An Echo in the Bone

  “Aye, he does,” Joan said, with obvious disapproval. “He’s always moaning on about it to me, how much he looooves her…” She rolled her eyes. “Not that I think he shouldna love her,” she hastened to add, seeing Jamie’s expression. “But he shouldna be telling me about it, now, should he?”

  “Ah … no,” he said, feeling mildly dazed. The wind was booming past the rock, and the whine of it in his ears was eating at him, making him feel suddenly as he used to in the cave, living in solitude for weeks, with no voice but the wind’s to hear. He shook his head violently to clear it, forcing himself to focus on Joan’s face, hear her words above the wind.

  “She’s willing, I think,” Joan was saying, still frowning. “Though she doesna talk to me about it, thank Bride. She’s fond of him, though; feeds him the choice bits and that.”

  “Well, then…” He brushed a flying strand of hair out of his mouth, feeling dizzy. “Why do they not marry?”

  “Because of you,” Claire said, sounding a trifle less amused. “And that’s where I come into this, I suppose?”

  “Because of—”

  “The agreement you made with Laoghaire, when I… came back.” Her attention was focused on Joan, but she came closer and touched his hand lightly, not looking at him. “You promised to support her—and find dowries for Joan and Marsali—but the support was to stop if she married again. That’s it, isn’t it?” she said to Joan, who nodded.

  “She and Joey might make shift to scrape along,” she said. “He does what he can, but… ye’ve seen him. If ye were to stop the money, though, she’d likely have to sell Balriggan to live—and that would break her heart,” she added quietly, dropping her eyes for the first time.

  An odd pain seized his heart—odd because it was not his own but he recognized it. It was sometime in the first weeks of their marriage, when he’d been digging new beds in the garden. Laoghaire had brought him out a mug of cool beer and stood while he drank it, then thanked him for the digging. He’d been surprised and laughed, saying why should she think to thank him for that?

  “Because ye take care for my place,” she’d said simply, “but ye don’t try to take it from me.” Then she’d taken the empty mug from him and gone back to the house.

  And once, in bed—and he flushed at the thought, with Claire standing right by him—he’d asked her why she liked Balriggan so much; it wasna a family place, after all, nor remarkable in any way. And she’d sighed a little, pulled the quilt up to her chin, and said, “It’s the first place I’ve felt safe.” She wouldn’t say more when he asked her, but only turned over and pretended to fall asleep.

  “She’d rather lose Joey than Balriggan,” Joan was saying to Claire. “But she doesna mean to lose him, either. So ye see the difficulty, aye?”

  “I do, yes.” Claire was looking sympathetic but shot him a glance indicating that this was—naturally—his problem. Of course it was, he thought, exasperated.

  “I’ll… do something,” he said, having not the slightest notion what, but how could he refuse? God would probably strike him down for interfering with Joan’s vocation, if his own sense of guilt didn’t finish him off first.

  “Oh, Da! Thank you!”

  Joan’s face broke into a sudden, dazzling smile, and she threw herself into his arms—he barely got them up in time to catch her; she was a very solid young woman. But he folded her into the embrace he’d wanted to give her on meeting and felt the odd pain ease, as this strange daughter fitted herself tidily into an empty spot in his heart he hadn’t known was there.

  The wind was still whipping by, and it might have been a speck of dust that made Claire’s eyes glisten as she looked at him, smiling.

  “Just the one thing,” he said sternly, when Joan had released him and stood back.

  “Anything,” she said fervently.

  “Ye’ll pray for me, aye? When ye’re a nun?”

  “Every day,” she assured him, “and twice on Sundays.”

  THE SUN WAS starting down the sky by now, but there was still some time to supper. I should, I supposed, be there to offer to help with the meal preparations; these were both enormous and laborious, with so many people coming and going, and Lallybroch could no longer afford the luxury of a cook. But even if Jenny was taken up with nursing Ian, Maggie and her young daughters and the two housemaids were more than capable of managing. I would only be in the way. Or so I told myself, well aware that there was always work for a spare pair of hands.

  But I clambered down the stony hill behind Jamie and said nothing when he turned away from the trail to Lallybroch. We wandered down toward the little loch, well content.

  “Perhaps I did have something to do wi’ the books, aye?” Jamie said, after a bit. “I mean, I read to the wee maids in the evenings now and again. They’d sit on the settle with me, one on each side, wi’ their heads against me, and it was—” He broke off with a glance at me and coughed, evidently worried that I might be offended at the idea that he’d ever enjoyed a moment in Laoghaire’s house. I smiled and took his arm.

  “I’m sure they loved it. But I really doubt that you read anything to Joan that made her want to become a nun.”

  “Aye, well,” he said dubiously. “I did read to them out of the Lives of the Saints. Oh, and Fox’s Book of the Martyrs, too, even though there’s a good deal of it to do wi’ Protestants, and Laoghaire said Protestants couldna be martyrs because they were wicked heretics, and I said bein’ a heretic didna preclude being a martyr, and—” He grinned suddenly. “I think that might ha’ been the closest thing we had to a decent conversation.”

  “Poor Laoghaire!” I said. “But putting her aside—and do let’s—what do you think of Joan’s quandary?”

  He shook his head dubiously.

  “Well, I can maybe bribe Laoghaire to marry yon wee cripple, but it would take a deal of money, since she’d want more than she gets from me now. I havena got that much left of the gold we brought, so it would need to wait until I can get back to the Ridge and extract some more, take that to a bank, arrange for a draft… I hate to think of Joan having to spend a year at home, trying to keep yon lust-crazed weasels apart.”

  “Lust-crazed weasels?” I said, entertained. “No, really. Did you see them at it?”

  “Not exactly,” he said, coughing. “Ye could see there was an attraction atween them, though. Here, let’s go along the shore; I saw a curlew’s nest the other day.”

  The wind had quieted and the sun was bright and warm—for the moment. I could see clouds lurking over the horizon, and doubtless it would be raining again by nightfall, but for the moment it was a lovely spring day, and we were both disposed to enjoy it. By unspoken consent, we put aside all disagreeable matters and talked of nothing in particular, only enjoying each other’s company, until we reached a shallow, grass-covered mound where we could perch and enjoy the sun.

  Jamie’s mind seemed to return now and then to Laoghaire, though—I supposed he couldn’t help it. I didn’t really mind, as such comparisons as he made were entirely to my benefit.

  “Had she been my first,” he said thoughtfully at one point, “I think I might have a much different opinion of women in general.”

  “Well, you can’t define all women in terms of what they’re like—or what one of them is like—in bed,” I objected. “I’ve known men who, well…”

  “Men? Was Frank not your first?” he demanded, surprised.

  I put a hand behind my head and regarded him.

  “Would it matter if he wasn’t?”

  “Well…” Clearly taken aback by the possibility, he groped for an answer. “I suppose—” He broke off and eyed me, meditatively stroking one finger down the bridge of his nose. One corner of his mouth turned up. “I don’t know.”

  I didn’t know, myself. On the one hand, I rather enjoyed his shock at the notion—and at my age, I was not at all averse to feeling mildly wanton, if only in retrospect. On the other hand…

  “Well, where do you get o
ff, anyway, casting stones?”

  “Ye were my first,” he pointed out, with considerable asperity.

  “So you said,” I said, teasing. To my amusement, he flushed up like the rosy dawn.

  “Ye didna believe me?” he said, his voice rising in spite of himself.

  “Well, you did seem rather well informed, for a so-called virgin. To say nothing of… imaginative.”

  “For God’s sake, Sassenach, I grew up on a farm! It’s a verra straightforward business, after all.” He looked me closely up and down, his gaze lingering at certain points of particular interest. “And as for imagining things … Christ, I’d spent months—years!—imagining!” A certain light filled his eyes, and I had the distinct impression that he hadn’t stopped imagining in the intervening years, not by any means.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked, intrigued.

  “I’m thinking that the water in the loch’s that wee bit chilly, but if it didna shrink my cock straight off, the feel of the heat when I plunged into ye … Of course,” he added practically, eyeing me as though estimating the effort involved in forcing me into the loch, “we wouldna need to do it in the water, unless ye liked; I could just dunk ye a few times, drag ye onto the shore, and—God, your arse looks fine, wi’ the wet linen of your shift clinging to it. It goes all transparent, and I can see the weight of your buttocks, like great smooth round melons—”

  “I take it back—I don’t want to know what you’re thinking!”

  “You asked,” he pointed out logically. “And I can see the sweet wee crease of your arse, too—and once I’ve got ye pinned under me and ye canna get away… d’ye want it lying on your back, Sassenach, or bent over on your knees, wi’ me behind? I could take a good hold either way, and—”

  “I am not going into a freezing loch in order to gratify your perverted desires!”

  “All right,” he said, grinning. Stretching himself out beside me, he reached round behind and took a generous handful. “Ye can gratify them here, if ye like, where it’s warm.”

  OENOMANCY

  LALLYBROCH WAS A working farm. Nothing on a farm can stop for very long, even for grief. Which is how it came to be that I was the only person in the front of the house when the door opened in the middle of the afternoon.

  I heard the sound and poked my head out of Ian’s study to see who had come in. A strange young man was standing in the foyer, gazing round appraisingly. He heard my step and turned, looking at me curiously.

  “Who are you?” we said simultaneously, and laughed.

  “I’m Michael,” he said, in a soft, husky voice with the trace of a French accent. “And ye’ll be Uncle Jamie’s faery-woman, I suppose.”

  He was examining me with frank interest, and I felt therefore free to do the same.

  “Is that what the family’s been calling me?” I asked, looking him over.

  He was a slight man, lacking either Young Jamie’s burly strength or Young Ian’s wiry height. Michael was Janet’s twin but did not resemble her at all, either. This was the son who had gone to France, to become a junior partner in Jared Fraser’s wine business, Fraser et Cie. As he took off his traveling cloak, I saw that he was dressed very fashionably for the Highlands, though his suit was sober in both color and cut—and he wore a black crepe band around his upper arm.

  “That, or the witch,” he said, smiling faintly. “Depending whether it’s Da or Mam who’s talking.”

  “Indeed,” I said, with an edge—but couldn’t help smiling back. He was quiet but an engaging young man—well, relatively young. He must be near thirty, I thought.

  “I’m sorry for your… loss,” I said, with a nod toward the crepe band. “May I ask—”

  “My wife,” he said simply. “She died two weeks ago. I should have come sooner, else.”

  That took me aback considerably.

  “Oh. I … see. But your parents, your brothers and sisters—they don’t know this yet?”

  He shook his head and came forward a little, so the light from the fanshaped window above the door fell on his face, and I saw the dark circles under his eyes and the marks of the bone-deep exhaustion that is grief’s only consolation.

  “I am so sorry,” I said, and, moved by impulse, put my arms around him. He leaned toward me, under the same impulse. His body yielded for an instant to my touch, and there was an extraordinary moment in which I sensed the deep numbness within him, the unacknowledged war of acknowledgment and denial. He knew what had happened, what was happening—but could not feel it. Not yet.

  “Oh, dear,” I said, stepping back from the brief embrace. I touched his cheek lightly, and he stared at me, blinking.

  “I will be damned,” he said mildly. “They’re right.”

  A DOOR OPENED and closed above, I heard a foot on the stair—and an instant later, Lallybroch awoke to the knowledge that the last child had come home.

  The swirl of women and children wafted us into the kitchen, where the men appeared, by ones and twos through the back door to embrace Michael or clap him on the shoulder.

  There were outpourings of sympathy, the same questions and answers repeated several times—how had Michael’s wife, Lillie, died? She had died of the influenza; so had her grandmother; no, he himself had not caught it; her father sent his prayers and concerns for Michael’s father—and eventually the preparations for washing and supper and the putting of children to bed began, and Michael slipped out of the maelstrom.

  Coming out of the kitchen myself to fetch my shawl from the study, I saw him at the foot of the stair with Jenny, talking quietly. She touched his face, just as I had, asking him something in a low voice. He half-smiled, shook his head, and, squaring his shoulders, went upstairs alone to see Ian, who was feeling too poorly to come down to supper.

  ALONE AMONG THE Murrays, Michael had inherited the fugitive gene for red hair, and burned among his darker siblings like a coal. He had inherited an exact copy of his father’s soft brown eyes, though. “And a good thing, too,” Jenny said to me privately, “else his da would likely be sure I’d been at it wi’ the goatherd, for God knows, he doesna look like anyone else in the family.”

  I’d mentioned this to Jamie, who looked surprised but then smiled.

  “Aye. She wouldna ken it, for she never met Colum MacKenzie face-to-face.”

  “Colum? Are you sure?” I looked over my shoulder.

  “Oh, aye. The coloring’s different—but allowing for age and good health … There was a painting at Leoch, done of Colum when he was maybe fifteen, before his first fall. Recall it, do ye? It hung in the solar on the third floor.”

  I closed my eyes, frowning in concentration, trying to reconstruct the floor plan of the castle.

  “Walk me there,” I said. He made a small amused noise in his throat but took my hand, tracing a delicate line on my palm.

  “Aye, here’s the entrance, wi’ the big double door. Ye’d cross the courtyard, once inside, and then …”

  He walked me unerringly to the exact spot in my mind, and sure enough, there was a painting there of a young man with a thin, clever face and look of far-seeing in his eyes.

  “Yes, I think you’re right,” I said, opening my eyes. “If he is as intelligent as Colum, then… I have to tell him.”

  Jamie’s eyes, dark with thought, searched my face.

  “We couldna change things, earlier,” he said, a note of warning in my voice. “Ye likely canna change what’s to come in France.”

  “Maybe not,” I said. “But what I knew—what I told you, before Culloden. It didn’t stop Charles Stuart, but you lived.”

  “Not on purpose,” he said dryly.

  “No, but your men lived, too—and that was on purpose. So maybe—just maybe—it might help. And I can’t live with myself if I don’t.”

  He nodded, sober.

  “Aye, then. I’ll call them.”

  THE CORK EASED free with a soft pop!, and Michael’s face eased, too. He sniffed the darkened cork, then passed the bo
ttle delicately under his nose, eyes half closing in appreciation.

  “Well, what d’ye say, lad?” his father asked. “Will it poison us or no?”

  He opened his eyes and gave his father a mildly dirty look.

  “You said it was important, aye? So we’ll have the negroamaro. From Apulia,” he added, with a note of satisfaction, and turned to me. “Will that do, Aunt?”

  “Er… certainly,” I said, taken back somewhat. “Why ask me? You’re the wine expert.”

  Michael glanced at me, surprised.

  “Ian said—” he began, but stopped and smiled at me. “My apologies, Aunt. I must have misunderstood.”

  Everyone turned and looked at Young Ian, who reddened at this scrutiny.

  “What exactly did ye say, Ian?” Young Jamie asked. Young Ian narrowed his eyes at his brother, who seemed to be finding something funny in the situation.

  “I said,” Young Ian replied, straightening himself defiantly, “that Auntie Claire had something of importance to say to Michael, and that he must listen, because she’s a… a…”

  “Ban-sidhe, he said,” Michael ended helpfully. He didn’t grin at me, but a deep humor glowed in his eyes, and for the first time I saw what Jamie had meant by comparing him to Colum MacKenzie. “I wasn’t sure whether he meant that, Auntie, or if it’s only you’re a conjure-woman—or a witch.”

  Jenny gasped at the word, and even the elder Ian blinked. Both of them turned and looked at Young Ian, who hunched his shoulders defensively.

  “Well, I dinna ken exactly what she is,” he said. “But she’s an Auld One, isn’t she, Uncle Jamie?”

  Something odd seemed to pass through the air of the room; a sudden live, fresh wind moaned down the chimney, exploding the banked fire and showering sparks and embers onto the hearth. Jenny got up with a small exclamation and beat them out with the broom.

  Jamie was sitting beside me; he took my hand and fixed Michael with a firm sort of look.

  “There’s no real word for what she is—but she has knowledge of things that will come to pass. Listen to her.”

  That settled them all to attention, and I cleared my throat, deeply embarrassed by my role as prophet but obliged to speak nonetheless. For the first time, I had a sudden sense of kinship with some of the more reluctant Old Testament prophets. I thought I knew just what Jeremiah felt like when told to go and prophesy the destruction of Nineveh. I just hoped I’d get a better reception; I seemed to recall that the inhabitants of Nineveh had thrown him into a well.

  “You’ll know more than I do about the politics in France,” I said, looking directly at Michael. “I can’t tell you anything in terms of specific events for the next ten or fifteen years. But after that… things are going to go downhill fast. There’s going to be a revolution. Inspired by the one that’s happening now in America, but not the same. The King and Queen will be imprisoned with their family, and both of them will be beheaded.”

  A general gasp went up from the table, and Michael blinked.

  “There will be a movement called the Terror, and people will be pulled out of their homes and denounced, all the aristocrats will either be killed or have to flee the country, and it won’t be too good for rich people in general. Jared may be dead by then, but you won’t be. And if you’re half as talented as I think, you will be rich.”

  He snorted a little at that, and there was a breath of laughter in the room, but it didn’t last long.

  “They’ll build a machine called the guillotine—perhaps it already exists, I don’t know. It was originally made as a humane method of execution, I think, but it will be used so often that it will be a symbol of the Terror, and of the revolution in general. You don’t want to be in France when that happens.”

  “I—how do ye know this?” Michael demanded. He looked pale and half belligerent. Well, here was the rub. I took a firm grip of Jamie’s hand under the table and told them how I knew.

  There was a dead silence. Only Young Ian didn’t look dumbfounded—but he knew already, and more or less believed me. I could tell that most of those around the table didn’t. At the same time, they couldn’t really call me a liar.

  “That’s what I know,” I said, speaking straight to Michael. “And that’s how I know it. You have a few years to get ready. Move the business to Spain, or Portugal. Sell out and emigrate to America. Do anything you like—but don’t stay in France for more than ten years more. That’s all,” I said abruptly. I got up and went out, leaving utter silence in my wake.

  I SHOULDN’T HAVE been surprised, but I was. I was in the hen coop, collecting eggs, when I heard the excited squawk and flutter of the hens outside that announced someone had come into their yard. I fixed the last hen with a steely glare that dared her to peck me, snatched an egg out from under her, and came out to see who was there.

  It was Jenny, with an apronful of corn. That was odd; I knew the hens had already been fed, for I’d seen one of Maggie’s daughters doing it an hour earlier.

  She nodded to me and tossed the corn in handfuls. I tucked the last warm egg