The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [615]
100
DEAD WHALE
BY LATE MARCH, the trails down the mountain were passable. No word had come yet from Milford Lyon, and after some debate on the matter, it was decided that Jamie and I, with Brianna, Roger, and Marsali, would travel to Wilmington, while Fergus took the survey reports to New Bern to be formally filed and registered.
The girls and I would buy supplies depleted over the winter, such as salt, sugar, coffee, tea, and opium, while Roger and Jamie would make discreet inquiries after Milford Lyon—and Stephen Bonnet. Fergus would come to join us, so soon as the surveying reports were taken care of, making his own inquiries along the coast as chance offered.
After which, presumably, Jamie and Roger, having located Mr. Bonnet, would drop round to his place of business and take turns either shooting him dead or running him through with a sword, before riding back into the mountains, congratulating themselves on a job well done. Or so I understood the plan to be.
“The best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley,” I quoted to Jamie, in the midst of one discussion on the matter. He raised one brow and gave me a look.
“What sorts of plans have mice got?”
“Well, there you have me,” I admitted. “The principle holds, though; you haven’t any idea what may happen.”
“That’s true,” he agreed. “But whatever does happen, I shall be ready for it.” He patted the dirk that lay on the corner of his desk, and went back to making lists of farm supplies.
The weather warmed markedly as we descended from the mountains, and as we drew nearer to the coast, flocks of seagulls and crows wheeled and swarmed over the fresh-plowed fields, shrieking ecstatically in the bright spring sunshine.
The trees in the mountains were barely beginning to leaf out, but in Wilmington, flowers were already glowing in the gardens, spikes of yellow columbine and blue larkspur nodding over the tidy fences on Beaufort Street. We found lodgings in a small, clean inn a little way from the quay. It was relatively cheap and reasonably comfortable, if a trifle crowded and dark.
“Why don’t they have more windows?” Brianna grumbled, nursing a stubbed toe after stumbling over Germain in the darkness on the landing. “Somebody’s going to burn the place down, lighting candles to see where they’re going. Glass can’t be that expensive.”
“Window tax,” Roger informed her, picking Germain up and dangling him head-down over the bannister, to Germain’s intense delight.
“What? The Crown taxes windows?”
“It does. Ye’d think people would care more about that than stamps or tea, but apparently they’re used to the window tax.”
“No wonder they’re about to have a revolu— Oh, good morning, Mrs. Burns! The breakfast smells wonderful.”
The girls, the children, and I spent several days in careful shopping, while Roger and Jamie mixed business with pleasure in assorted taprooms and taverns. Most of their errands were completed, and Jamie produced a small but useful subsidiary income from card-playing and betting on horses, but all he was able to hear of Stephen Bonnet was that he had not been seen in Wilmington for some months. I was privately relieved to hear this.
It rained later in the week, hard enough to keep everyone indoors for two days. More than simple rain; it was a substantial storm, with winds high enough to bend the palmetto trees half over and plaster the muddy streets with torn leaves and fallen branches. Marsali sat up late into the night, listening to the wind, alternating between saying the rosary and playing cards with Jamie for distraction.
“Fergus did say it was a large ship he would be coming on from New Bern? The Octopus? That sounds good-sized, doesn’t it, Da?”
“Oh, aye. Though I believe the packet boats are verra safe, too. No, dinna discard that, lass—throw away the trey of spades instead.”
“How do ye know I have the trey of spades?” she demanded, frowning suspiciously at him. “And it’s no true about the packet boats. Ye ken that as well as