The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle (165 page)

The hair prickled on the back of my neck, despite the heat of the day. Ronald MacNab was the tenant who had betrayed Jamie to the men of the Watch a year before, the man who had died for his treachery within a day of its being found out. Died, I remembered, among the ashes of his home, burned over his head by the men of Lallybroch. The pile of chimneystones, so innocent when we had passed them a moment ago, had now the grim look of a cairn. I swallowed, forcing back the bitter taste that rose at the back of my throat.

“MacNab?” Jamie said softly. His expression was at once alert. “Ronnie MacNab?”

I had told Jamie of MacNab’s betrayal, and his death, but I hadn’t told him the means of it.

Ian nodded. “Aye. He died there, the night the English took ye, Jamie. The thatch must ha’ caught from a spark, and him too far gone in drink to get out in time.” He met Jamie’s eyes straight on, all teasing gone.

“Ah? And his wife and child?” Jamie’s look was the same as Ian’s; cool and inscrutable.

“Safe. Mary MacNab’s kitchen-maid at the house, and Rabbie works in the stables.” Ian glanced involuntarily over his shoulder in the direction of the ruined cottage. “Mary comes up here now and again; she’s the only one on the place will go there.”

“Was she fond of him, then?” Jamie had turned to look in the direction of the cottage, so his face was hidden from me, but there was tension in the line of his back.

Ian shrugged. “I shouldna think so. A drunkard, and vicious with it, was Ronnie; not even his auld mother had much use for him. No, I think Mary feels it her duty to pray for his soul—much good it’ll do him,” he added.

“Ah.” Jamie paused a moment as though in thought, then tossed his horse’s reins over its neck and turned up the hill.

“Jamie,” I said, but he was already walking back up the road, toward the small clearing beside the grove. I handed the reins I was holding to a surprised Fergus.

“Stay here with the horses,” I said. “I have to go with him.” Ian moved to come with me, but Murtagh stopped him with a shake of the head, and I went on alone, following Jamie up over the crest of the hill.

He had the long, tireless stride of a hill-walker, and had reached the small clearing before I caught him up. He stood at the edge of what had been the outer wall. The square shape of the cottage’s earth floor was still barely visible, the new growth that covered it sparser than the nearby barley, greener and wild in the shade of the trees.

There was little trace of the fire left; a few chunks of charred wood poked through the grass near the stone hearth that lay open now, flat and exposed as a tombstone. Careful not to step within the outlines of the vanished walls, Jamie began to walk around the clearing. He circled the hearthstone three times, walking always widdershins, left, and left, and left again, to confound any evil that might follow.

I stood to one side and watched. This was a private confrontation, but I couldn’t leave him to face it alone, and though he didn’t glance at me, still I knew he was glad of my presence.

At last he stopped by the fallen pile of stones. Reaching out, he laid a hand gingerly on it and closed his eyes for a moment, as though in prayer. Then, stooping, he picked up a stone the size of his fist, and placed it carefully on the pile, as though it might weigh down the uneasy soul of the ghost. He crossed himself, turned and came toward me with a firm, unhurried step.

“Don’t look back,” he said quietly, taking me by the arm as we turned toward the road.

I didn’t.

Jamie, Fergus, and Murtagh went with Ian and the dogs in search of the sheep, leaving me to take the string of horses down to the house alone. I was far from being an accomplished horse-handler, but thought I could manage half a mile, so long as nothing popped out at me unexpectedly.

This was very different from our first homecoming to Lallybroch; then, we had been in flight, both of us. Me from the future, Jamie from his past. Our residence then had been happy, but tenuous and insecure; always there was the chance of discovery, of Jamie’s arrest. Now, thanks to the Duke of Sandringham’s intervention, Jamie had come to take possession of his birthright, and I, my lawful place beside him as his wife.

Then, we had arrived disheveled, unexpected, a violent disruption in the household. This time, we had come announced, with due ceremony, bearing presents from France. While I was sure our reception would be cordial, I did wonder how Ian and Jamie’s sister Jenny would take our permanent return. After all, they had lived as master and mistress of the estate for the last several years, ever since the death of Jamie’s father, and the disastrous events that had precipitated him into a life of outlawry and exile.

I topped the last hill without incident, and the manor house and its outbuildings lay below me, slate roofs darkening as the first banks of rain clouds rolled in. Suddenly, my mare started, and so did I, struggling to keep a hold on the reins as she curvetted and plunged in alarm.

Not that I could blame her; from around the corner of the house had emerged two huge, puffy objects, rolling along the ground like overweight clouds.

“Stop that!” I shouted “Whoa!” All the horses were now swerving and pulling, and I was inches away from a stampede. Fine homecoming, I thought, if I let all Jamie’s new breeding stock break their collective legs.

One of the clouds rose slightly, then sank flat to the ground, and Jenny Fraser Murray, released from the burden of the feather mattress she had been carrying, raced for the road, dark curls flying.

Without a moment’s hesitation, she leaped for the bridle of the nearest animal, and jerked down, hard.

“Whoa!” she said. The horse, obviously recognizing the voice of authority, did whoa. With a little effort, the other horses were calmed, and by the time I could slide down from my saddle, we had been joined by another woman and a boy of nine or ten, who lent an experienced hand with the remaining beasts.

I recognized young Rabbie MacNab, and deduced that the woman must be his mother, Mary. The bustle and shuffle of horses, bundles and mattresses precluded much conversation, but I had time for a quick hug of greeting with Jenny. She smelled of cinnamon and honey and the clean sweat of exertion, with an undertone of baby-scent, that paradoxical smell composed of spit-up milk, soft feces, and the ultimate cleanliness of fresh, smooth skin.

We clung together for a moment, hugging tight, remembering our last embrace, when we had parted on the edge of a night-dark wood—me to go in search of Jamie, she to return to a newborn daughter.

“How’s little Maggie?” I asked, breaking away at last.

Jenny made a face, wryness mingled with pride. “She’s just walking, and the terror o’ the house.” She glanced up the empty road. “Met Ian, did ye?”

“Yes, Jamie, Murtagh, and Fergus went with him to find the sheep.”

“Better them than us,” she said, with a quick gesture toward the sky. “It’s coming on to rain any minute. Let Rabbie stable the horses and you come lend a hand wi’ the mattresses, or we’ll all sleep wet tonight.”

A frenzy of activity ensued, but when the rain came, Jenny and I were snug in the parlor, undoing the parcels we had brought from France, and admiring the size and precocity of wee Maggie, a sprightly miss of some ten months, with round blue eyes and a head of strawberry fuzz, and her elder brother, Young Jamie, a sturdy almost-four-year-old. The impending arrival was no more than a tiny bulge beneath their mother’s apron, but I saw her hand rest tenderly there from time to time, and felt a small pang to see it.

“You mentioned Fergus,” Jenny said, as we talked. “Who’s that?”

“Oh, Fergus? He’s—well, he’s—” I hesitated, not sure quite how to describe Fergus. A pickpocket’s prospects for employment on a farm seemed limited. “He’s Jamie’s,” I said at last.

“Oh, aye? Well, I suppose he can sleep in the stable,” said Jenny, resigned. “Speaking of Jamie”—she glanced at the window, where the rain was streaming down—“I hope they find those sheep soon. I’ve a good dinner planned, and I dinna want it to spoil with keeping.”

In fact, darkness had fallen, and Mary MacNab had laid the table before the men returned. I watched her at her work; a small, fine-boned woman with dark-brown hair and a faintly worried look that faded into a smile when Rabbie returned from the stables and went to the kitchen, hungrily asking when dinner would be.

“When the men are back,
mo luaidh
,” she said, “Ye know that. Go and wash, so you’ll be ready.”

When the men finally did appear, they seemed a good deal more in need of a wash than did Rabbie. Rain-soaked, draggled, and muddy to the knees, they trailed slowly into the parlor. Ian unwound the wet plaid from his shoulders and hung it over the firescreen, where it dripped and steamed in the heat of the fire. Fergus, worn out by his abrupt introduction to farm life, simply sat down where he was and stared numbly at the floor between his legs.

Jenny looked up at the brother she had not seen for nearly a year. Glancing from his rain-drenched hair to his mud-crusted feet, she pointed to the door.

“Outside, and off wi’ your boots,” she said firmly. “And if ye’ve been in the high field, remember to piss on the doorposts on your way back in. That’s how ye keep a ghost from comin’ in the house,” she explained to me in a lowered tone, with a quick look at the door through which Mary MacNab had disappeared to fetch the dinner.

Jamie, slumped into a chair, opened one eye and gave his sister a dark-blue look.

“I land in Scotland near dead wi’ the crossing, ride for four days over the hills to get here, and when I arrive, I canna even come in the house for a drop to wet my parched throat; instead I’m off through the mud, huntin’ lost sheep. And once I
do
get here, ye want to send me out in the dark again to piss on doorposts. Tcha!” He closed the eye again, crossed his hands across his stomach, and sank lower in his chair, a study in stubborn negation.

“Jamie, my dearie,” his sister said sweetly. “D’ye want your dinner, or shall I feed it to the dogs?”

He remained motionless for a long moment, eyes closed. Then, with a hissing sigh of resignation, he got laboriously to his feet. With a moody twitch of his shoulder, he summoned Ian and the two of them turned, following Murtagh, who was already out the door. As he passed, Jamie reached down a long arm, hauled Fergus to his feet, and dragged the boy sleepily along.

“Welcome home,” Jamie said morosely, and with a last wistful glance at fire and whisky, trudged out into the night once more.

31

MAIL CALL

After this inauspicious homecoming, matters rapidly improved. Lallybroch absorbed Jamie at once, as though he had never left, and I found myself pulled effortlessly into the current of farm life as well. It was an unsettled autumn, with frequent rain, but with fair, bright days that made the blood sing, too. The place bustled with life, everyone hurrying through the harvest time and the preparations that must be made for the coming winter.

Lallybroch was remote, even for a Highland farm. No real roads led there, but the post still reached us by messenger, over the crags and the heather-clad slopes, a connection with the world outside. It was a world that sometimes seemed unreal in memory, as though I had never danced among the mirrors of Versailles. But the letters brought back France, and reading them, I could see the poplar trees along the Rue Tremoulins, or hear the reverberating bong of the cathedral bell that hung above L’Hôpital des Anges.

Louise’s child was born safely; a son. Her letters, rife with exclamations and underlinings, overflowed with besotted descriptions of the angelic Henri. Of his father, putative or real, there was no mention.

Charles Stuart’s letter, arriving a month later, made no mention of the child, but according to Jamie, was even more incoherent than usual, seething with vague plans and grandiosities.

The Earl of Mar wrote soberly and circumspectly, but his general annoyance with Charles was clear. The Bonnie Prince was not behaving. He was rude and overbearing to his most loyal followers, ignored those who might be of help to him, insulted whom he should not, talked wildly, and—reading between the lines—drank to excess. Given the attitude of the times regarding alcoholic intake on the part of gentlemen, I thought Charles’s performance must have been fairly spectacular, to occasion such comment. I supposed the birth of his son had not, in fact, escaped his notice.

Mother Hildegarde wrote from time to time, brief, informative notes squeezed into a few minutes that could be snatched from her daily schedule. Each letter ended with the same words; “Bouton also sends his regards.”

Master Raymond did not write, but every so often, a parcel would come addressed to me, unsigned and unmarked, but containing odd things: rare herbs and small, faceted crystals; a collection of stones, each the size of Jamie’s thumbnail, smooth and disc-shaped. Each one had a tiny figure carved into one side, some with lettering above or on the reverse. And then there were the bones—a bear’s digit, with the great curved claw still attached; the complete vertebrae of a small snake, articulated and strung on a leather thong, so the whole string flexed in a lifelike manner; an assortment of teeth, ranging from a string of round, peglike things that Jamie said came from a seal, through the high-crowned, scythe-cusped teeth of deer, to something that looked suspiciously like a human molar.

From time to time, I carried some of the smooth, carved stones in my pocket, enjoying the feel of them between my fingers. They were old; I knew that much. From Roman times at least; perhaps even earlier. And from the look of some of the creatures on them, whoever had carved them had meant them to be magic. Whether they were like the herbs—having some actual virtue—or only a symbol, like the signs of the Cabbala, I didn’t know. They seemed benign, though, and I kept them.

While I enjoyed the daily round of domestic tasks, what I liked best were the long walks to the various cottages on the estate. I always carried a large basket with me on these visits, containing an assortment of things, from small treats for the children to the most commonly needed medicines. These were called for frequently, for poverty and poor hygiene made illness common, and there were no physicians north of Fort William or south of Inverness.

Some ailments I could treat readily, like the bleeding gums and skin eruptions characteristic of mild scurvy. Other things were beyond my power to heal.

I laid a hand on Rabbie MacNab’s head. The shaggy hair was damp at his temples, but his jaw hung open, slack, relaxed, and the pulse in his neck beat slowly.

“He’s all right now,” I said. His mother could see that as well as I could; he lay sprawled in the peaceful abandon of sleep, cheeks flushed from the heat of the nearby fire. Still, she stayed tense and watchful, hovering over the bedstead until I spoke. Once I had given absolution to the evidence of her own eyes, she was willing to believe, though; her bunched shoulders slumped under her shawl.

“Thank the Blessed Mother,” Mary MacNab murmured, crossing herself briefly, “and you, my lady.”

“I didn’t do anything,” I protested. This was quite literally true; the only service I had been able to render young Rabbie was to make his mother let him alone. It had, in fact, taken a certain amount of forcefulness to discourage her efforts to feed him bran mixed with cock’s blood, wave burning feathers under his nose, or dash cold water over him—none of these remedies being of marked use to someone suffering an epileptic seizure. When I arrived, his mother had been volubly regretting her inability to administer the most effective of remedies: spring water drunk from the skull of a suicide.

“It frichts me so when he’s taen like that,” Mary MacNab said, gazing longingly at the bed where her son lay. “I had Father MacMurtry to him the last time, and he prayed a terrible long time, and sprinkled holy water on the lad to drive the de’ils out. But noo they’ve come back.” She clasped her hands tight together, as though she wished to touch her son, but couldn’t bring herself to do so.

“It isn’t devils,” I said. “It’s only a sickness, and not all that bed a one, at that.”

“Aye, my lady, an’ ye say so,” she murmured, unwilling to contradict me, but plainly unconvinced.

“He’ll be all right.” I tried to reassure the woman, without raising hopes that couldn’t be met. “He always recovers from these fits, doesn’t he?” The fits had come on two years ago—probably the result of head injury from beatings administered by his late father, I thought—and while the seizures were infrequent, they were undeniably terrifying to his mother when they occurred.

She nodded reluctantly, plainly unconvinced.

“Aye … though he bangs his heid something fearful now and then, thrashin’ as he does.”

“Yes, that’s a risk,” I said patiently. “If he does it again, just pull him away from anything hard, and let him alone. I know it looks bad, but really, he’ll be quite all right. Just let the fit run its course, and when it’s over, put him to bed and let him sleep.” I knew that words were of limited value, no matter how true they might be. Something more concrete was needed for reassurance.

As I turned to go, I heard a small click in the deep pocket of my skirt, and had a sudden inspiration. Reaching in, I pulled out two or three of the small smooth charmstones Raymond had sent me. I selected the milky white one—chalcedony, perhaps—with the tiny figure of a writhing man carved into one side. So that’s what it’s for, I thought.

“Sew this into his pocket,” I said, laying the tiny charm ceremoniously in the woman’s hand. “It will protect him from … from devils.” I cleared my throat. “You needn’t worry about him, then, even if he has another fit; he’ll come out of it all right.”

I left then, feeling at once extremely foolish and halfway pleased, amidst an eager flood of relieved thanks. I wasn’t sure whether I was becoming a better physician or merely a more practiced charlatan. Still, if I couldn’t do much for Rabbie, I could help his mother—or let her help herself, at least. Healing comes from the healed; not from the physician. That much, Raymond had taught me.

I left the house then, to do my errands for the day, calling on two of the cottages near the west end of the farm. All was well at the Kirbys and the Weston Frasers, and I was soon on my way back to the house. At the top of a slope, I sat down under a large beech tree to rest for a moment before the long walk back. The sun was coming down the sky, but hadn’t yet reached the row of pines that topped the ridge on the west side of Lallybroch. It was still late afternoon, and the world glowed with the colors of late autumn.

The fallen beechmast was cool and slippery under me, but a good many leaves still clung, yellowed and curling, to the tree above. I leaned back against the smooth-barked trunk and closed my eyes, dimming the bright glare of ripe barley fields to a dark red glow behind my eyelids.

The stifling confines of the crofters’ cottages had given me a headache. I leaned my head against the birch’s smooth bark and began to breathe slowly and deeply, letting the fresh outdoor air fill my lungs, beginning what I always thought of as “turning in.”

This was my own imperfect attempt to duplicate the feeling of the process Master Raymond had shown me in L’Hôpital des Anges; a summoning of the look and feel of each bit of myself, imagining exactly what the various organs and systems looked and felt like when they were functioning properly.

I sat quietly, hands loose in my lap, and listened to the beat of my heart. Beating fast from the exertion of the climb, it slowed quickly to a resting pace. The autumn breeze lifted the tendrils of hair from my neck and cooled my fire-flushed cheeks.

I sat, eyes closed, and traced the path of my blood, from the secret, thick-walled chambers of my heart, blue-purple through the pulmonary artery, reddening swiftly as the sacs of the lungs dumped their burden of oxygen. Then out in a bursting surge through the arch of the aorta, and the tumbling race upward and down and out, through carotids, renals, subclavians. To the smallest capillaries, blooming beneath the surface of the skin, I traced the path of my blood through the systems of my body, remembering the feel of perfection, of health. Of peace.

I sat still, breathing slowly, feeling languorous and heavy as though I had just risen from the act of love. My skin felt thin, my lips slightly swollen, and the pressure of my clothes was like the touch of Jamie’s hands. It was no random choice that had invoked his name to cure me. Whether it was health of mind or body, the love of him was necessary to me as breath or blood. My mind reached out for him, sleeping or waking, and finding him, was satisfied. My body flushed and glowed, and as it came to full life, it hungered for his.

The headache was gone. I sat a moment longer, breathing. Then I got to my feet and walked down the hill toward home.

I had never actually had a home. Orphaned at five, I had lived the life of a academic vagabond with my uncle Lamb for the next thirteen years. In tents on a dusty plain, in caves in the hills, in the swept and garnished chambers of an empty pyramid, Quentin Lambert Beauchamp, M.S., Ph.D., F.R.A.S., etc., had set up the series of temporary camps in which he did the archaeological work that would make him famous long before a car crash ended his brother’s life and threw me into his. Not one to dither over petty details like an orphaned niece, Uncle Lamb had promptly enrolled me in a boarding school.

Not one to accept the vagaries of fate without a fight, I declined absolutely to go there. And, recognizing something in me that he had himself in abundant measure, Uncle Lamb had shrugged, and on the decision of a heartbeat, had taken me forever from the world of order and routine, of sums, clean sheets, and daily baths, to follow him into vagabondage.

The roving life had continued with Frank, though with a shift from field to universities, as the digging of a historian is usually conducted within walls. So, when the war came in 1939, it was less a disruption to me than to most.

I had moved from our latest hired flat into the junior nurses’ quarters at Pembroke Hospital, and from there to a field station in France, and back again to Pembroke before war’s end. And then, those few brief months with Frank, before we came to Scotland, seeking to find each other again. Only to lose each other once and for all, when I had walked into a stone circle, through madness, and out the other side, into the past that was my present.

It was strange, then, and rather wonderful, to wake in the upper bedroom at Lallybroch, next to Jamie, and realize, as I watched the dawn touch his sleeping face, that he had been born in this bed. All the sounds of the house, from the creak of the back stair under an early-rising maid’s foot, to the drumming rain on the roofslates, were sounds he had heard a thousand times before; heard so often, he didn’t hear them anymore. I did.

His mother, Ellen, had planted the late-blooming rosebush by the door. Its faint, rich scent still wafted up the walls of the house to the bedroom window. It was as though she reached in herself, to touch him lightly in passing. To touch me, too, in welcome.

Beyond the house itself lay Lallybroch; fields and barns and village and crofts. He had fished in the stream that ran down from the hills, climbed the oaks and towering larches, eaten by the hearthstone of every croft. It was his place.

But he, too, had lived with disruption and change. Arrest, and the flight of outlawry; the rootless life of a mercenary soldier. Arrest again, imprisonment and torture, and the flight into exile so recently ended. But he had lived in one place for his first fourteen years. And even at that age, when he had been sent, as was the custom, to foster for two years with his mother’s brother, Dougal MacKenzie, it was part and parcel of the life expected for a man who would return to live forever on his land, to care for his tenants and estate, to be a part of a larger organism. Permanence was his destiny.

But there had been that space of absence, and the experience of things beyond the boundaries of Lallybroch, even beyond the rocky coasts of Scotland. Jamie had spoken with kings, had touched law, and commerce, seen adventure and violence and magic. Once the boundaries of home had been transgressed, could destiny be enough to hold him? I wondered.

As I came down from the crest of the hill, I saw him below, heaving boulders into place as he repaired a rift in a drystone dike that bordered one of the smaller fields. Near him on the ground lay a pair of rabbits, neatly gutted but not yet skinned.

“ ‘Home is the sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter home from the hill,’ ” I quoted, smiling at him as I came up beside him.

He grinned back, wiped the sweat from his brow, then pretended to shudder.