An Echo in the Bone Page 13

  carrying Jem back from swimming, the summer before, and Roger singing to Mandy in the night, his harsh, cracked voice little more than a whisper—but music, all the same.

  I nodded to Bobby, who smiled and nodded back, though without interrupting his song. He raised his brows and jerked a thumb over his shoulder and uphill, presumably indicating where Jamie had gone. He betrayed no surprise at seeing me in shift and shawl—doubtless he thought I was bound for the stream to wash, as well, inspired by the singular warmth of the day.

  Eudail mhòir a shluagh an domhain

  Dhòirt iad d’ fhuil an dè

  ’S chuir iad do cheann air stob daraich

  Tacan beag bhod chrè.

  (Great sweetheart of all people of the world

  They poured your blood yesterday

  And they put your head on an oak stick

  A short distance from your body.)

  Òbhan, òbhan òbhan ìri

  Òbhan ìri ò!

  Òbhan, òbhan òbhan ìri

  ’S mòr mo mhulad ’s mòr.

  (Woe is me, woe is me

  Woe is me, great indeed is my sorrow.)

  I waved briefly and turned up the side trail that led to the upper clearing. “New House,” everyone called it, though the only indications that there might someday be a house there were a stack of felled logs and a number of pegs driven into the ground, with strings tied between them. These were meant to mark the placement and dimensions of the house Jamie intended to build in replacement of the Big House—when we came back.

  He’d been moving the pegs, I saw. The wide front room was now wider, and the back room intended for my surgery had developed a growth of some sort, perhaps a separate stillroom.

  The architect was sitting on a log, surveying his kingdom, stark naked.

  “Expecting me, were you?” I asked, taking off my shawl and hanging it on a convenient branch.

  “I was.” He smiled, and scratched his chest. “I thought the sight of my naked backside would likely inflame ye. Or was it maybe Bobby’s?”

  “Bobby hasn’t got one. Do you know, you haven’t got a single gray hair below the neck? Why is that, I wonder?”

  He glanced down, inspecting himself, but it was true. There were only a few strands of silver among the fiery mass of his hair, though his beard—the winter growth tediously and painfully removed a few days before—was heavily frosted with white. But the hair on his chest was still a dark auburn, and that below a fluffy mass of vivid ginger.

  He combed his fingers thoughtfully through the exuberant foliage, looking down.

  “I think it’s hiding,” he remarked, and glanced up at me, one eyebrow raised. “Want to come and help me hunt for it?”

  I came round in front of him and obligingly knelt down. The object in question was in fact quite visible, though admittedly looking rather shell-shocked by the recent immersion, and a most interesting shade of pale blue.

  “Well,” I said, after a moment’s contemplation. “Great oaks from tiny acorns grow. Or so I’m told.”

  A shiver ran through him at the warmth of my mouth and I lifted my hands involuntarily, cradling his balls.

  “Holy God,” he said, and his hands rested lightly on my head in benediction.

  “What did ye say?” he asked, a moment later.

  “I said,” I said, coming up momentarily for air, “I find the gooseflesh rather erotic.”

  “There’s more where that came from,” he assured me. “Take your shift off, Sassenach. I havena seen ye naked in nearly four months.”

  “Well … no, you haven’t,” I agreed, hesitating. “And I’m not sure I want you to.”

  One eyebrow went up.

  “Whyever not?”

  “Because I’ve been indoors for weeks on end without sun or exercise to speak of. I probably look like one of those grubs you find under rocks—fat, white, and squidgy.”

  “Squidgy?” he repeated, breaking into a grin.

  “Squidgy,” I said with dignity, wrapping my arms around myself.

  He pursed his lips and exhaled slowly, eyeing me with his head on one side.

  “I like it when ye’re fat, but I ken quite well that ye’re not,” he said, “because I’ve felt your ribs when I put my arms about you, each night since the end of January. As for white—ye’ve been white all the time I’ve known ye; it’s no likely to come a great shock to me. As for the squidgy part”—he extended one hand and wiggled the fingers beckoningly at me—“I think I might enjoy that.”

  “Hmm,” I said, still hesitant. He sighed.

  “Sassenach,” he said, “I said I havena seen ye naked in four months. That means if ye take your shift off now, ye’ll be the best thing I’ve seen in four months. And at my age, I dinna think I remember farther back than that.”

  I laughed, and without further ado, stood up and pulled the ribbon tie at the neck of my shift. Wriggling, I let it fall in a puddle round my feet.

  He closed his eyes. Then breathed deep and opened them again.

  “I’m blinded,” he said softly, and held out a hand to me.

  “Blinded as in sun bouncing off a vast expanse of snow?” I asked dubiously. “Or as in coming face to face with a gorgon?”

  “Seeing a gorgon turns ye to stone, not strikes ye blind,” he informed me. “Though come to think”—he prodded himself with an experimental forefinger—“I may turn to stone yet. Will ye come here, for God’s sake?”

  I came.

  I FELL ASLEEP IN the warmth of Jamie’s body, and woke some time later, snugly wrapped in his plaid. I stretched, alarming a squirrel overhead, who ran out on a limb to get a better view. Evidently he didn’t like what he saw, and began scolding and chattering.

  “Oh, hush,” I said, yawning, and sat up. The squirrel took exception to this gesture and began having hysterics, but I ignored him. To my surprise, Jamie was gone.

  I thought he’d likely just stepped into the wood to relieve himself, but a quick glance round didn’t discover him, and when I scrambled to my feet, the plaid clutched to me, I saw no sign of him.

  I hadn’t heard anything; surely if someone had come, I would have wakened—or Jamie would have wakened me. I listened carefully, but—the squirrel having now gone about its own business—heard nothing beyond the normal sounds of a forest waking to spring: the murmur and rush of wind through new-leafed trees, punctuated by the occasional crack of a falling branch, or the rattle of last year’s pinecones and chestnut hulls bouncing through the canopy; the call of a distant jay, the conversation of a gang of pygmy nuthatches foraging in the long grass nearby, the rustle of a hungry vole in the winter’s dead leaves.

  The jay was still calling; another had joined it now, shrill with alarm. Perhaps that was where Jamie had gone.

  I unwound myself from the plaid and pulled on my shift and shoes. It was getting on for evening; we—or I, at least—had slept a long time. It was still warm in the sun, but the shadows under the trees were cold, and I put on my shawl and bundled up Jamie’s plaid into my arms—likely he’d want it.

  I followed the calling of the jays uphill, away from the clearing. There was a pair nesting near the White Spring; I’d seen them building the nest only two days before.

  It wasn’t far from the house site at all, though that particular spring always had the air of being remote from everything. It lay in the center of a small grove of white ash and hemlock, and was shielded on the east by a jagged outcropping of lichen-covered rock. All water has a sense of life about it, and a mountain spring carries a particular sense of quiet joy, rising pure from the heart of the earth. The White Spring, so called for the big pale boulder that stood guardian over its pool, had something more—a sense of inviolate peace.

  The closer I came to it, the surer I was that that was where I’d find Jamie.

  “There’s something there that listens,” he’d told Brianna once, quite casually. “Ye see such pools in the Highlands; they’re called saints’ pools—folk say the s
aint lives by the pool and listens to their prayers.”

  “And what saint lives by the White Spring?” she’d asked, cynical. “Saint Killian?”

  “Why him?”

  “Patron saint of gout, rheumatism, and whitewashers.”

  He’d laughed at that, shaking his head.

  “Whatever it is that lives in such water is older than the notion of saints,” he assured her. “But it listens.”

  I walked softly, approaching the spring. The jays had fallen silent now.

  He was there, sitting on a rock by the water, wearing only his shirt. I saw why the jays had gone about their business—he was still as the white boulder itself, his eyes closed, hands turned upward on his knees, loosely cupped, inviting grace.

  I stopped at once when I saw him. I had seen him pray here once before—when he’d asked Dougal MacKenzie for help in battle. I didn’t know who he was talking to just now, but it wasn’t a conversation I wished to intrude upon.

  I ought to leave, I supposed—but aside from the fear that I might disturb him by an inadvertent noise, I didn’t want to go. Most of the spring lay in shadow, but fingers of light came down through the trees, stroking him. The air was thick with pollen, and the light was filled with motes of gold. It struck answering glints from the crown of his head, the smooth high arch of his foot, the blade of his nose, the bones of his face. He might have grown there, part of earth and stone and water, might have been himself the spirit of the spring.

  I didn’t feel unwelcome. The peace of the place reached out to touch me gently, slow my heart.

  Was that what he sought here, I wondered? Was he drawing the peace of the mountain into himself, to remember, to sustain him during the months—the years, perhaps—of coming exile?

  I would remember.

  The light began to go, brightness falling from the air. He stirred, finally, lifting his head a little.

  “Let me be enough,” he said quietly.

  I started at the sound of his voice, but he hadn’t been speaking to me.

  He opened his eyes and rose then, quiet as he’d sat, and came past the stream, long feet bare and silent on the layers of damp leaves. As he came past the outcropping of rock, he saw me and smiled, reaching out to take the plaid I held out to him, wordless. He said nothing, but took my cold hand in his large warm one and we turned toward home, walking together in the mountain’s peace.

  A FEW DAYS LATER, he came to find me. I was foraging along the creek bank for leeches, which had begun to emerge from their winter’s hibernation, ravenous for blood. They were simple to catch; I merely waded slowly through the water near shore.

  At first, the thought of acting as live bait for the leeches was repellent, but after all, that was how I usually obtained leeches—by letting Jamie, Ian, Bobby, or any of a dozen young males wade through the streams and pick them off. And once you got used to the sight of the creatures, slowly engorging with your blood, it wasn’t all that bad.

  “I have to let them have enough blood to sustain themselves,” I explained, grimacing as I eased a thumbnail under the sucker of a leech in order to dislodge it, “but not enough that they’ll be comatose, or they won’t be of any use.”

  “A matter of nice judgment,” Jamie agreed, as I dropped the leech into a jar filled with water and duckweed. “When ye’ve done feeding your wee pets, then, come along and I’ll show ye the Spaniard’s Cave.”

  It was no little distance. Perhaps four miles from the Ridge, through cold, muddy creeks and up steep slopes, then through a crack in a granite cliff face that made me feel as though I were being entombed alive, only to emerge into a wilderness of jutting boulders, smothered in nets of wild grape.

  “We found it, Jem and I, out hunting one day,” Jamie explained, lifting a curtain of leaves for me to pass beneath. The vines snaked over the rocks, thick as a man’s forearm and knotted with age, the rusty-green leaves of spring not yet quite covering them. “It was a secret between us. We agreed we’d tell no one else—not even his parents.”

  “Nor me,” I said, but wasn’t offended. I heard the loss in his voice at the mention of Jem.

  The entrance to the cave was a crack in the ground, over which Jamie had pushed a large, flat rock. He slid this back with some effort, and I bent over cautiously, experiencing a brief clench of the innards at the faint sound of moving air through the fissure. The surface air was warm, though; the cave was drawing, not blowing.

  I remembered all too well the cave at Abandawe, that had seemed to breathe around us, and it took some force of will to follow Jamie as he disappeared into the earth. There was a rough wooden ladder—new, I saw, but replacing a much older one that had fallen to pieces; some bits of rotted wood were still in place, dangling from the rock on rusted iron spikes.

  It could have been no more than ten or twelve feet to the bottom, but the neck of the cave was narrow, and the descent seemed endless. At last I reached the bottom, though, and saw that the cave had opened out, like the bottom of a flask. Jamie was crouched to one side; I saw him draw out a small bottle and smelled the sharp scent of turpentine.

  He’d brought a torch, a pine knot with a head dipped in tar and wrapped with a rag. He soaked the rag with turpentine, then drew the fire-starter Bree had made for him. A shower of sparks lit his face, intent and ruddy. Twice more, and the torch caught, the flame bursting through the flammable cloth and catching the tar.

  He lifted the torch, and gestured toward the floor behind me. I turned and nearly jumped out of my skin.

  The Spaniard leaned against the wall, bony legs stretched out, skull fallen forward as if in a doze. Tufts of reddish, faded hair still clung here and there, but the skin had gone entirely. His hands and feet were mostly gone, too, the small bones carried away by rodents. No large animals had been able to get at him, though, and while the torso and long bones showed signs of nibbling, they were largely intact; the swell of the rib cage poked through a tissue of cloth so faded that there was no telling what color it had ever been.

  He was a Spaniard, too. A crested metal helmet, red with rust, lay by him, along with an iron breastplate and a knife.

  “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” I whispered. Jamie crossed himself, and knelt by the skeleton.

  “I’ve no notion how long he’s been here,” he said, also low-voiced. “We didna find anything with him save the armor and that.” He pointed to the gravel just in front of the pelvis. I leaned closer to look; a small crucifix, probably silver, now tarnished black, and a few inches away, a tiny triangular shape, also black.

  “A rosary?” I asked, and Jamie nodded.

  “I expect he was wearing it about his neck. It must have been made of wood and string, and when it rotted, the metal bits fell. That”—his finger gently touched the little triangle—“says Nr. Sra. Ang. on the one side—Nuestra Señora de los Angeles, I think it means, ‘Our Lady of the Angels.’ There’s a wee picture of the Blessed Virgin on the other side.”

  I crossed myself by reflex.

  “Was Jemmy scared?” I asked, after a moment’s respectful silence.

  “I was,” Jamie said dryly. “It was dark when I came down the shaft, and I nearly stepped on this fellow. I thought he was alive, and the shock of it liked to stop my heart.”

  He’d cried out in alarm, and Jemmy, left aboveground with strict instructions not to move from the spot, had promptly scrambled into the hole, losing his grip of the broken ladder halfway down and landing feetfirst on his grandfather.

  “I heard him scrabbling and looked up, just in time to have him plunge out of the heavens and strike me in the breast like a cannonball.” Jamie rubbed the left side of his chest with rueful amusement. “If I hadn’t looked up, he’d have broken my neck—and he’d never have got out, by himself.”

  And we’d never have known what happened to either one of you. I swallowed, dry-mouthed at the thought. And yet … on any given day, something just as random might happen. To anyone.

  “A wonder neither one of
you broke anything,” I said instead, and gestured toward the skeleton. “What do you think happened to this gentleman?” His people never knew.

  Jamie shook his head.

  “I dinna ken. He wasna expecting an enemy, because he wasna wearing his armor.”

  “You don’t think he fell in and couldn’t get out?” I squatted by the skeleton, tracing the tibia of the left leg. The bone was dried and cracked, gnawed at the end by small sharp teeth—but I could see what might be a greenstick fracture of the bone. Or might just be the cracking of age.

  Jamie shrugged, glancing up.

  “I shouldna think so. He was a good bit shorter than I am, but I think the original ladder must have been here when he died—for if someone built the ladder later, why would they leave this gentleman here at the bottom of it? And even with a broken leg, he should have been able to climb it.”

  “Hmm. He might have died of a fever, I suppose. That would account for his taking off his breastplate and helmet.” Though I personally would have taken them off at the first opportunity; depending on the season, he must either have been boiled alive or suffered severely from mildew, semi-enclosed in metal.

  “Mmphm.”

  I glanced up at this sound, which indicated dubious acceptance of my reasoning but disagreement with my conclusion.

  “You think he was killed?”

  He shrugged.

  “He has armor—but nay weapon save a wee knife. And ye can see he was right-handed, but the knife’s lying to his left.”

  The skeleton had been right-handed; the bones of the right arm were noticeably thicker, even by the flicker of torchlight. Possibly a swordsman? I wondered.

  “I kent a good many Spanish soldiers in the Indies, Sassenach. All of them fair bristled wi’ swords and spears and pistols. If this man died of a fever, his companions might take his arms—but they’d take the armor, too, and the knife. Why leave it?”

  “But by that token,” I objected, “why did whoever killed him—if he was killed—leave the armor and the knife?”

  “As for the armor—they didna want it. It wouldna be particularly useful to anyone other than a soldier. As for the knife—because it was sticking in him?” Jamie suggested. “And it’s no a very good knife to begin with.”

  “Very logical,” I said, swallowing again. “Putting aside the question of how he died—what in God’s name was he doing in the mountains of North Carolina in the first place?”

  “The Spanish sent explorers up as far as Virginia, fifty or sixty years ago,” he informed me. “The swamps discouraged them, though.”

  “I can see why. But why … this?” I stood up, waving a hand to encompass the cave and its ladder. He didn’t reply, but took my arm and lifted his torch, turning me to the side of the cave opposite the ladder. Well above my head, I saw another small fissure in the rock, black in the torchlight, barely wide enough for a man to wriggle through.

  “There’s a smaller cave through there,” he said, nodding upward. “And when I put Jem up to look, he told me there were marks in the dust—square marks, as though heavy boxes had sat there.”

  Which is why, when the need to hide treasure had occurred to him, so had thought of the Spaniard’s Cave.

  “We’ll bring the last of the gold tonight,” he said, “and pile rocks to hide the opening up there. Then we’ll leave the señor here to his rest.”

  I was obliged to admit that the cave made as suitable a resting place as any. And the Spanish soldier’s presence would likely discourage anyone who stumbled on the cave from further investigation, both Indians and settlers having a distinct aversion to ghosts. For that matter, so did Highlanders, and I turned curiously to Jamie.

  “You and Jem—you weren’t troubled about being haunted by him?”

  “Nay, we said the proper prayer for the repose of his soul, when I sealed the cave, and scattered salt around it.”

  That made me smile.

  “You know the proper prayer for every occasion, don’t you?”

  He smiled faintly in return, and rubbed the head of the torch in the damp gravel to extinguish it. A faint shaft of light from above glowed on the crown of his head.