Drums of Autumn (120 page)

“I will be damned if I know,” he said.

“They did burn the priest? He’s dead?” There could be no doubt of it after what he’d seen, but still Roger felt compelled to ask.

“He was a priest?” Thick reddish brows rose in surprise, then fell. “Aye, he’s dead. And not only him.” An involuntary shudder went over the Highlander’s big frame.

Fraser hadn’t known what they meant to do when the drums began to sound, and everyone went out to gather by the great fire. There was plenty of talk, but his knowledge of the Mohawk tongue was insufficient to make out what was happening, and his nephew, who spoke the tongue, was nowhere to be found.

The whites had not been invited, but no one made any move to keep them away. And so it was that he and Claire had come to be standing on the edge of the crowd, curious onlookers, when the
sachem
and the Council came out and the old man began to speak. Another man had spoken, too, very angrily.

“Then they brought the man out, naked as a tadpole, bound him to a stake, and started in upon him.” He paused, eyes shadowed, and glanced at Roger.

“I’ll tell ye, man, I’ve seen French executioners keep a man alive who wished he weren’t. It wasna worse than that—but no a great deal better.” Fraser drank again, thirstily, and lowered the cup.

“I tried to take Claire away— I didna ken but what they meant to attack us next.” The crowd was pressed so tight around them, though, that movement was impossible; there was no choice but to go on watching.

Roger’s mouth felt dry, and he reached for the cup. He didn’t want to ask, but he felt a perverse need to know—whether for Alexandre’s sake or for his own.

“Did he—cry out at all?”

Fraser gave him another glance of surprise, then something like understanding crossed his face.

“No,” he said slowly. “He died verra well—by their lights. Ye will have been knowing the man?”

Roger nodded, wordless. It was difficult to believe Alexandre was gone, even hearing this. And
where
had he gone? Surely he could not have been right.
I will not be forgiven
. Surely not. No just God—

Roger shook his head hard, pushing the thought away. It was plain that Fraser had no more than half his mind on his story, horrific as it was. He kept glancing at the door, a look of anxious expectation on his face. Was he expecting rescue?

“How many men did you bring with you?”

The blue eyes flashed, surprised.

“My nephew Ian.”

“That’s all?” Roger tried to keep the stunned disbelief out of his voice, but patently failed.

“Ye were expecting the 78th Hieland regiment?” Fraser asked sarcastically. He got to his feet, swaying slightly, arm pressed to his side. “I brought whisky.”

“Whisky? Did that have anything to do with the fighting?” Remembering the reek of the man who had fallen over him, Roger nodded toward the wall of the longhouse.

“It may have.”

Fraser went to the wall with the cracked panel, and pressed an eye against the opening, staring out at the clearing for some time before returning to the dwindling fire. Things had gone quiet outside.

The big Highlander was looking more than unwell. His face was white and sheened with sweat under the streaks of dried blood. Roger silently poured more water; it was as silently accepted. He knew well enough what was wrong with Fraser, and it wasn’t the effects of injury.

“When you last saw her—”

“When the fighting broke out.” Unable to stay seated, Fraser set down the cup and got to his feet again, prowling the confines of the longhouse like a restless bear. He paused, glancing at Roger.

“Will ye maybe ken a bit what happened there?”

“I could guess.” He acquainted Fraser with the priest’s story, finding some small respite from worry in the telling.

“They wouldn’t have harmed her,” he said, trying to reassure himself as much as Fraser. “She’d nothing to do with it.”

Fraser gave a derisory snort.

“Aye, she did.” Without warning, he smashed a fist against the ground, in a muffled thump of fury. “Damn the woman!”

“She’ll be all right,” Roger repeated stubbornly. He couldn’t bear to think otherwise, but he knew what Fraser plainly knew as well—if Claire Fraser was alive, unhurt, and free, nothing could have kept her from her husband’s side. And as for the unknown nephew…

“I heard your nephew—in the fight. I heard him call out to you. He sounded all right.” Even as he offered this bit of information, he knew how feeble it was as reassurance. Fraser nodded, though, head bent on his knees.

“He’s a good lad, Ian,” he murmured. “And he has friends among the Mohawk. God send they will protect him.”

Roger’s curiosity was coming back, as the shock of the evening began to fade.

“Your wife,” he said. “What did she do? How could she possibly have been involved in this?”

Fraser sighed. He scrubbed his good hand over his face and through his hair, rubbing until the loose red locks stood up in knots and snarls.

“I shouldna have said so,” he said. “It wasna her fault in the least. It’s only—she’ll not be killed, but God, if they’ve harmed her…”

“They won’t,” Roger said firmly. “What happened?”

Fraser shrugged and closed his eyes. Head tilted back, he described the scene as though he could still see it, engraved on the inside of his eyelids. Perhaps he could.

“I didna take heed of the girl, in such a crowd. I couldna even say what she looked like. It was only at the last that I saw her.”

Claire had been by his side, white-faced and rigid in the press of shouting, swaying bodies. When the Indians had nearly finished with the priest, they untied him from the stake and fastened his hands instead to a long pole, held above his head, from which to suspend him in the flames.

Fraser glanced at him, wiping the back of a hand across his lips.

“I’ve seen a man’s heart pulled beating from his chest before,” he said. “But I hadna seen it eaten before his eyes.” He spoke almost shyly, as though apologizing for his squeamishness. Shocked, he had looked to Claire. It was then that he had seen the Indian girl standing on Claire’s other side, with a cradleboard in her arms.

With great calmness, the girl had handed the board to Claire, then turned and slipped through the crowd.

“She didna look to left or right, but walked straight into the fire.”

“What?” Roger’s throat closed with shock, the exclamation emerging in a strangled croak.

The flames had embraced the girl in moments. A head taller than the folk near him, Jamie had seen everything clearly.

“Her clothes caught, and then her hair. By the time she reached him, she was burning like a torch.” Still, he had seen the dark silhouette of her arms, raised to embrace the empty body of the priest. Within moments, it was no longer possible to distinguish man or woman; there was only the one figure, black amid the towering flames.

“It was then everything went mad.” Fraser’s wide shoulders slumped a little, and he touched the gash in his temple. “All I ken is one woman set up a howl, and then there was the hell of a screech, and of a sudden, everyone was either fleeing or fighting.”

He had himself tried to do both, shielding Claire and her burden while fighting his way out of the thrashing press of bodies. There were too many of them, though. Unable to escape, he had pushed Claire against the wall of a longhouse, seized a stick of wood with which to defend them, and shouted for Ian, while wielding his makeshift club on anyone reckless enough to come near.

“Then a wee fiend leapt out o’ the smoke, and struck me with his club.” He shrugged, one-shouldered. “I turned to fight him off, and then there were three of them on me.” Something had caught him in the temple, and he had known no more till waking in the longhouse with Roger.

“I havena seen Claire since. Nor Ian.”

The fire had burned itself to coals, and it was growing cold in the longhouse. Jamie unfastened his brooch and pulled the plaid around his shoulders as well as he could, one-handed, and leaned gingerly back against the wall.

His right arm might be broken; he’d taken a blow from one of the war clubs just below the shoulder, and the stricken spot went from numbness to blinding pain with no warning. That was of no moment, though, compared with his worry for Claire and wee Ian.

It was very late. If Claire hadn’t been hurt in the fighting, she was likely safe enough, he told himself. The old woman wouldn’t countenance harm done to her. As for Ian, though—he felt a moment’s pride in the lad, in spite of his fear. Ian was a bonny fighter, and a credit to the uncle who’d taught him.

If he should have been overcome, though…there had been so many of the savages, and with the fighting so hot…

He shifted restlessly, trying not to think of facing his sister with ill news of her youngest boy. Christ, he’d rather have his own heart torn from his breast and eaten before his eyes; it would feel much the same.

Seeking distraction—any distraction—from his fears, he shifted again, taking random stock of the shadowy insides of the house. Bare as a Skyeman’s cupboard, for the most part. A jug of water, a broken bed frame, and one or two tattered skins for bedding lying crumpled on the earthen floor.

MacKenzie was sitting hunched across the fire, heedless of the growing chill. His arms were wrapped about his knees, head bent in thought. He was half turned away, unaware of Jamie’s eye on him.

He grudged to admit it, but the man was decently made. Long shanks and a good breadth through the shoulders; he’d have a fair reach with a sword. He was tall as the MacKenzies of Leoch—and why not? he thought suddenly. The man was Dougal’s get, if a few generations onward.

He found that notion both disturbing and oddly comforting. He’d killed men when he must, and mostly their ghosts let him sleep at night with no great rattling of bones. Dougal’s death, though, was one that he had lived through more than once, and woke from sweating, with the sound of those last silent words of Dougal’s ringing in his ears; words mouthed in blood.

There’d been not the slightest choice; it was kill or be killed, and a near thing either way. And yet…Dougal MacKenzie had been his foster father, and if he was honest, a part of him had loved the man.

Yes, it was some comfort to know that a small part of Dougal was left. The other part of this MacKenzie’s heritage was a wee bit more troubling. He’d seen the man’s eyes first thing when he woke, bright green and intent, and for one second his wame had shriveled up into a ball, thinking of Geillis Duncan.

Did he much want his daughter linked with a witch’s spawn? He eyed the man covertly. Perhaps it was as well if Brianna’s child was not of this man’s blood.

“Brianna,” MacKenzie said, lifting his head suddenly from his knees. “Where is she?”

Jamie jerked, and a hot knife-blade seared his arm, leaving him sweating.

“Where?” he said. “At River Run, with her aunt. She’s safe.” His heart was thundering in his ears. Christ, was the man able to read thoughts? Or had he the Sight?

The green eyes were steady, dark in the dim light.

“Why did you bring Claire, and not Brianna? Why did she not come with you?”

Jamie returned the man’s cool look. They’d see if it was a matter of mind reading or not. If not, the last thing he meant to tell MacKenzie now was the truth; time enough for that when—if—they were safely away.

“I should have left Claire as well, if I thought I could. She’s a stubborn wee besom. Short of tying her hand and foot, I couldna prevent her coming.”

Something dark flickered in MacKenzie’s eyes—doubt, or pain?

“I should not have thought Brianna the kind of lass to mind her father’s word overmuch,” he said. His voice had an edge to it—yes, pain, and a sort of jealousy.

Jamie relaxed slightly. No mind reading.

“Did ye no? Well, and perhaps ye dinna ken her so well as all that,” he said. Pleasantly enough, but with a jeering undertone that would make one sort of man go for his throat.

MacKenzie wasn’t that sort. He sat up straight, and drew a deep breath.

“I know her well,” he said levelly. “She is my wife.”

Jamie sat up straight in turn, and clenched his teeth on a hiss of pain.

“The hell she is.”

MacKenzie’s black brows drew down at that.

“We are handfast, she and I. Did she not tell you that?”

She hadn’t—but he hadn’t given her much chance to tell him, either. Too furious at the thought of her willing to bed a man, stung at thinking she’d made a fool of him, proud as Lucifer and suffering the Devil’s pains for it, in wishing her perfect and finding her only as human as himself.

“When?” Jamie asked.

“Early September, in Wilmington. When I—just before I left her.” The admission came unwillingly, and through the black veil of his own guilt he saw a reflection of it on MacKenzie’s face. As well deserved as his own, he thought viciously. If the coward had not left her…

“She didna tell me.”

He saw the doubt and the pain in MacKenzie’s eyes quite clearly now. The man worried that Brianna did not want him—for if she did, she would have come. He knew well enough that no power on earth or below it would keep Claire from
his
side if she thought him in danger—and felt a jolt of fear renewed at that thought; for where was she?

“I suppose she thought you wouldn’t see handfasting as a legal form of marriage,” MacKenzie said quietly.

“Or perhaps she didna see it so herself,” Jamie suggested cruelly. He could relieve the man’s mind by telling him a part of the truth—that Brianna had not come because she was with child—but he was in no charitable mood.

It was getting quite dark, but even so he could see MacKenzie’s face flush at that, and his hands clench on the ragged deerskin.

“I saw it so,” was all he said.

Jamie closed his eyes, and said no more. The last coals in the fire died slowly, leaving them in darkness.

61

THE OFFICE OF A PRIEST

T
he smell of burnt things hung in the air. We passed close by the pit and I couldn’t help seeing from the corner of my eye the heap of charred fragments, shattered ends frosted white with ash. I hoped it was wood. I was afraid to look directly.

I stumbled on the frozen ground, and my escort caught me by the arm. Pulled me up without comment and pushed me toward a longhouse where two men stood on guard, huddled against a cold wind that filled the air with drifting ashes.

I had not slept and had not eaten, though food was offered. My feet and my fingers were cold. There was keening from a longhouse at the far end of the village, and over it the louder formal chant of a death song. Was it for the girl that they sang, or someone else? I shivered.

The guards glanced at me and stood aside. I lifted the hide flap at the door and went in.

It was dark; the fire inside as dead as the one outside. Gray light from the smokehole gave me enough illumination to see an untidy heap of skins and cloth on the floor, though. A patch of red tartan showed amid the jumble, and I felt a surge of relief.

“Jamie!”

The pile heaved and came apart. Jamie’s rumpled head popped up, alert but looking a good deal the worse for wear. Next to him was a dark, bearded man who seemed oddly familiar. Then he moved into the light, and I caught the flash of green eyes above the shrubbery.

“Roger!” I exclaimed.

Without a word he rose out of the blankets and clasped me in his arms. He held so tight, I could hardly breathe.

He was terribly thin; I could feel every one of his ribs. Not starved, though; he stank, but with the normal scents of dirt and stale sweat, not the yeasty effluvium of starvation.

“Roger, are you all right?” He let go, and I looked him up and down, searching for any signs of injury.

“Yes,” he said. His voice was husky, from sleep and emotion. “Bree? She’s all right?”

“She’s fine,” I assured him. “What’s happened to your foot?” He wore nothing but a tattered shirt and a stained rag wrapped around one foot.

“A cut. Nothing. Where is she?” He clutched my arm, anxious.

“At a place called River Run, with her great-aunt. Didn’t Jamie tell you? She’s—”

I was interrupted by Jamie clutching my other arm.

“Are ye all right, Sassenach?”

“Yes, of course I—my God, what happened to you?” My attention was momentarily distracted from Roger by the sight of Jamie. It wasn’t the nasty contusion on his temple or the dried blood on his shirt that struck my notice, so much as the unnatural way he held his right arm.

“My arm’s maybe broken,” he said. “Hurts like a bugger. Will ye come and tend to it?”

Without waiting for an answer he turned and walked away, sitting down heavily near the broken bed frame. I gave Roger a brief pat and went after him, wondering what the hell. Jamie wouldn’t admit to being in pain in front of Roger Wakefield, if splintered raw bone were sticking out of his flesh.

“What are you up to?” I muttered, kneeling beside him. I felt the arm gingerly through his shirt—no compound fractures. I rolled it carefully up for a better look.

“I havena told him about Brianna,” he said, very softly. “And I think it better you do not.”

I stared at him.

“We can’t do that! He has to know.”

“Keep your voice down. Aye, he maybe should know about the bairn—but not the other, not Bonnet.”

I bit my lip, feeling gingerly down the swell of his biceps. He had one of the worst bruises I had ever seen; a huge mottled splotch of purple-blue—but I was fairly sure the arm wasn’t broken.

I wasn’t so sure about his suggestion.

He could see the doubt on my face; he squeezed my hand hard.

“Not yet; not here. Let it wait, at least until we’re safe away.”

I thought for a moment, as I ripped the sleeve of his shirt and used it to make a rough sling. Learning that Brianna was pregnant was going to be a shock by itself. Perhaps Jamie was right; there was no telling how Roger would react to the news of the rape, and we were a long way from being home free yet. Better he should have his head clear. At last I nodded, reluctantly.

“All right,” I said aloud, getting up. “I don’t think it’s broken, but the sling will help.”

I left Jamie sitting on the ground and went to Roger, feeling like a Ping-Pong ball.

“How’s the foot?” I knelt to unwrap the unsanitary-looking rag around it, but he stopped me with an urgent hand on my shoulder.

“Brianna. I know there’s something wrong. Is she—”

“She’s pregnant.”

Whatever possibilities he had been turning over in his mind, that hadn’t been among them. It isn’t possible to mistake sheer amazement. He blinked, looking as though I’d hit him on the head with an ax.

“Are you sure?”

“She’ll be seven months gone by now; it’s noticeable.” Jamie had come up so quietly that neither of us had heard him. He spoke coldly, and looked even colder, but Roger was well beyond noticing subtleties.

Excitement brightened his eyes, and his shocked face came alive beneath the black whiskers.

“Pregnant. My God, but how?”

Jamie made a derisive noise in the back of his throat. Roger glanced at him, then quickly away.

“That is, I never thought—”

“
How?
Aye, ye didna think, and it’s my daughter left to pay the price of your pleasure!”

Roger’s head snapped round at that, and he glared at Jamie.

“She is not left, in any way! I told you she is my wife!”

“She is?” I said, startled in the midst of my unwrapping.

“They’re handfast,” Jamie said, very grudgingly. “Why could the lass not have told us, though?”

I thought I could answer that one—in more than one way. The second answer wasn’t one I could suggest in front of Roger, though.

She hadn’t said, because she was with child, and thought it was Bonnet’s. Believing that, she might have thought it better not to reveal their handfasting, so as to leave Roger an escape—if he wanted it.

“Most likely because she thought you wouldn’t see that as a true marriage,” I said. “I’d told her about our wedding; about the contract and how you insisted on marrying me in church, with a priest. She wouldn’t want to tell you anything she thought you might not approve of—she wanted so badly to please you.”

Jamie had the grace to look abashed at this, but Roger ignored the argument.

“Is she well?” he asked, leaning forward and grasping my arm.

“Yes, she’s fine,” I assured him, hoping it was still true. “She wanted to come with us, but of course we couldn’t let her do that.”

“She wanted to come?” His face lighted up, joy and relief plain to see, even through the hair and filth. “Then she didn’t—” He stopped abruptly, and glanced from me to Jamie and back. “When I met…Mr. Fraser on the mountainside, he seemed to think that she—er—had said—”

“A terrible misunderstanding,” I put in hastily. “She hadn’t told us about the handfasting, so when she turned up pregnant, we, er…assumed…” Jamie was brooding, looking at Roger with no particular favor, but jerked into awareness when I nudged him sharply.

“Oh, aye,” he said, a little grudgingly. “A mistake. I’ve given Mr. Wakefield my apologies and told him I shall do my best to see it right. But we’ve other things to think of now. Have ye seen Ian, Sassenach?”

“No.” I became aware for the first time that Ian was not with them, and felt a small lurch of fear in the pit of my stomach. Jamie looked grim.

“Where have ye been all night, Sassenach?”

“I was with—oh, Jesus!”

I ignored his question for a moment, caught up in the sight of Roger’s foot. The flesh was swollen and reddened over half his foot, with a severe ulceration on the outer margin of the sole. I pressed firmly, a little way in, and felt the nasty give of small pockets of pus under the skin.

“What happened here?”

“I cut it, trying to get away. They bound it and put things on it, but it’s been infected on and off. It gets better, and then it gets worse.” He shrugged; his attention wasn’t on his foot, ugly as it was. He looked up at Jamie, evidently having come to a decision.

“Brianna didn’t send you to meet me, then? She didn’t ask you to—get rid of me?”

“No,” Jamie said, taken by surprise. He smiled briefly, his features suffused with sudden charm. “That was my own notion.”

Roger drew a deep breath and closed his eyes briefly.

“Thank God,” he said, and opened them. “I thought perhaps she’d—we’d had a terrible argument, just before I left her, and I thought maybe that was why she hadn’t told you about the handfasting; that she’d decided she didn’t want to be married to me.” There was sweat on his forehead, either from the news or from my handling of his foot. He smiled, a little painfully. “Having me beaten to death or sold into slavery seemed a trifle extreme, though, even for a woman with her temper.”

“Mmphm.” Jamie was slightly flushed. “I did say I was sorry for it.”

“I know.” Roger looked at him for a minute, evidently making up his mind about something. He took a deep breath, then bent down and put my hand gently away from his foot. He straightened up and met Jamie’s eyes, dead-on.

“I’ve something to tell you. What we fought over. Has she told you what brought her here—to find you?”

“The death notice? Aye, she’s told us. Ye dinna think I’d allow Claire to come with me otherwise?”

“What?” Puzzled wariness showed in Roger’s eyes.

“Ye canna have it both ways. If she and I are to die at Fraser’s Ridge six years from now, we canna very well be killed by the Iroquois any time before that, now can we?”

I stared at him; that particular implication had escaped me. Rather staggering; practical immortality—for a time. But that was assuming—

“That’s assuming that you can’t change the past—that
we
can’t, I mean. Do you believe that?” Roger leaned forward a little, intent.

“I will be damned if I know. Do
you
think so?”

“Yes,” Roger said flatly. “I do think the past can’t be changed. That’s why I did it.”

“Did what?”

He licked his lips, but went doggedly on.

“I found that death notice long before Brianna did. I thought, though, that it would be useless to try to change things. So I—I kept it from her.” He looked from me to Jamie. “So now you know. I didn’t want her to come; I did everything I could to keep her away from you. I thought it was too dangerous. And—I was afraid of losing her,” he ended simply.

To my surprise, Jamie was looking at Roger with sudden approval.

“Ye tried to keep her safe, then? To protect her?”

Roger nodded, a certain relief lessening the tension in his shoulders.

“So you understand?”

“Aye, I do. That’s the first thing I’ve heard that gives me a good opinion of ye, sir.”

It wasn’t an opinion I shared at the moment.

“You found that thing—and didn’t tell her?” I could feel the blood climbing into my cheeks.

Roger saw the look on my face, and looked away.

“No. She…um…she saw it your way, I’m afraid. She thought—well, she said I’d betrayed her, and—”

“And you did! Her and us both! Of all the—Roger, how could you
do
such a thing?”

“He did right,” Jamie said. “After all—” I turned on him fiercely, interrupting.

“He did
not
! He deliberately kept it from her, and tried to keep her from—don’t you realize, if he’d succeeded, you’d never have seen her?”

“Aye, I do. And what’s happened to her would not have happened.” His eyes were deep blue, steady on mine. “I would it had been so.”

I swallowed down my grief and anger, until I thought I could speak again without choking.

“I don’t think
she
would have had it so,” I said softly. “And it was hers to say.”

Roger jumped in, before Jamie could reply.

“You said what’s happened to her wouldn’t have—you mean, being pregnant?” He didn’t wait for a reply; he had plainly recovered from the shock of the news sufficiently to begin thinking, and was rapidly reaching the same unpleasant conclusions Brianna had come to, some months earlier. He swung his head toward me, eyes wide with shock.

“She’s seven months along, you said. Jesus! She can’t go back!”

“Not
now,
” I said, with bitter emphasis. “She might have, when we first found out. I tried to make her go back to Scotland, or at least to the Indies—there’s another…opening, there. But she wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t go without finding out what happened to you.”

“What happened to me,” he repeated, and glanced at Jamie. Jamie’s shoulders tensed, and he set his jaw.

“Aye,” he said. “It’s my fault, and no remedy for it. She’s trapped here. And I can do nothing for her—save bring ye back to her.” And that, I realized, was why he had not wanted to tell Roger anything; for fear that when he realized Brianna was trapped in the past, Roger would refuse to come back with us. Following her into the past was one thing; staying there forever with her was something else again. Neither was it guilt over Bonnet alone that had eaten Jamie up on our journey here; the Spartan boy with the fox gnawing at his vitals would have recognized a kindred soul on the spot, I thought, looking at him with exasperated tenderness.

Roger gazed at him, completely at a loss for words.

Before he could find any, a noise of shuffling footsteps approached the door of the hut. The flap lifted, and a large number of Mohawks came in, one after the other.

We looked at them in astonishment; there were about fifteen of them, men and women and children, all dressed for traveling, in leggings and furs. One of the older women held a cradleboard, and without hesitation she walked up to Roger and pressed it into his arms, saying something in Mohawk.

He frowned at her, not understanding. Jamie, suddenly alert, leaned toward her and said a few halting words. She repeated what she had said, impatiently, then looked behind her and motioned to a young man.

“You are…priest,” he said haltingly to Roger. He pointed at the cradleboard. “Water.”