The Fiery Cross

by Diana Gabaldon

  To begin with, where he is," Jamie said, grunting slightly as he hauled on the oars.

  "No idea," Duff said promptly, looking happier.

  "Well, where did ye last see the bugger?" Jamie asked patiently. Duff and Peter exchanged glances.

  cc cl Well, noo," Duff began cautiously, "d'ye mean by 'see,5 where it was I last apped een on the captain?"

  44 str What else would he mean, clotheid? 'I Roger said, grunting with a backward oke.

  Peter nodded thoughtfully, evidently awarding a point to our side, and elbowed Duff in the ribs.

  "He was in a pot-house on Roanoke, eatin' fish Pie," Duff said, capitulating. "Baked wi' oysters and breadcrumbs on the top, and a pint of dark ale to wash it down. Molasses pudding, too."

  "Ye've a keen sense of observation, Mr. Duff," Jamie said. "How's your sense of time, then?"

  "Eh? Oh, aye, 1 tak' your meanin', man. When was it.

  aboot." twa month past, "And if ye were close enough to see what the man was eating," Jamie observed mildly, "then I expect ye were at table with him, no? What did he speak of)"

  Duff looked mildly embarrassed. He glanced at me, then up at one of the circling gulls.

  "Aye, well. The shape of the arse on the barmaid, mostly.,, cci

  shouldna think that a topic of conversation to occupy the course of a meal, even if the lassie was particularly shapely," Roger put in.

  "Ah, ye'd be surprised how much there is to say about a woman's bum, lad,5' Duff assured him. "This One was round as an apple, and heavy as a steamed puddin'. 'Twas cold as charity in the place, and the thought of havin' such a plump, hot, wee bridie in your hands-mcanin'flo offense to ye, ma'am, I'm sure," he added hurriedly, tipping his hat in my direction.

  "None taken,55 I assured him cordially.

  "Can you swim, Mr. Duff)" Jamie asked, his tone still one of mild curiosity. "What?" Duff blinked, taken back. "I ... ah ... well

  "No, he can't," Roger said cheerfully. "He told me."

  Duff gave him a look of outraged betrayal over Jamie's head.

  The Fiery Cross 885

  "Well, there's loyalty! " he said, scandalized. "A fine shipmate you are! Givin' me away so-ye should be ashamed of yersel', so ye should!"

  Jamie raised his oars, dripping, out of the water, and Roger followed suit. 'We were perhaps a quarter-mile from shore, and the water beneath our hull was a deep, soft green, portending a bottom several fathoms deep. The boat rocked gently, liffing on the bosom of a long, slow swell.

  I "Bonnet," Jamie said, still politely, but with a definite edge. Peter folded his arms and closed his eyes, making it clear that the subject had nothing to do with him. Duff sighed and eyed Jamie narrowly.

  "Aye, well. It's true, I've no notion where the man is. When I saw him on Roanoke, he was makin' arrangements to have some ... goods ... brought in. For what that might be worth to ye," he added, rather ungraciously.

  "What goods? Brought in where? And going where?" Jamie was leaning on his shipped oars, apparently casual. I could see a certain tension in the fine of his body, though, and it occurred to me that while his attention might be fixed on Duff's face, he was of necessity also watching the horizon behind Duffwhich was rising and falling hypnotically as the swell lifted the piretta and let it drop. Over and over and ...

  "Tea-chests was what I took in for him," Duff answered warily. "Couldna say, for the rest."

  "The rest?"

  "Christ, man, every boat on this water brings in the odd bit of jiggery-pokery here and there-surely ye ken that much?"

  Peter's eyes had opened to half-slits; I saw them rest on Jamie's face with a certain expression of interest. The wind had shifted a few points, and the smell of dead whale was decidedly stronger. Jamie took a slow, deep breath, and let it out again, rather faster.

  "Ye brought in tea, then. Where from? A ship?"

  "Aye." Duff was watching Jamie, too, in growing fascination. I shifted uneasily on the narrow seat. I couldn't tell from the back of his neck, but I thought it more than likely that he was beginning to turn green.

  "The Sparrow," Duff went on, eyes fixed on Jamie. "She anchored off the Banks, and the boats went out to her. We loaded the cargo and came in through Joad's Inlet. Cam' ashore at Wylie's Landing, and handed over to a fellow there."

  "What ... fellow?" The wind was cool, but I could see sweat trickling down the back of Jamie's neck, dampening his collar and plastering the linen between his shoulders.

  Duff didn't answer immediately. A look of speculation flickered in his small, deep-set eyes.

  "Don't think about it, Duff," Roger said, softly, but with great assurance. "I can reach ye from here with an oar, ken?"

  "Aye?" Duff glanced thoughtfully from Jamie, to Roger, and then to me. "Aye, reckon ye might. But allowin' for the sake for argyment as how you can swim, MacKenzie-and even that Mr. Fraser might keep afloat-I dinna think that's true of the lady, is it? Skirts and petticoats . . ." He shook his head, pursing thin lips in speculation as he looked at me. "Go to the bottom like a stone, she would."

  886 Diana Gabaldon

  Peter shifted ever so slightly, bringing his feet under him.

  "Claire?" Jamie said. I saw his fingers curl tight round the oars, and heard the note of strain in his voice. I sighed and drew the pistol out from under the coat across my lap.

  "Right," I said. "Which one shall I shoot?"

  Peter's eyes snapped open, wide enough that I saw a rim of white show all round his black pupils. He looked at the pistol, then at Duff, then directly at Jamie.

  "Give tea to a man name Butlah," he said. "Work for Mist' Lyon." He pointed at me'then at Duff. "Shoot him," he suggested.

  The ice thus broken, it took very little time for our two passengers to confide the rest of what they knew, pausing only momentarily for Jamie to be sick over the side between questions.

  Smuggling was, as Duff had suggested, so common in the area as to constitute general business practice; most of the merchants-and all of the small boatmen-in Wilmington engaged in it, as did most others on the Carolina coast, in order to avoid the crippling duties on officially imported goods. Stephen Bonnet, however, was not only one of the more successful smugglers, but also rather a specialist.

  "Brings in goods to order, like," Duff said, twisting his neck in order to scratch more effectively between his shoulder blades. "And in what ye might call quantity."

  "How much quantity?" Jamie's elbows rested on his knees, his head sunk onto his hands. It seemed to be helping; his voice was steady.

  Duff pursed his lips and squinted, calculating.

  "There was six of us at the tavern on Roanoke. Six wil small boats, I Mean, as could run the inlets. If we were each to be fetchin' along as much as we could manage ... say, fifty chests of tea all told, then."

  "And he brings in such a load how often-every two months?" Roger had relaxed a little, leaning on his oars. I hadn't, and gave Duff a hard eye over the pistol to indicate as much.

  "Oh, more often than that," Duff answered, eyeing me warily. "Couldn't say exactly, but you hear talk, aye? From what the other boats say, I reckon he's got a load comin' every two weeks in the season, somewhere on the coast betwixt Virginia and Charleston." Roger gave a brief grunt of surprise at that, and Jamie looked up briefly from his cupped hands.

  "What about the Navy?" he asked. "Who's he paying?" That was a good question. While small boats might escape the Navy's eye, Bonnet's operation evidently involved large quantities of contraband, coming in on large ships. it would be hard to hide something on that scale-and the obvious answer was that he wasn't bothering to hide it.

  Duff shook his head and shrugged. "Can't say, man."

  "But you haven't worked for Bonnet since February?" I asked. "Why not?" Duff and Peter exchanged a glance.

  "You eat scorpion-fish, you hungry," Peter said to me. "You don' eat dem, iffen you got sumpin' bettah.55

  The Fiery Cross 887 "What?"

  "The man's dangerous, Sassenach,"
Jamie translated dryly. "They dinna like to deal with him, save for need." "He's no bad at "Well, see him, Bonnet," Duff said, warming to the topic

  all to deal with-sac long as your interest runs wi' his. Only, if it might be as all of a sudden it doesna quite run with his . - ."

  Peter solemnly drew a finger across his stringy neck, nodding in affirmation. "And it's no as if there's warnin' about it, either," Duff added, nodding too. "One minute, it's whisky and segars, the next, ye're on your back in the sawdust, breathin' blood, and happy still to be breathin' at that."

  "A temper, has he?" Jamie drew a hand down over his face, then wiped his tweary palm on his shirt. The linen clung damply to his shoulders, but I knew he wouldn't take it off.

  1 Duff, Peter, and Roger all shook their heads simultaneously at the question. "Cold as ice," Roger said, and I heard the small note of strain in his voice. "Kill ye without the turn of an arse-hair," Duff assured Jamie.

  "Rip you like dern whale," Peter put in helpfully, with a wave toward the island. The current had carried us a good deal closer to the land, and I could see the whale as well as smell it. Seabirds whirled and screamed in a great cloud over the carcass, swooping down to tear away gobbets of flesh, and a small crowd of people clustered nearby, hands to their noses, clearly clutching handkerchiefs and sachets.

  Just then, the wind changed, and a fetid gust of decay washed over us like a breaking wave. I clapped Roger's shirt to my own face, and even Peter appeared to pale,

  "Mother of God, have mercy on me," Jamie said, under his breath. "1-0h, Christ!" He leaned to the side and threw up, repeatedly.

  I nudged Roger in the buttock with my toe. "Row," I suggested.

  Roger obeyed with alacrity, putting his back into it, and Aithin a few minutes, the keel of the piretta touched sand. Duff and Peter leaped out to run the hull up onto the beach, then gallantly assisted me out of the boat, evidently not holding the pistol against me.

  Jamie paid them, then staggered a short distance up the beach and sat down, quite suddenly, in the sand beneath a loblolly pine. He was roughly the same shade as the dead whale, a dirty gray with white blotches.

  "Will we wait for ye, sit, and row ye back?" Duff, his purse now bulging healthily, hovered helpfully over Jamie.

  "No," Jamie said. "Take them." He waved feebly at me and Roger, then closed his eyes and swallowed heavily. "As for me, I believe ... I shall just ... swim back."

  MONSTERS AND HEROES

  HE LITTLE BOYS WERE mad to see the whale, and tugged their reluctant mothers along like kites. I came along, keeping a somewhat more discreet distance from the towering carcass, leaving Jamie on the T

  beach to recover. Roger took Duff aside for a bit of private conversation,

  Peter subsided into somnolence in the bottom of the boat. while though it mu t have been The carcass was newly washed up on the beach, S

  dead for some time before its landing; such an impressive state of decomposition must have taken days to develop. The stench notwithstanding, a number of the more intrepid visitors were standing on the carcass, waving cheerily to their companions on the beach below, and a gentleman armed with a hatchet was employed in hacking chunks of flesh from the side of the animal, dropping these into a pair of large buckets. I recognized him as the proprietor of an ordinary on Hawthorn Street, and made a mental note to strike that establishment from our list of potential eating-places.

  Numbers of small crustaceans, not nearly so fastidious in their habits, swarmed merrily over the carcass, and I saw several people, also armed with ruit. Ten milhon sand buckets, picking the larger crabs and crayfish off like ripe f

  e distance, rubbing my fleas had joined the circus, too, and I retreated to a saf

  ankles. I glanced back down the beach, seeing that Jamie had risen now and joined the conversation-Duff was looking increasingly restive, glancing back and

  rom the whale to his boat. Clearly, he was anxious to return to business, forth f

  before the attraction should disappear altogether.

  At last he succeeded in escaping, and scampered away toward his piretta, looking hunted. Jamie and Roger came toward me, but the little boys were clearly not ready yet to leave the whale. Brianna nobly volunteered to watch them both, so that Marsali could climb the nearby lighthouse tower, to see whether there might be any sign of the Octopus.

  "What have you been saying to poor Mr. Duff?" I asked Jamie. "He looked rather worried."

  "Aye? No need of worry," he said, glancing toward the water, where Duff's piretta was rapidly pulling back to the quay. "I've only put a wee bit of business in his way."

  "He knows where Lyon is," Roger put in. He looked disturbed, but excited. "Amd Mr. Lyon knows where Bonnet is--or if not where, precisely, at least how to get word to him. Let us go a bit higher, aye?" Jamie was still pale; he

  The Fiery Cross 889

  gestured toward the stair of the tower with his chin, Aiping sweat from the side of his neck.

  The air was fresher at the top of the tower, but I had little attention to spare for the view out over the ocean.

  "And so ... ?" I said, not sure I wanted to hear the answer.

  "So I have commissioned Duff to carry a message to Mr. Lyon. All being agreeable, we will meet with Mr. Bonnet at Wylie's Landing, in a week's time." I swallowed, feeling a wave of dizziness that had nothing to do with the

  height. I closed my eyes, clutching the wooden rail that surrounded the tiny platform we stood on. The wind was blowing hard, and the boards of the tower creaked and groaned, feeling frighteningly insubstantial.

  I heard Jamie shift his weight, rnoving toward Roger. "He is a man, ken?" he said quietly. "Not a monster."

  Was he? It was a monster, I thought, who haunted Brianna-and perhaps her father. Would killing him reduce him, make him no more than a man again?

  "I know." Roger's voice was steady, but lacked conviction.

  I opened my eyes, to see the ocean falling away before me into a bank of floating mist. It was vast and beautiful-and empty. One might well fall off the end of the world, I thought.

  'YE SAI LE D Wl' our Stephen, aye? For what, two months, three? "Near on three," Roger answered.

  Our Stepben, was it? And what did Jamie mean by that homely usage, thenP Jamie nodded, not turning his head. He looked out over the rolling wash of the sea, the breeze whipping strands of hair loose from their binding to dance like flames, pale in daylight.

  "Ye'll have kent the man well enough, then."

  Roger leaned his weight against the rail. It was solid, but wet and sticky with half-dried spray, where spume from the rocks below had reached it.

  "Well enough," he echoed. "Aye. Well enough for whaW'

  Jamie turned then, to look him in the face. His eyes were narrowed against the wind, but straight and bright as razors.

  "Well enough to ken he is a man-and no more."

  "What else would he be?" Roger felt the edge in his own voice.

  Jamie turned back toward the sea, shading his eyes with his hand as he looked toward the sinking sun.

  "A monster," he said softly. "Something less than a man-or more."

  Roger opened his mouth to reply, but found he could not. For it was a monster, that shadowed his own heart with fear.

  "How did the sailors see him?" Claire's voice came from Jamie's other side; she leaned over the rail to look around him, and the wind seized her hair and shook it out in a flying cloud, stormy as the distant sky.

  "On the Gloriana?" Roger took a deep breath, a whiff of dead whale mingling with the fecund scent of the salt marsh behind. "They ... respected him.

  890 Diana Gabaldon

  Some of them were afraid of him." Like me. "He had the reputation of a hard captain, but a good one. Competent. Men were iAilling to ship with him, because he always came safe into port, his voyages were always profitable."

  "Was he cruel?" Claire asked. A faint line showed between her brows.

  "All captains are cruel sometim
es, Sassenach," Jamie said, with a slight tinge of impatience. "They need to be."

  She glanced up at him, and Roger saw her expression change, memory softening her eyes, a wry thought tightening the corner of her mouth. She laid a hand on Jamie's arm, and he saw her knuckles whiten as she squeezed.

  "You've never done other than you had to," she said, so quietly that Roger could scarcely hear her. No matter; the words were plainly not meant for him. She raised her voice then, slightly. "There's a difference between cruelty and necessity"

  "Aye," Jamie said, half under his breath. "And a thin line, maybe, between a monster and a hero."

  THE BATTLE OF WYLIE'S LANDING

  HE SOUND WAS CALM and flat, the surface barely ruffled by tiny wind-driven waves. And a bloody good thing, too, Roger thought, looking at his father-in-law. Jamie had his eyes open, at least, fixed on

  the shore with a sort of desperate intensity, as though the sight of solid land, however unreachable, might yet impart some comfort. Droplets of sweat gleamed on his upper lip, and his face was the same nacreous color as the dawn sky, but he hadn't vomited yet.

  Roger wasn't seasick, but he felt nearly as ill as Jamie looked. Neither of them had eaten any breakfast, but he felt as though he'd swallowed a large mass of parritch, liberally garnished with carpet-tacks.

  "That's it." Duff sat back on his oars, nodding toward the wharf ahead. It was cool on the water-almost cold at this hour-but the air was thick with moisture, and sweat ran down his face from his efforts. Peter sat silent on his own oars, dark face set in an expression indicating that he wanted nothing to do with this enterprise, and the sooner their unwelcome cargo disembarked, the better.

  Wylie's Landing seemed like a mirage, floating in a layer of mist above the water amid a thick growth of needlerush and cord grass. Marshland, clumps of stunted coastal forest, and broad stretches of open water surrounded it, under an overwhelming arch of pale gray sky. By comparison to the green enclosures of the mountains, it seemed uncomfortably exposed. At the same time, it was completely isolated, evidently miles from any other sign of human habitation.

  The Fiery Cross 891

  That was in part illusion; Roger knew that the plantation house was no more than a mile from the landing, but it was hidden by a dense growth of scraggylooking forest that sprang from the marshy ground like some misshapen, dwarfish Sherwood, thick with vines and brush.

  The landing itself consisted of a short wooden dock on pilings, and a collection of ramshackle sheds adjoining it, weathered to a silver-gray that seemed about to disappear into the lowering sky. A small open boat was drawn up on the shore, hull upturned. A zigzag split-rail fence enclosed a small pen beyond the sheds; Wylie must ship livestock by water now and then.

  Jamie touched the cartridge box that hung at his belt, either for reassurance, or perhaps only to insure that it was still dry. His eyes went to the sky, assessing, and Roger realized with a sudden qualm that if it rained, the guns might not be dependable. Black powder clumped in the damp; more than a trace of moisture and it wouldn't fire at all. And the last thing he wanted was to find himself facing Stephen Bonnet with a useless gun.

  He is a man, no more, he repeated silently to himself. Let Bonnet swell to supernatural proportions in his mind, and he was doomed. He groped for some reassuring image, and fastened on a memory of Stephen Bonnet, seated in the head of the Gloriana, breeches puddled round his bare feet, blond-stubbled jaw slack in the morning light, his eyes half-closed in the pleasure of taking a peaceful crap -

  Shit, he thought. Think of Bonnet as a monster, and it became impossible; think of him as a man, and it was worse. And yet, it had to be done.

  His palms were sweating; he rubbed them on his breeks, not even bothering to try to hide it. There was a dirk on his belt, along with the pair of pistols; the sword lay in the bottom of the boat, solid in its scabbard. He thought of John Grey's letter, and Captain Marsden's eyes, and tasted something bitter and metallic at the back of his throat.

  At Jamie's direction, the piretta drew slowly nearer the landing, everyone on board alert for any sign of life.

  "No one lives here?" Jamie asked, low-voiced, leaning over Duff's shoulder to