LONG ROAD HOME
JAMIE SAT BY THE tiny window in his shirt and breeches, watching his wife’s hair dry.
It was hot as a forge in the tiny spare room Mrs. Macken had given them, and his sweat lay on him in a heavy dew that broke under its own weight and ran down his sides with any movement, but he was careful not to block any faint breath of air that might seep into the room; the air reeked of Roquefort cheese and blood.
He’d soaked her hair with water from the ewer Mrs. Macken had brought and wetted her shift; it clung to her body, the round of her buttock showing pink through the fabric as it dried. It showed the thick wad of the dressing, too, and the bloody stain that spread slow upon the cloth.
Slow. His lips formed the word and he thought it passionately but didn’t speak aloud. Slow! Stopping altogether would be much better, but he’d settle for slow just now.
Eight pints. That’s how much blood she said a human body had. It must vary some, though; clearly a man his size had more than a woman of hers. Single hairs were beginning to rise from the soaking mass, curling as they dried, delicate as an ant’s feelers.
He wished he might give her some of his blood; he had plenty. She’d said it was possible, but not in this time. Something to do with things in the blood that mightn’t match.
Her hair was a dozen colors, brown, molasses, cream and butter, sugar, sable … gleams of gold and silver where the dying light touched it. A broad streak of pure white at her temple, nearly the shade of her skin. She lay on her side facing him, one hand curled against her bosom, the other loose, upturned, so the inside of her wrist showed pure white, too, the blue veins heartbreaking.
She’d said she thought of cutting her wrists when she believed him dead. He didn’t think he’d do it that way, if she died. He’d seen it: Toby Quinn with his wrist cut to the bone and all his blood run out across the floor, the room stinking of butchery and the word “teind” written on the wall above him in blood, his confession. A tithe to hell, it meant, and he shuddered in spite of the heat and crossed himself.
She’d said it was maybe the blood that had made Young Ian’s bairns all die—the blood not matching betwixt him and his Mohawk wife—and that maybe it would be different with Rachel. He said a quick Ave, that it might be so, and crossed himself again.
The hair that lay upon her shoulders was coiling now, sinuous, slow as rising bread. Ought he rouse her to drink again? She needed the water, to help make more blood, to cool her with sweat. But while she slept, the pain was less. A few moments longer, then.
Not now. Please, not now.
She shifted, moaning, and he saw that she was different; restless now. The stain on her bandage had changed color, darkened from scarlet to rust as it dried. He laid a hand softly on her arm and felt the heat.
The bleeding had stopped. The fever had begun.
NOW THE TREES were talking to him. He wished they’d stop. The only thing Ian Murray wanted just now was silence. He was alone for the moment, but his ears buzzed and his head still throbbed with noise.
That always happened for a bit after a fight. You were listening so hard, to start with, for the sounds of the enemy, the direction of the wind, the voice of a saint behind you … you began to hear the voices of the forest, like you did hunting. And then you heard the shots and shouting, and when there were moments when that stopped, you heard the blood pounding round your body and beating in your ears, and, all in all, it took some time for the racket to die down afterward.
He had brief flashes of things that had happened during the day—milling soldiers; the thud of the arrow that struck him; the face of the Abenaki he’d killed by the fire; the look of George Washington on his big white horse, racing up the road, waving his hat—but these came and went in a fog of confusion, appearing as though revealed to him by a stroke of lightning, then disappearing into a buzzing mist.
A wind went whispering through the branches over him, and he felt it on his skin as though he’d been brushed with sandpaper. What might Rachel say, when he told her what he’d done?
He could still hear the sound when the tomahawk caved in the Abenaki’s skull. He could still feel it, too, in the bones of his arms, in the bursting pain of his wound.
Dimly, he realized that his feet were no longer keeping to the road; he was stumbling over clumps of grass, stubbing his moccasin-clad toes on rocks. He looked back to find his path—he saw it, plain, a wavering line of black … Why was it wavering?
He didn’t want silence, after all. He wanted Rachel’s voice, no matter what she might say to him.
It came to him dimly that he couldn’t go any farther. He was aware of a faint sense of surprise but was not afraid.
He didn’t remember falling but found himself on the ground, his hot cheek pressed against the cool prickle of pine needles. Laboriously, he got to his knees and scraped away the thick layer of fallen needles. Then he was lying with his body on damp earth, the blanket of needles half pulled over him; he could do no more and said a brief prayer to the tree, that it might protect him through the night.
And as he fell headlong into darkness, he did hear Rachel’s voice, in memory.
“Thy life’s journey lies along its own path, Ian,” she said, “and I cannot share thy journey—but I can walk beside thee. And I will.”
His last thought was that he hoped she’d still mean it when he told her what he’d done.
IN WHICH ROSY-FINGERED DAWN SHOWS UP MOB-HANDED
GREY WOKE TO THE drums of reveille, not startled by the accustomed rattle but with no clear idea where he was. In camp. Well, that much was obvious. He swung his legs out of the cot and sat up slowly, taking stock. His left arm hurt a lot, one of his eyes was stuck shut, and his mouth was so dry he could barely swallow. He’d slept in his clothes, smelled rank, and needed badly to piss.
He groped under the cot, found a utensil, and used it, noting in a rather dreamy way that his urine smelled of apples. That brought back the taste of cider and, with it, full recollection of the day and night before. Honey and flies. Artillery. Jamie, blood down his face. Rifle butt and the crack of bone. William … Hal …
Almost full recollection. He sat down and remained quite still for a moment, trying to decide whether Hal had really told him that his eldest son, Benjamin, was dead. Surely not. It must have been a shred of nightmare, lingering in his mind. And yet he had the dreadful feeling of doomed certainty that comes down like a curtain on the mind, smothering disbelief.
He stood up, staggering a little, determined to go and find his brother. He hadn’t yet found his shoes, though, when the flap was thrown back and Hal came in, followed by an orderly with a basin, a steaming pitcher, and shaving implements.
“Sit down,” Hal said, in a completely ordinary voice. “You’ll have to wear one of my uniforms, and you’re not doing it smelling like that. What the devil happened to your hair?”
Grey had forgotten his hair and flattened a palm on top of his head, surprised at the bristly stubble there.
“Oh. A ruse de guerre.” He sat down slowly, eyes on his brother. The bad eye had come open, though it was unpleasantly crusty, and so far as Grey could see, Hal looked much as he usually did. Tired, of course, worn, and a little haunted, but everyone looked like that the day after a battle. Surely if it were true, he’d look different. Worse, somehow.
He would have asked, but Hal didn’t linger, going off and leaving John in the hands of the orderly. Before the ablutions were complete, a young Scottish surgeon with freckles appeared, yawning as though he hadn’t slept all night, and blinked blearily at Grey’s arm. He prodded this in a professional manner, pronounced the bone cracked but not broken, and put it in a sling.
The sling had to be removed almost at once, in order for him to dress—another orderly arrived with a uniform and a tray of breakfast—and by the time he was made tidy and had been forcibly fed, he was wild with impatience.
He would have to wait for Hal to reappear, though; no point going out to sc
our the camp for him. And he really must talk to his brother before seeking out William. A small dish of honey had been provided with his toast, and he was dipping a dubious finger into it, wondering whether he ought to try dabbing it into his eye, when at last the flap opened again and his brother was with him.
“Did you actually tell me that Ben is dead?” he blurted at once. Hal’s face contracted a bit, but his jaw was set.
“No,” Hal said evenly. “I told you that I’d had news of Ben, and they said he was dead. I don’t believe it.” He gave John a stare defying him to contradict this belief.
“Oh. Good,” Grey said mildly. “Then I don’t believe it, either. Who told you, though?”
“That’s why I don’t believe it,” Hal replied, turning to lift the tent flap and peer out—evidently to be sure of not being overheard, and the thought made Grey’s belly flutter a little. “It was Ezekiel Richardson who brought me the news, and I wouldn’t trust that fellow if he told me I had a hole in the seat of my breeches, let alone something like that.”
The flutter in Grey’s belly became a full-blown beating of wings.
“Your instincts haven’t led you amiss there,” he said. “Sit down and have a piece of toast. I have a few things to tell you.”
WILLIAM WOKE with a shattering headache and the conviction that he had forgotten something important. Clutching his head, he discovered a bandage wound round it, chafing his ear. He pulled it off impatiently; there was blood on it, but not much and all dried. He recalled vague bits of things from the night before—pain, nausea, his head swimming, Uncle Hal … and then an image of his father, white-faced and fragile … “If you and I have things to say to each other …” Christ, had he dreamed that?
He said something bad in German, and a young voice repeated it, rather doubtfully.
“What’s that mean, sir?” asked Zeb, who had popped up beside his cot with a covered tray.
“You don’t need to know, and don’t repeat it,” William said, sitting up. “What happened to my head?”
Zeb’s brow creased.
“You don’t remember, sir?”
“If I did, would I be asking you?”
Zeb’s brow creased in concentration, but the logic of this question escaped him, and he merely shrugged, set down the tray, and answered the first one.
“Colonel Grey said you was hit on the head by deserters.”
“Desert—oh.” He stopped to consider that. British deserters? No … there was a reason why German profanity had sprung to his mind. He had a fleeting memory of Hessians, and … and what?
“Colenso’s got over the shits,” Zeb offered helpfully.
“Good to know the day’s starting out well for somebody. Oh, Jesus.” Pain crackled inside his skull, and he pressed a hand to his head. “Have you got anything to drink on that tray, Zeb?”
“Yes, sir!” Zeb uncovered the tray, triumphantly revealing a dish of coddled eggs with toast, a slice of ham, and a beaker of something that looked suspiciously murky but smelled strongly of alcohol.
“What’s in this?”
“Dunno, sir, but Colonel Grey says it’s a hair-of-the-dog-what-bit-you sort of thing.”
“Oh.” So it hadn’t been a dream. He shoved that thought aside for the moment and regarded the beaker with a cautious interest. He’d had the first of his father’s restoratives when he was fourteen and had mistaken the punch being prepared for Lord John’s dinner party as the same sort that ladies had at garden parties. He’d had a few more in the years since and found them invariably effective, if rather startling to drink.
“Right, then,” he said, and, taking a deep breath, picked up the beaker and drained it, swallowing heroically without pausing for breath.
“Cor!” said Zeb, admiring. “The cook said he could send some sausages, was you up to eating ’em.”
William merely shook his head—being momentarily incapable of speech—and picked up a piece of toast, which he held for a moment, not quite ready to consider actually inserting it into his mouth. His head still hurt, but the restorative had jarred loose a few more bits from the detritus in his brain.
“… Advice? You’re too old to be given it and too young to take it.…”
“… Er spricht Deutsch. Er gehört!…” He speaks German. He heard.
“I heard,” he said slowly. “What did I hear?”
Zeb appeared to think this another rhetorical question and, instead of trying to answer it, asked one of his own.
“What happened to Goth, sir?” His thin face was solemn, as though he expected to receive bad news.
“Goth,” William repeated blankly. “Has something happened to Goth?”
“Well, he’s gone, sir,” Zeb said, apparently trying to be tactful. “That is—when the regulars took you and the Indian away from the Rebels, you wasn’t on him.”
“When the … what Indian?—what the devil happened yesterday, Zeb?”
“How would I know?” Zeb said, affronted. “Wasn’t there, was I?”
“No, of course—bloody hell. Is my uncle—the Duke of Pardloe—in camp? I need to talk to him.”
Zeb looked dubious.
“Well, I can go and look for him, I s’pose.”
“Do, please. Now.” William waved him off, then sat still for a moment, trying to stick the jagged fragments of his memory back together. Rebels? Goth … He did recall something about Goth, but what was it? Had he run into Rebels, who took the horse? But what was this about Indians and deserters, and why did he keep hearing echoes of German speech in the back of his brain?
And who, come to think of it, was the Colonel Grey that Zeb had referred to? He’d assumed it was Uncle Hal—but his father’s rank was lieutenant colonel, and he’d also be addressed as “Colonel” in common use. He glanced at the tray and the empty beaker. Uncle Hal certainly knew about the hair of the dog, but …
“As long as you’re alive, everything’s all right.”
He put the untouched toast down, a sudden lump in his throat. Again. He’d had the lump last night, when he saw Papa. When he’d said to his father—yes, God damn it, his father!—“I’m glad you’re not dead.”
He maybe wasn’t quite ready to talk to Papa—or Papa to him—and he didn’t quite agree that everything was all right, but …
A shaft of brilliant sunlight lanced into his face as the tent flap was shoved aside, and he sat bolt upright, swinging his legs out of bed to be ready to meet—
But it wasn’t either his uncle or his father who appeared out of the eye-watering blur of sunlight. It was Banastre Tarleton, in uniform but wigless and unbuttoned, looking indecently cheerful for someone whose face seemed to have been beaten badly not too long ago.
“Alive, are you, Ellesmere?” Ban spotted the dish and, scooping up a coddled egg in his fingers, gulped it. He licked his buttery fingers, making pleased noises.
“Christ, I’m hungry. Been up since dawn. Killing on an empty stomach leaves you rare sharp-set, I’ll say that. Can I have the rest?”
“Be my guest. Who’ve you been killing for breakfast? Rebels?”
Tarleton looked surprised, arrested with a mouthful of toast. He chewed this imperfectly and bolted the bite before answering with a shower of crumbs.
“No, Washington’s troops withdrew to the south, so far as I know. Hessian deserters. The same lot that crowned you and left you for dead, or so I assume. They had your horse; recognized him.” He reached for another egg, and William thrust a spoon into his hand.
“For God’s sake, eat like a Christian. Do you have my horse?”
“I do. He’s lame in the right fore, but I don’t think it’s bad. Mmm … have you got your own cook?”
“No, he’s my uncle’s. Tell me about the deserters. They knocked me on the head, and my memory’s a bit spotty.” More than a bit, but chunks of it were beginning to come back pretty fast now.
Between bites, Tarleton gave him the story. A company of mercenaries under von Knyphausen had made up thei
r minds to desert during the battle, but not all the men were of the same mind. Those in favor of desertion had drawn away a bit and were quietly discussing whether it was necessary to kill the dissenters, when William had shown up unexpectedly in their midst.
“That knocked them a bit skew-ways, as you might surmise.” Tarleton, having finished the eggs and most of the toast, picked up the beaker and looked disappointed at finding it empty.
“There’s probably water in that canteen,” William said, motioning toward the battered tin-and-leather object hanging from the tent pole. “So that’s it.… They looked a bit nervous, but when I asked one of them in German whether there was a farrier nearby—that was it! Goth threw a shoe, that’s why he—but then I heard someone whispering, sounding frantic, and he was saying, ‘He heard! He knows!’ Must’ve meant he thought I’d overheard them plotting and knew what they were up to.”
He breathed out in relief at having this much of the previous day restored to him.
Tarleton nodded. “Imagine so. They did kill some of the dissenters—gather a barney broke out after they bashed you on the head and threw you into the ravine—but not all of them.”
A few of the mercenaries had escaped and headed for von Knyphausen, who, upon hearing the news, had sent a dispatch to Clinton asking for assistance in dealing with the miscreants.
William nodded at this. It was always better to have matters like desertion or treason dealt with by troops outside the affected companies. And knowing Ban Tarleton, he would have leapt at the chance to track down the deserters and—
“Were you told to kill them?” he asked, striving for casualness.
Tarleton gave him an eggy grin and wiped a few lingering crumbs off his chin.
“Not specifically. Got the impression that as long as I brought a few back to tell the tale, no one much cared how many. And there was a hint of pour encourager les autres in my orders.”
Politely suppressing his shock at the revelation that Tarleton could read, let alone read Voltaire, William nodded.
Outlander [08] Written in My Own Heart's Blood Page 73
