"It is a task of the greatest import, my James, and one that only you can do. It is true that men flock to my Father's standard; more come every day. Still, we must not haste to feel secure, no? By such luck, your kinsmen the MacKenzies have come to my aid. But you have to your family another side, eh?"
"No," Jamie said, a look of horror dawning on his face.
"But yes," said Charles, with a final squeeze. He swung around to face Jamie, beaming. "You will go to the north, to the land of your fathers, and return to me at the head of the men of clan Fraser!"
40
THE FOX'S LAIR
Do you know your grandfather well?" I asked, waving away an unseasonable deerfly that seemed unable to make up its mind whether I or the horse would make a better meal.
Jamie shook his head.
"No. I've heard he acts like a terrible auld monster, but ye shouldna be scairt of him." He smiled at me as I swatted at the deerfly with the end of my shawl. "I'll be with you."
"Oh, crusty old gentlemen don't bother me," I assured him. "I've seen a good many of those in my time. Soft as butter underneath, the most of them. I imagine your grandfather's much the same."
"Mm, no," he replied thoughtfully. "He really is a terrible auld monster. It's only, if ye act scairt of him, it makes him worse. Like a beast scenting blood, ye ken?"
I cast a look ahead, where the far-off hills that hid Beaufort Castle suddenly loomed in a rather sinister manner. Taking advantage of my momentary lack of attention, the deerfly made a strafing run past my left ear. I squeaked and ducked to the side, and the horse, taken aback by this sudden movement, shied in a startled manner.
"Hey! Cuir stad!" Jamie dove sideways to grab my reins, dropping his own. Better schooled than my own mount, his horse snorted, but accommodated this maneuver, merely flicking its ears in a complacently superior way.
Jamie dug his knees into his horse's sides, pulling mine to a stop alongside.
"Now then," he said, narrowed eyes following the zigzag flight of the humming deerfly. "Let him light, Sassenach, and I'll get him." He waited, hands raised at the ready, squinting slightly in the sunlight.
I sat like a mildly nervous statue, half-hypnotized by the menacing buzz. The heavy winged body, deceptively slow, hummed lazily back and forth between the horse's ears and my own. The horse's ears twitched violently, an impulse with which I was in complete sympathy.
"If that thing lands in my ear, Jamie, I'm going to—" I began.
"Shh!" he ordered, leaning forward in anticipation, left hand cupped like a panther about to strike. "Another second, and I'll have him."
Just then I saw the dark blob alight on his shoulder. Another deerfly, seeking a basking place. I opened my mouth again.
"Jamie…"
"Hush!" He clapped his hands together triumphantly on my tormentor, a split second before the deerfly on his collar sank its fangs into his neck.
Scottish clansmen fought according to their ancient traditions. Disdaining strategy, tactics, and subtlety, their method of attack was simplicity itself. Spotting the enemy within range, they dropped their plaids, drew their swords, and charged the foe, shrieking at the tops of their lungs. Gaelic shrieking being what it is, this method was more often successful than not. A good many enemies, seeing a mass of hairy, bare-limbed banshees bearing down on them, simply lost all nerve and fled.
Well schooled as it might ordinarily be, nothing had prepared Jamie's horse for a grade-A, number one Gaelic shriek, uttered at top volume from a spot two feet behind its head. Losing all nerve, it laid back its ears and fled as though the devil itself were after it.
My mount and I sat transfixed in the road, watching an outstanding exhibition of Scottish horsemanship as Jamie, both stirrups lost and the reins free, flung half out of his saddle by his horse's abrupt departure, heaved himself desperately forward, grappling for the mane. His plaid fluttered madly about him, stirred by the wind of his passing, and the horse, thoroughly panicked by this time, took the thrashing mass of color as an excuse to run even faster.
One hand tangled in the long mane, Jamie was grimly hauling himself upright, long legs clasping the horse's sides, ignoring the stirrup irons that danced beneath the beast's belly. Scraps of what even my limited Gaelic recognized as extremely bad language floated back on the gentle wind.
A slow, clopping sound made me look behind, to where Murtagh, leading the pack horse, was coming over the small rise we had just descended. He made his careful way down the road to where I waited. He pulled his animal to a leisurely stop, shaded his eyes, and looked ahead, to the spot where Jamie and his panicked mount were just vanishing over the next hilltop.
"A deerfly," I said, in explanation.
"Late for them. Still, I didna think he'd be in such a hurry to meet his grandsire as to leave ye behind," Murtagh remarked, with his customary dryness. "Not that I'd say a wife more or less will make much difference in his reception."
He picked up his reins and booted his pony into reluctant motion, the packhorse amiably coming along for the journey. My own mount, cheered by the company and reassured by a temporary absence of flies, stepped out quite gaily alongside.
"Not even an English wife?" I asked curiously. From the little I knew, I didn't think Lord Lovat's relations with anything English were much to cheer about.
"English, French, Dutch, or German. It isna like to make much difference; it'll be the lad's liver the Old Fox will be eatin' for breakfast, not yours."
"What do you mean by that?" I stared at the dour little clansman, looking much like one of his own bundles, under the loose wrapping of plaid and shirt. Somehow every garment that Murtagh put on, no matter how new or how well tailored, immediately assumed the appearance of something narrowly salvaged from a rubbish heap.
"What kind of terms is Jamie on with Lord Lovat?"
I caught a sidelong glance from a small, shrewd black eye, and then his head turned toward Beaufort Castle. He shrugged, in resignation or anticipation.
"No terms at all, 'til now. The lad's never spoken to his grandsire in his life."
"But how do you know so much about him if you've never met him?"
At least I was beginning to understand Jamie's earlier reluctance to approach his grandfather for help. Reunited with Jamie and his horse, the latter looking rather chastened, and the former irritable to a degree, Murtagh had gazed speculatively at him, and offered to ride ahead to Beaufort with the pack animal, leaving Jamie and me to enjoy lunch at the side of the road.
Over a restorative ale and oatcake, he had at length told me that his grandfather, Lord Lovat, had not approved of his son's choice of bride, and had not seen fit either to bless the union or to communicate with his son—or his son's children—anytime since the marriage of Brian Fraser and Ellen MacKenzie, more than thirty years before.
"I've heard a good bit about him, one way and another, though." Jamie replied, chewing a bite of cheese. "He's the sort of man that makes an impression on folk, ye ken."
"So I gather." The elderly Tullibardine, one of the Parisian Jacobites, had regaled me with a number of uncensored opinions regarding the leader of clan Fraser, and I thought that perhaps Brian Fraser had not been desolated at his father's inattention. I said as much, and Jamie nodded.
"Oh, aye. I canna recall my father having much good to say of the old man, though he wouldna be disrespectful of him. He just didna speak of him often." He rubbed at the side of his neck, where a red welt from the deerfly bite was beginning to show. The weather was freakishly warm, and he had unfolded his plaid for me to sit on. The deputation to the head of clan Fraser had been thought worth some investment in dignity, and Jamie wore a new kilt, of the buckled military cut, with the plaid a separate strip of cloth. Less enveloping for shelter from the weather than the older, belted plaid, it was a good deal more efficient to put on in a hurry.
"I wondered a bit," he said thoughtfully, "whether my father was the sort of father he was because of the way old Simon treated him. I didna realize it at the time, of course, but it's no so common for a man to show his feelings for his sons."
"You've thought about it a lot." I offered him another flask of ale, and he took it with a smile that lingered on me, more warming than the feeble autumn sun.
"Aye, I did. I was wondering, ye see, what sort of father I'd be to my own bairns, and looking back a bit to see, my own father being the best example I had. Yet I knew, from the bits that he said, or that Murtagh told me, that his own father was nothing like him, so I thought as how he must have made up his mind to do it all differently, once he had the chance."
I sighed a bit, setting down my bit of cheese.
"Jamie," I said. "Do you really think we'll ever—"
"I do," he said, with certainty, not letting me finish. He leaned over and kissed my forehead. "I know it, Sassenach, and so do you. You were meant to be a mother, and I surely dinna intend to let anyone else father your children."
"Well, that's good," I said. "Neither do I."
He laughed and tilted my chin up to kiss my lips. I kissed him back, then reached up to brush away a breadcrumb that clung to the stubble around his mouth.
"Ought you to shave, do you think?" I asked. "In honor of seeing your grandfather for the first time?"