“Aye,” he said, a little gruffly, but then he gave me a half smile and the Scottish lad showed through the tattoos. “Maybe another wolf will come find me, sometime.”
“I hope so,” I said, meaning it. “Ian—I wanted to ask you a favor.”
One eyebrow went up.
“Name it, Auntie.”
“Well … Jamie said that you plan to stop in Philadelphia. I wondered …” I felt myself blushing, much to my annoyance. His other eyebrow rose.
“Whatever it is, Auntie, I’ll do it,” he said, one side of his mouth curling. “I promise.”
“Well … I, um, want you to go to a brothel.”
The eyebrows came down and he stared hard at me, obviously thinking he hadn’t heard aright.
“A brothel,” I repeated, somewhat louder. “In Elfreth’s Alley.”
He stood motionless for a moment, then turned and put the cheese back on the shelf, and glanced down at the clear brown water of the creek rushing past our feet.
“This might take a bit of time to explain, aye? Let’s go out into the sun.”
60
Just One Step
September 15, 1779
JUST ONE STEP. THAT’S all it ever took, all it ever takes. Sometimes you see such a step coming, from a long way off. Sometimes you never notice, until you look backward.
Here it was, right in front of her. The door of her cabin—hers, her home, the home of her marriage, of her baby’s first months, of her realest life—was open to the morning and the round gold leaves of the aspens lay flat on the wood of the stoop, gleaming with dew as the dawn came up.
One step over the threshold that divided her small rag rug, with its quiet, homely blues and grays, from that pagan abandon of golds and greens and red outside, and her life here was over. They might come back—Ian had promised that they would, and she trusted that he’d do whatever he could to make it so—but even if they did, it would be a different life.
Oggy—perhaps he would be walking, talking, might have a different name by then. He wouldn’t recall this early life, the closeness of waking against her body in bed, turning at once to her breast and yielding up his separate existence so easily, becoming one with her as he’d been when she carried him inside, just for those moments while he fed from her again. Somewhere he might be weaned, on the road between now and then. He would be a different person when they came back. So would she.
Jenny came up beside her, her face bright and a pack with food and drink, handkerchiefs, clouts, and clean stockings under her arm. She glanced at Rachel’s face, then at the inside of the cabin, as though making an inventory. There was little enough to take note of: the rug, the bed and its trundle where Jenny slept, Oggy’s cradle. They had already given everything else away; what they needed would be given back or built again if they returned.
“Well, then, laddie,” Jenny said to Oggy. “This will be your first journey from home, aye? It’s my third. Just pay attention to me; I’ll see ye right.”
Oggy promptly leaned out of Rachel’s arms, reaching for his grannie, who laughed and took him.
“Ye’re fettled, m’annsachd?” she said to Rachel. “Is the sense o’ the meeting clear? Let’s be off, then, and see what lies ahead.”
THE FIRST STEP took them from the cabin to the Big House to take their leave. They’d said goodbye to Brianna and Roger and seen them off with their wagon full of children and contraband sauerkraut three weeks before—an experience that had made Rachel’s heart uneasy. Now she was inexpressibly relieved to see Jamie and hear that he intended to accompany the travelers on the three-day journey to Salisbury in the Piedmont, where they would find the Great Wagon Road that would take them north.
“I need to meet wi’ a few men there,” Jamie had said, with a casual reserve that she knew was meant to protect her own feelings. She knew his business was that of war, and he knew how much that troubled her, but she knew how much it troubled him and would not force him to say the things he was thinking, let alone the things he knew.
She’d felt moved to speak about it—the war—in general, in meeting. And then she’d talked about her brother, Denzell. A Friend from birth, as she was; a godly man, but also a doctor, and a man of conscience.
“Such men aren’t always comfortable to live with,” she’d said, half apologetically, but more than one woman had smiled in sympathy, knowing what she meant. “But I wouldn’t have him otherwise, thee knows. And he’s of the mind that God has called him to the battlefield—not to fight with a musket or sword, but to fight Death itself, in the name of Liberty.” She’d drawn a deep breath then, and added, “I have had word that my brother was captured, and is in a British prison. I’d ask thee all, please, to pray for him.”
They had nodded, solemn. And Jamie Fraser had crossed himself, which moved her.
Jamie nearly always came to meeting, but seldom spoke himself. He’d come in quietly and sit on a back bench, head bowed, listening. Listening, as any Friend would, to the silence and his inner light. When people felt moved of the spirit to speak, he would listen courteously to them, too, but watching the remoteness of his face on these occasions, she thought his mind was still by itself, in quiet, persistent search.
“I dinna suppose Young Ian’s told ye much about Catholics,” he’d said to her once, when he’d paused afterward to give her a fleece he’d brought from Salem.
“Only when I ask him,” she said, with a smile. “And thee knows he’s no theologian. Roger Mac knows more, I think, regarding Catholic belief and practice. Does thee want to tell me something about Catholics? I know thee must feel seriously outnumbered every First Day.”
He’d smiled at that, and it made her heart glad to see it. He was so often troubled these days, and no wonder.
“Nay, lass, God and I get on well enough by ourselves. It’s only that when I come to your meeting, sometimes it reminds me of a thing Catholics do now and then. It’s no a formal thing—but a body will go and sit for an hour before the Sacrament, in church. I’d do it now and then when I was a young man, in Paris. We call it Adoration.”
“What does thee do during that hour?” she’d asked, curious.
“Nothing in particular. Pray, for the most part. Say the Rosary. Or sit in silence. Read, maybe, the Bible or the writings of some saint. I’ve seen folk sing, sometimes. I remember once, goin’ into the chapel of Saint Joseph in the wee hours of the morning, long before dawn—almost all the candles were burnt out—and hearin’ someone playing a guitar, singing. Very soft, not playing to be heard, ken. Just … singing before God.”
Something odd moved in his eyes at the recollection, but then he smiled at her again, a rueful smile.
“I think that may be the last music I remember really hearing.”
“What?”
He touched the back of his head, briefly.
“I was struck in the heid wi’ an ax, many years gone. I lived, but I never heard music again. The pipes, fiddles, singin’ … I ken it’s music, but to me, it’s nay more than noise. But that song … I dinna recall the song itself, but I know how I felt when I heard it.”