An Echo in the Bone (146 page)

“I do, too!” Rachel said hotly. “Thee said thee would find me a place of safety with Friends, if I wanted. I didn’t, and I don’t.”

Before Denny could come back with anything else, Lady Dorothea held out her hand in a dramatic gesture of command, stopping him dead.

“I have an idea,” she said.

“I greatly fear to ask what it is,” Denny said, sounding entirely sincere.

“I don’t,” Rachel said. “What?”

Dorothea looked from one to the other. “I have been to a Quaker meeting. Two, in fact. I know how it’s done. Let us hold a meeting and ask the Lord to guide us.”

Denny’s mouth fell open, greatly entertaining Rachel, who was seldom able to dumbfound her brother but was beginning to enjoy seeing Dorothea do it.

“That—” he began, sounding stunned.

“Is an excellent idea,” Rachel said, already dragging another chair near to the fire.

Denny could hardly argue. Looking remarkably discombobulated, he sat, though Rachel noticed that he put her between Dorothea and himself. She wasn’t sure whether he was afraid to be too close to Dorothea, lest the power of her presence overwhelm him, or whether it was only that sitting across the hearth from her gave him the best view.

They all settled slowly, shifting a bit for comfort, and lapsed into silence. Rachel closed her eyes, seeing the warm redness of the fire inside her lids, feeling the comfort of it on her hands and feet.

She gave silent thanks for it, remembering the constant griping of cold in the camp, the nails of her fingers and toes on fire with it, and the continual shivering that lessened but did not stop when she huddled into her blankets at night and left her muscles fatigued and sore. It was no wonder Denny didn’t want Dorothea to go with them. She didn’t want to go back, would give almost anything not to go—anything but Denny’s well-being. She hated being cold and hungry, but it would be much worse to be warm and well-fed and know that he suffered alone.

Did Lady Dorothea have any idea what it would be like? she wondered, and opened her eyes.

Dorothea sat quiet but upright, graceful hands folded in her lap. She supposed Denny was imagining, as Rachel was, those hands reddened and marred by chilblains, that lovely face gaunt with hunger and blotched with dirt and cold.

Dorothea’s eyes were shadowed by her lids, but Rachel was sure she was looking at Denny. This was a considerable gamble on Dorothea’s part, she thought. For what if the Lord spoke to Denny and said it was impossible, that he must send her away? What if the Lord spoke to Dorothea now, she thought suddenly, or what if He had already? Rachel was quite taken back at the thought. It wasn’t that Friends thought that the Lord spoke only to them; it was only that they weren’t sure other folk listened very often.

Had she been listening herself? In all honesty, she was forced to admit that she had not. And she knew why: out of a disinclination to hear what she was afraid she must—that she must turn away from Ian Murray and abandon the thoughts of him that warmed her body and heated her dreams in the freezing forest, so she woke sometimes sure that if she put out her hand to the falling snow, it would hiss and vanish from her palm.

She swallowed hard and closed her eyes, trying to open herself to the truth but trembling in fear of hearing it.

All she heard, though, was a steady panting noise, and an instant later Rollo’s wet nose nudged her hand. Disconcerted, she scratched his ears. Surely it wasn’t seemly to be doing that in meeting, but he would keep nudging her until she complied, she knew. He half-closed his yellow eyes in pleasure and rested his heavy head upon her knee.

The dog loves him
, she thought, rubbing gently through the thick, coarse fur.
Can he be a bad
man, if that is so?
It wasn’t God she heard in reply but her brother, who would certainly say,

“While dogs are worthy creatures, I think they are perhaps no judge of character.”

But I am
, she thought to herself.
I know what he is—and I know him for what he might be, too
.

She looked at Dorothea, motionless in her gray bag of a dress. Lady Dorothea Grey was prepared to abandon her former life, and very likely her family, to become a Friend, for Denny’s sake.

Might it not be, she wondered, that Ian Murray could turn from violence for hers?

Well, there is a proud thought
, she scolded herself.
What sort of power does thee think thee has,
Rachel Mary Hunter? No one has that sort of power, save the Lord
.

But the Lord did have it. And if the Lord should be so inclined, anything was possible. Rollo’s tail moved gently, thumping thrice upon the floor.

Denzell Hunter straightened a little on his stool. It was the slightest movement, but coming as it did out of utter stillness, it surprised both the women, who lifted their heads like startled birds.

“I love thee, Dorothea,” he said. He spoke very quietly, but his soft eyes burned behind his spectacles, and Rachel felt her chest ache. “Will thee marry me?”

SEVERANCE AND REUNION

April 20, 1778

AS TRANSATLANTIC VOYAGES went—and after our ad-ventures with Captains Roberts, Hickman, and Stebbings, I considered myself something of a connoisseur of seagoing disaster—the trip to America was quite dull. We did have a slight brush with an English man-of-war but fortunately outran her, did run into two squalls and a major storm but luckily didn’t sink, and while the food was execrable, I was much too distracted to do more than knock weevils out of the biscuit before eating it.

Half my mind was on the future: Marsali and Fergus’s precarious situation, the danger of Henri-Christian’s condition, and the logistics of dealing with it. The other half—well, to be fair, seven-eighths—was still at Lallybroch with Jamie.

I felt raw and bruised. Severed in some vital part, as always when parted from Jamie for very long, but also as though I had been violently ejected from my home, like a barnacle ripped from its rock and heedlessly tossed into boiling surf.

The greater part of that, I thought, was Ian’s impending death. Ian was so much a part of Lallybroch, his presence there so much a constant and a comfort to Jamie all these years, that the sense of his loss was in a way the loss of Lallybroch itself. Oddly enough, Jenny’s words, hurtful as they might have been, didn’t really trouble me; I knew only too well the frantic grief, the desperation that one turned to rage because it was the only way to stay alive. And in truth, I understood her feelings, too, because I shared them: irrational or not, I felt that I should have been able to help Ian. What good was all my knowledge, all my skill, if I couldn’t help when help was truly vital?

But there was a further sense of loss—and a further nagging guilt—in the fact that I could not be there when Ian died, that I had had to leave him for the last time knowing that I would not see him again, unable to offer comfort to him, or to be with Jamie or his family when the blow fell, or even simply to bear witness to his passing.

Young Ian felt this, too, to an even greater degree. I often found him sitting near the stern, staring into the ship’s wake with troubled eyes.

“D’ye think he’s gone yet?” he asked me abruptly on one occasion when I’d come to sit beside him there. “Da?”

“I don’t know,” I told him honestly. “I’d think so, on the basis of how ill he was—but people do sometimes hang on amazingly. When is his birthday, do you know?”

He stared at me in bafflement. “It’s in May sometime, near Uncle Jamie’s. Why?”

I shrugged and pulled my shawl tighter against the chill of the wind.

“Often people who are very ill, but are near their birthday, seem to wait until it’s passed before dying. I read a study of it once. For some reason, it’s more likely if the person is famous or well known.”

That made him laugh, though painfully.

“Da’s never been that.” He sighed. “Right now I wish I’d stayed for him. I know he said to go—and I wanted to go,” he added fairly. “But I feel bad that I did.”

I sighed, too. “So do I.”

“But you had to go,” he protested. “Ye couldna let poor wee Henri-Christian choke. Da would understand that. I know he did.”

I smiled at his earnest attempt to make me feel better.

“He understood why you needed to go, too.”

“Aye, I know.” He was silent for a bit, watching the furrow of the wake; it was a brisk day and the ship was traveling well, though the sea was choppy, dotted with whitecaps. “I wish—” he said suddenly, then stopped and swallowed. “I wish Da could ha’ met Rachel,” he said, low-voiced. “I wish she could meet him.”

I made a sympathetic sound. I remembered all too vividly the years during which I had watched Brianna grow, aching because she would never know her father. And then a miracle had happened—but it wouldn’t happen for Ian.

“I know you told your da about Rachel—he told me you had and was so happy to know about her.” That made him smile a little. “Did you tell Rachel about your father? Your family?”

“No.” He sounded startled. “No, I never did.”

“Well, you’ll just have to—what’s wrong?” His brow had furrowed, and his mouth turned down.

“I—nothing, really. It’s only, I just thought—I never told her anything. I mean, we—didna really talk, aye? I mean, I said things to her now and then, and her me, but just in the ordinary way of things. And then we—I kissed her, and… well, that was all about it.” He made a helpless gesture. “But I never asked her. I was just sure.”

“And now you’re not?”

He shook his head, brown hair flying in the wind.

“Oh, no, Auntie; I’m as sure of what’s between us as I am of… of…” He looked about in search of some symbol of solidity on the heaving deck, but then gave up. “Well, I’m surer of how I feel than I am that the sun will come up tomorrow.”

“I’m sure she knows that.”

“Aye, she does,” he said, in a softer voice. “I know she does.”

We sat for a bit in silence. Then I stood up and said, “Well, in that case—perhaps you ought to say a prayer for your father and then go and sit near the bow.”

I HAD BEEN in Philadelphia once or twice in the twentieth century, for medical conferences. I hadn’t liked the place then, finding it grubby and unwelcoming. It was different now, but not much more attractive. The roads that weren’t cobbled were seas of mud, and streets that would eventually be lined with run-down row houses with yards full of rubbish, broken plastic toys, and motorcycle parts were now edged with ramshackle shanties with yards full of rubbish, discarded oyster shells, and tethered goats. Granted, there were no black-suited feral policemen visible, but the petty criminals were still the same, and still visible, despite the very obvious presence of the British army; red coats swarmed near the taverns, and marching columns went past the wagon, muskets on their shoulders.

It was spring. I’d give it that much. There were trees everywhere, thanks to William Penn’s dictum that one acre in five should be left in trees—even the avaricious politicians of the twentieth century hadn’t quite succeeded in deforesting the place, though probably only because they couldn’t figure out how to make a profit at it without being caught—and many of the trees were in bloom, a confetti of white petals drifting over the horses’ backs as the wagon turned into the city proper.

An army patrol was set up on the main road into the city; they had stopped us, demanding passes from the driver and his two male passengers. I had put on a proper cap, didn’t meet anyone’s eye, and murmured that I was coming in from the country to tend my daughter, who was about to give birth. The soldiers glanced briefly into the large basket of food I had on my lap, but didn’t even look at my face before waving the wagon on. Respectability had its uses. I wondered idly how many spymasters had thought of using elderly ladies? You didn’t hear about old women as spies—but then again, that might merely indicate how good they were at it.

Fergus’s printshop was not in the most fashionable district but not far off, and I was pleased to see that it was a substantial red-brick building, standing in a row of solid, pleasant-looking houses like it. We had not written ahead to say I was coming; I would have arrived as soon as the letter. With a rising heart, I opened the door.

Marsali was standing at the counter, sorting stacks of paper. She glanced up as the bell above the door rang, blinked, then gaped at me.

“How are you, dear?” I said, and, putting down the basket, hurried to put up the flap of the counter and take her in my arms.

She looked like death warmed over, though her eyes lit with a passionate relief upon seeing me.

She nearly fell into my arms and burst into uncharacteristic sobs. I patted her back, making soothing sounds and feeling somewhat alarmed. Her clothes hung limp on her bones, and she smelled stale, her hair unwashed for too long.

“It will be all right,” I repeated firmly for the dozenth time, and she stopped sobbing and stood back a bit, groping in her pocket for a grubby handkerchief. To my shock, I saw that she was pregnant again.

“Where’s Fergus?” I asked.

“I dinna ken.”

“He’s left you?!” I blurted, horrified. “Why, that wretched little—”

“No, no,” she said hurriedly, almost laughing through her tears. “He’s not left me, not at all. It’s only he’s in hiding—he changes his place every few days, and I dinna ken just which one he’s in right now. The weans will find him.”

“Why is he in hiding? Not that I need to ask, I suppose,” I said, with a glance at the squat black printing press that stood behind the counter. “Anything specific, though?”

“Aye, a wee pamphlet for Mr. Paine. He’s got a series of them going, ken, called ‘The American Crisis.’ ”

“Mr. Paine—the Common Sense fellow?”

“Aye, that’s him,” she said, sniffing and dabbing. “He’s a nice man, but ye dinna want to drink with him, Fergus says. Ken how some men are sweet and loving when they’re drunk, but some get fou’ and it’s up wi’ the bonnets o’ bonnie Dundee and them not even Scots for an excuse?”

“Oh, that sort. Yes, I know it well. How far along are you?” I asked, changing the subject back to one of general interest. “Shouldn’t you sit down? You oughtn’t to be on your feet for a long time.”