An Echo in the Bone Read online

  sinkhole like New York,” Adam said judiciously. His stock was hanging loose round his neck, and as they passed the faint glow of a window, William saw that one of the silver buttons of his cousin’s coat was missing. “Swear I’ve seen a couple of these whores in camp, though.”

  “Sir Henry send you out to make a census, did he? Or do you just spend so much time with the camp followers you know them all by—”

  He was interrupted by a change in the noise coming from one of the houses down the street. Shouting, but not of the genially drunken sort evident heretofore. This was ugly shouting, a male voice in a rage and the shrieks of a woman.

  The cousins exchanged glances, then started as one toward the racket.

  This had increased as they hurried toward its source, and as they came even with the farthest house, a number of half-dressed soldiers spilled out into the alleyway, followed by a burly lieutenant to whom William had been introduced during the party in Adam’s room, but whose name he did not recall, dragging a half-naked whore by one arm.

  The lieutenant had lost both coat and wig; his dark hair was polled close and grew low on his brow, which, together with his thick-shouldered build, gave him the look of a bull about to charge. In fact, he did, turning and ramming a shoulder into the woman he’d dragged out, slamming her into the wall of the house. He was roaring drunk, and bellowing incoherent profanities.

  “Fireship.”

  William didn’t see who’d spoken the word, but it was taken up in excited murmurs, and something ugly ran through the men in the alley.

  “Fireship! She’s a fireship!”

  Several women had gathered in the doorway. The light behind them was too dim to show their faces, but they were clearly frightened, huddling together. One called out, tentative, stretching out an arm, but the others pulled her back. The black-haired lieutenant took no notice; he was battering the whore, punching her repeatedly in the stomach and breasts.

  “Hoy, fellow!”

  William started forward, shouting, but several hands grasped his arms, preventing him.

  “Fireship!” The men were beginning to chant it, with each blow of the lieutenant’s fists.

  A fireship was a poxed whore, and as the lieutenant left off his bashing and hauled the woman under the light of the red lantern, William could see that indeed she was; the rash across her face was plain.

  “Rodham! Rodham!” Adam was shouting the lieutenant’s name, trying to break through the crush of men, but they moved together, pushing him back, and the chant of “Fireship!” got louder.

  Shrieks came from the whores in the doorway, and they crammed back as Rodham flung the woman down on the doorstep. William lunged and succeeded in breaking through the press, but before he could reach the lieutenant, Rodham had seized the lantern and, dashing it against the front of the house, flung blazing oil over the whore.

  He fell back then, panting, eyes wide and staring as though in disbelief, as the woman leapt to her feet, arms windmilling in panic as the flames caught her hair, her gauzy shift. Within seconds, she was wrapped in fire, screaming in a high, thin voice that cut through the confusion of noise in the street and ran straight into William’s brain.

  The men fell back as she staggered toward them, lurching, hands reaching—whether in a futile plea for help or in the desire to immolate them, as well, he couldn’t tell. He stood rooted to the spot, his body clenched with the need to do something, the impossibility of doing anything, the overwhelming sense of disaster. An insistent pain in his arm made him glance mechanically aside, to find Adam beside him, fingers digging hard into the muscle of his forearm.

  “Let’s go,” Adam whispered, his face white and sweating. “For God’s sake, let’s go!”

  The door of the whorehouse had slammed shut. The burning woman fell against it, hands pressed against the wood. The appetizing smell of roasting meat filled the close, hot confines of the alley, and William felt his gorge rise once more.

  “God curse you! May your goddamned pricks all rot and fall off!” The scream came from a window above; William’s head jerked up and he saw a woman shaking a fist at the men below. There was a rumble from the men, and one shouted something foul in reply; another bent and seized a cobblestone and rising, flung it hard. It bounced against the front of the house below the window, and fell back, striking one of the soldiers, who cursed and shoved the man who’d thrown it.

  The burning woman had sunk down by the door; the flames had made a charred spot on it. She was still making a faint keening noise, but had ceased to move.

  Suddenly William lost his mind and, grabbing the man who had thrown the stone, took him by the neck and cracked his head against the doorpost of the house. The man stiffened and slumped, his knees giving way, and sat in the street, moaning.

  “Get out!” William bellowed. “All of you! Leave!” Fists clenched, he turned on the black-haired lieutenant, who, his rage all vanished, was standing motionless, staring at the woman on the stoop. Her skirts had vanished; a pair of blackened legs twitched feebly in the shadow.

  William reached the man in one stride and took him by the front of his shirt, yanking him round.

  “Go,” he said, in a dangerous voice. “Leave. Now!”

  He released the man, who blinked, swallowed, and, turning, walked like an automaton into the dark.

  Panting, William turned on the rest of them, but they had lost the thirst for violence as quickly as it had come upon them. There were a few glances toward the woman—she had gone still now—and shufflings, incoherent murmurs. None of them would meet another’s eye.

  He was vaguely conscious of Adam by his side, trembling with shock but solidly beside him. He put a hand on his smaller cousin’s shoulder and held on, trembling himself, as the men melted away. The man sitting in the street got slowly to his hands and feet, half-rose, and lurched after his companions, caroming off the fronts of houses as he made his way into the dark.

  The alley fell quiet. The fire had gone out. The other red lanterns in the street had been extinguished. He felt as though he had grown to the spot, would stand in this hateful place forever—but Adam moved a little, and his hand fell from his cousin’s shoulder and he found that his feet would carry him.

  They turned away, and walked in silence back through the dark streets. They came by a sentry point, where soldiers on guard were standing round a fire, keeping casual watch. They were to keep order in the occupied city, the guards. The sentries glanced at them, but did not stop them.

  In the light of the fire, he saw the tracks of wetness on Adam’s face and realized that his cousin was crying.

  So was he.

  TRANSVERSE LIE

  Fraser’s Ridge

  March 1777

  THE WORLD WAS DRIPPING. Freshets leapt down the mountain, grass and leaves were wet with dew, and the shingles steamed in the morning sun. Our preparations were made and the passes were clear. There remained only one more thing to do before we could leave.

  “Today, d’ye think?” Jamie asked hopefully. He was not a man made for peaceful contemplation; once a course of action was decided upon, he wanted to be acting. Babies, unfortunately, are completely indifferent to both convenience and impatience.

  “Maybe,” I said, trying to keep a grip on my own patience. “Maybe not.”

  “I saw her last week, and she looked then as though she was goin’ to explode any minute, Auntie,” Ian remarked, handing Rollo the last bite of his muffin. “Ken those mushrooms? The big round ones? Ye touch one and poof!” He flicked his fingers, scattering muffin crumbs. “Like that.”

  “She’s only having the one, no?” Jamie asked me, frowning.

  “I told you—six times so far—I think so. I bloody hope so,” I added, repressing an urge to cross myself. “But you can’t always tell.”

  “Twins run in families,” Ian put in helpfully.

  Jamie did cross himself.

  “I’ve heard only one heartbeat,” I said, keeping a grip on my tempe
r, “and I’ve been listening for months.”

  “Can ye not count the bits that stick out?” Ian inquired. “If it seemed to have six legs, I mean …”

  “Easier said than done.” I could, of course, make out the general aspect of the child—a head was reasonably easy to feel, and so were buttocks; arms and legs a bit more problematical. That was what was disturbing me at the moment.

  I’d been checking Lizzie once a week for the past month—and had been going up to her cabin every other day for the last week, though it was a long walk. The child—and I did think there was only one—seemed very large; the fundus of the uterus was a good bit higher than I thought it should be. And while babies frequently changed position in the weeks prior to birth, this one had remained in a transverse lie—wedged sideways—for a worryingly long time.

  The fact was that without a hospital, operating facilities, or anesthesia, my ability to deal with an unorthodox delivery was severely limited. Sans surgical intervention, with a transverse lie, a midwife had four alternatives: let the woman die after days of agonizing labor; let the woman die after doing a cesarean section without benefit of anesthesia or asepsis—but possibly save the baby; possibly save the mother by killing the child in the womb and then removing it in bits (Daniel Rawlings had had several pages in his book—illustrated—describing this procedure), or attempting an internal version, trying to turn the baby into a position in which it might be delivered.

  While superficially the most attractive option, that last one could easily be as dangerous as the others, resulting in the deaths of mother and child.

  I’d tried an external version the week before, and managed—with difficulty—to induce the child to turn head-down. Two days later, it had turned right back, evidently liking its supine position. It might turn again by itself before labor started—and it might not.

  Experience being what it was, I normally managed to distinguish between intelligent planning for contingencies and useless worrying over things that might not happen, thus allowing myself to sleep at night. I’d lain awake into the small hours every night for the last week, though, envisioning the possibility that the child wouldn’t turn in time, and running through that short, grim list of alternatives in futile search for one more choice.

  If I had ether … but what I’d had had gone when the house burned.

  Kill Lizzie, in order to save the new child? No. If it came to that, better to kill the child in utero, and leave Rodney with a mother, Jo and Kezzie with their wife. But the thought of crushing the skull of a full-term child, healthy, ready to be born … or decapitating it with a loop of sharp wire—

  “Are ye no hungry this morning, Auntie?”

  “Er … no. Thank you, Ian.”

  “Ye look a bit pale, Sassenach. Are ye sickening for something?”

  “No!” I got up hastily before they could ask any more questions—there was absolutely no point in anyone but me being terrorized by what I was thinking—and went out to fetch a bucket of water from the well.

  Amy was outside; she had started a fire going under the big laundry kettle, and was chivying Aidan and Orrie, who were scrambling round to fetch wood, pausing periodically to throw mud at each other.

  “Are ye wanting water, a bhana-mhaighstir?” she asked, seeing the bucket in my hand. “Aidan will fetch it down for ye.”

  “No, that’s all right,” I assured her. “I wanted a bit of air. It’s so nice out in the mornings now.” It was; still chilly until the sun got high, but fresh, and dizzy with the scents of grass, resin-fat buds, and early catkins.

  I took my bucket up to the well, filled it, and made my way down the path again, slowly, looking at things as you do when you know you might not see them again for a long time. If ever.

  Things had changed drastically on the Ridge already, with the coming of violence, the disruptions of the war, the destruction of the Big House. They’d change a great deal more, with Jamie and me both gone.

  Who would be the natural leader? Hiram Crombie was the de facto head of the Presbyterian fisher-folk who had come from Thurso—but he was a rigid, humorless man, much more likely to cause friction with the rest of the community than to maintain order and foster cooperation.

  Bobby? After considerable thought, Jamie had appointed him factor, with the responsibility of overseeing our property—or what was left of it. But aside from his natural capabilities or lack thereof, Bobby was a young man. He—along with many of the other men on the Ridge—could so easily be swept up in the coming storm, taken away and obliged to serve in one of the militias. Not the Crown’s forces, though; he had been a British soldier, stationed in Boston seven years before, where he and several of his fellows had been menaced by a mob of several hundred irate Bostonians. In fear for their lives, the soldiers had loaded their muskets and leveled them at the crowd. Stones and clubs were thrown, shots were fired—by whom, no one could establish; I had never asked Bobby—and men had died.

  Bobby’s life had been spared at the subsequent trial, but he bore a brand on his cheek—”M,” for “Murder.” I had no idea of his politics—he never spoke of such things—but he would never fight with the British army again.

  I pushed open the door to the cabin, my equanimity somewhat restored.

  Jamie and Ian were now arguing as to whether the new child would be a sister or brother to little Rodney or a half sibling.

  “Well, no way of telling, is there?” Ian said. “Nobody kens whether Jo or Kezzie fathered wee Rodney, and the same for this bairn. If Jo is Rodney’s father, and Kezzie this one’s—”

  “It doesn’t really matter,” I interrupted, pouring water from the bucket into the cauldron. “Jo and Kezzie are identical twins. That means their … er … their sperm is identical, as well.” That was oversimplifying matters, but it was much too early in the day to try to explain reproductive meiosis and recombinant DNA. “If the mother is the same—and she is—and the father is genetically the same—and they are—any children born would be full sisters or brothers to each other.”

  “Their spunk’s the same, too?” Ian demanded, incredulous. “How can ye tell? Did ye look?” he added, giving me a look of horrified curiosity.

  “I did not,” I said severely. “I didn’t have to. I know these things.”

  “Oh, aye,” he said, nodding with respect. “Of course ye would. I forget sometimes what ye are, Auntie Claire.”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, exactly, but it didn’t seem necessary either to inquire or to explain that my knowledge of the Beardsleys’ intimate processes was academic, rather than supernatural.

  “But it is Kezzie that’s this one’s father, no?” Jamie put in, frowning. “I sent Jo away; it’s Kezzie she’s been living with this past year.”

  Ian gave him a pitying look.

  “Ye think he went? Jo?”

  “I’ve not seen him,” Jamie said, but the thick red brows drew together.

  “Well, ye wouldn’t,” Ian conceded. “They’ll ha’ been gey careful about it, not wantin’ to cross ye. Ye never do see more than one of them—at a time,” he added, offhanded.

  We both stared at him. He looked up from the chunk of bacon in his hand and raised his brows.

  “I ken these things, aye?” he said blandly.

  AFTER SUPPER, the household shifted and settled for the night. All the Higginses retired to the back bedroom, where they shared the single bedstead.

  Obsessively, I opened my midwifery bundle and laid out the kit, checking everything over once more. Scissors, white thread for the cord. Clean cloths, rinsed many times to remove all trace of lye soap, scalded and dried. A large square of waxed canvas, to waterproof the mattress. A small bottle of alcohol, diluted fifty percent with sterile water. A small bag containing several twists of washed—but not boiled—wool. A rolled-up sheet of parchment, to serve in lieu of my stethoscope, which had perished in the fire. A knife. And a length of thin wire, sharpened at one end, coiled up like a snake.

&nbs
p; I hadn’t eaten much at dinner—or all day—but had a constant sense of rising bile at the back of my throat. I swallowed and wrapped the kit up again, tying the twine firmly round it.

  I felt Jamie’s eyes on me and looked up. He said nothing, but smiled a little, warmth in his eyes, and I felt a momentary easing—then a fresh clenching, as I wondered what he would think, if worst came to worst, and I had to—but he’d seen that twist of fear in my face. With his eyes still on mine, he quietly took his rosary from his sporran, and began silently to tell the beads, the worn wood sliding slowly through his fingers.

  TWO NIGHTS LATER, I came instantly awake at the sound of feet on the path outside and was on my own feet, pulling on my clothes, before Jo’s knock sounded on the door. Jamie let him in; I heard them murmuring together as I burrowed under the settle for my kit. Jo sounded excited, a little worried—but not panicked. That was good; if Lizzie had been frightened or in serious trouble, he would have sensed it at once—the twins were nearly as sensitive to her moods and welfare as they were to each other’s.

  “Shall I come?” Jamie whispered, looming up beside me.

  “No,” I whispered back, touching him for strength. “Go back to sleep. I’ll send, if I need you.”

  He was tousled from sleep, the embers of the fire making shadows in his hair, but his eyes were alert. He nodded and kissed my forehead, but instead of stepping back, he laid his hand on my head and whispered, “O blessed Michael of the Red Domain …” in Gaelic, then touched my cheek in farewell.

  “I’ll see ye in the morning then, Sassenach,” he said, and pushed me gently toward the door.

  To my surprise, it was snowing outside. The sky was gray and full of light and the air alive with huge, whirling flakes that brushed my face, melting instantly on my skin. It was a spring storm; I could see the flakes settle briefly on the grass stems, then vanish. There would likely be no trace of snow by morning, but the night was filled with its mystery. I turned to look back, but could not see the cabin behind us—only the shapes of trees half shrouded, uncertain in the pearl-gray light. The path before us looked likewise unreal, the trace disappearing into strange trees and unknown shadows.

  I felt weirdly disembodied, caught between past and future, nothing visible save the whirling white silence that surrounded me. And yet I felt calmer than I had in many days. I felt the weight of Jamie’s hand on my head, with its whispered blessing. O blessed Michael of the Red Domain …

  It was the blessing given to a warrior going out to battle. I had given it to him, more than once. He’d never done such a thing before, and I had no idea what had made him do it now—but the words glowed in my heart, a small shield against the dangers ahead.

  The snow covered the ground now in a thin blanket that hid dark earth and sprouting growth. Jo’s feet left crisp black prints that I followed upward, the needles of fir and balsam brushing cold and fragrant against my skirt, as I listened to a vibrant silence that rang like a bell.

  If ever there were a night when angels walked, I prayed it might be this one.

  IT WAS NEARLY an hour’s walk to the Beardsley cabin, in daylight and good weather. Fear hastened my footsteps, though, and Jo—I thought it was Jo, by his voice, was hard-pressed to keep up with me.

  “How long has she been at it?” I asked. You could never tell, but Lizzie’s first labor had been fast; she’d delivered little Rodney quite alone and without incident. I didn’t think we were going to be that lucky tonight, though my mind couldn’t help hopefully envisioning an arrival at the cabin to find Lizzie already holding the new baby, safely popped out without difficulty.

  “Not long,” he panted. “Her waters came all of a sudden, when we were all abed, and she said I best come fetch you at once.”

  I tried not to notice that “all abed”—after all, he and/or Kezzie might have slept on the floor—but the Beardsley ménage was the literal personification of double entendre; nobody who knew the truth could think of them without thinking of …

  I didn’t bother asking how long he and Kezzie had both been living at the cabin; from what Ian had said, they’d likely both been there all the time. Given the normal conditions of life in the backcountry, no one would have blinked at the notion of a man and his wife living with his brother. And so far as the general population of the Ridge was aware, Lizzie was married to Kezzie. She was. She was also married to Jo, as the result of a set of machinations that still caused me to marvel, but the Bearsdley household kept that fact quiet, on Jamie’s orders.

  “Her pap’ll be there,” Jo said, breath pluming white as he pulled alongside me where the trail opened out. “And Auntie Monika. Kezzie went to fetch ’em.”

  “You left Lizzie alone?”

  His shoulders hunched defensively, uncomfortable.

  “She said to,” he said simply.

  I didn’t bother replying, but hastened my step, until a stitch in my side made me slow a little. If Lizzie hadn’t already given birth and hemorrhaged or had some other disaster while alone, it might be a help to have “Auntie Monika”—Mr. Wemyss’s second wife—to hand. Monika Berrisch Wemyss was a German lady, of limited and eccentric English but boundless courage and common sense.

  Mr. Wemyss had his share of courage, too, though it was a quiet sort. He was waiting for us on the porch, with Kezzie, and it was clear that Mr. Wemyss was supporting his son-in-law, rather than the reverse. Kezzie was openly wringing his hands and jigging from foot to foot, while Mr. Wemyss’s slight figure bent consolingly toward him, a hand on his arm. I caught low murmurs, and then they saw us and turned toward us, sudden hope in the straightening of their bodies.

  A long, low howl came from the cabin, and all the men stiffened as though it had been a wolf springing out of the dark at them.

  “Well, she sounds all right,” I said mildly, and all of them exhaled at once, audibly. I wanted to laugh, but thought better not, and pushed open the door.

  “Ugh,” said Lizzie, looking up from the bed. “Oh, it’s you, ma’am. Thank the Lord!”