The sun was coming down, but there was plenty of light left to show him the blood draining from her face. She swallowed visibly and nodded, once.
“His wee lad was named Jeremiah,” she said. “I remember, because Da got a wee bawbee sent him from the garrison commander”—her lips compressed, and he kent she was thinking of Jack Randall—“and when the dark-haired man came back, Da gave it to him, and I heard Mr. MacKenzie talking to his friend later, and saying that it must have belonged to his own father, who was named Jeremiah, like … Jemmy. His son’s name was Jeremiah and they called him Jemmy.” She stopped talking and stared at him, her eyes round as three-penny bits. “Ye’re tellin’ me your grandson is that Jemmy, and the dark-haired man is …”
“I am,” he said, and let his breath out.
She sat down again, very slowly.
He let her alone, remembering all too well the mix of incredulity, bewilderment, and fear that he’d felt when Claire, battered and hysterical after he’d rescued her from the witch trial in Cranesmuir, had finally told him what she was.
He also remembered vividly what he’d said at the time. “It would ha’ been easier if ye’d only been a witch.” That made him smile, and he squatted down in front of his sister.
“Aye, I ken,” he said to her. “But it’s no really different than if they’d come from … Spain, maybe. Or Timbuktu, say.”
She darted a sharp look at him and snorted, but her hands—clenched in her lap—relaxed.
“So the way of it is that Roger Mac and Brianna were each of them at Lallybroch—then. Ye met Brianna when she came to find us. But ye’d met Roger Mac years earlier, looking for his wee lad. Brianna came again a bit later wi’ the bairns, looking for Roger. Ye didna meet her then, but she saw Da.”
He paused for a moment, waiting. Jenny’s look changed suddenly and she sat up straighter.
“She met Da? But he was already dead …” Her voice trailed off as she tried to juggle it all in her head.
“She did,” he said, and swallowed the lump in his throat. “And Roger Mac spent some time with Da, too, searching. He—told me things about Da. See … for the two o’ them, it was nay more than a few months ago that they saw him,” he said softly, and took her hand, holding it tight. “To hear Roger Mac speak of him so—it was as though Da stood beside me.”
She let out her breath in a small sob, and squeezed his hand tight between her own. The tears were in her eyes again, but she wasn’t afraid, and she blinked them back, sniffing.
“It’s maybe easier if ye think of it as a miracle,” he said, trying to be helpful. “I mean—it is, no?”
She gave him a look, took out a hankie, and blew her nose.
“Fag mi,” she said. Don’t try me.
“Come,” he said, and stood, pulling her up. “Ye’ve a new nephew to meet. Again.”
ROGER SAW JAMIE first, stepping out from the shadow of the chimney, a shadow himself, dark against dark—and behind him, another shadow, so insubstantial that for a moment he wasn’t sure she was there at all. Then he found himself on his feet, moving to meet her on the edge of the firelight, the flicker of the flames behind him bright in her eyes and the lovely girl he had known shining out at him.
“Miss Fraser,” he said softly, and took her hand in both of his, light-boned and firm as a bird’s foot. “Well met.”
She breathed a laugh, lines creasing round her eyes.
“Last time we met,” she said, “I thought I’d like it if ye kissed my hand, but ye didn’t.”
He could see the rapid beat of her pulse at the side of her throat, but her hand was steady in his, and he raised it and kissed it with a tenderness that was not at all assumed.
“I thought your father might take it amiss,” he said, smiling. A slightly startled expression crossed her face, and her hand tightened on his.
“It’s true,” she whispered, staring up at him. “Ye saw Da, talked to him—only a few months ago? Your voice doesna sound like … Ye dinna talk like ye think he’s dead.” Her voice was filled with wonderment.
Jamie made a soft noise, deep in his throat, and moved out of the shadows, touching her arm.
“Brianna, too,” he said quietly, and tilted his head toward the fire, where Roger saw Bree holding Oggy, talking to the other children, her long red hair lifting in the warm rising air from the fire. She was waving the baby’s podgy little hand in regal gestures, talking for him in a deep, comic voice, and the bairns were all giggling.
“She saw Da, too, though she didna get to speak to him. It was in the burying ground at Lallybroch; she said he knelt by Mammeigh’s stone, and he’d brought her holly and yew, bound wi’ red thread.”
“Mammaidh …”
Jenny’s voice caught in her throat with a small click, and Roger saw tears well suddenly in her eyes. He let go of her hand as Jamie put his arm round her and drew her close, and brother and sister clung together, faces hidden in each other, holding love between them.
He was still staring at them when he felt Claire beside him. She was watching them as well, her face smooth and her heart in her eyes. Silently, she took his hand.
9
Animal Nursery Tales
IT TOOK A MONTH, rather than two weeks, but by the time the wild grapes began to ripen, Jamie, Roger, and Bree—with precarious ceremony and a lot of giggling from the groundlings below—tacked a large sheet of stained white canvas (salvaged and stitched together from pieces of the damaged mainsail of a Royal Navy sloop that was refitting in Wilmington when Fergus happened to be strolling along the quay) onto the framing of the New House’s new kitchen.
We had a roof. Of our own.
I stood under it, looking up, for a long time. Just smiling.
People were trooping in and out, carrying things over from the lean-to, up from the Higginses’ cabin, out of the springhouse, in from the shelter of the Big Log, down from the garden. It reminded me, suddenly and without warning, of making camp on an expedition with my Uncle Lamb: the same higgledy-piggledy bustle of objects, good spirits, relief and happiness, expectation.
Jamie set down the pie safe, easing it gently onto the new pine floor so as not to dent or mar the boards.
“Wasted effort,” he said, smiling as he looked up at me. “A week and it’ll be as though we’d driven a herd of pigs through it. Why are ye smiling? Does the prospect amuse ye?”
“No, but you do,” I said, and he laughed. He came and put an arm around me, and we both looked up.
The canvas shone a brilliant white, and the late-morning sun glowed along its edges. The canvas lifted a little, whispering in the breeze, and multiple stains of seawater, dirt, and what might possibly be the blood of fish or men made shadows that shimmered on the floor around our feet, the shallows of a new life.
“Look,” he whispered in my ear, and nudged my cheek with his chin, directing my gaze.
Fanny stood on the far side of the room, looking up. She was lost in the snowy light, oblivious to Adso the cat, twining about her ankles in hopes of food. She was smiling.
JAMIE DUG THE hole. A shallow groove in the black, mica-flecked soil under the chimney breast, about ten inches long.