Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [60]
I had seen ships come into port in the Indies and in Georgia, disgorging their cargos of emigrants, so emaciated and worn by their passage that they reminded me of nothing so much as concentration camp victims—skeletal as living corpses, white as maggots from two months in the darkness belowdecks.
Despite the expense and difficulty of the journey, despite the pain of parting from friends and family and homeland forever, the immigrants poured in, in hundreds and in thousands, carrying their children—those who survived the voyage—and their possessions in small, ragged bundles; fleeing poverty and hopelessness, seeking not fortune but only a small foothold on life. Only a chance.
I had spent only a short time at Lallybroch the winter before, but I knew there were tenants there who survived only by the goodwill of Ian and Young Jamie, their crofts not yielding enough to live on. While such goodwill was invariably given, it was not inexhaustible; I knew that the estate’s slender resources were often stretched to the maximum.
Beyond Lallybroch, there were the smugglers Jamie had known in Edinburgh, and the illegal distillers of Highland whisky—any number of men, in fact, who had been forced to turn to lawlessness to feed their families. No, finding willing emigrants would be no problem at all for Jamie.
The problem was that in order to recruit suitable men for the purpose, he would have to go to Scotland. And in my mind was the sight of a granite gravestone in a Scottish kirkyard, on a hill high above the moors and sea.
JAMES ALEXANDER MALCOLM MACKENZIE FRASER, it read, and below that, my own name was carved—Beloved husband of Claire.
I would bury him in Scotland. But there had been no date on the stone when I saw it, two hundred years hence; no notion when the blow would fall.
“Not yet,” I whispered, clenching my fists in the silk of my petticoat. “I’ve only had him for a little while—oh, God, please, not yet!”
As though in answer, the door swung open, and James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser came in, carrying a candle.
He smiled at me, loosening his stock.
“You’re verra light on your feet, Sassenach. I see I must teach ye to hunt one day, and you such a fine stalker.”
I made no apology for eavesdropping, but came to help him with his waistcoat buttons. In spite of the late hour and the brandy, he was clear-eyed and alert, his body tautly alive when I touched him.
“You’d best put out the candle,” I said. “The bugs will eat you alive.” I pinched a mosquito off his neck by way of illustration, the fragile body crushed to a smear of blood between my fingers.
Among the scents of brandy and cigar smoke, I could smell the night on him, and the faint musky spice of nicotiana; he had been walking, then, amid the flowers in the garden. He did that when he was either distressed or excited—and he didn’t seem distressed.
He sighed and flexed his shoulders as I took his coat; his shirt was damp with sweat underneath, and he plucked it away from his skin with a mild grunt of distaste.
“I canna tell how folk live in such heat, dressed like this. It makes the savages look quite sensible, to be goin’ about in loincloths and aprons.”
“It would be a lot cheaper,” I agreed, “if less aesthetically appealing. Imagine Baron Penzler in a loincloth, I mean.” The Baron weighed perhaps eighteen stone, with a pasty complexion.
He laughed, the sound muffled in his shirt as he pulled it over his head.
“You, on the other hand …” I sat down on the window seat, admiring the view as he stripped off his breeches, standing on one leg to roll down his stocking.
With the candle extinguished, it was dark in the room, but with my eyes adapted, I could still make him out, long limbs pale against the velvet night.
“And speaking of the Baron—” I prodded.
“Three hundred pounds sterling,” he replied, in tones of extreme satisfaction. He straightened up and tossed the rolled stockings