“Remarkable!” Brianna agreed, swallowing.
“Ye see why we kent ye at once,” her aunt went on, laying a loving hand against the carved frame.
“Yes. Yes, I can see that.”
“It will be my mother, aye? Your grandmother, Ellen MacKenzie.”
“Yes,” Brianna said. “I know.” Dust motes stirred up by their footsteps whirled lazily through the afternoon light from the window. Brianna felt rather as though she was whirling with them, no longer anchored to reality.
Two hundred years from now, she had—I will? she thought wildly—stood in front of this portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, furiously denying the truth that it showed.
Ellen MacKenzie looked out at her now as she had then; long-necked and regal, slanted eyes showing a humor that did not quite touch the tender mouth. It wasn’t a mirror image, by any means; Ellen’s forehead was high, narrower than Brianna’s, and the chin was round, not pointed, her whole face somewhat softer and less bold in its features.
But the resemblance was there, and pronounced enough to be startling; the wide cheekbones and lush red hair were the same. And around her neck was the string of pearls, gold roundels bright in the soft spring sun.
“Who painted it?” Brianna said at last, though she didn’t need to hear the answer. The tag by the painting in the museum had given the artist as “Unknown.” But having seen the portrait of the two little boys below, Brianna knew, all right. This picture was less skilled, an earlier effort—but the same hand had painted that hair and skin.
“My mother herself,” Jenny was saying, her voice filled with a wistful pride. “She’d a great hand for drawing and painting. I often wished I had the gift.”
Brianna felt her fingers curl unconsciously, the illusion of the brush between them momentarily so vivid she could have sworn she felt smooth wood.
That’s where, she thought, with a small shiver, and heard an almost audible click! of recognition as a tiny piece of her past dropped into place. That’s where I got it.
Frank Randall had joked that he couldn’t draw a straight line; Claire that she drew nothing else. But Brianna had the gift of line and curve, of light and shadow—and now she had the source of the gift, as well.
What else? she thought suddenly. What else did she have that had once belonged to the woman in the picture, to the boy with the stubborn tilt to his head?
“Ned Gowan brought me this from Leoch,” Jenny said, touching the frame with a certain reverence. “He saved it, when the English battered down the castle, after the Rising.” She smiled faintly. “He’s a great one for family, Ned is. He’s a Lowlander from Edinburgh, wi’ no kin of his own, but he’s taken the MacKenzies for his clan—even now the clan’s no more.”
“No more?” Brianna blurted. “They’re all dead?” The horror in her voice made Jenny glance at her, surprised.
“Och, no. I didna mean that, lass. But Leoch’s gone,” she added, in a softer tone. “And the last chiefs with it—Colum and his brother Dougal…they died for the Stuarts.”
She had known that, of course; Claire had told her. What was surprising was the sudden rush of an unexpected grief; regret for these strangers of her newfound blood. With an effort, she swallowed the thickening in her throat and turned to follow Jenny up the stairs.
“Was Leoch a great castle?” she asked. Her aunt paused, hand on the banister.
“I dinna ken,” she said. Jenny glanced back at Ellen’s picture, something like regret in her eyes.
“I never saw it—and now it’s gone.”
* * *
Entering the bedroom on the second floor was like entering an undersea cavern. The room was small, as all the rooms were, with low beams smoked black from years of peat fires, but the walls were fresh and white, and the room itself was filled with a greenish, wavering light that spilled through two large windows, filtered by the leaves of the swaying rose brier.
Here and there some bright thing blinked or glowed like a reef fish in the soft gloom; a painted doll that lay on the hearthrug, abandoned by a grandchild, a Chinese basket with a pierced coin tied to its lid by way of ornament. A brass candlestick on the table, a small painting on the wall, rich colors deep against the whitewash.
Jenny went at once to the big armoire that stood at the side of the room, and stood on tiptoe to bring down a large morocco-covered box, its corners worn with age. As she put back the lid, Brianna caught the glint of metal and a small sharp flash, as of sunlight on jewels.
“Here it is.” Jenny brought out a thick, folded wad of grimy paper, much traveled and much read by the looks of it, and put it into Brianna’s hand. It had been sealed; a smudge of greasy wax still clung to the end of one sheet.
“They’re in the Colony of North Carolina, but they dinna live near any town,” Jenny explained. “Jamie writes a bit in the evenings when he can, and keeps the bits all by him, till either he or Fergus takes the journey down to Cross Creek, or a traveler passes by who will carry the letter. That suits him; he doesna write easy—especially since he broke his hand that time ago.”
Brianna started at the casual reference, but her aunt’s calm face showed no special awareness.
“Sit ye down, lassie.” She waved a hand, giving Brianna the choice of stool or bed.
“Thank you,” Brianna murmured, taking the stool. So perhaps Jenny didn’t know everything about Jamie and Black Jack Randall? The notion that she might know things about this unseen man that not even his beloved sister knew was in a way unsettling. To dismiss the thought, she hurriedly opened the letter.
The scrawled words sprang out at her, black and vivid. She had seen this writing before—its cramped, difficult letters, with the big, looping tails, but that had been on a document two hundred years old, its ink brown and faded, its writing constrained by careful thought and formality. Here he had felt free—the writing rolled across the page in a bold broken scrawl, the lines tilting drunkenly up at the ends. It was untidy, but readable for all that.
Fraser’s Ridge, Monday 19 September
My dearest Jenny,
All here are in Good Health and Spirits, and trust that this letter will find all in your Household likewise Content.
Your son sends his Most Affectionate Regards, and begs to be Remembered to his Father, Brothers and Sisters. He bids you tell Matthew and Henry that he sends them the Encloased Object, which is the preserved Skull of an animal called Porpentine by Reason of its Prodigious Spines (though it is not at all like the small Hedge-creepie which you will know by that name, being much Greater in Size and Dwelling in the Treetops, where it Feasts upon the tender shoots). Tell Matthew and Henry that I do not know why the Teeth are orange. No Doubt the animal finds it Decorative.
Also enclosed you will find a small Present for yourself; the Patterning is contrived by use of the Quills of this same Porpentine, which the Indians dye with the juices of several Plants, before weaving them in the Ingenious Manner you see before you.
Claire has been recently much Interested by Conversation—if the term can be used for a Communication limited mostly to Gesticulations and the Making of Faces (she insists I note here that she does not Make Faces, to which I reply that I am in Better Case to judge of the matter, being able to see the Face in question, which she is not)—in Conversation with an old woman of the Indians, much Esteemed in this area as a Healer, who has Given her many such plants. In consequence, her fingers are Purple at present, which I find Most Decorative.