“And it occurred to them,” Jamie said, drawing a deep breath, “that girls and women and young boys are more profitable than almost anything—save whisky, maybe.” The corner of his mouth twitched, but it wasn’t a smile.
“Our Mr. Brown insists he’d nothing to do wi’ this,” Ian added, a cynical note in his voice. “Nor had his brother or their committee.”
“But how did the Browns get involved with Hodgepile’s gang?” I asked. “And what did they do with the people they kidnapped?”
The answer to the first question was that it had been the happy outcome of a botched robbery.
“Ye recall Aaron Beardsley’s auld place, aye?”
“I do,” I said, wrinkling my nose in reflex at the memory of that wretched sty, then emitting a small cry and clapping both hands over my abused appendage.
Jamie glanced at me, and put another bit of bread on his toasting fork.
“Well, so,” he went on, ignoring my protest that I was full, “the Browns took it over, of course, when they adopted the wee lass. They cleaned it out, stocked it fresh, and went on using it as a trading post.”
The Cherokee and Catawba had been accustomed to come to the place—horrid as it was—when Aaron Beardsley had operated as an Indian trader, and had continued to do business with the new management—a very beneficial and profitable arrangement all round.
“Which is what Hodgepile saw,” Ian put in. The Hodgepile gang, with their usual straightforward methods of doing business, had walked in, shot the couple in charge, and begun systematically looting the place. The couple’s eleven-year-old daughter, who had fortunately been in the barn when the gang arrived, had slipped out, mounted a mule, and ridden hell-for-leather for Brownsville and help. By good fortune, she had encountered the Committee of Safety, returning from some errand, and brought them back in time to confront the robbers.
There then ensued what in later years would be called a Mexican standoff. The Browns had the house surrounded. Hodgepile, however, had Alicia Beardsley Brown—the two-year-old girl who legally owned the trading post, and who had been adopted by the Browns upon the death of her putative father.
Hodgepile had enough food and ammunition inside the trading post to withstand a siege of weeks; the Browns were disinclined to set fire to their valuable property in order to drive him out, or to risk the girl’s life by storming the place. After a day or two during which desultory shots were exchanged, and the members of the committee became increasingly edgy at having to camp in the woods surrounding the trading post, a flag of truce had been waved from the upper window, and Richard Brown had gone inside to parley with Hodgepile.
The result being a wary sort of merger. Hodgepile’s gang would continue their operations, steering clear of any settlement under the Browns’ protection, but would bring the proceeds of their robberies to the trading post, where they could be disposed of inconspicuously at a good profit, with Hodgepile’s gang taking a generous cut.
“The proceeds,” I said, accepting a fresh slice of buttered toast from Jamie. “That—you do mean captives?”
“Sometimes.” His lips pressed tight as he poured a mug of cider and handed it to me. “And depending upon where they were. When they took captives in the mountains, some of them were sold to the Indians, through the trading post. Those they took from the piedmont, they sold to river pirates, or took to the coast to sell on to the Indies—that would be the best price, aye? A fourteen-year-old lad would bring a hundred pound, at least.”
My lips felt numb, and not only from the cider.
“How long?” I said, appalled. “How many?” Children, young men, young women, wrenched from their homes and sold cold-bloodedly into slavery. No one to follow. Even if they were somehow to escape eventually, there would be no place—no one—to return to.
Jamie sighed. He looked unutterably tired.
“Brown doesna ken,” Ian said quietly. “He says … He says he’d nothing to do with it.”
“Like bloody hell he hadn’t,” I said, a flash of fury momentarily eclipsing horror. “He was with Hodgepile when they came here. He knew they meant to take the whisky. And he must have been with them before, when they—did other things.”
Jamie nodded.
“He claims he tried to stop them from taking you.”
“He did,” I said shortly. “And then he tried to make them kill me, to stop me telling you he’d been there. And then he bloody meant to drown me himself! I don’t suppose he told you that.”
“No, he didn’t.” Ian exchanged a brief look with Jamie, and I saw some unspoken agreement pass between them. It occurred to me that I might possibly just have sealed Lionel Brown’s fate. If so, I was not sure I felt guilty about it.
“What—what do you mean to do with him?” I asked.
“I think perhaps I will hang him,” Jamie replied, after a moment’s pause. “But I’ve more questions I want answered. And I must think about how best to manage the matter. Dinna bother about it, Sassenach; ye’ll not see him again.”
With that, he stood and stretched, muscles cracking, then shifted his shoulders, settling himself with a sigh. He gave me a hand and helped me to my feet.
“Go up to bed, Sassenach, and I’ll be up directly. I must just have a wee word with Ian first.”
Hot buttered toast, cider, and conversation had made me feel momentarily better. I found myself so tired, though, that I could barely drag myself up the stairs, and was obliged to sit on the bed, swaying blearily, in hopes of getting up the strength to take off my clothes. It was a few moments before I noticed that Jamie was hovering in the doorway.
“Erm …?” I said vaguely.
“I didna ken, did ye want me to stay with ye tonight?” he asked diffidently. “If ye’d rest better alone, I could take Joseph’s bed. Or if ye’d like, I could sleep beside ye, on the floor.”
“Oh,” I said blankly, trying to weigh these alternatives. “No. Stay. Sleep with me, I mean.” From the bottom of a well of fatigue, I summoned something like a smile. “You can warm the bed, at least.”
A most peculiar expression flitted across his face at that, and I blinked, not sure I’d seen it. I had, though; his face was caught between embarrassment and dismayed amusement—with somewhere behind all that the sort of look he might have worn if going to the stake: heroically resigned.
“What on earth have you been doing?” I asked, sufficiently surprised as to be shaken out of my torpor.
Embarrassment was getting the upper hand; the tips of his ears were going red, and a flush was visible in his cheeks, even by the dim light of the taper I’d set on the table.
“I wasna going to tell ye,” he muttered, avoiding my gaze. “I swore wee Ian and Roger Mac to silence.”
“Oh, they’ve been silent as the grave,” I assured him. Though this statement did perhaps explain the occasional odd look on Roger’s face, of late. “What’s been going on?”
He sighed, scraping the edge of his boot across the floor.
“Aye, well. It’s Tsisqua, d’ye see? He meant it as hospitality, the first time, but then when Ian told him … well, it wasna the best thing to have said, under the circumstances, only … And then the next time we came, and there they were again, only a different pair, and when I tried to make them leave, they said Bird said to say that it was honor to my vow, for what good was a vow that cost nothing to keep? And I will be damned if I ken does he mean that, or is he only thinking that either I’ll crack and he’ll have the upper hand of me for good, or that I’ll get him the guns he wants to put an end to it one way or the other—or is he only having a joke at my expense? Even Ian says he canna tell which it is, and if he—”
“Jamie,” I said. “What are you talking about?”
He stole a quick glance at me, then looked away again.
“Ah … naked women,” he blurted, and went red as a piece of new flannel.
I stared at him for a moment. My ears still buzzed slightly, but there wasn’t anything wrong with
my hearing. I pointed a finger at him—carefully, because all my fingers were swollen and bruised.
“You,” I said, in measured tones, “come here right now. Sit down right there”—I pointed at the bed beside me—“and tell me in words of one syllable exactly what you’ve been doing.”
He did, with the result that five minutes later I was lying flat on the bed, wheezing with laughter, moaning with the pain to my cracked ribs, and with helpless tears running down my temples and into my ears.
“Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God,” I gasped. “I can’t stand it, I really can’t. Help me sit up.” I extended a hand, yelped with pain as his fingers closed on my lacerated wrist, but got upright at last, bent over with a pillow clutched to my middle, and clutched it tighter each time a gust of recurrent laughter struck me.
“I’m glad ye think it’s sae funny, Sassenach,” Jamie said very dryly. He’d recovered himself to some extent, though his face was still flushed. “Ye’re sure ye’re no hysterical?”
“No, not at all.” I sniffed, dabbing at my eyes with a damp linen hankie, then snorted with uncontainable mirth. “Oh! Ow, God, that hurts.”
Sighing, he poured a cup of water from the flask on the bedside table, and held it for me to drink. It was cool, but flat and rather stale; I thought perhaps it had been standing since before …
“All right,” I said, waving the cup away and dabbing moisture very carefully from my lips. “I’m fine.” I breathed shallowly, feeling my heart begin to slow down. “Well. So. At least now I know why you’ve been coming back from the Cherokee villages in such a state of—of—” I felt an unhinged giggle rising, and bent over, moaning as I stifled it. “Oh, Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ. And here I thought it was thoughts of me, driving you mad with lust.”
He snorted then himself, though mildly. He put down the cup, rose, and turned back the coverlet. Then he looked at me, and his eyes were clear, unguarded.
“Claire,” he said, quite gently, “it was you. It’s always been you, and it always will be. Get into bed, and put the candle out. As soon as I’ve fastened the shutters, smoored the hearth, and barred the door, I’ll come and keep ye warm.”
“Kill me.” Randall’s eyes were fever-bright. “Kill me,” he said. “My heart’s desire.”
He jerked awake, hearing the words echo in his head, seeing the eyes, seeing the rain-matted hair, Randall’s face, wet as that of a drowned man.
He rubbed a hand hard over his own face, surprised to feel his skin dry, his beard no more than a shadow. The sense of wet, the itching scurf of a month’s whiskers, was still so strong that he got up, moving quietly by instinct, and went to the window, where moonlight shone through the cracks in the shutter. He poured a little water into the basin, moved the bowl into a shaft of light, and looked in, to rid himself of that lingering sense of being someone else, somewhere else.
The face in the water was no more than a featureless oval, but smooth-shaven, and the hair lay loose on his shoulders, not bound up for battle. And yet it seemed the face of a stranger.
Unsettled, he left the water in the bowl, and after a moment, padded softly back to the bed.
She was asleep. He had not even thought of her when he woke, but now the sight of her steadied him. That face he knew, even battered and swollen as it was.
He set his hand on the bedstead, comforted by the solid wood. Sometimes when he woke, the dream stayed with him, and he felt the real world ghostly, faint around him. Sometimes he feared he was a ghost.
But the sheets were cool on his skin, and Claire’s warmth a reassurance. He reached for her, and she rolled over, curled herself backward into his arms with a small moan of content, her bum roundly solid against him.
She fell asleep again at once; she hadn’t really waked. He had an urge to rouse her, make her talk to him—only to be quite sure she could see him, hear him. He only held her tight, though, and over her curly head he watched the door, as though it might open and Jack Randall stand there, soaked and streaming.
Kill me, he’d said. My heart’s desire.
His heart beat slow, echoing in the ear he pressed against the pillow. Some nights, he would fall asleep listening to it, comforted by the fleshy, monotonous thump. Other times, like now, he would hear instead the mortal silence in between the beats—that silence that patiently awaits all men.
He had drawn the quilts up, but now put them back, so that Claire was covered but his own back lay bare, open to the chill of the room, that he might not slip warmly into sleep and risk returning to the dream. Let sleep struggle for him in the cold, and at last pull him off the precipice of consciousness, down to the deeps of black oblivion.
For he did not wish to know what Randall had meant by what he said.
32
HANGING’S TOO GOOD
In the morning, Mrs. Bug was back in the kitchen, and the air was warm and fragrant with the smells of cooking. She seemed quite as usual, and beyond a brief glance at my face and a “tsk!”, not inclined to fuss. Either she had more sensitivity than I’d thought, or Jamie had had a word.
“Here, a muirninn, have it while it’s hot.” Mrs. Bug slid a heap of turkey hash from the platter onto my plate, and deftly topped it with a fried egg.
I nodded thanks and picked up my fork, with a certain lack of enthusiasm. My jaw was still so sore that eating was a slow and painful business.
The egg went down all right, but the smell of burned onion seemed very strong, oily in my nostrils. I separated a small bite of potato and mashed it against the roof of my mouth, squashing it with my tongue in lieu of chewing it, then washing it down with a sip of coffee.
More in hopes of distracting myself than because I truly wanted to know, I asked, “And how is Mr. Brown this morning?”
Her lips tightened, and she smacked down a spatula of fried potatoes as though they were Brown’s brains.
“Nowhere near sae badly off as he ought to be,” she said. “Hanging’s too good for him, and him nay more than a wretched dungheap, crawling wi’ maggots.”
I spit out the bit of potato I’d been mangling, and took another hasty gulp of coffee. It hit bottom and started back up. I pushed back the bench and ran for the door, reaching it just in time to throw up into the blackberry bush, retching coffee, bile, and fried egg.
I was dimly aware of Mrs. Bug, hovering anxiously in the doorway, and waved her away with one hand. She hesitated for a moment, but then went in again, as I stood up and started toward the well.
The entire inside of my head tasted of coffee and bile, and the back of my nose stung terribly. I felt as though my nose were bleeding again, but when I touched it gingerly, discovered that it wasn’t. Careful swilling with water cleansed my mouth, and did a bit to remedy the nasty taste—but nothing to drown the panic that had come in the wake of the nausea.
I had the sudden, distinct, and thoroughly bizarre impression that my skin was missing. My legs felt shaky, and I sat down on the stump where we split kindling, heedless of splinters.
I can’t, I thought. I simply can’t.
I sat on the chopping block, lacking the will to rise. I could feel my womb, very distinctly. A small, round weight at the base of my abdomen, feeling slightly swollen, very tender.
Nothing, I thought, with what determination I could muster. Entirely normal. It always feels that way, at a particular point of my cycle. And after what we had done, Jamie and I … well, no bloody wonder if I were still conscious of my interior workings. Granted, we hadn’t, the night before; I’d wanted nothing but to be held. On the other hand, I’d nearly ruptured myself, laughing. A small laugh escaped me now, remembering Jamie’s confession. It hurt, and I clutched my ribs, but felt a little better.
“Well, bloody hell anyway,” I said aloud, and got up. “I’ve things to do.”
Propelled by this bold statement, I fetched my basket and foraging knife, told Mrs. Bug I was off, and set out toward the Christies’.
I’d check Tom’s hand, then invite Malva to come
out with me in search of ginseng root, and any other useful things we might come across. She was an apt pupil, observant and quick, with a good memory for plants. And I’d meant to teach her how to prepare penicillin colonies. Picking through a collection of damp, moldy garbage would be soothing. I ignored a slight tendency of my gorge to rise at the thought, and lifted my battered face to the morning sun.
And I wasn’t going to worry about what Jamie meant to do with Lionel Brown, either.
33
IN WHICH MRS. BUG
TAKES A HAND
By the next morning, I had recovered quite a bit. My stomach had settled, and I felt much more resilient, emotionally; a good thing, as whatever warnings Jamie had given Mrs. Bug about fussing over me had plainly worn off.
Everything hurt less, and my hands had nearly returned to normal, but I was still desperately tired, and it was in fact rather comforting to put my feet up on the settle and be brought cups of coffee—the tea was running very low, and no chance of more likely for several years—and dishes of rice pudding with raisins in.
“And ye’re quite sure as your face will go back to lookin’ like a face, are ye?” Mrs. Bug handed me a fresh muffin, dripping with butter and honey, and peered dubiously at me, lips pursed.
I was tempted to ask her what the thing on the front of my head looked like now, but was fairly sure I didn’t want to hear the answer. Instead, I contented myself with a brief “Yes” and a request for more coffee.
“I kent a wumman up in Kirkcaldy once, as was kicked in the face by a cow,” she said, still eyeing me critically as she dished up the coffee. “Lost her front teeth, puir creature, and ever after, her nose pointed off to the side, like that.” She pushed her own small round nose sharply to the side with an index finger in illustration, simultaneously tucking her upper lip under the lower one to simulate toothlessness.
I touched the bridge of my own nose carefully, but it was reassuringly straight, if still puffy.
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