I took a good mouthful of hot, honeyed water, and swallowed. “Those—they have something like quinine in them.”
Jamie’s face changed at once, the worry lessening.
“So they’ll help the lass?”
“I hope so. There aren’t many, though.”
“D’ye mean you need more o’ these things for Miss Lizzie, Mrs. Fraser?” Jo glanced up at me, dark eyes sharp over the little jar.
“Yes,” I said, surprised. “You don’t mean you know where to get any, surely?”
“Aye, ma’am,” Kezzie said, his voice a little loud, as usual. “Indians got ’em.”
“Which Indians?” Jamie asked, his gaze sharpening.
“Them Cherokee,” Jo said, waving vaguely over one shoulder. “By the mountain.”
This description might have suited half a dozen villages, but evidently it was a specific village that they had in mind, for the two of them turned as one, obviously intending to go directly and fetch back gallberries.
“Wait a bit, lads,” Jamie said, snagging Kezzie by the collar. “I’ll go along with ye. Ye’ll be needing something to trade, after all.”
“Oh, we got hides a-plenty, sir,” Jo assured him. “’Twas a good season.”
Jo was an expert hunter, and while Kezzie still hadn’t sufficiently keen hearing to hunt well, his brother had taught him to run traplines. Ian had told me that the Beardsleys’ shack was stacked nearly to the rooftree with the hides of beaver, marten, deer, and ermine. The smell of it always clung to them, a faint miasma of dried blood, musk, and cold hair.
“Aye? Well, that’s generous of ye, Jo, to be sure. But I’ll come, nonetheless.” Jamie glanced at me, acknowledging the fact that he had made his decision—but asking for my approval, nonetheless. I swallowed, tasting bitterness.
“Yes,” I said, and cleared my throat. “If—if you’re going, let me send some things, and tell you what to ask for in trade. You won’t leave until morning, surely?”
The Beardsleys were vibrating with impatience to be gone, but Jamie stood still, looking at me, and I felt him touch me, without words or movement.
“No,” he said softly, “we’ll bide for the night.” He turned then to the Beardsleys. “Go up, will ye, Jo, and ask Bobby Higgins to come down. I’ll need to speak with him.”
“He’s up with Miss Lizzie?” Jo Beardsley looked displeased at this, and his brother’s face echoed his expression of slit-eyed suspicion.
“What’s he a-doin’ in her room, then? Don’t he know she’s betrothed?” Kezzie asked, righteously.
“Her father’s with her, too,” Jamie assured them. “Her reputation’s safe, aye?”
Jo snorted briefly, but the brothers exchanged glances, then left together, slender shoulders set in determination to oust this threat to Lizzie’s virtue.
“So you’ll do it?” I set down the pestle. “Be an Indian agent?”
“I think I must. If I do not—Richard Brown surely will. I think I canna risk that.” He hesitated, then drew close and touched me lightly, fingers on my elbow. “I’ll send the lads back at once with the berries ye need. I may need to stay for a day, maybe two. For the talking, aye?” To tell the Cherokee that he was now an agent for the British Crown, he meant—and to make arrangements for word to be spread that the headmen of the mountain villages should come down later to a council for parley and gifts.
I nodded, feeling a small bubble of fear swell under my breastbone. It was starting. No matter how much one knows that something dreadful is going to happen in the future, one somehow never thinks it will be today.
“Not—don’t stay away too long, will you?” I blurted, not wanting to burden him with my fears, but unable to keep quiet.
“No,” he said softly, and his hand rested for an instant in the small of my back. “Dinna fash yourself; I’ll not tarry.”
The sound of feet descending the stairs echoed in the hall. I supposed Mr. Wemyss had shooed the Beardsleys out, along with Bobby. They didn’t stop, but went off without speaking, casting looks of veiled dislike at Bobby, who seemed quite oblivious to them.
“Yon lad said you wanted to speak to me, zur?” He’d regained some color, I was glad to see, and seemed steady enough on his feet. He glanced uneasily at the table, still spread with the sheet I’d put him on, and then at me, but I merely shook my head. I’d finish dealing with his piles later.
“Aye, Bobby.” Jamie made a brief gesture toward a stool, as though to invite Bobby to sit, but I cleared my throat in a meaningful manner, and he stopped, then leaned against the table, rather than sitting down himself.
“Those two who came—Brown, they’re called. They’ve a settlement some way away. Ye said ye’ve heard of the Committees of Safety, aye? So ye’ll have some notion what they’re about.”
“Aye, zur. Tha Browns, zur—did they want me?” He spoke calmly enough, but I saw him swallow briefly, Adam’s apple bobbing in his slender throat.
Jamie sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. The sun was slanting through the window now, and struck him directly, making his red hair glow with flame—and picking out here and there a flicker of the silver that was beginning to show among the ruddy strands.
“They did. They kent ye were here; heard of ye, doubtless from someone ye met along the way. Ye’ll have told folk where ye were headed, I suppose?”
Bobby nodded, wordless.
“What did they want with him?” I asked, tipping the ground root bark and berries into a bowl and pouring hot water over them to steep.
“They didna make that quite clear,” Jamie said dryly. “But then, I didna give them the chance. I only told them they’d take a guest from my hearth over my dead body—and theirs.”
“I thanks ’ee for that, zur.” Bobby took a deep breath. “They—knew, I reckon? About Boston? I’d not told anyone that, surely.”
Jamie’s frown deepened slightly.
“Aye, they did. They pretended to think I didna ken; told me I was harboring a murderer unbeknownst, and a threat to the public welfare.”
“Well, the first is true enough,” Bobby said, touching his brand gingerly, as though it still burned him. He offered a wan smile. “But I dunno as I s’ould be a threat to anyone, these days.”
Jamie dismissed that.
“The point is, Bobby, that they do ken ye’re here. They’ll not come and drag ye away, I think. But I’d ask ye to go canny about the place. I’ll make provision to see ye safely back to Lord John, when the time comes, with an escort. I gather ye’re no quite finished with him?” he asked, turning to me.
“Not quite,” I replied equably. Bobby looked apprehensive.
“Well, then.” Jamie reached into the waist of his breeches, and drew out a pistol, which had been hidden by the folds of his shirt. It was, I saw, the fancy gilt-edged one.
“Keep it by ye,” Jamie said, handing it to Bobby. “There’s powder and shot in the sideboard. Will ye look out for my wife and family, then, whilst I’m gone?”
“Oh!” Bobby looked startled, but then nodded, tucking the pistol away in his own breeches. “I will so, zur. Depend upon it!”
Jamie smiled at him, his eyes warming.
“That’s a comfort to me, Bobby. Will ye maybe go and find my son-in-law? I’ll need a word with him before I go.”
“Aye, zur. Right away!” He squared his shoulders and set off, an expression of determination on his poet’s face.
“What do you think they would have done with him?” I asked softly, as the outer door closed behind him. “The Browns.”
Jamie shook his head.
“God knows. Hanged him at a crossroad, maybe—or maybe only beaten him and driven him out of the mountains. They want to make a show of being able to protect the folk, aye? From dangerous criminals and the like,” he added, with a twist of the mouth.
“A government derives its powers from the just consent of the governed,” I quoted, nodding. “For a Committee of Safety to have any legitimacy, there needs to be an obvious threat to the public safety. Clever of the Browns to have reasoned that out.”
He gave me a look, one auburn brow raised.
“Who said that? The consent of the governed.”
“Thomas Jefferson,” I replied, feeling smug. “Or rather, he will say it in another two years.”
“He’ll steal it from a gentleman named Locke in another two years,” he corrected. “I suppose Richard Brown must ha’ been decently educated.”
“Unlike me, you mean?” I said, unruffled. “If you expect trouble from the Browns, though, should you have given Bobby that particular pistol?”
He shrugged.
“I’ll need the good ones. And I doubt verra much that he’ll fire that one.”
“Counting on its deterrent effect?” I was skeptical, but he was likely right.
“Aye, that. But more on Bobby.”
“How so?”
“I doubt he’d fire a gun again to save his own life—but he would, maybe, to save yours. And should it come to such a pass, they’ll be too close to miss.” He spoke with dispassion, but I felt the hairs prickle down my nape.
“Well, that’s a comfort,” I said. “And just how do you know what he’d do?”
“Talked to him,” he said briefly. “The man he shot in Boston was the first he’d ever killed. He doesna want to do it again.” He straightened, and moved restlessly toward the counter, where he busied himself in straightening a scatter of small instruments I had laid out for cleaning.
I moved to stand beside him, watching. There was a handful of small cautery irons and scalpels, soaking in a beaker of turpentine. He took them out, one by one, wiped them dry and laid them back in their box, neatly, side by side. The spade-shaped metal ends of the irons were blackened by use; the scalpel blades were weathered to a soft glow, but the sharp edges gleamed, a hairbreadth of bright silver.
“We’ll be all right,” I said quietly. I meant it to be a reassuring statement, but it came out with a tinge of question.
“Aye, I know,” he said. He put the last iron in its box, but didn’t replace the lid. Instead, he stood, hands spread flat on the counter, looking straight ahead.
“I dinna want to go,” he said softly. “I dinna want to do this.”
I wasn’t sure whether he was speaking to me, or to himself—but I thought he wasn’t referring only to his journey to the Cherokee village.
“Neither do I,” I whispered, and moved a little closer, so I felt his breathing. He lifted his hands then and turned toward me, taking me into his arms, and we stood wrapped close, listening to each other’s breathing, the bitter smell of the brewing tea seeping through the homely scents of linen, dust, and sun-warmed flesh.
There were still choices to be made, decisions to reach, actions to take. Many of them. But in one day, one hour, one single declaration of intent, we had stepped across the threshold of war.