The doorway was filled by a short, stocky woman, dressed in a very odd combination of garments. For an instant, I thought she was an Indian, for she wore no cap, and her dark hair was braided—but then she came into the shop, and I saw that she was white. Or rather, pink; her heavy face was flushed with sunburn and the tip of her pug nose was bright red.

“Which one of you is Claire Fraser?” she demanded, looking from me to Melanie Bogues.

“I am,” I said, repressing an instinctive urge to take a step backward. Her manner wasn’t threatening, but she radiated such an air of physical power that I found her rather intimidating. “Who are you?” I spoke from astonishment, rather than rudeness, and she did not seem offended.

“Jezebel Hatfield Morton,” she said, squinting intently at me. “Some geezer at the docks tellt me that you was headin’ here.” In marked contrast to Melanie Bogue’s soft English accent, she had the rough speech I associated with people who had been in the backcountry for three or four generations, speaking to no one in the meantime save raccoons, possums, and one another.

“Er … yes,” I said, seeing no point in denying it. “Did you need help of some kind?”

She didn’t look it; had she been any healthier, she would have burst the seams of the man’s shirt she was wearing. Melanie and Miranda were staring at her, wide-eyed. Whatever danger Melanie had been afraid of, it wasn’t Miss Morton.

“Not to say help,” she said, moving further into the shop. She tilted her head to one side, examining me with what looked like fascination. “I was thinkin’ you might know where’bouts that skunk Isaiah Morton be, though.”

My mouth dropped open, and I shut it quickly. Not Miss Morton, then—Mrs. Morton. The first Mrs. Isaiah Morton, that is. Isaiah Morton had fought with Jamie’s militia company in the War of the Regulation, and he had mentioned his first wife—breaking out in a cold sweat as he did so.

“I … ah … believe he’s working somewhere upcountry,” I said. “Guilford? Or was it Paleyville?”

Actually, it was Hillsboro, but that scarcely mattered, since at the moment, he wasn’t in Hillsboro. He was, in fact, in Cross Creek, come to take delivery of a shipment of barrels for his employer, a brewster. I’d seen him at the cooper’s shop barely an hour earlier, in company with the second Mrs. Morton and their infant daughter. Jezebel Hatfield Morton did not look like the sort of person to be civilized about such things.

She made a low noise in her throat, indicative of disgust.

“He’s a dang slippery little weasel. But I’ll kotch up to him yet, don’t you trouble none about that.” She spoke with a casual assurance that boded ill for Isaiah.

I thought silence was the wiser course, but couldn’t stop myself asking, “Why do you want him?” Isaiah possessed a certain uncouth amiability, but viewed objectively, he scarcely seemed the sort to inflame one woman, let alone two.

“Want him?” She looked amused at the thought, and rubbed a solid fist under her reddened nose. “I don’t want him. But ain’t no man runs out on me for some whey-faced trollop. Once I kotch up to him, I mean to stave his head in and nail his fly-bit hide to my door.”

Spoken by another person, this statement might have passed for rhetoric. As spoken by the lady in question, it was an unequivocal declaration of intent. Miranda’s eyes were round as a frog’s, and her mother’s nearly so.

Jezebel H. Morton squinted at me, and scratched thoughtfully beneath one massive breast, leaving the fabric of her shirt pasted damply to her flesh.

“I heerd tell as how you saved the little toad-sucker’s life at Alamance. That true?”

“Er … yes.” I eyed her warily, watching for any offensive movement. She was blocking the door; if she made for me, I would dive across the counter and dash through the door into the Bogueses’ living quarters.

She was wearing a large pig-sticker of a knife, unsheathed. This was thrust through a knotted wampum belt that was doing double duty, holding up a kilted mass of what I thought might originally have been red flannel petticoats, hacked off at the knee. Her very solid legs were bare, as were her feet. She had a pistol and powder horn slung from the belt, as well, but made no move to reach for any of her weapons, thank God.

“Too bad,” she said dispassionately. “But then, if he’d died, I’d not have the fun of killin’ him, so I s’pose it’s as well. Don’t worry me none; if’n I don’t find him, one of my brothers will.”

Business apparently disposed of for the moment, she relaxed a bit, and looked around, noticing for the first time the empty shelves.

“What-all’s goin’ on here?” she demanded, looking interested.

“We’re selling up,” Melanie murmured, attempting to shove Miranda safely behind her. “Going to England.”

“That so?” Jezebel looked mildly interested. “What happened? They kill your man? Or tar and feather him?”

Melanie went white.

“No,” she whispered. Her throat moved as she swallowed, and her frightened gaze went toward the door. So that was the threat. I felt suddenly cold, in spite of the sweltering heat.

“Oh? Well, if you care whether they do, maybe you best move on down to Center Street,” she suggested helpfully. “They’re fixin’ to make roast chicken out of somebody, sure as God made little green apples. You can smell hot tar all over town, and they’s a boiling of folks comin’ forth from the taverns.”

Melanie and Miranda uttered twin shrieks, and ran for the door, shoving past the unflappable Jezebel. I was moving rapidly in the same direction, and narrowly avoided a collision, as Ralston Bogues stepped through the door, just in time to catch his hysterical wife.

“Randy, you go mind your brothers,” he said calmly. “Be still, Mellie, it’s all right.”

“Tar,” she panted, clutching him. “She said—she said—”

“Not me,” he said, and I saw that his hair dripped and his face shone pale through its sweat. “They’re not after me. Not yet. It’s the printer.”

Gently, he disengaged his wife’s hands from his arm, and stepped round the counter, casting a brief glance of curiosity at Jezebel.

“Take the children, go to Ferguson’s,” he said, and pulled a fowling piece from its hiding place beneath the counter. “I’ll come so soon as I may.” He reached into a drawer for the powder horn and cartridge box.

“Ralston!” Melanie spoke in a whisper, glancing after Miranda’s retreating back, but the entreaty was no less urgent for its lack of volume. “Where are you going?”

One side of his mouth twitched, but he didn’t reply.

“Go to Ferguson’s,” he repeated, eyes fixed on the cartridge in his hand.

“No! No, don’t go! Come with us, come with me!” She seized his arm, frantic.

He shook her off, and went doggedly about the business of loading the gun.

“Go, Mellie.”

“I will not!” Urgent, she turned to me. “Mrs. Fraser, tell him! Please, tell him it’s a waste—a terrible waste! He mustn’t go.”

I opened my mouth, unsure what to say to either of them, but had no chance to decide.

“I don’t imagine Mistress Fraser will think it a waste, Mellie,” Ralston Bogues said, eyes still on his hands. He slung the strap of the cartridge box over his shoulder and cocked the gun. “Her husband is holding them off right now—by himself.”

He looked up at me then, nodded once, and was gone.



JEZEBEL WAS RIGHT: you could smell tar all over town. This was by no means unusual in the summertime, especially near the warehouse docks, but the hot thick reek now took on an atmosphere of threat, burning in my nostrils. Tar—and fear—aside, I was gasping from the effort to keep up with Ralston Bogues, who was not precisely running, but was moving as fast as it was possible to go without breaking into a lope.

Jezebel had been right about the people boiling out of taverns, too; the corner of Center Street was choked with an excited crowd. Mostly men, I saw, though there were a few women of the coarser type among them, fishwives and bond servants.