Drums of Autumn (71 page)

Mueller’s eyes were a reddish brown, and seemed always to be burning with an inner intensity. They burned more brightly now, for the bruised frailty of the flesh surrounding them. The deep-set eyes fixed on me, and he nodded, once, and then again.

Mueller had shrunk since I had last seen him. All his flesh had fallen away; still a huge man, he was more bone than muscle now, cadaverous and ancient. His eyes were fixed on mine, the only spark of life in a face like crumpled paper.

“Herr Mueller,” I said. My voice sounded calm to my own ears; I hoped it sounded the same to him.
“Wie geht es Euch?”

The old man stood swaying in front of me, as though the evening breeze might knock him down. I didn’t know if he had lost his mount, or left it down below the ridge, but there was no sign of horse or mule.

He took a step toward me, and I took one back, involuntarily.

“Frau Klara,” he said, and there was a note of pleading in his voice.

I stopped, wanting to call out to Lord John, but hesitant. He wouldn’t call me by my first name if he meant to do me harm.

“They are dead,” he said.
“Mein Mädchen. Mein Kind.”
Tears welled suddenly in the bloodshot eyes, and ran slowly down the weather-beaten grooves of his face. The misery in his eyes was so acute that I reached out and took his huge, work-scarred old hand in mine.

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

He nodded again, his old mouth working. He let me lead him to the bench by the door, where he sat down quite suddenly, as though all the strength had gone out of his legs.

The door opened, and John Grey came out. He had his pistol in his hand, but when I shook my head at him, he slid it at once into his shirt. The old man had not let go of my hand; he pulled, forcing me to sit down beside him.

“Gnädige Frau,”
he said, and suddenly turned and embraced me, hugging me tight against his filthy coat. He shook with soundless crying, and even knowing what he had done, I put my own arms around him.

He smelled dreadful, sour and reeking with old age and sorrow, with beer and sweat and filth, and somewhere under all the other odors was the fetor of dried blood. I shuddered, caught in a web of pity, horror, and revulsion, but could not pull away.

He let go, finally, and seemed suddenly to see John Grey, who was hovering nearby, not sure whether to intervene or not. The old man started at sight of him.

“Mein Gott!”
he exclaimed, in tones of horror.
“Er hat Masern!”
The sun was sinking fast, bathing the dooryard in bloody light. It struck Grey full in the face, highlighting the darkened spots on his face, flushing his skin with red.

Mueller turned to me, and frantically seized my face between his huge, horny paws. His thumbs scraped across my cheeks, and an expression of relief came into his sunken eyes, as he saw that my skin was still clear.

“Gott sei dank’,”
he said, and letting go of my face, began to rummage in his coat, saying something in German so urgent and so mumbled that I could make out no more than the occasional word.

“He says he was afraid he would be too late, and is glad that he was not,” Grey said, seeing my bewilderment. He eyed the old farmer with suspicious dislike. “He says he’s brought you something—a charm of some kind. It will ward off the curse, and keep you safe from the illness.”

The old man withdrew an object wrapped in cloth from the recesses of his coat, and laid it in my lap, still babbling in German.

“He thanks you for all your help to his family—he thinks you are a fine woman, as dear to him as one of his daughters-in-law—he says that…” Mueller unfolded the cloth with shaking hands, and the words died in Grey’s throat.

I opened my mouth, but made no sound. I must have made some involuntary movement, for the cloth slipped suddenly to the ground, spilling out the sheaf of white-streaked hair to which a small silver ornament still clung. With it was the leather pouch, the woodpecker’s feathers draggled with blood.

Mueller was still speaking, and Grey was trying to, but I was only dimly aware of their words. Inside my ears echoed the words I had heard a year before, down by the stream, in Gabrielle’s soft voice, translating for Nayawenne.

Her name meant. “It may be; it will happen.” Now it had, and all that was left me for consolation was her words: “She says you must not be troubled; sickness is sent from the gods. It won’t be your fault.”

29

CHARNEL HOUSES

J
amie smelled the smoke long before the village came in sight. Willie saw him stiffen, and tensed in his own saddle, glancing warily around them.

“What?” the boy whispered. “What is it?”

“I dinna ken.” He kept his own voice low, though there was no evidence that anyone was near enough to hear them. He swung down from his horse and handed the reins to Willie, nodding toward a vine-covered cliff face whose foot was shrouded in brush.

“Take the horses behind the cliff, lad,” he said. “There’s a deer path there, that leads up to a spruce grove. Get well in among the trees, and wait there for me.” He hesitated, not wanting to scare the boy, but there was no help for it.

“If I should not come back by dark,” he said, “leave at once. Dinna wait for the morning; go back to the wee stream we just crossed, turn to your left, and follow it to a place where there’s a waterfall—you’ll hear it, even in the dark. Behind the falls there’s a wee cave; the Indians use it when they’re hunting.”

A small rim of white showed all the way around the lad’s blue irises. Jamie took a firm grip of the boy’s leg, just above the knee, to impress the directions upon him, and felt a quiver run through the long muscle of the thigh.

“Stay there till the morning,” he said, “and if I havena caught ye up by then—go home. Keep the sun on your left in the morning, on your right after noon, and in two days give your horse his head; you’ll be near enough home for him to find the way, I think.”

He took a deep breath, wondering what else to say, but there was nothing.

“God go with ye, lad.” He gave Willie as reassuring a smile as he could muster, clapped the horse on the rump to start it, and turned toward the scent of burning.

It wasn’t the normal smell of village fires; not even of the big ceremonial fires that Ian had told him of, when they burned whole trees in the firepit in the center of the village. Those were the size of Beltane fires, Ian said, and he knew the crackle and size of such a blaze. This was much bigger.

With great caution he made a wide circle, at last coming to a small hill from which he knew that he could gain a view of the village. As soon as he emerged from the forest’s shelter, though, he saw it. Rolling plumes of gray smoke were rising from the smoldering remnants of every longhouse in the village.

A thick brownish pall of smoke hung over the forest as far as he could see. He took a quick breath, coughed, and hastily drew a fold of his plaid across his nose and mouth, crossing himself with his free hand. He had smelled burning flesh before, and a sudden cold sweat bathed him at the memory of the funeral pyres of Culloden.

His soul misgave him at the sight of the desolation below, but he searched carefully, squinting through the eye-stinging haze for any sign of life among the ruins. Nothing moved save the wavering smoke, its wraiths gliding silent, wind-driven through the blackened houses. Had it been the Cherokee or the Creek, raiding up from the south? Or one of the remnant Algonkian tribes to the north, the Nanticokes or the Tuteloes?

A gust of wind smote him full in the face with the stink of charred flesh. He bent and vomited, trying to rid himself of his bone-deep knowledge of burnt crofts and murdered families. As he straightened up, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, he heard a dog bark in the distance.

He turned and went quickly downhill toward the sound, his heart beating faster. Raiders would not bring dogs. If there were survivors of the massacre, the dogs would be with them.

Still, he went as silently as possible, not daring to call out. That fire had been burning for less than a day; half the walls were still standing. Whoever had set it was still nearby, without a doubt.

It was a dog that met him; a big yellow mongrel, one that he recognized as belonging to Ian’s friend Onakara. Off its normal territory, the dog neither barked nor rushed him, but stood its ground in the shadow of a pine tree, ears laid back and growling softly. He walked toward it slowly, holding out his closed fist.

“Balach math,”
he murmured to it. “Hold. Where are your people, then?”

The dog extended its muzzle, still growling, and sniffed at the proffered hand. Its nostrils twitched, and it relaxed a little, nosing closer in recognition.

He felt rather than saw a human presence, and looked up into the face of the dog’s owner. Onakara’s face was painted, with white streaks that ran from hair to chin, and behind the pale bars of paint, his eyes were dead.

“What enemy has done this?” Jamie asked, in his halting Tuscaroran. “Does your uncle still live?”

Onakara didn’t answer, but turned and went back into the forest, followed by his dog. Jamie came after them, and within a half-hour’s walk emerged into a small clearing where the survivors had made a temporary camp.

As he passed through the camp, he saw faces he knew. Some of them registered awareness of his presence; others stared sightlessly into a distance he knew too well—the infinite prospect of sorrow and despair. All too many were missing.

He had seen this before, and the ghosts of war and murder dragged at his footsteps as he passed. He had seen a young woman in the Highlands, sitting on the doorstep of her smoking house with her husband’s body at her feet; she had worn the same stunned look as the young Indian woman by the sycamore tree.

Slowly, though, he became aware that something was different here. Wigwam shelters dotted the clearing; bundles lay piled near the edges of the clearing, and horses and ponies were tethered among the trees. This was no hasty exodus of people plundered and fleeing for their lives—it was an orderly retreat, with most of their worldly goods neatly packed and brought along. What in God’s name had happened in Anna Ooka this day?

Nacognaweto was in a wigwam at the far side of the clearing. Onakara lifted the flap and silently nodded Jamie in.

A sudden spark leapt in the older man’s eyes as he entered, but then died at once as Nacognaweto saw his face, with the shadow of reflected grief on it. The chieftain closed his eyes for a moment, and reopened them, composed.

“You have not met with her who heals, nor with the woman whose longhouse I dwelt in?”

Used to the Indian notion that it was rude to speak a person’s name aloud save for the sake of ceremony, Jamie knew he must refer to Gabrielle and old Nayawenne. He shook his head, knowing that that gesture must destroy the last flicker of hope the other had held. It was no consolation, but he took the flask of brandy from his belt, and offered that in mute apology for his failure to bring good news.

Nacognaweto accepted it, and with a tilt of his head, summoned a woman, who dug about in one of the bundles by the hide wall and produced a gourd cup. The Indian poured a quantity of spirit that would flatten a Scotsman, and drank deeply before handing the gourd to Jamie.

He took a small sip for the sake of politeness, and handed back the gourd. It wasn’t polite to come to the point of a visit at once, but he had no time for palaver and he could see that the other had no heart for it.

“What has happened?” he asked bluntly.

“Sickness,” Nacognaweto answered softly. His eyes shone wetly, watering from the fumes of brandy. “We are cursed.”

Haltingly, the story emerged, between the swallows of brandy. Measles had broken out in the village and swept through it like fire. Within the first week, a quarter of the people lay dead; now, at the end, there were no more than a quarter left alive.

When the sickness had begun, Nayawenne had sung over the victims. When more fell sick, she had gone out into the forest in search of…Jamie’s grasp of Tuscarora was not sufficient to interpret the words. A charm, he thought it was—some plant? Or perhaps she looked for a vision that would tell them what to do, how to make amends for whatever evil had brought the sickness on them, or the name of the enemy who had cursed them. Gabrielle and Berthe had gone with her, because she was old and should not go alone—and none of the three had come back.

Nacognaweto was swaying very slightly as he sat, the gourd cup clasped in his hands. The woman bent over him, trying to take it away, but he shrugged her aside, and she let him be.

They had searched for the women, but there was no sign. Perhaps they had been taken by raiders, perhaps they too had fallen ill, and died in the forest. But the village had no
shaman
to speak for them, and the gods had not listened.

“We are cursed.”

Nacognaweto’s words were slurred, and the cup tilted dangerously in his hands. The woman knelt behind him and put her hands on his shoulders, to steady him.

“We left the dead in the houses, and set fire to them,” she said to Jamie. Her eyes were black with sadness, too, but some life still lurked within them. “Now we will go north, to Oglanethaka.” Her hands tightened on Nacognaweto’s shoulders, and she nodded to Jamie. “You go now.”

He went, the grief of the place clinging to him like the smoke that permeated clothes and hair. And within his charred heart as he left the camp sprang a small green shoot of selfishness, relief that the grief was—for this time—not his own. His woman still lived. His children were safe.

He looked up at the sky and saw the dull glow of the sinking sun reflected in the pall of smoke. He lengthened his stride to a hill-walker’s lope that ate the miles. There was not much time; night was coming fast.

P
ART
E
IGHT

Beaucoup