53
BLAME
Jamie spoke barely a word to anyone, between our departure from Fraser’s Ridge, and our arrival at the Tuscaroran village of Tennago. I rode in a state of misery, torn between guilt at leaving Brianna, fear for Roger, and pain at Jamie’s silence. He was short with Ian, and had said no more than absolutely necessary to Jocasta at Cross Creek. To me, he said nothing.
Plainly, he blamed me for not telling him at once about Stephen Bonnet. In retrospect, I blamed myself bitterly, seeing what had come of it. He had kept the gold ring I had thrown at him; I had no idea what he had done with it.
The weather was intermittently bad, the clouds hanging so low to the mountains that on the higher ridges, we traveled for days on end through a thick, cold fog, water droplets condensing on the horses’ coats, so that a constant rain dripped from their manes and moisture shone on their flanks. We slept at night in whatever shelter we could find, each rolled in a damp cocoon of blankets, lying separately around a smoldering fire.
Some of the Indians who had known us at Anna Ooka made us welcome when we reached Tennago. I saw several men eye the casks of whisky as we unloaded our pack mules, but no one made any move to molest them. There were two mule-loads of whisky; a dozen small casks, all of the Fraser share of the year’s distilling—most of our income for the year. A king’s ransom, in terms of trade. Enough to ransom one young Scotsman, I hoped.
It was the best—and the only—thing we had to trade with, but it was also a dangerous one. Jamie presented one cask to the sachem of the village, and he and Ian disappeared into one of the longhouses to confer. Ian had given Roger to some of his friends among the Tuscarora, but did not know where they had taken him. I hoped against hope that it was Tennago. If so, we could be back at River Run within a month.
This was a faint hope, though. In the midst of the bitter quarrel with Brianna, Jamie had admitted telling Ian to make sure that Roger didn’t come back again. Tennago was about ten days journey from the Ridge; much too close for the purposes of an enraged father.
I wanted to ask the women who entertained me about Roger, but no one in the house had any French or English, and I had only enough words of Tuscaroran to allow for basic politeness. Better to let Ian and Jamie handle the diplomatic negotiations. Jamie, with his gift for languages, was competent in Tuscaroran; Ian, who spent half his time hunting with the Indians, was thoroughly fluent.
One of the women offered me a platter containing steaming mounds of grain cooked with fish. I leaned to scoop up a bit with the flat piece of wood provided for the purpose, and felt the amulet swing forward under my shirt, its small weight both a reminder of grief and a comfort to it.
I had brought both Nayawenne’s amulet, and the carved opal I had found under the red cedar tree. I had brought the former, intending to give it back—to whom, I had no idea. The latter might augment the whisky, if additional bargaining power was needed. For the same reason, Jamie had brought every small valuable he possessed—not many—with the exception of his father’s ruby ring, which Brianna had brought to him from Scotland.
We had left the ruby with Brianna, just in case we did not return—the possibility had to be faced. There was no telling whether Geillis Duncan had been right or wrong in her theories regarding the use of gemstones, but at least Brianna would have one.
She had hugged me fiercely and kissed me when we left River Run. I hadn’t wanted to go. Nor had I wanted to stay. I was torn between them once more; between the necessity to stay and look after Brianna, and the equally urgent necessity to go with Jamie.
“You have to go,” Brianna had said firmly. “I’ll be fine; you said yourself I’m healthy as a horse. You’ll be back a long time before I need you.”
She had glanced at her father’s back; he stood in the stableyard, supervising the loading of the horses and mules. She turned back to me, expressionless.
“You have to go, Mama. I trust you to find Roger.” There was an uncomfortable emphasis on the you, and I hoped very much that Jamie couldn’t hear her.
“Surely you don’t think Jamie would—”
“I don’t know,” she interrupted. “I don’t know what he’d do.” Her jaw was set in a way I recognized all too well. Argument was futile, but I tried anyway.
“Well, I know,” I said firmly. “He’d do anything for you, Brianna. Anything. And even if it weren’t you, he’d do everything he possibly could to get Roger back. His sense of honor—” Her face shut up like a trap, and I realized my mistake.
“His honor,” she said flatly. “That’s what matters. I guess it’s all right, though; as long as it makes him get Roger back.” She turned away, bending her head against the wind.
“Brianna!” I said, but she only hunched her shoulders, pulling the shawl tight around them.
“Auntie Claire? We’re ready now.” Ian had appeared nearby, glancing from me to Brianna, his face troubled. I looked from him to Brianna, hesitating, not wanting to leave her like this.
“Bree?” I said again.
Then she had turned back in a flurry of wool and embraced me, her cheek cold against mine.
“Come back!” she whispered. “Oh, Mama—come back safe!”
“I can’t leave you, Bree, I can’t!” I held her tight, all strong bone and tender flesh, the child I had left, the child I had regained—and the woman who now put my arms away from her and stood straight, alone.
“You have to go,” she whispered. The mask of indifference had fallen and her cheeks were wet. She glanced over my shoulder at the archway to the stableyard. “Bring him back. You’re the only one who can bring him back.”
She kissed me quickly, turned and ran, the sound of her steps ringing on the brick path.
Jamie came through the stable arch and saw her, flying through the stormy light like a banshee. He stood still, looking after her, his face expressionless.
“You can’t leave her like this,” I said. I wiped my own wet cheeks with the corner of my shawl. “Jamie, go after her. Please, go and say goodbye, at least.”
He stood still for a moment, and I thought he was going to pretend he hadn’t heard me. But then he turned and walked slowly down the path. The first drops of rain were beginning to fall, splatting on the dusty brick, and the wind belled his cloak as he went.
“Auntie?” Ian’s hand was under my arm, gently urging. I went with him, and let him give me a hand under my foot to mount. Within a few minutes Jamie was back. He had mounted, not looking at me, and, with a signal to Ian, ridden out of the stableyard without looking back. I had looked back, but there was no sign of Brianna.
* * *
Night had long since fallen, and Jamie was still in the longhouse with Nacognaweto and the sachem of the village. I looked up whenever anyone came into the house, but it was never him. At length, though, the hide flap over the doorway lifted, and Ian came in, a small, round figure behind him.
“I’ve a surprise for ye, Auntie,” he said, beaming, and stepped aside to show me the smiling round face of the slavewoman Pollyanne.
Or rather, the ex-slave. For here, of course, she was free. She sat down beside me, grinning like a jack-o’-lantern, and turned back the deerskin mantle she wore to show me the little boy in the crook of her arm, his face as round and beaming as her own.
With Ian as interpreter, her own bits of English and Gaelic, and the odd bit of female sign language, we were soon deep in conversation. She had, as Myers surmised, been welcomed by the Tuscarorans and adopted into the tribe, where her skills at healing were valued. She had taken as husband a man who had been widowed in the measles epidemic, and had presented him with this new addition to the family a few months before.
I was delighted that she had found both freedom and happiness, and congratulated her warmly. I was reassured, too; if the Tuscarorans had treated her so kindly, perhaps Roger had not fared as badly as I feared.
A thought struck me, and I pulled Nayawenne’s amulet from the neck of my buckskin shirt.
“Ian—will you ask if she knows who I should give this to?”
He spoke to her in Tuscaroran, and she leaned forward, fingering the amulet curiously as he spoke. At last she shook her head and sat back, replying in her curious deep voice.
“She says they will not want it, Auntie,” Ian translated. “It is the medicine bundle of a shaman, and it is dangerous. It should have been buried with the person to whom it belonged; no one here will touch it, for fear of attracting the shaman’s ghost.”
I hesitated, holding the leather pouch in my hand. The strange sense of holding something alive had not recurred since Nayawenne’s death. Surely it was no more than imagination that seemed to stir against my palm.
“Ask her—what if the shaman wasn’t buried? If the body couldn’t be found?”
Pollyanne’s round face was solemn, listening. She shook her head when Ian had finished and replied.
“She says that in that case the ghost walks with you, Auntie. She says you should not show it to anyone here—they will be frightened.”
“She isn’t frightened, is she?” Pollyanne caught that on her own; she shook her head, and touched her massive bosom.
“Indian now,” she said simply. “Not always.” She turned to Ian, and explained through him that her own people revered the spirits of the dead; in fact, it was not unusual for a man to keep by him the head or some other part of his grandfather or other ancestor, for protection or advice. No, the thought of a ghost walking with me did not trouble her.
Nor did the notion trouble me. In fact, I found the thought of Nayawenne walking with me to be rather a comfort, under the circumstances. I put the amulet back in my shirt. It brushed soft and warm against my skin, like the touch of a friend.
We talked for some time, until long after the others in the longhouse had gone to their separate cubicles, and the sound of snoring filled the smoky air. We were surprised, in fact, by Jamie’s arrival, which let in a draft of cold air.
It was as Pollyanne made her farewells that she hesitated, trying to decide whether to tell me something. She glanced at Jamie, then shrugged her massive shoulders and made up her mind. She leaned close to Ian, murmured something that sounded like honey trickling over rocks, putting both hands to her face, fingertips against the skin. She then embraced me quickly and left.
Ian stared after her in astonishment.
“What did she say, Ian?”
He turned back to me, his sketchy brows drawn together in concern.
“She says I should tell Uncle Jamie, that the night the woman died in the sawmill, she saw a man.”
“What man?”
He shook his head, still frowning.
“She didna ken him. Only that he was a white man, heavy and square, not so tall as Uncle or I. She saw him come out of the mill, and walk fast into the forest. She was sitting in the door to her hut, in the dark, so she thinks he didna see her—but he passed close enough to the fire that she saw his face. She says he was pockmarked”—here he put his fingertips against his face, as she had—“with a face like a pig.”
“Murchison?” My heart skipped a beat.
“Did the man wear a uniform?” Jamie asked, frowning.
“No. But she was curious to know what he had been doing there; he wasna one of the plantation owners, nor yet a hand or an overseer. So she crept to the mill to see, but when she put her head inside, she knew something evil had happened. She said she smelt blood, and then she heard voices, so she didna go in.”
So it had been murder, and Jamie and I had missed preventing it by a matter of moments. It was warm in the longhouse, but I felt cold at the memory of the thick, bloody air in the sawmill, and the hardness of a kitchen skewer in my hand.
Jamie’s hand settled on my shoulder. Without thinking, I reached up and took it. It felt very good in mine, and I realized that we had not purposely touched each other in nearly a month.
“The dead lass was an army laundress,” he said quietly. “Murchison has a wife in England; I suppose he might have found a pregnant mistress to be an encumbrance.”
“No wonder he was making such a fuss of hunting for whoever was responsible—and then seizin’ on yon poor woman who couldna even speak for herself.” Ian’s face was flushed with indignation. “If he could have got her hanged for it, he’d ha’ thought himself safe, I daresay, the wicked wee scut.”
“Perhaps I will pay a call on the Sergeant, when we return,” Jamie said. “Privately.”
The thought made my blood run cold. His voice was soft and even, and his face calm when I turned to look, but I seemed to see the surface of a dark Scottish pool reflected in his eyes, the water ruffled as though something heavy had just sunk below.
“Don’t you think you’ve enough vengeance to keep you occupied for the moment?”
I spoke more sharply than I intended, and his hand slipped abruptly out of mine.
“I expect so,” he said, both face and voice without expression. He turned to Ian.
“Wakefield—or MacKenzie, or whatever the man’s name is—is a good way to the north. They sold him to the Mohawk; a small village below the river. Your friend Onakara has agreed to guide us; we’ll leave at first light.”
He rose and walked away, toward the far end of the house. Everyone else had already retired for the night. Five hearths burned, down the length of the house, each with its own smokehole, and the far wall was divided into cubicles, one for each couple or family, with a low, wide shelf for sleeping and space beneath for storage.
Jamie stopped at the cubicle assigned for our use, where I had left our cloaks and bundles. He slipped off his boots, unbelted the plaid he wore over breeches and shirt, and disappeared into the darkness of the sleeping space without a backward glance.
I scrambled to my feet, meaning to follow him, but Ian stopped me with a hand on my arm.
“Auntie,” he said hesitantly. “Will ye not forgive him?”
“Forgive him?” I stared at him. “For what? For Roger?”
He grimaced.
“No. It was a grievous mistake, but we would do the same again, thinking matters as we did. No—for Bonnet.”
“For Stephen Bonnet? How can he possibly think I blame him for that? I’ve never said such a thing to him!” And I had been too busy thinking that he blamed me, to even consider it.
Ian scratched a hand through his hair.
“Well…do ye not see, Auntie? He blames himself for it. He has, ever since the man robbed us on the river; and now wi’ what he’s done to my cousin…” He shrugged, looking mildly embarrassed. “He’s fair eaten up with it, and knowing that you’re angry wi’ him—”
“But I’m not angry with him! I thought he was angry with me, because I didn’t tell him Bonnet’s name right away.”
“Och.” Ian looked as though he didn’t know whether to laugh or look distressed. “Well, I daresay it would ha’ saved us a bit of trouble if ye had, but no, I’m sure it’s not that, Auntie. After all, by the time Cousin Brianna told ye, we’d already met yon MacKenzie on the mountainside and done him a bit of no good.”
I took in a deep breath and blew it out again.
“But you think he thinks I’m angry at him?”
“Oh, anyone could see ye are, Auntie,” he assured me earnestly. “Ye dinna look at him or speak to him save for what ye must—and,” he said, clearing his throat delicately, “I havena seen ye go to his bed, anytime this month past.”
“Well, he hasn’t come to mine, either!” I said hotly, before reflecting that this was scarcely a suitable conversation to be having with a seventeen year-old boy.
Ian hunched his shoulders and gave me an owlish look.
“Well, he’s his pride, hasn’t he?”
“God knows he has,” I said, rubbing a hand over my face. “I—look, Ian, thank you for saying something to me.”
He gave me one of the rare sweet smiles that transformed his long, homely face.
“Well, I do hate to see him suffer. I’m fond of Uncle Jamie, aye?”
“So am I,” I said, and swallowed the small lump in my throat. “Good night, Ian.”
* * *
I walked softly down the length of the house, past cubicles in which whole families slept together, the sound of their mingled breathing a peaceful descant to the anxious beating of my heart. It was raining outside; water dripped from the smokeholes, sizzling in the embers.
Why had I not seen what Ian had? That was easy to answer; it wasn’t anger, but my own sense of guilt that had blinded me. I had kept back my knowledge of Bonnet’s involvement as much because of the gold wedding ring as because Brianna had asked me to; I could have persuaded her to tell Jamie, had I tried.
She was right; he would undoubtedly go after Stephen Bonnet sooner or later. I had somewhat more confidence in Jamie’s success than she did, though. No, it had been the ring that had made me keep silence.
And why should I feel guilty over that? There was no sensible answer; it had been instinct, not conscious thought, to hide the ring. I had not wanted to show it to Jamie, to put it back on my finger in front of him. And yet I had wanted—needed—to keep it.
My heart squeezed small, thinking of the past few weeks, of Jamie, going grimly about the necessities of reparation in loneliness and guilt. That was why I had come with him, after all—because I was afraid that if he went alone, he might not come back. Spurred by guilt and courage, he might go to reckless lengths; with me to consider, I knew he would be careful. And all the time he had thought himself not only alone but bitterly reproached by the one person who could—and should—have offered him comfort.
“Eaten up with it” indeed.
* * *
I paused by the cubicle. The shelf was some eight feet wide, and he lay well back; I could see little more of him than a humped shape under a blanket made of rabbit skins. He lay very still, but I knew he wasn’t asleep.
I climbed onto the platform, and once safe within the shadows of the cubicle, slipped out of my clothes. It was fairly warm in the longhouse, but my bare skin prickled and my nipples tightened. My eyes had grown accustomed to the dimness; I could see that he lay on his side facing me. I caught the shine of his eyes in the dark, open and watching me.
I knelt down and slid under the blanket, the fur soft against my skin. Without stopping to think too much, I rolled to face him, pressing my nakedness against him, face buried in his shoulder.
“Jamie,” I whispered to him. “I’m cold. Come and warm me. Please?”