A Breath of Snow and Ashes (86 page)

“He’s come for the gold,” she said, lowering her voice. “The Frenchman’s gold.”

“Oh, aye?” Jamie said cautiously. He darted a glance at me, one eyebrow raised, but I shook my head. She wasn’t having hallucinations.

Jocasta sighed with impatience and shook her head, then stopped abruptly, with a muffled “Och!” of pain, putting both hands to her head as though to keep it on her shoulders.

She breathed deeply for a moment or two, her lips pressed tight together. Then she slowly lowered her hands.

“It started last night,” she said. “The pain in my eye.”

She’d waked in the night to a throbbing in her eye, a dull pain that spread slowly to the side of her head.

“It’s come before, ken,” she explained. She had pushed herself up to a sitting position now, and was beginning to look a little better, though she still held the warm cloth to her eye. “It began when I started to lose my sight. Sometimes it would be one eye, sometimes both. But I kent what was coming.”

But Jocasta MacKenzie Cameron Innes was not a woman to allow mere bodily indisposition to interfere with her plans, let alone interrupt what promised to be the most scintillating social affair in Cross Creek’s history.

“I was that disgusted,” she said. “And here Miss Flora MacDonald coming!”

But the arrangements had all been made; the barbecued carcasses were roasting in their pits, hogsheads of ale and beer stood ready by the stables, and the air was full of the fragrance of hot bread and beans from the cookhouse. The slaves were well-trained, and she had full faith that Ulysses would manage everything. All she must do, she’d thought, was to stay on her feet.

“I didna want to take opium or laudanum,” she explained. “Or I’d fall asleep for sure. So I made do wi’ the whisky.”

She was a tall woman, and thoroughly accustomed to an intake of liquor that would have felled a modern man. By the time the MacDonalds arrived, she’d had the better part of a bottle—but the pain was getting worse.

“And then my eye began to water so fierce, everyone would ha’ seen something was wrong, and I didna want
that.
So I came into my sitting room; I’d taken care to put a wee bottle of laudanum in my workbasket, in case the whisky should be not enough.

“Folk were swarming thick as lice outside, trying to catch a glimpse or a word with Miss MacDonald, but the sitting room was deserted, so far as I could tell, what wi’ my head pounding and my eye fit to explode.” She said this last quite casually, but I saw Jamie flinch, the memory of what I’d done with the needle obviously still fresh. He swallowed and wiped his knuckles hard across his mouth.

Jocasta had quickly abstracted the bottle of laudanum, swallowed a few gulps, and then sat for a moment, waiting for it to take effect.

“I dinna ken if ye’ve ever had the stuff, Nephew, but it gives ye an odd feeling, as though ye might be starting to dissolve at the edges. Take a drop too much, and ye begin to see things that aren’t there—blind or not—and hear them, too.”

Between the effects of laudanum and liquor and the noise of the crowd outside, she hadn’t noticed footsteps, and when the voice spoke near her, she’d thought for a moment that it was a hallucination.

“‘So here ye are, lass,’
he said,” she quoted, and her face, already pale, blanched further at the memory.
“‘Remember me, do ye?’”

“I take it ye did, Aunt?” Jamie asked dryly.

“I did,” she replied just as dryly. “I’d heard that voice twice before. Once at the Gathering where your daughter was wed—and once more than twenty years ago, in an inn near Coigach, in Scotland.”

She lowered the wet cloth from her face and put it unerringly back into the bowl of warm water. Her eyes were red and swollen, raw against the pale skin, and looking terribly vulnerable in their blindness—but she had command of herself once more.

“Aye, I did ken him,” she repeated.

She had recognized the voice at once as one known—but for a moment, could not place it. Then realization had struck her, and she had clutched the arm of her chair for support.

“Who are ye?” she’d demanded, with what force she could summon. Her heart was pounding in time to the throbbing in her head and eye, and her senses swimming in whisky and laudanum. Perhaps it was the laudanum that seemed to transform the sound of the crowd outside into the sound of a nearby sea, the noise of a slave’s footsteps in the hall to the thump of the landlord’s clogs on the stairs of the inn.

“I was there. Truly there.” Despite the sweat that still ran down her face, I saw gooseflesh pebble the pale skin of her shoulders. “In the inn at Coigach. I smelt the sea, and I heard the men—Hector and Dougal—I could
hear
them! Arguing together, somewhere behind me. And the man wi’ the mask—I could
see
him,” she said, and a ripple went up the back of my own neck as she turned her blind eyes toward me. She spoke with such conviction that for an instant, it seemed she
did
see.

“Standing at the foot of the stair, just as he’d been twenty-five years ago, a knife in his hand and his eyes upon me through the holes in his mask.”

And, “Ye ken well enough who I am, lass,” he’d said, and she had seemed to see his smile, though dimly she had known she only heard it in his voice; she’d never seen his face, even when she had her sight.

She was sitting up, half doubled over, arms crossed over her breast as though in self-defense and her white hair wild and tangled down her back.

“He’s come back,” she said, and shook with a sudden convulsive shudder. “He’s come for the gold—and when he finds it, he will kill me.”

Jamie laid a hand on her arm, in an attempt to calm her.

“No one will kill ye while I’m here, Aunt,” he said. “So this man came to ye in your sitting room, and ye kent him from his voice. What else did he say to ye?”

She was still shivering, but not so badly. I thought it was as much reaction to massive amounts of laudanum and whisky as from fear.

She shook her head in the effort of recollection.

“He said—he said he had come to take the gold to its rightful owner. That we’d held it in trust, and while he didna grudge me what we’d spent of it, Hector and me—it wasna mine, had never been mine. I should tell him where it was, and he would see to the rest. And then he put his hand on me.” She ceased clutching herself, and held out one arm toward Jamie. “On my wrist. D’ye see the marks there? D’ye see them, Nephew?” She sounded anxious, and it occurred to me suddenly that she might doubt the existence of the visitor herself.

“Aye, Auntie,” Jamie said softly, touching her wrist. “There are marks.”

There were; three purplish smudges, small ovals where fingers had gripped.

“He squeezed, and then twisted my wrist so hard I thought it had snapped. Then he let go, but he didna step back. He stayed over me, and I could feel the heat of his breath and the stink of tobacco on my face.”

I had hold of her other wrist, feeling the pulse beat there. It was strong and rapid, but every once in a while would skip a beat. Hardly surprising. I did wonder how often she took laudanum—and how much.

“So I reached down into my workbasket, took my wee knife from its sheath, and went for his balls,” she concluded.

Taken by surprise, Jamie laughed.

“Did ye get him?”

“Yes, she did,” I said, before Jocasta could answer. “I saw dried blood on the knife.”

“Well, that will teach him to terrorize a helpless blind woman, won’t it?” Jamie patted her hand. “Ye did well, Auntie. Did he go, then?”

“He did.” The recounting of her success had steadied her a lot; she pulled her hand from my grip, in order to push herself up straighter against the pillows. She pulled away the towel still draped around her neck, and dropped it on the floor with a brief grimace of distaste.

Seeing that she was plainly feeling better, Jamie glanced at me, then rose to his feet.

“I’ll go and see is anyone limping about the place, then.” At the door, he paused, though, turning back to Jocasta.

“Auntie. Ye said ye’d met this fellow
twice
before? At the inn in Coigach where the men brought the gold ashore—and at the Gathering four years ago?”

She nodded, brushing back the damp hair from her face.

“I did. ’Twas on the last day. He came into my tent, while I was alone. I kent someone was there, though he didna speak at first, and I asked who was it? He gave a bit of a laugh, then, and said, ‘It’s true what they said, then—you’re blind entirely?’”

She had stood up, facing the invisible visitor, recognizing the voice, but not quite knowing yet why.

“‘So ye dinna ken me, Mrs. Cameron? I was a friend to your husband—though it’s been a good many years since last we met. On the coast of Scotland—on a moonlicht nicht.’”

She licked dry lips at the memory.

“So then it came to me, all on the sudden. And I said, ‘Blind I may be, but I ken ye well, sir. What d’ye want?’ But he was gone. And the next instant, I heard Phaedre and Ulysses talking as they came toward the tent; he’d seen them, and fled away. I asked them, but they’d been ta’en up wi’ their arguing, and hadna seen him leave. I kept someone by me all the time, then, until we left—and he didna come near me again. Until now.”

Jamie frowned and rubbed a knuckle slowly down the long, straight bridge of his nose.

“Why did ye not tell me then?”

A trace of humor touched her ravaged face, and she wrapped her fingers round her injured wrist.

“I thought I was imagining things.”

PHAEDRE HAD FOUND the bottle of laudanum where Jocasta had dropped it, under her chair in the sitting room. Likewise, a trail of tiny blood spots that I had missed in my hurry. These disappeared before reaching the door, though; whatever wound Jocasta had inflicted on the intruder had been minor.

Duncan, summoned discreetly, had hurried in to comfort Jocasta—only to be sent directly out again, with instructions to see to the guests; neither injury nor illness was going to mar such an occasion!

Ulysses met with a slightly more cordial reception. In fact, Jocasta sent for him. Peering into her room to check on her, I found him sitting by the bed, holding his mistress’s hand, with such an expression of gentleness on his usually impassive face that I was quite moved by it, and stepped quietly back into the hall, not to disturb them. He saw me, though, and nodded.

They were talking in low voices, his head in its stiff white wig bending toward hers. He seemed to be arguing with her, in a most respectful fashion; she shook her head, and gave a small cry of pain. His hand tightened on hers, and I saw that he had taken off his white gloves; her hand lay long and frail, pallid in his powerful dark grasp.

She breathed deeply, steadying herself. Then she said something definite, squeezed his hand, and lay back. He rose, and stood for a moment beside the bed, looking down at her. Then he drew himself up, and taking his gloves from his pocket, came out into the hall.

“If you will fetch your husband, Mrs. Fraser?” he said, low-voiced. “My mistress wishes me to tell him something.”

THE PARTY WAS STILL IN full swing, but had shifted to a lower, digestive sort of gear. People greeted Jamie or me as we followed Ulysses into the house, but no one stopped us.

He led us downstairs to his butler’s pantry, a tiny room that lay off the winter kitchen, its shelves crammed with silver ornaments, bottles of polish, vinegar, blacking, and bluing, a housewife with needles, pins, and threads, small tools for mending, and what looked like a substantial private stock of brandy, whisky, and assorted cordials.

He removed these from their shelf, and reaching back into the empty space where they had stood, pressed upon the wood of the wall with both white-gloved hands. Something clicked, and a small panel slid aside with a soft rasping sound.

He stood aside, silently inviting Jamie to look. Jamie raised one eyebrow and leaned forward, peering into the recess. It was dark and shadowy in the butler’s pantry, with only a dim light filtering in from the high basement windows that ran around the top of the kitchen walls.

“It’s empty,” he said.

“Yes, sir. It should not be.” Ulysses’s voice was low and respectful, but firm.