A Breath of Snow and Ashes (139 page)

90

FORTY-SIX BEANS
TO THE GOOD

A
T DAWN, RICHARD BROWN WAS GONE. The rest of the men seemed grim, but resigned, and under the command of a squatty, morose sort of fellow named Oakes, we resumed our push south.

Something had changed in the night; Jamie had lost a little of the tension that had infused him since our departure from the Ridge. Stiff, sore, and disheartened as I was, I found this change some comfort, though wondering what had caused it. Was it the same thing that had caused Richard Brown to leave on his mysterious errand?

Jamie said nothing, though, beyond inquiring after my hand—which was tender, and so stiff that I couldn’t immediately flex my fingers. He continued to keep a watchful eye on our companions, but the lessening of tension had affected them, too; I began to lose my fear that they might suddenly lose patience and string us up, Tom Christie’s dour presence notwithstanding.

As though in accord with this more relaxed atmosphere, the weather suddenly cleared, which heartened everyone further. It would have been stretching things to say that there was any sense of rapprochement, but without Richard Brown’s constant malevolence, the other men at least became occasionally civil. And as it always did, the tedium and hardships of travel wore everyone down, so that we rolled down the rutted roads like a pack of marbles, occasionally caroming off one another, dusty, silent, and united in exhaustion, if nothing else, by the end of each day.

This neutral state of affairs changed abruptly in Brunswick. For a day or two before, Oakes had been plainly anticipating something, and when we reached the first houses, I could see him beginning to draw great breaths of relief.

It was therefore no surprise when we stopped to refresh ourselves at a pothouse on the edge of the tiny, half-abandoned settlement, to find Richard Brown awaiting us. It
was
a surprise when, without more than a murmured word from Brown, Oakes and two others suddenly seized Jamie, knocking the cup of water from his hand and slamming him against the wall of the building.

I dropped my own cup and flung myself toward them, but Richard Brown grabbed my arm in a viselike grip and dragged me toward the horses.

“Let go! What are you doing? Let go, I say!” I kicked him, and had a good go at scratching out his eyes, but he got hold of both my wrists, and shouted for one of the other men to help. Between the two of them, they got me—still screaming at the top of my lungs—on a horse in front of another of Brown’s men. There was a deal of shouting from Jamie’s direction, and general hubbub, as a few people came out of the pothouse, staring. None of them seemed disposed to interfere with a large group of armed men, though.

Tom Christie was shouting protests; I glimpsed him hammering on the back of one man, but to no avail. The man behind me wrapped an arm round my middle and jerked it tight, knocking out what breath I had left.

Then we were thundering down the road, Brunswick—and Jamie—disappearing in the dust.

My furious protests, demands, and questions brought no response, of course, beyond an order to be quiet, this accompanied by another warning squeeze of the restraining arm around me.

Shaking with rage and terror, I subsided, and at that point, saw that Tom Christie was still with us, looking shaken and disturbed.

“Tom!” I shouted. “Tom, go back! Don’t let them kill him! Please!”

He looked in my direction, startled, rose in his stirrups, and looked back toward Brunswick, then turned toward Richard Brown, shouting something.

Brown shook his head, reined his mount in so that Christie could come up alongside, and leaning over, yelled something at him that must have passed for explanation. Christie clearly didn’t like the situation, but after a few impassioned exchanges, he subsided, scowling, and dropped back. He pulled his horse’s head aside and circled back to come within speaking distance of me.

“They will not kill nor harm him,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the rumble of hooves and rattle of harness. “Brown’s word of honor upon it, he says.”

“And you
believe
him, for God’s sake?”

He looked disconcerted at that, glanced again at Brown, who had spurred up to ride ahead, then back at Brunswick. Indecision played across his features, but then his lips firmed and he shook his head.

“It will be all right,” he said. But he would not meet my eyes, and in spite of my continued entreaties to him to go back, to stop them, he slackened his pace, falling back so that I couldn’t see him anymore.

My throat was raw from screaming, and my stomach hurt, bruised and clenched in a knot of fear. Our speed had slowed, now that we had left Brunswick behind, and I concentrated on breathing; I wouldn’t speak until I was sure I could do so without my voice trembling.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked finally. I sat stiff in the saddle, enduring an unwanted intimacy with the man behind me.

“New Bern,” he said, with a note of grim satisfaction. “And then, thank God, we’ll be shut of you at last.”

THE JOURNEY TO NEW BERN passed in a blur of fear, agitation, and physical discomfort. While I did wonder what was about to happen to me, all such speculations were drowned by my anxiety about Jamie.

Tom Christie was plainly my only hope of finding out anything, but he avoided me, keeping his distance—and I found
that
as alarming as anything else. He was clearly troubled, even more so than he had been since Malva’s death, but he no longer bore a look of dull suffering; he was actively agitated. I was terribly afraid that he knew or suspected Jamie was dead, but would not admit it—either to me, or to himself.

All of the men clearly shared my captor’s urge to be rid of me as soon as possible; we stopped only briefly, when absolutely necessary for the horses to rest. I was offered food, but could not eat. By the time we reached New Bern, I was completely drained from the sheer physical exertion of the ride, but much more so from the constant strain of apprehension.

Most of the men remained at a tavern on the outskirts of the town; Brown and one of the other men took me through the streets, accompanied by a silent Tom Christie, arriving at last at a large house of whitewashed brick. The home, as Brown informed me with a sense of lively pleasure, of Sheriff Tolliver—also, the town gaol.

The sheriff, a darkly handsome sort, viewed me with a sort of interested speculation, mingled with a growing disgust as he heard the crime of which I was accused. I made no attempt at rebuttal or defense; the room was going in and out of focus, and all my attention was required to keep my knees from giving way.

I barely heard most of the exchange between Brown and the sheriff. At the last, though, just before I was led away into the house, I found Tom Christie suddenly beside me.

“Mrs. Fraser,” he said, very low. “Believe me, he is safe. I would not have his death on my conscience—nor yours.” He was looking at me directly, for the first time in . . . days? weeks? . . . and I found the intensity of his gray eyes both disconcerting and oddly comforting.

“Trust in God,” he whispered. “He will deliver the righteous out of all his dangers.” And with a sudden hard and unexpected squeeze of my hand, he was gone.

AS EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY gaols went, it could have been worse. The women’s quarters consisted of a small room at the back of the sheriff’s house, which had likely been a storeroom of sorts originally. The walls were roughly plastered, though some escape-minded former occupant had chipped away a large chunk of the plaster, before discovering that beneath it lay a layer of lath, and beneath
that
an impenetrable wall of baked-clay brick, which confronted me at once with its bland impenetrability when the door was opened.

There was no window, but an oil dip burned on a ledge by the door, casting a faint circle of light that illuminated the daunting bare patch of brick, but left the corners of the room in deep shadow. I couldn’t see the night-soil bucket, but knew there was one; the thick, acrid tang of it stung my nose, and I automatically began breathing through my mouth as the sheriff pushed me into the room.

The door closed firmly behind me, and a key grated in the lock.

There was a single, narrow bedstead in the shadows, occupied by a large lump under a threadbare blanket. The lump took its time, but eventually stirred and sat up, resolving itself into a small, plump woman, capless and frowsy with sleep, who sat blinking at me like a dormouse.

“Ermp,” she said, and rubbed her eyes with her fists, like a small child.

“So sorry to disturb you,” I said politely. My heart had slowed a bit by now, though I was still shaking and short of breath. I pressed my hands flat against the door to stop them trembling.

“Think nothing of it,” she said, and yawned suddenly, like a hippopotamus, showing me a set of worn but serviceable molars. Blinking and smacking her lips absently, she reached down beside her, pulled out a battered pair of spectacles, and set them firmly on her nose.

Her eyes were blue, and hugely magnified by the lenses, enormous with curiosity.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Claire Fraser,” I said, watching her narrowly, in case she too might already have heard all about my supposed crime. The bruise on my breast left by the stone that had struck me was still visible, beginning to yellow above the edge of my gown.

“Oh?” She squinted, as though trying to place me, but evidently failed, for she shrugged away the effort. “Got any money?”

“A bit.” Jamie had forced me to take almost all the money—not a great deal, but there was a small weight of coin at the bottom of each of the pockets tied around my waist, and a couple of proclamation notes tucked inside my stays.

The woman was a good deal shorter than I, and pillowy in aspect, with large, drooping breasts and several comfortable rolls corrugating her uncorseted middle; she was in her shift, with her gown and stays hung from a nail in the wall. She seemed harmless—and I began to breathe a little more easily, beginning to grasp the fact that at least I was safe for the moment, no longer in danger of sudden, random violence.

The other prisoner made no offensive moves toward me, but hopped down off the bed, bare feet thumping softly in what I realized now was a matted layer of moldy straw.

“Well, call the old bizzom and send for some Holland, then, why don’t you?” she suggested cheerfully.

“The . . who?”

Instead of answering, she trundled to the door and banged on it, shouting, “Mrs. Tolliver! Mrs. Tolliver!”

The door opened almost immediately, revealing a tall, thin woman, looking like an annoyed stork.

“Really, Mrs. Ferguson,” she said. “You are the most dreadful nuisance. I was just coming to pay my respects to Mrs. Fraser, in any case.” She turned her back on Mrs. Ferguson with magisterial dignity and inclined her head a bare inch toward me.

“Mrs. Fraser. I am Mrs. Tolliver.”

I had a split second in which to decide how to react, and chose the prudent—if galling—course of genteel submission, bowing to her as though she were the Governor’s lady.

“Mrs. Tolliver,” I murmured, careful not to meet her eyes. “How kind of you.”