An Echo in the Bone (143 page)

Two floors above, Mandy sat up in bed and screamed like a
ban-sidhe
.

HE MADE IT TO Amanda’s room a half step before Brianna and scooped the child out of her bed, cradling her against his pounding heart.

“Jemmy, Jemmy!” she sobbed. “He’s gone, he’s gone. He’s
GONE
!!” This last was shrieked as she stiffened in Roger’s arms, digging her feet hard into his belly.

“Hey, hey,” he soothed, trying to rearrange her and pet her into calm. “It’s okay, Jemmy’s fine.

He’s fine
, he’s only gone to visit Bobby overnight. He’ll be home tomorrow.”

“He’s
GONE!”
She squirmed like an eel, not trying to get away but merely possessed by a paroxysm of frantic grief. “He’s not here, he’s not here!”

“Aye, like I said, he’s at Bobby’s house, he—”

“Not
here
,” she said urgently, and thumped the palm of her hand repeatedly on the top of her head. “Not here wif me!”

“Here, baby, come here,” Bree said urgently, taking the tear-streaked child from him.

“Mama, Mama! Jemmy’s
GONE!”
She clung to Bree, staring desperately, still thumping her head. “He’s not wif me!”

Bree frowned at Mandy, puzzled, a hand running over her, checking for temperature, swollen glands, tender tummy…

“Not with you,” she repeated, speaking intently, trying to get Mandy out of her panic. “Tell Mummy what you mean, sweetheart.”

“Not
here
!” In utter desperation, Mandy lowered her head and butted her mother in the chest.

“Oof!”

The door at the end of the hall opened, and William Buccleigh came out, wearing Roger’s woolen dressing gown.

“What in the name of the Blessed Virgin’s all this riot?” he inquired.

“He took him, he took him!” Mandy shrieked, and buried her head in Brianna’s shoulder.

Despite himself, Roger was feeling infected by Amanda’s fear, irrationally convinced that something terrible had happened.

“Do you know where Jem is?” he snapped at Buccleigh.

“I do not.” Buccleigh frowned at him. “Is he not in his bed?”

“No, he isn’t!” Brianna snapped. “You saw him leave, for heaven’s sake.” She forced her way between the men. “Quit it right now, both of you! Roger, take Mandy. I’m going to phone Martina Hurragh.” She thrust Amanda, moaning around the thumb in her mouth, into his arms and hurried for the stairs, her hastily acquired nightclothes rustling like leaves.

He rocked Amanda, distracted, alarmed, nearly overcome by her sense of panic. She emitted fright and grief like a radio broadcasting tower, and his own breath came short and his hands were wet with sweat where he clutched her Winnie-the-Pooh nightie.

“Hush,
a chuisle,”
he said, pitching his voice as calmly as he could. “Hush, now. We’ll fix it.

You tell Daddy what waked you up, and I’ll fix it, promise.”

She obediently tried to stifle her sobs, rubbing chubby fists into her eyes.

“Jemmy,” she moaned. “I want Jemmy!”

“We’ll get him back straightaway,” Roger promised. “Tell me, what made you wake up? Did you have a bad dream?”

“Uh-huh.” She clutched him tighter, her face full of fear. “Was big wocks,
big
wocks. They scweamed at me!”

Ice water ran straight through his veins. Jesus, oh, Jesus. Maybe she
did
remember her trip through the stones.

“Aye, I see,” he said, patting her as soothingly as he could, for the ferment in his own breast. He
did
see. In memory he saw those stones, felt and heard them again. And, turning a little, saw the pallor of William Buccleigh’s face and knew he heard the ring of truth in Mandy’s voice, too.

“What happened then,
a leannan
? Did you go close to the big rocks?”

“Not me; Jem! That man took him and the wocks
ate
him!” At this, she collapsed in tears again, sobbing inconsolably.

“That man,” Roger said slowly, and turned a little more, so that William Buccleigh was in her field of view. “Do you mean
this
man, sweetheart? Uncle Buck?”

“No, nonononononono, a
other
man!” She straightened up, staring into his face with huge, tear-filled eyes, straining to make him understand. “Bobby’s daddy!”

He heard Brianna coming upstairs. Fast, but unevenly; it sounded as though she was bumping against the walls of the staircase, losing her balance as she hurried.

She stumbled into view at the top of the stair, and Roger felt every hair on his body stand up at the sight of her white, staring face.

“He’s gone,” she said, hoarse. “Martina says he’s not with Bobby, she didn’t expect him tonight at all. I made her go outside and look—Rob lives three houses down. She says his truck is gone.”

ROGER’S HANDS were numb with cold, and the steering wheel was slippery with their sweat.

He took the turn off the highway at such speed that the off-wheels lifted slightly and the car tilted. William Buccleigh’s head thumped the window.

“Sorry,” Roger muttered mechanically, and received a grunt of acceptance in reply.

“Mind yourself,” Buccleigh said, rubbing his temple. “Ye’ll have us over in a ditch, and then what?”

Then what, indeed. With great effort, he eased his foot back on the gas. It was near moonset, and a wan quarter moon did little to light the landscape, black as pitch around them. The headlights of the little Morris barely dented the darkness, and the frail beams swung to and fro as they bounced crazily on the dirt road that led near Craigh na Dun.

“Why the devil should this
trusdair
take your son?” Buccleigh rolled down his window and stuck his head out, vainly trying to see farther than the view through the dust-coated windshield.

“And why, for the sake of all holy, bring him
here?”

“How do I know?” Roger said through his teeth. “Maybe he thinks he needs blood to open the stones.
Christ
, why did I write that?” He pounded a fist on the wheel in frustration.

Buccleigh blinked, very startled, but his gaze sharpened at once.

“Is that it?” he said, urgent. “
Is
that how ye do it? Blood?”

“No, dammit!” Roger said. “It’s the time of year, and gemstones. We think.”

“But ye wrote down blood, with a query mark next it.”

“Yes, but—what do you mean? Did you read my notebook, too, you cunt?”

“Language, son,” said William Buccleigh, grim but cool. “Of course I did. I read everything in your study I could get my hands on—and so would you, in my place.”

Roger throttled back the panic that gripped him, enough to manage a curt nod.

“Aye, maybe I would. And if
you’d
taken Jem—I’d kill ye once I found you, but I’d maybe understand why. But
this
fucker! What does he think he’s
doing
, for God’s sake?”

“Calm yourself,” Buccleigh advised him briefly. “Ye’ll do your wean no good if ye lose the heid.

This Cameron—is he one like us?”

“I don’t know. I don’t bloody
know.”

“There are others, though? It’s not just in the family?”

“I don’t know—I think there are others, but I don’t know for sure.” Roger struggled to think, struggled to keep the car rolling at a low enough speed to handle the curves of the road, half overgrown with creeping gorse.

He was trying to pray but managing nothing but a terror-stricken, incoherent
Lord, please!
He wished Bree was with him, but they couldn’t have brought Mandy anywhere near the rocks, and if they should be in time to catch Cameron … if Cameron was even here… Buccleigh would help him, he was fairly sure of that.

The back of his mind harbored a forlorn hope that there was some misunderstanding, that Cameron had mistaken the night and, realizing it, was bringing Jem back home, even as Roger and his bloody five times greatgrandfather tore over a rocky moor in the dark, headed straight for the most terrible thing either of them knew.

“Cameron—he read the notebook, too,” Roger blurted, unable to bear his own thoughts. “By accident. He pretended to think it was all a—a—fiction, something I’d made up for fun. Jesus, what have I
done
?”

“Look out!” Buccleigh threw his arms over his face and Roger stood on the brake, swerving off the road and into a large rock—barely missing the old blue truck that stood on the road, dark and empty.

HE SCRAMBLED UP the hill, scrabbling for handholds in the dark, rocks rolling under his feet, gorse prickles piercing his palms, now and then stabbing under his nails, making him swear. Far below, he could hear William Buccleigh following. Slowly—but following.

He began to hear them long before he reached the crest. It was three days before Samhain, and the stones knew it. The sound that wasn’t a sound at all vibrated through the marrow of his bones, made his skull ring and his teeth ache. He gritted his teeth together and kept on. By the time he reached the stones, he was on hands and knees, unable to stand upright.

Dear God
, he thought,
God, preserve me! Keep me alive long enough to find him!

He could barely form thoughts but recalled the flashlight. He’d brought it from the car and now fumbled it out of his pocket, dropping it, having to grope frantically over the short grass in the circle, finding it at last and squeezing the button with a finger that slipped off four times before finally achieving the strength to make the connection.

The beam of light sprang out, and he heard a muffled exclamation of amazement from the dark behind him. Of course, he thought dazedly, William Buccleigh hadn’t yet seen a flashlight. The wavering beam passed slowly round the circle, back. What was he looking for? Footprints?

Something Jem had dropped, that would show he’d come this way?

There was nothing.

Nothing but the stones. It was getting worse, and he dropped the flashlight, clutching his head with both hands. He had to move… had to go … go get Jem…

He was dragging himself over the grass, white-blind with the pain and nearly mindless, when strong hands grabbed him by the ankles and hauled him backward. He thought there might have been a voice, but if so, it was lost in the piercing scream that echoed inside his head, inside his soul, and he cried out his son’s name as loud as he could to hear something besides that noise, felt his throat tear from the effort, but heard nothing.

Then the earth moved beneath him and the world fell away.

FELL AWAY QUITE literally. When he came to some time later, he found that he and William Buccleigh were resting in a shallow declivity in the side of the hill, forty feet below the stone circle. They’d fallen and rolled; he could tell that from the way he felt and the way Buccleigh looked. There was a hint of dawn in the sky, and he could see Buccleigh, scratched and torn, sitting hunched beside him, curled into himself as though his belly hurt.

“What… ?” Roger whispered. He cleared his throat and tried again to ask what had happened, but couldn’t manage more than a whisper—and even that made his throat burn like fire.

William Buccleigh muttered something under his breath, and Roger realized that he was praying.

He tried to sit up and made it, though his head spun.

“Did ye drag me free?” he demanded in his harsh whisper. Buccleigh’s eyes were closed and stayed that way until he had finished his prayer. Then he opened them and glanced from Roger to the top of the hill, where the unseen stones still quired their ghastly song of time undone—no more from here, thank goodness, than an eerie whine that set his teeth on edge.

“I did,” Buccleigh said. “I didna think ye were going to make it out on your own.”

“I wasn’t.” Roger lowered himself back onto the ground, dizzy and aching. “Thanks,” he added a moment later. There was a great void inside him, vast as the fading sky.

“Aye, well. Maybe it’ll help to make up for getting ye hanged,” Buccleigh said, in an offhand way. “What now?”

Roger stared up at the sky, rotating slowly overhead. It made him dizzier, so he closed his eyes and reached out a hand.

“Now we go home,” he croaked. “And think again. Help me up.”

VALLEY FORGE

WILLIAM WORE HIS uniform. It was necessary, he told his father.

“Denzell Hunter is a man of great conscience and principle. I cannot engage to winkle him out of the American camp without proper leave of his officer. I think he would not come. But if I can obtain permission—and I think I can—then I believe he will.”

But to obtain formal permission for the services of a Continental surgeon, obviously he had to ask formally. Which meant riding into Washington’s new winter quarters at Valley Forge in a red coat, no matter what happened next.

Lord John had closed his eyes for a moment, plainly envisioning just what sort of thing
might
happen next, but then opened them and said briskly, “All right, then. Will you take a servant with you?”

“No,” William said, surprised. “Why would I need one?”

“To care for the horses, to manage your goods—and to be the eyes in the back of your head,” his father said, giving him a look indicating that he should already have been aware of some of this.

He therefore did
not
say,
“Horses?”
or
“What goods?”
but merely nodded and said, “Thank you, Papa. Can you find me someone suitable?”

“Suitable” turned out to be one Colenso Baragwanath, a stunted youth from Cornwall who had come with Howe’s troops as a stable-boy. He did know horses, William would give him that.

There were four horses and a pack mule, this last laden with sides of pork, four or five fat turkeys, a bag of rough-skinned potatoes, another of turnips, and a large keg of cider.

“If conditions there are half as bad as I think they are,” his father had told him, while overseeing the loading of the mule, “the commander would lend you the services of half a battalion in exchange for this, let alone a surgeon.”

“Thank you, Papa,” he said again, and swung into his saddle, his new captain’s gorget about his neck and a white flag of truce folded neatly into his saddlebag.

Valley Forge looked like a gigantic encampment of doomed charcoal-burners. The place was essentially a wood lot, or had been before Washington’s soldiers began felling everything in sight. Hacked stumps were everywhere, and the ground was strewn with broken branches. Huge bonfires burned in random spots, and piles of logs were stacked everywhere. They were building huts as fast as possible—and none too soon, for snow had begun falling three or four hours before, and the camp was already blanketed with white.