Thump. Thump. Thump. True, there was a lesser thump following the main one, but it was the solid, reassuring rhythm of the thump that gave her—well, gave her heart. She smiled at the thought and wiped her wet hands through her hair, which had come loose from its ribbon.
She was kneeling on the grass beside the wheel when Roger came down again, bearing gifts in the form of two boiled eggs, a chunk of dry bread rubbed with olive oil and garlic, and a bottle of ale. She started with the ale.
“It’s not so bad,” she said, nodding at the wheel. “One of the sawed felloes came loose, but it’s not broken. I can fit it back and put a wire screw in—”
“To hell with the wheel,” he said, though mildly. “Eat an egg and tell me what’s going on.” His face showed nothing but concern, but the set of his shoulders said he wouldn’t leave it.
She took a long drink of ale for fortitude, stifled a belch, and told him.
“I keep thinking that it will just go away. That once it stops, it won’t happen again. But I keep listening for it, on edge … and then it doesn’t happen for a week, two weeks, three … and I’ve started to relax and then wham! There it is again.” She looked up at him apologetically. “I’m sorry I fell apart. But you know, it’s kind of like pregnancy—there’s this thing inside you, part of you, but you can’t control it and it just takes your body and … does things with it.” She glanced down and began picking fragments of eggshell out of the grass.
“And it might kill you,” she said, very softly. “Though Mama says it’s not life threatening—except for the maybe-giving-you-a-stroke thing.”
“Leave those—eggshells are part of the landscape.” He took her unresisting hand and kissed it gently. “Do you have willow bark with you?”
“Yes. Mama made up a kit for me.” She smiled a little, despite the situation, and gestured up the hill, toward the lopsided wagon. “In my bag. Twenty-four packets of willow bark, each good for a three-cup brew. She thought that would last me until we got to Charleston.
“One more thing,” she said, and took a deep, snuffling breath. Her nose was beginning to clear and she could breathe again.
“Aye?”
“Pregnancy and this—heart thing. Mama says that it’s like a lot of other things—pregnancy might make it go away, either temporarily or even permanently. But it might also make it a lot worse.” She blew her nose on a wet handkerchief. “And she didn’t say this, but I thought of it later—what if it’s something … I mean, Mandy’s heart. Did I—give that to her?”
“No,” he said firmly. “No, we know that’s a common birth defect. Patent ductus arteriosus, your mum said. You didn’t cause it. Though …”
She wanted to believe him, but the doubts and thoughts she’d been suppressing for the last few months were all bubbling out.
“Your great-whatever-grandfather. Buck. He had something wrong with his heart, didn’t he?”
Roger’s face went momentarily blank.
“Aye, he did,” he said slowly. “But it—I mean, it seemed to be an effect of coming through the stones.” His hand went to his own chest, unconsciously, and he rubbed it slowly. “He was having an … attack, a seizure … right when we came through. But then it got better—and then it got much worse later. That’s when we met Hector McEwan.”
Her breathing was a lot easier. There was something about logical thought that short-circuited emotion. Maybe that’s why people said you should count to ten when you were upset …
“I wish I’d asked him more about it,” she said. “But”—she touched her own chest, where her twitchy heart was presently beating quietly—“I wasn’t having anything like this at the time.”
She could see that he didn’t want to say it, but she could tell what he was thinking, because it was the logical conclusion and she was thinking it, too.
“Maybe it—the damage, if that’s what it is—gets worse, the more often you do it? Travel, I mean?”
“God, I don’t know.” He glanced up the hill. The kids’ voices were fainter; they were off in the woods on the other side of the road. “It doesn’t seem to have hurt Jem, or … or me. Or your mother. But—it only just occurred to me: your mother traveled through the stones while she was pregnant with you. Maybe that …?” He touched her chest, gently.
“Too small a sample size.” She laughed, shakily. “And I didn’t travel with Mandy. Don’t worry. Mama said the odds of someone my age and my state of health having a stroke were infinitesimal. As for pregnancy …”
“Bree.” He stood and pulled her to her feet, facing him. “I meant it, m’aoibhneas. I’d never risk your life, your health—or your happiness.” He tilted his head so they were forehead-to-forehead, eye-to-eye, and he felt her smile. “D’ye not know how much you mean to me?” he said. “Let alone the kids. For that matter … do ye really think I’d risk you dying on me and leaving me wi’ those wee fiends?”
She laughed, though he could see the tears still glimmering at the corners of her eyes. She squeezed his hands, hard, then let go and dug for a handkerchief in her pocket.
“‘M’aoibhneas’?” she asked, shaking the handkerchief out and wiping her nose with it. “I don’t know that one. What does it mean?”
“Joy,” he said gruffly, and cleared his throat. “My joy.” He nodded at the wheel and its sprung tyre. “What is it they say? Happiness is someone who can mend ye when you’re broken?”
IT TOOK LESS than an hour to mend the wheel—so far as she could do that.
“It really needs a blacksmith to put fresh rivets in the tyre,” she said, rising from a squat by the freshly attached wheel. “All I had was flat-headed tacks for the felloes and a couple of really crude screws and some wire, but—”
“We’ll drive slowly,” Roger said. He shaded his eyes, judging the height of the sun. “There’s a good three hours of daylight left. And I think there’s a place called Bartholomew, or Yamville, or something like that on this road. Might be big enough to boast a blacksmith.”
The kids had exhausted themselves running up and down the trace, playing tag and hide-and-seek while she was mending the wheel. A solid lunch of cold boiled potatoes (remarkably good with a little salt and vinegar) and eggs, with a good dollop of sauerkraut for vitamin C, and apples to finish off—they had a bag of small greenish-yellow apples, sweet but tart—and Mandy was out cold, curled up in the wagon bed with her head on a sack of oats, and Jem and Germain yawning beside her but determined not to fall asleep and miss anything.
Roger felt much the same. The trace had widened into an actual road, but there was no one on it; they hadn’t passed or met anyone in the last two hours, and the horses had slowed, so the forest passed quietly, tree by tree, rather than the jolting green blur of the earlier part of the journey. It was soothing, hypno … hyp—
“Hey!” Brianna grabbed his arm, startling him back into wakefulness. By reflex, he hauled back on the reins and the horses stopped, snorting, their sides slicked with sweat.