"An apology," he said hoarsely. "For lacking the time to send me the document, in order that I might sign it myself. And his gratitude, for my loyal support. Jesus, Claire! What am I going to do?"
It was a cry from the heart, and one to which I had no answer. I watched helplessly as he sank onto a hassock and sat staring, rigid, at the fire.
Jenny, transfixed by all this drama, moved now to take up the letters and the broadsheet. She read them over carefully, her lips moving slightly as she did so, then set them gently down on the polished tabletop. She looked at them, frowning, then crossed to her brother, and laid a hand on his shoulder.
"Jamie," she said. Her face was very pale. "There's only the one thing ye can do, my dearie. Ye must go and fight for Charles Stuart. Ye must help him win."
The truth of her words penetrated slowly through the layers of shock that wrapped me. The publication of this Bond of Association branded those who signed it as rebels, and as traitors to the English crown. It didn't matter now how Charles had managed, or where he had gotten the funds to begin; he was well and truly launched on the seas of rebellion, and Jamie—and I—were launched with him, willy-nilly. There was, as Jenny had said, no choice.
My eye caught Charles's letter, where it had fallen from Jamie's hand. "…Though there be manie who tell me I am foolish to embark in this werk without the support of Louis—or at least of his bankes!—I will entertain no notion at all of returning to that place from whence I come," it read. "Rejoice with me, my deare frend, for I am come Home."
35
MOONLIGHT
As the preparations for leaving went forward, a current of excitement and speculation ran all through the estate. Weapons hoarded since the Rising of the '15 were excavated from thatch and hayrick and hearth, burnished and sharpened. Men met in passing and paused to talk in earnest groups, heads together under the hot August sun. And the women grew quiet, watching them.
Jenny shared with her brother the capacity to be opaque, to give no clue of what she was thinking. Transparent as a pane of glass myself, I rather envied this ability. So, when she asked me one morning if I would fetch Jamie to her in the brewhouse, I had no notion of what she might want with him.
Jamie stepped in behind me and stood just within the door of the brewhouse, waiting as his eyes adjusted to the dimness. He took a deep breath, inhaling the bitter, damp pungency with evident enjoyment.
"Ahh," he said, sighing dreamily. "I could get drunk in here just by breathing."
"Weel, hold your breath, then, for a moment, for I need ye sober," his sister advised.
He obligingly inflated his lungs and puffed out his cheeks, waiting. Jenny poked him briskly in the stomach with the handle of her masher, making him double over in an explosion of breath.
"Clown," she said, without rancor. "I wanted to talk to ye about Ian."
Jamie took an empty bucket from the shelf, and upturning it, sat down on it. A faint glow from the oiled-paper window above him lit his hair with a deep copper gleam.
"What about Ian?" he asked.
Now it was Jenny's turn to take a deep breath. The wide bran tub before her gave off a damp warmth of fermentation, filled with the yeasty aroma of grain, hops, and alcohol.
"I want ye to take Ian with you, when ye go."
Jamie's eyebrows flew up, but he didn't say anything immediately. Jenny's eyes were fixed on the motions of the masher, watching the smooth roil of the mixture. He looked at her thoughtfully, big hands hanging loose between his thighs.
"Tired of marriage, are ye?" he asked conversationally. "Likely it would be easier just for me to take him out in the wood and shoot him for ye." There was a quick flash of blue eyes over the mash tub.
"If I want anyone shot, Jamie Fraser, I'll do it myself. And Ian wouldna be my first choice as target, either."
He snorted briefly, and one corner of his mouth quirked up.
"Oh, aye? Why, then?"
Her shoulders moved in a seamless rhythm, one motion fading into the next.
"Because I'm asking ye."
Jamie spread his right hand out on his knee, absently stroking the jagged scar that zigzagged its way down his middle finger.
"It's dangerous, Jenny," he said quietly.
"I know that."
He shook his head slowly, still gazing down at his hand. It had healed well, and he had good use of it, but the stiff fourth finger and the roughened patch of scar tissue on the back gave it an odd, crooked appearance.
"You think ye know."
"I know, Jamie."
His head came up, then. He looked impatient, but was striving to stay reasonable.
"Aye, I know Ian will ha' told ye stories, about fighting in France, and all. But you've no notion how it really is, Jenny. Mo cridh, it isna a matter of a cattle raid. It's a war, and likely to be a damn bloody shambles of one, too. It's—"
The masher struck the side of the tub with a clack and fell back into the mash.
"Don't tell me I dinna ken what it's like!" Jenny blazed at him. "Stories, is it? Who d'ye think nursed Ian when he came home from France wi' half a leg and a fever that nearly killed him?"
She slapped her hand flat on the bench. The stretched nerves had snapped.
"Don't know? I don't know? I picked the maggots out of the raw flesh of his stump, because his own mother couldna bring herself to do it! I held the hot knife against his leg to seal the wound! I smelled his flesh searing like a roasted pig and listened to him scream while I did it! D'ye dare to stand there and tell me I…don't…KNOW how it is!"
Angry tears ran down her cheeks. She brushed at them, groping in her pocket for a handkerchief.
Lips pressed tight together, Jamie rose, pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve, and handed it to her. He knew better than to touch or try to comfort her. He stood staring at her for a moment as she wiped furiously at her eyes and dripping nose.
"Aye, well, ye know, then," he said. "And yet you want me to take him?"
"I do." She blew her nose and wiped it briskly, then tucked the handkerchief in her pocket.
"He kens well enough that he's crippled, Jamie. Kens it a good bit too well. But he could manage with ye. There's a horse for him; he wouldna have to walk."
He made an impatient gesture with one hand.
"Could he manage is no the question, is it? A man can do what he thinks he must—why do you think he must?"
Composed once more, she fished the tool out of the mash and shook it. Brown droplets spattered into the tub.
"He hasna asked ye, has he? Whether ye'll need him or no?"
"No."
She stabbed the masher back into the tub and resumed her work.
"He thinks ye wilna want him because he's lame, and that he'd be no use to ye." She looked up then, troubled dark-blue eyes the twins of her brother's. "Ye knew Ian before, Jamie. He's different now."
He nodded reluctantly, resuming his seat on the bucket.
"Aye. Well, but ye'd expect it, no? And he seems well enough." He looked up at his sister and smiled.
"He's happy wi' ye, Jenny. You and the bairns."
She nodded, black curls bobbing.
"Aye, he is," she said softly. "But that's because he's a whole man to me, and always will be." She looked directly at her brother. "But if he thinks he's of no use to you, he wilna be whole to himself. And that's why I'll have ye take him."
Jamie laced his hands together, elbows braced on his knees, and rested his chin on his linked knuckles.
"This wilna be like France," he said quietly. "Fighting there, ye risk no more than your life in battle. Here…" He hesitated, then went on. "Jenny, this is treason. If it goes wrong, those that follow the Stuarts are like to end on a scaffold."
Her normally pale complexion went a shade whiter, but her motions didn't slow.
"There's nay choice for me," he went on, eyes steady on her. "But will ye risk us both? Will ye have Ian look down from the gallows on the fire waiting for his entrails? You'll chance raising your bairns wi'out their father—to save his pride?" His face was nearly as pale as hers, glimmering in the darkness of the brewhouse.
The strokes of the masher were slower now, without the fierce velocity of her earlier movements, but her voice held all the conviction of her slow, inexorable mashing.
"I'll have a whole man," she said steadily. "Or none."
Jamie sat without moving for a long moment, watching his sister's dark head bent over her work.
"All right," he said at last, quietly. She didn't look up or vary her movements, but the white kertch seemed to incline slightly toward him.
He sighed explosively, then rose and turned abruptly to me.
"Come on out of here, Sassenach," he said. "Christ, I must be drunk."
"What makes ye think you can order me about?" The vein in Ian's temple throbbed fiercely. Jenny's hand squeezed mine tighter.
Jamie's assertion that Ian would accompany him to join the Stuart army had been met first with incredulity, then with suspicion, and—as Jamie persisted—anger.
"You're a fool," Ian declared flatly. "I'm a cripple, and ye ken it well enough."
"I ken you're a bonny fighter, and there's none I'd rather have by my side in a battle," Jamie said firmly. His face gave no sign of doubts or hesitation; he had agreed to Jenny's request, and would carry it out, no matter what. "You've fought there often enough; will ye desert me now?"