The basket hive was heavy, and the slope was steep. It was easier to go down than up. I hitched up the rope, which was beginning to rub the skin off my shoulder, and began sidling downward through sumac and hobble-bush, bracing my feet against rocks and grabbing at branches to keep from slipping.
Concentrating on my feet, I didn’t take particular notice of where I was. I emerged into a gap in the bushes from which the roof of a cabin was visible, some distance below me. Whose was that? The Christies’, I thought. I wiped a sleeve across the sweat dripping from the point of my chin; the day was warm, and I hadn’t brought a canteen. Perhaps I would stop and ask for water on the way home.
Making my way at last to the snag, I was disappointed to find no sign of the swarm. I stood still, blotting sweat from my face and listening, in hopes of picking up the bees’ telltale deep drone. I heard the hum and whine of assorted flying insects, and the genial racket of a flock of foraging pygmy nuthatches on the slope above—but no bees.
I sighed and turned to make my way around the snag, but then paused, my eye caught by a glimpse of white below.
Thomas Christie and Malva were in the small clearing at the back of their cabin. I had caught the flash of his shirt as he moved, but now he stood motionless, arms crossed.
His attention appeared to be fixed on his daughter, who was cutting branches from one of the mountain ash trees at the side of the clearing. What for? I wondered.
There seemed something very peculiar about the scene, though I couldn’t think exactly what. Some attitude of body? Some air of tension between them?
Malva turned and walked toward her father, several long, slender branches in her hand. Her head was bent, her step dragging, and when she handed him the branches, I understood abruptly what was going on.
They were too far away for me to hear them, but he apparently said something to her, gesturing brusquely toward the stump they used as a chopping block. She knelt down by it, bent forward, and lifted up her skirts, exposing her bare bu**ocks.
Without hesitation, he raised the switches and slashed them hard across her rump, then whipped them back in the other direction, crisscrossing her flesh with vivid lines that I could see even at such a distance. He repeated this several times, whipping the springy twigs back and forth with a measured deliberation whose violence was the more shocking for its lack of apparent emotion.
It hadn’t even occurred to me to look away. I stood stock-still in the shrubbery, too stunned even to brush away the gnats that swarmed around my face.
Christie had thrown down the switches, turned on his heel, and gone into the house before I could do more than blink. Malva sat back on her heels and shook down her skirts, smoothing the fabric gingerly over her bottom as she rose. She was red-faced, but not weeping or distraught.
She’s used to it. The thought came unbidden. I hesitated, not knowing what to do. Before I could decide, Malva had settled her cap, turned, and walked into the woods with an air of determination—headed straight toward me.
I ducked behind a big tulip poplar, before I was even aware of making a decision. She wasn’t injured, and I was sure she wouldn’t like to know that anyone had seen the incident.
Malva passed within a few feet of me, puffing a little on the climb, and snorting through her nose and muttering in a way that made me think she was very angry, rather than upset.
I peered cautiously round the poplar, but caught no more than a glimpse of her cap, bobbing through the trees. There were no cabins up there, and she hadn’t carried a basket or any tools for foraging. Perhaps she only wanted to be alone, to recover herself. No surprise, if so.
I waited until she was safely out of sight, then made my own way slowly down the slope. I didn’t stop at the Christie cabin, thirsty as I was, and had quite lost interest in errant bees.
I MET JAMIE AT a stiled fence, some little distance from home, in conversation with Hiram Crombie. I nodded in greeting, and waited in some impatience for Crombie to finish his business, so I could tell Jamie what I had just witnessed.
Luckily, Hiram showed no inclination to linger; I made him nervous.
I told Jamie at once what I had seen, and was annoyed to find that he didn’t share my concern. If Tom Christie thought it necessary to whip his daughter, that was his affair.
“But he might be . . . it might be—perhaps it doesn’t stop with a switching. Perhaps he does . . . other things to her.”
He shot me a look of surprise.
“Tom? D’ye have any reason to think so?”
“No,” I admitted reluctantly. The Christie ménage gave me an uncomfortable feeling, but that was likely only because I didn’t get on with Tom. I wasn’t so foolish as to think that a tendency toward Bible-thumping meant a person wouldn’t engage in wickedness—but in all fairness, it didn’t mean he did, either. “But surely he shouldn’t be whipping her like that—at her age?”
He glanced at me in mild exasperation.
“Ye dinna understand a thing, do ye?” he said, echoing my thought exactly.
“I was about to say just that, to you,” I said, giving him look for look. He didn’t look away, but held my gaze, his own slowly taking on a wry amusement.
“So it will be different?” he said. “In your world?” There was just enough edge in his voice to remind me forcibly that we were not in my world—nor ever would be. Sudden gooseflesh ran up my arm, lifting the fine blond hairs.
“A man wouldna beat a woman, then, in your time? Not even for good cause?”
And what was I to say to that? I couldn’t lie, even if I wanted to; he knew my face much too well.
“Some do,” I admitted. “But it’s not the same. There—then, I mean—a man who beat his wife would be a criminal. But,” I added in fairness, “a man who beat his wife then would most often be using his fists.”
A look of astonished disgust crossed his face.
“What sort of man would do that?” he asked incredulously.
“A bad one.”
“So I should think, Sassenach. And ye dinna think there’s a difference?” he asked. “Ye’d see it the same, if I were to smash your face, rather than only take a tawse to your bum?”
Blood flared abruptly in my cheeks. He once had taken a strap to me, and I hadn’t forgotten it. I had wanted to kill him at the time—and didn’t feel kindly toward him at the memory. At the same time, I wasn’t stupid enough to equate his actions with those of a modern-day wife-beater.
He glanced at me, raised one eyebrow, then understood what I was recalling. He grinned.
“Oh,” he said.
“Oh, indeed,” I said very cross. I had succeeded in putting that extremely humiliating episode out of mind, and didn’t at all like having it recalled.
He, on the other hand, was plainly enjoying the recollection. He eyed me in a manner I found grossly insufferable, still grinning.
“God, ye screamed like a ban-sidhe.”
I began to feel a distinct throbbing of blood in my temples.
“I bloody well had cause to!”
“Oh, aye,” he said, and the grin widened. “Ye did. Your own fault, mind,” he added.
“My f—”
“It was,” he said firmly.
“You apologized!” I said completely outraged. “You know you did!”
“No, I didn’t. And it was still your fault to begin with,” he said, with complete lack of logic. “Ye wouldna have got nearly such a wicked tanning, if ye’d only minded me in the first place, when I told ye to kneel and—”
“Minded you! You think I would have just meekly given in and let you—”
“I’ve never seen ye do anything meek, Sassenach.” He took my arm to help me over the stile, but I jerked free, puffing with indignation.
“You beastly Scot!” I dropped the hive on the ground at his feet, picked up my skirts, and scrambled over the stile.
“Well, I havena done it again,” he protested, behind me. “I promised, aye?”
I whirled round on the other side and glared at him.
“Only because I threatened to cut your heart out if you ever tried!”
“Well, even so. I could have—and ye ken that well, Sassenach. Aye?” He’d quit grinning, but there was a distinct glint in his eye.
I took several deep breaths, trying simultaneously to control my annoyance and think of some crushing rejoinder. I failed in both attempts, and with a briefly dignified “Hmph!” turned on my heel.
I heard the rustle of his kilt as he picked up the hive, hopped over the stile, and came after me, catching up within a stride or two. I didn’t look at him; my cheeks were still flaming.
The infuriating fact was that I did know that. I remembered all too well. He had used his sword belt to such effect that I hadn’t been able to sit comfortably for several days—and if he should ever decide to do it again, there was absolutely nothing to stop him.
I was, for the most part, able to ignore the fact that I was legally his property. That didn’t alter the fact that it was a fact—and he knew it.
“What about Brianna?” I demanded. “Would you feel the same way about it, if young Roger suddenly decided to take his belt or a switch to your daughter?”
He appeared to find something amusing in the notion.
“I think he’d have the devil of a fight on his hands if he tried,” he said. “That’s a braw wee lassie, no? And she has your notions of what constitutes wifely obedience, I’m afraid. But then,” he added, swinging the hive’s rope across his shoulder, “ye never ken what goes on in a marriage, do ye? Perhaps she’d be pleased if he tried.”
“Pleased?!” I gawked at him in astonishment. “How can you think that any woman would ever—”
“Oh, aye? What about my sister?”
I stopped dead in the middle of the path, staring at him.
“What about your sister? Surely you aren’t telling me—”
“I am.” The glint was back, but I didn’t think he was joking.
“Ian beat her?”
“I do wish ye’d stop calling it that,” he said mildly. “It sounds as though Ian took his fists to her, or blackened her eyes. I gave ye a decent skelping, but I didna bloody ye, for God’s sake.” His eyes flicked briefly toward my face; everything had healed, at least outwardly; the only trace left was a tiny scar through one eyebrow—invisible, unless one parted the hairs there and looked closely. “Neither would Ian.”
I was completely flabbergasted to hear this. I had lived in close proximity with Ian and Jenny Murray for months at a time, and had never seen the slightest indication that he possessed a violent nature. For that matter, it was impossible to imagine anyone trying such a thing on Jenny Murray, who had—if such a thing was possible—an even stronger personality than her brother.
“Well, what did he do? And why?”
“Well, he’d only take his belt to her now and then,” he said, “and only if she made him.”
I took a deep breath.
“If she made him?” I asked calmly, under the circumstances.