“Well, she’ll maybe be better company for ye than a manservant, lass, but your cousin’s right about the one thing—she’ll be no protection. It’ll be you lookin’ out for her, likely.”
Brianna straightened her shoulders and thrust out her chin, summoning up as much self-confidence as she could, in spite of the sudden hollow feeling that assailed her.
“I can manage,” she said.
* * *
She kept her hand curled tight, holding on to the stone in her palm. It was something to cling to, as the Moray Firth widened into the sea, and the cradling shore of Scotland fell away to either side.
Why ought she to feel so strongly for a place she hardly knew? Lizzie, born and raised in Scotland, had spared no glance for the receding land but had gone below at once, to lay claim to their space and arrange the few belongings they had brought aboard.
Brianna had never thought of herself as Scottish—had not known she was Scottish until quite recently—yet she had scarcely felt more bereft by her mother’s leaving or her father’s death than by this parting from people and places she had known for so short a time.
Perhaps it was only the contagious emotion of the other passengers. Many of them were standing at the rail as she was, several weeping openly. Or fear of the long journey ahead. But she knew quite well it was none of those things.
“That’s that, I expect.” It was Lizzie, appearing at her elbow after all, to see the last sight of the land fade away. Her small pale face was expressionless, but Brianna didn’t mistake lack of expression for lack of feeling.
“Yes, we’re on our way.” Moved by impulse, Brianna put out a hand and drew the girl to stand in front of her at the rail, sheltered alike from freshening wind and from jostling passengers and seamen. Lizzie was a good foot shorter than Brianna, and fine-boned as the delicate sooty terns that circled the masts, squawking overhead.
The sun did not really set at this time of year but hung low above the dark hills, and the air had grown quite cold in the Firth. The girl was thinly dressed; she shivered, and pressed quite unselfconsciously against Brianna for warmth. Brianna had a blue woolen arisaid provided by Jenny; she wrapped her arms and the shawl ends around the younger girl, finding as much comfort in the embrace as she gave.
“It will be all right,” she said, to herself as much as to Lizzie.
The pale blond head bobbed briefly under her chin; she couldn’t tell whether it was a nod, or only Lizzie’s attempt to get the wind-whipped strands of hair out of her eyes. Elf-locks snatched from her own thick plait fluttered in the stiff salt breeze, echoing the pull of the huge sails above. Despite her misgivings, she felt her spirits start to rise with the wind. She had survived a good many partings so far; she would survive this. That was what made this leaving hard, she thought. She had already lost father, mother, lover, home, and friends. She was alone by necessity, and also by choice. But then to find both home and family again so unexpectedly at Lallybroch had caught her unaware. She would have given almost anything to stay—just a little longer.
But there were promises to keep, losses to be made good. Then she could come back. To Scotland. And to Roger.
She shifted her arm, feeling his thin silver band warm on her wrist under the shawl, the metal heated by her own flesh. Un peu…beaucoup…Her other hand gripped the cloth together, exposed to the wind and damp with sea spray. If it hadn’t been so cold, she might not have noticed the sudden warmth of the drop that fell on the back of her hand.
Lizzie stood stiff as a stick, her arms hugged tight around herself. Her ears were large and transparent, her hair fine and thin, sleek to her skull. Her ears poked out like a mouse’s, tender and fragile in the soft deep light of the low night sun.
Brianna reached up and wiped away the tears by touch. Her own eyes were dry, and her mouth set firm as she looked out at the land over Lizzie’s head, but the cold face and quivering lips against her hand might as well have been her own.
They stood for some time silently, until the last of the land was gone.
36
YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN
Inverness, July 1769
Roger walked slowly through the town, looking around him with a mixture of fascination and delight. Inverness had changed a bit in two hundred-odd years, no doubt of it, and yet it was recognizably the same town; a good deal smaller, to be sure, with half its muddy streets unpaved, and yet he knew this street he was walking down, had walked down it a hundred times before.
It was Huntly Street, and while most of the small shops and buildings were unfamiliar, across the river stood the Old High Church—not so Old, now—its stubby steeple blunt as ever. Surely if he went inside, Mrs. Dunvegan, the minister’s wife, would be setting out flowers in the chancel, ready for the Sunday service. But she wouldn’t—Mrs. Dunvegan hadn’t happened yet, with her thick wool sweaters and the terrible pot pies with which she tormented the sick of her husband’s parish. Yet the small stone kirk stood solid and familiar, in the charge of a stranger.
His father’s own church wasn’t here; it had been—would be?—built in 1837. Likewise the manse, which had always seemed so elderly and decrepit, had not been built until the early 1900s. He had passed the site on his way; there was nothing there now save a tangle of cinquefoil and sweet broom, and a single small rowan sapling that sprouted from the underbrush, leaves fluttering in the light wind.
There was the same damp coolness to the air, tingling with freshness—but the overlying stink of motor exhaust was gone, replaced by a distant reek of sewage. The most striking absence was the churches; where both banks of the river would one day sport a noble profusion of steeples and spires, now there was nothing save a scatter of small buildings.
There was only the one stone footbridge, but the River Ness itself was naturally much the same. The river was low and the same gulls sat in the riffles, squawking companionably to one another as they picked small fish from among the stones just under the water’s surface.
“Luck to you, mate,” he said to a fat gull who sat on the bridge, and crossed the river into the town.
Here and there, a gracious residence sat comfortably insulated by its wide grounds, a grand lady spreading her skirts, ignoring the presence of the hoi polloi nearby. There was Mountgerald in the distance, the big house looking precisely as he had always known it, save that the great copper beeches that would in future surround the house had not yet been planted; instead, a row of spindly Italian cypresses leaned dismally against the garden wall, looking homesick for their sunny birthplace.
For all its elegance, Mountgerald was reputed to have been built in the oldest of the old ways—with the foundation laid over the body of a human sacrifice. By report, a workman had been lured into the hole of the cellar, and a great stone dropped onto him from the top of the newly built wall, crushing him to death. He had—so local history said—been buried there in the cellar, his blood a propitiation to the hungry spirits of the earth, who thus satisfied, had allowed the edifice to stand prosperous and untroubled through the years.
The house could be no more than twenty or thirty years old now, Roger thought. There might easily be people in the town who had worked on its building; who knew exactly what had happened in that cellar, to whom, and why.