A Breath of Snow and Ashes

John nodded, silent. Brianna’s husband was coming now, their little boy held by one hand, his hair as vivid as his mother’s in the bright summer sun. He held a baby in the crook of his arm—Brianna took it from him, turning back the blanket to display the child to William, who inspected it with every indication of politeness.

He realized suddenly that every fragment of Fraser’s being was focused on the scene outside. Of course; he had not seen Willie since the boy was twelve. And to see the two together—his daughter and the son he could never speak to or acknowledge. He would have touched Fraser, put a hand on his arm in sympathy, but knowing the probable effect of his touch, forbore to do it.

“I have come,” Fraser said suddenly, “to ask a favor of you.”

“I am your servant, sir,” Lord John said, terribly pleased, but taking refuge in formality.

“Not for myself,” Fraser said with a glance at him. “For Brianna.”

“My pleasure will be the greater,” John assured him. “I am exceeding fond of your daughter, her temperamental resemblances to her sire notwithstanding.”

The corner of Fraser’s mouth lifted, and he returned his gaze to the scene below.

“Indeed,” he said. “Well, then. I canna tell ye why I require this—but I need a jewel.”

“A jewel?” Lord John’s voice sounded blank, even to his own ears. “What sort of jewel?”

“Any sort.” Fraser shrugged, impatient. “It doesna matter—so long as it should be some precious gem. I once gave ye such a stone—” His mouth twitched at that; he had handed over the stone, a sapphire, under duress, as a prisoner of the Crown. “Though I dinna suppose ye’d have that by ye, still.”

In point of fact, he did. That particular sapphire had traveled with him for the last twenty-five years, and was at this moment in the pocket of his waistcoat.

He glanced at his left hand, which bore a broad gold band, set with a brilliant, faceted sapphire. Hector’s ring. Given to him by his first lover at the age of sixteen. Hector had died at Culloden—the day after John had met James Fraser, in the dark of a Scottish mountain pass.

Without hesitation, but with some difficulty—the ring had been worn a long time, and had sunk a little way into the flesh of his finger—he twisted it off and dropped it into Jamie’s hand.

Fraser’s brows rose in astonishment.

“This? Are ye sur—”

“Take it.” He reached out then, and closed Jamie’s fingers around it with his own. The contact was fleeting, but his hand tingled, and he closed his own fist, hoping to keep the sensation.

“Thank you,” Jamie said again, quietly.

“It is—my very great pleasure.” The party below was breaking up—Brianna was taking her leave, the baby held in her arms, her husband and son already halfway down the walk. William bowed, hat off, the shape of his chestnut head so perfectly echoing that of the red—

Suddenly, Lord John could not bear to see them part. He wished to keep that, too—the sight of them together. He closed his eyes and stood, hands on the sill, feeling the movement of the breeze past his face. Something touched his shoulder, very briefly, and he felt a sense of movement in the air beside him.

When he opened his eyes again, all three of them were gone.





119



LOTH TO DEPART

September 1776

ROGER WAS LAYING THE LAST OF the water pipes when Aidan and Jemmy popped up beside him, sudden as a pair of jack-in-the-boxes.

“Daddy, Daddy, Bobby’s here!”

“What, Bobby Higgins?” Roger straightened up, feeling his back muscles protest, and looked toward the Big House, but saw no sign of a horse. “Where is he?”

“He went up to the graveyard,” Aidan said, looking important. “D’ye think he’s gone to look for the ghost?”

“I doubt it,” Roger said calmly. “What ghost?”

“Malva Christie’s,” Aidan said promptly. “She walks. Everybody says so.” He spoke bravely, but wrapped his arms about himself. Jemmy, who plainly hadn’t heard that bit of news before, looked wide-eyed.

“Why does she walk? Where’s she going?”

“Because she was murrrrderrred, silly,” Aidan said. “Folk what are murdered always walk. They’re lookin’ for the one who killed them.”

“Nonsense,” Roger said firmly, seeing the uneasy look on Jemmy’s face. Jem had known Malva Christie was dead, of course; he’d gone to her funeral, along with all the other children on the Ridge. But he and Brianna had simply told the boy that Malva had died, not that she had been murdered.

Well, Roger thought grimly, little hope of keeping something like that secret. He hoped Jem wouldn’t have nightmares.

“Malva’s not walking about looking for anyone,” he said, with as much conviction as he could infuse into his voice. “Her soul is in heaven with Jesus, where she’s happy and peaceful—and her body . . . well, when people die, they don’t need their bodies anymore, and so we bury them, and there they stay, all tidy in their graves, until the Last Day.”

Aidan looked patently unconvinced by this.

“Joey McLaughlin saw her, two weeks ago Friday,” he said, bobbing up and down on his toes. “A-flittin’ through the wood, he said, all dressed in black—and howlin’ most mournful!”

Jemmy was beginning to look truly upset. Roger laid down the spade, and picked Jem up in his arms.

“I expect Joey McLaughlin was a bit the worse for a dram too much,” he said. Both boys were entirely familiar with the concept of drunkenness. “If it was flitting through the wood howling, it was most likely Rollo he saw. Come on, though, we’ll go find Bobby, and ye’ll see Malva’s grave for yourselves.”

He put out a hand to Aidan, who took it happily and chattered like a magpie all the way up the hill.

And what was Aidan going to do, when he left? he wondered. The idea of leaving, at first so abrupt as to seem completely unreal, unthinkable, had been filtering into his consciousness, day by day. As he worked at the chores, dug the trenches for Brianna’s water pipes, carried hay, chopped wood, he would try to think: “Not much longer.” And yet it seemed impossible that one day he would not be on the Ridge, would not push open the door to the cabin and find Brianna involved in some fiendish experiment on the kitchen table, Jem and Aidan madly vrooming around her feet.

The feeling of unreality was even more pronounced when he preached of a Sunday or went round as minister—if yet without portfolio—to visit the sick or counsel the troubled. Looking into all those faces—attentive, excited, bored, dour, or preoccupied—he simply couldn’t believe that he meant to go, callously to abandon them all. How would he tell them? he wondered, with a sort of anguish at the thought. Especially the ones he felt most responsible for—Aidan and his mother.

He’d prayed about it, looking for strength, for guidance.

And yet . . . and yet the vision of Amanda’s tiny blue fingernails, the faint wheeze of her breathing, never left him. And the looming stones by the creek on Ocracoke seemed to grow nearer, more solid, day by day.

Bobby Higgins was indeed in the graveyard, his horse tethered under the pines. He was sitting by Malva’s grave, head bowed in contemplation, though he looked up at once when Roger and the boys appeared. He looked pale and somber, but scrambled to his feet and shook Roger’s hand.

“I’m glad to see ye back, Bobby. Here, you lot go and play, aye?” He set Jemmy down, and was pleased to see that after one suspicious glance at Malva’s grave—adorned with a wilted bunch of wildflowers—Jemmy went off quite happily with Aidan to hunt for squirrels and chipmunks in the wood.

“I—er—wasn’t expecting to see you again,” he added a little awkwardly. Bobby looked down, slowly dusting pine needles from his breeches.

“Well, zur . . . the fact of the matter is, I’ve come to stay. If so be as that’s agreeable,” he added hastily.

“To stay? But—of course it’s fine,” Roger said, recovering from his surprise. “Have you—that is—you’ve not had a falling-out with his Lordship, I hope?”

Bobby looked astonished at the thought, and shook his head decidedly.

“Oh, no, zur! His Lordship’s been proper kind to me, ever since he took me on.” He hesitated, biting his lower lip. “It’s only—well, ye see, zur, there’s a deal of folk what come to stay with his Lordship these days. Politicals, and—and army folk.”

Despite himself, he touched the brand on his cheek, which had faded now to a pinkish scar but was still apparent—and always would be. Roger understood.

“You weren’t comfortable there any longer, I suppose?”

“That’s it, zur.” Bobby gave him a grateful look. “Time was, ’twas just his Lordship and me and Manoke the cook. Sometimes a guest would come for dinner or to stay a few days, but ’twas all easy and what ye might call simple. When I went for to run messages or errands for his Lordship, folk would stare, but only for the first time or two; after that, they’d be used to this”—he touched his face again—“and it was all right. But now . . .” He trailed off unhappily, leaving Roger to imagine the probable response of British army officers, starched, polished, and either openly disapproving of this blot on the service—or painfully polite.

“His Lordship saw the difficulty; he’s good that way. And he said as how he would miss me, but if I chose to seek my fortune elsewhere, he would give me ten pounds and his best wishes.”

Roger whistled respectfully. Ten pounds was a very respectable sum. Not a fortune, but quite enough to set Bobby on his road.

“Very nice,” he said. “Did he know ye meant to come here?”

Bobby shook his head.

“I wasn’t sure myself,” he admitted. “Once, I should—” He cut himself off abruptly, with a glance at Malva’s grave, then turned back to Roger, clearing his throat.

“I thought I best talk to Mr. Fraser, before I was to make up my mind. Could be there’s naught for me here any longer, either.” This was phrased as a statement, but the question was clear. Everyone on the Ridge knew Bobby and accepted him; that wasn’t the difficulty. But with Lizzie married and Malva gone . . . Bobby wanted a wife.

“Oh . . . I think ye might find yourself welcome,” Roger said with a thoughtful look at Aidan, hanging upside down by his knees from a tree branch, while Jemmy pegged pinecones at him. A most peculiar feeling went through him—something between gratitude and jealousy—but he pushed the latter feeling firmly down.

“Aidan!” he shouted. “Jem! Time to go!” And turned casually back to Bobby, saying, “I think ye’ll maybe not have met Aidan’s mother, Amy McCallum—a young widow, aye, with a house and a bit of land. She’s come to work at the Big House; if ye’ll come sit down to supper there . . .”



“I’VE THOUGHT OF IT now and then,” Jamie admitted. “Wondered, ye ken? What if I could? How would it be?”

He glanced at Brianna, smiling, but a little helpless, and shrugged.

“What d’ye think, lass? What should I do there? How would it be?”

“Well, it—” she began, and stopped, trying to envision him in that world—behind the wheel of a car? Going to an office, in a three-piece suit? That idea was so ludicrous, she laughed. Or sitting in a darkened theater, watching Godzilla films with Jem and Roger?

“What’s Jamie spelled backward?” she asked.

“Eimaj, I suppose,” he replied, bewildered. “Why?”

“I think you’d do fine,” she said, smiling. “Never mind. You’d—well, I suppose you could . . . publish newspapers. The printing presses are bigger and faster, and it takes a lot more people to gather the news, but otherwise—I don’t think it’s so different then from what it is now. You know how to do that.”

He nodded, a crease of concentration forming between the thick brows that were so like hers.

“I suppose so,” he said a little dubiously. “Could I be a farmer, d’ye think? Surely folk still eat; someone must feed them.”

“You could.” She looked round, taking fresh note of all the homely details of the place: the chickens scratching peaceably in the dirt; the soft, weathered boards of the stable; the thrown-up dirt near the foundation of the house where the white pig had burrowed in. “There are people then who still farm just this way; small places, way up in the mountains. It’s a hard life—” She saw him smile, and laughed in return. “All right, it’s not any harder than it is now—but it’s a lot easier in the cities.”

She paused, thinking.

“You wouldn’t have to fight,” she said finally.

He seemed surprised at that.

“No? But ye did say there are wars.”

“There certainly are,” she said, needles of ice piercing her belly, as the images pierced her mind: fields of poppies, fields of white crosses—a man on fire, a naked child running with burned skin, the contorted face of a man in the instant before the bullet entered his brain. “But—but then it’s only the young men who fight. And not all of them; only some.”

“Mmphm.” He thought for a bit, his brow furrowed, then looked up searching her face.

“This world of yours, this America,” he said finally, matter-of-factly. “The freedom that ye go to. There will be a fearful price to be paid. Will it be worth it, do ye think?”

It was her turn then to be silent and think. At last she put her hand on his arm—solid, warm, steady as iron.

“Almost nothing would be worth losing you,” she whispered. “But maybe that comes close.”



AS THE WORLD turns toward winter and the nights grow long, people begin to wake in the dark. Lying in bed too long cramps the limbs, and dreams dreamt too long turn inward on themselves, grotesque as a Mandarin’s fingernails. By and large, the human body isn’t adapted for more than seven or eight hours’ sleep—but what happens when the nights are longer than that?

What happens is the second sleep. You fall asleep from tiredness, soon after dark—but then wake again, rising toward the surface of your dreams like a trout coming up to feed. And should your sleeping partner also wake then—and people who have slept together for a good many years know at once when each other wakes—you have a small, private place to share, deep in the night. A place in which to rise, to stretch, to bring a juicy apple back to bed, to share slice by slice, fingers brushing lips. To have the luxury of conversation, uninterrupted by the business of the day. To make love slowly in the light of an autumn moon.

And then, to lie close, and let a lover’s dreams caress your skin as you begin to sink once more beneath the waves of consciousness, blissful in the knowledge that dawn is far off—that’s second sleep.

I came very slowly to the surface of my first sleep, to find that the highly erotic dream I had been having had some basis in reality.

“I’d never thought myself the sort who’d molest a corpse, Sassenach.” Jamie’s voice tickled the tender flesh below my ear, murmuring. “But I will say the notion has more appeal than I’d thought.”

I wasn’t sufficiently coherent as to respond to this, but thrust my hips back toward him in a fashion that he seemed to find as eloquent an invitation as one written in calligraphy on parchment. He took a deep breath, a firm grip on my buttocks, and brought me to an awakening that could be called rude in several senses of the word.

I squirmed like a worm impaled on a fish-hook, making small urgent noises that he interpreted correctly, rolling me onto my face and proceeding to leave me in no doubt that I was not merely alive and awake, but functioning.

I emerged at length from a nest of flattened pillows, damp, gasping, quivering in every engorged and slippery nerve-ending, and thoroughly awake.

“What brought that on?” I inquired. He hadn’t pulled away; we lay still joined, washed in the light of a big golden half-moon, riding low in the sky above the chestnut trees. He made a small sound, partly amusement, partly dismay.

“I canna look at ye asleep without wanting to wake ye, Sassenach.” His hand cupped my breast, gently now. “I suppose I find myself lonely without ye.”

There was an odd note in his voice, and I turned my head toward him, but couldn’t see him in the dark behind me. Instead, I put back a hand and touched the leg still wrapped halfway over mine. Even relaxed, it was hard, the long groove of the muscle graceful under my fingers.

“I’m here,” I said, and his arm tightened suddenly round me.



I HEARD THE BREATH catch in his throat, and my hand tightened on his thigh.

“What is it?” I said.

He drew breath, but didn’t answer at once. I felt him draw back a little, and fumble under the pillow. Then his hand came round me again, but this time seeking the hand that lay on his leg. His fingers curled into mine, and I felt a small, hard, roundish object thrust into my hand.

I heard him swallow.

The stone, whatever it was, seemed slightly warm to the touch. I ran a thumb slowly over it; a raw stone of some kind, but big, the size of one of my finger-joints.

“Jamie . . .” I said, feeling my throat close.

“I love you,” he said, so softly that I barely heard him, close as we were.

I lay still for a moment, feeling the stone grow warmer in the palm of my hand. Surely it was imagination that made it seem to throb in time with my heart. Where on earth had he gotten it?

Then I moved—not suddenly, but with deliberation, my body sliding slowly free of his. I rose, feeling light-headed, and crossed the room. Pushed open the window to feel the sharp touch of the autumn wind on my naked bed-warm skin, and drawing back my arm, hurled the tiny object into the night.

Then I came back to bed, saw his hair a dark mass on the pillow, and the shine of his eyes in the moonlight.

“I love you,” I whispered, and slid under the sheet beside him, putting my arms around him, hugging him close, warmer than the stone—so much warmer—and his heart beat with mine.

“I’m none so brave as I was before, ken?” he said very softly. “Not brave enough to live without ye anymore.”

But brave enough to try.

I drew his head down to me, stroking the tumble of his hair, coarse and smooth at once, live beneath my fingers.

“Lay your head, man,” I said softly. “It’s a long time ’til dawn.”





120



IF ONLY FOR MYSELF

THE SKY WAS A FLAT, LEADEN COLOR, threatening rain, and the wind gusted through the palmettos, rattling the leaves like sabers. Down in the depths of the tidal forest, the four stones loomed beside the creek.

“I am the wife of the laird of Balnain,” Brianna whispered, next to me. “The faeries have stolen me over again.” She was white to the lips, Amanda clutched close to her breast.

We had made our farewells—we had been saying farewell, I thought, since the day I pressed the stethoscope to Mandy’s heart. But Brianna turned and flung herself—baby and all—at Jamie, who pressed her so tight against his heart, I thought one of them must break.

Then she was flying at me, a cloud of cloak and loosened hair, and her face was cold against mine, her tears and mine mingling on my skin.

“I love you, Mama! I love you!” she said in desperation, then turned and, without looking back, began to walk the pattern Donner had described, quietly chanting under her breath. A circle right, between two stones, a circle left, and back through the center—and then to the left of the largest stone.

I had been expecting it; when she began to walk the pattern, I had run away from the stones, stopping at what I thought a safe distance. It wasn’t. The sound of them—a roar, this time, instead of a shriek—thundered through me, stopping my breath and nearly my heart. Pain froze in a band round my chest and I dropped to my knees, swaying and helpless.

They were gone. I could see Jamie and Roger running to check—terrified of finding bodies, at once desolate and elated to find none. I couldn’t see well—my vision swam, flickering in and out—but didn’t need to. I knew they were gone, from the hole in my heart.



“TWO DOWN,” Roger whispered. His voice was no more than a faint rasp, and he cleared his throat, hard. “Jeremiah.” He looked down at Jem, who blinked and sniffed, and drew himself up tall at the sound of his formal name.

“Ye ken what we’re about now, aye?” Jemmy nodded, though he flicked a scared glance toward the towering stone where his mother and his baby sister had just vanished. He swallowed hard, and wiped the tears off his cheeks.

“Well, then.” Roger reached out a hand and rested it gently on Jemmy’s head. “Know this, mo mac—I shall love ye all my life, and never forget ye. But this is