cities, had been carefully planned by its founder, a man named Oglethorpe. I knew this because Mrs. Landrum, the woman from whom we rented our room, had explained to me that the city was laid out according to “the Oglethorpe plan”—this spoken in portentous tones, for Mrs. Landrum was a relative of the aforesaid Oglethorpe and intensely proud of the city and its civic perfection.

The plan called for six wards—a ward being composed of four civic blocks—for business, and four “tything” blocks for houses, these arrayed around an open square. There were ten houses to a block, and the men of a tything trained together for militia duty.

“Though that’s not so important now as it used to be,” Mrs. Landrum explained to me. “The Indians are still a bother in the backcountry, but it’s years since they troubled to come into the city.”

I rather thought Indians were the least of it, but as Mrs. Landrum didn’t seem concerned about the war with the British, I didn’t bring it up. It was apparent from her references that as not only her family but everyone she knew were Loyalists, plainly this was the proper state of things, and pesky nuisances like this “rebellion, as they’re pleased to call it!” would soon be put down and we could get tea at a decent price again.

From my point of view, the most interesting thing about Mr. Oglethorpe’s plan—in the course of conversation, it was revealed to me that he’d founded not only Savannah but the whole Province of Georgia—was that each house of a tything was provided with a one-mile tract of farmland outside the city and a five-acre kitchen garden closer in.

“Really,” I said, my fingers beginning to itch at the thought of dirt. “Er . . . what do you plant?”

The upshot of this conversation—and many like it—was that I made an arrangement to help with the keeping of the kitchen garden in return for a share of “sass” (as Mrs. Landrum puzzlingly referred to green stuff like kale and turnips), beans, and dried corn, as well as a small plot where I could cultivate medicinal herbs. A secondary consequence of this amiable acquaintance was that Rachel and Ian, whose room was below ours, began referring to their unborn child as Oglethorpe, though this was politely shortened to “Oggy” whenever Mrs. Landrum was in hearing.

And the third and most important effect of Mrs. Landrum’s friendship was that I found myself once more a doctor.

We had been in Savannah for a few weeks when Mrs. Landrum came up to our room one afternoon and inquired as to whether I might know anything regarding cures for the toothache, she knowing that I had a way with herbs?

“Oh, I might,” I replied, with a surreptitious glance at my medical bag, which had been gathering dust under the bed since our arrival. “Whose tooth is it?”

The tooth had belonged to a gentleman named Murphy from Ellis Ward, the one we lived in. I say “had belonged” because I had the badly broken and infected bicuspid out of Mr. Murphy’s head before he could have said Jack Robinson, though he was in such pain that he could barely recall his own name, let alone Jack’s.

Mr. Murphy was extremely grateful for his deliverance. Mr. Murphy was also the owner of a very small vacant shop on the other side of Ellis Square. It was the work of a few moments to acquire a small shingle with TEETH EXTRACTED on it. And within twenty-four hours of hanging out my shingle, I was proudly depositing my earnings on the kitchen table—which was also my herbal-preparations counter and Jamie’s desk, as it occupied the center of our single room.

“Well done, Sassenach!” Jamie picked up a small jar of honey, taken in payment for a nastily impacted wisdom tooth. He loved honey. I’d also acquired two large speckled turkey eggs (one of them filled the entire palm of my hand), a loaf of reasonably fresh sourdough bread, six pennies, and a small silver Spanish coin.

“I think ye could support the family all on your own, a nighean,” he said, dipping a finger in the honey and licking it before I could stop him. “Ian and Fergus and I can all retire and become gentlemen of leisure.”

“Good. You can start by making supper,” I said, stretching my back. Stays did keep you upright through a long day’s work, but I was looking forward to taking them off, eating supper, and lying down, in quick succession.

“Of course, Sassenach.” With a small flourish, he drew the knife from his belt, cut a slice off the loaf, drizzled honey on it, and gave it to me. “There ye are.”

I raised an eyebrow at him but bit into it. Sweetness flooded my mouth and my bloodstream simultaneously, and I tasted sunlight and flowers. I moaned.

“What did ye say, Sassenach?” He was busily buttering another slice.

“I said, ‘Well done,’” I said, and picked up the pot of honey. “We’ll make a cook of you yet.”

THE BASIC ISSUES of housing and food taken care of, plainly the next order of business was to retrieve Bonnie. Jamie had located the Bell family, and three weeks after our arrival in Savannah, he and Fergus had scraped together enough money to hire a cart and an extra mule from the livery stable where Clarence boarded. We met Richard Bell in the morning, and he came with us to the farm of one Zachary Simpson, the farmer with whom Bonnie boarded.

Mr. Simpson cleared away the last of the hay and pulled away the canvas with the air of a magician producing a rabbit from a hat. From the reaction of three-quarters of his spectators, you’d think he had: Jamie and Fergus both gasped audibly, and Richard Bell emitted a hum of satisfaction. I bit my lip and tried not to laugh, but I doubted they’d have noticed if I’d rolled on the floor in paroxysms of mirth.

“Nom de Dieu,” Fergus said, stretching out a reverent hand. “She’s beautiful.”

“Best I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Bell agreed, clearly torn between regard and regret.

“Aye.” Jamie was pink with pleasure, trying visibly to retain a modest constraint. “Aye. She’s bonnie, no?”

I supposed “she” was—if one was a connoisseur of printing presses, which I wasn’t. Still, I confessed some fondness for Bonnie; we’d met before, in Edinburgh. Jamie had been oiling some part of her mechanism when I’d returned to find him after twenty years, and she had been witness to our reunion.

And she had withstood the rigors of disassembly, sea travel, reassembly, and months of being immured in a barn with commendable fortitude. A pale winter sun shone through a crack in the barn’s wall, making her wood glow with somber pride, and her metal was—so far as I could see—quite free from rust.

“Well done,” I said, giving her a small pat. Mr. Simpson was modestly accepting the applause of the crowd for his feat of preserving Bonnie from harm, and I could see that they’d be some time in getting her onto the cart we’d brought, so I made my way back to the farmhouse. I’d noticed a number of chickens scratching in the yard and had some hopes of acquiring fresh eggs.

Marsali’s hoard—and Jenny’s novena to St. Bride, Queen of the Sea, plus a modest assist from my acupuncture needles (Clarence luckily proved a good sailor)—had got us safely to Savannah, but the requirements of housing ten people and renting premises suitable for a small printing business had exhausted both the Caslon English Roman gold and the insurance money paid to Fergus for the fire’s destruction.

With the need for income somewhat acute, Ian and Jamie had found employment at one of the warehouses on the river. A wise choice, as it turned out: in addition to their pay and the odd damaged cask of salt fish or biscuit, being on the docks all day allowed them first—and cheapest—choice from the fishermen coming in with their catch. We therefore hadn’t been starving nor yet threatened with scurvy—the climate was mild enough that plenty of green things grew, even in late November—but I was getting tired of rice and fish and winter kale. A nice dish of scrambled eggs, now . . . possibly with fresh butter . . .

I’d come equipped for trading, with several packets of pins and a bag of salt, and Mrs. Simpson and I amicably concluded a bargain for a basket of eggs and a small tub of butter before the men had got Bonnie out of the barn and were sat on the back stoop, comfortably drinking beer.

“What remarkable chickens those are,” I said, stifling a small belch. The beer, of Mrs. Simpson’s own production, was tasty but strong. The chickens in question were more than remarkable: they appeared to have no legs but to be trundling round the yard on their bottom sides, pecking at their corn with cheerful imperturbability.

“Oh, aye,” said Mrs. Simpson, nodding with pride. “My mother brought those—well, their great-great-grandmothers—with her from Scotland, thirty years a-gone. ‘Creepies,’ she always called them—but they’ve got a true name. Scots Dumpy, it is, or so a gentleman from Glasgow told me.”

“How very appropriate,” I said, taking another sip of beer and peering at the chickens. They did after all have legs; just very short ones.

“I breed them for sale,” Mrs. Simpson added helpfully. “If might should be ye should find yourself in want of a good hen or two.”

“I can’t think of anything I’d like better,” I said wistfully. The rice paddies and palmettos of Savannah seemed infinitely far away from the clean sharp air of Fraser’s Ridge . . . but we were in the South, at least. And come March and good traveling weather, Marsali and Fergus should be safely established, and we could turn our faces toward North Carolina. “Perhaps in a few months . . .” I added Scots Dumpy chickens to the mental list I was accumulating and returned to the beer.

The men had got the printing press onto the cart, suitably swathed in canvas and repacked with straw for the journey into town, and now came into the house to resume their own well-earned refreshment.

We sat companionably round Mrs. Simpson’s scrubbed kitchen table, drinking beer and eating salted radishes. Jamie and Fergus were glowing with excitement and satisfaction; the looks on their faces warmed me more than the beer. Poor Richard Bell was trying his best to be generous and share their delight, but it was plain that he was low in both body and spirit.

I had met him only a few days before, and that briefly, so had not yet cultivated an acquaintance sufficient as to allow me to make him undress and let me palpate his liver, but I was morally certain that the “relapsing ague” Mrs. Bell had written of was malaria. I couldn’t say so with complete certainty without looking at his blood cells under a microscope—and God knew when I might ever have one again—but I’d seen enough people suffering from “the quartan ague” or “the tertian fever” as to have little doubt.

Luckily, I had a small supply of Jesuit bark among the selection of herbs and medicines I’d brought with me. It wouldn’t cure him, but I could, with luck, limit the more-severe attacks and relieve some of the symptoms. Thinking of this reminded me suddenly of Lizzie Wemyss. Coming to America as Brianna’s bond servant, she also had contracted malaria from the coastal mosquitoes. I’d managed to control the disease in her fairly well, but how had she fared in my absence?

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” My attention was jerked back to the conversation, but I added LOTS of Jesuit bark to my mental list before replying.

127 PLUMBING

LIKE PLUMBING, MEDICINE is a profession where you learn early on not to put your fingers in your mouth. I smelled my next patient coming and was reaching for the jar of soft soap and the bottle of raw alcohol before she came through the door. And the instant I saw her, I knew what the problem was.

There were two women, in fact: one was a tall, rather commanding-looking woman, well dressed and wearing a hat rather than the usual bonnet. The other was a small, slight girl who might have been any age between twelve and twenty. She was what they called a mulatto, half black and half white, with café au lait skin and snub features. I set her lower age limit at twelve only because she had apparent breasts bubbling over the top of her stays. She was dressed neatly but plainly in blue gingham, and she stank like an open sewer.

The tall woman paused, looking me over consideringly.

“You are a female physician?” she asked, in a tone just short of accusation.

“I am Dr. Fraser, yes,” I replied equably. “And you are . . . ?”

She flushed at that and looked disconcerted. Also very dubious. But after an awkward pause, she made up her mind and gave a sharp nod. “I am Sarah Bradshaw. Mrs. Phillip Bradshaw.”

“I’m pleased to meet you. And your . . . companion?” I nodded at the young woman, who stood with her shoulders hunched and her head bent, staring at the ground. I could hear a soft dripping noise, and she shifted as though trying to press her legs together, wincing as she did so.

“This is Sophronia. One of my husband’s slaves.” Mrs. Bradshaw’s lips compressed and drew in tight; from the lines surrounding her mouth, she did it routinely. “She—that is—I thought perhaps—” Her rather plain face flamed crimson; she couldn’t bring herself to describe the trouble.

“I know what it is,” I said, saving her the difficulty. I came round the table and took Sophronia by the hand; hers was small and very callused, but her fingernails were clean. A house slave, then. “What happened to the baby?” I asked her gently.

A small, frightened intake of breath, and she glanced sideways at Mrs. Bradshaw, who gave her another sharp nod, lips still pursed.

“It died in me,” the girl said, so softly I could scarcely hear her, even though she was no more than an arm’s length from me. “Dey cut it out in pieces.” That had likely saved the girl’s life, but it surely hadn’t helped her condition.

Despite the smell, I took a deep breath, trying to keep my emotions under control.

“I’ll need to examine Sophronia, Mrs. Bradshaw. If you have any errands, perhaps you’d like to go and take care of them . . . ?”

She unzipped her lips sufficiently as to make a small, frustrated noise. Quite obviously, she would like nothing better than to leave the girl and never come back. But just as obviously, she was afraid of what the slave might tell me if left alone with me.

“Was the child your husband’s?” I asked baldly. I didn’t have time to beat around the bush; the poor girl was dripping urine and fecal matter on the floor and appeared ready to die of shame.

I doubted that Mrs. Bradshaw meant to die of that condition, but she plainly felt it almost as acutely as did Sophronia. She went white with shock, then her face flamed anew. She turned on her heel and stamped out, slamming the door behind her.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’ then,” I said to the door, and turned to the girl, smiling in reassurance. “Here, sweetheart. Let’s have a look at the trouble, shall we?”

Vesicovaginal fistula and rectovaginal fistula. I’d known that from the first moment; I just didn’t know how bad they might be or how far up the vaginal canal they’d occurred. A fistula is a passage between two things that ought never to be joined and is, generally speaking, a bad thing.

It wasn’t a common condition in civilized countries in the twentieth century but more common than one might think. I’d seen it several times in Boston, at a clinic where I gave time once a week to provide medical care to the city’s poor. Young girls, much too young to be considering the opposite sex in any serious way, becoming pregnant before their bodies had ripened enough. Prostitutes, some of them. Others just girls who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like this one.

A full-term baby that couldn’t be forced out through the birth canal, and days of nonproductive labor, the child’s head a battering ram against the tissues of the pelvis, the bladder, the vagina, and the bowel. Until at last the tissues thinned and split, leaving a ragged hole between bladder and vagina, or between vagina and rectum, allowing the body’s waste to drip out unhindered through the vagina.

Not a matter of life or death, but revolting, uncontrollable, and bloody uncomfortable, too. Sophronia’s inner thighs were swollen, a bright, patchy red, the skin macerated by the constant wetness, the irritating fecal slime. Like a permanent diaper rash, I thought, suppressing a deeply visceral urge to find Mr. Bradshaw and make a few fistulas in him with a blunt probe.

I talked to her while I made my examinations, soothingly, and after a little she began to answer me, though still in whispers. She was thirteen. Yes, Mr. Bradshaw had took her to his bed. She hadn’t minded. He said his wife was mean to him, and she was—all the slaves knew it. Mr. Bradshaw had been nice to her, gentle-like, and when she fell pregnant, he’d taken her from the laundry and put her to kitchen work, where she’d have good food and wouldn’t have to break her back with the heavy linens.

“He was sad,” she said softly, looking up at the ceiling while I wiped away the filthy trickle between her legs. “When the baby died. He cried.”

“Did he,” I said, in what I hoped was a neutral voice. I folded a clean towel and pressed it between her legs, throwing the wet one she’d been wearing into my bucket of vinegar and water. “When did the baby die—how long ago, I mean?”

She frowned, the expression barely rippling the pure young skin of her forehead. Could she count? I wondered.

“Be some time before the sausage-makin’,” she said uncertainly.

“In the fall, then?”

“Yessum.”

And it was mid-December now. I poured water over my dirty hand and dribbled a bit of soap into my palm. I really must try to get a nailbrush, I thought.

Mrs. Bradshaw had come back but hadn’t come in; I’d pulled the curtains over the front window, but her shadowed outline was plain on the cloth, the jaunty feathers in her hat stuck up like a silhouette cowlick.

I tapped my foot thoughtfully, then shook myself into order and went to open the door.

“I might be able to help,” I said without preamble, startling the woman.

“How?” She blinked at me, and, taken unawares, her face was open, troubled but without the pinched look she’d worn earlier.

“Come inside,” I said. “It’s cold out here in the wind,” and guided her in, a hand on her back. She was very thin; I could feel the knobs of her spine, even through her coat and stays.

Sophronia was sitting on the table, hands folded in her lap; when her mistress came in, she bent her head, looking at the floor again.

I explained the nature of the difficulty, so well as I could—neither of them had any grasp of internal anatomy at all; it was simply a matter of holes to them. Still, I managed to get the general point across.

“You know that a wound can be stitched, to hold the skin together while it heals?” I said patiently. “Well, this is much the same kind of thing, but made much harder by the wounds being inside and the tissues being very thin and slippery. It would be very difficult to mend—I’m not sure I can do it—but it is at least possible to try.”

It was—just. In the late nineteenth century, a physician named J. Marion Sims had more or less invented the entire practice of gynecological surgery, in order to address exactly this condition. It had taken him years to develop the techniques, and I knew them—had done the procedure more than once. The catch was that you really needed good, solid anesthesia in order to have a chance of success. Laudanum or whisky might answer for cruder, swifter operations, but for painstakingly delicate surgery like this, the patient had to be completely unconscious and immobile. I would have to have ether.

I had no idea how I was going to make ether, living in a small rented house with a number of people whom I really didn’t want to risk blowing to bits. And the thought of what flammable ether could do—had done—made me break out in a cold sweat. But seeing the faint hope rise in both their faces, I made up my mind to do it.

I gave Sophronia a small jar of beeswax ointment for the skin of her thighs and told them to come back in a week; I would know then whether it was possible. I saw them out, and as they went away down the street, Mrs. Bradshaw reached out unconsciously and touched Sophronia’s shoulder in a brief caress of reassurance.

I took a deep breath and resolved that I would find a way. Turning to go inside, I glanced the other way down the street and saw a tall young man whose lean ranginess struck me with a sense of instant recognition. I blinked once, and imagination promptly clothed him in scarlet.

“William!” I called, and, picking up my skirts, ran after him.

HE DIDN’T HEAR me at first, and I had time for doubt—but not much; the set of head and shoulders, that long, decisive stride . . . He was thinner than Jamie, and his hair was a dark chestnut, not red, but he had his father’s bones. And his eyes: hearing me at last, he turned, and those dark-blue cat eyes widened in surprise.

“Mother Cl—” He cut the word off, his face hardening, but I reached out and took his big hand between my own (rather hoping that I had got all of the slime off).

“William,” I said, panting just a bit, but smiling up at him. “You can call me what you like, but I’m no less—and no more—to you than I ever was.”

His severe look softened a little at that, and he ducked his head awkwardly.

“I think I must call you Mrs. Fraser, mustn’t I?” He detached his hand, though gently. “How do you come to be here?”

“I might ask the same of you—and perhaps with more reason. Where’s your uniform?”

“I’ve resigned my commission,” he said, a little stiffly. “Under the circumstances, there seemed little point to my remaining in the army. And I have business that requires somewhat more independence of movement than I should have as one of Sir Henry’s aides.”

“Will you come and have something hot to drink with me? You can tell me about your business.” I’d rushed out without my cloak, and a chilly breeze was fingering me with more intimacy than I liked.

“I—” He caught himself, frowning, then looked at me thoughtfully and rubbed a finger down the long, straight bridge of his nose, just as Jamie did when making up his mind. And just as Jamie did, he dropped his hand and nodded briefly as though to himself.

“All right,” he said, rather gruffly. “In fact, my business may be of some . . . importance to you.”

Another five minutes saw us in an ordinary off Ellis Square, drinking hot cider, rich with cinnamon and nutmeg. Savannah wasn’t—thank God—Philadelphia, in terms of nasty winter weather, but the day was cold and windy, and the pewter cup was delightfully warm in my hands.

“What does bring you here, then, Willie? Or should I call you William now?”

“William, please,” he said dryly. “It’s the only name I feel is rightfully mine, for the moment. I should like to preserve what small dignity I have.”

“Mmm,” I said noncommittally. “William it is, then.”

“As for my business . . .” He sighed briefly and rubbed a knuckle between his brows. He then explained about his cousin Ben, Ben’s wife and child, then Denys Randall, and finally—Captain Ezekiel Richardson. That name made me sit up straight.

He noticed my reaction and nodded, grimacing.

“That’s what I meant when I said my business might have some relevance to you. Pa—Lord John said that it was Richardson’s threatening to arrest you as a spy that caused him to, er, marry you.” He flushed a little.

“It was,” I said, trying not to recall the occasion. In fact, I recalled only snatches of those empty, glaring days when I’d believed Jamie to be dead. One of those snatches, though, was a vivid recollection of standing in the parlor of Number 17, holding a bouquet of white roses, with John beside me and a military chaplain with a book before us—and, standing on John’s other side, grave and handsome, William in his captain’s uniform and shining gorget, looking so like Jamie that I felt for a dizzying instant that Jamie’s ghost had come to watch. Unable to decide whether to faint or to run out of the room shrieking, I’d simply stood frozen, until John had nudged me gently, whispering in my ear, and I’d blurted out, “I do,” and collapsed on the ottoman, flowers spilling from my hands.

Caught up in the memory, I’d missed what William was saying and shook my head, trying to focus.

“I’ve been searching for him for the last three months,” he said, putting down his cup and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “He’s an elusive scoundrel. And I don’t know that he’s in Savannah at all, for that matter. But the last hint I had of him was in Charleston, and he left there three weeks ago, heading south.

“Now, for all I know, the fellow’s bound for Florida or has already taken ship for England. On the other hand . . . Amaranthus is here, or at least I believe so. Richardson seems to take an inordinate interest in the Grey family and its connections, so perhaps . . . Do you know Denys Randall yourself, by the way?”

He was looking at me intently over his cup, and I realized, with a faint sense of amusement mingled with outrage, that he had thrown the name at me suddenly in hopes of surprising any guilty knowledge I might have.

Why, you little scallywag, I thought, amusement getting the upper hand. You need a bit more practice before you can pull off that sort of thing, my lad.

I did in fact know something about Denys Randall that William almost certainly didn’t know—and that Denys Randall himself might not know—but it wasn’t information that would shed any light on the whereabouts and motives of Ezekiel Richardson.

“I’ve never met him,” I said, quite truthfully, and held up my cup toward the serving maid for more cider. “I used to know his mother, Mary Hawkins; we met in Paris. A lovely, sweet girl, but I’ve had no contact with her for the last . . . thirty . . . no, thirty-four years. I assume from what you tell me that she married a Mr. Isaacs—you said he was a Jewish merchant?”

“Yes. So Randall said—and I can’t see why he’d lie about it.”

“Nor can I. But what you do know—you think,” I corrected, “is that while Denys Randall and Ezekiel Richardson have heretofore appeared to be working together, now they aren’t?”

William shrugged, impatient.

“So far as I know. I haven’t seen Randall since he warned me about Richardson, but I haven’t seen Richardson, either.”

I could sense his rising desire to be up and off; he was drumming his fingers softly on the tabletop, and the table itself shuddered slightly when his leg bumped it.

“Where are you staying, William?” I asked impulsively, before he could go. “In—in case I do see Richardson. Or hear anything of Amaranthus, for that matter. I am a doctor; a lot of people come to see me, and everyone talks to a doctor.”

He hesitated, but then gave another shrug, this one infinitesimal. “I’ve taken a room at Hendry’s, on River Street.”

He stood, tossed some money on the table, and extended a hand to help me up.

“We’re staying at Landrum’s, one square over from the City Market,” I said on impulse, rising. “If you should—want to call. Or need help. Just in case, I mean.”

His face had gone carefully blank, though his eyes were burning like match flames. I felt a chill, knowing from experience the sort of thing that was likely going on behind such a façade.

“I doubt it, Mrs. Fraser,” he said politely. And, kissing my hand in brief farewell, he left.

128 GIGGING FROGS

December 22, 1778

JAMIE TOOK A FIRM grip of the back of Germain’s shirt and beckoned with his free hand to Ian, who held the torch.

“Look out over the water first, aye?” Jamie whispered, lifting his chin at the black glitter of the submerged marsh. It was broken by clumps of waist-high cordgrass and smaller ones of needlerush, bright green in the torchlight. This was a deep spot, though, with two or three of what the natives of Savannah called “hammocks,” though plainly they meant “hummock”—wee islands, with trees like wax myrtle and yaupon holly bushes, though these, too, were of a spiky nature, like everything else in a marsh save the frogs and fish.

Some of the spikier inhabitants of the marsh, though, were mobile and nothing you wanted to meet unexpectedly. Germain peered obediently into the darkness, his gigging spear held tight and high, poised for movement. Jamie could feel him tremble, partly from the chill but mostly, he thought, from excitement.

A sudden movement broke the surface of the water, and Germain lunged forward, plunging his gig into the water with a high-pitched yell.

Fergus and Jamie let out much deeper cries, each grabbing Germain by an arm and hauling him backward over the mud, as the irate cottonmouth he’d nearly speared turned on him, lashing, yawning mouth flaring white.

But the snake luckily had business elsewhere and swam off with a peeved sinuosity. Ian, safely out of range, was laughing.

“Think it’s funny, do ye?” said Germain, scowling in order to pretend he wasn’t shaking.

“Aye, I do,” his uncle assured him. “Be even funnier if ye were eaten by an alligator, though. See there?” He lifted the torch and pointed; ten feet away, there was a ripple in the water, between them and the nearest hammock. Germain frowned uncertainly at it, then turned his head to his grandfather.

“That’s an alligator? How d’ye ken that?”

“It is,” Jamie said. His own heart was pounding from the sight of the cottonmouth. Snakes unnerved him, but he wasn’t scairt of alligators. Cautious, yes. Scairt, no. “See how the ripples come back from the island there?”

“Aye.” Germain squinted across the water. “So?”

“Those ripples are coming toward us side on. The one Ian’s pointing at? It’s coming at a right angle—right toward us.”

It was, though slowly.

“Are alligators good to eat?” Fergus asked, watching it thoughtfully. “A good deal more meat on one than on a frog, n’est-ce pas?”

“They are, and there is, aye.” Ian shifted his weight a little, gauging the distance. “We canna kill one of those wi’ spears, though. I should have brought my bow.”

“Should we . . . move?” Germain asked doubtfully.

“Nay, see how big it is first,” Ian said, fingering the long knife at his belt. He was wearing a breechclout, and his bare legs were long and steady as a heron’s, standing mid-calf in the muddy water.

The four of them watched with great concentration as the ripple came on, paused, came on a little more, slowly.

“Are they stunned by light, Ian?” Jamie asked, low-voiced. Frogs were; they had maybe two dozen bullfrogs in their sack, surprised in the water and killed before they kent what hit them.

“I dinna think so,” Ian whispered back. “I’ve not hunted one before, though.”

There was a sudden gleam in the water, a scatter of ripples, and the glow of two small burning orbs, a demon’s eyes.

“A Dhia!” Jamie said, making a convulsive sign against evil. Fergus pulled Germain back farther, making a clumsy sign of the cross with his hook. Even Ian seemed taken back a bit; his hand fell from his knife and he stepped back toward the mud, not taking his eyes off the thing.

“It’s a wee one, I think,” he said, reaching safety. “See, its eyes are nay bigger than my thumbnail.”

“Does that matter, if it’s possessed?” Fergus asked, suspicious. “Even if we were to kill it, we might be poisoned.”

“Oh, I dinna think so,” Jamie said. He could see it now as it hung motionless in the water, stubby clawed feet halfway drawn up. It was perhaps two feet long—the toothy jaw maybe six inches. It could give you a nasty bite, nay more. But it wasn’t close enough to reach.

“Ken what a wolf’s eyes look like in the dark? Or a possum’s?” He’d taken Fergus hunting, of course, when he was young, but seldom at night—and such things as you’d hunt at night in the Highlands were usually running from you, not looking at you.

Ian nodded, not taking his eyes off the small reptile.

“Aye, that’s true. Wolves’ eyes are usually green or yellow, but I’ve seen them red like that sometimes, by torchlight.”

“I would suppose that a wolf could be possessed by an evil spirit as easily as an alligator could,” Fergus said, a little testily. It was clear, though, that he wasn’t afraid of the thing, either, now that he’d got a good look; they were all beginning to relax.

“He thinks we’re stealing his frogs,” Germain said, giggling. He was still holding the spear, and even as he spoke, he spotted something and slammed the three-tined sapling into the water with a whoop.

“I got it, I got it!” he shouted, and splashed into the water, heedless of the alligator. He bent to see that his prey was firmly transfixed, let out another small whoop, and pulled up his spear, displaying a catfish of no mean size, belly showing white in its frantic flapping, blood running in trickles from the holes made by the tines.

“More meat on that than on yon wee lizard there, aye?” Ian took the spear, pulled the fish off, and bashed its head with the hilt of his knife to kill it.

Everyone looked, but the alligator had departed, alarmed by the kerfuffle.

“Aye, that’s us fettled, I think.” Jamie picked up both bags—one half full of bullfrogs, and the other still squirming slightly from the inclusion of a number of shrimp and crayfish netted from the shallows. He held open the one with the frogs for Ian to toss the fish inside, saying a verse from the Hunting Blessing, for Germain: “Thou shalt not eat fallen fish nor fallen flesh/ Nor one bird that thy hand shall not bring down/Be thou thankful for the one/ Though nine should be swimming.”

Germain was not paying attention, though; he was standing quite still, fair hair lifting in the breeze, his head turned.

“Look, Grand-père,” he said, voice urgent. “Look!”

They all looked and saw the ships, far out beyond the marsh but coming in, heading for the small headland to the south. Seven, eight, nine . . . a dozen at least, with red lanterns at their masts, blue ones at the stern. Jamie felt the hair rise on his body and his blood go cold.

“British men-of-war,” Fergus said, his voice empty with shock.

“They are,” Jamie said. “We’d best get home.”

IT WAS ALMOST dawn before I felt Jamie slide into bed behind me, bringing chilled skin and the smell of brine, cold mud, and marsh plants with him. Also . . .

“What’s that smell?” I asked drowsily, kissing the arm he’d put round me.

“Frogs, I expect. God, ye’re warm, Sassenach.” He cuddled closer, pressing his body into mine, and I felt him pull loose the bow of the ribbon that gathered the neck of my shift.

“Good hunting, then?” I obligingly wiggled my bottom into the hollow of his thighs and he sighed in appreciation, his breath warm on my ear, and slipped a cold hand inside my shift. “Ooh.”

“Aye. Germain caught a fine big catfish, and we brought back a sack of crawfish and shrimps—the wee gray ones.”

“Mmm. We’ll have a good supper, then.” His temperature was quickly equalizing with mine, and I was drifting pleasantly back down toward sleep—though quite willing to be roused for the right reasons.

“We saw a wee alligator. And a snake—a water moccasin.”

“You didn’t catch those, I hope.” I knew that snakes and alligators were technically edible, but I didn’t think we were quite hungry enough to make the challenges of cooking one worthwhile.

“No. Oh—and a dozen British ships full of soldiers turned up, too.”

“That’s ni—What?” I flipped over in his arms, ending face-to-face.

“British soldiers,” he repeated gently. “Dinna fash, Sassenach. I expect it will be all right. Fergus and I already hid the press, and we havena got any silver to bury. That’s one thing to be said for poverty,” he added reflectively, stroking my bottom. “Ye dinna need to fear bein’ plundered.”

“That—what the bloody hell are they doing here?” I rolled over and sat straight up in bed, pulling my shift up round my shoulders.

“Well, ye did say Pardloe told ye they meant to cut off the southern colonies, aye? I imagine they decided to start here.”

“Why here? Why not . . . Charleston? Or Norfolk?”

“Well, I couldna say, not being privy to the British councils of war,” he said mildly. “But if I was to guess, I’d say it’s maybe that there are a good many troops already in Florida, and they’ll be marching up to join this new lot. The Loyalists are thick as fleas on a dog all along the coast of the Carolinas; if the army’s secured Florida and Georgia, they’d be well placed to advance northward, picking up local support.”

“You have it all figured out, I see.” I pressed my back against the wall—there was no headboard—and finished retying the ribbon of my shift. I didn’t feel equal to meeting an invasion with my bosom uncovered.

“No,” he admitted. “But there are only two things to do, Sassenach: stay or flee. It’s the dead of winter in the mountains; we canna get through the passes ’til March, and I’d rather not be stravaiging about the countryside with three bairns, two pregnant women, and nay money. And I doubt they’ll burn the city, not if they mean it to be a base for invading the rest of the South.” He reached up and ran a soothing hand down my shoulder and arm. “It’s not as though ye’ve not lived in an occupied city before.”

“Hmm,” I said dubiously, but he did have a point. There were some advantages to the situation, the chief one being that if an army already held a city, they wouldn’t be attacking it: no fighting in the streets. But, then . . . they didn’t hold it yet.

“Dinna fash yourself, lass,” he said softly, and twined a finger in my ribbon. “Did I not tell ye when we wed, ye’d have the protection of my body?”

“You did,” I admitted, and laid a hand over his. It was big, strong, and capable.

“Then come lie wi’ me, mo nighean donn, and let me prove it,” he said, and pulled the ribbon loose.

FROG LEGS OF that size really did look quite like chicken drumsticks. And tasted very like, too, dredged in flour and egg with a little salt and pepper and fried.

“Why is it that the meat of strange animals is so often described as tasting like chicken?” Rachel asked, neatly snaring another leg out from under her husband’s reaching hand. “I’ve heard people say that of everything from catamount to alligator.”

“Because it does,” Ian answered, raising a brow at her and stabbing his fork into a platter of catfish chunks, similarly coated and fried.

“Well, if you want to be technical about it,” I began, to a chorus of mingled groans and laughter. Before I could launch into an explanation of the biochemistry of muscle fiber, though, there was a rap on the door. We had been making so much noise over supper that I hadn’t heard footsteps on the stair and was taken by surprise.

Germain popped up to open the door and gazed up in surprise at two Continental officers, in full uniform.

There was a general scraping of chairs as the men stood up, and Jamie stepped out from behind the table. He’d been working in the warehouse all day, after hunting in the marshes half the night, and was not only barefoot but wearing a badly stained, grimy shirt and a faded plaid so worn that it was thin in spots. Still, no one would have doubted that he was the master of the house. When he inclined his head and said, “Gentlemen? Be welcome,” both officers took off their hats, bowed, and came in, murmuring, “Your servant, sir.”

“General Fraser,” the senior officer said, the title not quite a question, as he eyed Jamie’s attire. “I am Major General Robert Howe.”

I’d never seen Major General Howe before, but I knew his companion, and my hand tightened on the bread knife. He was wearing a colonel’s uniform now, and his face was as blandly forgettable as ever, but I wasn’t likely to forget Captain Ezekiel Richardson—lately a captain in His Majesty’s army, last seen in Clinton’s headquarters in Philadelphia.

“Your humble servant, sir,” Jamie said, in a tone quite belying the usual compliment. “I am James Fraser but no longer an officer in any army. I have resigned my commission.”

“So I understand, sir.” Howe’s rather bulging eyes scanned the table, flicking past Jenny, Rachel, Marsali, and the little girls before settling on me. He gave a small nod of inward conviction and bowed to me. “Mrs. Fraser? I trust I see you well, ma’am.” Obviously, he’d heard the story behind Jamie’s dramatic resignation.

“You do, thank you,” I said. “Do watch out for the crayfish there, Colonel.” For Richardson was standing just in front of the tin tub in which I’d set the crayfish, covered with water and supplied with a few handfuls of cornmeal, with which they’d purge their nasty little entrails over the next twenty-four hours and become safe to eat.

“Your pardon, ma’am,” he said politely, moving aside. Unlike Howe, he was chiefly concerned with the men; I saw his eyes touch for an instant on Fergus’s hook, dismiss him, then rest on Ian, with an air of satisfaction. What Jamie called a cold grue went down my back. I knew already what they wanted; this was a high-level press gang.

Jamie recognized their purpose, too.

“My wife is well, thanks be to God, General. I expect she would like her husband to remain in that condition, too.”

Well, that was fairly blunt. Howe evidently decided there was no point in further civilities and waded in directly.

“Are you aware, sir, that a number of British troops have disembarked just outside the city and doubtless mean to invade and capture it?”

“I am,” Jamie said patiently. “I watched their ships come in last night. As for capturing the city, I think they’re verra well placed to do just that. And if I were you, General—and I thank the Lord that I’m not—I should be gatherin’ my men this minute and marching out of the city wi’ them. Ken the proverb about livin’ to fight another day, do ye? I recommend it as a strategy.”

“Do I understand you aright, sir?” Richardson put in, his tone edgy. “You decline to join in the defense of your own city?”

“Aye, we do,” Ian put in before Jamie could answer. He eyed the visitors in an unfriendly way, and I saw his right hand drop to his side, reaching for Rollo’s head, then his fingers curl up tight, missing it. “It’s no our city and we’re no disposed to die for it.”

I was sitting next to Rachel and felt her shoulders lose a little of their tension. Across the table, Marsali’s eyes slid sideways, meeting Fergus’s, and I saw a moment of silent marital communication and accord. “If they don’t know who we are, don’t tell them.”

Howe, a rather thickset man, opened and closed his mouth several times before finding words.

“I am appalled, sir,” he managed finally, his face quite red. “Appalled,” he repeated, his second chin quivering with outrage—and, I thought, no little desperation. “That a man known for his bravery in battle, his constancy to the cause of freedom, would cravenly submit to the rule of the bloody tyrant!”

“A choice little short of treason,” Richardson put in, nodding severely. I raised my eyebrows at this and stared at him, but he sedulously avoided my eye.

Jamie stood looking at them for a moment, rubbing a forefinger down the bridge of his nose.

“Mr. Howe,” he said at last, dropping his hand. “How many men have ye in your command?”

“Why . . . nearly a thousand!”

“How nearly?”

“Six hundred,” Richardson said, at the same moment that Howe exclaimed, “Nine hundred, sir!”

“Aye,” said Jamie, clearly unimpressed. “Those transports carry three thousand men, easily—well armed, with artillery—and they’ve an entire Highland regiment wi’ them, too; I heard their pipes as they came ashore.”

Howe’s color faded noticeably. Still, he had grit; he kept his dignity.

“Whatever the odds, sir,” he said, “it is my duty to fight and to protect the city entrusted to my care.”

“I respect your devotion to your duty, General,” Jamie said, quite seriously. “And may God be with ye. But I won’t.”

“We could physically compel you,” Richardson pointed out.

“Ye could,” Jamie agreed, unruffled. “But to what end? Ye canna make me command men if I refuse to do it, and what good is an unwilling soldier?”

“This is craven cowardice, sir!” Howe said, but it was clear that this was bluster, and poorly acted bluster, at that.

“Dia eadarainn ’s an t-olc,” Jamie said quietly, and nodded toward the door. “God between us an evil,” he said. “Go with God, gentlemen, but leave my house.”

“THEE DID WELL, Jamie,” Rachel said quietly, after the sound of the soldiers’ footsteps had faded from the stairwell. “No Friend could have spoken more wisely.”

He glanced at her, mouth quirking.

“Thank ye, lass,” he said. “But I think ye ken I wasna speaking from the same reasons a Friend might have.”

“Oh, I do,” she said, smiling. “But the effect is the same, and Friends are grateful for whatever they can get. Will thee have the last frog leg?”

A small ripple of laughter ran through the adults, and the children, who had been sitting rigid and white-faced during the soldiers’ visit, relaxed as though they were balloons that someone had let the air out of and began zooming around the room in relief. Fearing for the tub of crayfish, Jenny and Marsali marshaled them into some sort of order and marched them off home to bed, Marsali pausing to kiss Fergus and adjuring him to be careful walking home alone.

“The British are not in the city yet, mon chou,” he said, kissing her back.

“Aye, well—it never hurts to keep in practice,” she said tartly. “Come along, ye wee rattans.”

The rest of us sat for a time discussing the immediate future and what little might be done. Jamie was right about the advantages of poverty in such a situation—but at the same time . . .

“They’ll take whatever food they find,” I said. “At least at first.” I gave the shelf behind me a quick glance; it was our pantry and held the sum total of the household’s stores: a small crock of lard, cloth bags of oatmeal, flour, rice, beans, and parched corn, a braid of onions and a few dried apples, half a wheel of cheese, a little box of salt and a pepper pot, and the remains of a loaf of sugar. Plus our small stock of candles.

“Aye.” Jamie nodded, got up, and fetched his purse, which he turned out on the table. “Fourteen shillings, about. Ian? Fergus?” Ian and Rachel’s resources amounted to another nine shillings, Fergus’s one guinea, two shillings, and a handful of pennies.

“See what ye can get at the tavern tomorrow, lass,” he said, pushing a small pile of coins toward Rachel. “I think I can put aside a cask of salt fish from the warehouse. And you, Sassenach—if ye’re quick at the market in the morning, ye might manage to get more rice and beans, maybe a flitch of bacon?” Bits of copper and silver winked on the table before me, the King’s stolid countenance chiseled in profile.

“There’s no good hiding place in our room,” Ian observed, looking around. “Nor here. Auntie’s wee surgery, d’ye think?”

“Aye, that’s what I was thinking. It’s a board floor, and the building’s got a good foundation. I’ll maybe make a wee hidey-hole tomorrow. I shouldna think there’s much in your surgery that soldiers would want?” This last was said questioningly to me.

“Only the medicines that are made with alcohol,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Speaking of soldiers—I have to tell you something. It may not be important—but then again . . .” And I told them about Ezekiel Richardson.

“Ye’re quite sure of it, Sassenach?” Jamie frowned a little, red brows sparking in the candlelight. “Yon man’s got a face that might belong to anyone.”

“He’s not what you’d call memorable, at all,” I admitted. “But, yes, I am sure. He has that mole on the side of his chin; I remember that. It’s more the way he was looking at me, though. He recognized me, I’m positive.”

Jamie drew breath and blew it out slowly, considering. Then he put his hands flat on the table and looked at Ian.

“Your auntie met my son, William, in the city the other day—by accident,” he said, his voice carefully neutral. “Tell them what he said of Richardson, Sassenach, will ye?”

I did, keeping an eye on the pulse in Ian’s throat. So was Rachel; she put a hand quietly on his, which he was clenching in a fist on the table. He glanced at her, smiled briefly, and reluctantly unclenched it, lacing his fingers with hers.

“And what’s William doing here, then?” Ian asked, obviously working to keep any hint of hostility out of his voice.

“He was looking for Richardson, in fact, but he’s also searching for his cousin’s wife, a woman named Amaranthus Grey—or perhaps Cowden,” I added. “She might be going by her maiden name. I’d meant to ask if either of you had heard any mention of her.”

Both Ian and Rachel shook their heads.

“Thee would remember a name like that,” Rachel said. “But thee thinks William doesn’t know that Richardson is here?”

“I’m sure he doesn’t,” I said. “Nor that Richardson has gone over to the Rebels. Apparently.”

There was silence for a moment. I could hear the faint clicking of the crayfish in the tub behind me and the slight pop as a fault in the candlewick made the flame bob and dance.

“This man Richardson may simply have changed his allegiance,” Rachel suggested. “I know of many who have, over the last two years.”

“He might,” I said slowly, “but the thing is—John thought he was an intelligencer—a spy or secret agent of some sort. And when someone of that stripe turns his coat . . . you have to ask whether he’s turned it once or twice. Or not at all. Don’t you?”

Jamie laid a hand on the table, thinking.

“Aye, well,” he said at last, and, sitting up straight, stretched himself with a sigh. “If there’s aught fishy about the man, we’ll ken it soon enough.”

“We will?” I asked. He gave me a wry smile.

“Aye, Sassenach. He’ll come looking for you. Keep your wee knife close to hand, aye?”

129 INVASION

December 29

WE HEARD THE GUNS soon after dawn. Jamie paused in the act of shaving to listen. It was a distant thunder, irregular, muffled by distance. But I had heard artillery close at hand and felt the sound as an echo in my bones, urging instant flight. Jamie had heard artillery at a much closer range than I and set down his razor, planting his hands flat on the washstand. To keep them from trembling, I thought.

“They’re firing cannon from the ships in the river,” he said quietly. “And regular artillery from the south. God help Howe and his men.” He crossed himself and picked up the razor.

“How far away do you think they are?” I had paused in the act of putting on my stockings and now drew one up, slowly fastening my garter. Jamie shook his head.

“No telling from in here. I’ll go out in a bit, though, and then I’ll see how the wind lies.”

“You’re going out?” I asked, uneasy at the prospect. “Surely you’re not going to work today.” Fadler’s warehouse, where he worked as a supervisor and senior clerk, was on the river.

“I am not,” he said briefly. “But I thought I’d go and fetch the bairns and Marsali and my sister. Fergus will be gone to see what’s happening, and I dinna want them left alone without a man.” His mouth thinned. “Especially not if the soldiers come into the city.”

I nodded, at once unable to speak. The thought of the things that happened—could happen—during an invasion . . . I had, thank God, never lived through such an event but had seen too many newsreels and photographs to be under any illusions as to the possibilities. And there had already been reports of a British company come up from Florida under an officer named Major Prevost, raiding the countryside around Sunbury, running off cattle, and burning barns and farmhouses. Sunbury was not nearly far enough away for comfort.

When Jamie left, I rattled around for a few minutes, undecided what to do first, but then pulled myself together and decided to make a quick visit to my surgery. It would be a good idea to take away my more-valuable instruments—not that any of them had great value; there was no black market in amputation saws (at least not yet . . .)—and such drugs and supplies as might be needed if—

I cut that “if” off sharply and looked around our modest room. I had been keeping only a few staples, like flour and butter, and the more perishable items of food here; anything that could be stored for a while was now hidden under the floor of my surgery. If we were about to have Marsali, Jenny, and the children to stay for an indefinite time, though, I’d best bring back a few more things.

I took my biggest basket and knocked at Rachel’s door downstairs. She answered at once, already dressed to go out.

“Ian has gone with Fergus,” she said, before I could ask. “He says he will not fight with the militia but that Fergus is his brother and it is his duty to see him safe. I can’t complain about that.”

“I could,” I said frankly. “I’d complain like billy-o if I thought it would do any good. Waste of breath, though. Will you come with me down to the surgery? Jamie’s gone to get Jenny and Marsali and the children, so I thought I’d best bring back something for them to eat.”

“Let me get my basket.”

The streets were full of people—most of them in some process of leaving the city, fetching goods, or drawing carts through the streets, though some were clearly bent on looting. I saw two men break a window and crawl through it into a large house off Ellis Square.

We reached the surgery without incident, though, and found two whores standing outside. They were women I knew, and I introduced them to Rachel, who was much less discomposed by the introduction than they were.

“We’re wanting to buy pox cures, missus,” said Molly, a sturdy Irish girl. “So many as ye might have to hand and be willin’ to part with.”

“Are you, um, expecting a—er—rash of the pox? So to speak?” I was unlocking the door as we spoke, calculating whether the current crop of penicillin was likely to be sufficiently potent as to make any difference.

“It don’t matter that much whether it works or not, ma’am,” said Iris, who was very tall, very thin, and very black. “We’uns plan to sell ’em to the soldiers.”

“I see,” I said, rather blankly. “Well, then . . .”

I gave them what penicillin I had in liquid form, declining to charge them. I kept the powdered mold and the remnants of Roquefort cheese, though, in case the family might have need of them—and suffered a bolt of vivid fear at the thought of Fergus and Ian, doing God knew what. The artillery had stopped —or the wind had changed—but it started up again as we made our way home, holding our baskets under our cloaks to prevent snatch-and-grab attacks.

Jamie had brought back Marsali and Jenny and the children, all of them carrying what they could in the way of clothes, food, and bedding. There was a long period of total chaos, while things were organized, but at last we sat down to a sort of rough tea, at around three o’clock. Jamie, declining to be involved in the domestic engineering, had exercised his male prerogative of disappearing on vaguely unspecified “business” but, with unerring instinct, reappeared just as the cake was being set out, bearing a large gunnysack full of clams, a barrel of flour, and a modicum of news.

“The fighting’s over,” he said, looking for someplace to set the clams down.

“I noticed the guns had stopped some time ago. Do you know what’s happened?” I took the bag and decanted the clams with a loud clatter into the empty cauldron, then poured a bucket of water over them. They’d keep until supper.

“Exactly what I told General Howe would happen,” he said, though not with any sense of pleasure at being right. “Campbell—that’s the British Lieutenant Colonel, Archibald Campbell—circled Howe and his men and bagged them up like fish in a net. I dinna ken what he’s done wi’ them, but I expect there will be troops in the city before nightfall.”

The women all looked at one another and relaxed visibly. This was actually good news. What with one thing and another, the British army was quite good at occupying cities. And while the citizenry might justifiably resent the billeting of troops and the requisitioning of supplies, the underlying fact was that there’s nothing for keeping public order like having an army living with you.

“Will we be safe, then, with the soldiers here?” Joanie asked. She was bright-eyed with the adventure, like her siblings, and had been following the adult conversation closely.

“Aye, mostly,” Jamie said, but his eye met Marsali’s, and she grimaced. We probably would be safe enough, though food might be short for a while, until the army quartermasters got things straightened out. Fergus and Bonnie, though, were another matter.

“Luckily, we hadna started up L’Oignon yet,” she said, answering Jamie’s look. “It’s only been printing up handbills and broadsheets and the odd religious tract. I think it will be all right,” she said bravely, but she reached to touch Félicité’s dark head, as though to reassure herself.

We had the clams made into chowder—rather a watery chowder, as we had very little milk, but we thickened it with crumbled biscuit, and there was enough butter—and were setting the table for supper when Fergus and Ian came clattering up the stairs, flushed with excitement and full of news.

“It was a black slave who made the difference,” Fergus said, cramming a piece of bread into his mouth. “Mon Dieu, I’m famished! We haven’t eaten all day. This man wandered into the British camp soon after the fighting began and offered to show them a secret path through the swamp. Lieutenant Colonel Campbell sent a regiment of Highlanders—we could hear the pipes; it reminded me of Prestonpans.” He grinned at Jamie, and I could see the scrawny ten-year-old French orphan he’d been, riding on a captured cannon. He swallowed and washed the bite down with water, that being all we had at the moment.

“Highlanders,” he continued, “and some other infantry, and they followed the slave through the swamp and got well round General Howe’s men, who were all clumped together, for of course they didn’t know from which direction the fight might come.”

Campbell had then sent another infantry company to Howe’s left, “to make some demonstrations,” Fergus said, waving an airy hand and scattering crumbs. “They turned, of course, to meet this, and then the Highlanders fell on them from the other side, and voilà!” He snapped his fingers.

“I doubt Howe feels any gratitude to that slave,” Ian put in, scooping his bowl into the cauldron of chowder. “But he ought. He didna lose more than thirty or forty men—and had they stood and fought, they’d likely all have been killed, if they hadn’t the sense to surrender. And he didna strike me as a man o’ sense,” he added thoughtfully.

“How long d’ye think they’ll stay, the army?” Jenny was slicing bread and handing out the pieces round the table but paused to wipe a forearm across her brow. It was winter, but with the fire going in the small room and so many people crowded in, the temperature was quickly approaching Turkish-bath levels.

All the men exchanged glances. Then Jamie spoke, reluctantly.

“A long time, a piuthar.”

130 A SOVEREIGN CURE

IT HAD TO BE done, and it had to be done now. Between Jamie’s uneasiness and my own misgivings, I’d put off the question of making ether. But now we were up against it: I simply couldn’t do what needed to be done for Sophronia without a dependable general anesthetic.

I’d already decided that I could do the manufacture in the tiny toolshed in Mrs. Landrum’s huge kitchen garden. It was outside the city limits, with an acre of open space on every side, this occupied only by winter kale and hibernating carrots. If I blew myself to kingdom come, I wouldn’t take anyone else with me.

I doubted that this observation would reassure Jamie to any great extent, though, so I put off mentioning my plans. I’d assemble what I needed and tell him only at the last minute, thus saving him worry. And, after all, if I couldn’t obtain the necessary ingredients . . . but I was sure that I could. Savannah was a sizable city, and a shipping port. There were at least three apothecaries in town, as well as several warehouses that imported specialty items from England. Someone was bound to have sulfuric acid, otherwise known as oil of vitriol.

The weather was cool but sunny, and seeing a number of red-coated soldiers in the street, I wondered idly whether climatic considerations had had anything to do with the British deciding to switch their theater of operations to the South.

The elder Mr. Jameson—a sprightly gentleman in his seventies—greeted me pleasantly when I entered Jameson’s Apothecary. I’d had occasion to make small purchases of herbs from him before, and we got on well. I presented him with my list and browsed among the jars on his shelves while he pottered to and fro in search of my requests. There were three young soldiers on the other side of the shop, gathered in furtive conversation with the younger Mr. Jameson over something he was showing them under his counter. Pox cures, I assumed—or—giving them the benefit of the doubt regarding foresight—possibly condoms.

They concluded their surreptitious purchases and scuttled out, heads down and rather red in the face. The younger Mr. Jameson, who was the grandson of the owner and about the same age as the just-departed soldiers, was also rather pink but greeted me with aplomb, bowing.

“Your servant, Mrs. Fraser! Might I be of assistance?”

“Oh, thank you, Nigel,” I said. “Your grandfather has my list. But”—a thought had occurred to me, perhaps jogged by the soldiers—“I wonder whether you might know of a Mrs. Grey. Amaranthus Grey is her name, and I believe her maiden name was . . . oh, what was it? Cowden! Amaranthus Cowden Grey. Have you ever heard that name?”

He wrinkled his very smooth brow in thought.

“What an odd name. Er—meaning no offense, ma’am,” he hastily assured me. “I meant . . . rather exotic. Quite unusual.”

“Yes, it is. I don’t know her,” I said, “but a friend of mine said that she lived in Savannah and had urged me to . . . er . . . make her acquaintance.”

“Yes, of course.” Nigel hmm’d for a bit but shook his head. “No, I’m sorry, ma’am, I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered an Amaranthus Cowden.”

“Cowden?” said Mr. Jameson, emerging suddenly from his back room with several bottles in his hands. “Of course we have, boy. Or, rather, not encountered; she’s never come in the shop. But we had a request brought by mail, only two or three weeks ago, asking for . . . oh, what was it, my mind is a sieve, Mrs. Fraser, an absolute sieve, I assure you—don’t get old, that’s my advice—oh, yes. Gould’s complexion cream, Villette’s gripe water, a box of pastilles to sweeten the breath, and a dozen bars of Savon D’Artagnan French soap. That was it.” He beamed at me over his spectacles. “She lives in Saperville,” he added, as an afterthought.

“You’re a wonder, Granddad,” Nigel murmured dutifully, and reached for the bottles his grandfather was holding. “Shall I wrap these, or are we mixing something for the lady?”

“Oh.” Mr. Jameson looked down at the bottles in his hands, as though wondering how they’d got there. “Oh, yes! I wanted to ask you, Mrs. Fraser, what it was you had in mind to do with oil of vitriol. It’s amazingly dangerous, you know.”

“Um, yes, I do.” I eyed him consideringly; some men would be quite capable of refusing to sell a woman something they thought inappropriate or dangerous, but Mr. Jameson seemed a worldly sort—and he did at least know that I knew the use of medicinal herbs.

“I have it in mind to make ether,” I said. The substance was known, I knew—someone or other had discovered it back in the eighth century, or so I was told in medical school—but its use as an anesthetic wouldn’t be developed ’til somewhere in the nineteenth century. I wondered idly whether anyone in the intervening eleven hundred years had noticed that the stuff put people to sleep, but had inadvertently killed them and thus abandoned further experimentation.

Both Mr. Jamesons looked surprised.

“Ether?” said Nigel, openly puzzled. “Why would you make it yourself?”

“Why would I—what, do you mean that you have the stuff already made up?” I asked, astonished.

Both of them nodded, pleased to be of service.

“Oh, yes,” Mr. Jameson said. “We don’t always stock it, of course, but with the . . . er . . . army”—he waved a hand, encompassing the recent invasion and occupation—“there are the troop transports, and there will be a great increase of shipping, now that the blockade is not in effect.”

“What does the increase of shipping have to do with the sale of ether?” I asked, wondering whether Mr. Jameson might just possibly be right about the effects of advancing age on the brain.

“Why, ma’am,” said Nigel. “It’s a sovereign cure for the seasickness. Did you not know?”

131 A BORN GAMBLER

ICOUNTED MY INSTRUMENTS for the third time and, finding that none of them had escaped since the last count, covered them with a clean linen cloth and patted it lightly in reassurance—whether of the scalpels or myself, I wasn’t sure. Silk sutures, gut sutures, needles—the finest embroidery needles obtainable in Savannah. Pledgets, swabs, dressings, rolled bandages. A six-inch willow twig, carefully cleaned of its pith, sanded smooth, and boiled slowly—so as not to crack the wood—to be used as a catheter to stabilize the urethra and bladder and keep urine out of the surgical field. I’d thought of using a larger one for the bowel, but decided that I’d be better using my fingers to manipulate the slippery tissues there—so long as I managed neither to cut nor puncture myself in the process.

Rachel was coming to assist with the surgery, and I’d go through all the instruments and procedures again with her. I’d come down an hour early, though, wanting both to make my final preparations and to spend a little time alone, settling my mind and spirit to the job ahead.

I felt surprisingly calm, considering the complexity and risks of the operation ahead. It could be argued that even if I failed, the poor child couldn’t possibly be worse off than she was—but of course she could die as a result of the surgery, from shock, infection, or even accidental hemorrhage. Abdominal surgery was much more serious than trying a transvaginal correction—but given what I had at hand, I thought the chances of achieving a cure were much better that way. And then there was the matter of the curettage that had removed the dead infant; I had no idea what kind of damage that might have inflicted, but if there was any, I might be able to correct it.

I glanced automatically at the shelf where my penicillin factory was working—or at least I hoped it was working, billions of little spores excreting their helpful substance. I hadn’t had time in Savannah to establish a good process and test the resultant product; there was, as was so often the case, no guarantee whatever that I had usable penicillin in my broth. But I did have a small chunk of very ripe French cheese, acquired at extravagant cost and stirred into a little boiled milk to make a paste; the thick scent of it fought for ascendancy with the pungent smell of ether.

I could hear the early-morning sounds of the city outside, soothing in their ordinariness: the whisk of a broom on pavement, the clop of horse-drawn wagons, a tantalizing smell of hot bread as the baker’s boy’s quick footsteps passed by. The simple demands of life quickly made routine out of any sort of chaos, and as invasions went, the occupation of Savannah had been reasonably bloodless.

My sense of well-being and calm detachment was interrupted a moment later by the opening of the surgery door.

“May I help—” I began, turning. Then I saw my visitor and altered my remark to a fairly hostile “What do you want?”

Captain—no, he was a colonel now; the wages of treason, I supposed—Richardson smiled charmingly at me, then turned and bolted the door. I pulled out a drawer and removed my small amputation saw; it was small enough to handle quickly, and the serrated edge would take his nose off, if my aim was good.

The charming smile broadened into a grin as he saw what I was about, and he bowed. He wasn’t wearing a uniform—and no wonder—but was clothed in a decent, rather sober suit, with unpowdered hair tied simply back. No one would have looked at him twice.

“Your most humble servant, ma’am. Have no alarm; I merely wished to make sure we weren’t interrupted.”

“Yes, that’s what I’m alarmed about,” I said, taking a firm grip on the saw. “Unbolt that bloody door this minute.”

He looked at me for a moment, one eye narrowed in calculation, but then uttered a short laugh and, turning, pulled the bolt. Folding his arms, he leaned against the door.

“Better?”

“Much.” I let go the saw but didn’t move my hand far from it. “I repeat—what do you want?”

“Well, I thought perhaps the time had come to lay my cards upon your table, Mrs. Fraser—and see whether you might want to play a hand or two.”

“The only thing I might be inclined to play with you, Colonel, is mumblety-peg,” I said, tapping my fingers on the handle of the saw. “But if you want to show me your cards, go right ahead. You want to be quick about it, though—I have an operation to conduct in less than an hour.”

“It shouldn’t take that long. May I?” Raising his brows, he gestured at one of the stools. I nodded, and he sat down, looking quite relaxed.

“The essence of the matter, ma’am, is that I am a Rebel—and always have been.”

“You—what?”

“I am presently a colonel in the Continental army—but when you first knew me, I was working as an American agent in the guise of a captain in His Majesty’s army in Philadelphia.”

“I don’t understand.” I grasped what he was telling me but couldn’t grasp why the hell he should be telling me.

“You are a Rebel yourself, are you not?” One sparse brow lifted in inquiry. He really was the most ordinary-looking man, I thought. If he was a spy, he was physically well suited for it.

“I am,” I said guardedly. “What about it?”

“Then we’re on the same side,” he said patiently. “When I cozened Lord John Grey into marrying you, I—”

“You what?”

“Surely he told you that I had threatened to have you arrested for distributing seditious materials? At which you’re very clumsy, I might add,” he added dispassionately. “His lordship assured me that he had no personal interest in you whatever and then most obligingly married you the next day. His lordship is a very gallant man—particularly in view of his own preferences.”

He cocked his head, smiling in a conspiratorial manner, and a spear of ice shot through my belly.

“Oh, you do know, then,” he observed, watching my face. “I thought you would. He’s extremely discreet, but I think you a very perceptive woman, particularly in sexual matters.”

“Stand up,” I said, in my coldest voice, “and leave. Right now.”

He didn’t, of course, and I cursed my lack of forethought in not keeping a loaded pistol in the surgery. The saw might serve if he attacked me, but I knew better than to try attacking him.

Besides, what would you do with the body, if you killed him? the logical side of my mind inquired. He wouldn’t fit in the cupboard, let alone the hidey-hole.

“For the third—and last—time,” I said. “What do you bloody want?”

“Your help,” he said promptly. “I’d originally had it in mind to use you as an agent in place. You could have been very valuable to me, moving in the same social circles as the British high command. But you seemed too unstable—forgive me, ma’am—to approach immediately. I hoped that as your grief over your first husband faded, you would come to a state of resignation in which I might seek your acquaintance and by degrees achieve a state of intimacy in which you could be persuaded to discover small—and, at first, seemingly innocent—bits of information, which you would pass on to me.”

“Just what do you mean by ‘intimacy’?” I said, folding my arms. Because while the word in current parlance often meant merely friendship, he hadn’t used it with that intonation at all.

“You’re a very desirable woman, Mrs. Fraser,” he said, looking me over in an objectionably appraising way. “And one who knows her desirability. His lordship obviously wasn’t obliging you in that regard, so . . .” He lifted a shoulder, smiling in a deprecating fashion. “But as General Fraser has returned from the dead, I imagine you’re no longer susceptible to lures of that kind.”

I laughed and dropped my arms.

“You flatter yourself, Colonel,” I said dryly. “If not me. Look: why not stop trying to fluster me and tell me what you want me to do and why on earth you think I’d do it.”

He laughed, too, which lent some sense of individuality to his face.

“Very well. It may be difficult to believe, but this war will not be won on the battlefield.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Yes, I assure you, ma’am. It will be won by spying and by politics.”

“A very novel approach, I’m sure.” I was trying to place his accent; it was English but a rather flat sort of accent. Not London, not the north . . . educated, but not polished. “I assume you weren’t soliciting my assistance in the political line.”

“No, actually, I am,” he said. “If somewhat indirectly.”

“I suggest you try the direct approach,” I said. “My patient will be arriving very shortly.” The sounds outside had changed; apprentices and housemaids were going past in little groups, bound for work or daily marketing. Calls to and fro, the occasional giggle of a flirtation in passing.

Richardson nodded in acceptance.

“Are you aware of the Duke of Pardloe’s opinion of this war?”

I was somewhat taken aback by this. Foolishly, it hadn’t occurred to me that Hal might have one, outside the requirements of his service. But if ever I had met a man guaranteed to have opinions, it was Harold, Second Duke of Pardloe.

“What with one thing and another, I’ve never exchanged views with the duke on political matters. Nor with my—nor with his brother, for that matter.”

“Ah. Well, ladies often take no interest in things outside their own sphere of interest—though I rather thought you might have a . . . wider appreciation, shall we say?” He looked pointedly from my canvas apron and tray of instruments to the other appointments of my surgery.

“What about his politics?” I asked shortly, disregarding his implications.

“His Grace is a strong voice in the House of Lords,” Richardson said, playing with a frayed thread on the edge of his cuff. “And while he was at first very much in favor of the war, his opinions of late have been noticeably more . . . moderate. He wrote a public letter to the first minister in the fall, urging a consideration of reconciliation.”

“And?” I hadn’t the slightest idea where he was going with this and was growing impatient.

“Reconciliation is not what we want, ma’am,” he said, and, pulling the thread free, flicked it aside. “Such efforts will only delay the inevitable and interfere with the commitment of the citizenry that we desperately need. But the fact that His Grace shows this moderation of outlook is useful to me.”

“Jolly good,” I said. “Get to the point, if you please.”

He ignored this and proceeded about his exposition as though he had all the time in the world.

“Were he fiercely committed to one extreme or the other, he would be difficult to . . . influence. While I don’t know His Grace well, everything I know of him indicates that he values his sense of honor—”

“He does.”

“—almost as much as he values his family,” Richardson finished. He looked directly at me, and for the first time I felt a flicker of real fear.

“I have for some time been working to acquire influence—whether direct or otherwise—over such members of the duke’s family as are within my reach. With, say, a son—a nephew?—perhaps even his brother in my control, it would then be possible to affect His Grace’s public position, in whatever way seemed most advantageous to us.”

“If you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting, then I suggest you leave my sight this instant,” I said, in what I hoped was a tone of calm menace. Though I spoiled whatever effect there might have been by adding, “Besides, I have absolutely no connection with any of Pardloe’s family now.”

He smiled faintly, with no sense of pleasantry at all.

“His nephew, William, is in the city, ma’am, and you were seen speaking with him nine days ago. Perhaps you are unaware, though, that both Pardloe and his brother are here, as well?”

“Here?” My mouth hung open for an instant and I closed it sharply. “With the army?”

He nodded.

“I gather that in spite of your recent . . . marital rearrangement? . . . you remain on good terms with Lord John Grey.”

“Sufficiently good that I would do nothing whatever to deliver him into your bloody hands, if that’s what you had in mind.”

“Nothing so crude, ma’am,” he assured me, with a brief flash of teeth. “I had in mind only the transmission of information—in both directions. I intend no damage at all to the duke or his family; I only wish to—”

Whatever his intentions, they were interrupted by a tentative knock on the door, which then opened to admit Mrs. Bradshaw’s head. She looked apprehensively at me and suspiciously at Richardson, who cleared his throat, stood up, and bowed to her.

“Your servant, ma’am,” he said. “I was just taking my leave of Mrs. Fraser. Good day to you.” He turned and bowed to me, more elaborately. “Your most humble servant, Mrs. Fraser. I look forward to seeing you again. Soon.”

“I’ll just bet you do,” I said, but far enough under my breath that I doubted he heard me.

Mrs. Bradshaw and Sophronia edged into the room, coming close enough to Richardson on his way out that his face wrinkled up in involuntary revulsion at smelling Sophronia, and he cast a startled glance over his shoulder at me—this causing him to collide heavily with Rachel, hurrying in. He waltzed with her for a step or two, finally getting his balance and making his inelegant escape, pursued by my laughter.

This bit of slapstick had partially dispelled the uneasiness he’d brought to my surgery, and I put him firmly out of my mind. Sufficient to the day was the Richardson thereof, and I had work to do. It was with a sense of confidence that I took Sophronia’s small hand between my own and smiled at her downcast face.

“Don’t be worried, sweetheart,” I said. “I’m going to take care of you.”

WITH A MODERN hospital and equipment, I would have done the surgery transvaginally. Given my current resources, though, it would have to be abdominal. With Mrs. Bradshaw anxiously perched on a stool out of the way—she wouldn’t leave, and I hoped she wouldn’t faint—and Rachel carefully counting drops of ether under her breath, I took my best scalpel and cut into Sophronia’s fresh-scrubbed belly. The stretch marks left by her pregnancy were fading but still visible on her very young flesh.

I had makeshift stirrups, should I need them, made by nailing blocks of wood to the table at an angle, and I’d put a wadded towel between her thighs, soaked with the antibacterial lotion I’d scrubbed her with, an alcoholic extraction of crushed garlic mixed with a hot-water extract of lemon balm. It smelled pleasantly kitchen-like and did something to kill the sewage smell—as well as germs, I hoped.

The ether, though, was stronger than anything else, and within ten minutes of starting, I began to feel a slight swimming in my head.

“Mrs. Bradshaw,” I called over my shoulder. “Will you open the window, please? And the shutters?” I hoped we wouldn’t attract any spectators—but the need for fresh air was imperative.

The vesicovaginal fistula was luckily fairly small and in a reasonably easy position to reach. Rachel was holding a retractor for me with one hand, keeping the other on Sophronia’s pulse, and administering more ether every few minutes.

“Are you all right, Rachel?” I asked, trimming back the edges of the fistula in order to get a decent field for stitching—the edges were flattened and macerated, and the tissue would shred and pull apart under any sort of pressure. I’d had some hesitation in asking her to help today; I would have asked Jenny, but she was suffering from what was called the catarrh, and sneezing and coughing were the last things I wanted in a surgical assistant.

“I am,” she answered, her voice slightly muffled behind her not-quite-sterile-but-at-least-boiled mask. She’d used one of Ian’s handkerchiefs for the purpose; it was an incongruously cheerful calico in dark-pink-and-white checks. Ian’s taste in clothing was strongly Mohawk.

“Good. Tell me if you feel at all dizzy.” I had no idea what I’d do if she did feel dizzy—perhaps Mrs. Bradshaw could take over the dropping bottle for a few minutes. . . .

I spared a quick glance over my shoulder. Mrs. Bradshaw sat on her stool, gloved hands clasped tight in her lap and her face pale as a sheet, but she sat firm.

“It’s going well so far,” I said to her, trying to sound as reassuring as possible through my own chaste white mask. The masks seemed to unnerve her, and she looked away, swallowing.

It really was going well, though. While it was Sophronia’s youth that had caused the problem, that also meant that her tissues were healthy, in good shape, and she had considerable animal vitality. If the surgery was successful, if there was little or no subsequent infection, she’d heal very quickly. If.

“Ifs” hover in the air above your head all the time when you’re doing surgery, like a cloud of gnats. For the most part, though, they keep a respectful distance, only buzzing dimly in the background.

Done.

“One down, one to go,” I murmured, and, dipping a wad of sterilized gauze into my cheese lotion, I daubed some—not without a qualm—over the newly stitched repair. “Onward.”

The bowel repair was easier—though more unpleasant. It was quite cold in the surgery—I hadn’t lit a fire, not wanting soot in the air—but I was sweating; beads of perspiration ran tickling down the side of my nose and down my neck from my bound-up hair.

I could feel the girl, though, the life of her echoing in my hands, her heartbeat strong and steady—there was a large blood vessel visible on the surface of the uterus, and I could see it pulsing. She’d been lucky in the one thing: the uterus hadn’t been perforated, and looked healthy. I couldn’t tell whether there was internal scarring, but when I cupped my hand gently over the organ, it felt normal to me. For a moment, I closed my eyes, feeling deeper, and found what I thought I needed. I opened them again, blotted the ooze of blood from the cut tissues, and reached for a fresh needle.

How long? Anesthesia complications were one of the nasty little flying “ifs,” and that one flew down and perched on my shoulder. I had no clock or pocket watch but had brought a small sandglass borrowed from our landlady.

“How long has it been, Rachel?”

“Twenty minutes.” Her voice was soft, and I looked up, but she was still steady, her eyes fixed on the open belly. She was nearly four months’ pregnant, her own belly slightly rounded. “Don’t worry,” I said to her briefly. “It won’t happen to you.”

“Surely it could?” she said, still more softly.

I shook my head.

“Not if I’m with you when you give birth.”

She made a small amused sound and picked up the dropping bottle again.

“Thee will be, I assure thee, Claire.”

Rachel was shivering slightly by the time I’d finished; I was wringing wet but feeling the glow of at least temporary victory. The fistulas were repaired, the leakage stopped. I irrigated the surgical field with saline solution and the organs glistened, the beautiful deep colors of the body unmarred by smears of fecal matter.

I paused for a moment to admire the neat compactness of the pelvic organs, all in their places. There was a tiny trickle of pale urine from the catheter, staining the towel with a faint yellow shadow. In a modern hospital, I would have left the catheter in during the healing, but it would be difficult to manage without a drainage bag, and the chances of irritation or infection from the device were likely greater than the possible benefits of leaving it. I eased it free of her body, watching. Within a few seconds, the flow of urine ceased, and I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

I had taken up a fresh needle threaded with silk, to close the incision, when something occurred to me.

“Rachel—do you want to look? Closely, I mean.” Sophronia had had ether within the last couple of minutes and was still deeply under; Rachel checked her color and breathing and then came round the table to stand beside me.

I didn’t think she’d be disturbed by the blood or the sight of organs, given the things she’d seen in military camps and battlefields. She wasn’t, but she was disturbed.

“That—” She swallowed and put a hand to her swelling stomach, very gently. “So beautiful,” she whispered. “How the body is made. How such things can be.”

“It is,” I said, her awe making me lower my own voice.

“To think of her poor infant, though . . . and she no more than a child . . .”

I glanced at Rachel and saw tears standing in her eyes. And I saw the thought cross her face, masked as it was: It could happen to me.

“Yes,” I said quietly. “Go back to the ether; I’ll close the incision now.” But as I dipped my hands again in the bowl of alcohol and water, something else occurred to me.

Oh, God, I thought, appalled at the thought. But . . .

“Mrs. Bradshaw,” I said. She was sitting with her head bowed, arms wrapped round herself against the chill, perhaps half asleep. When I spoke, though, her head came up sharply.

“Is it over?” she asked. “Does she live?”

“She does,” I said. “And, with luck, will continue to do so. But . . .” I hesitated, but I had to ask. And I had to ask this woman.

“Before I sew up the incision . . . I can—do a very minor procedure that will stop Sophronia from becoming pregnant again.”

Mrs. Bradshaw blinked.

“You can?”

“Yes. It’s a simple thing to do—but, once done, it can’t be undone. She’d never be able to have babies.” A fresh cloud of “ifs” had formed, buzzing anxiously over my shoulder.

She was thirteen. She was a slave. And had a master who used her. If she were to become pregnant again soon, she might well die during the labor and would almost certainly be seriously damaged. It might never be safe for her to bear a child—but it wasn’t safe for any woman, ever. And “never” is a very big word.

Mrs. Bradshaw had drifted slowly toward the table, her eyes twitching toward the exposed, half-draped body, then away, unable either to look or to stay away. I put out a hand, warding her off.

“Don’t come closer, please.”

“He was sad when the baby died. He cried.” I could still hear the sadness in Sophronia’s voice; she mourned her child. How could she not? Could I take away the possibility of another—forever—without even asking her what she felt about it?

And yet . . .

If she bore a child, it, too, would be a slave; it might be taken from her and sold. Even if not, it would likely live and die in slavery.

And yet . . .

“If she wasn’t able to bear children . . .” Mrs. Bradshaw said slowly. She stopped speaking, and I could see the thoughts crossing her white, pinched face; her lips had all but disappeared, so tightly were they pressed together. I didn’t think she was concerned with the fact that Sophronia’s value would be diminished if she couldn’t reproduce.

Would the fear of damage due to pregnancy stop Mr. Bradshaw from using the girl?

If she were barren, would he feel no hesitation?

“He didn’t hesitate because she was twelve,” I said, my words cold as pellets of ice. “Would the chance of killing her next time stop him?”

She stared at me in shock, mouth hanging open. She blinked, swallowed, and looked at Sophronia, limp and helpless, body gaping open on the blood-soaked towels, the floor around her thickly spattered with her fluids.

“I think thee cannot,” Rachel said quietly. She looked from me to Mrs. Bradshaw, and it wasn’t clear to whom she was speaking: perhaps both of us. She was holding Sophronia’s hand.

“She felt her child move within her. She loved it.” Rachel’s voice broke, and she choked a little. Tears welled and rolled down to disappear into her mask. “She wouldn’t . . . she . . .” She stopped, gulping a little, and shook her head, unable to go on.

Mrs. Bradshaw put a hand clumsily over her face, as though to stop me seeing her thoughts.

“I can’t,” she said, and repeated almost angrily, behind the shield of her hand, “I can’t. It isn’t my fault! I tried—I tried to do the right thing!” She wasn’t talking to me; I didn’t know if it was to Mr. Bradshaw or God.

The “ifs” were all still there, but so was Sophronia, and I couldn’t leave her any longer.

“All right,” I said quietly. “Go and sit down, Mrs. Bradshaw. I said I’d take care of her, and I will.”

My hands were cold, and the body under them was very warm, pulsing with life. I picked up the needle and put in the first suture.

132 WILL-O’-THE-WISP

SAPERVILLE? WILLIAM WAS beginning to wonder whether Amaranthus Cowden Grey actually existed or whether she was a will-o’-the-wisp created by Ezekiel Richardson. But if so—to what end?

He’d made careful inquiries after receiving Mrs. Fraser’s note yesterday; there really was a place called Saperville—a tiny settlement some twenty miles to the southwest of Savannah, in what his interlocutor had told him was “the piney woods,” in a tone of voice suggesting that the piney woods were next door to hell, both in terms of remoteness and uncivil conditions. He couldn’t conceive what might have made the woman—if she really did exist—go to such a place.

If she didn’t exist . . . then someone had invented her, and the most likely suspect for such a deception was Ezekiel Richardson. William had been decoyed by Richardson before. The entire experience in the Dismal Swamp still made him grit his teeth in retrospect—the more so when he reflected that, if not for that chain of events, neither he nor Ian Murray would have met Rachel Hunter.

With an effort, he dismissed Rachel from his mind—she wouldn’t stay out of his dreams, but he didn’t have to think about her while awake—and returned to the elusive Amaranthus.

In purely practical terms, Saperville lay on the other side of Campbell’s army, which was still encamped over several acres of ground outside Savannah, while billeting arrangements were made, housing built, and fortifications dug. A large part of the Continental forces that had opposed them had been neatly bagged up and sent north as prisoners, and the chances of the remnants causing trouble for Campbell were minuscule. That didn’t mean William could walk straight through the camp without attracting attention. He might not meet with anyone who knew him, but that didn’t mean no one would question him. And however innocuous his errand, the last thing he wanted was to have to explain to anyone why he had resigned his commission.

He’d had time, while Campbell was arraying his forces, to take Miranda out of Savannah and board her with a farmer some ten miles to the north. The army foragers might still find her—they certainly would, if the army remained in Savannah for any great time—but for the moment she was safe. All too familiar with military rapacity—he’d seized horses and supplies himself, many times—he wasn’t about to take her within sight of the army.

He drummed his fingers on the table, thinking, but reluctantly concluded that he’d best walk to Saperville, making a wide circle around Campbell’s men. He wasn’t going to find out about bloody Amaranthus sitting here, that was sure.

Resolved, he paid for his meal, wrapped himself in his cloak, and set off. It wasn’t raining, that was one good thing.

It was January, though, and the days were still short; the shadows were lengthening by the time he came to the edge of the sea of camp followers that had formed around the army. He made his way past a conclave of red-armed laundresses, their kettles all fuming in the chilly air and the scent of smoke and lye soap hanging over them in a witchy sort of haze.

“Double, double toil and trouble,” he chanted under his breath. “Fire burn and caldron bubble. Fillet of a fenny snake, in the caldron boil and bake. Eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog . . .” He couldn’t recall what came next and abandoned the effort.

Beyond the laundresses, the ground was choppy, the boggy spots interspersed with higher bits of ground, these crowned with stunted trees and low bushes—and quite obviously providing a footing, so to speak, for the whores to ply their own trade.

He gave these a somewhat wider berth and consequently found himself squelching through something that was not quite a bog, but not far off, either. It was remarkably beautiful, though, in a chiaroscuro sort of way; the fading light somehow made each barren twig stand out in stark contrast to the air, the swollen buds still sleeping but rounded, balanced on the edge between winter’s death and the life of spring. He wished for a moment that he could draw, or paint, or write poetry, but as it was, he could only pause for a few seconds to admire it.

As he did so, though, he felt a permanence form in his heart, a quiet sense that even though he had only these few seconds, he would have them forever, could come back to this place, this time, in his mind.

He was right, though not entirely for the reasons he supposed.

He would have passed right by her, thinking she was a part of the bog, for she was curled over in a tight ball and the hood of her sad-colored cloak covered her head. But she made a tiny sound, a heartbroken whimper that stopped him in his tracks, and he saw her then, crouched in the mud at the foot of a sweet gum.

“Ma’am?” he said tentatively. She hadn’t been aware of him; she uncurled suddenly, her white face staring up at him, shocked and tear-streaked. Then she gulped air and leapt to her feet, throwing herself at him.

“Wiyum! Wiyum!” It was Fanny, Jane’s sister, alone, daubed with mud, and in a state of complete hysteria. She’d catapulted into his arms; he gripped her firmly, holding her lest she fly to pieces, which she looked very like doing.

“Frances. Frances! It’s all right; I’m here. What’s happened? Where’s Jane?”

At her sister’s name, she gave a wail that made his blood go cold and buried her face in his chest. He patted her back and, this failing to help, then shook her a little.

“Frances! Pull yourself together. Sweetheart,” he added more gently, seeing her swimming, red-rimmed eyes and swollen face. She’d been weeping for a long time. “Tell me what’s happened, so I can help you.”

“You can’t,” she blubbered, and thumped her forehead hard against his chest, several times. “You can’t, you can’t, nobody can, you can’t!”

“Well, we’ll see about that.” He looked around for someplace to sit her down, but there was nothing more solid than clumps of grass and spindly trees in sight. “Come on, it’s getting dark. We need to get out of this place, at least.” He set her firmly on her feet, took her arm, and compelled her to start walking, on the theory that one can’t be hysterical and walk in a straight line at the same time.

In fact, this seemed to be the case. By the time he’d got her back to the camp followers’ area, she was sniffling but no longer wailing, and she was looking where she was going. He bought her a cup of hot soup from a woman with a steaming cauldron and made her drink it, though a remnant thought of the fingers of birth-strangled babes made him forgo one for himself.

He handed back the empty cup and, seeing that Fanny was at least superficially calm now, towed her toward the hillock with trees, in search of a seat. She stiffened, though, as they approached, and pulled back with a little mew of fear.

Losing patience, he put a hand under her chin and made her meet his eyes.

“Frances,” he said in a level tone. “Tell me what the devil is going on, and do it now. Words of one syllable, if you please.”

“Jane,” she said, and her eyes began to overflow again. She dashed at them with her cloak-covered forearm, though, and, with a visible effort, managed to tell him.

“It wass a cuwwy.”

“A what? Oh, a cully, sorry. At the brothel, you mean. Yes?”

She nodded.

“He wass looking thu the gulls and s-saw J-Jane . . .” She gulped. “He wass a fwend of Captain Hahkness. He wass at da house when he—Captain Hahkness—died. He weckognized huh.”

A ball of ice formed in William’s entrails at her words.

“The devil he did,” he said softly. “What did he do, Fanny?”

The man—a Major Jenkins, she said—had seized Jane by the arm and dragged her off, Fanny running after them. He had taken her all the way into the city, to a house with soldiers standing outside. They wouldn’t let Fanny in, so she had stood outside in the street, terrified but determined not to leave, and after a time they had given up trying to drive her away.

The house with soldiers standing outside was very likely Colonel Campbell’s headquarters, William thought, beginning to feel sick. Presumably Jenkins had hauled Jane before some senior officer, if not Campbell himself, to denounce her for Harkness’s murder.

Would they even bother giving her a trial? He doubted it. The city was under martial law; the army—or, rather, Lieutenant Colonel Campbell—did as it saw fit, and he doubted very much that Campbell would give a whore accused of murdering a soldier the benefit of any doubt.

“Where is she now?” He forced himself to go on sounding calm, though he felt anything but.

Fanny gulped and wiped her nose on her cloak again. At this point, it scarcely mattered, but by instinct he pulled his handkerchief from his sleeve and handed it to her.

“Dey took her to anovver house. On de edge of da city. Dere’s a big tree dere, ousside. I tink dey’ll hang her, Wiyum.”

William was very much afraid they would. He swallowed the saliva that had collected in his mouth and patted Fanny’s shoulder.

“I’ll go and see what I can find out. Do you have friends here—someone to stay with?” He motioned at the mass of the encampment, where small fires were beginning to glow amidst the oncoming shades of night. She nodded, pressing her lips together to keep them from trembling.

“All right. Go and find them. I’ll come in the morning—at first light. Meet me where I found you, all right?”

“Awright,” she whispered, and laid a small white hand on his chest, just over his heart. “Sank you, Wiyum.”

HIS ONLY CHANCE was to talk to Campbell. Fanny had told him the house where Jenkins had taken Jane was the big gray house north of Reynolds Square; that was the likeliest place to start.

He paused on the street to brush the worst of the dried mud and bits of vegetation off his cloak. He was only too well aware that he looked like exactly what he’d been pretending to be for the last three months: an unemployed laborer. On the other hand—

As he’d resigned his commission, he was no longer under Campbell’s authority. And no matter how he personally felt about the matter of his title, it was still his, by law. The Ninth Earl of Ellesmere drew himself up to his full height, squared his shoulders, and went to war.

Manner and speech got him past the sentries at the door. The servant who came to take his cloak stared at him in unmitigated dismay, but was afraid to throw him out, and vanished to find someone who would take the responsibility of dealing with him.

There was a dinner party going on; he could hear the clink of silver and china, the glugging of bottles being poured, and the muted rumble of conversation, punctuated by bursts of polite laughter. His hands were sweating; he wiped them unobtrusively on his breeches.

What the devil was he going to say? He’d tried to formulate some line of reasonable argument on his way, but everything seemed to fall to pieces the moment he thought of it. He’d have to say something, though. . . .

Then he heard a voice, raised in question, that made his heart skip a beat. Uncle Hal! He couldn’t be mistaken; his uncle and his father both had light but penetrating voices, clear as cut crystal—and sharp as good Toledo steel when they wanted to be.

“Here, you!” He strode down the hall and grabbed a servitor coming out of the dining room with a platter of crab shells in his hands. “Give me that,” he ordered, taking the platter from the man’s hands, “go back in there, and tell the Duke of Pardloe his nephew would like a word.”

The man goggled at him, mouth open, but didn’t move. William repeated his request, adding “Please,” but also adding a stare meant to indicate that, in the case of resistance, his next step would be to bash the man over the head with the platter. This worked, and the man turned like an automaton and marched back into the dining room—from which, in very short order, his uncle emerged, polished in dress and manner but clearly excited in countenance.

“William! What the devil are you doing with that?” He took the platter from William and shoved it carelessly under one of the gilt chairs ranged along the wall of the foyer. “What’s happened? Have you found Ben?”

Christ, he hadn’t thought of that. Naturally, Uncle Hal would assume . . . With a grimace, he shook his head.

“I haven’t, Uncle, I’m sorry. I think I do know where his wife is, but—”

Hal’s face underwent a couple of lightning shifts, from excitement to disappointment to outward calm.

“Good. Where are you staying? John and I will come and—”

“Papa’s here, too?” William blurted, feeling like a fool. If he hadn’t been so sensitive about his position and thus avoided anyone from the army, he would have learned that the 46th was part of Campbell’s force in short order.

“Naturally,” Hal said, with a touch of impatience. “Where else would he be?”

“With Dottie, looking for Ben’s wife,” William riposted smartly. “Is she here, too?”

“No.” His uncle looked displeased, but not altogether displeased. “She discovered that she was with child, so John very properly brought her back to New York—and less properly consigned her to the care of her husband. She’s presumably wherever Washington’s troops are at the moment, unless that bloody Quaker’s had the common sense to—”

“Oh, Pardloe.” A stout officer in a lieutenant colonel’s uniform and an ornate double-curled wig stood in the doorway, looking mildly surprised. “Thought you’d been taken ill, the way you dashed out.” Despite the mild tone, there was an undercurrent in the man’s voice that drove a two-penny nail into William’s spine. This was Archibald Campbell, and from the visible frostiness with which he and Uncle Hal were viewing each other, Uncle Hal’s value as a negotiator might not be what his nephew could hope.

Still, Uncle Hal could—and did—introduce William to Campbell, thus relieving him of the worry of producing adequate bona fides.

“Your servant, my lord,” Campbell said, eyeing him suspiciously. He glanced over his shoulder, moving out of the way of a pair of servants carrying a massive wine cooler. “I fear that dinner has nearly concluded, but if you’d like, I’ll have the servants provide a small supper for you in the office.”

“No, sir, I thank you,” William said, bowing—though the smell of food made his stomach gurgle. “I took the liberty of coming to speak with you about a . . . um . . . an urgent matter.”

“Indeed.” Campbell looked displeased and wasn’t troubling to hide it. “It can’t wait until the morning?”

“I don’t know that it can, sir.” He’d had a look at the big oak on the edge of town, which he thought must be the one Fanny meant. As Jane’s corpse wasn’t hanging from it, he assumed she was still being held prisoner in the house nearby. But that was no assurance that they didn’t mean to execute her at dawn. The army was rather fond of executing prisoners at dawn; start the day off in the right frame of mind . . .

He got hold of his racing thoughts and bowed again.

“It concerns a young woman, sir, who I understand was arrested earlier today, upon suspicion of—of assault. I—”

“Assault?” Campbell’s beetling brows shot up toward the furbelows of his wig. “She stabbed a man twenty-six times, then cut his throat in cold blood. If that’s your notion of assault, I should hate to see—”

“Who is this young woman, my lord?” Uncle Hal put in, his tone formal and his face impassive.

“Her name is Jane,” William began, and stopped, having no idea what her last name might be. “Uh . . . Jane . . .”

“Pocock, she says,” put in Campbell. “She’s a whore.”

“A—” Hal cut his exclamation off one syllable too late. He narrowed his eyes at William.

“She is . . . under my protection,” William said, as firmly as he could.

“Really?” drawled Campbell. He gave Uncle Hal a look of amused contempt, and Uncle Hal went white with suppressed fury—most of which was not suppressed at all in the look he turned on William.

“Yes. Really,” said William, aware that this was not brilliant but unable to think of anything better. “I wish to speak on her behalf. Provide her with a solicitor,” he added, rather wildly. “I’m sure she isn’t guilty of the crime of which she’s accused.”

Campbell actually laughed, and William felt his ears burning with hot blood. He might have said something imprudent had Lord John not appeared at this juncture, as impeccably uniformed as his brother and looking mildly inquisitive.

“Ah, William,” he said, as though he’d quite expected to see his son here. His eyes flicked rapidly from face to face, obviously drawing conclusions about the tenor of the conversation, if not its subject. With scarcely a pause, he stepped forward and embraced William warmly.

“You’re here! I’m delighted to see you,” he said, smiling up at William. “I have remarkable news! Will you excuse us for a moment, sir?” he said to Campbell, and, not waiting for an answer, gripped William by the elbow, yanked open the front door, towed him out onto the wide veranda, and closed the door firmly behind them.

“All right. Tell me what’s going on,” Lord John said, low-voiced. “And do it fast.

“Jesus,” he said, when William had blurted out an only slightly confused account of the situation. He rubbed a hand slowly over his face, thinking, and repeated, “Jesus.”

“Yes,” William said, still upset but feeling some comfort at his father’s presence. “I’d thought to talk to Campbell, but then when Uncle Hal was here, I hoped . . . but he and Campbell seem to be—”

“Yes, their relationship could best be described as one of cordial hatred,” Lord John agreed. “Archibald Campbell is highly unlikely to do Hal any sort of favor, unless it was to escort him personally into the next southbound coach for hell.” He blew out his breath and shook his head, as though to clear it of wine fumes.

“I don’t know, William, I really don’t. The girl—she is a whore?”

“Yes.”

“Did she do it?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, God.” He looked helplessly at William for a moment, then squared his shoulders. “All right. I’ll do what I can, but I don’t promise anything. There’s a tavern on the square, called Tudy’s. Go there and wait—I rather think your presence will not be helpful in this discussion.”

IT SEEMED FOREVER but must have been less than an hour when Lord John appeared at Tudy’s. One look at his face told William that he hadn’t been successful.

“I’m sorry,” he said without preliminary, and sat down opposite William. He’d come out without his hat and brushed at the raindrops caught in his hair. “The girl—”

“Her name is Jane,” William interrupted. It seemed important that he insist on that, not let everyone just dismiss her as “the whore.”

“Miss Jane Eleanora Pocock,” his father agreed, with a brief nod. “Apparently she not only committed the crime but has confessed to it. A signed confession, no less. I read it.” He rubbed a hand tiredly over his face. “Her only objection was to the statement that she stabbed Harkness twenty-six times and cut his throat. According to her, she only stabbed him once before cutting his throat. People will exaggerate these things.”

“That’s what she told me.” William’s throat felt tight. His father darted a glance at him but chose not to say anything in response to this. What he thought was all too clear, though.

“She was trying to save her young sister from being defiled by the man,” he said, urgently defensive. “And Harkness was a depraved sod who’d used her—Jane, I mean—abominably! I heard him talk about it. It would have turned your stomach to hear him.”

“I daresay,” Lord John agreed. “Dangerous clients are one of the hazards of that profession. But was there no recourse available to her other than a carving knife? Most brothels that cater to soldiers have some means of rescuing the whores from . . . excessive importunity. And Miss Pocock, from what Colonel Campbell tells me, is a—er—an—”

“Expensive piece. She is. Was.”

William reached out blindly for the mug of beer he’d been ignoring, took a huge gulp, and coughed convulsively. His father watched with some sympathy.

William at last drew breath and sat, staring at his fists, clenched on the table.

“She hated him,” he said at last, low-voiced. “And the madam wouldn’t have kept her sister from him; he’d paid for her maidenhead.”

Lord John sighed and covered one of William’s fists with his hand, squeezing.

“Do you love the young woman, William?” he asked, very quietly. The tavern wasn’t busy, but there were enough men drinking there that no one was noticing them.

William shook his head, helpless.

“I—tried to protect her. To save her from Harkness. I—I bought her for the night. I didn’t stop to think that he’d come back—but of course he would,” he finished bitterly. “I likely made things worse for her.”

“There wouldn’t have been a way of making them better, save marrying the girl or killing Harkness yourself,” Lord John said dryly. “And I don’t recommend murder as a way of settling difficult situations. It tends to lead to complications—but not nearly as many as marriage.” He got up and went to the bar, returning with two steaming cups of hot rum punch.

“Drink that,” he said, pushing one in front of William. “You look chilled through.”

He was; he’d taken a table in a far corner, nowhere near the fire, and a fine, uncontrollable shiver was running through him, enough to ripple the surface of the punch when he wrapped his hand round the pewter cup. The punch was good, though made with preserved lemon peel, sweet, strong, and hot and made with good brandy as well as rum. He hadn’t eaten anything in hours, and it warmed his stomach immediately.

They drank in silence—what was there to say? There was no way of saving Jane, bar some sort of physical assault, and he couldn’t ask his father or uncle to join or support him in that sort of desperate caper. He didn’t think they’d do it, for one thing. He believed in their considerable affection for him but knew quite well that they’d see it as their duty to prevent him committing folly that could well prove fatal.

“It won’t have been entirely in vain, you know,” Lord John said quietly. “She did save her sister.”

William nodded, unable to speak. The thought of seeing Fanny in the morning, only to tell her—and then what? Must he stand beside her and watch Jane be hanged?

Lord John stood up and, without asking, went back to the bar for another pair of drinks. William looked at the gently steaming cup set before him and then at his father.

“You think you bloody know me, don’t you?” he said, but with true affection in his voice.

“Yes, I do think that, William,” said his father, in the same tone. “Drink your drink.”

William smiled and, rising, clapped his father on the shoulder.

“Maybe you do, at that. I’ll see you in the morning, Papa.”

133 LAST RESORT

IWAS LYING IN bed beside Jamie, drowsily wondering on what grounds I could induce Mrs. Weisenheimer to collect her urine for me. She suffered from gallstones, for which the most effective herbal treatment I had was bearberry. Fortunately, Mr. Jameson had some of the dried leaf in stock. One had to be careful in using it, though, because it contained arbutin, which hydrolyzed to hydroquinone—a very effective urinary antiseptic, but dangerously toxic. On the other hand . . . it was an effective skin lightener, if applied topically.

I yawned and decided that it wasn’t worth the bother of making Jamie come to the surgery and talk to Mrs. Weisenheimer in German about her urine. He’d do it if I asked, but I’d never hear the end of it.

I dismissed the idea and rolled over, cuddling against Jamie, who was peacefully asleep on his back, as usual, but who half-woke at my touch, patted me clumsily, curled round me, and fell soundly asleep again at once. Ninety seconds later, there was a knock at the door.

“Ifrinn!” Jamie shot bolt upright, rubbed a hand roughly over his face, and threw back the covers. Groaning, I followed suit less athletically, crawling out of bed and groping blindly for my knitted slippers.

“Let me go. It’s probably for me.” At this hour of the night, a knock at the door was more likely someone with a medical emergency than one involving salt fish or horses, but given the military occupation of the city, one never knew.

One certainly hadn’t anticipated opening the door to find William standing on the other side of it, looking pale and feral.

“Is Mr. Fraser at home?” he said tersely. “I need his help.”

FRASER HAD DRESSED at once, taken up a belt with a sheathed dirk and a leather bag upon it, and fastened this round his waist without question. He was wearing Highland dress, William saw, a much-worn, faded plaid. He gathered up a fold of it around his shoulders, nodding toward the door.

“We’d best go down to my wife’s surgery,” he said softly, nodding toward the thin wall, the laths clearly visible through its plaster. “Ye can tell me there what’s to do.”

William followed him through the rain-slicked streets, water like cold tears on his cheeks. Inside, he felt parched and dry, cracked leather wrapped around a core of solid terror. Fraser didn’t speak on the way but clutched him once by the elbow, pushing him into a narrow space between two buildings, just as an army patrol came round the corner. He pressed hard against the wall, shoulder to shoulder with Fraser, and felt the man’s denseness and warmth as a shock.

In the back of his mind was the memory of having been small and lost in the fog on the fells of the Lake District. Cold and terrified, he’d fallen into a rocky hollow and lain there, frozen, hearing ghosts in the mist. And then the overwhelming relief of Mac’s finding him, of the enveloping warmth of the groom’s arms.

He shoved the memory impatiently aside, but a lingering sense of something that wasn’t quite hope remained when the last of the boots trampled out of hearing and Fraser slid from their hiding place, beckoning him to follow.

The small surgery was cold and dark, smelling of herbs and medicines and old blood. There was a sweetish smell, too, strange but familiar, and after a moment’s disorientation, he realized that it must be ether; he’d smelled it on Mother Claire and Denzell Hunter when they’d operated on his cousin Henry.

Fraser had locked the door behind them and found a candlestick in the cupboard. He handed this to William, took a tinderbox from the same cupboard, and set the candle alight with a brisk efficiency. The wavering light shone up into his face, and the boldness of his features sprang into view: long straight nose and heavy brows, broad cheekbones and the fine deep modeling of jaw and temple. It was damnably queer to see the resemblance so marked and so close, but at the moment William actually found it an odd comfort.

Fraser set the candlestick on the table and motioned William to one of the two stools, taking the other.

“Tell me, then,” he said calmly. “It’s safe here; no one will hear. I gather it’s a dangerous matter?”

“Life and death,” William said, and, with a deep breath, began.

Fraser listened with complete attention, his eyes fixed intently on William’s face as he talked. When he had finished, there was a moment of silence. Then Fraser nodded once, as if to himself.

“This young woman,” he said. “May I know what she is to you?”

William hesitated, not knowing what to say. What was Jane to him? Not a friend, nor yet a lover. And yet . . .

“She—I took her and her sister under my protection,” he said. “When they left Philadelphia with the army.”

Fraser nodded as though this was a perfectly adequate explanation of the situation.

“D’ye know that your uncle and his regiment are with the occupying army? That he’s here, I mean?”

“Yes. I spoke with my—with Lord John and Pardloe. They aren’t able to help. I—have resigned my commission,” he felt compelled to add. “That hasn’t anything to do with why they can’t help, only that I’m not subject any longer to military command myself.”

“Aye, I saw ye weren’t in uniform,” he said. He drummed the fingers of his right hand briefly on the tabletop, and William saw with surprise that the ring finger was missing, a thick scar down the back of the hand. Fraser saw him notice.

“Saratoga,” he said, with the flicker of something that might have been a smile in other circumstances.

William felt a small shock at the word, things unnoticed at the time suddenly returning to him. Himself kneeling through the night beside Brigadier Simon Fraser’s deathbed and a tall man on the other side, a white bandage on his hand, leaning down from the shadows to say something softly in the Scottish tongue to the brigadier, who replied in the same language.

“The brigadier,” he said, and stopped abruptly.

“My kinsman,” Fraser said. He delicately forbore to add, “And yours,” but William made that connection easily. He felt it as a distant echo of grief, a pebble dropped in water, but that could wait.

“Is the young woman’s life worth yours?” Fraser asked. “Because I think that consideration is likely what lies behind your—your other kinsmen’s”—the corner of his mouth twitched, though William couldn’t tell whether with humor or distaste—“failure to help ye.”

William felt hot blood rise in his face, anger supplanting desperation.

“They didn’t fail me. They couldn’t help. Are you saying that you will not help me, either, sir? Or can’t? Are you afraid of the venture?”

Fraser gave him a quelling look; William registered this but didn’t care. He was on his feet, fists clenched.

“Don’t bother, then. I’ll do it myself.”

“If ye thought ye could, ye’d never have come to me, lad,” Fraser said evenly.

“Don’t you call me ‘lad,’ you, you—” William choked off the epithet, not out of prudence but out of inability to choose among the several that sprang at once to his mind.

“Sit down,” Fraser said, not raising his voice but infusing it with an air of command that made it unthinkable—or at least uncomfortable—to disobey. William glared at him. His chest was heaving and yet he couldn’t draw enough breath to speak. He didn’t sit down, but he did uncurl his fists and stand still. At last he managed a jerky nod. Fraser drew a long, visible breath and let it out slowly, white in the chill of the dark little room.

“All right, then. Tell me where she is and what ye ken of the physical situation.” He glanced at the shuttered window, where oozing damp showed black between the slats as the rain seeped through. “The night’s not long enough.”

THEY WENT TO the warehouse where Fraser worked, down by the river. Fraser left William outside to keep watch, unlocked a man door at the side, and slid through it with no sound, reappearing a few minutes later dressed in rough breeches and a shirt that didn’t fit him, carrying a small burlap bag and two large black kerchiefs. He handed one of these to William and, folding the other diagonally, tied it round his face, covering nose and mouth.

“Is this truly necessary?” William tied on his own kerchief but felt slightly ridiculous, as though dressing up for some bizarre pantomime.

“Ye can go without if ye like,” Fraser advised him, taking a knitted wool cap out of the bag, tucking his hair up under it, and then pulling it down over his eyebrows. “I canna risk being recognized.”

“If you think the risk too great—” William began, an edge in his voice, but Fraser stopped him, gripping his arm.

“Ye’ve a claim to my help,” he said, voice low and brusque. “For any venture ye deem worthy. But I’ve a family who have a claim to my protection. I canna leave them to starve if I’m taken.”

William had no chance to reply to this; Fraser had locked the door and was already walking off, beckoning impatiently. He did think about it, though, following the Scot through the mist that rose knee-high in the streets. It had stopped raining; that was one thing in their favor.

“For any venture ye deem worthy.” Not a word about Jane’s being a whore or about her being a confessed murderess. Perhaps it was that Fraser himself was a criminal and felt some sympathy on that account.

Or maybe it’s just that he’s willing to take my word that I have to do it. And willing to take the devil of a risk to help me.

But such thoughts could do no good now, and he put them out of his mind. They hurried on, soft-footed and faceless, through the empty squares of Savannah, toward the house by the hanging tree.

“I DINNA SUPPOSE ye ken which room is hers?” Jamie murmured to William. They were loitering under the big live oak, concealed not only by its shadows but by the long beards of Spanish moss that hung from its branches and the mist that drifted under them.

“No.”

“Wait here.” Fraser disappeared in that unnerving catlike way of his. Left to his own devices and further unnerved by the silence, William thought to explore the contents of the bag Fraser had left on the ground. These proved to be several sheets of paper and a stoppered vial of what—un-stoppered—proved to be treacle.

He was still puzzling over that when Fraser was back, as suddenly as he’d disappeared.

“There’s no but one guard on the house, at the front,” he said, moving close enough to whisper into William’s ear. “And all the windows are dark, save one upstairs. There’s a single candle burning; it must be hers.”

“Why do you think that?” William whispered back, startled.

Fraser hesitated for a moment, but then said, even more quietly, “I once spent a night expecting to be hanged the next morning. I wouldna have spent it in darkness, given the choice. Come on.”

It was a two-story house and, while fairly large, simply built. Two rooms on the upper floor at the back, two at the front. The shutters of the upper windows were open, and the glow of a candle flickered in the right-hand room at the back. Fraser insisted on circling the house—at a cautious distance, darting from bush to tree to bush—to be sure of the guard’s position. The man, armed with a musket slung across his back, was on the veranda that ran across the front of the house. Judging from his build, he was young, probably younger than William. And by his posture, which was careless in the extreme, he wasn’t expecting any trouble.

“I don’t suppose they thought a whore would have any friends,” William said under his breath, getting a brief Scottish grunt in return. Fraser beckoned and led him round the back of the house.

They passed a window that likely belonged to the kitchen; there were no curtains, and he could see the faint light of a smothered hearth deep inside, just visible through the shutters. There’d be a risk that one or more slaves or servants slept in the kitchen, though—and he was pleased to see that Fraser appeared to be going on that assumption. They moved around the next corner of the house, as quietly as possible.

Fraser pressed his ear to the shutters of a large window but appeared to hear nothing. He fitted the blade of his stout knife between the shutters and, with some difficulty, levered the bolt up out of its brackets. He gestured to William to come and lean hard on the shutter, to keep the bolt from falling suddenly, and with a joint effort composed of dumb-show and frantic gestures—that would likely have seemed comic to anyone not involved in performing it—they succeeded in getting the bloody shutters open without too much racket.

The window behind was curtained—all to the good—but a casement, with a thumb latch that wouldn’t yield to Jamie’s knife. The big Scot was sweating; he pulled his cap off for a moment to wipe his brow, then put it back on, and, taking the treacle from the bag, he un-stoppered the bottle and poured some of the sticky syrup into his hand. This he smeared over a pane of the casement and, taking a sheet of paper, pasted it onto the glass.

William could make no sense of this proceeding, but Fraser drew back his arm and struck the glass a sharp buffet with his fist. It broke with no more than a small cracking noise, and the shattered pieces were removed easily, stuck to the treacled paper.

“Where did you learn that one?” William whispered, deeply impressed, and heard a small chuckle of satisfaction from behind Fraser’s mask.

“My daughter told me about it,” he whispered in reply, laying glass and paper on the ground. “She read it in a book.”

“That’s—” William stopped abruptly, and so did his heart. He’d forgotten. “Your . . . daughter. You mean—I have a sister?”

“Aye,” Fraser said briefly. “Ye’ve met her. Come on.” He reached through the hole in the glass, undid the catch, and pulled on the window frame. The window swung open, with an unexpected loud screech of unoiled hinges.

“Shit!” William said, under his breath.

Fraser had said something that William assumed was the equivalent sentiment in Gaelic, but he didn’t waste time. He shoved William back against the wall and, with a hissed “Stay there!”, faded into the night.

William plastered himself against the wall, heart hammering. He could hear rapid footsteps clattering down the wooden steps from the veranda, then muffled thumps on the damp ground.

“Who’s there?” the guard shouted, as he rounded the house. Seeing William, he shouldered his musket and took aim. And Fraser came out of the dark mist like an angry ghost, grabbed the boy by the shoulder, and laid him out with a rock slammed into the back of his skull.

“Hurry,” he said, low-voiced, jerking his chin toward the open window as he lowered the guard’s limp body to the ground. William wasted no time but heaved himself into the house, squirming across the sill to land almost soundlessly, squatting on the carpet of what must be a parlor, to judge from the dim outlines of the furniture. An unseen clock ticked accusingly, somewhere in the darkness.

Fraser hoisted himself into the open window frame and paused for a moment, listening. But there was no sound in the house save the ticking clock, and he hopped lightly down inside.

“Ye dinna ken whose house this is?” he whispered to William, looking round.

William shook his head. It must be an officer’s billet, but he had no idea who the officer might be—probably the major in charge of disciplinary matters. Presumably Campbell had lodged Jane here as an alternative to putting her in the camp’s stockade. Thoughtful of him.

His eyes had adapted quickly; there was a dark oblong a few feet away—the door. Fraser saw it, too; his hand rested on William’s back for an instant, pushing him toward it.

There was an oval lozenge of glass set into the front door, and enough light came through it to show them the painted canvas floorcloth running down the hall, its diamond pattern black in the colorless light. Near the door, a pool of shadow hid the foot of the staircase, and within seconds they were creeping up the stairs, as quickly and as quietly as two very large men in a hurry could go.

“This way.” William was in the lead; he motioned to Fraser as he turned to the left. The blood was beating in his head, and he could scarcely breathe. He wanted to tear off the clinging mask and gulp air, but not yet . . . not yet.

Jane. Had she heard the guard call out? If she was awake, she must have heard them on the stair.

The landing was windowless and very dark, but there was a faint glow of candlelight under Jane’s door—he hoped to God it was Jane’s door. Running a hand down the doorframe, he felt the knob, and his hand closed round it. It was locked, naturally—but in trying the knob, the heel of his hand brushed the key, still in the lock.

Fraser was behind him; he could hear the man’s breathing. Behind the door of the next room, someone was snoring in a reassuringly regular sort of way. So long as the guard stayed out long enough . . .

“Jane,” he whispered as loudly as he dared, putting his lips to the crack between the door and its jamb. “Jane! It’s me, William. Be quiet!”

He thought he heard a swift intake of breath from the other side of the door, though it might have been only the sound of his own blood racing in his ears. With infinite care, he pulled the door toward him and turned the key.

The candle was standing on a small bureau, its flame flickering wildly in the draft from the open door. There was a strong smell of beer; a broken bottle lay on the floor, brown glass a-glitter in the wavering light. The bed was rumpled, bedclothes hanging half off the mattress . . . Where was Jane? He whirled, expecting to see her cowering in the corner, frightened by his entrance.

He saw her hand first. She was lying on the floor by the bed, beside the broken bottle, her hand flung out, white and half open as though in supplication.

“A Dhia,” Fraser whispered behind him, and now he could smell the cut-steel reek of blood, mingled with beer.

He didn’t remember falling on his knees or lifting her up in his arms. She was heavy, limp and awkward, all the grace and heat of her gone and her cheek cold to his hand. Only her hair was still Jane, shining in the candlelight, soft against his mouth.

“Here, a bhalaich.” A hand touched his shoulder, and he turned without thought.

Fraser had pulled the mask down around his neck, and his face was serious, intent. “We havena much time,” he said softly.

They didn’t speak. They straightened the bedclothes in silence, put a clean quilt over the worst of the blood, and laid her on it. William wetted his kerchief from the ewer and cleaned the spatters of blood from her face and hands. He hesitated for a moment, then tore the kerchief violently in two and bandaged her torn wrists, then crossed her hands on her breast.

Jamie Fraser was by him then, with a fugitive gleam from the blade of his knife.

“For her sister,” he said, and, bending, cut a lock of the shining chestnut hair. He put this into the pocket of the ragged breeches and went quietly out. William heard the brief creak of his footsteps on the stair and understood that he had been left to make his farewell in privacy.

He looked upon her face by candlelight for the first time, and the last. He felt emptied, hollow as a gutted deer. With no notion what to say, he touched one black-bound hand and spoke the truth, in a voice too low for any but the dead to hear.

“I wanted to save you, Jane. Forgive me.”

134 LAST RITES

JAMIE CAME HOME just before dawn, white-faced and chilled to the bone. I wasn’t asleep. I hadn’t slept since he’d left with William, and when I heard his step on the creaking stairs, I scooped hot water from the ever-simmering cauldron into the wooden mug I had ready, half filled with cheap whisky and a spoonful of honey. I’d thought he’d need it, but I hadn’t had any idea how much.

“The lassie had cut her wrists wi’ a broken bottle,” he said, crouching on a stool by the fire, a quilt draped over his shoulders and the warm mug cupped between his big hands. He couldn’t stop shivering.

“God rest her soul and forgive her the sin of despair.” He closed his eyes and shook his head violently, as though to dispel his memory of what he’d seen in that candlelit room. “Oh, Jesus, my poor lad.”

I’d made him go to bed and crawled in to warm him with my body, but I hadn’t slept then, either. I didn’t feel the need of it. There were things that would need to be done when the day came; I could feel them waiting, a patient throng. William. The dead girl. And Jamie had said something about the girl’s young sister. . . . But for the moment, time was still, balanced on the cusp of night. I lay beside Jamie and listened to him breathe. For the moment, that was enough.

BUT THE SUN rose, as it always did.

I was stirring the breakfast porridge when William appeared, bringing with him a mud-smeared young girl who looked like a lightning-blasted tree. William didn’t look any better but seemed less likely to fall to bits.

“This is Frances,” he said, in a low, hoarse voice, putting a large paw on her shoulder. “These are Mr. and Mrs. Fraser, Fanny.” She was so fine-boned that I half-expected her to stagger under the weight of his hand, but she didn’t. After a stunned moment, she realized the introduction and gave a jerky nod.

“Sit down, sweetheart,” I said, smiling at her. “The porridge is almost ready, and there’s toasted bread with honey.”

She stared at me, blinking dully. Her eyes were red and swollen, her hair lank under a tattered cap. I thought she was so shocked that she was unable to comprehend anything. William looked as though someone had hit him on the head, stunning him like an ox bound for slaughter. I looked uncertainly at Jamie, not knowing what to do for either of them. He glanced from one to the other, then rose and quietly took the girl into his arms.

“There, a nighean,” he said quietly, patting her back. His eyes met Willie’s and I saw something pass between them—a question asked and answered. Jamie nodded. “I’ll care for her,” he said.

“Thank you. She . . . Jane,” William said with difficulty. “I want to—to bury her. Decently. But I think I can’t . . . claim her.”

“Aye,” Jamie said. “We’ll see to it. Go and do whatever ye need to do. Come back when ye can.”

William stood a moment longer, red-rimmed eyes fixed on the girl’s back, then gave me an abrupt bow and left. At the sound of his departing footsteps, Frances gave a small, despairing howl, like an orphaned puppy. Jamie wrapped her closer in his arms, holding her snug against his chest.

“It will be all right, a nighean,” he said softly, though his eyes were fixed on the door through which William had gone. “Ye’re at home now.”

I DIDN’T REALIZE that Fanny was tongue-tied, until I took her to see Colonel Campbell. She hadn’t spoken at all until that point, merely shaking her head yes or no, making small motions of refusal or gratitude.

“You kilt my thither!” she said loudly, when Campbell rose from his desk to greet us. He blinked and sat back down.

“I doubt it,” he said, eyeing her warily. She wasn’t crying, but her face was blotched and swollen, as if someone had slapped her repeatedly. She stood very straight, though, small fists clenched, and glared at him. He looked at me. I shrugged slightly.

“The’th dead,” Fanny said. “The wath your prithoner!”

Campbell steepled his hands and cleared his throat.

“May I ask who you are, child? And who your sister is?”

“Her name is Frances Pocock,” I put in hastily. “Her sister was Jane Pocock, who I understand . . . died last night, while in your custody. She would like to claim her sister’s body, for burial.”

Campbell gave me a bleak look.

“I see that news travels fast. And you are, madam?”

“A friend of the family,” I said, as firmly as possible. “My name is Mrs. James Fraser.”

His face shifted a little; he’d heard the name. That probably wasn’t a good thing.

“Mrs. Fraser,” he said slowly. “I’ve heard of you. You dispense pox cures to the city’s whores, do you not?”

“Among . . . other things, yes,” I said, rather taken aback by this description of my medical practice. Still, it seemed to offer him a logical connection between Fanny and me, for he glanced from one of us to the other, nodding to himself.

“Well,” he said slowly. “I don’t know where the—er—the body has been—”

“Don’t oo call my thither ‘the body’!” Fanny shouted. “Her name ith Jane!”

Commanders, as a rule, aren’t used to being shouted at, and Campbell appeared to be no exception. His square face flushed and he put his hands flat on the desk, preparing to rise. Before he got the seat of his breeches clear of his chair, though, his aide came in and coughed discreetly.

“I beg pardon, sir; Lieutenant Colonel Lord John Grey wishes to see you.”

“Does he, indeed.” This didn’t seem to be welcome news to Campbell, but it was to me.

“You’re clearly busy, sir,” I said quickly, seizing Fanny by the arm. “We’ll come back later.” And without waiting to be dismissed, I more or less dragged her out of the office.

Sure enough, John was standing in the anteroom, in full uniform. His face was calmly pleasant and I saw that he was in diplomatic mode, but his expression altered the instant he saw me.

“What are you doing here?” he blurted. “And”—glancing at Fanny—“who the devil is this?”

“Do you know about Jane?” I said, grabbing him by the sleeve. “What happened to her last night?”

“Yes, I—”

“We want to claim her body, for burial. Can you help?”

He detached my hand, courteously, and brushed his sleeve.

“I can, yes. I’m here upon the same errand. I’ll send word—”

“We’ll wait for you,” I said hastily, seeing the aide frown in my direction. “Outside. Come, Fanny!”

Outside, we found a place to wait on an ornamental bench set in the formal front garden. Even in winter, it was a pleasant spot, with several palmetto trees popping out of the shrubbery like so many Japanese parasols, and even the presence of a number of soldiers coming and going didn’t much impair the sense of gracious peace. Fanny, though, was in no mood for peace.

“Who wath that?” she demanded, twisting to look back at the house. “What doth he want wif Jane?”

“Ah . . . that’s William’s father,” I said carefully. “Lord John Grey is his name. I imagine William asked him to come.”

Fanny blinked for a moment, then turned a remarkably penetrating pair of brown eyes on me, red-rimmed and bloodshot but decidedly intelligent.

“He doethn’t wook wike Wiyum,” she said. “Mither Fwather wooks a wot wike Wiyum.”

I looked back at her for a moment.

“Really?” I said. “I hadn’t noticed that. Do you mind not talking for a bit, Fanny? I need to think.”

JOHN CAME OUT about ten minutes later. He paused on the steps, looking around, and I waved. He came down to where we sat and at once bowed very formally to Fanny.

“Your servant, Miss Frances,” he said. “I understand from Colonel Campbell that you are the sister of Miss Pocock; please allow me to offer my deepest condolences.”

He spoke very simply and honestly, and Fanny’s eyes welled up with tears.

“Can I have huh?” she said softly. “Pwease?”

Heedless of his immaculate breeches, he knelt on the ground in front of her and took her hand in his.

“Yes, sweetheart,” he said, just as softly. “Of course you can.” He patted her hand. “Will you wait here, just for a moment, while I speak with Mrs. Fraser?” He stood and, as an afterthought, pulled a large snowy handkerchief out of his sleeve and handed it to her with another small bow.

“Poor child,” he said, taking my hand and tucking it into the curve of his elbow. “Or children—the other girl can’t have been more than seventeen.” We walked for a few paces, down a small brick walk between empty flower beds, until we were safely out of earshot of both street and house. “I take it that William sought Jamie’s help. I thought he might, though I hoped he wouldn’t, for both their sakes.”

His face was shadowed, and there were blue smudges under his eyes; evidently he’d had a disturbed night, too.

“Where is William, do you know?” I asked.

“I don’t. He said he had an errand outside the city but would return tonight.” He glanced over his shoulder at the house. “I’ve arranged for . . . Jane . . . to be appropriately tended. She cannot be buried in a churchyard, of course—”

“Of course,” I murmured, angry at the thought. He noticed but cleared his throat and went on.

“I know a family with a small private cemetery. I believe I can make arrangement for a quiet burial. Quickly, of course; tomorrow, very early?”

I nodded, getting a grip on myself. It wasn’t his fault.

“You’ve been very good,” I said. Worry and the lack of sleep were catching up with me; things seemed oddly non-dimensional, as though trees and people and garden furniture were merely pasted onto a painted backdrop. I shook my head to clear it, though; there were important things to be said.

“I have to tell you something,” I said. “I wish I didn’t, but there it is. Ezekiel Richardson came to my surgery the other day.”

“The devil he did.” John had stiffened at the name. “He’s not with the army here, surely? I would have—”

“Yes, but not with your army.” I told him, as briefly as I could, what Richardson now was—or, rather, was revealed to be; God only knew how long he’d been a Rebel spy—and what his intentions were toward Hal and the Grey family in general.

John listened, his face quietly intent, though the corner of his mouth twitched when I described Richardson’s plan to influence Hal’s political actions.

“Yes, I know,” I said dryly, seeing that. “I don’t suppose he’s ever actually met Hal. But the important thing . . .” I hesitated, but he had to know.

“He knows about you,” I said. “What you . . . are. I mean that you—”

“What I am,” he repeated, expressionless. His eyes had been fastened on my face to this point; now he looked away. “I see.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

John was a distinguished soldier and an honorable gentleman, member of an ancient noble family. He was also a homosexual, in a time when that particular attribute was a capital offense. For that knowledge to be in the hands of a man who meant ill to him and his family . . . I wasn’t under any illusions about what I’d just done—with three words, I’d shown him that he was standing on a very narrow tightrope over a very deep pit, with Richardson holding the end of the rope.

“I’m sorry, John,” I said, very softly. I touched his arm, and he laid his hand briefly over mine, squeezed it gently, and smiled.

“Thank you.” He stared at the brick paving under his feet for a moment, then looked up. “Do you know how he came by the—information?” He spoke calmly, but a nerve was jumping just under his injured eye, a tiny twitch. I wanted to put my finger on it, still it. But there was nothing I could do.

“No.” I looked back at the distant bench. Fanny was still there, a small, desolate figure, head bent. I turned my gaze back to John; his brow was creased, thinking.

“One last thing. Hal’s daughter-in-law, the young woman with the odd name—”

“Amaranthus,” he interrupted, and smiled wryly. “Yes, what about her? Don’t tell me that Ezekiel Richardson invented her for his own purposes.”

“I wouldn’t put it past him, but probably not.” I told him what I’d learned from Mr. Jameson.

“I told William day before yesterday,” I said. “But what with everything”—I waved a hand, encompassing Fanny, Jane, Colonel Campbell, and a few other things—“I doubt he’s had time to go to Saperville to look for her. You don’t suppose that’s the errand he spoke of, do you?” I asked, struck by the thought.

“God knows.” He rubbed a hand over his face, then straightened. “I must go. I’ll have to tell Hal a few things. Not . . . that, I don’t think,” he said, seeing my face. “But obviously there are things he needs to know, and know quickly. God bless you, my dear. I’ll send word about tomorrow.” He took my hand, kissed it very gently, and let go.

I watched him walk away, his back very straight, the scarlet of his coat bright as blood against the grays and faded greens of the winter garden.

WE BURIED JANE on the morning of a dull, cold day. The sky was sodden with low gray clouds, and a raw wind blew in from the sea. It was a small private burying ground, belonging to a large house that stood outside the city.

All of us came with Fanny: Rachel and Ian, Jenny, Fergus and Marsali—even the girls and Germain. I worried a bit; they couldn’t help but feel the echoes of Henri-Christian’s death. But death was a fact of life and a common one, and while they stood solemn and pale amongst the adults, they were composed. Fanny was not so much composed as completely numb, I thought; she’d wept all the tears her small body could hold and was white and stiff as a bleached stick.

John came, dressed in his uniform (in case anyone became inquisitive and tried to disturb us, he explained to me in an undertone). The coffin-maker had had only adult coffins to hand; Jane’s shrouded body looked so like a chrysalis, I half-expected to hear a dry rattling sound when the men picked it up. Fanny had declined to look upon her sister’s face one last time, and I thought that was as well.

There was no priest or minister; she was a suicide, and this was ground hallowed only by respect. When the last of the dirt had been shoveled in, we stood quiet, waiting, the harsh wind flurrying our hair and garments.

Jamie took a deep breath and a step to the head of the grave. He spoke the Gaelic prayer called the Death Dirge, but in English, for the sake of Fanny and Lord John.

Thou goest home this night to thy home of winter,

To thy home of autumn, of spring, and of summer;

Thou goest home this night to thy perpetual home,

To thine eternal bed, to thine eternal slumber.

Sleep thou, sleep, and away with thy sorrow,

Sleep thou, sleep, and away with thy sorrow,

Sleep thou, sleep, and away with thy sorrow,

Sleep, thou beloved, in the Rock of the fold.

The shade of death lies upon thy face, beloved,

But the Jesus of grace has His hand round about thee;

In nearness to the Trinity farewell to thy pains,

Christ stands before thee and peace is in His mind.

Jenny, Ian, Fergus, and Marsali joined in, murmuring the final verse with him.

Sleep, O sleep in the calm of all calm,

Sleep, O sleep in the guidance of guidance,

Sleep, O sleep in the love of all loves,

Sleep, O beloved, in the Lord of life,

Sleep, O beloved, in the God of life!

It wasn’t until we turned to go that I saw William. He was standing just outside the wrought-iron fence that enclosed the burying ground, tall and somber in a dark cloak, the wind stirring the dark tail of his hair. He was holding the reins of a very large mare with a back as broad as a barn door. As I came out of the burying ground, holding Fanny’s hand, he came toward us, the horse obligingly following him.

“This is Miranda,” he said to Fanny. His face was white and carved with grief, but his voice was steady. “She’s yours now. You’ll need her.” He took Fanny’s limp hand, put the reins into it, and closed her fingers over them. Then he looked at me, wisps of hair blowing across his face. “Will you look after her, Mother Claire?”

“Of course we will,” I said, my throat tight. “Where are you going, William?”

He smiled then, very faintly.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, and walked away.

Fanny was staring up at Miranda in complete incomprehension. I gently took the reins from her, patted the horse’s jaw, and turned to find Jamie. He was just inside the fence, talking with Marsali; the others had come out already and were standing in a cold little cluster, Ian and Fergus talking with Lord John, while Jenny shepherded the children—all of whom were staring at Fanny.

Jamie was frowning a little, but at last he nodded and, bending forward, kissed Marsali on the forehead and came out. He raised one eyebrow when he saw Miranda, and I explained.

“Aye, well,” he said, with a glance at Fanny. “What’s one more?” There was an odd tone to his voice, and I looked at him in inquiry.

“Marsali asked me if we’d take Germain,” he said, drawing Fanny in against him in a sheltering hug, as if this were a common thing.

“Really?” I glanced over my shoulder at the rest of the family. “Why?” We had all discussed the matter at some length the night before and concluded that we wouldn’t wait until spring to leave Savannah. With the city occupied, there was no chance of Fergus and Marsali resuming publication of their newspaper, and with Colonel Richardson lurking behind the scenes, the place was beginning to seem distinctly dangerous.

We would all travel together to Charleston, get Fergus and Marsali established there, and then the rest of us would go on north to Wilmington, where we would begin to equip ourselves for the trip into the mountains when the snows began to melt in March.

“Ye told them, Sassenach,” Jamie said, scratching Miranda’s forelock with his free hand. “What the war would be, and how long it would last. Germain’s of an age when he’ll be out and in the thick o’ things. Marsali’s worrit that he’ll come to harm, loose in a city where the sorts of things happen that do happen in wartime. God knows the mountains may be no safer”—he grimaced, obviously recalling a few incidents that had taken place there—“but on the whole, he’s likely better off not being in a place where he could be conscripted by the militia or pressed into the British navy.”

I looked down the gravel path that led to the house; Germain had drifted away from his mother, grandmother, Rachel, and his sisters and joined Ian and Fergus in conversation with Lord John.

“Aye, he kens he’s a man,” Jamie said dryly, following the direction of my gaze. “Come along, a leannan,” he said to Fanny. “It’s time we all had breakfast.”

135 AMARANTHUS

Saperville

January 15, 1779

SAPERVILLE WAS DIFFICULT to find but, once found, small enough that it was a matter of only three inquiries to discover the residence of a widow named Grey.

“Over there.” Hal reined up, nodding toward a house that stood a hundred yards back from the road in the shade of an enormous magnolia tree. He was being casual, but John could see the muscle twitching in his brother’s jaw.

“Well . . . I suppose we just go up and knock, then.” He turned his own horse’s head in at the rutted lane, taking stock of the place as they walked toward it. It was a rather shabby house, the front veranda sagging at one corner where its foundation had given way, and half its few windows boarded over. Still, the place was occupied; the chimney was smoking fitfully, in a way suggesting that it hadn’t been recently swept.

The door was opened to them by a slattern. A white woman, but one clothed in a stained wrapper and felt slippers, with wary eyes and a sourly downturned mouth whose corners showed the stains of tobacco chewing.

“Is Mrs. Grey at home?” Hal inquired politely.

“Nobody o’ that name here,” the woman said, and made to shut the door, this action being prevented by Hal’s boot.

“We were directed to this address, madam,” Hal said, the politeness diminishing markedly. “Be so good as to inform Mrs. Grey that she has visitors, please.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed.

“And who in tarnation are you, Mr. Fancy Pants?”

John’s estimation of the woman’s nerve rose considerably at this, but he thought he ought to intervene before Hal started wheezing.

“This is His Grace the Duke of Pardloe, madam,” he said, with maximum politeness. Her face altered at once, though not for the better. Her jaw hardened, but a predatory gleam came into her eye.

“Elle connaît votre nom,” he said to Hal. She knows your name.

“I know that,” his brother snapped. “Madam—”

Whatever he would have said was interrupted by the sudden shrieking of a baby, somewhere upstairs.

“I beg your pardon, madam,” Lord John said politely to the slattern, and, seizing her by the elbows, walked her backward into the house, whirled her round, and pushed her into the kitchen. There was a pantry, and he shoved her into this cubbyhole, slammed the door upon her, and, grabbing a bread knife from the table, thrust it through the hasp of the latch as a makeshift bolt.

Hal had meanwhile disappeared upstairs, making enough noise for a company of cavalry. John galloped after him, and by the time he reached the head of the stair, his brother was busily engaged in trying to break down the door of a room from which came the siren shrieks of a baby and the even louder cries of what was probably the baby’s mother.

It was a good, solid door; Hal flung himself at it shoulder-first and rebounded as though made of India rubber. Barely pausing, he raised his foot and slammed the flat of his boot sole against the panel, which obligingly splintered but didn’t break inward.

Wiping his face on his sleeve, he eyed the door and, catching the flicker of movement through the splintered paneling, called out, “Young woman! We have come to rescue you! Stand well away from the door!

“Pistol, please,” he said, turning to John with his hand out.

“I’ll do it,” John said, resigned. “You haven’t any practice with doorknobs.”

Whereupon, with an air of assumed casualness, he drew the pistol from his belt, aimed carefully, and shot the doorknob to pieces. The boom of the gun evidently startled the room’s inhabitants, for a dead silence fell. He gently pushed the stem of the shattered knob through the door; the remnants of the knob thunked to the floor on the other side, and he pushed the door cautiously open.

Hal, nodding his thanks, stepped forward through the wisps of smoke.

It was a small room, rather grimy, and furnished with no more than a bedstead, dresser, stool, and washstand. The stool was particularly noticeable, as it was being brandished by a wild-eyed young woman, clutching a baby to her breast with her other hand.

An ammoniac reek came from a basket in the corner, piled with dirty clouts; a folded quilt in a pulled-out drawer showed where the baby had been sleeping, and the young woman was less kempt than her mother would have liked to see, her cap askew and her pinny stained. Hal disregarded all matters of circumstance and bowed to her.

“Do I address Miss Amaranthus Cowden?” he said politely. “Or is it Mrs. Grey?”

John gave his brother a disparaging look and turned a cordial smile on the young woman.

“Viscountess Grey,” he said, and made a leg in courtly style. “Your most humble servant, Lady Grey.”

The young woman looked wildly from one man to the other, stool still raised, clearly unable to make head or tail of this invasion, and finally settled on John as the best—if still dubious—source of information.

“Who are you?” she asked, pressing her back against the wall. “Hush, darling.” For the baby, recovered from shock, had decided to grizzle.

John cleared his throat.

“Well . . . this is Harold, Duke of Pardloe, and I am his brother, Lord John Grey. If our information is correct, I believe we are, respectively, your father-in-law and your uncle by marriage. And, after all,” he remarked, turning to Hal, “how many people in the colonies do you think there could possibly be named Amaranthus Cowden?”

“She hasn’t yet said she is Amaranthus Cowden,” Hal pointed out. He did, however, smile at the young woman, who reacted as most women did, staring at him with her mouth slightly open.

“May I?” John reached forward and took the stool gently from her unresisting hand, setting it on the floor and gesturing her to take a seat. “What sort of name is Amaranthus, may I ask?”

She swallowed, blinked, and sat down, clutching the baby.

“It’s a flower,” she said, sounding rather dazed. “My grandfather’s a botanist. It could have been worse,” she added more sharply, seeing John smile. “It might have been Ampelopsis or Petunia.”

“Amaranthus is a very beautiful name, my dear—if I may call you so?” Hal said, with grave courtesy. He wiggled a forefinger at the baby, who had stopped grizzling and was staring at him warily. Hal pulled his officer’s gorget off over his head and dangled the shiny object, close enough for the child to grab—which he did.

“It’s too large to choke him,” Hal assured Amaranthus. “His father—and his father’s brothers—all teethed on it. So did I, come to that.” He smiled at her again. She was still white-faced but gave him a wary nod in response.

“What is the little fellow’s name, my dear?” John asked.

“Trevor,” she said, taking a firmer hold on the child, now completely engrossed in trying to get the demilune gorget—half the size of his head—into his mouth. “Trevor Grey.” She looked back and forth between the Grey brothers, a frown puckering her brows. Then she lifted her chin and said, enunciating clearly, “Trevor . . . Wattiswade . . . Grey. Your Grace.”

“So you are Ben’s wife.” A little of the tension left Hal’s shoulders. “Do you know where Ben is, my dear?”

Her face went stiff, and she clutched the baby tighter.

“Benjamin is dead, Your Grace,” she said. “But this is his son, and if you don’t mind . . . we should quite like to come with you.”

136 UNFINISHED BUSINESS

WILLIAM SHOVED his way through the crowds in the City Market, oblivious to the complaints of those rebounding from his impact.

He knew where he was going and what he meant to do when he got there. It was the only thing left to do before leaving Savannah. After that . . . it didn’t matter.

His head throbbed like an inflamed boil. Everything throbbed. His hand—he’d probably broken something, but he didn’t care. His heart, pounding and sore inside his chest. He hadn’t slept since they’d buried Jane; would likely never sleep again and didn’t care.

He remembered where the warehouse was. The place was almost empty; doubtless the soldiers had taken everything the owner hadn’t had time to move out of reach. Three men were lounging by the far wall, sitting on the few remaining casks of salt fish and smoking their pipes; the smell of tobacco reached him, a small comfort in the echoing cold fishiness of the building.

“James Fraser?” he said to one of the loungers, and the man pointed with the stem of his pipe toward a small office, a sort of shed attached to the far wall of the warehouse.

The door was open; Fraser was seated at a table covered with papers, writing something by the light that fell through a tiny barred window behind him. He looked up at the sound of William’s footsteps and, seeing him, put down his quill and rose slowly to his feet. William came forward, facing him across the table.

“I have come to take my farewell,” William said, very formally. His voice was less firm than he liked, and he cleared his throat hard.

“Aye? Where is it that ye mean to go?” Fraser was wearing his plaid, the faded colors muted further by the dimness of the light, but what light there was sparked suddenly from his hair as he moved his head.

“I don’t know,” William said, gruff. “It doesn’t matter.” He took a deep breath. “I—wished to thank you. For what you did. Even though—” His throat closed tight; try as he might, he couldn’t keep Jane’s small white hand out of his thoughts.

Fraser made a slight dismissive motion and said softly, “God rest her, poor wee lass.”

“Even so,” William said, and cleared his throat again. “But there is one further favor that I wished to ask of you.”

Fraser’s head came up; he looked surprised but nodded.

“Aye, of course,” he said. “If I can.”

William turned and pulled the door shut, then turned to face the man again.

“Tell me how I came to be.”

The whites of Fraser’s eyes flashed in brief astonishment, then disappeared as his eyes narrowed.

“I want to know what happened,” William said. “When you lay with my mother. What happened that night? If it was night,” he added, and then felt foolish for doing so.

Fraser eyed him for a moment.

“Ye want to tell me what it was like, the first time ye lay with a woman?”

William felt the blood rush into his head, but before he could speak, the Scot went on.

“Aye, exactly. A decent man doesna speak of such things. Ye dinna tell your friends such things, do ye? No, of course not. So much less would ye tell your . . . father, or a father his . . .”

The hesitation before “father” was brief, but William caught it, no trouble. Fraser’s mouth was firm, though, and his eyes direct.

“I wouldna tell ye, no matter who ye were. But being who ye are—”

“Being who I am, I think I have a right to know!”

Fraser looked at him for a moment, expressionless. He closed his eyes for an instant and sighed. Then opened them and drew himself up, straightening his shoulders.

“No, ye haven’t. But that’s not what ye want to know, in any case,” he said. “Ye want to know, did I force your mother. I did not. Ye want to know, did I love your mother. I did not.”

William let that lie there for a moment, controlling his breathing ’til he was sure his voice would be steady.

“Did she love you?” It would have been easy to love him. The thought came to him unbidden—and unwelcome—but with it, his own memories of Mac the groom. Something he shared with his mother.

Fraser’s eyes were cast down, watching a trail of tiny ants running along the scuffed floorboards.

“She was verra young,” he said softly. “I was twice her age. It was my fault.”

There was a brief silence, broken only by their breathing and the distant shouts of men working on the river.

“I’ve seen the portraits,” William said abruptly. “Of my—of the eighth earl. Her husband. Have you?”

Fraser’s mouth twisted a little, but he shook his head.

“You know, though—knew. He was fifty years older than she was.”

Fraser’s maimed hand twitched, fingers tapping lightly against his thigh. Yes, he’d known. How could he not have known? He dipped his head, not quite a nod.

“I’m not stupid, you know,” William said, louder than he’d intended.

“Didna think ye were,” Fraser muttered, but didn’t look at him.

“I can count,” William went on, through his teeth. “You lay with her just before her wedding. Or was it just after?”

That went home; Fraser’s head jerked up and there was a flash of dark-blue anger.

“I wouldna deceive another man in his marriage. Believe that of me, at least.”

Oddly enough, he did. And in spite of the anger he still struggled to keep in check, he began to think he perhaps understood how it might have been.

“She was reckless.” He made it a statement, not a question, and saw Fraser blink. It wasn’t a nod, but he thought it was acknowledgment and went on, more confident.

“Everyone says that—everyone who knew her. She was reckless, beautiful, careless . . . she took chances . . .”

“She had courage.” It was said softly, the words dropped like pebbles in water, and the ripples spread through the tiny room. Fraser was still looking straight at him. “Did they tell ye that, then? Her family, the folk who kent her?”

“No,” William said, and felt the word sharp as a stone in his throat. For just an instant, he’d seen her in those words. He’d seen her, and the knowledge of the immensity of his loss struck through his anger like a lightning bolt. He drove his fist into the table, striking it once, twice, hammering it ’til the wood shook and the legs juddered over the floor, papers flying and the inkwell falling over.

He stopped as suddenly as he’d started, and the racket ceased.

“Are you sorry?” he said, and made no effort to keep his voice from shaking. “Are you sorry for it, damn you?”

Fraser had turned away; now he turned sharply to face William but didn’t speak at once. When he did, his voice was low and firm.

“She died because of it, and I shall sorrow for her death and do penance for my part in it until my own dying day. But—” He compressed his lips for an instant, and then, too fast for William to back away, came round the table and, raising his hand, cupped William’s cheek, the touch light and fierce.

“No,” he whispered. “No! I am not sorry.” Then he whirled on his heel, threw open the door, and was gone, kilt flying.