Beneath a nearby hemlock tree, Tom Christie had wrapped himself in a blanket and lain down alone, his hat pulled down over his face.



IT RAINED ALL THE WAY to Salisbury. We found shelter in an inn there, and seldom had a fire seemed so welcome. Jamie had brought what cash we had, and in consequence, we could afford a room to ourselves. Brown posted a guard on the stair, but that was merely for show; after all, where would we go?

I stood in front of the fire in my shift, my wet cloak and gown spread over a bench to dry.

“You know,” I observed, “Richard Brown hasn’t thought this out at all.” Not surprising, that, since he hadn’t actually intended to take me or us to trial. “Who, exactly, does he mean to hand us over to?”

“The sheriff of the county,” Jamie replied, untying his hair and shaking it out over the hearth, so that droplets of water sizzled and popped in the fire. “Or failing that, a justice of the peace, perhaps.”

“Yes, but what then? He’s got no evidence—no witnesses. How can there be any semblance of a trial?”

Jamie looked at me curiously.

“Ye’ve never been tried for anything, have ye, Sassenach?”

“You know I haven’t.”

He nodded.

“I have. For treason.”

“Yes? And what happened?”

He ran a hand through his damp hair, considering.

“They made me stand up, and asked my name. I gave it, the judge muttered to his friend for a bit, and then he said, ‘Condemned. Imprisonment for life. Put him in irons.’ And they took me out to the courtyard and had a blacksmith hammer fetters onto my wrists. The next day we began walking to Ardsmuir.”

“They made you walk there? From Inverness?”

“I wasna in any great hurry, Sassenach.”

I took a deep breath, trying to stem the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“I see. Well … but surely—wouldn’t m-murder”—I could just about say it without stammering, but not quite, yet—“be a matter for a jury trial?”

“It might, and certainly I shall insist upon it—if things go so far. Mr. Brown seems to think they may; he’s telling everyone in the taproom the story, making us out to be monsters of depravity. Which I must say is no great feat,” he added ruefully, “considering the circumstances.”

I pressed my lips tight together, to avoid giving a hasty answer. I knew he knew that I had had no choice—he knew that I knew he had had nothing to do with Malva in the first place—but I could not help but feel a sense of blame in both directions, for this desperate muddle in which we found ourselves. Both for what had happened afterward, and for Malva’s death itself—though God knew I would give anything to have her alive again.

He was right about Brown, I realized. Cold and wet, I’d paid little attention to the noises from the taproom below, but I could hear Brown’s voice, echoing up the chimney, and from the random words that came through, it was apparent that he was doing exactly what Jamie said—blackening our characters, making it out that he and his Committee of Safety had undertaken the ignoble but necessary job of apprehending us and committing us to justice. And, just incidentally, carefully prejudicing any potential jury members by making sure the story spread abroad in all its scandalous detail.

“Is there anything to be done?” I asked, having listened to as much of this nonsense as I could stomach.

He nodded, and pulled a clean shirt from his saddlebag.

“Go down for supper, and look as little like depraved murderers as possible, a nighean.”

“Right,” I said, and with a sigh, withdrew the ribbon-trimmed cap I had packed.



I SHOULDN’T HAVE been surprised. I had lived long enough to have a fairly cynical view of human nature—and lived long enough in this time to know how directly public opinion expressed itself. And yet I was still shocked, when the first stone hit me in the thigh.

We were some distance south of Hillsboro. The weather continued wet, the roads muddy, and the travel difficult. I think Richard Brown would have been pleased to relinquish us to the sheriff of Rowan county—if such a person had been available. The office, he was informed, was currently unfilled, the last occupant having decamped hurriedly overnight and no one yet found willing to replace him.

A matter of politics, I gathered, the recent sheriff having leaned toward independency, whilst the majority of persons in the county were still strongly Loyalist. I didn’t learn the specifics of the incident that had triggered the recent sheriff’s hasty departure, but the taverns and inns near Hillsboro were buzzing like hornets’ nests in the wake of it.

The Circuit Court had ceased to meet some months before, Brown was informed, the justices who attended it feeling it too dangerous to appear in the present unsettled state of things. The sole justice of the peace he was able to discover felt similarly, and declined point-blank to take custody of us, informing Brown that it was more than his life was worth, to be involved in anything even faintly controversial at the moment.

“But it’s nothing to do with politics!” Brown had shouted at him, frustrated. “It’s murder, for God’s sake—black murder!”

“Anything and everything’s political these days, sir,” the JP, one Harvey Mickelgrass, informed him sadly, shaking his head. “I should not venture to address even a case of drunk and disorderly, for fear of having my house pulled down around my ears and my wife left widowed. The sheriff attempted to sell his office, but could find no one willing to purchase it. No, sir—you will have to go elsewhere.”

Brown would by no means take us to Cross Creek or Campbelton, where Jocasta Cameron’s influence was strong, and where the local justice was her good friend, Farquard Campbell. And so we headed south, toward Wilmington.

Brown’s men were disedified; they had expected a simple lynching and house-burning, perhaps the odd bit of looting—not this long-drawn-out and tedious plodding from place to place. Their spirits were further lowered when Ezra, who had been clinging to his horse in a dogged daze of fever, fell suddenly into the road and was picked up dead.

I didn’t ask to examine the body—and wouldn’t have been given leave in any case—but I rather thought from the lolling looks of him that he had simply lost consciousness, tumbled off, and broken his neck.

Not a few of the others cast looks of open fear toward me in the wake of this occurrence, though, and their sense of enthusiasm for the venture diminished visibly.

Richard Brown was not deterred; he would, I was sure, have shot us without mercy long since, had it not been for Tom Christie, silent and gray as the morning fog on the roads. He said little, and that little confined to necessities. I should have thought him moving mechanically, in the numb haze of grief—had I not turned one evening as we camped by the road, to see his eyes fixed upon me, with a look of such naked anguish in them that I glanced hastily away, only to see Jamie, sitting beside me, watching Tom Christie with a very thoughtful expression.

For the most part, though, he kept his face impassive—what could be seen of it, under the shade of his leather slouch hat. And Richard Brown, prevented by Christie’s presence from doing us active harm, took every opportunity to spread his version of the tale of Malva’s murder—perhaps as much to harrow Tom Christie in the hearing of it, over and over again, as for its effect on our reputations.

At any rate, I should not have been surprised when they stoned us, in a small, nameless hamlet south of Hillsboro—but I was. A young boy had seen us on the road, stared as we rode by—then vanished like a fox, scampering down a bank with the news. And ten minutes later, we rode around a bend in the road and into a fusillade of stones and shrieks.

One struck my mare on the shoulder and she shied violently. I kept my seat narrowly, but was off-balance; another hit me in the thigh, and another high in the chest, knocking the breath from me, and when one more bounced painfully off my head, I lost my grip on the reins, and as the horse, panicked, curvetted and spun, I flew off, landing on the ground with a bone-shaking thud.