“He didna go to any more taverns,” the boy reported, wiping a stray drop of milk off his chin. “He went straight to Carfax Close, to the printshop.”
Jamie said something in Gaelic under his breath. “Did he? And what then?”
“Well, he found the shop shut up, of course. When he saw the door was locked, he looked careful like, up at the windows, as though he was maybe thinking of breaking in. But then I saw him look about, at all the folk coming and going—it was a busy time of day, wi’ all the folk coming to the chocolate shop. So he stood on the stoop a moment, thinking, and then he set off back up the close—I had to duck into the tailor’s shop on the corner so as not to be seen.”
The man had paused at the entrance of the close, then, making up his mind, had turned to the right, gone down a few paces, and disappeared into a small alley.
“I kent as how the alley led up to the court at the back of the close,” Young Ian explained. “So I saw at once what he meant to be doing.”
“There’s a wee court at the back of the close,” Jamie explained, seeing my puzzled look. “It’s for rubbish and deliveries and such—but there’s a back door out of the printshop opens onto it.”
Young Ian nodded, putting down his empty bowl. “Aye. I thought it must be that he meant to get into the place. And I thought of the new pamphlets.”
“Jesus,” Jamie said. He looked a little pale.
“Pamphlets?” Ian raised his brows at Jamie. “What kind of pamphlets?”
“The new printing for Mr. Gage,” Young Ian explained.
Ian still looked as blank as I felt.
“Politics,” Jamie said bluntly. “An argument for repeal of the last Stamp Act—with an exhortation to civil opposition—by violence, if necessary. Five thousand of them, fresh-printed, stacked in the back room. Gage was to come round and get them in the morning, tomorrow.”
“Jesus,” Ian said. He had gone even paler than Jamie, at whom he stared in a sort of mingled horror and awe. “Have ye gone straight out o’ your mind?” he inquired. “You, wi’ not an inch on your back unscarred? Wi’ the ink scarce dry on your pardon for treason? You’re mixed up wi’ Tom Gage and his seditious society, and got my son involved as well?”
His voice had been rising throughout, and now he sprang to his feet, fists clenched.
“How could ye do such a thing, Jamie—how? Have we not suffered enough for your actions, Jenny and me? All through the war and after—Christ, I’d think you’d have your fill of prisons and blood and violence!”
“I have,” Jamie said shortly. “I’m no part of Gage’s group. But my business is printing, aye? He paid for those pamphlets.”
Ian threw up his hands in a gesture of vast irritation. “Oh, aye! And that will mean a great deal when the Crown’s agents arrest ye and take ye to London to be hangit! If those things were to be found on your premises—” Struck by a sudden thought, he stopped and turned to his son.
“Oh, that was it?” he asked. “Ye kent what those pamphlets were—that’s why ye set them on fire?”
Young Ian nodded, solemn as a young owl.
“I couldna move them in time,” he said. “Not five thousand. The man—the seaman—he’d broke out the back window, and he was reachin’ in for the doorlatch.”
Ian whirled back to face Jamie.
“Damn you!” he said violently. “Damn ye for a reckless, harebrained fool, Jamie Fraser! First the Jacobites, and now this!”
Jamie had flushed up at once at Ian’s words, and his face grew darker at this.
“Am I to blame for Charles Stuart?” he said. His eyes flashed angrily and he set his teacup down with a thump that sloshed tea and whisky over the polished tabletop. “Did I not try all I could to stop the wee fool? Did I not give up everything in that fight—
He turned back to Ian, his brows lowering as he went on, voice growing hard.
“And as for what I’ve cost your family—what have ye profited, Ian? Lallybroch belongs to wee James now, no? To
Ian flinched at that. “I never asked—” he began.
“No, ye didn’t. I’m no accusing ye, for God’s sake! But the fact’s there—Lallybroch’s no mine anymore, is it? My father left it to me, and I cared for it as best I could—took care o’ the land and the tenants—and ye helped me, Ian.” His voice softened a bit. “I couldna have managed without you and Jenny. I dinna begrudge deeding it to Young Jamie—it had to be done. But still…” He turned away for a moment, head bowed, broad shoulders knotted tight beneath the linen of his shirt.
I was afraid to move or speak, but I caught Young Ian’s eye, filled with infinite distress. I put a hand on his skinny shoulder for mutual reassurance, and felt the steady pounding of the pulse in the tender flesh above his collarbone. He set his big, bony paw on my hand and held on tight.
