* * *
After supper, one of the men began to sing. Another brought out a wooden flute and accompanied him, the sound thin but piercing in the cold autumn night. The air was chilly, but there was no wind, and it was cozy enough, wrapped in shawls and blankets, huddled in small family clusters round the fire. The blaze had been built up after the cooking, and now made a substantial dent in the darkness.
It was warm, if a trifle active, in our own family huddle. Ian had gone to fetch another armload of wood, and baby Maggie clung to her mother, forcing her elder brother to seek refuge and body warmth elsewhere.
“I’m going to stick ye upside down in yonder kettle, an’ ye dinna leave off pokin’ me in the balls,” Jamie informed his nephew, who was squirming vigorously on his uncle’s lap. “What’s the matter, then—have ye got ants in your drawers?”
This query was greeted with a gale of giggles and a marked effort to burrow into his host’s midsection. Jamie groped in the dark, making deliberately clumsy grabs at his namesake’s arms and legs, then wrapped his arms around the boy and rolled suddenly over on top of him, forcing a startled whoop of delight from small Jamie.
Jamie pinned his nephew forcibly to the ground and held him there with one hand while he groped blindly on the ground in the dark. Seizing a handful of wet grass with a grunt of satisfaction, he raised himself enough to jam the grass down the neck of small Jamie’s shirt, changing the giggling to a high-pitched squeal, no less delighted.
“There, then,” Jamie said, rolling off the small form. “Go plague your auntie for a bit.”
Small Jamie obligingly scrambled over to me on hands and knees, still giggling, and nestled on my lap among the folds of my cloak. He sat as still as is possible for an almost four-year-old boy—which is not very still, all things considered—and let me remove the bulk of the grass from his shirt.
“You smell nice, Auntie,” he said, buffing my chin affectionately with his mop of black curls. “Like food.”
“Well, thank you,” I said. “Ought I to take that to mean you’re hungry again?”
“Aye. Is there milk?”
“There is.” I could just reach the stoneware jug by stretching out my fingers. I shook the bottle, decided there was not enough left to make it worthwhile to fetch a cup, and tilted the jug, holding it for the little boy to drink from.
Temporarily absorbed in the taking of nourishment, he was still, the small, sturdy body heavy on my thigh, back braced against my arm as he wrapped his own pudgy hands around the jug.
The last drops of milk gurgled from the jug. Small Jamie relaxed all at once, and emitted a soft burp of repletion. I could feel the heat glowing from him, with that sudden rise of temperature which presages falling asleep in very young children. I wrapped a fold of the cloak around him, and rocked him slowly back and forth, humming softly to the tune of the song beyond the fire. The small bumps of his vertebrae were round and hard as marbles under my fingers.
“Gone to sleep, has he?” The larger Jamie’s bulk loomed near my shoulder, the firelight picking out the hilt of his dirk, and the gleam of copper in his hair.
“Yes,” I said. “At least he’s not squirming, so he must have. It’s rather like holding a large ham.”
Jamie laughed, then was still himself. I could feel the hardness of his arm just brushing mine, and the warmth of his body through the folds of plaid and arisaid.
A night breeze brushed a strand of hair across my face. I brushed it back, and discovered that small Jamie was right; my hands smelled of leeks and butter, and the starchy smell of cut potatoes. Asleep, he was a dead weight, and while holding him was comforting, he was cutting off the circulation in my left leg. I twisted a bit, intending to lay him across my lap.
“Don’t move, Sassenach,” Jamie’s voice came softly, next to me. “Just for a moment, mo duinne—be still.”
I obligingly froze, until he touched me on the shoulder.
“That’s all right, Sassenach,” he said, with a smile in his voice. “It’s only that ye looked so beautiful, wi’ the fire on your face, and your hair waving in the wind. I wanted to remember it.”
I turned to face him, then, and smiled at him, across the body of the child. The night was dark and cold, alive with people all around, but there was nothing where we sat but light and warmth—and each other.
33
THY BROTHER’S KEEPER
Fergus, after an initial period of silent watchfulness from corners, had become a part of the household, taking on the official position of stable-lad, along with young Rabbie MacNab.
While Rabbie was a year or two younger than Fergus, he was as big as the slight French lad, and they quickly became inseparable friends, except on the occasions when they argued—which was two or three times a day—and then attempted to kill each other. After a fight one morning had escalated into a punching, kicking, fist-swinging brawl that rolled through the dairy shed and spilled two pannikins of cream set out to sour, Jamie took a hand.
With an air of long-suffering grimness, he had taken each miscreant by the scruff of a skinny neck, and removed them to the privacy of the barn, where, I assumed, he overcame any lingering scruples he might have had about the administration of physical retribution. He strode out of the barn, shaking his head and buckling his belt back on, and left with Ian to ride up the valley to Broch Mordha. The boys had emerged some time later, substantially subdued and—united in tribulation—once more the best of friends.
Sufficiently subdued, in fact, to allow young Jamie to tag along with them as they did their chores. As I glanced out the window later in the morning, I saw the three of them playing in the dooryard with a ball made of rags. It was a cold, misty day, and the boys’ breath rose in soft clouds as they galloped and shouted.
“Nice sturdy little lad you’ve got there,” I remarked to Jenny, who was sorting through her mending basket in search of a button. She glanced up, saw what I was looking at, and smiled.
“Oh, aye, wee Jamie’s a dear lad.” She came to join me by the window, peering out at the game below.
“He’s the spit of his da,” she remarked fondly, “but he’s going to be a good bit wider through the shoulder, I think. He’ll maybe be the size of his uncle; see those legs?” I thought she was probably right; while small Jamie, nearly four, still had the chunky roundness of a toddler, his legs were long, and the small back was wide and flat with muscle. He had the long, graceful bones of his uncle, and the same air his larger namesake projected, of being composed of something altogether tougher and springier than mere flesh.
I watched the little boy pounce on the ball, scoop it up with a deft snatch, and throw it hard enough to sail past the head of Rabbie MacNab, who raced off, shouting, to retrieve it.
“Something else is like his uncle,” I said. “I think he’s maybe going to be left-handed, too.”
“Oh, God!” said Jenny, brow furrowed as she peered at her offspring. “I hope not, but you’re maybe right.” She shook her head, sighing.
“Lord, when I think of the trouble poor Jamie had, from being caurry-fisted! Everybody tried to break him of it, from my parents to the schoolmaster, but he always was stubborn as a log, and wouldna budge. Everybody but Ian’s father, at least,” she added, as an afterthought.
“He didn’t think being left-handed was wrong?” I asked curiously, aware that the general opinion of the times was that left-handedness was at the best unlucky, and at the worst, a symptom of demonic possession. Jamie wrote—with difficulty—with his right hand, because he had been beaten regularly at school for picking up the quill with his left.
Jenny shook her head, black curls bobbing under her kertch.
“No, he was a queer man, auld John Murray. He said if the Lord had chosen to strengthen Jamie’s left arm so, then ’twould be a sin to spurn the gift. And he was a rare man wi’ a sword, auld John, so my father listened, and he let Jamie learn to fight left-handed.”
“I thought Dougal MacKenzie taught Jamie to fight left-handed,” I said. I rather wondered what Jenny thought of her uncle Dougal.
She nodded, licking the end of a thread before putting it through the eye of her needle with one quick poke.
“Aye, it was, but that was later, when Jamie was grown, and went to foster wi’ Dougal. It was Ian’s father taught him his first strokes.” She smiled, eyes on the shirt in her lap.
“I remember, when they were young, auld John told Ian it was his job to stand to Jamie’s right, for he must guard his chief’s weaker side in a fight. And he did—they took it verra seriously, the two of them. And I suppose auld John was right, at that,” she added, snipping off the excess thread. “After a time, nobody would fight them, not even the MacNab lads. Jamie and Ian were both fair-sized, and bonny fighters, and when they stood shoulder to shoulder, there was no one could take the pair o’ them down, even if they were outnumbered.”
She laughed suddenly, and smoothed back a lock of hair behind her ear.
“Watch them sometime, when they’re walking the fields together. I dinna suppose they even realize they do it still, but they do. Jamie always moves to the left, so Ian can take up his place on the right, guardin’ the weak side.”
Jenny gazed out the window, the shirt momentarily forgotten in her lap, and laid a hand over the small swelling of her stomach.
“I hope it’s a boy,” she said, looking at her black-haired son below. “Left-handed or no, it’s good for a man to have a brother to help him.” I caught her glance at the picture on the wall—a very young Jamie, standing between the knees of his elder brother, Willie. Both young faces were snub-nosed and solemn; Willie’s hand rested protectively on his little brother’s shoulder.
“Jamie’s lucky to have Ian,” I said.
Jenny looked away from the picture, and blinked once. She was two years older than Jamie; she would have been three years younger than William.
“Aye, he is. And so am I,” she said softly, picking up the shirt once more.
I took a child’s smock from the mending basket and turned it inside out, to get at the ripped seam beneath the armhole. It was too cold out for anyone but small boys at play or men at work, but it was warm and cozy in the parlor; the windows fogged over quickly as we worked, isolating us from the icy world outside.
“Speaking of brothers,” I said, squinting as I threaded my own needle, “did you see Dougal and Colum MacKenzie much, as you were growing up?”
Jenny shook her head. “I’ve never met Colum. Dougal came here a time or two, bringing Jamie home for Hogmanay or such, but I canna say I know him well.” She looked up from her mending, slanted eyes bright with interest. “You’ll know them, though. Tell me, what’s Colum MacKenzie like? I always wondered, from the bits of things I’d hear from visitors, but my parents never would speak of him.” She paused a moment, a crease between her brows.
“No, I’m wrong; my da did say something about him, once. ’Twas just after Dougal had left, to go back to Beannachd wi’ Jamie. Da was leaning on the fence outside, watching them ride out o’ sight, and I came up to wave to Jamie—it always grieved me sore when he left, for I didna ken how long he’d be gone. Anyway, we watched them over the crest of the hill, and then Da stirred a bit, and grunted, and said, ‘God help Dougal MacKenzie when his brother Colum dies.’ Then he seemed to remember I was there, for he turned round and smiled at me, and said, ‘Well, lassie, what’s for our dinner, then?’ and wouldna say more about it.” The black brows, fine and bold as the strokes of calligraphy, lifted in puzzled inquiry.
“I thought that odd, for I’d heard—who hasn’t?—that Colum is sore crippled, and Dougal does the chief’s work for him, collecting rents and settling claims—and leading the clan to battle, when needs be.”
“He does. But—” I hesitated, unsure how to describe that odd symbiotic relationship. “Well,” I said with a smile, “the closest I can come is to tell you that once I overheard them arguing, and Colum said to Dougal, ‘I’ll tell ye, if the brothers MacKenzie have but one cock and one brain between them, then I’m glad of my half of the bargain!’ ”
Jenny gave a sudden laugh of surprise, then stared at me, a speculative gleam deep in her blue eyes, so like her brother’s.
“Och, so that’s the way of it, is it? I did wonder once, hearing Dougal talk about Colum’s son, wee Hamish; he seemed a bit fonder than an uncle might be.”
“You’re quick, Jenny,” I said, staring back at her. “Very quick. It took me a long time to work that out, and I saw them every day for months.”
She shrugged modestly, but a small smile played about her lips.
“I listen,” she said simply. “To what folk say—and what they don’t. And people do gossip something terrible here in the Highlands. So”—she bit off a thread and spat the ends neatly into the palm of her hand—“tell me about Leoch. Folk say it’s big, but not so grand as Beauly or Kilravock.”
We worked and talked through the morning, moving from mending to winding wool for knitting, to laying out the pattern for a new baby dress for Maggie. The shouts from the boys outside ceased, to be replaced by murmurous noises and banging from the back of the house, suggesting that the younger male element had gotten cold and come to infest the kitchens, instead.
“I wonder will it snow soon?” Jenny said, with a glance at the window. “There’s wetness in the air; did ye see the haze over the loch this morning?”
I shook my head. “I hope not. That will make it hard for Jamie and Ian, coming back.” The village of Broch Mordha was less than ten miles from Lallybroch, but the way lay over steadily rising hills, with steep and rocky slopes, and the road was little more than a deer track.
In the event, it did snow, soon after noon, and the flakes kept swirling down long past nightfall.
“They’ll have stayed in Broch Mordha,” Jenny said, pulling her nightcapped head in from an inspection of the cloudy sky, with its snow-pink glow. “Dinna worry for them; they’ll be tucked up cozy in someone’s cottage for the night.” She smiled reassuringly at me as she pulled the shutters to. A sudden wail came from down the hall, and she picked up the skirts of her nightrobe with a muffled exclamation.
“Good night, Claire,” she called, already hurrying off on her maternal errand of mercy. “Sleep well.”
I usually did sleep well; in spite of the cold, damp climate, the house was tightly constructed, and the goosefeather bed was plentifully supplied with quilts. Tonight, though, I found myself restless without Jamie. The bed seemed vast and clammy, my legs twitchy, and my feet cold.
I tried lying on my back, hands lightly clasped across my ribs, eyes closed, breathing deep, to summon up a picture of Jamie; if I could imagine him there, breathing deeply in the dark beside me, perhaps I could fall asleep.
The sound of a cock crowing at full blast lifted me off the pillow, as though a stick of dynamite had been touched off beneath the bed.
“Idiot!” I said, every nerve in my body twanging from the shock. I got up and cracked the shutter. It had stopped snowing, but the sky was still pale with cloud, a uniform color from horizon to horizon. The rooster let loose another bellow in the hen-coop below.
“Shut up!” I said. “It’s the middle of the night, you feathered bastard!” The avian equivalent of a raspberry echoed through the still night, and down the hall, a child began to cry, followed by a rich but muffled Gaelic expletive in Jenny’s voice.
“You,” I said to the invisible rooster, “are living on borrowed time.” There was no response to this, and after a pause to make certain that the rooster had in fact called it a night, I closed the shutters and did the same.
The commotion had derailed any coherent train of thought. Instead of trying to start another, I decided to try turning inward, in the hopes that physical contemplation would relax me enough to sleep.
It worked. As I began to hover on the edge of sleep, my mind fixed somewhere around my pancreas, I could dimly hear the sounds of small Jamie pattering down the hall to his mother’s bedroom—roused from sleep by a full bladder, he seldom had the presence of mind to take the obvious step, and would frequently blunder down the stair from the nursery in search of assistance instead.
I had wondered, coming to Lallybroch, whether I might find it difficult to be near Jenny; if I would be envious of her easy fruitfulness. And I might have been, had I not seen that abundant motherhood had its price as well.
“There’s a pot right by your bed, clot-heid,” Jenny’s exasperated voice came outside my door as she steered small Jamie back to his bed. “Ye must have stepped in it on your way out; why can ye no get it through your heid to use that one? Why have ye got to come use mine, every night in creation?” Her voice faded as she turned up the stair, and I smiled, visualization moving down the sweeping curve of my intestines.
There was another reason I did not envy Jenny. I had at first feared that the birth of Faith had done me some internal damage, but that fear had disappeared with Raymond’s touch. As I completed the inventory of my body, and felt my spine go slack on the edge of sleep, I could feel that all was well there. It had happened once, it could happen again. All that was needed was time. And Jamie.
Jenny’s footsteps sounded on the boards of the hallway, quickening in response to a sleepy squawk from Maggie, at the far end of the house.
“Bairns are certain joy, but nay sma’ care,” I murmured to myself, and fell asleep.