The Fiery Cross

by Diana Gabaldon

  856 Diana Gabaldon

  "Right, that's the idea," Roger said encouragingly. His finger twiddled gently in the slight depression, and Jemmy gave the ghost of a giggle, beginning to W

  ake up.

  "Pooooooo," he said. "Poopoo.,,

  'Whatever works," Brianna said, still cross, but resigned "Go

  potty go Poo-just get it over with, all right? Mummy wants to go to sleep."

  "Perhaps you should take your finger off of his . - - mmphm?" Roger nodded toward the object in question. "You'll give the poor lad a complex or something."

  "Fine." Bree took her hand away with alacrity, and the stubby object sprang ,oger over the rim of the pot.

  back up, pointing directly at P

  "Hey! Now, just a min-"he began, and got his hand up as a shield just in time.

  "P00," Jernmy said, beaming in drowsy pleasure. "Shit!"

  "Chit!" Jemmy echoed obligingly.

  "Well, that's not quite-would you stop laughing?" Roger said testily, wiping his hand gingerly on a kitchen rag.

  Brianna snorted and gurgled, shaking her head so the straggling locks of hair that had escaped her plait f

  ell down around her face, "Good boy, Jemmy! " she managed,

  Thus encouraged, Jemmy took on an air of inner absorption, scrunched his chin down into his chest, and without further ado, proceeded to Act Two of the evening's drama.

  "Clever lad!" Roger said sincerely. Brianna glanced at him,

  momentary surprise interrupting her own applause. He was surprised himself, He had spoken by reflex, and hearing the words, just for a moment, his voice hadn't sounded like his own. Very familiar-but not his own. It was like writing the words of Clellan's song, hearing the old man5s voice, even as his own lips formed the words.

  "Aye, that's clever," he said,

  his silky head. more softly, and patted the little boy gently on He took the pot outside to empty it while Brianna put Jemmy back to bed with kisses and murmurs of admiration. Basic sanitation accomplished, he went to the well to wash his hands before coming back inside to bed.

  "Are You through working?- Bree asked drowsily, as he slid into bed beside her. She rolled over and thrust her bottom unceremoniously into his stomach, which he took as a gesture of af

  fection, given the fact that she was about thirty degrees warmer than he was after the sortie outside.

  "Aye, for tonight." He put his arms round her and kissed the back of her ear, the warmth of her body a comf

  ort and delight. She took his chilly hand in hers without comment, folded it and tucked it snugly beneath her chin, with a small kiss on the knuckle. He stretched slightly, then relaxed, letting his muscles go slack and feeling the tiny movements as their bodies adjusted, shaping to each other

  - A faint buzzing snore rose from the trundle, where Jemmy slept the sleep of the righteously dry.

  Briarma had freshly smoored the fire; it burned with a low, even heat and the

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  sweet scent of hickory, making small occasional pops as the buried flame reached a pocket of resin or a spot of damp. Warmth crept over him, and sleep tiptoed in its wake, drawing a blanket of drowsiness up round his cars, unlocking the tidy cupboards of his mind and letting all the thoughts and impressions of the day spill out in brightly colored heaps.

  Resisting unconsciousness for a last few moments, he poked desultorily among the scattered riches thus revealed, in the faint hope of finding a corner of the Telfer song poking out; some scrap of word or music that would allow him to seize the vanished verses and drag them back into the light of consciousness. It wasn't the story of the ill-fated Willie that emerged from the rubble, though, but rather a voice. Not his own, and not that of old Kimmie Cleflan, either.

  Clever lad! it said, in a clear warm contralto, tinged with laughter. Roger jerked.

  "Whaju sayP" Brianna mumbled, disturbed by the movement.

  "Go on-be clever," he said slowly, echoing the words as they formed in his memory. "That's what she said."

  "Who?" Brianna turned her head, with a rustle of hair on the pillow.

  "My mother." He put his free hand round her waist, resettling them both. "You asked what they said in Scotland. I'd forgotten, but that's what she used to say to me. 'Go on-be clever!' or 'Do ye need to be clever?'

  Bree gave a small grunt of sleepy amusement. "Well, it's better than Poo," she said.

  They lay quiet for a bit. Then she said, still speaking softly, but with all traces of sleep gone from her voice, "You talk about your dad now and then-but I've never heard you mention your mother before."

  He gave a one-shouldered shrug, bringing his knees up against the yielding backs of her thighs.

  "I don't remember a lot about her."

  "How old were you when she died?" Brianna's hand floated up to rest over his.

  "Oh, four, I think, nearly five.'5

  "Mmm." She made a small sound of sympathy, and squeezed his hand. She was quiet for a moment, alone in private thought, but he heard her swallow audibly, and felt the slight tension in her shoulders.

  "What?" "Oh ... nothing."

  "Aye?" He disengaged his hand, used it to lift the heavy plait aside, and gently massaged the nape of her neck. She turned her head away to make it easier, burying her face in the pillow.

  "Just-I was just thinking--if I died now, Jemmy s so young--he wouldn't remember me at all," she whispered, words half-muffled.

  "Yes, he would." He spoke in automatic contradiction, wanting to give her reassurance, even knowing that she was likely right.

  "You don't remember, and you were lots older when you lost your mother." "Oh ... I do remember her," he said slowly, digging the ball of his thumb into the place where her neck joined her shoulder. "Only, it's just in bits and pieces. Sometimes, when I'm dreaming, or thinking of something else, I get a

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  quick glimpse of her, or some echo of her voice. A few things I recall clearlylike the locket she used to wear round her neck, with her initials on it in wee red stones. Garnets, they were."

  That locket had perhaps saved his life, during his first ill-fated attempt to pass through the stones. He felt the loss of it now and then, like a small thorn buried beneath the surface of the skin, but pushed the feeling aside, telling himself that after all, it was nothing more than a bit of metal.

  At the same time, he missed it.

  46

  That's a thing, Roger." Her voice held a hint of sharpness. "Do you remember her? I mean-what would Jernmy know about me-about you, for that matter-if all he had left of us was"-she cast about for some suitable object-"was your bodhran and my pocket knife?"

  "He'd know his dad was musical, and his mum was bloodthirsty," Roger said dryly. "Ouch!" He recoiled slightly as her fist came down on his thigh, then set his hands placatingly on her shoulders. "No, really. He'd know a lot about us, and not just from the bits and bobs we'd left behind, though those would help."

  "How?"

  4

  of Well Her shoulders had relaxed again; he could feel the slender edge her shoulder blade, hard against the skin-she was too thin, he thought. "You studied history for a time, didn't you? You know how much one can tell from homely objects like dishes and toys."

  "Mmm." She sounded dubious, but he thought that she simply wanted to be convinced.

  "And Jem would know a lot more than that about you, from your drawings," he pointed out. And a bell of a lot more than a son ought, if be ever read your dream-book, he thought. The sudden impulse to say so, to confess that he himself had read it, trembled on his tongue, but he swallowed it. Beyond simple fear of how she might respond if she discovered his intrusion, was the greater fear that she would cease to write in it, and those small secret glimpses of her mind would be lost to him.

  "I guess that's true," she said slowly. "I wonder if Jern will draw---or be musical."

  If Stephen Bonnetplays tbeflute, Roger thought cynically, but choked off that subv
ersive notion, refusing to contemplate it.

  "That's how he'll know the most of us," he said instead, resuming his gentle kneading. "He'll look at himself, aye?"

  "Mmm?" "Well, look at you," he pointed out. "Everyone who sees you says, 'You must be Jamie Fraser's lass!' And the red hair isn't the only thing-what about the shooting? And the way you and your mother are about tomatoes . . ."

  She smacked her lips reflexively, and giggled when he laughed.

  "Yeah, all right, I see," she said. "Mmm. Why did you have to mention tomatoes? I used the last of the dried ones last week, and it'll be six months before they're on again."

  "Sorry," he said, and kissed the back of her neck in apology.

  "I did wonder," he said, a moment later. "When you found out about Jamic-when we began to look for him-you must have wondered what he was

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  fike." He knew she had; he certainly had. "When you found him-how did he "Oompare? Was he at all like you thought he'd be, from what you knew about

  11im already? or-from what you knew about yourselP"

  That made her laugh again, a little wryly.

  661 don't know," she said. "I didn't know then, and I still don't know." "What d'ye mean by that?"

  "Well, when you hear things about somebody before you meet them, of bourse the real person isn't just like what you heard, or what you ima ned. But gi

  and sort of you don't forget what you imagined, either; that stays in your mind,

  tnerges with what you find out when you meet them. And then-" she bent her head forward, thinking. "Even if you know somebody first, and then hear things about them later-that kind of affects how you see them, doesn't it?"

  .,: "Aye? Mmm, I suppose so. Do ye mean ... your other dad? Frank?"

  "I suppose I do." She shifted under his hands, shrugging it away. She didn't want to talk about Frank Randall, not just now.

  "What about your parents, Roger? Do you figure that's why the Reverend saved all their old staff in those boxes? So later you could look through it, learn more about them, and sort of add that to your real memories of them?"

  :1 "I-yes, I suppose so," he said uncertainly. "Not that I have any memories pf my real dad in any case; he only saw me the once, and I was less than a year 'old then."

  e "But you do remember your mother, don't you? At least a little bit?"

  She sounded slightly anxious; she wanted him to remember. He hesitated, and a thought struck him with a small shock. The truth of it was, he realized, khat he never consciously tried to remember his mother. The realization gave him a sudden and unaccustomed feeling of shame.

  "She died in the War, didn't she?" Bree's hand had taken up his suspended ,massage, reaching back to gently knead the tightened muscle of his thigh.

  "Yes. She-in the Blitz. A bomb." "In Scotland? But I thought-" "No. In London."

  He didn't want to speak of it. He never had spoken of it. On the rare occaslons when memory led in that direction, he veered away. That territory lay behind a closed door, with a large "No Entry" sign that he had never sought to pass. And yet tonight ... he felt the echo of Bree's brief anguish at the thought that her son might not recall her. And he felt the same echo, like a faint voice calling, from the woman locked behind that door in his mind. But was it locked, after all?

  With a hollow feeling behind his breastbone that might have been dread, he reached out and put his hand on the knob of that closed door. How much did he recall?

  "My Gran, my mother's mum, was English," he said slowly. "A widow. We went south to live with her in London, when my dad was killed."

  He had not thought of Gran, any more than his mum, in years. But with his speaking, he could smell the rosewater and glycerine lotion his grandmother had used on her hands, the faintly musty smell of her upstairs flat in Totteflham Court Road, crammed with horsehair furniture too large for it, remnants of a previous life that had held a house, a husband, and children.

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  He took a deep breath. Bree felt it, and pressed her broad firm back encouragingly against his chest. He kissed the back of her neck. So the door did open-just a crack, maybe, but the light of a xvintry London afternoon shone through it, lighting up a stack of battered wooden blocks on a threadbare carpet. A woman's hand was building a tower with them, the faint sun scattering rainbows from a diamond on her hand. His own fingers curled in reflex, seeing that slim hand.

  "Mum-my mother-she was small, like Gran. That is, they both seemed big, to me, but I remember ... I remember seeing her stand on her tiptoes to reach things down from the shelf

  Things, The tea-caddy, with its cut-glass sugar bowl. The battered kettle, three mismatched mugs. His had had a panda bear on it. A package of biscuits-bright red, with a picture of a parrot ... My God, he hadn't seen those kind ever again-did they still make them? No, of course not, not now ...

  He pulled his veering mind firmly back from such distractions.

  "I know what she looked like, but mostly from pictures, not from my own memories." And yet he did have memories, he realized, with a disturbing sensation in the pit of his stomach. He thought "Mum," and suddenly he didn't see the photos anymore; he saw the chain of her spectacles, a string of tiny metal beads against the soft curve of a breast, and a pleasant warm smoothness, smelling of soap against his cheek; the cotton fabric of a flowered housedress. Blue flowers. Shaped like trumpets, with curling vines; he could see them clearly.

  "What did she look like? Do you look like her at all?"

  He shrugged, and Bree shifted, rolling over to face him, her head propped upon her outstretched arm. Her eyes shone in the half-dark, sleepiness overcome by interest.

  "A little," he said slowly. "Her hair was dark, like mine." Shiny, curly. Lifting in the wind, sprinkled with wbitegrains ofsand. He'd sprinkled sand on her bead, and she brushed itfirom her hair, laughing. A beach somewhere?

  "The Reverend kept some pictures of her, in his study. One showed her holding me on her lap. I don't know what we were looking at-but both of us look as though we're trying hard to keep from laughing. We look a lot alike in that one. I have her mouth, I think-and ... maybe ... the shape of her brows."

  For a long time he had felt a tightness in his chest whenever he saw the pictures of his mother. But then it had passed, the pictures lost their meaning and became no more than objects in the casual clutter of the Reverend's house. Now he saw them clearly once again, and the tightness in his chest was back. He cleared his throat hard, hoping to ease it.

  "Need water?" She made to rise, reaching for the jug and cup she kept for him on the stool by the bed, but he shook his head, a hand on her shoulder to stop her.

  "It's all right," he said, a little gruffly, and cleared his throat again. It felt as tight and painful as it had in the weeks just past the hanging, and his hand involuntarily sought the scar, smoothing the ragged line beneath his jaw with the tip of a finger.

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  "You know," he said, seeking at least a momentary diversion, "you should do a self-portrait, next time you go to see your aunt at River Run."

  "What, me?" She sounded startled, though, he thought-perhaps a bit pleased at the idea.

  4( CcSure. You could, I know. And then there'd be ... well, a permanent record, I mean." For Jem to remember, in case anything should happen to you. The words floated above them in the dark, striking them both momentarily silent. Damn, and he'd been trying to reassure her.

  "I'd like a portrait of you," he said softly, and reached out a finger to trace the curve of cheek and temple. "So we can look at it when we're very old, and I can tell ye that you haven't changed a bit."

  She gave a small snort, but turned her head and kissed his fingers briefly, before rolling onto her back. She stretched, pointing her toes until her joints cracked, then relaxed with a sigh.

  "I'll think about it," she said.

  The room was quiet, save for the murmur of the fire and the gentle creak of settling timber. Th
e night was cold, but still; the morning would be foggyhe had felt the damp gathering in the ground when he'd gone outside, breathing from the trees. But it was warm and dry within. Brianna sighed again; he could feel her sinking back toward sleep beside him, could feel it coming for him, too.

  The temptation to give in and let it carry him painlessly away was great. But while Brianna's fears were eased for the moment, he still heard that whisper"He wouldn't remember me at all." But it came now from the other side of the door in his mind.

  Yes, I do, Mum, he thought, and shoved it open all the way.

  "I was with her," he said softly. He was on his back, staring up at the pinebeamed ceiling, the joins of the rafters barely visible to his dark-adapted eyes. "What? With who?" He could hear the lull of sleep in her voice, but curiositv roused her briefly.

  bomb." "With my mother. And my grandmother. When ... the

  He heard her head turn sharply toward him, hearing the strain in his voice, but he looked straight upward into the dark roof-beams, not blinking.

  "Do you want to tell me?" Brianna's hand found his, curled round it, squeezing. He wasn't sure at all that he did, but he nodded a little, squeezing back.

  "Aye. I suppose I must," he said softly. He sighed deeply, smelling the lingering scents of fried corn-mush and on ,ions that hung in the corners of the cabin. Somewhere in the back of his nose, the imagined scents of hot-air registers and breakfast porridge, wet woolens, and the petrol fumes of lorries woke silent guides through the labyrinth of memory.

  "It was at night. The air-raid sirens went. I knew what it was, but it scared the shit out of me every time. There wasn't time to dress; Mum pulled me out of bed and put my coat on over my pajamas, then we rushed out and down the stairs-there were thirty-six steps, I'd counted them all that day, coming home from the shops-and we hurried to the nearest shelter."

  The nearest shelter for them was the Tube station across the street; grubby

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  white tiles and the flicker of fluorescent lights, the thrilling rush of air somewhere deep below, like the breathing of dragons in nearby caves.

  "It was exciting." He could see the crush of people, hear the shouting of the wardens over the noise of the crowd. "Everything was vibrating; the floors, the walls, the air itself."

  Feet thundered on the wooden treads as streams of refugees poured into the bowels of the earth, down one level to a platform, down another, yet another, burrowing toward safety. It was panic-but an orderly panic.

  "The bombs could go through fifty feet of earth-but the lower levels were safe."

  They had reached the bottom of the first stairway, run jostling with a mass of others through a short, white-tiled tunnel to the head of the next. There was a wide space at the head of the stairway, and the crowd pooled in a swirling eddy into it, swelling Aith the pressure of refugees pouring from the tunnel behind, draining only slowly as a thin stream crowded onto the stair leading down."There was a wall round the head of the stair; I could hear Gran worrying that I'd be crushed against it-people were pouring down from the street, pressing from behind."

  He could just see over the wall, standing on his toes, chest pressed against the concrete. Down below, emergency lights shone in interrupted streaks along the walls, striping the milling crowd below. It was late night; most of the people were dressed in whatever they had been able to seize when the siren went, and the light glowed on unexpected flashes of bare flesh and extraordinary garments. One woman sported an extravagant hat, decorated with feathers and fruit, worn atop an ancient overcoat.

  He had been watching the crowd below in fascination, trying to see if it was really a whole pheasant on the hat. There was shouting; an air-raid warden in a white helmet with a big black "W", beckoning madly, trying to hasten the already rushing crowd toward the far end of the platform, making room for those coming off the stair.

  "There were children crying, but not me. I wasn't really afraid at all." He hadn't been afraid, because Mum was holding his hand. If she was there, notbing bad could happen.

  "There was a big thump nearby. I could see the lights shake. Then there was a