An Echo in the Bone, Page 86

  fought everywhere they said he had, though, he would hardly have had time to change his socks between campaigns, let alone come home to Scotland. And the estate wasn’t his, after all; he was the second youngest of nine children. His wife, the tiny bainisq trudging at the head of the procession on her brother-in-law Hugh’s arm, had no household of her own, I gathered, and lived with Hugh’s family, she having no children alive—or nearby, at least—to care for her.

  I did wonder whether she was pleased that we’d brought him home. Would it not have been better just to know that he’d died abroad, doing his duty and doing it well, than to be presented with the dismayingly pitiful detritus of her husband, no matter how professionally packaged?

  But she had seemed, if not happy, at least somewhat gratified at being the center of such a fuss. Her crumpled face had flushed and seemed to unfold a little during the festivities of the night, and now she walked on with no sign of flagging, doggedly stepping over the ruts made by her husband’s coffin.

  It was Hugh’s fault. Simon’s much elder brother and the owner of Balnain, he was a spindly little old man, barely taller than his widowed sister-in-law, and with romantic notions. It was his pronouncement that, instead of planting Simon decently in the family burying ground, the family’s most gallant warrior should be interred in a place more suited to his honor and the reverence due him.

  Bainisq, pronounced “bann-eeshg,” meant a little old lady; was a little old man merely an “eeshg”? I wondered, looking at Hugh’s back. I thought I wouldn’t ask until we were back at the house—assuming we made it there by nightfall.

  At long last, Corrimony hove into sight. According to Jamie, the name meant “a hollow in the moor,” and it was. Within the cup-shaped hollow in the grass and heather rose a low dome; as we grew closer, I saw that it was made from thousands and thousands of small river rocks, most the size of a fist, some the size of a person’s head. And around this dark gray rain-slicked cairn was a circle of standing stones.

  I clutched Jamie’s arm by reflex. He glanced at me in surprise, then realized what I was looking at and frowned.

  “D’ye hear anything, Sassenach?” he murmured.

  “Only the wind.” This had been moaning along with the funeral procession, mostly drowning out the old man chanting the coronach before the coffin, but as we came out onto the open moor, it picked up speed and rose several tones in pitch, sending cloaks and coats and skirts flapping like ravens’ wings.

  I kept a cautious eye on the stones but sensed nothing as we drew to a halt before the cairn. It was a passage tomb, of the general kind they called a clava cairn; I had no notion what that signified, but Uncle Lamb had had photographs of many such sites. The passage was meant to orient with some astronomical object on some significant date. I glanced up at the leaden, weeping sky and decided that today was probably not the day, anyway.

  “We dinna ken who was buried there,” Hugh had explained to us the day before. “But clearly a great chieftain of some sort. Must ha’ been, the terrible trouble it is to build a cairn like that!”

  “Aye, to be sure,” Jamie had said, adding delicately. “The great chieftain: he’s no buried there anymore?”

  “Oh, no,” Hugh assured us. “The earth took him, long since. There’s no but a wee stain of his bones there now. And ye needna be worrit about there being a curse upon the place, either.”

  “Oh, good,” I murmured, but he paid no attention.

  “Some lang nebbit opened the tomb a hundred years ago or more, so if there was to be a curse on it, it surely went off attached to him.”

  This was comforting, and in fact none of the people now standing about the cairn seemed at all put off or bothered by its proximity. Though it might just be that they had lived near it for so long that it had become no more than a feature of the landscape.

  There was a certain amount of practical discussion, the men looking at the cairn and shaking their heads dubiously, gesturing in turn toward the open passage that led to the burial chamber, then toward the top of the cairn, where the stones had either been removed or had simply fallen in and been cleared away below. The women gravitated closer together, waiting. We had arrived in a fog of fatigue the day before, and while I had been introduced to all of them, I had trouble keeping the proper name attached to the proper face. In truth, their faces all looked similar—thin, worn, and pale, with a sense of chronic exhaustion about them, a tiredness much deeper than waking the dead would account for.

  I had a sudden recollection of Mrs. Bug’s funeral. Makeshift and hasty—and yet carried out with dignity and genuine sorrow on the part of the mourners. I thought these people had barely known Simon Fraser.

  How much better to have regarded his own last wish as stated and left him on the battlefield with his fallen comrades, I thought. But whoever said funerals were for the benefit of the living had had the right of it.

  The sense of failure and futility that had followed the defeat at Saratoga had made his own officers determined to accomplish something, to make a proper gesture toward a man they had loved and a warrior they honored. Perhaps they had wanted to send him home, too, because of their desire for their own homes.

  The same sense of failure—plus a deadly streak of romanticism—had doubtless made General Burgoyne insist upon the gesture; I thought he likely felt his own honor required it. And then Hugh Fraser, reduced to a hand-to-mouth existence in the wake of Culloden and faced with the unexpected homecoming of his younger brother, unable to produce much in the way of a funeral, but deeply romantic himself… and the end of it this strange procession, bringing Simon Fraser to a home no longer his and a wife who was a stranger to him.

  And his place will know him no more. The line came to mind as the men made their decision and began to dismount the coffin from its wheels. I had drawn closer, along with the other women, and found I was now standing within a foot or two of one of the standing stones that ringed the cairn. These were smaller than the stones on Craigh na Dun—no more than two or three feet high. Moved by sudden impulse, I reached out and touched it.

  I hadn’t expected anything to happen, and it very luckily didn’t. Though had I suddenly vanished in the midst of the burial, it would have substantially enlivened the event.

  No buzzing, no screaming, no sensation at all. It was just a rock. After all, I thought, there was no reason why all standing stones should be assumed to mark time portals. Presumably the ancient builders had used stones to mark any place of significance—and surely a cairn like this one must have been significant. I wondered what sort of man—or woman, perhaps?—had lain here, leaving no more than an echo of their bones, so much more fragile than the enduring rocks that sheltered them.

  The coffin was lowered to the ground and—with much grunting and puffing—shoved through the passage into the burial chamber in the center of the tomb. There was a large flat slab of stone that lay against the cairn, this incised with strange cup-shaped marks, presumably made by the original builders. Four of the stronger men took hold of this and maneuvered it slowly over the top of the cairn, sealing the hole above the chamber.

  It fell with a muffled thud that sent a few small rocks rolling down the sides of the cairn. The men came down then, and we all stood rather awkwardly round it, wondering what to do next.

  There was no priest here. The funeral Mass for Simon had been said earlier, in a small, bare stone church, before the procession to this thoroughly pagan burial. Evidently, Hugh’s researches hadn’t discovered anything regarding rites for such things.

  Just when it seemed that we would be obliged simply to turn round and slog our way back to the farmhouse, Ian coughed explosively and stepped forward.

  The funeral procession was drab in the extreme, none of the bright tartans that had graced Highland ceremonies in the past. Even Jamie’s appearance was subdued, cloaked, and his hair covered with a black slouch hat. The sole exception to the general somberness was Ian.

  He had provoked stares whe
n he’d come downstairs this morning, and the staring hadn’t stopped. With good reason. He’d shaved most of his head and greased the remaining strip of hair into a stiff ridge down the middle of his scalp, to which he had attached a dangling ornament of turkey feathers with a pierced silver sixpence. He was wearing a cloak, but under it had put on his worn buckskins, with the blue-and-white wampum armlet his wife, Emily, had made for him.

  Jamie had looked him slowly up and down when he appeared and nodded, one corner of his mouth turning up.

  “It willna make a difference, aye?” he’d said quietly to Ian as we headed for the door. “They’ll still ken ye for who ye are.”

  “Will they?” Ian had said, but then ducked out into the downpour without waiting for an answer.

  Jamie had undoubtedly been right; the Indian finery was a dress rehearsal in preparation for his arrival at Lallybroch, for we were bound there directly, once Simon’s body was decently disposed of and the farewell whisky had been drunk.

  It had its uses now, though. Ian slowly removed his cloak and handed it to Jamie, then walked to the entrance of the passage and turned to face the mourners—who watched this apparition, bug-eyed. He spread his hands, palms upward, closed his eyes, put back his head so the rain ran down his face, and began to chant something in Mohawk. He was no singer, and his voice was so hoarse from his cold that many words broke or disappeared, but I caught Simon’s name in the beginning. The general’s death song. It didn’t go on for long, but when he dropped his hands, the congregation uttered a deep, collective sigh.

  Ian walked away, not looking back, and without a word the mourners followed. It was finished.

  BY THE WIND GRIEVED

  THE WEATHER CONTINUED to be terrible, with fitful gusts of snow now added to the rain, and Hugh pressed us to stay, at least for another few days, until the sky should clear.

  “It might well be Michaelmas before that happens,” Jamie said to him, smiling. “Nay, cousin, we’ll be off.”

  And so we were, bundled in all the clothes we possessed. It took more than two days to reach Lallybroch, and we were obliged to shelter overnight in an abandoned croft, putting the horses in the cow byre next to us. There was no furniture nor peat for the hearth, and half the roof had gone, but the stone walls broke the wind.

  “I miss my dog,” Ian grumbled, huddling under his cloak and pulling a blanket over his goose-pimpled head.

  “Would he sit on your heid?” Jamie inquired, taking a firmer hold on me as the wind roared past our shelter and threatened to rip away the rest of the threadbare thatch overhead. “Ye should have thought about it being January, before ye shaved your scalp.”

  “Well enough for you,” Ian replied, peering balefully out from under his blanket. “Ye’ve got Auntie Claire to keep warm with.”

  “Well, ye might get a wife yourself one of these days. Is Rollo going to sleep with the both of ye when ye do?” Jamie inquired.

  “Mmphm,” Ian said, and pulled the blanket down over his face, shivering.

  I shivered, too, in spite of Jamie’s warmth, our combined cloaks, three woolen petticoats, and two pairs of stockings. I had been in a number of cold places in my life, but there’s something remarkably penetrating about the Scottish cold. In spite of my longing for a warm fire and the remembered coziness of Lallybroch, though, I was almost as uneasy about our approaching homecoming as Ian was—and Ian had been growing more like a cat on hot bricks, the farther we got into the Highlands. He twitched and muttered to himself now, thrashing in his blankets in the darkened confines of the shed.

  I had wondered when we landed in Edinburgh whether we ought to send word of our arrival to Lallybroch. When I’d suggested this, though, Jamie laughed.

  “D’ye think we stand the slightest chance of getting within ten miles o’ the place without everyone hearing of it? Never fear, Sassenach,” he’d assured me. “The minute we set foot in the Highlands, everyone from Loch Lomond to Inverness will know that Jamie Fraser’s comin’ home with his English witch, and a red Indian with him, to boot.”

  “English witch?” I said, not sure whether to be entertained or offended. “Did they call me that? When we were at Lallybroch?”

  “Frequently to your face, Sassenach,” he said dryly. “But ye didna have enough Gaelic then to know it. They didna mean it as an insult, a nighean,” he added more gently. “Nor will they now. It’s only that Highlanders call a thing as they see it.”

  “Hmm,” I said, a trifle taken back.

  “They’ll no be wrong, now, will they?” he’d asked, grinning.

  “Are you implying that I look like a witch?”

  “Well, not sae much just this minute,” he said, narrowing one eye judiciously. “First thing in the morning, maybe—aye, that’s a more fearsome prospect.”

  I hadn’t a looking glass, not having thought to acquire one in Edinburgh. I did still have a comb, though, and snuggling now with my head beneath Jamie’s chin, resolved to stop some way short of Lallybroch and employ it thoroughly, rain or no rain. Not, I thought, that it would likely make much difference whether I arrived looking like the Queen of England or like a dandelion gone to seed. It was Ian’s homecoming that was important.

  On the other hand… I wasn’t sure quite what my own welcome might be. There was unfinished business, to put it mildly, between myself and Jenny Murray.

  We had been good friends once. I hoped we might be again. But she had been the chief engineer of Jamie’s marriage to Laoghaire MacKenzie. From the best of motives, no doubt; she’d worried for him, lonely and rootless on his return from captivity in England. And in all justice, she’d thought me dead.

  What had she thought, I wondered, when I’d suddenly appeared again? That I had abandoned Jamie before Culloden and then had second thoughts? There hadn’t been time for explanations and rapprochement—and there had been that very awkward moment when Laoghaire, summoned by Jenny, had showed up at Lallybroch, accompanied by her daughters, taking Jamie and me very much by surprise.

  A bubble of laughter rose in my chest at thought of that encounter, though I certainly hadn’t laughed at the time. Well, perhaps there would be time to talk now, once Jenny and Ian had recovered from the shock of their youngest son’s homecoming.

  I became aware, from subtle shiftings behind me, that while the horses were breathing heavily and peacefully in their byre and Ian had finally subsided into phlegm-rattling snores, I wasn’t the only one still lying awake thinking of what might await us.

  “You aren’t asleep, either, are you?” I whispered to Jamie.

  “No,” he said softly, and shifted his weight again, gathering me more closely against him. “Thinking about the last time I came home. I had such fear—and a verra wee bit of hope. I imagine it’s maybe like that for the lad now.”

  “And for you now?” I asked, folding my own hands over the arm that encircled me, feeling the solid, graceful bones of wrist and forearm, gently touching his maimed right hand. He sighed deeply.

  “Dinna ken,” he said. “But it’ll be all right. You’re with me, this time.”

  THE WIND DROPPED sometime in the night, and the day, by some miracle, dawned clear and bright. Still cold as a polar bear’s bottom, but not raining. I thought that a good omen.

  Nobody spoke as we cleared the last high pass that led to Lallybroch and saw the house below. I felt a loosening in my chest and only then realized how long I’d been holding my breath.

  “It hasn’t changed, has it?” I said, my breath white on the cold air.

  “There’s a new roof on the dovecote,” Ian said. “And Mam’s sheep pen is bigger.” He was doing his best to sound nonchalant, but there was no mistaking the eagerness in his voice. He nudged his horse and pulled a little in front of us, the turkey feathers in his hair lifting on the breeze.

  It was early afternoon, and the place was quiet; the morning chores had been done, the evening milking and supper-making not yet started. I didn’t see anyone outside save a couple of big
, shaggy Highland cattle munching hay in the near pasture, but the chimneys were smoking and the big white-harled farmhouse had its usual hospitable, settled air.

  Would Bree and Roger ever go back here? I wondered suddenly. She’d mentioned it, when the notion of their leaving became fact and they had begun to plan.

  “It’s vacant,” she’d said, eyes fixed on the twentieth-century-style shirt she was making. “For sale. Or it was, when Roger went there a few years—ago?” She looked up with a wry smile; it wasn’t really possible to discuss time in any customary way. “I’d like the kids to live there, maybe. But we’ll just have to see how… things work out.”

  She’d glanced then at Mandy, asleep in her cradle, faintly blue around the lips.

  “It will work out fine,” I’d said firmly. “Everything will be just fine.”

  Lord, I prayed now silently, that they might be safe!

  Ian had swung off his horse and was waiting impatiently for us. As we dismounted, he headed for the door, but our arrival had been noted, and it swung wide before he could touch it.

  Jenny stopped dead in the doorway. She blinked, once, and her head tilted slowly back as her eyes traveled up the long, buckskin-covered body, with its roped muscles and small scars, to the crested, feathered head with its tattooed face, so carefully expressionless—save for the eyes, whose hope and fear he could not hide, Mohawk or no.

  Jenny’s mouth twitched. Once… twice … then her face broke and she began to utter small, hysterical whoops that turned into unmistakable laughter. She gulped, whooped again, and laughed so hard that she staggered backward into the house and had to sit down on the bench in the hall, where she bent double with her arms wrapped round her middle and laughed until the sound gave out and her breath came in faint, wheezing gasps.

  “Ian,” she said at last, shaking her head. “Oh, God, Ian. My wee lad.”

  Ian looked entirely taken aback. He looked at Jamie, who shrugged, his own mouth twitching, then back at his mother.

  She gulped for air, her chest heaving, then stood up, went to him, and wrapped her arms about him, her tear-streaked face pressed to his side. His arms went slowly, carefully around her, and he held her to him like something fragile, of immense value.

  “Ian,” she said again, and I saw her small, taut shoulders suddenly slump. “Oh, Ian. Thank God ye’ve come in time.”

  SHE WAS SMALLER than I had remembered, and thinner, her hair with a little more gray in it though still darkly vibrant—but the deep-blue cat-eyes were just the same, as was the natural air of command she shared with her brother.

  “Leave the horses,” she said briskly, wiping her eyes on the corner of her apron. “I’ll have one o’ the lads take care of them. Ye’ll be frozen and starving—take off your things and come into the parlor.” She glanced at me, with a brief look of curiosity and something else that I couldn’t interpret—but didn’t meet my eyes directly or say more than “Come,” as she led the way to the parlor.

  The house smelled familiar but strange, steeped in peat smoke and the scent of cooking; someone had just baked bread, and the yeasty smell floated down the hall from the kitchen. The hall itself was nearly as cold as the outdoors; all the rooms had their doors closed tight to keep in the heat from their fires, and a welcome wave of warmth eddied out when she opened the door to the parlor, turning to pull Ian in first.

  “Ian,” she said, in a tone I’d never heard her use before. “Ian, they’ve come. Your son’s come home.”

  Ian the elder was sitting in a large armchair close to the fire, a warm rug over his legs. He struggled to his feet at once, a little unsteady on the wooden peg he wore in replacement of a leg lost in battle, and took a few steps toward us.

  “Ian,” Jamie said, his voice soft with shock. “God, Ian.”

  “Oh, aye,” Ian said, his own voice wry. “Dinna fash; it’s still me.”

  Phthisis, they called it. Or doctors did. It meant “wasting,” in the Greek. Laymen called it by the blunter name “consumption,” and the reason why was all too apparent. It consumed its victims, ate them alive. A wasting disease, and waste it did. Ate flesh and squandered life, profligate and cannibal.

  I’d seen it many times in England of the thirties and forties, much more here in the past. But I’d never seen it carve the living flesh from the bones of someone I loved, and my heart went to water and drained from my chest.

  Ian had always been whipcord thin, even in times of plenty. Sinewy and tough, his bones always near the surface of his skin, just as Young Ian’s were. Now…

  “I may cough, but I won’t break,” he assured Jamie, and, stepping forward, put his arms round Jamie’s neck. Jamie enfolded him very gently, the gingerness of the embrace growing firmer as he found that Ian didn’t break—and closed his eyes to keep the tears in check. His arms tightened, trying involuntarily to keep Ian from the abyss that all too plainly yawned at his feet.

  I can count all my bones. The Biblical quote came unbidden to my mind. I quite literally could; the cloth of his shirt lay over ribs that showed so clearly that I could see the articulations where each one joined the protruding knobs of his backbone.

  “How long?” I blurted, turning to Jenny, who was watching the men, her own eyes bright with unshed tears. “How long has he had it?”

  She blinked once and swallowed.

  “Years,” she said, steadily enough. “He came back from the Tolbooth in Edinburgh with the cough, and it never left. It’s got worse over the last year, though.”

  I nodded. A chronic case, then; that was something. The acute form—“galloping consumption,” they called it—would have taken him in months.

  She gave me back the question I had asked her, but with a different meaning.

  “How long?” she said, so softly that I barely heard her.

  “I don’t know,” I said, with equal softness. “But… not long.”

  She nodded; she had known this for a long time.

  “Just as well ye came in time, then,” she said, matter-of-fact.

  Young Ian’s eyes had been fixed on his father from the moment we entered the room. The shock showed plainly on his face, but he kept himself in hand.

  “Da,” he said, and his voice was so hoarse that the word emerged in a strangled croak. He cleared it viciously and repeated, “Da,” coming forward. The elder Ian looked at his son, and his face lit with a joy so profound that it eclipsed the marks of illness and suffering.

  “Oh, Ian,” he said, holding out his arms. “My wee lad!”

  IT WAS THE Highlands. And it was Ian and Jenny. Which meant that matters that