A Breath of Snow and Ashes (119 page)

“She fed me,” he said at last, rubbing a hand tiredly across his eyes. “Every day.”

Jocasta rose late and breakfasted in her sitting room, attended by Ulysses, to make plans for the day. Duncan, who had risen before dawn every day of his life, usually in the expectation of a dry crust or at most, a bit of drammach—oatmeal mixed with water—woke now to find a steaming pot of tea beside his bed, accompanied by a bowl of creamy parritch, liberally garnished with honey and cream, toast drenched in butter, eggs fried with ham.

“Sometimes a wee fish, rolled in cornmeal, crisp and sweet,” he added, with mournful reminiscence.

“Well, that’s verra seductive, to be sure, Duncan,” Jamie said, not without sympathy. “A man’s vulnerable when he’s hungry.” He gave me a wry glance. “But still . . .”

Duncan had been grateful to Phaedre for her kindness, and had—being a man, after all—admired her beauty, though in a purely disinterested sort of way, he assured us.

“To be sure,” Jamie said with marked skepticism. “What happened?”

Duncan had dropped the butter, was the answer, whilst struggling to butter his toast one-handed. Phaedre had hastened to retrieve the pieces of the fallen dish, and then hurried to fetch a cloth and wipe the streaks of butter from the floor—and then from Duncan’s chest.

“Well, I was in my nightshirt,” he murmured, starting to go red again. “And she was—she had—” His hand rose and made vague motions in the vicinity of his chest, which I took to indicate that Phaedre’s bodice had displayed her bosom to particular advantage while in such close proximity to him.

“And?” Jamie prompted ruthlessly.

And, it appeared, Duncan’s anatomy had taken note of the fact—a circumstance admitted with such strangulated modesty that we could barely hear him.

“But I thought you couldn’t—” I began.

“Oh, I couldna,” he assured me hastily. “Only at night, like, dreaming. But not waking, not since I had the accident. Perhaps it was being so early i’ the morning; my cock thought I was still asleep.”

Jamie made a low Scottish noise expressing considerable doubt as to this supposition, but urged Duncan to continue, with a certain amount of impatience.

Phaedre had taken notice in her turn, it transpired.

“She was only sorry for me,” Duncan said frankly. “I could tell as much. But she put her hand on me, soft. So soft,” he repeated, almost inaudibly.

He had been sitting on his bed—and had gone on sitting there in dumb amazement, as she took away the breakfast tray, lifted his nightshirt, climbed on the bed with her skirts neatly tucked above her round brown thighs, and with great tenderness and gentleness, had welcomed back his manhood.

“Once?” Jamie demanded. “Or did ye keep doing it?”

Duncan put his head in his hand, a fairly eloquent admission, under the circumstances.

“How long did this . . . er . . . liaison go on?” I asked more gently.

Two months, perhaps three. Not every day, he hastened to add—only now and then. And they had been very careful.

“I wouldna ever have wanted to shame Jo, ken,” he said very earnestly. “And I kent weel I shouldna be doing it, ’twas a great sin, and yet I couldna keep from—” He broke, off, swallowing. “It’s all my fault, what’s happened, let the sin be on me! Och, my puir darling lass . . .”

He fell silent, shaking his head like an old, sad, flea-ridden dog. I felt terribly sorry for him, regardless of the morality of the situation. The collar of his shirt was turned awkwardly under, strands of his grizzled hair trapped beneath his coat; I gently pulled them out and straightened it, though he took no heed.

“D’ye think she’s dead, Duncan?” Jamie asked quietly, and Duncan blanched, his skin going the same gray as his hair.

“I canna bring myself to think it,
Mac Dubh,
” he said, and his eyes filled with tears. “And—and yet . . .”

Jamie and I exchanged uneasy glances. And yet. Phaedre had taken no money when she disappeared. How could a female slave travel very far without detection, advertised and hunted, lacking a horse, money, or anything beyond a pair of leather shoes? A man might possibly make it to the mountains, and manage to survive in the woods, if he were tough and resourceful—but a girl? A house slave?

Someone had taken her—or else she was dead.

None of us wanted to voice that thought, though. Jamie heaved a great sigh, and taking a clean handkerchief from his sleeve, put it in Duncan’s hand.

“I shall pray for her, Duncan—wherever she may be. And for you,
a charaid
. . . and for you.”

Duncan nodded, not looking up, the handkerchief clutched tight. It was clear that any attempt at comfort would be futile, and so at last we left him sitting there, in his tiny, landlocked room, so far from the sea.

We made our way back slowly, not speaking, but holding hands, feeling the strong need to touch each other. The day was bright, but there was a storm coming up; ragged clouds were streaming in from the east, and the breeze came in gusts that whirled my skirts about like a twirling parasol.

The wind was less on the back terrace, sheltered as it was by its waist-high wall. Looking up from here, I could just see the window that Phaedre had been looking out of when I’d found her there, the night of the barbecue.

“She told me that something wasn’t right,” I said. “The night of Mrs. MacDonald’s barbecue. Something was troubling her then.”

Jamie shot me an interested glance.

“Oh, aye? But she didna mean Duncan, surely?” he objected.

“I know.” I shrugged helplessly. “She didn’t seem to know what was wrong herself—she just kept saying, ‘Something ain’t right.’”

Jamie took a deep breath and blew it out again, shaking his head.

“In a way, I suppose I hope that whatever it was, it had to do with her going. For if it wasna to do with her and Duncan . . .” He trailed off, but I had no difficulty in finishing the thought.

“Then it wasn’t to do with your aunt, either,” I said. “Jamie—do you really think Jocasta might have had her killed?”

It should have sounded ridiculous, spoken aloud like that. The horrible thing was that it didn’t.

Jamie made that small, shrugging gesture he used when very uncomfortable about something, as though his coat was too tight.

“Had she her sight, I should think it—possible, at least,” he said. “To be betrayed by Hector—and she blamed him already, for the death of her girls. So her daughters are dead, but there is Phaedre, alive, every day, a constant reminder of insult. And then to be betrayed yet again, by Duncan,
with
Hector’s daughter?”

He rubbed a knuckle under his nose. “I should think any woman of spirit might be . . . moved.”

“Yes,” I said, imagining what I might think or feel under the same circumstances. “Certainly. But to murder—that
is
what we’re talking about, isn’t it? Couldn’t she simply have sold the girl?”

“No,” he said thoughtfully. “She couldn’t. We made provision to safeguard her money when she wed—but not the property. Duncan is the owner of River Run—and all that goes with it.”

“Including Phaedre.” I felt hollow, and a little sick.

“As I said. Had she her sight, I shouldna be astonished at all by the thought. As it is . . .”

“Ulysses,” I said, with certainty, and he nodded reluctantly. Ulysses was not only Jocasta’s eyes, but her hands, as well. I didn’t think he would have killed Phaedre at his mistress’s command—but if Jocasta had poisoned the girl, for instance, Ulysses might certainly have helped to dispose of the body.

I felt an odd air of unreality—even with what I knew of the MacKenzie family, calmly discussing the possibility of Jamie’s aged aunt having murdered someone . . . and yet . . . I
did
know the MacKenzies.

“
If
my aunt had any hand at all in the matter,” Jamie said. “After all, Duncan said they were discreet. And it may be the lass was taken off—perhaps by the man my aunt recalls from Coigach. It could be he’d think Phaedre might help him to the gold, no?”

That was a somewhat happier thought. And it
did
fit with Phaedre’s premonition—if that’s what it was—which had occurred the same day that the man from Coigach came.

“I suppose all we
can
do is pray for her, poor thing,” I said. “I don’t suppose there’s a patron saint of abducted persons, is there?”

“Saint Dagobert,” he replied promptly, causing me to stare at him.

“You’re making that up.”

“Indeed I am not,” he said with dignity. “Saint Athelais is another one—and perhaps better, now I think. She was a young Roman lass, who was abducted by the Emperor Justinian, who wished to have his way wi’ her, and she vowed to chastity. But she escaped and went off to live with her uncle in Benevento.”

“Good for her. And Saint Dagobert?”

“A king of some sort—Frankish? Anyway, his guardian took against him as a child, and had him kidnapped away to England, so the guardian’s son might reign instead.”

“Where do you learn these things?” I demanded.

“From Brother Polycarp, at the Abbey of St. Anne,” he said, the corner of his mouth tucking back in a smile. “When I couldna sleep, he’d come and tell me stories of the saints, hours on end. It didna always put me to sleep, but after an hour or so of hearing about holy martyrs having their breasts amputated or being flogged wi’ iron hooks, I’d close my eyes and make a decent pretense of it.”

Jamie took my cap off and set it on the ledge. The air blew through my inch of hair, ruffling it like meadow grass, and he smiled as he looked at me.

“Ye look like a boy, Sassenach,” he said. “Though damned if I’ve ever seen a lad with an arse like yours.”

“Thanks so much,” I said, absurdly pleased. I had eaten like a horse in the last two months, slept well and deeply through the nights, and knew I was much improved in looks, hair notwithstanding. Never hurt to hear it, though.

“I want ye verra much,
mo nighean donn,
” he said softly, and curled his fingers round my wrist, letting the pads rest gently on my pulse.

“So the MacKenzies of Leoch are all prone to black jealousy,” I said. I could feel my pulse, steady under his fingers. “Charming, cunning, and given to betrayal.” I touched his lip, ran my thumb lightly along it, the tiny prickles of beard pleasant to the touch. “All of them?”

He looked down, fixing me suddenly with a dark blue gaze in which humor and ruefulness were mingled with a good many other things I couldn’t read.

“Ye think I am not?” he said, and smiled a little sadly. “God and Mary bless ye, Sassenach.” And bent to kiss me.

WE COULD NOT TARRY at River Run. The fields down here on the piedmont had long since been harvested and turned under, the remnants of dried stalks flecking the fresh dark earth; snow would fly soon in the mountains.

We had discussed the matter round and round—but came to no useful conclusion. There was nothing further we could do to help Phaedre—except to pray. Beyond that, though . . . there was Duncan to think of.

For it had occurred to both of us that if Jocasta
had
found out about his liaison with Phaedre, her wrath was not likely to be limited to the slave girl. She might bide her time—but she would not forget the injury. I’d never met a Scot who
would.

We took our leave of Jocasta after breakfast the next day, finding her in her private parlor, embroidering a table runner. The basket of silk threads sat in her lap, the colors carefully arrayed in a spiral, so that she could choose the one she wanted by touch, and the finished linen fell to one side, five feet of cloth edged with an intricate design of apples, leaves, and vines—or no, I realized, when I picked up the end of the cloth to admire it. Not vines. Black-eyed serpents, coiling slyly, slithering, green and scaly. Here and there one gaped to show its fangs, guarding scattered red fruit.

“Garden of Eden,” she explained to me, rubbing the design lightly betwixt her fingers.

“How beautiful,” I said, wondering how long she’d been working on it. Had she begun it before Phaedre’s disappearance?

A bit of casual talk, and then Josh the groom appeared to say that our horses were ready. Jamie nodded, dismissing him, and stood.

“Aunt,” he said to Jocasta matter-of-factly, “I should take it verra much amiss were any harm to come to Duncan.”

She stiffened, fingers halting in their work.

“Why should any harm come to him?” she asked, lifting her chin.

Jamie didn’t reply at once, but stood regarding her, not without sympathy. Then he leaned down, so that she could feel his presence close, his mouth near her ear.

“I know, Aunt,” he said softly. “And if ye dinna wish anyone else to share that knowledge . . . then I think I shall find Duncan in good health when I return.”

She sat as though turned to salt. Jamie stood up, nodding toward the door, and we took our leave. I glanced back from the hallway, and saw her still sitting like a statue, face as white as the linen in her hands and the little balls of colored thread all fallen from her lap, unraveling across the polished floor.

73

DOUBLE-DEALING

W
ITH MARSALI GONE, the whisky-making became more difficult. Among us, Bree and Mrs. Bug and I had managed to get off one more malting before the weather became too cold and rainy, but it was a near thing, and it was with great relief that I saw the last of the malted grain safely decanted into the still. Once set to ferment, the stuff became Jamie’s responsibility, as he trusted no one else with the delicate job of judging taste and proof.

The fire beneath the still had to be kept at exactly the right level, though, to keep fermentation going without killing the mash, then raised for the distillings once fermentation was complete. This meant that he lived—and slept—beside the still for the few days necessary for each batch to come off. I generally brought him supper and stayed until the dark came, but it was lonely without him in my bed, and I was more than pleased when we poured the last of the new making into casks.

“Oh, that smells good.” I sniffed beatifically at the inside of an empty cask; it was one of the special casks Jamie had obtained through one of Lord John’s shipping friends—charred inside like a normal whisky cask, but previously used to store sherry. The sweet mellow ghost of the sherry mingled with the faint scent of char and the hot, raw reek of the new whisky were together enough to make my head spin pleasantly.

“Aye, it’s a small batch, but no bad,” Jamie agreed, inhaling the aroma like a perfume connoisseur. He lifted his head and eyed the sky overhead; the wind was coming up strong, and thick clouds were racing past, dark-bellied and threatening.

“There’s only the three casks,” he said. “If ye think ye might manage one, Sassenach, I’ll take the others. I should like to have them safe, rather than dig them out of a snowbank next week.”

A half-mile walk in a roaring wind, carrying or rolling a six-gallon cask, was no joke, but he was right about the snow. It wasn’t quite cold enough for snow yet, but it would be soon. I sighed, but nodded, and between us, we managed to lug the casks slowly up to the whisky cache, hidden among rocks and ragged grapevines.

I had quite regained my strength, but even so, every muscle I had was trembling and jerking in protest by the time we had finished, and I made no objection at all when Jamie made me sit down to rest before heading back to the house.

“What do you plan to do with these?” I asked, nodding back toward the cache. “Keep, or sell?”

He wiped a flying strand of hair out of his face, squinting against a blast of flying dust and dead leaves.

“I’ll have to sell one, for the spring seed. We’ll keep one to age—and I think perhaps I can put the last to good purpose. If Bobby Higgins comes again before the snow, I shall send a half-dozen bottles to Ashe, Harnett, Howe, and a few others—a wee token of my abiding esteem, aye?” He grinned wryly at me.

“Well, I’ve heard of worse bona fides,” I said, amused. It had taken him a good deal of work to worm his way back into the good graces of the North Carolina Committee of Correspondence, but several members had begun answering his letters again—cautiously, but with respect.

“I shouldna think anything important will happen over the winter,” he said thoughtfully, rubbing his cold-reddened nose.

“Likely not.” Massachusetts, where most of the uproar had been taking place, was now occupied by a General Gage, and the latest we had heard was that he had fortified Boston Neck, the narrow spit of land that connects the city to the mainland—which meant that Boston was now cut off from the rest of the colony, and under seige.

I felt a small pang, thinking of it; I had lived in Boston for nearly twenty years, and was fond of the city—though I knew I would not recognize it now.

“John Hancock—he’s a merchant there—is heading the Committee of Safety, Ashe says. They’ve voted to recruit twelve thousand militia, and are looking to purchase five
thousand
muskets—with the trouble I had to find thirty, good luck to them, is all I can say.”

I laughed, but before I could reply, Jamie stiffened.

“What’s that?” His head turned sharply, and he laid a hand on my arm. Silenced abruptly, I held my breath, listening. The wind stirred the drying leaves of wild grapevines with a papery rustle behind me, and in the distance a murder of crows passed, squabbling in shrill cries.

Then I heard it, too: a small, desolate, and very human sound. Jamie was already on his feet, making his way with care between the fallen rocks. He ducked beneath the lintel made by a leaning slab of granite, and I made to follow him. He stopped abruptly, nearly making me run into him.

“Joseph?” he said incredulously.

I peered around him as best I could. To my equal astonishment, it
was
Mr. Wemyss, sitting hunched on a boulder, a stone jug between his bony knees. He’d been crying; his nose and eyes were red, making him look even more like a white mouse than usual. He was also extremely drunk.

“Oh,” he said, blinking in dismay at us. “Oh.”

“Are ye . . . quite well, Joseph?” Jamie came closer, extending a hand gingerly, as though afraid that Mr. Wemyss might crack into pieces if touched.

This instinct was sound; when he touched the little man, Mr. Wemyss’s face crumpled like paper, and his thin shoulders began to shake uncontrollably.

“I am so sorry, sir,” he kept saying, quite dissolved in tears. “I’m
so
sorry!”

Jamie gave me a “do something, Sassenach” look of appeal, and I knelt swiftly, putting my arms round Mr. Wemyss’s shoulders, patting his slender back.

“Now, now,” I said, giving Jamie a “now
what
?” sort of look over Mr. Wemyss’s matchstick shoulder in return. “I’m sure it will be all right.”

“Oh, no,” he said, hiccuping. “Oh, no, it can’t.” He turned a face streaming with woe toward Jamie. “I can’t bear it, sir, truly I can’t.”

Mr. Wemyss’s bones felt thin and brittle, and he was shivering. He was wearing only a thin shirt and breeches, and the wind was beginning to whine through the rocks. Clouds thickened overhead, and the light went from the little hollow, suddenly, as though a blackout curtain had been dropped.

Jamie unfastened his own cloak and wrapped it rather awkwardly round Mr. Wemyss, then lowered himself carefully onto another boulder.

“Tell me the trouble, Joseph,” he said quite gently. “Is someone dead, then?”

Mr. Wemyss sank his face into his hands, head shaking to and fro like a metronome. He muttered something, which I understood to be “Better if she were.”

“Lizzie?” I asked, exchanging a puzzled glance with Jamie. “Is it Lizzie you mean?” She’d been perfectly all right at breakfast; what on earth—

“First Manfred McGillivray,” Mr. Wemyss said, raising his face from his hands, “and then Higgins. As though a degenerate and a murderer were not bad enough—now this!”

Jamie’s brows shot up and he looked at me. I shrugged slightly. The gravel was jabbing sharply into my knees; I rose stiffly and brushed it away.

“Are you saying that Lizzie is, er . . . in love with someone . . . unsuitable?” I asked carefully.

Mr. Wemyss shuddered.

“Unsuitable,” he said, in a hollow tone. “Jesus Christ. Unsuitable!”

I’d never heard Mr. Wemyss blaspheme before; it was unsettling.

He turned wild eyes on me, looking like a crazed sparrow, huddled in the depths of Jamie’s cloak.

“I gave up everything for her!” he said. “I sold myself—and gladly!—to save her from dishonor. I left home, left Scotland, knowing I should never see it more, that I should leave my bones in the soil of the strangers. And yet I’ve said nay word of reproach to her, my dear wee lassie, for how should it be her fault? And now . . .” He turned a hollow, haunted gaze on Jamie.

“My God, my God. What shall I do?” he whispered. A blast of wind thundered through the rocks and whipped the cloak around him, momentarily obliterating him in a shroud of gray, as though distress had quite engulfed him.

I kept tight hold of my own cloak, to prevent it being torn off me; the wind was strong enough that I nearly lost my footing. Jamie squinted against the spray of dust and fine gravel that blasted us, setting his teeth in discomfort. He wrapped his arms around himself, shivering.

“Is the lass with child, then, Joseph?” he said, obviously wanting to get to the bottom of things and go home.

Mr. Wemyss’s head popped out of the folds of cloak, fair hair tousled into broomstraw. Blinking reddened eyes, he nodded, then excavated the jug and, raising it in trembling hands, took several gulps. I saw the single “X” marked on the jug; with his characteristic modesty, he had taken a jug of the raw new whisky, not the cask-aged higher quality.

Jamie sighed, reached out a hand, and taking the jug from him, took a healthy gulp himself.

“Who?” he said, handing it back. “Is it my nephew?”

Mr. Wemyss stared at him, owl-eyed.

“Your nephew?”

“Ian Murray,” I put in helpfully. “Tall brown-haired lad? Tattoos?”

Jamie gave me a look suggesting that I was perhaps not being quite so helpful as I thought, but Mr. Wemyss went on looking blank.

“Ian Murray?” Then the name appeared to penetrate through the alcoholic fog. “Oh. No. Christ, if it were! I should bless the lad,” he said fervently.

I exchanged another look with Jamie. This looked like being serious.

“Joseph,” he said with just a touch of menace. “It’s cold.” He wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “Who’s debauched your daughter? Give me his name, and I’ll see him wed to her in the morning or dead at her feet, whichever ye like. But let’s do it inside by the fire, aye?”

“Beardsley,” Mr. Wemyss said, in a tone suggesting visions of utter despair.

“Beardsley?” Jamie repeated. He raised one eyebrow at me. It wasn’t what I would have expected—but hearing it came as no great shock, either.

“Which Beardsley was it?” he asked, with relative patience. “Jo? Or Kezzie?”

Mr. Wemyss heaved a sigh that came from the bottoms of his feet.

“She doesn’t know,” he said flatly.

“Christ,” said Jamie involuntarily. He reached for the whisky again, and drank heavily.

“Ahem,” I said, giving him a meaningful look as he lowered the jug. He surrendered it to me without comment, and straightened himself on his boulder, shirt plastered against his chest by the wind, his hair whipped loose behind him.

“Well, then,” he said firmly. “We’ll have the two of them in, and find out the truth of it.”

“No,” said Mr. Wemyss, “we won’t. They don’t know, either.”

I had just taken a mouthful of raw spirit. At this, I choked, spluttering whisky down my chin.

“They
what
?” I croaked, wiping my face with a corner of my cloak. “You mean . . .
both
of them?”

Mr. Wemyss looked at me. Instead of replying, though, he blinked once. Then his eyes rolled up into his head and he fell headlong off the boulder, poleaxed.

I MANAGED TO RESTORE Mr. Wemyss to semiconsciousness, but not to the point of his being able to walk. Jamie was therefore obliged to carry the little man slung across his shoulders like a deer carcass; no mean feat, considering the broken ground that lay between the whisky cache and the new malting floor, and the wind that pelted us with bits of gravel, leaves, and flying pinecones. Clouds had boiled up over the shoulder of the mountain, dark and dirty as laundry suds, and were spreading rapidly across the sky. We were going to get drenched, if we didn’t hurry.

The going became easier once we reached the trail to the house, but Jamie’s temper was not improved by Mr. Wemyss’s suddenly coming to at this point and vomiting down the front of his shirt. After a hasty attempt at swabbing off the mess, we reorganized our strategy, and made our way with Mr. Wemyss precariously balanced between us, each firmly gripping one elbow as he slipped and stumbled, his spindly knees giving way at unexpected moments, like Pinocchio with his strings cut.

Jamie was talking to himself volubly in Gaelic under his breath during this phase of the journey, but desisted abruptly when we came into the dooryard. One of the Beardsley twins was there, catching chickens for Mrs. Bug before the storm; he had two of them, held upside down by the legs like an ungainly bouquet of brown and yellow. He stopped when he saw us, and stared curiously at Mr. Wemyss.