4

CULLODEN

What a mean little piggy face!” Brianna stooped to peer fascinated at the red-coated mannequin that stood menacingly to one side of the foyer in the Culloden Visitors Centre. He stood a few inches over five feet, powdered wig thrust belligerently forward over a low brow and pendulous, pink-tinged cheeks.

“Well, he was a fat little fellow,” Roger agreed, amused. “Hell of a general, though, at least as compared to his elegant cousin over there.” He waved a hand at the taller figure of Charles Edward Stuart on the other side of the foyer, gazing nobly off into the distance under his blue velvet bonnet with its white cockade, loftily ignoring the Duke of Cumberland.

“They called him ‘Butcher Billy.’ ” Roger gestured at the Duke, stolid in white knee breeches and gold-braided coat. “For excellent reason. Aside from what they did here”—he waved toward the expanse of the spring-green moor outside, dulled by the lowering sky—“Cumberland’s men were responsible for the worst reign of English terror ever seen in the Highlands. They chased the survivors of the battle back into the hills, burning and looting as they went. Women and children were turned out to starve, and the men shot down where they stood—with no effort to find out whether they’d ever fought for Charlie. One of the Duke’s contemporaries said of him, ‘He created a desert and called it peace’—and I’m afraid the Duke of Cumberland is still rather noticeably unpopular hereabouts.”

This was true; the curator of the visitors’ museum, a friend of Roger’s, had told him that while the figure of the Bonnie Prince was treated with reverent respect, the buttons off the Duke’s jacket were subject to constant disappearance, while the figure itself had been the butt of more than one rude joke.

“He said one morning he came in early and turned on the light, to find a genuine Highland dirk sticking in His Grace’s belly,” Roger said, nodding at the podgy little figure. “Said it gave him a right turn.”

“I’d think so,” Brianna murmured, looking at the Duke with raised brows. “People still take it that seriously?”

“Oh, aye. Scots have long memories, and they’re not the most forgiving of people.”

“Really?” She looked at him curiously. “Are you Scottish, Roger? Wakefield doesn’t sound like a Scottish name, but there’s something about the way you talk about the Duke of Cumberland…” There was the hint of a smile around her mouth, and he wasn’t sure whether he was being teased, but he answered her seriously enough.

“Oh, aye.” He smiled as he said it. “I’m Scots. Wakefield’s not my own name, see; the Reverend gave it me when he adopted me. He was my mother’s uncle—when my parents were killed in the War, he took me to live with him. But my own name is MacKenzie. As for the Duke of Cumberland”—he nodded at the plate-glass window, through which the monuments of Culloden Field were plainly visible. “There’s a clan stone out there, with the name of MacKenzie carved on it, and a good many of my relatives under it.”

He reached out and flicked a gold epaulet, leaving it swinging. “I don’t feel quite so personal about it as some, but I haven’t forgotten, either.” He held out a hand to her. “Shall we go outside?”

It was cold outside, with a gusty wind that lashed two pennons, flying atop the poles set at either side of the moor. One yellow, one red, they marked the positions where the two commanders had stood behind their troops, awaiting the outcome of the battle.

“Well back out of the way, I see,” Brianna observed dryly. “No chance of getting in the way of a stray bullet.”

Roger noticed her shivering, and drew her hand further through his arm, bringing her close. He thought he might burst from the sudden swell of happiness touching her gave him, but tried to disguise it with a retreat into historical monologue. “Well, that was how generals led, back then—from the rear. Especially Charlie; he ran off so fast at the end of the battle that he left behind his sterling silver picnic set.”

“A picnic set? He brought a picnic to the battle?”

“Oh, aye.” Roger found that he quite liked being Scottish for Brianna. He usually took pains to keep his accent modulated under the all-purpose Oxbridge speech that served him at the university, but now he was letting it have free rein for the sake of the smile that crossed her face when she heard it.

“D’ye know why they called him ‘Prince Charlie’?” Roger asked. “English people always think it was a nickname, showing how much his men loved him.”

“It wasn’t?”

Roger shook his head. “No, indeed. His men called him Prince Tcharlach”—he spelled it carefully—“which is the Gaelic for Charles. Tcharlach mac Seamus, ‘Charles, son of James.’ Very formal and respectful indeed. It’s only that Tcharlach in Gaelic sounds the hell of a lot like ‘Charlie’ in English.”

Brianna grinned. “So he never was ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’?”

“Not then.” Roger shrugged. “Now he is, of course. One of those little historical mistakes that get passed on for fact. There are a lot of them.”

“And you a historian!” Brianna said, teasing.

Roger smiled wryly. “That’s how I know.”

They wandered slowly down the graveled paths that led through the battlefield, Roger pointing out the positions of the different regiments that had fought there, explaining the order of battle, recounting small anecdotes of the commanders.

As they walked, the wind died down, and the silence of the field began to assert itself. Gradually their conversation died away as well, until they were talking only now and then, in low voices, almost whispers. The sky was gray with cloud from horizon to horizon, and everything beneath its bowl seemed muted, with only the whisper of the moor plants speaking in the voices of the men who fed them.

“This is the place they call the Well of Death.” Roger stooped by the small spring. Barely a foot square, it was a tiny pool of dark water, welling under a ridge of stone. “One of the Highland chieftains died here; his followers washed the blood from his face with the water from this spring. And over there are the graves of the clans.”

The clan stones were large boulders of gray granite, rounded by weather and blotched with lichens. They sat on patches of smooth grass, widely scattered near the edge of the moor. Each one bore a single name, the carving so faded by weather as to be nearly illegible in some cases. MacGillivray. MacDonald. Fraser. Grant. Chisholm. MacKenzie.

“Look,” Brianna said, almost in a whisper. She pointed at one of the stones. A small heap of greenish-gray twigs lay there; a few early spring flowers mingled, wilted, with the twigs.

“Heather,” Roger said. “It’s more common in the summer, when the heather is blooming—then you’ll see heaps like that in front of every clan stone. Purple, and here and there a branch of the white heather—the white is for luck, and for kingship; it was Charlie’s emblem, that and the white rose.”

“Who leaves them?” Brianna squatted on her heels next to the path, touching the twigs with a gentle finger.

“Visitors.” Roger squatted next to her. He traced the faded letters on the stone—FRASER. “People descended from the families of the men who were killed here. Or just those who like to remember them.”

She looked sidelong at him, hair drifting around her face. “Have you ever done it?”

He looked down, smiling at his hands as they hung between his knees.

“Yes. I suppose it’s very sentimental, but I do.”

Brianna turned to the thicket of moor plants that edged the path on the other side.

“Show me which is heather,” she said.

On the way home, the melancholy of Culloden lifted, but the feeling of shared sentiment lingered, and they talked and laughed together like old friends.

“It’s too bad Mother couldn’t come with us,” Brianna remarked as they turned into the road where the Randalls’ bed-and-breakfast was.

Much as he liked Claire Randall, Roger didn’t agree at all that it was too bad she hadn’t come. Three, he thought, would have been a crowd, and no mistake. But he grunted noncommitally, and a moment later asked, “How is your mother? I hope she’s not terribly ill.”

“Oh, no, it’s just an upset stomach—at least that’s what she says.” Brianna frowned to herself for a moment, then turned to Roger, laying a hand lightly on his leg. He felt the muscles quiver from knee to groin, and had a hard time keeping his mind on what she was saying. She was still talking about her mother.

“…think she’s all right?” she finished. She shook her head, and copper glinted from the waves of her hair, even in the dull light of the car. “I don’t know; she seems awfully preoccupied. Not ill, exactly—more as though she’s kind of worried about something.”

Roger felt a sudden heaviness in the pit of his stomach.

“Mphm,” he said. “Maybe just being away from her work. I’m sure it will be all right.” Brianna smiled gratefully at him as they pulled up in front of Mrs. Thomas’s small stone house.

“It was great, Roger,” she said, touching him lightly on the shoulder. “But there wasn’t much here to help with Mama’s project. Can’t I help you with some of the grubby stuff?”

Roger’s spirits lightened considerably, and he smiled up at her. “I think that might be arranged. Want to come tomorrow and have a go at the garage with me? If it’s filth you want, you can’t get much grubbier than that.”

“Great.” She smiled, leaning on the car to look back in at him. “Maybe Mother will want to come along and help.”

He could feel his face stiffen, but kept gallantly smiling.

“Right,” he said. “Great. I hope so.”

In the event, it was Brianna alone who came to the manse the next day.

“Mama’s at the public library,” she explained. “Looking up old phone directories. She’s trying to find someone she used to know.”

Roger’s heart skipped a beat at that. He had checked the Reverend’s phonebook the night before. There were three local listings under the name “James Fraser,” and two more with different first names, but the middle initial “J.”

“Well, I hope she finds him,” he said, still trying for casualness. “You’re really sure you want to help? It’s boring, filthy work.” Roger looked at Brianna dubiously, but she nodded, not at all discomposed at the prospect.

“I know. I used to help my father sometimes, dredging through old records and finding footnotes. Besides, it’s Mama’s project; the least I can do is help you with it.”

“All right.” Roger glanced down at his white shirt. “Let me change, and we’ll go have a look.”

The garage door creaked, groaned, then surrendered to the inevitable and surged suddenly upward, amid the twanging of springs and clouds of dust.

Brianna waved her hands back and forth in front of her face, coughing. “Gack!” she said. “How long since anyone’s been in this place?”

“Eons, I expect.” Roger replied absently. He shone his torch around the inside of the garage, briefly lighting stacks of cardboard cartons and wooden crates, old steamer trunks smeared with peeling labels, and amorphous tarpaulin-draped shapes. Here and there, the upturned legs of furniture poked through the gloom like the skeletons of small dinosaurs, protruding from their native rock formations.

There was a sort of fissure in the junk; Roger edged into this and promptly disappeared into a tunnel bounded by dust and shadows, his progress marked by the pale spot of his torch as it shone intermittently on the ceiling. At last, with a cry of triumph, he seized the dangling tail of a string hanging from above, and the garage was suddenly illuminated in the glare of an oversized bulb.

“This way,” Roger said, reappearing abruptly and taking Brianna by the hand. “There’s sort of a clear space in back.”

An ancient table stood against the back wall. Perhaps originally the centerpiece of the Reverend Wakefield’s dining room, it had evidently gone through several successive incarnations as kitchen block, toolbench, sawhorse, and painting table, before coming to rest in this dusty sanctuary. A heavily cobwebbed window overlooked it, through which a dim light shone on the nicked, paint-splattered surface.

“We can work here,” Roger said, yanking a stool out of the mess and dusting it perfunctorily with a large handkerchief. “Have a seat, and I’ll see if I can pry the window open; otherwise, we’ll suffocate.”

Brianna nodded, but instead of sitting down, began to poke curiously through the nearer piles of junk, as Roger heaved at the warped window frame. He could hear her behind him, reading the labels on some of the boxes. “Here’s 1930–33,” she said, “And here’s 1942–46. What are these?”

“Journals,” said Roger, grunting as he braced his elbows on the grimy sill. “My father—the Reverend, I mean—he always kept a journal. Wrote it up every night after supper.”

“Looks like he found plenty to write about.” Brianna hoisted down several of the boxes, and stacked them to the side, in order to inspect the next layer. “Here’s a bunch of boxes with names on them—‘Kerse,’ ‘Livingston,’ ‘Balnain.’ Parishioners?”

“No. Villages.” Roger paused in his labors for a moment, panting. He wiped his brow, leaving a streak of dirt down the sleeve of his shirt. Luckily both of them were dressed in old clothes, suitable for rootling in filth. “Those will be notes on the history of various Highland villages. Some of those boxes ended up as books, in fact; you’ll see them in some of the local tourist shops through the Highlands.”

He turned to a pegboard from which hung a selection of dilapidated tools, and selected a large screwdriver to aid his assault on the window.

“Look for the ones that say ‘Parish Registers,’ he advised. “Or for village names in the area of Broch Tuarach.”

“I don’t know any of the villages in the area,” Brianna pointed out.

“Oh, aye, I was forgetting.” Roger inserted the point of the screwdriver between the edges of the window frame, grimly chiseling through layers of ancient paint. “Look for the names Broch Mordha…um, Mariannan, and…oh, St. Kilda. There’s others, but those are ones I know had fair-sized churches that have been closed or knocked down.”

“Okay.” Pushing aside a hanging flap of tarpaulin, Brianna suddenly leaped backward with a sharp cry.

“What? What is it?” Roger whirled from the window, screwdriver at the ready.

“I don’t know. Something skittered away when I touched that tarp.” Brianna pointed, and Roger lowered his weapon, relieved.

“Oh, that all? Mouse, most like. Maybe a rat.”

“A rat! You have rats in here?” Brianna’s agitation was noticeable.

“Well, I hope not, because if so, they’ll have been chewing up the records we’re looking for,” Roger replied. He handed her the torch. “Here, shine this in any dark places; at least you won’t be taken by surprise.”

“Thanks a lot.” Brianna accepted the torch, but still eyed the stacks of cartons with some reluctance.

“Well, go on then,” Roger said. “Or did you want me to do you a rat satire on the spot?”

Brianna’s face split in a wide grin. “A rat satire? What’s that?”

Roger delayed his answer, long enough for another try at the window. He pushed until he could feel his biceps straining against the fabric of his shirt, but at last, with a rending screech, the window gave way, and a reviving draft of cool air whooshed in through the six-inch gap he’d created.

“God, that’s better.” He fanned himself exaggeratedly, grinning at Brianna. “Now, shall we get on with it?”

She handed him the torch, and stepped back. “How about you find the boxes, and I’ll sort through them? And what’s a rat satire?”

“Coward,” he said, bending to rummage beneath the tarpaulin. “A rat satire is an old Scottish custom; if you had rats or mice in your house or your barn, you could make them go away by composing a poem—or you could sing it—telling the rats how poor the eating was where they were, and how good it was elsewhere. You told them where to go, and how to get there, and presumably, if the satire was good enough—they’d go.”

He pulled out a carton labeled JACOBITES, MISCELLANEOUS, and carried it to the table, singing,

“Ye rats, ye are too many,
If ye would dine in plenty,
Ye mun go, ye mun go.”

Lowering the box with a thump, he bowed in response to Brianna’s giggling and turned back to the stacks, continuing in stentorian voice.

“Go to Campbell’s garden,
Where nae cat stands warden,
And the kale, it grows green.

Go and fill your bellies,
Dinna stay and gnaw my wellies—
Go, ye rats, go!”

Brianna snorted appreciatively. “Did you just make that up?”

“Of course.” Roger deposited another box on the table with a flourish. “A good rat satire must always be original.” He cast a glance at the serried ranks of cartons. “After that performance, there shouldn’t be a rat within miles of this place.”

“Good.” Brianna pulled a jackknife from her pocket and slit the tape that sealed the topmost carton. “You should come do one at the bed-and-breakfast place; Mama says she’s sure there’s mice in the bathroom. Something chewed on her soap case.”

“God knows what it would take to dislodge a mouse capable of eating bars of soap; far beyond my feeble powers, I expect.” He rolled a tattered round hassock out from behind a teetering stack of obsolete encyclopedias, and plumped down next to Brianna. “Here, you take the parish registers, they’re a bit easier to read.”

They worked through the morning in amiable companionship, turning up occasional interesting passages, the odd silverfish, and recurrent clouds of dust, but little of value to the project at hand.

“We’d better stop for lunch soon,” Roger said at last. He felt a strong reluctance to go back into the house, where he would once more be at Fiona’s mercy, but Brianna’s stomach had begun to growl almost as loudly as his own.

“Okay. We can do some more after we eat, if you’re not worn out.” Brianna stood and stretched herself, her curled fists almost reaching the rafters of the old garage. She wiped her hands on the legs of her jeans, and ducked between the stacks of boxes.

“Hey!” She stopped short, near the door. Roger, following her, was brought up sharp, his nose almost touching, the back of her head.

“What is it?” he asked. “Not another rat?” He noted with approval that the sun lit her thick single braid with glints of copper and gold. With a small golden nimbus of dust surrounding her, and the light of noon silhouetting her long-nosed profile, he thought she looked quite medieval; Our Lady of the Archives.

“No. Look at this, Roger!” She pointed at a cardboard carton near the middle of a stack. On the side, in the Reverend’s strong black hand, was a label with the single word “Randall.”

Roger felt a stab of mingled excitement and apprehension. Brianna’s excitement was unalloyed.

“Maybe that’s got the stuff we’re looking for!” she exclaimed. “Mama said it was something my father was interested in; maybe he’d already asked the Reverend about it.”

“Could be.” Roger forced down the sudden feeling of dread that had struck him at sight of the name. He knelt to extract the box from its resting place. “Let’s take it in the house; we can look in it after lunch.”

The box, once opened in the Reverend’s study, held an odd assortment of things. There were old photostats of pages from several parish registers, two or three army muster lists, a number of letters and scattered papers, a small, thin notebook, bound in gray cardboard covers, a packet of elderly photographs, curling at the edges, and a stiff folder, with the name “Randall” printed on the cover.

Brianna picked up the folder and opened it. “Why, it’s daddy’s family tree!” she exclaimed. “Look.” She passed the folder to Roger. Inside were two sheets of thick parchment, with lines of descent neatly ruled across and down. The beginning date was 1633; the final entry, at the foot of the second page, showed

Frank Wolverton Randall m. Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp, 1937

“Done before you were born,” Roger murmured.

Brianna peered over his shoulder as his finger passed slowly down the lines of the genealogical table. “I’ve seen it before; daddy had a copy in his study. He used to show it to me all the time. His had me at the bottom, though; this must be an early copy.”

“Maybe the Reverend did some of the research for him.” Roger handed Brianna back the folder, and picked up one of the papers from the stack on the desk.

“Now here’s an heirloom for you,” he said. He traced the coat of arms embossed at the head of the sheet. “A letter of commission in the army, signed by His Royal Majesty, King George II.”

“George the Second? Jeez, that’s even before the American Revolution.”

“Considerably before. It’s dated 1735. In the name of Jonathan Wolverton Randall. Know that name?”

“Yeah.” Brianna nodded, stray wisps of hair falling in her face. She wiped them back carelessly and took the letter. “daddy used to talk about him every now and then; one of the few ancestors he knew much about. He was a captain in the army that fought Bonnie Prince Charlie at Culloden.” She looked up at Roger, blinking. “I think maybe he was killed in that battle, in fact. He wouldn’t have been buried there, would he?”

Roger shook his head. “I shouldn’t think so. It was the English who cleared up after the battle. They shipped most of their own dead back home for burial—the officers, anyway.”

He was prevented from further observation by the sudden appearance in the doorway of Fiona, bearing a feather duster like a battle standard.

“Mr. Wakefield,” she called. “There’s the man come to take awa’ the Reverend’s truck, but he canna get it started. He says will ye be givin’ him a hand, like?”

Roger started guiltily. He had taken the battery to a garage for testing, and it was still sitting in the backseat of his own Morris. No wonder the Reverend’s truck wasn’t starting.

“I’ll have to go sort this out,” he told Brianna. “I’m afraid it might take a while.”

“That’s okay.” She smiled at him, blue eyes narrowing to triangles. “I should go too. Mama will be back by now; we thought we might go out to the Clava Cairns, if there was time. Thanks for the lunch.”

“My pleasure—and Fiona’s.” Roger felt a stab of regret at being unable to offer to go with her, but duty called. He glanced at the papers spread out on the desk, then scooped them up and deposited them back in the box.

“Here,” he said. “This is all your family records. You take it. Maybe your mother would be interested.”

“Really? Well, thanks, Roger. Are you sure?”

“Absolutely,” he said, carefully laying the folder with the genealogical chart on top. “Oh, wait. Maybe not all of it.” The corner of the gray notebook stuck out from under the letter of commission; he pulled it free, and tidied the disturbed papers back into the box. “This looks like one of the Reverend’s journals. Can’t think what it’s doing in there, but I suppose I’d better put it with the others; the historical society says they want the whole lot.”

“Oh, sure.” Brianna had risen to go, clutching the box to her chest, but hesitated, looking at him. “Do you—would you like me to come back?”

Roger smiled at her. There were cobwebs in her hair, and a long streak of dirt down the bridge of her nose.

“Nothing I’d like better,” he said. “See you tomorrow, eh?”

The thought of the Reverend’s journal stayed with Roger, all during the tedious business of getting the ancient truck started, and the subsequent visit of the furniture appraiser who came to sort the valuable antiques from the rubbish, and set a value on the Reverend’s furnishings for auction.

This disposition of the Reverend’s effects gave Roger a sense of restless melancholy. It was, after all, a dismantling of his own youth, as much as the clearing away of useless bric-a-brac. By the time he sat down in the study after dinner, he could not have said whether it was curiosity about the Randalls that compelled him to pick up the journal, or simply the urge somehow to regain a tenuous connection with the man who had been his father for so many years.

The journals were kept meticulously, the even lines of ink recording all major events of the parish and the community of which the Reverend Mr. Wakefield had been a part for so many years. The feel of the plain gray notebook and the sight of its pages conjured up for Roger an immediate vision of the Reverend, bald head gleaming in the glow of his desk lamp as he industriously inscribed the day’s happenings.

“It’s a discipline,” he had explained once to Roger. “There’s a great benefit to doing regularly something that orders the mind, you know. Catholic monks have services at set times every day, priests have their breviaries. I’m afraid I haven’t the knack of such immediate devotion, but writing out the happenings of the day helps to clear my mind; then I can say my evening prayers with a calm heart.”

A calm heart. Roger wished he could manage that himself, but calmness hadn’t visited him since he’d found those clippings in the Reverend’s desk.

He opened the book at random, and slowly turned the pages, looking for a mention of the name “Randall.” The dates on the notebook’s cover were January–June, 1948. While what he had told Brianna about the historical society was true, that had not been his chief motive in keeping the book. In May of 1948, Claire Randall had returned from her mysterious disappearance. The Reverend had known the Randalls well; such an event was sure to have found mention in his journal.

Sure enough, the entry for May 7:

“Visit w. Frank Randall this evening; this business about his wife. So distressing! Saw her yesterday—so frail, but those eyes staring—made me uneasy to sit w. her, poor woman, though she talked sensibly.

Enough to unhinge anyone, what she’s been through—whatever it was. Terrible gossip about it all—so careless of Dr. Bartholomew to let on that she’s pregnant. So hard for Frank—and for her, of course! My heart goes out to them both.

Mrs. Graham ill this week—she could have chosen a better time; jumble sale next week, and the porch full of old clothes…”

Roger flipped rapidly through the pages, looking for the next mention of the Randalls, and found it, later the same week.

“May 10—Frank Randall to dinner. Doing my best to associate publicly both w. him and his wife; I sit with her for an hour most days, in hopes of quelling some of the gossip. It’s almost pitying now; word’s gone round that she’s demented. Knowing Claire Randall, I’m not sure that she would not be more offended at being thought insane than at being considered immoral—must be one or the other though?

Tried repeatedly to talk to her about her experiences, but she says nothing of that. Talks all right about anything else, but always a sense that she’s thinking of something else.

Must make a note to preach this Sunday on the evils of gossip—though I’m afraid calling attention to the case with a sermon will only make it worse.”

“May 12—…Can’t get free of the notion that Claire Randall is not deranged. Have heard the gossip, of course, but see nothing in her behaviour that seems unstable in the slightest.

Do think she carries some terrible secret; one she’s determined to keep. Spoke—cautiously—to Frank of this; he’s reticent, but I’m convinced she has said something to him. Have tried to make it clear I wish to help, in any way I can.”

“May 14—A visit from Frank Randall. Very puzzling. He has asked my help, but I can’t see why he asked what he has. Seems very important to him, though; he keeps himself under close rein, but wound tight as a watch. I fear the release—if it comes.

Claire well enough to travel—he means to take her back to London this week. Assured him I would communicate any results to him by letter at his University address; no hint to his wife.

Have several items of interest on Jonathan Randall, though I can’t imagine the significance of Frank’s ancestor to this sorry business. Of James Fraser, as I told Frank—no inkling; a complete mystery.”

A complete mystery. In more ways than one, Roger thought. What had Frank Randall asked the Reverend to do? To find out what he could about Jonathan Randall and about James Fraser, apparently. So Claire had told her husband about James Fraser—told him something, at least, if not everything.

But what conceivable connection could there be between an English army captain who had died at Culloden in 1746, and the man whose name seemed inextricably bound up with the mystery of Claire’s disappearance in 1945—and the further mystery of Brianna’s parentage?

The rest of the journal was filled with the usual miscellany of parish happenings; the chronic drunkenness of Derick Gowan, culminating in that parishioner’s removal from the River Ness as a water-logged corpse in late May; the hasty wedding of Maggie Brown and William Dundee, a month before the christening of their daughter, June; Mrs. Graham’s appendectomy, and the Reverend’s attempts to cope with the resultant influx of covered dishes from the generous ladies of the parish—Herbert, the Reverend’s current dog, seemed to have been the beneficiary of most of them.

Reading through the pages, Roger found himself smiling, hearing the Reverend’s lively interest in his flock come to life once more in the old minister’s words. Browsing and skimming, he nearly missed it—the last entry concerning Frank Randall’s request.

“June 18—Had a brief note from Frank Randall, advising me that his wife’s health is somewhat precarious; the pregnancy is dangerous and he asks my prayers.

Replied with assurances of prayers and good wishes for both him and his wife. Enclosed also the information I had so far found for him; can’t say what use it will be to him, but that must be his own judgement. Told him of the surprising discovery of Jonathan Randall’s grave at St. Kilda; asked if he wishes me to photograph the stone.”

And that was all. There was no further mention of the Randalls, or of James Fraser. Roger laid the book down and massaged his temples; reading the slanting lines of handwriting had given him a mild headache.

Aside from confirming his suspicions that a man named James Fraser was mixed up in all this, the matter remained as impenetrable as ever. What in the name of God did Jonathan Randall have to do with it, and why on earth was the man buried at St. Kilda? The letter of commission had given Jonathan Randall’s place of birth as an estate in Sussex; how did he end up in a remote Scottish kirkyard? True, it wasn’t all that far from Culloden—but why hadn’t he been shipped back to Sussex?

“Will ye be needin’ anything else tonight, Mr. Wakefield?” Fiona’s voice roused him from his fruitless meditations. He sat up, blinking, to see her holding a broom and a polishing cloth.

“What? Er, no. No, thanks, Fiona. But what are you doing with all that clobber? Not still cleaning at this time of night?”

“Well, it’s the church ladies,” Fiona explained. “You remember, ye told them they could hold their regular monthly meeting here tomorrow? I thought I’d best tidy up a bit.”

The church ladies? Roger quailed at the thought of forty housewives, oozing sympathy, descending on the manse in an avalanche of tweeds, twin-sets, and cultured pearls.

“Will ye be takin’ tea with the ladies?” Fiona was asking. “The Reverend always did.”

The thought of entertaining Brianna Randall and the church ladies simultaneously was more than Roger could contemplate with equanimity.

“Er, no,” he said abruptly. “I’ve…I’ve an engagement tomorrow.”

His hand fell on the telephone, half-buried in the debris of the Reverend’s desk. “If you’ll excuse me, Fiona, I’ve got to make a call.”

Brianna wandered back into the bedroom, smiling to herself. I looked up from my book and arched a brow in inquiry.

“Phone call from Roger?” I said.

“How’d you know?” She looked startled for a moment, then grinned, shucking off her robe. “Oh, because he’s the only guy I know in Inverness?”

“I didn’t think any of your boyfriends would be calling long-distance from Boston,” I said. I peered at the clock on the table. “Not at this hour, anyway; they’ll all be at football practice.”

Brianna ignored this, and shoved her feet under the covers. “Roger’s invited us to go up to a place called St. Kilda tomorrow. He says it’s an interesting old church.”

“I’ve heard of it,” I said, yawning. “All right, why not? I’ll take my plant press; maybe I can find some crown vetch—I promised some to Dr. Abernathy for his research. But if we’re going to spend the day tramping round reading old gravestones, I’m turning in now. Digging up the past is strenuous work.”

There was a brief flicker in Brianna’s face, and I thought she was about to say something. But she merely nodded, and reached to turn out the light, the secretive smile still lurking in the corners of her mouth.

I lay looking up into the darkness, hearing her small tossings and turnings fade into the regular cadences of her sleeping breath. St. Kilda, eh? I had never been there, but I knew of the place; it was an old church, as Brianna had said, long deserted and out of the way for tourists—only the occasional researcher ever went there. Perhaps this was the opportunity I had been waiting for, then?

I would have Roger and Brianna together there, and alone, with little fear of interruption. And perhaps it was a suitable place to tell them—there among the long-dead parishioners of St. Kilda. Roger had not yet verified the whereabouts of the rest of the Lallybroch men, but it seemed fairly sure that they had at least left Culloden Field alive, and that was really all I needed to know, now. I could tell Bree the end of it, then.

My mouth grew dry at the thought of the coming interview. Where was I to find the words for this? I tried to visualize how it might go; what I might say, and how they might react, but imagination failed me. More than ever, I regretted my promise to Frank that had kept me from writing to the Reverend Wakefield. If I had, Roger at least might already know. Or perhaps not; the Reverend might not have believed me.

I turned restlessly, seeking inspiration, but weariness crept over me. And at last I gave up and turned onto my back, closing my eyes on the dark above me. As though my thinking of him had summoned the Reverend’s spirit, a biblical quotation drifted into my fading consciousness: Sufficient unto the day, the Reverend’s voice seemed to murmur to me, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. And then I slept.

I woke up in the shadowed dark, hands clenched in the bedclothes, heart beating with a force that shook me like the skin of a kettledrum. “Jesus!” I said.

The silk of my nightgown was hot and clinging; looking down, I could dimly see my nipples thrusting through it, hard as marbles. The quivering spasms were still rippling through wrists and thighs, like the aftershocks of an earthquake. I hoped I hadn’t cried out. Probably not; I could hear Brianna’s breathing, untroubled and regular across the room.

I fell back on the pillow, shaking with weakness, the sudden flush washing my temples with damp.

“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” I muttered, breathing deeply as my heart slowly returned to normal.

One of the effects of a disturbed sleep cycle is that one stops dreaming coherently. Through the long years of early motherhood, and then of internship, residency, and nights on-call, I had got used to falling at once into oblivion when I lay down, with such dreams as occurred nothing more than fragments and flashes, restless flickers in the dark as synapses fired at random, recharging themselves for the work of the day that would come too soon.

In more recent years, with the resumption of something resembling a normal schedule, I had begun to dream again. The usual kinds of dreams, whether nightmare or good dream—long sequences of images, wanderings in the wood of the mind. And I was familiar with this kind of dream, too; it was common to what might politely be called periods of deprivation.

Usually, though, such dreams came floating, soft as the touch of satin sheets, and if they woke me, I fell at once back into sleep, glowing dimly with a memory that would not last ’til morning.

This was different. Not that I remembered much about it, but I had a vague impression of hands that gripped me, rough and urgent, not wooing but compelling. And a voice, nearly shouting, that echoed in the chambers of my inner ear, along with the sound of my fading heartbeat.

I put my hand on my chest over the leaping pulse, feeling the soft fullness of my breast beneath the silk. Brianna’s breath caught in a soft snore, then resumed its even cadence. I remembered listening for that sound when she was small; the slow, stertorous rhythm of reassurance, sounding through the darkened nursery, even as a heartbeat.

My own heartbeat was slowing under my hand, under the deep rose silk, the color of a baby’s sleep-flushed cheek. When you hold a child to your breast to nurse, the curve of the little head echoes exactly the curve of the breast it suckles, as though this new person truly mirrors the flesh from which it sprang.

Babies are soft. Anyone looking at them can see the tender, fragile skin and know it for the rose-leaf softness that invites a finger’s touch. But when you live with them and love them, you feel the softness going inward, the round-checked flesh wobbly as custard, the boneless splay of the tiny hands. Their joints are melted rubber, and even when you kiss them hard, in the passion of loving their existence, your lips sink down and seem never to find bone. Holding them against you, they melt and mold, as though they might at any moment flow back into your body.

But from the very start, there is that small streak of steel within each child. That thing that says “I am,” and forms the core of personality.

In the second year, the bone hardens and the child stands upright, skull wide and solid, a helmet protecting the softness within. And “I am” grows, too. Looking at them, you can almost see it, sturdy as heartwood, glowing through the translucent flesh.

The bones of the face emerge at six, and the soul within is fixed at seven. The process of encapsulation goes on, to reach its peak in the glossy shell of adolescence, when all softness then is hidden under the nacreous layers of the multiple new personalities that teenagers try on to guard themselves.

In the next years, the hardening spreads from the center, as one finds and fixes the facets of the soul, until “I am” is set, delicate and detailed as an insect in amber.

I had thought I was well beyond that stage, had lost all trace of softness and was well set on my way to a middle age of stainless steel. But now I thought that Frank’s death had cracked me in some way. And the cracks were widening, so that I could no longer patch them with denial. I had brought my daughter back to Scotland, she with those bones strong as the ribs of Highland mountains, in the hope that her shell was strong enough to hold her together, while the center of her “I am” might still be reachable.

But my own core held no longer in the isolation of “I am,” and I had no protection to shield me from the softness from within. I no longer knew what I was or what she would be; only what I must do.

For I had come back, and I dreamed once more, in the cool air of the Highlands. And the voice of my dream still echoed through ears and heart, repeated with the sound of Brianna’s sleeping breath.

“You are mine,” it had said. “Mine! And I will not let you go.”