Dragonfly in Amber

  When he could wait no longer, he took me, a knife to its scabbard, and we moved hard together, pressing, wanting, needing so urgently that moment of ultimate joining, and fearing to reach it, for the knowledge that beyond it lay eternal separation.

  He brought me again and again to the peaks of sensation, holding back himself, stopping, gasping and shuddering on the brink. Until at last I touched his face, twined my fingers in his hair, pressed him tight and arched my back and hips beneath him, urging, forcing.

  “Now,” I said to him, softly. “Now. Come with me, come to me, now. Now!”

  He yielded to me, and I to him, despair lending edge to passion, so the echo of our cries seemed to die away slowly, ringing in the darkness of the cold stone hut.

  We lay pressed together, unmoving, his weight a heavy blessing, a shield and reassurance. A body so solid, so filled with heat and life; how could it be possible that he would cease to exist within hours?

  “Listen,” he said at last, softly. “Do you hear?”

  At first I heard nothing but the rushing of the wind, and the trickle of rain, dripping through the holes of the roof. Then I heard it, the steady, slow thump of his heartbeat, pulsing against me, and mine against his, each matching each, in the rhythm of life. The blood coursed through him, and through our fragile link, through me, and back again.

  We lay so, warm beneath the makeshift covering of plaid and cloak, on a bed of our clothing, tangled together. Then at last he slipped free, and turning me away from him, cupped his hand across my belly, his breath warm on the nape of my neck.

  “Sleep now a bit, mo duinne,” he whispered. “I would sleep once more this way—holding you, holding the babe.”

  I had thought I could not sleep, but the pull of exhaustion was too much, and I slipped beneath the surface with scarcely a ripple. Near dawn I woke, Jamie’s arms still around me, and lay watching the imperceptible bloom of night into day, futilely willing back the friendly shelter of the dark.

  I rolled to the side and lifted myself to watch him, to see the light touch the bold shape of his face, innocent in sleep, to see the dawning sun touch his hair with flame—for the last time.

  A wave of anguish broke through me, so acute that I must have made some sound, for he opened his eyes. He smiled when he saw me, and his eyes searched my face. I knew that he was memorizing my features, as I was his.

  “Jamie,” I said. My voice was hoarse with sleep and swallowed tears. “Jamie. I want you to mark me.”

  “What?” he said, startled.

  The tiny sgian dhu he carried in his stocking was lying within reach, its handle of carved staghorn dark against the piled clothing. I reached for it and handed it to him.

  “Cut me,” I said urgently. “Deep enough to leave a scar. I want to take away your touch with me, to have something of you that will stay with me always. I don’t care if it hurts; nothing could hurt more than leaving you. At least when I touch it, wherever I am, I can feel your touch on me.”

  His hand was over mine where it rested on the knife’s hilt. After a moment, he squeezed it and nodded. He hesitated for a moment, the razor-sharp blade in his hand, and I offered him my right hand. It was warm beneath our coverings, but his breath came in wisps, visible in the cold air of the room.

  He turned my palm upward, examining it carefully, then raised it to his lips. A soft kiss in the well of the palm, then he seized the base of my thumb in a hard, sucking bite. Letting go, he swiftly cut into the numbed flesh. I felt no more than a mild burning sensation, but the blood welled at once. He brought the hand quickly to his mouth again, holding it there until the flow of blood slowed. He bound the wound, now stinging, carefully in a handkerchief, but not before I saw that the cut was in the shape of a small, slightly crooked letter “J.”

  I looked up to see that he was holding out the tiny knife to me. I took it, and somewhat hesitantly, took the hand he offered me.

  He closed his eyes briefly, and set his lips, but a small grunt of pain escaped him as I pressed the tip of the knife into the fleshy pad at the base of his thumb. The Mount of Venus, a palm-reader had told me; indicator of passion and love.

  It was only as I completed the small semicircular cut that I realized he had given me his left hand.

  “I should have taken the other,” I said. “Your sword hilt will press on it.”

  He smiled faintly.

  “I could ask no more than to feel your touch on me in my last fight—wherever it comes.”

  Unwrapping the blood-spotted handkerchief, I pressed my wounded hand tightly against his, fingers gripped together. The blood was warm and slick, not yet sticky between our hands.

  “Blood of my Blood…” I whispered.

  “…and Bone of my Bone,” he answered softly. Neither of us could finish the vow, “so long as we both shall live,” but the unspoken words hung aching between us. Finally he smiled crookedly.

  “Longer than that,” he said firmly, and pulled me to him once more.

  * * *

  “Frank,” he said at last, with a sigh. “Well, I leave it to you what ye shall tell him about me. Likely he’ll not want to hear. But if he does, if ye find ye can talk to him of me, as you have to me of him—then tell him…I’m grateful. Tell him I trust him, because I must. And tell him—” His hands tightened suddenly on my arms, and he spoke with a mixture of laughter and absolute sincerity. “Tell him I hate him to his guts and the marrow of his bones!”

  We were dressed, and the dawn light had strengthened into day. There was no food, nothing with which to break our fast. Nothing left that must be done…and nothing left to say.

  He would have to leave now, to make it to Drumossie Moor in time. This was our final parting, and we could find no way to say goodbye.

  At last, he smiled crookedly, bent, and kissed me gently on the lips.

  “They say…” he began, and stopped to clear his throat. “They say, in the old days, when a man would go forth to do a great deed—he would find a wisewoman, and ask her to bless him. He would stand looking forth, in the direction he would go, and she would come behind him, to say the words of the prayer over him. When she had finished, he would walk straight out, and not look back, for that was ill-luck to his quest.”

  He touched my face once, and turned away, facing the open door. The morning sun streamed in, lighting his hair in a thousand flames. He straightened his shoulders, broad beneath his plaid, and drew a deep breath.

  “Bless me, then, wisewoman,” he said softly, “and go.”

  I laid a hand on his shoulder, groping for words. Jenny had taught me a few of the ancient Celtic prayers of protection; I tried to summon the words in my mind.

  “Jesus, Thou Son of Mary,” I started, speaking hoarsely, “I call upon Thy name; and on the name of John the Apostle beloved, And on the names of all the saints in the red domain, To shield thee in the battle to come…”

  I stopped, interrupted by a sound from the hillside below. The sound of voices, and of footsteps.

  Jamie froze for a second, shoulder hard beneath my hand, then whirled, pushing me toward the rear of the cottage, where the wall had fallen away.

  “That way!” he said. “They are English! Claire, go!”

  I ran toward the opening in the wall, heart in my throat, as he turned back to the doorway, hand on his sword. I stopped, just for a moment, for the last sight of him. He turned his head, caught sight of me, and suddenly he was with me, pushing me hard against the wall in an agony of desperation. He gripped me fiercely to him. I could feel his erection pressing into my stomach and the hilt of his dagger dug into my side.

  He spoke hoarsely into my hair. “Once more. I must! But quick!” He pushed me against the wall and I scrabbled up my skirts as he raised his kilts. This was not lovemaking; he took me quickly and powerfully and it was over in seconds. The voices were nearer; only a hundred yards away.

  He kissed me once more, hard enough to leave the taste of blood in my mouth. “Name him Brian,”
he said, “for my father.” With a push, he sent me toward the opening. As I ran for it, I glanced back to see him standing in the middle of the doorway, sword half-drawn, dirk ready in his right hand.

  The English, unaware that the cottage was occupied, had not thought to send a scout round the back. The slope behind the cottage was deserted as I dashed across it and into the thicket of alders below the hillcrest.

  I pushed my way through the brush and the branches, stumbling over rocks, blinded by tears. Behind me I could hear shouts and the clash of steel from the cottage. My thighs were slick and wet with Jamie’s seed. The crest of the hill seemed never to grow nearer; surely I would spend the rest of my life fighting my way through the strangling trees!

  There was a crashing in the brush behind me. Someone had seen me rush from the cottage. I dashed aside the tears and scrabbled upward, groping on all fours as the ground grew steeper. I was in the clear space now, the shelf of granite I remembered. The small dogwood growing out of the cliff was there, and the tumble of small boulders.

  I stopped at the edge of the stone circle, looking down, trying desperately to see what was happening. How many soldiers had come to the cottage? Could Jamie break free of them and reach his hobbled horse below? Without it, he would never reach Culloden in time.

  All at once, the brush below me parted with a flash of red. An English soldier. I turned, ran gasping across the turf of the circle, and hurled myself through the cleft in the rock.

  PART SEVEN

  Hindsight

  47

  LOOSE ENDS

  He was right, of course. Bloody man, he was almost always right.” Claire sounded half-cross as she spoke. A rueful smile crossed her face, then she looked at Brianna, who sat on the hearthrug, gripping her knees, her face completely blank. Only the faint stir of her hair, lifting and moving in the rising heat of the fire, showed any motion at all.

  “It was a dangerous pregnancy—again—and a hazardous birth. Had I risked it there, it would almost certainly have killed us both.” She spoke directly to her daughter, as though they were alone in the room. Roger, waking slowly from the spell of the past, felt like an intruder.

  “The truth, then, all of it. I couldn’t bear to leave him,” Claire said softly. “Even for you…I hated you for a bit, before you were born, because it was for you that he’d made me go. I didn’t mind dying—not with him. But to have to go on, to live without him—he was right, I had the worst of the bargain. But I kept it, because I loved him. And we lived, you and I, because he loved you.”

  Brianna didn’t move; didn’t take her eyes from her mother’s face. Only her lips moved, stiffly, as though unaccustomed to talking.

  “How long…did you hate me?”

  Gold eyes met blue ones, innocent and ruthless as the eyes of a falcon.

  “Until you were born. When I held you and nursed you and saw you look up at me with your father’s eyes.”

  Brianna made a faint, strangled sound, but her mother went on, voice softening a little as she looked at the girl at her feet.

  “And then I began to know you, something separate from myself or from Jamie. And I loved you for yourself, and not only for the man who fathered you.”

  There was a blur of motion on the hearthrug, and Brianna shot erect. Her hair bristled out like a lion’s mane, and the blue eyes blazed like the heart of the flames behind her.

  “Frank Randall was my father!” she said. “He was! I know it!” Fists clenched, she glared at her mother. Her voice trembled with rage.

  “I don’t know why you’re doing this. Maybe you did hate me, maybe you still do!” Tears were beginning to make their way down her cheeks, unbidden, and she dashed them angrily away with the back of one hand.

  “Daddy…Daddy loved me—he couldn’t have, if I weren’t his! Why are you trying to make me believe he wasn’t my father? Were you jealous of me? Is that it? Did you mind so much that he loved me? He didn’t love you, I know that!” The blue eyes narrowed, cat-like, blazing in a face gone dead-white.

  Roger felt a strong desire to ease behind the door before she noticed his presence and turned that molten wrath on him. But beyond his own discomfort he was conscious of a sense of growing awe. The girl that stood on the hearthrug, hissing and spitting in defense of her paternity, flamed with the wild strength that had brought the Highland warriors down on their enemies like shrieking banshees. Her long, straight nose lengthened still further by the shadows, eyes slitted like a snarling cat’s, she was the image of her father—and her father was patently not the dark, quiet scholar whose photo adorned the jacket of the book on the table.

  Claire opened her mouth once, but then closed it again, watching her daughter with absorbed fascination. That powerful tension of the body, the flexing arch of the broad, flat cheekbones; Roger thought that she had seen that many times before—but not in Brianna.

  With a suddenness that made them both flinch, Brianna spun on her heel, grabbed the yellowed news-clippings from the desk, and thrust them into the fire. She snatched the poker and jabbed it viciously into the tindery mass, heedless of the shower of sparks that flew from the hearth and hissed about her booted feet.

  Whirling from the rapidly blackening mass of glowing paper, she stamped one foot on the hearth.

  “Bitch!” she shouted at her mother. “You hated me? Well, I hate you!” She drew back the arm with the poker, and Roger’s muscles tensed instinctively, ready to lunge for her. But she turned, arm drawn back like a javelin thrower, and hurled the poker through the full-length window, where the panes of night-dark glass reflected the image of a burning woman for one last instant before the crash and shiver into empty black.

  * * *

  The silence in the study was shattering. Roger, who had leaped to his feet in pursuit of Brianna, was left standing in the middle of the room, awkwardly frozen. He looked down at his hands as if not quite sure what to do with them, then at Claire. She sat perfectly still in the sanctuary of the wing chair, like an animal frozen by the passing shadow of a raptor.

  After several moments, Roger moved across to the desk and leaned against it.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he said.

  Claire’s mouth twitched faintly. “Neither do I.”

  They sat in silence for several minutes. The old house creaked, settling around them, and a faint noise of banging pots came down the hallway from the kitchen, where Fiona was doing something about dinner. Roger’s feeling of shock and constrained embarrassment gradually gave way to something else, he wasn’t sure what. His hands felt icy, and he rubbed them on his legs, feeling the warm rasp of the corduroy on his palms.

  “I…” He started to speak, then stopped and shook his head.

  Claire drew a deep breath, and he realized that it was the first movement he had seen her make since Brianna had left. Her gaze was clear and direct.

  “Do you believe me?” she asked.

  Roger looked thoughtfully at her. “I’ll be damned if I know,” he said at last.

  That provoked a slightly wavering smile. “That’s what Jamie said,” she said, “when I asked him at the first where he thought I’d come from.”

  “I can’t say I blame him.” Roger hesitated, then, making up his mind, got off the desk and came across the room to her. “May I?” He knelt and took her unresisting hand in his, turning it to the light. You can tell real ivory from the synthetic, he remembered suddenly, because the real kind feels warm to the touch. The palm of her hand was a soft pink, but the faint line of the “J” at the base of her thumb was white as bone.

  “It doesn’t prove anything,” she said, watching his face. “It could have been an accident; I could have done it myself.”

  “But you didn’t, did you?” He laid the hand back in her lap very gently, as though it were a fragile artifact.

  “No. But I can’t prove it. The pearls”—her hand went to the shimmer of the necklace at her throat—“they’re authentic; that can be verified. But can I prove
where I got them? No.”

  “And the portrait of Ellen MacKenzie—” he began.

  “The same. A coincidence. Something to base my delusion upon. My lies.” There was a faintly bitter note in her voice, though she spoke calmly enough. There was a patch of color in each cheek now, and she was losing that utter stillness. It was like watching a statue come to life, he thought.

  Roger got to his feet. He paced slowly back and forth, rubbing a hand through his hair.

  “But it’s important to you, isn’t it? It’s very important.”

  “Yes.” She rose herself and went to the desk, where the folder of his research sat. She laid a hand on the manila sheeting with reverence, as though it were a gravestone; he supposed to her it was.