28

HEATED CONVERSATION

By evening, Ian was glassy-eyed and hot to the touch. He sat up on his pallet to greet me, but swayed alarmingly, his eyes unfocused. I didn’t have the slightest doubt, but looked in his mouth for confirmation; sure enough, the small diagnostic Koplik’s spots showed white against the dark pink mucous membrane. Though the skin of his neck was still fair and childlike under his hair, it showed a harmless-looking stipple of small pink spots.

“Right,” I said, resigned. “You’ve got it. You’d best come up to the house so I can take care of you more easily.”

“I’ve got the measle? Am I going to die, then?” he asked. He seemed only mildly interested, his attention concentrated on some interior vision.

“No,” I said matter-of-factly, trusting that I was right. “Feeling pretty bad, though, are you?”

“My head hurts a bit,” he said. I could see that it did; his brows were drawn together, and he squinted at even so dim a light as that provided by my candle.

Still, he could walk, and a good thing, too, I thought as I watched him make his unsteady way down the ladder from the loft. Scrawny and storklike as he looked, he was a good eight inches taller than I, and outweighed me by at least thirty pounds.

It was no more than twenty yards to the cabin, but Ian was trembling from exertion by the time I got him inside. Lord John sat up as we came in, and made to get out of bed, but I waved him back.

“Stay there,” I said, depositing Ian heavily on a stool. “I can manage.”

I had been sleeping on the trundle bed; it was already made up with sheets, quilt, and pillow. I peeled Ian out of his breeks and stockings, and tucked him up at once. He was flushed and clammy-cheeked, and looked much sicker than he had done in the dimness of his loft.

The willow-bark brew I had left steeping was dark and aromatic; ready to drink. I poured it off carefully into a cup, glancing as I did so at Lord John.

“I’d meant this for you,” I said. “But if you could stand to wait …”

“By all means give it to the lad,” he said, with a dismissive wave. “I can wait easily. Can I not assist you, though?”

I thought of suggesting that if he really wanted to be helpful, he could walk to the privy rather than use the chamber pot—which I would have to empty—but I could see that he wasn’t yet in any condition to be wandering round outside at night by himself. I didn’t want to be explaining to young William that I had allowed his remaining parent—or what he thought was his remaining parent—to be eaten by bears, let alone take pneumonia.

So I merely shook my head politely, and knelt by the trundle to administer the brew to Ian. He felt well enough to make faces and complain about the taste, which I found reassuring. Still, the headache was obviously very bad; the line between his brows was fixed and sharp as though it had been carved there with a knife.

I sat on the trundle and took his head onto my lap, gently rubbing his temples. Then I put my thumbs just into the sockets of his eyes, pressing firmly upward on the ridge of his brows. He made a low sound of discomfort, but then relaxed, his head heavy on my thigh.

“Just breathe,” I said. “Don’t worry if it’s a bit tender at first, it means I’ve got the right spot.”

“ ’S all right,” he murmured, his words a little slurred. His hand drifted up and closed on my wrist, big and very warm. “That’s the Chinaman’s way, no?”

“That’s right. He means Yi Tien Cho—Mr. Willoughby,” I explained to Lord John, who was watching the proceedings with a puzzled frown. “It’s a way of relieving pain by putting pressure on some points of the body. This one is good for headache. The Chinaman taught me to do it.”

I felt some reluctance to mention the little Chinese to Lord John, seeing that the last time we had met, on Jamaica, Lord John had had some four hundred soldiers and sailors combing the island in pursuit of Mr. Willoughby, then suspected of a particularly atrocious murder.

“He didn’t do it, you know,” I felt compelled to add. Lord John raised one eyebrow at me.

“That’s as well,” he said dryly, “since we never caught him.”

“Oh, I’m glad.” I looked down at Ian, and moved my thumbs a quarter of an inch outward, pressing again. His face was still tight with pain, but I thought the whiteness at the corners of his mouth was lessening a bit.

“I … ah … don’t suppose you know who did kill Mrs. Alcott?” Lord John’s voice was casual. I glanced up at him, but his face betrayed nothing beyond simple curiosity and a large number of spots.

“I do, yes,” I said hesitantly, “but—”

“You do? A murder? Who was it? What happened, Auntie? Ooch!” Ian’s eyelids popped open under my fingers, wide with interest, then snapped shut in a grimace of pain as the firelight struck them.

“You be still,” I said, and dug my thumbs into the muscles in front of his ears. “You’re ill.”

“Argk!” he said, but subsided obediently into limpness, the corn-shuck mattress rustling loudly under his thin body. “All right, Auntie, but who? Ye canna be telling wee bits o’ things like that, and expect me to sleep without knowing the rest of it. Can she, then?” He opened one eye in a slitted appeal toward Lord John, who smiled in reply.

“I bear no further responsibility in the matter,” Lord John assured me. “However”—he spoke more firmly to Ian—“you might stop to think that perhaps the story incriminates someone your aunt prefers to shield. It would be discourteous to insist upon details, in that case.”

“Och, no, it’s never that,” Ian assured him, eyes tight closed. “Uncle Jamie wouldna murder anybody, save he had good reason.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw Lord John jerk, slightly startled. Plainly, it had never occurred to him that it could have been Jamie.

“No,” I assured him, seeing the fair brows draw together. “It wasn’t.”

“Well, and it wasna me, either,” Ian said smugly. “And who else would Auntie be protecting?”

“You flatter yourself, Ian,” I said dryly. “But since you insist …”

My hesitancy had in fact been in the interests of protecting Young Ian. No one else could be harmed by the story—the murderer was dead and, for all I knew, Mr. Willoughby, too, perished in the hidden jungles of the Jamaican hills, though I sincerely hoped not.

But the story involved someone else, as well; the woman I had first known as Geillis Duncan and known later as Geillis Abernathy, at whose behest Ian had been kidnapped from Scotland, imprisoned on Jamaica, and had suffered things that he had only lately begun to tell us.

Still, there seemed no way out of it now—Ian was fractious as a child insisting on a bedtime story, and Lord John was sitting up in bed like a chipmunk waiting for nuts, eyes bright with interest.

And so, with the macabre urge to begin with “Once upon a time …” I leaned back against the wall, and with Ian’s head still in my lap, began the story of Rose Hall and its mistress, the witch Geillis Duncan; of the Reverend Archibald Campbell and his strange sister, Margaret, of the Edinburgh Fiend and the Fraser prophecy; and of a night of fire and crocodile’s blood, when the slaves of six plantations along the Yallahs River had risen and slain their masters, roused by the houngan Ishmael.

Of later events in the cave of Abandawe on Haiti, I said nothing. Ian, after all, had been there. And those happenings had nothing to do with the murder of Mina Alcott.

“A crocodile,” Ian murmured. His eyes were closed, and his face had grown more relaxed under my fingers, despite the gruesome nature of my story. “Ye really saw it, Auntie?”

“I not only saw it, I stepped on it,” I assured him. “Or rather, I stepped on it, and then I saw it. If I’d seen it first, I’d have bloody run the other way.”

There was a low laugh from the bed. Lord John scratched at his arm, smiling.

“You must find life here rather dull, Mrs. Fraser, after your adventures in the Indies.”

“I could do with a spot of dullness now and then,” I said, rather wistfully.

Involuntarily, I glanced at the bolted door, where I had propped Ian’s musket, brought back from the storehouse when I had fetched him. Jamie had taken his own gun, but his pistols lay on the sideboard, loaded and primed as he had left them for me, bullet case and powder horn neatly arranged beside them.

It was cozy in the cabin, with the fire flickering gold and red on the rough-barked walls, and the air filled with the warm, lingering scents of squirrel stew and pumpkin bread, spiced with the bitter tang of willow tea. I brushed my fingers over Ian’s jaw. No rash yet, but the skin was tight and hot—very hot still, in spite of the willow bark.

Talking about Jamaica had at least distracted me a bit from my worry over Ian. Headache was not an unusual symptom for someone with measles; severe and prolonged headache was. Meningitis and encephalitis were dangerous—and all too possible—complications of the disease.

“How’s the head?” I asked.

“A bit better,” he said. He coughed, eyes squinching shut as the spasms jarred his head. He stopped and opened them slightly, dark slits that glowed with fever. “I’m awfully hot, Auntie.”

I slid off the trundle and went to wring out a cloth in cool water. Ian stirred slightly as I wiped his face, his eyes closed once more.

“Mrs. Abernathy gave me amethysts to drink for the headache,” he murmured drowsily.

“Amethysts?” I was startled, but kept my voice low and soothing. “You drank amethysts?”

“Ground up in vinegar,” he said. “And pearls in sweet wine, but that was for the bedding, she said.” His face looked red and swollen, and he turned his cheek against the cool pillow, seeking relief. “She was a great one for the stones, yon woman. She burned powdered emeralds in the flame of a black candle, and she rubbed my cock wi’ a diamond—to keep it hard, she said.”

There was a faint sound from the bed, and I looked up to see Lord John, raised up on one elbow, eyes wide.

“And did the amethysts work?” I wiped Ian’s face gently with the cloth.

“The diamond did.” He made a feeble attempt at an adolescent’s bawdy laugh, but it faded into a harsh, rasping cough.

“No amethysts here, I’m afraid,” I said. “But there’s wine, if you want it.” He did, and I helped him to drink it—well diluted with water—then eased him back on the pillow, flushed and heavy-eyed.

Lord John had lain down, too, and lay watching, his thick blond hair unbound, spread out on the pillow behind him.

“That’s what she wanted wi’ the lads, ye ken,” Ian said. His eyes were shut tight against the light, but he could clearly see something, if only in the mists of memory. He licked his lips; they were beginning to dry and crack, and his nose was beginning to run.

“She said the stone grew in a lad’s innards—the one she wanted. She said it must be a laddie who’d never gone wi’ a lass, though, that was important. If he had, the stone wouldna be right, somehow. If he h-huh-had one.” He paused to cough, and ended breathless, nose dripping. I held a handkerchief for him to blow.

“What did she want the stone for?” Lord John’s face bore a look of sympathy—he knew only too well what Ian felt like at the moment—but curiosity compelled the question. I didn’t object; I wanted to know too.

Ian started to shake his head, then stopped with a groan.

“Ah! Oh, God, my head will split surely! I dinna ken, man. She didna say. Only that it was needful; she must have it to be s-sure.” He barely got out the last word before dissolving into a coughing attack that was the worst yet; he sounded like a barking dog.

“You’d better stop talk—” I began, but was interrupted by a soft thump at the door.

Instantly I froze, wet cloth still in my hand. Lord John leaned swiftly from the bed and took a pistol from inside one of his high cavalry boots on the floor. A finger to his lips to enjoin silence, he nodded toward Jamie’s pistols. I moved silently to the sideboard and grasped one, reassured by the smooth, solid heft of it in my hand.

“Who is there?” Lord John called, in a surprisingly strong voice.

There was no answer save a sort of scratching, and a faint whine. I sighed and laid the pistol down, torn between irritation, relief and amusement.

“It’s your blasted dog, Ian.”

“Are you sure?” Lord John spoke in a low voice, pistol still aimed unwaveringly at the door. “It might be an Indian trick.”

Ian rolled over with an effort, facing the door.

“Rollo!” he shouted, his voice hoarse and cracking.

Hoarse or not, Rollo knew his master’s voice; there was a deep, joyful “WARF!” from outside, succeeding by frantic scratching, at a height some four feet from the ground.

“Beastly dog,” I said, hurrying to open the door. “Stop that, or I’ll make you into a rug, or a coat, or something!”

Giving this threat the attention it deserved, Rollo bounded past me into the room. Exuberant with joy, he launched his hundred and fifty pounds from the middle of the floor and landed directly on the trundle bed, making it sway dangerously, joints screeching in protest. Ignoring a strangled cry from the bed’s occupant, he proceeded to lick Ian madly about the face and forearms—the latter being flung up as a wholly inadequate defense to the slobbering onslaught.

“Bad dog,” Ian said, making ineffectual efforts to push Rollo off his chest, giggling helplessly in spite of his discomfort. “Bad dog, I say—down, sir!”

“Down, sir!” Lord John echoed sternly. Rollo, interrupted in his demonstrations of affection, rounded on Lord John, his ears laid back. He curled his lip, and gave his lordship a good look at the condition of his back teeth. Lord John started, and raised his pistol convulsively.

“Down, a dhiobhuil!” Ian said, prodding Rollo in the hindquarters. “Take your hairy arse out o’ my face, ye wicked beast!”

Rollo instantly dismissed Lord John from consideration, and padded around on top of the trundle, turning three times and kneading the bedding with his paws before collapsing next to his master’s body. He licked Ian’s ear, and with a deep sigh, laid his nose between his large muddy paws on the pillow.

“Would you like me to get him off, Ian?” I offered, eyeing the paws. I wasn’t quite sure how I might move a dog of Rollo’s size and temperament, bar shooting him with Jamie’s pistol and dragging his carcass off the bed, so was rather relieved when Ian shook his head.

“No, let him stay, Auntie,” he said, croaking slightly. “He’s a good fellow. Are ye no, a charaid?” He laid a hand on the dog’s neck, and turned his head so his cheek lay pillowed against Rollo’s thick ruff.

“All right, then.” Moving slowly, with a wary glance at the unblinking yellow eyes, I approached the bed and smoothed Ian’s hair. His forehead was still hot, but I thought the fever was a bit lower. If it broke in the night, as it well might, it was likely to be succeeded by a fit of violent shivering—when Ian might well find Rollo’s warm hairy bulk a comfort.

“Sleep well.”

“Oidhche mhath.” He was half asleep already, drifting into the vivid dreams of fever, and his “good-night” was barely more than a murmur.

I moved quietly about the room, tidying away the results of the day’s labors; a basket of fresh-gathered peanuts to be washed, dried and stored; a pan of dried reeds laid flat and covered with a layer of bacon grease to make rushlights. A trip to the pantry, where I stirred the beer mash fermenting in its tub, squeezed out the curds of the soft cheese a-making, and punched down the slow-rising salt bread, ready to be made into loaves and baked in the morning, when the small Dutch oven built into the side of the hearth would be heated through by the night’s low fire.

Ian was sound asleep when I came back into the main room; Rollo’s eyes were closed as well, though one yellow slit cracked open at my entrance. I glanced at Lord John; he was awake, but did not look round.

I sat down on the settle by the fire, and brought out the big wool basket with its green and black Indian pattern—Sun-eater, Gabrielle had called the design.

Two days since Jamie and Willie had left. Two days to the Tuscarora village. Two days back. If nothing happened to stop them.

“Nonsense,” I muttered, under my breath. Nothing would stop them. They would be home soon.

The basket was full of dyed skeins of wool and linen thread. Some I had been given by Jocasta, some I had spun myself. The difference was obvious, but even the lumpy, awkward-looking strands I produced could be used for something. Not stockings or jerseys; perhaps I could knit a tea cozy—that seemed sufficiently shapeless to disguise all my deficiencies.

Jamie had been simultaneously shocked and amused to find that I didn’t know how to knit. The question had never arisen at Lallybroch, where Jenny and the female servants kept everyone in knitted goods. I had taken on the chores of stillroom and garden, and never dealt with needlework beyond the simplest mending.

“Ye canna clickit at all?” he said incredulously. “And what did ye do for your winter stockings in Boston, then?”

“Bought them,” I said.

He had looked elaborately around the clearing where we had been sitting, admiring the half-finished cabin.

“Since I dinna see any shops about, I suppose ye’d best learn, aye?”

“I suppose so.” I dubiously eyed the knitting basket Jocasta had given me. It was well equipped, with three long circular wire needles in different sizes, and a sinister-looking set of four double-ended ivory ones, slender as stilettos, which I knew were used in some mysterious fashion to turn the heels of stockings.

“I’ll ask Jocasta to show me, next time we go down to River Run. Next year perhaps.”

Jamie snorted briefly and picked up a needle and a ball of yarn.

“It’s no verra difficult, Sassenach. Look—this is how ye cast up your row.” Drawing the thread out through his closed fist, he made a loop round his thumb, slipped it onto the needle, and with a quick economy of motion, cast on a long row of stitches in a matter of seconds. Then he handed me the other needle and another ball of yarn. “There—you try.”

I looked at him in complete amazement.

“You can knit?”

“Well, of course I can,” he said, staring at me in puzzlement. “I’ve known how to clickit wi’ needles since I was seven years old. Do they not teach bairns anything in your time?”

“Well,” I said, feeling mildly foolish, “they sometimes teach little girls to do needlework, but not boys.”

“They didna teach you, did they? Besides, it’s no fine needlework, Sassenach, it’s only plain knitting. Here, take your thumb and dip it, so …”

And so he and Ian—who, it turned out, could also knit and was prostrated by mirth at my lack of knowledge—had taught me the simple basics of knit and purl, explaining, between snorts of derision over my efforts, that in the Highlands all boys were routinely taught to knit, that being a useful occupation well suited to the long idle hours of herding sheep or cattle on the shielings.

“Once a man’s grown and has a wife to do for him, and a lad of his own to mind the sheep, he maybe doesna make his own stockings anymore,” Ian had said, deftly executing the turn of a heel before handing me back the stocking, “but even wee laddies ken how, Auntie.”

I cast an eye at my current project, some ten inches of a wooly shawl, which lay in a small crumpled heap at the bottom of the basket. I had learned the basics, but knitting for me was still a pitched battle with knotted thread and slippery needles, not the soothing, dreamy exercise that Jamie and Ian made of it, needles clicketing away in their big hands by the fire, comforting as the sound of crickets on the hearth.

Not tonight, I thought. I wasn’t up to it. Something mindless, like winding up the balls of yarn. That I could do. I laid aside a half-finished pair of stockings Jamie was making for himself—striped, the show-off—and pulled out a heavy skein of fresh-dyed blue wool, still redolent with the heavy scents of its dyeing.

Normally I liked the smell of fresh yarn, with its faint oily whiff of sheep, the earthy smell of indigo, and the sharp tang of the vinegar used to set the dye. Tonight it seemed smothering, added as it was to woodsmoke and candle wax, to the close, acrid smells of male bodies and the reek of illness—a mingled scent of sweaty sheets and used chamber pots—all trapped together in the room’s stale air.

I let the skein lie on my lap, and closed my eyes for a moment. I wanted nothing so much as to undress and sponge myself with cool water, then slip naked between the clean linen sheets of my bed and lie still, letting the fresh cool air blow through the open window across my face while I floated into oblivion.

But there was a sweating Englishman in one of my beds, and a filthy dog in the other, to say nothing of a teenage boy who was obviously in for a hard night. The sheets had not been washed in days, and when they were, it would be a backbreaking business of boiling, lifting and wringing. My bed for the night—assuming that I got to sleep in it—would be a pallet made of a folded quilt, with my pillow a sack of carded wool. I would breathe sheep all night.

Nursing is hard work, and all of a sudden I was bloody tired of it. For a moment of intense longing, I wanted them all just to go away. I opened my eyes, looking at Lord John with resentment. My little burst of self-pity faded, though, as I looked at him. He lay on his back, one arm behind his head, gazing somberly up at the ceiling. It might have been only a trick of the fire, but his face seemed marked by anxiety and grief, eyes shadowed with dark loss.

At once I felt ashamed of my ill temper. Granted, I hadn’t wanted him here. I was annoyed at his intrusion into my life and the burden of obligation his illness had placed upon me. His very presence made me uneasy—to say nothing of William’s. But they would go, soon. Jamie would be home, Ian would recover, and I would have back my peace, my happiness, and my clean sheets. What had happened to him was permanent.

John Grey had lost a wife—however he might have regarded her. It had taken courage of more than one kind to bring William here, and to send him off with Jamie. And I didn’t suppose the bloody man could help having caught the measles.

I laid the wool aside for the moment and got up to put the kettle on. A nice cup of tea all round seemed called for. As I straightened up from the hearth, I saw Lord John turn his head, my movement drawing his attention from his inward thoughts.

“Tea,” I said, embarrassed to meet his eyes after my uncharitable thoughts. I made a small, awkward gesture of interrogation toward the kettle.

He smiled faintly and nodded.

“I thank you, Mrs. Fraser.”

I took down the tea box from the cupboard, and laid out two cups and spoons, adding the sugar bowl as an afterthought; no molasses tonight.

When I had got the tea made, I sat down near the bed to drink it. We sipped in silence for a few moments, an odd air of shyness hovering between us.

At last, I set down my cup and cleared my throat.

“I’m sorry; I had meant to offer you my condolences on the loss of your wife,” I said, rather formally.

He looked surprised for a moment, then bowed his head in acknowledgment, matching my formality.

“It is a coincidence that you should say so at the moment,” he said. “I had just been thinking of her.”

Used as I was to having other people take one look at my face and discern instantly what I was thinking, it was oddly gratifying to be able to do it to someone else.

“Do you miss her greatly—your wife?” I felt a bit hesitant about asking, but he didn’t seem to find the question intrusive. I might almost have thought that he had been asking it himself, for he answered readily, if thoughtfully.

“I don’t really know,” he said. He glanced at me, one eyebrow raised. “Does that sound unfeeling?”

“I couldn’t say,” I said, a little tartly. “Surely you’d know better than I whether you had feelings for her or not.”

“I did, yes.” He let his head fall back on the pillow, his thick fair hair loose about his shoulders. “Or I do, perhaps. That’s why I came, do you see?”

“No, I can’t say that I do.”

I heard Ian cough, and rose to look, but he had only turned over in his sleep; he lay on his stomach, one long arm drooping from the trundle bed. I picked up his hand—it was still hot, but not dangerously so—and put it on the pillow near his face. His hair had fallen in his eyes; I brushed it gently back.

“You are very good with him; have you children of your own?”

Startled, I looked up to see Lord John watching me, chin propped on his fist.

“I—we—have a daughter,” I said.

His eyes widened.

“We?” he said sharply. “The girl is Jamie’s?”

“Don’t call her ‘the girl,’ ” I said, unreasonably irritated. “Her name is Brianna, and yes, she’s Jamie’s.”

“My apologies,” he said, rather stiffly.

“I meant no offense,” he added a moment later, in a softer tone. “I was surprised.”

I looked at him directly. I was too tired to be tactful.

“And a bit jealous, perhaps?”

He had a diplomat’s face; almost anything could have been going on behind that facade of handsome amiability. I went on staring at him, though, and he let the mask drop—a flash of knowledge lit the light blue eyes, tinged with grudging humor.

“So. One more thing that we have in common.” I was startled by his acuity, though I shouldn’t have been. It’s always discomfiting to find that feelings you thought safely hidden are in fact sitting out in the open for anyone to look at.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t think of that when you decided to come here.” The tea was finished; I set the cup aside and took up my skein of wool again.

He studied me for a moment, eyes narrowed.

“I thought of it, yes,” he said finally. He let his head fall back on the pillow, eyes fixed on the low beamed ceiling. “Still, if I was human enough—or petty enough—to consider that I might offend you by bringing William here, I would ask you to believe that such offense was not my motive in coming.”

I laid the finished ball of yarn in the basket and took up another skein, stretching it across the back of a split-willow chair.

“I believe you,” I said, my eyes fixed on the skein. “If only because it seems rather a lot of trouble to go to. What was your motive, though?”

I sensed the movement as he shrugged, rustling the sheets.

“The obvious—to allow Jamie to see the boy.”

“And the other obvious—to allow you to see Jamie.”

There was a marked silence from the bed. I kept my eyes on the yarn, turning the ball as I wrapped the strand, over and under, back and forth, an intricate crisscross that would in the end yield a perfect sphere.

“You are a rather remarkable woman,” he said at last, in a level tone.

“Indeed,” I said, not looking up. “In what way?”

He leaned back; I heard the rustle of his bedding.

“You are neither circumspect nor circuitous. In fact, I don’t believe I have ever met anyone more devastatingly straightforward—male or female.”

“Well, it’s not by choice,” I said. I came to the end of the thread and tucked it neatly into the ball. “I was born that way.”

“So was I,” he said, very softly.

I didn’t answer; I didn’t think he had spoken to be heard.

I rose and went to the cupboard. I took down three jars: catmint, valerian, and wild ginger. I took down the marble mortar and tipped the dried leaves and root chunks into it. A drop of water fell from the kettle, hissing into steam.

“What are you doing?” Lord John asked.

“Making an infusion for Ian,” I said, with a nod toward the trundle. “The same I gave you four days ago.”

“Ah. We heard of you as we traveled from Wilmington,” Grey said. His voice was casual now, making conversation. “You are well known in the countryside for your skills, it would appear.”

“Mm.” I pounded and ground, and the deep, musky smell of wild ginger filled the room.

“They say you are a conjure-woman. What is that, do you know?”

“Anything from a midwife to a physician to a caster of spells or a fortune-teller,” I said. “Depending on who’s talking.”

He made a sound that might have been a laugh, and then was silent for a bit.

“You think they will be safe.” It was a statement, but he was asking.

“Yes. Jamie wouldn’t have taken the boy if he thought there’d be any danger. Surely you know that, if you know him at all?” I added, glancing at him.

“I know him,” he said.

“Do you indeed,” I said.

He was quiet for a moment, bar the sound of scratching.

“I know him well enough—or think I do—to risk sending William away with him, alone. And to be sure he will not tell William the truth.”

I poured the green and yellow powder into a small square of cotton gauze and tied it neatly into a tiny bag.

“No, he won’t, you’re right about that.”

“Will you?”

I looked up, startled.

“You really think I would?” He studied my face carefully for a moment, then smiled.

“No,” he said quietly. “Thank you.”

I snorted briefly and dropped the medicine bag into the teapot. I put back the jars of herbs, and sat down with my blasted wool again.

“It was generous of you—to let Willie go with Jamie. Rather brave,” I added, somewhat grudgingly. I looked up; he was staring at the dark oblong of the hide-covered window, as though he could look beyond it to see the two figures, side by side in the forest.

“Jamie has held my life in his hands for a good many years now,” he answered softly. “I will trust him with William’s.”

“And what if Willie remembers a groom named MacKenzie better than you think? Or happens to take a good look at his own face and Jamie’s?”

“Twelve-year-old boys are not remarkable for their acute perception,” Grey said dryly. “And I think that if a boy has lived all his life in the secure belief that he is the ninth Earl of Ellesmere, the notion that he might actually be the illegitimate offspring of a Scottish groom is not one that would enter his head—or be long entertained there, if it did.”

I wound wool in silence, listening to the crackle of the fire. Ian was coughing again, but didn’t wake. The dog had moved, and was now curled up by his legs, a dark heap of fur.

I finished the second ball of yarn and began another. One more, and the infusion would have finished steeping. If Ian didn’t need me yet, I would lie down then.

Grey had been silent for so long that I was surprised when he started to speak again. When I glanced at him, he wasn’t looking at me, but was staring upward, seeking visions once again among the smoke-stained beams.

“I told you I had feelings for my wife,” he said softly. “I did. Affection. Familiarity. Loyalty. We had known each other all her life; our fathers had been friends; I had known her brother. She might well have been my sister.”

“And was she satisfied with that—to be your sister?”

He gave me a glance somewhere between anger and interest.

“You cannot be at all a comfortable woman to live with.” He shut his mouth, but couldn’t leave it there. He shrugged impatiently. “Yes, I believe she was satisfied with the life she led. She never said that she was not.”

I didn’t reply to this, though I exhaled rather strongly through my nose. He shrugged uncomfortably, and scratched his collarbone.

“I was an adequate husband to her,” he said defensively. “That we had no children of our own—that was not my—”

“I really don’t want to hear about it!”

“Oh, don’t you?” His voice was still low, not to wake Ian, but it had lost the smooth modulations of diplomacy; the anger was rough in it.

“You asked me why I came; you questioned my motives; you accused me of jealousy. Perhaps you don’t want to know, because if you did, you could not keep thinking of me as you choose to.”

“And how the hell do you know what I choose to think of you?”

His mouth twisted in an expression that might have been a sneer on a less handsome face.

“Don’t I?”

I looked him full in the face for a minute, not troubling to hide anything at all.

“You did mention jealousy,” he said quietly, after a moment.

“So I did. So did you.”

He turned his head away, but continued after a moment.

“When I heard that Isobel was dead … it meant nothing to me. We had lived together for years, though we had not seen each other for nearly two years. We shared a bed; we shared a life, I thought. I should have cared. But I didn’t.”

He took a deep breath; I saw the bedclothes stir as he settled himself.

“You mentioned generosity. It wasn’t that. I came to see … whether I can still feel,” he said. His head was still turned away, staring at the hide-covered window, grown dark with the night. “Whether it is my own feelings that have died, or only Isobel.”

“Only Isobel?” I echoed.

He lay quite still for a moment, facing away.

“I can still feel shame, at least,” he said, very softly.

I could tell by the feel of the night that it was very late; the fire had burned low, and the aching of my muscles told me that it was well past my bedtime.

Ian was getting restless; he stirred in his sleep, moaning, and Rollo got up and nuzzled him, making small whimpering noises. I went to him and wiped his face again, plumped his pillow and straightened his sheets, making comforting murmurs. He was no more than half awake; I held his head and fed him a cup of the warm infusion, sip by sip.

“You’ll feel better in the morning.” There were spots visible in the open neck of his shirt—only a few as yet—but the fever was less, and the line between his brows had eased.

I wiped his face once more and eased him back on his pillow, where he turned a cheek to the cool linen and fell asleep again at once.

There was plenty of the infusion left. I poured another cup and held it out to Lord John. Surprised, he sat upright and took it from me.

“And now that you’ve come, and seen him—do you still have feelings?” I said.

He stared at me for a moment, eyes unblinking in the candlelight.

“I do, yes.” Hand steady as a rock, he picked up the cup and drank. “God help me,” he added, so casual as almost to sound offhand.

---

Ian passed a bad night but dropped off into a fitful doze near dawn. I seized the chance of a little rest myself, and managed a few hours of delectable sleep on the floor before being roused by the the loud braying of Clarence the mule.

A sociable creature, Clarence was utterly delighted by the approach of anything he regarded as a friend—this category embracing virtually anything on four legs. He gave tongue to his joy in a voice that rang off the mountainside. Rollo, affronted at being thus upstaged in the watchdog department, leapt off Ian’s bed, soared over me, and out through the open window, baying like a werewolf.

Thus startled out of slumber, I staggered to my feet. Lord John, who was sitting in his shirt at the table, looked startled too, though whether at the racket or at my appearance, I couldn’t tell. I went outside, running my fingers hastily through my disheveled locks, heart beating faster in the hope that it might be Jamie returning.

My heart fell as I saw that it wasn’t Jamie and Willie, but my disappointment was quickly replaced by astonishment when I saw who the visitor was—Pastor Gottfried, leader of the Lutheran church in Salem. I had met the Pastor now and then, in the homes of parishioners where I had been paying medical calls, but I was more than surprised to find him so far afield.

It was nearly two days ride from Salem to the Ridge, and the nearest German Lutheran farm was at least fifteen miles away, over rough country. The Pastor was no natural horseman—I could see the mud and dust of repeated falls splashed over his black coat—and I thought that it must be a dire emergency indeed that brought him so far up the mountain.

“Down, wicked dog!” I said sharply to Rollo, who was baring his teeth and growling at the new arrival, much to the displeasure of the Pastor’s horse. “Be quiet, I say!”

Rollo gave me a yellow-eyed look and subsided with an air of offended dignity, as though to suggest that if I wished to welcome obvious malefactors onto the premises, he wouldn’t answer for the consequences.

The Pastor was a tubby little man with a huge, curly gray beard that surrounded his face like a storm cloud, through which his normally beaming face peered like the breaking sun. He wasn’t beaming this morning, though; his round cheeks were the color of suet, puffy lips pale, and his eyes red-rimmed with fatigue.

“Meine Dame,” he greeted me, doffing his broad-brimmed hat and bowing deeply from the waist. “Ist Euer Mann hier?”

I spoke no more than a few words of crude German, but could easily make out that he was looking for Jamie. I shook my head, gesturing vaguely toward the woods, to indicate Jamie’s absence.

The Pastor looked even more dismayed than before, nearly wringing his hands in his distress. He said several urgent things in German, then seeing that I didn’t understand him, repeated himself, speaking slower and louder, his stubby body straining for expression, trying by sheer force of will to make me understand.

I was still shaking my head helplessly when a voice spoke sharply from behind me.

“Was ist los?” demanded Lord John, emerging into the dooryard. “Was habt Ihr gesagt?” He had put on his breeches, I was glad to see, though he was still barefoot, with his fair hair streaming loose on his shoulders.

The Pastor gave me a scandalized look, plainly thinking The Worst, but this expression was wiped off his face at once by a further machine-gun rattle of German from Lord John. The Pastor bobbed in apology to me, then turned eagerly to the Englishman, waving his arms and stammering in his haste to tell his story.

“What?” I said, having failed to pluck more than a word or two from the Teutonic flood. “What on earth is he saying?”

Grey turned a grim face toward me.

“Do you know a family named Mueller?”

“Yes,” I said, immediate alarm flaring at the name. “I delivered a child to Petronella Mueller, three weeks ago.”

“Ah.” Grey licked dry lips and glanced at the ground; he didn’t want to tell me. “The—the child is dead, I am afraid. So is the mother.”

“Oh, no.” I sank down on the bench by the door, swept by a feeling of absolute denial. “No. They can’t be.”

Grey rubbed a hand over his mouth, nodding as the Pastor went on, waving his small, fat hands in agitation.

“He says it was Masern; I think that would be what we call the measle. Flecken, so ähnlich wie diese?” he demanded of the Pastor, pointing at the remnants of rash still visible on his face.

The Pastor nodded emphatically, repeating “Flecken, Masern, ja!” and patting his own cheeks.

“But what does he want Jamie for?” I asked, bewilderment added to distress.

“Apparently he believes Jamie might be able to reason with the man—with Herr Mueller. Are they friends?”

“Not exactly, no. Jamie hit Gerhard Mueller in the mouth and knocked him down in front of the mill last spring.”

A muscle twitched in Lord John’s scabbed cheek.

“I see. I suppose he’s using the term ‘reason with’ rather loosely, then.”

“Mueller can’t be reasoned with by any means more sophisticated than an ax handle,” I said. “But what is he being unreasonable about?”

Grey frowned—he didn’t recognize my use of “sophisticated,” I realized, though he understood what I meant. He hesitated, then turned back to the small minister and asked something else, listening intently to the resulting torrent of Deutsch.

Little by little, with constant interruptions and much gesticulation, the story emerged in translation.

There was, as Lord John had told us earlier, an epidemic of measles in Cross Creek. This had evidently spread into the backcountry; several households in Salem were afflicted, but the Muellers, isolated as they were, had not suffered infection until recently.

However, the day before the first sign of measles appeared, a small band of Indians had stopped at the Mueller farm asking for food and drink. Mueller, with whose opinions of Indians I was thoroughly well acquainted, had driven them off with considerable abuse. The Indians, offended, had made—said Mueller—mysterious signs toward his house as they left.

When measles broke out among the family the next day, Mueller was positive that the disease had been brought upon them by means of a hex, placed on his house by the Indians he had rebuffed. He had at once painted antihexing symbols upon his walls, and summoned the Pastor from Salem to perform an exorcism … “I think that is what he said,” Lord John added doubtfully. “Though I am not sure whether he means by that …”

“Never mind,” I said impatiently. “Go on!”

None of these precautions availed Mueller, though, and when Petronella and the new baby succumbed to the disease, the old man had lost what little mind he had. Vowing revenge upon the savages who had brought such devastation to his household, he had forced his sons and sons-in-law to accompany him, and ridden off into the woods.

From this expedition they had returned three days ago, the sons whitefaced and silent, the old man burning with cold satisfaction.

“Ich war dort. Ich habe ihn geschen,” said Herr Gottfried, sweat trickling down his cheeks at the recollection. I was there. I saw.

Summoned by a hysterical message from the women, the Pastor had ridden into the stableyard, to find two long tails of dark hair hanging from the barn door, stirring gently in the wind above the crudely painted legend Rache.

“That means ‘revenge,’ ” Lord John translated for me.

“I know,” I said, my mouth so dry I could barely speak. “I’ve read Sherlock Holmes. You mean he …”

“Evidently so.”

The Pastor was still speaking; he seized me by the arm and shook it, trying to communicate his urgency. Grey’s look sharpened at whatever the minister was saying, and he broke in with an abrupt question, answered by frenzied noddings.

“He’s coming here. Mueller.” Grey swung round to me, his face set in alarm.

Terribly upset by the scalps, the Pastor had gone in search of Herr Mueller, only to find that the patriarch had nailed his grisly trophies to the barn and then left the farm, bound—he had said—for Fraser’s Ridge, to see me.

If I hadn’t been sitting down already, I might have collapsed at this. I could feel the blood draining from my cheeks, and was sure I looked as pale as Pastor Gottfried.

“Why?” I said. “Is he—he couldn’t! He couldn’t think I had done anything to Petronella or the baby. Could he?” I turned in appeal toward the Pastor, who pushed a pudgy, trembling hand through his gray-streaked hair, disordering its carefully larded strands.

“The clerical gentleman doesn’t know what Mueller thinks, or what his purpose is in coming here,” said Lord John. He cast an interested eye over the pastor’s unprepossessing form. “Much to his credit, he set off alone, hell-for-leather after Mueller, and found him two hours later—insensible by the side of the road.”

The huge old farmer had evidently gone for days without food on his hunt for revenge. Intemperance was not a common failing among the Lutherans, but under the stimulus of fatigue and emotion, Mueller had drunk deeply upon his return, and the enormous draughts of beer he had consumed had been too much for him. Overcome, he had contrived to hobble his mule, but then had wrapped himself in his coat and fallen asleep among the trailing arbutus by the road.

The Pastor had made no attempt to rouse Mueller, being well acquainted with the man’s temper and feeling it would not be improved by drink. Instead, Gottfried had mounted his own horse and ridden as quickly as he could, trusting to Providence to bring him here in time to warn us.

He had had no doubt that my Mann would be competent to deal with Mueller, no matter what his state or intentions, but with Jamie gone …

Pastor Gottfried looked helplessly from me to Lord John, and back again.

“Vielleicht solten Sie gehen?” he suggested, making his meaning clear with a jerk of his head toward the paddock.

“I can’t leave,” I said, and gestured toward the house. “Mein—Christ, what’s nephew?—Mein junger Mann ist nicht gut.”

“Ihr Neffe ist krank” Lord John corrected briskly. “Haben Sie jemals Masern gehabt?”

The Pastor shook his head, distress altering to alarm.

“He hasn’t had the measles,” Lord John said, turning to me. “He mustn’t stay here, then, or he will put himself in danger of contracting the disease, is that so?”

“Yes.” The shock was beginning to recede slightly, and I was starting to pull myself together. “Yes, he should go at once. It’s safe for him to be near you, you aren’t contagious any longer. Ian is, though.” I made a vain attempt at smoothing my hair, which was standing on end—little wonder if it was, I thought. Then I thought of the scalps on Mueller’s barn door and my hair actually did stand on end, my own scalp rippling with horror.

Lord John was speaking authoritatively to the little Pastor, urging him toward his horse by means of a grip on his sleeve. Gottfried was making protests, but increasingly weak ones. He glanced back at me, round face full of trouble.

I tried to smile reassuringly at him, though I felt as distressed as he did.

“Danke,” I said. “Tell him it will be all right, will you?” I said to Lord John. “He won’t go, otherwise.” He nodded briefly.

“I have. I told him I am a soldier; that I will not let any harm come to you.”

The Pastor stood for a moment, hand on his horse’s bridle, talking earnestly to Lord John. Then he dropped the bridle, turned with decision and crossed the dooryard to me. Reaching up, he laid a hand gently on my tousled head.

“Seid gesegnet,” he said. “Benedicite.”

“He said—” began Lord John.

“I understand.”

We stood silently in the dooryard, watching Gottfried make his way through the chestnut grove. It seemed incongruously peaceful out here, with a soft autumn sun warm on my shoulders, and birds going about their business overhead. I heard the far-off knocking of a woodpecker, and the liquid duet of the mockingbirds that lived in the big blue spruce. No owls, but naturally there would be no owls now; it was midmorning.

Who? I wondered, as another aspect of the tragedy belatedly occurred to me. Who had been the target of Mueller’s blind revenge? The Mueller farm was several days ride from the mountain line that separated Indian territory from the settlements, but he could have reached several Tuscarora or Cherokee villages, depending on his direction.

Had he entered a village? If so, what carnage had he and his sons left behind? Worse, what carnage might ensue?

I shuddered, cold in spite of the sun. Mueller was not the only man who believed in revenge. The family, the clan, the village of whomever he had murdered—they would seek vengeance for their slain, as well; and they might not stop with the Muellers—if they even knew the identity of the killers.

And if they did not, but only knew the murderers to be white … I shuddered again. I had heard enough massacre stories to realize that the victims very seldom did anything to provoke their fate; they only had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fraser’s Ridge lay directly between Mueller’s farm and the Indian villages—which at the moment seemed distinctly the wrong place to be.

“Oh, God, I wish Jamie were here.” I wasn’t aware that I had spoken aloud, until Lord John replied.

“So do I,” he said. “Though I begin to think that William may be far safer with him than the boy might be here—and not only by reason of the illness.”

I glanced at him, realizing suddenly how weak he still was; this was the first time he had been out of bed in a week. He was white-faced under the remnants of his rash, and he was gripping the doorjamb for support, to keep from falling down.

“You shouldn’t even be up!” I exclaimed, and grasped him by the arm. “Go in and lie down at once.”

“I am quite all right,” he said irritably, but he didn’t jerk away, or protest when I insisted he get back into bed.

I knelt to check Ian, who was tossing restlessly on the trundle, blazing with fever. His eyes were shut, his features swollen and disfigured with the emergent rash, the glands in his neck round and hard as eggs.

Rollo poked an inquiring nose under my elbow, nudged his master gently and whined.

“He’ll be all right,” I said firmly. “Why don’t you go outside and keep an eye out for visitors, hm?”

Rollo ignored this advice, though, and instead sat patiently watching as I wrung out a rag in cool water and bathed Ian. I nudged him half awake, brushed his hair, gave him the chamber pot, and coaxed bee-balm syrup into him—all the time listening for the sound of hooves, and Clarence’s joyful announcement that company was coming.

---

It was a long day. After several hours of starting at every sound and looking over my shoulder at every step, I finally settled into the day’s work. I nursed Ian, who was feverish and miserable, fed the stock, weeded the garden, picked tender young cucumbers for pickling, and set Lord John, who was disposed to be helpful, to work shelling beans.

I looked into the woods with longing, on my way from privy to goat-pen. I would have given a lot simply to walk away into those cool green depths. It wouldn’t have been the first time I’d had such an impulse. But the autumn sun beat down on the Ridge, and the hours wore on in tranquil peace, without a sign of Gerhard Mueller.

“Tell me about this Mueller,” Lord John said. His appetite was coming back; he’d finished his helping of fried mush, though he pushed aside the salad of dandelion greens and pokeweed.

I plucked a tender stalk of pokeweed from the bowl and nibbled it myself, enjoying the sharp taste.

“He’s the head of a large family; German Lutherans, as you no doubt gathered. They live about fifteen miles from here, down in the river valley.”

“Yes?”

“Gerhard is big, and he’s stubborn, as you no doubt gathered. Speaks a few words of English, but not much. He’s old, but my God, he’s strong!” I could still see the old man, shoulders corded with stringy muscle, tossing fifty-pound sacks of flour into his wagon like so many sacks of feathers.

“This fight he had with Jamie—did he appear the sort to hold a grudge?”

“He’s very definitely the sort to hold a grudge, but not about that. It wasn’t really a fight. It—” I shook my head, searching for a way to describe it. “Do you know anything about mules?”

His fair brows lifted and he smiled.

“A bit, yes.”

“Well, Gerhard Mueller is a mule. He’s not really bad-tempered, and he isn’t precisely stupid—but he doesn’t pay a great deal of attention to anything other than what’s in his head, and it takes a good deal of force to switch his attention to anything else.”

I had not been present at the altercation in the mill, but had had it described to me by Ian. The old man had got it firmly stuck into his head that Felicia Woolam, one of the mill owner’s three daughters, had given him short weight and owed him another sack of flour.

In vain, Felicia protested that he had brought her five bags of wheat; she had ground them, and filled four bags with the resulting flour. The difference, she insisted, was due to the chaff and hulls removed from the grain. Five bags of wheat equalled four bags of flour.

“Fünf!” Mueller had said, waving his open hand in her face. “Es gibt fünf!” He would not be persuaded otherwise, and began to curse volubly in German, glowering and backing the girl into a corner.

Ian, having tried without success to distract the old man’s attention, had dashed outside to fetch Jamie from his conversation with Mr. Woolam. Both men had come hurriedly inside, but had no more success than Ian in changing Mueller’s conviction that he had been cheated.

Ignoring their exhortations, he had advanced on Felicia, clearly intent on taking by force an extra bag of flour from the stack behind her.

“At that point, Jamie gave up trying to reason with him, and hit him,” I said.

He had at first been reluctant to do so, Mueller being nearly seventy, but rapidly changed his mind when his first blow bounced off Mueller’s jaw as though it had been made of seasoned oakwood.

The old man had turned on him like a cornered boar, whereupon Jamie had struck him first in the stomach, and then in the mouth as hard as possible, knocking Mueller down and splitting his own knuckles on the old man’s teeth.

With a word to Woolam—who was a Quaker and thus opposed to violence—he had then seized Mueller by the legs and dragged the dazed farmer outside, where one of the Mueller sons was waiting patiently in the wagon. Hauling the old man up by the collar, Jamie had pinned him against the wagon and held him there, talking pleasantly in German, until Mr. Woolam—having hastily rebagged the flour—came out and loaded five sacks into the wagon, under the gimlet eye of the old man.

Mueller had counted them twice, carefully, then turned to Jamie, and said with dignity, “Danke, mein Herr.” He had then climbed into the wagon beside his bemused son, and driven away.

Grey scratched at the remnants of his rash, smiling.

“I see. So he appeared to hold no ill will?”

I shook my head, chewing, then swallowed.

“Not at all. He was kindness itself to me, when I went to the farm to help with Petronella’s baby.” My throat closed suddenly on the renewed realization that they were gone, and I choked on the bitter taste of the dandelion leaves, bile rising in my throat.

“Here.” Grey pushed the pot of ale across the table toward me.

I drank deeply, the cool sourness soothing for a moment the deeper bitterness of spirit. I set the pot down and sat for a moment, eyes closed. There was a fresh-smelling breeze from the window, but the sun was warm on the tabletop under my hands. All the tiny joys of physical existence were still mine, and I was the more acutely aware of them, for the knowledge that they had been so abruptly taken from others—from those who had barely tasted them.

“Thank you,” I said, opening my eyes.

Grey was watching me, with an expression of deep sympathy.

“You’d think it wouldn’t be such a shock,” I said, needing suddenly to try to explain. “They die here so easily. The young ones, especially. It isn’t as though I haven’t seen it before. And there’s so seldom anything I can do.”

I felt something warm on my cheek, and was surprised to find it was a tear. He reached into his sleeve, pulled out a handkerchief and handed it to me. It wasn’t especially clean, but I didn’t mind.

“I did sometimes wonder what he saw in you,” he said, his tone deliberately light. “Jamie.”

“Oh, you did? How flattering.” I sniffed, and blew my nose.

“When he began to speak of you, both of us thought you dead,” he pointed out. “And while you are undoubtedly a handsome woman, it was never of your looks that he spoke.”

To my surprise, he picked up my hand and held it lightly.

“You have his courage,” he said.

That made me laugh, if only halfheartedly.

“If you only knew,” I said.

He didn’t reply to that, but smiled faintly. His thumb ran lightly over the knuckles of my hand, his touch light and warm.

“He doesn’t hold back for fear of skinned knuckles,” he said. “Neither do you, I think.”

“I can’t.” I took a deep breath and wiped my nose; the tears had stopped. “I’m a doctor.”

“So you are,” he said quietly, and paused. “I have not thanked you for my life.”

“It wasn’t me. There isn’t really anything much I can do, for something like a disease. All I can do is to … be there.”

“A little more than that,” he said dryly, and released my hand. “Will you have more ale?”

I was beginning to see quite clearly what Jamie saw in John Grey.

The afternoon passed quietly. Ian tossed and moaned, but by late afternoon, the rash was fully developed, and his fever seemed to drop a little. He wouldn’t be wanting food, but perhaps I could induce him to take a little milk broth. The thought reminded me that it was nearly milking time, and I stood up, with a murmured word to Lord John, and put aside my mending.

I opened the cabin door and stepped out, directly in front of Gerhard Mueller, who was standing in the dooryard.

Mueller’s eyes were a reddish brown, and seemed always to be burning with an inner intensity. They burned more brightly now, for the bruised frailty of the flesh surrounding them. The deep-set eyes fixed on me, and he nodded, once, and then again.

Mueller had shrunk since I had last seen him. All his flesh had fallen away; still a huge man, he was more bone than muscle now, cadaverous and ancient. His eyes were fixed on mine, the only spark of life in a face like crumpled paper.

“Herr Mueller,” I said. My voice sounded calm to my own ears; I hoped it sounded the same to him. “Wie geht es Euch?”

The old man stood swaying in front of me, as though the evening breeze might knock him down. I didn’t know if he had lost his mount, or left it down below the ridge, but there was no sign of horse or mule.

He took a step toward me, and I took one back, involuntarily.

“Frau Klara,” he said, and there was a note of pleading in his voice.

I stopped, wanting to call out to Lord John, but hesitant. He wouldn’t call me by my first name if he meant to do me harm.

“They are dead,” he said. “Mein Mädchen. Mein Kind.” Tears welled suddenly in the bloodshot eyes, and ran slowly down the weather-beaten grooves of his face. The misery in his eyes was so acute that I reached out and took his huge, work-scarred old hand in mine.

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

He nodded again, his old mouth working. He let me lead him to the bench by the door, where he sat down quite suddenly, as though all the strength had gone out of his legs.

The door opened, and John Grey came out. He had his pistol in his hand, but when I shook my head at him, he slid it at once into his shirt. The old man had not let go of my hand; he pulled, forcing me to sit down beside him.

“Gnädige Frau,” he said, and suddenly turned and embraced me, hugging me tight against his filthy coat. He shook with soundless crying, and even knowing what he had done, I put my own arms around him.

He smelled dreadful, sour and reeking with old age and sorrow, with beer and sweat and filth, and somewhere under all the other odors was the fetor of dried blood. I shuddered, caught in a web of pity, horror, and revulsion, but could not pull away.

He let go, finally, and seemed suddenly to see John Grey, who was hovering nearby, not sure whether to intervene or not. The old man started at sight of him.

“Mein Gott!” he exclaimed, in tones of horror. “Er hat Masern!” The sun was sinking fast, bathing the dooryard in bloody light. It struck Grey full in the face, highlighting the darkened spots on his face, flushing his skin with red.

Mueller turned to me, and frantically seized my face between his huge, horny paws. His thumbs scraped across my cheeks, and an expression of relief came into his sunken eyes, as he saw that my skin was still clear.

“Gott sei dank’,” he said, and letting go of my face, began to rummage in his coat, saying something in German so urgent and so mumbled that I could make out no more than the occasional word.

“He says he was afraid he would be too late, and is glad that he was not,” Grey said, seeing my bewilderment. He eyed the old farmer with suspicious dislike. “He says he’s brought you something—a charm of some kind. It will ward off the curse, and keep you safe from the illness.”

The old man withdrew an object wrapped in cloth from the recesses of his coat, and laid it in my lap, still babbling in German.

“He thanks you for all your help to his family—he thinks you are a fine woman, as dear to him as one of his daughters-in-law—he says that …” Mueller unfolded the cloth with shaking hands, and the words died in Grey’s throat.

I opened my mouth, but made no sound. I must have made some involuntary movement, for the cloth slipped suddenly to the ground, spilling out the sheaf of white-streaked hair to which a small silver ornament still clung. With it was the leather pouch, the woodpecker’s feathers draggled with blood.

Mueller was still speaking, and Grey was trying to, but I was only dimly aware of their words. Inside my ears echoed the words I had heard a year before, down by the stream, in Gabrielle’s soft voice, translating for Nayawenne.

Her name meant. “It may be; it will happen.” Now it had, and all that was left me for consolation was her words: “She says you must not be troubled; sickness is sent from the gods. It won’t be your fault.”