eyes.
“Oh, God, oh, God.” Roger kept saying it, under his breath, long after it became clear that if it was a prayer, it was long past answering.
He was cradling her against his chest, and her eyes opened halfway, regarding him with nothing like relief or curiosity—only a calm fatality.
Jamie had poured water from his canteen onto a handkerchief; he fed the tip of it between her lips to wet them, and Roger saw her throat move in reflex as she sucked.
“Ye’ll be all right,” Roger whispered to her. “It’s all right, a leannan.”
“Who has done this, a nighean?” Jamie asked, just as gently. Roger saw that she understood; the question stirred the surface of her eyes like wind on a pond—but then passed over, leaving them calm again. She did not speak, no matter what questions they asked, only looked at them with incurious eyes, and went on sucking dreamily at the wet cloth.
“Are ye baptized, a leannan?” Jamie asked her at last, and Roger felt a deep jolt at the question. In the shock of finding her, he had not truly taken in her condition.
“Elle ne peut pas vivre,” Jamie said softly, his eyes meeting Roger’s. She cannot live.
His first instinct was a visceral denial. Of course she could live, she must. But huge patches of her skin were gone, the raw flesh crusted but still oozing. He could see the white edge of a knee bone, and literally see her heart beating, a reddish, translucent bulge that pulsed at the notch of her rib cage. She was light as a corn-dolly, and he became painfully aware that she seemed to float in his arms, like a slick of oil on water.
“Does it hurt, sweetheart?” he asked her.
“Mama?” she whispered. Then she closed her eyes and would say no more, only muttering “Mama?” now and then.
He had thought at first they would take her back to the Ridge, to Claire. But it was more than a day’s ride; she wouldn’t make it. Not possibly.
He swallowed, realization closing on his throat like a noose. He looked at Jamie, seeing the same sick acknowledgment in his eyes. Jamie swallowed, too.
“Do ye . . . know her name?” Roger could scarcely breathe, and forced the words. Jamie shook his head, then gathered himself, hunching his shoulders.
She had stopped sucking, but still murmured “Mama?” now and then. Jamie took the handkerchief from her lips and squeezed a few drops from it onto her blackened forehead, whispering the words of baptism.
Then they looked at each other, acknowledging necessity. Jamie was pale, sweat beading on his upper lip among the bristles of red beard. He took a deep breath, steeling himself, and lifted his hands, offering.
“No,” Roger said softly. “I’ll do it.” She was his; he could no more surrender her to another than he could have torn off an arm. He reached for the handkerchief, and Jamie put it into his hand, soot-stained, still damp.
He’d never thought of such a thing, and couldn’t think now. He didn’t need to; without hesitation, he cradled her close and put the handkerchief over her nose and mouth, then clamped his hand tight over the cloth, feeling the small bump of her nose caught snug between his thumb and index finger.
Wind stirred in the leaves above, and a rain of gold fell on them, whispering on his skin, brushing cool past his face. She would be cold, he thought, and wished to cover her, but had no hand to spare.
His other arm was round her, hand resting on her chest; he could feel the tiny heart beneath his fingers. It jumped, beat rapidly, skipped, beat twice more . . . and stopped. It quivered for a moment; he could feel it trying to find enough strength to beat one last time, and suffered the momentary illusion that it would not only do so, but would force its way through the fragile wall of her chest and into his hand in its urge to live.
But the moment passed, as did the illusion, and a great stillness came. Near at hand, a raven called.
THEY HAD ALMOST finished the burying, when the sound of hooves and jingling harness announced visitors—a lot of visitors.
Roger, ready to decamp into the woods, glanced at his father-in-law, but Jamie shook his head, answering his unasked question.
“Nay, they’d no come back. What for?” His bleak gaze took in the smoking ruin of the homestead, the trampled dooryard, and the low mounds of the graves. The little girl still lay nearby, covered with Roger’s cloak. He hadn’t been able to bear putting her into the ground just yet; the knowledge of her alive was still too recent.
Jamie straightened, stretching his back. Roger saw him glance to see that his rifle was to hand, leaning against a tree trunk. Then he settled himself, leaning on the scorched board he had been using as a shovel, waiting.
The first of the riders came out of the woods, his horse snorting and tossing its head at the smell of burning. The rider pulled it skillfully round and urged it closer, leaning forward to see who they were.
“So it’s you, is it, Fraser?” Richard Brown’s lined face looked grimly jovial. He glanced at the charred and steaming timbers, then round at his comrades. “Didn’t think you made your money just by selling whisky.”
The men—Roger counted six of them—shifted in their saddles, snorting with amusement.
“Have a bit o’ respect for the dead, Brown.” Jamie nodded at the graves, and Brown’s face hardened. He glanced sharply at Jamie, then at Roger.
“Just the two of you, is it? What are you doing here?”
“Digging graves,” Roger said. His palms were blistered; he rubbed a hand slowly on the side of his breeches. “What are you doing here?”
Brown straightened abruptly in his saddle, but it was his brother Lionel who answered.
“Coming down from Owenawisgu,” he said, jerking his head at the horses. Looking, Roger saw that there were four packhorses, laden with skins, and that several of the other horses carried bulging saddlebags. “Smelled the fire and come to see.” He glanced down at the graves. “Tige O’Brian, was it?”
Jamie nodded.
“Ye kent them?”
Richard Brown shrugged.
“Aye. It’s on the way to Owenawisgu. I’ve stopped a time or two; taken supper with them.” Belatedly, he removed his hat, plastering down wisps of hair over his balding crown with the flat of his hand. “God rest ’em.”
“Who’s burnt ’em out, if it wasn’t you?” one of the younger men in the party called. The man, a Brown by his narrow shoulders and lantern jaw, grinned inappropriately, evidently thinking this a jest.
The singed bit of paper had flown with the wind; it fluttered against a rock near Roger’s foot. He picked it up and with a step forward, slapped it against Lionel Brown’s saddle.
“Know anything about that, do you?” he asked. “It was pinned to O’Brian’s body.” He sounded angry, knew it, and didn’t care. His throat ached and his voice came out as a strangled rasp.
Lionel Brown glanced at the paper, brows raised, then handed it to his brother.
“No. Write it yourself, did you?”
“What?” He stared up at the man, blinking against the wind.
“Indians,” Lionel Brown said, nodding at the house. “Indians done this.”
“Oh, aye?” Roger could hear the undercurrents in Jamie’s voice—skepticism, wariness, and anger. “Which Indians? The ones from whom ye bought the hides? Told ye about it, did they?”
“Don’t be a fool, Nelly.” Richard Brown kept his voice pitched low, but his brother flinched a little, hearing it. Brown edged his horse nearer. Jamie stood his ground, though Roger saw his hands tighten on the board.
“Got the whole family, did they?” he asked, glancing at the small body under its cloak.
“No,” Jamie said. “We’ve not found the two elder children. Only the wee lassie.”
“Indians,” Lionel Brown repeated stubbornly, from behind his brother. “They took ’em.”
Jamie took a deep breath, and coughed from the smoke.
“Aye,” he said. “I’ll ask in the villages, then.”
“Won’t find ’em,” Richard Brown sai
d. He crumpled the note, tightening his fist suddenly. “If Indians took them, they won’t keep them near. They’ll sell them on, into Kentucky.”
There was a general mutter of agreement among the men, and Roger felt the ember that had simmered in his chest all afternoon burst into fire.
“Indians didn’t write that,” he snapped, jerking a thumb at the note in Brown’s hand. “And if it was revenge against O’Brian for being a Regulator, they wouldn’t have taken the children.”
Brown gave him a long look, eyes narrowed. Roger felt Jamie shift his weight slightly, preparing.
“No,” said Brown softly. “They wouldn’t. That’s why Nelly figured you wrote it yourself. Say the Indians came and stole the little ’uns, but then you come along and decide to take what’s left. So you fired the cabin, hung O’Brian and his wife, pinned that note, and here you are. How say you to that bit of reasoning, Mr. MacKenzie?”
“I’d ask how ye kent they were hanged, Mr. Brown.”
Brown’s face tightened, and Roger felt Jamie’s hand on his arm in warning, realizing only then that his fists were clenched.
“The ropes, a charaid,” Jamie said, his voice very calm. The words penetrated dimly, and he looked. True, the ropes they had cut from the bodies lay by the tree where they had fallen. Jamie was still talking, his voice still calm, but Roger couldn’t hear the words. The wind deafened him, and just below the whine of it he heard the intermittent soft thump of a beating heart. It might have been his own—or hers.
“Get off that horse,” he said, or thought he had. The wind swept into his face, heavy with soot, and the words caught in his throat. The taste of ash was thick and sour in his mouth; he coughed and spat, eyes watering.
Vaguely, he became aware of a pain in his arm, and the world swam back into view. The younger men were staring at him, with expressions ranging from smirks to wariness. Richard Brown and his brother were both sedulously avoiding looking at him, focused instead on Jamie—who was still gripping his arm.
With an effort, he shook off Jamie’s hand, giving his father-in-law the slightest nod by way of reassurance that he wasn’t about to go berserk—though his heart still pounded, and the feel of the noose was so tight about his throat that he couldn’t have spoken, even had he been able to form words.
“We’ll help.” Brown nodded at the little body on the ground, and began to swing one leg over his saddle, but Jamie stopped him with a small gesture.
“Nay, we’ll manage.”
Brown stopped, awkwardly half-on, half-off. His lips thinned and he pulled himself back on, reined around and rode off with no word of farewell. The others followed, looking curiously back as they went.
“It wasna them.” Jamie had taken up his rifle and held it, gazing at the wood where the last of the men had disappeared. “They ken something more about it than they’ll say, though.”
Roger nodded, wordless. He walked deliberately to the hanging tree, kicked aside the ropes, and drove his fist into the trunk, twice, three times. Stood panting, his forehead pressed against the rough bark. The pain of raw knuckles helped, a bit.
A trail of tiny ants was scurrying upward between the plates of bark, bound on some momentous business, all-absorbing. He watched them for a little, until he could swallow again. Then straightened up and went to bury her, rubbing at the bone-deep bruise on his arm.
PART FOUR
Abduction
26
AN EYE TO THE FUTURE
October 9, 1773
ROGER DROPPED HIS saddlebags on the ground beside the pit and peered in.
“Where’s Jem?” he said.
His mud-smeared wife looked up at him and brushed a sweat-matted lock of hair out of her face.
“Hello to you, too,” she said. “Have a good trip?”
“No,” he said. “Where’s Jem?”
Her brows rose at that, and she stabbed her shovel into the bottom of the pit, extending a hand for him to help her scramble out.
“He’s at Marsali’s. He and Germain are playing Vroom with the little cars you made them—or they were when I left him there.”
The knot of anxiety he had carried under his ribs for the last two weeks began slowly to relax. He nodded, a sudden spasm of the throat preventing him from speaking, then reached out and pulled her to him, crushing her against him in spite of her startled yelp and mud-stained clothes.
He held her hard, his own heart hammering loud in his ears, and wouldn’t—couldn’t—let go, until she wriggled out of his embrace. She kept her hands on his shoulders, but cocked her head to one side, one brow raised.
“Yeah, I missed you, too,” she said. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Terrible things.” The burning, the little girl’s death—these had become dreamlike during their travel, their horror muted to the surreal by the monotonous labor of riding, walking, the constant whine of wind and crunch of boots on gravel, sand, pine needles, mud, the engulfing blur of greens and yellows in which they lost themselves beneath an endless sky.
But now he was home, no longer adrift in the wilderness. And the memory of the girl who had left her heart in his hand was suddenly as real as she had been in the moment she died.
“You come inside.” Brianna was peering closely at him, concerned. “You need something hot, Roger.”
“I’m all right,” he said, but followed her without protest.
He sat at the table while she put the kettle on for tea, and told her everything that had happened, head in his hands, staring down at the battered tabletop, with its homely spills and burn scars.
“I kept thinking there must be something . . . some way. But there wasn’t. Even while I—I put my hand over her face—I was sure it wasna really happening. But at the same time—” He sat up, then, looking into the palms of his hands. At the same time, it had been the most vivid experience of his life. He could not bear to think of it, save in the most fleeting way, but knew he could never forget the slightest thing about it. His throat closed suddenly again.
Brianna looked searchingly into his face, saw his hand touch the ragged rope scar on his throat.
“Can you breathe?” she said anxiously. He shook his head, but it wasn’t true, he was breathing, somehow, though it felt as though his throat had been crushed in some huge hand, larynx and windpipe mangled into a bloody mass.
He flapped a hand to indicate that he would be all right, much as he doubted it himself. She came round behind him, pulled his hand from his throat, and laid her own fingers lightly over the scar.
“It’ll be all right,” she said quietly. “Just breathe. Don’t think. Just breathe.”
Her fingers were cold and her hands smelled of dirt. There was water in his eyes. He blinked, wanting to see the room, the hearth and candle and dishes and loom, to convince himself of where he was. A drop of warm moisture rolled down his cheek.
He tried to tell her that it was all right, he wasn’t crying, but she merely pressed closer, holding him across the chest with one arm, the other hand still cool on the painful lump in his throat. Her breasts were soft against his back, and he could feel, rather than hear, her humming, the small tuneless noise she made when she was anxious, or concentrating very hard.
Finally, the spasm began to ease, and the feel of choking left him. His chest swelled with the unbelievable relief of a free breath, and she let go.
“What . . . is it . . . that ye’re digging?” he asked, with only a little effort. He looked round at her and smiled, with a lot more. “A bar . . . becue pit for . . . a hippopot . . . amus?”
The ghost of a smile touched her face, though her eyes were still dark with concern.
“No,” she said. “It’s a groundhog kiln.”
He tried for a moment to compose some witty remark about it being a really large hole for killing something as small as a groundhog, but he wasn’t up to it.
“Oh,” he said instead.
He took the hot mug of catnip tea she placed in his hand and h
eld it near his face, letting the fragrant steam warm his nose and mist on the cold skin of his cheeks.
Brianna poured out a mug for herself, as well, and sat down across from him.
“I’m glad you’re home,” she said softly.
“Yeah. Me, too.” He essayed a sip; it was still scalding. “A kiln?” He’d told her about the O’Brians; he had to, but he didn’t want to talk about it. Not now. She seemed to sense this, and didn’t press him.
“Uh-huh. For the water.” He must have looked confused, for her smile grew more genuine. “I told you there was dirt involved, didn’t I? Besides, it was your idea.”
“It was?” At this point, almost nothing would surprise him, but he had no memory of having bright ideas about water.
The problem of bringing water to the houses was one of transport. God knew there was plenty of water; it ran in creeks, fell in waterfalls, dripped from ledges, sprang from springs, seeped in boggy patches under the cliffs . . . but making it go where you wanted required some method of containment.
“Mr. Wemyss told Fraulein Berrisch—that’s his girlfriend; Frau Ute fixed them up—what I was doing, and she told him that the men’s choir over in Salem was working on the same problem, so—”
“The choir?” He tried another cautious sip and found it drinkable. “Why would the choir—”
“That’s just what they call them. There’s the single men’s choir, the single women’s choir, the married choir . . . they don’t just sing together, though, it’s more like a social group, and each choir has particular jobs they do for the community. But anyway”—she flapped a hand—“they’re trying to bring water into the town, and having the same problem—no metal for pipes.
“You remember, though—you reminded me about the pottery they do in Salem. Well, they tried making water pipes out of logs, but that’s really hard and time-consuming, because you have to bore the middle of the log out with an augur, and you still need metal collars to bind the logs together. And they rot, after a while. But then they had the same idea you had—why not make pipes out of fired clay?”
She was becoming animated, talking about it. Her nose was no longer red from cold, but her cheeks were flushed pink and her eyes bright with interest. She waved her hands when she talked—she got that from her mother, he thought to himself, amused.
“. . . so we parked the kids with Mama and Mrs. Bug, and Marsali and I went to Salem—”
“Marsali? But she couldn’t be riding, surely?” Marsali was enormously pregnant, to the point that merely being around her made him slightly nervous, for fear she might go into labor at any moment.
“She isn’t due for a month. Besides, we didn’t ride; we took the wagon, and traded honey and cider and venison for cheese and quilts and—see my new teapot?” Proud, she waved at the pot, a homely squat thing with a red-brown glaze and yellow squiggly shapes painted round the middle. It was one of the uglier objects he’d ever seen, and the sight of it made tears come to his eyes from the sheer joy of being home.
“You don’t like it?” she said, a small frown forming between her brows.
“No, it’s great,” he said hoarsely. He fumbled for a handkerchief and blew his nose to hide his emotion. “Love it. You were saying . . . Marsali?”
“I was saying about the water pipes. But—there’s something about Marsali, too.” The frown deepened. “I’m afraid Fergus isn’t behaving very well.”
“No? What’s he doing? Having a mad affair with Mrs. Crombie?”
This suggestion was greeted with a withering look, but it didn’t last.
“He’s gone a lot, for one thing, leaving poor Marsali to mind the children and do all the work.”
“Totally normal, for the time,” he observed. “Most men do that. Your father does that. I do that; had ye not noticed?”
“I noticed,” she said, giving him a faintly evil look. “But what I mean is, most men do the heavy work, like plowing and planting, and let their wives manage the inside stuff, the cooking and the spinning and the weaving, and the laundry, and the preserving, and—well, anyway, all that stuff. But Marsali’s doing it all, plus the kids and the outdoor work, and working at the malting floor. And when Fergus is home, he’s grumpy and he drinks too much.”
This also sounded like normal behavior for the father of three small, wild
A Breath of Snow and Ashes Page 26