A Breath of Snow and Ashes (53 page)

“No,” I said. “Give it to him. Then fetch me some bandages—and go home.”

I had no idea what Jamie meant to do; I had no idea what I might do, when I discovered his intent. I didn’t know what to think, or how to feel. The only thing I did know for certain was that I had an injured man before me. For the moment, that would have to be enough.

FOR A LITTLE WHILE, I managed to forget who he was. Forbidding him to speak, I gritted my teeth and became absorbed in the tasks before me. He sniveled, but kept still. I cleaned, bandaged, tidied, administering impersonal comfort. But as the tasks ended, I was still left with the man, and was conscious of increasing distaste each time I touched him.

At last, I was finished, and went to wash, meticulously wiping my hands with a cloth soaked in turpentine and alcohol, cleaning under each fingernail despite the soreness. I was, I realized, behaving as though he harbored some vile contagion. But I couldn’t stop myself.

Lionel Brown watched me apprehensively.

“What d’ye mean to do?”

“I haven’t decided yet.” This was more or less true. It hadn’t been a process of conscious decision, though my course of action—or lack of it—had been determined. Jamie—damn him—had been right. I saw no reason to tell Lionel Brown that, though. Not yet.

He was opening his mouth, no doubt to plead with me further, but I stopped him with a sharp gesture.

“There was a man with you named Donner. What do you know about him?”

Whatever he’d expected, it wasn’t that. His mouth hung open a little.

“Donner?” he repeated, looking uncertain.

“Don’t dare to tell me you don’t remember him,” I said, my agitation making me sound fierce.

“Oh, no, ma’am,” he assured me hastily. “I recall him fine—just fine! What”—his tongue touched the raw corner of his mouth—“what d’ye want to know about him?”

The main thing I wanted to know was whether he was dead or not, but Brown almost certainly didn’t know that.

“Let’s start with his full name,” I proposed, sitting down gingerly beside him, “and go from there.”

In the event, Brown knew little more for sure about Donner
than
his name—which, he said, was Wendigo.

“What?” I said incredulously, but Brown appeared to find nothing odd in it.

“That’s what he said it was,” he said, sounding hurt that I should doubt him. “Indian, in’t it?”

It was. It was, to be precise, the name of a monster from the mythology of some northern tribe—I couldn’t recall which. Brianna’s high-school class had once done a unit of Native American myths, with each child undertaking to explain and illustrate a particular story. Bree had done the Wendigo.

I recalled it only because of the accompanying picture she had drawn, which had stuck with me for some time. Done in a reverse technique, the basic drawing done in white crayon, showing through an overlay of charcoal. Trees, lashing to and fro in a swirl of snow and wind, leaf-stripped and needle-flying, the spaces between them part of the night. The picture had a sense of urgency about it, wildness and movement. It took several moments of looking at it before one glimpsed the face amid the branches. I had actually yelped and dropped the paper when I saw it—much to Bree’s gratification.

“I daresay,” I said, firmly suppressing the memory of the Wendigo’s face. “Where did he come from? Did he live in Brownsville?”

He had stayed in Brownsville, but only for a few weeks. Hodgepile had brought him from somewhere, along with his other men. Brown had taken no notice of him; he caused no trouble.

“He stayed with the widow Baudry,” Brown said, sounding suddenly hopeful. “Might be he told her something of himself. I could find out for you. When I go home.” He gave me a look of what I assumed he meant to be doglike trust, but which looked more like a dying newt.

“Hmm,” I said, giving him a look of extreme skepticism. “We’ll see about that.”

He licked his lips, trying to look pitiful.

“Could I maybe have some water, ma’am?”

I didn’t suppose I could let him die of thirst, but I had had quite enough of ministering to the man personally. I wanted him out of my surgery and out of my sight, as soon as possible. I nodded brusquely and stepped into the hall, calling for Mrs. Bug to bring some water.

The afternoon was warm, and I was feeling unpleasantly prickly after working on Lionel Brown. Without warning, a flush of heat rose suddenly upward through my chest and neck and flowed like hot wax over my face, so that sweat popped out behind my ears. Murmuring an excuse, I left the patient to Mrs. Bug, and hurried out into the welcome air.

There was a well outside; no more than a shallow pit, neatly edged with stones. A big gourd dipper was wedged between two of the stones; I pulled it out and, kneeling, scooped up enough water to drink and to splash over my steaming face.

Hot flushes in themselves were not really unpleasant—rather interesting, in fact, in the same way that pregnancy was; that odd feeling as one’s body did something quite unexpected, and not within one’s conscious control. I wondered briefly whether men felt that way about erections.

At the moment, a hot flush seemed quite welcome. Surely, I told myself, I couldn’t be experiencing hot flushes if I were pregnant. Or could I? I had the uneasy knowledge that the hormonal surges of early pregnancy were quite as capable of causing all kinds of peculiar thermal phenomena as were those of the menopause. I was certainly having the sorts of emotional conniptions that went with being pregnant—or menopausal—or from being raped—

“Don’t be ridiculous, Beauchamp,” I said out loud. “You know quite well you’re not pregnant.”

Hearing it gave me an odd feeling—nine parts relief, one part regret. Well, perhaps nine thousand, nine hundred, and ninety-nine parts relief, to one of regret—but it was still there.

The flood of sweat that sometimes followed in the wake of a hot flush, though, was something I could do without. The roots of my hair were soaked, and while the cool water on my face was lovely, waves of heat were still blooming over me, spreading like a clinging veil over chest and face and neck and scalp. Seized by impulse, I tipped half a dipperful of water down the inside of my bodice, exhaling in relief as the wetness soaked the cloth, trickling between my breasts and down over my belly, tickling cool between my legs and dripping to the ground.

I looked a mess, but Mrs. Bug wouldn’t mind—and the devil with what bloody Lionel Brown thought. Dabbing at my temples with the end of my apron, I made my way back to the house.

The door stood ajar, as I’d left it. I pushed it open, and the strong pure light of the afternoon shone past me, illuminating Mrs. Bug in the act of pressing a pillow over Lionel Brown’s face with all her strength.

I stood blinking for a moment, so surprised that I simply couldn’t translate the sight into realization. Then I darted forward with an incoherent cry and grabbed her arm.

She was terribly strong, and so focused on what she was doing that she didn’t budge, veins standing out in her forehead and her face nearly purple with effort. I jerked hard on her arm, failed to dislodge her grip, and in desperation shoved her as hard as I could.

She staggered, off-balance, and I snatched the edge of the pillow, yanking it sideways, off Brown’s face. She lunged back, intent on completing the job, blunt hands shoving down into the mass of the pillow and disappearing to the wrists.

I drew back a step and flung myself at her bodily. We went over with a crash, hitting the table, upsetting the bench, and ending in a tangle on the floor amid a litter of broken earthenware and the scents of mint tea and a spilled chamber pot.

I rolled, gasped for breath, pain from my cracked ribs paralyzing me for a moment. Then I gritted my teeth, pushing her away and trying to extricate myself from a snarl of skirts—and stumbled to my feet.

His hand hung limp, trailing from the table, and I grabbed his jaw, pulling back his head, and pressed my mouth fervently to his. I blew what little breath I had into him, gasped, and blew again, all the time feeling frantically for some trace of a pulse in his neck.

He was warm, the bones of his jaw, his shoulder felt normal—but his flesh had a terrible slackness, the lips under mine flattening obscenely as I pressed and blew, blood from my split lip splattering everywhere, falling somehow away, so that I was forced to suck frantically to keep them sealed, breathing in hard through the corners of my mouth, fighting my ribs for enough air to blow again.

I felt someone behind me—Mrs. Bug—and kicked out at her. She made an effort to seize my shoulder, but I wrenched aside and her fingers slipped off. I turned round fast and hit her, as hard as I could, in the stomach, and she fell down on the floor with a loud
whoof!
No time to spare for her; I whirled and flung myself once more on Brown.

The chest under my hand rose reassuringly as I blew—but fell abruptly as I stopped. I drew back and pounded hard with both fists, smacking the hard springiness of the sternum with enough force to bruise my own hands further—and Brown’s flesh, had he been capable of bruising any longer.

He wasn’t. I blew and thumped and blew, until bloody sweat ran down my body in streams and my thighs were slick with it and my ears rang and black spots swam before my eyes with hyperventilating. Finally, I stopped. I stood panting in deep, wheezing gasps, wet hair hanging in my face, my hands throbbing in time to my pounding heart.

The bloody man was dead.

I rubbed my hands on my apron, then used it to wipe my face. My mouth was swollen and tasted of blood; I spat on the floor. I felt quite calm; the air had that peculiar sense of stillness that often accompanies a quiet death. A Carolina wren called in the wood nearby, “Teakettle, teakettle, teakettle!”

I heard a small rustling noise and turned round. Mrs. Bug had righted the bench and sat down on it. She sat hunched forward, hands folded together in her lap, a small frown on her wrinkled round face as she stared intently at the body on the table. Brown’s hand hung limp, fingers slightly cupped, holding shadows.

The sheet was stained over his body; that was the source of the chamber pot smell. So, he’d been dead before I began my resuscitation efforts.

Another wave of heat bloomed upward, coating my skin like hot wax. I could smell my own sweat. I closed my eyes briefly, then opened them, and turned back to Mrs. Bug.

“Why on
earth,
” I asked conversationally, “did you do that?”

“SHE’S DONE WHAT?” Jamie stared at me uncomprehendingly, then at Mrs. Bug, who sat at the kitchen table, head bowed, her hands clasped together in front of her.

Not waiting for me to repeat what I’d said, he strode down the hall to the surgery. I heard his footsteps come to a sudden stop. There was an instant’s silence, and then a heartfelt Gaelic oath. Mrs. Bug’s plump shoulders rose around her ears.

The footsteps came back, more slowly. He came in, and walked to the table where she sat.

“O, woman, how have you dared to lay hands upon a man who was mine?” he asked very softly, in Gaelic.

“Oh, sir,” she whispered. She was afraid to look up; she cowered under her cap, her face almost invisible. “I—I didna mean to. Truly, sir!”

Jamie glanced at me.

“She smothered him,” I repeated. “With a pillow.”

“I think ye do not do such a thing without meaning it,” he said, with an edge in his voice that could have sharpened knives. “What were ye about,
a boireannach,
to do it?”

The round shoulders began to quiver with fright.

“Oh, sir, oh, sir! I ken ’twas wrong—only . . . only it was the wicked tongue of him. All the time I had care of him, he’d cower and tremble, aye, when you or the young one came to speak to him, even Arch—but me—” She swallowed, the flesh of her face seeming suddenly loose. “I’m no but a woman, he could speak his mind to me, and he did. Threatening, sir, and cursing most awfully. He said—he said as how his brother would come, him and his men, to free him, and would slaughter us all in our blood and burn the houses over our heids.” Her jowls trembled as she spoke, but she found the courage to look up and meet Jamie’s eyes.