***
Reverend Caldwell stepped forward, a finger in his book at the proper place, put his spectacles on his nose, and smiled genially at the assemblage, blinking only slightly when he encountered the row of leering countenances.
12. Fergus, Jamie’s adopted French son, his wife, Marsali (daughter of Jamie’s ex-wife, Laoghaire), and their two children, Germain and Joan. Fergus, like Roger, has a few problems in finding status and self-worth in the environment where he finds himself. Intelligent, inventive, and artistic, but lacking one hand, he can’t do many of the chores necessary on a frontier homestead, thus throwing a lot of the work onto his young wife. This causes him to feel guilty and creates friction between him and Marsali.
Still, in the present situation, Fergus’s handicap is an advantage; lacking a hand, he is not obliged to serve with the militia, and while he will help in gathering the militia volunteers, if and when the militia is called to serve, he can remain on the Ridge to help defend and organize.
13. The Bugs. Jamie introduces Roger to an elderly but still strong and vigorous Highlander named Arch Bug, a recent immigrant to the colony with his wife, Murdina. Arch, Jamie informs Roger, will be the new factor for the Ridge, while Murdina will help with the cooking and household chores at the Big House.
Roger is outwardly cordial but inwardly fumes, This attitude undergoes an abrupt change when Jamie tells Roger why he’s made Arch Bug factor:
“ ’Twas luck I should have come across auld Arch Bug and his wife today. If it comes to the fighting—and it will, I suppose, later, if not now—then Claire will ride with us. I shouldna like to leave Brianna to manage on her own, and it can be helped.”
Roger felt the small nagging weight of doubt drop away, as all became suddenly clear.
“On her own. You mean—ye want me to come? To help raise men for the militia?”
Jamie gave him a puzzled look.
“Aye, who else?”
He pulled the edges of his plaid higher about his shoulders, hunched against the rising wind. “Come along, then, Captain MacKenzie,” he said, a wry note in his voice. “We’ve work to do before you’re wed.”
14. The McGillivrays. Another of Jamie’s Ardsmuir companions, Robin McGillivray is a talented gunsmith, married to an indomitable German lady named Ute, whose life is dedicated to making good matches for her children: her son, Manfred, but, more important, her three daughters, Hilda, Inga, and Senga. We meet the McGillivrays first at the Gathering, when John Quincy Myers, a trapping acquaintance, comes to tell Jamie that there is a certain amount of trouble with a thief-taker, who has just tried to arrest Manfred McGillivray for taking part in the Hillsborough riot. Manfred was in Hillsborough, his sisters admit, but they insist that he had nothing to do with the riots.
Going to investigate, Claire and Jamie find Manfred and a pair of manacles—but no thief-taker. Investigating more closely, they discover the thief-taker, one Harley Boble by name. He has been overpowered by the McGillivray women, who have him bound and gagged but are at something of a loss as to how to proceed.
Jamie deals with the immediate problem in his own inimitable fashion:
“Exactly what did Jamie tell him?” I asked Myers.
“Oh. Well.” The mountain man gave me a broad, gap-toothed grin. “Jamie Roy told him serious-like that it was surely luck for the thief-taker—his name’s Boble, by the way, Harley Boble—that we done come upon y’all when we did. He give him to understand that if we hadn’t, then this lady here”—he bowed toward Ute—”would likely have taken him home in her wagon, and slaughtered him like a hog, safe out of sight.”
Myers rubbed a knuckle under his red-veined nose and chortled softly in his beard.
“Boble said as how he didn’t believe it, he thought she was only a-tryin’ to scare him with that knife. But then Jamie Roy leaned down close, confidential-like, and said he mighta thought the same—only that he’d heard so much about Frau McGillivray’s reputation as a famous sausage-maker, and had had the privilege of bein’ served some of it to his breakfast this morning. Right about then, Boble started to lose the color in his face, and when Jamie Roy pulled out a bit of sausage to show him—”
The problem of the thief-taker thus disposed of, the McGillivrays accept Jamie’s invitation to come and settle on the Ridge.
PART 2: THE CHIEFTAIN’S CALL
Once returned to the Ridge, Claire deals with a houseful of new immigrants—all staying with the Frasers while new cabins are hastily built—and pursues her most pressing order of business: the development of a usable form of penicillin. Jamie is busy settling his new tenants, drawing up property deeds, organizing labor, and—somehow—finding the money to supply those tenants with the basic tools needed to carve homesteads out of the wilderness. As Claire pursues her chemical researches, so does Jamie: “somehow” is the clandestine making and selling of whisky.
Meanwhile, Roger and Brianna settle in the old cabin near the Big House, where Claire and Jamie live, and begin the adventurous if sometimes awkwardly bruising business of making a life together.
All this industry is abruptly interrupted by Governor Tryon’s letter, sent to all the colonels of militia: There is a gathering of Regulators near Salisbury, and one General Waddell is heading there to disperse them. Jamie and the other militia commanders are to gather as many men as they can and join him.
Jamie begins the matter with a ceremonial supper, to which he summons all his tenants, inviting also the German settlers who live nearby. He erects a large wooden cross in the yard, causing Brianna to ask with nervous facetiousness whether he is starting his own religion. He explains the tradition of the “fiery cross”—a symbol used by the ancient clan chieftains to summon men to war—and gives Roger careful instruction as to which songs to sing and in what order. The event is carefully orchestrated, and when the cross blazes up, Jamie has the core of his militia, eager to follow him.
PART 3: ALARMS AND EXCURSIONS
More men are needed, though, and Jamie (with Claire, Roger, and Fergus) sets out with a party of forty men, intending to raise further recruits from the country through which they pass.
While Jamie and Roger are absent (with Claire as medico), Bree is left in charge of the teeming—and frequently riotous—household. Herself, if you would.
Herself flung open the study door and glowered at the mob. Mrs. Bug, red in the face—as usual—and brimming with accusation. Mrs. Chisholm, ditto, overflowing with maternal outrage. Little Mrs. Aberfeldy, the color of an eggplant, clutching her two-year-old daughter, Ruth, protectively to her bosom. Tony and Toby Chisholm, both in tears and covered with snot. Toby had a red handprint on the side of his face; little Ruthie’s wispy hair appeared to be oddly shorter on one side than the other. They all began to talk at once.
“…Red savages!”
“…My baby’s beautiful hair!”
“She started it!”
“…dare to strike my son!”
“We was just playin’ at scalpin’, ma’am…”
“…EEEEEEEEEEE!”
“…and torn a great hole in my feather bed, the wee spawn!”
“Look what she’s done, the wicked auld besom!”
“Look what they’ve done!”
“Look ye, ma’am, it’s only…“
“AAAAAAAAAAA!”
Escaping momentarily from the tumult, she shuts herself in her father’s study and, while picking up a fallen ledger, discovers a letter from Lord John Grey, in which he tells Jamie of his inquiries regarding the whereabouts of Stephen Bonnet. He has news not only of Bonnet’s continued presence in the Carolinas but also recounts a horrible incident in which Bonnet has maimed and blinded a man with whom he fought a duel. The news leaves Brianna chilled and shaking.
While camped one night, Jamie’s militia are unexpectedly joined by Josiah Beardsley, the young hunter to whom Jamie had offered a place on the Ridge. Josiah is having an asthma attack, which Claire treats with hot coffee and breathing e
xercises. When recovered, Josiah says he will travel with the militia party for a bit, having “business” to conduct nearby.
The “business” turns out to be his twin brother, Keziah, whom Josiah has stolen from Aaron Beardsley’s farm, where the two brothers were indentured servants—having been sold as such at the age of two, after their entire family died on the passage from England to the colonies.
Hearing this, Jamie is naturally reluctant to approach the Beardsley place but has to inquire whether Beardsley will join the militia. He and Claire decide to approach Mr. Beardsley on their own, in order to avoid Beardsley inadvertently learning of the boys having taken refuge with Jamie. They leave the rest of the party to continue to Brownsville, a nearby settlement, under Roger’s command.
Roger is pleased—if a little nervous—at this sign of Jamie’s confidence and rides into Brownsville at the head of his men, only to be confronted by the barrel of a gun sticking out the window of the house he’s approached.
Isaiah Morton, one of the militiamen with Roger, has seduced Alicia, daughter of Lionel Brown, one of the two Brown brothers who founded the settlement. Hearing that Isaiah is unable to make an honest woman of Alicia, owing to his having a wife in Granite Falls, they’re inclined to take Alicia’s honor out of his hide—but Isaiah, with rare presence of mind, has vanished. Headed for the hills, Roger hopes—and, with the aid of Fergus and a barrel of whisky, pitches in to hold the Browns at bay, at least until Jamie can get there.
Meanwhile, Claire and Jamie discover an equally fraught situation at the Beardsley farm. They are greeted by Fanny Beardsley, who tells them that her husband is ill and tries to send them away. Claire’s medical nose detects something rotten in the state of Denmark, though, and she insists on coming inside, where they discover Aaron Beardsley, helpless in the loft.
He has had a serious stroke and can neither move nor talk. His wife has made no effort to care for him—quite the opposite, as Claire can tell at once by the marks of torture on the man’s wasted, filthy body. Fanny Beardsley claims that her husband has cruelly abused her—and she has clearly been getting a bit of her own back, wreaking vengeance on the helpless man, allowing him to die by inches.
Beardsley can’t talk but indicates to Jamie that he wishes to die. Claire tells Jamie that he will certainly die; aside from the effects of the stroke that felled him, he has developed gangrene. Jamie reluctantly agrees and shoots Beardsley through the eye. He buries Beardsley, and Claire sees him first vomit and then weep silently, disturbed not only by the violence of what he’s felt obliged to do but by thought of his own father, who died some days after a stroke many years before, with Jamie not present. Was his father in such dreadful case? he wonders. But he is estranged from his sister—the only one who could tell him—because of his having lost her youngest son to the Mohawk.
With Fanny Beardsley and the goats, the Frasers leave the ghastly farm, and on the way Fanny tells them about her dreadful marriage—revealing in the process that Aaron Beardsley had been married several times before and had (she says) killed his previous wives, whom he buried under a rowan tree in the yard. One of the dead wives appeared to her, she says casually, and urged her to flee. Disturbed by the woman’s talk, the Frasers bed down some distance from her that night and discover in the morning that she has fled—but has left something behind: a small baby, newborn and bearing a Mongol spot—a pigmented mark at the base of the spine, common to children of African extraction. Whoever fathered Fanny’s child, it wasn’t her husband.
Back in Brownsville, Roger has succeeded in pacifying the Browns, at least to an extent, and is both proud and pleased when Jamie, arriving and assessing the situation, tells him he’s done well. Jamie arranges for the Beardsley baby—now heir to Aaron Beardsley’s farm and prosperous trading post—to be cared for by the Browns, and all looks good for an orderly recruitment and getaway, when Alicia Beardsley comes to talk with Claire privately. The girl is pregnant by the bigamous Isaiah and is on the verge of begging Claire to help her to terminate her pregnancy, when they are interrupted.
Later that night, Jamie and Claire are surprised in the makeshift stable by Isaiah himself; he’s been lurking nearby, desperate to see Alicia. He attempts to hold Jamie at gunpoint, telling Claire to go get the girl, but Jamie is having no nonsense of that kind:
“Put it down, idiot,” he said, almost kindly. “Ye ken fine ye willna shoot me, and so do I.”
Claire sneaks into the house and up to Alicia’s small room, where she finds the girl lying stark naked on the floor beneath an open window, letting snow drift in upon her.
“I’ve heard of a number of novel ways of inducing miscarriage,” I told her, picking up a quilt from the cot and dropping it over her shoulders, “but freezing to death isn’t one of them.”
“If I’m d-dead, I won’t need to m-m-miscarry,” she said, with a certain amount of logic.
Jamie clutches his head over the situation but feels that the best he can do is to aid the absquatulation of Isaiah and Alicia, which he does, covering their escape by loosing the militia’s horses in the midst of a snowstorm. In the aftermath of the confusion, as everyone is thawing out indoors, a messenger arrives with another letter from Governor Tryon. The Regulators have dispersed, and the militia is stood down.
PART 4: I HEAR NO MUSIC BUT THE SOUND OF DRUMS
Claire, Jamie, Roger, and Fergus return to the Ridge and the bosoms of their families. Brianna is delighted to have Roger safely home again—but rather miffed that he does not appreciate the work she’s been doing in his absence. They make peace, though, and Christmas passes quietly, giving way to the more important—to Highlanders—occasion of Hogmanay (New Year’s).
There is much festivity, dancing, fortune-telling, eating, and drinking. Jamie tells Claire that he used to be able to hear music, but since being struck in the head by an ax, he hears no music but the sound of drums. That sense of rhythm remains, though, and enables him to do the sword dance he once did as a young man, foretelling the fortunes of war on the eve of battle.
Another Highland Hogmanay custom is that of the “first-foot,” wherein the first caller to cross a threshold after midnight on New Year’s Eve brings gifts of salt, coal, and food—and brings luck to the household. A red-haired person as first-foot is ill luck, but a dark-haired man is a fortunate first-foot, and so Roger is pressed into service, first-footing the nearby houses. When a knock comes on the door of the Big House, therefore, Jamie and Claire open it expecting to see their son-in-law.
Instead of Roger and Brianna, two smaller figures stood on the porch. Skinny and bedraggled, but definitely dark-haired, the two Beardsley twins stepped shyly in together, at Jamie’s gesture.
“A happy New Year to you, Mr. Fraser,” said Josiah, in a bullfrog croak. He bowed politely to me, still holding his brother by the arm. “We’ve come.”
With the twins both suffering terribly from chronic infections of tonsils and adenoids, Claire resumes her program of penicillin research. To find the right kind of bread mold, she uses the microscope from the medicine chest that Jamie gave her as an anniversary present, once the property of a Dr. Daniel Rawlings, whose casebook gives her the friendly feeling of companionship from a kindred practitioner. She makes good use of the microscope, trying it out on various things—including a sample of Jamie’s semen, which horrifies but intrigues him.
“Oh, aye? And what then? What’s the purpose of it, I mean?”
“Well, to help me diagnose things. If I can take a sample of a person’s stool, for instance, and see that he has internal parasites, then I’d know better what medicine to give him.”
Jamie looked as though he would have preferred not to hear about such things right after breakfast, but nodded. He drained his beaker and set it down on the counter.
“Aye, that’s sensible. I’ll leave ye to get on with it, then.”
He bent and kissed me briefly, then headed for the door. Just short of it, though, he turned back.
&nb
sp; “The, um, sperms…” he said, a little awkwardly.
“Yes?”
“Can ye not take them out and give them decent burial or something?”
I hid a smile in my teacup.
“I’ll take good care of them,” I promised. “I always do, don’t I?”
Claire’s penicillin experiments are successful, and she proceeds to remove the Beardsleys’ tonsils, noting with interest how close the boys have grown to Lizzie in the short time they’ve been at the Ridge, following her like puppies.
A rare shipment of mail arrives at the Ridge, including ladies’ magazines for Brianna, newspapers for Jamie—and a letter from Archie Hayes, intended for Jamie but opened by Brianna, in which the lieutenant tells Jamie the effect of his inquiries into the whereabouts and activities of one Stephen Bonnet. He has connections with a number of local merchants, particularly with a Mr. Butler, and warehouses in the Edenton area frequently have unusual goods, these goods coincidentally appearing at times when Bonnet has been in the vicinity. Hayes has made inquiries regarding one such warehouse and reports that it is jointly owned by “one Ronald Priestly and one Phillip Wylie.”
Discovery of the letter leads to a discussion between Claire and Brianna, during which the former asks whether her daughter truly wants Stephen Bonnet dead.
“I can’t,” she said, low-voiced. “I’m afraid if I ever let that thought in my mind…I’d never be able to think about anything else, I’d want it so much. And I will be damned if I’ll let…him…ruin my life that way.”
Jemmy gave a resounding belch, and spit up a little milk. Bree had an old linen towel across her shoulder, and deftly wiped his chin with it. Calmer now, he had lost his look of vexed incomprehension, and was concentrating intently on something over his mother’s shoulder. Following the direction of his clear blue gaze, I saw the shadow of a spiderweb, high up in the corner of the window. A gust of wind shook the window frame, and a tiny spot moved in the center of the web, very slightly.
The Companion to the Fiery Cross, a Breath of Snow and Ashes, an Echo in the Bone, and Written in My Own Heart's Blood Page 3
