“No,” he said at last. “Ye can’t. I need ye to do something else for me, Ian. I need ye to go home.”
“Home? What—”
“I need ye to go home and take care of Lallybroch—and my sister. I—I canna go. Not yet.” He bit his lower lip hard.
“Ye’ve got tenants and friends enough there,” Ian protested. “Ye need me here, man. I’m no leavin’ ye alone, aye? When ye go back, we’ll go together.” And he turned over in his plaid with an air of finality.
Jamie lay with his eyes tight closed, ignoring the singing and conversation near the fire, the beauty of the night sky over him, and the nagging pain in his back. He should perhaps be praying for the soul of the dead Jew, but he had no time for that just now. He was trying to find his father.
Brian Fraser’s soul must still exist, and he was positive that his father was in heaven. But surely there must be some way to reach him, to sense him. When first Jamie had left home, to foster with Dougal at Beannachd, he’d been lonely and homesick, but Da had told him he would be, and not to trouble overmuch about it.
“Ye think of me, Jamie, and Jenny and Lallybroch. Ye’ll not see us, but we’ll be here nonetheless, and thinking of you. Look up at night, and see the stars, and ken we see them, too.”
He opened his eyes a slit, but the stars swam, their brightness blurred. He squeezed his eyes shut again and felt the warm glide of a single tear down his temple. He couldn’t think about Jenny. Or Lallybroch. The homesickness at Dougal’s had stopped. The strangeness when he went to Paris had eased. This wouldn’t stop, but he’d have to go on living anyway.
Where are ye, Da? he thought in anguish. Da, I’m sorry!
He prayed as he walked next day, making his way doggedly from one Hail Mary to the next, using his fingers to count the Rosary. For a time, it kept him from thinking and gave him a little peace. But eventually the slippery thoughts came stealing back, memories in small flashes, quick as sun on water. Some he fought off—Captain Randall’s voice, playful as he took the cat in hand—the fearful prickle of the hairs on his body in the cold wind when he took his shirt off—the surgeon’s “I see he’s made a mess of you, boy …”
But some memories he seized, no matter how painful they were. The feel of his da’s hands, hard on his arms, holding him steady. The guards had been taking him somewhere, he didn’t recall and it didn’t matter, just suddenly his da was there before him, in the yard of the prison, and he’d stepped forward fast when he saw Jamie, a look of joy and eagerness on his face, this blasted into shock the next moment, when he saw what they’d done to him.
“Are ye bad hurt, Jamie?”
“No, Da, I’ll be all right.”
For a minute, he had been. So heartened by seeing his father, sure it would all come right—and then he’d remembered Jenny, taking that bastard into the house, sacrificing herself for—
He cut that one off short, too, saying, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee!” savagely out loud, to the startlement of Petit Phillipe, who was scuttling along beside him on his short bandy legs. “Blessed art thou amongst women,” Phillipe chimed in obligingly. “Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, amen!”
“Hail Mary,” said Père Renault’s deep voice behind him, taking it up, and within seconds seven or eight of them were saying it, marching solemnly to the rhythm, and then a few more … Jamie himself fell silent, unnoticed. But he felt the wall of prayer a barricade between himself and the wicked sly thoughts and, closing his eyes briefly, felt his father walk beside him, and Brian Fraser’s last kiss soft as the wind on his cheek.
They reached Bordeaux just before sunset, and D’Eglise took the wagon off with a small guard, leaving the other men free to explore the delights of the city—though such exploration was somewhat constrained by the fact that they hadn’t yet been paid. They’d get their money after the goods were delivered next day.
Ian, who’d been in Bordeaux before, led the way to a large, noisy tavern with drinkable wine and large portions.
“The barmaids are pretty, too,” he observed, watching one of these creatures wend her way deftly through a crowd of groping hands.
“Is it a brothel upstairs?” Jamie asked, out of curiosity, having heard a few stories.
“I dinna ken,” Ian said, with a certain regret, though in fact he’d never been to a brothel, out of a mixture of penury and fear of catching the pox. His heart beat a little faster at the thought, though. “D’ye want to go and find out, later?”
Jamie hesitated.
“I—well. No, I dinna think so.” He turned his face toward Ian and spoke very quietly. “I promised Da I wouldna go wi’ whores, when I went to Paris. And now … I couldna do it without … thinkin’ of him, ken?”
Ian nodded, feeling as much relief as disappointment.
“Time enough another day,” he said philosophically, and signaled for another jug. The barmaid didn’t see him, though, and Jamie snaked out a long arm and tugged at her apron. She whirled, scowling, but seeing Jamie’s face, wearing its best blue-eyed smile, chose to smile back and take the order.
Several other men from D’Eglise’s band were in the tavern, and this byplay didn’t pass unnoticed.
Juanito, at a nearby table, glanced at Jamie, raised a derisive eyebrow, then said something to Raoul in the Jewish sort of Spanish they called Ladino; both men laughed.
“You know what causes warts, friend?” Jamie said pleasantly—in Biblical Hebrew. “Demons inside a man, trying to emerge through the skin.” He spoke slowly enough that Ian could follow this, and Ian in turn broke out laughing—as much at the looks on the two Jews’ faces as at Jamie’s remark.
Juanito’s lumpy face darkened, but Raoul looked sharply at Ian, first at his face, then, deliberately, at his crotch. Ian shook his head, still grinning, and Raoul shrugged but returned the smile, then took Juanito by the arm, tugging him off in the direction of the back room, where dicing was to be found.
“What did you say to him?” the barmaid asked, glancing after the departing pair, then looking back wide-eyed at Jamie. “And what tongue did you say it in?”
Jamie was glad to have the wide brown eyes to gaze into; it was causing his neck considerable strain to keep his head from tilting farther down in order to gaze into her décolletage. The charming hollow between her breasts drew the eye …
“Oh, nothing but a little bonhomie,” he said, grinning down at her. “I said it in Hebrew.” He wanted to impress her, and he did, but not the way he’d meant to. Her half-smile vanished, and she edged back a little.
“Oh,” she said. “Your pardon, sir, I’m needed …” and with a vaguely apologetic flip of the hand, she vanished into the throng of customers, pitcher in hand.
“Eejit,” Ian said, coming up beside him. “What did ye tell her that for? Now she thinks ye’re a Jew.”
Jamie’s mouth fell open in shock. “What, me? How, then?” he demanded, looking down at himself. He’d meant his Highland dress, but Ian looked critically at him and shook his head.
“Ye’ve got the lang neb and the red hair,” he pointed out. “Half the Spanish Jews I’ve seen look like that, and some of them are a good size, too. For all yon lass kens, ye stole the plaid off somebody ye killed.”