Drums of Autumn, Page 87

  within. I made an incoherent sound of distress, and reached out for him, but he whirled away and stood rigid, back turned to us, in the middle of the room.

  I felt Brianna draw herself upright, heard Ian say, rather stupidly, “Bonnet?” I heard the ticking of the clock on the sideboard, felt the draft from the door. I was dimly aware of all these things, but had no eyes for anything but Jamie.

  I pushed back the bench, stumbled to my feet. He stood as though rooted into the floor, fists clenched into his belly like a man gut-shot, trying to hold back the inevitable fatal spill of his insides.

  I should be able to do something, to say something. I should be able to help them, to take care of them. But I could do nothing. I could not help one without betraying the other—had already betrayed them both. I had sold Jamie’s honor to keep him safe, and the doing of it had taken Roger and destroyed Bree’s happiness.

  I could go to neither of them now. All I could do was to stand there, feeling my heart crumble into small, jagged chunks.

  Bree left me, and walked quietly around the table, across the room, around Jamie. She stood in front of him, looking up into his face, her own set like marble, cold as a saint’s.

  “Damn you,” she said, scarcely audible. “Damn you very much, you bastard. I’m sorry I ever saw you.”

  PART ELEVEN

  Pas du Tout

  51

  BETRAYAL

  October 1769

  Roger opened his eyes and threw up. Or rather, down. It didn’t matter; The burning rush of bile through his nose and the trickle of vomitus that ran into his hair were unimportant by comparison with the agony in head and groin.

  A thumping swerve of movement jarred him, shooting kaleidoscopic colors from crotch to brain. A damp smell of canvas filled his nose. Then a voice spoke somewhere near, and formless panic took sudden, jagged shape among the colors.

  Gloriana! They’d got him! He lurched in reflex, brought up short by a searing jolt through his temples—but brought up a split-second earlier by something round his wrists. Tied, he was tied up in the hold.

  The shape of panic blew up bold and black against his mind. Bonnet. They’d caught him, taken back the stones. And now they’d kill him.

  He jerked convulsively, yanking at his wrists, teeth clenched against the pain. The deck dropped beneath him with a startled snort, and he slammed down hard.

  He vomited again, but his stomach was empty. He retched, ribs grating with each spasm against the canvas-wrapped bundles he lay across. Not sails; not a hold. Not the Gloriana, not a ship at all. A horse. He was tied hand and foot, belly down across a fucking horse!

  The horse jolted on a few more steps, then stopped. Voices muttered, hands fumbled at him, then he was pulled off roughly and dropped on his feet. He fell down at once, unable either to stand or to break his fall.

  He lay half doubled on the ground, concentrating on breathing. Without the jouncing, it was easier. Nobody troubled him, and gradually he began to be aware of his surroundings.

  Awareness didn’t help much. There were damp leaves under his cheek, cool and smelling of sweet rot. He cracked a cautious eye. Sky above, an impossible deep color, between blue and purple. The sound of trees, the rush of nearby water.

  Everything seemed to be revolving slowly around him, painfully vivid. He closed his eyes and pressed his hands flat against the ground.

  Jesus, where am I? The voices were talking casually, words half lost in the stamping and whickering of nearby horses. He listened intently but couldn’t make out the words. He felt a moment’s panic at the inability; he couldn’t even put a name to the language.

  There was a large, tender lump behind one ear, another on the back of his head, and a pain that made his temples throb; he’d been hit hard—but when? Had the blows ruptured vessels in his brain, deprived him of language? He opened his eyes all the way, and—with infinite caution—rolled onto his back.

  A square brown face glanced down at him, with no particular expression of interest, then looked back to the horse the man was tending.

  Indians. The shock was so great that he forgot momentarily about his pain, and sat up abruptly. He gasped and put his face on his knees, eyes closed as he fought to keep from passing out again, blood pounding through a splitting head.

  Where was he? He bit his knee, grinding the cloth savagely between his teeth, fighting for memory. Fragments of images came back to him, in mocking bits that stubbornly refused to fit together into sense.

  The creak of boards and the smell of bilges. Blinding sun through panes of glass. Bonnet’s face, and the breathing of whales in the mist, and a little boy named…named…

  Hands clasped in dark and the tang of hops. I thee wed, with my body I thee worship…

  Bree. Brianna. Cold sweat rolled down his cheek and his jaw muscles ached with clenching. The images hopped around in his mind like fleas. Her face, her face, he must not let it go!

  Not gentle, not a gentle face. A nose dead straight and cold blue eyes…no, not cold…

  A hand on his shoulder yanked him from the tortured pursuit of memory into the all too immediate present. It was an Indian, knife in hand. Numb with confusion, Roger simply looked at the man.

  The Indian, a middle-aged man with a bone in his roached hair, and an air of no-nonsense about him, took Roger by his own hair and tilted his head back and forth with a critical air. Confusion evaporated, as it occurred to Roger that he was about to be scalped as he sat there.

  He flung himself backward and lashed out with his feet, catching the Indian in the knees. The man went down with a cry of surprise, and Roger rolled, lurching and stumbling to his feet, running for his life.

  He ran like a drunken spider, spraddle-legged, staggering toward the trees. Shadows, refuge. There were shouts behind him, and the sound of quick feet scattering leaves. Then something jerked his feet from under him and he fell headlong with a bone-shaking thud.

  They had him on his feet before he had his breath back. No good to struggle; there were four of them, including the one Roger had knocked down. That one came toward them, limping, still holding the knife.

  “Not hurt you!” he said crossly. He slapped Roger briskly across the face, then leaned over and sawed through the leather thong that bound Roger’s wrists. With a loud snort, he turned on his heel and went back to the horses.

  The two men holding Roger promptly let go of him and walked off, too, leaving him swaying like a sapling in a high wind.

  Great, he thought blankly, I’m not dead. What the bloody hell?

  No answer to this presenting itself, he rubbed a hand gingerly over his face, discovering several bruises he’d missed earlier, and looked around.

  He stood in a small clearing, surrounded by huge oaks and half-shed hickory trees; the ground was thick with brown and yellow leaves, and the squirrels had left heaps of acorn caps and nut hulls scattered over the ground. He stood on a mountain; the slope of the ground told him that, as the chill air and jewel-deep sky told him the time was near sunset.

  The Indians—there were four, all men—ignored him completely, going about the business of camp-building without a glance in Roger’s direction. He licked dry lips and took a cautious step toward the small stream that burbled over algae-furred rocks a few yards away.

  He drank his fill, though the cold water made his teeth ache; nearly all the teeth were loose on one side of his mouth, and the lining of his cheek was badly cut. He rinsed his face gingerly, with a feeling of déjà vu. Sometime earlier, he had washed and drunk like this, cold water running over emerald rocks…

  Fraser’s Ridge. He sat back on his heels, memory dropping back in place, in large, ugly chunks.

  Brianna, and Claire…and Jamie Fraser. Suddenly the confusing image he had sought so desperately came back unbidden; Brianna’s face, with its broad, clean bones, blue eyes set slantwise above a long, straight nose. But Brianna’s face grown older, weathered to bronze, rough-cut and toughened by masculinity and exper
ience, blue eyes gone black with a murderous rage. Jamie Fraser.

  “You bloody sod,” Roger said softly. “You bloody, fucking sod. You tried to kill me.”

  His initial feeling was one of astonishment—but anger wasn’t far behind.

  He remembered everything now; the meeting in the clearing, the autumn leaves like fire and honey and the blazing man among them; the brown-haired youth—and who the hell was he? The fight—he touched a sore spot under his ribs with a grimace—and the end of it, lying flat in the leaves, sure that he was about to be killed.

  Well, he hadn’t been. He had a dim memory of hearing the man and the boy arguing somewhere over him—one of them had been for killing him on the spot, the other said no—but damned if he knew which one. Then one of them had hit him again, and he remembered nothing more until now.

  And now—he glanced around. The Indians had a fire going, and a clay pot sitting by it. None of them paid him the least attention, though he was sure they were all aware of him.

  Perhaps they had taken him from Fraser and the boy—why, though? More likely, Fraser had given him to the Indians. The man with the knife had said they didn’t mean to hurt him. What did they mean to do with him?

  He looked around. It would be night, soon; already, the distant shadows under the oaks had thickened.

  So what, sport? If you slope off after dark, where’re you going to? The only direction you know is down. The Indians were apparently ignoring him because they were confident that he wasn’t going anywhere.

  Dismissing the uncomfortable truth of this observation, he stood up. First things first. It was the last thing he wanted to do at the moment, but his bladder was bursting. His fingers were slow and clumsy, congested with blood, but he managed to fumble loose the lacing of his breeches.

  His first feeling was one of relief; it wasn’t as bad as it felt. Very sore, but ginger prodding seemed to indicate that he was basically intact and unruptured.

  It was only as he turned back toward the fire that simple relief was succeeded by a burst of rage so pure and blinding as to burn away both pain and fear. On his right wrist was a smudged black oval—a thumbprint, clear and mocking as a signature.

  “Christ,” he said, very softly. Fury burned hot and thick in the pit of his belly. He could taste it, sour in his mouth. He looked down the mountain-side behind him, not knowing whether he faced Fraser’s Ridge or not.

  “Wait for me, bugger,” he said, under his breath. “Both of you—wait for me. I’m coming back.”

  * * *

  Not right away, though. The Indians allowed him to share the food—a sort of stew, which they scooped up with their hands in spite of its near-boiling temperature—but were otherwise indifferent to him. He tried them in English, French—even the small bits of German that he knew, but got no response.

  They did tie him when they lay down to sleep; his ankles were bound and a noose put round his neck, tied to the wrist of one of his captors. Whether from indifference or because there wasn’t one, they didn’t give him a blanket, and he spent the night shivering, huddled as close to the dwindling fire as he could get without choking himself.

  He hadn’t thought he could sleep, but did, exhausted with pain. It was a restless sleep, though, filled with violent, fragmentary dreams and broken by the constant illusion of being strangled.

  In the morning, they set off again. No question of riding this time; he walked, and as fast as he could; the noose was left around his neck, hanging loose, but a short length of rope bound his wrists to the harness leathers of one of the horses. He stumbled and fell several times, but managed to scramble to his feet, in spite of bruises and aching muscles. He had the distinct impression that they would allow him to be dragged without compunction if he didn’t.

  They were heading roughly north; he could tell as much by the sun. Not that that helped a lot, since he had no notion where they had started from. Still, they could be no great distance from Fraser’s Ridge; he couldn’t have been unconscious for more than a few hours. He looked at the churning hooves of the horse beside him, trying to estimate its speed. No more than two or three miles per hour; he was managing to keep up without great strain.

  Landmarks. There was no telling where they meant to take him—or why—but if he was ever to get back, he had to memorize the shape of the terrain through which they passed.

  A cliff, forty feet high and overgrown with shaggy plants, a twisted persimmon tree protruding from a crack in the rock like a jack-in-the-box popping out, covered in bright orange bobbles.

  They emerged onto the crest of a ridge, to a breathtaking view of distant mountains; three sharp peaks, clustered together against a blazing sky, the left one higher than the other two. He could remember that. A stream—a river?—that fell through a small gorge; they drove the horses through a shallow ford, soaking Roger to the waist in icy water.

  The routine of travel lasted for days, moving ever northward. His captors did not talk to him, and by the fourth day he realized that he was beginning to lose track of time, falling into a dreamlike trance, overcome by fatigue and the silence of the mountains. He pulled a long thread from the hem of his coat and began to knot it, one knot for each day, both as some small hold on reality, and as a crude method of estimating the distance traveled.

  He was going back. Whatever it took, he was going back to Fraser’s Ridge.

  * * *

  It was on the eighth day that he found his chance. They were high in the mountains by now. They had crossed through one pass the day before, and come down a steep slope, the ponies grunting, slowing to brace each careful step as the loads on their saddles creaked and shifted.

  Now they were headed up again, and the ponies slowed their pace still further as the ground sloped sharply upward. Roger was able to gain a little ground, to pull even with the pony’s side and cling to the harness leather, letting the tough little beast pull him along.

  The Indians had dismounted, walking and leading the ponies. He kept a narrow eye on the long black scalp lock hanging down the back of the brave leading the pony he clung to. He held on with one hand; the other was busy under cover of a hanging flap of canvas, picking at the knot that bound him to the harness.

  Strand by strand, the hemp came free, until no more than a single thread of rope held him to the pony. He waited, sweat streaming down his ribs from fear and the effort of the climb, rejecting one opportunity after another, worrying from moment to moment that he had left it too late, that they would stop to make camp, that the brave who led his pony would turn and see him, would think to check.

  But they didn’t stop, and the brave didn’t turn. There, he thought, and his heart beat fast, seeing the first pony in the string step out along a narrow deer trail cut into the hillside. The ground fell away sharply below the trail, then leveled out about six feet down. Below was a thickly wooded slope, ideal for concealment.

  One pony, then another, negotiated the narrow stretch of trail, putting down their feet with finicking care. A third, and then it was Roger’s turn. He squeezed in close to the pony’s side, smelling the sweet, pungent foam of its sweat. One step, then another, and they were on the narrow trail.

  He jerked the rope loose and jumped. He hit with a jolt and sank halfway to his knees, sprang up and ran downhill. His shoes came off and he left them behind. He splashed across a tiny creek, scrabbled up its bank on hands and knees, and clambered to his feet, running before he’d got upright.

  He heard calls behind him, then silence, but knew he was pursued. He had no breath to waste; neither would they.

  The landscape slid past in a blur of leaves and rocks as he swung his head from side to side, looking for which way to go, someplace to hide. He chose a grove of birch, burst through and into a sloping meadow, careened down across the slippery grass, bare feet stubbing on roots and rocks. At the far side, he took a second to glance back. Two of them; he saw the round dark heads among the leaves.

  On into another copse, out again, zi
gzagging madly through a field of broken rocks, breath coming hard in his throat. One thing the bloody past had done for him, he thought grimly; improved his wind. Then there was no room for any thought—nothing but the blind instincts of flight.

  And down again, a scrambling drop down the wet, cracked face of a twenty-foot cliff, grabbing at the plants as he half fell past them, roots ripping, hands sinking into pockets of mud, blunting his fingers on unseen rocks. He landed hard at the bottom, bent over, gasping.

  One of them was right behind him, coming backward down the cliff. He snatched off the noose still around his neck, and whipped it hard at the Indian’s hands. The man’s hold slipped; he let go and slithered down, landing askew. Roger flung the noose over the man’s head, gave it a vicious yank, and fled, leaving the man on his knees, choking and clawing at the rope round his neck.

  Trees. He needed cover. He vaulted a fallen log, stumbled and rolled, was up again running. Up, a spruce thicket up a little way. Heart laboring, he jabbed his feet down hard, bounding up the slope.

  He flung himself into the spruces, fighting through the pricks of a million needles, blind, eyes shut against the lashing twigs. Then the ground gave way underneath him and he fell in a blur of sky and branches.

  He hit, half curled, his breath knocked out; had barely sense to curl up further and keep on rolling, bashing off rocks and saplings, setting off showers of dirt and fallen needles, bouncing and smashing his way to the bottom.

  He fetched up with a crash amid a tangle of woody stems, hung a moment, then slid down, to end with a thud. Dazed and bleeding, he lay still for a moment, then rolled painfully onto his side, wiping dirt and blood from his face.

  He looked up, searching. There they were. The two of them, at the top of the slope, coming carefully down beside the ledge he had fallen from.

  On hands and knees, he dived between the woody stems, and crawled for his life. Twigs bent, sharp ends jabbed him, and cascades of dust, dead leaves and insects fell from the higher branches above as he heaved his way forward, forcing a passage through the close-grown stems, twisting and turning, following such openings as he found.

  Hell was his first coherent thought. Then he realized that it was as much description as curse. He was in a rhododendron hell. With that belated realization, he slowed his flight—if crawling at roughly ten feet per hour could be called “flight.”

  The tunnel-like opening in which he found himself was too narrow to allow him to turn around, but he managed to see behind him by thrusting his head to one side and craning his neck. There was nothing there; nothing but damp and musty darkness, illumined by a faint scatter of light, swirling with dust motes. Nothing was visible but the stems and limber branches of the rhododendron thicket.

  His shaking limbs gave way, and he collapsed. He lay for a moment, curled up between the stems, breathing the musk of rotting leaves and damp earth.

  “You wanted cover, mate,” he murmured to himself. Things were beginning to hurt. He was ripped and bleeding in a dozen places. Even in the dim light, the ends of his fingers looked like raw meat.

  He took a slow inventory of the damage, listening all the while for sounds of pursuit. Not surprisingly, there were none. He had heard talk about rhododendron hells in the taverns in Cross Creek; half-boasting stories of hunting dogs who had chased a squirrel into one of the huge tangles and become hopelessly lost, never to be seen again.

  Roger hoped there was a fair amount of exaggeration to these stories, though a good look around wasn’t reassuring. What light there was had no direction. Any way he looked, looked the same. Drooping clusters of cool, leathery leaves, thick stems and slender branches laced together in a nearly impenetrable snarl.

  With a slight feeling of panic, he realized that he had no idea from which direction he had come.

  He put his head on his knees and breathed deeply, trying to think. All right, first things first. His right foot was bleeding from a deep gash on the edge of the sole. He took off his tattered stockings and used one to bind his foot. Nothing else seemed bad enough to need a bandage, save the shallow gouge in his scalp; that was still seeping blood, wet and sticky to his touch.

  His hands were shaking; it was hard to tie the stocking round his head. Still, the small action made him feel better. Now, then. He’d climbed countless Munros in Scotland, those endless craggy peaks, and more than once had helped to find day-trippers lost among the rocks and heather.

  If you were lost in the wilderness, the usual caution was to stay put; wait for someone to find you. That would seem not to apply, he thought, if the only people looking for you were ones you didn’t want to be found by.

  He looked upward, through the snarl of branches. He could see small patches of sky, but the rhododendrons rose nearly twelve feet over his head. There was no way to stand up; he could barely sit upright under the interlacing branches.

  There was no way of telling how big this particular hell was; on their journey through the mountains, he had seen entire slopes covered with heath balds, valleys filled with the deep green of rhododendron, only a few ambitious trees protruding above the waving sea of leaves. Then again, they had detoured round small tangles of the stuff, no more than a hundred feet square. He knew he was fairly close to one edge of the thing, but that knowledge was useless, with no idea in which direction the edge lay.

  He became aware that he was very cold, his hands still shaking. Shock, he thought dimly. What did you do for shock? Hot liquids, blankets. Brandy. Yeah, right. Elevate the feet. That much, he could do.

  He scooped a shallow, awkward little depression and eased himself into it, scraping the clammy, half-rotted leaves over his chest and shoulders. He propped his heels in the fork of a stem and closed his eyes, shivering.

  They wouldn’t come in after him. Why should they? A lot better to wait, if they were in no hurry. He’d have to come out eventually—if he still could.