“Oh, aye,” he said dryly. “Wily as snakes, the lot of us. Ye’ve only to look at Roger Mac to see how safe their time must be, him and the lass. A bit of a comfort, that,” he added, the tuck growing deeper. “To ken things will get better, I mean.”
I could see that he was trying to change the subject, which was not a good sign. I made a small snorting noise, but it hurt my nose.
“And you’re not truly roused, is that what you’re telling me?”
He made a much more successful snorting noise, but didn’t reply. He tilted his head to one side, watching as I laid out a square of gauze and began to rub dried leaves of comfrey into it. I didn’t know how to say what was troubling me, but he plainly saw that something was.
“Will you kill him?” I asked baldly, keeping my eyes on the jar of honey. It was made of brown glass, and the light glowed through it as though it were a huge ball of clear amber.
Jamie sat still, watching me. I could feel his speculative gaze, though I didn’t look up.
“I think so,” he said.
My hands had started to tremble, and I pressed them on the surface of the table to still them.
“Not today,” he added. “If I kill him, I shall do it properly.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what constituted a proper killing, in his opinion, but he told me anyway.
“If he dies at my hand, it will be in the open, before witnesses who ken the truth of the matter, and him standing upright. I willna have it said that I killed a helpless man, whatever his crime.”
“Oh.” I swallowed, feeling mildly ill, and took a pinch of powdered bloodroot to add to the salve I was making. It had a faint, astringent smell, which seemed to help. “But—you might let him live?”
“Perhaps. I suppose I might ransom him to his brother—depending.”
“Do you know, you sound quite like your uncle Colum. He would have thought it through like that.”
“Do I?” The corner of his mouth turned up slightly. “Shall I take that as compliment, Sassenach?”
“I suppose you might as well.”
“Aye, well,” he said thoughtfully. The stiff fingers tapped on the tabletop, and he winced slightly as the movement jarred the injured one. “Colum had a castle. And armed clansmen at his beck. I should have some difficulty in defending this house against a raid, perhaps.”
“That’s what you mean by ‘depending’?” I felt quite uneasy at this; the thought of armed raiders attacking the house had not occurred to me—and I saw that Jamie’s forethought in storing Mr. Brown off our premises had perhaps not been entirely for the purpose of sparing my sensibilities.
“One of the things.”
I mixed a bit of honey with my powdered herbs, then scooped a small dollop of purified bear grease into the mortar.
“I suppose,” I said, eyes on my mixing, “that there’s no point in turning Lionel Brown over to the—the authorities?”
“Which authorities did ye have in mind, Sassenach?” he asked dryly.
A good question. This part of the backcountry had not yet formed nor joined a county, though a movement was afoot to that purpose. Were Jamie to deliver Mr. Brown to the sheriff of the nearest county for trial . . . well, no, perhaps not a good idea. Brownsville lay just within the borders of the nearest county, and the current sheriff was in fact named Brown.
I bit my lip, considering. In times of stress, I tended still to respond as what I was—a civilized Englishwoman, accustomed to rely on the sureties of government and law. Well, all right, Jamie had a point; the twentieth century had its own dangers, but some things had improved. This was nearly 1774, though, and the colonial government was already showing cracks and fault lines, signs of the collapse to come.
“I suppose we could take him to Cross Creek.” Farquard Campbell was a justice of the peace there—and a friend to Jamie’s aunt, Jocasta Cameron. “Or to New Bern.” Governor Martin and the bulk of the Royal Council were in New Bern—three hundred miles away. “Maybe Hillsborough?” That was the center of the Circuit Court.
“Mmphm.”
This noise denoted a marked disinclination to lose several weeks’ work in order to haul Mr. Brown before any of these seats of justice, let alone entrust a matter of importance to the highly unreliable—and frequently corrupt—judicial system. I looked up and met his eye, humorous but bleak. If I responded as what I was, so did Jamie.
And Jamie was a Highland laird, accustomed to follow his own laws, and fight his own battles.
“But—” I began.
“Sassenach,” he said quite gently. “What of the others?”
The others. I stopped moving, paralyzed by the sudden memory: a large band of black figures, coming out of the wood with the sun behind them. But that group had split in two, intending to meet again in Brownsville, in three days’ time—today, in fact.
For the moment, presumably no one from Brownsville yet knew what had happened—that Hodgepile and his men were dead, or that Lionel Brown was now a captive on the Ridge. Given the speed with which news spread in the mountains, though, it would be public knowledge within a week.
In the aftermath of shock, I had somehow overlooked the fact that there were still a number of bandits at large—and while I didn’t know who they were, they knew both who I was and where I was. Would they realize that I could not identify them? Or be willing to take that risk?
Obviously, Jamie was not willing to take the risk of leaving the Ridge to escort Lionel Brown anywhere, whether or not he decided to let the man live.
The thought of the others had brought something important back to me, though. It might not be the best time to mention it, but then again, there wasn’t going to be a good one.
I took a deep breath, squaring myself for it.
“Jamie.”
The tone of my voice jerked him immediately from whatever he’d been thinking; he looked sharply at me, one eyebrow raised.
“I—I have to tell you something.”
He paled a little, but reached out at once, grasping my hand. He took a deep breath of his own, and nodded.
“Aye.”
“Oh,” I said, realizing that he thought I meant that I had suddenly arrived at a point where I needed to tell him the grisly details of my experiences. “Not—not that. Not exactly.” I squeezed his hand, though, and held on, while I told him about Donner.
“Another,” he said. He sounded slightly stunned. “Another one?”
“Another,” I confirmed. “The thing is . . . I, um, I don’t remember seeing him . . . seeing him dead.” The eerie sense of that dawn returned to me. I had very sharp, distinct memories—but they were disjointed, so fractured as to bear no relation to the whole. An ear. I remembered an ear, thick and cup-shaped as a woodland fungus. It was shaded in the most exquisite tones of purple, brown, and indigo, shadowed in the carved whorls of the inner parts, nearly translucent at the rim; perfect in the light of a sunbeam that cut through the fronds of a hemlock to touch it.
I recalled that ear so perfectly that I could almost reach into my memory and touch it myself—but I had no idea whose ear it had been. Was the hair that lay behind it brown, black, reddish, straight, wavy, gray? And the face . . . I didn’t know. If I had looked, I hadn’t seen.
He shot me a sharp look.
“And ye think he’s maybe not.”
“Maybe not.” I swallowed the taste of dust, pine needles, and blood, and breathed the comforting fresh scent of buttermilk. “I warned him, you see. I told him you were coming, and that he didn’t want you to find him with me. When you attacked the camp—he might have run. He struck me as a coward, certainly. But I don’t know.”
He nodded, and sighed heavily.
“Can you . . . recall, do you think?” I asked hesitantly. “When you showed me the dead. Did you look at them?”
“No,” he said softly. “I wasna looking at anything save you.”
His eyes had been on our linked hands. He raised them now, and looked at my face, troubled and searching. I lifted his hand and laid my cheek against his knuckles, closing my eyes for an instant.
“I’ll be all right,” I said. “The thing is—” I said, and stopped.
“Aye?”
“If he did run—where do you suppose he’d go?”
He closed his own eyes and drew a deep breath.
“To Brownsville,” he said, in resignation. “And if he did, Richard Brown kens already what’s become of Hodgepile and his men—and likely thinks his brother is dead, as well.”
“Oh.” I swallowed, and changed the subject slightly.
“Why did you tell Ian I wasn’t to be allowed to see Mr. Brown?”
“I didna say that. But I think it best if ye dinna see him, that much is true.”
“Because?”
“Because ye’ve an oath upon you,” he said, sounding mildly surprised that I didn’t understand immediately. “Can ye see a man injured, and leave him to suffer?”
The ointment was ready. I unwrapped his finger, which had stopped bleeding, and tamped as much of the salve under the damaged nail as I could manage.
“Probably not,” I said, eyes on my work. “But why—”
“If ye mend him, care for him—and then I decide he must die?” His eyes rested on me, questioning. “How would that be for ye?”
“Well, that would be a bit awkward,” I said, taking a deep breath to steady myself. I wrapped a thin strip of linen around the nail and tied it neatly. “Still, though . . .”
“Ye wish to care for him? Why?” He sounded curious, but not angry. “Is your oath so strong, then?”
“No.” I put both hands on the table to brace myself; my knees seemed suddenly weak.
“Because I’m glad they’re dead,” I whispered, looking down. My hands were raw, and I fumbled while I worked because my fingers were still swollen; there were deep purple marks still sunk in the skin of my wrists. “And I am very much—” What? Afraid; afraid of the men, afraid of myself. Thrilled, in a horrible sort of way. “Ashamed,” I said. “Terribly ashamed.” I glanced up at him. “I hate it.”
He held out his hand to me, waiting. He knew better than to touch me; I couldn’t have borne being touched just then. I didn’t take it, not at once, though I longed to. I looked away, speaking rapidly to Adso, who had materialized on the countertop and was regarding me with a bottomless green gaze.
“If I—I keep thinking . . . if I were to see him, help him—Christ, I don’t want to, I don’t at all! But if I could—perhaps that would . . . help somehow.” I looked up then, feeling haunted. “Make . . . amends.”
“For being glad they are dead—and for wanting him dead, too?” Jamie suggested gently.
I nodded, feeling as though a small, heavy weight had lifted with the speaking of the words. I didn’t remember taking his hand, but it was tight on mine. Blood from his finger was seeping through the fresh bandage, but he paid no attention.