The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [144]
“What’s wrong?” she asked again.
He took a deep breath and rubbed his sleeve across his face, careless of the smears of black soot.
“Your cousin,” he said abruptly. “I’m sorry about him, Bree.”
Her face softened, and the worried frown eased a little.
“Oh,” she said. She laid a hand on his arm and drew near, so he felt the warmth of her closeness. She sighed deeply and laid her forehead against his shoulder.
“Well,” she said at last, “I’m sorry, too—but it isn’t any more your fault than mine or Da’s—or Ian’s, for that matter.” She gave a small snort that might have been intended for a laugh. “If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s Lizzie’s—and nobody blames her.”
He smiled at that, a little wryly.
“Aye, I see,” he answered, and cupped a hand over the cool smoothness of her plait. “You’re right. And yet—I killed a man, Bree.”
She didn’t startle or jerk away, but somehow went completely still. So did he; it was the last thing he’d meant to say.
“You never told me that before,” she said at last, raising her head to look at him. She sounded tentative, unsure whether to pursue the matter. The breeze lifted a strand of hair across her face, but she didn’t move to brush it away.
“I—well, to tell ye the truth, I’ve scarcely thought of it.” He dropped his hand, and the stasis was broken. She shook herself a little and stood back.
“That sounds terrible, doesn’t it? But—” He struggled for words. He’d not meant to say anything, but now he’d started, it seemed urgently necessary to explain, to put it into proper words.
“It was at night, during a fight in the village. I escaped—I’d a bit of broken pole in my hand, and when someone loomed up out of the darkness, I . . .”
His shoulders slumped suddenly, as he realized that there was no possible way to explain, not really. He looked down at the gun he still held.
“I didn’t know I’d killed him,” he said quietly, eyes on the flint. “I didn’t even see his face. I still don’t know who it was—though it had to be someone I knew; Snaketown was a small village, I knew all ne rononkwe.” Why, he wondered suddenly, had he never once thought of asking who the dead man was? Plain enough; he hadn’t asked because he didn’t want to know.
“Ne rononkwe?” She repeated the words uncertainly.
“The men . . . the warriors . . . braves. It’s what they call themselves, the Kahnyen’kehaka.” The Mohawk words felt strange on his tongue; alien and familiar at once. He could see wariness on her face, and knew his speaking of it had sounded odd to her; not the way one uses a foreign term, handling it gingerly, but the way her father sometimes casually mingled Gaelic and Scots, mind seizing on the most available word in either language.
He stared down at the gun in his hand, as though he’d never seen one before. He wasn’t looking at her, but felt her draw near again, still tentative, but not repulsed.
“Are you . . . sorry about it?”
“No,” he said at once, and looked up at her. “I mean . . . aye, I’m sorry it happened. But sorry I did it—no.” He had spoken without pausing to weigh his words, and was surprised—and relieved—to find them true. He felt regret, as he’d told her, but what guilt there was had nothing to do with the shadow’s death, whoever it had been. He had been a slave in Snaketown, and had no great love for any of the Mohawk, though some were decent enough. He’d not intended killing, but had defended himself. He’d do it again, in the same circumstance.
Yet there was a small canker of guilt—the realization of just how easily he had dismissed that death. The Kahnyen’kehaka sang and told stories of their dead, and kept their memory alive around the fires of the longhouses, naming them for generations and recounting their deeds. Just as the Highlanders did. He thought suddenly of Jamie Fraser, face ablaze at the great fire of the Gathering, calling his people by name and by lineage. Stand by my hand, Roger the singer, son of Jeremiah MacKenzie. Perhaps Ian Murray found the Mohawk not so strange, after all.
Still, he felt obscurely