Drums of Autumn (67 page)

The trout were indeed biting well. By the time the sun had sunk below the rim of the distant black mountains, and the silver water faded to dull pewter, they had each a respectable string of fish. They were also both wet to the eyebrows, exhausted, half blind from the glare, and thoroughly happy.

“I have never tasted anything half so delicious,” Willie said dreamily. “Never.” He was naked, wrapped in a blanket, his shirt, breeches and stockings draped on a tree limb to dry. He lay back with a contented sigh, and belched slightly.

Jamie rearranged his damp plaid on a bush and laid another chunk of wood on the fire. The weather was fine, God be thanked, but it was chilly with the sun down, the night wind rising, and a wet sark on his back. He stood close to the edge of the fire and let the heated air rise up under his shirt. The warmth of it ran up his thighs and touched his chest and belly, comforting as Claire’s hands on the chilly flesh between his legs.

He stood quietly for a time, watching the boy without seeming to look at him. Putting vanity aside and judging fairly, he thought William a handsome child. Thinner than he should be; every rib showed—but with a wiry muscularity of limb and well formed in all his parts.

The boy had turned his head, gazing into the fire, and he could look more openly. Sap in the pinewood cracked and popped, flooding Willie’s face for a moment with golden light.

Jamie stood quite still, feeling his heart beat, watching. It was one of those strange moments that came to him rarely, but never left. A moment that stamped itself on heart and brain, instantly recallable in every detail, for all of his life.

There was no telling what made these moments different from any other, though he knew them when they came. He had seen sights more gruesome and more beautiful by far, and been left with no more than a fleeting muddle of their memory. But these—the still moments, as he called them to himself—they came with no warning, to print a random image of the most common things inside his brain, indelible. They were like the photographs that Claire had brought him, save that the moments carried with them more than vision.

He had one of his father, smeared and muddy, sitting on the wall of a cow byre, a cold Scottish wind lifting his dark hair. He could call that one up and smell the dry hay and the scent of manure, feel his own fingers chilled by the wind, and his heart warmed by the light in his father’s eyes.

He had such glimpses of Claire, of his sister, of Ian…small moments clipped out of time and perfectly preserved by some odd alchemy of memory, fixed in his mind like an insect in amber. And now he had another.

For so long as he lived, he could recall this moment. He could feel the cold wind on his face, and the crackling feel of the hair on his thighs, half singed by the fire. He could smell the rich odor of trout fried in cornmeal, and feel the tiny prick of a swallowed bone, hair-thin in his throat.

He could hear the dark quiet of the forest behind, and the soft rush of the stream nearby. And forever now he would remember the firelight golden on the sweet bold face of his son.

“Deo gratias,”
he murmured, and realized that he had spoken aloud only when the boy turned toward him, startled.

“What?”

“Nothing.” To cover the moment, he turned away and took down his half-dry plaid from the bush. Even soaking wet, Highland wool would keep in a man’s heat, and shelter him from cold.

“Ye should sleep, my lord,” he said, sitting down and arranging the damp folds of plaid around himself. “It will be a long day tomorrow.”

“I’m not sleepy.” As though to prove it, Willie sat up and scrubbed his hands vigorously through his hair, making the thick russet mass stand out like a mane round his head.

Jamie felt a stab of alarm; he recognized the gesture only too well as one of his. In fact, he had been just about to do precisely the same thing, and it was with an effort that he kept his hands still.

He swallowed the heart that had risen into his throat, and reached for his sporran. No. Surely the lad would never think—a boy of that age paid little heed to anything his elders said or did, let alone thought to look at them closely. Still, it had been the hell of a risk for all of them to take; the look on Claire’s face had been enough to tell him just how striking the resemblance was.

He took a deep breath, and began to take out the small cloth bundles that contained his fly-tying materials. They had used all his made flies, and if he meant to fish for their breakfast, a few more should be got ready.

“Can I help?” Willie didn’t wait for permission, but scooted around the fire, to sit beside him. Without comment, he pushed the small wooden box of birds’ feathers toward the boy, and picked a fishhook from the piece of cork that held them.

They worked in silence for a time, stopping only to admire a completed Silver Doctor or Broom-eye, or for Jamie to lend a word of advice or help in tying. Willie soon tired of the exacting work, though, and laid down his half-done Green Whisker, asking numerous questions about fishing, hunting, the forest, the Red Indians they were going to see.

“No,” Jamie said in answer to one such. “I’ve never seen a scalp in the village. They’re verra kindly folk, for the most part. Do one some injury, mind, and they’ll not be slow to take revenge for it.” He smiled wryly. “They do remind me a bit of Highlanders in that regard.”

“Grandmamma says the Scots breed I—” The casually begun statement choked off abruptly. Jamie looked up to see Willie concentrating fiercely on the half-made fly between his fingers, his face redder than the firelight accounted for.

“Like rabbits?” Jamie let both irony and smile show in his voice. Willie flicked a cautious sideways glance in his direction.

“Scottish families are sometimes large, aye.” Jamie plucked a wren’s down feather from the small box and laid it delicately against the shank of his hook. “We think children a blessing.”

The bright color was fading from Willie’s cheeks. He sat up a little straighter.

“I see. Have you got a lot of children yourself, Mr. Fraser?”

Jamie dropped the down feather.

“No, not a great many,” he said, eyes fixed on the mottled leaves.

“I’m sorry—I didn’t think—that is…” Jamie glanced up to see Willie gone red again, one hand crushing the half-tied fly.

“Think what?” he said, puzzled.

Willie took a deep breath.

“Well—the…the…sickness; the measles. I didn’t see any children, but I didn’t think when I said that…I mean…that maybe you had some, but they…”

“Och, no.” Jamie smiled at him reassuringly. “My daughter’s grown; she’ll be living far away in Boston this long while.”

“Oh.” Willie let out his breath, tremendously relieved. “That’s all?”

The fallen down-feather moved in a breath of wind, betraying its presence in the shadows. Jamie pinched it between thumb and forefinger and lifted it gently from the ground.

“No, I’ve a son, too,” he said, eyes on the hook that had somehow embedded its barb in his thumb. A tiny drop of blood welled up around the shining metal. “A bonny lad, and I love him weel, though he’s away from home just now.”

28

HEATED CONVERSATION

B
y evening, Ian was glassy-eyed and hot to the touch. He sat up on his pallet to greet me, but swayed alarmingly, his eyes unfocused. I didn’t have the slightest doubt, but looked in his mouth for confirmation; sure enough, the small diagnostic Koplik’s spots showed white against the dark pink mucous membrane. Though the skin of his neck was still fair and childlike under his hair, it showed a harmless-looking stipple of small pink spots.

“Right,” I said, resigned. “You’ve got it. You’d best come up to the house so I can take care of you more easily.”

“I’ve got the measle? Am I going to die, then?” he asked. He seemed only mildly interested, his attention concentrated on some interior vision.

“No,” I said matter-of-factly, trusting that I was right. “Feeling pretty bad, though, are you?”

“My head hurts a bit,” he said. I could see that it did; his brows were drawn together, and he squinted at even so dim a light as that provided by my candle.

Still, he could walk, and a good thing, too, I thought as I watched him make his unsteady way down the ladder from the loft. Scrawny and storklike as he looked, he was a good eight inches taller than I, and outweighed me by at least thirty pounds.

It was no more than twenty yards to the cabin, but Ian was trembling from exertion by the time I got him inside. Lord John sat up as we came in, and made to get out of bed, but I waved him back.

“Stay there,” I said, depositing Ian heavily on a stool. “I can manage.”

I had been sleeping on the trundle bed; it was already made up with sheets, quilt, and pillow. I peeled Ian out of his breeks and stockings, and tucked him up at once. He was flushed and clammy-cheeked, and looked much sicker than he had done in the dimness of his loft.

The willow-bark brew I had left steeping was dark and aromatic; ready to drink. I poured it off carefully into a cup, glancing as I did so at Lord John.

“I’d meant this for you,” I said. “But if you could stand to wait…”

“By all means give it to the lad,” he said, with a dismissive wave. “I can wait easily. Can I not assist you, though?”

I thought of suggesting that if he really wanted to be helpful, he could walk to the privy rather than use the chamber pot—which I would have to empty—but I could see that he wasn’t yet in any condition to be wandering round outside at night by himself. I didn’t want to be explaining to young William that I had allowed his remaining parent—or what he thought was his remaining parent—to be eaten by bears, let alone take pneumonia.

So I merely shook my head politely, and knelt by the trundle to administer the brew to Ian. He felt well enough to make faces and complain about the taste, which I found reassuring. Still, the headache was obviously very bad; the line between his brows was fixed and sharp as though it had been carved there with a knife.

I sat on the trundle and took his head onto my lap, gently rubbing his temples. Then I put my thumbs just into the sockets of his eyes, pressing firmly upward on the ridge of his brows. He made a low sound of discomfort, but then relaxed, his head heavy on my thigh.

“Just breathe,” I said. “Don’t worry if it’s a bit tender at first, it means I’ve got the right spot.”

“ ’S all right,” he murmured, his words a little slurred. His hand drifted up and closed on my wrist, big and very warm. “That’s the Chinaman’s way, no?”

“That’s right. He means Yi Tien Cho—Mr. Willoughby,” I explained to Lord John, who was watching the proceedings with a puzzled frown. “It’s a way of relieving pain by putting pressure on some points of the body. This one is good for headache. The Chinaman taught me to do it.”

I felt some reluctance to mention the little Chinese to Lord John, seeing that the last time we had met, on Jamaica, Lord John had had some four hundred soldiers and sailors combing the island in pursuit of Mr. Willoughby, then suspected of a particularly atrocious murder.

“He didn’t do it, you know,” I felt compelled to add. Lord John raised one eyebrow at me.

“That’s as well,” he said dryly, “since we never caught him.”

“Oh, I’m glad.” I looked down at Ian, and moved my thumbs a quarter of an inch outward, pressing again. His face was still tight with pain, but I thought the whiteness at the corners of his mouth was lessening a bit.

“I…ah…don’t suppose you know who
did
kill Mrs. Alcott?” Lord John’s voice was casual. I glanced up at him, but his face betrayed nothing beyond simple curiosity and a large number of spots.

“I do, yes,” I said hesitantly, “but—”

“You do? A murder? Who was it? What happened, Auntie? Ooch!” Ian’s eyelids popped open under my fingers, wide with interest, then snapped shut in a grimace of pain as the firelight struck them.

“You be still,” I said, and dug my thumbs into the muscles in front of his ears. “You’re ill.”

“Argk!” he said, but subsided obediently into limpness, the corn-shuck mattress rustling loudly under his thin body. “All right, Auntie, but who? Ye canna be telling wee bits o’ things like that, and expect me to sleep without knowing the rest of it. Can she, then?” He opened one eye in a slitted appeal toward Lord John, who smiled in reply.

“I bear no further responsibility in the matter,” Lord John assured me. “However”— he spoke more firmly to Ian—“you might stop to think that perhaps the story incriminates someone your aunt prefers to shield. It would be discourteous to insist upon details, in that case.”

“Och, no, it’s never that,” Ian assured him, eyes tight closed. “Uncle Jamie wouldna murder anybody, save he had good reason.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw Lord John jerk, slightly startled. Plainly, it had never occurred to him that it
could
have been Jamie.

“No,” I assured him, seeing the fair brows draw together. “It wasn’t.”

“Well, and it wasna me, either,” Ian said smugly. “And who else would Auntie be protecting?”

“You flatter yourself, Ian,” I said dryly. “But since you insist…”

My hesitancy had in fact been in the interests of protecting Young Ian. No one else could be harmed by the story—the murderer was dead and, for all I knew, Mr. Willoughby, too, perished in the hidden jungles of the Jamaican hills, though I sincerely hoped not.

But the story involved someone else, as well; the woman I had first known as Geillis Duncan and known later as Geillis Abernathy, at whose behest Ian had been kidnapped from Scotland, imprisoned on Jamaica, and had suffered things that he had only lately begun to tell us.

Still, there seemed no way out of it now—Ian was fractious as a child insisting on a bedtime story, and Lord John was sitting up in bed like a chipmunk waiting for nuts, eyes bright with interest.

And so, with the macabre urge to begin with “Once upon a time…” I leaned back against the wall, and with Ian’s head still in my lap, began the story of Rose Hall and its mistress, the witch Geillis Duncan; of the Reverend Archibald Campbell and his strange sister, Margaret, of the Edinburgh Fiend and the Fraser prophecy; and of a night of fire and crocodile’s blood, when the slaves of six plantations along the Yallahs River had risen and slain their masters, roused by the
houngan
Ishmael.

Of later events in the cave of Abandawe on Haiti, I said nothing. Ian, after all, had been there. And those happenings had nothing to do with the murder of Mina Alcott.

“A crocodile,” Ian murmured. His eyes were closed, and his face had grown more relaxed under my fingers, despite the gruesome nature of my story. “Ye really saw it, Auntie?”

“I not only saw it, I stepped on it,” I assured him. “Or rather, I stepped on it, and
then
I saw it. If I’d seen it first, I’d have bloody run the other way.”

There was a low laugh from the bed. Lord John scratched at his arm, smiling.

“You must find life here rather dull, Mrs. Fraser, after your adventures in the Indies.”

“I could do with a spot of dullness now and then,” I said, rather wistfully.

Involuntarily, I glanced at the bolted door, where I had propped Ian’s musket, brought back from the storehouse when I had fetched him. Jamie had taken his own gun, but his pistols lay on the sideboard, loaded and primed as he had left them for me, bullet case and powder horn neatly arranged beside them.

It was cozy in the cabin, with the fire flickering gold and red on the rough-barked walls, and the air filled with the warm, lingering scents of squirrel stew and pumpkin bread, spiced with the bitter tang of willow tea. I brushed my fingers over Ian’s jaw. No rash yet, but the skin was tight and hot—very hot still, in spite of the willow bark.

Talking about Jamaica had at least distracted me a bit from my worry over Ian. Headache was not an unusual symptom for someone with measles; severe and prolonged headache was. Meningitis and encephalitis were dangerous—and all too possible—complications of the disease.

“How’s the head?” I asked.

“A bit better,” he said. He coughed, eyes squinching shut as the spasms jarred his head. He stopped and opened them slightly, dark slits that glowed with fever. “I’m awfully hot, Auntie.”

I slid off the trundle and went to wring out a cloth in cool water. Ian stirred slightly as I wiped his face, his eyes closed once more.

“Mrs. Abernathy gave me amethysts to drink for the headache,” he murmured drowsily.

“Amethysts?” I was startled, but kept my voice low and soothing. “You drank amethysts?”

“Ground up in vinegar,” he said. “And pearls in sweet wine, but that was for the bedding, she said.” His face looked red and swollen, and he turned his cheek against the cool pillow, seeking relief. “She was a great one for the stones, yon woman. She burned powdered emeralds in the flame of a black candle, and she rubbed my cock wi’ a diamond—to keep it hard, she said.”

There was a faint sound from the bed, and I looked up to see Lord John, raised up on one elbow, eyes wide.

“And did the amethysts work?” I wiped Ian’s face gently with the cloth.

“The diamond did.” He made a feeble attempt at an adolescent’s bawdy laugh, but it faded into a harsh, rasping cough.

“No amethysts here, I’m afraid,” I said. “But there’s wine, if you want it.” He did, and I helped him to drink it—well diluted with water—then eased him back on the pillow, flushed and heavy-eyed.

Lord John had lain down, too, and lay watching, his thick blond hair unbound, spread out on the pillow behind him.

“That’s what she wanted wi’ the lads, ye ken,” Ian said. His eyes were shut tight against the light, but he could clearly see
something,
if only in the mists of memory. He licked his lips; they were beginning to dry and crack, and his nose was beginning to run.

“She said the stone grew in a lad’s innards—the one she wanted. She said it must be a laddie who’d never gone wi’ a lass, though, that was important. If he had, the stone wouldna be right, somehow. If he h-huh-had one.” He paused to cough, and ended breathless, nose dripping. I held a handkerchief for him to blow.

“What did she want the stone for?” Lord John’s face bore a look of sympathy—he knew only too well what Ian felt like at the moment—but curiosity compelled the question. I didn’t object; I wanted to know too.

Ian started to shake his head, then stopped with a groan.

“Ah! Oh, God, my head will split surely! I dinna ken, man. She didna say. Only that it was needful; she must have it to be s-sure.” He barely got out the last word before dissolving into a coughing attack that was the worst yet; he sounded like a barking dog.

“You’d better stop talk—” I began, but was interrupted by a soft thump at the door.

Instantly I froze, wet cloth still in my hand. Lord John leaned swiftly from the bed and took a pistol from inside one of his high cavalry boots on the floor. A finger to his lips to enjoin silence, he nodded toward Jamie’s pistols. I moved silently to the sideboard and grasped one, reassured by the smooth, solid heft of it in my hand.

“Who is there?” Lord John called, in a surprisingly strong voice.

There was no answer save a sort of scratching, and a faint whine. I sighed and laid the pistol down, torn between irritation, relief and amusement.

“It’s your blasted dog, Ian.”

“Are you sure?” Lord John spoke in a low voice, pistol still aimed unwaveringly at the door. “It might be an Indian trick.”

Ian rolled over with an effort, facing the door.

“Rollo!” he shouted, his voice hoarse and cracking.

Hoarse or not, Rollo knew his master’s voice; there was a deep, joyful “WARF!” from outside, succeeding by frantic scratching, at a height some four feet from the ground.

“Beastly dog,” I said, hurrying to open the door. “Stop that, or I’ll make you into a rug, or a coat, or something!”

Giving this threat the attention it deserved, Rollo bounded past me into the room. Exuberant with joy, he launched his hundred and fifty pounds from the middle of the floor and landed directly on the trundle bed, making it sway dangerously, joints screeching in protest. Ignoring a strangled cry from the bed’s occupant, he proceeded to lick Ian madly about the face and forearms—the latter being flung up as a wholly inadequate defense to the slobbering onslaught.

“Bad dog,” Ian said, making ineffectual efforts to push Rollo off his chest, giggling helplessly in spite of his discomfort. “Bad dog, I say—down, sir!”

“Down, sir!” Lord John echoed sternly. Rollo, interrupted in his demonstrations of affection, rounded on Lord John, his ears laid back. He curled his lip, and gave his lordship a good look at the condition of his back teeth. Lord John started, and raised his pistol convulsively.

“Down,
a dhiobhuil
!” Ian said, prodding Rollo in the hindquarters. “Take your hairy arse out o’ my face, ye wicked beast!”

Rollo instantly dismissed Lord John from consideration, and padded around on top of the trundle, turning three times and kneading the bedding with his paws before collapsing next to his master’s body. He licked Ian’s ear, and with a deep sigh, laid his nose between his large muddy paws on the pillow.