The Fiery Cross (142 page)

That was a limited resource, though. We had fifteen acres in new barley, which—bar hailstones, forest fires, and other Acts of God—would eventually be made into nearly a hundred kegs of whisky, which could be sold or traded for quite a lot, even completely raw and unaged. The barley was still green in the field, though, and the whisky no more than a profitable phantom.

In the meantime, we had used or sold almost all the spirit on hand. True, there were fourteen small kegs of spirit remaining—buried in a small cave above the whisky-spring—but that couldn’t be used. From each distilling, Jamie put aside two kegs, to be religiously kept for aging. The eldest barrel in this cache was only two years old; it would stay there for ten more, God willing, to emerge as liquid gold—and almost as valuable as the solid kind.

The immediate financial demands were not going to wait ten years, though. Beyond the possibility of a gunsmith’s shop for Manfred McGillivray and a modest dowry for Lizzie, there were the normal expenses of farming, livestock maintenance, and an ambitious plan to provide ploughshares to every tenant—many of whom were still tilling by hand.

And beyond our own expenses, there was one very burdensome obligation. Bloody Laoghaire MacKenzie damn-her-eyes Fraser.

She wasn’t precisely an ex-wife—but she wasn’t precisely not an ex-wife, either. Thinking me permanently gone, if not actually dead, Jamie had married her, under the prodding of his sister Jenny. The marriage had rather quickly proved to be a mistake, and upon my reappearance, an annulment had been sought, to the relief—more or less—of all parties.

Generous to a fault, though, Jamie had agreed to pay a large sum to her in annual maintenance, plus a dowry to each of her daughters. Marsali’s dowry was being paid gradually, in land and whisky, and there was no news of Joan’s impending marriage. But the money to keep Laoghaire in whatever style she kept in Scotland was falling due—and we didn’t have it.

I glanced at Jamie, who was brooding, eyes half-closed over his long, straight nose. I didn’t bother suggesting that we allow Laoghaire to put in for a gaberlunzie badge and go begging through the parish. No matter what he thought of the woman personally, he considered her his responsibility, and that was that.

I supposed that paying the debt in casks of salt fish and lye-soap was not a suitable option, either. That left us three alternatives: We could sell the whisky from the cache, though that would be a great loss in the long term. We could borrow money from Jocasta; possible, but highly distasteful. Or we could sell something else. Several horses, for instance. A large number of pigs. Or a jewel.

The candle was burning strongly, and the wax around the wick had melted. Looking down into the clear puddle of molten wax, I could see them: three gemstones, dark against the pale gray-gold of the candle, their vivid hues subdued but still visible in the wax. An emerald, a topaz, and a black diamond.

Jamie didn’t touch them, but stared at them, thick ruddy brows drawn together in concentration.

Selling a gemstone in colonial North Carolina would not be easy; it would likely require a trip to Charleston or Richmond. It could be done, though, and would result in enough money to pay Laoghaire her blood-money, as well as to meet the other mounting expenses. The gemstones had a value, though, that went beyond money—they were the currency of travel through the stones; protection for the life of a traveler.

What few things we knew about that perilous journey were based largely on the things that Geillis Duncan had written or had told me; it was her contention that gems gave a traveler not only protection from the chaos in that unspeakable space between the layers of time, but some ability to navigate, as it were—to choose the time in which one might emerge.

Moved by impulse, I went back to the shelf, and standing on tiptoe, groped for the hide-wrapped bundle hidden in the shadows there. It was heavy in my hand, and I unwrapped it carefully, laying the oval stone on the desk beside the candle. It was a large opal, its fiery heart revealed within a matrix of dull stone by the carving that covered the surface—a spiral; a primitive drawing of the snake that eats its tail.

The opal was the property of another traveler—the mysterious Indian called Otter-Tooth. An Indian whose skull showed silver fillings in the teeth; an Indian who seemed at one time to have spoken English. He had called this stone his “ticket back”—so it seemed that Geilie Duncan was not the only one who believed that gemstones had some power in that dreadful place . . . between.

“Five, the witch said,” Jamie said thoughtfully. “She said ye needed five stones?”

“She thought so.” It was a warm evening, but the down hairs on my jaw prickled at the thought of Geilie Duncan, of the stones—and of the Indian I had met on a dark hillside, his face painted black for death, just before I had found the opal, and the skull buried with it. Was it his skull we had buried, silver fillings and all?

“Was it needful for the stones to be polished, or cut?”

“I don’t know. I think she said cut ones were better—but I don’t know why she thought so—or if she was right.” That was always the rub; we knew so little for sure.

He made a little
hmf
noise, and rubbed the bridge of his nose slowly with one knuckle.

“Well, we’ve these three, and my father’s ruby. Those are cut and polished stones, and that makes four. Then that wee bawbee”—he glanced at the opal—“and the stone in your amulet, which are not.” The point here being that the cut or polished stones would fetch a great deal more in cash than would the rough opal or the raw sapphire in my medicine bag. And yet—could we risk losing a stone that might be needed, that might someday spell the difference between life and death for Bree or Roger?

“It’s not likely,” I said, answering his thought, rather than his words. “Bree will stay, certainly until Jemmy’s grown; perhaps for good.” After all, how could one abandon a child, the possibility of grandchildren? And yet, I had done it. I rubbed a finger absently over the smooth metal of my gold ring.

“Aye. But the lad?” He looked up at me, one eyebrow raised, the candlelight clear in his eyes, blue as sapphires cut and polished.

“He wouldn’t,” I said. “He wouldn’t leave Bree and Jemmy.” I spoke stoutly, but there was a thread of doubt in my heart, and it was reflected in my voice.

“Not yet,” Jamie said quietly.

I took a deep breath, but did not reply. I knew very well what he meant. Wrapped in silence, Roger seemed to withdraw further day by day.

His fingers had healed; I had suggested to Brianna that perhaps he would find solace in his bodhran. She had nodded, doubtfully. I didn’t know whether she had mentioned it to him or not—but the bodhran hung on the wall of their cabin, silent as its owner.

He did still smile and play with Jemmy, and was unfailingly attentive to Brianna—but the shadow in his eyes never lessened, and when he was not required for some chore, he would disappear for hours, sometimes all day, to walk the mountains, returning after dark, exhausted, dirt-stained—and silent.

“He hasna slept with her, has he? Since it happened?”

I sighed, brushing a strand of hair off my forehead.

“A few times. I asked. My guess would be that it hasn’t happened lately, though.”

Bree was doing her best to keep him close, to draw him out of the depths of his gathering depression—but it was clear to me, as well as to Jamie, that she was losing the battle, and knew it. She too was growing silent, and had shadows in her eyes.

“If he went . . . back . . . might there be a cure for his voice? There in your own time?” Jamie ran a finger over the opal as he spoke, eyes following the spiral as his finger traced it.

I sighed again, and sat down.

“I don’t know. There would be help—perhaps surgery, certainly speech therapy. I can’t say how
much
it would help; no one can. The thing is . . . he might recover a good deal of his voice naturally, if he’d only work at it. But he isn’t going to do that. And of course,” honesty compelled me to add, “he might
not
get it back, no matter how hard he worked.”

Jamie nodded, silent. Regardless of the possibilities of medical help, the fact was that if the marriage between Roger and Brianna failed, there was nothing whatever to keep him here. Whether he would choose to go back then . . .

Jamie sat up in his chair, and blew the candle out.

“Not yet,” he said in the darkness, his voice firm. “We’ve a few weeks yet before I must send money to Scotland; I’ll see what else we might contrive. For now, we’ll keep the stones.”

Last night I dreamed that I was making bread. Or at least I was trying to make bread. I’d be mixing dough and suddenly realize that I didn’t have any flour. Then I’d put the bread in pans and put it in the oven and realize that it hadn’t risen, and take it back out. I’d knead it and knead it and then I’d be carrying it around in a bowl under a cloth, looking for a warm place to put it, because you have to keep it warm or the yeast dies, and I was getting frantic because I couldn’t find a warm place; there was a cold wind blowing and the bowl was heavy and slippery and I thought I was going to drop it; my hands and feet were freezing and going numb.

Then I woke up and I really was cold. Roger had pulled all the covers off and rolled himself up in them, and there was a terrible draft blowing in under the door. I nudged him and yanked on the blankets, but I couldn’t get them loose and I didn’t want to make a lot of noise and wake Jemmy up. Finally, I got up and got my cloak off the peg and went back to sleep under that.

Roger got up before me this morning and went out; I don’t think he noticed that he’d left me in the cold.

T
HE PACKAGE ARRIVED in August, by the good offices of Jethro Wainwright, one of the few itinerant peddlers with sufficient enterprise to ascend the steep and winding paths that led to the Ridge. Red-faced and wheezing from the climb and the work of unloading his donkey’s pack-frame, Mr. Wainwright handed me the package with a nod, and staggered gratefully off toward the kitchen at my invitation, leaving his donkey to crop grass in the yard.

It was a small parcel, a box of some sort, sewn up carefully in oilskin and tied with twine for good measure. It was heavy. I shook it, but the only sound was a soft clunking, as though whatever lay within was padded. The label read simply “To Mr. James Fraser, Esq., Fraser’s Ridge, the Carolinas.”

“Well, what do you suppose this is?” I asked the donkey. It was a rhetorical question, but the donkey, an amiable creature, looked up from her meal and hee-hawed in reply, stems of fescue hanging from the corner of her
mouth.

The sound set off answering cries of curiosity and welcome from Clarence and the horses, and within seconds, Jamie and Roger appeared from the direction of the barn, Brianna came out of the springhouse, and Mr. Bug rose up from behind the manure pile in his shirtsleeves like a vulture rising from a carcass, all drawn by the noise.

“Thanks,” I said to the donkey, who flicked a modest ear at me and went back to the grass.

“What is it?” Brianna stood on her toes to peer over Jamie’s shoulder as he took the package from me. “It’s not from Lallybroch, is it?”

“No, it’s neither Ian’s hand . . . nor my sister’s,” Jamie replied with no more than a brief hesitation, though I saw him glance twice to make sure. “It’s come a good way, though—by ship?” He held the parcel under my nose inquiringly. I sniffed and nodded.

“Yes; there’s a whiff of tar about it. No documents, though?”

He turned the package over, then shook his head.

“It had a seal, but that’s gone.” Grayish fragments of wax clung to the twine, but the seal that might have provided a clue to the sender had long since succumbed to the vicissitudes of travel and Mr. Wainwright’s pack.

“Ump.” Mr. Bug shook his head, squinting dubiously at the package. “Not a mattock.”

“No, it’s nay a mattock-head,” Jamie agreed, hefting the little parcel appraisingly. “Nor yet a book, let alone a quire of paper. I havena ordered anything else that I can think of. D’ye think it might be seeds, Sassenach? Mr. Stanhope did promise to send ye bits from his friend’s garden, aye?”

“Oh, it might be!” That was an exciting possibility; Mr. Stanhope’s friend Mr. Crossley had an extensive ornamental garden, with a large number of exotic and imported species, and Stanhope had offered to see whether Crossley might be amenable to an exchange; seeds and cuttings of some of the rarer European and Asian herbs from his collection, for bulbs and seeds from what Stanhope described as my “mountain fastness.”

Roger and Brianna exchanged a brief look. Seeds were a good deal less intriguing to them than either paper or books would be. Still, the novelty of any letter or package was sufficient that no one suggested opening it until the full measure of enjoyment should have been extracted from speculation about its contents.

In the event, the package was not opened until after supper, when everyone had had a chance to weigh the parcel, poke and sniff at it, and offer an opinion regarding its contents. Pushing his empty plate aside, Jamie finally took up the parcel with all due ceremony, shook it once more, and then handed it to me.