Voyager - Diana Gabaldon [360]
“Sir Percival’s got ambitions, see?” While not noticeably relaxed, Tompkins had at least unbent enough to lean forward, one eye narrowing as he gestured in explanation. “He’s in with Dundas and all them. Everything goes right, and he might have a peerage, not just a knighthood, eh? But that’ll take more than money.”
One thing that could help was some spectacular demonstration of competence and service to the Crown.
“As in the sort of arrest that might make ’em sit up and take notice, eh? Ooh! That smarts, missus. You sure of what you’re a-doing of, there?” Tompkins squinted dubiously downward, to where I was sponging the site of the injury with dilute alcohol.
“I’m sure,” I said. “Go on, then. I suppose a simple smuggler wouldn’t have been good enough, no matter how big?”
Evidently not. However, when word had reached Sir Percival that there might just possibly be a major political criminal within his grasp, the old gentleman had nearly blown a gasket with excitement.
“But sedition’s a harder thing to prove than smuggling, eh? You catch one of the little fish with the goods, and they’re saying not a thing will lead you further on. Idealists, them seditionists,” Tompkins said, shaking his head with disgust. “Never rat on each other, they don’t.”
“So you didn’t know who you were looking for?” I stood and took one of my cat-gut sutures from its jar, threading it through a needle. I caught Tompkins’s apprehensive look, but did nothing to allay his anxiety. I wanted him anxious—and voluble.
“No, we didn’t know who the big fish was—not until another of Sir Percival’s agents had the luck to tumble to one of Fraser’s associates, what gave ’em the tip he was Malcolm the printer, and told his real name. Then it all come clear, o’ course.”
My heart skipped a beat.
“Who was the associate?” I asked. The names and faces of the six smugglers darted through my mind—little fish. Not idealists, any of them. But to which of them was loyalty no bar?
“I don’t know. No, it’s true, missus, I swear! Ow!” he said frantically as I jabbed the needle under the skin.
“I’m not trying to hurt you,” I assured him, in as false a voice as I could muster. “I have to stitch the wound, though.”
“Oh! Ow! I don’t know, to be sure I don’t! I’d tell, if I did, as God’s my witness!”
“I’m sure you would,” I said, intent on my stitching.
“Oh! Please, missus! Stop! Just for a moment! All I know is it was an Englishman! That’s all!”
I stopped, and stared up at him. “An Englishman?” I said blankly.
“Yes, missus. That’s what Sir Percival said.” He looked down at me, tears trembling on the lashes of both his eyes. I took the final stitch, as gently as I could, and tied the suture knot. Without speaking, I got up, poured a small tot of brandy from my private bottle, and handed it to him.
He gulped it gratefully, and seemed much restored in consequence. Whether out of gratitude, or sheer relief for the end of the ordeal, he told me the rest of the story. In search of evidence to support a charge of sedition, he had gone to the printshop in Carfax Close.
“I know what happened there,” I assured him. I turned his face toward the light, examining the burn scars. “Is it still painful?”
“No, Missus, but it hurt precious bad for some time,” he said. Being incapacitated by his injuries, Tompkins had taken no part in the ambush at Arbroath cove, but he had heard—“not direct-like, but I heard, you know,” he said, with a shrewd nod of the head—what had happened.
Sir Percival had given Jamie warning of an ambush, to lessen the chances of Jamie’s thinking him involved in the affair, and possibly revealing the details of their financial arrangements in quarters where such revelations would be detrimental to Sir Percival’s interests.
At the same time, Sir Percival had learned—from the associate, the mysterious Englishman—of the fallback arrangement with the French delivery vessel, and had arranged the grave-ambush on the beach at Arbroath.
“But what about the Customs officer who was killed on the road?” I asked sharply. I couldn’t repress a small