“Auntie,” he said hesitantly. “Will ye not forgive him?”
“Forgive him?” I stared at him. “For what? For Roger?”
He grimaced.
“No. It was a grievous mistake, but we would do the same again, thinking matters as we did. No—for Bonnet.”
“For Stephen Bonnet? How can he possibly think I blame him for that? I’ve never said such a thing to him!” And I had been too busy thinking that he blamed me, to even consider it.
Ian scratched a hand through his hair.
“Well … do ye not see, Auntie? He blames himself for it. He has, ever since the man robbed us on the river; and now wi’ what he’s done to my cousin …” He shrugged, looking mildly embarrassed. “He’s fair eaten up with it, and knowing that you’re angry wi’ him—”
“But I’m not angry with him! I thought he was angry with me, because I didn’t tell him Bonnet’s name right away.”
“Och.” Ian looked as though he didn’t know whether to laugh or look distressed. “Well, I daresay it would ha’ saved us a bit of trouble if ye had, but no, I’m sure it’s not that, Auntie. After all, by the time Cousin Brianna told ye, we’d already met yon MacKenzie on the mountainside and done him a bit of no good.”
I took in a deep breath and blew it out again.
“But you think he thinks I’m angry at him?”
“Oh, anyone could see ye are, Auntie,” he assured me earnestly. “Ye dinna look at him or speak to him save for what ye must—and,” he said, clearing his throat delicately, “I havena seen ye go to his bed, anytime this month past.”
“Well, he hasn’t come to mine, either!” I said hotly, before reflecting that this was scarcely a suitable conversation to be having with a seventeen year-old boy.
Ian hunched his shoulders and gave me an owlish look.
“Well, he’s his pride, hasn’t he?”
“God knows he has,” I said, rubbing a hand over my face. “I—look, Ian, thank you for saying something to me.”
He gave me one of the rare sweet smiles that transformed his long, homely face.
“Well, I do hate to see him suffer. I’m fond of Uncle Jamie, aye?”
“So am I,” I said, and swallowed the small lump in my throat. “Good night, Ian.”
* * *
I walked softly down the length of the house, past cubicles in which whole families slept together, the sound of their mingled breathing a peaceful descant to the anxious beating of my heart. It was raining outside; water dripped from the smokeholes, sizzling in the embers.
Why had I not seen what Ian had? That was easy to answer; it wasn’t anger, but my own sense of guilt that had blinded me. I had kept back my knowledge of Bonnet’s involvement as much because of the gold wedding ring as because Brianna had asked me to; I could have persuaded her to tell Jamie, had I tried.
She was right; he would undoubtedly go after Stephen Bonnet sooner or later. I had somewhat more confidence in Jamie’s success than she did, though. No, it had been the ring that had made me keep silence.
And why should I feel guilty over that? There was no sensible answer; it had been instinct, not conscious thought, to hide the ring. I had not wanted to show it to Jamie, to put it back on my finger in front of him. And yet I had wanted—needed—to keep it.
My heart squeezed small, thinking of the past few weeks, of Jamie, going grimly about the necessities of reparation in loneliness and guilt. That was why I had come with him, after all—because I was afraid that if he went alone, he might not come back. Spurred by guilt and courage, he might go to reckless lengths; with me to consider, I knew he would be careful. And all the time he had thought himself not only alone but bitterly reproached by the one person who could—and should—have offered him comfort.
“Eaten up with it” indeed.
* * *
I paused by the cubicle. The shelf was some eight feet wide, and he lay well back; I could see little more of him than a humped shape under a blanket made of rabbit skins. He lay very still, but I knew he wasn’t asleep.
I climbed onto the platform, and once safe within the shadows of the cubicle, slipped out of my clothes. It was fairly warm in the longhouse, but my bare skin prickled and my nipples tightened. My eyes had grown accustomed to the dimness; I could see that he lay on his side facing me. I caught the shine of his eyes in the dark, open and watching me.
I knelt down and slid under the blanket, the fur soft against my skin. Without stopping to think too much, I rolled to face him, pressing my nakedness against him, face buried in his shoulder.
“Jamie,” I whispered to him. “I’m cold. Come and warm me. Please?”
* * *
He turned to me, wordless, with a quiet ferocity that I might have thought the hunger of desire long stifled—but knew now for simple desperation. I sought no pleasure for myself; I wanted only to give him comfort. But opening to him, urging him, some deep wellspring opened too, and I cleaved to him in a sudden need as blind and desperate as his own.
We clung tight together, shuddering, heads buried in each other’s hair, unable to look at each other, unable to let go. Slowly, as the spasms died away, I became aware of things outside our own small mortal coil, and realized that we lay in the midst of strangers, naked and helpless, shielded only by darkness.
And yet we were alone, completely. We had the privacy of Babel; there was a conversation going on at the far end of the longhouse, but its words held no meaning. It might as well have been the hum of bees.
Smoke from the banked fire wavered up outside the sanctuary of our bed, fragrant and insubstantial as incense. It was dark as a confessional inside the cubicle; I could see no more of Jamie than the faint curve of light that rimmed his shoulder, a transient gleam in the locks of his hair.
“Jamie, I’m sorry,” I said softly. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Who else?” he said, with some bleakness.
“Everyone. No one. Stephen Bonnet, himself. But not you.”
“Bonnet?” His voice was blank with surprise. “What has he to do with it?”
“Well … everything,” I said, taken aback. “Er … doesn’t he?”
He rolled halfway off me, brushing hair out of his face.
“Stephen Bonnet is a wicked creature,” he said precisely, “and I shall kill him at the first opportunity I have. But I dinna see how I can blame him for my own failings as a man.”
“What on earth are you talking about? What failings?”
He didn’t answer right away, but bent his head, a humped shadow in the dark. His legs were still entangled with mine; I could feel the tension of his body, knotted in his joints, rigid in the hollows of his thighs.
“I hadna thought ever to be so jealous of a dead man,” he whispered at last. “I shouldna have thought it possible.”
“Of a dead man?” My own voice rose slightly, with astonishment, as it finally dawned on me. “Of Frank?”
He lay still, half on top of me. His hand touched the bones of my face, hesitant.
“Who else? I have been worm-eaten wi’ it, all these days of riding. I see his face in my mind, waking and sleeping. Ye did say he looked like Jack Randall, no?”
I gathered him tight against myself, pressing his head down so that his ear was near my mouth. Thank God I hadn’t mentioned the ring to him—but had my face, my traitorous, transparent face, somehow given away that I thought of it?
“How?” I whispered to him, squeezing hard. “How could you think of such a thing?”
He broke loose, rising on one elbow, his hair falling down over my face in a mass of flaming shadows, the firelight sparking gold and crimson through it.
“How could I not?” he demanded. “Ye heard her, Claire; ye ken well what she said to me!”
“Brianna?”
“She said she would gladly see me in hell, and sell her own soul to have her father back—her real father.” He swallowed; I heard the sound of it, above the murmur of distant voices.
&nbs
p; “I keep thinking he would not have made such a mistake. He would have trusted her; he would have known that she … I keep thinking that Frank Randall was a better man than I am. She thinks so.” His hand faltered, then settled on my shoulder, squeezing tight. “I thought … perhaps ye felt the same, Sassenach.”
“Fool,” I whispered, and didn’t mean him. I ran my hands down the long slope of his back, digging my fingers into the firmness of his buttocks. “Wee idiot. Come here.”
He dropped his head, and made a small sound against my shoulder that might have been a laugh.
“Aye, I am. Ye dinna mind it so much, though?”
“No.” His hair smelt of smoke and pinesap. There were still bits of needles caught in it; one pricked smooth and sharp against my lips.
“She didn’t mean it,” I said.
“Aye, she did,” he said, and I felt him swallow the thickness in his throat. “I heard her.”
“I heard you both.” I rubbed slowly between his shoulder blades, feeling the faint traces of the old scars, the thicker, more recent welts left by the bear’s claws. “She’s just like you; she’ll say things in a temper she’d never say in cold blood. You didn’t mean all the things you said to her, did you?”
“No.” I could feel the tightness in him lessening, the joints of his body loosening, yielding reluctantly to the persuasion of my fingers. “No, I didna mean it. Not all of it.”
“Neither did she.”
I waited a moment, stroking him as I had stroked Brianna, when she was small, and afraid.
“You can believe me,” I whispered. “I love you both.”
He sighed, deeply, and was quiet for a moment.
“If I can find the man and bring him back to her. If I do—d’ye think she’ll forgive me one day?”
“Yes,” I said. “I know it.”
On the other side of the partition, I heard the small sounds of lovemaking begin; the shift and sigh, the murmured words that have no language.
“You have to go.” Brianna had said to me. “You’re the only one who can bring him back.”
It occurred to me for the first time that perhaps she hadn’t been speaking of Roger.
* * *
It was a long trek through the mountains, made longer by the winter weather. There were days when it was impossible to travel; when we crouched all day under rocky overhangs or in the shelter of a grove of trees, huddled against the wind.
Once we were through the mountains, the traveling was somewhat easier, though the temperatures grew colder as we headed north. Some nights we ate cold food, unable to keep a fire alight in snow and wind. But each night I lay with Jamie, closely huddled together within a single cocoon of furs and blankets, sharing our warmth.
I kept close count of the days, marking them by means of a length of knotted twine. We had left River Run in early January; it was mid-February before Onakara pointed out to us the smoke rising in the distance that marked the Mohawk village where he and his companions had taken Roger Wakefield. “Snake-town,” he said it was called.
Six weeks, and Brianna would be nearly six months gone. If we could get Roger back quickly—and if he was capable of travel, I added grimly to myself—we should be back well before the child was due. If Roger wasn’t here, though—if the Mohawk had sold him elsewhere … or if he was dead—said a small cold voice inside my head, we would return without delay.
Onakara declined to accompany us into the village, which did absolutely nothing to increase my confidence in our prospects. Jamie thanked him and saw him off, with one of the horses, a good knife, and a flask of whisky in payment for his services.
We buried the rest of the whisky, hiding it carefully some distance outside the village.
“Will they understand what we want?” I asked, as we remounted. “Is Tuscarora close enough to Mohawk for us to talk to them?”
“It’s no quite the same, Auntie, but close,” Ian said. It was snowing lightly, and the flakes clung melting to his eyelashes. “Like the differences between Italian and Spanish, maybe. But Onakara says that the sachem and a few others have a bit of English, though they mostly dinna choose to use it. But the Mohawk fought with the English against the French; there will be some who ken it.”
“Well, then.” Jamie smiled at us and laid his musket across the saddle in front of him. “Let’s go and try our luck.”
54
CAPTIVITY I
February 1770
He had been in the Mohawk village nearly three months, by the reckoning of his knotted string. At first he had not known who they were; only that they were a different kind of Indian than his captors—and that his captors were afraid of them.
He had stood numb with exhaustion while the men who had brought him talked and pointed. The new Indians were different; they were dressed for the cold, in fur and leather, and many of the men’s faces were tattooed.
One of them prodded him with the point of a knife, and made him undress. He was forced to stand naked in the middle of a long wooden house while several men—and women—poked and jeered at him. His right foot was badly swollen; the deep cut had become infected. He could still walk, but each step sent jabs of pain through his leg, and he burned intermittently with fever.
They shoved him, pushing him to the door of the house. There was a lot of noise outside. He recognized the gauntlet; a double row of shouting savages, all armed with sticks and clubs. Someone behind poked him in the buttock with the point of a knife, and he felt a warm trickle of blood run down his leg. “Cours!” they said. Run.
The ground was trampled, snow packed into grimy ice. It burned his feet as a shove in his back sent him staggering into pandemonium.
He stayed upright most of the way, lurching one way, then another, as the clubs struck him to and fro and sticks lashed at his legs and back. There was no way to avoid the blows. All he could do was keep going, as fast as possible.
Close to the end, a club swung straight and took him hard across the belly; he doubled over and another swatted him behind the ear. He rolled bonelessly into the snow, barely feeling the cold on his broken skin.
A switch stung his legs, then lashed him hard just under the balls. He jerked his legs up in reflex, rolled again, and found himself on hands and knees, still somehow going, the blood from his nose and mouth mixing with the frozen mud.
He reached the end, and with the last blows still stinging on his back, grasped the poles of a longhouse and pulled himself slowly to his feet. He turned to face them, holding on to the poles to keep from falling. They liked that; they were laughing, with high-pitched yips that made them sound like a pack of dogs. He bowed low, and straightened up, head whirling. They laughed harder. He’d always known how to please a crowd.
They took him inside then, gave him water to wash with, some food. They gave him back his ragged shirt and filthy breeches, but not his coat or shoes. It was warm in the house; there were several fires burning at intervals down the length of the long structure, each with its own open smokehole above. He crawled into a corner and fell asleep, his hand on the lumpy seam of his breeches.
After this reception, the Mohawk treated him with general indifference but no great cruelty. He was the slave of the longhouse, at the use of anyone who lived there. If he did not understand an order, they would show him—once. If he refused or pretended not to understand, they beat him, and he refused no more. Still, he shared equally in their food and was given a decent place to sleep, at the end of the house.
As it was winter, the main work was in gathering wood and fetching water, though now and then a hunting party would take him along to help in butchering and carrying meat. The Indians made no great effort to communicate with him, but by careful listening he acquired a little of the language.
He began, with great caution, to try a few words. He chose a young girl to begin with, feeling her less dangerous. She stared at him, then laughed, delighted as if she had heard a crow talk. She called a friend to come and hear, and another, a
nd the three of them crouched in front of him, laughing softly behind their hands and looking sideways at him from the corners of their eyes. He said all the words he knew, pointing at the objects—fire, pot, blanket, corn—then pointed at a string of dried fish overhead and raised his eyebrows.
“Yona’kensyonk,” said his new friend promptly, and giggled when he repeated it. Over the next days and weeks, the girls taught him a great deal; it was from them that he finally learned where he was. Or not where, precisely, but in whose hands.
They were Kahnyen’kehaka, they told him proudly, with looks of surprise that he did not know that. Mohawk. Keepers of the Eastern Gate of the Iroquois League. He, on the other hand, was Kakonhoaerhas. It took a certain amount of discussion to determine the exact meaning of this term; he finally discovered, when one of the girls dragged in a mongrel in illustration, that it meant “dogface.”
“Thanks,” he said, fingering the thick growth of his beard. He bared his teeth at them and growled, and they shrieked with laughter.
One of the girls’ mothers became interested; seeing that his foot was still swollen, she brought ointment and bathed it, bandaging it for him with lichen and corn husks. The women began to speak to him when he brought them wood or water.
He made no attempt at escape; not yet. Winter kept its grip on the village, with frequent snows and bitter wind. He wouldn’t get far, unarmed, lame, and with no protection from the weather. He bided his time. And he dreamed at night of lost worlds, waking often in the dawn to the smell of fresh grass, with the ache of his need spilled warm on his belly.
* * *
The edges of the river were still frozen when the Jesuit came.
Roger had the run of the village; he was outside when the dogs began to bark and yelps from the sentries signaled the arrival of visitors. People began to gather, and he went with them, curious.
The new arrivals were a large group of Mohawk, men and women both, all on foot, burdened with the usual bundles of traveling gear. That seemed odd; such visitors as had come to the village before were small hunting parties. What was odder was that the visitors had with them a white man—the pale winter sun gleamed on the man’s fair hair.
The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle Page 419
