“The latter—but it’s no for me. I was just visiting the Chisholms and as I was leaving, I stopped to talk to Auld Mam—she was sitting on a bench outside smoking her pipe, so I sat down and chatted a bit.”
“That must have been fun.”
“Well, up to a point. But then she told me that whenever she goes to the privy, her womb falls out into her hand, and would I ask ye if there’s anything to be done about it.”
He flushed a little and I stifled a laugh.
“Let me think that one over. I’ll go up and talk to her tomorrow. Meanwhile, would you go fish Mandy and Orrie out of the creek, and find out if Cyrus is staying for supper?”
AS HE WALKED down toward the creek, he saw Jem, Germain, Aidan, and a few of the other boys from uphill, carousing through the woods, brandishing sticks at each other, slashing them like swords and pretending to fire them as muskets, shouting “Bang!” at random intervals.
“It’s all fun and games until somebody loses an eye,” he murmured, hearing Mrs. Graham’s admonition from his youth. No point in rounding up that lot and lecturing them, though. Beyond the fact that they were boys, there was a colder fact, too: said boys were only a few years away from being able to ride with a militia or join the army.
And the bloody war was heading in their direction, fast.
“Seventeen eighty-one, though,” he said, and crossed his fingers. “Yorktown happens in October of 1781. Two bloody years. But only two bloody years.” Surely they could make it that far?
The sight of Mandy and Orrie in the creek, sopping wet, covered with mud and waterweed, and chattering happily as a pair of titmice, eased his mind a bit—and so did the sight of Fanny and Cyrus, who had now moved closer together.
Cyrus, more than a foot taller than Fanny, was doing his best to arch over and look at what she was showing him without accidentally touching her. Roger cleared his throat, not wanting to startle them, and Cyrus snapped rigidly upright.
“It’s all right, a charaid,” Fanny told him, pronouncing “a charaid” very carefully—and very wrongly. Roger smiled, and saw Cyrus do so, too, though he tried to hide it. “It’s only Roger Mac.”
“True,” Roger said amiably, smiling down at them. “Mrs. Claire only wants to know will ye stay to dinner, a bhalaich?”
Cyrus had gone pink in the ears at being discovered so close to Fanny, and had in consequence lost all his English, but replied in Gaelic that he thanked the mistress and would like nothing better, but that his brother Hiram had told him to be back before nightfall, and it was a long walk.
“Aye, then. Oidhche mhath.”
He noticed, as he turned away, that Fanny had brought out her small roll of personal treasures to show Cyrus; his eye caught the gleam of a pendant in the grass, and Fanny had her hand half shielding an unfolded paper with some sort of drawing, as though to keep it from his eyes. Ah, must be the picture of her dead sister; Bree had described it to him. Cyrus must be well in with a chance, then, if Fanny was sharing that with the lad.
“Godspeed, a bhalaich,” he said, mostly to himself, and smiled.
Smiled not only out of a general benevolence toward the young lovers, but because Fanny’s drawing had reminded him of the reason for that benevolence.
Roger touched the pocket of his breeches, feeling the crackle of paper and the small hardness of the broken wax seal. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe it. He had, after all, been expecting it—or something like it. But there’s a difference between thinking you understand something, and then holding the reality in your hand and realizing that maybe you don’t. But realizing also that what you don’t yet understand may be the most important thing you ever do.
A faint sound of screeching made him turn his head, fatherly instincts at once focused—but Mandy’s piercing complaint left off almost at once, as she pushed Orrie, who fell backward into the water—not for the first time.
Well, maybe the second most important thing, he thought, smiling a little. His adoptive father—who had been, in fact, his great-uncle—had been a Presbyterian minister, and had never married—though ministers were allowed to marry, and generally encouraged to do so, as their wives could be a help on the organizing side of a congregation.
He’d never asked the Reverend why he hadn’t married—nor had he ever wondered, until now. Maybe it had been as simple as not meeting the right person and being unwilling to settle for simple companionship. Maybe as simple as a feeling that it would be difficult to balance a commitment to God with the commitment to a wife and children.
Ye gave me the wife and children first, he thought in the general direction of God. So I’m thinking Ye maybe don’t want me to ditch them in order to do whatever else Ye’ve got in mind.
Whatever else. That was the reality he had in his pocket, still hidden for the moment. A letter from the Reverend David Caldwell—a friend and a very senior Presbyterian elder. He had performed the marriage ceremony for Roger and Bree and helped a great deal in preparing Roger for his first go at ordination. It was both a comfort and a joy to know that Davy Caldwell still thought he could do it.
There is a Presbytery set for a General Assembly in Charles Town, to take place in May of next Year. I will of course speak in your Behalf, as regards Acceptance of your Seminary Record and previous Qualification for Ordination. It would be as well, though, were you to form some Connection with a Few of the Elders who will take part in the Presbytery before you meet them more formally in Charles Town—as a man might use both Buttons and Belt to keep his Breeches up.
The Reverend Caldwell’s words still made him smile. But under the humor and the sense of gratitude to Davy Caldwell was a sense of … what? He’d no notion what to call it, this strange flutter in his chest, a not unpleasant hollowness in the belly—anticipation, but worse, as though he were standing on the edge of a precipice, about to jump, without knowing whether he’d soar or crash on the rocks below. He was under no illusions about the rocks. But he had dreams of flying.
… And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
the high untrespassed sanctity of space,
put out my hand and touched the face of God.
The Reverend had had a yellowed copy of that poem pinned to the huge corkboard in his office for as long as Roger could remember—and for the first time, it now occurred to him that perhaps the Reverend had kept it in memory of Roger’s father, who’d died, like the poet, flying a Spitfire in the war. Or so he’d thought.
He touched his pocket again, with a brief prayer for his father’s soul—wherever it was—and another for the Reverend Caldwell and his kindness.
Bobby Higgins had brought him Caldwell’s letter, having picked it up in Cross Creek, and he’d tucked it in his pocket and gone to do chores, wanting to be alone when he read it, which he did in the company of Clarence the mule and two inquisitive horses.
Roger knew about the Presbytery of Charles Town. He’d written to Caldwell about his prospects of ordination some time ago and had mentioned casually that he and his family would be stopping in Charles Town in a month or so, to return Germain to the bosom of his family. He hadn’t mentioned the need to get their hands on guns for Jamie. He was still trying not to think about that.