“I can’t explain,” I said, defeated. “It wasn’t there—or I wasn’t looking at it—after I was shot. It wasn’t nearly dying that made me look in, see it yawning there. But being so . . . so bloody frail! Being so stinking afraid.” I clenched my fists, seeing the knobby bones of my knuckles, the blue veins that stood out on the backs of my hands and curved down my wrists.
“Not death,” I said at last, sniffing. “Futility. Uselessness. Bloody entropy. Death matters, at least sometimes.”
“I ken that,” Jamie said softly, and took my hands in his; they were big, and battered, scarred and maimed. “It’s why a warrior doesna fear death so much. He has the hope—sometimes the certainty—that his death will matter.”
“What happens to me between now and then doesna matter to anyone.”
Those words swam out of nowhere and struck me in the pit of the stomach, so hard that I could barely breathe. He’d said that to me, from the bottom of despair, in the dungeon of Wentworth Prison, a lifetime ago. He’d bargained for my life then, with what he had—not his life, already forfeit, but his soul.
“It matters to me!” I’d said to him—and, against all odds, had ransomed that soul and brought him back.
And then it had come again, stark and dire necessity, and he’d laid down his life without hesitation for his men and for the child I carried. And that time I had been the one who sacrificed my soul. And it had mattered, for both of us.
It still mattered. And the shell of fear cracked like an egg and everything inside me poured out like blood and water mingled and I sobbed on his chest until there were no more tears and no more breath. I leaned against him, limp as a dishcloth, and watched the crescent moon begin to rise in the east.
“What did you say?” I said, rousing myself after a long while. I felt groggy and disoriented, but at peace.
“I asked, what’s entropy?”
“Oh,” I said, momentarily disconcerted. When had the concept of entropy been invented? Not yet, obviously. “It’s, um . . . a lack of order, a lack of predictability, an inability for a system to do work.”
“A system of what?”
“Well, there you have me,” I admitted, sitting up and wiping my nose. “Just an ideal sort of system, with heat energy. The Second Law of Thermodynamics basically says that in an isolated system—one that’s not getting energy from somewhere outside, I mean—entropy will always increase. I think it’s just a scientific way of saying that everything is going to pot, all of the time.”
He laughed, and despite my shattered state of mind, I did, too.
“Aye, well, far be it from me to argue wi’ the Second Law of Thermodynamics,” he said. “I think it’s likely right. When did ye last eat, Sassenach?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not hungry.” I didn’t want to do anything but sit still beside him.
“D’ye see the sky?” he said, a little later. It was a pure deep violet at the horizon, fading into a blue-black immensity overhead, and the early stars burned like distant lamps.
“Hard to miss,” I said.
“Aye.” He sat with his head tilted back, looking up, and I admired the clean line of his long, straight nose, his soft wide mouth and long throat, as though seeing them for the first time.
“Is it not a void there?” he said quietly, still looking up. “And yet we’re no afraid to look.”
“There are lights,” I said. “It makes a difference.” My voice was hoarse, and I swallowed. “Though I suppose even the stars are burning out, according to the Second Law.”
“Mmphm. Well, I suppose men can make all the laws they like,” he said, “but God made hope. The stars willna burn out.” He turned and, cupping my chin, kissed me gently. “And nor will we.”
The noises of the city were muted now, though even darkness didn’t stifle it entirely. I heard distant voices and the sound of a fiddle: a party, perhaps, from one of the houses down the street. And the bell of St. George’s struck the hour with a small, flat bong! Nine o’clock. And all’s well.
“I’d better go and see to my patient,” I said.
“ALAS, POOR YORICK!”
September 17, 1778
Middlebrook Encampment, New Jersey
TWO NIGHTS LATER, William stood at the edge of a dark wood, watching a lopsided rising moon shed its light over Middlebrook Encampment. His heart was thumping in his ears and he was breathing fast, his hands clenched around the handle of the spade he’d just stolen.
He’d been correct in his assessment of his welcome. He’d roughened his accent and, posing as a young immigrant from England interested in joining Washington’s troops, he’d been invited to join the Hamilton family for supper and given a bed for the night. The next day, he’d walked up to Middlebrook Encampment with the eldest Hamilton son, a man about his own age, where he’d been introduced to a Captain Ronson, one of the few officers still there.
One thing had led to another, and, by degrees, he had steered the conversation to the battle at Brandywine Creek and thence to British prisoners of war . . . and eventually he’d been taken to the small burying ground that lay before him now.
He’d been cautious about Ben, mentioning his name only casually among several others—family acquaintances, he’d said, that he’d heard had been at the battle. Some of the men he talked to hadn’t recognized the name at all; two or three said, oh, yes, the English viscount, prisoner, billeted with a family called Tobermory, very civil fellow, shame that he’d died. . . .