“I did love her mother so,” he said, the words coming out in a rush, as though confessing some shameful secret. He blushed bright pink, and looked down at the thin hands he had twisted together in his lap.
“I see,” I said, tactfully averting my own gaze, and brushing a few bits of stray bloodroot off the desk. “Would you like me to talk to her?”
“Oh, I should be most grateful, Mum!” Lightened by relief, he nearly sprang to his feet. He wrang Jamie’s hand fervently, bowed repeatedly to me, and at last made his way out, with much bobbing and murmuring of thanks.
The door closed behind him, and Jamie sighed, shaking his head.
“Christ knows it’s trouble enough to get daughters married when they do ken their own minds,” he said darkly, plainly thinking of Brianna and Marsali. “Maybe it’s easier if they don’t.”
THE SINGLE CANDLE was guttering, casting flickering shadows over the room. I got up and went to the shelf where a few fresh ones lay. To my surprise, Jamie got up and came to join me. He reached past the assortment of half-burned tapers and fresh candles, pulling out the squat clock-candle that sat behind them, hidden in the shadows.
He set it on the desk, and used one of the tapers to light it. The wick was already blackened; the candle had been used before, though it wasn’t burned down very far. He looked at me, and I went quietly to shut the door.
“Do you think it’s time?” I asked softly, moving back to stand beside him.
He shook his head, but didn’t answer. He sat back a little in his chair, hands folded in his lap, watching the flame of the clock-candle take hold and swell into a wavering light.
Jamie sighed and put out a hand to turn his account-book toward me. I could see the state of our affairs laid out there in black and white—dismal, so far as cash went.
Very little business in the Colony was done on a cash basis—virtually none, west of Asheville. The mountain homesteaders all dealt in barter, and so far as that went, we managed fairly well. We had milk, butter, and cheese to trade; potatoes and grain, pork and venison, fresh vegetables and dried fruit, a little wine made from the scuppernong grapes of the autumn past. We had hay and timber—though so did everyone else—and my honey and beeswax. And above everything else, we had Jamie’s whisky.
That was a limited resource, though. We had fifteen acres in new barley, which—bar hailstones, forest fires, and other Acts of God—would eventually be made into nearly a hundred kegs of whisky, which could be sold or traded for quite a lot, even completely raw and unaged. The barley was still green in the field, though, and the whisky no more than a profitable phantom.
In the meantime, we had used or sold almost all the spirit on hand. True, there were fourteen small kegs of spirit remaining—buried in a small cave above the whisky-spring—but that couldn’t be used. From each distilling, Jamie put aside two kegs, to be religiously kept for aging. The eldest barrel in this cache was only two years old; it would stay there for ten more, God willing, to emerge as liquid gold—and almost as valuable as the solid kind.
The immediate financial demands were not going to wait ten years, though. Beyond the possibility of a gunsmith’s shop for Manfred McGillivray and a modest dowry for Lizzie, there were the normal expenses of farming, livestock maintenance, and an ambitious plan to provide ploughshares to every tenant—many of whom were still tilling by hand.
And beyond our own expenses, there was one very burdensome obligation. Bloody Laoghaire MacKenzie damn-her-eyes Fraser.
She wasn’t precisely an ex-wife—but she wasn’t precisely not an ex-wife, either. Thinking me permanently gone, if not actually dead, Jamie had married her, under the prodding of his sister Jenny. The marriage had rather quickly proved to be a mistake, and upon my reappearance, an annulment had been sought, to the relief—more or less—of all parties.
Generous to a fault, though, Jamie had agreed to pay a large sum to her in annual maintenance, plus a dowry to each of her daughters. Marsali’s dowry was being paid gradually, in land and whisky, and there was no news of Joan’s impending marriage. But the money to keep Laoghaire in whatever style she kept in Scotland was falling due—and we didn’t have it.
I glanced at Jamie, who was brooding, eyes half-closed over his long, straight nose. I didn’t bother suggesting that we allow Laoghaire to put in for a gaberlunzie badge and go begging through the parish. No matter what he thought of the woman personally, he considered her his responsibility, and that was that.
I supposed that paying the debt in casks of salt fish and lye-soap was not a suitable option, either. That left us three alternatives: We could sell the whisky from the cache, though that would be a great loss in the long term. We could borrow money from Jocasta; possible, but highly distasteful. Or we could sell something else. Several horses, for instance. A large number of pigs. Or a jewel.
The candle was burning strongly, and the wax around the wick had melted. Looking down into the clear puddle of molten wax, I could see them: three gemstones, dark against the pale gray-gold of the candle, their vivid hues subdued but still visible in the wax. An emerald, a topaz, and a black diamond.
Jamie didn’t touch them, but stared at them, thick ruddy brows drawn together in concentration.
Selling a gemstone in colonial North Carolina would not be easy; it would likely require a trip to Charleston or Richmond. It could be done, though, and would result in enough money to pay Laoghaire her blood-money, as well as to meet the other mounting expenses. The gemstones had a value, though, that went beyond money—they were the currency of travel through the stones; protection for the life of a traveler.
What few things we knew about that perilous journey were based largely on the things that Geillis Duncan had written or had told me; it was her contention that gems gave a traveler not only protection from the chaos in that unspeakable space between the layers of time, but some ability to navigate, as it were—to choose the time in which one might emerge.
Moved by impulse, I went back to the shelf, and standing on tiptoe, groped for the hide-wrapped bundle hidden in the shadows there. It was heavy in my hand, and I unwrapped it carefully, laying the oval stone on the desk beside the candle. It was a large opal, its fiery heart revealed within a matrix of dull stone by the carving that covered the surface—a spiral; a primitive drawing of the snake that eats its tail.
The opal was the property of another traveler—the mysterious Indian called Otter-Tooth. An Indian whose skull showed silver fillings in the teeth; an Indian who seemed at one time to have spoken English. He had called this stone his “ticket back”—so it seemed that Geilie Duncan was not the only one who believed that gemstones had some power in that dreadful place... between.
“Five, the witch said,” Jamie said thoughtfully. “She said ye needed five stones?”
“She thought so.” It was a warm evening, but the down hairs on my jaw prickled at the thought of Geilie Duncan, of the stones—and of the Indian I had met on a dark hillside, his face painted black for death, just before I had found the opal, and the skull buried with it. Was it his skull we had buried, silver fillings and all?
“Was it needful for the stones to be polished, or cut?”
“I don’t know. I think she said cut ones were better—but I don’t know why she thought so—or if she was right.” That was always the rub; we knew so little for sure.
He made a little hmf noise, and rubbed the bridge of his nose slowly with one knuckle.
“Well, we’ve these three, and my father’s ruby. Those are cut and polished stones, and that makes four. Then that wee bawbee”—he glanced at the opal—“and the stone in your amulet, which are not.” The point here being that the cut or polished stones would fetch a great deal more in cash than would the rough opal or the raw sapphire in my medicine bag. And yet—could we risk losing a stone that might be needed, that might someday spell the difference between life and death for Bree or Roger?
“It’s not likely,” I said, answering his thought, rather than his words. “Bree will stay, certainly until Jemmy’s grown; perhaps for good.” After all, how could one abandon a child, the possibility of grandchildren? And yet, I had done it. I rubbed a finger absently over the smooth metal of my gold ring.
“Aye. But the lad?” He looked up at me, one eyebrow raised, the candlelight clear in his eyes, blue as sapphires cut and polished.
“He wouldn’t,” I said. “He wouldn’t leave Bree and Jemmy.” I spoke stoutly, but there was a thread of doubt in my heart, and it was reflected in my voice.
“Not yet,” Jamie said quietly.
I took a deep breath, but did not reply. I knew very well what he meant. Wrapped in silence, Roger seemed to withdraw further day by day.
His fingers had healed; I had suggested to Brianna that perhaps he would find solace in his bodhran. She had nodded, doubtfully. I didn’t know whether she had mentioned it to him or not—but the bodhran hung on the wall of their cabin, silent as its owner.
He did still smile and play with Jemmy, and was unfailingly attentive to Brianna—but the shadow in his eyes never lessened, and when he was not required for some chore, he would disappear for hours, sometimes all day, to walk the mountains, returning after dark, exhausted, dirt-stained—and silent.
“He hasna slept with her, has he? Since it happened?”
I sighed, brushing a strand of hair off my forehead.
“A few times. I asked. My guess would be that it hasn’t happened lately, though.”
Bree was doing her best to keep him close, to draw him out of the depths of his gathering depression—but it was clear to me, as well as to Jamie, that she was losing the battle, and knew it. She too was growing silent, and had shadows in her eyes.
“If he went... back... might there be a cure for his voice? There in your own time?” Jamie ran a finger over the opal as he spoke, eyes following the spiral as his finger traced it.
I sighed again, and sat down.
“I don’t know. There would be help—perhaps surgery, certainly speech therapy. I can’t say how much it would help; no one can. The thing is... he might recover a good deal of his voice naturally, if he’d only work at it. But he isn’t going to do that. And of course,” honesty compelled me to add, “he might not get it back, no matter how hard he worked.”
Jamie nodded, silent. Regardless of the possibilities of medical help, the fact was that if the marriage between Roger and Brianna failed, there was nothing whatever to keep him here. Whether he would choose to go back then...
Jamie sat up in his chair, and blew the candle out.
“Not yet,” he said in the darkness, his voice firm. “We’ve a few weeks yet before I must send money to Scotland; I’ll see what else we might contrive. For now, we’ll keep the stones.”
Last night I dreamed that I was making bread. Or at least I was trying to make bread. I’d be mixing dough and suddenly realize that I didn’t have any flour. Then I’d put the bread in pans and put it in the oven and realize that it hadn’t risen, and take it back out. I’d knead it and knead it and then I’d be carrying it around in a bowl under a cloth, looking for a warm place to put it, because you have to keep it warm or the yeast dies, and I was getting frantic because I couldn’t find a warm place; there was a cold wind blowing and the bowl was heavy and slippery and I thought I was going to drop it; my hands and feet were freezing and going numb.
Then I woke up and I really was cold. Roger had pulled all the covers off and rolled himself up in them, and there was a terrible draft blowing in under the door. I nudged him and yanked on the blankets, but I couldn’t get them loose and I didn’t want to make a lot of noise and wake Jemmy up. Finally, I got up and got my cloak off the peg and went back to sleep under that.
Roger got up before me this morning and went out; I don’t think he noticed that he’d left me in the cold.
A PACKAGE FROM LONDON
THE PACKAGE ARRIVED in August, by the good offices of Jethro Wainwright, one of the few itinerant peddlers with sufficient enterprise to ascend the steep and winding paths that led to the Ridge. Red-faced and wheezing from the climb and the work of unloading his donkey’s pack-frame, Mr. Wainwright handed me the package with a nod, and staggered gratefully off toward the kitchen at my invitation, leaving his donkey to crop grass in the yard.
It was a small parcel, a box of some sort, sewn up carefully in oilskin and tied with twine for good measure. It was heavy. I shook it, but the only sound was a soft clunking, as though whatever lay within was padded. The label read simply “To Mr. James Fraser, Esq., Fraser’s Ridge, the Carolinas.”
“Well, what do you suppose this is?” I asked the donkey. It was a rhetorical question, but the donkey, an amiable creature, looked up from her meal and hee-hawed in reply, stems of fescue hanging from the corner of her
mouth.
The sound set off answering cries of curiosity and welcome from Clarence and the horses, and within seconds, Jamie and Roger appeared from the direction of the barn, Brianna came out of the springhouse, and Mr. Bug rose up from behind the manure pile in his shirtsleeves like a vulture rising from a carcass, all drawn by the noise.
“Thanks,” I said to the donkey, who flicked a modest ear at me and went back to the grass.
“What is it?” Brianna stood on her toes to peer over Jamie’s shoulder as he took the package from me. “It’s not from Lallybroch, is it?”
“No, it’s neither Ian’s hand... nor my sister’s,” Jamie replied with no more than a brief hesitation, though I saw him glance twice to make sure. “It’s come a good way, though—by ship?” He held the parcel under my nose inquiringly. I sniffed and nodded.
“Yes; there’s a whiff of tar about it. No documents, though?”
He turned the package over, then shook his head.
“It had a seal, but that’s gone.” Grayish fragments of wax clung to the twine, but the seal that might have provided a clue to the sender had long since succumbed to the vicissitudes of travel and Mr. Wainwright’s pack.
“Ump.” Mr. Bug shook his head, squinting dubiously at the package. “Not a mattock.”
“No, it’s nay a mattock-head,” Jamie agreed, hefting the little parcel appraisingly. “Nor yet a book, let alone a quire of paper. I havena ordered anything else that I can think of. D’ye think it might be seeds, Sassenach? Mr. Stanhope did promise to send ye bits from his friend’s garden, aye?”
“Oh, it might be!” That was an exciting possibility; Mr. Stanhope’s friend Mr. Crossley had an extensive ornamental garden, with a large number of exotic and imported species, and Stanhope had offered to see whether Crossley might be amenable to an exchange; seeds and cuttings of some of the rarer European and Asian herbs from his collection, for bulbs and seeds from what Stanhope described as my “mountain fastness.”
Roger and Brianna exchanged a brief look. Seeds were a good deal less intriguing to them than either paper or books would be. Still, the novelty of any letter or package was sufficient that no one suggested opening it until the full measure of enjoyment should have been extracted from speculation about its contents.
In the event, the package was not opened until after supper, when everyone had had a chance to weigh the parcel, poke and sniff at it, and offer an opinion regarding its contents. Pushing his empty plate aside, Jamie finally took up the parcel with all due ceremony, shook it once more, and then handed it to me.
“That knot’s a job for a surgeon’s hands, Sassenach,” he said with a grin. It was; whoever had tied it was no sailor, but had substituted thoroughness for knowledge. It took me several minutes of picking, but I got the knot undone at last, and rolled the twine up tidily for future use.
Jamie then slit the stitching carefully with the point of his dirk, and drew out a small wooden box, to gasps of astonishment. It was plain in design, but elegant in execution, made of a polished dark wood, equipped with brass hinges and hasp, and with a matching small brass plate set into the lid.
“From the Workshop of Messrs. Halliburton and Halliburton, 14 Portman Square, London.” Brianna read it out, leaning across the table and craning her neck. “Who on earth are Norman and Greene?”
“I havena the slightest idea,” Jamie replied. He lifted the hasp with one finger, and delicately put back the lid. Inside was a small bag of dark red velvet. He pulled this out, opened its drawstring, and slowly drew out a... thing.
It was a flat golden disk, about four inches across. Goggling in astonishment, I could see that the rim was slightly raised, like that of a plate, and printed with tiny symbols of some kind. Set into the central part of the disk was an odd pierced-work arrangement, made of some silvery metal. This consisted of a small open dial, rather like a clock-face, but with three arms connecting its outer rim to the center of the bigger, golden disk.
The small silver circle was also adorned with printed arcana, almost too fine to see, and attached to a lyre-shape which itself rested in the belly of a long, flat silver eel, whose back curved snugly round the inner rim of the golden disk. Surmounting the whole was a gold bar, tapered at the ends like a very thick compass needle, and affixed with a pin that passed through the center of the disk and allowed the bar to revolve. Engraved in flowing script down the center of the bar was the name “James Fraser.”
“Why, whatever in the name of Bride will that be?” Mrs. Bug, naturally, recovered first from her surprise.
“It’s a planispheric astrolabe,” Jamie answered, recovered from his surprise, and sounding now almost matter-of-fact.
“Oh, of course,” I murmured. “Naturally!”
He turned the thing over, displaying a flat surface etched with several concentric circles, these in turn subdivided by hundreds of tiny markings and symbols. This side had a revolving bit like the compass-needle thing on the other side, but rectangular in shape, and with the ends bent upward, flattened and notched so that the notches formed a pair of sights.
Bree reached out a finger and touched the gleaming surface reverently.
“My God,” she said. “Is that really gold?”
“It is.” Jamie placed the object gingerly into her outstretched palm. “And what I should like to know is why?”
“Why gold, or why an astrolabe?” I asked.
“Why gold,” he replied, frowning at the thing. “I’d been wanting such an instrument for some time, and couldna find one anywhere between Albany and Charleston. Lord John Grey had promised to have one sent me from London, and I suppose this is it. But why in Christ’s name...”
Everyone’s attention was still riveted by the astrolabe itself, but Jamie glanced away, reaching instead for the box it had come in. Sure enough, at the bottom of the box lay a note, crisply folded and sealed with blue wax. The insignia, though, was not Lord John’s customary smiling half-moon-and-stars, but an unfamiliar crest, showing a fish with a ring in its mouth.
Jamie glanced at this, frowning, then broke the seal and opened the note.
Mr. James Fraser, Esq.
at Fraser’s Ridge
Royal Colony of North Carolina
My dear sir,
I have the honor to send the enclosed, with the compliments of my father, Lord John Grey. Upon my departure for London, he gave me instructions to obtain the finest instrument possible, and with knowledge of the high esteem in which he holds your friendship, I have taken pains to do so. I hope it will meet with your approval.
Your obdt. servant,
William Ransome, Lord Ellesmere,
Captain, 9th Regiment
“William Ransome?” Brianna had stood up in order to read over Jamie’s shoulder. She glanced at me, frowning. “He says his father’s Lord John—but isn’t Lord John’s son still a little boy?”
“He’s fifteen.” Jamie’s voice held an odd note, and I saw Roger glance up abruptly from the astrolabe in his hands, green eyes suddenly intent. His gaze shifted to me, with that odd look he had developed of late, of listening to something no one else could hear. I looked away.
“... not Grey,” Brianna was saying.
“No.” Jamie was still looking at the note in his hand, and sounded a little abstracted. He shook his head briefly, as though dispelling some thought, and returned to the matter at hand.
“No,” he repeated more firmly, laying down the note. “The lad is John’s stepson—his father was the Earl of Ellesmere; the boy’s the ninth of that title. Ransome is Ellesmere’s family name.”
I kept my eyes fixed sedulously on the table and the empty box, afraid to look up for fear that my transparent face might reveal something—if only the fact that there was something to be revealed.
William Ransome’s father had not, in fact, been the eighth Earl of Ellesmere. His father had been James Fraser, and I could feel the tension in Jamie’s leg where it touched mine beneath the table, though his face now wore an expression of mild exasperation.
“Evidently the lad’s been bought a commission,” he said, folding the letter neatly and tucking it back in the box. “So he’s gone off to London, and purchased the thing there at John’s instruction. But I suppose that to a lad of his background, ‘fine’ must necessarily mean plated wi’ gold!”
He stretched out a hand and Mr. Wainwright, who had been admiring his reflection in the polished golden surface, reluctantly surrendered the astrolabe.
Jamie examined it critically, rotating the inset silver eel with an index finger.
“Aye, well,” he said, almost reluctantly. “It is verra fine, as to the workmanship of the thing.”
“Pretty.” Mr. Bug nodded his approval, reaching for one of the hot stovies his wife was offering round. “Survey?”
“Aye, that’s right.”
“Survey?” Brianna took two of the little potato dumplings and sat down beside Roger, automatically passing him one. “It’s for surveying?”
“Among other things.” Jamie turned the astrolabe over and gently pushed the flat bar, making the notched sights revolve. “This bit—it’s used as a transit. Ye’ll ken what that is?”
Brianna nodded, looking interested.
“Sure. I know how to do different sorts of surveying, but we generally used...”
I saw Roger grimace as he swallowed, the roughness of the stovie catching at his throat. I lifted my hand toward the water pitcher, but he caught my eye and shook his head, almost imperceptibly. He swallowed again, more easily this time, and coughed.
“I recall ye said ye could survey.” Jamie regarded his daughter with approval. “That’s why I wanted this”—he hefted the object in his hand—“though I did have something a wee bit less gaudy in mind. Pewter would ha’ been more serviceable. Still, so long as I havena got to pay for it...”
“Let me see.” Brianna extended a hand and took the thing, frowning in absorption as she moved the inner dial.
“Do you know how to use an astrolabe?” I asked her dubiously.
“I do,” Jamie said, with a certain degree of smugness. “I was taught, in France.” He stood up, and jerked his chin toward the door.
“Bring it outside, lass. I’ll show ye how to tell the time.”
“... AYE, JUST THERE.” Jamie leaned intently over Bree’s shoulder, pointing at a spot on the outer dial. She moved the inner dial carefully to match, looked up at the sun, and twitched the pointer a fraction of an inch.
“Five-thirty!” she exclaimed, flushed with delight.
“Five thirty-five,” Jamie corrected, grinning broadly. “See there?” He pointed at one of the tiny symbols on the rim, which at this distance, appeared to be no more than a flyspeck to me.
“Five thirty-five,” Mrs. Bug said, in tones of awe. “Think of that, Arch! Why—I havena kent the time for sure, since... since...”
“Edinburgh,” her husband said, nodding.
“Aye, that’s right! My cousin Jane had a case-clock, a lovely thing, ’twould chime like a church bell, and its face wi’ brass numbers, and a pair of wee cherubs flying right across, so—”
“This is the first time I’ve known what time it was, since I left the Sherstons’ house.” Bree was ignoring both Mrs. Bug’s raptures and the instrument in her hands. I saw her meet Roger’s eyes, and smile—and after a moment, his own lopsided smile in return. How long had it been for him?
Everyone was squinting up at the setting sun, waving clouds of gnats from their eyes and discussing when they had last known the time. How very odd, I thought, with some amusement. Why this preoccupation with measuring time? And yet I had it, too.
I tried to think when the last time had been for me. At Jocasta’s wedding? No—on the field near Alamance Creek, just before the battle. Colonel Ashe had had a pocket watch, and—I stopped, remembering. No. It was after the battle. And that was very likely the last time Roger had known what time it was—if he had been sufficiently conscious to hear one of the Army surgeons announce that it was then four o’clock—and to give his considered opinion that Roger would not live to see the hour of five.
“What else can you do with it, Da?”
Bree handed the astrolabe carefully back to Jamie, who took it and at once began polishing away the fingermarks with the tail of his shirt.
“Oh, a great number of things. Ye can find your position, whether on land or at sea, tell the time, find a particular star in the sky...”
“Very useful,” I observed. “Though perhaps not quite so convenient as a clock. But I suppose telling time wasn’t your chief intent?”
“No.” He shook his head, stowing the astrolabe tenderly away in its velvet bag. “I must have the land of the two grants properly surveyed—and soon.”
“Why soon?” Bree had been turning to go, but turned back at this, one brow raised.
“Because time grows short.” Jamie looked up at her, the pleasure of his acquisition subsiding into seriousness. He glanced over his shoulder, but there was no one left on the porch save himself and me, Brianna and Roger.
Mr. Wainwright, uninterested in scientific marvels, had gone down to the yard and was lugging his packs into the house, aided by Mr. Bug, and hindered by Mrs. Bug’s running commentary. Everyone on the Ridge would know he was here by tomorrow, and would come to the house to buy, sell, and hear the latest news.
“Ye ken what’s coming, the two of ye.” Jamie glanced from Bree to Roger. “The King may fall, but the land will stay. And if we are to hold this land through it all, we must have it properly surveyed and registered. When there is trouble, when folk must leave their land or maybe have it seized—it’s the devil and all to get back, but it’s maybe possible, forbye—and ye have a proper deed to say what was once yours.”
The sun sparked gold and fire from the curve of his head as he looked up. He nodded toward the dark line of the mountains, silhouetted by a glorious spray of pink and gold cloud, but I could see from the look of distance in his eyes that he saw something far beyond.
“Lallybroch—we saved it by means of a deed of sasine. And Young Simon, Lovat’s son—he fought for his land, after Culloden, and got most of it back at last. But only because he had the papers to prove what had been his. So.”
He put back the lid of the box he had brought out, and laid the velvet bag gently in it. “I will have papers. And whether it is one George or the other who rules in time—this land will be ours. And yours,” he added softly, raising his eyes to Brianna’s. “And your children’s after you.”
I laid my hand on his, where it rested on the box. His skin was warm with work and the heat of the day, and he smelt of clean sweat. The hairs on his forearm shone red and gold in the sun, and I understood very well just then, why it is that men measure time. They wish to fix a moment, in the vain hope that so doing will keep it from departing.
NO SMALL THING
BRIANNA HAD COME UP TO the big house to borrow a book. She left Jemmy in the kitchen with Mrs. Bug, and went down the hall to her father’s study. He was gone, the room empty, though it smelled faintly of him—some indefinable masculine scent, composed of leather, sawdust, sweat, whisky, manure—and ink.
She rubbed a finger under her nose, nostrils twitching, and smiled at the thought. Roger smelled of those things, too—and yet he had his own scent, underneath. What was it? she wondered. His hands used to smell slightly of varnish and metal, when he owned a guitar. But that was long ago and far away.
