“Mmphm,” said the captain with a narrow-eyed glance at his mother. “I’m just away to call my two lads down from the field, sir—lieutenants from my last ship, who chose to come with me when I came ashore. I’ll walk you and your lady to the head of the path, if you’ll bear me company that far?”
“Thank you, Captain.” Bree seized the chance of getting a word in sideways and curtsied deeply to the captain and again—with as much face as she could manage—to Mrs. Cunningham. “Do please remember that my mother will come at once, ma’am, if you have any sort of … emergency.”
Mrs. Cunningham seemed to expand in several directions at once.
“Do ye dare threaten me, girl?”
“What? No!”
“D’ye see what ye’ve let in the house, Captain?” Mrs. Cunningham ignored Brianna and glowered at her son. “The lass means to ill-wish us!”
“We have a few more calls to make,” Roger interjected hastily. “Will ye allow me to bless your house with a wee prayer before we leave, sir?”
“Why—” The captain glanced at his mother, then drew himself up, chin set. “Yes, sir. We should be most obliged to you.”
Brianna saw Mrs. Cunningham’s lips shaped to say “Phut!” again, but Roger hastily forestalled her, raising his hands slightly and bowing his head in benediction.
“May God bless the dwelling,
Each stone, and beam, and stave,
All food, and drink, and clothing.
May health of men be always here.”
“Good day to ye, sir, madam,” he added quickly, and, bowing, grabbed Brianna’s hand. She hadn’t time to say anything—just as well, she thought—but smiled and nodded to the basilisk as they backed out of the door.
“So now we know what Blue Light means,” she said, casting a ginger glance behind them as they reached the end of the path. “As Mama says … Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ!”
“Apt,” Roger said, laughing.
“Was that a Hogmanay prayer?” she asked. “It sounded kind of familiar, but I wasn’t sure …”
“It is—and a house-blessing. Ye’ve heard your da say it a few times, but he does it in the Gaelic. The Cunninghams are educated Lowlanders, from their accent; if I’d tried the Gaelic version, Mrs. C. might well have thought I was trying to put a spell on them.”
“Weren’t you?” She said it lightly, but he turned his head to her, surprised.
“Well … in a way, I suppose so,” he said slowly, but then smiled. “Highland charms and prayers often aren’t distinguishable from each other. But I think if you address God directly, then it’s probably a prayer, rather than witchcraft.”
She glanced over her shoulder once more, with the feeling that Mrs. Cunningham’s eyes were burning a hole through the door of the cabin, watching their retreat.
“Do Presbyterians believe in exorcism?” she asked.
“No, we don’t,” he said, though he also looked back. “My father—the Reverend, I mean—did tell me, though, that when you go visiting, you should never leave a house without offering a blessing of some kind.” He held back a springy oak branch so she could duck beneath it. “He did add that it might keep things from following you home—but I think he was joking.”
I WAS WORKING my way down the creek bank, collecting leeches, watercress, and anything else that looked either edible or useful, when I heard a distant sound of wagon wheels.
Thinking that this might be the tinker Jo Beardsley had mentioned to Germain, I hastily shook down my skirts, shoved my feet back into my sandals, and hurried toward the wagon trace, where the rumbling of wheels had been suddenly replaced by a good deal of bad language.
This proved to be coming from a very large man, who was excoriating his mules, the wagon, and the wheel that had just hit a rock and sprung its iron tyre. He lacked Jamie’s creativity in cursing but was making up for it in volume.
“May I help you, sir?” I asked, seizing a moment when he’d paused for breath.
He swung round, astonished.
“Where the devil did you come from?” he asked.
I gestured toward the trees behind me, and repeated, “Do you need help?” Closer to the wagon, it was apparent that he wasn’t the tinker. The wagon—drawn by two very large mules—held a variety of things, but not iron pans and hair ribbons. There were half a dozen muskets lying in the wagon bed, together with a small collection of swords, scythes, and staves. A few small barrels that might be salt fish or pork—and one that was most certainly gunpowder, both from its markings and from the faint scent of charcoal tinged with sulfur and urine.
My insides contracted.
“Is this Fraser’s Ridge?” the man demanded, looking at the woods around us. We were some way below the clearing where the Higginses’ cabin stood, and there was no sign of habitation other than the wagon trace, which was quite overgrown.
“It is,” I said, there being no point in lying. “Do you have business here?”
He looked sharply at me, and focused on me for the first time.
“My business is my own,” he said, though not impolitely. “I’m looking for Jamie Fraser.”
“I’m Mrs. Fraser,” I said, folding my arms. “His business is mine.”
His face flushed and he glowered at me, as though thinking I was practicing upon him, but I gave him stare for stare and after a moment, he gave a sort of barking laugh and relaxed.
“Will you fetch your husband, then, or will I come and find him?”
“Whom shall I say is calling?” I asked, not moving.
“Benjamin Cleveland,” he said, swelling a bit with a sense of his own importance. “He’ll know the name.”
JAMIE LAID THE last brick in the course and trimmed the mortar with a small feeling of satisfaction—mingled with a mild dismay at the realization that tomorrow’s work on the chimney would need to be done with a ladder; this was as high as he could reach, without. His shoulders were complaining; the thought of his knees joining in made him stretch his back and sigh.
Aye, well, maybe my bonnie lass can help wi’ that. Brianna had said something to him the first night they’d come. She’d followed him through the building site, the two of them stumbling over rocks and strings and laughing as though they were drunk, bumping shoulders and grasping elbows to keep their balance in the dark. Each fleeting touch a spark that warmed him.
“I can make a movable frame with a pulley.” That’s what she’d said, putting a hand on the half-built chimney. “We can hoist up a bucket of bricks you can reach from the ladder.”
“We,” he said softly, smiling to himself. Then looked over his shoulder, self-conscious, lest the men carrying logs should have heard him. But they’d laid down the last one and paused for refreshment—Amy Higgins and Fanny had brought beer, and he dropped the trowel in a bucket of water and went to join them. Just before he reached the edge of the foundation, though, his eye caught a flicker of movement at the head of the wagon road, and the next instant Claire came into sight, dwarfed by the man who walked beside her.
“A Naoimh Micheal Àirdaingeal, dìon sinn anns an àm a’ chatha,” he said under his breath. He didn’t know the man, but there was something about him beyond his size that made the hairs rise on Jamie’s neck.