“Really?” I said politely. Cheating at cards was another of his specialties, but one I tried to discourage his using, convinced that it would get him killed one day. No wonder he hadn’t told me about this particular adventure.
“So he picked up Alice, wrapped her in his plaid, and brought her home—left her at the door.”
She looked at Jamie with grudging admiration.
“So. Have you come to claim a debt, then? You have my thanks, for what they may be worth.”
“A great deal, madam,” he said quietly. “But no. We’ve come to try to save your girls from worse than drunken raparees.”
Her thin brows arched high in question.
“From the pox,” I said baldly. Her mouth fell open.
For all her relative youth, Mrs. Sylvie was a hard customer, and no easy sell. While fear of the pox was a constant factor in the life of a whore, talk of spirochetes cut no ice with her, and my proposition that I inject her staff—there were only three girls, it appeared—with penicillin met with a firm refusal.
Jamie allowed the wrangling to go on until it became clear we had reached a stone wall. Then he came in on a different tack.
“My wife isna proposing such a course only from the goodness of her heart, ken?” he said. By now, we had been invited to sit, in a neat little parlor adorned with gingham curtains, and he leaned forward gingerly, so as not to strain the joints of the delicate chair he was sitting on.
“The son of a friend came to my wife, saying he’d contracted the syphilis from a whore in Hillsboro. She saw the sore; there is no question but that the lad is poxed. He panicked, though, before she was able to treat him, and ran. We have been looking for him ever since—and heard just yesterday that he had been seen here, in your establishment.”
Mrs. Sylvie lost control of her face for an instant. It was back in a moment, but there was no mistaking the look of horror.
“Who?” she said hoarsely. “A Scotch lad? What did he look like?”
Jamie exchanged a brief, quizzical glance with me, and described Manfred McGillivray. By the time he had finished, the young madam’s face was white as a sheet.
“I had him,” she said. “Twice. Oh, Jesus.” She took a couple of deep breaths, though, and rallied.
“He was clean, though! I made him show me—I always do.”
I explained that while the chancre healed, the disease remained in the blood, only to emerge later. After all, had she not known of whores who contracted syphilis, without any exhibition of a previous sore?
“Yes, of course—but they can’t have taken proper care,” she said, jaw set stubbornly. “I always do, and my girls, too. I insist upon it.”
I could see denial setting in. Rather than admit she might be harboring a deadly infection, she would insist it was not possible, and within moments would have talked herself into believing it and would throw us out.
Jamie could see it, too.
“Mrs. Sylvie,” he said, interrupting her flow of justifications. She looked at him, blinking.
“Have ye a deck of cards in the house?”
“What? I—yes, of course.”
“Bring them, then,” he said with a smile. “Gleek, loo, or brag, your choice.”
She gave him a long, hard look, her mouth pressed tight. Then it relaxed a little.
“Honest cards?” she asked, and a small gleam showed in her eye. “And for what stakes?”
“Honest cards,” he assured her. “If I win, my wife injects the lot of ye.”
“And if you lose?”
“A cask of my best whisky.”
She hesitated a moment longer, eyeing him narrowly, estimating the odds. There was still a blob of tar in his hair, and feathers on his coat, but his eyes were deep blue and guileless. She sighed, and put out a hand.
“Done,” she said.
“DID YOU CHEAT?” I asked, grasping his arm to keep from stumbling. It was well after dark by now, and the streets of Cross Creek were not lighted, save by starlight.
“Didna have to,” he said, and yawned hugely. “She may be a good whore, but she’s no hand at cards. She should have chosen loo; that’s mostly luck, while brag takes skill. Easier to cheat at loo, though,” he added, blinking.
“What, exactly, constitutes a good whore?” I asked curiously. I had never considered the question of qualifications anent that profession, but supposed there must be some, beyond possession of the requisite anatomy and a willingness to make it available.
He laughed at that, but scratched his head, considering.
“Well, it helps if she has a genuine liking for men, but doesna take them verra serious. And if she likes to go to bed, that’s as well, too. Ouch.” I had stepped on a rock, and tightening my grip on his arm, had got him on the patch of skin burned by tar earlier in the day.
“Oh, sorry. Is it bad? I have a bit of balm I can put on it, when we get to the inn.”
“Och, no. Just blisters; it will bide.” He rubbed his arm gingerly, but shrugged off the discomfort, and taking me by the elbow, led me round the corner, toward the main street. We had decided earlier that since we might be late, we would stay at McLanahan’s King’s Inn, rather than make the long drive back to River Run.
The smell of hot tar still permeated this end of town, and the evening breeze swirled feathers into small drifts at the side of the road; now and then, a down feather floated past my ear like a slow-moving moth.
“I wonder, are they still picking the feathers off Neil Forbes?” Jamie said, a grin in his voice.
“Maybe his wife will just put a bolster cover on him and use him as a pillow,” I suggested. “No, wait, he hasn’t got a wife. They’ll have to—”
“Call him a rooster, and put him out in the yard to serve the hens,” Jamie suggested, giggling. “He’s a fine cock-a-doodle, if no much in the way of a cock.”
He wasn’t drunk—we had drunk weak coffee with Mrs. Sylvie, after the injections—but he was desperately tired; we both were, and suddenly in the state of exhaustion where the lamest joke seems immensely funny, and we staggered, bumping together and laughing at worse and worse jokes until our eyes teared.
“What’s that?” Jamie said suddenly, drawing a deep, startled breath through his nose. “What’s burning?”
Something substantial; there was a glow in the sky, visible over the roofs of the nearby houses, and the sharp scent of burning wood suddenly overlaid the thicker smell of hot tar. Jamie ran toward the corner of the street, with me hot on his heels.
It was Mr. Simms’s print shop; well ablaze. Evidently his political enemies, balked of their prey, had decided to vent their animosity on his premises.
A knot of men was milling in the street, much as they had earlier in the day. Again, there were calls of “Tory!” and a few were brandishing torches. More men were running down the street toward the scene of the fire, shouting. I caught a bellow of “Goddamn Whigs!” and then the two groups collided in a flurry of shoving and punching.
Jamie grabbed my arm and propelled me back the way we had come, out of sight around the corner. My heart was pounding, and I was short of breath; we ducked under a tree and stood panting.
“Well,” I said, after a short silence, filled with the shouts of the riot, “I suppose Fergus will have to find a different occupation. There’s an apothecary’s shop going cheap, I know.”
Jamie made a small sound, not quite a laugh.
“He’d do better to go into partnership wi’ Mrs. Sylvie,” he said. “There’s a business not subject to politics. Come on, Sassenach—we’ll go the long way round.”
When at length we reached the inn, we found Young Ian fidgeting on the porch, watching out for us.
“Where in the name of Bride have you been?” he demanded severely, in a manner that made me think suddenly of his mother. “We’ve been combin’ the town for ye, Uncle Jamie, and Fergus sure ye’d been caught up in the collieshangie yonder and maimed or killed.” He nodded toward the print shop; the blaze was beginning to die, though there was still enough light from it to see his face, set in a disapproving frown.
“We’ve been doing good deeds,” Jamie assured him piously. “Visiting the sick, as Christ commands us.”
“Oh, aye?” Ian responded, with considerable cynicism. “He said ye should visit those in prison, too. Too bad ye didna start wi’ that.”
“What? Why?”
“Yon bugger Donner’s escaped, that’s for why,” Ian informed him, seeming to take a grim pleasure in imparting bad news. “During the fight this afternoon. The gaoler came to join in the fun, and left the door on the latch; the bugger just walked out and awa’.”
Jamie inhaled deeply, then let his breath out slowly, coughing slightly from the smoke.
“Aye, well,” he said. “So we’re down by one print shop and one thief—but four whores to the good. D’ye think that a fair exchange, Sassenach?”
“Whores?” Ian exclaimed, startled. “What whores?”
“Mrs. Sylvie’s,” I said, peering at him. He looked shifty, though perhaps it was only the light. “Ian! You didn’t!”
“Well, of course he did, Sassenach,” Jamie said, resigned. “Look at him.” A guilty expression was spreading over Ian’s features like an oil slick on water, easy to make out, even by the flickering, ruddy light of the dying fire.
“I found out about Manfred,” Ian offered hastily. “He went downriver, meaning to find a ship in Wilmington.”
“Yes, we found that out, too,” I said a little testily. “Who was it? Mrs. Sylvie or one of the girls?”
His large Adam’s apple bobbed nervously.
“Mrs. Sylvie,” he said in a low voice.
“Right,” I said. “Fortunately, I have some penicillin left—and a nice, dull syringe. Inside with you, Ian, you abandoned wretch, and down with your breeks.”
Mrs. McLanahan, emerging onto the porch to inquire whether we would like a bit of late supper, overheard this and gave me a startled look, but I was well past caring.
Sometime later, we lay at last in the haven of a clean bed, safe from the upheavals and turmoils of the day. I had pried the window open, and the faintest of breezes disturbed the heaviness of the thick, hot air. Several soft gray flecks drifted in, feathers or bits of ash, spiraling like snowflakes toward the floor.
Jamie’s arm lay across me, and I could make out the soft, glaucous shapes of the blisters that covered most of his forearm. The air was harsh with burning, but the smell of tar lay like an abiding threat beneath. The men who had burned Simms’s shop—and come so close to burning Simms, and likely Jamie, as well—were rebels in the making, men who would be called patriots.
“I can hear ye thinking, Sassenach,” he said. He sounded peaceful, on the verge of sleep. “What is it?”
“I was thinking of tar and feathers,” I said softly, and very gently touched his arm. “Jamie—it’s time.”