It came free with the suddenness of birth, and I was swiping blood and mucus from the tiny sealed face, blowing into its lungs, gently, gently, you have to blow gently, the alveoli of the lungs are like cobwebs, so small, compressing its chest, no more than a hand’s span, two fingers pressing, no more, and felt the tiny spring of it, delicate as a watch spring, felt the movement, small squirms, a faint instinctive struggling—and felt it fade, that flicker, that tiny spark of life, cried out in anguish and clutched the tiny, doll-like body to my breast, still warm, still warm.
“Don’t go,” I said, “don’t go, don’t go, please don’t go.” But the vibrancy faded, a small blue glow that seemed to light the palms of my hands for an instant, then dwindle like a candle flame, to the coal of a smoldering wick, to the faintest trace of brightness—then everything was dark.
I was still sitting in the brilliant sun, crying and blood-soaked, the body of the little boy in my lap, the butchered corpse of my Malva beside me, when they found me.
85
THE STOLEN BRIDE
A WEEK PASSED AFTER MALVA’S DEATH, and there was no slightest hint of who had killed her. Whispering, sidelong glances, and a palpable fog of suspicion hung about the Ridge, but despite Jamie’s every effort, no one could be located who knew—or would say—anything at all useful.
I could see the tension and frustration building up in Jamie, day by day, and knew it must find an outlet. I had no idea what he might do, though.
After breakfast on the Wednesday, Jamie stood glowering at the window in his study, then slammed down his fist on the table, with a suddenness that made me jump.
“I have reached the mortal limit of endurance,” he informed me. “One moment more of this, and I shall run mad. I must do something, and I will.” Without waiting for any response to this statement, he strode to the office door, flung it open, and bellowed, “Joseph!” into the hall.
Mr. Wemyss appeared out of the kitchen, where he had been sweeping the chimney at Mrs. Bug’s direction, looking startled, pale, soot-smudged, and generally unkempt.
Jamie ignored the black footprints on the study floor—he had burned the rug—and fixed Mr. Wemyss with a commanding gaze.
“D’ye want that woman?” he demanded.
“Woman?” Mr. Wemyss was understandably bewildered. “What—oh. Are you—might you be referring to Fraulein Berrisch?”
“Who else? D’ye want her?” Jamie repeated.
It had plainly been a long time since anyone had asked Mr. Wemyss what he wanted, and it took him some time to gather his wits from the shock of it.
Brutal prodding by Jamie forced him past deprecating murmurs about the Fraulein’s friends no doubt being the best judge of her happiness, his own unsuitability, poverty, and general unworthiness as a husband, and into—at long last—a reckless admission that, well, if the Fraulein should not be terribly averse to the prospect, perhaps . . . well . . . in a word . . .
“Aye, sir,” he said, looking terrified at his own boldness. “I do. Very much!” he blurted.
“Good.” Jamie nodded, pleased. “We’ll go and get her, then.”
Mr. Wemyss was open-mouthed with astonishment; so was I. Jamie swung round to me, issuing orders with the confidence and joie de vivre of a sea-captain with a fat prize in view.
“Go and find Young Ian for me, will ye, Sassenach? And tell Mrs. Bug to put up food, enough for a week’s travel for four men. And then fetch Roger Mac; we’ll need a minister.”
He rubbed his hands together in satisfaction, then clapped Mr. Wemyss on the shoulder, causing a small puff of soot to rise from his clothes.
“Go fettle yourself, Joseph,” he said. “And comb your hair. We’re going to go and steal ye a bride.”
“. . . AND PUT A PISTOL TO his breest, his breest,” Young Ian chanted, “Marry me, marry me, minister, or else I’ll be your priest, your priest—or else I’ll be your priest!”
“Of course,” Roger said, dropping the song, in which a bold young man named Willie rides with his friends to abduct and forcibly marry a young woman who proves bolder yet, “we’ll hope ye prove a wee bit more capable than Willie upon the night, aye, Joseph?”
Mr. Wemyss, scrubbed, dressed, and fairly vibrating with excitement, gave him a glance of complete incomprehension. Roger grinned, tightening the strap of his saddlebag.
“Young Willie obliges a minister to marry him to the young woman at gunpoint,” he explained to Mr. Wemyss, “but then, when he takes his stolen bride to bed, she’ll have none of him—and his best efforts will not avail to force her.”
“And so return me, Willie, to my hame, as virgin as I came, I came—as virgin as I came!” Ian caroled.
“Now, mind,” Roger said warningly to Jamie, who was heaving his own saddlebags over Gideon’s back. “If the Fraulein is at all unwilling . . .”
“What, unwilling to be wed to Joseph?” Jamie clapped Mr. Wemyss on the back, then bent to give him a foot up and fairly heaved the smaller man into the saddle. “I canna see any woman of sense turning from such an opportunity, can you, a charaid?”
He took a quick look round the clearing, to see all was well, then ran up the steps and kissed me in quick farewell, before running down again to mount Gideon, who for once seemed amenable and made no effort to bite him.
“Keep well, mo nighean donn,” he said, smiling into my eyes. And then they were gone, thundering out of the clearing like a gang of Highland raiders, Ian’s ear-splitting whoops ringing from the trees.
ODDLY ENOUGH, the departure of the men seemed to ease things slightly. The talk, of course, went merrily on—but without Jamie or Ian there to serve as a lightning-rod, it merely crackled to and fro like St. Elmo’s fire; spitting, fizzing, and making everyone’s hair stand on end, but essentially a harmless phenomenon, unless touched directly.
The house felt less an embattled fortress, and more the eye of a storm.
Also, with Mr. Wemyss out of the house, Lizzie came to visit, bringing little Rodney Joseph, as the baby was called—Roger having set his face firmly against the young fathers’ enthusiastic suggestions of Tilgath-pileser and Ichabod. Wee Rogerina had come out of it all right, being now commonly known as Rory, but Roger declined entirely to hear of a child being christened anything that might result in his being known to the world at large as Icky.
Rodney seemed a very congenial child, in part because he had never quite lost that air of round-eyed astonishment that made him seem agog to hear what you had to say. Lizzie’s astonishment at his birth had mutated into an enchantment that might have completely eclipsed Jo and Kezzie, were it not for the fact that they shared it.
Either one of them would—unless forcibly stopped—spend half an hour discussing Rodney’s bowel habits with the intensity heretofore reserved for new snares and the peculiar things found inside the stomachs of animals they had killed. Pigs, it seemed, really would eat anything; so would Rodney.
A few days after the men’s departure on their bride-stealing expedition, Brianna had come up from her cabin with Jemmy to visit, and Lizzie likewise had brought Rodney. The two of them joined Amy McCallum and me in the kitchen, where we were spending a pleasant evening sewing by the light of the fire, admiring Rodney, keeping a negligent eye on Jemmy and Aidan—and after a certain amount of cautious exploration, devoting ourselves wholeheartedly to a rundown of the male population of the Ridge, viewed in the light of suspects.
I, of course, had a more personal and painful interest in the topic, but all three of the young women were solidly on the side of justice—i.e., the side that refused even to contemplate the notion that either Jamie or I might have had anything to do with the murder of Malva Christie.
For myself, I found such open speculation rather a comfort. I had, of course, been engaging in private conjecture nonstop—and an exhausting business it was, too. Not only was it unpleasant to visualize every man I knew in the role of cold-blooded murderer—the process obliged me continuously to reimagine the murder itself, and relive the moment when I had found her.
“I’d really hate to think it might have been Bobby,” Bree said, frowning as she pushed a wooden darning egg into the heel of a sock. “He seems just such a nice boy.”
Lizzie drew down her chin at this, pursing her lips.
“Oh, aye, he’s a sweet lad,” she said. “But what ye might call warm-blooded.”
All of us looked at her.
“Well,” she said mildly, “I didna let him, but he tried hard enough. And when I said no, he did go off and kick a tree.”
“My husband would do that sometimes, if I refused him,” Amy said, thoughtful. “But I’m sure he wouldna have cut my throat.”
“Well, but Malva didn’t refuse whoever it was,” Bree pointed out, squinting as she threaded her darning needle. “That was the problem. He killed her because she was pregnant, and he was afraid she’d tell everyone.”
“Ho!” Lizzie said, triumphant. “Well, then—it canna have been Bobby at all, can it? For when my Da turned him awa’—” A brief shadow crossed her face at mention of her father, who still had not spoken a word to her nor acknowledged the birth of little Rodney. “Did he not think of speiring for Malva Christie? Ian said he meant to. And if she were with child by him—well, then, her father would be obliged to agree, would he not?”
Amy nodded, finding this convincing, but Bree had objections.
“Yes—but she was insisting that it wasn’t his baby. And he threw up in the blackberry bushes when he heard that she was”—her lips compressed momentarily—“well, he wasn’t happy at all. So he might have killed her out of jealousy, don’t you think?”
Lizzie and Amy hmm’d dubiously at this—both of them were fond of Bobby—but were obliged to admit the possibility.
“What I wonder about,” I said a little hesitantly, “is the older men. The married ones. Everyone knows about the young men who were interested in her—but I’ve certainly seen more than one married man glance at her in passing.”
“I nominate Hiram Crombie,” Bree said at once, stabbing her needle into the heel of the sock. Everyone laughed, but she shook her head.
“No, I’m serious. It’s always the really religious, very uptight ones that turn out to have secret drawers full of women’s underwear, and slink around molesting choirboys.”
Amy’s jaw dropped.
“Drawers full of women’s underwear?” she said. “What . . . shifts and stays? Whatever would he do wi’ them?”
Brianna flushed at that, having forgotten her audience. She coughed, but there was no good way out.
“Er . . . well. I was thinking more of French women’s underwear,” she said weakly. “Um . . . lacy sorts of things.”
“Oh, French,” Lizzie said, nodding wisely. Everyone knew about the notorious reputation of French ladies—though I doubted that any woman on Fraser’s Ridge save myself had ever seen one. In the interests of covering Bree’s lapse, though, I obligingly told them about La Nestlé, the King of France’s mistress, who had had her ni**les pierced and appeared at court with her br**sts exposed, sporting gold hoops through them.