“Raw neeps?” I asked.
“Oh, come on,” Bree protested. “They’re just like apples, except not sweet. And I brought apples and raisins, too, and carrots, and a jar of boiled spinach and one of pickles—and we got one of the casks of salt fish …”
“Oh, my God,” said Roger, with feeling. “I thought I was going to die of thirst after eating one of them …”
“No one told ye to soak them?” Jamie said, grinning.
“We had cheese, too,” Bree said, but it was clear she was fighting a losing battle.
“Well, the cheese wasn’t that bad, if you washed it down with gin … you ever seen a cheese mite, up close?”
“Could ye see them?” Jamie asked, interested. “I’ve been in a ship’s hold more than once and I couldna see my hand in front of my face.”
“Aye,” Roger said. “We couldn’t have an open light in the hold, of course, so the only time we had light was when they opened the hatch cover. Which they did whenever the weather was fine,” he added, with an attempt at fairness.
“That doesna sound sae bad,” Jamie said. “Ye dinna even notice cheese mites, if ye’re hungry. And raw neeps are very filling …”
Bree made a small noise of amusement; I didn’t. He was teasing, but not joking. I recognized the vivid memory of long years of near-starvation in the Highlands after Culloden, and something not far from it in Ardsmuir Prison.
“How long were you at sea?” I asked.
“Seven weeks, four days, and thirteen and a half hours,” Brianna said. “It was a pretty quick trip, thank God.”
“Aye, it was,” Roger agreed. “The last storm hit us near the coast, though, and we had to come ashore at Savannah. I didn’t think I’d get this lot onto another boat”—he waved casually at his wife and children—“but then we asked just how far it was, and faced with the prospect of walking five hundred miles … we found another boat.”
This one was a fishing boat. “An open boat, thank God,” Bree said fervently. “We slept on deck.”
“So ye came to the stones at last, then,” Jamie said. “How was it?”
“We almost didn’t make it,” Roger said quietly. He looked at the children, asleep on the settle. Mandy had fallen over and was sprawled on her face, limp as Esmeralda. “It was Mandy who got us through—and you,” he added, raising his eyes to Jamie with a slight smile.
“Me?”
“You wrote a book,” Bree said softly, looking at him. “A Grandfather’s Tales. And you thought to put a copy in the box with your letters.”
Jamie’s face changed and he looked down at the floor, suddenly abashed.
“Ye … read it?” he asked, and cleared his throat.
“We did.” Roger’s voice was soft. “Over and over.”
“And over,” Bree added, eyes warm with the memory. “Mandy could recite some of her favorite stories word for word.”
“Aye, well …” Jamie rubbed his nose. “But what has that to do wi’ …”
“She found you,” Roger said. “In the stones. We all were thinking as hard as we could, about you and Claire and the Ridge and—and everything we recalled, I suppose. Too much, maybe—too many different things.”
“I can’t begin to describe it,” Bree said, and of course she couldn’t—but the shadow of it lay on her face. “We—couldn’t get out. We stepped through and we were … it’s kind of like exploding, Da,” she said, trying. “But so slowly you can … sort of feel yourself coming apart. When we did it before—it was like that, but it was over pretty fast. This time … it didn’t stop.”
I felt the memory of it, at her words, and everything inside me lurched as though I’d been thrown off a cliff. Bree had gone pale, but she swallowed and went on.
“I—we—you can’t really talk, but you’re sort of aware of who’s with you, who you’re holding on to. But Mandy—and Jem, a little—are … kind of stronger than either Roger or me. And I—we—could hear Mandy, saying, ‘Grandda! Blue pictsie!’ And suddenly, we were … all on the same page, I guess you could say.”
Roger smiled at that, and took up the story.
“We were all thinking of you, and of that specific story; it’s the one with the illustration of a blue pictsie. And … then we were lying on the ground, almost literally in pieces, but … alive. In the right time. And together.”
Jamie made a small sound in his throat—the only inarticulate Scottish noise I’d ever heard from him. I looked away and saw that Jem was awake; he hadn’t moved but his eyes were open. He sat up slowly and leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
“It’s okay, Grandda,” he said, his voice froggy with sleep. “Don’t cry. Ye got us here safe.”
Part Two
* * *
NO LAW EAST OF THE PECOS
11
Lightning
ROGER STEPPED INTO THE clearing and stopped so abruptly that Bree nearly crashed into him, and saved herself only by gripping his shoulder.
“Bloody hell,” she said softly, looking past him at the ruin that confronted them.
“That’s … putting it mildly.” He’d been told, of course—everyone from Jamie to Rodney Beardsley, aged five, had told him—that the cabin that had served the Ridge as church, schoolhouse, and Masonic Lodge had been struck by lightning and burned down a year ago, during Jamie and Claire’s absence. Seeing it, though, was an unexpected shock.
The timbers of the doorframe had burned but still stood, a fragile black welcome to the charred emptiness on the other side.
“They took away most of the burnt wood.” Brianna took a deep breath, walked up to the empty doorway, and looked around. “Probably charcoal for smoking meat or making gunpowder. I wonder how hard it is to get sulfur these days.”
He glanced at her, not sure whether she was serious or just trying to keep the conversation light until the shock of seeing his first—his only—church destroyed had passed. The only place he’d been—for a little while—a real minister. His chest felt tight and so did his throat—but he put aside his sense of disquiet for the moment and coughed.
“You’re intending to make gunpowder? After what happened with the matches?”
She narrowed her eyes at him, but he could tell now that she was deliberately making light of things.
“You know that wasn’t my fault. And I could. I know the formula for gunpowder, and we could dig saltpeter out of people’s old privies.”
“Well, you can, if digging up ancient privies is your notion of fun,” he said, smiling despite himself. “Did your researches tell you how not to blow yourself up while making gunpowder?”
“No, but I know who to ask,” she said, complacent. “Mary Patton.”
Whether she’d intended it or not, the distraction of her conversation was working. The feeling of having been gut-punched had passed, and if he still felt the pangs of memory, he was able to put them aside to be dealt with later.