Jamie had made a fire in our bedroom, and the scent of dried fir kindling and hickory wood overlaid the lingering turpentine scent of the fresh timbers. He was lying on the bed, clad in his nightshirt and smelling pleasantly of warm animals, cold hay, and peanut butter, and thumbing idly through my Merck Manual, which I’d left on the bedside table.
“Trying the Sortes Virgilianae, are you?” I asked, sitting down beside him and shaking my hair loose from its knot. “Most people use the Bible for that, but I suppose Merck might do just as well.”
“Hadna thought of that,” he said, smiling, and closing the book, handed it to me. “Why not? You choose, then.”
“All right.” I weighed the book in my hands for a moment, enjoying the tidy heft of it and the feel of the pebbled cover under my fingertips. I closed my eyes, opened the book at random, and ran my finger down the page. “What have we got?”
Jamie took his spectacles off and leaned over my arm, peering at the spot I’d marked.
“The symptomology of this condition is both varied and obscure, requiring extensive observation and repeated testing before a diagnosis can be made,” he read. He glanced up at me. “Aye, well, that’s about the size of it, no?”
“Yes,” I said, and closed the book, feeling obscurely comforted. Jamie gave a mild snort, but took the book from me and put it back on the table.
“Ye can take the extensive observations as given,” he said dryly. “Repeated testing, though …” His expression changed, turning inward. “Aye, maybe. Just maybe. I’ll need to think on that.”
“Do,” I said, made slightly nervous by his look of interested contemplation. I had no idea how one might go about testing a hypothesis like his—or perhaps I did. I swallowed.
“Do you … want me to read it?” I asked. “Frank’s book?” The notion of reading The Soul of a Rebel—Frank’s final book—gave me a feeling that I would have formally diagnosed with no tests whatsoever as the heebie-jeebies. And that, without considering Jamie’s notion that Frank had somehow intended the book as a personal message to him.
He looked at me, startled.
“You? No.”
An outburst of giggling and minor shrieking rose suddenly from below. Jamie made a Scottish noise, got up, and pulled his boots on. Raising an eyebrow at me, he stepped out into the hall and walked slowly toward the head of the stairs, clumping loudly. As he reached the fourth stair, the noise below ceased abruptly. I heard a faint snort of amusement, and he went down quickly. I could hear his voice in the kitchen, and a meek chorus of assent from the children, but made out only the odd word here and there. Another minute, and he came briskly up the stairs again.
“Is the MacLennans’ little boy actually named ‘Oogh’?” I asked curiously, as he sat down to take off his boots.
“Aodh, aye,” he said, pronouncing it with a slightly more guttural sound at the end, but still identifiably “Oogh.” “Were we speakin’ English, I expect his name would be Hugh. Here, Sassenach.” He handed me a linen towel from the kitchen, wrapped around what proved to be a delectably fragrant peanut butter sandwich on fresh-baked bread with blackberry jelly.
“Ye didna get your fair share at supper,” he said, smiling at me. “Ye were too busy filling all the wee mouths. So I put one aside for ye, on top of your herb cabinet. Recalled it just now.”
“Oh …” I closed my eyes and inhaled beatifically. “Oh, Jamie. This is wonderful!”
He made a pleased sound in his throat, poured me a cup of water, and sat back, hands clasped about his knees, watching me eat. I reveled in every sweet bite, chunky bits of peanut, blackberry seeds, and chewy, grainy bread included, and swallowed the last of it with a sigh of satisfaction and regret.
“Did I ever tell you that I brought a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with me, when I came back through the stones?”
“No, ye didn’t. Why that?”
Why, indeed?
“Well … I think it was because it reminded me of Brianna. I made her peanut butter sandwiches so often, for her school lunches. She had a Zorro lunch box, with a little thermos in it.”
Jamie’s eyebrows went up. “Zorro? A Spanish fox?”
I waved a hand dismissively. “I’ll tell you about him later. You would have liked him. I didn’t take a lunch box, though; I just wrapped my sandwich in a sheet of—of plastic.”
Jamie’s brows were still raised. “Like the stuff Mr. Randall’s spectacles were made of?”
“No, no.” I flapped my hand, trying to think how to describe Saran Wrap. “More like … like the transparent cover on his book—that’s plastic, too—but lighter. Sort of like a very light, transparent handkerchief.” I felt a pang of nostalgia, remembering that day.
“It was when I came to Edinburgh, looking for A. Malcolm, Printer. I was feeling light-headed—with fright, mostly—so I sat down, unwrapped my sandwich, and ate it. I thought then that it was the last peanut butter sandwich I’d ever eat. It was the best thing I ever ate. And when I finished it, I let the bit of plastic go; there was no point in keeping it.” In my mind’s eye, I could see it now, the fragile clear plastic crumpling, unfolding, rising, and scudding along the cobblestones, lost out of time.
“I rather felt the same way,” I said, and cleared my throat. “Lost, I mean. I wondered, then, whether someone might find it, and what they might think of it. Probably nothing beyond a moment’s curiosity.”
“I daresay,” he murmured, reaching with a corner of the towel to wipe a smear of jelly off my mouth, then kissing me. “But then ye found me, and ye weren’t lost anymore, I hope?”
“I wasn’t. I’m not.” I rested my head on his shoulder, and he kissed my forehead.
“The bairns are settled, Sassenach. Come to bed wi’ me, aye?”
I did, and we made love slowly, by the light of the embers, with the sound of the wind and the rain rushing past in the night outside.
Sometime later, on the edge of sleep, my hand on the warm round of Jamie’s buttock, I thought of Frank’s face; his photograph, drifting through my mind—those familiar hazel eyes behind the black-rimmed glasses. Earnest, intelligent, scholarly … honest.
21
Lighting a Fuse
THEY SMELLED IT FIRST. Brianna felt her nose twitch at the mingled stench of urine and sulfur. Beside her on the wagon bench, reins in hand, her father coughed. With a fine coating of charcoal dust …
“Mama says it’s got medicinal purposes—or at least some people used to think it had.”
“What, gunpowder?” He spared her a sideways glance, but most of his attention was focused on the small cluster of buildings that had just come into view, charmingly situated at a bend in the river.
“Mm-hmm. A little Gun-powder tyed up in a rag, and held so in the mouth, that it may touch the aking tooth, instantly easeth the pains of the teeth. Nicholas Culpeper, 1647.”
Her father grunted.
“That likely works. Ye’d be too busy trying to decide whether to vomit or cough to be worrit about your teeth.”