A Breath of Snow and Ashes (136 page)

“You know what I want!” Brown called. He took off his hat, wiping sweat and dirt from his face. “I want that goddamn murderous witch of yours.”

The answer to that was another carefully aimed pistol ball. Brown jumped again, but not so high.

“Look you,” he tried again, with a conciliating note in his voice. “We ain’t going to hurt her. We mean to take her to Hillsboro for trial. A fair trial. That’s all.”

Jamie handed me the second pistol to reload, took another, and fired.

You had to give Brown credit for persistence, I thought. Of course, it had probably dawned on him that Jamie either couldn’t or wouldn’t actually hit him, and he doggedly stood his ground through two more shots, yelling that they meant to take me to Hillsboro, and surely to God if I were innocent, Jamie should
want
a trial, shouldn’t he?

It was hot upstairs, and sweat was trickling down between my breasts. I blotted the fabric of my shift against my chest.

With no answer save the whine of pistol balls, Brown threw up his hands in exaggerated pantomime of a reasonable man tried beyond endurance, and stamped back to his men beneath the chestnut trees. Nothing had changed, but seeing the narrow back of him made me breathe a little easier.

Jamie was still crouched in the window, pistol at the ready, but seeing Brown go back, he relaxed and sat back on his heels, sighing.

“Is there water, Sassenach?”

“Yes.” The bedroom ewer was full; I poured him a cup and he drank it thirstily. We had food, water, and a fair amount of shot and powder. I did not, however, foresee a long siege ahead.

“What do you suppose they’ll do?” I didn’t go near the window, but by standing to one side, I could see them clearly, gathered in conference under the trees. The air was still and heavy, and the leaves above them hung like damp rags.

Jamie came to stand behind me, dabbing at his lip with the tail of his shirt.

“Fire the house as soon as it’s dark, I suppose,” he said matter-of-factly. “I would. Though I suppose they might try draggin’ Gideon out and threatening to put a ball through his head, and I didna give ye up.” He seemed to think this last was a joke, but I failed to see the humor in it.

He saw my face and put a hand behind my back, drawing me close for a moment. The air was hot and sticky, and we were both wringing wet, but the nearness of him was a comfort, nonetheless.

“So,” I said, taking a deep breath. “It all depends on whether Mrs. Bug got away—and who she’s told.”

“She’ll ha’ gone for Arch, first thing.” Jamie patted me gently, and sat down on the bed. “If he’s to home, he’ll run for Kenny Lindsay; he’s nearest. After that . . .” He shrugged, and closed his eyes, and I saw that his face was pale under the sunburn and the smears of dirt and blood.

“Jamie—are you hurt?”

He opened his eyes and gave me a small, one-sided smile, trying not to stretch his torn lip.

“No, I’ve broken my bloody finger again, is all.” He raised a shoulder in deprecation, but let me lift his right hand to look.

It was a clean break; that was all that could be said for it. The fourth finger was stiff, the joints fused from being so badly broken long ago, in Wentworth Prison. He couldn’t bend it, and it therefore stuck out awkwardly; this wasn’t the first time he’d snapped it.

He swallowed as I felt gently for the break, and closed his eyes again, sweating.

“There’s laudanum in the surgery,” I said. “Or whisky.” I knew he would refuse, though, and he did.

“I’ll want a clear head,” he said, “whatever happens.” He opened his eyes and gave me the ghost of a smile. The room was sweltering and airless, despite the open shutter. The sun was more than halfway down the sky, and the first shadows were gathering in the corners of the room.

I went down to the surgery to fetch a splint and bandage; it wouldn’t help a lot, but it was something to do.

The surgery was dark, with the shutters closed, but with the windows broken, air came through them, making the room seem oddly exposed and vulnerable. I walked in like a mouse, quiet, stopping abruptly, listening for danger, whiskers twitching. Everything was quiet, though.

“
Too
quiet,” I said aloud, and laughed. Moving with purpose and ignoring the noise, I set my feet down firmly and opened cupboard doors with abandon, banging instruments and rattling bottles as I looked out what I needed.

I stopped into the kitchen before returning upstairs. Partly to reassure myself that the back door
was
firmly bolted, and partly to see what bits of food Mrs. Bug might have left out. He hadn’t said so, but I knew the pain of the broken finger was making Jamie mildly nauseated—and in him, food generally quelled that sort of disturbance, and made him feel more settled.

The cauldron was still over the coals, but the fire, untended, had burned down so far that the soup had luckily not boiled away. I poked up the embers and put on three sticks of fat pine, as much by way of thumbing my nose at the besiegers outside as from the long-ingrained habit of never letting a fire die. Let them see the spray of sparks from the chimney, I thought, and imagine us sitting peacefully down to eat by our hearth. Or better yet, imagine us sitting by the blazing fire, melting lead and molding bullets.

In this defiant frame of mind, I went back upstairs, equipped with medical supplies, an alfresco lunch, and a large bottle of black ale. I couldn’t help but notice, though, the echo of my footsteps on the stair, and the silence that settled quickly back into place behind me, like water when one steps out of it.

I heard a shot, just as I approached the head of the stair, and took the last steps so fast that I tripped and would have fallen headlong, save for reeling into the wall.

Jamie appeared from Mr. Wemyss’s room, fowling piece in hand, looking startled.

“Are ye all right, Sassenach?”

“Yes,” I said crossly, wiping spilled soup off my hand with my apron. “What in the name of God are you shooting at?”

“Nothing. I only wanted to make the point that the back of the house is nay safer than the front, if they thought of creeping up that way. Just to ensure that they
do
wait for dark to fall.”

I bound up his finger, which seemed to help a little. The food, as I’d hoped, helped considerably more. He ate like a wolf, and rather to my surprise, so did I.

“The condemned ate a hearty meal,” I observed, picking up crumbs of bread and cheese. “I’d always thought being in danger of death would make one too nervous to eat, but apparently not.”

He shook his head, took a swallow of ale, and passed me the bottle.

“A friend once told me, ‘The body has nay conscience.’ I dinna ken that that’s entirely so—but it is true that the body doesna generally admit the possibility of nonexistence. And if ye exist—well, ye need food, that’s all.” He grinned one-sided at me, and tearing the last of the sweet rolls in half, gave one to me.

I took it, but didn’t eat it immediately. There was no sound outside, save the buzzing of cicadas, though the air had a sultry thickness to it that often presaged rain. It was early in the summer for storms, but one could only hope.

“You’ve thought of it, too, haven’t you?” I said quietly.

He made no pretense of misunderstanding me.

“Well, it
is
the twenty-first o’ the month,” he said.

“It’s
June,
for heaven’s sake! And the wrong year, as well. That newspaper clipping said January, of 1776!” I was absurdly indignant, as though I had somehow been cheated.

He found that funny.

“I was a printer myself, Sassenach,” he said, laughing through a mouthful of sweet roll. “Ye dinna want to believe everything ye read in the newspapers, aye?”

When I looked out again, only a few men were visible under the chestnut trees. One of them saw my movement; he waved his arm slowly to and fro above his head—then drew the edge of his hand flat across his throat.

The sun was just above the treetops; two hours, perhaps, to nightfall. Two hours surely was enough time for Mrs. Bug to have summoned help, though—always assuming she had found anyone who would come. Arch might have gone to Cross Creek—he went once a month; Kenny might be hunting. As for the newer tenants . . . without Roger to keep them in order, their suspicion and dislike of me had become blatant. I had the feeling that they might come if summoned—but only to cheer as I was dragged away.

If anyone
did
come—what then? I didn’t want to be dragged away, much less shot or burnt alive in the ashes of my house—but I didn’t want anyone else injured or killed in an effort to prevent it, either.

“Come away from the window, Sassenach,” Jamie said. He held out a hand to me, and I went, sitting on the bed beside him. I felt all at once exhausted, the adrenaline of emergency having burned away, leaving my muscles feeling like heat-softened rubber.

“Lie down,
a Sorcha,
” he said softly. “Lay your head in my lap.”

Hot as it was, I did so, finding it a comfort to stretch out, even more to hear his heart, thumping slow and solid above my ear, and feel his hand, light on my head.

All the weapons were laid out, ranged on the floor beside the window, all loaded, primed, and ready for use. He’d taken his sword down from the armoire; it stood by the door, a last resort.

“There’s nothing we can do now, is there?” I said after a little. “Nothing but wait.”

His fingers moved idly through the damp curls of my hair; it fell to just above my shoulders now, long enough—barely—to tie back or pin up.

“Well, we might say an Act of Contrition,” he said. “We did that, always, the night before a battle. Just in case,” he added, smiling down at me.

“All right,” I said after a pause. “Just in case.”

I reached up and his good hand closed round mine.

“Mon Dieu, je regrette . . .”
he began, and I remembered that he said this prayer in French, harking back to those days as a mercenary in France; how often had he said it then, a necessary precaution, cleansing the soul at night in expectation of the possibility of death in the morning?

I said it, too, in English, and we fell silent. The cicadas had stopped. Far, far away, I thought I heard a sound that might be thunder.

“Do you know,” I said after a long while, “I’m sorry for a great many things and people. Rupert, Murtagh, Dougal . . . Frank. Malva,” I added softly, with a catch in my throat. “But speaking only for myself . . .” I cleared my throat.

“I don’t regret anything,” I said, watching the shadows creep in from the corners of the room. “Not one bloody thing.”

“Nor do I,
mo nighean donn,
” he said, and his fingers stilled, warm against my skin. “Nor do I.”

I WOKE FROM A DOZE with the smell of smoke in my nostrils. Being in a state of grace is all very well, but I imagine even Joan of Arc had qualms when they lit the first brand. I sat bolt upright, heart pounding, to see Jamie at the window.

It wasn’t quite dark yet; streaks of orange and gold and rose lit the sky to the west, and touched his face with a fiery light. He looked long-nosed and fierce, the lines of strain cut deep.

“Folk are coming,” he said. His voice was matter-of-fact, but his good hand was clenched hard round the edge of the shutter, as though he would have liked to slam and bolt it.

I came to stand by him, combing my fingers hastily through my hair. I could still make out figures under the chestnut trees, though they now were no more than silhouettes. They’d built a bonfire there, at the far edge of the dooryard; that’s what I’d smelled. There were more people coming into the dooryard, though; I was sure I made out the squat figure of Mrs. Bug among them. The sound of voices floated up, but they weren’t talking loudly enough to make out words.

“Will ye plait my hair, Sassenach? I canna manage, wi’ this.” He gave his broken finger a cursory glance.

I lit a candle, and he moved a stool to the window, so he could keep watch while I combed his hair and braided it into a tight, thick queue, which I clubbed at the base of his neck and tied with a neat black ribbon.

I knew his reasons were twofold: not only to appear well-groomed and gentlemanly, but to be ready to fight if he had to. I was less worried about someone seizing me by the hair as I attempted to cleave them in half with a sword, but supposed that if this were my last appearance as the lady of the Ridge, I should not appear unkempt.

I heard him mutter something under his breath, as I brushed my own hair by candlelight, and turned on my stool to look at him.

“Hiram’s come,” he informed me. “I hear his voice. That’s good.”

“If you say so,” I said dubiously, recollecting Hiram Crombie’s denunciations in church a week before—thinly veiled remarks clearly aimed at us. Roger hadn’t mentioned them; Amy McCallum had told me.

Jamie turned his head to look at me, and smiled, an expression of extraordinary sweetness coming over his face.

“Ye’re verra lovely, Sassenach,” he said as though surprised. “But, aye, it’s good. Whatever he thinks, he wouldna countenance Brown hanging us in the dooryard, nor yet setting the house afire to drive us out.”