The Outlandish Companion Page 17

  Returning to the village after a hunting trip, burdened with moose meat, he is surprised to be taken and hustled away to a small hut containing a young Jesuit priest. Roger has no notion what may be happening, but is relieved beyond measure to have another white man to talk with. The other man, Père Alexandre Ferigault, is a missionary, who has lived some years with the Mohawk, converting some— alienating others. As he observes, “One is Kahnyen’kehaka, or one is—other.” In spite of his years with the Indians, Père Ferigault is still “other.”

  His current status as captive is the result of a schism precipitated by a love affair with one of his converts. Not the affair as such—as he explains to Roger, the Mohawk do not practice marriage in the European fashion, and have no objection to cohabitation by willing partners—but rather his repudiation of it. Learning that his lover was pregnant, Father Alexandre experienced what he thinks was a heavenly message revealing the error of his ways, whereupon he promptly removed himself from the girl’s longhouse.

  However, he had established a policy of not baptizing children unless their parents were both practicing Catholics in a state of grace, fearing that otherwise the Indians might—as they did elsewhere—view baptism as merely a superstitious charm against evil, rather than a sacrament. Bound by his own policy, therefore, he cannot baptize his child—his lover remained a convert, in spite of considerable reason to renounce her faith, but he cannot absolve himself of sin—and thus achieve a state of grace—because he cannot bring himself to stop loving her.

  It is this delicate situation that has caused his present difficulties; the nonconvert population has never been fond of him, and tolerated him only for the sake of a high-ranking man who was one of his converts. This man, the grandfather of the infant in question, is now infuriated at the priest’s refusal to baptize his own child, and has withdrawn his protection. The priest has been brought to Snaketown to face the judgment of the Council there—and Father Alexandre is not hopeful of his prospects.

  Père Ferigault’s story distracts Roger from his own misery, but adds to his fear, as the Indians remove the priest temporarily in order to torture him. Why is Roger held here? Is he meant to face a similar fate?

  Roger is, in fact, merely being hidden in order to prevent the Frasers from catching sight of him until a bargain has been concluded for his ransom. Jamie has come with his entire stock of whisky, prepared to give it for Roger’s release, but—no more trusting than the Indians—has cached it in the woods until the bargain is made.

  For their part, some of the Indians are willing to accept the bargain, others— wary of the effects of liquor on the people—are not. Some women of the village show a disposition to keep Roger and adopt him into the tribe—a Mohawk custom with some captives.

  In order to show goodwill and demonstrate the quality of the goods offered, Young Ian arranges—through the offices of the young woman with whom he has formed a relationship—a small ceilidh, a whisky-tasting party at which stories are told and songs sung, involving several of the more prominent men of the village. Claire is invited to share the fire of Tewaktenyonh, an elderly woman of some importance in the village, sister to both the war chief and the sachem of the village.

  Claire has with her the opal unearthed with the skull she found on the mountain a year earlier—an opal that makes the Indians very uneasy indeed. While the men are drinking, Tewaktenyonh asks to see the stone, and upon hearing Claire’s story of its discovery, tells a story of her own—the story of Otter-Tooth, a strange man who came to the village some forty years before.

  Urging the Mohawk to attack and drive out the white settlers, Otter-Tooth made a name for himself as a warrior, but incurred the villagers’ uneasiness. The Mohawk do not make war for no reason, and there was neither treaty nor friction requiring it— yet Otter-Tooth urged war with greater and greater urgency. Finally he so disturbed the village that he was ordered to leave—but would not. Cast out, he kept returning, always preaching doom for the Mohawk, foretelling their destruction if they would not heed his words.

  Concluding that Otter-Tooth harbored a malign spirit, and was likely a sorcerer himself, the Mohawk tried once more to thrust him out of the village, and failing this, decided to kill him. Tortured and left bound, Otter-Tooth succeeded in escaping, and was pursued to the south by the men of the village, who eventually caught up with him and killed him.

  To prevent his spirit from following them home, the men cut off his head and buried it, together with the great opal that Otter-Tooth carried. He called the stone his tika-ba, Tewaktenyonh tells Claire. The Indians have no notion what this term meant, but Claire thinks she does— the opal was his “ticket back”—the means of return for a time-traveler.

  Meanwhile, Jamie and Young Ian have celebrated a successful ceilidh, and the Frasers retire, hopeful of an early escape from the village.

  AT RIVER RUN, Brianna is physically thriving, abloom with pregnancy. Her emotions are in a less flourishing state, however. Fear for her parents and Roger, loneliness and guilt, give way to astonishment and anger, when she learns that Jocasta, eager to protect River Run, has decided both to make Brianna her heir— and to find her a suitable husband, to be enticed by the rich promise of her inheritance.

  Brianna protests that she cannot possibly own slaves, does not want to marry in any case … but as Jocasta’s body servant, Phaedre, observes, “Well, like I say—it ain’t so much what you want. It’s what Miss Jo wants. Now, let’s try this dress.”

  Successful in rebuffing the advances of the local suitors, Brianna is slightly more wary of a new arrival—Lord John William Grey, of Mount Josiah plantation in Virginia, who is, she is informed, not only a rich man and a lord—eminently suitable, in other words—but an old friend of her father’s.

  To her surprise, Lord John is kind, personable, witty, and honorable. He is also homosexual, a fact she discovers by accident one night. The discovery supplies her with a means to solve the problem plaguing her.

  She cannot in good conscience marry a man she doesn’t love; at the same time, she doesn’t want Roger to marry her out of a sense of obligation—feeling that even though his sense of honor may compel him to stay with her, he will resent being permanently trapped in the past. This, added to the doubt about the impending baby’s paternity, seems too much to ask of him, and an unfair burden with which to begin a marriage. If he returns to find her unmarried, though, he may feel that he has no choice.

  Brianna therefore implements her plan—blackmailing Lord John into marriage. She explains her reasoning to him; since he would not in any case desire her in a wifely fashion, she wouldn’t be depriving him of the physical love she can’t give. At the same time, Roger would be relieved of both choice and obligation. And if Lord John does not choose to acquiesce … she takes a deep breath and threatens to expose him as a pederast.

  Lord John’s response to this remarkable threat is, “Child, you would make an angel weep, and God knows I am no angel!”

  Reluctantly, he is obliged to reveal the background of his relationship with Jamie Fraser, a tale to which Brianna listens with mingled horror and fascination. Lord John convinces her that she must at least allow Roger to make his own choice, and further, that she must forgive her father for his part in her troubles. Firmly declining to go along with her plan, he suggests that they pretend to an engagement that will at least temporarily relieve her of the unwanted attentions of Jocasta’s horde of suitors.

  IMPRISONED IN HIS SMALL HUT, Roger has no inkling of the arrival of a ransom party. He has no notion what the Indians mean to do with him, but his fears are not allayed by their treatment of the priest. Father Alexandre is stripped, removed from the hut, and returned some hours later, minus one ear. The priest tells Roger that he is sure the Mohawk mean to kill him, and asks Roger—the son of a minister— both to hear his confession and to pray for him, telling him that “in time of need, any man may do the office of a priest.”

  When the Indians come at nightfall to re
move the priest, Roger is sure the worst is happening. Still, he has no choice but to sit and listen to the beating of the drums, and the sound of upraised voices outside.

  The yelling escalates, though, and it becomes clear that whatever is happening outside, it’s out of control. A fight is raging in the center of the village, and among the shouts and screams, Roger hears an undeniably Scottish voice, shouting in Gaelic. Inspired by the thought that rescue is at hand, Roger seizes the absence of the guard from his doorway to rush out, armed with a makeshift spear broken from a bedframe.

  Outside, everything is confusion. Men are fighting, stumbling to and fro in the darkness amid a reek of whisky—and in the huge firepit, the flames are roaring high, consuming the body of the priest. Roger is attacked and strikes back with his spear, felling his opponent, but then is attacked himself from behind, clubbed into near-insensibility.

  Waking back in the confines of the hut, he finds another senseless body lying on the ground nearby—Jamie Fraser, the man he has been itching to get his hands on for the last several months. Faced with Fraser at last, though, his response is neither fury nor alarm, but joyful relief—Fraser can be here only because Brianna has sent him.

  The Fraser stone.

  Dying with the assurance that Brianna loves him is better than dying without it— but he hadn’t wanted to die in the first place. Luckily, Fraser is not dead, either, and only slightly injured. Restored to his senses, Jamie is less than thrilled to see Roger, being more concerned with the whereabouts of Claire. He tells Roger what he knows of events outside; the Indians had tortured the priest and hung him in the flames, when quite unexpectedly, a girl standing in the crowd had handed a cradleboard with a baby to Claire and walked steadily into the fire herself.

  An uproar immediately began, apparently exacerbated by drunkenness—some of the Indians having discovered the cache of whisky barrels. Caught up in the maelstrom, Jamie found himself fighting, along with Young Ian, to protect Claire and the baby, but was overcome.

  The rest of the story is supplied by Claire, who arrives near daybreak. She has spent the night in a longhouse, under the protection of Tewaktenyonh, and is able to tell the men what has happened—or most of it.

  Some of the younger braves had taken the whisky, assuming the bargain for Roger to be concluded. However, one man has perished in the fighting—the man Roger pierced with his spear. Since the whisky was given as the price for Roger’s life, the Indians do not intend to kill him in revenge—but rather intend to forcibly adopt one member of the ransom party, in replacement of the dead man. The only things Claire doesn’t know at this point are who will be selected—and where Young Ian is.

  Jamie insists that he will remain with the Indians; Roger must return with Claire, for Brianna’s sake. Besides, as he points out logically, if he and Claire are to die in a fire in 1776, neither of them can be killed in the meantime. He will be safe enough in Snaketown, and so soon as an opportunity presents itself, he will escape and head south by himself.

  Claire is more than reluctant to agree to this, but has no choice. Neither has Jamie; later in the day, the door flap opens to admit Ian, his scalp plucked to a war lock, and the marks of fresh tattooing blood-crusted on his cheeks. He has made his choice, he says quietly—he will remain, with the young woman he calls Emily. The others are free to go.

  Remonstrance and objection are useless; Ian is now Kahnyen’kehaka, allowed to speak in no tongue but the Mohawk, scrubbed clean of the taint of white blood, named Wolf’s Brother in a ceremony that claims him forever as an Indian. Heartsick, Claire and Jamie take leave of Ian and Rollo, turning to go south with Roger.

  They haven’t gone far when Jamie’s grief over Ian turns to fury with Roger. He reveals to Roger the truth about Brianna’s pregnancy—that it is likely the result of rape by Bonnet—and demands to know whether Roger intends to stand by his daughter. If not, he says, Roger can bloody well go back through the stones at once.

  Roger is taken completely by surprise, and deeply shocked. After a brief and violent altercation, Jamie abandons him, insisting that Claire accompany him. He flings the opal at Roger’s feet, leaving Roger to make up his mind whether he can accept the coming child as his own, and be a decent husband to Bree—or whether he will go back through the stones of the circle he discovered on his way north with the Indians.

  IN RIVER RUN, Lord John has arrived with news—Stephen Bonnet has been captured, and condemned to hang. Momentarily shocked by the news, Brianna comes to a decision; she must see Bonnet, she tells Lord John, and speak to him. Upon Lord John’s objection to this notion, she shows him the note Jamie left her upon his departure—urging her to find some way by which to forgive Bonnet, for the sake of her own peace. At first too angry with Jamie to listen to him, she has spent enough time alone to realize the wisdom of his words. So far she has found no way to forgive; if she sees the man, perhaps she can make peace with both him and herself.

  Reluctantly, Lord John agrees, and takes her to the warehouse on the river—where the Crown stores imported liquor, as well as the turpentine, pitch, and other naval stores intended for the naval yards at Charleston—where Bonnet is held prisoner, in an underground cell.

  His gaze stayed on her face, mildly curious.

  “Have we business still to do then, darlin’?”

  She took a deep breath—through her mouth, this time.

  “They told me you’re going to hang.”

  “They told me the same thing.” He shifted again on the hard wooden bench. He stretched his head to one side, to ease the muscles of his neck, and peered up sidelong at her. “You’ll not have come from pity, though, I shouldn’t think.”

  “No,” she said, watching him thoughtfully. “To be honest, I’ll rest a lot easier once you’re dead.”

  He stared at her for a moment, then burst out laughing. He laughed hard enough that tears came to his eyes; he wiped them carelessly, bending his head to swipe his face against a shrugged shoulder, then straightened up, the marks of his laughter still on his face.

  “What is it you want from me, then?”

  She opened her mouth to reply, and quite suddenly, the link between them dissolved. She had not moved, but felt as though she had taken one step across an impassable abyss. She stood now safe on the other side, alone. Blessedly alone. He could no longer touch her.

  “Nothing, ”she said, her voice clear in her own ears. “I don’t want anything at all from you. I came to give you something. ”

  She opened her cloak, and ran her hands over the swell of her abdomen. The small inhabitant stretched and rolled, its touch a blind caress of hand and womb, both intimate and abstract.

  “Yours,” she said.

  He looked at the bulge, and then at her.

  “I’ve had whores try to foist their spawn on me before,” he said. But he spoke without viciousness, and she thought there was a new stillness behind the wary eyes.

  “Do you think I’m a whore?” She didn’t care if he did or not, though she doubted he did. “I’ve no reason to lie. I already told you, I don’t want anything from you.”

  She drew the cloak back together, covering herself. She drew herself up then, feeling the ache in her back ease with the movement. It was done. She was ready to go.

  “You’re going to die,” she said to him, and she who had not come for pity’s sake was surprised to find she had some. “If it makes the dying easier for you, to know there’s something of you left on earth—then you’re welcome to the knowledge. But I’ve finished with you, now.”

  Her departure is prevented, though, by the sudden appearance of Sergeant Murchison. Creeping down to the dungeon to join Bonnet, he has come upon and killed—evidently—Lord John, who lies in a boneless heap, facedown on the dank bricks of the passageway. His plain intent is to murder Brianna as well, but the close quarters prevent his raising the musket to shoot her. He lifts the gun instead, to club her with the stock, but he has bargained without the protective fury of a mot
her-to-be—and the strength of a tall and muscular woman. She seizes the gun from him, strikes him in the head, and watches him fall unconscious.

  With the strength of her outburst fading fast, she steps back far enough to get Bonnet at gunpoint, and forces him to tell her what has been going on. Prior to his capture, he had been running cheap contraband alcohol up the river, exchanging it for expensive brandy and wine stocked in the warehouse, which Murchison had abstracted. The cheap alcohol was stored in casks marked with the Crowns stamp, the good liquor sold off quietly. But since Bonnet’s capture, one of Murchison’s soldiers, a Private Hodgepile, had gotten wind of the scheme and had been asking questions.

  The plan was therefore that Murchison would release Bonnet, after setting fuses in the warehouse and spilling several barrels of highly flammable turpentine. The warehouse would go up in flames, concealing all evidence of the smuggling—and Bonnet would escape, being assumed dead in the conflagration.

  Dancing with impatience, Bonnet urges her to let him go. The fuses have been set and lit, he tells her; the warehouse is going to explode overhead at any moment! She steps back, a little dazed, but motions to the unconscious Murchison, insisting that Bonnet cannot mean to leave him behind—the man is still alive.

  Pragmatic as always, Bonnet takes the knife from Murchison’s belt and cuts his throat. Observing that he is no longer alive, and thus presents no moral dilemma, he strides to the door, urging Brianna to leave as well—and promptly.

  Her first impulse is to do just that—but she cannot go without finding out whether Lord John is truly dead. A frantic search for a pulse reveals him to be badly injured, but not quite dead. A smallish man, he is still too much for her to carry by herself, but she cannot, will not, leave him.