The Fiery Cross (80 page)

“Are you kidding? I haven’t been out after midnight in years.” She grinned back at him, swirling the cloak around her shoulders. “Got everything?”

“All but the salt.” Roger nodded toward a canvas bag on the counter. A firstfoot was to bring gifts to the house: an egg, a faggot of wood, a bit of salt—and a bit of whisky, thus insuring that the household would not lack for necessities during the coming year.

“Right. Where did I—oh, Christ!” Swinging open the cupboard door to search for the salt, I was confronted by a pair of glowing eyes, glaring out of the darkness at me.

“Good grief.” I put a hand over my chest, to keep my heart from leaping out, waving the other hand weakly at Roger, who had sprung up at my cry, ready to defend me. “Not to worry—it’s just the cat.”

Adso had taken refuge from the party, bringing along the remains of a freshly killed mouse for company. He growled at me, evidently thinking I meant to snatch this treat for myself, but I pushed him crossly aside, digging the small bag of ground salt out from behind his furry hindquarters.

I closed the cupboard door, leaving Adso to his feast, and handed Roger the salt. He took it, laying down the object he had had in his hand.

“Where did ye get that wee auld wifie?” he asked, nodding toward the object as he put the salt away in his bag. I glanced at the counter, and saw that he had been examining the little pink stone figure that Mrs. Bug had given me.

“Mrs. Bug,” I replied. “She says it’s a fertility charm—which is certainly what it looks like. It
is
very old, then?” I’d thought it must be, and seeing Roger’s interest confirmed the impression.

He nodded, still looking at the thing.

“Very old. The ones I’ve seen in museums are dated at thousands of years.” He traced the bulbous outlines of the stone with a reverent forefinger.

Brianna moved closer to see, and without thinking, I set a hand on her arm.

“What?” she said, turning her head to smile at me. “I shouldn’t touch it? Do they work
that
well?”

“No, of course not.”

I took my hand away, laughing, but feeling rather self-conscious. At the same time, I became aware that I would really rather she
didn’t
touch it, and was relieved when she merely bent down to examine it, leaving it on the counter. Roger was looking at it, too—or rather, he was looking at Brianna, his eyes fixed on the back of her head with an odd intensity. I could almost imagine that he was willing her to touch the thing, as strongly as I was willing her not to.

Beauchamp
, I said silently to myself,
you have had much too much to drink tonight.
All the same, I reached out by impulse and scooped the figure up, dropping it into my pocket.

“Come on! We have to go!” The odd mood of the moment abruptly broken, Brianna straightened up and turned to Roger, urging him.

“Aye, right. Let’s go, then.” He slung the bag over his shoulder and smiled at me, then took her arm and they disappeared, letting the surgery door close behind them.

I put out the candle, ready to follow them, and then stopped, suddenly reluctant to go back at once to the chaos of the celebration.

I could feel the whole house in movement, throbbing around me, and light flowed under the door from the hall. Just here, though, it was quiet. In the silence, I felt the weight of the little idol in my pocket, and pressed it, hard and lumpy against my leg.

There is nothing special about January the first, save the meaning we give to it. The ancients celebrated a new year at Imbolc, at the beginning of February, when the winter slackens and the light begins to come back—or the date of the spring equinox, when the world lies in balance between the powers of dark and light. And yet I stood there in the dark, listening to the sound of the cat chewing and slobbering in the cupboard, and felt the power of the earth shift and stir beneath my feet as the year—or something—prepared to change. There was noise and the sense of a crowd nearby, and yet I stood alone, while the feeling rose through me, hummed in my blood.

The odd thing was that it was not strange in the slightest. It was nothing that came from outside me, but only the acknowledgment of something I already possessed, and recognized, though I had no notion what to call it. But midnight was fast approaching. Still wondering, I opened the door, and stepped into the light and clamor of the hall.

A shout from across the hall betokened the arrival of the magic hour, as announced by Mr. Guthrie’s timepiece, and the men came jostling out of Jamie’s office, joking and pushing, faces turned expectantly toward the door.

Nothing happened. Had Roger decided to go to the back door, given the crowd in the kitchen? I turned to look down the hall, but no, the kitchen doorway was crowded with faces, all looking back at me in expectation.

Still no knock at the door, and there was a small stir of restiveness in the hallway, and a lull in conversation, one of those awkward silences when no one wants to talk for fear of sudden interruption.

Then I heard the sound of footsteps on the porch, and a rapid knock, one-two-three. Jamie, as householder, stepped forward to fling the door open and bid the firstfoot welcome. I was near enough to see the look of astonishment on his face, and looked quickly to see what had caused it.

Instead of Roger and Brianna, two smaller figures stood on the porch. Skinny and bedraggled, but definitely dark-haired, the two Beardsley twins stepped shyly in together, at Jamie’s gesture.

“A happy New Year to you, Mr. Fraser,” said Josiah, in a bullfrog croak. He bowed politely to me, still holding his brother by the arm. “We’ve come.”

THE GENERAL AGREEMENT was that dark-haired twins were a most fortunate omen, obviously bringing twice the luck of a single firstfoot. Nonetheless, Roger and Bree—who had met the twins hesitating in the yard, and sent them up to the door—went off to do their best for the other houses on the Ridge, Bree being severely warned not to enter any house until Roger had crossed the threshold.

Fortunate or not, the appearance of the Beardsleys caused a good deal of talk. Everyone had heard of the death of Aaron Beardsley—the official version, that is, which was that he had perished of an apoplexy—and the mysterious disappearance of his wife, but the advent of the twins caused the whole affair to be raked up and talked over again. No one knew what the boys had been doing between the militia’s expedition and New Year’s; Josiah said only “wanderin’” in his raspy croak, when asked—and his brother Keziah said nothing at all, obliging everyone to talk about the Indian trader and his wife until exhaustion caused a change of subject.

Mrs. Bug took the Beardsleys at once under her wing, taking them off to the kitchen to be washed, warmed, and fed. Half the partygoers had gone home to be firstfooted; those who would not leave ’til morning split into several groups. The younger people returned to the barn to dance—or to seek a bit of privacy among the hay bales—the older ones sat to talk of memories by the hearth, and those who had overindulged in dance or whisky curled up in any convenient corner—and quite a few inconvenient ones—to sleep.

I found Jamie in his study, leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, a drawing of some kind on the table before him. He wasn’t asleep, and opened his eyes when he heard my step.

“Happy New Year,” I said softly, and bent to kiss him.

“A guid New Year to you,
a nighean donn
.” He was warm and smelled faintly of beer and dried sweat.

“Still want to go outside?” I asked, with a glance at the window. The moon had set long since, and the stars burned faint and cold in the sky. The yard outside was bleak and black.

“No,” he said frankly, rubbing a hand over his face. “I want to go to bed.” He yawned and blinked, trying to smooth down the disheveled bits of hair sticking up on the top of his head. “I want you to come, too, though,” he added, generously.

“I’d like nothing better,” I assured him. “What’s that?” I circled round behind him, looking over his shoulder at the drawing, which seemed to be some sort of floor plan, with mathematical calculations scribbled in the margins.

He sat up, looking a trifle more alert.

“Ah. Well, this is wee Roger’s gift to Brianna, for Hogmanay.”

“He’s building her a house? But they—”

“Not her.” He grinned up at me, hands flat on either side of the drawing. “The Chisholms.”

Roger, with a guile that would have become Jamie himself, had scouted round among the settlers on the Ridge, and engineered an agreement between Ronnie Sinclair and Geordie Chisholm.

Ronnie had a large and commodious cabin next to his cooperage. So the agreement was that Ronnie, who was unmarried, would move into the cooper’s shop, where he could easily sleep. The Chisholms would then move into Ronnie’s cabin, to which they would at once—weather allowing—add two rooms, as per the plan on Jamie’s table. In return, Mrs. Chisholm would undertake to make Ronnie’s meals and do his washing. In the spring, when the Chisholms took possession of their own homestead and built a house there, Ronnie would take back his newly enlarged cabin—when the grandness of his improved accommodation might prove sufficient inducement for some young woman to accept his proposal of marriage, he hoped.

“And in the meantime, Roger and Bree get back their cabin, Lizzie and her father stop sleeping in the surgery, and everything is beer and skittles!” I squeezed his shoulders, delighted. “That’s a wonderful arrangement!”

“What’s a skittle?” he inquired, frowning back at me in puzzlement.

“One of a set of ninepins,” I said. “I believe the expression is meant to exemplify a state of general delight with prevailing conditions. Did you do the plan?”

“Aye. Geordie’s no carpenter, and I dinna want the place to fall down about his ears.” He squinted at the drawings, then took a quill from the jar, flipped open the inkwell, and made a small correction to one of the figures.

“There,” he said, dropping the quill. “That’ll do. Wee Roger wants to show it to Bree when they come back tonight; I said I’d leave it out for him.”

“She’ll be thrilled.” I leaned against the back of his chair, massaging his shoulders with my hands. He leaned back, the weight of his head warm against my stomach, and closed his eyes, sighing in pleasure.

“Headache?” I asked softly, seeing the vertical line between his eyes.

“Aye, just a bit. Oh, aye, that’s nice.” I had moved my hands to his head, gently rubbing his temples.

The house had quieted, though I could still hear the rumble of voices in the kitchen. Beyond them, the high sweet sound of Evan’s fiddle drifted through the cold, still air.

“‘My Brown-Haired Maid,’” I said, sighing reminiscently. “I do love that song.” I pulled loose the ribbon binding his plait, and unbraided the hair, enjoying the soft, warm feel of it as I spread it with my fingers.

“It’s rather odd that you don’t have an ear for music,” I said, making small talk to distract him, as I smoothed the ruddy arcs of his brows, pressing just within the edge of the orbit. “I don’t know why, but an aptitude for mathematics often goes along with one for music. Bree has both.”

“I used to,” he said absently.

“Used to what?”

“Have both.” He sighed and bent forward to stretch his neck, his elbows resting on the table. “Oh, Christ. Please. Oh, aye. Ah!”

“Really?” I massaged his neck and shoulders, kneading the tight muscles hard through the cloth. “You mean you used to be able to
sing
?” It was a family joke; while possessed of a fine speaking voice, Jamie’s sense of pitch was so erratic that any song in his voice was a chant so tuneless that babies were stunned, rather than lulled, to sleep.

“Well, perhaps not that, so much.” I could hear the smile in his voice, muffled by the fall of hair that hid his face. “I could tell one tune from another, though—or say if a song was sung badly or well. Now it’s no but noise or screeching.” He shrugged, dismissing it.

“What happened?” I asked. “And when?”

“Oh, it was before I kent ye, Sassenach. In fact, quite soon before.” He lifted a hand, reaching toward the back of his head. “Do ye recall, I’d been in France? It was on my way back wi’ Dougal MacKenzie and his men, when Murtagh came across ye, wanderin’ the Highlands in your shift. . . .”

He spoke lightly, but my fingers had found the old scar under his hair. It was no more now than a thread, the welted gash healed to a hairbreadth line. Still, it had been an eight-inch wound, laid open with an ax. It had nearly killed him at the time, I knew; he had lain near death in a French abbey for four months, and suffered from crippling headaches for years.

“It was that? You mean that you . . . couldn’t hear music anymore, after you were hurt?”

His shoulders lifted briefly in a shrug.

“I hear no music but the sound of drums,” he said simply. “I’ve the rhythm of it still, but the tune is gone.”

I stopped, my hands on his shoulders, and he turned to look back at me, smiling, trying to make a joke of it.

“Dinna be troubled for it, Sassenach; it’s no great matter. I didna sing well even when I
could
hear it. And Dougal didna kill me, after all.”

“Dougal? You do think it was Dougal, then?” I was surprised at the certainty in his voice. He had thought at the time that it might perhaps have been his uncle Dougal who had made the murderous attack upon him—and then, surprised by his own men before being able to finish the job, had pretended instead to have found him wounded. But there had been no evidence to say for sure.

“Oh, aye.” He looked surprised, too, but then his face changed, realizing.

“Oh, aye,” he said again, more slowly. “I hadna thought—you couldna tell what he said, could you? When he died, I mean—Dougal.” My hands were still resting on his shoulders, and I felt an involuntary shiver run through him. It spread through my hands and up my arms, raising the hairs all the way to the back of my neck.

As clearly as though the scene took place before me now, I could see that attic room in Culloden House. The bits and pieces of discarded furniture, things toppled and rolling from the struggle—and on the floor at my feet, Jamie crouching, grappling with Dougal’s body as it bucked and strained, blood and air bubbling from the wound where Jamie’s dirk had pierced the hollow of his throat. Dougal’s face, blanched and mottled as his lifeblood drained away, eyes fierce black and fixed on Jamie as his mouth moved in Gaelic silence, saying . . . something. And Jamie’s face, as white as Dougal’s, eyes locked on the dying man’s lips, reading that last message.