In the next instant, Roger crashed out of the brush and seized her, crushing her against him.
“You’re all right? Has he hurt you?” He’d dropped his knife, and held her by the arms, eyes trying to look everywhere at once—her face, her body, into her eyes. . . .
“I’m fine,” she said, feeling dizzy. “Roger, I’m—”
“Where has he gone?” It was her father, soaking wet and grim as death, dirk in his hand.
“That—” She turned to point, but he was already gone, running wolflike. She saw the marks of Bonnet’s passage now, the scuffed footmarks clear in the muddy sand. Before she could turn round again, Roger was after him.
“Wait!” she shrieked, but no answer came save the rapidly receding rustle of brush as heavy bodies flung themselves heedlessly through.
She stood still for a moment, head hanging as she breathed. The rain was pooling in the sockets of Emmanuel’s open eyes; the orange light glowed in them, making them look like the eyes of a Japanese movie monster.
That random thought passed across her mind, then vanished, leaving her blank and numb. She wasn’t sure what to do at this point. There were no sounds from the beach anymore; the noises of Bonnet’s flight had long since faded.
The rain was still falling, but the last of the sun shone through the wood, the long rays nearly horizontal, filling the space between the shadows with an odd, shifting light that seemed to waver as she watched, as though the world around her were about to disappear.
In the midst of it, dreamlike, she saw the women appear, the Fulani twins. They turned the identical faces of fawns to her, huge eyes black with fear, and ran into the wood. She called out to them, but they disappeared. Feeling unutterably tired, she trudged after them.
She didn’t find them. Nor was there a sign of anyone else. The light began to die, and she turned back, limping, toward the house. She ached everywhere, and began to suffer from the illusion that there was no one left in the world but her. Nothing but the burning light, fading to ashes moment by moment.
Then she remembered the baby in her womb, and felt better. No matter what, she wasn’t alone. Nonetheless, she gave a wide berth to the place where she thought Emmanuel’s body lay. She had meant to circle back toward the house, but went too far. As she turned to go back, she caught a glimpse of them, standing together in the shelter of the trees on the other side of a stream.
The wild horses, tranquil as the trees around them, flanks gleaming bay and chestnut and black with the wet. They raised their heads, scenting her, but didn’t run, only stood regarding her with big, gentle eyes.
THE RAIN HAD stopped when she reached the house. Ian sat on the stoop, wringing water out of his long hair.
“You have mud on your face, Ian,” she said, sinking down beside him.
“Oh, have I?” he said, giving her a half-smile. “How is it, then, coz?”
“Oh. I’m . . . I think I’m fine. What—?” She gestured at his shirt, stained with watery blood. Something seemed to have hit him in the face; besides the smudges of mud, his nose was puffed, there was a swelling just above his brow, and his clothes were torn, as well as wet.
He drew a deep, deep breath and sighed, as though he were as tired as she was.
“I got back the wee black lass,” he said. “Phaedre.”
That pierced the dreamlike fugue that filled her mind, but only a little.
“Phaedre,” she said, the name feeling like that of someone she had once known, long ago. “Is she all right? Where—”
“In there.” Ian nodded back toward the house, and she became aware that what she had thought the sound of the sea was in fact someone weeping, the small sobs of someone who has already wept herself to exhaustion, but cannot stop.
“Nay, leave her to herself, coz.” Ian’s hand on her arm stopped her from rising. “Ye canna help.”
“But—”
He stopped her, reaching into his shirt. From around his neck, he took a battered wooden rosary, and handed it to her.
“She’ll maybe want this—later. I picked it up from the sand, after the ship . . . left.”
For the first time since her escape, the nausea was back, a sense of vertigo that threatened to pull her down into blackness.
“Josh,” she whispered. Ian nodded silently, though it hadn’t been a question.
“I’m sorry, coz,” he said very softly.
IT WAS NEARLY DARK when Roger appeared at the edge of the wood. She hadn’t been worrying, only because she was in a state of shock too deep even to think of what was happening. At sight of him, though, she was on her feet and flying toward him, all the fears she had suppressed erupting at last into tears, running down her face like the rain.
“Da,” she said, choking and sniffling into his wet shirt. “He’s—is he—”
“He’s all right. Bree—can ye come with me? Are ye strong enough—just for a bit?”
Gulping and wiping her nose on the soggy arm of her shift, she nodded, and leaning on his arm, limped into the darkness under the trees.
Bonnet was lying against a tree, head lolling to one side. There was blood on his face, running down onto his shirt. She felt no sense of victory at sight of him, only an infinitely weary distaste.
Her father was standing silently under the same tree. When he saw her, he stepped forward and folded her wordlessly into his arms. She closed her eyes for one blissful moment, wanting nothing more than to abandon everything, let him pick her up like a child and carry her home. But they had brought her here for a reason; with immense effort, she lifted her head and looked at Bonnet.
Did they want congratulations? she wondered fuzzily. But then she remembered what Roger had told her, describing her father leading her mother through the scene of butchery, making her look, so that she would know her tormentors were dead.
“Okay,” she said, swaying a little. “All right, I mean. I—I see. He’s dead.”
“Well . . . no. Actually, he isn’t.” Roger’s voice held an odd note of strain, and he coughed, with a look that shot daggers at her father.
“D’ye want him dead, lass?” Her father touched her shoulder, gently. “It is your right.”
“Do I—” She looked wildly from one to the other of the grave, shadowed faces, then at Bonnet, realizing for the first time that blood was running down his face. Dead men, as her mother had often explained, don’t bleed.
They had found Bonnet, Jamie said, run him to earth like a fox, and set about him. It had been an ugly fight, close-to, with knives, as their pistols were useless in the wet. Knowing that he fought for his life, Bonnet had struck viciously—there was a red-stained gash in the shoulder of Jamie’s coat, a scratch high on Roger’s throat, where a knife blade had passed within a fraction of slashing his jugular. But Bonnet had fought to escape, and not to kill—retreating into a space between trees where only one could come at him, he had grappled with Jamie, thrown him off, then bolted.
Roger had given chase, and boiling with adrenaline, had thrown himself at Bonnet bodily, knocking the pirate headfirst into the tree he now lay against.
“So there he lies,” Jamie said, giving Bonnet a bleak eye. “I had hoped he’d broken his neck, but no such thing, alas.”
“But he is unconscious,” Roger said, and swallowed.
She understood, and in her present mood, this particular male quirk of honor seemed reasonable. To kill a man in fair fight—or even an unfair fight—was one thing; to cut his throat while he lay unconscious at your feet was another.
But she hadn’t understood at all. Her father wiped his dirk on his breeches and handed it to her, hilt first.
“What . . . me?” She was too shocked even to feel astonishment. The knife was heavy in her hand.
“If ye wish it,” her father said, with grave courtesy. “If not, Roger Mac or I will do it. But it is your choice, a nighean.”
Now she understood Roger’s look—they had been arguing about it, before he had come to fetch her. And she understood exactly why her father offered her the choice. Whether it was vengeance or forgiveness, she held the man’s life in her hand. She took a deep breath, the awareness that it would not be vengeance coming over her with something like relief.
“Brianna,” Roger said softly, touching her arm. “Say the word if ye’ll have him dead; I’ll do it.”
She nodded, and took a deep breath. She could hear the savage longing in his voice—he did. She could hear the choked sound of his voice in memory, too, when he had told her of killing Boble—when he woke from dreams of it, drenched in sweat.
She glanced at her father’s face, nearly drowned in shadow. Her mother had said only a little of the violent dreams that haunted him since Culloden—but that little was enough. She could hardly ask her father to do this—to spare Roger what he suffered himself.
Jamie raised his head, feeling her eyes on him, and met her gaze, straight on. Jamie Fraser had never turned from a fight he saw as his—but this was not his fight, and he knew it. She had a sudden flash of awareness; it wasn’t Roger’s fight, either, though he would take the weight of it from her shoulders, and gladly.
“If you—if we—if we don’t kill him here and now—” Her chest was tight, and she stopped for breath. “What will we do with him?”
“Take him to Wilmington,” her father said matter-of-factly. “The Committee of Safety there is strong, and they know him for a pirate; they’ll deal with him by law—or what passes for it now.”
They’d hang him; he would be just as dead—but his blood wouldn’t be on Roger’s hands, or in his heart.
The light was gone. Bonnet was no more than a lumpen shape, dark against the sandy ground. He might die of his wounds, she thought, and dimly hoped so—it would save trouble. But if they took him to her mother, Claire would be compelled to try to save him. She never turned from a fight that was hers, either, Brianna thought wryly, and was surprised to feel a small lightening of spirit at the thought.
“Let him live to be hanged, then,” she said quietly, and touched Roger’s arm. “Not for his sake. For yours and mine. For your baby.”
For an instant, she was sorry that she’d told him now, in the night-dark wood. She would so much have liked to see his face.
109
ALL THE NEWS THAT’S
FIT TO PRINT
FROM L’Oignon–Intelligencer, September 25, 1775
A ROYAL PROCLAMATION—
A Proclamation was issued in London upon the 23rd of August, in which His Majesty George III proclaims the American Colonies to be “in a State of open and avowed Rebellion.”
“NOTHING BUT OUR OWN EXERTIONS MAY DEFEAT THE MINISTERIAL SENTENCE OF DEATH OR ABJECT SUBMISSION”—The Continental Congress in Philadelphia has now rejected the Objectionable Proposals put forth by Lord North, intended to promote the Object of Reconciliation. The Delegates to this Congress state unequivocally the Right of the American Colonies to raise Appropriations and to have a say in the Disbursement of Same. The Statement of the Delegates reads in Part: “As the British Ministry has pursued its Ends and prosecuted Hostilities with great Armaments and Cruelty, can the World be deceived into an Opinion that we are Unreasonable, or can it hesitate to believe with us that Nothing but our own Exertions may defeat the Ministerial Sentence of Death or Abject Submission?”