Drums of Autumn

  Roger doubled and staggered back, gasping from the blow. It didn’t hurt—yet—but he’d felt the force of it all the way to his spine. His principal feeling was one of amazement, tinged with anger.

  “Stop,” he said, trying to get enough breath to talk. “Stop! For God’s sake, I said I—”

  Fraser hit him again, this time on the side of the jaw. That one hurt, a glancing blow that scraped the skin and left his jawbone throbbing. Roger jerked back, fear turning rapidly to fury. The bloody sod was trying to kill him!

  Fraser swung at him again, but missed as Roger ducked and whirled. Well, to fuck with good family relations, then!

  He took a giant step backward, shrugging out of his coat. To his surprise, Fraser didn’t come after him, but stood there, fists at his sides, waiting.

  The blood was drumming in Roger’s ears, and he had no eyes for anyone but Fraser. If it was a fight the bugger wanted, that’s what he’d get, then.

  Roger crouched, hands up and ready. He’d been taken by surprise, but he wouldn’t be caught that way again. No brawler, still he’d been in his share of pub fights. They were well matched for height and reach, and he had more than fifteen years’ advantage on the man.

  He saw Fraser’s right, ducked and countered, felt his fist brush linen as it passed Fraser’s side and then the left he hadn’t seen took him in the eye. Bloody stars and streaks of light exploded through the side of his head, and tears ran down his cheek as he launched himself at Fraser, roaring.

  He hit the man; he could feel his fists strike flesh, but it seemed to make no difference. Through his one sound eye, he could see that broad-boned face, set in eerie calm, like a Viking berserker. He swung, and it disappeared, bobbed up again; he swung, grazing an ear. A blow struck him in the shoulder; he swung half around with it, recovered, and launched himself headfirst.

  “She’s…mine,” Roger gritted between clenched teeth. He had his arms wrapped around Fraser’s body, felt the deep-sprung ribs give as he squeezed. He’d crack the bastard like a nut. “Mine…hear?”

  Fraser rabbit-punched him in the back of the neck, a glancing blow, but hard enough to numb his left arm and shoulder. He let go his grip, hunched and drove his right shoulder hard into Fraser’s chest, trying to drive the older man off his feet.

  Fraser took a short step back and hooked him hard, but the blow struck his ribs, not the soft flesh below. Still, it was hard enough to make him grunt and jerk back, crouching to protect himself.

  Fraser lowered his head and butted him, straight on; he flew backward and landed hard. Blood from his nose ran down his mouth and chin; with a sense of remoteness, he watched the spatter of dark red drops grow and run together into a splotch on his shirt.

  He rolled to one side to avoid the kick he saw coming, but not far enough. As he rolled frantically the other way, it occurred to him, in a detached sort of way, that while he might be fifteen years younger than his opponent, Jamie Fraser had likely spent every one of those fifteen years engaged in physical combat.

  He had got momentarily out of range. Gulping air, he rolled up onto his hands and knees. Blood gurgled through smashed cartilage with each breath; he could taste it in the back of his throat, a taste like sheared metal.

  “Nuff,” he panted. “No. ’Nuff!”

  A hand grabbed his hair and jerked back his head. Blue eyes glittered six inches away, and he felt the man’s breath hot on his face.

  “Not nearly enough,” Fraser said, and kneed him in the mouth. He fell over and rolled once, then struggled to his feet. The clearing blurred in a throb of orange and yellow; only instinct got him up and moving.

  He was fighting for his life, and knew it. He hurled himself blindly at the weaving figure, got a grip of Fraser’s shirt and drove a punch at the man’s belly, as hard as he could. Fabric tore and his fist struck bone. Fraser shifted like a snake and shot a hand down between them. He grabbed Roger’s testicles and squeezed with all his strength.

  Roger stood stock-still, then dropped as though his spinal cord had been severed. There was a split second, before the pain hit, when Roger was conscious of one last thought, cold and clear as a shard of ice. My God, he thought, I’m going to die before I’ve been born.

  47

  A FATHER’S SONG

  It was well after dark before Jamie came in, and my nerves were thoroughly on edge from the waiting; I could only imagine Brianna’s. We had eaten supper—or I should say, supper had been served. None of us had any appetite, either for food or conversation; even Lizzie’s normal voracity was noticeably impaired. I hoped the girl wasn’t ill; pale and silent, she had pled a headache and gone to bed in the herb shed. Still, it was fortunate in the circumstances; it saved me having to invent an excuse to get rid of her once Jamie did arrive.

  The candles had been lit for over an hour when I finally heard the goats bleat in greeting at his step on the path. Brianna looked up at once at the sound, her face pale in the yellow light.

  “It’ll be all right,” I said. She heard the confidence in my voice and nodded, slightly reassured. The confidence was authentic, but not unalloyed. I thought everything would be all right eventually—but God knew, it wasn’t going to be a jolly family evening. Well as I knew Jamie, there were still a good many circumstances in which I had no idea how he would react—and hearing that his daughter was pregnant by a rapist was certainly one of them.

  In the hours since Brianna had made my suspicions a certainty, I had envisioned virtually every possible response he might make, several of them involving shouting or the putting of his fists through solid objects, behavior which I always found upsetting. So might Bree, and I knew rather better what she might do when upset.

  She was under a tight control for the moment, but I knew how precarious her calm demeanor was. Let him say a bruising word to her, and she would flare like a striking match. Beyond red hair and arresting height, she had from Jamie both a passionate nature and a perfect readiness to speak her mind.

  So unfamiliar and so anxious to please each other, they had both so far stepped delicately—but there seemed no delicate way of handling this. Unsure whether I should prepare myself to be advocate, interpreter, or referee, it was with rather a hollow feeling that I lifted the latch to let him in.

  He had washed at the creek; his hair was damp at the temples, and he had wiped his face on his shirttail, judging by the moist patches on it.

  “You’re very late; where were you?” I asked, standing on tiptoe to give him a kiss. “And where’s Ian?”

  “Fergus came and asked could we give him a hand wi’ his chimney stones, as he couldna manage verra well by himself. Ian’s stayed ower, to help finish the job.” He dropped an absent kiss on top of my head, and patted my bottom. He’d been working hard, I thought; he was warm to my touch and smelled pungently of sweat, though the skin of his face was cool and fresh from washing.

  “Did Marsali feed you supper?” I peered at him in the gloom. Something seemed different about him, though I couldn’t think what.

  “No. I dropped a stone and I’ve maybe broken my blasted finger again; I thought I’d best come home and have ye tend to it.” That was it, I thought; he’d patted me with his left hand instead of his right.

  “Come into the light and let me see.” I drew him to the fire, and made him sit down on one of the oak settles. Brianna was on the other, her sewing spread around her. She got up and came to look over my shoulder.

  “Your poor hands, Da!” she said, seeing the swollen knuckles and scraped skin.

  “Och, it’s no great matter,” he said, glancing dismissively at them. “Save for the bloody finger. Ow!”

  I felt my way gently over the fourth finger of his right hand, from base to nail, disregarding his small grunt of pain. It was reddened and slightly swollen, but not visibly dislocated.

  It always troubled me slightly to examine this hand. I had set a number of broken bones in it long ago, before I knew anything of formal surgery, and working under
far from ideal conditions. I had managed; I had saved the hand from amputation, and he had good use of it, but there were small awkwardnesses; slight twistings and thickenings that I was aware of whenever I felt it closely. Still, at the moment, I blessed the opportunity for delay.

  I closed my eyes, feeling the fire’s warm flicker on my lids as I concentrated. The fourth finger was always stiff; the middle joint had been crushed, and healed frozen. I could see the bone in my mind; not the polished dry surface of a laboratory specimen, but the faintly luminous matte glow of living bone, all the tiny osteoblasts busily laying down their crystal matrix, and the hidden pulse of the blood that fed them.

  Once more, I drew my own finger down the length of his, then took it gently between my thumb and index finger, just below the distal joint. I could feel the crack in my mind, a thin dark line of pain.

  “There?” I asked, opening my eyes.

  He nodded, a faint smile on his lips as he looked at me.

  “Just there. I like the way ye look when ye do that, Sassenach.”

  “What way is that?” I asked, a bit startled to hear that I looked any way in particular.

  “I canna describe it, exactly,” he said, head tilted to one side as he examined me. “It’s maybe like—”

  “Madame Lazonga with her crystal ball,” Brianna said, sounding amused.

  I glanced up, taken aback to find Brianna gazing down at me, head cocked at the same angle, with the same appraising look. She switched her gaze to Jamie. “A fortune-teller, I mean. A seer.”

  He laughed.

  “Aye, I think you’re maybe right, a nighean. Though it was a priest I was thinking of; the way they look saying Mass, when they look past the bread and see the flesh of Christ instead. Not that I should think to compare my measly finger wi’ the Body of Our Lord, mind,” he added, with a modest nod toward the offending digit.

  Brianna laughed, and a smile curved his mouth on one side, as he looked up at her, his eyes soft despite the lines of tiredness round them. He’d had a long day, I thought. And likely to be a lot longer. I would have given anything to hold that fleeting moment of connection between them, but it had passed already.

  “I think you are both ridiculous,” I said. I touched his finger lightly at the spot I’d held. “The bone is cracked, just there below the joint. It’s not bad, though; no more than a hairline fracture. I’ll splint it, just in case.”

  I got up and went to rummage through my medical chest for a linen bandage and one of the long, flat wood chips I used as tongue depressors. I glanced covertly over the raised lid, watching him. Something was definitely odd about him this evening, though I still couldn’t put my finger on it.

  I had sensed it from the first, even through my own agitation, and sensed it even more strongly when I held his hand to examine it; a sort of energy pulsed through him, as though he were excited or upset, though he gave no outward sign of it. He was bloody good at hiding things when he wanted to; what the hell had happened at Fergus’s house?

  Brianna said something to Jamie, too low for me to catch, and then turned away without waiting for an answer, and came to join me by the open chest.

  “Do you have some ointment, for his hands?” she asked. Then, leaning close on pretext of looking into the chest, said in a low voice, “Should I tell him tonight? He’s tired and he’s hurt. Hadn’t I better let him rest?”

  I glanced at Jamie. He was leaning back against the settle, eyes wide open as he watched the flames, hands resting flat on his thighs. He wasn’t relaxed, though; whatever strange current was flowing through him, it had him strung like a telegraph wire.

  “He might rest better not knowing, but you won’t,” I said, equally low-voiced. “Go ahead and tell him. You might let him eat first, though,” I added practically. I was a strong believer in meeting bad news on a full stomach.

  I splinted Jamie’s finger while Brianna sat down beside him and dabbed gentian ointment onto the abraded knuckles of his other hand. Her face was quite calm; no one would ever guess what was going on behind it.

  “You’ve torn your shirt,” I said, finishing off the last bandage with a small square knot. “Give it to me after supper and I’ll mend it. How’s that, then?”

  “Verra nice, Madame Lazonga,” he said, gingerly wiggling his freshly splinted finger. “I shall be getting quite spoilt, wi’ so much attention paid me.”

  “When I start to chew your food for you, you can worry,” I said tartly.

  He laughed, and gave the splinted hand to Bree for anointing.

  I went to the cupboard to fetch a plate for him. As I turned back toward the hearth, I saw him watching her intently. She kept her head bent, eyes on the large, callused hand she held between her own. I could imagine her search for words with which to begin, and my heart ached for her. Perhaps I should have told him privately myself, I thought; not let him near her until the first rush of feeling was safely past and he had himself in hand again.

  “Ciamar a tha tu, mo chridhe?” he said suddenly. It was his customary greeting to her, the beginning of their evening Gaelic lesson, but his voice was different tonight; soft, and very gentle. How are you, darling? His hand turned and covered hers, cradling her long fingers.

  “Tha mi gle mhath, athair,” she replied, looking a bit surprised. I am well, Father. Normally he began the lesson after dinner.

  Slowly he reached out with his other hand and rested it gently on her stomach.

  “An e ’n fhirinn a th’agad?” he asked. Do you tell me true? I closed my eyes and let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. No need to break all the news, after all. And now I knew the reason for his taut-strung strangeness; he knew, and whatever the knowledge cost him to hold, hold it he would, and treat her gently.

  She didn’t know enough Gaelic yet to tell what he’d asked, but she knew well enough what he meant. She stared at him for a moment, frozen, then lifted his sound hand to her cheek and bent her head over it, the loose hair hiding her face.

  “Oh, Da,” she said, very quietly. “I’m sorry.”

  She sat quite still, holding to his hand as though it were a lifeline.

  “Ah, now, m’ annsachd,” he said softly, “it will be all right.”

  “No, it won’t,” she said, her voice small but clear. “It can’t ever be right. You know that.”

  He glanced at me out of habit, but only briefly. I couldn’t tell him what to do, now. He drew a deep breath, took her by the shoulder and gave her a gentle shake.

  “All I know,” he said softly, “is that I’m here by ye, and your mother, too. We willna see ye shamed or hurt. Not ever. D’ye hear me?”

  She didn’t answer or look up, but kept her eyes on her lap, her face hidden by the rich fall of her hair. A maiden’s hair, thick and unbound. His hand traced the shining curve of her head, then his fingers trailed along her jaw and lifted her chin so her eyes looked into his.

  “Lizzie’s right?” he asked gently. “It was rape?”

  She pulled her chin away and looked down at her knotted hands, the gesture as much an admission as her nod.

  “I didn’t think she knew. I didn’t tell her.”

  “She guessed. But it’s no your fault, and dinna ever think so,” he said firmly. “Come here to me, a leannan.” He reached for her, and gathered her awkwardly onto his knee.

  The oakwood creaked alarmingly under their combined weight, but Jamie had built it after his usual sturdy fashion; it could have held six of him. Tall as Brianna was, she looked almost small cradled in his arms, her head tucked into the curve of his shoulder. He stroked her hair gently, and murmured small things to her, half in Gaelic.

  “I’ll see ye safe marrit, and your bairn wi’ a good father,” he murmured to her. “I swear it to ye, a nighean.”

  “I can’t marry anybody,” she said, sounding choked. “It wouldn’t be right. I can’t take somebody else when I love Roger. And Roger won’t want me now. When he finds out—”

  “It’ll
make no difference to him,” Jamie said, grasping her harder, almost fiercely, as though he could make things right by pure force of will. “If he’s a decent man, it’ll make no difference. And if it does—well, then he doesna deserve ye, and I shall beat him into pulp and stamp on the pieces, and then go and find ye a better man.”

  She gave a small laugh that turned into a sob, and buried her head in the cloth of his shoulder. He patted her, rocking and murmuring as though she were a tiny girl with a skinned knee, and his eyes met mine over her head.

  I hadn’t wept when she had told me; mothers are strong. But now she couldn’t see me, and Jamie had taken the burden of strength from my shoulders for the moment.

  She hadn’t cried when she told me, either. But now she clung to him and wept, as much from relief, I thought, as from grief. He simply held her and let her cry, stroking her hair again and again, his eyes on my face.

  I blotted my eyes on my sleeve, and he smiled at me, faintly. Brianna had subsided into long, sighing breaths, and he patted her gently on the back.

  “I’m hungry, Sassenach,” he said. “And I should imagine a wee drop wouldna come amiss for any of us, aye?”

  “Right,” I said, and cleared my throat. “I’ll go and fetch some milk from the shed.”

  “That’s no what I meant by drink!” he called after me in mock outrage.

  Ignoring both this and Brianna’s choked laugh, I pushed open the door.

  The night outside was cold and bright, the autumn stars bright sparks overhead. I wasn’t dressed to be outdoors—my face and hands were already beginning to tingle—but I stood quite still nonetheless, letting the cold wind sweep past me, taking with it the tension of the last quarter hour.

  Everything was quiet; the crickets and cicadas had long since died or gone underground with the rustling mice, the skunks and possums who left off their endless search for food and went to dream their winter dreams, the rich fat of their efforts wrapped warm about their bones. Only wolves hunted in the cold, starry nights of late autumn, and they went silent, fur-footed on the frozen ground.

  “What are we going to do?” I said softly, addressing the question to the overwhelming depths of the vast dark sky overhead.

  I heard no sound but the rush of wind in the pine trees; no answer, save the form of my own question—the faint echo of “we” that rang in my ears. That much was true at least; whatever happened, none of us need face things alone. And I supposed that was after all as much answer as I needed, for now.

  They were still on the settle when I came back in, red heads close together, haloed by the fire. The smell of gentian ointment mingled with the pungent scent of burning pine and the mouth-watering aroma of the venison stew—quite suddenly, I was hungry.

  I let the door close quietly behind me, and slid to the heavy bolt. I went to poke the fire and lay a new supper, fetching down a fresh loaf of bread from the shelf, then went to get sweet butter from the crock in the pantry. I stayed a moment there, glancing over the loaded shelves.

  “Put your trust in God, and pray for guidance. And when in doubt, eat.” A Franciscan monk had once given me that advice, and on the whole, I had found it useful. I picked out a jar of black currant jam, a small round goat cheese, and a bottle of elderflower wine, to go with the meal.

  Jamie was talking quietly when I came back. I finished my preparations, letting the deep lilt of his voice soothe me, as well as Brianna.

  “I used to think of you, when ye were small,” Jamie was saying to Bree, his voice very soft. “When I lived in the cave; I would imagine that I held ye in my arms, a wee babe. I would hold ye so, against my heart, and sing to ye there, watching the stars go by overhead.”

  “What would you sing?” Brianna’s voice was low, too, barely audible above the crackle of the fire. I could see her hand, resting on his shoulder. Her index finger touched a long, bright strand of his hair, tentatively stroking its softness.

  “Old songs. Lullabies I could remember, that my mother sang to me, the same that my sister Jenny would sing to her bairns.”

  She sighed, a long, slow sound.

  “Sing to me now, please, Da.”

  He hesitated, but then tilted his head toward hers and began to chant softly, an odd tuneless song in Gaelic. Jamie was tone-deaf; the song wavered oddly up and down, bearing no resemblance to music, but the rhythm of the words was a comfort to the ear.

  I caught most of the words; a fisher’s song, naming the fish of loch and sea, telling the child what he would bring home to her for food. A hunter’s song, naming birds and beasts of prey, feathers for beauty and furs for warmth, meat to last the winter. It was a father’s song—a soft litany of providence and protection.

  I moved quietly around the room, taking down the pewter plates and wooden bowls for supper, coming back to cut bread and spread it with butter.

  “Do you know something, Da?” Bree asked softly.

  “What’s that?” he said, momentarily suspending his song.

  “You can’t sing.”

  There was a soft exhalation of laughter and the rustle of cloth as he shifted to make them both more comfortable.

  “Aye, that’s true. Shall I stop, then?”

  “No.” She snuggled closer, tucking her head into the curve of his shoulder.

  He resumed his tuneless crooning, only to interrupt himself a few moments later.

  “D’ye ken something yourself, a leannan?”

  Her eyes were closed, her lashes casting deep shadows on her cheeks, but I saw her lips curve in a smile.

  “What’s that, Da?”

  “Ye weigh as much as a full-grown deer.”

  “Shall I get off, then?” she asked, not moving.