An echo in the bone - Gabaldon Diana - Страница 173

July 8, 1777

WILLIAM WISHED HE hadn’t accepted the brigadier’s invitation to breakfast. If he had contented himself with the lean rations that were a lieutenant’s lot, he would have been hungry, but happy. As it was, he was on the spot—blissfully filled to the eyes with fried sausage, buttered toast, and grits with honey, for which the brigadier had developed a fondness—when the message had come from General Burgoyne. He didn’t even know what it had said; the brigadier had read it while sipping coffee, frowning slightly, then sighed and called for ink and quill.

“Want a ride this morning, William?” he’d asked, smiling across the table.

Which is how he’d come to be at General Burgoyne’s field headquarters when the Indians had come in. Wyandot, one of the soldiers said; he wasn’t familiar with them, though he had heard that they had a chief called Leatherlips, and he did wonder how that had come about. Perhaps the man was an indefatigable talker?

There were five of them, lean, wolfish-looking rascals. He couldn’t have said what they wore or how they were armed; all his attention was focused on the pole that one of them carried, this decorated with scalps. Fresh scalps. White scalps. A musky smell of blood hung in the air, unpleasantly ripe, and flies moved with the Indians, buzzing loudly. The remains of William’s lavish breakfast coagulated in a hard ball just under his ribs.

The Indians were looking for the paymaster; one of them was asking, in a surprisingly melodious English, where the paymaster was. So it was true, then. General Burgoyne had unleashed his Indians, sent them coursing through the woods like hunting dogs to fall upon the rebels and spread terror among them.

He did not want to look at the scalps but couldn’t help it; his eyes followed them as the pole bobbed through a growing crowd of curious soldiers—some mildly horrified, some cheering. Jesus. Was that a woman’s scalp? It had to be; a flowing mass of honey-colored hair, longer than any man would wear his hair, and shining as though its owner brushed it a hundred strokes every night, like his cousin Dottie said she did. It was not unlike Dottie’s hair, though a little darker—

He turned away abruptly, hoping that he wouldn’t be sick, but turned just as abruptly back when he heard the cry. He’d never heard a sound like that before—a shriek of such horror, such grief, that his heart froze in his chest.

“Jane! Jane!” A Welsh lieutenant he knew slightly, called David Jones, was forcing his way through the crowd, beating at the men with fists and elbows, lunging toward the surprised Indians, his face contorted with emotion.

“Oh, God,” breathed a soldier near him. “His fiancee’s called Jane. He can’t mean—”

Jones threw himself at the pole, snatching at the fall of honey-colored hair, shrieking “JANE!” at the top of his lungs. The Indians, looking disconcerted, jerked the pole away. Jones flung himself on one of them, knocking the surprised Indian to the ground and hammering him with the strength of in sanity.

Men were pushing forward, grabbing at Jones—but not doing so with any great heart. Appalled looks were being shot at the Indians, who clustered together, eyes narrowed and hands at their tomahawks. The whole sense of the gathering had changed in an instant from approval to outrage, and the Indians plainly sensed it.

An officer William didn’t know strode forward, daring the Indians with a hard eye, and tore the blond scalp from the pole. Then stood holding it, disconcerted, the mass of hair seeming alive in his hands, the long strands stirring, waving up around his fingers.

They had finally pulled Jones off the Indian; his friends were patting his shoulders, trying to urge him away, but he stood stock-still, tears rolling down his face and dripping from his chin. “Jane,” he mouthed silently. He held out his hands, cupped and begging, and the officer who held the scalp placed it gently into them.

WHILE STILL ALIVE

LIEUTENANT STACTOE WAS standing by one corpse, arrested. Very slowly, he squatted down, his eyes fixed on something, and as though by reflex covered his mouth with one hand.

I really didn’t want to look.

He’d heard my footsteps, though, and took his hand away from his mouth. I could see the sweat trickling down his neck, the band of his shirt pasted to his skin, dark with it.

“Do you suppose that was done while he was still alive?” he asked, in an ordinary tone of voice.

Reluctantly, I looked over his shoulder.

“Yes,” I said, my voice as unemotional as his. “It was.”

“Oh,” he said. He stood, contemplated the corpse for a moment, then walked away a few steps and threw up.

“Never mind,” I said gently, and took him by the sleeve. “He’s dead now. Come and help.”

Many of the boats had gone astray, been captured before they reached the end of the lake; many more had been taken by British troops waiting at the portage point. Our canoe and several more had escaped, and we had made our way through the woods for a day and a night and most of another day before meeting with the main body of troops fleeing overland from the fort. I was beginning to think that those who were captured were the lucky ones.

I didn’t know how long it had been since the small group we had just discovered was attacked by Indians. The bodies were not fresh.

GUARDS WERE POSTED at night. Those not on watch slept as though poleaxed, exhausted by a day of flight—if anything so cumbrous and labored could be described by such a graceful word. I woke just past dawn from dreams of Snow White trees, gape-mouthed and grasping, to find Jamie crouched beside me, a hand on my arm.

“Ye’d best come, a nighean,” he said softly.

Mrs. Raven had cut her throat with a penknife.

There wasn’t time to dig a grave. I straightened her limbs and closed her eyes, and we piled rocks and branches over her before staggering back to the rut that passed for a road through the wilderness.

AS DARKNESS CAME up through the trees, we began to hear them. High ululating shrieks. Hunting wolves.

“March on, march on! Indians!” one of the militiamen shouted.

As if summoned by the shout, a bloodcurdling shriek wavered through the darkness nearby, and the stumbling retreat turned at once to headlong panic, men dropping their bundles and pushing one another out of the way in their haste to flee.

There were shrieks from the refugees, too, though these were quickly stifled.

“Off the road,” Jamie said, low and fierce, and began pushing the slow and bewildered into the woods. “They may not know where we are. Yet.”

And then again, they might.

“D’ye have your death song ready, Uncle?” Ian whispered. He had caught us up the day before, and now he and Jamie were pressed close on either side of me, where we had taken cover behind a huge fallen trunk.

“Oh, I’ll sing them a death song, if it comes to that,” Jamie muttered, half under his breath, and took out one of the pistols from his belt.

“You can’t sing,” I said. I hadn’t meant to be funny—I was so frightened that I said by it reflex, the first thing that came into my mind—and he didn’t laugh.

“That’s true,” he said. “Well, then.”

He primed the pistol, closed the pan and thrust it into his belt.

“Dinna be afraid, a nighean,” Jamie whispered, and I saw his throat work as he swallowed. “I’ll not let them take ye. Not alive.” He touched the pistol at his belt.

I stared at him, then at the pistol. I hadn’t thought it possible to be more afraid.

I felt suddenly as though my spinal cord had snapped; my limbs wouldn’t move, and my bowels very literally turned to water. I understood in that moment exactly what had led Mrs. Raven to slash her own throat.