A Breath of Snow and Ashes (108 page)

IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO get a wagon up to the Ridge; the only approach was by the narrow trail that wound up the slope from Coopersville—one of the factors that had led to the development of that minor crossroads into a small hamlet, as itinerant peddlers and other travelers tended to stop there, making brief forays on foot upward into the mountain.

“Which is all very well for discouraging hostile invasion onto the Ridge,” I told Bree, panting as I set down a large canvas-wrapped bundle of candlesticks, chamber pots, and other small household belongings at the side of the trail. “But it unfortunately makes it rather difficult to get
off
the bloody Ridge, too.”

“I suppose it never occurred to Da that anyone would want to leave,” Bree said, grunting as she lowered her own burden—Marsali’s cauldron, packed with cheeses, sacks of flour, beans, and rice, plus a wooden box full of dried fish and a string bag of apples. “This thing weighs a
ton.
”

She turned and bellowed, “GERMAIN!” up the trail behind us. Dead silence. Germain and Jemmy were meant to be shepherding Mirabel the goat down to the wagon. They had left the cabin with us, but had been dropping steadily behind.

Neither a call nor a
mehhhh
came from the trail, but Mrs. Bug came into view, trundling slowly under the weight of Marsali’s spinning wheel, which she bore on her back, and holding Mirabel’s halter in one hand. Mirabel, a small, neat white goat with gray markings, blatted happily at sight of us.

“I found the puir wee lassie tethered to a bush,” Mrs. Bug said, setting down the spinning wheel with a wheeze and wiping her face with her apron. “No sign o’ the lads, the wicked wee creatures.”

Brianna made a low growling noise that boded ill for either Jemmy or Germain, if she caught them. Before she could stomp back up the trail, though, Roger and Young Ian came down, each carrying one end of Marsali’s loom, collapsed for the occasion into a large bundle of heavy timbers. Seeing the traffic jam in the road, though, they stopped, setting down their burden with sighs of relief.

“What’s amiss, then?” Roger asked, glancing from face to face, and settling on the goat with a frown. “Where are Jem and Germain?”

“Dollars to donuts the little fiends are hiding somewhere,” Bree said, smoothing tumbled red hair out of her face. Her plait had come undone, and straggling wisps of hair were sticking damply to her face. I was momentarily grateful for my short thicket of curls; no matter what it looked like, it was certainly convenient.

“Shall I go and look?” Ian asked, emerging from the wooden pudding basin he’d been carrying upside down on his head. “They’ll no have gone far.”

Sounds of hasty feet from below made everyone turn expectantly in that direction—but it was not the boys, but Marsali, breathless and wide-eyed.

“Henri-Christian,” she gasped, her eyes flicking rapidly round the group. “Have ye got him, Mother Claire? Bree?”

“I thought
you
had him,” Bree said, catching Marsali’s sense of urgency.

“I did. Wee Aidan McCallum was minding him for me, whilst I loaded things into the wagon. But then I stopped to feed him”—a hand went briefly to her bosom—“and they were both vanished! I thought perhaps . . .” Her words died away as she began scanning the bushes along the trail, her cheeks flushed with exertion and annoyance.

“I’ll strangle him,” she said through gritted teeth. “And where’s Germain, then?” she cried, catching sight of Mirabel, who had taken advantage of the stop to nibble tasty thistles by the path.

“This is beginning to have the look of a plan about it,” Roger observed, obviously amused. Ian, too, seemed to be finding something funny in the situation, but vicious glares from the frazzled females present wiped the smirks off their faces.

“Yes, do go and find them, please,” I said, seeing that Marsali was about to either burst into tears or go berserk and throw things.

“Aye, do,” she said tersely. “And beat them, while ye’re at it.”

“YE KEN WHERE THEY ARE?” Ian asked, shading his eyes to look up a trough of tumbled rock.

“Aye, likely. This way.” Roger pushed through a tangle of yaupon and redbud, with Ian after him, and emerged onto the bank of the small creek that paralleled the trail here. Below, he caught a glimpse of Aidan’s favorite fishing place near the ford, but there was no sign of life down there.

Instead, he turned upward, making his way through thick dry grass and loose rocks along the creekbank. Most of the leaves had fallen from the chestnuts and poplars, and lay in slippery mats of brown and gold underfoot.

Aidan had shown him the secret place some time ago; a shallow cave, barely three feet high, hidden at the top of a steep slope overgrown by a thicket of oak saplings. The oaks were bare now, and the cave’s opening easily visible, if you knew to look for it. It was particularly noticeable at the moment, because smoke was coming out of it, slipping veil-like up the face of the rock above, leaving a sharp scent in the cold, dry air.

Ian raised one eyebrow. Roger nodded, and made his way up the slope, making no effort to be quiet about it. There was a mad scuffle of noises inside the cave, thumpings and low cries, and the veil of smoke wavered and stopped, replaced by a loud hiss and a puff of dark gray from the cave mouth as someone threw water on the fire.

Ian, meanwhile, had made his way silently up the side of the rockface above the cave, seeing a small crevice from which a tiny plume of smoke issued. Clinging one-handed to a dogwood that grew out of the rock, he leaned perilously out, and cupping a hand near his mouth, let out a frightful Mohawk scream, directed into the crevice.

Terror-stricken shrieks, much higher-pitched, issued from the cave, followed in short order by a tumble of little boys, pushing and tripping over each other in their haste.

“Ho, there!” Roger snagged his own offspring neatly by the collar as he rushed past. “The jig’s up, mate.”

Germain, with Henri-Christian’s sturdy form clutched to his midsection, was attempting to escape down the slope, but Ian leapt past him, springing pantherlike down the rocks, and grabbed the baby from him, bringing him to a reluctant stop.

Only Aidan remained at large. Seeing his comrades in captivity, he hesitated at the edge of the slope, obviously wanting to flee, but nobly gave in, coming back with dragging step to share their fate.

“Right, lads; sorry, it’s not on.” Roger spoke with some sympathy; Jemmy had been upset for days at the prospect of Germain’s leaving.

“But we do not want to go, Uncle Roger,” Germain said, employing his most effective look of wide-eyed pleading. “We will stay here; we can live in the cave, and hunt for our food.”

“Aye, sir, and me and Jem, we’ll share our dinners wi’ them,” Aidan piped up in anxious support.

“I brought some of Mama’s matches, so they’ve got a fire to keep warm,” Jem chipped in eagerly, “and a loaf of bread, too!”

“So ye see, Uncle—” Germain spread his hands gracefully in demonstration, “we shall be no trouble to anyone!”

“Oh, nay trouble, is it?” Ian said, with no less sympathy. “Tell your mother that, aye?”

Germain put his hands behind him, clutching his buttocks protectively by reflex.

“And what were ye thinking, dragging your wee brother up here?” Roger said a little more severely. “He can barely walk yet! Two steps out of there”—he nodded at the cave—“and he’d be tumbling down the burn and his neck broken.”

“Oh, no, sir!” Germain said, shocked. He fumbled in his pocket and drew out a piece of string. “I should tie him up, when I was not there, so he shouldna wander or fall. But I couldna be leaving him; I promised
Maman,
when he was born, I said I would never leave him.”

Tears were beginning to trickle down Aidan’s thin cheeks. Henri-Christian, totally confused, began to howl in sympathy, which made Jem’s lower lip tremble, as well. He wriggled out of Roger’s grasp, ran to Germain, and clutched him passionately about the middle.

“Germain can’t go, Daddy, please don’t make him go!”

Roger rubbed his nose, exchanged brief looks with Ian, and sighed.

He sat down on a rock, and motioned to Ian, who was having a certain amount of difficulty in deciding which way up to hold Henri-Christian. Ian gave him the baby with a noticeable air of relief, and Henri-Christian, feeling the need of security, seized Roger’s nose with one hand and his hair with the other.

“Look,
a bhailach,
” he said, detaching Henri-Christian’s grasp with some difficulty. “Wee Henri-Christian needs his mother to feed him. He’s barely got teeth, for God’s sake—he canna be living up here in the wild, eating raw meat wi’ you savages.”

“He has too got teeth!” Aidan said stoutly, extending a bitten forefinger in proof. “Look!”

“He eats pap,” Germain said, but with some uncertainty to his tone. “We would mash up biscuits for him with milk.”

“Henri-Christian needs his mother,” Roger repeated firmly, “and your mother needs
you.
Ye dinna expect her to manage a wagon and two mules
and
your sisters, all the way to New Bern alone, do ye?”

“But Papa can help,” Germain protested. “The girls mind him, when they mind no one else!”

“Your papa’s gone already,” Ian informed him. “He’s ridden ahead, to find a place for ye all to live, once ye’ve got there. Your mother’s to follow on, wi’ all your things. Roger Mac’s right,
a bhailach
—your mother needs ye.”

Germain’s small face paled a little. He looked helplessly down at Jemmy, still clinging to him, then up the hill at Aidan, and gulped. The wind had come up, and blew his blond fringe back from his face, making him look very small and fragile.

“Well, then,” he said, and stopped, swallowing. Very gently, he put his arms round Jemmy’s shoulders and kissed the top of his round red head.

“I’ll come back, cousin,” he said. “And you will come and visit me by the sea. You’ll come, too,” he assured Aidan, looking up. Aidan sniffed, nodding, and made his way slowly down the slope.

Roger reached out a free hand and gently detached Jemmy. “Get on my back,
mo chuisle,
” he said. “It’s a steep slope; I’ll take ye down pick-a-back.”

Not waiting to be asked, Ian leaned down and picked up Aidan, who wrapped his legs round Ian’s middle, hiding his tear-streaked face in Ian’s buckskin shirt.

“D’ye want to ride, too?” Roger asked Germain, standing up carefully under the weight of his double burden. “Ian can carry ye, if ye like.”

Ian nodded and held out a hand, but Germain shook his head, blond hair flying.

“
Non,
Uncle Roger,” he said, almost too softly to hear. “I’ll walk.” And turning round, began to make his way gingerly down the precipitous slope.

69

A STAMPEDE OF BEAVERS

October 25, 1774

T
HEY HAD BEEN WALKING for an hour before Brianna began to realize that they weren’t after game. They’d cut the trail of a small herd of deer, with droppings so fresh that the pellets were still patchy with moisture, but Ian ignored the sign, pushing up the slope in single-minded determination.

Rollo had come with them, but after several fruitless attempts to draw his master’s attention to promising scents, abandoned them in disgust and bounded off through the flurrying leaves to do his own hunting.

The climb was too steep to permit conversation, even had Ian seemed inclined. With a mental shrug, she followed, but kept gun in hand and an eye on the brush, just in case.

They had left the Ridge at dawn; it was well past noon when they paused at last, on the bank of some small and nameless stream. A wild grapevine wrapped itself round the trunk of a persimmon that overhung the bank; animals had taken most of the grapes, but a few bunches still hung out over the water, out of reach for any but the most daring of squirrels—or a tall woman.

She shucked her moccasins and waded into the stream, gasping at the icy shock of the water on her calves. The grapes were ripe to bursting, so purple as to be nearly black, and sticky with juice. The squirrels hadn’t got to them, but the wasps had, and she kept a cautious eye on the dagger-bellied foragers as she twisted the tough stem of a particularly succulent bunch.

“So, do you want to tell me what we’re really looking for?” she asked, back turned to her cousin.

“No,” he said, a smile in his voice.

“Oh, a surprise, is it?” She popped the stem, and turned to toss the grapes to him.

He caught the bunch one-handed, and set them down on the bank beside the ragged knapsack in which he carried provisions.

“Something o’ the sort.”

“As long as we aren’t just out for a walk, then.” She twisted off another bunch, and sloshed ashore, to sit down beside him.

“No, not that.” He flipped two grapes into his mouth, crushed them, and spat the skins and pips with the ease of long custom. She nibbled hers more daintily, biting one in half and flicking the seeds out with a fingernail.

“You ought to eat the skins, Ian; they have vitamins.”

He raised one shoulder in skepticism, but said nothing. Both she and her mother had explained the concept of vitamins—numerous times—to little or no effect. Jamie and Ian had reluctantly been obliged to admit the existence of germs, because Claire could show them teeming seas of microorganisms in her microscope. Vitamins, however, were unfortunately invisible and thus could be safely ignored.

“Is it much farther, this surprise?” The grape skins were, in fact, very bitter. Her mouth puckered involuntarily as she bit into one. Ian, industriously eating and spitting, noticed and grinned at her.

“Aye, a bit farther.”

She cast an eye at the horizon; the sun was coming down the sky. If they were to turn back now, it would be dark before they reached home.

“How
much
farther?” She spit the mangled grape skin into her palm and flicked it away into the grass.

Ian glanced at the sun, too, and pursed his lips.

“Well . . . I should think we’ll reach it by midday tomorrow.”

“We’ll
what
? Ian!” He looked abashed, and ducked his head.

“I’m sorry, coz. I ken I should have told ye before—but I thought ye maybe wouldn’t come, if I said how far.”

A wasp lighted on the bunch of grapes in her hand, and she slapped it irritably away.

“You
know
I wouldn’t. Ian, what were you thinking? Roger will have a fit!”

Her cousin seemed to find the notion funny; his mouth turned up at the corner.

“A fit? Roger Mac? I shouldna think so.”

“Well, all right, he won’t throw a fit—but he’ll be worried. And Jemmy will miss me!”

“No, they’ll be all right,” Ian assured her. “I told Uncle Jamie we’d be gone three days, and he said he’d bring the wean up to the Big House. With your Mam and Lizzie and Mrs. Bug to fuss him, wee Jem won’t even notice you’re gone.”

This was likely true, but did nothing to assuage her annoyance.

“You told
Da
? And he just said fine, and both of you thought it was perfectly all right to—to—lug me off into the woods for three days, without telling me what was going on? You—you—”

“High-handed, insufferable, beastly
Scots,
” Ian said, in such a perfect imitation of her mother’s English accent that she burst out laughing, despite her annoyance.

“Yes,” she said, wiping spluttered grape juice off her chin. “Exactly!”

He was still smiling, but his expression had changed; he wasn’t teasing anymore.

“Brianna,” he said softly, with that Highland lilt that made of her name something strange and graceful. “It’s important, aye?”

He wasn’t smiling at all now. His eyes were fixed on hers, warm, but serious. His hazel eyes were the only feature of any beauty about Ian Murray’s face, but they held a gaze of such frank, sweet openness that you felt he had let you look inside his soul, just for an instant. She had had occasion before to wonder whether he was aware of this particular effect—but even if he was, it was difficult to resist.

“All right,” she said, and waved away a circling wasp, still cross but resigned. “All
right
. But you still should have told me. And you won’t tell me, even now?”

He shook his head, looking down at the grape he was thumbing loose from its stem.

“I can’t,” he said simply. He flipped the grape into his mouth and turned to open his bag—which, now that she noticed, bulged suspiciously. “D’ye want some bread, coz, or a bit of cheese?”

“No. Let’s go.” She stood up and brushed dead leaves from her breeches. “The sooner we get there, the sooner we’ll be back.”

THEY STOPPED AN HOUR before sunset, while enough light remained to gather wood. The bulging knapsack had proved to contain two blankets, as well as food and a jug of beer—welcome, after the day’s walking, which had been mostly uphill.

“Oh, this is a good batch,” she said approvingly, sniffing at the neck of the jug after a long, aromatic, hop-edged swallow. “Who made it?”

“Lizzie. She caught the knack of it from
Frau
Ute. Before the . . . er . . . mphm.” A delicate Scottish noise encompassed the painful circumstances surrounding the dissolution of Lizzie’s betrothal.

“Mmm. That was too bad, wasn’t it?” She lowered her lashes, watching him covertly to see whether he would say anything further about Lizzie. Lizzie and Ian had seemed fond of each other once—but first he had gone to the Iroquois, and then she had been engaged to Manfred McGillivray when he returned. Now that both of them were free once more . . .

He dismissed her comment about Lizzie with nothing more than a shrug of agreement, though, concentrating on the tedious process of fire-making. The day had been warm and an hour of daylight remained, but the shadows under the trees were already blue; the night would be chilly.

“I’m going to have a look at the stream,” she announced, plucking a coiled line and hook from the small pile of effects Ian had unloaded from his bag. “It looked like there’s a trout pool just below the bend, and the flies will be rising.”

“Oh, aye.” He nodded, but paid her little attention, patiently scraping the pile of kindling a little higher before striking the next shower of sparks from his flint.

As she made her way around the bend of the little creek, she saw that it wasn’t merely a trout pool—it was a beaver pond. The humped mound of the lodge was reflected in still water, and on the far bank she could see the agitated judderings of a couple of willow saplings, evidently in the process of being consumed.

She moved slowly, a wary eye out. Beavers wouldn’t trouble her, but they
would
make a dash for the water if they saw her, not only splashing, but smacking the water with their tails in alarm. She’d heard it before; it was amazingly loud, sounding like a fusillade of gunshots, and guaranteed to scare every fish within miles into hiding.

Gnawed sticks littered the near bank, the white inner wood chiseled as neatly as any carpenter could do, but none was fresh, and she heard nothing nearby but the sigh of wind in the trees. Beavers were not stealthy; none was close.

With a cautious eye on the far bank, she baited the hook with a small chunk of cheese, whirled it slowly overhead, picked up speed as she let the line out, then let it fly. The hook landed with a small
plop!
in the middle of the pond, but the noise wasn’t sufficient to alarm the beavers; the willow saplings on the far bank continued to shake and heave under the assault of industrious teeth.

The evening hatch was rising, just as she’d told Ian. The air was soft, cool on her face, and the surface of the water dimpled and glimmered like gray silk shaken in light. Small clouds of gnats drifted in the still air under the trees, prey for the rising of the carnivorous caddis flies, stone flies, and damselflies breaking free of the surface, new-hatched and ravenous.

It was a pity that she hadn’t a casting rod or tied flies—but still worth a try. Caddis flies weren’t the only things that rose hungry at twilight, and voracious trout had been known to strike at almost anything that floated in front of them—her father had once taken one with a hook adorned with nothing more than a few knotted strands of his own bright hair.

That was a thought. She smiled to herself, brushing back a wisp of hair that had escaped from its plait, and began to draw the line slowly back toward shore. But there were likely more than trout here, and cheese was—

A strong tug came on the line, and she jerked in surprise. A snag? The line jerked back, and a thrill from the depths shot up her arm like electricity.

The next half hour passed without conscious thought, in the single-minded pursuit of finny prey. She was wet to mid-thigh, rashed with mosquito bites, and her wrist and shoulder ached, but she had three fat fish gleaming in the grass at her feet, a hunter’s sense of profound satisfaction—and a few more crumbs of cheese left in her pocket.

She was drawing back her arm to throw the hook again, when a sudden chorus of squeaks and hisses shattered the evening calm, and a stampede of beavers broke from cover, trundling down the opposite bank of the pond like a platoon of small, furry tanks. She stared at them open-mouthed, and took a step back in reflex.

Then something big and dark appeared among the trees behind the beavers, and further reflex shot adrenaline through her limbs as she whirled to flee. She would have been into the trees and away in an instant, had she not stepped on one of her fish, which slid under her foot like greased butter and dumped her unceremoniously on her backside. From which position she was ideally placed to see Rollo race from the trees in a long, low streak and launch himself in an arching parabola from the top of the bank. Graceful as a comet, he soared through the air and landed in the pond among the beavers, with a splash like a fallen meteor.

IAN LOOKED UP AT HER, open-mouthed. Slowly, his eyes traveled from her dripping hair, over her sopping, mud-smeared clothes, and down to the fish—one slightly squashed—that dangled from a leather string in her hand.