Stunned silence followed the appearance of this apparition. Even Jamie looked completely nonplussed.
Mrs. Bug had been pale when they came in; now she had gone the color of chalk, and her lips had disappeared. Arch’s eyes went straight to Jamie’s, dark and defiant.
The only person unimpressed by sight of the glowing metal was Donner.
“Well, neato-mosquito,” he said. “What about the jewels? Keep your eye on the goal here, people!”
His accomplices, however, had lost interest in theoretical jewels, with solid gold actually in hand, and were simultaneously discussing the possibility of more and squabbling over who should have custody of the present ingot.
My own head was spinning: from the blow, from the sudden appearance of the ingot and its revelations regarding the Bugs—and particularly from the fumes of ether, which were getting notably stronger. No one in the kitchen had noticed, but all sound from the surgery had ceased; the young lout in there had undoubtedly passed out.
The bottle of ether had been nearly full; enough to anesthetize a dozen elephants, I thought dizzily—or a houseful of people. Already, I could see Donner struggling to keep his head upright. A few minutes more, and all the thugs would likely have subsided into a state of innocuous desuetude—but so would we.
Ether is heavier than air; the stuff would sink to the floor, where it would gradually rise in a pool around our knees. I stood up, taking a quick breath from the presumably purer air higher up. I had to get the window open.
Jamie and Arch were speaking Gaelic to each other, much too fast for me to follow, even had my head been in normal working order. Donner was frowning at them, mouth open as though he meant to tell them to stop but couldn’t quite find the words.
I fumbled with the catch of the inside shutters, having to concentrate very hard in order to make my fingers work. Finally, the latch flipped free and I swung the shutter open—revealing the leering face of an unfamiliar Indian in the twilight outside the window.
I shrieked and staggered back. Next thing, the back door sprang open and a squat bearded figure rushed in, bellowing in some incomprehensible tongue, followed by Ian, who was followed by yet another strange Indian, screaming and laying about himself with something—tomahawk? club? I couldn’t get my eyes to focus well enough to tell.
All was pandemonium, seen through glazed eyes. I clutched the windowsill to keep from sinking to the floor, but couldn’t summon the presence of mind to open the damn window. Everyone was struggling and fighting, but the inhabitants of the kitchen were doing it in slow motion, yelling and staggering like drunks. As I watched, my mouth hanging unbecomingly open, Jamie painstakingly drew Donner’s knife out from under his bu**ocks, brought it up in a slow, graceful arc, and buried it under Donner’s breastbone.
Something flew past my ear and crashed through the window, destroying what was probably the only intact pane of glass left in the house.
I breathed in deep gulps of fresh air, trying to clear my head, and made frantic waving motions with my hands, shouting—or trying to shout—“Get out! Get out!”
Mrs. Bug was trying to do just that, crawling on hands and knees toward the half-open door. Arch hit the wall and slid slowly down beside her, face gone blank. Donner had fallen face forward over the table, his blood dripping nastily onto the floorboards, and another thug was lying in the extinct hearth, his skull crushed. Jamie was still upright, swaying, and the squat bearded figure was standing beside him, shaking his head and looking confused as the fumes began to affect him.
“What’s going on?” I heard him ask.
The kitchen was nearly dark now, the figures swaying like fronds of kelp in some underwater forest.
I closed my eyes for a second. When I opened them again, Ian was saying, “Wait, I’ll light a candle.” He had one of Brianna’s matches in his hand, the tin in the other.
“IAN!” I shrieked, and then he struck the match.
There was a soft whoof! noise, then a louder whoomp! as the ether in the surgery ignited, and suddenly we were standing in a pool of fire. For a fraction of a second, I felt nothing, and then a burst of searing heat. Jamie seized my arm and hurled me toward the door; I staggered out, fell into the blackberry bushes, and rolled through them, thrashing and flailing at my smoking skirts.
Panicked and still uncoordinated from the ether, I struggled with the strings of my apron, finally managing to rip loose the strings and wriggle out of it. My linen petticoats were singed, but not charred. I crouched panting in the dead weeds of the dooryard, unable to do anything for the moment but breathe. The smell of smoke was strong and pungent.
Mrs. Bug was on the back porch on her knees, jerking off her cap, which was on fire.
Men erupted through the back door, beating at their clothes and hair. Rollo was in the yard, barking hysterically, and on the other side of the house, I could hear the screams of frightened horses. Someone had got Arch Bug out—he was stretched at full length in the dead grass, most of his hair and eyebrows gone, but evidently still alive.
My legs were red and blistered, but I wasn’t badly burned—thank God for layers of linen and cotton, which burn slowly, I thought groggily. Had I been wearing something modern like rayon, I should have gone up like a torch.
The thought made me look back toward the house. It was full dark by now, and all the windows on the lower floor were alight. Flame danced in the open door. The place looked like an immense jack-o’-lantern.
“Ye’re Mistress Fraser, I suppose?” The squat, bearded person bent over me, speaking in a soft Scottish burr.
“Yes,” I said, coming gradually to myself. “Who are you, and where’s Jamie?”
“Here, Sassenach.” Jamie stumbled out of the dark and sat down heavily beside me. He waved a hand at the Scotsman. “May I present Mr. Alexander Cameron, known more generally as Scotchee?”
“Your servant, ma’am,” he said politely.
I was feeling gingerly at my hair. Clumps of it had been singed to crispy thread, but at least I still had some.
I felt, rather than saw, Jamie look up at the house. I followed the direction of his glance, and saw a dark figure at the window upstairs, framed in the dim glow from the burning downstairs. He shouted something in the incomprehensible tongue, and began throwing things out of the window.
“Who’s that?” I asked, feeling more than slightly surreal.
“Oh.” Jamie rubbed at his face. “That would be Goose.”
“Of course it would,” I said, nodding. “He’ll be a cooked goose, if he stays in there.” This struck me as wildly hilarious, and I doubled up in laughter.
Evidently, it wasn’t quite as witty as I’d thought; no one else seemed to think it funny. Jamie stood up and shouted something at the dark figure, who waved nonchalantly and turned back into the room.
“There’s a ladder in the barn,” Jamie said calmly to Scotchee, and they moved off into the darkness.
The house burned fairly slowly for a while; there weren’t a lot of easily flammable objects down below, bar the books and papers in Jamie’s study. A tall figure belted out of the back door, shirt pulled up over his nose with one hand, the tail of his shirt held up with the other to form a bag.
Ian came to a stop beside me, dropped to his knees, gasping, and let down his shirttail, releasing a pile of small objects.
“That’s all I could get, I’m afraid, Auntie.” He coughed a few times, waving his hand in front of his face. “D’ye ken what happened?”
“It’s not important,” I said. The heat was becoming more intense, and I struggled to my knees. “Come on; we’ll need to get Arch further away.”
The effects of the ether had mostly worn off, but I was still conscious of a strong sense of unreality. I hadn’t anything but cold well water with which to treat burns, but bathed Arch’s neck and hands, which had been badly blistered. Mrs. Bug’s hair had been singed, but she, like me, had been largely protected by her heavy skirts.
Neither she nor Arch said a word.
Amy McCallum came running up, face pale in the fiery glow; I told her to take the Bugs to Brianna’s cabin—hers now—and for God’s sake, keep the little boys safe away. She nodded and went, she and Mrs. Bug supporting Arch’s tall form between them.
No one made any effort to bring out the bodies of Donner and his companions.
I could see when the fire took hold in the stairwell; there was a sudden strong glow in the upstairs windows, and shortly thereafter, I could see flames in the heart of the house.
Snow began to fall, in thick, heavy, silent flakes. Within half an hour, the ground, trees, and bushes were dusted with white. The flames glowed red and gold, and the white snow reflected a soft reddish glow; the whole clearing seemed filled with the light of the fire.
Somewhere around midnight, the roof fell in, with a crash of glowing timbers and a tremendous shower of sparks that fountained high into the night. The sight was so beautiful that everyone watching went “Oooooh!” in involuntary awe.
Jamie’s arm tightened round me. We could not look away.
“What’s the date today?” I asked suddenly.
He frowned for a moment, thinking, then said, “December twenty-first.”
“And we aren’t dead, either. Bloody newspapers,” I said. “They never get anything right.”
For some reason, he thought that was very funny indeed, and laughed until he had to sit down on the ground.
124
PROPERTY OF THE KING
WE SPENT THE REMAINDER OF the night sleeping—or at least horizontal—on the floor of the cabin, with the Bugs, Goose and his brother, Light—who confused me initially by referring to themselves as Jamie’s “sons”—Scotchee, and Ian. On their way to visit Bird’s village, the Indians—for Alexander Cameron was as much an Indian as the others, I thought—had met Jamie and Ian, hunting, and accepted Jamie’s hospitality.
“Though it was a warmer welcome than we expected, Bear-Killer!” Goose said, laughing.
They did not ask who Donner was, nor make any reference to the men whose bodies burned in the funeral pyre of the house—only asked awed questions about the ether, and shook their heads in amazement, watching the fire.
For Jamie’s part, I noticed that he did not ask why they were going to Bird’s village—and concluded that he did not want to hear that some of the Cherokee had decided to support the King. He listened to the talk, but said little, spending his time fingering through the pile of objects saved from the fire. There was little of value there—a few scorched, loose pages from my casebook, some pewter spoons, a bullet mold. But when he fell asleep at last next to me, I saw that his fist was closed around something, and peering closely in the dark, made out the protruding head of the little cherrywood snake.
I woke just past dawn to find Aidan peering down at me, Adso in his arms.
“I found your wee cheetie in my bed,” Aidan whispered. “D’ye want him?”
I was about to refuse, but then saw the look in Adso’s eye. He was very tolerant of small children normally, but Aidan was holding him round the middle like a bag of laundry, his back legs dangling ludicrously.