Drums of Autumn, Page 22

  “Hush.” He laid his hand on mine and squeezed hard. His eyes held mine, and kept me from speaking.

  “I am already part of it,” he said quietly. “It is my aunt’s property, her men involved. Mr. Campbell is right; I am her kinsman. It will be my duty to go—to see, at least. To be there.” He hesitated then, as though he might say more, but instead merely squeezed my hand again and let me go.

  “Then I’m going with you.” I spoke quite calmly, with that eerie sense of detachment that comes with awareness of impending disaster.

  His wide mouth twitched briefly.

  “I did expect ye would, Sassenach. Go and fetch your wee box, aye? I’ll have the horses brought round.”

  I didn’t wait to hear Mr. Campbell’s expostulations, but fled toward the stillroom, my slippers pattering on the tiles like the beat of an anxious heart.

  * * *

  We met Andrew MacNeill on the road, resting his horse in the shade of a chestnut tree. He had been waiting for us; he stepped out of the shadows at the sound of our hoofbeats. He nodded to Campbell as we halted by him, but his eyes were on me, frowning.

  “Did you not tell him, Campbell?” he said, and turned the frown on Jamie. “It will be no affair for a woman, Mr. Fraser.”

  “Ye called it a matter of bloodshed, did ye no?” Jamie said, a marked edge in his voice. “My wife is ban-lighiche; she has seen war wi’ me, and more. If ye wish me there, she will go with me.”

  MacNeill’s lips pressed tight together, but he didn’t argue further. He turned abruptly and swung into his saddle.

  “Acquaint us, MacNeill, with the history of this unfortunate affair.” Campbell urged his mare’s nose past the withers of Jamie’s horse, skillfully edging between MacNeill and Jamie. “Mr. Fraser is newly come, as you know, and your lad said only to me that it was bloodshed. I have no particulars.”

  MacNeill’s burly shoulders rose slightly, shrugging toward the iron-gray pigtail that bisected his collar. His hat was jammed down on his head, set square with the shoulders, as though he had used a carpenter’s level to even it. A square, blunt man, MacNeill, in words as well as appearance.

  Told in brief bursts as we trotted, it was a simple story. The sawmill’s overseer, Byrnes, had had an altercation with one of the turpentine slaves. This man, being armed with the large slash-knife appropriate to his occupation, had attempted to settle the matter by removing Byrnes’ head. Missing his aim, he had succeeded only in depriving the overseer of an ear.

  “Barked him like a pine tree,” MacNeill said, a certain grim satisfaction apparent in his voice. “Took his lug and a wee bit o’ the side of his face, as well. Not that it will ha’ impaired his beauty ower-much, the ugly wee pusbag.”

  I glanced toward Jamie, who lifted one eyebrow in response. Evidently Byrnes was no favorite with the local planters.

  The overseer had shrieked for help, and with the assistance of two customers and several of their slaves, had succeeded in subduing his assailant. The wound stanched and the slave locked in a shed, young Donald MacNeill—who had come to have a saw blade set and found himself unexpectedly in the midst of drama—had been dispatched at once to spread the word to the plantation owners nearby.

  “You’ll not know,” Campbell explained, twisting in his saddle to speak to Jamie. “When a slave must be executed, the slaves from those plantations nearby are brought to watch; a deterrent, aye? against future ill-considered action.”

  “Indeed,” Jamie said politely. “I believe that was the Crown’s notion in executing my grandsire on Tower Hill after the Rising. Verra effective, too; all my relations have been quite well behaved since.”

  I had lived long enough among Scots to appreciate the effects of that little jab. Jamie might have come at Campbell’s request, but the grandson of the Old Fox did no man’s bidding lightly—nor necessarily held English law in high regard.

  MacNeill had got the message, all right; the back of his neck flushed turkey-red, but Farquard Campbell looked amused. He uttered a short, dry laugh before turning round.

  “Which slave is it, d’ye know?” he asked the older man. MacNeill shook his head.

  “Young Donald didna say. But ye ken as well as I do; it’ll be that bugger Rufus.”

  Campbell’s shoulders slumped in acknowledgment.

  “Jo will be sore pained to hear it,” he murmured, shaking his head regretfully.

  “It’s her ain fault,” MacNeill said, brutally thwacking a horsefly that had settled on his leg above the boot. “Yon Byrnes isna fit to mind pigs, let alone run Negroes. I’ve told her often enough; so’ve you.”

  “Aye, but Hector hired the man, not Jo,” Campbell protested mildly. “And she couldna well dismiss him out of hand. What’s she to do, then, come and manage the place herself?”

  The answer was a grunt as MacNeill shifted his broad buttocks in the saddle. I glanced at Jamie, and found him poker-faced, eyes hidden in the shadow under the brim of his hat.

  “There’s little worse than a willful woman,” MacNeill said, a trifle louder than strictly necessary. “They’ve none to blame save themselves if harm comes to them.”

  “Whereas,” I chipped in, leaning forward and raising my own voice enough to be heard over the clop and creak of the horses, “if harm comes to them because of some man, the satisfaction of blaming him will be adequate compensation?”

  Jamie snorted briefly with amusement; Campbell cackled out loud and poked MacNeill in the ribs with his crop.

  “Got ye there, Andrew!” he said.

  MacNeill did not reply, but his neck grew even redder. We rode in silence after that, MacNeill’s shoulders hunched just under his ears.

  While mildly satisfying, this exchange did nothing to settle my nerves; my stomach was knotted in dread of what might happen when we reached the mill. Despite their dislike of Byrnes and the obvious assumption that whatever had happened had likely been the overseer’s fault, there wasn’t the slightest suggestion that this would alter the slave’s fate in any way.

  “A bad law,” Campbell had called it—but the law nonetheless. Still, it was neither outrage nor horror at the thought of judicial atrocity that made my hands tremble and the leather reins slick with sweat; it was wondering what Jamie would do.

  I could tell nothing from his face. He rode relaxed, left hand on the reins, the right curled loosely on his thigh, near the bulge of the pistol in his coat.

  I was not even sure whether I could take comfort in the fact that he had allowed me to come with him. That might mean that he didn’t expect to commit violence—but in that case, did it mean he would stand by and let the execution happen?

  And if he did…? My mouth was dry, my nose and throat choked with the soft brown dust that rose in clouds from the horses’ hooves.

  I am already part of it. Part of what, though? Of clan and family, yes—but of this? Highlanders would fight to the death for any cause that touched their honor or stirred their blood, but they were for the most part indifferent to outside matters. Centuries of isolation in their mountain fastnesses had left them disinclined to meddle in the affairs of others—but woe to any who meddled in theirs!

  Plainly Campbell and MacNeill saw this as Jamie’s affair—but did he? Jamie was not an isolated Highlander, I assured myself. He was well traveled, well educated, a cultured man. And he knew damn well what I thought of present matters. I had the terrible feeling, though, that my opinion would count for very little in the reckoning of this day.

  It was a hot and windless afternoon, with cicadas buzzing loudly in the weeds along the road, but my fingers were cold, and stiff on the reins. We had passed one or two other parties; small groups of slaves, moving on foot in the direction of the sawmill. They didn’t look up as we passed, but melted aside into the bushes, making room as we cantered past.

  Jamie’s hat flew off, knocked by a low branch; he caught it deftly and clapped it back on his head, but not before I had caught a glimpse of his face, unguarded for a moment, th
e lines of it tense with anxiety. With a small shock, it occurred to me that he didn’t know what he was going to do either. And that frightened me more than anything else so far.

  We were suddenly in the pine forest; the yellow-green flicker of hickory and alder leaves gave way abruptly to the darker light of cool deep green, like moving from the surface of the ocean into the calmer depths.

  I reached back to touch the wooden case strapped on behind my saddle, trying to avoid thinking of what might lie ahead, by making mental preparations for the only role I might reasonably play in this incipient disaster. I likely could not prevent damage; but I could try to repair what had happened already. Disinfection and cleansing—I had a bottle of distilled alcohol, and a wash made from pressed garlic juice and mint. Then dress the wound—yes, I had linen bandages—but surely it would need stitching first?

  In the midst of wondering what had been done with Byrnes’ detached ear, I stopped. The buzzing in my own ears was not from cicadas. Campbell, in the lead, reined up sharply, listening, and the rest of us halted behind him.

  Voices in the distance, lots of voices, in a deep, angry buzz, like a hive of bees turned upside down and shaken. Then there was the faint sound of shouts and screams, and the sudden loud report of a shot.

  We galloped down the last slope, dodging trees, and thundered into the sawmill’s clearing. The open ground was filled with people; slaves and bondsmen, women and children, milling in panic through the stacks of sawn lumber, like termites exposed by the swing of an ax.

  Then I lost all consciousness of the crowd. All my attention was fixed at the side of the mill, where a crane hoist was rigged, with a huge curved hook for raising logs to the level of the saw bed.

  Impaled on the hook was the body of a black man, twisting in horrid imitation of a worm. The smell of blood struck sweet and hot through the air; there was a pool of it on the platform below the hoist.

  My horse stopped, fidgeting, obstructed by the crowd. The shouts had died away into moans and small, disconnected screams from women in the crowd. I saw Jamie slide off in front of me, and force his way through the press of bodies toward the platform. Campbell and MacNeill were with him, shoving grimly through the mob. MacNeill’s hat fell off, unregarded, to be trampled underfoot.

  I sat frozen in my saddle, unable to move. There were other men on the platform near the hoist; a small man whose head was wound grotesquely round with bandages, splotched with blood all down one side; several other men, white and mulatto, armed with clubs and muskets, making occasional threatening jabs at the crowd.

  Not that there seemed any urge to rush the platform; to the contrary, there seemed a general urge to get away. The faces around me were stamped with expressions ranging from fear to shocked dismay, with only here and there a flash of anger—or satisfaction.

  Farquard Campbell emerged from the press, boosted onto the platform by MacNeill’s sturdy shoulder, and advanced at once on the men with clubs, waving his arms and shouting something I couldn’t hear, though the screams and moans around me were dying away into the silence of shock. Jamie seized the edge of the platform and lifted himself up after Campbell, pausing to give a hand to MacNeill.

  Campbell was face-to-face with Byrnes, his lean cheeks convulsed with fury.

  “…unspeakable brutality!” he was shouting. His words came unevenly, half swallowed in the shuffle and murmur around me, but I saw him jab a finger emphatically at the hoist and its grisly burden. The slave had stopped struggling; he hung inert.

  The overseer’s face was invisible, but his body was stiff with outrage and defiance. One or two of his friends moved slowly toward him, plainly meaning to offer support.

  I saw Jamie stand for a moment, assessing events. He drew both pistols from his coat, and coolly checked the priming. Then he stepped forward, and clapped one to Byrnes’ bandaged head. The overseer went rigid with surprise.

  “Bring him down,” Jamie said to the nearest thug, loudly enough to be audible over the dying grumbles of the crowd. “Or I blow off what’s left o’ your friend’s face. And then—” He raised the second pistol and aimed it squarely at the man’s chest. The expression on Jamie’s own face made further threats unnecessary.

  The man moved reluctantly, narrowed eyes fixed on the pistol. He took hold of the brake-handle of the winch that controlled the hoist, and pulled it back. The hook descended slowly, its cable taut with the strain of its burden. There was a massive sigh from the spectators as the limp body touched the earth.

  I had managed to urge my horse forward through the crowd, till I was within a foot or two of the end of the platform. The horse shied and stamped, tossing his head and snorting at the strong smell of blood, but was well trained enough not to bolt. I slid off, ordering a man nearby to bring my box.

  The boards of the platform felt strange underfoot, heaving like the dry land does when one steps off a ship. It was no more than a few steps to where the slave lay; by the time I reached him, that cold clarity of mind that is the surgeon’s chief resource had come upon me. I paid no heed to the heated arguments behind me, or to the presence of the remaining spectators.

  He was alive; his chest moved in small, jerky gasps. The hook had pierced the stomach, passing through the lower rib cage, emerging from the back at about the level of the kidneys. The man’s skin was an unearthly shade of dark blue-gray, his lips blanched to the color of clay.

  “Hush,” I said softly, though there was no sound from the slave save the small hiss of his breath. His eyes were pools of incomprehension, pupils dilated, swamped with darkness.

  There was no blood from his mouth; the lungs were not punctured. The breathing was shallow, but rhythmic; the diaphragm had not been pierced. My hands moved gently over him, my mind trying to follow the path of the damage. Blood oozed from both wounds, flowed in a black slick over the ridged muscles of back and stomach, shone red as rubies on the polished steel. No spurting; they had somehow missed both abdominal aorta and the renal artery.

  Behind me, a heated argument had broken out; some small, detached portion of my mind noted that Byrnes’ companions were his fellow overseers from two neighboring plantations, presently being rebuked with vigor by Farquard Campbell.

  “…blatant disregard of the law! You shall answer for it in court, gentlemen, be assured that you shall!”

  “What does it matter?” came a sullen rumble from someone. “It’s bloodshed—and mutilation! Byrnes has his rights!”

  “Rights no for the likes of you to decide.” MacNeill’s deep growl joined in. “Rabble, that’s what ye are, no better than the—”

  “And where d’you get off, old man, stickin’ your long Scotch nose in where it’s not wanted, eh?”

  “What will ye need, Sassenach?”

  I hadn’t heard him come up beside me, but he was there. Jamie crouched next to me, my box open on the boards beside him. He held a loaded pistol still in one hand, his attention mostly on the group behind me.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I could hear the argument going on in the background, but the words blurred into meaninglessness. The only reality was under my hands.

  It was slowly dawning on me that the man I touched was possibly not fatally wounded, in spite of his horrible injury. From everything I could sense and feel, I thought that the curve of the hook had gone upward through the liver. Likely the right kidney was damaged, and the jejunum or gallbladder might be nicked—but none of those would kill him immediately.

  It was shock that might do for him, if he was to die quickly. But I could see a pulse throbbing in the sweat-slick abdomen, just above the piercing steel. It was fast, but steady as a drumbeat; I could feel it echo in the tips of my fingers when I placed a hand on it. He had lost blood—the scent of it was thick, overpowering the smell of sweat and fear—but not so much as to doom him.

  An unsettling thought came to me—I might be able to keep this man alive. Likely not; in the wake of the thought came a flood of all the things that could go wron
g—hemorrhage when I removed the hook being only the most immediate. Internal bleeding, delayed shock, perforated intestine, peritonitis—and yet.

  At Prestonpans, I had seen a man pierced through the body with a sword, the location of the wound very much like this. He had received no treatment beyond a bandage wrapped around his body—and yet he had recovered.

  “Lawlessness!” Campbell was saying, his voice rising over the babble of argument. “It cannot be tolerated, no matter the provocation. I shall have you all taken in charge, be sure of it!”

  No one was paying any attention to the true object of the discussion. Only seconds had passed—but I had only seconds more to act. I placed a hand on Jamie’s arm, pulling his attention away from the debate.

  “If I save him, will they let him live?” I asked him, under my breath.

  His eyes flicked from one to another of the men behind me, weighing the possibilities.

  “No,” he said softly. His eyes met mine, dark with understanding. His shoulders straightened slightly, and he laid the pistol across his thigh. I could not help him make his choice; he could not help with mine—but he would defend me, whichever choice I made.

  “Give me the third bottle from the left, top row,” I said, with a nod at the lid of the box, where three rows of clear glass bottles, firmly corked, held a variety of medicines.

  I had two bottles of pure alcohol, another of brandy. I poured a good dose of the brownish powdered root into the brandy, and shook it briskly, then crawled to the man’s head and pressed it to his lips.

  His eyes were glazed; I tried to look into them, to make him see me. Why? I wondered, even as I leaned close and called his name. I couldn’t ask if this would be his choice—I had made it for him. And having made it, could not ask for either approval or forgiveness.

  He swallowed. Once. Twice. The muscles near his blanched mouth quivered; drops of brandy ran across his skin. Once more a deep convulsive gulp, and then his straining neck relaxed, his head heavy on my arm.

  I sat with my eyes closed, supporting his head, my fingers on the pulse under his ear. It jumped; skipped a beat and resumed. A shiver ran over his body, the blotched skin twitching as though a thousand ants ran over it.

  The textbook description ran through my mind:

  Numbness. Tingling. A sensation of the skin crawling, as though affected by insects. Nausea, epigastric pain. Labored breathing, skin cold and clammy, features bloodless. Pulse feeble and irregular, yet the mind remains clear.

  None of the visible symptoms were discernible from those he already showed. Epigastric pain, forsooth.

  One-fiftieth grain will kill a sparrow in a few seconds. One-tenth grain, a rabbit in five minutes. Aconite was said to be the poison in the cup Medea prepared for Theseus.

  I tried to hear nothing, feel nothing, know nothing but the jerky beat beneath my fingers. I tried with all my might to shut out the voices overhead, the murmur nearby, the heat and dust and stink of blood, to forget where I was, and what I was doing.

  Yet the mind remains clear.

  Oh, God, I thought. It did.

  12

  THE RETURN OF JOHN QUINCY MYERS

  Deeply shaken by the events at the sawmill, Jocasta nonetheless declared her intention of carrying on with the party she had planned.

  “It will distract our minds from the sadness,” she said firmly. She turned to me, and reaching out, critically fingered the muslin cloth of my sleeve.

  “I’ll call Phaedre to begin a new gown for ye,” she said. “The girl’s a fine sempstress.”

  I rather thought it would take more than a new gown and a dinner party to distract my mind, but I caught a warning glance from Jamie and shut my mouth hard to keep the words inside.

  In the event, given the shortness of time and a lack of suitable fabric, Jocasta decided to have one of her gowns remade for me.

  “How does it look, Phaedre?” Jocasta frowned in my direction, as though she could summon vision by pure will. “Will it do?”

  “Do fine,” the maid answered around a mouthful of pins. She thrust in three in quick succession, squinted at me, pinched up a fold of fabric at the waistline and stabbed in two more.

  “Be just fine,” she elaborated, mouth now clear. “She shorter than you, Miss Jo, and a bit thinner in the waist. Some bigger in the bosom, though,” Phadre added in an undertone, grinning at me.

  “Yes, I know that.” Jocasta spoke tartly, having caught the whisper. “Slash the bodice; we can fill it with Valenciennes lace over a field of green silk—take a scrap from that old dressing gown of my husband’s; it will be the right color to complement this.” She touched the sleeve, with its brilliant green striping. “Band the slash with the green silk, too; it will show off her bosom.” The long pale fingers indicated the line of alteration, drifting across the tops of my breasts almost absentmindedly. The touch was cool, impersonal and barely felt, but I narrowly prevented myself jerking back.

  “You have a most remarkable memory for color,” I said, surprised and slightly unnerved.

  “Oh, I remember this dress very well,” she said. She touched the full sleeve lightly. “A gentleman once told me I reminded him of Persephone in it; springtime incarnate, he said.” A faint smile of memory lit her face, then was erased as she lifted her head toward me.

  “What color is your hair, my dear? I hadna thought to ask. You sound a bit blond, somehow, but I’ve no notion whether that may be actually the case. Pray, do not tell me ye’re black-haired and sallow!” She smiled, but the joke sounded somehow like a command.

  “It’s more or less brown,” I said, touching my hair self-consciously. “Faded a bit, though; it’s gone light in streaks.”

  She frowned at this, seeming to consider whether brown was quite suitable. Unable to settle the question for herself, she turned to the maid.

  “How does she look, Phaedre?”