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

by Diana Gabaldon

  The distraction proved nearly fatal, for the Major’s spurs caught and tangled, and he sprawled headlong in the grass, losing his grip on the laced hat—which he had held throughout the chase—and sending it pinwheeling through the air.

  Roger hesitated for an instant, but then ran back to help, with a smothered oath. He saw Jamie running back, too, spade held at the ready—though even a metal shovel seemed pitifully inadequate to deal with a five-hundred-pound hog.

  MacDonald was already scrambling to his feet, though; before either of them could reach him, he took off running as though the devil himself were breathing on his coattails. Arms pumping and face set in puce determination, he ran for his life, bounding like a jackrabbit through the grass—and disappeared. One instant he was there, and the next he had vanished, as though by magic.

  Jamie looked wide-eyed at Roger, then at the pig, who had stopped short on the far side of the kiln pit. Then, moving gingerly, one eye always on the pig, he sidled toward the pit, glancing sideways, as though afraid to see what lay at the bottom.

  Roger moved to stand at Jamie’s shoulder, looking down. Major MacDonald had fallen into the deeper hole at the end, where he lay curled up like a hedgehog, arms clasped protectively over his wig—which had remained in place by some miracle, though now much bespattered with dirt and bits of grass.

  “MacDonald?” Jamie called down. “Are ye damaged, man?”

  “Is she there?” quavered the Major, not emerging from his ball.

  Roger glanced across the pit at the pig, now some distance away, snout down in the long grass.

  “Er…aye, she is.” To his surprise, his voice came easy, if a little hoarse. He cleared his throat and spoke a little louder. “Ye needna worry, though. She’s busy eating your hat.”

  JAMIE GOES TO see Robin McGillivray, the gunsmith, who has been talking with Brianna about her designs for a gun, then walks back, pondering the dilemma before him: knowing what he knows, he must declare himself a Rebel sooner or later—but when? And how? And what will the Scots who are his tenants, and the Indians who know him as the agent of the King, do when he does?

  On the way, he meets Brianna, who gives him something else to worry about, by telling him about the Trail of Tears and what’s going to happen to the Cherokee—not immediately, but eventually.

  CLAIRE HAS SUCCEEDED in producing ether but requires a guinea pig, and she persuades first Lizzie and then Bobby Higgins to lend their services. Malva, who is present, is astonished.

  ——

  JAMIE VISITS THE Cherokee again, to arrange a ransom for some Indian captives, and in so doing meets “Scotchee,” Alexander Cameron, a Highlander who has married into the Cherokee and who seeks him out. From Cameron, he learns that Mr. Henderson, one of the justices who was chased out of Hillsborough during the riot a few years before, has retired into private life and is arranging the purchase of a large tract of land from the Cherokee, well inside the Treaty Line.

  Jamie gave Cameron an eye, apprehending at once the complexity of the situation. For the one thing, the lands in question lay far, far inside the Treaty Line. For Henderson to instigate such dealings was an indication—had any been needed—of just how feeble the grasp of the Crown had grown of late. Plainly, Henderson thought nothing of flouting his Majesty’s treaty, and expected no interference with his affairs as a result of doing so.

  That was one thing. For another, though—the Cherokee held land in common, as all the Indians did. Leaders could and did sell land to whites, without such legal niceties as clear title, but were still subject to the ex post facto approval or disapproval of their people. Such approval would not affect the sale, which would be already accomplished, but could result in the fall of a leader, and in a good deal of trouble for the man who tried to take possession of land paid for in good faith—or what passed for good faith, in such dealings.

  “John Stuart [the superintendent of the Southern Department] knows of this, of course,” Jamie said, and Cameron nodded, with a small air of complacency.

  “Not officially, mind,” he said.

  DURING THE SMOKING and drinking and feasting later, stories of battles are told, and Jamie—rather to his surprise—tells the assembly a story of Culloden, of the MacAllister who killed six enemies with the tongue of a wagon. One of the Indians asks how many men Jamie killed in this battle, and he finds himself suddenly on the field at Culloden.

  The smoke burned in his chest, behind his eyes, and for an instant he tasted the bitter smoke of cannon fire, not sweet tobacco. He saw—he saw—Alistair MacAllister, dead at his feet among the red-clothed bodies, the side of his head crushed in and the round curve of his shoulder shining solid through the cloth of the shirt, so wetly did it cling to him.

  He was there, on the moor, the wet and cold no more than a shimmer on his skin, rain slick on his face, his own shirt sopping and steaming on him with the heat of his rage.

  And then he no longer stood on Drumossie, and became aware a second too late of the indrawn breaths around him. He saw Robert Talltree’s face, the wrinkles all turned up in astonishment, and only then looked down, to see all ten of his fingers flex and fold, and the four fingers of the right extend again, quite without his meaning it. The thumb wavered, indecisive. He watched this with fascination, then, coming finally to his wits, balled his right hand as well as he could and wrapped the left around it, as though to throttle the memory that had been thrust with such unnerving suddenness into the palm of his hand.

  Very late, he seeks out Bird and attempts to tell him what Brianna has revealed to him, regarding the Cherokees’ fate:

  “The women of my family are…” He groped, not knowing the Cherokee word. “Those who see in dreams what is to come.” He darted a look at Cameron, who appeared to take this in his stride, for he nodded, and closed his eyes to draw smoke into his lungs.

  “Have they the Sight, then?” he asked, mildly interested.

  Jamie nodded; it was as good an explanation as any.

  “They have seen a thing concerning the Tsalagi. Both my wife and my daughter have seen this thing.”

  Bird’s attention sharpened, hearing this. Dreams were important; for more than one person to share a dream was extraordinary, and therefore most important.

  “It grieves me to tell you,” Jamie said, and meant it. “Sixty years from this time, the Tsalagi will be taken from their lands, removed to a new place. Many will die on this journey, so that the path they tread will be called…” He groped for the word for “tears,” did not find it, and ended, “the trail where they wept.”

  ***

  “This wife you have,” Bird said at last, deeply contemplative, “did you pay a great deal for her?”

  “She cost me almost everything I had,” he said, with a wry tone that made the others laugh. “But worth it.”

  Very late indeed, Jamie goes to his guesthouse, only to find a woman waiting for him, as per Bird’s usual joke. But this one isn’t a naked young nubile lass.

  The firelight showed him an elderly woman, her hair in grizzled plaits, her dress of white buckskin decorated with paint and porcupine quills. He recognized Calls-in-the-Forest, dressed in her best. Bird’s sense of humor had finally got completely out of hand; he had sent Jamie his mother.

  All grasp of Tsalagi deserted him. He opened his mouth, but merely gaped at her. She smiled, very slightly, and held out her hand.

  “Come and lie down, Bear-Killer,” she said. Her voice was kind and gruff. “I’ve come to comb the snakes from your hair.”

  ——

  CLAIRE IS WORKING in her garden when she receives an unexpected visitor—Manfred McGillivray. He has come to say that he can’t marry Lizzie and to confess the reason: he has contracted syphilis from a whore with whom he was carrying on an affair in Hillsborough.

  Claire is about to inject him with penicillin when he takes alarm at someone coming, dives through the window, and runs. The someone coming is Young Ian, carrying Lizzie in his arms, she having co
llapsed with another malarial attack. Ian helps Claire to rub gallberry ointment into Lizzie’s skin, while listening to Claire’s tale of Manfred’s trouble, then carries Lizzie up to bed.

  “If you would, please, Ian.” I hesitated, and his eyes met mine, deep brown and soft with worry and the shadow of remembered pain. “She’ll be all right,” I said, trying to infuse a sense of certainty into the words.

  “Aye, she will,” he said firmly, and stooped to gather her up, tucking the blanket under her. “If I’ve anything to say about it.”

  MANFRED DOESN’T COME back. Ian does, with a blackened eye, skinned knuckles, and the terse report that Manfred had declared a set intention of hanging himself, and good riddance to the fornicating son of a bitch, and might his rotten bowels gush forth like Judas Iscariot’s, the stinking, traitorous wee turd. Ian then stamps upstairs to stand silently over Lizzie’s bed.

  The news of her son’s trouble reaches Ute McGillivray, who responds with fury, accusing Claire of blackening Manfred’s name, and storms off, declaring that she will stop anyone from trading with the Frasers.

  Both Lizzie and her father miss the McGillivrays—for the severing of Lizzie’s engagement has also severed the Wemysses from the large, warm family and ruined Joseph’s budding romance with Monika Berrisch.

  Malva Christie, however, is fascinated by the affair—and by Claire’s explanation of “good bugs” and “bad bugs.”

  OUT GATHERING ON the hillside, Claire happens to oversee the Christies’ yard and sees Tom Christie take a bundle of switches to his daughter. Rather shocked by this, she tells Jamie, but he declines to get involved, saying that it is, after all, Tom’s business, so long as he isn’t damaging his daughter.

  “WOODEARS”—DESPITE HIS dismissal of the matter, though, Jamie promises Claire that he will look into it and finds an opportunity to speak with Malva by herself a few days later.

  He learns a few more puzzling things about the family background from Malva, causing him to wonder about Tom’s wife—or wives.

  LATER, BRIANNA IS digging a channel from the nearest stream, and Jamie comes to help her. In the process, they find the remains of a sinister little fire on a stone on the bank—one including what looks like charred finger bones, as well as herbs. Jamie recognizes it as a Highland charm but doesn’t know who left it or what its purposeis.

  Brianna has her suspicions. Her father says to leave it alone, it’s a private business—but Roger had come home well after dark the night before, whistling a song he said Amy McCallum had taught him, and the song was called “The Deasil Charm.”

  Brianna goes to consult Mrs. Bug, who listens to her description of the charm and tells her it’s a love charm, one called “the Venom o’ the North Wind.”

  “There are easier ways to make a lad fall in love wi’ ye, lass,” she added, pointing a stubby finger at Brianna in admonition. “Cook him up a nice plate o’ neeps boiled in milk and served wi’ butter, for one.”

  “I’ll remember,” Brianna promised, smiling, and excused herself.

  She had meant to go home; there were dozens of things needing to be done, from spinning yarn and weaving cloth, to plucking and drawing the half dozen dead geese she had shot and hung in the lean-to. But instead she found her footsteps turning up the hill, along the overgrown trail that led to the graveyard.

  Surely it wasn’t Amy McCallum who’d made that charm, she thought. It would have taken her hours to walk down the mountain from her cabin, and her with a small baby to tend. But babies could be carried. And no one would know whether she had left her cabin, save perhaps Aidan—and Aidan didn’t talk to anyone but Roger, whom he worshipped.

  The sun was nearly down, and the tiny cemetery had a melancholy look to it, long shadows from its sheltering trees slanting cold and dark across the needle-strewn ground and the small collection of crude markers, cairns, and wooden crosses. The pines and hemlocks murmured uneasily overhead in the rising breeze of evening.

  The sense of cold had spread from her backbone, making a wide patch between her shoulder blades. Seeing the earth grubbed up beneath the wooden marker with “Ephraim” on it didn’t help.

  ROGER HAS ENCOUNTERED an awkward situation. He came unexpectedly across Bobby Higgins, locked in embrace with Malva Christie, whose reponse was swift: “Tell my father, she’d said, and I’ll tell everyone I’ve seen you kiss Amy McCallum.” Too late, he becomes aware of what people in the mountains are saying: “Everybody kens ye spend more time up at the notch wi’ the widow McCallum than ye do with your own wife.”

  Clearly, his visits to the McCallums must cease, for Amy’s sake as much as his own. Going to explain matters to her, though, he finds a crisis in progress—Aidan has fallen seriously ill.

  In fact, Aidan is suffering from appendicitis and becomes Claire’s first real patient—and first success—for the use of ether. Roger forces Malva to come and help with the operation, which she reluctantly does—but her father notes her absence and appears during the operation, which shocks him.

  “Did ye just raise that child from the dead?” he asked. His voice was almost conversational, though his feathery brows arched high.

  I wiped a hand across my mouth, still tasting the sickly sweetness of the ether.

  “I suppose so,” I said.

  “Oh.”

  He stared at me, blank-faced. The room reeked of alcohol, and it seemed to sear my nasal lining. My eyes were watering a little; I wiped them on my apron. Finally, he nodded, as though to himself, and turned to go.

  I had to see to Aidan and his mother. But I couldn’t let him go without trying to mend things for Malva, so far as I could.

  “Tom—Mr. Christie.” I hurried after him, and caught him by the sleeve. He turned, surprised and frowning.

  “Malva. It’s my fault; I sent Roger to bring her. You won’t—” I hesitated, but couldn’t think of any tactful way to put it. “You won’t punish her, will you?”

  The frown deepened momentarily, then lifted. He shook his head, very slightly, and with a small bow, detached his sleeve from my hand.

  “Your servant, Mrs. Fraser,” he said quietly, and with a last glance at Aidan—presently demanding food—he left.

  MEANWHILE, A FIGHT breaks out between Roger and Brianna.

  “You’ll help any woman but me,” she said, opening her eyes. “Why is that?”

  He gave her a long, hard look, and she wondered for an instant whether there was such a thing as a black emerald.

  “Maybe I didn’t think ye needed me,” he said. And turning on his heel, he left.

  ROGER AND JAMIE go fishing, and alone together in the peace of the water, Roger tells Jamie that he feels he has a calling—that he is meant to be a minister. Rather to Roger’s surprise, Jamie is less disconcerted by the admission than is Roger himself.

  “Ye want to take care of them,” Jamie said softly, and it wasn’t a question, but rather an acceptance.

  Roger laughed a little, unhappily, and closed his eyes against the sparkle of the sun off the water.

  “I don’t want to do it,” he said. “It’s the last thing I thought of, and me growing up in a minister’s house. I mean, I ken what it’s like. But someone has to do it, and I am thinking it’s me.”

  In fact, Jamie is very practical about the matter, asking whether Roger needs to be ordained and how this might be managed.

  “Have ye spoken to your wife about it?”

  “No,” he said, staring across the pool.

  “Why not?” There was no tone of accusation in the question; more curiosity. Why, after all, should he have chosen to talk to his father-in-law first, rather than his wife?

  Because you know what it is to be a man, he thought, and she doesn’t. What he said, though, was another version of the truth.

  “I don’t want her to think me a coward.”

  ***

  The mountains and the green wood rose up mysterious and wild around them, and the hazy sky unfurled itself over the hollow like
angel’s wings, silent and sunlit. But not peaceful; never peace, not here.

  “Do you believe us—Claire and Brianna and me—about the war that’s coming?”

  Jamie laughed shortly, gaze fixed on the water.

  “I’ve eyes, man. It doesna take either prophet or witch to see it standing on the road.”

  “That,” said Roger, giving him a curious look, “is a very odd way of putting it.”

  “Is it, so? Is that no what the Bible says? When ye shall see the abomination of desolation, standing where it ought not, then let them in Judaea flee to the mountains?”

  Let him who readeth understand. Memory supplied the missing part of the verse, and Roger became aware, with a small sense of cold in the bone, that Jamie did indeed see it standing on the road, and recognized it. Nor was he using figures of speech; he was describing, precisely, what he saw—because he had seen it before.

  ***

  “Your wife,” he said thoughtfully, rising and hitching the strap of the creel onto his shoulder.

  “Aye?” Roger picked up the battered hat, bestrewn with flies, and gave it to him. Jamie nodded thanks, and set it on his head.

  “She has eyes, too.”

  “M-I-C”—TO ROGER’S further surprise, Brianna not only doesn’t think him a coward but also seems very supportive of his desire to become a minister.

  “I’ll help,” she said firmly. “You tell me how, and I’ll help.”

  ***

  They sat silent for a little, the fireflies drifting down like slow green rain, their silent mating song lighting the darkening grass and trees. Roger’s face was fading as the light failed, though she still saw the line of his jaw, set in determination.

  “I swear to ye, Bree,” he said. “Whatever I’m called to now—and God knows what that is—I was called to be your husband first. Your husband and the father of your bairns above all things—and that I always shall be. Whatever I may do, it will not ever be at the price of my family, I promise you.”