A Breath of Snow and Ashes (74 page)

IN THE EVENT, Ute McGillivray was not quite able to fulfill her threat—but she did enough damage. Manfred’s dramatic disappearance, the breaking of his engagement to Lizzie, and the reason for it was a fearful scandal, and word of it spread from Hillsboro and Salisbury, where he had worked now and then as an itinerant gunsmith, to Salem and High Point.

But thanks to Ute’s efforts, the story was even more confused than would be normal for such gossip; some said that he was poxed, others that I had maliciously and falsely accused him of being poxed, because of some fancied disagreement with his parents. Others, more kindly, did not believe Manfred was poxed, but said that doubtless I had been mistaken.

Those who believed him to be poxed were divided as to how he had achieved that condition, half of them convinced that he had got it from some whore, and a good many of the rest speculating that he had got it from poor Lizzie, whose reputation suffered terribly—until Ian, Jamie, the Beardsley twins, and even Roger took to defending her honor with their fists, at which point people did not, of course, stop talking—but stopped talking where any of her champions might hear directly.

All of Ute’s numerous relatives in and around Wachovia, Salem, Bethabara, and Bethania of course believed her version of the story, and tongues wagged busily. All of Salem did not cease trading with us—but many people did. And more than once, I had the unnerving experience of greeting Moravians I knew well, only to have them stare past me in stony silence, or turn their backs upon me. Often enough that I no longer went to Salem.

Lizzie, beyond a certain initial mortification, seemed not terribly upset at the rupture of her engagement. Bewildered, confused, and sorry—she said—for Manfred, but not desolated by his loss. And since she seldom left the Ridge anymore, she didn’t hear what people said about her. What
did
trouble her was the loss of the McGillivrays—particularly Ute.

“D’ye see, ma’am,” she told me wistfully, “I’d never had a mother, for my own died when I was born. And then
Mutti
—she asked me to call her so when I said I’d marry Manfred—she said I was her daughter, just like Hilda and Inga and Senga. She’d fuss over me, and bully me and laugh at me, just as she did them. And it was . . . just so
nice,
to have all that family. And now I’ve lost them.”

Robin, who had been sincerely attached to her, had sent her a short, regretful note, sneaked out through the good offices of Ronnie Sinclair. But since Manfred’s disappearance, neither Ute nor the girls had come to see her, nor sent a single word.

It was Joseph Wemyss, though, who was most visibly affected by the affair. He said nothing, plainly not wishing to make matters worse for Lizzie—but he drooped, like a flower deprived of rain. Beyond his pain for Lizzie, and his distress at the blackening of her reputation, he, too, missed the McGillivrays, missed the joy and comfort of suddenly being part of a large, exuberant family, after so many years of loneliness.

Worse, though, was that while Ute had not been able to carry out her threat entirely, she
had
been able to influence her near relatives—including Pastor Berrisch, and his sister, Monika, who, Jamie told me privately, had been forbidden to see or speak to Joseph again.

“The Pastor’s sent her away to his wife’s relatives in Halifax,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “To forget.”

“Oh, dear.”

And of Manfred, there was no slightest trace. Jamie had sent word through all his usual avenues, but no one had seen him since his flight from the Ridge. I thought of him—and prayed for him—daily, haunted by pictures of him skulking in the woods alone, the deadly spirochetes multiplying in his blood day by day. Or, much worse, working his way to the Indies on some ship, pausing in every port to drown his sorrows in the arms of unsuspecting whores, to whom he would pass on the silent, fatal infection—and they, in turn . . .

Or sometimes, the nightmare image of a bundle of rotting clothes hanging from a tree limb, deep in the forest, with no mourners save the crows who came to pick the flesh from his bones. And despite everything, I could not find it in my heart to hate Ute McGillivray, who must be thinking the same thoughts.

The sole bright spot in this ruddy quagmire was that Thomas Christie, quite contrary to my expectations, had allowed Malva to continue to come to the surgery, his sole stipulation being that if I proposed to involve his daughter in any further use of the ether, he was to be told ahead of time.

“There.” I stood back, gesturing to her to look through the eyepiece of the microscope. “Do you see them?”

Her lips pursed in silent fascination. It had taken no little effort to find a combination of staining and reflected sunlight that would reveal the spirochetes, but I had succeeded at last. They weren’t strongly visible, but you could see them, if you knew what you were looking for—and despite my complete conviction in my original diagnosis, I was relieved to see them.

“Oh, yes! Wee spirals. I see them plain!” She looked up at me, blinking. “D’ye mean seriously to tell me that these bittie things are what’s poxed Manfred?” She was too polite to express open skepticism, but I could see it in her eyes.

“I do indeed.” I had explained the germ theory of disease a number of times, to a variety of disbelieving eighteenth-century listeners, and in the light of this experience had little expectation of finding a favorable reception. The normal response was either a blank stare, indulgent laughter, or a sniff of dismissal, and I was more or less expecting a polite version of one of these reactions from Malva.

To my surprise, though, she seemed to grasp the notion at once—or at least pretended to.

“Well, so.” She put both hands on the counter and peered again at the spirochetes. “These wee beasties cause the syphilis, then. However do they do that? And why is it that the bittie things ye showed me from my teeth don’t make me ill?”

I explained, as best I could, the notion of “good bugs” or “indifferent bugs” versus “bad bugs,” which she seemed to grasp easily—but my explanation of cells, and the concept of the body being composed of these, left her frowning at the palm of her hand in confusion, trying to make out the individual cells. She shook off her doubt, though, and folding up her hand in her apron, returned to her questions.

Did the bugs cause all disease? The penicillin—why did it work on some of the germs, but not all? And how did the bugs get from one person to another?

“Some travel by air—that’s why you must try to avoid people coughing or sneezing on you—and some by water—which is why you mustn’t drink from a stream that someone’s been using as a privy—and some . . . well, by other means.” I didn’t know how much she might know about sex in humans—she lived on a farm, clearly she knew how pigs, chickens, and horses behaved—and I was wary of enlightening her, lest her father hear about it. I rather thought he’d prefer her to be dealing with ether.

Naturally, she pounced on my evasion.

“Other means? What other means are there?” With an internal sigh, I told her.

“They do
what
?” she said, incredulous. “Men, I mean. Like an animal! Whyever would a woman let a man do that to her?”

“Well, they
are
animals, you know,” I said, suppressing an urge to laugh. “So are women. As to why one would let them . . .” I rubbed my nose, looking for a tasteful way of putting it. She was moving rapidly ahead of me, though, putting two and two together.

“For money,” she said, looking thunderstruck. “
That’s
what a whore does! She lets them do such things to her for money.”

“Well, yes—but women who aren’t whores—”

“The bairns, aye, ye said.” She nodded, but was plainly thinking of other things; her small, smooth forehead was wrinkled in concentration.

“How much money do they get?” she asked. “I should want a lot, I think, to let a man—”

“I don’t know,” I said, somewhat taken aback. “Different amounts, I expect. Depending.”

“Depending . . . oh, if he was maybe ugly, ye mean, ye could make him pay more? Or if
she
were ugly . . .” She gave me a quick, interested look. “Bobby Higgins told me of a whore he kent in London, that her looks was spoilt by vitriol.” She looked up at the cupboard where I kept the sulfuric acid under lock and key, and shivered, her delicate shoulders quivering with revulsion at the thought.

“Yes, he told me about her, too. Vitriol is what we call a caustic—a liquid that burns. That’s why—”

But her mind had already returned to the subject of fascination.

“To think of Manfred McGillivray doing such a thing!” She turned round gray eyes on me. “Well, and Bobby. He must have been, mustn’t he?”

“I do believe soldiers are inclined—”

“But the Bible,” she said, squinting thoughtfully. “It says ye mustna be whoring after idols. Does that mean men went about sticking their pricks into—did the idols look like women, d’ye think?”

“I’m sure that’s not what it means, no,” I said hastily. “More a metaphor, you know. Er . . . lusting after something, I think it means, not, er . . .”

“Lust,” she said thoughtfully. “That’s to want something sinful bad, is it not?”

“Yes, rather.” Heat was wavering over my skin, dancing in tiny veils. I needed cool air, quickly, or I’d be flushed as a tomato and drenched with sweat. I rose to go out, but felt I really mustn’t leave her with the impression that sex had to do only with money or babies—even though it well might, for some women.

“There
is
another reason for intercourse, you know,” I said, speaking over my shoulder as I headed for the door. “When you love someone, you want to give them pleasure. And they want to do the same for you.”

“Pleasure?” Her voice rose behind me, incredulous. “Ye mean some women
like
it?”

47

BEES AND SWITCHES

I
WAS BY NO MEANS SPYING. One of my hives had swarmed, and I was looking for the fugitive bees.

New swarms usually didn’t travel far, and stopped frequently, often resting for hours in a tree fork or open log, where they formed a ball of humming conference. If they could be located before making up their collective mind about where to settle, they could often be persuaded into a temptingly empty basket hive, and thus hauled back into captivity.

The trouble with bees is that they don’t leave footprints. Now I was casting to and fro on the mountainside, nearly a mile from the house, an empty basket hive slung on a rope over my shoulder, trying to follow Jamie’s instructions regarding hunting, and think like a bee.

There were huge blooming patches of galax, fire-weed, and other wildflowers on the hillside far above me, but there was a very attractive dead snag—if one was a bee—poking out of the heavy growth some way below.

The basket hive was heavy, and the slope was steep. It was easier to go down than up. I hitched up the rope, which was beginning to rub the skin off my shoulder, and began sidling downward through sumac and hobble-bush, bracing my feet against rocks and grabbing at branches to keep from slipping.

Concentrating on my feet, I didn’t take particular notice of where I was. I emerged into a gap in the bushes from which the roof of a cabin was visible, some distance below me. Whose was that? The Christies’, I thought. I wiped a sleeve across the sweat dripping from the point of my chin; the day was warm, and I hadn’t brought a canteen. Perhaps I would stop and ask for water on the way home.

Making my way at last to the snag, I was disappointed to find no sign of the swarm. I stood still, blotting sweat from my face and listening, in hopes of picking up the bees’ telltale deep drone. I heard the hum and whine of assorted flying insects, and the genial racket of a flock of foraging pygmy nuthatches on the slope above—but no bees.

I sighed and turned to make my way around the snag, but then paused, my eye caught by a glimpse of white below.

Thomas Christie and Malva were in the small clearing at the back of their cabin. I had caught the flash of his shirt as he moved, but now he stood motionless, arms crossed.

His attention appeared to be fixed on his daughter, who was cutting branches from one of the mountain ash trees at the side of the clearing. What for? I wondered.

There seemed something very peculiar about the scene, though I couldn’t think exactly what. Some attitude of body? Some air of tension between them?

Malva turned and walked toward her father, several long, slender branches in her hand. Her head was bent, her step dragging, and when she handed him the branches, I understood abruptly what was going on.

They were too far away for me to hear them, but he apparently said something to her, gesturing brusquely toward the stump they used as a chopping block. She knelt down by it, bent forward, and lifted up her skirts, exposing her bare buttocks.

Without hesitation, he raised the switches and slashed them hard across her rump, then whipped them back in the other direction, crisscrossing her flesh with vivid lines that I could see even at such a distance. He repeated this several times, whipping the springy twigs back and forth with a measured deliberation whose violence was the more shocking for its lack of apparent emotion.

It hadn’t even occurred to me to look away. I stood stock-still in the shrubbery, too stunned even to brush away the gnats that swarmed around my face.

Christie had thrown down the switches, turned on his heel, and gone into the house before I could do more than blink. Malva sat back on her heels and shook down her skirts, smoothing the fabric gingerly over her bottom as she rose. She was red-faced, but not weeping or distraught.

She’s used to it.
The thought came unbidden. I hesitated, not knowing what to do. Before I could decide, Malva had settled her cap, turned, and walked into the woods with an air of determination—headed straight toward me.

I ducked behind a big tulip poplar, before I was even aware of making a decision. She wasn’t injured, and I was sure she wouldn’t like to know that anyone had seen the incident.

Malva passed within a few feet of me, puffing a little on the climb, and snorting through her nose and muttering in a way that made me think she was very angry, rather than upset.

I peered cautiously round the poplar, but caught no more than a glimpse of her cap, bobbing through the trees. There were no cabins up there, and she hadn’t carried a basket or any tools for foraging. Perhaps she only wanted to be alone, to recover herself. No surprise, if so.

I waited until she was safely out of sight, then made my own way slowly down the slope. I didn’t stop at the Christie cabin, thirsty as I was, and had quite lost interest in errant bees.

I MET JAMIE AT a stiled fence, some little distance from home, in conversation with Hiram Crombie. I nodded in greeting, and waited in some impatience for Crombie to finish his business, so I could tell Jamie what I had just witnessed.

Luckily, Hiram showed no inclination to linger; I made him nervous.

I told Jamie at once what I had seen, and was annoyed to find that he didn’t share my concern. If Tom Christie thought it necessary to whip his daughter, that was his affair.

“But he might be . . . it might be—perhaps it doesn’t stop with a switching. Perhaps he does . . . other things to her.”

He shot me a look of surprise.

“Tom? D’ye have any reason to think so?”

“No,” I admitted reluctantly. The Christie ménage gave me an uncomfortable feeling, but that was likely only because I didn’t get on with Tom. I wasn’t so foolish as to think that a tendency toward Bible-thumping meant a person wouldn’t engage in wickedness—but in all fairness, it didn’t mean he
did,
either. “But surely he shouldn’t be whipping her like that—at her age?”

He glanced at me in mild exasperation.

“Ye dinna understand a thing, do ye?” he said, echoing my thought exactly.

“I was about to say just that, to
you,
” I said, giving him look for look. He didn’t look away, but held my gaze, his own slowly taking on a wry amusement.

“So it will be different?” he said. “In your world?” There was just enough edge in his voice to remind me forcibly that we were not in my world—nor ever would be. Sudden gooseflesh ran up my arm, lifting the fine blond hairs.

“A man wouldna beat a woman, then, in your time? Not even for good cause?”

And what was I to say to that? I couldn’t lie, even if I wanted to; he knew my face much too well.

“Some do,” I admitted. “But it’s not the same. There—then, I mean—a man who beat his wife would be a criminal. But,” I added in fairness, “a man who beat his wife then would most often be using his fists.”

A look of astonished disgust crossed his face.

“What sort of man would do that?” he asked incredulously.

“A bad one.”

“So I should think, Sassenach. And ye dinna think there’s a difference?” he asked. “Ye’d see it the same, if I were to smash your face, rather than only take a tawse to your bum?”

Blood flared abruptly in my cheeks. He once
had
taken a strap to me, and I hadn’t forgotten it. I had wanted to kill him at the time—and didn’t feel kindly toward him at the memory. At the same time, I wasn’t stupid enough to equate his actions with those of a modern-day wife-beater.

He glanced at me, raised one eyebrow, then understood what I was recalling. He grinned.

“Oh,” he said.

“Oh, indeed,” I said very cross. I had succeeded in putting that extremely humiliating episode out of mind, and didn’t at all like having it recalled.

He, on the other hand, was plainly enjoying the recollection. He eyed me in a manner I found grossly insufferable, still grinning.

“God, ye screamed like a
ban-sidhe.
”

I began to feel a distinct throbbing of blood in my temples.

“I bloody well had cause to!”

“Oh, aye,” he said, and the grin widened. “Ye did. Your own fault, mind,” he added.

“
My
f—”

“It was,” he said firmly.

“You apologized!” I said completely outraged. “You know you did!”

“No, I didn’t. And it was still your fault to begin with,” he said, with complete lack of logic. “Ye wouldna have got nearly such a wicked tanning, if ye’d only minded me in the first place, when I told ye to kneel and—”

“Minded you! You think I would have just meekly given in and let you—”

“I’ve never seen ye do
anything
meek, Sassenach.” He took my arm to help me over the stile, but I jerked free, puffing with indignation.

“You beastly
Scot
!” I dropped the hive on the ground at his feet, picked up my skirts, and scrambled over the stile.

“Well, I havena done it again,” he protested, behind me. “I promised, aye?”

I whirled round on the other side and glared at him.

“Only because I threatened to cut your heart out if you ever tried!”

“Well, even so. I
could
have—and ye ken that well, Sassenach. Aye?” He’d quit grinning, but there was a distinct glint in his eye.

I took several deep breaths, trying simultaneously to control my annoyance and think of some crushing rejoinder. I failed in both attempts, and with a briefly dignified “Hmph!” turned on my heel.

I heard the rustle of his kilt as he picked up the hive, hopped over the stile, and came after me, catching up within a stride or two. I didn’t look at him; my cheeks were still flaming.

The infuriating fact was that I
did
know that. I remembered all too well. He had used his sword belt to such effect that I hadn’t been able to sit comfortably for several days—and if he should ever decide to do it again, there was absolutely nothing to stop him.

I was, for the most part, able to ignore the fact that I was legally his property. That didn’t alter the fact that it
was
a fact—and he knew it.

“What about Brianna?” I demanded. “Would you feel the same way about it, if young Roger suddenly decided to take his belt or a switch to your daughter?”

He appeared to find something amusing in the notion.

“I think he’d have the devil of a fight on his hands if he tried,” he said. “That’s a braw wee lassie, no? And she has your notions of what constitutes wifely obedience, I’m afraid. But then,” he added, swinging the hive’s rope across his shoulder, “ye never ken what goes on in a marriage, do ye? Perhaps she’d be pleased if he tried.”

“Pleased?!” I gawked at him in astonishment. “How can you think that any woman would
ever
—”

“Oh, aye? What about my sister?”

I stopped dead in the middle of the path, staring at him.

“What
about
your sister? Surely you aren’t telling me—”

“I am.” The glint was back, but I didn’t think he was joking.

“Ian
beat
her?”

“I do wish ye’d stop calling it that,” he said mildly. “It sounds as though Ian took his fists to her, or blackened her eyes. I gave ye a decent skelping, but I didna bloody ye, for God’s sake.” His eyes flicked briefly toward my face; everything had healed, at least outwardly; the only trace left was a tiny scar through one eyebrow—invisible, unless one parted the hairs there and looked closely. “Neither would Ian.”

I was completely flabbergasted to hear this. I had lived in close proximity with Ian and Jenny Murray for months at a time, and had never seen the slightest indication that he possessed a violent nature. For that matter, it was impossible to imagine anyone trying such a thing on Jenny Murray, who had—if such a thing was possible—an even stronger personality than her brother.

“Well, what
did
he do? And why?”

“Well, he’d only take his belt to her now and then,” he said, “and only if she made him.”

I took a deep breath.

“If she
made
him?” I asked calmly, under the circumstances.

“Well, ye ken Ian,” he said, shrugging. “He’s no the one to be doing that sort of thing unless Jenny deviled him into it.”