Mountain Laurel

by Lori Benton

  His uncle was among those waiting at the cabins when they came up from the creek. Ally carried Seona. Lily walked between them, arms full of Ian’s ruined shirt and her simples box. Ian carried his rifle and his son, cleanly wrapped in a tiny blanket prepared for him. Naomi hurried forward as Ally ducked into Seona’s cabin, but Hugh Cameron hung back, staring at the bundle in Ian’s arms.

  “Uncle, I’ve a son—and ye a grandson. Would ye care to see him?” Save for a tightening of his mouth, his uncle’s expression didn’t alter. “Ye’ll hear his name at least. It’s Gabriel. Gabriel Robert Cameron.”

  Indifferent to paternal pronouncements, Gabriel Robert Cameron emitted an ominous squawk.

  With a tightening in his chest, Ian gave his son into Lily’s keeping, lingering for a last glimpse of the scowling little face. Then he stalked past them all—gawking slaves and stone-faced uncle alike. He might have swept past his wife as well had he not run headlong into her rounding the kitchen.

  “Ian!” She stepped back, sweeping his bare chest and stained breeches with alarm. “I was resting during the storm and had to dress. Mama said . . .”

  “It’s a son,” he told her, voice shaking. “They’re both well. But I’m not fit company just now. Might ye have Maisy bring water to me in our room?”

  Judith lowered her eyes. “Of course.”

  He’d not thought the band around his chest could squeeze tighter, but his wife’s dashed expression made it constrict his ribs like a barrel hoop. Ian put a hand to her cheek. “We’ll talk, aye? But I need time. Don’t wait supper on me.”

  Alone in their room, he propped the window sash high. A rush of warm air, rain-freshened, belled the curtains inward. He shucked off his breeches, then pulled on a clean pair. At a tap on the door he said, “Aye, Maisy.”

  He rubbed his hand across his face as a bucket thumped against the floor.

  “Mister Ian?” Maisy came deeper into the room, holding out her hand. A small object nestled in the folds of her palm. “Lily—Seona, more like—say you meant to have it.”

  When the door shut, he curled his fist, pressing the arrowhead into his palm as he’d done last on the creek bank. He’d lost track of it. How had Seona not? He needed no token to remember, but it suited his heart to have it, to hold when he thought of his son.

  By all that was holy—he had a son.

  “Gabriel . . .” He’d thought he’d done this grievous thing, released them both. But that was before he held them against his heart.

  Ian went to his knees, then laid himself out, arms outstretched, the weight in his chest pinning him to the floor. “I couldn’t abandon her. Them. But if anything done this day wasn’t of necessity, rather for my own need . . . search me, forgive me.”

  The curtains billowed. Air moved across him head to heels, gentle as the brush of fingers. As we forgive our debtors.

  His hands fisted in resistance, but there was no mistaking the Scripture that had come into his mind. Nor what it bid him do. He summoned the image of his uncle, withdrawn in rejection of the bairn . . . because all that was embracing in him had died years ago, with his son. With Aidan. Hadn’t he caused it to be chiseled into granite, for all to read? The light of mine eyes. Had Gabriel died this day, had Seona not survived, what would Ian have seen in his uncle’s eyes? A reflection of his own gutted soul?

  He let bitterness against his uncle go. What lay within his power was his own heart and his choices in the coming days.

  “If it be possible—I ask to be near the child, to see him grow. See the lad he makes. And the man.” He paused, drawing strength, as the tears pooled beneath his cheek. “But be they near to me or far, for as long as I have breath, they shall be mine to see whole and lacking naught in my power to provide. Mine to shield. Mine to love.”

  If only in the silence of his soul.

  When he opened his eyes, light streamed through the west-facing window like liquid gold. His heart thumped steady against the floor. His thoughts drifted back over the hours past, fingering the indelible moments like strung beads, anxiety burnished away in prayer. The future would be there to meet them, with its paths to choose. For now, that moment, he knew what he must do.

  Ian rose, washed, and finished dressing. He combed and bound his hair. Peering into the glass above the basin, he tied his neckcloth. Then he slipped the arrowhead into a coat pocket and went to find his wife.

  “Mama Josephine professes herself positively shocked at his conduct.” Rosalyn’s disparaging tone carried from the dining room. Ian halted in the adjacent warming room as she pitched her voice higher, mimicking Josephine Pryce. “‘I would think he’d show more concern for the mother of his heir than a half-breed got on a slave.’ We’ll see what everyone has to say once what Cousin Ian has done today makes the rounds. Imagine, attending her himself—under a tree—then standing half-naked before Papa Hugh and claiming the child. He really is a perfect savage, your husband.”

  “He’s nothing of the kind.” Judith’s voice was surprisingly firm. “I’m sure it was a terrifying ordeal.”

  Lucinda sighed. “How much simpler it would be had the plague of a girl died of it.”

  “Mama!”

  “Did the thought never cross your mind, Judith? Still, your stepfather now has an iron hold on his nephew.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She means,” Ian said, stepping into the doorway, “that Gabriel is your stepfather’s property, as well as my son.”

  Rosalyn nearly dropped the glass raised to her lips, but Lucinda’s composure went unruffled. “Listening at doors again, Mr. Cameron?”

  Ignoring the pair, Ian extended a hand to Judith. “Will ye come with me?”

  “Your wife hasn’t finished her supper,” Lucinda said coolly.

  Though Judith’s plate was hardly touched, she pushed back her chair and rose awkwardly to her feet. “Even so, Mama, I am quite ready to be excused.”

  “I had no idea my sister meant to visit today.” Judith shut the door and faced him, pale with apprehension. “How much did you hear?”

  “Enough.” He moved numbly to the bed, kicked off his shoes and swung his feet onto the counterpane, then patted the space beside him. “Come rest with me.”

  Judith sat gingerly on the edge of the tick.

  “That won’t do,” he said and slid an arm beneath her knees to bring her full onto the bed. He removed her shoes and dropped them onto the floor with his. Lying down again, he rested his head on the slope of her belly. Her heart was tripping like a rabbit’s.

  “Can ye feel it moving now—the bairn?”

  “If I lie still for a bit.” A tentative hand rested on the crown of his head. The room was warm, despite the open window. Sweat sprang up beneath her fingers but he didn’t pull away. “Ian? What was it like?”

  The bed hangings moved in a current of air. He knew what she asked, but words eluded him.

  “A miracle?” she said.

  He drew an audible breath, minding their long-ago exchange about Cecily Reynold’s childbed. He’d made her blush and been amused at the doing of it. “Aye, a miracle.”

  As if on cue, he felt a nudge against his cheek.

  “There. Did you feel it?”

  “I did.” He waited, but the child didn’t stir again. After a moment he heard himself speaking. “I was in the field when I saw her, away down at the creek. I felt . . . a compulsion, I guess, to go and speak with her. I don’t know by whose leave she came to be there, but when I realized her travail had come, I thought to bring her back—she wanted Lily, not me—but the storm broke over us.”

  He told the rest quickly, while Judith’s pulse beat beneath his ear. When she didn’t speak at once, he was struck anew by the stillness of her, the composed patience he’d once taken for lack of substance, but which he knew now as a capstone over a depth he’d only begun to fathom.

  The child stirred again. He closed his eyes, reaching out to it, suddenly longing for the connection.

 
Sometime later Judith shifted. He roused, confused as to where—and with whom—he lay. The room had dimmed. He’d slept through the sun’s setting, dreaming of water and willows.

  He raised his head and looked at his wife. She was awake. She’d been watching him sleep. “Shall I light a candle? Read for a bit?”

  “Could we stay like this a little longer?” she asked.

  “Am I not heavy on ye?”

  “No. I like it.”

  The summer hangings swayed like willow boughs in the watery dusk. He drew breath, forcing it past the ache. “Then we’ll stay.”

  Beneath his ear her heartbeat quickened. He felt a tug at the base of his neck, then the spill of his hair as the ribbon he’d tied it with came loose. Judith’s fingers combed the damp strands.

  Memory of sun-browned fingers, of green eyes and tumbled curls, took him strongly. Nothing but a veil as thin as the hangings lay between. He could snatch it aside, let his heart go winging . . .

  “It was me.”

  Judith’s words called him back to the darkening room. “What was?”

  “I told Seona she could go down to the creek today.”

  She spoke as if in apology, yet gratitude burned the backs of his eyes, a gratitude he couldn’t express, for entwined in the joy, the grief, and the cleansing was the indelible memory of oneness. Fleeting, bittersweet. Released.

  Judith must have felt him quiver, though he tried to suppress it, face pressed against their unborn child. Her fingers slid down his temple, brushing the moisture on his cheek. “Ian—I’m so sorry for your pain.”

  “Aye,” he said, when he could speak. “But I more for yours.”

  “He’s perfect, Mama. Don’t you think so?” Seona watched from her cot as Lily knelt on a pallet, changing Gabriel’s first clout.

  “First of ten thousand,” she’d said, whipping a rag over his nethers in time to stem an arcing fountain, then laughing. “Little man’s already showing off.”

  Seona was warm, a pleasant dew of sweat on her skin. Her clean shift clung to dips and curves that were strange now, flaccid, no longer taut and round. She watched Lily brush Gabriel’s cheek with a knuckle. “You mind me being that tiny, Mama?”

  “’Course I do, girl-baby.”

  She winced as pain stabbed through her—her insides going back to their rightful shape. “Was it hard, birthing me?”

  “The easiest childbed’s a job of work. Ye know that. But I forgot the pain once I held ye.”

  Lily gave Gabriel, snug in his clean clout, into Seona’s reaching hands. She laid him on the cot where she could stare at his face by tallow-light.

  “I ain’t forgot yet,” she said softly. She minded it in flashes. In every flash was Ian, carrying her, kneeling over her, gripping her arms while she split asunder. Holding the messy little body of their son. His long limbs wrapping her like the sweetest of blankets. The smell of him on her skin.

  She felt the push of darker thoughts, hovering like the muggy night air, and saw in Lily’s eyes the grief she longed to hold at bay. An instant before she burst into tears, Esther popped up in the cabin doorway.

  “Hey, Seona. Miss Lily. Can I see that baby?”

  Instead of a sob, laughter broke in Seona’s throat. “Come on, then.”

  Esther knelt by the cot as Seona loosened Gabriel’s swaddling. “He’s so white!” the girl blurted, then covered her mouth and giggled. “Well, pink really—but he’s still perty, with them tiny fingers and ears. He got ears like Mister Ian!” She bent over and cooed. “Look there, he done opened his eyes. You think they gonna be blue, Seona? What was it Mister Ian called him? Some angel name. Gabriel! Ga-a-abriel . . . you hear me talkin’ to you, baby?”

  Over Esther’s head Seona and Lily locked their gazes, hearts spilling over as abundantly as the girl’s words.

  41

  AUGUST 1794

  Outside John Reynold’s barn, Ian watched his wife engage in conversation with the womenfolk of a family newly settled in the area, while he communed in solitude with the corn, grown up to the door-yard like the previous summer. John came out of the barn, Robin bouncing in his arms, and strode over to him. “Before you go, Ian, we need to speak of Ruby.”

  Guilt had smote him the moment he’d arrived and set eyes on the woman. “Forgive me, John. Until today she’d gone clean out of my reckoning.”

  “You’ve had your distractions of late,” John allowed.

  “Still, I’ll write the petition today. See her manumitted. Meantime tell me what’s needed and—”

  John held up the hand not busy with his fidgety son. “I’d hoped you hadn’t written it, actually. Ruby doesn’t wish to be manumitted. Not yet.”

  Taken aback, Ian spotted his nominal slave, appearing more robust than when last he’d seen her, herding the Allen children and those of the new family toward a plate of sweet rolls set out on the cabin porch. “Why not?”

  “Seems she had two sons your uncle sold?”

  “Sammy and Eli. What of them?”

  “She’s insisting her boys will come back to Mountain Laurel to find her, one day.”

  “Has she reason to think so?”

  “Not that I can ascertain. But she believes it. With all her heart.”

  Ian frowned, watching the woman. “Has she spoken of what happened before? With my cousin and her man, Esau?”

  “No, though Cecily’s tried every charm in her considerable arsenal to coax it from her.” Robin kicked, wanting down. His father gave his clouted bottom a genial smack. “Still yourself, rascal. If I let you run amok while your mother’s busy, we’ll both get an earful of French.”

  Robin pouted, then relented, giggling, when John poked his belly. “He’s barely toddling without a finger to clutch,” he told Ian, “but thinks he should be racing about with the big lads.”

  Ian watched the interplay, arms aching for his own son. He spotted Judith again, but she wasn’t showing signs of leave-taking. Just as well. At least here he had distractions.

  “Ian, you look as if you’ve the weight of the Carraways on your shoulders.”

  A little taken aback, he searched his neighbor’s solicitous gaze. “Ye know the weight, John. Ye just preached me a sermon on it, aye?”

  “Did I?”

  Ian quoted the words still seared across his heart. “‘No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.’”

  “I was speaking of serving God rather than mammon.”

  “Not about women?” Ian blurted, then ran a hand over his mouth, face ablaze.

  John didn’t laugh. He studied him, head cocked in that listening way of his. “True. Other things than monetary gain can crowd the Almighty from our hearts. Or those He means to be our first loves on this earth.”

  “Didn’t ye speak on that?”

  “Not directly. But if you heard it, receive it from the Lord.”

  “And do what with it? He’s my son. And she . . .” Ian dropped his voice, though no one was nearby. “What do I do?”

  John shifted Robin and put a hand to Ian’s shoulder. “The Almighty will show you in His time. When He does, you’ll know. And it will be right. For everyone.”

  “How can ye be sure?”

  “Because, brother, He does all things well. Leave it in His hands.”

  Despite the ache, Ian felt a smile tug his lips. He liked this man calling him brother. “It’s more what I might do that worries me. What if I cannot obey?”

  John’s eyes warmed. “I’ve no fear on that score, in no small part because you do. So tell me, how is Seona? And your son?”

  “They’re well—far as I know. I haven’t seen Gabriel save from a distance since the day he was born.” But to say his name aloud to this friend who’d stood by him through it all was a small healing.

  “That’s nearly a month.” John’s eyes held compassion. Ian thought he meant to speak.

  Before he could do so, Judi
th was there, ready to depart.

  She was silent on the walk home, despite his efforts at conversation. They paused at the back door, Ian intending to go to his shop. For solitude to pray. To wait.

  “Ye’ll have a wee rest, then?” he asked her.

  “I think so.” Judith’s hand went to the swell of her belly. She was due in a little over a month yet was smaller than Seona had been that far along.

  As if summoned by his thoughts, Seona stepped from the kitchen, Gabriel in her arms. Down the rose-scented breezeway her eyes locked with his. Then she stole a glance at Judith and slipped off to the side. Leaving a heavy silence behind.

  Judith put a hand to his arm. “I heard what you said to Mr. Reynold. I’ve prayed on it the whole way home. I can’t bear to watch your heart break, Ian. Go and see your son. You’ve my blessing to do so.”

  He covered her hand with his, as if to trap the words—until he could believe she’d said them. He searched her eyes for indecision.

  Either he will hate the one, and love the other . . .

  “I trust you, Ian.” Judith slipped her hand from beneath his and went into the house.

  Seona had settled it with herself that first Sabbath day Ian came to visit Gabriel. She wouldn’t stay to spy. She’d hand him over so Ian could sit on the cabin stoop and hold him on his knees or take him off walking like he’d done this warm September day. She’d go on with whatever she was doing—usually scrubbing out clouts, folding clouts, or hanging clouts on the line—and let them have their time. But today, when her breasts grew heavy with the need to feed her baby and still Ian didn’t bring him back, she left the washhouse to go looking.