Further cautious investigation makes it evident that Jemmy can indeed “hear” gemstones—and is likely therefore capable of time-travel, or may be when he’s older.
This leads to a discussion of the possible genetics of Jem’s inheritance—and to the renewed question of his paternity. Claire explains the nature of dominant and recessive genes and notes that Roger, for example, cannot roll his tongue. Neither can Brianna. Therefore, if Jemmy can…he must be Stephen Bonnet’s son. An awkward silence ensues, broken by Jamie, who casually rolls his own tongue and asks Jem whether he can do that.
Roger looked up at Bree, and something seemed to pass through the air between them. He reached down and took hold of Jem’s other hand, momentarily interrupting his song.
“So, a bhalaich, can ye do it, then?”
“FRÈRE…do whats?”
“Look at Grand-da.” Roger nodded at Jamie, who took a deep breath and quickly put out his tongue, rolled into a cylinder.
“Can ye do that?” Roger asked.
“Chure.” Jemmy beamed and put out his tongue. Flat. “Bleah!”
A collective sigh gusted through the room. Jemmy, oblivious, swung his legs up, his weight suspended momentarily from Roger’s and Jamie’s hands, then stomped his feet down on the floor again, recalling his original question.
“Grand-da gots balls?” he asked, pulling on the men’s hands and tilting his head far back to look up at Jamie.
“Aye, lad, I have,” Jamie said dryly. “But your Da’s are bigger. Come on, then.”
And to the sound of Jemmy’s tuneless chanting, the men trundled him outside, hanging like a gibbon between them, his knees drawn up to his chin.
The next day, a small funeral ceremony takes place—for Otter-Tooth and his companions and for Dr. Rawlings, whose remains are buried now beneath a rowan tree on the Ridge.
It was nearly dark as we came down the narrow trail back to the house. I could see Brianna in front of me, though, leading the way; the men were a little behind us. The fireflies were out in great profusion, drifting through the trees, and lighting the grass near my feet. One of the little bugs lighted briefly in Brianna’s hair and clung there for a moment, blinking.
A wood at twilight holds a deep hush, that bids the heart be still, the foot step lightly on the earth.
“Have ye thought, then, a cliamhuinn?” Jamie said, behind me. His voice was low, the tone of it friendly enough—but the formal address made it clear that the question was seriously meant.
“Of what?” Roger’s voice was calm, hushed from the service, the rasp of it barely audible.
“Of what ye shall do—you and your family. Now that ye ken both that the wee lad can travel—and what it might mean, if ye stay.”
What it might mean to them all. I drew breath, uneasy. War. Battle. Uncertainty, save for the certainty of danger. The danger of illness or accident, for Brianna and Jem. The danger of death in the toils of childbirth, if she was again with child. And for Roger—danger both of body and soul. His head had healed, but I saw the stillness at the back of his eyes, when he thought of Randall Lillywhite.
***
“Who knows? I know what’s going on in England now—they are not ready, they’ve no notion of what they’re risking here. If war were to break out suddenly, with little warning—if it had broken out, at Alamance—it might spread quickly. It might be over before the English had a clue what was happening. It might have saved years of warfare, thousands of lives.”
“Or not,” Jamie said dryly, and Roger laughed.
“Or not,” he agreed. “But the point there is this; I think there are times for men of peace—and a time for men of blood, as well.”
“Men of blood,” Jamie repeated. “And I am one of those, ye think.” It wasn’t a question.
Brianna had reached the house, but turned and waited for the rest of us. She had been listening to the conversation, too.
“You are,” Roger said. He looked up. Bright sparks flew from the chimney in a firework shower, lighting his face by their glow.
“Ye called me,” he said at last, still looking up into the blazing dark. “At the Gathering, at the fire.”
“Thig a seo, mac mo chinnich,” Jamie said quietly. “Aye, I did.” Stand by my side, Roger the singer, son of Jeremiah.
“Thig a seo, mac mo chinnich,” Roger said. “Stand by my side—son of my house. Did ye mean that?”
“Ye know that I did.”
“Then I mean it, too.” He reached out and rested his hand on Jamie’s shoulder, and I saw the knuckles whiten as he squeezed.
“I will stand by you. We will stay.”
Beside me, Brianna let out the breath she had been holding, in a sigh like the twilight wind.
And later still, Claire and Jamie sit on the porch of their house, amid their family, their community, a temporary peace in the whirlwind of the coming war.
Jamie’s hand still lay on mine. It tightened a little, and I glanced at him, but his eyes were still fixed somewhere past the dooryard; past the mountains, and the distant clouds. His grip tightened further, and I felt the edges of my ring press into my flesh.
“When the day shall come, that we do part,” he said softly, and turned to look at me, “if my last words are not ‘I love you’—ye’ll ken it was because I didna have time.”
THE END
A BREATH OF SNOW AND ASHES
PART 1: RUMORS OF WAR
t is April of 1773, and Ian Murray is in the woods at night (accompanied by his dog, Rollo), engaged in an ongoing conversation with God, when he hears the sound of a number of men and horses, moving through the forest near him.
ELSEWHERE IN THE mountains, Jamie and Claire Fraser, their daughter, Brianna, and her husband, Roger, with other people from Fraser’s Ridge, discover a remote cabin, apparently owned by Dutch settlers. The cabin has burned, but some of the inhabitants have not—they’re dead of what appears to be poison. The Ridge people bury the dead, wondering what has happened.
RETURNING TO THE Ridge, the Frasers discover a visitor: one Major MacDonald, an involuntarily retired half-pay army officer, who comes bringing news of the colony’s new governor, Josiah Martin, and his concerns about political unrest in the colony. Discussions of the recent news are interrupted by the sudden appearance of Rollo.
“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” I said. “Bloody Timmy’s in the well!” I flew down the steps and ran for the path, barely registering the Major’s startled oath behind me.
I found Ian a few hundred yards down the path, conscious, but groggy. He was sitting on the ground, eyes closed and both hands holding his head, as though to keep the bones of his skull from coming apart. He opened his eyes as I dropped to my knees beside him, and gave me an unfocused smile.
“Auntie,” he said hoarsely. He seemed to want to say something else, but couldn’t quite decide what; his mouth opened, but then simply hung that way, tongue moving thoughtfully to and fro.
“Look at me, Ian,” I said, as calmly as possible. He did—that was good. It was too dark to see whether his pupils were unnaturally dilated, but even in the evening shadow of the pines that edged the trail, I could see the pallor of his face, and the dark trail of bloodstains down his shirt.
Ian thinks he’s been shot by the men he heard in the wood, who fired at him—though upon close inspection, it appears that he’s been struck in the head by a falling branch dislodged by a shot. Still, the fact that a band of violent men is abroad is a matter of concern.
ROGER AND BRIANNA return to their own cabin but feel uneasy. Their son, Jemmy, isn’t there, having gone with Lizzie and her father, Mr. Wemyss, to an engagement party for Manfred’s sister Senga. Impulsively, Roger and Brianna decide to walk the five miles to the McGillivrays’, to get their son.
AT THE BIG House, Major MacDonald has stories that he’s heard of young women and children kidnapped and sold to brothels, but he has a more pressing reason for his visit—he’s brought Jamie news of a group of Scottish immi
grants, fisher-folk from Thurso. Jamie needs tenants to settle his land, and the governor wants the backcountry settled; the immigrants have nowhere to go. So…? Jamie is dubious, knowing the expense involved in settling new tenants and having no personal ties to the Thurso folk—but agrees. In further conversation, the major talks about the Committees of Safety that are springing up in the colony, impromptu assemblages of men who band together as substitute for the growing absence of law and law enforcement.
Inviting Jamie to set up a Committee of Safety meant that he would call upon those men who had served under him in the militia—but would commit the government to nothing, in terms of paying or equipping them—and the Governor would be clear of any responsibility for their actions, since a Committee of Safety was not an official body.
The danger to Jamie—and all of us—in accepting such a proposal, though…that was considerable.
Young Ian and Jamie converse about the coming war. Roger and Bree set out to retrieve Jemmy and are mistakenly attacked by the Beardsley twins, young men who are following Lizzie to protect her.
Roger tightened his grip on her arm in reflex.
“Whatever d’ye mean by that?”
“Just that if I were Manfred McGillivray, I’d take good care to be nice to Lizzie. Mama says the Beardsleys follow her around like dogs, but they don’t. They follow her like tame wolves.”
“I thought Ian said it wasn’t possible to tame wolves.”
“It isn’t,” she said tersely. “Come on, let’s hurry, before they smoor the fire.”
The engagement party is in full roar when the MacKenzies arrive, and they are made welcome. Ute McGillivray, Robin’s German wife, is a warm and hospitable woman—but also one with a formidable personality and a determination to make good matches for her children. Her matchmaking extends also to Mr. Wemyss, whom she has introduced to the elderly Fraulein Berrisch, sister of a local pastor.
Jemmy, briefly reunited with his parents, goes off with his slightly older friend, Germain, son of Jamie’s foster son and stepdaughter, Fergus and Marsali. Roger and Brianna relax in the hay with each other, only to be surprised by the eventual return of Jemmy, dead drunk on cherry bounce. The presence of a snoring three-year-old does not noticeably impair the sense of clandestine romance that permeates the party.
BACK AT THE Big House, Major MacDonald’s real news is that Jamie is invited to become an Indian agent for the Southern Department. The job is to visit the nearby Indian villages and make sure they remain on good terms with—and amenable to advice from—the Indians’ good friend King George. Claire and Jamie discuss this and segue from playful comment about Indian agents to seriousness and recollection of the Dutch settlers.
“The men came,” he said softly, to the beams overhead. “He fought them, and they killed him there, on his own threshold. And when she saw her man was gone I think she told the men she must feed the weans first, before…and then she put toadstools into the stew, and fed it to the bairns and her mother. She took the two men with them, but I think it was that that was the accident. She only meant to follow him. She wouldna leave him there, alone.”
I wanted to tell him that this was a rather dramatic interpretation of what we had seen. But I couldn’t very well tell him he was wrong. Hearing him describe what he saw in thought, I saw it, too, all too clearly.
“You don’t know,” I said at last, softly. “You can’t know.” Unless you find the other men, I thought suddenly, and ask them. I didn’t say that, though.
Neither of us spoke for a bit. I could tell that he was still thinking, but the quicksand of sleep was once more pulling me down, clinging and seductive.
“What if I canna keep ye safe?” he whispered at last. His head moved suddenly on the pillow, turning toward me. “You and the rest of them? I shall try wi’ all my strength, Sassenach, and I dinna mind if I die doing it, but what if I should die too soon—and fail?”
And what answer was there to that?
“You won’t,” I whispered back. He sighed, and bent his head, so his forehead rested against mine. I could smell eggs and whisky, warm on his breath.
“I’ll try not,” he said, and I put my mouth on his, soft against mine, acknowledgment and comfort in the dark.
I laid my head against the curve of his shoulder, wrapped a hand round his arm, and breathed in the smell of his skin, smoke and salt, as though he had been cured in the fire.
“You smell like a smoked ham,” I murmured, and he made a low sound of amusement and wedged his hand into its accustomed spot, clasped between my thighs.
I let go then, at last, and let the heavy sands of sleep engulf me. Perhaps he said it, as I fell into darkness, or perhaps I only dreamt it. “If I die,” he whispered in the dark, “dinna follow me. The bairns will need ye. Stay for them. I can wait.”
PART 2: A GATHERING OF SHADOWS
A letter comes from Lord John Grey, saying that his son, William, has returned to England to complete his education. He gives his (British) view of the recent Boston Massacre, mentioning that he has employed Bobby Higgins, the soldier who brought the letter. Bobby was convicted of manslaughter for his role in the massacre and branded on the cheek with an “M” for “murderer.” Lord John thinks Higgins has been treated unjustly and mentions that he suffers from an indisposition, which he hopes Claire might be able to help.
EXAMINING BOBBY HIGGINS, Claire discovers that, among other things, he suffers severely from hemorrhoids, and she tells Jamie that she is doubtless unduly suspicious but wonders whether Lord John’s motives in wanting Bobby to be treated are entirely altruistic. Jamie tells her that she is unduly suspicious and then tells her that when Lord John told him he would take William to raise, he—Jamie—had offered himself to Lord John, apparently in gratitude. But he tells her also why.
“Ye canna be so close to another,” he said finally. “To be within each other, to smell their sweat, and rub the hairs of your body with theirs and see nothing of their soul. Or if ye can do that…” He hesitated, and I wondered whether he thought of Black Jack Randall, or of Laoghaire, the woman he had married, thinking me dead. “Well…that is a dreadful thing in itself,” he finished softly, and his hand dropped away.
Claire repairs Bobby’s hemorrhoids.
No man is really at his best with someone else’s hand up his arse. I had noticed this before, and Robert Higgins was no exception to the general rule.
“Now, this won’t hurt much at all,” I said as soothingly as possible. “All you need to do is to keep quite still.”
“Oh, I s’all do that, Mum, indeed I will,” he assured me fervently.
But in the midst of the operation, Richard and Lionel Brown come to call and go to talk to Jamie. Bobby’s run-in with the Browns’ mule results in a nasty bite, which causes him to faint. Lizzie faints in turn from malaria, from which she suffers chronically, and Claire is out of Jesuit bark but makes gallberry syrup as a substitute.
The Browns have formed a Committee of Safety and want to arrest (and probably execute) Bobby Higgins as a murderer, to demonstrate their effectiveness. Jamie declines to allow them to take Bobby and decides to be an Indian agent, because if he doesn’t, Richard Brown surely will.
——
JAMIE GOES TO ask Roger what he knows about the oncoming Revolution, in detail.
He’d rather bury the old privy pit or castrate pigs than go and ask Roger Mac what he kent about Indians and revolutions. He found it mildly gruesome to discuss the future with his son-in-law, and tried never to do it.
The things Claire told him of her own time seemed often fantastic, with the enjoyable half-real sense of faery tales, and sometimes macabre, but always interesting, for what he learned of his wife from the telling. Brianna tended to share with him small, homely details of machinery, which were interesting, or wild stories of men walking on the moon, which were immensely entertaining, but no threat to his peace of mind.
Roger Mac, though, had a cold-blooded way of talking that remind
ed him to an uncomfortable degree of the works of the historians he’d read, and had therefore a sense of concrete doom about it. Talking to Roger Mac made it seem all too likely that this, that, or the other frightful happenstance was not only indeed going to happen—but would most likely have direct and personal consequences.
It was like talking to a particularly evil-minded fortune-teller, he thought; one you hadn’t paid enough to hear something pleasant. The thought made a sudden memory pop up on the surface of his mind, bobbing like a fishing cork.
The memory in question is of an old fortune-teller he’d met in Paris as a young student. The old woman told him, “You’ll die nine times before you rest in your grave,” and her words come back to him now, leaving him wondering, as he climbs toward Roger, just how many lives he has left.
——
CLAIRE SHOWS BOBBY the malaria parasites in Lizzie’s blood and diagnoses Bobby with hookworms.
Bobby eyed me apprehensively.
“It’s not exactly as I’m horrible shy, mum,” he said, shifting gingerly. “You know that. But Dr. Potts did give me great huge clysters of mustard water. Surely that would ha’ burnt they worms right out? If I was a worm, I s’ould let go and give up the ghost at once, did anyone souse me with mustard water.”
“Well, you would think so, wouldn’t you?” I said. “Unfortunately not. But I won’t give you an enema,” I assured him. “We need to see whether you truly do have the worms, to begin with, and if so, there’s a medicine I can mix up for you that will poison them directly.”
“Oh.” He looked a little happier at that. “How d’ye mean to see, then, mum?” He glanced narrowly at the counter, where the assortment of clamps and suture jars were still laid out.
“Couldn’t be simpler,” I assured him. “I do a process called fecal sedimentation to concentrate the stool, then look for the eggs under the microscope.”
The Companion to the Fiery Cross, a Breath of Snow and Ashes, an Echo in the Bone, and Written in My Own Heart's Blood Page 7