“Here, lad,” Jamie said, thrusting a wooden cup of hot brose into the Tall Tree’s hand. “Warm your belly, and come meet Miranda. She belongs to Frances, but the lass says she’s willing to lend ye the mare until we can find ye a horse of your own.”
“Frances? Oh. I-I thank her.” The Tall Tree glowed a bit and glanced shyly at the house, and then at the horse. Miranda was a big mare, stout and broad-backed, and with a gentle, accommodating manner.
Young Ian had come down now, in buckskins and jacket, his hair plaited and hanging down his back, Tòtis following him. He glanced round the group of men, nodding, then kissed Tòtis’s forehead and lifted his chin toward the porch. Then Ian came for his own brose, lifting a brow in the direction of Cyrus.
“A’ Chraobh Ard will be joining us, a bhalaich,” Jamie said casually. “Will ye show him the way of it, to saddle and bridle Miranda, while I tell the men what we’re about?”
“Aye,” Ian said, swallowing hot barley broth and exhaling a cloud of white steam. “And what are we about?”
“Cavalry drills.” That made Ian raise both brows and glance over his shoulder at the group of men, who looked like what they were—farmers. They all owned horses, and could ride from the Ridge to Salem without falling off, but beyond that …
“Simple cavalry drills,” Jamie clarified. “Riding slowly.”
Young Ian looked thoughtfully at Cyrus, standing at eager attention.
“Aye,” he said, and crossed himself.
WHEN I WENT upstairs to tie up my hair before starting the soap making, I found Silvia and all four of the girls in my bedroom with Frances, Patience, and Prudence more or less hanging over the sill to watch the militia ride out. They barely noticed me, but Silvia stepped back a little, abashed, and began to apologize.
“Don’t worry at all,” I said, and stepped up behind Patience to peer out. “There’s something about a group of men on horses …”
“With rifles and muskets,” she said, rather dryly. “Yes, there is.”
I thought the girls hadn’t quite grasped the fact that the militia group was drilling and training for the express purpose of killing people, but their mother assuredly had and watched the men forming up, with the usual calling out and crude jokes, with a certain grimness that deepened the lines bracketing her mouth. I touched her arm gently and she turned her head, startled.
“I know that you and your daughters would prefer to die, rather than have other people killed so that you don’t … but you know … you’re our guests. Jamie’s a Highlander, and his laws of hospitality forbid him to let anyone kill his guests. So I’ll have to ask you to stretch your principles a bit and let him protect you.”
Her lips twitched and her eyes met mine with a gleam of humor.
“As a matter of good manners?”
“Exactly,” I said, smiling back.
A squeal from the girls drew us back to the window. Jamie was mounted, passing slowly up and down the line of his men, inspecting their tack and their weapons, pausing to ask questions and make jokes. Steam rose from horses and men, their breaths white in the cold dawn air. Cyrus was at the end of the line, and Young Ian was instructing him on the finer points of mounting a horse, starting with which foot to begin with.
“Oh, doesn’t he look fine?” Prudence said, admiring. I wasn’t sure whether she meant Jamie, Young Ian, or Cyrus, as they were all more or less in the same place, but I made sounds of approval.
It seemed to take a long time for the men to organize themselves, but suddenly they all shuffled and jostled into place in a double column. Jamie took his place at the head of it and lifted his rifle above his head. A sort of jingling rumble reached us, and the militia moved out, with a visible sense of purpose that was quite stirring to watch.
Cyrus, upright as a stalk of uncooked asparagus, rode beside Young Ian, the last pair in line. I crossed myself, then turned to my own troops.
“Well, ladies … it’s a fine day for making soap. Fall in!”
JAMIE AND THE Lindsay brothers, with some help from Tom McHugh and his middle son, Angus, had cut down the trees and brush along one side of the wagon road where the land was flat, so that there was no bank between road and forest. They had left eight big trees standing, spaced about thirty feet apart.
“So,” Jamie said to his gathered troops, and nodded at the trees. “We’re going to weave through those trees—going to one side of the first, then the other side of the next, and so on. And we’re going to do it slowly, one man following the next after a slow count of ten.”
“Why?” said Joe McDonald, squinting at the trees suspiciously.
“Well, first, because I say so, a charaid,” Jamie said, smiling. “Ye always do what your colonel says, because we’ll fight better if we’re all goin’ in the same direction—and for that to happen, somebody has to decide which direction to go … and that’s me, aye?” A ripple of laughter ran through the men.
“Oh. Aye,” McDonald said, uncertainly. Joe was young, only eighteen, and had never fought in a battle, bar fists behind somebody’s barn to settle a grudge.
“But as for why I’m tellin’ ye to do this—” He gestured toward the trees. “This is for the horses. We’re a mounted militia—though we’ll have foot soldiers, too—and the horses must be nimble and you able to guide them through strange ground. Cavalrymen do this sort of drill; it’s called a serpentine—because ye weave like a snake, aye?” Without pausing for further question, he looked at Ian and jerked his head sideways.
Ian nudged his horse and turned slowly out of the group, reined around to face the trees, then leaned forward and with a bloodcurdling scream that made all the other horses snort and stamp, dug in his heels and shot for the first tree as though he and the horse had been fired from a gun. In the instant before collision, they dodged aside and shot toward the next, whipping in and out of the line of trees so fast you could scarcely count the trees as they passed. At the end of the line, they turned on a sixpence and shot back even faster, arriving with a high-pitched Indian yip to shouted applause.
Jamie glanced at Cyrus, who looked at once terrified and excited, the reins clutched up to his chest.
“So now we’ll do it slow,” Jamie said. “Ye want to go first, Joe?”
AT THE END of an hour, both horses and men were warm, limber, and in high spirits, having—for the most part—avoided collision with each other or trees. The sun was well above the horizon now; they’d best head back, so the men could get breakfast and go on to their daily chores. He was about to dismiss them when Ian stood in his stirrups and called over the men’s heads.
“Uncle! Race ye to the bend and back!” There was a general rumble of enthusiasm at this proposal, and Jamie reined round without hesitation, drawing up beside Ian.
“Go!” shouted Kenny Lindsay, and go they did, thundering down the dirt road in a churn of dust and encouraging Highland shrieks from behind. Ian’s horse was a shrewd wee mare named Lucille, who didn’t like being beaten—but neither did Phineas, and it was hell-for-leather all the way and the forest a green blur beside them.