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DUTCH CABIN

March 1773

NO ONE HAD KNOWN the cabin was there, until Kenny Lindsay had seen the flames, on his way up the creek

“I wouldna ha’ seen at all,” he said, for perhaps the sixth tiht, I’d never ha’ kent it, never” He wiped a tre hand over his face, unable to take his eyes off the line of bodies that lay at the edge of the forest “Was it savages, Mac Dubh? They’re no scalped, but maybe—”

“No” Jaently back over the staring blue face of a sirl “None of theht them out?”

Lindsay shook his head, eyes closed, and shivered convulsively It was late afternoon, and a chilly spring day, but the

“I didna look,” he said simply

My own hands were like ice; as nu as the rubbery flesh of the dead wo They had been dead forthem li had preserved thenities of putrefaction

Still, I breathed shallowly; the air was bitter with the scent of burning Wisps of steam rose now and then from the charred ruin of the tiny cabin Fro, then bend and pick up soround beneath

Kenny had pounded on our door long before daylight, su that ere far too late to offer aid Soe had cous and Ronnie Sinclair in a sether in low-voiced Gaelic

“D’ye ken what did for them, Sassenach?” Jamie squatted beside me, face troubled “The ones under the trees, that is” He nodded at the corpse in front of me “I ken what killed this puir woman”

The wo, slender feet shod in leather clogs A pair of long hands to h not so tall as Brianna, I thought, and looked auto the branches on the far side of the clearing

I had turned the woman’s apron up to cover her head and upper body Her hands were red, rough-knuckled ork, and with callused palhs and the slenderness of her body, I thought she was no er No one could say whether she had been pretty

I shook my head at his remark

“I don’t think she died of the burning,” I said “See, her legs and feet aren’t touched She ht fire, and it spread to the shoulders of her gown She h to the wall or the chiht, and then the whole bloody place went up”

Jamie nodded slowly, eyes on the dead woman

“Aye, that makes sense But as it killed theh none are burned like this But they ht, for none o’ them ran out Was it a deadly illness, perhaps?”

“I don’t think so Let ain”

I walked slowly down the row of still bodies with their cloth-covered faces, stooping over each one to peer again beneath the makeshift shrouds There were any number of illnesses that could be quickly fatal in these days—with no antibiotics to hand, and no way of ad fluids save by mouth or rectum, a simple case of diarrhea could kill within twenty-four hours

I saw such things often enough to recognize them easily; any doctor does, and I had been a doctor for s now and then in this century that I had never encountered in ht with the slave trade from the tropics—but it was no parasite that had done for these poor souls, and no illness that I knew, to leave such traces on its victims

All the bodies—the burned woman, a much older woman, and three children—had been found inside the walls of the fla house Kenny had pulled them out, just before the roof fell in, then ridden for help All dead before the fire started; all dead virtually at the saun to smolder soon after the woman fell dead on her hearth?

The victiiant red spruce, while the rave nearby Brianna stood by the sirl, her head bent I came to kneel by the little body, and she knelt down across from me

“What was it?” she asked quietly “Poison?”

I glanced up at her in surprise

“I think so What gave you that idea?”

She nodded at the blue-tinged face below us She had tried to close the eyes, but they bulged beneath the lids, giving the little girl a look of startled horror The sony, and there were traces of vomit in the corners of the mouth

“Girl Scout handbook,” Brianna said She glanced at the h to hear Herout her open hand “Never eat any strange mushroom,” she quoted “There areone fro in a ring by that log over there”

Moist, fleshy caps, a pale brohite warty spots, the open gills and slender stems so pale as to look almost phosphorescent in the spruce shadows They had a pleasant, earthy look to them that belied their deadliness

“Panther toadstools,” I said, half to aricus pantherinus—or that’s what they will be called, once so them properly Pantherinus, because they kill so swiftly—like a striking cat”

I could see the gooseflesh ripple on Brianna’s forearold hairs She tilted her hand and spilled the rest of the deadly fungus on the ground

“Who in their righther hand on her skirt with a slight shudder

“People who didn’t know better People ere hungry, perhaps,” I answered softly I picked up the little girl’s hand, and traced the delicate bones of the forearns of bloat, whether froes I couldn’t tell—but the collarbones were sharp as scythe blades All of the bodies were thin, though not to the point of emaciation

I looked up, into the deep blue shadows of the mountainside above the cabin It was early in the year for foraging, but there was food in abundance in the forest—for those who could recognize it

Jahtly on my back Cold as it was, a trickle of sweat streaked his neck, and his thick auburn hair was dark at the temples

“The grave is ready,” he said, speaking low, as though he ht alarm the child “Is that what’s killed the bairn?” He nodded at the scattered fungi

“I think so—and the rest of them, too Have you had a look around? Does anyone knoho they were?”

He shook his head

“Not English; the clothes are wrong Gerone to Salem, surely; they’re clannish souls, and no inclined to settle on their own These were s on the old wo use “No books nor writing left, if there was any to begin with Nothing that ht tell their name But—”

“They hadn’t been here long” A low, cracked voice er had co rearden plot had been scratched into the earth nearby, but the few plants shoere no more than sprouts, the tender leaves lin of livestock, no

“New eer said softly “Not bond servants; this was a family They weren’t used to outdoor labor, either; the women’s hands have blisters and fresh scars” His own broad hand rubbed unconsciously over a homespun knee; his palms were as smoothly callused as Jamie’s now, but he had once been a tender-skinned scholar; he re

“I wonder if they left people behind—in Europe,” Brianna irl’s forehead, and laid the kerchief back over her face I saw her throat move as she sed “They’ll never knohat happened to them”

“No” Jamie stood abruptly “They do say that God protects fools—but I think even the Alhty will lose patience now and then” He turned away,to Lindsay and Sinclair

“Look for the man,” he said to Lindsay Every head jerked up to look at him

“Man?” Roger said, and then glanced sharply at the burned re “Aye—who built the cabin for them?”

“The wo her chin

“You could, aye,” he said,look at his wife Brianna rese; she stood six feet in her stockings and had her father’s clean-lith

“Perhaps they could, but they didn’t,” Jamie said shortly He nodded toward the shell of the cabin, where a few bits of furniture still held their fragile shapes As I watched, the evening wind ca the ruin, and the shadow of a stool collapsed noiselessly into ash, flurries of soot and char round

“What do youinto the house There was virtually nothing left inside, though the chied bits of the walls res fallen like jackstraws

“There’s noat the blackened hearth, where the remnants of a cauldron lay, cracked in two from the heat, its contents vaporized “No pots, save that—and that’s too heavy to carry away Nay tools Not a knife, not an ax—and ye see whoever built it had that”

I did; the logs were unpeeled, but the notches and ends bore the clear marks of an ax

Frowning, Roger picked up a long pine branch and began to poke through the piles of ash and rubble, looking to be sure Kenny Lindsay and Sinclair didn’t bother; Jamie had told them to look for ainto the forest Fergus ith thean the chore of collecting stones for a cairn

“If there was afrom her father to the row of bodies “Did this woman maybe think they wouldn’t survive on their own?”

And thus take her own life, and those of her children, to avoid a long-drawn-out death from cold and starvation?

“Leave them and take all their tools? God, I hope not” I crossed h even as I did so, I doubted it “Wouldn’t they have walked out, looking for help? Even with childrenthe snow’s hest mountain passes were still packed with snow, and while the trails and slopes et and muddy with runoff, they’d been passable for a month, at least

“I’ve found the hts He spoke very calmly, but paused to clear his throat “Just—just here”

The daylight was beginning to fade, but I could see that he had gone pale No wonder; the curled form he had unearthed beneath the charred tiive anyone pause Charred to blackness, hands upraised in the boxer’s pose so common to those dead by fire, it was difficult even to be sure that it was a ht it was, from what I could see

Speculation about this new body was interrupted by a shout froe

“We’ve found them, milord!”

Everyone looked up fro froe of the wood

“Theround within the shadow of the trees, found not together, but not far apart, only a short distance from the house And both, so far as I could tell, probably dead of

“That’s no Dutch his head over one body

“He us dubiously He scratched his nose with the tip of the hook he wore in replacement of his left hand “From the Indies, non?”

One of the unknown bodies was in fact that of a black man The other hite, and both wore nondescript clothes of worn homespun—shirts and breeches; no jackets, despite the cold weather And both were barefoot

“No” Ja one hand unconsciously on his own breeches, as though to rid himself of the touch of the dead “The Dutch keep slaves on Barbuda, aye—but these are better fed than the folk from the cabin” He lifted his chin toward the silent roomen and children “They didna live here Besides” I saw his eyes fix on the dead men’s feet

The feet were grubby about the ankles and heavily callused, but basically clean The soles of the black man’s feet showed yellowish pink, with no smears of mud or rando through the muddy forest barefoot, that much was sure

“So there were perhaps more men? And when these died, their cous added practically, gesturing from the burned cabin to the stripped bodies—“and fled”

“Aye,slowly over the earth of the yard—but the ground was churned with footsteps, clurass uprooted and the whole of the yard dusted with ash and bits of charred wood It looked as though the place had been ravaged by ra hippopotami

“I could wish that Young Ian was here He’s the best of the trackers; he could maybe tell what happened there, at least” He nodded into the wood, where the men had been found “How one”

Ja fast now; even in the clearing where the burned cabin stood, the dark was rising, pooling under the trees, creeping like oil across the shattered earth

His eyes went to the horizon, where streaold and pink as the sun set behind them, and he shook his head

“Bury theo”

Onethe dead, the burned man had not died of fire or poison When they lifted the charred corpse fro fell free of the body, landing with a sround Brianna picked it up, and rubbed at it with the corner of her apron

“I guess they overlooked this,” she said a little bleakly, holding it out It was a knife, or the blade of one The wooden hilt had burned entirely away, and the blade itself arped with heat

Steeling ainst the thick, acrid stench of burned fat and flesh, I bent over the corpse, poking gingerly at the reat deal, but preserves the strangest things The triangular wound was quite clear, seared in the hollow beneath his ribs

“They stabbed hi hands on my own apron

“They killed hilanced at the young wo apron over her head “She made a steith the mushrooms, and they all ate it The children, too”

The clearing was silent, save for the distant calls of birds on thepainfully in eance? Or simple despair?

“Aye, maybe,” Jamie said quietly He stooped to pick up an end of the sheet of canvas they had placed the dead man on “We’ll call it accident”

The Dutchers in another

A cold wind had sprung up as the sun went down; the apron fluttered away froled cry of shock, and nearly dropped her

She had neither face nor hair anymore; the slender waist narrowed abruptly into charred ruin The flesh of her head had burned away co an oddly tiny, blackened skull, fro levity

They lowered her hastily into the shallow grave, her children and mother beside her, and left Brianna and me to build a small cairn over them, in the ancient Scottish way, to mark the place and provide protection fro for the two barefoot men

The work finally done, everyone gathered, white-faced and silent, around the new-er stand close beside Brianna, his arh her, which I thought had nothing to do with the cold Their child, Jeirl

“Will ye speak a word, Mac Dubh?” Kenny Lindsay glanced inquiringly at Jaainst the growing chill

It was nearly nightfall, and no one wanted to linger We would have to , and that would be hard enough, in the dark But Kenny was right; we couldn’t leave without at least soers

Jamie shook his head

“Nay, let Roger Mac speak If these were Dutchmen, belike they were Protestant”

Dilance Brianna shot at her father It was true that Roger was a Presbyterian; so was Tom Christie, a much older s The question of religion was noRoger

Roger cleared his throat with a noise like tearing calico It was always a painful sound; there was anger in it noell He didn’t protest, though, and he ht on, as he took his place at the head of the grave

I had thought he would sientler psalh

“Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I ament He hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass, and He hath set darkness in my paths”

His voice had once been powerful, and beautiful It was choked now, noshadow of its former beauty—but there was sufficient power in the passion hich he spoke to make all those who heard him bow their heads, faces lost in shadow

“He hath stripped lory, and taken the crown froone: and my hope hath He removed like a tree” His face was set, but his eyes rested for a bleak moment on the charred stu block

“He hath put my brethren far froed from otten lances, and everyone drew a little closer together, against the rising wind

“Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends,” he said, and his voice softened, so that it was difficult to hear hi of the trees “For the hand of God has touched me”

Brianna ht movement beside him, and he cleared his throat once limpse of the rope scar that marred it

“Oh, that my words were noritten! Oh, that they were printed in a book! That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever!”

He looked slowly round from face to face, his own expressionless, then took a deep breath to continue, voice cracking on the words

“For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body”—Brianna shuddered convulsively, and looked away from the raw mound of dirt—“yet in my flesh shall I see God Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold”

He stopped, and there was a brief collective sigh, as everyone let out the breath they had been holding He wasn’t quite finished, though He had reached out, half-unconsciously, for Bree’s hand, and held it tightly He spoke the last words alht for his listeners

“Be ye afraid of the sword: for wrath bringeth the punishment”

I shivered, and Ja He looked down at

He was thinking, as I was, not of the present, but the future Of a ses of the Wilton Gazette, dated February 13, 1776

It is with grief that the news is received of the deaths by fire of Jaration that destroyed their house in the settleht of January 21 last Mr Fraser, a nephew of the late Hector Cameron of River Run Plantation, was born at Broch Tuarach in Scotland He idely known in the Colony and deeply respected; he leaves no surviving children

It had been easy, so far, not to think too eable future—after all, forewarned was forearmedwasn’t it?

I glanced at the shallow cairn, and a deeper chill passed through me I stepped closer to Jamie, and put my other hand on his arht in reassurance No, he said to me silently No, I will not let it happen