A Breath of Snow and Ashes (96 page)

Too far now for Roger to reach the thing; there were three benches of bodies between him and the snake. Bree, who could have dealt with it, was right away on the far side of the room. No help for it, he decided, with an inward sigh of resignation. He’d have to stop the proceedings, and in a very calm voice, call upon someone dependable—who? He cast hastily round, and spotted Ian Murray, who was within reach, thank God, to grasp the thing and take it out.

He was opening his mouth to do just this, in fact, when the snake, bored with the scenery in its view, slid rapidly round the bench and headed straight along the back row.

Roger’s eye was on the snake, so he was as surprised as anyone—including the snake, no doubt—when Jamie suddenly stooped and snatched it from the floor, whipping the startled serpent under his plaid.

Jamie was a large man, and the stir of his movement made several people look over their shoulders to see what had happened. He shifted, coughed, and endeavored to look passionately interested in Roger’s sermon. Seeing that there was nothing to look at, everyone turned back, settling themselves more comfortably.

“. . . Now, we come across the Samaritans again, do we not, in the story of the Good Samaritan? Ye’ll most of ye ken that one, but for the weans who may not have heard it yet—” Roger smiled at Jem, Germain, and Aidan, who all wriggled like worms and made small, ecstatic squeaks at the thrill of being singled out.

From the corner of his eye, he could see Jamie, standing frozen and pale as his best linen sark. Something was moving about inside said sark, and the barest hint of bright scales showed in his clenched hand—the snake was evidently trying to escape up his arm, being restrained from popping through the neck of the shirt only by Jamie’s desperate grip on its tail.

Jamie was sweating badly; so was Roger. He saw Brianna frown a little at him.

“. . . and so the Samaritan told the innkeeper to mind the poor fellow, bind up his wounds, and feed him, and he’d stop to settle the account on his way back from his business. So . . .”

Roger saw Claire lean close to Jamie, whispering something. His father-in-law shook his head. At a guess, Claire had noticed the snake—she could scarcely fail to—and was urging Jamie to go outside with it, but Jamie was nobly refusing, not wanting to further disrupt the sermon, as he couldn’t go out without pushing past a number of other standees.

Roger paused to wipe his face with the large handkerchief Brianna had provided for the purpose, and under cover of this, saw Claire reach into the slit of her skirt and draw out a large calico pocket.

She appeared to be arguing with Jamie in a whisper; he was shaking his head, looking like the Spartan with the fox at his vitals.

Then the snake’s head appeared suddenly under Jamie’s chin, tongue flicking, and Jamie’s eyes went wide. Claire stood instantly on tiptoe, seized it by the neck, and whipping the astonished reptile out of her husband’s shirt like a length of rope, crammed the writhing ball headfirst into her pocket and jerked shut the drawstring.

“Praise the Lord!” Roger blurted, to which the congregation obligingly chorused “Amen!” though looking a little puzzled at the interjection.

The man next to Claire, who had witnessed this rapid sequence of events, stared at her bug-eyed. She stuffed the pocket—now heaving with marked agitation—back into her skirt, dropped her shawl over it, and giving the gentleman beside her a “What are
you
looking at, mate?” sort of stare, faced front and adopted a look of pious concentration.

Roger made it somehow to the end, sufficiently relieved at having the snake in custody that even leading the final hymn—an interminable back-and-forth “line hymn” in which he was obliged to chant each line, this echoed by the congregation—didn’t disconcert him too much, though he had almost no voice left and what there was creaked like an unoiled hinge.

His shirt was clinging to him and the cool air outside was a balm as he stood shaking hands, bowing, accepting the kind words of his flock.

“A grand sermon, Mr. MacKenzie, grand!” Mrs. Gwilty assured him. She nudged the wizened gentleman who accompanied her, who might be either her husband or her father-in-law. “Was it no the grand sermon, then, Mr. Gwilty?”

“Mmphm,” said the wizened gentleman judiciously. “No bad, no bad. Bit short, and ye left out the fine story aboot the harlot, but nay doot ye’ll get the way of it in time.”

“Nay doubt,” Roger said, nodding and smiling, wondering,
What harlot?
“Thank ye for coming.”

“Oh, wouldna have missed it for the world,” the next lady informed him. “Though the singing wasna quite what one might have hoped for, was it?”

“No, I’m afraid not. Perhaps next time—”

“I never did care for Psalm 109, it’s that dreary. Next time, perhaps ye’ll give us one o’ the mair sprightly ones, aye?”

“Aye, I expect—”

“DaddyDaddyDaddy!” Jem cannoned into his legs, clutching him affectionately round the thighs and nearly knocking him over.

“Nice job,” said Brianna, looking amused. “What was going on in the back of the room? You kept looking back there, but I couldn’t see anything, and—”

“Fine sermon, sir, fine sermon!” The older Mr. Ogilvie bowed to him, then walked off, his wife’s hand in his arm, saying to her, “The puir lad canna carry a tune in his shoe, but the preaching wasna sae bad, all things considered.”

Germain and Aidan joined Jemmy, all trying to hug him at once, and he did his best to encompass them, smile at everyone, and nod agreeably to suggestions that he speak louder, preach in the Gaelic, refrain from Latin (what Latin?) and Popish references, try to look more sober, try to look happier, try not to twitch, and put in more stories.

Jamie came out, and gravely shook his hand.

“Verra nice,” he said.

“Thanks.” Roger struggled to find words. “You—well. Thanks,” he repeated.

“Greater love hath no man,”
Claire observed, smiling at him from behind Jamie’s elbow. The wind lifted her shawl, and he could see the side of her skirt moving oddly.

Jamie made a small amused sound.

“Mmphm. Ye might drop by, maybe, and have a word wi’ Rab McAfee and Isaiah Lachlan—perhaps a short sermon on the text,
‘He who loveth his son chasteneth him betimes?’”

“McAfee and Lachlan. Aye, I’ll do that.” Or perhaps he’d just get the McAfees and Jacky Lachlan alone and see to the chastening himself.

He saw off the last of the congregation, took his leave of Tom Christie and his family with thanks, and headed for home and luncheon, his own family in tow. Normally, there would be another service in the afternoon, but he wasn’t up to that yet.

Old Mrs. Abernathy was a little way before them on the path, being assisted by her friend, the slightly less-ancient Mrs. Coinneach.

“A nice-looking lad,” Mrs. Abernathy was remarking, her cracked old voice floating back on the crisp fall air. “But nervous, och! Sweating rivers, did ye see?”

“Aye, well, shy, I suppose,” Mrs. Coinneach replied comfortably. “I expect he’ll settle, though, in time.”

ROGER LAY IN BED, savoring the lingering sense of the day’s accomplishments, the relief of disasters averted, and the sight of his wife, the light from the embers glowing through the thin linen of her shift as she knelt by the hearth, touching her skin and the ends of her hair with light, so that she looked illuminated from within.

The fire banked for the night, she rose and peered at Jemmy, curled up in his trundle and looking deceptively angelic, before coming to bed.

“You look contemplative,” she said, smiling as she climbed onto the mattress. “What are you thinking about?”

“Trying to think what on earth I might have said that Mr. MacNeill could possibly have thought was Latin, let alone a Catholic reference,” he replied, companionably making room for her.

“You didn’t start singing ‘Ave Maria’ or anything,” she assured him. “I would have noticed.”

“Mm,” he said, and coughed. “Don’t mention the singing, aye?”

“It’ll get better,” she said firmly, and turned, pushing and squirming, to make a nest for herself. The mattress was stuffed with wool, much more comfortable—and a hell of a lot quieter—than corn shucks, but very prone to lumps and odd hollows.

“Aye, maybe,” he said, though thinking,
Maybe. But it will never be what it was.
No point in thinking of that, though; he’d grieved as much as he meant to. It was time to make the best of things and get on.

Comfortable at last, she turned to him, sighing in contentment as her body seemed to melt momentarily and remold itself around him—one of her many small, miraculous talents. She had put her hair in a thick plait for sleeping, and he ran his hand down its length, recalling the snake with a brief shudder. He wondered what Claire had done with it. Likely set it free in her garden to eat mice, pragmatist that she was.

“Did you figure out which harlot story it was you left out?” Brianna murmured, moving her hips against his in a casual but definitely nonaccidental sort of way.

“No. There are a terrible lot of harlots in the Bible.” He took the tip of her ear very gently between his teeth and she drew a deep, sudden breath.

“Whassa harlot?” said a small, sleepy voice from the trundle.

“Go to sleep, mate—I’ll tell ye in the morning,” Roger called, and slid a hand down over Brianna’s very round, very solid, very warm hip.

Jemmy would almost certainly be asleep in seconds, but they contented themselves with small, secret touches beneath the bedclothes, waiting to be sure he was
soundly
asleep. He slept like the dead, once firmly in dreamland, but had more than once roused from the drowsy foreshore at very awkward moments, disturbed by his parents’ unseemly noises.

“Is it like you thought it would be?” Bree asked, putting a thoughtful thumb on his nipple and rotating it.

“Is what—oh, the preaching. Well, bar the snake . . .”

“Not just that—the whole thing. Do you think . . .” Her eyes searched his, and he tried to keep his mind on what she was saying, rather than what she was doing.

“Ah . . .” His hand clamped over hers, and he took a deep breath. “Yeah. Ye mean am I still sure? I am; I wouldna have done such a thing if I weren’t.”

“Dad—Daddy—always said it was a great blessing to have a calling, to
know
that you were meant to be something in particular. Do you think you’ve always had a—a calling?”

“Well, for a time, I had the fixed notion that I was meant to be a deep-sea diver,” he said. “Don’t laugh; I mean it. What about you?”

“Me?” She looked surprised, then pursed her lips, thinking. “Well, I went to a Catholic school, so we were all urged to think about becoming priests or nuns—but I was pretty sure I didn’t have a religious vocation.”

“Thank God,” he said, with a fervency that made her laugh.

“And then for quite a while, I thought I should be a historian—that I wanted to be one. And it
was
interesting,” she said slowly. “I could do it. But—what I really wanted was to build things. To make things.” She pulled her hand out from under his and waggled her fingers, long and graceful. “But I don’t know that that’s a calling, really.”

“Do ye not think motherhood is a calling, of sorts?” He was on delicate ground here. She was several days late, but neither of them had mentioned it—or was going to, yet.

She cast a quick glance over her shoulder at the trundle bed, and made a small grimace, whose import he couldn’t read.

“Can you call something that’s accidental for most people a calling?” she asked. “I don’t mean it isn’t important—but shouldn’t there be some choice involved?”

Choice. Well, Jem had been thoroughly an accident, but this one—if there was one—they’d chosen, all right.

“I don’t know.” He smoothed the long rope of her braid against her spine, and she pressed closer in reflex. He thought she felt somehow riper than usual; something about the feel of her breasts. Softer. Bigger.

“Jem’s asleep,” she said softly, and he heard the surprisingly deep, slow breathing from the trundle. She put her hand back on his chest, the other somewhat lower.

A little later, drifting toward dreamland himself, he heard her say something, and tried to rouse enough to ask her what it was, but managed only a small interrogative “Mm?”

“I’ve always thought I
do
have a calling,” she repeated, looking upward at the shadows in the beamed ceiling. “Something I was meant to do. But I don’t know yet what it is.”

“Well, ye definitely weren’t meant to be a nun,” he said drowsily. “Beyond that—I couldna say.”