Brian made a noncommittal sound in his throat, and Roger wondered just what Murray meant. Was it a warning that Rob Cameron might have relatives or allies to whom he was heading? Or was there some tension or difficulty between some of the Camerons and the Frasers of Lovat—or between the Camerons and the MacKenzies?
That presented some difficulty. If there was a feud of any importance going on, Roger ought already to know about it. He gave a small, grave “hmp” himself and resolved to approach any Camerons with caution. At the same time … was Rob Cameron intending to seek refuge or help with the Camerons of this time? Had he maybe come to the past before and had a hiding place prepared among his own clan? That was an evil thought, and Roger felt his stomach tighten as though to resist a punch.
But no; there hadn’t been time. If Cameron had only learned about time travel from the guide Roger had written for his children’s eventual use, he wouldn’t have had time to go to the past, find ancient Camerons, and … no, ridiculous.
Roger shook off the tangle of half-formed thoughts as though they were a fishing net thrown over his head. There was nothing more to be done until they reached the garrison tomorrow.
Murray and Fraser were leaning on the fence now, sharing the pipe and chatting casually in Gaelic.
“My daughter bids me ask after your son,” Brian Fraser said, with an air of casualness. “Any word?”
Murray snorted, smoke purling from his nostrils, and said something very idiomatic about his son. Fraser grimaced in sympathy and shook his head.
“At least ye ken he’s alive,” he said, dropping back into English. “Like enough, he’ll come home when he’s had his fill of fighting. We did, aye?” He nudged Murray gently in the ribs, and the taller man snorted again, but with less ferocity.
“It wasna boredom that led us here, a dhuine dhubh. Not you, anyway.” He raised one shaggy graying brow, and Fraser laughed, though Roger thought there was a regretful edge in it.
He remembered the story very well: Brian Fraser, a bastard of old Lord Lovat’s, had stolen Ellen MacKenzie from her brothers Colum and Dougal, the MacKenzies of Castle Leoch, and had ended up at last with her at Lallybroch, the pair of them more or less disowned by both clans but at least left alone by them. He’d seen the portrait of Ellen, too—tall, red-haired, and undeniably a woman worth the effort.
She’d looked very much like her granddaughter Brianna. By reflex, he closed his eyes, breathed deep of the cold Highland evening, and thought he felt her there at his side. If he opened them again, might he see her standing in the smoke?
I’ll come back, he thought to her. No matter what, a nighean ruaidh—I’m coming back. With Jem.
SANCTUARY
IT WAS NEARLY AN hour’s drive over the narrow, twisting Highland roads from Lallybroch to Fiona Buchan’s new house in Inverness. Plenty of time for Brianna to wonder if she was doing the right thing, if she had any right to involve Fiona and her family in a matter that looked more dangerous by the moment. Plenty of time to get a stiff neck from looking over her shoulder—though if she was being followed, how would she know?
She’d had to tell the kids where Roger was, as gently and briefly as possible. Mandy had put a thumb in her mouth and stared gravely at her, round-eyed. Jem … Jem hadn’t said anything but had gone white under his freckles and looked as though he was about to throw up. She glanced in the rearview mirror. He was hunched in a corner of the backseat now, face turned to the window.
“He’ll come back, honey,” she’d said, trying to hug him in reassurance. He’d let her but stood stiff in her arms, stricken.
“It’s my fault,” he’d said, his voice small and wooden as a puppet’s. “I should have got away sooner. Then Dad wouldn’t—”
“It’s not your fault,” she’d said firmly. “It’s Mr. Cameron’s fault and no one else’s. You were very brave. And Daddy will come back really soon.”
Jem had swallowed hard but said nothing in reply. When she’d let him go, he swayed for a moment, and Mandy had come up and hugged his legs.
“Daddy’ll come back,” she said encouragingly. “For supper!”
“It might take a little bit longer than that,” Bree said, smiling in spite of the panic packed like a snowball under her ribs.
She drew a deep breath of relief as the highway opened out near the airport and she could go faster than 30 mph. Another wary glance in the mirror, but the road was empty behind her. She stepped on the gas.
Fiona was one of the only two people who knew. The other one was in Boston: her mother’s oldest friend, Joe Abernathy. But she needed sanctuary for Jem and Mandy, right now. She couldn’t stay with them at Lallybroch; the walls were two feet thick in places, yes, but it was a farm manor, not a fortified tower house, and hadn’t been built with any notion that the inhabitants might need to repel invaders or stand off a siege.
Being in the city gave her a sense of relief. Having people around. Witnesses. Camouflage. Help. She pulled up in the street outside the Craigh na Dun Bed-and-Breakfast (three AA stars) with the sense of an exhausted swimmer crawling up onto shore.
The timing was good. It was early afternoon; Fiona would have finished the cleaning and it wouldn’t yet be time to check in new guests or start the supper.
A little painted bell in the shape of a bluebell tinkled when they opened the door, and one of Fiona’s daughters instantly popped an inquiring head out of the lounge.
“Auntie Bree!” she shouted, and at once the lobby was filled with children, as Fiona’s three girls pushed one another out of the way to hug Bree, pick up Mandy, and tickle Jem, who promptly dropped to all fours and crawled under the bench where folk left their wraps.
“What—oh, it’s you, hen!” Fiona, coming out of the kitchen in a workmanlike canvas apron that said PIE QUEEN on the front, smiled with delight at sight of Bree and enveloped her in a floury hug.
“What’s wrong?” Fiona murmured in her ear, under cover of the embrace. She drew back a bit, still holding Bree, and looked up at her, squinting in half-playful worry. “Rog playing away from home, is he?”
“You … could say that.” Bree managed a smile but evidently not a very good one, because Fiona at once clapped her hands, bringing order out of the chaos in the lobby, and dispatched all the children to the upstairs lounge to watch telly. Jem, looking hunted, was coaxed out from under the bench and reluctantly followed the girls, looking back over his shoulder at his mother. She smiled and made shooing motions at him, then followed Fiona into the kitchen, glancing by reflex over her own shoulder.
THE TEAKETTLE SCREAMED, interrupting Brianna, but not before she’d got to the most salient point of her story. Fiona warmed and filled the pot, purse-lipped with concentration.
“Ye say he took the rifle. Ye’ve still got your shotgun?”
“Yes. It’s under the front seat of my car at the moment.”
Fiona nearly dropped the pot. Brianna shot out an arm and grabbed the handle, steadying it. Her hands were freezing, and the warm china felt wonderful.
“Well, I wasn’t going to leave it in a house the bastards have a key to, now, was I?”
Fiona set down the pot and crossed herself. “Dia eadarainn ’s an t-olc.” God between us and evil. She sat, giving Brianna a sharp look. “And ye’re quite sure as it’s bastards, plural?”
“Yes, I bloody am,” Bree said tersely. “Even if Rob Cameron managed to grow wings and fly out of my priest’s hole—let me tell you what happened to Jem at the dam.”
She did, in a few brief sentences, by the end of which Fiona was glancing over her own shoulder at the closed kitchen door. She looked back at Bree, settling herself. In her early thirties, she was a pleasantly rounded young woman with a lovely face and the calm expression of a mother who normally has the Indian sign on her offspring, but at the moment she had a look that Brianna’s own mother would have described as “blood in her eye.” She said something very bad in English regarding the man who’d chased Jem.
�
�So, then,” she said, picking up a paring knife from the nearby drainboard and examining the edge critically, “what shall we do?”
Bree drew a breath and sipped cautiously at the hot, milky tea. It was sweet, silky, and very comforting—but not nearly as comforting as that “we.”
“Well, first—would you let Jem and Mandy stay here while I go do a few things? It might be overnight; I brought their pajamas, just in case.” She nodded at the paper sack that she’d set down on one of the chairs.
“Aye, of course.” A small frown formed between Fiona’s dark brows. “What … sorts of things?”
“It’s—” Brianna began, intending to say, “better if you don’t know,” but in fact someone had better know where she was going and what she was doing. Just in case she didn’t come back. A little bubble of what might be either fear or anger rose up through the sense of warmth in her middle.
“I’m going to visit Jock MacLeod in hospital. He’s the night watchman who found Jem at the dam. He might know the man who hit him and tried to take Jem. And he does know Rob Cameron. He can maybe tell me who Cameron’s mates are outside of work or in lodge.”
She rubbed a hand down over her face, thinking.
“After that … I’ll talk to Rob’s sister and his nephew. If she’s not involved in whatever he’s up to, she’ll be worried. And if she is involved—then I need to know that.”
“D’ye think ye’ll be able to tell?” Fiona’s frown had eased a bit, but she still looked worried.
“Oh, yes,” Brianna said, with grim determination. “I’ll be able to tell. For one thing, if someone I talk to is involved, they’re probably likely to try to stop me asking questions.”
Fiona made a small noise that could best be spelled as “eeengh,” indicating deep concern.
Brianna drank the last of her tea and set down the cup with an explosive sigh.
“And then,” she said, “I’m going back to Lallybroch to meet a locksmith and have him change all the locks and install burglar alarms on the lower windows.” She looked questioningly at Fiona. “I don’t know how long it might take.…”
“Aye, that’s why ye brought the kids’ nighties. Nay problem, hen.” She chewed her lower lip, eyeing Brianna.
Bree knew what she was thinking, debating whether to ask or not, and saved her the trouble.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do about Roger,” she said steadily.
“He’ll come back, surely,” Fiona began, but Bree shook her head. Horrifying Realization Number 3 couldn’t be denied any longer.
“I don’t think so,” she said, though she bit her lip as if to keep the words from escaping. “He—he can’t know that Jem isn’t there. And he’d never ab-abandon him.”
Fiona was clasping Brianna’s hand in both of her own.
“No, no, of course he wouldna do that. But if he and the other fellow go on searching and find no trace … eventually, surely he’d think …” Her voice died away as she tried to imagine what Roger might think under those circumstances.
“Oh, he’ll be thinking, all right,” Bree said, and managed a small, shaky laugh. The thought of Roger’s determination, the growing sense of fear and desperation that must inevitably eat away at it, his fight to keep going—because he would; he’d never give up and come back to tell her Jem was lost for good. For if he didn’t find any trace of Jem, what could he think? That Cameron had maybe killed Jem, hidden his body, and gone to America in search of the gold? Or that they had both been lost in that horrifying space between one time and another, never to be found?
“Well, and he’ll be praying, too,” Fiona said with a brisk squeeze of Bree’s hand. “I can help wi’ that.”
That made tears well, and she blinked hard, scrubbing at her eyes with a paper napkin.
“I can’t cry now,” she said, in a choked voice. “I can’t. I haven’t got time.” She stood up suddenly, pulling her hand free. She sniffed, blew her nose hard on the napkin, and sniffed again.
“Fiona … I—I know you haven’t told anybody about … us,” she began, and even she could hear the doubt in her own voice.
Fiona snorted.
“I have not,” she said. “I’d be taken off to the booby hatch, and what would Ernie do wi’ the girls and all? Why?” she added, giving Brianna a hard look. “What are ye thinking?”
“Well … the women who—who dance at Craigh na Dun. Do you think any of them know what it is?”
Fiona sucked in one cheek, thinking.
“One or two o’ the older ones might have an idea,” she said slowly. “We’ve been callin’ down the sun on Beltane there for as far back as anyone knows. And some things do get passed down, ken. Be strange if nobody ever wondered. But even if someone kent for sure what happens there, they’d not speak—no more than I would.”
“Right. I just wondered—could you maybe find out, quietly, if any of the women have ties to Rob Cameron? Or maybe … to the Orkneys?”
“To what?” Fiona’s eyes went round. “Why the Orkneys?”
“Because Rob Cameron went on archaeological digs there. And I think that’s what made him interested in stone circles to start with. I know one man named Callahan, a friend of Roger’s—who worked up there with him, and I’ll talk to him, too—maybe tomorrow; I don’t think I’ll have time today. But if there’s anyone else who might be connected with things like that …” It was more than a long shot, but at the moment she was inclined to look under any stone she could lift.
“I’ll call round,” Fiona said thoughtfully. “And speak of calling—telephone me if ye’re not coming back tonight, aye? Just so as I know ye’re safe.”
Bree nodded, her throat tight, and hugged Fiona, taking one more moment’s strength from her friend.
Fiona saw her down the hall to the front door, pausing at the foot of the stair, and glanced toward the chatter coming from above. Did Bree want to say goodbye to Jem and Mandy? Wordless, Brianna shook her head. Her feelings were too raw; she couldn’t hide them sufficiently and didn’t want to scare the kids. Instead, she pressed her fingers to her lips and blew a kiss up the stairs, then turned to the door.
“That shotgun—” Fiona began behind her, and stopped. Brianna turned and raised an eyebrow.
“They canna get ballistics off buckshot, can they?”
AN GEARASDAN
THEY REACHED Fort William in early afternoon of the second day’s travel.
“How large is the garrison?” Roger asked, eyeing the stone walls of the fort. It was modest, as forts went, with only a few buildings and a drill yard within the surrounding walls.
“Maybe forty men, I’d say,” Brian replied, turning sideways to allow a pair of red-coated guards carrying muskets to pass him in the narrow entry passage. “Fort Augustus is the only garrison north of it, and that’s got maybe a hundred.”
That was surprising—or maybe not. If Roger was right about the date, it would be another three years before there was much talk of Jacobites in the Highlands—let alone enough of it to alarm the English crown into sending troops en masse to keep a lid on the situation.
The fort was open, and any number of civilians appeared to have business with the army, judging from the small crowd near one building. Fraser steered him toward another, smaller one with a tilt of his head, though.
“We’ll see the commander, I think.”
“You know him?” A worm of curiosity tickled his spine. Surely it was too early for—
“I’ve met him the once. Buncombe, he’s called. Seems a decent fellow, for a Sassenach.” Fraser gave his name to a clerk in the outer room, and within a moment they were ushered into the commander’s office.
“Oh …” A small, middle-aged man in uniform with tired eyes behind a pair of half spectacles half-rose, half-bowed, and dropped back into his seat as though the effort of recognition had exhausted him. “Broch Tuarach. Your servant, sir.”
Perhaps it had, Roger thought. The man’s face was gaunt and lined, and his breat
h whistled audibly in his lungs. Claire might have known specifically what was up with Captain Buncombe, but it didn’t take a doctor to know that something was physically amiss.
Still, Buncombe listened civilly to his story, called in the clerk to make a careful note of Cameron’s description and Jem’s, and promised that these would be circulated to the garrison and that any patrols or messengers would be advised to ask after the fugitives.
Brian had thoughtfully brought along a couple of bottles in his saddlebags and now produced one, which he set on the desk with a gurgling thump of enticement.
“We thank ye, sir, for your help. If ye’d allow us to present a small token of appreciation for your kindness …”
A small but genuine smile appeared on Captain Buncombe’s worn face.
“I would, sir. But only if you gentlemen will join me …? Ah, yes.” Two worn pewter cups and—after a brief search—a crystal goblet with a chip out of the rim were produced, and the blessed silence of the dram fell upon the tiny office.
After a few moments’ reverence, Buncombe opened his eyes and sighed.
“Amazing, sir. Your own manufacture, is it?”
Brian inclined his head with a modest shake.
“Nay but a few bottles at Hogmanay, just for the family.”
Roger had himself seen the root cellar from which Brian had chosen the bottle, lined from floor to ceiling with small casks and with an atmosphere to it that would have knocked a moose flat had he stayed to breathe it long. But an instant’s thought told him that it was probably wiser not to let a garrison full of soldiers know that you kept any sort of liquor in large quantities on your premises, no matter what terms you were on with their commander. He caught Brian’s eye, and Fraser looked aside with a small “mmphm” and a tranquil smile.
“Amazing,” Buncombe repeated, and tipped another inch into his glass, offering the bottle round. Roger followed Brian’s lead and refused, nursing his own drink while the other two men fell into a sort of conversation he recognized very well. Not friendly but courteous, a trade of information that might be of advantage to one or both—and a careful avoidance of anything that might give the other too much advantage.
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