My heart was still hammering in my ears, the sound of my own breathing scaring me, it was so like the gasping sound when Harley Boble had broken my nose. I shut my mouth hard, trying to stop. Holding my breath seemed to work, allowing only small inhalations through my now-functioning nose.

The movement of Ute’s mouth caught my eye and I stared at it, trying to fix myself once more in time and space. I was hearing words, but couldn’t quite make the jump of comprehension. I breathed, letting the words flow over me like water, taking emotion from them—anger, reason, protest, placation, shrillness, growling—but no explicit meaning.

Then I took a deep breath, wiped my face—I was surprised to find it wet—and suddenly everything snapped back to normal. I could hear, and understand.

Ute was staring at me, anger and dislike clear on her face, but muted by a lurking horror.

“You are mad,” she said, nodding. “I see.” She sounded almost calm at this point. “Well, then.”

She turned to Jamie, automatically twisting up untidy handsful of grizzled blond hair, stuffing them under her enormous cap. The ribbon had been torn; a loop of it dangled absurdly over one eye.

“So, she is mad. I will say so, but still, my son—my son!—is gone. So.” She stood heaving, surveying me, and shook her head, then turned again to Jamie.

“Salem is closed to you,” she said curtly. “My family, those who know us—they will not trade with you. Nor anyone else I speak to, to tell them the wicked thing she has done.” Her eye drifted back to me, a cold, gelid blue, and her lip curled in a heavy sneer under the loop of torn ribbon.

“You are shunned,” she said. “You do not exist, you.” She turned on her heel and walked out, forcing Ian and Rollo to sidestep hastily out of her way. Her footfalls echoed heavily on the stair, a ponderous, measured tread, like the tolling of a passing bell.

I saw the tension in Jamie’s shoulders relax, little by little. He was still wearing his nightshirt—there was a damp patch between his shoulder blades—and had the pistol still in his hand.

The front door boomed shut below. Everyone stood still, struck silent.

“You wouldn’t really have shot her, would you?” I asked, clearing my throat.

“What?” He turned, staring at me. Then he caught the direction of my glance, and looked at the pistol in his hand as though wondering where that had come from.

“Oh,” he said, “no,” and shook his head, reaching up to put it back on top of the wardrobe. “I forgot I had it. Though God kens well enough that I should like to shoot the besotted auld besom,” he added. “Are ye all right, Sassenach?”

He stooped to look at me, his eyes soft with worry.

“I’m all right. I don’t know what—but it’s all right. It’s gone now.”

“Ah,” he said softly, and looked away, lashes coming down to hide his eyes. Had he felt it, too, then? Found himself suddenly … back? I knew he had sometimes. Remembered waking from sleep in Paris to see him braced in an open window, pressing so hard against the frame that the muscles stood out in his arms, visible by moonlight.

“It’s all right,” I repeated, touching him, and he gave me a brief, shy smile.

“Ye should have bitten her,” Ian was saying earnestly to Rollo. “She’s got an arse the size of a hogshead of tobacco—how could ye miss?”

“Probably afraid of being poisoned,” I said, coming out of my corner. “Do you suppose she meant it—or no, she meant it, certainly. But do you suppose she can do it? Stop anyone trading with us, I mean.”

“She can stop Robin,” Jamie said, a certain grimness returning to his expression. “For the rest … we’ll see.”

Ian shook his head, frowning, and rubbed his knuckled fist gingerly against his thigh.

“I kent I should have broken Manfred’s neck,” he said with real regret. “We could ha’ told Frau Ute he fell off a rock, and saved a deal of trouble.”

“Manfred?” The small voice made everyone turn as one, to see who had spoken.

Lizzie stood in the doorway, thin and pale as a starveling ghost, her eyes huge and glassy with recent fever.

“What about Manfred?” she said. She swayed dangerously, and put out a hand to the jamb, to save herself falling. “What’s happened to him?”

“Poxed and gone,” Ian said curtly, drawing himself up. “Ye didna give him your maidenheid, I hope.”



IN THE EVENT, Ute McGillivray was not quite able to fulfill her threat—but she did enough damage. Manfred’s dramatic disappearance, the breaking of his engagement to Lizzie, and the reason for it was a fearful scandal, and word of it spread from Hillsboro and Salisbury, where he had worked now and then as an itinerant gunsmith, to Salem and High Point.

But thanks to Ute’s efforts, the story was even more confused than would be normal for such gossip; some said that he was poxed, others that I had maliciously and falsely accused him of being poxed, because of some fancied disagreement with his parents. Others, more kindly, did not believe Manfred was poxed, but said that doubtless I had been mistaken.

Those who believed him to be poxed were divided as to how he had achieved that condition, half of them convinced that he had got it from some whore, and a good many of the rest speculating that he had got it from poor Lizzie, whose reputation suffered terribly—until Ian, Jamie, the Beardsley twins, and even Roger took to defending her honor with their fists, at which point people did not, of course, stop talking—but stopped talking where any of her champions might hear directly.

All of Ute’s numerous relatives in and around Wachovia, Salem, Bethabara, and Bethania of course believed her version of the story, and tongues wagged busily. All of Salem did not cease trading with us—but many people did. And more than once, I had the unnerving experience of greeting Moravians I knew well, only to have them stare past me in stony silence, or turn their backs upon me. Often enough that I no longer went to Salem.

Lizzie, beyond a certain initial mortification, seemed not terribly upset at the rupture of her engagement. Bewildered, confused, and sorry—she said—for Manfred, but not desolated by his loss. And since she seldom left the Ridge anymore, she didn’t hear what people said about her. What did trouble her was the loss of the McGillivrays—particularly Ute.

“D’ye see, ma’am,” she told me wistfully, “I’d never had a mother, for my own died when I was born. And then Mutti—she asked me to call her so when I said I’d marry Manfred—she said I was her daughter, just like Hilda and Inga and Senga. She’d fuss over me, and bully me and laugh at me, just as she did them. And it was … just so nice, to have all that family. And now I’ve lost them.”

Robin, who had been sincerely attached to her, had sent her a short, regretful note, sneaked out through the good offices of Ronnie Sinclair. But since Manfred’s disappearance, neither Ute nor the girls had come to see her, nor sent a single word.

It was Joseph Wemyss, though, who was most visibly affected by the affair. He said nothing, plainly not wishing to make matters worse for Lizzie—but he drooped, like a flower deprived of rain. Beyond his pain for Lizzie, and his distress at the blackening of her reputation, he, too, missed the McGillivrays, missed the joy and comfort of suddenly being part of a large, exuberant family, after so many years of loneliness.

Worse, though, was that while Ute had not been able to carry out her threat entirely, she had been able to influence her near relatives—including Pastor Berrisch, and his sister, Monika, who, Jamie told me privately, had been forbidden to see or speak to Joseph again.

“The Pastor’s sent her away to his wife’s relatives in Halifax,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “To forget.”

“Oh, dear.”

And of Manfred, there was no slightest trace. Jamie had sent word through all his usual avenues, but no one had seen him since his flight from the Ridge. I thought of him—and prayed for him—daily, haunted by pictures of him skulking in the woods alone, the deadly spirochetes multiplying in his blood day by day. Or, much worse, working his way to the Indies on some ship, pausing in every port to drown his sorrows in the arms of unsuspecting whores, to whom he would pass on the silent, fatal infection—and they, in turn …