CLAIRE, WITH MRS. Bug’s help, gets off the last malting of the season and then goes to help Jamie take some of his whisky casks to a secret cache. On the way there, though, they encounter Mr. Wemyss, in obvious distress.
“Are ye…quite well, Joseph?” Jamie came closer, extending a hand gingerly, as though afraid that Mr. Wemyss might crack into pieces if touched.
This instinct was sound; when he touched the little man, Mr. Wemyss’s face crumpled like paper, and his thin shoulders began to shake uncontrollably.
“I am so sorry, sir,” he kept saying, quite dissolved in tears. “I’m so sorry!”
Jamie gave me a “do something, Sassenach” look of appeal, and I knelt swiftly, putting my arms round Mr. Wemyss’s shoulders, patting his slender back.
“Now, now,” I said, giving Jamie a “now what?” sort of look over Mr. Wemyss’s matchstick shoulder in return. “I’m sure it will be all right.”
“Oh, no,” he said, hiccuping. “Oh, no, it can’t.” He turned a face streaming with woe toward Jamie. “I can’t bear it, sir, truly I can’t.”
Mr. Wemyss’s bones felt thin and brittle, and he was shivering. He was wearing only a thin shirt and breeches, and the wind was beginning to whine through the rocks. Clouds thickened overhead, and the light went from the little hollow, suddenly, as though a blackout curtain had been dropped.
Jamie unfastened his own cloak and wrapped it rather awkwardly round Mr. Wemyss, then lowered himself carefully onto another boulder.
“Tell me the trouble, Joseph,” he said quite gently. “Is someone dead, then?”
Mr. Wemyss sank his face into his hands, head shaking to and fro like a metronome. He muttered something, which I understood to be “Better if she were.”
Mr. Wemyss has grounds for distress; he’s just learned that Lizzie is pregnant. Worse, she’s pregnant by one of the Beardsleys, those half-wild hunters. And worse still…
“Which Beardsley was it?” he asked, with relative patience. “Jo? Or Kezzie?”
Mr. Wemyss heaved a sigh that came from the bottoms of his feet.
“She doesn’t know,” he said flatly.
“Christ,” said Jamie involuntarily. He reached for the whisky again, and drank heavily.
“Ahem,” I said, giving him a meaningful look as he lowered the jug. He surrendered it to me without comment, and straightened himself on his boulder, shirt plastered against his chest by the wind, his hair whipped loose behind him.
“Well, then,” he said firmly. “We’ll have the two of them in, and find out the truth of it.”
“No,” said Mr. Wemyss, “we won’t. They don’t know, either.”
I had just taken a mouthful of raw spirit. At this, I choked, spluttering whisky down my chin.
“They what?” I croaked, wiping my face with a corner of my cloak. “You mean…both of them?”
Mr. Wemyss looked at me. Instead of replying, though, he blinked once. Then his eyes rolled up into his head and he fell headlong off the boulder, poleaxed.
Jamie meets one of the Beardsleys near the Big House and, after punching him in the stomach, orders him to find his twin and come back. Meanwhile, Claire speaks to Lizzie, who confides how it all came about—but defiantly refuses to see anything wrong with her three-cornered love knot.
The twins were still alive, but didn’t look as though they were particularly glad of the fact. They sat shoulder to shoulder in the center of Jamie’s study, pressed together as though trying to reunite into a single being.
Their heads jerked toward the door in unison, looks of alarm and concern mingling with joy at seeing Lizzie. I had her by the arm, but when she saw the twins, she pulled loose and hurried to them with a small exclamation, putting an arm about each boy’s neck to draw him to her bosom.
I saw that one of the boys had a fresh black eye, just beginning to puff and swell; I supposed it must be Kezzie, though I didn’t know whether this was Jamie’s notion of fairness, or merely a convenient means of ensuring that he could tell which twin was which while talking to them.
Jamie, with all three miscreants—and Mr. Wemyss—before him, forces Lizzie to draw straws in order to choose one of the twins, declares her handfast with Keziah, and orders Jo to leave the Ridge until after the child is born. Jamie and Claire usher out Mr. Wemyss, who is overcome, leaving the twins and Lizzie to their farewells. When they reenter the study, though, it’s to find Keziah with a bloody handkerchief wrapped round his hand. The only way most people can tell the twins apart is by means of a round scar on Jo’s thumb, where he cut away a branding that showed him a thief. Now Jo has pressed the hot knife blade to his brother’s thumb; as soon as the wound heals, no one will be able to tell them apart—except Lizzie.
Roger and Brianna lie comfortably in bed, discussing whether—or, rather, when—to tell Jemmy about time travel and where they really come from. Their philosophical conversation is interrupted by a knock at the door, though, and Roger answers it to find Lizzie with the twins. They ask “Mr. Roger” if he would please marry Lizzie and Jo, because Lizzie is pregnant and they want to fix matters before anyone finds out. Roger, ignorant of what’s been going on up at the Big House, and touched by their youth, agrees and does so, with Keziah and Bree as witnesses.
When Roger and Bree learn next day that there are two marriages, both apparently valid, there seems no way to deal with the situation save to keep quiet.
“Well, I don’t suppose there’s actually much anybody can do about it,” Bree said practically. “If we say anything in public, the Presbyterians will probably stone Lizzie as a Papist whore, and—”
Mr. Wemyss made a sound like a stepped-on pig’s bladder.
“Certainly no one will say anything.” Roger fixed Mrs. Bug with a hard look. “Will they?”
“Well, I’ll have to tell Arch, mind, or I’ll burst,” she said frankly. “But no one else. Silent as the grave, I swear it, de’il take me if I lie.” She put both hands over her mouth in illustration, and Roger nodded.
“I suppose,” he said dubiously, “that the marriage I performed isna actually valid as such. But then—”
“It’s certainly as valid as the handfasting Jamie did,” I said. “And besides, I think it’s too late to force her to choose. Once Kezzie’s thumb heals, no one will be able to tell…”
“Except Lizzie, probably,” Bree said. She licked a smear of honey from the corner of her mouth, regarding Roger thoughtfully. “I wonder what it would be like if there were two of you?”
“We’d both of us be thoroughly bamboozled,” he assured her. “Mrs. Bug—is there any more coffee?”
“Who’s bamboozled?” The kitchen door opened in a swirl of snow and frigid air, and Jamie came in with Jem, both fresh from a visit to the privy, ruddy-faced, their hair and lashes thick with melting snowflakes.
“You, for one. You’ve just been done in the eye by a nineteen-year-old bigamist,” I informed him.
CLAIRE IS BAKING cookies with Jem, when she discovers nits crawling in his hair. This is not a surprise—lice are endemic on the Ridge at the moment—but it is a cause for instant action. While Jem is having his head shaved, the cookies burn, a small fire is started—and extinguished—and Roger, who has returned in the midst of the chaos, notices that Jem has a small, perfectly round brown mark, called a nevus, behind one ear.
He assures Brianna that this is nothing to worry about; he has one himself, in…just…the…same…spot.
Jemmy was on his hands and knees now, trying to coax Adso out from under the settle. His neck was small and fragile, and his shaven head looked unearthly white and rather shockingly naked, like a mushroom poking out of the earth. Roger’s eyes rested on it for a moment; then he turned to Bree.
“I do believe perhaps I’ve picked up a few lice myself,” he said, his voice just a tiny bit too loud. He reached up, pulled off the thong that bound his thick black hair, and scratched his head vigorously with both hands. Then he picked up the scissors, smiling, and he
ld them out to her. “Like father, like son, I suppose. Give us a hand here, aye?”
PART 10: WHERE’S PERRY MASON WHEN YOU NEED HIM?
From a letter from Lord John to Jamie:
Dear Mr. Fraser—
What in the Name of God are you about? I have known you in the course of our long Acquaintance to be many Things—Intemperate and Stubborn being two of them—but have always known you for a Man of Intelligence and Honor.
Yet despite explicit Warnings, I find your Name upon more than one List of suspected Traitors and Seditionists, associated with illegal Assemblies, and thus subject to Arrest. The Fact that you are still at Liberty, my Friend, reflects nothing more than the Lack of Troops at present available in North Carolina….
Whatever else you may be, you are no Fool, and so I must assume you realize the Consequences of your Actions. But I would be less than a Friend did I not put the Case to you bluntly: you expose your Family to the utmost Danger by your Actions, and you put your own Head in a Noose.
For the Sake of whatever Affection you may yet bear me, and for the Sake of those dear Connexions between your Family and myself—I beg you to renounce these most dangerous Associations while there is still Time.
Jamie shows the letter to Claire, who is somewhat bemused by it.
“These lists he mentions—do you know anything about that?”
He shrugged at that, and poked through one of the untidy piles with a forefinger, pulling out a smeared sheet that had obviously been dropped in a puddle at some point.
“Like that, I suppose,” he said, handing it over. It was unsigned, and nearly illegible, a misspelt and vicious denunciation of various Outrages and Debached Persons—here listed—whose speech, action, and appearance was a threat to all who valued peace and prosperity. These, the writer felt, should be shown whats what, presumably by being beaten, skinned alive, rold in bolling Tar and plac’d on a Rail, or in particularly pernicious cases, Hanged outright from there own Rooftrees.
“Where did you pick that up?” I dropped it on the desk, using two fingers.
“In Campbelton. Someone sent it to Farquard, as Justice of the Peace. He gave it to me, because my name is on it.”
“It is?” I squinted at the straggling letters. “Oh, so it is. J. Frayzer. You’re sure it’s you? There are quite a few Frasers, after all, and not a few named John, James, Jacob, or Joseph.”
“Relatively few who could be described as a Red-haired dejenerate Pox-ridden Usuring Son of a Bitch who skulks in Brothels when not drunk and comitting Riot in the Street, I imagine.”
“Oh, I missed that part.”
“It’s in the exposition at the bottom.”
Moving into seriousness, Jamie and Claire discuss the issue: plainly, the die is cast, and Jamie is a rebel, for good or ill.
He writes back to his good friend:
My dear John—
It is too late.
Our continued Correspondence cannot but prove a Danger to you, but it is with the greatest Regret that I sever this Link between us.
Believe me ever
Your most humble
and affectionate Friend,
Jamie
ON THE NIGHT before the eighteenth of April, Roger and Brianna lie in bed, talking about the Revolution. A child of Boston, Brianna knows only too well what is happening—or about to happen—as dawn breaks over Lexington and Concord on this day. She recites Longfellow’s poem to Roger (“Listen, my children, and you shall hear / Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere…”), as he visualizes just what is happening, now, only a few hundred miles to the north.
“It was two by the village clock,” she repeated,
“When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musketball.
“You know the rest.” She stopped abruptly, her hand tight on his.
From one moment to the next, the character of the night had changed. The stillness of the small hours had ceased, and a breath of wind moved through the trees outside. All of a sudden, the night was alive again, but dying now, rushing toward dawn.
If not actively twittering, the birds were wakeful; something called, over and over, in the nearby wood, high and sweet. And above the stale, heavy scent of the fire, he breathed the wild clean air of morning, and felt his heart beat with sudden urgency.
“Tell me the rest,” he whispered.
He saw the shadows of men in the trees, the stealthy knocking on doors, the low-voiced, excited conferences—and all the while, the light growing in the east. The lap of water and creak of oars, the sound of restless kine lowing to be milked, and on the rising breeze the smell of men, stale with sleep and empty of food, harsh with black powder and the scent of steel.
And without thinking, pulled his hand from his wife’s grasp, rolled over her, and pulling up the shift from her thighs, took her hard and fast, in vicarious sharing of that mindless urge to spawn that attended the imminent presence of death.
Lay on her trembling, the sweat drying on his back in the breeze from the window, heart thumping in his ears. For the one, he thought. The one who would be the first to fall. The poor sod who maybe hadn’t swived his wife in the dark and taken the chance to leave her with child, because he had no notion what was coming with the dawn. This dawn.
Brianna lay still under him; he could feel the rise and fall of her breath, powerful ribs that lifted even under his weight.
“You know the rest,” she whispered.
“Bree,” he said very softly. “I would sell my soul to be there now.”
The peace of dawn is shattered, a quarter of an hour later, by the arrival of one of the Beardsleys, shouting that “Lizzie’s having the baby, come quick!” Brianna and Claire rush to the Beardsleys’ cabin, only to find Lizzie and a small, round, blood-smeared baby, regarding each other with identical looks of astonished surprise.
Once things are cleaned up and settled, the male members of the Ridge come to pay their respects to the new mother and child.
“May the Blessing of Bride and of Columba be on you, young woman,” Jamie said formally in Gaelic, bowing to her, “and may the love of Christ sustain you always in your motherhood. May milk spring from your breasts like water from the rock and may you rest secure in the arms of your”—he coughed briefly, glancing at the Beardsleys—“husband.”
“If you can’t say ‘prick,’ why can you say ‘breasts’?” Jemmy inquired, interested.
“Ye can’t, unless it’s a prayer,” his father informed him. “Grandda was giving Lizzie a blessing.”
“Oh. Are there any prayers with pricks in them?”
“I’m sure there are,” Roger replied, carefully avoiding Brianna’s eye, “but ye don’t say them out loud. Why don’t ye go and help Grannie with the breakfast?”
BRIANNA IS MAKING paper, when Roger comes out to talk to her and mentions that he is founding a lodge of Freemasons on the Ridge, taking a page from Jamie’s book when he started a lodge among the prisoners at Ardsmuir—to give men lacking the same religious background some common ground of idealism and camaraderie.
FERGUS AND MARSALI have begun a new life as printers; their maiden effort is a newspaper known as L’Oignon-Intelligencer: distributed upon a Weekly Basis, with Extra Editions as events demand, these provided at a modest cost of One Penny….
Along with the initial edition of the new paper, Colonel John Ashe has sent a sheaf of other documents, including the Lexington Alarm—a note of the events surrounding the attack on Lexington.
COLONEL ASHE’S MESSENGER has also brought word of a Congress to be held in Mecklenburg County in mid-May, for the purpose of
declaring the county’s independence from King George. Aware that he is still regarded with skepticism by many in the rebellion, Jamie makes up his mind to attend this and takes Roger with him, to witness history in the making.
Before they can depart, a little local history is made: Tom Christie shows up at the Big House, dragging his daughter, Malva, who is pregnant, and insists that Jamie must help him force her to name the father. She does.
She took a huge gulp of air at that, and raised her head. Her eyes were reddened, but still very beautiful, and wide with apprehension.
“Oh, sir,” she said, but then stopped dead.
Jamie was by now looking nearly as uncomfortable as the Christies, but did his best to keep his air of kindness.
“Will ye not tell me, then, lass?” he said, as gently as possible. “I promise ye’ll not suffer for it.”
Tom Christie made an irritable noise, like some beast of prey disturbed at its meal, and Malva went very pale indeed, but her eyes stayed fixed on Jamie.
“Oh, sir,” she said, and her voice was small but clear as a bell, ringing with reproach. “Oh, sir, how can ye say that to me, when ye ken the truth as well as I do?” Before anyone could react to that, she turned to her father, and lifting a hand, pointed directly at Jamie.
“It was him,” she said.
There is an understandable amount of confusion following Malva’s statement. While Jamie follows Claire (who has fled, her usual behavior in times of emotional stress) and convinces her that Malva’s statement is a lie, he also grimly notes that there are many, on the Ridge and elsewhere, who will believe it.
“They’ll all believe it, Claire,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.”
JAMIE IS RIGHT. The devil of doubt has been set free in the world, and tongues wag merrily all over the Ridge. Even his own daughter is not immune to the poison.
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 15
