An Echo in the Bone (140 page)

He closed his eyes, grimacing, and his hand tightened on mine in instinctive denial of the obvious. I clung to his fingers just as tightly, in spite of the fact that it was his tender right hand I held. The thought of being parted from him for any amount of time or space—let alone the Atlantic Ocean and the months it might take before we saw each other again—made the bottom of my stomach fall away and filled me with desolation and a sense of vague terror.

He would go with me if I asked—if I even gave him room for doubt about what he must do. I must not.

He needed this so much. Needed what small time remained with Ian; needed even more to be here for Jenny when Ian died, for he could be her comfort in a way that not even her children could be. And if he had needed to go and see Laoghaire out of guilt over the failure of their marriage—how much more acute would be his guilt at abandoning his sister, yet again, and in her most desperate time of need.

“You can’t leave,” I whispered, urgent. “I
know
, Jamie.”

He opened his eyes then and looked at me, eyes dark with anguish.

“I canna let ye go. Not without me.”

“It… won’t be long,” I said, forcing the words past the lump in my throat—a lump that acknowledged both my sorrow in parting from him and the greater sorrow for the reason why our separation wouldn’t be a long one.

“I’ve gone farther by myself, after all,” I said, trying to smile. His mouth moved, wanting to respond, but the trouble in his eyes didn’t change.

I lifted his crippled hand to my lips and kissed it, pressed my cheek against it, my head turned away—but a tear ran down my cheek and I knew he felt the wetness of it on his hand, for his other hand reached for me and drew me into him, and we sat pressed together for a long, long time, listening to the wind that stirred the grass and touched the water. The heron had set down at the far side of the loch and stood on one leg, waiting patiently amid the tiny ripples.

“We’ll need a lawyer,” I said at last, not moving. “Is Ned Gowan still alive?”

MUCH TO MY astonishment, Ned Gowan
was
still alive. How old could he possibly be? I wondered, looking at him. Eighty-five? Ninety? He was toothless and wrinkled as a crumpled paper bag, but still jaunty as a cricket, and with his lawyer’s bloodlust quite intact.

He had drawn up the agreement of annulment for the marriage between Jamie and Laoghaire, cheerfully arranging the annual payments to Laoghaire, the dowries for Marsali and Joan. He set himself now just as cheerfully to dismantling it.

“Now, the question of Mistress Joan’s dowry,” he said, thoughtfully licking the point of his quill.

“You specified, sir, in the original document, that this amount—may I say, this very
generous
amount—was to be endowed upon the young woman upon the occasion of her marriage and to remain her sole property thereafter, not passing to her husband.”

“Aye, that’s right,” Jamie said, not very patiently. He’d told me privately that he would prefer to be staked out naked on an anthill than to have to deal with a lawyer for more than five minutes, and we had been dealing with the complications of this agreement for a good hour. “So?”

“So she is not marrying,” Mr. Gowan explained, with the indulgence due to someone not very bright but still worthy of respect by reason of the fact that he was paying the lawyer’s fee. “The question of whether she can receive the dowry under this contract—”

“She
is
marrying,” Jamie said. “She’s becoming a Bride o’ Christ, ye ignorant Protestant.”

I glanced at Ned in some surprise, having never heard that he
was
a Protestant, but he made no demur at this. Mr. Gowan, sharp as ever, noticed my surprise and smiled at me, eyes twinkling.

“I have no religion save the law, ma’am,” he said. “Observance of one form of ritual over another is irrelevant; God to me is the personification of Justice, and I serve Him in that guise.”

Jamie made a Scottish noise deep in his throat in response to this sentiment.

“Aye, and a fat lot o’ good that will do ye, and your clients here ever realize ye’re no a papist.”

Mr. Gowan’s small dark eyes did not cease to twinkle as he turned them on Jamie.

“I am sure ye dinna suggest such a low thing as blackmail, sir? Why, I hesitate even to name that honorable Scottish institution, knowing as I do the nobility of your character—and the fact that ye’re no going to get this bloody contract done without me.”

Jamie sighed deeply and settled into his chair.

“Aye, get on with it. What’s to do about the dowry, then?”

“Ah.” Mr. Gowan turned with alacrity to the matter at hand. “I have spoken with the young woman regarding her own wishes in the matter. As the original maker of the contract, you may—with the consent of the other signatory, which, I understand, has been given”—he uttered a dry little cough at this oblique mention of Laoghaire—“alter the terms of the original document.
Since
, as I say, Mistress Joan does not propose to wed, do you wish to rescind the dowry altogether, to keep the existing terms, or to alter them in some way?”

“I want to give the money to Joan,” Jamie said, with an air of relief at finally being asked something concrete.

“Absolutely?” Mr. Gowan inquired, pen poised. “The word ‘absolutely’ having a meaning in law other than—”

“Ye said ye talked to Joan. What the devil does
she
want, then?”

Mr. Gowan looked happy, as he usually did upon perceiving a new complication.

“She wishes to accept only a small portion of the original dowry, this to be used to provide for her reception into a convent; such a donation is customary, I believe.”

“Aye?” Jamie raised one eyebrow. “And what about the rest?”

“She wishes the residue to be given to her mother, Laoghaire MacKenzie Fraser, but not given absolutely, if you follow me. Given with conditions.”

Jamie and I exchanged looks.

“
What
conditions?” he asked carefully.

Mr. Gowan held up a withered hand, folding down the fingers as he enumerated the conditions.

“One, that the money shall
not
be released until a proper record of the marriage of Laoghaire MacKenzie Fraser and Joseph Boswell Murray shall be written in the parish register of Broch Mordha, witnessed and attested by a priest. Two, that a contract be signed, reserving and guaranteeing the estate of Balriggan and all its inclusive goods as the sole property of Laoghaire MacKenzie Fraser until her death, thereafter being willed as the aforesaid Laoghaire MacKenzie Fraser shall so dispose in a proper will. Thirdly, the money shall not be given absolutely, but shall be retained by a trustee and disbursed in the amount of twenty pounds per annum, paid jointly to the aforesaid Laoghaire MacKenzie Fraser and Joseph Boswell Murray. Fourth, that these annual payments shall be used only for matters pertaining to the upkeep and improvement of the estate of Balriggan. Fifth, that payment of each year’s disbursement shall be contingent upon the receipt of proper documentation regarding the use of the previous year’s disbursement.”

He folded down his thumb and lowered his closed fist, and held up one finger of his other hand.

“Sixth—and lastly—that one James Alexander Gordon Fraser Murray, of Lallybroch, shall be trustee for these funds. Are these conditions agreeable, sir?”

“They are,” Jamie said firmly, rising to his feet. “Make it so, if ye please, Mr. Gowan—and now, if no one minds, I am going away and having a wee dram. Possibly two.”

Mr. Gowan capped his inkwell, tidied his notes into a neat pile, and likewise rose, though more slowly.

“I’ll join ye in that dram, Jamie. I want to hear about this war of yours in America. It sounds the grandest of adventures!”

COUNTING SHEEP

AS THE TIME GREW SHORTER, Ian found it impossible to sleep. The need to go, to find Rachel, burned in him so that he felt hot coals in the pit of his stomach all of the time. Auntie Claire called it heartburn, and it was. She said it was from bolting his food, though, and it wasn’t that—he could barely eat.

He spent his days with his father, as much as he could. Sitting in the corner of the speak-a-word room, watching his father and his elder brother go about the business of Lallybroch, he couldn’t understand how it would be possible to stand up and walk away, to leave them behind. To leave his father forever behind.

During the days, there were things to be done, folk to be visited, to talk to, and the land to be walked over, the stark beauty of it soothing when his feelings grew too heated to bear. At night, though, the house lay quiet, the creaking silence punctuated by his father’s distant cough and his two young nephews’ heavy breathing in the room beside him. He began to feel the house itself breathe around him, drawing one ragged, heavy-chested gasp after another, and to feel the weight of it on his own chest, so he sat up in bed, gulping air only to be sure he could. And finally he would slide out of bed, steal downstairs with his boots in his hands, and let himself out of the kitchen door to walk the night under clouds or stars, the clean wind fanning the coals of his heart to open flame, until he should find his tears and peace in which to shed them.

One night he found the door unbolted already. He went out cautiously, looking round, but saw no one. Likely Young Jamie gone to the barn; one of the two cows was due to calf any day. He should go and help, maybe … but the burning under his ribs was painful, he needed to walk a bit first. Jamie would have fetched him in any case, had he thought he needed help.

He turned away from the house and its outbuildings and headed up the hill, past the sheep pen, where the sheep lay in somnolent mounds, pale under the moon, now and then emitting a soft, sudden
bah!
, as though startled by some sheep dream.

Such a dream took shape before him suddenly, a dark form moving against the fence, and he uttered a brief cry that made the nearer sheep start and rustle in a chorus of low-pitched
bahs
.

“Hush,
a bhailach,”
his mother said softly. “Get this lot started, and ye’ll wake the dead.”

He could make her out now, a small, slender form, with her unbound hair a soft mass against the paleness of her shift.

“Speak o’ the dead,” he said rather crossly, forcing his heart down out of his throat. “I thought ye were a ghost. What are ye doing out here, Mam?”

“Counting sheep,” she said, a thread of humor in her voice. “That’s what ye’re meant to do when ye canna sleep, aye?”

“Aye.” He came and stood beside her, leaning on the fence. “Does it work?”

“Sometimes.”

They stood still for a bit, watching the sheep stir and settle. They smelled sweetly filthy, of chewed grass and sheep shit and greasy wool, and Ian found that it was oddly comforting just to be with them.

“Does it work to count them, when ye ken already how many there are?” he asked, after a short silence. His mother shook her head.

“No, I say their names over. It’s like saying the rosary, only ye dinna feel the need to be asking.

It wears ye down, asking.”

Especially when ye ken the answer’s going to be no
, Ian thought, and moved by sudden impulse, put his arm around her shoulders. She made a small sound of amused surprise, but then relaxed, laying her head against him. He could feel the small bones of her, light as a bird’s, and thought his heart might break.

They stood for a while that way, and then she freed herself, gently, moving away a little and turning to him.

“Sleepy yet?”

“No.”

“Aye, well. Come on, then.” Not waiting for an answer, she turned and made her way through the dark, away from the house.

There was a moon, half full, and he’d been out more than long enough for his eyes to adjust; it was simple to follow, even through the jumbled grass and stones and heather that grew on the hill behind the house.

Where was she taking him? Or rather, why? For they were heading uphill, toward the old broch—and the burying ground that lay nearby. He felt a chill round his heart—did she mean to show him the site of his father’s grave?

But she stopped abruptly and stooped, so he nearly tripped over her. Straightening up, she turned and put a pebble into his hand.

“Over here,” she said softly, and led him to a small square stone set in the earth. He thought it was Caitlin’s grave—the child who’d come before Young Jenny, the sister who’d lived but one day—but then saw that Caitlin’s stone lay a few feet away. This one was the same size and shape, but—he squatted by it, and running his fingers over the shadows of its carving, made out the name.

Yeksa’a
.

“Mam,” he said, and his voice sounded strange to his own ears.

“Is that right, Ian?” she said, a little anxious. “Your da said he wasna quite certain of the spelling of the Indian name. I had the stone carver put both, though. I thought that was right.”

“Both?” But his hand had already moved down and found the other name.

Iseabaíl
.

He swallowed hard.

“That was right,” he said very softly. His hand rested flat on the stone, cool under his palm.

She squatted down beside him, and reaching, put her own pebble on the stone. It was what you did, he thought, stunned, when you came to visit the dead. You left a pebble to say you’d been there; that you hadn’t forgotten.

His own pebble was still in his other hand; he couldn’t quite bring himself to lay it down. Tears were running down his face, and his mother’s hand was on his arm.

“It’s all right,
mo duine,”
she said softly. “Go to your young woman. Ye’ll always be here wi’

us.”

The steam of his tears rose like the smoke of incense from his heart, and he laid the pebble gently on his daughter’s grave. Safe among his family.

It wasn’t until many days later, in the middle of the ocean, that he realized his mother had called him a man.

THE RIGHT OF IT

IAN DIED JUST after dawn. The night had been hellish; a dozen times, Ian had come close to drowning in his own blood, choking, eyes bulging, then rising up in convulsion, spewing up bits of his lungs. The bed looked like some slaughter had taken place, and the room reeked of the sweat of a desperate, futile struggle, the smell of Death’s presence.