The Fiery Cross
Page 34
"So Bree was right," I said, to break the silence in the clearing. "She said perhaps you were starting your own religion. When she saw the cross, I mean." He glanced at me, startled. He looked in the direction where the house lay, then his mouth curled wryly.
"I suppose I am," he said. "God help me.'
He took the knife gently away from Jemmy, wiped it on a fold of his plaid, and slid it away into its scabbard. He was finished,
I stood to follow him. The words I couldn't speak-wouldn't speak-were a ball of eels in my throat. Afraid one would slither free and slip out of my mouth, I said instead, "Was it God you were calling on to help you? When I saw you earlier?"
"Och, no," he said. He looked away for a second, then met my eyes with a sudden queer glance. "I was calling Dougal MacKenzie."
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I felt a deep and sudden qualm go through me. Dougal was long dead; he had died in Jamie's arms on the eve of Culloden--died with Jamie's dirk in his throat. I swallowed, and my eyes flicked involuntarily to the knife at his belt.
"I made my peace wi' Dougal long ago," he said softly, seeing the direction of my glance. He touched the hilt of the knife, with its knurl of gold, that had once been Hector Cameron's. "He was a chieftain, Dougal. He will know that I did then as I must-for my men, for you-and that I will do it now again."
I realized now what it was he had said, standing tall, facing the west-the direction to which the souls of the dead fly home. It had been neither prayer nor plea. I knew the words-though it was many years since I had heard them. He had shouted "Fulacb Ard!'--the war cry of clan MacKenzie.
I swallowed hard.
"And will he ... help you, do you think?" He nodded, serious.
"If he can," he said. "We will ha' fought together many times, Dougal and 1; hand to hand-and back to back. And after all, Sassenach-blood is blood."
I nodded back, mechanically, and lifted Jernmy up against my shoulder. The sky had bleached to a winter white, and shadow filled the clearing. The stone at the head of the spring stood out, a pale and ghostly shape above black water.
"Let's go," I said. "It's nearly night."
THE BARD
T WAS FULL DARK when Roger finally reached his own door, but the windows glowed welcomingly, and sparks showered from the chimney, promising warmth and food. He was tired, chilled, and very hungry, and
he felt a deep and thankful appreciation for his home-substantially sharpened by the knowledge that he would leave it on the morrow,
"Brianna?" He stepped inside, squinting in the dim glow, looking for his wife.
"There you are! You're so late! Where have you been?" She popped out of the small back room, the baby balanced on her hip and a heap of tartan cloth clutched to her chest. She leaned over it to kiss him briefly, leaving him with a tantalizing taste of plum jam.
"I've beeli riding up hill and down dale for the last ten hours," he said, taking the cloth from her and tossing it onto the bed. "Looking for a mythical family of Dutchmen. Come here and kiss me properly, aye?"
She obligingly wrapped her free arm round his waist and gave him a lingerinLy- nium-scented kiss that made him think that hungrv as he was, dinner could
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perhaps wait for a bit. The baby, however, had other ideas, and set up a loud wail that made Brianna. hastily detach herself, grimacing at the racket.
"Still teething?" Roger said, observing his off
spring's red and swollen countenance, covered with a shiny coating of snot, saliva, and tears,
"How did you guess?" she said caustically. "Here, can you take him, just for a minute?" She thrust Jemmy, writhing, into his father's arms, and tugged at her bodice, the green linen damply creased and stained with pale splotches of spit-up milk. One of her breasts bobbed into view, and she reached out for Jemmy, sitting down with him in the nursing chair by the fire.
"He's been fiissing all day," she said, shaking her head as the baby squirmed and whined, batting at the proffered nourishment with a fretfial hand. "He won't nurse for more than a few minutes, and when he does, he spits it up again. He whines when you pick him up, but he screams if you set him down." She shoved a hand tiredly through her hair. "I feel like I've been wrestling alligators all day."
"Oh, mm. That's too bad." Roger rubbed his aching lower back, trying not to be ostentatious about it. He pointed toward the bed with his chin. "Ah ... what's the tartan for?"
"Oh, I forgot-that's yours." Attention momentarily distracted from the struggling child, she glanced up at Roger, taking in for the first time his disheveled appearance. "Da brought it down for you to wear tonight. You have a big smudge of mud on your face, by the way-did you fall off?"
"Several times." He moved to the washstand, limping only slightly. One sleeve of his coat and the knee of his breeches were plastered with mud, and he rubbed at his chest, trying to dislodge bits of dry leaf that had got down the neck of his shirt.
"Oh? That's too bad. Shh, shh, shh," she crooned to the child, rocking him to and fro. "Did you hurt yourself?"
"Ah, no. It's fine." He shed the coat and turned his back, pouring water from the pitcher into the bowl. He splashed cold water over his face, listening to Jemmy's squeals and privately calculating the odds of being able to make love to Brianna sometime before having to leave next morning. Between Jemmy's teeth and his grandfather's plans, the chances seemed slight, but hope sprang eternal.
He blotted his face with the towel, glancing covertly around in hopes of food. Both table and hearth were empty, though there was a strong vinegar scent in the air.
"Sauerkraut?" he guessed, sniffmg audibly. "The Muellers?"
"They brought two big jars of it," Brianna said, gesturing toward the corner where a stone crock stood in the shadows. "That one's ours. Did you get anything to eat while you were out?"
"No." His belly rumbled loudly, evidently willing to consider cold sauerkraut, if that was all that was on offer. Presumably there would be food at the big house, though. Cheered by this thought, he pulled off his breeches and began the awkward business of pleating up the tartan cloth to make a belted plaid.
Jemmy had quieted a little, now making no more than intermittent yips of discomfort as his mother rocked him to and fro.
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"Whatz was that about mythical Dutchmen? " Brianna asked, still rocking, but now with a moment's attention to spare.
"Jamie sent me up to the northeast to look for a family of Dutchmen he'd militia sumheard had settled near Boiling Creek-to tell the men about the
mons and have them come back with me, if they would." He frowned at the cloth laid out on the bed. He'd worn a plaid like this only twice before, and both times, had had help to put the thing on. "is it important for me to wear this, do you think?"
Brianna snorted behind him with brief amusement.
"I think you'd better wear something. You can't go up to the big house in nothing but your shirt. You couldn't find the Dutchmen, then?"
"Not so much as a wooden shoe." He had found what he thought was Boiling Creek, and had ridden up the bank for miles, dodging--or not---overhanging branches, bramble patches, and thickets of witch hazel, but hadn't found a sign of anything larger than a fox that had slipped across his path, disappearing into the brush like a flame suddenly extinguished.
"Maybe they moved on. Went up to Virginia, or Pennsylvania." Brianna spoke with sympathy. It had been a long, exhausting day, with failure at the end of it. Not a terrible failure; Jamie had said only, "Find them if ye can"-and if he had found them, they might not have understood his rudimentary Dutch, gained on brief holidays to the Amsterdam of the 1960s. Or might not have come, in any case. Still, the small failure nagged at him, like a stone in his shoe. He glanced at Brianna, who grinned widely at him in anticipation.
"All right," he said with resignation. "Laugh if ye must." Getting into a belted plaid wasn't the most dignified thing a man could do, given that the most efficient method was
to lie down on the pleated fabric and roll like a sausage on a girdle. Jamie could do it standing up, but then, the man had had practice.
His struggles-rather deliberately cxaggerated-were rewarded by Brianna's giggling, which in turn seemed to have a calming effect on the baby. By the time Roger made the final adjustments to his pleats and drapes, mother and child were both flushed, but happy.
Roger made a leg to them, flourishing, and Bree patted her own leg in onehanded applause.
"Terrific," she said, her eyes traveling appreciatively over him. "See Daddy? Pretty Daddy!" She turned Jemmy, who stared openmouthed at the vision of male glory before him and blossomed into a wide, slow smile, a trickle of drool hanging from the pouting curve of his lip.
Roger was still hungry, sore, and tired, but it didn't seem so important. He grinned, and held out his arms toward the baby.
"Do you need to change? If he's full and dry, I'll take him up to the housegive you a bit of time to fix up."
"You think I need fixing up, do you?" Brianna gave him an austere look down her long, straight nose. Her hair had come down in wisps and straggles, her dress looked as though she'd been sleeping in it for weeks, and there was a dark smear of jam on the upper curve of one breast.
"You look great," he said, bending and swinging Jernmy deftly up. "Hush, a
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bb,elaich. You've had enough of Mummy, and she's definitely had enough of you for a bit. Come along with me."
"Don't forget your guitar!" Bree called after him as he headed for the door. He glanced back at her, surprised.
"What?" "Da wants you to sing. Wait, he gave me a list,"
"A fist? Of what?" To the best of Roger's knowledge, Jamie Fraser paid no attention whatever to music. It rankled him a bit, in fact, though he seldom admitted it-that his own greatest skill was one that Fraser didn't value.
"Songs, of course." She furrowed her brow, conjuring up the memorized list. "He wants you to do 'Ho RoP and 'Birniebouzle,' and 'The Great Silkie'-you can do other stuff in between, he said, but he wants those-and then get into the warmongering stuff That's not what he called it, but you know what I mean-'Killiecrankic' and 'The Haughs of Cromdale,' and 'The Sherrifsmuir Fight.' Just the older stuff, though; he says don't do the songs from the '45, except for 'Johnnie Cope'-he wants that one for sure, but toward the end. And-"
Roger stared at her, disentangling Jemmy's foot from the folds of his plaid. "I wouldn't have thought your father so much as knew the names of songs, let alone had preferences,"
Brianna had stood up and was reaching for the long wooden pin that held her hair in place. She pulled it out and let the thick red shimmer cascade over shoulders and face. She ran both hands through the ruddy mass and pushed it back, shaking her head.
"He doesn't. Have preferences, I mean. Da's completely tone-deaf. Mama says he has a good sense of rhythm, but he can't tell one note from another." "That's what I thought. But whys,,
"He may not listen to music, Roger, but he listens." She glanced at him, snigging the comb through the tangles of her hair. "And he watches. He knows how people act-and how they feel-when they hear you do those songs."
"Does he?" Roger murmured. He felt an odd spark of pleasure at the thought that Fraser had indeed noticed the effect of his music, even if he didn't appreciate it personally. "So-he means me to soften them up, is that it? Get them in the mood before he goes on for his own bit?"
"That's it." She nodded, busy untying the laces of her bodice. Escaped from confinement, her breasts bobbed suddenly free, round and loose under the thin muslin shift.
Roger shifted his weight, easing the fit of his plaid. She caught the slight movement and looked at him. Slowly, she drew her hands up, cupping her breasts and liffing them, her eyes on his and a Slight smile on her lips, Just for a moment, he felt as though he had stopped breathing, though his chest continued to rise and fall.
She was the first to break the moment, dropping her hands and turning to delve into the chest where she kept her linen.
"Do you know exactly what he's up to?" she asked, her voice muffled in the depths of the chest. "Did he have that cross up when you left?"
"Aye, I know about it.,' Jemmy was making small huffing noises, like a toy
The Fiery Cross 24-1
engine struggling up a hill. Roger tucked him under one arm, his hand cradling the fat little belly, "It's a fiery cross. Dye ken what that is?"
She emerged from the chest, a fresh shift in her hands, looking mildly disturbed.
"A fiery cross? You mean he's going to burn a cross in the yard?"
"Well, not burn it all the way, no." Taking down his bodhran with his free hand and flicking a finger against the drum head to check the tautness, he explained briefly the tradition of the fiery cross. "It's a rare thing," he concluded, moving the drum out of Jemmy's grasping reach. "I don't think it was ever done in the Highlands again, after the Rising. Your father told me he'd seen it once, though-it's something really special, to see it done here."
Flushed with historical enthusiasm, he didn't notice at once that Briarma seemed slightly less eager.
"Maybe so," she said uneasily. "I don't know ... it sort of gives me the creeps."
"Eh?" Roger glanced at her in surprise. "Why?"
She shrugged, pulling the crumpled shift off over her head.
"I don't know. Maybe it's just that I have seen burning crosses--on the evening news on TV. You know, the KKK--or do you know? Maybe they don't---didn't-report things like that on television in Britain?"
"The Ku Klux Klan?" Roger was less interested in fanatical bigots than in the sight of Brianna's bare breasts, but made an effort to focus on the conversation. "Oh, aye, heard of them. Where d'you think they got the notion?"
"What? You mean-"
"Sure," he said cheerfully. "They got it from the Highland immigrantsfrom whom they were descended, by the bye. That's why they called it 'Klan,' aye? Come to think," he added, interested, "it could be this-tonight-that's the link. The occasion that brings the custom from the Old World to the New, I mean. Wouldn't that be something?"
"Something," Brianna echoed faintly. She'd pulled on a fresh shift, and now shook out a clean dress of blue linen, looking uneasy.
"Everything starts somewhere, Bree," he said, more gently. "Most often, we don't know where or how; does it matter if this time we do? And the Ku Klux Klan won't get started for a hundred years from now, at least." He hoisted Jemmy slightly, bouncing him on one hip. "It won't be us who sees it, or even wee Jeremiah here-maybe not even his son."
"Great," she said dryly, pulling on her stays and reaching for the laces. "So ourgreat-grandson can end up being the Grand Dragon."
Roger laughed.
"Aye, maybe so. But for tonight, it's your father."
PLAYING WITH FIRE
E WASN'T SURE what he had expected. Something like the spectacle of the great fire at the Gathering, perhaps. The preparation was
Hthe same, involving large quantities of food and drink. A huge keg of beer and a smaller one of whisky stood on planks at the edge of the dooryard, and a huge roast pig on a spit of green hickory turned slowly over a bed of coals, sending whiffs of smoke and mouthwatering aromas through the cold evening air,
He grinned at the fire-washed faces in front of him, slicked with grease and flushed with booze, and struck his bodhran. His stomach rumbled loudly, but the noise was drowned beneath the raucous chorus of "Killiecrankie."
"0, 1 met the De-ev-il and Dundeece ... On the brac-aes o'Killiecrankie-O!"
He would have earned his own supper by the time he got it. He had been playing and singing for more than an hour, and the moon was rising over Black Mountain now. He paused under cover of the refrain, just long enough to grab the cup of ale set under his stool and wet his throat, then hit the new verse fresh and solid.
"Ifougbt on land, Ifought on sea, At hame Ifougbt my auntic, Ob! I met the Devil and Dundee ... On the braes o'Killiecrankie-O!"
He could feel the cross standing at his back, almost hidden by the darkness. Everyone had had a chance to see it, though; he'd heard the murmurs of interest and speculation.
Jamie Fraser was away to one side, out of the ring of firelight. Roger could just make out his tall form, dark in the shadow of the big red spruce that stood near the house. Fraser had been working his way methodically through the group all evening, stopping here and there to exchange cordialities, tell a joke,
The Fiery Cross 243
pause to listen to a problem or a story. Now he stood alone, waiting. Nearly time, then-for whatever he meant to do.
Roger gave them a moment for applause and his own refreshment, then launched into "Johnnie Cope," fast, fierce, and fiinny.
He'd done that one at the Gathering, several times, and knew pretty much how they'd take it. A moment's pause, uncertainty, then the voices beginning to join in-by the end of the second verse, they'd be whooping and shouting ribald remarks in the background.
Some of the men here had fought at Prestonpans; if they'd been defeated at Culloden, they'd still routed Johnnie Cope's troops first, and loved the chance to relive that famous victory. And those Highlanders who hadn't fought had heard about it. The Muellers, who had likely never heard of Charles Stuart and probably understood one word in a dozen, seemed to be improvising their own sort of yodeling chorus round the back, waving their cups in sloshing salute to each verse. Aye, well, so long as they were having a good time.
The crowd was half-shouting the final chorus, nearly drowning him out.
'Hey, Jobnnie Cope, are ye walking yet?
And are your drums a-beatin'yet? Ifye were walkin'. I wad wait, Taegang tae the coals in the mornin'!"
He hit a final thump, and bowed to huge applause. That was the warm-up done; time for the main act to come onstage. Bowing and smiling, he rose from his stool and faded off, fetching up in the shadows near the hacked remains of the huge pork carcass.
Bree was there waiting for him, Jemmy wide-awake and owl-eyed in her arms. She leaned across and kissed him, handing him the kid as she did so, and taking his bodhran in exchange.
"You were great!" she said. "Hold him; I'll get you some food and beer." Jem usually wanted to stay with his mother, but was too stupefied by the noise and the leaping flames to protest the handover. He snuggled against Roger's chest, gravely sucking his thumb.
Roger was sweating from the exertion, his heart beating fast from the adrenaline of performance, and the air away from the fire and the crowd was cold on his flushed face. The baby's swaddled weight felt good against him, warm and solid in the crook of his arm. He'd done well, and knew it. Let's hope it was what Fraser wanted.
By the time Bree reappeared with a drink and a pewter plate heaped with sliced pork, apple fritters, and roast potatoes, Jamie had come into the circle of firelight, taking Roger's place before the standing cross.
He stood tall and broad-shouldered in his best gray gentleman's coat, kilted below in soft blue tartan, his hair loose and blazing on his shoulders, with a small warrior's plait down one side, adorned with a single feather. Firelight glinted from the knurled gold hilt of his dirk and the brooch that held his looped plaid. He looked pleasant enough, but his manner overall was serious, intent. He made a good show-and knew it.
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The crowd quieted within seconds, men elbowing their more garrulous neighbors to silence.
"Ye ken well enough what we're about here, aye?" he asked without preamble. He raised his hand, in which he held the Governor's crumpled summons, the red smear of its official seal visible in the leaping firelight. There was a rumble of agreement; the crowd was still cheerful, blood and whisky coursing freely through their veins.
"We are called in duty and we come in honor to serve the cause of law-and the Governor."
Roger saw old Gerhard Mueller, leaning to one side to hear the translation that one of his sons-in-law was murmuring in his ear. He nodded his approval, and shouted, '7a! Lang kbe Governor!" There was a ripple of laughter, and echoing shouts in English and Gaelic.