Диана Гэблдон - A Breath of Snow and Ashes 6

“It is,” MacDonald agreed. “Early enough, perhaps, to have folk on their guard. But before your men come, sir—perhaps we should speak of what brought me?”

“Aye?” Jamie said, squinting carefully as he poured a glittering stream of lead. “Of course, Donald. I should have kent no small matter would bring ye so far. What is it?”

MacDonald smiled like a shark; now we’d come to it.

“Ye’ve done well wi’ your place here, Colonel. How many families it is ye have on your land the noo?”

“Thirty-four,” Jamie said. He didn’t look up, but turned out another bullet into the ashes.

“Room for a few more, perhaps?” MacDonald was still smiling. We were surrounded by thousands of miles of wilderness; the handful of homesteads on Fraser’s Ridge made scarcely a dent in it—and could vanish like smoke. I thought momentarily of the Dutch cabin, and shivered, despite the fire. I could still taste the bitter, cloying smell of burned flesh, thick in the back of my throat, lurking beneath the lighter flavors of the omelette.

“Perhaps,” Jamie replied equably. “The new Scottish emigrants, is it? From up past Thurso?”

Major MacDonald and I both stared at him.

“How the devil d’ye ken that?” MacDonald demanded. “I heard it myself only ten days since!”

“Met a man at the mill yesterday,” Jamie replied, picking up the ladle again. “A gentleman from Philadelphia, come into the mountains to collect plants. He’d come up from Cross Creek and seen them.” A muscle near his mouth twitched. “Apparently, they made a bit of a stir at Brunswick, and didna feel themselves quite welcome, so they came up the river on flatboats.”

“A bit of a stir? What did they do?” I asked.

“Well, d’ye see, mum,” the Major explained, “there are a great many folk come flooding off ships these days, straight from the Highlands. Whole villages, packed into the bowels of a ship—and looking as though they’ve been shat out when they disembark, too. There’s nothing for them on the coast, though, and the townsfolk are inclined to point and snigger, seein’ them in their outlandish rig—so for the most part, they get straight onto a barge or a flatboat and head up the Cape Fear. Campbelton and Cross Creek at least have folk who can talk to them.”

He grinned at me, brushing a smudge of dirt from the skirts of his uniform coat.

“The folk in Brunswick willna be quite accustomed to such rawboned Highlanders, they having seen only such civilized Scotch persons as your husband and his aunt.”

He nodded toward Jamie, who gave him a small, ironic bow in return.

“Well, relatively civilized,” I murmured. I was not ready to forgive MacDonald for the whore in Edenton. “But—”

“They’ve barely a word of English among them, from what I hear,” MacDonald hurried on. “Farquard Campbell came down to speak wi’ them, and brought them north to Campbelton, or I doubt not but they’d be milling about onshore yet, wi’ no notion at all where to go or what to do next.”

“What’s Campbell done wi’ them?” Jamie inquired.

“Ah, they’re parceled out amongst his acquaintance in Campbelton, but ’twon’t suit in the long run, ye can see that, of course.” MacDonald shrugged. Campbelton was a small settlement near Cross Creek, centered around Farquard Campbell’s successful trading store, and the land around it was entirely settled—mostly by Campbells. Farquard had eight children, many of whom were also married—and as fertile as their father.

“Of course,” Jamie said, looking wary. “But they’re from the northern coast. They’ll be fishermen, Donald, not crofters.”

“Aye, but they’re willing to make a change, no?” MacDonald gestured toward the door, and the forest beyond. “There’s nothing for them left in Scotland. They’ve come here, and now they must make the best of it. A man can learn to farm, surely?”

Jamie looked rather dubious, but MacDonald was in the full flush of his enthusiasm.

“I’ve seen many a fisher-lad and plowboy become a soldier, man, and so have you, I’ll wager. Farming’s no more difficult than soldiering, surely?”

Jamie smiled a little at that; he had left farming at nineteen and fought as a mercenary in France for several years before returning to Scotland.

“Aye, well, that’s maybe true, Donald. But the thing about being a soldier is that someone’s tellin’ ye what to do, from the moment ye rise until ye fall down at night. Who’s to tell these poor wee gomerels which end o’ the cow to milk?”

“That would be you, I expect,” I said to him. I stretched myself, easing my back, stiff from riding, and glanced across at MacDonald. “Or at least I suppose that’s what you’re getting at, Major?”

“Your charm is exceeded only by your quickness of wit, mum,” said MacDonald, bowing gracefully in my direction. “Aye, that’s the meat of it. All your folk are Highlanders, sir, and crofters; they can speak to these newcomers in their own tongue, show them what they’ll need to know—help them to make their way.”

“There are a good many other folk in the colony who have the Gaidhlig, ” Jamie objected. “And most of them a great deal more convenient to Campbelton.”

“Aye, but you’ve vacant land that needs clearing, and they haven’t.” Obviously feeling that he had won the argument, MacDonald sat back and took up his neglected mug of beer.

Jamie looked at me, one eyebrow raised. It was perfectly true that we had vacant land: ten thousand acres, but barely twenty of them under cultivation. It was also true that lack of labor was acute in the entire colony, but even more so in the mountains, where the land didn’t lend itself to tobacco or rice—the sorts of crops suited to slave labor.

At the same time, though—

“The difficulty is, Donald, how to settle them.” Jamie bent to turn out another ball on the hearth, and straightened, brushing back a loose strand of auburn hair behind his ear. “I’ve land, aye, but little else. Ye canna be loosing folk straight from Scotland into the wilderness, and expect them to claw a living out of it. I couldna even give them the shoon and suit of clothes a bondsman would have, let alone tools. And to feed them and all their wives and weans through the winter? To offer them protection?” He lifted his ladle in illustration, then shook his head and dropped in another lump of lead.

“Ah, protection. Well, since ye’ve mentioned that, let me proceed to another wee matter of interest.” MacDonald leaned forward, lowering his voice confidentially, though there was no one to hear.

“I’ve said I’m the Governor’s man, aye? He’s charged me to travel about, over the western part of the colony, and keep an ear to the ground. There are Regulators still unpardoned, and”—he glanced warily to and fro, as though expecting one of these persons to bound out of the fireplace—“ye’ll have heard of the Committees of Safety?”

“A bit.”

“Ye’ll not have one established yet, here in the backcountry?”

“Not that I’ve heard of, no.” Jamie had run out of lead to melt, and now stooped to scoop the new-made balls from the ashes at his feet, the warm light of the fire glowing red on the crown of his head. I sat down beside him on the settle, picking up the shot pouch from the table and holding it open for him.

“Ah,” said MacDonald, looking pleased. “I see I’ve come in good time, then.”

In the wake of the civil unrest that surrounded the War of the Regulation a year before, a number of such informal citizens’ groups had sprung up, inspired by similar groups in the other colonies. If the Crown was no longer able to assure the safety of the colonists, they argued, then they must take the matter into their own hands.