Drums of Autumn (79 page)

The ram, a majestic creature with great coiled horns, extended his head over the fence and emitted an imperious
“Beheheh!”
that was immediately echoed by his faithful flock.

“Bugger off, Hughie,” said Ian, with tolerant scorn. “You’re no mutton yet, but the day’ll come, aye?” He waved dismissively at the ram and turned up the hill, kilt swinging.

Brianna hung back a step, watching his stride in fascination. Ian wore his kilt with an air quite unlike anything she was used to; not a costume nor a uniform—with a conscious bearing, but more as though it were part of his body than an article of clothing.

In spite of that, she knew it wasn’t usual for him to wear it; Jenny’s eyes had opened wide when he had come down to breakfast; then she had bent her head, burying a smile in her cup. Young Jamie had flicked a dark brow at his father, got back a bland look, and settled to his sausage with a faint shrug, and one of those small subterranean noises common to Scottish males.

The plaid cloth was old—she could see the fading along the creases and the wornness at the hem—but carefully kept. It would have been hidden away after Culloden, along with the pistols and the swords, with the pipes and their pibrochs—all the symbols of pride conquered.

No, not quite conquered, she thought, with a queer small tug at her heart. She remembered Roger Wakefield, squatting beside her under a gray sky on the battlefield at Culloden, his face lean and dark, eyes shadowed with knowledge of the dead nearby.

“Scots have long memories,” he’d said, “and they’re not the most forgiving of people. There’s a clan stone out there with the name of MacKenzie carved on it, and a good many of my relatives under it.” He had smiled then, but not in jest. “I don’t feel quite so personal about it as some, but I haven’t forgotten either.”

No, not conquered. Not through a thousand years of strife and treachery, and not now. Defeated, scattered, but still surviving. Like Ian, maimed but upright. Like her father, exiled but still a Highlander.

With an effort she put Roger from her mind, and hurried to keep up with Ian’s long, limping stride.

His lean face had lighted with pleasure when she had asked him to show her Lallybroch. It had been arranged that Young Jamie would take her to Inverness in a week’s time, to see her safely aboard a ship to the Colonies, and she meant to use her time here to good advantage.

They walked—at a good pace, despite Ian’s leg—over the fields toward the small foothills that rimmed the valley to the north, rising toward the pass through the black crags. It was a beautiful place, she thought. The pale green fields of oats and barley rippled with shifting light, cloud-shadows scudding through the spring sunshine, driven by the breeze that bent the stems of budding grass.

One field lay in long, dark ridges, the dirt humped and bare. At the side of the field stood a large heap of rough stones, neatly stacked.

“Is that a cairn?” she asked Ian, voice lowered in respect. Cairns were the memorials of the dead, her mother had told her—sometimes the very long dead—new rocks added to the heap by each passing visitor.

He glanced at her in surprise, caught the direction of her gaze, and grinned.

“Ah, no, lass. Those are the stones we turned up wi’ the plow in the spring. Every year we take them out, and every year there come new ones. Damned if I ken where they come from,” he added, shaking his head in resignation. “Stone fairies come and sow them in the night, I expect.”

She didn’t know whether this was a joke or not. Uncertain whether to laugh, she asked a question instead.

“What will you plant here?”

“Oh, it’s planted already.” Ian shaded his eyes, squinting across the long field with pride. “This is the tattie field. The new vines will be up by the end of the month.”

“Tattie—oh, potatoes!” She looked at the field with new interest. “Mama told me about that.”

“Aye, it was Claire’s notion—and a good one, too. There’s more than once the tatties have kept us from starving.” He smiled briefly but said nothing more, and moved off, heading for the wild hills beyond the fields.

It was a long walk. The day was breezy, but warm, and Brianna was sweating by the time they paused at last, halfway up a rough track through the heather. The narrow path seemed to perch precariously between a steep hillside and an even steeper fall down a sheer rock face into a small, splashing burn.

Ian stopped, wiping his brow with his sleeve, and motioned her to a seat amid the heaps of granite boulders. From this vantage point, the valley lay below them, the farmhouse seeming small and incongruous, its fields a feeble intrusion of civilization on the surrounding wilderness of crag and heather.

He brought out a stone bottle from the sack he carried, and drew the cork with his teeth.

“That’ll be your mother’s doing, too,” he said with a grin, handing her the bottle. “That I’ve kept my teeth, I mean.” He passed the tip of his tongue meditatively over his front teeth, shaking his head.

“A great one for eatin’ weeds, your mother, but who’s to argue, eh? Half the men my age are eatin’ naught but porridge now.”

“She was always telling me to eat up my vegetables, when I was little. And brush after every meal.” Brianna took the bottle from him and tilted it into her mouth; the ale was strong and bitter, but welcomely cool after the long walk.

“When ye were little, eh?” Amused, Ian cast an eye over her length. “I’ve seldom seen a lass sae braw. I’d say your mother kent her business, aye?”

She smiled back and gave him back the bottle.

“She knew enough to marry a tall man, at least,” she said wryly.

Ian laughed and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. He gazed affectionately at her, brown eyes warm.

“Ah, it’s fine to see ye, lassie. You’re verra much like him, it’s true. Christ, what I wouldna give to be there when Jamie sees you!”

She looked down at the ground, biting her lip. The ground was thick with bracken, and their path up the hill showed plain, where the green fronds that had overgrown the track had been crushed and knocked aside.

“I don’t know whether he knows or not,” she blurted. “About me.” She glanced up at him. “He didn’t tell you.”

Ian rocked back a little, frowning.

“No, that’s true,” he said slowly. “But I am thinking he maybe hadna time to say, even if he knew. He’ll not have been here long, that last time he came, with Claire. And then, it was such a moil, wi’ all that happened—” He stopped, pursing his lips, and glanced at her.

“Your auntie’s been troubled about that,” he said. “Thinking that ye might blame her.”

“Blame her for what?” She stared at him, puzzled.

“For Laoghaire.” The brown eyes held hers, intent.

A faint chill came over Brianna at the memory of those pale eyes, cold as marbles, and the woman’s hateful words. She had dismissed them as simple malice, but the echoes of “whoremaster” and “cheat” lingered unpleasantly in her ear.

“What did Aunt Jenny have to do with Laoghaire?”

Ian sighed, brushing back a thick lock of brown hair that fell down across his face.

“It was her doing that Jamie married the woman. She meant it well, mind,” he said warningly. “We did think Claire was dead these many years.”

His tone held a question, but Brianna merely nodded, looking down and smoothing the fabric across her knee. This was dangerous ground; better to say nothing, if she could. After a moment, Ian went on.

“It was after he’d come home from England—he was a prisoner there for some years after the Rising—”

“I know.”

Ian’s brows shot up in surprise, but he said nothing; simply shook his head.

“Aye, well. When he came back, he was—different. Well, he would be, aye?” He smiled briefly, then dropped his eyes, pleating the fabric of his kilt between his fingers.

“It was like talking to a ghost,” he said quietly. “He would look at me, and smile, and answer—but he wasna really there.” He took a deep breath, and she could see the lines between his brows, carved deep in concentration.

“Before—after Culloden—it was different, then. He was sair wounded—and he’d lost Claire—” He glanced briefly at her, but she kept still, and he went on.

“But it was a desperate time then. A great many folk died; of the fighting, of sickness or of starving. There were English soldiers in the country, burning, killing. When it’s like that, ye canna even think of dying, only because the struggle to live and keep your family takes all your time.”

A small smile touched Ian’s lips, the rue of memory oddly lightened with a private amusement.

“Jamie hid,” he said, with an abrupt gesture toward the hillside above them. “There. There’s a wee cave behind that big gorse bush, halfway up. It’s what I brought ye here to show ye.”

She looked where he pointed, up the tangled slope of rock and heather, the hillside a riot of tiny flowers. There was no sign of a cave, but the gorse bush stood out in a blaze of yellow blossom, brilliant as a torch.

“I came up to bring him food once, when he was sick of the ague. I told him he must come down to the house wi’ me; that Jenny was scairt he’d die up here, all alone. He opened one eye, all bright with the fever, and his voice was sae hoarse I could scarcely hear him. He said Jenny needna be worrit; even though everything in the world seemed set on killin’ him, he didna mean to make it easy for them. Then he closed his eye and went to sleep.”

Ian gave her a wry glance. “I wasna so sure he had that much to say about whether he was going to die or no, so I stayed with him through the night. But he was right, after all; he’s verra stubborn, ye ken?” His tone held a note of a mild apology.

Brianna nodded, but her throat felt too tight to speak. Instead she stood up abruptly, and headed up the hill. Ian made no protest, but stayed on his rock, watching her.

It was a steep climb, and small thorny plants caught at her stockings. Near the cave, she had to scramble upward on all fours, to keep her balance on the steep granite slope.

The cave mouth was little more than a crack in the rock, the opening widening into a small triangle at the bottom. She knelt down and thrust her head and shoulders inside.

The chill was immediate; she could feel dampness condense on her cheeks. It took a moment for her sight to adapt to the dark, but enough light trickled into the cave past her shoulders for her to see.

It was perhaps eight feet long and six feet wide, a dim, dirt-floored cavity, with a ceiling so low that one could stand upright only near the entrance. To stay inside for any length of time would be like being entombed.

She pulled her head out quickly, breathing in deep gulps of the fresh spring air. Her heart was beating heavily.

Seven years! Seven years to have lived here, in cold grime and gnawing hunger.
I wouldn’t last seven days,
she thought.

Wouldn’t you?
said another part of her mind. And then it came again, that tiny click of recognition that she had felt when she had looked at Ellen’s portrait, and felt her fingers close on an invisible brush.

She turned around slowly and sat down, the cave behind her. It was very quiet here on the mountainside, but quiet in the way of hills and forests, a quiet that was not silent at all, but composed of constant tiny sounds.

There were small buzzings in the gorse bush nearby, of bees working the yellow flowers, dusty with pollen. Far below was the rushing of the burn, a low note echoing the rush of the wind above, stirring leaves and rattling twigs, sighing past the jutting boulders.

She sat still, and listened, and thought she knew what Jamie Fraser had found here.

Not loneliness, but solitude. Not suffering, but endurance, the discovery of grim kinship with the rocks and sky. And the finding here of a harsh peace that would transcend bodily discomfort, a healing instead of the wounds of the soul.

He had perhaps found the cave not a tomb, but a refuge; drawn strength from its rocks, like Antaeus thrown to earth. For this place was part of him, who had been born here, as it was part of her, who had never seen it before.

Ian was still sitting patiently below; hands clasped about his knees, looking out over the valley. She reached up and carefully broke off a bit of the gorse-bush, mindful of its spines. She laid it at the entrance of the cave, weighted with a small stone, then stood and made her way precariously down the hill.

Ian must have heard her approach, but didn’t turn around. She sat down beside him.

“It’s safe for you to wear that, now?” she said abruptly, with a nod at his kilt.

“Oh, aye,” he said. He glanced down, his fingers rubbing the soft, worn wool. “It’s been some years now since the soldiers last came. After all, what’s left?” He gestured over the valley below.

“They carried away all they could find of value. Ruined what they couldna carry. There’s no much left, save the land, is there? And I think they hadna much interest in that.” She could see he was disturbed in some way; his wasn’t a face that hid its owner’s feelings.

She watched him for a moment, then said quietly, “You’re still here. You and Jenny.”

His hand stilled, and lay against the plaid. His eyelids were closed, his homely, weathered face raised to the sun.

“Aye, that’s true,” he said at last. He opened his eyes again, and turned to look at her. “And so are you. We talked a bit last night, your auntie and I. When ye see Jamie, and all’s well between ye—then ask him, if ye will, what would he have us do.”

“Do? About what?”

“About Lallybroch.” He waved, taking in the valley and the house below. He turned to her, eyes troubled.

“You’ll maybe know—maybe not—that your father made a deed of sassine before Culloden, to give over the place to Young Jamie, should it all come to smash and he be killed or condemned as a traitor. But that would be before you were born; before he kent that he’d have a bairn of his own.”

“Yes, I did know that.” She had a sudden awareness of what he was leading up to, and put her hand on his arm, startling him with the touch.

“I didn’t come for that, Uncle,” she said softly. “Lallybroch isn’t mine—and I don’t want it. All I want is to see my father—and my mother.”