* * *
I had never actually had a home. Orphaned at five, I had lived the life of a academic vagabond with my uncle Lamb for the next thirteen years. In tents on a dusty plain, in caves in the hills, in the swept and garnished chambers of an empty pyramid, Quentin Lambert Beauchamp, M.S., Ph.D., F.R.A.S., etc., had set up the series of temporary camps in which he did the archaeological work that would make him famous long before a car crash ended his brother’s life and threw me into his. Not one to dither over petty details like an orphaned niece, Uncle Lamb had promptly enrolled me in a boarding school.
Not one to accept the vagaries of fate without a fight, I declined absolutely to go there. And, recognizing something in me that he had himself in abundant measure, Uncle Lamb had shrugged, and on the decision of a heartbeat, had taken me forever from the world of order and routine, of sums, clean sheets, and daily baths, to follow him into vagabondage.
The roving life had continued with Frank, though with a shift from field to universities, as the digging of a historian is usually conducted within walls. So, when the war came in 1939, it was less a disruption to me than to most.
I had moved from our latest hired flat into the junior nurses’ quarters at Pembroke Hospital, and from there to a field station in France, and back again to Pembroke before war’s end. And then, those few brief months with Frank, before we came to Scotland, seeking to find each other again. Only to lose each other once and for all, when I had walked into a stone circle, through madness, and out the other side, into the past that was my present.
It was strange, then, and rather wonderful, to wake in the upper bedroom at Lallybroch, next to Jamie, and realize, as I watched the dawn touch his sleeping face, that he had been born in this bed. All the sounds of the house, from the creak of the back stair under an early-rising maid’s foot, to the drumming rain on the roofslates, were sounds he had heard a thousand times before; heard so often, he didn’t hear them anymore. I did.
His mother, Ellen, had planted the late-blooming rosebush by the door. Its faint, rich scent still wafted up the walls of the house to the bedroom window. It was as though she reached in herself, to touch him lightly in passing. To touch me, too, in welcome.
Beyond the house itself lay Lallybroch; fields and barns and village and crofts. He had fished in the stream that ran down from the hills, climbed the oaks and towering larches, eaten by the hearthstone of every croft. It was his place.
But he, too, had lived with disruption and change. Arrest, and the flight of outlawry; the rootless life of a mercenary soldier. Arrest again, imprisonment and torture, and the flight into exile so recently ended. But he had lived in one place for his first fourteen years. And even at that age, when he had been sent, as was the custom, to foster for two years with his mother’s brother, Dougal MacKenzie, it was part and parcel of the life expected for a man who would return to live forever on his land, to care for his tenants and estate, to be a part of a larger organism. Permanence was his destiny.
But there had been that space of absence, and the experience of things beyond the boundaries of Lallybroch, even beyond the rocky coasts of Scotland. Jamie had spoken with kings, had touched law, and commerce, seen adventure and violence and magic. Once the boundaries of home had been transgressed, could destiny be enough to hold him? I wondered.
As I came down from the crest of the hill, I saw him below, heaving boulders into place as he repaired a rift in a drystone dike that bordered one of the smaller fields. Near him on the ground lay a pair of rabbits, neatly gutted but not yet skinned.
“ ‘Home is the sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter home from the hill,’ ” I quoted, smiling at him as I came up beside him.
He grinned back, wiped the sweat from his brow, then pretended to shudder.
“Dinna mention the sea to me, Sassenach. I saw two wee laddies sailing a bit of wood in the millpond this morning and nearly heaved up my breakfast at the sight.”
I laughed. “You haven’t any urge to go back to France, then?”
“God, no. Not even for the brandy.” He heaved one last stone to the top of the wall and settled it into place. “Going back to the house?”
“Yes. Do you want me to take the rabbits?”
He shook his head, and bent to pick them up. “No need; I’m going back myself. Ian needs a hand wi’ the new storage cellar for the potatoes.”
The first potato crop ever planted on Lallybroch was due for harvest within a few days, and—on my timorous and inexpert advice—a small root-cellar was being dug to house them. I had distinctly mixed feelings, whenever I looked at the potato field. On the one hand, I felt considerable pride in the sprawling, leafy vines that covered it. On the other, I felt complete panic at the thought that sixty families might depend on what lay under those vines for sustenance through the winter. It was on my advice—given hastily a year ago—that a prime barley field had been planted in potatoes, a crop hitherto unknown in the Highlands.
I knew that in the fullness of time, potatoes would become an important staple of life in the Highlands, less susceptible to blight and failure than the crops of oats and barley. Knowing that from a paragraph read in a geography book long ago was a far cry from deliberately taking responsibility for the lives of the people who would eat the crop.
I wondered if the taking of risks for other people got easier with practice. Jamie did it routinely, managing the affairs of the estate and the tenants as though he had been born to it. But, of course, hehad been born to it.
“Is the cellar nearly ready?” I asked.
“Oh, aye. Ian’s got the doors built, and the pit’s nearly dug. It’s only there’s a soft bit of earth near the back, and his peg gets stuck in when he stands there.” While Ian managed very well on the wooden peg he wore in substitute for his lower right leg, there were the occasional awkwardnesses such as this.
Jamie glanced thoughtfully up the hill behind us. “We’ll need the cellar finished and covered by tonight; it’s going to rain again before dawn.”
I turned to look in the direction of his gaze. Nothing showed on the slope but grass and heather, a few trees, and the rocky seams of granite that poked bony ridges through the scruffy overgrowth.
“How in hell can you tell that?”
He smiled, pointing uphill with his chin. “See the small oak tree? And the ash nearby?”
I glanced at the trees, baffled. “Yes. What about them?”
“The leaves, Sassenach. See how both trees look lighter than usual? When there’s damp in the air, the leaves of an oak or an ash will turn, so ye see the underside. The whole tree looks several shades lighter.”
“I suppose it does,” I agreed doubtfully. “If you happen to know what color the tree is normally.”
Jamie laughed and took my arm. “I may not have an ear for music, Sassenach, but I’ve eyes in my head. And I’ve seen those trees maybe ten thousand times, in every weather there is.”
It was some way from the field to the farmhouse, and we walked in silence for the most part, enjoying the brief warmth of the afternoon sun on our backs. I sniffed the air, and thought that Jamie was probably right about the coming rain; all the normal autumn smells seemed intensified, from the sharp pine resins to the dusty smell of ripe grain. I thought that I must be learning, myself; becoming attuned to the rhythms and sights and smells of Lallybroch. Maybe in time, I would come to know it as well as Jamie did. I squeezed his arm briefly, and felt the pressure of his hand on mine in response.
“D’ye miss France, Sassenach?” he said suddenly.
“No,” I said, startled. “Why?”
He shrugged, not looking at me. “Well, it’s only I was thinking, seeing ye come down the hill wi’ the basket on your arm, how bonny ye looked wi’ the sun on your brown hair. I thought you looked as though ye grew there, like one of the saplings—like ye’d always been a part of this place. And then it struck me, that to you, Lallybroch’s maybe a poor wee spot. There’s no grand life, like there was in France; not even interesting work, as ye had at the H?pital.” He glanced down at me shyly.
“I suppose I worry you’ll grow bored wi’ it here—in time.”
I paused before answering, though it wasn’t something I hadn’t thought about.
“In time,” I said carefully. “Jamie—I’ve seen a lot of things in my life, and been in a lot of places. Where I came from—there were things there that I miss sometimes. I’d like to ride a London omnibus again, or pick up a telephone and talk to someone far away. I’d like to turn a tap, and have hot water, not carry it from the well and heat it in a cauldron. I’d like all that—but I don’t need it. As for a grand life, I didn’t want it when I had it. Nice clothes are all very well, but if gossip and scheming and worry and silly parties and tiny rules of etiquette go with them…no. I’d as soon live in my shift and say what I like.”
He laughed at that, and I squeezed his arm once more.
“As for the work…there’s work for me here.” I glanced down into the basket of herbs and medicines on my arm. “I can be useful. And if I miss Mother Hildegarde, or my other friends—well, it isn’t as fast as a telephone, but there are always letters.”
I stopped, holding his arm, and looked up at him. The sun was setting, and the light gilded one side of his face, throwing the strong bones into relief.
“Jamie…I only want to be where you are. Nothing else.”
He stood still for a moment, then leaned forward and kissed me very gently on the forehead.