Christmas pie. She put in her thumb, and pulled out a plum”—she opened her hand with a flourish—“and said ‘What a good girl am I!’”
I had been expecting them, of course, but had no difficulty in looking impressed anyway. The reality of a gem is both more immediate and more startling than its description. Six or seven of them flashed and glimmered in her palm, flaming fire and frozen ice, the gleam of blue water in the sun, and a great gold stone like the eye of a lurking tiger.
Without meaning to, I drew near enough to look down into the well of her hand, staring with fascination. “Big enough,” Jamie had described them as being, with a characteristic Scottish talent for understatement. Well, smaller than a breadbox, I supposed.
“I got them for the money, to start,” Geilie was saying, prodding the stones with satisfaction. “Because they were easier to carry than a great weight of gold or silver, I mean; I didna think then what other use they might have.”
“What, as bhasmas?” The idea of burning any of those glowing things to ash seemed a sacrilege.
“Oh, no, not these.” Her hand closed on the stones, dipped into her pocket, and back into the box for more. A small shower of liquid fire dropped into her pocket, and she patted it affectionately. “No, I’ve a lot o’ the smaller stones for that. These are for something else.”
She eyed me speculatively, then jerked her head toward the door at the end of the room.
“Come along up to my workroom,” she said. “I’ve a few things there you’ll maybe be interested to see.”
“Interested” was putting it mildly, I thought.
It was a long, light-filled room, with a counter down one side. Bunches of drying herbs hung from hooks overhead and lay on gauze-covered drying racks along the inner wall. Drawered cabinets and cupboards covered the rest of the wall space, and there was a small glass-fronted bookcase at the end of the room.
The room gave me a mild sense of déjà-vu; after a moment, I realized that it was because it strongly resembled Geilie’s workroom in the village of Cranesmuir, in the house of her first husband—no, second, I corrected myself, remember the flaming body of Greg Edgars.
“How many times have you been married?” I asked curiously. She had begun building her fortune with her second husband, procurator fiscal of the district where they lived, forging his signature in order to divert money to her own use, and then murdering him. Successful with this modus operandi, I imagined she had tried it again; she was a creature of habit, was Geilie Duncan.
She paused a moment to count up. “Oh, five, I think. Since I came here,” she added casually.
“Five?” I said, a little faintly. Not just a habit, it seemed; a positive addiction.
“A verra unhealthy atmosphere for Englishmen it is in the tropics,” she said, and smiled slyly at me. “Fevers, ulcers, festering stomachs; any little thing will carry them off.” She had evidently been mindful of her oral hygiene; her teeth were still very good.
She reached out and lightly caressed a small bottle that stood on the lowest shelf. It wasn’t labeled, but I had seen crude white arsenic before. On the whole, I was glad I hadn’t taken any food.
“Oh, you’ll be interested in this,” she said, spying a jar on an upper shelf. Grunting slightly as she stood on tiptoe, she reached it down and handed it to me.
It contained a very coarse powder, evidently a mixture of several substances, brown, yellow, and black, flecked with shreds of a semitranslucent material.
“What’s this?”
“Zombie poison,” she said, and laughed. “I thought ye’d like to see.”
“Oh?” I said coldly. “I thought you told me there was no such thing.”
“No,” she corrected, still smiling. “I told ye Hercule wasn’t dead; and he’s not.” She took the jar from me and replaced it on the shelf. “But there’s no denying that he’s a good bit more manageable if he’s had a dose of this stuff once a week, mixed with his grain.”
“What the hell is it?”
She shrugged, offhanded. “A bit of this and a bit of that. The main thing seems to be a kind of fish—a little square thing wi’ spots; verra funny-looking. Ye take the skin and dry it, and the liver as well. But there are a few other things ye put in with it—I wish I kent what,” she added.
“You don’t know what’s in it?” I stared at her. “Didn’t you make it?”
“No. I had a cook,” Geilie said, “or at least they sold him to me as a cook, but damned if I’d feel safe eating a thing he turned out of the kitchen, the sly black devil. He was a houngan, though.”
“A what?”
“Houngan is what the blacks call one of their medicine-priests; though to be quite right about it, I believe Ishmael said his sort of black called him an oniseegun, or somesuch.”
“Ishmael, hm?” I licked my dry lips. “Did he come with that name?”
“Oh, no. He had some heathen name wi’ six syllables, and the man who sold him called him ‘Jimmy’—the auctioneers call all the bucks Jimmy. I named him Ishmael, because of the story the seller told me about him.”
Ishmael had been taken from a barracoon on the Gold Coast of Africa, one of a shipment of six hundred slaves from the villages of Nigeria and Ghana, stowed between decks of the slave ship Persephone, bound for Antigua. Coming through the Caicos Passage, the Persephone had run into a sudden squall, and been run aground on Hogsty Reef, off the island of Great Inagua. The ship had broken up, with barely time for the crew to escape in the ship’s boats.
The slaves, chained and helpless betweendecks, had all drowned. All but one man who had earlier been taken from the hold to assist as a galley mate, both messboys having died of the pox en route from Africa. This man, left behind by the ship’s crew, had nonetheless survived the wreck by clinging to a cask of spirits, which floated ashore on Great Inagua two days later.
The fishermen who discovered the castaway were more interested in his means of salvation than in the slave himself. Breaking open the cask, however, they were shocked and appalled to find inside the body of a man, somewhat imperfectly preserved by the spirits in which he had been soaking.
“I wonder if they drank the crème de menthe anyway,” I murmured, having observed for myself that Mr. Overholt’s assessment of the alcoholic affinities of sailors was largely correct.
“I daresay,” said Geilie, mildly annoyed at having her story interrupted. “In any case, when I heard of it, I named him Ishmael straight off. Because of the floating coffin, aye?”
“Very clever,” I congratulated her. “Er…did they find out who the man in the cask was?”
“I don’t think so.” She shrugged carelessly. “They gave him to the Governor of Jamaica, who had him put in a glass case, wi’ fresh spirits, as a curiosity.”
“What?” I said incredulously.
“Well, not so much the man himself, but some odd fungi that were growing on him,” Geilie explained. “The Governor’s got a passion for such things. The old Governor, I mean; I hear there’s a new one, now.”
“Quite,” I said, feeling a bit queasy. I thought the ex-governor was more likely to qualify as a curiosity than the dead man, on the whole.
Her back was turned, as she pulled out drawers and rummaged through them. I took a deep breath, hoping to keep my voice casual.
“This Ishmael sounds an interesting sort; do you still have him?”
“No,” she said indifferently. “The black bastard ran off. He’s the one who made the zombie poison for me, though. Wouldn’t tell me how, no matter what I did to him,” she added, with a short, humorless laugh, and I had a sudden vivid memory of the weals across Ishmael’s back. “He said it wasn’t proper for women to make medicine, only men could do it. Or the verra auld women, once they’d quit bleeding. Hmph!”
She snorted, and reached into her pocket, pulling out a handful of stones.
“Anyway, that’s not what I brought ye up to show ye.”
Carefully, she laid five of the stones
in a rough circle on the countertop. Then she took down from a shelf a thick book, bound in worn leather.
“Can ye read German?” she asked, opening it carefully.
“Not much, no,” I said. I moved closer, to look over her shoulder. Hexenhammer, it said, in a fine, handwritten script.
“Witches’ Hammer?” I asked. I raised one eyebrow. “Spells? Magic?”
The skepticism in my voice must have been obvious, for she glared at me over one shoulder.
“Look, fool,” she said. “Who are ye? Or what, rather?”
“What am I?” I said, startled.
“That’s right.” She turned and leaned against the counter, studying me through narrowed eyes. “What are ye? Or me, come to that? What are we?”
I opened my mouth to reply, then closed it again.
“That’s right,” she said softly, watching. “It’s not everyone can go through the stones, is it? Why us?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “And neither do you, I’ll be bound. It doesn’t mean we’re witches, surely!”
“Doesn’t it?” She lifted one brow, and turned several pages of the book.
“Some people can leave their bodies and travel miles away,” she said, staring meditatively at the page. “Other people see them out wandering, and recognize them, and ye can bloody prove they were really tucked up safe in bed at the time. I’ve seen the records, all the eyewitness testimony. Some people have stigmata ye can see and touch—I’ve seen one. But not everybody. Only certain people.”
She turned another page. “If everyone can do it, it’s science. If only a few can, then it’s witchcraft, or superstition, or whatever you like to call it,” she said. “But it’s real.” She looked up at me, green eyes bright as a snake’s over the crumbling book. “We’re real, Claire—you and me. And special. Have ye never asked yourself why?”
I had. Any number of times. I had never gotten a reasonable answer to the question, though. Evidently, Geilie thought she had one.
She turned back to the stones she had laid on the counter, and pointed at them each in turn. “Stones of protection; amethyst, emerald, turquoise, lapis lazuli, and a male ruby.”
“A male ruby?”
“Pliny says rubies have a sex to them; who am I to argue?” she said impatiently. “The male stones are what ye use, though; the female ones don’t work.”
I suppressed the urge to ask precisely how one distinguished the sex of rubies, in favor of asking, “Work for what?”
“For the travel,” she said, glancing curiously at me. “Through the stones. They protect ye from the…whatever it is, out there.” Her eyes grew slightly shadowed at the thought of the time-passage, and I realized that she was deathly afraid of it. Little wonder; so was I.
“When did ye come? The first time?” Her eyes were intent on mine.
“From 1945,” I said slowly. “I came to 1743, if that’s what you mean.” I was reluctant to tell her too much; still, my own curiosity was overwhelming. She was right about one thing; she and I were different. I might never again have the chance to talk to another person who knew what she did. For that matter, the longer I could keep her talking, the longer Jamie would have to look for Ian.
“Hm.” She grunted in a satisfied manner. “Near enough. It’s two hundred year, in the Highland tales—when folk fall asleep on fairy duns and end up dancing all night wi’ the Auld Folk; it’s usually two hundred year later when they come back to their own place.”
“You didn’t, though. You came from 1968, but you’d been in Cranesmuir several years before I came there.”
“Five years, aye.” She nodded, abstracted. “Aye, well, that was the blood.”
“Blood?”
“The sacrifice,” she said, suddenly impatient. “It gives ye a greater range. And at least a bit of control, so ye have some notion how far ye’re going. How did ye get to and fro three times, without blood?” she demanded.
“I…just came.” The need to find out as much as I could made me add the little else I knew. “I think—I think it has something to do with being able to fix your mind on a certain person who’s in the time you go to.”
Her eyes were nearly round with interest.
“Really,” she said softly. “Think o’ that, now.” She shook her head slowly, thinking. “Hm. That might be so. Still, the stones should work as well; there’s patterns ye make, wi’ the different gems, ye ken.”
She pulled another fistful of shining stones from her pocket and spread them on the wooden surface, pawing through them.
“The protection stones are the points of the pentacle,” she explained, intent on her rummaging, “but inside that, ye lay the pattern wi’ different stones, depending which way ye mean to go, and how far. And ye lay a line of quicksilver between them, and fire it when ye speak the spells. And of course ye draw the pentacle wi’ diamond dust.”
“Of course,” I murmured, fascinated.
“Smell it?” she asked, looking up for a moment and sniffing. “Ye wouldna think stones had a scent, aye? But they do, when ye grind them to powder.”
I inhaled deeply, and did seem to find a faint, unfamiliar scent among the smell of dried herbs. It was a dry scent, pleasant but indescribable—the scent of gemstones.
She held up one stone with a small cry of triumph.
“This one! This is the one I needed; couldna find one anywhere in the islands, and finally I thought o’ the box I’d left in Scotland.” The stone she held was a black crystal of some kind; the light from the window passed through it, and yet it glittered like a piece of jet between her white fingers.
“What is it?”
“An adamant; a black diamond. The auld alchemists used them. The books say that to wear an adamant brings ye the knowledge of the joy in all things.” She laughed, a short, sharp sound, devoid of her usual girlish charm. “If anything can bring knowledge o’ joy in that passage through the stones, I want one!”
Something was beginning to dawn on me, rather belatedly. In defense of my slowness, I can only argue that I was simultaneously listening to Geilie and keeping an ear out for any sign of Jamie returning below.
“You mean to go back, then?” I asked, as casually as I could.
“I might.” A small smile played around the corners of her mouth. “Now that I’ve got the things I need. I tell ye, Claire, I wouldna risk it, without.” She stared at me, shaking her head. “Three times, wi’ no blood,” she murmured. “So it can be done.
“Well, best we go down now,” she said, suddenly brisk, sweeping the stones up and dumping them back into her pocket. “The fox will be back—Fraser is his name, is it no? I thought Clotilda said something else, but the stupid bitch likely got it wrong.”
As we made our way down the long workroom, something small and brown darted across the floor in front of me. Geilie was quick, despite her size; her small foot stamped on the centipede before I could react.
She watched the half-crushed beast wriggling on the floor for a moment, then stooped and slid a sheet of paper under it. Scooping it up, she decanted the thing thriftily into a glass jar.
“Ye dinna want to believe in witches and zombies and things that go bump in the night?” she said, with a small, sly smile at me. She nodded at the centipede, struggling round and round in frenzied, lopsided circles. “Well, legends are many-legged beasties, aye? But they generally have at least one foot on the truth.”
She took down a clear brown-glass jug and poured the liquid into the centipede’s bottle. The pungent scent of alcohol rose in the air. The centipede, washed up by the wave, kicked frantically for a moment, then sank to the bottom of the bottle, legs moving spasmodically. She corked the bottle neatly, and turned to go.
“You asked me why I thought we can pass through the stones,” I said to her back. “Do you know why, Geilie?” She glanced over her shoulder at me.
“Why, to change things,” she said, sounding surprised. “Why else? Come along; I hear your man down there.”
Whatever Jamie had been doing, it had been hard work; his shirt was dampened with sweat, and clung to his shoulders. He swung around as we entered the room, and I saw that he had been looking at the wooden puzzle-box that Geilie had left on the table. It was obvious from his expression that I had been correct in my surmise—it was the box he had found on the silkies’ isle.
“I believe I have succeeded in mending your sugar press, mistress,” he said, bowing politely to Geilie. “A matter of a cracked cylinder, which your overseer and I contrived to stuff with wedges. Still, I fear ye may be needing another soon.”
Geilie quirked her eyebrows, amused.
“Well, and I’m obliged to ye, Mr. Fraser. Can I not offer ye some refreshment after your labor?” Her hand hovered over the row of bells, but Jamie shook his head, picking up his coat from the sofa.
“I thank ye, mistress, but I fear we must take our leave. It’s quite some way back to Kingston, and we must be on our way, if we mean to reach it before dark.” His face went suddenly blank, and I knew he must have felt the pocket of his coat and realized that the photographs were missing.
He glanced quickly at me, and I gave him a brief nod, touching the side of my skirt where they lay.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” I said, snatching up my hat, and moving toward the door with alacrity. Now that Jamie was back, I wanted nothing so much as to get quickly away from Rose Hall and its owner. Jamie hung back a moment, though.
“I wondered, Mistress Abernathy—since ye mentioned having lived in Paris for a time—whether ye might have been acquainted there wi’ a gentleman of my own acquaintance. Did ye by chance ken the Duke of Sandringham?”
She cocked her cream-blond head at him inquisitively, but as he said no more, she nodded.
“Aye, I kent him. Why?”
Jamie gave her his most charming smile. “No particular reason, mistress; only a curiosity, ye might say.”
The sky was completely overcast by the time we passed the gate, and it was clear that we weren’t going to make it back to Kingston without getting soaked. Under the circumstances, I didn’t care.
“Ye’ve got Brianna’s pictures?” was the first thing Jamie asked, reining up for a moment.
“Right here.” I patted my pocket. “Did you find any sign of Ian?”
He glanced back over his shoulder, as though fearing we might be pursued.
“I couldna get anything out of the overseer or any o’ the slaves—they’re bone-scairt of that woman, and I canna say I blame them a bit. But I know where he is.” He spoke with considerable satisfaction.
“Where? Can we sneak back and get him?” I rose slightly in my saddle, looking back; the slates of Rose Hall were all that was visible through the treetops. I would have been most reluctant to set foot on the place again for any reason—except for Ian.
“Not now.” Jamie caught at my bridle, turning the horse’s head back to the trail. “I’ll need help.”
Under the pretext of finding material to repair the damaged sugar press, Jamie had managed to see most of the plantation within a quarter-mile of the house, including a cluster of slave huts, the stables, a disused drying shed for tobacco, and the building that housed the sugar refinery. Everyplace he went, he suffered no interference beyond curious or hostile glances—except near the refinery.
“That big black bugger who came up onto the porch was sitting on the ground outside,” he said. “When I got too close to him, it made the overseer verra nervous indeed; he kept calling me away, warning me not to get too close to the fellow.”
“That sounds like a really excellent idea,” I said, shuddering slightly. “Not getting close to him, I mean. But you think he has something to do with Ian?”
“He was sitting in front of a wee door fixed into the ground, Sassenach.” Jamie guided his horse adroitly around a fallen log in the path. “It must lead to a cellar beneath the refinery.” The man had not moved an inch, in all the time that Jamie contrived to spend around the refinery. “If Ian’s there, that’s where he is.”
“I’m fairly sure he’s there, all right.” I told him quickly the details of my visit, including my brief conversation with the kitchenmaids. “But what are we going to do?” I concluded. “We can’t just leave him there! After all, we don’t know what Geillis wants with him, but it can’t be innocent, if she wouldn’t admit he was there, can it?”
“Not innocent at all,” he agreed, grim-faced. “The overseer wouldna speak to me of Ian, but he told me other things that would curl your hair, if it wasna already curled up like sheep’s wool.” He glanced at me, and a half-smile lit his face, in spite of his obvious perturbation.
“Judging by the state of your hair, Sassenach, I should say that it’s going to rain verra soon now.”
“How observant of you,” I said sarcastically, vainly trying to tuck in the curls and tendrils that were escaping from under my hat. “The fact that the sky’s black as pitch and the air smells like lightning wouldn’t have a thing to do with your conclusions, of course.”
The leaves of the trees all round us were fluttering like tethered butterflies, as the edge of the storm rose toward us up the slope of the mountain. From the small rise where we stood, I could see the storm clouds sweep in across the bay below, with a dark curtain of rain hanging beneath it like a veil.
Jamie rose in his saddle, looking over the terrain. To my unpracticed eye,
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