That was all there was time for—and all he could possibly say.
***
The night shivered. The whole night. The ground and the lake, the sky, the dark, the stars, and every particle of his own body. He was scattered, instantly everywhere and part of everything. And part of them. There was one moment of an exaltation too great for fear and then he vanished, his last thought no more than a faint, I am…voiced more in hope than declaration.
Roger came back to a blurred knowledge of himself, flat on his back under a clear black sky whose brilliant stars seemed pinpoints now, desperately far away. He missed them, missed being part of the night. Missed, with a brief rending sense of desolation, the two men who’d shared his soul for that blazing moment.
They’ve found Jerry—but not Jem. And so they turn northward once more, to search for both Jem…and Buck’s mother, Geillis Duncan.
——
BACK IN SCOTLAND now, Brianna makes her final preparations, writing in her “Practical Guide for Time Travelers”:
It’s almost time. The winter solstice is day after tomorrow. I keep imagining that I can feel the earth shifting slowly in the dark, tectonic plates moving under my feet and…things…invisibly lining up. The moon is waxing, nearly a quarter full. Have no idea whether that might be important.
In the morning, we’ll take the train to Inverness. I’ve called Fiona; she’ll meet us at the station, and we’ll eat and change at her house—then she’ll drive us to Craigh na Dun…and leave us there. Keep wondering if I should ask her to stay—or at least to come back in an hour, in case one or more of us should still be there, on fire or unconscious. Or dead.
IN CRANESMUIR, ROGER and Buck reach the fiscal’s house and ask for Mrs. Duncan. The mistress, it seems, is at home but has a visitor: Dr. McEwan. She’ll see the new visitors, though, and the men go up, each wondering what they may find.
Roger felt Buck stiffen slightly, and no wonder. He hoped he wasn’t staring himself.
Geillis Duncan was maybe not a classic beauty, but that didn’t matter. She was certainly good-looking, with creamy-blond hair put up under a lace cap, and—of course—the eyes. Eyes that made him want to close his own and poke Buck in the back to make him do the same, because surely she or McEwan would notice….
McEwan had noticed something, all right, but it wasn’t the eyes. He was eyeing Buck with a small frown of displeasure, as Buck took a long stride forward, seized the woman’s hand, and boldly kissed it.
“Mrs. Duncan,” he said, straightening up and smiling right into those clear green eyes. “Your most humble and obedient servant, ma’am.”
She smiled back, one blond brow raised, with an amused look that met Buck’s implied challenge—and raised it. Even from where he was standing, Roger felt the snap of attraction between them, sharp as a spark of static electricity. So had McEwan.
“How is your health, Mr. MacKenzie?” McEwan said pointedly to Buck. He pulled a chair into place. “Do sit down and let me examine you.”
Buck either didn’t hear or pretended not to. He was still holding Geillis Duncan’s hand, and she wasn’t pulling it away.
The obvious sense of electric attraction between Buck and Geillis horrifies both Roger and Dr. McEwan—albeit for different reasons. Geillis takes Buck up to her herb attic, leaving the other two aghast.
“Stop, man,” he said, keeping his voice pitched as low and evenly as he could, in hopes of soothing McEwan. “Ye’ll do yourself no good. Sit down, now. I’ll tell ye why it—why he—why the man’s interested in her.”
“For the same reason every dog in the village is interested in a bitch in heat,” McEwan said venomously. But he let Roger take the poker from his hand, and while he wouldn’t sit down, he did at least take several deep breaths that restored a semblance of calm.
“Aye, tell me, then—for all the good it will do,” he said.
It wasn’t a situation that allowed for diplomacy or euphemism.
“She’s his mother, and he knows it,” Roger said bluntly.
Whatever McEwan had been expecting, that wasn’t it, and for an instant, Roger was gratified to see the man’s face go absolutely blank with shock. Only for an instant, though. It was likely going to be a tricky bit of pastoral counseling, at best.
Roger does his best, listening to McEwan’s miserable confessions regarding his relationship with Geillis—and tries to distract him from what he hopes isn’t happening upstairs, by asking the doctor to look at his throat again. This McEwan does, explaining as much as he knows about the blue light and what he thinks might happen with regard to healing. But distraction is not enough; plainly the man is fatally engaged.
At last Buck returns, and Roger gets him away. Buck is quiet, though admitting—to Roger’s relief—that while Geillis made advances to him, they…didn’t. Later, over a campfire outside Cranesmuir, Buck tells Roger the story of his own wife and why he felt he oughtn’t try to return to her—instead, he offers to go back to Brianna, to tell her what’s happened and where Roger is.
“So ye see,” he said. “If I go back and tell your wife what’s to do—and, with luck, come back to tell you—it’s maybe the one good thing I could do. For my family—for yours.”
It took some time for Roger to get his voice sufficiently under control as to speak.
“Aye,” he said. “Well. Sleep on it. I mean to go up to Lallybroch. Ye’ll maybe go and see Dougal MacKenzie at Leoch. If ye think ye still…mean it, after…there’s time enough to decide then.”
BRIANNA AND THE kids have reached Inverness and completed their preparations. She fears that they may have been seen, though, in spite of her precautions, and as they climb Craigh na Dun, she hears footsteps behind her and is sure that Rob Cameron and his companions are in pursuit.
Turning on the pursuer, though, she finds Lionel Menzies, distraught and urgent. Needing help, she’d told him about the venture, and he’s been watching out. They have been spotted, he says; Rob and others are on their way—they must go at once.
But while they’ve been conversing, Mandy has been climbing, up into the stone circle.
But Mandy, little fist clutching her emerald, had turned toward the biggest of the standing stones. Her mouth drooped open for a moment, and then suddenly her face brightened as though someone had lit a candle inside her.
“Daddy!” she shrieked, and, yanking her hand out of Brianna’s, raced directly toward the cleft stone—and into it.
“Jesus!” Brianna barely heard Menzies’s shocked exclamation. She ran toward the stone, tripped over Esmeralda, and fell full length in the grass, knocking out her wind.
“Mama!” Jem paused for a moment beside her, glancing wildly back and forth between her and the stone where his little sister had just vanished.
“I’m…okay,” she managed, and with that assurance, Jem charged across the clearing, calling back, “I’ll get her, Mam!”
Jem does get Mandy back, both children popping out of the stone whole and unhurt, though shocked and nauseated by the passage. One problem: the emeralds they were carrying for passage have burned up. Lionel Menzies saves the day, knocking a small diamond out of his Masonic ring for Jem and giving the ring (with its other diamond) to Mandy.
“Lionel,” she said, and he reached out and touched her cheek.
“Go now,” he said. “I can’t leave until ye go. Once you’re gone, though, I’ll run for it.”
She nodded jerkily, once, then stooped and took the children’s hands. “Jem—put that in your other pocket, okay?” She gulped air and turned toward the big cleft stone. The racket of it hammered at her blood and she could feel it pulling, trying to take her apart.
“Mandy,” she said, and could barely hear her own voice. “Let’s find Daddy. Don’t let go.”
It was only as the screaming began that she realized she’d not said “Thank you,” and then she thought no more.
Brianna, Jem, and Mandy reach what they hope is the right time—they know they’re in the right place.
Brianna heads for Lallybroch; that’s the only place she knows for sure that Roger has been, and is the logical place to ask after him. She approaches cautiously from the back of the house, though, still worried about the possibility of changing the future by meeting people she knows from a different time. What if her father, aged eighteen, is here? If so, will meeting him now mean she won’t meet him at forty-six in North Carolina?
But her need to find Roger impels her, and she comes slowly down the hill toward the house, through the small family burying ground, leaving the kids at the broch above. Jem rushes down after her, though, saying he sees a man coming up—a black-haired man. Bree’s heart leaps, but, no, it can’t be Roger; Jem would know his father….
She ducks back out of sight and sees the man come up among the graves, with a bit of greenery in his hand. He kneels beside one grave—one she knows is that of Ellen MacKenzie Fraser, and she realizes with a shock that the man is Brian Fraser, Jamie’s father.
She shifted her weight, uncertain whether to call out or wait ’til he’d finished his business with the dead. But the small stones under her feet shifted, too, rolling down with a click-clack-click that made him look up and, seeing her, rise abruptly to his feet, black brows raised.
Black hair, black brows. Brian Dubh. Black Brian.
I met Brian Fraser (you would like him, and he, you)…
Wide, startled hazel eyes met hers, and for a second that was all she saw. His beautiful deep-set eyes, and the expression of stunned horror in them.
“Brian,” she said. “I—”
“A Dhia!” He went whiter than the harled plaster of the house below. “Ellen!”
Astonishment deprived her of speech for an instant—long enough to hear light footsteps scrambling down the hill behind her.
“Mam!” Jem called, breathless.
Brian’s glance turned up, behind her, and his mouth fell open at sight of Jem. Then a look of radiant joy suffused his face.
“Willie!” he said. “A bhalaich! Mo bhalaich!” He looked back at Brianna and stretched out a trembling hand to her. “Mo ghràidh…mo chridhe…”
“Brian,” she said softly, her heart in her voice, filled with pity and love, unable to do anything but respond to the need of the soul that showed so clearly in his lovely eyes. And with her speaking of his name for the second time, he stopped dead, swaying for a moment, and then the eyes rolled up in his head and he fell.
Brianna fears for a moment that they’ve killed him, but it’s all right; he’s only fainted from the shock. She hesitates but can’t bring herself to rouse him and introduce herself; having seen the joy on his face at sight of what he thought were his wife and son, she can’t deprive him of the knowledge that Ellen and Willie are waiting for him.
As she begins to steal away, though, Jem rushes up to tell her that Mandy has run off, saying she hears her daddy.
Daddy is indeed close by, also headed for Lallybroch, to rendezvous with Buck. He’s disturbed in mind, worried about Buck—and what he might or might not do with regard to his very unorthodox mother.
The presence of the gull broke his sense of isolation, at least. He rode on in a calmer frame of mind, resolved only not to think about things until he had to.
He thought he was close to Lallybroch; with luck, would reach it well before dark. His belly rumbled at the prospect of tea, and he felt happier. Whatever he could and couldn’t tell Brian Fraser, just seeing Brian and his daughter, Jenny, again would be a comfort.
The gulls cried high overhead, still wheeling, and he looked up. Sure enough: he could just make out the low ruins of the Iron Age hill fort up there, the ruins he’d rebuilt—would rebuild? What if he never got back to—Jesus, don’t even think about it, man, it’ll drive you crazier than you are already.
He nudged the horse and it reluctantly accelerated a bit. It accelerated a lot faster in the next moment, when a crashing noise came from the hillside just above.
“Whoa! Whoa, you eedjit! Whoa, I said!” These adjurations, along with a heave of the reins to bring the horse’s head around, had an effect, and they ended facing back the way they’d come, to see a young boy standing, panting, in the middle of the road, his red hair all on end, nearly brown in the muted light.
“Daddy,” he said, and his face lit as though touched by a sudden sun. “Daddy!”
Roger hadn’t any memory of leaving his horse or running down the road. Or of anything else. He was sitting in the mud and the mist in a patch of wet bracken with his son hugged tight to his chest, and nothing else mattered in the world.
With the family reunited, the MacKenzies find temporary refuge with Dr. McEwan in Cranesmuir. The doctor leaves the four of them to share his bed, while he says he will find a bed “with a friend.” With the children safely asleep, Roger and Bree go into the doctor’s surgery to make love…and talk, after so long apart.
“I thought I might never see you again,” she whispered.
“Aye,” he said softly, and his hand stroked her long hair and her back. “Me, too.” They were silent for a long moment, each listening to the other’s breath—his came easier than it had, she thought, without the small catches—and then he finally said, “Tell me.”
She did, baldly and with as little emotion as she could manage. She thought he might be emotional enough for both of them.
He couldn’t shout or curse, because of the sleeping children. She could feel the rage in him; he was shaking with it, his fists clenched like solid knobs of bone.
“I’ll kill him,” he said, in a voice barely pitched above silence, and his eyes met hers, savage and so dark that they seemed black in the dim light.
“It’s okay,” she said softly, and, sitting up, took both his hands in hers, lifting one and then the other to her lips. “It’s okay. We’re all right, all of us. And we’re here.”
He looked away and took a deep breath, then looked back, his hands tightening on hers.
“Here,” he repeated, his voice bleak, still hoarse with fury. “In 1739. If I’d—”
“You had to,” she said firmly, squeezing back hard. “Besides,” she added, a little diffidently, “I sort of thought we wouldn’t stay. Unless you’ve taken a great liking to some of the denizens?”
——
ROGER FELT HER begin to relax, and quite suddenly she let go her stubborn hold on consciousness and fell asleep like someone breathing ether. He held her and listened to the tiny sounds that made up silence: the distant hiss of the peat fire in the bedroom, a cold wind rattling at the window, the rustling and breathing of the sleeping kids, the slow beating of Brianna’s valiant heart.
Thank you, he said silently to God.
He had expected to fall asleep himself at once; tiredness covered him like a lead blanket. But the day was still with him, and he lay for some time looking up into the dark.
He was at peace, too tired to think coherently of anything. All the possibilities drifted round him in a slow, distant swirl, too far away to be troublesome. Where they might go…and how. What Buck might have said to Dougal MacKenzie. What Bree had brought in her bag, heavy as lead. Whether there would be porridge for breakfast—Mandy liked porridge.
The thought of Mandy made him ease out of the quilts to check on the children. To reassure himself that they were really there.
They were, and he stood by the bed for a long time, watching their faces in wordless gratitude, breathing the warm childish smell of them—still tinged with a slight tang of goat.
At last he turned, shivering, to make his way back to his warm wife and the beckoning bliss of sleep. But as he reentered the surgery, he glanced through the window into the night outside.
Cranesmuir slept, and mist lay in her streets, the cobbles beneath gleaming with wet in the half-light of a drowning moon. On the far side of the square, though, a light showed in the attic window of Arthur Duncan’s house.
And in the shadow of the square below, a small movement betrayed the presence of a man. Waiting.
With his eyes tight shut, he put a hand on the icy windowpane, and said a prayer to be going on with.
PART 7: BEFORE I GO HENCE
And now we rejoin Claire and Jamie in Philadelphia, with Fergus, Marsali, and their children. Things have quieted, with the exodus of the British army, but there is still substantial unrest; the Loyalists who have not left the city haven’t surrendered their opinions, either, and a small stream of threats flows under the door of the Rebel printshop.
Lord John has offered the use of his house on Chestnut Street to Claire, but Jamie declines, saying he will take care of his own family, thank you. So the printshop is crowded but happy, despite the sort of disturbing news that occurs during a war. In this instance, it’s an account of a massacre at a place in New York called Andrustown. Joseph Brant, a Mohawk (known as Thayendanegea) is fighting with and for the British, and his warriors have attacked a settlement called Andrustown, massacring the inhabitants.
She stood watching until Joanie had gone out through the back door, then turned to me and handed me the letter.
It was from a Mr. Johansen, apparently one of Fergus’s regular correspondents, and the contents were as Marsali had said, though adding a few gruesome details that she hadn’t mentioned in Joanie’s hearing. It was fairly factual, with only the barest of eighteenth-century ornaments, and the more hair-raising—literally, I thought; some of the Andrustown residents had been scalped, by report—for that.
Marsali nodded as I looked up from the letter.
“Aye,” she said. “Fergus wants to publish the account, but I’m nay so sure he ought to. Because of Young Ian, ken?”
“What’s because of Young Ian?” said a Scottish voice from the printshop doorway, and Jenny came through, a marketing basket over one arm. Her eyes went to the letter in my hand, and her sharp dark brows rose.
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 34