Claire is distressed at the thought of further violence—but on the other hand…They discuss the fate of the other men, and she tells Jamie about Donner; there’s a possibility that he left the camp before Jamie’s attack.
Troubled in mind but not allowed to visit Brown—in case Jamie decides to kill him—Claire sits down to read Tom Jones. Her reading is disturbed by the arrival of Tom Christie, who is much more disturbed by sight of her battered face. Seeking to distract him, she asks him if he’s ever read Tom Jones and, in the subsequent conversation, learns that he burned his wife’s books. She re-dresses his hand.
He nodded thanks to me, and donned his hat, turning to go. Upon a moment’s impulse, I asked, “Did you ever have the chance to apologize to your wife?”
That was a mistake. His face tightened into coldness and his eyes went flat as a snake’s.
“No,” he said shortly. I thought for a moment that he would put the book down and refuse to take it. But instead, he tightened his lips, tucked the volume more securely under his arm, and left, without further farewell.
JAMIE AND IAN interrogate Lionel Brown, who tries to throw all blame on the dead Hodgepile, not only for abducting Claire and hurting Marsali (who is not dead, by the way) but for the string of house-burnings and other abductions.
“How long?” I said, appalled. “How many?” Children, young men, young women, wrenched from their homes and sold cold-bloodedly into slavery. No one to follow. Even if they were somehow to escape eventually, there would be no place—no one—to return to.
Jamie sighed. He looked unutterably tired.
“Brown doesna ken,” Ian said quietly. “He says…He says he’d nothing to do with it.”
“Like bloody hell he hadn’t,” I said, a flash of fury momentarily eclipsing horror. “He was with Hodgepile when they came here. He knew they meant to take the whisky. And he must have been with them before, when they—did other things.”
Jamie nodded.
“He claims he tried to stop them from taking you.”
“He did,” I said shortly. “And then he tried to make them kill me, to stop me telling you he’d been there. And then he bloody meant to drown me himself! I don’t suppose he told you that.”
“No, he didn’t.” Ian exchanged a brief look with Jamie, and I saw some unspoken agreement pass between them. It occurred to me that I might possibly just have sealed Lionel Brown’s fate. If so, I was not sure I felt guilty about it.
Come nightfall, Jamie asks Claire if she wants him to come to her bed—to sleep. She does, and all is well—but Jamie dreams, of Culloden. And Black Jack Randall.
MALVA CHRISTIE COMES next day to help Claire in the surgery and to learn, but their conversation is interrupted by a thumping and dragging on the porch. This proves to be Lionel Brown, in a state of panic, who has dragged himself from the Bugs’ cabin, to beg Claire not to let Jamie kill him. Claire isn’t sure whether Jamie intends that or not—and is even less sure what her own feelings are in the matter. She can’t let him lie wounded on the porch, though, and carries him inside, where she administers minimal first aid.
Claire goes out to the well to splash water on her face and returns to find Mrs. Bug in the act of smothering Lionel Brown with a pillow. Claire tries to stop her but fails. Mrs. Bug is distraught, as well she might be, once Jamie finds out about it.
“O, woman, how have you dared to lay hands upon a man who was mine?” he asked, very softly, in Gaelic.
“Oh, sir,” she whispered. She was afraid to look up; she cowered under her cap, her face almost invisible. “I—I didna mean to. Truly, sir!”
Jamie glanced at me.
“She smothered him,” I repeated. “With a pillow.”
“I think ye do not do such a thing without meaning it,” he said, with an edge in his voice that could have sharpened knives. “What were ye about, a boirean-nach, to do it?”
The round shoulders began to quiver with fright.
“Oh, sir, oh, sir! I ken ’twas wrong—only…only it was the wicked tongue of him. All the time I had care of him, he’d cower and tremble, aye, when you or the young one came to speak to him, even Arch—but me—” She swallowed, the flesh of her face seeming suddenly loose. “I’m no but a woman, he could speak his mind to me, and he did. Threatening, sir, and cursing most awfully. He said—he said as how his brother would come, him and his men, to free him, and would slaughter us all in our blood and burn the houses over our heids.” Her jowls trembled as she spoke, but she found the courage to look up and meet Jamie’s eyes.
“I kent ye’d never let that happen, sir, and did my best to pay him no mind. And when he did get under my skin enough, I told him he’d be deid long before his brother heard where he was. But then the wicked wee cur escaped—and I’m sure I’ve no idea how ’twas done, for I’d have sworn he was in no condition even to rise from the bed, let alone come so far—but he did, and threw himself upon your wife’s mercy, and she took him up—I would have dragged his evil carcass away myself, but she wouldna have it—” Here she darted a briefly resentful glance at me, but returned an imploring gaze to Jamie almost at once.
“And she took him to mend, sweet gracious lady that she is, sir—and I could see it in her face, that having tended him so, it was coming to her that she couldna bear to see him killed. And he saw it, too, the gobshite, and when she went out, he jeered at me, saying now he was safe, he’d fooled her into tending him and she’d never let him be killed, and directly he was free of the place, he’d have a score of men down upon us like vengeance itself, and then…” She closed her eyes, swaying briefly, and pressed a hand to her chest.
“I couldn’t help it, sir,” she said, very simply. “I really couldn’t.”
ASIDE FROM THE delicate questions of morality involved, Lionel Brown’s death puts Jamie in an awkward position with regard to Richard Brown and the rest of Brownsville, since they will naturally want vengeance for Lionel’s death.
With a little thought and the assistance of the Cherokee chief, Bird, though, Jamie and Roger succeed in returning Lionel’s body to Brownsville in a ceremonial fashion, first telling Richard about Hodgepile’s intrusion and abduction of Claire, noting that he, Jamie, found Lionel in Hodgepile’s company and took him captive but did not slay him. Lionel suffered severe injuries in a fall before his capture, Jamie says—with complete truth—adding that they treated his injuries, but he died.
Jamie let a moment of stunned silence pass, before continuing.
“We have brought him to you, so that you may bury him.” He made a small gesture, and Ian, who had dismounted, cut the ropes that held the travois. He and the two Cherokee pulled it to the porch and left it lying in the rutted road, returning silently to their horses. Jamie inclined his head sharply, and swung Gideon’s head around. Bird followed him, pleasantly impassive as the Buddha. I didn’t know whether he understood enough English to have followed Jamie’s speech, but it didn’t matter. He understood his role, and had carried it out perfectly.
The Browns might have had a profitable sideline in murder, theft, and slavery, but their chief income lay in trade with the Indians. By his presence at Jamie’s side, Bird gave clear warning that the Cherokee regarded their relationship with the King of England and his agent as more important than trade with the Browns. Harm Jamie or his property again, and that profitable connection would be broken.
***
“Will this be the end of it?” I asked. My voice felt thin in the cold air, and I wasn’t sure he’d heard me. But he did. He shook his head slightly.
“There is never an end to such things,” he said quietly. “But we are alive. And that is good.”
PART 5: GREAT UNEXPECTATIONS
Claire returns with Jamie, determined to resume her life and her medical practice. The opportunity to do so arises at once, when she goes to check on the pregnant Marsali and detects something wrong with the baby’s position. Not sure what the problem is, she doesn’t know quite how to proceed: Induc
tion of labor? Emergency cesarean? She brings Marsali to the Big House and summons Fergus.
LUCKILY, MARSALI’S CERVIX has begun to dilate, and the baby’s heartbeat has settled down, so Claire opts for the least-risky procedure and—with some help from Fergus—induces labor. The child is safely born and healthy—but a dwarf. Little Henri-Christian is a healthy little boy, but his effect is out of all proportion to his size. His father is completely demoralized, and the superstitious fisher-folk think—and say—that he is demon spawn. Ian, though, comes to visit Marsali and give her comfort—and, holding Henri-Christian, tells Marsali that he had a child, among the Mohawk.
“Believe me, cousin,” he said, very softly, “your husband grieves. But he will come back.” Then he rose and left, silent as an Indian.
CLAIRE FINDS FERGUS skulking in the barn and reproaches him; he tells her about his experiences in the brothel where he was born and the experiences of dwarves in the milieus of Paris.
“They’ll…get used to him,” I said, as bravely as I could. “People will see that he isn’t a monster. It may take some time, but I promise you, they’ll see.”
“Will it? And if they let him live, what then will he do?” He rose to his feet quite suddenly. He stretched out his left arm, and with a jerk, freed the leather strip that held his hook. It fell with a soft thump into the straw, and left the narrow stump of his wrist bare, the pale skin creased with red from the tightness of the wrappings.
“Me, I cannot hunt, cannot do a proper man’s work. I am fit for nothing but to pull the plow, like a mule!” His voice shook with anger and self-loathing. “If I cannot work as a man does, how shall a dwarf?”
“Fergus, it isn’t—”
“I cannot keep my family! My wife must labor day and night to feed the children, must put herself in the way of scum and filth who misuse her, who— Even if I was in Paris, I am too old and crippled to whore!” He shook the stump at me, face convulsed, then whirled and swung his maimed arm, smashing it against the wall, over and over.
“Fergus!” I seized his other arm, but he jerked away.
“What work will he do?” he cried, tears streaming down his face. “How shall he live? Mon Dieu! Il est aussi inutile que moi!”
He bent and seized the hook from the ground, and hurled it as hard as he could at the limestone wall. It made a small chiming sound as it struck, and fell into the straw, startling the nanny and her kids.
Fergus was gone, the Dutch door left swinging. The goat called after him, a long maaaah! of disapproval.
I held on to the railing of the pen, feeling as though it was the only solid thing in a slowly tilting world. When I could, I bent and felt carefully in the straw until I touched the metal of the hook, still warm from Fergus’s body. I drew it out and wiped bits of straw and manure carefully off it with my apron, still hearing Fergus’s last words.
“My God! He is as useless as I am!”
BRIANNA IS SPINNING with Marsali, trying not to discuss Fergus or Henri-Christian, while Roger is playing Vroom with Jem and Germain, when a young boy named Aidan McCallum comes to tell Roger that his mother wants him to come drive out “a de’il what’s got intae the milk.”
The Presbyterians on the Ridge are beginning to call upon Roger more and more often for the small ceremonies of life—buryings and blessings—but exorcism is a little out of his line. Still, he comes and does drive the “de’il”—a large frog—out of the milk. He stays to comfort the hysterical widow McCallum—thus putting himself in bad odor with Brianna, who is more than annoyed that he seems to spend more time with every other woman on the Ridge than he does with his own wife. He retorts that perhaps he’d spend more time with her if he had any notion that she needed him.
SOME WEEKS LATER, Hiram Crombie comes at dawn to inform Roger that his wife’s old mother has “passed” in the night and to ask him to come and say a word at the grave. All the Frasers go to the wake, which is conducted with great propriety, including a hired wailer and a sin-eater—a strange, outcast man from somewhere in the wood, whose amber eye and mangled face disturb Claire. But they don’t disturb her nearly as much as does the corpse—for when she rests a hand on old Mrs. Wilson’s abdomen, she discovers that the woman is, in fact, not dead.
Mrs. Wilson recovers sufficiently to berate her son-in-law for providing a cheap funeral, but, as Claire is aware, it’s a brief reprieve; the woman is suffering from an abdominal aneurysm, which has begun to separate, thus causing a loss of blood pressure and evident death. When it dissects and bursts, death will be more than evident.
She looked…peaceful, was the only word. It was no surprise whatever to feel the pulse beneath my hand simply stop. Somewhere deeper, in my own depths, I felt the dizzying rush of the hemorrhage begin, a flooding warmth that pulled me into it, made black spots whirl before my eyes, and caused a ringing in my ears. I knew to all intents and purposes she had now died for good. I felt her go. And yet I heard her voice above the racket, very small but calm and clear.
“I forgive ye, Hiram,” she said. “Ye’ve been a good lad.”
PART 6: ON THE MOUNTAIN
It’s March of 1774, and with the melting of snow comes Major MacDonald, a red-coated bird of ill omen. He’s brought newspapers, with the text of letters from Governor Martin to all sorts of people, from ex-Governor Tryon to General Gage, asking for help. Martin is losing his grip on the colony—what little he had—and is considering the desperate step of arming the Indians. As Indian agent, Jamie will have to go to the Cherokee villages to assess their readiness to undertake a fight on behalf of Governor Martin—if matters go so far.
“I’m guessing that he isn’t actually going to do that,” I said, finding the blue ribbon I was looking for, “because if he had—does, I mean—the Revolution would have got going in North Carolina right now, rather than in Massachusetts or Philadelphia two years from now. But why on earth is he publishing these letters in the newspaper?”
Jamie laughed. He shook his head, pushing back the disheveled hair from his face.
“He’s not. Evidently, the Governor’s mail is being intercepted. He’s no verra pleased about it, MacDonald says.”
MEANWHILE, FERGUS IS showing a little more animation and is earning a little money, teaching French to Hiram Crombie. Hiram has decided that he is called to go and preach Christianity to the Cherokee.
And Roger is helping Brianna to dig out her kiln, when Jamie comes to chat. He asks Roger again whether he is sure about staying in the past—war is getting closer and more distinct by the day, and Jamie is reaching the point where he must sell one or more of the gemstones he has.
“They’re yours to sell,” he replied, cautious. “Why now, though? Are things difficult?”
Jamie gave him an exceedingly wry look.
“Difficult,” he repeated. “Aye, ye could say that.” And proceeded to lay out the situation succinctly.
The marauders had destroyed not only a season’s whisky in the making, but also the malting shed, only now rebuilding. That meant no surplus of the lovely drink this year to sell or trade for necessities. There were thirty more tenant families on the Ridge to be mindful of, most of them struggling with a place and a profession that they could never have imagined, trying merely to keep alive long enough to learn how to stay that way.
“And then,” Jamie added grimly, “there’s MacDonald—speak o’ the devil.”
The Major himself had come out onto the stoop, his red coat bright in the morning sun. He was dressed for travel, Roger saw, booted and spurred, and wearing his wig, laced hat in hand.
“A flying visit, I see.”
Jamie made a small, uncouth noise.
“Long enough to tell me I must try to arrange the purchase of thirty muskets, with shot and powder—at my own expense, mind—to be repaid by the Crown, eventually,” he added, in a cynic tone that made it obvious how remote he considered this eventuality to be.
“Thirty muskets.” Roger contemplated that, pursing his own lips
in a soundless whistle. Jamie had not been able even to afford to replace the rifle he had given Bird for his help in the matter of Brownsville.
Jamie shrugged.
“And then there are wee matters like the dowry I’ve promised Lizzie Wemyss—she’ll be wed this summer. And Marsali’s mother, Laoghaire—” He glanced warily at Roger, unsure how much he might know regarding Laoghaire. More than Jamie would be comfortable knowing, Roger thought, and tactfully kept his face blank.
“I owe a bit to her, for maintenance. We can live, aye, with what we’ve got—but for the rest…I must sell land, or the stones. And I willna give up the land.” His fingers drummed restlessly against his thigh, then stopped, as he raised his hand to wave to the Major, who had just spotted them across the clearing.
“I see. Well, then…” Plainly, it had to be done; it was foolish to sit on a fortune in gems, merely because they might one day be needed for a far-fetched and risky purpose. Still, the notion made Roger feel slightly hollow, like rappelling down a cliff and having someone cut your safety line.
Roger agrees that Jamie should send a gem or two with Bobby Higgins to Lord John in Virginia, as Lord John will make sure to get a good price. Their discussion is cut short, though, by the approach of Major MacDonald, full of breakfast and bonhomie but oblivious to the presence of the white sow, who has emerged from her den beneath the foundation of the house and is about to spot the major. The white sow is not the only danger.
“Pit!” Roger shouted, only the word came out in a strangled croak. Nonetheless, MacDonald seemed to hear him, for a bright red face turned in his direction, eyes bulging. It must have sounded like “Pig!” for the Major glanced back over his shoulder then to see the sow trot faster, small pink eyes fixed on him with murderous intent.
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 11