“Captain,” Jamie replied, and his heart thumped hard in his ears as he bowed, because Cunningham was no card player and the truth was written in the narrowing of his eyes and the hardness of his mouth.

A formal occasion, then, is it? He had a sudden mental picture of them squaring up to fight a duel, in kilt, cocked hat, and their Masonic aprons. What would be the weapons? he wondered. Cutlasses?

“Dèan ullachadh, mo charaidean,” he said casually to the men who stood with him. Stand ready.

The meeting went well enough—outwardly. The ritual, the words of brotherhood, fellowship, idealism. But he thought the words rang hollow, with a sense of ice among the men, covering their hearts, separating one from another, leaving all in the cold.

Things felt easier when it came to Business: the small things they did as a matter of community. A widow unable to deal with her late husband’s stock; a man who’d fallen through his own roof whilst repairing his chimney and broken both an arm and a leg; an auld quarrel betwixt the MacDonalds and the MacQuarries that had broken out in a fistfight at market day in Salisbury and had come home with them, still trailing clouds of ill will.

Things that were not really the business of the Lodge but that should be brought up: talk that Howard Nettles was having to do with a woman who kept shop at Beardsley’s Trading Post, whose husband was a bargeman and spent weeks away from home.

“Is there anyone here who kens Nettles well enough to drop a word in his ear?” Jamie asked. “If it’s Mrs. Appleton that’s bein’ talked about, I’ve seen her husband and he’d make two of Howard.”

A small murmur of humor ran through the room, and Geordie MacNeil said he didna ken Howard well enough to say what he needed to hear, but he did ken Howard’s cousin, who lived in a wee settlement near the Blowing Rock, and he could have a word next time he passed that way.

“Aye, well enough,” Jamie said, thinking that Claire’s bees would enjoy hearing about this. “And we’ll hope it’s soon enough to save Howard’s neck. Thank ye, Geordie. Anything else before we start the beer?” From the corner of his eye, he saw Cunningham move suddenly but then catch himself and subside.

It’ll be outside, then. He took a deep breath and felt a distant bodhran start to beat in his blood.

Hiram Crombie had brought the beer tonight, it being his turn. Skinflint he might be—all the fisher-folk were, having lived in stark poverty all their lives—but he kent what was right, and the beer was good. Jamie wondered what was ado with wee Cyrus, but it didn’t look urgent ….

On the far side of the room, Cunningham was talking. About loyalty. About his service in the Royal Navy. About loyalty to the King.