She must have been conceived, then, quite soon after Christie’s arrival in the Colonies. No great wonder, if the man had seized the first chance he had to marry, after living without a woman for so long. And then the wife had thought better of her bargain, and gone. Christie had told Roger Mac his wife had died of influenza—well, a man had his pride, and God knew Tom Christie had more than most.
But Allan Christie . . . where had he come from? The young man was somewhere in his twenties; it was possible that he had been conceived before Culloden. But if so—who was his mother?
“You and your brother,” he said abruptly, at the next break in conversation. “Did ye have the same mother?”
“Yes, sir,” she said, looking startled.
“Ah,” he said, and let the subject drop. Well, now. So Christie had been wed before Culloden. And then the woman, whoever she was, had come to find him in the Colonies. That argued a high degree of determination and devotion, and made him regard Christie with a good deal more interest. But that devotion had not been proof against the hardships of the Colonies—or else she found Tom so changed by time and circumstance that the devotion had been drowned in disappointment, and she had left again.
He could see that, easily—and felt an unexpected bond of sympathy with Tom Christie. He recalled his own feelings, all too well, when Claire came back to find him. The disbelieving joy of her presence—and the bone-deep fear that she would not recognize the man she had known, in the man who stood before her.
Worse, if she had discovered something that made her flee—and well as he knew Claire, he still was not sure that she would have stayed, if he’d told her at once about his marriage to Laoghaire. For that matter, if Laoghaire hadn’t shot him and nearly killed him, Claire might well have run away, and been lost for good. The thought of it was a black pit, gaping at his feet.
Of course, had she gone, he would have died, he reflected. And never come to this place and got his land, nor seen his daughter, nor held his grandson in his arms. Come to think, perhaps being nearly killed wasn’t always a misfortune—so long as you didn’t actually die of it.
“Does your arm trouble ye, sir?” He was jerked back from his thoughts to realize that he was standing like a fool, one hand clutching the spot on his upper arm where Laoghaire’s pistol ball had gone through and Malva squinting at him in concern.
“Ah, no,” he said hastily, dropping his hand. “A midgie bite. The bittie things are out early. Tell me”—he groped for some neutral topic of conversation—“d’ye like it here in the mountains?”
Inane as the question was, she appeared to consider it seriously.
“It’s lonely, sometimes,” she said, and glanced into the forest, where falling shafts of sunlight splintered on leaves and needles, shrubs and rocks, filling the air with a shattered green light. “But it is . . .” she groped for a word. “Pretty,” she said, with a small smile at him, acknowledging the inadequacy of the word.
They had reached the small clearing where the water bubbled out over a ledge of what his daughter said was serpentine—the rock whose soft green gave the spring its name; that, and the thick layer of vivid moss that grew around it.
He gestured to her to kneel and drink first. She did, cupping her hands to her face and closing her eyes in bliss at the taste of the cold, sweet water. She gulped, cupped her hands and drank again, almost greedily. She was very pretty herself, he thought in amusement, and the word was much more appropriate to the wee lassie, with that delicate chin and the lobes of her tender pink ears peeping from her cap, than to the spirit of the mountains. Her mother must have been lovely, he thought—and it was fortunate for the lass that she had not taken much of her father’s grim looks, save those gray eyes.
She sat back on her heels, breathing deep, and scooted to the side, nodding at him to kneel and take his turn. The day wasn’t hot, but it was a steep climb to the spring, and the cold water went down gratefully.
“I’ve never seen the Highlands,” Malva said, dabbing the end of her kerchief over her wet face. “Some say this place is like it, though. D’ye think so yourself, sir?”
He shook the water from his fingers and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.
“Something like. Some parts. The Great Glen, and the forest—aye, that’s verra like this.” He pointed his chin up at the trees surrounding them, murmurous and resin-scented. “But there’s nay bracken here. And nay peat, of course. And nay heather; that’s the biggest difference.”
“Ye hear the stories—of men hiding in the heather. Did ye ever do so yourself, sir?” She dimpled slightly, and he didn’t know whether she meant to tease, or was only making conversation.
“Now and then,” he said, and smiled at her as he rose, brushing pine needles from his kilt. “Stalking the deer, aye? Here, I’ll show ye the woodears.”
The fungus grew in thick shelves at the foot of an oak, no more than ten feet from the spring. Some of the things had opened their gills already, begun to darken and curl; the ground nearby was scattered with the spores, a dark brown powder that lay upon the glossy crackle of last year’s dry leaves. The fresher fungi were still bright, though, deep orange and meaty.
He left her there with a cordial word, and went back down the narrow trail, wondering about the woman who had loved and left Tom Christie.
49
THE VENOM OF THE
NORTH WIND
July 1774
BRIANNA DROVE THE SHARP end of the spade into the muddy bank and pulled out a chunk of clay the color of chocolate fudge. She could have done without the reminder of food, she thought, flinging it aside into the current with a grunt. She hitched up her soggy shift and wiped a forearm across her brow. She hadn’t eaten since mid-morning, and it was nearly teatime. Not that she meant to stop until supper. Roger was up the mountain, helping Amy McCallum rebuild her chimney stack, and the little boys had gone up to the Big House to be fed bread and butter and honey and generally spoiled by Mrs. Bug. She’d wait to eat; there was too much to do here.
“D’ye need help, lass?”
She squinted, shading her eyes against the sun. Her father was standing on the bank above, viewing her efforts with what looked like amusement.
“Do I look like I need help?” she asked irritably, swiping the back of a mud-streaked hand across her jaw.
“Ye do, aye.”
He’d been fishing; barefoot and wet to mid-thigh. He laid his rod against a tree and swung the creel from his shoulder, woven reeds creaking with the weight of the catch. Then he grasped a sapling for balance, and started to edge down the slippery bank, bare toes squelching in the mud.
“Wait—take your shirt off!” She realized her mistake an instant too late. A startled look flitted across his face, only for a moment, and then was gone.
“I mean . . . the mud . . .” she said, knowing it was too late. “The washing.”
“Oh, aye, to be sure.” Without hesitation, he pulled the shirt over his head and turned his back to her, hunting for a convenient branch from which to hang it.
His scars were not really shocking. She’d glimpsed them before, imagined them many times, and the reality was much less vivid. The scars were old, a faint silvered net, moving easily over the shadows of his ribs as he reached upward. He moved naturally. Only the tension in his shoulders suggested otherwise.
Her hand closed involuntarily, feeling for an absent pencil, feeling the stroke of the line that would capture that tiny sense of unease, the jarring note that would draw the observer closer, closer still, wondering what it was about this scene of pastoral grace. . . .
Thou shalt not uncover thy father’s nakedness, she thought, and spread her hand flat, pressing it hard against her thigh. But he had turned back and was coming down the bank, eyes on the tangled rushes and protruding stones underfoot.
He slid the last two feet and arrived beside her with a splash, arms flailing to keep his balance. She laughed, as he’d intended, and he smiled. She’d thought for an instant to speak of it, make some apology—but he would not meet her eyes.
“So, then, move it, or go round?” His attention focused on the boulder embedded in the bank, he leaned his weight against it and shoved experimentally.
“Can we move it, do you think?” She waded up beside him, retucking the hem of her shift, which she had pulled between her legs and fastened with a belt. “Going round would mean digging another ten feet of ditch.”
“That much?” He glanced at her in surprise.
“Yes. I want to cut a notch here, to cut through to that bend—then I can put a small water-wheel here and get a good fall.” She leaned past him, pointing downstream. “The next-best place would be down there—see where the banks rise?—but this is better.”
“Aye, all right. Wait a bit, then.” He made his way back to the bank, scrambled up, and disappeared into the wood, from whence he returned with several stout lengths of fresh oak sapling, still sporting the remnants of their glossy leaves.
“We dinna need to get it out of the creekbed, aye?” he asked. “Only move it a few feet, so ye can cut through the bank beyond it?”
“That’s it.” Rivulets of sweat, trapped by her thick eyebrows, ran tickling down the sides of her face. She’d been digging for the best part of an hour; her arms ached from heaving shovelsful of heavy mud, and her hands were blistered. With a sense of profound gratitude, she surrendered the spade and stepped back in the creek, stooping to splash cold water on her scratched arms and flushed face.
“Heavy work,” her father observed, grunting a little as he briskly finished undermining the boulder. “Could ye not have asked Roger Mac to do it?”
“He’s busy,” she said, perceiving the shortness of her tone, but not inclined to disguise it.
Her father darted a sharp glance at her, but said no more, merely busying himself with the proper placement of his oak staves. Attracted like iron filings to the magnetism of their grandfather’s presence, Jemmy and Germain appeared like magic, loudly wanting to help.
She’d asked them to help, and they’d helped—for a few minutes, before being drawn away by the glimpse of a porcupine high up in the trees. With Jamie in charge, of course, they leaped to the task, madly scooping dirt from the bank with flat bits of wood, giggling, pushing, getting in the way, and stuffing handsful of mud down the back of each other’s breeches.
Jamie being Jamie, he ignored the nuisance, merely directing their efforts and finally ordering them out of the creek, so as not to be crushed.
“All right, lass,” he said, turning to her. “Take a grip there.” The boulder had been loosened from the confining clay, and now protruded from the bank, oak staves thrust into the mud beneath, sticking up on either side, and another behind.
She seized the one he indicated, while he took the other two.
“On the count of three . . . one . . . two . . . heave!”
Jem and Germain, perched above, chimed in, chanting “One . . . two . . . heave!” like a small Greek chorus. There was a splinter in her thumb and the wood rasped against the waterlogged creases of her skin, but she felt suddenly like laughing.