Drums of Autumn

  them, now and again, wi’ the Indians. The locusts are better, though—especially the smoked ones.”

  Marsali and Brianna both made gagging noises, causing Ian to grin even wider. He picked up another bag of barley and poured a thick layer into a flat rush basket. Two more roaches, suddenly exposed to the light of day, skittered madly over the side of the basket, fell to the ground and dashed away, disappearing under the edge of the crudely built malting floor.

  “No, I said!” Marsali kept a tight hold on Germaine’s collar, preventing his determined attempts to follow them. “Stay, ye wee fiend, d’ye want to be smoked, too?” Small wisps of transparent smoke rose up through the cracks of the wooden platform, permeating the small clearing with the breakfast-like scent of roasting grain. Brianna felt her stomach gurgle; it was nearly suppertime.

  “Maybe you should leave them in,” she suggested, joking. “Smoked roaches might add a nice flavor to the whisky.”

  “I doubt they’d harm it any,” her father agreed, coming up beside her. He wiped his face with a handkerchief, looked at it, and made a slight face at the sooty smudges on it before tucking it back up his sleeve. “All right, Ian?”

  “Aye, it’ll do. It’s only the one bag that’s spoilt all through, Uncle Jamie.” Ian rose with his tray of raw barley, and kicked negligently at a split bag, where the soft green of mold and black tinge of rot showed the ill effects of seeping damp. Two more opened bags, with the spoiled top layer scooped off, sat by the edge of the malting floor.

  “Let’s finish, then,” Jamie said. “I’m starved.” He and Ian each seized a burlap bag and scattered the fresh barley in a thick layer over the clear space on the platform, using a flat wooden spade to flatten and turn the grain.

  “How long does it all take?” Brianna poked her nose over the edge of the mash tub, where Marsali was stirring the fermenting grain of the last smoking. The mash had only begun to work; there was no more than a faint whiff of alcohol in the air.

  “Oh, it will depend on the weather, a bit.” Marsali cast an experienced eye skyward. It was late afternoon, and the sky had begun to darken into a clear deep blue, with no more than streaks of white cloud floating over the horizon. “Clear as it is, I should say—Germaine!” Germaine’s bottom was the only part of him visible, the top half having disappeared under a log.

  “I’ll get him.” Brianna took three quick strides across the clearing, and scooped him up. Germaine made a deep sound of protest at this unwarranted interference, and began to kick, hammering his sturdy heels against her legs.

  “Ow!” Brianna set him on the ground, rubbing her thigh with one hand.

  Marsali made a sound of exasperation and dropped her ladle. “Now what have ye got, ye wicked thing?” Germaine, having learned from experience, popped his latest acquisition into his mouth and swallowed convulsively. He immediately turned purple and began to choke.

  With a cry of alarm, Marsali dropped to her knees and tried to pry his mouth open. Germaine gagged, wheezed, and staggered backward, shaking his head. His blue eyes bulged, and a thin line of drool snaked down his chin.

  “Here!” Brianna grabbed the little boy by the arm, pulled his back against her, and with both hands fisted into his stomach, jerked them sharply back.

  Germaine made a loud whooping noise, and something small and round shot out of his mouth. He gurgled, gasped for air, got a good lungful and started to howl, his face going from dusky purple to a healthy red within seconds.

  “Is he all right?” Jamie peered anxiously at the little boy, who was crying in his mother’s arms, then, satisfied, glanced at Brianna. “That was verra quick, lass. A good job.”

  “Thanks. I—thanks. I’m glad it worked.”

  Brianna felt a little shaky. Seconds. It hadn’t taken more than a few seconds. Life to death and back again, in nothing flat. Jamie touched her arm, giving her a brief squeeze, and she felt a little better.

  “Best take the laddie down to the house,” he told Marsali. “Give him his supper and put him to bed. We’ll finish here.”

  Marsali nodded, looking shaken herself. She brushed a strand of pale hair out of her eyes, and gave Brianna a poor attempt at a smile.

  “I thank ye, good-sister.”

  Brianna felt a surprising small glow of pleasure at the title. She gave Marsali back the smile.

  “I’m glad he’s all right.”

  Marsali picked up her bag from the ground, and with a nod to Jamie, turned and made her way carefully down the steep path, toddler in her arms, Germaine’s chubby fists twined tightly in her hair.

  “That was pretty work, Coz.” Ian had finished the spreading, and jumped down from the platform to congratulate her. “Where did ye learn a thing like that?”

  “From my mother.”

  Ian nodded, looking impressed. Jamie bent over, searching the ground nearby.

  “What is it the laddie swallowed, I wonder?”

  “This.” Brianna spotted the object, half buried under fallen leaves, and plucked it out. “It looks like a button.” The object was a lopsided circle, crudely carved from wood, but indisputably a button, with a long shank and holes bored for thread.

  “Let me see.” Jamie held out a hand, and she dropped the button into it.

  “You’ll no be missing any buttons, will ye, Ian?” he asked, frowning at the small object in his palm.

  Ian peered over Jamie’s shoulder, and shook his head. “Maybe Fergus?” he suggested.

  “Maybe, but I dinna think so. Our Fergus is too much the dandy to be wearin’ something like this. All the buttons on his coat are made of polished horn.” He shook his head slowly, still frowning, then shrugged. Picking up his sporran, he put the button into it before fastening it about his waist.

  “Ah, well. I’ll ask about. Will ye finish here, Ian? There’s no much left to do.” He smiled at Brianna and cocked his head toward the path. “Come then, lass; we’ll ask at Lindseys’, on our way home.”

  In the event, Kenny Lindsey was not at home.

  “Duncan Innes came to fetch him, not an hour since,” Mrs. Lindsey said, shading her eyes against the late sun as she stood in the doorway of her house. “I make nay doubt they’ll be to your house the noo. Will ye and your lassie no step in, Mac Dubh, and have a taste of something?”

  “Ah, no, I thank ye, Mrs. Kenny. My wife will be having the supper ready for us. But perhaps ye could be tellin’ me whether this wee bawbee is from Kenny’s coat?”

  Mrs. Lindsey peered at the button in his hand, then shook her head.

  “No, indeed. Have I not just finished sewing on a whole fresh set of buttons for him, that’s he’s carved from the bone of a deer? The bonniest things ye ever saw, too,” she declared, with pride in her husband’s craftsmanship. “Each one has got a wee face on it, grinnin’ like an imp, and each one different!”

  Her eye ran speculatively over Brianna.

  “There’s Kenny’s brother, now,” she said. “With a fine wee place near Cross Creek—twenty acres in tobacco, and a good creek through it. He’ll be at the Gathering at Mount Helicon; perhaps you’ll be going, Mac Dubh?”

  Jamie shook his head, smiling at the bald hint. There were few available women in the colony, and even though Jamie had given it out that Brianna was promised elsewhere, this had not by any means put a stop to the matchmaking attempts.

  “I fear not this year, Mrs. Kenny. Perhaps the next, but I canna spare the time just now.”

  They took their leave politely, and turned toward home, the sinking sun at their backs casting long shadows on the path ahead of them.

  “Do you think the button’s important?” Brianna asked curiously.

  Jamie shrugged slightly. A light breeze lifted the hair on the crown of his head, and tugged at the leather thong that held it back.

  “I canna say. It could be nothing—but it could be something, too. Your mother told me what Ronnie Sinclair said, about the man in Cross Creek, asking about the whisky.”

  “Hod
gepile?” Brianna couldn’t help smiling at the name. Jamie returned the smile briefly, then became serious again.

  “Aye. If the button belongs to someone on the Ridge—they ken well enough where the still is, and they might stop to look and no harm done. But if it was to be a stranger…” He glanced at her and shrugged again.

  “It’s none so easy for a man to pass unnoticed here—unless he should be hiding a-purpose. A man come for any innocent reason would stop at a house for a bit of food and drink, and I’d hear of it the same day. But there’s been nothing of the sort. Nor would it be an Indian; they dinna use such things in their clothing.”

  A gust of wind whirred across the path in a swirl of brown and yellow leaves, and they turned uphill, toward the cabin. They walked in near silence, affected by the growing quiet of the woods; the birds were still singing twilight songs, but the shadows were lengthening under the trees. The northern slope of the mountain across the valley had already gone dark and silent, as the sun edged behind it.

  The cabin’s clearing was still filled with sunlight, though, filtered through a yellow blaze of chestnut trees. Claire was in the palisaded garden, a basin on one hip, snapping beans from poled vines. Her slender figure was silhouetted dark against the sun, her hair a great aureole of curly gold.

  “Innisfree,” Brianna said involuntarily, stopping dead at the sight.

  “Innisfree?” Jamie glanced at her, bewildered.

  She hesitated, but there was no way out of explaining.

  “It’s a poem, or part of one. Daddy always used to say it, when he’d come home and find Mama puttering in her garden—he said she’d live out there if she could. He used to joke that she—that she’d leave us someday, and go find a place where she could live by herself, with nothing but her plants.”

  “Ah.” Jamie’s face was calm, its broad planes ruddy in the dying light. “How does the poem go, then?”

  She was conscious of a small tightness round her heart as she said it.

  “I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

  And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:

  Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee.

  And live alone in the bee-loud glade.”

  The thick red brows drew together slightly, sparking in the sun.

  “A poem, is it? And where is Innisfree?”

  “Ireland, maybe. He was Irish,” Brianna said in explanation. “The poet.” The row of bee gums stood squat on their stones at the edge of the wood.

  “Oh.”

  Tiny motes of gold and black drifted past them through honeyed air—bees homing from the fields. Her father made no move to go forward, but stood silent by her side, watching her mother pick beans, black and gold among the leaves.

  Not alone, after all, she thought. But the small tightness stayed in her chest, not quite an ache.

  * * *

  Kenny Lindsey took a sip of whisky, closed his eyes, and rolled the liquor round his tongue like a professional wine taster. He paused, frowning in concentration, then swallowed with a convulsive gulp.

  “Hoo!” He drew breath, shuddering all over.

  “Christ,” he said hoarsely. “That’ll strip your tripes!”

  Jamie grinned at the compliment, and poured another small measure, shoving it toward Duncan.

  “Aye, it’s better than the last,” he agreed, with a cautious sniff before essaying his own drink. “This one doesna take the hide off your tongue—quite.”

  Lindsay wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, nodding in agreement.

  “Weel, it’ll find a good home. Woolam wants a cask—that’ll last him a year, the way yon Quakers dole it out.”

  “Ye’ve agreed a price?”

  Lindsay nodded, sniffing appreciatively at the platter of bannocks and savories that Lizzie set in front of him.

  “A hundredweight of barley for the cask; another, if ye’ll go halves wi’ him in the whisky from it.”

  “That’s fair.” Jamie took a bannock and chewed absently for a moment. Then he raised one brow at Duncan, seated across the table.

  “Will ye ask MacLeod on Naylor’s Creek will he make us the same bargain? You’ll pass that way going home, aye?”

  Duncan nodded, chewing, and Jamie lifted his cup to me in a silent toast of celebration—Woolam’s offer made a total of eight hundred pounds of barley, scraped together by barter and promise. More than the surplus output of every field on the Ridge; the raw material for next year’s whisky.

  “A cask each to the houses on the Ridge, two to Fergus—” Jamie pulled absently at his earlobe, calculating. “Two, maybe, to Nacognaweto, one kept back to age—aye, we can spare maybe a dozen casks for the Gathering, Duncan.”

  Duncan’s coming was opportune. While Jamie had managed to barter the first year’s crop of raw whisky to the Moravians in Salem for the tools, cloth, and other things we so urgently needed, there was no doubt that the wealthy Scottish planters of the Cape Fear would make a better market.

  We couldn’t possibly spare time away from the homestead for long enough to make the week-long journey to Mount Helicon, but if Duncan could take the whisky down and sell it…I was already making lists in my head. Everyone brought things to sell, at a Gathering. Wool, cloth, tools, food, animals…I urgently needed a small copper kettle, and six lengths of fresh muslin for shifts, and…

  “Do you think you should give alcohol to the Indians?” Brianna’s question pulled me from my greedy reverie.

  “Why not?” Lindsey asked, a little disapproving of her intrusion. “After all, we’re no going to give it to them, lass. They’ve little silver, but they pay in hides—and they pay well.”

  Brianna glanced at me for support, then at Jamie.

  “But Indians don’t—I mean I’ve heard that they can’t handle alcohol.”

  All three men looked at her uncomprehendingly, and Duncan looked at his cup, turning it round in his hand.

  “Handle it?”

  The corner of her mouth quirked inward.

  “They get drunk easily, I mean.”

  Lindsey peered into his cup, then looked at her, rubbing a hand over the balding crown of his head.

  “Ye’ve a point, lass?” he said, more or less politely.

  Brianna’s full mouth compressed itself, then relaxed.

  “I mean,” she said, “it seems wrong to encourage people to drink, who can’t stop drinking if they start.” She looked at me, a little helplessly. I shook my head.

  “ ‘Alcoholic’ isn’t a noun yet,” I said. “It’s not a disease now—just weak character.”

  Jamie glanced up at her quizzically.

  “Well, I’ll tell ye, lass,” he said, “I’ve seen many a drunkard in my day, but I’ve yet to see a bottle leap off a table and pour itself down anyone’s throat.”

  There were general grunts of agreement with this, and another small round to accompany the change of subject.

  “Hodgepile? No, I’ve not seen the man, though I do believe I’ve heard the name.” Duncan swilled the rest of his drink and set down his cup, wheezing gently. “You’ll want me to ask at the Gathering?”

  Jamie nodded, and took another bannock. “Aye, if ye will, Duncan.”

  Lizzie was bent over the fire, stirring the stew for supper. I saw her shoulders tighten, but she was too shy to speak before so many men. Brianna suffered no such inhibitions.

  “I have someone to ask after, too, Mr. Innes.” She leaned over the table toward him, eyes fixed on him in earnest entreaty. “Will you ask for a man named Roger Wakefield? Please?”

  “Och, indeed. Indeed I will.” Duncan went pink at the proximity of Brianna’s bosom, and in confusion drank down the rest of Kenny’s whisky. “Is there aught else I can do?”

  “Yes,” I said, putting down a fresh cup in front of the disgruntled Lindsey. “While you’re asking after Hodgepile and Bree’s young man, would you also ask for a man named Joseph Wemyss? He’ll be a bondsman.” From
the corner of my eye, I saw Lizzie’s thin shoulders slump in relief.

  Duncan nodded, his composure restored as Brianna disappeared into the pantry to fetch butter. Kenny Lindsey looked after her, interested.

  “Bree? Is that the name ye call your daughter?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Why?”

  A smile showed briefly on Lindsey’s face. Then he glanced at Jamie, coughed, and buried the smile in his cup.

  “It’s a Scots word, Sassenach,” Jamie said, a rather wry smile appearing on his own face. “A bree is a great disturbance.”

  44

  THREE-CORNERED CONVERSATION

  October 1769

  The shock of impact juddered through his arms. With a rhythm born of long practice, Jamie jerked the axhead free, swung it back and brought it down in a tchunk! of splintered bark and yellow wood chips. He shifted his foot on the log and struck again, the ax blow judged to a nicety, sharp metal embedded in the wood a scant two inches from his toes.

  He could have told Ian off to do the chopping, and gone himself to fetch the flour from the tiny mill at Woolam’s Point, but the lad deserved the treat of a visit with the three unmarried Woolam daughters who worked with their father in the mill. They were Quaker girls, dressed drab as sparrows, but lively of wit and fair of face, and they made a pet of Ian, vying with each other to offer him small beer and meat pies when he came.

  A good deal better the lad should spend his time flirting with virtuous Quakers than with the bold-eyed Indian lassies over the ridge, he thought, with a little grimness. He hadn’t forgotten what Myers had said about Indian women taking men to their beds as they liked.

  He had sent the wee bondmaid with Ian as well, thinking the brisk fall air might bring a bit of color to the lassie’s face. The wean was white-skinned as Claire, but with the sickly blue-white cast of skimmed milk, not Claire’s pale glow, rich and grainless as the silk-white heartwood of a poplar tree.

  The log was nearly split; one more blow, and a twist of the ax, and two good chunks lay ready for the hearth, smelling clean and sharp with resin. He stacked them neatly on the growing woodpile next to the pantry, and rolled another half log into place beneath his foot.

  The truth of it was that he liked chopping wood. Quite different from the damp, backbreaking, foot-freezing job of cutting peats, but with that same feeling of soul-deep satisfaction at seeing a good stock of fuel laid by, which only those who have spent winters shivering in thin clothes can know. The woodpile reached nearly to the eaves of the house by now, dry split chunks of pine and oak, hickory and maple, the sight of them warming his heart as much as the wood itself would warm his flesh.

  Speak of warmth; it was a warm day for late October, and his shirt was clinging to his shoulders already. He wiped a sleeve across his face and examined the damp patch critically.

  If he got wringing, Brianna would insist on washing it again, protest as he might that sweat was clean enough. “Phew,” she would say, with a disapproving nostril-flare, wrinkling her long nose up like a possum. He had laughed out loud when he first saw her do it; as much from surprise as from amusement.

  His mother had died long ago, in his childhood, and while the odd memory of her came now and then in dreams, he had mostly replaced her presence with static pictures, frozen images in his mind. But she had said “Phew!” to him when he came in mucky, and wrinkled up her long nose in just that way—it had come back with a flash when he saw Brianna do it.

  What a mystery blood was—how did a tiny gesture, a tone of voice, endure through generations like the harder verities of flesh? He had seen it again and again, watching his nieces and nephews grow, and accepted without thought the echoes of parent and grandparent that appeared for brief moments, the shadow of a face looking back through the years—that vanished again into the face that was now.

  Yet now that he saw it in Brianna…he could watch her for hours, he thought, and was reminded of his sister, bending close over each of her newborn bairns in fascination. Perhaps that was why parents watched their weans in such enchantment, he thought; finding out all the tiny links between them, that bound the chains of life, one generation to the next.

  He shrugged, and pulled the shirt off. It was his own place, after all; there was no one to see the marks on his back, and no one whose business it would be to care if they did. The air was chill and sudden on his damp skin, but a few swings of the ax brought the warm blood pulsing back again.

  He loved all Jenny’s children deeply—especially Ian, the wee gowk whose mixture of foolishness and pigheaded courage reminded him so much of himself at that age. They were his blood, after all. But Brianna…