“I see what you mean about discretion, Uncle,” William said, openly amused.
“I,” said Hal coldly, “am the Colonel of His Majesty’s Forty-sixth Regiment of Foot. You are …” His voice trailed off as he gazed at William, bareheaded and slightly rumpled in his civilian finery, but still with the straight-backed bearing of a soldier.
I don’t suppose that will ever leave him, John thought. It hasn’t left his father.
“… not a serving officer at the moment,” Hal finished, choosing to be tactful for once.
William nodded agreeably.
“That’s fortunate, isn’t it?” he said. “As you aren’t my commanding officer, you can’t forbid me to go look for Tarleton if I like.”
48
A Face in the Water
“FANNY AND CYRUS SITTING in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g,” Roger said as he came into the surgery. I laughed, but looked guiltily over my shoulder.
“They’d better not be. Jamie’s roaming about like a wolf, seeking whom he may devour.” Cyrus was a very tall, very thin lad from one of the fisher-folk families, though I didn’t know which one. He’d sat down next to Fanny at church one Sunday and had been appearing now and then near her like a tall, bashful ghost. I’d never heard him speak and wondered whether he had any English. Fanny’s Gaelic was so far limited to commonplaces like, “Pass me a bannock, please,” and the Lord’s Prayer, but I supposed they might be of an age where young people are naturally tongue-tied in each other’s presence.
“They’re not,” Roger assured me. “I just saw them on the creek bank, sitting a decorous two feet apart, Cyrus with his hands folded so tight in his lap that he must be cutting off the circulation. Who’s Jamie seeking to devour, and why?”
“He got a letter from Benjamin Cleveland, signed by two other landowners over the mountain in Tennessee County, as well. They’re pestering Jamie to commit his militia and come join them in ‘rooting out the vile root of tyranny’—which I take to mean going round the neighbors and, if they’re Loyalists, hauling them out and beating them, taking their stock, burning their buildings, hanging them, or doing other antisocial things to discourage them.”
Roger’s laughter disappeared.
“Mr. Cleveland’s prose style leaves a bit to be desired,” he said. “‘Rooting out the root,’ I mean—but at least he’s clear about it.”
“So is Jamie,” I said, and resumed pounding the roots in my mortar with somewhat more force than necessary. “Meaning he’s damned if he’ll do it but he can’t just tell them to go directly to hell without passing Go. If he did, the only thing stopping them from adding the Ridge to their visiting list would be distance.”
“How far is it from here to Tennessee County?” Roger asked, uneasy. “Some way, surely?”
I stopped pounding long enough to shrug and wipe the forming sweat off my forehead with my sleeve.
“Roughly three or four days’ ride. With good weather,” I added, with a glance at the window, which showed sunshine streaming over the blooming grass.
“And, um … there’s Captain Cunningham and his Loyalist friends to be considered, too, I suppose?”
“Oh, God,” I said. “Yes, rather the local worm in the apple, isn’t he? On the other hand,” I added judiciously, “he’s probably Jamie’s best excuse for not joining our friend Benjamin on his bloodthirsty rounds—the notion that Jamie has to stay here on the Ridge in order to keep his own Loyalists in line. Which might actually be true, come to think of it.”
“I suppose so. What is that?” he asked, nodding at the mortar, purely for distraction.
“Echinacea,” I said. “It’s a bit early, but I need it. You dig the roots in autumn, because that’s when the plant starts storing its energy in the root; it doesn’t need to keep flowers and leaves going.
“You realize,” I added, pausing for breath, “that distance notwithstanding, the only things keeping Nicodemus Partland’s thugs—I mean, it must be him, mustn’t it?—from going through the Ridge like a dose of salts are you and Jamie?”
Roger looked as though he wasn’t surprised to hear that but was still discomfited.
“Aye,” he said slowly. “Ye can see it in Lodge. Ye know it’s not done to talk politics or religion there? Equality, Fraternity, et cetera?”
“So I’ve heard.” I’d slowed down a little in my pounding, and gave him a wry smile. “I always assumed that was a custom more honored in the breach, though. Um … knowing what people are like, I mean.” Men, I meant, and he noticed, giving me back the wry smile. He tilted a hand to and fro in equivocation.