The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [6]
The moisture shrouded trees and rocks with dripping mist, the clouds spat intermittent sleet and freezing rain, and erratic winds had lowered the temperature by some thirty degrees. My left shin, sensitive to cold, throbbed at the spot where I had broken the bone two years before. A person given to portents and metaphors might have been tempted to draw comparisons between the nasty weather and the reading of the Governor’s Proclamation, I thought—the prospects were similarly chill and foreboding.
“Whereas,” Hayes boomed, glowering at the crowd over his paper, “I have received information that a great Number of outrageous and disorderly Persons did tumultuously assemble themselves together in the Town of Hillsborough, on the 24th and 25th of last Month, during the sitting of the Superior Court of Justice of that District to oppose the Just Measures of Government and in open Violation of the Laws of their Country, audaciously attacking his Majesty’s Associate Justice in the Execution of his Office, and barbarously beating and wounding several Persons in and during the sitting of said Court, and offering other enormous Indignities and Insults to his Majesty’s Government, committing the most violent Outrages on the Persons and properties of the Inhabitants of the said Town, drinking Damnation to their lawful Sovereign King George and Success to the Pretender—”
Hayes paused, gulping air with which to accomplish the next clause. Inflating his chest with an audible whoosh, he read on:
“To the End therefore, that the Persons concerned in the said outrageous Acts may be brought to Justice, I do, by the Advice and Consent of his Majesty’s Council, issue this my Proclamation, hereby requiring and strictly enjoining all his Majesty’s Justices of the Peace in this Government to make diligent Inquiry into the above recited Crimes, and to receive the Deposition of such Person or Persons as shall appear before them to make Information of and concerning the same; which Depositions are to be transmitted to me, in Order to be laid before the General Assembly, at New Bern, on the 30th day of November next, to which time it stands Prorogued for the immediate Dispatch of Public Business.”
A final inhalation; Hayes’s face was nearly as purple as the piper’s by now.
“Given under my Hand, and the Great Seal of the Province, at New Bern, the 18th Day of October, in the 10th Year of his Majesty’s Reign, Anno Domini 1770.
“Signed, William Tryon,” Hayes concluded, with a final puff of steamy breath.
“Do you know,” I remarked to Jamie, “I believe that was all one single sentence, bar the closing. Amazing, even for a politician.”
“Hush, Sassenach,” he said, his eyes still fixed on Archie Hayes. There was a subdued rumble from the crowd behind me, of interest and consternation—touched with a certain amount of amusement at the phrases regarding treasonous toasts.
This was a Gathering of Highlanders, many of them exiled to the Colonies in the wake of the Stuart Rising, and had Archie Hayes chosen to take official notice of what was said over the cups of ale and whisky passed round the fires the night before . . . but then, he had but forty soldiers with him, and whatever his own opinions of King George and that monarch’s possible damnation, he kept them wisely to himself.
Some four hundred Highlanders surrounded Hayes’s small beachhead on the creekbank, summoned by the tattoo of drums. Men and women sheltered among the trees above the clearing, plaids and arisaids pulled tight against the rising wind. They too were keeping their own counsel, judging from the array of stony faces visible under the flutter of scarves and bonnets. Of course, their expressions might derive from cold as much as from natural caution; my own cheeks were stiff, the end of my nose had gone numb, and I hadn’t felt my feet anytime since daybreak.
“Any person wishing to make declaration concerning these most serious matters may entrust such statements safely to my care,” Hayes announced, his round face an official blank. “I will remain in my tent with