“When would you like to have the place, Rachel?”
“On First Day—thee would call it Sunday,” she explained to Cunningham. “We don’t use the pagan names. But the time of day doesn’t matter. We would not discommode any arrangements you have come to.”
“Pagan?” Cunningham looked aghast. “You think ‘Sunday’ is a pagan term?”
“Well, of course it is,” she said reasonably. “It means ‘day of the sun,’ meaning the ancient Roman festival of that name, dies solis, which became Sunnendaeg in English. I grant you,” she said, dimpling slightly at Roger, “it sounds slightly less pagan than ‘Tuesday,’ which is called after a Norse god. But still.” She flipped a hand and turned to go. “Let me know what times you both intend to preach, and I will arrange things accordingly. Oh—” she added, over her shoulder. “Naturally we will help with the building.”
The men watched her disappear among the oaks in silence.
Cunningham had picked up another fragment of charcoal and was rubbing it absently between thumb and forefinger. It reminded Roger of going with Brianna once to an Ash Wednesday service at St. Mary’s, in Inverness; the priest with a small dish of ashes (Bree had told him they were the ashes of palm fronds left over from the previous year’s Palm Sunday) rubbed a thumb through the black and then made a rapid cross on the forehead of each person in the congregation, swiftly murmuring to each, “Remember, Man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.”
Roger had gone up for his turn, and could vividly recall both the strange gritty feel of the ashes, and the odd sense of mingled disquiet and acceptance.
Something like now.
23
Trout-fishing in America, Part Two
A few days later …
THE FLY FLUTTERED DOWN, green and yellow as a falling leaf, to land among the rings of the rising hatch. It floated for a second on the surface, maybe two, then vanished in a tiny splash, yanked out of sight by voracious jaws. Roger flicked the end of his rod sharply to set the hook, but there was no need. The trout were hungry this evening, striking at everything, and his fish had taken the hook so deep that bringing it in needed nothing but brute force.
It came up fighting, though, flapping and silver in the last of the light. He could feel its life through the rod, fierce and bright, so much bigger than the fish itself, and his heart rose to meet it.
“Who taught ye to cast, Roger Mac?” His father-in-law took the trout as it came ashore, still flapping, and clubbed it neatly on a stone. “That was as pretty a touch as ever I’ve seen.”
Roger made a modest gesture of dismissal, but flushed a little with pleasure at the compliment; Jamie didn’t say such things lightly.
“My father,” he said.
“Aye?” Jamie looked startled.
Roger hastened to correct himself. “The Reverend, I mean. He was really my great-uncle, though—he adopted me.”
“Still your father,” Jamie said, but smiled. He glanced toward the far side of the pool, where Germain and Jemmy were squabbling over who’d caught the biggest fish. They had a respectable string but hadn’t thought to keep their catches separate, so couldn’t tell who’d caught what.
“Ye dinna think it makes a difference, do ye? That Jem’s mine by blood and Germain by love?”
“You know I don’t.” Roger smiled himself at sight of the two boys. Germain was a little more than a year older than Jem, but slightly built, like both his parents. Jem had the long bones and wide shoulders of his grandfather—and his father, Roger thought, straightening his own shoulders. The two boys were much of a height, and the hair of both glowed red at the moment, the ruddy light of the sinking sun setting fire to Germain’s blond mop. “Where’s Fanny, come to think? She’d settle them.”
Frances was twelve, but sometimes seemed much younger—and often startlingly older. She’d been fast friends with Germain when Jem had arrived on the Ridge, and rather standoffish, fearing that Jem would come between her and her only friend. But Jem was an open, sweet-tempered lad, and Germain knew a good deal more about how people worked than did the average eleven-year-old ex-pickpocket, and shortly the three of them were to be seen everywhere together, giggling as they slithered through the shrubbery, intent on some mysterious errand, or turning up at the end of churning, too late to help with the work but just in time for a glass of fresh buttermilk.
“My sister’s showing her how to comb goats.”
“Aye?”
“For the hair. I want it to mix wi’ the plaster for the walls.”
“Oh, aye.”
Roger nodded, threading a stringer through the fish’s dark-red gill slit.
The sun came low through the trees, but the trout were still biting, the water dappling with dozens of bright rings and the frequent splash of a leaping fish. Roger’s fingers tightened for a moment on his rod, tempted—but they had enough for supper and next morning’s breakfast, too. No point in catching more; there were a dozen casks of smoked and salted fish already put away in the cold cellar, and the light was going.
Jamie showed no signs of moving, though. He was sitting on a comfortable stump, bare-legged and clad in nothing but his shirt, his old hunting plaid puddled on the ground behind; it had been a warm day and the balm of it still lingered in the air. He glanced at the boys, who had forgotten their argument and were back at their lines, intent as a pair of kingfishers.
Jamie turned to Roger then, and said, in a quite ordinary tone of voice, “Do Presbyterians have the sacrament of Confession, mac mo chinnidh?”
Roger said nothing for a moment, taken aback both by the question and its immediate implications and by Jamie’s addressing him as “son of my house”—a thing he’d done exactly once, at the calling of the clans at Mount Helicon some years before.
The question itself was straightforward, though, and he answered it that way.
“No. Catholics have seven sacraments but Presbyterians only recognize two: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.” He might have left it at that, but the first implication of the question was plain before him.
“D’ye have a thing ye want to tell me, Jamie?” He thought it might be the second time he’d called his father-in-law Jamie to his face. “I can’t give ye absolution—but I can listen.”
He wouldn’t have said that Jamie’s face showed anything in the way of strain. But now it relaxed and the difference was sufficiently visible that his own heart opened to the man, ready for whatever he might say. Or so he thought.
“Aye.” Jamie’s voice was husky and he cleared his throat, ducking his head, a little shy. “Aye, that’ll do fine. D’ye remember the night we took Claire back from the bandits?”
“I’m no likely to forget it,” Roger said, staring at him. He cut his eyes at the boys, but they were still at it, and he looked back at Jamie. “Why?” he asked, wary.
“Were ye there wi’ me, at the last, when I broke Hodgepile’s neck and Ian asked me what to do with the rest? I said, ‘Kill them all.’”
“I was there.” He had been. And he didn’t want to go back. Three words and it was all there, just below the surface of memory, still cold in his bones: black night in the forest, a sear of fire across his eyes, chilling wind, and the smell of blood. The drums—a bodhran thundering against his arm, two more behind him. Screaming in the dark. The sudden shine of eyes and the stomach-clenching feel of a skull caving in.