Grey’s hand had gone to his waist as he’d risen, ready to draw the dagger Percy had given him. He’d seen these boys before, he thought—the sons of the commander of one of the New Jersey militia companies?—and, rather clearly, they’d seen him before, too.
“Traitor!” One of them yelled at him. “Bloody f**king spy!” They were between him and the distant infantry company; the orchard was at his back, and the three of them were well within range of any Hessian rifleman who happened to look in their direction.
“Look—” he began, but could see that it was pointless. Something had happened; they were crazed with something—terror, anger, grief?—that made their features shift like water and their limbs tremble with the need to do something immediate and violent. They were boys, but both taller than he was and quite capable of doing him the damage they clearly intended.
“General Fraser,” he said loudly, hoping to jar them into uncertainty. “Where is General Fraser?”
THE PRICE OF BURNT SIENNA
“COMPANIES ALL present, sir!” Robert MacCammon rushed up, panting. He was a heavyset man, and even the gently rolling fields and meadows were hard on him; the dark stains in his oxters were the size of dinner plates.
“Aye, good.” Jamie glanced beyond Major MacCammon and saw Lieutenant Herbert’s company emerging from a small wood, glancing cautiously round, their weapons in their hands. They were doing well, untrained as they were, and he was pleased with them.
Lord, let me bring them through it as best I can.
This prayer barely formed in his mind, he turned to look toward the west, and froze. On the slope below him, no more than a hundred yards away, he saw the two Craddock boys, armed with a rock and a stick, respectively, menacing a man whose back was turned to him but whose bare, cropped blond head was instantly recognizable, even without the stained bandage tied round it.
Then he saw Grey put a hand to his waist and knew beyond the shadow of doubt that it was a knife he reached for.
“Craddock!!” he bellowed, and the boys both started. One dropped his rock and stooped to pick it up again, exposing his scrawny neck to Grey. Grey looked at the vulnerable expanse of flesh, glanced bleakly at the older boy, gripping his stick like a cricket bat, then up the slope at Jamie, and let both hands and shoulders drop.
“Ifrinn!” Jamie muttered under his breath. “Stay here,” he said briefly to Bixby, and ran down the slope, stumbling and pushing his way through a thick growth of alders that left sticky sap all over his hands.
“Where the devil is your company?” he demanded without preamble, breathing hard as he came up with the boys and Grey.
“Oh. Er . . .” The younger Craddock looked to his brother to answer.
“We couldn’t find ’em, sir,” the older boy said, and swallowed. “We were looking, when we run into a party of redcoats and had to scamper pretty quick to get away.”
“Then we saw him,” the younger Craddock said, thrusting out his chin at Grey. “Everybody in camp had said as how he was a redcoat spy, and, sure enough, there he was, makin’ for them, waving and callin’ out.”
“So we thought as how it was our duty to stop him, sir,” the older boy put in, anxious not to be eclipsed by his brother.
“Aye, I see.” Jamie rubbed the spot between his eyebrows, which felt as though a small, painful knot had formed there. He glanced over his shoulder. Men were still running up from the south, but the rest of Craddock’s company was nearly all there, milling anxiously and looking in his direction. No wonder: he could hear British drums, near at hand. Doubtless that was the company the boys had run into—the one Grey had been making for.
“Wenn ich etwas sagen dürfte,” Grey said in German, with a glance at the Craddocks. If I might speak . . .
“You may not, sir,” Jamie replied, with some grimness. There wasn’t time—and if these two wee blockheids survived to get back to camp, they’d recount every word that had passed between Grey and him to anyone who would listen. The last thing he could afford was for them to report him involved in foreign confabulation with an English spy.
“I am in search of my son!” Grey switched to English, with another glance at the Craddocks. “I have reason to believe he’s in danger.”
“So is everyone else out here,” Jamie replied with an edge, though his heart jerked in his chest. So that was why Grey had broken his parole. “In danger from whom?”
“Sir! Sir!” Bixby’s voice was shouting from the other side of the alders, high and urgent. He had to go, and quickly.
“Coming, Mr. Bixby!” he shouted. “Why didn’t you kill them?” he asked Grey abruptly, and jerked his head toward the Craddocks. “If you got past them, you could have made it.”
One fair brow arched above the handkerchief binding Grey’s bad eye.
“You’d forgive me for Claire—but not for killing your . . . men.” He glanced at the two Craddocks, spotty as a pair of raisin puddings and—Grey’s look implied—likely no brighter.
For a split second, the urge to punch him again surged up from Jamie’s bowels, and for the same split second, the knowledge of it showed on John Grey’s face. He didn’t flinch, and his good eye widened in a pale-blue stare. This time, he’d fight back.
Jamie closed his eyes for an instant, forcibly setting anger aside.
“Go with this man,” he said to the Craddocks. “He is your prisoner.” He pulled one of the pistols from his belt and presented it to the elder Craddock, who received it with wide-eyed respect. Jamie didn’t bother telling the lad it was neither loaded nor primed.