The Fiery Cross (8 page)

IT WAS SOME WAY; I was out of breath and sweating from the exercise by the time I caught them up near the competition field. Things were just getting under way; I could hear the buzz of talk from the crowd of men gathering, but no shouts of encouragement or howls of disappointment as yet. A few brawny specimens stamped to and fro, stripped to the waist and swinging their arms to limber up; the local “strongmen” of various settlements.

The drizzle had started up again; the wetness gleamed on curving shoulders and plastered swirls of dark body hair flat against the pale skins of chests and forearms. I had no time to appreciate the spectacle, though; John Quincy threaded his way adroitly through the knots of spectators and competitors, waving cordially to this and that acquaintance as we passed. On the far side of the crowd, a small man detached himself from the mass and came hurrying to meet us.

“
Mac Dubh!
Ye’ve come, then—that’s good.”

“Nay bother, Robbie,” Jamie assured him. “What’s to do, then?”

McGillivray, who looked distinctly harried, glanced at the strongmen and their supporters, then jerked his head toward the nearby trees. We followed him, unnoticed by the crowd gathering round two large stones wrapped with rope, which I assumed some of the strongmen present were about to prove their prowess by lifting.

“It’s your son, is it, Rob?” Jamie asked, dodging a water-filled pine branch.

“Aye,” Robbie answered, “or it was.”

That sounded sinister. I saw Jamie’s hand brush the butt of his pistol; mine went to my medical kit.

“What’s happened?” I asked. “Is he hurt?”

“Not him,” McGillivray replied cryptically, and ducked ahead, beneath a drooping chestnut bough hung with scarlet creeper.

Just beyond was a small open space, not really big enough to be called a clearing, tufted with dead grass and studded with pine saplings. As Fergus and I ducked under the creeper after Jamie, a large woman in homespun whirled toward us, shoulders hunching as she raised the broken tree limb she clutched in one hand. She saw McGillivray, though, and relaxed fractionally.

“Wer ist das?”
she asked suspiciously, eyeing us. Then John Quincy appeared from under the creeper, and she lowered the club, her solidly handsome features relaxing further.

“Ha, Myers! You brung me den Jamie,
oder
?” She cast me a curious look, but was too busy glancing between Fergus and Jamie to inspect me closely.

“Aye, love, this is Jamie Roy—
Sheumais Mac Dubh
.” McGillivray hastened to take credit for Jamie’s appearance, putting a respectful hand on his sleeve. “My wife, Ute,
Mac Dubh
. And
Mac Dubh
’s son,” he added, waving vaguely at Fergus.

Ute McGillivray looked like a Valkyrie on a starchy diet; tall, very blond, and broadly powerful.

“Your servant, ma’am,” Jamie said, bowing.

“Madame,”
Fergus echoed, making her a courtly leg.

Mrs. McGillivray dropped them a low curtsy in return, eyes fixed on the prominent bloodstains streaking the front of Jamie’s—or rather, Roger’s—coat.

“Mein Herr,”
she murmured, looking impressed. She turned and beckoned to a young man of seventeen or eighteen, who had been lurking in the background. He bore such a marked resemblance to his small, wiry, dark-haired father that his identity could scarcely be in doubt.

“Manfred,” his mother announced proudly. “
Mein
laddie.”

Jamie inclined his head in grave acknowledgment.

“Mr. McGillivray.”

“Ah . . . your s-servant, sir?” The boy sounded rather dubious about it, but put out his hand to be shaken.

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir,” Jamie assured him, shaking it. The courtesies duly observed, he looked briefly round at the quiet surroundings, raising one eyebrow.

“I had heard that you were suffering some inconvenience wi’ regard to a thief-taker. Do I take it that the matter has been resolved?” He glanced in question from McGillivray Junior to McGillivray Senior.

The three McGillivrays exchanged assorted glances among themselves. Robin McGillivray gave an apologetic cough.

“Well, not to say
resolved
, quite,
Mac Dubh
. That is to say . . .” He trailed off, the harried look returning to his eyes.

Mrs. McGillivray gave him a stern look, then turned to Jamie.

“
Ist kein
bother,” she told him. “
Ich haf den
wee ball of shite safe put. But only we want to know, how we best
den Korpus
hide?”

“The . . . body?” I said, rather faintly.

Even Jamie looked a bit disturbed at that.

“Ye’ve killed him, Rob?”

“Me?” McGillivray looked shocked. “Christ’s sake,
Mac Dubh
, what d’ye take me for?”

Jamie raised the eyebrow again; evidently the thought of McGillivray committing violence was scarcely far-fetched. McGillivray had the grace to look abashed.

“Aye, well. I suppose I might have—and I did—well, but,
Mac Dubh
! That business at Ardsmuir was all long ago and done wi’, aye?”

“Aye,” Jamie said. “It was. What about this business wi’ the thief-taker, though? Where is he?”

I heard a muffled giggle behind me, and swung round to see that the rest of the family McGillivray, silent ’til now, was nonetheless present. Three teenaged girls sat in a row on a dead log behind a screen of saplings, all immaculately attired in clean white caps and aprons, only slightly wilted with the rain.

“
Meine
lassies,” Mrs. McGillivray announced, with a wave in their direction—unnecessarily, since all three of the girls looked like smaller versions of herself. “Hilda, Inga,
und
Senga.”

Fergus bowed elegantly to the three.

“Enchanté, mes demoiselles.”

The girls giggled and bobbed their heads in response, but without rising, which struck me as odd. Then I noticed some disturbance taking place under the skirt of the oldest girl; a sort of heaving flutter, accompanied by a muffled grunt. Hilda swung her heel sharply into whatever it was, all the time smiling brightly at me.

There was another grunt—much louder this time—from under the skirt, which caused Jamie to start and turn in her direction.

Still smiling brightly, Hilda bent and delicately picked up the edge of her skirt, under which I could see a frantic face, bisected by a dark strip of cloth tied round his mouth.

“That’s him,” said Robbie, sharing his wife’s talent for stating the obvious.

“I see.” Jamie’s fingers twitched slightly against the side of his kilt. “Ah . . . perhaps we could have him out, then?”

Robbie motioned to the girls, who all stood up together and stepped aside, revealing a small man who lay against the base of the dead log, bound hand and foot with an assortment of what looked like women’s stockings, and gagged with someone’s kerchief. He was wet, muddy, and slightly battered round the edges.

Myers bent and hoisted the man to his feet, holding him by the collar.

“Well, he ain’t much to look at,” the mountain man said critically, squinting at the man as though evaluating a substandard beaver skin. “I guess thief-takin’ don’t pay so well as ye might think.”

The man was in fact skinny and rather ragged, as well as disheveled, furious—and frightened. Ute sniffed contemptuously.

“Saukerl!”
she said, and spat neatly on the thief-taker’s boots. Then she turned to Jamie, full of charm.

“So,
mein Herr
. How we are to kill him best?”

The thief-taker’s eyes bulged, and he writhed in Myers’s grip. He bucked and twisted, making frantic gargling noises behind the gag. Jamie looked him over, rubbing a knuckle across his mouth, then glanced at Robbie, who gave a slight shrug, with an apologetic glance at his wife.

Jamie cleared his throat.

“Mmphm. Ye had something in mind, perhaps, ma’am?”

Ute beamed at this evidence of sympathy with her intentions, and drew a long dagger from her belt.

“I thought maybe to butcher,
wie ein Schwein, ja?
But see . . .” She poked the thief-taker gingerly between the ribs; he yelped behind the gag, and a small spot of blood bloomed on his ragged shirt.

“Too much
Blut
,” she explained, with a moue of disappointment. She waved at the screen of trees, behind which the stone-lifting seemed to be proceeding well. “
Die Leute
will schmell.”

“Schmell?” I glanced at Jamie, thinking this some unfamiliar German expression. He coughed, and brushed a hand under his nose. “Oh,
smell
!” I said, enlightened. “Er, yes, I think they might.”

“I dinna suppose we’d better shoot him, then,” Jamie said thoughtfully. “If ye’re wanting to avoid attention, I mean.”

“I say we break his neck,” Robbie McGillivray said, squinting judiciously at the trussed thief-taker. “That’s easy enough.”

“You think?” Fergus squinted in concentration. “I say a knife. If you stab in the right spot, the blood is not so much. The kidney, just beneath the ribs in back . . . eh?”

The captive appeared to take exception to these suggestions, judging from the urgent sounds proceeding from behind the gag, and Jamie rubbed his chin dubiously.

“Well, that’s no verra difficult,” he agreed. “Or strangle him. But he
will
lose his bowels. If it were to be a question of the smell, even crushing his skull . . . but tell me, Robbie, how does the man come to be here?”

“Eh?” Robbie looked blank.

“You’re no camped nearby?” Jamie waved a hand briefly at the tiny clearing, making his meaning clear. There was no trace of hearthfire; in fact, no one had camped on this side of the creek. And yet all the McGillivrays were here.

“Oh, no,” Robbie said, comprehension blossoming on his spare features. “Nay, we’re camped some distance up. Only, we came to have a wee keek at the heavies”—he jerked his head toward the competition field—“and the friggin’ vulture spied our Freddie and took hold of him, so as to drag him off.” He cast an unfriendly look at the thief-taker, and I saw that a coil of rope dangled snakelike from the man’s belt. A pair of iron manacles lay on the ground nearby, the dark metal already laced with orange rust from the damp.

“We saw him grab aholt of Brother,” Hilda put in at this point. “So we grabbed aholt of
him
and pushed him through here, where nobody could see. When he said he meant to take Brother away to the sheriff, me and my sisters knocked him down and sat on him, and Mama kicked him a few times.”

Ute patted her daughter fondly on one sturdy shoulder.

“They are
gut
, strong
Mädchen
,
meine
lasses,” she told Jamie. “Ve
komm
see
hier die Wettkämpfer
, maybe choose husband for Inga or Senga. Hilda
hat einen Mann
already promised,” she added, with an air of satisfaction.

She looked Jamie over frankly, her eye dwelling approvingly on his height, the breadth of his shoulders, and the general prosperity of his appearance.

“He is fine, big, your
Mann
,” she said to me. “You haf sons, maybe?”

“No, I’m afraid not,” I said apologetically. “Er . . . Fergus is married to my husband’s daughter,” I added, seeing her gaze shift appraisingly to Fergus.

The thief-taker appeared to feel that the subject was drifting somewhat afield, and summoned attention back to himself with an indignant squeal behind his gag. His face, which had gone pale at the discussion of his theoretical demise, had grown quite red again, and his hair was matted down across his forehead in spikes.

“Oh, aye,” Jamie said, noticing. “Perhaps we should let the gentleman have a word?”

Robbie narrowed his eyes at this, but reluctantly nodded. The competitions had got well under way by now, and there was a considerable racket emanating from the field; no one would notice the odd shout over here.

“Don’t let ’em kill me, sir! You know it ain’t right!” Hoarse from his ordeal, the man fixed his appeal on Jamie as soon as the gag was removed. “I’m only doin’ as I ought, delivering a criminal to justice!”

“Ha!” all the McGillivrays said at once. Unanimous as their sentiment appeared to be, the expression of it immediately disintegrated into a confusion of expletives, opinions, and a random volley of kicks aimed at the gentleman’s shins by Inga and Senga.

“Stop that!” Jamie said, raising his voice enough to be heard over the uproar. As this had no result, he grabbed McGillivray Junior by the scruff of the neck and roared,
“Ruhe!”
at the top of his lungs, which startled them into momentary silence, with guilty looks over their shoulders in the direction of the competition field.

“Now, then,” Jamie said firmly. “Myers, bring the gentleman, if ye will. Rob, Fergus, come along with ye.
Bitte
, Madame?” He bowed to Mrs. McGillivray, who blinked at him, but then nodded in slow acquiescence. Jamie rolled an eye at me, then, still holding Manfred by the neck, he marched the male contingent off toward the creek, leaving me in charge of the ladies.

“Your
Mann
—he will save my son?” Ute turned to me, fair brows knitted in concern.

“He’ll try.” I glanced at the girls, who were huddled together behind their mother. “Do you know whether your brother
was
at Hillsborough?”

The girls looked at one another, and silently elected Inga to speak.

“Well,
ja
, he was, then,” she said, a little defiantly. “But he wasna riotin’, not a bit of it. He’d only gone for to have a bit of harness mended, and was caught up in the mob.”

I caught a quick glance exchanged between Hilda and Senga, and deduced that this was perhaps not the entire story. Still, it wasn’t my place to judge, thank goodness.

Mrs. McGillivray’s eyes were fixed on the men, who stood murmuring together some distance away. The thief-taker had been untied, save for his hands, which remained bound. He stood with his back against a tree, looking like a cornered rat, eyeteeth showing in a snarl of defiance. Jamie and Myers were both looming over him, while Fergus stood by, frowning attentively, his chin propped on his hook. Rob McGillivray had taken out a knife, with which he was contemplatively flicking small chips of wood from a pine twig, glancing now and then at the thief-taker with an air of dark intent.