The Fiery Cross

by Diana Gabaldon

  And I believed what he'd said. He was a man of honor and duty, and I knew what his loneliness had been-for I had had my own. On the other hand, I knew his body, nearly as well as my own. If it had a great capacity to endure hardship, it had an equal capacity to experience great joy. Jamie could be ascetic from necessity-never from natural temperament.

  Most of the time I succeeded in forgetting that he had shared Laoghaire's bed, however briefly and-he said-unsatisfactorily. I did not forget that she had been, and was still, quite an attractive woman.

  Which left me rather wishing that Jenny Murray had found some other inspiration for the conversion of her feelings toward her brother.

  JAMIE WAS QUIET and abstracted through the rest of the day, though he roused himself to be sociable when Fergus and Marsah arrived with their children for a visit after supper. He taught Germain to play draughts, while Fergus recalled for Roger the words of a ballad he had picked up in the alleys of Paris as a juvenile pickpocket. The women retired to the hearth to stitch baby gowns, knit booties, and-in honor of Marsali's advancing pregnancy and Lizzie's engagemententertain each other with hair-raising anecdotes of labor and birth.

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  "Laid sideways, the babe was, and the size of a six-month shoat

  "Ha. Germain had a head like a cannonball, the midwife said, and he was acing backward, the wee rattan-" s shoulders that were the probjemmy had a huge head, but it was hi

  k bourse ... the lady's 4purse' of course, is her-"

  "Her means of making a living, aye, I see. Then the next bit, where her customer puts his fingers in her purse-"

  I "No, ye dinna get to move yet) it's still my turn, for I've jumped your man there, and so I can go here-"

  "Merde!" d. She glared at her offspring, who hunched his "Germain!" Marsali bellowe

  ;shoulders, scowling at the draughtboard, lower lip thrust out.

  , "Dinna fash yourself, man, for see? Now it's your turn, ye can go there, and tkere, and there-" i? ... and what he is asking the

  11 ... Avez-vous ete a la selle auiOurdbu

  whore, of course-" Or would it be, 'Have you had a " 'Have you-been in the saddle today?'

  ride today?' 57 f his aristocratic nose pinkening with amusement. Fergus laughed, the end o

  "Well, that is one translation, surely." Roger lifted a brow at him, half-smiling.

  "Aye? " n is also what a French doctor says)" I put in, see"That particular expressio had a ing his incomprehension. "Colloquially speaking, it means, 'Have You bowel movement today?' " haps une specialistc," Fergus explained cheer"The lady in question being per

  fully. "I used to know one who-" emed more amused ,'Ferqus!" Marsali's whole face was pink, though she se

  than outraged. eyebrows still raised as he struggled with the nu"I see," Roger murmured, I did wonder how one would set it ances of this bit of sophisticated translation.

  to music. ndpere?" Germain inquired chummily, evidently "Comment sont vos selles, gra ur stools, grandfather? familiar with this line of social inquiry. And how are yo

  "Free and easy," his grandfather assured him. "Eat up your parritch every morning, and ye'll never have piles."

  "Da!" "Well, it's true," Jamie protested. all fizzing noises. Jernmy stirred in Brianna was bright red, and emitting sm

  her lap - ritch Germain observed, frowning narrowly at I'Le petit rouge eats par reast, eyes closed. "He Jernmy, who was nursing contentedly at his mother's b

  shits stones."

  "Germain!" all the women shouted in unison. grandfather. Looking well, it's true," he said, in perfect imitation of his rs with dignified, he turned his back on the women and began building towe

  the draughts-men.

  872 Diana Gabaldon

  "He doesna seem to want to give up the teat," Marsali observed, nodding at Jemmy. "Neither did Germain, but he'd no choice-nor did poor wee Joanie." She glanced rueftilly down at her stomach, which was barely beginning to swell with Number Three.

  I caught the barest flicker of a glance between Roger and Bree, followed by a Mona Lisa smile on Brianna's face. She settled herself more comfortably, and stroked Jemmy's head. Enjoy it wbile you can, nveetheart, her actions said, more vividly than words.

  I felt my own eyebrows rise, and glanced toward Jamie. He'd seen that little byplay, too, and gave me the male equivalent of Brianna's smile, before turning back to the draughtsboard.

  "I like parritch," Lizzie put in shyly, in a minor attempt to change the subject. "Specially with honey and milk."

  "Ali," said Fergus, reminded of his original task. He turned back to Roger, lifting a finger. "Honeypots. The refrain, you see, where les abeilles come buzzing-"

  "Aye, aye, that's so," Mrs. Bug neatly recaptured the conversation, when he paused to draw breath, "parritch wi' honey is the best thing for the bowels, though sometimes even that fails. Why, I kent a man once, who couldna move his bowels for more than a month!"

  "Indeed. Did he try a pellet of wax rolled in goose-grease? Or a tisane of grape leaves?" Fergus was instantly diverted. French to the core, he was a great connoisseur of purges, laxatives, and suppositories.

  "Everything," Mrs. Bug assured him. "Parritch, dried apples, wine mixed wi' an ox's gall, water drunk at the dark o' the moon at midnight ... nothing at all would shift him. 'Twas the talk of the village, wi' folk placing wagers, and the poor man gone quite gray in the face. Nervous spasms, it was, and his bowels tied up like garter strings, so that-"

  "Did he explode?" Germain asked, interested. Mrs. Bug shook briefly with laughter.

  "No, that he didna, laddie. Though I did hear as how it was a near thing." "What was it finally shifted him, then?" Jamie asked.

  "She finally said she'd marry me, and not the other fellow." Mr. Bug, who had been dozing in the corner of the settle through the evening, stood up and stretched himself, then put a hand on his wife's shoulder, smiling tenderly down at her upturned face. " 'Twas a great relief, to be sure."

  IT WAS LATE when we went to bed, after a convivial evening that ended with Fergus singing the prostitute's ballad in its lengthy entirety to general applause, Jamie and German beating time on the table with their hands.

  Jamie lay back against the pillow, hands crossed behind his head, chuckling to himself now and then as bits of the song came back to him. It was cold enough that the windowpanes were misted with our breath, but he wore no nightshirt, and I admired the sight of him as I sat brushing my hair.

  He had recovered well from the snakebite, but was still thinner than usual, so that the graceftil arch of his collarbone was visible, and the long muscles of

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  arms roped from bone to bone, distinct beneath his skin. The skin of his st was bronze where his shirt usually Jay open, but the tender skin on the erside of his arms was white as milk, a tracery of blue veins showing. The t shadowed the prominent bones of his face and glimmered from his hair, arnon and amber where it lay across his shoulders, dark auburn and redd where it dusted his bared body.

  "The candlelight becomes ye, Sassenach," he said, smiling, and I saw that he watching me, blue eyes the color of bottomless ocean.

  "I was just thinking the same of you," I said, standing up and putting aside brush. My hair floated in a cloud round my shoulders, clean, soft, and shinit smelled of marigolds and sunflowers and so did my skin. Bathing and pooing in winter was a major undertaking, but I had been determined not

  to go to bed smelling of pig shit. as I bent to blow the "Let it burn, then," he said, reaching out to stop me

  gandle out. His hand curled round my wrist, urging me toward him.

  , "Come to bed, and let me watch ye. I like the way the light moves in your s; like whisky, when ye pour it on a haggis, and then set it on fire."

  ",eye red, but made no demur as he made room for me, I,. "How poetic," I murmu

  led loose the drawstring of my shift, and slipped it off me. The air of the orn was cold enough to make my nipples draw up tig
ht, but the skin of his est was delightfully warm on my breasts as he gathered me into him, sighing

  '*jth pleasure - d, cupping one of my "It's Fergus's song inspiring me, I expect," he sai

  ",,,,breasts in his hand and weighing it with a nice balance between admiration and appraisal. "Godl ye've the loveliest breasts. Ye recall that one verse, where he says the lady's tits were so enormous, she could wrap them round his ears? Yours aren't so big as that, of course, but d'ye think ye maybe could wrap them round-"

  "I don't think they need to be enormous to do tbat," I assured him. "Move up. Besides, I don't believe it's actually wrapping round, so much as it is squashing together, and they're certainly large enough for ... see? "

  ,oh,11 lie said, sounding deeply gratified and a little breathless. "Aye, ye're right. That's ... oh, that looks verra beautiffill Sassenach-at least from here." "It looks very interesting from here, too," I assured him, trying neither to laugh nor go cross-eyed. "Which one of us moves, do you think?"

  "Me, for now. I'm no chafing ye, Sassenach?" he inquired.

  "Well, just a bit. Wait, though-" I reached out a hand, feeling blindly over the table by the bed. I got hold of the little pot of creamy almond ointment I used for hand lotion, flicked the lid off, and dug a finger into it.

  "Yes, that's much better," I said, "Isn't it?"

  "Oh. Oh. Aye." I isn't there?" I said thoughtfully, letting "And then there's that other verse, nd the curve of his go for a moment, and drawing a slippery finger slowly rou

  buttock. "About what the prostitute did to the choirboy?" "Oh, Christ!"

  "Yes, that's what he said. According to the song."

  874 Diana Gabaldon

  MUCH LATER, in the dark, I roused from sleep to feel his hand, on me again. Still pleasantly adrift in dreams, I didn't move, but lay inert, letting him do what he would.

  My mind was loosely tethered to reality, and it took some time for me t

  0 come to the slow realization that something wasn't quite right. It took even longer to focus my mind and struggle toward the surface of wakefulness, but at last I got my eyes open, blinking away clouds of sleep.

  He was crouched half over me, his face half-lit by the dim glow from the rowning a little, his breath smoored hearth. His eyes were closed, and he was f

  coming through half-opened lips. He moved almost mechanically, and I wondered, muzzily astonished, whether he could possibly be doing it in his sleep?

  A thin film of sweat gleamed on the high cheekbones, the long straight bridge of his nose, on the slopes and curves of his naked body.

  He was stroking me in an odd, monotonous sort of way, like a man wo rking at some repetitive task. The touch was more than intimate, but weirdly impersonal; I might have been anybodyor anythingm--I thought.

  Then he moved, and eyes still closed, flipped back the quilt covering me and moved between my legs, spreading them apart in a brusque fashion that was quite unlike him. His brows were drawn together, knotted in a frown of concentration. I moved instinctively to close my legs, squirming away. His hands clamped down on my shoulders then, his knee thrust my thighs apart, and he entered me roughly.

  I made a high-pitched sound of startled protest, and his eyes popped open. He stared at me, his eyes no more than an inch from mine, unfocused, then sharpening into abrupt awareness. He froze.

  "Who the bloody hell do you think I am?" I said, low-voiced and furious.

  He wrenched himself away and flung himself off the bed, leaving the covers hanging to the floor in disarray. He seized his clothes from the peg, reached the door in two strides, opened it and disappeared, slamming it behind him.

  I sat up, feeling thoroughly rattled. I scrabbled the quilts back up around myself, feeling dazed, angryand halfway disbelieving. I rubbed my hands over my face, trying to wake up a] I the way. Surely I hadn't been dreaming?

  No. He was. He'd been half-asleep-or wholly so-and he'd bloody thought I was bloody Laoghaire! Nothing else could account for the way he had been touching me, with a sense of painful impatience tinged with anger; he had never touched me like that in his life.

  I lay back down, but it was patently impossible to go back to sleep. I stared at the shadowy rafters for a few minutes, then rose with decision, and got dressed.

  The dooryard was bleak and cold under a high, bright moon. I stepped out, closing the kitchen door softly behind me, and clutched my cloak round me, listening. Nothing stirred in the cold, and the wind was no more than a sigh through the pines. At some distance, though, I heard a faint, regular noise, and turned toward it, making my way carefully through the dark.

  The door of the haybarn was open.

  I leaned against the doorjamb, and crossed my arms, watching as he stamped

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  to and fro, pitching hay in the moonlight, working off his temper. Mine was still pulsing in my temples, but began to subside as I watched him.

  nd, and all too well. I had not met The difficulty was that I did understa

  n I would catch a narry of Frank's women-he was discreet. But now and the

  glance exchanged the local supermarket-and a feeling of at a faculty party or

  black rage would well up in me, only to be followed by bafflement as to what, I'precisely, I was to do with it.

  jealousy had nothing to do with logic.

  Laoghaire MacKenzie was six thousand miles away; likely neither of us ank was even farther away, and it was certain would ever see her again, Fr

  neither of us would ever see him again, this side the grave.

  No. jealousy had nothing at all to do with logic e knew I was there; I I began to be cold, but went on standing there. H

  could see it in the way he kept his head turned toward his work. He was sweathis shirt stuck to him, making a dark ing, in spite of the cold; the thin cloth of e stack, left it, and sat spot on his back. At last, he stabbed the pitchfork into th

  ad in his hands, fingers down on a bench made from half a log. He put his he

  rubbing violently through his hair. ression halfway between dismay and Finally, he looked up at me, with an exp

  reluctant amusement.

  "I dinna understand it."

  ,What?" I moved toward him, and sat down near him, curling my feet under me. I could smell the sweat on his skin, along with almond cream and the ghost Of his earlier lust.

  He gave me a sidelong glance, and answered dryly, "Anything, Sassenach." "Can't be that bad, can it?" I reached tentatively for him, and ran a hand lightly down the curve of his back.

  He heaved a deep sigh, blowing air through pursed lips

  "When I was three-and-twenty, I didna understand how it was that to look at a woman could turn my bones to water, yet make me feel I could bend steel derstand how I could in my hands. When I was five-and-twenty, I didna un 91

  want both to cherish a woman and ravish her, all at once. of his mouth and a "A woman?" I asked, and got what I wanted-the curt

  glance that went through my heart.

  "One woman," he said. He took the hand I laid on his knee, and held it ight snatch it back. "Just one," he repeated) his tightly, as though afraid I in

  voice husky. but the boards creaked and settled in the cold. I it was quiet in the barn, toward him. just a little. Moonlight moved a little on the bench, scooting ly off the piled hay.

  streamed through the wide-open door, glowing dim what I dinna ken now. "And that," he said, squeezing my fingers tighter, "is re I will I love you, a nigbean donn. I have loved ye from the moment I saw)

  love ye 'til tim my side, I am well e itself is done, and so long as you are by

  pleased wi' the- world." ie but before I could do more than A flush of warmth went through 1T

  squeeze his hand in reply, he went on, turning to took at me with an expression of bewilderment so desperate as to be almost comical -

  876 Diana Gabaldon

  "And that bein' so, Claire-why, in the name of Christ and all his saintswhy do I want to ta
ke ship to Scotland, hunt down a man whose name and face I dinna ken at all, and kill him, for swiving a woman to whom I have nay claim, and who I couldna stand to be in the same room with for more than three minutes at the most?"

  He brought his free hand down in a fist, striking the log with a thump that vibrated through the wood under my buttocks.

  "I do not understand!"

  I suppressed the urge to say, "And you think I do?" Instead, I merely sat quietly, and after a moment, stroked his knuckles very lightly with my thumb. It was less a caress than a simple reassurance, and he took it So.

  After a moment, he sighed deeply, squeezed my hand and stood up. "I am a fool," he said.

  I sat still for a moment, but he seemed to expect some sort of confirmation, so I nodded obligingly.

  "Well, perhaps," I said. "But you aren't going to Scotland, are you?" Instead of replying, he got to his feet and walked moodily to and fro, kicking clumps of dried mud, which burst like small bombs. Surely he wasn't contemplating ... he couldn't be. With some difficulty, I kept my mouth shut, and waited patiently, until he came back to stand in front of me.

  "All right," he said, in the tone of one stating a declaration of principle. "I dinna ken why it galls me that Laoghaire should seek another man's company-no, that's no the truth, is it? I ken well enough. And it isna jealousy. Or ... well, it is, then, but that's no the main thing." He shot me a look, as though daring me to contradict this assertion, but I kept my mouth shut. He exhaled strongly through his nose, and took a deep breath, looking down.

  "Well, then. If I'm honest about it." His lips pressed tight together for a moment. "Why?" he burst out, looking up at me. "What is it about him?" "What is what about who? The man she-'5

  "She hated it, the bedding!" he interrupted me, stamping a clod into powder. "Perhaps I flatter myself, or you flatter me . - ." He gave me a look that wanted to be a glare, but ended in bewilderment. "Am I ... am I ... ?"

  I wasn't sure whether he wanted me to say, "Yes, you are!" or "No, you're not!", but satisfied myself with a smile that said both.

  "Aye. Well," he said reluctantly. "I didna tbink it was me. And before we were wed, even Laoghaire liked me well enough." I must have made a small snort at that, for he glanced at me, but I shook my head, dismissing it.

  "I thought it must be a mislike for men in general, or only for the act. And if though I did feel it was so ... well, it wasna quite so bad, if it wasna my fault,

  somehow I should be able to mend it. He trailed off into this thoughts, brow furrowed, then resumed with a sigh.

  "But maybe I was wrong about that. Perhaps it was me. And that's a thought that sticks in my craw."

  I had no real idea what to say to him, but clearly I had to say something.

  "I think it was her," I said, firmly. "Not you. Though of course I may be prejudiced. She did try to kill me, after all."

  "She what?" He swung round, looking blank.

  "You didn't know that? Oh." I tried to think; had I not told him? No, I sup-

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  posed not. What with one thing and another, it hadn't seemed important at the time; I had never expected to see her again. And later ... well, it really wasn't portant then. I explained briefly about Laoghaire's having sent me to join im ranesmuir, fully aw

  Geillie Duncan that day in C are that Geillie was about to be arrested for witchcraft, and hoping that I would be taken with her-as indeed I was.

  "The wicked wee bitch!" he said, sounding more astonished than anything else. "No, I didna ken that at all-Christ, Sassenach, ye canna think I would have marrit the woman, knowing she'd done such a thing to you!"

  "Welt, she was only sixteen at the time," I said, able under the circumstances to be tolerantly forgiving. "And she might not have realized that we'd be tried or that the witch-court would try to burn us. She might only have meant mischief-thinking that if I were accused as a witch, it would make you lose interst in me." The revelation of her chicanery seemed at least to have distracted C

  Jamie's mind, which was all to the good.