“So.” His voice was slightly louder; he’d turned toward the door. “Say where ye’d like to go, Corporal, and someone will take ye there. In the meantime, let me go and see where your breakfast has got to.”

AFTER BREAKFAST AND a further brief discussion with Corporal Jackson, Jamie wrote a note and sent Jem up the hill to Captain Cunningham to deliver it. And two hours later, Lieutenants Bembridge and Esterhazy appeared at our door. I didn’t know what either the captain or Mrs. Cunningham had said to them, but neither one was battered, and when seen, they appeared to be working—somewhat uneasily—with each other. Just now, they both appeared rather nonplussed, and announced that they had come to escort our prisoner—er, guest—to the captain’s cabin. The captain had agreed—as the leading Loyalist on Fraser’s Ridge—to offer Corporal Jackson refuge until such time as he could be reunited with his company.

“He can’t walk,” Jamie advised them. “I’ll lend ye a mule.”

“He can’t ride, either,” I said. “You’ll need to make a travois for him.”

While the men went out to do this, I checked the corporal’s condition—feverish, but not a high fever, a certain amount of pain and some redness, but—I sniffed his leg discreetly—no overt infection, and I wrote up a medical note for Elspeth Cunningham, with a description of the injury and notes on care of the plaster cast. I offered him elevenses, which he refused, but he did drink another medicinal posset, involving an egg, cream, sugar, extract of willow bark, black cohosh, and meadowsweet, a good slug of whisky—and enough laudanum to fell a horse.

“You’re sure you want to go?” I asked, watching as he sipped the posset. “We’re happy to take care of you until you’re healed enough to rejoin your company.”

The corporal was heavy-eyed and his face was flushed, but he managed a smile.

“It’s bettah I go, madam. This Cap’n Cunningham, he can send to Cap’n Stevens, he will make provision for me to go to Charlotte.”

I shook my head dubiously. He was doing well enough, but being dragged uphill for two miles behind a mule while suffering from a broken leg wasn’t anything I’d wish on an enemy, let alone an innocent man. Still, it was his choice. I took my amulet bag from round my neck and opened it. The usual scent wafted out as I dipped my finger into it, earthy and unidentifiable but with an odd sense of reassurance.

“Well, let me give you back your High John the Conqueror,” I said, smiling as I plucked it out. “I hope you won’t need it on your journey, but just in case …”

“Oh, no, madam.” He waved a slow hand at me, pushing it away. “Its magic remain with me ’cause you have healed me with it—but it is part of your magic now.”