Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)(220)

“The yellow fever has two stages,” she said, and lifted the child to her shoulder. It had a head like a small cantaloupe, and Grey was reminded shockingly of its father. “If you survive the first stage—it lasts several days—then sometimes you recover. If not, there’s a lull in the fever—a day or two when the—the person seems to be improving, but then…it comes back.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, and he wondered when she had last slept. She looked at once a thousand years old and ageless, like a stone.

“Olivia,” she said, and opened her eyes, patting the child’s tiny back, “recovered, or seemed to. Then she went into labor, and—” She lifted the baby slightly in illustration. “But the next day…it came back. She was dead in—in hours. It took Charlotte a day later…she was…so small. So fragile.”

“I am so sorry,” Grey said softly. He had been fond of his cousin, but his mother had raised Olivia from the age of ten, when his cousin had lost her own parents. A thought came to him.

“Cromwell?” he asked, afraid to hear but needing to know. He’d delivered Olivia’s son, very much by accident, but as a result had always felt close to the boy.

His mother gave him a watery smile.

“He’s fine. The fever never touched him, thank God. Nor this little one.” She cupped a hand behind the infant’s fuzzy skull. “Her name is Seraphina. Olivia had time…to hold her, at least, and give her a name. We christened her at once, in case…”

“Give her to me, Mother,” he said, and took the child from her arms. “You need to go and sit down, and you need something to eat.”

“I’m not—” she began automatically, and he interrupted her.

“I don’t care. Go sit down. I’ll go and blow up the cook.”

She tried to give him a smile, and the twitch of her lips reminded him with a jolt of Inocencia. And everything else. His own mourning would have to wait.



IF YOU HAD TO attack a fortress at night, on foot and lightly armed, doing it with black men was distinctly an advantage, Grey thought. The barely risen moon was a crescent, a thread of light against the dark sky. Cano’s men had removed their shirts and, dressed only in rough canvas breeches, they were no more than shadows, flowing barefoot and silent through the empty marketplace.

Cano himself materialized suddenly behind Grey’s shoulder, announced by a waft of foul breath.

“Ahorita?” he whispered. Now?

Grey shook his head. Malcolm’s wig was wadded up in his pocket and he had assumed instead an infantryman’s cap—a contrivance of steel plates, punctured and laced together, to be worn under a uniform hat—this covered with a black knitted cap. He felt as though his head were melting, but it would turn the blade of a sword—or a machete.

“Inocencia,” he murmured, and Cano grunted in reply and faded back into the night. The girl wasn’t yet late; the church bells had only just rung midnight.

Like any self-respecting fortress, El Castillo de los Tres Reyes Magos del Morro—the Castle of the Three Magi of the Hump, as Azeel had kindly translated its full name for him—the hump being the big black rock at the opening of the harbor—had only one way in and one way out. It also had steeply sloping walls on all sides, to deter both climbers and cannonballs.

True, there were small penetrations on the water side, used for the disposal of garbage or inconvenient bodies, or for the arrival of provisions or the secret deliverance of a guest or prisoner held incognito. Those were of no use in the present venture, though, as the only possible approach was by boat.

One bell bonged the quarter hour. Two for the half hour. Grey had just pulled his head covering off in order to avoid fainting when there was a stir in the darkness nearby.

“Se?or?” said a soft, low voice by his elbow. “Es listo. Venga!”

“Bueno,” he whispered back. “Se?or Cano?”

“Aquí.” Cano was aquí, so quickly that Grey realized the man must have been standing no more than a few feet away.

“Venga, then.” Grey moved his head toward the fortress, then paused to put on his two caps. By the time he had managed this, they were all there, a breathing mass like a herd of cattle, eyes shining now and then in an errant gleam of light.

He took Inocencia by the arm, to prevent her being lost or trampled, and they walked quietly into the small stone guardhouse that shielded the castle’s entrance, for all the world like a bride and groom walking sedately into church, followed by a horde of machete-wielding wedding guests.

This absurd fancy disappeared directly as they stepped into the torchlit room. There were four guards, one slumped over a table, the others on the floor. Inocencia shuddered under his hand, and, glancing at her in the flickering light, he saw that her dark dress was torn at the shoulder, and her lip was bleeding. She had drugged the guards’ wine, but evidently it hadn’t acted fast enough.

“Bueno,” he whispered to her, and squeezed her arm. She didn’t smile but nodded, swallowed hard, and gestured toward the door on the other side of the guards’ room.

This was the entrance to the fortress proper, portcullis and all, and his heart began to beat in his ears as they passed beneath its teeth with no sound but the shuffle of feet and the occasional clink from the bags of metal spikes.