I chose not to correct his choice of words, because I knew my friend’s heart had remained so loyal to King William that he likely found it easier ignoring the plain truth that New York’s governor had been forbidden, by a royal proclamation, from giving us aid.

Turnbull said, “We luckily had many Scots at New York who did take our part and try to help us, and the local merchants did arrange a new ship for us, underneath the nose of their government.”

And that’s where I had come in, as a warehouse clerk, helping them find their provisions. “Your husband recruited me,” I said to Helen. “He showed me over the ship. Then, since any adventure had seemed to me better than being a clerk, I resigned my employment and sailed on her.”

“I nearly didn’t,” said Turnbull, and smiled. “They got under sail in New York harbor so suddenly, trying to slip out before they were stopped, that I didn’t get word until they were well underway, and I was forced to chase after them in a boat or be left behind.”

“Is that when you left your parrot?” Helen asked him.

He nodded. “I’ll warrant now in New York there’s a parrot from the Darien coast that wonders what it’s doing there, but I could find no one to send it on to my cousin in Scotland, and I was too rushed to return it with me to the colony, so it remained with my friends,” he said, “on Staten Island.”

We talked less of the time we’d spent in Caledonia. Most of it had been unpleasant. We’d arrived to find our fort burnt by the Spanish, and a very short while later our ship had been joined by the fleet of the second expedition, and turmoil began. The arguing among the councilors. The people who had wished to stay, and those who’d wished to leave. Those who had wished to build again, and those who’d wished to turn their backs on the attempt. And then, of course, there had been Captain Drummond.

I confess that when I’d heard his name first in New York, I’d thought it could not be the same man I was thinking of, for surely the directors of the company would never make a councilor of the man who’d been a leader of the massacre at Glencoe—who in the dark times following our revolution had not only repaid the MacDonalds’ hospitality by slaughtering their women, men, and children, but who, so it was said, had personally killed two lads who’d begged for mercy, when another captain hesitated.

Drummond was an able soldier, but he was not liked nor trusted by the men of the new council. He urged them to take action. They did, having him imprisoned under guard.

Turnbull, as his lieutenant, was imprisoned, too. A man who protested was hanged, and through it all I’d thought of nothing so much as that evening at Wood Creek when I had sat with Jacob Wilde beneath the pines and watched the war council, when other men were in such disagreement.