Drums of Autumn

  “I did say ye’d a fine mind, no?” he answered dryly. “Though since ye ask…I was raised to do two things, Ian. To mind my land and people, and to care for my family. I’ve done those two things, as best I might—and I shall go on doing them as best I can.”

  Young Ian had the grace to look abashed at this.

  “Aye, well, I didna mean…” he mumbled, looking at his feet.

  “Dinna fash, laddie,” Jamie interrupted, clapping him on the shoulder. He grinned wryly at his nephew. “Ye’ll amount to something for your mother’s sake—if it kills us both. And now I think it will be my turn at the pole.”

  He glanced forward, to where Troklus’s shoulders gleamed like oily copper, snake-muscled with long labor. Jamie untied his breeches—unlike the other men, he would not take off his shirt for poling, but stripped his breeks for coolness and worked with his shirt knotted between his thighs, in the Highland style—and nodded to Ian.

  “You think about it, laddie. Youngest son or no, your life’s not meant to be wasted.”

  He smiled at me then, with a sudden heart-stopping brilliance, and handed me his shed breeks. Then, still holding my hand in his, he stood upright and, hand over heart, declaimed,

  “Amo, amas, I love a lass,

  As cedar tall and slender;

  Sweet cowslip’s grace

  Is her nominative case,

  And she’s o’ the feminine gender.”

  He nodded graciously to Ian, who had dissolved in giggles, and lifted my hand to his lips, blue eyes aslant with mischief.

  “Can I decline a nymph so divine?

  Her voice like a flute is dulcis;

  Her oculus bright, her manus white

  And soft, when I tacto, her pulse is.

  O bow belle, my puella

  I’ll kiss in secula seculorum;

  If I’ve luck, sir, she’s my uxor,

  O dies benedictorum.”

  He made a courtly leg to me, blinked solemnly in his version of a wink, and strode off in his shirt.

  9

  TWO-THIRDS OF A GHOST

  The surface of the river gleamed like oil, the water moving gently past without a ripple. There was a single lantern hung from the starboard bow; sitting on a low stool perched on the forward deck, I could see the light below, not so much reflected in the water as trapped under it, moving slowly side by side with the boat.

  The moon was a faint sickle, making its feeble sweep through the treetops. Beyond the thick trees that lined the river, the ground fell away in broad sweeps of darkness, over the rice plantations and tobacco fields. The heat of the day was sucked down into the earth, glowing with unseen energy beneath the surface of the soil, the rich, fertile flatlands simmering in black heat behind the screen of pines and sweetgum trees, working the alchemy of water and trapped sun.

  To move at all was to break a sweat. The air was tangible, each tiny ripple of warmth a caress against my face and arms.

  There was a soft rustle in the dark behind me, and I reached up a hand, not turning to look. Jamie’s big hand closed gently over mine, squeezed and let go. Even that brief touch left my fingers damp with perspiration.

  He eased himself down next to me with a sigh, plucking at the collar of his shirt.

  “I dinna think I’ve breathed air since we left Georgia,” he said. “Every time I take a breath, I think I’ll maybe drown.”

  I laughed, feeling a trickle of sweat snake down between my breasts.

  “It will be cooler in Cross Creek; everyone says so.” I took a deep breath myself, just to prove I could. “Doesn’t it smell wonderful, though?” The darkness released all the pungent green scents of the trees and plants along the water’s edge, mingling with the damp mud of the riverbank and the scent of sun-warmed wood from the deck of the boat.

  “Ye’d have made a good dog, Sassenach.” He leaned back against the wall of the cabin with a sigh. “It’s no wonder yon beast admires ye so.”

  The click of toenails on deckboards announced the arrival of Rollo, who advanced cautiously toward the rail, stopped a careful foot short of it, and lowered himself gingerly to the deck. He laid his nose on his paws and sighed deeply. Rollo disapproved almost as strongly of boats as Jamie did.

  “Hullo there,” I said. I extended a hand for him to sniff, and he politely condescended to let me scratch his ears. “And where’s your master, eh?”

  “In the cabin, bein’ taught new ways to cheat at cards,” Jamie said wryly. “God kens best what will happen to the lad; if he’s not shot or knocked on the head in some tavern, he’ll likely come home wi’ an ostrich he’s won at faro next.”

  “Surely they haven’t either ostriches or faro games up in the mountains? If there aren’t any towns to speak of, surely there aren’t many taverns, either.”

  “Well, I shouldna think so,” he admitted. “But if a man’s bound to go to the devil, he’ll find a way to do it, no matter where ye set him down.”

  “I’m sure Ian isn’t going to the devil,” I replied soothingly. “He’s a fine boy.”

  “He’s a man,” Jamie corrected. He cocked an ear toward the cabin, where I could hear muffled laughter and the occasional comfortable obscenity. “A damn young one, though, and fat-heided with it.” He looked at me, a rueful smile visible in the lantern light.

  “If he were a wee lad yet, I could keep some rein on him. As it is—” He shrugged. “He’s old enough to mind his own business, and he’ll not thank me for sticking my nose in.”

  “He always listens to you,” I protested.

  “Mmphm. Wait till I tell him something he doesna want to hear.” He leaned his head against the wall, closing his eyes. Sweat gleamed across the high cheekbones, and a small trickle ran down the side of his neck.

  I put out a finger and delicately flicked the tiny drop away, before it further dampened his shirt.

  “You’ve been telling him for two months that he has to go home to Scotland; he doesn’t want to hear that, I don’t think.”

  Jamie opened one eye and surveyed me cynically.

  “Is he in Scotland?”

  “Well…”

  “Mmphm,” he said, and closed the eye again.

  I sat quietly for a bit, blotting the perspiration off my face with a fold of my skirt. The river had narrowed here; the near bank was no more than ten feet away. I caught a rustle of movement among the shrubs, and a pair of eyes gleamed briefly red with reflected light from our lantern.

  Rollo lifted his head with a sudden low Woof, ears pricked to attention. Jamie opened his eyes and glanced at the bank, then sat up abruptly.

  “Christ! That’s the biggest rat I’ve ever seen!”

  I laughed.

  “It’s not a rat; it’s a possum. See the babies on her back?”

  Jamie and Rollo regarded the possum with identical looks of calculation, assessing its plumpness and possible speed. Four small possums stared solemnly back, pointed noses twitching over their mother’s humped, indifferent back. Obviously thinking the boat no threat, the mother possum finished lapping water, turned, and trundled slowly into the brush, the tip of her naked thick pink tail disappearing as the lantern light faded.

  The two hunters let out identical sighs, and relaxed again.

  “Myers did say as they’re fine eating,” Jamie remarked wistfully. With a small sigh of my own, I groped in the pocket of my gown and handed him a cloth bag.

  “What’s this?” He peered interestedly into the bag, then poured the small, lumpy brown objects out into the palm of his hand.

  “Roasted peanuts,” I said. “They grow underground hereabouts. I found a farmer selling them for hogfood, and had the inn-wife roast some for me. You take off the shells before you eat them.” I grinned at him, enjoying the novel sensation of for once knowing more about our surroundings than he did.

  He gave me a mildly dirty look, and crushed a shell between thumb and forefinger, yielding three nuts.

  “I’m ignorant, Sassenach,” he said. “
Not a fool. There’s a difference, aye?” He put a peanut in his mouth and bit down gingerly. His skeptical look changed to one of pleased surprise, and he chewed with increasing enthusiasm, tossing the other nuts into his mouth.

  “Like them?” I smiled, enjoying his pleasure. “I’ll make you peanut butter for your bread, once we’re settled and I have my new mortar unpacked.”

  He smiled back and swallowed before cracking another nut.

  “I will say that if it’s a swampish place, at least it’s fine soil. I’ve never seen so many things grow so easily.”

  He tossed another nut into his mouth.

  “I have been thinking, Sassenach,” he said, looking down into the palm of his hand. “What would ye think of maybe settling here?”

  The question wasn’t entirely unexpected. I had seen him eyeing the black fields and lush crops with a farmer’s glittering eye, and caught his wistful expression when he admired the Governor’s horses.

  We couldn’t go back to Scotland immediately, in any case. Young Ian, yes, but not Jamie or me, owing to certain complications—not the least of these being a complication by the name of Laoghaire MacKenzie.

  “I don’t know,” I said slowly. “Indians and wild animals quite aside—”

  “Och, well,” he interrupted, mildly embarrassed. “Myers told me they were no difficulty at all, and ye keep clear of the mountains.”

  I forbore from pointing out that the Governor’s offer would take us into the precincts of precisely those mountains.

  “Yes, but you do remember what I told you, don’t you? About the Revolution? This is 1767, and you heard the conversation at the Governor’s table. Nine years, Jamie, and all hell breaks loose.” We had both lived through war, and neither of us took the thought lightly. I laid a hand on his arm, forcing him to look at me.

  “I was right, you know—before.” I had known what would happen at Culloden; had told him the fate of Charles Stuart and his men. And neither my knowing nor his had been enough to save us. Twenty aching years of separation, and the ghost of a daughter he would never see lay behind that knowing.

  He nodded slowly, and lifted a hand to touch my cheek. The soft glow of the small lantern overhead attracted clouds of tiny gnats; they swirled suddenly, disturbed by his movement.

  “Aye, ye were,” he said softly. “But then—we thought we must change things. Or try, at the least. But here—” He turned, waving an arm at the vast land that lay unseen beyond the trees. “I shouldna think it my business,” he said simply. “Either to help or to hinder much.”

  I waved the gnats away from my face.

  “It might be our business, if we lived here.”

  He rubbed a finger below his lower lip, thinking. His beard was sprouting, a glimmer of red stubble sparked with silver in the lantern light. He was a big man, handsome and strong in the prime of his life, but no longer a young one, and I realized that with sudden gratitude.

  Highland men were bred to fight; Highland boys became men when they could lift their swords and go to battle. Jamie had never been reckless, but he had been a warrior and a soldier most of his life. As a young man in his twenties, nothing could have kept him from a fight, whether it was his own or not. Now, in his forties, sense might temper passion—or at least I hoped so.

  And it was true; beyond this aunt whom he didn’t know, he had no family here, no ties that might compel involvement. Perhaps, knowing what was coming, we might contrive to stay clear of the worst?

  “It’s a verra big place, Sassenach.” He looked out over the prow of the boat, into the vast black sweep of invisible land. “Only since we left Georgia, we have traveled farther than the whole length of Scotland and England both.”

  “That’s true,” I admitted. In Scotland, even among the high crags of the Highlands, there had been no way to escape the ravages of war. Not so here; should we seek our place carefully, we might indeed escape the roving eye of Mars.

  He tilted his head to one side, smiling up at me.

  “I could see ye as a planter’s lady, Sassenach. If the Governor will find me a buyer for the other stones, then I shall have enough, I think, to send Laoghaire all the money I promised her, and still have enough over to buy a good place—one where we might prosper.”

  He took my right hand in his, his thumb gently stroking my silver wedding ring.

  “Perhaps one day I shall deck ye in laces and jewels,” he said softly. “I havena been able to give ye much, ever, save a wee silver ring, and my mother’s pearls.”

  “You’ve given me a lot more than that,” I said. I wrapped my fingers around his thumb and squeezed. “Brianna, for one.”

  He smiled faintly, looking down at the deck.

  “Aye, that’s true. She’s maybe the real reason—for staying, I mean.”

  I pulled him toward me, and he rested his head against my knee.

  “This is her place, no?” he said quietly. He lifted a hand, gesturing toward the river, the trees and the sky. “She will be born here, she’ll live here.”

  “That’s right,” I said softly. I stroked his hair, smoothing the thick strands that were so much like Brianna’s. “This will be her country.” Hers, in a way it could never be mine or his, no matter how long we might live here.

  He nodded, beard rasping gently against my skirt.

  “I dinna wish to fight, or have ye ever in danger, Sassenach, but if there is a bit I can do…to build, maybe, to make it safe, and a good land for her…” He shrugged. “It would please me,” he finished softly.

  We sat silently for a bit, close together, watching the dull shine of the water and the slow progress of the sunken lantern.

  “I left the pearls for her,” I said at last. “That seemed right; they were an heirloom, after all.” I drew my ringed hand, curved, across his lips. “And the ring is all I need.”

  He took both my hands in his, then, and kissed them—the left, which still bore the gold ring of my marriage to Frank, and then the right, with his own silver ring.

  “Da mi basia mille,” he whispered, smiling. Give me a thousand kisses. It was the inscription inside my ring, a brief quotation from a love song by Catullus. I bent and gave him one back.

  “Dein mille altera,” I said. Then a thousand more.

  * * *

  It was near midnight when we tied up near a brushy grove to rest. The weather had changed; still hot and muggy, now the air held the hint of thunder, and the undergrowth stirred with small movements—random air currents, or the scurryings of tiny night things hastening for home before the storm.

  We were nearly at the end of the tidal surge; from here it would be a matter of sail and pole, and Captain Freeman had hopes of catching a good breeze on the wings of a storm. It would pay us to rest while we could. I curled into our nest on the stern, but was unable to fall asleep at once, late as it was.

  By the Captain’s estimation, we might make Cross Creek by evening tomorrow—certainly by the day after. I was surprised to realize how eagerly I was looking forward to our arrival; two months of living hand-to-mouth on the road had given me an urgent longing for some haven, no matter how temporary.

  Familiar as I was with Highland notions of hospitality and kinship, I had no fears regarding our welcome. Jamie plainly did not consider the fact that he hadn’t met this particular aunt in forty-odd years to be any bar to our cordial reception, and I was quite sure he was right. At the same time, I couldn’t help entertaining considerable curiosity about Jocasta Cameron.

  There had been five MacKenzie siblings, the children of old Red Jacob, who had built Castle Leoch. Jamie’s mother, Ellen, had been the eldest, Jocasta the youngest. Janet, the other sister, had died, like Ellen, well before I met Jamie, but I had known the two brothers, Colum and Dougal, quite well indeed, and from that knowledge, couldn’t help speculating as to what this last MacKenzie of Leoch might be like.

  Tall, I thought, with a glance at Jamie, curled up peacefully on the deck beside me. Tall, and maybe red-haired
. They were all tall—even Colum, victim of a crippling degenerative disease, had been tall to begin with—fair skinned Vikings, the lot of them, with a ruddy blaze to their coloring that shimmered from Jamie’s fiery red through his uncle Dougal’s deep russet. Only Colum had been truly dark.

  Remembering Colum and Dougal, I felt a sudden stir of unease. Colum had died before Culloden, killed by his disease. Dougal had died on the eve of the battle—killed by Jamie. It had been a matter of self-defense—my self, in fact—and only one of so many deaths in that bloody April. Still, I did wonder whether Jamie had given any thought as to what he might say, when the greetings were past at River Run, and the casual family chat got round to “Oh, and when did you last see So-and-so?”

  Jamie sighed and stretched in his sleep. He could—and did—sleep well on any surface, accustomed as he had been to sleeping in conditions that ranged from wet heather to musty caves to the cold stone floors of prison cells. I supposed the wooden decking under us must be thoroughly comfortable by contrast.

  I was neither so elastic nor so hardened, myself, but gradually weariness overwhelmed me, and even the prick of curiosity about the future was unable to keep me awake.

  I woke to confusion. It was still dark, and there was noise all around, shouting and barking, and the deck beneath me trembled with the vibration of stamping feet. I jerked upright, half thinking myself aboard a sailing ship, convinced that we had been boarded by pirates.

  Then my mind cleared, along with my foggy vision, and I discovered that we had been boarded by pirates. Strange voices shouted oaths and orders, and booted feet were heavy on the deck. Jamie was gone.

  I scrabbled onto my hands and feet, taking no heed for clothes or anything else. It was near dawn; the sky was dark, but light enough that the cabin showed as a darker blotch against it. As I struggled upright, clinging to the cabin roof for support, I was nearly knocked flat by flying bodies hurling themselves across it.

  There was a confused blur of fur and white faces, a shout and a shot and a terrible thud, and Ian was crouching ashen on the deck, over Rollo’s heaving form. A strange man, hatless and disheveled, pushed himself to his feet.

  “Damn! He nearly got me!” Unhinged by the near miss, the robber’s hand trembled as he fumbled with the spare pistol at his belt. He pointed it at the dog, face drawing down in an ugly squint.

  “Take that, arse-bite!”

  A taller man appeared from nowhere, his hand knocking down the pistol before the flint could strike.

  “Don’t waste the shot, fool.” He gestured to Troklus and Captain Freeman—the latter volubly incensed—being herded toward me. “How d’you mean to hold them with an empty gun?”

  The shorter man cast an evil look at Rollo, but swung his pistol to bear on Freeman’s midriff instead.

  Rollo was making an odd noise, a low growling mixed with whimpers of pain, and I could see a wet, dark stain on the boards under his twitching body. Ian bent low over him, hands stroking his head helplessly. He looked up, and tears shone wet on his cheeks.

  “Help me, Auntie,” he said. “Please help!”

  I moved impulsively, and the tall man stepped forward, thrusting out an arm to stop me.

  “I want to help the dog,” I said.

  “What?” said the short robber, in tones of outrage.

  The tall man was masked—they all were, I realized, my eyes adjusting to the growing half-light. How many were there? It was impossible to tell under the mask, but I had the distinct impression that the tall man was smiling. He didn’t answer, but gave a short jerk of his pistol, giving me leave.

  “Hullo, old boy,” I said under my breath, dropping to my knees next to the dog. “Don’t bite, there’s a good doggie. Where is he hurt, Ian, do you know?”

  Ian shook his head, sniffing back the tears.

  “It’s under him; I can’t get him to turn over.”

  I wasn’t about to try to heave the dog’s huge carcass over either. I felt quickly for a pulse in the neck, but my fingers sank into Rollo’s thick ruff, prodding uselessly. Seized by inspiration, I instead picked up a front leg and felt up its length, getting my fingers into the hollow where the leg met the body.

  Sure enough, there it was; a steady pulse, throbbing reassuringly under my fingers. I began by habit to count, but quickly abandoned the effort, as I had no idea what a dog’s normal pulse rate should be. It was steady, though; no fluttering, no arrhythmia, no weakness. That was a very good sign.

  Another was that Rollo hadn’t lost consciousness; the great leg I held tucked