A Breath of Snow and Ashes (7 page)

He considered that for a bit, the chuff of their shoes on the rocky trail a comforting rhythm.

“Well, the ancient Romans did it with concrete; the recipe’s in Pliny.”

“I know. But it takes a particular kind of sand, which we don’t happen to have. Likewise, quicklime, which we likewise don’t have. And—”

“Aye, but what about clay?” he interrupted. “Did ye see that plate at Hilda’s wedding? The big brown and red one, with the beautiful patterns?”

“Yes,” she said. “Why?”

“Ute McGillivray said someone from Salem brought it. I dinna recall the name, but she said he was quite the big noise in potting—or whatever ye call making dishes.”

“I’ll bet you any amount of money she didn’t say that!”

“Well, words to that effect.” He went on, undeterred. “The point being that he made it
here;
it wasn’t something he’d brought from Germany. So there’s clay about that’s suitable for firing, eh?”

“Oh, I
see.
Hmm. Well, now, that’s an idea, isn’t it?”

It was, and an attractive one whose discussion occupied them for most of the rest of the journey.

They had come down off the Ridge and were within a quarter-mile of the McGillivrays’ place when she began to have an uneasy feeling down the back of her neck. It
could
be only imagination; after the sights they had seen in that deserted hollow, the dark air of the wood seemed thick with threat, and she had been imagining ambush at every blind bend, tensing with the anticipation of attack.

Then she heard something crack in the trees to her right—a small dry branch breaking, in a way that neither wind nor animal would break it. Real danger had its own taste, vivid as lemon juice, by contrast with the weak lemonade of imagination.

Her hand tightened on Roger’s arm in warning, and he stopped at once.

“What?” he whispered, hand on his knife. “Where?” He hadn’t heard it.

Damn, why hadn’t she brought her gun, or at least her own dirk? All she had was her Swiss Army knife, carried always in her pocket—and what weapons the landscape offered.

She leaned into Roger, pointing, her hand close to his body to be sure he followed the direction of her gesture. Then she stooped, feeling about in the darkness for a rock, or a stick to use as a club.

“Keep talking,” she whispered.

“The Minister’s Cat is a fraidy cat, is she?” he said, his tone one of fairly convincing teasing.

“The Minister’s Cat is a
ferocious
cat,” she replied, trying to match his bantering tone, meanwhile fumbling one-handed in her pocket. Her other hand closed on a stone, and she pulled it free of the clinging dirt, cold and heavy in her palm. She rose, all her senses focused on the darkness to their right. “She’ll freaking disembowel anything that—”

“Oh, it’s you,” said a voice in the woods behind her.

She shrieked, and Roger jerked in reflex, spun on his heel to face the threat, grabbed her and thrust her behind him, all in the same motion.

The push sent her staggering backward. She caught a heel in a hidden root in the dark, and fell, landing hard on her backside, from which position she had an excellent view of Roger in the moonlight, knife in hand, charging into the trees with an incoherent roar.

Belatedly, she registered what the voice had said, as well as the unmistakable tone of disappointment in it. A very similar voice, loud with alarm, spoke from the wood on the right.

“Jo?” it said. “What? Jo, what?”

There was a lot of thrashing and yelling going on in the woods to the left. Roger’d got his hands on someone.

“Roger!” she shouted. “Roger, stop! It’s the Beardsleys!”

She’d dropped the rock when she fell, and now got to her feet, rubbing the dirt from her hand on the side of her skirt. Her heart was still pounding, her left buttock was bruised, and her urge to laugh was tinged with a strong desire to strangle one or both of the Beardsley twins.

“Kezzie Beardsley, come out of there!” she bellowed, then repeated it, even louder. Kezzie’s hearing had improved after her mother had removed his chronically infected tonsils and adenoids, but he was still rather deaf.

A loud rustling in the brush yielded the slight form of Keziah Beardsley, dark-haired, white-faced, and armed with a large club, which he swung off his shoulder and tried abashedly to hide behind him when he saw her.

Meanwhile, much louder rustling and a certain amount of cursing behind her portended the emergence of Roger, gripping the scrawny neck of Josiah Beardsley, Kezzie’s twin.

“What in the name of God d’ye wee bastards think ye’re up to?” Roger said, shoving Jo across to stand by his brother in a patch of moonlight. “D’ye realize I nearly killed you?”

There was just enough light for Brianna to make out the rather cynical expression that crossed Jo’s face at this, before it was erased and replaced with one of earnest apology.

“We’re that sorry, Mr. Mac. We heard someone coming, and thought it might be brigands.”

“Brigands,” Brianna repeated, feeling the urge to laugh rising, but keeping it firmly in check. “Where on earth did you get that word?”

“Oh.” Jo looked at his feet, hands clasped behind his back. “Miss Lizzie was a-readin’ to us, from that book what Mr. Jamie brought. ’Twas in there. About brigands.”

“I see.” She glanced at Roger, who met her eye, his annoyance obviously waning into amusement, as well.
“The Pirate Gow,”
she explained. “Defoe.”

“Oh, aye.” Roger sheathed his dirk. “And why, exactly, did ye think there might be brigands coming?”

Kezzie, with the quirks of his erratic hearing, picked that up and answered, as earnestly as his brother, though his voice was louder and slightly flat, the result of his early deafness.

“We come across Mr. Lindsay, sir, on his way home, and he did tell us what passed, up by Dutchman’s Creek. It’s true, so, what he said? They was all burned to cinders?”

“They were all dead.” Roger’s voice had lost any tinge of amusement. “What’s that to do with you lot lurking in the woods with clubs?”

“Well, you see, sir, McGillivrays’ is a fine, big place, what with the cooper’s shop and the new house and all, and being on a road, like—well, if
I
was a brigand, sir, ’tis just the sort of place I might choose,” replied Jo.

“And Miss Lizzie’s there, with her Pap. And your son, Mr. Mac,” Kezzie added pointedly. “Shouldn’t want no harm to come to ’em.”

“I see.” Roger smiled a little crookedly. “Well, thanks to ye, then, for the kind thought. I doubt the brigands will be anywhere near, though; Dutchman’s Creek is a long way away.”

“Aye, sir,” Jo agreed. “But brigands might be anywhere, mightn’t they?”

This was undeniable, and sufficiently true as to give Brianna a renewed feeling of chill in the pit of the stomach.

“They might be, but they aren’t,” Roger assured them. “Come along to the house with us, aye? We’re just going to collect wee Jem. I’m sure
Frau
Ute would give ye a bed by the fire.”

The Beardsleys exchanged inscrutable looks. They were nearly identical—small and lithe, with thick dark hair, distinguished only by Kezzie’s deafness and the round scar on Jo’s thumb—and to see the two fine-boned faces wearing precisely the same expression was a little unnerving.

Whatever information had been exchanged by that look, it had evidently included as much consultation as was required, for Kezzie nodded slightly, deferring to his brother.

“Ah, no, sir,” Josiah said politely. “We’ll bide, I think.” And with no further talk, the two of them turned and crunched off into the dark, scuffling leaves and rocks as they went.

“Jo! Wait!” Brianna called after them, her hand having found something else in the bottom of her pocket.

“Aye, ma’am?” Josiah was back, appearing by her elbow with unsettling abruptness. His twin was no stalker, but Jo was.

“Oh! I mean, oh, there you are.” She took a deep breath to slow her heart, and handed him the carved whistle she’d made for Germain. “Here. If you’re going to stand guard, this might be helpful. To call for help, if someone
should
come.”

Jo Beardsley had plainly never seen a whistle before, but didn’t care to admit it. He turned the little object over in his hand, trying not to stare at it.

Roger reached out, took it from him, and blew a healthy blast that shattered the night. Several birds, startled from their rest, shot out of the nearby trees, shrieking, followed closely by Kezzie Beardsley, eyes huge with amazement.

“Blow in that end,” Roger said, tapping the appropriate end of the whistle before handing it back. “Squeeze your lips a bit.”

“Much obliged, sir,” Jo murmured. His normal stoic facade had shattered with the silence, and he took the whistle with the wide-eyed look of a boy on Christmas morning, turning at once to show the prize to his twin. It struck her quite suddenly that neither boy likely ever
had
had a Christmas morning—or any other sort of gift.

“I’ll make another one for you,” she told Kezzie. “Then the two of you can signal back and forth. If you see any brigands,” she added, smiling.

“Oh, yes, ma’am. We’ll do that, we surely will!” he assured her, scarcely glancing at her in his eagerness to examine the whistle his brother had put in his hands.

“Blow it three times, if ye want help,” Roger called after them, taking her arm.

“Aye, sir!” came back from the darkness, followed by a belated faint “Thank you, ma’am!”—this in turn followed at once by a fusillade of puffs, gasps, and breathless rattles, punctuated by briefly successful shrill toots.

“Lizzie’s been teaching them manners, I see,” Roger said. “As well as their letters. D’ye think they’ll ever be truly civilized, though?”

“No,” she said, with a trace of regret.

“Really?” She couldn’t see his face in the dark, but heard the surprise in his voice. “I was only joking. Ye really think not?”

“I do—and no wonder, after the way they grew up. Did you see the way they were with that whistle? No one’s ever given them a present, or a toy.”

“I suppose not. D’ye think that’s what makes boys civilized? If so, I imagine wee Jem will be a philosopher or an artist or something. Mrs. Bug spoils him rotten.”

“Oh, as if you don’t,” she said tolerantly. “And Da, and Lizzie, and Mama, and everyone else in sight.”

“Oh, well,” Roger said, unembarrassed at the accusation. “Wait ’til he has a bit of competition. Germain’s in no danger of spoiling, is he?” Germain, Fergus and Marsali’s eldest son, was harried by two small sisters, known to one and all as the hell-kittens, who followed their brother constantly, teasing and pestering.

She laughed, but felt a slight sense of uneasiness. The thought of another baby always made her feel as though she were perched at the top of a roller coaster, short of breath and stomach clenched, poised somewhere between excitement and terror. Particularly now, with the memory of their lovemaking still softly heavy, shifting like mercury in her belly.

Roger seemed to sense her ambivalence, for he didn’t pursue the subject, but reached for her hand and held it, his own large and warm. The air was cold, the last vestiges of a winter chill lingering in the hollows.

“What about Fergus, then?” he asked, taking up an earlier thread of the conversation. “From what I hear, he hadn’t much of a childhood, either, but he seems fairly civilized.”

“My aunt Jenny had the raising of him from the time he was ten,” she objected. “You haven’t met my aunt Jenny, but believe me, she could have civilized Adolf Hitler, if she put her mind to it. Besides, Fergus grew up in Paris, not the backwoods—even if it
was
in a brothel. And it sounds like it was a pretty high-class brothel, too, from what Marsali tells me.”

“Oh, aye? What does she tell you?”

“Oh, just stories that he’s told her, now and then. About the clients, and the wh—the girls.”

“Can ye not say ‘whore,’ then?” he asked, amused. She felt the blood rise in her cheeks, and was pleased that it was dark; he teased her more when she blushed.

“I can’t help it that I went to a Catholic school,” she said, defensive. “Early conditioning.” It was true; she couldn’t say certain words, save when in the grip of fury or when mentally prepared. “Why can you, though? You’d think a preacher’s lad would have the same problem.”

He laughed, a little wryly.

“Not precisely the same problem. It was more a matter of feeling obliged to curse and carry on in front of my friends, to prove I could.”

“What kind of carrying on?” she asked, scenting a story. He didn’t often talk about his early life in Inverness, adopted by his great-uncle, a Presbyterian minister, but she loved hearing the small tidbits he sometimes let fall.

“Och. Smoking, drinking beer, and writing filthy words on the walls in the boys’ toilet,” he said, the smile evident in his voice. “Tipping over dustbins. Letting air out of automobile tires. Stealing sweeties from the Post Office. Quite the wee criminal I was, for a time.”

“The terror of Inverness, huh? Did you have a gang?” she teased.

“I did,” he said, and laughed. “Gerry MacMillan, Bobby Cawdor, and Dougie Buchanan. I was odd man out, not only for being the preacher’s lad, but for having an English father and an English name. So I was always out to show them I was a hard man. Meaning I was usually the one in most trouble.”

“I had no idea you were a juvenile delinquent,” she said, charmed at the thought.

“Well, not for long,” he assured her wryly. “Come the summer I was fifteen, the Reverend signed me up on a fishing boat, and sent me to sea with the herring fleet. Couldna just say whether he did it to improve my character, keep me out of jail, or only because he couldn’t stand me round the house any longer, but it did work. Ye want to meet hard men sometime, go to sea with a bunch of Gaelic fishermen.”

“I’ll remember that,” she said, trying not to giggle and producing a series of small, wet snorts instead. “Did your friends end up in jail, then, or did they go straight, without you to mislead them?”

“Dougie joined the army,” he said, a tinge of wistfulness in his voice. “Gerry took over his dad’s shop—his dad was a tobacconist. Bobby . . . aye, well, Bobby’s dead. Drowned, that same summer, out lobstering with his cousin off Oban.”