BY MID-MORNING, there were enough rocks collected to begin the first pillar; with a nod and a murmur, they set to work, dragging and heaving, stacking and fitting, with now and then a muffled exclamation at a smashed finger or bruised toes.
Jamie heaved a big stone into place, then straightened up, gasping for breath.
Roger drew his own deep breath. It might as well be now; no better opportunity was likely to come.
“I’ve a favor to ask,” he said abruptly.
Jamie glanced up, breathing heavily, one eyebrow raised. He nodded, waiting for the request.
“Teach me to fight.”
Jamie wiped an arm across his streaming face, and blew out a deep breath.
“Ye ken well enough how to fight,” he said. One corner of his mouth quirked up. “D’ye mean will I teach ye to handle a sword without cutting off your foot?”
Roger kicked a stone back into the pile.
“That will do, to start.”
Jamie stood for a moment, looking him over. It was a thoroughly dispassionate examination, much as he would have given a bullock he thought to buy. Roger stood still, feeling the sweat stream down the groove of his back, and thought that once more, he was being compared—to his disadvantage—with the absent Ian Murray.
“You’re auld for it, mind,” Jamie said at last. “Most swordsmen start when they’re boys.” He paused. “I had my first sword at five.”
Roger had had a train when he was five. With a red engine that tooted its whistle when you pulled the cord. He met Jamie’s eye, and smiled pleasantly.
“Old for it, maybe,” he said. “But not dead.”
“Ye could be,” Fraser answered. “A little learning is a dangerous thing—a fool wi’ a blade by his side in a scabbard is safer than a fool who thinks he kens what to do with it.”
“A little learning is a dangerous thing,” Roger quoted. “Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring. Do you think me a fool?”
Jamie laughed, surprised into amusement.
“There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,” he replied, finishing the verse. “And drinking largely sobers us again. As for foolish—ye’ll no just be drunk on the thought of it, I suppose?”
Roger smiled slightly in reply; he had given up being surprised by the breadth of Jamie’s reading.
“I’ll drink deep enough to stay sober,” he said. “Will ye teach me?”
Jamie squinted, then lifted one shoulder slightly. “Ye’ve size to your credit, and a good reach, forbye.” He looked Roger head to toe once more and nodded. “Aye, ye’ll maybe do.”
He turned and walked away, toward the next heap of stones. Roger followed, feeling oddly gratified, as though he had passed some small but important test.
The test hadn’t yet begun, though. It was only partway through the building of the new pillar that Jamie spoke again.
“Why?” he asked, eyes on the huge stone he was slowly heaving into place. It was too heavy to lift, the size of a whisky keg. Knotted clumps of grass roots stuck out from under it, ripped out of the earth by the stone’s slow and brutal passage across the ground.
Roger bent to lend his own weight to the task. The lichens on the rock’s surface were rough under his palms, green and scabby with age.
“I’ve a family to protect,” he said. The rock moved grudgingly, sliding a few inches across the uneven ground. Jamie nodded, once, twice; on the silent “three,” they shoved together, with an echoed grunt of effort. The monster half-rose, paused, rose altogether and overbalanced, chunking down into place with a thunk! that quivered through the ground at their feet.
“Protect from what?” Jamie stood and wiped a wrist across his jaw. He glanced up and away, gesturing with his chin at the hanging pig. “I shouldna care to take on a panther wi’ a sword, myself.”
“Oh, aye?” Roger bent his knees and maneuvered another large rock into his arms. “I hear you’ve killed two bears—one with a dirk.”
“Aye, well,” Jamie said dryly. “A dirk’s what I had. As for the other—if it was a sword, it was Saint Michael’s, not mine.”
“Aye, and if ye’d known ahead of time that you might—ugh—meet it—would you not have armed yourself—better?” Roger bent his knees, lowering the stone carefully into place. He let it drop the last few inches, and wiped stinging hands on his breeks.
“If I’d known I should meet a damn bear,” Jamie said, grunting as he lifted another stone into place, “I would have taken another path.”
Roger snorted and wiggled the new stone, easing its fit against the others. There was a small gap at one side that left it loose; Jamie eyed it, walked to the stone pile, and picked up a small chunk of granite, tapered at one end. It fit the gap exactly, and the two men smiled involuntarily at each other.
“D’ye think there’s another path to take, then?” Roger asked.
Fraser rubbed a hand across his mouth, considering.
“If it’s the war ye mean—then, aye, I do.” He gave Roger a stare. “Maybe I’ll find it and maybe I won’t—but aye, there’s another path.”
“Maybe so.” He hadn’t meant the oncoming war, and he didn’t think Jamie had, either.
“As to bears, though . . .” Jamie stood still, eyes steady. “There’s a deal of difference, ye ken, between meeting a bear unawares—and hunting one.”
THE SUN STILL WASN’T VISIBLE, but it wasn’t necessary, either. Noon came as a rumbling in the belly, a soreness of the hands; a sudden awareness of the weariness of back and legs as timely as the chiming of a grandfather’s clock. The last large rock fell into place, and Jamie straightened up, gasping for breath.
By unspoken but mutual consent, they sat down with the packet of food, clean shirts draped across bare shoulders, against the chill of drying sweat.
Jamie chewed industriously, washing down a large bite with a gulp of ale. He made an involuntary face, pursed his lips to spit, then changed his mind and swallowed.
“Ach! Mrs. Lizzie’s been at the mash again.” He grimaced and took a remedial bite of biscuit, to erase the taste.
Roger grinned at his father-in-law’s face.
“What’s she put in it this time?” Lizzie had been trying her hand at flavored ales—with indifferent success.
Jamie sniffed warily at the mouth of the stone bottle.
“Anise?” he suggested, passing the bottle to Roger.
Roger smelt it, wrinkling up his nose involuntarily at the alcoholic whiff.
“Anise and ginger,” he said. Nevertheless, he took a cautious sip. He made the same face Jamie had, and emptied the bottle over a compliant blackberry vine.
“Waste not, want not, but . . .”
“It’s nay waste to keep from poisoning ourselves.” Jamie heaved himself up, took the emptied bottle, and set off toward the small stream on the far side of the field.
He came back, sat down, and handed Roger the bottle of water. “I’ve had word of Stephen Bonnet.”
It was said so casually that Roger didn’t register the meaning of the words at first.
“Have you?” he said at last. Piccalilli relish was oozing over his hand. Roger wiped the relish from his wrist with a finger, and put it into his mouth, but didn’t take another bite of sandwich; his appetite had vanished.
“Aye. I dinna ken where he is now—but I ken where he’ll be come next April—or rather, where I can cause him to be. Six months, and then we kill him. Do ye think that will give ye time?”
He was looking at Roger, calm as though he had suggested an appointment with a banker, rather than an appointment with death.
Roger could believe in netherworlds—and demons, too. He hadn’t dreamed last night, but the demon’s face floated always at the edge of his mind, just out of sight. Time to summon him, perhaps, and bring him into view. You had to call a demon up, didn’t you, before you could exorcise him?
There were preparations to make, though, before that could happen. He flexed his shoulders and his arms once more, this time in anticipation. The soreness had mostly gone.
“There’s mony an ane for him maks mane
but nane shall ken where he is gane.
O’er his white banes when they are bare,
The wind shall blaw forever mair, O—
The wind shall blaw forever mair.”
“Aye,” he said. “That’ll do.”