"Better?" I said.
"Much." Jamie flexed his hand, grimacing. "Christ, those nettles sting!"
"They do." I pulled down the neck of my bodice and spread a little aloe juice on my breast with a gingerly touch. The coolness brought relief at once.
"I'm rather glad you didn't take me up on my offer," I said wryly, with a glance at a nearby bunch of blooming nettle.
He grinned and patted me on the bottom with his good hand.
"Well, it was a near thing, Sassenach. Ye shouldna tempt me like that." Then, sobering, he bent and kissed me gently.
"No, mo duinne. I swore to ye the once, and I was meaning it. I shallna raise a hand to you in anger, ever. After all," he added softly, turning away, "I have done enough to hurt you."
I shrank from the pain of memory, but I owed him justice as well.
"Jamie," I said, lips trembling a bit. "The…baby. It wasn't your fault. I felt as though it was, but it wasn't. I think…I think it would have happened anyway, whether you'd fought Jack Randall or not."
"Aye? Ah…well." His arm was warm and comforting about me, and he pressed my head into the curve of his shoulder. "It eases me a bit to hear ye say so. It wasna the child so much as Frank that I meant, though. D'ye think you can forgive me for that?" The blue eyes were troubled as he looked down at me.
"Frank?" I felt a shock of surprise. "But…there's nothing to forgive." Then a thought struck me; perhaps he really didn't know that Jack Randall was still alive—after all, he had been arrested immediately after the duel. But if he didn't know.…I took a deep breath. He would have to find it out in any case; perhaps better from me.
"You didn't kill Jack Randall, Jamie," I said.
To my puzzlement, he didn't seem shocked or surprised. He shook his head, the afternoon sun striking sparks from his hair. Not yet long enough to lace back again, it had grown considerably in prison, and he had to brush it out of his eyes continuously.
"I know that, Sassenach," he said.
"You do? But…what…" I was at a loss.
"You…dinna know about it?" he said hesitantly.
A cold feeling crept up my arms, despite the heat of the sun.
"Know what?"
He chewed his lower lip, eyeing me reluctantly. At last he took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh.
"No, I didna kill him. But I wounded him."
"Yes, Louise said you wounded him badly. But she said he was recovering." Suddenly, I saw again in memory that last scene in the Bois de Boulogne; the last thing I had seen before the blackness took me. The sharp tip of Jamie's sword, slicing through the rain-spattered doeskin. The sudden red stain that darkened the fabric…and the angle of the blade, glinting with the force that drove it downward.
"Jamie!" I said, eyes widening with horror. "You didn't…Jamie, what have you done!"
He looked down, rubbing his welted palm against the side of his kilt. He shook his head, wondering at himself.
"I was such a fool, Sassenach. I couldna think myself a man and let him go unpunished for what he'd done to the wee lad, and yet…all the time, I kept thinking to myself, ‘Ye canna kill the bastard outright, you've promised. Ye canna kill him.' " He smiled faintly, without humor, looking down at the marks on his palm.
"My mind was boiling over like a pot of parritch on the flame, yet I held to that thought. ‘Ye canna kill him.' And I didn't. But I was half-mad wi' the fury of the fighting, and the blood singing in my ears—and I didna stop a moment to remember why it was I must not kill him, beyond that I had promised you. And when I had him there on the ground before me, and the memory of Wentworth and Fergus, and the blade live in my hand—" He broke off suddenly.
I felt the blood draining from my head and sat down heavily on a rock outcropping.
"Jamie," I said. He shrugged helplessly.
"Well, Sassenach," he said, still avoiding my gaze, "all I can say is, it's a hell of a place to be wounded."
"Jesus." I sat still, stunned by this revelation. Jamie sat quiet beside me, studying the broad backs of his hands. There was still a small pink mark on the back of the right one. Jack Randall had driven a nail through it, in Wentworth.
"D'ye hate me for it, Claire?" His voice was soft, almost tentative.
I shook my head, eyes closed.
"No." I opened them, and saw his face close by, wearing a troubled frown. "I don't know what I think now, Jamie. I really don't. But I don't hate you." I put a hand on his, and squeezed it gently. "Just…let me be by myself for a minute, all right?"
Clad once more in my now-dry gown, I spread my hands flat on my thighs. One silver, one gold. Both my wedding rings were still there, and I had no idea what that meant.
Jack Randall would never father a child. Jamie seemed sure of it, and I wasn't inclined to question him. And yet I still wore Frank's ring, I still remembered the man who had been my first husband, could summon at will thoughts and memories of who he had been, what he would do. How was it possible, then, that he would not exist?
I shook my head, thrusting back the wind-dried curls behind my ears. I didn't know. Chances were, I never would know. But whether one could change the future or not—and it seemed we had—I was certain that I couldn't change the immediate past. What had been done had been done, and nothing I could do now would alter it. Jack Randall would sire no children.
A stone rolled down the slope behind me, bouncing and setting off small slides of gravel. I turned and glanced up, to where Jamie, dressed once more, was exploring.
The rockfall above was recent. Fresh white surfaces showed where the stained brown of the weathered limestone had fractured, and only the smallest of plants had yet gained a foothold in this tumbled pile of rock, unlike the thick growth of shrubs that blanketed the rest of the hillside.
Jamie inched to one side, absorbed in finding handholds through the intricacies of the fall. I saw him edge around a giant boulder, hugging the rock, and the faint scrape of his dirk against the stone came to me through the still afternoon air.
Then he disappeared. Expecting him to reappear round the other side of the rock, I waited, enjoying the sun on my shoulders. But he didn't come back into sight, and after a few moments, I grew worried. He might have slipped and fallen or banged his head on a rock.
I took what seemed forever to undo the fastenings of my heeled boots again, and still he had not come back. I rucked up my skirts, and started up the hill, bare toes cautious on the rough warm rocks.
"Jamie!"
"Here, Sassenach." He spoke behind me, startling me, and I nearly lost my balance. He caught me by the arm and lifted me down to a small clear space between the jagged fallen stones.
He turned me toward the limestone wall, stained with water rust, and smoke. And something more.
"Look," he said softly.
I looked where he pointed, up across the smooth expanse of the cave wall, and gasped at the sight.
Painted beasts galloped across the rock face above me, hooves spurning the air as they leaped toward the light above. There were bison, and deer, grouped together in tail-raised flight, and at the end of the rock shelf, a tracing of delicate birds, wings spread as they hovered above the charge of the earthbound beasts.
Done in red and black and ochre with a delicate grace that used the lines of the rock itself for emphasis, they thundered soundlessly, haunches rounded with effort, wings taking flight through the crevices of stone. They had lived once in the dark of a cave, lit only by the flames of those who made them. Exposed to the sun by the fall of their sheltering roof, they seemed alive as anything that walked upon the earth.
Lost in contemplation of the massive shoulders that thrust their way from the rock, I didn't miss Jamie until he called me.
"Sassenach! Come here, will ye?" There was something odd about his voice, and I hurried toward him. He stood at the entrance of a small side-cave, looking down.
They lay behind an outcrop of the rock, as though they had sought shelter from the wind that chased the bison.
There were two of them, lying together on the packed earth of the cave floor. Sealed in the dry air of the cave, the bones had endured, though flesh had long since dried to dust. A tiny remnant of brown-parchment skin clung to the round curve of one skull, a strand of hair gone red with age stirring softly in the draft of our presence.
"My God," I said, softly, as though I might disturb them. I moved closer to Jamie, and his hand slid around my waist.
"Do you think…were they…killed here? A sacrifice, perhaps?"
Jamie shook his head, staring pensively down at the small heap of delicate, friable bones.
"No," he said. He, too, spoke softly, as though in the sanctuary of a church. He turned and lifted a hand to the wall behind us, where the deer leaped and the cranes soared into space beyond the stone.
"No," he said again. "The folk that made such beasts…they couldna do such things." He turned again then to the two skeletons, entwined at our feet. He crouched over them, tracing the line of the bones with a gentle finger, careful not to touch the ivory surface.
"See how they lie," he said. "They didna fall here, and no one laid out their bodies. They lay down themselves." His hand glided above the long armbones of the larger skeleton, a dark shadow fluttering like a large moth as it crossed the jackstraw pile of ribs.
"He had his arms around her," he said. "He cupped his thighs behind her own, and held her tight to him, and his head is resting on her shoulder."
His hand made passes over the bones, illuminating, indicating, clothing them once more with the flesh of imagination, so I could see them as they had been, embraced for the last time, for always. The small bones of the fingers had fallen apart, but a vestige of gristle still joined the metacarpals of the hands. The tiny phalanges overlay each other; they had linked hands in their last waiting.
Jamie had risen and was surveying the interior of the cavern, the late afternoon sun painting the walls with splashes of crimson and ochre.
"There." He pointed to a spot near the cavern entrance. The rocks there were brown with dust and age, but not rusty with water and erosion, like those deeper in the cave.
"That was the entrance, once," he said. "The rocks fell once before, and sealed this place." He turned back and rested a hand on the rocky outcrop that shielded the lovers from the light.
"They must have felt their way around the cave, hand in hand," I said. "Looking for a way out, in the dust and the dark."
"Aye." He rested his forehead against the stone, eyes closed. "And the light was gone, and the air failed them. And so they lay down in the dark to die." The tears made wet tracks through the dust on his cheeks. I brushed a hand beneath my own eyes, and took his free hand, carefully weaving my fingers with his.
He turned to me, wordless, and the breath rushed from him as he pulled me hard against him. Our hands groped in the dying light of the setting sun, urgent in the touch of warmth, the reassurance of flesh, reminded by the hardness of the invisible bone beneath the skin, how short life is.
PART FIVE
"I Am Come Home"
30
LALLYBROCH
It was called Broch Tuarach, for the ancient cylinder of stone, built some hundreds of years before, that poked up from the hillside behind the manor. The people who lived on the estate called it "Lallybroch." Insofar as I could gather, this meant "lazy tower," which made at least as much sense as applying the term "North-facing Tower" to a cylindrical structure.
"How can something that's round face north?" I asked as we made our way slowly down a long slope of heather and granite, leading the horses in single file down the narrow, twisting path the red deer had trampled through the springy growth. "It hasn't got a face."
"It has a door," Jamie said reasonably. "The door faces north." He dug in his feet as the slope dropped sharply, hissing through his teeth in signal to the horse he led behind him. The muscular hindquarters in front of me bunched suddenly, as the cautious stride altered to a tentative mincing, each hoof sliding a few inches in the damp earth before another step was risked. The horses, purchased in Inverness, were good-sized, handsome beasts. The wiry little Highland ponies would have made much better work of the steep slope, but these horses, all mares, were meant for breeding, not work.
"All right," I said, stepping carefully over a tiny runnel of water that crossed the deer path. "Good enough. What about ‘Lallybroch,' though? Why is it a lazy tower?"
"It leans a bit," Jamie replied. I could see the back of his head, bent in concentration on the footing, a few tendrils of red-gold hair lifting from the crown in the afternoon breeze that blew up the slope. "Ye canna see it much from the house, but if you stand on the west side, you'll see it leans to the north a bit. And if ye look from one of the slits on the top floor over the door, ye canna see the wall beneath you because of the slant."
"Well, I suppose no one had heard of plumb lines in the thirteenth century," I observed. "It's a wonder it hasn't fallen down by now."
"Oh, it's fallen down a number of times," Jamie said, raising his voice slightly as the wind freshened. "The folk who lived there just put it back up again; that's likely why it leans."
"I see it! I see it!" Fergus's voice, shrill with excitement, came from behind me. He had been allowed to stay on his mount, as his negligible weight was unlikely to cause the horse any great difficulty, bad footing notwithstanding. Glancing back, I could see him kneeling on his saddle, bouncing up and down with excitement. His horse, a patient, good-natured bay mare, gave a grunt at this, but kindly refrained from flinging him off into the heather. Ever since his adventure with the Percheron colt at Argentan, Fergus had seized every chance to get on a horse, and Jamie, amused and sympathetic to a fellow horse-lover, had indulged him, taking him up behind his own saddle when he rode through the Paris streets, allowing him now and then to get up alone on one of Jared's coach horses, large stolid creatures that merely flicked their ears in a puzzled sort of way at Fergus's kicks and shouts.
I shaded my eyes, looking in the direction where he pointed. He was right; from his higher vantage point, he had spotted the dark form of the old stone broch, perched on its hill. The modern manor-house below was harder to see; it was built of white-harled stone, and the sun reflected from its walls as from the surrounding fields. Set in a hollow of sloping barley fields, it was still partly obscured to our view by a row of trees that formed the windbreak at the foot of a field.
I saw Jamie's head rise, and fix as he saw the home farm of Lallybroch below. He stood quite still for a minute, not speaking, but I saw his shoulders lift and set themselves square. The wind caught his hair and the folds of his plaid and lifted them, as though he might rise in the air, joyous as a kite.
It reminded me of the way the sails of the ships had filled, turning past the headland into the shipping roads as they left the harbor of Le Havre. I had stood on the end of the quay, watching the bustle and the comings and goings of shipping and commerce. The gulls dived and shrieked among the masts, their voices raucous as the shouting of the seamen.
Jared Munro Fraser had stood by me, watching benignly the flow of passing seaborne wealth, some of it his. It was one of his ships, the Portia, that would carry us to Scotland. Jamie had told me that all Jared's ships were named for his mistresses, the figureheads carved in the likenesses of the ladies in question. I squinted against the wind at the prow of the ship, trying to decide whether Jamie had been teasing me. If not, I concluded, Jared preferred his women well endowed.
"I shall miss you both," Jared said, for the fourth time in half an hour. He looked truly regretful, even his cheerful nose seeming less upturned and optimistic than usual. The trip to Germany had been a success; he sported a large diamond in his stock, and the coat he wore was a rich bottle-green velvet with silver buttons.
"Ah, well," he said, shaking his head. "Much as I should like to keep the laddie with me, I canna grudge him joy of his homecoming. Perhaps I shall come to visit ye someday, my dear; it's been long since I set foot in Scotland."
"We'll miss you, too," I told him, truthfully. There were other people I would miss—Louise, Mother Hildegarde, Herr Gerstmann. Master Raymond most of all. Yet I looked forward to returning to Scotland, to Lallybroch. I had no wish to go back to Paris, and there were people there I most certainly had no desire to see again—Louis of France, for one.
Charles Stuart, for another. Cautious probing amongst the Jacobites in Paris had confirmed Jamie's initial impression; the small burst of optimism fired by Charles's boasting of his "grand venture" had faded, and while the loyal supporters of King James held true to their sovereign, there seemed no chance that this stolid loyalty of stubborn endurance would lead to action.
Let Charles make his own peace with exile, then, I thought. Our own was over. We were going home.
"The baggage is aboard," said a dour Scots voice in my ear. "The master of the ship says come ye along now; we sail wi' the tide."
Jared turned to Murtagh, then glanced right and left down the quay. "Where's the laddie, then?" he asked.
Murtagh jerked his head down the pier. "In the tavern yon. Gettin' stinkin' drunk."
I had wondered just how Jamie had planned to weather the Channel crossing. He had taken one look at the lowering red sky of dawn that threatened later storms, excused himself to Jared, and disappeared. Looking in the direction of Murtagh's nod, I saw Fergus, sitting on a piling near the entrance to one grogshop, plainly doing sentry duty.
Jared, who had exhibited first disbelief and then hilarity when informed of his nephew's disability, grinned widely at this news.
"Oh, aye?" he said. "Well, I hope he's left the last quart 'til we come for him. He'll be hell to carry up the gangplank, if he hasn't."
"What did he do that for?" I demanded of Murtagh, in some exasperation. "I told him I had some laudanum for him." I patted the silk reticule I carried. "It would knock him out a good deal faster."
Murtagh merely blinked once. "Aye. He said if he was goin' to have a headache, he'd as soon enjoy the gettin' of it. And the whisky tastes a good bit better goin' down than yon filthy black stuff." He nodded at my reticule, then at Jared. "Come on, then, if ye mean to help me wi' him."
In the forward cabin of the Portia, I had sat on the captain's bunk, watching the steady rise and fall of the receding shoreline, my husband's head cradled on my knees.