Outlander [08] Written in My Own Heart's Blood

by Diana Gabaldon

  Oh, God. Bree. Oh, Jesus, help me. Will I ever see her again?

  He realized that he’d fallen silent and was staring at Janet Fraser with his mouth open. Apparently she was used to this sort of response from men, though; she gave him a demure, slant-eyed smile, said that supper would be on the table in a few moments and maybe Da should show Mr. MacKenzie the way to the necessary? Then she was walking back down the hallway, the big door swung to behind her, and he found he could breathe again.

  THE SUPPER WAS plain but plentiful and well cooked, and Roger found that food restored him amazingly. No wonder—he couldn’t remember when he’d last eaten.

  They ate in the kitchen, with a pair of housemaids called Annie and Senga and a man-of-all-work named Tom McTaggart sharing the table with the family. All of them were interested in Roger and, while giving him great sympathy in the matter of his missing son, were even more interested in where he might come from and what news he might bear.

  Here he was at something of a loss, as he had no firm notion what year it was (Brian died—God, will die—when Jamie was nineteen, and if Jamie was born in May of 1721—or was it 1722?—and he was two years younger than Jenny …) and thus no idea what might have been happening in the world of late, but he delayed a bit, explaining his antecedents in some detail—that was good manners, for one thing, and for another, his birthplace in Kyle of Lochalsh was far enough away from Lallybroch that the Frasers were unlikely to have met any of his people.

  Then at last he had a bit of luck, when McTaggart told about taking off his shoe to shake out a stone, then seeing one of the pigs wriggle under the fence and head for the kailyard at a trot. He rushed after the pig, of course, and succeeded in catching it—but had dragged it back to the pen only to find that the other pig had likewise wriggled out and was peacefully eating his shoe.

  “This was all she left!” he said, pulling half a shredded leather sole out of his pocket and waving it at them reproachfully. “And a rare struggle I had to pull it from her jaws!”

  “Why did ye bother?” Jenny asked, wrinkling her nose at the dank object. “Dinna trouble yourself, Taggie. We’ll slaughter the pigs next week, and ye can have a bit o’ the hide to make yourself a new pair of shoon.”

  “And I suppose I’m to go barefoot ’til then, am I?” McTaggart asked, disgruntled. “There’s frost on the ground in the morn, aye? I could take a chill and be dead of the pleurisy before yon pig’s eaten its last bucket o’ slops, let alone been tanned.”

  Brian laughed and lifted his chin toward Jenny. “Did your brother no leave a pair of his outgrown shoon behind when he left for Paris? I mind me he did, and if ye havena given them to the poor, might be as Taggie could manage wi’ them for a bit.”

  Paris. Roger’s mind worked furiously, calculating. Jamie had spent not quite two years in Paris at the université and had come back … when? When he was eighteen, he thought. Jamie would have been—will be—eighteen in May of 1739. So it was now 1737, 1738, or 1739.

  The narrowing of uncertainty calmed him a little, and he managed to put his mind to thinking of historical events that had occurred in that gap that he might offer as current news in conversation: absurdly, the first thing that came to mind was that the bottle opener had been invented in 1738. The second was that there had been an enormous earthquake in Bombay in 1737.

  His audience was initially more interested by the bottle opener, which he was obliged to describe in detail—inventing wildly, as he had no notion what the thing actually looked like, though there were sympathetic murmurs regarding the residents of Bombay and a brief prayer for the souls of those crushed under falling houses and the like.

  “But where is Bombay?” asked the younger of the housemaids, wrinkling her brow and looking from one face to another.

  “India,” said Jenny promptly, and pushed back her chair. “Senga, fetch the cranachan, aye? I’ll show ye where India is.”

  She vanished through the swinging door, and the bustle of removing dishes left Roger with a few moments’ breathing space. He was beginning to feel a little easier, getting his bearings, though still agonized with worry for Jem. He did spare a moment’s thought for William Buccleigh and how Buck might take the news of the date of their arrival.

  Seventeen thirty-something … Jesus, Buck himself hadn’t even been born yet! But, after all, what difference did that make? he asked himself. He hadn’t been born yet, either, and had lived quite happily in a time prior to his birth before.… Could their proximity to the beginning of Buck’s life have something to do with it, though?

  He did know—or thought he knew—that you couldn’t go back to a time during your own lifetime. Trying to exist physically at the same time as yourself just wasn’t on. It had just about killed him once; maybe they’d got too close to Buck’s original lifeline, and Buck had somehow recoiled, taking Roger with him?

  Before he could explore the implications of that unsettling thought, Jenny returned, carrying a large, thin book. This proved to be a hand-colored atlas, with maps—surprisingly accurate maps, in many cases—and descriptions of “The Nations of the World.”

  “My brother sent it to me from Paris,” Jenny told him proudly, opening the book to a double-page spread of the Continent of India, where the starred circle indicating Bombay was surrounded by small drawings of palm trees, elephants, and something that upon close scrutiny turned out to be a tea plant. “He’s at the université there.”

  “Really?” Roger smiled, being sure to look impressed. He was, the more so at realization of the effort and expense involved in going from this remote mountain wilderness to Paris. “How long has he been there?”

  “Oh, almost two years now,” Brian answered. He put out a hand and touched the page gently. “We do miss the lad cruelly, but he writes often. And he sends us books.”

  “He’ll be back soon,” Jenny said, though with an air of conviction that seemed somewhat forced. “He said he’d come back.”

  Brian smiled, though this too was a little forced.

  “Aye. I’m sure I hope so, a nighean. But ye ken he may have found opportunities that keep him abroad for a time.”

  “Opportunities? Ye mean that de Marillac woman?” Jenny asked, a distinct edge in her voice. “I dinna like the way he writes about her. Not one bit.”

  “He could do worse for a wife, lass.” Brian lifted one shoulder. “She’s from a good family.”

  Jenny made a very complicated sound in her throat, indicating sufficient respect for her father as to prevent her expressing a fuller opinion of “that woman” while still making that opinion plain. Her father laughed.

  “Your brother’s no a complete fool,” he assured her. “I doubt he’d marry a simpleton or a—a—” He’d obviously thought better of saying “whore”—his lips had begun to shape the word—but couldn’t think of a substitute in time.

  “He would,” Jenny snapped. “He’d walk straight into a cob’s web wi’ his eyes wide open, if the cob had a pretty face and a round arse.”

  “Janet!” Her father tried to look shocked but failed utterly. McTaggart guffawed openly, and Annie and Senga giggled behind their hands. Jenny glowered at them but then drew herself up with dignity and addressed herself to their guest.

  “So, then, Mr. MacKenzie. Is your own wife living, I hope? And is she your wean’s mother?”

  “Is she—” He felt the question like a blow in the chest but then remembered when he was. The odds of a woman surviving childbirth were no more than even in many places. “Yes. Yes, she’s—in Inverness, with our daughter.”

  Mandy. Oh, my sweet baby. Mandy. Bree. Jem. All at once, the enormity of it struck him. He’d managed so far to ignore it by concentrating on the need to find Jem, but now a cold wind whistled through the holes in his heart left by hurtling odds. The odds were that he would never see any of them again. And they would never know what had happened to him.

  “Oh, sir.” Jenny whispered it, leaning forward to lay a hand on his arm, her eyes
wide with horror at what she’d provoked. “Oh, sir, I’m sorry! I didna mean to—”

  “It’s all right,” he managed, forcing the words through his mangled larynx in a croak. “I’m—” He waved a hand in blind apology and stumbled out. He went straight out through the mudroom at the back of the house and found himself in the night outside.

  There was a narrow crack of sullen light just at the tops of the mountains, where the cloud had not quite settled, but the yard about him was deep in shadow, and the wind touched his face with the scent of cold rain. He was shaking, but not from chill, and sat down abruptly on the big stone by the path where they pulled the children’s wellies off when it was muddy.

  He put his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, overcome for a moment. Not only for his own situation—but for those in the house. Jamie Fraser was coming home soon. And soon after there would come the afternoon when red-coated soldiers marched into the yard at Lallybroch, finding Janet and the servants alone. And the events would be set in train that would end with the death of Brian Fraser, struck down by an apoplexy while watching his only son flogged—he thought—to death.

  Jamie … Roger shivered, seeing in mind not his indomitable father-in-law but the lighthearted young man who, among the distractions of Paris, still thought to send books to his sister. Who—

  It had begun to rain, with a quiet thoroughness that slicked his face in seconds. At least no one would know if he wept in despair. I can’t stop it, he thought. I can’t tell them what’s coming.

  A huge shape loomed out of the darkness, startling him, and the dog leaned heavily against him, nearly pushing him off the stone he sat on. A large, hairy nose was thrust sympathetically into his ear, whoofling and wetter than the rain.

  “Jesus, dog,” he said, half-laughing in spite of everything. “God.” He put his arms round the big, smelly creature and rested his forehead against its massive neck, feeling inchoate comfort.

  He thought of nothing for a little and was inexpressibly relieved. Little by little, though, coherent thought came back. It maybe wasn’t true that things—the past—couldn’t be changed. Not the big things, maybe, not kings and battles. But maybe—just maybe—the small ones could. If he couldn’t come right out and tell the Frasers of Lallybroch what doom was to come upon them, perhaps there was something he could say, some warning that might forestall—

  And if he did? If they listened? Would that good man in the house die of his apoplexy anyway, some weakness in his brain giving way as he came in from the barn one day? But that would leave his son and his daughter safe—and then what?

  Would Jamie stay in Paris and marry the flirtatious Frenchwoman? Would he come home peaceably to live at Lallybroch and mind his estate and his sister?

  Either way, he wouldn’t be riding near Craigh na Dun in five or six years, pursued by English soldiers, wounded and needing the assistance of a random time traveler who had just stepped out of the stones. And if he didn’t meet Claire Randall.… Bree, he thought. Oh, Christ. Bree.

  There was a sound behind him—the door of the house opening—and the beam of a lantern fell onto the path nearby.

  “Mr. MacKenzie?” Brian Fraser called into the night. “Are ye all right, man?”

  “God,” he whispered, clutching the dog. “Show me what to do.”

  LIGHTS, ACTION, SIRENS

  THE DOOR AT THE top of the staircase was locked. Jem pounded on it with his fists, kicked it with his feet, and shouted. He could feel it back down there behind him, in the dark, and the feel of it crawled up his back, as if it were coming to get him, and the thought of that scared him so bad that he shrieked like a ban-sìdhe and threw himself hard against the door, over and over, and—

  The door flew open and he fell flat on a dirty lino floor, all footmarks and cigarette butts.

  “What the devil—who are you, laddie, and what in God’s name were ye doing in there?”

  A big hand grabbed him by the arm and pulled him up. He was out of breath from yelling and almost blubbering from relief, and it took a minute to remember who he was.

  “Jem.” He swallowed, blinking in the light, and wiped his face on his sleeve. “Jem MacKenzie. My mam’s …” He went blank, suddenly unable to remember what Mam’s first name was. “She works here sometimes.”

  “I know your mam. No mistaking that hair, laddie.” The man who’d pulled him up was a security guard; the patch on his shirtsleeve said so. He tilted his head to one side and the other, looking Jem over, light flashing off his bald head, off his glasses. The light was coming from those long tube lights in the ceiling Da said were fluorescent; they buzzed and reminded him of the thing in the tunnel, and he turned round fast and shoved the door shut with a bang.

  “Is someone chasin’ ye, lad?” The guard reached a hand toward the doorknob, and Jem put his back hard against the door.

  “No!” He could feel it back there, behind the door. Waiting. The guard was frowning at him. “I—I just—it’s really dark down there.”

  “Ye were down in the dark? However did ye come to be there? And where’s your mother?”

  “I don’t know.” Jem started being scared again. Really scared. Because Mr. Cameron had shut him up in the tunnel so he could go somewhere. And he might have gone to Lallybroch.

  “Mr. Cameron put me in there,” he blurted. “He was supposed to take me to spend the night with Bobby, but instead he took me to Craigh na Dun, and then he took me to his house and locked me in a room overnight, and then the next morning he brought me here and shut me up in the tunnel.”

  “Cameron—what, Rob Cameron?” The guard crouched down so he could frown right into Jem’s face. “Why?”

  “I—I don’t know.” Don’t ever tell anyone, Da had said. Jem swallowed hard. Even if he wanted to tell, he didn’t know how to start. He could say Mr. Cameron took him up the hill at Craigh na Dun, to the stones, and pushed him into one. But he couldn’t tell what had happened then, not any more than he could tell Mr. MacLeod—that’s what it said on his badge, JOCK MACLEOD—what the shiny thing in the tunnel was.

  Mr. MacLeod made a thinking noise in his throat, shook his head, and stood up.

  “Well, I’d best be calling your parents to come and fetch ye home, aye? They can say if they maybe want to speak to the polis.”

  “Please,” Jem whispered, feeling his knees turn to water at the thought of Mam and Da coming to get him. “Yes, please.”

  Mr. MacLeod took him along to a little office where the phone was, gave him a warm can of Coke, and told him to sit down just there and say his parents’ telephone number. He sipped the drink and felt lots better right away, watching Mr. MacLeod’s thick finger whirl the telephone dial. A pause, and then he could hear ringing on the other end. Breep-breep … breep-breep … breep-breep …

  It was warm in the office, but he was starting to feel cold around his face and hands. Nobody was answering the phone.

  “Maybe they’re asleep,” he said, stifling a Coke burp. Mr. MacLeod gave him a sideways look and shook his head, pushed down the receiver, and dialed the number again, making Jem say the numbers one at a time.

  Breep-breep.… breep-breep …

  He was concentrating so hard on willing somebody to pick up the phone that he didn’t notice anything until Mr. MacLeod suddenly turned his head toward the door, looking surprised.

  “What—” the guard said, and then there was a blur and a thunking noise like when cousin Ian shot a deer with an arrow, and Mr. MacLeod made an awful noise and fell right out of his chair onto the floor, and the chair shot away and fell over with a crash.

  Jem didn’t remember standing up, but he was pressed against the filing cabinet, squeezing the can so hard that the bubbly Coke blurped out and foamed over his fingers.

  “You come with me, boy,” said the man who’d hit Mr. MacLeod. He was holding what Jem thought must be a cosh, though he’d never seen one. He couldn’t move, even if he’d wanted to.

  The man made an impa
tient noise, stepped over Mr. MacLeod like he was a bag of rubbish, and grabbed Jem by the hand. Out of sheer terror, Jem bit him, hard. The man yelped and let go, and Jem threw the can of Coke right at his face, and when the man ducked, he tore past him and out of the office and down the long hallway, running for his life.

  IT WAS GETTING late; they passed fewer and fewer cars on the road, and Mandy’s head began to nod. The mouse-princess mask had ridden up on top of her head, its pipe-cleaner whiskers poking up like antennae. Seeing this in the rearview mirror, Brianna had a sudden vision of Mandy as a tiny radar station, scanning the bleak countryside for Jem’s small, pulsing signal.

  Could she? She shook her head, not to dispel the notion but to keep her mind from slipping all the way out of reality. The adrenaline of her earlier rage and terror had all drained away; her hands shook a little on the steering wheel, and the darkness around them seemed vast, a yawning void that would swallow them in an instant if she stopped driving, if the feeble beam of the headlights ceased …

  “Warm,” Mandy murmured sleepily.

  “What, baby?” She’d heard but was too hypnotized by the effort of keeping her eyes on the road to take it in consciously.

  “Warm … er.” Mandy struggled upright, cross. The yarn ties of her mask were stuck in her hair, and she made a high-pitched cranky noise as she yanked at them.

  Brianna pulled carefully onto the verge, set the hand brake, and, reaching back, began to disentangle the mask.

  “You mean we’re going toward Jem?” she asked, careful to keep her voice from trembling.

  “Uh-huh.” Free of the nuisance, Mandy yawned hugely and flung out a hand toward the window. “Mmp.” She put her head down on her arms and whined sleepily.

  Bree swallowed, closed her eyes, then opened them, looking carefully in the direction Mandy had pointed. There was no road … but there was, and with a trickle of ice water down her spine, she saw the small brown sign that said: SERVICE ROAD. NO PUBLIC ACCESS. NORTH OF SCOTLAND HYDRO ELECTRIC BOARD. Loch Errochty dam. The tunnel.