He nodded, plainly not following. I smiled kindly at him.
“All you have to do, Bobby, is shit.”
His face was a study in doubt and apprehension.
“If it’s all the same to you, mum,” he said, “I think I’ll keep the worms.”
LORD JOHN SENDS a present of white phosphorus to Brianna.
“And you intend to do…what with it?” he asked, trying to keep any note of foreboding from his voice. He had the vaguest memories of hearing about the properties of phosphorus in his distant school days; he thought either it made you glow in the dark or it blew up. Neither prospect was reassuring.
“Wellll…make matches. Maybe.” Her upper teeth fastened momentarily in the flesh of her lower lip as she considered the jar. “I know how—in theory. But it might be a little tricky in practice.”
“Why is that?” he asked warily.
“Well, it bursts into flame if you expose it to air,” she explained. “That’s why it’s packed in water. Don’t touch, Jem! It’s poisonous.” Grabbing Jemmy round the middle, she pulled him down from the table, where he had been eyeing the jar with greedy curiosity.
“Oh, well, why worry about that? It will explode in his face before he has a chance to get it in his mouth.” Roger picked up the jar for safekeeping, holding it as though it might go off in his hands. He wanted to ask whether she were insane, but had been married long enough to know the price of injudicious rhetorical questions.
Jamie arrives to ask Roger to go to Cross Creek and collect the new tenants, with Arch Bug and Tom Christie—Tom Christie because Arch Bug is a Catholic, while the new tenants are all Protestants and fairly fierce about it.
Roger rubbed his chin, trying to think how to explain two centuries of Scottish religious intolerance in any way that would make sense to an American of the twentieth century. “Ahh…ye recall the civil-rights thing in the States, integration in the South, all that?”
“Of course I do.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Okay. So, which side are the Negroes?”
“The what?” Jamie looked entirely baffled. “Where do Negroes come into the matter?”
“Not quite that simple,” Roger assured her. “Just an indication of the depth of feeling involved. Let us say that the notion of having a Catholic landlord is likely to cause our new tenants severe qualms—and vice versa?” he asked, glancing at Jamie.
CLAIRE IS EXHAUSTED from treating Bobby’s hookworms and nursing Lizzie, who keeps throwing up the gallberry syrup. Claire finally tries rubbing the gallberry syrup mixed with goose grease into her skin. Jamie tells Claire about the “you’ll die nine times” prophecy, and they disagree about how many lives he’s got left.
“You’re a very hard person to kill, I think,” I said. “That’s a great comfort to me.”
He smiled, reluctant, but then reached out and lifted his glass in salute, touching it first to his own lips, then to mine.
“We’ll drink to that, Sassenach, shall we?”
JAMIE, WITH IAN, visits a Cherokee village and talks to the leader of the band (which occupies several villages), Bird-who-sings-in-the-morning. Bird wants guns, as all the Indians do.
Jamie is somewhat uneasy about taking Ian, in spite of the lad’s facility with various Indian languages.
The Cherokee welcomed them both with respect, but Jamie had noticed at once a particular edge in their response to Ian. They perceived Ian to be Mohawk—and he made them wary. In all honesty, he himself sometimes thought there was some part of Ian that had not come back from Snaketown, and perhaps never would.
What is somewhat more disturbing to Jamie, though, is Bird’s idea of hospitality, which causes him to send two nubile maidens to warm Jamie’s bed.
“Madam!” he said, disengaging his mouth with difficulty. He seized the lady by the shoulders and rolled her off his body with enough force that she whooped with surprise, bare legs flying—Jesus, was she naked?
She was. Both of them were; his eyes adapted to the faint glow of the embers, he caught the shimmer of light from shoulders, breasts, and rounded thighs.
He sat up, gathering furs and blankets round him in a sort of hasty redoubt.
“Cease, the two of you!” he said severely in Cherokee. “You are beautiful, but I cannot lie with you.”
“No?” said one, sounding puzzled.
“Why not?” said the other.
“Ah…because there is an oath upon me,” he said, necessity producing inspiration. “I have sworn…sworn…” He groped for the proper word, but didn’t find it. Luckily, Ian leaped in at this point, with a stream of fluent Tsalagi, too fast to follow.
“Ooo,” breathed one girl, impressed. Jamie felt a distinct qualm.
“What in God’s name did ye tell them, Ian?”
“I told them the Great Spirit came to ye in a dream, Uncle, and told ye that ye mustn’t go with a woman until ye’d brought guns to all the Tsalagi.”
“Until I what?!”
“Well, it was the best I could think of in a hurry, Uncle,” Ian said defensively.
AT JAMIE’S REQUEST, Roger has gone with Arch Bug and Tom Christie to collect the new tenants and has brought them as far as River Run, where he talks to Duncan about them.
“Ready to go, are they?” Duncan nodded toward the meadow, where the smoke of campfires hung in a low golden haze.
“Ready as they’ll ever be. Poor things,” Roger added, with some sympathy.
Duncan raised one shaggy brow.
“Fish out of water,” Roger amplified, holding out his glass to accept the proffered refill. “The women are terrified, and so are the men, but they hide it better. Ye’d think I was taking them all to be slaves on a sugar plantation.”
Duncan nodded.
“Or sell them to Rome to clean the Pope’s shoon,” he said wryly. “I misdoubt most of them had ever smelt a Catholic before embarking. And from the wrinkled noses, they dinna care so much for the scent now, I think. Do they so much as tak’ a dram now and then, d’ye ken?”
“Only medicinally, and only if in actual danger of death, I think.”
Jocasta arrives with her butler, Ulysses (whom she’s got back after he fled the colony for killing Lieutenant Wolff). Ulysses has accompanied Jocasta shopping, along with Jocasta’s body servant, Phaedre, and Jem. Phaedre takes Jem to bathe and put to bed but steps aside to speak privately with Roger—she tells him about the tall, light-haired man they met in Cross Creek, who showed an undue interest in little Jemmy.
Roger felt his bones strain in his flesh, urgent with desire to hunt and kill the man who had raped his wife, threatened his family. But there were seventy-six people depending on him—no, seventy-seven. Vengeance warred with responsibility—and most reluctantly, gave way.
He breathed slow and deep, feeling the knot of the rope scar tighten in his throat. No. He had to go, see the new tenants safe. The thought of sending them with Arch and Tom, while he remained behind to search for Bonnet, was tempting—but the job was his; he couldn’t abandon it for the sake of a time-consuming—and likely futile—personal quest.
Nor could he leave Jem unprotected.
He must tell Duncan, though; Duncan could be trusted to take steps for the protection of River Run, to send word to the authorities in Cross Creek, to make inquiries.
And Roger would make sure that Jem was safe away, too, come morning, held before him on his saddle, kept in his sight every inch of the way to the sanctuary of the mountains.
“Who’s your daddy?” he muttered, and a fresh surge of rage pulsed through his veins. “God damn it, I am, you bastard!”
PART 3: TO EVERY THING THERE IS A SEASON
Later in August, Claire tells Jamie about the state of the Ridge while he’s been gone to the Cherokee villages. The new tenants arrived and were much taken aback by her, and vice versa. Grasshoppers got into the barley, causing Mrs. Bug and Claire to fire the field, which in turn caused the new tenants to regard their singed and reeking hostess with alarm.
JAMIE WRITES to Lord John, telling him of his appointment as Indian agent, adding his contemplations of Committees of Safety and their possibilities for abuse of power and vigilantism, though the lack of law in the colony makes such committees seem attractive to the public. Jamie expresses wariness regarding the Browns of Brownsville and closes by mentioning that he’s heard of an appearance by Stephen Bonnet, begging that Lord John advise him at once should he hear anything of the man.
——
“VROOM!”—
What I wonder is, these dreams I have about then—they seem so vivid and detailed; more than the dreams I have about now. Why do I see things that don’t exist anywhere except inside my brain?
What I wonder about the dreams is—all the new inventions people think up—how many of those things are made by people like me—like us? How many “inventions” are really memories, of the things we once knew? And—how many of us are there?
So Brianna writes in the “dreambook” she keeps. Meanwhile, Roger is carving a toy for Jemmy, while listening to his wife contemplate aloud the project of getting hot running water to the house.
“Whatsit, Daddy, what’s it?” Jemmy had recaptured the toy and ran up to him, clutching it to his chest.
“It’s a…a…” he began, helpless. It was in fact a crude replica of a Morris Minor, but even the word “car,” let alone “automobile,” had no meaning here. And the internal combustion engine, with its pleasantly evocative noises, was at least a century away.
“I guess it’s a vroom, honey,” said Bree, a distinct tone of sympathy in her voice. He felt the gentle weight of her hand, resting on his head.
“Er…yeah, that’s right,” he said, and cleared a thickening in his throat. “It’s a vroom.”
“Broom,” said Jemmy happily, and knelt to roll it down the hearth again. “Broom-broom!”
MAJOR MACDONALD returns on the final day of haymaking and spots Bobby Higgins, with his “M” brand. He and Bobby warily observe and disapprove of each other. Bobby is exhibiting interest in Lizzie, and vice versa. Jamie blesses the gathering, and everyone gets more or less drunk.
Jamie sends Young Ian to distract Lizzie from Bobby. The men who have been haying—Jamie, Roger, most of the tenants—fall asleep with their beer in their hand, leaving Claire to talk to Major MacDonald, who tells her there have been other burnings of homesteads—he has a suspicion that some of the Cherokee might have been burning homesteads built over the Treaty Line.
The fireflies were coming out, drifting like cool green sparks in the shadows, and I looked upward involuntarily, to see a spray of red and yellow ones from the chimney. Whenever I thought of that gruesome clipping—and I tried not to, nor to count the days between now and January 21 of 1776—I had thought of the fire as occurring by accident. Such accidents were more than common, ranging from hearth fires run amok and candlesticks tipped over, to blazes caused by the summer lightning storms. It hadn’t consciously occurred to me before that it might be a deliberate act—an act of murder.
I moved my foot enough to nudge Jamie. He stirred in his sleep, reached out one hand, and clasped it warmly round my ankle, then subsided with a contented groan.
“Stand between me and all things grisly,” I said, half under my breath.
“Slàinte,” said the Major, and drained his cup again.
PROPELLED BY MAJOR MacDonald’s news, Jamie and Ian depart two days later for a visit to Bird-who-sings-in-the-morning, leaving Claire with Bobby Higgins for assistance. Bobby has brought several boxes from Lord John, whose letter explains that he has sent not only the oil of vitriol that Claire asked for but also has managed the double-pelican retort.
Postscriptum: I have thus far restrained my sense of vulgar Curiosity, but I do venture to hope that on some future Occasion, you may possibly gratify me by explaining the Purpose to which you intend these Articles be put.
Claire unpacks with great excitement but is interrupted by Jamie and Ian’s sudden return, with several Indians (some in need of medical treatment) following them.
“Duty calls,” I said, a trifle breathless.
Jamie drew a deep breath of his own, squared his shoulders, and nodded.
“Well, I havena died of unrequited lust yet; I suppose I shallna do it now.”
“Don’t suppose you will,” I said. “Besides, didn’t you tell me once that abstinence makes…er…things…grow firmer?”
He gave me a bleak look.
“If it gets any firmer, I’ll faint from a lack of blood to the heid. Dinna forget the eggs, Sassenach.”
Claire deals with a broken tooth in an Indian woman, who says her family name is Wilson—much to the shocked displeasure of Hiram Crombie, leader of the Presbyterian fisher-folk, whose wife’s family name is Wilson. Another Indian arrives sometime later, this one bearing a bundle on his shoulder—this containing a jumble of weathered bones, a hollow-eyed skull staring up from the midst of them.
These are the bones of the elderly man who owned the homestead that was burned inside the Treaty Line. The Indian says the man wasn’t killed; he died of natural causes, and the Indian found his body. The Indian has brought it at Bird’s request, in proof that the Indians didn’t kill him (and, by extension, had nothing to do with the burning of the homestead). Bird also has a message for Jamie:
“Tsisqua says,” he said, in the careful way of one who has memorized a speech in an unfamiliar tongue, “you re-mem-ber de guns.” He nodded then decisively, and went.
Roger conducts a funeral for the owner of the bones. Afterward, Claire and Jamie find a little privacy, and he tells her the Scottish belief regarding the guardian of a graveyard:
“Did ye ken, Sassenach, that some folk believe the last person to lie in a graveyard becomes its guardian? He must stand on guard until the next person dies and comes to take his place—only then can he rest.”
“I suppose our mysterious Ephraim might be rather surprised to find himself in such a position, when here he’d lain down under a tree all alone,” I said, smiling a little. “But I do wonder: what is the guardian of a graveyard guarding—and from whom?”
He laughed at that.
“Oh…vandals, maybe; desecraters. Or charmers.”
“Charmers?” I was surprised at that; I’d thought the word “charmer” synonymous with “healer.”
“There are charms that call for bones, Sassenach,” he said. “Or the ashes of a burnt body. Or soil from a grave.” He spoke lightly enough, but with no sense of jesting. “Aye, even the dead may need defending.”
“And who better to do it than a resident ghost?” I said. “Quite.”
JAMIE LEADS HER to a secluded clearing where he has begun to fell logs—where the next house will stand, just in case there is anything to the newspaper clipping Brianna found in the future, stating that the Big House will burn, killing everyone in it.
They sit and talk about their family—ought they insist that Roger and Bree and Jemmy all try to return through the stones, in order to escape the dangers of the coming war? This in turn leads to a discussion of their own relationship—for Claire will never think of leaving him.
“So what is my most endearing trait?” I demanded.
“Ye think I’m funny,” he said, grinning.
“I…do…not…” I grunted, struggling madly. He merely lay on top of me, tranquilly oblivious to my pokings and thumpings, until I exhausted myself and lay gasping underneath him.
“And,” he said thoughtfully, “ye like it verra much when I take ye to bed. No?”
“Er…” I wanted to contradict him, but honesty forbade. Besides, he bloody well knew I did.
“You are squashing me,” I said with dignity. “Kindly get off.”
“No?” he repeated, not moving.
“Yes! All right! Yes! Will you bloody get off?!”
He didn’t get off, but bent his head and kissed me. I was close-lipped, determined not to give in, but he was determined, too, and if one came right dow
n to it…the skin of his face was warm, the plush of his beard stubble softly scratchy, and his wide sweet mouth…My legs were open in abandon and he was solid between them, bare chest smelling of musk and sweat and sawdust caught in the wiry auburn hair…. I was still hot with struggling, but the grass was damp and cool around us…. Well, all right; another minute, and he could have me right there, if he cared to.
He felt me yield, and sighed, letting his own body slacken; he no longer held me prisoner, but simply held me. He lifted his head then, and cupped my face with one hand.
“D’ye want to know what it is, really?” he asked, and I could see from the dark blue of his eyes that he meant it. I nodded, mute.
“Above all creatures on this earth,” he whispered, “you are faithful.”
I thought of saying something about St. Bernard dogs, but there was such tenderness in his face that I said nothing, instead merely staring up at him, blinking against the green light that filtered through the needles overhead.
“Well,” I said at last, with a deep sigh of my own, “so are you. Quite a good thing, really. Isn’t it?”
Roger and Bree arrive for supper at the Big House, announcing that they have great news. By which they mean that Bree has succeeded in making workable Lucifer matches from Lord John’s phosphorus, but before they can say that, Mrs. Bug leaps to the conclusion that Brianna is pregnant.
“You’re wi’ child again!” she cried, dropping a spoon in her excitement. She clapped her hands together, inflating like a birthday balloon. “Oh, the joy of it! And about time, too,” she added, letting go her hands to wag a finger at Roger. “And here was me thinkin’ as I should add a bit o’ ginger and brimstone to your parritch, young man, so as to bring ye up to scratch! But ye kent your business weel enough in the end, I see. And you, a bhalaich, what d’ye think? A bonny wee brother for ye!”
Jemmy, thus addressed, stared up at her, mouth open.
“Er…” said Roger, flushing up.
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 8