Dragonfly in Amber
Page 59

He made an odd half-shrugging gesture, as though seeking to ease the pressure of his shirt across his shoulders. It was something he did when feeling awkward or unsure; I hadn't seen him do it in months.
"But Willie died. And so I am laird." He glanced at me, a little shyly, then reached into his sporran and pulled something out. A little cherrywood snake that Willie had carved for him as a birthday gift lay on his palm, head twisted as though surprised to see the tail following it.
Jamie stroked the little snake gently; the wood was shiny and seasoned with handling, the curves of the body gleaming like scales in early twilight.
"I talk to Willie, sometimes, in my mind," Jamie said. He tilted the snake on his palm. "If you'd lived, Brother, if ye'd been laird as you were meant to be, would ye do what I've done? or would ye find a better way?" He glanced down at me, flushing slightly. "Does that sound daft?"
"No." I touched the snake's smooth head with a fingertip. The high clear call of a meadowlark came from the far field, thin as crystal in the evening air.
"I do the same," I said softly, after a moment. "With Uncle Lamb. And my parents. My mother especially. I—I didn't think of her often, when I was young, just every now and then I'd dream about someone soft and warm, with a lovely singing voice. But when I was sick, after…Faith—sometimes I imagined she was there. With me." A sudden wave of grief swept over me, remembrance of losses recent and long past.
Jamie touched my face gently, wiping away the tear that had formed at the corner of one eye but not quite fallen.
"I think sometimes the dead cherish us, as we do them," he said softly. "Come on, Sassenach. Let's walk a bit; there's time before dinner."
He linked my arm in his, tight against his side, and we turned along the fence, walking slowly, the dry grass rustling against my skirt.
"I ken what ye mean, Sassenach," Jamie said. "I hear my father's voice sometimes, in the barn, or in the field. When I'm not even thinkin' of him, usually. But all at once I'll turn my head, as though I'd just heard him outside, laughing wi' one of the tenants, or behind me, gentling a horse."
He laughed suddenly, and nodded toward a corner of the pasture before us.
"It's a wonder I dinna hear him here, but I never have."
It was a thoroughly unremarkable spot, a wood-railed gate in the stone fence that paralleled the road.
"Really? What did he used to say here?"
"Usually it was ‘If ye're through talkin', Jamie, turn about and bend ower.' "
We laughed, pausing to lean on the fence. I bent closer, squinting at the wood.
"So this is where you got smacked? I don't see any toothmarks," I said.
"No, it wasna all that bad," he said, laughing. He ran a hand affectionately along the worn ash fence rail.
"We used to get splinters in our fingers, sometimes, Ian and me. We'd go up to the house after, and Mrs. Crook or Jenny would pick them out for us—scolding all the time."
He glanced toward the manor, where all the first-floor windows glowed with light against the gathering night. Dark forms moved briefly past the windows; small, quick-moving shadows in the kitchen windows, where Mrs. Crook and the maids were at the dinner preparations. A larger form, tall and slender as a fence rail, loomed suddenly in one of the drawing room windows. Ian stood a moment, silhouetted in the light as though called by Jamie's reminiscence. Then he drew the curtains and the window dulled to a softer, shrouded glow.
"I was always glad when Ian was with me," Jamie said, still looking toward the house. "When we got caught at some devilry and got thrashed for it, I mean."
"Misery loves company?" I said, smiling.
"A bit. I didna feel quite so wicked when there were the two of us to share the guilt between. But it was more that I could always count on him to make a lot of noise."
"What, to cry out, you mean?"
"Aye. He'd always howl and carry on something awful, and I knew he would do it, so I didna feel so ashamed of my own noise, if I had to cry out." It was too dark to see his face anymore, but I could still see the half-shrugging gesture he made when embarrassed or uncomfortable.
"I always tried not to, of course, but I couldna always manage. If my da thought it worth thrashing me over, he thought it worth doing a proper job. And Ian's father had a right arm like a tree bole."
"You know," I said, glancing down at the house, "I never thought of it particularly before, but why on earth did your father thrash you out here, Jamie? Surely there's enough room in the house—or the barn."
Jamie was silent for a moment, then shrugged again.
"I didna ever ask. But I reckon it was something like the King of France."
"The King of France." This apparent non sequitur took me aback a bit.
"Aye. I dinna ken," he said dryly, "quite what it's like to have to wash and dress and move your bowels in public, but I can tell ye that it's a verra humbling experience to have to stand there and explain to one of your father's tenants just what ye did that's about to get your arse scalded for ye."
"I imagine it must be," I said, sympathy mingled with the urge to laugh. "Because you were going to be laird, you mean? That's why he made you do it here?"
"I expect so. The tenants would know I understood justice—at least, from the receiving end."
32
FIELD OF DREAMS
The field had been plowed in the usual "rigs," high ridges of piled earth, with deep furrows drawn between them. The rigs rose knee-high, so a man walking down the furrows could sow his seed easily by hand along the top of the rig beside him. Designed for the planting of barley or oats, no reason had been seen to alter them for the planting of potatoes.
"It said ‘hills,' " Ian said, peering over the leafy expanse of the potato field, "but I thought the rigs would do as well. The point of the hills seemed to be to keep the things from rotting wi' too much water, and an old field wi' high rigs seemed like to do that as well."
"That seems sensible," Jamie agreed. "The top parts seem to be flourishing, anyway. Does the man say how ye ken when to dig the things up, though?"
Charged with the planting of potatoes in a land where no potato had ever been seen, Ian had proceeded with method and logic, sending to Edinburgh both for seed potatoes, and for a book on the subject of planting. In due course, A Scientific Treatise on Methods of Farming, by Sir Walter O'Bannion Reilly had made its appearance, with a small section on potato planting as presently practiced in Ireland.
Ian was carrying this substantial volume under one arm—Jenny had told me that he wouldn't go near the potato field without it, lest some knotty question of philosophy or technique occur to him while there—and now flipped it open, bracing it on one forearm as he groped in his sporran for the spectacles he wore when reading. These had belonged to his late father; small circles of glass, set in wire rims, and customarily worn on the end of his nose, they made him look like a very earnest young stork.
"Harvesting of the crop should be undertaken simultaneously with the appearance of the first winter goose," he read, then looked up, squinting accusingly over his spectacles at the potato field, as though expecting an indicative goose to stick its head up among the furrowed rigs.
"Winter goose?" Jamie peered frowning at the book over Ian's shoulder. "What sort of goose does he mean? Greylags? But ye see those all year. That canna be right."
Ian shrugged. "Maybe ye only see them in the winter in Ireland. Or maybe it's some kind of Irish goose he means, and not greylags at all."
Jamie snorted. "Well, the fat lot of good that does us. Does he say anything useful?"
Ian ran a finger down the lines of type, moving his lips silently. We had by now collected a small crowd of cottars, all fascinated by this novel approach to agriculture.
"Ye dinna dig potatoes when it's wet," Ian informed us, eliciting a louder snort from Jamie.
"Hmm," Ian murmured to himself. "Potato rot, potato bugs—we didna ha' any potato bugs, I suppose that's lucky—potato vines…umm, no, that's only what to do if the vines wilt. Potato blight—we canna tell if we have that until we see the potatoes. Seed potatoes, potato storage—"
Impatient, Jamie turned away from Ian, hands on his hips.
"Scientific farming, eh?" he demanded. He glared at the field of darkgreen, leafy vines. "I suppose it's too damn scientific to explain how ye tell when the bloody things are ready to eat!"
Fergus, who had been tagging along behind Jamie as usual, looked up from a caterpillar, inching its slow and fuzzy way along his forefinger.
"Why don't you just dig one up and see?" he asked.
Jamie stared at Fergus for a moment. His mouth opened, but no sound emerged. He shut it, patted Fergus gently on the head, and went to fetch a pitchfork from its place against the fence.
The cottars, all men who had helped to plant and tend the field under Ian's direction—assisted by Sir Walter—clustered round to see the results of their labor.
Jamie chose a large and flourishing vine near the edge of the field and poised the fork carefully near its roots. Visibly holding his breath, he put a foot on the heel of the fork and pushed. The tines slid slowly into the damp brown dirt.
I was holding my own breath. There was a good deal more depending on this experiment than the reputation of Sir Walter O'Bannion Reilly. Or my own, for that matter.
Jamie and Ian had confirmed that the barley crop this year was smaller than normal, though still sufficient for the needs of the Lallybroch tenants. Another bad year would exhaust the meager reserves of grain, though. For a Highland estate, Lallybroch was prosperous; but that was saying something only by comparison with other Highland farms. Successful potato planting could well make the difference between hunger and plenty for the folk of Lallybroch over the next two years.
Jamie's heel pressed down and he leaned back on the handle of the fork. The earth crumbled and cracked around the vine, and with a sudden, rending pop the potato vine lifted up and the earth revealed its bounty.
A collective "Ah!" went up from the spectators, at sight of the myriad brown globules clinging to the roots of the uprooted vine. Ian and I both fell to our knees in the dirt, scrabbling in the loosened soil for potatoes severed from the parent vine.
"It worked!" Ian kept saying as he pulled potato after potato out of the ground. "Look at that! See the size of it?"
"Yes, look at this one!" I exclaimed in delight, brandishing one the size of my two fists held together.
At length, we had the produce of our sample vine laid in a basket; perhaps ten good-sized potatoes, twenty-five or so fist-size specimens, and a number of small things the size of golf balls.
"What d'ye think?" Jamie scrutinized our collection quizzically. "Ought we to leave the rest, so the little ones will grow more? Or take them now, before the cold comes?"
Ian groped absently for his spectacles, then remembered that Sir Walter was over by the fence, and abandoned the effort. He shook his head.
"No, I think this is right," he said. "The book says ye keep the bittie ones for the seed potatoes for next year. We'll want a lot of those." He gave me a grin of relieved delight, his hank of thick, straight brown hair dropping across his forehead. There was a smudge of dirt down the side of his face.
One of the cottars' wives was bending over the basket, peering at its contents. She reached out a tentative finger and prodded one of the potatoes.
"Ye eat them, ye say?" Her brow creased skeptically. "I dinna see how ye'd ever grind them in a quern for bread or parritch."
"Well, I dinna believe ye grind them, Mistress Murray," Jamie explained courteously.
"Och, aye?" The woman squinted censoriously at the basket. "Well, what d'ye do wi' them, then?"
"Well, you…" Jamie started, and then stopped. It occurred to me, as it no doubt had to him, that while he had eaten potatoes in France, he had never seen one prepared for eating. I hid a smile as he stared helplessly at the dirt-crusted potato in his hand. Ian also stared at it; apparently Sir Walter was mute on the subject of potato cooking.
"You roast them." Fergus came to the rescue once more, bobbing up under Jamie's arm. He smacked his lips at the sight of the potatoes. "Put them in the coals of the fire. You eat them with salt. Butter's good, if you have it."
"We have it," said Jamie, with an air of relief. He thrust the potato at Mrs. Murray, as though anxious to be rid of it. "You roast them," he informed her firmly.
"You can boil them, too," I contributed. "Or mash them with milk. Or fry them. Or chop them up and put them in soup. A very versatile vegetable, the potato."
"That's what the book says," Ian murmured, with satisfaction.
Jamie looked at me, the corner of his mouth curling in a smile.
"Ye never told me you could cook, Sassenach."
"I wouldn't call it cooking, exactly," I said, "but I probably can boil a potato."
"Good." Jamie cast an eye at the group of tenants and their wives, who were passing the potatoes from hand to hand, looking them over rather dubiously. He clapped his hands loudly to attract attention.
"We'll be having supper here by the field," he told them. "Let's be fetching a bit of wood for a fire, Tom and Willie, and Mrs. Willie, if ye'd be so kind as to bring your big kettle? Aye, that's good, one of the men will help ye to bring it down. You, Kincaid—" He turned to one of the younger men, and waved off in the direction of the small cluster of cottages under the trees. "Go and tell everyone—it's potatoes for supper!"
And so, with the assistance of Jenny, ten pails of milk from the dairy shed, three chickens caught from the coop, and four dozen large leeks from the kailyard, I presided over the preparation of cock-a-leekie soup and roasted potatoes for the laird and tenants of Lallybroch.
The sun was below the horizon by the time the food was ready, but the sky was still alight, with streaks of red and gold that lanced through the dark branches of the pine grove on the hill. There was a little hesitation when the tenants came face-to-face with the proposed addition to their diet, but the party-like atmosphere—helped along by a judicious keg of home-brewed whisky—overcame any misgivings, and soon the ground near the potato field was littered with the forms of impromptu diners, hunched over bowls held on their knees.
"What d'ye think, Dorcas?" I overheard one woman say to her neighbor. "It's a wee bit queer-tasting, no?"
Dorcas, so addressed, nodded and swallowed before replying.
"Aye, it is. But the laird's eaten six o' the things so far, and they havena kilt him yet."
The response from the men and children was a good deal more enthusiastic, likely owing to the generous quantities of butter supplied with the potatoes.
"Men would eat horse droppings, if ye served them wi' butter," Jenny said, in answer to an observation along these lines. "Men! A full belly, and a place to lie down when they're drunk, and that's all they ask o' life."
"A wonder ye put up wi' Jamie and me," Ian teased, hearing her, "seein' ye've such a low opinion of men."
Jenny waved her soup ladle dismissively at husband and brother, seated side by side on the ground near the kettle.
"Och, you two aren't ‘men.' "
Ian's feathery brows shot upward, and Jamie's thicker red ones matched them.
"Oh, we're not? Well, what are we, then?" Ian demanded.
Jenny turned toward him with a smile, white teeth flashing in the firelight. She patted Jamie on the head, and dropped a kiss on Ian's forehead.
"You're mine," she said.
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.