* * *
Myers, bless his kindly heart and faithful nature, did return within the month—bringing not only three pack-mules laden with tools, small furnishings, and necessities such as salt, but also Duncan Innes.
“Here?” Innes looked interestedly over the tiny homestead that had begun to take shape on the strawberry-covered ridge. We had two sturdy sheds now, plus a split-railed penfold in which to keep the horses and any other stock we might acquire.
At the moment, our total stock consisted of a small white piglet, which Jamie had obtained from a Moravian settlement thirty miles away, exchanging for it a bag of sweet yams I had gathered and a bundle of willow-twig brooms I had made. Rather too small for the penfold, it had so far been living in the shed with us, where it had become fast friends with Rollo. I wasn’t quite so fond of it myself.
“Aye. It’s decent land, with plenty of water; there are springs in the wood, and the creek all through.”
Jamie guided Duncan to a spot from which the western slopes below the ridge were visible; there were natural breaks, or “coves” in the forest, now overgrown with tangles of wild grass, but ultimately suitable for cultivation.
“D’ye see?” He gestured over the slope, which ran down gently from the ridge to a small bluff, where a line of sycamores marked the distant river’s edge. “There’s room there for at least thirty homesteads, to start. We’d need to clear a deal of forest, but there’s space enough to begin. Any crofter worth his salt could feed his family from a garden plot, the soil’s so rich.”
Duncan had been a fisherman, not a farmer, but he nodded obediently, eyes fixed on the vista as Jamie peopled it with future houses.
“I’ve paced it out,” Jamie was saying, “though it will have to be surveyed properly as soon as may be. But I’ve the description of it in my head—did ye by chance bring ink and paper?”
“Aye, we did. And a few other things, as well.” Duncan smiled at me, his long, rather melancholy face transformed by the expression. “Miss Jo’s sent a feather bed, which she thought might not come amiss.”
“A feather bed? Really? How wonderful!” I immediately dismissed any ungenerous thoughts I had ever harbored about Jocasta Cameron. While Jamie had built us an excellent, sturdy bedstead framed in oakwood, with the bottom ingeniously made of laced rope, I had had nothing to lay on it save cedar branches, which were fragrant but unpleasantly lumpy.
My thoughts of luxuriant wallowing were interrupted by the emergence from the woods of Ian and Myers, the latter with a brace of squirrels hung from his belt. Ian proudly presented me with an enormous black object, which on closer inspection proved to be a turkey, fat from gorging on the autumn grains.
“Boy’s got a nice eye, Mrs. Claire,” said Myers, nodding approvingly. “Those be wily birds, turkeys. Even the Indians don’t take ’em easy.”
It was early for Thanksgiving, but I was delighted with the bird, which would be the first substantial item in our larder. So was Jamie, though his pleasure lay more in the thing’s tail feathers, which would provide him with a good supply of quills.
“I must write to the Governor,” he explained over dinner, “to say that I shall be taking up his offer, and to give the particulars of the land.” He picked up a chunk of cake and bit into it absently.
“Do watch out for nutshells,” I said, a little nervously. “You don’t want to break a tooth.”
Dinner consisted of trout grilled over the fire, yams baked in it, wild plums, and a very crude cake made of flour from hickory nuts, ground up in my mortar. We had been living mostly on fish and what edible vegetation I could scrounge, Ian and Jamie having been too busy with the building to take time to hunt. I rather hoped that Myers would see fit to stay for a bit—long enough to bag a deer or some other nice large source of protein. A winter of dried fish seemed a little daunting.
“Dinna fash, Sassenach,” Jamie murmured through a mouthful of cake, and smiled at me. “It’s good.” He turned his attention to Duncan.
“When we’ve done with eating, Duncan, you’ll maybe walk wi’ me to the river, and choose your place?”
Innes’s face went blank, then flushed with a mixture of pleasure and dismay.
“My place? Land, ye mean, Mac Dubh?” Involuntarily, he hunched the shoulder on the side with the missing arm.
“Aye, land.” Jamie speared a hot yam with a sharpened stick, and began to peel it carefully with his fingers, not looking at Innes. “I shall be needing you to act as my agent, Duncan—if ye will. It’s only right ye should be paid. Now, what I am thinking—if ye should find it fair, mind—is that I shall make the claim for a homestead in your name, but as ye willna be here to work it, Ian and I will see to putting a bit of your land to corn, and to building a wee croft there. Then come time, you shall have a place to settle, if ye like, and a bit of corn put by. Will that suit ye, do ye think?”
Duncan’s face had been going through an array of emotions as Jamie spoke, from dismay to amazement to a cautious sort of excitement. The last thing that would ever have occurred to him was that he might own land. Penniless, and unable to work with his hands, in Scotland he would have lived as a beggar—if he had lived at all.
“Why—” he began, then stopped and swallowed, knobbly Adam’s apple bobbing. “Aye, Mac Dubh. That will suit fine.” A small, incredulous smile had formed on his face as Jamie spoke, and stayed there, as though Duncan were unaware of it.
“Agent.” He swallowed again, and reached for one of the bottles of ale he had brought. “What will ye have me to do for ye, Mac Dubh?”
“The two things, Duncan, and ye will. First is to find me settlers.” Jamie waved a hand at the beginnings of our new cabin, which so far consisted entirely of a fieldstone foundation, the framing of the floor, and a wide slab of dark slate selected for the hearthstone, presently leaning against the foundation.
“I canna be leaving here just at present, myself. What I want ye to do is to find as many as ye can of the men who were transported from Ardsmuir. They’ll have been scattered, but they came through Wilmington; a many of them will be in North or South Carolina. Find as many as ye can, tell them what I’m about here—and bring as many as are willing here in the spring.”
Duncan was nodding slowly, lips pursed beneath his drooping mustache. Few men wore such facial adornment, but it suited him, making him look like a thin but benevolent walrus.
“Verra well,” he said. “And the second?”
Jamie glanced at me, then at Duncan.
“My aunt,” he said. “Will ye undertake to help her, Duncan? She’s great need of an honest man, who can deal wi’ the naval bastards and speak for her in business.”
Duncan had showed no hesitation in agreeing to comb several hundred miles of colony in search of settlers for our enterprise, but the notion of dealing with naval bastards struck him with profound uneasiness.
“Business? But I dinna ken aught of—”
“Dinna fash,” Jamie said, smiling at his friend, and the adjuration worked on Duncan as well as it did on me; I could see the mounting uneasiness in Duncan’s eyes begin to recede. For roughly the ten-thousandth time, I wondered how he did it.
“It’ll be little trouble to ye,” Jamie said soothingly. “My aunt kens well enough what’s to be done; she can tell ye what to say and what to do—it’s only she needs a man for the saying and doing of it. I shall write a letter to her, for ye to take back, explaining that ye’ll be pleased to act for her.”
During the latter part of this conversation, Ian had been digging about in the packs that had been unloaded from the mules. Now he withdrew a flat piece of metal, and squinted at it curiously.
“What’s this?” he asked, of no one in particular. He held it out for us to see; a flat piece of dark metal, pointed at one end like a knife, with rudimentary crosspieces. It looked like a small dirk that had been run over by a steamroller.
“Iron for your hearth.” Duncan reached for the piece, and handed it, handle-first, to Jamie. “It was Miss Jo’s thought.”
“Was it? That was kind.” Jamie’s face was weathered to deep bronze by long days in the open, but I saw the faint flush of pink on the side of his neck. His thumb stroked the smooth surface of the iron, and then he handed it to me.
“Keep it safe, Sassenach,” he said. “We’ll bless our hearth before Duncan leaves.”
I could see that he was deeply touched by the gift, but didn’t understand entirely why, until Ian had explained to me that one buries iron beneath a new hearth, to ensure blessing and prosperity on the house.
It was Jocasta’s blessing on our venture; her acceptance of Jamie’s decision—and forgiveness for what must have seemed his abandonment. It was more than generosity, and I folded the small piece of iron carefully into my handkerchief, and put it in my pocket for safekeeping.
* * *
We blessed the hearth two days later, standing in the wall-less cabin. Myers had removed his hat, from respect, and Ian had washed his face. Rollo was present, too, as was the small white pig, who was required to attend as the personification of our “flocks,” despite her objections; the pig saw no point in being removed from her meal of acorns to participate in a ritual so notably lacking in food.
Ignoring piercing pig-screams of annoyance, Jamie held the small iron knife upright by its tip, so that it formed a cross, and said quietly,
“God, bless the world and all that is therein.
God, bless my spouse and my children,
God, bless the eye that is in my head,
And bless, God, the handling of my hand,
What time I rise in the morning early,
What time I lie down late in bed,
Bless my rising in the morning early,
And my lying down late in bed.”
He reached out and touched first me, then Ian—and with a grin, Rollo and the pig—with the iron, before going on:
“God, protect the house, and the household,
God, consecrate the children of the motherhood,
God, encompass the flocks and the young,
Be Thou after them and tending them,
What time the flocks ascend hill and wold,
What time I lie down to sleep.
What time the flocks ascend hill and wold,
What time I lie down in peace to sleep.
“Let the fire of thy blessing burn forever upon us, O God.”
He knelt then by the hearth and placed the iron into the small hole dug for it, covered it over, and tamped the dirt flat. Then he and I took the ends of the big hearthstone, and laid it carefully into place.
I should have felt quite ridiculous, standing in a house with no walls, attended by a wolf and a pig, surrounded by wilderness and mocked by mockingbirds, engaged in a ritual more than half pagan. I didn’t.
Jamie stood in front of the new hearth, stretched out a hand to me, and drew me to stand by the hearthstone beside him. Looking down at the slate before us, I suddenly thought of the abandoned homestead we had found on our journey north; the fallen timbers of the roof, and the cracked hearthstone, from which a hollybush had sprouted. Had the unknown founders of that place thought to bless their hearth—and failed anyway? Jamie’s hand tightened on mine, in unconscious reassurance.
On a flat rock outside the cabin, Duncan kindled a small fire, Myers holding the steel for him to strike. Once begun, the fire was coaxed into brightness, and a brand taken from it. Duncan held this in his one hand, and walked sunwise around the cabin’s foundation, chanting in loud Gaelic. Jamie translated for me as he sang:
“The safeguard of Fionn mac Cumhall be yours,
The safeguard of Cormac the shapely be yours,
The safeguard of Conn and Cumhall be yours,
From wolf and from bird-flock
From wolf and from bird-flock.”
He paused in his chanting as he came to each point of the compass, and bowing to the “four airts,” swept his brand in a blazing arc before him. Rollo, plainly disapproving of these pyromaniac goings-on, growled deep in his throat, but was firmly shushed by Ian.
“The shield of the King of Fiann be yours,
The shield of the king of the sun be yours,
The shield of the king of the stars be yours,
In jeopardy and distress
In jeopardy and distress.”
There were a good many verses; Duncan circled the house three times. It was only as he reached the final point, next to the freshly laid hearthstone, that I realized Jamie had laid out the cabin so that the hearth lay to the north; the morning sun fell warm on my left shoulder and threw our mingled shadows to the west.
“The sheltering of the king of kings be yours,
The sheltering of Jesus Christ be yours,
The sheltering of the spirit of Healing be yours,
From evil deed and quarrel,
From evil dog and red dog.”
With a look down his nose at Rollo, Duncan stopped by the hearth, and gave the brand to Jamie, who stooped in turn and set alight the waiting pile of kindling. Ian gave a Gaelic whoop as the flame blazed up, and there was general applause.
* * *
Later, we saw Duncan and Myers off. They were bound not for Cross Creek but, rather, for Mount Helicon, where the Scots of the region held a yearly Gathering in the autumn, to give thanks for successful harvests, to exchange news and transact business, to celebrate marriages and christenings, to keep the far-flung elements of clan and family in touch.
Jocasta and her household would be there; so would Farquard Campbell and Andrew MacNeill. It was the best place for Duncan to begin his task of finding the scattered men of Ardsmuir; Mount Helicon was the largest of the Gatherings; Scots would come there from as far away as South Carolina and Virginia.
“I shall be here come spring, Mac Dubh,” Duncan promised Jamie as he mounted. “With as many men as I can fetch to ye. And I shall hand on your letters without fail.” He patted the pouch by his saddle, and tugged his hat down to shade his eyes from the rich September sun. “Will ye have a word for your aunt?”
Jamie paused for a moment, thinking. He had written to Jocasta already; was there anything to add?
“Tell my aunt I shall not see her at the Gathering this year, or perhaps at the next. But the one after that, I shall be there without fail—and my people with me. Godspeed, Duncan!”
He slapped Duncan’s horse on the rump, and stood by me waving as the two horses dropped over the edge of the ridge and out of sight. The parting gave me an odd feeling of desolation; Duncan was our last and only link with civilization. Now we were truly alone.
Well, not quite alone, I amended. We had Ian. To say nothing of Rollo, the pig, three horses, and two mules that Duncan had left us, to manage the spring plowing. Quite a little establishment, in fact. My spirits rose in contemplation; within the month, the cabin would be finished, and we would have a solid roof over our heads. And then—
“Bad news, Auntie,” said Ian’s voice in my ear. “The pig’s eaten the rest of your nutmeal.”