“Hallo there, Mej,” he said softly. “Hallo, then. Ye’re all right, are ye?”
Like magic, Jemmy’s eyelids floated up. He smiled dreamily at Roger.
“Hallo, Daddy.” Still smiling beatifically, his eyes closed and he relaxed into utter limpness, cheek flattened against his father’s knee.
“He’s all right,” Roger told her.
“Well, good,” she said, not particularly mollified. “What do you think they’ve been drinking? Beer?”
Roger leaned forward and sniffed at his offspring’s red-stained lips.
“Cherry Bounce, at a guess. There’s a vat of it, round by the barn.”
“Holy God!” She’d never drunk Cherry Bounce, but Mrs. Bug had told her how to make it: “Tak’ the juice of a bushel o’ cherries, dissolve twenty-four pound o’ sugar ower it, then ye put it into a forty-gallon cask and fill it up wi’ whisky.”
“He’s all right.” Roger patted her arm. “Is that Germain over there?”
“It is.” She leaned over to check, but Germain was peacefully asleep, also smiling. “That Cherry Bounce must be good stuff.”
Roger laughed.
“It’s terrible. Like industrial-strength cough syrup. I will say it makes ye very cheerful, though.”
“Have you been drinking it?” She eyed him narrowly, but his lips appeared to be their usual color.
“Of course not.” He leaned over and kissed her, to prove it. “Surely ye dinna think a Scotsman like Ronnie would deal wi’ disappointment by drinking Cherry Bounce? When there’s decent whisky to hand?”
“True,” she said. She glanced at the cooperage. The faint glow from the hearth fire had faded and the outline of the door had disappeared, leaving the building no more than a faint rectangle of black against the darker mass of the forest beyond. “How is Ronnie dealing with it?” She glanced round, but Inga and Hilda had taken themselves off to help Frau Ute; all of them were clustered round the food table, clearing things away.
“Oh, he’s all right, Ronnie.” Roger moved Jemmy off his lap, placing him gently on his side in the straw near Germain. “He wasna in love with Senga, after all. He’s suffering from sexual frustration, not a broken heart.”
“Oh, well, if that’s all,” she said dryly. “He won’t have to suffer much longer; I’m informed that Frau Ute has the matter well in hand.”
“Aye, she’s told him she’ll find him a wife. He’s what ye might call philosophical about the matter. Though still reeking wi’ lust,” he added, wrinkling his nose.
“Ew. Do you want anything to eat?” She glanced at the little boys, getting her feet under her. “I’d better get you something before Ute and the girls clear it all away.”
Roger yawned, suddenly and immensely.
“No, I’m all right.” He blinked, smiling sleepily at her. “I’ll go tell Fergus where Germain is, maybe snatch a bite on the way.” He patted her shoulder, then stood up, swaying only a little, and moved off toward the fire.
She checked the boys again; both were breathing deeply and regularly, dead to the world. With a sigh, she bundled them close together, piling up the straw around them, and covered them with her cloak. It was growing colder, but winter had gone; there was no feel of frost in the air.
The party was still going on, but it had shifted to a lower gear. The dancing had stopped and the crowd broken up into smaller groups, men gathered in a circle near the fire, lighting their pipes, the younger men disappeared somewhere. All around her, families were settling in for the night, making nests for themselves in the hay. Some were in the house, more in the barn; she could hear the sound of a guitar from somewhere behind the house, and a single voice, singing something slow and wistful. It made her yearn suddenly for the sound of Roger’s voice as it had been, rich and tender.
Thinking of that, though, she realized something; his voice had been much better when he came back from consoling Ronnie. Still husky and with only a shadow of its former resonance—but it had come easily, without that choked note in it. Perhaps alcohol relaxed the vocal cords?
More likely, she thought, it simply relaxed Roger; removed some of his inhibitions about the way he sounded. That was worth knowing. Her mother had opined that his voice would improve, if he would stretch it, work with it, but he was shy of using it, wary of pain—whether from the actual sensation of speaking, or from the contrast with the way he had sounded before.
“So maybe I’ll make a little Cherry Bounce,” she said aloud. Then she looked at the two small forms slumbering in the hay, and contemplated the prospect of waking up alongside three hangovers, come morning. “Well, maybe not.”
She bunched up enough hay for a pillow, spread her folded kerchief over it—they’d be picking hay out of their clothes most of tomorrow—and lay down, curling her body round Jem’s. If either boy stirred or vomited in his sleep, she’d feel it and rouse.
The bonfire had burned down; only a ragged fringe of flames now flickered over the bed of glowing embers, and the lanterns set around the yard had all gone out or been thriftily extinguished. Guitar and singer had ceased. Without light and noise to keep it at bay, the night came in, spreading wings of cold silence over the mountain. The stars burned bright above, but they were pinpricks, millennia away. She closed her eyes against the immensity of the night, bowing to put her lips against Jem’s head, cradling his warmth.
She tried to compose her mind for sleep, but without the distractions of company, and with the scent of burning timber strong in the air, memory stole back, and her normal prayers of blessing became pleas for mercy and protection.
“He hath put my brethren far from me, and mine acquaintance are verily estranged from me. My kinsfolk have failed, and my familiar friends have forgotten me.”
I won’t forget you, she said silently to the dead. It seemed so pitiful a thing to say—so small and futile. And yet the only thing in her power.
She shivered briefly, tightening her grip on Jemmy.
A sudden rustle of the hay, and Roger slid in behind her. He fumbled a bit, spreading his own cloak over her, then sighed with relief, his body relaxing heavily against hers as his arm came round her waist.
“Been a bloody long day, hasn’t it?”
She groaned faintly in agreement. Now that everything was quiet, with no more need to talk, watch, pay attention, every fiber of her muscles seemed about to dissolve with fatigue. There was no more than a thin layer of hay between her and cold, hard ground, but she felt sleep lapping at her like the waves of the tide creeping up a sandy shore, soothing and inexorable.
“‘Did you get something to eat?” She put a hand on his leg, and his arm tightened in reflex, holding her close.
“Aye, if ye think beer’s food. Many folk do.” He laughed, a warm fog of hops on his breath. “I’m fine.” The warmth of his body was beginning to seep through the layers of cloth between them, dispelling the night’s chill.
Jem always gave off heat when he slept; it was like holding a clay firepot, with him curled against her. Roger was putting out even more heat, though. Well, her mother did say that an alcohol lamp burned hotter than oil.
She sighed and snuggled back against him, feeling warm, protected. The cold immensity of the night had lifted, now that she had her family close, together again, and safe.
Roger was humming. She realized it quite suddenly. There was no tune to it, but she felt the vibration of his chest against her back. She didn’t want to chance stopping him; surely that was good for his vocal cords. He stopped on his own, though, after a moment. Hoping to start him again, she reached back to stroke his leg, essaying a small questioning hum of her own.
“Hmmm-mmmm?”
His hands cupped her bu**ocks and fastened tight.
“Mmm-hmmm,” he said, in what sounded like a combination of invitation and satisfaction.
She didn’t reply, but made a slight dissentient motion of the behind. Under normal conditions, this would have caused him to let go. He did let go, but only with one hand, and this in order to slide it down her leg, evidently meaning to get hold of her skirt and ruckle it up.
She reached back hastily and grabbed the roving hand, bringing it round and placing it on her breast, as an indication that while she appreciated the notion and under other circumstances would be thrilled to oblige, just this moment she thought—
Roger was usually very good at reading her body language, but evidently this skill had dissolved in whisky. That, or—the thought came suddenly to her—he simply didn’t care whether she wanted—
“Roger!” she hissed.
He had started humming again, the sound now interspersed with the low, bumping noises a teakettle makes, just before the boil. He’d got his hand down her leg and up her skirt, hot on the flesh of her thigh, groping swiftly upward—and inward. Jemmy coughed, jerking in her arms, and she made an attempt to kick Roger in the shin, as a signal of discouragement.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he murmured into the curve of her neck. “Oh, God, so beautiful. So beautiful . . . so . . . hmmm . . .” The next words were a mumble against her skin, but she thought he’d said “slippery.” His fingers had reached their goal, and she arched her back, trying to squirm away.
“Roger,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Roger, there are people around!” And a snoring toddler wedged like a doorstop in front of her.
He mumbled something in which the words “dark” and “nobody’ll see” were distinguishable, and then the groping hand retreated—only to grab a handful of her skirts and start shoving them out of the way.
He had resumed the humming, pausing momentarily to murmur, “Love you, love you so much. . . .”
“I love you, too,” she said, reaching back and trying to catch his hand. “Roger, stop that!”
He did, but immediately reached around her, and grasped her by the shoulder. A quick heave, and she was lying on her back staring up at the distant stars, which were at once blotted out by Roger’s head and shoulders as he rolled on top of her in a tremendous rustling of hay and loosened clothing.
“Jem—” She flung out a hand toward Jemmy, who appeared not to have been disturbed by the sudden disappearance of his backstop, but was still curled up in the hay like a hibernating hedgehog.
Roger was, of all things, singing now, if one could call it that. Or chanting, at least, the words to a very bawdy Scottish song, about a miller who is pestered by a young woman wanting him to grind her corn. Whereupon he does.
“He flung her down upon the sacks, and there she got her corn ground, her corn ground. . . .” Roger was chanting hotly in her ear, his full weight pinning her to the ground and the stars spinning madly far above.
She’d thought his description of Ronnie as “reeking wi’ lust” merely a figure of speech, but evidently not. Bare flesh met bare flesh, and then some. She gasped. So did Roger.
“Oh, God,” he said. He paused, frozen for an instant against the sky above her, then sighed in an ecstasy of whisky fumes and began to move with her, humming. It was dark, thank God, though not nearly dark enough. The remnants of the fire cast an eerie glow over his face, and he looked for an instant the bonny big, black devil Inga had called him.