A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [255]
Frowning, he rose and pulled the papers from under the gunstock. Drawings of a gun, executed from different angles—a rifle, there was the cutaway interior of the barrel, the grooves and landings clear—but most peculiar. One drawing showed it whole, reasonably familiar, bar the odd hornlike growths on the barrel. But the next . . . the gun seemed as though someone had broken it over his knee; it was snapped through, stock and barrel pointing downward in opposite directions, joined only by . . . what sort of hinge was that? He closed one eye, considering.
The cessation of clamor from the forge and the loud hiss of hot metal in the sump broke his fascination with the drawings and made him look up.
“Did your lass show ye those?” Robin asked, with a nod at the papers. He pulled the tail of his shirt up from behind his leather apron, and mopped steam from his sweating face, looking amused.
“No. What is she about? Is she wanting ye to make her a gun?” He relinquished the sheets to the gunsmith, who shuffled through them, sniffing with interest.
“Oh, she’s no way of paying for that, Mac Dubh, unless Roger Mac’s discovered a pot o’ fairy gold since last week. No, she’s only been telling me her notions of improvement in the art of riflery, asking what it might cost to make such a thing.” The cynic smile that had been lurking in the corner of Robin’s mouth broadened into a grin, and he shoved the papers back at Jamie. “I can tell she’s yours, Mac Dubh. What other lass would spend her time thinking of guns, rather than gowns and bairns?”
There was more than a little implied criticism in this remark—Brianna had undoubtedly been a good deal more forthright in manner than was becoming—but he let it pass for the moment. He needed Robin’s goodwill.
“Well, any woman has her fancies,” he observed mildly. “Even wee Lizzie, I suppose—but Manfred will see to that, I’m sure. He’ll be in Salisbury just now? Or Hillsboro?”
Robin McGillivray was by no means a stupid man. The abrupt transition of subject made him arch one brow, but he passed no remark. Instead, he sent Heinrich off to the house to fetch them some beer, waiting for the lad to disappear before turning back to Jamie, expectant.
“I need thirty muskets, Robin,” he said without preamble. “And I’ll need them quickly—within three months.”
The gunsmith’s face went comically blank with astonishment, but only for a moment. He blinked then, and closed his mouth with a snap, resuming his usual expression of sardonic good humor.
“Starting your own army, are ye, Mac Dubh?”
Jamie merely smiled at that without answering. If word got around that he meant to arm his tenantry and muster his own Committee of Safety in answer to Richard Brown’s banditry, that would do nay harm and might do good. Letting word get out that the Governor was working secretly to arm the savages, in case he required to suppress an armed rising in the backcountry, and that he, Jamie Fraser, was the agent of such action—that was an excellent way to get himself killed and his house burnt to the ground, to say nothing of what other trouble might ensue.
“How many can ye find for me, Robin? And how fast?”
The gunsmith squinted, thinking, then darted a sideways glance at him.
“Cash?”
He nodded, seeing Robin’s lips purse in a soundless whistle of astonishment. Robin kent as well as anyone that he had no money to speak of—let alone the small fortune required to assemble that many guns.
He could see the speculation in Robin’s eyes, as to where he might be planning to acquire that sort of money—but the gunsmith said nothing aloud. McGillivray’s upper teeth sank into his lower lip in concentration, then relaxed.
“I can find six, maybe seven, betwixt Salisbury and Salem. Brugge”—naming the Moravian gunsmith—“would do one or two, if he kent it was for you. . . .” Seeing the infinitesimal shake of Jamie’s head he nodded in resignation.