Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [452]
“Aye, I am. Ye dinna mind it so much, though?”
“No.” His hair smelt of smoke and pinesap. There were still bits of needles caught in it; one pricked smooth and sharp against my lips.
“She didn’t mean it,” I said.
“Aye, she did,” he said, and I felt him swallow the thickness in his throat. “I heard her.”
“I heard you both.” I rubbed slowly between his shoulder blades, feeling the faint traces of the old scars, the thicker, more recent welts left by the bear’s claws. “She’s just like you; she’ll say things in a temper she’d never say in cold blood. You didn’t mean all the things you said to her, did you?”
“No.” I could feel the tightness in him lessening, the joints of his body loosening, yielding reluctantly to the persuasion of my fingers. “No, I didna mean it. Not all of it.”
“Neither did she.”
I waited a moment, stroking him as I had stroked Brianna, when she was small, and afraid.
“You can believe me,” I whispered. “I love you both.”
He sighed, deeply, and was quiet for a moment.
“If I can find the man and bring him back to her. If I do—d’ye think she’ll forgive me one day?”
“Yes,” I said. “I know it.”
On the other side of the partition, I heard the small sounds of lovemaking begin; the shift and sigh, the murmured words that have no language.
“You have to go.” Brianna had said to me. “You’re the only one who can bring him back.”
It occurred to me for the first time that perhaps she hadn’t been speaking of Roger.
It was a long trek through the mountains, made longer by the winter weather. There were days when it was impossible to travel; when we crouched all day under rocky overhangs or in the shelter of a grove of trees, huddled against the wind.
Once we were through the mountains, the traveling was somewhat easier, though the temperatures grew colder as we headed north. Some nights we ate cold food, unable to keep a fire alight in snow and wind. But each night I lay with Jamie, closely huddled together within a single cocoon of furs and blankets, sharing our warmth.
I kept close count of the days, marking them by means of a length of knotted twine. We had left River Run in early January; it was mid-February before Onakara pointed out to us the smoke rising in the distance that marked the Mohawk village where he and his companions had taken Roger Wakefield. “Snake-town,” he said it was called.
Six weeks, and Brianna would be nearly six months gone. If we could get Roger back quickly—and if he was capable of travel, I added grimly to myself—we should be back well before the child was due. If Roger wasn’t here, though—if the Mohawk had sold him elsewhere … or if he was dead—said a small cold voice inside my head, we would return without delay.
Onakara declined to accompany us into the village, which did absolutely nothing to increase my confidence in our prospects. Jamie thanked him and saw him off, with one of the horses, a good knife, and a flask of whisky in payment for his services.
We buried the rest of the whisky, hiding it carefully some distance outside the village.
“Will they understand what we want?” I asked, as we remounted. “Is Tuscarora close enough to Mohawk for us to talk to them?”
“It’s no quite the same, Auntie, but close,” Ian said. It was snowing lightly, and the flakes clung melting to his eyelashes. “Like the differences between Italian and Spanish, maybe. But Onakara says that the sachem and a few others have a bit of English, though they mostly dinna choose to use it. But the Mohawk fought with the English against the French; there will be some who ken it.”
“Well, then.” Jamie smiled at us and laid his musket across the saddle in front of him. “Let’s go and try our luck.”
54
CAPTIVITY I
February 1770
He had been in the Mohawk village nearly three months, by the reckoning of his knotted string. At first he had not known who they were; only that they were a different kind of Indian than his captors—and that his captors were afraid of them.
He had stood numb with exhaustion while