“Never!” replied Jamie indignantly. “I never yelled.”
“Ye call it what ye like, Jamie,” his friend answered, “but ye were awful loud.”
“Ye could hear the both of ye for miles,” Jenny interjected. “And not only the yelling. Ye could hear Jamie arguing all the time, right up to the fence.”
“Aye, ye should ha’ been a lawyer, Jamie. But I dinna ken why I always let you do the talking,” said Ian, shaking his head. “You always got us in worse trouble than we started.”
Jamie began to laugh again. “You mean the broch?”
“I do.” Ian turned to me, motioning toward the west, where the ancient stone tower rose from the hill behind the house.
“One of Jamie’s better arguments, that was,” he said, rolling his eyes upward. “He told Brian it was uncivilized to use physical force in order to make your point of view prevail. Corporal punishment was barbarous, he said, and old-fashioned, to boot. Thrashing someone just because they had committed an act with whose ram-ramifications, that was it—with whose ramifications ye didn’t agree was not at a’ a constructive form of punishment.…”
All of us were laughing by this time.
“Did Brian listen to all of this?” I asked.
“Oh, aye.” Ian nodded. “I just stood there wi’ Jamie, nodding whenever he’d stop for breath. When Jamie finally ran out of words, his father sort of coughed a bit and said ‘I see.’ Then he turned and looked out of the window for a little, swinging the strap and nodding his head, as though he were thinking. We were standing there, elbow to elbow like Jamie said, sweating. At last Brian turned about and told us to follow him to the stables.”
“He gave us each a broom, a brush, and a bucket, and pointed us in the direction of the broch,” said Jamie, taking up the story. “Said I’d convinced him of my point, so he’d decided on a more ‘constructive’ form of punishment.”
Ian’s eyes rolled slowly up, as though following the rough stones of the broch upward.
“That tower rises sixty feet from the ground,” he told me, “and it’s thirty feet in diameter, wi’ three floors.” He heaved a sigh. “We swept it from the top to the bottom,” he said, “and scrubbed it from the bottom to the top. It took five days, and I can taste rotted oat-straw when I cough, even now.”
“And you tried to kill me on the third day,” said Jamie, “for getting us into that.” He touched his head gingerly. “I had a wicked gash over my ear, where ye hit me wi’ the broom.”
“Oh, weel,” Ian said comfortably, “that was when ye broke my nose the second time, so we were even.”
“Trust a Murray to keep score,” Jamie said, shaking his head.
“Let’s see,” I said, counting on my fingers. “According to you, Frasers are stubborn, Campbells are sneaky, MacKenzies are charming but sly, and Grahams are stupid. What’s the Murrays’ distinguishing characteristic?”
“Ye can count on them in a fight,” said Jamie and Ian together, then laughed.
“Ye can too,” said Jamie, recovering. “You just hope they’re on your side.” And both men went off into fits again.
Jenny shook her head disapprovingly at spouse and brother.
“And we havena even had any wine yet,” she said. She put down her sewing and heaved herself to her feet. “Come wi’ me, Claire; we’ll see has Mrs. Crook made any biscuits to have wi’ the port.”
* * *
Coming back down the hall a quarter of an hour later with trays of refreshments, I heard Ian say, “You’ll not mind then, Jamie?”
“Mind what?”
“That we wed without your consent—me and Jenny, I mean.”
Jenny, walking ahead of me, came to a sudden stop outside the drawing room door.
There was a brief snort from the love seat where Jamie lay sprawled, feet propped on a hassock. “Since I didna tell ye where I was, and ye had no notion when—if ever—I’d come back, I can hardly blame ye for not waiting.”
I could see Ian in profile, leaning over the log basket. His long, good-natured face wore a slight frown.
“Weel, I didna think it right, especially wi’ me being crippled …”
There was a louder snort.
“Jenny couldna have a better husband, if you’d lost both legs and your arms as well,” Jamie said gruffly. Ian’s pale skin flushed slightly in embarrassment. Jamie coughed and swung his legs down from the hassock, leaning over to pick up a scrap of kindling that had fallen from the basket.
“How did ye come to wed anyway, given your scruples?” he asked, one side of his mouth curling up.
“Gracious, man,” Ian protested, “ye think I had any choice in the matter? Up against a Fraser?” He shook his head, grinning at his friend.
“She came up to me out in the field one day, while I was tryin’ to mend a wagon that sprang its wheel. I crawled out, all covered wi’ muck, and found her standin’ there looking like a bush covered wi’ butterflies. She looks me up and down and she says—” He paused and scratched his head. “Weel, I don’t know exactly what she said, but it ended with her kissing me, muck notwithstanding, and saying, ‘Fine, then, we’ll be married on St. Martin’s Day.’ ” He spread his hands in comic resignation. “I was still explaining why we couldna do any such thing, when I found myself in front of a priest, saying, ‘I take thee, Janet’… and swearing to a lot of verra improbable statements.”
Jamie rocked back in his seat, laughing.
“Aye, I ken the feeling,” he said. “Makes ye feel a bit hollow, no?”
Ian smiled, embarrassment forgotten. “It does and all. I still get that feeling, ye know, when I see Jenny sudden, standing against the sun on the hill, or holding wee Jamie, not lookin’ at me. I see her, and I think, ‘God, man, she can’t be yours, not really.’ ” He shook his head, brown hair flopping over his brow. “And then she turns and smiles at me …” He looked up at his brother-in-law, grinning.
“Weel, ye know yourself. I can see it’s the same wi’ you and your Claire. She’s … something special, no?”
Jamie nodded. The smile didn’t leave his face, but altered somehow.
“Aye,” he said softly. “Aye, she is that.”
* * *
Over the port and biscuits, Jamie and Ian reminisced further about their shared boyhood, and their fathers. Ian’s father, William, had died just the past spring, leaving Ian to run the estate alone.
“You remember when your father came on us down by the spring, and made us go wi’ him to the smithy to see how to fix a wagon-tree?”
“Aye, and he couldna understand why we kept squirming and shifting about—”
“And he kept asking ye did ye need to go to the privy—”
Both men were laughing too hard to finish the story, so I looked at Jenny.
“Toads,” she said succinctly. “The two o’ them each had five or six toads inside his shirt.”
“Oh, Lord,” said Ian. “When the one crawled up your neck and hopped out of your shirt into the forge, I thought I’d die.”
“I cannot imagine why my father didna wring my neck on several occasions,” said Jamie, shaking his head. “It’s a wonder I ever grew up.”
Ian looked consideringly at his own offspring, industriously engaged in piling wooden blocks on top of each other by the hearth. “I don’t quite know how I’m goin’ to manage it, when the time comes I have to beat my own son. I mean … he’s, well, he’s so small.” He gestured helplessly at the sturdy little figure, tender neck bent to his task.
Jamie eyed his small namesake cynically. “Aye, he’ll be as much a devil as you or I, give him time. After all, I suppose even I must ha’ looked small and innocent at one point.”
“You did,” said Jenny unexpectedly, coming to set a pewter cup of cider in her husband’s hand. She patted her brother on the head.
“You were verra sweet as a baby, Jamie. I remember standing over your cot. Ye canna ha’ been more than two, asleep wi’ your thumb in your mouth, and we agreed
we’d never seen a prettier lad. You had fat round cheeks and the dearest red curls.”
The pretty lad turned an interesting shade of rose, and drained his cider at one gulp, avoiding my glance.
“Didna last long, though,” Jenny said, flashing white teeth in a mildly malicious smile at her brother. “How old were ye when ye got your first thrashing, Jamie? Seven?”
“No, eight,” Jamie said, thrusting a new log into the smoldering pile of kindling. “Christ, that hurt. Twelve strokes full across the bum, and he didna let up a bit, beginning to end. He never did.” He sat back on his heels, rubbing his nose with the knuckles of one hand. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes bright from the exertion.
“Once it was over, Father went off a bit and sat down on a rock while I settled myself. Then when I’d quit howling and got down to a sort of wet snuffle, he called me over to him. Now that I think of it, I can remember just what he said. Maybe you can use it on young Jamie, Ian, when the time comes.” Jamie closed his eyes, recalling.
“He stood me between his knees and made me look him in the face, and said, ‘That’s the first time, Jamie. I’ll have to do it again, maybe a hundred times, before you’re grown to a man.’ He laughed a bit then and said, ‘My father did it to me at least that often, and you’re as stubborn and cockle-headed as ever I was.’
“He said, ‘Sometimes I daresay I’ll enjoy thrashing you, depending on what you’ve done to deserve it. Mostly I won’t. But I’ll do it nonetheless. So remember it, lad. If your head thinks up mischief, your backside’s going to pay for it.’ Then he gave me a hug and said, ‘You’re a braw lad, Jamie. Go away to the house now and let your mother comfort ye.’ I opened my mouth to say something to that, and he said, quick-like, ‘No, I know you don’t need it, but she does. Get on wi’ ye.’ So I came down and Mother fed me bread with jam on it.”
Jenny suddenly started to laugh. “I just remembered,” she said, “Da used to tell that story about you, Jamie, about thrashing you, and what he said to you. He said when he sent ye back to the house after, you came halfway down, then all of a sudden stopped and waited for him.
“When he came down to ye, you looked up at him and said, ‘I just wanted to ask, Faither—did ye enjoy it this time?’ And when he said ‘no,’ you nodded and said, ‘Good. I didna like it much either.’ ”
We all laughed for a minute together, then Jenny looked up at her brother, shaking her head. “He loved to tell that story. Da always said you’d be the death of him, Jamie.”
The merriment died out of Jamie’s face, and he looked down at the big hands resting on his knees.
“Aye,” he said quietly. “Well, and I was, then, wasn’t I?”
Jenny and Ian exchanged glances of dismay, and I looked down at my own lap, not knowing what to say. There was no sound for a moment but the crackling of the fire. Then Jenny, with a quick look at Ian, set down her glass and touched her brother on the knee.
“Jamie,” she said. “It wasna your fault.”
He looked up at her and smiled, a little bleakly.
“No? Who else’s, then?”
She took a deep breath and said, “Mine.”
“What?” He stared at her in blank astonishment.
She had gone a little paler even than usual, but remained composed.
“I said it was my fault, as much as anyone’s. For—for what happened to you, Jamie. And Father.”
He covered her hand with his own and rubbed it gently.
“Dinna talk daft, lass,” he said. “Ye did what ye did to try to save me; you’re right, if ye’d not gone wi’ Randall, he’d likely have killed me here.”
She studied her brother’s face, a troubled frown wrinkling her rounded brow.
“No, I dinna regret taking Randall to the house—not even if he’d … well, no. But that wasn’t it.” She drew a deep breath again, steeling herself.
“When I took him inside, I brought him up to my room. I—I didna ken quite what to expect—I’d not … been wi’ a man. He seemed verra nervous, though, all flushed and as though he were not certain himself, which seemed strange to me. He pushed me onto the bed, and then he stood there, rubbing himself. I thought at first I’d really damaged him wi’ my knee, though I knew I hadna struck him so hard, really.” The color was creeping up her cheeks, and she stole a sidelong glance at Ian before looking hastily back at her lap.
“I ken now that he was trying to—to make himself ready. I didna mean to let him know I was frightened, so I sat up straight on the bed and stared at him. That seemed to anger him, and he ordered me to turn round. I wouldna do it, though, and just kept looking at him.”
Her face was the color of one of the roses by the doorstep. “He … unbuttoned himself, and I … well, I laughed at him.”
“You did what?” Jamie said incredulously.
“I laughed. I mean—” Her eyes met her brother’s with some defiance. “I kent well enough how a man’s made. I’d seen you naked often enough, and Willy and Ian as well. But he—” A tiny smile appeared on her lips, despite her apparent efforts to suppress it. He looked so funny, all red in the face, and rubbing himself so frantic, and yet still only half—”
There was a choked sound from Ian, and she bit her lip, but went on bravely.
“He didna like it when I laughed, and I could see it, so I laughed some more. That’s when he lunged at me and tore my dress half off me. I smacked him in the face, and he struck me across the jaw, hard enough to make me see stars. Then he grunted a bit, as though that pleased him, and started to climb onto the bed wi’ me. I had just about sense enough left to laugh again. I struggled up onto my knees, and I—I taunted him. I told him I kent he was no a real man, and couldna manage wi’ a woman. I—”
She bent her head still further, so the dark curls swung down past her flaming cheeks. Her words were very low, almost a whisper.
“I … spread the pieces of my gown apart, and I … taunted him wi’ my breasts. I told him I knew he was afraid o’ me, because he wasna fit to touch a woman, but only to sport wi’ beasts and young lads …”
“Jenny,” said Jamie, shaking his head helplessly.
Her head came up to look at him. “Weel, I did then,” she said. “It was all I could think of, and I could see that he was fair off his head, but it was plain too that he … couldn’t. And I stared right at his breeches and I laughed again. And then he got his hands round my throat, throttling me, and I cracked my head against the bedpost, and … and when I woke he’d gone, and you wi’ him.”
There were tears standing in her lovely blue eyes as she grasped Jamie’s hands.
“Jamie, will ye forgive me? I know if I’d not angered him that way he wouldna have treated you as he did, and then Faither—”
“Oh, Jenny, love, mo cridh, don’t.” He was kneeling beside her, pulling her face into his shoulder. Ian, on her other side, looked as though he had been turned to stone.
Jamie rocked her gently as she sobbed. “Hush, little dove. Ye did right, Jenny. It wasna your fault, and maybe not mine either.” He stroked her back.
“Listen, mo cridh. He came here to do damage, under orders. And it would ha’ made no difference who he’d found here, or what you or I might have done. He meant to cause trouble, to rouse the countryside against the English, for his own purposes—and those of the man that hired him.”
Jenny stopped crying and sat up, looking at him in amazement.
“To rouse folk against the English? But why?”
Jamie made an impatient gesture with one hand. “To find out the folk that might support Prince Charles, should it come to another Rising. But I dinna ken yet which side Randall’s employer is on—if he wants to know so those that follow the Prince can be watched, and maybe have their property seized, or if it’s that he—Randall’s employer—means to go wi’ the Prince himself, and wants the Highlands roused and ready for war when the time comes. I dinna ken, and it isna important now.” He touched his sister’s hair, smoothing it b
ack from her brow.
“All that’s important is that you’re not harmed, and I am home. Soon I’ll come back to stay, mo cridh. I promise.”
She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it, her face glowing. She fumbled in her pocket for a handkerchief and blew her nose. Then she looked at Ian, still frozen by her side, a look of hurt anger in his eyes.
She touched him gently on the shoulder.
“You think I should ha’ told you.”
He didn’t move, but went on looking at her. “Aye,” he said quietly. “I do.”
She put the handkerchief down in her lap and took him by both hands.
“Ian, man, I didna tell ye because I didna wish to lose you too. My brother was gone, and my father. I didna mean to lose my own heart’s blood as well. For you are dearer to me even than home and family, love.” She cast a lopsided smile at Jamie. “And that’s saying quite a bit.”
She looked into Ian’s eyes, pleading, and I could see love and hurt pride struggling for mastery on his face. Jamie rose then and touched me on the shoulder. We left the room quietly, leaving them together before the dying fire.
* * *
It was a clear night, and the moonlight fell in floods through the tall casements. I could not fall asleep myself, and I thought perhaps it was the light also that kept Jamie awake; he lay quite still, but I could tell by his breathing that he was not asleep. He turned onto his back, and I heard him chuckle softly under his breath.
“What’s funny?” I asked quietly.
He turned his head toward me. “Oh, did I wake ye, Sassenach? I’m sorry. I was only remembering about things.”
“I wasn’t asleep.” I scooted closer. The bed had obviously been made for the days when a whole family slept together on one mattress; the gigantic feather-bed must have consumed the entire productivity of hundreds of geese, and navigating through the drifts was like crossing the Alps without a compass. “What were you remembering?” I asked, once I had safely reached his side.
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