Jennie About to Be (40 page)

They surprised a group of deer on a ridge just above them; one moment they were there, coats dark with wet, and the next moment they were gone. There was a thinning and brightening of the mist, and a northwest wind arose and drove the fog before it. In a little while the sun shone, and Jennie felt like singing a hymn of thanksgiving.
I'm a sun worshipper
, she thought.
May my lord make his face to shine upon me and give me heat and light and hope
.

She might be a little delirious, she thought cheerfully, but it was a pleasant delirium, to appreciate the comfort of her clothes drying on her; the sight of eagles soaring in the limitless sky, the white threads of waterfalls down mountainsides, the dark pelts of forested slopes, the porcelain blue sheen of the lochs.

It was all very near Eden after the bad night and the raw, blind morning. There was no place up here for the stranger to be hiding; everything was clear and bare. They stopped at noon on a rock shelf overlooking a broad green valley through which small streams meandered in a glittering tracery. The call of a curlew rose at irregular intervals to Jennie and Alick where they sat with their backs against warm stone. From the height of land above them water ran down and filled a hollow in the rock, from which they drank; the overflow trickled down to the valley to join one of those sparkling threads.

Their strupach was another surprise from the sack, the roots of a plant called cormeille. He had gathered them this morning, while she'd been wondering if he'd been taken prisoner. She honored her vow not to be squeamish, and took his word for it that a small quantity would keep her going almost as well as the bread and cheese did.

When she didn't hesitate, he showed his approval by opening a conversation. He showed her a track that led down to the valley beside the narrow wandering channel of the overflow from the rock pool. “There are fresh hoofprints in the damp moss,” he said. “He will be far away by now, through the pass there.” He pointed to a notch in the western wall of the hills.

“Where is he going, do you suppose?”

“Out to the coast, I'm thinking.”

“I wonder why,” Jennie said.

“All who travel this way are not fugitives,” he said.

They set off again, southwest along one of those upheavals of gneiss like frozen surf, rearing above the green strath with its curlews and meandering streams. It was not difficult; after all, it had been a track for laden ponies, not for mountain goats. But the slight euphoria caused by the appearance of the sun and the disappearance of the stranger was wearing off. The day seemed to go on forever, and so did the way ahead, each twist in the track opening out to a different but equally endless vista.

The illusion that the mountains were continuously rearranging themselves was emphasized by the constant shifts in the light and shadow as the immense clouds boiled up over the northwestern peaks and blew across the sun.

The cormeille root had done what Alick had promised. They were not hungry again until late afternoon, when they stopped and had a bit of bread and cheese and drank some water. Alick said only one thing.

“I will be needing to snare our food now. The ham will be gone tonight, and the bread soon after.”

“Can you tickle trout?” she asked.

“Guddle them, you mean? I have done it, but I would not like my life to depend upon it.”

There was nothing to say to that. If he had no luck with his snares, they could live for a time on water and perhaps cormeille root if he found more of it. But they'd hardly be able to travel fifteen miles a day; it was unlikely they'd ever walk into Fort William; their ghosts would join the exciseman.

They started on again, with the long Highland evening ahead of them. Her thoughts moved independently of her body. This was the third day from the hollow by the Pict's House. Three mornings ago Nigel had saddled Dora for her and said, “I will come with you,” and she had said, “No.” But he came anyway, and now he was dead.

The old ballad sang itself in her head, and she would never be free of it.

“Stop this!”
she hissed. Alick stood still and waited without looking around. “I'm talking to myself!” she said loudly.

He nodded as if it were nothing strange, and went on. Now she was back in the immediate world again, and it was no better, no worse, than when she had left it.

Up ahead of them a new rock formation towered against a backdrop of roiling purple and pewter clouds. “What is that?” she called to Alick. “Is it man-made? A shrine? An
idol
? Is this a place where savage tribes used to worship? Did they hurl human sacrifices over the cliff?” She laughed wildly. “I shouldn't be putting ideas into your head.”

Alick ignored this. “It's called the Cailleach, the Old Woman. There are many stories about her. One is that she is watching for her husband and eleven sons to come back from battle. They never come because they are dead in some far country, and turned to stone, like her.”

“Isn't there a kinder story? That she protects travelers, for instance?”

“Aye, there might be one; there are tales enough. You could make one to please yourself, as the rest have done.”

“Do
you
have one?”

He almost smiled. “There are enough lies told without me adding to them.”

The clouds were moving off to the southeast, and as the wind dropped, the new ones came more slowly, so when they went down into pine woods again, the showers of sunlight dropping through the green roof warmed and illuminated the shade below. Unseen life fluttered and sang in the treetops. She kept looking up in hopes of seeing a pine marten.

They left the golden rain for the shade of a deep small glen like the one in which the exciseman was buried; hawthorn foamed with blossom; birches and oaks stood in a green sea of ferns and bracken. They startled a fox mousing, and he was gone like a streak of fire.

“Pass your stick through the bracken like this,” said Alick, demonstrating. “It will warn an adder away.”

“Adders!” She stood rigid on the spot. She knew about them at home, but in her present state of mind she had never given them a thought here. “Are there a great many?”

“I have seen an adder only once in my life,” he said, “but I do not wish to be surprised that way again.”

She followed him into the waist-high green tide, fearfully swishing her stick back and forth before her. When they came out onto a stretch of turf, her forehead and nape were wet.

Shallow water flowed down through the glen over a pebbly and sandy bed, splashing up in miniature surf whenever it met a boulder of any size. The short grass beside it was spattered with the little yellow flowers of tormentil and the white ones of wild strawberry plants, and there were patches of whortleberry with blossoms like tiny waxen bells. It was warm here even though the sun had long since left it, as if it still stored some of the day's heat.

Alick dropped his plaid and the bag. “We will sleep here tonight. We were late starting, and it would be dark before we reached the place I had in mind.”

“Was it my fault?” she asked with false meekness.

“We will not be blaming anyone,” he said tranquilly. “You might be gathering some dry wood while I am gone.” He disappeared abruptly past an elder thicket. She heard him for a little while, then nothing except a fine, thin, little birdsong. The eagles were absent from the zenith, but at a lower level some sort of hawk, not like the buzzards of the moor, was hunting. She wondered how long the small singing bird would live.

N
ERVOUSLY
sweeping her stick back and forth ahead of her, she went into the high bracken again toward the biggest birches. These looked scarred with the years and showed where limbs had broken off. She found old dead branches under them; she also found a well-trodden path through the bracken, evidently used by animals coming to drink. There were a few deer droppings on it and some smaller ones. She loaded one arm with as much of the light dry wood as she could manage and went back by the animal path, still sweeping her stick before her but with slightly less trepidation. Earlier she'd felt like someone wading through murky waters over an unknown bottom.

She came out to the brook downstream from Alick's plaid and sack, at a spot where the earth was trampled and broken at the water's edge by a confusion of hoof and paw prints. More droppings, none of them fresh today. She was proud that she was clearheaded enough to search for the sign of a man's foot. There was none. She recognized the fox's dainty step, and she was more intrigued than alarmed by a large, round, catlike print. Lynx or wildcat? It was only a two-legged predator that she feared.

She followed the edge of the stream to their belongings, dropped her wood, and went back for more, this time taking the plaid. She spread it on the ground, and by going from one thick old birch to another, she collected a good amount of fuel. She drew up the four corners and tied her scarf tightly around them, then hoisted the bundle over her shoulder. She allowed herself to think of nothing but the immediate present, not last night, not tomorrow's journey. Not Nigel, not what lay after Fort William. For now she had no past and no future; she wanted something hot in her stomach and then a long sleep with neither ghosts nor nightmares.

When she came back to the campsite, Alick was just bringing a load of fir boughs. An eyebrow went up at the sight of her with the huge bundle on her back, and she couldn't resist a small grin of triumph as she untied the scarf and tipped out the contents.

“You've wrought well,” he said.

She bobbed. “Thank you, sir!” No smile from him; this was not a situation for amusement. He went away again.
Ah, well
, she thought,
I should be glad that he speaks to me at all
. She looked longingly at the sack; she was sure she could use the tinderbox to get their fire started, but she wouldn't be so presumptuous. She sat on the ground and tried to concentrate on sorting out the natural sounds around her so as to keep her thoughts in the narrow channel of the
now
. She no longer feared his absences as desertion, but he was gone a long time, and the glen began to lose its stored warmth.

He brought more fir boughs and carried his bonnet full of cold, dripping watercress. “My head is clean,” he said, straight-faced. “There'll be no wee beasties straying among the cresses.”

“I'm sure of it,” she said just as solemnly.

“Now if you'll be pulling bracken for our beds, I'll be cooking our supper.”

“Shall we put them together again tonight and share the plaid?” she asked. “There may be frost. I can feel the chill.”

There was no nonsense about him. “Aye, it could be,” he agreed. Vigorously she pulled bracken and spread it thickly over the mattress of fir. She wondered if he'd been embarrassed or alarmed this morning to wake with her hands clasping his arm and her forehead against his shoulder. Likely as not he'd been grateful for the human contact while he suspected the murdered exciseman to be roaming around outside. Well, she'd been grateful, too; it was probably that contact which had helped her sleep.

He fried the rest of the ham, and they ate slowly, making the most of every mouthful, alternating ham with watercress and the bread with which they'd wiped up the melted fat.

“We'll have more meat for tomorrow, I'm thinking,” he said, and she knew he had made and set some snares. She and her sisters had destroyed them wherever they found them, but then their lives hadn't depended on snares.

When they settled for the night on their comparatively soft bed, with Alick silently refusing the plaid, they saw for the first time the crescent moon. The sky was the color of her Wedgwood jasperware, with the moon delicately embossed in white upon it.
Forbidden comparison
, she sternly rebuked herself.
No past, remember
?

“It's so deep, this glen,” she said, “after the hilltops. I feel as if we're seeing the moon from the bottom of a well. Well, at least we're not seeing it through glass, or over a left shoulder.” Her body was relaxing, but she was too keyed up to sleep, much as she had longed for it.

“How many miles did we go today?” she asked. “Fifteen?
More
?” she added hopefully.

“Far enough,” he conceded. “We will do better tomorrow; we can be on our way at first light. Sleep now.”

She turned on her side and looked at him from under her lids. His eyes were shut, and he lay on his back with his ankles crossed like a Crusader on his tomb. His beard was recognizable as a beard now. His nose had a mild, aquiline sweep to it. The crop marks across it and his cheekbone were still there but faint.

She could not sleep on order, though her limbs sank with a delicious heaviness into the bracken and fir, and the rippling of water so close to them was sedative. She tried to let herself go with it, but she was horribly aware of what clamored at the doors of her consciousness, and she didn't know how long she could hold out.