“It may be so,” he said. “Jared said the same; that seasickness doesna generally last more than a few days, provided the seas aren’t too heavy.” He took a small sip of his ale, and then, with growing confidence, a deeper swallow. “I can stand three days of it, I suppose.”
* * *
Late in the afternoon of the second day, six men appeared, winding their way along the stony shore on shaggy Highland ponies.
“There’s Raeburn in the lead,” Jamie said, shading his eyes and squinting to distinguish the identities of the six small dots. “Kennedy after him, then Innes—he’s missing the left arm, see?—and Meldrum, and that’ll be MacLeod with him, they always ride together like that. Is the last man Gordon, then, or Fergus?”
“It must be Gordon,” I said, peering over his shoulder at the approaching men, “because it’s much too fat to be Fergus.”
“Where the devil is Fergus, then?” Jamie asked Raeburn, once the smugglers had been greeted, introduced to their new shipmates, and sat down to a hot supper and a cheerful glass.
Raeburn bobbed his head in response, hastily swallowing the remains of his pasty.
“Weel, he said to me as how he’d some business to see to, and would I see to the hiring of the horses, and speak to Meldrum and MacLeod about coming, for they were out wi’ their own boat at the time, and not expected back for a day or twa more, and…”
“What business?” Jamie said sharply, but got no more than a shrug in reply. Jamie muttered something under his breath in Gaelic, but returned to his own supper without further comment.
The crew being now complete—save Fergus—preparations began in the morning for getting under way. The deck was a scene of organized confusion, with bodies darting to and fro, popping up through hatchways, and dropping suddenly out of the rigging like dead flies. Jamie stood near the wheel, keeping out of the way, but lending a hand whenever a matter requiring muscle rather than skill arose. For the most part, though, he simply stood, eyes fixed on the road along the shore.
“We shall have to sail by midafternoon, or miss the tide.” Captain Raines spoke kindly, but firmly. “We’ll have surly weather in twenty-four hours; the glass is falling, and I feel it in my neck.” The Captain tenderly massaged the part in question, and nodded at the sky, which had gone from pewter to lead-gray since early morning. “I’ll not set sail in a storm if I can help it, and if we mean to make the Indies as soon as possible—”
“Aye, I understand, Captain,” Jamie interrupted him. “Of course; ye must do as seems best.” He stood back to let a bustling seaman go past, and the Captain disappeared, issuing orders as he went.
As the day wore on, Jamie seemed composed as usual, but I noticed that the stiff fingers fluttered against his thigh more and more often, the only outward sign of worry. And worried he was. Fergus had been with him since the day twenty years before, when Jamie had found him in a Paris brothel, and hired him to steal Charles Stuart’s letters.
More than that; Fergus had lived at Lallybroch since before Young Ian was born. The boy had been a younger brother to Fergus, and Jamie the closest thing to a father that Fergus had ever known. I could not imagine any business so urgent that it would have kept him from Jamie’s side. Neither could Jamie, and his fingers beat a silent tattoo on the wood of the rail.
Then it was time, and Jamie turned reluctantly away, tearing his eyes from the empty shore. The hatches were battened, the lines coiled, and several seamen leapt ashore to cast free the mooring hawsers; there were six of them, each a rope as thick around as my wrist.
I put a hand on Jamie’s arm in silent sympathy.
“You’d better come down below,” I said. “I’ve got a spirit lamp. I’ll brew you some hot ginger tea, and then you—”
The sound of a galloping horse echoed along the shore, the scrunch of hoofbeats on gravel echoing from the cliffside well in advance of its appearance.
“There he is, the wee fool,” Jamie said, his relief evident in voice and body. He turned to Captain Raines, one brow raised in question. “There’s enough of the tide left? Aye, then, let’s go.”
“Cast off!” the Captain bellowed, and the waiting hands sprang into action. The last of the lines tethering us to the piling was slipped free and neatly coiled, and all around us, lines tightened and sails snapped overhead, as the bosun ran up and down the deck, bawling orders in a voice like rusty iron.
“She moves! She stirs! ‘She seems to feel / the thrill of life along her keel’！” I declaimed, delighted to feel the deck quiver beneath my feet as the ship came alive, the energy of all the crew poured into its inanimate hulk, transmuted by the power of the wind-catching sails.
“Oh, God,” said Jamie hollowly, feeling the same thing. He grasped the rail, closed his eyes and swallowed.
“Mr. Willoughby says he has a cure for seasickness,” I said, watching him sympathetically.
“Ha,” he said, opening his eyes. “I ken what he means, and if he thinks I’ll let him—what the bloody hell!”
I whirled to look, and saw what had caused him to break off. Fergus was on deck, reaching up to help down a girl perched awkwardly above him on the railing, her long blond hair whipping in the wind. Laoghaire’s daughter—Marsali MacKimmie.
Before I could speak, Jamie was past me and striding toward the pair.
“What in the name of holy God d’ye mean by this, ye wee coofs?” he was demanding, by the time I made my way into earshot through the obstacle course of lines and seamen. He loomed menacingly over the pair, a foot taller than either of them.
“We are married,” Fergus said, bravely moving in front of Marsali. He looked both scared and excited, his face pale beneath the shock of black hair.
“Married!” Jamie’s hands clenched at his sides, and Fergus took an involuntary step backward, nearly treading on Marsali’s toes. “What d’ye mean, ‘married’？”
I assumed this was a rhetorical question, but it wasn’t; Jamie’s appreciation of the situation had, as usual, outstripped mine by yards and seized at once upon the salient point.
“Have ye bedded her?” he demanded bluntly. Standing behind him, I couldn’t see his face, but I knew what it must look like, if only because I could see the effect of his expression on Fergus. The Frenchman turned a couple of shades paler and licked his lips.
“Er…no, milord,” he said, just as Marsali, eyes blazing, thrust her chin up and said defiantly, “Yes, he has!”
Jamie glanced briefly back and forth between the two of them, snorted loudly, and turned away.
“Mr. Warren!” he called down the deck to the ship’s sailing master. “Put back to the shore, if ye please!”
Mr. Warren stopped, openmouthed, in the middle of an order addressed to the rigging, and stared, first at Jamie, then—quite elaborately—at the receding shoreline. In the few moments since the appearance of the putative newlyweds, the Artemis had moved more than a thousand yards from the shore, and the rocks of the cliffs were slipping by with increasing speed.
“I don’t believe he can,” I said. “I think we’re already in the tide-race.”