Mercy (7 page)

He looked to his left, and to his right, but for the first time in his life he did not know the men who were fighting beside him. His own men, his tenan ts and tacksmen and cousins, would be on the road to Carrymuir by now. Like him, they had seen the sea of ten thousand sassenachs, heard the roll ing cannons, listened to the conflicting commands given to the Highland ar my. They had seen the zealousness on Prince Tearlach's smooth face and had known that they simply could not win.

When, in the wee hours of the dawn, he had gone to strike his bargain with the Duke of Perth, he knew that his argument was purely a matter of logisti cs. He had agreed to lead his men, he told Perth. That did not mean he hims elf would be fighting.

Jodi Picoult

It was a technicality; any oath he'd made would naturally imply he'd be fig hting alongside, since no laird would expect his clan to do what he himself would not. But in this case, he was willing to bend the truth to protect t he others. And he knew when he offered the commander the choice of a ragtag band from Carrymuir or his own skill in combat, it wouldn't be much of a c hoice at all.

He wondered, as he slogged across the moor for the third time, his leg bleed ing from a lucky round of Sassenach grapeshot, whether any of these fools re alized he did not want to be here at all. He didn't want to face one more bl oody English soldier, or step on the still-heaving backs of Scots fallen fou r deep.

He wondered what God was like. He hoped that heaven resembled Scotland. He murmured the paternoster over and over to hear the sound of his own voice

. Seeing a Sassenach just turning his way, he lifted his left arm high in th e air. He brought the sword down at the man's neck, cleaving it wide, feelin g the hot blood melt the sleet on his chest.

Cameron MacDonald sank to his knees and vomited; tried to remind himself th at he had given his word to fight to the death. He did not much relish dyin g, but aye, it was a fair trade. He loved the people of his town too much t o see them suffer.

And had he the chance, he'd do the same all over again.

Angus MacDonald sat up in his narrow bed. Having heard the gossip during one of his lucid moments during the day, it did not surprise him when the ghost of his great-great-great-great-uncle Cameron came to haunt him in the hollow of the night. And it surprised him even less that Cameron MacD

onald I was, in death, no less unconventional than he'd been when he was alive. No rattling chains and slipping through doors, not for him. No, he came to Angus in the guise of a dream, a spectacular frenzy in which Ang us seemed to be seeing through Cameron's own eyes as he thundered across a moor, waving a broadsword.

"I shouldna have expected anything different," he muttered, talking to hims elf as he pulled on a pair of twill trousers and a pilled Shetland sweater. Once, when he'd been caretaker of Carrymuir, he'd seen the ghost of Mary Q

ueen of Scots herself, sailing away from Loch Leven Castle dressed as a lad die, as she'd been

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when she escaped its prison hundreds of years before. It had left him with a queer feeling in his stomach and a beating in his head not unlike a hangove r--sensations he felt right now.

Angus knew that although most people would dismiss him as someone in the throes of Alzheimer's, he was really a victim of collective memory. It was a sort of reincarnation, a resurrection of some other clan member's thoughts. He happened to be privy to whatever was plaguing Cameron MacDo nald I. And tonight, Cameron Mac-Donald I was not pleased with the actio ns of Cameron MacDonald II.

"I dinna know what he can be thinking," Angus said, pulling slippers onto his feet, because they were the first footwear he could find in his bedroo m. "Young Cam always has to be reminded about the way of things." Angus, in fact, had been the one to convince Cam to return to Wheelock and b ecome police chief after his father's death. Almost exactly eight years ago, Cameron had come to Scotland to tell Angus about Ian's accident. At the tim e, Angus had been seventy-four, caretaker at Carrymuir all his life, althoug h his wife had died twelve years earlier and all his relatives were living i n Massachusetts. Young Cameron, who was a bit of a wanderer, had volunteered to sit at Carrymuir for several years to spell Angus, but Ian's early death had altered the plans. Cam had taken Angus to the tavern for a wee dram, kn owing that he, like everyone else, would take the loss of a clan chief hard. He spread his palms over the scarred wooden bar and told him of the ice, th e tractor-trailer, the bend in the narrow road. He said this all in a monoto ne, because it wasn't quite real to him yet, and he mentioned, as the doctor s had, that his father had felt no pain. When he was finished speaking, Angu s looked up at him, his eyes bright and dry. "Aye, well," he said, "so I'll be stayin' here a wee bit longer."

To Angus's horror, Young Cam had wanted to trade. He'd stay at Carrymuir, he said, and Angus could go home and take over the clan. The thought had s haken Angus more than his nephew's death; you simply couldn't cross the li nes of leadership like that.

Even now, Angus remembered the shine of Cam's brow and the set of his jaw as he fought his own birthright. It's no' a real title, he had said. There's not hing I can do as chief that ye canna do better.

Angus had shrugged, finished off his whiskey, and stared at the boy. He wond ered if Cam realized that he had slipped into Angus's own Scots burr, not be cause of a familiarity with the pattern of speech in Carrymuir, but simply b ecause it had been bred into him. "Duty is duty," Angus had said, "and a lai rd is a laird. And be there a clan or no', lad, ye canna doubt your own bloo d."

Of course, stubbornness had also been passed down over the generations of MacDonalds, so Angus had accepted a compromise. Cam returned to Wheelock

, but so did Angus, and the lands and grand house at Carrymuir were left to the Scottish National Trust.

Every morning over his rainbow banquet of vitamins and heart medication Ang us forced his mind back to Carrymuir, so that he would not wake up one morn ing and find that he could not remember it any longer. He pictured the stro ng stone house, the fireplace in the great hall, the sheep that spilled abo ut the old crofters' huts like a current. He did not let himself dwell on t he fact that Carrymuir, which had never been taken by Campbells or English or anyone else, was now overrun with tourists.

But he did not have time for that now. Angus pulled his bathrobe on over hi s clothes, and at just after three in the morning, began to walk in his sli ppers the mile from his small home to the Wheelock police station, where on ce again he would be his great-nephew's conscience.

Wheelock Township Police Dept.

Case # 95-9050

STATE vs. MacDONALD, James Reid White male, age 36, D.O.B. 3/14/59. Pla ce of birth: Boston MA Ht. 6'4", wt. 200 lbs. green eyes, auburn hair CHARGES: Murder One

PLACE: Wheelock Inn, Main St., Wheelock MA

DATE:

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September 19, 1995

EVIDENCE: 1.Pillowcase2.Rug samples3.Shoes worn by suspect4.Samples of hai r (victim)5.Samples of hair (suspect)6.Autopsy report7.Photographs of crim e scene andvictim8.Voluntary statement fromsuspectA Hie brewed her own tea

. It was a very English thing to do, and Cam sometimes laughed at her, say ing she'd better keep quiet about it or all the good Scots would run her o ut of town. At first she did it because she was a stickler for detail. In the same way she could sense a stray frond of grass ruining an arrangement

, she could taste the commonplace seeping from a bag of Lipton's as strong and as bitter as arsenic. But she'd learned to tolerate it and now she br ewed her own tea only because Cam usually made a comment about it. Allie did at least a hundred things each day simply because of their effect on Cam. They bound him to her: she'd drop his shirts off at the cleaners wit hout being asked, or lay out a bowl of cereal for him before she went to bed so it was there in the morning, or, as in the case of the tea, open herself to teasing just to guarantee an exchange of conversation. She made his life run so smoothly that he never had to wonder about those little details that plague everyone else--like turning the clocks back in the fall, or always h aving enough milk in the refrigerator, or keeping handy the right size batte ries for whatever piece of electronic equipment he was fixing. She told hers elf this was something she wanted to do, a silent promise she'd made on her wedding day to the handsome, magnificent man standing beside her. If every d ay flowed seamlessly into the next for Cam, he'd never have reason to wonder

, What if?

It never occurred to Allie that this was very similar to behav-iorally drugging Cam. Or that every selfless errand she ran for her husband was another silken strand that wrapped him tight, like a spider trapping her prey with guilt. Or that Cam was strong enough, and sure enough, to break o ut of any hold or system Allie could ever create.

Then again, maybe this had occurred to her, and that was the reason she con tinued.

Sometimes, when Cam was working the midnight-to-eight shift, and Allie was lying in bed, she let her hands move restlessly over her own body. She pret ended that Cam would notice something ridiculously simple--like the fact th at all his socks were neatly paired and folded in his underwear drawer--and would turn to her with the same look on his face that Allie often gave to him. Allie, he'd say, his eyes burning with wonder and worship, have you do ne all this for me?

Cam had gone back to the station in the middle of the night to relieve Zand y, who was watching over Jamie MacDonald. When Allie heard the car pull int o the driveway, she slid the egg from the bowl where it had been waiting to the sizzling pan. By the time Cam had kicked the dirt off his boots and hu ng his coat up in the mudroom, Allie was already slipping the egg onto a sl ice of toast.

She placed her hand on the back of his neck as he settled heavily at the kitc hen table, rubbing his face with his hands. "Tired?" she asked. Cam made an indistinguishable noise in the back of his throat. He picked up h is fork just as Allie laid the steaming plate in front of him. His mouth wate red at the sight of the hot food, but he carefully set the fork on the edge o f the plate and turned back to Allie.

She was at the sink, scraping the frying pan. She had a thing about letting food sit in a frying pan, and was obsessive about scrubbing it clean the sec ond it came off the stove. Her shoulders were tense with effort, but she was humming.

"Allie," he said, but she didn't hear him over the running water. "Allie!" She turned around quickly, pressing up against the basin of the sink as if he'

d scared the hell out of her instead of just raising his voice. "What's the ma tter with your egg?"

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"Nothing." Cam took a deep breath. "Allie," he said, "do you think he was ri ght?"

Allie slid into the chair across from her husband. There was no question i n her mind what he was asking. "Do you?"

Cam stared at her so forcefully Allie could feel his gaze. She covered her chest with her palms, picturing in a quick flash Cam's mouth drawing deep a t her breast the night before. "I don't know," he admitted. "But my hands a re tied. He killed a woman; we've got the body. He's got scratches on his f ace and Hugo found skin cells that match up under Maggie MacDonald's finger nails." He paused a moment, cocking his head. "If I was dying of cancer and in god-awful pain and I asked you to kill me, would you do it?" Allie didn't hesitate. "Yes. But then I'd kill myself, too." Cam's mouth fell open. "Because you'd murdered me?"

"No," Allie said. "Because you'd be dead." 71 If'vA. put her toothbrush down at the edge of the sink and stared L VJ. a t the medicine cabinet one more time. She'd done it before at other people's houses--peeked inside--but this was a little different. This wasn't simple curiosity, but a burning desire to put together the pieces. And it seemed pa tently wrong to invade the privacy of a woman who had gone out of her way to give her employment and shelter all in one day.

Mia opened the mirrored door, watching her own image lengthen and swerve a nd then fall away to a neat array of glass shelves.

Tylenol, and iodine, and syrup of ipecac. Gauze pads and Band-Aids and La ura Ashley perfume. Ban deodorant, Brut aftershave. Kaopectate. The only prescription medicine she recognized was a form of penicillin. Well, that, and the birth control pills. She had used the same kind at one point. Mia took out the shell-shaped box and ran her finger over the lid. She flipp ed open the pills and counted the number missing.

It occurred to her that if she pushed a couple of pills out with her thumb and washed them down the drain, she could quite possibly change the life of Cameron and Allie MacDonald. She quickly snapped the lid shut and put it b ack in the medicine cabinet, shaking with this sense of power. Jodi Picoult

As Cam put down his empty glass, Allie refilled it. "It's Murder One," he sa id, as if he could not believe it himself. "He knew he was going to do it; h e drove to a specific goddamned town to do it; and he voluntarily admitted t o killing her." He shook his head. "I don't know what Jamie thought I could do for him," he said. "I've got to assume it was a premeditated killing."

"A lot of people aren't going to see it that way." Cam stood up and wrapped his arms around her. She fit just under his chin. " Too bad you're only the wife of a clan chief. You'd make the perfect politic al mate."

"Cam," Allie said slowly, as if a thought had just occurred to her, "I made f uneral decorations. Cemetery baskets and things like that. Well, actually, Mi a did."

Cam nodded. "You're the town florist. No one's going to think you're making a statement."

Allie pulled away from him and opened the refrigerator, pretending to searc h for something. "But what if I did?"

"What if you did what?"

"What if I wanted to make a statement?"

Cam sank back into a chair. "Allie, even if you killed someone, I'd have to tur n you in." He ran a hand through his thick hair, spilling it over his face. "I'