Drums of Autumn (80 page)

Ian’s long face relaxed, and he put his hand over hers where it lay on his arm. He didn’t say anything for a moment; then squeezed her hand gently and let it go.

“Aye, well. You’ll tell him, nonetheless; if he wishes it—”

“He won’t,” she interrupted firmly.

Ian looked at her, a faint smile at the back of his eyes.

“Ye ken a lot about what he’ll do, for a lass that’s never met him.”

She smiled at him, the spring sun warm on her shoulders.

“Maybe I do.”

The smile broke through to Ian’s face.

“Aye, your mother will ha’ told ye, I suppose. And she did know him, for all she was a Sassenach. But then, she was always…special, your mother.”

“Yes.” She hesitated for a moment, wanting to hear more about the topic of Laoghaire, but unsure how to ask. Before she could think of something, he stood, brushed down his kilt, and started down the track, forcing her to rise and follow.

“What’s a fetch, Uncle Ian?” she asked the back of his head. Preoccupied with the difficulties of descent, he didn’t turn, but she saw him lurch slightly, wooden leg sinking into the loose earth. At the bottom of the hill he waited for her, leaning on his stick.

“You’ll be thinking of what Laoghaire said?” he asked. Without waiting for her nod, he turned and began making his way along the bottom of the hill, toward the small stream that flowed down through the rocks.

“A fetch is the sight of a person, when the person himself is far awa’,” he said. “Sometimes it will be a person that’s died, far from home. It’s ill luck to see one, but worse luck to meet your own—for if you do, ye die.”

It was the absolute matter-of-factness of his tone that made a shiver run down her spine.

“I hope I don’t,” she said. “But she said—Laoghaire—” She stumbled on the name.

“L’heery,” Ian corrected. “Aye, well. It was at her wedding to Jamie that Jenny saw your mother’s fetch, that’s true. She kent then that it was a bad match, but it was too late to be undone.”

He knelt awkwardly on his good knee, and splashed water from the burn over his face. Brianna did likewise, and gulped several handfuls of the cold, peaty-tasting water. Having no towel, she pulled her long shirttail from her breeks and wiped her face. She caught Ian’s scandalized look at the glimpse of her bare stomach thus afforded, and dropped the shirttail abruptly, her cheeks flushing.

“You were going to tell me why my father married her,” she said, to hide her embarrassment.

Ian’s cheeks had gone a dull red, and he turned hastily away, talking to cover his confusion.

“Aye. It was as I told ye—when Jamie came from England, it was like the spark had gone out o’ him, and there was nothing here to kindle it again. I dinna ken what it was that happened in England, but something did, sure as I’m born.”

He shrugged, the back of his neck fading to its normal sunburnt brown.

“After Culloden, he was bad hurt, but there was fighting still to do, of a kind, and that kept him alive. When he came home from England—there wasna anything here for him, really.” He spoke quietly, eyes cast down, watching his footing on the rocky ground.

“So Jenny made the match for him, with Laoghaire.” He glanced at her, eyes bright and shrewd.

“You’ll maybe be old enough to know, for all you’re unwed yet. What a woman can do for a man—or he for her, I suppose. To heal him, I mean. Fill his emptiness.” He touched his maimed leg absently. “Jamie wed Laoghaire from pity, I think—and if she had truly needed him—aye, well.” He shrugged again, and smiled at her.

“It’s no use to say what might have been or should be, is it? But he had left Laoghaire’s house some time before your mother came back, you should know that.”

Brianna felt a small surge of relief.

“Oh. I’m glad to know that. And my mother—when she came back—”

“He was verra glad to see her,” Ian said simply. This time the smile lighted his whole face, like sunshine. “So was I.”

35

BON VOYAGE

I
t reminded her uncomfortably of Boston’s city dog pound. A large, halfdark space whose rafters rang with yelping, and an atmosphere dense with animal smells. The big building on the market square in Inverness sheltered a great many enterprises—food vendors, cattle and swine brokers, assurance agents, ship-chandlers and Royal Navy recruiters, but it was the group of men, women and children bunched in one corner that lent most force to the illusion.

Here and there a man or a woman stood upright amid the group, chin out and shoulders set in a show of good health and spirit, putting themselves forward. But for the most part, the people who offered themselves for sale eyed the passersby warily, in darting glances whose expressions were fixed between hope and fear—much too reminiscent of the dogs in the animal shelter where her father had now and then taken her to adopt a pet.

There were several families, too, with children clinging to their mothers, or standing blank-faced beside their parents. She tried not to look at them; it was always the puppies that had broken her heart.

Young Jamie was sidling slowly around the group, hat held against his chest to save it being crushed by the crowd, eyes half closed as he considered the prospects on offer. Her uncle Ian had gone to the shipping office to arrange her passage to America, leaving her cousin Jamie to choose a servant to accompany her on the journey. In vain had she protested that she didn’t need a servant; after all, she had—so far as they knew—traveled from France to Scotland by herself, in perfect safety.

The men had nodded and smiled and listened with every evidence of polite attention—and here she was, obediently following Young Jamie through the crowd like one of her aunt Jenny’s sheep. She was beginning to understand exactly what her mother had meant by describing the Frasers as “stubborn as rocks.”

Despite the hubbub around her and her annoyance at her male relatives, her heart gave a small, excited bounce at thought of her mother. It was only now, when she knew for sure that Claire was safe, that she could admit to herself how sorely she had missed her. And her father—that unknown Highlander who had come so suddenly and vividly to life for her as she read his letters. The minor fact of an intervening ocean seemed no more than a small inconvenience.

Her cousin Jamie interrupted these rosy thoughts by taking her arm and leaning close to shout in her ear.

“Yon fellow wi’ the cast in one eye,” he said in a subdued bellow, indicating the gentleman in question by pointing with his chin. “What d’ye say to him, Brianna?”

“I’d say he looks like the Boston Strangler,” she muttered, then louder, shouting into her cousin’s ear, “He looks like an ox! No!”

“He’s strong, and he looks honest!”

Brianna thought the gentleman in question looked too stupid to be
dis
honest, but refrained from saying so, merely shaking her head emphatically.

Young Jamie shrugged philosophically and resumed his scrutiny of the would-be bondsmen, walking around those who took his particular interest and peering at them closely, in a way she might have thought exceedingly rude had a number of other potential employers not been doing likewise.

“Bridies! Hot bridies!” A high-pitched screech cut through the rumble and racket of the hall, and Brianna turned to see an old woman elbowing her way robustly through the crowd, a steaming tray hung round her neck and a wooden spatula in hand.

The heavenly scent of fresh hot dough and spiced meat cut through the other pungencies in the hall, noticeable as the old woman’s calling. It had been a long time since breakfast, and Brianna dug in her pocket, feeling saliva fill her mouth.

Ian had taken her purse to pay for her passage, but she had two or three loose coins; she held one up and waved it to and fro. The bridie seller spotted the flash of silver and at once altered course, tacking through the chattering mob. She hove to in front of Brianna and reached up to snatch the coin.

“Mary save us, a giantess!” she said, showing strong yellow teeth in a grin as she tilted her head back to look up at Brianna. “Ye’d best take twa, my dearie. One will never do a great lass like you!”

Heads turned, and faces grinned up at her. She stood half a head higher than most of the men nearby. Mildly embarrassed by the attention, Brianna gave the nearest offender a cold look. This seemed to entertain the young man quite a lot; he staggered back against his friend, clutching his breast and pretending to be overcome.

“My God!” he said. “She looked at me! I’m heartstruck!”

“Och, awa’ wi’ ye,” his friend scoffed, shoving him upright. “ ’Twas me she was looking at; who’d look at
you
if they’d a choice?”

“Nothing of the sort,” his friend protested stoutly. “It was me—wasn’t it, darlin’?” He languished, making calf’s eyes at Brianna and looking so ridiculous that she laughed, along with the crowd around her.

“And what would ye be doing with her, if ye got her, eh? She’d make two of ye. Now, off wi’ ye, spawn,” the bridie seller said, casually smacking the young man across the buttocks with her wooden spatula. “I’ve business, if you haven’t. And the young woman will starve if ye dinna leave off playin’ the fool and let her buy her dinner, aye?”

“She looks in fine flesh to me, grannie.” Brianna’s admirer, ignoring both assault and admonition, ogled her shamelessly. “And as for the rest—fetch me a ladder, Bobby, I’m no afraid of heights!”

Amid gales of laughter, the young man was dragged away by his friends, making loud kissing noises over his shoulder as he moved reluctantly off. Brianna took her change in coppers and retired into a corner to eat two of the hot beef pasties, her face still warm with laughter and self-consciousness.

She hadn’t been so aware of her height since she had been a gawky seventh-grader, towering over all her classmates. Among her tall cousins, she had felt at home, but it was true; here she stuck out like a sore thumb, despite her having abided by Jenny’s insistence and changed from her men’s clothes to a dress of her cousin Janet’s, hastily altered and let out in the seams.

Her sense of self-consciousness was not helped by the fact that no underclothes went with the dress, beyond a shift. No one seemed to find any lack in this state of affairs, but she was intensely conscious of the unaccustomed feeling of airiness about her nether parts, and the odd feeling of her naked thighs sliding past each other as she walked, her silk stockings gartered just above the knee.

Both self-consciousness and drafts were forgotten as she bit into the first hot pastry. A bridie was a plump hot pie in a half-moon shape, filled with minced steak and suet and spiced with onion. A rush of hot, rich juice and flaky pastry filled her mouth, and she closed her eyes in bliss.

“The food was either terribly bad or terribly good,” Claire had said, describing her adventures in the past. “That’s because there’s no way of keeping things; anything you eat has either been salted or preserved in lard, if it isn’t half rancid—or else it’s fresh off the hoof or out of the garden, in which case it can be bloody marvelous.”

The bridie was bloody marvelous, Brianna decided, even if it did keep dropping crumbs down the top of her bodice. She brushed at her bosom, trying to be unobtrusive, but the crowd’s attention had turned—no one was looking at her now.

Or almost no one. A slight, fair man in a shabby coat had materialized by her elbow, making small nervous movements as though he wanted to pluck her sleeve but hadn’t quite got up the nerve. Not sure whether he was a beggar or another importunate suitor, she looked suspiciously down her nose at him.

“Yes?”

“You—you are requiring a servant, ma’am?”

She dropped her aloofness, realizing that he must be one of the crowd of indentures.

“Oh. Well, I wouldn’t say I require one, exactly, but it looks as though I’m going to get one anyway.” She glanced at Young Jamie, who was now interrogating a squat, beetle-browed individual with shoulders like the Village Blacksmith. Young Jamie’s notion of the ideal servant seemed to be limited to muscle. She looked back at the small man in front of her; he wasn’t much by Young Jamie’s standards, but by hers…

“Are you interested?” she asked.

The expression of haggard nervousness didn’t leave his face, but a fugitive gleam of hope showed in his eyes.

“It—I—that is—not me, no. But will you think—perhaps consider—will you take my daughter?” he said abruptly. “Please!”

“Your daughter?” Brianna looked down at him, startled, her half-eaten bridie forgotten.

“I beg you, ma’am!” To her surprise, tears stood in the man’s eyes. “Ye cannot think how urgently I pray you, or what gratitude I must bear ye!”

“But—ah—” Brianna brushed crumbs from the corner of her mouth, feeling desperately awkward.

“She is a strong girl in spite of her appearance, and most willing! She will be content to do any service whatever for ye, ma’am, and ye’ll buy her contract!”

“But why should—look, what’s the trouble?” she said, moved past awkwardness by curiosity and pity for his obvious distress. She took him by the arm and drew him into the shelter of a corner, where the racket was slightly diminished.

“Now, why are you so anxious that I should hire your daughter?”

She could see the muscles move in his throat as he swallowed convulsively.

“There is a man. He—he desires her. Not as a servant. As a—as a—concubine.” The words came out in a hoarse whisper, and a flood of ugly crimson stained his face.

“Mmphm,” said Brianna, discovering all at once the utility of this ambiguous expression. “I see. But you needn’t let your daughter go to him, surely?”

“I have no choice.” His agony was patent. “Her contract has been bought by Mr. Ransom—the broker.” He jerked his head backward, indicating a tough-looking gentleman in a tie-wig, who was talking to Young Jamie. “He can dispose of it to whom he will—and he will sell her without a moment’s hesitation to this…this…” He choked, overcome by despair.

“Here, take this.” She hastily untucked the wide kerchief from her bodice, took it off her neck, and handed it to him. It left her slightly less than modest, but this seemed like an emergency.

Clearly it was, to him. He swabbed blindly at his face, then dropped the cloth and seized her free hand in both of his.

“He is a drover; he has gone to the cattle market to sell his beasts. When he has done so, he will return with the money for her contract, and take her away to his house in Aberdeen. When I heard him say so to Ransom, I was thrown into the most violent despair. I prayed most urgently to the Lord for her deliverance. And then—” He gulped.

“I saw you—so proud and noble and kind-seeming—and it did come to me as my prayers were answered. Oh, ma’am, I pray ye, do not disdain a father’s plea. Take her!”

“But I’m going to America! You’d never—” She bit her lip. “I mean, you wouldn’t see her—for a very long time.”

The desperate father went quite white at this. He closed his eyes, and seemed to sway slightly, giving at the knees.

“The Colonies?” he whispered. Then he opened his eyes once more and set his jaw.

“Better she should be gone from me forever to a wild place, than to meet dishonor before my eyes.”

Brianna had no idea what to say to this. She glanced helplessly over the man’s head at the sea of bobbing heads.

“Er…your daughter…which one…?”

The flicker of hope in his eyes sprang into sudden flame, shocking in its intensity.

“Bless ye, lady! I will fetch her to ye directly!”

He pressed her hand fervently, then darted away into the crowd, leaving her staring after him. After a moment, she shrugged helplessly, and bent to pick up her fallen kerchief. How had
this
happened? And what in the name of goodness would her uncle and her cousin say, if she—

“This is Elizabeth,” a voice announced breathlessly. “Do your duty to the lady, Lizzie.”

Brianna looked down and found the decision made for her.

“Oh, dear,” she murmured, seeing the neat white parting down the middle of the small head that bent in a deep curtsy before her. “A puppy.”

The head bobbed upright, presenting her with a thin, starved-looking face, in which scared gray eyes occupied most of the available space.

“Your servant, mum,” said the small, white-lipped mouth. Or at least that’s what it looked like it said; the girl spoke so softly, she couldn’t be heard above the surrounding racket.

“She will serve ye well, ma’am, aye, indeed she will!” The father’s anxious voice was more audible. She glanced at him; there was a strong resemblance between father and daughter, both with the same flyaway fair hair, the same thin, anxious faces. They were nearly the same height, though the girl was so frail, she seemed like her father’s shadow.

“Er…hello.” She smiled at the girl, trying to seem reassuring. The girl’s head tilted fearfully back, looking up. She swallowed visibly, and licked her lips.

“Ah…how old are you, Lizzie? May I call you Lizzie?”

The small head bobbed on a neck that looked like a wild mushroom’s stalk; long, colorless, and infinitely fragile. The girl whispered something that Brianna didn’t catch; she looked at the father, who answered eagerly.

“Fourteen, ma’am. But she’s a rare hand with cooking and sewing, clean in her person and ye’ll never find a soul more biddable and willing!”

He stood behind his daughter, hands on her shoulders, gripped tight enough to show his knuckles white. His eyes met Brianna’s. They were pale blue, pleading. His lips moved—without sound, but she heard him clearly.

“Please,” he said.

Beyond him, Brianna could see her uncle, who had come into the hall. He was talking to Young Jamie, smooth head and curly bent together in close conversation. In a moment they would be looking for her.

She took a deep breath and drew herself up to her full height. Well, and if you came right down to it, she thought, she was as much a Fraser as her cousin. Let them find out just how stubborn a rock could be.

She smiled at the girl and held out a hand, offering the second, uneaten bridie.