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

  “Yes. He goes on da bus.” Mandy bounced a little on her booster seat, leaning to peer out the window. She was wearing the Halloween mask Bree had helped her make, this being a mouse princess: a mouse face drawn with crayons on a paper plate, with holes pierced for eyes and at either side for pink yarn ties, pink pipe cleaners glued on for whiskers, and a precarious small crown made with cardboard, more glue, and most of a bottle of gold glitter.

  Scots celebrated Samhain with hollowed-out turnips with candles in them, but Brianna had wanted a slightly more festive tradition for her half-American children. The whole seat sparkled as though the car had been sprinkled with pixie dust.

  She smiled, despite her worry.

  “I meant, if you played warmer, colder with Jem, could you do it if he wasn’t answering you out loud? Would you know if he was closer or farther away?”

  Mandy kicked the back of the seat in meditative fashion.

  “Maybe.”

  BACK IN THE past, Roger and Buck have split up, Buck going to Inverness, and Roger to Lallybroch, reasoning that Jem knows the way from Craigh na Dun to Lallybroch, and even though it’s a long way, if he had escaped from Rob Cameron, he’d head for home.

  “Jem!” He shouted now and then as he went, though the moors and mountains were empty save for the rustling of rabbits and stoats and silent but for the calling of ravens and the occasional shriek of a seagull winging high overhead, evidence of the distant sea.

  “Jem!” he called, as though he could compel an answer by sheer need, and in that need imagined sometimes that he heard a faint cry in response. But when he stopped to listen, it was the wind. Only the wind, whining in his ears, numbing him. He could walk within ten feet of Jem and never see him, and he knew that.

  His heart rose, in spite of his anxiety, when he came to the top of the pass and saw Lallybroch below him, its white-harled buildings glowing in the fading light. Everything lay peaceful before him: late cabbages and turnips in orderly rows within the kailyard walls, safe from grazing sheep—there was a small flock in the far meadow, already bedding for the night, like so many woolly eggs in a nest of green grass, like a kid’s Easter basket.…

  He hammered at the door, and a huge dog came galloping round the corner of the house, baying like the bloody hound of the Baskervilles. It slid to a stop in front of him but went on barking, weaving its huge head to and fro like a snake, ears cocked in case he might make a false move that would let it devour him with a clear conscience.

  He wasn’t risking any moves; he’d plastered himself against the door when the dog appeared and now shouted, “Help! Come call your beast!”

  He heard footsteps within, and an instant later the door opened, nearly decanting him into the hall.

  “Hauld your wheesht, dog,” a tall, dark man said in a tolerant tone. “Come ben, sir, and dinna be minding him. He wouldna eat you; he’s had his dinner.”

  “I’m pleased to hear it, sir, and thank ye kindly.” Roger pulled off his hat and followed the man into the shadows of the hall. It was his own familiar hall, the slates of the floor just the same, though not nearly as worn, the dark-wood paneling shining with beeswax and polishing. There was a hall tree in the corner, though of course different to his; this one was a sturdy affair of wrought iron, and a good thing, too, as it was supporting a massive burden of jackets, shawls, cloaks, and hats, which would have crumpled a flimsier piece of furniture.

  He smiled at it, nonetheless, and then stopped dead, feeling as though he’d been punched in the chest.

  The wood paneling behind the hall tree shone serene, unblemished. No sign of the saber slashes left by frustrated redcoat soldiers searching for the outlawed laird of Lallybroch after Culloden. Those slashes had been carefully preserved for centuries, were still there, darkened by age but still distinct, when he had owned—would own, he corrected mechanically—this place.

  “We keep it so for the children,” Bree had quoted her uncle Ian as saying. “We tell them, ‘This is what the English are.’ ”

  He had no time to deal with the shock; the dark man had shut the door with a firm Gaelic adjuration to the dog and now turned to him, smiling.

  “Welcome, sir. Ye’ll sup wi’ us? The lass has it nearly ready.”

  “Aye, I will, and thanks to ye,” Roger bowed slightly, groping for his eighteenth-century manners. “I—my name is Roger MacKenzie. Of Kyle of Lochalsh,” he added, for no respectable man would omit to note his origins, and Lochalsh was far enough away that the chances of this man—who was he? He hadn’t the bearing of a servant—knowing its inhabitants in any detail was remote.

  He’d hoped that the immediate response would be, “MacKenzie? Why, you must be the father of wee Jem!” It wasn’t, though; the man returned his bow and offered his hand.

  “Brian Fraser of Lallybroch, your servant, sir.”

  Roger is—naturally—struck dumb upon realizing that he’s just met Jamie Fraser’s father. It’s not merely the unexpected appearance of the man, let alone realization of who he is, that’s disturbing Roger, though; it’s the dawning horror that he’s come to the wrong time. Or has he?

  He’s in 1739—nearly forty years earlier than he’d expected. He was concentrating, with Buck, on the name “Jeremiah” when they stepped through the stones. So have they come to this time because Jem is here—or has something gone terribly wrong?

  SOMETHING HAS OBVIOUSLY gone wrong, but Jem is safe—for the moment. He reaches the end of the hydroelectric tunnel and—eureka!—the service door that leads up into the turbine chamber is unlocked. He makes his way through the sinister rumble of the darkened chamber, with its immense vibrating engines, and at last reaches the sanctum of the offices on the other side of the dam. A security guard named Jock MacLeod finds him, sits him down to recover with a can of warm Coke, and proceeds to phone his parents. Or tries to.

  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 impatient 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.

  ——

  JEM COULD USE some help, and, luckily, it’s on the way. Mandy begins to sense Jem’s presence, and the rescue party arrives at the road to the Loch Errochty dam. Heart in her mouth, Bree pulls up to the dam office just as all hell breaks loose—with motion-detector lights and sirens (these caused by Jem’s having eluded his pursuer long enough to hit the emergency exit and escape the building). Seeing a big man thrashing his way through the bushes near the spillway with a stick, she leaps out, carrying Mandy, and bellows at the man, who whirls to confront her.

  Bree had peeled Mandy off. Setting her daughter down behind her, she prepared to take the man apart with her
bare hands, if necessary. Evidently this intent showed, because the man dropped the stick and abruptly vanished into the darkness.

  Then flashing lights washed over the drive and she realized that it wasn’t her own aspect that had frightened him. Mandy was clinging to her leg, too frightened even to wail anymore. Bree picked her up, patting her gently, and turned to face the two police officers who were advancing cautiously toward her, hands on their batons. She felt wobbly-legged and dreamlike, things fading in and out of focus with the strobing lights. The rush of tons of falling water filled her ears.

  “Mandy,” she said into her daughter’s warm curly hair, her own voice almost drowned out by the sirens. “Can you feel Jem? Please tell me you can feel him.”

  “Here I am, Mummy,” said a small voice behind her. Convinced she was hallucinating, she lifted a restraining hand toward the police officers and pivoted slowly round. Jem was standing on the drive six feet away, dripping wet, plastered with dead leaves, and swaying like a drunk.

  Then she was sitting splay-legged on the gravel, a child clutched in each arm, trying hard not to shake, so they wouldn’t notice. She didn’t start to sob, though, until Jemmy lifted a tearstained face from her shoulder and said, “Where’s Daddy?”

  DADDY IS STILL looking for Jem in the wrong place. In spite of his fear for Jem and his imminent worry, though, Roger finds support and friendship in Brian Fraser, who sends out word to his tenants, takes Roger round his lands to search—and finally suggests that they visit the garrison at Fort William, as the British soldiers may have picked up some useful news.

  The commander, a Captain Buncombe, has no news of Jem but promises to put out word to his troops. As they leave Fort William, Roger and Brian are astonished to find Jenny, mounted and repelling the advances of soldiers at the fort’s entrance. She’s followed them, bringing urgent news: Buck has been found unconscious in the heather but came round sufficiently as to ask his rescuers to send to Lallybroch for Roger. Buck is presently abiding with a family of crofters named MacLaren but seems dangerously ill and may not live.

  BACK AT LALLYBROCH, in the aftermath of Jem’s rescue from the dam tunnel, Brianna finds Rob Cameron gone from the priest’s hole, all the doors locked, and her .22 rifle gone as well. The conclusion is obvious: Cameron has associates—the man at the dam, and whoever let Cameron out of the priest’s hole. And whoever these people are, they now have a key to Lallybroch.

  Brianna takes what precautions she can, bringing the kids to Inverness to stay with her friend Fiona, who now runs a bed-and-breakfast establishment. Brianna then returns to her own house, shotgun in hand, and takes up station in the old broch tower, to see who might turn up. As darkness begins to fall, she hears the phone ring inside the house—and hears the ringing stop as the phone is picked up.

  Her immediate impulse was to go and flush out whoever was in her house and demand to know the meaning of this. Her money was on Rob Cameron, and the thought of flushing him like a grouse and marching him out at the point of a gun made her hand tighten on said gun with anticipation. She had Jem back; Cameron would know she didn’t need to keep him alive.

  But. She hesitated in the door of the broch, looking down.

  But whoever was in the house had answered the phone. If I was a burglar, I wouldn’t be answering the phone in the house I was burgling. Not unless I thought it would wake up the people inside.

  Whoever was in her house already knew no one was home.

  “Quod erat demonstrandum,” her father’s voice said in her mind, with a grim satisfaction. Someone in the house was expecting a call.

  BACK IN INVERNESS, Jem and Mandy are passing the time pleasantly enough, playing with Fiona’s three daughters. Finding the girliness a little overwhelming, Jem goes to bounce a ball on the landing. From there he has a good view of the front door, and when the bell rings, he looks up to discover Rob Cameron coming in.

  Cameron has come, he tells Fiona, in the name of research, wanting information about the local group of dancers who call down the sun on Beltane at the nearby stone circle at Craigh na Dun. Fiona, knowing only too well who Rob is, distracts him briefly and runs to find Jem, whom she sends quickly out of the house, with instructions to run to a neighbor’s house and call the police.

  Jem does, but while waiting for the police to arrive, he sees Rob Cameron come hurriedly out of Fiona’s place and drive off. A radio bulletin about Cameron (chief suspect in Jemmy’s kidnapping) had come through while Cameron was talking to Fiona. Taking alarm, he’d hit Fiona and rushed out of the house.

  Fiona’s husband, Ernie Buchan, is also alarmed and decides to take Jem and Mandy back to their mother at Lallybroch, he fearing that their presence in his house will endanger his own family. He arrives with the children to find Brianna engaged in a standoff with unknown miscreants inside the house; reinforcements arrive shortly afterward, in a butcher’s van. What ensues is a one-sided shoot-out at the O.K. Corral, with Brianna’s shotgun shattering windows, shredding tires, and holding off the intruders long enough for her to reach Ernie’s electrician’s van.

  The van’s engine is flooded, though, and the bad guys, hooded with balaclava helmets, try to rush Ernie’s stalled van. At this precarious point, the cavalry shows up, in the person of a dark-blue Fiat, which fiercely charges the bad guys and drives them back long enough for Ernie to get his engine going.

  Ernie’s van is badly damaged but limps down the highway toward the nearest truck stop, the blue Fiat following sedately behind. Taking temporary refuge in a Little Chef Café, Brianna discovers that her savior is Lionel Menzies—the principal of Jem’s school (who has some reason to think there’s something odd about the MacKenzie family, but who is also a friend of Roger’s, by way of being a fellow Freemason of the same lodge).

  Clearly there’s more at work here than Rob Cameron and his personal malice. At her wits’ end and badly needing an ally, Brianna confides as much of the truth as she can to Menzies—including Rob’s possible motives but leaving out the mention of time travel, Spanish gold, or where Roger and Buck really are—and takes some comfort in his belief and support. He takes the MacKenzies home and leaves with the suggestion that Brianna might think of taking the children right away to America.

  This is not something Bree hasn’t thought of—but in light of recent events, it begins to look like more than a good idea. But what about Roger? She knows that he’ll never give up looking for Jemmy, but she writes a letter for him, just in case, and conceals it in the ancient desk in the laird’s study, knowing that Roger will look there sooner or later if he does return.

  As she gropes for the secret recess, though, she dislodges another letter, shoved down in the innermost crevices of the desk. It’s a letter from her father, Frank Randall, addressed to her and enclosing a brief family tree, along with Frank’s speculations regarding his suspicions about undue interest in his family—Brianna, specifically.

  Dearest Deadeye,

  You’ve just left me, after our wonderful afternoon among the clay pigeons. My ears are still ringing. Whenever we shoot, I’m torn between immense pride in your ability, envy of it—and fear that you may someday need it.

  What a queer feeling it is, writing this. I know that you’ll eventually learn who—and perhaps, what—you are. But I have no idea how you’ll come to that knowledge. Am I about to reveal you to yourself, or will this be old news when you find it? If we’re both lucky, I may be able to tell you in person, when you’re a little older. And if we’re very lucky, it will come to nothing. But I daren’t risk your life in that hope, and you’re not yet old enough that I could tell you.

  I’m sorry, sweetheart, that’s terribly melodramatic. And the last thing I want to do is alarm you. I have all the confidence in the world in you. But I am your father and thus prey to the fears that afflict all parents—that something dreadful and unpreventable will happen to one’s child, and you powerless to protect her.

  The letter reinforces Brianna’s feeling that there
is in fact a conspiracy aimed at her and her children and that she must get the children away. Right away.

  Shortly after the war ended, your mother and I came to Scotland. Something of a second honeymoon. She went out one afternoon to pick flowers—and never came back. I searched—everyone searched—for months, but there was no sign, and eventually the police stopped—well, in fact they didn’t stop suspecting me of murdering her, damn them, but they grew tired of harassing me. I had begun to put my life back together, made up my mind to move on, perhaps leave Britain—and then Claire came back. Three years after her disappearance, she showed up in the Highlands, filthy, starved, battered—and pregnant.

  Pregnant, she said, by a Jacobite Highlander from 1743 named James Fraser. I won’t go into all that was said between us; it was a long time ago and it doesn’t matter—save for the fact that IF your mother was telling the truth, and did indeed travel back in time, then you may have the ability to do it, too. I hope you don’t. But if you should—Lord, I can’t believe I’m writing this in all seriousness. But I look at you, darling, with the sun on your ruddy hair, and I see him. I can’t deny that.

  Well. It took a long time. A very long time. But your mother never changed her story, and though we didn’t speak about it after a while, it became obvious that she wasn’t mentally deranged (which I had rather naturally assumed to be the case, initially). And I began…to look for him.

  Now I must digress for a moment; forgive me. I think you won’t have heard of the Brahan Seer. Colorful as he was—if, in fact, he existed—he’s not really known much beyond those circles with a taste for the more outlandish aspects of Scottish history. Reggie, though, is a man of immense curiosity, as well as immense learning, and was fascinated by the Seer—one Kenneth MacKenzie, who lived in the seventeenth century (maybe), and who made a great number of prophecies about this and that, sometimes at the behest of the Earl of Seaforth.