The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [66]
The servant is not precisely what Ian and Young Jamie had envisioned; far from the protectively muscular manservant they had in mind, Brianna’s choice falls on a wispy young girl, Elizabeth Wemyss, whose father begs Brianna to buy his daughter’s contract of indenture, in order to save her from the hands of a man whom he fears has dishonorable intentions.
Sure of her ability to take care of herself and Lizzie, Brianna insists that the girl will be her maid, and the two embark for North Carolina, with Brianna assuring her new servant that they will find Lizzie’s father—himself sold as a bondsman in the Colonies—as soon as they find Brianna’s.
ROGER’S SECOND ATTEMPT to pass through the stones is successful. Seeking traces of Brianna, he heads at once for Inverness, to consult the shipping registers and—if he can determine where she has gone—to make arrangements to follow her himself.
She is there—or rather, her name is there, inscribed as a passenger on the Phillip Alonzo, headed for the southern Colonies. Roger takes the first opportunity to follow, shipping as a hand on the Gloriana, bound for the Carolinas—captained by one Stephen Bonnet, who has the reputation of a fair but ruthless man.
Embarked on the long sea journey, Roger finds his loneliness slightly assuaged by watching the Scottish passengers— themselves embarked on a passage no less hazardous than his own, but willing to forsake home and country for the chance of a better life for themselves and their children.
This hope will prove vain for some. One night Roger is waked by a terrible commotion near the hold; smallpox has broken out among the passengers, and in an effort to prevent the disease from spreading the sailors are throwing the victims—many of them children—overboard to drown.
Joining the melee, Roger sees two dark figures crouched in the shadow near the cargo hold; one attacks him—a tall, fair man, whom he had noticed before. Not for the man’s own sake, but for the sake of his wife, a bonny wee girl named Morag MacKenzie, who has a nursing child.
The passengers’ revolt is subdued and the survivors clapped under hatches. But what of the second figure Roger has seen? He goes unobserved to the cargo hold next day, to make his own investigation. What he finds is what he suspected: Morag MacKenzie, hidden with her child. The boy has a rash on his face; in the panic over the pox he would certainly be dispatched with the rest. But it is not smallpox, Morag insists; nothing but a teething rash. It will clear within a few days; until then she must hide, to save baby Jemmy’s life. Surely Roger will not give her away? Moved by her plight, he promises to keep her secret, and to bring her food, until she can safely come out.
But a ship is a small place, and little happens that does not come to the attention of the Captain. Coming from the hold in a dense fog next day, Roger meets Stephen Bonnet, who demands to know his reason for hiding the girl—and offers Roger a dreadful gamble: the toss of a coin for the infant’s life.
Roger wins the toss, and hears the strange story of Bonnet’s early life, and the death of a beggar man who lies under the foundation of a great house in Inverness, killed in Bonnet’s stead by the toss of a coin. A coin the Captain still holds— along with Roger’s fate.
He opened the hand that held the coin, and held it cupped thoughtfully before him, tilting it back and forth so the silver gleamed in the lantern light.
“Heads you live, and tails you die. A fair chance, would yez say, MacKenzie?”…
As in a dream, Roger felt the weight of the shilling drop once more into his hands. He heard the suck and hiss of the water on the hull, the blowing of the whales—and the