A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [321]
Food was beginning to be brought out: tureens of powsowdie and hotchpotch—and an enormous tub of soup à la Reine, a clear compliment to the guest of honor—platters of fried fish, fried chicken, fried rabbit; venison collops in red wine, smoked sausages, Forfar bridies, inky-pinky, roast turkeys, pigeon pie; dishes of colcannon, stovies, turnip purry, roasted apples stuffed with dried pumpkin, squash, corn, mushroom pasties; gigantic baskets overflowing with fresh baps, rolls, and other breads . . . all this, I was well aware, merely as prelude to the barbecue whose succulent aroma was drifting through the air: a number of hogs, three or four beeves, two deer, and, the pièce de résistance, a wood bison, acquired God knew how or where.
A hum of pleasant anticipation rose around me, as people began metaphorically to loosen their belts, squaring up to the tables with a firm determination to do their duty in honor of the occasion.
Jamie was still stuck fast to Mrs. MacDonald, I saw; he was helping her to a dish of what looked from the distance to be broccoli salad. He looked up and saw me, beckoned me to join them—but I shook my head, gesturing with my fan toward the buffet tables, where the guests were setting to in the businesslike manner of grasshoppers in a barley field. I didn’t want to lose the opportunity of inquiring about Manfred McGillivray, before the stupor of satiety settled over the crowd.
I made my way purposefully into the fray, accepting tidbits offered to me by assorted servants and slaves, pausing to chat with any acquaintance I saw, particularly those from Hillsboro. Manfred had spent a great deal of time there, I knew, taking commissions for guns, delivering the finished products, and doing small jobs of repair. That was the most likely place for him to go, I thought. But no one I talked to had seen him, though most knew him.
“Nice lad,” one gentleman told me, pausing momentarily in his potations. “And sore missed, too. Besides Robin, there’s few gunsmiths closer than Virginia.”
I knew that, and knowing, wondered whether Jamie was having any luck in locating the muskets he needed. Perhaps Lord John’s smuggling connections would be necessary.
I accepted a small pie from a passing slave’s tray, and wandered on, munching and chatting. There was much talk about a series of fiery articles that had appeared recently in the Chronicle, the local newspaper, whose proprietor, one Fogarty Simms, was spoken of with considerable sympathy.
“A rare plucked ’un, is Simms,” said Mr. Goodwin, shaking his head. “But I doubt me he’ll stand. I spoke with him last week, and he told me he’s in some fear of his skin. There’ve been threats, aye?”
From the tone of the gathering, I assumed that Mr. Simms must be a Loyalist, and this appeared to be true, from the various accounts I was given. There was talk, apparently, of a rival paper setting up, this to support the Whiggish agenda, with its incautious talk of tyranny and the overthrow of the King. No one knew quite who was behind the new venture, but there was talk—and much indignation at the prospect—that a printer was to be brought down from the north, where folk were notably given to such perverse sentiments.
The general consensus was that such persons wanted their backsides kicked, to bring them to their senses.
I hadn’t sat down to eat formally, but after an hour of moving slowly through fields of champing jaws and wandering herds of hors d’oeuvre trays, I felt as though I’d sat through a French royal banquet—those occasions lasting so long that chamber pots were discreetly placed beneath the guests’ chairs, and where the occasional guest giving way and sliding beneath the table was discreetly ignored.
The present occasion was less formal, but not much less prolonged. After an hour’s preliminary eating, the barbecue was raised steaming from the pits near the stable, and brought to the lawns on wooden trestles, mounted on the shoulders of slaves. The sight of immense sides of beef, pork, venison, and buffalo, gleaming with oil and vinegar and surrounded by