An Echo in the Bone (137 page)

“Oh, dear,” I said, stepping back from the brief embrace. I touched his cheek lightly, and he stared at me, blinking.

“I will be damned,” he said mildly. “They’re right.”

A DOOR OPENED and closed above, I heard a foot on the stair—and an instant later, Lallybroch awoke to the knowledge that the last child had come home.

The swirl of women and children wafted us into the kitchen, where the men appeared, by ones and twos through the back door to embrace Michael or clap him on the shoulder.

There were outpourings of sympathy, the same questions and answers repeated several times—how had Michael’s wife, Lillie, died? She had died of the influenza; so had her grandmother; no, he himself had not caught it; her father sent his prayers and concerns for Michael’s father—and eventually the preparations for washing and supper and the putting of children to bed began, and Michael slipped out of the maelstrom.

Coming out of the kitchen myself to fetch my shawl from the study, I saw him at the foot of the stair with Jenny, talking quietly. She touched his face, just as I had, asking him something in a low voice. He half-smiled, shook his head, and, squaring his shoulders, went upstairs alone to see Ian, who was feeling too poorly to come down to supper.

ALONE AMONG THE Murrays, Michael had inherited the fugitive gene for red hair, and burned among his darker siblings like a coal. He had inherited an exact copy of his father’s soft brown eyes, though. “And a good thing, too,” Jenny said to me privately, “else his da would likely be sure I’d been at it wi’ the goatherd, for God knows, he doesna look like anyone else in the family.”

I’d mentioned this to Jamie, who looked surprised but then smiled.

“Aye. She wouldna ken it, for she never met Colum MacKenzie face-to-face.”

“Colum? Are you sure?” I looked over my shoulder.

“Oh, aye. The coloring’s different—but allowing for age and good health … There was a painting at Leoch, done of Colum when he was maybe fifteen, before his first fall. Recall it, do ye? It hung in the solar on the third floor.”

I closed my eyes, frowning in concentration, trying to reconstruct the floor plan of the castle.

“Walk me there,” I said. He made a small amused noise in his throat but took my hand, tracing a delicate line on my palm.

“Aye, here’s the entrance, wi’ the big double door. Ye’d cross the courtyard, once inside, and then …”

He walked me unerringly to the exact spot in my mind, and sure enough, there was a painting there of a young man with a thin, clever face and look of far-seeing in his eyes.

“Yes, I think you’re right,” I said, opening my eyes. “If he
is
as intelligent as Colum, then… I have to tell him.”

Jamie’s eyes, dark with thought, searched my face.

“We couldna change things, earlier,” he said, a note of warning in my voice. “Ye likely canna change what’s to come in France.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “But what I knew—what I told you, before Culloden. It didn’t stop Charles Stuart, but
you
lived.”

“Not on purpose,” he said dryly.

“No, but your men lived, too—and that
was
on purpose. So maybe—just maybe—it
might
help.

And I can’t live with myself if I don’t.”

He nodded, sober.

“Aye, then. I’ll call them.”

THE CORK EASED free with a soft
pop!
, and Michael’s face eased, too. He sniffed the darkened cork, then passed the bottle delicately under his nose, eyes half closing in appreciation.

“Well, what d’ye say, lad?” his father asked. “Will it poison us or no?”

He opened his eyes and gave his father a mildly dirty look.

“You said it was important, aye? So we’ll have the negroamaro. From Apulia,” he added, with a note of satisfaction, and turned to me. “Will that do, Aunt?”

“Er… certainly,” I said, taken back somewhat. “Why ask me? You’re the wine expert.”

Michael glanced at me, surprised.

“Ian said—” he began, but stopped and smiled at me. “My apologies, Aunt. I must have misunderstood.”

Everyone turned and looked at Young Ian, who reddened at this scrutiny.

“What exactly did ye say, Ian?” Young Jamie asked. Young Ian narrowed his eyes at his brother, who seemed to be finding something funny in the situation.

“I said,” Young Ian replied, straightening himself defiantly, “that Auntie Claire had something of importance to say to Michael, and that he must listen, because she’s a… a…”

“
Ban-sidhe
, he said,” Michael ended helpfully. He didn’t grin at me, but a deep humor glowed in his eyes, and for the first time I saw what Jamie had meant by comparing him to Colum MacKenzie. “I wasn’t sure whether he meant that, Auntie, or if it’s only you’re a conjure-woman—or a witch.”

Jenny gasped at the word, and even the elder Ian blinked. Both of them turned and looked at Young Ian, who hunched his shoulders defensively.

“Well, I dinna ken
exactly
what she is,” he said. “But she’s an Auld One, isn’t she, Uncle Jamie?”

Something odd seemed to pass through the air of the room; a sudden live, fresh wind moaned down the chimney, exploding the banked fire and showering sparks and embers onto the hearth.

Jenny got up with a small exclamation and beat them out with the broom.

Jamie was sitting beside me; he took my hand and fixed Michael with a firm sort of look.

“There’s no real word for what she is—but she has knowledge of things that will come to pass.

Listen to her.”

That settled them all to attention, and I cleared my throat, deeply embarrassed by my role as prophet but obliged to speak nonetheless. For the first time, I had a sudden sense of kinship with some of the more reluctant Old Testament prophets. I thought I knew
just
what Jeremiah felt like when told to go and prophesy the destruction of Nineveh. I just hoped I’d get a better reception; I seemed to recall that the inhabitants of Nineveh had thrown him into a well.

“You’ll know more than I do about the politics in France,” I said, looking directly at Michael. “I can’t tell you anything in terms of specific events for the next ten or fifteen years. But after that… things are going to go downhill fast. There’s going to be a revolution. Inspired by the one that’s happening now in America, but not the same. The King and Queen will be imprisoned with their family, and both of them will be beheaded.”

A general gasp went up from the table, and Michael blinked.

“There will be a movement called the Terror, and people will be pulled out of their homes and denounced, all the aristocrats will either be killed or have to flee the country, and it won’t be too good for rich people in general. Jared may be dead by then, but you won’t be. And if you’re half as talented as I think, you
will
be rich.”

He snorted a little at that, and there was a breath of laughter in the room, but it didn’t last long.

“They’ll build a machine called the guillotine—perhaps it already exists, I don’t know. It was originally made as a humane method of execution, I think, but it will be used so often that it will be a symbol of the Terror, and of the revolution in general. You
don’t
want to be in France when that happens.”

“I—how do ye know this?” Michael demanded. He looked pale and half belligerent. Well, here was the rub. I took a firm grip of Jamie’s hand under the table and told them how I knew.

There was a dead silence. Only Young Ian didn’t look dumbfounded—but he knew already, and more or less believed me. I could tell that most of those around the table didn’t. At the same time, they couldn’t really call me a liar.

“That’s what I know,” I said, speaking straight to Michael. “And that’s how I know it. You have a few years to get ready. Move the business to Spain, or Portugal. Sell out and emigrate to America. Do anything you like—but don’t stay in France for more than ten years more. That’s all,” I said abruptly. I got up and went out, leaving utter silence in my wake.

I SHOULDN’T HAVE been surprised, but I was. I was in the hen coop, collecting eggs, when I heard the excited squawk and flutter of the hens outside that announced someone had come into their yard. I fixed the last hen with a steely glare that dared her to peck me, snatched an egg out from under her, and came out to see who was there.

It was Jenny, with an apronful of corn. That was odd; I knew the hens had already been fed, for I’d seen one of Maggie’s daughters doing it an hour earlier.

She nodded to me and tossed the corn in handfuls. I tucked the last warm egg into my basket and waited. Obviously she wanted to talk to me and had made an excuse to do so in private. I had a deep feeling of foreboding.

Entirely justified, too, for she dropped the last handful of cracked corn and, with it, all pretense.

“I want to beg a favor,” she said to me, but she avoided my eye, and I could see the pulse in her temple going like a ticking clock.

“Jenny,” I said, helpless either to stop her or to answer her. “I know—”

“Will ye cure Ian?” she blurted, lifting her eyes to mine. I’d been right about what she meant to ask, but wrong about her emotion. Worry and fear lay behind her eyes, but there was no shyness, no embarrassment; she had the eyes of a hawk, and I knew she would rip my flesh like one if I denied her.

“Jenny,” I said again. “I can’t.”

“Ye can’t, or ye won’t?” she said sharply.

“I
can’t
. For God’s sake, do you think I wouldn’t have done it already if I had the power?”

“Ye might not, for the sake of the grudge ye hold against me. If that’s it—I’ll say I’m sorry, and I do mean it, though I meant what I did for the best.”

“You… what?” I was honestly confused, but this seemed to anger her.

“Dinna pretend ye’ve no notion what I mean! When ye came back before, and I sent for Laoghaire!”

“Oh.” I hadn’t quite
forgotten
that, but it hadn’t seemed important, in light of everything else.

“That’s … all right. I don’t hold it against you. Why
did
you send for her, though?” I asked, both out of curiosity and in hopes of diffusing the intensity of her emotion a little. I’d seen a great number of people on the ragged edge of exhaustion, grief, and terror, and she was firmly in the grip of all three.

She made a jerky, impatient motion and seemed as though she would turn away but didn’t.

“Jamie hadn’t told ye about her, nor her about you. I could see why, maybe, but I kent if I brought her here, he’d have nay choice then but to take the bull by the horns and clear up the matter.”

“She nearly cleared
him
up,” I said, beginning to get somewhat hot myself. “She
shot him
, for God’s sake!”

“Well, I didna give her the gun, did I?” she snapped. “I didna mean him to say whatever he said to her, nor her to take up a pistol and put a ball in him.”

“No, but you told me to go away!”

“Why wouldn’t I? Ye’d broken his heart once already, and I thought ye’d do it again! And you wi’ the nerve to come prancing back here, fine and blooming, when we’d been … we’d been—it was that that gave Ian the cough!”

“That—”

“When they took him away and put him in the Tolbooth. But you werena here when that happened! Ye werena here when we starved and froze and feared for the lives of our men and our bairns! Not for any of it! You were in France, warm and safe!”

“I was in Boston, two hundred years from now, thinking Jamie was dead,” I said coldly. “And I
can’t help
Ian.” I struggled to subdue my own feelings, uncorked with a rush by this ripping of scabs off the past, and found compassion in the look of her, her fine-boned face gaunt and harrowed with worry, her hands clenched so hard that the nails bit into the flesh.

“Jenny,” I said more quietly. “Please believe me. If I could do anything for Ian, I’d give my soul to do it. But I’m not magic; I haven’t any power. Only a little knowledge, and not enough. I’d give my
soul
to do it,” I repeated, more strongly, leaning toward her. “But I can’t. Jenny… I can’t.”

She stared at me in silence. A silence that lengthened past bearing, and finally I stepped around her and walked toward the house. She didn’t turn around, and I didn’t look back. But behind me, I heard her whisper.

“You have nay soul.”

PURGATORY II

WHEN IAN FELT WELL enough, he came out walking with Jamie. Sometimes only as far as the yard or the barn, to lean on the fence and make remarks to Jenny’s sheep. Sometimes he felt well enough to walk miles, which amazed—and alarmed—Jamie. Still, he thought, it was good to walk side by side through the moors and the forest and down beside the loch, not talking much but side by side. It didn’t matter that they walked slowly; they always had, since Ian had come back from France with a wooden leg.

“I’m lookin’ forward to having back my leg,” Ian had remarked casually once, when they sat in the shelter of the big rock where Fergus had lost his hand, looking out over the small burn that ran down at the foot of the hill, watching for the stray flash of a leaping trout.

“Aye, that’ll be good,” Jamie had said, smiling a little—and a little wry about it, too, recalling when he’d waked after Culloden and thought his own leg missing. He’d been upset and tried to comfort himself with the thought that he’d get it back eventually, if he made it out of purgatory and into heaven. Of course, he’d thought he was dead, too, but that hadn’t seemed nearly as bad as the imagined loss of his leg.

“I dinna suppose ye’ll have to wait,” he said idly, and Ian blinked at him.

“Wait for what?”

“Your leg.” He realized suddenly that Ian had no notion what he’d been thinking, and hastened to explain.

“So I was only thinking, ye wouldna spend much time in purgatory—if at all—so ye’ll have it back soon.”

Ian grinned at him. “What makes ye sae sure I willna spend a thousand years in purgatory? I might be a terrible sinner, aye?”

“Well, aye, ye might be,” Jamie admitted. “Though if so, ye must think the devil of a lot of wicked thoughts, because if ye’d been
doing
anything, I’d know about it.”

“Oh, ye think so?” Ian seemed to find this funny. “Ye havena seen me in years. I might ha’ been doing anything, and ye’d never ken a thing about it!”