by Sara Donati
Nathaniel nodded. “Carryck himself, and Contrecoeur.”
“And Mrs. Hope,” she added. “But it may well be completely innocent, Nathaniel.”
“Maybe so. But there’s something about the way they were standing there. Can’t put my finger on it right now.”
“Nathaniel.” Elizabeth pulled his face around to her, and looked hard into his eyes. “They might be playing whist, for all we know.”
He frowned at her. “Do you really believe that, Boots?”
Elizabeth shifted uncomfortably. Her upbringing told her that it was wrong to be so inquisitive about something obviously meant to be private; her experience with Moncrieff and Carryck made it clear that propriety and good manners were a luxury she must do without. None of it quite fit together, and it would keep her awake tonight.
They were in the hall off the courtyard when Nathaniel said, “What I want to know is, what Contrecoeur has got to do with all this.”
“So do I, Nathaniel. But it can wait until tomorrow, can it not?”
He didn’t even hear her. His attention had shifted away suddenly, as if he had caught the scent of something he had been looking for.
“Moncrieff.”
She heard only the sound of steps in the Great Hall, but she had no doubt that Nathaniel was right. She followed him.
The courtyard lantern cast enough light through the windows to show them that the room was empty. Then Elizabeth’s eyes adjusted to the shadows and she saw Angus Moncrieff at the far end of the hall, near the door that must lead to Elphinstone Tower.
“Avoiding us, Angus?” Nathaniel’s voice echoed slightly. “Where you off to in such a hurry?”
They had narrowed the distance between them considerably before Moncrieff spoke.
“I have business,” he said stiffly.
“With the earl,” Nathaniel supplied. “And so do we. Maybe we’ll just come along.”
“I canna allow it,” said Moncrieff. In the vague light Elizabeth could see the perspiration on his forehead, just as she could read the flush of anger that ran through Nathaniel by the way his back straightened. But there was nothing of it in his voice.
“Now, that’s curious,” Nathaniel said, stopping just in front of the man. “You thinkin’ you can forbid me anything at all.”
In a corner a mouse scratched and worried, and for a moment that was the only sound. Then in one quick movement Nathaniel reached out and neatly plucked a string that hung around Moncrieff’s neck and disappeared into his shirt. The string broke and Moncrieff jerked in surprise, his voice spiking in outrage. “What’s this? Have ye no decency, man?”
Nathaniel stepped back, examining his prize.
“That was ma faither’s. Ye’ve no use for it.”
“I ain’t so sure.”
Elizabeth came closer to look, and was surprised to see that it was not a pendant or medallion, but a simple square of soft dark material, half the length of Nathaniel’s thumb. In its middle was another square, this one of white linen sewn down with a zigzag stitch. The whole was faded and frayed at the edges, and the image on the white linen was so faint that Elizabeth could not make it out in the poor light.
“I’ll thank ye tae give it back,” Moncrieff said sharply. “It’s got nothing to do with you.”
“You’ll thank me. Now, that’s a novelty, ain’t it. The earl wears something just like this around his neck too.”
Moncrieff’s head snapped back. “How—” And then, his whole body shaking in anger: “Ye canna ha’ seen what the earl wears or doesna wear around his neck!”
“Maybe not, but you just told me what I suspected. So what is this thing?”
“I’ll say nae more.”
Nathaniel held it out to Elizabeth. “Do you recognize this, Boots?”
Elizabeth took it and went to the window to study it by the courtyard light.
“I do not,” she said. “And it is too faded to read. But perhaps there is someone we could ask. The earl?”
Moncrieff stilled suddenly. “Ye canna bother the laird wi’ this.”
“I don’t see why not.” Nathaniel reached for the door. “He’s up there in the tower, entertaining his visitors. A few more won’t hurt.”
“Ye have no idea,” Moncrieff said.
Elizabeth said, “Exactly. That is exactly why we must persevere.”
Whatever he had been expecting, the tower room took Nathaniel by surprise. It smelled nothing of a battlefield surgery and wounds gone bad.
Most of the people who had been here just ten minutes ago were gone. The Hakim stood close by, and on a chair next to a narrow bed sat Monsieur Contrecoeur, still dressed as he had been for dinner, all in black from the fine coat and breeches to his gloves. He had come here in a hurry, and the reason was clear: the man in the bed was dying.
“I tried—” Moncrieff began, and the Frenchman cut him off with a raised hand.
“Never mind, Angus. It doesn’t matter now.”
“Where’s the earl?” Nathaniel addressed Contrecoeur directly, in part to see if he would lie.
“In the chamber just above us. I asked for a few minutes alone with Georges,” said Contrecoeur.
“This is Monsieur Dupuis?” Elizabeth directed her question to the Hakim, but Moncrieff answered.
“Aye.” Moncrieff’s tone was bitter. “He’s dying, as ye can see for yesel’. Will you no’ leave him in peace?”
Nathaniel crossed the room and looked down.
The man in the bed blinked up at him, his eyes hazy with pain. Around his neck was a cloth medallion like the one Nathaniel had taken from Moncrieff. A crucifix hung over the bed. A dying man; a Catholic. A stranger.
Then he smiled, and Nathaniel recognized him.
He was clean shaven, where once he had worn his beard long and ragged. The beard had first earned him the name Dog-Face from the Kahnyen’kehàka—an honor they reserved for the hairiest and ugliest O’seronni. But the priest had proved himself stronger and braver than his countrymen, walking the gauntlet without a sound, falling under one blow to get up again and take the next, and all so that he might be allowed to tell them stories of his strange O’seronni heaven. They had renamed him Iron-Dog.
“Wolf-Running-Fast,” he whispered in the language of Nathaniel’s adopted people. “You are here at last.”
Nathaniel fell without a struggle into the rhythms of the language, and the things it demanded of him. “Iron-Dog, my friend. On the Great River they tell stories of you. They say that the Seneca burned you and ate your heart. They tell stories of your bravery.”
Dupuis hitched a breath and let it go in a long wheezing sigh. “God delivered me from that fate,” he said, switching into English. “He had other work for me, here.”
“What work?”
That saintly smile, the one that had set him apart. “You know as well as I do. To see you and your father reunited with your family.”
“You’re the one who told Carryck where to find us.”
He swallowed, and the tumors on his neck writhed like living things. “I told Moncrieff where to start looking. It took a long time. Almost too long.” He closed his eyes, and for a moment Nathaniel thought he had gone to sleep, but he spoke again, his voice as strong as before.
“Your lady wife.”
“Aye,” Nathaniel said. “This is Elizabeth.”
“English?”
Elizabeth stepped forward. “Yes, sir. I am English.”
He swallowed again and held out a long white hand, his palm crisscrossed with old scars.
Once Nathaniel had allowed this man to baptize him although he had not ever believed, not in his god or his devil. But Iron-Dog was one of the few white men who had earned his respect in those days. Nathaniel took the offered hand.
Dupuis pulled him forward. His breath was sweet with laudanum.
“I baptized you by my own hand,” he whispered. “But I can direct you no further on your journey. Listen to Contrecoeur. He will be your guide.”
“I do not want him as a guide,” Nathaniel said, because he would not lie to this man, on his deathbed or anywhere else.
“But you need him,” said Iron-Dog. “As he needs you.”
28
Contrecoeur led the way up the circle of stairs, followed by Elizabeth and Nathaniel. Moncrieff came close behind, sucking in each breath and pushing it out step by step.
Another tower chamber, but no sickroom this time. Like the rest of the castle it was overfilled with fancy furniture, paintings and china figurines and ivory carvings. A dozen wax candles were all burning at once, so that shadows jumped on polished silver and brass.
“Lady Carryck’s chambers,” Elizabeth said. She pointed with her chin. “You see, there is her portrait over the mantel.”
It meant nothing to Nathaniel—one more pretty picture, this time a woman with hair the color of amber. The earl’s dead wife. Nathaniel took Elizabeth’s elbow to keep her next to him.
Carryck waited for them at a table, his hand curled around a cup. Mrs. Hope was on the other side of the room with sewing in her lap. She stood and smoothed her skirt, spoke without looking at anybody.
“I’ll bide below.”
“Stay where ye are, Jean.” Carryck’s voice was steady; nothing especially affectionate in his tone, nothing to indicate what they might be to each other except for the fact that he called her Jean, in this place where first names were such rare currency.
The housekeeper sat down again and folded her hands in her lap. When Nathaniel met her gaze she looked away.
Candlelight was kind to old faces, but even so the earl looked his age; the whisky, maybe. Or sorrow for Dupuis. Nathaniel could still not quite get his mind around the fact that Iron-Dog was here. What it meant, how he fit in to all of this.
“Come then and sit ye doon.”
The earl poured whisky for all of them—Elizabeth, too—and the room was filled with the bright, sharp smell of it. Nathaniel had never much liked hard liquor but he drank what was put before him, just as he took his turn with the pipe when it went around the Kahnyen’kehàka council fire.
It was Carryck who broke the silence.
“Ye’ve been waitin’ a guid while tae say what it is ye have tae say, Bonner. I’ll listen now, and then I’ll take my turn and tell ye what ye need tae understand.”
Elizabeth put her hand lightly on Nathaniel’s knee under the table, and he covered it with his own. Then he looked the earl directly in the eye.
“My mother used to say that if you can’t show a man respect when you sit down at his table, then don’t accept his invitation. Now we’re sitting here at your table, but it wasn’t an invitation that brought us to this place. So maybe that gives me leave to say what I’m thinking.”
“By all means,” said Carryck dryly.
Nathaniel went on. “It was your man here who put me and my father and our friend in a garrison gaol for weeks, and then when that didn’t do the job, he stole our children and put them and us at the mercy of every French warship between here and home. Took a woman like Curiosity—in all her days she has never done anything but good—away from her husband and children, and I don’t doubt the worry and aggravation has stole ten years off her life. The Osiris went down with two hundred men on it—and if Moncrieff had had his way, it would have taken my father and me with it. All this, just so you could see me and mine onto Scottish soil. Maybe my father and Rab MacLachlan are dead now, and if they are, that’s on your head too. So what I see when I look at you is a rich man used to getting his way, no matter what the cost. And I’m wondering why I should believe anything you have to say to me.”
Contrecoeur leaned forward. “It’s true that two hundred men and more have lost their lives, but they died for a good cause.”
Elizabeth’s head snapped toward him. “Since we are to speak plainly, may I ask why you are here, monsieur? I do not understand your interest in this affair.”
Nathaniel drew Moncrieff’s cloth medallion from his shirt and dropped it on the table. “It’s got something to do with this, I’ll wager.”
“He took it from me,” Moncrieff said to the earl, who never even looked in his direction.
The Frenchman smiled at the bit of cloth as another man might smile at his child. “The scapular. Yes, it has everything to do with this. You see, the earl’s motives are not entirely selfish. He is a true friend and protector to the most persecuted people in Scotland.”
Nathaniel grimaced. “Speak plain, man. ‘Persecuted’ could mean a lot of things.”
“By your lady’s expression I see she understands me very well.”
“The Church of Rome, Nathaniel.” Elizabeth’s voice wavered a little. “The Catholic church. The earl has given sanctuary to a priest.”
“To more than one,” Nathaniel agreed. “I expect that Monsieur Contrecoeur here ain’t just passing through on a whim. Came to read the last rites, is what I’d guess.”
A shoulder lifted in agreement. “I had that honor when I arrived, yes.”
Elizabeth was surprised, he could feel it in the way she looked at Contrecoeur.
“He’s a priest all right, Boots. Ask him to take off his gloves.”
“That’s no’ necessary,” said the earl.
“But I don’t mind,” said Contrecoeur. He pulled off the gloves to show them strong hands, broad of palm and long fingered. Where his thumbs had once been two twists of flesh were tucked into masses of silver-white scar tissue.
Elizabeth let out a soft gasp.
“That’s what I thought,” Nathaniel said. “The Huron liked to take the missionaries’ thumbs off with clam shells. There was one sachem who wore Jesuit thumbs and ears on a string around his neck.”
Contrecoeur flexed his fingers. “His name was Calling-Crow. I knew him well.”
Nathaniel said, “What else did they do to you?”
For the first time a shadow crossed Contrecoeur’s handsome face.
“I left with my soul intact. More I could not ask.”
“The Jesuits are no more,” Elizabeth said, more to herself than the table. “The pope suppressed the order some years ago, and all Jesuits were banished from England and Scotland.”
Moncrieff grunted. “The Scots were ever a loyal folk.”
“That is true.” Contrecoeur nodded. “Not all of our friends abandoned us. There are those who took it upon themselves to provide the Society of Jesus with a home, and safe shelter—at great risk to themselves. Much as the earl has done.”
“And Catherine of Russia.” Elizabeth’s expression was growing darker by the moment. “I understand now why it is that you want to take Mademoiselle LeBrun to her mother.”
Contrecoeur looked more surprised than pleased that Elizabeth had made this connection. “You are very quick, madame.”
“Am I indeed?” Elizabeth said sharply. “I assume you travel in disguise where you are not welcome.”
“The society has always been active in trade,” he said. “Those of us who remain true to it carry on as merchants where we cannot live openly as priests.”
Elizabeth touched the square of brown material that still sat in the middle of the table. “Do you wear one of these too, my lord Earl?”
“Aye,” Carryck said gruffly. “I am Catholic. I wear the scapular as my faither wore it, and his faither and grandfaither afore him.”
“That little scrap of cloth can’t be all that’s at the bottom of this,” Nathaniel said.
Elizabeth touched his sleeve. “You are right, Nathaniel. It is more complex. Things might get very complicated for the earl if his loyalty to the Church of Rome became public knowledge. If I remember correctly, the restrictions on Catholics and the penalties for evading them are unbelievably severe. And there has been great resistance to any Bill of Relief—riots, and the like.”
“A Bill o’ Relief was signed last April,” said Carryck, his calm leaving him suddenly.
Elizabeth’s surprise must have shown on her face,
but he would not let her respond, leaning forward to speak directly to her.
“Dinna talk tae me o’ Bills o’ Relief. I wad be a fool tae put my faith and risk everythin’ on the whim o’ the English parliament.”
Nathaniel sat back to think it through. “So let me see if I got this straight. All this trouble, men dead and missing, children stole—all this ’cause he’s one kind of Christ worshiper, and those Campbells his daughter married into—the ones who tried to put a bullet in my head—are another.”
“In essence,” Elizabeth said.
Moncrieff was sputtering in anger and frustration, but Carryck silenced him with a sharp look. His calm restored, he said, “There’s a wee bit mair tae it. It’s many years now that I canna openly welcome my priest tae Carryckcastle wi’oot puttin’ him in danger o’ his life. The hearin’ o’ the Holy Mass or refusin’ tae attend kirk instead could cost me everything I hold dear. Should the presbytery suspect me o’ practicing my own faith, they can summon me—me—before them, and if I canna satisfy them that I’m no’ papist, they will denounce me tae the Privy Council, and aa my property will be consigned tae my nearest Protestant relative—the Campbells o’ Breadalbane—or revert tae the Crown. As a Catholic I canna buy real property, inherit an estate, or leave my property tae a Catholic son. And that same son couldna serve as a governor, factor, or even a schoolmaster. That’s what it means tae be Catholic—and faithful—in Scotland.”
Nathaniel said, “So your daughter ran off and married into the one family that would put you in the worst spot. What drove her to do something like that?”
The room was so quiet, it might have been empty.
“I did,” said Jean Hope. “I wasna truthfu’ wi’ her when she needed it most, and she married intae the Campbell line tae strike a blow at me.”
“Wheest, Jean.” Carryck’s voice came gentle. “We’ll no’ speak o’ it.”
“Won’t we?” Nathaniel leaned back in his chair. “Seems to me we’ve got a right to know all of it. The truth is, all of this puts me in mind of that story—” He reached for Elizabeth’s hand under the table. “Remember, Boots, the one you read out loud last winter? About that place with the little people who went to war because half of them liked to start with the big end of a boiled egg and the other half favored the small end. What was that book?”
