Her chin drove into her chest; she couldn’t breathe. And still he forced her head down. Her knees slid apart, her thighs forced wide by the downward pressure.
“Stop!” she grunted. It hurt to force sound through her constricted windpipe. “Gd’s sk, stp!”
The relentless pressure paused, but did not ease. She could feel him there behind her, an inexorable, inexplicable force. She reached back with her free hand, groping for something to claw, something to hit or bend, but there was nothing.
“I could break your neck,” he said, very quietly. The weight of his arm left her shoulders, though the twisted arm still held her bent forward, hair loose and tumbled, nearly touching the floor. A hand settled on her neck. She could feel thumb and index fingers on either side, pressing lightly on her arteries. He squeezed, and black spots danced before her eyes.
“I could kill you, so.”
The hand left her neck, and touched her, deliberately, knee and shoulder, cheek and chin, emphasizing her helplessness. She jerked her head away, not letting him touch the wetness, not wanting him to feel her tears of rage. Then the hand pressed sudden and brutal on the small of her back. She made a small, choked sound and arched her back to keep her arm from breaking, thrusting out her hips backward, legs spread to keep her balance.
“I could use ye as I would,” he said, and there was a coldness in his voice. “Could you stop me, Brianna?”
She felt as though she would suffocate with rage and shame.
“Answer me.” The hand took her by the neck again, and squeezed.
“No!”
She was free. So suddenly released, she pitched forward onto her face, barely getting one hand down in time to save herself.
She lay on the straw, panting and sobbing. There was a loud whuffle near her head—Magdalen, roused by the noise, leaning out of her stall to investigate. Slowly, painfully, she raised herself to a sitting position.
He was standing over her, arms folded.
“Damn you!” she gasped. She slammed a hand down in the hay. “God, I want to kill you!”
He stood quite still, looking down at her.
“Aye,” he said quietly. “But ye can’t, can you?”
She stared up at him, not understanding. His eyes were intent on hers, not angry, not mocking. Waiting.
“You can’t,” he repeated, with emphasis.
And then realization came, flooding down her aching arms to her bruised fists.
“Oh, God,” she said. “No. I can’t. I couldn’t. Even if I’d fought him … I couldn’t.”
Quite suddenly she began to cry, the knots inside her slipping loose, the weights shifting, lifting, as a blessed relief spread through her body. It hadn’t been her fault. If she had fought with all her strength—as she had fought just now—
“Couldn’t,” she said, and swallowed hard, gasping for air. “I couldn’t have stopped him. I kept thinking, if only I’d fought harder … but it wouldn’t have mattered. I couldn’t have stopped him.”
A hand touched her face, big and very gentle.
“You’re a fine, braw lassie,” he whispered. “But a lassie, nonetheless. Would ye fret your heart out and think yourself a coward because ye couldna fight off a lion wi’ your bare hands? It’s the same. Dinna be daft, now.”
She wiped the back of her hand under her nose, and sniffed deeply.
He put a hand under her elbow and helped her up, his strength no longer either threat or mockery, but unutterable comfort. Her knees stung, where she had scraped them on the ground. Her legs wobbled, but she made it to the haypile, where he let her sit down.
“You could just have told me, you know,” she said. “That it wasn’t my fault.”
He smiled faintly.
“I did. Ye couldna believe me, though, unless ye knew for yourself.”
“No. I guess not.” A profound but peaceful weariness had settled on her like a blanket. This time she had no urge to tear it off.
She watched, feeling too limp to move, as he wetted a cloth from the trough and wiped her face, straightened her twisted skirts, and poured out a drink for her.
When he handed her the freshly filled cup of cider, though, she laid a hand on his arm. Bone and muscle were solid, warm under her hand.
“You could have fought back. But you didn’t.”
He laid a big hand over hers, squeezed and let it go.
“No, I didna fight,” he said quietly. “I gave my word—for your mother’s life.” His eyes met hers squarely, neither ice nor sapphire now, but clear as water. “I dinna regret it.”
He took her by the shoulders, and eased her down onto the piled hay.
“Do ye rest a bit, a leannan.”
She lay down, but reached up to touch him as he knelt by her.
“Is it true—that I won’t forget?”
He paused for a moment, hand on her hair.
“Aye, that’s true,” he said softly. “But it’s true, too, that it willna matter after a time.”
“Won’t it?” She was too tired even to wonder what he might mean by this. She felt almost weightless; strangely remote, as though she no longer inhabited her troublesome body. “Even if I’m not strong enough to kill him?”
A clear cold draft from the open door cut through the warm fog of smoke, making all the animals stir. The brindled cow shifted her weight in sudden irritation and let out a low-throated mwaaah, not of distress so much as of querulous complaint.
She felt her father glance at the cow before turning back to her.
“You’re a verra strong woman, a bheanachd,” he said at last, very softly.
“I’m not strong. You just proved I’m not—”
His hand on her shoulder stopped her.
“That’s not what I mean.” He stopped, thinking, his hand smoothing her hair, over and over.
“She was ten when our mother died, Jenny was,” he said at last. “It was the day after the funeral when I came into the kitchen and found her kneeling on a stool, to be tall enough to stir the bowl on the table.
“She was wearing my mother’s apron,” he said softly, “folded up under the arms, and the strings wrapped twice about her waist. I could see she’d been weepin’, like I had, for her face was all stained and her eyes red. But she just went on stirring, staring down into the bowl, and she said to me, ‘Go and wash, Jamie; I’ll have supper for you and Da directly.’ ”
His eyes closed altogether, and he swallowed once. Then he opened them, and looked down at her again.
“Aye, I ken fine how strong women are,” he said quietly. “And you’re strong enough for what must be done, m’ annsachd—believe me.”
He stood up then, and went to the cow. It had risen to its feet and was moving restlessly in a small circle, swaying and shuffling on its tether. He caught it by the tether rope, gentled it with hands and words, made his way behind the heifer, frowning in concentration. She saw him turn his head and look, to check his dirk, then turn back, murmuring.
Not a loving butcher, no. A surgeon in his way, like her mother. From this odd plateau of remoteness, she could see how much her parents—so wildly different in temperament and manner—were alike in this one respect; that odd ability to mingle compassion with sheer ruthlessness.
But they were different even in that, she thought; Claire could hold life and death together in her hands, and yet preserve herself, hold aloof; a doctor must go on living, for the sake of her patients, if not for her own sake. Jamie would be ruthless toward himself, as much as—or more than—he would be to anyone else.
He had thrown off his plaid; now he unfastened his shirt, with no haste but neither with any wasted motion. He pulled the pale linen over his head and laid it neatly aside, returning to his watching post at the heifer’s tail, ready to assist.
A long ripple ran down the cow’s rounded side, and the torchlight glimmered white on the tiny knot of a scar over his heart. Uncover his nakedness? He would strip himself to the bone, if he thought it necessary.
And—a much less comforting thought—if he thought it necessary, he would do the same to her, without a moment’s hesitation.
He had a hand at the base of the cow’s tail, speaking to it in Gaelic, soothing, encouraging. She felt as though she could almost grasp the sense of his words—but not quite.
All might be well, or it might not. But whatever happened, Jamie Fraser would be there, fighting. It was a comfort.
* * *
Jamie paused by the upper fence of the cowpen, on the rise above the house. It was late, and he was more than tired, but his mind kept him wakeful. The calving completed, he had carried Brianna down to the cabin—she sleeping sound as a babe in his arms—and then gone out again, to seek relief in the solitude of the night.
His shins ached where she had kicked him, and there were deep bruises on his thighs; she was amazingly powerful for a woman. None of that troubled him in the least; in fact, he felt an odd and unexpected pride in this evidence of her strength. She will be all right, he thought. Surely she will.
There was more hope than confidence behind this thought. Yet it was on his own account that he was wakeful, and he felt at once troubled and foolish at the knowledge. He had thought himself thoroughly healed, old hurts so far behind him that they could safely be dismissed from mind. He had been wrong about that, and it unsettled him to find just how close to the surface the buried memories lay.
If he were to find rest tonight, they would have to be exhumed; the ghosts raised in order to lay them. Well, he had told the lass it took strength. He stopped, gripping the fence.
The rustle of night sounds faded slowly from his mind as he waited, listening for the voice. He had not heard it for years, had thought never to hear it again—but he had already heard its echo once tonight; seen the blaze of anger’s phantom in his daughter’s eyes, and felt its flames singe his own heart.
Better to call it forth and face it boldly than let it lie in ambush. If he could not face his own demons, he could not conquer hers. He touched a bruise on his thigh, finding an odd comfort in the soreness.
No one dies of it, he’d said. Not you; not me.
The voice did not come at first; for a moment he hoped it would not—perhaps it had been long enough … but then it was there again, whispering in his ear as though it had never left, its insinuations a caress that burned his memory as once they had burned his skin.
“Gently at first,” it breathed. “Softly. Tender as though you were my infant son. Gently, but for so long you will forget there was a time I did not own your body.”
The night stood still around him, paused as time had paused so long before, poised on the edge of a gulf of dread, waiting. Waiting for the next words, known beforehand and expected, but nonetheless …
“And then,” the voice said, loving, “then I’ll hurt you very badly. And you will thank me, and ask for more.”
He stood quite still, face turned upward to the stars. Fought back the surge of fury as it murmured in his ear, the pulse of memory in his blood. Then made himself surrender, let it come. He trembled with remembered helplessness, and clenched his teeth in rage—but stared unblinking at the brightness of heaven overhead, invoking the names of the stars as the words of a prayer, abandoning himself to the vastness overhead as he sought to lose himself below.
Betelgeuse. Sirius. Orion. Antares. The sky is very large, and you are very small. Let the words wash through him, the voice and its memories pass over him, shivering his skin like the touch of a ghost, vanishing into darkness.
The Pleiades. Cassiopeia. Taurus. Heaven is wide, and you are very small. Dead, but none the less powerful for being dead. He spread his hands wide, gripping the fence—those were powerful, too. Enough to beat a man to death, enough to choke out a life. But even death was not enough to loose the bands of rage.
With great effort, he let go. Turned his hands palm upward, in gesture of surrender. He reached beyond the stars, searching. The words formed themselves quietly in his mind, by habit, so quietly he was not aware of them until he found them echoed in a whisper on his lips.
“ ‘… Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.’ ”
He breathed slowly, deeply. Seeking, struggling; struggling to let go. “ ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’ ”
Waited, in emptiness, in faith. And then grace came; the necessary vision; the memory of Jack Randall’s face in Edinburgh, stricken to bare bone by the knowledge of his brother’s death. And he felt once more the gift of pity, calm in its descent as the landing of a dove.
He closed his eyes, feeling the wounds bleed clean again as the succubus drew its claws from his heart.
He sighed, and turned his hands over, the rough wood of the fence comforting and solid under his palms. The demon was gone. He had been a man, Jack Randall; nothing more. And in the recognition of that common frail humanity, all power of past fear and pain vanished like smoke.
His shoulders slumped, relieved of their burden.
“Go in peace,” he whispered, to the dead man and himself. “You are forgiven.”
The night sounds had returned; the cry of a hunting cat rose sharp on the air, and rotting leaves crunched soft underfoot as he made his way back toward the house. The oiled hide that covered the window glowed golden in the dark, with the flame of the candle he had left burning in the hope of Claire’s return. His sanctuary.
He thought that he should perhaps have told Brianna all this, too—but no. She couldn’t understand what he had told her; he had had to show her, instead. How to tell her in words, then, what he had learned himself by pain and grace? That only by forgiveness could she forget—and that forgiveness was not a single act, but a matter of constant practice.
Perhaps she would find such grace herself; perhaps this unknown Roger Wakefield could be her sanctuary, as Claire had been his. He found his natural jealousy of the man dissolved in a passionate wish that Wakefield could indeed give her what he himself could not. Pray God he would come soon; pray God he would prove a decent man.
In the meantime, there were other matters to be dealt with. He walked slowly down the hill, oblivious to the wind that blew the kilt about his knees and billowed through his shirt and plaid. Things must be done here; winter was coming, and he could not leave his women here alone with only Ian to hunt for them and defend them. He couldn’t leave to search for Wakefield.
But if Wakefield did not come? Well, there were other ways; he would see Brianna and the child protected, one way or another. And at least his daughter was safe from the man who had harmed her. Permanently safe. He rubbed a hand across his face, smelling blood still on his skin from the calving.
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Yes, but what of those who trespass against the ones we love? He could not forgive on another’s behalf—and would not, if he could. But if not … how should he expect forgiveness in return?
Educated in the universities of Paris, confidant of kings and friend to philosophers, still he was a Highlander, born to blood and honor. The body of a warrior and the mind of a gentleman—and the soul of a barbarian, he thought wryly, to whom neither God’s nor mortal law stood more sacred than the ties of blood.
Yes, there was forgiveness; she must find a way to forgive the man, for her own sake. But he was a different matter.
“ ‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.’ ” He whispered it to himself. Then he looked up, away from the safe small glow of hearth and home, to the flaming glory of the stars above.
“The hell it is,” he said, aloud, shamed but defiant. It was ungrateful, he knew. And wrong, forbye. But there it was, and no use to lie either to God or to himself about it.
“The hell it is,” he repeated, louder. “And if I am damned for what I’ve done—then let it be! She is my daughter.”
He stood still for a moment, looking up, but there was no answer from the stars. He nodded once, as though in reply, and went on down the hill, the wind
cold behind him.
49
CHOICES
November 1769
I opened Daniel Rawlings’s box, and stared at the rows of bottles filled with the soft greens and browns of powdered root and leaf, the clear gold of distillations. There was nothing among the bottles to help. Very slowly, I lifted the covering that lay over the top compartment, over the blades.
I lifted out the scalpel with the curved edge, tasting cold metal in the back of my throat. It was a beautiful tool, sharp and sturdy, well balanced, part of my hand when I chose it to be. I balanced it on the end of my finger, letting it tilt gently back and forth.
I set it down, and picked up the long, thick root that lay on the table. Part of the stem was still attached, the remnants of leaves hanging limp and yellow. Only one. I had searched the woods for nearly two weeks, but it was so late in the year that the leaves of the smaller herbs had yellowed and fallen; it was impossible to recognize plants that were no more than brown sticks. I had found this one in a sheltered spot, a few of the distinctive fruits still clinging to its stalk. Blue cohosh, I was sure. But only one. It wasn’t enough.
I had none of the European herbs, no hellebore, no wormwood. I could perhaps get wormwood, though with some difficulty; it was used to flavor absinthe.
“And who makes absinthe in the backwoods of North Carolina?” I said aloud, picking up the scalpel again.
“No one that I know of.”
I jumped, and the blade jabbed deep into the side of my thumb. Blood spattered across the tabletop, and I snatched the corner of my apron, wadding the cloth hard against the wound in reflex.
“Christ, Sassenach! Are ye all right? I didna mean to startle ye.”
It didn’t hurt a great deal yet, but the shock of sudden injury made me bite my lower lip. Looking worried, Jamie took my wrist and lifted the edge of the wadded cloth. Blood promptly welled from the cut and ran down my hand, and he clamped the cloth back in place, squeezing tight.
“It’s all right; just a cut. Where did you come from? I thought you were up at the still.” I felt surprisingly shaky, perhaps from the shock.
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