“I might have done that in rage—I did do it in a black rage—but I would have done the same was my blood as cold as ice.” He touched my face, smoothing back an escaped curl. “Do ye not see? Those men were brigands, and worse. To leave one of them alive would be to leave the root of a poisonous plant in the ground, to grow again.”
It was a vivid image—but so was my memory of that large, shambling man, wandering vaguely among the pigpens at Beardsley’s trading post where I’d seen him, afterward. Seeming so unlike the man who’d come out of the darkness, to smother me with the weight of his body …
“But he seemed so … feckless,” I said, with a helpless gesture. “How could someone like that even begin to assemble a—a gang?”
He stood up suddenly, unable to sit any longer, and paced restlessly to and fro in front of me.
“D’ye not see, Sassenach? Even was he a feckless dolt—he went places. Ye saw him talk wi’ the folk at Beardsley’s, no?”
“Yes,” I said slowly, “but—”
He stopped, glaring down at me.
“And what if he began to talk, one day, about how he’d ridden wi’ Hodgepile and the Browns, the things they’d done? What if he lost himself in drink, and boasted of how he’d—” He choked that off and took a deep breath. “About what he’d done to you.”
I felt as though I’d swallowed something cold and slimy. And still faintly alive. Jamie’s mouth compressed, looking at my face.
“I’m sorry, Sassenach,” he said quietly. “But it’s true. And I wouldna let that happen. Because of you. Because of me. But more … because if it was known that such a thing had happened—”
“It was known,” I said, my lips stiff. “It is known.” None of the men who had rescued me that night could have been in much doubt that I’d been raped, whether they knew which man—men—had done the act, or not. If they knew, their wives knew. No one had ever spoken to me of it, nor ever would, but the knowledge was there, and no way ever to make it go away.
“Because if it was known that such a thing had happened,” he repeated evenly, “and that any man who took part in it had been allowed to live … then anyone who lives under my protection would feel themselves helpless. And rightly so.”
He exhaled strongly through his nose, turning away.
“D’ye no remember that man—the one who called himself Wendigo?”
“Jesus.” Gooseflesh rippled over my shoulders and down my arms. I had forgotten. Not the man himself—he was a time traveler named Wendigo Donner—but his connection with the man we were discussing.
A member of Hodgepile’s gang, Donner had escaped into the darkness when Jamie and his men had rescued me—and months later had come back to the Ridge, with companions, to rob and kill, in search of the gemstones he knew we had. It was his attack on the Big House that had—indirectly—caused the conflagration that burned it to the ground, and his ashes were still mingled with the remains of our lives in that clearing.
Jamie was right. Donner had escaped and come back to try to kill us. To leave the lumpkin who’d raped me at large was to risk the same thing happening again. The realization of it sickened me. I had managed to put most of what had happened aside, dealing with the physical aspects as necessary, firmly quashing or refusing to remember the rest. But it was still there—all of it, turning like an evil prism to show things in a harsh new light. The light, I now realized, that Jamie always saw by.
And seeing now clearly myself, I clenched my belly muscles and forced my voice to be steady.
“What if he wasn’t the last of them?”
Jamie shook his head, not in negation, but resignation.
“It doesna matter, Sassenach. If there were others who escaped … most would be wise enough to leave and stay gone. But it doesna matter—another gang will spring up. It’s the way of things, aye?”
“Is it?” I thought he was right—I knew he was right, in terms of wars, governments, human foolishness in general. I just didn’t want to believe it was true of this place. This was home.
He nodded, watching my face, not without sympathy.
“Remember Scotland—the Watch?”
“Yes.” The Watches, he might have said, for there were many. Organized gangs, who extorted money for protection—but sometimes gave that protection. And if they didn’t get their money—black rent, it was called—might burn your house or crops. Or do worse.