Oh, River Run was a garden of earthly delight, all right … but I had called a black man friend, and left my daughter in his care.
Thinking of Joe Abernathy, and Brianna, gave me a strange sense of dislocated double vision, of existing in two places at once. I could see their faces in my mind, hear their voices in my inner ear. And yet reality was the man beside me, kilt swinging with his stride, head bent in anxious thought.
And that was my temptation: Jamie. Not the inconsequentials of soft beds or gracious rooms, silk gowns or social deference. Jamie.
If he did not take Jocasta’s offer, he must do something else. And “something else” was most likely William Tryon’s dangerous lure of land and men. Better than Jocasta’s generous offer, in its way; what he built would be his own, the legacy he wanted to leave for Brianna. If he lived to build it.
I was still living on two planes. In this one, I could hear the whisper of his kilt where it brushed my skirt, feel the humid warmth of his body, warmer even than the heated air. I could smell the musky scent of him that made me want to pull him from his thoughts into the border, unbelt him and let the plaid fall from his shoulders, pull down my bodice and press my breasts against him, take him down half-naked and wholly roused among the damp green plants, and force him from his thoughts to mine.
But on the plane of memory, I smelled yew trees and the wind from the sea, and under my fingers was no warm man, but the cold, smooth granite of a tombstone with his name.
I didn’t speak. Neither did he.
We had made a complete circle by now, and come back to the river’s edge, where gray stone steps led down and disappeared under a lapping sheen of water; even so far upstream, the faint echoes of the tide could be felt.
There was a boat moored there; a small rowboat, fit for solitary fishing or a leisurely excursion.
“Will ye come for a row?”
“Yes, why not?” I thought he must feel the same desire I had—to get away from the house and Jocasta, to get enough distance in which to think clearly, without danger of interruption.
I came down, putting my hand on his arm for balance. Before I could step into the boat, though, he turned toward me. Pulling me to him, he kissed me, gently, once, then held me against his body, his chin resting on my head.
“I don’t know,” he said quietly, in answer to my unspoken questions. He stepped into the boat and offered me a hand.
* * *
He was silent while we made our way out onto the river. It was a dark, moonless night, but the reflections of starlight from the surface of the river gave enough light to see, once my eyes had adapted to the shifting glimmer of water and tree-shadow.
“Ye dinna mean to say anything?” he asked abruptly, at last.
“It’s not my choice to make,” I said, feeling a tightness in my chest that had nothing to do with stays.
“No?”
“She’s your aunt. It’s your life. It has to be your choice.”
“And you’ll be a spectator, will you?” He grunted as he spoke, digging with the oars as he pulled upstream. “Is it not your life? Or do ye not mean to stay with me, after all?”
“What do you mean, not stay?” I sat up, startled.
“Perhaps it will be too much for you.” His head was bent over the oars; I couldn’t see his face.
“If you mean what happened at the sawmill—”
“No, not that.” He heaved back on the oars, shoulders broadening under his linen, and gave me a crooked smile. “Death and disaster wouldna trouble ye ower-much, Sassenach. But the small things, day by day … I see ye flinch, when the black maid combs your hair, or when the boy takes your shoes away to clean. And the slaves who work in the turpentine camp. That troubles ye, no?”
“Yes. It does. I’m—I can’t own slaves. I’ve told you—”
“Aye, ye have.” He rested on the oars for a moment, brushing a lock of hair out of his face. His eyes met mine squarely.
“And if I chose to do this, Sassenach … could ye stay by me, and watch, and do nothing—for there is nothing that could be done, until my aunt should die. Perhaps not even then.”
“What do you mean?”
“She will not free her slaves—how should she? I could not, while she lived.”
“But once you had inherited the place …” I hesitated. Beyond the ghoulish aspects of discussing Jocasta’s death, there was the more concrete consideration that that event was unlikely to occur for some time; Jocasta was little more than sixty, and aside from her blindness, in vigorous health.
I suddenly saw what he meant; could I bring myself to live, day after day, month after month, year after year, as an owner of slaves? I could not pretend otherwise, could take no refuge in the notion that I was only a guest, an outsider.
I bit my lip, in order not to cry out instant denial.
“Even then,” he said, answering my partial argument. “Did ye not know that a slave owner cannot free his slaves without the written permission of the Assembly?”
“He what?” I stared blankly at him. “Whyever not?”
“The plantation owners go in fear of an armed insurrection of Negroes,” he said. “And d’ye blame them?” he added sardonically.
“Slaves are forbidden to carry weapons, save tools such as tree knives, and there are the bloodshed laws to prevent their use.” He shook his head. “Nay, the last thing the Assembly would allow is a large group of free blacks let loose upon the countryside. Even if a man wishes to manumit one of his slaves, and is given permission to do so, the freed slave is required to leave the colony within a short time—or he may be captured and enslaved by anyone who chooses to take him.”
“You’ve thought about it,” I said slowly.
“Haven’t you?”
I didn’t answer. I trailed my hand in the water, a little wave purling up my wrist. No, I hadn’t thought about the prospect. Not consciously, because I hadn’t wanted to face the choice that was now being laid before me.
“I suppose it would be a great chance,” I said, my voice sounding strained and unnatural to my ears. “You’d be in charge of everything …”
“My aunt is not a fool,” he interrupted, with a slight edge to his voice. “She would make me heir, but not owner in her place. She would use me to do those things she cannot—but I would be no more than her cat’s-paw. True, she would ask my opinion, listen to my advice; but nothing would be done, and she didna wish it so.”
He shook his head.
“Her husband is dead. Whether she was fond of him or no, she is mistress here now, with none to answer to. And she enjoys the taste of power too well to spit it out.”
He was plainly correct in this assessment of Jocasta Cameron’s character, and therein lay the key to her plan. She needed a man; someone to go into those places she could not go, to deal with the Navy, to handle the chores of a large estate that she could not manage because of her blindness.
At the same time, she patently did not want a husband; someone who would usurp her power and dictate to her. Had he not been a slave, Ulysses could have acted for her—but while he could be her eyes and ears, he could not be her hands.
No, Jamie was the perfect choice; a strong, competent man, able to command respect among peers, compel obedience in subordinates. One knowledgeable in the management of land and men. Furthermore, a man bound to her by kinship and obligation, there to do her bidding—but essentially powerless. He would be held in thrall by dependence upon her bounty, and by the rich bribe of River Run itself; a debt that need not be paid until the matter was no longer of any earthly concern to Jocasta Cameron.
There was an increasing lump in my throat as I sought for words. I couldn’t, I thought. I couldn’t manage it. But I couldn’t face the alternative, either; I couldn’t urge him to reject Jocasta’s offer, knowing it would send him to Scotland, to meet an unknown death.
“I can’t say what you should do,” I finally said, my voice barely audible above the regular lap of the oa
rs.
There was an eddy pool, where a large tree had fallen into the water, its branches forming a trap for all the debris that drifted downstream. Jamie made for this, backing the rowboat neatly into quiet water. He let down the oars, and wiped a sleeve across his forehead, breathing heavily from exertion.
The night was quiet around us, with little sound but the lapping of water, and the occasional scrape of submerged tree branches against the hull. At last he reached out and touched my chin.
“Your face is my heart, Sassenach,” he said softly, “and love of you is my soul. But you’re right; ye canna be my conscience.”
In spite of everything, I felt a lightening of spirit, as though some indefinable burden had dropped away.
“Oh, I’m glad,” I said, adding impulsively, “it would be a terrible strain.”
“Oh, aye?” He looked mildly startled. “Ye think me verra wicked, then?”
“You’re the best man I’ve ever met,” I said. “I only meant … it’s such a strain, to try to live for two people. To try to make them fit your ideas of what’s right … you do it for a child, of course, you have to, but even then, it’s dreadfully hard work. I couldn’t do it for you—it would be wrong even to try.”
I’d taken him back more than a little. He sat for some moments, his face half turned away.
“Do ye really think me a good man?” he said at last. There was a queer note in his voice, that I couldn’t quite decipher.
“Yes,” I said, with no hesitation. Then added, half jokingly, “Don’t you?”
After a long pause, he said, quite seriously, “No, I shouldna think so.”
I looked at him, speechless, no doubt with my mouth hanging open.
“I am a violent man, and I ken it well,” he said quietly. He spread his hands out on his knees; big hands, which could wield sword and dagger with ease, or choke the life from a man. “So do you—or ye should.”
“You’ve never done anything you weren’t forced to do!”
“No?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, but even as I spoke, a shadow of doubt clouded my words. Even when done from the most urgent necessity, did such things not leave a mark on the soul?
“Ye wouldna hold me in the same estimation as, say, a man like Stephen Bonnet? He might well say he acted from necessity.”
“If you think you have the slightest thing in common with Stephen Bonnet, you’re dead wrong,” I said firmly.
He shrugged, half impatient, and shifted restlessly on the narrow bench.
“There’s nay much to choose between Bonnet and me, save that I have a sense of honor that he lacks. What else keeps me from turning thief?” he demanded. “From plundering those whom I might? It is in me to do it—my one grandsire built Leoch on the gold of those he robbed in the Highland passes; the other built his fortune on the bodies of women whom he forced for their wealth and titles.”
He stretched himself, powerful shoulders rising dark against the shimmer of the water behind him. Then he suddenly took hold of the oars across his knees and flung them into the bottom of the boat, with a crash that made me jump.
“I am more than five-and-forty!” he said. “A man should be settled at that age, no? He should have a house, and some land to grow his food, and a bit of money put away to see him through his auld age, at the least.”
He took a deep breath; I could see the white bosom of his shirt rise with his swelling chest.
“Well, I dinna have a house. Or land. Or money. Not a croft, not a tattie-plot, not a cow or a sheep or a pig or a goat! I havena got a rooftree or a bedstead, or a pot to piss in!”
He slammed his fist down on the thwart, making the wooden seat vibrate under me.
“I dinna own the clothes I stand up in!”
There was a long silence, broken only by the thin song of crickets.
“You have me,” I said, in a small voice. It didn’t seem a lot.
He made a small sound in his throat that might have been either a laugh or a sob.
“Aye, I have,” he said. His voice was quivering a bit, though whether with passion or amusement, I couldn’t tell. “That’s the hell of it, aye?”
“It is?”
He threw up his hand in a gesture of profound impatience.
“If it was only me, what would it matter? I could live like Myers; go to the woods, hunt and fish for my living, and when I was too old, lie down under a peaceful tree and die, and let the foxes gnaw my bones. Who would care?”
He shrugged his shoulders with irritable violence, as though his shirt was too tight.
“But it’s not only me,” he said. “It’s you, and it’s Ian and it’s Duncan and it’s Fergus and it’s Marsali—God help me, there’s even Laoghaire to think of!”
“Oh, let’s don’t,” I said.
“Do ye not understand?” he said, in near desperation. “I would lay the world at your feet, Claire—and I have nothing to give ye!”
He honestly thought it mattered.
I sat looking at him, searching for words. He was half turned away, shoulders slumped in despair.
Within an hour, I had gone from anguish at the thought of losing him in Scotland, to a strong desire to bed him in the herbaceous borders, and from that to a pronounced urge to hit him on the head with an oar. Now I was back to tenderness.
At last I took one big, callused hand and slid forward so I knelt on the boards between his knees. I laid my head against his chest, and felt his breath stir my hair. I had no words, but I had made my choice.
“ ‘Whither thou goest,’ ” I said, “ ‘I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried.’ ” Be it Scottish hill or southern forest. “You do what you have to; I’ll be there.”
* * *
The water ran fast and shallow near the middle of the creek; I could see the boulders black just beneath the glinting surface. Jamie saw them, too, and pulled strongly for the far side, bringing us to rest against a shelving gravel bank, in a pool formed by the roots of a weeping willow. I leaned out and caught a branch of the willow, and wrapped the painter round it.
I had thought we would return to River Run, but evidently this expedition had some point beyond respite. We had continued upriver instead, Jamie pulling strongly against the slow current.
Left alone with my thoughts, I could only listen to the faint hiss of his breath, and wonder what he would do. If he chose to stay … well, it might not be as difficult as he thought. I didn’t underrate Jocasta Cameron, but neither did I underestimate Jamie Fraser. Both Colum and Dougal MacKenzie had tried to bend him to their will—and both had failed.
I had a moment’s qualm at the memory of my last sight of Dougal MacKenzie, mouthing soundless curses as he drowned in his own blood, Jamie’s dirk socketed at the base of his throat. I am a violent man, he’d said, you know it.
But he was still wrong; there was a difference between this man and Stephen Bonnet, I thought, watching the flex of his body on the oars, the grace and power of the sweep of his arms. He had several things beyond the honor that he claimed: kindness, courage … and a conscience.
I realized where we were going, as he backed with one oar, steering across the current toward the mouth of a wide creek, overhung with aspens. I had never approached by water before, but Jocasta had said it was not far.
I should not have been surprised; if he had come out tonight to confront his demons, it was a most appropriate place.
A little way above the creek mouth, the mill loomed dark and silent. There was a dim glow behind its bulk; light from the slave shanties near the woods. We were surrounded by the usual night noises, but the place seemed strangely quiet, in spite of the racket made by trees and frogs and water. Though it was night, the huge building seemed to cast a shadow—though this was plainly no more than my imagination.
“Places that are very busy in the daytime always seem particularly spooky
at night,” I said, in an effort to break the mill’s silence.
“Do they?” Jamie sounded abstracted. “I didna much like that one in the daylight.”
I shuddered at the memory.
“Neither did I. I only meant—”
“Byrnes is dead.” He didn’t look at me; his face was turned toward the mill, half-hidden by the willow’s shadow.
I dropped the end of the tie rope.
“The overseer? When?” I said, shocked more by the abruptness than the revelation. “And how?”
“This afternoon. Campbell’s youngest lad brought the news just before sunset.”
“How?” I asked again. I gripped my knees, a double handful of ivory silk twisted in my fingers.
“It was the lockjaw.” His voice was casual, unemphatic. “A verra nasty way to die.”
He was right about that. I had never actually seen anyone die of tetanus myself, but I knew the symptoms well enough: restlessness and difficulty swallowing, developing into a progressive stiffening as the muscles of arms and legs and neck began to spasm. The spasms increased in severity and duration until the patient’s body was hard as wood, arched in an agony that came on and receded, came on again, went off, and at last came on in an endless tetany that could not be relaxed by anything save death.
“He died grinnin’, Ronnie Campbell said. But I shouldna think it was a happy death, forbye.” It was a grim joke, but there was little humor in his voice.
I sat up quite straight, feeling cold all down my spine in spite of the warmth of the night.
“It isn’t a quick death, either,” I said. Suspicion spread cold tentacles through my mind. “It takes days to die of tetanus.”
“It took Davie Byrnes five days, first to last.” If there had been any trace of humor in his voice to start with, it was gone now.
“You saw him,” I said, a small flicker of anger beginning to thaw the internal chill. “You saw him! And you didn’t tell me?”
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