Drums of Autumn, Page 85

  * * *

  “I thought of it,” she said, with a deep breath. “As soon as I realized. I wondered if you could do—something like that, here.”

  “It wouldn’t be easy. It would be dangerous—and it would hurt. I don’t even have any laudanum; only whisky. But yes, I can do it—if you want me to.” I forced myself to sit still, watching her pace slowly back and forth before the hearth, hands folded behind her in thought.

  “It would have to be surgical,” I said, unable to keep quiet. “I don’t have the right herbs—and they aren’t always reliable, in any case. At least surgery is…certain.” I laid the scalpel on the table; she should not be under any illusions as to what I was suggesting. She nodded at my words, but didn’t stop her pacing. Like Jamie, she always thought better while moving.

  A trickle of sweat ran down my back, and I shivered. The fire was warm enough, but my fingers were still cold as ice. Christ, if she wanted it, would I even be able to do it? My hands had begun to tremble, with the strain of waiting.

  She turned at last to look at me, eyes clear and appraising under thick, ruddy brows.

  “Would you have done it? If you could?”

  “If I could—?”

  “You said once that you hated me, when you were pregnant. If you could have not been—”

  “God, not you!” I blurted, horror-stricken. “Not you, ever. It—” I knotted my hands together, to still their trembling. “No,” I said, as positively as I could. “Never.”

  “You did say so,” she said, looking at me intently. “When you told me about Da.”

  I rubbed a hand across my face, trying to focus my thoughts. Yes, I had told her that. Idiot.

  “It was a horrible time. Terrible. We were starving, it was war—the world was coming apart at the seams.” Wasn’t hers? “At the time, it seemed as though there was no hope; I had to leave Jamie, and the thought drove almost everything else out of my mind. But there was one other thing,” I said.

  “What was that?”

  “It wasn’t rape,” I said softly, meeting her eyes. “I loved your father.”

  She nodded, her face a little pale.

  “Yes. But it might be Roger’s. You did say that, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. It might. Is the possibility enough for you?”

  She laid a hand over her stomach, long fingers gently curved.

  “Yeah. Well. It isn’t an it, to me. I don’t know who it is, but—” She stopped suddenly and glanced at me, looking suddenly shy.

  “I don’t know if this sounds—well…” She shrugged abruptly, dismissing doubt. “I had this sharp pain that woke me up in the middle of the night, a few days…after. Quick, like somebody had stabbed me with a hatpin, but deep.” Her fingers curled inward, her fist pressing just above her pubic bone, on the right side.

  “Implantation,” I said softly. “When the zygote takes root in the womb.” When that first, eternal link is formed between mother and child. When the small blind entity, unique in its union of egg and sperm, comes to anchor from the perilous voyage of beginning, home from its brief, free-floating existence in the body, and settles to its busy work of division, drawing sustenance from the flesh in which it embeds itself, in a connection that belongs to neither side, but to both. That link, which cannot be severed, either by birth or by death.

  She nodded. “It was the strangest feeling. I was still half asleep, but I…well, I just knew all of a sudden that I wasn’t alone.” Her lips curved in a faint smile, reminiscent of wonder. “And I said to…it…” Her eyes rested on mine, still lit by the smile, “I said, ‘Oh, it’s you.’ And then I went back to sleep.”

  Her other hand crossed the first, a barricade across her belly.

  “I thought it was a dream. That was a long time before I knew. But I remember. It wasn’t a dream. I remember.”

  I remembered, too.

  I looked down and saw beneath my hands not the wooden tabletop nor gleaming blade, but the opal skin and perfect sleeping face of my first child, Faith, with slanted eyes that never opened on the light of earth.

  Looked up into the same eyes, open now and filled with knowledge. I saw that baby, too, my second daughter, filled with bloody life, pink and crumpled, flushed with fury at the indignities of birth, so different from the calm stillness of the first—and just as magnificent in her perfection.

  Two miracles I had been given, carried beneath my heart, born of my body, held in my arms, separated from me and part of me forever. I knew much too well that neither death nor time nor distance ever altered such a bond—because I had been altered by it, once and forever changed by that mysterious connection.

  “Yes, I understand,” I said. And then said, “Oh, but Bree!” as the knowledge of what her decision would mean to her flooded in on me anew.

  She was watching me, brows drawn down, lines of trouble in her face, and it occurred to me belatedly that she might take my exhortations as the expression of my own regrets.

  Appalled at the thought that she might think I had not wanted her, or had ever wished she had not been, I dropped the blade and reached out across the table to her.

  “Bree,” I said, seized with panic at the thought. “Brianna. I love you. Do you believe I love you?”

  She nodded without speaking, and stretched out a hand toward me. I grasped it like a lifeline, like the cord that had once joined us.

  She closed her eyes, and for the first time I saw the glitter of tears that clung to the delicate, thick curve of her lashes.

  “I’ve always known that, Mama,” she whispered. Her fingers tightened around mine; I saw her other hand press flat against her stomach. “From the beginning.”

  50

  IN WHICH ALL IS REVEALED

  By late November, the days as well as the nights were cold, and the rain clouds began to hang lower on the slopes above us. The weather unfortunately had no dampening effect on people’s tempers; everyone was increasingly edgy, and for obvious reason: There was still no word of Roger Wakefield.

  Brianna was still silent about the cause of their argument; in fact, she almost never referred to Roger anymore. She had made her decision; there was nothing to do but to wait, and let Roger make his—if he hadn’t already. Still, I could see fear warring with anger when she left her face unguarded—and doubt hung over everyone like the clouds over the mountains.

  Where was he? And what would happen when—or if—he finally appeared?

  I took some respite from the prevailing mood of edginess by taking stock of the pantry. Winter was nearly here; the foraging was over, the garden harvested, the preserving done. The pantry shelves bulged with sacks of nuts, heaps of squash, rows of potatoes, jars of dried tomatoes, peaches, and apricots, bowls of dried mushrooms, wheels of cheese, and baskets of apples. Braids of onions and garlic and strings of dried fish hung from the ceiling; bags of flour and beans, barrels of salt beef and salt fish, and stone jars of sauerkraut stood on the floor.

  I counted over my hoard like a squirrel reckoning nuts, and felt soothed by our abundance. No matter what else happened, we would neither starve nor go hungry.

  Emerging from the pantry with a wedge of cheese in one hand and a bowl of dry beans in the other, I heard a tap on the door. Before I could call out, it opened and Ian’s head poked in, cautiously surveying the room.

  “Brianna’s no here?” he asked. As she clearly wasn’t, he didn’t wait for an answer but stepped in, trying to smooth back his hair.

  “Have ye a bit o’ looking glass, Auntie?” he asked. “And maybe a comb?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said. I set down the food, got my small mirror and the tortoiseshell comb from the drawer of the sideboy and handed them to him, peering upward at his gangling form.

  His face seemed abnormally shiny, his lean cheeks blotched with red, as though he had not only shaved but had scrubbed the skin to the point of rawness. His hair, normally a thick, stubborn sheaf of soft brown, was now slicked straight back on the sides of his head
with some kind of grease. Liberally pomaded with the same substance, it erupted in an untidy quiff over his forehead, making him look like a deranged porcupine.

  “What have you got on your hair, Ian?” I asked. I sniffed at him and recoiled slightly at the result.

  “Bear fat,” he said. “But it stank a bit, so I mixed in a wee scoop of incense soap to make it smell better.” He peered critically at himself in the mirror and made small jabs at his coiffure with the comb, which seemed pitifully inadequate to the task.

  He was wearing his good coat, with a clean shirt and—unheard of touch for a workday—a clean, starched stock wrapped about his throat, looking tight enough to strangle him.

  “You look very nice, Ian,” I said, biting the inside of my cheek. “Um…are you going somewhere special?”

  “Aye, well,” he said awkwardly. “It’s just if I’m meant to be courting, like, I thought I must try to look decent.”

  Courting? I wondered at his haste. While he was certainly interested in girls—and there were a few girls in the district who made no secret of returning his interest—he was barely seventeen. Men did marry that young, of course, and Ian had both his own land and a share in the whisky making, but I hadn’t thought his affections so strongly engaged yet.

  “I see,” I said. “Ah…is the young lady anyone I know?” He rubbed at his jaw, raising a red flush along the bone.

  “Aye, well. It’s—it’s Brianna.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes, but the flush rose slowly over his face.

  “What?” I said incredulously. I set down the slice of bread I was holding and stared at him. “Did you say Brianna?”

  His eyes were fixed on the floor, but his jaw was set stubbornly.

  “Brianna,” he repeated. “I’ve come to make her a proposal of marriage.”

  “Ian, you can’t possibly mean that.”

  “I do,” he said, sticking out his long, square chin in a determined manner. He glanced toward the window, and shuffled his feet. “Will she—is she comin’ in soon, d’ye think?”

  The sharp scent of nervous perspiration reached me, mingled with soap and bear fat, and I saw that his hands were clenched in fists, tight enough to make the knobby knuckles stand out white against his tanned skin.

  “Ian,” I said, torn between exasperation and tenderness, “are you doing this because of Brianna’s baby?”

  The whites of his eyes flashed as he glanced at me, startled. He nodded, shifting his shoulders uncomfortably inside the stiff coat.

  “Aye, of course,” he said, as though surprised that I should ask.

  “Then you’re not in love with her?” I knew the answer quite well, but thought we had better have it all out.

  “Well…no,” he said, the painful blush renewing itself. “But I’m no promised to anyone else,” he hastened to add. “So that’s all right.”

  “It is not all right,” I said firmly. “Ian, that’s a very, very kind notion of yours, but—”

  “Oh, it’s not mine,” he interrupted, looking surprised. “Uncle Jamie thought of it.”

  “He what?” A loud, incredulous voice spoke behind me, and I whirled to find Brianna standing in the doorway, staring at Ian. She advanced slowly into the room, hands fisted at her sides. Just as slowly, Ian retreated, fetching up with a bump against the table.

  “Cousin,” he said, with a bob of his head that dislodged a spike of greased hair. He brushed at it, but it stuck out, hanging disreputably over one eye. “I…ah…I…” He saw the look on Brianna’s face and promptly shut his eyes.

  “I-have-come-to-express-my-desire-to-ask-for-your-hand-in-the-blessed-sacrament-of-matrimony,” he said in one breath. He took in another, with an audible gasp. “I—”

  “Shut up!”

  Ian, his mouth opened to continue, immediately shut it. He opened one eye in a cautious slit, like one viewing a bomb momentarily expected to go off.

  Bree glared from Ian to me. Even in the dim room, I could see the tight look of her mouth and the crimson rising in her cheeks. The tip of her nose was red, whether from the nippy air outside or from annoyance, I couldn’t tell.

  “Did you know about this?” she demanded of me.

  “Of course not!” I said. “For heaven’s sake, Bree—” Before I could finish, she had whirled on her heel and run out of the door. I could see the quick flash of her rusty skirts as she hurried up the slope leading to the stable.

  I pulled off my apron and flung it hastily over the chair. “I’d better go after her.”

  “I’ll go, too,” Ian offered, and I didn’t stop him. Reinforcements might be needed.

  “What do you think she’ll do?” he asked, panting in my wake as I hastened up the steep slope.

  “God knows,” I said. “But I’m afraid we’re going to find out.” I was entirely too familiar with the look of a Fraser roused to fury. Neither Bree nor Jamie lost their temper easily, but when they did, they lost it thoroughly.

  “I’m glad she didna strike me,” Ian said thankfully. “I thought for a moment she was going to.” He pulled even with me, his long legs outstripping mine, hurrying though I was. I could hear uplifted voices from the open half-door of the stable.

  “Why on earth would you put poor little Ian up to such a thing?” Brianna was saying, her voice high with indignation. “I’ve never heard of such a high-handed, arrogant—”

  “Poor little Ian?” Ian said, vastly affronted. “What does she—”

  “Oh, high-handed, am I?” Jamie’s voice interrupted. He sounded both impatient and irritable, though not yet angry. Perhaps I was in time to avert full-scale hostilities. I peeked through the stable door, to see them face-to-face, glaring at each other over a large pile of half-dried manure.

  “And what better choice could I make, will ye tell me that?” he demanded. “Let me tell ye, lassie, I thought of every bachelor in fifty miles before I settled on Ian. I wouldna have ye wed to a cruel man or a drunkard, nor yet a poor man—nor one auld enough to be your grandsire, either.”

  He shoved a hand through his hair, sure sign of mental agitation, but made a masterful effort to calm himself. He lowered his voice a bit, trying to be conciliatory.

  “Why, I even put aside Tammas McDonald, for while he’s a fine stretch of land and a good temper, and he’s an age for you, he’s a bittie wee fellow forbye, and I thought ye wouldna care to stand up side by side with him before a priest. Believe me, Brianna, I’ve done my best to see ye well wed.”

  Bree wasn’t having any; her own hair had come loose during her dash up the hill, and was floating round her face like the flames of a vengeful archangel.

  “And what makes you think I want to be married to anybody at all?”

  His mouth dropped open.

  “Want?” he said incredulously. “And what has want to do with it?”

  “Everything!” She stamped her foot.

  “Now there you’re wrong, lassie,” he advised her, turning to pick up his fork. He eyed her stomach with a nod. “You’ve a bairn coming, who needs a name. Your time to be choosy is long since past, aye?”

  He dug his fork into the pile of manure and heaved the load into the waiting barrow, then dug again, with a smooth economy of motion born of years of labor.

  “Now, Ian’s a sweet-tempered lad, and a hard worker,” he said, eyes on his task. “He’s got his own land; he’ll have mine, too, in time, and that will—”

  “I am not going to marry anybody!” Brianna drew herself up to her full height, fists balled at her sides, and spoke in a voice loud enough to disturb the bats in the corners of the ceiling. One small dark form detached itself from the shadows and flittered out into the gathering dusk, ignored by the combatants underneath.

  “Well, then, make your own choice,” Jamie said shortly. “And I wish ye well of it!”

  “You…are…not…listening!” Brianna said, grinding each word between her teeth. “I’ve made my choice. I said I won’t…marry…anyone!” She punctuated this with another stamp of
her foot.

  Jamie thrust the fork into the pile with a thump. He straightened up and eyed Brianna, rubbing his fist across his jaw.

  “Aye, well. I seem to recall hearin’ a verra similar opinion expressed by your mother—the night before our wedding. I havena asked her lately does she regret bein’ forced to wed me or not, but I flatter myself she’s maybe not been miserable altogether. Perhaps ye should go and have a word wi’ her?”

  “It’s not the same thing at all!” Brianna snapped.

  “No, it’s not,” Jamie agreed, keeping a firm grip on his temper. The sun was low behind the hills, flooding the stable with a golden light in which the creeping tide of red in his skin was nonetheless quite visible. Still, he was making every attempt to be reasonable.

  “Your mother wed me to save her life—and mine. It was a brave thing she did, and generous, too. I’ll grant it’s no a matter of life or death, but—have ye no idea what it is to live branded as a wanton—or as a fatherless bastard, come to that?”

  Seeing her expression falter slightly at this, he pressed his advantage, stretching out a hand to her and speaking kindly.

  “Come, lassie. Can ye not bring yourself to do it for the bairn’s sake?”

  Her face tightened again and she stepped back.

  “No,” she said, sounding strangled. “No. I can’t.”

  He dropped his hand. I could see them both, despite the fading light, and saw the danger signs all too clearly, in the narrowing of his eyes and the set of his shoulders, squared for battle. “Is that how Frank Randall raised ye, lass, to have no regard for what’s right or wrong?”

  Brianna was trembling all over, like a horse that’s run too far.

  “My father always did what was right for me! And he would never have tried to pull something like this!” she said. “Never! He cared about me!”

  At this, Jamie finally lost his temper, which went off with a bang.

  “And I don’t?” he said. “I am not trying my best to do what’s right for ye? In spite of your being—”

  “Jamie—” I turned toward him, saw his eyes gone black with anger, and turned toward her. “Bree—I know he didn’t—you have to understand—”

  “Of all the reckless, thoughtless, selfish ways in which to behave!”

  “You self-righteous, insensitive bastard!”

  “Bastard! Ye’ll call me a bastard, and your belly swellin’ like a pumpkin with a child that ye mean to doom to finger-pointing and calumny for all its days, and—”

  “Anybody points a finger at my child, and I’ll break it off and stuff it down their throat!”

  “Ye senseless wee besom! Have ye no the faintest notion o’ how things are? Ye’ll be a scandal and a hissing! Folk will call ye whore to your face!”

  “Let them try it!”

  “Oh, let them try it? And ye mean me to stand by and listen, I suppose?”

  “It’s not your job to defend me!”

  He was so furious that his face went white as fresh-bleached muslin.

  “Not my job to defend you? For Christ’s sake, woman, who else is meant to do it?”

  Ian tugged gently on my arm, drawing me back.

  “Ye’ve only the twa choices now, Auntie,” he murmured in my ear. “Douse them both wi’ a pan o’ cold water, or come away with me and leave them to it. I’ve seen Uncle Jamie and my Mam go at it before. Believe me, ye dinna want to step between two Frasers wi’ their dander up. My Da said he’s tried once or twice, and got the scars to prove it.”

  I took a final glance at the situation and gave up. He was right; they were nose to nose, red hair bristling and eyes slitted like a couple of bobcats, circling, spitting and snarling. I could have set the hay on fire, and neither one would have spared an instant’s notice.

  It seemed remarkably quiet and peaceful outside. A whippoorwill sang in the aspen grove, and the wind was in the east, carrying the faint sounds of the waterfall to us. By the time we reached the dooryard, we couldn’t hear the shouting anymore.

  “Dinna be worrit, Auntie,” Ian said comfortingly. “They’ll get hungry, sooner or later.”

  * * *

  In the event, it was unnecessary to starve them out; Jamie stamped down the hill a few minutes later and without a word, fetched his horse from the paddock,