A Breath of Snow and Ashes (78 page)

“Bones, ye say? What sort—the bones of an animal, were they, or a man?”

Brianna felt as though someone had dropped a slug down her back.

“A man?”

“Oh, aye. There’s some charms that take grave dust, ken, and some the dust of bones, or the ashes of a body.” Evidently reminded by the mention of ashes, Mrs. Bug pulled a big pottery mixing bowl from the warm ashes of the hearth, and peered into it. The bread starter had died a few days before, and the bowl of flour, water, and honey had been set out in hopes of snaring a wild yeast from the passing air.

The round little Scotswoman frowned at the bowl, shook her head, and put it back with a brief muttered verse in Gaelic. Naturally, Brianna thought, slightly amused, there
would
be a prayer for catching yeast. Which patron saint was in charge of that?

“What ye said, though,” Mrs. Bug said, returning both to her chopping of turnips and to the original subject of conversation. “About it bein’ on the Flat Rock. Seaweed, bones, and a flat rock. That’s a love charm, lass. The one they call the Venom o’ the North Wind.”

“What a really peculiar name for a love charm,” she said, staring at Mrs. Bug, who laughed.

“Och, now, do I remember it at all?” she asked rhetorically. She wiped her hands upon her apron, and folding them at her waist with a vaguely theatrical air, recited:

“A love charm for thee,

 Water drawn through a straw,

 The warmth of him thou lovest,

  With love to draw on thee.

“Arise betimes on Lord’s day,

 To the flat rock of the shore

 Take with thee the butterbur

  And the foxglove.

“A small quantity of embers

 In the skirt of thy kirtle,

 A special handful of seaweed

  In a wooden shovel.

“Three bones of an old man,

 Newly torn from the grave,

 Nine stalks of royal fern,

  Newly trimmed with an ax.

“Burn them on a fire of faggots

 And make them all into ashes;

 Sprinkle in the fleshy breast of thy lover,

  Against the venom of the north wind.

“Go round the
rath
of procreation,

 The circuit of the five turns,

 And I will vow and warrant thee

  That man shall never leave thee.”

Mrs. Bug unfolded her hands and took another turnip, quartering it with neat, quick chops and tossing the pieces into the pot. “Ye’re not wanting such a thing yourself, I hope?”

“No,” Brianna murmured, feeling the small cold feeling continue down her back. “Do you think—would the fisher-folk use a charm like that?”

“Well, as to that, I canna say
what
they’d do—but surely a few would ken that charm; it’s weel enough known, though I havena kent anyone myself has done it. There are easier ways to make a lad fall in love wi’ ye, lass,” she added, pointing a stubby finger at Brianna in admonition. “Cook him up a nice plate o’ neeps boiled in milk and served wi’ butter, for one.”

“I’ll remember,” Brianna promised, smiling, and excused herself.

She had meant to go home; there were dozens of things needing to be done, from spinning yarn and weaving cloth, to plucking and drawing the half dozen dead geese she had shot and hung in the lean-to. But instead she found her footsteps turning up the hill, along the overgrown trail that led to the graveyard.

Surely it wasn’t Amy McCallum who’d made that charm, she thought. It would have taken her hours to walk down the mountain from her cabin, and her with a small baby to tend. But babies could be carried. And no one would know whether she had left her cabin, save perhaps Aidan—and Aidan didn’t talk to anyone but Roger, whom he worshipped.

The sun was nearly down, and the tiny cemetery had a melancholy look to it, long shadows from its sheltering trees slanting cold and dark across the needle-strewn ground and the small collection of crude markers, cairns, and wooden crosses. The pines and hemlocks murmured uneasily overhead in the rising breeze of evening.

The sense of cold had spread from her backbone, making a wide patch between her shoulder blades. Seeing the earth grubbed up beneath the wooden marker with
Ephraim
on it didn’t help.

50

SHARP EDGES

H
E SHOULD HAVE KNOWN better.
Did
know better. But what could he have done? Much more important, what was he to do now?

Roger made his way slowly up the mountainside, nearly oblivious to its beauty. Nearly, but not quite. Desolate in the bleakness of winter, the secluded notch where Amy McCallum’s ramshackle cabin perched among the laurels was a blaze of color and life in spring and summer—so vivid that even his worry couldn’t stop his noticing the blaze of pinks and reds, interrupted by soft patches of creamy dogwood and carpets of bluets, their tiny blue flowers nodding on slender stems above the torrent of the stream that bounded down beside the rocky trail.

They must have chosen the site in summer, he reflected cynically. It would have seemed charming then. He hadn’t known Orem McCallum, but plainly the man hadn’t been any more practical than his wife, or they would have realized the dangers of their remoteness.

The present situation wasn’t Amy’s fault, though; he shouldn’t blame her for his own lack of judgment.

He didn’t precisely blame himself, either—but he should have noticed sooner what was going on; what was being said.

“Everybody kens ye spend more time up at the notch wi’ the widow McCallum than ye do with your own wife.”

That’s what Malva Christie had said, her little pointed chin raised in defiance.
“Tell my father, and I’ll tell everyone I’ve seen you kiss Amy McCallum. They’ll all believe me.”

He felt an echo of the astonishment he’d felt at her words—an astonishment succeeded by anger. At the girl and her silly threat, but much more at himself.

He’d been working at the whisky clearing and, heading back to the cabin for dinner, had rounded a turn in the trail and surprised the two of them, Malva and Bobby Higgins, locked in an embrace. They’d sprung apart like a pair of startled deer, eyes wide, so alarmed as to be funny.

He’d smiled, but before he could either apologize or fade tactfully into the underbrush, Malva had stepped up to him, eyes still wide, but blazing with determination.

“Tell my father,”
she’d said,
“and I’ll tell everyone I’ve seen you kiss Amy McCallum.”

He’d been so taken aback by her words that he’d scarcely noticed Bobby, until the young soldier had put a hand on her arm, murmuring something to her, drawing her away. She’d turned reluctantly, with a last, wary, meaningful glance at Roger, and a parting shot that left him staggered.

“Everybody kens ye spend more time up at the notch wi’ the widow McCallum than ye do with your own wife. They’ll all believe me.”

God damn it, they would, too, and it was his own bloody fault. Bar one or two sarcastic remarks, Bree hadn’t protested his visits; she’d accepted—or seemed to—that
someone
had to go now and then to see the McCallums, make sure they had food and fire, provide a few moments’ company, a small respite in the monotony of loneliness and labor.

He’d done such things often, going with the Reverend to call on the aged, the widowed, the ill of the congregation; take them food, stop for a bit to talk—to listen. It was just what you
did
for a neighbor, he told himself; a normal kindness.

But he should have taken more notice. Now he recalled Jamie’s thoughtful glance over the supper table, the breath taken as though to say something, when Roger had asked Claire for a salve for wee Orrie McCallum’s rash—and then Claire’s glance at Brianna, and Jamie’s closing his mouth, whatever he’d thought of saying left unspoken.

“They’ll all believe me.”
For the girl to have said that, there must have been talk already. Likely Jamie had heard it; he could only hope that Bree hadn’t.

The crooked chimney came in sight above the laurels, the smoke a nearly transparent wisp that made the clear air above the rooftree seem to quiver, as though the cabin were enchanted, might vanish with a blink.

The worst of it was that he knew precisely how it had happened. He had a weakness for young mothers, a terrible tenderness toward them, a desire to take care of them. The fact that he knew exactly
why
he harbored such an urge—the memory of his own young mother, who had died saving his life during the Blitz—didn’t help.

It was a tenderness that had nearly cost him his life at Alamance, when that bloody-minded fool William Buccleigh MacKenzie had mistaken Roger’s concern for Morag MacKenzie for . . . well, all right, he’d kissed her, but only on the forehead, and for God’s sake, she was his own many-times-great-grannie . . . and the thundering idiocy of nearly being killed by your own great-great-etc.-grandfather for molesting his wife . . . it had cost him his voice, and he should have learned his lesson, but he hadn’t, not well enough.

Suddenly furious with himself—and with Malva Christie, the malicious little chit—he picked up a stone from the trail and flung it down the mountain, into the stream. It struck another in the water, bounced twice, and vanished into the rushing gurgle.

His visits to the McCallums had to stop, at once. He saw that clearly. Another way would have to be found for them . . . but he had to come once more, to explain. Amy would understand, he thought—but how to explain to Aidan what reputation was, and why gossip was a deadly sin, and why Roger couldn’t come anymore to fish or show him how to build things. . . .

Cursing steadily under his breath, he made the last short, steep ascent and came into the ragged, overgrown little dooryard. Before he could call out to announce his presence, though, the door flew open.

“Roger Mac!” Amy McCallum half-fell down the step and into his arms, gasping and weeping. “Oh, you came, you came! I prayed for someone to come, but I didna think anyone would, in time, and he’d die, but ye’ve come, God be thankit!”

“What is it? What’s wrong? Is wee Orrie taken sick?” He got hold of her arms, steadying her, and she shook her head, so violently that her cap slid half off.

“Aidan,” she gasped. “It’s Aidan.”

AIDAN MCCALLUM lay doubled up on my surgery table, white as a sheet, making little gasping groans. My first hope—green apples or gooseberries—vanished with a closer look at him. I was fairly sure what I had here, but appendicitis shares symptoms with a number of other conditions. A classic case does, however, have one striking aspect.

“Can you unfold him, just for a moment?” I looked at his mother, hovering over him on the verge of tears, but it was Roger who nodded and came to put his hands on Aidan’s knees and shoulders, gently persuading him to lie flat.

I put a thumb in his navel, my little finger on his right hipbone, and pressed his abdomen sharply with my middle finger, wondering for a second as I did so whether McBurney had yet discovered and named this diagnostic spot. Pain in McBurney’s Spot was a specific diagnostic symptom for acute appendicitis. I pressed Aidan’s stomach there, then I released the pressure, he screamed, arched up off the table, and doubled up like a jackknife.

A hot appendix for sure. I’d known I’d encounter one sometime. And with a mixed sense of dismay and excitement, I realized that the time had come for me finally to use the ether. No doubt about it, and no choice; if the appendix wasn’t removed, it would rupture.

I glanced up; Roger was supporting little Mrs. McCallum with a hand under her elbow; she clutched the baby close to her chest, wrapped in its bundle. She’d need to stay; Aidan would need her.

“Roger—get Lizzie to come mind the baby, will you? And then run as fast as you can to the Christies’; I’ll need Malva to come and help.”

The most extraordinary expression flitted across his face; I couldn’t interpret it, but it was gone in an instant, and I didn’t have time to worry about it. He nodded and left without a word, and I turned my attention to Mrs. McCallum, asking her the questions I needed answered before I cut into her small son’s belly.

IT WAS ALLAN CHRISTIE who opened the door to Roger’s brusque knock. A darker, leaner version of his owl-faced father, he blinked slowly at the question as to Malva’s whereabouts.

“Why . . . she’s gone to the stream,” he said. “Gathering rushes, she said.” He frowned. “Why do ye want her?”

“Mrs. Fraser needs her to come and help with—with something.” Something moved inside; the back door opening. Tom Christie came in, a book in his hand, the page he’d been reading caught between two fingers.

“MacKenzie,” he said, with a short jerk of the head in acknowledgment. “Did ye say Mrs. Fraser is wanting Malva? Why?” He frowned as well, the two Christies looking exactly like a pair of barn owls contemplating a questionable mouse. “Only that wee Aidan McCallum’s taken badly, and she’d be glad of Malva’s help. I’ll go and find her.”

Christie’s frown deepened, and he opened his mouth to speak, but Roger had already turned, hurrying into the trees before either of them could stop him.

He found her fairly quickly, though every moment spent searching seemed an eternity. How long did it take an appendix to burst? She was knee-deep in the stream, skirts kirtled high and her rush basket floating beside her, tethered by an apron string. She didn’t hear him at first, deafened by the flow of the water. When he called her name more loudly, her head jerked up in alarm, and she raised the rush knife, gripped tightly in her hand.

The look of alarm faded when she saw who it was, though she kept a wary eye on him—and a good grip on the knife, he saw. His summons was received with a flash of interest.

“The ether? Really, she’s going to cut him?” she asked eagerly, wading toward him.

“Yes. Come on; I’ve already told your father Mrs. Fraser needs you. We needn’t stop.”

Her face changed at that.

“Ye told him?” Her brow creased for a moment. Then she bit her lip and shook her head.

“I can’t,” she said, raising her voice above the sound of the stream.

“Yes, ye can,” he said, as encouragingly as possible, and stretched out a hand to help her. “Come on; I’ll give ye a hand with your things.”

She shook her head more decidedly, pink lower lip poking out a bit.

“No. My father—he’ll no have it.” She glanced in the direction of the cabin, and he turned to look, but it was all right; neither Allan nor Tom had followed him. Yet.

He kicked off his shoes and stepped into the icy creek, the stones rolling, hard and slippery under his feet. Malva’s eyes widened and her mouth fell open as he bent and grabbed her basket, ripped it from her apron string, and tossed it onto the bank. Then he took the knife from her hand, thrust it through his belt, grabbed her round the waist, and picking her up, splashed ashore with her, disregarding the kicking and squealing.

“You’re coming with me,” he said, grunting as he set her down. “Ye want to walk, or do I carry you?”

He thought she seemed more intrigued than horrified at this proposal, but she shook her head again, backing away from him.

“I can’t—truly! He’ll—he’ll beat me if he finds out I’ve been meddling wi’ the ether.”

That checked him momentarily. Would he? Perhaps. But Aidan’s life was at stake.

“He won’t find out, then,” he said. “Or if he does, I’ll see to it that he does ye no harm. Come, for God’s sake—there’s no time to be wasting!”