“I bear no further responsibility in the matter,” Lord John assured me. “However”— he spoke more firmly to Ian—“you might stop to think that perhaps the story incriminates someone your aunt prefers to shield. It would be discourteous to insist upon details, in that case.”
“Och, no, it’s never that,” Ian assured him, eyes tight closed. “Uncle Jamie wouldna murder anybody, save he had good reason.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Lord John jerk, slightly startled. Plainly, it had never occurred to him that it could have been Jamie.
“No,” I assured him, seeing the fair brows draw together. “It wasn’t.”
“Well, and it wasna me, either,” Ian said smugly. “And who else would Auntie be protecting?”
“You flatter yourself, Ian,” I said dryly. “But since you insist…”
My hesitancy had in fact been in the interests of protecting Young Ian. No one else could be harmed by the story—the murderer was dead and, for all I knew, Mr. Willoughby, too, perished in the hidden jungles of the Jamaican hills, though I sincerely hoped not.
But the story involved someone else, as well; the woman I had first known as Geillis Duncan and known later as Geillis Abernathy, at whose behest Ian had been kidnapped from Scotland, imprisoned on Jamaica, and had suffered things that he had only lately begun to tell us.
Still, there seemed no way out of it now—Ian was fractious as a child insisting on a bedtime story, and Lord John was sitting up in bed like a chipmunk waiting for nuts, eyes bright with interest.
And so, with the macabre urge to begin with “Once upon a time…” I leaned back against the wall, and with Ian’s head still in my lap, began the story of Rose Hall and its mistress, the witch Geillis Duncan; of the Reverend Archibald Campbell and his strange sister, Margaret, of the Edinburgh Fiend and the Fraser prophecy; and of a night of fire and crocodile’s blood, when the slaves of six plantations along the Yallahs River had risen and slain their masters, roused by the houngan Ishmael.
Of later events in the cave of Abandawe on Haiti, I said nothing. Ian, after all, had been there. And those happenings had nothing to do with the murder of Mina Alcott.
“A crocodile,” Ian murmured. His eyes were closed, and his face had grown more relaxed under my fingers, despite the gruesome nature of my story. “Ye really saw it, Auntie?”
“I not only saw it, I stepped on it,” I assured him. “Or rather, I stepped on it, and then I saw it. If I’d seen it first, I’d have bloody run the other way.”
There was a low laugh from the bed. Lord John scratched at his arm, smiling.
“You must find life here rather dull, Mrs. Fraser, after your adventures in the Indies.”
“I could do with a spot of dullness now and then,” I said, rather wistfully.
Involuntarily, I glanced at the bolted door, where I had propped Ian’s musket, brought back from the storehouse when I had fetched him. Jamie had taken his own gun, but his pistols lay on the sideboard, loaded and primed as he had left them for me, bullet case and powder horn neatly arranged beside them.
It was cozy in the cabin, with the fire flickering gold and red on the rough-barked walls, and the air filled with the warm, lingering scents of squirrel stew and pumpkin bread, spiced with the bitter tang of willow tea. I brushed my fingers over Ian’s jaw. No rash yet, but the skin was tight and hot—very hot still, in spite of the willow bark.
Talking about Jamaica had at least distracted me a bit from my worry over Ian. Headache was not an unusual symptom for someone with measles; severe and prolonged headache was. Meningitis and encephalitis were dangerous—and all too possible—complications of the disease.
“How’s the head?” I asked.
“A bit better,” he said. He coughed, eyes squinching shut as the spasms jarred his head. He stopped and opened them slightly, dark slits that glowed with fever. “I’m awfully hot, Auntie.”
I slid off the trundle and went to wring out a cloth in cool water. Ian stirred slightly as I wiped his face, his eyes closed once more.
“Mrs. Abernathy gave me amethysts to drink for the headache,” he murmured drowsily.
“Amethysts?” I was startled, but kept my voice low and soothing. “You drank amethysts?”
“Ground up in vinegar,” he said. “And pearls in sweet wine, but that was for the bedding, she said.” His face looked red and swollen, and he turned his cheek against the cool pillow, seeking relief. “She was a great one for the stones, yon woman. She burned powdered emeralds in the flame of a black candle, and she rubbed my cock wi’ a diamond—to keep it hard, she said.”
There was a faint sound from the bed, and I looked up to see Lord John, raised up on one elbow, eyes wide.
“And did the amethysts work?” I wiped Ian’s face gently with the cloth.
“The diamond did.” He made a feeble attempt at an adolescent’s bawdy laugh, but it faded into a harsh, rasping cough.
“No amethysts here, I’m afraid,” I said. “But there’s wine, if you want it.” He did, and I helped him to drink it—well diluted with water—then eased him back on the pillow, flushed and heavy-eyed.
Lord John had lain down, too, and lay watching, his thick blond hair unbound, spread out on the pillow behind him.
“That’s what she wanted wi’ the lads, ye ken,” Ian said. His eyes were shut tight against the light, but he could clearly see something, if only in the mists of memory. He licked his lips; they were beginning to dry and crack, and his nose was beginning to run.
“She said the stone grew in a lad’s innards—the one she wanted. She said it must be a laddie who’d never gone wi’ a lass, though, that was important. If he had, the stone wouldna be right, somehow. If he h-huh-had one.” He paused to cough, and ended breathless, nose dripping. I held a handkerchief for him to blow.
“What did she want the stone for?” Lord John’s face bore a look of sympathy—he knew only too well what Ian felt like at the moment—but curiosity compelled the question. I didn’t object; I wanted to know too.
Ian started to shake his head, then stopped with a groan.
“Ah! Oh, God, my head will split surely! I dinna ken, man. She didna say. Only that it was needful; she must have it to be s-sure.” He barely got out the last word before dissolving into a coughing attack that was the worst yet; he sounded like a barking dog.
“You’d better stop talk—” I began, but was interrupted by a soft thump at the door.
Instantly I froze, wet cloth still in my hand. Lord John leaned swiftly from the bed and took a pistol from inside one of his high cavalry boots on the floor. A finger to his lips to enjoin silence, he nodded toward Jamie’s pistols. I moved silently to the sideboard and grasped one, reassured by the smooth, solid heft of it in my hand.
“Who is there?” Lord John called, in a surprisingly strong voice.
There was no answer save a sort of scratching, and a faint whine. I sighed and laid the pistol down, torn between irritation, relief and amusement.
“It’s your blasted dog, Ian.”
“Are you sure?” Lord John spoke in a low voice, pistol still aimed unwaveringly at the door. “It might be an Indian trick.”