Dragonfly in Amber

“I had to know.” There was a faint quaver in her voice, but he saw her chin firm instantly, suppressing it. “I had to know if he’d done it—if he’d saved his men—or if he’d sacrificed himself for nothing. And I had to tell Brianna. Even if she doesn’t believe it—if she never believes it. Jamie was her father. I had to tell her.”

  “Yes, I see that. And you couldn’t do it while Dr. Randall—your hus—I mean, Frank,” he corrected himself, flushing, “was alive.”

  She smiled faintly. “It’s all right; you can call Frank my husband. He was, after all, for a good many years. And Bree’s right, in a way—he was her father, as well as Jamie.” She glanced down at her hands, and spread the fingers of both, so the light gleamed from the two rings she wore, silver and gold. Roger was struck by a thought.

  “Your ring,” he said, coming to stand close by her again. “The silver one. Is there a maker’s mark in it? Some of the eighteenth-century Scottish silversmiths used them. It might not be proof positive, but it’s something.”

  Claire looked startled. Her left hand covered the right protectively, fingers rubbing the wide silver band with its pattern of Highland interlace and thistle blooms.

  “I don’t know,” she said. A faint blush rose in her cheeks. “I haven’t seen inside it. I’ve never taken it off.” She twisted the ring slowly over the joint of the knuckle; her fingers were slender, but from long wearing, the ring had left a groove in her flesh.

  She squinted at the inside of the ring, then rose and brought it to the table, where she stood next to Roger, tilting the silver circle to catch the light from the table lamp.

  “There are words in it,” she said wonderingly. “I never realized that he’d…Oh, dear God.” Her voice broke, and the ring slipped from her fingers, rattling on the table with a tiny metal chime. Roger hurriedly scooped it up, but she had turned away, fists held tight against her middle. He knew she didn’t want him to see her face; the control she had kept through the long hours of the day and the scene with Brianna had deserted her now.

  He stood for a minute, feeling unbearably awkward and out of place. With a terrible feeling that he was violating a privacy that ran deeper than anything he had ever known, but not knowing what else to do, he lifted the tiny metal circle to the light and read the words inside.

  “Da mi basia mille…” But it was Claire’s voice that spoke the words, not his. Her voice was shaky, and he could tell that she was crying, but it was coming back under her control. She couldn’t let go for long; the power of what she held leashed could so easily destroy her.

  “It’s Catullus. A bit of a love poem. Hugh.…Hugh Munro—he gave me the poem for a wedding present, wrapped around a bit of amber with a dragonfly inside it.” Her hands, still curled into fists, had now dropped to her sides. “I couldn’t say it all, still, but the one bit—I know that much.” Her voice was growing steadier as she spoke, but she kept her back turned to Roger. The small silver circle glowed in his palm, still warm with the heat of the finger it had left.

  “…da mi basia mille…”

  Still turned away, she went on, translating,

  “Then let amorous kisses dwell

  On our lips, begin and tell

  A Thousand and a Hundred score

  A Hundred, and a Thousand more.”

  When she had finished, she stood still a moment, then slowly turned to face him again. Her cheeks were flushed and wet, and her lashes clumped together, but she was superficially calm.

  “A hundred, and a thousand more,” she said, with a feeble attempt at a smile. “But no maker’s mark. So that isn’t proof, either.”

  “Yes, it is.” Roger found there seemed to be something sticking in his own throat, and hastily cleared it. “It’s absolute proof. To me.”

  Something lit in the depths of her eyes, and the smile grew real. Then the tears welled up and overflowed as she lost her grip once and for all.

  “I’m sorry,” she said at last. She was sitting on the sofa, elbows on her knees, face half-buried in one of the Reverend Mr. Wakefield’s huge white handkerchiefs. Roger sat close beside her, almost touching. She seemed very small and vulnerable. He wanted to pat the ash-brown curls, but felt too shy to do it.

  “I never thought…it never occurred to me,” she said, blowing her nose again. “I didn’t know how much it would mean, to have someone believe me.”

  “Even if it isn’t Brianna?”

  She grimaced slightly at his words, brushing back her hair with one hand as she straightened.

  “It was a shock,” she defended her daughter. “Naturally, she couldn’t—she was so fond of her father—of Frank, I mean,” she amended hastily. “I knew she might not be able to take it all in at first. But…surely when she’s had time to think about it, ask questions…” Her voice faded, and the shoulders of her white linen suit slumped under the weight of the words.

  As though to distract herself, she glanced at the table, where the stack of shiny-covered books still sat, undisturbed.

  “It’s odd, isn’t it? To live twenty years with a Jacobite scholar, and to be so afraid of what I might learn that I could never bear to open one of his books?” She shook her head, still staring at the books. “I don’t know what happened to many of them—I couldn’t stand to find out. All the men I knew; I couldn’t forget them. But I could bury them, keep their memory at bay. For a time.”

  And that time now was ended, and another begun. Roger picked up the book from the top of the stack, weighing it in his hands, as if it were a responsibility. Perhaps it would take her mind off Brianna, at least.

  “Do you want me to tell you?” he asked quietly.

  She hesitated for a long moment, but then nodded quickly, as though afraid she would regret the action if she paused to think about it longer.

  He licked dry lips, and began to talk. He didn’t need to refer to the book; these were facts known to any scholar of the period. Still, he held Frank Randall’s book against his chest, solid as a shield.

  “Francis Townsend,” he began. “The man who held Carlisle for Charles. He was captured. Tried for treason, hanged and disemboweled.”

  He paused, but the white face was drained of blood already, no further change was possible. She sat across the table from him, motionless as a pillar of salt.

  “MacDonald of Keppoch charged the field at Culloden on foot, with his brother Donald. Both of them were cut down by English cannon fire. Lord Kilmarnock fell on the field of battle, but Lord Ancrum, scouting the fallen, recognized him and saved his life from Cumberland’s men. No great favor; he was beheaded the next August on Tower Hill, together with Balmerino.” He hesitated. “Kilmarnock’s young son was lost on the field; his body was never recovered.”

  “I always liked Balmerino,” she murmured. “And the Old Fox? Lord Lovat?” Her voice was little more than a whisper. “The shadow of an ax…”

  “Yes.” Roger’s fingers stroked the slick jacket of the book unconsciously, as though reading the words within by Braille. “He was tried for treason, and condemned to be beheaded. He made a good end. All the accounts say that he met his death with great dignity.”

  A scene flashed through Roger’s mind; an anecdote from Hogarth. He recited from memory, as closely as he could. “ ‘Carried through the shouts and jeers of an English mob on his way to the Tower, the old chieftain of clan Fraser appeared nonchalant, indifferent to the missiles that sailed past his head, and almost good-humored. In reply to a shout from one elderly woman—“You’re going to get your head chopped off, you old Scotch cur!”—he leaned from his carriage window and shouted jovially back, “I expect I shall, you ugly old English bitch!” ’ ”

  She was smiling, but the sound she made was a cross between a laugh and a sob.

  “I’ll bet he did, the bloody old bastard.”

  “When he was led to the block,” Roger went on cautiously, “he asked to inspect the blade, and instructed the executioner to do a good job. He told the man, ‘Do it right, for I shall be v
ery angry indeed if you don’t.’ ”

  Tears were running down beneath her closed lids, glittering like jewels in the firelight. He made a motion toward her, but she sensed it and shook her head, eyes still closed.

  “I’m all right. Go on.”

  “There isn’t much more. Some of them survived, you know. Lochiel escaped to France.” He carefully refrained from mention of the chieftain’s brother, Archibald Cameron. The doctor had been hanged, disemboweled, and beheaded at Tyburn, his heart torn out and given to the flames. She did not seem to notice the omission.

  He finished the list rapidly, watching her. Her tears had stopped, but she sat with her head hung forward, the thick curly hair hiding all expression.

  He paused for a moment when he had finished speaking, then got up and took her firmly by the arm.

  “Come on,” he said. “You need a little air. It’s stopped raining; we’ll go outside.”

  * * *

  The air outside was fresh and cool, almost intoxicating after the stuffiness of the Reverend’s study. The heavy rain had ceased about sunset, and now, in the early evening, only the pit-a-pat dripping of trees and shrubs echoed the earlier downpour.

  I felt an almost overwhelming relief at being released from the house. I had feared this for so long, and now it was done. Even if Bree never…but no, she would. Even if it took a long time, surely she would recognize the truth. She must; it looked her in the face every morning in the mirror; it ran in the very blood of her veins. For now, I had told her everything, and I felt the lightness of a shriven soul, leaving the confessional, unburdened as yet by thought of the penance ahead.

  Rather like giving birth, I thought. A short period of great difficulty and rending pain, and the certain knowledge of sleepless nights and nerve-racking days in future. But for now, for a blessed, peaceful moment, there was nothing but a quiet euphoria that filled the soul and left no room for misgivings. Even the fresh-felt grief for the men I had known was muted out here, softened by the stars that shone through rifts in the shredding cloud.

  The night was damp with early spring, and the tires of cars passing on the main road nearby hissed on the wet pavement. Roger led me without speaking down the slope behind the house, up another past a small, mossy glade, and down again, where there was a path that led to the river. A black iron railroad bridge spanned the river here; there was an iron ladder from the path’s edge, attached to one of the girders. Someone armed with a can of white spray-paint had inscribed FREE SCOTLAND on the span with random boldness.

  In spite of the sadness of memory, I felt at peace, or nearly so. I’d done the hardest part. Bree knew now who she was. I hoped fervently that she would come to believe it in time—not only for her own sake, I knew, but also for mine. More than I could ever have admitted, even to myself, I wanted to have someone with whom to remember Jamie; someone I could talk to about him.

  I felt an overwhelming tiredness, one that touched both mind and body. But I straightened my spine just once more, forcing my body past its limits, as I had done so many times before. Soon, I promised my aching joints, my tender mind, my freshly riven heart. Soon, I could rest. I could sit alone in the small, cozy parlor of the bed-and-breakfast, alone by the fire with my ghosts. I could mourn them in peace, letting the weariness slip away with my tears, and go at last to seek the temporary oblivion of sleep, in which I might meet them alive once more.

  But not yet. There was one thing more to be done before I slept.

  * * *

  They walked in silence for some time, with no sound but the passing of distant traffic, and the closer lapping of the river at its banks. Roger felt reluctant to start any conversation, lest he risk reminding her of things she wished to forget. But the floodgates had been opened, and there was no way of holding back.

  She began to ask him small questions, hesitant and halting. He answered them as best he could, and hesitant in return, asked a few questions of his own. The freedom of talking, suddenly, after so many years of pent-up secrecy, seemed to act on her like a drug, and Roger, listening in fascination, drew her out despite herself. By the time they reached the railroad bridge, she had recovered the vigor and strength of character he had first seen in her.

  “He was a fool, and a drunkard, and a weak, silly man,” she declared passionately. “They were all fools—Lochiel, Glengarry, and the rest. They drank too much together, and filled themselves with Charlie’s foolish dreams. Talk is cheap, and Dougal was right—it’s easy to be brave, sitting over a glass of ale in a warm room. Stupid with drink, they were, and then too proud of their bloody honor to back down. They whipped their men and threatened them, bribed them and lured them—took them all to bloody ruin…for the sake of honor and glory.”

  She snorted through her nose, and was silent for a moment. Then, surprisingly, she laughed.

  “But do you know what’s really funny? That poor, silly sot and his greedy, stupid helpers; and the foolish, honorable men who couldn’t bring themselves to turn back…they had the one tiny virtue among them; they believed. And the odd thing is, that that’s all that’s endured of them—all the silliness, the incompetence, the cowardice and drunken vainglory; that’s all gone. All that’s left now of Charles Stuart and his men is the glory that they sought for and never found.

  “Perhaps Raymond was right,” she added in a softer tone; “it’s only the essence of a thing that counts. When time strips everything else away, it’s only the hardness of the bone that’s left.”

  “I suppose you must feel some bitterness against the historians,” Roger ventured. “All the writers who got it wrong—made him out a hero. I mean, you can’t go anywhere in the Highlands without seeing the Bonnie Prince on toffee tins and souvenir tourist mugs.”

  Claire shook her head, gazing off in the distance. The evening mist was growing heavier, the bushes beginning to drip again from the tips of their leaves.

  “Not the historians. No, not them. Their greatest crime is that they presume to know what happened, how things come about, when they have only what the past chose to leave behind—for the most part, they think what they were meant to think, and it’s a rare one that sees what really happened, behind the smokescreen of artifacts and paper.”

  There was a faint rumble in the distance. The evening passenger train from London, Roger knew. You could hear the whistle from the manse on clear nights.

  “No, the fault lies with the artists,” Claire went on. “The writers, the singers, the tellers of tales. It’s them that take the past and re-create it to their liking. Them that could take a fool and give you back a hero, take a sot and make him a king.”

  “Are they all liars, then?” Roger asked. Claire shrugged. In spite of the chilly air, she had taken off the jacket to her suit; the damp molded the cotton shirt to show the fineness of collarbone and shoulder blades.

  “Liars?” she asked, “or sorcerers? Do they see the bones in the dust of the earth, see the essence of a thing that was, and clothe it in new flesh, so the plodding beast reemerges as a fabulous monster?”

  “And are they wrong to do it, then?” Roger asked. The rail bridge trembled as the Flying Scotsman hit the switch below. The wavering white letters shook with vibration—FREE SCOTLAND.

  Claire stared upward at the letters, her face lit by fugitive starlight.

  “You still don’t understand, do you?” she said. She was irritated, but the husky voice didn’t rise above its normal level.

  “You don’t know why,” she said. “You don’t know, and I don’t know, and we never will know. Can’t you see? You don’t know, because you can’t say what the end is—there isn’t any end. You can’t say, ‘This particular event’ was ‘destined’ to happen, and therefore all these other things happened. What Charles did to the people of Scotland—was that the ‘thing’ that had to happen? Or was it ‘meant’ to happen as it did, and Charles’s real purpose was to be what he is now—a figurehead, an icon? Without him, would Scotland have endured two hundred year
s of union with England, and still—still”—she waved a hand at the sprawling letters overhead—“have kept its own identity?”

  “I don’t know!” said Roger, having to shout as the swinging searchlight lit the trees and track, and the train roared over the bridge above them.

  There was a solid minute of clash and roar, earthshaking noise that held them rooted to the spot. Then at last it was past, and the clatter died to a lonely crying wail as the red light of the end car swept out of sight beyond them.

  “Well, that’s the hell of it, isn’t it?” she said, turning away. “You never know, but you have to act anyway, don’t you?”

  She spread her hands suddenly, flexing the strong fingers so her rings flashed in the light.

  “You learn it when you become a doctor. Not in school—that isn’t where you learn, in any case—but when you lay your hands on people and presume to heal them. There are so many there, beyond your reach. So many you can never touch, so many whose essence you can’t find, so many who slip through your fingers. But you can’t think about them. The only thing you can do—the only thing—is to try for the one who’s in front of you. Act as though this one patient is the only person in the world—because to do otherwise is to lose that one, too. One at a time, that’s all you can do. And you learn not to despair over all the ones you can’t help, but only to do what you can.”