Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)(213)

He rubbed more of Tom’s coconut-oil concoction into his exposed skin, brushed his hair and bound it simply with a ribbon, then strode out to see what Tom had found out from the other servants.

They were on the patio, which seemed the center of the house. The usual cheerful racket was much subdued, though, and Ana-Maria crossed herself and bobbed a curtsy when she saw him.

“Lo siento mucho, se?or,” she said. “Su madre…su prima y los ninos—” She waved a graceful hand outward, encompassing his mother, Olivia, and the children, then again inward, this time indicating all the servants around her, and laid the hand on her heart, looking at him with a great compassion in her softly lined face. “Tenemos dolor, se?or.”

He took her meaning clearly, if not every word, and bowed low to her, nodding to the other servants as he straightened.

“Muchas gracias…” Se?ora? Se?orita? Was she married? He didn’t know, so he just repeated, “Muchas gracias,” with more emphasis.

Tom wasn’t among the servants; he’d likely gone to talk to Jacinto about doctors. John bowed again to the servants generally and turned toward the house.

There were voices toward the front of the house, speaking very rapid Spanish, with an occasional baffled word from Tom edging its way into the conversation. Curious, John made his way past the sala and into the small vestibule, where he found Jacinto and Tom blocking the front door and heard a woman’s voice outside, raised in agitation, saying his name.

“Necessito hablar con el Se?or Grey! Ahorita!”

“What’s going on?” He spoke sharply, and the two men turned toward him, allowing him a view of a yellow bandanna and the desperate face of Inocencia.

She seized the moment and pushed her way between the butler and Tom, snatched a crumpled note from her bosom, and thrust it into Grey’s hand. Then she fell to her knees, clutching the hem of his coat.

“Por favor, se?or!”

The note was limp with the sweat of her body, and the ink had blurred a little but was still clearly readable. There was neither salutation nor signature, and it was very short:

I’m nabbed, old cock. Your ball.



“WHAT DOES THIS MEAN, se?or?” Jacinto had been reading the note over his shoulder, without the slightest attempt to pretend he wasn’t. “This is…not English, is it?”

“It is,” he assured the butler, carefully folding the note and putting it in his pocket. He felt as though someone had punched him in the chest, very hard, and he had trouble catching his breath.

It was English, all right—but English that no one but an Englishman would understand. And not even an Englishman like Tom—who was frowning at Inocencia in puzzlement—would know the meaning of that last, paralyzing sentence.

Your ball.

Grey swallowed, tasting the last bitterness of the breakfast drink, and made himself breathe deep. Then he stooped and raised Inocencia to her feet. She was gasping for breath, too, he saw, and there were tracks of dried tears on her cheeks.

“The consul has been arrested?” he asked. She looked helplessly from him to Jacinto, who coughed and translated what Grey had said. She nodded violently, biting her lower lip.

“Está en El Morro,” she managed, gulping, and added something else that Grey couldn’t follow. A quick back and forth, and Jacinto turned to Grey, his long old face very grave.

“This woman says that your friend was arrested at the city wall last night and has been taken to El Morro. That is where the gobierno—the government, excuse me—where they keep prisoners. This…lady”—he inclined his head, giving Inocencia the benefit of the doubt—“she saw Se?or Stubbs being taken to the governor’s office soon after dawn, and so she waited nearby and followed when they took him down to—” He broke off to ask Inocencia a sharp question. She shook her head and said something in reply.

“He is not in the dungeon,” Jacinto reported. “But he is locked in a room where they put gentlemen when it is necessary to contain them. She was able to come and talk to him through the door, once the guards had left, and he wrote this note and told her to hurry and bring it to you at once, before you left the city.” Jacinto shot Grey a glance but then coughed and looked away. “He said you would know what to do.”

Grey felt a black dizziness come over him and a prickle of rising hair on the back of his neck. His lips felt stiff.

“Did he, indeed.”



“YOU CAN’T, ME LORD!” Tom stared at him, aghast.

“I’m very much afraid you’re right, Tom,” he said, striving for calm. “But I don’t see that I have any choice but to try.”

He thought Tom was going to be sick; the young valet’s face was pale as the morning mist that blanketed the tiny garden where they’d gone for a bit of privacy. Grey was himself just as pleased that he hadn’t had a chance to eat breakfast; he recalled Jamie Fraser telling him once, in inimitable Scottish fashion, that his “wame was clenched like a fist,” a phrase that described his own present sensation to a T.

He’d have given a lot to have Fraser beside him on this occasion.

He’d have given almost as much to have Tom.

As it was, he was apparently going into battle supported by a stuttering ex-zombie, an African woman of unpredictable temper and known homicidal tendencies, and Malcolm Stubbs’s concubine.