Jamie got up, slowly. He was panting from the effort, face and clothes smeared dark with blood and manure, but his eyes never left the calf and his face was alight with the same joy I felt as we watched the new mother—remarkably placid, considering recent events—sniff her new offspring and then begin to lick it with long, rhythmic swipes of her tongue.
“She’ll be a good mother.”
For an instant, I thought Jamie had said it, but he was facing me, looking surprised, and there was a faint movement behind me. I swung round with a small yelp and saw the man who had stepped soundlessly into the byre with us.
“Who the hell—” I began, groping for a weapon, but Jamie had raised his hand in greeting to the man.
“Mr. Cloudtree,” he said, and paused to wipe his forearm across his blood-slimed face. “I trust we see ye well, and your family?”
“They’re well enough,” the young man answered, keeping a wary eye on me and the wooden shovel I’d seized. “And since I got the chance, ma’am, I meant to thank you for it. For my babies, I mean.”
“Oh,” I said, rather blankly. Cloudtree. The pieces of memory fell into place around that name. The fecund smell of the byre, the swamp of blood and birthwater, brought back that night out of time in a small cabin, the endless effort, and the timeless forever when I held a small blue light in my hands, praying with heart and soul for it not to go out. I swallowed.
“You’re very welcome, Mr. Cloudtree,” I said. Aaron. That was the name of Agnes’s nasty stepfather: Aaron Cloudtree. I eyed him with much less favor, but he didn’t notice, his attention fixed on Jamie and the scene before us.
“A nice bit of work there, man,” he said to Jamie, nodding approvingly at Rosy and her calf, the latter looking round-eyed and bewildered, its hair swirled in all directions. “Near as good as your wife’s.”
“Taing,” Jamie said, and bent to pick up the grimy linen towel, wiping his face as he stood. “What brings ye to us at this time o’ the night, Mr. Cloudtree?”
“I come earlier, but you was at table,” Cloudtree said, shrugging. “You had the old witch there; I couldn’t’ve spoke before her.”
Jamie glanced at me and settled himself, slowly wiping his hands.
“Speak now,” he said.
“The old witch’s son, Cunningham. You know he’s been trading, down to the Cherokee villages, just the other side o’ the Line?”
Jamie nodded, eyes fixed on Cloudtree’s face. He was mixed blood, a handsome man with silky long brown hair, though with a petulant curve to his mouth.
“Not everybody listens to him,” Cloudtree assured him. “But he’s got some few men down there, maybe twenty, will follow him. He calls ’em his militia, but he ain’t fought Indians before or he’d know better. They take his guns, his powder, and his medals, though, and they’d likely do what he asked—for a while.”
“What is it that he’s asking?” Jamie had stopped wiping his hands and now held the towel twisted between them.
“I ain’t heard this from him,” Cloudtree said, leaning in and lowering his voice, “but I heard it from two o’ the men in Keowee, ones he paid. There’s a redcoat officer named Ferguson, set to go to and fro in the mountains, raising Loyalist militias and arresting rebels, hangin’ men and burning houses. Cunningham’s wrote Ferguson a letter, naming your name and saying he ought to come here with his troops, ’cuz you a king beaver ’mongst the rebels and your pelt would be worth the trouble to take it.”
All the air seemed to have been sucked out of the byre. After a moment, though, Jamie took a long breath and let it out slowly.
“Do you know when?” he asked calmly.
Cloudtree shrugged.
“I don’t know ’bout Ferguson. Seems he’s got plenty to keep him busy where he is. But Cunningham’s got tired o’ waitin’ for an answer. The men I talked to say he means to arrest you himself and take you to Ferguson—so’s Ferguson can hang you for show, I mean. They say”—he looked at his hands and folded down the fingers, counting—“eight days from yesterday. Cunningham’s waitin’ on a fellow name of Partland, who’s comin’ from Ninety-Six with some more men.”
Jamie’s eyes met mine, and I knew we were thinking the same thing: Seven nights from now was Lodge night. If they were coming for Jamie, that would be the logical time to do it. It was a good two hundred miles from the settlement of Ninety-Six to the Ridge, but Partland and friends might well make it.