Drums of Autumn (65 page)

“Do you feel yourself content?” Lord John asked suddenly.

Jamie paused for a moment.

“I have all that man could want,” he said quietly. “A place, and honorable work. My wife at my side. The knowledge that my son is safe and well cared for.” He looked up then, at Grey. “And a good friend.” He reached over, clasped Lord John’s hand, and let it go. “I want no more.”

I shut my eyes resolutely, and began to count sheep.

I was awakened just before dawn by Ian, crouching by my bedside.

“Auntie,” he said softly, a hand on my shoulder. “Best ye come; the man in the corncrib’s verra poorly.”

I was on my feet by reflex, wrapped in my cloak and moving bare-footed after Ian before my mind had even begun to function consciously. Not that any great diagnostic skill was needed; I could hear the deep, rattling respirations from ten feet away.

The Earl hovered by the doorway, his thin face pale and scared in the gray light.

“Go away,” I told him sharply. “You mustn’t be near him; nor you, Ian—the two of you go to the house, fetch me hot water from the cauldron, my box, and clean rags.”

Willie moved at once, eager to be away from the frightening sounds coming from the shed. Ian lingered, though, his face troubled.

“I dinna think ye can help him, Auntie,” he said quietly. His eyes met mine straight on, with an adult depth of understanding.

“Very likely not,” I said, answering him in the same terms. “But I can’t do nothing.”

He took a deep breath, nodded.

“Aye. But I think…” He hesitated, then went on as I nodded, “I think ye shouldna torment him wi’ medicine. He’s fixed to die, Auntie; we heard an owl in the night—he will have heard it, too. It is a sign of death to them.”

I glanced at the dark oblong of the door, biting my lip. The breaths were shallow and wheezing, with alarmingly long pauses between them. I looked back at Ian.

“What do the Indians do, when someone is dying? Do you know?”

“Sing,” he said promptly. “The
shaman
puts paint upon her face, and sings the soul away to safety, so the demons dinna take it.”

I hesitated, my instincts to do
something
at war with my conviction that action would be futile. Had I any right to deprive this man of peace in his dying? Worse, to alarm him into fear that his soul would be lost by my interference?

Ian hadn’t waited for the results of my dithering. He stooped and scraped up a small clot of earth, spat in it and stirred it to mud. Without comment, he dipped his forefinger into the puddle, and drew a line from my forehead down the bridge of my nose.

“Ian!”

“Shh,” he murmured, frowning in concentration. “Like this, I think.” He added two lines across each cheekbone, and a rough zigzag down the left side of my jawbone. “That’s as near as I remember the proper way of it. I’ve only seen it the once, and from a distance.”

“Ian, this isn’t—”

“Shhh,” he said again, laying a hand on my arm to quell protest. “Go to him, Auntie. Ye willna frighten him; he’s accustomed to ye, no?”

I rubbed away a drip from the end of my nose, feeling thoroughly idiotic. There was no time to argue, though. Ian gave me a small push, and I turned to the door. I stepped into the darkness of the corncrib, bent and laid a hand on the man. His skin was hot and dry, his hand limp as worn leather.

“Ian, can you talk to him? Say his name, tell him it’s all right?”

“Ye must not say his name, Auntie; it will call demons.”

Ian cleared his throat, and said a few words in soft clicking gutterals. The hand in mine twitched slightly. My eyes had adjusted now, I could see the man’s face, marked with a faint look of surprise as he saw my mud paint.

“Sing, Auntie,” Ian urged, low-voiced. “
Tantum ergo,
maybe; it sounded a wee bit like that.”

There was nothing else I could do, after all. Rather helplessly, I began.

“Tantum ergo, sacramentum…”

Within a few seconds, my voice steadied, and I sat back on my bare heels, singing slowly, holding his hand. The heavy brows relaxed, and a look of what I thought might be calm came into the sunken eyes.

I had been present at a good many deaths, from accident, warfare, illness, or natural causes, and had seen men meet death in many ways, from philosophical acceptance to violent protest. But I had never seen one die quite this way.

He simply waited, eyes on mine, until I had come to the end of the song. Then he turned his face toward the door, and as the rising sun struck him, he left his body, without the twitch of a muscle or the drawing of a final breath.

I sat quite still, holding the limp hand, until it occurred to me that I was holding my breath, too.

The air around me seemed queerly still, as though time had stopped for a moment. But of course it had, I thought, and forced myself to draw breath. It had stopped for him, forever.

“What are we to do with him?”

There was nothing further to be done
for
our guest; the only question at the moment was how we might best deal with his mortal remains.

I had had a quiet word with Lord John, and he had taken Willie to gather late strawberries on the ridge. While the Indian’s death had had nothing even faintly gruesome about it, I could wish Willie hadn’t seen it; it wasn’t a sight for a child who had seen his mother die no more than a few months before. Lord John had seemed upset himself—perhaps a little sunshine and fresh air would help both of them.

Jamie frowned and rubbed a hand over his face. He hadn’t shaved yet, and the stubble made a rasping sound.

“We must give him decent burial, surely?”

“Well, I don’t suppose we can leave him lying about in the corncrib, but would his people mind if we buried him here? Do you know anything about how they treat their dead, Ian?”

Ian was still a little pale, but surprisingly self-possessed. He shook his head, and took a drink of milk.

“I dinna ken a great deal, Auntie. But I have seen one man die, as I told ye. They wrapped him in a deerskin and had a procession round the village, singing, then took the body a ways into the wood and put it up on a platform, above the ground, and left it there to dry.”

Jamie seemed less than enthralled at the prospect of having mummified bodies perched in the trees near the farm. “I should think it best maybe to wrap the body decently and carry it to the village, then, so his own folk can deal with him properly.”

“No, you can’t do that.” I slid the pan of newly baked muffins out of the Dutch oven, plucked a broomtwig and stuck it into one plump brown cake. It came out clean, so I set the pan on the table, then sat down myself. I frowned abstractedly at the jug of honey, glowing gold in the late morning sun.

“The trouble is that the body is almost certainly still infectious. You didn’t touch him at all, did you, Ian?” I glanced at Ian, who shook his head, looking sober.

“No, Auntie. Not after he fell sick here; before that, I dinna recall. We were all together, hunting.”

“And you haven’t had measles. Drat.” I rubbed a hand through my hair. “Have you?” I asked Jamie. To my relief, he nodded.

“Aye, when I was five or so. And you say a person canna have the same sickness twice. So it willna injure me to touch the body?”

“No, nor me either; I’ve had them too. The thing is, we can’t take him to the village. I don’t know at all how long the measles virus—that’s a sort of germ—can live on clothes or in a body, but how could we explain to his people that they mustn’t touch him or go near him? And we can’t risk letting them be infected.”

“What troubles me,” Ian put in unexpectedly, “is that he isna a man from Anna Ooka—he’s from a village further north. If we bury him here in the usual way, his folk may hear of it and think we had done him to death in some fashion, then buried him to hide it.”

That was a sinister possibility that hadn’t occurred to me, and I felt as though a cold hand had been laid on the back of my neck.

“You don’t think they would, surely?”

Ian shrugged, broke open a hot muffin, and drizzled honey over the steaming insides.

“Nacognaweto’s folk trust us, but Myers did say there were plenty who would not. They’ve reason to be suspicious, aye?”

Considering that the bulk of the Tuscarora had been exterminated in a vicious war with the North Carolina settlers no more than fifty years before, I rather thought they had a point. It didn’t help with the present problem, though.

Jamie swallowed the last of his muffin and sat back with a sigh.

“Well, then. I think best we wrap the poor man in a shroud of sorts, and put him in the wee cave in the hill above the house. I’ve set the posts for a stable across the opening already; those will keep the beasts off. Then Ian or I should go to Anna Ooka and explain matters to Nacognaweto. Perhaps he will send someone back who can look at the body and assure the man’s people that he met with no violence from us—and then we can bury him.”

Before I could reply to this suggestion, I heard footsteps, running across the dooryard. I had left the door ajar, to let in light and air. As I turned toward it, Willie’s face appeared in the opening, pale and distraught.

“Mrs. Fraser! Please, will you come? Papa’s ill.”

“Has he got it from the Indian?” Jamie frowned at Lord John, whom we had stripped to his shirt and put to bed. His face was by turns flushed and pale—the symptoms I had put down earlier to emotional distress.

“No, he can’t have. The incubation period is one to two weeks. Where were you—” I turned to Willie, then shrugged, dismissing the question. They had been traveling; there was no conceivable way of telling where or when Grey had encountered the virus. Travelers normally slept several to a bed in inns, and the blankets were seldom changed; it would be easy to lie down in one and get up in the morning with the germs of anything from measles to hepatitis.

“You did say there was an epidemic of measles in Cross Creek?” I put a hand on Grey’s forehead. Adept as I was at reading fevers by touch, I would have put his near a hundred and three; quite high enough.

“Yes,” he said hoarsely, and coughed. “Have I got the measles? You must keep Willie away.”

“Ian—take Willie outside, will you, please?” I wrung out a cloth wetted with elderflower water, and wiped Grey’s face and neck. There was no rash yet on his face, but when I made him open his mouth, the small whitish Koplik’s spots on the lining were clear enough.

“Yes, you have got the measles,” I said. “How long have you been feeling ill?”

“I felt somewhat light-headed when I retired last night,” he said, and coughed again. “I woke with a bad headache, sometime in the night, but I thought it only the result of Jamie’s so-called whisky.” He smiled faintly at Jamie. “Then this morning…” He sneezed, and I hastily groped for a fresh handkerchief.

“Yes, quite. Well, try to rest a bit. I’ve put some willow bark to steep; that will help the headache.” I stood up and raised a brow at Jamie, who followed me outside.

“We can’t let Willie be near him,” I said, low-voiced so as not to be overheard; Willie and Ian were by the penfold, forking hay into the horses’ manger. “Or Ian. He’s very infectious.”

Jamie frowned.

“Aye. What ye said, though, about incubation—”

“Yes. Ian might have been exposed through the dead man, Willie might have been exposed to the same source as Lord John. Either one of them might have it now, but show no sign yet.” I turned to look at the two boys, both of them outwardly as healthy as the horses they were feeding.

“I think,” I said, hesitating as I formed a vague plan, “that perhaps you had better camp outside with the boys tonight—you could sleep in the herb shed, or camp in the grove. Wait a day or so; if Willie’s infected—if he got it from the same source as Lord John—he’ll likely be showing signs by then. If not, then he’s likely all right. If he
is
all right, then you and he could go to Anna Ooka to tell Nacognaweto about the dead man. That would keep Willie safely out of danger.”

“And Ian could stay here to take care of you?” He frowned, considering, then nodded. “Aye, I expect that will do.”

He turned to glance at Willie. Impassive as he could be when he wanted to, I knew him well enough to detect the flicker of emotion across his face.

There was worry in the tilt of his brows—concern for John Grey, and perhaps for me or Ian. But beyond that was something quite different—interest tinged with apprehension, I thought, at the prospect of spending several days alone with the boy.

“If he hasn’t noticed it yet, he isn’t going to,” I said softly, putting my hand on his arm.

“No,” he muttered, turning his back on the boy. “I suppose it’s safe enough.”

“They do say it’s an ill wind that blows nobody good,” I said. “You’ll be able to talk to him without it seeming odd.” I paused. “There’s just the one thing, before you go.”

He put his hand over mine where it lay on his arm, and smiled down at me.

“Aye, and what’s that?”

“Do get that pig out of the pantry, please.”

27

TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA

T
he journey began inauspiciously. It was raining, for one thing. For another, he disliked leaving Claire, especially in such difficult circumstances. For a third, he was badly worried for John; he hadn’t liked the look of the man at all when he took leave of him, barely half conscious and wheezing like a grampus, his features so blotched with rash as to be unrecognizable.

And for a fourth, the ninth Earl of Ellesmere had just punched him in the jaw. He took a firm hold on the youngster’s scruff and shook him, hard enough to make his teeth clack painfully together.

“Now, then,” he said, letting go. The boy staggered, and sat down suddenly as he lost his balance. He glared down at the lad, sitting in the mud by the penfold. They had been having this argument, on and off, for the last twenty-four hours, and he had had enough of it.

“I ken well enough what ye said. But what
I
said is that ye’re coming with me. I’ve told ye why, and that’s all about it.”

The boy’s face drew down in a ferocious scowl. He wasn’t easily cowed, but then Jamie supposed that earls weren’t used to folk trying, either.

“I am
not
leaving!” the boy repeated. “You can’t make me!” He got to his feet, jaw clenched, and turned back toward the cabin.

Jamie snaked out an arm, grabbed the lad’s collar, and hauled him back. Seeing the boy draw back his foot for a kick, he closed his fist and punched the boy neatly in the pit of the stomach. William’s eyes bulged and he doubled over, holding his middle.

“Don’t kick,” Jamie said mildly. “It’s ill-mannered. And as for makin’ you, of course I can.”

The Earl’s face was bright red and his mouth was opening and closing like a startled goldfish’s. His hat had fallen off, and the rain was pasting strands of dark hair to his head.

“It’s verra loyal of ye to want to stay by your stepfather,” Jamie went on, wiping the water out of his own face, “but ye canna help him, and you may do yourself damage by staying. So ye’re not.” From the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of movement as the oiled hide over the cabin’s window moved aside, then fell. Claire, no doubt wondering why they were not already long gone.

Jamie took the Earl by an unresisting arm, and led him to one of the saddled horses.

“Up,” he said, and had the satisfaction of seeing the boy stick a reluctant foot in the stirrup and swing aboard. Jamie tossed the boy’s hat up to him, donned his own, and mounted himself. As a precaution, though, he kept hold of both sets of reins as they set off.

“You, sir,” said a breathless, enraged voice behind him, “are a lout!”

He was torn between irritation and an urge to laugh, but gave way to neither. He cast a look back over his shoulder, to see William also turned, and leaning perilously to the side, half off his saddle.

“Don’t try it,” he advised the boy, who straightened up abruptly and glared at him. “I wouldna like to tie your feet in your stirrups, but I’ll do it, make no mistake.”

The boy’s eyes narrowed into bright blue triangles, but he evidently took Jamie at his word. His jaw stayed clenched, but his shoulders slumped a little in temporary defeat.

They rode in silence for most of the morning, rain drizzling down their necks and weighting the shoulders of their cloaks. Willie might have accepted defeat, but not graciously. He was still sullen when they dismounted to eat, but did at least fetch water without protest, and pack up the remains of their meal while Jamie watered the horses.

Jamie eyed him covertly, but there was no sign of measles. The Earl’s face was frowning but rashless, and while the tip of his nose was dripping, this appeared to be due solely to the effects of the weather.

“How far is it?” It was midafternoon before William’s curiosity overcame his stubbornness. Jamie had long since relinquished the boy’s reins to him—there was no danger of the lad’s trying to make his way back alone now.

“Two days, perhaps.” In such mountainous terrain as lay between the Ridge and Anna Ooka, they would make little better speed on horseback than on foot. Having horses, though, allowed them to bring a few small conveniences, such as a kettle, extra food, and a pair of carved fishing rods. And a number of small gifts for the Indians, including a keg of home-brewed whisky to help cushion the bad news they bore.

There was no reason to hurry, and some to delay—Claire had told him firmly not to bring Willie back for at least six days. By then, John would no longer be infectious. He would be well on the way to recovery—or dead.

Claire had been outwardly confident, assuring Willie that his stepfather would be quite all right, but he’d seen the mist of worry in her eyes. It gave him a feeling of hollowness just below the ribs. It was perhaps as well that he was leaving; he could be of no help, and sickness always left him with a helpless feeling that made him at once afraid and angry.

“These Indians—they
are
friendly?” He could hear the tone of doubt in Willie’s voice.

“Yes.” He felt Willie waiting for him to add “my lord,” and took a small, perverse satisfaction in not doing it. He guided his horse’s head to the side and slowed his pace, an invitation for Willie to ride up next to him. He smiled at the boy as he did so.

“We have known them more than a year, and been guests in their long-houses—aye, the people of Anna Ooka are more courteous and hospitable than most folk I’ve met in England.”

“You have lived in England?” The boy shot him a surprised look, and he cursed his carelessness, but luckily the lad was a great deal more interested in Red Indians than in the personal history of James Fraser, and the question passed with no more than a vague reply.

He was glad to see the boy abandon his sullen preoccupation and begin to take some interest in their surroundings. He did his best to encourage it, telling stories of the Indians and pointing out animal sign as they went, and he was glad to see the boy thaw into civility, if nothing more, as they rode.

He welcomed the distraction of conversation himself; his mind was a good deal too busy to make silence comfortable. If the worst should happen—if John should die—what then became of Willie? He would doubtless return to England and his grandmother—and Jamie would hear no more of him.

John was the only other person, besides Claire, who knew the truth of Willie’s paternity without doubt. It was possible that Willie’s grandmother at least suspected the truth, but she would never, under any circumstances, admit that her grandson might be the bastard of a Jacobite traitor rather than the legitimate issue of the late Earl.

He said a small prayer to Saint Bride for the welfare of John Grey, and tried to dismiss the nagging worry from his mind. In spite of his apprehensions, he was beginning to enjoy the trip. The rain had lessened to no more than a light spattering, and the forest was fragrant with the scents of wet, fresh leaves and fecund dark leaf mold.

“D’ye see those scratches down the trunk of that tree?” He pointed with his chin at a large hickory whose bark hung in shreds, showing a number of long, parallel white slashes, some six feet from the ground.

“Yes.” Willie took off his hat and slapped it against his thigh to knock the water off, then leaned forward to look more closely. “An animal did that?”

“A bear,” Jamie said. “Fresh, too—see the sap’s not dried yet in the cuts.”

“Is it nearby?” Willie glanced around, seeming more curious than alarmed.

“Not close,” Jamie said, “or the horses would be carryin’ on. But near enough, aye. Keep an eye out; we’ll likely see its dung or its prints.”

No, if John died, his tenuous link with William would be broken. He had long since resigned himself to the situation, and accepted the necessity without complaint—but he would feel bereft indeed if the measles robbed him not only of his closest friend but of all connection with his son.

It had stopped raining. As they rounded the flank of a mountain and came out above a valley, Willie gave a small exclamation of surprised delight, and sat up straight in his saddle. Against a backdrop of rain-dark clouds, a rainbow arced from the slope of a distant mountain, falling in a perfect shimmer of light to the floor of the valley far below.

“Oh, it’s glorious!” Willie said. He turned a wide smile on Jamie, their differences forgotten. “Have you ever seen such a thing before, sir?”

“Never,” said Jamie, smiling back. It occurred to him, with a small shock, that these few days in the wilderness might conceivably be the last he would see or hear of William. He hoped that he wouldn’t have to hit the boy again.

He always slept lightly in the wood, and the sound woke him at once. He lay quite still for a moment, unsure what it was. Then he heard the small, choked noise, and recognized the sound of stifled weeping.

He checked his instant urge to turn and lay a hand on the boy in comfort. The lad was making every effort not to be heard; he deserved to keep his pride. He lay still, looking up into the sweep of the vast night sky above, and listening.

Not fright; William had shown no fear of sleeping in dark woods, and had there been a large animal nearby, the boy would not be keeping quiet about it. Was the lad unwell? The sounds were little more than thickened breathing, caught in the throat—perhaps the boy was in pain and too proud to say. It was that fear that decided him to speak; if the measles had caught them up, there was no time to waste; he must carry the boy back to Claire at once.

“My lord?” he said softly.

The sobbing ceased abruptly. He heard the audible sound of a swallow and the rasp of cloth on skin as the lad wiped a sleeve across his face.

“Yes?” the Earl said, with a creditable attempt at coolness, marred only by the thickness in his voice.

“Are ye unwell, my lord?” He could tell already that it wasn’t that, but it would do for a pretext. “Have ye maybe taken a touch of the cramp? Sometimes dried apples take a man amiss.”

A deep breath came from the far side of the fire, and a snuffle as an attempt was made to clear a running nose unobtrusively. The fire had burned down to nothing more than embers; still, he could see the dark shape that squirmed into a sitting position, crouched on the far side of the fire.

“I—ah—yes, I think perhaps I have got…something of the sort.”

Jamie sat up himself, the plaid falling away from his shoulders.

“It’s no great matter,” he said, soothingly. “I’ve a potion that will cure all manner of ills of the stomach. Do ye rest easy for a moment, my lord; I’ll fetch water.”

He got to his feet and went away, careful not to look at the boy. By the time he came back from the stream with the kettle filled, Willie had got his nose blown and his face wiped, and was sitting with his knees drawn up, his head resting on them.

He couldn’t keep himself from touching the boy’s head as he passed. Familiarity be damned. The dark hair was soft to his touch, warm and slightly damp with sweat.

“A griping in your guts, is it?” he said pleasantly, kneeling and putting the kettle to boil.

“Mm-hm.” Willie’s voice was muffled in the blanket over his knees.

“That passes soon enough,” he said. He reached for his sporran, and sorted through the proliferation of small items in it, coming up eventually with the small cloth bag that held the dried mixture of leaves and flowers Claire had given him. He didn’t know how she’d known it would be needed, but he was long past the point of questioning anything she did in the way of healing—whether of heart or of body.

He felt a moment’s passionate gratitude to her. He’d seen her look at the boy, and knew how she must feel. She’d known about the lad, of course, but seeing the flesh-and-blood proof that her husband had shared another woman’s bed wasn’t something a wife should be asked to put up with. Little wonder if she was inclined to stick pins in John, him pushing the lad under her nose as he had.

“It willna take more than a moment to brew up,” he assured the boy, rubbing the fragrant mixture between his hands into a wooden cup, as he’d seen Claire do.

She’d not reproached him. Not with
that
at least, he thought, suddenly remembering how she’d acted when she’d found out about Laoghaire. She’d gone for him like a fiend, then, and yet when later she’d learned about Geneva Dunsany…perhaps it was only that the boy’s mother was dead?

The realization went through him like a sword thrust. The boy’s mother was dead. Not just his real mother, who’d died the same day he was born—but the woman he’d called mother all his life since. And now his father—or the man he called father, Jamie thought with an unconscious twist of his mouth—was lying sick of an illness that had killed another man before the lad’s eyes no more than days before.

No, it wasn’t fright that made the lad greet by himself in the dark. It was grief, and Jamie Fraser, who’d lost a mother in childhood himself, ought to have known that from the beginning.

It wasn’t stubbornness, nor even loyalty, that had made Willie insist on staying at the Ridge. It was love of John Grey, and fear of his loss. And it was the same love that made the boy weep in the night, desperate with worry for his father.

An unaccustomed weed of jealousy sprang up in Jamie’s heart, stinging like nettles. He stamped firmly on it; he was fortunate indeed to know that his son enjoyed a loving relationship with his stepfather. There, that was the weed stamped out. The stamping, though, seemed to have left a small bruised spot on his heart; he could feel it when he breathed.

The water was beginning to rumble in the kettle. He poured it carefully over the herb mixture, and a sweet fragrance rose up in the steam. Valerian, she’d said, and catmint. The root of a passionflower, soaked in honey and finely ground. And the sweet, half-musky smell of lavender, coming as an afterscent.

“Don’t drink it yourself,” she’d said, casual in giving it to him. “There’s lavender in it.”

In fact, it didn’t trouble him, if he was warned of it. It was only that now and then a whiff of lavender took him unawares, and sent a sudden surge of sickness through his wame. Claire had seen the effects on him once too often to be unwary of it.