Mount Helicon The Royal Colony of North Carolina Late October, 1770 10 страница
He hesitated, one hand on Roger’s arm to prevent an abrupt departure. He squinted into the haze, reckoning up the possibilities. They’d visited three campsites together, and got the pledges of four men. How many more could be found at the Gathering?
“After Duncan, go across to the sheep pens. Angus Og will be there, surely—ye ken Angus Og?”
Roger nodded, hoping he recalled the correct Angus Og. He’d met at least four men of that name in the last week, but one of them had had a dog at heel, and reeked of raw wool.
“Campbell, aye? Bent like a fishhook, and a cast in one eye?”
“Aye, that’s him.” Jamie gave a nod of approbation, relaxing his grip. “He’s too crabbit to fight himself, but he’ll see his nephews come, and spread the word amongst the settlements near High Point. So, Duncan, Angus . . . oh, aye, Joanie Findlay.”
“Joanie?”
Fraser grinned.
“Aye, auld Joan, they call her. Her camp’s near my aunt, her and her brother, Iain Mhor.”
Roger nodded, dubious.
“Aye. It’s her I speak to, though, is it?”
“Ye’ll have to,” Fraser said. “Iain Mhor’s got nay speech. She’s two more brothers who have, though, and two sons old enough to fight. She’ll see they come.”
Jamie cast an eye upward; the day had warmed slightly and it wasn’t raining so much as misting—a mizzle, they’d call it in Scotland. The clouds had thinned enough to show the disk of the sun, a pale blurry wafer still high in the sky, but sinking lower. Another two hours of good light, maybe.
“That’ll do,” he decided, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “Come back to the fire when ye’ve done wi’ auld Joan, and we’ll have a bit of supper before your wedding, aye?” He gave Roger an up-cocked brow and a slight smile, then turned away. Before Roger could move off, he turned back.
“Say straight off as you’re Captain MacKenzie,” he advised. “They’ll mind ye better.” He turned again and strode off in search of the more recalcitrant prospects on his list.
MacLeod’s fire burned like a smudge pot in the mist. Roger turned toward it, repeating the names under his breath like a mantra. “Duncan MacLeod, Rabbie Cochrane, Angus Og Campbell, Joanie Findlay . . . Duncan MacLeod, Rabbie Cochrane . . .” No bother; three times and he’d have it cold, no matter whether it was the words of a new song to be learned, facts in a textbook, or directions to the psychology of potential militia recruits.
He could see the sense of finding as many of the backcountry Scots as possible now, before they scattered away to their farms and cabins. And he was heartened by the fact that the men Fraser had approached so far had accepted the militia summons with no more than a mild glower and throat-clearings of resignation.
Captain MacKenzie. He felt a small sense of embarrassed pride at the title Fraser had casually bestowed on him. “Instant Soldier,” he muttered derisively to himself, straightening the shoulders of his sodden coat. “Just add water.”
At the same time, he’d admit to a faint tingle of excitement. It might amount to no more than playing soldiers, now, indeed—but the thought of marching with a militia regiment, muskets shouldered and the smell of gunpowder on their hands . . .
It was less than four years from now, he thought, and militiamen would stand on the green at Lexington. Men who were no more soldiers to start with than these men he spoke to in the rain—no more than him. Awareness shivered over his skin, settled in his belly with an odd weight of significance.
It was coming. Christ, it was really coming.
MACLEOD WAS NO TROUBLE, but it took longer than he’d thought to find Angus Og Campbell, up to his arse in sheep, and irascible at the distraction. “Captain MacKenzie” had had little effect on the old bastard; the invocation of “Colonel Fraser”—spoken with a degree of menace—had had more. Angus Og had chewed his long upper lip with moody concentration, nodded reluctantly, and gone back to his bargaining with a gruff, “Aye, I’ll send word.”
The mizzle had stopped and the clouds were beginning to break up by the time he climbed back up the slope to Joan Findlay’s camp.
“Auld Joan,” to his surprise, was an attractive woman in her mid-thirties, with sharp hazel eyes that regarded him with interest under the folds of her damp arisaid.
“So it’s come to that, has it?” she said, in answer to his brief explanation of his presence. “I did wonder, when I heard what the soldier-laddie had to say this morning.”
She tapped her lip thoughtfully with the handle of her wooden pudding-spoon.
“I’ve an aunt who lives in Hillsborough, ken. She’s a room in the King’s House, straight across the street from Edmund Fanning’s house—or where it used to be.” She gave a short laugh, though it held no real humor.
“She wrote to me. The mob came a-boilin’ down the street, wavin’ pitchforks like a flock o’ demons, she said. They cut Fanning’s house from its sills, and dragged the whole of it down wi’ ropes, right before her eyes. So now we’re meant to send our men to pull Fanning’s chestnuts from the fire, are we?”
Roger was cautious; he’d heard a good deal of talk about Edmund Fanning, who was less than popular.
“I couldna say as to that, Mrs. Findlay,” he said. “But the Governor—”
Joan Findlay snorted expressively.
“Governor,” she said, and spat into the fire. “Pah. The Governor’s friends, more like. But there—poor men mun bleed for the rich man’s gold, and always will, eh?”
She turned to two small girls who had materialized behind her, silent as small shawled ghosts.
“Annie, fetch your brothers. Wee Joanie, you stir the pot. Mind ye scrape the bottom well so it doesna burn.” Handing the spoon to the smallest girl, she turned away, beckoning Roger to follow.
It was a poor camp, with no more than a woolen blanket stretched between two bushes to provide a shelter of sorts. Joan Findlay squatted down before the cavelike recess so provided, and Roger followed, bending down to peer over her shoulder.
“A bhràthair, here’s Captain MacKenzie,” she said, reaching out a hand to the man that lay on a pallet of dry grass under the blanket’s shelter. Roger felt a sudden shock at the man’s appearance, but suppressed it.
A spastic, they would have called him in the Scotland of Roger’s own time; what did they call such a condition now? Perhaps nothing in particular; Fraser had said only, He has nay speech.
No, nor proper movement, either. His limbs were bony and wasted, his body twisted into impossible angles. A tattered quilt had been laid over him, but his jerking movements had pulled it awry, so that the cloth was bunched, wrenched hard between his legs, and his upper body was left exposed, the worn shirt also rumpled and pulled half off by his struggles. The pale skin over shoulder and ribs gleamed cold and blue-toned in the shadows.
Joan Findlay cupped a hand about the man’s cheek and turned his head so that he could look at Roger.
“This will be my brother Iain, Mr. MacKenzie,” she said, her voice firm, daring him to react.
The face too was distorted, the mouth pulled askew and drooling, but a pair of beautiful—and intelligent—hazel eyes looked back at Roger from the ruin. He took firm grip of his feelings and his own features, and reached out, taking the man’s clawed hand in his own. It felt terrible, the bones sharp and fragile under skin so cold it might have been a corpse’s.
“Iain Mhor,” he said softly. “I have heard your name. Jamie Fraser sends ye his regards.”
The eyelids lowered in a graceful sweep of acknowledgment, and came up again, regarding Roger with calm brightness.
“The Captain’s come to call for militiamen,” Joan said from behind Roger’s shoulder. “The Governor’s sent orders, aye? Seems he’s had enough o’ riot and disorder, so he says; he’ll put it down by force.” Her voice held a strong tone of irony.
Iain Mhor’s eyes shifted to his sister’s face. His mouth moved, struggling for shape, and his narrow chest strained with effort. A few croaking syllables emerged, thick with spittle, and he fell back, breathing hard, eyes intent on Roger.
“Will there be bounty money paid, he says, Captain?” Joan translated.
Roger hesitated. Jamie had addressed that question, but there was no definite answer. He could feel the subdued eagerness, though, both in the woman behind him and the man who lay before him. The Findlays were grinding poor; that much was plain from the little girls’ ragged frocks and bare feet, from the threadbare clothes and bedding that gave Iain Mhor scant shelter from the cold. But honesty compelled him to answer.
“I don’t know. There is none advertised as yet—but there may be.” The payment of bounty money depended on the response to the Governor’s call; if a simple order produced insufficient troops, the Governor might see fit to provide further inducement for militiamen to answer the summons.
An expression of disappointment flickered in Iain Mhor’s eyes, replaced almost at once by resignation. Any income would have been welcome, but it was not really expected.
“Well, then.” Joan’s voice held the same resignation. Roger felt her draw back and turn aside, but he was still held by the long-lashed hazel eyes. They met his, unflinching and curious. Roger hesitated, unsure whether to simply take his leave. He wanted to offer help—but God, what help was there?
He stretched out a hand toward the gaping shirt, the rumpled quilt. Little enough, but something.
“May I?”
The hazel eyes closed for a moment, opened in acquiescence, and he set about the chore of putting things straight. Iain Mhor’s body was emaciated, but surprisingly heavy, and awkward to lift from such an angle.
Still, it took no more than a few moments, and the man lay decently covered, and warmer at least. Roger met the hazel eyes again, smiled, nodded awkwardly, and backed away from the grass-lined nest, wordless as Iain Mhor himself.
Joan Findlay’s two sons had come; they stood by their mother, sturdy lads of sixteen and seventeen, regarding Roger with cautious curiosity.
“This will be Hugh,” she said, reaching up to put a hand on one shoulder, then the other, “and Iain Og.”
Roger inclined his head courteously.
“Your servant, gentlemen.”
The boys exchanged glances with each other, then looked at their feet, smothering grins.
“So, Captain MacKenzie.” Joan Findlay’s voice came down hard on the word. “If I lend ye my sons, will ye promise me, then, to send them safe home?”
The woman’s hazel eyes were as bright and intelligent as her brother’s—and as unflinching. He braced himself not to look away.
“So far as it lies in my power, ma’am—I will see them safe.”
The edge of her mouth lifted slightly; she knew quite well what was in his power and what was not. She nodded, though, and her hands dropped to her sides.
“They’ll come.”
He took his leave then, and walked away, the weight of her trust heavy on his shoulders.
GRANNIE BACON’S GIFTS
THE LAST OF MY PATIENTS seen to, I stood on my toes and stretched luxuriously, feeling a pleasant glow of accomplishment. For all the conditions that I couldn’t really treat, all the illnesses I couldn’t cure . . . still, I had done what I could, and had done it well.
I closed the lid of my medical chest and picked it up in my arms; Murray had graciously volunteered to bring back the rest of my impedimenta—in return for a bag of dried senna leaves and my spare pill-rolling tile. Murray himself was still attending his last patient, frowning as he prodded the abdomen of a little old lady in bonnet and shawl. I waved in farewell at him, and he gave me an abstracted nod, turning to pick up his fleam. At least he did remember to dip it into the boiling water; I saw his lips move as he spoke Brianna’s charm under his breath.
My feet were numb from standing on the cold ground, and my back and shoulders ached, but I wasn’t really tired. There were people who would sleep tonight, their pain relieved. Others who would heal well now, wounds dressed cleanly and limbs set straight. A few whom I could truthfully say I had saved from the possibility of serious infection or even death.
And I had given yet another version of my own Sermon on the Mount, preaching the gospel of nutrition and hygiene to the assembled multitudes.
“Blessed are those who eat greens, for they shall keep their teeth,” I murmured to a red-cedar tree. I paused to pull off a few of the fragrant berries, and crushed one with my thumbnail, enjoying the sharp, clean scent.
“Blessed are those who wash their hands after wiping their arses,” I added, pointing a monitory finger at a blue jay who had settled on a nearby branch. “For they shall not sicken.”
The camp was in sight now, and with it, the delightful prospect of a cup of hot tea.
“Blessed are those who boil water,” I said to the jay, seeing a plume of steam rising from the small kettle hung over our fire. “For they shall be called saviors of mankind.”
“Mrs. Fraser, mum?” A small voice piped up beside me, breaking my reverie, and I looked down to see Eglantine Bacon, aged seven, and her younger sister, Pansy, a pair of round-faced, towheaded little girls, liberally sprinkled with freckles.
“Oh, hallo, dear. And how are you?” I asked, smiling down at them. Quite well, from the looks of them; illness in a child is generally visible at a glance, and both the small Bacons were obviously blooming.
“Very well, mum, thank ye kindly.” Eglantine gave a short bob, then reached over and pushed on Pansy’s head to make her curtsy, too. The courtesies observed—the Bacons were townspeople, from Edenton, and the girls had been raised to have nice manners—Eglantine reached into her pocket and handed me a large wad of fabric.
“Grannie Bacon’s sent ye a present,” she explained proudly, as I unfolded the material, which proved to be an enormous mobcap, liberally embellished with lace and trimmed with lavender ribbons. “She couldna come to the Gathering this year, but she said as we must bring ye this, and give ye her thanks for the medicine ye sent for her . . . roo-mah-tics.” She pronounced the word carefully, her face screwed up in concentration, then relaxed, beaming in pride at having gotten it out properly.
“Why, thank you. How lovely!” I held the cap up to admire, privately thinking a few choice things about Grannie Bacon.
I had encountered that redoubtable lady a few months earlier, at Farquard Campbell’s plantation, where she was visiting Farquard’s aged and obnoxious mother. Mrs. Bacon was almost as old as the ancient Mrs. Campbell, and quite as capable of annoying her descendants, but also possessed of a lively sense of humor.
She had disapproved, audibly, repeatedly, and eventually to my face, of my habit of going about with my head uncovered, it being her opinion that it was unseemly for a woman of my age not to wear either cap or kerch, reprehensible for the wife of a man of my husband’s position—and furthermore, that only “backcountry sluts and women of low character” wore their hair loose upon their shoulders. I had laughed, ignored her, and given her a bottle of Jamie’s second-best whisky, with instructions to have a wee nip with her breakfast and another after supper.
A woman to acknowledge a debt, she had chosen to repay it in characteristic fashion.
“Will ye not put it on?” Eglantine and Pansy were looking trustfully up at me. “Grannie told us to be sure ye put it on, so as we could tell her how it suited ye.”
“Did she, indeed.” No help for it, I supposed. I shook the object out, twisted up my hair with one hand, and pulled the mobcap on. It drooped over my brow, almost reaching the bridge of my nose, and draped my cheeks in ribboned swathes, so that I felt like a chipmunk peering out from its burrow.
Eglantine and Patsy clapped their hands in paroxysms of delight. I thought I heard muffled sounds of amusement from somewhere behind me, but didn’t turn to see.
“Do tell your grannie I said thank you for the lovely present, won’t you?” I patted the girls gravely on their blond heads, offered them each a molasses toffee from my pocket, and sent them off to their mother. I was just reaching up to pull off the excrescence on my head, when I realized that their mother was present—had probably been there all along, in fact, lurking behind a persimmon tree.
“Oh!” I said, converting my reach into an adjustment of the floppy chapeau. I held the overhanging flap up with one finger, the better to peer out. “Mrs. Bacon! I didn’t see you there.”
“Mrs. Fraser.” Polly Bacon’s face was flushed a delicate rose color—no doubt from the chill of the day. She had her lips pressed tight together, but her eyes danced under the ruffle of her own very proper cap.
“The girls wanted to give ye the cap,” she said, tactfully averting her gaze from it, “but my mother-in-law did send ye another wee gift. I thought perhaps I’d best bring that myself, though.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted anything to do with any more of Grannie Bacon’s gifts, but took the proffered parcel with as much grace as I could manage. It was a small bag of oiled silk, plumply stuffed with something, with a faintly sweet, slightly oily botanical scent about it. A crude picture of a plant had been drawn on the front in brownish ink; something with an upright stalk and what looked like umbels. It looked faintly familiar, but I could put no name to it. I undid the string, and poured a small quantity of tiny dark-brown seeds out into my palm.
“What are these?” I asked, looking up at Polly in puzzlement.
“I don’t know what they’re called in English,” she said. “The Indians call them dauco. Grannie Bacon’s own grannie was a Catawba medicine woman, aye? That’s where she learnt the use of them.”
“Was she really?” I was more than interested now. No wonder the drawing seemed familiar; this must be the plant that Nayawenne had once shown me—the women’s plant. To be sure of it, though, I asked.
“What is the use of them?”
The color rose higher in Polly’s cheeks, and she glanced round the clearing to be sure no one was close enough to hear before leaning forward to whisper to me.
“They stop a woman from getting wi’ child. Ye take a teaspoonful each day, in a glass of water. Each day, mind, and a man’s seed canna take hold in the womb.” Her eyes met mine, and while the light of amusement still lingered at the backs of them, something more serious was there as well.
“Grannie said ye were a conjure-woman, she could tell. And that bein’ so, ye’d have cause often to help women. And when it is a matter of miscarriage, stillbirth, or childbed fever, let alone the misery of losing a live babe—she said I must tell ye that an ounce o’ prevention is worth a pound o’ cure.”
“Tell your mother-in-law thank you,” I said sincerely. The average woman of Polly’s age might have five or six children; she had the two girls, and lacked the drained look of a woman worn with ill-timed bearing. Evidently, the seeds worked.
Polly nodded, the smile breaking out on her face.
“Aye, I’ll tell her. Oh—she said as how her grannie told her it was women’s magic; ye dinna mention it to men.”
I glanced thoughtfully across the clearing, to where Jamie stood in conversation with Archie Hayes, Jemmy blinking sleepily in the crook of his arm. Yes, I could well see that some men might take exception to old Grannie Bacon’s medicine. Was Roger one of them?
Bidding farewell to Polly Bacon, I took my chest across to our lean-to, and tucked the bag of seeds carefully away in it. A very useful addition to my pharmacopeia, if Nayawenne and Mrs. Bacon’s grannie were correct. It was also a singularly well-timed gift, considering my earlier conversation with Bree.
Even more valuable than the small heap of rabbit skins I had accumulated, though those were more than welcome. Where had I put them? I looked round the scattered rubble of the campsite, half-listening to the men’s conversation behind me. There they were, just under the edge of the canvas. I lifted the lid of one of the empty food hampers to put them away for the journey home.
“. . . Stephen Bonnet.”
The name stung my ear like a spider’s bite, and I dropped the lid with a bang. I glanced quickly round the campsite, but neither Brianna nor Roger was within hearing distance. Jamie’s back was turned to me, but it was he who had spoken.
I pulled the mobcap off my head, hung it carefully from a dogwood branch, and went purposefully to join him.
WHATEVER THE MEN had been talking about, they stopped when they saw me. Lieutenant Hayes thanked me gracefully once more for my surgical assistance, and took his leave, his bland round face revealing nothing.
“What about Stephen Bonnet?” I said, as soon as the Lieutenant was out of earshot.
“That’s what I was inquiring about, Sassenach. Is the tea brewed yet?” Jamie made a move toward the fire, but I stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“Why?” I demanded. I didn’t let go my grip, and he reluctantly turned to face me.
“Because I wish to know where he is,” he said evenly. He made no pretense of not understanding me, and a small, cold feeling flickered through my chest.
“Did Hayes know where he is? Has he heard anything of Bonnet?”
He shook his head, silent. He was telling me the truth. My fingers loosened with relief, and he moved his arm out of my grasp—not angrily, but with a sense of quiet and definite detachment.
“It is my business!” I said, answering the gesture. I kept my voice low, glancing round to be sure that neither Bree nor Roger was within hearing. I didn’t see Roger; Bree was standing by the fire, absorbed in conversation with the Bugs, the elderly couple Jamie had engaged to help care for the farm. I turned back to Jamie.
“Why are you looking for that man?”
“Is it not sense to know where danger may lie?” He wasn’t looking at me but over my shoulder, smiling and nodding at someone. I glanced back to see Fergus heading for the fire, rubbing a cold-reddened hand beneath his arm. He waved cheerfully with his hook, and Jamie lifted a hand halfway in acknowledgment, but turned away a little, still facing me, effectively preventing Fergus from coming to join us.
The cold feeling returned, sharp as though someone had pierced my lung with a sliver of ice.
“Oh, of course,” I said, as coolly as I could. “You want to know where he is, so that you can take pains not to go there, is that it?”
Something that might have been a smile flickered across his face.
“Oh, aye,” he said. “To be sure.” Given the scarcity of population in North Carolina in general, and the remoteness of Fraser’s Ridge in particular, the chances of our stumbling over Stephen Bonnet by accident were roughly equivalent to walking out of the front door and stepping on a jellyfish—and Jamie bloody knew it.
I narrowed my eyes at him. The corner of his wide mouth drew in for a moment, then relaxed, his eyes gone back to seriousness. There was precisely one good reason for his wanting to locate Stephen Bonnet—and I bloody knew that.
“Jamie,” I said, and put a hand on his arm again. “Leave him alone. Please.”
He put his own hand over mine, squeezing, but I felt no reassurance from the gesture.
“Dinna fash yourself, Sassenach. I’ve asked throughout the Gathering, all through the week, inquiring of men from Halifax to Charleston. There’s nay report of the man anywhere in the colony.”
“Good,” I said. It was, but the fact did not escape me that he had been hunting Bonnet with assiduity—and had told me nothing of it. Nor did it escape me that he had not promised to stop looking.
“Leave him alone,” I repeated softly, my eyes holding his. “There’s enough trouble coming; we don’t need more.” He had drawn close to me, the better to forestall interruption, and I could feel the power of him where he touched me, his arm beneath my hand, his thigh brushing mine. Strength of bone and fire of mind, all wrapped round a core of steel-hard purpose that would make him a deadly projectile, once set on any course.
“Ye say it is your business.” His eyes were steady, the blue of them bleached pale with autumn light. “I know it is mine. Are ye with me, then?”
The ice blossomed in my blood, spicules of cold panic. Damn him! He meant it. There was one reason to seek out Stephen Bonnet, and one reason only.
I swung round on my heel, pulling him with me, so we stood pressed close together, arms linked, looking toward the fire. Brianna, Marsali, and the Bugs were now listening raptly to Fergus, who was recounting something, his face alight with cold and laughter. Jemmy’s face was turned toward us over his mother’s shoulder, round-eyed and curious.
“They are your business,” I said, my voice pitched low and trembling with intensity. “And mine. Hasn’t Stephen Bonnet done enough damage to them, to us?”
“Aye, more than enough.”
He pulled me closer to him; I could feel the heat of him through his clothes, but his voice was cold as the rain. Fergus’s glance flicked toward us; he smiled warmly at me and went on with his story. To him, no doubt we looked like a couple sharing a brief moment of affection, heads bent together in closeness.
“I let him go,” Jamie said quietly. “And evil came of it. Can I let him wander free, knowing what he is, and that I have loosed him to spread ruin? It is like loosing a rabid dog, Sassenach—ye wouldna have me do that, surely.”
His hand was hard, his fingers cold on mine.
“You let him go once; the Crown caught him again—if he’s free now, it’s not your fault!”
“Perhaps not my fault that he is free,” he agreed, “but surely it is my duty to see he doesna stay so—if I can.”
“You have a duty to your family!”
He took my chin in his hand and bent his head, his eyes boring into mine.
“Ye think I would risk them? Ever?”
I held myself stiff, resisting for a long moment, then let my shoulders slump, my eyelids drop in capitulation. I took a long, trembling breath. I wasn’t giving in altogether.
“There’s risk in hunting, Jamie,” I said softly. “You know it.”
His grip relaxed, but his hand still cupped my face, his thumb tracing the outline of my lips.
“I know it,” he whispered. The mist of his breath touched my cheek. “But I have been a hunter for a verra long time, Claire. I willna bring danger to them—I swear it.”
“Only to yourself? And just what do you think will happen to us, if you—”
I caught a glimpse of Brianna from the corner of my eye. She had half-turned, seeing us, and was now beaming tender approval on this scene of what she supposed to be parental fondness. Jamie saw her, too; I heard a faint snort of amusement.
“Nothing will happen to me,” he said definitely, and gathering me firmly to him, stifled further argument with an encompassing kiss. A faint spatter of applause rose from the direction of the fire.
“Encore!” shouted Fergus.
“No,” I said to him as he released me. I whispered, but spoke vehemently for all that. “Not encore. I don’t want to hear the name of Stephen Bonnet ever bloody again!”
“It will be all right,” he whispered back, and squeezed my hand. “Trust me, Sassenach.”
PRIDE
ROGER DIDN’T LOOK BACK, but thoughts of the Findlays went with him as he made his way downhill from their camp, through clumps of brush and trodden grass.
The two boys were sandy-haired and fair, short—though taller than their mother—but broad-shouldered. The two younger children were dark, tall, and slender, with their mother’s hazel eyes. Given the gap of years between the older boys and their younger siblings, Roger concluded from the evidence that Mrs. Findlay had likely had two husbands. And from the look of things now was a widow again.
Perhaps he should mention Joan Findlay to Brianna, he thought, as further evidence that marriage and childbirth were not necessarily mortal to women. Or perhaps it was better just to leave that subject lie quiet for a bit.
Beyond thoughts of Joan and her children, though, he was haunted by the soft, bright eyes of Iain Mhor. How old was he? Roger wondered, grasping the springy branch of a pine to keep from sliding down a patch of loose gravel. Impossible to tell from looking; the pale, twisted face was lined and worn—but with pain and struggle, not age. He was no larger than a boy of twelve or so, but Iain Mhor was older than his namesake, clearly—and Iain Og was sixteen.
He was likely younger than Joan; but perhaps not. She had treated him with deference, bringing Roger to him as a woman would naturally bring a visitor to the head of the family. Not greatly younger, then—say thirty or more?
Christ, he thought, how did a man like that survive so long in times like these? But as he had backed awkwardly away from Iain Mhor, one of the little girls had crawled into the crude shelter from the back, pushing a bowl of milk pudding before her, and had sat down matter-of-factly by her uncle’s head, spoon in hand. Iain Mhor had limbs and fingers enough—he had a family.