Jennie About to Be (39 page)

“Alick, I am so frightened,” she whispered abjectly. He turned his head so fast that his cheek brushed against her face, and it was cold and wet.

“It was
him
.”

“Who?”

“The exciseman they killed.” He was still shaking. “He is always on the watch for the murderers. That is why no one travels this track now, for fear of meeting him.”

“Are you saying that was a
ghost
?” Her
s
's were hissing like his. “Two ghosts, man and pony?”

“They brought the pony back with them. But if the poor beast has died since, he could have joined his master. Mata would seek
me
, if we were both dead.”

“Alick, are you serious?” But she knew he was. “Who killed this man? Linnmore men?”

“Och, no. They used to come from the north of us and ride across the moor in the night. . . . I am ashamed of myself, but I cannot help this.”

His fear permeated the cave and clouded out the image of the hunter waiting in ambush. She wanted to tell him that no ghosts smelled of tobacco and pony sweat, but she knew he would not even hear her. The horror he had heard about was real, it had passed within ten feet of him, and who knew how many times they would meet it again? For him to have taken this way had demanded more courage than she could have dreamed. She was responsible, and she couldn't protect him any more than she could against the sheriff's men.

“Could we move our beds together,” she asked humbly, “and sleep beside one another, and share the plaid? I am so frightened, and I'm ashamed, too.”

Anger stopped the shaking. “You are a woman. It is not dishonorable for you.”

“Honor, dishonor—what do they matter now, any more than being a man or woman matters? We are two human beings, and something is out there.” She went back to her bed and bundled up the heather and bracken and dumped it down by his. Then she lay down on it, but he stood in the cave entrance.

“It's just for companionship,” she said crossly. “I am not going to seduce you, and I don't think you have any intentions of seducing me.” She saw and heard Nigel shouting the ridiculous accusation in a breaking voice.

But she had broken through to Alick. “In any case,” he said ironically, “I would be in no condition to do so at this moment.” He came and lay down beside her. She covered herself with half the plaid, and he took the other half.

“There,” she said. “It's not likely to be back tonight.”
It's waiting for us in the next glen or on the next hill
, she finished silently. But the closeness, even without touching, was a sedative for them both. Then Alick, almost falling asleep, jerked awake, exclaimed unintelligibly and sat up, staring toward the entrance. She put her hand on his arm.

“It's all right, there's nothing there,” she said.

“You need to sleep,” he muttered. “We've a long way to go. Sleep, and I will watch.”

“Neither you nor I murdered him,” she said patiently, “so what have we to fear? . . . How did it happen?”

He lay back again. “He was one of them, you see, but he had secretly become an exciseman. His wife wanted him to be
respectable
, she called it. He was to turn them all over to the authorities when they came down from the mountains. There was one who suspected him, his own cousin, and in Glen Socach they got the truth out of him and cut his throat with his own dirk and buried him. That is why I said no man could pay me enough to sleep there last night. . . . But they met him the next time, you see, and the one who killed him was brought home half-mad. Since then no one goes this way.”

But someone else does
, Jennie thought. “What is the nearest town to where we are now?” she asked him.

“Why do you ask that? Do you want to go there?”

“No! I want to go with you to Fort William, as we planned. I was just wondering how far we had come in two days. It seems like a hundred miles.”

“Thirty is more like it. Strathpeffer and Dingwall are twenty miles away and more.”

Less than a month ago she had ridden through those places in a happy daze. Now she was concerned only with the man who had probably ridden out from one of those towns. If a big enough reward were offered and he wanted it all for himself, he would have a pistol in his belt and the confidence that he could take his prisoner without a struggle. But there
would
be a struggle; Alick would not go back to be humiliated and then hanged.

He fell asleep again, and this time he wasn't awakened by any horrors; his even breathing should have lulled her, but she was trying to think how she could save them both from the man lying in wait.

S
HE AWOKE
to find herself curled against Alick's side, and her two hands were clasped around his upper arm. Stupefied by heavy sleep, disoriented, she had barely realized where she was, and why, when the arm was gently removed; he rolled away from her and left the cave. She could see out; it was morning, and in the south the mountains that had burned like embers last night were fair against a sky that might have been as blue all the way to Spain. The ospreys were already fishing the loch, and their calls pierced the upper air like arrows.

She was so saturated with sleep she could hardly move a limb. She flexed fingers and toes, and stretched cautiously. She thought with anguished greed of a hot bath, fresh clothing against clean skin, a hot breakfast; of waking up at last in some safe place with everything awful wiped off her slate; of being Jennie Hawthorne whose worst ill was homesickness.

What you want, my stupid lass, is the impossible
, she said to herself.
There's no going back in time unless you lose a good part of your wits. This is the
here,
this is the
now. . . . .
And Alick's been gone too long. How long have I been lying here? Did I drop off again?

Nothing but her mind wanted to move fast; she groaned in protest while she got herself up. She'd heard no other sounds in the primitive silence except birds, but if the man had attacked him from behind and knocked him senseless, he would be bound and thrown over the pony's back before he knew it.

She saw it all in such ruthless detail that when someone stooped to come in, black and anonymous against the light, she put both fists up to her mouth and backed away.

Without a glance at her Alick picked up the satchel. She slipped out and went to the shrubby place she had found last night for privacy. Just beyond this the eruption of rock pushed up and out like the prow of a petrified ship, and the path went around it and out of sight. She walked under the projection until she could see what lay behind it. Nothing but empty green hillsides and stands of trees, opalescent with the vapors rising from them. But she almost stepped in pony manure.

When she came back, Alick had built a fire and was holding the pannikin over it. As the water began to steam, he dropped a handful of dry leaves into it.

“What are you making?” she asked.

“A tea for us, with hawthorn and whortleberry leaves. I gathered them up in Glen Socach. They should be dried in the sun, but this will be better than nothing.” He set the pan off the fire. “It is strengthening to the blood; it will put heart in us.” He began cutting off bread and cheese.

“Is it also useful for keeping ghosts away?” she asked.

“Are you finding me a joke?” He didn't raise his voice or look up from what he was doing.

“No,” she said, “but this morning I am convinced that was not a ghost last night.”

“I have no doubt whatever of your opinion of me,” he said stiffly.

Her dignity was equal to his. “My opinion of you is that you are a human being for whom I have caused much trouble, and you are behaving much better than I deserve.”

“No one is blaming you for anything.” He laid a slice of cheese on a slice of bread.

“
I
am,” she said briskly, “but I'm not going to belabor the point. What I want to say is that I almost walked in pony droppings this morning. Somebody was out here last night, who must have heard our movements in the cave and smelled traces of our fire.”

“Then I have made a fool of myself for nothing.”

“I'm not saying the ghost of the exciseman doesn't exist!” she said angrily. “I'd rather it was a ghost out there than someone who's followed us or come out from Fort Augustus to hunt us down!”

“It is nothing like that.”

“How do you know?” she said belligerently.

“I am just sure.” He was imperturbable.

“Just sure the way you were just sure it was a ghost last night?”

“The tea has steeped long enough. Here.” He produced a deep-bowled wooden spoon from Parlan's supplies. “Sup with this.”

It was bitter, but it felt good in her stomach, and it made the hard bread and cheese easier to eat. They took turns with the spoon. It was a point of honor not to be squeamish about small things. Besides, the one time she had seen him laugh, his teeth had looked healthy, and when their faces had been close together last night while they listened to the footsteps, his breath was clean. It was probably both weak and overnice of her to consider such things, but she couldn't help it. There were so-called gentlefolk with whom she wouldn't have shared a spoon. “I hope he isn't waiting for us farther on,” she said. “When you were gone this morning, I thought he had seized you.”

“He will not be waiting. He is an innocent traveler. He doesn't know about the exciseman, or he is not afraid of meeting him.”

She said irritably, “Do you have second sight? How can you be so positive? You were positive we'd meet no one, but someone else
is
here. You have no weapon but your knife, and he could be armed to the teeth.”

He didn't answer that. “Here. It has cooled a wee bit.” He held out the pannikin. “Drink the rest of it.”

She obeyed. Then she took the pan across the path and down to the spring and rinsed it and wiped it out with moss. The day that had begun in such beauty was changing. Scarves of mist were floating over the loch. They would walk in cold fog, possibly rain, straight to their doom. The food she had eaten was surging around in her like a wherry tossed on the waves. She climbed back up to the cave, where he was stamping out and grinding out any last sparks of their fire.

“All you care about is knowing he wasn't supernatural!” she said. “You'd rather have a dangerous man out here somewhere than a poor homeless spirit. That makes everything all right, doesn't it? Perfectly safe. Oh, you are so smug standing there!”

“Smug?” he repeated quizzically. “What is that?”

“It's what you are,” she retorted. “It was not a ghost, so you can tell me
my
fears mean nothing. Nothing else can do us any harm. Not a flesh-and-blood man with a pistol in his hand, and the promise of a good reward. No,
he
can lie in wait for us, just so long as he's not a ghost!”

“If he is lying in wait, he is being well entertained.”

It was like a hard hand clapped across her mouth. Her own voice echoed in her ears, bouncing across the loch from the opposite slopes. She was ashamed, embarrassed, and infuriated. But he had driven her into this behavior, and her anxiety about the stranger remained. She could not be or even sound contrite.

“I am sorry for shouting,” she said in a low voice. “But I am as afraid of that man as you are of the exciseman.”

“There is another way we could travel from here. They were sometimes driven down to it by snow on the heights. But they didn't like it.”

“Why?” She kept her voice down. “What's wrong about it? Surely there are no villages out here?”

“No, but some glens are too narrow and too dark, and sometimes there are others traveling through them for reasons that have nothing to do with whisky. They wish to be unseen, to have the place to themselves, you understand.”

“What you're saying is that you would rather take your chances with one man up here, who might be perfectly innocent, than with God knows what down below.”

Alick nodded.

“You could have told me that earlier,” said Jennie, “and not let me go on and on.”

“Och, I would never interrupt a lady when she is speaking her mind,” he said.

The fog, carried on no perceptible wind, silently surrounded them. The loch and the opposite hills disappeared; the path was blotted out ahead and behind them. Cold moisture dampened their skin and silvered their clothes. They walked in an eerie stillness broken only by their footsteps. The ospreys had long since gone in search of visible fishing grounds. All other life on earth could have died during the haunted night.

When the track dipped down below the tree line, they passed through a fir wood, but there was no sense of shelter here, only entrapment. It was dark under the trees; the mist writhed among them in strange shapes; there seemed to be a supernatural wind stirring the tips, though they'd felt nothing on the high slopes. They came to a little glade around a spring, and the man and pony had undoubtedly spent the night here. So he'd gone on instead of lying in wait; Jennie felt a little better, but not much.

She wanted to break the spell, but she couldn't think of anything to say. Alick was not a man who encouraged unnecessary words; he was too busy trying to save his own life, encumbered by her for weal or woe. She was terribly afraid it was going to be woe.

There was a sudden scrabble and scamper right over their heads, and she cried out in shock, straining to see up into the fir boughs. For what? She couldn't imagine, but her whole chest cavity seemed to reverberate like a drum.

Alick said something in Gaelic, then translated. “A pine marten. A harmless wee beast.” For Jennie the fright had been cathartic. The unseen animal restored the world to her, and she felt lighter and easier both in her limbs and in her mind.