ROGER LAY IN BED, savoring the lingering sense of the day’s accomplishments, the relief of disasters averted, and the sight of his wife, the light from the embers glowing through the thin linen of her shift as she knelt by the hearth, touching her skin and the ends of her hair with light, so that she looked illuminated from within.
The fire banked for the night, she rose and peered at Jemmy, curled up in his trundle and looking deceptively angelic, before coming to bed.
“You look contemplative,” she said, smiling as she climbed onto the mattress. “What are you thinking about?”
“Trying to think what on earth I might have said that Mr. MacNeill could possibly have thought was Latin, let alone a Catholic reference,” he replied, companionably making room for her.
“You didn’t start singing ‘Ave Maria’ or anything,” she assured him. “I would have noticed.”
“Mm,” he said, and coughed. “Don’t mention the singing, aye?”
“It’ll get better,” she said firmly, and turned, pushing and squirming, to make a nest for herself. The mattress was stuffed with wool, much more comfortable—and a hell of a lot quieter—than corn shucks, but very prone to lumps and odd hollows.
“Aye, maybe,” he said, though thinking, Maybe. But it will never be what it was. No point in thinking of that, though; he’d grieved as much as he meant to. It was time to make the best of things and get on.
Comfortable at last, she turned to him, sighing in contentment as her body seemed to melt momentarily and remold itself around him—one of her many small, miraculous talents. She had put her hair in a thick plait for sleeping, and he ran his hand down its length, recalling the snake with a brief shudder. He wondered what Claire had done with it. Likely set it free in her garden to eat mice, pragmatist that she was.
“Did you figure out which harlot story it was you left out?” Brianna murmured, moving her hips against his in a casual but definitely nonaccidental sort of way.
“No. There are a terrible lot of harlots in the Bible.” He took the tip of her ear very gently between his teeth and she drew a deep, sudden breath.
“Whassa harlot?” said a small, sleepy voice from the trundle.
“Go to sleep, mate—I’ll tell ye in the morning,” Roger called, and slid a hand down over Brianna’s very round, very solid, very warm hip.
Jemmy would almost certainly be asleep in seconds, but they contented themselves with small, secret touches beneath the bedclothes, waiting to be sure he was soundly asleep. He slept like the dead, once firmly in dreamland, but had more than once roused from the drowsy foreshore at very awkward moments, disturbed by his parents’ unseemly noises.
“Is it like you thought it would be?” Bree asked, putting a thoughtful thumb on his nipple and rotating it.
“Is what—oh, the preaching. Well, bar the snake . . .”
“Not just that—the whole thing. Do you think . . .” Her eyes searched his, and he tried to keep his mind on what she was saying, rather than what she was doing.
“Ah . . .” His hand clamped over hers, and he took a deep breath. “Yeah. Ye mean am I still sure? I am; I wouldna have done such a thing if I weren’t.”
“Dad—Daddy—always said it was a great blessing to have a calling, to know that you were meant to be something in particular. Do you think you’ve always had a—a calling?”
“Well, for a time, I had the fixed notion that I was meant to be a deep-sea diver,” he said. “Don’t laugh; I mean it. What about you?”
“Me?” She looked surprised, then pursed her lips, thinking. “Well, I went to a Catholic school, so we were all urged to think about becoming priests or nuns—but I was pretty sure I didn’t have a religious vocation.”
“Thank God,” he said, with a fervency that made her laugh.
“And then for quite a while, I thought I should be a historian—that I wanted to be one. And it was interesting,” she said slowly. “I could do it. But—what I really wanted was to build things. To make things.” She pulled her hand out from under his and waggled her fingers, long and graceful. “But I don’t know that that’s a calling, really.”
“Do ye not think motherhood is a calling, of sorts?” He was on delicate ground here. She was several days late, but neither of them had mentioned it—or was going to, yet.
She cast a quick glance over her shoulder at the trundle bed, and made a small grimace, whose import he couldn’t read.
“Can you call something that’s accidental for most people a calling?” she asked. “I don’t mean it isn’t important—but shouldn’t there be some choice involved?”
Choice. Well, Jem had been thoroughly an accident, but this one—if there was one—they’d chosen, all right.
“I don’t know.” He smoothed the long rope of her braid against her spine, and she pressed closer in reflex. He thought she felt somehow riper than usual; something about the feel of her breasts. Softer. Bigger.
“Jem’s asleep,” she said softly, and he heard the surprisingly deep, slow breathing from the trundle. She put her hand back on his chest, the other somewhat lower.
A little later, drifting toward dreamland himself, he heard her say something, and tried to rouse enough to ask her what it was, but managed only a small interrogative “Mm?”
“I’ve always thought I do have a calling,” she repeated, looking upward at the shadows in the beamed ceiling. “Something I was meant to do. But I don’t know yet what it is.”
“Well, ye definitely weren’t meant to be a nun,” he said drowsily. “Beyond that—I couldna say.”
THE MAN’S FACE was in darkness. He saw an eye, a wet shine, and his heart beat in fear. The bodhrana were talking.
There was wood in his hand, a tipper, a club—it seemed to change in size, immense, yet he handled it lightly, part of his hand, it beat the drumhead, beat in the head of the man whose eyes turned toward him, shining with terror.
Some animal was with him, something large and half-seen, brushing eager past his thighs into the dark, urgent for blood, and he after it, hunting.
The club came down, and down, and upanddown, upanddown, upanddown with the waggle of his wrist, the bodhran live and talking in his bones, the thud that shivered through his arm, a skull breaking inward with a wet, soft sound.
Joined for that instant, joined closer than man and wife, hearts one, terror and bloodlust both yielding to that soft, wet thud and the empty night. The body fell, and he felt it go away from him, a rending loss, felt earth and pine needles rough against his cheek as he fell.
The eyes shone wet and empty, and the face slack-lipped in firelight, one he knew, but he knew not the name of the dead, and the animal was breathing in the night behind him, hot breath on his nape. Everything was burning: grass, trees, sky.
The bodhrana were talking in his bones, but he could not make it out what they said, and he beat the ground, the soft limp body, the burning tree in a rage that made sparks fly, to make the drums leave his blood, speak clearly. Then the tipper flew free, his hand struck the tree and burst into flame.
He woke with his hand on fire, gasping. He brought his knuckles to his mouth by instinct, tasting silver blood. His heart was hammering so that he could scarcely breathe, and he fought the notion, trying to slow his heart, keep breathing, keep panic at bay, stop his throat closing up and strangling him.
The pain in his hand helped, distracting him from the thought of suffocation. He’d thrown a punch in his sleep, and hit the log wall of the cabin square. Jesus, it felt like his knuckles had burst. He pressed the heel of his other hand against them, hard, gritting his teeth.
Rolled onto his side and saw the wet shine of eyes in the ghost of firelight and would have screamed, if he’d had any breath.
“Are you all right, Roger?” Brianna whispered, voice urgent. Her hand touched his shoulder, his back, the curve of his brow, quickly seeking injury.
“Yeah,” he said, fighting for breath. “Bad . . . dream.” He wasn’t dreaming of suffocation; his chest was tight, every breath a conscious effort.
She threw back the covers and rose in a rustle of sheets, pulling him up.
“Sit up,” she said, low-voiced. “Wake all the way up. Breathe slow; I’ll make you some tea—well, something hot, at least.”
He hadn’t any breath to protest. The scar on his throat was a vise. The first agony in his hand had subsided; now it began to throb in time to his heart—fine, that was all he needed. He fought back the dream, the sense of drums beating in his bones, and in the struggle, found his breath start to ease. By the time Brianna brought him a mug of hot water poured over something foul-smelling, he was breathing almost normally.
He declined to drink whatever it was, whereupon she thriftily used it to bathe his scraped knuckles instead.
“Do you want to tell me about the dream?” She was heavy-eyed, still yearning for sleep, but willing to listen.
He hesitated, but he could feel the dream hovering in the night-still air, just behind him; to keep silent and lie back in the dark was to invite its return. And perhaps she should know what the dream had told him.
“It was a muddle, but to do with the fight—when we went to bring Claire back. The man—the one I killed—” The word stuck in his throat like a bur, but he got it out. “I was smashing in his head, and he fell, and I saw his face again. And suddenly I realized I’d seen him before; I—I know who he was.” The faint horror of knowing the man showed in his voice, and her heavy lashes rose, her eyes suddenly alert.
Her hand covered his injured knuckles, lightly, questioning.
“Do ye recall a wretched little thieftaker named Harley Boble? We met him, just the once, at the Gathering at Mount Helicon.”
“I remember. Him? You’re sure? It was dark, you said, and all confused—”
“I’m sure. I didn’t know, when I hit him, but I saw his face when he fell—the grass was on fire, I saw it clearly—and I saw it again, just now, in the dream, and the name was in my mind when I woke up.” He flexed his hand slowly, grimacing. “It seems a lot worse, somehow, to kill someone ye know.” And the knowledge of having killed a stranger was quite bad enough. It obliged him to think of himself as one capable of murder.
“Well, you didn’t know him, at the time,” she pointed out. “Didn’t recognize him, I mean.”
“No, that’s true.” It was, but didn’t help. The fire was smoored for the night, and the room was chilly; he noticed the gooseflesh on her bare forearms, the gold hairs rising. “You’re cold; let’s go back to bed.”
The bed still held a faint warmth, and it was unutterable comfort to have her curl close to his back, the heat of her body penetrating his bone-deep chill. His hand still throbbed, but the pain had dulled to a negligible ache. Her arm settled firmly round him, a loose fist curled under his chin. He bent his head to kiss her own knuckles, smooth and hard and round, felt her warm breath on his neck, and had the oddest momentary recollection of the animal in his dream.
“Bree . . . I did mean to kill him.”
“I know,” she said softly, and tightened her arm around him, as though to save him falling.