VISIT TO A HAUNTED GARDEN
I BLOODY KNEW. From the moment I woke to birdsong and a cold quilt beside me, I knew. Jamie often rose before dawn, for hunting, fishing, or travel—but he invariably touched me before he left, leaving me with a word or a kiss. We’d lived long enough to know how chancy life could be and how swiftly people could be parted forever. We’d never spoken of it or made a formal custom of it, but we almost never parted without some brief token of affection.
And now he’d gone off in the dark, without a word.
“You bloody, bloody man!” I said, and thumped the ground with my fist in frustration.
I made my way down the hill, quilts folded under my arm, fuming. Jenny. He’d gone and talked to Jenny. Of course he had; why hadn’t I foreseen that?
He’d agreed not to ask me. He hadn’t said he wouldn’t ask anyone else. And while Jenny clearly loved me, I’d never been under any illusions as to where her ultimate loyalty lay. She wouldn’t have voluntarily given up my secret, but if her brother asked her, point-blank, she would certainly have told him.
The sun was spreading warmth like honey over the morning, but none of it was reaching my cold bones.
He knew. And he’d gone a-hunting.
I DIDN’T NEED to look but looked anyway. Jamie’s rifle was gone from its place behind the door.
“He came in early,” Amy Higgins told me, spooning out a bowl of parritch for me. “We were all in bed still, but he called out soft, and Bobby got up to unbar the door. I would have fed him, but he said he was well enough and away he went. Hunting, he said.”
“Of course,” I said. The bowl was warm to my hands, and in spite of what I thought—what I knew—was going on, the thick grainy smell of it was enticing. And there was honey, and a little cream kept back from the butter-making; Amy allowed these in deference to Bobby’s debauched English tastes, though she stuck to the usual virtuously Scottish salt on parritch herself.
Eating settled me, a little. The blunt fact was that there was absolutely nothing I could do. I didn’t know the lumpkin’s name or where he lived. Jamie might. If he’d talked to Jenny right away, he could easily have sent word to Beardsley’s trading post and asked who was the fat man with the port-wine stain on his face. Even if he didn’t yet know and was on his way to find out, I had no means of catching up with him—let alone stopping him.
“A Hieland man canna live wi’ a man who’s raped his wife nearby, nor should he.” That’s what Jenny had said to me. In warning, I now realized.
“Gak!” It was wee Rob, toddling round the room, who had seized my skirt in both hands and was giving me a toothy smile—all four teeth of it. “Hungy!”
“Hallo, there,” I said, smiling back despite my disquiet. “Hungry, you say?” I extended a small spoonful of honeyed parritch in his direction, and he went for it like a starving piranha. We shared the rest of the bowl in companionable silence—Rob wasn’t a chatty child—and I decided that I would work in the garden today. I didn’t want to go far afield, as Rachel could go into labor at any moment, from the looks of it. And a short spell of solitude amid the soothing company of the vegetable kingdom might lend me a bit of much-needed calm.
It would also get me out of the cabin, I reflected, as Rob, having licked the bowl, handed it back to me, toddled across the cabin, and, lifting his dress, peed in the hearth.
THERE WOULD BE a new kitchen garden near the new house. It was measured and planned, the earth broken, and poles for the deer fence had begun accumulating. But there was little point in walking that far each day to tend a garden when there was not yet a house to live in. I minded Amy’s plot in the meantime, sneaking occasional seedlings and propagules into it between the cabbages and turnips—but today I meant to visit the Old Garden.
That’s what the people of the Ridge called it, and they didn’t go there. I privately called it Malva’s Garden, and did.
It was on a small rise behind where the Big House had stood. With the new house rising already in my mind, I passed the bare spot where the Big House had been, without a qualm. There were more exigent things to be qualm about, I thought, and sniggered.
“You are losing your mind, Beauchamp,” I murmured, but felt better.
The deer fence had weathered and broken down in spots, and the deer had naturally accepted the invitation. Most of the bulbs had been pawed up and eaten, and while a few of the softer plants, like lettuce and radishes, had escaped long enough to reseed themselves, the growing plants had been nibbled to scabby white stalks. But a very thorny wild rose brier flourished away in one corner, cucumber vines crawled over the ground, and a massive gourd vine rippled over a collapsed portion of the fence, thick with infant fruits.
A monstrous pokeweed rose from the center of the patch, nearly ten feet high, its thick red stem supporting a wealth of long green leaves and hundreds of purplish-red flower stalks. The nearby trees had grown immensely, shading the plot, and in the diffuse green light the long, nubbly stalks looked like nudibranchs, those colorful sea slugs, gently swaying in currents of air rather than water. I touched it respectfully in passing; it had an odd medicinal smell, well deserved. There were a number of useful things one could do with pokeweed, but eating it wasn’t one of them. Which was to say, people did eat the leaves on occasion, but the chances of accidental poisoning made it not worth the trouble of preparation unless there was absolutely nothing else to eat.
I couldn’t remember the exact spot where she’d died. Where the pokeweed grew? That would be entirely apropos, but maybe too poetic.
Malva Christie. A strange, damaged young woman—but one I’d loved. Who perhaps had loved me, as well as she could. She’d been with child and near her time when her brother—the child’s father—had cut her throat, here in the garden.
I’d found her moments later and tried to save the child, performing an emergency cesarean with my gardening knife. He’d been alive when I pulled him from his mother’s womb but died at once, the brief flame of his life a passing blue glow in my hands.
Did anyone name him? I wondered suddenly. They’d buried the baby boy with Malva, but I didn’t recall anyone mentioning his name.
Adso came stalking through the weeds, eyes intent on a fat robin poking busily for worms in the corner. I kept still, watching, admiring the lithe way in which he sank imperceptibly lower as he came more slowly, creeping on his belly for the last few feet, pausing, moving, pausing again for a long, nerve-racking second, no more than the tip of his tail a-twitch.
And then he moved, too fast for the eye to see, and in a brief and soundless explosion of feathers, it was over.
“Well done, cat,” I said, though in fact the sudden violence had startled me a little. He paid no attention but leapt through a low spot in the fence, his prey in his mouth, and disappeared to enjoy his meal.
I stood still for a moment. I wasn’t looking for Malva; the Ridge folk said that her ghost haunted the garden, wailing for her child. Just the sort of thing they would think, I thought, rather uncharitably. I hoped her spirit had fled and was at peace. But I couldn’t help thinking, too, of Rachel, so very different a soul, but a young mother, as well, so near her time, and so nearby.
My old gardening knife was long gone. But Jamie had made me a new one during the winter evenings in Savannah, the handle carved from whalebone, shaped, as the last one had been, to fit my hand. I took it from its sheath in my pocket and nicked my wrist, not stopping to think.
The white scar at the base of my thumb had faded, no more now than a thin line, almost lost in the lines that scored my palm. Still legible, though, if you knew where to look: the letter “J” he had cut into my flesh just before Culloden. Claiming me.
I massaged the flesh near the cut gently, until a full red drop ran down the side of my wrist and fell to the ground at the foot of the pokeweed.
“Blood for blood,” I said, the words quiet in themselves but seeming drowned by the rustle of leaves all around. “Rest ye quiet, child—and do no harm.”
DO NO HARM. Well, you tried. As doctor, as lover, as mother and wife. I said a silent goodbye to the garden and went up the hill, toward the MacDonalds’ cottage.
How would Jamie do it? I wondered, and was surprised to find that I did wonder, and wondered in a purely dispassionate way. He’d taken the rifle. Would he pick the man off at a distance, as if he were a deer at water? A clean shot, the man dead before he knew it.
Or would he feel he must confront the man, tell him why he was about to die—offer him a chance to fight for his life? Or just walk up with the cold face of vengeance, say nothing, and kill the man with his hands?
“Ye canna have been marrit to a Hieland man all these years and not ken how deep they can hate.”
I really didn’t want to know.
Ian had shot Allan Christie with an arrow, as one would put down a rabid dog, and for precisely similar reasons.
I’d seen Jamie’s hate flame bright the night he saved me and said to his men, “Kill them all.”
How was it now for him? If the man had been found on that night, there would have been no question that he would die. Should it be different now, only because time had passed?
I walked in the sun now but still felt cold, the shadows of Malva’s Garden with me. The matter was out of my hands; no longer my business, but Jamie’s.
I MET JENNY on the path, coming up briskly, a basket on her arm and her face alight with excitement.
“Already?” I exclaimed.
“Aye, Matthew MacDonald came down a half hour ago to say her water’s broken. He’s gone to find Ian now.”
He had found Ian; we met the two young men in the dooryard of the cabin, Matthew bright red with excitement, Ian white as a sheet under his tan. The door of the cabin was open; I could hear the murmur of women’s voices inside.
“Mam,” Ian said huskily, seeing Jenny. His shoulders, stiff with terror, relaxed a little.
“Dinna fash yourself, a bhalaich,” she said comfortably, and smiled sympathetically at him. “Your auntie and I have done this a time or two before. It will be all right.”
“Grannie! Grannie!” I turned to find Germain and Fanny, both covered with dirt and with sticks and leaves in their hair, faces bright with excitement. “Is it true? Is Rachel having her baby? Can we watch?”
How did it work? I wondered. News in the mountains seemed to travel through the air.
“Watch, forbye!” Jenny exclaimed, scandalized. “Childbed isna any kind of a place for men. Be off with ye this minute!”
Germain looked torn between disappointment and pleasure at being called a man. Fanny looked hopeful.
“I’m no-t a man,” she said.
Jenny and I both looked dubiously at her and then at each other.
“Well, ye’re no quite a woman yet, either, are ye?” Jenny said to her. If not, she was close. Tiny breasts were beginning to show when she was in her shift, and her menarche wasn’t far off.
“I’ve s-seen babies bor-n.” It was a simple statement of fact, and Jenny nodded slowly.
“Aye. All right, then.”
Fanny beamed.
“What do we do?” Germain demanded, indignant. “Us men.”
I smiled, and Jenny gave a deep chuckle that was older than time. Ian and Matthew looked startled, Germain quite taken aback.
“Your uncle did his part of the business nine months ago, lad, just as ye’ll do yours when it’s time. Now, you and Matthew take your uncle awa’ and get him drunk, aye?”
Germain nodded quite seriously and turned to Ian.
“Do you want Amy’s wine, Ian, or shall we use Grandda’s good whisky, do ye think?”
Ian’s long face twitched, and he glanced at the open cabin door. A deep grunt, not quite a groan, came out and he looked away, paling further. He swallowed and groped in the leather bag he wore at his waist, coming out with what looked like a rolled animal skin of some kind and handing it to me.
“If—” he started, then stopped to gather himself and started again. “When the babe is born, will ye wrap him—or her,”—he added hastily, “in this?”
It was a small skin, soft and flexible, with very thick, fine fur in shades of gray and white. A wolf, I thought, surprised. The hide of an unborn wolf pup.
“Of course, Ian,” I said, and squeezed his arm. “Don’t worry. It will be all right.”
Jenny looked at the small, soft skin and shook her head.
“I doubt, lad, if that will half-cover your bairn. Have ye no seen the size o’ your wife lately?”
AND YOU KNOW THAT
JAMIE CAME HOME three days later, with a large buck tied to Miranda’s saddle. The horse seemed unenthused about this, though tolerant, and she whuffed air through her nostrils and shivered her hide when he dragged the carcass off, letting it fall with a thump.
“Aye, lass, ye’ve done brawly,” he said, clapping her on the shoulder. “Is Ian about, a nighean?” He paused to kiss me briefly, glancing up the hill toward the MacDonald cottage. “I could use a bit of help wi’ this.”
“Oh, he’s here,” I said, smiling. “I don’t know if he’ll come skin your deer for you, though. He’s got a new son and won’t let the baby out of his sight.”
Jamie’s face, rather tired and worn, broke into a grin.
“A son? The blessing of Bride and Michael be on him! A braw lad?”
“Very,” I assured him. “I think he must weigh almost nine pounds.”
“Poor lass,” he said, with a sympathetic grimace. “And her first, too. Wee Rachel’s all right, though?”
“Rather tired and sore, but quite all right,” I assured him. “Shall I bring you some beer, while you take care of the horse?”
“A good wife is prized above rubies,” he said, smiling. “Come to me, mo nighean donn.” He reached out a long arm and drew me in, holding me close against him. I put my arms around him and felt the quiver of his muscles, exhausted, and the sheer hard strength still in him, that would hold him up, no matter how tired he might be. We stood quite still for some time, my cheek against his chest and his face against my hair, drawing strength from each other for whatever might come. Being married.
AMID THE GENERAL rejoicing and fuss over the baby—who was still being called Oggy, his parents being spoiled for choice regarding his name—the butchering of the deer, and the subsequent feasting lasting well into the night, it was late morning of the next day before we found ourselves alone again.
“The only thing lacking last night was cherry bounce,” I remarked. “I never saw so many people drink so much of so many different things.” We were making our way—slowly—up to the house site, carrying several bags of nails, a very expensive small saw, and a plane that Jamie had brought back in addition to the deer.
Jamie made a small amused sound but didn’t reply. He paused for a moment to look up at the site, presumably envisioning the outline of the house-to-be.
“D’ye think it should maybe have a third story?” he asked. “The walls would bear it easily enough. Take careful building of the chimneys, though, Keeping them plumb, I mean.”
“Do we need that much room?” I asked doubtfully. There had certainly been times in the old house when I’d wished we’d had that much room: influxes of visitors, new emigrants, or refugees had often filled the place to the point of explosion—mine. “Providing more space might just encourage guests.”
“Ye make it sound like they’re white ants, Sassenach.”
“Wh—oh, termites. Well, yes, there’s a strong superficial resemblance.”
Arrived at the clearing, I piled the nails conveniently and went to bathe my face and hands in water from the tiny spring that flowed from the rocks a little way up the hill. By the time I came back, Jamie had stripped off his shirt and was knocking together a pair of rough sawhorses. I hadn’t seen him with his shirt off for a long time and paused to enjoy the sight. Beyond the simple pleasure of seeing his body flex and move, whipcord muscles moving easily under his skin, I liked knowing that he felt himself safe here and could ignore his scars.
I sat down on an upturned bucket and watched for a time. The blows of his hammer temporarily silenced the birds, and when he stopped and set the sawhorse on its feet, the air rang empty in my ears.
“I wish you hadn’t felt you had to do it,” I said quietly.
He didn’t reply for a moment but pursed his lips as he squatted and picked up a few stray nails. “When we wed—” he said, not looking at me. “When we wed, I said to ye that I gave ye the protection of my name, my clan—and my body.” He stood up then and looked down at me, serious. “Do ye tell me now that ye no longer want that?”
“I—no,” I said abruptly. “I just—I wish you hadn’t killed him, that’s all. I’d—managed to forgive him. It wasn’t an easy thing to do, but I did it. Not permanently, but I thought I could do it permanently, sooner or later.”
His mouth twitched a little.
“And if ye could forgive him, he needn’t die, ye’re saying? That’s like a judge lettin’ a murderer go free, because his victim’s family forgave him. Or an enemy soldier sent off wi’ all his weapons.”
“I am not a state at war, and you are not my army!”
He began to speak, then stopped short, searching my face, his eyes intent.
“Am I not?” he said quietly.
I opened my mouth to reply but found I couldn’t. The birds had come back, and a gang of house finches chittered at the foot of a big fir that grew at the side of the clearing.
“You are,” I said reluctantly, and, standing up, wrapped my arms around him. He was warm from his work, and the scars on his back were fine as threads under my fingers. “I wish you didn’t have to be.”
“Aye, well,” he said, and held me close. After a bit, we walked hand in hand to the biggest pile of barked timber and sat down. I could feel him thinking but was content to wait until he had formed what he wanted to say. It didn’t take him long. He turned to me and took my hands, formal as a man about to say his wedding vows.
“Ye lost your parents young, mo nighean donn, and wandered about the world, rootless. Ye loved Frank”—his mouth compressed for an instant, but I thought he was unconscious of it—“and of course ye love Brianna and Roger Mac and the weans . . . but, Sassenach—I am the true home of your heart, and I know that.”
He lifted my hands to his mouth and kissed my upturned palms, one and then the other, his breath warm and his beard stubble soft on my fingers.
“I have loved others, and I do love many, Sassenach—but you alone hold all my heart, whole in your hands,” he said softly. “And you know that.”
WE WORKED through the day then, Jamie fitting stones for the foundation, me digging the new garden and foraging through the woods, bringing back pipsissewa and black cohosh, mint and wild ginger to transplant.
Toward late afternoon we stopped to eat; I’d brought cheese and bread and early apples in my basket and had put two stone bottles of ale in the spring to keep cold. We sat on the grass, leaning back against a stack of timber that was shaded by the big fir, tired, eating in companionable silence.
“Ian says he and Rachel will come up tomorrow to help,” Jamie said at last, thriftily eating his apple core. “Are ye going to eat yours, Sassenach?”
“No,” I said, handing it over. “Apple seeds have cyanide in them, you know.”
“Will it kill me?”
“It hasn’t so far.”
“Good.” He pulled off the stem and ate the core. “Have they settled on a name for the wee lad yet?”
I closed my eyes and leaned back into the shade of the big fir, enjoying its sharp, sun-warmed scent.
“Hmm. The last I heard, Rachel was suggesting Fox—for George Fox, you know; he was the founder of the Society of Friends, but naturally they wouldn’t call the baby George, because of the king. Ian said he doesn’t think highly of foxes, though, and what about Wolf, instead?”
Jamie made a meditative Scottish noise.
“Aye, that’s no bad. At least he’s not wanting to call the wean Rollo.”
I laughed, opening my eyes.
“Do you really think that’s what he has in mind? I know people name their children for deceased relatives, but naming one for your deceased dog . . .”
“Aye, well,” Jamie said judiciously. “He was a good dog.”
“Well, yes, but—” A movement down on the far side of the cove caught my eye. People coming up the wagon road. “Look, who’s that?” There were four small moving dots, but at this distance I couldn’t make out much more than that without my glasses.
Jamie shaded his eyes, peering.
“No one I ken,” he said, sounded mildly interested. “It looks like a family, though—they’ve a couple of bairns. Maybe new folk, wanting to settle. They havena got much in the way of goods, though.”
I squinted; they were closer now, and I could make out the disparity of height. Yes, a man and a woman, both wearing broad-brimmed hats, and a boy and girl.
“Look, the lad’s got red hair,” Jamie said, smiling and raising his chin to point. “He minds me of Jem.”
“So he does.” Curious now, I got up and rummaged in my basket, finding the bit of silk in which I kept my spectacles when not wearing them. I put them on and turned, pleased as I always was to see fine details spring suddenly into being. Slightly less pleased to see that what I had thought was a scale of bark on the timber near where I’d been sitting was in fact an enormous centipede, enjoying the shade.
I turned my attention back to the newcomers, though; they’d stopped—the little girl had dropped something. Her dolly—I could see the doll’s hair, a splotch of color on the ground, even redder than the little boy’s. The man was wearing a pack, and the woman had a large bag over one shoulder. She set it down and bent to pick up the doll, brushing it off and handing it back to her daughter.
The woman turned then to speak to her husband, throwing out an arm to point to something—the Higginses’ cabin, I thought. The man put both hands to his mouth and shouted, and the wind carried his words to us, faint but clearly audible, called out in a strong, cracked voice.
“Hello, the house!”
I was on my feet, and Jamie stood and grabbed my hand, hard enough to bruise my fingers.
Movement at the door of the cabin, and a small figure that I recognized as Amy Higgins appeared. The tall woman pulled off her hat and waved it, her long red hair streaming out like a banner in the wind.
“Hello, the house!” she called, laughing.
Then I was flying down the hill, with Jamie just before me, arms flung wide, the two of us flyng together on that same wind.