A Breath of Snow and Ashes (32 page)

Memory, longing . . . need. They became men touched by fire—roused from dull acceptance by the sudden searing recollection of loss.

“Everyone would go a bit mad, for a time. There would be fights, all the time. And at night, in the dark . . .”

At night, you would hear the sounds of desperation, stifled sobs or stealthy rustlings. Some men would, in the end, reach out to another—sometimes to be rebuffed with shouts and blows. Sometimes not.

I wasn’t sure what he was trying to tell me, nor what it had to do with Thomas Christie. Or, perhaps, Lord John Grey.

“Did any of them ever . . . touch you?” I asked tentatively.

“No. None of them would ever think to touch me,” he said very softly. “I was their chief. They loved me—but they wouldna think, ever, to touch me.”

He took a deep, ragged breath.

“And did you want them to?” I whispered. I could feel my own pulse begin to throb in my fingertips, against his skin.

“I hungered for it,” he said so softly I could barely hear him, close as I was. “More than food. More than sleep—though I wished most desperately for sleep, and not only for the sake of tiredness. For when I slept, sometimes I saw ye.

“But it wasna the longing for a woman—though Christ knows, that was bad enough. It was only—I wanted the touch of a hand. Only that.”

His skin had ached with need, ’til he felt it must grow transparent, and the raw soreness of his heart be seen in his chest.

He made a small rueful sound, not quite a laugh.

“Ye ken those pictures of the Sacred Heart—the same as we saw in Paris?”

I knew them—Renaissance paintings, and the vividness of stained glass glowing in the aisles of Notre Dame. The Man of Sorrows, his heart exposed and pierced, radiant with love.

“I remembered that. And I thought to myself that whoever saw that vision of Our Lord was likely a verra lonely man himself, to have understood so well.”

I lifted my hand and laid it on the small hollow in the center of his chest, very lightly. The sheet was thrown back, and his skin was cool.

He closed his eyes, sighing, and clasped my hand, hard.

“The thought of that would come to me sometimes, and I would think I kent what Jesus must feel like there—so wanting, and no one to touch Him.”

25

ASHES TO ASHES

J
AMIE CHECKED HIS SADDLEBAGS once more, though he had done it so often of late that the exercise was little more than custom. Each time he opened the left-hand one, he still smiled, though. Brianna had remade it for him, stitching in loops of leather that presented his pistols, hilt up, ready to be seized in an emergency, and a clever arrangement of compartments that held handy his shot pouch, powder horn, a spare knife, a coil of fishing line, a roll of twine for a snare, a hussif with pins, needles, and thread, a packet of food, a bottle of beer, and a neatly rolled clean shirt.

On the outside of the bag was a small pouch that held what Bree was pleased to call a “first-aid kit,” though he was unsure what it was meant to be in aid of. It contained several gauze packets of a bitter-smelling tea, a tin of salve, and several strips of her adhesive plaster, none of which seemed likely to be of use in any imaginable misadventure, but did no harm.

He removed a cake of soap she had added, along with a few more unnecessary fripperies, and carefully hid them under a bucket, lest she be offended.

Just in time, too; he heard her voice, exhorting wee Roger about the inclusion of sufficient clean stockings in his bags. By the time they came round the corner of the hay barn, he had everything securely buckled up.

“Ready, then,
a charaid
?”

“Oh, aye.” Roger nodded, and slung the saddlebags he was carrying on his shoulder off onto the ground. He turned to Bree, who was carrying Jemmy, and kissed her briefly.

“I go with
you,
Daddy!” Jem exclaimed hopefully.

“Not this time, sport.”

“Wanna see Indians!”

“Later, perhaps, when ye’re bigger.”

“I can talk Indian! Uncle Ian tellt me! Wanna go!”

“Not this time,” Bree told him firmly, but he wasn’t inclined to listen, and began struggling to get down. Jamie made a small rumble in his throat, and fixed him with a quelling eye.

“Ye’ve heard your parents,” he said. Jem glowered, and stuck out his lower lip like a shelf, but ceased his fuss.

“Someday ye must tell me how ye do that,” Roger said, eyeing his offspring.

Jamie laughed, and leaned down to Jemmy. “Kiss Grandda goodbye, eh?”

Disappointment generously abandoned, Jemmy reached up and seized him round the neck. He picked the little boy up out of Brianna’s arms, hugged him, and kissed him. Jem smelled of parritch, toast, and honey, a homely warm and heavy weight in his arms.

“Be good and mind your mother, aye? And when ye’re a wee bit bigger, ye’ll come, too. Come and say farewell to Clarence; ye can tell him the words Uncle Ian taught ye.” And God willing, they’d be words suitable for a three-year-old child. Ian had a most irresponsible sense of humor.

Or perhaps,
he thought, grinning to himself,
I’m only recalling some o’ the things I taught Jenny’s bairns—including Ian—to say in French.

He’d already saddled and bridled Roger’s horse, and Clarence the pack mule was fully loaded. Brianna was checking the girth and stirrup leathers while Roger slung his saddlebags—more to keep herself busy than because of any need. Her lower lip was caught in her teeth; she was being careful not to seem worried, but was fooling no one.

Jamie took Jem up to pat the mule’s nose, in order to give the lass and her man a moment’s privacy. Clarence was a good sort, and suffered Jem’s enthusiastic patting and mispronounced Cherokee phrases with long-suffering tolerance, but when Jem turned in his arms toward Gideon, Jamie leaned back sharply.

“Nay, lad, ye dinna want to touch yon wicked bugger. He’ll take your hand right off.”

Gideon twitched his ears and stamped once, impatient. The big stallion was dying to get under way and have another chance at killing him.

“Why do you keep that vicious thing?” Brianna asked, seeing Gideon’s long lip wrinkle back to show his yellow teeth in anticipation. She took Jemmy from him, stepping well away from Gideon.

“What, wee Gideon? Oh, we get on. Besides, he’s half my trade goods, lass.”

“Really?” She gave the big chestnut a suspicious glance. “Are you sure you won’t start a war, giving the Indians something like him?”

“Oh, I dinna mean to give him to them,” he assured her. “Not directly, at least.”

Gideon was a bad-tempered, thrawn-headed reester of a horse, with a mouth like iron and a will to match. However, these unsociable qualities seemed most appealing to the Indians, as did the stallion’s massive chest, long wind, and stoutly muscled frame. When Quiet Air, the sachem in one of the villages, had offered him three deerskins for the chance to breed his spotted mare to Gideon, Jamie had realized suddenly that he had something here.

“’Twas the greatest good fortune that I never found the time to castrate him,” he said, slapping Gideon familiarly on the withers and dodging by reflex as the stallion whipped his head round to snap. “He earns his keep, and more, standing at stud to the Indian ponies. It’s the only thing I’ve ever asked him to do that he’s not balked at.”

The lass was pink as a Christmas rose from the morning cold; she laughed at that, though, going an even deeper color.

“What’s castrate?” Jemmy inquired.

“Your mother will tell ye.” He grinned at her, ruffled Jemmy’s hair, and turned to Roger. “Ready, lad?”

Roger Mac nodded and stepped up into his stirrup, swinging aboard. He had a steady old bay gelding named Agrippa, who tended to grunt and wheeze, but was sound enough for all that, and good for a rider like Roger—competent enough, but with an abiding sense of inner reservation about horses.

Roger leaned down from the saddle for a last kiss from Brianna, and they were under way. Jamie’d taken a private—and thorough—leave of Claire earlier.

She was in the window of their bedroom, watching out to wave to them as they rode past, her hairbrush in her hand. Her hair was standing out in a great curly swash round her head, and the early-morning sun caught in it like flames in a thornbush. It gave him a sudden queer feeling to see her thus so disordered, half-naked in her shift. A sense of strong desire, despite what he’d done to her not an hour past. And something almost fear, as though he might never see her again.

Quite without thought, he glanced at his left hand, and saw the ghost of the scar at the base of his thumb, the “C” so faded that it was scarcely visible. He had not noticed it or thought of it in years, and felt suddenly as though there was not air enough to breathe.

He waved, though, and she threw him a mocking kiss, laughing. Christ, he’d marked
her;
he could see the dark patch of the love bite he’d left on her neck, and a hot flush of embarrassment rose in his face. He dug his heels into Gideon’s side, causing the stallion to give a squeal of displeasure and turn round to try to bite him in the leg.

With this distraction, they were safe away. He looked back only once, at the trailhead, to see her still there, framed by light. She lifted one hand, as though in benediction, and then the trees hid her from sight.

THE WEATHER WAS FAIR, though cold for as early in the autumn as it was; the horses’ breath steamed as they made their way down from the Ridge through the tiny settlement folk now called Cooperville, and along the Great Buffalo Trail to the north. He kept an eye on the sky; it was much too early for snow, but heavy rains were not uncommon. What clouds there were were mare’s tails, though; no cause for worry.

They didn’t speak much, each man alone with his thoughts. Roger Mac was easy company, for the most part. Jamie did miss Ian, though; he would have liked to talk over the situation as it stood now with Tsisqua. Ian understood the minds of Indians better than most white men, and while Jamie understood Bird’s gesture of sending the hermit’s bones well enough—it was meant as a proof of his continuing goodwill toward settlers, if the King should send them guns—he would have valued Ian’s opinion.

And while it was necessary that he introduce Roger Mac in the villages, for the sake of future relations . . . Well, he blushed at the thought of having to explain to the man about . . .

Damn Ian. The lad had simply gone in the night, a few days past, him and his dog. He’d done it before, and would doubtless be back as suddenly as he’d gone. Whatever darkness he’d brought back from the north would now and then become too much for him, and he would vanish into the wood, coming back silent and withdrawn, but somewhat more at peace with himself.

Jamie understood it well enough; solitude was in its own way a balm for loneliness. And whatever memory the lad was fleeing—or seeking—in the wood . . .

“Has he ever spoken to you about them?”
Claire had asked him, troubled.
“His wife? His child?”

He had not. Ian did not speak of anything about his time among the Mohawk, and the only token he had brought back from the north was an armlet, made of blue-and-white wampum shells. Jamie had caught a glimpse of it in Ian’s sporran once, but not enough to tell the pattern of it.

Blessed Michael defend you, lad,
he thought silently toward Ian.
And may the angels mend you.

With one thing and another, he had no real conversation with Roger Mac until they’d stopped for their noon meal. They ate the fresh stuff the women had sent, enjoying it. Enough for supper left; next day, it would be corn dodgers and anything that came across their path that could be easily caught and cooked. And one day more, and the Snowbird women would have them royally fed, as representatives of the King of England.

“Last time, it was ducks, stuffed wi’ yams and corn,” he told Roger. “It’s manners to eat as much as ye can, mind, no matter what’s served, and ye’re the guest.”

“Got it.” Roger smiled faintly, then looked down at the half-eaten sausage roll in his hand. “About that. Guests, I mean. There’s a wee problem, I think—with Hiram Crombie.”

“Hiram?” Jamie was surprised. “What’s to do wi’ Hiram?”

Roger’s mouth twitched, unsure whether to laugh or not.

“Well, it’s only—ye ken everybody’s calling the bones we buried Ephraim, aye? It’s all Bree’s fault, but there it is.”

Jamie nodded, curious.

“Well, so. Yesterday Hiram came along to me, and said he’d been studying upon the matter—praying and the like—and had come to the conclusion that if it were true that some of the Indians were his wife’s kin, then it stood to reason that some of them must be saved, as well.”

“Oh, aye?” Amusement began to kindle in his own breast.

“Yes. And so, he says, he feels called upon to bring these hapless savages the word of Christ. For how else are they to hear it?”

Jamie rubbed a knuckle over his upper lip, torn now between amusement and dismay at the thought of Hiram Crombie invading the Cherokee villages, psalmbook in hand.

“Mmphm. Well, but . . . do ye not believe—Presbyterians, I mean—that it’s all predestined? That some are saved, I mean, and some damned, and not a thing to be done about it? Which is why the Papists are all bound for hell in a handbasket?”

“Ah . . . well . . .” Roger hesitated, clearly not quite willing to put the matter so baldly himself. “Mmphm. There may be some difference of opinion among Presbyterians, I imagine. But yes, that’s more or less what Hiram and his cohorts think.”

“Aye. Well, then, if he thinks some o’ the Indians must be saved already, why must they be preached to?”

Roger rubbed a finger between his brows.

“Well, d’ye see, it’s the same reason Presbyterians pray and go to kirk and all. Even if they’re saved, they feel they want to praise God for it, and—and learn to do better, so as to live as God wishes them to. In gratitude for their salvation, see?”

“I rather think Hiram Crombie’s God might take a dim view of the Indian way of living,” Jamie said, with vivid memories of naked bodies in the dimness of ember glow, and the smell of furs.

“Quite,” Roger said, catching Claire’s dry tone so exactly that Jamie laughed.

“Aye, I see the difficulty,” he said, and he did, though he still found it funny. “So Hiram means to go to the Cherokee villages and preach? Is that it?”

Roger nodded, swallowing a bit of sausage.