I drank my ale and offered nothing, mainly because Helen was not altogether wrong. That was essentially what happened, except Archie wasn’t trying to escape his execution or his conscience—when he’d tripped and fallen back and struck his head its fatal blow against the Regent Murray’s tomb, his frightened eyes had been on me.
And I was fine with that. I’d stood a moment in the moonlit silence, looking at the brass plaque on the tomb, and I’d decided Justice after all had played her part. The debt was paid.
Helen seemed to hesitate. “My friend does also tell me Dr. Young will soon be traveling to London with his daughter, Violet, there to spend the winter.” With a glance at me, she added, “I am sorry, Adam.”
I assured her it was of no matter. “I would do the same, if I were Violet’s father. He will find a better match for her in London, I should think.”
Turnbull was looking from his wife to me. “What’s this?”
Helen explained, “Adam was hoping he might find himself a wife while he was here. I thought that Violet Young would suit him very well. I was apparently mistaken.”
“She was not my matching half,” was how I summed it up, which earned a smile from Helen.
“She was perfect. You were simply too particular.”
Someday, perhaps, I’d freely speak of how I’d met the woman who was made to be my matching half, and how I’d given her my heart, and how I’d let her go. But not today.
“If you’re not careful,” Helen carried on, “you will end up a lonely bachelor like your friend upstairs.”
I had enjoyed my visits with the Latin master these past several days, and rose to his defense. “He is not lonely. He has books.”
With understanding, Turnbull asked, “How many have you bought?”
“A few.”
To Helen, Turnbull said, “You should have seen the books that Adam brought to Caledonia. I thought the ship would sink, he had so many.”
“You did meet each other in New York, I understand.” I knew she had been waiting for the tale of how we’d met, and I could see her sitting forward in her chair as Turnbull nodded.
“That’s right. Adam helped us find another ship, when ours was not allowed to leave the harbor.”
She asked, “So then you had abandoned the first colony?”
He winced a little at her choice of words, but did not argue, and I did not blame him. There had been so much dispute among the colonists of that first voyage as to why they had not stayed to see it through, so many accusations thrown, so many differing accounts, and so much hatred heaped upon those men who had returned to Scotland only to be branded traitors, that he likely thought it best to let it lie.
He told her, “Yes. We’d parted ways when we left Caledonia, to start our voyage home. Our ship and one other wound up at New York. This was in August, ninety-nine. We did not know the company was fitting out a second fleet of ships to sail from Scotland.”
And that second fleet of ships, the Rising Sun among them, would have been the expedition that sailed from the Clyde that month—the same one Lily nearly joined with Maggie, before they’d learned of James Graeme’s death.
“We were unaware of this,” said Turnbull, as though he wished Helen to be very sure on that point. “But Captain Drummond—you’ll have heard me speak of him, he was one of the councilors of the colony—he was already keen to return. He disagreed with the reasons the others had given for leaving, and if he’d had his way, we’d have stopped in for provisions at New York, set down our sick men, taken on new ones, and gone straight back to Caledonia. But the governor of New York did not wish to help us.”
I chose not to correct his choice of words, because I knew my friend’s heart had remained so loyal to King William that he likely found it easier ignoring the plain truth that New York’s governor had been forbidden, by a royal proclamation, from giving us aid.
Turnbull said, “We luckily had many Scots at New York who did take our part and try to help us, and the local merchants did arrange a new ship for us, underneath the nose of their government.”
And that’s where I had come in, as a warehouse clerk, helping them find their provisions. “Your husband recruited me,” I said to Helen. “He showed me over the ship. Then, since any adventure had seemed to me better than being a clerk, I resigned my employment and sailed on her.”
“I nearly didn’t,” said Turnbull, and smiled. “They got under sail in New York harbor so suddenly, trying to slip out before they were stopped, that I didn’t get word until they were well underway, and I was forced to chase after them in a boat or be left behind.”