An Echo in the Bone
Page 54

He glanced up at it, tempted. He couldn’t read the letters without Bree; that wouldn’t be right. But the two books—they’d looked briefly at the books when they found the box, but had been concerned mostly with the letters and with finding out what had happened to Claire and Jamie. Feeling like Jem absconding with a packet of chocolate biscuits, he brought the box down carefully—it was very heavy—and set it on the desk, rummaging carefully down under the letters.
The books were small, the largest what was called a crown octavo volume, about five by seven inches. It was a common size, from a time when paper was expensive and difficult to get. The smaller was likely a crown sixteenmo, only about four by five inches. He smiled briefly, thinking of Ian Murray; Brianna had told him her cousin’s scandalized response to her description of toilet paper. He might never wipe his arse again without a feeling of extravagance.
The small one was carefully bound in blue-dyed calfskin, with gilt-edged pages; an expensive, beautiful book. Pocket Principles of Health, it was entitled, by C. E. B. F. Fraser, M.D. A limited edition, produced by A. Bell, Printer, Edinburgh.
That gave him a small thrill. So they’d made it to Scotland, under the care of Captain Trustworthy Roberts. Or at least he supposed they must—though the scholar in him cautioned that this wasn’t proof; it was always possible that the manuscript had somehow made it to Scotland, without necessarily being carried in person by the author.
Had they come here? he wondered. He looked around the worn, comfortable room, easily envisioning Jamie at the big old desk by the window, going through the farm ledgers with his brother-in-law. If the kitchen was the heart of the house—and it was—this room had likely always been its brain.
Moved by impulse, he opened the book and nearly choked. The frontispiece, in customary eighteenth-century style, showed an engraving of the author. A medical man, in a neat tiewig and black coat, with a high black stock. From above which his mother-in-law’s face looked serenely out at him.
He laughed out loud, causing Annie Mac to peer cautiously in at him, in case he might be having a fit of some kind, as well as talking to himself. He waved her off and shut the door before returning to the book.
It was her, all right. The wide-spaced eyes under dark brows, the graceful firm bones of cheek, temple, and jaw. Whoever had done the engraving had not got her mouth quite right; it had a sterner shape here, and a good thing, too—no man had lips like hers.
How old… ? He checked the date of printing: MDCCLXXVIII. 1778. Not much older than when he’d last seen her, then—and looking still a good deal younger than he knew her to be.
Was there a picture of Jamie in the other … ? He seized it and flipped it open. Sure enough, another steel-point engraving, though this was a more homely drawing. His father-in-law sat in a wing chair, his hair tied simply back, a plaid draped over the chair behind him, and a book open upon his knee. He was reading to a small child sitting upon his other knee—a little girl with dark curly hair. She was turned away, absorbed in the story. Of course—the engraver couldn’t have known what Mandy’s face would look like.
Grandfather Tales, the book was titled, with the subtitle, “Stories from the Highlands of Scotland and the Backcountry of the Carolinas,” by James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser. Again, printed by A. Bell, Edinburgh, in the same year. The dedication said simply, For my grandchildren.
Claire’s portrait had made him laugh; this one moved him almost to tears, and he closed the book gently.
Such faith they had had. To create, to hoard, to send these things, these fragile documents, down through the years, with only the hope that they would survive and reach those for whom they were intended. Faith that Mandy would be here to read them one day. He swallowed, the lump in his throat painful.
How had they managed it? Well, they did say faith moved mountains, even if his own seemed presently not adequate to flatten a molehill.
“Jesus,” he muttered, not sure if this was simple frustration or a prayer for assistance.
A flicker of motion through the window distracted him from the paper, and he glanced up to see Jem coming out of the kitchen door at the far end of the house. He was red in the face, small shoulders hunched, and had a large string bag in one hand, through which Roger could see a bottle of lemon squash, a loaf of bread, and a few other foodlike bulges. Startled, Roger looked at the clock on the mantel, thinking he had lost complete track of time—but he hadn’t. It was just on one o’clock.
“What the—” Shoving the paper aside, he got up and made for the back of the house, emerging just in time to see Jem’s small figure, clad in windcheater and jeans—he wasn’t allowed to wear jeans to school—making its way across the hayfield.
Roger could have caught him up easily, but instead slowed his pace, following at a distance.
Plainly Jem wasn’t ill—so likely something drastic had happened at school. Had the school sent him home, or had he simply left on his own? No one had called, but it was just past the school’s dinner hour; if Jem had seized the opportunity to run for it, it was possible they hadn’t yet missed him. It was nearly two miles to walk, but that was nothing to Jem.
Jem had got to the stile in the drystone dyke that walled the field, hopped over, and was making determinedly across a pasture full of sheep. Where was he heading?
“And what the bloody hell did you do this time?” Roger muttered to himself.
Jem had been in the village school at Broch Mordha for only a couple of months—his first experience with twentieth-century education. After their return, Roger had tutored Jem at home in Boston, while Bree was with Mandy during her recovery from the surgery that had saved her life. With Mandy safe home again, they’d had to decide what to do next.
It was mostly Jem that had made them go to Scotland rather than stay in Boston, though Bree had wanted that anyway.
“It’s their heritage,” she’d argued. “Jem and Mandy are Scots on both sides, after all. I want to keep that for them.” And the connection with their grandfather; that went without saying.
He’d agreed, and agreed also that Jem would likely be less conspicuous in Scotland—despite exposure to television and months in the United States, he still spoke with a strong Highland lilt that would make him a marked man in a Boston elementary school. On the other hand, as Roger observed privately, Jem was the sort of person who drew attention, no matter what.
Still, there was no question that life on Lallybroch and in a small Highland school were a great deal more like what Jem had been accustomed to in North Carolina—though given the natural flexibility of kids, he thought he’d adapt pretty well to wherever he found himself.
As to his own prospects in Scotland … he’d kept quiet about that.
Jem had reached the end of the pasture and shooed off a group of sheep that were blocking the gate that led to the road. A black ram lowered its head and menaced him, but Jem wasn’t bothered about sheep; he shouted and swung his bag, and the ram, startled, backed up sharply, making Roger smile.
He had no qualms about Jem’s intelligence—well, he did, but not about its lack. Much more about what kind of trouble it could lead him into. School wasn’t simple for anyone, let alone a new school. And a school in which one stuck out, for any reason … Roger remembered his own school in Inverness, where he was peculiar first for having no real parents, and then as the minister’s adopted son. After a few miserable weeks of being poked, taunted, and having his lunch stolen, he’d started hitting back. And while that had led to a certain amount of difficulty with the teachers, it had eventually taken care of the problem.
Had Jem been fighting? He hadn’t seen any blood, but he might not have been close enough. He’d be surprised if it was that, though.
There’d been an incident the week before, when Jem had noticed a large rat scurrying into a hole under the school’s foundation. He had brought a bit of twine with him next day, set a snare just before going in to the first lesson, and gone out at the recess to retrieve his prey, which he had then proceeded to skin in a businesslike manner, to the admiration of his male classmates and the horror of the girls. His teacher hadn’t been best pleased, either; Miss Glendenning was a city woman from Aberdeen.
Still, it was a Highland village school, and most of the students came from the nearby farms and crofts. Their fathers fished and hunted—and they certainly understood about rats. The principal, Mr. Menzies, had congratulated Jem on his cunning, but told him not to do it again at school. He had let Jem keep the skin, though; Roger had nailed it ceremoniously to the door of the toolshed.
Jem didn’t trouble opening the pasture gate; just ducked between the bars, dragging the bag after him.
Was he making for the main road, planning to hitchhike? Roger put on a bit of speed, dodging black sheep droppings and kneeing his way through a cluster of grazing ewes, who gave way in indignation, uttering sharp baahs.
No, Jem had turned the other way. Where the devil could he be going? The dirt lane that led to the main road in one direction led absolutely nowhere in the other—it petered out where the land rose into steep, rocky hills.
And that, evidently, was where Jem was headed—for the hills. He turned out of the lane and began climbing, his small form almost obscured by the luxuriant growth of bracken and the drooping branches of rowan trees on the lower slopes. Evidently he was taking to the heather, in the time-honored manner of Highland outlaws.
It was the thought of Highland outlaws that made the penny drop. Jem was heading for the Dunbonnet’s cave.
Jamie Fraser had lived there for seven years after the catastrophe of Culloden, almost within sight of his home but hidden from Cumberland’s soldiers—and protected by his tenants, who never used his name aloud but called him “the Dunbonnet,” for the color of the knitted Highland bonnet he wore to conceal his fiery hair.
That same hair flashed like a beacon, halfway up the slope, before disappearing again behind a rock.
Realizing that, red hair or no, he could easily lose Jem in the rugged landscape, Roger lengthened his stride. Ought he to call out? He knew approximately where the cave was—Brianna had described its location to him—but he hadn’t yet been up there himself. It occurred to him to wonder how Jem knew where it was. Perhaps he didn’t and was searching for it.
Still, he didn’t call, but started up the hill himself. Now he came to look, he could see the narrow path of a deer trail through the growth and the partial print of a small sneaker in the mud of it. He relaxed a little at the sight, and slowed down. He wouldn’t lose Jem now.
It was quiet on the hillside, but the air was moving, restless in the rowan trees.
The heather was a haze of rich purple in the hollows of the soaring rock above him. He caught the tang of something on the wind and turned after it, curious. Another flash of red: a stag, splendidly antlered and reeking of rut, ten paces from him on the slope below. He froze, but the deer’s head came up, wide black nostrils flaring to scent the air.
He realized suddenly that his hand was pressed against his belt, where he’d once carried a skinning knife, and his muscles were tensed, ready to rush down and cut the deer’s throat, once the hunter’s shot took it down. He could all but feel the tough hairy skin, the pop of the windpipe, and the gush of hot, reeking blood over his hands, see the long yellow teeth exposed, slimed with the green of the deer’s last meal.
The stag belled, a guttural, echoing roar, his challenge to any other stag within hearing. For the space of a breath, Roger expected one of Ian’s arrows to whir out of the rowans behind the deer or the echo of Jamie’s rifle to crack the air. Then he shook himself back into his skin and, bending, picked up a stone to throw—but the deer had heard him and was off, with a crash that took it rattling into the dry bracken.
He stood still, smelling his own sweat, still dislocated. But it wasn’t the North Carolina mountains, and the knife in his pocket was meant for cutting twine and opening beer bottles.
His heart was pounding, but he turned back to the trail, still fitting himself back into time and place. Surely it got easier with practice? They’d been back well more than a year now, and still he woke sometimes at night with no notion where or when he was—or, worse, stepped through some momentary wormhole into the past while still awake.
The kids, being kids, hadn’t seemed to suffer much from that sense of being … otherwhere. Mandy, of course, had been too young and too sick to remember anything, either of her life in North Carolina or the trip through the stones. Jem remembered. But Jem—he’d taken one look at the automobiles on the road they’d reached half an hour after their emergence from the stones on Ocracoke and stood transfixed, a huge grin spreading across his face as the cars whizzed past him.
“Vroom,” he’d said contentedly to himself, the trauma of separation and time travel—Roger had himself barely been able to walk, feeling that he had left a major and irretrievable piece of himself trapped in the stones—apparently forgotten.
A kindly motorist had stopped for them, sympathized with their story of a boating accident, and driven them to the village, where a collect phone call to Joe Abernathy had sorted out the immediate contingencies of money, clothes, a room, and food. Jem had sat on Roger’s knee, gazing open-mouthed out the window as they drove up the narrow road, the wind from the open window fluttering his soft, bright hair.
Couldn’t wait to do it again. And once they’d got settled at Lallybroch, had pestered Roger into letting him drive the Morris Mini round the farm tracks, sitting in Roger’s lap, small hands clenching the steering wheel in glee.
Roger smiled wryly to himself; he supposed he was lucky Jem had decided to abscond on foot this time—another year or two, and he’d likely be tall enough to reach the pedals. He’d best start hiding the car keys.