Beyond the all-too-brief hours of their wedding night at the Gathering, this was the first—and only—time he’d had Brianna to himself, free from the insatiable demands of her offspring.
He caught the gleam of sun off metal as she lowered her arm. She was wearing his bracelet, he realized with a deep feeling of pleasure. He had given it to her when he’d asked her to marry him—a lifetime ago, in the freezing mists of a winter night in Inverness. It was a simple circlet of silver, engraved with a series of phrases in French. Je t’aime, it said: I love you. Un peu, beaucoup, passionnément, pas du tout: A little, a lot, passionately—not at all.
“Passionnément,” he murmured, envisioning her wearing nothing but his bracelet and her wedding ring.
First things first, though, he told himself, and picked up a fresh cartridge. After all, they had time.
Satisfied that his loading habits were on the way to being well established, if not yet rapid, Brianna finally allowed him to practice sighting, and at last, to shoot.
It took a dozen tries before he could hit the white square of the kerchief, but the sense of exultation he felt when a dark spot appeared suddenly near the edge of it had him reaching for a fresh cartridge before the smoke of the shot had dissipated. The sense of excited accomplishment took him through another dozen cartridges, scarcely noticing anything beyond the jerk and boom of the gun, the flash of powder, and the breathless instant of realization when he saw an occasional shot go home.
The kerchief hung in tatters by this time, and small clouds of whitish smoke floated over the meadow. The hawk had decamped at the sound of the first shot, along with all the other birds of the neighborhood, though the ringing in his ears sounded like a whole chorus of distant titmice.
He lowered the gun and looked at Brianna, grinning, whereupon she burst into laughter.
“You look like the end man in a minstrel show,” she said, the end of her nose going pink with amusement. “Here, clean up a little, and we’ll try shooting from farther away.”
She took the gun and handed him a clean handkerchief in exchange. He wiped black soot from his face, watching as she swiftly swabbed the barrel and reloaded. She straightened, then heard something; her head rose suddenly, eyes fixing on an oak across the meadow.
Ears still ringing from the roar of the gun, Roger had heard nothing. Swinging round, though, he caught a flicker of movement; a dark gray squirrel, poised on a pine branch at least thirty feet above the ground.
Without the slightest hesitation, Brianna raised the gun to her shoulder and seemed to fire in the same motion. The branch directly under the squirrel exploded in a shower of wood chips, and the squirrel, blown off its feet, plunged to the ground, bouncing off the springy evergreen branches as it went.
Roger ran across to the foot of the tree, but there was no need to hurry; the squirrel lay dead, limp as a furry rag.
“Good shot,” he said in congratulation, holding up the corpse as Brianna came to see. “But there’s not a mark on him—you must have scared him to death.”
Brianna gave him a level look from beneath her brows.
“If I’d meant to hit him, Roger, I’d have hit him,” she said, with a slight edge of reproof. “And if I had hit him, you’d be holding a handful of squirrel mush. You don’t aim right at something that size; you aim to hit just under them and knock them down. It’s called barking,” she explained, like a kindly kindergarten teacher correcting a slow pupil.
“Oh, aye?” He repressed a small sense of irritation. “Your father teach you that?”
She gave him a slightly odd look before replying.
“No, Ian did.”
He made a noncommittal noise in response to that. Ian was a point of awkwardness in the family. Brianna’s cousin had been well-loved, and he knew the whole family missed him. Still, they hesitated to speak of Young Ian before Roger, out of delicacy.
It hadn’t exactly been Roger’s fault that Ian Murray had remained with the Mohawk—but there was no denying that he had had a part in the matter. If he hadn’t killed that Indian …
Not for the first time, he pushed aside the confused memories of that night in Snaketown, but felt nonetheless the physical echoes; the quicksilver rush of terror through his belly and the judder of impact through the muscles of his forearms, as he drove the broken end of a wooden pole with all his strength into a shadow that had sprung up before him out of the shrieking dark. A very solid shadow.
Brianna had crossed the meadow, and set up another target; three irregular chunks of wood set on a stump the size of a dinner table. Without comment, he wiped his sweating hands on his breeks, and concentrated on the new challenge, but Ian Murray refused to leave his mind. He’d barely seen the man, but remembered him clearly; hardly more than a youth, tall and gangly, with a homely but appealing face.
He couldn’t think of Murray’s face without seeing it as he last had, scabbed with a line of freshly tattooed dots that looped across the cheeks and over the bridge of his nose. His face was brown from the sun, but the skin of his freshly plucked scalp had been a fresh and startling pink, naked as a baby’s bum and blotched red from the irritation of the plucking.
“What’s the matter?”
Brianna’s voice startled him, and the barrel jerked up as he fired, the shot going wild. Or wilder, rather. He hadn’t managed to hit any of the wooden blocks in a dozen shots.
He lowered the gun and turned to her. She was frowning, but didn’t look angry, only puzzled and concerned.
“What’s wrong?” she asked again.
He took a deep breath and rubbed his sleeve across his face, careless of the smears of black soot.
“Your cousin,” he said abruptly. “I’m sorry about him, Bree.”
Her face softened, and the worried frown eased a little.
“Oh,” she said. She laid a hand on his arm and drew near, so he felt the warmth of her closeness. She sighed deeply and laid her forehead against his shoulder.
“Well,” she said at last, “I’m sorry, too—but it isn’t any more your fault than mine or Da’s—or Ian’s, for that matter.” She gave a small snort that might have been intended for a laugh. “If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s Lizzie’s—and nobody blames her.”
He smiled at that, a little wryly.
“Aye, I see,” he answered, and cupped a hand over the cool smoothness of her plait. “You’re right. And yet—I killed a man, Bree.”
She didn’t startle or jerk away, but somehow went completely still. So did he; it was the last thing he’d meant to say.
“You never told me that before,” she said at last, raising her head to look at him. She sounded tentative, unsure whether to pursue the matter. The breeze lifted a strand of hair across her face, but she didn’t move to brush it away.
“I—well, to tell ye the truth, I’ve scarcely thought of it.” He dropped his hand, and the stasis was broken. She shook herself a little and stood back.
“That sounds terrible, doesn’t it? But—” He struggled for words. He’d not meant to say anything, but now he’d started, it seemed urgently necessary to explain, to put it into proper words.
“It was at night, during a fight in the village. I escaped—I’d a bit of broken pole in my hand, and when someone loomed up out of the darkness, I …”
His shoulders slumped suddenly, as he realized that there was no possible way to explain, not really. He looked down at the gun he still held.
“I didn’t know I’d killed him,” he said quietly, eyes on the flint. “I didn’t even see his face. I still don’t know who it was—though it had to be someone I knew; Snaketown was a small village, I knew all ne rononkwe.” Why, he wondered suddenly, had he never once thought of asking who the dead man was? Plain enough; he hadn’t asked because he didn’t want to know.
“Ne rononkwe?” She repeated the words uncertainly.
“The men … the warriors … braves. It’s what they call themselves, the Kahnyen’kehaka.” The Mohawk words felt s
trange on his tongue; alien and familiar at once. He could see wariness on her face, and knew his speaking of it had sounded odd to her; not the way one uses a foreign term, handling it gingerly, but the way her father sometimes casually mingled Gaelic and Scots, mind seizing on the most available word in either language.
He stared down at the gun in his hand, as though he’d never seen one before. He wasn’t looking at her, but felt her draw near again, still tentative, but not repulsed.
“Are you … sorry about it?”
“No,” he said at once, and looked up at her. “I mean … aye, I’m sorry it happened. But sorry I did it—no.” He had spoken without pausing to weigh his words, and was surprised—and relieved—to find them true. He felt regret, as he’d told her, but what guilt there was had nothing to do with the shadow’s death, whoever it had been. He had been a slave in Snaketown, and had no great love for any of the Mohawk, though some were decent enough. He’d not intended killing, but had defended himself. He’d do it again, in the same circumstance.
Yet there was a small canker of guilt—the realization of just how easily he had dismissed that death. The Kahnyen’kehaka sang and told stories of their dead, and kept their memory alive around the fires of the longhouses, naming them for generations and recounting their deeds. Just as the Highlanders did. He thought suddenly of Jamie Fraser, face ablaze at the great fire of the Gathering, calling his people by name and by lineage. Stand by my hand, Roger the singer, son of Jeremiah MacKenzie. Perhaps Ian Murray found the Mohawk not so strange, after all.
Still, he felt obscurely as though he had deprived the unknown dead man of name, as well as life, seeking to blot him out by forgetting, to behave as though that death had never happened, only to save himself from the knowledge of it. And that, he thought, was wrong.
Her face was still, but not frozen; her eyes rested on his with something like compassion. Still, he looked away, back at the gun whose barrel he gripped. His fingers, soot-stained, had left greasy black ovals on the metal; she reached out and took it from him, rubbing the marks away with the hem of her shirt.
He let her take it, and watched, rubbing his dirty fingers against the side of his breeches.
“It’s just … does it not seem that if ye must kill a man, it should be on purpose? Meaning it?”
She didn’t answer, but her lips pursed slightly, then relaxed.
“If you shoot someone with this, Roger, it will be on purpose,” she said quietly. She looked up at him, then, blue eyes intent, and he saw that what he had taken for compassion was in fact a fierce stillness, like the small blue flames in a burned-out log.
“And if you have to shoot someone, Roger, I want you to mean it.”
Two dozen rounds later, he could hit the wooden blocks at least once in six tries. He would have kept it up, doggedly, but she could see the muscles in his forearms beginning to tremble as he lifted the gun, stilled by effort of will. He would begin to miss more often now, out of fatigue, and that would do him no good.
Or her. Her breasts were beginning to ache, engorged with milk. She’d have to do something about it soon.
“Let’s go and eat,” she said, smiling as she took the musket from him after the last shot. “I’m starving.”
The exertion of shooting, reloading, putting up targets, had kept them both warm, but it was nearly winter, and the air was cold; much too cold, she thought regretfully, to lie naked in the dry ferns. But the sun was warm, and with forethought, she had packed two ratty quilts in her rucksack, along with the lunch.
He was quiet, but it was a comfortable quiet. She watched him cut slivers from the chunk of hard cheese, dark lashes lowered, and admired the long-limbed, competent look of him, fingers neat and quick, gentle mouth compressed slightly as he concentrated on his work, a drop of sweat rolling down the high brown curve of his cheekbone, in front of his ear.
She wasn’t sure what to make of what he had told her. Still, she knew enough to realize that it was a good thing that he had told her, even though she didn’t like to hear or think of his time with the Mohawk. It had been a bad time for her—alone, pregnant, doubting whether he or her parents would ever return—as well as for him. She reached to accept a bit of cheese, brushed his fingers with her own, and leaned forward, to make him kiss her.
He did, then sat back, his eyes gone soft green and clear, free of the shadow that had haunted them.
“Pizza,” he said.
She blinked, then laughed. It was one of their games; taking turns to think of things they missed from the other time, the time before—or after, depending how you looked at it.
“Coke,” she said promptly. “I think I could maybe do pizza—but what good is pizza without Coca-Cola?”
“Pizza with beer is perfectly fine,” he assured her. “And we can have beer—not that Lizzie’s homemade hell-brew is quite on a par with MacEwan’s Lager, yet. But you really think you could make pizza?”
“Don’t see why not.” She nibbled at the cheese, frowning. “This wouldn’t do”—she brandished the yellowish remnant, then popped it in her mouth—“too strong-flavored. But I think …” She paused to chew and swallow, then washed it down with a long drink of rough cider.
“Come to think of it, this would go pretty well with pizza.” She lowered the leather bottle and licked the last sweet, semi-alcoholic drops from her lips. “But the cheese—I think maybe sheep’s cheese would do. Da brought some from Salem last time he went there. I’ll ask him to get some more and see how it melts.”
She squinted against the bright, pale sun, calculating.
“Mama’s got plenty of dried tomatoes, and tons of garlic. I know she has basil—don’t know about the oregano, but I could do without that. And crust—” She waved a dismissive hand. “Flour, water, and lard, nothing to it.”
He laughed, handing her a biscuit filled with ham and Mrs. Bug’s piccalilli.
“How Pizza Came to the Colonies,” he said, and lifted the cider bottle in brief salute. “Folk always wonder where humanity’s great inventions come from; now we know!”
He spoke lightly, but there was an odd tone in his voice, and his glance held hers.
“Maybe we do know,” she said softly, after a moment. “You ever think about it—why? Why we’re here?”
“Of course.” The green of his eyes was darker now, but still clear. “So do you, aye?”
She nodded, and took a bite of biscuit and ham, the piccalilli sweet with onion and pungent in her mouth. Of course they thought of it. She and Roger and her mother. For surely it had meaning, that passage through the stones. It must. And yet … her parents seldom spoke of war and battle, but from the little they said—and the much greater quantity she had read—she knew just how random and how pointless such things could sometimes be. Sometimes a shadow rises, and death lies nameless in the dark.
Roger crumbled the last of his bread between his fingers, and tossed the crumbs a few feet away. A chickadee flew down, pecked once, and was joined within seconds by a flock that swooped down out of the trees, vacuuming up the crumbs with chattering efficiency. He stretched, sighing, and lay back on the quilt.
“Well,” he said, “if you ever figure it out, ye’ll be sure to tell me, won’t you?”
Her heartbeat was tingling in her breasts; no longer safely contained behind the rampart of her breastbone, but set loose to crackle through her flesh, small jolts of electricity tweaking her nipples. She didn’t dare to think of Jem; the barest hint of him and her milk would let down in a gush.
Before she could let herself think too much about it, she pulled the hunting shirt over her head.
Roger’s eyes were open, fixed on her, soft and brilliant as the moss beneath the trees. She undid the knot of the linen strip, and felt the cool touch of the wind on her bare breasts. She cupped them in her hands, feeling the heaviness rise, begin to tingle and crest.
“Come here,” she said softly, eyes on his. “Hurry. I need you.”
They lay half-clot
hed and comfortably tangled beneath the tattered quilt, sleepy and sticky with half-dried milk, the heat of their joining still warm around them.
The sun through the empty branches overhead made black ripples behind the lids of her closed eyes, as though she looked down through a dark red sea, wading in the blood-warm water, seeing black volcanic sand change and ripple round her feet.
Was he awake? She didn’t turn her head or open her eyes to see, but tried to send a message to him, a slow, lazy pulse of a heartbeat, a question surging from blood to blood. Are you there? she asked silently. She felt the question move up through her chest and out along her arm; she imagined the pale underside of her arm and the blue vein along it, as though she might see some telltale subterranean flash as the impulse threaded through her blood and down her forearm, reached her palm, her finger, and delivered the faintest throb of its pressure against his skin.
Nothing happened at once. She could hear his breathing, slow and regular, a counterpoint to the sough of breeze through trees and grass, like surf coming in upon a sandy shore.
She imagined herself as a jellyfish, he another. She could see them clearly; two transparent bodies, lucent as the moon, veils pulsing in and out in hypnotic rhythm, borne on the tide toward one another, tendrils trailing, slowly touching …
His finger crossed her palm, so lightly it might have been the brush of fin or feather.
I’m here, it said. And you?
Her hand closed over it, and he rolled toward her.
Late in the year as it was, the light died early. It was still a month ’til the winter solstice, but by mid-afternoon, the sun was already brushing the slope of Black Mountain, and their shadows stretched to impossible lengths before them as they turned eastward, toward home.
She carried the gun; instruction was over for the day, and while they weren’t hunting, if the opportunity of game offered, she would take it. The squirrel she had killed earlier was already cleaned and tucked in her sack, but that was barely flavoring for a vegetable stew. A few more would be nice. Or a possum, she thought dreamily.
The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle Page 473