by Sara Donati
“The king of spades,” she whispered, and pushed a small packet toward him. Without a backward glance she disappeared toward the shadowy corner where Moncrieff waited for her.
Nathaniel unwound the packet from its paper casing quickly, Robbie and Hawkeye leaning in close to watch. A deck of cards. The round, bland face of the king of spades was circled with neat, careful handwriting. The dark ink seemed to shiver and jump in the guttering candlelight.
Robbie squinted hard. “Iona’s hand,” he whispered. There was enough sunlight from the small, high window now to see him clearly. He was filthy, tangle-haired, his lower face lost in a snarl of beard.
Nathaniel’s heart gave a leap. If Iona would risk sending such a note things must be coming to a head.
Hawkeye made a sound in his throat and Nathaniel tucked the card into his shirt just as Thompson appeared at the door again, chewing on bread so that the crumbs fell in a wet shower over his jacket. He jerked his head over his shoulder. With last murmured words, the women pulled down their hoods and slipped out as quietly as they had come. The guard thumped out after them, his key rasping as it turned in the lock.
Denier woke and came sniffing around the pile of food. The knife cut on his cheek had finally closed, but it still wept an angry yellow-red. His appetite was intact; he retired to his cot with a meat pie and his share of the sausage.
They ate silently, concentrating at first on the meat and on slick white cheese they washed down with Adele’s ale in a tin cup that circled once and then again. Nathaniel wished, as he did every day, for water. For all of his life he had begun every day spent at home by diving into the cold pool under the falls at Lake in the Clouds; now he daydreamed of drinking until he had his fill, and more.
“Well?” Moncrieff’s voice was thick. He had been sick with a fever for almost a week, and he was still prone to coughing fits.
They waited another five minutes until they could hear Thompson talking out in the courtyard above the normal noise of the garrison. Nathaniel read Iona’s note in the light from the little window, and then he pressed his forehead against the cold, damp stone for a moment. When he came back to them, he could see the cautious hope on his father’s face.
“Tonight,” he said, his voice cracking with the effort and with relief. “When the seminary clock strikes ten. There’ll be a diversion in the barracks and we should be ready to run.” The little he knew of the plan worked out between Pépin’s brothers and Iona didn’t take long to relate.
There was a tense silence when Nathaniel finished, each of them alone with their own thoughts. Denier had stopped eating, and was tugging at one huge ear in a thoughtful way. He muttered a question in Pépin’s direction and got a brief word in reply. The escape plans seemed to have brought about an uneasy truce between them, but Nathaniel intended to keep a sharp eye on the butcher.
“Any sign of Runs-from-Bears?” asked Robbie, putting voice to the question that kept Nathaniel awake night after night. They could not even know for sure if Otter had made it out of Montréal.
“Not yet,” said Nathaniel, passing the card to his father.
Hawkeye took the king of spades and held it to the guttering candle flame until it was nothing but ash. Then he reached for the corn bread. “Eat up, boys,” he said, new energy in his voice. “No sense letting good food go to waste.”
Moncrieff was looking between Nathaniel and Pépin. “But what of weapons?”
Although the young farmer’s English was spotty, he had followed most of the conversation. Still gnawing on a bit of sausage, he picked up a candle from the pile and handed it to Moncrieff. “From ma mere,” he said.
Moncrieff raised an eyebrow at the weight of the candle. Then he tested the narrow end with his thumb and jerked in surprise. A bead of blood appeared, bright on his grimy skin.
“It’s a wise woman wha’ kens the worth o’ a guid strong candle,” said Robbie grimly as he tore off another chunk of bread. “An’ should we meet wi’ Pink George on the way oot o’ his filthy gaol, I’ll demonstrate the truth o’ that tae him wi’ great pleasure.” He narrowed an eye at Moncrieff. “Did Adele ha’ any news o’ Somerville?”
Nathaniel caught his father’s eye. Robbie was determined to pay Pink George back for the shooting of his dog. If all went well he would never have the chance, but there was no good reason to point that out.
“Aye,” said Moncrieff, filling the tin cup again. “Giselle is to be married.”
There was a moment of surprised silence.
Hawkeye grunted, his gaze fixed on the food before him. “He’ll have a struggle on his hands, whoever he is.”
“Perhaps,” said Moncrieff. “But Horace Pickering is no man’s fool.”
Robbie sputtered a mist of ale. “The fish-faced seadog is tae marry Giselle?”
Moncrieff inclined his head. “She might ha’ done far worse. Now she’ll be free o’ her faither, and awa’ fra’ here. I think it will serve her weel.”
“Aye,” said Hawkeye lightly. “A husband gone to sea nine months out of twelve may suit her just fine.” He stared for a moment at Nathaniel, and then grinned as if he knew full well what his son must be feeling: surprise, some curiosity he would not indulge with questions, and relief. He need think on Giselle Somerville no more.
“Perhaps he’ll take her home,” Moncrieff said thoughtfully. “He has a house outside o’ Edinburgh. Have I told ye about the countryside around Edinburgh?”
The others snorted. Angus Moncrieff had asked the Bonners for a single hour to present his case for Scotland and Carryck and had had their attention, day and night, for a good month. He had paid a high price for the opportunity—for a day at least, Nathaniel had wondered if the cold in his chest might kill him—but he made good use of it. And his easy way with a story was welcome in the long dark days of March when boredom and desperation vied for the upper hand.
Moncrieff’s histories were told in a long, comfortable ramble. He spoke of kidnapped kings, land grants and treaties, treacheries and lost opportunities, brave men with weak allies, traitorous Norman nobles. There were complicated tales of English perfidy, clan rivalries and border wars, banking disasters, famines and clearings. Moncrieff gave them such a vivid picture of his homeland and its people that Nathaniel sometimes daydreamed of places he knew only by name and would never see: Stirling and Bannockburn, Falkirk, Holyrood.
Nathaniel had heard many of the same stories from his mother, but Moncrieff told them with the voice and vision of the men who had fought the battles. He was so skilled at spinning tales that it was some good time before Nathaniel noticed those subjects he avoided. He never told his own story in any detail, said almost nothing of his own family or his unshakable allegiance to the Carryck line; and in all his recounting of tangled politics and divided loyalties, he spoke of religion in only the most passing way. Stranger still, while they heard of every battle fought with England for independence since Robert the Bruce, Moncrieff never spoke of the most recent and disastrous, the Rising of ’45, although he sang of it now and then. When the mood was on him, Moncrieff would throw back his head and sing in a profound, clear baritone so that even the guards playing dice in the courtyard quieted to listen.
The folks with plaids, the folks with plaids,
The folks with plaids of scarlet,
And folks with checkered plaids of green
Are going off with Charlie.
Were I m’self sixteen years old,
Were I as I would fain be,
Were I m’self sixteen years old
I’d go m’self with Charlie.
Nathaniel thought Moncrieff might be unwilling to talk of the Rising out of sensitivity to Robbie, who had fought for the exiled Catholic king and escaped to the Colonies in a complicated set of circumstances. For his part, Robbie seemed content to let Moncrieff’s stories lead where they would go without comment. More than once Nathaniel had wished for privacy in which he could ask some very pointed questions out of Moncrieff’s
hearing.
Most of all, Moncrieff talked about Carryck. Sometimes Nathaniel fell asleep at night listening to the stories, only to escape in his dreams in the opposite direction, to Elizabeth and Lake in the Clouds, to their children, and to the Kahnyen’kehàka, who were truer family to him than any earl in a stone castle could ever be. They had had no word of Otter and no way of knowing if he had made it home, but deep in his bones Nathaniel was certain that he had. He could almost see Runs-from-Bears on the path. He was on his way here, or he was dead.
Nathaniel knew Moncrieff was probably right, that he was a Scot through and through; but it made no difference. None of it—not the farms or fields or mines or titles—had any claim on his heart or mind. He would go home to Lake in the Clouds and never leave the mountain again. Nathaniel could see the same thought on his father’s face now.
“You’ll be off home to Scotland,” Hawkeye said to Moncrieff. “Glad to see the last of Canada, I’ll wager. You came a long way and stayed a long time to be goin’ home empty-handed. I’m sorry for it, man, but I can’t help you.”
The narrow shoulders lifted in a shrug. “It was worth the chance,” he said. “I would ha’ gone twice the distance to save Carryck. It will ne’er be the same again.”
“Nothing ever is,” said Hawkeye, but his tone was kind. He understood what it meant to lose home lands to an invading army that never seemed to lessen, or tire.
“I saw Carryck when I was no’ but a lad,” said Robbie, almost to himself. “I was on the road tae Glasgow. A summer nicht, and the midges were nippin’ aye fierce, but the sicht o’ the castle lit up wi’ torches was a gey wonder tae behold. It seemed tae me tae be filled wi’ a thousand fine folk.”
“The hospitality o’ the auld earl was well kennt,” agreed Moncrieff. “Men came from as far as Paris and London to hunt wi’ him—and he welcomed them all. Even Pink George came to Carryck, back in forty-four. I remember it weel.”
“You must have been a boy yourself,” said Nathaniel, truly surprised. “That’s fifty years ago.”
“I was thirteen,” said Moncrieff. “And in training under my faither, who was the earl’s factor before me. Pink George was no more than twenty himself. I recall that hunting party weel, for the banquet was my first and my faither’s last. He died the following year.” Moncrieff cleared his throat again, rubbing a hand over his face. “It was that very banquet where our fine host, George Somerville, Lord Bainbridge, earned the name Pink George.”
Robbie’s head snapped up. “Ye’ve been sittin’ here wi’ us in this stinkin’ hole for weeks, Angus, and no’ tolt the tale? I’ve lang wondered aboot that name.”
“I was saving it for a rainy day.”
“The sun is shining,” said Hawkeye. “But tomorrow will be too late if luck is with us.”
But Nathaniel could not sit still, not even for a well-told story. He got up to pace the room. The warmth of the spring morning touched his face with a tenderness that would have made him despair, if it weren’t for his faith that tomorrow they would be away. He would never turn back, of that much he was certain, should the whole city burn to the ground.
“… more than fifty rode out wi’ the hounds that day, Bainbridge among them. He came back empty-handed, lopsided wi’ drink, and in an amorous frame o’ mind. Kitchen lassie or duchess, he wasna particular. Bainbridge’s appetite for women was the talk o’ the land.”
“Much like yer own,” noted Robbie with a wink, but Moncrieff only raised a dignified brow in his direction, and refused to be drawn into a discussion of his own habits.
“The trouble began when he caught sight o’ wee Barbara Cameron, a servin’ maid. Just fifteen, with eyes o’ lavender, and hair like the moonlight itself. A bonnie lass was Barbara, virtuous, but canty. She was serving drink that evening, and had the poor fortune to come across Bainbridge, who thought he would dispense wi’ the niceties and get right to lifting her skirts. But whisky made him slow, and she was quick. She left him wi’ nothing but her scent in his nose and a ribbon he snatched from her hair as she slipped awa’.”
Moncrieff paused to take another deep swallow. The telling of a story seemed to give him a thirst.
“Now, he was no’ so bad to look at himself as a young man, was our Bainbridge. There were other bonnie faces in the hall that night who might’ve made him forget wee Barbara, if it werena for the fact that she had shunned him in front o’ all the other men at his table. ‘Oho,’ says one o’ the stupider Drummonds—just a month later his horse did us all the favor o’ throwing him on his heid—‘have ye lost your touch, Bainbridge, or is the wild rose of Scotland too thorny for a soft English hand?’ ”
There was a guffaw from Robbie, who was bent over in a bow, his hands folded between his knees and head cocked.
“From the little ye’ve seen o’ the man, you know verra well that Pink George is the kind that canna thole laughter at his own expense. And so he made a wager wi’ softheided Geordie Drummond. He would have Barbara Cameron in his bed before the dawn, plow the field, and leave a bit more of England putting down roots in Scottish soil when he gaed awa’ hame.”
Moncrieff shrugged as if to disavow responsibility for what had happened so long ago.
“That was his mistake. Ye see, he drew the auld earl’s attention on himself, chasing after a serving maid all evening, for he decided in his drunken state that once she kennt him weel, she couldna withstan’ his charms. In the end, his lairdship sent my faither off to get to the bottom o’ the matter. And when he came back wi’ the whole tale, the earl got a particular light in his eye.
“He was a wily one, the auld earl, sharp as they come and wi’ a wicked sense o’ humor. Young Bainbridge was an opportunity he couldna let pass. So he goes after the lad—no’ to tell him to leave the lass alone, for what game is there in that? No, he asks if there’s anything the viscount desires to make his stay more comfortable!”
Pépin had inched a bit closer and was listening hard, although Nathaniel thought he was probably not getting more than half of the story. Denier had gone back to sleep.
“Bainbridge is too deep in his cups to see the strangeness of it, that the Earl o’ Carryck should be asking after his wishes personally, and him no’ but a lad. But his blood is up now—watching Barbara move through the room, her skirts swinging and her cheeks aa bright wi’ color—and he doesna see what is plain to every other man. And the ladies, too, Scotch and English alike, laughing behind their hands.
“Aye, the lass is on his mind and he’s blind to all o’ it, is George. He winks and nods, and winks again, and presses wee Barbara’s hair ribbon into the earl’s broad palm. ‘What a lovely pink it is,’ says he, winking in Barbara’s direction. ‘I am quite taken with it.’”
In the shadows of the gaol cell they all smiled broadly, for Moncrieff was a mean mimic and had got Pink George down exactly.
“Now, the earl can barely keep a sober expression, but he nods. ‘Aye,’ says he. And ‘Certainly.’ As if it were a weighty matter between men o’ the world. He sends Bainbridge off to his room. ‘Guid things come tae him wha’ waits,’ says the earl.”
Robbie sat up straighter. “Tell me that Carryck didna send the lass in tae Somerville, or I’ll lose ma mind.”
Moncrieff raised a finger. “If there’s anything to ken about the auld earl it is this: he could turn almost any quirk o’ fate to his own advantage or amusement, and he never gave awa’ what was his.
“So. Off Bainbridge stumbles to his bed, and awa’ marches the earl in the other direction wi’ most of the party behind him. My faither and I gaed along, too, carrying torches. So lang I live I willna forget the sight o’ it—the ladies and gentlemen in their fine clothes, high-stepping through the muck and mud, slipping an’ sliding in shite and laughing like boobies on their way tae the barn. More than a few o’ them gaed astray in the hayricks, for the moon was full and Bainbridge wasna the only man wi’ an eye for the lassies.”
Moncrieff stopped to scratch his
thinly sprouted beard, extracting a louse that he examined closely before crushing it. Then he looked around the circle of faces, meeting each man’s eye.
“And while the laird was seeing to things in the barn, the drink got the better o’ Bainbridge and he fell to sleep waiting. But he woke in the morning to find the earl was so guid as his word, for he wasna alone under the kivvers.”
“No’ wee Barbara in bed wi’ him!” whispered Robbie.
“No’ Barbara,” agreed Moncrieff. “The viscount woke wi’ his arms about a fine Scotch sow—twenty stone o’ pig—tranked wi’ grog to keep her sleepy. A lovely pink she was, wi’ a hair ribbon to match tied in a bow around her neck. Bainbridge’s cursing could be heard throughout the castle, and all the way to the Solway Firth, forbye. And from that day to this, he’s been known as Pink George. No’ to his face, o’ course.”
When they had stopped laughing, Robbie wiped his eyes. “And what o’ Barbara?” he asked. “What became o’ her?”
Moncrieff turned away to help himself to more of the sausage. “That winter she sailed off to France in the service of a rich merchant’s wife. I believe she married there, and raised a family.”
“I for one ain’t surprised,” said Hawkeye. “Men don’t change much in their lifetimes, after all. Unless it’s for the worse.”
“Pink George,” said Robbie, almost singing it to himself. “I wad verra much enjoy oinkin’ and snortin’ in his face.”
From the hall there was a shuffling and Thompson appeared at the grid in the door. “Jones!” he hissed. In a rush what was left of the food was hidden away under the cot in the farthest corner; by the time Ronald Jones had come through the door, they were gathered around a game of cards.
The sergeant stood for a moment watching them, his arms crossed over his paunch. He sucked noisily on the stem of his pipe so that smoke circled the greasy red head. One blue eye narrowed, he took in the cell from corner to corner with a practiced sweep, finally settling on the snoring Denier.
