The Fiery Cross (197 page)

“Before.” Her eyes opened again, but she spoke dully, as though nothing mattered any longer. “He was a doctor, Rawlings. He’d come to look at my eyes, once before. When Hector took ill, he called the man back. I canna say quite what happened, but Hector caught him nosing round where he should not, and smashed his head in. He was a hot-tempered man, Hector.”

“I should say so,” Jamie said, with another glance at the body of Dr. Rawlings. “How did he get in here?”

“We—he—hid the corpse, meaning to carry it off and leave it in the wood. But then . . . Hector got worse, and couldna leave his bed. Within a day, he was dead, too. And so . . .” She lifted a long white hand, gesturing toward the draft of dank chill that floated from the open tomb.

“Great minds think alike,” I murmured, and Jamie gave me a dirty look, letting go my hand. He stood contemplating the stillness inside the violated mausoleum, thick brows drawn down in a frown of concentration.

“Oh, aye?” he said again. “Whose is the second coffin?”

“Mine.” Jocasta was recovering her nerve; her shoulders straightened and her chin lifted.

Jamie made a small puffing noise and glanced at me. I could believe that Jocasta would callously leave a dead man to lie exposed, rather than put him in her own pristine coffin . . . and yet. To do so drastically increased the odds of discovery, slim as those might be.

No one would have opened Jocasta’s coffin until it was time to receive her own body; Dr. Rawlings’ corpse could have lain there in complete safety, even were the mausoleum to be opened for some reason. Jocasta Cameron was selfish—but by no means stupid.

“Put Wolff in, then, if you must,” she said. “He can lie on the floor with the other one.”

“Why not put him in your coffin, Aunt?” Jamie asked, and I saw that he was looking at her intently.

“No!” She had begun to turn away, but at this whipped back, her blind face fierce in the torchlight. “He is dung. Let him lie and rot in the open!”

Jamie narrowed his eyes at her response, but didn’t reply. Instead, he turned to the tomb and began to shift the loosened blocks.

“What are you doing?” Jocasta could hear the grating noise of the shifting marble, and became agitated anew. She turned round on the walk, but became disoriented, staring off toward the river. I realized that she must now be completely blind, unable even to see the light from the torch.

I had no attention to pay her just then, though. Jamie wedged himself through the gap in the blocks, and stepped inside.

“Light me, Sassenach,” he said softly, and his voice echoed slightly in the small stone chamber.

Breathing very shallowly, I followed him. Phaedre had begun to moan in the darkness outside; she sounded like the
ban-sidhe
that howls for approaching death—but this death had come long since.

The coffins were equipped with brass plates, gone slightly green with damp, but still easily readable. “Hector Alexander Robert Cameron,” read one, and “Jocasta Isobeail MacKenzie Cameron,” the other. Without hesitation, Jamie seized the edges of the lid of Jocasta’s coffin and pulled up.

It wasn’t nailed; the lid was heavy, but shifted at once.

“Oh,” Jamie said softly, looking down.

Gold will never tarnish, no matter how damp or dank its surroundings. It will lie at the bottom of the sea for centuries, to emerge one day in some random fisherman’s net, bright as the day it was smelted. It glimmers from a rocky matrix, a siren’s song that has called to men for thousands of years.

The ingots lay in a shallow layer over the bottom of the coffin. Enough to fill two small chests, each chest heavy enough to require two men—or a man and a strong woman—to carry it. Each ingot stamped with a fleur-de-lis. One third of the Frenchman’s gold.

I blinked at the shimmer, and looked aside, my eyes blurring with fractured light. It was dark on the floor, but I could still make out the huddled form against the pale marble. “Nosing where he should not.” And what had he seen, Daniel Rawlings, that had made him draw the fleur-de-lis in the margin of his casebook, with that discreet notation, “Aurum”?

Hector Cameron was still alive, then. The mausoleum had not yet been sealed. Perhaps when Dr. Rawlings rose to follow his wandering patient, Hector had led him here unwitting, going down in the night to view his hoard? Perhaps. Neither Hector Cameron nor Daniel Rawlings could say, now, how it had been, or what had happened.

I felt a thickening in my throat, for the man whose bones lay now at my feet, the friend and colleague whose instruments I had inherited, whose shade had stood at my elbow, lending me both courage and comfort, when I laid hands on the sick and sought to heal them.

“Such a waste,” I said softly, looking down.

Jamie lowered the coffin lid, gently, as though the coffin held an occupant whose rest had been disturbed.

Outside, Jocasta stood still on the path. She had an arm round Phaedre, who had stopped whimpering, but it was not clear which of them was supporting the other. Jocasta must know now from the noise where we were, but she faced the river still, eyes fixed, unblinking in the torchlight.

I cleared my throat, hugging the shawl tighter with my free hand.

“What shall we do, then?” I asked Jamie.

He turned and looked back into the tomb for a moment, then shrugged a little.

“We’ll leave the Lieutenant to Hector, as we planned. As for the doctor . . .” He drew breath slowly, troubled gaze fixed on the slender bones that lay in a graceful fan, pale and still in the light. A surgeon’s hand—once.

“I think,” he said, “we will take him home with us—to the Ridge. Let him lie among friends.”

He brushed past the two women without acknowledgment or pardon, and went to fetch Lieutenant Wolff.

Fraser’s Ridge
May, 1772

T
HE NIGHT AIR WAS COOL and fresh. So early in the year, the bloodthirsty flies and mosquitoes hadn’t started yet; only random moths came in through the open window now and then, to flutter round the smoored hearth like bits of burning paper, brushing past their outflung limbs in brief caress.

She lay as she had fallen, half on top of him, heart thumping loud and slow in her ears. From here, she could see out through the window; the jagged black line of trees on the far side of the dooryard, and beyond them a section of sky, lit with stars, so near and bright that it should be possible to step out among them and walk from one to another, higher and higher, to the hook of the crescent moon.

“You’re not mad at me?” he whispered. He spoke more easily now, but lying with her ear on his chest, she could hear the faint catch in his voice, the point where he forced air hard through his scarred throat to form the words.

“No.” His hand was on her hair, stroking. “I didn’t ever tell you not to read it.”

His fingers touched her shoulder, lightly, and her toes curled with pleasure at the feeling. Did she mind? No. She supposed she ought to feel exposed in some way, the privacy of her thoughts and dreams laid bare to him—but she trusted him with them. He would never use those things against her.

Besides, once set down on paper, the dreams became a separate thing from her, herself. Much like the drawings that she made; a reflection of one facet of her mind, a brief glimpse of something once seen, once thought, once felt—but not the same thing as the mind or heart that made them. Not quite.

“Fair’s fair, though.” Her chin rested in the hollow of his shoulder. He smelled good, bitter and musky with the scent of satisfied desire. “Tell me one of your dreams, then.”

A laugh vibrated through his chest, nearly soundless, but she felt it.

“Only one?”

“Yes, but it has to be an important one. Not the flying ones, or the ones where you’re being chased by a monster, or the ones where you go to school without your clothes on. Not the ones that everybody has—one that only
you
have.”

One of her hands was on his chest, scratching gently to make the dark curly hairs twitch and rise. The other was under the pillow; if she moved her fingers slightly, she could feel the smooth little shape of the ancient wifie, as he called it. She could imagine her own womb swelling, round and hard. She could feel the clutch and soft spasm in her lower belly; aftershocks of their lovemaking. Would it be this time?

He turned his head on the pillow, thinking. Long lashes lay against his cheek, black as the lines of the trees outside. He turned back then, lifting them, and his eyes were the color of moss, soft and vivid in the shadowed light.

“I could be romantic,” he whispered, and his fingers drifted down her back, so that she felt gooseflesh rise in their wake. “I could say this is my dream—you and me, here alone . . . us and our children.” He turned his head a little, checking the trundle in the corner, but Jemmy was sound asleep, invisible.

“You could,” she echoed, and ducked her head so her forehead pressed against his shoulder. “But that’s a waking dream—not a real dream. You know what I mean.”

“Aye, I do.”

He was quiet for a minute, his hand lying still, broad and warm across the base of her spine.

“Sometimes,” he whispered at last, “sometimes, I dream I am singing, and I wake from it with my throat aching.”

He couldn’t see her face, or the tears that prickled at the corners of her eyes.

“What do you sing?” she whispered back. She heard the
shush
of the linen pillow as he shook his head.

“No song I’ve ever heard, or know,” he said softly. “But I know I’m singing it for you.”

July 27, 1772

“Was called from churning to attend Rosamund Lindsay, who arrived in late afternoon with a severe laceration to the left hand, sustained with an axe while girdling trees. Wound was extensive, having nearly severed the left thumb; laceration extended from base of index finger to two inches above the styloid process of the radius, which was superficially damaged. Injury had been sustained approximately three days prior, treated with rough binding and bacon grease. Extensive sepsis apparent, with suppuration, gross swelling of hand and forearm. Thumb blackened; gangrene apparent; characteristic pungent odor. Subcutaneous red streaks, indicative of blood poisoning, extended from site of injury nearly to antecubital
fossa.

Patient presented with high fever (est. 104 degrees F., by hand), symptoms of dehydration, mild disorientation. Tachycardia evident.

In view of the seriousness of patient’s condition, recommended immediate amputation of limb at elbow. Patient refused to consider this, insisting instead upon application of pigeon poultice, consisting of the split body of a freshly-killed pigeon, applied to wound (patient’s husband had brought pigeon, neck freshly wrung). Removed thumb at base of metacarpal, ligated remains of radial artery (crushed in original injury) and superficialis volae. Debrided and drained wound, applied approximately 1/2 oz. crude penicillin powder (source: rotted casaba rind, batch #23, prep. 15/4/72) topically, followed by application of mashed raw garlic (three cloves), barberry salve—and pigeon poultice, at insistence of husband applied over dressing. Administered fluids by mouth; febrifuge mixture of red centaury, bloodroot, and hops; water
ad lib
. Injected liquid penicillin mixture (batch # 23), IV, dosage 1/4 oz in suspension in sterile water.

Patient’s condition deteriorated rapidly, with increasing symptoms of disorientation and delirium, high fever. Extensive urticaria appeared on arm and upper torso. Attempted to relieve fever by repeated applications of cold water, to no avail. Patient being incoherent, requested permission to amputate from husband; permission denied on grounds that death appeared imminent, and patient “would not want to be buried in pieces.”

Repeated penicillin injection. Patient lapsed into unconsciousness shortly thereafter, and expired just before dawn.