Smiling at the thought, I finished wrapping the bandage about her sticklike shin. Her legs and feet had almost no flesh upon them, and felt hard and cold as wood. She’d knocked her shin against the leg of the table and taken off a strip of skin the width of a finger; such a minor injury that a younger person would think nothing of it—but her family worried over her, and had sent for me.
“It will be slow healing, but if you keep it clean—for God’s sake, do not let her put hog fat on it!—I think it will be all right.” The younger Mrs. Abernathy, known as Young Grannie—herself about seventy—gave me a sharp eye at that; like her mother-in-law, she put a good deal of faith in hog fat and turpentine as cure-alls, but nodded grudgingly. Her daughter, whose high-flown name of Arabella had been shortened to the cozier Grannie Belly, grinned at me behind Young Grannie’s back. She had been less fortunate in the way of teeth—her smile showed significant gaps—but was cheerful and good-natured.
“Willie B.,” she instructed a teenaged grandson, “just be steppin’ doon to the root cellar, and bringing up a wee sack of turnips for Herself.”
I made the usual protestations, but all parties concerned were comfortably aware of the proper protocol in such matters, and within a few minutes, I was on my way home, the richer by five pounds of turnips.
They were welcome. I had forced myself to go back to my garden in the spring after Malva’s death—I had to; sentiment was all very well, but we had to eat. The subsequent disturbances of life and my prolonged absences, though, had resulted in dreadful neglect of the autumn crop. Despite Mrs. Bug’s best efforts, the turnips had all succumbed to thrips and black rot.
Our supplies in general were sadly depleted. With Jamie and Ian gone so frequently, not there to harvest or hunt, and without Bree and Roger, the grain crops had been half of their usual yield, and only a pitiful single haunch of venison hung in the smoking shed. We needed nearly all the grain for our own use; there was none to trade or sell, and only a scant few bags of barleycorn sat under canvas near the malting shed—where they were likely to rot, I thought grimly, as no one had had time to see to the malting of a fresh batch before the cold weather set in.
Mrs. Bug was slowly rebuilding her flock of chickens, after a disastrous attack by a fox that got into the henhouse—but it was slow going, and we got only the occasional egg for breakfast, grudgingly spared.
On the other hand, I reflected more cheerfully, we did have ham. Lots of ham. Likewise, immense quantities of bacon, headcheese, pork chops, tenderloin … to say nothing of suet and rendered fat.
The thought led me back to hog fat, and to the crowded, overflowingly familiar coziness of the Abernathys’ cluster of cabins—and by contrast, to thought of the dreadful emptiness at the Big House.
In a place with so many people, how could the loss of only four be so important? I had to stop and lean against a tree, let the sorrow wash through me, making no attempt to stop it. I’d learned. “Ye canna hold a ghost at bay,” Jamie had told me. “Let them in.”
I let them in—I could never keep them out. And took what small comfort I could in hoping—no, I didn’t hope, I told myself fiercely, I knew—that they were not ghosts in fact. Not dead, but only … elsewhere.
After a few moments, the overwhelming grief began to recede, going slowly as the ebbing tide. Sometimes it uncovered treasure: small forgotten images of Jemmy’s face, smeared with honey, Brianna’s laughter, Roger’s hands, deft with a knife, carving one of the little cars—the house was still littered with them—then leaning to spear a muffin from a passing plate. And if to look at these caused fresh pain, at least I had them, and could keep them in my heart, knowing that in the fullness of time, they would bring consolation.
I breathed, and felt the tightness in my chest and throat ease. Amanda was not the only one who might benefit from modern surgery, I thought. I couldn’t tell what might be done for Roger’s vocal cords, but maybe … and yet, his voice now was good. Full and resonant, if rough. Perhaps he would choose to keep it as it was—he’d fought for it, and earned it.
The tree I leaned against was a pine; the needles swayed softly above me, then settled, as though in agreement. I had to go; it was late in the day and the air was growing colder.
Wiping my eyes, I settled the hood of my cloak and went on. It was a long walk from the Abernathys’—I should really have ridden Clarence, but he’d come up lame the day before, and I’d let him rest. I’d have to hurry, though, if I was to reach home before dark.
I cast a wary eye upward, judging the clouds, which had that soft, uniform gray of coming snow. The air was cold and thick with moisture; when the temperature dropped at nightfall, snow would fall.
The sky was still light, but only just, as I came down past the springhouse and into the backyard. Light enough to tell me that something was wrong, though—the back door stood open.
That set off alarm bells, and I turned to run back into the woods. I turned, and ran smack into a man who had come out of the trees behind me.
“Who the hell are you?” I demanded, stepping hastily back.
“Don’t worry about that, Mrs.,” he said, and grabbing me by the arm, yelled toward the house, “Hey, Donner! I got her!”
Whatever Wendigo Donner been doing for the last year, it hadn’t been profitable, by the looks of him. Never a natty dresser at the best of times, he was now so ragged that his coat was literally falling apart, and a slice of stringy buttock showed through a rent in his breeches. His mane of hair was greasy and matted, and he stank.
“Where are they?” he demanded hoarsely.
“Where are what?” I swung round to face his companion, who seemed in slightly better condition. “And where are my housemaid and her sons?” We were standing in the kitchen, and the hearth fire was out; Mrs. Bug hadn’t come that morning, and wherever Amy and the boys were, they’d been gone for some time.
“Dunno.” The man shrugged, indifferent. “Wasn’t nobody to home when we came.”
“Where are the jewels?” Donner grabbed at my arm, jerking me round to face him. His eyes were sunk in his head, and his grip was hot; he was burning with fever.
“I haven’t got any,” I said shortly. “You’re ill. You should—”
“You do! I know you do! Everybody knows!”
That gave me momentary pause. Gossip being what it was, everybody likely thought they knew that Jamie had a small cache of jewels. Small wonder if word of this hypothetical treasure had reached Donner—and little likelihood that I could convince him otherwise. I had no choice but to try, though.
“They’re gone,” I said simply.
Something flickered in his eyes at that.
“How?” he said.
I raised an eyebrow in the direction of his accomplice. Did he want the man to know?
“Go find Richie and Jed,” Donner said briefly to the thug, who shrugged and went out. Richie and Jed? How on earth many people had he brought? Past the first shock of seeing him, I now became aware that there were thumping feet upstairs, and the sound of cupboard doors being banged impatiently down the hall.
“My surgery! Get them out of there!” I dove for the door to the hallway, intending to perform this office myself, but Donner grabbed at my cloak to stop me.
I was bloody tired of being manhandled, and I wasn’t afraid of this miserable excuse for a human being.
“Let go!” I snapped, and kicked him briskly in the kneecap to emphasize the point. He yelped, but let go; I could hear him cursing behind me as I rushed through the door and down the hall.
Papers and books had been flung out into the hallway from Jamie’s office, and a puddle of ink had been poured over them. The explanation of the ink was apparent when I saw the thug rifling my surgery—he had a big blot of ink on the front of his shirt, where he had apparently sequestered the stolen pewter inkwell.
“What are you doing, you nitwit?” I said. The thug, a boy of sixteen or so, blinked at me, mouth open. He had one of Mr. Blogweather’
s perfect glass globes in his hand; at this, he grinned maliciously and let it drop to the floor, where it shattered into a spray of fragments. One of the flying shards lanced through his cheek, slicing it open; he didn’t feel it, until the blood began to well. Then he put a hand to the wound, frowning in puzzlement, and bellowed in fright at the blood on his hand.
“Crap,” said Donner, behind me. He put his arms around me, and dragged me after him back to the kitchen.
“Look,” he said urgently, releasing me. “All I want is two. You can keep the rest. I gotta have one to pay these guys, and one to—to travel with.”
“But it’s true,” I insisted, knowing that he wouldn’t believe me. “We haven’t got any. My daughter and her family—they’ve gone. Gone back. They used all we had. There aren’t any more.”
He stared at me, disbelief plain in his burning eyes.
“Yes, there are,” he said positively. “There have to be. I gotta get out of here!”
“Why?”
“Never you mind. I gotta go, and quick.” He swallowed, eyes darting around the kitchen, as though the gems might be sitting casually on the sideboard. “Where are they?”
A hideous crash from the surgery, followed by an outbreak of shouted curses, prevented any reply I might have made. I moved by reflex toward the door, but Donner moved in front of me.
I was infuriated at this invasion, and beginning to be alarmed. While I’d never seen any indication of violence from Donner, I wasn’t so sure about the men he’d brought with him. They might eventually give up and leave, when it became apparent that there were in fact no gems on the premises—or they might try to beat the location of said gems out of me.
I pulled my cloak more tightly around myself and sat down on a bench, trying to think calmly.
“Look,” I said to Donner. “You’ve taken the house apart—” A crash from upstairs shook the house, and I jumped. My God, it sounded as though they’d tipped over the wardrobe. “You’ve taken the house apart,” I repeated, through gritted teeth, “and you haven’t found anything. Wouldn’t I give them to you, if I had any, to save you wrecking the place?”
“No, I don’t reckon you would. I wouldn’t, if I was you.” He rubbed a hand across his mouth. “You know what’s going on—the war and all.” He shook his head in confusion. “I didn’t know it would be this way. Swear to God, half the people I meet don’t know which way is up anymore. I thought it’d be like, you know, redcoats and all, and you just keep away from anybody in a uniform, keep away from the battles, and it’d be fine. But I haven’t seen a redcoat anywhere, and people—you know, just plain old people—they’re shooting each other and running around burning up each other’s houses.…”
He closed his eyes for a minute. His cheeks went from red one moment to white the next; I could see he was very ill. I could hear him, too; the breath rattled wetly in his chest, and he wheezed faintly. If he fainted, how would I get rid of his companions?
“Anyway,” he said, opening his eyes. “I’m going. Going back. I don’t care what things are like then; it’s a hell of a lot better’n here.”
“What about the Indians?” I inquired, with no more than a touch of sarcasm. “Leaving them to their own devices, are you?”
“Yeah,” he said, missing the sarcasm. “Tell you the truth, I’m not so keen on Indians anymore, either.” He rubbed absently at his upper chest, and I saw a large, puckered scar through a rent in his shirt.
“Man,” he said, longing clear in his voice, “what I wouldn’t give for a cold Bud and a baseball game on TV.” Then his wandering attention snapped back to me. “So,” he said in a halfway reasonable tone, “I need those diamonds. Or whatever. Hand ’em over and we’ll leave.”
I had been turning over various schemes for getting rid of them, to no particular avail, and was getting more uneasy by the moment. We had very little worth stealing, and from the looks of the rifled sideboard, they’d already got what there was—including, I realized, with a fresh stab of alarm, the pistols and powder. Before too much longer, they’d grow impatient.
Someone might come—Amy and the boys were likely at Brianna’s cabin, which they were in process of moving into; they could come back at any moment. Someone could come looking for Jamie or myself—though the chances of that receded by the moment, with the dying light. Even if someone did, though, the effect was likely to be disastrous.
Then I heard voices on the front porch, and the stamping of feet, and leapt to my own feet, my heart in my mouth.
“Would you quit doin’ that?” Donner said irritably. “You’re the jumpiest twat I ever saw.”
I ignored him, having recognized one of the voices. Sure enough, in the next moment, two of the thugs, brandishing pistols, shoved Jamie into the kitchen.
He was wary and disheveled, but his eyes went immediately to me, running up and down my body to assure himself that I was all right.
“I’m fine,” I said briefly. “These idiots think we have gemstones, and they want them.”
“So they said.” He straightened himself, shrugging to settle the coat on his shoulders, and glanced at the cupboards, hanging open, and the despoiled sideboard. Even the pie hutch had been overturned, and the remains of a raisin pie lay squashed on the floor, marked with a large heelprint. “I gather they’ve looked.”
“Look, mate,” said one of the thugs, reasonably, “all we want’s the swag. Just tell us where it is, and we go, no ’arm done, eh?”
Jamie rubbed the bridge of his nose, eyeing the man who’d spoken.
“I imagine my wife has told ye that we have no gems?”
“Well, she would, wouldn’t she?” the thug said tolerantly. “Women, you know.” He seemed to feel that now Jamie had showed up, they could get on with things in a more businesslike fashion, man-to-man.
Jamie sighed and sat down.
“Why d’ye think I’ve got any?” he inquired, rather mildly. “I have had, I admit—but no longer. They’ve been sold.”
“Where’s the money, then?” The second thug was obviously quite willing to settle for that, no matter what Donner thought.
“Spent,” Jamie said briefly. “I’m a colonel of militia—surely ye ken that much? It’s an expensive business, provisioning a militia company. Food, guns, powder, shoes—it adds up, aye? Why, the cost in shoe leather alone—and then, to say nothing of shoon for the horses! Wagons, too; ye wouldna believe the scandalous cost of wagons.…”
One of the thugs was frowning, but half-nodding, following this reasonable exegesis. Donner and his other companion were noticeably agitated, though.
“Shut up about the damn wagons,” Donner said rudely, and bending, he snatched up one of Mrs. Bug’s butcher knives from the floor. “Now, look,” he said, scowling and trying to look menacing. “I’ve had it with the stalling around. You tell me where they are, or—or I’ll—I’ll cut her! Yeah, I’ll cut her throat. Swear I will.” With this, he clutched me by the shoulder and put the knife to my throat.
It had become clear to me some little time ago that Jamie was stalling for time, which meant that he expected something to happen. Which in turn meant he was expecting someone to come. That was reassuring, but I did think the apparent nonchalance of his demeanor in the face of my theoretically impending demise was perhaps carrying things a trifle too far.
“Oh,” he said, scratching at the side of his neck. “Well, I wouldna do that, if I were you. She’s the one who kens where the gems are, aye?”
“I what?” I cried indignantly.
“She is?” One of the other thugs brightened at that.
“Oh, aye,” Jamie assured him. “Last time I went out wi’ the militia, she hid them. Wouldna tell me where she’d put them.”
“Wait—I thought you said you sold ’em and spent the money,” Donner said, plainly confused.
“I was lying,” Jamie explained, patient.
“Oh.”
“But if ye’re going to kill my wife, well, then, of course that
alters the case.”
“Oh,” said Donner, looking somewhat happier. “Yeah. Exactly!”
“I believe we havena been introduced, sir,” Jamie said politely, extending a hand. “I am James Fraser. And you are …?”
Donner hesitated for a minute, unsure what to do with the knife in his right hand, but then shifted it awkwardly to his left and leaned forward to shake Jamie’s hand briefly.
“Wendigo Donner,” he said. “Okay, now we’re getting somewhere.”
I made a rude noise, but it was drowned by a series of crashes and the sound of breaking glass from the surgery. The lout in there must be clearing the shelves wholesale, flinging bottles and jars on the floor. I grasped Donner’s hand and pulled the knife away from my throat, then sprang to my feet, in much the same state of insane fury in which I had once torched a field full of grasshoppers.
This time, it was Jamie who seized me around the middle as I darted toward the door, swinging me half off my feet.
“Let go! I’ll frigging kill him!” I said, kicking madly.
“Well, wait just a bit about that, Sassenach,” he said, low-voiced, and lugged me back to the table, where he sat down with his arms wrapped around me, holding me firmly pinned on his lap. Further sounds of depredation came down the hall—the splintering of wood and crunch of glass under a bootheel. Evidently, the young lout had given up searching for anything and was simply destroying for the fun of it.
I took a deep breath, preparatory to emitting a scream of frustration, but stopped.
“Jeez,” Donner said, wrinkling his nose. “What’s that smell? Somebody cut one?” He looked accusingly at me, but I paid no attention. It was ether, heavy and sickly sweet.
Jamie stiffened slightly. He knew what it was, too, and essentially what it did.
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