by Sara Donati
“Mr. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels,” she said. “Thousands of the Lilliputians died rather than be compelled to begin their eggs at the small end.”
Moncrieff pushed back his chair so violently that it screeched and then crashed over. “How dare ye.” He spoke softly, and with such venom that Nathaniel reached for a weapon that wasn’t there and then rose to block Moncrieff’s path to Elizabeth. “How dare ye insult Carryck in such a way.”
“Angus,” barked the earl. “Enough! Sit ye doon, man.”
“I willna!” Moncrieff was pale with rage. “I willna sit here and listen tae this English bitch make light o’ our travails.”
Nathaniel grabbed him by the shirt and hauled him forward, bending over to meet his eye. “You’re a foul-mouthed bastard,” he said easily. “And a coward, to attack a woman when I’m standing right here in front of you.”
Moncrieff spat in his face.
Contrecoeur and Carryck both sprang forward, but Nathaniel’s fist had already buried itself in Moncrieff’s gut. He sank to his knees, grunting and gasping for breath.
Nathaniel wiped the spittle from his face with his sleeve. His wounded shoulder was screaming, and he had broken into a sweat.
“Angus,” said Carryck. “Ye disappoint me, man.”
Contrecoeur said nothing, but merely helped Moncrieff to his feet. He hung there for a moment, sputtering and coughing, and when he looked up there was nothing of contrition in his expression.
“Aye, I lost my temper,” he wheezed. “But I’ll take no’ a word back. I willna stand by and smile while they sneer at us.”
“You are mistaken, Mr. Moncrieff,” Elizabeth said. “I do not sneer, nor would I make light of these outrageous penalties and the deprivation of basic human rights. But I do—I must—challenge your interference in our lives. We are not politicians, and we cannot be held accountable for these wrongs done to you.”
Moncrieff coughed. “It has nothing tae do with politics. Should Breadalbane come tae Carryck it will have tae do wi’ blood. They’ll drive us out wi’ whips and canes, the way they drove my grandfaither out o’ Dumfries in the riots. He died in the mud, watching his roof burn. His guidwife would ha’ froze tae death beside him and my faither wi’ her, but for the auld laird. But he gave them work, and a croft and a place tae make their confessions, and tae hear the Mass without fear. Ye wi’ yer superiority and yer weeping for the Africans, ye care nothing for what we’ve suffered under your countrymen. You stand there and speak tae us of eggs.”
Elizabeth drew herself up to her full height. “You have suffered great injustice, but we are no part of that, sir.”
Moncrieff’s mouth twisted with disgust. “She doesna understand,” he said to the earl. “I told ye how it would be.”
“She understands well enough, and so do I,” Nathaniel said. “You want to hold on to what’s yours—there’s nothing unusual in that. You’re Catholics, and I’d guess you’re Jacobites, too.”
There was a sudden silence as Carryck and Contrecoeur looked at each other.
Contrecoeur said, “Our political aspirations are modest. We are interested only in surviving in these ungodly times.”
Elizabeth let out a hoarse laugh. “You must think us very dense indeed, sir. You are asking us to join a lost cause. To allow ourselves to be used as pawns in your holy war.”
“No,” said Contrecoeur, leaning forward, his fervor so bright that it changed his face into a martyr’s mask. “It is exactly that which we hope to avoid. The best way to keep the peace is to keep Carryck free of Campbell influence.”
Nathaniel studied the priest’s face. “Your name ain’t Contrecoeur, is it? You’re no more French than I am.”
Carryck looked up in surprise. “Can ye no see the resemblance tae Angus? Before he took his vows he was called John Moncrieff.”
“Brothers,” said Nathaniel. And saw it then, in the line of the jaw and the set of the eyes.
“Half brothers,” said Contrecoeur.
Elizabeth said, “They sent you to France to be educated by the Jesuits.”
Contrecoeur looked at his half brother. “You were wrong about her, Angus. About both of them. They are not so witless after all.”
Nathaniel swallowed down the bile that rose in his throat, and he looked at Contrecoeur.
The man was nothing more than a priest. A priest like all the other priests he had ever known, steadfast in his conviction that his heaven was the only worthy goal and that every creature on the earth was in the world to serve his church, and his needs. He had known anger deep and cold enough to sear, and it all pushed up now from deep in his gut. He swallowed it back down, but it took everything in him.
He said, “So what happens to an exiled priest returned in secret to his homeland, if he’s found out?”
Contrecoeur inclined his head. “You wish me ill, Mr. Bonner. Your life in the endless forests has hardened your heart.”
Elizabeth said, “If we are hard, sir, it is because you have put our children in danger.”
He put out a mangled hand, palm up, as if to offer her something worth taking. “As are the children of the church, Mrs. Bonner. As are we all.”
Nathaniel took Elizabeth’s arm. “There’s nothing else to be said here. You’ll have to find another way out.”
“You were baptized in the church,” Contrecoeur said. “You are tied to this place by blood and faith.”
Nathaniel laughed out loud. “I will never belong to this place. Do you hear me, Carryck? Marry the French girl and get yourself a son, or make peace with your daughter. I’m taking my family home.”
The earl stared, his expression stony.
“I am sorry for your troubles,” Elizabeth said to Mrs. Hope. “But we cannot help you.”
Moncrieff put himself in front of Nathaniel, swaying slightly on his feet. “Ye’d turn yer back on yer blood kin?”
“Get out of my way,” Nathaniel said softly.
Moncrieff did not move. “I should ha’ taken the boy and killed ye when I had the chance.”
Nathaniel studied him for a moment: the long face and sunken cheeks, the dark eyes bloodshot and still bright with anger.
“I was just thinking the same thing about you,” he said. “I still am.”
“Stand aside, Angus.” Carryck’s voice was hoarse, but steady. “Let them go.”
“Aye, Angus,” Nathaniel echoed. “Stand aside.”
Hannah meant to read while she waited for her father and Elizabeth to come back from dining with Carryck, but the afternoon in Carryckton had been more tiring than she realized. She fell asleep after just a few pages, and dreamed of the bear wandering blind through the fairy wood, trailing a chain behind herself, and calling out for help.
The sound of her father’s voice, hushed and urgent, woke her. Hannah righted herself so suddenly that the book in her lap slid to the floor with a muffled thump.
“What?” she asked, frightened by the expression on his face. “What’s wrong?” She looked to Elizabeth and Curiosity, who stood behind him. “Is something wrong? My grandfather?”
And then she saw what her father held in his hands: the buckskin sacks, double sewn, that he had worn against his skin for so much of this journey. Empty.
She unfolded her legs and tried to stand up, suddenly as unsteady as a new colt. Her father steadied her with his free hand.
“Did you hear anything?” he asked. “Did anybody come in here while we were gone?”
Hannah shook her head. “No. Nobody.”
“You see,” said Curiosity. “I told you, I would have heard it if somebody came in. I don’ sleep that deep, not here.”
“All the coin?” Hannah asked. “All of it gone?”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “All of it. One hundred and three gold guineas, and four pounds sixpence in silver. The sacks were undisturbed when I fetched a shawl in the late afternoon.”
Hannah rubbed her eyes and tried to collect her thoughts. “I saw Mac Stoker,”
she said. “He was leaving.”
Her father’s back went very straight. “Where? When did you see him?”
“In the tunnels,” said Hannah, and she saw how the grown-ups all looked at each other.
“Speak up, child,” said Curiosity. “And tell us what you know about Mac Stoker.”
It was quickly told—the tunnels under the castle, the staircase built into the thick wall of Forbes Tower that came out in the kitchen window casement. And Mac Stoker with a sack over his shoulder on his way to find his crew and his ship.
“I thought maybe he had stolen a teakettle, or a silver platter,” she finished.
“I don’t think it could have been Stoker,” Nathaniel said. “He couldn’t come up here without being seen. And the timing is off—that was before we left for dinner.”
Curiosity’s mouth was set in a hard line. “But who else knew about the coin?”
“Moncrieff,” said Elizabeth. “Moncrieff knew, and he wasn’t at dinner.”
“Angus Moncrieff has not been in these rooms,” said Curiosity firmly. “I could smell the man a mile off, rat that he is.”
“The maids,” Hannah suggested hesitantly. “The maids might have known. Maybe he sent one of them—”
“Or maybe Stoker did,” said Elizabeth. “He is good at getting women to do his bidding.”
Hannah watched her father’s face, seeing the anger there just below the surface, and the frustration. He turned to Elizabeth.
“How much will it cost to buy passage home for all of us?”
Elizabeth spread her hands out on her lap. “About six pounds per person, if we want cabins. Perhaps half that for the twins. Another three pounds for provisions for each of us. Counting your father and Robbie that would be—”
“More than fifty pound,” said Curiosity. “Might as well be a thousand.”
“If only there were some way to contact my aunt Merriweather,” Elizabeth said. “But I have no idea where she is.”
Nathaniel turned away without a word. He took a candle from the mantelpiece and disappeared into the dressing room.
“Now what?” muttered Curiosity.
Elizabeth put her arm around Hannah. “I don’t know.”
A few moments later Nathaniel was back. He held out his hands, full now: a silver comb embedded with pearls and a set of brushes to match. A pair of shoe buckles encrusted with square-cut stones that caught the candlelight and cast it out again in a rainbow. A hand mirror, inlaid with ivory and pearl, and deeply carved: Sans Peur. He let them fall on the table and the sound of it was very loud in the room.
“Would these bring in enough money?”
“In London, yes,” Elizabeth said. “But I doubt there are any jewelers in Carryckton. Perhaps in Moffat.”
“Jennet told me about Moffat,” said Hannah. “It’s a place where rich people go to take baths.”
A smile flickered at the corner of Elizabeth’s mouth. “A spa, yes, and quite a fashionable one with the aristocracy. There would almost certainly be a way to dispose of these things.”
“Lady Isabel is there, too,” said Hannah. “And some of the Campbells.”
Three heads came up suddenly to look at her. She said, “You made me start at the end, or I would have told you already.”
Curiosity said, “Sounds like a long story, indeed. Let’s set down.”
It took almost an hour for Hannah to tell it. As she recounted what she had learned at the Laidlaw cottage, Nathaniel filled in the background that Contrecoeur—John Moncrieff, Elizabeth reminded herself—and Carryck had given them during their visit to Lady Carryck’s chamber.
“A fine mess,” Curiosity concluded when they had finished. “Priests and hidey-holes and runaway daughters. There ain’t nothing like religion to bring out the worst in folks.”
Elizabeth gestured toward the empty buckskin sacks. “And then this—”
“It don’ much matter who took it,” said Curiosity. “Not as far as I can see. Either way it’s gone.”
Nathaniel leaned forward to study a shoe buckle. “I don’t know, Curiosity. If it was Moncrieff, or Carryck even, then that means they’ll go to some lengths to keep us here. What we need is an ally, somebody to help us get away.”
“I have rarely heard a master or landlord so universally praised,” said Elizabeth. “It is hard to imagine that any one of his servants or tenants would be of any assistance. I think we must depend on ourselves alone.”
Hannah said, “There’s the Campbells. They want us gone, anyway. Maybe they’d help, once they know we’ve got no interest in Carryck.”
“Maybe they would,” said Nathaniel slowly. “But just because we don’t want to claim this place don’t mean we got to hook up with Carryck’s enemies.”
Curiosity put her chin down to her chest and gave Nathaniel a piercing look. “I don’ wish the man ill, either. But tell me, what choice do we have? Cain’t you talk to this Isabel, if not her menfolk? See if she’s willing to send us on our way?”
Elizabeth watched Nathaniel struggle with this idea. She put a hand on his, and he looked at her.
“We must go to Moffat anyway to sell these things.” She picked up the mirror and it flashed in the candlelight. “It might do some good to call on Lady Isabel. For us and perhaps for Carryck, as well.”
Nathaniel ran a hand through his hair. He had discarded his coat, and the white linen of the shirt strained against his shoulders, all the tension in him rising up.
“I don’t know, Boots.”
She said, “Let me go. I could make the trip in one day, with a good horse.”
Curiosity laughed. “Now, there’s a rare idea. Send you off with a load of jewels in your pocket—on your own, of course—through strange countryside to find the Campbells, after they put two bullets in your husband.”
Elizabeth tried to keep her composure. “The Campbells do not know me,” she said. “I am just another lady come to Moffat to take the waters.”
Hannah cleared her throat and Nathaniel turned toward her.
“Say what you got on your mind, Squirrel.”
After a moment she said, “It’s when you two split up that there’s trouble. I think you should both go.”
Nathaniel’s face went very still, and then he reached out a hand to put on her shoulder. “You’re right. Sometimes it takes a child to point out the truth of a thing. What do you say, Boots?”
“I’d like to hear what Curiosity thinks of the idea,” Elizabeth said.
Curiosity tapped the table with one long finger, her jaw working thoughtfully. “I suppose I can keep people out of here for a day, and there’s goat’s milk enough. We managed that way once before, after all. But how you going to get horses, without letting Carryck know what you up to?”
Hannah said, “The mailcoach leaves Carryckton for Moffat at half past five in the morning.” And then, in response to Elizabeth’s surprised look and Curiosity’s suspicious one: “I saw it posted on the board outside the tavern. The Barley Mow, it was called.”
“Is that so,” Curiosity said grimly. “I’ll tell you what I think, missy. I think you got this whole thing set in your head as soon as you heard that sorry story about Lady Isabel running off. Ain’t that so?”
Hannah had an almost petulant expression, and she said nothing.
“The only problem is that we don’t have the fare,” said Elizabeth.
Curiosity’s brow furled down low as she considered. Then she reached into her headwrap with two long fingers and drew out a single coin. A five-guinea gold piece sparked the light.
“In case of trouble.” She let out a great sigh, and many things passed across her face in quick succession—desperation, anger, and a simple weariness that Elizabeth understood very well, and for which there was no immediate cure.
“Hannah,” she said quietly. “Go fetch me my satchel, please.”
“Curiosity—” Elizabeth began.
“Hush now, just wait.” Curiosity held up a hand. And so th
ey sat in silence until Hannah came back and put the small satchel on the table.
Curiosity opened it, and reaching down into the bottom, she pulled out the pistols and holster Nathaniel had been wearing when he came back from his nighttime ride in Dumfries. She rummaged a little longer and came up with a bag of bullets and one of powder.
“Nobody was paying any attention while you were bleeding half to death,” she said to Nathaniel. “But I thought these might come in handy. I expect you paid a good deal for them.”
“I did,” Nathaniel said. “And I’m glad to see them again.”
Curiosity surprised Elizabeth by leaning across the table and taking both of Nathaniel’s hands in her own.
“You watch yourselves. I want to go home, and I won’t take kindly to any more delays. Do you hear me, Nathaniel Bonner?”
Nathaniel nodded. “I do.”
“One more thing,” she said. “And then you need to get some sleep before you start off. I think you should take Daniel with you. I never did care for the way Moncrieff look at that boy, and I don’ trust him now most especially.”
At the nape of Elizabeth’s neck the hair rose, and she saw Moncrieff’s face contorted with outrage. I should have taken the boy and killed ye when I had the chance.
“We’ll take Daniel,” Nathaniel said. “But I’m leaving you one of the pistols.”
29
Moffat looked like any other town in a Sunday morning drizzle, the lanes almost empty under a lowering sky. Elizabeth took note of a theatre, an assembly hall, and along the High Street any number of discreet signs for the services of doctors and surgeons.
“Ye see, Mr. Speedwell’s shingle just there,” said the lady who sat across from her. She was a small, round woman by the name of Mrs. Eleanor Rae, and she had just spent a fortnight in Carryckton visiting her sister. “He’s just the mannie tae see yer guidman weel agin, mark ma words.” And she clucked her tongue in compassion, studying Nathaniel’s silent form. “It’s a pity, that’s what it is. But nivver fear, ma dear, Mr. Speedwell will put him richt again.”
