Judith E. French (30 page)

“What is it?” she demanded of him. “The baby’s not dead?”

He wanted to lie—to tell that it was so—to take the easy way out. But he couldn’t. He’d hurt Cailin too many times. If he betrayed her now, she’d never forgive him. “The baby’s alive,” he said, “but the women say that it’s breech.”

“I was born breech. That’s nothing,” she protested weakly. “My mother birthed me and two more.”

“Heron believes that Pine Basket knows about such things. She says that this baby will die ... and ... ” A lump rose in his throat and choked him. “They want to take the child, Cailin ... to save your life.”

“Take it?” Another contraction seized her, and she arched her back and dug her nails into his hands. “What do you mean,
take it?
They want to murder my baby?”

“They say it’s a matter of time ... that the babe will die anyway.”

“And ye’d let them?” Her eyes caught the reflection from the glowing hearth and blazed like firebrands.

“I can’t lose you, Cailin.”

“No! No, I tell you. I don’t care if I die. This is our child. I’ll have it, or we’ll die together.”

Sterling put his arms around her and hugged her to him. “Think what you’re saying,” he begged her as tremors of emotion wracked his frame. “We can make another babe.”

She stiffened again. And when the pain had run its course, she whispered to him. “No. I’ll nay agree. And if ye truly love me as your wife, you’ll stand by me in this, Sassenach.”

He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the center of her palm. “I’ll stand by you, Cailin, but if you die on me, I’ll—”

“I won’t die, damn it,” she gasped. “I won’t.” She reached up and clutched the amulet around her neck. “This is magic, remember,” she said. “Whoever possesses the Eye of Mist has one wish. You remember, don’t ye?” she begged him.

“I remember, Highlander.” He’d never been a man for tears, but her image wavered in front of him as his eyes filled with moisture.

“The power of life and death,” she murmured. “If there is a God up there, He won’t blame me.” Her fingers tightened on the golden pendant until her knuckles turned as white as tallow. “I, Cailin MacGreggor Gray, call on thee,” she declared with the last of her strength. “Save my baby’s life.”

“Magic can’t work unless you believe it,” he said.

“I believe,” she insisted. “Damn it. I believe in the amulet—in ghost wolves and fairies too, if that’s what it takes to save our baby!”

Again, the pain came, and Cailin struggled to keep from screaming. “He has to live,” she whispered hoarsely. “He must.”

Heron entered the wigwam and moved to Sterling’s side. He glanced at the Menominee woman. “She wants to keep trying,” Sterling said. “She won’t give up.”

The Indian woman handed him a cup of water and a cloth. He used it to moisten Cailin’s lips, and she nodded gratefully.

Heron put another log on the fire. The rest of the women came in. Pine Basket conferred with her companions and went to Cailin’s side. “Up,” she said in Algonquian.

“No!” Cailin cried.

Heron laid a hand on Cailin’s head. “She will help you,” she said. “No one will hurt your little one. Let us help you.”

“Sterling!”

“Pine Basket only wants to get Sweet Spring on her feet again,” Heron said.

“Not them,” Cailin said to Sterling. “You.”

He assisted her to her feet, and they began to walk in a small circle around the wigwam. Old Pine Basket tossed a handful of leaves onto the coals and began to chant. Heron took Cailin’s other arm.

After the space of an hour, Cailin suddenly dropped onto her knees and groaned. “Something—something ...” she managed.

Heron motioned to the sleeping platform. Sterling gathered her up in his arms and laid her back on the bearskin. Pine Basket peered between her legs and began to laugh.

“Hold her hands. Now!” Heron ordered.

Sterling did as he was told.

Cailin took a deep breath, strained, and pushed with all her might. And the bloody infant slipped out, feetfirst, into the old woman’s wrinkled hands. “A little warrior!” Pine Basket proclaimed. “A man child.”

“Is he all right?” Cailin demanded. “Is he—”

The loud wail of an angry baby answered her plea. In seconds, Pine Basket tied and severed the pulsing cord, and placed the naked infant into Sterling’s arms. “Your son,” she said proudly.

“Give him to me,” Cailin begged. “Let me see him.”

Carefully cradling the tiny head, he laid the screaming boy against Cailin’s breast. He rooted until he found his mother’s nipple, then began to suck lustily. Cailin laughed through her tears. “He’s got hair,” she said. “Look at all that black hair.”

“At least he’s not a redhead,” Sterling teased, stroking the infant’s sturdy back with two fingers. He glanced at the old woman anxiously.

She grinned, exposing white teeth worn down nearly to the gum. “Your woman is fine,” she said. “Will bear you many sons.”

Sterling leaned close to Cailin’s ear. “I love you,” he whispered.

“And I love you,” she answered. Her eyes devoured the baby. “Look at him. Isn’t he the most beautiful bairn you’ve ever seen? What shall we name him?”

He smiled at her. “I was thinking about Cameron,” he admitted.

“Aye, that makes two of us,” she confided. Her joyous laughter filled the last chink in his heart and made him whole.

 

B
y the light of a full Shawnee moon, wee Cameron Gray crossed the Ohio River with his mother and father in a birch-bark canoe. The baby took no notice of the brilliant May moon hanging low in the sky, or of the virgin forest stretching on either side of the river, illuminated as clearly as some fairy kingdom. Snugly laced into his Menominee cradle board and strapped to his mother’s back, he slept, unaware that each mile carried him closer to the sea and his future home along the Chesapeake.

Sterling, Cailin, and the infant had set out from the Menominee village lying in the natural triangle formed by the two great lakes, Superior and Michigan, on a brisk morning in April. Not wanting to risk the health of their newborn son, Sterling and Cailin had traveled slowly, stopping at friendly villages and passing from one tribe to another until they’d reached the first Shawnee town lying between the Falls and the Great Miami River.

At the village of Chalahgawtha, Sterling’s Shawnee heritage assured them hospitality, but it was Cailin’s shell bead bracelet that ensured the escort of fourteen armed braves and the loan of canoes and provisions to take them east to the Great Shell Fish Bay, the Chesapeake. “A sister of the peace woman does not need to ask,” the Shawnee shaman had said. “We are honored to offer assistance.”

Now, the same canoes that had carried them across the swift-flowing Ohio followed the twisting course of the Kentucky River south and east to a point near the junction of the Konhawa River.

Cailin felt as though she’d been traveling forever. She’d rapidly regained her strength after childbirth, and now, the long days of traveling on foot and by canoe had added to her feeling of well-being. For the first time in her life, she was truly happy. Culloden and the deaths of so many of her kin no longer shadowed her dreams. Somewhere in the peace of the great trees and endless sky, she’d forgiven Sterling for killing Johnnie MacLeod and for being part of the English military.

Laughter came easily between them and was as easily shared with their fierce companions. It was impossible for Cailin to wake without anticipation and wonder for the day ahead. Cameron’s tiny face, sturdy body, and baby antics were an unending source of delight for both his parents.

And somewhere on the trail, Cailin and Sterling had come to a decision about her loved ones in Scotland. “A letter can cross the ocean from Annapolis to Glasgow in less than three months,” her husband had assured her. “I’ll write to friends I knew in the military and to families near your home who remained loyal to King George during the rebellion, promising a reward for information about your family. And once we make contact, I’ll provide passage to Maryland for them if they want to come. If they don’t, we can provide support for your young half-brother until he’s of legal age. I can see that he’s educated as befits a laird’s son.”

“And if our letters come to nothing?” she’d asked.

“Then you and Cameron will remain in Maryland while I go and hunt the rascals out. I’ll find them, Cailin,” he’d promised. “I swear it. If your father told the truth about the inheritance he left you, money won’t be a problem. If he didn’t, then I’ll sell part of my land to get it.”

The compromise was what she needed to satisfy the vow she’d made. Never would she risk Cameron’s life by taking him on an ocean voyage, and leaving him behind was impossible to consider. He and Sterling were her world, and if Sterling said he’d find her grandfather, her sister, and Corey, then he would. She’d learned that Sterling was a man who kept his word, a rare treasure even in her native Highlands.

“Will we rebuild your plantation?” she asked him the morning they forded the Konhawa River and started walking due east.

“Not for a few years,” he’d replied. “The Mohawk have a long memory. They have a new sachem and a new shaman by now, but I’m certain there’s still a bounty on our scalps. I’d like to keep you and Cameron closer to the settlements until danger of war with the hostiles is over. Unless you’d consider remaining in Annapolis while I work the plantation alone.”

She’d scoffed at that. “Nay likely, Sassenach.”

“Why did I think that would be your reaction?”

“I couldn’t say, not for the life of me,” she answered sweetly. They’d both laughed at that, and little Cameron had opened his eyes, puckered up his face, and demanded to be fed in no uncertain terms. Cailin shifted his cradle board, unlaced him, and tucked him into the curve of her arm so that he could nurse.

“If you aren’t a rich heiress, times may be tough for us,” Sterling warned. “I spent every coin I had on building the first time.”

“Dinna fash yourself,” she said, her gaze riveted on the precious bundle tugging at her breast. “This is our treasure. If we have him, what else do we need?”

 

It was June when they strode down the hill toward Annapolis harbor. Cailin was not oblivious to the stares and murmurs of curious townfolk. The Shawnee warriors had turned back the night before, but even without an honor guard of savages, Cailin attracted enough attention with her Indian buckskins, dark-haired infant in a cradle board, and beaded headband.

By the time they reached the market square at the water’s edge, a group of gaping children and busybodies were trailing after them. A horse auction was in progress, amid a score of farmers selling produce, live chickens, fresh fish, servant indentures, and bags of wool. It had been Sterling’s intention to hire a small boat and crew to carry them to Lord Kentington’s plantation, but as they crossed the crowded common, Cailin stopped short—her sun-tanned face as suddenly pale as if she’d seen a ghost.

“What’s wrong?” Sterling asked.

“There. That man,” she whispered in shocked tones. She tried to keep her voice normal, but it was impossible. Those shoulders, that square head, and the wrinkled Scots bonnet could belong to no one else on earth.

“Which man?” he demanded.

She shook off Sterling’s hand and took a few steps closer to the giant balancing a live pig on one shoulder. The pig’s feet were bound and its snout was wrapped tightly with twine, but it weighed close to a hundred pounds, and it could still struggle mightily. “Big Fergus! Big Fergus, is that you?” she called, unconsciously switching to Gaelic.

The big man turned around, and a grin split his homely face from ear to ear. And Cailin saw the boy who’d been hidden by Fergus’s massive bulk.

“Corey!” she screamed. “Corey MacLoed!”

The child saw her and began to run. Close on his heels ran a black and white sheepdog. “Cailin!” the boy cried above the sharp joyous barking of the dog. “Cailin!”

 

Forrest Wescott took them home on his sloop, not to New Westover, but to the land Cailin had inherited from Cameron Stewart, the plantation he called Scot’s Haven. There, she put her infant son into her grandfather’s arms and shed tears of joy as she listened to the tale of Corey’s adventures as he’d struggled to find her.

“When Corey and Big Fergus came back to Glen Garth, your sister and that man of hers had already left for Canada. There was nothing else to do but bring the boy to you,” James Stewart explained.

“But how?” Cailin demanded. She couldn’t keep her hands off Corey or her grandfather. She kept stroking their hair and touching their faces to assure herself that they were real and not just a figment of her imagination. She’d even given Big Fergus a hug and a kiss, and she’d gotten down on her knees to hug old Lance. The sheepdog kept butting her with his head and burying his wet nose into her hand. “Good boy, good Lance,” she said. “How did you get here, Grandda?”

“’Twas easy enough, once we made our way past the English soldiers and out of Scotland,” her grandfather boasted. “I may be sightless, but I’m not stupid. I kenned well enough that Cameron Stewart was your father and that he lived in America. I counted on finding someone at his London estates who would find us passage to this wilderness. His solicitor wasted no time in putting us on a ship, and we’ve taken our ease here waiting for ye to come home ever since. ’Tis time, too. The laddie’s been running free as an Indian himself. Time he had school.”

“Ye didna come as ye promised,” Corey reminded her. “We thought ye might be in danger, so we decided to come and rescue ye. I would have gone into the woods looking for ye, Big Fergus and me, but Grandda pleaded his age. We stayed to watch over him.”

“A good job they’ve done too,” her grandfather said. “This house is so big that it’s taken me a while to learn to find my way around it.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Corey teased. “He pretends to be helpless so that the housekeeper, Mistress MacCarthy, will see to his every whim. I think Grandda’s sweet on her.”

“Be that true, Grandda?” Cailin asked him.

“None of your cheek, lass,” he retorted. “A man’s never too old to like a soft place to lay his head. When I stop smiling at the women is the day ye can lay me in my grave.”

 

Cailin barely had time to walk through the halls of Scot’s Haven and inspect the stables and outbuildings before Forrest’s sloop returned to her dock with Moonfeather and a host of other relatives whom she didn’t know.

Cailin put Cameron into his father’s arms and ran down the oyster-shell path to meet her sister. Again, tears and hugs were given and received, and both women tried to talk at the same time.

“You must see our little Cameron,” Cailin said. “We named him after ...”

Moonfeather wiped the tears from her smooth, honey-colored cheeks. “Father would be proud,” she replied. “He died well. Quickly, without being taken by the Iroquois.”

“How do ye know?” Cailin asked. “Are ye sure?”

“A wolf told me in a dream,” the peace woman answered softly. “It is so.”

Sterling came down the walk and handed Moonfeather the baby. “We brought home a little keepsake from Menominee country,” he said. “Cameron Gray, meet your Aunt Moonfeather.”

She laughed and held the infant high. He reached out with chubby hands and grabbed her dark hair. “Aunt Moonfeather is too much for him to say,” the peace woman replied. “My father called me Leah. Aunt Leah will do very nicely for this young laddie.”

“The amulet was real,” Cailin said. “We nearly lost him, but—”

“Shhh,” Moonfeather said. “Magic is best not spoken of, only cherished ... as we shall cherish this little one.” She looked into Cailin’s eyes. “He carries the best of two worlds in his bloodline. Indian and European. In time to come, the red man will vanish, but we will leave something in the hearts and minds of young ones like this.”

“Is it true?” Sterling asked as he put a strong arm around Cailin’s shoulders. “Did Cameron Stewart leave this plantation to Cailin?”

“He did,” Moonfeather assured them. She kissed little Cameron’s cheeks and nuzzled his neck. “Ye have a rich wife, if that matters to ye ... a very, very rich wife.”

Sterling grinned down at Cailin. “I’ll not leave her because of it,” he teased.

“I should hope not,” she said.

“If you can stand a few more reunions, there are some people who have been wanting to meet you,” Moonfeather said with shining eyes. “Your sister Anne, your sister Fiona, my husband Brandon, Anne’s husband Ross, Fiona’s husband Wolf Shadow—”

“So many?” Cailin cried.

“Aye, little sister,” Moonfeather answered. “And many more. There are your nieces and nephews and more wee ones than you can imagine. Many have prayed for your safe return.”

Trembling, Cailin looked up at Sterling. For once, she was too full of emotion to speak.

He leaned down and kissed her mouth with slow tenderness, then found the words for her. “We’d best go and make them welcome, Cailin, Cameron, and I.”

Cailin held out her arms for the baby. He crowed with excitement and put out a tiny starfish hand to seize his mother’s golden amulet. Cooing happily, he popped the shiny pendant into his mouth and gummed it in utter contentment.

“Once the separate pieces of the Eye of Mist were one,” Moonfeather murmured. “It may be that the Great Spirit wishes them to be one again.”

“Aye,” Cailin agreed. She glanced up at Sterling.

He nodded. “What your father divided, you can make whole.”

Moonfeather smiled. “So. The circle is complete.”

Sterling’s hand tightened on Cailin’s. And together, the three of them walked down the hill toward the sparkling waters of the Chesapeake and the American family that awaited them.