The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [492]
Peter nodded slowly, face creased in concentration.
“That might be, Mac Dubh,” he allowed. “And if there’s a wee black bastard hangin’ about in the wood—who’s to say how many the bear’s killed, and how many the wee black devil’s done for, and the bear takin’ the blame?”
“But who is this wee black devil?” Bree asked. The men looked from one to another, and shrugged, more or less in unison.
“It must be an escaped slave, surely?” I said, lifting my brows at Jamie. “I can’t see why a free black in his right mind would off go into the wilderness alone like that.”
“Maybe he isn’t in his right mind,” Bree suggested. “Slave or free. If he’s going around killing people, I mean.” She cast an uneasy look at the wood around us, and put a hand on Jemmy, who was curled in a blanket on the ground beside her, sound asleep.
The men looked automatically to their weapons, and even I reached under my apron to touch the knife I wore at my belt for digging and chopping.
The forest seemed suddenly both sinister and claustrophobic. It was much too easy to imagine lurking eyes in the shadows, ascribe the constant soft rustle of leaves to stealthy footsteps or the brush of passing fur.
Jamie cleared his throat.
“Your wife’s not mentioned black devils, I suppose, Peter?”
Bewlie shook his head. The concern with which he had greeted Josiah’s tale was still stamped upon his grizzled face, but a small touch of amusement gleamed in his eyes.
“No. I can’t say as she has, Mac Dubh. The only thing I recall in that regard is the Black Man o’ the West.”
“And who is that?” Josiah asked, interested.
Peter shrugged and scratched at his beard.
“Aye, well, I shouldna say it’s anyone, so to speak. Only that the shamans say there is a spirit who lives in each o’ the four directions, and each spirit has a color to him—so when they go to singin’ their prayers and the like, they’ll maybe call the Red Man o’ the East to help the person they’re singing for, because Red is the color of triumph and success. North, that’s blue—the Blue Man, to give the spirit of the North his right name—that’s defeat and trouble. So ye’d call on him to come and give your enemy a bit of grief, aye? To the South, that’s the White Man, and he’s peace and happiness; they sing to him for the women with child, and the like.”
Jamie looked both startled and interested to hear this.
“That’s verra like the four airts, Peter, is it no?”
“Well, it is, then,” Peter agreed, nodding. “Odd, no? That the Cherokee should get hold of the same notions as we Hielanders have?”
“Oh, not so much.” Jamie gestured to the dark wood, beyond the small circle of our fire. “They live as we do, aye? Hunters, and dwellers in the mountains. Why should they not see what we have seen?”
Peter nodded slowly, but Josiah was impatient with this philosophizing.
“Well, what’s the Black Man o’ the West, then?” he demanded. Both Jamie and Peter turned their heads as one to look at him. The two men looked nothing alike—Peter was short, squat, and genially bearded, Jamie tall and elegant, even in his hunting clothes—and yet there was something identical in their eyes, that made little mouse-feet run skittering down my spine. “What we have seen,” indeed! I thought.
“The West is the home of the dead,” Jamie said softly, and Peter nodded, soberly.
“And the Black Man o’ the West is death himself,” he added. “Or so say the Cherokee.”
Josiah was heard to mutter that he didn’t think so very much of that idea, but Brianna thought even less of it.
“I do not believe that the spirit of the West was out in the woods conking people on the head,” she declared firmly. “It was a person Josiah saw. And it was a black person. Ergo, it was either a free black or an escaped slave. And given the odds, I vote for escaped slave.”
I wasn’t sure it was a matter for democratic process, but