A Breath of Snow and Ashes

him to the gold, no?”

That was a somewhat happier thought. And it did fit with Phaedre’s premonition—if that’s what it was—which had occurred the same day that the man from Coigach came.

“I suppose all we can do is pray for her, poor thing,” I said. “I don’t suppose there’s a patron saint of abducted persons, is there?”

“Saint Dagobert,” he replied promptly, causing me to stare at him.

“You’re making that up.”

“Indeed I am not,” he said with dignity. “Saint Athelais is another one—and perhaps better, now I think. She was a young Roman lass, who was abducted by the Emperor Justinian, who wished to have his way wi’ her, and she vowed to chastity. But she escaped and went off to live with her uncle in Benevento.”

“Good for her. And Saint Dagobert?”

“A king of some sort—Frankish? Anyway, his guardian took against him as a child, and had him kidnapped away to England, so the guardian’s son might reign instead.”

“Where do you learn these things?” I demanded.

“From Brother Polycarp, at the Abbey of St. Anne,” he said, the corner of his mouth tucking back in a smile. “When I couldna sleep, he’d come and tell me stories of the saints, hours on end. It didna always put me to sleep, but after an hour or so of hearing about holy martyrs having their breasts amputated or being flogged wi’ iron hooks, I’d close my eyes and make a decent pretense of it.”

Jamie took my cap off and set it on the ledge. The air blew through my inch of hair, ruffling it like meadow grass, and he smiled as he looked at me.

“Ye look like a boy, Sassenach,” he said. “Though damned if I’ve ever seen a lad with an arse like yours.”

“Thanks so much,” I said, absurdly pleased. I had eaten like a horse in the last two months, slept well and deeply through the nights, and knew I was much improved in looks, hair notwithstanding. Never hurt to hear it, though.

“I want ye verra much, mo nighean donn,” he said softly, and curled his fingers round my wrist, letting the pads rest gently on my pulse.

“So the MacKenzies of Leoch are all prone to black jealousy,” I said. I could feel my pulse, steady under his fingers. “Charming, cunning, and given to betrayal.” I touched his lip, ran my thumb lightly along it, the tiny prickles of beard pleasant to the touch. “All of them?”

He looked down, fixing me suddenly with a dark blue gaze in which humor and ruefulness were mingled with a good many other things I couldn’t read.

“Ye think I am not?” he said, and smiled a little sadly. “God and Mary bless ye, Sassenach.” And bent to kiss me.



WE COULD NOT TARRY at River Run. The fields down here on the piedmont had long since been harvested and turned under, the remnants of dried stalks flecking the fresh dark earth; snow would fly soon in the mountains.

We had discussed the matter round and round—but came to no useful conclusion. There was nothing further we could do to help Phaedre—except to pray. Beyond that, though . . . there was Duncan to think of.

For it had occurred to both of us that if Jocasta had found out about his liaison with Phaedre, her wrath was not likely to be limited to the slave girl. She might bide her time—but she would not forget the injury. I’d never met a Scot who would.

We took our leave of Jocasta after breakfast the next day, finding her in her private parlor, embroidering a table runner. The basket of silk threads sat in her lap, the colors carefully arrayed in a spiral, so that she could choose the one she wanted by touch, and the finished linen fell to one side, five feet of cloth edged with an intricate design of apples, leaves, and vines—or no, I realized, when I picked up the end of the cloth to admire it. Not vines. Black-eyed serpents, coiling slyly, slithering, green and scaly. Here and there one gaped to show its fangs, guarding scattered red fruit.

“Garden of Eden,” she explained to me, rubbing the design lightly betwixt her fingers.

“How beautiful,” I said, wondering how long she’d been working on it. Had she begun it before Phaedre’s disappearance?

A bit of casual talk, and then Josh the groom appeared to say that our horses were ready. Jamie nodded, dismissing him, and stood.

“Aunt,” he said to Jocasta matter-of-factly, “I should take it verra much amiss were any harm to come to Duncan.”

She stiffened, fingers halting in their work.

“Why should any harm come to him?” she asked, lifting her chin.

Jamie didn’t reply at once, but stood regarding her, not without sympathy. Then he leaned down, so that she could feel his presence close, his mouth near her ear.

“I know, Aunt,” he said softly. “And if ye dinna wish anyone else to share that knowledge . . . then I think I shall find Duncan in good health when I return.”

She sat as though turned to salt. Jamie stood up, nodding toward the door, and we took our leave. I glanced back from the hallway, and saw her still sitting like a statue, face as white as the linen in her hands and the little balls of colored thread all fallen from her lap, unraveling across the polished floor.





73



DOUBLE-DEALING

WITH MARSALI GONE, the whisky-making became more difficult. Among us, Bree and Mrs. Bug and I had managed to get off one more malting before the weather became too cold and rainy, but it was a near thing, and it was with great relief that I saw the last of the malted grain safely decanted into the still. Once set to ferment, the stuff became Jamie’s responsibility, as he trusted no one else with the delicate job of judging taste and proof.

The fire beneath the still had to be kept at exactly the right level, though, to keep fermentation going without killing the mash, then raised for the distillings once fermentation was complete. This meant that he lived—and slept—beside the still for the few days necessary for each batch to come off. I generally brought him supper and stayed until the dark came, but it was lonely without him in my bed, and I was more than pleased when we poured the last of the new making into casks.

“Oh, that smells good.” I sniffed beatifically at the inside of an empty cask; it was one of the special casks Jamie had obtained through one of Lord John’s shipping friends—charred inside like a normal whisky cask, but previously used to store sherry. The sweet mellow ghost of the sherry mingled with the faint scent of char and the hot, raw reek of the new whisky were together enough to make my head spin pleasantly.

“Aye, it’s a small batch, but no bad,” Jamie agreed, inhaling the aroma like a perfume connoisseur. He lifted his head and eyed the sky overhead; the wind was coming up strong, and thick clouds were racing past, dark-bellied and threatening.

“There’s only the three casks,” he said. “If ye think ye might manage one, Sassenach, I’ll take the others. I should like to have them safe, rather than dig them out of a snowbank next week.”

A half-mile walk in a roaring wind, carrying or rolling a six-gallon cask, was no joke, but he was right about the snow. It wasn’t quite cold enough for snow yet, but it would be soon. I sighed, but nodded, and between us, we managed to lug the casks slowly up to the whisky cache, hidden among rocks and ragged grapevines.

I had quite regained my strength, but even so, every muscle I had was trembling and jerking in protest by the time we had finished, and I made no objection at all when Jamie made me sit down to rest before heading back to the house.

“What do you plan to do with these?” I asked, nodding back toward the cache. “Keep, or sell?”

He wiped a flying strand of hair out of his face, squinting against a blast of flying dust and dead leaves.

“I’ll have to sell one, for the spring seed. We’ll keep one to age—and I think perhaps I can put the last to good purpose. If Bobby Higgins comes again before the snow, I shall send a half-dozen bottles to Ashe, Harnett, Howe, and a few others—a wee token of my abiding esteem, aye?” He grinned wryly at me.

“Well, I’ve heard of worse bona fides,” I said, amused. It had taken him a good deal of work to worm his way back into the good graces of the North Carolina Committee of Correspondence, but several members had begun answering his letters again—cautiously, but with respect.

“I shouldna think anything important will happen over the winter,” he said thoughtfully, rubbing his cold-reddened nose.

“Likely not.” Massachusetts, where most of the uproar had been taking place, was now occupied by a General Gage, and the latest we had heard was that he had fortified Boston Neck, the narrow spit of land that connects the city to the mainland—which meant that Boston was now cut off from the rest of the colony, and under seige.

I felt a small pang, thinking of it; I had lived in Boston for nearly twenty years, and was fond of the city—though I knew I would not recognize it now.

“John Hancock—he’s a merchant there—is heading the Committee of Safety, Ashe says. They’ve voted to recruit twelve thousand militia, and are looking to purchase five thousand muskets—with the trouble I had to find thirty, good luck to them, is all I can say.”

I laughed, but before I could reply, Jamie stiffened.

“What’s that?” His head turned sharply, and he laid a hand on my arm. Silenced abruptly, I held my breath, listening. The wind stirred the drying leaves of wild grapevines with a papery rustle behind me, and in the distance a murder of crows passed, squabbling in shrill cries.

Then I heard it, too: a small, desolate, and very human sound. Jamie was already on his feet, making his way with care between the fallen rocks. He ducked beneath the lintel made by a leaning slab of granite, and I made to follow him. He stopped abruptly, nearly making me run into him.

“Joseph?” he said incredulously.

I peered around him as best I could. To my equal astonishment, it was Mr. Wemyss, sitting hunched on a boulder, a stone jug between his bony knees. He’d been crying; his nose and eyes were red, making him look even more like a white mouse than usual. He was also extremely drunk.

“Oh,” he said, blinking in dismay at us. “Oh.”

“Are ye . . . quite well, Joseph?” Jamie came closer, extending a hand gingerly, as though afraid that Mr. Wemyss might crack into pieces if touched.

This instinct was sound; when he touched the little man, Mr. Wemyss’s face crumpled like paper, and his thin shoulders began to shake uncontrollably.

“I am so sorry, sir,” he kept saying, quite dissolved in tears. “I’m so sorry!”

Jamie gave me a “do something, Sassenach” look of appeal, and I knelt swiftly, putting my arms round Mr. Wemyss’s shoulders, patting his slender back.

“Now, now,” I said, giving Jamie a “now what?” sort of look over Mr. Wemyss’s matchstick shoulder in return. “I’m sure it will be all right.”

“Oh, no,” he said, hiccuping. “Oh, no, it can’t.” He turned a face streaming with woe toward Jamie. “I can’t bear it, sir, truly I can’t.”

Mr. Wemyss’s bones felt thin and brittle, and he was shivering. He was wearing only a thin shirt and breeches, and the wind was beginning to whine through the rocks. Clouds thickened overhead, and the light went from the little hollow, suddenly, as though a blackout curtain had been dropped.

Jamie unfastened his own cloak and wrapped it rather awkwardly round Mr. Wemyss, then lowered himself carefully onto another boulder.

“Tell me the trouble, Joseph,” he said quite gently. “Is someone dead, then?”

Mr. Wemyss sank his face into his hands, head shaking to and fro like a metronome. He muttered something, which I understood to be “Better if she were.”

“Lizzie?” I asked, exchanging a puzzled glance with Jamie. “Is it Lizzie you mean?” She’d been perfectly all right at breakfast; what on earth—

“First Manfred McGillivray,” Mr. Wemyss said, raising his face from his hands, “and then Higgins. As though a degenerate and a murderer were not bad enough—now this!”

Jamie’s brows shot up and he looked at me. I shrugged slightly. The gravel was jabbing sharply into my knees; I rose stiffly and brushed it away.

“Are you saying that Lizzie is, er . . . in love with someone . . . unsuitable?” I asked carefully.

Mr. Wemyss shuddered.

“Unsuitable,” he said, in a hollow tone. “Jesus Christ. Unsuitable!”

I’d never heard Mr. Wemyss blaspheme before; it was unsettling.

He turned wild eyes on me, looking like a crazed sparrow, huddled in the depths of Jamie’s cloak.

“I gave up everything for her!” he said. “I sold myself—and gladly!—to save her from dishonor. I left home, left Scotland, knowing I should never see it more, that I should leave my bones in the soil of the strangers. And yet I’ve said nay word of reproach to her, my dear wee lassie, for how should it be her fault? And now . . .” He turned a hollow, haunted gaze on Jamie.

“My God, my God. What shall I do?” he whispered. A blast of wind thundered through the rocks and whipped the cloak around him, momentarily obliterating him in a shroud of gray, as though distress had quite engulfed him.

I kept tight hold of my own cloak, to prevent it being torn off me; the wind was strong enough that I nearly lost my footing. Jamie squinted against the spray of dust and fine gravel that blasted us, setting his teeth in discomfort. He wrapped his arms around himself, shivering.

“Is the lass with child, then, Joseph?” he said, obviously wanting to get to the bottom of things and go home.

Mr. Wemyss’s head popped out of the folds of cloak, fair hair tousled into broomstraw. Blinking reddened eyes, he nodded, then excavated the jug and, raising it in trembling hands, took several gulps. I saw the single “X” marked on the jug; with his characteristic modesty, he had taken a jug of the raw new whisky, not the cask-aged higher quality.

Jamie sighed, reached out a hand, and taking the jug from him, took a healthy gulp himself.

“Who?” he said, handing it back. “Is it my nephew?”

Mr. Wemyss stared at him, owl-eyed.

“Your nephew?”

“Ian Murray,” I put in helpfully. “Tall brown-haired lad? Tattoos?”

Jamie gave me a look suggesting that I was perhaps not being quite so helpful as I thought, but Mr. Wemyss went on looking blank.

“Ian Murray?” Then the name appeared to penetrate through the alcoholic fog. “Oh. No. Christ, if it were! I should bless the lad,” he said fervently.

I exchanged another look with Jamie. This looked like being serious.

“Joseph,” he said with just a touch of menace. “It’s cold.” He wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “Who’s debauched your daughter? Give me his name, and I’ll see him wed to her in the morning or dead at her feet, whichever ye like. But let’s do it inside by the fire, aye?”

“Beardsley,” Mr. Wemyss said, in a tone suggesting visions of utter despair.

“Beardsley?” Jamie repeated. He raised one eyebrow at me. It wasn’t what I would have expected—but hearing it came as no great shock, either.

“Which Beardsley was it?” he asked, with relative patience. “Jo? Or Kezzie?”

Mr. Wemyss heaved a sigh that came from the bottoms of his feet.

“She doesn’t know,” he said flatly.

“Christ,” said Jamie involuntarily. He reached for the whisky again, and drank heavily.

“Ahem,” I said, giving him a meaningful look as he lowered the jug. He surrendered it to me without comment, and straightened himself on his boulder, shirt plastered against his chest by the wind, his hair whipped loose behind him.

“Well, then,” he said firmly. “We’ll have the two of them in, and find out the truth of it.”

“No,” said Mr. Wemyss, “we won’t. They don’t know, either.”

I had just taken a mouthful of raw spirit. At this, I choked, spluttering whisky down my chin.

“They what?” I croaked, wiping my face with a corner of my cloak. “You mean . . . both of them?”

Mr. Wemyss looked at me. Instead of replying, though, he blinked once. Then his eyes rolled up into his head and he fell headlong off the boulder, poleaxed.



I MANAGED TO RESTORE Mr. Wemyss to semiconsciousness, but not to the point of his being able to walk. Jamie was therefore obliged to carry the little man slung across his shoulders like a deer carcass; no mean feat, considering the broken ground that lay between the whisky cache and the new malting floor, and the wind that pelted us with bits of gravel, leaves, and flying pinecones. Clouds had boiled up over the shoulder of the mountain, dark and dirty as laundry suds, and were spreading rapidly across the sky. We were going to get drenched, if we didn’t hurry.

The going became easier once we reached the trail to the house, but Jamie’s temper was not improved by Mr. Wemyss’s suddenly coming to at this point and vomiting down the front of his shirt. After a hasty attempt at swabbing off the mess, we reorganized our strategy, and made our way with Mr. Wemyss precariously balanced between us, each firmly gripping one elbow as he slipped and stumbled, his spindly knees giving way at unexpected moments, like Pinocchio with his strings cut.

Jamie was talking to himself volubly in Gaelic under his breath during this phase of the journey, but desisted abruptly when we came into the dooryard. One of the Beardsley twins was there, catching chickens for Mrs. Bug before the storm; he had two of them, held upside down by the legs like an ungainly bouquet of brown and yellow. He stopped when he saw us, and stared curiously at Mr. Wemyss.

“What—” began the boy. He got no further. Jamie dropped Mr. Wemyss’s arm, took two strides, and punched the Beardsley twin in the stomach with sufficient force that he doubled over, dropped the chickens, staggered back, and fell down. The chickens flapped off in a cloud of scattered feathers, squawking.

The boy writhed about on the ground, mouth opening and closing in a vain search for air, but Jamie paid no attention. He stooped, seized the lad by the hair, and spoke loudly and directly into his ear—in case it was Kezzie, I supposed.

“Fetch your brother. To my study. Now.”

Mr. Wemyss had been watching this interesting tableau, one arm draped across my shoulders for support and his mouth hanging open. It continued to hang open as he turned his head, following Jamie as he strode back toward us. He blinked, though, and shut it, as Jamie seized his other arm and, removing him neatly from me, propelled him into the house without a backward glance.

I gazed reproachfully at the Beardsley on the ground.

“How could you?” I said.

He made soundless goldfish mouths at me, his eyes completely round, then managed a long heeeeee sound of inhalation, his face dark purple.

“Jo? What’s the matter, are ye hurt?” Lizzie came out of the trees, a pair of chickens clutched by the legs in either hand. She was frowning worriedly at—well, I supposed it was Jo; if anyone could tell the difference, it would surely be Lizzie.

“No, he’s not hurt,” I assured her. “Yet.” I pointed a monitory finger at her. “You, young lady, go and put those chickens in their coop and then—” I hesitated, glancing at the boy on the ground, who had recovered enough breath to gasp and was gingerly sitting up. I didn’t want to bring her into my surgery, not if Jamie and Mr. Wemyss were going to be eviscerating the Beardsleys right across the hall.

“I’ll go with you,” I decided hastily, gesturing her away from Jo. “Shoo.”

“But—” She cast a bewildered glance at Jo—yes, it was Jo; he ran a hand through his hair to get it out of his face, and I saw the scarred thumb.

“He’s fine,” I said, turning her toward the chicken coop with a firm hand on her shoulder. “Go.”

I glanced back, to see that Jo Beardsley had made it to his feet and, with a hand pressed to his tender middle, was making off toward the stable, presumably to fetch his twin as ordered.

I glanced back at Lizzie, giving her a narrow eye. If Mr. Wemyss had the right end of the stick and she was pregnant, she was evidently one of those fortunate persons who doesn’t suffer from morning sickness or the usual digestive symptoms of early pregnancy; she was, in fact, very healthy-looking.

That in itself should have alerted me, I supposed, pale and green-stick as she normally was. Now that I looked carefully, there seemed to be a soft pink glow about her, and her pale blond hair was shiny where it peeped out under her cap.

“How far along are you?” I asked, holding back a branch for her. She gave me a quick look, gulped visibly, then ducked under the branch.

“About four months gone, I think,” she said meekly, not looking at me. “Um . . . Da told ye, did he?”

“Yes. Your poor father,” I said severely. “Is he right? Both of the Beardsleys?”

She hunched her shoulders a little, head bowed, but nodded, almost imperceptibly.

“What—what will Himself do to them?” she asked, her voice small and tremulous.

“I really don’t know.” I doubted that Jamie himself had formed any specific notions—though he had mentioned having the miscreant responsible for Lizzie’s pregnancy dead at her feet if her father wished it.

Now that I thought, the alternative—having her wed by morning—was likely to be somewhat more problematic than simply killing the twins would be.

“I don’t know,” I repeated. We had reached the coop, a stoutly built edifice