“And that would be you, I expect?” Roger said with a smile, nodding at the cracked fiddle case the conductor had set on a whatnot, carefully out of the way of being stepped or sat on.
“That would be me,” the gentleman agreed, with a graceful bow of acknowledgment. “Seamus Hanlon, sir—your servant.”
“I am obliged, sir. Roger MacKenzie, of Fraser’s Ridge.” He returned the bow, taking pleasure in the old-fashioned formality, and clasped Hanlon’s hand briefly, careful of the twisted fingers and knobby joints. Hanlon saw his care of the arthritic hand and gave a brief grimace of deprecation.
“Ah, they’ll be fine with a drop of lubrication, so they will.” Hanlon flexed one hand experimentally, then flipped the fingers in dismissal, fixing Roger with a bright glance.
“And yourself, sir; I felt the calluses on your fingertips. Not a fiddler, perhaps, but would ye be after playin’ some stringed instrument?”
“Only to pass the time of an evening; nothing like you gentlemen.” Roger nodded politely toward the ensemble, which, now unpacked, boasted a battered cello, two viols, a trumpet, a flute, and something which he thought might have started life as a hunting horn, though it appeared to have been amended since by the addition of several odd loops of tubing that stuck out in different directions.
Hanlon eyed him shrewdly, taking in his breadth of chest.
“And hark at the voice in him! Sure, and you’re a singer, Mr. MacKenzie?”
Roger’s reply was interrupted by a loud thump and a dolorous twang behind him. He whirled to see the cello player inflating himself over his instrument in the manner of a hen with a very large chick, to protect it from further injury by the gentleman who had evidently kicked it carelessly in passing.
“Watch yourself, then!” the cellist snapped. “Clumsy sot!”
“Oh?” The intruder, a stocky man in naval uniform, glowered menacingly at the cellist. “You dare … dare shpeak to me …” His face was flushed an unhealthy red, and he swayed slightly as he stood; Roger could smell the fumes of alcohol from a distance of six feet.
The officer raised a forefinger to the cellist, and appeared to be on the point of speech. A tongue tip showed pinkly between his teeth, but no words emerged. His empurpled jowls quivered for a moment, then he abandoned the attempt, turned on his heel, and made off, swerving narrowly to avoid an incoming footman with a tray of drinks, and caroming off the doorjamb as he passed into the corridor.
“ ’Ware, then, Mr. O’Reilly.” Seamus Hanlon spoke dryly to the cellist. “Were we near the sea, I should reckon there’d be a press-gang waitin’ for ye, the instant ye set foot outside. As it is, I’d put no odds on him layin’ for ye with a marlinspike or something of the kind.”
O’Reilly spat eloquently on the floor.
“I know him,” he said contemptuously. “Wolff, he’s called. Dog, more like, and a poor dog at that. He’s tight as a tick—he’ll not remember me, an hour hence.”
Hanlon squinted thoughtfully at the doorway through which the Lieutenant had vanished.
“Well, that’s as may be,” he allowed. “But I know the gentleman, too, and I do believe his mind may be somewhat sharper than his behavior might suggest.” He stood for a moment, tapping the bow of his fiddle thoughtfully against the palm of his hand, then turned his head toward Roger.
“Fraser’s Ridge, ye said? Will ye be a kinsman of Mrs. Cameron’s—or Mrs. Innes, I should say?” he corrected himself.
“I’m married to Jamie Fraser’s daughter,” Roger said patiently, having discovered that this was the most efficient description, as most of the county appeared to know who Jamie Fraser was, and it prevented further questions regarding Roger’s own family connections.
“Ho-ho,” Seamus said, looking visibly impressed. “Well, then. Hum!”
“What’s that bladder doing here, anyway?” the cellist demanded, still glaring after the departed officer. He patted his instrument soothingly. “Everyone knows he meant to wed Mrs. Cameron and have River Run for himself. I wonder he’s the tripes to show his face today!”
“Perhaps he’s come to show there are no hard feelings,” Roger suggested. “A civil gesture—best man won and all that, aye?”
The musicians emitted a medley of sniggers and guffaws at this suggestion.
“Maybe,” said the flutist, shaking his head over his instrument. “But if you’re any friend to Duncan Innes, tell him to watch his back in the dancin’.”
“Aye, do that,” Seamus Hanlon concurred. “Be off with ye, young man, and speak to him—but see ye come back.”
He crooked a finger at the waiting footman, and scooped a cup neatly from the proffered tray. He lifted this in salute, grinning at Roger over its rim. “It may be you’ll know a tune or two that’s new to me.”
42
THE DEASIL CHARM
Brianna sat back in the leather wing chair before the hearth, nursing Jemmy as she watched her great-aunt ready herself for the wedding.
“What you think, then?” Phaedre asked, dipping the silver comb into a small pot of pomade. “Dress it up high, with the curls over the top?” Her voice was hopeful, but wary. She disapproved overtly of her mistress’s refusal to wear a wig, and would do her level best to create a similarly fashionable effect with Jocasta’s own hair, if allowed.
“Tosh,” said Jocasta. “This isn’t Edinburgh, child, let alone London.” She leaned back, head lifted and eyes closed, basking. Bright spring sunshine poured through the panes, sparking off the silver comb, and making dark shadows of the slave’s hands against the nimbus of shining white hair.
“Maybe not, but ’taint the wild Caribee nor the backcountry, neither,” Phaedre countered. “You the mistress here; this your weddin’. Everybody be lookin’ at you—you wantin’ to shame me, wear your hair down your shoulders like a squaw, and everybody be thinkin’ I don’t know my business?”
“Oh, heaven forbid.” Jocasta’s wide mouth twisted with an irritable humor. “Dress it simply, if you please, swept back and put up with combs. Perhaps my niece will let you show off your skill on her locks.”
Phaedre cast a narrow glance over her shoulder at Brianna, who simply smiled and shook her head. She’d worn a lace-edged cap for the sake of public decency, and wasn’t disposed to fuss with her hair. The slave snorted, and resumed her attempt to cajole Jocasta. Brianna closed her eyes, letting the amicable bickering recede into the background. Warm sun fell through the casement over her feet, and the fire purred and crackled at her back, embracing her like the old woolen shawl she had wrapped about herself and little Jem.
Beyond the voices of Jocasta and Phaedre, she could hear the thrum of the house below. Every room in the house was bursting with guests. Some were staying at nearby plantations, and had ridden in for the festivities, but enough were staying at River Run overnight that all the bedchambers were full, with guests sleeping five and six to a bed, and more on pallets in the tents by the river landing.
Brianna eyed the expanse of Jocasta’s big tester bed enviously. Between the exigencies of travel, Jemmy, and the crowded conditions at River Run, she and Roger hadn’t slept together in more than a week, and weren’t likely to, until they returned to the Ridge.
Not that sleeping together was the major concern, nice as it was. The tug of the baby’s mouth on her breast aroused a number of nonmaternal urges elsewhere, which required both Roger and a little privacy for satisfaction. They had started something promising the night before, in the pantry, but had been interrupted by one of the kitchen slaves, coming in to fetch a cheese. Perhaps the stable? She stretched her legs out, toes curling, and wondered whether the grooms slept in the stable or not.
“Well, I shall wear the brilliants, then, but only to please you, a nighean.” Jocasta’s humorous voice pulled her out of the alluring vision of a dark, hay-lined stall, and Roger’s body, naked limbs half-seen in the gloom.
She glanced up from Jemmy’s blissful suckling, to where Jocasta sat upon the window seat, t
he spring light through the casement falling across her face. She looked abstracted, Bree thought, as though she were listening to something faint and far-off, that only she could hear. Maybe the hum of the wedding guests below.
The murmur in the house below reminded her of her mother’s summer hives; a thrum that you could hear if you put your ear against one of the bee gums, a distant sound of busy content. The product of this particular swarm was talk, rather than honey, though the intent was similar—the laying up of reserves to see them through bleak and nectarless days of deprivation.
“That will do, that will do.” Jocasta waved Phaedre away, getting to her feet. She shooed the maid out of the room, then stood tapping her fingers restlessly on the dressing table, clearly thinking of further details that should be attended to. Jocasta’s brows drew together, and she pressed two fingers against the skin above her eyes.
“Have you got a headache, Auntie?” Brianna kept her voice low, so as not to disturb Jemmy, who was nearly asleep. Jocasta dropped her hand and turned toward her niece with a small, wry smile.
“Och, it’s nothing. Whenever the weather turns, my poor head turns with it!”
In spite of the smile, Brianna could see small lines of pain tugging at the corners of Jocasta’s eyes.
“Jem’s nearly finished. I’ll go and fetch Mama, shall I? She could make you a tisane.”
Jocasta flapped a hand in dismissal, pushing away the pain with an obvious effort.
“No need, a muirninn. It’s none so bad as that.” She rubbed at her temple, careful of the hairdressing, the gesture belying her words.
Jemmy’s mouth released its hold with a small, milky pop! and his head lolled back. The crook of Brianna’s elbow was hot and sweaty, where his head had rested; his tiny ear was crumpled and crimson. She lifted his inert body and sighed with relief as the cool air struck her skin. A soft belch bubbled out of him with a dribble of excess milk, and he subsided against her shoulder like a half-filled water balloon.
“Full, is he?” Jocasta smiled, blind eyes turned toward them at the faint sound.
“As a drum,” Brianna assured her. She patted his small back, to be sure, but heard no more than the soft sigh of sleep-filled breathing. She rose, wiped the milk from his chin, and laid the baby on his stomach in his makeshift cradle, a drawer from Jocasta’s mahogany chiffonier, laid on the floor and thickly padded with pillows and quilts.
Brianna hung the shawl over the back of the chair, shivering slightly in a draft that leaked around the window frame. Not wanting to risk her new dress being stained with spit-up milk, she’d been nursing Jemmy in shift and stockings, and her bare forearms were pebbled with gooseflesh.
Jocasta turned her head in answer to the creak of wood and rustle of fabric, as Brianna opened the big armoire and took out two linen petticoats and her dress, smoothing the panels of soft, pale blue wool with satisfaction. She had woven the cloth and engineered the design of the gown herself—though Mrs. Bug had spun the thread, Claire had dyed it with indigo and saxifrage, and Marsali had helped with the sewing.
“Shall I call Phaedre back to dress ye, lass?”
“No, that’s all right, I can manage—if you’ll help me with the laces?” She didn’t like to call on the services of the slaves, any more than could be helped. The petticoats were no problem; she simply stepped into them, one at a time, and fastened the drawstrings round her waist. The stays needed to be laced up the back, though, and so did the gown itself.
Jocasta’s brows were still dark, bronze against the pale apricot hue of her skin. They rose a little at the suggestion that she help to dress her niece, but she nodded, with no more than a brief hesitation. She turned her blind eyes toward the hearth, frowning a little.
“I suppose I can. The laddie’s not too near the fire, is he? Sparks can jump, aye?”
Brianna wriggled into the stays, scooping her breasts up into the scalloped hollows that supported them, then pulled the gown on over them.
“No, he’s not too near the fire,” she said patiently. She’d made the bodice with light boning in the front and sides. Brianna turned slightly to and fro, admiring the effect in Jocasta’s looking glass. Catching sight in the mirror of her aunt’s slight frown behind her, she rolled her eyes at herself, then bent and pulled the drawer a little farther from the hearth, just in case.
“Thanks to ye for humoring an auld woman,” Jocasta said dryly, hearing the scrape of wood.
“You’re welcome, Aunt,” Brianna replied, letting both warmth and apology show in her voice. She laid a hand on her great-aunt’s shoulder, and Jocasta put her own long hand over it, squeezing gently.
“It’s no that I think ye’re a neglectful mother, aye?” Jocasta said. “But when ye’ve lived so long as I have, ye may be cautious, too, lass. I have seen dreadful things happen to bairns, ye ken?” she said, more softly. “And I should rather be set afire myself, than see harm come to our bonnie lad.”
She moved behind Brianna and ran her hands lightly down her niece’s back, finding the lacings without trouble.
“Ye’ve regained your figure, I see,” the old woman said with approval, her hands skimming the sides of Brianna’s waist. “What is this—crewelwork? What color is it?”
“Dark indigo blue. Flowering vines done in heavy cotton, to contrast with the pale blue wool.” She took one of Jocasta’s hands and guided the fingertips lightly over the vines that covered each bone in the bodice, running from the scalloped neck to the V of the waist, dropped sharply in front to show off the trim figure Jocasta had remarked upon.
Brianna drew in her breath as the laces tightened, glancing from her reflection to her son’s small head, round as a cantaloupe and heartbreakingly perfect. Not for the first time, she wondered about her great-aunt’s life. Jocasta had had children, or at least Jamie thought so—but she never spoke of them, and Brianna hesitated to ask. Perhaps lost in infancy; so many were. Her chest tightened at the thought.
“Dinna fash yourself,” her aunt said. Jocasta’s face readjusted itself into determined cheerfulness in the mirror. “Yon laddie’s born for great things; nay harm will come to him, I’m sure.”
She turned, the green silk of her dressing gown rustling over her petticoats, leaving Bree freshly startled at her aunt’s ability to divine people’s feelings, even without seeing their faces.
“Phaedre!” Jocasta called. “Phaedre! Bring my case—the black one.”
Phaedre was nearby, as always, and a brief rustling in the drawers of the armoire produced the black case. Jocasta sat down with it at her secretary.
The black leather case was old and worn, a narrow box covered in weathered hide, unadorned save for its silver hasp. Jocasta kept her best jewels in a much grander case of velvet-lined cedarwood, Brianna knew. What could be in this one?
She moved to stand beside her aunt as Jocasta put back the lid. Inside the case was a short length of turned wood, the thickness of a finger, and on it were ranged three rings: a plain band of gold set with a beryl, another with a large cabochon emerald, and the last with three diamonds, surrounded by smaller stones that caught the light and threw it back in rainbows that danced across the walls and beams.
“What a lovely ring!” Bree exclaimed involuntarily.
“Oh, the diamond one? Well, Hector Cameron was aye a rich man,” said Jocasta, absently touching the biggest ring. Her long fingers—unadorned—sorted deftly through a small heap of trinkets that lay in the box beside the rings, and came out with something small and dull.
She handed the tiny object to Brianna, who discovered it to be a small pierced-work tin brooch, rather tarnished, made in the shape of a heart.
“That’s a deasil charm, a muirninn,” Jocasta said, with a satisfied nod. “Put it on the wean’s skirts, behind.”
“A charm?” Brianna glanced at Jemmy’s huddled form. “What kind of charm?”
“Against the fairies,” Jocasta said. “Keep it pinned to the lad’s smock—always to the back, mind—and
naught born of the Auld Folk will trouble him.”
The hair on Brianna’s forearms prickled slightly at the matter-of-factness in the old woman’s voice.
“Your mother should ha’ told ye,” Jocasta went on, with a hint of reproval in her voice. “But I ken as she’s a Sassenach, and your father likely wouldna think of it. Men don’t,” she added, with a hint of bitterness. “It’s a woman’s job to see to the weans, to keep them from harm.”
Jocasta stooped to the kindling basket and groped among the bits of debris, coming up with a long pine twig in her hand, the bark still on it.
“Take that,” she commanded, holding it out toward Brianna. “Light the end of it from the hearth, and walk ye round the bairn three times. Sunwise, mind!”
Mystified, Brianna took the stick and thrust it into the fire, then did as she was bid, holding the flaming twig well away from both the makeshift cradle and her blue wool skirts. Jocasta tapped her foot rhythmically on the floor, and chanted, half under her breath.
She spoke in Gaelic, but slowly enough that Brianna could make out most of the words.
“Wisdom of serpent be thine,
Wisdom of raven be thine,
Wisdom of valiant eagle.
Voice of swan be thine,
Voice of honey be thine,
Voice of the Son of the stars.
Sain of the fairy-woman be thine,
Sain of the elf-dart be thine,
Sain of the red dog be thine.
Bounty of sea be thine,
Bounty of land be thine,
Bounty of the Father of Heaven.
Be each day glad for thee,
No day ill for thee,
A life joyful, satisfied.”
Jocasta paused for a moment, a slight frown on her face, as though listening for any backtalk from Fairyland. Evidently satisfied, she motioned toward the hearth.
“Throw it into the fire. Then the wean will be safe from burning.”
Brianna obeyed, finding to her fascination that she did not find any of this even faintly ridiculous. Odd, but very satisfying to think that she was protecting Jem from harm—even harm from fairies, which she didn’t personally believe in. Or she hadn’t, before this.
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