“Fearless?” she said, incredulous. “Me?” She made a noise that Rachel would have spelled as “Psssht.” “I’ve been scairt to the bone since I was ten years old, a leannan. But ye get used to it, ken?” She took back the basket, and Rachel hoisted Oggy, whose weight had doubled the moment he fell asleep, into a more secure position.
“What happened when thee was ten?” she asked, curious.
“My mother died,” Jenny answered. Her expression and voice were both matter-of-fact, but Rachel could hear bereavement in it, plain as the high, thin call of a hermit thrush.
“Mine died when I was born,” Rachel said, after a long pause. “I can’t say that I miss her, as I never knew her—though of course …”
“They say ye canna miss what ye never had, but they’re wrong about that one,” Jenny said, and touched Rachel’s cheek with the palm of her hand, small and warm. “Watch where ye’re walkin’, lass. It’s slick underfoot.”
“Yes.” Rachel kept her eyes on the ground, striding wide to avoid a muddy patch where a tiny spring bubbled up. “I dream, sometimes. There’s a woman, but I don’t know who she is. Perhaps it’s my mother. She seems kind, but she doesn’t say much. She just looks at me.”
“Does she look like ye, lass?”
Rachel shrugged, balancing Oggy with a hand under his bottom.
“She has dark hair, but I can’t ever remember her face when I wake up.”
“And ye wouldna ken what she looked like, alive.” Jenny nodded, looking at something behind her own eyes. “I kent mine—and if ye ever want to know what she looked like, just go and have a keek at Brianna, for she’s Ellen MacKenzie Fraser to the life—though a wee bit bigger.”
“I’ll do that,” Rachel assured her. She found her new cousin-in-law slightly intimidating, though Ian clearly loved her. “Scared, though—and thee said thee has been frightened ever since?” She didn’t think she’d ever met someone less frightened than Janet Murray, whom she’d seen only yesterday face down a huge raccoon on the cabin’s porch, driving it off with a broom and a Scottish execration, in spite of the animal’s enormous claws and menacing aspect.
Jenny glanced at her, surprised, and changed the heavy basket from one arm to the other with a small grunt as the trail narrowed.
“Oh, no scairt for myself, a nighean, I dinna think I’ve ever worrit about bein’ killed or the like. No, scairt for them. Scairt I wouldna be able to manage, to take care o’ them.”
“Them?”
“Jamie and Da,” Jenny said, frowning a little at the squashy ground under her feet. It had rained hard the night before, and even the open ground was muddy. “I didna ken how to take care of them. I kent well I couldna fill my mother’s place for either one. See, I thought they’d die wi’out her.”
And you’d be left entirely alone, Rachel thought. Wanting to die, too, and not knowing how. It does seem much easier for men; I wonder why? Do they not think anyone needs them?
“Thee managed, though,” she said, and Jenny shrugged.
“I put on her apron and made their supper. That was all I kent to do. Feed them.”
“I’d suppose that was the most important thing.” She bent her head and brushed the top of Oggy’s cap with her lips. His mere presence made her breasts tingle and ache. Jenny saw that, and smiled, in a rueful sort of way.
“Aye. When ye ha’ bairns, there’s that wee time when ye really are all they need. And then they leave your arms and ye’re scairt all over again, because now ye ken all the things that could harm them, and you not able to keep them from it.”
Rachel nodded, and they made their way in silence—though a close, listening sort of silence—through the little oak wood and round the edge of the smaller hayfield, to the growth of aspens where the cabin stood.
She had thought she’d leave it to Ian to tell his mother, but the mood between them was one of love, and the spirit moved her to speak now.
“Ian means to go to New York,” she said. Oggy was stirring, and she hoisted him to her shoulder, patting his firm little back. “To satisfy himself regarding the welfare of—the … er … his …”
“The Indian woman he was wed to?” Jenny said bluntly. “Aye, I thought he’d want to, when I heard about the massacre.”
Rachel didn’t waste time asking how Jenny had heard about it. The Mohawks had stayed three days, and news of any kind seeped through the Ridge like indigo dye through a wet cloth.
“I will go with him,” she said.
Jenny made a noise that might be spelled glarmph, but nodded.
“Aye. I thought ye might.”
“You did?” Rachel was surprised—and perhaps a little affronted. She had expected shock and argument, attempted dissuasion.
“He’s told ye about his dead bairns by her, I expect?”
“He did, yes, before we wed.” Oggy’s live weight in her arms was a double blessing; she knew how much Ian had feared never being able to sire a live child.
Jenny nodded.
“He’s an honest man. And kind, to boot, but I doubt he’ll ever make a decent Friend.”
“Well, so do I,” Rachel admitted. “And yet miracles happen.”
That made Jenny laugh. She stopped at the edge of the porch and put down her basket in order to scrape the mud from the soles of her shoes, then held Rachel’s elbow to balance her while she did the same.
“Fearless, ye said,” Jenny said, meditatively. “Friends are fearless, are they?”
“We don’t fear death, because we think our lives are lived only in preparation for eternal life with God,” Rachel explained.
“Well, if the worst thing that can happen to ye is death, and ye’re no afraid of that … well, then.” Jenny shrugged. “I suppose ye’re right.” Her face crinkled suddenly and she laughed. “Fearless. I’ll need to think on that one for a bit—get used to it, ken. Still—” She lifted her chin, indicating Oggy, who had roused at the scent of home and was rooting sleepily at Rachel’s breast.
“Do ye not fear for him? Takin’ him all that way through a war?”
She didn’t add, “Wouldn’t losing him be worse than death?” but she didn’t need to.
Rachel unfastened her blouse and put Oggy to suck, drawing in her breath as he seized her nipple, then relaxing as her milk let down. Jenny was waiting for her, eyes fixed on Oggy’s head. Rachel spoke evenly.
“Would thee let thy husband go alone seven hundred miles to rescue his first wife and her three children—one of whom might just possibly be his?”
Jenny’s mouth opened, but apparently there were no Scottish sounds appropriate to the occasion.
“Well, no,” she said mildly. “Thee has a point.”
57
Ready for Anything
HE’D HAVE TO TELL her, and sooner rather than later. At least he’d got a plan made, whether she liked it or not.
It was raining, and the solid drops pounded the tin roof of the goat shed like gunfire. Ian ducked inside to find his mother milking one of the nannies and singing a waulking song called “Mile Marbhaisg Air A’ Ghaol” at the top of her lungs. She glanced up at him, nodded to indicate that she’d be with him in a wee bit, and went on singing “A Thousand Curses on Love” and milking.