“Why did you wait?” I stood up, glaring at Geilie. “For God’s sake, you kept me drinking tea and chatting, while this was going on? He’s been dead less than an hour, but he must have been in trouble a long time since—days! Why didn’t you bring me out here at once?”
“He seemed pretty far gone this morning,” she said, not at all disturbed by my agitation. She shrugged. “I’ve seen them so before; I didna think you could do anything much. It didna seem worth hurrying.”
I choked back further recrimination. She was right; I could have operated, had I come sooner, but the chances of it doing any good were slim to nonexistent. The hernia repair was something I might have managed, even with such difficult conditions; after all, that was nothing more than pushing back the bowel protrusion and pulling the ruptured layers of abdominal muscle back together with sutures; infection was the only real danger. But once the loop of escaped intestine had twisted, so that the blood supply was cut off and the contents began to putrefy, the man was doomed.
But to allow the man to die here in this stuffy shed, alone…well, perhaps he would not have found the presence of one white woman more or less a comfort, in any case. Still, I felt an obscure sense of failure; the same I always felt in the presence of death. I wiped my hands slowly on a brandy-soaked cloth, mastering my feelings.
One to the good, one to the bad—and Ian still to be found.
“Since I’m here now, perhaps I’d best have a look at the rest of your slaves,” I suggested. “An ounce of prevention, you know.”
“Oh, they’re well enough.” Geilie waved a careless hand. “Still, if ye want to take the time, you’re welcome. Later, though; I’ve a visitor coming this afternoon, and I want to talk more with ye, first. Come back to the house, now—someone will take care o’ this.” A brief nod disposed of “this,” the slave’s contorted body. She linked her arm in mine, urging me out of the shed and back toward the kitchen with soft thrustings of her weight.
In the kitchen, I detached myself, motioning toward the pregnant slave, now on her hands and knees, scrubbing the hearthstones.
“You go along; I want to have a quick look at this girl. She looks a bit toxic to me—you don’t want her to miscarry.”
Geilie gave me a curious glance, but then shrugged.
“She’s foaled twice with no trouble, but you’re the doctor. Aye, if that’s your notion of fun, go ahead. Don’t take too long, though; that parson said he’d come at four o’clock.”
I made some pretense of examining the bewildered woman, until Geilie’s draperies had disappeared into the breezeway.
“Look,” I said. “I’m looking for a young white boy named Ian; I’m his aunt. Do you know where he might be?”
The girl—she couldn’t be more than seventeen or eighteen—looked startled. She blinked, and darted a glance at one of the older women, who had quit her own work and come across the room to see what was going on.
“No, ma’am,” the older woman said, shaking her head. “No white boys here. None at all.”
“No, ma’am,” the girl obediently echoed. “We don’ know nothin’ ’bout your boy.” But she hadn’t said that at first, and her eyes wouldn’t meet mine.
The older woman had been joined now by the other two kitchenmaids, coming to buttress her. I was surrounded by an impenetrable wall of bland ignorance, and no way to break through it. At the same time, I was aware of a current running among the women—a feeling of mutual warning; of wariness and secrecy. It might be only the natural reaction to the sudden appearance of a white stranger in their domain—or it might be something more.
I couldn’t take longer; Geilie would be coming back to look for me. I fumbled quickly in my pocket, and pulled out a silver florin, which I pressed into the girl’s hand.
“If you should see Ian, tell him that his uncle is here to find him.” Not waiting for an answer, I turned and hurried out of the kitchen.
I glanced down toward the sugar mill as I passed through the breezeway. The sugar press stood abandoned, the oxen grazing placidly in the long grass at the edge of the clearing. There was no sign of Jamie or the overseer; had he come back to the house?
I came through the French windows into the salon, and stopped short. Geilie sat in her wicker chair, Jamie’s coat across the arm, and the photographs of Brianna spread over her lap. She heard my step and looked up, one pale brow arched over an acid smile.
“What a pretty lassie, to be sure. What’s her name?”
“Brianna.” My lips felt stiff. I walked slowly toward her, fighting the urge to snatch the pictures from her hands and run.
“Looks a great deal like her father, doesn’t she? I thought she seemed familiar, that tall red-haired lass I saw that night on Craigh na Dun. He is her father, no?” She inclined her head toward the door where Jamie had vanished.
“Yes. Give them to me.” It made no difference; she had seen the pictures already. Still, I couldn’t stand to see her thick white fingers cupping Brianna’s face.
Her mouth twitched as though she meant to refuse, but she tapped them neatly into a square and handed them to me without demur. I held them against my chest for a moment, not knowing what to do with them, then thrust them back into the pocket of my skirt.
“Sit ye down, Claire. The coffee’s come.” She nodded toward the small table, and the chair alongside. Her eyes followed me as I moved to it, alive with calculation.
She gestured for me to pour the coffee for both of us, and took her own cup without words. We sipped silently for a few moments. The cup trembled in my hands, spilling hot liquid across my wrist. I put it down, wiping my hand on my skirt, wondering in some dim recess of my mind why I should be afraid.
“Twice,” she said suddenly. She looked at me with something akin to awe. “Sweet Christ Jesus, ye went through twice! Or no—three times, it must have been, for here ye are now.” She shook her head, marveling, never taking her bright green eyes from my face.
“How?” she asked. “How could ye do it so many times, and live?”
“I don’t know.” I saw the look of hard skepticism flash across her face, and answered it, defensively. “I don’t! I just—went.”
“Was it not the same for you?” The green eyes had narrowed into slits of concentration. “What was it like, there between? Did ye not feel the terror? And the noise, fit to split your skull and spill your brains?”
“Yes, it was like that.” I didn’t want to talk to about it; didn’t even like to think of the time-passage. I had blocked it deliberately from my mind, the roar of death and dissolution and the voices of chaos that urged me to join them.
“Did ye have blood to protect you, or stones? I wouldna think ye’d the nerve for blood—but maybe I’m wrong. For surely ye’re stronger than I thought, to have done it three times, and lived through it.”
“Blood?” I shook my head, confused. “No. Nothing. I told you—I…went. That’s all.” Then I remembered the night she had gone through the stones in 1968; the blaze of fire on Craigh na Dun, and the twisted, blackened shape in the center of that fire. “Greg Edgars,” I said. The name of her first husband. “You didn’t just kill him because he found you and tried to stop you, did you? He was—”