Dawn on a Distant Shore

by Sara Donati

  “But some men take their mither’s faither’s names.” Jennet pushed this out in a great rush.

  The earl smiled at her, as if this knowledge of the complications of the family genealogy excused her interruption.

  “That’s aye true. In the male line I descend from anither family, but one o’ my line wed a Scott and took her name along wi’ her lands. What ye must ken, lass, is this: in Scotland there’s naucht mair important than the land. Which is why so muny men left Scotland for the New Werld after the Rising. They were looking for a place where a man could settle his family, and claim new land.”

  Hannah’s whole posture changed, uneasiness wiped away suddenly by anger. “Steal land,” she said stiffly. “From my mother’s people. From my people.”

  “Hmpf.” One brow shot up and the earl sent Elizabeth a questioning glance.

  She said, “The matter looks very different from the other side, my lord.”

  “Aye, so it must.”

  “Tell the rest o’ it!” Jennet said impatiently.

  The earl cleared his throat. “And so in the Hielands and in much o’ the Lowlands the lairds are called after their lands. Ma surname is Scott but I’m called Carryck after the earldom I inherited frae my faither. The king calls me Carryck, my tenants call me Carryck, my wife called me Carryck. And you, my wee cousin, will call me Carryck, too.”

  Jennet’s mouth fell open in surprise and then shut with an audible click. Elizabeth might have laughed at the sight, if she were not herself so surprised.

  “Does Jennet call you Carryck?”

  She laughed out loud at the idea. “Ma mither wad beat me for sic an impertinence,” she said. “And I wadn’t be allowed tae visit the greenhouse.” Something occurred to her, and she turned to Elizabeth, flashing her dimples.

  “Wad ye like tae see the smelly tree?” she asked. “It stinks for aa the werld like a dog twa days deid in the sun.”

  Elizabeth did not know what to make of this offer, but the earl resolved the dilemma for her.

  “The lady dinna come here tae see the conservatory, lass. I expect she wants a word wi’ me.”

  Elizabeth inclined her head. “If it is not too much of an imposition, my lord.”

  “Och, ye canna talk tae the laird when he’s putterin’ aboot the greenhouse,” Jennet said, brushing a curl out of her eyes. “Ye might as weel try tae get a song oot of Admiral Liefken here.” And she wrinkled her nose at a tulip just on the verge of opening.

  “Wheest, Jennet.” The earl’s mouth jerked at one corner, but his tone was stern. “Dinna forget your manners. I can weel spare time for our guest.”

  “Ye’ll no’ want us here, then. Do ye care tae see the rest o’ the castle, Squirrel?”

  “Jennet,” said Carryck, and the little girl drew up suddenly, as if she knew what he might say, and did not care to hear it.

  “Ye’ll no’ be snoopin’ where ye dinna belong.”

  She bobbed a quick curtsy. “Ne, my lord.”

  “Verra weel. Awa’ wi’ the baith o’ ye.”

  Hannah hesitated, but Elizabeth waved her on with a smile and then stood watching until the girls had disappeared into the rose garden. When they were gone she waited still, unsure where to begin now that she had the earl’s attention. Everything that she might say to him seemed suddenly too obvious for words.

  He said, “I’ve had no word o’ the Leopard, if that’s what ye want tae hear.”

  Elizabeth composed her face before she turned to him. “I was hoping you had, yes.”

  “I’ve sent word tae Dundas, and tae the Admiralty, as weel. If there’s aught tae learn o’ the ship, it willna be lang.”

  “Then you do not know if the Leopard was involved in this recent battle with the French?” It was a fear she had not yet spoken aloud, one she had not even shared with Nathaniel.

  The earl’s expression was unreadable. “I canna say.”

  “Then perhaps I might ask another question, my lord.”

  He worked his thumbs against the edge of his leather apron. “Wad it no’ be better tae wait wi’ this conversation until your guidman is recovered?”

  “I am quite capable of asking questions without my husband’s assistance, my lord.”

  “O’ that I ha’ nae doubt,” he said dryly.

  She clasped her hands together before her to keep them from shaking. “Perhaps you could tell me why it is that you have gone to such trouble and expense to bring us here, against our will and inclination.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Ye ken full weel, madam.” Something hard had come into his tone, and he looked now more like the man she had met last night, the one who had commanded his men with so few words. But if she let him intimidate her at the beginning of these negotiations for their freedom, they would be here a very long time.

  She said, “My lord. Neither my husband nor his father have any interest in claiming Carryck. And even if they were interested, why should they be given precedence over your own daughter?”

  His neck flushed a mottled red. “I have no daughter.” The earl spoke unaccented English for the first time, keen-edged and stark.

  “Really? As I understand it, your daughter Lady Isabel married one Walter Campbell.” And even as she said that name aloud, she recalled the confusion at the inn while Nathaniel lay bleeding on the floor. The earl had said the same name: Walter’s men are behind this. And then he had sent his own men out to find the dragoons who had come so close to killing Nathaniel.

  Walter’s men are behind this. Surely there were many men named Walter in Scotland; the earl could not have been speaking of that Walter Campbell who was married to his only daughter. And yet she saw on his face that this was exactly whom he meant.

  All the warnings of the past few months came back to her: the Campbells wanted Carryck, and they would do anything to achieve that end. The dragoons who had kidnapped Mac Stoker and shot Nathaniel were Walter Campbell’s men, and acting on his orders.

  “My lord!”

  The young man called Lucas was at the door, hesitating there as if the greenhouse were forbidden territory.

  “My lord, Davie and the others are come, and they’ve brung the men ye wanted wi’ them.” He sent Elizabeth a nervous glance.

  “The dragoons,” Carryck said to Elizabeth, taking off his apron.

  Lucas swallowed hard to catch his breath. “Will ye come, my lord?”

  “Aye. Where’s Moncrieff?”

  “Still doon the village, my lord.”

  “Send for him.”

  Elizabeth said, “My lord, I would like to be there when you question the dragoons.”

  He glanced down at her. “That’s no’ possible, madam. Unless ye’ve got the gift o’ communin’ wi’ the deid.”

  Coming out of the sun into the shadows of the Great Hall, Hannah shivered. It was the biggest room she had ever seen, as long and more than twice as wide as the longhouse of the Wolf clan where her mother had been born, a space where eighty and sometimes as many as a hundred people worked and ate and slept. This Great Hall was empty but for tables and chairs, and more surprising still, it had colored glass windows that threw great patches of deep red and blue and gold down on the flagstone floor.

  “Come on!” Jennet hissed, taking Hannah by the hand to pull her along. They passed through an open door into a hall and stopped. Jennet went up on tiptoe to whisper in her ear.

  “The door makes an awfu’ creak.”

  Hannah wanted to ask why they had to be quiet if no one was near to hear them, but Jennet was already working the latch with complete concentration, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth as she wiggled it ever so carefully back and forth. Finally the latch gave with a small squeak and the door opened just wide enough for them to slip through into Elphinstone Tower.

  Stairs wound upward in a spiral, sunlight falling in dusty bars through a small window at the first turning. Their bare feet made no noise on the cool stone, but Hannah’s heart beat so loud in her ears that
she feared that the men in the courtyard might hear it, as she could hear their voices. She wondered if this was one of the places that the earl had been speaking of when he had fixed Jennet with his stern expression. But it could not be; she seemed so much at ease, and not at all afraid.

  They came to a small landing with a single door, tall and rounded at the top with a candle sconce to either side, but they passed by and continued up the winding stairs. Another door just like the first, and then at the very top was a third and final door, and here Jennet stopped. She made a funny little bow as she worked the latch, and ushered Hannah in.

  A large room, but almost empty. A few trunks and a lopsided chair, a rolled-up carpet. It was full of light, with windows on three sides.

  “This is my secret place,” Jennet said proudly. “Ye can see the whole valley frae here, and the courtyard and the dairy and the stables and everythin’.”

  It was a wonderful room, and Hannah told her so. “Does no one ever look for you here?”

  A thoughtful look came over Jennet’s face. “Did ye take note o’ the first chamber we passed?”

  Hannah nodded.

  “It belonged tae the lady.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “When she died, he locked the door and put up the key.”

  “And since then you’ve never seen inside?” Hannah asked.

  “She died afore I was born.”

  “And no one else has been inside since her death?”

  “Naebodie drawin’ breath,” said Jennet, with a significant nod.

  “Ghosts?”

  “Aye,” said Jennet. “They say the lady sits at the window at dusk, watchin’, wi’ her dog beside her.”

  “Who says this?” Hannah asked. She was perfectly willing to believe that the lady’s ghost lived in the tower, but she was also very curious about the details.

  “MacQuiddy.”

  MacQuiddy was the house steward, a crooked old man with a single tuft of white hair and a red nose. Jennet had pointed him out to Hannah when she showed her the kitchens, but he had been too deep in an argument with the cook to take note of them.

  “Does he know about the ghosts, then?”

  “MacQuiddy is aulder than the laird,” Jennet said, fluttering her fingers. “He kens everythin’. Exceptin’ my secret place.” She said this very firmly, as if she expected Hannah to argue the opposite.

  “My grandmother says that only guilty people are afraid of ghosts.” And white people, Hannah might have added.

  “Och, it’s no’ the ghosts that keep people awa’ frae Elphinstone Tower—it’s the laird. He has a devilish sharp way when a temper’s on him.”

  Hannah could well imagine this—she had seen his face last night, when it was not clear how serious her father’s injuries really were. But in spite of the fact that Jennet knew this side of the earl, she did not really seem at all worried about his temper. It was hard to know if this was foolhardiness, or simple faith in her own ability to charm.

  “Come, look,” she said, drawing Hannah to the window.

  Jennet drew in a sharp breath, but it took longer for Hannah to make out what was happening in the courtyard below.

  A group of men were gathered in a rough circle, and at their feet two men lay sprawled on the cobblestones. One of them stared up blankly into the summer sky, and even from this distance Hannah could see that his eyes were mismatched: the left was normal, and the right a bloody starburst. His mouth was contorted in a surprised O.

  “Walter’s men, the ones wha’ shot yer faither. Baith deid,” said Jennet calmly.

  Hannah jerked back from the window. “How do you know that those are the men who shot my father?”

  Jennet wrinkled her brow at such a strange question. “Because the laird ordered his men oot after the dragoons wha’ kidnapped the pirate and shot yer da. Are ye no’ glad they’re deid?”

  “Of course I’m glad,” Hannah said. And wondered why she was not.

  The earl came striding into the courtyard and into the circle around the bodies. He stood looking down while one of the men spoke for some time. He had a high voice for a man, and it carried to them in bursts. “The Moffat road,” Hannah heard, and “Walter.”

  “Davie likes tae spin a tale,” observed Jennet. “He took a wild boar the winter past and the tellin’ o’ it lasted longer than the hunt.”

  The earl seemed to have heard enough, for he walked away.

  “What will they do with the bodies?”

  Jennet shrugged. “Why, the men will drop them on Breadalbane’s doorstep. A message, ye see, that yer faither and the rest o’ ye are under the laird’s protection.”

  Hannah thought of Thaddeus Glove, who had been hanged in Johnstown for shooting an exciseman in the back, and of the Kahnyen’kehàka woman called White-Hair who had suffered the same fate for stabbing a soldier, even though the man had survived. She thought of Runs-from-Bears, who might have gone to the gallows for putting the Tory with notched ears in his grave, where he could make no more moccasins. She wondered if no one would be arrested for the murder of the two dragoons, or if the feuding between clans was so common that others stood back and let them get on with it. It was an interesting idea, that the Scots might turn out to be like the Hodenosaunee when it came to blood vengeance, but somehow Hannah understood that this question should not be asked, at least not of Jennet.

  From the courtyard below them came a voice Hannah recognized: Angus Moncrieff. A shudder ran up her spine at the sound, and she touched a finger lightly to Jennet’s sleeve. “I had better go back. I would like to be there when Hakim Ibrahim visits my father.”

  Jennet had stepped back from the window, her arms wound around herself. Her complexion had gone suddenly pale beneath her suntanned skin. “Aye,” she said. “I’ll come, too, gin ye dinna mind.”

  Nathaniel dreamed of Angus Moncrieff. They were in the Montréal gaol again, alone this time, and Moncrieff was singing in the strong, echoing beat of a Kahnyen’kehàka war song.

  Were I m’self sixteen years old,

  Were I as I would fain be,

  Were I m’self sixteen years old

  I’d gang m’self with Charlie.

  Outside a human form hung heavy from the gallows on a rope that creaked in the wind. In the way of dreams the wall was no barrier at all, and Nathaniel watched as the body turned to show him his father’s face: slack in death, familiar and strange at once. Moncrieff watched, too, the brown eyes quick and eager under heavy lids.

  In his fist was his grandfather’s war club and it seemed to move on its own, up and through the air to meet Moncrieff’s skull just above the left eye, the shock of bone giving way shooting up his arm and into his own skull with a dull crack. And then Nathaniel saw that it wasn’t Moncrieff at all but Adam MacKay, grinning at him with bloodied teeth.

  He woke in a sweat. His head hurt, and the wounds in his shoulder and leg throbbed with the beat of his heart.

  Hakim Ibrahim stood next to the bed, and beside him Elizabeth in a gown he had never seen, some strange fabric that seemed to float around her. Curiosity’s hand was on his cheek, long and cool.

  “Hannah?” His voice cracked and wobbled like an old man’s.

  “I just saw her in the courtyard. She should be here any moment.”

  “I dreamed of Moncrieff.”

  “He’s just come from the village,” said Elizabeth. “We could hear his voice below the window. Perhaps you heard him in your sleep.”

  “I dreamed of him,” Nathaniel repeated dully.

  “Fever dreams,” said the Hakim. “It was to be expected.”

  He closed his eyes against the light. “My father?”

  “No word yet. I did speak with the earl.”

  Curiosity made a noise in her throat. “Drink this tea, now. The earl ain’t goin’ nowhere, and neither are you until this fever has settled.”

  He took the cup from her and swallowed the bitter tea, and then she filled it again and he emptied that too. His stomach roiled in
protest and for a moment he thought he would bring it all up again. When it settled, he lay back against the pillows and reached out to touch Elizabeth.

  “Tell me about Carryck.”

  “Yes, go on and tell him,” said Curiosity. “Take his mind off what we got to do here.”

  What Elizabeth had to report was quickly told, and none of it good.

  The Hakim’s attentions to his shoulder made him break into a new sweat, but he kept his gaze focused on Elizabeth. “You think this Walter Campbell is the daughter’s husband?”

  “Yes. It makes sense, and explains quite a lot. Perhaps the Hakim can tell us for certain …”

  The surgeon did not look up from his work, but he nodded. “Lady Isabel eloped to marry Walter Campbell, Curator to Lady Flora of Loudoun.”

  “And thus the earl decided to send Moncrieff to find Hawkeye.” Elizabeth supplied the rest of it.

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us this before?” Nathaniel asked.

  Hakim Ibrahim met his gaze. “Would it have made any difference?”

  Nathaniel’s tongue felt suddenly thick in his mouth, and it was hard to focus on Elizabeth’s face although she was close enough to touch. Outside the window the murmur of voices rose and fell again.

  “What’s that noise?”

  “The earl’s men,” said Elizabeth. “The dragoons who shot you are dead. Apparently he means to send a message to the Campbells.”

  “And to us,” said Curiosity. “The man don’t like to be crossed. As if we didn’t know that ourselves.”

  Nathaniel was more tired now than he could ever remember being but he reached out and took Curiosity’s wrist. It was cool to his touch and solid and when she looked at him he saw that she was pleased with herself.

  “What was in that tea besides willow bark for fever?”

  She lifted one brow. “What you need.”

  “I need to get us away from this place.”

  “That’s true enough. I expect you to get me home, and right quick. But you cain’t do it dead, Nathaniel Bonner. Now sleep.”