There were more sounds in the room now, soft voices, the spitting of a cracking log, the wind under the eaves of the roof, the rushing sound of pines and the sloshing of water. Movement, warmth, life. Jamie’s hand, solid on my shoulder. I heard it all, I felt it all, but it was removed from me, happening in another world. All I was, was the sound of a heartbeat.
And in some enormity of time, I knew that there were two of us in that sound, a sharing of the beat of a heart, the knowledge of life. My finger tapping, slow and sure.
Thup-tup … thup-tup …
Malva … I saw her in my mind’s eye, dead in the garden, and the smell of blood and the scent of birth. The tiny boy I’d taken from her body, barely alive. A blue spark in my hands, that dwindled and died.
A blue spark. I saw it, saw it and looked deep into it, willing it to stay, holding it safe in the palms of my hands.
Thup … My finger stilled, and the small sound answered.
Tup.
I gradually became aware of my own breath, and after that, felt the solidness of Jamie and realized that he was holding me upright, an arm around my middle, his other hand on my breast, above the baby’s head. I lifted my own head, nearly blind from the brilliant darkness I’d been in, and saw the silhouette of a girl against the fire, her body dark and thin through the white of her shift.
“I cut the cord for you, Mrs. Fraser,” Agnes said. “And I kneaded Mam’s belly like she told me. Do you want a cup of cider? Pa drank all the beer.”
“She would, lass,” Jamie said, and gently let me go. “But first bring a wee blanket for your sister, aye?”
IT WAS DARK outside; the moon had set and dawn was some way off. It was cold, but the cold didn’t touch me.
I’d let him take the baby, at last. Felt his hands on mine as he took her, warm and sure, his face filled with light. He’d knelt carefully and given the baby to Susannah, placing his hand on the child in benediction.
Then he’d stood and wrapped me in my cloak and walked me outside. I couldn’t feel the ground beneath my feet, or see the forest, but the cold air smelled of pine and lay like a balm on my heated skin.
“All right, Sassenach?” he whispered. I seemed to be leaning against him, though I didn’t remember doing it. I’d lost track of where my body began and ended; the pieces seemed to be floating about in a loose sort of cloud of exaltation.
I felt Jamie’s hands tremble a little as he touched my face. From exhaustion, I thought. The same small, constant quiver seemed to be running through me from crown to sole, like a low-voltage current of electricity.
In fact, I’d passed clear through exhaustion and out the other side, as one does sometimes in moments of great effort. You know that your bodily energy has been used up, and yet there’s a supernatural sense of mental clarity and a strange capacity to keep moving, but at the same time, you see it all simultaneously, from outside yourself and from your deepest core—the usual intervening layers of flesh and thought have become transparent.
“I’m fine,” I said, and I laughed. Let my forehead fall against his chest and breathed for a moment, feeling all my pieces come to rest, whole again, as the enchantment of the last hour faded into peace.
“Jamie,” I said, a few moments later, raising my head. “What color is my hair?”
This was an absurd question; it was the depth of the night and we were standing in a pitch-black forest. But he made a small noise of appraisal and lifted my chin to look.
“All the colors o’ the earth,” he said, and smoothed the hair from my face. “But here, all about your face—it’s the color of moonlight, mo ghràidh.”
55
The Venom of the North Wind
RACHEL WOKE SUDDENLY, COMPLETELY alert but with no idea what had woken her. She moved, turning her head to see if Ian was awake. He was; his hand clamped across her mouth and she froze. It was dark in the cabin, but there was light enough from the banked fire for her to see his face, eyes dark with warning.
She blinked, once, and with a tiny nod he removed his hand. He lay quite still and so did she, though her heart thumped hard enough that she thought it would wake Oggy, snuggled between them.
Thumping hard enough that she couldn’t hear anything, either—Ian was listening, though. His long body hadn’t moved, and yet he seemed to have coiled up, somehow, like a snake gathering itself. She shut her eyes, concentrating.
There had been wind all night; berries from the big red cedar that guarded the house had been thumping on the roof at intervals. But Ian would have recognized that sound …