It wasn’t until the forest closed behind them and the path rose before them that he thought to ask. She hadn’t wanted to look beyond day-to-day survival during the worst of their journey, but he was sure that her vision of the present wasn’t limited to washing clothes and shooting turkeys.
“What do you think your own job might be? Here.”
He was following her; she turned her head briefly toward him and the sun touched her hair with flames.
“Oh, me?” she said. “I think maybe I’m the armorer.” She smiled, but the look in her eyes was serious. “We’re going to need one.”
12
Erstwhile Companions
Mount Josiah Plantation, Royal Colony of Virginia
WILLIAM SMELLED SMOKE. NOT hearth fire or wildfire; just an ashy tang on the wind, tinged with charcoal, grease—and fish. It wasn’t coming from the dilapidated house; the chimney had collapsed, taking part of the roof with it, and a big red-tinged creeper shrouded the scatter of stones and shingles.
There were poplar saplings growing up through the buckled boards of the small porch, too; the forest had begun its stealthy work of reclamation. But the forest didn’t smoke its meat. Someone was here.
He dismounted and tethered Bart to a sapling, primed his pistol, and made his way toward the house. It could be Indians on a hunt, smoking their game before carrying it back to wherever they’d come from. He’d no quarrel with hunters, but if it was squatters who’d thought to take over the property, they could think again. This was his place.
It was Indians—or one, at least. A half-naked man squatted in the shade of a huge beech tree, tending a small firepit covered with damp burlap; William could smell fresh-cut hickory logs, mingled with the thick smell of blood, fresh meat, smoke, and the pungent reek of drying fish—a small rack of split trout stood beside an open fire. His belly rumbled.
The Indian—he looked young, though large and very muscular—had his back to William and was deftly dressing out the carcass of a small hog that lay on a flattened burlap sack beside the firepit.
“Hallo, there,” William said, raising his voice. The man looked round, blinking against the smoke and waving it out of his face. He rose slowly, the knife he’d been using still in his hand, but William had spoken pleasantly enough, and the stranger wasn’t menacing. He also wasn’t a stranger. He stepped out of the tree’s shadow, the sunlight hit his hair, and William felt a jolt of astonished recognition.
So did the young man, by the look on his face.
“Lieutenant?” he said, disbelieving. He looked William quickly up and down, registering the lack of uniform, and his big dark eyes fixed on William’s face. “Lieutenant … Lord Ellesmere?”
“I used to be. Mr. Cinnamon, isn’t it?” He couldn’t help smiling as he spoke the name. The young man’s hair was now little more than an inch long, but only shaving it off entirely would have disguised either its distinctive deep reddish-brown color or its exuberant curliness. A French mission orphan, he owed his name to it.
“John Cinnamon, yes. Your servant … sir.” The erstwhile scout gave him a presentable half bow, though the “sir” was spoken with something of a question.
“William Ransom. Yours, sir,” William said, smiling, and thrust out his hand. John Cinnamon was a couple of inches shorter than himself, and a couple of inches broader; the scout had grown into himself in the last two years and possessed a very solid handshake.
“I trust you’ll pardon my curiosity, Mr. Cinnamon—but how the devil do you come to be here?” William asked, letting go. He’d last seen John Cinnamon three years before, in Quebec, where he’d spent much of a long, cold winter hunting and trapping in company with the half-Indian scout, who was near his own age.
He wondered briefly if Cinnamon had come in search of him, but that was absurd. He didn’t think he’d ever mentioned Mount Josiah to the man—and even if he had, Cinnamon couldn’t possibly have expected to find him here. He’d not been here since he was sixteen.
“Ah.” To William’s surprise, a slow flush washed Cinnamon’s broad cheekbones. “I—er—I … well, I’m on my way south.” The flush grew deeper.
William cocked an eyebrow. While it was true that Virginia was south of Quebec and that there was a good deal of country souther still, Mount Josiah wasn’t on the way to anywhere. No roads led here. He had himself come upriver with his horse on a barge to the Breaks, that stretch of falls and turbulent water on the James River where the land suddenly collapsed upon itself and put a stop to water travel. He’d seen only three people as he rode on above the Breaks—all of them headed the other way.