A Breath of Snow and Ashes (55 page)

“A ceann-cinnidh,”
Arch had said. O, chieftain. One word, and we stood in Scotland. It was easy to see the difference in attitude between Jamie’s new tenants and his Ardsmuir men—the difference of a loyalty of agreement and one of acknowledgment. This was different still: an older allegiance, which had ruled the Highlands for a thousand years. The oath of blood and iron.

I saw Jamie weigh the present and the past and realize where Arch Bug stood between them. I saw it in his face, exasperation changing to realization—and saw his shoulders drop a little, in acceptance.

“By your word, then, it is my right,” he said softly, also in Gaelic. He drew himself up, picked up the ax, and held it out, handle first. “And by that right, I give you back your woman’s life—and your own.”

Mrs. Bug let out a small sobbing breath. Arch didn’t look round at her, but reached out and took the ax, with a grave inclination of the head. He turned then, and walked out without a further word—though I saw the fingers of his maimed hand brush his wife’s sleeve, very softly, in passing.

Mrs. Bug straightened herself, hastily tucking up the straggling bits of hair with trembling fingers. Jamie didn’t look at her, but sat down again, and took up his quill and a sheet of paper, though I thought he had no intention of writing anything. Not wanting to embarrass her, I affected great interest in the bookshelf, picking up Jamie’s little cherrywood snake as though to examine it more closely.

Cap on straight now, she came into the room, and bobbed a curtsy in front of him.

“Will I fetch ye a bit to eat, sir? There’s bannocks made fresh.” She spoke with great dignity, head upright. He raised his own head from his paper, and smiled at her.

“I should like that,” he said.
“Gun robh math agaibh, a nighean.”

She nodded smartly and turned on her heel. At the door, though, she paused, looking back. Jamie raised his brows.

“I was there, ken,” she said, fixing him with a direct look. “When the Sassenachs killed your grandsire, there on Tower Hill. There was a lot of blood.” She pursed her lips, examining him through narrowed, reddened eyes, then relaxed.

“Ye’re a credit to him,” she said, and was gone in a whisk of petticoats and apron strings.

Jamie looked at me in surprise, and I shrugged.

“It wasn’t necessarily a compliment, you know,” I said, and his shoulders began to shake in silent laughter.

“I know,” he said at last, and swiped a knuckle beneath his nose. “D’ye ken, Sassenach—sometimes I mourn the auld bastard?” He shook his head. “Sometime I must ask Mrs. Bug if it’s true what he said, at the last. What they say he said, I mean.”

“What’s that?”

“He gave the headsman his fee, and told him to do a good job—‘For I shall be very angry indeed if ye don’t.’”

“Well, it certainly sounds like something he
would
say,” I said, smiling a little. “What do you suppose the Bugs were doing in London?”

He shook his head again, and turned his face to me, lifting his chin so the sun from the window glimmered like water along his jaw and cheekbone.

“God knows. D’ye think she’s right, Sassenach? About me being like him?”

“Not to look at,” I said, smiling a little. The late Simon, Lord Lovat, had been short and squat, though powerfully built despite his age. He had also borne a strong resemblance to a malevolent—but very clever—toad.

“No,” Jamie agreed. “Thank God. But otherwise?” The light of humor was still in his eyes, but he was serious; he truly wanted to know.

I studied him thoughtfully. There was no trace of the Old Fox in his bold, clean-cut features—those had come mostly from his mother’s MacKenzie side—nor yet in the broad-shouldered height of him, but somewhere behind those slanted dark blue eyes, I now and then sensed a faint echo of Lord Lovat’s deep-set gaze, glittering with interest and sardonic humor.

“You have something of him,” I admitted. “More than a little, sometimes. You haven’t the overweening ambition, but . . .” I squinted a bit, considering. “I was going to say that you aren’t as ruthless as him,” I went on slowly, “but you are, really.”

“Am I, then?” He didn’t seem either surprised or put out to hear this.

“You can be,” I said, and felt somewhere in the marrow of my bones the popping sound of Arvin Hodgepile’s neck breaking. It was a warm afternoon, but gooseflesh rippled suddenly up my arms, and then was gone.

“Have I the devious nature, d’ye think?” he asked seriously.

“I don’t know, quite,” I said with some dubiousness. “You’re not a proper twister like he was—but that may be only because you’ve a sense of honor that he lacked. You don’t use people like he did.”

He smiled at that, but with less real humor than he’d shown before.

“Oh, but I do, Sassenach,” he said. “It’s only I try not to let it show.”

He sat for a moment, his gaze fixed on the little cherrywood snake that I held, but I didn’t think he was looking at it. At last, he shook his head and looked up at me, the corner of his mouth tucking wryly in.

“If there is a heaven, and my grandsire’s in it—and I take leave to doubt that last—he’s laughing his wicked auld head off now. Or he would be, if it weren’t tucked underneath his arm.”

34

THE EXHIBITS IN THE CASE

A
ND SO IT WAS that several days later, we rode into Brownsville. Jamie, in full Highland regalia, with Hector Cameron’s gold-knurled dirk at his waist and a hawk’s feather in his bonnet. On Gideon, who had his ears laid back and blood in his eye, as usual.

By his side, Bird-who-sings-in-the-morning, peace chief of the Snowbird Cherokee. Bird, Ian told me, was from the Long Hair clan, and looked it. His hair was not only long and glossily anointed with bear fat, but most resplendently dressed, with a high tail twisted up from the crown of his head and dropping down his back, ending in a dozen tiny braids decorated—like the rest of his costume—with wampum shell beads, glass beads, small brass bells, parakeet feathers, and a Chinese yen; God knew where he’d got that. Slung by his saddle, his newest and most prized possession—Jamie’s rifle.

By Jamie’s other side, me—Exhibit A. On my mule Clarence, dressed and cloaked in indigo wool—which played up the paleness of my skin and beautifully highlighted the yellow and green of the healing bruises on my face—with my necklace of freshwater pearls about my neck for moral support.

Ian rode behind us with the two braves Bird had brought as retinue, looking more like an Indian than a Scot, with the semicircles of tattooed dots that swooped across his tanned cheekbones, and his own long brown hair greased back from his face and tied in a knot, a single turkey quill thrust through it. At least he hadn’t plucked his scalp in the Mohawk fashion; he looked sufficiently menacing without that.

And on a travois behind Ian’s horse rode Exhibit B—the corpse of Lionel Brown. We’d put him in the springhouse to keep cool with the butter and eggs, and Bree and Malva had done their best, packing the body with moss to absorb liquids, adding as many strongly aromatic herbs as they could find, then wrapping the unsavory package in a deer’s hide, bound with rawhide strips in the Indian fashion. Despite this attention, none of the horses was enthusiastic about being anywhere near it, but Ian’s mount was grimly acquiescent, merely snorting loudly every few minutes and shaking his head so his harness rattled, a lugubrious counterpoint to the soft thump of hooves.

We didn’t talk much.

Visitors to any mountain settlement were cause for public notice and comment. Our little entourage brought folk popping out of their houses like winkles on pins, mouths agape. By the time we reached Richard Brown’s house, which doubled as the local tavern, we had a small band of followers, mostly men and boys.

The sound of our arrival brought a woman—Mrs. Brown, I recognized her—out onto the crudely built stoop. Her hand flew to her mouth, and she rushed back into the house.

We waited in silence. It was a cool, bright autumn day, and the breeze stirred the hair on my neck; I’d worn it pulled back, at Jamie’s request, and wore no cap. My face was exposed, the truth written on it.

Did they know?
Feeling strangely remote, as though I watched from somewhere outside my own body, I looked from face to face among the crowd.

They couldn’t know.
Jamie had assured me of it; I knew it, myself. Unless Donner had escaped, and come to tell them all that had happened during that final night. But he hadn’t. If he had, Richard Brown would have come to us.

All they knew was what showed on my face. And that was too much.

Clarence felt the hysteria that quivered under my skin like a pool of mercury; he stamped, once, and shook his head as though wanting to dislodge flies in his ears.

The door opened, and Richard Brown came out. There were several men behind him, all armed.

Brown was pale, unkempt, with a sprouting beard and greasy hair. His eyes were red and bleared, and a miasma of beer seemed to surround him. He’d been drinking heavily, and was plainly trying to pull himself together enough to deal with whatever threat we represented.

“Fraser,” he said, and stopped, blinking.

“Mr. Brown.” Jamie nudged Gideon closer, so he was at eye level with the men on the porch, no more than six feet from Richard Brown.

“Ten days past,” Jamie said levelly, “a band of men came upon my land. They stole my property, assaulted my daughter who is with child, burnt my malting shed, destroyed my grain, and abducted and abused my wife.”

Half the men had been staring at me already; now all of them were. I heard the small, metallic click of a pistol being cocked. I kept my face immobile, my hands steady on the reins, my eyes fixed on Richard Brown’s face.

Brown’s mouth began to work, but before he could speak, Jamie raised a hand, commanding silence.

“I followed them, with my men, and killed them,” he said, in the same level tone. “I found your brother with them. I took him captive, but did not slay him.”

There was a general intake of breath, and uneasy murmurs from the crowd behind us. Richard Brown’s eyes darted to the bundle on the travois, and his face went white under the scabby beard.

“You—” he croaked. “Nelly?”

This was my cue. I took a deep breath and nudged Clarence forward.

“Your brother suffered an accident before my husband found us,” I said. My voice was hoarse, but clear enough. I forced more air into it, to be heard by everyone. “He was badly injured in a fall. We tended his injuries. But he died.”

Jamie let a moment of stunned silence pass, before continuing.

“We have brought him to you, so that you may bury him.” He made a small gesture, and Ian, who had dismounted, cut the ropes that held the travois. He and the two Cherokee pulled it to the porch and left it lying in the rutted road, returning silently to their horses.

Jamie inclined his head sharply, and swung Gideon’s head around. Bird followed him, pleasantly impassive as the Buddha. I didn’t know whether he understood enough English to have followed Jamie’s speech, but it didn’t matter. He understood his role, and had carried it out perfectly.

The Browns might have had a profitable sideline in murder, theft, and slavery, but their chief income lay in trade with the Indians. By his presence at Jamie’s side, Bird gave clear warning that the Cherokee regarded their relationship with the King of England and his agent as more important than trade with the Browns. Harm Jamie or his property again, and that profitable connection would be broken.

I didn’t know everything Ian had said to Bird, when asking him to come—but I thought it quite likely that there was also an unspoken agreement that no formal inquiry would be made on behalf of the Crown into the fate of any captives who might have passed into Indian hands.

This was, after all, a matter of business.

I kicked Clarence in the ribs and wheeled into place behind Bird, keeping my eyes firmly fixed on the Chinese yen that glinted in the middle of his back, dangling from his hair on a scarlet thread. I had an almost uncontrollable urge to look back, and clenched my hands on the reins, digging my fingernails into my palms.

Was Donner dead, after all?
He wasn’t among the men with Richard Brown; I’d looked.

I didn’t know whether I
wanted
him to be dead. The desire to find out more about him was strong—but the desire to be done with the matter, to leave that night on the mountainside behind once and for all, all witnesses safely consigned to the silence of the grave—that was stronger.

I heard Ian and the two Cherokee come into line behind us, and within moments, we were out of sight of Brownsville, though the scent of beer and chimney smoke lingered in my nostrils. I pushed Clarence up beside Jamie; Bird had fallen back to ride with his men and Ian; they were laughing at something.

“Will this be the end of it?” I asked. My voice felt thin in the cold air, and I wasn’t sure he’d heard me. But he did. He shook his head slightly.

“There is never an end to such things,” he said quietly. “But we are alive. And that is good.”

PART FIVE

Great Unexpectations