Dawn on a Distant Shore
Page 123

"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.