“Yes,” I said, piercing the skin with a quick jab. He grunted but didn’t move.
“Will ye set a paper handy, then, Sassenach, wi’ something to write with? I’ll be tellin’ ye names as I go.”
I put in three more stitches, then swiveled round to get the journal. As I normally wrote in bed, I used a small stick of graphite wrapped round with a strip of rag, rather than ink and a quill, and I fetched that, too.
“Shoot,” I said, returning to my repairs. “If you don’t mind the reference.”
His stomach twitched in brief amusement.
“I don’t. It’s a list of the Loyalists who were wi’ Cunningham last night. Put down Geordie Hallam, and Conor MacNeil, Angus MacLean, and—”
“Wait, not so fast.” I picked up the pencil. “Why do you want a list of these men? You obviously remember who they are.”
“Oh, I kent who they were, well before last night,” he assured me, with some grimness. “The list is for you and Bobby and the Lindsays, in case they kill me in the next few days.”
The graphite snapped in my hand. I put it down, wiped my hand carefully on a wet rag, and said, “Oh?” in as calm a voice as I could manage.
“Aye,” he said. “Ye didna think last night settled matters, did ye, Sassenach?”
Given the current state of Captain Cunningham, actually I had rather thought that. I swallowed hard and picked up the needle again.
“You mean there’s a possibility that we may have a visitation by the Cherokees?”
“Aye, them,” he said thoughtfully, “or maybe Nicodemus Partland, wi’ a band of men from over the mountain. Mind, it may not happen,” he added, seeing my face. “And my own men will be ready if it does. But just in case, ye’ll need to get rid of the Loyalists here, if I’m gone. So ye need to ken who they are, aye?”
I paused to pick up a fresh suture thread and breathed carefully, my eyes on my work.
“Get rid of them?”
“Well, I dinna mean to let them stay on as my tenants,” he said reasonably. “They tried to kill me last night. Or take me off to be hanged, which isna much better,” he added, and I saw the rage simmering under the thin skin of reason.
“That’s a point, yes.” I dabbed blood away from the wound and made two more stitches. I’d poked up the fire and added fresh wood, but I felt cold to the marrow. “Can you—I mean, will they just … leave, if you tell them to go?”
He’d been looking at the ceiling, but now turned his head to look at me. It was the patient look of a lion who’d been asked if he could really eat that wildebeest over there.
“Um,” I said, and cleared my throat. “Tell me about the landslide.”
His face lightened, and he told me about his flight from the Lodge, four or five of his own men close behind him, and the Loyalists running into them, to be delayed while he escaped into the darkness.
“Only the trail I meant to take was washed away by the rain—ouch—and I got lost for a bit, looking for another. Then it began to thunder and the lightning was strikin’ close enough I could smell it, but at least I could see my way now and then.”
He’d struck back in the direction he thought home to be, hoping to encounter some of his men, whom he’d told to guard the New House from the rear and capture such men of Cunningham’s as came that way.
“Capture them?” I said, tying a suture, clipping it, and picking out a fresh thread. “Where did you mean to put them? Not the root cellar, I hope.” Our food levels were perilously low after a long winter, and such dried fruits and early vegetables as we had were all in the root cellar, along with bags of chestnuts, walnuts, and peanuts, and I could just imagine the havoc a lot of resentful captives might wreak in there.
He shook his head. His eyes were open now, fixed on the ceiling joists in order to avoid looking at what I was doing to his chest.
“Nay, I’d told Bobby they should put anyone they caught into the pigs’ cave, tied up.”
“Dear God. And what if the White Sow took it into her mind to show up?” While the legendary Beast of the Ridge had declined to establish a new lair under the present house—thank God—she did still roam the mountainside, eating her fill of chestnut mast and anything else that took her fancy, and she did, now and then, visit the pigpen and liberate a few of its inhabitants, most of these her own descendants.
“The fortunes of war,” he said callously. “They should ha’ kent better than to follow a man who canna choose between the King and God. Ng!”