“Will I tell ye something, Sassenach?” Jamie said, after a long silence. He leaned back to look up at the crescent moon, briefly visible through the shredding clouds, and set his hand on my knee. It was his right hand, and I could see the thin line of the scar where I had removed his ring finger, white against the cold-mottled darkness of his skin, the four remaining fingers cramped with grasping reins all day.
“You shall,” I said, taking the hand and beginning to massage it. He didn’t seem worried or upset, so it probably wasn’t bad news.
“I was sitting on the porch, just afore we left, and I had wee Davy in my arms, him sucking on my thumb, and Mandy came up the steps covered in mud, to show me a bone she’d found by the lake and ask who’d owned it. I took it, looked at it, and told her it was from the backbone of a beaver, and she looked at me and asked did I hear animals.”
I started to straighten and stretch his fingers, and he settled his back more firmly against the tree and made a small sound of mingled pain and pleasure in the back of his throat.
“Hear them … how?” It had rained on and off all day but had stopped in the evening, and while I was damp all the way to my underthings, I’d established enough equilibrium of body temperature not to be shivering, and it was tranquil here, away from the large campfires.
“Ken she and Jem can tell where each other are, without seeing each other?”
“They can?” I said, a little startled. “No, I don’t think I did know that.” I wasn’t completely surprised to hear it, though. I supposed I’d actually seen them do it a number of times, without really noticing. “Do their parents know, do you think?”
“Aye, she said her mother kent it—had tried them, in Boston, having them go some distance apart and say could each still tell where the other was. Mandy didna pay attention to how far it was—it was only a game to them, though she thought it was strange that her parents couldna tell where she or Jem were, once she realized it.”
“Is it only her and Jem?” I asked. “Or can they, um, hear other people, too? Like their parents, I mean.”
“I asked her that, and she said they can, aye—but not everybody. Just each other and their parents. And you, but not so much.”
That gave me a shiver that had nothing to do with cold.
“Do they, er, hear you?”
He shook his head.
“Nay, I asked. She says I’m a different color in her head. She kens when I’m near her, but canna feel me at a distance.”
“What color are you?” I asked, fascinated.
He made a small sound of amusement. “Water,” he said.
“Really?” I squinted at him. It was dark, and the tiny fire was sputtering on damp wood, but my eyes had adapted to the dark and there was enough moonlight to make out his features. “Any particular kind of water? Blue like the ocean, or brown, like the creek?”
He shook his head. “Just water.”
“You should ask Jem if that’s what he thinks,” I said, and slid my fingers between his, pressing his fingers back to stretch the knuckles.
“I will,” he said, with a slightly odd note in his voice. “If I see him again.”
And there it was. The stone in my heart, the lump of hot lead in my viscera. I’d forgotten, briefly, worn out by the labor of the day. But the thought of what might happen on Kings Mountain was never far from my conscious mind.
Jamie felt my shock, and his fingers closed suddenly over mine, still cold, but firm, and he put his other hand over mine as well, sheltering it.
“If I die this week, I’d ask ye three things, a nighean,” he said quietly. “Three things that I want. Will ye give them to me?”
“You know I will,” I said, though my throat was tight and my voice thick. “If I can.”
“Aye, I do,” he said softly, and raising my hand, kissed it, his breath warm on my cold skin. “Well, then. When ye can, find a priest and have a Mass said for my soul.”
“Done,” I said, and cleared my throat. “It might take some time, though. I think the nearest priest is probably in Maryland.”
“Aye, fine. I’ll stick it out in Purgatory ’til ye manage. I’ve been there before; it’s none sae bad.”
I thought he was joking. About Purgatory, at least.
“And the second thing?”
“Wee Davy,” he said. “Amanda says that he’s like me. The color o’ water. He’s not the same as she and Jem are … and I think that maybe means he canna pass through the stones.”
That one came out of nowhere, and I blinked. My eyelashes were heavy with wet, and drops flowed down my cheeks like tears. His hands tightened on mine and he turned his head toward me, a barely perceptible movement in the dark.
“I’ve said this before, but I say it now again, and I mean it. If I’m dead, ye should all go back. If it should be that Davy canna travel, give him to Rachel and Young Ian. They’ll love him wi’ all their hearts and keep him safe.”
I wanted to say, “I love you with all my heart—and I can’t keep you safe.”
But I squeezed back and said, as well as I could for the real tears starting, “I will.”
He lifted my hand and kissed my cold knuckles.
“Tapadh leat, mo chridhe.”
We sat together in silence, listening to the rain pattering through the leaves, water dripping from the trees, distant voices. The infant fire had died a-borning, though we could still smell the ghost of its smoke.
“You said three things,” I said at last. My voice was hoarse. “What’s the third?”
He let go of my hand and opened my fingers, as I’d done for him a few moments before, but his fingertips traced the lines of my palm and rested at the base of my thumb, where the letter J had nearly faded into my skin.
“Remember me,” he whispered.
We made love to each other, under the layers of sodden clothing, finding little warmth save that at the point of connection. We kept on well past the point where it was clear that neither of us could finish. Our bodies slowly left each other and we clung together through the dark until the dawn.
144
A Hanging Matter
October 3, 1780
IT WASN’T THE FIRST time he’d gone to a battle knowing he’d die. The difference was that last time, he’d wanted to.
The rain had kept them from lighting fires. They’d eaten what scraps they had left and then huddled in the dark, under what shelter they could find. He’d found a fallen tree, a big poplar whose roots had come up when the tree went down, making a rudimentary shelter. There wasn’t much room; he sat cross-legged, his back to the roots, and Claire was curled up beside him like a dormouse, wrapped in her soggy cloak and covered with half of his, her head resting warm on his thigh under the woolen folds. It was the only place he felt warm.
He wasn’t the sort of soldier who fought old battles over beer and salted bread in taverns. He didn’t seek to summon ghosts; they came by themselves, in his dreams.
But dreams don’t always tell the truth; he’d had dreams of Culloden many, many times over the years—and yet none of his dreams had shown him how Murtagh died or given him the peace of knowing that he’d killed Jack Randall.