We found Colum in the kirkyard, sitting on a stone bench where the late afternoon sun could warm his back. His blackthorn stick lay on the bench beside him, and his short, bowed legs dangled a few inches above the ground. Shoulders hunched and head bowed in thought, at a distance he looked like a gnome, a natural inhabitant of this man-made rock garden, with its tilted stones and creeping lichens. I eyed a prime specimen on a weathered vault, but supposed we had better not stop.
The grass was soundless under our feet, but Colum raised his head while we were still some distance away. There was nothing wrong with his senses, at least.
The shadow under a nearby lime tree moved slightly at our approach. There was nothing wrong with Angus Mhor's senses, either. Satisfied of our identity, the big servant resumed his silent guardianship, becoming again part of the landscape.
Colum nodded in greeting and motioned to the seat beside him. Near at hand, there was no suggestion of the gnomish, despite his twisted body. Face-to-face, you saw nothing but the man within.
Jamie found me a seat on a nearby stone, before taking up the place indicated next to Colum. The marble was surprisingly cold, even through my thick skirts, and I shifted a bit, the carved skull and crossbones atop the memorial lumpy and uncomfortable under me. I saw the epitaph carved below it and grinned:
Here lies Martin Elginbrod,
Have mercie on my soul, Lord God,
As I would do were I Lord God,
And thou wert Martin Elginbrod.
Jamie raised one brow at me in warning, then turned back to Colum. "You asked to see us, Uncle?"
"I've a question for ye, Jamie Fraser," Colum said, without preamble. "D'ye hold me as your kinsman?"
Jamie was silent for a moment, studying his uncle's face. Then he smiled faintly.
"You've my mother's eyes," he said. "Shall I deny that?"
Colum looked startled for a moment. His eyes were the clear, soft gray of a dove's wing, fringed thick with black lashes. For all their beauty, they could gleam cold as steel, and I wondered, not for the first time, just what Jamie's mother had been like.
"You remember your mother? You were no more than a wee laddie when she died."
Jamie's mouth twisted slightly at this, but he answered calmly.
"Old enough. For that matter, my father's house had a looking glass; I'm told I favor her a bit."
Colum laughed shortly. "More than a bit." He peered closely at Jamie, eyes squinting slightly in the bright sun. "Oh, aye, lad; you're Ellen's son, not a doubt of it. That hair, for the one thing…" He gestured vaguely toward Jamie's hair, glinting auburn and amber, roan and cinnabar, a thick, wavy mass with a thousand colors of red and gold. "…And that mouth." Colum's own mouth rose at one side, as though in reluctant reminiscence. "Wide as a nightjar's, I used to tease her. Ye could catch bugs like a toad, I'd say to her, had ye no but a sticky tongue."
Taken by surprise, Jamie laughed.
"Willie said that once, to me," he said, and then the full lips clamped shut; he spoke rarely of his dead elder brother, and never, I imagined, had he mentioned Willie to Colum before.
If Colum noticed the slip, he gave no sign of it.
"I wrote to her then," he said, looking abstractedly at one of the tilted stones nearby. "When your brother and the babe died of the pox. That was the first time, since she left Leoch."
"Since she wed my father, ye mean."
Colum nodded slowly, still looking away.
"Aye. She was older than me, ye ken, by two years or so; about the same as between your sister and you." The deep-set gray eyes swiveled back and fixed on Jamie.
"I've never met your sister. Were ye close, the two of you?"
Jamie didn't speak, but nodded slightly, studying his uncle closely, as though looking for the answer to a puzzle in the worn face before him.
Colum nodded, too. "It was that way between Ellen and myself. I was a sickly wee thing, and she nursed me often. I remember the sun shining through her hair, and she telling me tales as I lay in bed. Even later"—the fine-cut lips lifted in a slight smile—"when my legs first gave way; she'd come and go, all about Leoch, and stop each morning and night in my chamber, to tell me who she'd seen and what they'd said. We'd talk, about the tenants and the tacksmen, and how things might be arranged. I was married then, but Letitia had no mind for such matters, and less interest." He flipped a hand, dismissing his wife.
"We talked between us—sometimes with Dougal, sometimes alone—of how the fortunes of the clan might best be maintained; how peace might be kept among the septs, which alliances could be made with other clans, how the lands and the timber should be managed.…And then she left," he said abruptly, looking down at the broad hands folded on his knee. "With no asking of leave nor word of farewell. She was gone. And I heard of her from others now and then, but from herself—nothing."
"She didn't answer your letter?" I asked softly, not wanting to intrude. He shook his head, still looking down.
"She was ill; she'd lost a child, as well as having the pox. And perhaps she meant to write later; it's an easy task to put off." He smiled briefly, without humor, and then his face relaxed into somberness. "But by Christmas twelve-month, she was dead."
He looked directly at Jamie, who met his gaze squarely.
"I was a bit surprised, then, when your father wrote to tell me he was taking you to Dougal, and wished ye then to come to me at Leoch for your schooling."
"It was agreed so, when they wed," Jamie answered. "That I should foster with Dougal, and then come to you for a time." The dry twigs of a larch rattled in a passing wind, and he and Colum both hunched their shoulders against the sudden chill of it, their family resemblance exaggerated by the similarity of the gesture.
Colum saw my smile at their resemblance, and one corner of his mouth turned up in answer.
"Oh, aye," he said to Jamie. "But agreements are worth as much as the men who make them, and nay more. And I didna know your father then."
He opened his mouth to go on, but then seemed to reconsider what he had been about to say. The silence of the kirkyard flowed back into the space their conversation had made, filling in the gap as though no word were ever spoken.
It was Jamie, finally, who broke the silence once more.
"What did ye think of my father?" he asked, and I glimpsed in his tone that curiosity of a child who has lost his parents early, seeking clues to the identity of these people known only from a child's restricted point of view. I understood the impulse; what little I knew of my own parents came almost entirely from Uncle Lamb's brief and unsatisfactory answers to my questions—he was not a man given to character analysis.
Colum, on the other hand, was.
"What was he like, d'ye mean?" He looked his nephew over carefully, then gave a short grunt of amusement.
"Look ye in the mirror, lad," he said, a half-grudging smile lingering on his face. "If it's your mother's face ye see, it's your father looking back at ye through those damned Fraser cat-eyes." He stretched and shifted his position, easing his bones on the lichened stone bench. His lips were pressed tight, by habit, against any exclamation of discomfort, and I could see what had made those deep creases between nose and mouth.
"To answer ye, though," he went on, once more comfortably settled, "I didn't like the man overmuch—nor he me—but I knew him at once for a man of honor." He paused, then said, very softly, "I know you for the same, Jamie MacKenzie Fraser."
Jamie didn't change expression, but there was a faint quiver to his eyelids; only one as familiar with him as I was—or as observant as Colum was—would have noticed.
Colum let out his breath in a long sigh.
"So, lad, that's why I wished to talk with you. I must decide, ye see, whether the MacKenzies of Leoch go for King James or King Geordie." He smiled sourly. "It's a case, I think, of the devil ye know, or the devil ye don't, but it's a choice I must make."
"Dougal—" Jamie began, but his uncle cut him off with a sharp motion of his hand.
"Aye, I know what Dougal thinks—I've had little rest from it, these two years past," he said impatiently. "But I am the MacKenzie of Leoch, and it's mine to decide. Dougal will abide by what I say. I'd know what you'd advise me to do—for the sake of the clan whose blood runs in your veins."
Jamie glanced up, eyes dark blue and impervious, hooded against the afternoon sun that shone in his face.
"I am here, and my men with me," he said. "Surely my choice is plain?"
Colum shifted himself again, head cocked attentively to his nephew, as though to catch any nuances of voice or expression that might give him a clue.
"Is it?" he asked. "Men give their allegiance for any number of reasons, lad, and few of them have much to do with the reasons they speak aloud. I've talked with Lochiel, and Clanranald, and Angus and Alex MacDonald of Scotus. D'ye think they're here only because they feel James Stuart their rightful king? Now I would talk with you—and hear the truth, for the sake of your father's honor."
Seeing Jamie hesitate, Colum went on, still watching his nephew keenly.
"I don't ask for myself; if you've eyes, ye can see that the matter isn't one that will trouble me long. But for Hamish—the lad is your cousin, remember. If there's to be a clan for him to lead, once he's of age—then I must choose rightly, now."