“It was not his fault! Mona was a witch—an enchantress.” His lips compressed at the expression on my face. “Ye don’t believe me, I see. It is the truth; more than once, I caught her at it—working her charms, observing times—I came once to the roof o’ the house at midnight, searching for her. I saw her there, stark naked and staring at the stars, standing in the center of a pentacle she’d drawn wi’ the blood of a strangled dove, and her hair flying loose, mad in the wind.”
“Her hair,” I said, looking for some thread to grasp in this, and suddenly realizing. “She had hair like mine, didn’t she?”
He nodded, looking away, and I saw his throat move as he swallowed.
“She was . . . what she was,” he said softly. “I tried to save her—by prayer, by love. I could not.”
“What happened to her?” I asked, keeping my voice as low as his. With the wind as it was, there was little chance of our being overheard here, but this was not the sort of thing I thought anyone should hear.
He sighed, and swallowed again.
“She was hangit,” he said, sounding almost matter-of-fact about it. “For the murder of my brother.”
This, it seemed, had happened while Tom was imprisoned at Ardsmuir; she had sent him word, before her execution, telling him of Malva’s birth, and that she was confiding care of the children to Edgar’s wife.
“I suppose she thought that funny,” he said, sounding abstracted. “She’d the oddest sense of humor, Mona had.”
I felt cold, beyond the chill of the early-morning breeze, and hugged my elbows.
“But you got them back—Allan and Malva.”
He nodded; he had been transported, but had the good fortune to have his indenture bought by a kind and wealthy man, who had given him the money for the children’s passage to the Colonies. But then both his employer and the wife he had taken here had died in an epidemic of the yellow fever, and casting about for some new opportunity, he had heard of Jamie Fraser’s settling in North Carolina and that he would help those men he had known in Ardsmuir to land of their own.
“I would to God I had cut my own throat before I came,” he said, turning back abruptly to me. “Believe me in that.”
He seemed entirely sincere. I didn’t know what to say in response, but he seemed to require none, and went on.
“The girl . . . she was nay more than five years old when I first saw her, but already she had it—the same slyness, the charm—the same darkness of soul.”
He had tried to the best of his ability to save Malva, as well—to beat the wickedness out of her, to constrain the streak of wildness, above all, to keep her from working her wiles upon men.
“Her mither had that, too.” His lips tightened at the thought. “Any man. It was the curse of Lilith that they had, the both of them.”
I felt a hollowness in the pit of my stomach, as he came back now to the matter of Malva.
“But she was with child . . .” I said.
His face paled further, but his voice was firm.
“Aye, she was. I do not think it wrong to prevent yet another witch from entering the world.”
Seeing my face, he went on before I could interrupt.
“Ye ken she tried to kill ye? You and me, both.”
“What do you mean? Tried to kill me, how?”
“When ye told her about the invisible things, the—the germs. She took great interest in that. She told me, when I caught her wi’ the bones.”
“What bones?” I asked, a sliver of ice running down my back.
“The bones she took from Ephraim’s grave, to work her charms upon your husband. She didna use them all, and I found them in her workbasket later. I beat her, badly, and she told me then.”
Accustomed to wander alone in the woods in search of food plants and herbs, she had been doing so during the height of the dysentery epidemic. And in her wanderings, had come upon the isolated cabin of the sin-eater, that strange, damaged man. She had found him near death, burning with fever and sunk in coma, and while she stood there undecided whether to run for help, or only run, he had in fact died.
Whereupon, seized by inspiration—and bearing my careful teachings in mind—she had taken mucus and blood from the body and put it into a little bottle with a bit of broth from the kettle on the hearth, nurturing it inside her stays with the warmth of her own body.
And had slipped a few drops of this deadly infusion into my food, and that of her father, in the hope that if we fell sick, our deaths would be seen as no more than a part of the sickness that plagued the Ridge.
My lips felt stiff and bloodless.
“You’re sure of this?” I whispered. He nodded, making no effort to convince me, and that alone gave me conviction that he spoke the truth.
“She wanted—Jamie?” I asked.
He closed his eyes for a moment; the sun was coming up, and while the brilliance of it was behind us, the gleam off the water was bright as silver plate.
“She . . . wanted,” he said at last. “She lusted. Lusted for wealth, for position, for what she saw as freedom, not seeing it as license—never seeing!” He spoke with sudden violence, and I thought it was not Malva alone who had never seen things as he did.
But she had wanted Jamie, whether for himself or only for his property. And when her love charm failed, and the epidemic of sickness came, had taken a more direct way toward what she wanted. I could not yet find a way to grasp that—and yet I knew it was true.
And then, finding herself inconveniently with child, she had come up with a new scheme.
“Do you know who the father really was?” I asked, my throat tightening again—I thought it always would—at the memory of the sunlit garden and the two neat, small bodies, ruined and wasted. Such a waste.
He shook his head, but would not look at me, and I knew that he had some idea, at least. He would not tell me, though, and I supposed it didn’t matter just now. And the Governor would be up soon, ready to receive him.
He, too, heard the stirrings down below, and took a deep breath.
“I could not let her destroy so many lives; could not let her go on. For she was a witch, make no mistake; that she failed to kill either you or me was no more than luck. She would have killed someone, before she finished. Perhaps you, if your husband clung to you. Perhaps him, in the hope of inheriting his property for the child.” He took a ragged, painful breath.
“She was not born of my loins, and yet—she was my daughter, my blood. I could not . . . could not allow . . . I was responsible.” He stopped, unable to finish. In this, I thought, he told the truth. And yet . . .
“Thomas,” I said firmly, “this is twaddle, and you know it.”
He looked at me, surprised, and I saw that tears stood in his eyes. He blinked them back and answered fiercely.
“Say you so? You know nothing, nothing!”
He saw me flinch, and looked down. Then, awkwardly, he reached out and took my hand. I felt the scars of the surgery I had done, the flexible strength of his gripping fingers.
“I have waited all my life, in a search . . .” He waved his free hand vaguely, then closed his fingers, as though grasping the thought, and continued more surely, “No. In hope. In hope of a thing I could not name, but that I knew must exist.”
His eyes searched my face, intent, as though he memorized my features. I raised a hand, uncomfortable under this scrutiny, intending, I suppose, to tidy my mad hair—but he caught my hand and held it, surprising me.
“Leave it,” he said.
Standing with both hands in his, I had no choice.
“Thomas,” I said, uncertain. “Mr. Christie . . .”
“I became convinced that it was God I sought. Perhaps it was. But God is not flesh and blood, and the love of God alone could not sustain me.
“I have written down my confession.” He let go, and poked a hand into his pocket, fumbling a little, and pulled out a folded paper, which he clutched in his short, solid fingers.
“I have sworn here that it was I who killed my daughter, for the shame she had brought upon me by her wantonness.” He spoke firmly enough, but I could see the working of his throat above the wilted stock.
“You didn’t,” I said positively. “I know you didn’t.”
He blinked, gazing at me.
“No,” he said, quite matter-of-fact. “But perhaps I should have.
“I have written a copy of this confession,” he said, tucking the document back into his coat, “and have left it with the newspaper in New Bern. They will publish it. The Governor will accept it—how can he not?—and you will go free.”
Those last four words struck me dumb. He was still gripping my right hand; his thumb stroked gently over my knuckles. I wanted to pull away, but forced myself to keep still, compelled by the look in his eyes, clear gray and naked now, without disguise.
“I have yearned always,” he said softly, “for love given and returned; have spent my life in the attempt to give my love to those who were not worthy of it. Allow me this: to give my life for the sake of one who is.”
I felt as though someone had knocked the wind from me. I hadn’t any breath, but struggled to form words.
“Mr. Chr—Tom,” I said. “You mustn’t. Your life has—has value. You can’t throw it away like this!”
He nodded, patient.
“I know that. If it did not, this would not matter.”
Feet were coming up the companionway, and I heard the Governor’s voice below, in cheerful conversation with the Captain of Marines.
“Thomas! Don’t do this!”
He only looked at me, and smiled—had I ever seen him smile?—but did not speak. He raised my hand and bent over it; I felt the prickle of his beard and the warmth of his breath, the softness of his lips.
“I am your servant, madam,” he said very softly. He squeezed my hand and released it, then turned and glanced toward the shore. A small boat was coming, dark against the glitter of the silver sea. “Your husband is coming for you. Adieu, Mrs. Fraser.”
He turned and walked away, back steady in spite of the swell that rose and fell beneath us.
PART ELEVEN
In the Day of Vengeance
98
TO KEEP A GHOST AT BAY
JAMIE GROANED, STRETCHED, and sat down heavily on the bed.
“I feel as though someone’s stepped on my cock.”
“Oh?” I opened one eye to look at him. “Who?”
He gave me a bloodshot look.
“I dinna ken, but it feels as though it was someone heavy.”
“Lie down,” I said, yawning. “We haven’t got to leave right away; you can rest a bit more.”
He shook his head.
“Nay, I want to be home. We’ve been gone too long as it is.” Nonetheless, he didn’t get up and finish dressing, but continued to sit on the swaybacked inn bed in his shirt, big hands hanging idle between his thighs.
He looked tired to death, in spite of just having risen, and no wonder. I didn’t think he could have slept at all for several days, what with his search for me, the burning of Fort Johnston, and the events attending my release from the Cruizer. Remembering, I felt a pall settle over my own spirits, in spite of the joy in which I had wakened, realizing that I was free, on land, and with Jamie.