The Fiery Cross, Page 32

  My heart had begun to slow a little, but prickles of irritation still ran over my skin like nettle rash. I tried to shake it off, opening the big cupboard to assure myself that neither Mrs. Bug's nor the children's depredations had harmed anything truly important.

  No, it was all right. Each glass bottle had been polished to a jewellike gleam-the sunlight caught them in a blaze of blue and green and crystal-but

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  each had been put back exactly in its place, each neatly written label turned forward. The gauzy bundles of dried herbs had been shaken free of dust, but carefully hung back on their nails.

  The sight of the assembled medicines was calming. I touched a jar of antilouse ointment, feeling a miser's sense of gratification at the number and variety of bags and jars and bottles.

  Alcohol lamp, alcohol bottle, microscope, large amputation saw, jar of sutures, box of plasters, packet of cobweb-all were arrayed with military precision, drawn up in ranks like ill-assorted recruits under the eye of a drill sergeant. Mrs. Bug might have the flaws of her greatness, but I couldn't help but admit her virtue as a housekeeper.

  The only thing in the cabinet that plainly hadn't been touched was a tiny leather bag, the amulet given to me by the Tuscaroran shaman Nayawenne; that lay askew in a corner by itself. Interesting that Mrs. Bug wouldn't touch that, I thought; I had never told her what it was, though it did look Indian, with the feathers-from raven and woodpecker-thrust through the knot. Less than a year in the Colonies, and less than a month in the wilderness, Mrs. Bug regarded all things Indian with acute suspicion.

  The odor of lye soap hung in the air, reproachful as a housekeeper's ghost. I supposed I couldn't really blame her; moldy bread, rotted melon, and mushy apple slices might be research to me; to Mrs. Bug, they could be nothing but a calculated offense to the god of cleanliness.

  I sighed and closed the cupboard, adding the faint perfume of dried lavender and the skunk scent of pennyroyal to the ghosts of lye and rotted apples. I had lost experimental preparations many times before, and this one had not been either complex or in a greatly advanced state. it would take no more than half an hour to replace it, setting out fresh bits of bread and other samples. I wouldn't do it, though; there wasn't enough time. Jamie was clearly beginning to gather his militiamen; it could be no more than a few days before they would depart for Salisbury, to report to Governor Tryon. Before we would departfor I certainly meant to accompany them.

  it occurred to me, quite suddenly, that there hadn't been enough time to finish the experiment when I had set it up to begin with. I had known we would leave soon; even if I got immediate good growth, I would not have had time to collect, dry, purify ... I'd known that, consciouslyand yet I had done it anyway, gone right on with my plans, pursuing my routines, as though life were still settled and predictable, as though nothing whatever might threaten the tenor of my days. As though acting might make it true.

  "You really are a fool, Beauchamp," I murmured, pushing a curl of hair tiredly behind one ear. I went out, shutting the door of the surgery firmly behind me, and went to negotiate peace between Mrs. Bug and Mrs. Chisholm,

  SUPERFICIALLY, peace in the house was restored, but an atmosphere of uneasiness remained. The women went about their work tense and tight-lipped; even Lizzie, the soul of patience, was heard to say "Tcha!" when one of the children spilled a pan of buttermilk across the steps.

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  Even outside, the air seemed to crackle, as though a lightning storm were near. As I went to and fro from sheds to house, I kept glancing over my shoulder at the sky above Roan Mountain, half-expecting to see the loom of thunderheads-and yet the sky was still the pale slate-blue of late autumn, clouded with nothing more than the wisps of mare's tails.

  I found myself distracted, unable to settle to anything. I drifted from one task to another, leaving a pile of onions half-braided in the pantry, a bowl of beans half-shelled on the stoop, a pair of torn breeks lying on the settle, neethe dangling from its thread. Again and again, I found myself crossing the yard, coming from nowhere in particular, bound upon no specific errand.

  I glanced up each time I passed the cross, as though expecting it either to have disappeared since my last trip, or to have acquired some explanatory notice, neatly pinned to the wood. If not Iesus Nazoreum Rex ludeus, then sometbing. But no. The cross remained, two simple sticks of pinewood, bound together by a rope. Nothing more. Except, of course, that a cross is always something more. I just didn't know what it might be, this time.

  Everyone else seemed to share my distraction. Mrs. Bug, disedified by the conflict with Mrs. Chisholm, declined to make any lunch, and retired to her room, ostensibly suffering from headache, though she refused to let me treat it. Lizzie, normally a fine handwith food, burned the stew, and billows of black smoke stained the oak beams above the hearth.

  At least the Muellers were safely out of the way. They had brought a large cask of beer with them, and had retired after breakfast back to Brianna's cabin, where they appeared to be entertaining themselves very nicely.

  The bread refused to rise. Jemmy had begun a new tooth, a hard one, and screamed and screamed and screamed. The incessant screeching twisted everyone's nerves to the snapping point, including mine. I should have liked to suggest that Bree take him away somewhere out of earshot, but I saw the deep smudges of fatigue under her eyes and the strain on her face, and hadn't the heart. Mrs. Chisholm, tried by the constant battles of her own offspring, had no such compunction.

  "For God's sake, why do ye no tak' that bairn awa to your own cabin, lass?" she snapped. "If he mun greet so, there's no need for us all to hear it!"

  Bree's eyes narrowed dangerously.

  "Because," she hissed, "your two oldest sons are sitting in my cabin, drinking with the Germans. I wouldn't want to disturb them!"

  Mrs. Chisholm's face went bright red. Before she could speak, I quickly stepped forward and snatched the baby away from Bree.

  "I'll take him out for a bit of a walk, shall I?" I said, hoisting him onto my shoulder. "I could use some fresh air. Why don't you go up and lie down on my bed for a bit, darling?" I said to Bree. "You look just a little tired."

  "Uh-huh," she said. One corner of her mouth twitched. "And the Pope's a little bit Catholic, too. Thanks, Mama." She kissed Jemmy's hot, wet cheek, and vanished toward the stairwell.

  Mrs. Chisholm scowled horridly after her, but caught my eye, coughed, and called to her three-year-old twins, who were busily demolishing my sewing basket.

  The cold air outside was a relief, after the hot, smoky confines of the kitchen,

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  and Jemmy quieted a little, though he continued to squirm and whine. He rubbed his hot, damp face against my neck, and gnawed ferociously on the cloth of my shawl, fussing and drooling.

  I paced slowly to and fro, patting him gently and humming "Lilibuleero" under my breath. I found the exercise soothing, in spite of Jernmy's crankiness. There was only one of him, after all, and he couldn't talk.

  "You're a male, too," I said to him, pulling his woolen cap over the soft bright down that feathered his skull. "As a sex, you have your defects, but I will say that catfighting isn't one of them."

  Fond as I was of individual women-Bree, Marsali, Lizzie, and even Mrs. Bug-I had to admit that taken en masse, I found men much easier to deal with. Whether this was the fault of my rather unorthodox upbringing-I had been raised largely by my Uncle Lamb and his Persian manservant, Firouz-my experiences in the War, or simply an aspect of my own unconventional personality, I found men soothingly logical and-with a few striking exceptionspleasingly direct.

  I turned to look at the house. It stood serene amid the spruce and chestnut trees, elegantly proportioned, soundly built. A face showed at one of the windows. The face stuck out its tongue and pressed flat against the pane, crossing its eyes above squashed nose and cheeks. High-pitched feminine voices and the sound of banging came to me faintly through
the cold, clean air.

  "Hmm," I said.

  Reluctant as I was to leave home again so soon, and little as I liked the idea of Jamie being involved in armed conflicts of any kind, the thought of going off to live in the company of twenty or thirty unshaven, reeking men for a week or two had developed a certain undeniable attraction. If it meant sleeping on the ground ...

  "Into each life some rain must fall," I told Jemmy with a sigh. "But I suppose you're just learning that now, aren't you, poor thing?"

  "Grinnh!" he said, and drew himself up into a ball to escape the pain of his emergent teeth, his knees digging painfully into my side. I settled him more comfortably on my hip, and gave him an index finger to chew on. His gums were hard and knobbly; I could feel the tender spot where the new tooth was coming in, swollen and hot under the skin. A piercing shriek came from the house, followed by the sound of shouts and running feet.

  "You know," I said conversationally, "I think a bit of whisky would be just the thing for that, don't you?" and withdrawing the finger, I tucked Jemmy up against my shoulder. I ducked past the cross and into the shelter of the big red spruce-just in time, as the door of the house burst open and Mrs. Bug's penetrating voice rose like a trumpet on the chilly air.

  IT WAS A LONG WAY to the whisky clearing, but I didn't mind. It was blessedly quiet in the forest, and Jemmy, lulled by the movement, finally relaxed into a doze, limp and heavy as a little sandbag in my arms.

  So late in the year, all the deciduous trees had lost their leaves; the trail was ankle-deep in a crackling carpet of brown and gold, and maple seeds whirled

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  past on the wind, brushing my skirt with a whisper of wings. A raven flew past, high above. It gave an urgent, raucous cry, and the baby jerked in my arms. "Hush," I said, hugging him close. "It's nothing, lovey; just a bird."

  Still, I looked after the raven, and listened for another. They were birds of portent-or so said Highland superstition. One raven was an omen of change; two were good fortune; three were ill. I tried to dismiss such notions from my mind-but Nayawenne had told me the raven was my guide, my spirit animaland I never saw the big, black shadows pass overhead without a certain shiver up the spine.

  Jemmy stirred, gave a brief squawk, and fell back into silence. I patted him and resumed my climb, wondering as I made my way slowly up the mountain, what animal might be his guide?

  The animal spirit chose you, Nayawenne told me, not the other way around. You must pay careful attention to signs and portents, and wait for your animal to manifest itself to you. Ian's animal was the wolf; Jamie's the bear--or so the Tuscarora said. I had wondered at the time what one was supposed to do if chosen by something ignominious like a shrew or a dung beetle, but was too polite to ask.

  Only one raven. I could still hear it, though it was out of sight, but no echoing cry came from the firs behind me. An omen of change.

  "You could have saved yourself the trouble," I said to it, under my breath so as not to wake the baby. "Hardly as though I needed telling, is it?"

  I climbed slowly, listening to the sigh of the wind and the deeper sound of my own breath. At this season, change was in the air itself, the scents of ripeness and death borne on the breeze, and the breath of winter in its chill. Still, the rhythms of the turning earth brought change that was expected, ordained; body and mind met it with knowledge and-on the whole-with peace. The changes coming were of a different order, and one calculated to disturb the soul.

  I glanced back at the house; from this height, I could see only the corner of the roof, and the drifting smoke from the chimney.

  "What do you think?" I said softly, Jemmy's head beneath my chin, round and warm in its knitted cap. "Will it be yours? Will you live here, and your children after you?"

  It would be a very different life, I thought, from the one he might have led. If Brianna had risked the stones to take him back-but she had not, and so the little boy's fate lay here. Had she thought of that? I wondered. That by staying, she chose not only for herself, but him? Chose war and ignorance, disease and danger, but had risked all that, for the sake of his father-for Roger. I was not entirely sure it had been the right choice-but it hadn't been my choice to make.

  Still, I reflected, there was no way of imagining beforehand what having a child was like-no power of the mind was equal to the knowledge of just what the birth of a child could do, wresting lives and wrenching hearts.

  "And a good thing, too," I said to Jemmy. "No one in their right mind would do it, otherwise."

  My sense of agitation had faded by now, soothed by the wind and the peace

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  of the leafless wood. The whisky clearing, as we called it, was hidden from the trail. Jamie had spent days searching the slopes above the Ridge, before finding a spot that met his requirements.

  Or spots, rather. The malting floor was built in a small clearing at the foot of a hollow; the still was farther up the mountain in a clearing of its own, near a small spring that provided fresh, clear water. The malting floor was out of direct sight of the trail, but not difficult to get to.

  "No point in hiding it," Jamie had said, explaining his choice to me, "when anyone wi' a nose could walk to it blindfolded."

  True enough; even now, when there was no grain actively fermenting in the shed or toasting on the floor, a faintly fecund, smoky scent lingered in the air. When grain was "working," the musty, pungent scent of fermentation was perceptible at a distance, but when the sprouting barley was spread on the floor above a slow fire, a thin haze of smoke hung over the clearing, and the smell was strong enough to reach Fergus's cabin, when the wind was right.

  No one was at the malting floor now, of course. When a new batch was working, either Marsali or Fergus would be here to tend it, but for the moment, the roofed floor lay empty, smooth boards darkened to gray by use and weather. There was a neat stack of firewood piled nearby, though, ready for use.

  I went close enough to see what sort of wood it was; Fergus liked hickory, both because it split more easily, and for the sweet taste it gave the malted grain. Jamie, deeply traditional in his approach to whisky, would use nothing but oak. I touched a chunk of split wood; Aride grain, light wood, thin bark. I smiled. Jamie had been here recently, then.

  Normally, a small keg of whisky was kept at the malting floor, both for the sake of hospitality and caution. "If someone should come upon the lass alone there, best she have something to give them," Jamie had said. "It's known what we do there; best no one should try to make Marsali tell them where the brew is." It wasn't the best whisky-generally a very young, raw spirit-but certainly good enough either for uninvited visitors or a teething child.

  "You haven't got any taste buds yet, anyway, so what's the odds?" I murmured to Jemmy, who stirred and smacked his lips in his sleep, screwing up his tiny face in a scowl.

  I hunted about, but there was no sign of the small whisky keg either in its usual place behind the bags of barley or inside the pile of firewood. Perhaps taken away for refilling, perhaps stolen. No great matter, in either case.

  I turned to the north, past the malting floor, took ten steps and turned right. The stone of the mountain jutted out here, a solid block of granite thrusting upward from the growth of turpelo and buttonbush. Only it wasn't solid. Two slabs of stone leaned together, the open crack below them masked by holly bushes. I pulled my shawl over Jemmy's face to protect him from the sharp-edged leaves, and squeezed carefully behind them, ducking down to go through the cleft.

  The stone face fell away in a crumple of huge boulders on the far side of the cleft, with'saplings and undergrowth sprouting willy-nilly in the crevices between the rocks. From below, it looked impassable, but from above, a faint trail was visible, threading down to another small clearing. Hardly a clearing; no

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  more than a gap in the trees, where a clear spring bubbled from the rock and disappeared again into the earth. In summer, it was invisi
ble even from above, shielded by the leafy growth of the trees around it.

  Now, on the verge of winter, the white glimmer of the rock by the spring was easily visible through the leafless scrim of alder and mountain ash. Jamie had found a large, pate boulder, and rolled it to the head of the spring, where he had scratched the form of a cross upon it, and said a prayer, consecrating the spring to our use. I had thought at the time of making a joke equating whisky with holy water-thinking of Father Kenneth and the baptisms-but had on second thoughts refrained; I wasn't so sure Jamie would think it a joke.

  I made my way cautiously down the slope, the faint trail leading through the boulders, and finally round an outcrop of rock, before clebouching into the spring clearing. I was warm from the walking, but it was cold enough to numb my fingers where I gripped the edges of my shawl. And Jamie was standing at the edge of the spring in nothing but his shirt.

  I stopped dead, hidden by a scrubby growth of evergreens.

  It wasn't his state of undress that halted me, but rather something in the look of him. He looked tired, but that was only reasonable, since he had been up and gone so early.

  The ragged breeks he wore for riding lay puddled on the ground nearby, his belt and its impedimenta neatly cofled beside them. My eye caught a dark blotch of color, half-hidden in the grass beyond; the blue and brown cloth of his hunting kilt. As I watched, he pulled the shirt over his head and dropped it, then knelt down naked by the spring and splashed water over his arms and face.

  His clothes were mud-streaked from riding, but he wasn't filthy, by any means. A simple hand-and-face wash would have sufficed, I thought-and could have been accomplished in much greater comfort by the kitchen hearth.

  He stood up, though, and taking the small bucket from the edge of the spring, scooped up cold water and poured it deliberately over himself, closing his eyes and gritting his teeth as it streamed down his chest and legs. I could see his balls draw up tight against his body, looking for shelter as the icy water sluiced through the auburn bush of his pubic hair and dripped off his cock.

  "Your grandfather has lost his bloody mind," I whispered to Jemmy, who stirred and grimaced in his sleep, but took no note of ancestral idiosyncrasies,

  I knew Jamie wasn't totally impervious to cold; I could see him gasp and shudder from where I stood in the shelter of the rock, and I shivered in sympathy. A Highlander born and bred, he simply didn't regard cold, hunger, or general discomfort as anything to take account of. Even so, this seemed to be taking cleanliness to an extreme.

  He took a deep, gasping breath, and poured water over himself a second time. When he bent to scoop up the third bucketfiil, it began to dawn on me what he was doing.

  A surgeon scrubs before operating for the sake of cleanliness, of course, but that isn't all there is to it. The ritual of soaping the hands, scrubbing the nails, rinsing the skin, repeated and repeated to the point of pain, is as much a mental activity as a physical one. The act of washing oneself in this obsessive way serves to focus the mind and prepare the spirit; one is washing away external preoccu-

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  pation, sloughing petty distraction, just as surely as one scrubs away germs and dead skin.

  I had done it often enough to recognize this particular ritual when I saw it. Jamie was not merely washing; he was cleansing himself, using the cold water not only as solvent but as mortification, He was preparing himself for something, and the notion made a small, cold trickle run down my own spine, chilly as the spring water.

  Sure enough, after the third bucketful, he set it down and shook himself, dro lets flying from the wet ends of his hair into the dry grass like a spatter of p

  rain. No more than half-dry, he pulled the shirt back over his head, and turned to the west, where the sun lay low between the mountains. He stood still for a moment-very still.

  The light streamed through the leafless trees, bright enough that from where I stood, I could see him now only in silhouette, light glowing through the damp linen of his shirt, the darkness of his body a shadow within. He stood with his head lifted, shoulders up, a man listening.

  For what? I tried to still my own breathing, and pressed the baby's capped head gently into my shoulder, to keep him from waking. I listened, too.

  I could hear the sound of the woods, a constant soft sigh of needle and branch. There was little wind, and I could hear the water of the spring nearby, a muted rush past stone and root. I heard quite clearly the beating of my own heart, and Jemmy's breath against my neck, and suddenly I felt afraid, as though the sounds were too loud, as though they might draw the attention of something dangerous to us.

  I froze, not moving at all, trying not to breathe, and like a rabbit under a bush, to become part of the wood around me. Jemmy's pulse beat blue, a tender vein across his temple, and I bent my head over him, to hide it.

  Jamie said something aloud in Gaelic. It sounded like a challenge-or perhaps a greeting. The words seemed vaguely familiar-but there was no one there; the clearing was empty. The air felt suddenly colder, as though the light had dimmed; a cloud crossing the face of the sun, I thought, and looked upbut there were no clouds; the sky was clear. Jernmy moved suddenly in my arms, startled, and I clutched him tighter, willing him to make no sound.

  Then the air stirred, the cold faded, and my sense of apprehension passed. Jamie hadn't moved. Now the tension went out of him, and his shoulders relaxed. He moved just a little, and the setting sun lit his shirt in a nimbus of gold, and caught his hair in a blaze of sudden fire.

  He took his dirk from its discarded sheath, and with no hesitation, drew the edge across the fingers of his right hand. I could see the thin dark line across his fingertips, and bit my lips. He waited a moment for the blood to well up, then shook his hand with a sudden hard flick of the wrist, so that droplets of blood flew from his fingers and struck the standing stone at the head of the pool.

  He laid the dirk beneath the stone, and crossed himself with the bloodstreaked fingers of his right hand. He knelt then, very slowly, and bowed his head over folded hands.

  I'd seen him pray now and then, of course, but always in public, or at least with the knowledge that I was there. Now he plainly thought himself alone,

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  and to watch him kneeling so, stained with blood and his soul given over, made me feel that I spied on an act more private than any intimacy of the body. I Would have moved or spoken, and yet to interrupt seemed a sort of desecration. I kept silent, but found I was no longer a spectator; my own mind had jamed to prayer unintended.