Darwin was nodding in satisfaction. “Now we have the whole thing. And observe, at every turn we come back to the two strangers—long since disappeared, and I will wager we see no more of them.”
“But what the devil’s been going on?” said Pole. He scratched at his jaw and wiped his nose again on his sleeve. “A dying man, Spanish bullion, a leviathan in Loch Malkirk—how did we get into the middle of all this? I come here for a bite of free dinner and a quiet smoke with Willy, and before I know it I’m running over the countryside as confused as Lazarus’ widow.”
“What is really going on?” Darwin rubbed at his grey wig. “As to that, at the moment I could offer no more than rank conjecture. We lack tangible evidence. But for what it is worth, Colonel, I believe that you were involved largely accidentally. My instincts tell me that I was the primary target, and someone aimed their shafts at my curiosity or my cupidity.”
“The bullion?” Pole’s eyes sparkled. “Aye, where they tickled me, too. If you go, I’d like a chance to join you. I’ve done it before, and I know some of the difficulties. Rely on me.”
Darwin shook his head. The plate of fruit had been emptied, and there was a dreamy look on his coarse features. “It is not the treasure, that can be yours, Colonel—if it proves to exist. No, sir, there’s sweeter bait for me, something I can scent but not yet see. The Devil, and one thing more, must wait for us in Malkirk.”
The pile in the courtyard of the stage inn had been growing steadily. An hour before, three leather bags had been delivered, then a square oak chest and a canvas-wrapped package. The coachman sat close to the wall of the inn, warming his boots at a little brazier and shielding his back against the unseasonably cold May wind. He was drinking from a tankard of small beer and looking doubtfully from the swelling heap of luggage to the roof of the coach.
Finally he looked over his shoulder, measured the angle of the sun with an experienced eye, and rose to his feet. As he did so there was a clatter of horses’ hooves.
Two light pony traps came into view, approaching from opposite directions. They met by the big coach. Two passengers climbed down from them, looked first at the pile of luggage on the ground, then at the laden traps, and finally at each other. The brooding coachman was ignored completely.
The fat man shook his head.
“This is ridiculous, Colonel. When we agreed to share a coach for this enterprise it was with the understanding that I would take my medical chest and equipment with me. They are bulky, but I do not care to travel without them, for even a few miles from home. However, it did not occur to me that you would then choose to bring with you all your household possessions.” He waved a brawny arm at the other trap. “We are visiting Scotland, not removing ourselves to it permanently.”
The tall, scrawny man had moved to his light carriage and was struggling to take down from it a massive wooden box. Despite his best effort he was unable to lift it clear, and after a moment he gave up, grunted, and turned to face the other. He shook his head.
“A few miles from home is one thing, Dr. Darwin. Loch Malkirk is another. We will be far in the Highlands, beyond real civilization. I know that it has been thirty years since the Great Rebellion, but I’m told that the land is not quiet. It still seethes with revolt. We will need weapons—if not for the natives, then for the Devil.”
Darwin had checked that his medical chest was safely aboard the coach. Now he came across to grasp one side of the box on the other trap, and between them they lowered it to the ground.
“You are quite mistaken,” he said. “The Highlands are unhappy but they are peaceful. Dr. Johnson fared well enough there, only three years ago. You will not need your weapons, though there is no denying that the people hold loyal to Prince Charles Edward—”
“The Young Pretender,” grunted Pole. “The upstart blackguard who—”
“—who has what many would accept as a legitimate claim to the throne of Scotland, if not of England.” Darwin was peering curiously into the wooden box, as Pole carefully raised the lid. “His loss in ’46 was a disaster, but the clans are loyal in spite of his exile. Colonel Pole”—he had at last caught a glimpse of the inside of the box—“weapons are one thing, but I trust you are not proposing to take that with you to Malkirk.”
“Certainly am.” Jacob Pole crouched by the box and lovingly stroked the shining metal. “You’ll never see a prettier cannon than Little Bess. Brass-bound, iron sheath on the bore, and fires a two-inch ball with black powder. Show me a devil or a leviathan in Loch Malkirk, and I’ll show you something that’s a good deal more docile when he’s had one of these up his weasand.” He held up a ball, lofting it an inch or two in the palm of his hand. “And if the natives run wild I’m sure it will do the same for them.”
Darwin reached to open the lid wider. “Musket and shot, too. Where do you imagine that we are travelling, to the moon? You know the Highlanders are forbidden to carry weapons, and we have little enough room for rational appurtenances. The ragmatical collection you propose is too much.”
“No more than your medical chests are too much.” Pole straightened up. “I’ll discard if you will, but not otherwise.”
“Impossible. I have already winnowed to a minimum.”
“And so have I.”
The coachman stood up slowly and carried his empty tankard back into the inn. Once inside he went over to the keg, placed his tankard next to it, and jerked his head back toward the door.
“Listen to that,” he said gloomily. “Easy money, I thought it’d be, wi’ just the two passengers. Now they’re at each other before they’ve set foot in the coach, and I’ve contracted to carry them as far as Durham. Here, Alan, pour me another one in there before I go, and make it a big ’un.”
The journey north was turning back the calendar, day by day and year by year. Beyond Durham the spring was noticeably less advanced, with the open apple blossom of Nottingham regressing by the time they reached Northumberland to tight pink buds a week away from bloom. The weather added to the effect with a return to the raw, biting cold of February, chilling fingers and toes through the thickest clothing.
At Otterburn they had changed coaches to an open dray that left them exposed to the gusts of a hard northeaster, and beyond Stirling the centuries themselves peeled away from the rugged land. The roads were unmetalled, mere stony scratches along the slopes of the mountains, and the mean houses of turf and rubble were dwarfed by the looming peaks.
At first Darwin had tried to write. He made notes in the thick volume of his Commonplace Book, balancing it on his knee. Worsening roads and persistent rain conspired to defeat him, and at last he gave up. He sat facing forward in the body of the dray, unshaven, swaddled in blankets and covered by a sheet of grey canvas with a hole cut in it for his head.
“Wild country, Colonel Pole.” He gestured forward as they drove northwest along Loch Shin. “We are a long way from Lichfield. Look at that group.”
He nodded ahead at a small band of laborers plodding along the side of the track. Jacob Pole made a snorting noise that could have as well come from the horse. He was smoking a stubby pipe with a bowl like a cupped hand, and a jar of hot coals stood on the seat behind him.
“What of ’em?” he said. His pipe was newly charged with black tobacco scraped straight from the block, and he blew out a great cloud of blue-grey smoke. “I see nothing worth talking about. They’re just dreary peasants.”
“Ah, but they are pure Celt,” said Darwin cheerfully. “Observe the shape of their heads, and the brachycephalic cranium. We’ll see more of them as we go further north. It’s been the way of it for three thousand years, the losers in the fight for good lands are pushed north and west. Scots and Celts and Picts, driven and crowded to the northern hills.”