Drums of Autumn

  He laughed, humor transforming his face.

  “Jesus!” he said. “My mother will have kittens!”

  * * *

  The great rose brier that overhung the door was newly in leaf, hundreds of tiny green buds just forming. Brianna looked up at it as she followed Young Jamie, and caught sight of the lintel over the door.

  Fraser, 1716 was carved into the weathered wood. She felt a small thrill at the sight, and stood staring up at the name for a moment, the sunwarm wood of the jamb solid under her hand.

  “All right, Cousin?” Young Jamie had turned to look back at her inquiringly.

  “Fine.” She hurried into the house after him, automatically ducking her head, though there was no need.

  “We’re mostly tall, save my Mam and wee Kitty,” Young Jamie said with a smile, seeing her duck. “My grandsire—your grandsire, too—built this house for his wife, who was a verra tall woman herself. It’s the only house in the Highlands where ye can go through a doorway without ducking or bashing your head, I expect.”

  …Your grandsire, too. The casual words made her feel suddenly warm, in spite of the cool dimness of the entry hall.

  Frank Randall had been an only child, as had her mother; such relatives as she had were not close—only a couple of elderly great-aunts in England, and some long-distant second cousins in Australia. She had set out thinking only to find her father; she hadn’t realized that she might discover a whole new family in the process.

  A lot of family. As she entered the hallway, with its scarred paneling, a door opened and four small children ran out, closely pursued by a tall young woman with brown curly hair.

  “Ah, run for it, run for it, wee fishies!” she cried, rushing forward with outstretched hands snapping like pincers. “The wicked crab will have ye eaten up, snap, snap!”

  The children fled down the hall in a gale of giggles and shrieks, looking back over their shoulders in terrified delight. One of them, a little boy of four or so, saw Brianna and Young Jamie standing in the entry and instantly reversed his direction, charging down the hallway like a runaway locomotive, shouting, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!”

  The boy flung himself recklessly at Young Jamie’s midriff. The latter caught him expertly, and hoisted the beaming little boy in his arms.

  “Now, then, wee Matthew,” he said sternly. “What sort of manners is this your auntie Janet’s teachin’ you? What will your new cousin be thinkin’, to see ye dashin’ about wi’ no more sense than a chicken after corn?”

  The little boy giggled louder, not at all put off by the scolding. He peeked at Brianna, caught her eye, and promptly buried his face in his father’s shoulder. Slowly he raised his head and peeked again, blue eyes wide.

  “Da!” he said. “Is that a lady?”

  “Of course she is, I’ve told ye, she’s your cousin.”

  “But she’s got on breeks!” Matthew stared at her in shock. “Ladies dinna wear breeks!”

  The young woman looked rather as though she subscribed to this opinion as well, but she interrupted firmly, moving to take the little boy from his father.

  “Well, and I’m sure she’s a fine reason for it, but it isna proper to be makin’ remarks before people’s faces. You go and get yourself washed, aye?” She set him down and turned him toward the door at the end of the hallway, giving him a gentle push. He didn’t move, but turned back around to stare at Brianna.

  “Where’s Grannie, Matt?” his father asked.

  “In the back parlor wi’ Grandda and a lady and a man,” Matthew replied promptly. “They’ve had two pots of coffee, a tray of scones, and a whole Dundee cake, but Mama says they’re hangin’ on in hopes of bein’ fed dinner, too, and good luck to them because it’s only brose and a bit o’ hough today, and damned—oop!”—he pressed a hand over his mouth, glancing guiltily at his father—“and drat if she’ll gie them any of the gooseberry tart, no matter how long they stay.”

  Young Jamie gave his son a narrow look, then glanced quizzically at his sister. “A lady and a man?”

  Janet made a faint moue of distaste.

  “The Grizzler and her brother,” she said.

  Young Jamie grunted, with a glance at Brianna.

  “I imagine Mam will be pleased for an excuse to get away from them, then.” He nodded at Matthew. “Go and fetch your Grannie, lad. Tell her I’ve brought a visitor she’ll like to see. And watch your language, aye?” He turned Matthew toward the back of the house and slapped him gently on the rump in dismissal.

  The little boy went, but slowly, casting glances of intense fascination over his shoulder at Brianna as he went.

  Young Jamie turned back to Brianna, smiling.

  “That’ll be my eldest,” he said. “And this”—gesturing to the young woman, “is my sister, Janet Murray. Janet—Mistress Brianna Fraser.”

  Brianna didn’t know whether to offer to shake hands or not, and instead contented herself with a nod and a smile. “I’m very pleased to meet you,” she said warmly.

  Janet’s eyes sprang wide with amazement, whether at what Brianna had said or at the accent with which she’d spoken, Brianna couldn’t tell.

  Young Jamie grinned at his sister’s surprise.

  “You’ll never guess who she is, Jen,” he said. “Never in a thousand years!”

  Janet lifted one eyebrow, then narrowed her eyes at Brianna.

  “Cousin,” she murmured, looking their guest frankly up and down. “She’s the look o’ the MacKenzies, surely. But she’s a Fraser, ye say…” Her eyes sprang suddenly wide.

  “Oh, ye can’t be,” she said to Brianna. A wide smile began to spread across her face, pointing up the family resemblance to her brother. “You can’t be!”

  Her brother’s chortle was interrupted by the swish of a swinging door and the sound of light footsteps on the boards of the hallway.

  “Aye, Jamie? Mattie says we’ve a guest—” The soft, brisk voice died suddenly, and Brianna looked up, her heart suddenly in her throat.

  Jenny Murray was very small—no more than five feet tall—and delicately boned as a sparrow. She stood staring at Brianna, mouth slightly open. Her eyes were the deep blue of gentians, made the more striking by a face gone white as paper.

  “Oh, my,” she said softly. “Oh, my.” Brianna smiled tentatively, nodding to her aunt—her mother’s friend, her father’s beloved only sister. Oh, please! she thought, suddenly suffused with a longing as intense as it was unexpected. Please like me, please be happy I’m here!

  Young Jamie bowed elaborately to his mother, beaming.

  “Mam, might I have the honor to present to ye—”

  “Jamie Fraser! I kent he was back—I told ye, Jenny Murray!”

  The voice rang out from the back of the hallway in tones of highpitched accusation. Glancing up in startlement, Brianna saw a woman emerging from the shadows, rustling with indignation.

  “Amyas Kettrick told me he’d seen your brother riding near Balriggan! But no, ye wouldna have it, would ye, Jenny—telling me I’m a fool, telling me Amyas is blind, and Jamie in America! Liars the both of ye, you and Ian, trying to protect that wicked coward! Hobart!” she shouted, turning toward the back of the house, “Hobart! Come out here this minute!”

  “Be quiet!” said Jenny impatiently. “Ye are a fool, Laoghaire!” She jerked at the woman’s sleeve, urging her around. “And as for who’s blind, look at her! Are ye too far past it to tell the difference between a grown man and a lass in breeks, for heaven’s sake?” Her own eyes stayed fixed on Brianna, bright with speculation.

  “A lass?”

  The other woman turned, frowning nearsightedly at Brianna. Then she blinked once, anger erased as her round face went slack with surprise. She gasped, crossing herself.

  “Mary, Margaret and Bride! Who in the name of God are you?”

  Brianna took a deep breath, looking from one woman to the other as she answered, trying to keep her voice from shaking.

  “My name is Brianna. I’m
Jamie Fraser’s daughter.”

  Both women’s eyes popped wide. The woman called Laoghaire grew slowly red and seemed to swell, opening and closing her mouth in a futile search for words.

  Jenny stepped forward, though, and seized Brianna’s hands, looking up into her face. A soft pink bloomed in her cheeks, making her look suddenly young.

  “Jamie’s? You’re truly Jamie’s lassie?” She squeezed Brianna’s hands hard between her own.

  “My mother says so.”

  Brianna felt the answering smile on her own face. Jenny’s hands were cool, but Brianna felt a rush of warmth nonetheless, which spread through her hands and up into her chest. She caught the faint, spicy scent of baking in the folds of Jenny’s gown, and something else, more earthy and pungent, that she thought must be the smell of sheep’s wool.

  “Does she, so?” Laoghaire had recovered both her voice and her self-possession. She stepped forward, eyes narrowed. “Jamie Fraser’s your father, aye? And just who might your mother be?”

  Brianna stiffened.

  “His wife,” she said. “Who else?”

  Laoghaire put back her head and laughed. It wasn’t a nice laugh.

  “Who else?” she said, mimicking. “Who else indeed, lassie! And just which wife would that be, now?”

  Brianna felt the blood drain from her own face, and her hands grow stiff in Jenny’s as the flood of realization washed over her. You idiot, she thought. You stupid idiot. It was twenty years! Of course he would have married again. Of course. No matter how much he loved Mama.

  On the heels of this thought was another, more terrible. Did she find him? Oh, God, did she find him with a new wife, and he sent her away? Oh, God, where is she?

  She turned blindly, wanting to run, not knowing where to go, what to do, only feeling that she must get out of here at once, and find her mother.

  “You’ll be wanting to sit down, I expect, Cousin. Come into the parlor, aye?” Young Jamie’s voice was firm in her ear, and his arm was around her, turning her, urging her down the hall and through one of the doors that opened off it.

  She scarcely heard the babble of voices around her, the confusion of explanations and accusations that popped around her ears like strings of firecrackers. She glimpsed a small, neat man with a face like the White Rabbit, looking vastly surprised, and another man, much taller, who rose as she came into the parlor and came toward her, his weathered, homely face creased in concern.

  It was the tall man who calmed the racket and brought everyone to order, extracting from the confused muddle of voices an explanation of her presence.

  “Jamie’s daughter?” He glanced at her with interest, but looked much less surprised than anyone else so far. “What’s your name, a leannan?”

  “Brianna.” She was too upset to smile at him, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  “Brianna.” He eased himself down on a hassock, motioning her to a seat opposite, and she saw that he had a wooden leg that protruded stiffly to one side. He took her hand and smiled at her, the warm light in his soft brown eyes making her feel momentarily safer.

  “I’m your uncle Ian, lass. Welcome to ye.” Her own hand tightened on his involuntarily, clinging to the refuge he seemed to offer. He didn’t flinch or draw back, just looked her over carefully, seeming amused by the way she was dressed.

  “Been sleeping in the heather, have ye?” he said, seeing the dirt and plant stains on her clothes. “You’ll have come some way to find us, niece.”

  “She says she’s your niece,” Laoghaire said. Recovered from her shock, she peered over Ian’s shoulder, her round face pinched with dislike. “Belike she’s only come to see what she can get.”

  “I shouldna be callin’ the kettle black, Laoghaire,” Ian said mildly. He twisted round to face her. “Or was it not you and Hobart a half-hour past, tryin’ to squeeze five hundred pounds from me?”

  Her lips pressed tight together, deepening the lines that bracketed her mouth.

  “That money’s mine,” she snapped, “and well ye know it! It was agreed to; you witnessed the paper.”

  Ian sighed; evidently this wasn’t the first he had heard of the matter today.

  “I did,” he said patiently. “And ye’ll have your money—so soon as Jamie’s able to send it. He’s promised, and he’s an honorable man. But—”

  “Honorable, is it?” Laoghaire produced an unladylike snort. “Is it honorable to commit bigamy, then? Desert his wife and children? Steal away my daughter and ruin her? Honorable!” She looked at Brianna, eyes bright and hard as fresh-rolled steel.

  “I’ll ask again, lass—what’s your mother’s name?”

  Brianna simply stared at her, overwhelmed. The stock around her throat was choking her, and her hands felt icy, despite Ian’s grasp.

  “Your mother,” Laoghaire repeated, impatient. “Who was she?”

  “It doesna matter who—” Jenny began, but Laoghaire rounded on her, face flushed with fury.

  “Oh, it matters! If he got her on some army whore, or some slut of a maidservant when he was in England—that’s one thing. But if she’s—”

  “Laoghaire!”

  “Sister!”

  “Ye foul-tongued besom!”

  Brianna put a stop to the outcry simply by standing up. She was as tall as any of the men, and towered over the women. Laoghaire took one quick step back. Every face in the room was turned to her, marked with hostility, sympathy, or merely curiosity.

  With a coolness that she didn’t feel, Brianna reached for the inner pocket of her coat, the secret pocket she had sewed into the seam only a week before. It seemed like a century.

  “My mother’s name is Claire,” she said, and dropped the necklace on the table.

  There was utter silence in the room, save for the soft hissing of the peat fire, burning low on the hearth. The pearl necklace lay gleaming, the spring sun from the window picking out the gold pierced-work roundels like sparks.

  It was Jenny who spoke first. Moving like a sleepwalker, she reached out a slender finger and touched one of the pearls. Freshwater pearls, the kind called baroque because of their singular, irregular, unmistakable shapes.

  “Oh, my,” Jenny said softly. She lifted her head and looked Brianna in the face, the slanted blue eyes shimmering with what looked like tears. “I am so very glad to see ye—Niece.”

  * * *

  “Where is my mother? Do you know?” Brianna glanced from face to face, her heart beating heavily in her ears. Laoghaire was not looking at her; her gaze was fastened to the pearls, face gone cold and frozen.

  Jenny and Ian exchanged a quick glance, then Ian stood up, moving awkwardly to bring his leg under him.

  “She’s with your Da,” he said quietly, touching Brianna’s arm. “Dinna fash yourself, lassie; they’re both safe.”

  Brianna resisted the impulse to collapse with relief. Instead, she let out her breath very carefully, feeling the knot of anxiety loosen slowly in her belly.

  “Thank you,” she said. She tried to smile at Ian, but her face felt slack and rubbery. Safe. And together. Oh, thank you! she thought, in wordless gratitude.

  “Those are mine, by rights.” Laoghaire nodded at the pearls. She wasn’t angry now, but coldly self-possessed. Without the distortions of fury, Brianna could see that she had once been very pretty, and was still a handsome woman—tall for a Scot, and graceful in her movements. She had the kind of delicate fair coloring that fades quickly, and had thickened through the middle, but her figure was still erect and firm, and her face still showed the pride of a woman who has known herself beautiful.

  “That they’re not!” said Jenny, with a quick flash of temper. “They were my mother’s jewels, that my father gave to Jamie for his wife, and—”

  “And his wife I am,” Laoghaire interrupted. She looked at Brianna then, a cold, gauging look.

  “I am his wife,” she repeated. “I married him in good faith, and he promised me payment for the wrong he did me.” She turned her col
d gaze on Jenny. “It’s been more than a year since I’ve seen a penny. Am I to sell my shoes to feed my daughter—the one he’s left to me?”

  She lifted her chin and looked at Brianna.

  “If you’re his daughter, then his debts are yours as well. Tell her, Hobart!”

  Hobart looked mildly embarrassed.

  “Ah, now, Sister,” he said, putting a hand on her arm in an attempt to be soothing. “I dinna think—”

  “No, ye don’t, and haven’t since ye were born!” She shook him off in irritation, and stretched out a hand toward the pearls. “They’re mine!”

  It was pure reflex; the pearls were clutched tight in Brianna’s hand before she had made the decision to snatch them. The gold roundels were cool against her skin, but the pearls were warm—the sign of a genuine pearl, her mother had told her.

  “You wait just one minute here.” The strength and coldness of her own voice surprised her. “I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know what happened between you and my father, but—”

  “I am Laoghaire MacKenzie, and your bastard of a father married me four years ago—under false pretenses, I might add.” Laoghaire’s anger had not disappeared but seemed to have submerged; her face had a tight, stretched look, but she was not shouting, and the red had faded from her soft, plump cheeks.

  Brianna took a deep breath, striving for calmness.

  “Yes? But if my mother is with my father now—”

  “He left me.”

  The words were spoken without heat, but they fell with the weight of stones in still water, spreading endless ripples of pain and betrayal. Young Jamie had been opening his mouth to speak; he shut it again, watching Laoghaire.

  “He said that he could not bear it longer—to dwell in the same house with me, to share my bed.” She spoke calmly, as though reciting a piece she had learned by heart, her eyes still fixed on the empty spot where the pearls had rested.

  “So he left. And then he came back—with the witch. Flaunted her in my face; bedded her under my nose.” Slowly, she raised her eyes to Brianna’s, studying her with quiet intensity, searching out the mysteries of her face. Slowly, she nodded.

  “It was she,” she said, with a certainty that was faintly eerie in its calmness. “She cast her spells on him from the day she came to Leoch—and on me. She made me invisible. From the day she came, he could not see me.”

  Brianna felt a small shiver run up her spine, despite the hissing peat fire on the hearth.

  “And then she was gone. Dead, they said. Killed in the Rising. And him come home again from England, free at long last.” She shook her head very slightly; her eyes still rested on Brianna’s face, but Brianna knew Laoghaire didn’t see her any longer.

  “But she wasna dead at all,” Laoghaire said softly. “And he was not free. I knew that; I always knew that. Ye canna kill a witch with steel— they must burn.” Laoghaire’s pale blue eyes turned to Jenny.

  “You saw her—at my wedding. Her fetch standing there, between me and him. Ye saw her, but ye didna say. I only heard it later, when ye told Maisri the seer. You should ha’ told me, then.” It was a not so much an accusation as a statement of fact.

  Jenny’s face had gone pale again, the slanted blue eyes dark with something—perhaps fear. She licked her lips and started to reply, but Laoghaire’s attention had shifted to Ian.

  “Ye’d best be wary, Ian Murray,” she said, her tone now matter-of-fact. She nodded toward Brianna. “Look at her weel, man. Is a right woman made so? Taller than most men, dressed as a man, wi’ hands as broad as a dinner plate, fit to choke the life from one o’ your weans, should she choose.”

  Ian didn’t answer, though his long, homely face looked troubled. Young Jamie’s fists clenched, though, and his jaw set tight. Laoghaire saw it, and a small smile touched the corners of her mouth.

  “She is a witch’s child,” she said. “And ye know it, all of you!” She glanced around the room, challenging each uncomfortable face. “They should have burned her mother in Cranesmuir, save for the lovespell she’d put on Jamie Fraser. Aye, I say be wary of what ye’ve brought into your house!”

  Brianna brought the flat of her hand down on the table with a thump, startling everyone.

  “Hogwash,” she said loudly. She could feel the blood rushing to her face, and didn’t care. All the faces were gawking, mouths open, but she had no attention to spare for anyone but Laoghaire MacKenzie.

  “Hogwash,” she said again, and pointed a finger at the woman. “If they ought