A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [18]
“It’s early in the spring.” Jamie glanced at the window as he spoke; it was dark now, and the shutters closed, but a cool breeze crept through and stirred the threads where I had strung mushrooms to dry, dark wizened shapes that swayed like tiny dancers, frozen against the pale wood.
I knew what he meant by that. The ground in the mountains was impassable during the winter; the high passes still held snow, and the lower slopes had only begun to green and blossom in the last few weeks. If there was an organized gang of marauders, they might only now be moving into the backcountry, after a winter spent lying low in the piedmont.
“It is,” MacDonald agreed. “Early enough, perhaps, to have folk on their guard. But before your men come, sir—perhaps we should speak of what brought me?”
“Aye?” Jamie said, squinting carefully as he poured a glittering stream of lead. “Of course, Donald. I should have kent no small matter would bring ye so far. What is it?”
MacDonald smiled like a shark; now we’d come to it.
“Ye’ve done well wi’ your place here, Colonel. How many families it is ye have on your land the noo?”
“Thirty-four,” Jamie said. He didn’t look up, but turned out another bullet into the ashes.
“Room for a few more, perhaps?” MacDonald was still smiling. We were surrounded by thousands of miles of wilderness; the handful of homesteads on Fraser’s Ridge made scarcely a dent in it—and could vanish like smoke. I thought momentarily of the Dutch cabin, and shivered, despite the fire. I could still taste the bitter, cloying smell of burned flesh, thick in the back of my throat, lurking beneath the lighter flavors of the omelette.
“Perhaps,” Jamie replied equably. “The new Scottish emigrants, is it? From up past Thurso?”
Major MacDonald and I both stared at him.
“How the devil d’ye ken that?” MacDonald demanded. “I heard it myself only ten days since!”
“Met a man at the mill yesterday,” Jamie replied, picking up the ladle again. “A gentleman from Philadelphia, come into the mountains to collect plants. He’d come up from Cross Creek and seen them.” A muscle near his mouth twitched. “Apparently, they made a bit of a stir at Brunswick, and didna feel themselves quite welcome, so they came up the river on flatboats.”
“A bit of a stir? What did they do?” I asked.
“Well, d’ye see, mum,” the Major explained, “there are a great many folk come flooding off ships these days, straight from the Highlands. Whole villages, packed into the bowels of a ship—and looking as though they’ve been shat out when they disembark, too. There’s nothing for them on the coast, though, and the townsfolk are inclined to point and snigger, seein’ them in their outlandish rig—so for the most part, they get straight onto a barge or a flatboat and head up the Cape Fear. Campbelton and Cross Creek at least have folk who can talk to them.”
He grinned at me, brushing a smudge of dirt from the skirts of his uniform coat.
“The folk in Brunswick willna be quite accustomed to such rawboned Highlanders, they having seen only such civilized Scotch persons as your husband and his aunt.”
He nodded toward Jamie, who gave him a small, ironic bow in return.
“Well, relatively civilized,” I murmured. I was not ready to forgive MacDonald for the whore in Edenton. “But—”
“They’ve barely a word of English among them, from what I hear,” MacDonald hurried on. “Farquard Campbell came down to speak wi’ them, and brought them north to Campbelton, or I doubt not but they’d be milling about onshore yet, wi’ no notion at all where to go or what to do next.”
“What’s Campbell done wi’ them?” Jamie inquired.
“Ah, they’re parceled out amongst his acquaintance in Campbelton, but ’twon’t suit in the long run, ye can see that, of course.” MacDonald shrugged. Campbelton was a small settlement near Cross Creek, centered around Farquard Campbell’s successful trading store, and the land around it was entirely settled—mostly by Campbells. Farquard had eight children, many of whom were also married—and as fertile as their father.
“Of course,” Jamie