“Be this soul on Thine arm, O Christ, Thou King of the City of Heaven, Amen,” Young Ian repeated under his breath. He nodded slowly. “Aye, all right. And then?”
Jamie reached out and touched his nephew’s cheek with great gentleness. “Then ye live with it, laddie,” he said softly. “That’s all.”
28
VIRTUE’S GUARDIAN
“You think the man Young Ian followed has something to do with Sir Percival’s warning?” I lifted a cover on the supper tray that had just been delivered and sniffed appreciatively; it seemed a very long time since Moubray’s stew.
Jamie nodded, picking up a sort of hot stuffed roll.
“I should be surprised if he had not,” he said dryly. “While there’s likely more than one man willing to do me harm, I canna think it likely that gangs o’ them are roaming about Edinburgh.” He took a bite and chewed industriously, shaking his head.
“Nay, that’s clear enough, and nothing to be greatly worrit over.”
“It’s not?” I took a small bite of my own roll, then a bigger one. “This is delicious. What is it?”
Jamie lowered the roll he had been about to take a bite of, and squinted at it. “Pigeon minced wi’ truffles,” he said, and stuffed it into his mouth whole.
“No,” he said, and paused to swallow. “No,” he said again, more clearly. “That’s likely just a matter of a rival smuggler. There are two gangs that I’ve had a wee bit of difficulty with now and then.” He waved a hand, scattering crumbs, and reached for another roll.
“The way the man behaved—smellin’ the brandy, but seldom tasting it—he may be a dégustateur de vin; someone that can tell from a sniff where a wine was made, and from a taste, which year it was bottled. A verra valuable fellow,” he added thoughtfully, “and a choice hound to set on my trail.”
Wine had come along with the supper. I poured out a glass and passed it under my own nose.
“He could track you—you, personally—through the brandy?” I asked curiously.
“More or less. You’ll remember my cousin Jared?”
“Of course I do. You mean he’s still alive?” After the slaughter of Culloden and the erosions of its aftermath, it was wonderfully heartening to hear that Jared, a wealthy Scottish émigré with a prosperous wine business in Paris, was still among the quick, and not the dead.
“I expect they’ll have to head him up in a cask and toss him into the Seine to get rid of him,” Jamie said, teeth gleaming white in his soot-stained countenance. “Aye, he’s not only alive, but enjoying it. Where d’ye think I get the French brandy I bring into Scotland?”
The obvious answer was “France,” but I refrained from saying so. “Jared, I suppose?” I said instead.
Jamie nodded, mouth full of another roll. “Hey!” He leaned forward and snatched the plate out from under the tentative reach of Young Ian’s skinny fingers. “You’re no supposed to be eating rich stuff like that when your wame’s curdled,” he said, frowning and chewing. He swallowed and licked his lips. “I’ll call for more bread and milk for ye.”
“But Uncle,” said Young Ian, looking longingly at the savory rolls. “I’m awfully hungry.” Purged by confession, the boy had recovered his spirits considerably, and evidently, his appetite as well.
Jamie looked at his nephew and sighed. “Aye well. Ye swear you’re no going to vomit on me?”
“No, Uncle,” Young Ian said meekly.
“All right, then.” Jamie shoved the plate in the boy’s direction, and returned to his explanation.
“Jared sends me mostly the second-quality bottling from his own vineyards in the Moselle, keepin’ the first quality for sale in France, where they can tell the difference.”
“So the stuff you bring into Scotland is identifiable?”
He shrugged, reaching for the wine. “Only to a nez, a dégustateur, that is. But the fact is, that wee Ian here saw the man taste the wine at the Dog and Gun and at the Blue Boar, and those are the two taverns on the High Street that buy brandy from me exclusively. Several others buy from me, but from others as well.
“In any case, as I say, I’m none so concerned at havin’ someone look for Jamie Roy at a tavern.” He lifted his wineglass and passed it under his own nose by reflex, made a slight, unconscious face, and drank. “No,” he said, lowering the glass, “what worries me is that the man should have found his way to the printshop. For I’ve taken considerable pains to make sure that the folk who see Jamie Roy on the docks at Burntisland are not the same ones who pass the time o’ day in the High Street with Mr. Alec Malcolm, the printer.”
I knitted my brows, trying to work it out.
“But Sir Percival called you Malcolm, and he knows you’re a smuggler,” I protested.
Jamie nodded patiently. “Half the men in the ports near Edinburgh are smugglers, Sassenach,” he said. “Aye, Sir Percival kens fine I’m a smuggler, but he doesna ken I’m Jamie Roy—let alone James Fraser. He thinks I bring in bolts of undeclared silk and velvet from Holland—because that’s what I pay him in.” He smiled wryly. “I trade brandy for them, to the tailor on the corner. Sir Percival’s an eye for fine cloth, and his lady even more. But he doesna ken I’ve to do wi’ the liquor—let alone how much—or he’d be wanting a great deal more than the odd bit of lace and yardage, I’ll tell ye.”
“Could one of the tavern owners have told the seaman about you? Surely they’ve seen you.”
He ruffled a hand through his hair, as he did when thinking, making a few short hairs on the crown stand up in a whorl of tiny spikes.
“Aye, they’ve seen me,” he said slowly, “but only as a customer. Fergus handles the business dealings wi’ the taverns—and Fergus is careful never to go near the printshop. He always meets me here, in private.” He gave me a crooked grin. “No one questions a man’s reasons for visiting a brothel, aye?”
“Could that be it?” I asked, struck by a sudden thought. “Any man can come here without question. Could the seaman Young Ian followed have seen you here—you and Fergus? Or heard your description from one of the girls? After all, you’re not the most inconspicuous man I’ve ever seen.” He wasn’t, either. While there might be any number of redheaded men in Edinburgh, few of them towered to Jamie’s height, and fewer still strode the streets with the unconscious arrogance of a disarmed warrior.
“That’s a verra useful thought, Sassenach,” he said, giving me a nod. “It will be easy enough to find out whether a pigtailed seaman with one eye has been here recently; I’ll have Jeanne ask among her lassies.”
He stood up, and stretched rackingly, his hands nearly touching the wooden rafters.
“And then, Sassenach, perhaps we’ll go to bed, aye?” He lowered his arms and blinked at me with a smile. “What wi’ one thing and another, it’s been the bloody hell of a day, no?”
“It has, rather,” I said, smiling back.