mugs in front of him. The gesture reminded him of Christie's handshake, and he wondered whether Brianna knew anything about Jamie's history in that direction. He rather thought not; surely she would have mentioned it.
"Brianna, say hello to our new tenants," he said, with a nod at the Christies. "Mr. Thomas Christie, and. . . "
"My son, Allan," Christie said, with a jerk of the head, "and my daughter, Malva."
The son had none of his father's owlish look, being much fairer in aspect, with a broad, square, clean-shaven face, though he had the same feathery, tufted dark hair. He nodded in silent acknowledgment of the introduction, eyes fixed on the refreshment.
The girl-Malva?-barely looked up, her hands folded modestly in her lap. Roger had the vague impression of a tallish girl, perhaps seventeen or eighteen, neat in a dark blue dress and white kerch, with a soft frill of black curls just visible around the pale oval of her face. Another point in Christie's favor, Roger thought absently; girls of marriageable age were rare, pretty ones still rarer. Malva Christie would likely have several offers before the spring planting.
Bree nodded to each of them, looking at the girl with particular interest.
The Fiery Cross 813
Then a loud shriek came from the kitchen, and she fled with a murmured Cxcusc. He lifted a mug of beer, offering it. "Will
6cMy son," Roger said, in apology.
you take a bit of refreshment, Mr. ChristiO"
The tenant contracts were all kept in the left-hand drawer of the desk; he'd seen them, and knew the general outlines. Fifty acres would be granted outright, more land rented as needed, with provision for payment made according ,'to individual situations. A little discussion over the beer and biscuits, and they had reached what seemed an adequate agreement.
Completing the contract with a flourish Roger signed his own name3 as *agent for James Fraser, and pushed the paper across the desk for Christie to sound tenant3 and sign. He felt a deep, pleasant glow of accomplishment. A
willing to pay half his quitrent by serving as schoolmaster for five months of the year. Jamie himself, Roger thought complacently, would not have done better. and
Then he caught himself. No, Jamie would have taken one more step, seen the Christies offered not only hospitality but lodging, a place to stay until they could achieve some shelter of their own. Not here, though; not with Jamie ill and Claire occupied in nursing him. He thought for a moment, then stepped to the door and called for Lizzie.
"We've a new tenant come, and his family, a muirninn," he said, smiling at her anxious3 willing mouse-face. "This is Mr. Thomas Christie, and his son and daughter. Can ye ask your Da will he take them up to Evan Lindsay's cabin? It's near where they'll have their own land, and I'm thinking perhaps Evan and his wife have room for them to stay for a bit, until they can get a start on a place of their own."
"Oh, aye, Mister Roger." Lizzie bobbed a quick curtsy toward Christie, who acknowledged her with a small bow. Then she glanced at Roger, thin brows lifted. ,Will Himself know about it, then?"
Roger felt a slight flush rise in his cheeks, but gave no sign of discomposure. "That's all right," he said. "I'll be telling him, so soon as he's feeling betten" "Mr. Fraser is ill? I am sorry to hear it." The unfamiliar soft voice came from
behind, startling him, and he turned to find Malva Christie looking up at him in question. He hadn't taken much notice of her, but was now struck by the beauty of her eyes-an odd light gray, almond-shaped and luminous, and thickly fringed with long black lashes. Perhaps sooner than the spring planting, he thought, and coughed.
"Bitten by a snake," he said abruptly. ,Not to worry, though; he's mending."
He thrust out a hand to Christie) ready this time for the secret grip. ,welcome to Fraser's Ridge," he said. "I hope you and your family will be happy here."
JAMIE WAS SITTING UP in bed, attended hand and foot by devoted women, and looking desperate in consequence. His face relaxed a littl at sight of a fellow man, and he waved away his handmaidens. Lizzie, Marsali, and Mrs. Bug left reluctantly, but Claire remained, busy with her bottles and blades.
814 Diana Gabaldon
Roger moved to sit down on the bed-foot, only to be shooed off by Claire, who motioned him firmly to a stool before lifting the sheet to check matters beneath and be sure that his ill-advised gesture had caused no damage,
"All right," she said at last, poking at the white cheesecloth dressing with an air of satisfaction. The maggots were back, evidently earning their keep. She straightened up and nodded to Roger-like the Grand Vizier granting an audience with the Caliph of Baghdad, Roger thought, amused. He glanced at Jamie, who rolled his eyes upward, then gave Roger a small, wry smile of greeting.
"How is it?" both of them said at once. Roger smiled, and the comer of Jamie's mouth turned up. He gave a brief shrug.
"I'm alive," he said. "Mind, that doesna prove ye were right. Ye're not." "Right about what?" Claire asked, glancing up with curiosity from the bowl in her hands.
"Oh, a wee point of philosophy," Jamie told her. "Regarding choice, and chance."
She snorted.
"I don't want to hear a word about it."
"Just as well. I'm no inclined to discuss such matters on nothin but bread
9 and milk." Jamie glanced with mild distaste at a bowl of that nourishing but squashy substance, sitting half-finished on the table at his side. "So, have ye seen to the ulcer on the mule's leg, then, Roger Mac?"
"I did," Claire told him. "It's healing very well. Roger's been busy, interviewing new tenants."
"Oh, aye?" Fraser's brows went up in interest.
"Aye, a man named Tom Christie and his family. He said he was at Ardsmuir with you."
For a split second, Roger felt as though all the air in the room had been removed by a vacuum, freezing everything. Fraser stared at him, expressionless. Then he nodded, his expression of pleasant interest restored as though by magic, and normal time resumed.
"Aye, I mind Tom Christie fine. Where has he been in the last twenty years?" Roger explained both Tom Christie's account of his wanderings, and what accommodations had been reached for his tenancy.
"That will do verra well," Jamie said approvingly, hearing of Christie's willingness to be schoolmaster. "Tell him he may use any of the books here-and ask him to make up a list of others he might need. I'll tell Fergus to look about, next time he's in Cross Creek or Wilmington."
The conversation moved on to more mundane affairs, and after a few minutes, Roger got up to take his leave.
Everything seemed perfectly all right, and yet he felt obscurely uneasy. Surely he hadn't imagined that instant? Turning to close the door behind him, he saw that Jamie had folded his hands neatly on his chest and closed his eyes; if not yet asleep, effectively forbidding conversation. Claire was looking at her husband, her yellow hawk-eyes narrowed in speculation. No, she'd seen it, too.
So he hadn't imagined it. What on earth was the matter with Tom Christie?
rHE sUMAIIER DIM
HE NEXT DAY Roger closed the door behind him and stood on the porch for a moment, breathing the cold bright air Of the late morning--late, Christ, it couldn't be more than half seven, but it was a good
al later than he was accustomed to start the day. The sun had already drifted the chestnut trees on the highest ridge, the curve of its flaming disk visible silhouette- through the last of the yellow leaves, trace of the buffalo left, The air still held the tang of blood, but there was no
- He glanced around, taking eyond a dark patch in the flattened pumpkin vines ratched in mentally made, his list Of chores for the day. Chickens sc
ck as he ar a small group of hogs rooting for mast e fall-shabby yard,and he could lie
P the chestnut grove. at he had left his work months, or even years, beHe had the odd feeling th ation-so strong at first-had left him for
fore, not days. The feeling of disl0c back again, stronger than before. if he quite a long time, but now it had come aga
in, surely he would find glosed his eyes for a moment) then opened them in his nostrils self on the Broad Street in Oxford, the smell of auto exhaust
'fiirn and the prospect Of a peaceful morning's work among the dusty books of the Bodleian ahead. Not today. This
He smacked a hand against onethigh, to d'sP'l the feeling'
rd, and the work might be peaceful, but it would be was the pidge, not Oxfo here were trees to be girdled and hay to be gathdone with hands, not head. T d through the hills ered; not the, field hay, but the small wild patches scattere
that would yield an armload here, an armload there-enough to allow the keeping of an extra cow through the winter. branch. The A hole in the roof of the smOke-shed, made by a fAing tree ed for re-shingled -and the branch itself to be chOPP
roof to be mended and to be dug, before the ground froze or turned to rnud* wood. A fresh Pri-)Y-hole split. Lizzie's spinning wheel to mend ... Flax to be chopped. Fence tails to V of simple choice, let alone complex
He felt groggy and stupid, incapab e recovered nough-mOre than enOugh-to be physically
thought. He had slept e d his family, s, but Thomas Christie an
from the exhaustion of the last few day
r Jamie safely home, had business of getting
coming on the heels of the desperate
taken all the mental energy he had. ep of mare's tails, sketched against the sky. He glanced at the sky; a low swe He shrugged and scra0hed his scalp. No rain for a bit, the roof could wait, d a stone jar of ate and the packet of Hay, then, and tree-girdling. He stuffe
816 Diana Gabaldon
sandwiches Bree had made for him into his bag, and went to fetch the handscythe and hatchet.
Walking began to rouse him. It was cold in the shadows under the pines, but the sun was now high enough to make itself felt whenever he walked through the bright patches. His muscles warmed and loosened with the exercise, and by the time he had climbed to the first of the high meadows, he had begun to feel himself again, solidly embedded in the physical world of mountain and forest. The future had gone back to the world of dreams and memory, and he was once more present and accounted for.
"Good thing, too," he muttered to himself "Don't want to be cutting off your foot." He dropped the ax under a tree, and bent to cut hay.
It wasn't the soothingly monotonous labor of regular haying, where the big two-handed scythe laid the dry, rich grass in pleasing swathes across a field. This was at once rougher but easier work, that involved grasping a clump of sprouting muhly or blue-stem with one hand, slicing the stalks near the root, and stuffing the handful of wild hay into the burlap sack he had brought.
It took no great strength, but required attention, rather than the mindless muscular effort of field-haying. The grass clumps grew thickly all over this small break in the trees, but were interspersed with outcrops of granite, small bushes, decaying snags, and brambles.
It was soothing labor, and while it did require some watchfulness, soon enough his mind began to stray to other things. The things Jamie had told him, out on the black mountainside, under the stars,
Some he had known; that there was bad feeling between Alex MacNeill and Nelson McIver, and the cause of it; that one of Patrick Neary's sons was likely a thief, and what should be done about it. Which land to sell, when and to whom. Others, he had had no inkling of. He pressed his lips tight together, thinking of Stephen Bonnet.
And what should be done about Claire.
"If I am dead, she must leave," Jamie had said, rousing suddenly from a feverish stupor. He had gripped Roger's arm with surprising strength, his eyes burning dark. "Send her. Make her go. Ye should all go, if the bairn can pass. But she must go. Make her go to the stones."
"Why?" Roger had asked quietly. "Why should she go?" It was possible that Jamie was deranged by fever, not thinking clearly. "It's a dangerous thing, to go through the stones."
"It is dangerous for her here, without me." Fraser's eyes had momentarily lost their sharp focus; the lines of his face relaxed in exhaustion. His eyes halfclosed and he sagged back. Then, suddenly, his eyes opened again.
"She is an Old One," he said. "They will kill her, if they know." Then his eyes had closed again, and he had not spoken again until the others had found them at daylight.
Viewed now in the clear light of an autumn morning, safely removed from the whining wind and dancing flames of that lost night on the mountain, Roger was reasonably sure that Fraser had only been wandering in the mists of his fever, concern for his wife muddled by phantoms that sprang from the poison in his blood. Still, Roger couldn't help but take notice.
"'She is an Old One." Fraser had been speaking in English, which was too
The Fiery Cross 817
Had it been Gaelic, his meaning would have been clearer. Had he said uld have known whether Jamie truly thought his e is ban-sidhe," Roger wo oroughty human wisewoman.
e Was one of the fairy-folk, or only a th
Surely he couldn't ... but he might. Even in Roger's own time, the belief in e others" ran strongly, if Jess widely admitted, in the blood of the Highs. Now? Fraser believed quite Openly in ghosts-to say nothing of saints angels. To Roger's cynical Presbyterian mind5 there wasn't a great deal of crence between lighting candles to St. Genevieve and putting out a pan of
for the facries. as uneasily aware that he would himself never have On the other hand, he w ched a charm hung over cow-byre Isturbed milk meant for the others, nor tou d placed it door lintel-arid not only from respect for the person who ha
ere. The work had warmed him thoroughly; his shirt was beginning to stick to his L to drink
down his neck. He paused for a moment, shoulders, and sweat trickled his brow as a sweatband.
Wom his water gourd and tie a rag round of himself or Fraser might just have a point, he thought. While the notion
.na----e-ven of Clairc-as being sidhcanach was laughable on the face of rian
... there was more than one face to it, wasn't therO They were different; not everyone could travel through the stones, let alone did.
And there were others. Geillis. Duncan. The unknown traveler she had meneman whose severed head Claire had found in the fioned to Claire. The gend made the hairs prickle wilderness, silver fillings intact. The thought of that one
on his forearms, sweat or no. a hill near Jamie had buried the he-ad, with due respect and a brief prayer, on
the house-the first inhabitant Of the- small, sun-fitted clearing intended as the fiiture cemetery of Fraser's Ridge. At Claire's insistence, he had marked the small grave with a rough chunk of granite, u .rilabeled-for what was there to say?-but marbled with veins of green serpentine.
Was Fraser right? Ye should allSo back, if the bairn can pass. e there in the And if they didn't go back ... then someday they might all Ii of gransunny clearing together: himself, Brianna, lemmy, each under a chunk
r. What on earth would ite. The only difference was that each would bear a narn
they carve for dates? he wondered suddenly, and wiped sweat from his jawjemmys would be no problem, but for the rest of them ... an pass. If There was the rub, of course-or one of them- if the bairn c
Claire's theory was right, and the ability to pass through the stones was a ge-type-then fifty/fifty, if Jernmy were Bonnetic trait, like eye color or blood Rogers. net's c1iild-, three chances out of four, or perhaps certainty, if he were
He hacked savagely at a clump of grass, not bothering to grasp it, and grain membered the small pink figure underneath heads flew like shrapnel. Then he re ere were to be another his pillow, and breathed deep. And if it worked, if th
ood? Odds three out of four--or perhaps child, one that was his for sure) by bl
another stone, one day, in the family graveyard. the cutting here. The bag was almost full, and there was no more hay worth ade his way Fetching the hatchet, he stung the bag across his shoulder and m
downhill, to the edge of the highest cornfield. h cornfields he had been
used to it bore no more resemblance to the Britis
818 Diana Gabaldon
than did the high meadows to a hayfield. Once a patch of virgin f girthe trees still stood, black and dead against the pale blue sky, They had be orest,
left to die, the corn planted in the open spaces between them. en dled and It was the quickest way to clear land sufficiently f
or crops. With the trees dead, enough sunlight came through the leafless branches for the corn below, One or two or three years later, the dead tree roots would have rotted sufliciently to make it possible to push the trunks over, to be gradually cut for wood and hauled away. For now, though, they stood, an eerie band of black scarecrows, spreading empty arms across the corn,
The corn itself had been gathered; flocks of mourning doves foraged for bugs among the litter of dry stalks, and a covey of bobwhite took fright at Roger's approach, scattering like a handful of marbles thrown across the ground, A ladder-backed woodpecker, secure above his head, uttered a brief shriek of startlement and paused in its hammering to inspect him before returning to its noisy excavations.
"You should be pleased," he said to the bird, setting down the bag and unlimbering the hatchet from his belt. "More bugs for you, aye?" The dead trees were infested by myriad insects; several woodpeckers could be found in any field of girdled trees, heads cocked to hear the subterranean scratchings of their burrowing prey.
"Sorry," he murmured under his breath to the tree he had selected. It was ridiculous to feel pity for a tree; the more so in this sprawling wilderness, where saplings sprang out of the thawing earth with such spring vigor as to crack solid rock and the mountains Nvere so thickly blanketed with trees that the air itself was a smoky blue with their exhalations. For that matter, the emotion wouldn't last longer than it took to begin the job; by the time he reached the third tree, he would be sweating freely and cursing the awkwardness of the work,
Still, he always approached the job with a faint reluctance, disliking the manner of it more than the result. Chopping down a tree for timber was straightforward; girdling it seemed somehow mean-spirited, if practical, leaving the tree to die slowly, unable to bring water from its roots above the ling of bare, exposed wood. It was not so unpleasant in the f
all, at least, when the trees were dormant and leafless already; it must be rather like dying in their steep, he thought. Or hoped,
Chips of aromatic wood flew past his head, as he chopped his way briskly around the big trunk, and went on without pause to the next victim.
Needless to say, he took care never to let anyone hear him apologize to a tree. Jamie always said a prayer for the animals he killed, but Roger doubted that he would regard a tree as anything other than fuel, building material, or sheer bloody obstruction. The woodpecker screeched suddenly overhead. Roger swung round to see what had caused the alarm, but relaxed at once, seeing the small, wiry figure of Kenny Lindsay approaching through the trees, It appeared that Lindsay had come on the same business; he flourished his own girdling knife in cordial greeting,
"Madain mbatb, a Sme6raich!" be shouted. "And what's this I hear, that we've a newcomer?"
No longer even faintly surprised at the speed with which news passed over
The Fiery Cross 819
mountain) Roger offered his ate-jug to Lindsay, and gave him the details of ."new family.
.."Christie is their nar , and
11yes. Thomas Christie, is it?" Kenny asked,
Aye? Oh." his son and daughter, You'll know him-he was dsmuir.51
There it was again, that faint tremor of reaction at Christie's name. ,,Christie," Kenny Lindsay repeated. The tip of his tongue showed briefly . g the name. ,Mm. Aye, well." feeling more uneasy ,What's the matter with Christie)" Roger demanded,
the minute -
"Matter?" Kenny looked startled. "Nothing's the matter with him-is there?" "No. I mean-you seemed a bit taken aback to hear his name- I wondered f or a drunkard, or the like."
er perhaps he was a known thie ,
Enlightenment spread across Kenny's st"bbted face like sun on a morning eadow. no, Christie's a decent enough "Oh, aye, I take your meaning now. No,
t, so far as I ken the man." gether, then? He said so."
"So far -as ye ken? Were ye not at Ardsmuir to but seemed still
460ch, aye, he was there right enough," Kenny agreed,
The Fiery Cross Page 114
