“Aye. If the button belongs to someone on the Ridge—they ken well enough where the still is, and they might stop to look and no harm done. But if it was to be a stranger …” He glanced at her and shrugged again.
“It’s none so easy for a man to pass unnoticed here—unless he should be hiding a-purpose. A man come for any innocent reason would stop at a house for a bit of food and drink, and I’d hear of it the same day. But there’s been nothing of the sort. Nor would it be an Indian; they dinna use such things in their clothing.”
A gust of wind whirred across the path in a swirl of brown and yellow leaves, and they turned uphill, toward the cabin. They walked in near silence, affected by the growing quiet of the woods; the birds were still singing twilight songs, but the shadows were lengthening under the trees. The northern slope of the mountain across the valley had already gone dark and silent, as the sun edged behind it.
The cabin’s clearing was still filled with sunlight, though, filtered through a yellow blaze of chestnut trees. Claire was in the palisaded garden, a basin on one hip, snapping beans from poled vines. Her slender figure was silhouetted dark against the sun, her hair a great aureole of curly gold.
“Innisfree,” Brianna said involuntarily, stopping dead at the sight.
“Innisfree?” Jamie glanced at her, bewildered.
She hesitated, but there was no way out of explaining.
“It’s a poem, or part of one. Daddy always used to say it, when he’d come home and find Mama puttering in her garden—he said she’d live out there if she could. He used to joke that she—that she’d leave us someday, and go find a place where she could live by herself, with nothing but her plants.”
“Ah.” Jamie’s face was calm, its broad planes ruddy in the dying light. “How does the poem go, then?”
She was conscious of a small tightness round her heart as she said it.
“I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee.
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.”
The thick red brows drew together slightly, sparking in the sun.
“A poem, is it? And where is Innisfree?”
“Ireland, maybe. He was Irish,” Brianna said in explanation. “The poet.” The row of bee gums stood squat on their stones at the edge of the wood.
“Oh.”
Tiny motes of gold and black drifted past them through honeyed air—bees homing from the fields. Her father made no move to go forward, but stood silent by her side, watching her mother pick beans, black and gold among the leaves.
Not alone, after all, she thought. But the small tightness stayed in her chest, not quite an ache.
* * *
Kenny Lindsey took a sip of whisky, closed his eyes, and rolled the liquor round his tongue like a professional wine taster. He paused, frowning in concentration, then swallowed with a convulsive gulp.
“Hoo!” He drew breath, shuddering all over.
“Christ,” he said hoarsely. “That’ll strip your tripes!”
Jamie grinned at the compliment, and poured another small measure, shoving it toward Duncan.
“Aye, it’s better than the last,” he agreed, with a cautious sniff before essaying his own drink. “This one doesna take the hide off your tongue—quite.”
Lindsay wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, nodding in agreement.
“Weel, it’ll find a good home. Woolam wants a cask—that’ll last him a year, the way yon Quakers dole it out.”
“Ye’ve agreed a price?”
Lindsay nodded, sniffing appreciatively at the platter of bannocks and savories that Lizzie set in front of him.
“A hundredweight of barley for the cask; another, if ye’ll go halves wi’ him in the whisky from it.”
“That’s fair.” Jamie took a bannock and chewed absently for a moment. Then he raised one brow at Duncan, seated across the table.
“Will ye ask MacLeod on Naylor’s Creek will he make us the same bargain? You’ll pass that way going home, aye?”
Duncan nodded, chewing, and Jamie lifted his cup to me in a silent toast of celebration—Woolam’s offer made a total of eight hundred pounds of barley, scraped together by barter and promise. More than the surplus output of every field on the Ridge; the raw material for next year’s whisky.
“A cask each to the houses on the Ridge, two to Fergus—” Jamie pulled absently at his earlobe, calculating. “Two, maybe, to Nacognaweto, one kept back to age—aye, we can spare maybe a dozen casks for the Gathering, Duncan.”
Duncan’s coming was opportune. While Jamie had managed to barter the first year’s crop of raw whisky to the Moravians in Salem for the tools, cloth, and other things we so urgently needed, there was no doubt that the wealthy Scottish planters of the Cape Fear would make a better market.
We couldn’t possibly spare time away from the homestead for long enough to make the week-long journey to Mount Helicon, but if Duncan could take the whisky down and sell it … I was already making lists in my head. Everyone brought things to sell, at a Gathering. Wool, cloth, tools, food, animals … I urgently needed a small copper kettle, and six lengths of fresh muslin for shifts, and …
“Do you think you should give alcohol to the Indians?” Brianna’s question pulled me from my greedy reverie.
“Why not?” Lindsey asked, a little disapproving of her intrusion. “After all, we’re no going to give it to them, lass. They’ve little silver, but they pay in hides—and they pay well.”
Brianna glanced at me for support, then at Jamie.
“But Indians don’t—I mean I’ve heard that they can’t handle alcohol.”
All three men looked at her uncomprehendingly, and Duncan looked at his cup, turning it round in his hand.
“Handle it?”
The corner of her mouth quirked inward.
“They get drunk easily, I mean.”
Lindsey peered into his cup, then looked at her, rubbing a hand over the balding crown of his head.
“Ye’ve a point, lass?” he said, more or less politely.
Brianna’s full mouth compressed itself, then relaxed.
“I mean,” she said, “it seems wrong to encourage people to drink, who can’t stop drinking if they start.” She looked at me, a little helplessly. I shook my head.
“ ‘Alcoholic’ isn’t a noun yet,” I said. “It’s not a disease now—just weak character.”
Jamie glanced up at her quizzically.
“Well, I’ll tell ye, lass,” he said, “I’ve seen many a drunkard in my day, but I’ve yet to see a bottle leap off a table and pour itself down anyone’s throat.”
There were general grunts of agreement with this, and another small round to accompany the change of subject.
“Hodgepile? No, I’ve not seen the man, though I do believe I’ve heard the name.” Duncan swilled the rest of his drink and set down his cup, wheezing gently. “You’ll want me to ask at the Gathering?”
Jamie nodded, and took another bannock. “Aye, if ye will, Duncan.”
Lizzie was bent over the fire, stirring the stew for supper. I saw her shoulders tighten, but she was too shy to speak before so many men. Brianna suffered no such inhibitions.
“I have someone to ask after, too, Mr. Innes.” She leaned over the table toward him, eyes fixed on him in earnest entreaty. “Will you ask for a man named Roger Wakefield? Please?”
“Och, indeed. Indeed I will.” Duncan went pink at the proximity of Brianna’s bosom, and in confusion drank down the rest of Kenny’s whisky. “Is there aught else I can do?”
“Yes,” I said, putting down a fresh cup in front of the disgruntled Lindsey. “While you’re asking after Hodgepile and Bree’s young man, would you also ask for a man named Joseph Wemyss? He’ll be a bondsman.” From the corner of my eye, I saw Lizzie’s thin shoulders slump in relief.
Duncan nodded, his c
omposure restored as Brianna disappeared into the pantry to fetch butter. Kenny Lindsey looked after her, interested.
“Bree? Is that the name ye call your daughter?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Why?”
A smile showed briefly on Lindsey’s face. Then he glanced at Jamie, coughed, and buried the smile in his cup.
“It’s a Scots word, Sassenach,” Jamie said, a rather wry smile appearing on his own face. “A bree is a great disturbance.”
44
THREE-CORNERED CONVERSATION
October 1769
The shock of impact juddered through his arms. With a rhythm born of long practice, Jamie jerked the axhead free, swung it back and brought it down in a tchunk! of splintered bark and yellow wood chips. He shifted his foot on the log and struck again, the ax blow judged to a nicety, sharp metal embedded in the wood a scant two inches from his toes.
He could have told Ian off to do the chopping, and gone himself to fetch the flour from the tiny mill at Woolam’s Point, but the lad deserved the treat of a visit with the three unmarried Woolam daughters who worked with their father in the mill. They were Quaker girls, dressed drab as sparrows, but lively of wit and fair of face, and they made a pet of Ian, vying with each other to offer him small beer and meat pies when he came.
A good deal better the lad should spend his time flirting with virtuous Quakers than with the bold-eyed Indian lassies over the ridge, he thought, with a little grimness. He hadn’t forgotten what Myers had said about Indian women taking men to their beds as they liked.
He had sent the wee bondmaid with Ian as well, thinking the brisk fall air might bring a bit of color to the lassie’s face. The wean was white-skinned as Claire, but with the sickly blue-white cast of skimmed milk, not Claire’s pale glow, rich and grainless as the silk-white heartwood of a poplar tree.
The log was nearly split; one more blow, and a twist of the ax, and two good chunks lay ready for the hearth, smelling clean and sharp with resin. He stacked them neatly on the growing woodpile next to the pantry, and rolled another half log into place beneath his foot.
The truth of it was that he liked chopping wood. Quite different from the damp, backbreaking, foot-freezing job of cutting peats, but with that same feeling of soul-deep satisfaction at seeing a good stock of fuel laid by, which only those who have spent winters shivering in thin clothes can know. The woodpile reached nearly to the eaves of the house by now, dry split chunks of pine and oak, hickory and maple, the sight of them warming his heart as much as the wood itself would warm his flesh.
Speak of warmth; it was a warm day for late October, and his shirt was clinging to his shoulders already. He wiped a sleeve across his face and examined the damp patch critically.
If he got wringing, Brianna would insist on washing it again, protest as he might that sweat was clean enough. “Phew,” she would say, with a disapproving nostril-flare, wrinkling her long nose up like a possum. He had laughed out loud when he first saw her do it; as much from surprise as from amusement.
His mother had died long ago, in his childhood, and while the odd memory of her came now and then in dreams, he had mostly replaced her presence with static pictures, frozen images in his mind. But she had said “Phew!” to him when he came in mucky, and wrinkled up her long nose in just that way—it had come back with a flash when he saw Brianna do it.
What a mystery blood was—how did a tiny gesture, a tone of voice, endure through generations like the harder verities of flesh? He had seen it again and again, watching his nieces and nephews grow, and accepted without thought the echoes of parent and grandparent that appeared for brief moments, the shadow of a face looking back through the years—that vanished again into the face that was now.
Yet now that he saw it in Brianna … he could watch her for hours, he thought, and was reminded of his sister, bending close over each of her newborn bairns in fascination. Perhaps that was why parents watched their weans in such enchantment, he thought; finding out all the tiny links between them, that bound the chains of life, one generation to the next.
He shrugged, and pulled the shirt off. It was his own place, after all; there was no one to see the marks on his back, and no one whose business it would be to care if they did. The air was chill and sudden on his damp skin, but a few swings of the ax brought the warm blood pulsing back again.
He loved all Jenny’s children deeply—especially Ian, the wee gowk whose mixture of foolishness and pigheaded courage reminded him so much of himself at that age. They were his blood, after all. But Brianna …
Brianna was his blood, and his flesh as well. An unspoken promise kept to his own parents; his gift to Claire, and hers to him.
Not for the first time, he found himself wondering about Frank Randall. And what had Randall thought, holding the child of another man—and a man he had no cause to love?
Perhaps Randall had been the better man, come to that—to harbor a child for her mother’s sake, and not his own; to search her face with joy only in its beauty, and not because he saw himself reflected there. He felt vaguely ashamed, and struck down with greater force to exorcise the feeling.
His mind was concerned entirely with its thoughts, and not at all with his actions. While he used it, though, the ax was as much a part of his body as the arms that swung it. Just as a twinge in wrist or elbow would have warned him instantly of damage, some faint vibration, some subtle shift in weight arrested him in midswing, so that the loosened axhead flew harmlessly across the clearing, rather than slamming into his vulnerable foot.
“Deo gratias,” he muttered, with rather less thankfulness than the words indicated. He crossed himself perfunctorily and went to pick up the slab of metal. Damn the dry weather; it hadn’t rained in nearly a month, and the shrunken haft of his ax was less worrying than the drooping heads of the plants in Claire’s garden near the house.
He cast a glance at the half-dug well, shrugging in irritation. Another thing that must be done, which there wasn’t time to do. It would have to wait a bit; they could haul water from the creek or melt snow, but without wood to burn they would starve or freeze, or both.
The door opened and Claire came out, cloak on against the chill of autumn shadows, her basket over her arm. Brianna was behind her, and at sight of them he forgot his annoyance.
“What have you done?” Claire said at once, seeing him with the axhead in one hand. Her eyes flicked over him quickly, looking for blood.
“Nay, I’m whole,” he assured her. “It’s only I’ve got to mend the handle. You’ll be foraging?” He nodded at Claire’s basket.
“I thought we’d try up the stream, for wood ears.”
“Ah? Dinna go too far, aye? There are Indians hunting the far mountain. I smelt them on the ridge this morning.”
“You smelled them?” Brianna asked.
One red brow went up in inquiry. He saw Claire glance from Brianna to him and smile slightly, to herself; it was one of his own gestures, then. He lifted one brow, looking at Claire, and saw her smile grow wider.
“It’s autumn, and they’re dryin’ venison,” he explained to Brianna. “Ye can smell the smoking fires a great ways away, if the wind sets right.”
“We won’t go far,” Claire assured him. “Just above the trout pool.”
“Aye, well. I daresay it’s safe enough.” He felt some reluctance at letting the women go, but he could scarcely keep them mewed up in the house only because there were savages nearby—the Indians were no doubt peacefully employed as he was himself, in making winter preparations.
If he knew for sure it was Nacognaweto’s folk, he wouldn’t worry, but as it was, the hunting parties often roamed far afield and it could as easily be Cherokee, or the odd small tribe that called themselves the Dog People. There was only one village of them left, and they were deeply suspicious of white strangers—not without reason.
Brianna’s eyes rested on his bare chest for a moment, at the tiny knot of puckered scar tissue, but she showed no
sign of disgust or curiosity—nor did she when she laid her hand briefly on his shoulder, kissing his cheek in goodbye, though he knew she must feel the healed welts beneath her fingers.
Claire would have told her, he supposed—all about Jack Randall, and the days before the Rising. Or perhaps not quite all. A small shiver that had nothing to do with cold ran up the crease of his spine, and he stepped back, away from her touch, though he still smiled at her.
“There’s bread in the hutch, and a little stew left in the kettle for you and Ian and Lizzie.” Claire reached up and flicked a stray wood chip from his hair. “Don’t eat the pudding in the pantry; that’s for supper.”
He caught her fingers in his and kissed her knuckles lightly. She looked surprised, and then a faint warm glow came up under her skin. She came up a-tiptoe and kissed his mouth, then hurried after Brianna, already at the edge of the clearing.
“Be careful!” he called after them. They waved, and disappeared into the woods, leaving him with their kisses soft on his face.
“Deo gratias,” he murmured again, watching them, and this time spoke with heartfelt gratitude. He waited until the last flicker of Brianna’s cloak had vanished, before returning to his work.
* * *
He sat on the chopping block, a handful of square-headed nails on the ground beside him, carefully driving them one at a time into the end of the ax handle with a small mallet. The dry wood split and spread, but held by the iron enclosure of the axhead, could not splinter.
He twisted the head, then finding it firm, stood up and brought the ax down in a mighty blow on the chopping block, by way of test. It held.
He was chilled now, from sitting, and pulled his shirt back on. He was hungry, too, but he would wait a bit for the young ones. Not but what they had likely stuffed themselves already, he thought cynically. He could almost smell the meat pies Sarah Woolam made, the rich scent twining in his memory through the actual autumn smells of dead leaves and damp earth.
The thought of meat pies lingered in his mind as he went on with his work, along with the thought of winter. The Indians said it would be hard, this winter, not like the last. How would it be, hunting in deep snow? It snowed in Scotland, of course, but often enough it lay light on the ground, and the trodden paths of the red deer showed black on the steep, bare mountainsides.
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