Drums of Autumn (106 page)

“Aye,” he said quietly. “But ye can’t, can you?”

She stared up at him, not understanding. His eyes were intent on hers, not angry, not mocking. Waiting.

“You
can’t,
” he repeated, with emphasis.

And then realization came, flooding down her aching arms to her bruised fists.

“Oh, God,” she said. “No. I can’t. I couldn’t. Even if I’d fought him…I
couldn’t
.”

Quite suddenly she began to cry, the knots inside her slipping loose, the weights shifting, lifting, as a blessed relief spread through her body. It hadn’t been her fault. If she had fought with all her strength—as she had fought just now—

“Couldn’t,” she said, and swallowed hard, gasping for air. “I couldn’t have stopped him. I kept thinking, if only I’d fought harder…but it wouldn’t have mattered. I couldn’t have stopped him.”

A hand touched her face, big and very gentle.

“You’re a fine, braw lassie,” he whispered. “But a lassie, nonetheless. Would ye fret your heart out and think yourself a coward because ye couldna fight off a lion wi’ your bare hands? It’s the same. Dinna be daft, now.”

She wiped the back of her hand under her nose, and sniffed deeply.

He put a hand under her elbow and helped her up, his strength no longer either threat or mockery, but unutterable comfort. Her knees stung, where she had scraped them on the ground. Her legs wobbled, but she made it to the haypile, where he let her sit down.

“You could just have
told
me, you know,” she said. “That it wasn’t my fault.”

He smiled faintly.

“I did. Ye couldna believe me, though, unless ye knew for yourself.”

“No. I guess not.” A profound but peaceful weariness had settled on her like a blanket. This time she had no urge to tear it off.

She watched, feeling too limp to move, as he wetted a cloth from the trough and wiped her face, straightened her twisted skirts, and poured out a drink for her.

When he handed her the freshly filled cup of cider, though, she laid a hand on his arm. Bone and muscle were solid, warm under her hand.

“You could have fought back. But you didn’t.”

He laid a big hand over hers, squeezed and let it go.

“No, I didna fight,” he said quietly. “I gave my word—for your mother’s life.” His eyes met hers squarely, neither ice nor sapphire now, but clear as water. “I dinna regret it.”

He took her by the shoulders, and eased her down onto the piled hay.

“Do ye rest a bit,
a leannan
.”

She lay down, but reached up to touch him as he knelt by her.

“Is it true—that I won’t forget?”

He paused for a moment, hand on her hair.

“Aye, that’s true,” he said softly. “But it’s true, too, that it willna matter after a time.”

“Won’t it?” She was too tired even to wonder what he might mean by this. She felt almost weightless; strangely remote, as though she no longer inhabited her troublesome body. “Even if I’m not strong enough to kill him?”

A clear cold draft from the open door cut through the warm fog of smoke, making all the animals stir. The brindled cow shifted her weight in sudden irritation and let out a low-throated
mwaaah,
not of distress so much as of querulous complaint.

She felt her father glance at the cow before turning back to her.

“You’re a verra strong woman,
a bheanachd,
” he said at last, very softly.

“I’m not strong. You just proved I’m not—”

His hand on her shoulder stopped her.

“That’s not what I mean.” He stopped, thinking, his hand smoothing her hair, over and over.

“She was ten when our mother died, Jenny was,” he said at last. “It was the day after the funeral when I came into the kitchen and found her kneeling on a stool, to be tall enough to stir the bowl on the table.

“She was wearing my mother’s apron,” he said softly, “folded up under the arms, and the strings wrapped twice about her waist. I could see she’d been weepin’, like I had, for her face was all stained and her eyes red. But she just went on stirring, staring down into the bowl, and she said to me, ‘Go and wash, Jamie; I’ll have supper for you and Da directly.’ ”

His eyes closed altogether, and he swallowed once. Then he opened them, and looked down at her again.

“Aye, I ken fine how strong women are,” he said quietly. “And you’re strong enough for what must be done,
m’ annsachd
—believe me.”

He stood up then, and went to the cow. It had risen to its feet and was moving restlessly in a small circle, swaying and shuffling on its tether. He caught it by the tether rope, gentled it with hands and words, made his way behind the heifer, frowning in concentration. She saw him turn his head and look, to check his dirk, then turn back, murmuring.

Not a loving butcher, no. A surgeon in his way, like her mother. From this odd plateau of remoteness, she could see how much her parents—so wildly different in temperament and manner—were alike in this one respect; that odd ability to mingle compassion with sheer ruthlessness.

But they were different even in that, she thought; Claire could hold life and death together in her hands, and yet preserve herself, hold aloof; a doctor must go on living, for the sake of her patients, if not for her own sake. Jamie would be ruthless toward himself, as much as—or more than—he would be to anyone else.

He had thrown off his plaid; now he unfastened his shirt, with no haste but neither with any wasted motion. He pulled the pale linen over his head and laid it neatly aside, returning to his watching post at the heifer’s tail, ready to assist.

A long ripple ran down the cow’s rounded side, and the torchlight glimmered white on the tiny knot of a scar over his heart. Uncover his nakedness? He would strip himself to the bone, if he thought it necessary. And—a much less comforting thought—if he thought it necessary, he would do the same to her, without a moment’s hesitation.

He had a hand at the base of the cow’s tail, speaking to it in Gaelic, soothing, encouraging. She felt as though she could almost grasp the sense of his words—but not quite.

All might be well, or it might not. But whatever happened, Jamie Fraser would be there, fighting. It was a comfort.

Jamie paused by the upper fence of the cowpen, on the rise above the house. It was late, and he was more than tired, but his mind kept him wakeful. The calving completed, he had carried Brianna down to the cabin—she sleeping sound as a babe in his arms—and then gone out again, to seek relief in the solitude of the night.

His shins ached where she had kicked him, and there were deep bruises on his thighs; she was amazingly powerful for a woman. None of that troubled him in the least; in fact, he felt an odd and unexpected pride in this evidence of her strength.
She will be all right,
he thought. Surely she will.

There was more hope than confidence behind this thought. Yet it was on his own account that he was wakeful, and he felt at once troubled and foolish at the knowledge. He had thought himself thoroughly healed, old hurts so far behind him that they could safely be dismissed from mind. He had been wrong about that, and it unsettled him to find just how close to the surface the buried memories lay.

If he were to find rest tonight, they would have to be exhumed; the ghosts raised in order to lay them. Well, he had told the lass it took strength. He stopped, gripping the fence.

The rustle of night sounds faded slowly from his mind as he waited, listening for the voice. He had not heard it for years, had thought never to hear it again—but he had already heard its echo once tonight; seen the blaze of anger’s phantom in his daughter’s eyes, and felt its flames singe his own heart.

Better to call it forth and face it boldly than let it lie in ambush. If he could not face his own demons, he could not conquer hers. He touched a bruise on his thigh, finding an odd comfort in the soreness.

No one dies of it,
he’d said.
Not you; not me
.

The voice did not come at first; for a moment he hoped it would not—perhaps it
had
been long enough…but then it was there again, whispering in his ear as though it had never left, its insinuations a caress that burned his memory as once they had burned his skin.

“Gently at first,” it breathed. “Softly. Tender as though you were my infant son. Gently, but for so long you will forget there was a time I did not own your body.”

The night stood still around him, paused as time had paused so long before, poised on the edge of a gulf of dread, waiting. Waiting for the next words, known beforehand and expected, but nonetheless…

“And then,” the voice said, loving, “then I’ll hurt you very badly. And you will thank me, and ask for more.”

He stood quite still, face turned upward to the stars. Fought back the surge of fury as it murmured in his ear, the pulse of memory in his blood. Then made himself surrender, let it come. He trembled with remembered helplessness, and clenched his teeth in rage—but stared unblinking at the brightness of heaven overhead, invoking the names of the stars as the words of a prayer, abandoning himself to the vastness overhead as he sought to lose himself below.

Betelgeuse. Sirius. Orion. Antares. The sky is very large, and you are very small
. Let the words wash through him, the voice and its memories pass over him, shivering his skin like the touch of a ghost, vanishing into darkness.

The Pleiades. Cassiopeia. Taurus. Heaven is wide, and you are very small
. Dead, but none the less powerful for being dead. He spread his hands wide, gripping the fence—those were powerful, too. Enough to beat a man to death, enough to choke out a life. But even death was not enough to loose the bands of rage.

With great effort, he let go. Turned his hands palm upward, in gesture of surrender. He reached beyond the stars, searching. The words formed themselves quietly in his mind, by habit, so quietly he was not aware of them until he found them echoed in a whisper on his lips.

“ ‘…Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.’ ”

He breathed slowly, deeply. Seeking, struggling; struggling to let go.
“ ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’ ”

Waited, in emptiness, in faith. And then grace came; the necessary vision; the memory of Jack Randall’s face in Edinburgh, stricken to bare bone by the knowledge of his brother’s death. And he felt once more the gift of pity, calm in its descent as the landing of a dove.

He closed his eyes, feeling the wounds bleed clean again as the succubus drew its claws from his heart.

He sighed, and turned his hands over, the rough wood of the fence comforting and solid under his palms. The demon was gone. He had been a man, Jack Randall; nothing more. And in the recognition of that common frail humanity, all power of past fear and pain vanished like smoke.

His shoulders slumped, relieved of their burden.

“Go in peace,” he whispered, to the dead man and himself. “You are forgiven.”

The night sounds had returned; the cry of a hunting cat rose sharp on the air, and rotting leaves crunched soft underfoot as he made his way back toward the house. The oiled hide that covered the window glowed golden in the dark, with the flame of the candle he had left burning in the hope of Claire’s return. His sanctuary.

He thought that he should perhaps have told Brianna all this, too—but no. She couldn’t understand what he
had
told her; he had had to show her, instead. How to tell her in words, then, what he had learned himself by pain and grace? That only by forgiveness could she forget—and that forgiveness was not a single act, but a matter of constant practice.

Perhaps she would find such grace herself; perhaps this unknown Roger Wakefield could be her sanctuary, as Claire had been his. He found his natural jealousy of the man dissolved in a passionate wish that Wakefield could indeed give her what he himself could not. Pray God he would come soon; pray God he would prove a decent man.

In the meantime, there were other matters to be dealt with. He walked slowly down the hill, oblivious to the wind that blew the kilt about his knees and billowed through his shirt and plaid. Things must be done here; winter was coming, and he could not leave his women here alone with only Ian to hunt for them and defend them. He couldn’t leave to search for Wakefield.

But if Wakefield did not come? Well, there were other ways; he would see Brianna and the child protected, one way or another. And at least his daughter was safe from the man who had harmed her. Permanently safe. He rubbed a hand across his face, smelling blood still on his skin from the calving.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us
. Yes, but what of those who trespass against the ones we love? He could not forgive on another’s behalf—and would not, if he could. But if not…how should he expect forgiveness in return?

Educated in the universities of Paris, confidant of kings and friend to philosophers, still he was a Highlander, born to blood and honor. The body of a warrior and the mind of a gentleman—and the soul of a barbarian, he thought wryly, to whom neither God’s nor mortal law stood more sacred than the ties of blood.

Yes, there was forgiveness; she must find a way to forgive the man, for her own sake. But he was a different matter.

“ ‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.’ ”
He whispered it to himself. Then he looked up, away from the safe small glow of hearth and home, to the flaming glory of the stars above.

“The hell it is,” he said, aloud, shamed but defiant. It was ungrateful, he knew. And wrong, forbye. But there it was, and no use to lie either to God or to himself about it.

“The hell it is,” he repeated, louder. “And if I am damned for what I’ve done—then let it be! She is my daughter.”

He stood still for a moment, looking up, but there was no answer from the stars. He nodded once, as though in reply, and went on down the hill, the wind cold behind him.

49

CHOICES

November 1769

I
opened Daniel Rawlings’s box, and stared at the rows of bottles filled with the soft greens and browns of powdered root and leaf, the clear gold of distillations. There was nothing among the bottles to help. Very slowly, I lifted the covering that lay over the top compartment, over the blades.

I lifted out the scalpel with the curved edge, tasting cold metal in the back of my throat. It was a beautiful tool, sharp and sturdy, well balanced, part of my hand when I chose it to be. I balanced it on the end of my finger, letting it tilt gently back and forth.

I set it down, and picked up the long, thick root that lay on the table. Part of the stem was still attached, the remnants of leaves hanging limp and yellow. Only one. I had searched the woods for nearly two weeks, but it was so late in the year that the leaves of the smaller herbs had yellowed and fallen; it was impossible to recognize plants that were no more than brown sticks. I had found this one in a sheltered spot, a few of the distinctive fruits still clinging to its stalk. Blue cohosh, I was sure. But only one. It wasn’t enough.

I had none of the European herbs, no hellebore, no wormwood. I could perhaps get wormwood, though with some difficulty; it was used to flavor absinthe.

“And who makes absinthe in the backwoods of North Carolina?” I said aloud, picking up the scalpel again.

“No one that I know of.”

I jumped, and the blade jabbed deep into the side of my thumb. Blood spattered across the tabletop, and I snatched the corner of my apron, wadding the cloth hard against the wound in reflex.

“Christ, Sassenach! Are ye all right? I didna mean to startle ye.”

It didn’t hurt a great deal yet, but the shock of sudden injury made me bite my lower lip. Looking worried, Jamie took my wrist and lifted the edge of the wadded cloth. Blood promptly welled from the cut and ran down my hand, and he clamped the cloth back in place, squeezing tight.

“It’s all right; just a cut. Where did you come from? I thought you were up at the still.” I felt surprisingly shaky, perhaps from the shock.

“I was. The mash isna ready for distilling yet. You’re bleeding like a pig, Sassenach. Are ye sure you’re all right?” I
was
bleeding badly; besides the splashes of blood across the table, the corner of my apron was soaked with dark red.

“Yes. I probably severed a tiny vein. It’s not an artery, though; it will stop. Hold my hand up, will you?” I fumbled one-handed with the strings of my apron, seeking to free it. Jamie undid it with a quick yank, wrapped the apron round my hand, and held the whole clumsy bundle up over my head.

“What were ye doing with your wee knife?” he asked, eyeing the dropped scalpel, where it lay alongside the twisted cohosh root.

“Ah…I was going to slice up that root,” I said, waving weakly at it.

He gave me a sharp look, glanced across to the sideboard, where my paring knife lay in plain sight, then looked back at me with raised brows.

“Aye? I’ve never seen ye use one of these”—he nodded at the open array of scalpels and surgical blades—“save on people.”

My hand twitched slightly in his, and he tightened his grip on my thumb, squeezing hard enough to make me catch my breath in pain. He loosened his grip, then looked intently into my face, frowning.

“What in heaven’s name are ye about, Sassenach? Ye look as though I’d surprised ye about to commit murder.”

My lips felt stiff and bloodless. I pulled my thumb out of his grasp and sat down, holding the wounded digit against my bosom with my other hand.

“I was…deciding,” I said, with great reluctance. It was no good to lie; he would have to know, sooner or later, if Bree—

“Deciding what?”

“About Bree. What was the best way to do it.”

“To do it?” His eyebrows shot up. He glanced at the open medicine case, then at the scalpel, and a look of sudden shocked comprehension washed over his face.

“You mean to—”

“If she wants me to.” I touched the knife, its small blade stained with my own blood. “There are herbs—or this. There are awful risks to using herbs—convulsions, brain damage, hemorrhage—but it doesn’t matter; I don’t have enough of the right kind.”

“Claire—have you done it before?”

I looked up, to see him looking down at me with something I had never seen in his eyes before—horror. I pressed my hands flat on the table, to stop them trembling. I didn’t do as well with my voice.

“Would it make a difference to you if I had?”

He stared at me for a moment, then eased himself down on the bench opposite, slowly, as though afraid he might break something.

“Ye havena done it,” he said softly. “I know it.”

“No,” I said. I stared down at his hand, covering mine. “No, I haven’t.”

I could feel the tension go out of his hand; it relaxed, curling over mine, enfolding it. But my own lay limp in his grasp.

“I knew ye couldna do murder,” he said.

“I could. I have.” I didn’t look up at him, but spoke to the tabletop. “I killed a man, a patient in my care. I told you about Graham Menzies.”

He was silent for a moment, but held on to my hand, squeezing slightly.

“I think it isna the same,” he said at last. “To ease a doomed man to a death he wishes…it seems to me that that is mercy, not murder. And duty, too, perhaps.”

“Duty?” That did make me look at him, startled. The look of shock had faded from his eyes, though he was still solemn.

“Do ye not recall Falkirk Hill, and the night Rupert died in the chapel there?”

I nodded. It wasn’t something easily forgotten—the cold dark of the tiny church, the eerie sounds of pipes and battle far outside. Inside the black air thick with the sweat of frightened men, and Rupert dying slowly on the floor at my feet, choking on his blood. He had asked Dougal MacKenzie, as his friend and his chief, to hasten him…and Dougal had.

“It will be a doctor’s duty, too, I think,” Jamie said gently. “If you are sworn to heal—but cannot—and to save men pain—and can?”

“Yes.” I took a deep breath and curled my hand around the scalpel. “I
am
sworn—and by more than a doctor’s oath. Jamie, she’s my daughter. I would rather do anything in the world but this—anything.” I looked up at him and blinked, holding back tears.

“Don’t you think I haven’t thought about it? That I don’t know what the risks are? Jamie, I could kill her!” I pulled the cloth off my wounded thumb; the cut was still oozing.

“Look—it shouldn’t bleed like that, it’s a deep cut but not a bad one. But it does! I hit a vein. I could do the same to Bree and never know it, until she began to bleed—and if so…Jamie, I couldn’t stop it! She’d bleed to death under my hand, and there isn’t a thing I could do about it, not a thing!”

He looked at me, eyes dark with shock.

“How could ye think of doing such a thing, knowing that?” His voice was soft with disbelief.

I drew a deep, trembling breath, and felt despair wash over me. There was no way to make him understand, no way.

“Because I know other things,” I said at last, very softly, not looking at him. “I know what it is to bear a child. I know what it is to have your body and your mind and your soul taken from you and changed without your will. I know what it is to be ripped out of the place you thought was yours, to have choice taken from you.
I know what it is,
do you hear me? and it isn’t something anyone should do without being willing.” I looked up at him, and my fist clenched hard on my wounded thumb.

“And you—for God’s sake—
you
know what I don’t; what it’s like to live with the knowledge of violation. Do you mean to tell me that if I could have cut that from you after Wentworth, that you wouldn’t have had me do it, no matter what the risks? Jamie, that may be a rapist’s child!”

“Aye, I know,” he began, and had to stop, too choked to finish. “I
know,
” he began again, and his jaw muscles bulged as he forced the words. “But I know the one thing else—if I dinna ken his father, I ken his grandsire well enough. Claire, that is a child of my blood!”

“
Your
blood?” I echoed. I stared at him, the truth dawning on me. “You want a grandchild badly enough to sacrifice your daughter?”

“Sacrifice? It isna me that’s meaning to commit slaughter in cold blood!”

“You didn’t mind the angel-makers at the Hôpital des Anges; you had pity for the women they helped, you said so.”

“Those women had nay choice!” Too agitated to sit, he got up and paced restlessly back and forth in front of me. “They had no one to protect them, no way to feed a child—what else could they do, poor creatures? But it isna so, for Brianna! I will never let her be hungry or cold, never let aught harm her or the bairn, never!”

“That isn’t all there is to it!”

He stared at me, brows drawn down in stubborn incomprehension.

“If she bears a child here, she won’t leave,” I said unsteadily. “She can’t—not without tearing herself apart.”

“So
you
mean to tear her apart?” I flinched, as though he’d struck me.

“You want her to stay,” I said, striking back. “You don’t care that she has a life somewhere else, that she
wants
to go back. If she’ll stay—and better yet, if she’ll give you a grandchild—then you bloody don’t care what it does to her, do you?”

It was his turn to flinch, but he turned on me squarely.

“Aye, I care! That doesna mean I think it right for you to force her into—”

“What do you mean, force her?” The blood was burning hot in my cheeks. “For God’s sake, you think I want to do this? No! But, by God, she’ll have the choice if she wants it!”

I had to press my hands together to stop them shaking. The apron had fallen to the floor, stained with blood, reminding me much too vividly of operating theaters and battlefields—and of the terrible limits of my own skill.

I could feel his eyes on me, narrowed and burning. I knew that he was as torn in the matter as I was. He did indeed care desperately for Bree—but now I had spoken the truth, we both recognized it; deprived of his own children, living for so long as an exile, there was nothing he wanted more in life than a child of his blood.

But he couldn’t stop me, and he knew it. He wasn’t used to feeling helpless, and he didn’t like it. He turned abruptly and went to the sideboard, where he stood, fists resting on top of it.

I had never felt so desolate, so in need of his understanding. Did he not realize how horrible the prospect was for me, as well as him? Worse, because it was my hand that must do the damage.

I came up behind him, and laid a hand on his back. He stood unmoving, and I stroked him lightly, taking some comfort from the simple fact of his presence, of the solid strength of him.

“Jamie.” My thumb left a slight smear of red on the linen of his shirt. “It will be all right. I’m sure it will.” I was talking to convince myself, as much as him. He didn’t move, and I ventured to put my arm around his waist, laying my cheek against the curve of his back. I wanted him to turn and take me in his arms, to assure me that it would indeed somehow be all right—or at the least, that he would not blame me for whatever happened.

He moved abruptly, dislodging my hand.

“Ye’ve a high opinion of your power, have ye no?” He spoke coldly, turning to face me.

“What do you mean by that?”

He grasped my wrist in one hand, pinning it to the wall above my head. I could feel the tickle of blood down my wrist, flowing from my wounded thumb. His fingers wrapped around my hand, squeezing tight.

“Ye think it’s yours alone to say? That life and death is yours?” I could feel the small bones of my hand grind together, and I stiffened, trying to pull free.

“It’s not mine to say! But if
she
says—then yes, it’s my power. And yes, I’ll use it. Just like you would—like you
have,
when you’ve had to.” I shut my eyes, fighting down fear. He wouldn’t hurt me…surely? It occurred to me with a small shock that he could indeed stop me. If he broke my hand…

Very slowly, he bent his head and rested his forehead against mine.

“Look at me, Claire,” he said, very quietly.

Slowly, I opened my eyes and looked. His eyes were no more than an inch away; I could see the tiny gold flecks near the center of his iris, the black ring surrounding it. My fingers in his were slippery with blood.

He let go of my hand, and touched my breast lightly, cupping it for a moment.

“Please,” he whispered, and then was gone.

I stood quite still against the wall, and then slowly slid to the floor in a bloom of skirts, the cut on my thumb throbbing with my heartbeat.

I was so shaken by the quarrel with Jamie that I couldn’t settle to anything. At last, I put on my cloak and went out, walking up the ridge. I avoided the path that led across the Ridge toward Fergus’s cabin, and down toward the road. I didn’t want to risk meeting anyone at all.

It was cold and cloudy, with a light rain sputtering intermittently among the leaf-bare branches. The air was heavy with cold moisture; let the temperature drop a few degrees more, and it would snow. If not tonight, tomorrow—or next week. Within a month at the most, the Ridge would be cut off from the lowlands.

Ought I to take Brianna to Cross Creek? Whether she decided to bear the child or not, might she be safer there?

I shuffled through layers of wet, yellow leaves. No. My impulse was to think that civilization must offer some advantage, but not in this case. There was nothing Cross Creek could offer that would truly be of help in case of any obstetrical emergency; in fact, she might well be in active danger from the medical practitioners of the time.

No, whatever she decided, she was better off here, with me. I wrapped my arms about myself under my cloak, and flexed my fingers, trying to work some warmth and suppleness into them, to feel some sense of surety in touch.

Please,
he’d said. Please what? Please don’t ask her, please don’t do it if she asks? But I had to.
I swear by Apollo the physician…not to cut for the stone, nor to procure abortion
…Well, and Hippocrates was neither a surgeon, a woman…nor a mother. As I’d told Jamie, I’d sworn by something a lot older than Apollo the physician—and that oath was in blood.