An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon
I’d jump ship else, and go over to Rome,” he added, as a feeble joke.
“That’s good,” she said softly, not looking up from the depths of the cocoa she wasn’t drinking.
More silence. And the shade of Jerry MacKenzie, RAF, came and sat down by the fire in his fleece-lined leather flight jacket, watching the play of light in his granddaughter’s ink-black hair.
“So you—” He could hear the little pop as her tongue parted from her dry mouth. “You’re going to look? See if you can find out where your father went? Where he might … be?”
Where he might be. Here, there, then, now? His heart gave a sudden convulsive lurch, thinking of the tramp who’d stayed in the broch. God … no. It couldn’t be. No reason to think it, none. Only wanting.
He’d thought about it a lot, on the way to Oxford, between the praying. What he’d say, what he’d ask, if he had the chance. He wanted to ask everything, say everything—but there really was only the one thing to say to his father, and that thing was snoring in his arms like a drunken bumblebee.
“No.” Mandy squirmed in her sleep, emitted a small burp, and settled back against his chest. He didn’t look up, but kept his eyes fixed in the dark labyrinth of her curls. “I couldn’t risk my own kids losing their father.” His voice had nearly disappeared; he felt his vocal cords grinding like gears to force the words out.
“It’s too important. You don’t forget having a dad.”
Bree’s eyes slid sideways, the blue of them no more than a spark in the firelight.
“I thought … you were so young. You do remember your father?”
Roger shook his head, the chambers of his heart clenching hard, grasping emptiness.
“No,” he said softly, and bent his head, breathing in the scent of his daughter’s hair. “I remember yours.”
FLUTTERBY
Wilmington, colony of North Carolina
May 3, 1777
I COULD SEE AT ONCE that Jamie had been dreaming again. His face had an unfocused, inward look, as though he were seeing something other than the fried black pudding on his plate.
Seeing him like this gave me an urgent desire to ask what he had seen—quelled at once, for fear that if I asked too soon, he might lose some part of the dream. It also, truth be told, knotted me with envy. I would have given anything to see what he saw, whether it was real or not. That hardly mattered—it was connection, and the severed nerve ends that had joined me to my vanished family sparked and burned like shorted-out electrical cables when I saw that look on his face.
I couldn’t stand not to know what he had dreamed, though in the usual manner of dreams, it was seldom straightforward.
“You’ve been dreaming of them, haven’t you?” I said, when the serving maid had gone out. We’d risen late, tired from the long ride to Wilmington the day before, and were the only diners in the inn’s small front room.
He glanced at me and nodded slowly, a small frown between his brows. That made me uneasy; the occasional dreams he had of Bree or the children normally left him peaceful and happy.
“What?” I demanded. “What happened?”
He shrugged, still frowning.
“Nothing, Sassenach. I saw Jem and the wee lass—” A smile came over his face at that. “God, she’s a feisty wee baggage! She minds me o’ you, Sassenach.”
This was a dubious compliment as phrased, but I felt a deep glow at the thought. I’d spent hours looking at Mandy and Jem, memorizing every small feature and gesture, trying to extrapolate, imagine what they would look like as they grew—and I was almost sure that Mandy had my mouth. I knew for a fact that she had the shape of my eyes—and my hair, poor child, for all it was inky black.
“What were they doing?”
He rubbed a finger between his brows as though his forehead itched.
“They were outside,” he said slowly. “Jem told her to do something and she kicked him in the shin and ran away from him, so he chased her. I think it was spring.” He smiled, eyes fixed on whatever he’d seen in his dream. “I mind the wee flowers, caught in her hair, and lying in drifts across the stones.”
“What stones?” I asked sharply.
“Oh. The gravestones,” he answered, readily enough. “That’s it—they were playing among the stones on the hill behind Lallybroch.”
I sighed happily. This was the third dream that he’d had, seeing them at Lallybroch. It might be only wishful thinking, but I knew it made him as happy as it made me, to feel that they had made a home there.
“They could be,” I said. “Roger went there—when we were looking for you. He said the place was standing vacant, for sale. Bree would have money; they might have bought it. They could be there!” I’d told him that before, but he nodded, pleased.
“Aye, they could be,” he said, his eyes still soft with his memory of the children on the hill, chasing through the long grass and the worn gray stones that marked his family’s rest.
“A flutterby came with them,” he said suddenly. “I’d forgot that. A blue one.”
“Blue? Are there blue butterflies in Scotland?” I frowned, trying to remember. Such butterflies as I’d ever noticed had tended to be white or yellow, I thought.
Jamie gave me a look of mild exasperation.
“It’s a dream, Sassenach. I could have flutterbys wi’ tartan wings, and I liked.”
I laughed, but refused to be distracted.
“Right. What was it that bothered you, though?”
He glanced curiously at me.
“How did ye ken I was troubled?”
I looked at him down my nose—or as much down my nose as was possible, given the disparity of height.
“You may not have a glass face, but I have been married to you for thirty-odd years.”
He let the fact that I hadn’t actually been with him for twenty of those years pass without comment, and only smiled.
“Aye. Well, it wasna anything, really. Only that they went into the broch.”
“The broch?” I said uncertainly. The ancient tower for which Lallybroch was named did stand on the hill behind the house, its shadow passing daily through the burying ground like the stately march of a giant sundial. Jamie and I had gone up there often of an evening in our early days at Lallybroch, to sit on the bench that stood against the broch’s wall and be away from the hubbub of the house, enjoying the peaceful sight of the estate and its grounds spread white and green below us, soft with twilight.
The small frown was back between his brows.
“The broch,” he repeated, and looked at me, helpless. “I dinna ken what it was. Only that I didna want them to go in. It … felt as though there was something inside. Waiting. And I didna like it at all.”
PART THREE
Privateer
CORRESPONDENCE FROM THE FRONT
October 3, 1776
Ellesmere
to Lady Dorothea Grey
Dear Coz—
I write in haste to catch the Courier. I am embarked upon a brief Journey in company with another Officer, on behalf of Captain Richardson, and do not know for certain what my Whereabouts may be for the immediate Future. You may write to me in care of your Brother Adam; I will endeavor to keep in Correspondence with him.
I have executed your Commission to the best of my Ability, and will persevere in your Service. Give my Father and yours my best Regards and Respects, as well as my continuing Affection, and do not omit to keep a large Part of this last Quantity for yourself.
Your most obedient,
William
October 3, 1776
Ellesmere to Lord John Grey
Dear Father,
After due Thought, I have decided to accept Captain Richardson’s Proposal that I accompany a senior Officer on a Mission to Quebec, acting as Interpreter for him, my French being thought adequate to the Purpose. General Howe is agreeable.
I have not yet met Captain Randall-Isaacs, but will join him in Albany next Week. I do not know when we may return, and cannot say what Opportunities there may be to write, but I will do so when I can, and in the meantime beg that you will think fondly of
Your son,
William
Late October 1776
Quebec
WILLIAM WASN’T SURE quite what to make of Captain Denys Randall-Isaacs. On the surface, he was just the sort of genial, unremarkable fellow you found in any regiment: about thirty, decent with cards, ready with a joke, good-looking in a dark sort of way, open-faced, and reliable. He was a very pleasant traveling companion, too, with a fund of entertaining stories for the road and a thoroughgoing knowledge of bawdy songs and poems of the lower sort.
What he didn’t do was talk about himself. Which, in William’s experience, was what most people did best—or at least most frequently.
He’d tried a little tentative prodding, offering the rather dramatic story of his own birth, and receiving in turn a few spare facts: Randall-Isaacs’s own father, an officer of dragoons, had died in the Highlands campaign before Denys’s birth, and his mother had remarried a year later.
“My stepfather is a Jew,” he’d told William. “A rich one,” he’d added, with a wry smile.
William had nodded, amiable.
“Better than a poor one,” he’d said, and left it at that. It wasn’t much, as facts went, but it did go some way to explain why Randall-Isaacs was working for Richardson rather than pursuing fame and glory with the Lancers or the Welch Fusiliers. Money would buy a commission, but it would not ensure a warm reception in a regiment nor the sorts of opportunity that family connections and the influence spoken of delicately as “interest” would.
It occurred—fleetingly—to William to wonder just why he was turning his back on his own substantial connections and opportunities in order to engage in Captain Richardson’s shadowy ventures, but he dismissed that consideration as a matter for later contemplation.
“Amazing,” Denys murmured, looking up. They had reined in their horses on the road that led up from the bank of the St. Lawrence to the citadel of Quebec; from here, they could see the steep cliff face that Wolfe’s troops had climbed, seventeen years before, to capture the citadel—and Quebec—from the French.
“My father made that climb,” William said, trying to sound casual.
Randall-Isaacs’s head swiveled toward him in astonishment. “He did? Lord John, you mean—he fought on the Plains of Abraham with Wolfe?”
“Yes.” William eyed the cliff with respect. It was thick with saplings, but the underlying rock was crumbling shale; he could see the jagged dark fissures and quadrangular cracks through the leaves. The notion of scaling that height in the dark, and not only climbing it, but hauling all the artillery up the cliff-side with them … !
“He said the battle was over almost as soon as it started—only the one great volley—but the climb to the battlefield was the worst thing he’d ever done.”
Randall-Isaacs grunted respectfully, and paused for a moment before gathering his reins.
“You said your father knows Sir Guy?” he said. “Doubtless he’ll appreciate hearing the story.”
William glanced at his companion. Actually, he hadn’t said that Lord John knew Sir Guy Carleton, the commander in chief for North America—though he did. His father knew everyone. And with that simple thought, he realized suddenly what his true function on this expedition was. He was Randall-Isaacs’s calling card.
It was true that he spoke French very well—languages came easy to him—and that Randall-Isaacs’s French was rudimentary. Richardson had likely been telling the truth about that bit; always best to have an interpreter you can trust. But while Randall-Isaacs had exhibited a flattering interest in William, William became aware ex post facto that Randall-Isaacs was much more specifically interested in Lord John: the highlights of his military career, where he had been posted, whom he had served with or under, who he knew.
It had happened twice already. They’d called upon the commanders of Fort Saint-Jean and Fort Chambly, and in both instances Randall-Isaacs had presented their credentials, mentioning casually that William was the son of Lord John Grey. Whereupon the official welcome had warmed at once into a long, late evening of reminiscence and conversation, fueled by good brandy. During which—William now realized—he and the commanders had done all the talking. And Randall-Isaacs had sat listening, his handsome, high-colored face aglow with a flattering interest.
Huh, William thought to himself. Having worked it out, he wasn’t sure how he felt about it. On the one hand, he was pleased with himself for having smoked what was going on. On the other, he was less pleased to think that he was desirable mainly for his connections, rather than his own virtues.
Well, it was useful, if humbling, to know. What he didn’t know was exactly what Randall-Isaacs’s role was. Was he only gathering information for Richardson? Or had he other business, unspoken? Often enough, Randall-Isaacs had left him to his own devices, saying casually that he had a private errand for which he thought his own French adequate.
They were—according to the very limited instruction Captain Richardson had given him—assessing the sentiments of the French habitants and English settlers in Quebec, with an eye to future support in case of incursion by the American rebels or attempted threats and seductions by the Continental Congress.
These sentiments so far seemed clear, if not what he might have expected. The French settlers in the area were in sympathy with Sir Guy, who—as governor general of North America—had passed the Quebec Act, which legalized Catholicism and protected the French Catholics’ trade. The English were disgruntled by the same act, for obvious reasons, and had declined en masse to answer Sir Guy’s calls for militia assistance during the American attack on the city during the previous winter.
“They must have been insane,” he remarked to Randall-Isaacs, as they crossed the open plain before the citadel. “The Americans who tried it on here last year, I mean.”
They’d reached the top of the cliff now, and the citadel rose from the plain before them, peaceful and solid—very solid—in the autumn sun. The day was warm and beautiful, and the air was alive with the rich, earthy smells of the river and forest. He’d never seen such a forest. The trees that edged the plain and grew all along the banks of the St. Lawrence grew impenetrably thick, now blazing with gold and crimson. Seen against the darkness of the water and the impossible deep blue of the vast October sky, the whole of it gave him the dreamlike feeling of riding through a medieval painting, glowing with gold leaf and burning with a sense of otherworldly fervor.
But beyond the beauty of it, he felt the savagery of the place. Felt it with a clarity that made his bones feel transparent. The days were still warm, but the chill of winter was a sharp tooth that bit harder with each day’s twilight, and it took very little imagination for him to see this plain as it would be a few weeks from now, cloaked in bitter ice, whitely inhospitable to all life. With a ride of two hundred miles behind him, and an immediate understanding of the problems of supply for two riders on the rugged journey north in good weather, combined with what he knew of the rigors of supplying an army in bad weather …
“If they weren’t insane, they wouldn’t be doing what they are doing.” Randall-Isaacs interrupted his thoughts, he, too, drawing up for a moment to look over the prospect with a soldier’s eye. “It was Colonel Arnold who led them here, though. That man is certainly insane. But a damned good soldier.” Admiration showed in his voice, and William glanced curiously at him.
“Know him, do you?” he asked casually, and Randall-Isaacs laughed.
“Not to speak to,” he replied. “Come on.” He spurred up, and they turned toward the citadel gate. He wore an amused, half-contemptuous expression, though, as if dwelling on a memory, and after a few moments, he spoke again.
“He might have done it. Arnold, I mean; taken the city. Sir Guy hadn’t any troops to speak of, and had Arnold got here when he planned to, and with the powder and shot he needed … well, it would have been a different story. But he chose the wrong man to ask directions of.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Randall-Isaacs looked suddenly wary, but then seemed to shrug internally, as though to say, “What does it matter?” He was in good humor, already looking forward to a hot dinner, a soft bed, and clean linen, after weeks of camping in the dark forests.
“He couldn’t make it overland,” he said. “Seeking a way to carry an army and its necessities north by water, Arnold had gone looking for someone who had made the hazardous trip and knew the rivers and portages,” Randall-Isaacs said. “He’d found one, too—Samuel Goodwin.”
“But it never occurred to him that Goodwin might be a Loyalist.” Randall-Isaacs shook his head at this naïveté. “Goodwin came to me and asked what he should do. So I told him, and he gave Arnold his maps—carefully rewritten to serve their purpose.”
And serve their purpose they had. By misstating distances, removing landmarks, indicating passages where there were none, and providing maps that were pure figments of imagination, Mr. Goodwin’s guidance succeeded in luring Arnold’s force deep into the wilderness, obliging them to carry their ships and supplies overland for days on end, and eventually delaying them so badly that the winter caught them, well short of Quebec City.
Randall-Isaacs laughed, though there was a tinge of regret about it, William thought.
“I was amazed when they told me he’d made it after all. Aside from everything else, he’d been swindled by the carpenters who made his ships—I do believe that was sheer incompetence, not politics, though these days it’s sometimes hard to tell. Made with green timbers and badly fitted. More than half of them came apart and sank within days of launching.
“It had to have been sheer hell,” Randall-Isaacs said, as though to himself. He pulled himself up straight then, shaking his head.
“But they followed him. All his men. Only one company turned back. Starving, half naked, freezing … they followed him,” he repeated, marveling. He glanced sideways at William, smiling. “Think your men would follow you, Lieutenant? In such conditions?”
“I hope I should have better sense than to lead them into such conditions,” William replied dryly. “What happened to Arnold in the end? Was he captured?”
“No,” Randall-Isaacs said thoughtfully, lifting a hand to wave at the guards by the citadel gate. “No, he wasn’t. As to what’s happened to him now, God only knows. Or God and Sir Guy. I’m hoping the latter can tell us.”
JOYEUX NÖEL
London
December 24, 1776
MOST PROSPEROUS MADAMS WERE stout creatures, Lord John reflected. Whether it was only the satisfaction of appetites denied in their early years, or was a shield against the possibility of a return to the lower stations of their trade, almost all of them were well armored in flesh.
Not Nessie. He could see the shadow of her body through the thin muslin of her shift—he had inadvertently roused her from her bed—as she stood before the fire to pull on her bed-sacque. She bore not an ounce more upon her scrawny frame than she had when he’d first met her, then aged—she’d said—fourteen, though he’d suspected at the time that she might be eleven. That would make her thirty-odd. She still looked fourteen. He smiled at the notion, and she smiled back, tying her gown. The smile aged her a bit, for there were gaps among her teeth, and the remainder showed black at the root. If she was not stout, it was because she
“That’s good,” she said softly, not looking up from the depths of the cocoa she wasn’t drinking.
More silence. And the shade of Jerry MacKenzie, RAF, came and sat down by the fire in his fleece-lined leather flight jacket, watching the play of light in his granddaughter’s ink-black hair.
“So you—” He could hear the little pop as her tongue parted from her dry mouth. “You’re going to look? See if you can find out where your father went? Where he might … be?”
Where he might be. Here, there, then, now? His heart gave a sudden convulsive lurch, thinking of the tramp who’d stayed in the broch. God … no. It couldn’t be. No reason to think it, none. Only wanting.
He’d thought about it a lot, on the way to Oxford, between the praying. What he’d say, what he’d ask, if he had the chance. He wanted to ask everything, say everything—but there really was only the one thing to say to his father, and that thing was snoring in his arms like a drunken bumblebee.
“No.” Mandy squirmed in her sleep, emitted a small burp, and settled back against his chest. He didn’t look up, but kept his eyes fixed in the dark labyrinth of her curls. “I couldn’t risk my own kids losing their father.” His voice had nearly disappeared; he felt his vocal cords grinding like gears to force the words out.
“It’s too important. You don’t forget having a dad.”
Bree’s eyes slid sideways, the blue of them no more than a spark in the firelight.
“I thought … you were so young. You do remember your father?”
Roger shook his head, the chambers of his heart clenching hard, grasping emptiness.
“No,” he said softly, and bent his head, breathing in the scent of his daughter’s hair. “I remember yours.”
FLUTTERBY
Wilmington, colony of North Carolina
May 3, 1777
I COULD SEE AT ONCE that Jamie had been dreaming again. His face had an unfocused, inward look, as though he were seeing something other than the fried black pudding on his plate.
Seeing him like this gave me an urgent desire to ask what he had seen—quelled at once, for fear that if I asked too soon, he might lose some part of the dream. It also, truth be told, knotted me with envy. I would have given anything to see what he saw, whether it was real or not. That hardly mattered—it was connection, and the severed nerve ends that had joined me to my vanished family sparked and burned like shorted-out electrical cables when I saw that look on his face.
I couldn’t stand not to know what he had dreamed, though in the usual manner of dreams, it was seldom straightforward.
“You’ve been dreaming of them, haven’t you?” I said, when the serving maid had gone out. We’d risen late, tired from the long ride to Wilmington the day before, and were the only diners in the inn’s small front room.
He glanced at me and nodded slowly, a small frown between his brows. That made me uneasy; the occasional dreams he had of Bree or the children normally left him peaceful and happy.
“What?” I demanded. “What happened?”
He shrugged, still frowning.
“Nothing, Sassenach. I saw Jem and the wee lass—” A smile came over his face at that. “God, she’s a feisty wee baggage! She minds me o’ you, Sassenach.”
This was a dubious compliment as phrased, but I felt a deep glow at the thought. I’d spent hours looking at Mandy and Jem, memorizing every small feature and gesture, trying to extrapolate, imagine what they would look like as they grew—and I was almost sure that Mandy had my mouth. I knew for a fact that she had the shape of my eyes—and my hair, poor child, for all it was inky black.
“What were they doing?”
He rubbed a finger between his brows as though his forehead itched.
“They were outside,” he said slowly. “Jem told her to do something and she kicked him in the shin and ran away from him, so he chased her. I think it was spring.” He smiled, eyes fixed on whatever he’d seen in his dream. “I mind the wee flowers, caught in her hair, and lying in drifts across the stones.”
“What stones?” I asked sharply.
“Oh. The gravestones,” he answered, readily enough. “That’s it—they were playing among the stones on the hill behind Lallybroch.”
I sighed happily. This was the third dream that he’d had, seeing them at Lallybroch. It might be only wishful thinking, but I knew it made him as happy as it made me, to feel that they had made a home there.
“They could be,” I said. “Roger went there—when we were looking for you. He said the place was standing vacant, for sale. Bree would have money; they might have bought it. They could be there!” I’d told him that before, but he nodded, pleased.
“Aye, they could be,” he said, his eyes still soft with his memory of the children on the hill, chasing through the long grass and the worn gray stones that marked his family’s rest.
“A flutterby came with them,” he said suddenly. “I’d forgot that. A blue one.”
“Blue? Are there blue butterflies in Scotland?” I frowned, trying to remember. Such butterflies as I’d ever noticed had tended to be white or yellow, I thought.
Jamie gave me a look of mild exasperation.
“It’s a dream, Sassenach. I could have flutterbys wi’ tartan wings, and I liked.”
I laughed, but refused to be distracted.
“Right. What was it that bothered you, though?”
He glanced curiously at me.
“How did ye ken I was troubled?”
I looked at him down my nose—or as much down my nose as was possible, given the disparity of height.
“You may not have a glass face, but I have been married to you for thirty-odd years.”
He let the fact that I hadn’t actually been with him for twenty of those years pass without comment, and only smiled.
“Aye. Well, it wasna anything, really. Only that they went into the broch.”
“The broch?” I said uncertainly. The ancient tower for which Lallybroch was named did stand on the hill behind the house, its shadow passing daily through the burying ground like the stately march of a giant sundial. Jamie and I had gone up there often of an evening in our early days at Lallybroch, to sit on the bench that stood against the broch’s wall and be away from the hubbub of the house, enjoying the peaceful sight of the estate and its grounds spread white and green below us, soft with twilight.
The small frown was back between his brows.
“The broch,” he repeated, and looked at me, helpless. “I dinna ken what it was. Only that I didna want them to go in. It … felt as though there was something inside. Waiting. And I didna like it at all.”
PART THREE
Privateer
CORRESPONDENCE FROM THE FRONT
October 3, 1776
Ellesmere
to Lady Dorothea Grey
Dear Coz—
I write in haste to catch the Courier. I am embarked upon a brief Journey in company with another Officer, on behalf of Captain Richardson, and do not know for certain what my Whereabouts may be for the immediate Future. You may write to me in care of your Brother Adam; I will endeavor to keep in Correspondence with him.
I have executed your Commission to the best of my Ability, and will persevere in your Service. Give my Father and yours my best Regards and Respects, as well as my continuing Affection, and do not omit to keep a large Part of this last Quantity for yourself.
Your most obedient,
William
October 3, 1776
Ellesmere to Lord John Grey
Dear Father,
After due Thought, I have decided to accept Captain Richardson’s Proposal that I accompany a senior Officer on a Mission to Quebec, acting as Interpreter for him, my French being thought adequate to the Purpose. General Howe is agreeable.
I have not yet met Captain Randall-Isaacs, but will join him in Albany next Week. I do not know when we may return, and cannot say what Opportunities there may be to write, but I will do so when I can, and in the meantime beg that you will think fondly of
Your son,
William
Late October 1776
Quebec
WILLIAM WASN’T SURE quite what to make of Captain Denys Randall-Isaacs. On the surface, he was just the sort of genial, unremarkable fellow you found in any regiment: about thirty, decent with cards, ready with a joke, good-looking in a dark sort of way, open-faced, and reliable. He was a very pleasant traveling companion, too, with a fund of entertaining stories for the road and a thoroughgoing knowledge of bawdy songs and poems of the lower sort.
What he didn’t do was talk about himself. Which, in William’s experience, was what most people did best—or at least most frequently.
He’d tried a little tentative prodding, offering the rather dramatic story of his own birth, and receiving in turn a few spare facts: Randall-Isaacs’s own father, an officer of dragoons, had died in the Highlands campaign before Denys’s birth, and his mother had remarried a year later.
“My stepfather is a Jew,” he’d told William. “A rich one,” he’d added, with a wry smile.
William had nodded, amiable.
“Better than a poor one,” he’d said, and left it at that. It wasn’t much, as facts went, but it did go some way to explain why Randall-Isaacs was working for Richardson rather than pursuing fame and glory with the Lancers or the Welch Fusiliers. Money would buy a commission, but it would not ensure a warm reception in a regiment nor the sorts of opportunity that family connections and the influence spoken of delicately as “interest” would.
It occurred—fleetingly—to William to wonder just why he was turning his back on his own substantial connections and opportunities in order to engage in Captain Richardson’s shadowy ventures, but he dismissed that consideration as a matter for later contemplation.
“Amazing,” Denys murmured, looking up. They had reined in their horses on the road that led up from the bank of the St. Lawrence to the citadel of Quebec; from here, they could see the steep cliff face that Wolfe’s troops had climbed, seventeen years before, to capture the citadel—and Quebec—from the French.
“My father made that climb,” William said, trying to sound casual.
Randall-Isaacs’s head swiveled toward him in astonishment. “He did? Lord John, you mean—he fought on the Plains of Abraham with Wolfe?”
“Yes.” William eyed the cliff with respect. It was thick with saplings, but the underlying rock was crumbling shale; he could see the jagged dark fissures and quadrangular cracks through the leaves. The notion of scaling that height in the dark, and not only climbing it, but hauling all the artillery up the cliff-side with them … !
“He said the battle was over almost as soon as it started—only the one great volley—but the climb to the battlefield was the worst thing he’d ever done.”
Randall-Isaacs grunted respectfully, and paused for a moment before gathering his reins.
“You said your father knows Sir Guy?” he said. “Doubtless he’ll appreciate hearing the story.”
William glanced at his companion. Actually, he hadn’t said that Lord John knew Sir Guy Carleton, the commander in chief for North America—though he did. His father knew everyone. And with that simple thought, he realized suddenly what his true function on this expedition was. He was Randall-Isaacs’s calling card.
It was true that he spoke French very well—languages came easy to him—and that Randall-Isaacs’s French was rudimentary. Richardson had likely been telling the truth about that bit; always best to have an interpreter you can trust. But while Randall-Isaacs had exhibited a flattering interest in William, William became aware ex post facto that Randall-Isaacs was much more specifically interested in Lord John: the highlights of his military career, where he had been posted, whom he had served with or under, who he knew.
It had happened twice already. They’d called upon the commanders of Fort Saint-Jean and Fort Chambly, and in both instances Randall-Isaacs had presented their credentials, mentioning casually that William was the son of Lord John Grey. Whereupon the official welcome had warmed at once into a long, late evening of reminiscence and conversation, fueled by good brandy. During which—William now realized—he and the commanders had done all the talking. And Randall-Isaacs had sat listening, his handsome, high-colored face aglow with a flattering interest.
Huh, William thought to himself. Having worked it out, he wasn’t sure how he felt about it. On the one hand, he was pleased with himself for having smoked what was going on. On the other, he was less pleased to think that he was desirable mainly for his connections, rather than his own virtues.
Well, it was useful, if humbling, to know. What he didn’t know was exactly what Randall-Isaacs’s role was. Was he only gathering information for Richardson? Or had he other business, unspoken? Often enough, Randall-Isaacs had left him to his own devices, saying casually that he had a private errand for which he thought his own French adequate.
They were—according to the very limited instruction Captain Richardson had given him—assessing the sentiments of the French habitants and English settlers in Quebec, with an eye to future support in case of incursion by the American rebels or attempted threats and seductions by the Continental Congress.
These sentiments so far seemed clear, if not what he might have expected. The French settlers in the area were in sympathy with Sir Guy, who—as governor general of North America—had passed the Quebec Act, which legalized Catholicism and protected the French Catholics’ trade. The English were disgruntled by the same act, for obvious reasons, and had declined en masse to answer Sir Guy’s calls for militia assistance during the American attack on the city during the previous winter.
“They must have been insane,” he remarked to Randall-Isaacs, as they crossed the open plain before the citadel. “The Americans who tried it on here last year, I mean.”
They’d reached the top of the cliff now, and the citadel rose from the plain before them, peaceful and solid—very solid—in the autumn sun. The day was warm and beautiful, and the air was alive with the rich, earthy smells of the river and forest. He’d never seen such a forest. The trees that edged the plain and grew all along the banks of the St. Lawrence grew impenetrably thick, now blazing with gold and crimson. Seen against the darkness of the water and the impossible deep blue of the vast October sky, the whole of it gave him the dreamlike feeling of riding through a medieval painting, glowing with gold leaf and burning with a sense of otherworldly fervor.
But beyond the beauty of it, he felt the savagery of the place. Felt it with a clarity that made his bones feel transparent. The days were still warm, but the chill of winter was a sharp tooth that bit harder with each day’s twilight, and it took very little imagination for him to see this plain as it would be a few weeks from now, cloaked in bitter ice, whitely inhospitable to all life. With a ride of two hundred miles behind him, and an immediate understanding of the problems of supply for two riders on the rugged journey north in good weather, combined with what he knew of the rigors of supplying an army in bad weather …
“If they weren’t insane, they wouldn’t be doing what they are doing.” Randall-Isaacs interrupted his thoughts, he, too, drawing up for a moment to look over the prospect with a soldier’s eye. “It was Colonel Arnold who led them here, though. That man is certainly insane. But a damned good soldier.” Admiration showed in his voice, and William glanced curiously at him.
“Know him, do you?” he asked casually, and Randall-Isaacs laughed.
“Not to speak to,” he replied. “Come on.” He spurred up, and they turned toward the citadel gate. He wore an amused, half-contemptuous expression, though, as if dwelling on a memory, and after a few moments, he spoke again.
“He might have done it. Arnold, I mean; taken the city. Sir Guy hadn’t any troops to speak of, and had Arnold got here when he planned to, and with the powder and shot he needed … well, it would have been a different story. But he chose the wrong man to ask directions of.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Randall-Isaacs looked suddenly wary, but then seemed to shrug internally, as though to say, “What does it matter?” He was in good humor, already looking forward to a hot dinner, a soft bed, and clean linen, after weeks of camping in the dark forests.
“He couldn’t make it overland,” he said. “Seeking a way to carry an army and its necessities north by water, Arnold had gone looking for someone who had made the hazardous trip and knew the rivers and portages,” Randall-Isaacs said. “He’d found one, too—Samuel Goodwin.”
“But it never occurred to him that Goodwin might be a Loyalist.” Randall-Isaacs shook his head at this naïveté. “Goodwin came to me and asked what he should do. So I told him, and he gave Arnold his maps—carefully rewritten to serve their purpose.”
And serve their purpose they had. By misstating distances, removing landmarks, indicating passages where there were none, and providing maps that were pure figments of imagination, Mr. Goodwin’s guidance succeeded in luring Arnold’s force deep into the wilderness, obliging them to carry their ships and supplies overland for days on end, and eventually delaying them so badly that the winter caught them, well short of Quebec City.
Randall-Isaacs laughed, though there was a tinge of regret about it, William thought.
“I was amazed when they told me he’d made it after all. Aside from everything else, he’d been swindled by the carpenters who made his ships—I do believe that was sheer incompetence, not politics, though these days it’s sometimes hard to tell. Made with green timbers and badly fitted. More than half of them came apart and sank within days of launching.
“It had to have been sheer hell,” Randall-Isaacs said, as though to himself. He pulled himself up straight then, shaking his head.
“But they followed him. All his men. Only one company turned back. Starving, half naked, freezing … they followed him,” he repeated, marveling. He glanced sideways at William, smiling. “Think your men would follow you, Lieutenant? In such conditions?”
“I hope I should have better sense than to lead them into such conditions,” William replied dryly. “What happened to Arnold in the end? Was he captured?”
“No,” Randall-Isaacs said thoughtfully, lifting a hand to wave at the guards by the citadel gate. “No, he wasn’t. As to what’s happened to him now, God only knows. Or God and Sir Guy. I’m hoping the latter can tell us.”
JOYEUX NÖEL
London
December 24, 1776
MOST PROSPEROUS MADAMS WERE stout creatures, Lord John reflected. Whether it was only the satisfaction of appetites denied in their early years, or was a shield against the possibility of a return to the lower stations of their trade, almost all of them were well armored in flesh.
Not Nessie. He could see the shadow of her body through the thin muslin of her shift—he had inadvertently roused her from her bed—as she stood before the fire to pull on her bed-sacque. She bore not an ounce more upon her scrawny frame than she had when he’d first met her, then aged—she’d said—fourteen, though he’d suspected at the time that she might be eleven. That would make her thirty-odd. She still looked fourteen. He smiled at the notion, and she smiled back, tying her gown. The smile aged her a bit, for there were gaps among her teeth, and the remainder showed black at the root. If she was not stout, it was because she