The Fiery Cross

by Diana Gabaldon

  grabbed Judas's reins, holding him steady. Evidently we were getting off the mountain, slippery trail or not.

  I got into the saddle in a swash of wet skirts, and took a firm grip, trying to shout soothing words into Judas's ear as he skittered and danced, eager to be gone. We were dangerously close to the conifers at the edge, and I leaned hard inward, trying to get him toward the cliff side of the ledge.

  An extraordinary prickling sensation ran over my body, as though I were being bitten from head to toe by thousands of tiny ants. I looked at my hands and saw them glowing, limned in blue light. The hairs on my forearms stood straight out, each one glowing blue. My hood had fallen back, and I felt the hair on my head rise all at once, as though a giant hand had gently lifted it.

  The air smelled suddenly of brimstone, and I looked about in alarm. Trees, rocks, the ground itself was bathed in blue light. Tiny snakes of brilliant white electricity hissed across the surface of the cliff, a few yards away.

  I turned, calling for Jamie, and saw him on Gideon, turning toward me, his mouth open as he shouted, all words lost in the reverberation of the air around us.

  Gideon's mane began to rise, as though by magic. Jamie's hair floated up from his shoulders, shot with wires of crackling blue. Horse and rider glowed with hell-light, each muscle of face and limb outlined. I felt a rush of air over my skin, and then Jamie flung himself from his saddle and into me, hurling us both into emptiness.

  The lightning struck before we hit the ground.

  I came to, smelling burned flesh and the throat-searing sting of ozone. I felt as though I had been turned inside out; all of my organs seemed to be exposed. It was still raining. I lay still for a while, letting the rain run over my face and

  soak my hair, while the neurons of my nervous system slowly began to work again. My finger twitched, by itself. I tried to do it on purpose, and succeeded. I flexed my fingers-not so good. A few more minutes, though, and enough circuits were working to allow me to sit up.

  Jamie was lying near me, sprawled on his back like a rag doll among a patch of sumac. I crawled over to him, and found that his eyes were open. He blinked at me, and a muscle twitched at the side of his mouth in an attempt at a smile.

  I couldn't see any blood, and while his limbs were thrown awry, they were all straight. The rain pooled in his eye sockets, running into his eyes. He blinked violently, then turned his head to let the water drain off his face. I put a hand on his stomach, and felt the big abdominal pulse beneath my fingers, very slow, but steady.

  I didn't know how long we had been unconscious, but this storm too had moved away. Sheet lightning flashed beyond the distant mountains, throwing the peaks into sharp relief.

  "Thunder is good," I quoted, watching it in a sort of dreamy stupor, "thunder is impressive; but it is the lightning that does the work."

  "It's done a job of work on me. Are ye all right, Sassenach?" "Splendid," I said, still feeling pleasantly remote. "And you?"

  He glanced at me curiously, but seemed to conclude that it was all right. He grasped a sumac bush and dragged himself laboriously to his feet.

  "I canna feel my toes just yet," he told me, "but the rest is all right. The

  The Fiery Cross 731

  horses, though-" He glanced upward, and I saw his throat move as he Swallowed.

  The horses were silent.

  We were some twenty feet below the ledge, among the firs and balsams. I uld move, but didn't seem able to summon the will to do so. I sat still, taking ran the climb back up to the k, while Jamie shook himself, then beg

  ankiller's ledge.

  it seemed very quiet; I wondered whether I had been deafened by the blast. foot was cold. I looked down and discovered that my left shoe was goneether knocked off by the lightning or lost in the fall, I had no idea, but I

  'dn't see it anywhere nearby. The stocking was gone, too; there was a small starburst of veins, just below the anklebone-a legacy of my second pregcy. I sat staring at it as though it were the key to the secrets of the universe. The horses must be dead; I knew that. Why weren't we? I breathed in the

  stink of burning flesh, and a tiny shudder arose, somewhere deep inside me. Were we alive now, only because we were doomed to die in four years? When it came our turn, would we lie in the burnt ruins of our house, shells of charred land reeking flesh? my face Burnt to boxes, whispered the voice of my memory- Tears ran down

  with the rain, but they were distant tears-for the horses, for my mother-not fbr myself. Not yet.

  There were blue veins beneath the surface of my skin, more prominent than before. On the backs of my hands, they traced a roadmap ... in the tender flesh behind my knee, they showed in webs and traceries; along my shin, one large vein swelled snakelike, distended. I pressed a finger on it; it was soft and I t came back the instant I removed the finger.

  disappeared, bu -

  The inner workings of my body were becoming slowly more visible, the taut skin thinning, leaving me vulnerable, with everything outside, exposed to the elements, that once was safely sheltered in the snug casing of the body. Bone

  d blood push through ... there was an oozing graze on the top of my foot. an

  Jamie was back, drenched to the skin and breathless from the climb. Both his shoes were gone, I saw.

  , "Judas is dead," he said, sitting down beside me. He took my cold hand in his own cold hand and pressed it hard.

  "Poor thing," I said, and the tears ran faster, warm streams mingling with cold rain. "He knew, didn't he? He always hated thunder and lightning5 always.51

  Jamie put an arm round my shoulders and pressed my head against his chest, making little soothing noises. ng an effort to wipe ,And Gideon?" I asked at last, raising my head and maki

  my nose on a fold of sodden cloak. Jamie shook his head, with a small, incredulous smile. the side of his right shoulder and "He's alive," he said. "He's burnt down

  foreleg and his mane's singed off entirely." He picked up a fold of his own tattered cloak and tried to wipe my face, with no better results than I had had my self "I expect it will do wonders for his temper," he said, trying to make a joke of it. shaken to laugh, but I managed a "I suppose so." I was too worn out and

  732 Diana Gabaldon

  small smile, and it felt good. "Can you lead him down, do you think? 1-1 have some ointment. It's good for burns."

  "Aye, I think so." He gave me a hand and helped me stand up. I turned to brush down my crumpled skirts, and as I did so, caught sight of something. -look.,,

  "Look," I said, my voice no more than a whisper. "Jamie

  Ten feet away, up the slope from us, stood a big balsam fir, its top sheared edged becleanly away and half its remaining branches charred and smoking. W

  tween one branch and the stump of the trunk was a huge, rounded mass. It was half black, the tissues turned to carbon-but the hair on the other half lay in sodden white spikes, the cream-white color of trilliums.

  Jamie stood looking up at the corpse of the bear, his mouth half open. Slowly he closed it, and shook his head. He turned to me, then, and looked past me, toward the distant mountains, where the retreating lightning flashed silently.

  "They do say," he said softly, "that a great storm portends the death of a king."

  He touched my face, very gently.

  "Wait here, Sassenach, while I fetch the horse. We'll go home."

  HEARTHFIRE

  Fraser's Ridge Octobtr, 1771

  E SEASON CHANGED, from one hour to the next. She had H

  one to sleep in the cool balm of an Indian summer evening, and wakTg

  eet ened in the middle of the night to the sharp bite of autumn, her f

  freezing under the single quilt. Still drowsy, she couldn't fall sleep again, not without more covers.

  She dragged slit-eyed out of bed, padded over the icy floor to check Jemmy. He was warm enough, sunk deep into his tiny featherbed, the quilt drawn up around his small pink cars. She laid a gentle hand on his back, waiting
for the reassurance of the rise and fall of his breath. Once, twice, once more.

  She rummaged for an extra quilt and spread it on the bed, reached for a cup of water to ease her dry throat, and realized with a grunt of annoyance that it was empty. She thought with longing of crawling back into bed, sinking into deep, warm slumber-but not dying of thirst.

  There was a bucket of well water by the stoop. Yawning and grimacing, she slid the bolt from its brackets and set it gently down-though Jern slept so soundly at night, there wasn't much danger of waking him.

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  Still, she opened the door with care and stepped out, shivering slightly as the I air twitched the shift about her legs. She bent and groped in the darkness.

  uC c .

  She saw a flicker of movement from the corner of her eye and whirled. For was Obadiah Henderson, sitting on the bench beside instant, she thought it

  t out chrealized, r door, and her heart clenched like a fist as he stood up. Then sh

  him. Poger's arms before her mind could consciously sor e details was in

  speechless, she had time to notice things: the arch of his Pressed against him, the smell of clothes gone so long worn, so long unbone against her face, rly longer, but of the wood he hed that they didn't smell even of sweat a

  ked through and the earth he slept upon, and mostly of the bitter smoke he athed. The strength of his arm about her and the rasp of his beard on her . . The cracked cold leather of his shoes beneath her bare toes, and the shape the bones of his feet within them. "You're home!"

  "It's you," she said, and was crying. car. -you're well? Jem's well?"

  "Aye, I'm home," he whispered in her ge to see his She relaxed her hold on his ribs and he smiled at her, so stran

  e through a growth of thick black beard, the curve of his lips familiar in the oonlight.

  right?" She sniffed, eyes overflowing as she looked at "We're fine. You're all why didn't you knocW . i4What are you doing out here, for heaven's sakO ere, knock "Aye. 15m fine. I didn't want to scare Ye. Thought I'd sleep out h

  the morning. Why are ye crying-

  wasn't whispering from any desire to avoid waking t) She realized then that he husk, warped and breathless. And yet he Jern; what voice he had was a ragged out the painful hesitation he had had. spoke clearly, the words unforced, with

  "You can talk," she saidl wiping hastily at her eyes with the back of a wrist. "I mean-better." Once, she would have hesitated to touch his throat, fearful the sudden intimacy of of his feelings, but instinct knew better than to waste

  shock. The strain might come again, and they be strangers, but for a moment, for this moment in the dark, she could say anything, do anything, and she put her fingers on the warm ragged scar, touched the incision that had saved his life, a clean white line through the whiskers.

  "Does it still hurt to

  talk? d his eyes met hers, dark and "It hurts," he said, in the faint croaking rasp, an

  soft in the moonlight. "But I can. I will-Brianna." , to let go She stepped back, one hand on his arm, unwilling

  "Come in," she said. c,lies cold out here."

  I HAD ANY NUMBER of objections to hearthfire, ranging from splinters under the fingernails and pitch on the hands to blisters, burns, and the sheer infuriating contrariness of the element. I would, however, say two things in its fajig

  vor: it was undeniably warm, and it cast the act of love in a ht of such dim of nakedness could safety be forgotten.

  beauty that all the hesitations all, here a limb, there the Our mingled shadows flowed together on the W

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  curve of back or haunch showed clean, some part of an undulating beast. Jamie's head rose clear, a great maned creature looming over me, back arched in his extremity.

  I reached up across the stretch of glowing skin and trembling muscle, brushed the sparking hairs of arms and chest, to bury my hands in the warmth of his hair and pull him down gasping to the dark hollow of my breasts.

  I kept my eyes half-closed, my legs as well, unwilling to surrender his body, to give up the illusion of oneness-if illusion it was. How many more times might I hold him so, even in the enchantment of firelight?

  I clung with all my might to him, and to the dying pulse of my own flesh. But joy grasped is joy vanished, and within moments I was no more than myself. The dark starburst on my ankle showed clearly, even in firelight.

  I slackened my grip on his shoulders and touched the rough whorls of his hair with tenderness. He turned his head and kissed my breast, then stirred and sighed and slid sideways.

  "And they say hen's teeth are rare," he said, gingerly touching a deep bitemark on one shoulder.

  I laughed, in spite of myself.

  "As rare as a rooster's cock, I suppose." I raised myself on one elbow and peered toward the hearth.

  "What is it, wee hen?"

  "Just making sure my clothes won't catch fire." What with one thing and another, I hadn't much noticed where he'd thrown my garments, but they seemed to be a safe distance from the flames; the skirt was in a small heap by the bed, the bodice and shift somehow had ended up in separate comers of the room. My brassiere-strip was nowhere to be seen.

  Light flickered on the whitewashed walls, and the bed was full of shadows. "You are beautiffil," he whispered to me.

  "If you say so."

  "Do ye not believe me? Have I ever lied to you?"

  "That's not what I mean. I mean-if you say it, then it's true. You make it true."

  He sighed and shifted, easing us into comfort. A log cracked suddenly in the hearth, sending up a spray of gold sparks, and subsided, hissing as the heat struck a hidden seam of damp. I watched the new wood turn black, then red, blazing into white-hot light.

  "Do ye say it of me, Sassenach?" he asked suddenly. He sounded shy, and I turned my head to look up at him in surprise.

  "Do I say what? That you're beautiftil?" My mouth curved involuntarily, and he smiled in return.

  "Well ... not that. But that ye can bear my looks, at least."

  I traced the faint white fine of the scar across his ribs, left by a sword, long ago. The longer, thicker scar of the bayonet that had ripped the length of one thigh. The arm that held me, browned and roughened, the hairs of it bleached white-gold with long days of sun and work. Near my hand, his cock curled between his thighs, gone soft and small and tender now, in its nest of auburn hair.

  "You're beautiful to me, Jamie," I said soffly, at last. "So beautiful, you break my heart."

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  His hand traced the knobs of my backbone, one at a time.

  "But I am an auld man," he said, smiling. "or should be. I've white hairs in head; my beard's gone gray."

  ". "Silver," I said, brushing the soft stubble on his chin, parti-colored as a t. "In bits." ,And scabbit-looking with it. And yet. . ." His eyes "Gray," he said firmly-

  ned as he looked at me. "Yet I burn when I come to ye, Sassenach-and I think, Itil we two be burned to ashes."

  s that poetry?" I asked cautiously. "Or do you mean it literally?"

  "Oh," he said. "No. I hadna meant ... no." He tightened his arm around and bent his head to mine

  "I dinna ken about that. if it should be "It won't."

  A breath of laughter stirred my hair.

  i, "'Ye sound verra sure of it, Sassenach."

  "The future can be changed; I do it all the time." "Oh, aye?7

  I rolled away a bit, to took at him.

  -1 do. Look at Mairi MacNeill. if I hadn't been there last week, she would ave died, and her twins with her. But I was there, and they didn't."

  I put a hand behind my head, watching the reflection of the flames ripple like water across the ceiling beams.

  "I do wonder-there are lots I can't save, but some I do. if someone lives cause of me, and later has children, and they have children, and so on ... well, by the time you reach my time, say, there are probably thirty or forty peo'ple in the world wh
o wouldn't otherwise have been there, hm? And they've all been doing things meanwhile, living their lives-don't you think that's chang'ling the future?" For the first time, it occurred to me to wonder just how much I was single-handedly contributing to the population explosion of the twentirth century.

  11 "Aye," he said slowly. He picked up my free hand and traced the lines of my palm with one long finger.

  "Aye, but it's their future ye change, Sassenach, and perhaps you're meant to.- He took my hand in his and pulled gently on the fingers. One knuckle "Physicians have popped, making a small sound like a log spitting in the hearth

  saved a good many folk over the years, surely."

  "Of course they do. And not just physicians, either." I sat up, impelled by the force of my argument. "But it doesn't matter--don't YOU see? You-" I pointed one finger at him, ,-you've saved a life now and then. Fergus? Ian? And here they are, both going about the world doing things and procreating and what-not. You changed the future for them, didn't you?"

  ccAye, well ... perhaps. I couldna do otherwise, though, could V'

  That simple statement stopped me, and we lay in silence for a bit, watching the flicker of light on the white-plastered wall. At last he stirred beside me, and spoke again.

  "I dinna say it for pity," he said. "But ye ken ... now and then my bones ache a bit." He didn't look at me, but spread his crippled hand, turning it in the light, so the shadow of the crooked fingers made a spider on the wall.

  736 Diana Gabaldon

  Now and then. I kent, all right. I knew the limits of the body-and its miracles. I'd seen him sit down at the end of a day's labor,

  exhaustion written in every line of his body. Seen him move slowly, stubborn against the protests of flesh and bone when he rose on cold mornings. I would be willing to bet that he had not lived a day since Culloden without pain, the physical damages of war aggravated by damp and harsh living. And I would also be willing to bet that he had never mentioned it to anyone. Until now.

  "I know that," I said softly, and touched the hand. The twisting SCar that runneled his leg. The small depression in the flesh of his arm, legacy of a bullet.

  "But not with you," he said, and covered my hand where it lay on his arm. "D'ye ken that the only time I am without pain is in your bed, Sassenach When I take ye, when I lie in your arms-my wounds are healed, then, my scars forgotten.

  I sighed and laid my head in the curve of his shoulder. My thigh pressed his, the softness of my flesh a mold to his harder form.

  "Mine, too."

  He was silent for a time, stroking my hair with his good hand. It was wild and bushy, freed from its moorings by our earlier struggles, and he smoothed one curly strand at a time, combing down each lock between his fingers.

  "Your hair's like a great storm cloud, Sassenach," he murmured, sounding half-asleep. "All dark and light together. No two hairs are the same color."

  il-He was right; the lock between his fingers bore strands of Pure white, of sil ver and blond, dark streaks, nearly sable, and several bits still of my young light brown.

  His fingers went under the mass of hair, and I felt his hand cup the base of my skull, holding my head like a chalice.

  "I saw my mother in her coffin," he said at last. His thumb touched my ear, drew down the curve of helix and lobule, and I shivered at his touch.

  "The women had plaited her hair, to be seemly, but my father wouldna have it. I heard him. He didna shout, though, he was verra quiet. He would have his last sight of her as she was to him, he said. He was half-crazed wi' grief, they said, he should let well alone, be still. He didna trouble to say more to them, but went to the coffin himself. He undid her plaits and he spread out her hair in his two hands across the pillow. They were afraid to stop him."

  He paused, his thumb stilled.