“Stop that!” I said sharply to myself. “Stop it at once. I won’t have it.” They were teenaged boys. I wasn’t afraid of … But the first man to rape me had been about sixteen; he’d been apologetic about it. I stepped into a narrow alley between two buildings and threw up.
I’d managed to function. I got back to the Shippens’ house and collected my things, then returned to the printshop to eat lunch and pack up the rest of my herbs and medicines; Fergus and Germain would bring them to Chestnut Street on their afternoon delivery round.
No one had molested me on the way back to Chestnut Street. I could have asked Jenny to come with me, but pride prevented me. I would not let simple-minded fear stop me doing what needed to be done.
But how long can you keep doing it? And what’s the point?
“There’s always a point,” I muttered. “It’s someone’s life. That’s a point.”
A life that could be snatched away, thrown away, frittered on a battlefield … How many men had died that way? And it didn’t stop, it didn’t get better.… This was an early war, for God’s sake. An endless chain of wars lay between my lives: the Revolution here, the Great War at the other end—and constant slaughter in between.
The summer was dying; the air was beginning to have a hint of freshness in the mornings, but in midafternoon it still hung thick and heavy. Too heavy to draw a full breath.
I stood for a moment outside Number 17, feeling unequal to going in and dealing with things. After a moment, I turned down the path that led round the side of the house, out to the tiny garden at the back, and sat down on the bench there, among the roses, feeling most unwell.
I DON’T KNOW how long I had been sitting there, head in my hands, listening to the loud buzzing of bees. But I heard footsteps coming down the path and managed to lift my head.
“Are ye all right, Sassenach?” It was Jamie, the large box of medicines and bandages in his arms. And from the look of alarm on his face, it was reasonably obvious that I didn’t look all right. I couldn’t muster the energy to try to look all right.
“I just—thought I’d sit down,” I said, flapping a hand helplessly.
“I’m glad ye did.” He set down the box on the yellowing grass and came to crouch in front of me, examining my face. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” I said, and without warning began to cry. Or, rather, to leak. There was nothing of the sobbing, convulsive, racking nature of weeping; tears were just streaking down my cheeks without my approval.
Jamie nudged me over a little and sat down beside me, wrapping his arms around me. He was wearing his old kilt, and the smell of the dusty wool fabric, worn thin with age, made me utterly dissolve.
He tightened his grip and, sighing, pressed his cheek to my head and said small, tender things in Gaelic. And in a little time, the effort to understand them gave me a tenuous grip on myself. I drew a deep breath and he released me, though he kept an arm around me for support.
“Mo nighean donn,” he said softly, and smoothed hair out of my face. “Have ye got a hankie?”
That made me laugh. Or rather emit a sort of strangled giggle, but still …
“Yes. At least, I think so.” I groped in my bosom and withdrew a sturdy square of much-laundered linen, on which I blew my nose several times and then wiped my eyes, trying to think what on earth to offer as an explanation for my disordered state—of mind, as well as body. There wasn’t any good way to begin, so I just began.
“Do you ever—well, no. I know you do.”
“Likely,” he said, smiling a little. “What do I do?”
“See the … the void. The abyss.” Speaking the words reopened the rent in my soul, and the cold wind came through. A shudder ran through me, in spite of the warmth of the air and Jamie’s body. “I mean—it’s always there, always yawning at your feet, but most people manage to ignore it, not think about it. I’ve mostly been able to. You have to, to do medicine.” I wiped my nose on my sleeve, having dropped my handkerchief. Jamie pulled a crumpled hankie out of his sleeve and handed it to me.
“Ye dinna mean only death?” he asked. “Because I’ve seen that often enough. It hasna really scairt me since I was ten or so, though.” He glanced down at me and smiled. “And I doubt ye’re afraid of it, either. I’ve seen ye face it down a thousand times and more.”
“Facing something down doesn’t mean you aren’t afraid of it,” I said dryly. “Usually quite the opposite. And I know you know that.”
He made a small sound of agreement in his throat and hugged me gently. I would normally have found this comforting, and the fact that I didn’t merely added to my sense of despair.
“It’s—it’s just … nothing. And so much endless nothing … It’s as though nothing you do, nothing you are, can possibly matter, it’s all just swallowed up …” I closed my eyes, but the darkness behind my eyelids frightened me and I opened them again. “I—” I raised a hand, then let it fall.
“I can’t explain,” I said, defeated. “It wasn’t there—or I wasn’t looking at it—after I was shot. It wasn’t nearly dying that made me look in, see it yawning there. But being so … so bloody frail! Being so stinking afraid.” I clenched my fists, seeing the knobby bones of my knuckles, the blue veins that stood out on the backs of my hands and curved down my wrists.
“Not death,” I said at last, sniffing. “Futility. Uselessness. Bloody entropy. Death matters, at least sometimes.”
“I ken that,” Jamie said softly, and took my hands in his; they were big, and battered, scarred and maimed. “It’s why a warrior doesna fear death so much. He has the hope—sometimes the certainty—that his death will matter.”
“What happens to me between now and then doesna matter to anyone.”
Those words swam out of nowhere and struck me in the pit of the stomach, so hard that I could barely breathe. He’d said that to me, from the bottom of despair, in the dungeon of Wentworth Prison, a lifetime ago. He’d bargained for my life then, with what he had—not his life, already forfeit, but his soul.
“It matters to me!” I’d said to him—and, against all odds, had ransomed that soul and brought him back.
And then it had come again, stark and dire necessity, and he’d laid down his life without hesitation for his men and for the child I carried. And that time I had been the one who sacrificed my soul. And it had mattered, for both of us.
It still mattered. And the shell of fear cracked like an egg and everything inside me poured out like blood and water mingled and I sobbed on his chest until there were no more tears and no more breath. I leaned against him, limp as a dishcloth, and watched the crescent moon begin to rise in the east.
“What did you say?” I said, rousing myself after a long while. I felt groggy and disoriented, but at peace.
“I asked, what’s entropy?”
“Oh,” I said, momentarily disconcerted. When had the concept of entropy been invented? Not yet, obviously. “It’s, um … a lack of order, a lack of predictability, an inability for a system to do work.”
“A system of what?”
“Well, there you have me,” I admitted, sitting up and wiping my nose. “Just an ideal sort of system, with heat energy. The Second Law of Thermodynamics basically says that in an isolated system—one that’s not getting energy from somewhere outside, I mean—entropy will always increase. I think it’s just a scientific way of saying that everything is going to pot, all of the time.”
He laughed, and despite my shattered state of mind, I did, too.
“Aye, well, far be it from me to argue wi’ the Second Law of Thermodynamics,” he said. “I think it’s likely right. When did ye last eat, Sassenach?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not hungry.” I didn’t want to do anything but sit still beside him.
“D’ye see the sky?” he said, a little later. It was a pure deep violet at the horizon, fading into a blue-black immensity overhead, and the early stars burned like distant lamps.
“Har
d to miss,” I said.
“Aye.” He sat with his head tilted back, looking up, and I admired the clean line of his long, straight nose, his soft wide mouth and long throat, as though seeing them for the first time.
“Is it not a void there?” he said quietly, still looking up. “And yet we’re no afraid to look.”
“There are lights,” I said. “It makes a difference.” My voice was hoarse, and I swallowed. “Though I suppose even the stars are burning out, according to the Second Law.”
“Mmphm. Well, I suppose men can make all the laws they like,” he said, “but God made hope. The stars willna burn out.” He turned and, cupping my chin, kissed me gently. “And nor will we.”
The noises of the city were muted now, though even darkness didn’t stifle it entirely. I heard distant voices and the sound of a fiddle: a party, perhaps, from one of the houses down the street. And the bell of St. George’s struck the hour with a small, flat bong! Nine o’clock. And all’s well.
“I’d better go and see to my patient,” I said.
“ALAS, POOR YORICK!”
September 17, 1778
Middlebrook Encampment, New Jersey
TWO NIGHTS LATER, William stood at the edge of a dark wood, watching a lopsided rising moon shed its light over Middlebrook Encampment. His heart was thumping in his ears and he was breathing fast, his hands clenched around the handle of the spade he’d just stolen.
He’d been correct in his assessment of his welcome. He’d roughened his accent and, posing as a young immigrant from England interested in joining Washington’s troops, he’d been invited to join the Hamilton family for supper and given a bed for the night. The next day, he’d walked up to Middlebrook Encampment with the eldest Hamilton son, a man about his own age, where he’d been introduced to a Captain Ronson, one of the few officers still there.
One thing had led to another, and, by degrees, he had steered the conversation to the battle at Brandywine Creek and thence to British prisoners of war … and eventually he’d been taken to the small burying ground that lay before him now.
He’d been cautious about Ben, mentioning his name only casually among several others—family acquaintances, he’d said, that he’d heard had been at the battle. Some of the men he talked to hadn’t recognized the name at all; two or three said, oh, yes, the English viscount, prisoner, billeted with a family called Tobermory, very civil fellow, shame that he’d died.…
And one man, a Lieutenant Corey, had said the same thing but his eyes had flickered slightly when he said it. William was wise enough to abandon the subject at once—but brought up Captain Benjamin Grey with someone else, much later and out of hearing of Corey.
“Is he buried nearby?” he’d asked, with a decent assumption of casual concern. “I know his family. I should like to be able to write to them, tell them I’d visited, you know.…”
It had taken some effort; the burying ground was well outside the encampment, up on a little wooded knoll, and while some of the graves were neatly ranked, others had been dug hastily, and many were unmarked. His companion was not busy, though, and of a helpful complexion; he went and unearthed the adjutant’s ledger in which the dead were listed and, with some poking about, eventually led William to a flattened mound with a piece of lath stuck into it, on which GREY had been scratched with a nail.
“Lucky you came before another winter got at it,” his companion had remarked, pulling the lath out and examining it critically. He shook his head, reached into his pocket, and, fetching out a lead pencil, reinforced the name with strong, scrubbing strokes before pushing it back into the earth. “Maybe that will last a bit, in case the family should want to set up a stone.”
“That’s … very good of you,” William had said, his throat tight. “I’ll tell his family of your kindness.” But he couldn’t weep for a man he theoretically hadn’t known and so swallowed his emotions and turned away, finding something commonplace to talk about as they made their way downhill.
He had wept in private, later, leaning against the comforting bulk of the mare, whom he’d named Miranda. She wasn’t sprightly, but she was a good horse, and merely whuffed a little and shifted her weight to give him support.
He’d been stubbornly insisting to himself that there must be some mistake. Ben couldn’t be dead. This belief had been sustained by Uncle Hal’s complete refusal to believe the news. And it was plausible; whatever Ezekiel Richardson was up to, he meant no good to the Greys.
But here was Ben’s grave, silent and muddy, speckled with the first yellowing leaves of September. And all around him lay the decaying bodies of other men, some prisoners, some Continental regulars, some militia … equal, and equally alone in death.
He’d eaten dinner that night with the Hamiltons again, replying automatically to their conversation but concerned with his own misery—and the thought of the much greater misery to come when he had to return to New York and tell his father and Uncle Hal.…
William had taken leave of the Hamiltons next morning, consigning the remains of the deer to them, and was followed down the narrow road by their good wishes and hopes that they would see him again with General Washington, when the troops came back to Middlebrook to winter. He’d made it several miles down the mountain, dragging his spirit behind him, when he stopped to take a piss.
He’d been hunting once with Ben, and they’d stopped like this; Ben had told him a particularly scabrous joke, and he’d laughed so much that he couldn’t piss and Ben had pissed on his shoes, which made them both laugh harder, and …
“God damn it,” he said aloud, and, buttoning his flies, stamped back to Miranda and swung up into the saddle. “I’m sorry, owd lass,” he said, reining her head around to face uphill. “We’re going back.”
And here he was, wavering between the conviction that this was madness and the stark fact that there wasn’t anything else he could do besides go back to New York, and he wouldn’t do that until and unless he had no other choice. At least he might be able to salvage a lock of Ben’s hair for Aunt Minnie.…
That thought made him want to throw up, but he touched the knife at his waist, took a firmer hold of the spade, and made his way gingerly in among the graves.
The moonlight was bright enough to find footing but not to read most of the markers. He had to kneel and run his thumb over several before feeling the letters G-R-E-Y.
“Right,” he said out loud. His voice sounded small and choked, and he cleared his throat and spat—to the side, not on the grave. “Right,” he said again, more forcefully, and, standing, took up the spade and drove it into the earth.
He’d started close to what he thought should be the head, but dug in from the side—the thought of driving his spade down into Ben’s face made his flesh creep. The dirt was soft, damp with recent rain, but it was heavy work, and despite the coolness of the mountain night, he was soaked with sweat before he’d dug a quarter of an hour. If Ben had died of camp fever, as they said—and come to think, was that sensible? He hadn’t been held in the stockade with the enlisted men. As an officer, he’d been billeted with the Tobermorys. How had he come to catch camp fever? But still, if he had, then others would have died at the same time; it was a badly infectious sort of plague, he knew that much.
But if that were true, then a number of other men would have been buried at the same time, and buried hastily, to prevent contagion from the bodies. (Oh, there was a good thought: he might be opening a grave full of teeming pestilence.…) Anyway, if that were the case, the graves would be shallow ones.
This one was. His spade struck something harder than dirt, and he stopped abruptly, muscles quivering. He swallowed and resumed shoveling, more cautiously.
The body had been wrapped in a shroud of coarse burlap. He couldn’t see, but a ginger probing with his fingers told him as much. Squatting, he dug with his hands, unearthing what he hoped was the head. His stomach was clenched tight and he was breathing through his mouth. The stink was less than he’d expec
ted, but still definitely there.
Oh, God. Ben … He’d been nursing the hope that the grave was empty.
Patting and probing, he made out the rounded shape and took a deep breath, feeling for the edge of the shroud. Had it been stitched? No, the edge was loose.
He’d thought of bringing a torch but had dismissed the idea, not wanting to risk detection. On the whole, he was glad he hadn’t. He wiped dirt from his hands onto his breeches and peeled the burlap gently back, grimacing as it stuck to the skin beneath. It came loose with a grisly, rasping sound, and he nearly dropped it and ran. But he steeled himself and touched the dead man’s face.
It wasn’t as awful as he’d thought it might be; the body seemed largely still intact. How long will a man lie i’ the earth ere he rot? What had the gravedigger said in reply—nine years? Well, then … He’d seen Hamlet with Ben and Adam, in London.…
William fought back an insane urge to laugh and felt gently over the dead features. The nose was broad and stubby, not Ben’s sharp beak—but no doubt the process of decay … He slid his fingers over the temple, thinking to see if a presentable lock of hair might—and stopped dead, not breathing.
The corpse was missing an ear. Bloody hell, it was missing both ears. He felt again, both sides, unable to believe it. But it was true—and the ears had been missing for some time; even with the nasty slack feel of the decaying flesh, the ridges of scar tissue were distinct. A thief.
William sat back on his heels and tilted up his head, letting out a huge breath. He felt dizzy, and the stars made little pinwheels in his vision.
“Jesus,” he breathed, flooded with relief, gratitude, and creeping horror. “Oh, Jesus, thank you! And, oh, Christ,” he added, looking down at the invisible stranger in Ben’s grave, “now what?”
A CRACKLING OF THORNS
Outlander [08] Written in My Own Heart's Blood Page 104
