87
EN GARDE
FOR A MOMENT, he didn’t think he was going to be able to lift his hand to the latch-string. Both arms hung as though weighted with lead, and the small muscles of his forearm jumped and trembled with exhaustion. It took two tries, and even then, he could do no more than catch the string clumsily between two middle fingers; his thumb wouldn’t close.
Brianna heard him fumbling; the door opened suddenly and his hand fell nerveless from the latch. He had no more than a glimpse of tumbled hair and a beaming face with a smear of soot down one cheek, and then she had her arms around him, her mouth on his, and he was home.
“You’re back!” she said, letting go.
“I am.” And glad of it, too. The cabin smelt of hot food and lye soap, with a clean, faint tang of juniper overlaying the smoke of reed candles and the muskier scents of human occupation. He smiled at her, suddenly a little less tired.
“Dadee, Dadee!” Jemmy was bouncing up and down in excitement, clinging to a low stool for balance. “Da—deeee!”
“Hallo, hallo,” Roger said, reaching down to pat the boy’s fluffy head. “Who’s a good lad, then?” He missed his mark and his hand brushed a soft cheek instead, but Jemmy didn’t care.
“Me! Me!” he shouted, and grinned with a huge expanse of pink gum, showing off all his small white teeth. Brianna echoed the grin, with substantially more enamel but no less delight.
“We have a surprise for you. Watch this!” She went swiftly toward the table, and sank to one knee, a pace from Jemmy. She stretched out her arms, her hands no more than a few inches from his. “Come to Mama, sweetie. Come here, baby, come to Mama.”
Jemmy swayed precariously, loosed one hand, reached for his mother, then let go and took one drunken step, then two, and fell shrieking into her arms. She clutched him, giggling in delight, then turned him toward Roger.
“Go to Daddy,” Brianna encouraged. “Go on, go to Daddy.”
Jemmy screwed up his face in doubtful concentration, looking like a first-time parachutist at the open door of a circling plane. He swayed dangerously to and fro.
Roger squatted, hands held out, tiredness forgotten for the moment.
“Come on, mate, come on, you can do it!”
Jemmy clung a moment, leaning, leaning, then let go his mother’s hand and staggered drunkenly toward Roger, faster and faster and faster through three steps, falling headlong into Roger’s saving grasp.
He hugged Jemmy tight against him, the little boy wriggling and crowing in triumph.
“Good lad! Be into everything now, won’t you?”
“Like he’s not already!” Brianna said, rolling her eyes in resignation. As though in illustration, Jemmy wriggled loose from Roger’s grasp, dropped to hands and knees, and crawled off at a high rate of speed, heading for his basket of toys.
“And what else have ye been doing today?” Roger asked, sitting down at the table.
“What else?” Her eyes went wide, then narrowed. “You don’t think learning to walk is enough for one day?”
“Of course; it’s wonderful, it’s marvelous!” he assured her hastily. “I was only making conversation.”
She relaxed, appeased.
“Well, then. We scrubbed the floor—not that anybody could tell the difference—” She glanced down with some distaste at the rough, discolored boards underfoot, “—and we made bread and set it to rise, only it didn’t, so that’s why you’re having flat-bread with your dinner.”
“Love flat-bread,” he assured her hastily, catching the gimlet gleam in her eye.
“Sure you do,” she said, lifting one thick red brow. “Or at least you know which side it’s buttered on.”
He laughed. Here in the warm, the chill was wearing off, and his hands were starting to throb, but he felt good, nonetheless. Tired enough to fall off his stool, but good. Good and hungry. His stomach growled in anticipation.
“Flat-bread and butter is a start,” he said. “What else? I smell something good.” He looked at the bubbling cauldron and sniffed hopefully. “Stew?”
“No, laundry.” Bree glowered at the kettle. “The third bloody batch today. I can’t fit much in that dinky thing, but I couldn’t take the wash up to the big kettle at the house, because of washing the floor and spinning. When you do wash outside, you have to stay there, to tend the fire and stir it, so you can’t do much else at the same time.” Her lips clamped and thinned. “Very inefficient.”
“Shame.” Roger passed lightly over the logistics of laundry, in favor of more pressing issues. He lifted his chin toward the hearth.
“I do smell meat. You don’t think a mouse has fallen into the pot?”
Jemmy, catching this, let go his hold on a rag-ball and crawled eagerly toward the fire. “Mouzee? See mouzee?”
Brianna grabbed the collar of Jemmy’s smock and turned the glower on Roger.
“Certainly not. No, baby, no mousie. Daddy’s being silly. Here, Jemmy, come eat.” Letting go the collar, she seized the little boy by the waist and lifted him—kicking and struggling—into his high chair. “Eat, I said! You stay put.” Jemmy arched his back, grunting and squealing in protest, then suddenly relaxed, sliding down out of the chair and disappearing into the folds of his mother’s skirt.
Brianna grappled for him, going red in the face with laughter and exasperation.
“All right!” she said, hauling him upright. “Don’t eat, then. See if I care.” She reached for the litter of toys, spilled out of their basket, and plucked a battered corn-husk doll from the rubble. “Here, see dolly? Nice dolly.”
Jemmy clasped the doll to his bosom, sat down abruptly on his bottom, and began to address the doll in earnest tones, shaking it now and then for emphasis.
“Eat!” he said sternly, poking it in the stomach. He laid the doll on the floor, picked up the basket, and carefully turned it over on top of the dolly. “Say put!”
Brianna rubbed a hand down her face, and sighed. She gave Roger a glance. “And you want to know what I do all day.”
The glance sharpened, as she truly looked at him for the first time.
“And what have you been doing, Mr. MacKenzie? You look like you’ve been in the wars.” She touched his face gently; there was a knot forming on his forehead; he could feel the skin tightening there, and the tiny stab of pain when she touched it.
“Something like. Jamie’s been showing me the rudiments of swordsmanship.”
Her brows went up, and he laughed self-consciously, keeping his hands in his lap.
“Wooden swords, aye?”
Several wooden swords. They’d broken three so far, though the makeshift weapons were stout lengths of wood; not twigs, by any means.
“He stabbed you in the head?” Brianna’s voice had a slight edge, though Roger couldn’t tell whether it was meant for him or for her father.
“Ah . . . no. Not exactly.”
With hazy memories of swashbuckling films and university fencing matches, he’d been unprepared for the sheer brutal force involved in hand-to-hand combat with swords. Jamie’s first blow had knocked Roger’s sword from his hand and sent it flying; a later one had split the wood and sent a large chunk of it rocketing past his ear.
“What does ‘not exactly’ mean?”
“Well, he was showing me something called corps a corps—which appears to be French for ‘Get your opponent’s sword wrapped round your own, then knee him in the balls and punch his head while he’s trying to get loose.’”
Brianna gave a brief, shocked laugh.
“You mean he—”
“No, but it was a near thing,” he said, wincing at the memory. “I’ve a bruise on my thigh the size of my hand.”
“Are you hurt anywhere else?” Brianna was frowning at him, worried.
“No.” He smiled up at her, keeping his hands in his lap. “Tired. Sore. Starving.”
The frown eased and her smile flickered back, though a small line stayed between her brows. She reached for the wooden platter on the sideboard, turned, and squatted by the hearth.
“Quail,” she said with satisfaction, raking a number of blackened bundles out of the ashes with the poker. “Da brought them this morning. He said not to pluck them; just wrap them in mud and bake them. I hope he knows what he’s talking about.” She jerked her head toward the boiling cauldron. “Jemmy helped me with the mud; that’s why we had to do another pot of laundry. Ouch!” She snatched away her hand and sucked a burned finger, then picked up the platter and brought it to the table.
“Let them cool a little,” she instructed him. “I’ll get some of those pickles you like.”
The quail looked like nothing so much as charred rocks. Still, a tantalizing steam drifted up through cracks in a few of the blackened lumps. Roger felt like picking one up and eating it on the spot, burned mud and all. Instead, he fumbled at the cloth-covered plate on the table, discovering the maligned flat-bread underneath. Stiff-fingered, he managed to tear off a good chunk, and stuffed it silently into his mouth.
Jemmy had abandoned his ball of rags under the bed, and come to see what his father was doing. Pulling himself upright by the table leg, he spotted the bread and reached up, making urgent noises of demand. Roger carefully tore off another bit of bread and handed it to his offspring, nearly dropping it in the process. His hands were cut and battered; the knuckles of his right hand blood-grazed, swollen, and black with fresh bruising. Half his right thumbnail had been knocked away, and the bit of raw nail bed showed red and oozing.
“Ow-ee.” Clutching his bread, Jemmy looked at Roger’s hands, then up at his face. “Daddy owee?”
“Dad’s all right,” Roger assured him. “Just tired.”
Jemmy stared at the injured thumb, then slowly raised his hand to his mouth and inserted his own thumb, sucking loudly.
It actually looked like a good idea. His thumb stung and ached, where the nail had gone, and all his fingers were cold and stiff. With a quick glance at Brianna’s back, he lifted his hand and stuck his thumb in his mouth.
It felt alien, thick and hard and tasting of silvery blood and cold grime. Then suddenly it fit, and tongue and palate closed round the injured digit in a warm and soothing pressure.
Jemmy butted him in the thigh, his usual signal for “up,” and he grasped the back of the little boy’s clout with his free hand, boosting him up onto his knee. Jemmy made himself at home, rooting and squirming, then relaxed in sudden peace, bread squashed in one hand, sucking quietly on his thumb.
Roger slowly relaxed, one elbow propped on the table, the other arm round his son. Jemmy’s heavy warmth and heavy breathing against his ribs were a soothing accompaniment to the homely noises Brianna was making as she dished the supper. To his surprise, his thumb stopped hurting, but he left it where it was, too tired to question the odd sense of comfort.
His muscles were gradually relaxing, too, coming off the state of tensed readiness in which he’d held them for hours.
His inner ear still rang with brisk instruction. Use your forearm, man—the wrist, the wrist! Dinna move your hand out like that, keep it near the body. It’s a sword, aye? Not a bloody club. Use the tip!
He’d thrown Jamie heavily against a tree, at one point. And Fraser had tripped over a rock and gone down once, Roger on top. As for any actual damage inflicted with a sword, he might as well have been fighting a cloud.
Dirty fighting is the only kind there is, Fraser had told him, panting, as they knelt at the stream and splashed cold water over sweating faces. Anything else is no but exhibition.
His head jerked on his neck and he blinked, coming back abruptly from the grate and crash of wooden swords to the dim warmth of the cabin. The platter was gone; Brianna was cursing softly under her breath at the sideboard, banging the hilt of his dirk against the blackened lumps of clay-baked quail to crack them open.
Watch your footing. Back, back—aye, now, come back at me! No, dinna reach so far . . . keep your guard up!
And the stinging whap! of the springy “blade” across arms and thighs and shoulders, the solid thunk of it driven bruising home between his ribs, sunk deep and breathless in his belly. Had it been cold steel, he would have been dead in minutes, cut to bleeding ribbons.
Don’t catch the blade on yours—throw it off. Beat, beat it off! Come at me, thrust! Keep it close, keep it close . . . aye, good . . . ha!
His elbow slipped and his hand fell. He jerked upright, barely keeping hold of the sleeping child, and blinked, vision swimming with firelight.
Brianna started guiltily and shut her notebook. Getting to her feet, she thrust it out of sight behind a pewter plate, resting upright on its edge at the back of the sideboard.
“It’s ready,” she said hurriedly. “I just—I’ll get the milk.” She disappeared into the pantry in a rustle of skirts.
Roger shifted Jemmy, got a grip, and lifted the small, solid body up to his shoulder, though his arms felt like cooked noodles. The little boy was sound asleep, but kept his thumb plugged firmly into his mouth.
Roger’s own thumb was wet with spittle, and he felt a flush of embarrassment. Christ, had she been drawing him that way? No doubt; she must have caught sight of him sucking his thumb and thought it “cute”; it wouldn’t be the first time she’d drawn him in what he considered a compromising position. Or was she writing dreams again?
He laid Jemmy gently in his cradle, brushed damp bread crumbs off the coverlet, and stood rubbing his bruised knuckles with the fingers of his other hand. Sloshing noises came from the pantry. Moving quietly, he stepped to the sideboard and extracted the book from its hiding place. Sketches, not dreams.
It was no more than a few quick lines, the essence of a sketch. A man tired to death, still watchful; head on one hand, neck bowed with exhaustion—free arm clamped tight around a treasured, helpless thing.
She’d titled it. En garde, it said, in her slanted, spiky script.
He closed the book and slid it back behind the plate. She was standing in the pantry doorway, the milk jug in her hand.
“Come and eat,” she said softly, eyes on his. “You need your strength.”