She stood watching until Joanie had gone out through the back door, then turned to me and handed me the letter.

It was from a Mr. Johansen, apparently one of Fergus’s regular correspondents, and the contents were as Marsali had said, though adding a few gruesome details that she hadn’t mentioned in Joanie’s hearing. It was fairly factual, with only the barest of eighteenth-century ornaments, and the more hair-raising—literally, I thought; some of the Andrustown residents had been scalped, by report—for that.

Marsali nodded as I looked up from the letter.

“Aye,” she said. “Fergus wants to publish the account, but I’m nay so sure he ought to. Because of Young Ian, ken?”

“What’s because of Young Ian?” said a Scottish voice from the printshop doorway, and Jenny came through, a marketing basket over one arm. Her eyes went to the letter in my hand, and her sharp dark brows rose.

“Has he told ye much about her?” Marsali asked, having explained the letter. “The Indian lass he wed?”

Jenny shook her head and began taking things out of her basket.

“Nay a word, save for his telling Jamie to say he wouldna forget us.” A shadow crossed her face at the memory, and I wondered for a moment how it must have been for her and Ian, receiving Jamie’s account of the circumstances in which Ian had become a Mohawk. I knew the agony with which he’d written that letter, and doubted that the reading of it had been done with less.

She laid down an apple and beckoned to me for the letter. Having read it through in silence, she looked at me. “D’ye think he’s got feelings for her still?”

“I think he does,” I answered reluctantly. “But nothing like his feelings for Rachel, surely.” I did recall him, though, standing with me in the twilight on the demilune battery at Fort Ticonderoga, when he’d told me about his children—and Emily, his wife.

“He feels guilty about her, does he?” Jenny asked, shrewdly watching my face. I gave her a look, but nodded. She compressed her lips, but then handed the letter back to Marsali.

“Well, we dinna ken whether his wife has anything to do wi’ this Brant or his doings, and it’s no her that’s been massacred. I’d say let Fergus print it, but”—and she glanced at me—“show the letter to Jamie and have him talk to wee Ian about it. He’ll listen.” Her expression lightened a little then, and a slight smile emerged. “He’s got a good wife now, and I think Rachel will keep him to home.”



MAIL WAS DELIVERED to the printshop at all hours of the day—and, not infrequently, the night—and by all manner of messengers. Philadelphia gloried in the best postal system in the colonies, this having been established by Benjamin Franklin only three years before; post riders rode regularly between New York and Philadelphia and over thirty other routes through the colonies.

Given the nature of Fergus’s business and the nature of the times, though, almost as much mail arrived by older routes: passed along by travelers, merchants, Indians, and soldiers, and shoved under the door in the night watches. Or handed to a member of the family in the street. It was exchanges of that sort during the British occupation of the city that had compelled me to marry John Grey in order to avoid arrest for sedition and spying.

John’s own letter, though, arrived sedately in the pouch of a postal rider, properly stamped, and sealed with a blob of yellow wax imprinted with his signet in the shape of a smiling half-moon.

To Mrs. James Fraser, Fraser’s Printshop, Philadelphia

From Lord John Grey, Wilbury House, New York

My dear,

I am with my brother and his regiment in New York, and am like to remain here for some time. That being so, I thought I would mention that the Lease of my house on Chestnut Street will run until the End of the Year, and as the Thought of it being left empty to be vandalized or left to ruin distresses me, I conceived the Notion of offering it to you once again.

Not, I hasten to add (lest your intransigent Husband be reading this), as a Domicile but rather as Premises for a Surgery. Acquainted as I am with your peculiar Habit of attracting Persons suffering from Disease, Deformity, or hideous Injury, and being also well acquainted with the Number of Persons presently inhabiting the younger Mr. Fraser’s printing Establishment, I believe you may find your medical Adventures more easily accommodated in Chestnut Street than between a Printing Press and a towering Stack of sixpenny Bibles bound in buckram.

As I do not expect you to spend your valuable Time in domestic Labor, I have arranged for Mrs. Figg and a Servant of her choice to remain in my employment for so long as you require them, being paid through my Bank. You will greatly oblige me, my dear, by accepting this Proposition, as it will put my mind at ease regarding the Property. And the Thought of you at work, earnestly administering a Clyster to General Arnold, will greatly enliven the Tedium of my present Condition.

Your most obedient Servant,

John

“What are ye smiling at, Mother Claire?” Marsali inquired, observing me with the letter in hand. She smiled, teasing. “Has someone sent ye a billet-doux?”

“Oh, something of the sort,” I said, folding it up. “You wouldn’t know where Jamie is just now, would you?”

She closed one eye to assist thought, keeping the other on Henri-Christian, who was industriously blacking his father’s best boots—and a good deal of himself in the process.

“He said he was going wi’ Young Ian to see a man about a horse,” she said, “and then to the docks.”

“The docks?” I said in surprise. “Did he say why?”

She shook her head. “I could maybe guess, though. That’ll do, Henri! A Dhia, the state of you! Go find one o’ your sisters and tell her to wash your hands for ye, aye?”

Henri looked at his hands, as though astonished to find them completely black.

“Oui, Maman,” he said, and, cheerfully wiping them on his breeches, scampered out into the kitchen, bellowing, “Félicité! Come wash me!” at the top of his lungs.

“Why?” I asked, moving closer and lowering my voice slightly—for obviously she’d got rid of Henri-Christian on the little pitchers–big ears principle.

“He’s been talking wi’ Fergus about going with ye, when ye go back to North Carolina,” she said. “If I had to guess, I’d say he’s gone to find out what it might cost to move everything”—she made a sweeping gesture, encompassing everything from printing press to loft—“by ship.”

“Hmm,” I said, as noncommittally as possible, though my heart had leapt—at both the thought of imminent departure for the Ridge and the thought that Fergus and Marsali might come with us. “Do you … want to?” I asked cautiously, seeing the line between her brows. She was still a lovely woman, fair and fine-boned, but she was too thin, and the lines of strain sharpened her features.

She shook her head, but in indecision rather than negation.

“I really dinna ken,” she admitted. “It’s a good bit easier now, wi’ the British gone—but they’re no so far away, are they? They could come back, and then what?” She glanced uneasily over her shoulder, though the printshop was empty for the moment. Fergus had had to leave home and live furtively on the outskirts of the city, during the last months of the British occupation.

I opened my mouth to tell her that I doubted this. Hal Grey had told me, under the influence of ganja, that the new British strategy was to sever the southern colonies from the North and suppress the rebellion there, thus starving the North into submission. But I closed it without speaking. Best not to mention that until I found out whether Jamie had told Fergus.

Why didn’t I bloody know what was going to happen? I asked myself in frustration—and not for the first time. Why hadn’t I thought to brush up on American history when I had the chance?