They lowered her hastily into the shallow grave, her children and mother beside her, and left Brianna and me to build a small cairn over them, in the ancient Scottish way, to mark the place and provide protection from wild beasts, while a more rudimentary resting place was dug for the two barefoot men.
The work finally done, everyone gathered, white-faced and silent, around the new-made mounds. I saw Roger stand close beside Brianna, his arm protectively about her waist. A small shudder went through her, which I thought had nothing to do with the cold. Their child, Jemmy, was a year or so younger than the smallest girl.
“Will ye speak a word, Mac Dubh?” Kenny Lindsay glanced inquiringly at Jamie, pulling his knitted bonnet down over his ears against the growing chill.
It was nearly nightfall, and no one wanted to linger. We would have to make camp, somewhere well away from the stink of burning, and that would be hard enough, in the dark. But Kenny was right; we couldn’t leave without at least some token of ceremony, some farewell for the strangers.
Jamie shook his head.
“Nay, let Roger Mac speak. If these were Dutchmen, belike they were Protestant.”
Dim as the light was, I saw the sharp glance Brianna shot at her father. It was true that Roger was a Presbyterian; so was Tom Christie, a much older man whose dour face reflected his opinion of the proceedings. The question of religion was no more than a pretext, though, and everyone knew it, including Roger.
Roger cleared his throat with a noise like tearing calico. It was always a painful sound; there was anger in it now as well. He didn’t protest, though, and he met Jamie’s eyes straight on, as he took his place at the head of the grave.
I had thought he would simply say the Lord’s Prayer, or perhaps one of the gentler psalms. Other words came to him, though.
“Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard: I cry aloud, but there is no judgment. He hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass, and He hath set darkness in my paths.”
His voice had once been powerful, and beautiful. It was choked now, no more than a rasping shadow of its former beauty—but there was sufficient power in the passion with which he spoke to make all those who heard him bow their heads, faces lost in shadow.
“He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone: and my hope hath He removed like a tree.” His face was set, but his eyes rested for a bleak moment on the charred stump that had served the Dutch family for a chopping block.
“He hath put my brethren far from me, and mine acquaintance are verily estranged from me. My kinsfolk have failed, and my familiar friends have forgotten me.” I saw the three Lindsay brothers exchange glances, and everyone drew a little closer together, against the rising wind.
“Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends,” he said, and his voice softened, so that it was difficult to hear him, above the sighing of the trees. “For the hand of God has touched me.”
Brianna made a slight movement beside him, and he cleared his throat once more, explosively, stretching his neck so that I caught a glimpse of the rope scar that marred it.
“Oh, that my words were now written! Oh, that they were printed in a book! That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever!”
He looked slowly round from face to face, his own expressionless, then took a deep breath to continue, voice cracking on the words.
“For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body”—Brianna shuddered convulsively, and looked away from the raw mound of dirt—“yet in my flesh shall I see God. Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold.”
He stopped, and there was a brief collective sigh, as everyone let out the breath they had been holding. He wasn’t quite finished, though. He had reached out, half-unconsciously, for Bree’s hand, and held it tightly. He spoke the last words almost to himself, I thought, with little thought for his listeners.
“Be ye afraid of the sword: for wrath bringeth the punishments of the sword, that ye may know there is a judgment.”
I shivered, and Jamie’s hand curled round my own, cold but strong. He looked down at me, and I met his eyes. I knew what he was thinking.
He was thinking, as I was, not of the present, but the future. Of a small item that would appear three years hence, in the pages of the Wilmington Gazette, dated February 13, 1776.
It is with grief that the news is received of the deaths by fire of James MacKenzie Fraser and his wife, Claire Fraser, in a conflagration that destroyed their house in the settlement of Fraser’s Ridge, on the night of January 21 last. Mr. Fraser, a nephew of the late Hector Cameron of River Run Plantation, was born at Broch Tuarach in Scotland. He was widely known in the Colony and deeply respected; he leaves no surviving children.
It had been easy, so far, not to think too much of it. So far in the future, and surely not an unchangeable future—after all, forewarned was forearmed . . . wasn’t it?
I glanced at the shallow cairn, and a deeper chill passed through me. I stepped closer to Jamie, and put my other hand on his arm. He covered my hand with his, and squeezed tight in reassurance. No, he said to me silently. No, I will not let it happen.
As we left the desolate clearing, though, I could not free my mind of one vivid image. Not the burned cabin, the pitiful bodies, the pathetic dead garden. The image that haunted me was one I had seen some years before—a gravestone in the ruins of Beauly Priory, high in the Scottish Highlands.
It was the tomb of a noble lady, her name surmounted by the carving of a grinning skull—very like the one beneath the Dutchwoman’s apron. Beneath the skull was her motto:
Hodie mihi cras tibi—sic transit gloria mundi.
My turn today—yours tomorrow. Thus passes the glory of the world.
3
KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE
WE RETURNED TO FRASER’S RIDGE just before sunset the next day, to discover a visitor waiting. Major Donald MacDonald, late of His Majesty’s army, and even more lately of Governor Tryon’s personal light-horse guard, was sitting on the front stoop, my cat in his lap and a jug of beer beside him.
“Mrs. Fraser! Your servant, mum,” he called genially, seeing me approach. He tried to stand up, but then let out a gasp as Adso, objecting to the loss of his cozy nest, dug his claws into the Major’s thighs.
“Do sit, Major,” I said, waving him hastily back. He subsided with a grimace, but nobly refrained from flinging Adso into the bushes. I came up onto the stoop beside him and sat down, sighing with relief.
“My husband is just seeing to the horses; he’ll be down directly. I see that someone’s made you welcome?” I nodded at the beer, which he promptly offered to me with a courtly gesture, wiping the neck of the jug on his sleeve.
“Oh, yes, mum,” he assured me. “Mrs. Bug has been most assiduous of my welfare.”
Not to seem uncordial, I accepted the beer, which in all truth went down very well. Jamie had been anxious to get back, and we’d been in the saddle since dawn, with only a brief break for refreshment at midday.
“It is a most excellent brew,” the Major said, smiling as I exhaled after swallowing, my eyes half-closing. “Your own making, perhaps?”
I shook my head and took another swallow, before handing the jug back to him. “No, it’s Lizzie’s. Lizzie Wemyss.”
“Oh, your bondmaid; yes, of course. Will you give her my compliments?”
“Isn’t she here?” I glanced toward the open door behind him, rather surprised. At this time of day, I would have expected Lizzie to be in the kitchen, making supper, but she would surely have heard our arrival and come out. There was no smell of cooking, now that I noticed. She wouldn’t have known when to expect us, of course, but . . .
“Mm, no. She is . . .” The Major knitted his brows in the effort of recall, and I wondered how full the jug had been before he got at it; there were no more than a couple of inches left now. “Ah, yes. She went to the McGillivrays’ with her father, Mrs. Bug said. To visit her affianced, I believe?”
“Yes, she’s engaged to Manfred McGillivray. But Mrs. Bug—”
“—is in the springhoose,” he said, with a nod up the hill toward the small shed. “A matter of cheese, I believe she said. An omelette was most graciously proposed for my supper.”
“Ah . . .” I relaxed a bit more, the dust of the ride settling with the beer. It was wonderful to come home, though my sense of peace was uneasy, tainted by the memory of the burned cabin.
I supposed that Mrs. Bug would have told him our errand, but he made no reference to it—nor to whatever had brought him up to the Ridge. Naturally not; all business would wait appropriately for Jamie. Being female, I would get impeccable courtesy and small bits of social gossip in the meantime.
I could do social gossip, but needed to be prepared for it; I hadn’t a natural knack.
“Ah . . . Your relations with my cat seem somewhat improved,” I hazarded. I glanced involuntarily at his head, but his wig had been expertly mended.
“It is an accepted principle of politics, I believe,” he said, ruffling his fingers through the thick silver fur on Adso’s belly. “Keep your friends close—but your enemies closer.”
“Very sound,” I said, smiling. “Er . . . I hope you haven’t been waiting long?”
He shrugged, intimating that any wait was irrelevant—which it generally was. The mountains had their own time, and a wise man did not try to hurry them. MacDonald was a seasoned soldier, and well-traveled—but he had been born in Pitlochry, close enough to the Highland peaks to know their ways.
“I came this morning,” he said. “From New Bern.”
Small warning bells went off in the back of my mind. It would have taken him a good ten days to travel from New Bern, if he had come directly—and the state of his creased and mud-stained uniform suggested that he had.
New Bern was where the new royal governor of the colony, Josiah Martin, had taken up his residence. And for MacDonald to have said, “From New Bern,” rather than mentioning some later stop on his journey, made it reasonably plain to me that whatever business had impelled this visit, it had originated in New Bern. I was wary of governors.
I glanced toward the path that led to the paddock, but Jamie wasn’t visible yet. Mrs. Bug was, emerging from the springhouse; I waved to her and she gestured enthusiastically in welcome, though hampered by a pail of milk in one hand, a bucket of eggs in the other, a crock of butter under one arm, and a large chunk of cheese tucked neatly underneath her chin. She negotiated the steep descent with success, and disappeared round the back of the house, toward the kitchen.
“Omelettes all round, it looks like,” I remarked, turning back to the Major. “Did you happen to come through Cross Creek, by chance?”
“I did indeed, mum. Your husband’s aunt sends you her kind regards—and a quantity of books and newspapers, which I have brought with me.”
I was wary of newspapers these days, too—though such events as they reported had undoubtedly taken place several weeks—or months—previously. I made appreciative noises, though, wishing Jamie would hurry up, so I could excuse myself. My hair smelled of burning and my hands still remembered the touch of cold flesh; I wanted a wash, badly.