"No, I'm wrong; my da did say something about him, once. 'Twas just after Dougal had left, to go back to Beannachd wi' Jamie. Da was leaning on the fence outside, watching them ride out o' sight, and I came up to wave to Jamie—it always grieved me sore when he left, for I didna ken how long he'd be gone. Anyway, we watched them over the crest of the hill, and then Da stirred a bit, and grunted, and said, ‘God help Dougal MacKenzie when his brother Colum dies.' Then he seemed to remember I was there, for he turned round and smiled at me, and said, ‘Well, lassie, what's for our dinner, then?' and wouldna say more about it." The black brows, fine and bold as the strokes of calligraphy, lifted in puzzled inquiry.
"I thought that odd, for I'd heard—who hasn't?—that Colum is sore crippled, and Dougal does the chief's work for him, collecting rents and settling claims—and leading the clan to battle, when needs be."
"He does. But—" I hesitated, unsure how to describe that odd symbiotic relationship. "Well," I said with a smile, "the closest I can come is to tell you that once I overheard them arguing, and Colum said to Dougal, ‘I'll tell ye, if the brothers MacKenzie have but one c**k and one brain between them, then I'm glad of my half of the bargain!' "
Jenny gave a sudden laugh of surprise, then stared at me, a speculative gleam deep in her blue eyes, so like her brother's.
"Och, so that's the way of it, is it? I did wonder once, hearing Dougal talk about Colum's son, wee Hamish; he seemed a bit fonder than an uncle might be."
"You're quick, Jenny," I said, staring back at her. "Very quick. It took me a long time to work that out, and I saw them every day for months."
She shrugged modestly, but a small smile played about her lips.
"I listen," she said simply. "To what folk say—and what they don't. And people do gossip something terrible here in the Highlands. So"—she bit off a thread and spat the ends neatly into the palm of her hand—"tell me about Leoch. Folk say it's big, but not so grand as Beauly or Kilravock."
We worked and talked through the morning, moving from mending to winding wool for knitting, to laying out the pattern for a new baby dress for Maggie. The shouts from the boys outside ceased, to be replaced by murmurous noises and banging from the back of the house, suggesting that the younger male element had gotten cold and come to infest the kitchens, instead.
"I wonder will it snow soon?" Jenny said, with a glance at the window. "There's wetness in the air; did ye see the haze over the loch this morning?"
I shook my head. "I hope not. That will make it hard for Jamie and Ian, coming back." The village of Broch Mordha was less than ten miles from Lallybroch, but the way lay over steadily rising hills, with steep and rocky slopes, and the road was little more than a deer track.
In the event, it did snow, soon after noon, and the flakes kept swirling down long past nightfall.
"They'll have stayed in Broch Mordha," Jenny said, pulling her nightcapped head in from an inspection of the cloudy sky, with its snow-pink glow. "Dinna worry for them; they'll be tucked up cozy in someone's cottage for the night." She smiled reassuringly at me as she pulled the shutters to. A sudden wail came from down the hall, and she picked up the skirts of her nightrobe with a muffled exclamation.
"Good night, Claire," she called, already hurrying off on her maternal errand of mercy. "Sleep well."
I usually did sleep well; in spite of the cold, damp climate, the house was tightly constructed, and the goosefeather bed was plentifully supplied with quilts. Tonight, though, I found myself restless without Jamie. The bed seemed vast and clammy, my legs twitchy, and my feet cold.
I tried lying on my back, hands lightly clasped across my ribs, eyes closed, breathing deep, to summon up a picture of Jamie; if I could imagine him there, breathing deeply in the dark beside me, perhaps I could fall asleep.
The sound of a c**k crowing at full blast lifted me off the pillow, as though a stick of dy***ite had been touched off beneath the bed.
"Idiot!" I said, every nerve in my body twanging from the shock. I got up and cracked the shutter. It had stopped snowing, but the sky was still pale with cloud, a uniform color from horizon to horizon. The rooster let loose another bellow in the hen-coop below.
"Shut up!" I said. "It's the middle of the night, you feathered bastard!" The avian equivalent of a raspberry echoed through the still night, and down the hall, a child began to cry, followed by a rich but muffled Gaelic expletive in Jenny's voice.
"You," I said to the invisible rooster, "are living on borrowed time." There was no response to this, and after a pause to make certain that the rooster had in fact called it a night, I closed the shutters and did the same.
The commotion had derailed any coherent train of thought. Instead of trying to start another, I decided to try turning inward, in the hopes that physical contemplation would relax me enough to sleep.
It worked. As I began to hover on the edge of sleep, my mind fixed somewhere around my pancreas, I could dimly hear the sounds of small Jamie pattering down the hall to his mother's bedroom—roused from sleep by a full bladder, he seldom had the presence of mind to take the obvious step, and would frequently blunder down the stair from the nursery in search of assistance instead.
I had wondered, coming to Lallybroch, whether I might find it difficult to be near Jenny; if I would be envious of her easy fruitfulness. And I might have been, had I not seen that abundant motherhood had its price as well.
"There's a pot right by your bed, clot-heid," Jenny's exasperated voice came outside my door as she steered small Jamie back to his bed. "Ye must have stepped in it on your way out; why can ye no get it through your heid to use that one? Why have ye got to come use mine, every night in creation?" Her voice faded as she turned up the stair, and I smiled, visualization moving down the sweeping curve of my intestines.
There was another reason I did not envy Jenny. I had at first feared that the birth of Faith had done me some internal damage, but that fear had disappeared with Raymond's touch. As I completed the inventory of my body, and felt my spine go slack on the edge of sleep, I could feel that all was well there. It had happened once, it could happen again. All that was needed was time. And Jamie.
Jenny's footsteps sounded on the boards of the hallway, quickening in response to a sleepy squawk from Maggie, at the far end of the house.
"Bairns are certain joy, but nay sma' care," I murmured to myself, and fell asleep.
Through the next day, we waited, doing our chores and going through the daily routine with one ear cocked for the sound of horses in the dooryard.
"They'll have stayed to do some business," Jenny said, outwardly confident. But I saw her pause every time she passed the window that overlooked the lane leading to the house.
As for me, I had a hard time controlling my imagination. The letter, signed by King George, confirming Jamie's pardon, was locked in the drawer of the desk in the laird's study. Jamie regarded it as a humiliation, and would have burned it, but I had insisted it be kept, just in case. Now, listening for sounds through the rush of winter wind, I kept having visions of it having all been a mistake, or a hoax of some kind—of Jamie once more arrested by red-coated dragoons, taken away again to the misery of prison, and the impending danger of the hangman's noose.
The men returned at last just before nightfall, horses laden with bags containing the salt, needles, pickling spice, and other small items that Lallybroch could not produce for itself.
I heard one of the horses whinny as it came into the stableyard, and ran downstairs, meeting Jenny on her way out through the kitchens.
Relief swept through me as I saw Jamie's tall figure, shadowed against the barn. I ran through the yard, disregarding the light covering of snow that lingered on the ground, and flung myself into his arms.
"Where the hell have you been?" I demanded.
He took time to kiss me before replying. His face was cold against mine, and his lips tasted faintly and pleasantly of whisky.
"Mm, sausage for supper?" he said approvingly, sniffing at my hair, which smelled of kitchen smoke. "Good, I'm fair starved."
"Bangers and mash," I said. "Where have you been?"
He laughed, shaking out his plaid to get the blown snow off. "Bangers and mash? That's food, is it?"
"Sausages with mashed potatoes," I translated. "A nice traditional English dish, hitherto unknown in the benighted reaches of Scotland. Now, you bloody Scot, where in hell have you been for the last two days? Jenny and I were worried!"
"Well, we had a wee accident—" Jamie began, when he spotted the small figure of Fergus, bearing a lantern. "Och, ye've brought a light, then, Fergus? Good lad. Set it there, where ye won't set fire to the straw, and then take this poor beast into her stall. When ye've got her settled, come along to your own supper. You'll be able to sit to it by now, I expect?" He aimed a friendly cuff at Fergus's ear. The boy dodged and grinned back; apparently whatever had happened in the barn yesterday had left no hard feelings.
"Jamie," I said, in measured tones. "If you don't stop talking about horses and sausages and tell me what sort of accident you had, I am going to kick you in the shins. Which will be very hard on my toes, because I'm only wearing slippers, but I warn you, I'll do it anyway."