Mountain Laurel

by Lori Benton

  “Necessity? Is that what ye’re calling yon pig?” Ian bent a nod toward the fugitive, reinstated in its pen.

  “Perhaps I shall!” Reynold’s laughter was full. “Thankfully we’ve a God as rich in common sense as He is humor. It was our Lord, after all, who said, ‘Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the sabbath day?’ Though I note He makes no mention of pigs.”

  Laughing in his turn, Ian studied the man. Reynold made no attempt to hide his religion, and yet . . . “Did I miss ye and your wife at service this morn?”

  “If you mean at Pryce’s meeting, we weren’t in attendance. The Reverend Wilkes and I hold a certain strongly opposing view which has rendered me unwelcome amongst his congregants.” Reynold reached for a gourd hung from a water barrel by the door, dipped it full, and took a swallow. “I’d live in peace with my neighbors, as our Lord bids, but I cannot sit quiet in a pew whilst bondage is condoned—even championed—from the pulpit.”

  Ian eyed the man but saw no evidence of censure directed at him—the nephew of a slave-owning planter. “One might venture to say ye’ve fetched up at the wrong end of the country, given such sensibilities.”

  “One might. But the Lord knows what He’s about. Here He planted us, and here we’ll sink our roots.” Reynold offered the gourd. More to Ian’s present interest was bread. One sweet roll remained between them. His neighbor read his straying glance but made no move to thwart him.

  Ian shooed a questing fly, hesitated, then tore the roll in half. Reynold took his portion with a solemn nod, acknowledging the sacrifice.

  Ian leaned against the cabin wall, stretched his legs until the toes of his boots caught a sliver of sunlight at the porch’s edge, and surveyed the homestead. They might be largely at rest on this Sabbath day, but the orderliness of the place testified to the Reynolds’ industry during the other six. The man had related his story while they’d worked. At twenty-six, after his father’s death, Reynold had sailed for the newly independent United States with funds from the sale of the family’s London tailor shop. He met Cecily aboard ship, fleeing the turbulent revolution in France. They were wed in Wilmington. Months later, having traveled deep into the Piedmont, Reynold purchased fifty acres from Hugh Cameron, built a cabin, cleared a hill, and planted it in Indian corn.

  Ian, in turn, had told of his years spent fur-trapping in Canada—for which efforts he’d far less to show.

  “We’ve our own Sabbath meeting here,” Reynold said now. “A family from over the ridge—the Allens—and a fellow by name of Charles Spencer. It’s a small attendance, unless you count Charlie’s hounds.” Reynold gestured westward, beyond the cornstalks, to the rising hills. “I expect him anytime. He’s wont to come early, to claim his spot in the hay.”

  “Ye hold your meeting in the barn?”

  “We do. And you’re welcome to join us.”

  “It’s kindly offered,” Ian replied, “but I should start back. There’s a supper later that would be imprudent of me to miss.” He stood to take his leave but asked, “Has my uncle ever come here—to worship with ye?”

  “I’ve invited your kin. They’ve never come.”

  Ian couldn’t imagine his aunt and cousins abandoning the society of Chesterfield for straw in their hair and manure on their shoes.

  “Tell me something, Ian.” Reynold’s chin lifted askance, as though he were trying to catch a distant sound. “By your speech I judge you Scotland-born, though I’m guessing you’ve lived most of your life this side of the Atlantic, with the past few years, by your own accounting, on the frontier. Why have you come to Carolina?”

  The question, and the man’s uncanny accuracy, startled. Ian caught his gaze, which was guileless as the day was warm. “Och, awa’ wi’ ye,” he said, easing into the broad speech of his mother’s kin. “Ye kent who and what I was when I came oot o’ the wood totin’ yer bacon. Own it, man.”

  Reynold rubbed the back of his neck, then broke into his easy smile. “There’s little news doesn’t find its way to the mill before long. But I didn’t learn of you by hearsay. Your uncle told me, after he wrote to you, late last winter.”

  “Then ye know why I’m here.” Ian’s grin faded under Reynold’s scrutiny.

  “I know why your uncle sent for you,” his neighbor corrected easily. “Not why you’ve come.”

  7

  Ian cupped his hands in the creek’s flow to bathe his sweating face. He’d spent longer than intended with the Reynolds. He liked the Englishman, despite the fact their last exchange troubled him like a pebble lodged in his boot.

  I know why your uncle sent for you. Not why you’ve come.

  “For my sins,” Ian had quipped, then mumbled something about a broken apprenticeship, familial disappointment, his uncle Callum refusing to take him back to Canada. “It was best I left Boston and I’d nowhere else to go.” He’d shrugged as though speaking of it didn’t cause his chest to ache. “I mean to—hope to—settle to a life that will atone, I suppose.”

  Reynold had regarded him, head tilted in that odd, listening way. “Without vision the people perish,” he’d said, leaving Ian baffled as to his meaning. He hadn’t asked, hadn’t wanted to pitch camp on the discomfiting topic.

  Removing his neckcloth, Ian used it to douse himself head to shoulders, letting the creek water trickle beneath his open shirt, then shook his dripping hair back from his face. He’d lost his ribbon. No knowing where. The bitty things were as shifty in his keeping as the Reynolds’ shoat.

  Squinting through the boughs overhead, he judged he’d still time to make himself presentable before showing his face at table. He was a dozen yards farther along the path when he heard the voice, distant but clear.

  “Och, will ye hark to her now.”

  Hand falling to his knife, he scanned the stone-pocked ridge rising on his left, then downslope through the wood on his right. No matter his uncle owned this land, much of it was virgin forest. Cover enough for bear or panther—or man—to pass unseen. Not necessarily unheard.

  “Come here to me, love.”

  Certain the voice had issued from a point upstream, where the creek tumbled from the higher ridge, Ian stepped off the trail. The land rose under him, rocky, rooty, brush-tangled, but intermittent comments from above drew him on.

  “Will ye no’ gang wi’ me, lass?”

  “Aye, she’ll go,” Ian muttered. “Ye both shall, once I ferret ye out.”

  He ascended by handholds the last few yards, grasping a woody laurel shrub to haul himself over a final rise.

  Before him the creek cut into the hillside for the distance of a stone’s throw, before the ridge’s higher slopes folded in to form a hollow where birch trees clustered, knee-deep in ferns and mossy stones. Sunlight lanced their mottled trunks. Through them he glimpsed lichen-speckled stone outcroppings mounting the slope beyond, creating a sort of curved wall over which the stream spilled in a narrow, glassy waterfall, twice a man’s height.

  The setting was unexpected, yet he’d the oddest sense of having seen the place before.

  Then he caught what he’d come seeking: a flash of faded-blue cloth, deep within the grove, near the base of the waterfall. He marked a path through the ferns, plotting his approach.

  A harsh kruk rent the stillness. Then a woman’s voice spoke.

  “Hush, now. Let me finish.”

  He stalked the unsuspecting pair, guided by the patch of blue. It broadened into the curve of a shoulder. The woman’s, surely. He still saw no sign of the first speaker. The man. Pierced by suspicion, Ian paused and scanned his back trail, then the hollow to left and right.

  Nothing. Only the woman. Had the man climbed farther up the ridge?

  He pressed forward. The shoulder he’d spied dipped to a slender waist, brushed by dark tumbled ringlets. Seona.

  She sat on a rock, back turned nearly full to him. At her bare feet spread a pool that deepened over a stony basin, into which the waterfall
emptied. A basket, nestled in the grass beside her, held what appeared to be a scattering of half-withered blueberries. They weren’t on her mind at present, however. Grasping the last tree separating them, Ian leaned out.

  Across her lap lay a yellowed scrap of paper, over which her hand moved in short, purposeful strokes. He shifted for a better view; beneath his boot a stick snapped.

  Seona sprang up, whirling to face him as something large and black—a raven—launched from behind the rock, startling him back a pace as it took wing.

  He recovered almost instantly from surprise. Seona had already thrust the paper behind her back, but knowledge of it blazed from her eyes.

  He stepped from the birches, coming to stand before her. “What are ye doing?”

  Her eyes darted sidelong, as though she, too, contemplated flight. Then, resignedly, she brought forth what was hidden and held it out to him. The paper was damp where she’d clenched it with fingers smudged a telltale black, but there was no writing on it. Not even letters. Ringing the paper’s ragged border were charcoal sketches of the raven’s head, with a full-bodied likeness of the bird in the center, rendered down to the delineation of its feathers and a sparkle of life in the dark-beaded eye.

  Ian felt his heart rush a beat as admiration—appreciation, astonishment even—flooded him. Mere accuracy couldn’t have quickened his artistic sensibilities the way these drawings were doing. There was life on the page, an expression of joy that robbed him of speech. Seona was staring at her feet. A tendril of her hair lifted on the breeze and pressed against her cheek.

  “These are good,” he said at last. “Good as most book illustrations I’ve seen. Better than some.”

  Her head jerked up. He watched her face as the meaning of his words took hold. For an instant she seemed startled, pleased even. Then her eyes flicked up at him, wary.

  “It ain’t writing.”

  He almost smiled at that. “No, it isn’t.” And he’d never heard that drawing was forbidden to slaves. Was that the point she was making? Or was it forbidden, and she hoped he wouldn’t know that?

  He considered the sketches again, drinking in the grace of line and proportion. “And clearly this isn’t the first ye’ve attempted this.”

  She hesitated, a flinch of her brows the only indication the question rattled her. Forbidden or not, she didn’t like that he’d caught her at it.

  “I been making pictures since . . . since I was little.”

  He could believe it. Her skill spoke of untold hours’ work. Where had she found those hours? He glanced at the basket and its meager gleaning of berries and suppressed another smile. “Does anyone ken what it is ye can do? Has anyone seen?” When she shook her head, eyes veiled by downswept lashes, he asked, “Not even Lily?”

  “No one knows, Mister Ian.” She pulled her lower lip between her teeth. “Except you.”

  So she had kept it secret, for whatever reason. It struck him that, unless she was lying to him, she’d never heard her drawing praised. Moreover, whatever satisfaction she’d derived from the pursuit would have been tainted by dread of this very thing. Discovery. It hadn’t stopped her doing it.

  He’d had that heart’s affair with woodworking, once upon a time. Seeing it here, in this unlikely manifestation, he yearned for it again.

  “It’s true, Seona. These are very good.” He saw no response to his praise now. “Is this a thing ye oughtn’t to be doing?”

  Her brows drew together. Fear strained her features. “I . . . I reckon Miss Lucinda wouldn’t like it.”

  He wondered what his aunt’s reaction would be if she knew. Putting a stop to it, no doubt. Exacting some sort of punishment besides?

  “Mister Ian, what you meaning to do?”

  The fragile sense of connection with her dissolved as he realized he—her master’s kin—was meant to do something. He drew breath, not knowing what he intended to say until the words left his mouth. “I’ll keep your secret, Seona.”

  Silence followed, screaming with mistrust. “Why?”

  “Why?” he echoed, even as the possible implication seared through his mind—as it must have been racing through hers. He grew conscious of her hair loose in the breeze, the curve of her waist, the dark-lashed eyes that stunned with their vivid green. He couldn’t prevent the surge of heat in his face and sounded more defensive than he’d meant to when he said, “Because I won’t be the one to quench a gift such as yours, nor see ye punished for creating something beautiful.”

  Her eyes flared in surprise. She frowned but took the paper he held out to her.

  “Have ye others? Other pictures? Where d’ye keep them?”

  It was clear on her face the instant she resigned herself and her secret to his keeping. “Above your head when you sleep at night.”

  “The garret?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Wind shifted the white boughs above them. Sunlight streamed over her, striking sparks down the length of her hair. Not a true black, as he’d thought, it glinted bronze where the sun touched it. She lifted her eyes and stared at the base of his throat. He was standing close to her, towering like a reeking bear, hair dripping down the open neck of his shirt, clothing streaked with sweat and barn filth. He stepped back.

  It was then he felt the prickle at the base of his skull. He tensed, certain of being watched.

  The man. He’d gone clean out of mind. But though he scanned the place, there was no one. Only the raven, perched in a lone birch tree across the pool, into which it had flown when he’d startled it. He swung to face Seona again. “Was it the raven ye were speaking to?”

  She’d been staring at him but slid her eyes away. “Yes, sir.”

  A moment before, when he’d praised her drawing, her expression had been as transparent as he’d ever seen on a slave’s face. Now she was closed to him, her features a mask, and he felt as he had those first weeks with his uncle Callum among the Chippewa, stumbling over a bafflingly nuanced language, striving for subtlety and missing the mark by a mile. To blazes with subtlety, then.

  “Seona, who was speaking to ye? Where has he gone?”

  “Nowhere, Mister Ian.”

  “Are ye lying to me again?”

  “Again?” Understanding rippled over her features and she rushed on to say, “I didn’t lie that day, about the filly. Esther talked me into sneaking to the stable—after I saw you in the parlor.”

  That he could believe. Maisy’s daughter had a quick tongue and apparently knew how to use it to get her way. Still, he was all but certain Seona was lying now. The voice he’d heard had belonged to a Scot or someone who spoke as one. Malcolm? The notion of the old man out in the wood wooing a lass young enough to be his great-granddaughter was absurd.

  “Who are ye protecting? Another of my uncle’s slaves?”

  He’d made no threatening move, yet she stepped back, pointing across the pool. “Mister Ian—he’s right there. You heard that old raven talking. Here—” She thrust the drawing at him and raised her arm.

  Ian ducked as the raven launched toward them, swept past his face, and settled with a flapping of wings on Seona’s outstretched forearm. It balanced there a moment, then hopped down to a moss-dappled stone to eye them.

  Ian lowered himself onto the rock she’d vacated, just a wee bit rattled. “It’s a tame raven?”

  Seona crouched in front of the bird, fingers clamped over her sleeve where the raven had perched. “Not so tame as it was. Master Hugh’s son had it from a chick.”

  “My cousin, ye mean?” The rock beneath him, the leaf-filtered light, the drawing in his hand—all felt insubstantial, as though in stepping into the birch hollow, he’d fallen into a dream. Or a painting of a dream . . . that was where he’d seen this place. The painting in the parlor. “Seona, it must be fifteen years since Aidan Cameron died.”

  “Longer back than that. Afore I was born.”

  “How old are ye?” he asked, suddenly curious.

  “Ten years and eight.”


  She was of an age with Judith. That took him aback. Judith seemed barely out of girlhood, whereas Seona . . . no need to be told her childhood, such as it had been, had ended long ago.

  “He taught the raven to speak, did Aidan?”

  “I don’t know as he set out to teach him,” Seona said, gazing at the bird. “More like Munin picked up speech on his own, being nigh Mister Aidan all the time. So Mama tells it.”

  He frowned. “What did ye call it—the raven?”

  “Munin. From a book, Mama said.”

  Ian minded his da’s inscription in the book of Norse legends above his uncle’s desk, clear as if he read the words afresh. “‘I fear for Hugin lest he fare not back,’” he quoted. “‘Yet I watch the more for Munin.’”

  Seona’s eyes widened. “You know those words?”

  “My da sent that book to Uncle Hugh. We’ve a copy in Boston.” He paused, staring at the raven. “Thought and memory . . .” Seeing her puzzlement, he explained, “The ravens in the story that line’s from, that’s what their names mean. Hugin is thought. Munin is memory. Each dawn the Norse god, Odin, sent the pair to fly over the world, acting his spies. They’d return and perch on his shoulder to whisper the secrets of men.”

  She smiled at that, a light in her eyes. “Mama once said be careful what you tell a raven. They don’t keep secrets.”

  A breeze stirred, brushing the curls from her face. The sun had deepened her skin to a light-cinnamon hue across the bridge of her nose. Along the delicate turn of her collarbones. The hollow between.

  Such thoughts fled when a third voice said, “I fear for Hugin.”

  Ian stared at the raven, the flesh of his scalp crawling. The enunciation of the words, their tonal quality, was uncannily human, but the bird hadn’t spoken with any voice he recognized. If ravens were mimics—and apparently they were—was the voice that had drawn him to the hollow that of his long-dead cousin?

  Or the raven’s memory of it.

  “Mister Aidan was fond of animals,” Seona was saying. “Mama says there was a doe he had from a fawn. It would eat from his hand like a hound. It went back wild after—” She broke off as a cloud darted over the sun, throwing the hollow into shadow. She stood, on her face a dawning comprehension that matched Ian’s own.