The Outlandish Companion

by Diana Gabaldon

  “No, he’s all right. Hush, sweetie, come see Grannie.” I smiled as I said it, with the still-new feeling of mingled surprise and delight that I could actually be someone’s grandmother. I supposed the novelty would wear off sooner or later; I had, after all, got quite used to being “Mama.”

  Recognizing me, Jemmy abandoned his fuss and went promptly into his mussel-clinging-to-a-rock routine, chubby fists gripped tight in my hair. Disentangling his fingers, I peered over his head, but things below seemed under control. Fergus, breeches and stockings soaking wet, Jamie’s cloak draped round his shoulders, was wringing out his shirtfront one-handed, saying something to the soldier who had rescued Germain. Marsali had whipped off her arisaid and wrapped the little boy in it, her loosened blonde hair flying like cobwebs in the wind.

  Leftenant Hayes, attracted by the noise, was peering out from the flap of his tent like a whelk from its shell. He looked up, and caught my eye; I waved briefly, then turned to follow my own family back to our campsite.

  Jamie was saying something to Brianna in Gaelic, as he helped her over a rocky patch in the trail ahead of me.

  “Yes, I’m ready,” she said, replying in English. “Where’s your coat, Da?”

  “I lent it to your husband,” he said. “We dinna want him to look a beggar at your wedding, aye?”

  Bree laughed, wiping a flying strand of red hair out of her mouth with her free hand.

  “Better a beggar than an attempted suicide.”

  “What?” I caught up with them as we emerged from the shelter of the rocks. The wind barreled across the open space, pelting us with sleet and bits of stinging gravel.

  “Whoof!” Brianna hunched over the swaddled baby girl she carried, sheltering her from the blast. “Roger cut himself shaving; the front of his coat is covered with bloodstains.” She glanced at Jamie, eyes watering with the wind. “Where is he now?”

  “In one piece,” he assured her. “He’s talking wi’ Father Donahue.” He gave her a sharp look. “Ye might have told me the lad was no a Catholic.”

  “I might have,” she said, unperturbed. “But I didn’t. It’s no big deal to me.”

  “If ye mean by that peculiar expression, that it’s of no consequence—” Jamie began with a distinct edge in his voice, but was interrupted by the appearance of Roger himself, resplendent in a kilt and plaid of green and white MacKenzie tartan, topped by Jamie’s good coat and waistcoat. The coat fit decently—both men were of a size, long-limbed and broad-shouldered, though Jamie was an inch or two the taller—and the gray wool was quite as becoming to Roger’s dark hair and olive skin as it was to Jamie’s burnished auburn coloring.

  “You look very nice, Roger,” I said. “Where did you cut yourself?” His face was pink, with the raw look common to just-shaved skin, but otherwise unmarked; lucky, under the circumstances.

  Roger was carrying Jamie’s plaid under his arm, a bundle of red and black tartan. He handed it over and tilted his head to one side, showing me the deep gash just under his jawbone.

  “Just there. Not so bad, but it bled like the dickens. They don’t call them cutthroat razors for nothing, aye?”

  The gash had crusted into a neat dark line, a cut some three inches long, angled down from the corner of his jaw across the side of his throat. I touched the skin near it briefly. All right; the blade of the razor had cut straight in, no flap of skin needing suture. No wonder it had bled, though; it did look as though he had tried to cut his throat.

  “A bit nervous this morning?” I teased. “Not having second thoughts, are you?”

  “A little late for that,” Brianna said dryly, coming up beside me. “Got a kid here who needs a name, after all.”

  “He’ll have more names than he knows what to do with,” Roger assured her. “So will you—Mrs. MacKenzie.”

  A small flush lit Brianna’s face at the name, and she smiled at him. He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead, taking the baby from her as he did so. A look of sudden shock crossed his face as he felt the weight of the bundle in his arms, and he gawked down at it.

  “That’s not ours,” Bree said, grinning at his look of consternation. “It’s Marsali’s wee Joan. Mama has Jemmy.”

  “Thank God,” he said, holding the bundle with a good deal more caution. “I thought he’d evaporated or something.” He lifted the blanket slightly, exposing tiny Joan’s sleeping face, and smiled—as people always did—at sight of her comical quiff of brown hair, which came to a point like a Kewpie doll’s.

  “Not a chance,” I said, grunting as I hoisted a well-nourished Jemmy, now peacefully comatose in his own wrappings, into a more comfortable position. “I think he’s gained a pound or two on the way uphill.” I was flushed from exertion, and held the baby a little away from myself, as a sudden wave of heat flushed my cheeks and perspiration broke out under the waves of my disheveled hair.

  Jamie took Jemmy from me, and tucked him expertly under one arm like a football, hand under the baby’s head.

  “Ye’ve spoken wi’ the priest, then?” he said, eyeing Roger skeptically.

  “I have,” Roger said dryly, answering the look as much as the question. “He’s satisfied I’m no the Antichrist. So long as I’m willing the lad should be baptized a Catholic, there’s no bar to the wedding.”

  Jamie grunted in reply, and I repressed a smile. While Jamie had no great religious prejudices—he had dealt with, fought with, and commanded far too many men, of every possible background—the revelation that his son-in-law was a Presbyterian—and had no intention of converting—had occasioned some small comment.

  Bree caught my eye and gave me a sidelong smile, her own eyes creasing into blue triangles of catlike amusement.

  “Very wise of you not to mention religion ahead of time,” I murmured, careful not to speak loudly enough for Jamie to hear me. Both men were walking ahead of us, still rather stiff in their attitudes. The formality of their demeanor was rather impaired, though, by the trailing draperies of the babies they carried. Jemmy let out a sudden squawk, but his grandfather swung him up without breaking stride, and he subsided, round eyes fixed on us over Jamie’s shoulder, sheltered under the hooding of his blanket.

  “Roger wanted to say something, but I told him to keep quiet.” She waved at Jemmy, and fixed a wifely look on Roger’s back. “I knew Da wouldn’t make a stramash about it, if we waited till just before the wedding.”

  I noted both her astute evaluation of her father’s behavior, and her easy use of Scots. She resembled Jamie in a good deal more than the obvious matter of looks and coloring; she had his talent for human judgment and his glibness with language. Still, there was something niggling at my mind, something to do with Roger and religion.…

  We had come up close enough behind the men to hear their conversation.

  “… about Hillsborough,” Jamie was saying, leaning toward Roger so as to be heard over the wind. “Calling for information about the rioters.”

  “Oh, aye?” Roger sounded both interested and wary. “Duncan Innes will be interested to hear that. He was in Hillsborough during the troubles, did you know?”

  “No.” Jamie sounded more than interested. “I’ve barely seen Duncan to speak to this week. I’ll ask him, maybe, after the weddings.”

  Roger turned, shielding Joan from the wind with his body as he spoke to Brianna.

  “Your aunt’s told Father Donahue he can hold the weddings in her tent. That’ll be a help.”

  “Brrr!” Bree hunched her shoulders, shivering. “Thank goodness. It’s no day to be getting married under the greenwood tree.

  A chestnut overhead sent down a damp shower of yellow leaves, as though in agreement. Roger looked a little uneasy.

  “I don’t imagine it’s quite the wedding ye thought of,” he said.

  Brianna looked up at Roger and a slow, wide smile spread across her face. “Neither was the first one,” she said. “But I liked it fine.”

  Roger’s complexion wasn’t given to blushi
ng, and his ears were red with cold in any case. He opened his mouth as though to reply, caught Jamie’s gimlet eye, and shut it again, looking embarrassed but undeniably pleased. “Mr. Fraser!”

  I turned to see one of the soldiers making his way up the hill toward us, his eyes fixed on Jamie.

  “Corporal McNair, your servant sir,” he said, breathing hard as he reached us. He gave a sharp inclination of the head. “The Leftenant’s compliments, and would ye be so good as to attend him in his tent?” He caught sight of me, and bowed again, less abruptly. “Mrs. Fraser. My compliments, Ma’am.”

  “Your servant, sir.” Jamie returned the Corporal’s bow. “My apologies to the Leftenant, but I have duties that require my attendance elsewhere.” He spoke politely, but the Corporal glanced sharply up at him. McNair was young, but not callow; a quick look of understanding crossed his lean, dark face.

  “The Leftenant bids me request the attendance upon him of Mr. Farquard Campbell, Mr. Andrew MacNeill, Mr. Gerald Forbes, Mr. Duncan Innes, and the priest, as well as yourself, sir.”

  A certain amount of tension left Jamie’s shoulders.

  “Does he,” he said dryly. Farquard Campbell and Andrew MacNeill were large landowners and local magistrates; Gerald Forbes a prominent solicitor from Cross Creek. And Duncan Innes was about to become the largest plantation owner in the western half of the colony, by virtue of his impending marriage to Jamie’s widowed aunt, Jocasta Cameron.

  He gave a slight shrug and shifted the baby to his other shoulder, settling himself.

  “Aye. Well, then. Tell the Leftenant I shall attend him as soon as may be convenient. However, if he desires to speak wi’ Father Kenneth, I think he will have a bit of a wait. Both the good Father and myself are required at a wedding.”

  Nothing daunted, Corporal McNair bowed and went off, presumably in search of the other gentlemen on his list.

  “And what’s all that about?” I asked Jamie. “Oops.” I reached up and skimmed a glistening strand of saliva from Jemmy’s chin before it could reach Jamie’s shirt. “Starting a new tooth, are we?”

  “I’ve plenty of teeth,” Jamie assured me. “And so have you, so far as I can see. As for yon corporal laddie and his message—Archie Hayes likely thinks to enlist me, Campbell, and the rest to help him.” He held a dripping branch out of the way for me to pass; Roger and Brianna had gone on ahead.

  “Help him what? Track down the rioters? No one on the Ridge was involved, surely?” I ducked under the branch, feeling the chill of a wet leaf brush my cheek.

  “No. As to what Hayes may want help with, I canna say. And I dinna mean to find out, either.” He cocked one ruddy eyebrow at me, and I laughed.

  “Oh, a certain flexibility in that word convenient, is there?”

  “I didna say it would be convenient for him,” Jamie pointed out. “Now, about your petticoat, Sassenach, and why you’re scampering about the mountain bare-arsed—Duncan, a charaid!” The wry look on his face melted into genuine pleasure at sight of Duncan Innes, making his way toward us through a small growth of longleaf pine.

  Duncan clambered over a fallen log, the process made rather awkward by his missing left arm, and arrived on the path beside us, shaking water droplets from his hair. He was dressed for his wedding, in a clean shirt and stock with a fine lace jabot, and a coat of blue wool with red silk facings, the empty sleeve pinned up with a brooch. I had never seen Duncan look so elegant, and said so.

  “Och, well,” he said diffidently. “Miss Jo did wish it.” He shrugged off the compliment along with the rain, carefully brushing away dead needles and bits of bark that had adhered to his coat in the passage through the pines.

  “Brrr! A gruesome day, Mac Dubh, and no mistake.” He looked up at the sky and shook his head. “Happy the bride the sun shines on; happy the corpse the rain falls on.”

  “I do wonder just how delighted you can expect the average corpse to be,” I said, “whatever the meterological conditions. But I’m sure Jocasta will be quite happy.” I added hastily, seeing a look of bewilderment spread itself across Duncan’s features. “And you, too, of course!”

  “Oh… aye,” he said, a little uncertainly. “Aye, of course. I thank ye, ma’am.”

  “When I saw ye coming through the wood, I thought perhaps Corporal MacNair was nippin’ at your heels,” Jamie said. “You’re no on your way to see Archie Hayes, are you?”

  Duncan looked quite startled.

  “Hayes? No, what would the Leftenant want wi’ me?”

  “One or two things that I can think of. Here, Sassenach, take this wee squirrel away, aye?” Jamie interrupted himself to hand me Jemmy, who had decided to take a more active interest in the proceedings and was attempting to climb his grandfather’s torso, digging in his heels and making loud grunting noises. The sudden activity, however, was not Jamie’s chief motive for relieving himself of the burden, as I discovered when I accepted Jemmy.

  “Thanks a lot,” I said, wrinkling my nose. Jamie grinned at me, and turned Duncan up the path, resuming their conversation.

  “Hum,” I said, sniffing cautiously. “Finished, are you? No, I thought not.” Jemmy closed his eyes, went bright red, and emitted a popping noise like muffled machinegun fire. I undid his wrappings sufficiently to peek down his back.

  “Whoops,” I said, and hastily unwound the blanket, just in time. “What has your mother been feeding you?”

  Thrilled to have escaped his swaddling bands, Jemmy churned his legs like a windmill, causing a noxious yellowish substance to ooze from the baggy legs of his diaper.

  “Pew,” I said succinctly, and holding him at arm’s length, headed off the path toward one of the tiny rivulets that meandered down the mountainside, thinking that while I could do without such refinements of life as indoor plumbing and motorcars, there were times when I sincerely missed things like rubber pants with elasticated legs. To say nothing of toilet rolls.

  I found a good spot on the edge of the little stream, with a thick coating of dead leaves. I knelt, laid out a fold of my cloak, and parked Jemmy on it on his hands and knees, pulling the soggy clout off without bothering to unpin it.

  “Weee!” he said, sounding surprised as the cold air struck him. He clenched his fat little buttocks and hunched like a small pink toad.

  “Ha,” I told him. “If you think a cold wind up the bum is bad, just wait.” I scooped up a handful of damp yellow-brown leaves, and cleaned him off briskly. A fairly stoic child, he wiggled and squirmed, but didn’t screech, instead making high-pitched “Eeeeee” noises as I excavated his crevices.

  I flipped him over, and with a hand held prophylactically over the danger zone, administered a similar treatment to his private parts, this eliciting a wide, gummy grin.

  “Oh, you are a Hieland man, aren’t you?” I said, grinning back.

  “And just what d’ye mean by that remark, Sassenach?” I looked up to find Jamie leaning against a tree on the other side of the streamlet, arms folded as he smiled at me. The bold colors of his dress tartan and white linen sark stood out bright against the faded autumn foliage; face and hair, though, made him look like some denizen of the wood, all bronze and auburn, with the wind stirring his hair so the free ends danced like the scarlet-maple leaves above.

  “Well, he’s apparently impervious to cold and damp,” I said, concluding my labors and discarding the final handful of soiled leaves. “Beyond that… well, I’ve not had much to do with male infants before, but isn’t this rather precocious?”

  One corner of Jamie’s mouth curled up, as he peered at the prospect revealed under my hand. The tiny appendage stood up stiff as my thumb, and roughly the same size.

  “Ah, no,” he said. “I’ve seen a many wee lads in the raw—Jenny’s three boys, at least. They all do that now and again.” He shrugged, and the smile grew wider. “Now, whether it’s only Scottish lads, I canna be saying.…”

  “A talent that improves with age, I daresay,” I say dryly. I tossed the dirty clout ac
ross the streamlet, where it landed at his feet with a splat. “Get the pins and rinse that out, will you?”

  His long, straight nose wrinkled slightly, but he knelt without demur and picked the filthy thing up gingerly between two fingers.

  “Oh, so that’s what ye’ve done wi’ your petticoat,” he said. I had opened the large pocket I wore slung at my waist and extracted a clean, folded rectangle of cloth. Not the unbleached linen of the clout he held, but a thick, soft, often-washed wool, dyed a pale red with the juice of currants and persimmons.

  I shrugged, checked Jemmy for the prospect of fresh explosions, and popped him onto the new diaper.

  “With this lad, little Joanie and Germain all in clouts, and the weather too damp to dry anything properly, we were rather short of clean bits.” The bushes around the clearing where we had made our family camp were all festooned with flapping laundry, most of it still wet, owing to the inopportune weather.

  “Here.” Jamie stretched across the foot-wide span of rock-strewn water to hand me the pins extracted from the old diaper.

  I took them, careful not to drop them in the stream. My fingers were stiff and chilly, but the pins were valuable; Bree had made them of heated wire, and Roger had carved the capped heads from wood, in accordance with her drawings. Honest-to-goodness safety pins, if a bit larger and cruder than the modern version. The only real defect was the glue used to hold the wooden heads to the wire; a casein glue made from boiled milk, it was by no means waterproof, and the heads had to be reglued periodically.

  I folded the diaper snugly about Jemmy’s loins and thrust a pin through the cloth, smiling at the sight of the wooden cap. Bree had taken one set and carved a small, comical frog—each with a wide, toothless grin—onto each one.

  “All right, Froggie, here you go then.” Diaper securely fastened, I sat down and boosted him into my lap, smoothing down his smock and attempting to rewrap his blanket.

  “Where did Duncan go?” I asked. “Down to see the Leftenant?”

  Jamie shook his head, bent over his task.