Dragonfly In Amber

“I Am Come Home”

30 LALLYBROCH

It was called Broch Tuarach, for the ancient cylinder of stone, built some hundreds of years before, that poked up from the hillside behind the manor. The people who lived on the estate called it “Lallybroch.” Insofar as I could gather, this meant “lazy tower,” which made at least as much sense as applying the term “North-facing Tower” to a cylindrical structure.

“How can something that’s round face north?” I asked as we made our way slowly down a long slope of heather and granite, leading the horses in single file down the narrow, twisting path the red deer had trampled through the springy growth. “It hasn’t got a face.”

“It has a door,” Jamie said reasonably. “The door faces north.” He dug in his feet as the slope dropped sharply, hissing through his teeth in signal to the horse he led behind him. The muscular hindquarters in front of me bunched suddenly, as the cautious stride altered to a tentative mincing, each hoof sliding a few inches in the damp earth before another step was risked. The horses, purchased in Inverness, were good-sized, handsome beasts. The wiry little Highland ponies would have made much better work of the steep slope, but these horses, all mares, were meant for breeding, not work.

“All right,” I said, stepping carefully over a tiny runnel of water that crossed the deer path. “Good enough. What about ‘Lallybroch,’ though? Why is it a lazy tower?”

“It leans a bit,” Jamie replied. I could see the back of his head, bent in concentration on the footing, a few tendrils of red-gold hair lifting from the crown in the afternoon breeze that blew up the slope. “Ye canna see it much from the house, but if you stand on the west side, you’ll see it leans to the north a bit. And if ye look from one of the slits on the top floor over the door, ye canna see the wall beneath you because of the slant.”

“Well, I suppose no one had heard of plumb lines in the thirteenth century,” I observed. “It’s a wonder it hasn’t fallen down by now.”

“Oh, it’s fallen down a number of times,” Jamie said, raising his voice slightly as the wind freshened. “The folk who lived there just put it back up again; that’s likely why it leans.”

“I see it! I see it!” Fergus’s voice, shrill with excitement, came from behind me. He had been allowed to stay on his mount, as his negligible weight was unlikely to cause the horse any great difficulty, bad footing notwithstanding. Glancing back, I could see him kneeling on his saddle, bouncing up and down with excitement. His horse, a patient, good-natured bay mare, gave a grunt at this, but kindly refrained from flinging him off into the heather. Ever since his adventure with the Percheron colt at Argentan, Fergus had seized every chance to get on a horse, and Jamie, amused and sympathetic to a fellow horse-lover, had indulged him, taking him up behind his own saddle when he rode through the Paris streets, allowing him now and then to get up alone on one of Jared’s coach horses, large stolid creatures that merely flicked their ears in a puzzled sort of way at Fergus’s kicks and shouts.

I shaded my eyes, looking in the direction where he pointed. He was right; from his higher vantage point, he had spotted the dark form of the old stone broch, perched on its hill. The modern manor-house below was harder to see; it was built of white-harled stone, and the sun reflected from its walls as from the surrounding fields. Set in a hollow of sloping barley fields, it was still partly obscured to our view by a row of trees that formed the windbreak at the foot of a field.

I saw Jamie’s head rise, and fix as he saw the home farm of Lallybroch below. He stood quite still for a minute, not speaking, but I saw his shoulders lift and set themselves square. The wind caught his hair and the folds of his plaid and lifted them, as though he might rise in the air, joyous as a kite.

It reminded me of the way the sails of the ships had filled, turning past the headland into the shipping roads as they left the harbor of Le Havre. I had stood on the end of the quay, watching the bustle and the comings and goings of shipping and commerce. The gulls dived and shrieked among the masts, their voices raucous as the shouting of the seamen.

Jared Munro Fraser had stood by me, watching benignly the flow of passing seaborne wealth, some of it his. It was one of his ships, the Portia, that would carry us to Scotland. Jamie had told me that all Jared’s ships were named for his mistresses, the figureheads carved in the likenesses of the ladies in question. I squinted against the wind at the prow of the ship, trying to decide whether Jamie had been teasing me. If not, I concluded, Jared preferred his women well endowed.

“I shall miss you both,” Jared said, for the fourth time in half an hour. He looked truly regretful, even his cheerful nose seeming less upturned and optimistic than usual. The trip to Germany had been a success; he sported a large diamond in his stock, and the coat he wore was a rich bottle-green velvet with silver buttons.

“Ah, well,” he said, shaking his head. “Much as I should like to keep the laddie with me, I canna grudge him joy of his homecoming. Perhaps I shall come to visit ye someday, my dear; it’s been long since I set foot in Scotland.”

“We’ll miss you, too,” I told him, truthfully. There were other people I would miss – Louise, Mother Hildegarde, Herr Gerstmann. Master Raymond most of all. Yet I looked forward to returning to Scotland, to Lallybroch. I had no wish to go back to Paris, and there were people there I most certainly had no desire to see again – Louis of France, for one.

Charles Stuart, for another. Cautious probing amongst the Jacobites in Paris had confirmed Jamie’s initial impression; the small burst of optimism fired by Charles’s boasting of his “grand venture” had faded, and while the loyal supporters of King James held true to their sovereign, there seemed no chance that this stolid loyalty of stubborn endurance would lead to action.

Let Charles make his own peace with exile, then, I thought. Our own was over. We were going home.

“The baggage is aboard,” said a dour Scots voice in my ear. “The master of the ship says come ye along now; we sail wi’ the tide.”

Jared turned to Murtagh, then glanced right and left down the quay. “Where’s the laddie, then?” he asked.

Murtagh jerked his head down the pier. “In the tavern yon. Gettin’ stinkin’ drunk.”

I had wondered just how Jamie had planned to weather the Channel crossing. He had taken one look at the lowering red sky of dawn that threatened later storms, excused himself to Jared, and disappeared. Looking in the direction of Murtagh’s nod, I saw Fergus, sitting on a piling near the entrance to one grogshop, plainly doing sentry duty.

Jared, who had exhibited first disbelief and then hilarity when informed of his nephew’s disability, grinned widely at this news.

“Oh, aye?” he said. “Well, I hope he’s left the last quart ’til we come for him. He’ll be hell to carry up the gangplank, if he hasn’t.”

“What did he do that for?” I demanded of Murtagh, in some exasperation. “I told him I had some laudanum for him.” I patted the silk reticule I carried. “It would knock him out a good deal faster.”

Murtagh merely blinked once. “Aye. He said if he was goin’ to have a headache, he’d as soon enjoy the gettin’ of it. And the whisky tastes a good bit better goin’ down than yon filthy black stuff.” He nodded at my reticule, then at Jared. “Come on, then, if ye mean to help me wi’ him.”

In the forward cabin of the Portia, I had sat on the captain’s bunk, watching the steady rise and fall of the receding shoreline, my husband’s head cradled on my knees.

One eye opened a slit and looked up at me. I stroked the heavy damp hair off his brow. The scent of ale and whisky hung about him like perfume.

“You are going to feel exactly like hell when you wake up in Scotland,” I told him.

The other eye opened, and regarded the dancing waves of light reflected across the timbered ceiling. Then they fixed on me, deep pools of limpid blue.

“Between hell now, and hell later, Sassenach,” he said, his speech measured and precise, “I will take later, every time.” His eyes closed. He belched softly, once, and the long body relaxed, rocked at ease on the cradle of the deep.

The horses seemed as eager as we; sensing the nearness of stables and food, they began to push the pace a bit, heads up and ears cocked forward in anticipation.

I was just reflecting that I could do with a wash and a bite to eat, myself, when my horse, slightly in the lead, dug in its feet and came to a slithering halt, hooves buried fetlock deep in the reddish dust. The mare shook her head violently from side to side, snorting and whooshing.

“Hey, lass, what’s amiss? Got a bee up your nose?” Jamie swung down from his own mount and hurried to grab the gray mare’s bridle. Feeling the broad back shiver and twitch beneath me, I slid down as well.

“Whatever is the matter with her?” I gazed curiously at the horse, which was pulling backward against Jamie’s grip on the bridle, shaking her mane, with eyes bugging. The other horses, as though infected by her unease, began to stamp and shift as well.

Jamie glanced briefly over his shoulder at the empty road.

“She sees something.”

Fergus raised himself in his shortened stirrups and shaded his eyes, staring over the mare’s back. Lowering his hand, he looked at me and shrugged.

I shrugged back; there seemed to be nothing whatever to cause the mare’s distress – the road and the fields lay vacant all around us, grain-heads ripening and drying in the late summer sun. The nearest grove of trees was more than a hundred yards away, beyond a small heap of stones that might have been the remnants of a tumbled chimneystack. Wolves were almost unheard of in cleared land like this, and surely no fox or badger would disturb a horse at this distance.

Giving up the attempt to coax the mare forward, Jamie led her in a half-circle; she went willingly enough, back in the direction we had come.

He motioned to Murtagh to lead the other horses out of the way, then swung himself into the saddle, and leaning forward, one hand clutched in the mare’s mane, urged her slowly forward, speaking softly in her ear. She came hesitantly, but without resistance, until she reached the point of her previous stopping. There she halted again and stood shivering, and nothing would persuade her to move a step farther.

“All right, then,” said Jamie, resigned. “Have it your way.” He turned the horse’s head and led her into the field, the yellow grain-heads brushing the shaggy hairs of her belly. We rustled after them, the horses bending their necks to snatch a mouthful of grain here and there as we passed through the field.

As we rounded a small granite outcrop just below the crest of the hill, I heard a brief warning bark just ahead. We emerged onto the road to find a black and white shepherd dog on guard, head up and tail stiff as he kept a wary eye on us.

He uttered another short yap, and a matching black and white figure shot out of a clump of alders, followed more slowly by a tall, slender figure wrapped in a brown hunting plaid.

“Ian!”

“Jamie!”

Jamie tossed the mare’s reins back to me, and met his brother-in-law in the middle of the road, where the two men clutched each other round the shoulders, laughing and pounding each other on the back. Released from suspicion, the dogs frolicked happily around them, tails wagging, darting aside now and then to sniff at the legs of the horses.

“We didna expect ye ’til tomorrow at the earliest,” Ian was saying, his long, homely face beaming.

“We had a good wind crossing,” Jamie explained. “Or at least Claire tells me we did; I wasna taking much notice, myself.” He cast a glance back at me, grinning, and Ian came up to grasp my hand.

“Good-sister,” he said in formal greeting. Then he smiled, the warmth of it lighting his soft brown eyes. “Claire.” Impulsively, he kissed my fingers, and I squeezed his hand.

“Jenny’s gone daft wi’ cleaning and cooking,” he said, still smiling at me. “You’ll be lucky to have a bed to sleep in tonight; she’s got all the mattresses outside, being beaten.”

“After three nights in the heather, I wouldn’t mind sleeping on the floor,” I assured him. “Are Jenny and the children all well?”

“Oh, aye. She’s breeding again,” he added. “Due in February.”

“Again?” Jamie and I spoke together, and a rich blush rose in Ian’s lean cheeks.

“God, man, wee Maggie’s less than a year old,” Jamie said, with a censorious cock of one brow. “Have ye no sense of restraint?”

“Me?” Ian said indignantly. “Ye think I had anything to do with it?”

“Well, if ye didn’t, I should think ye’d be interested in who did,” Jamie said, the corner of his mouth twitching.

The blush deepened to a rich rose color, contrasting nicely with Ian’s smooth brown hair. “Ye know damn well what I mean,” he said. “I slept on the trundle bed wi’ Young Jamie for two months, but then Jenny…”

“Oh, you’re saying my sister’s a wanton, eh?”

“I’m saying she’s as stubborn as her brother when it comes to getting what she wants,” Ian said. He feinted to one side, dodged neatly back and landed a blow in the pit of Jamie’s stomach. Jamie doubled over, laughing.

“Just as well I’ve come home, then,” he said. “I’ll help ye keep her under control.”

“Oh, aye?” Ian said skeptically. “I’ll call all the tenants to watch.”

“Lost a few sheep, have ye?” Jamie changed the subject with a gesture that took in the dogs and Ian’s long crook, dropped in the dust of the roadway.

“Fifteen yows and a ram,” Ian said, nodding. “Jenny’s own flock of merinos, that she keeps for the special wool. The ram’s a right bastard; broke down the gate. I thought they might have been in the grain up here, but nay sign o’ them.”

“We didn’t see them up above,” I said.

“Oh, they wouldna be up there,” Ian said, waving a dismissive hand. “None o’ the beasts will go past the cottage.”

“Cottage?” Fergus, growing impatient with this exchange of civilities, had kicked his mount up alongside mine. “I saw no cottage, milord. Only a pile of stones.”

“That’s all that’s left of MacNab’s cottage, laddie,” said Ian. He squinted up at Fergus, silhouetted against the late afternoon sun. “And ye’d be well-advised to keep away from there yourself.”

The hair prickled on the back of my neck, despite the heat of the day. Ronald MacNab was the tenant who had betrayed Jamie to the men of the Watch a year before, the man who had died for his treachery within a day of its being found out. Died, I remembered, among the ashes of his home, burned over his head by the men of Lallybroch. The pile of chimneystones, so innocent when we had passed them a moment ago, had now the grim look of a cairn. I swallowed, forcing back the bitter taste that rose at the back of my throat.

“MacNab?” Jamie said softly. His expression was at once alert. “Ronnie MacNab?”

I had told Jamie of MacNab’s betrayal, and his death, but I hadn’t told him the means of it.

Ian nodded. “Aye. He died there, the night the English took ye, Jamie. The thatch must ha’ caught from a spark, and him too far gone in drink to get out in time.” He met Jamie’s eyes straight on, all teasing gone.

“Ah? And his wife and child?” Jamie’s look was the same as Ian’s; cool and inscrutable.

“Safe. Mary MacNab’s kitchen-maid at the house, and Rabbie works in the stables.” Ian glanced involuntarily over his shoulder in the direction of the ruined cottage. “Mary comes up here now and again; she’s the only one on the place will go there.”

“Was she fond of him, then?” Jamie had turned to look in the direction of the cottage, so his face was hidden from me, but there was tension in the line of his back.

Ian shrugged. “I shouldna think so. A drunkard, and vicious with it, was Ronnie; not even his auld mother had much use for him. No, I think Mary feels it her duty to pray for his soul – much good it’ll do him,” he added.

“Ah.” Jamie paused a moment as though in thought, then tossed his horse’s reins over its neck and turned up the hill.

“Jamie,” I said, but he was already walking back up the road, toward the small clearing beside the grove. I handed the reins I was holding to a surprised Fergus.

“Stay here with the horses,” I said. “I have to go with him.” Ian moved to come with me, but Murtagh stopped him with a shake of the head, and I went on alone, following Jamie up over the crest of the hill.

He had the long, tireless stride of a hill-walker, and had reached the small clearing before I caught him up. He stood at the edge of what had been the outer wall. The square shape of the cottage’s earth floor was still barely visible, the new growth that covered it sparser than the nearby barley, greener and wild in the shade of the trees.

There was little trace of the fire left; a few chunks of charred wood poked through the grass near the stone hearth that lay open now, flat and exposed as a tombstone. Careful not to step within the outlines of the vanished walls, Jamie began to walk around the clearing. He circled the hearthstone three times, walking always widdershins, left, and left, and left again, to confound any evil that might follow.

I stood to one side and watched. This was a private confrontation, but I couldn’t leave him to face it alone, and though he didn’t glance at me, still I knew he was glad of my presence.

At last he stopped by the fallen pile of stones. Reaching out, he laid a hand gingerly on it and closed his eyes for a moment, as though in prayer. Then, stooping, he picked up a stone the size of his fist, and placed it carefully on the pile, as though it might weigh down the uneasy soul of the ghost. He crossed himself, turned and came toward me with a firm, unhurried step.

“Don’t look back,” he said quietly, taking me by the arm as we turned toward the road.

I didn’t.

Jamie, Fergus, and Murtagh went with Ian and the dogs in search of the sheep, leaving me to take the string of horses down to the house alone. I was far from being an accomplished horse-handler, but thought I could manage half a mile, so long as nothing popped out at me unexpectedly.

This was very different from our first homecoming to Lallybroch; then, we had been in flight, both of us. Me from the future, Jamie from his past. Our residence then had been happy, but tenuous and insecure; always there was the chance of discovery, of Jamie’s arrest. Now, thanks to the Duke of Sandringham’s intervention, Jamie had come to take possession of his birthright, and I, my lawful place beside him as his wife.

Then, we had arrived disheveled, unexpected, a violent disruption in the household. This time, we had come announced, with due ceremony, bearing presents from France. While I was sure our reception would be cordial, I did wonder how Ian and Jamie’s sister Jenny would take our permanent return. After all, they had lived as master and mistress of the estate for the last several years, ever since the death of Jamie’s father, and the disastrous events that had precipitated him into a life of outlawry and exile.

I topped the last hill without incident, and the manor house and its outbuildings lay below me, slate roofs darkening as the first banks of rain clouds rolled in. Suddenly, my mare started, and so did I, struggling to keep a hold on the reins as she curvetted and plunged in alarm.

Not that I could blame her; from around the corner of the house had emerged two huge, puffy objects, rolling along the ground like overweight clouds.

“Stop that!” I shouted “Whoa!” All the horses were now swerving and pulling, and I was inches away from a stampede. Fine homecoming, I thought, if I let all Jamie’s new breeding stock break their collective legs.

One of the clouds rose slightly, then sank flat to the ground, and Jenny Fraser Murray, released from the burden of the feather mattress she had been carrying, raced for the road, dark curls flying.

Without a moment’s hesitation, she leaped for the bridle of the nearest animal, and jerked down, hard.

“Whoa!” she said. The horse, obviously recognizing the voice of authority, did whoa. With a little effort, the other horses were calmed, and by the time I could slide down from my saddle, we had been joined by another woman and a boy of nine or ten, who lent an experienced hand with the remaining beasts.

I recognized young Rabbie MacNab, and deduced that the woman must be his mother, Mary. The bustle and shuffle of horses, bundles and mattresses precluded much conversation, but I had time for a quick hug of greeting with Jenny. She smelled of cinnamon and honey and the clean sweat of exertion, with an undertone of baby-scent, that paradoxical smell composed of spit-up milk, soft feces, and the ultimate cleanliness of fresh, smooth skin.

We clung together for a moment, hugging tight, remembering our last embrace, when we had parted on the edge of a night-dark wood – me to go in search of Jamie, she to return to a newborn daughter.

“How’s little Maggie?” I asked, breaking away at last.

Jenny made a face, wryness mingled with pride. “She’s just walking, and the terror o’ the house.” She glanced up the empty road. “Met Ian, did ye?”

“Yes, Jamie, Murtagh, and Fergus went with him to find the sheep.”

“Better them than us,” she said, with a quick gesture toward the sky. “It’s coming on to rain any minute. Let Rabbie stable the horses and you come lend a hand wi’ the mattresses, or we’ll all sleep wet tonight.”

A frenzy of activity ensued, but when the rain came, Jenny and I were snug in the parlor, undoing the parcels we had brought from France, and admiring the size and precocity of wee Maggie, a sprightly miss of some ten months, with round blue eyes and a head of strawberry fuzz, and her elder brother, Young Jamie, a sturdy almost-four-year-old. The impending arrival was no more than a tiny bulge beneath their mother’s apron, but I saw her hand rest tenderly there from time to time, and felt a small pang to see it.

“You mentioned Fergus,” Jenny said, as we talked. “Who’s that?”

“Oh, Fergus? He’s – well, he’s-” I hesitated, not sure quite how to describe Fergus. A pickpocket’s prospects for employment on a farm seemed limited. “He’s Jamie’s,” I said at last.

“Oh, aye? Well, I suppose he can sleep in the stable,” said Jenny, resigned. “Speaking of Jamie” – she glanced at the window, where the rain was streaming down – “I hope they find those sheep soon. I’ve a good dinner planned, and I dinna want it to spoil with keeping.”

In fact, darkness had fallen, and Mary MacNab had laid the table before the men returned. I watched her at her work; a small, fine-boned woman with dark-brown hair and a faintly worried look that faded into a smile when Rabbie returned from the stables and went to the kitchen, hungrily asking when dinner would be.

“When the men are back, mo luaidh,” she said, “Ye know that. Go and wash, so you’ll be ready.”

When the men finally did appear, they seemed a good deal more in need of a wash than did Rabbie. Rain-soaked, draggled, and muddy to the knees, they trailed slowly into the parlor. Ian unwound the wet plaid from his shoulders and hung it over the firescreen, where it dripped and steamed in the heat of the fire. Fergus, worn out by his abrupt introduction to farm life, simply sat down where he was and stared numbly at the floor between his legs.

Jenny looked up at the brother she had not seen for nearly a year. Glancing from his rain-drenched hair to his mud-crusted feet, she pointed to the door.

“Outside, and off wi’ your boots,” she said firmly. “And if ye’ve been in the high field, remember to piss on the doorposts on your way back in. That’s how ye keep a ghost from comin’ in the house,” she explained to me in a lowered tone, with a quick look at the door through which Mary MacNab had disappeared to fetch the dinner.

Jamie, slumped into a chair, opened one eye and gave his sister a dark-blue look.

“I land in Scotland near dead wi’ the crossing, ride for four days over the hills to get here, and when I arrive, I canna even come in the house for a drop to wet my parched throat; instead I’m off through the mud, huntin’ lost sheep. And once I do get here, ye want to send me out in the dark again to piss on doorposts. Tcha!” He closed the eye again, crossed his hands across his stomach, and sank lower in his chair, a study in stubborn negation.

“Jamie, my dearie,” his sister said sweetly. “D’ye want your dinner, or shall I feed it to the dogs?”

He remained motionless for a long moment, eyes closed. Then, with a hissing sigh of resignation, he got laboriously to his feet. With a moody twitch of his shoulder, he summoned Ian and the two of them turned, following Murtagh, who was already out the door. As he passed, Jamie reached down a long arm, hauled Fergus to his feet, and dragged the boy sleepily along.

“Welcome home,” Jamie said morosely, and with a last wistful glance at fire and whisky, trudged out into the night once more.

31 MAIL CALL

After this inauspicious homecoming, matters rapidly improved. Lallybroch absorbed Jamie at once, as though he had never left, and I found myself pulled effortlessly into the current of farm life as well. It was an unsettled autumn, with frequent rain, but with fair, bright days that made the blood sing, too. The place bustled with life, everyone hurrying through the harvest time and the preparations that must be made for the coming winter.

Lallybroch was remote, even for a Highland farm. No real roads led there, but the post still reached us by messenger, over the crags and the heather-clad slopes, a connection with the world outside. It was a world that sometimes seemed unreal in memory, as though I had never danced among the mirrors of Versailles. But the letters brought back France, and reading them, I could see the poplar trees along the Rue Tremoulins, or hear the reverberating bong of the cathedral bell that hung above L’Hôpital des Anges.

Louise’s child was born safely; a son. Her letters, rife with exclamations and underlinings, overflowed with besotted descriptions of the angelic Henri. Of his father, putative or real, there was no mention.

Charles Stuart’s letter, arriving a month later, made no mention of the child, but according to Jamie, was even more incoherent than usual, seething with vague plans and grandiosities.

The Earl of Mar wrote soberly and circumspectly, but his general annoyance with Charles was clear. The Bonnie Prince was not behaving. He was rude and overbearing to his most loyal followers, ignored those who might be of help to him, insulted whom he should not, talked wildly, and – reading between the lines – drank to excess. Given the attitude of the times regarding alcoholic intake on the part of gentlemen, I thought Charles’s performance must have been fairly spectacular, to occasion such comment. I supposed the birth of his son had not, in fact, escaped his notice.

Mother Hildegarde wrote from time to time, brief, informative notes squeezed into a few minutes that could be snatched from her daily schedule. Each letter ended with the same words; “Bouton also sends his regards.”

Master Raymond did not write, but every so often, a parcel would come addressed to me, unsigned and unmarked, but containing odd things: rare herbs and small, faceted crystals; a collection of stones, each the size of Jamie’s thumbnail, smooth and disc-shaped. Each one had a tiny figure carved into one side, some with lettering above or on the reverse. And then there were the bones – a bear’s digit, with the great curved claw still attached; the complete vertebrae of a small snake, articulated and strung on a leather thong, so the whole string flexed in a lifelike manner; an assortment of teeth, ranging from a string of round, peglike things that Jamie said came from a seal, through the high-crowned, scythe-cusped teeth of deer, to something that looked suspiciously like a human molar.

From time to time, I carried some of the smooth, carved stones in my pocket, enjoying the feel of them between my fingers. They were old; I knew that much. From Roman times at least; perhaps even earlier. And from the look of some of the creatures on them, whoever had carved them had meant them to be magic. Whether they were like the herbs – having some actual virtue – or only a symbol, like the signs of the Cabbala, I didn’t know. They seemed benign, though, and I kept them.

While I enjoyed the daily round of domestic tasks, what I liked best were the long walks to the various cottages on the estate. I always carried a large basket with me on these visits, containing an assortment of things, from small treats for the children to the most commonly needed medicines. These were called for frequently, for poverty and poor hygiene made illness common, and there were no physicians north of Fort William or south of Inverness.

Some ailments I could treat readily, like the bleeding gums and skin eruptions characteristic of mild scurvy. Other things were beyond my power to heal.

I laid a hand on Rabbie MacNab’s head. The shaggy hair was damp at his temples, but his jaw hung open, slack, relaxed, and the pulse in his neck beat slowly.

“He’s all right now,” I said. His mother could see that as well as I could; he lay sprawled in the peaceful abandon of sleep, cheeks flushed from the heat of the nearby fire. Still, she stayed tense and watchful, hovering over the bedstead until I spoke. Once I had given absolution to the evidence of her own eyes, she was willing to believe, though; her bunched shoulders slumped under her shawl.

“Thank the Blessed Mother,” Mary MacNab murmured, crossing herself briefly, “and you, my lady.”

“I didn’t do anything,” I protested. This was quite literally true; the only service I had been able to render young Rabbie was to make his mother let him alone. It had, in fact, taken a certain amount of forcefulness to discourage her efforts to feed him bran mixed with cock’s blood, wave burning feathers under his nose, or dash cold water over him – none of these remedies being of marked use to someone suffering an epileptic seizure. When I arrived, his mother had been volubly regretting her inability to administer the most effective of remedies: spring water drunk from the skull of a suicide.

“It frichts me so when he’s taen like that,” Mary MacNab said, gazing longingly at the bed where her son lay. “I had Father MacMurtry to him the last time, and he prayed a terrible long time, and sprinkled holy water on the lad to drive the de’ils out. But noo they’ve come back.” She clasped her hands tight together, as though she wished to touch her son, but couldn’t bring herself to do so.

“It isn’t devils,” I said. “It’s only a sickness, and not all that bed a one, at that.”

“Aye, my lady, an’ ye say so,” she murmured, unwilling to contradict me, but plainly unconvinced.

“He’ll be all right.” I tried to reassure the woman, without raising hopes that couldn’t be met. “He always recovers from these fits, doesn’t he?” The fits had come on two years ago – probably the result of head injury from beatings administered by his late father, I thought – and while the seizures were infrequent, they were undeniably terrifying to his mother when they occurred.

She nodded reluctantly, plainly unconvinced.

“Aye… though he bangs his heid something fearful now and then, thrashin’ as he does.”

“Yes, that’s a risk,” I said patiently. “If he does it again, just pull him away from anything hard, and let him alone. I know it looks bad, but really, he’ll be quite all right. Just let the fit run its course, and when it’s over, put him to bed and let him sleep.” I knew that words were of limited value, no matter how true they might be. Something more concrete was needed for reassurance.

As I turned to go, I heard a small click in the deep pocket of my skirt, and had a sudden inspiration. Reaching in, I pulled out two or three of the small smooth charmstones Raymond had sent me. I selected the milky white one – chalcedony, perhaps – with the tiny figure of a writhing man carved into one side. So that’s what it’s for, I thought.

“Sew this into his pocket,” I said, laying the tiny charm ceremoniously in the woman’s hand. “It will protect him from… from devils.” I cleared my throat. “You needn’t worry about him, then, even if he has another fit; he’ll come out of it all right.”

I left then, feeling at once extremely foolish and halfway pleased, amidst an eager flood of relieved thanks. I wasn’t sure whether I was becoming a better physician or merely a more practiced charlatan. Still, if I couldn’t do much for Rabbie, I could help his mother – or let her help herself, at least. Healing comes from the healed; not from the physician. That much, Raymond had taught me.

I left the house then, to do my errands for the day, calling on two of the cottages near the west end of the farm. All was well at the Kirbys and the Weston Frasers, and I was soon on my way back to the house. At the top of a slope, I sat down under a large beech tree to rest for a moment before the long walk back. The sun was coming down the sky, but hadn’t yet reached the row of pines that topped the ridge on the west side of Lallybroch. It was still late afternoon, and the world glowed with the colors of late autumn.

The fallen beechmast was cool and slippery under me, but a good many leaves still clung, yellowed and curling, to the tree above. I leaned back against the smooth-barked trunk and closed my eyes, dimming the bright glare of ripe barley fields to a dark red glow behind my eyelids.

The stifling confines of the crofters’ cottages had given me a headache. I leaned my head against the birch’s smooth bark and began to breathe slowly and deeply, letting the fresh outdoor air fill my lungs, beginning what I always thought of as “turning in.”

This was my own imperfect attempt to duplicate the feeling of the process Master Raymond had shown me in L’Hôpital des Anges; a summoning of the look and feel of each bit of myself, imagining exactly what the various organs and systems looked and felt like when they were functioning properly.

I sat quietly, hands loose in my lap, and listened to the beat of my heart. Beating fast from the exertion of the climb, it slowed quickly to a resting pace. The autumn breeze lifted the tendrils of hair from my neck and cooled my fire-flushed cheeks.

I sat, eyes closed, and traced the path of my blood, from the secret, thick-walled chambers of my heart, blue-purple through the pulmonary artery, reddening swiftly as the sacs of the lungs dumped their burden of oxygen. Then out in a bursting surge through the arch of the aorta, and the tumbling race upward and down and out, through carotids, renals, subclavians. To the smallest capillaries, blooming beneath the surface of the skin, I traced the path of my blood through the systems of my body, remembering the feel of perfection, of health. Of peace.

I sat still, breathing slowly, feeling languorous and heavy as though I had just risen from the act of love. My skin felt thin, my lips slightly swollen, and the pressure of my clothes was like the touch of Jamie’s hands. It was no random choice that had invoked his name to cure me. Whether it was health of mind or body, the love of him was necessary to me as breath or blood. My mind reached out for him, sleeping or waking, and finding him, was satisfied. My body flushed and glowed, and as it came to full life, it hungered for his.

The headache was gone. I sat a moment longer, breathing. Then I got to my feet and walked down the hill toward home.

I had never actually had a home. Orphaned at five, I had lived the life of a academic vagabond with my uncle Lamb for the next thirteen years. In tents on a dusty plain, in caves in the hills, in the swept and garnished chambers of an empty pyramid, Quentin Lambert Beauchamp, M.S., Ph.D., F.R.A.S., etc., had set up the series of temporary camps in which he did the archaeological work that would make him famous long before a car crash ended his brother’s life and threw me into his. Not one to dither over petty details like an orphaned niece, Uncle Lamb had promptly enrolled me in a boarding school.

Not one to accept the vagaries of fate without a fight, I declined absolutely to go there. And, recognizing something in me that he had himself in abundant measure, Uncle Lamb had shrugged, and on the decision of a heartbeat, had taken me forever from the world of order and routine, of sums, clean sheets, and daily baths, to follow him into vagabondage.

The roving life had continued with Frank, though with a shift from field to universities, as the digging of a historian is usually conducted within walls. So, when the war came in 1939, it was less a disruption to me than to most.

I had moved from our latest hired flat into the junior nurses’ quarters at Pembroke Hospital, and from there to a field station in France, and back again to Pembroke before war’s end. And then, those few brief months with Frank, before we came to Scotland, seeking to find each other again. Only to lose each other once and for all, when I had walked into a stone circle, through madness, and out the other side, into the past that was my present.

It was strange, then, and rather wonderful, to wake in the upper bedroom at Lallybroch, next to Jamie, and realize, as I watched the dawn touch his sleeping face, that he had been born in this bed. All the sounds of the house, from the creak of the back stair under an early-rising maid’s foot, to the drumming rain on the roofslates, were sounds he had heard a thousand times before; heard so often, he didn’t hear them anymore. I did.

His mother, Ellen, had planted the late-blooming rosebush by the door. Its faint, rich scent still wafted up the walls of the house to the bedroom window. It was as though she reached in herself, to touch him lightly in passing. To touch me, too, in welcome.

Beyond the house itself lay Lallybroch; fields and barns and village and crofts. He had fished in the stream that ran down from the hills, climbed the oaks and towering larches, eaten by the hearthstone of every croft. It was his place.

But he, too, had lived with disruption and change. Arrest, and the flight of outlawry; the rootless life of a mercenary soldier. Arrest again, imprisonment and torture, and the flight into exile so recently ended. But he had lived in one place for his first fourteen years. And even at that age, when he had been sent, as was the custom, to foster for two years with his mother’s brother, Dougal MacKenzie, it was part and parcel of the life expected for a man who would return to live forever on his land, to care for his tenants and estate, to be a part of a larger organism. Permanence was his destiny.

But there had been that space of absence, and the experience of things beyond the boundaries of Lallybroch, even beyond the rocky coasts of Scotland. Jamie had spoken with kings, had touched law, and commerce, seen adventure and violence and magic. Once the boundaries of home had been transgressed, could destiny be enough to hold him? I wondered.

As I came down from the crest of the hill, I saw him below, heaving boulders into place as he repaired a rift in a drystone dike that bordered one of the smaller fields. Near him on the ground lay a pair of rabbits, neatly gutted but not yet skinned.

“ ‘Home is the sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter home from the hill,’ ” I quoted, smiling at him as I came up beside him.

He grinned back, wiped the sweat from his brow, then pretended to shudder.

“Dinna mention the sea to me, Sassenach. I saw two wee laddies sailing a bit of wood in the millpond this morning and nearly heaved up my breakfast at the sight.”

I laughed. “You haven’t any urge to go back to France, then?”

“God, no. Not even for the brandy.” He heaved one last stone to the top of the wall and settled it into place. “Going back to the house?”

“Yes. Do you want me to take the rabbits?”

He shook his head, and bent to pick them up. “No need; I’m going back myself. Ian needs a hand wi’ the new storage cellar for the potatoes.”

The first potato crop ever planted on Lallybroch was due for harvest within a few days, and – on my timorous and inexpert advice – a small root-cellar was being dug to house them. I had distinctly mixed feelings, whenever I looked at the potato field. On the one hand, I felt considerable pride in the sprawling, leafy vines that covered it. On the other, I felt complete panic at the thought that sixty families might depend on what lay under those vines for sustenance through the winter. It was on my advice – given hastily a year ago – that a prime barley field had been planted in potatoes, a crop hitherto unknown in the Highlands.

I knew that in the fullness of time, potatoes would become an important staple of life in the Highlands, less susceptible to blight and failure than the crops of oats and barley. Knowing that from a paragraph read in a geography book long ago was a far cry from deliberately taking responsibility for the lives of the people who would eat the crop.

I wondered if the taking of risks for other people got easier with practice. Jamie did it routinely, managing the affairs of the estate and the tenants as though he had been born to it. But, of course, hehad been born to it.

“Is the cellar nearly ready?” I asked.

“Oh, aye. Ian’s got the doors built, and the pit’s nearly dug. It’s only there’s a soft bit of earth near the back, and his peg gets stuck in when he stands there.” While Ian managed very well on the wooden peg he wore in substitute for his lower right leg, there were the occasional awkwardnesses such as this.

Jamie glanced thoughtfully up the hill behind us. “We’ll need the cellar finished and covered by tonight; it’s going to rain again before dawn.”

I turned to look in the direction of his gaze. Nothing showed on the slope but grass and heather, a few trees, and the rocky seams of granite that poked bony ridges through the scruffy overgrowth.

“How in hell can you tell that?”

He smiled, pointing uphill with his chin. “See the small oak tree? And the ash nearby?”

I glanced at the trees, baffled. “Yes. What about them?”

“The leaves, Sassenach. See how both trees look lighter than usual? When there’s damp in the air, the leaves of an oak or an ash will turn, so ye see the underside. The whole tree looks several shades lighter.”

“I suppose it does,” I agreed doubtfully. “If you happen to know what color the tree is normally.”

Jamie laughed and took my arm. “I may not have an ear for music, Sassenach, but I’ve eyes in my head. And I’ve seen those trees maybe ten thousand times, in every weather there is.”

It was some way from the field to the farmhouse, and we walked in silence for the most part, enjoying the brief warmth of the afternoon sun on our backs. I sniffed the air, and thought that Jamie was probably right about the coming rain; all the normal autumn smells seemed intensified, from the sharp pine resins to the dusty smell of ripe grain. I thought that I must be learning, myself; becoming attuned to the rhythms and sights and smells of Lallybroch. Maybe in time, I would come to know it as well as Jamie did. I squeezed his arm briefly, and felt the pressure of his hand on mine in response.

“D’ye miss France, Sassenach?” he said suddenly.

“No,” I said, startled. “Why?”

He shrugged, not looking at me. “Well, it’s only I was thinking, seeing ye come down the hill wi’ the basket on your arm, how bonny ye looked wi’ the sun on your brown hair. I thought you looked as though ye grew there, like one of the saplings – like ye’d always been a part of this place. And then it struck me, that to you, Lallybroch’s maybe a poor wee spot. There’s no grand life, like there was in France; not even interesting work, as ye had at the Hôpital.” He glanced down at me shyly.

“I suppose I worry you’ll grow bored wi’ it here – in time.”

I paused before answering, though it wasn’t something I hadn’t thought about.

“In time,” I said carefully. “Jamie – I’ve seen a lot of things in my life, and been in a lot of places. Where I came from – there were things there that I miss sometimes. I’d like to ride a London omnibus again, or pick up a telephone and talk to someone far away. I’d like to turn a tap, and have hot water, not carry it from the well and heat it in a cauldron. I’d like all that – but I don’t need it. As for a grand life, I didn’t want it when I had it. Nice clothes are all very well, but if gossip and scheming and worry and silly parties and tiny rules of etiquette go with them… no. I’d as soon live in my shift and say what I like.”

He laughed at that, and I squeezed his arm once more.

“As for the work… there’s work for me here.” I glanced down into the basket of herbs and medicines on my arm. “I can be useful. And if I miss Mother Hildegarde, or my other friends – well, it isn’t as fast as a telephone, but there are always letters.”

I stopped, holding his arm, and looked up at him. The sun was setting, and the light gilded one side of his face, throwing the strong bones into relief.

“Jamie… I only want to be where you are. Nothing else.”

He stood still for a moment, then leaned forward and kissed me very gently on the forehead.

“It’s funny,” I said as we came over the crest of the last small hill that led down to the house. “I had just been wondering the same kinds of things about you. Whether you’d be happy here, after the things you did in France.”

He smiled, half-ruefully, and looked toward the house, its three stories of white-harled stone glowing gold and umber in the sunset.

“Well, it’s home, Sassenach. It’s my place.”

I touched him gently on the arm. “And you were born to it, you mean?”

He drew a deep breath, and reached out to rest a hand on the wooden fence-rail that separated this lower field from the grounds near the house.

“Well, in fact I wasna born to it, Sassenach. By rights, it should have been Willie was lairdie here. Had he lived, I expect I would have been a soldier – or maybe a merchant, like Jared.”

Willie, Jamie’s elder brother, had died of the smallpox at the age of eleven, leaving his small brother, aged six, as the heir to Lallybroch.

He made an odd half-shrugging gesture, as though seeking to ease the pressure of his shirt across his shoulders. It was something he did when feeling awkward or unsure; I hadn’t seen him do it in months.

“But Willie died. And so I am laird.” He glanced at me, a little shyly, then reached into his sporran and pulled something out. A little cherrywood snake that Willie had carved for him as a birthday gift lay on his palm, head twisted as though surprised to see the tail following it.

Jamie stroked the little snake gently; the wood was shiny and seasoned with handling, the curves of the body gleaming like scales in early twilight.

“I talk to Willie, sometimes, in my mind,” Jamie said. He tilted the snake on his palm. “If you’d lived, Brother, if ye’d been laird as you were meant to be, would ye do what I’ve done? or would ye find a better way?” He glanced down at me, flushing slightly. “Does that sound daft?”

“No.” I touched the snake’s smooth head with a fingertip. The high clear call of a meadowlark came from the far field, thin as crystal in the evening air.

“I do the same,” I said softly, after a moment. “With Uncle Lamb. And my parents. My mother especially. I – I didn’t think of her often, when I was young, just every now and then I’d dream about someone soft and warm, with a lovely singing voice. But when I was sick, after… Faith – sometimes I imagined she was there. With me.” A sudden wave of grief swept over me, remembrance of losses recent and long past.

Jamie touched my face gently, wiping away the tear that had formed at the corner of one eye but not quite fallen.

“I think sometimes the dead cherish us, as we do them,” he said softly. “Come on, Sassenach. Let’s walk a bit; there’s time before dinner.”

He linked my arm in his, tight against his side, and we turned along the fence, walking slowly, the dry grass rustling against my skirt.

“I ken what ye mean, Sassenach,” Jamie said. “I hear my father’s voice sometimes, in the barn, or in the field. When I’m not even thinkin’ of him, usually. But all at once I’ll turn my head, as though I’d just heard him outside, laughing wi’ one of the tenants, or behind me, gentling a horse.”

He laughed suddenly, and nodded toward a corner of the pasture before us.

“It’s a wonder I dinna hear him here, but I never have.”

It was a thoroughly unremarkable spot, a wood-railed gate in the stone fence that paralleled the road.

“Really? What did he used to say here?”

“Usually it was ‘If ye’re through talkin’, Jamie, turn about and bend ower.’ ”

We laughed, pausing to lean on the fence. I bent closer, squinting at the wood.

“So this is where you got smacked? I don’t see any toothmarks,” I said.

“No, it wasna all that bad,” he said, laughing. He ran a hand affectionately along the worn ash fence rail.

“We used to get splinters in our fingers, sometimes, Ian and me. We’d go up to the house after, and Mrs. Crook or Jenny would pick them out for us – scolding all the time.”

He glanced toward the manor, where all the first-floor windows glowed with light against the gathering night. Dark forms moved briefly past the windows; small, quick-moving shadows in the kitchen windows, where Mrs. Crook and the maids were at the dinner preparations. A larger form, tall and slender as a fence rail, loomed suddenly in one of the drawing room windows. Ian stood a moment, silhouetted in the light as though called by Jamie’s reminiscence. Then he drew the curtains and the window dulled to a softer, shrouded glow.

“I was always glad when Ian was with me,” Jamie said, still looking toward the house. “When we got caught at some devilry and got thrashed for it, I mean.”

“Misery loves company?” I said, smiling.

“A bit. I didna feel quite so wicked when there were the two of us to share the guilt between. But it was more that I could always count on him to make a lot of noise.”

“What, to cry out, you mean?”

“Aye. He’d always howl and carry on something awful, and I knew he would do it, so I didna feel so ashamed of my own noise, if I had to cry out.” It was too dark to see his face anymore, but I could still see the half-shrugging gesture he made when embarrassed or uncomfortable.

“I always tried not to, of course, but I couldna always manage. If my da thought it worth thrashing me over, he thought it worth doing a proper job. And Ian’s father had a right arm like a tree bole.”

“You know,” I said, glancing down at the house, “I never thought of it particularly before, but why on earth did your father thrash you out here, Jamie? Surely there’s enough room in the house – or the barn.”

Jamie was silent for a moment, then shrugged again.

“I didna ever ask. But I reckon it was something like the King of France.”

“The King of France.” This apparent non sequitur took me aback a bit.

“Aye. I dinna ken,” he said dryly, “quite what it’s like to have to wash and dress and move your bowels in public, but I can tell ye that it’s a verra humbling experience to have to stand there and explain to one of your father’s tenants just what ye did that’s about to get your arse scalded for ye.”

“I imagine it must be,” I said, sympathy mingled with the urge to laugh. “Because you were going to be laird, you mean? That’s why he made you do it here?”

“I expect so. The tenants would know I understood justice – at least, from the receiving end.”

32 FIELD OF DREAMS

The field had been plowed in the usual “rigs,” high ridges of piled earth, with deep furrows drawn between them. The rigs rose knee-high, so a man walking down the furrows could sow his seed easily by hand along the top of the rig beside him. Designed for the planting of barley or oats, no reason had been seen to alter them for the planting of potatoes.

“It said ‘hills,’ ” Ian said, peering over the leafy expanse of the potato field, “but I thought the rigs would do as well. The point of the hills seemed to be to keep the things from rotting wi’ too much water, and an old field wi’ high rigs seemed like to do that as well.”

“That seems sensible,” Jamie agreed. “The top parts seem to be flourishing, anyway. Does the man say how ye ken when to dig the things up, though?”

Charged with the planting of potatoes in a land where no potato had ever been seen, Ian had proceeded with method and logic, sending to Edinburgh both for seed potatoes, and for a book on the subject of planting. In due course, A Scientific Treatise on Methods of Farming, by Sir Walter O’Bannion Reilly had made its appearance, with a small section on potato planting as presently practiced in Ireland.

Ian was carrying this substantial volume under one arm – Jenny had told me that he wouldn’t go near the potato field without it, lest some knotty question of philosophy or technique occur to him while there – and now flipped it open, bracing it on one forearm as he groped in his sporran for the spectacles he wore when reading. These had belonged to his late father; small circles of glass, set in wire rims, and customarily worn on the end of his nose, they made him look like a very earnest young stork.

“Harvesting of the crop should be undertaken simultaneously with the appearance of the first winter goose,” he read, then looked up, squinting accusingly over his spectacles at the potato field, as though expecting an indicative goose to stick its head up among the furrowed rigs.

“Winter goose?” Jamie peered frowning at the book over Ian’s shoulder. “What sort of goose does he mean? Greylags? But ye see those all year. That canna be right.”

Ian shrugged. “Maybe ye only see them in the winter in Ireland. Or maybe it’s some kind of Irish goose he means, and not greylags at all.”

Jamie snorted. “Well, the fat lot of good that does us. Does he say anything useful?”

Ian ran a finger down the lines of type, moving his lips silently. We had by now collected a small crowd of cottars, all fascinated by this novel approach to agriculture.

“Ye dinna dig potatoes when it’s wet,” Ian informed us, eliciting a louder snort from Jamie.

“Hmm,” Ian murmured to himself. “Potato rot, potato bugs – we didna ha’ any potato bugs, I suppose that’s lucky – potato vines… umm, no, that’s only what to do if the vines wilt. Potato blight – we canna tell if we have that until we see the potatoes. Seed potatoes, potato storage-”

Impatient, Jamie turned away from Ian, hands on his hips.

“Scientific farming, eh?” he demanded. He glared at the field of darkgreen, leafy vines. “I suppose it’s too damn scientific to explain how ye tell when the bloody things are ready to eat!”

Fergus, who had been tagging along behind Jamie as usual, looked up from a caterpillar, inching its slow and fuzzy way along his forefinger.

“Why don’t you just dig one up and see?” he asked.

Jamie stared at Fergus for a moment. His mouth opened, but no sound emerged. He shut it, patted Fergus gently on the head, and went to fetch a pitchfork from its place against the fence.

The cottars, all men who had helped to plant and tend the field under Ian’s direction – assisted by Sir Walter – clustered round to see the results of their labor.

Jamie chose a large and flourishing vine near the edge of the field and poised the fork carefully near its roots. Visibly holding his breath, he put a foot on the heel of the fork and pushed. The tines slid slowly into the damp brown dirt.

I was holding my own breath. There was a good deal more depending on this experiment than the reputation of Sir Walter O’Bannion Reilly. Or my own, for that matter.

Jamie and Ian had confirmed that the barley crop this year was smaller than normal, though still sufficient for the needs of the Lallybroch tenants. Another bad year would exhaust the meager reserves of grain, though. For a Highland estate, Lallybroch was prosperous; but that was saying something only by comparison with other Highland farms. Successful potato planting could well make the difference between hunger and plenty for the folk of Lallybroch over the next two years.

Jamie’s heel pressed down and he leaned back on the handle of the fork. The earth crumbled and cracked around the vine, and with a sudden, rending pop the potato vine lifted up and the earth revealed its bounty.

A collective “Ah!” went up from the spectators, at sight of the myriad brown globules clinging to the roots of the uprooted vine. Ian and I both fell to our knees in the dirt, scrabbling in the loosened soil for potatoes severed from the parent vine.

“It worked!” Ian kept saying as he pulled potato after potato out of the ground. “Look at that! See the size of it?”

“Yes, look at this one!” I exclaimed in delight, brandishing one the size of my two fists held together.

At length, we had the produce of our sample vine laid in a basket; perhaps ten good-sized potatoes, twenty-five or so fist-size specimens, and a number of small things the size of golf balls.

“What d’ye think?” Jamie scrutinized our collection quizzically. “Ought we to leave the rest, so the little ones will grow more? Or take them now, before the cold comes?”

Ian groped absently for his spectacles, then remembered that Sir Walter was over by the fence, and abandoned the effort. He shook his head.

“No, I think this is right,” he said. “The book says ye keep the bittie ones for the seed potatoes for next year. We’ll want a lot of those.” He gave me a grin of relieved delight, his hank of thick, straight brown hair dropping across his forehead. There was a smudge of dirt down the side of his face.

One of the cottars’ wives was bending over the basket, peering at its contents. She reached out a tentative finger and prodded one of the potatoes.

“Ye eat them, ye say?” Her brow creased skeptically. “I dinna see how ye’d ever grind them in a quern for bread or parritch.”

“Well, I dinna believe ye grind them, Mistress Murray,” Jamie explained courteously.

“Och, aye?” The woman squinted censoriously at the basket. “Well, what d’ye do wi’ them, then?”

“Well, you…” Jamie started, and then stopped. It occurred to me, as it no doubt had to him, that while he had eaten potatoes in France, he had never seen one prepared for eating. I hid a smile as he stared helplessly at the dirt-crusted potato in his hand. Ian also stared at it; apparently Sir Walter was mute on the subject of potato cooking.

“You roast them.” Fergus came to the rescue once more, bobbing up under Jamie’s arm. He smacked his lips at the sight of the potatoes. “Put them in the coals of the fire. You eat them with salt. Butter’s good, if you have it.”

“We have it,” said Jamie, with an air of relief. He thrust the potato at Mrs. Murray, as though anxious to be rid of it. “You roast them,” he informed her firmly.

“You can boil them, too,” I contributed. “Or mash them with milk. Or fry them. Or chop them up and put them in soup. A very versatile vegetable, the potato.”

“That’s what the book says,” Ian murmured, with satisfaction.

Jamie looked at me, the corner of his mouth curling in a smile.

“Ye never told me you could cook, Sassenach.”

“I wouldn’t call it cooking, exactly,” I said, “but I probably can boil a potato.”

“Good.” Jamie cast an eye at the group of tenants and their wives, who were passing the potatoes from hand to hand, looking them over rather dubiously. He clapped his hands loudly to attract attention.

“We’ll be having supper here by the field,” he told them. “Let’s be fetching a bit of wood for a fire, Tom and Willie, and Mrs. Willie, if ye’d be so kind as to bring your big kettle? Aye, that’s good, one of the men will help ye to bring it down. You, Kincaid-” He turned to one of the younger men, and waved off in the direction of the small cluster of cottages under the trees. “Go and tell everyone – it’s potatoes for supper!”

And so, with the assistance of Jenny, ten pails of milk from the dairy shed, three chickens caught from the coop, and four dozen large leeks from the kailyard, I presided over the preparation of cock-a-leekie soup and roasted potatoes for the laird and tenants of Lallybroch.

The sun was below the horizon by the time the food was ready, but the sky was still alight, with streaks of red and gold that lanced through the dark branches of the pine grove on the hill. There was a little hesitation when the tenants came face-to-face with the proposed addition to their diet, but the party-like atmosphere – helped along by a judicious keg of home-brewed whisky – overcame any misgivings, and soon the ground near the potato field was littered with the forms of impromptu diners, hunched over bowls held on their knees.

“What d’ye think, Dorcas?” I overheard one woman say to her neighbor. “It’s a wee bit queer-tasting, no?”

Dorcas, so addressed, nodded and swallowed before replying.

“Aye, it is. But the laird’s eaten six o’ the things so far, and they havena kilt him yet.”

The response from the men and children was a good deal more enthusiastic, likely owing to the generous quantities of butter supplied with the potatoes.

“Men would eat horse droppings, if ye served them wi’ butter,” Jenny said, in answer to an observation along these lines. “Men! A full belly, and a place to lie down when they’re drunk, and that’s all they ask o’ life.”

“A wonder ye put up wi’ Jamie and me,” Ian teased, hearing her, “seein’ ye’ve such a low opinion of men.”

Jenny waved her soup ladle dismissively at husband and brother, seated side by side on the ground near the kettle.

“Och, you two aren’t ‘men.’ ”

Ian’s feathery brows shot upward, and Jamie’s thicker red ones matched them.

“Oh, we’re not? Well, what are we, then?” Ian demanded.

Jenny turned toward him with a smile, white teeth flashing in the firelight. She patted Jamie on the head, and dropped a kiss on Ian’s forehead.

“You’re mine,” she said.

After supper, one of the men began to sing. Another brought out a wooden flute and accompanied him, the sound thin but piercing in the cold autumn night. The air was chilly, but there was no wind, and it was cozy enough, wrapped in shawls and blankets, huddled in small family clusters round the fire. The blaze had been built up after the cooking, and now made a substantial dent in the darkness.

It was warm, if a trifle active, in our own family huddle. Ian had gone to fetch another armload of wood, and baby Maggie clung to her mother, forcing her elder brother to seek refuge and body warmth elsewhere.

“I’m going to stick ye upside down in yonder kettle, an’ ye dinna leave off pokin’ me in the balls,” Jamie informed his nephew, who was squirming vigorously on his uncle’s lap. “What’s the matter, then – have ye got ants in your drawers?”

This query was greeted with a gale of giggles and a marked effort to burrow into his host’s midsection. Jamie groped in the dark, making deliberately clumsy grabs at his namesake’s arms and legs, then wrapped his arms around the boy and rolled suddenly over on top of him, forcing a startled whoop of delight from small Jamie.

Jamie pinned his nephew forcibly to the ground and held him there with one hand while he groped blindly on the ground in the dark. Seizing a handful of wet grass with a grunt of satisfaction, he raised himself enough to jam the grass down the neck of small Jamie’s shirt, changing the giggling to a high-pitched squeal, no less delighted.

“There, then,” Jamie said, rolling off the small form. “Go plague your auntie for a bit.”

Small Jamie obligingly scrambled over to me on hands and knees, still giggling, and nestled on my lap among the folds of my cloak. He sat as still as is possible for an almost four-year-old boy – which is not very still, all things considered – and let me remove the bulk of the grass from his shirt.

“You smell nice, Auntie,” he said, buffing my chin affectionately with his mop of black curls. “Like food.”

“Well, thank you,” I said. “Ought I to take that to mean you’re hungry again?”

“Aye. Is there milk?”

“There is.” I could just reach the stoneware jug by stretching out my fingers. I shook the bottle, decided there was not enough left to make it worthwhile to fetch a cup, and tilted the jug, holding it for the little boy to drink from.

Temporarily absorbed in the taking of nourishment, he was still, the small, sturdy body heavy on my thigh, back braced against my arm as he wrapped his own pudgy hands around the jug.

The last drops of milk gurgled from the jug. Small Jamie relaxed all at once, and emitted a soft burp of repletion. I could feel the heat glowing from him, with that sudden rise of temperature which presages falling asleep in very young children. I wrapped a fold of the cloak around him, and rocked him slowly back and forth, humming softly to the tune of the song beyond the fire. The small bumps of his vertebrae were round and hard as marbles under my fingers.

“Gone to sleep, has he?” The larger Jamie’s bulk loomed near my shoulder, the firelight picking out the hilt of his dirk, and the gleam of copper in his hair.

“Yes,” I said. “At least he’s not squirming, so he must have. It’s rather like holding a large ham.”

Jamie laughed, then was still himself. I could feel the hardness of his arm just brushing mine, and the warmth of his body through the folds of plaid and arisaid.

A night breeze brushed a strand of hair across my face. I brushed it back, and discovered that small Jamie was right; my hands smelled of leeks and butter, and the starchy smell of cut potatoes. Asleep, he was a dead weight, and while holding him was comforting, he was cutting off the circulation in my left leg. I twisted a bit, intending to lay him across my lap.

“Don’t move, Sassenach,” Jamie’s voice came softly, next to me. “Just for a moment, mo duinne – be still.”

I obligingly froze, until he touched me on the shoulder.

“That’s all right, Sassenach,” he said, with a smile in his voice. “It’s only that ye looked so beautiful, wi’ the fire on your face, and your hair waving in the wind. I wanted to remember it.”

I turned to face him, then, and smiled at him, across the body of the child. The night was dark and cold, alive with people all around, but there was nothing where we sat but light and warmth – and each other.

33 THY BROTHER’S KEEPER

Fergus, after an initial period of silent watchfulness from corners, had become a part of the household, taking on the official position of stable-lad, along with young Rabbie MacNab.

While Rabbie was a year or two younger than Fergus, he was as big as the slight French lad, and they quickly became inseparable friends, except on the occasions when they argued – which was two or three times a day – and then attempted to kill each other. After a fight one morning had escalated into a punching, kicking, fist-swinging brawl that rolled through the dairy shed and spilled two pannikins of cream set out to sour, Jamie took a hand.

With an air of long-suffering grimness, he had taken each miscreant by the scruff of a skinny neck, and removed them to the privacy of the barn, where, I assumed, he overcame any lingering scruples he might have had about the administration of physical retribution. He strode out of the barn, shaking his head and buckling his belt back on, and left with Ian to ride up the valley to Broch Mordha. The boys had emerged some time later, substantially subdued and – united in tribulation – once more the best of friends.

Sufficiently subdued, in fact, to allow young Jamie to tag along with them as they did their chores. As I glanced out the window later in the morning, I saw the three of them playing in the dooryard with a ball made of rags. It was a cold, misty day, and the boys’ breath rose in soft clouds as they galloped and shouted.

“Nice sturdy little lad you’ve got there,” I remarked to Jenny, who was sorting through her mending basket in search of a button. She glanced up, saw what I was looking at, and smiled.

“Oh, aye, wee Jamie’s a dear lad.” She came to join me by the window, peering out at the game below.

“He’s the spit of his da,” she remarked fondly, “but he’s going to be a good bit wider through the shoulder, I think. He’ll maybe be the size of his uncle; see those legs?” I thought she was probably right; while small Jamie, nearly four, still had the chunky roundness of a toddler, his legs were long, and the small back was wide and flat with muscle. He had the long, graceful bones of his uncle, and the same air his larger namesake projected, of being composed of something altogether tougher and springier than mere flesh.

I watched the little boy pounce on the ball, scoop it up with a deft snatch, and throw it hard enough to sail past the head of Rabbie MacNab, who raced off, shouting, to retrieve it.

“Something else is like his uncle,” I said. “I think he’s maybe going to be left-handed, too.”

“Oh, God!” said Jenny, brow furrowed as she peered at her offspring. “I hope not, but you’re maybe right.” She shook her head, sighing.

“Lord, when I think of the trouble poor Jamie had, from being caurry-fisted! Everybody tried to break him of it, from my parents to the schoolmaster, but he always was stubborn as a log, and wouldna budge. Everybody but Ian’s father, at least,” she added, as an afterthought.

“He didn’t think being left-handed was wrong?” I asked curiously, aware that the general opinion of the times was that left-handedness was at the best unlucky, and at the worst, a symptom of demonic possession. Jamie wrote – with difficulty – with his right hand, because he had been beaten regularly at school for picking up the quill with his left.

Jenny shook her head, black curls bobbing under her kertch.

“No, he was a queer man, auld John Murray. He said if the Lord had chosen to strengthen Jamie’s left arm so, then ’twould be a sin to spurn the gift. And he was a rare man wi’ a sword, auld John, so my father listened, and he let Jamie learn to fight left-handed.”

“I thought Dougal MacKenzie taught Jamie to fight left-handed,” I said. I rather wondered what Jenny thought of her uncle Dougal.

She nodded, licking the end of a thread before putting it through the eye of her needle with one quick poke.

“Aye, it was, but that was later, when Jamie was grown, and went to foster wi’ Dougal. It was Ian’s father taught him his first strokes.” She smiled, eyes on the shirt in her lap.

“I remember, when they were young, auld John told Ian it was his job to stand to Jamie’s right, for he must guard his chief’s weaker side in a fight. And he did – they took it verra seriously, the two of them. And I suppose auld John was right, at that,” she added, snipping off the excess thread. “After a time, nobody would fight them, not even the MacNab lads. Jamie and Ian were both fair-sized, and bonny fighters, and when they stood shoulder to shoulder, there was no one could take the pair o’ them down, even if they were outnumbered.”

She laughed suddenly, and smoothed back a lock of hair behind her ear.

“Watch them sometime, when they’re walking the fields together. I dinna suppose they even realize they do it still, but they do. Jamie always moves to the left, so Ian can take up his place on the right, guardin’ the weak side.”

Jenny gazed out the window, the shirt momentarily forgotten in her lap, and laid a hand over the small swelling of her stomach.

“I hope it’s a boy,” she said, looking at her black-haired son below. “Left-handed or no, it’s good for a man to have a brother to help him.” I caught her glance at the picture on the wall – a very young Jamie, standing between the knees of his elder brother, Willie. Both young faces were snub-nosed and solemn; Willie’s hand rested protectively on his little brother’s shoulder.

“Jamie’s lucky to have Ian,” I said.

Jenny looked away from the picture, and blinked once. She was two years older than Jamie; she would have been three years younger than William.

“Aye, he is. And so am I,” she said softly, picking up the shirt once more.

I took a child’s smock from the mending basket and turned it inside out, to get at the ripped seam beneath the armhole. It was too cold out for anyone but small boys at play or men at work, but it was warm and cozy in the parlor; the windows fogged over quickly as we worked, isolating us from the icy world outside.

“Speaking of brothers,” I said, squinting as I threaded my own needle, “did you see Dougal and Colum MacKenzie much, as you were growing up?”

Jenny shook her head. “I’ve never met Colum. Dougal came here a time or two, bringing Jamie home for Hogmanay or such, but I canna say I know him well.” She looked up from her mending, slanted eyes bright with interest. “You’ll know them, though. Tell me, what’s Colum MacKenzie like? I always wondered, from the bits of things I’d hear from visitors, but my parents never would speak of him.” She paused a moment, a crease between her brows.

“No, I’m wrong; my da did say something about him, once. ’Twas just after Dougal had left, to go back to Beannachd wi’ Jamie. Da was leaning on the fence outside, watching them ride out o’ sight, and I came up to wave to Jamie – it always grieved me sore when he left, for I didna ken how long he’d be gone. Anyway, we watched them over the crest of the hill, and then Da stirred a bit, and grunted, and said, ‘God help Dougal MacKenzie when his brother Colum dies.’ Then he seemed to remember I was there, for he turned round and smiled at me, and said, ‘Well, lassie, what’s for our dinner, then?’ and wouldna say more about it.” The black brows, fine and bold as the strokes of calligraphy, lifted in puzzled inquiry.

“I thought that odd, for I’d heard – who hasn’t? – that Colum is sore crippled, and Dougal does the chief’s work for him, collecting rents and settling claims – and leading the clan to battle, when needs be.”

“He does. But-” I hesitated, unsure how to describe that odd symbiotic relationship. “Well,” I said with a smile, “the closest I can come is to tell you that once I overheard them arguing, and Colum said to Dougal, ‘I’ll tell ye, if the brothers MacKenzie have but one cock and one brain between them, then I’m glad of my half of the bargain!’ ”

Jenny gave a sudden laugh of surprise, then stared at me, a speculative gleam deep in her blue eyes, so like her brother’s.

“Och, so that’s the way of it, is it? I did wonder once, hearing Dougal talk about Colum’s son, wee Hamish; he seemed a bit fonder than an uncle might be.”

“You’re quick, Jenny,” I said, staring back at her. “Very quick. It took me a long time to work that out, and I saw them every day for months.”

She shrugged modestly, but a small smile played about her lips.

“I listen,” she said simply. “To what folk say – and what they don’t. And people do gossip something terrible here in the Highlands. So” – she bit off a thread and spat the ends neatly into the palm of her hand – “tell me about Leoch. Folk say it’s big, but not so grand as Beauly or Kilravock.”

We worked and talked through the morning, moving from mending to winding wool for knitting, to laying out the pattern for a new baby dress for Maggie. The shouts from the boys outside ceased, to be replaced by murmurous noises and banging from the back of the house, suggesting that the younger male element had gotten cold and come to infest the kitchens, instead.

“I wonder will it snow soon?” Jenny said, with a glance at the window. “There’s wetness in the air; did ye see the haze over the loch this morning?”

I shook my head. “I hope not. That will make it hard for Jamie and Ian, coming back.” The village of Broch Mordha was less than ten miles from Lallybroch, but the way lay over steadily rising hills, with steep and rocky slopes, and the road was little more than a deer track.

In the event, it did snow, soon after noon, and the flakes kept swirling down long past nightfall.

“They’ll have stayed in Broch Mordha,” Jenny said, pulling her nightcapped head in from an inspection of the cloudy sky, with its snow-pink glow. “Dinna worry for them; they’ll be tucked up cozy in someone’s cottage for the night.” She smiled reassuringly at me as she pulled the shutters to. A sudden wail came from down the hall, and she picked up the skirts of her nightrobe with a muffled exclamation.

“Good night, Claire,” she called, already hurrying off on her maternal errand of mercy. “Sleep well.”

I usually did sleep well; in spite of the cold, damp climate, the house was tightly constructed, and the goosefeather bed was plentifully supplied with quilts. Tonight, though, I found myself restless without Jamie. The bed seemed vast and clammy, my legs twitchy, and my feet cold.

I tried lying on my back, hands lightly clasped across my ribs, eyes closed, breathing deep, to summon up a picture of Jamie; if I could imagine him there, breathing deeply in the dark beside me, perhaps I could fall asleep.

The sound of a cock crowing at full blast lifted me off the pillow, as though a stick of dynamite had been touched off beneath the bed.

“Idiot!” I said, every nerve in my body twanging from the shock. I got up and cracked the shutter. It had stopped snowing, but the sky was still pale with cloud, a uniform color from horizon to horizon. The rooster let loose another bellow in the hen-coop below.

“Shut up!” I said. “It’s the middle of the night, you feathered bastard!” The avian equivalent of a raspberry echoed through the still night, and down the hall, a child began to cry, followed by a rich but muffled Gaelic expletive in Jenny’s voice.

“You,” I said to the invisible rooster, “are living on borrowed time.” There was no response to this, and after a pause to make certain that the rooster had in fact called it a night, I closed the shutters and did the same.

The commotion had derailed any coherent train of thought. Instead of trying to start another, I decided to try turning inward, in the hopes that physical contemplation would relax me enough to sleep.

It worked. As I began to hover on the edge of sleep, my mind fixed somewhere around my pancreas, I could dimly hear the sounds of small Jamie pattering down the hall to his mother’s bedroom – roused from sleep by a full bladder, he seldom had the presence of mind to take the obvious step, and would frequently blunder down the stair from the nursery in search of assistance instead.

I had wondered, coming to Lallybroch, whether I might find it difficult to be near Jenny; if I would be envious of her easy fruitfulness. And I might have been, had I not seen that abundant motherhood had its price as well.

“There’s a pot right by your bed, clot-heid,” Jenny’s exasperated voice came outside my door as she steered small Jamie back to his bed. “Ye must have stepped in it on your way out; why can ye no get it through your heid to use that one? Why have ye got to come use mine, every night in creation?” Her voice faded as she turned up the stair, and I smiled, visualization moving down the sweeping curve of my intestines.

There was another reason I did not envy Jenny. I had at first feared that the birth of Faith had done me some internal damage, but that fear had disappeared with Raymond’s touch. As I completed the inventory of my body, and felt my spine go slack on the edge of sleep, I could feel that all was well there. It had happened once, it could happen again. All that was needed was time. And Jamie.

Jenny’s footsteps sounded on the boards of the hallway, quickening in response to a sleepy squawk from Maggie, at the far end of the house.

“Bairns are certain joy, but nay sma’ care,” I murmured to myself, and fell asleep.

Through the next day, we waited, doing our chores and going through the daily routine with one ear cocked for the sound of horses in the dooryard.

“They’ll have stayed to do some business,” Jenny said, outwardly confident. But I saw her pause every time she passed the window that overlooked the lane leading to the house.

As for me, I had a hard time controlling my imagination. The letter, signed by King George, confirming Jamie’s pardon, was locked in the drawer of the desk in the laird’s study. Jamie regarded it as a humiliation, and would have burned it, but I had insisted it be kept, just in case. Now, listening for sounds through the rush of winter wind, I kept having visions of it having all been a mistake, or a hoax of some kind – of Jamie once more arrested by red-coated dragoons, taken away again to the misery of prison, and the impending danger of the hangman’s noose.

The men returned at last just before nightfall, horses laden with bags containing the salt, needles, pickling spice, and other small items that Lallybroch could not produce for itself.

I heard one of the horses whinny as it came into the stableyard, and ran downstairs, meeting Jenny on her way out through the kitchens.

Relief swept through me as I saw Jamie’s tall figure, shadowed against the barn. I ran through the yard, disregarding the light covering of snow that lingered on the ground, and flung myself into his arms.

“Where the hell have you been?” I demanded.

He took time to kiss me before replying. His face was cold against mine, and his lips tasted faintly and pleasantly of whisky.

“Mm, sausage for supper?” he said approvingly, sniffing at my hair, which smelled of kitchen smoke. “Good, I’m fair starved.”

“Bangers and mash,” I said. “Where have you been?”

He laughed, shaking out his plaid to get the blown snow off. “Bangers and mash? That’s food, is it?”

“Sausages with mashed potatoes,” I translated. “A nice traditional English dish, hitherto unknown in the benighted reaches of Scotland. Now, you bloody Scot, where in hell have you been for the last two days? Jenny and I were worried!”

“Well, we had a wee accident-” Jamie began, when he spotted the small figure of Fergus, bearing a lantern. “Och, ye’ve brought a light, then, Fergus? Good lad. Set it there, where ye won’t set fire to the straw, and then take this poor beast into her stall. When ye’ve got her settled, come along to your own supper. You’ll be able to sit to it by now, I expect?” He aimed a friendly cuff at Fergus’s ear. The boy dodged and grinned back; apparently whatever had happened in the barn yesterday had left no hard feelings.

“Jamie,” I said, in measured tones. “If you don’t stop talking about horses and sausages and tell me what sort of accident you had, I am going to kick you in the shins. Which will be very hard on my toes, because I’m only wearing slippers, but I warn you, I’ll do it anyway.”

“That’s a threat, is it?” he said, laughing. “It wasna serious, Sassenach, only that-”

“Ian!” Jenny, delayed momentarily by Maggie, had just arrived, in time to see her husband step into the circle of lanternlight. Startled by the shock in her voice, I turned to see her dart forward and put a hand to Ian’s face.

“Whatever happened to ye, man?” she said. Plainly, whatever the accident had been, Ian had borne the brunt of it. One eye was blackened and swollen half-shut, and there was a long, raw scrape down the slope of one cheekbone.

“I’m all right, mi dhu,” he said, patting Jenny gently as she embraced him, little Maggie squeezed uncomfortably between them. “Only a bit bruised here and there.”

“We were comin’ down the slope of the hill two miles outside the village, leading the horses because the footing was bad, and Ian stepped in a molehole and broke his leg,” Jamie explained.

“The wooden one,” Ian amplified. He grinned, a little sheepishly. “The mole had a bit the best o’ that encounter.”

“So we stayed at a cottage nearby long enough to carve him a new one,” Jamie ended the story. “Can we eat? The sides of my belly are flapping together.”

We went in without further ado, and Mrs. Crook and I served the supper while Jenny bathed Ian’s face with witch hazel and made anxious inquiries about other injuries.

“It’s nothing,” he assured her. “Only bruises here and there.” I had watched him coming into the house, though, and seen that his normal limp was badly exaggerated. I had a few quiet words with Jenny as we cleared away the supper plates, and once we were settled in the parlor, the contents of the saddlebags safely disposed of, she knelt on the rug beside Ian and took hold of the new leg.

“Let’s have it off, then,” she said firmly. “You’ve hurt yourself, and I want Claire to look it over. She can maybe help ye more than I can.”

The original amputation had been done with some skill, and greater luck; the army surgeon who had taken the lower leg off had been able to save the knee joint. This gave Ian a great deal more flexibility of movement than he might otherwise have had. For the moment, though, the knee joint was more a liability than an advantage.

The fall had twisted his leg cruelly; the end of the stump was blue with bruising, and lacerated where the sharp edge of the cuff had pressed through the skin. It must have been agony to set any weight on it, even had all else been normal. As it was, the knee had twisted, too, and the flesh on the inside of the joint was swollen, red and hot.

Ian’s long, good-natured face was nearly as red as the injured joint. While perfectly matter-of-fact about his disability, I knew he hated the occasional helplessness it imposed. His embarrassment at being so exposed now was likely as painful to him as my touching of his leg.

“You’ve torn a ligament through here,” I told him, tracing the swelling inside his knee with a gentle finger. “I can’t tell how bad it is, but bad enough. You’ve got fluid inside the joint; that’s why it’s swollen.”

“Can ye help it, Sassenach?” Jamie was leaning over my shoulder, frowning worriedly at the angry-looking limb.

I shook my head. “Not a lot I can do for it, beyond cold compresses to reduce the swelling.” I looked up at Ian, fixing him with my best approximation of a Mother Hildegarde look.

“What you can do,” I said, “is stay in bed. You can have whisky for the pain tomorrow; tonight, I’ll give you laudanum so you can sleep. Keep off it for a week, at least, and we’ll see how it does.”

“I canna do that!” Ian protested. “There’s the stable wall needs mending, two dikes down in the upper field, and the ploughshares to be sharpened, and-”

“And a leg to mend, too,” said Jamie, firmly. He gave Ian what I privately called his “laird’s look,” a piercing blue glare that caused most people to leap to his bidding. Ian, who had shared meals, toys, hunting expeditions, fights, and thrashings with Jamie, was a good deal less susceptible than most people.

“The hell I will,” he said flatly. His hot brown eyes met Jamie’s with a look in which pain and anger mingled with resentment – and something else I didn’t recognize. “D’ye think ye can order me?”

Jamie sat back on his heels, flushing as though he’d been slapped. He bit back several obvious retorts, finally saying quietly, “No. I wilna try to order ye. May I ask ye, though – to care for yourself?”

A long look passed between the men, containing some message I couldn’t read. At last, Ian’s shoulders slumped as he relaxed, and he nodded, with a crooked smile.

“You can ask.” He sighed, and rubbed at the scrape on his cheekbone, wincing as he touched the abraded skin. He took a deep breath, steeling himself, then held out a hand to Jamie. “Help me up, then?”

It was an awkward job, getting a man with one leg up two flights of stairs, but it was managed at last. At the bedroom door, Jamie left Ian to Jenny. As he stepped back, Ian said something soft and quick to Jamie in Gaelic. I still was not proficient in the tongue, but I thought he had said, “Be well, brother.”

Jamie paused, looking back, and smiled, the candle lighting his eyes with warmth.

“You, too, mo brathair.”

I followed Jamie down the hall to our own room. I could tell from the slump of his shoulders that he was tired, but I had a few questions I wanted to ask before he fell asleep.

“It’s only bruises here and there,” Ian had said, reassuring Jenny. It was. Here and there. Besides the bruises on his face and leg, I had seen the darkened marks that lay half-hidden under the collar of his shirt. No matter how much Ian’s intrusion had been resented, I couldn’t imagine a mole trying to strangle him in retaliation.

In the event, Jamie didn’t want to sleep at once.

“Oh, absence makes the heart grow fonder, does it?” I said. The bed, so vast the night before, now seemed scarcely big enough.

“Mm?” he said, eyes half-closed in content. “Oh, the heart? Aye, that, too. Oh, God, don’t stop; that feels wonderful.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll do it some more,” I assured him. “Let me put out the candle, though.” I rose and blew it out; with the shutters left open, there was plenty of light reflected into the room from the snowy sky, even without the candle’s flame. I could see Jamie clearly, the long shape of his body relaxed beneath the quilts, hands curled half-open at his side. I crawled in beside him and took up his right hand, resuming my slow massage of his fingers and palm.

He gave a long sigh, almost a groan, as I rubbed a thumb in firm circles over the pads at the base of his fingers. Stiffened by hours of clenching around his horse’s reins, the fingers warmed and relaxed slowly under my touch. The house was quiet, and the room cold, outside the sanctuary of the bed. It was pleasant to feel the length of his body warming the space beside me, and enjoy the intimacy of touch, with no immediate feeling of demand. In time, this touch might token more; it was winter, and the nights were long. He was there; so was I, and content with things as they were for the moment.

“Jamie,” I said, after a time, “who hurt Ian?”

He didn’t open his eyes, but gave a long sigh before answering. He didn’t stiffen in resistance, though; he had been expecting the question.

“I did,” he said.

“What?” I dropped his hand in shock. He closed his fist and opened it, testing the movement of his fingers. Then he laid his left hand on the counter-pane beside it, showing me the knuckles, slightly puffed by contact with the protuberances of Ian’s bony countenance.

“Why?” I said, appalled. I could tell that there was something new and edgy between Jamie and Ian, though it didn’t look exactly like hostility. I couldn’t imagine what might have made Jamie strike Ian; his brother-in-law was nearly as close to him as was his sister, Jenny.

Jamie’s eyes were open now, but not looking at me. He rubbed his knuckles restlessly, looking down at them. Aside from the mild bruising of his knuckles, there were no marks on Jamie; apparently Ian hadn’t fought back.

“Well, Ian’s been married too long,” he said defensively.

“I’d say you’d been out in the sun too long,” I remarked, staring at him, “except that there isn’t any. Have you got a fever?”

“No,” he said, evading my attempts to feel his forehead. “No, it’s only – stop that, Sassenach, I’m all right.” He pressed his lips together, but then gave up and told me the whole story.

Ian had in fact broken his wooden leg by stepping into a molehole near Broch Mordha.

“It was near evening – we’d had a lot to do in the village – and snowing. And I could see Ian’s leg was paining him a lot, even though he kept insisting he could ride. Anyway, there were two or three cottages near, so I got him up on one of the ponies, and brought him up the slope to beg shelter for the night.”

With characteristic Highland hospitality, both shelter and supper were offered with alacrity, and after a warm bowl of brose and fresh oatcake, both visitors had been accommodated with a pallet before the fire.

“There was scarce room to lay a quilt by the hearth, and we were squeezed a bit, but we lay down side by side and made ourselves as comfortable as might be.” He drew a deep breath, and looked at me half-shyly.

“Well, I was worn out by the journey, and slept deep, and I suppose Ian did the same. But he’s slept every night wi’ Jenny for the last five years, and I suppose, havin’ a warm body next to him in the bed – well, somewhere in the night, he rolled toward me, put his arm about me and kissed me on the back o’ the neck. And I” – he hesitated, and I could see the deep color flood his face, even in the grayish light of the snow-lit room – “I woke from a sound sleep, thinking he was Jack Randall.”

I had been holding my breath through this story; now I let it out slowly.

“That must have been the hell of a shock,” I said.

One side of Jamie’s mouth twitched. “It was the hell of a shock to Ian, I’ll tell ye,” he said. “I rolled over and punched him in the face, and by the time I came all the way to myself, I was on top of him, throttling him, wi’ his tongue sticking out of his head. Hell of a shock to the Murrays in the bed, too,” he added reflectively. “I told them I’d had a nightmare – well, I had, in a way – but it caused the hell of a stramash, what wi’ the bairns shriekin’, and Ian choking in the corner, and Mrs. Murray sittin’ bolt upright in bed, sayin’ ‘Who, who?’ like a wee fat owl.”

I laughed despite myself at the image.

“Oh God, Jamie. Was Ian all right?”

Jamie shrugged a little. “Well, ye saw him. Everyone went back to sleep, after a time, and I just lay before the fire for the rest of the night, staring at the roof beams.” He didn’t resist as I picked up his left hand, gently stroking the bruised knuckles. His fingers closed over mine, holding them.

“So when we left the next morning,” he went on, “I waited ’til we’d come to a spot where ye can sit and look over the valley below. And then” – he swallowed, and his hand tightened slightly on mine – “I told him. About Randall. And everything that happened.”

I began to understand the ambiguity of the look Ian had given Jamie. And I now understood the look of strain on Jamie’s face, and the smudges under his eyes. Not knowing what to say, I just squeezed his hands.

“I hadna thought I’d ever tell anyone – anyone but you,” he added, returning the squeeze. He smiled briefly, then pulled one hand away to rub his face.

“But Ian… well, he’s…” He groped for the right word. “He knows me, d’ye see?”

“I think so. You’ve known him all your life, haven’t you?”

He nodded, looking sightlessly out the window. The swirling snow had begun to fall again, small flakes dancing against the pane, whiter than the sky.

“He’s only a year older than me. When I was growing, he was always there. Until I was fourteen, there wasna a day went by when I didna see Ian. And even later, after I’d gone to foster wi’ Dougal, and to Leoch, and then later still to Paris, to university – when I’d come back, I’d walk round a corner and there he would be, and it would be like I’d never left. He’d just smile when he saw me, like he always did, and then we’d be walkin’ away together, side by side, ower the fields and the streams, talkin’ of everything.” He sighed deeply, and rubbed a hand through his hair.

“Ian… he’s the part of me that belongs here, that never left,” he said, struggling to explain. “I thought… I must tell him; I didna want to feel… apart. From Ian. From here.” He gestured toward the window, then turned toward me, eyes dark in the dim light. “D’ye see why?”

“I think so,” I said again, softly. “Did Ian?”

He made that small, uncomfortable shrugging motion, as though easing a shirt too tight across his back. “Well, I couldna tell. At first, when I began to tell him, he just kept shaking his head, as though he couldna believe me, and then when he did-” He paused and licked his lips, and I had some idea of just how much that confession in the snow had cost him. “I could see he wanted to jump to his feet and stamp back and forth, but he couldn’t, because of his leg. His fists were knotted up, and his face was white, and he kept saying ‘How? Damn ye, Jamie, how could ye let him do it?’ ”

He shook his head. “I dinna remember what I said. Or what he said. We shouted at each other, I know that much. And I wanted to hit him, but I couldn’t, because of his leg. And he wanted to hit me, but couldn’t – because of his leg.” He gave a brief snort of laughter. “Christ, we must ha’ looked a rare pair of fools, wavin’ our arms and shouting at each other. But I shouted longer, and finally he shut up and listened to the end of it.

“Then all of a sudden, I couldna go on talking; it just seemed like no use. And I sat down all at once on a rock, and put my head in my hands. Then after a time, Ian said we’d best be going on. And I nodded, and got up, and helped him on his horse, and we started off again, not speakin’ to each other.”

Jamie seemed suddenly to realize how tightly he was holding my hand. He released his grip, but continued to hold my hand, turning my wedding ring between his thumb and forefinger.

“We rode for a long time,” he said softly. “And then I heard a small sound behind me, and reined up so Ian’s horse came alongside, and I could see he’d been weeping – still was, wi’ the tears streaming down his face. And he saw me look at him, and shook his head hard, as if he was still angry, but then he held out his hand to me. I took it, and he gave me a squeeze, hard enough to break the bones. Then he let go, and we came on home.”

I could feel the tension go out of him, with the ending of the story. “Be well, brother,” Ian had said, balanced on his one leg in the bedroom door.

“It’s all right, then?” I asked.

“It will be.” He relaxed completely now, sinking back into the goose-down pillows. I slid down under the quilts beside him, and lay close, fitted against his side. We watched the snow fall, hissing softly against the glass.

“I’m glad you’re safe home,” I said.

I woke to the same gray light in the morning. Jamie, already dressed for the day, was standing by the window.

“Oh, you’re awake, Sassenach?” he said, seeing me lift my head from the pillow. “That’s good. I brought ye a present.”

He reached into his sporran and pulled out several copper doits, two or three small rocks, a short stick wrapped with fishline, a crumpled letter, and a tangle of hair ribbons.

“Hair ribbons?” I said. “Thank you; they’re lovely.”

“No, those aren’t for you,” he said, frowning as he disentanged the blue strands from the mole’s foot he carried as a charm against rheumatism. “They’re for wee Maggie.” He squinted dubiously at the rocks remaining in his palm. To my astonishment, he picked one up and licked it.

“No, not that one,” he muttered, and dived back into his sporran.

“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” I inquired with interest, watching this performance. He didn’t answer, but came out with another handful of rocks, which he sniffed at, discarding them one by one until he came to a nodule that struck his fancy. This one he licked once, for certainty, then dropped it into my hand, beaming.

“Amber,” he said, with satisfaction, as I turned the irregular lump over with a forefinger. It seemed warm to the touch, and I closed my hand over it, almost unconsciously.

“It needs polishing, of course,” he explained. “But I thought it would make ye a bonny necklace.” He flushed slightly, watching me. “It’s… it’s a gift for our first year of marriage. When I saw it, I was minded of the bit of amber Hugh Munro gave ye, when we wed.”

“I still have that,” I said softly, caressing the odd little lump of petrified tree sap. Hugh’s chunk of amber, one side sheared off and polished into a small window, had a dragonfly embedded in the matrix, suspended in eternal flight. I kept it in my medicine box, the most powerful of my charms.

A gift for our first anniversary. We had married in June, of course, not in December. But on the date of our first anniversary, Jamie had been in the Bastille, and I… I had been in the arms of the King of France. No time for a celebration of wedded bliss, that.

“It’s nearly Hogmanay,” Jamie said, looking out the window at the soft snowfall that blanketed the fields of Lallybroch. “It seems a good time for beginnings, I thought.”

“I think so, too.” I got out of bed and came to him at the window, putting my arms around his waist. We stayed locked together, not speaking, until my eye suddenly fell on the other small, yellowish lumps that Jamie had removed from his sporran.

“What on earth are those things, Jamie?” I asked, letting go of him long enough to point.

“Och, those? They’re honey balls, Sassenach.” He picked up one of the objects, dusting at it with his fingers. “Mrs. Gibson in the village gave them to me. Verra good, though they got a bit dusty in my sporran, I’m afraid.” He held out his open hand to me, smiling. “Want one?”

34 THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE

I didn’t know what – or how much – Ian had told Jenny of his conversation in the snow with Jamie. She behaved toward her brother just as always, matter-of-fact and acerbic, with a slight touch of affectionate teasing. I had known her long enough, though, to realize that one of Jenny’s greatest gifts was her ability to see something with utter clarity – and then to look straight through it, as though it wasn’t there.

The dynamics of feeling and behavior shifted among the four of us during the months, and settled into a pattern of solid strength, based on friendship and founded in work. Mutual respect and trust were simply a necessity; there was so much to be done.

As Jenny’s pregnancy progressed, I took on more and more of the domestic duties, and she deferred to me more often. I would never try to usurp her place; she had been the axis of the household since the death of her mother, and it was to her that the servants or tenants most frequently came. Still, they grew used to me, treating me with a friendly respect which bordered sometimes on acceptance, and sometimes on awe.

The spring was marked first by the planting of an enormous crop of potatoes; over half the available land was given to the new crop – a decision justified within weeks by a hailstorm that flattened the new-sprung barley. The potato vines, creeping low and stolid over the ground, survived.

The second event of the spring was the birth of a second daughter, Katherine Mary, to Jenny and Ian. She arrived with a suddenness that startled everyone, including Jenny. One day Jenny complained of an aching back and went to lie down. Very shortly it became clear what was really happening, and Jamie went posthaste for Mrs. Martins, the midwife. The two of them arrived back just in time to share in a celebratory glass of wine as the thin, high squalls of the new arrival echoed through the halls of the house.

And so the year burgeoned and greened, and I bloomed, the last of my hurts healing in the heart of love and work.

Letters arrived irregularly; sometimes there would be mail once a week, sometimes nothing would come for a month or more. Considering the lengths to which messengers had to go to deliver mail in the Highlands, I thought it incredible that anything ever arrived.

Today, though, there was a large packet of letters and books, wrapped against the weather in a sheet of oiled parchment, tied with twine. Sending the postal messenger to the kitchen for refreshment, Jenny untied the string carefully and thriftily stowed it in her pocket. She thumbed through the small pile of letters, putting aside for the moment an enticing-looking package addressed from Paris.

“A letter for Ian – that’ll be the bill for the seed, I expect, and one from Auntie Jocasta – oh, good, we’ve not heard from her in months, I thought she might be ill, but I see her hand is firm on the pen-”

A letter addressed with bold black strokes fell onto Jenny’s pile, followed by a note from one of Jocasta’s married daughters. Then another for Ian from Edinburgh, one for Jamie from Jared – I recognized the spidery, half-legible writing – and another, a thick, creamy sheet, sealed with the Royal crest of the House of Stuart. Another of Charles’s complaints about the rigors of life in Paris, and the pains of intermittently requited love, I imagined. At least this one looked short; usually he went on for several pages, unburdening his soul to “cher James,” in a misspelled quadrilingual patois that at least made it clear he sought no secretarial help for his personal letters.

“Ooh, three French novels and a book of poetry from Paris!” Jenny said in excitement, opening the paper-wrapped package. “C’est un embarras de richesse, hm? Which shall we read tonight?” She lifted the small stack of books from their wrappings, stroking the soft leather cover of the top one with a forefinger that trembled with delight. Jenny loved books with the same passion her brother reserved for horses. The manor boasted a small library, in fact, and if the evening leisure between work and bed was short, still it usually included at least a few minutes’ reading.

“It gives ye something to think on as ye go about your work,” Jenny explained, when I found her one night swaying with weariness, and urged her to go to bed, rather than stay up to read aloud to Ian, Jamie, and myself. She yawned, fist to her mouth. “Even if I’m sae tired I hardly see the words on the page, they’ll come back to me next day, churning or spinning or waulkin’ wool, and I can turn them over in my mind.”

I hid a smile at the mention of wool waulking. Alone among the Highland farms, I was sure, the women of Lallybroch waulked their wool not only to the old traditional chants but also to the rhythms of Molière and Piron.

I had a sudden memory of the waulking shed, where the women sat in two facing rows, barefooted and bare-armed in their oldest clothes, bracing themselves against the walls as they thrust with their feet against the long, sodden worm of woolen cloth, battering it into the tight, felted weave that would repel Highland mists and even light rain, keeping the wearer safe from the chill.

Every so often one woman would rise and go outside, to fetch the kettle of steaming urine from the fire. Skirts kilted high, she would walk spraddle-legged down the center of the shed, drenching the cloth between her legs, and the hot fumes rose fresh and suffocating from the soaking wool, while the waulkers pulled back their feet from random splashes, and made crude jokes.

“Hot piss sets the dye fast,” one of the women had explained to me as I blinked, eyes watering, on my first entrance to the shed. The other women had watched at first, to see if I would shrink back from the work, but wool-waulking was no great shock, after the things I had seen and done in France, both in the war of 1944 and the hospital of 1744. Time makes very little difference to the basic realities of life. And smell aside, the waulking shed was a warm, cozy place, where the women of Lallybroch visited and joked between bolts of cloth, and sang together in the working, hands moving rhythmically across a table, or bare feet sinking deep into the steaming fabric as we sat on the floor, thrusting against a partner thrusting back.

I was pulled back from my memories of wool-waulking by the noise of heavy boots in the hallway, and a gust of cool, rainy air as the door opened. Jamie, and Ian with him, talking together in Gaelic, in the comfortable, unemphatic manner that meant they were discussing farm matters.

“That field’s going to need draining next year,” Jamie was saying as he came past the door. Jenny, seeing them, had put down the mail and gone to fetch fresh linen towels from the chest in the hallway.

“Dry yourselves before ye come drip on the rug,” she ordered, handing one to each of the men. “And tak’ off your filthy boots, too. The post’s come, Ian – there’s a letter for ye from that man in Perth, the one ye wrote to about the seed potatoes.”

“Oh, aye? I’ll come read it, then, but is there aught to eat while I do it?” Ian asked, rubbing his wet head with the towel until the thick brown hair stood up in spikes. “I’m famished, and I can hear Jamie’s belly garbeling from here.”

Jamie shook himself like a wet dog, making his sister emit a small screech as the cold drops flew about the hall. His shirt was pasted to his shoulders and loose strands of rain-soaked hair hung in his eyes, the color of rusted iron.

I draped a towel around his neck. “Finish drying off, and I’ll go fetch you something.”

I was in the kitchen when I heard him cry out. I had never heard such a sound from him before. Shock and horror were in it, and something else – a note of finality, like the cry of a man who finds himself seized in a tiger’s jaws. I was down the hall and running for the drawing room without conscious thought, a tray of oatcakes still clutched in my hands.

When I burst through the door, I saw him standing by the table where Jenny had laid the mail. His face was dead white, and he swayed slightly where he stood, like a tree cut through, waiting for someone to shout “Timber” before falling.

“What?” I said, scared to death by the look on his face. “Jamie, what? What is it?!”

With a visible effort, he picked up one of the letters on the table and handed it to me.

I set down the oatcakes and took the sheet of paper, scanning it rapidly. It was from Jared; I recognized the thin, scrawly handwriting at once. “ ‘Dear Nephew,’ ” I read to myself, “ ‘…so pleased… words cannot express my admiration… your boldness and courage will be an inspiration… cannot fail of success… my prayers shall be with you…’ ” I looked up from the paper, bewildered. “What on earth is he talking about? What have you done, Jamie?”

The skin was stretched tight across the bones of his face, and he grinned, mirthless as a death’s-head, as he picked up another sheet of paper, this one a cheaply printed handbill.

“It’s not what I’ve done, Sassenach,” he said. The broadsheet was headed by the crest of the Royal House of Stuart. The message beneath was brief, couched in stately language.

It stated that by the ordination of Almighty God, King James, VIII of Scotland and III of England and Ireland asserted herewith his just rights to claim the throne of three kingdoms. And herewith acknowledged the support of these divine rights by the chieftains of the Highland clans, the Jacobite lords, and “various other such loyal subjects of His Majesty, King James, as have subscribed their names upon this Bill of Association in token thereof.”

My fingers grew icy as I read, and I was conscious of a feeling of terror so acute that it was a real effort to keep on breathing. My ears rang with pounding blood, and there were dark spots before my eyes.

At the bottom of the sheet were signed the names of the Scottish chieftains who had declared their loyalty to the world, and staked their lives and reputations on the success of Charles Stuart. Clanranald was there, and Glengarry. Stewart of Appin, Alexander MacDonald of Keppoch, Angus MacDonald of Scotus.

And at the bottom of the list was written, “James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser, of Broch Tuarach.”

“Jesus bloody fucking Christ,” I whispered, wishing there were something stronger I could say, as a form of relief. “The filthy bastard’s signed your name to it!”

Jamie, still pale and tight-faced, was beginning to recover.

“Aye, he has,” he said briefly. His hand snaked out for the unopened letter remaining on the table – a heavy vellum, with the Stuart crest showing plainly in the wax seal. Jamie ripped the letter open impatiently, tearing the paper. He read it quickly, then dropped it on the table as though it burned his hands.

“An apology,” he said hoarsely. “For lacking the time to send me the document, in order that I might sign it myself. And his gratitude, for my loyal support. Jesus, Claire! What am I going to do?”

It was a cry from the heart, and one to which I had no answer. I watched helplessly as he sank onto a hassock and sat staring, rigid, at the fire.

Jenny, transfixed by all this drama, moved now to take up the letters and the broadsheet. She read them over carefully, her lips moving slightly as she did so, then set them gently down on the polished tabletop. She looked at them, frowning, then crossed to her brother, and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Jamie,” she said. Her face was very pale. “There’s only the one thing ye can do, my dearie. Ye must go and fight for Charles Stuart. Ye must help him win.”

The truth of her words penetrated slowly through the layers of shock that wrapped me. The publication of this Bond of Association branded those who signed it as rebels, and as traitors to the English crown. It didn’t matter now how Charles had managed, or where he had gotten the funds to begin; he was well and truly launched on the seas of rebellion, and Jamie – and I – were launched with him, willy-nilly. There was, as Jenny had said, no choice.

My eye caught Charles’s letter, where it had fallen from Jamie’s hand. “…Though there be manie who tell me I am foolish to embark in this werk without the support of Louis – or at least of his bankes! – I will entertain no notion at all of returning to that place from whence I come,” it read. “Rejoice with me, my deare frend, for I am come Home.”

35 MOONLIGHT

As the preparations for leaving went forward, a current of excitement and speculation ran all through the estate. Weapons hoarded since the Rising of the ’15 were excavated from thatch and hayrick and hearth, burnished and sharpened. Men met in passing and paused to talk in earnest groups, heads together under the hot August sun. And the women grew quiet, watching them.

Jenny shared with her brother the capacity to be opaque, to give no clue of what she was thinking. Transparent as a pane of glass myself, I rather envied this ability. So, when she asked me one morning if I would fetch Jamie to her in the brewhouse, I had no notion of what she might want with him.

Jamie stepped in behind me and stood just within the door of the brewhouse, waiting as his eyes adjusted to the dimness. He took a deep breath, inhaling the bitter, damp pungency with evident enjoyment.

“Ahh,” he said, sighing dreamily. “I could get drunk in here just by breathing.”

“Weel, hold your breath, then, for a moment, for I need ye sober,” his sister advised.

He obligingly inflated his lungs and puffed out his cheeks, waiting. Jenny poked him briskly in the stomach with the handle of her masher, making him double over in an explosion of breath.

“Clown,” she said, without rancor. “I wanted to talk to ye about Ian.”

Jamie took an empty bucket from the shelf, and upturning it, sat down on it. A faint glow from the oiled-paper window above him lit his hair with a deep copper gleam.

“What about Ian?” he asked.

Now it was Jenny’s turn to take a deep breath. The wide bran tub before her gave off a damp warmth of fermentation, filled with the yeasty aroma of grain, hops, and alcohol.

“I want ye to take Ian with you, when ye go.”

Jamie’s eyebrows flew up, but he didn’t say anything immediately. Jenny’s eyes were fixed on the motions of the masher, watching the smooth roil of the mixture. He looked at her thoughtfully, big hands hanging loose between his thighs.

“Tired of marriage, are ye?” he asked conversationally. “Likely it would be easier just for me to take him out in the wood and shoot him for ye.” There was a quick flash of blue eyes over the mash tub.

“If I want anyone shot, Jamie Fraser, I’ll do it myself. And Ian wouldna be my first choice as target, either.”

He snorted briefly, and one corner of his mouth quirked up.

“Oh, aye? Why, then?”

Her shoulders moved in a seamless rhythm, one motion fading into the next.

“Because I’m asking ye.”

Jamie spread his right hand out on his knee, absently stroking the jagged scar that zigzagged its way down his middle finger.

“It’s dangerous, Jenny,” he said quietly.

“I know that.”

He shook his head slowly, still gazing down at his hand. It had healed well, and he had good use of it, but the stiff fourth finger and the roughened patch of scar tissue on the back gave it an odd, crooked appearance.

“You think ye know.”

“I know, Jamie.”

His head came up, then. He looked impatient, but was striving to stay reasonable.

“Aye, I know Ian will ha’ told ye stories, about fighting in France, and all. But you’ve no notion how it really is, Jenny. Mo cridh, it isna a matter of a cattle raid. It’s a war, and likely to be a damn bloody shambles of one, too. It’s-”

The masher struck the side of the tub with a clack and fell back into the mash.

“Don’t tell me I dinna ken what it’s like!” Jenny blazed at him. “Stories, is it? Who d’ye think nursed Ian when he came home from France wi’ half a leg and a fever that nearly killed him?”

She slapped her hand flat on the bench. The stretched nerves had snapped.

“Don’t know? I don’t know? I picked the maggots out of the raw flesh of his stump, because his own mother couldna bring herself to do it! I held the hot knife against his leg to seal the wound! I smelled his flesh searing like a roasted pig and listened to him scream while I did it! D’ye dare to stand there and tell me I… don’t… KNOW how it is!”

Angry tears ran down her cheeks. She brushed at them, groping in her pocket for a handkerchief.

Lips pressed tight together, Jamie rose, pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve, and handed it to her. He knew better than to touch or try to comfort her. He stood staring at her for a moment as she wiped furiously at her eyes and dripping nose.

“Aye, well, ye know, then,” he said. “And yet you want me to take him?”

“I do.” She blew her nose and wiped it briskly, then tucked the handkerchief in her pocket.

“He kens well enough that he’s crippled, Jamie. Kens it a good bit too well. But he could manage with ye. There’s a horse for him; he wouldna have to walk.”

He made an impatient gesture with one hand.

“Could he manage is no the question, is it? A man can do what he thinks he must – why do you think he must?”

Composed once more, she fished the tool out of the mash and shook it. Brown droplets spattered into the tub.

“He hasna asked ye, has he? Whether ye’ll need him or no?”

“No.”

She stabbed the masher back into the tub and resumed her work.

“He thinks ye wilna want him because he’s lame, and that he’d be no use to ye.” She looked up then, troubled dark-blue eyes the twins of her brother’s. “Ye knew Ian before, Jamie. He’s different now.”

He nodded reluctantly, resuming his seat on the bucket.

“Aye. Well, but ye’d expect it, no? And he seems well enough.” He looked up at his sister and smiled.

“He’s happy wi’ ye, Jenny. You and the bairns.”

She nodded, black curls bobbing.

“Aye, he is,” she said softly. “But that’s because he’s a whole man to me, and always will be.” She looked directly at her brother. “But if he thinks he’s of no use to you, he wilna be whole to himself. And that’s why I’ll have ye take him.”

Jamie laced his hands together, elbows braced on his knees, and rested his chin on his linked knuckles.

“This wilna be like France,” he said quietly. “Fighting there, ye risk no more than your life in battle. Here…” He hesitated, then went on. “Jenny, this is treason. If it goes wrong, those that follow the Stuarts are like to end on a scaffold.”

Her normally pale complexion went a shade whiter, but her motions didn’t slow.

“There’s nay choice for me,” he went on, eyes steady on her. “But will ye risk us both? Will ye have Ian look down from the gallows on the fire waiting for his entrails? You’ll chance raising your bairns wi’out their father – to save his pride?” His face was nearly as pale as hers, glimmering in the darkness of the brewhouse.

The strokes of the masher were slower now, without the fierce velocity of her earlier movements, but her voice held all the conviction of her slow, inexorable mashing.

“I’ll have a whole man,” she said steadily. “Or none.”

Jamie sat without moving for a long moment, watching his sister’s dark head bent over her work.

“All right,” he said at last, quietly. She didn’t look up or vary her movements, but the white kertch seemed to incline slightly toward him.

He sighed explosively, then rose and turned abruptly to me.

“Come on out of here, Sassenach,” he said. “Christ, I must be drunk.”

“What makes ye think you can order me about?” The vein in Ian’s temple throbbed fiercely. Jenny’s hand squeezed mine tighter.

Jamie’s assertion that Ian would accompany him to join the Stuart army had been met first with incredulity, then with suspicion, and – as Jamie persisted – anger.

“You’re a fool,” Ian declared flatly. “I’m a cripple, and ye ken it well enough.”

“I ken you’re a bonny fighter, and there’s none I’d rather have by my side in a battle,” Jamie said firmly. His face gave no sign of doubts or hesitation; he had agreed to Jenny’s request, and would carry it out, no matter what. “You’ve fought there often enough; will ye desert me now?”

Ian waved an impatient hand, dismissing this flattery. “That’s as may be. If my leg comes off or gives way, there’s precious little fighting I’ll do – I’ll be lyin’ on the ground like a worm, waiting for the first Redcoat who comes by to spit me. And beyond that” – he scowled at his brother-in-law – “who d’ye think will mind this place for ye until you come back, and I’m off to the wars with ye?”

“Jenny,” Jamie replied promptly. “I shall leave enough men behind that they can be seeing to the work; she can manage the accounts well enough.”

Ian’s brows shot up, and he said something very rude in Gaelic.

“Pog ma mahon! You’ll ha’ me leave her to run the place alone, wi’ three small bairns at her apron, and but half the men needed? Man, ye’ve taken leave o’ your senses!” Flinging up both hands, Ian swung around to the sideboard where the whisky was kept.

Jenny, seated next to me on the sofa with Katherine on her lap, made a small sound under her breath. Her hand sought mine under cover of our mingled skirts, and I squeezed her fingers.

“What makes ye think ye can order me about?”

Jamie eyed his brother-in-law’s tense back for a moment, scowling. Suddenly, a muscle at the corner of his mouth twitched.

“Because I’m bigger than you are,” he said belligerently, still scowling.

Ian rounded on him, incredulity stamped on his face. Indecision played in his eyes for less than a second. His shoulders squared up and his chin lifted.

“I’m older than you,” he answered, with an identical scowl.

“I’m stronger.”

“No, you’re not!”

“Aye, I am!”

“No, I am!”

A vein of dead seriousness underlay the laughter in their voices; while this little confrontation might be passed off as all in fun, they were as intent on each other as they had ever been in youth or childhood, and the echoes of challenge rang in Jamie’s voice as he ripped loose his cuff and jerked back the sleeve of his shirt.

“Prove it,” he said. He cleared the chess table with a careless sweep of the hand, sat down and braced his elbow on the inlaid surface, fingers flexed for an offensive. Deep blue eyes glared up into Ian’s dark-brown ones, hot with the same anger.

Ian took half a second to appraise the situation, then jerked his head in a brief nod of acceptance, making his heavy sheaf of dark hair flop into his eyes.

With calm deliberation, he brushed it back, unfastened his cuff, and rolled his sleeve to the shoulder, turn by turn, never taking his eyes from his brother-in-law.

From where I stood, I could see Ian’s face, a little flushed under his tan, long, narrow chin set in determination. I couldn’t see Jamie’s face, but the determination was eloquently expressed by the line of back and shoulders.

The two men set their elbows carefully, maneuvering to find a good spot, rubbing back and forth with the point of the elbow to be sure the surface was not slippery.

With due ritual, Jamie spread his fingers, palm toward Ian. Ian carefully placed his own palm against it. The fingers matched, touching for a moment in a mirror image, then shifted, one to the right and one to the left, linked and clasping.

“Ready?” Jamie asked.

“Ready.” Ian’s voice was calm, but his eyes gleamed under the feathery brows.

The muscles tensed at once, all along the length of the two arms, springing into sharp definition as they shifted in their seats, seeking leverage.

Jenny caught my eye and rolled her eyes heavenward. Whatever she had been expecting of Jamie, it wasn’t this.

Both men were focused on the straining knot of fingers, to the exclusion of everything else. Both faces were deep red with exertion, sweat damping the hair on their temples, eyes bulging slightly with effort. Suddenly I saw Jamie’s gaze break from its concentration on the clenched fists as he saw Ian’s lips clamp tighter. Ian felt the shift, looked up, met Jamie’s eyes… and the two men burst into laughter.

The hands clung for a moment longer, locked in spasm, then fell apart.

“A draw, then,” said Jamie, pushing back a strand of sweat-damp hair. He shook his head good-naturedly at Ian.

“All right, man. If I could order ye, I wouldna do it. But I can ask, no? Will ye come with me?”

Ian dabbed at the side of his neck, where a runnel of sweat dampened his collar. His gaze roamed about the room, resting for a moment on Jenny. Her face was no paler than usual, but I could see the hasty pulse, beating just below the angle of her jaw. Ian stared at her intently as he rolled his sleeve down again, in careful turns. I could see a deep pink flush begin to rise from the neck of her gown.

Ian rubbed his jaw as though thinking, then turned toward Jamie and shook his head.

“No, my jo,” he said softly. “Ye need me here, and here I shall stay.” His eyes rested on Jenny, with Katherine held against her shoulder, and on small Maggie, clutching her mother’s skirt with grubby hands. And on me. Ian’s long mouth curled in a slight smile. “I shall stay here,” he repeated. “Guardin’ your weak side, man.”

“Jamie?”

“Aye?” The answer came at once; I knew he hadn’t been asleep, though he lay still as a figure carved on a tomb. It was moon-bright in the room, and I could see his face when I rose on my elbow; he was staring upward, as though he could see beyond the heavy beams to the open night and the stars beyond.

“You aren’t going to try to leave me behind, are you?” I wouldn’t have thought of asking were it not for the scene with Ian, earlier in the evening. For once it was settled that Ian would stay, Jamie had sat down with him to issue orders – choosing who would march with the laird to the aid of the Prince, who would stay behind to tend to animals and pasture and the maintenance of Lallybroch.

I knew it had been a wrenching process of decision, though he gave no sign of it, calmly discussing with Ian whether Ross the smith could be spared to go and deciding that he could, though the ploughshares needed for the spring must all be in good repair before leaving. Whether Joseph Fraser Kirby might go, and deciding that he should not, as he was the main support not only of his own family but that of his widowed sister. Brendan was the oldest boy of both families, and at nine, ill-prepared to replace his father, should Joseph not come home.

It was a matter for the most delicate planning. How many men should go, to have some impact on the course of the war? For Jenny was right, Jamie had no choice now – no choice but to help Charles Stuart win. And to that end, as many men and arms as could possibly be summoned should be thrown into the cause.

But on the other side was me, and my deadly knowledge – and lack of it. We had succeeded in preventing Charles Stuart from getting money to finance his rebellion; and still the Bonnie Prince, reckless, feckless, and determined to claim his legacy, had landed to rally the clans at Glenfinnan. From a further letter from Jared, we had learned that Charles had crossed the Channel with two small frigates, provided by one Antoine Walsh, a sometime-slaver with an eye for opportunity. Apparently, he saw Charles’s venture as less risky than a slaving expedition, a gamble in which he might or might not be justified. One frigate had been waylaid by the English; the other had landed Charles safe on the isle of Eriskay.

Charles had landed with only seven companions, including the owner of a small bank named Aeneas MacDonald. Unable to finance an entire expedition, MacDonald had provided the funds for a small stock of broadswords, which constituted Charles’s entire armament. Jared sounded simultaneously admiring and horrified by the recklessness of the venture, but, loyal Jacobite that he was, did his best to swallow his misgivings.

And so far, Charles had succeeded. From the Highland grapevine, we learned that he had landed at Eriskay, crossed to Glenfinnan, and there waited, accompanied only by several large casks of brandywine, to see whether the clans would answer the call to his standard. And after what must have been several nerve-racking hours, three hundred men of clan Cameron had come down the defiles of the steep green hills, led not by their chieftain, who was away from his home – but by his sister, Jenny Cameron.

The Camerons had been the first, but they had been joined by others, as the Bill of Association showed.

If Charles should now proceed to disaster, despite all efforts, then how many men of Lallybroch could be spared, left at home to save something from the wreck?

Ian himself would be safe; that much was sure, and some balm to Jamie’s spirit. But the others – the sixty families who lived on Lallybroch? Choosing who would go and who would stay must seem in some lights like choosing men for sacrifice. I had seen commanders before; the men whom war forced to make such choices – and I knew what it cost them.

Jamie had done it – he had no choice – but on two matters he had held firm; no women would accompany his troop, and no lads under eighteen years of age would go. Ian had looked mildly surprised at this – while most women with young children would normally stay behind, it was far from unusual for Highland wives to follow their men to battle, cooking and caring for them, and sharing the army’s rations. And the lads, who considered themselves men at fourteen, would be grossly humiliated at being omitted from the tally. But Jamie had given his orders in a tone that brooked no argument, and Ian, after a moment’s hesitation, had merely nodded and written them down.

I hadn’t wanted to ask him, in the presence of Ian and Jenny, whether his ban on womenfolk was intended to include me. Because, whether it was or not, I was going with him, and that, I thought, was bloody all about it.

“Leave you behind?” he said now, and I saw his mouth curl into a sideways grin. “D’ye think I’d stand a chance of it?”

“No,” I said, snuggling next to him in sudden relief. “You wouldn’t. But I thought you might think about it.”

He gave a small snort, and drew me down, head on his shoulder. “Oh, aye. And if I thought I could leave ye, I’d chain ye to the banister; not much else would stop ye.” I could feel his head shake above me, in negation. “No. I must take ye wi’ me, Sassenach, whether I will or no. There are things you’ll maybe know along the way – even if they dinna seem like anything now, they may later. And you’re a rare fine healer, Sassenach – I canna deny the men your skill, and it be needed.”

His hand patted my shoulder, and he sighed. “I would give anything, mo duinne, could I leave ye here safe, but I cannot. So you will go with me – you and Fergus.”

“Fergus?” I was surprised by this. “But I thought you wouldn’t take any of the younger lads!”

He sighed again, and I put my hand flat on the center of his chest, where his heart beat beneath the small hollow, slow and steady.

“Well, Fergus is a bit different. The other lads – I willna take them, because they belong here; if it all goes to smash, they’ll be left to keep their families from starving, to work the fields and tend beasts. They’ll likely need to grow up fast, if it happens, but at least they’ll be here to do it. But Fergus… this isna his place, Sassenach. Nor is France, or I would send him back. But he has no place there, either.”

“His place is with you,” I said softly, understanding. “Like mine.”

He was silent for a long time, then his hand squeezed me gently.

“Aye, that’s so,” he said quietly. “Sleep now, mo duinne, it’s late.”

The fretful wail pulled me toward the surface of wakefulness for the third time. Baby Katherine was teething, and didn’t care who knew it. From their room down the hall, I heard Ian’s sleepy mumble, and Jenny’s higher voice, resigned, as she got out of bed and went to soothe the infant.

Then I heard the soft, heavy footfalls in the corridor, and realized that Jamie, still wakeful, was walking barefoot through the house.

“Jenny?” His voice, low-pitched to avoid disturbance, was still plainly audible in the creaking silence of the manor house,

“I heard the wee lassie greetin’,” he said. “If she canna sleep, neither can I, but you can. If she’s fed and dry, perhaps we can bear each other company for a bit, while you go back to your bed.”

Jenny smothered a yawn, and I could hear the smile in her voice.

“Jamie dear, you’re a mother’s blessing. Aye, she’s full as a drum, and a dry clout on her this minute. Take her, and I wish ye joy of each other.” A door closed, and I heard the heavy footfall again, heading back toward our room, and the low murmur of Jamie’s voice as he muttered soothingly to the baby.

I snuggled deeper into the comfort of the goose-down bed and turned toward sleep again, hearing with half an ear the baby’s whining, interspersed with hiccuping sobs, and Jamie’s deep, tuneless humming, the sound as comforting as the thought of beehives in the sun.

“Eh, wee Kitty, ciamar a tha thu? Much, mo naoidheachan, much.”

The sound of them went up and down the passage, and I dropped further toward sleep, but kept half-wakeful on purpose to hear them. One day perhaps he would hold his own child so, small round head cradled in the big hands, small solid body cupped and held firm against his shoulder. And thus he would sing to his own daughter, a tuneless song, a warm, soft chant in the dark.

The constant small ache in my heart was submerged in a flood of tenderness. I had conceived once; I could do so again. Faith had given me the gift of that knowledge, Jamie the courage and means to use it. My hands rested lightly on my breasts, cupping the deep swell of them, knowing beyond doubt that one day they would nourish the child of my heart. I drifted into sleep with the sound of Jamie’s singing in my ears.

Sometime later I drifted near the surface again, and opened my eyes to the light-filled room. The moon had risen, full and beaming, and all the objects in the room were plainly visible, in that flat, two-dimensional way of things seen without shadow.

The baby had quieted, but I could hear Jamie’s voice in the hall, still speaking, but much more quietly, hardly more than a murmur. And the tone of it had changed; it wasn’t the rhythmic, half-nonsense way one talks to babies, but the broken, halting speech of a man seeking the way through the wilderness of his own heart.

Curious, I slipped out of bed and crept quietly to the door. I could see them there at the end of the hall. Jamie sat leaning back against the side of the window seat, wearing only his shirt. His bare legs were raised, forming a back against which small Katherine Mary rested as she sat facing him in his lap, her own chubby legs kicking restlessly over his stomach.

The baby’s face was blank and light as the moon’s, her eyes dark pools absorbing his words. He traced the curve of her cheek with one finger, again and again, whispering with heartbreaking gentleness.

He spoke in Gaelic, and so low that I could not have told what he said, even had I known the words. But the whispering voice was thick, and the moonlight from the casement behind him showed the tracks of the tears that slid unregarded down his own cheeks.

It was not a scene that bore intrusion. I came back to the still-warm bed, holding in my mind the picture of the laird of Lallybroch, half-naked in the moonlight, pouring out his heart to an unknown future, holding in his lap the promise of his blood.

When I woke in the morning, there was a warm, unfamiliar scent next to me, and something tangled in my hair. I opened my eyes to find Katherine Mary’s rosebud lips smacking dreamily an inch from my nose, her fat fingers clutched in the hair above my left ear. I cautiously disengaged myself, and she stirred, but flopped over onto her stomach, drew her knees up and went back to sleep.

Jamie was lying on the other side of the child, face half-buried in his pillow. He opened one eye, clear blue as the morning sky.

“Good morning, Sassenach,” he said, speaking quietly so as not to disturb the small sleeper. He smiled at me as I sat up in bed. “Ye looked verra sweet, the two of you, asleep face-to-face like that.”

I ran a hand through my tangled hair, and smiled myself at Kitty’s upturned bottom, jutting absurdly into the air.

“That doesn’t look at all comfortable,” I observed. “But she’s still asleep, so it can’t be that bad. How late were you up with her last night? I didn’t hear you come to bed.”

He yawned and ran a hand through his hair, smoothing it away from his face. There were shadows under his eyes, but he seemed peacefully content.

“Oh, some time. Before moonset, at least. I didna want to wake Jenny by taking the wean back to her, so I laid her in the bed between us, and she didna twitch once, the rest of the night.”

The baby was kneading the mattress with elbows and knees, rootling in the bedclothes with a low grunting noise. It must be close to time for her morning feed. This supposition was borne out in the next moment, when she raised her head, eyes still tight shut, and let out a healthy howl. I reached hastily for her and picked her up.

“There-there-there,” I soothed, patting the straining little back. I swung my legs out of bed, then reached back and patted Jamie on the head. The rough bright hair was warm under my hand.

“I’ll take her to Jenny,” I said. “It’s early yet; you sleep some more.”

“I may do that, Sassenach,” Jamie said, flinching at the noise. “I’ll see ye at breakfast, shall I?” He rolled onto his back, crossed his hands on his chest in his favorite sleeping posture, and was breathing deeply again by the time Katherine Mary and I had reached the door.

The baby squirmed vigorously, rooting for a nipple and squawking in frustration when none was immediately forthcoming. Hurrying along the hall, I met Jenny, hurrying out of her bedroom in response to her offspring’s cries, pulling on a green dressing gown as she came. I held out the baby, waving little fists in urgent demand.

“There, mo mùirninn, hush now, hush,” Jenny soothed. With a cock of the eyebrow in invitation, she took the child from me and turned back into her room.

I followed her in and sat on the rumpled bed as she sat down on a nursing stool by the hearth and hastily bared one breast. The yowling little mouth clamped at once on to a nipple and we all relaxed in relief as sudden silence descended.

“Ah,” Jenny sighed. Her shoulders slumped a fraction as the flow of milk started. “That’s better, my wee piggie, no?” She opened her eyes and smiled at me, eyes clear and blue as her brother’s.

“ ’Twas kind of ye to keep the lassie all night; I slept like the dead.”

I shrugged, smiling at the picture of mother and child, relaxed together in total content. The curve of the baby’s head exactly echoed the high, round curve of Jenny’s breast and small, slurping noises came from the little bundle as her body sagged against her mother’s, fitting easily into the curve of Jenny’s lap.

“It was Jamie, not me,” I said. “He and his niece seem to have got on well together.” The picture of them came back to me, Jamie talking in earnest, low tones to the child, tears slipping down his face.

Jenny nodded, watching my face.

“Aye. I thought perhaps they’d comfort each other a bit. He doesna sleep well these days?” Her voice held a question.

“No,” I answered softly. “He has a lot on his mind.”

“Well he might,” she said, glancing at the bed behind me. Ian was gone already, risen at dawn to see to the stock in the barn. The horses that could be spared from the farming – and some that couldn’t – needed shoeing, needed harness, in preparation for their journey to rebellion.

“You can talk to a babe, ye ken,” she said suddenly, breaking into my thought. “Really talk, I mean. Ye can tell them anything, no matter how foolish it would sound did ye say it to a soul could understand ye.”

“Oh. You heard him, then?” I asked. She nodded, eyes on the curve of Katherine’s cheek, where the tiny dark lashes lay against the fair skin, eyes closed in ecstasy.

“Aye. Ye shouldna worrit yourself,” she added, smiling gently at me. “It isna that he feels he canna talk to you; he knows he can. But it’s different to talk to a babe that way. It’s a person; ye ken that you’re not alone. But they dinna ken your words, and ye don’t worry a bit what they’ll think of ye, or what they may feel they must do. You can pour out your heart to them wi’out choosing your words, or keeping anything back at all – and that’s a comfort to the soul.”

She spoke matter-of-factly, as though this were something that everyone knew. I wondered whether she spoke that way often to her child. The generous wide mouth, so like her brother’s, lifted slightly at one side.

“It’s the way ye talk to them before they’re born,” she said softly. “You’ll know?”

I placed my hands gently over my belly, one atop the other, remembering.

“Yes, I know.”

She pressed a thumb against the baby’s cheek, breaking the suction, and with a deft movement, shifted the small body to bring the full breast within reach.

“I’ve thought that perhaps that’s why women are so often sad, once the child’s born,” she said meditatively, as though thinking aloud. “Ye think of them while ye talk, and you have a knowledge of them as they are inside ye, the way you think they are. And then they’re born, and they’re different – not the way ye thought of them inside, at all. And ye love them, o’ course, and get to know them the way they are… but still, there’s the thought of the child ye once talked to in your heart, and that child is gone. So I think it’s the grievin’ for the child unborn that ye feel, even as ye hold the born one in your arms.” She dipped her head and kissed her daughter’s downy skull.

“Yes,” I said. “Before… it’s all possibility. It might be a son, or a daughter. A plain child, a bonny one. And then it’s born, and all the things it might have been are gone, because now it is.”

She rocked gently back and forth, and the small clutching hand that seized the folds of green silk over her breast began to loose its grip.

“And a daughter is born, and the son that she might have been is dead,” she said quietly. “And the bonny lad at your breast has killed the wee lassie ye thought ye carried. And ye weep for what you didn’t know, that’s gone for good, until you know the child you have, and then at last it’s as though they could never have been other than they are, and ye feel naught but joy in them. But ’til then, ye weep easy.”

“And men…” I said, thinking of Jamie, whispering secrets to the unhearing ears of the child.

“Aye. They hold their bairns, and they feel all the things that might be, and the things that will never be. But it isna so easy for a man to weep for the things he doesna ken.”