An Echo in the Bone, Page 63

  I walked with him across the parade ground to St. Clair’s house. There were thunderheads rising out on the lake, charcoal black against the blazing sky, and I could smell ozone in the air. It seemed a suitable portent.

  SOON. EVERYTHING said, Soon. The fragmentary reports and rumors that flew like pigeons through the fort, the closeness of the sultry air, the occasional boom of cannon in the distance, fired for practice—we hoped it was only practice—from the distant picket position called the Old French Lines.

  Everyone was restless, unable to sleep in the heat unless drunk. I wasn’t drunk, and I was restless. Jamie had been gone for more than two hours, and I wanted him. Not because I cared what St. Clair had had to say to the militia. But between heat and exhaustion, we hadn’t made love in more than a week, and I was beginning to suspect that time was growing short. If we were obliged either to fight or to flee in the next few days, heaven only knew how long it might be before we had a private moment again.

  I had been strolling round the parade ground, keeping an eye on St. Clair’s house, and when at last I saw him come out, I made my way toward him, walking slowly to allow him to take leave of the other officers who had come out with him. They stood for a moment close together, the slump of shoulders and angry tilt of heads telling me that the effect of their protests had been exactly what Jamie had predicted.

  He walked slowly away, hands behind him, head bent in thought. I came quietly alongside and tucked my hand into the crook of his elbow, and he looked down at me, surprised but smiling.

  “Ye’re out late, Sassenach. Is aught amiss?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “It just seemed like a nice evening for a walk in a garden.”

  “In a garden,” he repeated, giving me a sideways glance.

  “The commandant’s garden, to be exact,” I said, and touched the pocket of my apron. “I, um, have the key.” There were a number of small gardens inside the fort, most of them practical plots meant for the production of vegetables. The formal garden behind the commandant’s quarters had been designed by the French many years before, though, and while it had since been neglected and overrun by the seeds of airborne weeds, it had one rather interesting aspect—a high wall surrounding it, with a gate that locked. I’d thoughtfully abstracted the key earlier in the day from General St. Clair’s cook, who had come to me for a throat wash. I would put it back when I called on him the next day to check his sore throat.

  “Ah,” said Jamie thoughtfully, and turned obligingly back toward the commandant’s house.

  The gate was round the back, out of view, and we slipped hastily down the alley that led past the garden wall, while the guard outside St. Clair’s house was talking to a passerby. I closed the gate quietly behind us, locked it, and pocketed the key, then went to Jamie’s arms.

  He kissed me slowly, then raised his head, eyeing me.

  “I might need a bit of help, mind.”

  “That can be arranged,” I assured him. I laid a hand on his knee, where the kilt had folded up, exposing flesh. I moved a thumb lightly, liking the soft, wiry feel of the hairs on his leg. “Um … did you have any particular sort of help in mind?”

  I could smell him in spite of his careful washing, the dried sweat of his labor on his skin spiced with dust and wood chips. He’d taste of it, too, sweet and salt and musk.

  I slid my hand up his thigh beneath the kilt, feeling him shift and flex, the sudden groove of muscle smooth beneath my fingers. To my surprise, though, he stopped me, grasping my hand through the fabric.

  “Thought you wanted help,” I said.

  “Touch yourself, a nighean,” he said softly.

  That was a trifle disconcerting, particularly given that we were standing in an overgrown garden no more than twenty feet from an alleyway much patronized by militiamen looking for a place to get quietly drunk. Still… I leaned back against the wall and obligingly pulled the shift above my knee. I held it there, gently stroking the skin of my inner thigh—which was, in fact, very soft. I drew the other hand up the line of my stays, to the top, where my breasts swelled out against the thin, damp cotton.

  His eyes were heavy; he was still half drunk with fatigue but becoming more alert by the moment. He made a small interrogative sound.

  “Ever hear the one about sauce for the gander?” I said, twiddling thoughtfully with the string that held the neckline of my shift.

  “What?” That had brought him out of the haze; he was starkly awake, bloodshot eyes wide open.

  “You heard me.”

  “Ye want me to … to—”

  “I do.”

  “I couldna do that! In front of you?”

  “If I can do it in front of you, you can certainly return the favor. Of course, if you’d rather I stopped…” I let my hand fall—slowly—from the string. Paused, thumb very lightly ticking to and fro, to and fro, over my breast like the hand of a metronome. I could feel my nipple, round and hard as a musket ball; it must be visible through the fabric, even in this light.

  He swallowed; I heard it.

  I smiled and let my hand fall farther, taking hold of the hem of my skirt. And paused, one eyebrow raised.

  As though hypnotized, he reached down and took hold of the hem of his kilt.

  “That’s a good lad,” I murmured, leaning back on one hand. I raised one knee and set my foot on the wall, letting the skirt fall away, baring my thigh. Reached down.

  He said something under his breath in Gaelic. I couldn’t tell if it was an observation on the imminent prospect before him or whether he was commending his soul to God. In either case, he lifted his kilt.

  “What do you mean, you need help?” I asked, eyeing him.

  He made a small, urgent noise indicating that I should continue, so I did.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked after a moment, fascinated.

  “I’m not thinking.”

  “Yes, you are; I can see it on your face.”

  “Ye don’t want to know.” Sweat was beginning to gleam across his cheekbones, and his eyes had gone to slits.

  “Oh, yes, I do—oh, wait. If you’re thinking about someone other than me, I don’t want to know.”

  He opened his eyes at that, and fixed me with a look that ran straight up between my quivering legs. He didn’t stop.

  “Oh,” I said, a little breathless myself. “Well… when you can talk again, I do want to know, then.”

  He went on looking at me, with a gaze that now struck me as markedly akin to that of a wolf eyeing a fat sheep. I shifted a little against the wall and waved away a cloud of gnats. He was breathing fast, and I could smell his sweat, musky and acrid.

  “You,” he said, and I saw his throat move as he swallowed. He crooked the index finger of his free hand at me.

  “Come here.”

  “I—”

  “Now.”

  Mesmerized, I slid away from the wall and took two steps toward him. Before I could say or do anything else, there was a flurry of kilt and a large, hot hand was gripping me by the scruff of the neck. Then I was lying on my back in long grass and wild tobacco, Jamie solidly inside me, and the hand was over my mouth—a good thing, I realized dimly, as there were voices coming toward us along the alley on the other side of the garden wall.

  “Play wi’ fire and ye may get singed, Sassenach,” he whispered in my ear. He had me pinned like a butterfly and, with a solid grip on my wrists, kept me from moving, even though I was jerking and writhing under him, slippery and desperate. Very slowly, he lowered himself so his full weight rested on me.

  “Ye want to know what I was thinking, do ye?” he murmured in my ear.

  “Mmp!”

  “Well, I’ll tell ye, a nighean, but—” He paused in order to lick my earlobe.

  “NNG!”

  The hand tightened warningly over my mouth. The voices were near enough to make out words now: a small party of young militiamen, half drunk and in search of whores. Jamie’s teeth closed delicately on my ear, and h
e began to nibble thoughtfully, his breath warm and tickling. I wriggled madly, but he wasn’t budging.

  He gave the same thorough treatment to the other ear before the men had moved out of earshot, then kissed the end of my nose, taking his hand off my mouth at last.

  “Ah. Now, where was I? Oh, aye—ye wanted to hear what I was thinking of.”

  “I’ve changed my mind.” I was panting shallowly, as much from the weight on my chest as from desire. Both were considerable.

  He made a Scottish noise indicating deep amusement and tightened his grip on my wrists.

  “You started it, Sassenach—but I’ll finish it.” Whereupon he put his lips to my wet ear and told me in a slow whisper exactly what he’d been thinking. Not moving an inch while he did so, save to put his hand back over my mouth when I began to call him names.

  Every muscle in my body was jumping like a snapped rubber band when he finally moved. In one sudden motion, he raised himself and slid back, then forward hard.

  When I could see and hear again, I realized that he was laughing, still balanced above me.

  “Put ye out of your misery, did I, Sassenach?”

  “You…” I croaked. Words failed me, but two could play at this game. He hadn’t moved, in part to torture me—but in equal part because he couldn’t; not without ending it at once. I flexed my soft, slick muscles once around him, slowly, gently—then did it three times, fast. He made a gratifying noise and lost it, jerking and groaning, the pulse of it exciting an echo in my own flesh. Very slowly, he lowered himself, sighing like a deflated bladder, and lay beside me, breathing slowly, eyes closed.

  “Now you can sleep,” I said, stroking his hair. He smiled without opening his eyes, breathed deep, and his body relaxed, settling into the earth.

  “And next time, you bloody Scot,” I whispered in his ear, “I’ll tell you what I was thinking.”

  “Oh, God,” he said, and laughed without making a sound. “D’ye remember the first time I kissed ye, Sassenach?”

  I lay there for some time, feeling the bloom of sweat on my skin and the reassuring weight of him curled asleep in the grass beside me, before I finally remembered.

  “I said I was a virgin, not a monk. If I find I need help… I’ll ask.”

  IAN MURRAY WOKE from a deep and dreamless sleep to the sound of a bugle. Rollo, lying close beside him, lurched upright with a startled, deep WOOF!, and glared round for the threat, hackles raised.

  Ian scrambled up, as well, one hand on his knife, the other on the dog.

  “Hush,” he said under his breath, and the dog relaxed fractionally, though he kept up a low, rolling growl, just below the range of human hearing—Ian felt it, a constant vibration in the huge body under his hand.

  Now he was awake, he heard them easily. A subterranean stirring through the wood, as submerged—but quite as vibrant—as Rollo’s growl. A very large body of men, a camp, beginning to wake at no very great distance. How had he managed not to perceive them the night before? He sniffed, but the wind was wrong; he picked up no scent of smoke—though now he saw smoke, thin threads of it rising against the pale dawn sky. A lot of campfires. A very big camp.

  He had been rolling up his blanket as he listened. There was nothing more to his own camp, and within seconds he had faded into the brush, blanket tied to his back and his rifle in hand, the dog huge and silent at his heel.

  THE BRITISH ARE COMING

  Three Mile Point, New York Colony

  July 3, 1777

  THE DARK PATCH of sweat between Brigadier Fraser’s broad shoulders had the shape of the Isle of Man on the map in the old schoolroom at home. Lieutenant Greenleaf’s coat was entirely soaked with sweat, the body almost black, and only the faded sleeves showing red.

  William’s own coat was less faded—shamefully new and bright, in fact—but likewise clung to his back and shoulders, heavy with the humid exhalations of his body. His shirt was wringing; it had been stiff with salt when he put it on a few hours before, the constant sweating of the previous days’ exertion crystallized in the linen, but the stiffness had washed away as the sun rose, borne on a flood of fresh sweat.

  Looking up at the hill the brigadier proposed to climb, he had had some hope of coolness at the summit, but the exertion of the climb had canceled out any benefit of altitude. They had left camp just after dawn, the air then so delicious in its freshness that he’d longed to run naked through the woods like an Indian, catch fish from the lake, and eat a dozen of them for his breakfast, fried in cornmeal, fresh and hot.

  This was Three Mile Point, so called because it was three miles south of the fort at Ticonderoga. The brigadier, leading the advance force, had staged his troops here and proposed to climb to a height with Lieutenant Greenleaf, an engineer, to survey the terrain before moving further.

  William had been assigned to the brigadier a week earlier, to his pleasure. The brigadier was a friendly, sociable commander, but not in the same way as General Burgoyne. Though William would not have cared had the man been a tartar—he would be in the forward lines; that was all that mattered.

  He was carrying some of the engineer’s equipment, as well as a couple of canteens of water and the brigadier’s dispatch box. He helped to set up the surveying tripod and obligingly held measuring rods at intervals, but at length it was done, everything recorded, and the brigadier, having conferred with Greenleaf at some length, sent the engineer back to camp.

  The immediate business concluded, the brigadier seemed disinclined to descend at once, instead walking slowly about, appearing to enjoy the slight breeze, and then settling on a rock, uncorking his canteen with a sigh of pleasure.

  “Sit, William,” he said, motioning William to his own rock. They sat in silence for a bit, listening to the sounds of the forest.

  “I know your father,” the brigadier said suddenly, then smiled, a charming smile. “Everyone tells you that, I suppose.”

  “Well, yes, they do,” William admitted. “Or if not him, my uncle.”

  General Fraser laughed. “A considerable burden of family history to be borne,” he commiserated. “But I’m sure you bear it nobly.”

  William didn’t know what to say and made a politely indeterminate noise in response. The brigadier laughed again and passed him the canteen. The water was so warm that he barely felt it pass down his throat, but it smelled fresh and he could feel it slake his thirst.

  “We were together at the Plains of Abraham. Your father and I, I mean. Did he ever tell you about that night?”

  “Not a great deal,” William said, wondering if he was doomed to meet every soldier who had fought on that field with James Wolfe.

  “We came down the river at night, you know. All of us petrified. Especially me.” The brigadier looked out over the lake, shaking his head a little at the memory. “Such a river, the St. Lawrence. General Burgoyne mentioned that you had been in Canada. Did you see it?”

  “Not a great deal, sir. I traveled overland for the most part on the way to Quebec, and then came down the Richelieu. My father told me about the St. Lawrence, though,” he felt obliged to add. “He said it was a noble river.”

  “Did he tell you that I nearly broke his hand? He was next to me in the boat, and as I leaned out to call to the French sentry, hoping that my voice would not break, he gripped my hand to steady me. I felt his bones grinding, but under the circumstances didn’t really notice until I let go and heard him gasp.”

  William saw the brigadier’s eyes drift to his own hands and the small ripple across his wide brow, not quite puzzlement but the look of someone trying unconsciously to fit memory to present circumstance. His father had long, slender, elegant hands with fine bones. William’s fingers were long, but his hands were vulgarly large, broad of palm and brute-knuckled.

  “He—Lord John—he is my stepfather,” he blurted, then blushed painfully, embarrassed both by the admission and by whatever freak of mind had made him say it.

  “Oh? Oh, yes,” the brigadier sai
d vaguely. “Yes, of course.”

  Had the brigadier thought he spoke from pride, pointing out the ancientness of his own bloodline?

  The only comfort was that his face—the brigadier’s face, too—was so red from exertion that the blush could not show. The brigadier, as though responding to the thought of heat, struggled out of his coat, then unbuttoned his waistcoat and flapped it, nodding to William that he might do likewise—which he did, sighing with relief.

  The conversation turned casually to other campaigns: those the brigadier had fought in, those William had (mostly) heard of. He became gradually aware that the brigadier was gauging him, weighing his experience and his manner. He was uncomfortably aware that the former was inglorious; was General Fraser aware of what had happened during the Battle of Long Island? Word did travel fast in the service.

  Eventually, there was a pause in the conversation and they sat companionably in their shirtsleeves for a bit, listening to the soughing of the trees overhead. William wished to say something in his own defense but could think of no way to approach the matter gracefully. But if he did not speak, explain what had happened… well, there was no good explanation. He’d been a booby, that was all.

  “General Howe speaks well of your intelligence and boldness, William,” the brigadier said, as though continuing their earlier conversation, “though he said he thought you had not had opportunity as yet to show your talent for command.”

  “Ah… no, sir,” William replied, sweating.

  The brigadier smiled.

  “Well, we must be sure to remedy that lack, must we not?” He stood up, groaning slightly as he stretched and shrugged his way back into his coat. “You’ll dine with me later. We shall discuss it with Sir Francis.”

  CONFLAGRATION

  Fort Ticonderoga

  July 1, 1777

  WHITCOMB HAD COME back. With several British scalps, according to popular rumor. Having met Benjamin Whitcomb and one or two of the other Long Hunters, I was prepared to believe this. They spoke civilly enough, and they were far from the only men at the fort who dressed in rough leather and ragged homespun or whose skin shrank tight to raw bones. But they were the only men with the eyes of animals.

  The next day, Jamie was called to the commandant’s house and didn’t come back until after dark.

  A man was singing by one of the courtyard fires near St. Clair’s quarters, and I was sitting on an empty salt-pork barrel listening, when I saw Jamie pass by on the far side of the fire, heading for our barracks. I rose quickly and caught him up.

  “Come away,” he said softly, and led me toward the commandant’s garden. There was no echo of our last encounter in this garden, though I was terribly aware of his body, of the tension in it and the beating of his heart. Bad news, then.

  “What’s happened?” I asked, my voice low.

  “Whitcomb caught a British regular and brought him in. He wouldna say anything, of course—but St. Clair was canny enough to put Andy Tracy in a cell with the man, saying he was accused of being a spy—that Tracy was a spy, I mean.”

  “That was bright,” I said with approval. Lieutenant Andrew Hodges Tracy was an Irishman, bluff and charming, a born liar—and if anyone could winkle information out of someone without the use of force, Tracy would have been my own first choice. “I take it he found out something?”

  “He did. We also had in three British deserters—Germans. St. Clair wanted me to talk to them.”

  Which he had. The information brought by the deserters might be suspect—save that it correlated with the information tricked from the captured British soldier. The solid information for which St. Clair had been waiting for the last three weeks.

  General Carleton had remained in Canada with a small force; it was indeed General John Burgoyne, in charge of a large invasion army, who was heading toward the fort. He was reinforced by General von Riedesel, himself in command of seven Brunswick regiments, plus a light infantry battalion and four companies of dragoons. And his vanguard was less than four days’ march away.

  “Not too good,” I observed, taking a deep breath.

  “It is not,” he agreed. “Worse, Burgoyne has Simon Fraser as brigadier under him. He has the forward command.”