“Evidently so.” Jamie looked slightly worried, but much more amused. “Dinna fash yourself over it, Sassenach. Fergus has some skill at this game.”
“It is not a game,” I said, with enough vehemence that he looked at me in surprise.
“It’s not,” I repeated, a little more calmly.
He raised his brows at me, and pulling a small sheaf of papers from the mess on his desk, handed them across.
WEDNESDAY MORNING
NEAR 10 OF THE CLOCK—WATERTOWN
To all the friends of American liberty be it known that this morning before break of day, a brigade, consisting of about 1,000 to 1,200 men landed at Phip’s Farm at Cambridge and marched to Lexington, where they found a company of our colony militia in arms, upon whom they fired without any provocation and killed six men and wounded four others. By an express from Boston, we find another brigade are now upon their march from Boston supposed to be about 1,000. The Bearer, Israel Bissell, is charged to alarm the country quite to Connecticut and all persons are desired to furnish him with fresh horses as they may be needed. I have spoken with several persons who have seen the dead and wounded. Pray let the delegates from this colony to Connecticut see this.
J. Palmer, one of the Committee of Safety.
They know Col. Foster of Brookfield one of the Delegates.
Beneath this message was a list of signatures, though most were done in the same handwriting. The first read A true copy taken from the original per order of the Committee of Correspondence for Worcester—April 19, 1775. Attest. Nathan Baldwin, Town Clerk. All the others were preceded by similar statements.
“I will be damned,” I said. “It’s the Lexington Alarm.” I glanced up at Jamie, wide-eyed. “Where did you get it?”
“One of Colonel Ashe’s men brought it.” He shuffled to the end of the last sheet, pointing out John Ashe’s endorsement. “What is the Lexington Alarm?”
“That.” I looked at it with fascination. “After the battle at Lexington, General Palmer—he’s a general of militia—wrote this and sent it through the countryside by an express rider, to bear witness to what had happened; to notify the militias nearby that the war had started.
“Men along the way took copies of it, endorsed them to swear that they were true copies, and sent the message along to other townships and villages; there were probably hundreds of copies made at the time, and quite a few survived. Frank had one that someone gave him as a present. He kept it in a frame, in the front hall of our house in Boston.”
Then a quite extraordinary shudder went through me, as I realized that the familiar letter I was looking at had in fact been written only a week or two before—not two hundred years.
Jamie was looking a little pale, too.
“This—it’s what Brianna told me would happen,” he said, a tone of wonder in his voice. “Upon the nineteenth of April, a fight in Lexington—the start of the war.” He looked straight at me, and I saw that his eyes were dark, with a combination of awe and excitement.
“I did believe ye, Sassenach,” he said. “But . . .”
He didn’t finish the sentence, but sat down, reaching for his quill. With slow deliberation, he signed his name at the foot of the page.
“Ye’ll make me a fair copy, Sassenach?” he said. “I’ll send it on.”
80
THE WORLD TURNED
UPSIDE DOWN
COLONEL ASHE’S MAN HAD also brought word of a congress to be held in Mecklenberg County, to take place in mid-May, with the intent to declare the county’s official independence from the King of England.
Aware of the fact that he was still viewed with skepticism by not a few leaders of what had now suddenly become “the rebellion,” despite the stout personal support of John Ashe and a few other friends, Jamie made up his mind to attend this congress and speak openly in support of the measure.
Roger, absolutely blazing with suppressed excitement at this, his first chance to witness recorded history in the making, was to go with him.
A few days before their scheduled departure, though, everyone’s attention was distracted from the prospect of history by the more immediate present: the entire Christie family arrived suddenly at the front door, soon after breakfast.
Something had happened; Allan Christie was flushed with agitation, Tom grim and gray as an old wolf. Malva had clearly been crying, and her face went red and white by turns. I greeted her, but she looked away from me, lips trembling, as Jamie invited them into his study, gesturing them to sit.
“What is it, Tom?” He glanced briefly at Malva—plainly she was the focus of this family emergency—but gave his attention to Tom, as patriarch.
Tom Christie’s mouth was pressed so tight that it was barely visible in the depths of his neatly clipped beard.
“My daughter finds herself with child,” he said abruptly.
“Oh?” Jamie cast another brief glance at Malva—who stood with capped head bowed, looking down at her clasped hands—then looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “Ah. Well . . . there’s a good bit of it going about, to be sure,” he said, and smiled kindly, in an effort to ease the Christies, all of whom were quivering like beads on a tight-pulled wire.
I was myself less than startled to hear the news, though naturally concerned. Malva had always attracted a great deal of attention from young men, and while both her brother and father had been vigilant in preventing any open courting, the only way of keeping young men away altogether would have been to lock her in a dungeon.
Who had the successful suitor been? I wondered. Obadiah Henderson? Bobby, perhaps? One of the McMurchie brothers? Not—please God—both of them, I hoped. All of these—and not a few others—had been obvious in their admiration.
Tom Christie received Jamie’s attempt at pleasantry with stony silence, though Allan made a poor attempt at a smile. He was nearly as pale as his sister.
Jamie coughed.
“Well, so. Is there some way in which I might help, then, Tom?”
“She says,” Christie began gruffly, with a piercing look at his daughter, “that she will not name the man, save in your presence.” He turned the look on Jamie, thick with dislike.
“In my presence?” Jamie coughed again, clearly embarrassed at the obvious implication—that Malva thought her male relatives would either beat her or proceed to do violence upon her lover, unless the presence of the landlord constrained them. Personally, I thought that particular fear was probably well founded, and gave Tom Christie a narrow look of my own. Had he already tried, and failed, to beat the truth out of her?
Malva was not making any attempt at divulging the name of the father of her child, Jamie’s presence notwithstanding. She merely pleated her apron between her fingers, over and over, eyes fixed on her hands.
I cleared my throat delicately.
“How—um—how far gone are you, my dear?”
She didn’t answer directly, but pressed both hands, shaking, against her apron front, smoothing down the cloth so that the round bulge of her pregnancy was suddenly visible, smooth and melonlike, surprisingly large. Six months, perhaps; I was startled. Clearly, she’d delayed telling her father for as long as she possibly could—and hidden it well.
The silence was well beyond awkward. Allan shifted uncomfortably on his stool, and leaned forward to murmur reassuringly to his sister.
“It’ll be all right, Mallie,” he whispered. “Ye’ve got to say, though.”
She took a huge gulp of air at that, and raised her head. Her eyes were reddened, but still very beautiful, and wide with apprehension.
“Oh, sir,” she said, but then stopped dead.
Jamie was by now looking nearly as uncomfortable as the Christies, but did his best to keep his air of kindness.
“Will ye not tell me, then, lass?” he said, as gently as possible. “I promise ye’ll not suffer for it.”
Tom Christie made an irritable noise, like some beast of prey disturbed at its meal, and Malva went very pale indeed, but her eyes stayed fixed on Jamie.
“Oh, sir,” she said, and her voice was small but clear as a bell, ringing with reproach. “Oh, sir, how can ye say that to me, when ye ken the truth as well as I do?” Before anyone could react to that, she turned to her father, and lifting a hand, pointed directly at Jamie.
“It was him,” she said.
I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO grateful for anything in life as for the fact that I was looking at Jamie’s face when she said it. He had no warning, no chance to control his features—and he didn’t. His face showed neither anger nor fear, denial or surprise; nothing save the open-mouthed blankness of absolute incomprehension.
“What?” he said, and blinked, once. Then realization flooded into his face.
“WHAT?” he said, in a tone that should have knocked the little trollop flat on her lying little bottom.
She blinked then, and cast down her eyes, the very picture of virtue shamed. She turned, as though unable to bear his gaze, and stretched out a tremulous hand toward me.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Fraser,” she whispered, tears trembling becomingly on her lashes. “He—we—we didna mean to hurt ye.”
I watched with interest from somewhere outside my body, as my arm lifted and drew back, and felt a sense of vague approval as my hand struck her cheek with enough force that she stumbled backward, tripped over a stool, and fell, her petticoats tumbled up to her waist in a froth of linen, wool-stockinged legs sticking absurdly up in the air.
“Can’t say the same, I’m afraid.” I hadn’t even thought of saying anything, and was surprised to feel the words in my mouth, cool and round as river stones.
Suddenly, I was back in my body. I felt as though my stays had tightened during my temporary absence; my ribs ached with the effort to breathe. Liquid surged in every direction; blood and lymph, sweat and tears—if I did draw breath, my skin would give way and let it all spurt out, like the contents of a ripe tomato, thrown against a wall.
I had no bones. But I had will. That alone held me upright and saw me out the door. I didn’t see the corridor or realize that I had pushed open the front door of the house; all I saw was a sudden blaze of light and a blur of green in the dooryard and then I was running, running as though all the demons of hell coursed at my heels.
In fact, no one pursued me. And yet I ran, plunging off the trail and into the wood, feet sliding in the layers of slippery needles down the runnels between stones, half-falling down the slope of the hill, caroming painfully off fallen logs, wrenching free of thorns and brush.
I arrived breathless at the bottom of a hill and found myself in a dark, small hollow walled by the towering black-green of rhododendrons. I paused, gasping for breath, then sat down abruptly. I felt myself wobble, and let go, ending on my back among the dusty layers of leathery mountain laurel leaves.
A faint thought echoed in my mind, under the sound of my gasping breath. The guilty flee, where no man pursues. But I surely wasn’t guilty. Nor was Jamie; I knew that. Knew it.
But Malva was certainly pregnant. Someone was guilty.
My eyes were blurred from running and the sunlight starred into fractured slabs and streaks of color—dark blue, light blue, white and gray, pinwheels of green and gold as the cloudy sky and the mountainside spun round and round above me.