Page 112

Jamie

Jamie had been in Mairi’s pantry for at least an hour when boots sounded on the tavern floor.

He knew the tread before the man spoke. It had the same determined weight as the horses that had followed him through the glen on a wet night earlier that summer, and Jamie had never heard a man make quite so much noise while expecting other people to be discreet.

Through the narrow gap beside the pantry door, he could see half the common room, a corner of the hearth, Morag’s sensible boots beneath her chair, and Mairi behind the counter with her sleeves rolled above her elbows. Ewan had brought word that the excisemen were coming inland so Jamie had ridden down to learn whether Robertson meant to pass through Glenbrae or settle in for the evening, and Mairi had put him among the oat sacks the moment the first officer appeared at the end of the street.

He’d been offered a cup of ale, a heel of bread, and a piece of cheese. Evidently Mairi considered hiding a wanted smuggler much the same as feeding an unexpected guest.

“Jamie Campbell,” Robertson said. “Where is he?”

Mairi kept polishing the same pewter mug. “Are ye after a drink, sir, or do ye mean to stand in my doorway letting the cold in?”

“I’m after an answer.”

“Then ye’d best shut the door. The answers will freeze before they reach ye.”

One of the fishermen coughed into his mug. Inside the pantry, Jamie rested his forehead against a flour sack, certain that if he watched Morag’s face he’d disgrace himself by laughing aloud.

Robertson’s riding crop struck the counter. “Dunarraidh Castle. Campbell has been seen entering the place, and I have reliable information that men have carried whisky there after dark.”

“Folk see all manner of things at Dunarraidh after dark,” Morag said without lifting her eyes from her knitting. “Last winter Donald Fraser swore his dead aunt called to him from the west tower.”

“His aunt?” One of the excisemen said, looking over his shoulder.

“Aye. She’d been dead twelve years, poor soul, and she wasna any pleasanter in death than she’d been in life.”

The cooper’s shoulders began to shake. Jamie had heard the Donald Fraser tale himself, though in the previous telling the apparition had been Donald’s mother-in-law. The glen’s ghosts seemed to have a larger family than its living inhabitants.

“I did not come here to listen to nonsense,” Robertson said.

“A pity,” Morag answered. “We’re rather good at it.”

Jamie glanced toward the yard through the pantry’s small window where four soldiers waited with their horses. Beyond them stood a cart with a heavy axle and a folded tarpaulin, empty now and plainly brought to carry away anything worth confiscating.

Robertson had come prepared to prove the suspicions he’d been nursing since the harbor, and Jamie could scarcely blame the man for wanting his revenge.

“You know him,” Robertson said to the room. “Some of you stood beside him at the harbor when my men attempted to arrest Finlay MacRae.”

The needles stopped. Jamie knew Morag well enough to recognize the change even from the glimpse of her hands beneath the table.

“I know the lad ye nearly had dragged across the landing by his injured leg,” she said. “He’s mending, should ye care to hear it.”

Robertson said nothing for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice had lost the air of a man inconvenienced by country folk and acquired a harder edge.

“Campbell interfered with an officer of the Crown. That American woman interfered as well, and every road leads back to this glen. You can either tell me where they’re hiding or watch while my men pull this village and that damned castle apart, stone by stone.”

“You’ll have your work cut out,” Mairi said. “The weather’s been pulling Dunarraidh apart for a hundred years, and it hasna finished yet.”

Robertson turned so sharply the heel of his boot squealed on the boards. “Six men and a cart, Mistress Mairi. I did not bring them for a holiday.”

“Then ye’ve chosen the wrong glen. Though we’re verra pretty in summer here.”

Jamie bit into the bread to keep his mouth occupied. From outside came the clink of a bridle and the impatient stamp of a horse. He could imagine Robertson calculating how long it would take to question every cottage and how many villagers would give him the same cheerful answer. There were no strangers in this room willing to oblige him, which was its own kind of danger. The harder the man pushed, the more stubborn Glenbrae would become.

Morag laid her knitting across her knees. “Ye’ll not send those poor soldiers up the old tower after dark, will ye? The east stair lost three steps in the spring, and the west arch has a crack large enough to put a sheep through. A man could break his neck there.”

“Thank you for the warning,” Robertson said, making it quite clear he didn’t thank her at all.