Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone

1 The Mackenzies Are Here

THERE WAS A STONE under my right buttock, but I didn’t want to move. The tiny heartbeat under my fingers was soft and stubborn, the fleeting jolts life. The space between them was infinity, my connection to the dark sky and the rising flame.

“Move your arse a bit, Sassenach,” said a voice in my ear. “I need to scratch my nose and ye’re sitting on my hand.” Jamie twitched his fingers under me, and I moved, turning toward him as I shifted and resettled, keeping my hold on three-year-old Mandy, bonelessly asleep in my arms.

He smiled at me over Jem’s tousled head and scratched his nose. It must have been past midnight, but the fire was still high, and the light sparked off the stubble of his beard and glowed as softly in his eyes as in his grandson’s red hair and the shadowed folds of the worn plaid he’d wrapped about them both.

On the other side of the fire, Brianna laughed, in the quiet way people laugh in the middle of the night with sleeping children near.

She laid her head on Roger’s shoulder, her eyes half closed. She looked completely exhausted, her hair unwashed and tangled, the firelight scooping deep hollows in her face … but happy.

“What is it ye find funny, a nighean?” Jamie asked, shifting Jem into a more comfortable position. Jem was fighting as hard as he could to stay awake, but was losing the fight. He gaped enormously and shook his head, blinking like a dazed owl.

“Wha’s funny?” he repeated, but the last word trailed off, leaving him with his mouth half open and a glassy stare.

His mother giggled, a lovely girlish sound, and I felt Jamie’s smile.

“I just asked Daddy if he remembered a Gathering we went to, years ago. The clans were all called at a big bonfire and I handed Daddy a burning branch and told him to go down to the fire and say the MacKenzies were there.”

“Oh.” Jem blinked once, then twice, looked at the fire blazing in front of us, and a slight frown formed between his soft red brows. “Where are we now?”

“Home,” Roger said firmly, and his eyes met mine, then passed to Jamie. “For good.”

Jamie let out the same breath I’d been holding since the afternoon, when those four figures had appeared suddenly in the clearing below, and we had flown down the hill to meet them. There had been one moment of joyous, wordless explosion as we all flung ourselves at one another, and then the explosion had widened as Amy Higgins came out of her cabin, summoned by the noise, to be followed by Bobby, then Aidan—who had whooped at sight of Jem and tackled him, knocking him flat—with Orrie and little Rob.

Jo Beardsley had been in the woods nearby, heard the racket, and come to see … and within what seemed like moments, the clearing was alive with people. Six households were within reach of the news before sundown; the rest would undoubtedly hear of it tomorrow.

The instant outpouring of Highland hospitality had been wonderful; women and girls had run back to their cabins and fetched whatever they had baking or boiling for supper, the men had gathered wood and—at Jamie’s behest—piled it on the crest where the outline of the New House stood, and we had welcomed home our family in style, surrounded by friends.

Hundreds of questions had been asked of the travelers: Where had they come from? How was the journey? What had they seen? No one had asked if they were happy to be back; that was taken for granted by everyone.

Neither Jamie nor I had asked any questions. Time enough for that—and now that we were alone, Roger had just answered the only one that truly mattered.

The why of that answer, though … I felt a stirring of the hair on my nape.

“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” I murmured into Mandy’s black curls, and kissed her tiny, sleep-deaf ear. Once more, my fingers probed inside her clothes—filthy from travel, but very well made—and found the hairline scar between her ribs, the whisper of the surgeon’s knife that had saved her life two years ago, in a place so far from me.

It thumped peacefully along, that brave little heart under my fingertips, and I blinked back tears—not for the first time today, and surely not for the last.

“I was right, aye?” Jamie said, and I realized he’d said it for the second time.

“Right about what?”

“About needing more room,” he said patiently, and turned to gesture at the invisible rectangle of the stone foundation, the only tangible trace so far of the New House. The footprint of the original Big House was still visible as a dark mark beneath the grass of the clearing below, but it had nearly faded away. Perhaps by the time the New House was finished, it would be only a memory.

Brianna yawned like a lion, then pushed back her tangled mane and blinked sleepily into the dark.

“We’ll probably be sleeping in the root cellar this winter,” she said, then laughed.

“O ye o’ little faith,” Jamie said, not at all perturbed. “The timber’s sawn, split, and milled. We’ll have walls and floors and windows aplenty before snowfall. Maybe no glass in them yet,” he added fairly. “But that can wait ’til the spring.”

“Mmm.” Brianna blinked again and shook her head, then stood up to look. “Have you got a hearthstone?”

“I have. A lovely wee piece of serpentine—the green stone, ken?”

“I remember. And do you have a piece of iron to put under it?”

Jamie looked surprised.

“Not yet, no. I’ll find that when we bless the hearth, though.”

“Well, then.” She sat up straight and fumbled among the folds of her cloak, emerging with a large canvas bag, clearly heavy and full of assorted objects. She delved about in this for a few moments, then pulled out something that gleamed black in the firelight.

“Use that, Da,” she said, handing it across to Jamie.

He looked at it for a moment, smiled, and handed it to me.

“Aye, that’ll do,” he said. “Ye brought it for the hearth?”

“It” was a smooth black metal chisel, six inches long and heavy in my hand, with the word “Craftsman” imprinted in the head.

“Well … for a hearth,” Bree said, smiling at him. She put a hand on Roger’s leg. “At first, I thought we might build a house ourselves, when we could. But—” She turned and looked across the darkness of the Ridge into the vault of the cold, pure sky, where the Great Bear shone overhead. “We might not manage before winter. And since I imagine we’ll be imposing ourselves on you …” She looked up from under her lashes at her father, who snorted.

“Dinna be daft, lass. If it’s our house, it’s yours, and ye ken that well enough.” He raised a brow at her. “And the more hands there are to help with the building of it, the better. D’ye want to see the shape of it?”

Not waiting for an answer, he disentangled Jem from his plaid, eased him down on the ground beside me, and stood up. He pulled one of the burning branches from the fire and jerked his head in invitation toward the invisible rectangle of the new foundation.

Bree was still drowsy, but game; she smiled at me and shook her head good-naturedly, then hunched her cloak over her shoulders and got up.

“Coming?” she said to Roger.

He smiled up at her and waved a hand, shooing her along. “I’m too knackered to see straight, love. I’ll wait ’til the morning.”

Bree touched his shoulder lightly and set off after the light of Jamie’s torch, muttering something under her breath as she stumbled over a rock in the grass, and I laid a fold of my cloak over Jem, who hadn’t stirred.

Roger and I sat quiet, listening to their voices move away into the dark—and then sat quiet for a few moments longer, listening to the fire and the night, and each other’s thoughts.

For them to have risked the dangers of the travel, let alone the dangers of this time and this place … whatever had happened in their own time …

He gazed into my eyes, saw what I was thinking, and sighed.

“Aye, it was bad. Bad enough,” he said quietly. “Even so—we might have gone back to deal with it. I wanted to. But we were afraid there wasn’t anyone there Mandy could feel strongly enough.”

“Mandy?” I looked down at the solid little body, limp in sleep. “Feel whom? And what do you mean, ‘gone back’?” Wait—” I lifted a hand in apology. “No, don’t try to tell me now; you’re worn out, and there’s time enough.” I paused to clear my throat. “And it’s enough that you’re here.”

He smiled then, a real smile, though with the weariness of miles and years and terrible things behind it.

“Aye,” he said. “It is.”

We were silent for a time, and Roger’s head nodded; I thought he was nearly asleep, and was gathering my legs under me to rise and collect everyone for bed when he lifted his head again.

“One thing …”

“Yes?”

“Have you met a man—ever—named William Buccleigh MacKenzie? Or maybe Buck MacKenzie?”

“I recall the name,” I said slowly. “But—”

Roger rubbed a hand over his face and slowly down his throat, to the white scar left by a rope.

“Well … he’s the man who got me hanged, to begin with. But he’s also my four-times great-grandfather. Neither one of us knew that at the time he got me hanged,” he said, almost apologetically.

“Jesus H …. Oh, I beg your pardon. Are you still a sort of minister?”

He smiled at that, though the marks of exhaustion carved runnels in his face.

“I don’t think it wears off,” he said. “But if ye were about to say ‘Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,’ I wouldn’t mind it. Appropriate to the situation, ye might say.”

And in a few words, he told me how Buck MacKenzie had ended in Scotland in 1980, only to travel back with Roger in an effort to find Jem.

“There’s a great deal more to it than that,” he assured me. “But the end of it—for now—is that we left him in Scotland. In 1739. With … erm … his mother.”

“With Geillis?” My voice rose involuntarily, and Mandy twitched and made small cranky noises. I patted her hastily and shifted her to a more comfortable position. “Did you meet her?”

“Yes. Ehm … interesting woman.” There was a mug on the ground beside him, still half full of beer; I could smell the yeast and bitter hops. He picked it up and seemed to be debating whether to drink it or pour it over his head, but in the event took a gulp and set it down.

“I—we—wanted him to come with us. Of course there was the risk, but we’d managed to find enough gemstones, I thought we could make it, all together. And … his wife is here.” He waved vaguely toward the distant forest. “In America, I mean. Now.”

“I … dimly recall that, from your genealogy.” Though experience had taught me the limits of belief in anything recorded on paper.

Roger nodded, drank more beer, and cleared his throat, hard. His voice was hoarse and cracking from tiredness.

“I take it you forgave him for—” I gestured briefly at my own throat. I could see the line of the rope and the shadow of the small scar I’d left on his when I did the emergency tracheotomy with a penknife and the amber mouthpiece of a pipe.

“I loved him,” he said simply. A faint smile showed through the black stubble and the veil of tiredness. “How often do you get the chance to love someone who gave ye their blood, their life, and them never knowing who ye might be, or even if ye’d exist at all?”

“Well, you do take chances when you have children,” I said, and laid a hand gently on Jem’s head. It was warm, the hair unwashed but soft under my fingers. He and Mandy smelled like puppies, a sweet, thick animal scent, rich with innocence.

“Yes,” Roger said softly. “You do.”

Rustling grass and voices behind us heralded the return of the engineers—they were deep in a discussion of indoor plumbing.

“Aye, maybe,” Jamie was saying, dubious. “But I dinna ken if we can get all the things ye’ll need for it before the cold weather comes. I’ve just started digging a new privy, though; that’ll see us through for the time being. Then in the spring …”

Brianna said something in reply that I didn’t catch, and then they were there, caught in the fire’s halo, so alike to look at with the light glimmering on their long-nosed faces and ruddy hair. Roger stirred, getting his feet under him, and I stood up carefully, Mandy limp as her rag doll, Esmeralda.

“It’s wonderful, Mama,” Bree said, and hugged me to her, her body strong and straight and softly powerful, encompassing me, Mandy between us. She held me tight for a moment, then bent her head and kissed my forehead.

“I love you,” she said, her voice soft and husky.

“I love you, too, darling,” I said around the lump in my throat, and touched her face, so tired and radiant.

She stepped back then and took Mandy from me, swinging her up against a shoulder with practiced ease.

“Come on, pal,” she said to Jem, gently nudging him with the toe of her boot. “It’s time for bed.” He made a sleepy, interrogative noise and half-lifted his head, then collapsed again, soundly asleep.

“Dinna fash, I’ll get him.” Roger waved Jamie away and, stooping, rolled Jem into his arms and stood up with a grunt. “D’ye mean to go down, too?” he asked. “I can come back and take care of the fire, as soon as I’ve put Jem down.”

Jamie shook his head and put an arm around me.

“Nay, dinna trouble yourself. We’ll maybe sit awhile and see the fire out.”

They moved off slowly down the hill, shambling like cattle, to the accompaniment of clanking noises from Brianna’s bag. The Higgins cabin, where they’d spend the night, showed as a tiny glimmer in the dark; Amy must have lit a lamp and pulled back the hide that covered the window.

Jamie was still holding the chisel in his hand; eyes fixed on his daughter’s disappearing back, he raised it and kissed it, as he’d once kissed the haft of his dirk before me, and I knew this, too, was a sacred promise.

He put the chisel away in his sporran and took me in his arms, my back to him, so we could both watch them out of sight. He rested his chin on top of my head.

“What are ye thinking, Sassenach?” he said softly. “I saw your eyes; there are clouds in them.”

I settled against him, feeling his warmth a bulwark at my back.

“The children,” I said, hesitant. “They—I mean, it’s wonderful that they’re here. To think we’d never see them again, and suddenly …” I swallowed, overcome by the dizzying joy of finding myself—finding us—once again and so unexpectedly part of that remarkable thing, a family. “To be able to see Jem and Mandy grow up … to have Bree and Roger again …”

“Aye,” he said, a smile in his voice. “But?”

It took a moment, both to gather my thoughts and to put them into words.

“Roger said that something bad had happened, in their own time. And you know it must have been something truly terrible.”

“Aye,” he said, his voice hardening a little. “Brianna said the same. But ken, a nighean, they’ve lived in this time before. They do know, I mean—what it’s like, what it will be like.”

The ongoing war, he meant, and I squeezed his hands, clasped about my middle.

“I don’t think they do,” I said softly, looking down across the broad cove. They had vanished into the darkness. “Nobody knows who hasn’t been there.” To war.

“Aye,” he said, and held me, silent, his hand resting on my side, over the scar of the wound made by a musket ball at Monmouth.

“Aye,” he said again after a long moment. “I ken what ye’re saying, Sassenach. I thought my heart would burst when I saw Brianna and kent it was really her, and the bairns … but for all the joy of it … see, I missed them cruelly, but I could take comfort in thinking they were safe. Now—”

He stopped and I felt his heart beating against me, slow and steady. He took a deep breath, and the fire popped suddenly, a pocket of pitch exploding in sparks that disappeared into the night. A small reminder of the war that was rising, slowly, all around us.

“I look at them,” he said, “and my heart is suddenly filled with …”

“Terror,” I whispered, holding tight to him. “Sheer terror.”

“Aye,” he said. “That.”

WE STOOD FOR a bit, watching the darkness below, letting joy return. The window of the Higgins cabin still glowed softly on the far side of the clearing below.

“Nine people in that cabin,” I said. I took a deep breath of the cool, spruce-scented night, envisioning the fug and humid warmth of nine sleeping bodies, occupying every horizontal inch of the place, with a cauldron and kettle steaming on the hearth.

The second window bloomed into brightness.

“Four of them ours,” Jamie said, and laughed softly.

“I hope the place doesn’t burn down.” Someone had put fresh wood on the fire, and sparks were beginning to dance above the chimney.

“It willna burn down.” He turned me round to face him. “I want ye, a nighean,” he said softly. “Will ye lie wi’ me? It may be the last time we have any privacy for some while.”

I opened my mouth to say, “Of course!” and instead yawned hugely.

I clapped a hand to my mouth, removing it to say, “Oh, dear. I really didn’t mean that.”

He was laughing, almost soundlessly. Shaking his head, he straightened out the rumpled quilt I’d been sitting on, knelt on it, and stretched up a hand to me.

“Come lie wi’ me and watch the stars for a bit, Sassenach. If ye’re still awake in five minutes, I’ll take your clothes off and have ye naked in the moonlight.”

“And if I’m asleep in five minutes?” I kicked off my shoes and took his hand.

“Then I won’t bother takin’ your clothes off.”

The fire was burning lower but still steadily; I could feel the warm breeze of it touch my face and lift the hair at my temples. The stars were thick and bright as diamonds spilled in some celestial burglary. I shared this observation with Jamie, who made a very derogatory Scottish noise in response, but then lay back beside me, sighing in pleasure at the view.

“Aye, they’re bonnie. Ken Cassiopeia there?”

I looked at the approximate portion of the sky indicated by his nod, but shook my head. “I’m complete rubbish at constellations. I can see the Big Dipper, and I usually recognize Orion’s Belt, but damned if I see it at the moment. And the Pleiades are up there somewhere, aren’t they?”

“They’re part of Taurus—just there by the hunter.” He stretched out an arm, pointing. “And that’s Camelopardalis.”

“Oh, don’t be silly. There isn’t a giraffe constellation, I would have heard of that.”

“Well, it’s no really in the sky just now, but there is one. And come to think, is it any more ridiculous than what’s happened today?”

“No,” I said softly. “No, it’s not.” He put an arm around me and I rolled over to lay my cheek on his chest, and we watched the stars in silence, listening to the wind in the trees and the slow beat of our hearts.

It seemed a long time later when Jamie stirred and sighed.

“I dinna think I’ve ever seen such stars, not since the night we made Faith.”

I lifted my head in surprise. We seldom mentioned Faith—stillborn, but embedded in our hearts—to each other, though each of us knew the other’s feelings.

“You know when she was conceived? I don’t know that.”

He ran his hand slowly down my back, fingers pausing to rub circles in the small of it. If I’d been a cat, I would have waved my tail gently under his nose.

“Aye, well, I suppose I could be wrong, but I’ve always thought it was the night I went to your bed at the abbey. There was a tall window at the end o’ the hall, and I saw the stars as I came to ye. I thought it might be a sign to me—to see my way clear.”

For a moment, I groped among my memories. That time at the Abbey of Ste. Anne, when he’d come so close to a self-chosen death, was one I seldom revisited. It had been a terrifying time. Days full of fear and confusion running from one into the next, nights black with despair and desperation. And yet when I did look back, I found a handful of vivid images, standing out like the illuminated letters on a page of ancient Latin.

Father Anselm’s face, pale in candlelight, his eyes warm with compassion and then the growing glow of wonder as he heard my confession. The abbot’s hands, touching Jamie’s forehead, eyes, lips, and palms, delicate as a hummingbird’s touch, anointing his dying nephew with the holy chrism of Extreme Unction. The quiet of the darkened chapel where I had prayed for his life, and heard my prayer answered.

And among these moments was the night when I woke from sleep to find him standing, a pale wraith by my bed, naked and freezing, so weak he could barely walk, but filled once more with life and a stubborn determination that would never leave him.

“You remember Faith, then?” My hand rested lightly on my stomach, recalling. He’d never seen her, or felt her as more than random kicks and pushes from inside me.

He kissed my forehead briefly, then looked at me.

“Ye ken I do. Don’t you?”

“Yes. I just wanted you to tell me more.”

“Oh, I mean to.” He settled himself on one elbow and gathered me in so I could share his plaid.

“Do you remember that, too?” I asked, pulling down the fold of cloth he’d draped over me. “Sharing your plaid with me, the night we met?”

“To keep ye from freezing? Aye.” He kissed the back of my neck. “It was me freezing, at the abbey. I’d worn myself out tryin’ to walk, and ye wouldna let me eat anything, so I was starving to death, and—”

“Oh, you know that’s not true! You—”

“Would I lie to ye, Sassenach?”

“Yes, you bloody would,” I said. “You do it all the time. But never mind that now. You were freezing and starving, and suddenly decided that instead of asking Brother Paul for a blanket or a bowl of something hot, you should stagger naked down a dark stone corridor and get in bed with me.”

“Some things are more important than food, Sassenach.” His hand settled firmly on my arse. “And finding out whether I could ever bed ye again was more important than anything else just then. I reckoned if I couldn’t, I’d just walk on out into the snow and not come back.”

“Naturally, it didn’t occur to you to wait for a few more weeks and recover your strength.”

“Well, I was fairly sure I could walk that far leaning on the walls, and I’d be doin’ the rest lying down, so why wait?” The hand on my arse was idly stroking it now. “Ye do recall the occasion.”

“It was like making love to a block of ice.” It had been. It had also wrung my heart with tenderness, and filled me with a hope I’d thought I’d never know again. “Though you did thaw out after a bit.”

Only a bit, at first. I’d just cradled him against me, trying as hard as possible to generate body heat. I’d pulled off my shift, urgent to get as much skin contact as possible. I remembered the hard, sharp curve of his hipbone, the knobs of his spine, and the ridged fresh scars over them.

“You weren’t much more than skin and bones.”

I turned, drew him down beside me now, and pulled him close, wanting the reassurance of his present warmth against the chill of memory. He was warm. And alive. Very much alive.

“Ye put your leg over me to keep me from falling out the bed, I remember that.” He rubbed my leg slowly, and I could hear the smile in his voice, though his face was dark with the fire behind him, sparking in his hair.

“It was a small bed.” It had been—a narrow monastic cot, scarcely large enough for one normal-sized person. And even starved as he was, he’d occupied a lot of space.

“I wanted to roll ye onto your back, Sassenach, but I was afraid I’d pitch us both out onto the floor, and … well, I wasna sure I could hold myself up.”

He’d been shaking with cold and weakness. But now, I realized, probably with fear as well. I took the hand resting on my hip and raised it to my mouth, kissing his knuckles. His fingers were cold from the evening air and tightened on the warmth of mine.

“You managed,” I said softly, and rolled onto my back, bringing him with me.

“Only just,” he murmured, finding his way through the layers of quilt, plaid, shirt, and shift. He let out a long breath, and so did I. “Oh, Jesus, Sassenach.”

He moved, just a little.

“What it felt like,” he whispered. “Then. To think I’d never have ye again, and then …”

He had managed, and it was just barely.

“I thought—I’d do it if it was the last thing I ever did …”

“It almost bloody was,” I whispered back, and took hold of his bottom, firm and round. “I really did think you’d died, for a moment, until you started to move.”

“Thought I was going to,” he said, with the breath of a laugh. “Oh, God, Claire …” He stopped for a moment, lowered himself, and pressed his forehead against mine. He’d done it that night, too, cold-skinned and fierce with desperation, and I’d felt I was breathing my own life into him then, his mouth so soft and open, smelling faintly of the ale mixed with egg that was all he could keep down.

“I wanted …” he whispered. “I wanted you. Had to have ye. But once I was inside ye, I wanted …”

He sighed then, deep, and moved deeper.

“I thought I’d die of it, then and there. And I wanted to. Wanted to go—while I was inside ye.” His voice had changed, still soft but somehow distant, detached—and I knew he’d moved away from the present moment, gone back to the cold stone dark and the panic, the fear and overwhelming need.

“I wanted to spill myself into ye and let that be the last I ever knew, but then I started, and I kent it wasna meant to be that way—that I’d live, but that I would keep myself inside ye forever. That I was givin’ ye a child.”

He’d come back in the speaking, back into the now and into me. I held him tight, big and solid and strong in my arms, but shaking, helpless as he gave himself up. I felt my own warm tears well up and slide down cold into my hair.

After a time, he stirred and rolled off onto his side. A big hand still rested light on my belly.

“I did manage, aye?” he said, and smiled a little, firelight soft on his face.

“You did,” I said, and, pulling the plaid back over us, I lay with him, content in the light of dying flame and eternal stars.

2 A Blue Wine Day

SHEER EXHAUSTION MADE ROGER sleep like the dead, in spite of the fact that the MacKenzies’ bed consisted of two ragged quilts that Amy Higgins had hastily dragged out of her piecework bag, these laid over a week’s worth of the Higginses’ dirty laundry, and the MacKenzies’ outer clothing used as blankets. It was a warm bed, though, with the heat of the smoored fire on one side and the body heat of two children and a snuggly wife on the other, and he’d fallen into sleep like a man falling down a well, with time for no more than the briefest prayer—though a profound one—of gratitude.

We made it. Thanks.

He woke to darkness and the smell of burnt wood and a freshly used chamber pot, feeling a sudden chill behind him. He had lain down with his back to the fire but had rolled over during the night, and now saw the sullen glow of the last embers a couple of feet from his face, crimson veins in a bank of gray ash and charred wood. He put a hand behind him: Brianna was gone. There was a vague heap that must be Jem and Mandy at the far side of the quilt; the rest of the cabin was still somnolent, the air thick with heavy breathing.

“Bree?” he whispered, raising himself on one elbow. She was close—a solid shadow with her bottom braced against the wall by the hearth, standing on one foot to pull a stocking on. She put down her foot and crouched beside him, fingers brushing his face.

“I’m going hunting with Da,” she whispered, bending close. “Mama will watch the kids if you have things to do today.”

“Aye. Where did ye get—” He ran a hand down the side of her hip; she was wearing a thick hunting shirt and loose breeches, much patched; he could feel the roughness of the stitching under his palm.

“They’re Da’s,” she said, and kissed him, the tinge of firelight glisking in her hair. “Go back to sleep. It won’t be dawn for another hour.”

He watched her step lightly through the bodies on the floor, boots in her hand, and a cold draft snaked through the room as the door opened and closed soundlessly behind her. Bobby Higgins said something in a sleep-slurred voice, and one of the little boys sat up, said “What?” in a clear, startled voice, and then flopped back into his quilt, dormant once more.

The fresh air vanished into the comfortable fug, and the cabin slept again. Roger didn’t. He lay on his back, feeling peace, relief, excitement, and trepidation in roughly equal proportions.

They really had made it.

All of them. He kept counting his family, compulsively. All four of them. Here, and safe.

Fragmented memories and sensations jostled through his mind; he let them flow through him, not trying to stay them or catch more than an image here and there: the weight of a small gold bar in his sweaty hand, the lurch of his stomach when he’d dropped it and seen it slide away across the tilting deck. The warm steam of parritch with whisky on it, fortification against a freezing Scottish morning. Brianna hopping carefully down a flight of stairs on one foot, the bandaged one lifted and the words of “My Dame Hath a Lame, Tame Crane” coming irresistibly to his mind.

The smell of Buck’s hair, acrid and unwashed, as they embraced each other on the edge of a dock and a final farewell. Cold, endless, indistinguishable days and nights in the lurching hold of the Constance on their way to Charles Town, the four of them huddled in a corner behind the cargo, deafened by the smash of water against the hull, too seasick to be hungry, too tired even to be terrified, hypnotized instead by the rising water in the hold, watching it inch higher, splashing them with each sickening roll, trying to share their pitiful store of body heat to keep the kids alive …

He let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, put his hands on the solid wooden floor to either side, closed his eyes, and let it all drain away.

No looking back. They’d made their decision, and they’d made it here. To sanctuary.

So now what?

He’d lived in this cabin once, for a long time. Now he supposed he’d build a new one; Jamie had told him last night that the land Governor Tryon had given him was still his, registered in his name.

A small thrill of anticipation rose in his heart. The day lay before him; the beginning of a new life. What should he do first?

“Daddy!” a voice with a lot of spit whispered loudly in his ear. “Daddy, I hafta go potty!”

He sat up smiling, pushing cloaks and shirts out of the way. Mandy was hopping from foot to foot in agitation, a small black bird, solid against the shadows.

“Aye, sweetheart,” he whispered back, and took her hand, warm and sticky. “I’ll take ye to the privy. Try not to step on anybody.”

MANDY HAD ENCOUNTERED quite a few privies by now, and wasn’t put off by this one. When Roger opened the door, though, a huge spider dropped suddenly from the lintel and hung swaying like a plumb bob, inches from his face. He and Mandy both screamed—well, she did; his own effort was no more than a croak, but a manly croak, at least.

There was no real light yet; the spider was a black blob with an impression of legs, but all the more alarming for that. Alarmed in turn by their cries, the spider hurried back up its thread into whatever invisible recess it normally occupied.

“Not going in dere!” Mandy said, backing up against his legs.

Roger shared her feelings, but taking her off the trail into the bushes in the dark held the threat not only of further (and possibly larger) spiders, or snakes and bats, but also of the things that hunted in the crepuscule. Panthers, for instance … Aidan McCallum had entertained them earlier with a story about meeting a painter on his way to the privy … this privy.

“It’s all right, honey.” He bent and picked her up. “It’s gone. It’s afraid of us, it won’t come back.”

“I scared!”

“I know, sweetie. Don’t worry; I don’t think it will come back, but I’ll kill it if it does.”

“Wif a gun?” she asked hopefully.

“Yes,” he said firmly, and clutching her to his chest he ducked under the lintel, remembering too late Claire’s own story about the enormous rattlesnake perched on the seat of their privy …

In the event, though, nothing untoward occurred, save his nearly losing Mandy down the hole when she let go her grip to try to wipe her bottom with a dried corncob.

Sweating slightly in spite of the chilly morning air, he made his way back to the cabin, to find that in his absence, the Higginses—and Jem and Germain—had risen en masse.

Amy Higgins blinked slightly when told that Brianna had gone a-hunting, but when Roger added that she had gone with her father, the look of surprise faded into a nod of acceptance that made Roger smile inwardly. He was glad to see that Himself’s personality still dominated the Ridge, despite his long absence; Claire had told him last night that they’d only come back from exile the month before.

“Are there many new folk come to settle since we were last here?” he asked Bobby, sitting down on the bench beside his host, bowl of porridge in his hand.

“A mort of ’em,” Bobby assured him. “Twenty families, at least. A bit of milk and honey, Preacher?” He pushed the honey pot companionably in Roger’s direction—being an Englishman, Bobby was allowed such frivolities with his breakfast, rather than the severe Scottish pinch of salt. “Oh, sorry—I should have asked, are you still a preacher?”

Claire had asked him that last night, but it still came as a surprise.

“I am, aye,” he said, and reached for the milk jug. In fact, both question and answer made his heart speed up.

He was a minister. He just wasn’t sure how official he was. Granted, he’d christened, married, and buried the people of the Ridge for a year or more, and preached to them, as well as doing the lesser offices of a minister, and they’d all thought of him as such; no doubt they still did. On the other hand, he was not formally ordained as a Presbyterian minister. Not quite.

“I’ll maybe call on the new folk,” he said casually. “Do ye ken whether they’re any of them Catholic, or otherwise?” This was a rhetorical question; everyone on the Ridge knew the nature of everyone else’s beliefs—and weren’t at all shy of discussing them, if not always to their faces.

Amy plunked a tin mug of chicory coffee by his bowl and sat down to her own salted porridge with a sigh of relief.

“Fifteen Catholic families,” she said. “Twelve Presbyterians and three Blue Light—Methodies, aye? Ye’ll want to watch out for thon folk, Preacher. Hmm … oh, and maybe twa Anglicans … Orrie!” She sprang up, just in time to interrupt six-year-old Orrie, who had been stealthily, if unsteadily, lifting the full chamber pot above his head with the clear intent of emptying it over Jem, who was sitting cross-legged by the fire, blinking sleepily at the shoe in his hand.

Startled by his mother’s cry, Orrie dropped the chamber pot—more or less missing Jem but decanting its fetid contents into the newly stirred fire—and ran for the door. His mother pursued him, pausing only to snatch up a broom. Enraged Gaelic shouts and high-pitched yelps of terror receded into the distance.

Jem, to whom morning was anathema, looked at the spluttering mess in the hearth, wrinkled his nose, and stood up. He swayed for a moment, then ambled to the table and sat down next to Roger, yawning.

There was silence. A charred log broke suddenly in the hearth and a spurt of sparks flew out of the mess, like a final comment on the state of things.

Roger cleared his throat.

“Man that is born of woman is full of trouble as the sparks that fly upward,” he observed.

Bobby slowly turned his head from contemplation of the hearth to look at Roger. His eyes were smoke-reddened, and the old “M” brand on his cheek showed white in the dim light of the cabin.

“Well put, Preacher,” he said. “Welcome back.”

IT WAS WHAT her mother called a blue wine day. One where air and sky were one thing together and every breath intoxication. Chestnut and oak leaves crackled with each step, the scent of them sharp as that of the pine needles higher up. They were climbing the mountain, guns in hand, and Brianna Fraser MacKenzie was one with the day.

Her father held back a hemlock branch for her, and she ducked past to join him.

“Feur-milis,” he said, gesturing to the wide meadow that opened out before them. “Recall any of the Gàidhlig, do ye, lass?”

“You said something about the grass,” she said, scrabbling hastily through her mental closets. “But I don’t know the other word.”

“Sweet Grass. It’s what we call this wee meadow. Good pasture, but too great a climb for most of the stock, and ye dinna want to leave them here for days untended, because of painters and bears.”

The whole of the meadow rippled, the silver-green heads of millions of grass stems in movement catching morning sun. Here and there, yellow and white butterflies cruised, and at the far side of the grass there was a sudden crash as some large ungulate vanished into the brush, leaving branches swaying in its wake.

“A certain amount of competition as well, I see,” she said, nodding toward the place where the animal had disappeared. She lifted an eyebrow, wanting to ask whether they should not pursue it, but assuming that her father had some good reason why not, since he made no move.

“Aye, some,” he said, and turned to the right, moving along the edge of the trees that rimmed the meadow. “But deer dinna feed the same way cattle or sheep do, at least not if the pasture’s good. That was an old buck,” he added offhandedly over his shoulder. “We dinna need to kill those in summer; there’s better meat and plenty of it.”

She raised both brows but followed without comment. He turned his head and smiled at her.

“Where there’s one, there are likely more, this time o’ year. The does and the new fawns begin to gather into wee herds. It’s nowhere near rut yet, but the bucks are always thinkin’ on it. He kens well enough where they are.” He nodded in the direction of the vanished deer.

She suppressed a smile, recalling some of her mother’s uncensored opinions on men and the functions of testosterone. He saw it, though, and gave her a half-rueful look of amusement, knowing what she was thinking, and the fact that he did sent a small sweet pang through her heart.

“Aye, well, your mother’s right about men,” he said with a shrug. “Keep it in mind, a nighean,” he added, more seriously. He turned then, lifting his face into the breeze. “They’re near the meadow but downwind of us; we won’t get near, save we climb up and come down on them from the far side of the ridge.” He nodded toward the west, though, across the meadow. “I thought we’d maybe stop by Young Ian’s place first, though, if ye dinna mind?”

“Mind? No!” She felt a surge of delight at the mention of her cousin. “Somebody by the fire last night said he’s married now—who did he marry?” She was more than curious about Ian’s wife; some ten years before, he’d asked her to marry him, and while that had been a counsel of desperation—and completely ridiculous, to boot—she was aware that the thought of bedding her hadn’t been unwelcome to him. Later, with both of them adults and her married, him divorced from his Indian wife, a sense of physical attraction had been silently acknowledged between them—and just as silently dismissed.

Still, there were echoes of fondness between them, and she hoped she would like Ian’s unknown wife.

Her father laughed. “Ye’ll like her, lass. Rachel Hunter is her name; she’s a Quaker.”

A vision of a drab little woman with downcast eyes came to her, but her father caught the look of doubt on her face and shook his head.

“She’s no what ye’d think. She speaks her mind. And Ian’s mad in love wi’ her—and she with him.”

“Oh. That’s good!” She meant it, but her father cast her an amused glance, one brow raised. He said nothing further, though, and turned to lead the way through the rippling waves of fragrant grass.

IAN’S CABIN WAS charming. Not that it was markedly different from any other mountain cabin Brianna had ever seen, but it was sited in the midst of an aspen grove, and the fluttering leaves broke the sunlight into a flurry of light and shadow, so that the cabin had an air of magic about it—as though it might disappear into the trees altogether if you looked away.

Four goats and two kids poked their heads over the fence of their pen and started a congenial racket of greeting, but no one came out to see who the visitors were.

“They’ve gone somewhere,” Jamie remarked, squinting at the house. “Is that a note on the door?”

It was: a scrap of paper pinned to the door with a long thorn, with a line of incomprehensible writing that Bree finally recognized as Gaelic.

“Is Young Ian’s wife a Scot?” she asked, frowning at the words. The only ones she could make out were—she thought—“MacCree” and “goat.”

“Nay, it’s from Jenny,” her father said, whipping out his spectacles and scanning the note. “She says she and Rachel are away to a quilting at the MacCree’s and if Ian comes home before they do, will he milk the goats and set half the milk aside for cheese.”

As though hearing their names called, a chorus of loud mehhs came from the goat pen.

“Evidently Ian’s not home yet, either,” Brianna observed. “Do they need to be milked now, do you think? I probably remember how.”

Her father smiled at the thought but shook his head. “Nay, Jenny will ha’ stripped them no more than a few hours ago—they’ll do fine until the evening.”

Until that moment, she’d been idly supposing “Jenny” to be the name of a hired girl—but hearing the tone in which Jamie had said it, she blinked.

“Jenny. Your sister Jenny?” she said, incredulous. “She’s here?”

He looked mildly startled. “Aye, she is. I’m sorry, lass, I never stopped to think ye didna ken that. She—wait.” He lifted a hand, looking at her intently. “The letters. We wrote—well, Claire mostly wrote them—but—”

“We got them.” She felt breathless, the same feeling she’d had when Roger had brought back the wooden box with Jemmy’s full name burned into the lid, and they’d opened it to find the letters. And the overwhelming sense of relief, joy, and sorrow when she opened the first letter to see the words, “We are alive …”

The same feeling swept through her now, and tears took her unaware, so that everything around her flickered and blurred, as though the cabin and her father and she herself might be about to disappear altogether, dissolved into the shimmering light of the aspen trees. She made a small choking sound, and her father’s arm came round her, holding her close.

“We never thought we should see ye again,” he whispered into her hair, his own voice choked. “Never, a leannan. I was afraid—so afraid ye hadna reached safety, that … ye’d died, all of ye, lost in—in there. And we’d never know.”

“We couldn’t tell you.” She lifted her head from his shoulder and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “But you could tell us. Those letters … knowing you were alive. I mean …” She stopped suddenly and, blinking away the last of the tears, saw Jamie look away, blinking back his own.

“But we weren’t,” he said softly. “We were dead. When ye read those letters.”

“No, you weren’t,” she said fiercely, gripping his hand. “I wouldn’t read the letters all at once. I spaced them out—because as long as there were still unopened letters … you were still alive.”

“None of it matters, lass,” he said at last, very softly. He raised her hand and kissed her knuckles, his breath warm and light on her skin. “Ye’re here. So are we. Nothing else matters at all.”

BRIANNA WAS CARRYING the family fowling piece, while her father had his good rifle. She wouldn’t fire on any birds or small game, though, while there was a chance of spooking deer nearby. It was a steep climb, and she found herself puffing, sweat starting to purl behind her ears in spite of the cool day. Her father climbed, as ever, like a mountain goat, without the slightest appearance of strain, but—to her chagrin—noticed her struggling and beckoned her aside, onto a small ledge.

“We’re in nay hurry, a nighean,” he said, smiling at her. “There’s water here.” He reached out, with an obvious tentativeness, and touched her flushed cheek, quickly taking back his hand.

“Sorry, lass,” he said, and smiled. “I’m no used yet to the notion that ye’re real.”

“I know what you mean,” she said softly. Swallowing, she reached out and touched his face, warm and clean-shaven, slanted eyes deep blue as hers.

“Och,” he said under his breath, and gently brought her into his arms again. They stood that way, not speaking, listening to the cry of ravens circling overhead and the trickling of water on rock.

“Trobhad agus òl, a nighean,” he said, letting go as gently as he’d grasped her and turning her toward a tiny freshet that ran down a crevice between two rocks. Come and drink.

The water was icy and tasted of granite and the faint turpentine tang of pine needles.

She’d slaked her thirst and was splashing water on her flushed cheeks when she felt her father make a sudden movement. She froze at once, cutting her eyes at him. He also stood frozen, but he lifted both eyes and chin a little, signaling to the slope above them.

She saw—and heard—it then, a slow crumble of falling dirt that broke loose and hit the ledge beside her foot with a tiny rattle of pebbles. This was followed by silence, except for the calling of the ravens. That was louder, she thought, as though the birds were nearer. They see something, she thought.

They were nearer. A raven swooped suddenly, flashing unnervingly near her head, and another screamed from above.

A sudden boom from the outcrop overhead nearly made her lose her footing, and she grabbed a handful of sapling sticking out of the rock face by reflex. Just in time, too, for there was a thump and a slithering noise above, and at what seemed the same instant something huge fell past in a shower of dirt and gravel, bouncing off the ledge next to her in an explosion of breath, blood, and impact before landing with a crash in the bushes below.

“Blessed Michael defend us,” said her father in Gaelic, crossing himself. He peered down into the thrashing brush below—Jesus, whatever it was, it was still alive—then up.

“Weh!” said an impassioned male voice from above. She didn’t recognize the word, but she did know the voice, and joy burst over her.

“Ian!” she called. There was total silence from above, save for the ravens, who were getting steadily more upset.

“Blessed Michael defend us,” said a startled voice in Gaelic, and an instant later her cousin Ian had dropped onto their narrow ledge, where he balanced with no apparent difficulty.

“It is you!” she said. “Oh, Ian!”

“A charaid!” He grabbed her and squeezed tight, laughing in disbelief. “God, it’s you!” He drew back for an instant for a good look to confirm it, laughed again in delight, kissed her solidly, and resqueezed. He smelled like buckskin, porridge, and gunpowder, and she could feel his heart thumping against her own chest.

She vaguely heard a scrabbling noise, and as they let go of each other, she realized that her father had dropped off the ledge and was half sliding down the scree below it, toward the brush where the deer—it must have been a deer—had fallen.

He halted for a moment at the edge of the brushy growth—the bushes were still thrashing, but the movements of the wounded deer were growing less violent—then drew his dirk and, with a muttered remark in Gaelic, waded gingerly into the brush.

“It’s all rose briers down there,” Ian said, peering over her shoulder. “But I think he’ll make it in time to cut the throat. A Dhia, it was a bad shot and I was afraid I—but what the dev—I mean, how is it ye’re here?” He stood back a little, his eyes running over her, the corner of his mouth turning up slightly as he noted her breeches and leather hiking shoes, this fading as his eyes returned to her face, worried now. “Is your man not with ye? And the bairns?”

“Yes, they are,” she assured him. “Roger’s probably hammering things and Jem’s helping him and Mandy’s getting in the way. As for what we’re doing here …” The day and the joy of reunion had let her ignore the recent past, but the ultimate need of explanation brought the enormity of it all suddenly crashing in upon her.

“Dinna fash, cousin,” Ian said swiftly, seeing her face. “It’ll bide. D’ye think ye recall how to shoot a turkey? There’s a band o’ them struttin’ to and fro like folk dancing Strip the Willow at a ceilidh, not a quarter mile from here.”

“Oh, I might.” She’d propped the gun against the cliff face while she drank; the deer’s fall had knocked it over and she picked it up, checking; the fall had knocked the flint askew, and she reseated it. The thrashing below had stopped, and she could hear her father’s voice, in snatches above the wind, saying the gralloch prayer.

“Hadn’t we better help Da with the deer, though?”

“Ach, it’s no but a yearling buck, he’ll have it done before ye can blink.” Ian leaned out from the ledge, calling down. “I’m takin’ Bree to shoot turkeys, a bràthair mo mhàthair!”

Dead silence from below, and then a lot of rustling and Jamie’s disheveled head poked suddenly up above the rose briers. His hair was loose and tangled; his face was deeply flushed and bleeding in several places, as were his arms and hands, and he looked displeased.

“Ian,” he said, in measured tones, but in a voice loud enough to be easily heard above the forest sounds. “Mac Ian … mac Ian …!”

“We’ll be back to help carry the meat!” Ian called back. He waved cheerily and, grabbing the fowling piece, caught Bree’s eye and jerked his chin upward. She glanced down, but her father had disappeared, leaving the bushes swaying in agitation.

She’d lost much of her eye for the wilderness, she found; the cliff looked impassable to her, but Ian scrambled up as easily as a baboon, and after a moment’s hesitation, she followed, much more slowly, slipping now and then in small showers of dirt as she groped for the holds her cousin had used.

“Ian mac Ian mac Ian?” she asked, reaching the top and pausing to empty the dirt out of her shoes. Her heart was beating unpleasantly hard. “Is that like me calling Jem Jeremiah Alexander Ian Fraser MacKenzie when I’m annoyed with him?”

“Something like,” Ian said, shrugging. “Ian, son of Ian, son of Ian … the notion is to point out ye’re a disgrace to your forefathers, aye?” He was wearing a ragged, filthy calico shirt, but the sleeves had been torn off, and she saw a large white scar in the shape of a four-pointed star on the curve of his bare brown shoulder.

“What did that?” she said, nodding at it. He glanced at it and made a dismissive gesture, turning to lead her across the small ridge.

“Ach, no much,” he said. “An Abenaki bastard shot me wi’ an arrow, at Monmouth. Denny cut it out for me a few days after—that’s Denzell Hunter,” he added, seeing her blank look. “Rachel’s brother. He’s a doctor, like your mam.”

“Rachel!” she exclaimed. “Your wife?”

A huge grin spread across his face.

“She is,” he said simply. “Taing do Dhia.” Then looked quickly at her to see if she’d understood.

“I remember ‘thanks be to God,’” she assured him. “And quite a bit more. Roger spent most of the voyage from Scotland refreshing our Gàidhlig. Da also told me Rachel’s a Quaker?” She made it a question, stretching to step across the stones in a tiny brook.

“Aye, she is.” Ian’s eyes were fixed on the stones, but she thought he spoke with a bit less joy and pride than he’d had a moment before. She left it alone, though; if there was a conflict—and she couldn’t quite see how there wouldn’t be, given what she knew about her cousin and what she thought she knew about Quakers—this wasn’t the time to ask questions.

Not that such considerations stopped Ian.

“From Scotland?” he said, turning his head to look back at her over his shoulder. “When?” Then his face changed suddenly, as he realized the ambiguity of “when,” and he made an apologetic gesture, dismissing the question.

“We left Edinburgh in March,” she said, taking the simplest answer for now. “I’ll tell you the rest later.”

He nodded, and for a time they walked, sometimes together, sometimes with Ian leading, finding deer trails or cutting upward to go around a thick growth of bush. She was happy to follow him, so she could look at him without embarrassing him with her scrutiny.

He’d changed—no great wonder there—still tall and very lean, but hardened, a man grown fully into himself, the long muscles of his arms clear-cut under his skin. His brown hair was darker, plaited and tied with a leather thong, and adorned with what looked like very fresh turkey feathers bound into the braid. For good luck? she wondered. He’d picked up the bow and quiver he’d left at the top of the cliff, and the quiver swung gently now against his back.

But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face, she thought, entertained. It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists / It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees, dress does not hide him. The poem had always summoned Roger for her, but now it encompassed Ian and her father as well, different as the three of them were.

As they rose higher and the timber opened out, the breeze rose and freshened, and Ian halted, beckoning her with a small movement of his fingers.

“D’ye hear them?” he breathed in her ear.

She did, and the hairs rippled pleasantly down her backbone. Small, harsh yelps, almost like a barking dog. And farther off, a sort of intermittent purr, something between a large cat and a small motor.

“Best take off your stockings and rub your legs wi’ dirt,” Ian whispered, motioning toward her woolen stockings. “Your hands and face as well.”

She nodded, set the gun against a tree, and scratched dry leaves away from a patch of soil, moist enough to rub on her skin. Ian, his own skin nearly the color of his buckskins, needed no such camouflage. He moved silently away while she was anointing her hands and face, and when she looked up, she couldn’t see him for a moment.

Then there was a series of sounds like a rusty door hinge swinging to and fro, and suddenly she saw Ian, standing stock-still behind a sweet gum some fifty feet away.

The forest seemed to go dead for an instant, the soft scratchings and leaf-murmurs ceasing. Then there was an angry gobble and she turned her head as slowly as she could, to see a tom turkey poke his pale-blue head out of the grass and look sharp from side to side, wattles bright red and swinging, looking for the challenger.

She cut her eyes at Ian, his hands cupped at his mouth, but he didn’t move or make a sound. She held her breath and looked back at the turkey, who emitted another loud gobble—this one echoed by another tom at a distance. The turkey she was watching glanced back toward that sound, lifted his head and yelped, listened for a moment, and then ducked back into the grass. She glanced at Ian; he caught her movement and shook his head, very slightly.

They waited for the space of sixteen slow breaths—she counted—and then Ian gobbled again. The tom popped out of the grass and strode across a patch of open, leaf-packed ground, blood in his eye, breast feathers puffed, and tail fanned and vibrating. He paused for a moment to allow the woods to admire his magnificence, then commenced strutting slowly to and fro, uttering harsh, aggressive cries.

Moving only her eyeballs, she glanced back and forth between the strutting tom and Ian, who timed his movements to those of the turkey, sliding the bow from his shoulder, freezing, bringing an arrow to hand, freezing, and finally nocking the arrow as the bird made its final turn.

Or what should have been its final turn. Ian bent his bow and, in the same movement, released his arrow and uttered a startled, all-too-human yelp as a large, dark object dropped from the tree above him. He jerked back and the turkey barely missed landing on his head. She could see it now, a hen, feathers fluffed in fright, running with neck outstretched across the open ground toward the equally startled tom, who had deflated in shock.

By reflex, she seized her shotgun, brought it to bear, and fired. She missed, and both turkeys disappeared into a patch of ferns, making noises that sounded like a small hammer striking a wood block.

The echoes died away and the leaves of the trees settled back into their murmur. She looked at her cousin, who glanced at his bow, then across the open ground to where his arrow was sticking absurdly out from between two rocks. He looked at her, and they both burst into laughter.

“Aye, well,” he said philosophically. “That’s what we get for leavin’ Uncle Jamie to pick roses by himself.”

BRIANNA SWABBED THE barrel and rammed a wad of tow on a fresh round of buckshot. Hard, to stop her hand shaking.

“Sorry I missed,” she said.

“Why?” Ian looked at her, surprised. “When ye’re hunting, ye’re lucky to get one shot in ten. Ye ken that fine. Besides, I missed, too.”

“Only because a turkey fell on your head,” she said, but laughed. “Is your arrow ruined?”

“Aye,” he said, showing her the broken shaft he’d retrieved from the rocks. “The head’ll do, though.” He stripped the sharp iron head and put it in his sporran, tossed the shaft away, then stood up. “We’ll no get another shot at that lot, but—what’s amiss, lass?”

She’d tried to shove her ramrod into its pipe, but missed and sent it flying.

“What do they call it when you’re too excited to hit a deer—buck fever?” she said, making light of it as she went to fetch the rod. “Turkey fever, I suppose.”

“Oh, aye,” he said, and smiled, but his eyes were intent on her hands. “How long since ye’ve fired a gun, cousin?”

“Not that long,” she said tersely. She hadn’t expected it to come back. “Maybe six, seven months.”

“What were ye hunting then?” he asked, head on one side.

She glanced at him, made the decision, and, pushing the ramrod carefully home, turned to face him.

“A gang of men who were hiding in my house, waiting to kill me and take my kids,” she said. The words, bald as they were, sounded ridiculous, melodramatic.

Both his feathery brows went up.

“Did ye get them?” His tone was so interested that she laughed, in spite of the memories. He might have been asking if she’d caught a large fish.

“No, alas. I shot out the tire on their truck, and one of the windows in my own house. I didn’t get them. But then,” she added, with affected casualness, “they didn’t get me or the kids, either.”

Her knees felt suddenly weak, and she sat down carefully on a fallen log.

He nodded, accepting what she’d said with a matter-of-factness that would have astonished her—had it been any other man.

“That would be why ye’re here, aye?” He glanced around, quite unconsciously, as though scanning the forest for possible enemies, and she wondered suddenly what it would be like to live with Ian, never knowing whether you were talking to the Scot or the Mohawk—and now she was really curious about Rachel.

“Mostly, yes,” she answered. He picked up her tone and glanced sharply at her but nodded again.

“Will ye go back, then, to kill them?” This was said seriously, and it was with an effort that she tamped down the rage that seared through her when she thought of Rob Cameron and his bloody accomplices. It wasn’t fear or flashback that had made her hands shake now; it was the memory of the overwhelming urge to kill that had possessed her when she touched the trigger.

“I wish,” she said shortly. “We can’t. Physically, I mean.” She flapped a hand, pushing it all away. “I’ll tell it to you later; we haven’t even talked to Da and Mama about it yet. We only came last night.” As though reminded of the long, hard push upward through the mountain passes, she yawned suddenly, hugely.

Ian laughed, and she shook her head, blinking.

“Do I remember Da saying you have a baby?” she asked, firmly changing the subject.

The huge grin came back.

“I have,” he said, his face shining with such joy that she smiled, too. “I’ve got a wee son. He hasna got his real name yet, but we call him Oggy. For Oglethorpe,” he explained, seeing her smile widen at the name. “We were in Savannah when he started to show. I canna wait for ye to see him!”

“Neither can I,” she said, though the connection between Savannah and the name Oglethorpe escaped her. “Should we—”

A distant noise cut her short, and Ian was on his feet instantly, looking.

“Was that Da?” she asked.

“I think so.” Ian gave her a hand and hauled her to her feet, snatching up his bow almost in the same motion. “Come!”

She grabbed the newly loaded gun and ran, careless of brush, stones, tree branches, creeks, or anything else. Ian slithered through the wood like a fast-moving snake; she bulled her way through behind him, breaking branches and dashing her sleeve across her face to clear her eyes.

Twice Ian came to a sudden halt, grasping her arm as she hurtled toward him. Together they stood listening, trying to still pounding hearts and gasping breaths long enough to hear anything above the sough of the forest.

The first time, after what seemed like agonized minutes, they caught a sort of squalling noise above the wind, tailing off into grunts.

“Pig?” she asked, between gulps of air. Wild hogs could be big, and very dangerous.

Ian shook his head, swallowing.

“Bear,” he said, and, drawing a huge breath, seized her hand and pulled her into a run.

The second time they stopped for bearings, they heard nothing.

“Uncle Jamie!” Ian shouted, as soon as he had enough breath to do so. Nothing, and Brianna screamed, “Da!” as loud as she could—a pitifully small, futile sound in the immensity of the mountain. They waited, shouted, waited again—and after the final shout and silence, ran on again, Ian leading the way back toward the rose briers and the dead deer.

They came to a stumbling halt on the high ground above the hollow, chests heaving for air. Brianna seized Ian’s arm.

“There’s something down there!” The bushes were shaking. Not as they had during the deer’s death struggles, but definitely shaking, disturbed by the intermittent movements of something clearly bigger than Jamie Fraser. From here, she could clearly hear grunting, and the slobber of rending tendons, breaking bones … and chewing.

“Oh, Christ,” Ian said under his breath, but not far enough under, and terror sent a bolt of black dizziness through her chest. In spite of that, she gulped as much air as she could and screamed, “Daaaa!” once more.

“Och, now ye turn up,” said a deep, irascible Scottish voice from somewhere below their feet. “I hope ye’ve a turkey for the pot, lass, for we’ll no be having venison tonight.”

She flung herself flat on the ground, head hung over the edge of the cliff, dizzy with relief at seeing her father ten feet below, standing on the narrow ledge to which he’d led her earlier. His frown relaxed as he saw her above.

“All right, then, lass?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, “but no turkeys. What on earth happened to you?” He was disheveled and scratched, spots and rivulets of dried blood marking his arms and face, and a large rent in one sleeve. His right foot was bare, and his shin was heavily streaked with blood. He looked down from the ledge, and the glower returned.

“Dia gam chuideachadh,” he said, jerking his chin at the disturbance below. “I’d just got Ian’s deer skinned when yon fat hairy devil came out o’ the bushes and took it from me.”

“Cachd,” said Ian in brief disgust. He was squatting beside Brianna, surveying the rose briers. She took her attention off her father for a moment and caught a glimpse of something very large and black among the bushes, working at something in a concentrated manner; the bushes snapped and quivered as it ripped at the deer, and she caught sight of one stiff, quivering hoofed leg among the leaves.

The sight of the bear, quick as it was, caused a rush of adrenaline so visceral that it made her whole body tighten and her head feel light. She breathed as deep as she could, feeling sweat trickle down her back, her hands wet on the metal of the gun.

She came back to herself in time to hear Ian asking Jamie what had happened to his leg.

“I kicked it in the face,” Jamie replied briefly, with a glance of dislike toward the bushes. “It took offense and tried to take my foot off, but it only got my shoe.”

Ian quivered slightly beside her, but wisely didn’t laugh.

“Aye. D’ye want a hand up, Uncle?”

“I do not,” Jamie replied tersely. “I’m waiting for the mac na galladh to leave. It’s got my rifle.”

“Ah,” Ian said, properly appreciating the importance of this. Her father’s rifle was a very fine one, a long rifle from Pennsylvania, he’d told her. Plainly he was prepared to wait as long as it took—and was probably a lot more stubborn than the bear, she thought, with a small interior gurgle.

“Ye may as well go on,” Jamie said, looking up at them. “It may be a wee while.”

“I could probably shoot it from here,” Bree offered, judging the distance. “I can’t kill it, but a load of bird shot might make it leave.”

Her father made a Scottish noise in response to this, and a violent gesture of prevention.

“Dinna try it,” he said. “All ye’ll do is maybe madden it—and if I could get down that slope, yon beast can certainly get up it. Now away wi’ ye; I’m getting a crick in my neck talkin’ up at ye.”

Bree gave Ian a sidelong glance and he gave her back the ghost of a nod, acknowledging her reluctance to leave her father shoeless on a ledge no more than twenty feet from a hungry bear.

“We’ll bear ye company for a bit,” he announced—and before Jamie could object, Ian had grasped a stout pine sapling and swung himself down onto the cliff face, where his moccasined toes at once found a hold.

Brianna, following his example, leaned over and dropped her fowling piece into her father’s hands before finding her own way down, more slowly.

“I’m surprised ye didna have at it wi’ your dirk, Uncle Jamie,” Ian was saying. “Bear-Killer, is it, that the Tuscarora called ye?”

Bree was pleased to see that Jamie had regained his equanimity and gave Ian no more than a pitying look.

“Are ye maybe familiar with a saying about how a man grows wiser wi’ age?” he inquired.

“Aye,” Ian replied, looking baffled.

“Well, if ye dinna grow wiser, ye’re no likely to grow older,” Jamie said, leaning the gun against the cliff. “And I’m old enough to ken better than to fight a bear wi’ a dirk for a deer’s carcass. Have ye got anything to eat, lass?”

She’d quite forgotten the small bag over her shoulder, but she now took it off and groped inside, removing a small packet of bannocks and cheese supplied by Amy Higgins.

“Sit down,” she said, handing this to her father. “I want to look at your leg.”

“It’s no bad,” he said, but he was either too hungry to argue or simply conditioned to accept unwanted medical treatment by her mother, for he did sit down and stretch out the wounded leg.

It wasn’t bad, as he’d said, though there was a deep puncture wound in his calf, with a couple of long scrapes beside it—these presumably left as he’d hastily pulled his foot out of the bear’s mouth, she thought, feeling a little faint at the vision of this. She had nothing with her of use save a large handkerchief, but she soaked this in the icy water from the rivulet that flowed down the cliff face and cleaned the wound as well as she could.

Could you get tetanus from a bear’s bite? she wondered, swabbing and rinsing. She’d made sure to have all the kids’ shots up to date—including tetanus—before they’d left, but a tetanus immunization was only good for what, ten years? Something like that.

The puncture wound was still oozing blood, but not gushing. She wrung out the cloth and tied it firmly but not too tightly around his calf.

“Tapadh leat, a gràidh,” he said, and smiled at her. “Your mother couldna have done better. Here.” He’d saved two bannocks and a bit of cheese for her, and she leaned back against the cliff between him and Ian, surprised to discover that she was very hungry, and even more surprised to realize that she wasn’t worried by the fact that they were chatting away in the near vicinity of a large carnivorous animal that could undoubtedly kill them all.

“Bears are lazy,” Ian told her, observing the direction of her glance. “If he—is it a he-bear, Uncle?—has a fine deer down there, he’ll no bother to climb all the way up here for a scrawny wee snack. Speakin’ of which”—he leaned past her to address Jamie—“did it eat your sandal?”

“I didna stay to watch,” Jamie said, his temper seeming to have calmed as a result of food. “But I’ve hopes that he didn’t. After all, wi’ a perfectly good pile of steaming deer guts just at hand, why would ye bother wi’ a piece of old leather? Bears aren’t fools.”

Ian nodded at this and leaned back against the cliff, rubbing his shoulders gently on the sun-warmed stone.

“So, then, cousin,” he said to Bree. “Ye said ye’d tell me how it was ye came home. As we’ve likely a bit of time to pass …” He nodded toward the now-rhythmic noises of tearing flesh and mastication below.

The bottom of her stomach dropped abruptly, and her father, seeing her face, patted her knee.

“Dinna trouble yourself, a leannan. Time enough. Perhaps ye’d rather tell it to everyone, when Roger Mac’s with ye.”

She hesitated for a moment; she’d visualized it many times, telling her parents the whole of it, imagined herself and Roger telling the tale together, taking turns … but seeing the intent look in her father’s eyes, she realized belatedly that she couldn’t have told her part of it honestly in front of Roger—she hadn’t even told him everything when she’d found him again, seeing how furious he was at the details she had shared.

“No,” she said slowly. “I can tell you now. At least my part of it.” And washing down the last bannock crumbs with a handful of cold water, she began.

Yes, her mother did know men, she thought, seeing Ian’s fist clench on his knee, and hearing the low, involuntary growl her father made at hearing about Rob Cameron’s cornering her in the study at Lallybroch. She didn’t tell them what he’d said, the crude threats, the orders—nor what she’d done, taking off her jeans at his command, then slashing him across the face with the heavy denim before tackling him and knocking him to the floor. She did mention smashing the wooden box of letters over his head, and the two of them made small hmphs of satisfaction.

“Where did that box come from?” she interrupted herself to ask her father. “Roger found it in his adopted father’s garage—that’s a place where you park a car, I mean—” she added when she saw a look of confusion touch Jamie’s face. “Never mind, it was a sort of storage shed. But we always wondered where you’d put it at this end?”

“Och, that?” Jamie’s face relaxed a bit. “Roger Mac had told me how his father was a priest and lived for a great many years at his manse in Inverness. We made three boxes—it was a good bit of work to copy out all the letters, mind—and I had them sealed and sent to three different banks in Edinburgh, with instructions that in such and such a year, each box was to be sent on to the Reverend Wakefield at the manse in Inverness. We hoped at least one would turn up; I put Jemmy’s whole name on each one, thinkin’ that would mean something to you, but no one else. Go on, though—ye smashed yon Cameron wi’ the box and then …?”

“It didn’t knock him out all the way, but I got past him and into the hall. So I ran down to the hall tree—it’s not the same as the one your parents have,” she said to Ian, and then remembered what one of the last letters had said. “Oh, God! Your father, Ian … I’m so sorry!”

“Oh. Aye,” he said, looking down. She’d grasped his forearm, and he put his own big hand over hers and squeezed it lightly. “Dinna fash, a nighean. I feel him wi’ me, now and then. And Uncle Jamie brought my mam back from Scotland—oh, Jesus.” He stopped, looking at her round-eyed. “She doesna ken ye’re here!”

“She’ll find out soon enough,” Jamie said testily. “Will ye tell me what the devil happened to this gobshite Cameron?”

“Not enough,” she said grimly, and finished the story, including Cameron’s conspirators and the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral.

“So I took Jem and Mandy and went to California—it’s on the other side of America—to think what to do, and finally I decided that there wasn’t any choice; we had to try to find Roger—he’d left a letter that told me he was in Scotland, and when. And so we did, and …” She gestured widely to the wilderness around them. “Here we are.”

Jamie drew in air through his nose but said nothing. Nor did Ian, though he nodded briefly, as though to himself. Brianna felt strangely comforted by the proximity of her kin, eased by having told them the story, confided her fears. She felt protected in a way she hadn’t for a good long time.

“There it goes,” Ian said suddenly, and she followed the direction of his gaze, seeing the sudden wild swaying as the rose briers gave way to the bear’s bulk, waddling slowly away. Ian stood up and offered Brianna a hand.

She stretched to her full height and swayed, easing her limbs. She felt so easy in mind that she barely heard what her father said, rising behind her.

“What’s that?” she said, turning to him.

“I said, there’s the one thing more, isn’t there?”

“More?” she said, with a half smile. “Isn’t this enough to be going on with?”

Jamie made a Scottish noise in his throat, half apology, half warning.

“Yon Robert Cameron,” he said. “He likely read our letters, ye said.”

A trickle of ice water began a slow crawl down the groove of Brianna’s spine.

“Yes.” The sense of peaceful security had suddenly vanished.

“Then he kens about the Jacobite gold we keep hidden wi’ the whisky, and he also kens where we are. If he knows, so do his friends. And he maybe canna travel through the stones, but there are maybe those who can.” Jamie gave her a very direct blue look. “Sooner or later, someone will come looking.”

3 Rustic, Rural, and Very Romantic

THE SUN WAS BARELY up, but Jamie was long gone. I’d awakened briefly when he kissed my forehead, whispered that he was going hunting with Brianna, then kissed my lips and vanished into the chilly dark. I woke again two hours later in the warm nest of old quilts—these donated by the Crombies and the Lindsays—that served us for a bed and sat up, cross-legged in my shift, combing leaves and grass heads out of my hair with my fingers and enjoying the rare feeling of waking slowly, rather than with the oft-experienced sensation of having been shot from a cannon.

I supposed, with a pleasant little thrill, that once the house was habitable and the MacKenzies, along with Fergus and Marsali’s son Germain, and Fanny, an orphan left with us after the horrible death of her sister, were all ensconced within, mornings would once more resemble the exodus of bats from Carlsbad Cavern that I’d seen once in a Disney nature special. For now, though, the world was bright and filled with peace.

A vividly red ladybug dropped out of my hair and down the front of my shift, which put an abrupt end to my ruminations. I leapt up and shook the beetle out into the long grass by the Big Log, went into the bushes for a private moment, and came out with a bunch of fresh mountain mint. There was just enough water left in the bucket for me to have a cup of tea, so I left the mint on the flat surface Jamie had adzed at one end of a huge fallen poplar log to serve as worktable and food preparation space, and went to build up the fire and set the kettle inside the ring of blackened stones.

At the far edge of the clearing below, a thin spiral of smoke rose from the Higginses’ chimney like a snake out of a charmer’s basket; someone had poked up their smoored fire as well.

Who would be my first visitor this morning? Germain, perhaps; he’d slept at the Higgins cabin last night with Jemmy—but he wasn’t an early riser by temperament any more than I was. Fanny was a good distance away, with the Widow Donaldson and her enormous brood; she’d be along later.

It would be Roger, I thought, and felt a lifting of my heart. Roger and the children.

The fire was licking at the tin kettle; I lifted the lid and shredded a good handful of mint leaves into the water—first shaking the stems to dislodge any hitchhikers. The rest I bound with a twist of thread and hung among the other herbs suspended from the rafters of my makeshift surgery—this consisting of four poles with a lattice laid across the top, covered with hemlock branches for shade and shelter. I had two stools—one for me and one for the patient of the moment—and a small, crudely built table to hold whatever implements I needed to have easily to hand.

Jamie had put up a canvas lean-to beside the shelter, to provide privacy for such cases as required it, and also as storage for food or medicines kept in raccoon-proof casks, jars, or boxes.

It was rural, rustic, and very romantic. In a bug-ridden, grimy-ankled, exposed-to-the-elements, occasional-creeping-sensation-on-the-back-of-the-neck-indicating-that-you-were-being-eyed-up-by-something-considering-eating-you sort of way, but still.

I cast a longing look at the new foundation.

The house would have two handsome fieldstone chimneys; one had been halfway built and stood sturdy as a monolith amid the framing timbers of what would shortly—I hoped—be our kitchen and eating space. Jamie had assured me that he would frame the large room and tack on a temporary canvas roof within the next few weeks, so we could resume sleeping and cooking indoors. The rest of the house …

That might depend on whatever grandiose notions he and Brianna had conceived during their conversation the night before. I seemed to recall wild remarks about concrete and indoor plumbing, which I rather hoped wouldn’t take root, at least not until we had a roof over our heads and a floor under our feet. On the other hand …

The sound of voices on the path below indicated that my expected company had arrived, and I smiled. On the other hand, we’d have two more pairs of experienced and competent hands to help with the building.

Jem’s disheveled red head popped into view, and he broke into a huge grin at sight of me.

“Grannie!” he shouted, and brandished a slightly mangled corn dodger. “We brought you breakfast!”

THEY HAD BROUGHT me breakfast, lavish by my present standards: two fresh corn dodgers, griddled sausage patties wrapped in layers between burdock leaves, a boiled egg, still hot, and a quarter inch of Amy’s last year’s huckleberry jam, in the bottom of its jar.

“Mrs. Higgins says to send back the empty jar,” Jemmy informed me, handing it over. Only one eye was on the jar; the other was on the Big Log, which had been hidden by darkness the night before. “Wow! What kind of tree is that?”

“Poplar,” I said, closing my eyes in ecstasy at the first bite of sausage. The Big Log was roughly sixty feet long. It had been a good bit longer before Jamie had scavenged wood from the top for building and fires. “Your grandfather says it was likely more than a hundred feet tall before it fell.”

Mandy was trying to get up onto the log; Jem gave her a casual boost then leaned over to look down the length of the trunk, mostly smooth and pale but scabbed here and there with remnants of bark and odd little forests of toadstools and moss.

“Did it blow down in a storm?”

“Yes,” I said. “The top had been struck by lightning, but I don’t know whether that was the same storm that knocked it down. It might have died because of the lightning and then the next big storm blew it over. We found it like this when we came back to the Ridge. Mandy, be careful there!”

She’d scrambled to her feet and was walking along the trunk, arms stretched out like a gymnast, one foot in front of the other. The trunk was a good five feet in diameter at that point; there was plenty of room atop it, but it would be a hard bump if she fell off.

“Here, sweetheart.” Roger, who had been looking at the house site with interest, came over and plucked her off the log. “Why don’t you and Jem go gather wood for Grannie? D’ye remember what good firewood looks like?”

“Aye, of course.” Jem looked lofty. “I’ll show her how.”

“I knows how!” Mandy said, glowering at him.

“You have to look out for snakes,” he informed her.

She perked up at once, pique forgotten. “Wanna see a snake!”

“Jem—” Roger began, but Jemmy rolled his eyes.

“I know, Dad,” he said. “If I find a little one, I’ll let her touch it, but not if it’s got rattles or a cotton mouth.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Roger muttered, watching them go off hand in hand.

I swallowed the last of the corn dodgers, licked sugary jam from the corner of my mouth, and gave him a sympathetic look.

“Nobody died the last time you lived here,” I reminded him. He opened his mouth to reply, but closed it again, and I remembered. Mandy nearly had died last time. Which meant that whatever had made them come back now …

“It’s all right,” he said firmly, in answer to what must have been a very apprehensive look on my face. He smiled a little and took me by the elbow, drawing me into the shade of my surgery.

“It’s okay,” he said, and cleared his throat. “We’re okay,” he said, more loudly. “We’re all here and sound. Nothing else matters right now.”

“All right,” I said, only slightly reassured. “I won’t ask.”

He laughed at that, and the dappled light made his worn face young again. “We’ll tell you,” he assured me. “But most of it’s really Bree’s story; you should hear it from her. I wonder what they’re hunting, she and Jamie?”

“Probably each other,” I said, smiling. “Sit down.” I touched his arm, turning him toward the high stool.

“Each other?” He adjusted himself comfortably on the stool, feet tucked back under him.

“Sometimes it’s hard to know what to say, how to talk to each other, when you haven’t seen a person in a long time—especially when it’s a person who’s important to you. It takes a bit of time to feel comfortable again; easier if there’s a job at hand. Let me look at your throat, will you?”

“You don’t feel comfortable talking to me yet?” he asked lightly.

“Oh, yes,” I assured him. “Doctors never have trouble in talking to people. You start by telling them to take off their clothes, and that breaks the ice. By the time you’ve done poking them and peering into their orifices, the conversation is usually fairly animated, if not necessarily relaxed.”

He laughed, but his hand had unconsciously grasped the neckband of his shirt, pulling the fabric together.

“To tell you the truth,” he said, trying to look serious, “we only came for the free babysitting. We haven’t been more than six feet away from the kids in the last four months.” He laughed, then choked a little, and it ended in a small coughing fit.

I laid my hand on his and smiled. He smiled back—though with less certainty than before, and, pulling his hand back, he quickly unbuttoned his shirt and spread the cloth away from his neck. He cleared his throat, hard.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “You sound much better than you did last time I saw you.”

Actually, he did, and that rather surprised me. His voice was still broken, rasping, and hoarse—but he spoke with much less effort, and no longer looked as though that effort caused him constant pain.

Roger raised his chin and I reached up carefully, fitting my fingers about his neck, just under his jaw. He’d recently shaved; his skin was cool and slightly damp and I caught a whiff of the shaving soap I made for Jamie, scented with juniper berries; Jamie must have brought it for him early this morning. I was moved by the sense of ceremony in that small gesture—and moved much more by the hope in Roger’s eyes. Hope he tried to hide.

“I met a doctor,” he said gruffly. “In Scotland. Hector McEwan was his name. He was … one of us.”

My fingers stilled and so did my heart.

“A traveler, you mean?”

He nodded. “I need to tell you about him. About what he did. But that can wait a bit.”

“What he did,” I repeated. “To you, you mean?”

“Aye. Though it was what he did to Buck, first …”

I was about to ask what had happened to Buck when he looked suddenly into my eyes, intent.

“Have you ever seen blue light?” he asked. “When you touch somebody in a medical way, I mean? To heal them.”

Gooseflesh rippled up my arms and neck, and I had to take my fingers off his neck, because they were trembling.

“I haven’t done it myself,” I said carefully. “But I saw it. Once.”

I was seeing it again, as vivid in my mind’s eye as it had been in the shadows of my bed at L’Hôpital des Anges, when I had miscarried Faith and been dying of puerperal fever. When Master Raymond had laid his hands on me and I had seen the bones in my arm glow blue through my flesh.

I dropped that vision like a hot plate and realized that Roger was gripping my hand.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said.

“I’m not scared,” I said, half truthfully. “Just shocked. I hadn’t thought about it in years.”

“It scared the shit out of me,” he said frankly, and let go of my hand. “After he did what he did to Buck’s heart, I was afraid to talk to him, but I knew I had to. And when I touched him—to stop him, you know; I was following him up a path—he froze. And then he turned round and put his hand on my chest”—his own hand rose, unconsciously, and rested on his chest—“and he said the same thing to me that I’d heard him say to Buck: ‘Cognosco te.’ It means, ‘I know you,’” he clarified, seeing the blank look on my face. “In Latin.”

“He knew—what you were—just by touching you?” The oddest feeling was rippling over my shoulders and down my arms. Not exactly fear … but something like awe.

“Yes. I couldn’t tell about him,” he added hastily. “I didn’t feel anything strange, just then, but I was watching closely, earlier, when he put his hand on Buck’s chest—Buck had some sort of heart attack when we came through the stones—”

“He came with you and Bree and—”

Now Roger made the same helpless gesture.

“No, this was … earlier. Anyway, Buck was in a bad way, and the people who’d taken him in had sent for a doctor, this Hector McEwan. And he laid his hand on Buck’s chest and—and did wee things—and I saw—I really did, Claire, I saw it—a faint blue light come up through his fingers and spread over his hand.”

“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.”

He laughed.

“Aye. Exactly. Nobody else could see it, though,” he added, laughter fading out of his face. “Only me.”

I rubbed the palms of my hands slowly together, imagining it.

“Buck,” I said. “I assume he survived? Since you asked if we’d seen him.”

Roger’s face changed at that, a shadow passing behind his eyes.

“He did. Then. But we—separated, after I found Bree and the kids … It’s …”

“A long story,” I finished for him. “Maybe it should wait until Jamie and Bree come back from their hunting. But about this Dr. McEwan—did he tell you anything about—the blue light?” The words felt strange to say, and yet I could envision it; my palms tingled slightly at the thought, and I looked down at them involuntarily. No, still pink.

Roger was shaking his head. “Not much, no. Not in words. But—he put his hand on my throat.” His own hand rose, touching the ragged scar left by the hangman’s rope. “And … something happened,” he said softly.

4 The Women Will Ha’ a Fit

“WOULD YE COME ASIDE to the cabin, cousin?” Ian said, looking uncharacteristically shy. “In case Rachel might be back. I’d … like ye to meet her.”

“I’d love to meet her,” Bree said, smiling at him, and meant it. She lifted an eyebrow at her father, but he nodded.

“It will be good to put this lot down for a bit,” he said, wiping a sleeve across his perspiring face. “And if ye milked the goats as your mother asked ye to this morning, Ian, I wouldna say no to a cup of it, either.” He and Ian were carrying the usable remains of the deer, bound into an unwieldy package inside the mostly intact skin and hanging from a stout pole that they bore across their shoulders. It was a hot day.

Someone was home at the cabin in the aspen grove. The door stood open, and there was a small spinning wheel standing on the front stoop amid the darting leaf shadows and a chair beside it with a flat basket piled with brown and gray puffs of what Brianna assumed must be combed clean wool. There was no sign of the spinner, but women were singing inside the house, in Gaelic—breaking off every few bars in laughter, with one clear voice then singing the line over again, and the second after it, stumbling over an occasional word, then laughing again.

Jamie smiled, hearing it.

“Jenny’s teachin’ wee Rachel the Gàidhlig,” he said, unnecessarily. “Set it down here, Ian.” He nodded at the pool of shade under a fallen log. “The women will ha’ a fit if we bring flies into the house.”

Someone in the house had heard them, for the singing stopped and a head poked out of the open door.

“Ian!” A tallish, very pretty dark-haired girl popped out and hopped off the porch, grabbing Ian round the middle in exuberant embrace, this instantly returned. “Thy cousins have come! Does thee know?”

“Aye, I do,” he said, kissing her mouth. “Come say hello to my cousin Brianna, mo ghràidh. Oh—and Uncle Jamie, too,” he added, turning round.

Bree was already smiling, moved by the obvious love between the young Murrays, and glancing at her father she saw the same smile on his face. Saw it broaden as he looked beyond them to the open door, where a small woman had come out, a baby wearing nothing but a clout in her arms.

“Who—” she began, and then her eyes fell on Brianna, and her mouth dropped open.

“Blessed Bride protect us,” she said mildly, but her eyes were warm, blue, and slanted like Jamie’s, smiling up at Brianna. “The giants have come. And your husband, too, they say, and him even taller than yourself, lass. And ye’ve bairns, too, they say—all of them springin’ up like weeds, I reckon?”

“Toadstools,” Bree said, laughing, and bent down to hug her diminutive aunt. Jenny smelled of goats, fresh wool, porridge, and toasted yeast bread, and a faint scent in her hair and clothes that Bree had long forgotten but recognized instantly as the soap Jenny had made at Lallybroch, with honey and lavender and a Highland herb that had no name in English.

“It’s so good to see you,” she said, and felt tears well in her eyes, for the soap brought back Lallybroch as she’d first seen it—and with that ghost, another, stronger one behind it: the ghost of her own Lallybroch.

She blinked back the tears and straightened up, a tremulous smile pasted on her face. This vanished at once, though, as she remembered.

“Oh, Auntie! I’m so sorry. About Uncle Ian, I mean.” A new wave of loss washed through her. Even though Ian Murray the elder had been dead all of her life, save for a few brief years, and she had met him only once, the loss seemed fresh and shocking now.

Jenny looked down, patting the baby’s tender back. He had a downy head of brown-blond fuzz, like a guinea hen’s chick.

“Ach,” she said softly. “My Ian’s wi’ me still. I can see him in this wee’un’s face, clear as day.”

She turned the baby deftly so he rested on her hip, looking up at Brianna with big round eyes—eyes the same warm light brown of her cousin Ian—and his father.

“Oh,” Brianna said, charmed and comforted at once. She reached out a tentative hand and offered the baby a finger. “And your name is … Oggy?”

Jenny and Rachel both laughed, one with honest amusement and the other ruefully.

“I’m afraid we haven’t managed to find the proper name for him as yet,” Rachel said, touching him gently on the shoulder. Oggy turned toward his mother’s voice and kept on turning, leaning slowly out of Jenny’s arms like a sloth drawn ineluctably toward sweet fruit.

Rachel gathered him up, gently touching his cheek. He turned his head—again slowly—and started sucking on her knuckle.

“Ian says that Mohawk children find their proper names when they’re older, and have just cradle-names until then.”

Jenny’s shapely black eyebrows rose at this.

“Ye mean to tell me that the bairn’s going to be Oggy until … when?”

“Oh, no,” Rachel assured her. “I’m sure I’ll think of something before ‘when.’” She smiled at her mother-in-law, who rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to Brianna.

“I’m glad ye didna have such trouble wi’ your own bairns, a nighean. Jamie said in his letters that they’re called Jeremiah and Amanda, is that right?”

Brianna coughed, avoiding Rachel’s eye.

“Um … Jeremiah Alexander Ian Fraser MacKenzie,” she said. “And Amanda Claire Hope MacKenzie.”

Jenny nodded approvingly, whether at the quality or the quantity of the names.

“Jenny!” Bree’s father appeared on the porch, sweaty and disheveled, bloodstained shirt much in evidence. “Ian canna find the beer.”

“We drank it,” Jenny called back, not turning a hair.

“Oh.” He disappeared back into the house, presumably in search of something else potable, leaving damp, slightly bloody footprints on the porch.

“What’s happened to him?” Jenny demanded, shooting a sharp glance from the footprints to Brianna, who shrugged.

“A bear.”

“Oh.” She seemed to digest this for a moment, then shook her head. “I suppose I’ll have to let him have beer, then.” She disappeared after the menfolk, leaving Brianna and Rachel outside.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met a Quaker before,” Brianna said after a slightly awkward pause. “Is ‘Quaker’ the right word, by the way? I don’t mean to—”

“We say Friend,” Rachel said, smiling again. “Quaker is not offensive, though. But I think thee must have met at least one. Thee might not know, if the Friend chose not to use Plain Speech in talking with thee. Most of us don’t have stripes, spots, or any other physical mark by which thee might discern us.”

“Most of you?”

“Well, naturally I cannot see my own back, but I’m sure Ian would have told me, was there anything remarkable …”

Brianna laughed, feeling slightly giddy from hunger, relief, and the simple, recurrent joy at being with her family again. A charmingly expanded family, too, it seemed.

“I’m really glad to meet you,” she said to Rachel. “I couldn’t imagine what sort of girl would marry Ian—I’m sorry, that sounds wrong …”

“No, thee is quite right,” Rachel assured her. “I couldn’t have imagined marrying a man like him, either, but there he is in my bed each morning, nonetheless. They do say the Lord moves in mysterious ways. Come into the house,” she added, shifting Oggy into a new position. “I know where the wine is.”

5 Meditations on a Hyoid

“IT ALL BEGINS IN medias res, and if you’re lucky, it ends that way as well.” Roger swallowed, and I felt his larynx bob under my fingers. The skin of his throat was cool, and smooth where I held it, though I could feel a tiny prickle of beard stubble brush my knuckle just under his jaw.

“That’s what Dr. McEwan said?” I asked curiously. “What did he mean by it, I wonder?”

Roger’s eyes were closed—people normally closed their eyes when I examined them, as though needing to preserve what privacy they could—but at this, he opened them, an arresting deep green lit by the morning sun.

“I asked him. He said that nothing ever truly starts or stops, so far as he could see. That people think a child’s life begins at birth, but plainly that’s not so—ye can see them move in the womb, and a child that comes too soon will often live for a short time, and ye see that it’s alive in all its senses, even though it can’t sustain life.”

Now I’d closed my own eyes, not because I found Roger’s gaze unsettling, but in order to concentrate on the vibrations of his words. I moved my grip on his throat a little lower.

“Well, he’s quite right about that,” I said, envisioning the inner anatomy of the throat as I talked. “Babies are born already running, as it were. All their processes—except breathing—are working long before birth. But that’s still a rather cryptic remark.”

“Yes, it was.” He swallowed again and I felt his breath, warm on my bare forearm. “I prodded him a bit, because he’d obviously meant it by way of explanation—or at least the best he could do by way of explanation. I don’t suppose you could describe what it is you actually do when you heal someone, could you?”

I smiled at that without opening my eyes. “Oh, I might have a go at it. But there’s an implied error there; I don’t actually heal people. They heal by themselves. I just … support them.”

A sound that wasn’t quite a laugh made his larynx execute a complicated double bob. I thought I could feel a slight concavity under my thumb, where the cartilage had been partially crushed by the rope … I put my other hand round my own throat, for comparison.

“That’s actually what he said, too—Hector McEwan, I mean. But he did heal people; I saw him do it.”

My hands released both our throats, and I opened my eyes.

He gave me a quick précis of his relations with William Buccleigh, from Buck’s role in his hanging at Alamance, through the reappearance of his ancestor in Inverness in 1980, and Buck’s joining him in the search for Jem, after Brianna’s erstwhile co-worker, Rob Cameron, had kidnapped the boy.

“That was when he became … a bit more than a friend,” Roger said. He looked down and cleared his throat. “He came with me to search for Jem. Jem wasn’t there, of course, but we did find another Jeremiah. My father,” he said abruptly, his voice cracking on the word. I reached by reflex for his hand, but he waved me off, clearing his throat again.

“It’s okay. I’ll—I’ll tell you about that … later.” He swallowed and straightened a little, meeting my eyes again. “But Buck—that’s what we called him, Buck—when we came through the stones in search of Jem, we were both … damaged by the passage. You said, I think, that it got worse, if you did it more than once?”

“I wouldn’t say once isn’t damaging,” I said, with a small internal shudder at the memory of that void, a chaos where nothing seems to exist but noise. That, and the faint flicker of thought, all that holds you together between one breath and the next. “But yes, it does get worse. What happened to you?”

“To me, not that much. Unconscious for a bit, woke up strangling, fighting for air. Muck sweat, disorientation; couldn’t keep my balance for a bit, staggered all over. But Buck—” He frowned, and I saw his eyes change as he looked inward again, seeing the green hilltop of Craigh na Dun as he woke with the rain on his face. As I had waked three times. The hair on my neck rose slowly.

“It seemed to be his heart. He had a pain in his chest, his left arm, and he couldn’t breathe well, said it was like a weight on his chest, and he couldn’t get up. I got him water, though, and after a bit he seemed okay. At least he could walk, and he brushed off any suggestion that we stop and rest.”

They had separated then, Buck to search the road toward Inverness, Roger to go to Lallybroch, and—

“Lallybroch!” This time I did grab him by the arm. “You went there?”

“I did,” he said, and smiled. He clasped my hand, where it lay on his arm. “I met Brian Fraser.”

“You—but—Brian?” I shook my head in order to clear it. That made no sense.

“No, it didn’t make sense,” he said, plainly reading my thoughts from my face and smiling at the results. “We … didn’t go where—I mean when—we thought we were going. We ended in 1739.”

I stared at him for a moment, and he shrugged helplessly.

“Later,” I said firmly, and reached for his throat again, thinking, “In medias res.” What the devil did McEwan mean by that?

I could hear distant childish shouts from the direction of the creek, and the high, cracked screech of a hawk in the tall snag at the far side of our clearing; I could just see him—or her—from the corner of my eye: a large dark shape like a torpedo on a dead branch. And I was beginning to hear—or to think I heard—the thrum of blood in Roger’s neck, a faint sound, separate from the thump of his pulse. And the fact that I was evidently hearing it through my fingertips seemed shockingly ordinary.

“Talk to me a bit more,” I suggested, as much to avoid hearing what I thought I heard as in order to loosen up his larynx. “About anything.”

He hummed for a moment, but that made him cough, and I dropped my hand so he could turn his head.

“Sorry,” he said. “Bobby Higgins was just telling me the Ridge is growing—a lot of new families, I hear?”

“Like weeds,” I said, replacing my hand. “We came back to find that at least twenty new families had settled down, and there’ve been three more just since we came back from Savannah, where the winds of war had briefly blown us.”

He nodded, a slight frown on his face, and gave me a sidelong green glance. “I don’t suppose any of the new settlers is a minister?”

“No,” I said promptly. “Is that what you—I mean, you still think you—”

“I do.” He looked up at me, a little shyly. “I’m not fully ordained yet; I’ll need to take care of that, somehow. But when we decided to come back, we talked—Bree and I. About what we might do. Here. And …” He lifted both shoulders, palms on his knees. “That’s what I might do.”

“You were a minister here before,” I said, watching his face. “Do you really have to be formally ordained to do it again?”

He didn’t have to think; he’d done his thinking long since.

“I do,” he said. “I don’t feel … wrong … about having buried or married folk before, or christened them. Someone had to do it, and I was all there was. But I want it to be right.” He smiled a little. “It’s maybe like the difference between being handfast and being properly married. Between a promise and a vow. Even if ye ken ye’d never break the promise, ye want—” He struggled for the words. “Ye want the weight of the vow. Something to stand at your back.”

A vow. I’d made a few of those. And he was right; all of them—even those I’d broken—had meant something, had weight. And a few of them had stood at my back, and were still standing.

“That does make a difference,” I said.

“Ye know, ye were right,” he said, sounding surprised, and smiled at me. “It is easy to talk to a doctor—especially one who’s got ye by the throat. D’ye want to give McEwan’s method a try, then?”

I straightened my back and flexed my hands, rather self-consciously.

“It can’t hurt,” I said, hoping I was right. “You know—” I added hesitantly, and felt Roger’s Adam’s apple bob below my hand.

“I know,” he said gruffly. “No expectations. If something happens … well, it does. If not, I’m no worse off.”

I nodded, and felt gently about, fingertips probing. The tracheotomy I’d performed to save his life had left a smaller scar in the hollow of his throat, a slight depression about an inch long. I passed my thumb over that, feeling the healthy rings of cartilage above and below. The lightness of the touch made him shiver suddenly, tiny goosebumps stippling his neck, and he gave the breath of a laugh.

“Goose walking on my grave,” he said.

“Stamping about on your throat, more like,” I said, smiling. “Tell me again what Dr. McEwan said. Everything you can remember.”

I hadn’t taken my hand away, and I felt the lurch of his Adam’s apple as he cleared his throat hard.

“He prodded my throat—much as you’re doing,” he added, smiling back. “And he asked me if I knew what a hyoid bone was. He said”—Roger’s hand rose involuntarily toward his throat but stopped a few inches from touching it—“that mine was an inch or so higher than usual, and that if it had been in the normal place, I’d be dead.”

“Really,” I said, interested. I put a thumb just under his jaw and said, “Swallow, please.”

He did, and I touched my own neck and swallowed, still touching his.

“I’ll be damned,” I said. “It’s a small sample size, and granted, there may be differences attributable to gender—but he may well be right. Perhaps you’re a Neanderthal.”

“A what?” He stared at me.

“Just a joke,” I assured him. “But it’s true that one of the differences between the Neanderthals and modern humans is the hyoid. Most scientists think they hadn’t one at all, and therefore couldn’t speak, but my Uncle Lamb said— You rather need one for coherent speech,” I added, seeing his blank look. “It anchors the tongue. My uncle didn’t think they could have been mute, so the hyoid must have been located differently.”

“How extremely fascinating,” Roger said politely.

I cleared my own throat and circled his neck once again.

“Right. And after saying about your hyoid—what did McEwan do? How, exactly, did he touch you?”

Roger tilted his head back slightly and, reaching up, adjusted my grip, moving my hand down an inch and gently spreading my fingers.

“About like that,” he said, and I found that my hand was now covering—or at least touching—all the major structures of his throat, from larynx to hyoid.

“And then …?” I was listening intently—not to his voice, but to the sense of his flesh. I’d had my hands on his throat dozens of times, particularly during his recovery from the hanging, but what with one thing and another I hadn’t touched it in several years—until today. I could feel the solid muscles of his neck, firm under the skin, and I felt his pulse, strong and regular—a little fast, and I realized just how important this might be to him. I felt a qualm at that; I had no idea what Hector McEwan might have done—or what Roger might have imagined he’d done—and still less notion how to do anything myself.

“It’s just that I know what a sound larynx should feel like, and I can tell what yours feels like, and … I put my fingers there and envision the way it should feel.” That’s what McEwan had said in response to Roger’s questions. I wondered if I knew what a normal larynx felt like.

“There was a sensation of warmth.” Roger’s eyes had closed again; he was concentrating on my touch. The smooth bulge of his larynx lay under the heel of my hand, bobbing slightly when he swallowed. “Nothing startling. Just the feeling you get when you step into a room where a fire is burning.”

“Does my touch feel warm to you now?” It should, I thought; his skin was cool.

“Yes,” he said, not opening his eyes. “But it’s on the outside. It was on the inside when McEwan … did what he did.” His dark brows drew together in concentration. “It … I felt it … here—” Reaching up, he moved my thumb to rest just to the right of center, directly beneath the hyoid. “And … here.” His eyes opened in surprise, and he pressed two fingers to the flesh above his collarbone, an inch or two to the left of the suprasternal notch. “How odd; I hadn’t remembered that.”

“And he touched you there, as well?” I moved my lower fingers down and felt the quickening of my senses that often happened when I was fully engaged with a patient’s body. Roger felt it, too—his eyes flashed to mine, startled.

“What—?” he began, but before either of us could speak further, there was a high-pitched yowl from the clearing below. This was instantly followed by a confusion of young voices, more yowling, then a voice immediately identifiable as Mandy in a passion, bellowing, “You’re bad, you’re bad, you’re bad and I hate you! You’re bad and youse going to HELL!”

Roger leapt to his feet. “Amanda!” he bellowed. “Come here right now!” Over his shoulder, I saw Amanda, face contorted with rage, trying to grab her doll, Esmeralda, which Germain was dangling by one arm, just above her head, dancing to keep away from Amanda’s concerted attempts to kick him.

Startled, Germain looked up, and Amanda connected full-force with his shin. She was wearing stout half boots and the crack of impact was clearly audible, though instantly superseded by Germain’s cry of pain. Jemmy, looking appalled, grabbed Esmeralda, thrust her into Amanda’s arms, and with a guilty glance over his shoulder ran for the woods, followed by a hobbling Germain.

“Jeremiah!” Roger roared. “Stop right there!” Jem froze as though hit by a death ray; Germain didn’t, and vanished with a wild rustling into the shrubbery.

I’d been watching the boys, but a faint choking noise made me glance sharply at Roger. He’d gone pale and was clutching his throat with both hands. I seized his arm.

“Are you all right?”

“I … don’t know.” He spoke in a rasping whisper, but gave me the shadow of a pained smile. “Think I—might have sprained something.”

“Daddy?” said a small voice beside me. Amanda sniffled dramatically, wiping tears and snot all over her face. “Is you mad at me, Daddy?”

Roger took an immense breath, coughed, and went over, squatting down to take her in his arms.

“No, sweetheart,” he said softly—but in a fairly normal voice, and something clenched inside me began to relax. “I’m not mad. You mustn’t tell people they’re going to hell, though. Come here, let’s wash your face.” He stood up, holding her, and turned toward my mixing table, where there was a basin and ewer.

“I’ll do it,” I said, reaching out for Mandy. “Maybe you want to go and … er … talk to Jem?”

“Mmphm,” he said, and handed her across. A natural snuggler, Mandy at once clung affectionately to my neck and wrapped her legs around my middle.

“Can we wash my dolly’s face, too?” she asked. “Dose bad boys got her dirty!”

I listened with half an ear to Mandy’s mingled endearments to Esmeralda and denunciations of her brother and Germain, but most of my attention was focused on what was going on in the clearing below.

I could hear Jem’s voice, high and argumentative, and Roger’s, firm and much lower, but couldn’t pick out any words. Roger was talking, though, and I didn’t hear any choking or coughing …. That was good.

The memory of him bellowing at the children was even better. He’d done that before—it was a necessity, children and the great outdoors being what they respectively were—but I’d never heard him do it without his voice breaking, with a follow-up of coughing and throat clearing. McEwan had said that it was a small improvement, and that it took time for healing.

Had I actually done anything to help?

I looked critically at the palm of my hand, but it looked much as usual: a half-healed paper cut on the middle finger, stains from picking blackberries, and a burst blister on my thumb, from snatching a spider full of bacon that had caught fire out of the hearth, without a pot holder to shield my hand. Not a sign of any blue light, certainly.

“Wassat, Grannie?” Amanda leaned off the table to look at my upturned hand.

“What’s what? That black splotch? I think it’s ink; I was writing up my casebook yesterday. Kirsty Wilson’s rash.” I’d thought at first the rash was just poison sumac, but it was hanging on in a rather worrying fashion …. No fever, though … perhaps it was hives? Or some kind of atypical psoriasis?

“No, dat.” Mandy poked a wet, chubby finger at the heel of my hand. “Issa letter!” She twisted her head halfway round to look closer, black curls tickling across my arm. “Letter ‘J’!” she announced triumphantly. “‘J’ is for Jemmy! I hate Jemmy,” she added, frowning.

“Er …” I said, completely nonplussed. It was the letter “J.” The scar had faded to a thin white line but was still clear if the light struck right. The scar Jamie had given me, when I’d left him at Culloden. Left him to die, hurling myself through the stones to save his unborn, unknown child. Our child. And if I hadn’t?

I looked at Mandy, sherry-eyed and black-curled and perfect as a tiny spring apple. Heard Jem outside, now giggling with his father. It had cost us twenty years apart—years of heartbreak, pain, and danger. It had been worth it.

“It’s for Grandda’s name. ‘J’ for Jamie,” I said to Amanda, who nodded as though that made perfect sense, clutching a soggy Esmeralda to her chest. I touched her glowing cheek and imagined for an instant that my fingers might be tinged with blue, though they weren’t.

“Mandy,” I said, on impulse. “What color is my hair?”

“When your hair is white, you’ll come into your full power.” An old Tuscarora wisewoman named Nayawenne had said that to me, years ago—along with a lot of other disturbing things.

Mandy stared intently at me for a moment, then said definitely, “Brindle.”

“What? Where did you learn that word, for heaven’s sake?”

“Uncle Joe. He says ’at’s what color Badger is.”

“Who’s Badger?”

“Auntie Gail’s doggy.”

“Hmm,” I said. “Not yet, then. All right, sweetheart, let’s go and hang Esmeralda out to dry.”

6 Home Is the Hunter, Home from the Hill

JAMIE AND BRIANNA CAME back in late afternoon, with two brace of squirrels, fourteen doves, and a large piece of stained and tattered canvas that, unwrapped, revealed something that looked like the remnants of a particularly grisly murder.

“Supper?” I asked, gingerly poking at a shattered bone sticking out of the mass of hair and slick flesh. The smell was iron-raw and butcherous, with a rank note that seemed familiar, but decay hadn’t yet set in to any noticeable degree.

“Aye, if ye can manage, Sassenach.” Jamie came and peered down at the bloody shambles, frowning a little. “I’ll tidy it up for ye. I need a bit o’ whisky first, though.”

Given the bloodstains on his shirt and breeks, I hadn’t noticed the equally stained rag tied round his leg, but now saw that he was limping. Raising a brow, I went to the large basket of food, small tools, and minor medical supplies that I lugged up to the house site every morning.

“From what’s left of it, I presume that is—or was—a deer. Did you actually tear it apart with your bare hands?”

“No, but the bear did,” Bree said, straight-faced. She exchanged complicit glances with her father, who hummed in his throat.

“Bear,” I said, and took a deep breath. I gestured at his shirt. “Right. How much of that blood is yours?”

“No much,” he said tranquilly, sitting down on the Big Log. “Whisky?”

I looked sharply at Brianna, but she seemed to be intact. Filthy, and with green-gray bird droppings streaked down her shirt, but intact. Her face glowed with sun and happiness, and I smiled.

“There’s whisky in the tin canteen hanging over there,” I said, nodding toward the big spruce at the far side of the clearing. “Do you want to fetch it for your father while I see what’s left of his leg?”

“Sure. Where are Mandy and Jem?”

“When last seen, they were playing by the creek with Aidan and his brothers. Don’t worry,” I added, seeing her lower lip suck suddenly in. “It’s very shallow there, and Fanny said she’d go and keep an eye on Mandy while she’s collecting leeches. Fanny’s very dependable.”

“Mm-hmm.” Bree still looked dubious, but I could see her fighting down her maternal impulse to go scoop Mandy out of the creek immediately. “I know I met her last night, but I’m not sure I remember Fanny. Where does she live?”

“With us,” Jamie said matter-of-factly. “Ow!”

“Hold still,” I said, spreading the puncture wound in his leg open with two fingers while I poured saline solution into it. “You don’t want to die of tetanus, do you?”

“And what would ye do if I said yes, Sassenach?”

“The same thing I’m doing right now. I don’t care if you want to or not; I’m not having it.”

“Well, why did ye ask me, then?” He leaned back on his palms, both legs stretched out, and looked up at Bree. “Fanny’s a wee orphan lass. Your brother took her under his protection.”

Bree’s face went almost comically blank. “My brother. Willie?” she asked, tentative.

“Unless your mother kens otherwise, he’s the only brother ye’ve got,” Jamie assured her. “Aye, William. Jesus, Sassenach, ye’re worse than the bear!”

He closed his eyes, whether to avoid looking at what I was doing to his leg—enlarging and debriding the wound with a lancet; the injury wasn’t serious in itself, but the puncture wound in his calf was deep, and I was in fact not being rhetorical about the risk of tetanus—or to give Bree a moment to recover her countenance.

She looked at him, head cocked to one side.

“So,” she said slowly. “That means … he knows that you’re his father?”

Jamie grimaced, not opening his eyes.

“He does.”

“Not that happy about it?” One side of her mouth curled up, but both her eyes and her voice were sympathetic.

“Probably not.”

“Yet,” I murmured, rinsing blood down his long shinbone. He snorted. Bree made a more feminine version of the same noise and went to fetch the whisky. Jamie heard her go and opened his eyes.

“Are ye not done yet, Sassenach?” I saw the slight vibration of his wrists and realized that he was bracing himself on his palms in order to hide the fact that he was trembling with exhaustion.

“I’m through hurting you,” I assured him. I put my hand next to his on the log as I rose, touching his fingers lightly. “I’ll put a bandage on it, and then you should lie down for a bit with your foot propped up.”

“Don’t fall asleep, Da.” Brianna’s shadow fell over him, and she leaned down to hand him the canteen. “Ian says he’s bringing Rachel and his mother down to have supper with us.” She leaned in farther and kissed him on the forehead.

“Don’t worry about Willie,” she said. “He’ll figure things out.”

“Aye. I hope he doesna wait ’til I’m dead.” He gave her a lopsided smile to indicate that this was meant to be a joke, and lifted the canteen in salute.

I CHIVVIED JAMIE, protesting, into the shade under my surgical shelter and made him lie down with my apron folded under his head.

“Have you had anything at all to eat since breakfast?” I asked, propping his injured leg up with a chunk of wood from the scrap heap.

“I have,” he said patiently. “Amy Higgins sent bannocks and cheese wi’ Brianna, and we ate it whilst waiting on the bear to leave. Do ye think I’d not have said by now if I was starving?”

“Oh,” I said, feeling rather foolish. “Well, yes, I do. It’s just—” I smoothed hair back from his brow. “It’s just that I want to make you feel better, and feeding you was the only thing that came to mind.”

That made him laugh, and he stretched, arching his back, and readjusted himself into a more comfortable position on the trampled grass.

“Well, that’s a kind thought, Sassenach. I could think of a few other things, maybe—after I’ve had a wee rest. And Brianna says that Ian’s lot are coming to supper.” He turned his head, casting a look toward the distant mountain, where the sun was coming slowly down through a scatter of fat little clouds, painting their bellies with soft gold.

We both sighed a little at the sight, and he turned back and took my hand.

“What I want ye to do, Sassenach, is sit wi’ me here for a moment—and tell me I’m no dreaming. She’s really here? She and the bairns and Roger Mac?”

I squeezed his hand and felt the same bubbling joy I could see in his face.

“It’s real. They’re here. Right there, in fact.” I laughed a little, because I could still see Brianna below, just heading for the trees that fringed the creek, her long hair loose now, fading to brown in the shadows and lifting in the evening breeze as she called for the children.

“I know what you mean, though. I had a visit with Roger this morning and asked him to let me examine his throat. I felt just like doubting Thomas. It was so strange to have him right there in front of me, touch him—and at the same time, it didn’t seem strange at all.”

I rubbed the back of his hand lightly with my thumb, feeling the knobs of his knuckles and the faint roughness of the scar that ran down from where his fourth finger had been.

“I feel like that all the time, Sassenach,” he said, his voice a little husky. His fingers curled over mine. “When I wake sometimes in the early morning, and I see ye there beside me. I doubt you’re real. Until I touch ye—or until ye fart.”

I yanked my hand loose and he rolled away and came up sitting, elbows hunched comfortably over his knees.

“So how is it wi’ Roger Mac?” he asked, ignoring my glare. “D’ye think he’ll ever have his voice back?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I truly don’t. But let me tell you what he told me about a man named Hector McEwan …”

He listened with great attention, stirring only to brush away wandering clouds of gnats.

“Have ye ever seen that yourself, a nighean?” he asked when I’d finished. “Blue light, as he said?”

A small, deep shiver went through me that had nothing to do with the cooling air. I looked away, to a buried past. Or one I’d tried to bury.

“I … well, yes,” I said, and swallowed. “But I thought I was hallucinating at the time, and it’s quite possible I was. I’m reasonably sure that I was actually dying, and imminent death might alter one’s perceptions.”

“Aye, it does,” he said, rather dryly. “But that’s not to say what ye see in such a state isna true.” He looked closely at my face, considering.

“Ye dinna need to tell me,” he continued quietly, and touched my shoulder. “There’s no need to live such things again, if they dinna come back of their own accord.”

“No,” I said, maybe a little too quickly. I cleared my throat and took a firm grip on mind and memory. “I won’t. It’s just that I had a bad infection, and—and Master Raymond—” I wasn’t looking directly at him, but I felt his head lift suddenly at the name. “He came and healed me. I don’t have any idea how he did it, and I wasn’t thinking anything consciously. But I saw—” I rubbed a hand slowly over my forearm, seeing it again. “It was blue, the bone inside my arm. Not a vivid blue, not like that—” I gestured toward the mountain, where the evening sky above the clouds had gone the color of larkspur. “A very soft, faint blue. But it did—‘glow’ isn’t the right word, really. It was … alive.”

It had been. And I’d felt the blue spread outward from my bones, wash through me. And felt the bursting of the microbes in my system, dying like stars. The remembered sense of it lifted the hairs on my arms and neck, and filled me with a strange sensation of well-being, like warm honey being stirred.

A wild cry from the woods above broke the mood, and Jamie turned, smiling.

“Och, there’s wee Oggy. He sounds like a hunting catamount.”

I got to my feet, brushing grass off my skirt. “I think he’s the loudest child I’ve ever heard.”

As though the shriek had been a signal, I heard hooting from the hollow below, and a gang of children burst out of the trees by the creek, followed by Bree and Roger, walking slowly, heads leaning toward each other, deep in what looked like contented conversation.

“I’m going to need a bigger house,” Jamie said, meditatively.

Before he could expand on this interesting notion, though, the Murrays appeared on the path that led down from the eastern side of the Ridge, Rachel carrying Oggy—bellowing over her shoulder—and Ian behind her with a large, covered basket.

“The children?” Rachel said to Jamie. Jamie stood up, smiling, then nodded toward the clearing below.

“See for yourself, a nighean.”

Jem, Mandy, and Germain had been sorted out from their companions and were now tagging along behind Bree and Roger, amicably pushing one another.

“Oh,” Rachel said very softly, and I saw her hazel eyes go soft as well. “Oh, Jamie. Thy daughter looks so like thee—and her son as well!”

“I told ye,” Ian said, smiling down at her, and she put a hand on his arm, squeezing tight.

“Thy mother …” Rachel shook her head, unable to think of anything sufficiently descriptive of Jenny’s emotional state.

“Well, I doubt she’ll faint away,” Jamie said, getting gingerly to his feet. “She’s met the lass once before, though no the bairns. Where is she, though?” He glanced up the path that led into the woods, as though expecting his sister to materialize there as he spoke.

“She’s staying at the MacNeills’ tonight,” Rachel said, and set Oggy on the grass, where he lay squirming in a leisurely manner. “She and Cairistina MacNeill became very friendly while we were quilting, and Cairistina told us that her husband has gone to Salisbury and she was frightened at the thought of being alone at night, their home being such a distance from the nearest neighbor.”

I nodded at that. Cairistina was very young, newly married—she was Richard MacNeill’s third wife—and had come from Campbelton, near Cross Creek. Night on a mountain was very dark, and full of things unseen.

“That was very kind of Jenny,” I said.

Ian gave a brief snort of amusement. “I’ll no say my mother isna kind,” he said. “But I’ll give ye good odds that she’s staying on her own account as much as Mistress MacNeill’s.” He nodded at Oggy, who was whining, a long trail of drool hanging from his lower lip. “The laddie’s had the colic three nights runnin’ and it’s a small cabin, aye? I’d wager ye three to one she’s stretched out like a corpse on Mrs. MacNeill’s bed right now, sound asleep.”

“She walked the floor with him half the night,” Rachel said apologetically to me. “I told her I would take him, but she said, ‘Pish, and what’s a grannie for, then?’” She squatted and picked up Oggy before he could escalate to his imitation of an air-raid siren. “What does thee think of Marmaduke, Claire?”

“Of … oh, as a name for Oggy, you mean?” I hastily rearranged my face, but it was too late. Rachel laughed.

“That’s what Jenny said. Still,” she added, removing the end of her dark plait from her son’s grasping fingers, “Marmaduke Stephenson was one of the Boston Martyrs: a very weighty Friend. It would be a fine name.”

“Well, I grant ye, he wouldna easily be mistaken for someone else, if ye call him Marmaduke,” Jamie said, trying to be tactful. “And he’d learn to fight early on. But if ye mean him to be a Quaker …”

“Aye,” said Ian to Rachel. “And we’re no calling him Fear the Lord, either, lass. Maybe Fortitude, though; that’s a decent manly name.”

“Hmm,” she said, looking down her nose at her offspring. “What does thee think of Wisdom? Wisdom Murray? Wisdom Ian Murray?”

Ian laughed. “Aye, and what if the laddie should turn out to be a fool? Borrowing trouble, are ye no?”

Jamie tilted his head and squinted at Oggy, considering, then glanced at Ian, then at Rachel, and shook his head.

“Given his parents, I dinna think that’s likely. Still … have ye thought perhaps to honor your own da, Rachel? What was your father’s name?”

“Mordecai,” she said. “Possibly not as a first name …”

I glanced at the fire, a wavering reddish transparency in the daylight. “Ian, would you build up the fire a bit? I’m going to cook the doves in the ashes, and then … hmmm …” I glanced back down the hill, counting heads as they came up. The Higgins children had peeled off and gone to their own cabin for supper, so that left us with—I counted quickly on my fingers—seven adults, four children—and I had a big pot of lentils with herbs and a hambone that had been bubbling since midday. Bree had skinned and cleaned the squirrels she’d brought back—perhaps I’d best cut them up and add them to the pot. And then—

“We brought thee a small addition to thy supper, Claire.” Rachel nodded toward the basket over her arm. “No, Oggy, thee mustn’t pull thy mother’s hair. I might be startled and drop thee into the fire, and that would be a dreadful shame, wouldn’t it?”

I laughed at this very Quaker threat, but Oggy let go—mostly—the end of his mother’s braid and stuffed his fist into his mouth instead, regarding me with a thoughtful stare.

“Come on,” I said, reaching for him. “You’ve got cousins to meet, young Oglethorpe.”

JAMIE’S LEG DIDN’T hurt a great deal, but it was bruised and tender, and he was happy to sit on the big stump near Claire’s makeshift surgery and let his bones rest as he watched his family, busy with making dinner.

Brianna was dealing with the shattered deer, still wearing the hunting clothes he’d lent her. He watched her sure hand with the knife and the power of her shoulders working, proud of her. Did she take that skill from himself, he wondered—or from her mother? It wasn’t only the hands, nor yet the simple knowledge of how to go about it … it was a toughness of mind, he thought approvingly. The recognition of a job to do and no need to question it.

He glanced at Roger, who was splitting wood, stripped to the waist and sweating. That lad did have questions, and likely always would. Jamie thought he maybe sensed a new determination in him, though; he’d need it.

Claire said he meant to go on with being a minister. That was good; folk needed someone to do for their souls, and Roger plainly needed something worth doing. Claire said he’d told her he’d thought about it and made up his mind.

Brianna, though … what might the shape of her life be here, now? She’d taught a bit in their wee school, when she was here on the Ridge before. He hadn’t thought she really liked the teaching, though; he thought she wouldn’t miss it. She rose to her feet as he watched, and stretched, arms reaching for the sky. Christ, she’s a braw lass …

Maybe she’ll have more children. He was almost afraid to think that. He didn’t want to risk her. And Jem and Mandy needed her. Still and all … The thought was a small green hope in his chest and he smiled, watching the knot of children bringing up firewood, dropping it on the ground, and running off to join the game of whatever they were playing. Hide-and-seek, perhaps … there was wee Frances, coming along with a bundle of sticks and a handful of flowers.

She’d lost her cap and her dark curls had come down on one side, straggling over one shoulder. Her face was pink with the exercise and she was smiling; he was happy to see it.

Something tickled his leg, breaking into his thoughts. There was a green thing that looked like a tiny spade sitting on his upraised knee.

He moved a hand cautiously toward it, but it wasn’t afraid of him and didn’t fly off or retaliate by trying to crawl into his ears or nose as flies did. It let him touch its backside, merely twitching its antennae in mild annoyance, but when he attempted to stroke its back, it sprang off his knee, sudden as a grasshopper, and landed on the edge of Claire’s medicine box, where it seemed to pause to take stock of its circumstances.

“Don’t do it,” he advised the insect, in Gaelic. “You’ll end up as a tonic, or ground to powder.” He couldn’t tell whether it was looking at him, but it seemed to consider, then gave another startling hop and vanished.

Fanny had brought Claire a plant of some kind, and Claire was turning over the leaves, her face bright with interest, explaining what it was good for. Fanny glowed, a tiny smile of pleasure at being useful on her face.

The sight of her warmed his heart. She’d been so frightened when Willie brought her to them—and nay wonder, poor wee lass. There was a colder place in his heart where her sister, Jane, lived.

He said a small prayer for the repose of Jane’s soul—and, after an instant’s hesitation, another for Willie. Whenever he thought of Jane, he saw her in his mind, alone and abandoned in black night, her face stark white, dead by the light of her only candle. Dead by her own hand, and the church said thus damned, but he stubbornly prayed for her soul anyway. They couldn’t stop him.

Dinna fash, a leannan, he thought toward her, tenderly. I’ll see Frances safe for ye, and maybe I’ll see ye in Heaven one day. Dinna be afraid.

He hoped someone would see William safe for him. Dreadful as the memory of that night was, he kept it, recalled it deliberately. William had come to him for help, and he treasured that. The sense of the two of them, pursuing a lost cause through a rainy, dangerous night, standing together in desolation by the light of that candle, too late. It was a dreadful memory, but one he didn’t want to forget.

Mammaidh, he thought, his mother coming suddenly to mind. Look after my bonnie lad, will ye?

7 Dead or Alive

WILLIAM, NINTH EARL OF Ellesmere, Viscount Ashness, Baron Derwent, leaned against an oak tree, taking stock of his resources. At the moment, these consisted of a fairly good horse—a nice dark bay with a white nose who (William had been informed by the horse’s prior owner) went by the name of Bartholomew—along with a canvas sack containing a discouragingly small amount of food and half a bottle of stale beer, a decent knife, and a musket that might, in a pinch, be used to club someone, because attempting to fire it would undoubtedly blow off William’s hand, face, or both.

He did have three pounds, seven shillings, twopence, and a handful of small coins and fragments of metal that might once have been coins—a beneficent side effect of a scraping acquaintance with an American militia unit he’d encountered at a roadside tavern. They had, they said, served with the Continental troops at Monmouth and had been with General Washington six months earlier, at Middlebrook Encampment—the last known place that William’s cousin Benjamin had been seen alive.

Whether Benjamin was still alive was a matter of considerable speculation, but William was determined to proceed on that assumption until and unless he found proof to the contrary.

His encounter with the New Jersey militiamen had yielded no information whatever in that regard, but it had produced a number of men eager to play at cards, who grew wilder in their wagers as the night wore on and the drink ran low.

William hoped he’d find someplace tonight where the money he’d won might buy him supper and a bed; at the moment, it seemed much more likely to get him killed. He’d discovered that dawn was often a time for regrets, and apparently the Americans shared that sentiment today. They’d woken bellicose rather than nauseated, though, and had shortly thereafter accused William of cheating at cards, thus causing him to take his leave abruptly.

He peered cautiously out through the drooping canopy of a white oak. The road ran by a furlong or so from his hiding place, and while it was blessedly vacant at the moment, the muddy track was clearly well traveled, pocked and churned by the recent passage of horses.

He’d heard them coming, thank God, in time to get Bart off the road and hidden in a tangle of saplings and vines. He’d crept close to the road just in time to see some of the men from whom he’d won money the night before, now halfway recovered from their sodden sleep and of a mind to get it back, judging from their incoherent shouts as they passed.

He glanced up at the flickering green light that came down through the leaves; it was no more than midmorning. Too bad. He didn’t think it wise to go back to the tavern, where the other militiamen were doubtless stirring, and he had no idea how far it might be to the next hamlet. He shifted his weight and sighed; he didn’t fancy hanging about under a tree—which, it struck him, was the perfect size and shape from which to hang a man—until the lot pursuing him got tired and went back the other way. Or nightfall, whichever came first.

What came next was the sound of horses, but fewer of them. Three men, riding slowly.

Cloaca obscaena. He didn’t say it aloud, but the words rang clear in his head. One of the men was the gentleman from whom he’d purchased Bart, two days before, and the others were from the militia unit.

The other thing that was clear to him was the vision of Bart’s right fore, on which the shoe was missing a large triangular chunk.

He didn’t wait to see whether the ex-owner could pick Bart’s track out of the morass in the road. He dodged round the oak and made his way as fast as he could through the brush, devil take the noise.

Bart, whom he’d left nosing about for edibles, was standing with his head up, ears pricked, and nostrils flared with interest.

“No!” William said in a frantic whisper. “Don’t—”

The horse neighed loudly.

William snatched loose the reins and swung up into the saddle, gathering both reins into one hand and reaching for the musket with the other.

“Go!” he shouted, kicking Bart smartly, and they broke through the screen of brush and slewed onto the road in a shower of leaves and mud.

The three riders had gathered at the edge of the road, one man squatting in the mud, looking at the mass of overlapping tracks. All of them turned to gape at William, who bellowed something incoherent at them and brandished his musket as he turned sharply to the left and charged back in the direction of the tavern, bent low over his horse’s neck.

He could hear shouted curses behind him, but he had a good lead. He might make it.

As to what might happen if he did … it didn’t matter. There wasn’t anything else he could do. Being trapped between two groups of hostile horsemen didn’t appeal to him.

Bart stumbled. Slipped in the mud and went down, William shooting off over his head and landing flat on his back with a splat that knocked the breath out of him and the musket out of his hand.

They were on him before he could remember how to breathe. His head swam and everything was a blur of moving shapes. Two of the men dragged him up and he hung between them, blood roaring in his ears, helplessly vibrating with fury and fear, mouth opening and closing like a goldfish.

They didn’t waste time in threats. Bart’s ex-owner punched him in the face and the others let go, dropping him back into the mud. Hands rifled his pockets, snatched the knife from his belt. He heard Bart whuffling nearby, stamping a bit as one of the men pulled at the saddle.

“Oy, you let that alone!” shouted Bart’s owner, standing up. “That’s my horse and my saddle, damn your eyes!”

“No, ’tisn’t,” said a determined voice. “You’d not’ve caught this rascal without us! I’m having the saddle.”

“Leave it, Lowell! Let him have his horse, we’ll share out the money.” The third man evidently belted Lowell to emphasize his opinion, for there was a meaty smack and a yelp of outrage. William suddenly remembered how to breathe, and the dark mist cleared from his vision. Panting shallowly, he rolled over and started trying to get his feet under him.

One of the men cast him a brief glance but clearly thought him no threat. I’m probably not, he thought muzzily, but he wasn’t used to losing fights and the thought of simply slinking off like a whipped dog wasn’t on, either.

His musket had fallen into the thick flowering grass along the road. He wiped blood out of one eye, stood up, picked up the gun, and clubbed Bart’s ex-owner in the back of the head with it. The man had been in the act of mounting, and his foot stuck in the stirrup as he fell. The horse shied and backed with a shrill whinny of protest, and the men who’d been engaged in dividing William’s substance jerked round in alarm.

One leapt back and the other lunged forward, grabbing the musket’s barrel, and there were a few seconds of panting confusion, interrupted by the sound of shouts and galloping horses.

Distracted, William glanced round to see the larger group of gamblers from last night bearing down on them, hell-for-leather. He let go of the musket and dived for the grassy verge.

He would have made it had Bart, frightened by the onrush and the insensible weight still dangling from his stirrup, not chosen the same moment and the same goal. Nine hundred pounds of panicked horseflesh sent William flying down the road, where he landed on his face. The ground shook round him, and he could do nothing more than cover his head and pray.

There was a great deal of splashing, shouting, and impact. William suffered a passing kick in the ribs and a jarring thump to the left buttock as the fight—Why are they fighting? he thought dizzily—raged over and past him.

Then the shooting started.

His position couldn’t easily be improved. He went on lying in the road, arms covering his head, as men shouted and cursed in alarm, more horses came galloping toward him, and the rolling fire of muskets crashed over said head.

Rolling fire? he thought suddenly. Because that’s what it bloody was, and he rolled over and sat up in amazement to see a company of British infantry, some efficiently rounding up persons attempting to flee the scene, others efficiently reloading their muskets, and two officers on horseback, surveying the scene with an attitude of fierce interest.

He palmed mud away from his eyes and stared hard at the officers. Reasonably sure he didn’t know either of them, he relaxed slightly. He wasn’t injured, but the impact of Bart’s collision had left him shaken and bruised. He went on sitting in the middle of the road, breathing and letting his brain begin to restore its relations with his body.

The altercation, such as it was, had died down. The soldiers had rounded up most of the men he’d been gambling with and prodded them with bayonets into a small group, where a young cornet was efficiently tying their hands behind them.

“You,” said a voice behind him, and a boot nudged him roughly in the ribs. “Get up.”

He turned his head to see that he was being addressed by a private, an older man with a good deal of assurance about him. Quite suddenly, it occurred to him that the infantrymen might suppose him to be a participant in the recent fracas, rather than its victim. He scrambled to his feet and stared down at the much shorter private, who took a step back and flushed red.

“Put your hands behind you!”

“No,” William said briefly, and, turning his back on the man, took a step toward the mounted officers. The private, affronted, lunged at him and seized him by the arm.

“Take your hands off me,” William said, and—the private ignoring this civil request—shoved the man away and sent him staggering.

“Stand still, damn your eyes! Stand, or I’ll shoot!” William turned again, to find another private, hot-faced and sweating, pointing a musket at him. The musket was primed and loaded—and it was William’s musket. His mouth dried.

“Don’t … don’t shoot,” he managed. “That gun—it’s not—”

The first private stepped up behind him and punched him solidly in the kidney. His insides clenched as though he’d been stabbed in the stomach, and his vision went white. He gave at the knees but didn’t quite fall down, instead curling up on himself like a dead leaf.

“That one,” said an educated English voice, penetrating the buzzing white fog. “That one, that one, and—this one, the tall fellow. Stand him up.”

Hands seized William’s shoulders and yanked them back. He could scarcely breathe, but he made a strangled noise. Through a haze of tears and mud, he saw one of the officers, still on horseback, looking down at him critically.

“Yes,” the officer said. “Hang that one, too.”

WILLIAM EXAMINED HIS handkerchief critically. There wasn’t much left of it; they’d tried to bind his wrists with it and he’d ripped it to shreds, getting it off. Still … He blew his nose on it, very gently. Still bloody, and he dabbed the seepage gingerly. Footsteps were coming up the tavern’s stairs toward the room where he sat, guarded by two wary privates.

“He says he’s who?” said an annoyed voice outside the room. Someone said something in reply, but it was lost in the scraping of the door across the uneven floor as it opened. He rose slowly to his feet and drew himself up to his full height, facing the officer—a major of dragoons—who had just come in. The major stopped abruptly, forcing the two men behind him to stop as well.

“He says he’s the fucking ninth Earl of Ellesmere,” William said in a hoarse, menacing tone, fixing the major with the eye that he could still open.

“Actually, he is,” said a lighter voice, sounding both amused—and familiar. William blinked at the man who now stepped into the room, a slender, dark-haired figure in the uniform of a captain of infantry. “Captain Lord Ellesmere, in fact. Hallo, William.”

“I’ve resigned my commission,” William said flatly. “Hallo, Denys.”

“But not your title.” Denys Randall looked him up and down but forbore to comment on his appearance.

“Resigned your commission, have you?” The major, a youngish, thickset fellow who looked as though his breeches were too tight, gave William an unpleasant look. “In order to turn your coat and join the rebels, I take it?”

William breathed, twice, in order to avoid saying anything rash.

“No,” he said in an unfriendly voice.

“Naturally not,” Denys said, gently rebuking the major. He turned back to William. “And naturally, you would have been traveling with a company of American militia because …?”

“I was not traveling with them,” William said, successfully not adding “you nit” to this statement. “I encountered the gentlemen in question last night at a tavern, and won a substantial amount from them at cards. I left the tavern early this morning and resumed my journey, but they followed me, with the obvious intent of taking back the money by force.”

“‘Obvious intent’?” echoed the major skeptically. “How did you discern such intent? Sir,” he added reluctantly.

“I’d imagine that being pursued and beaten to a pulp might have been a fairly unambiguous indication,” Denys said. “Sit down, Ellesmere; you’re dripping on the floor. Did they in fact take back the money?” He pulled a large snowy-white handkerchief from his sleeve and handed it to William.

“Yes. Along with everything else in my pockets. I don’t know what’s become of my horse.” He dabbed the handkerchief against his split lip. He could smell Randall’s cologne on it, despite his swollen nose—the real Eau de Cologne, smelling of Italy and sandalwood. Lord John used it now and then, and the scent comforted him a little.

“So you claim to know nothing of the men with whom we found you?” said the other officer, this one a lieutenant, a man of about William’s own age, eager as a terrier. The major gave him a look of dislike, indicating that he didn’t think he needed any assistance in questioning William, but the lieutenant wasn’t attending. “Surely if you were playing cards with them, you must have gleaned some information?”

“I know a few of their names,” William said, feeling suddenly very tired. “That’s all.”

That was actually not all, by a long chalk, but he didn’t want to talk about the things he’d learned—that Abbot was a blacksmith and had a clever dog who helped him at his forge, fetching small tools or faggots for the fire when asked. Justin Martineau had a new wife, to whose bed he longed to return. Geoffrey Gardener’s wife made the best beer in the village, and his daughter’s was nearly as good, though she was but twelve years old. Gardener was one of the men the major had chosen to hang. He swallowed, his throat thick with dust and unspoken words.

He’d escaped the noose largely because of his skill at cursing in Latin, which had disconcerted the major long enough for William to identify himself, his ex-regiment, and a list of prominent army officers who would vouch for him, beginning with General Clinton (God, where was Clinton now?).

Denys Randall was murmuring to the major, who still looked displeased but had dropped from a full boil to a disgruntled simmer. The lieutenant was watching William intently, through narrowed eyes, obviously expecting him to leap from the bench and make a run for it. The man kept unconsciously touching his cartridge box and then his holstered pistol, clearly imagining the wonderful possibility that he could shoot William dead as he ran for the door. William yawned, hugely and unexpectedly, and sat blinking, exhaustion washing through him like the tide.

Right this moment, he really didn’t care what happened next. His bloody fingers had made smears on the worn wood of the table and he stared at these in absorption, paying no attention to what was being said—until one battered ear picked up the word “intelligencer.”

He closed his eyes. No. Just … no. But he was listening again, despite himself.

The voices rose, overlay each other, interrupted. But he was paying attention now, and realized that Denys was attempting to convince the major that he, William, was working as a spy, gaining information from American militia groups as part of a scheme to … kidnap George Washington?

The major appeared as startled as William was to hear this. The voices dropped as the major turned his back toward William, leaning forward into Denys and hissing questions. Denys, damn him, didn’t turn a hair, but he had lowered his voice respectfully. Where the bloody hell was George Washington? He couldn’t possibly be within two hundred miles … could he? Bar the battle at Monmouth Courthouse, the last William had heard of Washington’s movements he was arsing about in the mountains of New Jersey. The last place his cousin Benjamin had been seen.

There were noises outside the tavern—well, there had been all the time, but they were the inchoate noises of men being herded, orders, trampling, protests. Now the sounds took on a more organized character, and he recognized the noises of departure. A raised voice of authority, dismissing troops? Men moving away in a body, but not soldiers; nothing orderly about the shuffling and muttering he heard beneath the nearer sound of Denys’s discussion with Major What-not. No telling what was happening—but it didn’t sound at all like an official hanging. He’d attended one such function three years before, when an American captain named Hale had been executed as a … spy. He hadn’t eaten any breakfast, and tasted bile as the word dropped like cold lead into his stomach.

Thank you, Denys Randall … he thought, and swallowed. He’d once thought of Denys as a friend, and while he’d been disabused of that notion three years ago by Denys’s abrupt disappearance from Quebec, leaving William snowbound and without purpose, he hadn’t quite thought the man would use him openly as a tool. But a tool for what purpose?

Denys seemed to have won his point. The major turned and gave William a narrow-eyed, assessing look then shook his head, turned, and left, followed by his reluctantly obedient lieutenant.

Denys stood quite still, listening to their footsteps recede down the stairs. Then he took a deep, visible breath, straightened his coat, and came and sat down opposite William.

“Isn’t this a tavern?” William said before Denys could speak.

“It is.” One dark brow went up.

“Then get me something to drink before you start telling me what the devil you just did to me.”

THE BEER WAS good, and William felt a qualm on behalf of Geoffrey Gardener, but there was nothing he could do for the man. He drank thirstily, ignoring the sting of alcohol on his split lip, and began to feel a little more settled in himself. Denys had been applying himself to his own beer with an equal intensity, and for the first time William had enough attention to spare to notice the deep coating of dust that streaked Denys’s wide cuffs, and the grubbiness of his linen. He’d been riding for days. It occurred to him to wonder whether perhaps Denys’s opportune appearance hadn’t been entirely an accident. But if not—why? And how?

Denys drained his mug and set it down, eyes closed and mouth half open with momentary content. Then he sighed, sat up straight, opened his eyes, and shook himself into order.

“Ezekiel Richardson,” he said. “When did you last see him?”

That wasn’t what he’d been expecting. William wiped his mouth gingerly on his sleeve and lifted one brow and his empty mug at the waiting barmaid, who took both mugs and disappeared down the stairs.

“To speak to?” he said. “A week or two before Monmouth … maybe a year ago. I wouldn’t talk to him, though. Why?” Mention of Richardson annoyed him. The man had—according to Denys, he reminded himself—deliberately sent him into the Great Dismal Swamp with an eye to having him abducted or killed by rebels in Dismal Town. He’d nearly died in the swamp, and mention of the man made him more than edgy.

“He’s turned his coat,” Denys said bluntly. “I suspected him of being an American agent for some time, but it wasn’t until he sent you into the swamp that I began to feel sure of it. But I had no proof, and it’s a dangerous business to accuse an officer of spying without it.”

“And now you have proof?”

Denys gave him a sharp look.

“He’s left the army—without the nicety of resigning, I might add—and showed up in Savannah in the winter, claiming to be a Continental army major. I think that might be considered sufficient proof?”

“If it is, then what? Is there anything to eat in this place? I hadn’t any breakfast.” Denys looked closely at him but then rose to his feet without comment and went downstairs, presumably in search of food. William was in fact very light-headed but wanted also a few moments to come to terms with this revelation.

His father knew Richardson slightly—that was how William had first come to take on small intelligencing missions for him. Uncle Hal had—like most soldiers—thought intelligencing not a suitable activity for a gentleman, but Papa hadn’t shown any reservations about it. It was also Papa who’d introduced him to Denys Randall, who’d been calling himself Randall-Isaacs at the time. He’d spent some months with Randall-Isaacs in Quebec, poking about to little apparent end, before Denys had abruptly gone off on some undisclosed mission, leaving William with an Indian guide. Denys was most certainly … For the first time, the absolute conviction that Denys was a spy, and the notion that Papa himself might have been one, floated into his head. By reflex, he thumped the heel of his hand against his temple in an effort to dislodge the idea, but it wouldn’t go.

Savannah. In the winter. The British army had taken the city in late December. He’d been there himself soon after, and had good cause to remember it. His throat thickened. Jane.

Voices below, and Denys’s footsteps coming back up. William touched his nose; it was tender and felt about twice its normal size, but it had quit bleeding. Denys came in, smiling in reassurance.

“Food is on the way! And more beer—unless you need something stronger?” He peered closely at William, made a decision, and turned on his heel. “I’ll get some brandy.”

“That can wait. What—if anything—has Ezekiel Richardson got to do with my father?” William demanded abruptly.

That froze Denys, but only momentarily. He moved to the table and sat down slowly, his eyes fixed on William with a distinct look of calculation. Calculations. William could actually see thoughts flitting through the man’s mind—he just couldn’t tell what any of them were.

Denys took a deep breath and placed both hands on the table, palms down as though bracing himself.

“What makes you think that he has anything to do with Lord John?”

“He—Lord John, I mean—knows the fellow; Richardson approached him with the notion that I should … keep an eye out for interesting bits of information.”

“I see,” Denys said, very dryly. “Well, if they were friends, I should say that such a relationship no longer exists between them. Richardson was heard to utter certain threats regarding your father, though he has apparently not chosen to act on them. Yet,” he added delicately.

“What sort of threats?” A spurt of angry alarm had shot up William’s spine at this, and blood surged painfully into his battered face.

“I’m sure they are unfounded,” Denys began.

William half-rose to his feet. “Bloody tell me, or I’ll pull your fucking nose off.” He reached out, swollen knuckles poised to do just that, and Denys shoved his bench back with a screech and stood up, fast.

“I’ll make allowances for your condition, Ellesmere,” he said, giving William a firm look of the sort people tried on a dog that threatened to bite. “But—”

William made a noise low in his throat.

Denys took an involuntary step back. “All right!” he snapped. “Richardson threatened to make it known that Lord John is a sodomite.”

William blinked, frozen for a moment. The word didn’t even make sense immediately.

Then it did, but he was prevented from saying anything by the entrance of the barmaid, a plump, harassed-looking girl with a squint in one eye, bearing a massive tray of food and drink. The scent of roast meat, buttered vegetables, and fresh bread hurt the membranes of his nose but made his stomach convulse in sudden urgency. Not urgent enough to take his attention off what Randall had just said, though, and William rose, bowed the girl out, and shut the door of the chamber firmly upon her before turning back to Denys.

“A what? That’s …” William made a wide gesture indicating the complete unbelievability of this. “He was married, for God’s sake!”

“So I understand. To the, um, merry widow of a Scotch rebel general. That was quite recent, though, wasn’t it?” The edge of Denys Randall’s mouth tucked in a little in amusement, which incensed William.

“I don’t mean that!” he snapped. “And he wasn’t—I mean, the bloody Scotchman’s not dead, it was some sort of mistake. My father was married for years to my mother—I mean, my stepmother—to a lady from the Lake District.” He huffed air, angry, and sat down. “Richardson can’t do us any damage with that sort of lying gossip.”

Denys pursed his lips and exhaled, slowly. “William,” he said patiently, “gossip has probably killed more men than musket fire.”

“Rubbish.”

Denys smiled a little and acknowledged the exaggeration with a slight shrug. “That might be stating it a bit high, but think about it. You know the value of a man’s word, of his character. If Major Allbright hadn’t taken my word at face value just now, you’d be dead.” He pointed a long, manicured finger at William. “What if someone had earlier told him that I made my living cheating at cards, or was the principal investor in a popular bawdy house? Would he have been so inclined to accept my testimony as to the soundness of your character?”

William eyed him skeptically, but there was something in it.

“Who steals my purse steals trash, sort of thing?”

The smile widened.

“… But he that filches from me my good name / Robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed. Yes, that sort of thing. Consider what gossip of the sort Zeke Richardson has in mind could do to your family, will you? And meanwhile, stop glowering at me and eat something.”

William reluctantly considered it. His nose had quit bleeding, but there was an iron taste in the back of his throat. He cleared it and spat, as politely as possible, into the rags of his handkerchief, keeping Denys’s more substantial contribution for mopping up.

“All right. I see what you’re saying,” he said gruffly.

“A friend of your father’s—a Major Bates—was convicted of sodomy and hanged, some years ago,” Denys said. “Your father chose to be present at the hanging; he clung to the major’s legs to hasten his death. I don’t suppose he would have mentioned that incident to you, though.”

William made a small, negative motion of the head. He was momentarily too shocked to say anything.

“There is a death of the soul, as well as death of the body, you know. Even if he were not arrested, nor tried and convicted … a man so accused might well lose his life as it presently exists.” This was said quietly, almost offhandedly, and Denys followed this remark by sitting up straight, picking up a spoon, and placing before William a pewter plate piled with slices of roast pork, fried squash with corn, and several thick slices of corn bread, then pouring a generous cup of brandy to go with it.

“Eat,” Denys repeated firmly. “And then”—with an eye toward William’s general bedragglement—“tell me what in the name of God you’ve been doing. What made you resign your commission to begin with?”

“None of your business,” William said brusquely. “As to what I’m doing …” He was tempted to say that that was none of Denys’s business, either—but he couldn’t overlook Denys’s possibilities as a source of information. It was, after all, an intelligencer’s job to find things out.

“If you must know, I’m looking for some trace of my cousin, Benjamin Grey. Captain Benjamin Grey,” he added. “Of the Thirty-fourth Foot. Do you know him, by chance?”

Denys blinked, blank-faced, and William felt a small, surprising jolt in the pit of his stomach—the same feeling he got when a fish nibbled his bait.

“I’ve met him,” Randall said cautiously. “‘Trace,’ you said? Has he been … lost?”

“You could say that. He was captured at the Brandywine and held prisoner at a place called Middlebrook Encampment, in the Watchung Mountains. My uncle had an official letter from Sir Henry Clinton’s clerk, passing on a terse note from the Americans, regretting the death of Captain Benjamin Grey from fever.”

“Oh.” Denys relaxed a fraction of an inch, though his eyes were still watchful. “My condolences. You mean that you want to find where your cousin is buried? To, um, move the body to the family … er … resting place?”

“I had that in mind,” William said. “Only I did find his grave. And he wasn’t in it.”

A brief recollection of that night in the Watchung Mountains washed over him suddenly, raising the hairs on his forearms. Cold, wet clay clinging to his feet and rain soaking through his clothes, spongy blisters on his palms, and the smell of death coming up from the ground as his shovel grated suddenly on bone … He turned his head away, both from Denys and the memory.

“Someone else was, though.”

“Dear Lord.” Denys reached automatically for his cup and, finding it empty, shook himself briefly as though to dislodge the vision, then reached for the brandy bottle. “You’re quite sure? I mean, how long …?”

“He’d been buried for some time.” William took a long, burning gulp of the brandy, to purge the memory of the smell. And the touch. “But not long enough to hide the fact that the man in that grave had no ears.”

Denys’s evident shock gave him a sour satisfaction.

“Exactly,” he said. “A thief. And no, it wasn’t a mistaken identification of the body. The grave was marked with the name ‘Grey,’ and Benjamin’s full name was listed in the camp’s records of prisoner burials.”

Denys was twelve years older than William, but he looked suddenly older than thirty-three, his fine features sharpened by attention.

“You think it was deliberate, then. Well, of course,” he interrupted himself impatiently, “naturally it was. But by whom, and to what purpose?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “If someone had murdered your cousin and sought to hide his death, why not simply bury him as a fever victim? No need for the substitute body, I mean. So, your first supposition is that he’s alive? I think that’s reasonable.”

William drew a breath tinged with relief.

“I do, too,” he said. “So then it’s one of two possibilities: Ben faked his death and managed to substitute the other body in order to escape without pursuit. Or someone did it for him, without his consent, and took him away. I can see the first possibility, but damned if I can think of a reason for the second. But it doesn’t matter that much; if he’s alive, I can find him. And I bloody will. The family needs to know, one way or another.” This was quite true. He was honest enough to admit to himself, though, that Ben’s disappearance had offered him a purpose, a way out of the morass of guilt and sorrow left by Jane’s death.

Denys rubbed a hand over his face. It was late in the day and his whiskers were starting to rasp, a dark shadow over his jaw.

“The words ‘needle’ and ‘haystack’ come to mind,” he said. “But theoretically, yes, you could find him, if he’s alive.”

“Definitely yes,” William said firmly. “I have a list”—he touched his breast pocket to make sure that he still did have it, but felt the reassuring wodge of folded paper—“of men belonging to two militia companies who were put on gravedigging detail in Middlebrook Encampment during a fever outbreak.”

“Oh, so that’s what you were doing with—”

“Yes. Unfortunately, American militia companies enlist only for short periods, and then scatter off to tend their farms. One of the companies was from North Carolina and one from Virginia, but the men last night weren’t—” He stopped abruptly, reminded. “The men last night … does Major Allbright actually intend to hang some of them?”

Denys shrugged. “I don’t know him well enough to say. It might have been meant only for effect, to frighten and scatter the rest. But he’s taken those three along with him, back to his camp. If his temper cools by the time he gets there, he’ll likely have them flogged and let them go. He’s got enough men under his command that hanging civilians out of hand would become a matter of record—not really what an officer with an eye to advancement wants, if he’s any sense. Not that Allbright gives one the impression that he has,” he added thoughtfully.

“I see. Speaking of having no sense—what the devil was that taradiddle about me planning to kidnap George Washington?”

Randall actually laughed at that, and William felt his ears grow warm.

“Well, not you, personally,” he assured William. “Just a ruse de guerre. It worked, though, didn’t it? And I had to think of some explanation for your outré appearance; being an intelligencer was the only halfway believable thing I could think of.”

William grunted and gingerly tried a mouthful of succotash, a fried and buttered mixture of diced squash and corn sliced from the cob. It went down well, and he attacked the rest of his meal with increasing enthusiasm, ignoring the minor discomfort of eating. Denys watched him, smiling a little as he ate his own meal but leaving him alone.

When the plates were empty, there was a contemplative silence between them. Not friendly, but not hostile, either.

Denys picked up the brandy bottle and shook it; a small sloshing noise reassured him and he poured out what was left into their cups, then picked one up and raised it to William.

“A bargain,” he said. “If you come across any news of Ezekiel Richardson, send word to me. If I hear of anything pertaining to your cousin Benjamin, I’ll send word to you.”

William hesitated for a moment, but then touched his cup firmly to Randall’s.

“Done.”

Denys drank, then set down his cup.

“You can send me word in care of Captain Blakeney; he’s with Clinton’s troops in New York. And if I hear of anything …?”

William grimaced, but there wasn’t a lot of choice.

“Care of my father. He and my uncle are with the garrison at Savannah with Prévost.”

Denys nodded, pushed back his bench, and stood up.

“All right. Your horse is outside. With your knife and musket. May I ask where you’re bound?”

“Virginia.” He hadn’t actually known that for sure until he said it, but the speaking gave him certainty. Virginia. Mount Josiah.

Denys groped in a pocket and laid two guineas and a handful of smaller coins on the table. He smiled at William.

“It’s a long way to Virginia. Consider it a loan.”

8 Visitations

BY MIDAFTERNOON, I’D MADE great progress with my medicaments, treated three cases of poison ivy rash, a broken toe (caused by its owner kicking a mule in a fit of temper), and a raccoon bite (non-rabid; the hunter had knocked the coon out of a tree, thought it was dead, and went to pick it up, only to discover that it wasn’t. The raccoon was mad, but not in any infectious sense).

Jamie, though, had done much better. People had come up to the house site all day, in a steady trickle of neighborliness and curiosity. The women had stayed to chat with me about the MacKenzies, and the men had wandered off through the site with Jamie, returning with promises to come and lend a day’s labor here and there.

“If Roger Mac and Ian can help me move lumber tomorrow, the Sinclairs will come next day and give me a hand wi’ the floor joists. We’ll lay the hearthstone and bless it on Wednesday, Sean McHugh and a couple of his lads will lay the floor with me on Friday, and we’ll get the framing started next day; Tom MacLeod says he can spare me a half day, and Hiram Crombie’s son Joe says he and his half brother can help wi’ that as well.” He smiled at me. “If the whisky holds out, ye’ll have a roof over your head in two weeks, Sassenach.”

I looked dubiously from the stone foundation to the cloud-flecked sky overhead.

“A roof?”

“Aye, well, a sheet of canvas, most likely,” he admitted. “Still.” He stood and stretched, grimacing slightly.

“Why don’t you sit down for a bit?” I suggested, eyeing his leg. He was limping noticeably and the leg was a vivid patchwork of red and purple, demarcated by the black stitches of my repair job. “Amy’s left us a jug of beer.”

“Perhaps a wee bit later,” he said. “What’s that ye’re making, Sassenach?”

“I’m going to make up some gallberry ointment for Lizzie Beardsley, and then some gripe water for her little new one—do you know if he has a name yet?”

“Hubertus.”

“What?”

“Hubertus,” he repeated, smiling. “Or so Kezzie told me the day before yesterday. It’s in compliment to Monika’s late brother, he says.”

“Oh.” Lizzie’s father, Joseph Wemyss, had taken a kind German lady of a certain age as his second wife, and Monika, having no children of her own, had become a stalwart grandmother to the Beardsleys’ growing brood. “Perhaps they can call him Bertie, for short.”

“Are ye out of the Jesuit bark, Sassenach?” He lifted his chin in the direction of the open medicine chest I’d set on the ground near him. “Do ye not use that for Lizzie’s tonic?”

“I do,” I said, rather surprised that he’d noticed. “I used the last of it three weeks ago, though, and haven’t heard of anyone going to Wilmington or New Bern who might get me more.”

“Did ye mention it to Roger Mac?”

“No. Why him?” I asked, puzzled.

Jamie leaned back against the cornerstone, wearing one of those overtly patient expressions that’s meant to indicate that the person addressed is not being particularly bright. I snorted and flicked a gallberry at him. He caught it and examined it critically.

“Is it edible?”

“Amy says bees like the flowers,” I said dubiously, pouring a large handful of the dark-purple berries into my mortar. “But there’s very likely a reason why they’re called gallberries.”

“Ah.” He tossed it back at me, and I dodged. “Ye told me yourself, Sassenach, that Roger Mac said to ye yesterday that he meant to come back to the ministering. So,” he went on patiently, seeing no hint of enlightenment on my face, “what would ye do first, if that was your aim?”

I scooped a large glob of pale-yellow bear grease from its pot into the mortar, part of my mind debating whether to add a decoction of willow bark, while the rest considered Jamie’s question.

“Ah,” I said in turn, and pointed my pestle at him. “I’d go round to all the people who’d been part of my congregation, so to speak, and let them know that Mack the Knife is back in town.”

He gave me a concerned look, but then shook his head, dislodging whatever image I’d just given him.

“Ye would,” he said. “And maybe introduce yourself to the folk who’ve come to the Ridge since ye left.”

“And within a couple of days, everyone on the Ridge—and probably half the brethren’s choir in Salem—would know about it.”

He nodded amiably. “Aye. And they’d all ken that ye need Jesuit bark, and ye’d likely get it within the month.”

“Are ye in need of Jesuit bark, Grand-mère?” Germain had emerged from the woods behind me, a pail of water in one hand, a bundle of faggots clutched to his chest with the other, and what appeared to be a dead snake hanging round his neck.

“Yes,” I said. “Is that a—” But he’d forgotten me, his attention riveted on his grandfather’s macerated leg.

“Formidable!” he said, dropping the wood. “Can I see, Grand-père?”

Jamie made a gracious “feel free” gesture toward his leg, and Germain bent to look, eyes round.

“Mandy said that a bear bit your leg off,” he said, advancing a tentative forefinger toward the line of stitches. “But I didn’t believe her. Does it hurt?” he asked, glancing at Jamie’s face.

“Och, nay bother,” Jamie said, with a dismissive wave of the hand. “I’ve a privy to dig later. What kind is your wee snake, then?”

Germain obligingly removed the limp serpent and handed it to Jamie, who plainly hadn’t expected the gesture, but gingerly accepted it. I smiled and looked down into my mortar. Jamie was afraid of snakes but manfully disguised the fact, holding it up by the tail. It was a big corn snake, nearly three feet of orange and yellow scales, vivid as a streak of lightning.

“Did you kill it, Germain?” I frowned at the snake, pausing in my mashing. I’d explained repeatedly to all the children that they ought not to kill any non-venomous snake, as they helpfully ate mice and rats, but most adults on the Ridge considered that the only good snake was a dead one, and it was an uphill battle.

“Oh, no, Grannie,” he assured me. “It was in your garden and Fanny went for it with a hoe, but I stopped her. But then your wee cheetie sleeked through the fence and jumped on it and broke its …” He frowned at the snake. “I dinna ken whether it was its back or its neck because how could ye tell, but it’s dead all right. I thought I’d skin it for Fanny,” he explained, glancing back over his shoulder toward the garden. “To make her a belt, maybe.”

“What a lovely idea,” I said, wondering whether Fanny would think so.

“Do ye think I might be able to buy a buckle for it from the tinker?” Germain asked Jamie, taking back his snake and redraping it round his neck. “The belt, I mean. I’ve got twopence and some wee purple stones to trade.”

“What tinker?” I stopped mashing and stared at him.

“Jo Beardsley told me he’d met a tinker in Salem two days ago, and he reckoned the man would be here sometime this week,” Germain explained. “He said the tinker’s got a sackload o’ simples, so I thought if ye needed anything, Grannie …”

I cast a quick, greedy glance at my medicine chest, depleted by a planting season rife with ax and hoe injuries, animal and insect bites, an outbreak of food poisoning, and a strange plague of respiratory illness among the MacNeills, accompanied by low fever, coughing, and bluish spots on the trunk.

“Hmmm …” I patted my pockets, wondering what I had to trade, come to think of it …

“There are two bottles left of the elderberry wine,” Jamie said, standing up straight. “Ye can use those, Sassenach. And I’ve got a good deerskin, and half of a wee barrel of turpentine.”

“No, I want to keep the turpentine,” I said, adding absently, “Hookworms, you know.”

Jamie and Germain exchanged a cynical glance.

“Hookworms,” Jamie said, and Germain shook his head.

Before I could enlighten them about hookworms, though, a shout came from the direction of the creek, and Duncan Leslie and his two sons appeared, one of the sons with a large ham tucked under one arm.

Jamie stood up to greet them, and they all nodded politely to me but didn’t seem to expect me to stop what I was doing in order to chat.

“I shot a good-sized pig last week,” Duncan said, motioning the son with the ham forward. “There was a bit to spare, and we thought ye might use it, what with your family come, and all.”

“I’m much obliged, Duncan,” Jamie said. “If ye dinna mind eating under the sky, come and share it with us … tomorrow?” he asked, turning to me. I shook my head.

“Day after tomorrow,” I said. “I have to go up to Beardsleys’ tomorrow and I won’t be back in time to make much more than sandwiches.” If Amy had made bread and had some to spare, I added silently to myself.

“Aye, aye,” Duncan said, nodding. “My wife will be happy to see ye, Missus. So, Jamie,” he added, tilting his head toward the foundation, “I see ye’ve got a fine big house laid out—twa chimneys, eh? Where’s the kitchen to be, then?”

Jamie rose smoothly to his feet, gave me a brief “See?” look over his shoulder, and led the Leslies off to tour the foundation, limping only slightly.

Germain laid the snake on my table and, saying, “Look after it for me, will ye, Grannie?” hurried to join the men.

BRIANNA PAUSED AT the top of the trail and blotted sweat from her face and neck. The cabin before them was tidy and neat—very neat. There were whitewashed stones lining the path that led to the door, and the paned-glass windows—glass—were so polished that she could see herself and Roger in them, tiny cut-up blobs of color amid the green flicker of the reflected forest.

“Who whitewashes rocks?” she said, instinctively lowering her voice, as though the cabin might hear her.

“Well, it can’t be someone with a lot of time on their hands,” he said, half under his breath. “So it’s either a frustrated landscape designer or someone with a neurotic need to control their environment.”

“I suppose there’s no reason why you wouldn’t find control freaks in any time,” she said, shaking dust and leaf fragments off her skirt. “Look at the people who designed Elizabethan mazes, I mean. What was it Amy said about these people? Cunningham, is that the name?”

“Yes. ‘They’re Methodists. Blue Light,’” Roger quoted, “‘be careful of thon people, Preacher.’” And with that, he straightened his shoulders and set foot on the path that led between the whitewashed stones.

“Blue Light?” she said, and followed, poking hastily at her broad-brimmed straw hat, worn sedately over a cap. God forbid the preacher’s wife should give scandal to the faithful …

The door swung open before Roger could set foot on the step, and a small, bristly man with shaggy gray eyebrows stood eyeing them with no particular look of welcome. He was neatly dressed in butternut homespun breeches and waistcoat, and his linen shirt, while slightly yellowed with age, had been recently ironed.

“Good day to ye, sir.” Roger bowed, and Brianna made a brief bob of respect. “My name is Roger MacKenzie, and this is my wife, Brianna. We’ve come just lately to the Ridge, and—”

“I’d heard.” The man gave them a narrow look, but apparently they passed muster, for the man stepped back, gesturing them in. “I am Captain Charles Cunningham, late of His Majesty’s navy. Come in.”

Brianna felt Roger draw a deep breath. She smiled at Captain Cunningham, who blinked and looked sharply at Roger to see if he approved of this.

“Thank you, Captain,” she said, as charmingly as possible, and stepped past Roger and over the threshold. “You have a most remarkable house—so beautiful!”

“I—why—” the captain began, flustered. Before he could rearrange his thoughts, though, a dark Presence manifested itself before the hearth. Now it was Brianna’s turn to blink.

“The preacher, are ye?” said the woman, looking past Bree. Yes, it was certainly a woman, though one nearly as tall as Brianna herself and dressed entirely in black, save for a starched white cap, one of the severe kind, with ear lappets. She was old, but no telling how old; her face was bony and sharp-eyed, and Brianna thought at once of the she-wolf who had suckled Romulus and Remus.

“I am a minister,” Roger said, making her a deep bow. “Your servant, madam.”

“Mmphm. And what sect might ye be, sir?” the woman demanded.

“I am a Presbyterian, ma’am,” Roger said, “but—”

“And you?” the woman demanded, fixing Bree with a sharp blue eye. “D’ye share your husband’s beliefs?”

“I’m Roman Catholic,” Brianna said, as mildly as possible. It wasn’t the first time, and wouldn’t be the last, but they’d decided early on how to handle such questions. “Like my father—Jamie Fraser.”

That reply normally took the questioner aback and provided enough space for Roger to take control. The non-Catholic tenants’ respect for her father—whether based on personal esteem or merely the fact that he was their landlord—usually made them at least amenable to polite conversation, regardless of their general opinion of Catholics.

The woman—Mrs. Cunningham?—snorted and looked Bree up and down in a way indicating that she’d seen any number of disreputable women in her day and was comparing Brianna unfavorably to the lot of them.

“Phut,” she said. “Popery! We’ve nay truck wi’ such things in this house!”

“Mother,” said the captain, moving toward her. “I think that—”

“Ma’am,” said Roger, stepping in front of Bree in order to intercept the eye of the basilisk being aimed in her direction. “I assure ye, we’ve come neither to proselytize nor to convert ye. I—”

“Presbyterian, ye say?” The eye fixed on him, coldly accusing. “And a minister? How is it, then, that you cannot keep your own wife in order? What sort of minister can ye be, if you let your woman be a disciple of the Pope and roam about sowing and watering the seeds of wickedness and disorder amongst your neighbors?”

“Mother!” Captain Cunningham said sharply. She didn’t flinch, but turned her stern face toward her son.

“You know it’s true,” she informed him. “This lass”—she nodded at Brianna—“says that Jamie Fraser is her sire. That will mean”—she looked directly at Bree—“that your mother is Claire Fraser, aye?”

Bree took a deep breath of her own; the cabin was neat as a pin but quite small, and the supply of air in it seemed to be shrinking by the second.

“She is,” she said evenly. “And she asked me to convey her regards to you, and to say that should any member of your family be ill or have an injury, she would be happy to come and attend them. She’s a healer, and—”

“Phut!” repeated Mrs. Cunningham. “Aye, I daresay she would, but she’ll not get the chance, I assure ye, girl. The instant I heard about the woman, I planted chamomile and holly round the door. Nay witch will set foot in our house, I can tell you!”

Bree felt Roger’s hand on her arm and gave him a cold side-eye. She wasn’t about to lose her temper with this woman. His mouth twitched briefly and he let go, turning not to Mrs. Cunningham but to the captain.

“As I said,” he said, pleasantly, “I’ve not come to proselytize. I’m a respecter of sincere belief. I am curious, though—one of my neighbors mentioned the term ‘Blue Light,’ in reference to you and your family, Captain. I wonder if ye’d be willing to tell me the meaning?”

“Ah,” said the captain, sounding cautiously pleased to be asked something that his mother couldn’t take issue with. “Well, sir, as you ask—it’s the term by which such naval captains as promote the theology of evangelization upon their ships are known. ‘Blue Lights,’ they call us.” He spoke modestly, but his head was proudly raised, as was his chin. His eyes—a paler version of his mother’s—were wary, wondering how Roger might take this.

Roger smiled. “Are ye a theologian of sorts yourself, then, sir?”

“Oh,” said the captain, preening slightly. “I wouldn’t put it so high, but I have written the occasional piece—just my own thoughts on the matter, d’ye see …”

“Are any of them published, sir? I should be most interested to read your views.”

“Oh, well … two or three … just small things … of no great merit, I daresay … were published by Bell and Coxham, in Edinburgh. I’m afraid I’ve no copies with me here”—he glanced at a small, rough table in the corner that bore a small stack of paper along with an inkwell, sander, and jar of quills—“but I am at work upon an endeavor of somewhat larger scale …”

“A book, then?”

Roger sounded honestly interested—probably he actually was, Bree thought—but Mrs. Cunningham was plainly growing impatient with this amiability and meant to nip the conversation in the bud before Roger could seduce the captain into blasphemy or worse.

“The fact remains, Captain, that this gentleman’s good-mother is widely kent to be a witch, and likely his wife is one as well. Send them on their way. We’ve nay interest in their pretensions.”

Roger swung round to face her and drew himself up to his full height, which meant his head nearly brushed the rooftree.

“Mrs. Cunningham,” he said, still polite but letting a bit of steel show through. “I beg ye’ll consider that I am a minister of God. My wife’s beliefs—and her parents’—are as virtuous and moral as those of any good Christian, and I’ll swear to as much with my hand on your own Bible, if ye like.” He nodded at the tiny shelf over the desk, where a Bible took pride of place in a row of smaller books.

“Mmphm,” said the captain with a narrow-eyed glance at his mother. “I’m just away to call my two lads down from the field, sir—lieutenants from my last ship, who chose to come with me when I came ashore. I’ll walk you and your lady to the head of the path, if you’ll bear me company that far?”

“Thank you, Captain.” Bree seized the chance of getting a word in sideways and curtsied deeply to the captain and again—with as much face as she could manage—to Mrs. Cunningham. “Do please remember that my mother will come at once, ma’am, if you have any sort of … emergency.”

Mrs. Cunningham seemed to expand in several directions at once.

“Do ye dare threaten me, girl?”

“What? No!”

“D’ye see what ye’ve let in the house, Captain?” Mrs. Cunningham ignored Brianna and glowered at her son. “The lass means to ill-wish us!”

“We have a few more calls to make,” Roger interjected hastily. “Will ye allow me to bless your house with a wee prayer before we leave, sir?”

“Why—” The captain glanced at his mother, then drew himself up, chin set. “Yes, sir. We should be most obliged to you.”

Brianna saw Mrs. Cunningham’s lips shaped to say “Phut!” again, but Roger hastily forestalled her, raising his hands slightly and bowing his head in benediction.

“May God bless the dwelling,

Each stone, and beam, and stave,

All food, and drink, and clothing.

May health of men be always here.”

“Good day to ye, sir, madam,” he added quickly, and, bowing, grabbed Brianna’s hand. She hadn’t time to say anything—just as well, she thought—but smiled and nodded to the basilisk as they backed out of the door.

“So now we know what Blue Light means,” she said, casting a ginger glance behind them as they reached the end of the path. “As Mama says … Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ!”

“Apt,” Roger said, laughing.

“Was that a Hogmanay prayer?” she asked. “It sounded kind of familiar, but I wasn’t sure …”

“It is—and a house-blessing. Ye’ve heard your da say it a few times, but he does it in the Gaelic. The Cunninghams are educated Lowlanders, from their accent; if I’d tried the Gaelic version, Mrs. C. might well have thought I was trying to put a spell on them.”

“Weren’t you?” She said it lightly, but he turned his head to her, surprised.

“Well … in a way, I suppose so,” he said slowly, but then smiled. “Highland charms and prayers often aren’t distinguishable from each other. But I think if you address God directly, then it’s probably a prayer, rather than witchcraft.”

She glanced over her shoulder once more, with the feeling that Mrs. Cunningham’s eyes were burning a hole through the door of the cabin, watching their retreat.

“Do Presbyterians believe in exorcism?” she asked.

“No, we don’t,” he said, though he also looked back. “My father—the Reverend, I mean—did tell me, though, that when you go visiting, you should never leave a house without offering a blessing of some kind.” He held back a springy oak branch so she could duck beneath it. “He did add that it might keep things from following you home—but I think he was joking.”

I WAS WORKING my way down the creek bank, collecting leeches, watercress, and anything else that looked either edible or useful, when I heard a distant sound of wagon wheels.

Thinking that this might be the tinker Jo Beardsley had mentioned to Germain, I hastily shook down my skirts, shoved my feet back into my sandals, and hurried toward the wagon trace, where the rumbling of wheels had been suddenly replaced by a good deal of bad language.

This proved to be coming from a very large man, who was excoriating his mules, the wagon, and the wheel that had just hit a rock and sprung its iron tyre. He lacked Jamie’s creativity in cursing but was making up for it in volume.

“May I help you, sir?” I asked, seizing a moment when he’d paused for breath.

He swung round, astonished.

“Where the devil did you come from?” he asked.

I gestured toward the trees behind me, and repeated, “Do you need help?” Closer to the wagon, it was apparent that he wasn’t the tinker. The wagon—drawn by two very large mules—held a variety of things, but not iron pans and hair ribbons. There were half a dozen muskets lying in the wagon bed, together with a small collection of swords, scythes, and staves. A few small barrels that might be salt fish or pork—and one that was most certainly gunpowder, both from its markings and from the faint scent of charcoal tinged with sulfur and urine.

My insides contracted.

“Is this Fraser’s Ridge?” the man demanded, looking at the woods around us. We were some way below the clearing where the Higginses’ cabin stood, and there was no sign of habitation other than the wagon trace, which was quite overgrown.

“It is,” I said, there being no point in lying. “Do you have business here?”

He looked sharply at me, and focused on me for the first time.

“My business is my own,” he said, though not impolitely. “I’m looking for Jamie Fraser.”

“I’m Mrs. Fraser,” I said, folding my arms. “His business is mine.”

His face flushed and he glowered at me, as though thinking I was practicing upon him, but I gave him stare for stare and after a moment, he gave a sort of barking laugh and relaxed.

“Will you fetch your husband, then, or will I come and find him?”

“Whom shall I say is calling?” I asked, not moving.

“Benjamin Cleveland,” he said, swelling a bit with a sense of his own importance. “He’ll know the name.”

JAMIE LAID THE last brick in the course and trimmed the mortar with a small feeling of satisfaction—mingled with a mild dismay at the realization that tomorrow’s work on the chimney would need to be done with a ladder; this was as high as he could reach, without. His shoulders were complaining; the thought of his knees joining in made him stretch his back and sigh.

Aye, well, maybe my bonnie lass can help wi’ that. Brianna had said something to him the first night they’d come. She’d followed him through the building site, the two of them stumbling over rocks and strings and laughing as though they were drunk, bumping shoulders and grasping elbows to keep their balance in the dark. Each fleeting touch a spark that warmed him.

“I can make a movable frame with a pulley.” That’s what she’d said, putting a hand on the half-built chimney. “We can hoist up a bucket of bricks you can reach from the ladder.”

“We,” he said softly, smiling to himself. Then looked over his shoulder, self-conscious, lest the men carrying logs should have heard him. But they’d laid down the last one and paused for refreshment—Amy Higgins and Fanny had brought beer, and he dropped the trowel in a bucket of water and went to join them. Just before he reached the edge of the foundation, though, his eye caught a flicker of movement at the head of the wagon road, and the next instant Claire came into sight, dwarfed by the man who walked beside her.

“A Naoimh Micheal Àirdaingeal, dìon sinn anns an àm a’ chatha,” he said under his breath. He didn’t know the man, but there was something about him beyond his size that made the hairs rise on Jamie’s neck.

He glanced at his helpers for the day—seven men: Bobby Higgins, three of his Ardsmuir men, the others tenants he didn’t yet know well. And Fanny, who had brought them lunch.

None of the men had noticed the man making his way across the clearing—but Fanny had; she frowned and then looked quickly toward Jamie. He nodded to her, reassuring, and her face relaxed, though she kept glancing back down the hill, even as she answered something one of the men said to her.

Jamie stepped over the foundation. He had a feeling that he’d have liked to meet the fellow whilst standing in his own house with men at his back, but he had a stronger feeling that he wanted to get between the man and Claire.

She was smiling politely at the man as he talked, but he could see the wariness plain in her face. She looked up, though, and saw him coming. Relief bloomed in her, and he felt an answering thrum in his chest. He walked toward them, not smiling, but looking pleasant, at least.

“General Fraser?” said the man, looking him up and down with interest. Aye, well, that explained Claire’s wariness.

“Not anymore,” he said, still pleasant, and put out a hand. “Jamie Fraser, your servant, sir.”

“Yours, sir. Benjamin Cleveland.” A sweaty hand substantially bigger than his own grasped him and squeezed in a manner indicating that the owner thought he could have hurt him, had he wanted to.

Jamie let go without response and smiled. Aye, try it, ye wee bastard.

“I ken your name, sir. I’ve heard ye spoken of, now and then.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw Claire’s brows rise.

“Mr. Cleveland is a famous Indian fighter, a nighean,” he said, not taking his eyes off the man. “He’s killed a good many Cree and Cherokee, by his own report.”

“Caughnawaga, too. I don’t keep a count,” Cleveland said, chuckling in a way that said he remembered every man he’d killed, and enjoyed his memories. “I suppose your relations with the Indians are a mite more amiable?”

“I have friends in the Cherokee villages.” Not all of his friends in the villages were Indians, but Scotchee Cameron was no business of Cleveland’s.

“Splendid!” Cleveland’s ruddy face grew redder. “I hoped that might be the case.”

Jamie tilted his head with a noncommittal noise in his throat.

Claire evidently caught some note of what he was actually thinking, for she cleared her own throat and stepped up beside him, touching his arm.

“Mr. Cleveland’s wagon broke down, a mile or so down the trace—a sprung tyre. Perhaps you should go look at it?”

He smiled at her; she was transparent as a bottle of gin.

“Surely,” he said, and, turning to Cleveland, added, “I hope your cargo didna gang agley when the wheel broke. If ye’ve anything fragile, perhaps …”

“Oh, no,” Cleveland said casually. “It’s just a handful of guns and a bit of powder; everything’s sound enough.” He grinned at Jamie, exposing a row of stout, good teeth, though there was a shred of wet dark-brown tobacco caught between two of them.

“Speaking of guns, though,” he went on. “That’s one thing I had in mind to talk to you about. But yes, let’s do as your good lady suggests.” He made Claire a creditable bow then turned and took hold of Jamie’s arm, compelling him toward the trace.

Jamie disengaged himself without comment and, turning back to Claire, said, “Send Bobby and Aaron along wi’ some tools, will ye, Sassenach? And maybe a bit of beer, if there’s any left.”

Cleveland was waiting, and turned at once toward the wagon trace, leaving Jamie to come as he would. He followed, eyes on the broad back and tree-trunk legs. A very worn leather belt, showing the marks of cartridge box and powder horn, and presently supporting a large knife in an equally worn sheath—one decorated with dyed porcupine quills in an Indian pattern.

The man had maybe twenty years’ advantage on him—and at least a hundred pounds, though Cleveland was an inch or two shorter. He’s likely always been the biggest in any company he finds himself in. So he’s likely never had to care whether folk like him or not.

THE WAGON STOOD in a hollow of dark-green shade, where the wagon trace ran deep between two hillocks, both covered with a dense growth of balsam fir, hemlock, and pine. Jamie felt the coolness touch his face like a hand and drew a deep, clean breath of turpentine and cypress berries.

He was glad to see that the wagon wheel itself wasn’t damaged; the iron tyre that surrounded it had sprung loose, but none of the wood was broken. He could maybe get this man—and his guns; he spared a glance at the contents of the wagon—back on his way before hospitality required the Frasers to provide dinner and a bed.

“Ye came looking for me,” he said bluntly, looking up from the wheel. They hadn’t spoken on the walk save for brief courtesies. With the guns in plain sight, though, it was clearly time for business.

Cleveland nodded and took off his hat, openly appraising. His stomach strained the fabric of his hunting shirt, but it looked like hard fat, of the sort that would armor a man’s vitals.

“I did. Heard a good bit about you these two years past, one way and another.”

“Folk who listen to gossip will hear nae good of themselves,” Jamie said, in the Gàidhlig.

“What?” Cleveland was startled. “What’s that? Ain’t French, I heard a-plenty of that.”

“It’s the Gàidhlig,” Jamie said with a shrug, and repeated the sentiment in English. Cleveland smiled in response.

“You’d be right about that, Mr. Fraser,” he said. Bending, he picked up the heavy iron strip as though it were made of dandelion fluff and stood meditatively turning it in his hands. “There’s a good bit of talk abroad about how you came to lose your army commission.”

Despite himself, Jamie felt warmth rise up his neck.

“I resigned my commission, Mr. Cleveland, following the Battle of Monmouth. I had been temporarily appointed as field general in order to take command of a number of independent militia companies. These disbanded following the battle. There was no further need of my services.”

“I’d heard that you quit without notice, leaving half your men alone on the battlefield, in order to tend your ailing wife.” Cleveland’s bushy brows rose inquiringly. “Though having met Mrs. Fraser, I can certainly understand your feelin’s as a man.”

Jamie turned to face him over the wagonload of muskets and powder.

“I’ve no need to defend myself to you, sir. If ye’ve something to say to me, say it and have done. I’ve a privy to dig.”

Cleveland raised one hand, palm out, and bent his head, conciliating.

“No offense intended, Mr. Fraser. I only want to know whether you’re planning to rejoin the army. In whatever capacity.”

“No,” Jamie said shortly. “Why?”

“Because if not,” Cleveland said, and fixed him with a calculating eye, “you might be interested to know that a-many of your Whiggish neighbors over the mountains”—he jerked his chin in the rough direction of Tennessee County—“landowners, I mean, men who have something to lose—are raising private militias to protect their families and their property. I thought you might be considering something of the sort.”

Jamie felt his dislike of the man alter slightly, sliding reluctantly toward curiosity.

“And if I were?” he said.

Cleveland shrugged.

“It would be good to keep in touch with other groups. There’s no tellin’ where the British might pop up, but when they do—mark me, Mr. Fraser, when they do—I for one would like to know about it in time to take action.”

Jamie looked down into the wagon: muskets, and old ones, for the most part, with dry, cracked stocks and scratched muzzles—but a few regular British Brown Besses in better condition. Bought, traded, or stolen? he wondered.

“Action,” he repeated carefully. “And who are some of these men you speak of?”

“Oh, they exist,” Cleveland said, answering the thought rather than the question. “John Sevier. Isaac Shelby. William Campbell and Frederick Hambright. A good many others thinking on it, I can tell you.”

Jamie nodded but didn’t say more.

“One other thing I heard about you, Mr. Fraser,” said Cleveland, picking up one of the muskets from the wagon bed, idly checking the flint, “is that you were an Indian agent. That true?”

“I was.”

“And a good one, by report.” Cleveland smiled, suddenly clumsily playful. “I hear tell there’s quite a few redheaded children down in the Cherokee villages, hey?”

Jamie felt as though Cleveland had struck him across the face with the musket. Was that really being said, or was this some piece of foolery by which Cleveland hoped to involve him in something shabby?

“I’ll wish ye good day, sir,” he said stiffly. “My men will be down with tools to mend your wheel directly.”

He started walking back up the trace, but Cleveland, who moved quickly despite his bulk, was right beside him.

“If we’re to have militia, we need guns,” Cleveland said. “That stands to reason, don’t it?” Seeing that Jamie wasn’t disposed to answer rhetorical questions, he tried another tack.

“The Indians have guns,” he said. “The British government gives the Cherokee a good-sized allotment of shot and powder every year, for hunting. Was that the case when you were an agent?”

“Good day, Mr. Cleveland.” He walked faster, though the exercise was making his wounded leg throb. Cleveland grabbed his arm and jerked him to a stop.

“We can talk about guns later,” Cleveland said. “There’s just the one other thing I had in mind to speak to you about.”

“Take your hand off me.” The tone of his voice made Cleveland let go, but he didn’t back away.

“A man named Cunningham,” he said, his small brown eyes steady on Jamie’s. “Ex-navy captain. A Tory. Loyalist.”

That made a small, cold hole in Jamie’s middle. Captain Cunningham was indeed a Loyalist—so were a dozen others of his tenants.

“I hate a Tory,” Cleveland said, reflectively. He shook his head, but Jamie could see the gleam of his eyes beneath his hat brim. “Hung a few of ’em, down home. Put a scare into the others, and they left.” He cleared his throat and spat, landing a gob of yellowish phlegm near Jamie’s foot.

“Now. This Captain Cunningham writes letters. Essays in the papers. Someone with the captain’s welfare in mind might want to have a word with him about that. Don’t you think?”

WHEN JAMIE CAME back to the house site, he found the fire made up and a good smell of something cooking in the cauldron. Roger and Ian were there, talking to Claire while the shouts of children playing echoed among the trees near the creek. That’s right; Jenny would be coming to dinner tonight. He’d nearly forgot, in his annoyance with the blether of yon Cleveland.

“Someone with the captain’s welfare in mind might want to have a word with him about that. Don’t you think?”

This was not, in fact, bad advice, but knowing that didn’t help his mood any. He disliked being threatened, he disliked being condescended to, and he very much disliked being loomed at by a man larger than himself. He didn’t like Cleveland’s news, either, but he didn’t hold the man responsible for that.

The air of peaceful domesticity reached out for him, soothing, tempting him to join his family, drink the cold beer Fanny had pulled out of the well, sit down, and rest his aching leg. But the conversation with Cleveland was still boiling under his breastbone and he didn’t want to talk to anyone about it until he’d parsed it for himself.

He waved briefly to Claire as he passed through the site to where his shovel was waiting, thrust into the ground by the half-dug privy; the effort of digging would calm him as he thought things through. He hoped.

ROGER HAD SEEN Jamie disappear quietly into the shadows behind the half-built chimney and assumed that he’d gone for a piss. But when he didn’t reappear within a few minutes, Roger detached himself from the conversation—this presently centering on the infinite possibilities for wee Oglethorpe’s eventual real name—and followed his father-in-law into the gloaming.

He found Jamie standing on the edge of a large rectangular hole in the ground, evidently lost in contemplation of its depths.

“New privy?” he asked, nodding into the pit. Jamie looked up, smiling at sight of him, and Roger felt a rush of warmth—on more than one account.

“Aye. I’d only meant it to be the usual, ken, wi’ a single seat of ease.” Jamie gestured at the hole, the last of the sun touching his hair and skin with a golden light. “But with four more—and maybe yet more, in time? As ye say ye mean to stay, I mean.” He glanced sideways at Roger, and the smile came again.

“Then there’s the folk who come to see Claire, too. One of the Crombie boys came down last week to get a remedy for a case o’ the blazing shits, and he spent so long gruntin’ and groanin’ in Bobby Higgins’s privy that the family were all havin’ to trot into the woods, and Amy wasna best pleased at the state of the privy when he left, I can tell ye.”

Roger nodded.

“So ye mean to make it bigger, or make two privies?”

“Aye, that’s the question.” Jamie seemed pleased that Roger had grasped the essence of the situation so quickly. “See, most o’ the places wi’ families have a necessary that will accommodate two at once—the McHughs have a three-hole privy, and a thing of beauty it is, too; Sean McHugh is a canny man with his tools, and a good thing, what wi’ seven bairns. But the thing is—” He frowned a little and turned to look back toward the fire, presently hidden behind the dark bulk of the chimney stack. “The women, ken?”

“Claire and Brianna, you mean.” Roger took Jamie’s meaning at once. “Aye, they’ve notions of privacy. But a wee latch on the inside of the door …?”

“Aye, I thought of that.” Jamie waved a hand, dismissing it. “The difficulty’s more what they think of … germs.” He pronounced the word very carefully and glanced quickly at Roger under his brows, as though to see if he’d said it right, or as if he weren’t sure it was a real word to start with.

“Oh. Hadn’t thought of that. Ye mean the sick folk who come—they might leave …” He waved his own hand toward the hole.

“Aye. Ye should ha’ seen the carry-on when Claire insisted on scalding Amy’s privy wi’ boiling water and lye soap and pourin’ turpentine into it after the Crombie lad left.” His shoulders rose toward his ears in memory. “If she was to do that every time we had sick folk in our privy, we’d all be shitting in the woods, too.”

He laughed, though, and so did Roger.

“Both, then,” Roger said. “Two holes for the family, and a separate privy for visitors—or rather, for the surgery. Say it’s for convenience. Ye dinna want to seem highfalutin by not letting people use your own privy.”

“No, that wouldna do at all.” Jamie vibrated briefly then stilled, but stayed for a moment, looking down, a half smile still on his face. The smells of damp, fresh-dug earth and newly sawn wood rose thick around them, mingling with the scent of the fire, and Roger could almost imagine that he felt the house solidifying out of the smoke.

Jamie left off what he was thinking, then, and turned his head to look at Roger.

“I missed ye, Roger Mac,” he said.

ROGER OPENED HIS mouth to reply, but his throat had closed as hard as if he’d swallowed a rock, and nothing came out but a muffled grunt.

Jamie smiled and touched his arm, urging him toward a big stone at what Roger assumed would be the front of the house. The stone foundation ran out at ninety-degree angles from the big stone. It was going to be a sizable house—maybe even bigger than the original Big House.

“Come walk the foundation with me, aye?”

Roger bobbed his head and followed his father-in-law to the big stone, and was surprised to see that the word “FRASER” had been chiseled into it, and below that, “1779.”

“My cornerstone,” Jamie said. “I thought if the house was to burn down again, at least folk would ken we’d been here, aye?”

“Ah … mm,” Roger managed. He cleared his throat hard, coughed, and found enough air for a few words. “Lallybroch … y-your da …” He pointed upward, as though to a lintel. “He put—the date.”

Jamie’s face lit. “He did,” he said. “The place is still standing, then?”

“It was last time I … saw it.” His throat had loosened as the grip of emotion left it. “Though … come to think—” He stopped, recalling just when he’d last seen Lallybroch.

“I wondered, ken.” Jamie had turned his back and was leading the way down what would be the side of the house. A smell of roasting meat was wafting from the fire. “Brianna told me about the men who came.” He glanced back briefly at Roger, his face careful. “Ye were gone then, of course, lookin’ for Jem.”

“Yes.” And Bree had been forced to leave the house—their house—abandoned to the hands of thieves and kidnappers. It felt like the rock had dropped from his throat into his chest. No use thinking of that just now, though, and he shoved the vision of people shooting at his wife and children down into the bottom of his brain—for the moment.

“As it is,” he said, catching up with Jamie, “the last time I saw Lallybroch was … a bit earlier than that.”

Jamie paused, one eyebrow raised, and Roger cleared his throat. It was what he’d come back here to say; no better time to say it.

“When I went to find Jem, I started by going to Lallybroch. He knew it, it was his home—I thought, if he somehow got away from Cameron, he’d maybe go there.”

Jamie looked at him for a moment, then drew breath and nodded. “The lass said … 1739?”

“You would have been eighteen. Away at university in Paris. Your family was very proud of you,” Roger added softly. Jamie turned his head sharply away and stood quite still; Roger could hear the catch in his breath.

“Jenny,” he said. “Ye met Jenny. Then.”

“Aye, I did. She was maybe twenty. Then.” And then, for him, was less than a year in the past. And Jenny now was what, sixty? “I thought—I thought I should maybe say something to ye, before I met her again.”

“In case the shock of it knocked her over?”

“Something like that.”

Jamie had turned back to him now, his expression wavering between a smile and a considerable shock of his own, Roger thought. Roger could feel it, the sense of disbelief, disorientation, not knowing where to put your feet down. Jamie shook his head like a bull trying to dislodge a fly. I know the feeling, mate … all of them.

“That’s … very thoughtful of ye.” Jamie swallowed, and then looked up, the next thought penetrating the shock—and renewing it. “My father. Ye said—my family. He …” His voice died.

“He was there.” The voices from the distant fire had settled into the steady hum of women working: clanking and splashing and scraping noises, voices on the far side of hearing, punctuated by small bursts of laughter, an occasional sharp call to an errant child. Roger touched Jamie’s arm and tilted his head toward the path that led up toward the springhouse and the garden. “Maybe we should go somewhere and sit for a bit,” he said. “So I can tell it to ye before your sister comes.” So you can handle it without witnesses.

Jamie let out a deep sigh, compressed his lips briefly, then nodded and turned, leading the way past the big square cornerstone. Which, Roger suddenly thought, looked very much like the clan stones he’d seen on Culloden field, big gray stones casting long shadows in the evening light, each bearing the chiseled memory of one name: McGillivray, Cameron, MacDonald … Fraser.

ROGER STOOD WITH Jamie on a mossy bank above the creek, dutifully admiring the fledgling springhouse on the opposite side of the rushing water.

“It’s no much yet,” Jamie said modestly, nodding at it. “But it’s what I’ve had time for. I’ll need to build a bigger one soon, though—maybe by the spring—the summer rains will flood this one.”

The springhouse was little more at present than a rocky overhang to which rough stone walls had been added on either side, with openings at the foot of each wall to let water pass through. Wooden slats ran between the walls, suspended a couple of feet above the clear brown water of the creek. At the moment, these supported three pails of milk, each covered with a weighted cloth to prevent flies or frogs from dropping in, and half of a waxed wheel of Moravian cheese the size of Roger’s head.

“Jenny’s a fine cheese maker,” Jamie said, with a nod at the latter object. “But she hasna yet found a good starter, so I brought that from Salem.”

Below the slats, a modest array of stoneware crocks were half sunk in the creek, these—Jamie said—holding butter, cream, soured cream, and buttermilk. It was a peaceful spot here, the air cool with the breeze off the water, and the creek busily talking to itself. On the bank beyond the rocky lump of the springhouse, a thick growth of willows let their slender branches flow with the water.

“Like young women washing their hair, aye?” Roger said, gesturing at them, and Jamie smiled a little, but his mind was plainly not on poetry at the moment.

“Here,” he said, turning away from the creek and pushing aside the branches of a red oak sapling. Roger followed him up a small slope and onto a rocky shelf, where two or three more enterprising saplings had established themselves in crevices. There was room enough to sit comfortably at the edge of the shelf, from whence Roger found that they could see the opposite bank and the tiny springhouse, and also a good bit of the trail leading up from the house site.

“We’ll see anyone coming,” Jamie said, settling himself cross-legged, with his back against one of the saplings. “So, then. Ye’ve a thing or two to tell me.”

“So, then.” Roger sat down in a patch of shade, took off his shoes and stockings, and let his legs dangle in the cool draft at the edge of the shelf, in hopes that it would slow his heart. There was no way to begin, except to start.

“As I said, I went to Lallybroch in search of Jem—and of course he wasn’t there. But Brian—your father—”

“I ken his name,” Jamie said dryly.

“Ever call him by it?” Roger said, on impulse.

“No,” Jamie said, surprised. “Do men call their fathers by their Christian names in your time?”

“No.” Roger made a brief dismissive motion. “It’s just—I shouldn’t have said that, it’s part of my story, not yours.”

Jamie glanced at the fading sky.

“It’s a good while ’til supper,” he said. “We’ve likely time for both.”

“It’s a tale for another time,” Roger said, shrugging. “But … the meat of it is that while I came in search of Jem, I found—well, my father, instead. His name was Jeremiah, too—folk called him Jerry.”

Jamie said something in Gaelic and crossed himself.

“Aye,” Roger said briefly. “As I said—another time. The thing was—when I found him, he was only twenty-two. I was the age I am now; I could have been his father, just. So I called him Jerry; thought of him that way. At the same time, I kent he was my … well. I couldn’t tell him who I was; there wasn’t time.” He felt his throat grow tight again and cleared it, with an effort.

“Well, so. It was before, that I met your father at Lallybroch. I nearly fell over with the shock when he opened the door and told me his name.” He smiled a little at the memory, rueful. “He was about my own age, maybe a few years older. We met … as men. Mr. MacKenzie. Mr. Fraser.”

Jamie gave a brief nod, his eyes curious.

“And then your sister came in, and they made me welcome, fed me. I told your father—well, not the whole of it, obviously—but that I was looking for my wee lad, who’d been kidnapped.”

Brian had given Roger a bed, then taken him next morning to all the crofts nearby, asking after Jem and Rob Cameron, without result. But the next day, he’d suggested riding all the way to Fort William, to make inquiries at the army garrison.

Roger’s eyes were fixed on a patch of moss near his knee; it grew in rounded green clumps over the rocks, looking like the heads of young broccoli. He could feel Jamie listening. His father-in-law didn’t move at all, but Roger felt the slight tension in him at mention of Fort William. Or maybe it’s my own … He thrust his fingers into the cool, wet moss; to anchor himself, maybe.

“The commander was an officer named Buncombe. Your father called him ‘a decent fellow for a Sassenach’—and he was. Brian had brought two bottles of whisky—good stuff,” he added, glancing at Jamie, and saw the flicker of a returned smile at that. “We drank with Buncombe, and he promised to have his soldiers make inquiries. That made me feel … hopeful. As though I might really have some chance of finding Jem.”

He hesitated for a moment, trying to think how to say what he wanted to, but after all, Jamie had known Brian himself.

“It wasn’t so much Buncombe’s courtesy. It was Brian Dhu,” he said, looking straight at Jamie. “He was … kind, very kind, but it was more than that.” He had a vivid memory of it, of Brian, riding in front of him up a hill, bonnet and broad shoulders dark with rain, his back straight and sure. “You felt—I felt—as though … if this man was on my side, then things would be all right.”

“Everyone felt that about him,” Jamie said softly, looking down.

Roger nodded, silent. Jamie’s auburn head was bent, his gaze fixed on his knees—but Roger saw that head turn a fraction of an inch, and tilt as though in answer to a touch, and a tiny ripple of something between awe and simple acknowledgment stirred the hairs on his own scalp.

There it is, he thought, at once surprised and not surprised at all. He’d seen it—or rather, felt it—before, but it had taken several repetitions before he’d realized fully what it was. The summoning of the dead, when those who loved them spoke of them. He could feel Brian Dhu, here beside this mountain creek, as surely as he had felt him that dreich day in the Highlands.

Roger gave a brief nod to the ghost who stood with them, thought, Forgive me, and went on.

He told of William Buccleigh MacKenzie, who’d once nearly killed Roger but now was in the way of making amends by helping to find Jem. How together they had met Dougal MacKenzie, out collecting rents with his men—

“Jesus,” Jamie said, though Roger noticed he didn’t cross himself at mention of Dougal. His mouth curved up at the corner. “Did Dougal ken the—that this man Buck was his son?”

“No,” Roger said dryly. “As Buck hadn’t been born yet. Buck kent Dougal was his father, though; that was a bit of a shock for him.” Not only for him.

“I imagine it would be,” Jamie murmured. A tinge of amusement lingered on his face, and Roger wondered—not for the first time—at the ability of Highlanders to step back and forth between this world and the next. Jamie had killed his uncle when he had to, but had made his peace postmortem; he’d heard Jamie call on Dougal for help in battle—and seen him get it, too.

Roger and Buck had got it, as well: Dougal had lent them horses for their journey.

But as Roger had said, this wasn’t about his own search for son and father. This was about what he owed to another father and another son. To the shade of Brian Dhu—and to Jamie.

“I’ll tell ye the rest sometime. But for now—we went back to Lallybroch, for Brian had sent word that he’d found a thing that was maybe to do with my business.

“The thing was a sort of pendant sent to him from the garrison commander at Fort William. It seemed odd and it had the name ‘MacKenzie’ on it, so both the commander and Brian thought I should see it.” There was a remembered tightness in his chest as he saw the disks in his mind: pressed cardboard, one red, one green, both imprinted with the name “J. W. MacKenzie” and a string of cryptic numbers—the ID dog tags of an RAF flyer, and proof positive that they were looking for a different Jeremiah.

“We needed to find where those tags had come from, aye? So we went back to Fort William. And—” He had to stop and breathe deep, to get it out. “Captain Buncombe had left; the new garrison commander was a Captain Randall.”

All amusement had vanished from Jamie’s face, which was now blank as a slate.

“Aye,” Roger said, and coughed a bit. “Him.” The new commander had been cordial, personable. “Helpful,” Roger said. “It was—” He searched for a word, then spread his hands, helpless to find it. “It was weird. I mean … I knew … what he’d …”

“Done to me?” Jamie’s eyes were fixed on his, unreadable.

“What he’d do to you. Claire told me—us. When she …” He caught sight of Jamie’s face and hurried on. “I mean, she kent ye were dead, or I’m sure she wouldn’t have—”

“She told ye everything, then.” Jamie’s expression hadn’t changed much, but his face had gone pale.

Oh, shit.

“Well, just the … er … the general outli—” He stopped. Ye’ll never make a decent minister if ye can’t be honest. Buck had said that to him, and he was right. Roger took a breath.

“Yes,” he said simply, and felt his innards hollow out.

Without a word, Jamie got to his feet and, turning away, took several steps into the bushes, stopped, and threw up.

Oh, Jesus. Oh, God. What was I thinking!

Roger felt as though he’d been holding his breath for an hour, and took a sip of air, and then another. He’d been thinking far ahead—to what he needed to say to Jamie, to explain and apologize, to ask forgiveness. He needed to do that, if he and Bree were to live here again. But he hadn’t thought at all that Jamie might not realize that Roger—and Bree, for God’s sake!—knew the intimate details of his personal Gethsemane; had known them for years.

Bloody, bloody, bloody … oh, hell …

Roger sat with his fists clenched, listening to Jamie gulp air, spit, and pant. He kept his eyes fixed on a scarlet ladybug with black spots that had lighted on his knee; it trundled to and fro over the gray homespun, curious antennae prodding the cloth. At last there was a rustling of bushes, and Jamie came back and sat down, back pressed against the sapling. Roger opened his mouth, and Jamie made a short chopping gesture with one hand.

“Don’t,” he said. His shirt was damp with sweat, wilted over his collarbones. All the evening insects had come out now; clouds of gnats floated over their heads, and the crickets had begun to chirp. A mosquito whined past Roger’s ear, but he didn’t lift a hand to swat it.

Jamie sighed and gave Roger a very direct look.

“Go on, then,” he said. “Tell me the rest.”

Roger nodded and met Jamie’s eyes.

“I knew about Randall, and what he was,” he said bluntly. “And what would happen. Not just to you—to your sister. And your father.”

This time Jamie did cross himself, slowly, and whispered something in Gaelic that Roger didn’t catch, but didn’t ask to have repeated.

“I told Buck, then—just, about the—the flogging, not about—” The fingers of Jamie’s maimed hand flickered, as though about to make the chopping motion again. “About your father, and what happened to him then.”

He felt again the cold horror of that conversation. If he did nothing to stop Jack Randall, Brian Dhu Fraser would be dead within a year, dead of an apoplexy suffered while watching his son being flogged to death (as he thought) by Captain Randall. Jamie would be outlawed, wounded in body and soul, bearing the guilt of knowing that his father’s death lay upon him, knowing that he had abandoned his home and tenants to his bereaved and shattered sister. And Jenny, that lovely young girl, left completely alone, without even a brother’s protection.

Jamie didn’t flinch at the telling, but Roger could feel the words go into his own flesh like darts. Jenny. Christ, how will I face her?

He drew a deep breath. They were nearly there.

“Buck wanted to kill him—Randall. Right away, without hesitation.”

There was the barest breath of a laugh in Jamie’s voice, though it wavered a bit.

“He was Dougal’s son, then.”

“Absolutely no doubt about it,” Roger assured him. “You should have seen the two of them together.”

“I wish I had.”

Roger rubbed a hand over his face, shaking his head.

“The thing is—we could have stopped him. Killed him, I mean. We were armed. I’d been to see him before, with your da. He’d have no fear of me; I could have gone into his office with Buck and done it. Or we might have followed him to his lodgings, done it there; we’d have had a good chance of getting away.”

Jamie had flinched, just once, at the word “da.” He sat quiet now, though, his eyes the only thing alive in his face.

“I wouldn’t let Buck do it,” Roger blurted, speaking to those eyes. “I knew what would happen—all of it—and I let it happen. To your family. To you.”

Jamie looked down but didn’t speak. Roger felt fresh air from the creek come up from below, and felt the cold shadow of the trees touch his burning face.

At last Jamie stirred, nodding his head once, then twice, deciding.

“And if ye’d killed him?” he said quietly. “If I hadna been an outlaw, I’d not have been near Craigh na Dun, and in bad need of a healer, on that day when …” One eyebrow lifted.

Roger nodded, wordless.

“Brianna?” Jamie said softly, her name the sound of cool breeze in the Gàidhlig. “Would she have happened? And the bairns? You, for that matter?”

“It—we—might still have happened,” Roger said, and swallowed. “Another way. But aye. I was scared it might not. But I’m not—” He bit that off. Jamie knew he wasn’t making excuses.

“Aye, well.” Jamie got to his feet, scattering a cloud of gnats like a shower of gold dust in the evening light. “Dinna fash, then. I willna let Jenny kill ye. Come on, or the supper will be burnt.”

Roger felt rather as though a rug had been pulled out from under him. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but apparent calm acceptance wasn’t it.

“You … don’t …” he began hesitantly.

“I don’t.” Jamie reached down a hand, and when Roger took it, hauled him to his feet so they stood face-to-face, the trees beginning to rustle around them in the evening breeze.

“I spent a great deal of time thinking, ken,” Jamie said conversationally, tilting his head toward the creek, “when I lived as an outlaw after Culloden. Out under the sky, listening to the voices ye hear in the wind. And I would look back, wondering at the things I’d done—and not done—and thinking what if I’d done it differently? If we’d not chosen to try to stop Charles Stuart … it would have been different for us, at least, if not for the Highlands. I’d maybe have kept Claire by me. If I’d not gone to fight Jack Randall in the Bois de Boulogne, would I have two daughters now?” He shook his head, the lines in his face deep and his eyes dark with shadows.

“No man owns his own life,” he said. “Part of you is always in someone else’s hands. All ye can do is hope it’s mostly God’s hands you’re in.” He touched Roger’s shoulder, nodding toward the trail. “We should go.”

Roger followed, eased in mind, but unable to see the grubby, coarse shirt that covered Jamie’s back without still seeing the scars beneath.

“Mind,” Jamie said, turning to Roger at the head of the trail, “I think ye maybe shouldna tell Jenny what ye just told me. Not first thing, I mean. Let her get used to ye.”

JAMIE TOOK THE kindling sticks from Fanny and Mandy and bade them watch to see how you put them in to build up a fire. The fire had been burning all day, but low, as it wasn’t needed to do anything more than boil water and cook the stew Claire had made: bits of roasted possum flavoring a mass of young potatoes with carrots, peas, wild mushrooms, and onions. He glanced over his shoulder to be sure she was occupied elsewhere, then beckoned the girls in, conspiratorially.

“Let’s have a wee whiff,” he whispered, and they giggled, pressing in against his shoulders as he reached out with the pot lifter and slowly raised the lid, letting out a puff of damp steam, scented with meat and wine and onions. The girls sniffed as hard as ever they could, and he let it come in through his nose, all the way to the back of his throat. His wame rumbled at the luscious smell, and the girls burst into giggles again at the sound, glancing guiltily round.

“What on earth are you doing, Da?” He turned to find his daughter towering over him, a look of disapproval on her face. “Mandy, watch out! You’ve got Esmeralda almost in the fire!”

“Only teaching the wee lassies a bit o’ cookery,” he said airily, and, handing her the pot lifter, bowed and left, the music of girls’ laughter in his ears.

It was a good time to go; supper would be ready soon, and the light was going. He’d been looking out for Jenny, meaning to take her aside and prepare her a bit before she met Roger Mac.

Prepare her, how? he wondered. Say, “D’ye mind a man who came to Lallybroch forty years ago, lookin’ for his son? Ye don’t? Oh. Well, he’s here … only …”

Maybe she would remember. She’d been a young lass and Roger Mac was no bad-looking. And from what Roger Mac had told him, Da had spent a good bit of time in helping him to search, so perhaps …

The realization that he’d thought about Da so casually, thinking of him as still alive, made him feel as though he’d missed the last stair and come down staggering.

“Eh?” He became aware that Claire had asked him something and was waiting for an answer. “Sorry, Sassenach, I was thinking. What did ye say?”

She raised a brow at him, but smiled and handed him a bottle.

“I said, would you please open that?” It was a bottle of last year’s muscat wine that Jimmy Robertson had given Claire in thanks for her setting his youngest son’s broken arm.

“Ye think it’ll be worth drinking?” he asked, taking the bottle and examining it critically. The cork was tight in the bottle-neck, but dry and brittle; Claire had evidently tried to pull it and the greater part had broken off, crumbling in her hand.

“No,” she said, “but since when has that consideration ever stopped a Scot from drinking anything?”

“It hasna stopped any Englishmen I know, either. Maybe a Frenchman would be more choosy.” He held the brown glass bottle up to the light, to see the level of the wine inside, then drew his dirk and struck the neck of the bottle with a ringing tap of the blade. The glass broke cleanly, though at an angle, and he handed it back to her. “It doesna smell corked, at least.”

“Oh, good. I’ll—is that Oggy? Or a catamount?”

“It sounds like a catamount havin’ the griping farts, so it’s likely Oggy.”

She laughed, which made him feel momentarily happy. He took a sip of the wine, made a face, and gave it back to her.

“Who are ye planning to serve that to?”

“Nobody,” she replied, sniffing gingerly. “I’m going to soak a very tough-looking chunk of elk in it overnight with the last of the ramps and then boil it with beans and rice. What are they ever going to name that child—and when, do you think?”

“There’s nay rush about it, is there? No one’s going to confuse him wi’ any other bairn on the Ridge.” No one would. Rachel’s wee man had the best lungs Jamie had ever heard, and seldom stopped using them. Right now, he didn’t seem upset, just bellowing for the fun of it.

“I’ll go meet them,” he said. “I want to talk to Jenny before she sees Roger Mac.”

Claire’s face went blank for an instant and then she turned her head quickly toward the trees, where Jamie saw Brianna and Roger Mac standing in close conversation. Is he telling her what he told me? he wondered, with a resurgence of the “falling off a staircase” feeling in his wame.

“Goodness,” Claire said, a look of intense interest coming into her eyes like the one she had when she saw the tinker’s anal warts that looked like a fleshy cauliflower growing out of his bum. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Well, I dinna think she’ll faint, because she never does,” he said. “But ye might have a dram of something ready, just in case.”

AS IT WAS, his sister wasn’t with Ian and Rachel; Rachel said Jenny had gone aside to thig a wee bit of mother of vinegar from Morag MacAuley, but would be down right after them. That was a bit of luck, and he thanked her, pausing to rub the top of Oggy’s head briskly with his palm, an attention that usually made the bairn laugh. It did this time, too, and he set off up the trail feeling just that wee bit more settled in himself.

He found Jenny sitting on a stump beside the trail, shaking a stone out of her shoe. She heard his step and, looking up to see him, leapt to her feet and flung herself into his arms, ignoring the shoe.

“Jamie, a chuisle! Your bonnie lass! I’m fit to burst wi’ joy for ye!” She let go of his ribs and looked up, eyes brimming, and he felt his own sting, too, though he couldn’t help laughing through it, her joy reminding him of his own.

“Aye, me, too,” he said. He wiped his eyes briefly on his sleeve and set her cap straight for her. “How long ago was it that ye met Brianna? She said she’d gone to Lallybroch looking for her mother and me. And met you and Ian and all. And Laoghaire,” he added, remembering.

Jenny crossed herself at mention of the name, and laughed, too.

“Blessed Mother, the look on Laoghaire’s face when she saw the lass! And then the one when she tried to claim Mam’s pearls and Brianna shut her up like a writing desk!”

“Did she?” He regretted not seeing that, but then forgot it, recalling why he’d come looking for Jenny.

“Brianna’s man,” he said to the top of her head as she bent to put her shoe back on. “Roger MacKenzie.”

“Aye, what sort of man is he, then? Ye said ye liked him fine, in your letters.”

“I still do,” he assured her. “It’s just … d’ye recall when Claire and I came to Scotland to bury Simon the General at Balnain?”

“I’m no likely to forget it,” she said, her face darkening. Nor would she; that had been during Ian’s long dying, a terrible time for them all, but worst by far for her. He hated to bring it back to her, even for a moment, but couldn’t think how else to begin.

“Ye’ll remember, then, what Claire told ye all—about … where she came from.”

Jenny looked blankly at him, her mind clearly still shadowed by memories, but then she blinked, frowning.

“Aye …” she said cautiously. “Some taradiddle about stone circles and faeries, as I recall.”

“Aye, that’s the bit. Now—can ye maybe cast your mind back a bit further, to—to the time I was away in Paris, just before Da died?”

“I can,” she said tersely, glaring up at him. “But I dinna want to. Why are ye plaguing me wi’ that, of all things?”

He patted the air with his palm, urging her to hear him out.

“There was a man came to Lallybroch, looking for his kidnapped son. A dark-haired man, called Roger MacKenzie, from Lochalsh, he said. Do ye remember him?”

The sun was coming down, but there was plenty of light left to show him the blood draining from her face. She swallowed visibly and nodded, once.

“His wee lad was named Jeremiah,” she said. “I remember, because Da got a wee bawbee sent him from the garrison commander”—her lips compressed, and he kent she was thinking of Jack Randall—“and when the dark-haired man came back, Da gave it to him, and I heard Mr. MacKenzie talking to his friend later, and saying that it must have belonged to his own father, who was named Jeremiah, like … Jemmy. His son’s name was Jeremiah and they called him Jemmy.” She stopped talking and stared at him, her eyes round as three-penny bits. “Ye’re tellin’ me your grandson is that Jemmy, and the dark-haired man is …”

“I am,” he said, and let his breath out.

She sat down again, very slowly.

He let her alone, remembering all too well the mix of incredulity, bewilderment, and fear that he’d felt when Claire, battered and hysterical after he’d rescued her from the witch trial in Cranesmuir, had finally told him what she was.

He also remembered vividly what he’d said at the time. “It would ha’ been easier if ye’d only been a witch.” That made him smile, and he squatted down in front of his sister.

“Aye, I ken,” he said to her. “But it’s no really different than if they’d come from … Spain, maybe. Or Timbuktu, say.”

She darted a sharp look at him and snorted, but her hands—clenched in her lap—relaxed.

“So the way of it is that Roger Mac and Brianna were each of them at Lallybroch—then. Ye met Brianna when she came to find us. But ye’d met Roger Mac years earlier, looking for his wee lad. Brianna came again a bit later wi’ the bairns, looking for Roger. Ye didna meet her then, but she saw Da.”

He paused for a moment, waiting. Jenny’s look changed suddenly and she sat up straighter.

“She met Da? But he was already dead …” Her voice trailed off as she tried to juggle it all in her head.

“She did,” he said, and swallowed the lump in his throat. “And Roger Mac spent some time with Da, too, searching. He—told me things about Da. See … for the two o’ them, it was nay more than a few months ago that they saw him,” he said softly, and took her hand, holding it tight. “To hear Roger Mac speak of him so—it was as though Da stood beside me.”

She let out her breath in a small sob, and squeezed his hand tight between her own. The tears were in her eyes again, but she wasn’t afraid, and she blinked them back, sniffing.

“It’s maybe easier if ye think of it as a miracle,” he said, trying to be helpful. “I mean—it is, no?”

She gave him a look, took out a hankie, and blew her nose.

“Fag mi,” she said. Don’t try me.

“Come,” he said, and stood, pulling her up. “Ye’ve a new nephew to meet. Again.”

ROGER SAW JAMIE first, stepping out from the shadow of the chimney, a shadow himself, dark against dark—and behind him, another shadow, so insubstantial that for a moment he wasn’t sure she was there at all. Then he found himself on his feet, moving to meet her on the edge of the firelight, the flicker of the flames behind him bright in her eyes and the lovely girl he had known shining out at him.

“Miss Fraser,” he said softly, and took her hand in both of his, light-boned and firm as a bird’s foot. “Well met.”

She breathed a laugh, lines creasing round her eyes.

“Last time we met,” she said, “I thought I’d like it if ye kissed my hand, but ye didn’t.”

He could see the rapid beat of her pulse at the side of her throat, but her hand was steady in his, and he raised it and kissed it with a tenderness that was not at all assumed.

“I thought your father might take it amiss,” he said, smiling. A slightly startled expression crossed her face, and her hand tightened on his.

“It’s true,” she whispered, staring up at him. “Ye saw Da, talked to him—only a few months ago? Your voice doesna sound like … Ye dinna talk like ye think he’s dead.” Her voice was filled with wonderment.

Jamie made a soft noise, deep in his throat, and moved out of the shadows, touching her arm.

“Brianna, too,” he said quietly, and tilted his head toward the fire, where Roger saw Bree holding Oggy, talking to the other children, her long red hair lifting in the warm rising air from the fire. She was waving the baby’s podgy little hand in regal gestures, talking for him in a deep, comic voice, and the bairns were all giggling.

“She saw Da, too, though she didna get to speak to him. It was in the burying ground at Lallybroch; she said he knelt by Mammeigh’s stone, and he’d brought her holly and yew, bound wi’ red thread.”

“Mammaidh …”

Jenny’s voice caught in her throat with a small click, and Roger saw tears well suddenly in her eyes. He let go of her hand as Jamie put his arm round her and drew her close, and brother and sister clung together, faces hidden in each other, holding love between them.

He was still staring at them when he felt Claire beside him. She was watching them as well, her face smooth and her heart in her eyes. Silently, she took his hand.

9 Animal Nursery Tales

IT TOOK A MONTH, rather than two weeks, but by the time the wild grapes began to ripen, Jamie, Roger, and Bree—with precarious ceremony and a lot of giggling from the groundlings below—tacked a large sheet of stained white canvas (salvaged and stitched together from pieces of the damaged mainsail of a Royal Navy sloop that was refitting in Wilmington when Fergus happened to be strolling along the quay) onto the framing of the New House’s new kitchen.

We had a roof. Of our own.

I stood under it, looking up, for a long time. Just smiling.

People were trooping in and out, carrying things over from the lean-to, up from the Higginses’ cabin, out of the springhouse, in from the shelter of the Big Log, down from the garden. It reminded me, suddenly and without warning, of making camp on an expedition with my Uncle Lamb: the same higgledy-piggledy bustle of objects, good spirits, relief and happiness, expectation.

Jamie set down the pie safe, easing it gently onto the new pine floor so as not to dent or mar the boards.

“Wasted effort,” he said, smiling as he looked up at me. “A week and it’ll be as though we’d driven a herd of pigs through it. Why are ye smiling? Does the prospect amuse ye?”

“No, but you do,” I said, and he laughed. He came and put an arm around me, and we both looked up.

The canvas shone a brilliant white, and the late-morning sun glowed along its edges. The canvas lifted a little, whispering in the breeze, and multiple stains of seawater, dirt, and what might possibly be the blood of fish or men made shadows that shimmered on the floor around our feet, the shallows of a new life.

“Look,” he whispered in my ear, and nudged my cheek with his chin, directing my gaze.

Fanny stood on the far side of the room, looking up. She was lost in the snowy light, oblivious to Adso the cat, twining about her ankles in hopes of food. She was smiling.

JAMIE DUG THE hole. A shallow groove in the black, mica-flecked soil under the chimney breast, about ten inches long.

He and Roger and Ian had—puffing, gasping, and cursing in Gaelic, French, English, and Mohawk—carried the big slab of serpentine meant for the hearthstone down from the Green Spring the day before. It leaned now against the chimney, waiting.

The bottom of the stone was smeared with dirt and rootlets, and I saw a small spider emerge from a hollow, venturing an inch or two, then freezing in bewilderment.

“Wait,” I said to Jamie, who had sat back on his heels and reached up toward Bree, waiting with the black chisel in her hand. He lifted a brow but nodded, and the children clustered round me to see what was the holdup. I picked up the edge of my apron and attempted to move it under the spider without frightening it. It promptly ran straight up the stone, leapt off into thin air, and landed on Jamie’s shirt. He clapped a cupped hand over it, and—still with raised brow—stood carefully, walked to the outer edge of the half-framed room, and, removing his hand, took hold of the hem of his shirt and flapped it vigorously between the studs.

“Thalla le Dia!” said Jemmy.

“What?” said Fanny, who had been watching this byplay with openmouthed wonder.

“Go with God,” Jemmy said reasonably. “What else would ye say to a spider?”

“What indeed,” said Jamie. Patting Jem on the shoulder, he once more knelt by the open hearth and lifted a hand toward his daughter. Rather to my surprise, Bree kissed the chisel as though it were a crucifix and laid it gently in his hand.

He also lifted it to his lips and kissed it as though it were his dirk, then laid it gently in its burrow and scooped dirt over it with his left hand. He sat back on his heels again and looked deliberately from face to face. It was only the family present: ourselves, Brianna, Roger, Jem and Mandy, Germain, Fanny, Ian, Rachel, and Jenny, holding a sleeping Oggy.

“Bless Thou, O God, the dwelling,” he said,

“And each who rests herein this night;

Bless Thou, O God, my beloved ones

In every place wherein they sleep;

In the night that is to-night,

And every night;

In the day that is to-day,

And every day.

May this sacred iron be witness

To the love of God and the guarding of this house.”

The solemn attention of the assembly lasted for roughly five seconds of silence.

“Now we eat!” Mandy said brightly.

Jamie laughed with everyone else, but broke off and touched her cheek.

“Aye, m’annsachd. But no until the hearthstone’s laid. Stand back a wee bit, out of the way.”

Brianna snared Mandy and moved her well back, gesturing Jem, Fanny, and Germain into a similar, though reluctant, withdrawal. The men flexed their shoulders and hands a few times, then at Jamie’s signal bent and seized the stone.

“Arrrrrgh!” shouted Jem and Germain, enthusiastically mimicking the men, who were all making similar noises. Oggy sprang awake, mouth a perfect “O” of horror, and Jenny, with perfect timing, stuck her thumb into it. He reflexively closed his mouth and started to suck, though still round-eyed with amazement.

A lot of grunting, maneuvering, muttered directions, cries of alarm as the stone slipped, laughing and chattering among the spectators as it was caught, and, with a final gasp of effort, the stone was turned flat and dropped into place.

Jamie was bent over, hands on his knees, panting. He straightened slowly, red in the face, sweat running down his neck, and looked at me.

“I hope ye like this house, Sassenach,” he said, and took a deep gulp of air, “because I’m never building ye another.”

Gradually, everyone sorted themselves, and we reassembled at the edge of the new hearth for the final blessing. To my surprise—and to theirs—Jamie beckoned Roger and Ian and made them stand on either side of him where he stood before the hearth.

“Bless to me, O God,” he said, “the moon that is above me.

“Bless to me, O God, the earth that is beneath me,

Bless to me, O God, my wife and my children,

And bless, O God, myself who have care of them;

“Bless to me my wife and my children,

And bless, O God, myself who have care of them.

Bless, O God, the thing on which mine eye doth rest.

Bless, O God, the thing on which my hope doth rest,

Bless, O God, my reason and my purpose.

Bless, O bless Thou them, Thou God of life;

Bless, O God, my reason and my purpose,

Bless, O bless Thou them, Thou God of life.

“Bless to me the bed-companion of my love.

Bless to me the handling of my hands.

Bless, O bless Thou to me, O God, the fencing of my defense.

And bless, O bless to me the angeling of my rest;

Bless, O bless Thou to me, O God, the fencing of my defense.

And bless, O bless to me the angeling of my rest.”

With a nod of his head, he indicated that we should join him, and we did.

“Bless Thou, O God, the dwelling,

And each who rests herein this night;

Bless Thou, O God, my dear ones

In every place wherein they sleep;

In the night that is to-night,

And every single night;

In the day that is to-day,

And every single day.”

Amid murmured instructions, everyone picked up a stick of wood and brought it to the hearth, where Brianna laid it and carefully pressed handfuls of kindling under her construction.

I took my own deep breath, and, taking the twist of straw she handed me, I thrust it into the firepot from my surgery, then knelt on the new green stone and lit the fire.

WE’D EATEN A cold supper on our new front stoop, there being no table or benches for the kitchen as yet, but for the sake of ceremony, I had made molasses cookie dough early in the day and set it aside. Everyone trooped inside and unrolled their miscellaneous bedding—Jamie and I did have a bed, but everyone else would be sleeping on pallets before the new fire—and sat down to watch with keen anticipation as I dropped the cookies onto my girdle and slid the cool black iron circle into the glowing warmth of the brick-lined cubbyhole Jamie had built into the side of the huge hearth, to serve as an oven for quick baking.

“How long, how long, how long, Grannie?” Mandy was behind me, standing on tiptoes to see. I turned and lifted her up so she could see the girdle and cookies. The fire we had lighted that morning had been fed all day, and the brick surround was radiating heat—and would, all night.

“See how the dough is in balls? And you can feel how hot it is—don’t ever put your hand in the oven—but the heat will make those balls flatten out and then turn brown, and when they do, the cookies will be done. It takes about ten minutes,” I added, setting her down. “It’s a new oven, though, so I’ll have to keep checking.”

“Goody, goody, goody, goody!” She hopped up and down with delight, then threw herself into Brianna’s arms. “Mama! Read me a story ’til da cookies are done?”

Bree’s eyebrows lifted and she glanced at Roger, who smiled and shrugged.

“Why not?” he said, and went to rootle through the pile of miscellaneous belongings stacked against the kitchen wall.

“Ye brought a book for the bairns? That’s braw,” Jamie said to Bree. “Where did ye get it?”

“Do they actually make books now for children Mandy’s age?” I asked, looking down at her. Bree had said she could read a bit already, but I’d never seen anything in an eighteenth-century printshop that looked like it would be comprehensible—let alone appealing—to a three-year-old.

“Well, more or less,” Roger said, pulling Bree’s big canvas bag out of the pile. “That is, there were—are, I mean—a few books that are intended for children. Though the only titles that come to mind at the moment are Hymns for the Amusement of Children, The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, and Descriptions of Three Hundred Animals.”

“What sorts of animals?” Jamie asked, looking interested.

“No idea,” Roger confessed. “I’ve not seen any of those books; just read the titles on a list.”

“Did you ever print any books for children, in Edinburgh?” I asked Jamie, who shook his head. “Well, what did you read when you were in school?”

“As a bairn? The Bible,” he said, as though this should be self-evident. “And the almanac. After we learnt the ABC, I mean. Later we did a bit of Latin.”

“I want my book,” Mandy said firmly. “Gimme, Daddy. Please?” she added, seeing her mother’s mouth open. Bree shut her mouth and smiled, and Roger peered into the sack, then withdrew a bright-orange book that made me blink.

“What?” said Jamie, leaning forward to peer at it. He looked at me, eyebrows raised. I shrugged; he’d find out soon enough.

“Read it, Mummy!” Mandy curled into her mother’s side, thrusting the book into Bree’s hands.

“Okay,” Bree said, and opened it. “Do you like green eggs and ham? I do not like them, Sam-I-Am.”

“What?” said Fanny incredulously, and moved to peer over Bree’s shoulder, closely accompanied by Germain.

“What is that?” Germain asked, fascinated.

“Sam-I-Am!” Mandy said crossly, and jabbed a finger at the page. “He gots a sign!”

“Ah, oui. And what’s the other thing, then? A Who-Are-You?”

That made Fanny, Jemmy, and Roger laugh, which turned Mandy incandescent with rage. She might not have the red hair, I thought, but she had the Fraser temper, in spades.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” she shrieked, and scrambling to her feet made for Germain with the obvious intent of disemboweling him with her bare hands.

“Whoa!” Roger snared her deftly and lifted her off her feet. “Calm down, sweetheart, he didn’t mean—”

I could have told him—but if he hadn’t learned it from sharing a household with assorted Frasers for years, it wouldn’t do any good to tell him now—that the very last thing you should say to one in full roar was “Calm down.” Like putting out an oil fire on your stove by throwing a glass of water on it.

“He did!” Mandy bellowed, struggling madly in her father’s grip. “I hate him, he wuined it, it’s all wuined! Leggo, I hate you, too!” She started kicking, dangerously in the vicinity of her father’s crotch, and he instinctively held her out, away from him.

Jamie reached out, wrapped an arm round her middle, gathered her in, and put a big hand on the nape of her neck.

“Hush, a nighean,” he said, and she did. She was panting like a little steam engine, red-faced and teary, but she stopped.

“We’ll step outside for a moment, shall we?” he said to her, and nodded to the rest of the assembled company. “No one’s to touch her book while we’re gone. D’ye hear?”

There was a faint murmur of assent, succeeded by total silence as Jamie and Mandy disappeared into the night.

“The cookies!” Smelling the strong scent of incipient scorching, I darted to the oven, snatched the girdle out, and hastily flipped the cookies off onto the Big Plate—the only pottery dish we owned at the moment, but capable of holding anything up to a small turkey.

“Are the cookies okay?” Jem, with a total disregard for his sister’s immediate prospects, hurried over to look.

“Yes,” I assured him. “A bit brown at the edges, but perfectly fine.”

Fanny had come, too, but was less intent on gluttony.

“Will Mr. Fraser whip her?” she whispered, looking anxious.

“No,” Germain assured her. “She’s too little.”

“Oh, no, she’s not,” Jemmy assured him, with a wary glance at his mother, whose face was distinctly flushed, if not quite as red as Mandy’s.

All the children had clustered round me, whether out of interest in cookies or from self-preservation. I lifted an eyebrow at Roger, who went and sat down beside Brianna. I turned my back, to allow a little marital privacy, and sent Fanny and Jem out to fetch the big pitcher of milk, presently hanging in the well—and I did hope none of the local frogs had decided to avail themselves, in defiance of the stone-weighted cloth I’d draped over the pitcher’s mouth.

“I’m sorry, Grannie.” Germain edged close to me, low-voiced. “I didna mean to cause a stramash, truly.”

“I know, sweetheart. Everybody knows, except Mandy. And Grandda will explain it to her.”

“Oh.” He relaxed at once, having total faith in his grandfather’s ability to charm anything from an unbroken horse to a rabid hedgehog.

“Go get the mugs,” I told him. “Everyone will be back soon.”

The tin mugs had been rinsed after dinner and left upside down to dry on the stoop; Germain hurried out, carefully not looking at Bree.

Germain thought she was angry with him, but it was apparent to me that she was upset, not angry. And no wonder, I thought sympathetically. She’d tried so hard, for so long, to keep Jem and Mandy safe—and happy. First, during Roger’s long and harrowing absence, and then the search to find him, the trip through the stones, and the long journey here. Little wonder that her nerves were still on edge. Luckily, Roger’s instincts as a husband were quite good; he had his arm round her and her head resting on his shoulder, and was murmuring things to her, too low for me to catch the words, but the tone of it was love and reassurance, and the lines of her face were smoothing out.

I heard soft voices in the other direction, too, through the open kitchen door—Jamie and Mandy, evidently pointing out stars they liked to each other. I smiled, arranging the cookies on the platter. He probably could charm a rabid hedgehog, I thought.

With his own good instincts, Jamie waited until the mob had reassembled and were eagerly sniffing the warm cookies. Then he carried Mandy back in and deposited her among the other children without comment.

“Thirty-four?” he said, assessing the array at a glance. “One for Oggy, aye?”

“Yes. How do you do that?”

“Och, it’s no difficult, Sassenach.” He leaned over the platter and closed his eyes, inhaling beatifically. “It’s easier than goats and sheep after all—cookies dinna have legs.”

“Legs?” said Fanny, puzzled.

“Oh, aye,” he said, opening his eyes and smiling at her. “To know the number o’ goats ye have, ye just count the legs and divide by four.”

The adult members of the audience groaned, and Germain and Jem, who had learnt division, giggled.

“That—” Fanny began, and then stopped, frowning.

“Sit,” I said briskly. “Jem, pour the milk, please. And how many cookies does each person get then, Mr. Know-it-all?”

“Three!” the boys chorused. A dissenting opinion from Mandy, who thought everyone should have five, was quelled without incident and the whole room relaxed into a quiet orgy of cold, creamy milk and sweet-scented crumbs.

“Now, then,” Jamie said, and paused, carefully brushing crumbs off his shirtfront into his palm and licking them off. “Now, then,” he repeated. “Amanda tells me she can read her book by herself. Will ye maybe read it to us, a leannan?”

“Yes!”

And with only a brief interruption for the wiping of sticky hands and face, she was ensconced once more in her mother’s arms—but this time, the vivid orange book was in her own lap. She opened the cover and glared at her audience.

“Everybody shut up,” she said firmly. “I read.”

THE SURGERY WAS the only room with complete walls, so once the cookie crumbs were all devoured, and Mandy’s book read aloud several times, Ian and his family left for their own cabin and the children lugged their pallets down the rudimentary hallway, excited at the prospect of sleeping in their own house.

I went with them to make up a fire in the brazier, the second chimney not being yet complete, and hung tattered quilts over the open window and doorway to discourage bats, mosquitoes, foxes, and curious rodents.

“Now, if a raccoon or a possum should come in,” I said, “don’t try to make it leave. Just come out of the surgery and get your father or your grandsire. Or your mother,” I added. Bree could certainly deal with a rogue raccoon.

I threw a kiss to the room at large and went back to the kitchen.

The smell of molasses had faded, but the air was still sweet, now with the scent of whisky. Brianna, sitting on a wooden box of indigo, raised her tin cup to me.

“You’re just in time,” she said.

“For what?”

Jamie handed me a full cup and tapped the rim of his to mine. “Slàinte,” he said. “To the new hearth.”

“For presents,” Bree said, half apologetically. “I thought about it for a long time. I didn’t know if I’d ever find you—any of you—” she added, with a serious glance at Roger. “And I wanted to bring something that would last, even if it got destroyed or lost.”

Jamie and I exchanged a puzzled look, but she was already delving into her canvas bag. She came up with a chunky blue book and, eyes dancing, put it into my hands.

“What—” I began, but I knew instantly from the feel of it and let out a noise that could only be called a squeal. “Bree! Oh, oh …!”

Jamie was smiling but still puzzled. I held it out to him, then clutched it to my bosom before he could take it. “Oh!” I said again. “Bree, thank you! This is wonderful!”

She was pink with pleasure, her eyes shiny in response to my excitement. “I thought you’d like it.”

“Oh …!”

“Let me see it, mo nighean donn,” Jamie said, reaching gently for the book. I could hardly bear to let go of it, but relinquished it.

“Merck Manual, Thirteenth Edition,” he read from the cover, and looked up, brows raised. “Merck seems a popular writer—that, or he makes the devil of a lot of mistakes.”

“It’s a—a—medical book,” I explained, beginning to get hold of myself, though little thrills of elation were still washing through me. “The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy. It’s a sort of compendium of—of the state of general medical knowledge.”

“Oh.” He looked at the book with interest, and opened it, though I could see he didn’t yet grasp its full importance. “Controlling the spread of E. histolytica requires preventing access of human feces to the mouth,” he read, and looked up. “Oh,” he said softly, seeing the look on my face, and smiled. “It’s what folk will have found out—then. Things about healing that ye dinna ken yet, yourself. Though I’m guessing ye do ken not to eat shite?”

I nodded, and he closed the book gently and handed it back. I clasped it to my bosom, overwhelmed with anticipation. Thirteenth edition—from 1977!

Roger coughed, and when Brianna looked at him, he tilted his head toward the bag.

“And …” she said, smiling at Jamie. “For you, Da.” She pulled out a small, thick paperback and handed it to him. “And for you …” A second book followed the first. “And this one’s for you, too.” The third.

“They all go together,” Roger said gruffly. “It’s all one story, I mean, but printed in three volumes.”

“Oh, aye?” Jamie turned over one of the books gingerly, as though afraid it might disintegrate in his hands.

“It’s glued, is it? The binding?”

“Aye,” Roger said, smiling. “It’s called a paperback, that sort of wee book. They’re cheap and light.”

Jamie weighed the book on his hand and nodded, but he was already reading the back cover.

“Frodo Baggins,” he read aloud, and looked up, baffled. “A Welshman?”

“Not exactly. Brianna thought the tale might speak to ye,” Roger said, his smile deepening as he looked at her. “I think she’s right.”

“Mmphm.” Jamie gathered the trio of books together and—with a thoughtful look at the sticky fingerprints Mandy had left on her cup—put them on the top of my simples closet. He kissed Bree and nodded toward her bag.

“Thank ye kindly—I ken they’ll be braw. What did ye bring for yourself, lass?”

“Well … mostly small tools,” she said. “Mostly things that exist now, but of a better quality, or that I couldn’t get here without a lot of trouble and expense.”

“What, nay books at all?” Jamie asked, smiling. “Ye’ll be the only illiterate of the family?”

Bree was already flushed with pleasure and excitement, but grew noticeably pinker at this question.

“Um. Well … just the one.” She glanced at me, cleared her throat, and reached into the almost-empty bag.

“Oh,” I said, and the tone of my voice made Jamie look at me, rather than at the hardbound book in its plastic-covered dust jacket. The Soul of a Rebel, it said. The Scottish Roots of the American Revolution. By Franklin W. Randall, PhD.

Bree was looking at Jamie, a small anxious frown between her brows, but at this, she turned to me.

“I haven’t read it yet,” she said. “But you—either of you,” she added, glancing between me and Jamie, “are welcome to read it anytime. If you want to.”

I met Jamie’s eyes. His brows lifted briefly and he looked away.

BRIANNA AND ROGER took the sticky cups, mixing bowl, spoon, and milk pitcher outside to rinse, and I sat down beside Jamie on a large sack of dried beans to gloat over my Merck Manual for a few minutes. He was turning Frank’s book over in his hands with a ginger air indicating that he thought it might explode, but put it aside and smiled when he saw me fondling the blue pebbled cover of my new baby.

“D’ye mean to read it through from beginning to end, like the Bible?” he asked. “Or will ye just wait ’til someone comes to ye with blue spots and look that up?”

“Oh, both,” I assured him, weighing the chunky little book in my hand. “It may have new treatments to suggest for things I recognize—but it undoubtedly describes things I’ve never seen or heard of, too.”

“May I see it again?” He held out a hand, and I carefully laid the book in it. He opened it at random, read … “Trypanosomiasis.” His eyebrows rose. “Can ye do anything about trypanosomiasis, Sassenach?”

“Well, no,” I admitted. “But—on the off chance that I should encounter trypanosomiasis, at least I’d know what it was, and that might save the patient from being subjected to an ineffective or dangerous treatment.”

“Aye, and give him time to write his will and summon a priest, too,” he said, closing the book and handing it back.

“Mm,” I said, not really wanting to dwell on the possibility—well, the dead certainty, in fact—of diagnosing fatal conditions I couldn’t treat. “What about your books? Do they look interesting?” I nodded toward the stack of thick paperbacks, and his face lit up. He picked up the first volume and riffled the pages, slowly, then turned back to the first page and read in a husky voice:

“Concerning Hobbits. This book is largely concerned with Hobbits, and from its pages a reader may discover much of their character and a little of their history.”

“That’s just the Prologue,” I assured him. “You could skip that, if you like.”

He shook his head, eyes fixed on the page, smiling.

“If the author thought it was worth his writing it down, then it’s worth my reading it. I dinna mean to miss a single word.”

A sharp pang struck me then, seeing the reverential way in which he handled the book, turning over pages with a delicate forefinger. A book—any book—had a meaning well beyond its contents for a man who’d lived years at a time with little or no access to the printed word, and only the memory of stories to provide him and his companions escape from desperate circumstances.

“Have ye read these, Sassenach?” he asked, looking up.

“No, though I’ve read The Hobbit, by the same author. Bree and I read that one together when she was in the sixth grade—about twelve years old, I mean.”

“Ah. So ye wouldna say these are lewd books?”

“What? No, not at all,” I said, laughing. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Nothing, from the cover—I’ve never seen so much printing on the outside of a book—but ye canna tell, can ye?” He closed the book with obvious reluctance. “I was thinking, we might read these in the evenings, maybe everyone taking it in turn to read a chapter. Jem and Germain are old enough to manage it. D’ye think Frances can read?”

“I know she can. Her sister taught her, she said.” I rose and came over to him, leaning against his shoulder to look at The Fellowship of the Ring. “That’s a wonderful idea.” We had done that with Jenny and Ian during the brief months of our early marriage spent at Lallybroch: passed firelit hours of peace and happiness in the evenings while one person or another read aloud and the others knitted stockings or mended clothes or small bits of furniture. The rosy vision of such evenings here, our own family in our own home, made my heart glow in my chest.

He made a low Scottish noise indicating content and set the book down, next to the hardcover book Bree had brought for herself. Frank’s book. My already tenderized heart squeezed a little, at once happy and sad that she had brought it to remember him, to bring him with her into this new life.

Jamie saw me looking at the book and made another Scottish noise, this one indicating cautious interest. I nodded at The Soul of a Rebel. “Are you going to read that one?”

“I dinna ken,” he admitted, glancing at it. “Have you read it, Sassenach?”

“No.” I felt a small qualm at the admission. The fact was that while I’d read all of Frank’s articles, books, and essays during what I thought of as our first marriage, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to read any of the books he’d written during our second go, save a brief look at one that dealt with the aftermath of Culloden, when I began to search for the men of Lallybroch.

“This one was published after I … came back,” I said, my throat tight. “It was the last book he wrote. I’ve not even seen it before.” I wondered, for an instant, whether Bree had picked that one because the photograph of Frank on it was what he’d looked like the last time she saw him, or whether she’d chosen it mostly because of the title.

Jamie caught the tone of my voice and looked sharply at me, but he said nothing, and picked up Mandy’s Green Eggs and Ham for further perusal. Jem had taken his own special book, The Scientific American Boy, off to bed with him. He was probably reading it to Germain and Fanny by firelight. Nothing I could do about that, other than hope it didn’t include step-by-step instructions for building a trebuchet.

10 Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme

IT WAS A WEEK later when we heard the rest.

Fanny and Germain had gone up to Ian’s place to help comb Jenny’s goats. Jemmy, being barred from this occupation on account of a sprained thumb, and never liking to be a bystander, had decided to stay at home and play chess with Jamie.

Roger was picking out “Scarborough Fair” on a simple sort of dulcimer that he’d made, a counterpoint to the similarly rudimentary conversations that swirled slowly through the kitchen. By the time Bree and I had kneaded tomorrow’s dough and put it to rise, set a haunch of venison to soak in herbs and vinegar, and debated whether the floor need be mopped or only swept, the room had grown quiet, though. The chess match had ended—Jamie, by heroic effort, had managed to lose—the dulcimer had fallen silent, and Mandy and Jemmy both had fallen asleep, slumped like bags of dried beans in the corners of the settle.

By unspoken consent, the four adults gathered together around the table, with four cups and a bottle of decent red wine—the gift of Michael Lindsay for my help in stitching up a couple of long wounds in the flank of his horse, these the result of a run-in with a bear.

“Your dulcimer sounds bonnie, Roger Mac,” Jamie said, raising his cup toward the instrument, this now laid on top of the simples cupboard for safety. Roger raised his eyebrows, surprised.

“You … can make it out?” he said. “I mean—ye ken it’s a song?”

“No,” Jamie said, surprised in turn. “Was it a song? The sound it makes is nice, though. Like wee bells ringing.”

“It’s a song from … our time,” Brianna said, a little hesitant, and glanced at the children.

“It’s all right,” Roger assured her. “The lyrics to that one could have come from any time from the Middle Ages on.”

“That’s good. We have to be careful,” Bree said, with a half smile at me. “We’d just as soon not have Mandy singing ‘Twist and Shout’ in church.”

“Well, not in our church,” Roger said, “though there are certainly more … um … athletic churches now in which that would be more or less appropriate. I wonder if there are any snake-handling churches in the area,” he added, suddenly interested. “I don’t know when that started.”

“Snakes in church … on purpose?” Jamie said dubiously. “Why the devil would anyone do that?”

“Mark 16:17,” Roger said. “And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. They do it—or will do it—to prove their faith,” he explained. “Pick up rattlesnakes and cottonmouths with their bare hands. In church.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jamie said, and crossed himself.

“Exactly,” Roger said, nodding. “Anything in the Bible’s safe,” he said to Bree, “but we maybe don’t want to dwell on things that might suggest more modern things.”

I had glanced involuntarily at my hands when Roger had quoted the Bible verse, but looked up at this. Jamie looked blank.

Bree took a deep breath, looking once more at the children.

“It’s not that we want them to forget,” she said quietly. “There were—are, will be—people and things they loved from … our time. And we don’t know whether they might sometime … eventually … go back. But we have to be careful which memories from that time we keep among us, talk about. Remember.” I saw her long throat bob slightly as she swallowed. “It probably wouldn’t cause any trouble if Mandy told people about toilets, for instance—especially not if I build one,” she added, breaking into a brief smile. “But there are other things.”

“Aye,” said Jamie, softly. “I suppose there are.” He laid a hand on my thigh, and I covered it. He could see what I saw: the look on their faces, Roger and Brianna both. I’d seen it in the days near the end of World War II; he’d seen it in the months and years after Culloden. The look of exiles, necessity covering mourning, bravery turning away from memories that would never be left behind, no matter how deeply they were buried.

There was a long moment of silence. Jamie cleared his throat.

“I ken why ye came back,” he said. “But how?”

The sheer practicality of the question broke the brief spell of regret. Bree and Roger looked at each other, then at us.

“Is there more wine?” Roger asked.

“WE DIDN’T KNOW whether you can move through both time and space,” Bree explained, over a fresh glass. “We don’t know anyone who’s done that, and this didn’t seem like a good time to experiment.”

“I expect not,” I said, rather faintly. Most of the time, I managed not to remember what stepping into … that … was like, but the memory was there, all right. Like seeing something big and dark cruising just under the water, and you in a small, small boat on an endless sea.

“So, that decision was easy enough,” Roger said, with a grimace indicating that “easy” was a relative term. “We’d have to make the voyage from Scotland to America, regardless. It was partly a matter of whether the passage through the stones might be better from the stone circle near Inverness, or the one on Ocracoke.”

“People died on Ocracoke, coming through,” Bree said quietly, putting her hand on Roger’s. “Wendigo Donner told you so, didn’t he, Mama?”

“He did.” My own throat felt tight, as much from the memories Donner’s name conjured up as from other associations with the word “Ocracoke,” none of them good. Bree was very pale, and I thought she had her own memories of the place; she had been held prisoner there by Stephen Bonnet.

“And even those that didn’t die had—er—anomalies,” Roger said, and looked at me. “Otter-Tooth—Robert Springer. He meant for his entire group to go back to … when? The middle of the sixteenth century, earlier? A long way, anyway. He made it farther back than any of the rest, but still not as far as he meant to go. The point, though, is that the travel wasn’t the same for the members of the group.”

“We thought that might be because they went through one at a time, walking a pattern and chanting,” Bree put in. “We”—she gestured briefly at the sleeping children—“all came together, holding on to one another. That might have made a difference.”

“And we did come through Ocracoke together before,” Roger added. “If we did it once, we could maybe do it again.”

“So it came down to a question of ships, no?” Jamie had been sitting, intent, fingers tapping lightly against his thigh, but now straightened up. “Would there be a great difference, did ye think? Between a ship built in 1739 and one built in 1775 or so?”

“Yes,” Brianna said, with some emphasis. “Ships got bigger and faster—but weather is weather, and if you run into an iceberg or a hurricane”—she nodded at me—“it doesn’t matter that much whether you’re in a rowboat or the Titanic.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Jamie agreed, and I laughed. I’d told him—briefly—about the Titanic.

“From your point of view, a floating plank on the trout pond would be just as bad as the Queen Mary—that’s a really big ship.”

“Aye, well, I expect the food would be better on the latter,” he said, unperturbed by my teasing. “And as long as I had your wee stabbers in my face, I could choose on that basis. So, did ye ken the weather changed a great deal in forty years?” he asked, returning the conversation to Bree, who shook her head.

“Not the storms and wind-type weather—I mean, it might have, but we’d have no way of knowing that. What we did know, though, was the political weather.”

“The war,” Roger said, correctly interpreting my blank look. “The British were—I mean, they are—blockading and interrupting trade and seizing American ships right and left these days. What if we chose the wrong ship and ended up being sunk or captured, or me being pressed into the British navy, leaving Bree and the kids to decide whether to go through the stones by themselves, or stay in Jamaica or wherever and try to find me?”

“That’s sensible,” Jamie said. “So ye took ship in 1739, then. How was it?”

“Horrible,” Bree said promptly, just as Roger said, “Terrible!” They looked at each other and laughed, though with an undertone that belied their mirth; it was the slightly nervous laughter of survivors who weren’t yet entirely sure they’d made it.

They’d traveled on a brig called the Kermanagh, out of Inverness, to Edinburgh, where they’d found passage on the Constance, a small merchant ship, headed for Charles Town.

“No staterooms,” Roger said. “Just a wee nook in the hold, between the water barrels and stacks of chests full of cloth: linen, muslin, woolens, and silks. The smell was pretty strong—fuller’s earth and sizing and dyes and urine, ken?—but it could have been worse. The people at the other end of the hold were squashed between crates of salt fish and barrels of gin. With the fumes, they were mostly comatose, so far as we could tell in the dark.”

“They were lucky, if so,” Brianna said ruefully. “We hit four—not one, not two, not three, but four—storms along the way. Between being sure we were going to the bottom any minute and caroming off the cargo every other minute—except for Mandy, we were all bruised everywhere. I kept her in my lap pretty much the whole trip, with my cloak wrapped around us both, for warmth.”

Jamie looked slightly green, merely listening to this, and I had to admit to feeling a sympathetic lurch of the insides myself.

“What did you eat?” I asked, in hopes of stabilizing myself and the conversation.

“Cold parritch,” Roger said with a shrug. “Mostly. Some cold bacon, too. And neeps. Lots of neeps.”

“Raw neeps?” I asked.

“Oh, come on,” Bree protested. “They’re just like apples, except not sweet. And I brought apples and raisins, too, and carrots, and a jar of boiled spinach and one of pickles—and we got one of the casks of salt fish …”

“Oh, my God,” said Roger, with feeling. “I thought I was going to die of thirst after eating one of them …”

“No one told ye to soak them?” Jamie said, grinning.

“We had cheese, too,” Bree said, but it was clear she was fighting a losing battle.

“Well, the cheese wasn’t that bad, if you washed it down with gin … you ever seen a cheese mite, up close?”

“Could ye see them?” Jamie asked, interested. “I’ve been in a ship’s hold more than once and I couldna see my hand in front of my face.”

“Aye,” Roger said. “We couldn’t have an open light in the hold, of course, so the only time we had light was when they opened the hatch cover. Which they did whenever the weather was fine,” he added, with an attempt at fairness.

“That doesna sound sae bad,” Jamie said. “Ye dinna even notice cheese mites, if ye’re hungry. And raw neeps are very filling …”

Bree made a small noise of amusement; I didn’t. He was teasing, but not joking. I recognized the vivid memory of long years of near-starvation in the Highlands after Culloden, and something not far from it in Ardsmuir Prison.

“How long were you at sea?” I asked.

“Seven weeks, four days, and thirteen and a half hours,” Brianna said. “It was a pretty quick trip, thank God.”

“Aye, it was,” Roger agreed. “The last storm hit us near the coast, though, and we had to come ashore at Savannah. I didn’t think I’d get this lot onto another boat”—he waved casually at his wife and children—“but then we asked just how far it was, and faced with the prospect of walking five hundred miles … we found another boat.”

This one was a fishing boat. “An open boat, thank God,” Bree said fervently. “We slept on deck.”

“So ye came to the stones at last, then,” Jamie said. “How was it?”

“We almost didn’t make it,” Roger said quietly. He looked at the children, asleep on the settle. Mandy had fallen over and was sprawled on her face, limp as Esmeralda. “It was Mandy who got us through—and you,” he added, raising his eyes to Jamie with a slight smile.

“Me?”

“You wrote a book,” Bree said softly, looking at him. “A Grandfather’s Tales. And you thought to put a copy in the box with your letters.”

Jamie’s face changed and he looked down at the floor, suddenly abashed.

“Ye … read it?” he asked, and cleared his throat.

“We did.” Roger’s voice was soft. “Over and over.”

“And over,” Bree added, eyes warm with the memory. “Mandy could recite some of her favorite stories word for word.”

“Aye, well …” Jamie rubbed his nose. “But what has that to do wi’ …”

“She found you,” Roger said. “In the stones. We all were thinking as hard as we could, about you and Claire and the Ridge and—and everything we recalled, I suppose. Too much, maybe—too many different things.”

“I can’t begin to describe it,” Bree said, and of course she couldn’t—but the shadow of it lay on her face. “We—couldn’t get out. We stepped through and we were … it’s kind of like exploding, Da,” she said, trying. “But so slowly you can … sort of feel yourself coming apart. When we did it before—it was like that, but it was over pretty fast. This time … it didn’t stop.”

I felt the memory of it, at her words, and everything inside me lurched as though I’d been thrown off a cliff. Bree had gone pale, but she swallowed and went on.

“I—we—you can’t really talk, but you’re sort of aware of who’s with you, who you’re holding on to. But Mandy—and Jem, a little—are … kind of stronger than either Roger or me. And I—we—could hear Mandy, saying, ‘Grandda! Blue pictsie!’ And suddenly, we were … all on the same page, I guess you could say.”

Roger smiled at that, and took up the story.

“We were all thinking of you, and of that specific story; it’s the one with the illustration of a blue pictsie. And … then we were lying on the ground, almost literally in pieces, but … alive. In the right time. And together.”

Jamie made a small sound in his throat—the only inarticulate Scottish noise I’d ever heard from him. I looked away and saw that Jem was awake; he hadn’t moved but his eyes were open. He sat up slowly and leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

“It’s okay, Grandda,” he said, his voice froggy with sleep. “Don’t cry. Ye got us here safe.”