* * *
The horses seemed as eager as we; sensing the nearness of stables and food, they began to push the pace a bit, heads up and ears cocked forward in anticipation.
I was just reflecting that I could do with a wash and a bite to eat, myself, when my horse, slightly in the lead, dug in its feet and came to a slithering halt, hooves buried fetlock deep in the reddish dust. The mare shook her head violently from side to side, snorting and whooshing.
“Hey, lass, what’s amiss? Got a bee up your nose?” Jamie swung down from his own mount and hurried to grab the gray mare’s bridle. Feeling the broad back shiver and twitch beneath me, I slid down as well.
“Whatever is the matter with her?” I gazed curiously at the horse, which was pulling backward against Jamie’s grip on the bridle, shaking her mane, with eyes bugging. The other horses, as though infected by her unease, began to stamp and shift as well.
Jamie glanced briefly over his shoulder at the empty road.
“She sees something.”
Fergus raised himself in his shortened stirrups and shaded his eyes, staring over the mare’s back. Lowering his hand, he looked at me and shrugged.
I shrugged back; there seemed to be nothing whatever to cause the mare’s distress—the road and the fields lay vacant all around us, grain-heads ripening and drying in the late summer sun. The nearest grove of trees was more than a hundred yards away, beyond a small heap of stones that might have been the remnants of a tumbled chimneystack. Wolves were almost unheard of in cleared land like this, and surely no fox or badger would disturb a horse at this distance.
Giving up the attempt to coax the mare forward, Jamie led her in a half-circle; she went willingly enough, back in the direction we had come.
He motioned to Murtagh to lead the other horses out of the way, then swung himself into the saddle, and leaning forward, one hand clutched in the mare’s mane, urged her slowly forward, speaking softly in her ear. She came hesitantly, but without resistance, until she reached the point of her previous stopping. There she halted again and stood shivering, and nothing would persuade her to move a step farther.
“All right, then,” said Jamie, resigned. “Have it your way.” He turned the horse’s head and led her into the field, the yellow grain-heads brushing the shaggy hairs of her belly. We rustled after them, the horses bending their necks to snatch a mouthful of grain here and there as we passed through the field.
As we rounded a small granite outcrop just below the crest of the hill, I heard a brief warning bark just ahead. We emerged onto the road to find a black and white shepherd dog on guard, head up and tail stiff as he kept a wary eye on us.
He uttered another short yap, and a matching black and white figure shot out of a clump of alders, followed more slowly by a tall, slender figure wrapped in a brown hunting plaid.
“Ian!”
“Jamie!”
Jamie tossed the mare’s reins back to me, and met his brother-in-law in the middle of the road, where the two men clutched each other round the shoulders, laughing and pounding each other on the back. Released from suspicion, the dogs frolicked happily around them, tails wagging, darting aside now and then to sniff at the legs of the horses.
“We didna expect ye ’til tomorrow at the earliest,” Ian was saying, his long, homely face beaming.
“We had a good wind crossing,” Jamie explained. “Or at least Claire tells me we did; I wasna taking much notice, myself.” He cast a glance back at me, grinning, and Ian came up to grasp my hand.
“Good-sister,” he said in formal greeting. Then he smiled, the warmth of it lighting his soft brown eyes. “Claire.” Impulsively, he kissed my fingers, and I squeezed his hand.
“Jenny’s gone daft wi’ cleaning and cooking,” he said, still smiling at me. “You’ll be lucky to have a bed to sleep in tonight; she’s got all the mattresses outside, being beaten.”
“After three nights in the heather, I wouldn’t mind sleeping on the floor,” I assured him. “Are Jenny and the children all well?”
“Oh, aye. She’s breeding again,” he added. “Due in February.”
“Again?” Jamie and I spoke together, and a rich blush rose in Ian’s lean cheeks.
“God, man, wee Maggie’s less than a year old,” Jamie said, with a censorious cock of one brow. “Have ye no sense of restraint?”
“Me?” Ian said indignantly. “Ye think I had anything to do with it?”
“Well, if ye didn’t, I should think ye’d be interested in who did,” Jamie said, the corner of his mouth twitching.
The blush deepened to a rich rose color, contrasting nicely with Ian’s smooth brown hair. “Ye know damn well what I mean,” he said. “I slept on the trundle bed wi’ Young Jamie for two months, but then Jenny…”
“Oh, you’re saying my sister’s a wanton, eh?”
“I’m saying she’s as stubborn as her brother when it comes to getting what she wants,” Ian said. He feinted to one side, dodged neatly back and landed a blow in the pit of Jamie’s stomach. Jamie doubled over, laughing.
“Just as well I’ve come home, then,” he said. “I’ll help ye keep her under control.”
“Oh, aye?” Ian said skeptically. “I’ll call all the tenants to watch.”
“Lost a few sheep, have ye?” Jamie changed the subject with a gesture that took in the dogs and Ian’s long crook, dropped in the dust of the roadway.
“Fifteen yows and a ram,” Ian said, nodding. “Jenny’s own flock of merinos, that she keeps for the special wool. The ram’s a right bastard; broke down the gate. I thought they might have been in the grain up here, but nay sign o’ them.”
“We didn’t see them up above,” I said.
“Oh, they wouldna be up there,” Ian said, waving a dismissive hand. “None o’ the beasts will go past the cottage.”
“Cottage?” Fergus, growing impatient with this exchange of civilities, had kicked his mount up alongside mine. “I saw no cottage, milord. Only a pile of stones.”
“That’s all that’s left of MacNab’s cottage, laddie,” said Ian. He squinted up at Fergus, silhouetted against the late afternoon sun. “And ye’d be well-advised to keep away from there yourself.”
The hair prickled on the back of my neck, despite the heat of the day. Ronald MacNab was the tenant who had betrayed Jamie to the men of the Watch a year before, the man who had died for his treachery within a day of its being found out. Died, I remembered, among the ashes of his home, burned over his head by the men of Lallybroch. The pile of chimneystones, so innocent when we had passed them a moment ago, had now the grim look of a cairn. I swallowed, forcing back the bitter taste that rose at the back of my throat.
“MacNab?” Jamie said softly. His expression was at once alert. “Ronnie MacNab?”
I had told Jamie of MacNab’s betrayal, and his death, but I hadn’t told him the means of it.
Ian nodded. “Aye. He died there, the night the English took ye, Jamie. The thatch must ha’ caught from a spark, and him too far gone in drink to get out in time.” He met Jamie’s eyes straight on, all teasing gone.
“Ah? And his wife and child?” Jamie’s look was the same as Ian’s; cool and inscrutable.
“Safe. Mary MacNab’s kitchen-maid at the house, and Rabbie works in the stables.” Ian glanced involuntarily over his shoulder in the direction of the ruined cottage. “Mary comes up here now and again; she’s the only one on the place will go there.”
“Was she fond of him, then?” Jamie had turned to look in the direction of the cottage, so his face was hidden from me, but there was tension in the line of his back.
Ian shrugged. “I shouldna think so. A drunkard, and vicious with it, was Ronnie; not even his auld mother had much use for him. No, I think Mary feels it her duty to pray for his soul—much good it’ll do him,” he added.
“Ah.” Jamie paused a moment as though in thought, then tossed his horse’s reins over its neck and turned up the hill.
“Jamie,” I said, but he was already walking back up the road, toward the small clearing beside the grove. I handed the reins I was holding to a surprised Fergus.
“Stay here with the horses,” I said. “I have to go with him.” Ian moved to come with me, but Murtagh stopped him with a shake of the head, and I went on alone, following Jamie up over the crest of the hill.
He had the long, tireless stride of a hill-walker, and had reached the small clearing before I caught him up. He stood at the edge of what had been the outer wall. The square shape of the cottage’s earth floor was still barely visible, the new growth that covered it sparser than the nearby barley, greener and wild in the shade of the trees.
There was little trace of the fire left; a few chunks of charred wood poked through the grass near the stone hearth that lay open now, flat and exposed as a tombstone. Careful not to step within the outlines of the vanished walls, Jamie began to walk around the clearing. He circled the hearthstone three times, walking always widdershins, left, and left, and left again, to confound any evil that might follow.
I stood to one side and watched. This was a private confrontation, but I couldn’t leave him to face it alone, and though he didn’t glance at me, still I knew he was glad of my presence.
At last he stopped by the fallen pile of stones. Reaching out, he laid a hand gingerly on it and closed his eyes for a moment, as though in prayer. Then, stooping, he picked up a stone the size of his fist, and placed it carefully on the pile, as though it might weigh down the uneasy soul of the ghost. He crossed himself, turned and came toward me with a firm, unhurried step.
“Don’t look back,” he said quietly, taking me by the arm as we turned toward the road.
I didn’t.