The Fiery Cross, Page 47

  Fanny Beardsley had been subsumed by anxiety for her daughter. The child was awake and bawling, pummeling my liver with tiny fists in search of food.

  I lifted myself in the saddle, peering through the curtain of falling snow. How big a place was Brownsville? I could see no more than the rooffine of a single cabin peeping through the evergreen of pine and laurel. One of the men from Granite Falls had said it was sizable, though-what was "sizable," here in the backcountry? What were the odds that at least one of the residents of Brownsville might be a woman with a nursing child?

  Jamie had emptied out the canteen and filled it with goat's milk, but it was better, I thought, to reach shelter before trying to feed the baby again. If there was a mother who might offer her milk to the child, that would be best-but if not, the goat's milk would need to be heated; cold as it was outside, to give the baby cold milk might lower her body temperature dangerously.

  Mrs. Piggy snorted out a great gout of steam, and suddenly picked up her pace. She knew civilization when she smelled it-and other horses. She threw up her head and whinnied piercingly. Gideon joined her, and when the racket stopped, I could hear the encouraging replies of a number of horses in the distance.

  "They're here!" I exhaled in a steamy burst of relief. "The militia-they made it!"

  "Well, I should hope so, Sassenach," Jamie replied, taking a firm grip to prevent Gideon's bolting. "If wee Roger couldna find a village at the end of a straight trail, I'd have my doubts of his wits as well as his eyesight." But he was smiling, too.

  As we came round a curve in the trail, I could see that Brownsville really was a village. Chimney smoke drifted up in soft gray plumes from a dozen cabins, scattered over the hillside that rose to our right, and a cluster of buildings stood together by the road, clearly placed for custom, judging from the rubble of discarded kegs, bottles, and other rubbish strewn in the dead weeds of the roadside.

  Across the road from this pothouse, the men had erected a crude shelter for the horses, roofed with pine boughs and walled on one side with more branches to break the wind. The militiamen's horses were gathered under this in a cozy knot, hobbled and snorting, wreathed in clouds of their mingled breath.

  Spotting this refuge, our own horses were moving at a good clip; I had to pull heavily on the reins one-handed in order to keep Mrs. Piggy from breaking into a trot, which would have seriously jostled my passenger. As I hauled her back to a reluctant walk, a slight figure detached itself from the shelter of a pine tree and stepped into the road before us, waving.

  "Milord," Fergus greeted Jamie, as Gideon slewed to a reluctant halt. He peered up at Jamie from beneath the band of an indigo-dyed knitted cap, which he wore pulled down over his brows. It made his head look rather like the top of a torpedo, dark and dangerous. "You are well? I thought perhaps you had encountered some difficulty."

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  "Och." Jamie waved vaguely at me, indicating the bulge beneath my cloak. "No really a difficulty; it's only-"

  Fergus was staring over Gideon's shoulder at the bulge with some bemusement.

  "'Quelle viriliti, monsieur,' he said to Jamie, in tones of deep respect. "My congratulations."

  Jamie gave him a scathing look and a Scottish noise that sounded like boulders rolling underwater. The baby began to cry again.

  "First things first," I said. "Are there any women here with babies? This child needs milk, and she needs it now."

  Fergus nodded, eyes wide with curiosity.

  " Oui, milady. Two, at least, that I have seen." "Good. Lead me to them."

  He nodded again, and taking hold of Piggy's halter, turned toward the settlement.

  "What's amiss, then?" Jamie inquired, and cleared his throat. In my anxiety for the baby, I hadn't paused to consider what Fergus's presence meant. Jamie was right, though; simple concern for our well-being wouldn't have brought him out on the road in this weather.

  "Ah. We appear to have a small difficulty, milord." He described the events of the previous afternoon, concluding with a Gallic shrug and a huff of breath. ". . . and so Monsieur Morton has taken refuge with the horses"-he nodded ahead, toward the makeshift shelter-"while the rest of us enjoy the bospitaliti of Brownsville."

  Jamie looked a trifle grim at this; no doubt from a contemplation of what the bospitaliti for forty-odd men might cost.

  "Mmphm. I take it that the Browns dinna ken Morton is there?" Fergus shook his head.

  "Why is Morton there?" I asked, having temporarily stifled the baby by putting it to my own breast. "I should have thought he'd be off away, back to Granite Falls, and pleased to be alive."

  "He will not go, milady. He says he cannot forgo the bounty." Word had come just before our departure from the Ridge; the Governor was offering forty shillings per man as an inducement to serve in the militia; a substantial sum, particularly to a new homesteader such as Morton, facing a bleak winter.

  Jamie rubbed a hand slowly over his face. This was a dilemma, all right; the militia company needed the men and supplies from Brownsville, but Jamie could scarcely conscript several Browns who would immediately attempt to assassinate Morton. Nor could he afford to pay Morton's bounty himself. Jamie looked as though he were tempted to assassinate Morton personally, but I supposed this wasn't a reasonable alternative.

  "Perhaps Morton could be induced to marry the girl?" I suggested delicately.,

  "I thought of that," Fergus said. "Regretfully, Monsieur Morton is already possessed of a wife in Granite Falls." He shook his head, which was beginning to look like a small snowcapped hillock in his cap.

  "Why did the Browns not follow yon Morton?" Jamie asked, apparently

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  following his own train of thought. "If an enemy comes upon your land, and you wi' your kin, ye dinna just let him flee; ye hunt him down and kill him."

  Fergus nodded, clearly familiar with this brand of Highland logic.

  "I believe that was the intent," he said. "They were distracted, however, by

  1e petit Royer."

  I could hear a distinct note of amusement in his voice; so could Jamie. "What did he do?" he asked warily.

  "Sang to them," Fergus said, the amusement becoming more pronounced. "He has been singing most of the night, and playing upon his drum. The entire village came to hear-there are six men of suitable age for the militia, and," he added practically, "the two women avec lait, as I said, milady."

  Jamie coughed, lAriped a hand under his nose, and nodded to Fergus, with a wave at me.

  "Aye. Well, the wee lass must eat, and I canna stay back or the Browns will tumble to it that Morton's here. Go and say to him that I shall come and speak to him as soon as may be."

  He reined his horse's head toward the tavern, and I nudged Mrs. Piggy to follow.

  "What are you going to do about the Browns?" I asked.

  "Christ," Jamie said, more to himself than to me. "How in hell should I know?" And coughed again.

  MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

  UR ARRIVAL with the baby created a sufficient sensation to distract everyone in Brownsville from their private concerns, be these practical

  0 or homicidal. A look of intense relief crossed Roger's face at sight of Jamie, though this was instantly suppressed, replaced by a bland attitude of square-shouldered self-assurance. I ducked my head to hide a smile, and glanced at Jamie, wondering if he had noted this rapid transformation. He sedulously avoided my eye, indicating that he had.

  "Ye've done well," he said in a casual undertone, clapping Roger's shoulder in greeting before turning to receive the salutations of the other men and introductions to our involuntary hosts.

  Roger merely nodded in an offfiand sort of way, but his face took on a muted glow, as though someone had ht a candle inside him.

  Young Miss Beardsley caused a great stir; one of the nursing mothers was fetched and at once put the screeching baby to her breast, hastily handing me her own child in exchange. A thre
e-month-old boy of placid temperament, he

  looked up at me with mild bewilderment, but seemed not to object to the substitution, merely blowing a few thoughtful spit bubbles in my direction.

  A certain amount of confiision ensued, with everyone asking questions and offering speculations at once, but Jamie's story-edited to terseness-of events at the Beardsley farm put a stop to the hubbub. Even the red-eyed young woman whom I recognized from Fergus's story as Isaiah Morton's inamorata forgot her grief, listening openmouthed.

  "Poor little creature," she said, peering at the baby as it suckled fiercely at her cousin's breast. "So you have no parents at all, it seems." Miss Brown cast a dark look at her own father, apparently thinking orphanhood had its advantages.

  "What will become of her?" Mrs. Brown asked, with more practicahty

  "Oh, we'll see she's taken good care of, my dear. She'll find a secure place with us." Her husband put a reassuring hand on her arm, at the same time exchanging a glance with his brother. Jamie saw it, too; I saw his mouth twitch as though he might say something, but he shrugged slightly and turned instead to confer with Henry Gallegher and Fergus, his two stiff fingers tapping gently on his leg.

  The elder Miss Brown leaned toward me, preparing to ask another question, but was prevented by a sudden blast of arctic wind that blew through the big room, lifting the loose hides over the windows and peppering the room with a spray of snow like frozen bird shot. Miss Brown gave a small whoop, abandoned her curiosity, and ran to fasten down the window coverings; everyone else stopped discussing the Beardsleys and began hastily to batten down hatches.

  I caught a quick glimpse outside, as Miss Brown struggled with the unwieldy hides. The storm had arrived now in good earnest. Snow was coming down thick and fast; the black ruts of the road had all but disappeared under a coating of white, and it was obvious that Fraser's Company was going nowhere for the time being. Mr. Richard Brown, looking mildly disgruntled, nonetheless graciously offered us a second night's shelter, and the militiamen settled in for supper among the houses and barns of the village.

  Jamie went out to bring in our bedding and provisions from the horses, and see them fed and sheltered. Presumably he would also take the opportunity to speak privately with Isaiah Morton, if the latter was still lurking out there in the blizzard.

  I did wonder what Jamie meant to do with his mountain Romeo, but I hadn't time for much speculation. It was getting on now for twilight, and I was sucked into the swirl of activity around the hearth, as the women rose to the fresh challenge of providing supper for forty unexpected guests.

  Juliet-that is, the younger Miss Brown-moped sullenly in the comer, refusing to help. She did, though, take over care of the Beardsley baby, rocking the little girl and crooning to her long after it was plain that the child was asleep.

  Fergus and Gallegher had been sent off to retrieve the goats, and returned with them just before suppertime, wet and muddy to the knees, their beards and eyebrows frosted with snow. The nannies were wet and snow-caked, too,

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  their chilled udders red with cold, milk-swollen and swinging painfully against their legs. They were enchanted to be back in the bosom of civilization, though, and nattered to each other in cheerful excitement.

  Mrs. Brown and her sister-in-law took the goats off to the tiny barn to be milked, leaving me in charge of the stewpot and Hiram, who was installed in solitary majesty near the hearth, contained in a makeshift pen composed of an overturned table, two stools, and a blanket chest.

  The cabin was essentially one large, drafty room, with a walled loft above and a small lean-to at the back for storage. Crowded as it was with tables, benches, stools, kegs of beer, bundles of hides, a small handloom in one corner, a chiffianier-with a most incongruous chiming clock, adorned with cupids-in another, a bed against the wall, two settles by the hearth, a musket and two fowling pieces hung above the chimney breast, and various aprons and cloaks on pegs by the door, the presence of a sick goat was surprisingly inconsequential.

  I had a look at my erstwhile patient, who mehed ungratefully at me, long blue tongue protruding in derision. Snow was melting from the deep spirals of his horns, leaving them black and shiny, and his coat was soaked into brindled spikes round his shoulders.

  "There's gratitude for you," I said rebukingly. "If it weren't for Jamie, you'd be cooking over that fire, instead of beside it, and good enough for you, too, you wicked old sod."

  'Meb!" he said shortly.

  Still, he was cold, tired, and hungry, and his harem wasn't there to be impressed, so he suffered me to rub his head and scratch his ears, feed him wisps of hay, and-eventuallyto step into his pen and run a light hand down his injured leg to check the splinting. I was more than a little tired and hungry, too, having had nothing to eat since a little goat's milk at dawn. Between the smell of the simmering stew and the flickering light and shadows in the room, I felt fight-headed, and very slightly disembodied, as though I were floating a foot or two above the floor.

  "You're a nice old lad, aren't you?" I murmured. After an afternoon spent in close contactwith babies, all in varying stages of moistness and shrieking, the company of the irascible old goat was rather soothing.

  "Is he going to die?"

  I looked up in surprise, having quite forgotten the younger Miss Brown, who had been overlooked in the shadows of the settle. She was standing by the hearth now, still holding the Beardsley baby and frowning down at Hiram, who was trying to nibble the edge of my apron.

  "No," I said, twitching the cloth out of his mouth. "I shouldn't think so." What was her name? I groped blearily through my memory, matching up faces and names from the earlier flurry of introductions. Alicia, that was it, though I couldn't help still thinking of her as Juliet.

  She wasn't much older than Juliet; barely fifteen, if that. She was a plain child, though, round-jawed and pasty. Narrow in the shoulder and broad through the hip; not much of the jewel in the Ethiop's ear about her. She said nothing more, and to keep the conversation going, I nodded at the baby, still in her arms. "How's the little one?"

  "All right," she said listlessly. She stood staring at the goat a moment longer. Then tears suddenly welled in her eyes.

  "I wish Iwas dead," she said.

  "Oh, really?" I said, taken aback. "Er ... well. . . " I rubbed a hand over my face, trying to summon enough presence of mind to deal with this. Where was the beastly girl's mother? I cast a quick look at the door, but heard no one coming. We were momentarily alone, the women milking or minding supper, the men all caring for the stock.

  I stepped out of Hiram's pen and laid a hand on her arm.

  "Look," I said in a low voice. "Isaiah Morton's not worth it. He's married; did you know that?"

  Her eyes went wide, then squinted nearly shut, spurting sudden tears. No, evidently she hadn't known.

  Tears were pouring down her cheeks and dripping on the baby's oblivious head. I reached out and took the swaddled child gently from her, steering her toward the settle with my free hand.

  "H-how did you ... ? Wh-who ... ?" She was gurgling and sniffling, trying to ask questions and get control of herself at the same time. A man's voice shouted something outside, and she scrubbed frantically at her cheeks with her sleeve.

  The gesture reminded me that while the situation seemed rather melodramatic-not to say slightly comic-in my currently muzzy frame of mind, it was a matter of great seriousness to the principals involved in it. After all, her male relations had tried to kill Morton, and would certainly try again, if they found him. I tensed at the sound of approaching feet, and the baby stirred and whined a little in my arms. But the footsteps crunched past in the road, and the sound vanished in the wind.

  I sat down beside Alicia Brown, sighing with the sheer pleasure of taking weight off my feet. Every muscle and joint in my body ached from the aftereffects of the previous day and night, though I hadn't had time until now to think about it
much. Jamie and I would undoubtedly spend the night wrapped in blankets on someone's floor; I eyed the grimy, firelit boards with an emotion approaching lust.

  it was incongruously peaceful in the large room, with the snow whispering down outside, and the stewpot burbling away in the hearth, filling the air with the enticing scents of onion, venison, and turnips. The baby slept on my breast, emanating peaceful trust. I would have liked just to sit and hold her, thinking of nothing, but duty called.

  "How do I know? Morton told one of my husband's men," I said. "I don't know who his wife is, though; only that she lives in Granite Falls." I patted the tiny back, and the baby burped faintly and relaxed again, her breath warm beneath my ear. The women had washed and oiled her, and she smelled rather like a fresh pancake. I kept one eye on the door, and the other warily on Alicia Brown, in case of further hysterics.

  She sniffed and sobbed, hiccuped once, and then relapsed into silence, staring at the floor.

  C61wish I was dead," she whispered again, in tones of such fierce despair that

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  I set both eyes on her, startled. She sat hunched, hair hanging limply beneath her cap, her hands fisted and crossed protectively over her belly.

  "Oh, dear," I said. Given her pallor, the circumstances, and her behavior toward the Beardsley baby, that particular gesture made it no great leap to the obvious conclusion. "Do your parents know?"

  She gave me a quick look, but didn't bother asking how I knew. "Mama and Aunt do."

  She was breathing through her mouth, with intermittent wet snuffles. "I thought-I thought Papa would have to let me wed him, if-"

  I never had thought blackmail a very successful basis f

  or marriage, but this seemed the wrong time to say so.

  "Mmm," I said instead. "And does Mr. Morton know about it?" She shook her head, disconsolate.

  "Does he-does his wife have children, do you know?"

  "I've no idea." I turned my head, listening. I could hear men's voices in the distance, carried on the wind. So could she; she gripped my arm with surprising strength, wet brown eyes spike-lashed and urgent.

  "I heard Mr. MacKenzie and the men talking last night. They said you were a healer, Mrs. Fraser-one said you were a conjure woman. About babies. Do you know how-"

  "Someone's coming." I pulled away from her, interrupting before she could finish. "Here, take care of the baby. I need to-to stir the stew."

  I thrust the child unceremoniously into her arms and rose. When the door opened to admit a blast of wind and snow along with a large number of men, I was standing at the hearth, spoon in hand, eyes fixed on the pot and my mind bubbling as vigorously as the stew.

  She hadn't had time to ask explicitly, but I knew what she'd been about to say. Conjure woman, she'd called me. She wanted my help to get rid of the child, almost certainly. How? I wondered. How could a woman think of such a thing, with a living child in her arms, less than a day out of the womb?

  But she was very young. Very young, and suffering from the shock of hearing that her lover was untrue. Not yet far enough advanced in pregnancy to show, either; if she hadn't yet felt her own child move, no doubt it seemed quite unreal to her. She'd seen it only as a means of forcing her father's consent; now it likely seemed a trap that had closed suddenly upon her.

  No wonder if she was distraught, looking frantically for escape. Give her a little time to recover, I thought, glancing at the settle, where the shadows hid her. I should talk to her mother, to her aunt....

  Jamie appeared suddenly beside me, rubbing reddened hands over the fire, snow melting from the folds of his clothes. He looked extremely cheerful, in spite of his cold, the complications of Isaiah Morton's love life, and the storm going on outside.

  "How is it, Sassenach?" he asked hoarsely, and without waiting for me to reply, took the spoon from my hand, put one hard, cold arm around me, and pulled me off my feet and up into a hearty kiss, made the more startling by the fact that his half-sprouted beard was thickly encrusted with snow.

  Emerging slightly dazed from this stimulating embrace, I realized that the general attitude of the men in the room was similarly jolly. Backs were being

  slapped, boots stamped, and coats shaken to the accompaniment of the sort of hoots and roaring noises men make when feeling particularly exuberant.

  "What is it?" I asked, looking round in surprise. To my astonishment, Joseph Wemyss stood in the center of the crowd. The tip of his nose was red with cold, and he was being knocked half off his feet by men smacking him on the back in congratulations. "What's happened?"

  Jamie gave me a brilliant smile, teeth gleaming in the frozen wilderness of his face, and thrust a limp crumple of wet paper into my hand, fragments of red wax still clinging to it.

  ant words. The ink had run with the wet, but I could make out the relev

  Hearing of General Waddell's intended approach, the Regulators had decided that discretion was the better part of valor. They had dispersed. And as per this order from Governor Tryon-the militia was stood down.

  "Oh, good!" I said. And flinging my arms round Jamie, kissed him back, snow and ice notwithstanding.