breeze moved over the top of the hollow, shaking the laurels overhead with a rattling like dry bones. Very slowly, I got to my feet and began to climb.
I had no sure destination in mind; didn’t care, really, if I were wet or not. I only knew that I couldn’t go back to the house. As it was, I came to the trail that led to the White Spring, just as rain began to fall. Huge drops splattered on the leaves of pokeweed and burdock, and the firs and pines let go their long-held breath in a fragrant sigh.
The patter of drops on leaves and branches was punctuated by the muffled thud of heavier drops striking deep into soft earth—hail was coming with the rain, and suddenly there were tiny white particles of ice bouncing crazily on the packed needles, peppering my face and neck with stinging cold.
I ran, then, and took shelter beneath the drooping branches of a balsam fir that overhung the spring. The hail pocked the water and made it dance, but melted on impact, disappearing at once into the dark water. I sat still, arms wrapped around myself against the chill, shivering.
You could almost understand, said the part of my mind that had begun talking somewhere on the journey up the hill. Everyone thought you were dying—including you. You know what happens . . . you’ve seen it. People under the terrible strain of grief, those dealing with the presence of overwhelming death—I’d seen it. It was a natural seeking of solace; an attempt to hide, only for a moment, to deny death’s coldness by taking comfort in the simple warmth of bodily contact.
“But he didn’t,” I said stubbornly, out loud. “If he had, and that was it—I could forgive him. But God damn it, he didn’t!”
My subconscious subsided in the face of this certainty, but I was aware of subterranean stirrings—not suspicions, nothing strong enough to be called doubts. Only small, cool observations that poked their heads above the surface of my own dark well like spring peepers, high, thin pipings that were barely audible individually but that together might eventually form a racket of sound to shake the night.
You’re an old woman.
See how the veins stand out on your hands.
The flesh has fallen away from your bones; your breasts sag.
If he were desperate, needing comfort . . .
He might reject her, but could never turn away from a child of his blood.
I closed my eyes and fought a rising sense of nausea. The hail had passed, succeeded by heavy rain, and cold steam began to rise from the ground, vapor drifting upward, disappearing like ghosts into the downpour.
“No,” I said aloud. “No!”
I felt as though I had swallowed several large rocks, jagged and dirt-covered. It wasn’t just the thought that Jamie might—but that Malva had most certainly betrayed me. Had betrayed me if it were true—and still more, if it were not.
My apprentice. My daughter of the heart.
I was safe from the rain, but the air was thick with water; my garments grew damp and hung heavy on me, clammy on my skin. Through the rain, I could see the big white stone that stood at the head of the spring, that gave the pool its name. Here it was that Jamie had shed his blood in sacrifice, and dashed it on that rock, asking the help of the kinsman he had slain. And here it was that Fergus had lain down, opening his veins in despair for his son, his blood blooming dark in the silent water.
And I began to realize why I had come here, why the place had called me. It was a place to meet oneself, and find truth.
The rain passed, and the clouds broke. Slowly, the light began to fade.
IT WAS NEARLY DARK when he came. The trees were moving, restless with twilight and whispering among themselves; I didn’t hear his footsteps on the sodden trail. He was just there, suddenly, at the edge of the clearing.
He stood searching; I saw his head lift when he saw me, and then he strode round the pool and ducked under the overhanging branches of my shelter. He’d been out for some time, I saw; his coat was wet and the cloth of his shirt plastered to his chest with rain and sweat. He’d brought a cloak with him, bundled under his arm, and he unfolded this and wrapped it round my shoulders. I let him.
He sat quite close to me then, arms wrapped about his knees, and stared into the darkening pool of the spring. The light had reached that point of beauty, just before all color fades, and the hairs of his eyebrows arched auburn and perfect over the solid ridges of his brows, each hair distinct, like the shorter, darker hairs of his sprouting beard.
He breathed long and deep, as though he had been walking for some time, and rubbed away a drop of moisture that dripped from the end of his nose. Once or twice, he took a shorter breath, as though about to say something, but didn’t.
The birds had come out briefly after the rain. Now they were going to their rest, cheeping softly in the trees.
“I do hope you were planning to say something,” I said finally, politely. “Because if you don’t, I’ll probably start screaming, and I might not be able to stop.”
He made a sound somewhere between amusement and dismay, and sank his face into the palms of his hands. He stayed that way for a moment, then rubbed his hands hard over his face and sat up, sighing.
“I have been thinking all the time I was searching for ye, Sassenach, what in God’s name I should say when I found ye. I thought of one thing and another—and . . . there seemed nothing whatever I could say.” He sounded helpless.
“How is that?” I asked, a distinct edge in my voice. “I could think of a few things to say, I daresay.”
He sighed, and made a brief gesture of frustration.
“What? To say I was sorry—that’s not right. I am sorry, but to say so—it sounds as though I’ve done something to be sorry for, and that I have not. But I thought to start off so would make ye maybe think . . .” He glanced at me. I was keeping a tight grip on both my face and my emotions, but he knew me very well. The instant he’d said, “I’m sorry,” my stomach had plunged toward my feet.
He looked away.
“There’s naught I can say,” he said quietly, “that doesna sound as though I try to defend or excuse myself. And I willna do that.”
I made a small sound, as though someone had punched me in the stomach, and he glanced sharply at me.
“I won’t do it!” he said fiercely. “There is no way to deny such a charge that doesna carry the stink of doubt about it. And nothing I can say to you that doesna sound like some groveling apology for—for—well, I willna apologize for something I havena done, and if I did, ye’d only doubt me more.”
I was beginning to breathe a little easier.
“You don’t seem to have a lot of faith in my faith in you.”
He gave me a wary look.
“If I hadna got quite a lot of it, Sassenach, I wouldna be here.”
He watched me for a moment, then reached out and touched my hand. My fingers turned at once and curved to meet his, and our hands clasped tight. His fingers were big and cold and he held mine so tightly that I thought my bones would break.
He took a deep breath, almost a sob, and his shoulders, tight in his sodden coat, relaxed all at once.
“Ye didna think it true?” he asked. “Ye ran away.”
“It was a shock,” I said. And I’d thought, dimly, that if I stayed, I might just kill her.
“Aye, it was,” he said very dryly. “I expect I might have run away myself—if I could.”
A small twinge of guilt was added to the overload of emotions; I supposed my hasty exit couldn’t have helped the situation. He didn’t reproach me, though, but merely said again, “Ye didna think it true, though?”
“I don’t.”
“Ye don’t.” His eyes searched mine. “But ye did?”
“No.” I pulled the cloak closer round me, settling it on my shoulders. “I didn’t. But I didn’t know why.”
“And now ye do.”
I took a deep, deep breath of my own and let it go, then turned to face him, straight on.
“Jamie Fraser,” I said, with great deliberation. “If you could do suc
h a thing as that—and I don’t mean lying with a woman, I mean doing it and lying to me about it—then everything I’ve done and everything I’ve been—my whole life—has been a lie. And I am not prepared to admit such a thing.”
That surprised him a little; it was nearly dark now, but I saw his eyebrows rise.
“What d’ye mean by that, Sassenach?”
I waved a hand up the trail, where the house lay invisible above us, then toward the spring, where the white stone stood, a blur in the dark.
“I don’t belong here,” I said softly. “Brianna, Roger . . . they don’t belong here. Jemmy shouldn’t be here; he should be watching cartoons on television, drawing pictures of cars and airplanes with crayons—not learning to shoot a gun as big as he is and cut the entrails from a deer.”
I lifted my face and closed my eyes, feeling the damp settle on my skin, heavy on my lashes.
“But we are here, all of us. And we’re here because I loved you, more than the life that was mine. Because I believed you loved me the same way.”
I took a deep breath, so that my voice wouldn’t tremble, opened my eyes and turned to him.
“Will you tell me that’s not true?”
“No,” he said after a moment, so softly I could barely hear him. His hand tightened harder on mine. “No, I willna tell ye that. Not ever, Claire.”
“Well, then,” I said, and felt the anxiety and fury and fear of the afternoon run out of me like water. I rested my head on his shoulder, and breathed the rain and sweat on his skin. He smelled acrid, pungent with the musk of fear and curdled anger.
It was entirely dark by now. I could hear sounds in the distance, Mrs. Bug calling to Arch from the stable where she’d been milking the goats, and his cracked old voice hallooing back. A bat flittered past, silent and hunting.
“Claire?” Jamie said softly.
“Hm?”
“I’ve got to tell ye something.”
I froze. After a moment, I carefully detached myself from him and sat upright.
“Don’t do that,” I said. “It makes me feel as though I’ve been punched in the stomach.”
“I’m sorry.”
I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to swallow the sudden feeling of nausea.
“You said you wouldn’t start off by saying you were sorry, because it felt as though there must be something to be sorry for.”
“I did,” he said, and sighed.
I felt the movement between us as the two stiff fingers of his right hand thrummed against his leg.
“There isna any good way,” he said finally, “of telling your wife ye’ve lain wi’ someone else. No matter what the circumstances. There’s just not.”
I felt suddenly dizzy, and short of breath. I closed my eyes momentarily. He didn’t mean Malva; he’d made that clear.
“Who?” I said as evenly as possible. “And when?”
He stirred uneasily.
“Oh. Well . . . when ye . . . when ye were . . . gone, to be sure.”
I managed to take a short breath.
“Who?” I said.
“Just the once,” he said. “I mean—I hadna the slightest intention of—”
“Who?”
He sighed, and rubbed hard at the back of his neck.
“Christ. The last thing I want is to upset ye, Sassenach, by sounding as though it—but I dinna want to malign the puir woman by makin’ it seem that she was—”
“WHO?” I roared, seizing him by the arm.
“Jesus!” he said, thoroughly startled. “Mary MacNab.”
“Who?” I said again, blankly this time.
“Mary MacNab,” he repeated, and sighed. “Can ye let go, Sassenach? I think ye’ve drawn blood.”
I had, my fingernails digging hard enough into his wrist as to pierce the skin. I flung his hand away, and folded my own into fists, wrapping my arms around my body by way of stopping myself from strangling him.
“Who. The. Hell. Is. Mary. MacNab?” I said, through my teeth. My face was hot, but cold sweat prickled along my jaw and rolled down my ribs.
“Ye ken her, Sassenach. She was wife to Rab—him that died when his house was burnt. They had the one bairn, Rabbie; he was stable-lad at Lallybroch when—”
“Mary MacNab. Her?” I could hear the astonishment in my own voice. I did recall Mary MacNab—barely. She’d come to be a maid at Lallybroch after the death of her nasty husband; a small, wiry woman, worn with work and hardship, who seldom spoke, but went about her business like a shadow, never more than half-noticed in the rowdy chaos of life at Lallybroch.
“I scarcely noticed her,” I said, trying—and failing—to remember whether she had been there on my last visit. “But I gather you did?”
“No,” he said, and sighed. “Not like ye mean, Sassenach.”
“Don’t call me that,” I said, my voice sounding low and venomous to my own ears.
He made a Scottish noise in his throat, of frustrated resignation, rubbing his wrist.
“Aye. Well, see, ’twas the night before I gave myself up to the English—”
“You never told me that!”
“Never told ye what?” He sounded confused.
“That you gave yourself up to the English. We thought you’d been captured.”
“I was,” he said briefly. “But by arrangement, for the price on my head.” He flipped a hand, dismissing the matter. “It wasna important.”
“They might have hanged you!” And a good thing, too, said the small, furiously hurt voice inside.
“No, they wouldn’t.” A faint tinge of amusement showed in his voice. “Ye’d told me so, Sass—mmphm. I didna really care, though, if they did.”
I had no idea what he meant by saying I’d told him so, but I certainly didn’t care at the moment.
“Forget that,” I said tersely. “I want to know—”
“About Mary. Aye, I ken.” He rubbed a hand slowly through his hair. “Aye, well. She came to me, the night before I—I went. I was in the cave, ken, near Lallybroch, and she brought me supper. And then she . . . stayed.”
I bit my tongue, not to interrupt. I could feel him gathering his thoughts, searching for words.
“I tried to send her away,” he said at last. “She . . . well, what she said to me . . .” He glanced at me; I saw the movement of his head. “She said she’d seen me with ye, Claire—and that she kent the look of a true love when she saw it, for all she’d not had one herself. And that it wasna in her mind to make me betray that. But she would give me . . . some small thing. That’s what she said to me,” he said, and his voice had grown husky, “‘some small thing, that maybe ye can use.’”
“It was—I mean, it wasna . . .” He stopped, and made that odd shrugging motion of his, as though his shirt were tight across his shoulders. He bowed his head for a moment on his knees, hands linked round them.
“She gave me tenderness,” he said finally, so softly that I barely heard him. “I—I hope I gave her the same.”
My throat and chest were too tight to speak, and tears prickled behind my eyes. I remembered, quite suddenly, what he had said to me the night I mended Tom Christie’s hand, about the Sacred Heart—“so wanting—and no one to touch him.” And he had lived in a cave for seven years, alone.
There was no more than a foot of space between us, but it seemed an unbridgeable gulf.
I reached across it and laid my hand on his, the tips of my fingers on his big, weathered knuckles. I took a breath, then two, trying to steady my voice, but it cracked and broke, nonetheless.
“You gave her . . . tenderness. I know you did.”
He turned to me, suddenly, and my face was pressed into his coat, the cloth of it damp and rough on my skin, my tears blooming in tiny warm patches that vanished at once into the chill of the fabric.
“Oh, Claire,” he whispered into my hair. I reached up, and could feel wetness on his cheeks. “She said—she wished to keep ye alive for me. And she meant it; she didna mean to take
anything for herself.”
I cried then, holding nothing back. For empty years, yearning for the touch of a hand. Hollow years, lying beside a man I had betrayed, for whom I had no tenderness. For the terrors and doubts and griefs of the day. Cried for him and me and for Mary MacNab, who knew what loneliness was—and what love was, as well.
“I would have told ye, before,” he whispered, patting my back as though I were a small child. “But it was . . . it was the once.” He shrugged a little, helpless. “And I couldna think how. How to say it, that ye’d understand.”
I sobbed, gulped air, and finally sat up, wiping my face carelessly on a fold of my skirt.
“I understand,” I said. My voice was thick and clogged, but fairly steady now. “I do.”
And I did. Not only about Mary MacNab and what she had done—but why he’d told me now. There was no need; I would never have known. No need but the need for absolute honesty between us—and that I must know it was there.
I had believed him, about Malva. But now I had not only certainty of mind—but peace of heart.
We sat close together, the folds of my cloak and skirts flowing over his legs, his simple presence a comfort. Somewhere nearby, a very early cricket began to chirp.
“The rain’s past, then,” I said, hearing it. He nodded, with a small sound of assent.
“What shall we do?” I said at last. My voice sounded calm.
“Find out the truth—if I can.”
Neither of us mentioned the possibility that he might not. I shifted, gathering the folds of my cloak.
“Will we go home, then?”
It was too dark to see now, but I felt him nod as he got to his feet, putting down a hand to help me.
“Aye, we will.”
THE HOUSE WAS EMPTY when we returned, though Mrs. Bug had left a covered dish of shepherd’s pie on the table, the floor swept, and the fire neatly smoored. I took off my wet cloak and hung it on the peg, but then stood, unsure quite what to do next, as though I stood in a stranger’s house, in a country where I did not know the custom.
Jamie seemed to feel the same way—though after a moment, he stirred, fetched down the candlestick from the shelf over the hearth, and lit it with a spill from the fire. The wavering glow seemed only to emphasize the odd, echoing quality of the room, and he stood holding it for a minute, at a loss, before finally setting it down with a thump in the middle of the table.
“Are ye hungry, S . . . Sassenach?” He had begun to speak by habit, but then interrupted himself, looking up to be sure the name was once more allowed. I did my best to smile at him, though I could feel the corners of my mouth tremble.
“No. Are you?”
He shook his head, silent, and dropped his hand from the dish. Looking round for something else to do, he took up the poker and stirred the coals, breaking up the blackened embers and sending a swirl of sparks and soot up the chimney and out onto the hearth. It would ruin the fire, which would need to be rebuilt before bed, but I said nothing—he knew that.
“It feels like a death in the family,” I said at last. “As though something terrible has happened, and this is the shocked bit, before you begin to send round and tell all the neighbors.”
He gave a small, rueful laugh, and put the poker down.
“We’ll not need to. They’ll all ken well enough by daybreak what’s happened.”
Rousing at last from my immobility, I shook out my damp skirts and came to stand beside him by the fire. The heat of it seared at once through the wet cloth; it should have been comforting, but there was an icy weight in my abdomen that wouldn’t melt. I put a hand on his arm, needing the touch of him.
“No one will believe it,” I said. He put a hand over mine, and smiled a little, his eyes closed, but shook his head.
“They’ll all believe it, Claire,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.”
A Breath of Snow and Ashes Page 97