Chapter 22 #2
Every lift pulled fire through the joint. Every reach reminded him of the road, the fog, the bird bursting out of the ditch, Janet’s hands snapping bone back where it belonged. He ignored all of it.
Abigail drew the final mould lines with a steady hand, soot smudged along her jaw now, shawl put away so it wouldn’t catch. She looked too pale, but her eyes had gone bright with focus.
McRae glanced once at her drawing then at Rory then back at the mould.
“She drew this?”
“She did.”
“Hm.”
Abigail’s chin lifted a fraction. “Is there a problem?”
McRae looked at her. “No, mistress. That’s what troubles me.”
Duncan made a coughing sound behind them.
The bronze heated slowly, too slowly, then all at once it went the color of an apple in late August, gold-red, alive in the crucible. McRae watched it the way a priest watched a sacrament or a gambler watched dice, lips pressed thin beneath his beard.
“Now,” he said.
The pour went clean, a single stream, no break, no bubble. And no curse from McRae, which Rory took as the strongest possible sign of divine favor.
When it was done, no one spoke for several moments. McRae wiped his forehead with his sleeve.
“Well,” he said. “It might no’ be rubbish.”
From him, that was practically a poem.
By half past two, the first casting cooled beneath packed sand while the second mould stood ready in case the first failed. The workshop smelled of hot metal and damp linen.
Rory was filing the sprue edge from the first rough bearing when Abigail came to the smithy doorway. He knew before she spoke that something had changed.
Her face had set in that way it did when she had been working a problem in her mind until the answer came.
“Rory.”
He set the file down.
“What is it?”
She glanced once toward McRae, then toward Ewan.
“There’s a cutter on a bad line.”
The room stilled.
“Name,” Rory said.
“The Isabella.”
McRae muttered a low curse.
“Out of Boddam,” Abigail continued. “Two men aboard. North by northeast. Past the reef if the wind holds.”
Ewan stared at her. “How d’ye know that?”
Rory didn’t look away from her. When Abigail Winston stood in a doorway looking as though a ghost had walked through her, he took heed.
“Names,” he said quietly.
She didn’t answer at once. There it was again, the pause before truth.
“Tam Forbes.”
The name struck the room with a quiet force.
“Tobias, ’tis yer cousin,” Ewan said.
“Aye,” Tobias whispered from the door behind them. “He has a little boy in Boddam. Robbie.”
Rory looked at the bearing, then at the second mould. He looked at the sky beyond the yard, already bruising toward the dark in the east though sunset remained hours off.
“How long?” he asked McRae.
“For the second pour to cool?”
“Aye.”
“Forty minutes if the wind doesna foul the heat.”
“How long to clean this one enough to seat?”
McRae rubbed his thumb along the rough edge. “Hour and three quarters with a steady hand.”
Rory looked at Ewan. “How long until the Isabella reaches the reef if her line holds?”
Ewan’s face had gone grim. “Under two hours.”
“If the wind freshens?”
“Ninety minutes.”
The answer settled into every corner of the room.
Rory nodded. “Then we light the lamp.”
McRae stared at him. “The Board does nae light a lamp before the day written in the Board’s own book.”
“The Board does nae lose a Boddam crew on the reef of a headland it spent eleven thousand pounds of His Majesty’s silver building a lamp on top of either.”
McRae’s mouth tightened.
Rory stepped closer to the bench, injured shoulder throbbing under the loosened strap, one hand flat beside the new bearing.
“The Board does nae get the choice tonight,” he said. “I do.”
Silence followed.
Then Ewan nodded once. “Tavish,” he said. “Lantern room. Clean linen, seating tools, every small file we own. Tobias, get the oil up the stair. Duncan, fetch the spare lever.”
No one questioned it after that. Rory filed until his fingers cramped.
Abigail checked the seat twice, then three times, then silently handed him the smaller file when the angle changed by less than a whisper.
McRae cleaned the bearing with the care of a man disarming a pistol pointed at his own foot.
Tobias ran messages between tower and workshop until his face shone with sweat despite the cold.
Mrs. Gable appeared once at the doorway, took in the forge, the men, the wind, Abigail’s pale face, and Rory’s loosened shoulder strap.
Her eyes narrowed.
“Do I need to fetch Janet?”
“No,” Rory and Abigail said together.
Mrs. Gable looked wholly unconvinced. “I dislike agreement when it comes from fools.”
Then she set down more bread, another jug of ale, and a small wrapped packet.
“For later,” she told Abigail.
“What is it?”
“Food.”
“I gathered.”
“Then ask fewer questions.”
She vanished back into the wind.
By four, the weather had come fully upon them. The sky to the east went dark first, not black but a deep iron-blue that seemed to press downward over the water. The west held a strip of dull light near the horizon, thin as a blade.
Canvas snapped. Ropes sang. The scaffold made small complaining sounds every time the wind shouldered against it.
At half past four, McRae took the bearing from him, turned it once beneath the lamp, then again.
His thumb moved along the inner ring. At last McRae held it out.
“It’s good, Captain.” McRae looked at him a moment longer. “If it doesna, ye’ll still have tried for the lad.”
Rory tucked it inside his coat against his ribs, beside the oilcloth notebook he had carried for years. The metal was still warm through the linen. Alive with the day’s work. Outside the workshop, the wind hit him full in the face.
The east was already gone dark. The west had turned slate-going-to-ink, the last light gathering low behind the clouds as if reluctant to be seen leaving.
At the top of the tower, the eastern glass caught one pale shard from the dying sky. Inside it, a single candle moved.
Abigail was already in the lantern room, a small flame passing from bench to cradle to lamp and back again.
For one heartbeat, Rory stood in the yard and watched that candle move through the glass.
The crew gathered around him. Ewan with the lens drawings rolled beneath one arm.
Tobias carrying the oil. Tavish clutching the tool roll with both hands as if it contained a newborn heir.
Duncan with the spare lever over one shoulder, and last came McRae, cap low against the wind, face grim, tools wrapped in leather.
Mrs. Gable stood at the kitchen door with her arms folded and the look of a woman prepared to frighten the weather into cooperation if no one more qualified volunteered.
Rory stopped beneath the lintel and set his hand against the cold stone.
Out beyond the darkening sea, the Isabella was running blind toward the reef.
Tam Forbes had a wee son in Boddam. Robbie. A boy who would wake tomorrow either with a father or without one, depending on what they did in the next hour.