A Breath of Snow and Ashes (8 page)

She leaned closer to him and squeezed his hand, her shoulder brushing his in sympathy.

“I’m sorry,” she said, then paused. “Only . . . he isn’t dead, is he? Not yet. Not now.”

Roger shook his head, and made a small sound of mingled humor and dismay.

“Is that a comfort?” she asked. “Or is it horrible to think about?”

She wanted to keep him talking; he hadn’t talked so much in one go since the hanging that had taken his singing voice. Being forced to speak in public made him self-conscious, and his throat tightened. His voice was still rasping, but relaxed as he was now, he wasn’t choking or coughing.

“Both,” he said, and made the sound again. “I’ll never see him again, either way.” He shrugged slightly, pushing the thought away. “D’ye think of your old friends much?”

“No, not much,” she said softly. The trail narrowed here, and she linked her arm in his, drawing close as they approached the last turn, which would bring them in sight of the McGillivrays’. “There’s too much here.” But she didn’t want to talk about what
wasn’t
here.

“Do you think Jo and Kezzie are just playing?” she asked. “Or are they up to something?”

“What should they be up to?” he asked, accepting her change of subject without comment. “I canna think they’re lying in wait to commit highway robbery—not at this time of night.”

“Oh, I believe them about standing guard,” she said. “They’d do anything to protect Lizzie. Only—” She paused. They had come out of the forest onto the wagon road; the far verge fell away in a steep bank, looking at night like a bottomless pool of black velvet—by daylight, it would be a tangled mass of fallen snags, clumps of rhododendron, redbud, and dogwood, overgrown with the snarls of ancient grapevines and creepers. The road made a switchback further on and curved back on itself, arriving gently at the McGillivrays’ place, a hundred feet below.

“The lights are still on,” she said with some surprise. The small group of buildings—the Old Place, the New Place, Ronnie Sinclair’s cooper’s shop, Dai Jones’s blacksmith’s forge and cabin—were mostly dark, but the lower windows of the McGillivrays’ New Place were striped with light, leaking through the cracks of the shutters, and a bonfire in front of the house made a brilliant blot of light against the dark.

“Kenny Lindsay,” Roger said matter-of-factly. “The Beardsleys said they’d met him. He’ll have stopped to share the news.”

“Mm. We’d better be careful, then; if they’re looking out for brigands, too, they might shoot at anything that moves.”

“Not tonight; it’s a party, remember? What were ye saying, though, about the Beardsley boys protecting Lizzie?”

“Oh.” Her toe stubbed against some hidden obstacle, and she clutched his arm to keep from falling. “Oof! Only that I wasn’t sure who they thought they were protecting her from.”

Roger tightened his grip on her arm in reflex.

“Whatever d’ye mean by that?”

“Just that if I were Manfred McGillivray, I’d take good care to be nice to Lizzie. Mama says the Beardsleys follow her around like dogs, but they don’t. They follow her like tame wolves.”

“I thought Ian said it wasn’t possible to tame wolves.”

“It isn’t,” she said tersely. “Come on, let’s hurry, before they smoor the fire.”

THE BIG LOG HOUSE was literally overflowing with people. Light spilled from the open door and glowed in the row of tiny arrow-slit windows that marched across the front of the house, and dark forms wove in and out of the bonfire’s light. The sounds of a fiddle came to them, thin and sweet through the dark, borne on the wind with the scent of roasting meat.

“I suppose Senga’s truly made her choice, then,” Roger said, taking her arm for the final steep descent to the crossroad. “Who d’ye bet it is? Ronnie Sinclair or the German lad?”

“Oh, a bet? What are the stakes? Woops!” She stumbled, tripping on a half-buried rock in the path, but Roger tightened his grip, keeping her upright.

“Loser sets the pantry to rights,” he suggested.

“Deal,” she said promptly. “I think she chose Heinrich.”

“Aye? Well, ye may be right,” he said, sounding amused. “But I have to tell you, it was five to three in favor of Ronnie, last I heard.
Frau
Ute’s a force to be reckoned with.”

“She is,” Brianna admitted. “And if it was Hilda or Inga, I’d say it was no contest. But Senga’s got her mother’s personality; nobody’s telling
her
what to do—not even
Frau
Ute.

“Where did they get ‘Senga,’ anyway?” she added. “There are lots of Ingas and Hildas over toward Salem, but I’ve never heard of another Senga.”

“Ah, well, ye wouldn’t—not in Salem. It’s not a German name, ken—it’s Scots.”

“Scots?”
she said in astonishment.

“Oh, aye,” he said, the grin evident in his voice. “It’s Agnes, spelt backward. A girl named that is bound to be contrary, don’t ye think?”

“You’re kidding! Agnes, spelled backward?”

“I wouldna say it’s common, exactly, but I’ve certainly met one or two Sengas in Scotland.”

She laughed.

“Do the Scots do that with any other names?”

“Back-spelling?” He considered. “Well, I did go to school with a lass named Adnil, and there was a grocer’s lad who got in the messages for old ladies in the neighborhood—his name’s pronounced ‘Kirry,’ but it’s spelt ‘C-i-r-e.’”

She looked sharply at him, in case he was teasing, but he wasn’t. She shook her head.

“I think Mama’s right about Scots. So yours spelled backward would be—”

“Regor,” he confirmed. “Sounds like something from a Godzilla film, doesn’t it? A giant eel, maybe, or a beetle with death-ray eyes.” He sounded pleased at the notion.

“You thought about it, didn’t you?” she said, laughing. “Which would you rather be?”

“Well, when I was a kid, I thought the beetle with the death-ray eyes would be best,” he admitted. “Then I went to sea and started hauling up the occasional Moray eel in my net. Those are not the kind of thing ye’d want to meet in a dark alley, believe me.”

“More agile than Godzilla, at least,” she said, shuddering slightly at the recollection of the one Moray eel she’d met personally. A four-foot length of spring steel and rubber, fast as lightning and equipped with a mouthful of razors, it had come up from the hold of a fishing boat she’d watched being unloaded in a little port town called MacDuff.

She and Roger had been leaning on a low rock wall, idly watching the gulls hover in the wind, when a shout of alarm from the fishing boat just below had made them look down in time to see fishermen scrambling back from something on deck.

A dark sine wave had flashed through the silver wash of fish on deck, shot under the rail, and landed on the wet stones of the quay, where it had caused similar panic among the fishermen hosing down their gear, writhing and lashing about like a crazed high-tension cable until one rubber-booted man, gathering his self-possession, had rushed up and kicked it back into the water.

“Well, they’re no really bad sorts, eels,” Roger said judiciously, evidently recalling the same memory. “Ye canna blame them, after all; being dragged up from the bottom of the sea without warning—anyone would thrash about a bit.”

“So they would,” she said, thinking of themselves. She took his hand, threading her fingers between his, and found his firm, cold grip a comfort.

They were close enough now to catch snatches of laughter and talk, billowing up into the cold night with the smoke of the fire. There were children running loose; she saw two small forms dart through the legs of the crowd around the fire, black and thin-limbed as Halloween goblins.

That wasn’t Jem, surely? No, he was smaller, and surely Lizzie wouldn’t—

“Mej,” Roger said.

“What?”

“Jem, backward,” he explained. “I was just thinking it would be a lot of fun to see Godzilla films with him. Maybe he’d like to be the beetle with death-ray eyes. Be fun, aye?”

He sounded so wistful that a lump came to her throat, and she squeezed his hand hard, then swallowed.

“Tell him Godzilla stories,” she said firmly. “It’s make-believe anyway. I’ll draw him pictures.”

He laughed at that.

“Christ, you do, and they’ll be stoning ye for trafficking with the devil, Bree. Godzilla looks like something straight out of the Book of Revelation—or so I was told.”

“Who told you that?”

“Eigger.”

“Who . . . oh,” she said, going into mental reverse. “Reggie? Who’s Reggie?”

“The Reverend.” His great-uncle, his adoptive father. There was still a smile in his voice, but one tinged with nostalgia. “When we went to the monster films together of a Saturday. Eigger and Regor—and ye should have seen the looks on the faces of the Ladies’ Altar and Tea Society, when Mrs. Graham let them in without announcing them, and they came into the Reverend’s study to find us stamping round and roaring, kicking hell out of a Tokyo built of blocks and soup tins.”

She laughed, but felt tears prick at the backs of her eyes.

“I wish I’d known the Reverend,” she said, squeezing his hand.

“I wish ye had, too,” he said softly. “He would have liked ye so much, Bree.”

For the space of a few moments, while he talked, the dark forest and the flaming fire below had faded away; they were in Inverness, cozy in the Reverend’s study, with rain on the windows and the sound of traffic going by in the street. It happened so often when they talked like this, between themselves. Then some small thing would fracture the moment—now, it was a shout from the fire as people began to clap and sing—and the world of their own time vanished in an instant.

What if he were gone, she thought suddenly. Could I bring it back, all by myself?

A spasm of elemental panic gripped her, just for a moment, at the thought. Without Roger as her touchstone, with nothing but her own memories to serve as anchor to the future, that time would be lost. Would fade into hazy dreams, and be lost, leaving her no firm ground of reality to stand upon.

She took a deep breath of the cold night air, crisp with woodsmoke, and dug the balls of her feet hard into the ground as they walked, trying to feel solid.

“MamaMamaMAMA!” A small blob detached itself from the confusion round the fire and rocketed toward her, crashing into her knees with enough force to make her grab hold of Roger’s arm.

“Jem! There you are!” She scooped him up and buried her face in his hair, which smelled pleasantly of goats, hay, and spicy sausage. He was heavy, and more than solid.

Then Ute McGillivray turned and saw them. Her broad face was creased in a frown, but broke into a beam of delight at seeing them. People turned at her call of greeting, and they were engulfed at once by the crowd, everyone asking questions, expressing gratified surprise at their coming.

A few questions were asked about the Dutch family, but Kenny Lindsay had brought the news of the burning earlier; Brianna was glad of that. People clucked and shook their heads, but by now they had exhausted most of their horrified speculations, and were turning to other matters. The cold of the graves beneath the fir trees still lingered as a faint chill on her heart; she had no wish to make
that
experience real again by talking about it.

The newly engaged couple were seated together on a pair of upturned buckets, holding hands, faces blissful in the glow of the bonfire.

“I win,” Brianna said, smiling at sight of them. “Don’t they look happy?”

“They do,” Roger agreed. “I doubt Ronnie Sinclair is. Is he here?” He glanced round, and so did she, but the cooper was nowhere in sight.

“Wait—he’s in his shop,” she said, putting a hand on Roger’s wrist and nodding toward the small building on the opposite side of the road. There were no windows on this side of the cooper’s shop, but a faint glow showed round the edge of the closed door.

Roger glanced from the darkened shop to the convivial crowd round the fire; a good many of Ute’s relations had ridden over with the lucky bridegroom and his friends from Salem, bringing with them an immense barrel of black beer, which was adding to the festivities. The air was yeasty with the tang of hops.

By contrast, the cooper’s shop had a desolate, glowering sort of air about it. She wondered whether anyone around the fire had yet missed Ronnie Sinclair.

“I’ll go and have a bit of a blether with him, aye?” Roger touched her back in brief affection. “He could maybe use a sympathetic ear.”

“That and a stiff drink?” She nodded toward the house, where Robin McGillivray was visible through the open door, pouring what she assumed to be whisky for a select circle of friends.

“I imagine he will have managed that for himself,” Roger replied dryly. He left her, making his way around the convivial group by the fire. He disappeared in the dark, but then she saw the door of the cooper’s shop open, and Roger silhouetted briefly against the glow from within, his tall form blocking the light before vanishing inside.

“Wanna drink, Mama!” Jemmy was wriggling like a tadpole, trying to get down. She set him on the ground, and he was off like a shot, nearly upsetting a stout lady with a platter of corn fritters.

The aroma of the steaming fritters reminded her that she hadn’t had any supper, and she made her way after Jemmy to the table of food, where Lizzie, in her role as almost-daughter-of-the-house, helped her importantly to sauerkraut, sausages, smoked eggs, and something involving corn and squash.