“There’s a trail,” she said, looking from Jamie to me in hopes that this might be enough.
“Take Clarence,” he said to me, over her head. “The moon’s bright enough. I’ll go with ye.” And I think we’d best hurry, his expression added. I rather thought he was right.
CLARENCE WAS NOT enthused at being rousted from his sleep, nor about carrying two people, even if one was a starveling girl. He kept huffing and snorting irascibly, walking slowly and blowing out his sides every time I tried to nudge him into speed with my heels. Jamie had taken Fanny’s enormous mare, Miranda, she being of a stolid, amiable temperament and stout enough to bear his weight. She wasn’t all that pleased by the nocturnal expedition, either, but plodded obligingly through the groves of aspen and larch, poplar and fir, up the steep, narrow trail that led toward the top of the Ridge.
Clarence followed her rather than be left behind, but he wasn’t in any hurry about it and I kept losing sight of the shadowy mass of horse and man—and with them, any notion of where the trail was. I wondered how on earth the girl had found her way to us through dark and bramble; her legs and arms were scratched and there were leaves and pine needles in her hair; she smelled of the forest.
The moon was well up the sky by now, a lopsided, tricky lump of a moon that made it just possible to perceive deceptive openings in the forest, without actually being bright enough to see anything more than three feet away.
I had Agnes perched in front of me, her shift rucked up and pale white legs like mushroom stems dangling in the darkness to either side. I wondered whether she had left home in a panic—or whether perhaps the grubby shift was her only garment. It smelled faintly of cooking grease and singed cabbage.
“Tell me about your mother, Agnes,” I said, giving Clarence a solid kick in the ribs. He twitched his ears in annoyance, and I desisted. He was a good mule, but not above decanting a rider who aggravated him. “When—about—did her pains begin?”
She was a little less frightened, now that she had obtained the help she sought, and gradually grew calmer as she answered my questions.
Mrs. Cloudtree (was there a Mr. Cloudtree in residence? Yes, there was, though her body stiffened when she mentioned him) was near to her time (good, not a premature birth), though she’d thought it might be as much as another two or three weeks (maybe a little early, then … but even so, the baby should have a reasonable chance …).
Her mother’s pains had come on about midday, Agnes said, and her mother hadn’t thought it would take long: Agnes had come within four hours of the waters breaking, and each of her little brothers even faster. (Good, Mrs. Cloudtree was a multigravida. But in that case, she should have delivered fairly quickly and without complications … and plainly she hadn’t …)
Agnes couldn’t explain quite what the trouble was, other than a longer-than-usual labor. But she knew there was trouble, and that interested me.
“It’s not …,” she said, pulling the old shawl tighter round her shoulders and turning her head in an effort to see my face, make me understand. “Something’s different.”
“Something feels wrong to you?” I asked, interested.
She shook her head dubiously. “I don’t know. I helped, last time, when Georgie was born. And I was there when Billy came …. I was too little to help, then, but I could see everything. This is just … different.” I heard her swallow, and patted her shoulder.
“We’ll be there soon,” I said. I wanted to assure her that everything would be all right, but she knew better, or she wouldn’t have come running through the dark, looking for help. I could only hope that nothing irretrievable had happened at the Cloudtrees’ cabin in the meantime.
I glanced up, looking for the moon. I’d never managed to shift my sense of time to stars and planets, rather than the clock, and so was obliged to calculate time, rather than know it, as Jamie did. The moon was a ghostly galleon … drifted through my head. Could be, I thought, spotting it momentarily through a break in the dark, fragrant firs surrounding us. And a highwayman came riding … came riding …
I knew all I could know at this point; it was time to stop thinking. Every birth was different. And every death. The thought spoke itself inside my mind before I could stop it, and a shiver ran through me.
I asked a few questions about Agnes’s family, but she had withdrawn into her own anxiety and wasn’t disposed to talk much further. Beyond the information that they had built their present cabin in the early summer, I gained little knowledge of the Cloudtrees beyond their names: Aaron, Susannah, Agnes, William, and George.
At the top of the Ridge, Jamie halted at the edge of the Bald, as folk called the high, treeless meadows on the upper slopes of the mountain. As usual, there was a stiff wind blowing on the Bald, and the shawl I’d pulled over my head was snatched back and my hair with it, whipping free in the breeze. Jamie dropped Miranda’s reins, and she immediately lowered her head and began to munch grass.
Jamie dismounted and came to take Clarence’s bridle. Out from under the trees now, I could see him plainly by the moonlight; he was smiling up at me, watching as my hair was lifted straight up off my scalp.
“Dinna take flight just yet, Sassenach. I’ll need Miss Agnes to guide us from here,” he said, and reached up a hand to her. “Will ye come over to me, lass?”
I felt her stiffen, but after a moment’s hesitation she nodded and slid off Clarence. Clarence grunted and turned smartly round, obviously thinking that now we’d got rid of the girl, it was time to go home.
“Think again,” I told him, reining his head hard round. A short battle of wills followed, this resolved by Miranda and her riders moving off with the slow implacability of a steamroller. Clarence snorted and brayed after her, but she didn’t turn back, and after a moment’s fuming, he snapped into a tooth-jarring trot and plunged after her. A quarter of an hour later, we crossed the Cherokee Line. A white blaze, briefly showing by moonlight, marked one of the witness trees that marked the Treaty Line.
The moon was high overhead, and the trees open enough for me to see Jamie glance back over his shoulder. I raised my hand in a small wave of acknowledgment; I’d noticed. A premature birth might not be all Agnes’s family was risking, settling on Indian land. I was glad that Jamie had insisted on coming; he spoke enough Cherokee to get along, if that should become necessary.
The journey took no little time, as Agnes needed to come out into the open now and again to get her bearings—she could read stars, she said matter-of-factly—but within an hour, we saw the dim glow of a cabin’s windows, covered by oiled hide.
I slid off Clarence and pulled down the bag that held my kit.
“I’ll mind the horses,” Jamie said, coming up to take Clarence’s reins. “Ye’ll need to hurry, I expect?”
Agnes was already at the door, fluttering like a frantic moth, and even from where we stood, I could hear the deep, guttural noises of a woman deep in labor.
The door opened suddenly inward, and Agnes fell over the threshold. A tall, dark figure yanked her to her feet and slapped her across the face.
“Where the hell you been, girl!”
Clarence’s ears went straight up at the gunshot sound, and when this was succeeded at once by the high-pitched shrieking of small children, he turned around and trotted off into the forest.