Young Ian pondered that one for a minute, then took another gulp of his porter for courage and said, “I set it.”
Jamie and Ian both sat up straight at that. I could see Jamie revising his opinion as to the advisability of thrashing people without eyebrows, but he mastered his temper with an obvious effort, and said merely, “Why?”
The boy took another gulp of porter, coughed, and drank again, apparently trying to decide what to say.
“Well,” he began uncertainly, “there was a man,” and came to a dead stop.
“A man,” Jamie prompted patiently when his nephew showed signs of having become suddenly deaf and dumb. “What man?”
Young Ian clutched his glass in both hands, looking deeply unhappy.
“Answer your uncle this minute, clot,” Ian said sharply. “Or I’ll take ye across my knee and tan ye right here.”
With a mixture of similar threats and promptings, the two men managed to extract a more or less coherent story from the boy.
Young Ian had been at the tavern at Kerse that morning, where he had been told to meet Wally, who would come down from the rendezvous with the wagons of brandy, there to load the punked casks and spoiled wine to be used as subterfuge.
“Told?” Ian asked sharply. “Who told ye?”
“I did,” Jamie said, before Young Ian could speak. He waved a hand at his brother-in-law, urging silence. “Aye, I kent he was here. We’ll talk about it later, Ian, if ye please. It’s important we know what happened today.”
Ian glared at Jamie and opened his mouth to disagree, then shut it with a snap. He nodded to his son to go on.
“I was hungry, ye see,” Young Ian said.
“When are ye not?” his father and uncle said together, in perfect unison. They looked at each other, snorted with sudden laughter, and the strained atmosphere in the room eased slightly.
“So ye went into the tavern to have a bite,” Jamie said. “That’s all right, lad, no harm done. And what happened while ye were there?”
That, it transpired, was where he had seen the man. A small, ratty-looking fellow, with a seaman’s pigtail, and a blind eye, talking to the landlord.
“He was askin’ for you, Uncle Jamie,” Young Ian said, growing easier in his speech with repeated applications of porter. “By your own name.”
Jamie started, looking surprised. “Jamie Fraser, ye mean?” Young Ian nodded, sipping. “Aye. But he knew your other name as well—Jamie Roy, I mean.”
“Jamie Roy?” Ian turned a puzzled glance on his brother-in-law, who shrugged impatiently.
“It’s how I’m known on the docks. Christ, Ian, ye know what I do!”
“Aye, I do, but I didna ken the wee laddie was helpin’ ye to do it.” Ian’s thin lips pressed tight together, and he turned his attention back to his son. “Go on, lad. I willna interrupt ye again.”
The seaman had asked the tavernkeeper how best an old seadog, down on his luck and looking for employment, might find one Jamie Fraser, who was known to have a use for able men. The landlord pleading ignorance of that name, the seaman had leaned closer, pushed a coin across the table, and in a lowered voice asked whether the name “Jamie Roy” was more familiar.
The landlord remaining deaf as an adder, the seaman had soon left the tavern, with Young Ian right behind him.
“I thought as how maybe it would be good to know who he was, and what he meant,” the lad explained, blinking.
“Ye might have thought to leave word wi’ the publican for Wally,” Jamie said. “Still, that’s neither here nor there. Where did he go?”
Down the road at a brisk walk, but not so brisk that a healthy boy could not follow at a careful distance. An accomplished walker, the seaman had made his way into Edinburgh, a distance of some five miles, in less than an hour, and arrived at last at the Green Owl tavern, followed by Young Ian, near wilted with thirst from the walk.
I started at the name, but didn’t say anything, not wanting to interrupt the story.
“It was terrible crowded,” the lad reported. “Something happened in the morning, and everyone was talking of it—but they shut up whenever they saw me. Anyway, it was the same there.” He paused to cough and clear his throat. “The seaman ordered drink—brandy—then asked the landlord was he acquainted wi’ a supplier of brandy named Jamie Roy or Jamie Fraser.”
“Did he, then?” Jamie murmured. His gaze was intent on his nephew, but I could see the thoughts working behind his high forehead, making a small crease between his thick brows.
The man had gone methodically from tavern to tavern, dogged by his faithful shadow, and in each establishment had ordered brandy and repeated his question.
“He must have a rare head, to be drinkin’ that much brandy,” Ian remarked.
Young Ian shook his head. “He didna drink it. He only smelt it.”
His father clicked his tongue at such a scandalous waste of good spirit, but Jamie’s red brows climbed still higher.
“Did he taste any of it?” he asked sharply.
