I attacked them with a will, realizing as I did so that I was trying very hard not to think of the story Marsali had told me. I didn’t want to like Laoghaire—and I didn’t. But I didn’t want to feel sympathy for her, either, and that was proving harder to avoid.
It hadn’t been an easy life for her, apparently. Well, nor had it been for anyone else living in the Highlands then, I thought, grunting as I flung a shovelful of grain to the side. Being a mother was not that easy anywhere—but it seemed she had made a good job of it.
I sneezed from the grain dust, paused to wipe my nose on my sleeve, then went back to shoveling.
It wasn’t as though she had tried to steal Jamie from me, after all, I told myself, striving for compassion and high-minded objectivity. Rather the reverse, in fact—or at least she might well see it that way.
The edge of the shovel gritted hard against the floor as I scraped up the last of the grain. I sent the grain flying to the side, then used the flat of the blade to shove some of the new-turned grain into the empty corner, and smooth down the highest hillocks.
I knew all the reasons why he said he’d married her—and I believed him. However, the fact remained that the mention of her name conjured up assorted visions—starting with Jamie kissing her ardently in an alcove at Castle Leoch, and ending with him fumbling up her nightgown in the darkness of their marriage bed, hands warm and eager on her thighs—that made me snort like a grampus and feel the blood throb hotly in my temples.
Perhaps, I reflected, I was not really a very high-minded sort of person. Occasionally quite low-minded and grudge-bearing, in fact.
Claire doesn’t get the opportunity to consider her grudges at leisure, for the women are interrupted by the arrival of a gang of mounted men, who demand whisky. Told that there is only one small keg available, they threaten the women and end by shoving Marsali, knocking her out against the shed, and striking Claire, who falls stunned to the ground, the clay firepot she had thrown at the men starting a small grass fire. Marsali looks dead, but Claire has no chance to check, for the men seize her and bundle her onto a horse.
Frightened but able to think, Claire does her best to create a trail for Jamie, leaving hairs from her head tangled in bushes and ripping small branches as they pass.
The leader of the men is a British deserter named Hodgepile, who escaped from a warehouse fire at Cross Creek three years before, where he was presumed dead. He is now leading this band of brigands, occupied in plundering the countryside, burning houses, robbing and killing as they go.
I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jamie would come. My job was to survive until he did.
Chances look worse when the band meets with more men—among them, Lionel Brown of Brownsville, who Claire fears will kill her to avoid her giving him away. She is saved by a mulatto man named Tebbe, who seems superstitious about her, but her life is hanging by a thread—a thread that grows thinner when night falls, finding her bound to a tree, gagged and helpless.
She is attacked by one of the young men in the party, though not injured. She barely has time to recover from this assault, though, when a new threat emerges from the darkness.
Here he came, a stealthy rustling in the bushes. I gritted my teeth on the gag and looked up, but the shadowy form in front of me wasn’t one of the young boys.
The only thought that came to mind when I realized who the new visitor was was, Jamie Fraser, you bastard, where are you?
The newcomer is Harley Boble, a onetime thief-taker and a man with a severe grudge against both Jamie and Claire. He beats Claire viciously, kicking and hitting her, breaking her nose before committing a foul indecency.
I was frozen. Somewhere in the back of my mind, the detached observer wondered aloud whether this was in fact the single most disgusting thing I had ever encountered. Well, no, it wasn’t. Some of the things I had seen at L’Hôpital des Anges, to say nothing of Father Alexandre’s death, or the Beardsleys’ attic…the field hospital at Amiens…heavens, no, this wasn’t even close.
I lay rigid, eyes shut, recalling various nasty experiences of my past and wishing I were in fact in attendance at one of those events, instead of here.
He leaned over, seized my hair, and banged my head several times against the tree, wheezing as he did so.
“Show you…” he muttered, then dropped his hand and I heard shuffling noises as he staggered away.
When I finally opened my eyes again, I was alone.
When another of the men approaches her, she is close to strangling on the gag and her own blood and is perfectly willing to accept rape in return for release. The man does remove her gag, but what’s on his mind isn’t sex.
He was saying something, whispering urgently. I didn’t care, couldn’t listen. All I heard was the grateful wheeze of my own breathing, and the thump of my heart. Finally slowing from its frantic race to keep oxygen moving round my starved tissues, it pounded hard enough to shake my body.
Then a word or two got through to me, and I lifted my head, staring at him.
“Whad?” I said thickly. I coughed, shaking my head to try to clear it. It hurt very much. “What did you say?”
He was visible only as a ragged, lion-haired silhouette, bony-shouldered in the faint glow from the fire.
“I said,” he whispered, leaning close, “does the name ‘Ringo Starr’ mean anything to you?”
THE YOUNG MAN, Donner, is indeed a time traveler—one of the party of would-be time travelers who attempted to change the past of the Indian tribes in America, but their expedition went awry when some of the travelers were killed in the attempt and others went to different time periods.
Donner is afraid of his present companions and their violence and intends to get away. Claire insists he take her with him, and he reluctantly agrees but leaves her bound for the time being.
There comes a point when the body has simply had enough. It snatches at sleep, no matter what menace the future may hold. I’d seen that happen: the Jacobite soldiers who slept in the ditches where they fell, the British pilots who slept in their planes while mechanics fueled them, only to leap to full alert again in time to take off. For that matter, women in long labor routinely sleep between contractions.
In the same manner, I slept.
That kind of sleep is neither deep nor peaceful, though. I came out of it with a hand across my mouth.
The fourth man was neither incompetent nor brutal. He was large and soft-bodied, and he had loved his dead wife. I knew that, because he wept into my hair, and called me by her name at the end. It was Martha.
THE NEXT TIME Claire awakes, it is to hear the sound of a drum.
It wasn’t an Indian drum. I sat up, listening hard. It was a drum with a sound like a beating heart, slow and rhythmic, then trip-hammer fast, like the frantic surge of a hunted beast.
I could have told them that Indians never used drums as weapons; Celts did. It was the sound of a bodhran.
What next? I thought, a trifle hysterically, bagpipes?
It was Roger, certainly; only he could make a drum talk like that. It was Roger, and Jamie was nearby.
Jamie is indeed nearby, with his men. The drums stampede the brigands, and Jamie’s men attack the fleeing robbers. Hodgepile comes to get Claire, intending to use her as a hostage, but Jamie reaches her at the same time. He breaks Hodgepile’s neck and seizes Claire in his arms.
He was saying something else, urgently, but I couldn’t manage to translate it. Energy pulsed through him, hot and violent, like the current in a live wire, and I vaguely realized that he was still almost berserk; he had no English.
Ian, Fergus, and even old Arch Bug have come to rescue Claire. When Arch asks if she will take her vengeance on the men who abducted her, Jamie answers:
“There is an oath upon her,” he said to Arch, and I realized dimly that he was still speaking in Gaelic, though I understood him clearly. “She may not kill, save it is for mercy or her life. It is myself who kills for her.”
/> “And I,” said a tall figure behind him, softly. Ian.
Arch nodded understanding, though his face was still in darkness. Someone else was there beside him—Fergus. I knew him at once, but it took a moment’s struggle for me to put a name to the streaked pale face and wiry figure.
“Madame,” he said, and his voice was thin with shock. “Milady.”
Then Jamie looked at me, and his own face changed, awareness coming back into his eyes. I saw his nostrils flare, as he caught the scent of sweat and semen on my clothes.
“Which of them?” he said. “How many?” He spoke in English now, and his voice was remarkably matter-of-fact, as it might be if he were inquiring as to the number of guests expected for dinner, and I found the simple tone of it steadying.
“I don’t know,” I said. “They—it was dark.”
He nodded, squeezed my arm hard, and turned.
“Kill them all,” he said to Fergus, his voice still calm.
ROGER COMES BACK to Brianna, shocked by the night’s work—and by the fact that he joined in the killing. He tells her what happened on the way home—Claire setting her broken nose, washing alone by the water; Jamie asking him—with apparent normality—whether he would feel differently about Jem if he knew that Jem was not his, explaining that he meant to take Claire to bed—if she would; in case she might be pregnant, there would be doubt as to the paternity of the child. Then Jamie wrapped Claire in his plaid and took her home.
The men did not kill Lionel Brown, only because he had been injured in a fall and was helpless when they attacked the camp. Instead, they have brought him back to the Ridge and confided him to Mrs. Bug’s care, as Claire plainly can’t take care of him.
Brianna goes to her mother, only to be assured that Claire is “perfectly fine.”
Bree narrowed her eyes at me.
“Sure you are,” she said. “You look like you’ve been run over by a locomotive. Two locomotives.”
“Yes,” I said, and touched my split lip gingerly. “Well. Yes. Other than that, though…”
Bree washes Claire’s hair and cleans her up.
“Thank you, darling; that was wonderful,” I said, with complete sincerity. “All I want just now is sleep,” I added, with somewhat less.
I was still terribly tired, but now completely wakeful. What I did want was…well, I didn’t know quite what I did want, but a general absence of solicitous company was on the list. Besides, I’d caught a glimpse of Roger earlier, bloodstained, white, and swaying with weariness; I wasn’t the only victim of the recent unpleasantness.
“Go home, lass,” Jamie said softly. He swung the cloak from its peg and over her shoulders, patting her gently. “Feed your man. Take him to bed, and say a prayer for him. I’ll mind your mother, aye?”
Jamie explains his intent, to which Claire—rather dazed—assents.
“You—you’re sure?” I asked, putting down the syringe.
“No,” he said. “I’m not.” He took a deep breath then, and looked at me, his face uncertain in the wavering candlelight. “But I mean to try. I must.”
I smoothed the linen night rail down over my punctured thigh, looking at him as I did it. He’d dropped all his masks long since; the doubt, the anger, and the fear were all there, etched plain in the desperate lines of his face. For once, I thought, my own countenance was less easy to read, masked behind its bruises.
Something soft brushed past my leg with a small mirp! and I looked down to see that Adso had brought me a dead vole, no doubt by way of sympathy. I started to smile, felt my lip tingle, and then looked up at Jamie and let it split as I did smile, the taste of blood warm silver on my tongue.
“Well…you’ve come whenever I’ve needed you; I rather think you’ll do it this time, too.”
He looked completely blank for an instant, not grasping the feeble joke. Then it struck him, and blood rushed to his face. His lip twitched, and twitched again, unable to decide between shock and laughter.
I thought he turned his back then to hide his face, but in fact, he had only turned to search the cupboard. He found what he was looking for, and turned round again with a bottle of my best muscat wine in his hand, shining dark. He held it to his body with his elbow, and took down another.
“Aye, I will,” he said, reaching out his free hand to me. “But if ye think either one of us is going to do this sober, Sassenach, ye’re verra much mistaken.”
MEANWHILE, ROGER MAKES his own confession and receives his own absolution from Brianna. Back in the Big House…
Not the kitchen, still strewn with emotional wreckage. Not the surgery, with all its sharp-edged memories. Jamie hesitated, but then nodded toward the stair, raising one eyebrow. I nodded, and followed him up to our bedroom.
They drink wine, groping emotionally for each other, forming tentative connections, until at last:
“The worst of it is,” I said, into his shirt, “that I knew them. Each one of them. And I’ll remember them. And feel guilty that they’re dead, because of me.”
“No,” he said softly, but very firmly. “They are dead because of me, Sassenach. And because of their own wickedness. If there is guilt, let it rest upon them. Or on me.”
“Not on you alone,” I said, my eyes still closed. It was dark in there, and soothing. I could hear my voice, distant but clear, and wondered dimly where the words were coming from. “You’re blood of my blood, bone of my bone. You said so. What you do rests on me, as well.”
“Then may your vow redeem me,” he whispered.
He lifted me to my feet and gathered me to him, like a tailor gathering up a length of fragile, heavy silk—slowly, long-fingered, fold upon fold. He carried me then across the room, and laid me gently on the bed, in the light from the flickering fire.
HE’D MEANT TO be gentle. Very gentle. Had planned it with care, worrying each step of the long way home. She was broken; he must go canny, take his time. Be careful in gluing back her shattered bits.
And then he came to her and discovered that she wished no part of gentleness, of courting. She wished directness. Brevity and violence. If she was broken, she would slash him with her jagged edges, reckless as a drunkard with a shattered bottle.
For a moment, two moments, he struggled, trying to hold her close and kiss her tenderly. She squirmed like an eel in his arms, then rolled over him, wriggling and biting.
He’d thought to ease her—both of them—with the wine. He’d known she lost all sense of restraint when in drink; he simply hadn’t realized what she was restraining, he thought grimly, trying to seize her without hurting.
He, of all people, should have known. Not fear or grief or pain—but rage.
She raked his back; he felt the scrape of broken nails, and thought dimly that was good—she’d fought. That was the last of his thought; his own fury took him then, rage and a lust that came on him like black thunder on a mountain, a cloud that hid all from him and him from all, so that kind familiarity was lost and he was alone, strange in darkness.
It might be her neck he grasped, or anyone’s. The feel of small bones came to him, knobbled in the dark, and the screams of rabbits, killed in his hand. He rose up in a whirlwind, choked with dirt and the scourings of blood.
Wrath boiled and curdled in his balls, and he rode to her spurs. Let his lightning blaze and sear all trace of the intruder from her womb, and if it burnt them both to bone and ash—then let it be.
***
Eyes puffed and bruised, clouded like wild honey, inches from his own.
“How do you feel?” she asked softly.
“Terrible,” he replied with complete honesty. He was hoarse, as though he had been screaming—God, perhaps he had been. Her mouth had bled again; there was a red smear on her chin, and the taste of metal from it in his own mouth.
He cleared his throat, wanting to look away from her eyes, but unable to do it. He rubbed a thumb over the smear of blood, clumsily erasing it.
“You?” he asked, and the words were
like a rasp in his throat. “How do ye feel?”
She had drawn back a little at his touch, but her eyes were still fixed on his. He had the feeling that she was looking far beyond him, through him—but then the focus of her gaze came back, and she looked directly at him, for the first time since he had brought her home.
“Safe,” she whispered, and closed her eyes. She took one huge breath and her body relaxed all at once, going limp and heavy like a dying hare.
He held her, both arms wrapped around her as though to save her from drowning, but felt her sink away all the same. He wished to call out to her not to go, not to leave him alone. She vanished into the depths of sleep, and he yearned after her, wishing her healed, fearing her flight, and bent his head, burying his face in her hair and her scent.
The wind banged the open shutters as it passed, and in the dark outside, one owl hooted and another answered, hiding from the rain.
Then he cried, soundless, muscles strained to aching that he might not shake with it, that she might not wake to know it. He wept to emptiness and ragged breath, the pillow wet beneath his face. Then lay exhausted beyond the thought of tiredness, too far from sleep even to recall what it was like. His only comfort was the small, so fragile weight that lay warm upon his heart, breathing.
Then her hands rose and rested on him, the tears cool on his face, congealing, the white of her clean as the silent snow that covers char and blood and breathes peace upon the world.
THE FRAGILE IMITATION of normality next day is disturbed by a discussion as to what to do with Lionel Brown. Jamie has not decided whether to kill him or not, and if not, what else might be done with him, with no effective law, courts, or jails to which to commit him?
The Companion to the Fiery Cross, a Breath of Snow and Ashes, an Echo in the Bone, and Written in My Own Heart's Blood Page 10