The Fiery Cross, Page 48

  rn the militia took advanTHRILLED WITH THE NEWS of the stand-doA ,

  tage of the bad weather to celebrate. Equally thrilled not to be obliged to join the militia, the Browns instead joined heartily in the celebration, contributing three large kegs of Thomasina Brown's best home-brewed beer and six gallons of hard cider to the cause-at half-cost.

  By the time supper was over, I sat in the corner of a settleiivith the Beardsley baby in my. arms, half-dissolved with weariness, and kept vertical only by the fact that there was no place as yet to lie down. The air shimmered with smoke and conversation, I had drunk strong cider with my supper, and both faces and voices tended to swim in and out of focus, in a way that was not at all disagreeable, though mildly disconcerting.

  Alicia Brown had had no further chance to speak with me-but I had had no chance to speak with her mother or her aunt. The girl had taken up a seat by Hiram's pen, and was methodically feeding the goat crusts of corn bread left from supper, her face set in lines of sullen misery.

  Roger was singing French ballads, by popular request, in a soft, true voice. A young woman's face floated into view in front of me, eyebrows raised in question. She said something, lost in the babble of voices, then reached gently to take the baby from me. had offered Of course. Jemima, that was her name. The young mother who

  to nurse the child. I stood up to give her room on the settle, and she put the baby at once to her breast.

  I leaned against the chimney piece, watching with dim approval as she cupped the child's head, guiding it and murmuring. She was both tender and businesslike; a good combination. Her own babylittle Christopher, that was his name-snored peaceably in his grandmother's arms, as the old lady bent to light her clay pipe from the fire.

  I glanced back at Jernima, and had the oddest sense of d6j vu. I blinked, trying to catch the fleeting vision, and succeeded in capturing a sense of overwhelming closeness, of warmth and utter peace. For an instant, I thought it was

  342 Diana Gabaldon

  The Fiery Cross 343

  the sense of nursing a child, and then, odder still, realized that it was not the mother's sense I felt ... but the child's. I had the very distinct memory-if that's what it was--of being held against a warm body, mindless and replete in the sure conviction of absolute love.

  I closed my eyes, and took a firmer grip on the chimney breast, feeling the room begin a slow and lazy spin about me.

  "Beauchamp," I murmured, "you are quite drunk."

  If so, I wasn't the only one. Delighted at the prospect of imminent return to their homes, the militiamen had absorbed most of the drinkables in Brownsville, and were working assiduously on the remainder. The party was beginning to break up now, though, with men stumbling off to cold beds in barns and sheds, others thankfully rolling up in blankets by the fire.

  I opened my eyes to see Jamie throw back his head and yawn enormously, gape-jawed as a baboon. He blinked and stood up, shaking off the stupor of food and beer, then glanced toward the hearth and saw me standing there. He was plainly as tired as I was, if not quite as giddy, but he had a sense of deep content about him, apparent in the long-limbed ease with which he stretched and settled himself.

  "I'm going to see to the horses," he said to me, voice husky from grippe and much talking. "Fancy a walk in the moonlight, Sassenach?"

  THE SNOW HAD STOPPED, and there was moonlight, glowing through a haze of vanishing cloud. The air was lung-chillingly cold, still fresh and restless with the ghost of the passing storm, and did much to clear my spinning head.

  I felt a childish delight in being the first to mark the virgin snow, and stepped high and carefully, making neat bootprints and looking back to admire them. The line of footprints wasn't very straight, but fortunately no one was testing my sobriety.

  "Can you recite the alphabet backward?" I asked Jamie, whose footsteps were wavering companionably along with my own.

  "I expect so," he replied. "Which one? English, Greek, or Hebrew?" "Never mind." I took a firmer grip of his arm. "If you remember all three forward, you're in better condition than I am."

  He laughed softly, then coughed.

  "You're never drunk, Sassenach. Not on three cups of cider."

  "Must be fatigue, then," I said dreamily. "I feel as though my head's bobbing about on a string like a balloon. How do you know how much I drank? Do you notice everything)"

  He laughed again, and folded a hand round mine where it clutched his arm. "I like to watch ye, Sassenach. Especially in company. You've the loveliest shine to your teeth when ye laugh."

  "Flatterer," I said, feeling nonetheless flattered. Given that I hadn't so much as washed my face in several days, let alone bathed or changed my clothes, my teeth were likely the only things about me that could be honestly admired. Still, the knowledge of his attention was singularly warming.

  It was a dry snow, and the white crust compressed beneath our feet with a low crunching noise. I could hear Jamie's breathing, hoarse and labored still, but the rattle in his chest had gone, and his skin was cool.

  "It will be fair by morning," he said, looking up at the hazy moon. "D'ye see the ring?"

  it was hard to miss; an immense circle of diffuse light that ringed the moon, covering the whole of the eastern sky. Faint stars were showing through the haze; it would be bright and clear within the hour.

  "Yes. We can go home tomorrow, then?"

  "Aye. It will be muddy going, I expect. Ye can feel the air changing; it's cold enough now, but the snow will melt as soon as the sun's full on it."

  Perhaps it would, but it was cold enough now. The horses' brushy shelter had been reinforced with more cut branches of pine and hemlock, and it looked like a small, lumpy hillock rising from the ground, thickly covered over with snow. Dark patches had melted clear, though, warmed by the horses' breath, and wisps of steam rose from them, scarcely visible. Everything was quiet, with a palpable sense of drowsy content.

  "Morton will be cozy, if he's in there," I observed.

  "I shouldna think so. I sent Fergus out to tell him the militia was disbanded, so soon as Wemyss came wi' the note."

  "Yes, but if I were Isaiah Morton, I don't know that I would have set straight out on the road home in a blinding snowstorm," I said dubiously. "Likely ye would, if ye had all the Browns in Brownsville after ye wi' guns,"

  he said. Nonetheless, he paused in his step, raised his voice a little, and called "Isaiah!" in a, croaking rasp.

  There was no answer from the makeshift stable, and taking my arm again, he turned back toward the house, The snow was virgin no longer, trampled and muddied by the prints of many feet, as the militia dispersed to their beds. Roger had stopped singing, but there were still voices from inside the house; not everyone was ready to retire.

  Reluctant to go back at once to the atmosphere of smoke and noise, we walked by unspoken mutual consent round the house and barn, enjoying the silence of the snowy wood and the nearness of each other. Coming back, I saw that the door of the lean-to at the rear of the house stood ajar, creaking in the wind, and pointed it out to Jamie.

  He poked his head inside, to see that all was in order, but then, instead of closing the door, he reached back and took my arm, pulling me into the lean-to after him.

  "I'd a question to ask ye, Sassenach, before we go in," he said. He set the door open, so the moonlight streamed in, shining dimly on the hanging hams, the hogsheads and burlap bags that inhabited the lean-to with us.

  It was cold inside, but out of the wind I at once felt warmer, and put back the hood of my cloak.

  "What is 'it?" I said, mildly curious. The fresh air had cleared my head, at least, and while I knew I would be as good as dead the instant I lay down, for the moment I had that sense of pleasant lightness that comes with the feeling of effort completed, honor satisfied. It had been a terrible day and night, and a long day after, but now it was done, and we were free.

  344 Diana Gabaldon

  "Do ye want her, Sassenach?" he asked softly
. His face was a pale oval, blurred by the mist of his breath.

  "Who?" I asked, startled. He gave a small grunt of amusemenfi "The child. Who else?"

  Who else, indeed.

  "Do I want her-to keep her, you mean?" I asked cautiously. "Adopt her?" The notion hadn't crossed my mind consciously, but must have been lurking somewhere in my subconscious, for I was not startled at his question, and at the speaking, the idea sprang into fitill flower.

  My breasts had been tender since the morning, feeling fill and engorged, and I felt the demanding tug of the little girl's mouth in memory. I could not feed the baby myself-but Brianna could, or Marsah. Or she could five on cow's milk, goat's milk.

  I realized suddenly that I had unconsciously cupped one breast, and was gently massaging it. I stopped at once, but Jamie had seen it; he moved closer and put an arm around me. I leaned my head against him, the rough weave of his hunting shirt cold against my cheek.

  "Do you want her?" I asked. I wasn't sure whether I was hopeffil of his answer, or fearful of it. The answer was a slight shrug.

  "It's a big house, Sassenach," he said. "Big enough."

  "Hmm," I said. Not a resounding declaration-and yet I knew it was commitment, no matter how casually expressed. He had acquired Fergus in a Paris brothel, on the basis of three minutes' acquaintance, as a hired pickpocket. If he took this child, he would treat her as a daughter. Love her? No one could guarantee love-not he ... and not I.

  He had picked up my dubious tone of voice.

  "I saw ye with the wean, Sassenach, riding. Ye've a great tenderness about ye always-but when I saw ye so, wi' the bairn tumbling about beneath your cloak, it-I remembered, how it was, how ye looked, when ye carried Faith."

  I caught my breath. To hear him speak the name of our first daughter like that, so matter-of-factly, was startling. We spoke of her seldom; her death was so long in the past that sometimes it seemed unreal, and yet the wound of her loss had scarred both of us badly.

  Faith herself was not unreal at all, though.

  She was near me, whenever I touched a baby. And this child, this nameless orphan, so small and frail, with skin so translucent that the blue threads of her veins showed clear beneath-yes, the echoes of Faith were strong. Still, she wasn't my child. Though she could be; that was what Jamie was saying.

  Was she perhaps a gift to us? Or at least our responsibility?

  "Do you think we ought to take her?" I asked cautiously. "I mean-what might happen to her if we don't?"

  Jamie snorted faintly, dropping his arm, and leaned back against the wall of the house. He wiped his nose, and tilted his head toward the faint rumble of voices that came through the chinked logs.

  "She'd be well cared for, Sassenach. She's in the way of being an heiress, ken."

  That aspect of the matter hadn't occurred to me at all.

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  "Are you sure?" I said dubiously. "I mean, the Beardsleys are both gone, but as she's illegitimate-"

  He shook his head, interrupting me. "Nay, she's legitimate."

  "But she can't be. No one realizes it yet except you and me, but her father-"

  "Her father was Aaron Beardsley, so far as the law is concerned," he in. formed me. "By English law, a child born in wedlock is the legal child-and heir--of the husband-even if it's known for a fact that the mother committed adultery. And yon woman did say that Beardsley married her, no?"

  It struck me that he was remarkably positive about this particular provision of English law. It also struck me-in time, thank God, before I said anythingexactly why he was positive.

  William. His son, conceived in England, and so far as anyone in England knew-with the exception of Lord John Greypresumably the ninth Earl of Ellesmere. Evidently, he legally was the ninth Earl, according to what Jamie was telling me, whether the eighth Earl had been his father or not. The law reaDy was an ass, I thought.

  "I see," I said slowly. "So little Nameless will inherit all Beardsley's property, even after they discover that he can't have been her father. That's ... reas. suring."

  His eyes met mine for a moment, then dropped.

  "Aye," he said quietly. "Reassuring." There might have been a hint of bitter. ness in his voice, but if there was, it vanished without trace as he coughed and cleared his throat.

  "So ye see," he went on, matter-of-factly, "she's in no danger of neglect. Orphan Court would give Beardsley's property-goats and all"-he added, with a faint grin-"to whomever is her guardian, to be used for her welfare."

  "And her guardians'," I said, suddenly recalling the look Richard Brown had exchanged with his brother, when telling his wife the child would be "we cared for." I rubbed my nose, which had gone numb at the tip.

  "So the Browns would take her willingly, then."

  "Oh, aye," he agreed. "They kent Beardsley; they'll ken well enough how valuable she is. It would be a delicate matter to get her away from them, in fact-but if ye want the child, Sassenach, then ye'll have her. I promise ye that.,

  The whole discussion was giving me a very queer feeling. Something almost like panic, as though I were being pushed by some unseen hand toward the edge of a precipice. Whether that was a dangerous cliff or merely a foothold for a larger view remained to be seen.

  I saw in memory the gentle curve of the baby's skull, and the tissue-paper ears, small and perfect as shells, their soft pink whorls fading into an other. worldly tinge of blue.

  To give myself a little time to organize my thoughts, I asked, "What did you mean, it would be a delicate matter to get her away from the Browns? They've no claim on her, have they?"

  He shook his head.

  "Nay, but none of them shot her father, either."

  346 Diana Gabaldon

  "What-oh." That was a potential trap that I hadn't seen; the possibility that Jamie might be accused of killing Beardsley in order to get his hands on the trader's farm and goods, by then adopting the orphan. I swallowed, the back of my throat tasting faintly of bile.

  "But no one knows how Aaron Beardsley died, except us," I pointed out. Jamie had told them only that the trader had had an apoplexy and died, leaving out his own role as the angel of deliverance.

  "Us and Mrs. Beardsley," he said, a faint tone of irony in his voice. "And if she should come back, and accuse me of murdering her husband? It would be hard to deny, and I'd taken the child."

  I forbore from asking why she might do such a thing; in light of what she had already done, it was clear enough that Fanny Beardsley might do anything. "She won't come back," I said. Whatever my own uncertainties about the

  rest of it, I was sure that in this respect at least, I spoke the truth. Wherever Fanny Beardsley had gone-or why-I was sure she had gone for good.

  "Even if she did," I went on, pushing aside my vision of snow drifting through an empty wood, and a wrapped bundle lying by the burned-out fire, "I was there. I could say what happened."

  "If they'd let ye," Jamie agreed. "Which they wouldna. You're a marrit woman, Sassenach; ye couldna testify in a court, even if ye weren't my own wife."

  That brought me up short. Living as we did in the wilderness, I seldom encountered the more outrageous legal injustices of the times in a personal way, but I was aware of some of them. He was right. In fact, as a married woman, I had no legal rights at all. Ironically enough, Fanny Beardsley did, being now a widow. She could testify in a court of law-if she wished.

  "Well, bloody hell!" I said, with feeling. Jamie laughed, though quietly, then coughed.

  I snorted,,%vith a satisfactory explosion of white vapor. I wished momentarily that I was a dragon; it would have been extremely enjoyable to huff flame and brimstone on a number of people, starting with Fanny Beardsley. Instead, I sighed, my harmless white breath vanishing in the dimness of the lean-to.

  "I see what you mean by 'deficate,' then," I said.

  "Aye-but not impossible." He cupped a large, cold hand along my cheek, turning my face up to his. His eyes searched my own, dark and in
tent.

  "If ye want the child, Claire, I will take her, and manage whatever comes." If I wanted her. I could feel the soft weight of the child, sleeping on my breast. I had forgotten the intoxication of motherhood for years; pushed aside the memory of the feelings of exaltation, exhaustion, panic, delight. Having Germain and Jernmy and Joan nearby, though, had reminded me vividly.

  "One last question," I said. I took his hand and brought it down, fingers linked with mine. "The baby's father wasn't white. What might that mean to her?"

  I knew what it would have meant in Boston of the 1960s, but this was a very different place, and while in some ways society here was more rigid and less officially enlightened than the time I had come from, in others it was oddly much more tolerant.

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  Jamie considered carefully, the stiff fingers of his right hand tapping out a silent rhythm of contemplation on the head of a barrel of salt pork.

  . 111 think it will be all right," he said at last. "There's no question of her being taken into slavery. Even if it could be proved that her father was a slavc-and there's no proof at all-a child takes the mother's status. A child born to a free woman is free; a child born to a slave woman is a slave. And whatever yon dreadful woman might be, she wasna a slave."

  "Not in name, at least," I said, thinking of the marks on the doorpost. "But beyond the question of slavery ... ?"

  He sighed and straightened.

  "I think not," he said. "Not here. In Charleston, aye, it would likely matter; at least if she were in society. But in the backcountry?"

  He shrugged. True enough; so close as we were to the Treaty Line, there were any number of mixed-breed children. It was in no way unusual for settlers to take wives among the Cherokee. It was a good deal rarer to see children born of a black and white liaison in the backcountry, but they were plentiful in the coastal areas. Most of them slaves-but there, nonetheless.

  And wee Miss Beardsley would not be "in society," at least, not if we left her with the Browns. Here, her potential wealth would matter a great deal more than the color of her skin. With us, it might be different, for Jamie was-and always would be, despite his income or lack of it-a gentleman.

  "That wasn't the last question, after all," I said. I laid a hand over his, cold on my cheek. "The last one is-why are you suggesting the notion?"

  "Ah. Well, I only thought - - ." He dropped his hand, and looked away. "What ye said when we came home from the Gathering. That ye could have chosen the safety of barrenness-but did not, for my sake. I thought-" He stopped again, and rubbed the knuckle of his free hand hard along the bridge of his nose. He took a deep breath and tried again.

  "For my sake," he said firmly, addressing the air in front of him as though it were a tribunal, "I dirma want ye to bear another child. I wouldna risk your loss, Sassenach," he said, his voice suddenly husky. "Not for a dozen bairns. I've daughters and sons, nieces and nephews, grandchildren-weans enough." He looked at me directly then, and spoke softly.

  "But I've no life but you, Claire."

  He swallowed audibly, and went on, eyes fixed on mine.

  "I did think, though ... if ye do want another child ... perhaps I could still give ye one."

  Brief tears blurred my eyes. It was cold in the lean-to, and our fingers were stiff. I ftimbled my hand into his, squeezing tight.

  Even as we had spoken, my mind had been busy, envisioning possibilities, difficulties, blessings. I did not need to think fiirther, for I knew the decision had made itself. A child was a temptation of the flesh, as well as of the spirit; I knew the bliss of that unbounded oneness, as I knew the bittersweet joy of seeing that oneness fade as the child learned itself and stood alone.

  But I had crossed some subtle fine. Whether it was that I was born myself with some secret quota embodied in my flesh, or only that I knew my sole allegiance must be given elsewhere now ... I knew. As a mother, I had the lightness now of effort complete, honor satisfied. Mission accomplished.

  348 Diana Gabaldon

  1 leaned my forehead against his chest and spoke into the shadowed cloth above his heart.

  "No," I said softly. "But, Jamie ... I so love you."

  WE STOOD WRAPPED in each other's arms for a time, hearing the rumble of voices from the other side of the wall that separated the house from the leanto, but silent ourselves, and content with the peace of it. We were at once too exhausted to make the effort to go in, and reluctant to abandon the tranquillity of our rude retreat.

  "We'll have to go in soon," I murmured at last. "If we don't, we'll fall down right here, and be found in the morning, along with the hams."