The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [66]
“Say straight off as you’re Captain MacKenzie,” he advised. “They’ll mind ye better.” He turned again and strode off in search of the more recalcitrant prospects on his list.
MacLeod’s fire burned like a smudge pot in the mist. Roger turned toward it, repeating the names under his breath like a mantra. “Duncan MacLeod, Rabbie Cochrane, Angus Og Campbell, Joanie Findlay . . . Duncan MacLeod, Rabbie Cochrane . . .” No bother; three times and he’d have it cold, no matter whether it was the words of a new song to be learned, facts in a textbook, or directions to the psychology of potential militia recruits.
He could see the sense of finding as many of the backcountry Scots as possible now, before they scattered away to their farms and cabins. And he was heartened by the fact that the men Fraser had approached so far had accepted the militia summons with no more than a mild glower and throat-clearings of resignation.
Captain MacKenzie. He felt a small sense of embarrassed pride at the title Fraser had casually bestowed on him. “Instant Soldier,” he muttered derisively to himself, straightening the shoulders of his sodden coat. “Just add water.”
At the same time, he’d admit to a faint tingle of excitement. It might amount to no more than playing soldiers, now, indeed—but the thought of marching with a militia regiment, muskets shouldered and the smell of gunpowder on their hands . . .
It was less than four years from now, he thought, and militiamen would stand on the green at Lexington. Men who were no more soldiers to start with than these men he spoke to in the rain—no more than him. Awareness shivered over his skin, settled in his belly with an odd weight of significance.
It was coming. Christ, it was really coming.
MACLEOD WAS NO TROUBLE, but it took longer than he’d thought to find Angus Og Campbell, up to his arse in sheep, and irascible at the distraction. “Captain MacKenzie” had had little effect on the old bastard; the invocation of “Colonel Fraser”—spoken with a degree of menace—had had more. Angus Og had chewed his long upper lip with moody concentration, nodded reluctantly, and gone back to his bargaining with a gruff, “Aye, I’ll send word.”
The mizzle had stopped and the clouds were beginning to break up by the time he climbed back up the slope to Joan Findlay’s camp.
“Auld Joan,” to his surprise, was an attractive woman in her mid-thirties, with sharp hazel eyes that regarded him with interest under the folds of her damp arisaid.
“So it’s come to that, has it?” she said, in answer to his brief explanation of his presence. “I did wonder, when I heard what the soldier-laddie had to say this morning.”
She tapped her lip thoughtfully with the handle of her wooden pudding-spoon.
“I’ve an aunt who lives in Hillsborough, ken. She’s a room in the King’s House, straight across the street from Edmund Fanning’s house—or where it used to be.” She gave a short laugh, though it held no real humor.
“She wrote to me. The mob came a-boilin’ down the street, wavin’ pitchforks like a flock o’ demons, she said. They cut Fanning’s house from its sills, and dragged the whole of it down wi’ ropes, right before her eyes. So now we’re meant to send our men to pull Fanning’s chestnuts from the fire, are we?”
Roger was cautious; he’d heard a good deal of talk about Edmund Fanning, who was less than popular.
“I couldna say as to that, Mrs. Findlay,” he said. “But the Governor—”
Joan Findlay snorted expressively.
“Governor,” she said, and spat into the fire. “Pah. The Governor’s friends, more like. But there—poor men mun bleed for the rich man’s gold, and always will, eh?”
She turned to two small girls who had materialized behind her, silent as small shawled ghosts.
“Annie, fetch your brothers. Wee Joanie, you stir the pot. Mind ye scrape the bottom well so it doesna burn.” Handing the spoon to the smallest girl, she turned away,