by Sara Donati
“For the bairns’ sake, then.”
Elizabeth closed her eyes to rein in her temper. “If you were truly worried about my children, my lord, then they would be safe at home in New-York.”
He rubbed a thumb alongside his mouth as he considered. “Ye dinna trust me.”
“And does that surprise you?”
“No’ in the least,” said Carryck. “A sensible woman wad nivver entrust hersel’ and her bairns tae a stranger.”
“I see. You intrude in the middle of the night to test not only my composure, but also my character.”
“I came tae see ye safely hame,” he corrected her. “Moncrieff has been celebratin’ aa night and canna be trusted wi’ the job. Ma men are waitin’ on the green wi’ fresh horses.”
Elizabeth crossed her arms. “And if a thousand men waited with a thousand horses, it would make no difference to me. Once again I will tell you, my lord. I will not leave this place without my husband. Have I not made myself clear?”
“Och, aye, woman.” Carryck came away from the window. “Ye talk weel enough in yer strange English way, but ye canna hear.” And he pointed with his chin to the hall.
Elizabeth spun around. The sound of a familiar step and then the door flew open, and Nathaniel came through with a pistol cocked and aimed at the Earl of Carryck.
“Nathaniel!” Elizabeth stepped toward him, her hands raised. “I’m in no danger. This is Carryck.”
There was a shimmer of sweat on his brow, and something in his expression, something that struck such fear in her that her voice broke as she tried to speak. “Nathaniel, did you not hear me? This is the earl.”
He blinked at her. “I heard you. My father and Robbie were pressed onto a frigate, Boots. I’d say my lord earl here has caused enough trouble.” He lurched toward her. “But you’ll have to shoot the man yourself.”
Nathaniel grabbed her arm, his grip so fierce that she cried out as he pressed the pistol into her hand. His breath was warm on her face.
“The dragoons,” he whispered, and collapsed at her feet.
Carryck forgotten, Elizabeth fell to her knees next to her husband. In the candlelight he was milk white, and his breath came shallow and fast. She had seen him this way before; God, yes, and on that day had hoped never to see him thus again.
“He’s been shot.” Carryck crouched down next to her, but all his attention was on Nathaniel’s face.
“Yes. Here in the left leg.” She peeled away the cloak to get a better look, ran her hands over him and then stopped when her fingers came away red-stained. “And in the shoulder, as well.”
Rage swept through her so that her hands began to shake even as she pressed her palms to the wound and leaned in hard to stop the flow of blood. When she raised her head, the earl’s face was only inches from her own, and a wariness came into his eyes.
“He’s bleedin’ tae death,” he said gruffly. “Shootin’ me will ha’ tae wait.”
“I hope not for long,” Elizabeth snapped.
There was a startled cry at the door to the adjoining room. Hannah stood there with both fists clenched at her chest.
“He’s alive.” Elizabeth spoke as calmly and as clearly as she could. “Get Curiosity, right now. Can you do that?”
“No need.” Curiosity appeared out of the shadows, her nightdress floating along behind her. “Now hold down your voices unless you want those babies wailin’, too.”
Blood was seeping up through Elizabeth’s fingers. The muscles in her lower arms quivered and jumped as she put more of her weight on the wound. Nathaniel groaned, and his eyelids fluttered weakly.
“You see,” Elizabeth said fiercely, seeking out Hannah’s gaze. “He is alive.”
“And spoutin’ like a geyser.” Curiosity sent a pointed look at Elizabeth’s nightdress, already streaked with blood. She knelt on Nathaniel’s other side and put a hand to his neck.
“How bad is it?” Hannah asked, stepping closer.
Curiosity made a sound deep in her throat. “The man got a heart like a wheel, it just roll right on.”
Hannah’s breath hissed out through her clenched teeth, and Curiosity looked up at her sharply. “We fixed your daddy up before, and we can do it again.”
Carryck had been following all of this silently, but now Elizabeth felt him jerk in surprise. His gaze swung first toward Curiosity, and then up to Hannah. Against the stark white of her nightdress her hands and face shone bronze in the candlelight. Tears sparked in her eyes, as dark as obsidian. When he looked away again the truth was written on his face.
Moncrieff had not told him about Hannah. Elizabeth flushed with a bitter satisfaction. If the earl had not known that Hawkeye’s oldest grandchild was half Mohawk, what else had been kept from him?
Curiosity ripped Nathaniel’s breeches to the knee in order to get a better look at the wound in his leg.
“This ain’t too bad,” she said. “Missed the bone, and passed clean through. Let me see that shoulder, Elizabeth.”
Hannah said, “We’ll need linen for binding.”
“He needs a surgeon,” said the earl to Elizabeth. “Pickering’s Hakim is still at Carryckcastle.”
This brought Hannah up short, but Curiosity’s mouth thinned. “I take it this here is the earl,” she said without even looking at him. “Tellin’ us how to look after our own.”
“But Curiosity—” Hannah began, but the older woman shook her head sharply.
“I’d be mighty pleased to see the Hakim, but he ain’t here, and this bleedin’ has got to stop right now. Skip and get that medicine basket of yours, child. Elizabeth, I need more light, and most of all I need Nathaniel up on the bed where I can work on him. If the earl here care to make hisself useful he’ll help with the liftin’. Now move aside, both of you, and let me do what I can for him.”
Elizabeth wondered when Carryck had last been given a command by anyone, much less a woman. And yet he looked more preoccupied than aggrieved as he stepped away.
She said, “There is no time for civilities, sir. Will you not assist us?”
Carryck exhaled strongly through his nose. “It’s no’ the civilities that concern me. Do ye trust this woman?”
“I trust her with his life, and with my own.”
He crossed the room in a few strides. In a single movement he threw open the casement and whistled, one high piercing note followed by a falling tone. The last of it was still in the air when quick steps sounded on the stairs.
Three men appeared at the open door, young and well built, and all heavily armed. The tallest of them was black-haired, the other two fair and balding and as like to each other as boiled eggs. One of the twins carried a lantern that filled the room with swaying light, and showed up the widening red circle under Nathaniel’s shoulders.
“Dugald, Ewen.” Carryck’s tone was short. “See him ontae the bed.”
“That’s more like it,” Curiosity said. “You, there. Come over here and take him by the legs.”
“Christ,” breathed the tallest of them, staring openly at Nathaniel as the twins went to work. “It’s aye true. Look at him.”
“Lucas,” Carryck barked.
The young man’s jaw snapped shut, and he came to attention. “Aye, my lord.”
“Walter’s men are behind this. Send Davie tae take five men and see tae it.”
Lucas left reluctantly, with a long look over his shoulder.
Nathaniel groaned as the twins deposited him onto the bed and his eyelids cracked open. “I can sit a horse.”
“And ride it straight to the pearly gates while you at it,” Curiosity snorted, stanching blood with the corner of the bedsheet. “This shoulder is a sorry sight.”
“Nathaniel.” Elizabeth leaned over him. “You have lost a great deal of blood. Surely Carryckcastle can wait one more day.”
His hand sought out hers, and he grasped it hard. “Bind me up good and tie me to the saddle, if that’s what it takes. But let’s get out of Dumfries.”
“There, ye see,” said Carryck, spreading out his arms toward the women, as if to welcome them to his point of view. “If ye willna take my word, then I trust ye’ll take his.”
“I see, all right,” Curiosity said, her brow furled down low as she turned back to tending Nathaniel’s shoulder. “I see torn-up flesh and shattered bone. I see a man stubborn as rock.”
“Aye,” said Carryck, and he smiled for the first time since he had come into the room. “Exactly.”
24
It was not the idea of traveling on horseback that bothered Hannah so much as the fact that she had to share a saddle with one of the earl’s men. His name was Thomas Ballentyne; he was as large and dark and hairy as a bear, and he had a pistol in one boot and a long knife in the other. He took her up on the saddle before him with a resigned shrug.
“This is Meg.” He gestured to his mare with a very horselike toss of his own head. “She’s no’ verra talkative, and no mair am I.”
At least there would be no questions she did not care to answer. And he was a good horseman, as were all of Carryck’s men. Hannah counted some twenty of them as they moved along the winding road at a sharp pace with the rest of her family hidden inside their ranks.
Hannah was tired, but she would not let herself be lulled to sleep by Meg’s easy gait or the fact that Thomas Ballentyne radiated warmth like a well-laid fire. She must be the one to remember their route along these unmarked roads: Curiosity was preoccupied with Lily, and Elizabeth with Daniel; her father had lost too much blood to stay alert for long. It would take all of his concentration to stay upright in the saddle.
They were barely out of Dumfries when the first shifting light of dawn came up, and she turned her attention to the Scottish countryside, severe but still alive with new light. There were some trees now. Here and there a birch or elm crowded with rooks; a clutch of pines at a turning of the river, and in long misty stretches between the swelling hills. If they could be called hills. They put Hannah more in mind of children sleeping under blankets worn thin with use, crowded close together for warmth, rounded shoulders and hips and elbows jutting up. Nothing like the mountains of the endless forests.
Hannah wished for some quick look at her father, but he was hidden from her. An hour passed, and then another.
As they came around a corner there was a scattering on a far hillside.
“Wild goats.” She did not realize she had said it aloud until Thomas Ballentyne grunted.
“Aye.” And then, grudgingly: “Ye’re sharp-eyed.”
After that he began to put names to things, speaking them out over her head for her to take or leave, as she pleased. The Threewater Foot was a tangle of streams where they paused to let the horses drink without dismounting. It was a pretty spot, where guelder roses grew among the elms and willows overhung the stream, full of mossy boulders.
The dark-haired young man who had come into the inn at the earl’s whistle stared at her from the other side of the water. Hannah was surprised to find that while she could ignore him, Thomas Ballentyne could not.
“Lucas! Stop oglin’ the lass or I’ll tell Mary!”
There were shouts of laughter. The younger man turned his horse away, blushing furiously.
“You embarrassed him,” Hannah said.
He shrugged. “I canna thole sic impertinent behavior in ma own son.”
Hannah craned her neck for another look at Lucas to see if he resembled his father. Instead she caught sight of Elizabeth and Curiosity, horses side by side, their heads together. They seemed preoccupied and worried but not desperate, and that put Hannah at ease, for the moment. Just beyond them her father was a vaguely upright shape. He was very pale, and even from here she could see how it was with him.
“It’s a braw mannie wha’ can ride shotgun wi’oot complaint,” said Thomas Ballentyne, showing a talent for reading thoughts that made Hannah shift uneasily.
They started up the river valley on a narrow road, now in groups of three and four. Low mountains came into sight: Gateshaw Rig, Croft Head, Loch Fell, like a gathering of old men with hunched backs.
“We’re on Carryck land now,” said Thomas Ballentyne, pointing to a mountaintop. “That’s Aidan Rig.”
The name meant nothing to Hannah, so she turned her attention to the pastures along the river, full of sheep and cows with heavy thick coats; men working in a field of oats who straightened to raise a hand in greeting. Young women raking hay into ricks, smiling and calling out names. One flipped her skirt in their direction and the others laughed and scolded.
They passed through a small village, and then another, moving so fast that Hannah could make out nothing about them except thatched roofs and stone walls, a common well, a low church steeple, a mill on a stream. Crofters’ cottages with children playing around them, a boy herding a great sow, a woman scrubbing clothes in a stream, her skirts tucked up to show round knees purple-red with cold. The road began to work its way upward toward the summit of Aidan Rig, twisting with the curves of the hill. The soil was thin here and everywhere stone pushed up out of the ground as if the earth were set on shedding her bones. A young bullock grazing among the heather raised a heavy head to watch them pass.
Meg began to blow and snort, surging forward eagerly in spite of the steep climb.
“Aye, lass,” said Thomas Ballentyne. “Soon. Ye’ve earned yer oats this night.”
Hannah sat up straighter, as anxious as she had ever been.
“There,” he said, raising a gloved hand to point. “Carryckcastle.”
She had steeled herself for this, and still Hannah was taken by surprise. To her mother’s people, to the Kahnyen’kehàka, a castle was nothing more than a fortified village, longhouses surrounded by a wall of logs lashed together and sharpened to a point at the top. Carryckcastle was something very different: a vast expanse of smooth walls, turrets and towers, a hundred glass windows catching the sunlight and casting it out again. The castle grew out of the rock where the mountain thrust out over the valley below. Above it was only timber and a treacherous rock face; no man could approach it from below without being seen from a mile away. The home of a man who did not trust his neighbors.
Behind them, the sound of her father coughing from deep in his chest.
“Ye’ll be safe here,” Thomas Ballentyne said.
Hannah shuddered in the warm sunlight, and was silent.
All through this long journey, Elizabeth had dreaded the moment when they would first see this place, but when that time came she could feel only relief. Nathaniel had been listing hard to one side for the last half-mile of the winding road up the mountainside. She focused all her energy on him, willing him to stay upright for these last few minutes, trying at the same time to comfort Daniel with soft words. He mewled and hiccuped his unhappiness, straining away and clutching hard at the same time.
As the party turned the corner and started through the gate into the courtyard, Lily raised her voice, crying in earnest now, hungry and angry about it. Elizabeth turned her head for a moment in Curiosity’s direction, just as Nathaniel began a slow slide from the saddle.
It had been many years since she had played at such games, but now she left her horse in a vault, one arm wrapped around Daniel and her skirts flying. And still the earl was there before her, leaning over from his own mount to grab Nathaniel by the collar before he fell to the cobblestones. A legion of servants, men in leather aprons, footmen in blue and gold livery, stableboys, all rushed in to help, and Elizabeth lost sight of him until she could push her way through.
He was barely upright, supported on either side by two burly servants so that his cape gaped open. Curiosity had immobilized his left arm against his chest, and then bound him tightly from shoulder to waist. Now the whole expanse of linen was bright red. He looked down at himself and up at her with a puzzled expression.
“Boots.” His voice was raw, and she saw now clearly what this ride had cost him. “The children?”
“A
ll well.” Her knees were trembling, but her tone was firm and she managed a small smile.
“Good,” he said. “Good,” and slumped forward in a faint.
There was no help for it: she must leave Nathaniel to the care of others while she tended to the babies. As soon as he had been carried into a room on the ground floor where the Hakim waited—Elizabeth caught his eye in passing, and was calmed by his kind and earnest expression as he turned to greet Hannah—she let herself be led, squalling children firmly in arm, down halls and up staircases to a chamber the size of their entire cabin at Lake in the Clouds. When the footman closed the door behind her, she went straight to the bed and its little flight of carved stairs.
Elizabeth climbed them and settled herself against the mountain of bolsters and pillows. She did not look up again until the twins had begun to nurse, and then she found she was not alone.
Three lady’s maids stood waiting on the far side of the room, watching her. They curtsied and bobbed as if she were the king’s consort rather than the wife of an American backwoodsman, coming forward in a rustle of skirts to take her shoes, spread a rug over her legs, and adjust the pillows under the twins more comfortably. Through all this they said very little, but Elizabeth saw them taking in every detail, from the pitch-stained hem of her gown to the way Daniel played with a stray strand of her hair as he nursed. The two older maids kept all expression from their faces, but the youngest one stood for a moment smiling at the sight of Lily’s feet, which stuck out from under Elizabeth’s arm, toes wiggling madly.
Elizabeth bore it all patiently until they stood away again, eyes downcast. The earl must have a very strict housekeeper, one who inspired real fear in her staff. Or perhaps it’s me, she thought. Perhaps they are afraid of me.
“Thank you,” she said. “You may leave me now.”
They bobbed again, hands folded over starched aprons, and slipped away without a word. But the youngest one paused at the door to throw a curious last glance at her.
Elizabeth returned her shy smile. “What is your name?”
