Drums of Autumn (102 page)

He had got momentarily out of range. Gulping air, he rolled up onto his hands and knees. Blood gurgled through smashed cartilage with each breath; he could taste it in the back of his throat, a taste like sheared metal.

“Nuff,” he panted. “No. ’Nuff!”

A hand grabbed his hair and jerked back his head. Blue eyes glittered six inches away, and he felt the man’s breath hot on his face.

“Not nearly enough,” Fraser said, and kneed him in the mouth. He fell over and rolled once, then struggled to his feet. The clearing blurred in a throb of orange and yellow; only instinct got him up and moving.

He was fighting for his life, and knew it. He hurled himself blindly at the weaving figure, got a grip of Fraser’s shirt and drove a punch at the man’s belly, as hard as he could. Fabric tore and his fist struck bone. Fraser shifted like a snake and shot a hand down between them. He grabbed Roger’s testicles and squeezed with all his strength.

Roger stood stock-still, then dropped as though his spinal cord had been severed. There was a split second, before the pain hit, when Roger was conscious of one last thought, cold and clear as a shard of ice.
My God,
he thought,
I’m going to die before I’ve been born
.

47

A FATHER’S SONG

I
t was well after dark before Jamie came in, and my nerves were thoroughly on edge from the waiting; I could only imagine Brianna’s. We had eaten supper—or I should say, supper had been served. None of us had any appetite, either for food or conversation; even Lizzie’s normal voracity was noticeably impaired. I hoped the girl wasn’t ill; pale and silent, she had pled a headache and gone to bed in the herb shed. Still, it was fortunate in the circumstances; it saved me having to invent an excuse to get rid of her once Jamie did arrive.

The candles had been lit for over an hour when I finally heard the goats bleat in greeting at his step on the path. Brianna looked up at once at the sound, her face pale in the yellow light.

“It’ll be all right,” I said. She heard the confidence in my voice and nodded, slightly reassured. The confidence was authentic, but not unalloyed. I thought everything
would
be all right eventually—but God knew, it wasn’t going to be a jolly family evening. Well as I knew Jamie, there were still a good many circumstances in which I had no idea how he would react—and hearing that his daughter was pregnant by a rapist was certainly one of them.

In the hours since Brianna had made my suspicions a certainty, I had envisioned virtually every possible response he
might
make, several of them involving shouting or the putting of his fists through solid objects, behavior which I always found upsetting. So might Bree, and I knew rather better what
she
might do when upset.

She was under a tight control for the moment, but I knew how precarious her calm demeanor was. Let him say a bruising word to her, and she would flare like a striking match. Beyond red hair and arresting height, she had from Jamie both a passionate nature and a perfect readiness to speak her mind.

So unfamiliar and so anxious to please each other, they had both so far stepped delicately—but there seemed no delicate way of handling this. Unsure whether I should prepare myself to be advocate, interpreter, or referee, it was with rather a hollow feeling that I lifted the latch to let him in.

He had washed at the creek; his hair was damp at the temples, and he had wiped his face on his shirttail, judging by the moist patches on it.

“You’re very late; where were you?” I asked, standing on tiptoe to give him a kiss. “And where’s Ian?”

“Fergus came and asked could we give him a hand wi’ his chimney stones, as he couldna manage verra well by himself. Ian’s stayed ower, to help finish the job.” He dropped an absent kiss on top of my head, and patted my bottom. He’d been working hard, I thought; he was warm to my touch and smelled pungently of sweat, though the skin of his face was cool and fresh from washing.

“Did Marsali feed you supper?” I peered at him in the gloom. Something seemed different about him, though I couldn’t think what.

“No. I dropped a stone and I’ve maybe broken my blasted finger again; I thought I’d best come home and have ye tend to it.” That was it, I thought; he’d patted me with his left hand instead of his right.

“Come into the light and let me see.” I drew him to the fire, and made him sit down on one of the oak settles. Brianna was on the other, her sewing spread around her. She got up and came to look over my shoulder.

“Your poor hands, Da!” she said, seeing the swollen knuckles and scraped skin.

“Och, it’s no great matter,” he said, glancing dismissively at them. “Save for the bloody finger. Ow!”

I felt my way gently over the fourth finger of his right hand, from base to nail, disregarding his small grunt of pain. It was reddened and slightly swollen, but not visibly dislocated.

It always troubled me slightly to examine this hand. I had set a number of broken bones in it long ago, before I knew anything of formal surgery, and working under far from ideal conditions. I had managed; I had saved the hand from amputation, and he had good use of it, but there were small awkwardnesses; slight twistings and thickenings that I was aware of whenever I felt it closely. Still, at the moment, I blessed the opportunity for delay.

I closed my eyes, feeling the fire’s warm flicker on my lids as I concentrated. The fourth finger was always stiff; the middle joint had been crushed, and healed frozen. I could see the bone in my mind; not the polished dry surface of a laboratory specimen, but the faintly luminous matte glow of living bone, all the tiny osteoblasts busily laying down their crystal matrix, and the hidden pulse of the blood that fed them.

Once more, I drew my own finger down the length of his, then took it gently between my thumb and index finger, just below the distal joint. I could feel the crack in my mind, a thin dark line of pain.

“There?” I asked, opening my eyes.

He nodded, a faint smile on his lips as he looked at me.

“Just there. I like the way ye look when ye do that, Sassenach.”

“What way is that?” I asked, a bit startled to hear that I looked any way in particular.

“I canna describe it, exactly,” he said, head tilted to one side as he examined me. “It’s maybe like—”

“Madame Lazonga with her crystal ball,” Brianna said, sounding amused.

I glanced up, taken aback to find Brianna gazing down at me, head cocked at the same angle, with the same appraising look. She switched her gaze to Jamie. “A fortune-teller, I mean. A seer.”

He laughed.

“Aye, I think you’re maybe right,
a nighean
. Though it was a priest I was thinking of; the way they look saying Mass, when they look past the bread and see the flesh of Christ instead. Not that I should think to compare my measly finger wi’ the Body of Our Lord, mind,” he added, with a modest nod toward the offending digit.

Brianna laughed, and a smile curved his mouth on one side, as he looked up at her, his eyes soft despite the lines of tiredness round them. He’d had a long day, I thought. And likely to be a lot longer. I would have given anything to hold that fleeting moment of connection between them, but it had passed already.

“
I
think you are both ridiculous,” I said. I touched his finger lightly at the spot I’d held. “The bone is cracked, just there below the joint. It’s not bad, though; no more than a hairline fracture. I’ll splint it, just in case.”

I got up and went to rummage through my medical chest for a linen bandage and one of the long, flat wood chips I used as tongue depressors. I glanced covertly over the raised lid, watching him. Something was definitely odd about him this evening, though I still couldn’t put my finger on it.

I had sensed it from the first, even through my own agitation, and sensed it even more strongly when I held his hand to examine it; a sort of energy pulsed through him, as though he were excited or upset, though he gave no outward sign of it. He was bloody good at hiding things when he wanted to; what the hell had happened at Fergus’s house?

Brianna said something to Jamie, too low for me to catch, and then turned away without waiting for an answer, and came to join me by the open chest.

“Do you have some ointment, for his hands?” she asked. Then, leaning close on pretext of looking into the chest, said in a low voice, “Should I tell him tonight? He’s tired and he’s hurt. Hadn’t I better let him rest?”

I glanced at Jamie. He was leaning back against the settle, eyes wide open as he watched the flames, hands resting flat on his thighs. He wasn’t relaxed, though; whatever strange current was flowing through him, it had him strung like a telegraph wire.

“He might rest better not knowing, but you won’t,” I said, equally low-voiced. “Go ahead and tell him. You might let him eat first, though,” I added practically. I was a strong believer in meeting bad news on a full stomach.

I splinted Jamie’s finger while Brianna sat down beside him and dabbed gentian ointment onto the abraded knuckles of his other hand. Her face was quite calm; no one would ever guess what was going on behind it.

“You’ve torn your shirt,” I said, finishing off the last bandage with a small square knot. “Give it to me after supper and I’ll mend it. How’s that, then?”

“Verra nice, Madame Lazonga,” he said, gingerly wiggling his freshly splinted finger. “I shall be getting quite spoilt, wi’ so much attention paid me.”

“When I start to chew your food for you, you can worry,” I said tartly.

He laughed, and gave the splinted hand to Bree for anointing.

I went to the cupboard to fetch a plate for him. As I turned back toward the hearth, I saw him watching her intently. She kept her head bent, eyes on the large, callused hand she held between her own. I could imagine her search for words with which to begin, and my heart ached for her. Perhaps I should have told him privately myself, I thought; not let him near her until the first rush of feeling was safely past and he had himself in hand again.

“Ciamar a tha tu, mo chridhe?”
he said suddenly. It was his customary greeting to her, the beginning of their evening Gaelic lesson, but his voice was different tonight; soft, and very gentle.
How are you, darling?
His hand turned and covered hers, cradling her long fingers.

“Tha mi gle mhath, athair,”
she replied, looking a bit surprised.
I am well, Father
. Normally he began the lesson after dinner.

Slowly he reached out with his other hand and rested it gently on her stomach.

“An e ’n fhirinn a th’agad?”
he asked.
Do you tell me true?
I closed my eyes and let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. No need to break
all
the news, after all. And now I knew the reason for his taut-strung strangeness; he knew, and whatever the knowledge cost him to hold, hold it he would, and treat her gently.

She didn’t know enough Gaelic yet to tell what he’d asked, but she knew well enough what he meant. She stared at him for a moment, frozen, then lifted his sound hand to her cheek and bent her head over it, the loose hair hiding her face.

“Oh, Da,” she said, very quietly. “I’m sorry.”

She sat quite still, holding to his hand as though it were a lifeline.

“Ah, now,
m’ annsachd,
” he said softly, “it will be all right.”

“No, it won’t,” she said, her voice small but clear. “It can’t ever be right. You know that.”

He glanced at me out of habit, but only briefly. I couldn’t tell him what to do, now. He drew a deep breath, took her by the shoulder and gave her a gentle shake.

“All I know,” he said softly, “is that I’m here by ye, and your mother, too. We willna see ye shamed or hurt. Not ever. D’ye hear me?”

She didn’t answer or look up, but kept her eyes on her lap, her face hidden by the rich fall of her hair. A maiden’s hair, thick and unbound. His hand traced the shining curve of her head, then his fingers trailed along her jaw and lifted her chin so her eyes looked into his.

“Lizzie’s right?” he asked gently. “It was rape?”

She pulled her chin away and looked down at her knotted hands, the gesture as much an admission as her nod.

“I didn’t think she knew. I didn’t tell her.”

“She guessed. But it’s no your fault, and dinna ever think so,” he said firmly. “Come here to me,
a leannan
.” He reached for her, and gathered her awkwardly onto his knee.

The oakwood creaked alarmingly under their combined weight, but Jamie had built it after his usual sturdy fashion; it could have held six of him. Tall as Brianna was, she looked almost small cradled in his arms, her head tucked into the curve of his shoulder. He stroked her hair gently, and murmured small things to her, half in Gaelic.

“I’ll see ye safe marrit, and your bairn wi’ a good father,” he murmured to her. “I swear it to ye,
a nighean
.”

“I can’t marry anybody,” she said, sounding choked. “It wouldn’t be right. I can’t take somebody else when I love Roger. And Roger won’t want me now. When he finds out—”

“It’ll make no difference to him,” Jamie said, grasping her harder, almost fiercely, as though he could make things right by pure force of will. “If he’s a decent man, it’ll make no difference. And if it does—well, then he doesna deserve ye, and I shall beat him into pulp and stamp on the pieces, and then go and find ye a better man.”

She gave a small laugh that turned into a sob, and buried her head in the cloth of his shoulder. He patted her, rocking and murmuring as though she were a tiny girl with a skinned knee, and his eyes met mine over her head.

I hadn’t wept when she had told me; mothers are strong. But now she couldn’t see me, and Jamie had taken the burden of strength from my shoulders for the moment.

She hadn’t cried when she told me, either. But now she clung to him and wept, as much from relief, I thought, as from grief. He simply held her and let her cry, stroking her hair again and again, his eyes on my face.

I blotted my eyes on my sleeve, and he smiled at me, faintly. Brianna had subsided into long, sighing breaths, and he patted her gently on the back.

“I’m hungry, Sassenach,” he said. “And I should imagine a wee drop wouldna come amiss for any of us, aye?”

“Right,” I said, and cleared my throat. “I’ll go and fetch some milk from the shed.”

“That’s no what I meant by drink!” he called after me in mock outrage.

Ignoring both this and Brianna’s choked laugh, I pushed open the door.

The night outside was cold and bright, the autumn stars bright sparks overhead. I wasn’t dressed to be outdoors—my face and hands were already beginning to tingle—but I stood quite still nonetheless, letting the cold wind sweep past me, taking with it the tension of the last quarter hour.

Everything was quiet; the crickets and cicadas had long since died or gone underground with the rustling mice, the skunks and possums who left off their endless search for food and went to dream their winter dreams, the rich fat of their efforts wrapped warm about their bones. Only wolves hunted in the cold, starry nights of late autumn, and they went silent, fur-footed on the frozen ground.