"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.
"Gone to sleep, has he?" The larger Jamie's bulk loomed near my shoulder, the firelight picking out the hilt of his dirk, and the gleam of copper in his hair.
"Yes," I said. "At least he's not squirming, so he must have. It's rather like holding a large ham."
Jamie laughed, then was still himself. I could feel the hardness of his arm just brushing mine, and the warmth of his body through the folds of plaid and arisaid.
A night breeze brushed a strand of hair across my face. I brushed it back, and discovered that small Jamie was right; my hands smelled of leeks and butter, and the starchy smell of cut potatoes. Asleep, he was a dead weight, and while holding him was comforting, he was cutting off the circulation in my left leg. I twisted a bit, intending to lay him across my lap.
"Don't move, Sassenach," Jamie's voice came softly, next to me. "Just for a moment, mo duinne—be still."
I obligingly froze, until he touched me on the shoulder.
"That's all right, Sassenach," he said, with a smile in his voice. "It's only that ye looked so beautiful, wi' the fire on your face, and your hair waving in the wind. I wanted to remember it."
I turned to face him, then, and smiled at him, across the body of the child. The night was dark and cold, alive with people all around, but there was nothing where we sat but light and warmth—and each other.
33
THY BROTHER'S KEEPER
Fergus, after an initial period of silent watchfulness from corners, had become a part of the household, taking on the official position of stable-lad, along with young Rabbie MacNab.
While Rabbie was a year or two younger than Fergus, he was as big as the slight French lad, and they quickly became inseparable friends, except on the occasions when they argued—which was two or three times a day—and then attempted to kill each other. After a fight one morning had escalated into a punching, kicking, fist-swinging brawl that rolled through the dairy shed and spilled two pannikins of cream set out to sour, Jamie took a hand.
With an air of long-suffering grimness, he had taken each miscreant by the scruff of a skinny neck, and removed them to the privacy of the barn, where, I assumed, he overcame any lingering scruples he might have had about the administration of physical retribution. He strode out of the barn, shaking his head and buckling his belt back on, and left with Ian to ride up the valley to Broch Mordha. The boys had emerged some time later, substantially subdued and—united in tribulation—once more the best of friends.
Sufficiently subdued, in fact, to allow young Jamie to tag along with them as they did their chores. As I glanced out the window later in the morning, I saw the three of them playing in the dooryard with a ball made of rags. It was a cold, misty day, and the boys' breath rose in soft clouds as they galloped and shouted.
"Nice sturdy little lad you've got there," I remarked to Jenny, who was sorting through her mending basket in search of a button. She glanced up, saw what I was looking at, and smiled.
"Oh, aye, wee Jamie's a dear lad." She came to join me by the window, peering out at the game below.
"He's the spit of his da," she remarked fondly, "but he's going to be a good bit wider through the shoulder, I think. He'll maybe be the size of his uncle; see those legs?" I thought she was probably right; while small Jamie, nearly four, still had the chunky roundness of a toddler, his legs were long, and the small back was wide and flat with muscle. He had the long, graceful bones of his uncle, and the same air his larger namesake projected, of being composed of something altogether tougher and springier than mere flesh.
I watched the little boy pounce on the ball, scoop it up with a deft snatch, and throw it hard enough to sail past the head of Rabbie MacNab, who raced off, shouting, to retrieve it.
"Something else is like his uncle," I said. "I think he's maybe going to be left-handed, too."
"Oh, God!" said Jenny, brow furrowed as she peered at her offspring. "I hope not, but you're maybe right." She shook her head, sighing.
"Lord, when I think of the trouble poor Jamie had, from being caurry-fisted! Everybody tried to break him of it, from my parents to the schoolmaster, but he always was stubborn as a log, and wouldna budge. Everybody but Ian's father, at least," she added, as an afterthought.
"He didn't think being left-handed was wrong?" I asked curiously, aware that the general opinion of the times was that left-handedness was at the best unlucky, and at the worst, a symptom of demonic possession. Jamie wrote—with difficulty—with his right hand, because he had been beaten regularly at school for picking up the quill with his left.
Jenny shook her head, black curls bobbing under her kertch.
"No, he was a queer man, auld John Murray. He said if the Lord had chosen to strengthen Jamie's left arm so, then 'twould be a sin to spurn the gift. And he was a rare man wi' a sword, auld John, so my father listened, and he let Jamie learn to fight left-handed."
"I thought Dougal MacKenzie taught Jamie to fight left-handed," I said. I rather wondered what Jenny thought of her uncle Dougal.
She nodded, licking the end of a thread before putting it through the eye of her needle with one quick poke.
"Aye, it was, but that was later, when Jamie was grown, and went to foster wi' Dougal. It was Ian's father taught him his first strokes." She smiled, eyes on the shirt in her lap.
"I remember, when they were young, auld John told Ian it was his job to stand to Jamie's right, for he must guard his chief's weaker side in a fight. And he did—they took it verra seriously, the two of them. And I suppose auld John was right, at that," she added, snipping off the excess thread. "After a time, nobody would fight them, not even the MacNab lads. Jamie and Ian were both fair-sized, and bonny fighters, and when they stood shoulder to shoulder, there was no one could take the pair o' them down, even if they were outnumbered."
She laughed suddenly, and smoothed back a lock of hair behind her ear.
"Watch them sometime, when they're walking the fields together. I dinna suppose they even realize they do it still, but they do. Jamie always moves to the left, so Ian can take up his place on the right, guardin' the weak side."
Jenny gazed out the window, the shirt momentarily forgotten in her lap, and laid a hand over the small swelling of her stomach.
"I hope it's a boy," she said, looking at her black-haired son below. "Left-handed or no, it's good for a man to have a brother to help him." I caught her glance at the picture on the wall—a very young Jamie, standing between the knees of his elder brother, Willie. Both young faces were snub-nosed and solemn; Willie's hand rested protectively on his little brother's shoulder.
"Jamie's lucky to have Ian," I said.
Jenny looked away from the picture, and blinked once. She was two years older than Jamie; she would have been three years younger than William.
"Aye, he is. And so am I," she said softly, picking up the shirt once more.
I took a child's smock from the mending basket and turned it inside out, to get at the ripped seam beneath the armhole. It was too cold out for anyone but small boys at play or men at work, but it was warm and cozy in the parlor; the windows fogged over quickly as we worked, isolating us from the icy world outside.
"Speaking of brothers," I said, squinting as I threaded my own needle, "did you see Dougal and Colum MacKenzie much, as you were growing up?"
Jenny shook her head. "I've never met Colum. Dougal came here a time or two, bringing Jamie home for Hogmanay or such, but I canna say I know him well." She looked up from her mending, slanted eyes bright with interest. "You'll know them, though. Tell me, what's Colum MacKenzie like? I always wondered, from the bits of things I'd hear from visitors, but my parents never would speak of him." She paused a moment, a crease between her brows.