“It’s not for a man to say, but I think she maybe dreams of flyin’ free and high with a hundred drones in a cloud o’ mad desire. Oh—” He stopped, feeling in his pouch. “I ’most forgot, Missus. I’ve summat here for you.” He drew out a small package, wrapped in a piece of grimy pink calico.

“Who is it from?” I asked, taking it. It was light, no more than a few ounces, and something crackled faintly inside.

“That, I don’t rightly know, Missus Claire,” he said. “’Twas given me by a woman keeps a tavern down near Charlotte, in January. She said it was a black man left it, sayin’ it was for the conjure-woman what lived at Fraser’s Ridge, and would she kindly pass it on when someone was to be headin’ up this way. I do suppose he meant you,” he added with a smile. “Ain’t that many conjure-women in this neck o’ the woods.”

Puzzled, I opened the little parcel to find a sheet of thick paper, carefully folded around a hard object. I unfolded it and a rock the size of a hen’s egg—and roughly the same shape—fell out into my hand. It was a mottled gray in color, with white and green splotches. It was smooth and felt remarkably warm, considering the chilliness of the air. I handed it to Jamie and unfolded the large sheet of paper it had been wrapped in. The note was written with quill and ink, the writing a little straggly but quite legible.

I have left the army and returned to my home. My grandmother sends this for you, in thanks. It is a bluestone from an old place and she says it will heal sickness of spirit and of body.

I read this, astonished, and was about to tell Jamie that it must be from Corporal—evidently now ex-Corporal—Sipio Jackson, when he suddenly reached over and took the paper out of my hand.

“A Mhoire Mhàthair!”

John Quincy craned his neck to see, interested.

“I be damned,” he said. “That there’s your name, ain’t it, Jamie?”

It was substantially battered; it was torn at one corner, rubbed and dirty, some of the ink had evidently got wet and run, and the red wax seal had fallen off, leaving a round red stain behind—but there was no doubt at all what it was.

It was a copy—the original copy, signed by Governor William Tryon—of the grant of ten thousand acres of land in the Royal Colony of North Carolina, to one James Fraser, in recognition of his services to the Crown. And sewn to it with thick black pack-thread was the letter from Lord George Germain.

151

A Message in a Bottle

Aboard the Pallas

JOHN GREY WAS ALLOWED to exercise on deck twice a day—for as long as he liked, while they were at anchor. He was accompanied throughout by a powerfully built monoglot sailor whose sole apparent purpose was to keep him from leaping overboard and swimming for it and whose one language was neither English, French, German, Latin, Hebrew, nor Greek. He thought it might conceivably be Polish, but if it was, the knowledge wouldn’t help him.