27
DEATH COMES CALLING
I COULD SCARCELY CONTAIN my impatience until the men had roused and eaten, broken camp—in an irritatingly leisurely fashion—and mounted. At last, though, I found myself once more on horseback, riding through a morning so crisp and cold, I thought the air might shatter as I breathed it.
“Right,” I said without preamble, as my mount nosed her way up next to Jamie’s. “Talk.”
He glanced back at me and smiled. His face was creased with tiredness, but the brisk air—and a lot of very strong coffee—had revived him. Despite the troubled night, I felt quick and lively myself, blood coursing near the surface of my skin and blooming in my cheeks.
“Ye dinna mean to wait for wee Roger?”
“I’ll tell him later—or you can.” There was no way of riding three abreast; it was only owing to a washout that had left a fan of gravel down the mountainside that we were able to pick our way side by side for the moment, out of hearing of the others. I nudged my mount closer to Jamie’s, my knees wreathed in steam from the horse’s nostrils.
Jamie rubbed a hand over his face, and shook himself, as though to throw off fatigue.
“Aye, well,” he said. “You’ll have seen they were brothers?”
“I did notice that, yes. Where the hell did the other one come from?”
“From there.” He lifted his chin, pointing toward the west. Thanks to the washout, there was an unimpeded view of a small cove in the hollow below—one of those natural breaks in the wilderness, where the trees gave way to meadow and stream. From the trees at the edge of the cove, a thin plume of smoke rose upward, pointing like a finger in the still, cold air.
Squinting, I could make out what looked like a small farmhouse, with a couple of rickety outbuildings. As I watched, a tiny figure emerged from the house and headed toward one of the sheds.
“They’re just about to discover that he’s gone,” Jamie said, a trifle grimly. “Though with luck, they’ll think he’s only gone to the privy, or to milk the goats.”
I didn’t bother asking how he knew they had goats.
“Is that their home? Josiah and his brother?”
“In a manner of speaking, Sassenach. They were bond servants.”
“Were?” I said skeptically. Somehow I doubted that the brothers’ terms of indenture had just happened to expire the night before.
Jamie lifted one shoulder in a shrug, and wiped a dripping nose on his sleeve.
“Unless someone catches them, aye.”
“You caught Josiah,” I pointed out. “What did he tell you?”
“The truth,” he said, with a slight twist of the mouth. “Or at least I think so.”
He had hunted Josiah through the dark, guided by the sound of the boy’s frantic wheezing, and trapped him at last in a rocky hollow, seizing him in the dark. He had wrapped the freezing boy in his plaid, sat him down, and with judicious application of patience and firmness—augmented with sips of whisky from his flask—had succeeded at last in extracting the story.
“The family were immigrants—father, mother, and six bairns. Only the twins survived the passage; the rest perished of illness at sea. There were no relatives here—or none that met the boat, at any rate—and so the ship’s master sold them. The price wouldna cover the cost of the family’s passage, so the lads were indentured for thirty years, their wages to be put toward the debt.”
His voice in the telling was matter-of-fact; these things happened. I knew they did, but was much less inclined to accept them without comment.
“Thirty years! Why, that’s—how old were they at the time?”
“Two or three,” he said.
I was taken aback at that. Overlooking the basic tragedy, that was some mitigation, I supposed; if the boys’ purchaser had been providing for their welfare as children . . . but I remembered Josiah’s scrawny ribs, and the bowing of his legs. They hadn’t been all that well provided for. But then, neither were a good many children who came from loving homes.
“Josiah’s no idea who his parents were, where they came from, nor what their names were,” Jamie explained. He coughed briefly, and cleared his throat.
“He kent his own name, and that of his brother—the brother’s name is Keziah—but nothing else. Beardsley is the name o’ the man who took them, but as for the lads, they dinna ken if they’re Scots, English, Irish—with names like that, they likely aren’t German or Polish, but even that’s not impossible.”
“Hmm.” I puffed a cloud of thoughtful steam, temporarily obscuring the farmhouse below. “So Josiah ran away. I imagine that had something to do with the brand on his thumb?”
Jamie nodded, eyes on the ground as his horse picked its way down the slope. The ground to either side of the gravel was soft, and clumps of black dirt showed like creeping fungus through the scree.
“He stole a cheese—he was honest enough about that.” His mouth widened in momentary amusement. “Took it from a dairy shed in Brownsville, but the dairymaid saw him. In fact, the maid said ’twas the other—the brother—who took it, but . . .” Jamie’s ruddy brows drew together for a moment.
“Perhaps Josiah wasna so honest about it as I thought. At any rate, one of the boys took the cheese; Beardsley caught the two of them with it and summoned the sheriff, and Josiah took the blame—and the punishment.”
The boy had run away from the farm following this incident, which took place two years before. Josiah had—he told Jamie—always intended to return and rescue his brother, so soon as he could contrive a place for them to live. Jamie’s offer had seemed a godsend to him, and he had left the Gathering to make his way back on foot.
“Imagine his surprise to find us perched there on the hillside,” Jamie said, and sneezed. He wiped his nose, eyes watering slightly. “He was lurking close by, trying to make up his mind whether to wait until we’d gone, or find out whether we were headed for the farm—thinking if so, we might make a fine distraction for him to slip in and steal away his brother.”
“So you decided to slip in with him instead, and help with the stealing.” My own nose was dripping from the cold. I groped for my handkerchief with one hand, trusting to the horse, Mrs. Piggy, not to catapult us head over heels down the mountain while I blew my nose. I eyed Jamie over the hanky. He still had the clammy, red-nosed look of illness, but his high cheekbones were flushed with the morning sun and he looked remarkably cheerful for a man who’d been out in a cold wood all night. “Fun, was it?”
“Oh, aye, it was. I’ve not done anything like that in years.” Jamie’s eyes creased into blue triangles with his grin. “It reminded me o’ raiding into the Grants’ lands with Dougal and his men, when I was a lad. Creepin’ through the dark, stealing into the barn without a sound—Christ, I had to stop myself in time before I took the cow. Or I would have, if they’d had one.”
I sniffed, and laughed indulgently.
“You are the most complete bandit, Jamie,” I said.
“Bandit?” he said, mildly affronted. “I’m a verra honest man, Sassenach. Or at least I am when I can afford to be,” he amended, with a quick glance behind, to be sure we were not overheard.
“Oh, you’re entirely honest,” I assured him. “Too honest for your own good, in fact. You’re just not very law-abiding.”
This observation appeared to disconcert him slightly, for he frowned and made a gruff sound in his throat that might have been either a Scottish noise of disagreement or merely an attempt to dislodge phlegm. He coughed, then reined in, and standing up in his stirrups, waved his hat to Roger, who was some distance up the slope. Roger waved back, and turned his horse’s nose in our direction.
I pulled my horse in beside Jamie, and dropped the reins on its neck.
“I’ll have wee Roger take the men on to Brownsville,” Jamie explained, sitting back in his saddle, “while I go and call upon the Beardsleys alone. Will ye come with me, Sassenach, or go on wi’ Roger?”
“Oh, I’ll come with you,” I said, without hesitation. “I want to see what these Beardsleys are like.”
He smiled and brushed back his hair with one hand before replacing his hat. He wore his hair loose to cover his neck and ears against the cold, and it shone like molten copper in the morning sun.
“I thought ye might. Mind your face, though,” he said, in half-mocking warning. “Dinna go gape-jawed or gooseberry, and they mention their missing servant lad.”
“Mind your own face,” I said, rather crossly. “Gooseberry, indeed. Did Josiah say that he and his brother were badly treated?” I wondered whether there had been more to Josiah’s leaving than the cheese incident.
Jamie shook his head.
“I didna ask, and he didna say—but ask yourself, Sassenach: would ye leave a decent home to go and live in the woods alone, to make your bed in cold leaves and eat grubs and crickets ’til ye learned to hunt meat?”
He nudged his horse into motion, and rode up the slope to meet Roger, leaving me pondering that conjecture. He returned a few moments later, and I turned my mount in beside him, another question in my mind.
“But if things were bad enough here as to force him to leave—why didn’t his brother go with him?”
Jamie glanced at me, surprised, but then smiled, a little grimly.
“Keziah’s deaf, Sassenach.”
Not born deaf, from what Josiah had told him; his twin had lost his hearing as the result of an injury, occurring at the age of five or so. Keziah could therefore speak, but not hear any but the loudest of noises; and unable to perceive the sound of rustling leaves or shuffling feet, could neither hunt nor avoid pursuit.
“He says Keziah understands him, and doubtless he does. When we crept into the barn, I kept watch below while the lad went up the ladder to the loft. I didna hear a sound, but within a minute, both lads were down on the floor beside me, Keziah rubbing the sleep from his eyes. I hadna realized they were twins; gave me a turn to see the two of them, so like.”
“I wonder why Keziah didn’t bring away his breeches,” I said, touching on one thing that had been puzzling me.
Jamie laughed.
“I asked. Seems he’d taken them off the night before, left them in the hay, and one o’ the barn cats had kittens on them. He didna want to disturb her.”
I laughed too, though with an uneasy memory of pale bare feet, blue-tinged skin showing purple in the firelight.
“Kind lad. And his shoes?”
“He hadn’t any.”
By now we had reached the bottom of the slope. The horses milled for a moment, turning in a slow gyre round Jamie as directions were decided, rendezvous appointed, farewells taken. Then Roger—with only slight evidence of self-consciousness—whistled through his teeth and waved his hat in the air in summons. I watched him ride away, and noticed him half-turn in the saddle, then turn back, looking straight ahead.
“He’s no sure they’ll really follow him,” Jamie said, watching. He shook his head critically, then shrugged, dismissing it. “Aye, well. He’ll manage, or not.”
“He’ll manage,” I said, thinking of the night before.
“I’m glad ye think so, Sassenach. Come on, then.” He clicked his tongue and reined his horse’s head around.
“If you’re not sure Roger can manage, why are you sending him on his own?” I inquired of his back, swaying in the saddle as we turned into the thin copse that lay between us and the now-invisible farm. “Why not keep the men together, and take them into Brownsville yourself?”
“For one thing, he’ll no learn, and I dinna give him the chance. For another . . .” He paused, turning to look back at me. “For another, I didna want the whole boiling coming along to the Beardsleys’ and maybe hearing of their missing servant. The whole camp saw Josiah last night, aye? If you’ve a lad missing, and hear of a lad popping up and causing a stir in the forest nearby, conclusions might be drawn, d’ye not think?”
He turned back, and I followed him through a narrow defile between the pine trees. Dew gleamed like diamonds on bark and needle, and small icy drops fell from the boughs above, startling my skin where they fell.
“Unless this Beardsley is old or infirm, though, won’t he be joining you?” I objected. “Someone’s bound to mention Josiah in his hearing sooner or later.”
He shook his head, not turning round.
“And tell him what, if they do? They saw the lad when we dragged him in, and they saw him run away again. For all they ken, he got clear away.”
“Kenny Lindsay saw them both when you brought them back.”
He shrugged.
“Aye, I had a word wi’ Kenny, while we were saddling the horses. He’ll say nothing.” He was right, I knew. Kenny was one of his Ardsmuir men; he would follow Jamie’s orders without question.
“No,” Jamie went on, skillfully reining round a large boulder, “Beardsley’s not infirm; Josiah told me he’s an Indian trader—taking goods across the Treaty Line to the Cherokee villages. What I don’t know is if he’s to home just now. If he is, though—” He drew breath and paused to cough as the cold air tickled his lungs.
“That’s the other reason for sending the men ahead,” he continued, wheezing slightly. “We’ll not join them again until tomorrow, I think. By that time, they’ll have had a night to drink and be sociable in Brownsville; they’ll scarce recall the lad, and be the less likely to speak of him in Beardsley’s hearing. With luck, we’ll be well away before anything’s said—no chance of Beardsley leaving us to pursue the lad then.”
So he was counting on the Beardsleys being sufficiently hospitable as to put us up for the night. A reasonable expectation, in this neck of the woods. Listening to him cough again, I resolved to sit on his chest this evening, if necessary, and oblige him to be well-greased with camphor, whether he liked it or not.
We emerged from the trees, and I glanced dubiously at the farmhouse ahead. It was smaller than I had thought, and rather shabby, with a cracked step, a sagging porch, and a wide patch of shingles missing from the weathered roof. Well, I had slept in worse places, and likely would again.
The door to a stunted barn gaped open, but there was no sign of life. The whole place seemed deserted, save for the plume of smoke from the chimney.
I had meant what I said to Jamie, though I hadn’t been entirely accurate. He was honest, and also law-abiding—provided that the laws were those he chose to respect. The mere fact that a law had been established by the Crown was not, I knew, sufficient to make it law in his eyes. Other laws, unwritten, he would likely die for.
Still, while the law of property meant somewhat less to an erstwhile Highland raider than it might to others, it hadn’t escaped my attention—and therefore certainly hadn’t escaped his—that he was about to claim both hospitality and duty from a man whose property he had just helped to abscond. Jamie had no deep-seated objection to indenture as such, I knew; ordinarily, he would respect such a claim. That he hadn’t meant that he perceived some higher law in operation—though whether that was friendship, pity, the claim of his earbsachd, or something else, I didn’t know. He had paused, waiting for me.
“Why did you decide to help Josiah?” I asked bluntly, as we made our way across the ragged cornfield that lay before the house. Dry stalks snapped beneath the horses’ feet, and ice crystals glittered on the litter of dead leaves.
Jamie took off his hat, and set it on the saddle before him, as he tied back his hair in preparation for meeting company.
“Well, I said to him that if he was set on this course, so be it. But if he chose to come to the Ridge—alone or with his brother—then we must rid him of the mark on his thumb, for it would cause talk, and word might get back to yon Beardsley, wi’ the devil to pay and a’ that.”
He took a deep breath and let it out, the smoke of it wisping white around his head, then turned to look at me, his face serious.
“The lad didna hesitate for a moment, though he’d been branded; he knew. And I’ll tell ye, Sassenach—while a man may do a desperate thing once from love or courage . . . it takes something more than that, if ye’ve done it once already, and ye know damn well what it’s going to feel like to have to do it again.”
He turned away without waiting for my response, and rode into the dooryard, scattering a flock of foraging doves. He sat his horse upright, his shoulders broad and square. There was no hint of the deep-webbed scars that lined his back beneath the homespun cloak, but I knew them well.
So that was it, I thought. As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man. And the law of courage was the one he had lived by for the longest.