The Fiery Cross (85 page)

Bones or not, she had a remarkable knack for capturing the nuances of expression. He smiled at one sketch; Jemmy’s face wore the aloof and unmistakable expression of one concentrating hard on the production of a truly terrible diaper.

Beyond the pictures of Jemmy, there were several pages of what looked like engineering diagrams. Finding these of no great interest, he bent and replaced the book, then drew out another.

He realized at once that it was not a sketchbook. The pages were dense with Brianna’s tidy, angular writing. He flipped curiously through the pages; it wasn’t really a diary, but appeared to be a sort of record of her dreams.

Last night I dreamed that I shaved my legs.
Roger smiled at the inconsequence, but a vision of Brianna’s shins, long-boned and glimmering, kept him reading.

I was using Daddy’s razor and his shaving cream, and I was thinking that he’d complain when he found out, but I wasn’t worried. The shaving cream came in a white can with red letters, and it said Old Spice on the label. I don’t know if there ever was shaving cream like that, but that’s what Daddy always smelled of, Old Spice aftershave and cigarette smoke. He didn’t smoke, but the people he worked with did, and his jackets always smelled like the air in the living room after a party.

Roger breathed in, half-conscious of the remembered scents of fresh baking and tea, furniture polish and ammonia. No cigarettes at the decorous gatherings held in the manse’s parlor—and yet his father’s jackets too had smelled of smoke.

Once Gayle told me that she’d gone out with Chris and hadn’t had time to shave her legs, and she spent the whole evening trying to keep him from putting his hand on her knee, for fear he’d feel the stubble. Afterward, I never shaved my legs without thinking of that, and I’d run my fingers up my thigh, to see whether I could feel anything there, or if it was okay to stop shaving at my kneecaps.

The hair on Brianna’s thighs was so fine it could not be felt; and only seen when she rose up naked over him, with the sun behind her gilding her body, gleaming through that delicate nimbus of secrecy. The thought that no one would ever see it but himself gave him a small glow of satisfaction, like a miser counting each hair of gold and copper, enjoying his secret fortune undisturbed by any fear of theft.

He turned the page, feeling unspeakably guilty at this intrusion, yet drawn irresistibly by the urge to penetrate the intimacy of her dreams, to know the images that filled her sleeping mind.

The entries were undated, but each entry began with the same words:
Last night, I dreamed.

Last night I dreamed that it was raining. Hardly surprising, since it
was
raining, and has been for two days. When I went out to the privy this morning, I had to jump over a huge puddle by the door, and sank up to the ankles in the soft spot by the blackberries.

We went to bed last night with the rain pounding on the roof. It was so nice to curl up with Roger and be warm in our bed, after a wet, chilly day. Raindrops fell down the chimney and hissed in the fire. We told each other stories from our youths—maybe that’s where the dream came from, thinking about the past.

There wasn’t much to the dream, just that I was looking out a window in Boston, watching the cars go past, throwing up big sheets of water from their wheels, and hearing the swoosh and rush of their tires on the wet streets. I woke up still hearing that sound; it was so clear in my mind that I actually went to the window and peeked out, half expecting to see a busy street, full of cars rushing through the rain. It was a shock to see spruce trees and chestnuts and wild grass and creepers, and hear nothing but the soft patter of raindrops bouncing and trembling on the burdock leaves.

Everything was so vivid a green, so lush and overgrown, that it seemed like a jungle, or an alien planet—a place I’d never been, with nothing I recognized, though in fact I see it every day.

All day, I’ve heard the secret rush of tires in the rain, somewhere behind me.

Feeling guilty, but fascinated, Roger turned the page.

Last night I dreamed of driving my car. It was my own blue Mustang, and I was driving fast down a winding road, through the mountains—these mountains. I never have driven through these mountains, though I have been through the mountain woodlands in upstate New York. It was definitely here, though; I knew it was the Ridge.

It was so real. I can still feel my hair snapping in the wind, the wheel in my hands, the vibration of the motor and the rumble of tires on the pavement. But that sensation—as well as the car—is impossible. It can’t happen now, anywhere but in my head. And yet there it is, embedded in the cells of my memory, as real as the privy outside, waiting to be called back to life at the flick of a synapse.

That’s another oddness. Nobody knows what a synapse is, except me and Mama and Roger. What a strange feeling; as though we three share all kinds of secrets.

Anyway, that particular bit—the driving—is traceable to a known memory. But what about the dreams, equally vivid, equally real, of things I do not know of my waking self. Are some dreams the memories of things that haven’t happened yet?

Last night I dreamed that I made love with Roger.

He had been about to close the book, feeling a sense of guilt at his intrusion. The guilt was still there—in spades—but totally insufficient to overcome his curiosity. He glanced at the door, but the house was quiet; women were moving about in the kitchen, but no one was near the study.

Last night I dreamed that I made love with Roger.

It was great; for once I wasn’t thinking, wasn’t watching from the outside, like I always do. In fact, I wasn’t even aware of myself for a long time. There was just this . . . very wild, exciting stuff, and I was part of it and Roger was part of it, but there wasn’t any him or me, just us.

The funny thing is that it was Roger, but I didn’t think of him like that. Not by his name—not that name. It was like he had another name, a secret, real one—but I knew what it was.

(I’ve always thought everybody has that kind of name, the kind that isn’t a word. I know who I am—and whoever it is, her name isn’t “Brianna.” It’s me, that’s all. “Me” works fine as a substitute for what I mean—but how do you write down someone else’s secret name?)

I knew Roger’s real name, though, and that seemed to be why it was working. And it really was working, too; I didn’t think about it or worry about it, and I only thought toward the very end, Hey, it’s happening!

And then it did happen and everything dissolved and shook and throbbed—

Here she had blacked out the rest of the line, with a small, cross note in the margin, that said,

Well, none of the books I’ve ever read could describe it, either!

Despite his shocked fascination, Roger laughed aloud, then choked it off, glancing round hastily to see that he was still alone. There were noises in the kitchen, but no sound of footsteps in the hall, and his eyes went back to the page like iron filings drawn to a magnet.

I had my eyes closed—in the dream, that is—and I was lying there with little electric shocks still going off, and I opened my eyes and it was Stephen Bonnet inside me.

It was such a shock it woke me up. I felt like I’d been screaming—my throat was all raw—but I couldn’t have been, because Roger and the baby were sound asleep. I was hot all over, so hot I was sweating, but I was cold, too, and my heart was pounding. It took a long time before things settled down enough for me to go back to sleep; all the birds were carrying on.

That’s what finally let me go back to sleep, in fact—the birds. Da—and Daddy, too, come to think of it—told me that the jays and crows give alarm calls, but songbirds stop singing when someone comes near, so when you’re in a forest, you listen for that. With so much racket in the trees by the house, I knew it was safe—nobody was there.

There was a small blank space at the foot of the page. He turned it, feeling his palms sweat and his heartbeat heavy in his ears. The writing resumed at the top of the page. Before, the writing had been fluid, almost hasty, the letters flattened as they raced across the page. Here, they were formed with more care, rounded and upright, as though the first shock of the experience were spent, and she had returned, with a stubborn caution, to think further about it.

I tried to forget it, but that didn’t work. It kept coming back and coming back into my mind, so I finally went out by myself to work in the herb shed. Mama keeps Jemmy when I’m there because he gets in things, so I knew I could be alone. So I sat down in the middle of all the hanging bunches and closed my eyes and tried to remember every single thing about it, and think to myself about the different parts, “That’s okay,” or “That’s just a dream.” Because Stephen Bonnet scared me, and I felt sick when I thought of the end—but I really wanted to remember how. How it felt, and how I did it, so maybe I can do it again, with Roger.

But I keep having this feeling that I can’t, unless I can remember Roger’s secret name.

There the entry stopped. The dreams continued on the next page, but Roger didn’t read further. He closed the book very carefully and slid it back behind the others on the shelf. He rose to his feet and stood looking out the window for some time, unconsciously rubbing his sweating palms over the seams of his breeches.

D
O YE THINK they’ll share a bed?”

Jamie didn’t raise his voice, but he’d made no effort to lower it, either. Luckily, we were standing at the far end of the terrace, too far away for the bridal couple to hear. A number of heads turned in our direction, though.

Ninian Bell Hamilton was openly staring at us. I smiled brightly and fluttered my closed fan at the elderly Scotsman in greeting, meanwhile giving Jamie a swift nudge in the ribs.

“A nice, respectable sort of thing for a nephew to be wondering about his aunt,” I said under my breath.

Jamie shifted out of elbow range and lifted an eyebrow at me.

“What’s respectable to do with it? They’ll be married. And well above the age of consent, both o’ them,” he added, with a grin at Ninian, who went bright pink with smothered mirth. I didn’t know how old Duncan Innes was, but my best guess put him in his mid-fifties. Jamie’s aunt Jocasta had to be at least a decade older.

I could just see Jocasta over the heads of the intervening crowd, graciously accepting the greetings of friends and neighbors at the far end of the terrace. A tall woman gowned in russet wool, she was flanked by huge stone vases holding sprays of dried goldenrod, and her black butler Ulysses stood at her shoulder, dignified in wig and green livery. With an elegant white lace cap crowning her bold MacKenzie bones, she was undeniably the queen of River Run Plantation. I stood on tiptoe, searching for her consort.

Duncan was slightly shorter than Jocasta, but he should still have been visible. I’d seen him earlier in the morning, dressed in an absolute blaze of Highland finery, in which he looked dashing, if terribly self-conscious. I craned my neck, putting a hand on Jamie’s arm to keep my balance. He grabbed my elbow to steady me.

“What are ye looking for, Sassenach?”

“Duncan. Shouldn’t he be with your aunt?”

No one could tell by looking that Jocasta was blind—that she stood between the big vases to keep her bearings, or that Ulysses was there to whisper in her ear the names of approaching guests. I saw her left hand drift outward from her side, touch empty air, and drift back. Her face didn’t change, though; she smiled and nodded, saying something to Judge Henderson.