There were also really excellent reasons for staying the hell away from the vicinity of Sergeant Murchison, who seemed definitely the type to bear a grudge. And then there was Farquard Campbell and the whole waiting web of planters and Regulators, slaves and politics … No, I could see quite well why Jamie mightn’t want to go back to such entanglement and complication, to say nothing of the looming fact of the coming war. At the same time, I was fairly sure that none of those reasons accounted for his decision.
“It’s not just that you don’t want to go back to River Run, is it?” I leaned back against him, feeling his warmth as a contrast to the coolness of the evening breeze. The season had not yet turned; it was still late summer, and the air was rich with the sun-roused scents of leaf and berry, but so high in the mountains, the nights turned cold.
I felt the small rumble of a laugh in his chest, and warm breath brushed my ear.
“Is it so plain, then?”
“Plain enough.” I turned in his arms, and rested my forehead against his, so our eyes were inches apart. His were a very deep blue, the same color as the evening sky in the notch of the mountains.
“Owl,” I said.
He laughed, startled, and blinked as he pulled back, long auburn lashes sweeping briefly down.
“What?”
“You lose,” I explained. “It’s a game called ‘owl.’ First person to blink loses.”
“Oh.” He took hold of my ears by the lobes and drew me gently back, forehead to forehead. “Owl, then. Ye do have eyes like an owl, have ye noticed?”
“No,” I said. “Can’t say I have.”
“All clear and gold—and verra wise.”
I didn’t blink.
“Tell me then—why we’re staying.”
He didn’t blink either, but I felt his chest rise under my hand, as he took a deep breath.
“How shall I tell ye what it is, to feel the need of a place?” he said softly. “The need of snow beneath my shoon. The breath of the mountains, breathing their own breath in my nostrils as God gave breath to Adam. The scrape of rock under my hand, climbing, and the sight of the lichens on it, enduring in the sun and the wind.”
His breath was gone and he breathed again, taking mine. His hands were linked behind my head, holding me, face-to-face.
“If I am to live as a man, I must have a mountain,” he said simply. His eyes were open wide, searching mine for understanding.
“Will ye trust me, Sassenach?” he said. His nose pressed against mine, but his eyes didn’t blink. Neither did mine.
“With my life,” I said.
I felt his lips smile, an inch from mine.
“And with your heart?”
“Always,” I whispered, closed my eyes, and kissed him.
* * *
And so it was arranged. Myers would go back to Cross Creek, deliver Jamie’s instructions to Duncan, assure Jocasta of our welfare, and procure as much in the way of stores as the remnants of our money would finance. If there was time before the first snowfall, he would return with supplies; if not, in the spring. Ian would stay; his help would be needed to build the cabin, and to help with the hunting.
Give us this day our daily bread, I thought, pushing through the wet bushes that edged the creek, and deliver us not into temptation.
We were reasonably safe from temptation, though; for good or ill, we wouldn’t see River Run again for at least a year. As for the daily bread, that had been coming through as dependably as manna, so far; at this time of year, there was an abundance of ripe nuts, fruits and berries, which I collected as industriously as any squirrel. In two months, though, when the trees grew bare and the streams froze, I hoped God might still hear us, above the howl of the winter wind.
The stream was noticeably swelled by the rain, the water maybe a foot higher than it had been yesterday. I knelt, groaning slightly as my back unkinked; sleeping on the ground exaggerated all the normal small morning stiffnesses. I splashed cold water on my face, swished it through my mouth, drank from cupped hands, and splashed again, blood tingling through my cheeks and fingers.
When I looked up, face dripping, I saw two deer drinking from a pool on the other side, a little way upstream from me. I stayed very still, not to disturb them, but they showed no alarm at my presence. In the shadow of the birches, they were the same soft blue as the rocks and trees, little more than shadows themselves, but each line of their bodies etched in perfect delicacy, like a Japanese painting done in ink.
Then all of a sudden, they were gone. I blinked, and blinked again. I hadn’t seen them turn or run—and in spite of their ethereal beauty, I was sure I hadn’t been imagining them; I could see the dark imprints of their hooves in the mud of the far bank. But they were gone.
I didn’t see or hear a thing, but the hair rose suddenly on my body, instinct rippling up arms and neck like electric current. I froze, nothing moving but my eyes. Where was it, what was it?
The sun was up; the tops of the trees were visibly green, and the rocks began to glow as their colors warmed to life. But the birds were silent; nothing moved, save the water.
It was no more than six feet away from me, half visible behind a bush. The sound of its lapping was lost in the noise of the stream. Then the broad head lifted, and a tufted ear swiveled toward me, though I had made no noise. Could it hear me breathing?
The sun had reached it, lit it into tawny life, glowed in gold eyes that stared into mine with a preternatural calm. The breeze had shifted; I could smell it now; a faint acrid cat-tang, and the stronger scent of blood. Ignoring me, it lifted a dark-blotched paw and licked fastidiously, eyes slitted in hygienic preoccupation.
It rubbed the paw several times over its ear, then stretched luxuriously in the patch of new sun—my God, it must be six feet long!—and sauntered off, full belly swaying.
I hadn’t consciously been afraid; pure instinct had frozen me in place, and sheer amazement—at the cat’s beauty, as well as its nearness—had kept me that way. With its going, though, my central nervous system thawed out at once, and promptly went to pieces. I didn’t gibber, but did shake considerably; it was several minutes before I managed to get off my knees and stand up.
My hands shook so that I dropped the kettle three times in filling it. Trust him, he’d said, did I trust him? Yes, I did—and a fat lot of good that would do, unless he happened to be standing directly in front of me next time.
But for this time—I was alive. I stood still, eyes closed, breathing in the pure morning air. I could feel every single atom of my body, blood racing to carry round the sweet fresh stuff to every cell and muscle fiber. The sun touched my face, and warmed the cold skin to a lovely glow.
I opened my eyes to a dazzle of green and yellow and blue; day had broken. All the birds were singing now.
I went up the path toward the clearing, resisting the impulse to look behind me.
* * *
Jamie and Ian had felled several tall, slender pines the day before, cut them into twelve-foot lengths, and rolled and wrestled and tumbled the logs downhill. Now they lay stacked at the edge of the small clearing, rough bark glistening black with wet.
Jamie was pacing out a line, stamping down the wet grass, when I came back with the kettle filled with water. Ian had a fire started on the top of a large flat stone—he having learned from Jamie the canny trick of keeping a handful of dry kindling always in one’s sporran, along with flint and steel.
“This will be a wee shed,” Jamie was saying, frowning at the ground in concentration. “We’ll build this first, for we can sleep in it, if it should rain again, but it needna be so well built as the cabin—it’ll give us something to practice on, eh, Ian?”
“What is it for—beyond practice?” I asked. He looked up and smiled at me.
“Good morning, Sassenach. Did ye sleep well?”
“Of course not,” I said. “What’s the shed for?”
“Meat,” he said. “We’ll dig a shallow pit at the back, and fill it
wi’ embers, to smoke what we can for keeping. And make a rack for drying—Ian’s seen the Indians do it, to make what they call jerky. We must have a safe place where beasts canna get at our food.”
This seemed a sound idea; particularly in view of the sort of beasts in the area. My only doubts were regarding the smoking. I’d seen it done in Scotland, and knew that smoking meat required a certain amount of attention; someone had to be at hand to keep the fire from burning too high or going out altogether, had to turn the meat regularly, and baste it with fat to avoid scorching and drying.
I had no difficulty in seeing who was going to be nominated for this task. The only trouble was that if I didn’t manage to do it right, we’d all die of ptomaine poisoning.
“Right,” I said, without enthusiasm. Jamie caught my tone and grinned at me.
“That’s the first shed, Sassenach,” he said. “The second one’s yours.”
“Mine?” I perked up a bit at that.
“For your wee herbs and bits of plants. They do take up a bit of room, as I recall.” He pointed across the clearing, the light of builder’s mania in his eye. “And just there—that’s where the cabin will be; where we’ll live through the winter.”
Rather to my surprise, they had the walls of the first shed erected by the end of the second day, crudely roofed with cut branches until time should permit the cutting of shingles for a proper roof. The walls were made of slender notched logs, still with the bark on, and with noticeable chinks and gaps between them. Still, it was large enough to sleep the three of us and Rollo comfortably, and with a fire burning in a stone-lined pit at one end, it was quite cozy inside.
Enough branches had been removed from the roof to leave a smoke hole; I could see the evening stars, as I cuddled against Jamie and listened to him criticize his workmanship.
“Look at that,” he said crossly, lifting his chin at the far corner. “I’ve gone and laid in a crooked pole, and it’s put the whole of that line off the straight.”
“I don’t imagine the deer carcasses will care,” I murmured. “Here, let’s see that hand.”
“And the rooftree’s a good six inches lower at the one end than the other,” he went on, ignoring me, but letting me have his left hand. Both hands were smoothly callused, but I could feel the new roughnesses of scrapes and cuts, and so many small splinters that his palm was prickly to the touch.
“You feel like a porcupine,” I said, brushing my hand over his fingers. “Here, move closer to the fire, so I can see to pull them out.”
He moved obligingly, crawling around Ian, who—freshly de-splintered himself—had fallen asleep with his head pillowed on Rollo’s furry side. Unfortunately, the change of position exposed new weaknesses of construction to Jamie’s critical eye.
“You’ve never built a shed out of logs before, have you?” I interrupted his denunciation of the doorway, neatly tweaking a large splinter out of his thumb with my tweezers.
“Ow! No, but—”
“And you built the bloody thing in two days, with nothing but a felling ax and a knife, for God’s sake! There’s not a nail in it! Why ought you to expect it to look like Buckingham Palace?”
“I’ve never seen Buckingham Palace,” he said, rather mildly. He paused. “I do take your point, though, Sassenach.”
“Good.” I bent closely over his palm, squinting to make out the small dark streaks of splinters, trapped beneath the skin.
“I suppose it willna fall down, at least,” he said, after a longer pause.
“Shouldn’t think so.” I dabbed a cloth to the neck of the brandy bottle, swabbed his hand with it, then turned my attention to his right hand.
He didn’t speak for a time. The fire crackled softly to itself, flaring up now and then as a draft reached in between the logs to tickle it.
“The house is going to be on the high ridge,” he said suddenly. “Where the strawberries grow.”
“Will it?” I murmured. “The cabin, you mean? I thought that was going to be at the side of the clearing.” I’d taken out as many splinters as I could; those that were left were so deeply embedded that I would have to wait for them to work their way nearer the surface.
“No, not the cabin. A fine house,” he said softly. He leaned back against the rough logs, looking across the fire, out through the chinks to the darkness beyond. “Wi’ a staircase, and glass windows.”
“That will be grand.” I laid the tweezers back in their slot, and closed the box.
“Wi’ high ceilings, and a doorway high enough I shall never bump my heid going in.”
“That will be lovely.” I leaned back beside him, and rested my head on his shoulder. Somewhere in the far distance, a wolf howled. Rollo lifted his head with a soft wuff!, listened for a moment, then lay down again with a sigh.
“With a stillroom for you, and a study for me, lined with shelves for my books.”
“Mmmm.” At the moment, he possessed one book—The Natural History of North Carolina, published 1733, brought along as guide and reference.
The fire was burning low again, but neither of us moved to add more wood. The embers would warm us through the night, to be rekindled with the dawn.
Jamie put an arm around my shoulders, and tilting sideways, took me with him to lie curled together on the thick layer of fallen leaves that was our couch.
“And a bed,” I said. “You could build a bed, I expect?”
“As fine as any in Buckingham Palace,” he said.
* * *
Myers, bless his kindly heart and faithful nature, did return within the month—bringing not only three pack-mules laden with tools, small furnishings, and necessities such as salt, but also Duncan Innes.
“Here?” Innes looked interestedly over the tiny homestead that had begun to take shape on the strawberry-covered ridge. We had two sturdy sheds now, plus a split-railed penfold in which to keep the horses and any other stock we might acquire.
At the moment, our total stock consisted of a small white piglet, which Jamie had obtained from a Moravian settlement thirty miles away, exchanging for it a bag of sweet yams I had gathered and a bundle of willow-twig brooms I had made. Rather too small for the penfold, it had so far been living in the shed with us, where it had become fast friends with Rollo. I wasn’t quite so fond of it myself.
“Aye. It’s decent land, with plenty of water; there are springs in the wood, and the creek all through.”
Jamie guided Duncan to a spot from which the western slopes below the ridge were visible; there were natural breaks, or “coves” in the forest, now overgrown with tangles of wild grass, but ultimately suitable for cultivation.
“D’ye see?” He gestured over the slope, which ran down gently from the ridge to a small bluff, where a line of sycamores marked the distant river’s edge. “There’s room there for at least thirty homesteads, to start. We’d need to clear a deal of forest, but there’s space enough to begin. Any crofter worth his salt could feed his family from a garden plot, the soil’s so rich.”
Duncan had been a fisherman, not a farmer, but he nodded obediently, eyes fixed on the vista as Jamie peopled it with future houses.
“I’ve paced it out,” Jamie was saying, “though it will have to be surveyed properly as soon as may be. But I’ve the description of it in my head—did ye by chance bring ink and paper?”
“Aye, we did. And a few other things, as well.” Duncan smiled at me, his long, rather melancholy face transformed by the expression. “Miss Jo’s sent a feather bed, which she thought might not come amiss.”
“A feather bed? Really? How wonderful!” I immediately dismissed any ungenerous thoughts I had ever harbored about Jocasta Cameron. While Jamie had built us an excellent, sturdy bedstead framed in oakwood, with the bottom ingeniously made of laced rope, I had had nothing to lay on it save cedar branches, which were fragrant but unpleasantly lumpy.
My thoughts of luxuriant wallowing were interrupted by the emergence from the woods of Ian and Myers, the latt
er with a brace of squirrels hung from his belt. Ian proudly presented me with an enormous black object, which on closer inspection proved to be a turkey, fat from gorging on the autumn grains.
“Boy’s got a nice eye, Mrs. Claire,” said Myers, nodding approvingly. “Those be wily birds, turkeys. Even the Indians don’t take ’em easy.”
It was early for Thanksgiving, but I was delighted with the bird, which would be the first substantial item in our larder. So was Jamie, though his pleasure lay more in the thing’s tail feathers, which would provide him with a good supply of quills.
“I must write to the Governor,” he explained over dinner, “to say that I shall be taking up his offer, and to give the particulars of the land.” He picked up a chunk of cake and bit into it absently.
“Do watch out for nutshells,” I said, a little nervously. “You don’t want to break a tooth.”
Dinner consisted of trout grilled over the fire, yams baked in it, wild plums, and a very crude cake made of flour from hickory nuts, ground up in my mortar. We had been living mostly on fish and what edible vegetation I could scrounge, Ian and Jamie having been too busy with the building to take time to hunt. I rather hoped that Myers would see fit to stay for a bit—long enough to bag a deer or some other nice large source of protein. A winter of dried fish seemed a little daunting.
“Dinna fash, Sassenach,” Jamie murmured through a mouthful of cake, and smiled at me. “It’s good.” He turned his attention to Duncan.
“When we’ve done with eating, Duncan, you’ll maybe walk wi’ me to the river, and choose your place?”
Innes’s face went blank, then flushed with a mixture of pleasure and dismay.
“My place? Land, ye mean, Mac Dubh?” Involuntarily, he hunched the shoulder on the side with the missing arm.
“Aye, land.” Jamie speared a hot yam with a sharpened stick, and began to peel it carefully with his fingers, not looking at Innes. “I shall be needing you to act as my agent, Duncan—if ye will. It’s only right ye should be paid. Now, what I am thinking—if ye should find it fair, mind—is that I shall make the claim for a homestead in your name, but as ye willna be here to work it, Ian and I will see to putting a bit of your land to corn, and to building a wee croft there. Then come time, you shall have a place to settle, if ye like, and a bit of corn put by. Will that suit ye, do ye think?”
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