Drums of Autumn (99 page)

“She kent him, Uncle,” Ian said. He looked disturbed, but not afraid; excited, rather, in an unfamiliar way. “She’d seen him before—with Brianna.”

“Aye?” He tried to speak encouragingly, but the hair on the back of his neck was rising with premonition.

“At Wilmington,” Lizzie got out. “MacKenzie was his name; I heard a sailor call him so.”

Jamie glanced quickly at Ian, who shook his head.

“He didna give his place, but I dinna ken any from Leoch like him. I saw him and heard him speak; he’s maybe a Highlander, but schooled in the south, I’d say—an educated man.”

“And did this Mr. MacKenzie seem to know my daughter?” he asked. Lizzie nodded, frowning in concentration.

“Oh, aye, sir! And she kent him, too—she was afraid of him.”

“Afraid? Why?” He spoke sharply, and she blanched, but she was well started now, and the words came out, tripping and stumbling, but still coming.

“I dinna ken, sir. But she turned white when she saw him, sir, and let out a wee skelloch. Then she went red and white and red again—oh, she was fair upset, anyone could see it!”

“What did he do?”

“Why—why—nothing, then. He came close to her, and held her by the arms, and said to her that she must come awa’ with him. Everyone in the taproom was looking. She pulled herself away, white as my shift, but she said to me as it was all right, I was to wait, and she would come back. And—and then she went out with him.”

Lizzie drew in a quick breath and wiped the end of her nose, which had begun to drip.

“And ye let her go?”

The little bondmaid shrank back, cowering.

“Ooh, I should have gone after her, I ken weel I should, sir!” she cried, face twisted with misery. “But I was afraid, sir, and may God forgive me!”

With an effort, Jamie smoothed the frown from his face and spoke as patiently as he might.

“Aye, well. And what happened, then?”

“Oh, I went upstairs as she told me, and I lay in the bed, sir, prayin’ for all I was worth!”

“Well, that was verra helpful, I’m sure!”

“Uncle—” Ian’s voice was soft but not at all tentative, and his brown eyes were steady on Jamie’s. “She’s no but a wee lassie, Uncle; she did her best.”

Jamie rubbed his hand hard over his scalp.

“Aye,” he said. “Aye, I’m sorry, lass; I didna mean to bite your head off. But will ye no get on wi’ it?”

A hot pink spot had begun to burn on each of Lizzie’s cheeks.

“She—she didna come back till nearly dawn. And—and—”

Jamie had very little patience left, and no doubt it showed on his face.

“I could smell him on her,” she whispered, voice dropping almost to inaudibility. “His…seed.”

The surge of rage took him unaware, like a white-hot bolt of lightning through chest and belly. He felt half choked with it, but clamped it down tight, hoarding it like coals in a hearth.

“He bedded her, then; you’re sure of that?”

Thoroughly mortified at this bluntness, the little bondmaid could do no more than nod.

Lizzie was twisting her hands in the stuff of her gown, leaving her skirt all bunched and crumpled. Her paleness was replaced with a hot flush; she looked like one of Claire’s tomatoes. She couldn’t look at him, but hung her head, staring at the ground.

“Oh, sir. She’s wi’ child, can ye not see? It must be him—she was virgin when he took her. He’s come after her—and she’s afraid of him.”

Quite suddenly, he
could
see it, and felt the hairs rise all up his arms and shoulders. The autumn breeze struck cold through shirt and skin, and the rage turned to sickness. All the small things he had half seen and half thought, not allowing them to rise to the surface of his mind, came together at once in a logical pattern.

The look of her, and the way she acted; one moment lively and another lost in troubled thought. And the glow in her face that was not all from the sun. He knew the look of a woman breeding well enough; if he had known her before, he would have seen the change; but as it was…

Claire. Claire knew. The thought came to him, cold in its certainty. She knew her daughter, and she was a physician. She must know—and hadn’t told him.

“Are ye sure of this?” The coldness froze his rage. He could feel it stuck in his chest—a dangerous, jagged object that seemed to point in every direction.

Lizzie nodded, wordless, and blushed deeper, if such a thing were possible.

“I am her maid, sir,” she whispered, eyes on the ground.

“She means Brianna hasna had her courses in two months,” Ian provided matter-of-factly. The youngest of a family containing several older sisters, he was not constrained by Lizzie’s delicacy. “She’s sure.”

“I—I wouldna have said anything at all, sir,” the girl went on wretchedly. “Only, when I saw the man…”

“D’ye think he’s come to claim her, Uncle?” Ian interrupted. “We must stop him, aye?” The look of angry excitement was clear now, flushing the lad’s lean cheeks with feeling.

Jamie took a deep breath, only then realizing that he had been holding it.

“I dinna ken,” he said, surprised at the calmness of his own tone. He had barely had time to take in the news, let alone to draw conclusions, but the lad was right, there was a danger to be dealt with.

If this MacKenzie wished it, he might claim Brianna as his wife by right of common law, with the coming bairn as evidence of his claim. A court of law would not necessarily force a woman to wed a rapist, but any magistrate would uphold the right of a man to his wife and child—regardless of the wife’s feelings in the matter.

His own parents had wed by such device: fleeing and hiding among the Highland crags until his mother was well with child, so that her brothers were forced to accept the unwelcome marriage. A child was a permanent, undeniable bond between man and woman, and he had cause to know it.

He glanced toward the path that came up through the lower wood.

“Will he not be here on your heels? The Woolams will have told him the way.”

“Nooo,” said Ian thoughtfully. “I shouldna think so. We took his horse, aye?” He grinned suddenly at Lizzie, who giggled faintly in reply.

“Aye? And what’s to stop him taking the wagon, or one of the wagon mules?”

The grin widened substantially on Ian’s face.

“I left Rollo in the wagon bed,” he said. “I think he’ll walk it, Uncle Jamie.”

Jamie was forced to a grudging smile in return.

“That was quick of ye, Ian.”

Ian shrugged modestly.

“Well, I didna want the bastard to take us unawares. And though I’ve not heard Cousin Brianna talk about her laddie lately—yon Wakefield, aye?” He paused delicately. “I didna think she’d want to see this MacKenzie. Especially if—”

“I should say Mr. Wakefield has left his coming ower-long,” Jamie said. “Especially if.” It was no wonder she had stopped looking forward to Wakefield’s coming—once she’d realized. After all, how would a woman explain a swelling belly to a man who’d left her virgin?

He slowly and consciously unclenched his fists. There would be time enough for all that later. For the moment, there was the one thing to be dealt with.

“Fetch my pistols from the house,” he said, turning to Ian. “And you, lassie—” He gave Lizzie something intended for a smile, and reached for the coat he’d hung on the edge of the woodpile.

“Bide ye here, and wait for your mistress. Tell my wife—tell her I’ve gone to give Fergus a hand with his chimney. And dinna speak a word about this to my wife or daughter—or I’ll have your guts for garters.” This last threat was spoken half in jest, but the girl went white as though he’d meant it literally.

Lizzie sank down on the chopping block, her knees wabbling beneath her. She fumbled for the tiny medallion at her neck, seeking reassurance from the cold metal. She watched Mr. Fraser stride down the path, menacing as a great red wolf. His shadow stretched out black before him, and the late autumn sun touched him with fire.

The medal in her hand was cold as ice.

“O dear Mother,” she murmured, over and over. “O Blessed Mother, what have I done?”

45

FIFTY-FIFTY

T
he oak leaves were dry and crackling underfoot. There was a constant fall of leaves from the chestnut trees that towered overhead, a slow yellow rain that mocked the dryness of the ground.

“Is it true that Indians can move through the woods without making a sound, or is that just something they tell you in Girl Scouts?” Brianna kicked at a small drift of oak leaves, sending them flying. Dressed in wide skirts and petticoats that caught at leaves and twigs, we sounded like a herd of elephants ourselves.

“Well, they can’t do it in dry weather like this, unless they swing through the trees like chimpanzees. In a wet spring, it’s another story—even
I
could walk through here quietly then; the ground is like a sponge.”

I drew in my skirts to keep them away from a big elderberry bush, and stooped to look at the fruit. It was dark red, but not yet showing the blackish tinge of true ripeness.

“Two more days,” I said. “If we were going to use them for medicine, we’d pick them now. I want them for wine, though, and to dry like raisins—and for that, you want them to have a lot of sugar, so you wait until they’re nearly ready to drop from their stems.”

“Right. What landmark is it?” Brianna glanced around, and smiled. “No, don’t tell me—it’s that big rock that looks like an Easter Island head.”

“Very good,” I said approvingly. “Right, because it won’t change with the seasons.”

Reaching the edge of a small stream, we separated, working our way slowly down the banks. I had set Brianna to collect cress, while I poked about the trees in search of wood ears and other edible fungi.

I watched her covertly as I hunted, one eye on the ground, one on her. She was knee-deep in the stream with her skirts kilted up, showing an amazing stretch of long, muscular thigh as she waded slowly, eyes on the rippling water.

There was something wrong; had been for days. At first I had assumed her air of tension was due to the obvious stresses of the new situation in which she found herself. But over the past weeks she and Jamie had settled into a relationship that, while still marked by shyness on both sides, was increasingly warm. They delighted each other—and I was delighted to see them together.

Still, there was something troubling her. It had been three years since I had left her—four since she had left me, to live on her own, and she had changed; had grown entirely into a woman now. I could no longer read her as easily as I once had. She had Jamie’s trick of hiding strong feeling behind a mask of calmness—I knew it well in both of them.

In part, I had arranged this foraging expedition as an excuse to talk to her alone; with Jamie, Ian, and Lizzie in the house, and the constant traffic of tenants and visitors come to see Jamie, private conversation there was impossible. And if what I suspected was true, this wasn’t a conversation I wished to have where anyone could hear.

By the time I had my basket half filled with thick, fleshy orange wood ears, Brianna had emerged dripping from the stream, her own basket overflowing with clumps of wet green cress and bunches of jointed horsetail reeds to make into tapers.

She wiped her feet on the hem of her petticoat, and came to join me under one of the huge chestnut trees. I handed her the canteen of cider, and waited till she had had a drink.

“Is it Roger?” I said then, without preliminary.

She glanced at me, a flash of startlement visible in her eyes, and then I saw the tense line of her shoulder ease.

“I wondered whether you could still do that,” she said.

“Do what?”

“Read my mind. I sort of hoped you could.” Her wide mouth quirked awkwardly, trying to smile.

“I expect I’m a bit out of practice,” I said. “But give me a moment.” I reached up and smoothed the hair off her face. She looked at me, but beyond me, too shy to meet my eyes. A whippoorwill called in the far green shadows.

“It’s all right, baby,” I said quietly. “How far gone are you?”

The breath left her in a huge sigh. Her face went slack with relief.

“Two months.”

Now she met my eyes, and I felt a small shock of difference, the kind I had been getting since her arrival. Once, her relief would have been a child’s; a fear confided, and half eased already by the knowledge that I would somehow deal with it. But now it was only the relief of sharing an unbearable secret; she was not expecting me to remedy things. The knowledge that I
couldn’t
do anything in any case didn’t stop my irrational feeling of loss.

She squeezed my hand, as though reassuring
me,
and then sat down with her back against a tree trunk, stretching out her legs in front of her, long feet bare.

“Did you know already?”

I sat down next to her, less gracefully.

“I expect so; but I didn’t know I knew, if that makes sense.” Looking at her now, it was plain to see; the faint pallor of her skin and tiny alterations in her color, the fleeting look of inwardness. I had noticed, but had put the changes down to unfamiliarity and strain—to the flurry of emotions over finding me, meeting Jamie, to worry over Lizzie’s sickness, worry over Roger.

That particular worry now took on a sudden new dimension.

“Oh, Jesus. Roger!”

She nodded, pale in the filtered yellow shade of the chestnut leaves overhead. She looked jaundiced, and no wonder.

“It’s been nearly two months. He should have been here—unless something happened.”

My mind was busy calculating.

“Two months, and now it’s nearly November.” The leaves under us lay thick and soft, yellow and brown, fresh-fallen from the hickory and chestnut trees. My heart dropped suddenly in my chest. “Bree—you’ve got to go back.”

“What?” Her head jerked up. “Go back where?”

“To the stones.” I waved a hand in agitation. “To Scotland, and right away!”

She stared at me, thick brows drawn down.

“
Now?
What for?”

I took a deep breath, feeling a dozen different emotions collide. Concern for Bree, fear for Roger, a terrible sorrow for Jamie, who would have to give her up again, so soon. And for myself.

“You can go through, pregnant. We know that much, because I did it, with you. But honey—you can’t take a baby through that…that…you can’t,” I ended, helpless. “You know what it’s like.” It had been three years since I came through the stones, but I recalled the experience vividly.

Her eyes went black as the little blood remaining in her face drained away.

“You can’t take a child through,” I repeated, trying to get myself under control, think logically. “It would be like jumping off Niagara Falls with the baby in your arms. You’ll have to go back before it’s born, or—” I broke off, making calculations.

“It’s almost November. Ships won’t make the passage between late November and March. And you can’t wait till March—that would mean making a two-month trip across the Atlantic, six or seven months pregnant. If you didn’t deliver on the ship—which would likely kill you or the baby or both—you’d still have to ride thirty miles to the circle, and then make the passage, find your way to help on the other side…Brianna, you can’t do it! You have to go now, as soon as we can manage.”

“And if I do go now—how will I make sure I end up in the right time?”

She spoke quietly, but her fingers were pleating the fabric of her skirt.

“You—I think—well,
I
did,” I said, my initial panic beginning to subside into rational thought.

“You had Daddy at the other end.” She glanced up at me sharply. “Whether you wanted to go to him or not, you had strong feelings for him—he would have pulled you. Or me. But he isn’t there anymore.” Her face tightened, then relaxed.

“Roger knew—knows—how,” she corrected herself. “Geillis Duncan’s book said you could use gems to travel—for protection and navigation.”

“But you and Roger are both only guessing!” I argued. “And so was bloody Geilie Duncan! You might not need either gemstones
or
a strong attachment. In the old fairy tales, when people go inside a fairy’s dun and then return, it’s always two hundred years. If that’s the usual pattern, then—”

“Would you risk finding out it’s not? And it’s not—Geilie Duncan went
far-ther
than two hundred years.”

It occurred to me, a little belatedly, that she had thought all this out herself. Nothing I was saying came as any surprise. And that meant she had also reached her own conclusion—which did not involve taking ship back to Scotland.

I rubbed a hand between my brows, making an effort to match her calmness. The mention of Geillis had called to mind another memory—though one I had tried to forget.

“There’s another way,” I said, fighting for calm. “Another passage, I mean. It’s on Haiti—they call it Hispaniola now. In the jungle, there are standing stones on a hill, but the crack, the passage, is underneath, in a cave.”

The forest air was cool, but it wasn’t the shadows that made my skin ripple into gooseflesh. I rubbed my forearms, trying to erase the chill. I would willingly have erased all memory of the cave of Abandawe as well—I’d tried—but it wasn’t a place easily forgotten.

“You’ve been there?” She leaned forward, intent.

“Yes. It’s a horrible place. But the Indies are a good deal closer than Scotland is, and ships sail between Charleston and Jamaica nearly all year.” I took a deep breath, feeling a little better. “It wouldn’t be easy to go through the jungle—but it would give you a little longer—long enough for us to find Roger.” If he could still be found, I thought, but didn’t say so. That particular fear could be dealt with later.

One of the chestnut leaves spiraled down onto Brianna’s lap, vivid yellow against the soft brown homespun, and she picked it off, smoothing the waxy surface absently with her thumb. She looked at me, blue eyes intent.

“Does this place work like the other one?”

“I don’t know how any of them work! It sounded different, a bell sound instead of a buzzing noise. But it was a passage, all right.”

“You’ve been there,” she said slowly, looking at me under her brows.

“Why? Did you want to go back? After you’d found—him?” There was still a slight hesitation in her voice; she couldn’t quite bring herself to refer to Jamie as “my father.”

“No. It was to do with Geillis Duncan. She found it.”

Brianna’s eyes sprang wide.

“She’s
here?
”

“No. She’s dead.”

I took a deep breath, feeling the remembered shock and tingle of an ax blow run up my arm. Sometimes I thought of her, of Geillis, when I was alone in the forest. Sometimes I thought I heard her voice behind me, and turned around swiftly, but saw no more than the hemlock branches, soughing in the wind. But now and then I felt her eyes on me, green and bright as the springtime wood.

“Quite dead,” I said firmly, and changed the subject. “How did this happen, anyway?”

There wasn’t any pretence of not knowing what I was talking about. She gave me a straight look, one eyebrow raised.

“You’re the doctor. How many ways
are
there?”

I gave her back the look, with interest.

“Didn’t you even think of taking any precautions?”

She glowered, thick brows drawn down.

“I wasn’t
planning
to have sex here!”

I clutched my head, digging my fingers into my scalp in exasperation.

“You think people
plan
it? Good God, how many times did I come to that school of yours and give talks about—”

“All the time! Every year! My mother the sex encyclopedia! Do you have any idea how mortifying it is to have your own mother standing up in front of everybody, drawing pictures of
penises?
”

Her face went the color of the scarlet maples, flushed with the memory.

“I must not have done it all that well,” I said tartly, “since you seem not to have recognized one when you saw it.”

Her face jerked toward me, blood in her eye, but then relaxed when she saw that I was joking—or trying to.

“Right,” she said. “Well, they look different in 3-D.”

Taken unawares, I laughed. After a moment’s hesitation, she joined me, a hesitant giggle.

“You know what I mean. I gave you that prescription before I left.”

She looked down her long, straight nose at me.

“Yes, and I was never so shocked in my life! You thought I’d run right out and have sex with everybody in sight the minute you left?”

“You’re implying that it was only my presence stopping you?” The corner of her wide mouth twitched.

“Well, not
only
that,” she conceded. “But you had something to do with it, you and Daddy. I mean, I—I wouldn’t have wanted to disappoint you.” The twitch had turned to a quiver in an instant, and I hugged her hard, her smooth bright hair against my cheek.

“You couldn’t, baby,” I murmured, rocking her slightly. “We’d never be disappointed in you, never.”

I felt both tension and worry ebb as I held her. Finally, she took a deep breath and let go of me.

“Maybe not you or Daddy,” she said. “But what about—?” She tilted her head toward the now invisible house.

“He won’t—” I began, but then stopped. The truth was that I didn’t know
what
Jamie would do. On the one hand, he was strongly inclined to think that Brianna hung the moon. On the other hand, he had opinions regarding sexual honor that could only be described—for obvious reasons—as old-fashioned, and no inhibitions at all about expressing them.

He was worldly, well educated, tolerant, and compassionate. This did not in any way, shape, or form mean that he shared or understood modern sensibilities; I knew quite well he didn’t. And I couldn’t think that his attitude toward Roger would be tolerant in the slightest.

“Well,” I said dubiously, “I shouldn’t wonder if he didn’t want to punch Roger in the nose or something. But don’t worry,” I added, seeing her look of alarm. “He loves you,” I said, and smoothed the tumbled hair off her flushed face. “He won’t stop.”

I got up, brushing yellow leaves from my skirt.