Page 106 of A Scot in the Storm
“What?” he said.
“I’m just admiring the financial horror.”
“Admire quietly.”
The wind came in at half past eleven. A southerly push that arrived low and hard across the headland, flattening grass, snapping loose rope ends against scaffold poles, and driving cold damp beneath doors.
Tavish and Tobias hauled canvas tarps over the unfinished masonry.
Duncan lashed the lamp-store door until the hinges stopped creaking.
Mrs. Gable sent up broth, bread, cheese, and a small covered dish of something she claimed was “for strength,” which nobody questioned and everyone feared.
The forge took over the workshop yard. Heat bloomed red against the damp afternoon. Smoke flattened in the wind and crawled sideways across the stones. McRae worked with his coat off and sleeves rolled, forearms corded, face ruddy in the furnace glow.
Rory worked beside him with the shoulder strap loosened just enough to move.
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?”
