He rolled halfway off me, brushing hair out of his face.
“Stephen Bonnet is a wicked creature,” he said precisely, “and I shall kill him at the first opportunity I have. But I dinna see how I can blame him for my own failings as a man.”
“What on earth are you talking about? What failings?”
He didn’t answer right away, but bent his head, a humped shadow in the dark. His legs were still entangled with mine; I could feel the tension of his body, knotted in his joints, rigid in the hollows of his thighs.
“I hadna thought ever to be so jealous of a dead man,” he whispered at last. “I shouldna have thought it possible.”
“Of a dead man?” My own voice rose slightly, with astonishment, as it finally dawned on me. “Of Frank?”
He lay still, half on top of me. His hand touched the bones of my face, hesitant.
“Who else? I have been worm-eaten wi’ it, all these days of riding. I see his face in my mind, waking and sleeping. Ye did say he looked like Jack Randall, no?”
I gathered him tight against myself, pressing his head down so that his ear was near my mouth. Thank God I hadn’t mentioned the ring to him—but had my face, my traitorous, transparent face, somehow given away that I thought of it?
“How?” I whispered to him, squeezing hard. “How could you think of such a thing?”
He broke loose, rising on one elbow, his hair falling down over my face in a mass of flaming shadows, the firelight sparking gold and crimson through it.
“How could I not?” he demanded. “Ye heard her, Claire; ye ken well what she said to me!”
“Brianna?”
“She said she would gladly see me in hell, and sell her own soul to have her father back—her real father.” He swallowed; I heard the sound of it, above the murmur of distant voices.
“I keep thinking he would not have made such a mistake. He would have trusted her; he would have known that she…I keep thinking that Frank Randall was a better man than I am. She thinks so.” His hand faltered, then settled on my shoulder, squeezing tight. “I thought…perhaps ye felt the same, Sassenach.”
“Fool,” I whispered, and didn’t mean him. I ran my hands down the long slope of his back, digging my fingers into the firmness of his buttocks. “Wee idiot. Come here.”
He dropped his head, and made a small sound against my shoulder that might have been a laugh.
“Aye, I am. Ye dinna mind it so much, though?”
“No.” His hair smelt of smoke and pinesap. There were still bits of needles caught in it; one pricked smooth and sharp against my lips.
“She didn’t mean it,” I said.
“Aye, she did,” he said, and I felt him swallow the thickness in his throat. “I heard her.”
“I heard you both.” I rubbed slowly between his shoulder blades, feeling the faint traces of the old scars, the thicker, more recent welts left by the bear’s claws. “She’s just like you; she’ll say things in a temper she’d never say in cold blood. You didn’t mean all the things you said to her, did you?”
“No.” I could feel the tightness in him lessening, the joints of his body loosening, yielding reluctantly to the persuasion of my fingers. “No, I didna mean it. Not all of it.”
“Neither did she.”
I waited a moment, stroking him as I had stroked Brianna, when she was small, and afraid.
“You can believe me,” I whispered. “I love you both.”
He sighed, deeply, and was quiet for a moment.
“If I can find the man and bring him back to her. If I do—d’ye think she’ll forgive me one day?”
“Yes,” I said. “I know it.”
On the other side of the partition, I heard the small sounds of lovemaking begin; the shift and sigh, the murmured words that have no language.
“You have to go.” Brianna had said to me. “You’re the only one who can bring him back.”
It occurred to me for the first time that perhaps she hadn’t been speaking of Roger.
* * *
It was a long trek through the mountains, made longer by the winter weather. There were days when it was impossible to travel; when we crouched all day under rocky overhangs or in the shelter of a grove of trees, huddled against the wind.
Once we were through the mountains, the traveling was somewhat easier, though the temperatures grew colder as we headed north. Some nights we ate cold food, unable to keep a fire alight in snow and wind. But each night I lay with Jamie, closely huddled together within a single cocoon of furs and blankets, sharing our warmth.
I kept close count of the days, marking them by means of a length of knotted twine. We had left River Run in early January; it was mid-February before Onakara pointed out to us the smoke rising in the distance that marked the Mohawk village where he and his companions had taken Roger Wakefield. “Snake-town,” he said it was called.
Six weeks, and Brianna would be nearly six months gone. If we could get Roger back quickly—and if he was capable of travel, I added grimly to myself—we should be back well before the child was due. If Roger wasn’t here, though—if the Mohawk had sold him elsewhere…or if he was dead—said a small cold voice inside my head, we would return without delay.
Onakara declined to accompany us into the village, which did absolutely nothing to increase my confidence in our prospects. Jamie thanked him and saw him off, with one of the horses, a good knife, and a flask of whisky in payment for his services.
We buried the rest of the whisky, hiding it carefully some distance outside the village.
“Will they understand what we want?” I asked, as we remounted. “Is Tuscarora close enough to Mohawk for us to talk to them?”
“It’s no quite the same, Auntie, but close,” Ian said. It was snowing lightly, and the flakes clung melting to his eyelashes. “Like the differences between Italian and Spanish, maybe. But Onakara says that the sachem and a few others have a bit of English, though they mostly dinna choose to use it. But the Mohawk fought with the English against the French; there will be some who ken it.”
“Well, then.” Jamie smiled at us and laid his musket across the saddle in front of him. “Let’s go and try our luck.”
54
CAPTIVITY I
February 1770
He had been in the Mohawk village nearly three months, by the reckoning of his knotted string. At first he had not known who they were; only that they were a different kind of Indian than his captors—and that his captors were afraid of them.
He had stood numb with exhaustion while the men who had brought him talked and pointed. The new Indians were different; they were dressed for the cold, in fur and leather, and many of the men’s faces were tattooed.
One of them prodded him with the point of a knife, and made him undress. He was forced to stand naked in the middle of a long wooden house while several men—and women—poked and jeered at him. His right foot was badly swollen; the deep cut had become infected. He could still walk, but each step sent jabs of pain through his leg, and he burned intermittently with fever.
They shoved him, pushing him to the door of the house. There was a lot of noise outside. He recognized the gauntlet; a double row of shouting savages, all armed with sticks and clubs. Someone behind poked him in the buttock with the point of a knife, and he felt a warm trickle of blood run down his leg. “Cours!” they said. Run.