The Physician's Verdict
The cough had begun as a nuisance. A rasp in the chest after long days at the yards, a fleck of red in the handkerchief dismissed as strain. Flint had ignored it, as he ignored most pains. He had endured hunger, steel, and exile. A cough was nothing.
But by the winter of 1765, the cough was a constant. At night it racked him until his ribs ached. In the morning, his pillow bore the stain of blood. His once-broad frame thinned, his cheeks hollowed, his eyes sunken but still fierce. Even his stride, once steady as a soldier's, faltered on cold days.
He knew enough of the world to understand what it meant. Consumption, the wasting sickness that carried men off in months or years. He had seen cousins die of it in Caithness, coughing their lives out by the peat fire while kin whispered prayers.
And yet, when word reached him of a famed physician in Edinburgh, a man whose knowledge of the lungs was spoken of across Scotland, Flint resolved to go.
He told no one. Not Margaret, not Sinclair, not his managers. At dawn he took a cloak, a purse heavy with coin, and a single pistol. His claymore he left behind. He rode south alone, each cough tearing like musket shot in his chest.
Edinburgh in winter was a city of stone and smoke. The wynds and closes twisted narrow and dark, the high tenements leaning like watchful giants. Fires burned in every hearth, their smoke rising thick to the sky. The air smelled of coal, dung, and brine from the Firth.
Flint moved through the streets cloaked and silent, a Highland shadow among merchants and students, beggars and lawyers. Few glanced at him; in the city, everyone hurried on their own business.
The physician's house stood near the Canongate, a tall stone building with brass plate on the door: Dr. Archibald Kerr, Physician.
Flint rapped once. A servant led him inside, through a hall lined with books and jars of preserved specimens — lungs blackened, bones warped, organs floating in spirits. Flint's stomach turned, though his face remained stone.
The doctor entered, tall, spare, his wig powdered, his coat plain but fine. His eyes were sharp, his hands steady.
"You are James Flint," he said. It was not a question. "The shipbuilder of Glasgow and Aberdeen. I have heard your name."
Flint inclined his head. "I am." His voice was rough from coughing. "I need your skill."
"Sit."
The examination was long and meticulous. The doctor pressed Flint's chest, listened with ear to ribs as Flint breathed raggedly, tapped for hollowness. He examined the blood-stained kerchief Flint produced, his face grave.
At last he stepped back, folding his hands.
"You have what we call phthisis. The wasting sickness. It eats the lungs, and no man has yet found a cure."
Flint's jaw tightened. "How long?"
The doctor's eyes softened, but his voice remained firm. "Three years, perhaps four, if you husband your strength. Less, if you spend yourself too freely. No medicine can halt it, though laudanum may ease the coughing, and the air of the country may comfort you more than this city's smoke."
Silence fell. The crack of the fire was the only sound.
Flint sat rigid, fists clenched on his knees. Three years. Four at most. A sentence, plain as the drop of an axe.
His mind roared — with memory, with prophecy.
Iron will mark him. Ash will follow him. He will think himself a ghost.
The Cailleach's voice seemed to echo in the room, louder than the doctor's. Had she not foretold this? That he would live as a shadow, that ash would mark his steps? Was this the end of the road laid at his birth?
He rose suddenly, the chair scraping the floor. The doctor started, but Flint only bowed stiffly.
"My thanks," he said, voice low, thick.
The doctor opened his mouth, perhaps to offer comfort, but Flint was already gone.
He walked the Canongate like a man condemned. The fog pressed close, muffling hoofbeats, blurring lamps into pale ghosts. He coughed, red spattering the handkerchief again, and the sight made his vision swim with rage.
He had outlived Culloden. He had built an empire of ships. He had fought, bled, killed, and clawed his way to survival. And yet now — to die coughing in a chair like some weakling? To waste away while Margaret and her father circled like carrion crows?
His hand clenched until the kerchief tore.
No.
If he was to die, it would be on his own terms, in his own land, not as a ghost in Margaret's parlour.
He lifted his gaze to the north, though stone and smoke blocked it. Beyond the Forth, beyond the hills, beyond the moors — Caithness waited. The cliffs of Bruan, the sea roaring eternal, the ruins of Gunn Castle.
If he was to die, it would be there.
Breaking Ties
Flint rode back north from Edinburgh with the weight of his fate pressing like stone on his chest. Each cough tore at him, each fleck of blood on his kerchief a reminder of the clock now counting down. The road blurred with rain and mist. Villages passed without note, fields turned bare with winter, hills rolled grey and bleak.
When at last he reached Aberdeen, it was as though he were returning not to a home, but to a prison.
Margaret met him with feigned delight. She swept through the hall in silk, arms outstretched, lips curved in a smile polished for guests. "James! At last, you return. We were starved for company while you hid yourself with your ships."
Behind her, Sinclair loomed, red-faced from drink, already reaching for Flint's whisky decanter.
Flint said nothing. He let her embrace brush past him, let Sinclair clap his back, and walked to his chamber. His cough racked him before the hearth that night, muffled in cloth. Margaret did not come. She was laughing in the parlour with her father until dawn.
In the weeks that followed, Flint set his affairs in order. Quietly, deliberately, without fanfare.
He summoned his managers, one by one, to a chamber lit only by fire. He spoke little, only enough to give orders.
"Sell the yards at the Clyde. To honest men if they can be found, but sell them."
"Liquidate the Greenland shares. Transfer coin to accounts in Edinburgh, but not in Sinclair's reach."
"Settle wages, clear debts. Let no man say I left him cheated."
The managers obeyed, bewildered but silent. They whispered among themselves of sudden changes, of fortune shifting, but none dared question him.
Within months, Flint's empire was gone. The shipyards he had built with his hands, the whalers that bore his mark — sold, transferred, gone. Coin gathered into chests and accounts, but the heartbeat of his fortune ceased.
Margaret was the first to notice.
Her gowns came slower from Paris, the wine less frequent, the bills suddenly questioned. She stormed into his chamber one morning, cheeks flushed with anger.
"What have you done?" she demanded. "The accounts are closed, the merchants refuse my letters! I am humiliated, James — humiliated!"
Flint looked up from the fire, eyes dark, face gaunt with illness. He said nothing.
"You cannot do this," she pressed, her voice sharp. "My father and I have needs, obligations! You cannot cut us off!"
His cough answered, sudden and violent, blood staining his kerchief. He wiped it with steady hand and met her eyes.
"I can," he said. His voice was low, but iron.
She recoiled at the sight of blood, disgust flashing across her features. Without another word, she turned and swept from the room.
Sinclair came next, drunk and blustering.
"You'll ruin us, Flint! Do you hear? Ruin! What of family? What of loyalty? You think you can cast us aside like worn boots?"
Flint rose slowly, towering over him. He was gaunt now, but still broad, still terrible when anger lit his eyes.
"You ruined yourself," he said. "And loyalty is not bought with coin. You betrayed it when you sought my life."
Sinclair blanched, his mouth working soundlessly. Flint stepped closer, until the man stank of sweat and fear filled his nostrils.
"Pray you never cross my path again," Flint said.
Sinclair fled, muttering, his bluster broken.
That night, before dawn, Flint left.
He carried little — a pack with coin, his claymore strapped across his back, pistols and dirk at his belt. His cloak hung heavy on his shoulders, and his cough wracked him as he mounted the horse.
The streets of Aberdeen were silent, save for the clop of hooves on cobble. Windows shuttered, lamps dimmed, fog rising from the harbour.
He rode north, leaving behind the wealth he had built, the marriage that had poisoned him, the city that had caged him. He did not look back.
The sea wind rose, cold and sharp. Flint pulled his cloak tighter and whispered into the mist:
"Back to the cliffs. Back to the blood. Back to the end."
And he rode on, toward Caithness, toward ruin, toward fate.