A Breath of Snow and Ashes (173 page)

122

THE GUARDIAN

I
T WAS NOVEMBER; THERE WERE NO FLOWERS. But the holly bushes gleamed dark green, and the berries had begun to ripen. I cut a small bunch, careful of the prickles, added a tender branch of spruce for fragrance, and climbed the steep trail to the tiny graveyard.

I went every week, to leave some small token on Malva’s grave, and say a prayer. She and her child had not been buried with a cairn—her father hadn’t wanted such a pagan custom—but people came and left pebbles there by way of remembrance. It gave me some small comfort to see them; there were others who remembered her.

I stopped abruptly at the head of the trail; someone was kneeling by her grave—a young man. I caught the murmur of his voice, low and conversational, and would have turned about to go, save that he raised his head, and the wind caught his hair, short and tufted, like an owl’s feathers. Allan Christie.

He saw me, too, and stiffened. There was nothing to do but go and speak to him, though, and so I went.

“Mr. Christie,” I said, the words feeling strange in my mouth. That was what I had called his father. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

He stared up at me blankly; then some sort of awareness seemed to stir in his eyes. Gray eyes, rimmed with black lashes, so much like those of his father and sister. Bloodshot with weeping and lack of sleep, judging from the shocking smudges under them.

“Aye,” he said. “My loss. Aye.”

I stepped around him to lay down my evergreen bouquet, and with a small spurt of alarm, saw that there was a pistol on the ground beside him, cocked and primed.

“Where have you been?” I said as casually as possible, under the circumstances. “We’ve missed you.”

He shrugged, as though it really didn’t matter where he’d been—perhaps it didn’t. He wasn’t looking at me anymore, but at the stone we’d placed at the head of her grave.

“Places,” he said vaguely. “But I had to come back.” He turned away a little, plainly indicating that he wanted me to leave. Instead, I pulled up my skirts and knelt gingerly beside him. I didn’t
think
he’d blow his brains out in front of me. I had no idea what to do, other than to try to make him talk to me and hope that someone else would come along.

“We’re glad to have you home,” I said, trying for an easy, conversational note.

“Aye,” he said vaguely. And again, his eyes going to the headstone, “I had to come back.” His hand wandered toward the pistol, and I seized it, startling him.

“I know you loved your sister very much,” I said. “It—it was a terrible shock to you, I know.” What, what did one say? There were things one might say to a person contemplating suicide, I knew, but what?

“Your life has value.”
I’d said that to Tom Christie, who had only replied,
“If it did not, this would not matter.”
But how should I convince his son of that?

“Your father loved you both,” I said, wondering as I said it whether he knew what his father had done. His fingers were very cold, and I wrapped both my hands round his, trying to offer him a little warmth, hoping that the human contact would help.

“Not as I loved her,” he said softly, not looking at me. “I loved her all her life, from the time she was born and they gave her me to hold. There was nay other, for either of us. Faither was gone to prison, and then my mither—ah, Mither.” His lips pulled back, as though to laugh, but there was no sound.

“I know about your mother,” I said. “Your father told me.”

“Did he?” His head jerked up to look at me, eyes clear and hard. “Did he tell ye they took me and Malva to her execution?”

“I—no. I don’t think he knew, did he?” My stomach clenched.

“He did. I told him, later, when he sent for us, brought us here. He said that was good, we’d seen with our own eyes the ends of wickedness. He bade me remember the lesson—and so I did,” he added more quietly.

“How—how old were you?” I asked, horrified.

“Ten. Malva was nay more than two; she’d no idea what was happening. She cried out for her Mam when they brought Mither out to the hangsman, and kicked and screamed, reaching out for her.”

He swallowed, and turned his head away.

“I tried to take her, to push her head into my bosom, so she shouldna see—but they wouldna let me have her. They held her wee head and made her watch, and Auntie Darla saying in her ear that this was what happened to witches, and pinching her legs ’til she shrieked. We lived with Auntie Darla for six years after that,” he said, his face remote.

“She wasna best pleased about it, but she said she kent her Christian duty. The auld besom barely fed us, and ’twas me took care of Malva.”

He was silent for a bit, and so was I, thinking the best—the only—thing I could offer him now was the chance to speak. He pulled his hand from mine, leaned over, and touched the gravestone. It was no more than a lump of granite, but someone had gone to the trouble to carve her name on it—only the one word, MALVA , in crude block letters. It reminded me of the memorials that dotted Culloden, the clanstones, each with a single name.

“She was perfect,” he whispered. His finger traced its way over the stone, delicate, as though he touched her flesh. “So perfect. Her wee privates looked like a flower’s bud, and her skin sae fresh and soft. . . .”

A sense of coldness grew in the pit of my stomach. Did he mean . . . yes, of course he did. A sense of inevitable despair began to grow within me.

“She was mine,” he said, and looking up to see my eye upon him, repeated it more loudly. “She was mine!”

He looked down, then, at the grave, and his mouth turned in upon itself, in grief and anger.

“The auld man never knew—never guessed what we were to each other.”

Didn’t he?
I thought. Tom Christie might have confessed to the crime to save one he loved—but he loved more than one. Having lost a daughter—or rather, a niece—would he not do all he could to save the son who was the last remnant of his blood?

“You killed her,” I said quietly. I was in no doubt, and he showed no surprise.

“He would ha’ sold her away, given her to some clod of a farmer.” Allan’s fist clenched on his thigh. “I thought of that, as she grew older, and sometimes when I would lie with her, I couldna bear the thought, and would slap her face, only from the rage of thinking of it.”

He drew a deep, ragged breath.

“It wasna her fault, none of it. But I thought it was. And then I caught her wi’ that soldier, and again, wi’ filthy wee Henderson. I beat her for it, but she cried out that she couldna help it—she was with child.”

“Yours?”

He nodded, slowly.

“I never thought of it. I should, of course. But I never did. She was always wee Malva, see, a bittie wee lass. I saw her breasts swell, aye, and the hair come out to mar her sweet flesh—but I just never thought . . .

He shook his head, unable to deal with the thought, even now.

“She said she must marry—and there must be reason for her husband to think the child his, whoever she wed. If she couldna make the soldier wed her, then it must be another. So she took as many lovers as she might, quickly.

“I put a stop to that, though,” he assured me, a faintly nauseating tone of self-righteousness in his voice. “I told her I wouldna have it—I would think of another way.”

“And so you put her up to saying the child was Jamie’s.” My horror at the story and my anger at what he had done to us was subsumed by a flood of sorrow.
Oh, Malva,
I thought in despair.
Oh, my darling Malva. Why didn’t you tell me?
But of course she wouldn’t have told me. Her only confidant was Allan.

He nodded, and reached out to touch the stone again. A gust of wind quivered through the holly, stirring the stiff leaves.

“It would explain the bairn, see, but she wouldna have to wed anyone. I thought—Himself would give her money to go away, and I would go with her. We could go to Canada, perhaps, or to the Indies.” His voice sounded dreamy, as though he envisioned some idyllic life, where no one knew.

“But why did you kill her?” I burst out. “What made you
do
that?” The sorrow and the senselessness were overwhelming; I clenched my hands in my apron, not to batter him.

“I had to,” he said heavily. “She said she couldna go through with it.” He blinked, looking down, and I saw that his eyes were heavy with tears.

“She said—she loved you,” he said, low-voiced and thick. “She couldna hurt ye so. She meant to tell the truth. No matter what I said to her, she just kept saying that—she loved ye, and she’d tell.”

He closed his eyes, shoulders slumping. Two tears ran down his cheeks.

“Why, hinny?” he cried, crossing his arms over his belly in a spasm of grief. “Why did ye make me do it? Ye shouldna have loved anyone but me.”

He sobbed then, like a child, and curled into himself, weeping. I was weeping, too, for the loss and the pointlessness, for the utter, terrible
waste
of it all. But I reached out and took the gun from the ground. Hands shaking, I dumped out the priming pan, and shook the ball from the barrel, then put the pistol in the pocket of my apron.

“Leave,” I said, my voice half-choked. “Go away again, Allan. There are too many people dead.”

He was too grief-stricken to hear me; I shook him by the shoulder and said it again, more strongly.

“You can’t kill yourself. I forbid it, do you hear?”

“And who are you to say?” he cried, turning on me. His face was contorted with anguish. “I cannot live, I cannot!”

But Tom Christie had given up his life for his son, as well as for me; I couldn’t let that sacrifice go for naught.

“You must,” I said, and stood up, feeling light-headed, unsure whether my knees would hold me. “Do you hear me? You must!”

He looked up, eyes burning through the tears, but didn’t speak. There was a keening whine like the hum of a mosquito, and a soft, sudden thump. He didn’t change expression, but his eyes slowly died. He stayed on his knees for a moment, but bowed then forward, like a flower nodding on its stem, so I saw the arrow protruding from the center of his back. He coughed, once, sputtering blood, and fell sideways, curled on his sister’s grave. His legs jerked spasmodically, grotesquely froglike. Then he lay still.

I stood stupidly staring at him for some immeasurable span of time, becoming only gradually aware that Ian had walked out of the wood and stood beside me, bow over his shoulder. Rollo nosed curiously at the body, whining.

“He’s right, Auntie,” Ian said quietly. “He can’t.”

123

RETURN OF THE NATIVE

O
LD GRANNIE ABERNATHY looked at least a hundred and two. She admitted—under pressure—to ninety-one. She was nearly blind and nearly deaf, curled up like a pretzel from osteoporosis, and with skin gone so fragile that the merest scrape tore it like paper.

“I’m nay more than a bag o’ bones,” she said every time I saw her, shaking a head that trembled with palsy. “But at least I’ve still got maist o’ my teeth!”

For a wonder, she had; I thought that was the only reason she had made it this far—unlike many people half her age, she wasn’t reduced to living on porridge, but could still stomach meat and greens. Perhaps it was improved nutrition that kept her going—perhaps it was mere stubbornness. Her married name was Abernathy, but she had, she confided, been born a Fraser.

Smiling at the thought, I finished wrapping the bandage about her sticklike shin. Her legs and feet had almost no flesh upon them, and felt hard and cold as wood. She’d knocked her shin against the leg of the table and taken off a strip of skin the width of a finger; such a minor injury that a younger person would think nothing of it—but her family worried over her, and had sent for me.

“It will be slow healing, but if you keep it clean—for God’s sake, do
not
let her put hog fat on it!—I think it will be all right.” The younger Mrs. Abernathy, known as Young Grannie—herself about seventy—gave me a sharp eye at that; like her mother-in-law, she put a good deal of faith in hog fat and turpentine as cure-alls, but nodded grudgingly. Her daughter, whose high-flown name of Arabella had been shortened to the cozier Grannie Belly, grinned at me behind Young Grannie’s back. She had been less fortunate in the way of teeth—her smile showed significant gaps—but was cheerful and good-natured.

“Willie B.,” she instructed a teenaged grandson, “just be steppin’ doon to the root cellar, and bringing up a wee sack of turnips for Herself.”

I made the usual protestations, but all parties concerned were comfortably aware of the proper protocol in such matters, and within a few minutes, I was on my way home, the richer by five pounds of turnips.

They were welcome. I had forced myself to go back to my garden in the spring after Malva’s death—I had to; sentiment was all very well, but we had to eat. The subsequent disturbances of life and my prolonged absences, though, had resulted in dreadful neglect of the autumn crop. Despite Mrs. Bug’s best efforts, the turnips had all succumbed to thrips and black rot.

Our supplies in general were sadly depleted. With Jamie and Ian gone so frequently, not there to harvest or hunt, and without Bree and Roger, the grain crops had been half of their usual yield, and only a pitiful single haunch of venison hung in the smoking shed. We needed nearly all the grain for our own use; there was none to trade or sell, and only a scant few bags of barleycorn sat under canvas near the malting shed—where they were likely to rot, I thought grimly, as no one had had time to see to the malting of a fresh batch before the cold weather set in.

Mrs. Bug was slowly rebuilding her flock of chickens, after a disastrous attack by a fox that got into the henhouse—but it was slow going, and we got only the occasional egg for breakfast, grudgingly spared.

On the other hand, I reflected more cheerfully, we
did
have ham. Lots of ham. Likewise, immense quantities of bacon, headcheese, pork chops, tenderloin . . . to say nothing of suet and rendered fat.

The thought led me back to hog fat, and to the crowded, overflowingly familiar coziness of the Abernathys’ cluster of cabins—and by contrast, to thought of the dreadful emptiness at the Big House.

In a place with so many people, how could the loss of only four be so important? I had to stop and lean against a tree, let the sorrow wash through me, making no attempt to stop it. I’d learned.
“Ye canna hold a ghost at bay,”
Jamie had told me.
“Let them in.”

I let them in—I could never keep them out. And took what small comfort I could in hoping—no, I didn’t hope, I told myself fiercely, I
knew
—that they were not ghosts in fact. Not dead, but only . . . elsewhere.

After a few moments, the overwhelming grief began to recede, going slowly as the ebbing tide. Sometimes it uncovered treasure: small forgotten images of Jemmy’s face, smeared with honey, Brianna’s laughter, Roger’s hands, deft with a knife, carving one of the little cars—the house was still littered with them—then leaning to spear a muffin from a passing plate. And if to look at these caused fresh pain, at least I had them, and could keep them in my heart, knowing that in the fullness of time, they would bring consolation.

I breathed, and felt the tightness in my chest and throat ease. Amanda was not the only one who might benefit from modern surgery, I thought. I couldn’t tell what might be done for Roger’s vocal cords, but maybe . . . and yet, his voice now was good. Full and resonant, if rough. Perhaps he would choose to keep it as it was—he’d fought for it, and earned it.

The tree I leaned against was a pine; the needles swayed softly above me, then settled, as though in agreement. I had to go; it was late in the day and the air was growing colder.

Wiping my eyes, I settled the hood of my cloak and went on. It was a long walk from the Abernathys’—I should really have ridden Clarence, but he’d come up lame the day before, and I’d let him rest. I’d have to hurry, though, if I was to reach home before dark.

I cast a wary eye upward, judging the clouds, which had that soft, uniform gray of coming snow. The air was cold and thick with moisture; when the temperature dropped at nightfall, snow would fall.

The sky was still light, but only just, as I came down past the springhouse and into the backyard. Light enough to tell me that something was wrong, though—the back door stood open.

That set off alarm bells, and I turned to run back into the woods. I turned, and ran smack into a man who had come out of the trees behind me.

“Who the hell are you?” I demanded, stepping hastily back.

“Don’t worry about that, Mrs.,” he said, and grabbing me by the arm, yelled toward the house, “Hey, Donner! I got her!”

WHATEVER WENDIGO DONNER been doing for the last year, it hadn’t been profitable, by the looks of him. Never a natty dresser at the best of times, he was now so ragged that his coat was literally falling apart, and a slice of stringy buttock showed through a rent in his breeches. His mane of hair was greasy and matted, and he stank.

“Where are they?” he demanded hoarsely.

“Where are what?” I swung round to face his companion, who seemed in slightly better condition. “And where are my housemaid and her sons?” We were standing in the kitchen, and the hearth fire was out; Mrs. Bug hadn’t come that morning, and wherever Amy and the boys were, they’d been gone for some time.

“Dunno.” The man shrugged, indifferent. “Wasn’t nobody to home when we came.”

“Where are the jewels?” Donner grabbed at my arm, jerking me round to face him. His eyes were sunk in his head, and his grip was hot; he was burning with fever.

“I haven’t got any,” I said shortly. “You’re ill. You should—”

“You do! I know you do! Everybody knows!”

That gave me momentary pause. Gossip being what it was, everybody likely
thought
they knew that Jamie had a small cache of jewels. Small wonder if word of this hypothetical treasure had reached Donner—and little likelihood that I could convince him otherwise. I had no choice but to try, though.

“They’re gone,” I said simply.

Something flickered in his eyes at that.

“How?” he said.

I raised an eyebrow in the direction of his accomplice. Did he want the man to know?

“Go find Richie and Jed,” Donner said briefly to the thug, who shrugged and went out. Richie and Jed? How on earth many people had he brought? Past the first shock of seeing him, I now became aware that there were thumping feet upstairs, and the sound of cupboard doors being banged impatiently down the hall.

“My surgery! Get them out of there!” I dove for the door to the hallway, intending to perform this office myself, but Donner grabbed at my cloak to stop me.

I was bloody tired of being manhandled, and I wasn’t afraid of this miserable excuse for a human being.

“Let go!” I snapped, and kicked him briskly in the kneecap to emphasize the point. He yelped, but let go; I could hear him cursing behind me as I rushed through the door and down the hall.

Papers and books had been flung out into the hallway from Jamie’s office, and a puddle of ink had been poured over them. The explanation of the ink was apparent when I saw the thug rifling my surgery—he had a big blot of ink on the front of his shirt, where he had apparently sequestered the stolen pewter inkwell.

“What are you
doing,
you nitwit?” I said. The thug, a boy of sixteen or so, blinked at me, mouth open. He had one of Mr. Blogweather’s perfect glass globes in his hand; at this, he grinned maliciously and let it drop to the floor, where it shattered into a spray of fragments. One of the flying shards lanced through his cheek, slicing it open; he didn’t feel it, until the blood began to well. Then he put a hand to the wound, frowning in puzzlement, and bellowed in fright at the blood on his hand.

“Crap,” said Donner, behind me. He put his arms around me, and dragged me after him back to the kitchen.

“Look,” he said urgently, releasing me. “All I want is two. You can keep the rest. I gotta have one to pay these guys, and one to—to travel with.”

“But it’s true,” I insisted, knowing that he wouldn’t believe me. “We haven’t got any. My daughter and her family—they’ve gone. Gone back. They used all we had. There aren’t any more.”

He stared at me, disbelief plain in his burning eyes.

“Yes, there are,” he said positively. “There have to be. I gotta get out of here!”

“Why?”

“Never you mind. I gotta go, and quick.” He swallowed, eyes darting around the kitchen, as though the gems might be sitting casually on the sideboard. “Where are they?”

A hideous crash from the surgery, followed by an outbreak of shouted curses, prevented any reply I might have made. I moved by reflex toward the door, but Donner moved in front of me.

I was infuriated at this invasion, and beginning to be alarmed. While I’d never seen any indication of violence from Donner, I wasn’t so sure about the men he’d brought with him. They
might
eventually give up and leave, when it became apparent that there were in fact no gems on the premises—or they might try to beat the location of said gems out of me.

I pulled my cloak more tightly around myself and sat down on a bench, trying to think calmly.

“Look,” I said to Donner. “You’ve taken the house apart—” A crash from upstairs shook the house, and I jumped. My God, it sounded as though they’d tipped over the wardrobe. “You’ve taken the house apart,” I repeated, through gritted teeth, “and you haven’t found anything. Wouldn’t I give them to you, if I had any, to save you wrecking the place?”

“No, I don’t reckon you would. I wouldn’t, if I was you.” He rubbed a hand across his mouth. “
You
know what’s going on—the war and all.” He shook his head in confusion. “I didn’t know it would be this way. Swear to God, half the people I meet don’t know which way is up anymore. I thought it’d be like, you know, redcoats and all, and you just keep away from anybody in a uniform, keep away from the battles, and it’d be fine. But I haven’t seen a redcoat
anywhere,
and people—you know, just plain old
people
—they’re shooting each other and running around burning up each other’s houses. . . .”

He closed his eyes for a minute. His cheeks went from red one moment to white the next; I could see he was very ill. I could hear him, too; the breath rattled wetly in his chest, and he wheezed faintly. If he fainted, how would I get rid of his companions?

“Anyway,” he said, opening his eyes. “I’m going. Going back. I don’t care what things are like then; it’s a hell of a lot better’n here.”

“What about the Indians?” I inquired, with no more than a touch of sarcasm. “Leaving them to their own devices, are you?”