A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [16]
A small qualm made me pause, a bite of mushroom warm in my mouth. The possibility that a mysterious gang of armed men might be roaming at large, attacking homesteads at random, had not occurred to me ’til this moment.
Obviously, it had occurred to Jamie; he rose, put the fowling piece back on its hooks, touched the rifle that hung above it for reassurance, then went to the sideboard, where his dags and the case with its elegant pair of dueling pistols were kept.
MacDonald watched with approval, puffing clouds of soft blue smoke, as Jamie methodically laid out guns, shot pouches, bullet molds, patches, rods, and all the other impedimenta of his personal armory.
“Mmphm,” MacDonald said. “A verra nice piece, that, Colonel.” He nodded at one of the dags, a long-barreled, elegant thing with a scroll butt and silver-gilt fittings.
Jamie gave MacDonald a narrow glance, hearing the “Colonel,” but answered calmly enough.
“Aye, it’s a bonny thing. It doesna aim true at anything over two paces, though. Won it in a horse race,” he added, with a small apologetic gesture at the gun, lest MacDonald think him fool enough to have paid good money for it.
He checked the flint nonetheless, replaced it, and set the gun aside.
“Where?” Jamie said casually, reaching for the bullet mold.
I had resumed chewing, but looked inquiringly at the Major myself.
“Mind, it’s only what I’ve heard,” MacDonald warned, taking the pipe from his mouth for a moment, then hastily putting it back for another puff. “A homestead some distance from Salem, burned to the ground. Folk called Zinzer—Germans.” He sucked hard, cheeks hollowing.
“That was in February, late in the month. Then three weeks later, a ferry, on the Yadkin north of Woram’s Landing—the house robbed, and the ferryman killed. The third—” Here he broke off, puffing furiously, and cut his eyes at me, then back at Jamie.
“Speak, o, friend,” Jamie said in Gaelic, looking resigned. “She will have been seeing more dreadful things than you have, by far.”
I nodded at this, forking up another bite of egg, and the Major coughed.
“Aye. Well, saving your presence, mum—I happened to find myself in a, er, establishment in Edenton. . . .”
“A brothel?” I put in. “Yes, quite. Do go on, Major.”
He did, rather hurriedly, his face flushing dark beneath his wig.
“Ah . . . to be sure. Well, d’ye see, ’twas one of the, er, lasses in the place, told me as she’d been stolen from her home by outlaws who set upon the place one day without warning. She’d no but an auld grannie she lived with, and said they’d kilt the auld woman, and burned the house above her head.”
“And who did she say had done it?” Jamie had turned his stool to face the hearth, and was melting lead scrap in a ladle for the bullet mold.
“Ah, mmphm.” MacDonald’s flush deepened, and the smoke fumed from his pipe with such ferocity that I could barely make out his features through the curling wreaths.
It transpired, with much coughing and circumlocution, that the Major had not really believed the girl at the time—or had been too interested in availing himself of her charms to pay much attention. Putting the story down simply as one of the tales whores often told to elicit sympathy and the odd extra glass of geneva, he had not bothered to ask for further detail.
“But when I heard by chance later of the other burnings . . . well, d’ye see, I’ve had the luck to be charged by the Governor with keeping an ear to the ground, as it were, in the backcountry, for signs of unrest. And I began to think that this particular instance of unrest was maybe not just sae much of a coincidence as might at first appear.”
Jamie and I exchanged glances at that, Jamie’s tinged with amusement, mine with resignation. He’d bet me that MacDonald—a half-pay cavalry officer who survived by freelancing—would not only survive Governor Tryon’s resignation, but would succeed in worming his way promptly into some position with the new regime, now that Tryon had left to take up a superior