A Breath of Snow and Ashes

by Diana Gabaldon

  “If he’s dead, and we never learn of it, Ian willna have a moment’s peace—ever. D’ye want him to be looking over his shoulder at his wedding, afraid of a bullet through his wife’s heart as she speaks her vows? Or wed with a family, fearing each day to leave his house and his bairns, for fear of what he might come back to?”

  “I’m impressed at the scope and morbidity of your imagination—but you’re right. All right, I don’t hope he’s dead—not unless we find his body.”

  But no one did find his body, and the gold was moved, bit by bit, to its new hiding place.

  That had taken a bit of thought and considerable private discussion between Jamie and Ian. Not the whisky cave. Very few people knew about that—but some did. Joseph Wemyss, his daughter, Lizzie, and her two husbands—I marveled, rather, that I’d got to the point where I could think about Lizzie and the Beardsleys without boggling—all knew, of necessity, and Bobby and Amy Higgins would need to be shown its location before we left, as they would be making whisky themselves in our absence. Arch Bug had not been told of the cave’s location—but very likely knew it.

  Jamie was adamant that no one should know even of the gold’s existence on the Ridge, let alone its location.

  “Let even a rumor of it get out, and everyone here is in danger,” he’d said. “Ye ken what happened when yon Donner told folk we had jewels here.”

  I kent, all right. I still woke up in the midst of nightmares, hearing the muffled whumph! of exploding ether fumes, hearing the crash of glass and smashing wood as the raiders wrecked the house.

  In some of these dreams, I ran fruitlessly to and fro, trying to rescue someone—who?—but met always by locked doors, blank walls, or rooms engulfed in flame. In others, I stood rooted, unable to move a muscle, as fire crawled up the walls, fed with delicate greed on the clothes of bodies at my feet, burst through a corpse’s hair, caught in my skirts and swarmed upward, wrapping my legs in a blazing web.

  I still felt overpowering sadness—and a deep, cleansing rage—when I looked at the sooty smudge in the clearing that had once been my home, but I always had to go out in the morning after one of these dreams and look at it nonetheless: walk round the cold ruins and smell the taint of dead ash, in order to quench the flames that burned behind my eyes.

  “Right,” I said, and pulled my shawl tighter round me. We were standing by the springhouse, looking down on the ruins as we talked, and the chill was seeping into my bones. “So … where, then?”

  “The Spaniard’s Cave,” he said, and I blinked at him.

  “The what?”

  “I’ll show ye, a nighean,” he said, grinning at me. “When the snow melts.”

  SPRING HAD SPRUNG, and the creek was rising. Swelled by melting snow and fed by hundreds of tiny waterfalls that trickled and leapt down the mountain’s face, it roared past my feet, exuberant with spray. I could feel it cold on my face, and knew that I’d be wet to the knees within minutes, but it didn’t matter. The fresh green of arrowhead and pickerelweed rimmed the banks, some plants dragged out of the soil by the rising water and whirled downstream, more hanging on by their roots for dear life, leaves trailing in the racing wash. Dark mats of cress swirled under the water, close by the sheltering banks. And fresh greens were what I wanted.

  My gathering basket was half full of fiddleheads and ramp shoots. A nice big lot of tender new cress, crisp and cold from the stream, would top off the winter’s vitamin C deficiency very well. I took off my shoes and stockings, and after a moment’s hesitation, took off my gown and shawl as well and hung them over a tree branch. The air was chilly in the shade of the silver birches that overhung the creek here, and I shivered a bit but ignored the cold, kirtling up my shift before wading into the stream.

  That cold was harder to ignore. I gasped, and nearly dropped the basket, but found my footing among the slippery rocks and made my way toward the nearest mat of tempting dark green. Within seconds, my legs were numb, and I’d lost any sense of cold in the enthusiasm of forager’s frenzy and salad hunger.

  A good deal of our stored food had been saved from the fire, as it was kept in the outbuildings: the springhouse, corncrib, and smoking shed. The root cellar had been destroyed, though, and with it not only the carrots, onions, garlic, and potatoes but most of my carefully gathered stock of dried apples and wild yams, and the big hanging clusters of raisins, all meant to keep us from the ravages of scurvy. The herbs, of course, had gone up in smoke, along with the rest of my surgery. True, a large quantity of pumpkins and squashes had escaped, these having been piled in the barn, but one grows tired of squash pie and succotash after a couple of months—well, after a couple of days, speaking personally.

  Not for the first time, I mourned Mrs. Bug’s abilities as a cook, though of course I did miss her for her own sake. Amy McCallum Higgins had been raised in a crofter’s cottage in the Highlands of Scotland and was, as she put it, “a good plain cook.” Essentially, that meant she could bake bannocks, boil porridge, and fry fish simultaneously, without burning any of it. No mean feat, but a trifle monotonous, in terms of diet.

  My own pièce de résistance was stew—which, lacking onions, garlic, carrots, and potatoes, had devolved into a sort of pottage consisting of venison or turkey stewed with cracked corn, barley, and possibly chunks of stale bread. Ian, surprisingly, had turned out to be a passable cook; the succotash and squash pie were his contributions to the communal menu. I did wonder who had taught him to make them, but thought it wiser not to ask.

  So far no one had starved, nor yet lost any teeth, but by mid-March, I would have been willing to wade neck-deep in freezing torrents in order to acquire something both edible and green.

  Ian had, thank goodness, gone on breathing. And after a week or so had ceased acting quite so shell-shocked, eventually regaining something like his normal manner. But I noticed Jamie’s eyes follow him now and then, and Rollo had taken to sleeping with his head on Ian’s chest, a new habit. I wondered whether he really sensed the pain in Ian’s heart, or whether it was simply a response to the cramped sleeping conditions in the cabin.

  I stretched my back, hearing the small pops between my vertebrae. Now that the snowmelt had come, I could hardly wait for our departure. I would miss the Ridge and everyone on it—well, almost everyone. Possibly not Hiram Crombie, so much. Or the Chisholms, or—I short-circuited this list before it became uncharitable.

  “On the other hand,” I said firmly to myself, “think of beds.”

  Granted, we would be spending a good many nights on the road, sleeping rough—but eventually we would reach civilization. Inns. With food. And beds. I closed my eyes momentarily, envisioning the absolute bliss of a mattress. I didn’t even aspire to a feather bed; anything that promised more than an inch of padding between myself and the floor would be paradise. And, of course, if it came with a modicum of privacy—even better.

  Jamie and I had not been completely celibate since December. Lust aside—and it wasn’t—we needed the comfort and warmth of each other’s body. Still, covert congress under a quilt, with Rollo’s yellow eyes fixed upon us from two feet away, was less than ideal, even assuming that Young Ian was invariably asleep, which I didn’t think he was, though he was sufficiently tactful as to pretend.

  A hideous shriek split the air, and I jerked, dropping the basket. I flung myself after it, barely snatching the handle before it was whirled away on the flood, and stood up dripping and trembling, heart hammering as I waited to see whether the scream would be repeated.

  It was—followed in short order by an equally piercing screech, but one deeper in timbre and recognizable to my well-trained ears as the sort of noise made by a Scottish Highlander suddenly immersed in freezing water. Fainter, higher-pitched shrieks, and a breathless “Fook!” spoken in a Dorset accent indicated that the gentlemen of the household were taking their spring bath.

  I wrang out the hem of my shift and, snatching my shawl from the branch where I’d left it, slipped on my shoes and ma
de my way in the direction of the bellowing.

  There are few things more enjoyable than sitting in relative warmth and comfort while watching fellow human beings soused in cold water. If said human beings present a complete review of the nude male form, so much the better. I threaded my way through a small growth of fresh-budding river willows, found a conveniently screened rock in the sun, and spread out the damp skirt of my shift, enjoying the warmth on my shoulders, the sharp scent of the fuzzy catkins, and the sight before me.

  Jamie was standing in the pool, nearly shoulder-deep, his hair slicked back like a russet seal. Bobby stood on the bank, and picking up Aidan with a grunt, threw him to Jamie in a pinwheel of flailing limbs and piercing shrieks of delighted fright.

  “Me-me-me-me!” Orrie was dancing around his stepfather’s legs, his chubby bottom bouncing up and down among the reeds like a little pink balloon.

  Bobby laughed, bent, and hoisted him up, holding him for a moment high overhead as he squealed like a seared pig, then flung him in a shallow arc out over the pool.

  He hit the water with a tremendous splash and Jamie grabbed him, laughing, and pulled him to the surface, whence he emerged with a look of open-mouthed stupefaction that made them all hoot like gibbons. Aidan and Rollo were both dog-paddling round in circles by now, shouting and barking.

  I looked across to the opposite side of the pool and saw Ian rush naked down the small hill and leap like a salmon into the pool, uttering one of his best Mohawk war cries. This was cut off abruptly by the cold water, and he vanished with scarcely a splash.

  I waited—as did the others—for him to pop back up, but he didn’t. Jamie looked suspiciously behind him, in case of a sneak attack, but an instant later Ian shot out of the water directly in front of Bobby with a bloodcurdling yell, grabbed him by the leg, and yanked him in.

  Matters thereafter became generally chaotic, with a great deal of promiscuous splashing, yelling, hooting, and jumping off of rocks, which gave me the opportunity to reflect on just how delightful naked men are. Not that I hadn’t seen a good many of them in my time, but aside from Frank and Jamie, most men I’d seen undressed usually had been either ill or injured, and were encountered in such circumstances as to prevent a leisurely appreciation of their finer attributes.

  From Orrie’s chubbiness and Aidan’s spidery winter-white limbs to Bobby’s skinny, pale torso and neat little flat behind, the McCallum-Higginses were as entertaining to watch as a cageful of monkeys.

  Ian and Jamie were something different—baboons, perhaps, or mandrills. They didn’t really resemble each other in any attribute other than height, and yet were plainly cut from the same cloth. Watching Jamie squatting on a rock above the pool, thighs tensing for a leap, I could easily see him preparing to attack a leopard, while Ian stretched himself glistening in the sun, warming his dangly bits while keeping an alert watch for intruders. All they needed were purple bottoms, and they could have walked straight onto the African veldt, no questions asked.

  They were all lovely, in their wildly various ways, but it was Jamie my gaze returned to, over and over again. He was battered and scarred, his muscles roped and knotted, and age had grooved the hollows between them. The thick welt of the bayonet scar writhed up his thigh, wide and ugly, while the thinner white line of the scar left by a rattlesnake’s bite was nearly invisible, clouded by the thick fuzz of his body hair, this beginning to dry now and stand out from his skin in a cloud of reddish-gold. The scimitar-shaped sword cut across his ribs had healed well, too, no more than a hair-thin white line by now.

  He turned round and bent to pick up a cake of soap from the rock, and my insides turned over. It wasn’t purple but could not otherwise have been improved on, being high, round, delicately dusted with red-gold, and with a delightful muscular concavity to the sides. His balls, just visible from behind, were purple with the cold, and gave me a strong urge to creep up behind him and cup them in my rock-warmed hands.

  I wondered whether the resultant standing broad-jump would enable him to clear the pool.

  I had not, in fact, seen him naked—or even substantially undressed—in several months.

  But now … I threw back my head, closing my eyes against the brilliant spring sun, enjoying the tickle of my own fresh-washed hair against my shoulder blades. The snow was gone, the weather was good—and the whole outdoors beckoned invitingly, filled with places where privacy could be assured, bar the odd skunk.

  I LEFT THE MEN dripping and sunning themselves on the rocks, and went to retrieve my clothes. I didn’t put these on, though. Instead, I went quickly up to the springhouse, where I submerged my basket of greens in the cool water—if I took it to the cabin, Amy would seize them and boil them into submission—and left my gown, stays, and stockings rolled up on the shelf where the cheeses were stacked. Then I went back toward the stream.

  The splashing and shouting had ceased. Instead, I heard low-voiced singing, coming along the trail. It was Bobby, carrying Orrie, sound asleep after his exertions. Aidan, groggy with cleanliness and warmth, ambled slowly beside his stepfather, dark head tilting to and fro to the rhythm of the song.

  It was a lovely Gaelic lullaby; Amy must have taught it to Bobby. I did wonder if she’d told him what the words meant.

  S’iomadh oidhche fhliuch is thioram

  Sìde nan seachd sian

  Gheibheadh Griogal dhomhsa creagan

  Ris an gabhainn dìon.

  (Many a night, wet and dry

  Even in the worst of weather

  Gregor would find a little rock for me

  Beside which I could shelter.)

  Òbhan, òbhan òbhan ìri

  Òbhan ìri ò!

  Òbhan, òbhan òbhan ìri

  ’S mòr mo mhulad ‘s mòr.

  (Woe is me, woe is me

  Woe is me, great indeed is my sorrow.)

  I smiled to see them, though with a catch in my throat. I remembered Jamie carrying Jem back from swimming, the summer before, and Roger singing to Mandy in the night, his harsh, cracked voice little more than a whisper—but music, all the same.

  I nodded to Bobby, who smiled and nodded back, though without interrupting his song. He raised his brows and jerked a thumb over his shoulder and uphill, presumably indicating where Jamie had gone. He betrayed no surprise at seeing me in shift and shawl—doubtless he thought I was bound for the stream to wash, as well, inspired by the singular warmth of the day.

  Eudail mhòir a shluagh an domhain

  Dhòirt iad d’ fhuil an dè

  ’S chuir iad do cheann air stob daraich

  Tacan beag bhod chrè.

  (Great sweetheart of all people of the world

  They poured your blood yesterday

  And they put your head on an oak stick

  A short distance from your body.)

  Òbhan, òbhan òbhan ìri

  Òbhan ìri ò!

  Òbhan, òbhan òbhan ìri

  ‘S mòr mo mhulad ‘s mòr.

  (Woe is me, woe is me

  Woe is me, great indeed is my sorrow.)

  I waved briefly and turned up the side trail that led to the upper clearing. “New House,” everyone called it, though the only indications that there might someday be a house there were a stack of felled logs and a number of pegs driven into the ground, with strings tied between them. These were meant to mark the placement and dimensions of the house Jamie intended to build in replacement of the Big House—when we came back.

  He’d been moving the pegs, I saw. The wide front room was now wider, and the back room intended for my surgery had developed a growth of some sort, perhaps a separate stillroom.

  The architect was sitting on a log, surveying his kingdom, stark naked.

  “Expecting me, were you?” I asked, taking off my shawl and hanging it on a convenient branch.

  “I was.” He smiled, and scratched his chest. “I thought the sight of my naked backside would likely inflame ye. Or was it maybe Bobby’s?”

  “Bo
bby hasn’t got one. Do you know, you haven’t got a single gray hair below the neck? Why is that, I wonder?”

  He glanced down, inspecting himself, but it was true. There were only a few strands of silver among the fiery mass of his hair, though his beard—the winter growth tediously and painfully removed a few days before—was heavily frosted with white. But the hair on his chest was still a dark auburn, and that below a fluffy mass of vivid ginger.

  He combed his fingers thoughtfully through the exuberant foliage, looking down.

  “I think it’s hiding,” he remarked, and glanced up at me, one eyebrow raised. “Want to come and help me hunt for it?”

  I came round in front of him and obligingly knelt down. The object in question was in fact quite visible, though admittedly looking rather shell-shocked by the recent immersion, and a most interesting shade of pale blue.

  “Well,” I said, after a moment’s contemplation. “Great oaks from tiny acorns grow. Or so I’m told.”

  A shiver ran through him at the warmth of my mouth and I lifted my hands involuntarily, cradling his balls.

  “Holy God,” he said, and his hands rested lightly on my head in benediction.

  “What did ye say?” he asked, a moment later.

  “I said,” I said, coming up momentarily for air, “I find the gooseflesh rather erotic.”

  “There’s more where that came from,” he assured me. “Take your shift off, Sassenach. I havena seen ye naked in nearly four months.”

  “Well … no, you haven’t,” I agreed, hesitating. “And I’m not sure I want you to.”

  One eyebrow went up.

  “Whyever not?”

  “Because I’ve been indoors for weeks on end without sun or exercise to speak of. I probably look like one of those grubs you find under rocks—fat, white, and squidgy.”

  “Squidgy?” he repeated, breaking into a grin.

  “Squidgy,” I said with dignity, wrapping my arms around myself.

  He pursed his lips and exhaled slowly, eyeing me with his head on one side.

  “I like it when ye’re fat, but I ken quite well that ye’re not,” he said, “because I’ve felt your ribs when I put my arms about you, each night since the end of January. As for white—ye’ve been white all the time I’ve known ye; it’s no likely to come a great shock to me. As for the squidgy part”—he extended one hand and wiggled the fingers beckoningly at me—”I think I might enjoy that.”

  “Hmm,” I said, still hesitant. He sighed.

  “Sassenach,” he said, “I said I havena seen ye naked in four months. That means if ye take your shift off now, ye’ll be the best thing I’ve seen in four months. And at my age, I dinna think I remember farther back than that.”

  I laughed, and without further ado, stood up and pulled the ribbon tie at the neck of my shift. Wriggling, I let it fall in a puddle round my feet.

  He closed his eyes. Then breathed deep and opened them again.

  “I’m blinded,” he said softly, and held out a hand to me.

  “Blinded as in sun bouncing off a vast expanse of snow?” I asked dubiously. “Or as in coming face to face with a gorgon?”

  “Seeing a gorgon turns ye to stone, not strikes ye blind,” he informed me. “Though come to think”—he prodded himself with an experimental forefinger—”I may turn to stone yet. Will ye come here, for God’s sake?”

  I came.

  I FELL ASLEEP IN the warmth of Jamie’s body, and woke some time later, snugly wrapped in his plaid. I stretched, alarming a squirrel overhead, who ran out on a limb to get a better view. Evidently he didn’t like what he saw, and began scolding and chattering.

  “Oh, hush,” I said, yawning, and sat up. The squirrel took exception to this gesture and began having hysterics, but I ignored him. To my surprise, Jamie was gone.

  I thought he’d likely just stepped into the wood to relieve himself, but a quick glance round didn’t discover him, and when I scrambled to my feet, the plaid clutched to me, I saw no sign of him.

  I hadn’t heard anything; surely if someone had come, I would have wakened—or Jamie would have wakened me. I listened carefully, but—the squirrel having now gone about its own business—heard nothing beyond the normal sounds of a forest waking to spring: the murmur and rush of wind through new-leafed trees, punctuated by the occasional crack of a falling branch, or the rattle of last year’s pinecones and chestnut hulls bouncing through the canopy; the call of a distant jay, the conversation of a gang of pygmy nuthatches foraging in the long grass nearby, the rustle of a hungry vole in the winter’s dead leaves.

  The jay was still calling; another had joined it now, shrill with alarm. Perhaps that was where Jamie had gone.