An Echo in the Bone

  I felt hot breath in my ear.

  There, now. I’m sorry, Martha, but you got to take it. I got to give it to you. Yeah, there… oh, Christ, there… there…

  I didn’t remember falling to the ground. I was curled into a ball, face pressed to my knees, shaking with rage and terror. Crashing in the brush nearby, several men passed within a few feet of me, laughing and joking.

  And then some small fragment of my sanity spoke up in the recesses of my brain, cool as dammit, dispassionately remarking, Oh, so that’s a flashback. How interesting.

  “I’ll show you interesting,” I whispered—or thought I did. I don’t believe I made a sound. I was fully dressed—swaddled against the cold—I could feel the cold on my face, but it made no difference. I was naked, felt cool air on my breasts, my thighs—between my thighs …

  I clamped my legs together as tightly as I could and bit my lip as hard as I could. Now I really did taste blood. But the next thing didn’t happen. I remembered it vividly. But it was a memory. It didn’t happen again.

  Very slowly, I came back. My lip hurt, and I was drooling blood; I could feel the gouge, a loose flap of flesh in my inner lip, and taste silver and copper, as though my mouth was filled with pennies.

  I was breathing as though I’d run a mile, but I could breathe; my nose was clear, my throat soft and open, not bruised, not abraded. I was drenched in sweat, and my muscles hurt from being clenched so hard.

  I could hear moaning in the brush to my left. They didn’t kill him, then, I thought dimly. I supposed I should go and see, help him. I didn’t want to, didn’t want to touch a man, see a man, be anywhere near one. It didn’t matter, though; I couldn’t move.

  I was no longer frozen in the grip of terror; I knew where I was, that I was safe—safe enough. But I couldn’t move. I stayed crouched, sweating and trembling, and listened.

  The man groaned a few times, then rolled slowly over, branches rustling.

  “Oh, shit,” he mumbled. He lay still, breathing heavily, then sat up abruptly, exclaiming, “Oh, shit!”—whether at the pain of the movement or the memory of the robbery, I didn’t know. There was mumbled cursing, a sigh, silence… then a shriek of pure terror that hit my spinal cord like a jolt of electricity.

  Mad scrambling sounds as the man scuffled to his feet—why, why, what was going on? Crashing and rattling of flight. Terror was infectious; I wanted to run, too, was on my feet, my heart in my mouth, but didn’t know where to go. I couldn’t hear anything above that idiot’s crashing. What was bloody out there?

  A faint rustle of dry leaves made me jerk my head round—and saved me by a split second from having a heart attack when Rollo thrust his wet nose into my hand.

  “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ!” I exclaimed, relieved at the sound of my own voice. The sound of rustling footsteps came toward me through the leaves.

  “Oh, there ye are, Auntie.” A tall presence loomed up, no more than a shadow in the dark, and Young Ian touched my arm. “Are ye all right, Auntie?” There was an anxious tone in his voice, bless him.

  “Yes,” I said rather faintly, then with more conviction, “Yes. I am. I got turned about, in the dark.”

  “Oh.” The tall figure relaxed. “I thought ye must have lost your way. Denny Hunter came and said ye’d gone off to find some grease but ye’d no come back, and he was worrit for ye. So Rollo and I came to find ye. Who was yon fellow that Rollo scared the bejesus out of?”

  “I don’t know.” The mention of grease made me look for the cup of possum grease. It was on the ground, empty and clean. From the lapping noises, I deduced that Rollo, having finished off what was in the cup, was now tidily licking the dead leaves on which grease had spilled when I dropped it. Under the circumstances, I didn’t feel I could really complain.

  Ian bent and scooped up the cup.

  “Come back to the fire, Auntie. I’ll find some more grease.”

  I made no demur at this and followed him down off the hillside, paying no real attention to my surroundings. I was too occupied in rearranging my mental state, settling my feelings, and trying to regain some kind of equilibrium.

  I’d heard the word “flashback” only briefly, in Boston in the sixties. We didn’t call it flashback earlier, but I’d heard about it. And I’d seen it. Shell shock, they said in the First World War. Battle fatigue, in the Second. It’s what happens when you live through things you shouldn’t have been able to live through and can’t reconcile that knowledge with the fact that you did.

  Well, I did, I said defiantly to myself. So you can just get used to it. I wondered for an instant who I was talking to and—quite seriously—whether I was losing my mind.

  I certainly remembered what had happened to me during my abduction years before. I’d have strongly preferred not to but knew enough about psychology not to try to suppress the memories. When they showed up, I looked carefully at them, doing deep-breathing exercises, then stuffed them back where they’d come from and went to find Jamie. After a time, I found that only certain details showed up vividly: the cup of a dead ear, purple in the dawn light, looking like an exotic fungus; the brilliant burst of light I’d seen when Harley Boble had broken my nose; the smell of corn on the breath of the teenaged idiot who’d tried to rape me. The soft, heavy weight of the man who did. The rest was a merciful blur.

  I had nightmares, too, though Jamie generally woke at once when I began to make whimpering noises and grabbed me hard enough to shatter the dream, holding me against him and stroking my hair, my back, humming to me, half asleep himself, until I sank back into his peace and slept again. This was different.

  IAN WENT FROM fire to fire in search of grease and at length obtained a small tin containing half an inch of goose grease mixed with comfrey. It was more than a bit rancid, but Denny Hunter had told him what it was for, and he didn’t suppose the state of it mattered so much.

  The state of his aunt concerned him somewhat more. He knew fine well why she sometimes twitched like a wee cricket or moaned in her sleep. He’d seen the state of her when they’d got her back from the bastards, and he knew the sort of things they’d done to her. Blood rose in him and the vessels at his temples swelled at memory of the fight when they’d taken her back.

  She hadn’t wished to take her own revenge, when they’d rescued her; he thought perhaps that had been a mistake, though he understood the part about her being a healer and sworn not to kill. The thing was, some men needed killing. The Church didn’t admit that, save it was war. The Mohawk understood it fine. So did Uncle Jamie.

  And the Quakers…

  He groaned.

  Out of the frying pan, into the fire. The instant he’d got the grease, his steps had turned, not toward the hospital tent where Denny almost surely was—but toward the Hunters’ tent. He could pretend he was going to the hospital tent; the two were near enough together. But he’d never seen any point in lying to himself.

  Not for the first time, he missed Brianna. He could say anything to her, and she to him—more, he thought, than she could sometimes say to Roger Mac.

  Mechanically, he crossed himself, muttering, “Gum biodh iad sabhailte, a Dhìa.” That they might be safe, O God.

  For that matter, he wondered what Roger Mac might have counseled were he here. He was a quiet man, and a godly one, if a Presbyterian. But he’d been on that night’s ride and joined in the work, and not a word said about it after.

  Ian spared a moment’s contemplation of Roger Mac’s future congregation and what they’d think of that picture of their minister, but shook his head and went on. All these wonderings were only means to keep him from thinking what he’d say when he saw her, and that was pointless. He wanted only to say one thing to her, and that was the one thing he couldn’t say, ever.

  The tent flap was closed, but there was a candle burning within. He coughed politely outside, and Rollo, seeing where they were, wagged his tail and uttered a cordial woof !

  The flap was thrust back at once, and Rachel st
ood there, mending in one hand, squinting into the dark but already smiling; she’d heard the dog. She’d taken off her cap, and her hair was messed, coming down from its pins.

  “Rollo!” she said, bending down to scratch his ears. “And I see thee’ve brought thy friend along, too.”

  Ian smiled, lifting the little tin.

  “I brought some grease. My aunt said your brother needed it for his arsehole.” An instant too late, he re-collected himself. “I mean—for an arsehole.” Mortification flamed up his chest, but he was speaking to perhaps the only woman in camp who might take arseholes as a common topic of conversation. Well, the only one save his auntie, he amended. Or the whores, maybe.

  “Oh, he’ll be pleased; I thank thee.”

  She reached to take the tin from him, and her fingers brushed his. The tin box was smeared with the grease and slippery; it fell and both of them bent to retrieve it. She straightened first; her hair brushed his cheek, warm and smelling of her.

  Without even thinking, he put both hands on her face and bent to her. Saw the flash and darkening of her eyes, and had one heartbeat, two, of perfect warm happiness, as his lips rested on hers, as his heart rested in her hands.

  Then one of those hands cracked against his cheek, and he staggered back like a drunkard startled out of sleep.

  “What does thee do?” she whispered. Her eyes wide as saucers, she had backed away, was pressed against the wall of the tent as though to fall through it. “Thee must not!”

  He couldn’t find the words to say. His languages boiled in his mind like stew, and he was mute. The first word to surface through the moil in his mind was the Gàidhlig, though.

  “Mo chridhe,” he said, and breathed for the first time since he’d touched her. Mohawk came next, deep and visceral. I need you. And tagging belatedly, English, the one best suited to apology. “I—I’m sorry.”

  She nodded, jerky as a puppet.

  “Yes. I—yes.”

  He should leave; she was afraid. He knew that. But he knew something else, too. It wasn’t him she was afraid of. Slowly, slowly, he put out a hand to her, the fingers moving without his will, slowly, as though to guddle a trout.

  And by an expected miracle, but miracle nonetheless, her hand stole out toward his, trembling. He touched the tips of her fingers, found them cold. His own were warm, he would warm her…. In his mind, he felt the chill of her flesh against his own, noted the nipples hard against the cloth of her dress and felt the small round weight of her breasts, cold in his hands, the press of her thighs, chill and hard against his heat.

  He was gripping her hand, drawing her back. And she was coming, boneless, helpless, drawn to his heat.

  “Thee must not,” she whispered, barely audible. “We must not.”

  It came to him dimly that of course he could not simply draw her to him, sink to the earth, push her garments out of the way, and have her, though every fiber of his being demanded that he do just that. Some faint memory of civilization asserted itself, though, and he grabbed for it. At the same time, with a terrible reluctance, he released her hand.

  “No, of course,” he said, in perfect English. “Of course we mustn’t.”

  “I—thee—” She swallowed and ran the back of her hand across her lips. Not as though to wipe away his kiss, but in astonishment, he thought. “Does thee know—” She stopped dead, helpless, and stared at him.

  “I’m not worried about whether ye love me,” he said, and knew he spoke the truth. “Not now. I’m worried about whether ye might die because ye do.”

  “Thee has a cheek! I didn’t say I loved thee.”

  He looked at her then, and something moved in his chest. It might have been laughter. It might not.

  “A great deal better ye don’t,” he said softly. “I’m no a fool, and neither are you.”

  She made an impulsive gesture toward him, and he drew back, just a hair.

  “I think ye’d best not touch me, lass,” he said, still staring intently into her eyes, the color of cress under rushing water. “Because if ye do, I’ll take ye, here and now. And then it’s too late for us both, isn’t it?”

  Her hand hung in the air, and while he could see her willing it, she could not draw it back.

  He turned from her then and went out into the night, his skin so hot that the night air turned to steam as it touched him.

  RACHEL STOOD stock-still for a moment, listening to the pounding of her heart. Another regular sound began to intrude, a soft lapping noise, and she looked down, blinking, to see that Rollo had tidily polished off the last of the goose grease from the tin she had dropped and was now licking the empty tin.

  “Oh, Lord,” she said, and put a hand over her mouth, afraid that if she laughed, it would erupt into hysterics. The dog looked up at her, his eyes yellow in the candlelight. He licked his lips, long tail waving gently.

  “What am I to do?” she asked him. “Well enough for thee; thee can chase about after him all day, and share his bed at night, and not a word said.”

  She sat down on the stool, her knees feeling weak, and took a grip of the thick fur that ruffed the dog’s neck.

  “What does he mean?” she asked him. “ ‘I’m worried about whether ye might die because ye do?’ Does he think me one of those fools who pines and swoons and looks pale for love, like Abigail Miller? Not that she’d think of actually dying for anyone’s sake, let alone her poor husband’s.” She looked down at the dog and shook his ruff. “And what does he mean, kissing that chit—forgive my lack of charity, Lord, but there’s no good to be done by ignoring the truth—and not three hours later kissing me? Tell me that! What does he mean by it?”

  She let go of the dog then. He licked her hand politely, then vanished silently through the tent flap, no doubt to convey her question to his annoying master.

  She ought to be putting coffee on to boil and getting up some supper; Denny would be back soon from the hospital tent, hungry and cold. She continued to sit, though, staring at the candle flame, wondering whether she would feel it were she to pass her hand through it.

  She doubted it. Her whole body had ignited when he’d touched her, sudden as a torch soaked in turpentine, and she was still afire. A wonder her shift did not burst into flames.

  She knew what he was. He’d made no secret of it. A man who lived by violence, who carried it within him.

  “And I used that when it suited me, didn’t I?” she asked the candle. Not the act of a Friend. She had not been content to trust in God’s mercy, not willing to accept His will. She’d not only connived at and encouraged violence, she’d put Ian Murray in gross danger of both soul and body. No, no good to be done by ignoring the truth.

  “Though if it’s truth we’re speaking here,” she said to the candle, still feeling defiant, “I bear witness that he did it for Denny, as much as for me.”

  “Who did what?” Her brother’s bent head poked into the tent, and he straightened up, blinking at her.

  “Will thee pray for me?” she asked abruptly. “I am in great danger.”

  Her brother stared at her, eyes unblinking behind his spectacles.

  “Indeed thee is,” he said slowly. “Though I am in doubt that prayer will aid thee much.”

  “What, has thee no faith left in God?” She spoke sharp, made still more anxious by the thought that her brother might have been overcome by the things he had seen in the last month. She feared they had shaken her own faith considerable but depended upon her brother’s faith as she would on shield and buckler. If that were gone …

  “Oh, endless faith in God,” he said, and smiled. “In thee? Not quite so much.” He took off his hat and hung it on the nail he had driven into the tent pole, and checked to be sure that the flap was closed and tied fast behind him.

  “I heard heard wolves howling on my walk back,” he remarked. “Closer than was comfortable.” He sat down and looked directly at her.

  “Ian Murray?” he asked bluntly.

  “How did thee know
that?” Her hands were trembling, and she wiped them irritably on her apron.

  “I met his dog just now.” He eyed her with interest. “What did he say to thee?”

  “I—nothing.”

  Denny cocked one brow in disbelief, and she relented.

  “Not much. He said—I was in love with him.”

  “Is thee?” Denny asked, sounding not at all surprised.

  “How can I be in love with such a man?”

  “If thee were not, I do not suppose thee would be asking me to pray for thee,” he pointed out logically. “Thee would simply send him away. ‘How’ is probably not a question I am qualified to answer—though I imagine thee means it rhetorical, in any case.”

  She laughed, in spite of her agitation.

  “No,” she said, smoothing the apron over her knees. “I do not mean it rhetorical. More… well, would thee say that Job was being rhetorical when he asked the Lord what He was thinking? I mean it in that way.”

  “Questioning the Lord is an awkward business,” her brother said thoughtfully. “Thee does get answers, but they are inclined to lead thee to strange places.” He smiled at her again, but gently and with a depth of sympathy in his eyes that made her look away.

  She sat pleating the cloth of the apron between her fingers, hearing the shouts and drunken singing that marked every night in camp. She wished to say that places didn’t get much stranger than this—two Friends, in the midst of an army, and part of it—but it was indeed Denny’s questioning of the Lord that had got them here, and she did not wish him to feel that she blamed him for it.

  Instead, she looked up and asked earnestly, “Has thee ever been in love, Denny?”

  “Oh,” he said, and looked at his own hands, cupped on his knees. He still smiled, but it had altered, become inward, as though he saw something inside his head. “Yes. I suppose so.”

  “In England?”

  He nodded. “Yes. It—would not do, though.”

  “She … was not a Friend?”

  “No,” he said softly. “She was not.”

  In a way, that was a relief; she had been fearing that he had fallen in love with a woman who would not leave England, but had felt obliged himself to return to America—for her sake. Insofar as her own feelings for Ian Murray were concerned, though, this did not augur well.

  “I’m sorry about the grease,” she said abruptly.

  He blinked.

  “Grease?”

  “For someone’s arsehole, Friend Murray said. The dog ate it.”

  “The dog ate … oh, the dog ate the grease.” His mouth twitched, and he rubbed the thumb of his right hand slowly over his fingers. “That’s all right; I found some.”

  “You’re hungry,” she said abruptly, and stood up. “Wash thy hands and I’ll put the coffee on.”

  “That would be good. I thank thee, Rachel. Rachel…” He hesitated, but was not a man to avoid things. “Friend Murray said to thee that thee loves him—but not that he loves thee? That seems—a peculiar way of expression, does it not?”

  “It does,” she said, in a tone indicating that she didn’t wish to discuss Ian Murray’s peculiarities. She was not about to try to explain to Denny that Ian Murray had not declared himself to her in words because he hadn’t needed to. The air around her still shimmered with the heat of his declaration. Though…

  “Perhaps he did,” she said slowly. “He said something to me, but it wasn’t in English, and I didn’t understand. Does thee know what ‘mo cree-ga ’ might mean?”

  Denny frowned for a moment, then his brow cleared.

  “That would be the Highlander’s tongue, what they call the Gàidhlig, I think. No, I don’t know what it means—but I have heard Friend Jamie say that to his wife, in such circumstances as to make it evident that it is a term of deep … affection.” He coughed.

  “Rachel—does thee wish me to speak to him?”

  Her skin still burned, and her face felt as though it glowed with fever, but at this, a deep shard of ice seemed to pierce her heart.

  “Speak to him,” she repeated, and swallowed. “And say… what?” She had found the coffeepot and the pouch of roasted acorns and chicory. She poured a handful of the blackened mixture into her mortar and commenced to pound it as though the cup were full of snakes.

  Denny shrugged, watching her with interest.

  “Thee will break that mortar,” he observed. “As to what I should say—why, thee must tell me, Rachel.” His eyes were still intent upon her, but serious now, with no hint of humor. “I will tell him to stay away and never to speak to thee again, if thee wishes it. Or if thee prefers, I can assure him that thy affection for him is only that of a friend and that he must refrain from further awkward declarations.”

  She poured the grounds into the pot and then added water from the canteen she kept hanging on the tent pole.

  “Are those the only alternatives you see?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.

  “Sissy,” he said, very gently, “thee cannot wed such a man and remain a Friend. No meeting would accept such a union. Thee knows that.” He waited a moment and added, “Thee did ask me to pray for thee.”

  She didn’t answer or look at him but untied the tent flap and went out to put the coffeepot among the coals, pausing to poke up the fire and add more wood. The air glowed near the ground, lit by the smoke and fiery haze of thousands of small