“Did I break the skin?”
“Ye do that every time ye touch me, Sassenach. I’m no bleeding, though.”
We lay in silence for some time, and the sounds of crickets and the rustle of leaves flowed over us like water.
He spoke, quietly, and I turned my head, thinking I hadn’t heard him aright, but I had. I just didn’t know what language he was speaking.
“That isn’t Gàidhlig, is it?” I asked dubiously, and he shook his head slowly, eyes still closed.
“Gaeilge,” he said. “Irish. I heard it from Stephen O’Farrell, during the Rising. It just came back to me now.
“My body is out from my control,” he said softly. “She was the half of my body—the very half of my soul.”
38
Grim Reaper
I WAS DIGGING UP a number of four-leaved milkweeds, with the intent of transplanting them to my garden, when I heard the unmistakable bray of an annoyed mule. I’d had enough experience with Clarence and a few of his fellows to tell the difference between a call of greeting and a declaration of hostility. Both earsplitting, but different.
A couple of male voices and another mule now joined the argument. Hastily tucking the uprooted milkweeds into the wet moss in my basket, I picked up said basket and went to see what was happening.
Neither of the voices sounded familiar, and I stopped short of the racket, peering through a screen of silver firs and tall, skinny aspens. Two men, two mules, all right—but one of the mules, a light bay, had turned aside and was browsing on the flowering grass by the trail, while the other, darker mule was fiercely resisting the efforts of the two men to force him—I checked; yes, it was a him—to continue up the narrow, rocky defile.
Frankly, I didn’t blame the mule in the slightest. He and his fellow were both heavily laden, each with a long wooden crate slung on each side and large canvas-covered bundles tied messily to a pack frame on top.
I could guess what had happened. There was a good, wide trail that led up this side of the cove, but it branched at a spot called Wounded Lady, which was a small, brilliantly blue spring with a single aspen on its edge, white-barked and solid, but with trails of blood-red sap trickling slowly from the wounds inflicted by burrowing insects and the woodpeckers hunting them. The main trail made a sharp turn and went on to the east, while a narrower deer path, much obstructed by growth and rolling stones, went straight up the right side of the aspen.
The lead mule had either stumbled on rocks or been caught by the branches of the trees that edged the path. Whatever had caused it, the bindings of his baggage had broken or slipped, and half the load was hanging down over his tail, scattering small boxes and leather bags, with one of the long boxes resting with one end on the ground, the other pointing at the sky, and a fragile strand of rope still anchoring it to the mule.
I had seen the sort of cases used to ship firearms, many times. In France, in Scotland, in America—it didn’t matter what the time period, a bang-stick is a bang-stick, and you need a long, narrow box if you want to carry a large number of them.
I didn’t recognize either of the men, and I didn’t wait about to introduce myself. I took myself and my milkweeds off as fast as I could go.
Luckily, I found Jamie within half an hour, passing the time of day with Tom MacLeod, the coffin maker.
“Who’s dead?” I gasped, out of breath from scrambling down the mountain.
“No one, yet,” Jamie said, eyeing me. “But ye look like ye’re about to be, Sassenach. What’s happened?”
I set my basket on a sawhorse, sat down on another, and told them, pausing to gasp for breath or gulp water from the canteen Tom handed me.
“Nothin’ up that path but Captain Cunningham’s place, is there?” Tom observed.
“Ye mean they maybe didna go up that way by accident, aye?” Jamie stuck his head out of the coffin shed and looked up at the sky. “It’s going to rain soon. Be a pity if our friends find themselves stuck in the mud.”
Tom grunted in approval, and without further consultation went into his house, returning in less than a minute with an old leather hat on his head, a good rifle in his hand, a pistol in his belt, and a cartridge box slung over his bowed shoulder. He had a second pistol in his other hand, which he gave Jamie. Jamie nodded, checked the priming, and stuck it in his own belt. Absently touching his dirk, he nodded to me.
“Go get Young Ian, will ye, Sassenach? I saw him mowing in his upper field not an hour since.”
“But what—”
“Go,” he said, though mildly. “Dinna fash, Sassenach. It will be fine.”
I FOUND YOUNG Ian, not in his upper field, but in the woods nearby, rifle in hand.
“Don’t shoot!” I called, spotting him through the brush. “It’s me!”
“I couldna mistake ye for anything save a small bear or a large hog, Auntie,” he assured me as I pawed my way through a clump of dogwood toward him. “And I dinna want either one of those today.”
“Fine. How about a nice, fat pair of gunrunners?”
I explained as well as I could while jog-trotting along behind him as he detoured through the field in order to grab his scythe, which he thrust into my hands.
“I dinna think ye’ll have to use it, Auntie,” he said, grinning at the look on my face. “But if ye stand there blocking the trail, it would be a desperate man would try to go through ye.”
When we arrived, we discovered that the trail had already been effectively blocked by the first mule’s burden, which he had succeeded in shedding completely. When Ian and I showed up a little way below the gunrunners, the first mule, enjoying his new lightness of spirit, was nimbly climbing over the pile of bags, boxes, and wickerwork toward us, intent on joining his fellow, who was not letting his own pack stop him from browsing a large patch of blackberry brambles that edged the trail just there.
Evidently, we had arrived almost at the same time as Jamie and Tom MacLeod, for the two gunrunners had turned to gawk at me and Ian just as Jamie and Tom came into sight on the trail above them.
“Who the devil are you?” one of the men demanded, looking from me to Ian in bewilderment. Ian had tied up his hair in a topknot to keep it out of the way while mowing, and without his shirt, deeply tanned and tattooed, he looked very like the Mohawk he was. I didn’t want to think what I must look like, comprehensively disheveled and with my hair full of leaves and coming down, but I gripped my scythe and gave them a stern look.
“I’m Ian Òg Murray,” Ian said mildly, and nodded at me. “And that’s my auntie. Oops.” The first mule was nosing his way determinedly between us, causing us both to step off the path.
“I’m Ian Murray,” Ian repeated, stepping back his rifle in a relaxed-but-definitely-ready position across his chest.
“And I,” said a deep voice from above, “am Colonel James Fraser, of Fraser’s Ridge, and that’s my wife.” He moved into sight, broad-shouldered and tall against the light, with Tom behind him, sunlight glinting off his rifle.
“Catch that mule, will ye, Ian? This is my land. And who, may I ask, are you gentlemen?”
The men jerked in surprise and whirled to look upward—though one cast an apprehensive glance over his shoulder, to keep an eye on the threat to the rear.