Dawn on a Distant Shore (56 page)

"You've heard the
old saying, I'm sure. Better the devil you know."

"Enough devils to
go around in Scotland, no question about it." He stood, and drew her up
with him. "And dragons and giants and fairies and Green Men, too. But you
and me, we've been through the endless forests, Elizabeth."

"So we
have," she said. "I expect that we can manage Scotland, too."

The long road to
Dumfries was muck and misery. Horses floundered and babies wailed, and yet
Hannah could conjure no scowl, or even show the disinterest she thought she
must owe this place. By the time the wooden box they called a coach entered the
town she had rubbed the skin on her elbows raw leaning out the little window.

Daniel fussed in
Curiosity's arms, but she freed a hand long enough to pull back the leather curtain.

"Must be some
kind of celebration goin' on, all these folks headed in the same
direction."

"I should like to
get out and walk with them," Elizabeth said, shifting uneasily. "I
had forgotten how uncomfortable it is to travel by coach."

Lily turned her head
against Elizabeth's shoulder and frowned in her sleep.

Nathaniel said
nothing, but his jaw was hard-set. He had asked for a horse, but Moncrieff had
refused without explanation. Hannah wondered how long it would be before her
father and Moncrieff had serious words.

The lane was busy with
stray dogs and children, tradesmen and servants and ladies in hats sprouting
long feathers dyed pink and yellow and green. They held their skirts up from
the cobblestones to display layers of lace and ribboned shoes. In New-York a
rich man was known by his tall beaver hat, and here they were too, bobbing
along in a stream of soft caps and old tricorns.

"It is much like
Albany," Hannah said, surprised and a little disappointed.

Curiosity made a sound
in her throat. "Look harder, child. This town was tired when Albany wasn't
nothing more than a widening in the trail along the big river."

It was true: even the
stones that lined the doorways seemed to sag. Windows leaned together and timbers
bowed. Under thatched roofs the tiny stone cottages that lined the lanes looked
to Hannah like rows of knowing old faces with sunken eyes. In one spot the road
narrowed so that she might have reached out to pet a cat sleeping on a
windowsill in the early evening light.

Hannah craned her neck
to study the chimneys. "Look how black the smoke is." She wrinkled
her nose at the greasy smell of it.

"Coal," said
Elizabeth. "The dust coats everything."

A young boy raced by
carrying an unlit torch almost as long as he was. He cast a sidelong glance at
the coach and pulled up short, his mouth hanging open as he stared at Hannah.

"Boy," she
said, taking this opportunity. "Where is everyone going?"

He walked along beside
them with his mouth still gaping to show an odd collection of brownish teeth.
His torch bumped behind him over the cobblestones.

"He won't have
any English," said her father. "Speak Scots to him."

She might have done it
just to see the look on the boy's face, but Moncrieff's horse moved up between
the coach and the crowd, and he was lost to her. Hannah sat back and crossed
her arms, determined to ignore the man until he went away again. But he had
heard her question, and he talked to them through the window.

"The town is
getting ready tae celebrate the navy's victory over the French. There'll be speeches
and a bonfire. You'll be able tae watch from the inn. Here it is now, ye see.
The King's Arms."

No one responded to
him, but he didn't seem to mind.

"A warm meal and
a good night's rest before we travel on," Moncrieff continued.

"Bathwater,"
Curiosity said. "Lots of it. And hot."

Hannah thought it
might be the first words she had said to Moncrieff since they left Québec.

He pursed his mouth.
"Aye, o' course. Whatever ye require."

Nathaniel studied the
hat that Moncrieff had given him: dusty black, with a broad round brim. The
kind of hat you might see on a preacher, or one of the tinkers who roved the
edge of the wilderness, selling hair ribbon and buttonhooks from canvas packs
and reciting bible verses for their supper. Now he pulled it low over his brow
as he climbed out of the coach, unsteady still on his sea legs and feeling
foolish and irritated to be hiding his face.

The inn sat on a
cobbled square, where the crowd was still gathering. Nathaniel shielded the women
on the short walk to the door, hanging back until they were safely inside. The
lack of his own weapons weighed heavier than it had on the
Isis
.

The innkeeper showed
them to their rooms, a man as long and thin as a birch sapling with a fringe of
hair around his ears and the habit of addressing his feet when he spoke.
Elizabeth immediately shed her shoes and disappeared with the babies behind the
bed curtains while Curiosity directed servants who came with trunks and
baskets, trays of food and tea, and the first buckets of hot water. Squirrel went
straight to the window to watch the crowd below them.

Nathaniel joined her.
Although the old clock in the hall had showed it to be more than eight in the evening,
it was full light still.

"We're coming
into the longest days," he said.

She looked up at him
and it took Nathaniel by surprise, as it often did, to see her for what she
was: a pretty girl, tall and straight. Only five years younger than her mother had
been when he set his sights on her.

"You're going
out, aren't you. To that tavern the exciseman told you about. We passed it on
the road here."

He nodded. "This
far north it won't be dark for a good hour yet, but then I'll have to go.
There's a livery over there where I can rent a horse, or buy one."

She looked back out
over the square. "I know you have to ask about the
Jackdaw
, but it worries
me." She said it in Kahnyen'kehâka, to make it more true, to make him
listen.

Nathaniel answered her
in the same language. "Maybe your grandfather is nearby. Maybe he's
looking for us."

Below them five ladies
had come into the square in the company of redcoat officers. The crowd parted
for them, and Nathaniel got a better look. Young women richly dressed, each of
them wore a broad band across the breast, blue in color with white script: God
Save the King.

He was in Scotland,
and he was not: Nathaniel felt himself sixteen again, in those first years of
the war, when the Tories still had a grip on New-York. He had seen this kind of
display before. Loyalists parading silk banners for old George, determined to
make the world England, even if they should have to die to do it. He had never
thought to see the like again, and certainly not in Scotland. Not his mother's
Scotland, or the Scotland Robbie had fought for on the battlefield at Culloden.
Or even the Scotland Angus Moncrieff had talked about hour after hour in the
Montréal gaol. Yet here it was, proof that those stories had told only part of
the tale.

It's none of our
concern
,
he reminded himself.
Don't let yourself get caught up in their business.

Hannah slipped her
hand into his, and he squeezed it.

Just next to the
growing pile of refuse that would become the bonfire, workmen had begun
building something that looked to Nathaniel like a makeshift gallows.

"Look, Da,"
Hannah said. "That man in the tall hat, there by the well. He's got a great
doll dressed like a man. What are they going to do with it?"

It was a doll, one
made of bound straw and rags. A shaggy old wig had been tied to the head, and
it was dressed in breeches and a loose shirt. A board had been hung around the
neck, and on this "Th. Paine" had been painted in large letters. The
man held the doll over his head like a trophy, and then he jumped up on the
platform to show it to the crowd. With a flourish, he turned it around so that
they could read the board on the back: "The Rights of Man." A shrill
whistle of approval, laughter; the ladies put their gloved hands together.

"Da?" Hannah
was looking at him.

"They can't put
their hands on Tom Paine, so they'll hang him in effigy," Nathaniel said. "And
then they'll burn him. To celebrate the English victory over the French."

"Boots,"
Nathaniel called. "The servants are all gone. You can come out."

Elizabeth threw back
the curtains and climbed down from the feather bed. She left the twins where
they were, fed and content to babble at each other for the time being. They
were in need of clean swaddling and a bath, and so was she. But first she must eat.

She paused a moment to
study the room. It was of a good size, well furnished with mahogany furniture
and a fine carpet. Almost certainly these were the best lodgings to be had in
Dumfries, but Nathaniel still must bow his head or knock it on the door frame
as he came and went.

"Where is
Curiosity?"

Hannah pointed with
her chin toward the closed door to the adjoining room. "Hot water."

"Of course."
Elizabeth made diversions around trunks and baggage on her way to the table, where
Nathaniel offered her a tankard. She wrapped her hands around the cool pewter
and sniffed. Small beer, sharp and yeasty. The smell of it told her she was in
Britain again, as nothing else could.

"Sit."
Nathaniel pulled gently on her elbow.

"I've been
sitting more than half the day," she said. "Let me stretch a bit. And
tell me, what is all this?" There were six trunks she did not recognize,
in addition to their own few things.

"Giselle
Somerville's baggage," said Hannah. "Moncrieff said that Captain Pickering
did not want them, so he gave them to us."

"How very
strange. Without first asking if we cared to have them?"

Hannah shrugged, her
eyes sliding over Elizabeth's gray travel dress. It was one of the three she
had left Paradise with, and like all of them it showed the strain of the
journey.

Elizabeth reached for
the platter of cold beef. "I will not wear her finery. If we come to the
earl in tatters, it is his own doing. I daresay he will receive us
anyway."

"Otherwise we'll
just turn around and head home," Nathaniel said dryly, peering suspiciously
into a bowl of pickled onions.

A knock at the door,
and the innkeeper appeared. He bowed hastily, his pate flashing as round and
white as a clockface. "May I inquire, is everythin' in order? Do ye require
aught else, sir?"

"Mr.
Thornburn." Elizabeth addressed him directly, in a tone she knew he could
not mistake. "Please see to it that these trunks are removed. Take them to
Mr. Moncrieff, for they do not belong to us."

The innkeeper's head
bobbed. "Mr. Moncrieff is across the way at the Globe, ma'am, takin' a
drink wi' the Poet. But I'll see tae it directly."

Hannah's brow creased.
"The Poet? Does Dumfries have its own poet, then?"

"We do indeed,
miss. We count Rab Burns as our own. Did ye no' make his acquaintance when he
came aboard the
Isis
?"

"Robert
Burns?" Nathaniel sat up straighter. "The exciseman?"

"Aye, the verra
one," said Mr. Thornburn, stroking his chin whiskers thoughtfully. "An
exciseman, and Scotland's greatest poet, forbye. Is his verse kennt sae far awa'
as America, then?"

Hannah put her hands
flat on the table and she sang without hesitation, her voice steady but a little
rough with disuse:

Ye flowery banks o'
bonnie Doon,

How can ye blume sae
fair;

How can ye chant, ye
little birds,

And I sae fu' o' care!

Mr. Thornburn's jaw
sagged, and then snapped sharply closed. "A Red Indian wha' kens Rab
Burns's verse. It's aye true, then, they can be civilized."

Before Hannah could
respond, Nathaniel had stepped between her and the innkeeper. He said, "We'll
thank you for moving the trunks. There's nothing else we need."

"Aye, sir, as ye
wish." Mr. Thornburn bowed again. At the door he hesitated, casting one
last inquisitive look at Hannah, who raised her chin at him and stared, all
indignation.

For a moment they were
quiet, listening to the crowd in the town square. Then Elizabeth reached over
and put her hand on Hannah's.

"I'm afraid you
will hear many such terribly ignorant and rude things while we are here,"
she said. "Those who think themselves to be civilized are not always
particularly intelligent, or rational."

Hannah nodded, the
muscles in her jaw working silently. "I should have listened to you,"
she said finally. "I should have stayed at Lake in the Clouds."