“It’s all right,” he muttered, over and over, though he was uncertain whether the other could hear him. “It’s all right, they didn’t kill you.” He couldn’t help wondering whether it might have been better if they had; did they mean this only as a warning to the priest, or was it only the preliminary to greater tortures?
The fire had burned itself to coals; in the reddish light, the seeping blood was black.
Father Alexandre moved constantly in small jerks, the restlessness of his body at once caused and constrained by the pain of his wound. He could not by any means settle to sleep, and consequently neither could Roger, nearly as aware as the priest of each interminably passing minute.
Roger cursed himself for helplessness; he would have given anything to assuage the other man’s pain, even for a moment. It wasn’t merely sympathy, and he knew it; Father Alexandre’s small, breathless sounds kept the knowledge of the mutilation fresh in Roger’s mind, and terror alive in his blood. If the priest could only sleep, the sounds would stop—and perhaps in the darkness, the horror would recede a bit.
For the first time, he thought he understood what it was that made Claire Randall tick; made her walk onto battlefields, to lay her hands on wounded men. To ease pain and death in another was to soothe the fear of it in oneself—and to soothe his own fear, he would do almost anything.
At last, unable to bear the whispered prayers and stifled whimpering any longer, he lay down beside the priest, and took Alexandre in his arms.
“Hush,” he said, his lips close to Père Alexandre’s head. He hoped he had the side with the ear. “Be still now. Reposez-vous.”
The priest’s lean body quivered against his own, the muscles knotted with cold and agony. Roger rubbed the man’s back briskly, chafed his palms over the chilled limbs, and pulled both tattered deerskins over them.
“You’ll be all right.” Roger spoke in English, aware that it didn’t matter what he said, only that he said something. “Here now, it’s all right. Yes, go on, then.” He talked as much to distract himself as the other man; the feel of Alexandre’s naked body was vaguely shocking—as much because it didn’t feel unnatural as because it did.
The priest clung to him, head pressed into his shoulder. He said nothing, but Roger could feel the wetness of tears against his skin. He made himself hug the priest tightly, rubbing up and down the spine with its small lumps of knobby bone, forcing himself to think only of stopping the terrible shaking.
“You could be a dog,” Roger said. “A mistreated stray of some kind. I’d do it if you were a dog, of course I would. No, I wouldn’t,” he muttered to himself. “Call the ruddy RSPCA, I expect.”
He patted Alexandre’s head, careful where his fingers went, cold with gooseflesh at the thought of touching that raw, bloody patch by inadvertence. The hair at the priest’s nape was lank with sweat, though the flesh of his neck and shoulders was like ice. His lower body was warmer, but not by much.
“Nobody’d treat a dog like this,” he muttered. “Fucking savages. Set the police onto them. Put their bloody pictures in the Times. Complain to my MP.”
A small ripple of something too frightened to be called laughter went through him. He gripped the priest fiercely, and rocked him to and fro in darkness.
“Reposez-vous, mon ami. C’est bien, là, c’est bien.”
55
CAPTIVITY II
River Run, March 1770
Brianna rolled the wet brush along the edge of the palette, squeezing out the excess turps to form a good point. She touched the point briefly to the viridian-cobalt mix and added a fine line of shadow to the river’s edge.
There were footsteps on the path behind her, coming from the house. She recognized the arrythmic double step; it was the Deadly Duo. She tensed slightly, fighting the urge to snatch the wet canvas and put it out of sight behind Hector Cameron’s mausoleum. She didn’t mind Jocasta, who often came to sit with her while she painted in the mornings, to discuss techniques of painting, grinding pigments, and the like. In fact, she welcomed her great-aunt’s company and treasured the older woman’s stories of her girlhood in Scotland, of Brianna’s grandmother, and of the other MacKenzies of Leoch. But when Jocasta brought her faithful Seeing-eye Dog along, it was a different matter.
“Good morning, Niece! Is it not too cold for you the morn?”
Jocasta halted, her own cloak drawn around her, and smiled at Brianna. If she hadn’t known better, she wouldn’t have realized her aunt’s blindness.
“No, it’s fine here; the…er…tomb blocks the wind. I’m finished for now, though.” She wasn’t, but stabbed her brush into the turpentine jar and began to scrape the palette. Damned if she’d paint with Ulysses describing her every brushstroke out loud.
“Ah? Well, leave your things, then; Ulysses will take them up for you.”
Reluctantly abandoning her easel, Brianna picked up her private sketchbook and tucked it under one arm, giving her other to Jocasta. She wasn’t leaving that for Mr. Sees-all, Tells-all to flip through.
“We have company today,” Jocasta said, turning back toward the house. “Judge Alderdyce, from Cross Creek, and his mother. I thought perhaps ye’d wish time to change, before luncheon.” Brianna bit the inside of her cheek, to prevent any rejoinder to this less than subtle hint. More visitors.
Under the circumstances, she could scarcely refuse to meet her aunt’s guests—or even to change clothes for them—but she could have wished that Jocasta were a good deal less sociable. There was a constant stream of visitors; for luncheon, for tea, for supper, overnight, for breakfast, come to buy horses, sell cows, trade lumber, borrow books, bring gifts, play music. They came from neighboring plantations, from Cross Creek, and from as far away as Edenton and New Bern.
The array of Jocasta’s acquaintance was staggering. Still, Brianna had noticed an increasing tendency of late for the callers to be men. Single men.
Phaedre verified Brianna’s suspicions, voiced as the maid dug in the wardrobe for a fresh morning gown.
“There ain’t a lot of single women in the colony,” Phaedre observed, when Brianna mentioned the peculiar coincidence that most of the recent visitors appeared to be bachelors. Phaedre cast an eye at Brianna’s midsection, which was bulging noticeably under the loose muslin shift. “ ’Specially not young ones. To say nothing of women who’s got River Run a-coming to them.”
“Who’s got what?” Brianna said. She stopped, hair half pinned, and stared at the maid.
Phaedre laid one graceful hand across her mouth, eyes wide above it.
“Your auntie ain’t told you yet? Thought sure you knew, or I’d not’ve said.”
“Well, now you’ve said that much, go on saying. What do you mean?” Phaedre, a born gossip, took little coaxing.
“Your daddy and them hadn’t been gone but a week, before Miss Jo sent for Lawyer Forbes and had her will changed. When Miss Jo dies, they’s some little bits of money goes to your daddy, and some personal things to Mr. Farquard and some of her other friends—but everything else, that’s yours. The plantation, the timber, the sawmill…”