The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [307]
“What will you be giving us the day?” Roger inquired, pausing beside the fiddler. He smiled as the man turned round to him. “‘Ewie wi’ the Crooked Horn,’ perhaps, or ‘Shawn Bwee’?”
“Oh, God love ye, sir, nothin’ fancy.” The conductor of the small ensemble, a cricketlike Irishman whose bent back was belied by the brightness of his eyes, waved a hand in cordial scorn at his motley crew of musicians.
“They ain’t up to more than jigs and reels. No more are the folk as will be dancin’, though,” he added, practically. “’Tisn’t the Assembly Rooms in Dublin, after all, nor even Edenton; a good fiddler can keep ’em up to snuff.”
“And that would be you, I expect?” Roger said with a smile, nodding at the cracked fiddle case the conductor had set on a whatnot, carefully out of the way of being stepped or sat on.
“That would be me,” the gentleman agreed, with a graceful bow of acknowledgment. “Seamus Hanlon, sir—your servant.”
“I am obliged, sir. Roger MacKenzie, of Fraser’s Ridge.” He returned the bow, taking pleasure in the old-fashioned formality, and clasped Hanlon’s hand briefly, careful of the twisted fingers and knobby joints. Hanlon saw his care of the arthritic hand and gave a brief grimace of deprecation.
“Ah, they’ll be fine with a drop of lubrication, so they will.” Hanlon flexed one hand experimentally, then flipped the fingers in dismissal, fixing Roger with a bright glance.
“And yourself, sir; I felt the calluses on your fingertips. Not a fiddler, perhaps, but would ye be after playin’ some stringed instrument?”
“Only to pass the time of an evening; nothing like you gentlemen.” Roger nodded politely toward the ensemble, which, now unpacked, boasted a battered cello, two viols, a trumpet, a flute, and something which he thought might have started life as a hunting horn, though it appeared to have been amended since by the addition of several odd loops of tubing that stuck out in different directions.
Hanlon eyed him shrewdly, taking in his breadth of chest.
“And hark at the voice in him! Sure, and you’re a singer, Mr. MacKenzie?”
Roger’s reply was interrupted by a loud thump and a dolorous twang behind him. He whirled to see the cello player inflating himself over his instrument in the manner of a hen with a very large chick, to protect it from further injury by the gentleman who had evidently kicked it carelessly in passing.
“Watch yourself, then!” the cellist snapped. “Clumsy sot!”
“Oh?” The intruder, a stocky man in naval uniform, glowered menacingly at the cellist. “You dare . . . dare shpeak to me . . .” His face was flushed an unhealthy red, and he swayed slightly as he stood; Roger could smell the fumes of alcohol from a distance of six feet.
The officer raised a forefinger to the cellist, and appeared to be on the point of speech. A tongue tip showed pinkly between his teeth, but no words emerged. His empurpled jowls quivered for a moment, then he abandoned the attempt, turned on his heel, and made off, swerving narrowly to avoid an incoming footman with a tray of drinks, and caroming off the doorjamb as he passed into the corridor.
“’Ware, then, Mr. O’Reilly.” Seamus Hanlon spoke dryly to the cellist. “Were we near the sea, I should reckon there’d be a press-gang waitin’ for ye, the instant ye set foot outside. As it is, I’d put no odds on him layin’ for ye with a marlinspike or something of the kind.”
O’Reilly spat eloquently on the floor.
“I know him,” he said contemptuously. “Wolff, he’s called. Dog, more like, and a poor dog at that. He’s tight as a tick—he’ll not remember me, an hour hence.”
Hanlon squinted thoughtfully at the doorway through which the Lieutenant had vanished.
“Well, that’s as may be,” he allowed. “But I know the gentleman, too, and I do believe his mind may be somewhat sharper than his behavior might suggest.” He stood for a moment, tapping the bow of his fiddle thoughtfully against the palm of his hand, then turned his head toward Roger.
“Fraser’s Ridge, ye said? Will ye be a kinsman of Mrs. Cameron’s—or Mrs. Innes, I should say?” he