The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [80]
“Why?” I asked.
Jamie rocked back a little, looking up at me.
“I want him, Sassenach.”
“You do? What for?” Josiah was barely fourteen—or at least he thought he was fourteen; he wasn’t really sure when he’d been born and his parents had died too long ago to say. He was undersized even for fourteen, and badly nourished, with legs slightly bowed from rickets. He also showed evidence of assorted parasitic infections, and wheezed with what might be tuberculosis, or merely a bad case of bronchitis.
“A tenant, of course.”
“Oh? I’d have thought you had more applicants than you can handle, as it is.”
I didn’t just think so; I knew so. We had absolutely no money, though the trade Jamie had done at the Gathering had just about—not quite—cleared our indebtedness to several of the Cross Creek merchants for ironmongery, rice, tools, salt, and other small items. We had land in plenty—most of it forest—but no means to assist people to settle on it or farm it. The Chisholms and McGillivrays were stretching well past our limits, in terms of acquiring new tenantry.
Jamie merely nodded, dismissing these complications.
“Aye. Josiah’s a likely lad, though.”
“Hmm,” I said dubiously. It was true that the boy seemed tough—which was likely what Jamie meant by “likely”; simply to have survived this long by himself was evidence of that. “Maybe so. So are lots of others. What’s he got that makes you want him specially?”
“He’s fourteen.”
I looked at him, one brow raised in question, and his mouth twisted in a wry smile.
“Any man between sixteen and sixty must serve in the militia, Sassenach.”
I felt a small, unpleasant contraction in the pit of my stomach. I hadn’t forgotten the Governor’s unwelcome summons, but what with one thing and another, I hadn’t had the leisure to reflect on exactly what the practical consequences of it were likely to be.
Jamie sighed and stretched out his arms, flexing his knuckles until they cracked.
“So you’ll do it?” I asked. “Form a militia company and go?”
“I must,” he said simply. “Tryon’s got my ballocks in his hand, and I’m no inclined to see whether he’ll squeeze, aye?”
“I was afraid of that.”
Jamie’s picturesque assessment of the situation was unfortunately accurate. Looking for a loyal and competent man willing to undertake the settlement of a large section of wild backcountry, Governor Tryon had offered Jamie a Royal grant of land just east of the Treaty Line, with no requirement of quitrent for a period of ten years. A fair offer, though given the difficulties of settlement in the mountains, not quite so generous as it might have looked.
The catch was that holders of such grants were legally required to be white Protestant males of good character, above the age of thirty. And while Jamie met the other requirements, Tryon was well aware of his Catholicism.
Do as the Governor required, and . . . well, the Governor was a successful politician; he knew how to keep his mouth shut about inconvenient matters. Defy him, though, and it would take no more than a simple letter from New Bern to deprive Fraser’s Ridge of its resident Frasers.
“Hmm. So you’re thinking that if you take the available men from the Ridge—can’t you leave out a few?”
“I havena got so many to start with, Sassenach,” he pointed out. “I can leave Fergus, because of his hand, and Mr. Wemyss to look after our place. He’s a bond servant, so far as anyone knows, and only freemen are obliged to join the militia.”
“And only able-bodied men. That lets out Joanna Grant’s husband; he’s got a wooden foot.”
He nodded.
“Aye, and old Arch Bug, who’s seventy if he’s a day. That’s four men—and maybe eight boys under sixteen—to look after thirty homesteads and more than a hundred and fifty people.”
“The women can probably manage fairly well by themselves,” I said. “It’s winter, after all; no crops