But for this time—I was alive. I stood still, eyes closed, breathing in the pure morning air. I could feel every single atom of my body, blood racing to carry round the sweet fresh stuff to every cell and muscle fiber. The sun touched my face, and warmed the cold skin to a lovely glow.
I opened my eyes to a dazzle of green and yellow and blue; day had broken. All the birds were singing now.
I went up the path toward the clearing, resisting the impulse to look behind me.
* * *
Jamie and Ian had felled several tall, slender pines the day before, cut them into twelve-foot lengths, and rolled and wrestled and tumbled the logs downhill. Now they lay stacked at the edge of the small clearing, rough bark glistening black with wet.
Jamie was pacing out a line, stamping down the wet grass, when I came back with the kettle filled with water. Ian had a fire started on the top of a large flat stone—he having learned from Jamie the canny trick of keeping a handful of dry kindling always in one’s sporran, along with flint and steel.
“This will be a wee shed,” Jamie was saying, frowning at the ground in concentration. “We’ll build this first, for we can sleep in it, if it should rain again, but it needna be so well built as the cabin—it’ll give us something to practice on, eh, Ian?”
“What is it for—beyond practice?” I asked. He looked up and smiled at me.
“Good morning, Sassenach. Did ye sleep well?”
“Of course not,” I said. “What’s the shed for?”
“Meat,” he said. “We’ll dig a shallow pit at the back, and fill it wi’ embers, to smoke what we can for keeping. And make a rack for drying—Ian’s seen the Indians do it, to make what they call jerky. We must have a safe place where beasts canna get at our food.”
This seemed a sound idea; particularly in view of the sort of beasts in the area. My only doubts were regarding the smoking. I’d seen it done in Scotland, and knew that smoking meat required a certain amount of attention; someone had to be at hand to keep the fire from burning too high or going out altogether, had to turn the meat regularly, and baste it with fat to avoid scorching and drying.
I had no difficulty in seeing who was going to be nominated for this task. The only trouble was that if I didn’t manage to do it right, we’d all die of ptomaine poisoning.
“Right,” I said, without enthusiasm. Jamie caught my tone and grinned at me.
“That’s the first shed, Sassenach,” he said. “The second one’s yours.”
“Mine?” I perked up a bit at that.
“For your wee herbs and bits of plants. They do take up a bit of room, as I recall.” He pointed across the clearing, the light of builder’s mania in his eye. “And just there—that’s where the cabin will be; where we’ll live through the winter.”
Rather to my surprise, they had the walls of the first shed erected by the end of the second day, crudely roofed with cut branches until time should permit the cutting of shingles for a proper roof. The walls were made of slender notched logs, still with the bark on, and with noticeable chinks and gaps between them. Still, it was large enough to sleep the three of us and Rollo comfortably, and with a fire burning in a stone-lined pit at one end, it was quite cozy inside.
Enough branches had been removed from the roof to leave a smoke hole; I could see the evening stars, as I cuddled against Jamie and listened to him criticize his workmanship.
“Look at that,” he said crossly, lifting his chin at the far corner. “I’ve gone and laid in a crooked pole, and it’s put the whole of that line off the straight.”
“I don’t imagine the deer carcasses will care,” I murmured. “Here, let’s see that hand.”
“And the rooftree’s a good six inches lower at the one end than the other,” he went on, ignoring me, but letting me have his left hand. Both hands were smoothly callused, but I could feel the new roughnesses of scrapes and cuts, and so many small splinters that his palm was prickly to the touch.
“You feel like a porcupine,” I said, brushing my hand over his fingers. “Here, move closer to the fire, so I can see to pull them out.”
He moved obligingly, crawling around Ian, who—freshly de-splintered himself—had fallen asleep with his head pillowed on Rollo’s furry side. Unfortunately, the change of position exposed new weaknesses of construction to Jamie’s critical eye.
“You’ve never built a shed out of logs before, have you?” I interrupted his denunciation of the doorway, neatly tweaking a large splinter out of his thumb with my tweezers.
“Ow! No, but—”
“And you built the bloody thing in two days, with nothing but a felling ax and a knife, for God’s sake! There’s not a nail in it! Why ought you to expect it to look like Buckingham Palace?”
“I’ve never seen Buckingham Palace,” he said, rather mildly. He paused. “I do take your point, though, Sassenach.”
“Good.” I bent closely over his palm, squinting to make out the small dark streaks of splinters, trapped beneath the skin.
“I suppose it willna fall down, at least,” he said, after a longer pause.
“Shouldn’t think so.” I dabbed a cloth to the neck of the brandy bottle, swabbed his hand with it, then turned my attention to his right hand.
He didn’t speak for a time. The fire crackled softly to itself, flaring up now and then as a draft reached in between the logs to tickle it.
“The house is going to be on the high ridge,” he said suddenly. “Where the strawberries grow.”
“Will it?” I murmured. “The cabin, you mean? I thought that was going to be at the side of the clearing.” I’d taken out as many splinters as I could; those that were left were so deeply embedded that I would have to wait for them to work their way nearer the surface.
“No, not the cabin. A fine house,” he said softly. He leaned back against the rough logs, looking across the fire, out through the chinks to the darkness beyond. “Wi’ a staircase, and glass windows.”
“That will be grand.” I laid the tweezers back in their slot, and closed the box.
“Wi’ high ceilings, and a doorway high enough I shall never bump my heid going in.”
“That will be lovely.” I leaned back beside him, and rested my head on his shoulder. Somewhere in the far distance, a wolf howled. Rollo lifted his head with a soft wuff!, listened for a moment, then lay down again with a sigh.
“With a stillroom for you, and a study for me, lined with shelves for my books.”
“Mmmm.” At the moment, he possessed one book—The Natural History of North Carolina, published 1733, brought along as guide and reference.
The fire was burning low again, but neither of us moved to add more wood. The embers would warm us through the night, to be rekindled with the dawn.
Jamie put an arm around my shoulders, and tilting sideways, took me with him to lie curled together on the thick layer of fallen leaves that was our couch.
“And a bed,” I said. “You could build a bed, I expect?”
“As fine as any in Buckingham Palace,” he said.
* * *