The Fiery Cross, Page 52

  His eyes opened, and his head snapped up, The tipper struck the drum with a sudden tbunk! and it began with a shout from the crowd. His feet struck down on thV pounded earth, to the north and the south, to the east and the west, flashing swift between the swords.

  His feet struck soundless, sure on the ground, and his shadow danced on the wall behind him, looming tall, long arms upraised. His face was still toward me, but he didn't see me any longer, 1 was sure.

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  The muscles of his legs were strong as a leaping stag's beneath the hem of his kilt, and he danced with all the skill of the warrior he had been and still was. But I thought he danced now only for the sake of memory, that those watching might not forget; danced, with the sweat flying from his brow as he worked, and a look of unutterable distance in his eyes.

  PEOPLE WERE STILL TALKING of it when we adjourned to the house, just before midnight, for stovies, beer, and cider, before the first-footing.

  Mrs. Bug brought out a basket of apples, and gathered all the young unmarried girls together in a comer of the kitchen, where-with much giggling and glancing over shoulders toward the young men--each peeled a fruit, keeping the peeling in one piece. Each girl tossed her peel behind her, and the group all whirled round to cluster and exclaim over the fallen strip and see what was the shape of the letter it made.

  Apple peelings being by their nature fairly circular, there were a good many "Us, "G"s, and "O"s discovered-good news for Charley Chisholm, and Young Geordie Sutherland-and much speculation as to whether "Angus Og" might be the meaning of an "0" or not, for Angus Og MacLeod was a canty lad, and much liked, while the only "Owen" was an elderly widower, about five feet tall, and with a large wen on his face.

  I had taken Jemmy up to put him to bed, and after depositing him limp and snoring in his cradle, came down in time to see Lizzie cast her peeling.

  "'C'!" chorused two of the Guthrie girls, almost knocking heads as they benttolook.

  "No, no, it's a 'J'!

  Appealed to as the resident expert, Mrs. Bug bent down, eyeing the strip of red peel with her head on one side, like a robin sizing up a likely worm.

  "A 'J' it is, to be sure," she ruled, straightening up, and the group burst out in giggles, turning as one to stare at John Lowry, a young farmer from Woolam's Mill, who peered over his shoulder at them in total bewilderment.

  I caught a flash of red from the corner of my eye, and turned to see Brianna in the doorway to the hall. She tilted her head, beckoning me, and I hurried to join her.

  "Roger's ready to go out, but we couldn't find the ground salt; it wasn't in the pantry. Do you have it in your surgery?"

  "Oh! Yes, I have," I said guiltily. "I'd been using it to dry snakeroot, and forgot to put it back."

  Guests packed the porches and fined the wide hallway, spilling out of the kitchen and Jamie's study, all talking, drinking, and eating, and I threaded my way through the crush after her toward my surgery, exchanging greetings as I ducked brandished cups of cider, stovie crumbs crunching under my feet.

  The surgery itself was nearly empty, though; people tended to avoid it, through superstition, painfill associations, or simple wariness, and I had not encouraged them to go in, leaving the room dark, with no fire burning. Only one candle was burning in the room now, and the only person present was Roger, who was poking among the bits and pieces I'd lcft on the counter.

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  He looked up as we entered, smiling. Still faintly flushed from the dancing, he had put his coat back on and draped a woolen scarf round his neck; his cloak lay over the stool beside him. Custom held that the most fortunate "firstfoot" on a Hogmanay was a tall and handsome dark-haired man; to welcome one as the first visitor across the threshold after midnight brought good fortune to the house for the coming year.

  Roger being beyond argument the tallest-and quite the bcst-looking-dark man available, he had been elected to be firstfoot, not only for the Big House, as folk called it, but for those homes nearby. Fergus and Marsali and the others who lived near had already rushed off to their houses, to be ready to greet their firsffoot when he should come.

  A red-haired man, though, was frightful ill luck as a firstfoot, and Jamie had been consigned to his study, under the riotous guard of the Lindsay brothers, who were to keep him safely bottled up 'til after midnight. There were no clocks nearer than Cross Creek, but old Mr. Guthrie had a pocket watch, even older than himself; this instrument would declare the mystic moment when one year yielded to the next. Given the watch's propensity for stopping, I doubted that this would be more than a symbolic pronouncement, but that was quite enough, after all.

  "Eleven-fifty," Brianna declared, popping into the surgery after me, her own cloak over her arm. "I just checked Mr. Guthrie's watch."

  "Plenty of time. Are ye coming with me, then?" Roger grinned at Bree, seeing her cloak.

  "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 firsffoot was to bring gifts to the house: an egg, a faggot of wood, a bit of saltand 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 worryit'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.

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  "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 bad 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 whol
e 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.

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  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, onetwo-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 Beardsleythe 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 "wanderiW 59 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 soffly, 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."

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  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

  "I'd like nothing better," I assured him. "What's that?" I circled round bebind 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?11

  "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.

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  "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 fifted 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.

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  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.

  "What did he say?" My hands were tight on his shoulders, and his face was turned away as my thumbs rose up under his hair to seek the ancient scar again. 'Sister's son or no-I would that I had killed you, that day on the bill. For I

  knew from the beginning that it would be you or me. " He spoke calm and lowvoiced, and the very emotionlessness of the words made the shudder pass again, this time from me to him.

  It was quiet in the study. The sound of voices in the kitchen had died to a murmur, as though the ghosts of the past gathered there to drink and reminisce, laughing softly among themselves.

  "So that was what you meant," I said quietly. "When you said you'd made your peace with Dougal."

  "Aye." He leaned back in his chair and reached up, his hands wrapping warmly round my wrists. "He was right, ken. It was him or me, and would have been, one way or the other."

  I sighed, and a small burden of guilt dropped away. Jamie had been fighting to defend me, when he killed Dougal, and I had always felt that death to be laid at my door. But he was right, Dougal; too much lay between them, and if that final conflict had not come then, on the eve of Culloden, it would have been another time.

  Jamie squeezed my wrists, and turned in his chair, still holding my hands. "Let the dead bury the dead, Sassenach," he said softly. "The past is gonethe fiiture is not come. And we are here together, you and L"

  WORLD$ UNSEEN

  HE HOUSEHOLD WAS QUIET; it was the perfect opportunity for my experiments, Mr. Bug had gone to Woolam's Mill, taking the

  TBeardsley twins; Lizzie and Mr. Wemyss had gone to help Marsali with the new mash; and Mrs. Bug, having left a pot of porridge and a platter of toast in the kitchen, was out, too, combing the woods for the half-wild hens, catching them one by one and dragging them in by the feet to be installed in the

  The Fiery Cross 379

  handsome new chicken coop her husband had built. Bree and Roger sometimes came up to the big house for their breakfast, but more often chose to eat by their own hearth, as was the case this morning.

  Enjoying the peace of the empty house, I made up a tray with cup, teapot, cream, and sugar, and took it with me to my surgery, along with my samples. The early morning light was perfect, pouring through the window in a brilliant bar of gold. Leaving the tea to steep, I took a couple of small glass bottles from the cupboard and went outside.

  The day was chilly but beautiful, with a clear pale sky that promised a