“Good night, Claire,” she called, already hurrying off on her maternal errand of mercy. “Sleep well.”
I usually did sleep well; in spite of the cold, damp climate, the house was tightly constructed, and the goosefeather bed was plentifully supplied with quilts. Tonight, though, I found myself restless without Jamie. The bed seemed vast and clammy, my legs twitchy, and my feet cold.
I tried lying on my back, hands lightly clasped across my ribs, eyes closed, breathing deep, to summon up a picture of Jamie; if I could imagine him there, breathing deeply in the dark beside me, perhaps I could fall asleep.
The sound of a cock crowing at full blast lifted me off the pillow, as though a stick of dynamite had been touched off beneath the bed.
“Idiot!” I said, every nerve in my body twanging from the shock. I got up and cracked the shutter. It had stopped snowing, but the sky was still pale with cloud, a uniform color from horizon to horizon. The rooster let loose another bellow in the hen-coop below.
“Shut up!” I said. “It’s the middle of the night, you feathered bastard!” The avian equivalent of a raspberry echoed through the still night, and down the hall, a child began to cry, followed by a rich but muffled Gaelic expletive in Jenny’s voice.
“You,” I said to the invisible rooster, “are living on borrowed time.” There was no response to this, and after a pause to make certain that the rooster had in fact called it a night, I closed the shutters and did the same.
The commotion had derailed any coherent train of thought. Instead of trying to start another, I decided to try turning inward, in the hopes that physical contemplation would relax me enough to sleep.
It worked. As I began to hover on the edge of sleep, my mind fixed somewhere around my pancreas, I could dimly hear the sounds of small Jamie pattering down the hall to his mother’s bedroom—roused from sleep by a full bladder, he seldom had the presence of mind to take the obvious step, and would frequently blunder down the stair from the nursery in search of assistance instead.
I had wondered, coming to Lallybroch, whether I might find it difficult to be near Jenny; if I would be envious of her easy fruitfulness. And I might have been, had I not seen that abundant motherhood had its price as well.
“There’s a pot right by your bed, clot-heid,” Jenny’s exasperated voice came outside my door as she steered small Jamie back to his bed. “Ye must have stepped in it on your way out; why can ye no get it through your heid to use that one? Why have ye got to come use mine, every night in creation?” Her voice faded as she turned up the stair, and I smiled, visualization moving down the sweeping curve of my intestines.
There was another reason I did not envy Jenny. I had at first feared that the birth of Faith had done me some internal damage, but that fear had disappeared with Raymond’s touch. As I completed the inventory of my body, and felt my spine go slack on the edge of sleep, I could feel that all was well there. It had happened once, it could happen again. All that was needed was time. And Jamie.
Jenny’s footsteps sounded on the boards of the hallway, quickening in response to a sleepy squawk from Maggie, at the far end of the house.
“Bairns are certain joy, but nay sma’ care,” I murmured to myself, and fell asleep.
* * *
Through the next day, we waited, doing our chores and going through the daily routine with one ear cocked for the sound of horses in the dooryard.
“They’ll have stayed to do some business,” Jenny said, outwardly confident. But I saw her pause every time she passed the window that overlooked the lane leading to the house.
As for me, I had a hard time controlling my imagination. The letter, signed by King George, confirming Jamie’s pardon, was locked in the drawer of the desk in the laird’s study. Jamie regarded it as a humiliation, and would have burned it, but I had insisted it be kept, just in case. Now, listening for sounds through the rush of winter wind, I kept having visions of it having all been a mistake, or a hoax of some kind—of Jamie once more arrested by red-coated dragoons, taken away again to the misery of prison, and the impending danger of the hangman’s noose.
The men returned at last just before nightfall, horses laden with bags containing the salt, needles, pickling spice, and other small items that Lallybroch could not produce for itself.
I heard one of the horses whinny as it came into the stableyard, and ran downstairs, meeting Jenny on her way out through the kitchens.
Relief swept through me as I saw Jamie’s tall figure, shadowed against the barn. I ran through the yard, disregarding the light covering of snow that lingered on the ground, and flung myself into his arms.
“Where the hell have you been?” I demanded.
He took time to kiss me before replying. His face was cold against mine, and his lips tasted faintly and pleasantly of whisky.
“Mm, sausage for supper?” he said approvingly, sniffing at my hair, which smelled of kitchen smoke. “Good, I’m fair starved.”
“Bangers and mash,” I said. “Where have you been?”
He laughed, shaking out his plaid to get the blown snow off. “Bangers and mash? That’s food, is it?”
“Sausages with mashed potatoes,” I translated. “A nice traditional English dish, hitherto unknown in the benighted reaches of Scotland. Now, you bloody Scot, where in hell have you been for the last two days? Jenny and I were worried!”
“Well, we had a wee accident—” Jamie began, when he spotted the small figure of Fergus, bearing a lantern. “Och, ye’ve brought a light, then, Fergus? Good lad. Set it there, where ye won’t set fire to the straw, and then take this poor beast into her stall. When ye’ve got her settled, come along to your own supper. You’ll be able to sit to it by now, I expect?” He aimed a friendly cuff at Fergus’s ear. The boy dodged and grinned back; apparently whatever had happened in the barn yesterday had left no hard feelings.
“Jamie,” I said, in measured tones. “If you don’t stop talking about horses and sausages and tell me what sort of accident you had, I am going to kick you in the shins. Which will be very hard on my toes, because I’m only wearing slippers, but I warn you, I’ll do it anyway.”
“That’s a threat, is it?” he said, laughing. “It wasna serious, Sassenach, only that—”
“Ian!” Jenny, delayed momentarily by Maggie, had just arrived, in time to see her husband step into the circle of lanternlight. Startled by the shock in her voice, I turned to see her dart forward and put a hand to Ian’s face.
“Whatever happened to ye, man?” she said. Plainly, whatever the accident had been, Ian had borne the brunt of it. One eye was blackened and swollen half-shut, and there was a long, raw scrape down the slope of one cheekbone.
“I’m all right, mi dhu,” he said, patting Jenny gently as she embraced him, little Maggie squeezed uncomfortably between them. “Only a bit bruised here and there.”
“We were comin’ down the slope of the hill two miles outside the village, leading the horses because the footing was bad, and Ian stepped in a molehole and broke his leg,” Jamie explained.
“The wooden one,” Ian amplified. He grinned, a little sheepishly. “The mole had a bit the best o’ that encounter.”
“So we stayed at a cottage nearby long enough to carve him a new one,” Jamie ended the story. “Can we eat? The sides of my belly are flapping together.”
We went in without further ado, and Mrs. Crook and I served the supper while Jenny bathed Ian’s face with witch hazel and made anxious inquiries about other injuries.
“It’s nothing,” he assured her. “Only bruises here and there.” I had watched him coming into the house, though, and seen that his normal limp was badly exaggerated. I had a few quiet words with Jenny as we cleared away the supper plates, and once we were settled in the parlor, the contents of the saddlebags safely disposed of, she knelt on the rug beside Ian and took hold of the new leg.
“Let’s have it off, then,” she said firmly. “You’ve hurt yourself, and I want Claire to loo
k it over. She can maybe help ye more than I can.”
The original amputation had been done with some skill, and greater luck; the army surgeon who had taken the lower leg off had been able to save the knee joint. This gave Ian a great deal more flexibility of movement than he might otherwise have had. For the moment, though, the knee joint was more a liability than an advantage.
The fall had twisted his leg cruelly; the end of the stump was blue with bruising, and lacerated where the sharp edge of the cuff had pressed through the skin. It must have been agony to set any weight on it, even had all else been normal. As it was, the knee had twisted, too, and the flesh on the inside of the joint was swollen, red and hot.
Ian’s long, good-natured face was nearly as red as the injured joint. While perfectly matter-of-fact about his disability, I knew he hated the occasional helplessness it imposed. His embarrassment at being so exposed now was likely as painful to him as my touching of his leg.
“You’ve torn a ligament through here,” I told him, tracing the swelling inside his knee with a gentle finger. “I can’t tell how bad it is, but bad enough. You’ve got fluid inside the joint; that’s why it’s swollen.”
“Can ye help it, Sassenach?” Jamie was leaning over my shoulder, frowning worriedly at the angry-looking limb.
I shook my head. “Not a lot I can do for it, beyond cold compresses to reduce the swelling.” I looked up at Ian, fixing him with my best approximation of a Mother Hildegarde look.
“What you can do,” I said, “is stay in bed. You can have whisky for the pain tomorrow; tonight, I’ll give you laudanum so you can sleep. Keep off it for a week, at least, and we’ll see how it does.”
“I canna do that!” Ian protested. “There’s the stable wall needs mending, two dikes down in the upper field, and the ploughshares to be sharpened, and—”
“And a leg to mend, too,” said Jamie, firmly. He gave Ian what I privately called his “laird’s look,” a piercing blue glare that caused most people to leap to his bidding. Ian, who had shared meals, toys, hunting expeditions, fights, and thrashings with Jamie, was a good deal less susceptible than most people.
“The hell I will,” he said flatly. His hot brown eyes met Jamie’s with a look in which pain and anger mingled with resentment—and something else I didn’t recognize. “D’ye think ye can order me?”
Jamie sat back on his heels, flushing as though he’d been slapped. He bit back several obvious retorts, finally saying quietly, “No. I wilna try to order ye. May I ask ye, though—to care for yourself?”
A long look passed between the men, containing some message I couldn’t read. At last, Ian’s shoulders slumped as he relaxed, and he nodded, with a crooked smile.
“You can ask.” He sighed, and rubbed at the scrape on his cheekbone, wincing as he touched the abraded skin. He took a deep breath, steeling himself, then held out a hand to Jamie. “Help me up, then?”
It was an awkward job, getting a man with one leg up two flights of stairs, but it was managed at last. At the bedroom door, Jamie left Ian to Jenny. As he stepped back, Ian said something soft and quick to Jamie in Gaelic. I still was not proficient in the tongue, but I thought he had said, “Be well, brother.”
Jamie paused, looking back, and smiled, the candle lighting his eyes with warmth.
“You, too, mo brathair.”
I followed Jamie down the hall to our own room. I could tell from the slump of his shoulders that he was tired, but I had a few questions I wanted to ask before he fell asleep.
“It’s only bruises here and there,” Ian had said, reassuring Jenny. It was. Here and there. Besides the bruises on his face and leg, I had seen the darkened marks that lay half-hidden under the collar of his shirt. No matter how much Ian’s intrusion had been resented, I couldn’t imagine a mole trying to strangle him in retaliation.
* * *
In the event, Jamie didn’t want to sleep at once.
“Oh, absence makes the heart grow fonder, does it?” I said. The bed, so vast the night before, now seemed scarcely big enough.
“Mm?” he said, eyes half-closed in content. “Oh, the heart? Aye, that, too. Oh, God, don’t stop; that feels wonderful.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll do it some more,” I assured him. “Let me put out the candle, though.” I rose and blew it out; with the shutters left open, there was plenty of light reflected into the room from the snowy sky, even without the candle’s flame. I could see Jamie clearly, the long shape of his body relaxed beneath the quilts, hands curled half-open at his side. I crawled in beside him and took up his right hand, resuming my slow massage of his fingers and palm.
He gave a long sigh, almost a groan, as I rubbed a thumb in firm circles over the pads at the base of his fingers. Stiffened by hours of clenching around his horse’s reins, the fingers warmed and relaxed slowly under my touch. The house was quiet, and the room cold, outside the sanctuary of the bed. It was pleasant to feel the length of his body warming the space beside me, and enjoy the intimacy of touch, with no immediate feeling of demand. In time, this touch might token more; it was winter, and the nights were long. He was there; so was I, and content with things as they were for the moment.
“Jamie,” I said, after a time, “who hurt Ian?”
He didn’t open his eyes, but gave a long sigh before answering. He didn’t stiffen in resistance, though; he had been expecting the question.
“I did,” he said.
“What?” I dropped his hand in shock. He closed his fist and opened it, testing the movement of his fingers. Then he laid his left hand on the counter-pane beside it, showing me the knuckles, slightly puffed by contact with the protuberances of Ian’s bony countenance.
“Why?” I said, appalled. I could tell that there was something new and edgy between Jamie and Ian, though it didn’t look exactly like hostility. I couldn’t imagine what might have made Jamie strike Ian; his brother-in-law was nearly as close to him as was his sister, Jenny.
Jamie’s eyes were open now, but not looking at me. He rubbed his knuckles restlessly, looking down at them. Aside from the mild bruising of his knuckles, there were no marks on Jamie; apparently Ian hadn’t fought back.
“Well, Ian’s been married too long,” he said defensively.
“I’d say you’d been out in the sun too long,” I remarked, staring at him, “except that there isn’t any. Have you got a fever?”
“No,” he said, evading my attempts to feel his forehead. “No, it’s only—stop that, Sassenach, I’m all right.” He pressed his lips together, but then gave up and told me the whole story.
Ian had in fact broken his wooden leg by stepping into a molehole near Broch Mordha.
“It was near evening—we’d had a lot to do in the village—and snowing. And I could see Ian’s leg was paining him a lot, even though he kept insisting he could ride. Anyway, there were two or three cottages near, so I got him up on one of the ponies, and brought him up the slope to beg shelter for the night.”
With characteristic Highland hospitality, both shelter and supper were offered with alacrity, and after a warm bowl of brose and fresh oatcake, both visitors had been accommodated with a pallet before the fire.
“There was scarce room to lay a quilt by the hearth, and we were squeezed a bit, but we lay down side by side and made ourselves as comfortable as might be.” He drew a deep breath, and looked at me half-shyly.
“Well, I was worn out by the journey, and slept deep, and I suppose Ian did the same. But he’s slept every night wi’ Jenny for the last five years, and I suppose, havin’ a warm body next to him in the bed—well, somewhere in the night, he rolled toward me, put his arm about me and kissed me on the back o’ the neck. And I”—he hesitated, and I could see the deep color flood his face, even in the grayish light of the snow-lit room—“I woke from a sound sleep, thinking he was Jack Randall.”
I had been holding my breath through this story; now I let it out slowly.
“That must have been the hell
of a shock,” I said.
One side of Jamie’s mouth twitched. “It was the hell of a shock to Ian, I’ll tell ye,” he said. “I rolled over and punched him in the face, and by the time I came all the way to myself, I was on top of him, throttling him, wi’ his tongue sticking out of his head. Hell of a shock to the Murrays in the bed, too,” he added reflectively. “I told them I’d had a nightmare—well, I had, in a way—but it caused the hell of a stramash, what wi’ the bairns shriekin’, and Ian choking in the corner, and Mrs. Murray sittin’ bolt upright in bed, sayin’ ‘Who, who?’ like a wee fat owl.”
I laughed despite myself at the image.
“Oh God, Jamie. Was Ian all right?”
Jamie shrugged a little. “Well, ye saw him. Everyone went back to sleep, after a time, and I just lay before the fire for the rest of the night, staring at the roof beams.” He didn’t resist as I picked up his left hand, gently stroking the bruised knuckles. His fingers closed over mine, holding them.