The Fiery Cross (67 page)

She made a small
pff
sound of dismissal. Encouraged by the dark, the faint sense of intimacy engendered by the exchange of names—or simply from a need to talk, after so long—she told me about her mother, who had died when she was twelve, her father, a crabber, and her life in Baltimore, wading out along the shore at low tide to rake oysters and gather mussels, watching the fishing craft and the warships come in past Fort Howard to sail up the Patapsco.

“It wath . . . peatheful,” she said, rather wistfully. “It wath tho open—nothing but the thky and the water.” She tilted back her head again, as though yearning for the small bit of night sky visible through the interlacing branches overhead. I supposed that while the forested mountains of North Carolina were refuge and embrace to a Highlander like Jamie, they might well seem claustrophobic and alien to someone accustomed to the watery Chesapeake shore.

“Will you go back there, do you think?” I asked.

“Back?” She sounded slightly startled. “Oh. I . . . I hadn’t thought . . .”

“No?” I had found a tree trunk to lean against, and stretched slightly, to ease my back. “You must have seen that your—that Mr. Beardsley was dying. Didn’t you have some plan?” Beyond the fun of torturing him slowly to death, that is. It occurred to me that I had been getting altogether too comfortable with this woman, alone in the dark with the goats. She might truly have been Beardsley’s victim—or she might only be saying so now, to enlist our aid. It would behoove me to remember the burned toes on Beardsley’s foot, and the appalling state of that loft. I straightened up a little, and felt for the small knife I carried at my belt—just in case.

“No.” She sounded a little dazed—and no wonder, I supposed. I felt more than a little dazed myself, simply from emotion and fatigue. Enough so that I almost missed what she said next.

“What did you say?”

“I thaid . . . Mary Ann didn’t tell me what I wath to do . . . after.”

“Mary Ann,” I said cautiously. “Yes, and that would be . . . the first Mrs. Beardsley, would it?”

She laughed, and the hair on my neck rippled unpleasantly.

“Oh, no. Mary Ann wath the fourth one.”

“The . . . fourth one,” I said, a little faintly.

“Thye’th the only one he buried under the rowan tree,” she informed me. “That wath a mithtake. The otherth are in the woodth. He got lazy, I think; he did not want to walk tho far.”

“Oh,” I said, for lack of any better response.

“I told you—sshe thtands under the rowan tree at moonrithe. When I thaw her there at firtht, I thought sshe wath a living woman. I wath afraid of what
he
might do, if he thaw her there alone—tho I sstole from the houthe to warn her.”

“I see.” Something in my voice must have sounded less than credulous, for her head turned sharply toward me. I took a firmer grip on the knife.

“You do not believe me?”

“Of course I do!” I assured her, trying to edge Hiram’s head off my lap. My left leg had gone to sleep from the pressure of his weight, and I had no feeling in my foot.

“I can thow you,” she said, and her voice was calm and certain. “Mary Ann told me where they were—the otherth—and I found them. I can thow you their graveth.”

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” I said, flexing my toes to restore circulation. If she came toward me, I decided, I would shove the goat into her path, roll to the side, and make off as fast as possible on all fours, shouting for Jamie. And where in bloody hell
was
Jamie, anyway?

“So . . . um . . . Fanny. You’re saying that Mr. Beardsley”—it occurred to me that I didn’t know his name either, but I thought I would just as soon keep my relations with his memory formal, under the circumstances—“that your husband
murdered
four wives? And no one knew?” Not that anyone necessarily
would
know, I realized. The Beardsley homestead was very isolated, and it wasn’t at all unusual for women to die—of accident, childbirth, or simple overwork. Someone might have known that Beardsley had lost four wives—but it was entirely possible that no one cared how.

“Yeth.” She sounded calm, I thought; not incipiently dangerous, at least. “He would have killed me, too—but Mary Ann thtopped him.”

“How did she do that?”

She drew a deep breath and sighed, settling herself on the ground. There was a faint, sleepy bleat from her lap, and I realized that she was holding the kid again. I relaxed my grip on the knife; she could hardly attack me with a lapful of goat.

She had, she said, gone out to speak to Mary Ann whenever the moon was high; the ghostly woman appeared under the rowan tree only between half-moon wax and half-moon wane—not in the dark of the moon, or at crescent.

“Very particular,” I murmured, but she didn’t notice, being too absorbed in the story.

This had gone on for some months. Mary Ann had told Fanny Beardsley who she was, informed her of the fate of her predecessors, and the manner of her own death.

“He choked her,” Fanny confided. “I could see the markth of his handth on her throat. Sshe warned me that he would do the thame to me, one day.”

One night a few weeks later, Fanny was sure that the time had come.

“He wath far gone with the rum, you thee,” she explained. “It wath alwayth worth when he drank, and thith time . . .”

Trembling with nerves, she had dropped the trencher with his supper, splattering food on him. He had sprung to his feet with a roar, lunging for her, and she had turned and fled.

“He wath between me and the door,” she said. “I ran for the loft. I hoped he would be too drunk to manage the ladder, and he wath.”

Beardsley had stumbled, lurching, and dragged the ladder down with a crash. As he struggled, mumbling and cursing, to put it into place again, there came a knock on the door.

Beardsley shouted to know who it was, but no answer came; only another knock at the door. Fanny had crept to the edge of the loft, to see his red face glaring up at her. The knock sounded for a third time. His tongue was too thick with drink to speak coherently; he only growled in his throat and held up a finger in warning to her, then turned and staggered toward the door. He wrenched it open, looked out—and screamed.

“I have never heard thuch a thound,” she said, very softly. “Never.”

Beardsley turned and ran, tripping over a stool and sprawling full-length, scrabbling to his feet, stumbling to the foot of the ladder and scrambling up it, missing rungs and clawing for purchase, crying out and shouting.

“He kept thouting to me to help him, help him.” Her voice held an odd note; perhaps only astonishment that such a man should have called to her for help—but with a disquieting note that I thought betrayed a deep and secret pleasure in the memory.

Beardsley had reached the top of the ladder, but could not take the final step into the loft. Instead, his face had gone suddenly from red to white, his eyes rolled back, and then he fell senseless onto his face on the boards, his legs dangling absurdly from the edge of the loft.

“I could not get him down; it wath all I could do to pull him up into the loft.” She sighed. “And the retht . . . you know.”

“Not quite.” Jamie spoke from the dark near my shoulder, making me jump. Hiram grunted indignantly, shaken awake.

“How the hell long have
you
been there?” I demanded.

“Long enough.” He moved to my side and knelt beside me, a hand on my arm. “And what was it at the door, then?” he asked Mrs. Beardsley. His voice held no more than light interest, but his hand was tight on my arm. A slight shudder went over me.
What
, indeed.

“Nothing,” she said simply. “There wath no one there at all, that I could thee. But—you can thee the rowan tree from that door, and there
wath
a half-moon rithing.”

There was a marked period of silence at this. Finally, Jamie rubbed a hand hard over his face, sighed, and got to his feet.

“Aye. Well. I’ve found a spot where we can shelter for the night. Help me wi’ the goat, Sassenach.”

We were on hilly ground, spiked with rocky outcrops and small tangles of sweet shrub and greenbrier, making the footing between the trees so uncertain in the dark that I fell twice, catching myself only by luck before breaking my neck. It would have been difficult going in broad daylight; by night, it was nearly impossible. Fortunately, it was no more than a short distance to the spot Jamie had found.

This was a sort of shallow gash in the side of a crumbling clay bank, overhung with a tattered grapevine and thatched with matted grasses. At one time, there had been a stream here, and the water had carved away a good-sized chunk of earth from the bank, leaving an overhanging shelf. Something had diverted the flow of water some years ago, though, and the rounded stones of what had been the streambed were scattered and half-sunk in mossy soil; one rolled under my foot and I fell to one knee, striking it painfully on another of the beastly stones.

“All right, Sassenach?” Jamie heard my rude exclamation and stopped, turning toward me. He stood on the hillside just above me, Hiram on his shoulders. From below, silhouetted against the sky, he looked grotesque and rather frightening; a tall, horned figure with hunched and monstrous shoulders.

“Fine,” I said, rather breathless. “Just here, is it?”

“Aye. Help me . . . will ye?” He sounded a lot more breathless than I did. He sank carefully to his knees, and I hurried to help him lower Hiram to the ground. Jamie stayed kneeling, one hand on the ground to brace himself.

“I hope it won’t be too hard to find the trail in the morning,” I said, watching him anxiously. His head was bent with exhaustion, air rattling wetly in his chest with each breath. I wanted him in a place with fire and food, as fast as possible.

He shook his head, and coughed, clearing his throat.

“I ken where it is,” he said, and coughed again. “It’s only—” The coughing shook him hard; I could see his shoulders braced against it. When he stopped, I put a hand gently on his back, and could feel a fine, constant tremor running through him; not a chill, just the trembling of muscles forced beyond the limits of their strength.

“I canna go any further, Claire,” he said softly, as though ashamed of the admission. “I’m done.”

“Lie down,” I said, just as softly. “I’ll see to things.”

There was a certain amount of bustle and confusion, but within a half hour or so, everyone was more or less settled, the horses hobbled, and a small fire going.

I knelt to check my chief patient, who was sitting on his chest, splinted leg stuck out in front. Hiram, with his ladies safely gathered behind him in the shelter of the bank, emitted a belligerent “Meh!” and threatened me with his horns.

“Ungrateful sod,” I said, pulling back.

Jamie laughed, then broke off to cough, his shoulders shaking with the spasm. He was curled at one side of the depression in the bank, head pillowed on his folded coat.

“And as for you,” I said, eyeing him, “I wasn’t joking about that goose grease. Open your cloak, lift your shirt, and do it now.”

He narrowed his eyes at me, and shot a quick glance in Mrs. Beardsley’s direction. I hid a smile at his modesty, but gave Mrs. Beardsley the small kettle from my saddlebag and sent her off to fetch water and more firewood, then dug out the gourd of mentholated ointment.

Jamie’s appearance alarmed me slightly, now that I had a good look at him. He was pale and white-lipped, red-rimmed round the nostrils, and his eyes were bruised with fatigue. He looked very sick, and sounded worse, the breath wheezing in his chest with each respiration.

“Well, I suppose if Hiram wouldn’t die in front of his nannies, you won’t die in front of me, either,” I said dubiously, scooping out a thumbful of the fragrant grease.

“I am not dying in the least degree,” he said, rather crossly. “I’m only a wee bit tired. I shall be entirely myself in the morn—oh, Christ, I hate this!”

His chest was quite warm, but I thought he wasn’t fevered; it was hard to tell, my own fingers being very cold.

He jerked, made a high-pitched “eee” noise, and tried to squirm away. I seized him firmly by the neck, put a knee in his belly, and proceeded to have my way with him, all protests notwithstanding. At length, he gave up struggling and submitted, only giggling intermittently, sneezing, and uttering an occasional small yelp when I reached a particularly ticklish spot. The goats found it all very entertaining.

In a few minutes, I had him well-greased and gasping on the ground, the skin of his chest and throat red from rubbing and shiny with grease, a strong aroma of peppermint and camphor in the air. I patted a thick flannel into place on his chest, pulled down his shirt, drew the folds of his cloak around him, and tucked a blanket up snugly under his chin.

“Now, then,” I said with satisfaction, wiping my hands on a cloth. “As soon as I have hot water, we’ll have a nice cup of horehound tea.”

He opened one eye suspiciously.

“We will?”

“Well, you will. I’d rather drink hot horse piss, myself.”

“So would I.”

“Too bad; it hasn’t any medicinal effects that I know of.”

He groaned and shut the eye. He breathed heavily for a moment, sounding like a diseased bellows. Then he raised his head a few inches, opening his eyes.

“Is yon woman back yet?”

“No, I imagine it will take her a little time to find the stream in the dark.” I hesitated. “Did you . . . hear everything she was telling me?”

He shook his head.

“Not all—but enough. Mary Ann and that?”

“Yes, that.”

He grunted.

“Did ye believe her, Sassenach?”

I didn’t reply immediately, but took my time in cleaning the goose grease out from under my fingernails.

“I did at the time,” I finally said. “Just now—I’m not sure.”

He grunted again, this time with approval.

“I shouldna think she’s dangerous,” he said. “But keep your wee knife about ye, Sassenach—and dinna turn your back on her. We’ll take watch and watch about; wake me in an hour.”

He shut his eyes, coughed, and without further ado, fell fast asleep.