“Oh, that smells good.” I sniffed beatifically at the inside of an empty cask; it was one of the special casks Jamie had obtained through one of Lord John’s shipping friends—charred inside like a normal whisky cask, but previously used to store sherry. The sweet mellow ghost of the sherry mingled with the faint scent of char and the hot, raw reek of the new whisky were together enough to make my head spin pleasantly.
“Aye, it’s a small batch, but no bad,” Jamie agreed, inhaling the aroma like a perfume connoisseur. He lifted his head and eyed the sky overhead; the wind was coming up strong, and thick clouds were racing past, dark-bellied and threatening.
“There’s only the three casks,” he said. “If ye think ye might manage one, Sassenach, I’ll take the others. I should like to have them safe, rather than dig them out of a snowbank next week.”
A half-mile walk in a roaring wind, carrying or rolling a six-gallon cask, was no joke, but he was right about the snow. It wasn’t quite cold enough for snow yet, but it would be soon. I sighed, but nodded, and between us, we managed to lug the casks slowly up to the whisky cache, hidden among rocks and ragged grapevines.
I had quite regained my strength, but even so, every muscle I had was trembling and jerking in protest by the time we had finished, and I made no objection at all when Jamie made me sit down to rest before heading back to the house.
“What do you plan to do with these?” I asked, nodding back toward the cache. “Keep, or sell?”
He wiped a flying strand of hair out of his face, squinting against a blast of flying dust and dead leaves.
“I’ll have to sell one, for the spring seed. We’ll keep one to age—and I think perhaps I can put the last to good purpose. If Bobby Higgins comes again before the snow, I shall send a half-dozen bottles to Ashe, Harnett, Howe, and a few others—a wee token of my abiding esteem, aye?” He grinned wryly at me.
“Well, I’ve heard of worse bona fides,” I said, amused. It had taken him a good deal of work to worm his way back into the good graces of the North Carolina Committee of Correspondence, but several members had begun answering his letters again—cautiously, but with respect.
“I shouldna think anything important will happen over the winter,” he said thoughtfully, rubbing his cold-reddened nose.
“Likely not.” Massachusetts, where most of the uproar had been taking place, was now occupied by a General Gage, and the latest we had heard was that he had fortified Boston Neck, the narrow spit of land that connects the city to the mainland—which meant that Boston was now cut off from the rest of the colony, and under seige.
I felt a small pang, thinking of it; I had lived in Boston for nearly twenty years, and was fond of the city—though I knew I would not recognize it now.
“John Hancock—he’s a merchant there—is heading the Committee of Safety, Ashe says. They’ve voted to recruit twelve thousand militia, and are looking to purchase five thousand muskets—with the trouble I had to find thirty, good luck to them, is all I can say.”
I laughed, but before I could reply, Jamie stiffened.
“What’s that?” His head turned sharply, and he laid a hand on my arm. Silenced abruptly, I held my breath, listening. The wind stirred the drying leaves of wild grapevines with a papery rustle behind me, and in the distance a murder of crows passed, squabbling in shrill cries.
Then I heard it, too: a small, desolate, and very human sound. Jamie was already on his feet, making his way with care between the fallen rocks. He ducked beneath the lintel made by a leaning slab of granite, and I made to follow him. He stopped abruptly, nearly making me run into him.
“Joseph?” he said incredulously.
I peered around him as best I could. To my equal astonishment, it was Mr. Wemyss, sitting hunched on a boulder, a stone jug between his bony knees. He’d been crying; his nose and eyes were red, making him look even more like a white mouse than usual. He was also extremely drunk.
“Oh,” he said, blinking in dismay at us. “Oh.”
“Are ye . . . quite well, Joseph?” Jamie came closer, extending a hand gingerly, as though afraid that Mr. Wemyss might crack into pieces if touched.
This instinct was sound; when he touched the little man, Mr. Wemyss’s face crumpled like paper, and his thin shoulders began to shake uncontrollably.
“I am so sorry, sir,” he kept saying, quite dissolved in tears. “I’m so sorry!”
Jamie gave me a “do something, Sassenach” look of appeal, and I knelt swiftly, putting my arms round Mr. Wemyss’s shoulders, patting his slender back.
“Now, now,” I said, giving Jamie a “now what?” sort of look over Mr. Wemyss’s matchstick shoulder in return. “I’m sure it will be all right.”
“Oh, no,” he said, hiccuping. “Oh, no, it can’t.” He turned a face streaming with woe toward Jamie. “I can’t bear it, sir, truly I can’t.”
Mr. Wemyss’s bones felt thin and brittle, and he was shivering. He was wearing only a thin shirt and breeches, and the wind was beginning to whine through the rocks. Clouds thickened overhead, and the light went from the little hollow, suddenly, as though a blackout curtain had been dropped.
Jamie unfastened his own cloak and wrapped it rather awkwardly round Mr. Wemyss, then lowered himself carefully onto another boulder.
“Tell me the trouble, Joseph,” he said quite gently. “Is someone dead, then?”
Mr. Wemyss sank his face into his hands, head shaking to and fro like a metronome. He muttered something, which I understood to be “Better if she were.”
“Lizzie?” I asked, exchanging a puzzled glance with Jamie. “Is it Lizzie you mean?” She’d been perfectly all right at breakfast; what on earth—
“First Manfred McGillivray,” Mr. Wemyss said, raising his face from his hands, “and then Higgins. As though a degenerate and a murderer were not bad enough—now this!”
Jamie’s brows shot up and he looked at me. I shrugged slightly. The gravel was jabbing sharply into my knees; I rose stiffly and brushed it away.
“Are you saying that Lizzie is, er . . . in love with someone . . . unsuitable?” I asked carefully.
Mr. Wemyss shuddered.
“Unsuitable,” he said, in a hollow tone. “Jesus Christ. Unsuitable!”
I’d never heard Mr. Wemyss blaspheme before; it was unsettling.
He turned wild eyes on me, looking like a crazed sparrow, huddled in the depths of Jamie’s cloak.
“I gave up everything for her!” he said. “I sold myself—and gladly!—to save her from dishonor. I left home, left Scotland, knowing I should never see it more, that I should leave my bones in the soil of the strangers. And yet I’ve said nay word of reproach to her, my dear wee lassie, for how should it be her fault? And now . . .” He turned a hollow, haunted gaze on Jamie.
“My God, my God. What shall I do?” he whispered. A blast of wind thundered through the rocks and whipped the cloak around him, momentarily obliterating him in a shroud of gray, as though distress had quite engulfed him.
I kept tight hold of my own cloak, to prevent it being torn off me; the wind was strong enough that I nearly lost my footing. Jamie squinted against the spray of dust and fine gravel that blasted us, setting his teeth in discomfort. He wrapped his arms around himself, shivering.
“Is the lass with child, then, Joseph?” he said, obviously wanting to get to the bottom of things and go home.
Mr. Wemyss’s head popped out of the folds of cloak, fair hair tousled into broomstraw. Blinking reddened eyes, he nodded, then excavated the jug and, raising it in trembling hands, took several gulps. I saw the single “X” marked on the jug; with his characteristic modesty, he had taken a jug of the raw new whisky, not the cask-aged higher quality.
Jamie sighed, reached out a hand, and taking the jug from him, took a healthy gulp himself.
“Who?” he said, handing it back. “Is it my nephew?”
Mr. Wemyss stared at him, owl-eyed.
“Your nephew?”
“Ian Murray,” I put in helpfully. “Tall brown-haired lad? Tattoos?”
Jamie gave me a look suggesting that I was perhaps not being quite so helpful as I thought, but Mr. Wemyss went on looking blank.
“Ian Murray?” Then the name appeared to penetrate through the alcoholic fog. “Oh. No. Christ, if it were! I should bless the lad,” he said fervently.
I exchanged another look with Jamie. This looked like being serious.
“Joseph,” he said with just a touch of menace. “It’s cold.” He wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “Who’s debauched your daughter? Give me his name, and I’ll see him wed to her in the morning or dead at her feet, whichever ye like. But let’s do it inside by the fire, aye?”
“Beardsley,” Mr. Wemyss said, in a tone suggesting visions of utter despair.
“Beardsley?” Jamie repeated. He raised one eyebrow at me. It wasn’t what I would have expected—but hearing it came as no great shock, either.
“Which Beardsley was it?” he asked, with relative patience. “Jo? Or Kezzie?”
Mr. Wemyss heaved a sigh that came from the bottoms of his feet.
“She doesn’t know,” he said flatly.
“Christ,” said Jamie involuntarily. He reached for the whisky again, and drank heavily.
“Ahem,” I said, giving him a meaningful look as he lowered the jug. He surrendered it to me without comment, and straightened himself on his boulder, shirt plastered against his chest by the wind, his hair whipped loose behind him.
“Well, then,” he said firmly. “We’ll have the two of them in, and find out the truth of it.”
“No,” said Mr. Wemyss, “we won’t. They don’t know, either.”
I had just taken a mouthful of raw spirit. At this, I choked, spluttering whisky down my chin.
“They what?” I croaked, wiping my face with a corner of my cloak. “You mean . . . both of them?”
Mr. Wemyss looked at me. Instead of replying, though, he blinked once. Then his eyes rolled up into his head and he fell headlong off the boulder, poleaxed.
I MANAGED TO RESTORE Mr. Wemyss to semiconsciousness, but not to the point of his being able to walk. Jamie was therefore obliged to carry the little man slung across his shoulders like a deer carcass; no mean feat, considering the broken ground that lay between the whisky cache and the new malting floor, and the wind that pelted us with bits of gravel, leaves, and flying pinecones. Clouds had boiled up over the shoulder of the mountain, dark and dirty as laundry suds, and were spreading rapidly across the sky. We were going to get drenched, if we didn’t hurry.
The going became easier once we reached the trail to the house, but Jamie’s temper was not improved by Mr. Wemyss’s suddenly coming to at this point and vomiting down the front of his shirt. After a hasty attempt at swabbing off the mess, we reorganized our strategy, and made our way with Mr. Wemyss precariously balanced between us, each firmly gripping one elbow as he slipped and stumbled, his spindly knees giving way at unexpected moments, like Pinocchio with his strings cut.