87

JUSTICE IS MINE,
SAYETH THE LORD

I poked at the last package from Lord John, trying to work up enough enthusiasm to open it. It was a small wooden crate; perhaps more vitriol. I supposed I should make a fresh batch of ether—but then, what was the point? People had stopped coming to my surgery, even for the treatment of minor cuts and bruises, let alone the odd appendectomy.

I ran a finger through the dust on the counter, and thought that I should at least take care of that; Mrs. Bug kept the rest of the house spotless, but wouldn’t come into the surgery. I added dusting to the long list of things that I should do, but made no move to go and find a dust cloth.

Sighing, I got up and went across the hall. Jamie was sitting at his desk, twiddling a quill and staring at a half-finished letter. He put down the quill when he saw me, smiling.

“How is it, Sassenach?”

“All right,” I said, and he nodded, accepting it at face value. His face showed the lines of strain, and I knew that he was no more all right than I was. “I haven’t seen Ian all day. Did he say he was going?” To the Cherokee, I meant. Little wonder if he wanted to get away from the Ridge; I thought it had taken a good deal of fortitude for him to stay as long as he had, bearing the stares and murmurs—and the outright accusations.

Jamie nodded again, and dropped the quill back into its jar.

“Aye, I told him to go. No purpose to him staying any longer; there’d only be more fights.” Ian didn’t say anything about the fights, but had more than once turned up to supper with the marks of battle on him.

“Right. Well, I’d better tell Mrs. Bug before she starts the supper.” Still, I made no motion to get up, finding some small sense of comfort in Jamie’s presence, some surcease from the constant memory of the small, bloody weight in my lap, inert as a lump of meat—and the sight of Malva’s eyes, so surprised.

I heard horses in the yard, several of them. I glanced at Jamie, who shook his head, brows raised, then rose to go and meet the visitors, whoever they were. I followed him down the hall, wiping my hands on my apron and mentally revising the supper menu to accommodate what sounded like at least a dozen guests, from the whickering and murmuring I heard in the dooryard.

Jamie opened the door, and stopped dead. I looked over his shoulder, and felt terror seize me. Horsemen, black against the sinking sun, and in that moment, I was back in the whisky clearing, damp with sweat and clad in nothing but my shift. Jamie heard my gasp, and put back a hand, to keep me away.

“What d’ye want, Brown?” he said, sounding most unfriendly.

“We’ve come for your wife,” said Richard Brown. There was an unmistakable note of gloating in his voice, and hearing it, the down hairs on my body rippled with cold, and black spots floated in my field of vision. I stepped back, hardly feeling my feet, and took hold of the doorjamb to my surgery, clinging to it for support.

“Well, ye can just be on your way, then,” Jamie replied, with the same unfriendly tone. “Ye’ve nothing to do with my wife, nor she with you.”

“Ah, now, there you’re wrong, Mister Fraser.” My vision had cleared, and I saw him urge his horse up closer to the stoop. He leaned down, peering through the door, and evidently saw me, for he smiled, in a most unpleasant fashion.

“We’ve come to arrest your wife, for the dastard crime of murder.”

Jamie’s hand tensed where he gripped the door, and he drew himself slowly to his fullest height, seeming to expand as he did so.

“Ye’ll leave my land, sir,” he said, and his voice had dropped to a level just above the rustlings of horses and harness. “And ye’ll go now.”

I felt, rather than heard, footsteps behind me. Mrs. Bug, coming to see what was afoot.

“Bride save us,” she whispered, seeing the men. Then she was gone, running back through the house, light-footed as a deer. I should follow her, I knew, escape through the back door, run up into the forest, hide. But my limbs were frozen. I could barely breathe, let alone move.

And Richard Brown was looking at me over Jamie’s shoulder, open dislike mingling with triumph.

“Oh, we’ll leave,” he said, straightening up. “Hand her over, and we’ll be gone. Vanished like the morning dew,” he said, and laughed. Dimly, I wondered whether he was drunk.

“By what right do you come here?” Jamie demanded. His left hand rose, rested on the hilt of his dirk in plain threat. The sight of it galvanized me, finally, and I stumbled down the hall, toward the kitchen where the guns were kept.

“… Committee of Safety.” I caught those words in Brown’s voice, raised in threat, and then was through into the kitchen. I grabbed the fowling piece from its hooks above the hearth, and wrenching open the drawer of the sideboard, hastily bundled the three pistols there into the large pockets of my surgical apron, made to hold instruments while I worked.

My hands were shaking. I hesitated—the pistols were primed and loaded; Jamie checked them every night—should I take the shot pouch, the powder horn? No time. I heard Jamie’s voice and Richard Brown’s, shouting now at the front of the house.

The sound of the back door opening jerked my head up, and I saw an unfamiliar man pause in the doorway, looking round. He saw me and started toward me, grinning, hand out to seize my arm.

I lifted a pistol from my apron and shot him, point-blank. The grin didn’t leave his face, but took on a slightly puzzled air. He blinked once or twice, then put a hand to his side, where a reddening spot was beginning to spread on his shirt. He looked at his blood-smeared fingers, and his jaw dropped.

“Well, goddamn!” he said. “You shot me!”

“I did,” I said, breathless. “And I’ll bloody do it again, if you don’t get out of here!” I dropped the empty pistol on the floor with a crash, and scrabbled one-handed in my apron pocket for another, still holding the fowling piece in a death grip.

He didn’t wait to see if I meant it, but whirled and crashed into the door frame, then stumbled through it, leaving a smear of blood on the wood.

Wisps of black-powder smoke floated in the air, mingling oddly with the scent of roasting fish, and I thought for an instant that I might throw up, but managed despite my nausea to set down the fowling piece for a moment and bar the door, my hands shaking so that it took several tries.

Sudden sounds from the front of the house drove nerves and everything else from my mind, and I was running down the hall, gun in hand, before I had made a conscious decision to move, the heavy pistols in my apron banging against my thighs.

They’d dragged Jamie off the porch; I caught a brief glimpse of him in the midst of a surging melee of bodies. They’d stopped shouting. There wasn’t any noise at all, save for small grunts and the impact of flesh, the scuffling of myriad feet in the dust. It was deadly earnest, that struggle, and I knew at once that they meant to kill him.

I leveled the fowling piece at the edge of the crowd farthest from Jamie, and pulled the trigger. The crash of the gun and the startled screams seemed to come together, and the scene before me flew apart, the knot of men dissolving, peppered with bird shot. Jamie had kept hold of his dirk; with a little room around him now, I saw him drive it into one man’s side, wrench it back and lash sideways in the same motion, scoring a bloody furrow across the forehead of a man who had fallen back a little.

Then I caught a glimpse of metal to one side and by reflex shrieked “DUCK!” an instant before Brown’s pistol fired. There was a small tchoong past my ear, and I realized, in a very calm sort of way, that Brown had fired at me, not Jamie.

Jamie had, however, ducked. So had everyone else in the yard, and men were now scrambling to their feet, confused, the impetus of the attack dispersed. Jamie had dived toward the porch; he was up and stumbling toward me, striking viciously with the hilt of his dirk at a man who grabbed at his sleeve, so the man fell back with a cry.

We might have rehearsed it a dozen times. He took the steps of the porch in one leap and flung himself into me, carrying us both through the door, then spun on his heel and slammed the door, throwing himself against it and holding it against the frenzied impact of bodies for the instant it took me to drop the fowling piece, seize the bolt, and lift it into place.

It fell into its hooks with a thunk.

The door vibrated to the blows of fists and shoulders, and the shouting had started up again, but with a different sound. No gloating, no taunting. Cursing still, but with a set, malign intent.

Neither of us paused to listen.

“I barred the kitchen door,” I gasped, and Jamie nodded, diving into my surgery to secure the bolts of the inside shutters there. I heard the crash of breaking glass in the surgery behind me as I ran into his study; the windows there were smaller, and not glass, placed high in the wall. I slammed the shutters to and bolted them, then ran back into the suddenly darkened hallway to find the gun.

Jamie had it already; he was in the kitchen, grabbing things, and as I started toward the kitchen door, he came out of it, hung about with shot pouches, powder horns, and the like, fowling piece in his hand, and with a jerk of the head, motioned me before him up the stairs.

The rooms above were still filled with light; it was like bursting up from underwater, and I gulped the light as though it were air, dazzled and eyes watering as I rushed to bolt the shutters in the boxroom and Amy McCallum’s room. I didn’t know where Amy and her sons were; I could only be grateful that they weren’t in the house at the moment.

I ran into the bedroom, gasping. Jamie was kneeling by the window, methodically loading guns and saying something under his breath in Gaelic—prayer or cursing, I couldn’t tell.

I didn’t ask if he was hurt. His face was bruised, his lip was split, and blood had run down his chin onto his shirt, he was covered with dirt and what I assumed to be smears of other peoples’ blood, and the ear on the side closest me was swollen. But he was steady in his movements, and anything short of a fractured skull would have to wait.

“They mean to kill us,” I said, and didn’t mean it as a question.

He nodded, eyes on his work, then handed me a spare pistol to load.

“Aye, they do. Good job the weans are all safe away, isn’t it?” He smiled at me suddenly, bloody-toothed and fierce, and I felt steadier than I had for a long time.

He’d left one side of the shutter ajar. I moved carefully back behind him and peered out, the loaded pistol primed and in my hand.

“No bodies lying in the dooryard,” I reported. “I suppose you didn’t kill any of them.”

“Not for want of trying,” he replied. “God, what I’d give for a rifle!” He rose cautiously to his knees, the barrel of the fowling piece protruding over the sill, and surveyed the state of the attack.

They had withdrawn for the moment; a small group was visible under the chestnut trees at the far side of the clearing, and they’d taken the horses down toward Bree and Roger’s cabin, safely out of range of flying bullets. Brown and his minions were clearly planning what to do next.

“What do you suppose they would have done, if I’d agreed to go with them?” I could feel my heart again, at least. It was going a mile a minute, but I could breathe, and some feeling was coming back into my extremities.

“I should never ha’ let ye go,” he replied shortly.

“And quite possibly Richard Brown knows that,” I said. He nodded; he’d been thinking along the same lines. Brown had never intended actually to arrest me; only to provoke an incident in which we could both be killed under circumstances dubious enough as to prevent wholesale retaliation by Jamie’s tenants.

“Mrs. Bug got out, did she?” he asked.

“Yes. If they didn’t catch her outside the house.” I narrowed my eyes against the brilliant afternoon sun, searching for a short, broad figure in skirts among the group by the chestnut trees, but I saw only men.

Jamie nodded again, hissing gently through his back teeth as he swiveled the gun barrel slowly through an arc that covered the dooryard.

“We’ll see, then” was all he said. “Come that wee bit closer, man,” he murmured, as one man started cautiously across the yard toward the house. “One shot; that’s all I ask. Here, Sassenach, take this.” He pushed the fowling piece into my hands, and selected his favorite of the pistols, a long-barreled Highland dag with a scroll butt.

The man—it was Richard Brown, I saw—stopped some distance away, pulled a handkerchief from the waist of his breeches, and waved it slowly overhead. Jamie snorted briefly, but let him come on.

“Fraser!” he called, coming to a stop at a distance of forty yards or so. “Fraser! D’ye hear me?”

Jamie sighted carefully and fired. The ball struck the ground a few feet in front of Brown, raising a sudden puff of dust from the path, and Brown leapt in the air as though stung by a bee.

“What’s the matter with you?” he yelled indignantly. “Have ye never heard of a flag o’ truce, you horse-stealin’ Scotcher?”

“If I wanted ye dead, Brown, ye’d be coolin’ this minute!” Jamie shouted back. “Speak your piece.” What he did want was plain: he wanted them wary of coming closer to the house; it was impossible to hit anything accurately with a pistol at forty yards, and not that easy with a musket.

“You know what I want!” Brown called. He took off his hat, wiping sweat and dirt from his face. “I want that goddamn murderous witch of yours.”

The answer to that was another carefully aimed pistol ball. Brown jumped again, but not so high.

“Look you,” he tried again, with a conciliating note in his voice. “We ain’t going to hurt her. We mean to take her to Hillsboro for trial. A fair trial. That’s all.”

Jamie handed me the second pistol to reload, took another, and fired.

You had to give Brown credit for persistence, I thought. Of course, it had probably dawned on him that Jamie either couldn’t or wouldn’t actually hit him, and he doggedly stood his ground through two more shots, yelling that they meant to take me to Hillsboro, and surely to God if I were innocent, Jamie should want a trial, shouldn’t he?

It was hot upstairs, and sweat was trickling down between my breasts. I blotted the fabric of my shift against my chest.

With no answer save the whine of pistol balls, Brown threw up his hands in exaggerated pantomime of a reasonable man tried beyond endurance, and stamped back to his men beneath the chestnut trees. Nothing had changed, but seeing the narrow back of him made me breathe a little easier.

Jamie was still crouched in the window, pistol at the ready, but seeing Brown go back, he relaxed and sat back on his heels, sighing.

“Is there water, Sassenach?”

“Yes.” The bedroom ewer was full; I poured him a cup and he drank it thirstily. We had food, water, and a fair amount of shot and powder. I did not, however, foresee a long siege ahead.

“What do you suppose they’ll do?” I didn’t go near the window, but by standing to one side, I could see them clearly, gathered in conference under the trees. The air was still and heavy, and the leaves above them hung like damp rags.

Jamie came to stand behind me, dabbing at his lip with the tail of his shirt.

“Fire the house as soon as it’s dark, I suppose,” he said matter-of-factly. “I would. Though I suppose they might try draggin’ Gideon out and threatening to put a ball through his head, and I didna give ye up.” He seemed to think this last was a joke, but I failed to see the humor in it.

He saw my face and put a hand behind my back, drawing me close for a moment. The air was hot and sticky, and we were both wringing wet, but the nearness of him was a comfort, nonetheless.

“So,” I said, taking a deep breath. “It all depends on whether Mrs. Bug got away—and who she’s told.”

“She’ll ha’ gone for Arch, first thing.” Jamie patted me gently, and sat down on the bed. “If he’s to home, he’ll run for Kenny Lindsay; he’s nearest. After that …” He shrugged, and closed his eyes, and I saw that his face was pale under the sunburn and the smears of dirt and blood.

“Jamie—are you hurt?”

He opened his eyes and gave me a small, one-sided smile, trying not to stretch his torn lip.

“No, I’ve broken my bloody finger again, is all.” He raised a shoulder in deprecation, but let me lift his right hand to look.

It was a clean break; that was all that could be said for it. The fourth finger was stiff, the joints fused from being so badly broken long ago, in Wentworth Prison. He couldn’t bend it, and it therefore stuck out awkwardly; this wasn’t the first time he’d snapped it.

He swallowed as I felt gently for the break, and closed his eyes again, sweating.

“There’s laudanum in the surgery,” I said. “Or whisky.” I knew he would refuse, though, and he did.

“I’ll want a clear head,” he said, “whatever happens.” He opened his eyes and gave me the ghost of a smile. The room was sweltering and airless, despite the open shutter. The sun was more than halfway down the sky, and the first shadows were gathering in the corners of the room.

I went down to the surgery to fetch a splint and bandage; it wouldn’t help a lot, but it was something to do.

The surgery was dark, with the shutters closed, but with the windows broken, air came through them, making the room seem oddly exposed and vulnerable. I walked in like a mouse, quiet, stopping abruptly, listening for danger, whiskers twitching. Everything was quiet, though.

“Too quiet,” I said aloud, and laughed. Moving with purpose and ignoring the noise, I set my feet down firmly and opened cupboard doors with abandon, banging instruments and rattling bottles as I looked out what I needed.

I stopped into the kitchen before returning upstairs. Partly to reassure myself that the back door was firmly bolted, and partly to see what bits of food Mrs. Bug might have left out. He hadn’t said so, but I knew the pain of the broken finger was making Jamie mildly nauseated—and in him, food generally quelled that sort of disturbance, and made him feel more settled.

The cauldron was still over the coals, but the fire, untended, had burned down so far that the soup had luckily not boiled away. I poked up the embers and put on three sticks of fat pine, as much by way of thumbing my nose at the besiegers outside as from the long-ingrained habit of never letting a fire die. Let them see the spray of sparks from the chimney, I thought, and imagine us sitting peacefully down to eat by our hearth. Or better yet, imagine us sitting by the blazing fire, melting lead and molding bullets.

In this defiant frame of mind, I went back upstairs, equipped with medical supplies, an alfresco lunch, and a large bottle of black ale. I couldn’t help but notice, though, the echo of my footsteps on the stair, and the silence that settled quickly back into place behind me, like water when one steps out of it.

I heard a shot, just as I approached the head of the stair, and took the last steps so fast that I tripped and would have fallen headlong, save for reeling into the wall.

Jamie appeared from Mr. Wemyss’s room, fowling piece in hand, looking startled.

“Are ye all right, Sassenach?”

“Yes,” I said crossly, wiping spilled soup off my hand with my apron. “What in the name of God are you shooting at?”

“Nothing. I only wanted to make the point that the back of the house is nay safer than the front, if they thought of creeping up that way. Just to ensure that they do wait for dark to fall.”

I bound up his finger, which seemed to help a little. The food, as I’d hoped, helped considerably more. He ate like a wolf, and rather to my surprise, so did I.

“The condemned ate a hearty meal,” I observed, picking up crumbs of bread and cheese. “I’d always thought being in danger of death would make one too nervous to eat, but apparently not.”

He shook his head, took a swallow of ale, and passed me the bottle.

“A friend once told me, ‘The body has nay conscience.’ I dinna ken that that’s entirely so—but it is true that the body doesna generally admit the possibility of nonexistence. And if ye exist—well, ye need food, that’s all.” He grinned one-sided at me, and tearing the last of the sweet rolls in half, gave one to me.

I took it, but didn’t eat it immediately. There was no sound outside, save the buzzing of cicadas, though the air had a sultry thickness to it that often presaged rain. It was early in the summer for storms, but one could only hope.

“You’ve thought of it, too, haven’t you?” I said quietly.

He made no pretense of misunderstanding me.

“Well, it is the twenty-first o’ the month,” he said.

“It’s June, for heaven’s sake! And the wrong year, as well. That newspaper clipping said January, of 1776!” I was absurdly indignant, as though I had somehow been cheated.

He found that funny.

“I was a printer myself, Sassenach,” he said, laughing through a mouthful of sweet roll. “Ye dinna want to believe everything ye read in the newspapers, aye?”

When I looked out again, only a few men were visible under the chestnut trees. One of them saw my movement; he waved his arm slowly to and fro above his head—then drew the edge of his hand flat across his throat.

The sun was just above the treetops; two hours, perhaps, to nightfall. Two hours surely was enough time for Mrs. Bug to have summoned help, though—always assuming she had found anyone who would come. Arch might have gone to Cross Creek—he went once a month; Kenny might be hunting. As for the newer tenants … without Roger to keep them in order, their suspicion and dislike of me had become blatant. I had the feeling that they might come if summoned—but only to cheer as I was dragged away.

If anyone did come—what then? I didn’t want to be dragged away, much less shot or burnt alive in the ashes of my house—but I didn’t want anyone else injured or killed in an effort to prevent it, either.

“Come away from the window, Sassenach,” Jamie said. He held out a hand to me, and I went, sitting on the bed beside him. I felt all at once exhausted, the adrenaline of emergency having burned away, leaving my muscles feeling like heat-softened rubber.

“Lie down, a Sorcha,” he said softly. “Lay your head in my lap.”

Hot as it was, I did so, finding it a comfort to stretch out, even more to hear his heart, thumping slow and solid above my ear, and feel his hand, light on my head.

All the weapons were laid out, ranged on the floor beside the window, all loaded, primed, and ready for use. He’d taken his sword down from the armoire; it stood by the door, a last resort.

“There’s nothing we can do now, is there?” I said after a little. “Nothing but wait.”

His fingers moved idly through the damp curls of my hair; it fell to just above my shoulders now, long enough—barely—to tie back or pin up.

“Well, we might say an Act of Contrition,” he said. “We did that, always, the night before a battle. Just in case,” he added, smiling down at me.

“All right,” I said after a pause. “Just in case.”

I reached up and his good hand closed round mine.

“Mon Dieu, je regrette …” he began, and I remembered that he said this prayer in French, harking back to those days as a mercenary in France; how often had he said it then, a necessary precaution, cleansing the soul at night in expectation of the possibility of death in the morning?

I said it, too, in English, and we fell silent. The cicadas had stopped. Far, far away, I thought I heard a sound that might be thunder.

“Do you know,” I said after a long while, “I’m sorry for a great many things and people. Rupert, Murtagh, Dougal … Frank. Malva,” I added softly, with a catch in my throat. “But speaking only for myself …” I cleared my throat.

“I don’t regret anything,” I said, watching the shadows creep in from the corners of the room. “Not one bloody thing.”

“Nor do I, mo nighean donn,” he said, and his fingers stilled, warm against my skin. “Nor do I.”

I woke from a doze with the smell of smoke in my nostrils. Being in a state of grace is all very well, but I imagine even Joan of Arc had qualms when they lit the first brand. I sat bolt upright, heart pounding, to see Jamie at the window.

It wasn’t quite dark yet; streaks of orange and gold and rose lit the sky to the west, and touched his face with a fiery light. He looked long-nosed and fierce, the lines of strain cut deep.

“Folk are coming,” he said. His voice was matter-of-fact, but his good hand was clenched hard round the edge of the shutter, as though he would have liked to slam and bolt it.

I came to stand by him, combing my fingers hastily through my hair. I could still make out figures under the chestnut trees, though they now were no more than silhouettes. They’d built a bonfire there, at the far edge of the dooryard; that’s what I’d smelled. There were more people coming into the dooryard, though; I was sure I made out the squat figure of Mrs. Bug among them. The sound of voices floated up, but they weren’t talking loudly enough to make out words.

“Will ye plait my hair, Sassenach? I canna manage, wi’ this.” He gave his broken finger a cursory glance.

I lit a candle, and he moved a stool to the window, so he could keep watch while I combed his hair and braided it into a tight, thick queue, which I clubbed at the base of his neck and tied with a neat black ribbon.

I knew his reasons were twofold: not only to appear well-groomed and gentlemanly, but to be ready to fight if he had to. I was less worried about someone seizing me by the hair as I attempted to cleave them in half with a sword, but supposed that if this were my last appearance as the lady of the Ridge, I should not appear unkempt.

I heard him mutter something under his breath, as I brushed my own hair by candlelight, and turned on my stool to look at him.

“Hiram’s come,” he informed me. “I hear his voice. That’s good.”

“If you say so,” I said dubiously, recollecting Hiram Crombie’s denunciations in church a week before—thinly veiled remarks clearly aimed at us. Roger hadn’t mentioned them; Amy McCallum had told me.

Jamie turned his head to look at me, and smiled, an expression of extraordinary sweetness coming over his face.

“Ye’re verra lovely, Sassenach,” he said as though surprised. “But, aye, it’s good. Whatever he thinks, he wouldna countenance Brown hanging us in the dooryard, nor yet setting the house afire to drive us out.”

There were more voices outside; the crowd was growing quickly.

“Mr. Fraser!”

He took a deep breath, took the candle from the table, and threw open the shutter, holding the candle near his face so they could see him.

It was almost full dark, but several of the crowd were holding torches, which gave me uneasy visions of the mob coming to burn Dr. Frankenstein’s monster—but did at least allow me to make out the faces below. There were at least thirty men—and not a few women—there, in addition to Brown and his thugs. Hiram Crombie was indeed there, standing beside Richard Brown, and looking like something out of the Old Testament.

“We require ye to come down, Mr. Fraser,” he called. “And your wife—if ye please.”

I caught sight of Mrs. Bug, plump and clearly terrified, her face streaked with tears. Then Jamie closed the shutters, gently, and offered me his arm.

Jamie had worn both dirk and sword, and had not changed his clothes. He stood on the porch, bloodstained and battered, and dared them to harm us further.

“Ye’ll take my wife over my dead body,” he said, raising his powerful voice enough to be heard across the clearing. I was rather afraid they would. He’d been right—so far—about Hiram not countenancing lynching, but it was clear that public opinion was not in our favor.

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!” someone shouted from the back of the crowd, and a stone whistled through the air, bouncing off the front of the house with a sharp report, like a gunshot. It struck no more than a foot from my head, and I flinched, instantly regretting it.

Angry murmurs had risen from the moment Jamie had opened the door, and this encouraged them. There were shouts of “Murderers!” and “Heartless! Heartless!” and a number of Gaelic insults that I didn’t try to understand.

“If she didn’t do it, breugaire, who did?” someone bellowed. “Liar” it meant.

The man Jamie had slashed across the face with his dirk was in the forefront of the crowd; the open wound gaped, still oozing, and his face was a mask of dried blood.

“If ’twasn’t her, ’twas him!” he shouted, pointing at Jamie. “Fear-siûrsachd!” Lecher.

There was an ugly rumble of agreement at that, and I saw Jamie shift his weight and set his hand to his sword, ready to draw if they charged him.

“Be still!” Hiram’s voice was rather shrill, but penetrating. “Be still, I tell ye!” He pushed Brown aside and came up the steps, very deliberately. At the top, he gave me a look of revulsion, but then turned to the crowd.

“Justice!” one of Brown’s men yelled, before he could speak. “We want justice!”

“Aye, we do!” Hiram shouted back. “And justice we shall have, for the puir raped lass and her bairn unborn!”

A satisfied growl greeted this, and icy terror ran down my legs, so that I feared my knees would give way.

“Justice! Justice!” Various people were taking up the chant, but Hiram stopped them, raising both hands as though he were bloody Moses parting the Red Sea.

“Justice is mine, sayeth the Lord,” Jamie remarked, in a voice just loud enough to be generally heard. Hiram, who had evidently been about to say the same thing, gave him a furious look, but couldn’t very well contradict him.

“And justice you’ll have, Mister Fraser!” Brown said very loudly. He lifted his face, narrow-eyed and malicious with triumph. “I wish to take her for trial. Anyone accused is entitled to that, nay? If she is innocent—if you are innocent—how can you refuse?”

“Certainly a point,” Hiram observed, very dry. “If your wife be clean o’ the crime, she’s naught to fear. How say ye, sir?”

“I say that should I surrender her to the hands of this man, she willna live to stand a trial,” Jamie replied hotly. “He holds me to blame for the death of his brother—and some of ye here will ken well enough the truth o’ that affair!” he added, lifting his chin to the crowd.

Here and there, heads nodded—but they were few. No more than a dozen of his Ardsmuir men had been on the expedition that rescued me; in the wake of gossip following it, many of the new tenants would have known only that I had been abducted, assaulted in some scandalous fashion, and that men had died on my account. The mind of the times being what it was, I was well aware that an obscure sense of blame attached to the victim of any sexual crime—unless the woman died, in which case she became at once a spotless angel.

“He will slaughter her out of hand, for the sake of revenge upon me,” Jamie said, raising his voice. He changed abruptly to Gaelic, pointing at Brown. “Look at yon man, and see the truth of the matter writ upon his face! He has no more to do with justice than with honor, and he would not recognize honor by the smell of its arse!”

That made a few of them laugh, in sheer surprise. Brown, disconcerted, looked round to see what they were laughing at, which made more of them laugh.

The mood of the assembly was still against us, but they were not yet with Brown—who was, after all, a stranger. Hiram’s narrow brow creased in consideration.

“What would ye offer by way of guarantee for the woman’s safety?” Hiram asked Brown.

“A dozen hogsheads of beer and three dozen prime hides,” Brown replied promptly. “Four dozen!” His eagerness gleamed in his eyes, and it was all he could do to keep his voice from shaking with the lust to take me. I had a sudden, unpleasant conviction that while my death was his ultimate goal, he didn’t intend that it should be a quick one, unless circumstances demanded it.

“It would be worth far more than that to ye, breugaire, to have your revenge upon me with her death,” Jamie said evenly.

Hiram glanced from one to the other, unsure what to do. I looked out into the crowd, keeping my face impassive. In truth, it was not difficult to do; I felt completely numb.

There were a few friendly faces, glancing anxiously to Jamie, to see what to do. Kenny and his brothers, Murdo and Evan, stood in a tight group, hands on their dirks and faces set. I didn’t know whether Richard Brown had chosen his timing, or merely been lucky. Ian was gone, hunting with his Cherokee friends. Arch was plainly gone, as well, or he would be visible—Arch and his ax would be uncommonly handy just now, I thought.

Fergus and Marsali were gone—they, too, would have helped to stem the tide. But the most important absence was Roger’s. He alone had been keeping the Presbyterians more or less under control since the day of Malva’s accusation, or at least keeping a lid on the simmering pot of gossip and animosity. He might have cowed them now—had he been here.

The conversation had devolved from high drama to a three-way wrangle among Jamie, Brown, and Hiram, the former two adamant in their positions, and poor Hiram, quite unsuited to the task, trying to adjudicate. Insofar as I had feelings to spare, I felt rather sorry for him.

“Take him!” a voice called suddenly. Allan Christie pushed his way to the front of the crowd, and pointed at Jamie. His voice trembled and broke with emotion. “It’s him debauched my sister, him that kilt her! If ye’ll put someone to the trial, take him!”

There was a subterranean rumble of agreement at that, and I saw John MacNeill and young Hugh Abernathy draw close together, glancing uneasily from Jamie to the three Lindsay brothers, and back again.

“Nay, it’s her!” a woman’s voice called in contradiction, high and shrill. One of the fishers’ wives; she stabbed a finger at me, face pinched with malevolence. “A man might kill a lass he’d got wi’ child—but no man would do sich wickedness as to steal a babe unborn frae the womb! No but a witch would do that—and she found wi’ the puir wee corpse in her hands!”

A higher susurrus of condemnation greeted that. The men might possibly give me the benefit of doubt—no woman would.

“By the name of the Almighty!” Hiram was losing his grip on the situation, and becoming panicky. The situation was perilously close to degenerating into riot; anyone could feel the currents of hysteria and violence in the air. He cast his eyes up to heaven, looking for inspiration—and found some.

“Take them both!” he said suddenly. He looked at Brown, then Jamie. “Take them both,” he repeated, testing the notion and finding it good. “Ye’ll go along, to see that nay harm comes to your wife,” he said reasonably to Jamie. “And if it should be proved that she is innocent …” His voice died away on that, as it dawned on him that what he was saying was that if I were proven innocent, Jamie must be guilty, and what a good idea it would be to have him on the spot to be hanged instead.

“She is innocent; so am I.” Jamie spoke without heat, doggedly repeating it. He had no real hope of convincing anyone; the only doubt among the crowd was whether he or I was the guilty party—or whether we had plotted together to destroy Malva Christie.

He turned suddenly to face the crowd, and cried out to them in Gaelic.

“If you will deliver us into the stranger’s hand, then our blood be upon your heads, and you will answer for our lives upon the Day of Judgment!”

A sudden hush fell on the crowd at that. Men glanced uncertainly at their neighbors, measured Brown and his cohort with doubtful eyes.

They were known to the community, but strangers—Sassenachs—in the Scottish sense. So was I, and a witch, to boot. Lecher, rapist, and Papist murderer he might be—but Jamie at least was not a stranger.

The man I had shot was grinning at me evilly over Brown’s shoulder; evidently, I had no more than grazed him, worse luck. I gave him stare for stare, sweat gathering between my breasts, moisture slick and hot beneath the veil of my hair.

A murmur was rising among the crowd; argument and disputation, and I could see the Ardsmuir men begin to make their way slowly toward the porch, pushing through the mob. Kenny Lindsay’s eyes were fixed on Jamie’s face, and I felt Jamie take a deep breath beside me.

They would fight for him, if he called them. But there were too few of them, and poorly armed, by contrast with Brown’s mob. They would not win—and there were women and children in the crowd. To call his men would provoke only bloody riot, and leave the deaths of innocents upon his conscience. That was not a burden he could bear; not now.

I saw him come to this conclusion, and his mouth tighten. I had no idea what he might be about to do, but he was forestalled. There was a disturbance at the edge of the crowd; people turned to look, then froze, stricken silent.

Thomas Christie came through the crowd; in spite of the darkness and wavering torchlight, I knew at once it was him. He walked like an old man, hunched and halting, looking at no one. The crowd gave way before him at once, deeply respectful of his grief.

The grief was plainly marked on his face. He had let his beard and hair go untrimmed, uncombed, and both were matted. His eyes were pouched and bloodshot, the lines from nose to mouth black furrows through his beard. His eyes were alive, though, alert and intelligent. He walked through the crowd, past his son, as though he were alone, and came up the steps onto the porch.

“I will go with them to Hillsboro,” he said quietly to Hiram Crombie. “Let them both be taken, if ye will—but I will travel with them, as surety that no further evil may be done. Surely justice is mine, if it be anyone’s.”

Brown looked much taken aback by this declaration; plainly it wasn’t what he’d had in mind at all. But the crowd was in instant sympathy, murmuring agreement at the proposed solution. Everyone had the greatest compassion and respect for Tom Christie in the wake of his daughter’s murder, and the general feeling seemed to be that this gesture was one of the greatest magnanimity.

It was, too, as he had in all likelihood just saved our lives—at least for the moment. From the look in his eye, Jamie would strongly have preferred simply to take his chances on killing Richard Brown, but realized that beggars could not be choosers, and acquiesced as gracefully as possible, with a nod of the head.

Christie’s gaze rested on me for a moment, then turned to Jamie.

“If it will suit your convenience, Mr. Fraser, perhaps we will leave in the morning? There is no reason why you and your wife should not rest in your own beds.”

Jamie bowed to him.

“I thank ye, sir,” he said with great formality. Christie nodded back, then turned and went back down the steps, completely ignoring Richard Brown, who was looking at once irritated and confounded.

I saw Kenny Lindsay close his eyes, shoulders slumping in relief. Then Jamie put his hand under my elbow, and we turned, going into our house for what might be the final night spent under its roof.