A Breath of Snow and Ashes

  layers of linen and cotton, which burn slowly, I thought groggily. Had I been wearing something modern like rayon, I should have gone up like a torch.

  The thought made me look back toward the house. It was full dark by now, and all the windows on the lower floor were alight. Flame danced in the open door. The place looked like an immense jack-o’-lantern.

  “Ye’re Mistress Fraser, I suppose?” The squat, bearded person bent over me, speaking in a soft Scottish burr.

  “Yes,” I said, coming gradually to myself. “Who are you, and where’s Jamie?”

  “Here, Sassenach.” Jamie stumbled out of the dark and sat down heavily beside me. He waved a hand at the Scotsman. “May I present Mr. Alexander Cameron, known more generally as Scotchee?”

  “Your servant, ma’am,” he said politely.

  I was feeling gingerly at my hair. Clumps of it had been singed to crispy thread, but at least I still had some.

  I felt, rather than saw, Jamie look up at the house. I followed the direction of his glance, and saw a dark figure at the window upstairs, framed in the dim glow from the burning downstairs. He shouted something in the incomprehensible tongue, and began throwing things out of the window.

  “Who’s that?” I asked, feeling more than slightly surreal.

  “Oh.” Jamie rubbed at his face. “That would be Goose.”

  “Of course it would,” I said, nodding. “He’ll be a cooked goose, if he stays in there.” This struck me as wildly hilarious, and I doubled up in laughter.

  Evidently, it wasn’t quite as witty as I’d thought; no one else seemed to think it funny. Jamie stood up and shouted something at the dark figure, who waved nonchalantly and turned back into the room.

  “There’s a ladder in the barn,” Jamie said calmly to Scotchee, and they moved off into the darkness.

  The house burned fairly slowly for a while; there weren’t a lot of easily flammable objects down below, bar the books and papers in Jamie’s study. A tall figure belted out of the back door, shirt pulled up over his nose with one hand, the tail of his shirt held up with the other to form a bag.

  Ian came to a stop beside me, dropped to his knees, gasping, and let down his shirttail, releasing a pile of small objects.

  “That’s all I could get, I’m afraid, Auntie.” He coughed a few times, waving his hand in front of his face. “D’ye ken what happened?”

  “It’s not important,” I said. The heat was becoming more intense, and I struggled to my knees. “Come on; we’ll need to get Arch further away.”

  The effects of the ether had mostly worn off, but I was still conscious of a strong sense of unreality. I hadn’t anything but cold well water with which to treat burns, but bathed Arch’s neck and hands, which had been badly blistered. Mrs. Bug’s hair had been singed, but she, like me, had been largely protected by her heavy skirts.

  Neither she nor Arch said a word.

  Amy McCallum came running up, face pale in the fiery glow; I told her to take the Bugs to Brianna’s cabin—hers now—and for God’s sake, keep the little boys safe away. She nodded and went, she and Mrs. Bug supporting Arch’s tall form between them.

  No one made any effort to bring out the bodies of Donner and his companions.

  I could see when the fire took hold in the stairwell; there was a sudden strong glow in the upstairs windows, and shortly thereafter, I could see flames in the heart of the house.

  Snow began to fall, in thick, heavy, silent flakes. Within half an hour, the ground, trees, and bushes were dusted with white. The flames glowed red and gold, and the white snow reflected a soft reddish glow; the whole clearing seemed filled with the light of the fire.

  Somewhere around midnight, the roof fell in, with a crash of glowing timbers and a tremendous shower of sparks that fountained high into the night. The sight was so beautiful that everyone watching went “Oooooh!” in involuntary awe.

  Jamie’s arm tightened round me. We could not look away.

  “What’s the date today?” I asked suddenly.

  He frowned for a moment, thinking, then said, “December twenty-first.”

  “And we aren’t dead, either. Bloody newspapers,” I said. “They never get anything right.”

  For some reason, he thought that was very funny indeed, and laughed until he had to sit down on the ground.

  124

  PROPERTY OF THE KING

  WE SPENT THE REMAINDER OF the night sleeping—or at least horizontal—on the floor of the cabin, with the Bugs, Goose and his brother, Light—who confused me initially by referring to themselves as Jamie’s “sons”—Scotchee, and Ian. On their way to visit Bird’s village, the Indians—for Alexander Cameron was as much an Indian as the others, I thought—had met Jamie and Ian, hunting, and accepted Jamie’s hospitality.

  “Though it was a warmer welcome than we expected, Bear-Killer!” Goose said, laughing.

  They did not ask who Donner was, nor make any reference to the men whose bodies burned in the funeral pyre of the house—only asked awed questions about the ether, and shook their heads in amazement, watching the fire.

  For Jamie’s part, I noticed that he did not ask why they were going to Bird’s village—and concluded that he did not want to hear that some of the Cherokee had decided to support the King. He listened to the talk, but said little, spending his time fingering through the pile of objects saved from the fire. There was little of value there—a few scorched, loose pages from my casebook, some pewter spoons, a bullet mold. But when he fell asleep at last next to me, I saw that his fist was closed around something, and peering closely in the dark, made out the protruding head of the little cherrywood snake.

  I woke just past dawn to find Aidan peering down at me, Adso in his arms.

  “I found your wee cheetie in my bed,” Aidan whispered. “D’ye want him?”

  I was about to refuse, but then saw the look in Adso’s eye. He was very tolerant of small children normally, but Aidan was holding him round the middle like a bag of laundry, his back legs dangling ludicrously.

  “Yes,” I said, my voice hoarse from smoke. “Here—I’ll take him.”

  I sat up, but having accepted the cat, saw that most of the household was still asleep, rolled in blankets on the floor. Two notable exceptions: Jamie and Arch Bug were missing. I got up, and borrowing Amy’s cloak from beside the door, went out.

  The snow had stopped during the night, but there were two or three inches on the ground. I put Adso down under the eaves, where the ground was clear, and then—with a deep breath to steady myself—turned to look at the house.

  Steam rose from the charred remains, which stood inkblot black and stark against the white-furred trees behind it. Only about half the house had burned completely; the west wall was still standing, as were the stone chimney stacks. The rest was a mass of charred timbers and mounded ash, already turning gray. The upper story was completely gone, and as for my surgery . . .

  I turned away, hearing voices behind the house. Jamie and Arch were in the woodshed, but the door was open; I could see them inside, face to face. Jamie saw me hovering, and beckoned me in with a nod.

  “Good morning, Arch,” I said, peering at our erstwhile factor. “How are you?”

  “I’ve been better, a nighean, thank ye kindly,” he said, and coughed. His voice was little more than a harsh whisper, damaged by smoke, and there were enormous, fluid-filled blisters on both hands and face. Bar the loss of his hair and eyebrows, though, I thought he was otherwise all right.

  “Arch was just about to explain this to me, Sassenach.” Jamie pointed a toe at the gleaming metal of the gold ingot lying in the sawdust and wood chips at his feet. “Were ye not, Arch?”

  His voice was outwardly pleasant, but I heard the steel in it as clearly as Arch did. Arch Bug was no pushover, though, eyebrows or no eyebrows.

  “I owe ye nay explanations of anything, Seaumais mac Brian,” he said with equal pleasantness.

  “I give ye the chance of explanation, m
an, not the choice.” He’d dropped the pleasant tone. Jamie was smudged with soot, and scorched round the edges, but his eyebrows were intact and being put to good use. He turned to me, gesturing to the gold.

  “Ye’ve seen it before, aye?”

  “Of course.” The last time I’d seen it, it had been gleaming in the lantern light, packed solid with its fellows in the bottom of a coffin in Hector Cameron’s mausoleum, but the shape of the ingots and the fleur-de-lis stamp were unmistakable. “Unless Louis of France has been sending someone else vast quantities of gold, it’s part of Jocasta’s hoard.”

  “That it is not, and never was,” Arch corrected me firmly.

  “Aye?” Jamie cocked a thick brow at him. “To whom does it belong, then, if not to Jocasta Cameron? D’ye claim it as your own?”

  “I do not.” He hesitated, but the urge to speak was powerful. “It is the property of the King,” he said, and his old mouth closed tight on the last word.

  “What, the King of—oh,” I said, realizing at long last. “That king.”

  “Le roi, c’est mort,” Jamie said softly, as though to himself, but Arch turned fiercely to him.

  “Is Scotland dead?”

  Jamie drew breath, but didn’t speak at once. Instead, he gestured me to a seat on the stack of chopped cordwood, and nodded at Arch to take another, before sitting down beside me.

  “Scotland will die when her last son does, a charaid,” he said, and waved a hand toward the door, taking in the mountains and hollows around us—and all the people therein. “How many are here? How many will be? Scotland lives—but not in Italy.” In Rome, he meant, where Charles Stuart eked out what remained to him of a life, drowning his disappointed dreams of a crown in drink.

  Arch narrowed his eyes at this, but kept a stubborn silence.

  “Ye were the third man, were ye not?” Jamie asked, disregarding this. “When the gold was brought ashore from France. Dougal MacKenzie took one-third, and Hector Cameron another. I couldna say what Dougal did with his—gave it to Charles Stuart, most likely, and may God have mercy on his soul for that. You were tacksman to Malcolm Grant; he sent ye, did he not? You took one-third of the gold on his behalf. Did ye give it to him?”

  Arch nodded, slowly.

  “It was given in trust,” he said, and his voice cracked. He cleared his throat and spat, the mucus tinged with black. “To me, and then to the Grant—who should have given it in turn to the King’s son.”

  “Did he?” Jamie asked, interested. “Or did he think, like Hector Cameron, that it was too late?”

  It had been; the cause was already lost at that point—no gold could have made a difference. Arch’s lips pressed so tightly together as almost to be invisible.

  “He did what he did,” he said shortly. “What he thought right. That money was spent for the welfare of the clan. But Hector Cameron was a traitor, and his wife with him.”

  “It was you who spoke to Jocasta in her tent,” I said suddenly, realizing. “At the Gathering where you met Jamie. You’d come there to find her, hadn’t you?”

  Arch seemed surprised that I had spoken, but inclined his head an inch or so in acknowledgment. I wondered whether he had accepted—had sought?—a place with Jamie on account of his relationship with Jocasta.

  “And that”—I poked a toe at the shaved ingot—“you found in Jocasta’s house, when you went with Roger and Duncan to bring back the fisher-folk.” Proof—if he had needed it—that Jocasta did indeed still have Hector’s share of the French gold.

  “What I am wondering, myself,” Jamie said, rubbing a finger down the long, straight bridge of his nose, “is how the devil ye found the rest of it, and then got it away.”

  Arch’s lips pursed for a moment, then reluctantly unsealed themselves.

  “’Twas no great feat. I saw the salt at Hector’s tomb—the way the black slaves kept awa’. If he didna rest easy, it was nay wonder—but where would the gold better be, save wi’ him?” A wintry light shone in his faded eyes. “I kent Hector Cameron, a bit. He wasna the man to give up anything, only by reason of bein’ dead.”

  Arch made frequent trips to Cross Creek as factor, to buy and trade. He was not usually a guest at River Run, but had been there often enough to be familiar with the property. If anyone saw a figure near the mausoleum at night—well, everyone knew that Hector Cameron’s ghost “walked,” confined to one spot only by the lines of salt; no one would ever go close enough to investigate.

  And so he had simply abstracted one ingot on each trip—and not on every trip—eventually removing the whole hoard, before Duncan Innes discovered the loss.

  “I shouldna have kept out that first ingot, I see that,” he said, ruefully nodding at it. “At the first, though, I thought we might have need of it—Murdina and I. And then, when she was obliged to kill yon Brown—”

  Jamie’s head jerked up, and we both stared at him. He coughed.

  “The wicked creature grew well enough to poke about the cabin when she was oot; he found that”—he nodded again at the ingot—“in her workbag, where she’d hidden it. He couldna ken, of course, what it was—but he kent well enough that ragged folk such as we ought not to have such a thing.” His thin mouth pressed tight again, and I remembered that he had been chief tacksman for the Grant of clan Grant—a man of worth. Once.

  “He asked about it, and she wouldna tell him anything, of course. But then, when he made his way to your house, she feared he would tell what he’d seen. And so she made an end to him.”

  It was said calmly; after all, what else could she do? Not for the first time, I wondered just what other things the Bugs had done—or been forced to do—in the years after Culloden.

  “Well, ye kept the gold out of King George’s hands, at least,” Jamie said, a certain note of bleakness in his voice. I thought he was thinking of the battle at Moore’s Creek Bridge. If Hugh MacDonald had had that gold, with which to buy powder and arms, the victory there would not have been so easily won. Nor would the Highlanders have been slaughtered—again—charging sword in hand into the mouths of cannon.

  “Arch,” I said, when the silence threatened to become oppressive, “what, exactly, did you plan to do with it?”

  He blinked at that, and looked down at the ingot.

  “I . . . I meant at first only to see if it was true what I’d heard—that Hector Cameron had taken his part of the gold away with him, used it for his own ends. Then I found Hector dead, but ’twas clear from the way his wife lived that he had indeed taken it. So I wondered—was there any left?”

  One hand crept up, massaging his withered throat.

  “To tell ye the truth, mistress—I wished mostly to take it back from Jocasta Cameron. Having done that, though . . .” His voice died away, but then he shook himself.

  “I am a man of my word, Seaumais mac Brian. I swore an oath to my chief—and kept it, ’til he died. I swore my oath to the King across the water”—James Stuart, he meant—“but he is dead, now, too. And then—I swore loyalty to George of England when I came upon this shore. So tell me now where my duty lies?”

  “Ye swore an oath to me, too, Archibald mac Donagh,” Jamie said.

  Arch smiled at that, a wry expression, but a smile nonetheless.

  “And by reason of that oath, ye’re still alive, Seaumais mac Brian,” he said. “I could have killed ye last night in your sleep and been well awa’.”

  Jamie’s mouth twisted in a look that expressed considerable doubt of this statement, but he forbore to contradict.

  “You are free of your oath to me,” he said formally in Gaelic. “Take your life from my hand.” And inclining his head toward the ingot, said, “Take that—and go.”

  Arch regarded him for a moment, unblinking. Then stooped, picked up the ingot, and went.

  “You didn’t ask him where the gold is now,” I observed, watching the tall old man make his way round the cabin to rouse his wife.

  “Ye think he would ha’ told me?” He stood up then,
and stretched himself. Then he shook himself like a dog, and went to stand in the doorway of the shed, arms braced in the door frame, looking out. It was beginning to snow again.

  “I see it’s not only the Frasers who are stubborn as rocks,” I said, coming to stand beside him. “Scotland lives, all right.” That made him laugh.

  He put one arm around me, and I rested my head on his shoulder.

  “Your hair smells of smoke, Sassenach,” he said softly.

  “Everything smells of smoke,” I replied just as softly.

  The burned ruins of the house were still too warm for snow to stick, but that would pass. If it went on snowing, by tomorrow the house would be obliterated, white as the rocks and trees. We, too—eventually.

  I thought of Jocasta and Duncan, gone to the safety of Canada, the welcome of kinfolk. Where would the Bugs go—back to Scotland? For an instant, I longed to go, too. Away from loss and desolation. Home.

  But then I remembered.

  “So long as one hundred of us remain alive . . . ,” I quoted.

  Jamie tilted his head against mine for a moment, then raised it and turned to look down at me.

  “And when ye go to a sick man’s bed, Sassenach—to a wounding or a birth—how is it, then, that ye can rise from your own bed, even from mortal weariness, and go in the dark, alone? Why is it that ye willna wait, that ye dinna say no, ever? Why is it that ye willna forbear, even when ye know the case to be hopeless?”

  “I can’t.” I kept my gaze on the ruin of the house, its ashes growing cold before my eyes. I knew what he meant, the unwelcome truth he would force me to speak—but the truth lay between us, and must be told. “I cannot . . . can not . . . admit . . . that there is anything to do but win.”

  He cupped my chin and tilted my face upward, so that I was obliged to meet his eyes. His own face was worn with tiredness, the lines cut deep by eyes and mouth, but the eyes themselves were clear, cool, and fathomless as the waters of a hidden spring.

  “Nor can I,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “Ye can at least promise me the victory,” he said, but his voice held the whisper of a question.

  “Yes,” I said, and touched his face. I sounded choked, and my vision blurred. “Yes, I can promise that. This time.” No mention made of what that promise spared, of the things I could not guarantee. Not life, not safety. Not home, nor family; not law nor legacy. Just the one thing—or maybe two.

  “The victory,” I said. “And that I will be with you ’til the end.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment. Snowflakes pelted down, melting as they struck his face, sticking for an instant, white on his lashes. Then he opened his eyes and looked at me.

  “That is enough,” he said softly. “I ask no more.”

  He reached forward then and took me in his arms, held me close for a moment, the breath of snow and ashes cold around us. Then he kissed me, released me, and I took a deep breath of cold air, harsh with the scent of burning. I brushed a floating smut off my arm.

  “Well . . . good. Bloody good. Er . . .” I hesitated. “What do you suggest we do next?”

  He stood looking at the charred ruin, eyes narrowed, then lifted his shoulders and let them fall.

  “I think,” he said slowly, “we shall go—” He stopped suddenly, frowning. “What in God’s name . . . ?”

  Something was moving at the side of the house. I blinked away the snowflakes, standing on tiptoe to see better.

  “Oh, it can’t be!” I said—but it was. With a tremendous upheaval of snow, dirt, and charred wood, the white sow thrust her way into daylight. Fully emerged, she shook her massive shoulders, then, pink snout twitching irritably, moved purposefully off toward the wood. A moment later, a smaller version likewise emerged—and another, and another . . . and eight half-grown piglets, some white, some spotted, and one as black as the timbers of the house, trotted off in a line, following their mother.

  “Scotland lives,” I said again, giggling uncontrollably. “Er—where did you say we were going?”

  “To Scotland,” he said as though this were obvious. “To fetch my printing press.”

  He was still looking at the house, but his eyes were fixed somewhere beyond the ashes, far beyond the present moment. An owl hooted deep in the distant wood, startled from its sleep. He stood silent for a bit, then shook off his reverie, and smiled at me, snow melting in his hair.

  “And then,” he said simply, “we shall come back to fight.”

  He took my hand and turned away from the house, toward the barn where the horses stood waiting, patient in the cold.

  EPILOGUE I

  LALLYBROCH

  THE PENLIGHT’S BEAM MOVED SLOWLY across the heavy oak rafter, paused at a suspicious hole, then passed on. The heavyset man wore a frown of scrupulous