A Breath of Snow and Ashes (18 page)

That unnerved him, and he nearly lost his grip on the captive hand.

“Two of them! What do they think I am?”

The girl giggled again, leaned over, and bit him lightly on the chest.

“Christ!”

“Well, no, Uncle, they don’t think you’re Him,” Ian said, obviously suppressing his own mirth. “They think you’re the King. So to speak. You’re his agent, so they’re doing honor to His Majesty by sending you his women, aye?”

The second woman had uncovered his feet and was slowly stroking his soles with one finger. He was ticklish and would have found this bothersome, were he not so distracted by the first woman, with whom he was being compelled into a most undignified game of hide-the-sausage.

“Talk to them, Ian,” he said between clenched teeth, fumbling madly with his free hand, meanwhile forcing back the questing fingers of the captive hand—which were languidly stroking his ear—and wiggling his feet in a frantic effort to discourage the second lady’s attentions, which were growing bolder.

“Erm . . . what d’ye want me to say?” Ian inquired, switching back to English. His voice quivered slightly.

“Tell them I’m deeply sensible of the honor, but—gk!” Further diplomatic evasions were cut off by the sudden intrusion of someone’s tongue into his mouth, tasting strongly of onions and beer.

In the midst of his subsequent struggles, he was dimly aware that Ian had lost any sense of self-control and was lying on the floor giggling helplessly. It was filicide if you killed a son, he thought grimly; what was the word for assassinating a nephew?

“Madam!” he said, disengaging his mouth with difficulty. He seized the lady by the shoulders and rolled her off his body with enough force that she whooped with surprise, bare legs flying—Jesus, was she naked?

She was. Both of them were; his eyes adapted to the faint glow of the embers, he caught the shimmer of light from shoulders, breasts, and rounded thighs.

He sat up, gathering furs and blankets round him in a sort of hasty redoubt.

“Cease, the two of you!” he said severely in Cherokee. “You are beautiful, but I cannot lie with you.”

“No?” said one, sounding puzzled.

“Why not?” said the other.

“Ah . . . because there is an oath upon me,” he said, necessity producing inspiration. “I have sworn . . . sworn . . .” He groped for the proper word, but didn’t find it. Luckily, Ian leaped in at this point, with a stream of fluent Tsalagi, too fast to follow.

“Ooo,” breathed one girl, impressed. Jamie felt a distinct qualm.

“What in God’s name did ye tell them, Ian?”

“I told them the Great Spirit came to ye in a dream, Uncle, and told ye that ye mustn’t go with a woman until ye’d brought guns to all the Tsalagi.”

“Until I
what
?!”

“Well, it was the best I could think of in a hurry, Uncle,” Ian said defensively.

Hair-raising as the notion was, he had to admit it was effective; the two women were huddled together, whispering in awed tones, and had quite left off pestering him.

“Aye, well,” he said grudgingly. “I suppose it could be worse.” After all, even if the Crown were persuaded to provide guns, there were a damn lot of Tsalagi.

“Ye’re welcome, Uncle Jamie.” The laughter was gurgling just below the surface of his nephew’s voice, and emerged in a stifled snort.

“What?” he said testily.

“The one lady is saying it’s a disappointment to her, Uncle, because you’re verra nicely equipped. The other is more philosophical about it, though. She says they might have borne ye children, and the bairns might have red hair.” His nephew’s voice quivered.

“What’s wrong wi’ red hair, for God’s sake?”

“I dinna ken, quite, but I gather it’s not something ye want your bairn to be marked with, and ye can help it.”

“Well, fine,” he snapped. “No danger of it, is there? Can they not go home now?”

“It’s raining, Uncle Jamie,” Ian pointed out logically. It was; the wind had brought a patter of rain, and now the main shower arrived, beating on the roof with a steady thrum, drops hissing into the hot embers through the smoke hole. “Ye wouldna send them out in the wet, would ye? Besides, ye just said ye couldna lie wi’ them, not that ye meant them to go.”

He broke off to say something interrogative to the ladies, who replied with eager confidence. Jamie thought they’d said—they had. Rising with the grace of young cranes, the two of them clambered naked as jaybirds back into his bed, patting and stroking him with murmurs of admiration—though sedulously avoiding his private parts—pressed him down into the furs, and snuggled down on either side of him, warm bare flesh pressed cozily against him.

He opened his mouth, then shut it again, finding absolutely nothing to say in any of the languages he knew.

He lay on his back, rigid and breathing shallowly. His cock throbbed indignantly, clearly meaning to stay up and torment him all night in revenge for its abuse. Small chortling noises came from the pile of furs on the ground, interspersed with hiccuping snorts. He thought it was maybe the first time he’d heard Ian truly laugh since his return.

Praying for fortitude, he drew a long, slow breath, and closed his eyes, hands folded firmly across his ribs, elbows pressed to his sides.

15

STAKIT TO DROON

R
OGER WALKED OUT ONTO the terrace at River Run, feeling pleasantly exhausted. After three weeks of strenuous work, he’d gathered the new tenants from the highways and byways of Cross Creek and Campbelton, become acquainted with all the heads of households, managed to equip them at least minimally for the journey, in terms of food, blankets, and shoes—and got them all collected in one place, firmly overcoming their tendency to panic and stray. They’d start in the morning for Fraser’s Ridge, and not a moment too soon.

He looked out over the terrace in satisfaction, toward the meadow that lay beyond Jocasta Cameron Innes’s stables. They were all bedded down in a temporary camp there: twenty-two families, with seventy-six individual souls, four mules, two ponies, fourteen dogs, three pigs, and God only knew how many chickens, kittens, and pet birds, bundled into wicker cages for carrying. He had all the names on a list—animals excluded—dog-eared and crumpled in his pocket. He had several other lists there, as well, scribbled over, crossed out, and amended to the point of illegibility. He felt like a walking Book of Deuteronomy. He also felt like a very large drink.

This was luckily forthcoming; Duncan Innes, Jocasta’s husband, had returned from his own day’s labor and was sitting on the terrace, in company with a cut-glass decanter, from which the rays of the sinking sun struck a mellow amber glow.

“How is it, then,
a charaid
?” Duncan greeted him genially, gesturing toward one of the basketwork chairs. “Ye’ll take a dram, perhaps?”

“I will, and thanks.”

He sank gratefully into the chair, which creaked amiably beneath his weight. He accepted the glass Duncan handed him, and tossed it back with a brief
“Slàinte.”

The whisky burned through the strictures that bound his throat, making him cough, but seeming suddenly to open things, so that the constant faint sense of choking began to leave him. He sipped, grateful.

“Ready to go, are they?” Duncan nodded toward the meadow, where the smoke of campfires hung in a low golden haze.

“Ready as they’ll ever be. Poor things,” Roger added with some sympathy.

Duncan raised one shaggy brow.

“Fish out of water,” Roger amplified, holding out his glass to accept the proffered refill. “The women are terrified, and so are the men, but they hide it better. Ye’d think I was taking them all to be slaves on a sugar plantation.”

Duncan nodded. “Or sell them to Rome to clean the Pope’s shoon,” he said wryly. “I misdoubt most of them had ever smelt a Catholic before embarking. And from the wrinkled noses, they dinna care so much for the scent now, I think. Do they so much as tak’ a dram now and then, d’ye ken?”

“Only medicinally, and only if in actual danger of death, I think.” Roger took a slow, ambrosial swallow and closed his eyes, feeling the whisky warm his throat and curl in his chest like a purring cat. “Meet Hiram yet, did you? Hiram Crombie, the head man of this lot.”

“The wee sour-drap wi’ the stick up his arse? Aye, I met him.” Duncan grinned, his drooping mustache lifting at the end. “He’ll be at supper with us. Best have another.”

“I will, thanks,” said Roger, extending his glass. “Though they’re none of them much for hedonistic pleasure, so far as I can tell. Ye’d think they were all still Covenanters to the bone. The Frozen Chosen, aye?”

Duncan laughed immoderately at that.

“Well, it’s no like it was in my grandsire’s day,” he said, recovering and reaching across for the decanter. “And thank the Lord for that.” He rolled his eyes, grimacing.

“Your grandsire was a Covenanter, then?”

“God, yes.” Shaking his head, Duncan poured a goodly measure, first for Roger, then himself. “A fierce auld bastard, he was. Not that he’d no cause, mind. His sister was stakit to droon, ken?”

“Was—Christ.” He bit his tongue in penance, but was too interested to pay it much mind. “Ye mean—executed by drowning?”

Duncan nodded, eyes on his glass, then took a good gulp and held it for a moment in his mouth before swallowing.

“Margaret,” he said. “Her name was Margaret. Eighteen she was, at the time. Her father and her brother—my grandfather, aye?—they’d fled, after the battle at Dunbar; hid in the hills. The troops came a-hunting them, but she wouldna say where they’d gone—and she had a Bible by her. They tried to make her recant then, but she wouldna do that, either—the women on that side o’ the family, ye might as well talk to a stone,” he said, shaking his head. “There’s no moving them. But they dragged her doon to the shore, her and an auld Covenanter woman from the village, stripped them, and tied them both to stakes at the tide line. Waited there, the crowd o’ them, for the water to come in.”

He took another swallow, not waiting for the taste of it.

“The auld woman went under first; they’d tied her closer to the water—I suppose thinking Margaret would give in, if she saw the auld woman die.” He grunted, shaking his head. “But nay, not a bit of it. The tide rose, and the waves came up ower her. She choked, and she coughed, and her hair loose, hanging over her face, plastered doon like kelp, when the water went out.

“My mither saw it,” he explained, lifting his glass. “She was but seven at the time, but she never forgot. After the first wave, she said, there was the space of three breaths, and the wave came ower Margaret again. And then out . . . three breaths . . . and in again once more. And ye couldna see anything then but the swirl of her hair, floating on the tide.”

He raised his glass an inch higher, and Roger lifted his own in involuntary toast. “Jesus,” he said, and it was no blasphemy.

The whisky burned his throat as it went down and he breathed deep, giving thanks to God for the gift of air. Three breaths. It was the single malt of Islay, and the iodine taste of sea and kelp was strong and smoky in his lungs.

“May God give her peace,” he said, his voice rasping.

Duncan nodded, and reached again for the decanter.

“I would suppose she earned it,” he said. “Though they”—he pointed with his chin toward the meadow—“they’d say ’twas none of her doing at all; God chose her for salvation and chose the English to be damned; nay more to be said on the matter.”

The light was fading and the campfires began to glow in the dimness of the meadow beyond the stables. The smoke of them reached Roger’s nose, the scent warm and homelike, but nonetheless adding to the burn in his throat.

“I’ve no found sae much worth dyin’ for, myself,” Duncan said reflectively, then gave one of his quick, rare smiles. “But my grandsire, he’d say it only meant I was chosen to be damned.
‘By the decree of God, for His everlasting glory, some men and angels are predestined unto everlasting life, and others fore-ordained to everlasting death.’
He’d say that, whenever anyone spoke of Margaret.”

Roger nodded, recognizing the statement from the Westminster Confession. When was that—1646? 1647? A generation—or two—before Duncan’s grandfather.

“I expect it was easier for him to think her death was God’s will, and nothing to do with him,” Roger said, not without sympathy. “Ye’ll not believe it yourself, then? Predestination, I mean.”

He asked with true curiosity. The Presbyterians of his own time did still espouse predestination as a doctrine—but, a bit more flexible in attitude, tended to soft-pedal the notion of predestined damnation, and not to think too much on the idea that every detail of life was so predestined. Himself? God knew.

Duncan lifted his shoulders, the right rising higher and making him seem momentarily twisted. “God knows,” he said, and laughed. He shook his head, and drained his glass again.

“Nay, I think I don’t. But I wouldna say as much before Hiram Crombie—nor yet yon Christie.” Duncan lifted his chin toward the meadow, where he could see two dark figures, walking side by side toward the house. Arch Bug’s tall, stooped frame was easy to recognize, as was Tom Christie’s shorter, blocky build. He looked pugnacious even in silhouette, Roger thought, making short, sharp gestures as he walked, clearly arguing something with Arch.

“There’d be wicked fights ower it sometimes, in Ardsmuir,” Duncan said, watching the progress of the two figures. “The Catholics took it amiss, to be told they were damned. And Christie and his wee band took the greatest pleasure in telling them so.” His shoulders shook a little in suppressed laughter, and Roger wondered just how much whisky Duncan had had before he came out to the terrace. He’d never seen the older man so jovial.

“
Mac Dubh
put a stop to it, finally, when he made us all be Freemasons,” he added, leaning forward to pour a fresh glass. “But a few men were nearly killed, before that.” He lifted the decanter inquiringly in Roger’s direction.

Looking forward to a supper including both Tom Christie and Hiram Crombie, Roger accepted.

As Duncan leaned toward him to pour, still smiling, the last of the sun shone across his weathered face. Roger caught a glimpse of a faint white line through Duncan’s upper lip, half-visible beneath the hair, and realized quite suddenly why Duncan wore a long mustache—an unusual adornment, in a time when most men were clean-shaven.

He would not have spoken, likely, save for the whisky and the mood of strange alliance between them—two Protestants, amazingly bound to Catholics and bemused at the strange tides of fate that had washed over them; two men left quite alone by the misfortunes of life, and now surprised to find themselves the heads of households, holding the lives of strangers in their hands.

“Your lip, Duncan.” He touched his own mouth briefly. “What did that?”

“Och, that?” Duncan touched his own lip, surprised. “Nay, I was born wi’ a harelip, or so they said. I dinna recall it, myself; it was mended when I was nay more than a week old.”

It was Roger’s turn to be surprised.

“Who mended it?”

Duncan shrugged, one-shouldered this time.

“A traveling healer, my mither said. She’d quite resigned herself to losin’ me, she said, because I couldna suck, of course. She and my aunties all took it in turn to drap milk into my mouth from a rag, but she said I’d wasted nearly to a wee skeleton, when this charmer came by the village.”

He rubbed a knuckle self-consciously over his lip, smoothing the thick, grizzled hairs of his mustache.

“My faither gave him six herrings and a mull o’ snuff, and he stitched it up, and gave my mither a bit o’ some ointment to put on the wound. Well, and so . . .” He shrugged again, with a lopsided smile.

“Perhaps I was destined to live, after all. My grandsire said the Lord had chosen me—though God only kens what for.”

Roger was conscious of a faint ripple of unease, dulled though it was by whisky.

A Highland charmer who could repair a harelip? He took another drink, trying not to stare, but covertly examining Duncan’s face. He supposed it was possible; the scar was just barely visible—if you knew to look—under Duncan’s mustache, but didn’t extend up into the nostril. It must have been a fairly simple harelip, then, not one of the hideous cases like that one he’d read about—unable to look away from the page for horror—in Claire’s big black doctor’s book, where Dr. Rawlings had described a child born not only with a split lip, but missing the roof of its mouth, and most of the center of its face, as well.

There had been no drawing, thank God, but the visual picture conjured up by Rawlings’s spare description had been bad enough. He closed his eyes and breathed deep, inhaling the whisky’s perfume through his pores.

Was it possible? Perhaps. People did
do
surgery now, bloodstained, crude, and agonizing as it was. He’d seen Murray MacLeod, the apothecary from Campbelton, expertly stitch up a man’s cheek, laid open when the man was trampled by a sheep. Would it be any more difficult to stitch a child’s mouth?

He thought of Jemmy’s lip, tender as a blossom, pierced by needle and black thread, and shuddered.

“Are ye cold, then,
a charaid
? Shall we go in?” Duncan got his feet under him, as though to rise, but Roger waved the older man back.

“Ah, no. Goose walking on my grave.” He smiled, and accepted another drop to keep the nonexistent evening chill away. And yet he felt the hairs on his arms rise, just a little.
Could there be another one—more—like us?

There had been, he knew. His own multiple-times great-grandmother, Geillis, for one. The man whose skull Claire had found, complete with silver fillings in its teeth, for another. But had Duncan met another, in some remote Highland village half a century before?

Christ,
he thought, freshly unnerved.
How often does it happen? And what happens to them?

Before they had quite reached the bottom of the decanter, he heard footsteps behind him, and the rustle of silk.

“Mrs. Cameron.” He rose at once, the world tilting just a little, and took his hostess’s hand, bowing over it.

Her long hand touched his face, as was her habit, her sensitive fingertips confirming his identity.

“Och, there ye are, Jo. Had a good journey wi’ the wee lad, did ye?” Duncan struggled to rise, handicapped by whisky and his single arm, but Ulysses, Jocasta’s butler, had materialized silently out of the twilight behind his mistress in time to move her wicker chair into place. She sank into it without so much as putting a hand out to see that it was there, Roger noticed; she simply knew it would be.