12
FURTHER MYSTERIES
OF SCIENCE
LATE IN THE AFTERNOON, Roger MacKenzie came back from the cooper’s shop to discover his wife deep in contemplation of an object sitting on his dinner table.
“What is that? Some type of prehistoric Christmas tinned goods?” Roger extended a ginger forefinger toward a squat jar made of greenish glass and sealed with a cork, the latter covered with a stout layer of red wax. An amorphous chunk of something was visible inside, evidently submerged in liquid.
“Ho ho,” said his wife tolerantly, moving the jar out of his reach. “You think you’re being funny. It’s white phosphorus—a present from Lord John.”
He glanced at her; she was excited, the tip of her nose gone pink and bits of red hair pulled loose and waving in the breeze; like her father, she was inclined to run her hands through her hair when thinking.
“And you intend to do . . . what with it?” he asked, trying to keep any note of foreboding from his voice. He had the vaguest memories of hearing about the properties of phosphorus in his distant school days; he thought either it made you glow in the dark or it blew up. Neither prospect was reassuring.
“Wellll . . . make matches. Maybe.” Her upper teeth fastened momentarily in the flesh of her lower lip as she considered the jar. “I know how—in theory. But it might be a little tricky in practice.”
“Why is that?” he asked warily.
“Well, it bursts into flame if you expose it to air,” she explained. “That’s why it’s packed in water. Don’t touch, Jem! It’s poisonous.” Grabbing Jemmy round the middle, she pulled him down from the table, where he had been eyeing the jar with greedy curiosity.
“Oh, well, why worry about that? It will explode in his face before he has a chance to get it in his mouth.” Roger picked up the jar for safekeeping, holding it as though it might go off in his hands. He wanted to ask whether she were insane, but had been married long enough to know the price of injudicious rhetorical questions.
“Where d’ye mean to keep it?” He cast an eloquent glance round the confines of the cabin, which in terms of storage boasted a blanket chest, a small shelf for books and papers, another for comb, toothbrushes, and Brianna’s small cache of personal belongings, and a pie hutch. Jemmy had been able to open the pie hutch since the age of seven months or so.
“I’m thinking I’d better put it in Mama’s surgery,” she replied, keeping an absentminded grip on Jem, who was struggling with single-minded energy to get at the pretty thing. “Nobody touches anything in there.”
That was true enough; the people who were not afraid of Claire Fraser personally were generally terrified of the contents of her surgery, these featuring fearsomely painful-looking implements, mysterious murky brews, and vile-smelling medicines. In addition, the surgery had cupboards too high for even a determined climber like Jem to reach.
“Good idea,” Roger said, anxious to get the jar out of Jem’s vicinity. “I’ll take it up now, shall I?”
Before Brianna could answer, a knock came at the door, followed immediately by Jamie Fraser. Jem instantly ceased trying to get at the jar and instead flung himself on his grandfather with shrieks of joy.
“How is it, then, a bhailach?” Jamie inquired amiably, neatly turning Jem upside down and holding him by the ankles. “A word, Roger Mac?”
“Sure. Ye’ll sit, maybe?” He’d told Jamie earlier what he knew—lamentably little—regarding the role of the Cherokee in the upcoming Revolution. Had he come to inquire further? Reluctantly setting down the jar, Roger pulled out a stool and pushed it in his father-in-law’s direction. Jamie accepted it with a nod, dexterously transferring Jemmy to a position over one shoulder and sitting down.
Jemmy giggled madly, squirming until his grandfather slapped him lightly on the seat of his breeches, whereupon he subsided, hanging contentedly upside-down like a sloth, his bright hair spilling down the back of Jamie’s shirt.
“It’s this way, a charaid,” Jamie said. “I must be going in the morning to the Cherokee villages, and there is a thing I’d ask ye to do in my place.”
“Oh, aye. D’ye want me to see to the barley harvest, then?” The early grain was still ripening. Everyone had his fingers crossed that the weather would keep fair for another few weeks, but the prospects were good.
“No, Brianna can do that—if ye will, lass?” He smiled at his daughter, who raised thick ruddy eyebrows, the twins of his.
“I can,” she agreed. “What are you planning to do with Ian, Roger, and Arch Bug, though?” Arch Bug was Jamie’s factor, and the logical person to be overseeing the harvest in Jamie’s absence.
“Well, I shall take Young Ian with me. The Cherokee ken him well, and he’s comfortable wi’ their speech. I’ll take the Beardsley lads, too, so they can fetch back the berries and bits o’ things your mother wants for Lizzie, straightaway.”
“I go, too?” Jemmy inquired hopefully.
“Not this time, a bhailach. In the autumn, maybe.” He patted Jemmy on the bottom, then returned his attention to Roger.
“That being so,” he said, “I need ye to go to Cross Creek, if ye will, and collect the new tenants.” Roger felt a small surge of excitement—and alarm—at the prospect, but merely cleared his throat and nodded.
“Aye. Of course. Will they—”
“Ye’ll take Arch Bug along, and Tom Christie.”
A moment of incredulous silence greeted this statement.
“Tom Christie?” Bree said, exchanging a glance of bafflement with Roger. “What on earth for?” The schoolmaster was a notably dour sort, and no one’s idea of a congenial traveling companion.
Her father’s mouth twisted wryly.
“Aye, well. There’s the one small thing MacDonald neglected to tell me, when he asked if I’d take them. They’re Protestants, the lot.”
“Ah,” said Roger. “I see.” Jamie met his eye and nodded, relieved to be so immediately understood.
“I don’t see.” Brianna patted her hair, frowning, then pulled off the ribbon and began to comb her fingers slowly through it, undoing the tangles as a preliminary to brushing it. “What difference does it make?”
Roger and Jamie exchanged a brief but eloquent glance. Jamie shrugged, and pulled Jem down into his lap.
“Well.” Roger rubbed his chin, trying to think how to explain two centuries of Scottish religious intolerance in any way that would make sense to an American of the twentieth century. “Ahh . . . ye recall the civil-rights thing in the States, integration in the South, all that?”
“Of course I do.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Okay. So, which side are the Negroes?”
“The what?” Jamie looked entirely baffled. “Where do Negroes come into the matter?”
“Not quite that simple,” Roger assured her. “Just an indication of the depth of feeling involved. Let us say that the notion of having a Catholic landlord is likely to cause our new tenants severe qualms—and vice versa?” he asked, glancing at Jamie.
“What’s Negroes?” Jemmy asked with interest.
“Er . . . .dark-skinned people,” Roger replied, suddenly aware of the potential quagmire opened up by this question. It was true that the term “Negro” didn’t invariably mean also “slave”—but near enough that there was little difference. “D’ye not remember them, from your great-auntie Jocasta’s place?”
Jemmy frowned, adopting for an unsettling instant the precise expression his grandfather was wearing.
“No.”
“Well, anyway,” Bree said, calling the meeting to order with a sharp rap of her hairbrush on the table, “the point is that Mr. Christie is enough of a Protestant to make the new people feel comfortable?”
“Something of the sort,” her father agreed, one side of his mouth curling up. “Between your man here and Tom Christie, at least they’ll not think they’re entering the Devil’s realm entirely.”
“I see,” Roger said again, in a slightly different tone. So it wasn’t only his position as son of the house and general right-hand man, was it—but the fact that he was a Presbyterian, at least in name. He raised a brow at Jamie, who shrugged in acknowledgment.
“Mmphm,” Roger said, resigned.
“Mmphm,” said Jamie, satisfied.
“Stop doing that,” Brianna said crossly. “Fine. So you and Tom Christie are going to Cross Creek. Why is Arch Bug going?”
Roger became aware, in a subliminally marital way, that his wife was disgruntled at the thought of being left behind to organize the harvest—a filthy, exhausting job at the best of times—whilst he frolicked with a squad of his co-religionists in the romantically exciting metropolis of Cross Creek, population two hundred.
“It will be Arch, mostly, helping them to settle and build themselves shelter before the cold,” Jamie said logically. “Ye dinna mean to suggest, I hope, that I send him alone to talk to them?”
Brianna smiled involuntarily at that; Arch Bug, married for decades to the voluble Mrs. Bug, was famous for his lack of speech. He could talk, but seldom did so, limiting his conversational contributions to the occasional genial “Mmp.”
“Well, they’ll likely never realize that Arch is Catholic,” Roger said, rubbing his upper lip with a forefinger. “Or is he, come to that? I’ve never asked him.”
“He is,” Jamie said, very dryly. “But he’s lived long enough to ken when to be silent.”
“Well, I can see this is going to be a jolly expedition,” Brianna said, raising one brow. “When do you think you’ll be back?”
“Christ, I don’t know,” Roger said, feeling a stab of guilt at the casual blasphemy. He’d have to revise his habits, and quickly. “A month? Six weeks?”
“At least,” his father-in-law said cheerfully. “They’ll be on foot, mind.”
Roger took a deep breath, contemplating a slow march, en masse, from Cross Creek to the mountains, with Arch Bug on one side of him and Tom Christie on the other, twin pillars of taciturnity. His eyes lingered wistfully on his wife, envisioning six weeks of sleeping by the roadside, alone.
“Yeah, fine,” he said. “I’ll . . . um . . . go speak to Tom and Arch tonight, then.”
“Daddy go?” Catching the gist of the conversation, Jem scrambled off his grandfather’s knee and scampered over to Roger, grabbing him round the leg. “Go with you, Daddy!”
“Oh. Well, I don’t think—” He caught sight of Bree’s face, resigned, and then the green and red jar on the table behind her. “Why not?” he said suddenly, and smiled at Jem. “Great-Auntie Jocasta would love to see you. And Mummy can blow things up to her heart’s content without worrying where you are, aye?”
“She can do what?” Jamie looked startled.
“It doesn’t explode,” Brianna said, picking up the jar of phosphorus and cradling it possessively. “It just burns. Are you sure?” This last was addressed to Roger, and accompanied by a searching look.
“Yeah, sure,” he said, affecting confidence. He glanced at Jemmy, who was chanting “Go! Go! Go!”, meanwhile hopping up and down like a demented popcorn kernel. “At least I’ll have someone to talk to on the way.”