Drums of Autumn, Page 53

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Lord John jerk, slightly startled. Plainly, it had never occurred to him that it could have been Jamie.

  “No,” I assured him, seeing the fair brows draw together. “It wasn’t.”

  “Well, and it wasna me, either,” Ian said smugly. “And who else would Auntie be protecting?”

  “You flatter yourself, Ian,” I said dryly. “But since you insist…”

  My hesitancy had in fact been in the interests of protecting Young Ian. No one else could be harmed by the story—the murderer was dead and, for all I knew, Mr. Willoughby, too, perished in the hidden jungles of the Jamaican hills, though I sincerely hoped not.

  But the story involved someone else, as well; the woman I had first known as Geillis Duncan and known later as Geillis Abernathy, at whose behest Ian had been kidnapped from Scotland, imprisoned on Jamaica, and had suffered things that he had only lately begun to tell us.

  Still, there seemed no way out of it now—Ian was fractious as a child insisting on a bedtime story, and Lord John was sitting up in bed like a chipmunk waiting for nuts, eyes bright with interest.

  And so, with the macabre urge to begin with “Once upon a time…” I leaned back against the wall, and with Ian’s head still in my lap, began the story of Rose Hall and its mistress, the witch Geillis Duncan; of the Reverend Archibald Campbell and his strange sister, Margaret, of the Edinburgh Fiend and the Fraser prophecy; and of a night of fire and crocodile’s blood, when the slaves of six plantations along the Yallahs River had risen and slain their masters, roused by the houngan Ishmael.

  Of later events in the cave of Abandawe on Haiti, I said nothing. Ian, after all, had been there. And those happenings had nothing to do with the murder of Mina Alcott.

  “A crocodile,” Ian murmured. His eyes were closed, and his face had grown more relaxed under my fingers, despite the gruesome nature of my story. “Ye really saw it, Auntie?”

  “I not only saw it, I stepped on it,” I assured him. “Or rather, I stepped on it, and then I saw it. If I’d seen it first, I’d have bloody run the other way.”

  There was a low laugh from the bed. Lord John scratched at his arm, smiling.

  “You must find life here rather dull, Mrs. Fraser, after your adventures in the Indies.”

  “I could do with a spot of dullness now and then,” I said, rather wistfully.

  Involuntarily, I glanced at the bolted door, where I had propped Ian’s musket, brought back from the storehouse when I had fetched him. Jamie had taken his own gun, but his pistols lay on the sideboard, loaded and primed as he had left them for me, bullet case and powder horn neatly arranged beside them.

  It was cozy in the cabin, with the fire flickering gold and red on the rough-barked walls, and the air filled with the warm, lingering scents of squirrel stew and pumpkin bread, spiced with the bitter tang of willow tea. I brushed my fingers over Ian’s jaw. No rash yet, but the skin was tight and hot—very hot still, in spite of the willow bark.

  Talking about Jamaica had at least distracted me a bit from my worry over Ian. Headache was not an unusual symptom for someone with measles; severe and prolonged headache was. Meningitis and encephalitis were dangerous—and all too possible—complications of the disease.

  “How’s the head?” I asked.

  “A bit better,” he said. He coughed, eyes squinching shut as the spasms jarred his head. He stopped and opened them slightly, dark slits that glowed with fever. “I’m awfully hot, Auntie.”

  I slid off the trundle and went to wring out a cloth in cool water. Ian stirred slightly as I wiped his face, his eyes closed once more.

  “Mrs. Abernathy gave me amethysts to drink for the headache,” he murmured drowsily.

  “Amethysts?” I was startled, but kept my voice low and soothing. “You drank amethysts?”

  “Ground up in vinegar,” he said. “And pearls in sweet wine, but that was for the bedding, she said.” His face looked red and swollen, and he turned his cheek against the cool pillow, seeking relief. “She was a great one for the stones, yon woman. She burned powdered emeralds in the flame of a black candle, and she rubbed my cock wi’ a diamond—to keep it hard, she said.”

  There was a faint sound from the bed, and I looked up to see Lord John, raised up on one elbow, eyes wide.

  “And did the amethysts work?” I wiped Ian’s face gently with the cloth.

  “The diamond did.” He made a feeble attempt at an adolescent’s bawdy laugh, but it faded into a harsh, rasping cough.

  “No amethysts here, I’m afraid,” I said. “But there’s wine, if you want it.” He did, and I helped him to drink it—well diluted with water—then eased him back on the pillow, flushed and heavy-eyed.

  Lord John had lain down, too, and lay watching, his thick blond hair unbound, spread out on the pillow behind him.

  “That’s what she wanted wi’ the lads, ye ken,” Ian said. His eyes were shut tight against the light, but he could clearly see something, if only in the mists of memory. He licked his lips; they were beginning to dry and crack, and his nose was beginning to run.

  “She said the stone grew in a lad’s innards—the one she wanted. She said it must be a laddie who’d never gone wi’ a lass, though, that was important. If he had, the stone wouldna be right, somehow. If he h-huh-had one.” He paused to cough, and ended breathless, nose dripping. I held a handkerchief for him to blow.

  “What did she want the stone for?” Lord John’s face bore a look of sympathy—he knew only too well what Ian felt like at the moment—but curiosity compelled the question. I didn’t object; I wanted to know too.

  Ian started to shake his head, then stopped with a groan.

  “Ah! Oh, God, my head will split surely! I dinna ken, man. She didna say. Only that it was needful; she must have it to be s-sure.” He barely got out the last word before dissolving into a coughing attack that was the worst yet; he sounded like a barking dog.

  “You’d better stop talk—” I began, but was interrupted by a soft thump at the door.

  Instantly I froze, wet cloth still in my hand. Lord John leaned swiftly from the bed and took a pistol from inside one of his high cavalry boots on the floor. A finger to his lips to enjoin silence, he nodded toward Jamie’s pistols. I moved silently to the sideboard and grasped one, reassured by the smooth, solid heft of it in my hand.

  “Who is there?” Lord John called, in a surprisingly strong voice.

  There was no answer save a sort of scratching, and a faint whine. I sighed and laid the pistol down, torn between irritation, relief and amusement.

  “It’s your blasted dog, Ian.”

  “Are you sure?” Lord John spoke in a low voice, pistol still aimed unwaveringly at the door. “It might be an Indian trick.”

  Ian rolled over with an effort, facing the door.

  “Rollo!” he shouted, his voice hoarse and cracking.

  Hoarse or not, Rollo knew his master’s voice; there was a deep, joyful “WARF!” from outside, succeeding by frantic scratching, at a height some four feet from the ground.

  “Beastly dog,” I said, hurrying to open the door. “Stop that, or I’ll make you into a rug, or a coat, or something!”

  Giving this threat the attention it deserved, Rollo bounded past me into the room. Exuberant with joy, he launched his hundred and fifty pounds from the middle of the floor and landed directly on the trundle bed, making it sway dangerously, joints screeching in protest. Ignoring a strangled cry from the bed’s occupant, he proceeded to lick Ian madly about the face and forearms—the latter being flung up as a wholly inadequate defense to the slobbering onslaught.

  “Bad dog,” Ian said, making ineffectual efforts to push Rollo off his chest, giggling helplessly in spite of his discomfort. “Bad dog, I say—down, sir!”

  “Down, sir!” Lord John echoed sternly. Rollo, interrupted in his demonstrations of affection, rounded on Lord John, his ears laid back. He curled his lip, and gave his lordship a good look at the condit
ion of his back teeth. Lord John started, and raised his pistol convulsively.

  “Down, a dhiobhuil!” Ian said, prodding Rollo in the hindquarters. “Take your hairy arse out o’ my face, ye wicked beast!”

  Rollo instantly dismissed Lord John from consideration, and padded around on top of the trundle, turning three times and kneading the bedding with his paws before collapsing next to his master’s body. He licked Ian’s ear, and with a deep sigh, laid his nose between his large muddy paws on the pillow.

  “Would you like me to get him off, Ian?” I offered, eyeing the paws. I wasn’t quite sure how I might move a dog of Rollo’s size and temperament, bar shooting him with Jamie’s pistol and dragging his carcass off the bed, so was rather relieved when Ian shook his head.

  “No, let him stay, Auntie,” he said, croaking slightly. “He’s a good fellow. Are ye no, a charaid?” He laid a hand on the dog’s neck, and turned his head so his cheek lay pillowed against Rollo’s thick ruff.

  “All right, then.” Moving slowly, with a wary glance at the unblinking yellow eyes, I approached the bed and smoothed Ian’s hair. His forehead was still hot, but I thought the fever was a bit lower. If it broke in the night, as it well might, it was likely to be succeeded by a fit of violent shivering—when Ian might well find Rollo’s warm hairy bulk a comfort.

  “Sleep well.”

  “Oidhche mhath.” He was half asleep already, drifting into the vivid dreams of fever, and his “good-night” was barely more than a murmur.

  I moved quietly about the room, tidying away the results of the day’s labors; a basket of fresh-gathered peanuts to be washed, dried and stored; a pan of dried reeds laid flat and covered with a layer of bacon grease to make rushlights. A trip to the pantry, where I stirred the beer mash fermenting in its tub, squeezed out the curds of the soft cheese a-making, and punched down the slow-rising salt bread, ready to be made into loaves and baked in the morning, when the small Dutch oven built into the side of the hearth would be heated through by the night’s low fire.

  Ian was sound asleep when I came back into the main room; Rollo’s eyes were closed as well, though one yellow slit cracked open at my entrance. I glanced at Lord John; he was awake, but did not look round.

  I sat down on the settle by the fire, and brought out the big wool basket with its green and black Indian pattern—Sun-eater, Gabrielle had called the design.

  Two days since Jamie and Willie had left. Two days to the Tuscarora village. Two days back. If nothing happened to stop them.

  “Nonsense,” I muttered, under my breath. Nothing would stop them. They would be home soon.

  The basket was full of dyed skeins of wool and linen thread. Some I had been given by Jocasta, some I had spun myself. The difference was obvious, but even the lumpy, awkward-looking strands I produced could be used for something. Not stockings or jerseys; perhaps I could knit a tea cozy—that seemed sufficiently shapeless to disguise all my deficiencies.

  Jamie had been simultaneously shocked and amused to find that I didn’t know how to knit. The question had never arisen at Lallybroch, where Jenny and the female servants kept everyone in knitted goods. I had taken on the chores of stillroom and garden, and never dealt with needlework beyond the simplest mending.

  “Ye canna clickit at all?” he said incredulously. “And what did ye do for your winter stockings in Boston, then?”

  “Bought them,” I said.

  He had looked elaborately around the clearing where we had been sitting, admiring the half-finished cabin.

  “Since I dinna see any shops about, I suppose ye’d best learn, aye?”

  “I suppose so.” I dubiously eyed the knitting basket Jocasta had given me. It was well equipped, with three long circular wire needles in different sizes, and a sinister-looking set of four double-ended ivory ones, slender as stilettos, which I knew were used in some mysterious fashion to turn the heels of stockings.

  “I’ll ask Jocasta to show me, next time we go down to River Run. Next year perhaps.”

  Jamie snorted briefly and picked up a needle and a ball of yarn.

  “It’s no verra difficult, Sassenach. Look—this is how ye cast up your row.” Drawing the thread out through his closed fist, he made a loop round his thumb, slipped it onto the needle, and with a quick economy of motion, cast on a long row of stitches in a matter of seconds. Then he handed me the other needle and another ball of yarn. “There—you try.”

  I looked at him in complete amazement.

  “You can knit?”

  “Well, of course I can,” he said, staring at me in puzzlement. “I’ve known how to clickit wi’ needles since I was seven years old. Do they not teach bairns anything in your time?”

  “Well,” I said, feeling mildly foolish, “they sometimes teach little girls to do needlework, but not boys.”

  “They didna teach you, did they? Besides, it’s no fine needlework, Sassenach, it’s only plain knitting. Here, take your thumb and dip it, so…”

  And so he and Ian—who, it turned out, could also knit and was prostrated by mirth at my lack of knowledge—had taught me the simple basics of knit and purl, explaining, between snorts of derision over my efforts, that in the Highlands all boys were routinely taught to knit, that being a useful occupation well suited to the long idle hours of herding sheep or cattle on the shielings.

  “Once a man’s grown and has a wife to do for him, and a lad of his own to mind the sheep, he maybe doesna make his own stockings anymore,” Ian had said, deftly executing the turn of a heel before handing me back the stocking, “but even wee laddies ken how, Auntie.”

  I cast an eye at my current project, some ten inches of a wooly shawl, which lay in a small crumpled heap at the bottom of the basket. I had learned the basics, but knitting for me was still a pitched battle with knotted thread and slippery needles, not the soothing, dreamy exercise that Jamie and Ian made of it, needles clicketing away in their big hands by the fire, comforting as the sound of crickets on the hearth.

  Not tonight, I thought. I wasn’t up to it. Something mindless, like winding up the balls of yarn. That I could do. I laid aside a half-finished pair of stockings Jamie was making for himself—striped, the show-off—and pulled out a heavy skein of fresh-dyed blue wool, still redolent with the heavy scents of its dyeing.

  Normally I liked the smell of fresh yarn, with its faint oily whiff of sheep, the earthy smell of indigo, and the sharp tang of the vinegar used to set the dye. Tonight it seemed smothering, added as it was to woodsmoke and candle wax, to the close, acrid smells of male bodies and the reek of illness—a mingled scent of sweaty sheets and used chamber pots—all trapped together in the room’s stale air.

  I let the skein lie on my lap, and closed my eyes for a moment. I wanted nothing so much as to undress and sponge myself with cool water, then slip naked between the clean linen sheets of my bed and lie still, letting the fresh cool air blow through the open window across my face while I floated into oblivion.

  But there was a sweating Englishman in one of my beds, and a filthy dog in the other, to say nothing of a teenage boy who was obviously in for a hard night. The sheets had not been washed in days, and when they were, it would be a backbreaking business of boiling, lifting and wringing. My bed for the night—assuming that I got to sleep in it—would be a pallet made of a folded quilt, with my pillow a sack of carded wool. I would breathe sheep all night.

  Nursing is hard work, and all of a sudden I was bloody tired of it. For a moment of intense longing, I wanted them all just to go away. I opened my eyes, looking at Lord John with resentment. My little burst of self-pity faded, though, as I looked at him. He lay on his back, one arm behind his head, gazing somberly up at the ceiling. It might have been only a trick of the fire, but his face seemed marked by anxiety and grief, eyes shadowed with dark loss.

  At once I felt ashamed of my ill temper. Granted, I hadn’t wanted him here. I was annoyed at his intrusion into my life and the burden of obligation his illness had plac
ed upon me. His very presence made me uneasy—to say nothing of William’s. But they would go, soon. Jamie would be home, Ian would recover, and I would have back my peace, my happiness, and my clean sheets. What had happened to him was permanent.

  John Grey had lost a wife—however he might have regarded her. It had taken courage of more than one kind to bring William here, and to send him off with Jamie. And I didn’t suppose the bloody man could help having caught the measles.

  I laid the wool aside for the moment and got up to put the kettle on. A nice cup of tea all round seemed called for. As I straightened up from the hearth, I saw Lord John turn his head, my movement drawing his attention from his inward thoughts.

  “Tea,” I said, embarrassed to meet his eyes after my uncharitable thoughts. I made a small, awkward gesture of interrogation toward the kettle.

  He smiled faintly and nodded.

  “I thank you, Mrs. Fraser.”

  I took down the tea box from the cupboard, and laid out two cups and spoons, adding the sugar bowl as an afterthought; no molasses tonight.

  When I had got the tea made, I sat down near the bed to drink it. We sipped in silence for a few moments, an odd air of shyness hovering between us.

  At last, I set down my cup and cleared my throat.

  “I’m sorry; I had meant to offer you my condolences on the loss of your wife,” I said, rather formally.

  He looked surprised for a moment, then bowed his head in acknowledgment, matching my formality.

  “It is a coincidence that you should say so at the moment,” he said. “I had just been thinking of her.”

  Used as I was to having other people take one look at my face and discern instantly what I was thinking, it was oddly gratifying to be able to do it to someone else.

  “Do you miss her greatly—your wife?” I felt a bit hesitant about asking, but he didn’t seem to find the question intrusive. I might almost have thought that he had been asking it himself, for he answered readily, if thoughtfully.

  “I don’t really know,” he said. He glanced at me, one eyebrow raised. “Does that sound unfeeling?”

  “I couldn’t say,” I said, a little tartly. “Surely you’d know better than I whether you had feelings for her or not.”

  “I did, yes.” He let his head fall back on the pillow, his thick fair hair loose about his shoulders. “Or I do, perhaps. That’s why I came, do you see?”

  “No, I can’t say that I do.”

  I heard Ian cough, and rose to look, but he had only turned over in his sleep; he lay on his stomach, one long arm drooping from the trundle bed. I picked up his hand—it was still hot, but not dangerously so—and put it on the pillow near his face. His hair had fallen in his eyes; I brushed it gently back.

  “You are very good with him; have you children of your own?”

  Startled, I looked up to see Lord John watching me, chin propped on his fist.

  “I—we—have a daughter,” I said.

  His eyes widened.

  “We?” he said sharply. “The girl is Jamie’s?”

  “Don’t call her ‘the girl,’ ” I said, unreasonably irritated. “Her name is Brianna, and yes, she’s Jamie’s.”

  “My apologies,” he said, rather stiffly.

  “I meant no offense,” he added a moment later, in a softer tone. “I was surprised.”

  I looked at him directly. I was too tired to be tactful.

  “And a bit jealous, perhaps?”

  He had a diplomat’s face; almost anything could have been going on behind that facade of handsome amiability. I went on staring at him, though, and he let the mask drop—a flash of knowledge lit the light blue eyes, tinged with grudging humor.

  “So. One more thing that we have in common.” I was startled by his acuity, though I shouldn’t have been. It’s always discomfiting to find that feelings you thought safely hidden are in fact sitting out in the open for anyone to look at.

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t think of that when you decided to come here.” The tea was finished; I set the cup aside and took up my skein of wool again.

  He studied me for a moment, eyes narrowed.

  “I thought of it, yes,” he said finally. He let his head fall back on the pillow, eyes fixed on the low beamed ceiling. “Still, if I was human enough—or petty enough—to consider that I might offend you by bringing William here, I would ask you to believe that such offense was not my motive in coming.”

  I laid the finished ball of yarn in the basket and took up another skein, stretching it across the back of a split-willow chair.

  “I believe you,” I said, my eyes fixed on the skein. “If only because it seems rather a lot of trouble to go to. What was your motive, though?”

  I sensed the movement as he shrugged, rustling the sheets.

  “The obvious—to allow Jamie to see the boy.”

  “And the other obvious—to allow you to see Jamie.”

  There was a marked silence from the bed. I kept my eyes on the yarn, turning the ball as I wrapped the strand, over and under, back and forth, an intricate crisscross that would in the end yield a perfect sphere.

  “You are a rather remarkable woman,” he said at last, in a level tone.

  “Indeed,” I said, not looking up. “In what way?”

  He leaned back; I heard the rustle of his bedding.

  “You are neither circumspect nor circuitous. In fact, I don’t believe I have ever met anyone more devastatingly straightforward—male or female.”

  “Well, it’s not by choice,” I said. I came to the end of the thread and tucked it neatly into the ball. “I was born that way.”