Drums of Autumn, Page 4

  2

  IN WHICH WE MEET A GHOST

  Ten, eleven, twelve…and two, and six…one pound, eight shillings, sixpence, two farthings!” Fergus dropped the last coin ceremoniously into the cloth pocket, pulled tight the drawstrings, and handed it to Jamie. “And three buttons,” he added, “but I have kept those,” and patted the side of his coat.

  “Ye’ve settled with the landlord for our meal?” Jamie asked me, weighing the little bag.

  “Yes,” I assured him. “I have four shillings and sixpence left, plus what Fergus collected.”

  Fergus smiled modestly, square white teeth gleaming in the faint light from the tavern’s window.

  “We have the necessary money for the burial, then,” he said. “Will we take Monsieur Hayes to the priest now, or wait till morning?”

  Jamie frowned at the wagon, standing silent at the edge of the inn yard.

  “I shouldna think the priest will be awake at this hour,” he said, with a glance at the rising moon. “Still—”

  “I’d just as soon not take him with us,” I said. “Not to be rude,” I added apologetically to the wagon. “But if we’re going to sleep out in the woods, the…er…scent…” It wasn’t overpowering, but once away from the smoky reek of the tavern, a distinct odor was noticeable in the vicinity of the wagon. It hadn’t been a gentle death, and it had been a hot day.

  “Auntie Claire is right,” Ian said, brushing his knuckles inconspicuously under his nose. “We dinna want to be attracting wild animals.”

  “We canna be leaving Gavin here, surely!” Duncan protested, scandalized at the thought. “What, leave him lying on the step o’ the inn in his shroud, like a foundling wrapped in swaddling clothes?” He swayed alarmingly, his alcoholic intake affecting his always precarious balance.

  I saw Jamie’s wide mouth twitch with amusement, the moon shining white on the knife-edged bridge of his nose.

  “No,” he said. “We willna be leaving him here.” He tossed the little bag from hand to hand with a faint chinking sound, then, making his decision, thrust it into his coat.

  “We’ll bury him ourselves,” he said. “Fergus, will ye be stepping into the stable yonder and see can ye buy a spade verra cheap?”

  * * *

  The short journey to the church through the quiet streets of Charleston was somewhat less dignified than the usual funeral cortege, marked as it was by Duncan’s insistence on repeating the more interesting portions of his lament as a processional.

  Jamie drove slowly, shouting occasional encouragement to the horses; Duncan staggered beside the team, chanting hoarsely and clutching one animal by its headstall, while Ian held the other to prevent bolting. Fergus and I brought up the rear in staid respectability, Fergus holding his newly purchased shovel at port-arms, and muttering dire predictions as to the likelihood of us all spending the night in gaol for disturbing the peace of Charleston.

  As it was, the church stood by itself in a quiet street, some distance from the nearest house. This was all to the good, in terms of avoiding notice, but it did mean that the churchyard was dauntingly dark, with no glow of torch or candle to pierce the blackness.

  Great magnolia trees overhung the gate, leathery leaves drooping in the heat, and a border of pines, meant to provide shade and respite in the day, served at night to block all traces of moon and starlight, leaving the churchyard itself black as a…well, as a crypt.

  Walking through the air felt like pushing aside curtains of black velvet, perfumed with an incense of turpentine from the sun-heated pines; endless layers of soft, pungent smothering. Nothing could have been farther from the cold purity of the Highlands than this stifling southern atmosphere. Still, faint patches of mist hung under the dark brick walls, and I could have wished not to recall Jamie’s story of the tannasq quite so vividly.

  “We’ll find a place. Do you stay and hold the horses, Duncan.” Jamie slid down from the wagon’s seat and took me by the arm.

  “We’ll find a nice wee spot by the wall, perhaps,” he said, guiding me toward the gate. “Ian and I will dig while you hold the light, and Fergus can stand guard.”

  “What about Duncan?” I asked, with a backward glance. “Will he be all right?” The Scotsman was invisible, his tall, lanky form having faded into the larger blot comprising horses and wagon, but he was still clearly audible.

  “He’ll be chief mourner,” Jamie said, with a hint of a smile in his voice. “Mind your head, Sassenach.” I ducked automatically beneath a low magnolia branch; I didn’t know whether Jamie could actually see in total darkness, or merely felt things by instinct, but I had never seen him stumble, no matter how dark the surroundings.

  “Don’t you think someone’s going to notice a fresh grave?” It was not completely black in the churchyard, after all; once out from under the magnolias, I could make out the dim forms of gravestones, looking insubstantial but sinister in the dark, a faint mist rising from the thick grass about their feet.

  The soles of my own feet tingled as we picked a ginger way through the stones. I seemed to feel silent waves of reproach at this unseemly intrusion wafting up from below. I barked my shin on a tombstone and bit my lip, stifling an urge to apologize to its owner.

  “I expect they might.” Jamie let go of my arm to rummage in his coat. “But if the priest wanted money to bury Gavin, I shouldna think he’d trouble to dig him up again for nothing, aye?”

  Young Ian materialized out of the darkness at my elbow, startling me.

  “There’s open space by the north wall, Uncle Jamie,” he said, speaking softly in spite of the obvious fact that there was no one to hear. He paused, and drew slightly closer to me.

  “It’s verra dark in here, no?” The boy sounded uneasy. He had had nearly as much to drink as Jamie or Fergus, but while the alcohol had imbued the older men with grim humor, it had clearly had a more depressing effect on Ian’s spirits.

  “It is, aye. I’ve the bit of a candle I took from the tavern, though; wait a bit.” Faint rustlings announced Jamie’s search for flint and tinderbox.

  The encompassing dark made me feel disembodied, like a ghost myself. I looked upward and saw stars, so faintly visible through the thick air that they shed no light upon the ground, but only gave a feeling of immense distance and infinite remoteness.

  “It’s like the vigil of Easter.” Jamie’s voice came softly, accompanied by the small scratching sounds of a striking flint. “I saw the service once, at Notre Dame in Paris. Watch yourself, Ian, there’s a stone just there!” A thud and a stifled grunt announced that Ian had belatedly discovered the stone for himself.

  “The church was all dark,” Jamie continued, “but the folk coming for the service would buy small tapers from the crones at the doors. It was something like this”—I felt, rather than saw, his motion at the sky above—“a great space above, all ringing wi’ the silence, and folk packed in on every side.” Hot as it was, I gave an involuntary shiver at these words, which conjured up a vision of the dead around us, crowding silently side by side, in anticipation of an imminent resurrection.

  “And then, just when I thought I couldna bear the silence and the crowd, there came the priest’s voice from the door. ‘Lumen Christi!’ he called out, and the acolytes lit the great candle that he carried. Then from it they took the flame to their own tapers, and scampered up and down the aisles, passing the fire to the candles o’ the faithful.”

  I could see his hands, lit faintly by the tiny sparks from his flint.

  “Then the church came alive wi’ a thousand small flames, but it was that first candle that broke the dark.”

  The scratching sounds ceased, and he took away the cupped hand that had shielded the newborn flame. The flame strengthened and lit his face from below, gilding the planes of high cheekbones and forehead, and shadowing the deep-set orbits of his eyes.

  He lifted the candle, surveying the looming grave markers, eerie as a circle of standing stones.

  “Lumen Christi,” he sa
id softly, inclining his head toward a granite pillar surmounted with a cross, “et reguiescat in pace, amice.” The half-mocking note had left his voice; he spoke with complete seriousness, and I felt at once oddly comforted, as though some watchful presence had withdrawn.

  He smiled at me then, and handed me the candle.

  “See can ye find a bit of wood for a torch, Sassenach,” he said. “Ian and I will take it in turns to dig.”

  * * *

  I was no longer nervous, but still felt like a grave robber, standing under a pine tree with my torch, watching Young Ian and Jamie take their turns in the deepening pit, their naked backs gleaming with sweat in the torchlight.

  “Medical students used to pay men to steal fresh bodies from churchyards,” I said, handing my soiled kerchief to Jamie as he hauled himself out of the hole, grunting with effort. “That was the only way they could practice dissection.”

  “Did they?” Jamie said. He wiped the sweat from his face and gave me a quick, wry glance. “Or do they?”

  Luckily, it was too dark for Ian to notice my flush, despite the torchlight. It wasn’t the first slip I had made, nor was it likely to be the last, but most such inadvertencies resulted in nothing more than a quizzical glance, were they noticed at all. The truth simply was not a possibility that would occur to anyone.

  “I imagine they do it now,” I admitted. I shivered slightly at the thought of confronting a freshly exhumed and unpreserved body, still smeared with the dirt of its desecrated grave. Cadavers embalmed and laid on a stainless steel surface were not particularly pleasant either, but the formality of their presentation served to keep the corruptive realities of death at some small distance.

  I exhaled strongly through my nose, trying to rid myself of odors, imagined and remembered. When I breathed in, my nostrils were filled with the smell of damp earth and hot pitch from my pine torch, and the fainter, cooler echo of live scent from the pines overhead.

  “They take paupers and criminals from the prisons, too.” Young Ian, who had evidently heard the exchange, if not understood it, took the opportunity to stop for a moment, wiping his brow as he leaned on the shovel.

  “Da told me about one time he was arrested, when they took him to Edinburgh, and kept him in the Tolbooth. He was in a cell wi’ three other men, and one of them a fellow with the consumption, who coughed something dreadful, keeping the rest awake all night and all day. Then one night the coughing stopped, and they kent he was dead. But Da said they were so tired, they couldna do more than say a Pater Noster for his soul, and fall asleep.”

  The boy paused and rubbed an itching nose.

  “Da said he woke quite sudden wi’ someone clutching his legs and another someone takin’ him by the arms, liftin’ him up. He kicked and cried out, and the one who had his arms screeched and dropped him, so that he cracked his head on the stones. He sat up rubbin’ his pate and found himself staring at a doctor from the hospital and two fellows he’d brought along to carry awa’ the corpse to the dissecting room.”

  Ian grinned broadly at the recollection, wiping his sweat-soaked hair out of his face.

  “Da said he wasna sure who was most horrified, him or the fellows who’d got the wrong body. He did say as the doctor seemed regretful, though—said Da would have made a more interesting specimen, what wi’ his leg stump and all.”

  Jamie laughed, stretching his arms to ease his shoulders. With face and torso streaked with red dirt, and his hair bound back with a kerchief round his forehead, he looked disreputable as any grave robber.

  “Aye, I mind that story,” he said. “Ian did say after that as all doctors were ghouls, and wouldna have a thing to do with them.” He grinned at me; I had been a doctor—a surgeon—in my own time, but here I passed as nothing more than a wisewoman, skilled in the use of herbs.

  “Fortunately, I’m no afraid of wee ghoulies, myself,” he said, and leaned down to kiss me briefly. His lips were warm, tasting of ale. I could see droplets of sweat caught in the curly hairs of his chest, and his nipples, dark buds in the dim light. A tremor that had nothing to do either with cold or with the eeriness of our surroundings ran down my spine. He saw it and his eyes met mine. He took a deep breath, and all at once I was conscious of the close fit of my bodice, and the weight of my breasts in the sweat-soaked fabric.

  Jamie shifted himself slightly, plucking to ease the fit of his breeches.

  “Damn,” he said softly. He lowered his eyes and turned away, mouth barely touched by a rueful smile.

  I hadn’t expected it, but I recognized it, all right. A sudden surge of lust was a common, if peculiar, response to the presence of death. Soldiers feel it in the lull after battle; so do healers who deal in blood and struggle. Perhaps Ian had been more right than I thought about the ghoulishness of doctors.

  Jamie’s hand touched my back and I started, showering sparks from the blazing torch. He took it from me and nodded toward a nearby gravestone.

  “Sit down, Sassenach,” he said. “Ye shouldna be standing so long.” I had cracked the tibia of my left leg in the shipwreck, and while it had healed quickly, the leg still ached sometimes.

  “I’m all right.” Still, I moved toward the stone, brushing against him as I passed. He radiated heat, but his naked flesh was cool to the touch, the sweat evaporating on his skin. I could smell him.

  I glanced at him, and saw goose bumps rise on the fair flesh where I’d touched him. I swallowed, fighting back a sudden vision of tumbling in the dark, to a fierce blind coupling amid crushed grass and raw earth.

  His hand lingered on my elbow as he helped me to a seat on the stone. Rollo was lying by its side, drops of saliva gleaming in the torchlight as he panted. The slanted yellow eyes narrowed at me.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I said, narrowing my own eyes back at him. “Bite me, and I’ll cram my shoe down your throat so far you’ll choke.”

  “Wuff!” Rollo said, quite softly. He laid his muzzle on his paws, but the hairy ears were pricked, turned to catch the slightest sound.

  The spade chunked softly into the earth at Ian’s feet, and he straightened up, slicking sweat off his face with a palm swipe that left black smears along his jaw. He blew out a deep breath and glanced up at Jamie, miming exhaustion, tongue lolling from the corner of his mouth.

  “Aye, I expect it’s deep enough.” Jamie answered the wordless plea with a nod. “I’ll fetch Gavin along, then.”

  Fergus frowned uneasily, his features sharp in the torchlight.

  “Will you not need help to carry the corpse?” His reluctance was evident; still, he had offered. Jamie gave him a faint, wry smile.

  “I’ll manage well enough,” he said. “Gavin was a wee man. Still, ye might bring the torch to see by.”

  “I’ll come too, Uncle!” Young Ian scrambled hastily out of the pit, skinny shoulders gleaming with sweat. “Just in case you need help,” he added breathlessly.

  “Afraid to be left in the dark?” Fergus asked sarcastically. I thought that the surroundings must be making him uneasy; though he occasionally teased Ian, whom he regarded as a younger brother, he was seldom cruel about it.

  “Aye, I am,” Ian said simply. “Aren’t you?”

  Fergus opened his mouth, brows arched skyward, then shut it again and turned without a word toward the black opening of the lych-gate, whence Jamie had disappeared.

  “D’ye not think this is a terrible place, Auntie?” Ian murmured uneasily at my elbow, sticking close as we made our way through the looming stones, following the flicker of Fergus’s torch. “I keep thinking of that story Uncle Jamie told. And thinking now Gavin’s dead, maybe the cold thing…I mean, do you think would it maybe…come for him?” There was an audible swallow punctuating this question, and I felt an icy finger touch me, just at the base of my spine.

  “No,” I said, a little too loudly. I grabbed Ian’s arm, less for support than for the reassurance of his solidity. “Certainly not.”

  His skin was clammy with evapor
ating sweat, but the skinny muscularity of the arm under my hand was comforting. His half-visible presence reminded me faintly of Jamie; he was nearly as tall as his uncle, and very nearly as strong, though still lean and gangling with adolescence.

  We emerged with gratitude into the little pool of light thrown by Fergus’s torch. The flickering light shone through the wagon wheels, throwing shadows that lay like spiderwebs in the dust. It was as hot in the road as it was in the churchyard, but the air seemed somehow freer, easier to breathe, out from under the suffocating trees.

  Rather to my surprise, Duncan was still awake, perched drooping on the wagon’s seat like a sleepy owl, shoulders hunched about his ears. He was crooning under his breath, but stopped when he saw us. The long wait seemed to have sobered him a bit; he got down from the seat steadily enough and came round to the rear of the wagon to help Jamie.

  I smothered a yawn. I would be glad to be done with this melancholy duty and on our way to rest, even if the only bed to look forward to was one of piled leaves.

  “Ifrinn an Diabhuil! A Dhia, thoir cobhair!”

  “Sacrée Vierge!”

  My head snapped up. Everyone was shouting, and the horses, startled, were neighing and jerking frantically against their hobbles, making the wagon hop and lurch like a drunken beetle.

  “Wuff!” Rollo said next to me.

  “Jesus!” said Ian, goggling at the wagon. “Jesus Christ!”

  I swung in the direction he was looking, and screamed. A pale figure loomed out of the wagon bed, swaying with the wagon’s jerking. I had no time to see more before all hell broke loose.

  Rollo bunched his hindquarters and launched himself through the dark with a roar, to the accompaniment of shouts from Jamie and Ian, and a terrible scream from the ghost. Behind me, I could hear the sound of French cursing as Fergus ran back into the churchyard, stumbling and crashing over tombstones in the dark.

  Jamie had dropped the torch; it flickered and hissed on the dusty road, threatening to go out. I fell to my knees and grabbed it, blowing on it, desperate to keep it alight.

  The chorus of shouts and growling grew to a crescendo, and I rose up, torch in hand, to find Ian struggling with Rollo, trying to keep him away from the dim figures wrestling together in a cloud of dust.

  “Arrêtes espèce de cochon!” Fergus galloped out of the dark, brandishing the spade he had gone to fetch. Finding his injunction disregarded, he stepped forward and brought it down one-handed on the intruder’s head with a dull clong! Then he swung toward Ian and Rollo.

  “You be quiet, too!” Fergus said to the dog, threatening him with the shovel. “Shut up this minute, foul beast, or I brain you!”

  Rollo snarled, with a show of impressive teeth that I interpreted roughly to mean “You and who else?” but was prevented from mayhem by Ian, who wrapped his arm about the dog’s throat and choked off any further remarks.

  “Where did he come from?” Ian asked in amazement. He craned his neck, trying to get a look at the fallen figure without letting go of Rollo.

  “From hell,” Fergus said briefly. “And I invite him to go back there at once.” He was trembling with shock and exertion; the light gleamed dully from his hook as he brushed a thick lock of black hair out of his eyes.

  “Not from hell; from the gallows. Do ye not know him?”

  Jamie rose slowly to his feet, dusting his breeches. He was breathing heavily, and smeared with dirt, but seemed unhurt. He picked up his fallen kerchief and glanced about, wiping his face. “Where’s Duncan?”

  “Here, Mac Dubh,” said a gruff voice from the front of the wagon. “The beasts werena likin’ Gavin much to start with, and they’re proper upset to think he was a-resurrectin’. Not,” he added fairly, “but what I was a wee bit startled myself.” He eyed the figure on the ground with disfavor, and patted one skittish horse firmly on the neck. “Ah, it’s no but a silly bugger, luaidh, hush your noise now, aye?”

  I had handed Ian the torch and knelt to inspect the damage to our visitor. This seemed to be slight; the man was already stirring. Jamie was right; it was the man who had escaped hanging earlier in the day. He was young, about thirty, muscular and powerfully built, his fair hair matted with sweat and stiff with filth. He reeked of prison, and the musky-sharp smell of prolonged fear. Little wonder.

  I got a hand under his arm and helped him to sit up. He grunted and put his hand to his head, squinting in the torchlight.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Thankin’ ye kindly, ma’am, I will have been better.” He had a faint Irish accent and a soft, deep voice.

  Rollo, upper lip lifted just enough to show a menacing eyetooth, shoved his nose into the visitor’s armpit, sniffed, then jerked back his head and sneezed explosively. A small tremor of laughter ran round the circle, and the tension relaxed momentarily.

  “How long have ye been in the wagon?” Duncan demanded.

  “Since midafternoon.” The man rose awkwardly onto his knees, swaying a bit from the effects of the blow. He touched his head again and winced. “Oh, Jaysus! I crawled in there just after the Frenchie loaded up poor old Gavin.”

  “Where were you before that?” Ian asked.

  “Hidin’ under the gallows cart. It was the only place I thought they wouldn’t be looking.” He rose laboriously to his feet, closed his eyes to get his balance, then opened them. They were a pale green in the torchlight, the color of shallow seas. I saw them flick from face to face, then settle on Jamie. The man bowed, careful of his head.

  “Stephen Bonnet. Your servant, sir.” He made no move to extend a hand in greeting, nor did Jamie.

  “Mr. Bonnet.” Jamie nodded back, face carefully blank. I didn’t know quite how he contrived to look commanding, wearing nothing but a pair of damp and dirt-stained breeks, but he managed it. He looked the visitor over, taking in