41

THE SEER’S CURSE

Most of the Lowland Scots had gone over to Presbyterianism in the two centuries before. Some of the Highland clans had gone with them, but others, like the Frasers and MacKenzies, had kept their Catholic faith. Especially the Frasers, with their strong family ties to Catholic France.

There was a small chapel in Beaufort Castle, to serve the devotional uses of the Earl and his family, but Beauly Priory, ruined as it was, remained the burying place of the Lovats, and the floor of the open-roofed chancel was paved thick with the flat tombstones of those who lay under them.

It was a peaceful place, and I walked there sometimes, in spite of the cold, blustery weather. I had no idea whether Old Simon had meant his threat against me, or whether Jamie’s comparing me to Dame Aliset—who turned out to be a legendary “white woman” or healer, the Scottish equivalent of La Dame Blanche—was sufficient to put a stop to that threat. But I thought that no one was likely to accost me among the tombs of extinct Frasers.

One afternoon, a few days after the scene in the study, I walked through a gap in the ruined Priory wall and found that for once, I didn’t have it to myself. The tall woman I had seen outside Lovat’s study was there, leaning against one of the red-stone tombs, arms folded about her for warmth, long legs thrust out like a stork.

I made to turn aside, but she saw me, and motioned me to join her.

“You’ll be my lady Broch Tuarach?” she said, though there was no more than a hint of question in her soft Highland voice.

“I am. And you’re…Maisri?”

A small smile lit her face. She had a most intriguing face, slightly asymmetrical, like a Modigliani painting, and long black hair that flowed loose around her shoulders, streaked with white, though she was plainly still young. A seer, hm? I thought she looked the part.

“Aye, I have the Sight,” she said, the smile widening a bit on her lopsided mouth.

“Do mind-reading, too, do you?” I asked.

She laughed, the sound vanishing on the wind that moaned through the ruined walls.

“No, lady. But I do read faces, and…”

“And mine’s an open book. I know,” I said, resigned.

We stood side by side for a time then, watching tiny spatters of fine sleet dashing against the sandstone and the thick brown grass that overgrew the kirkyard.

“They do say as you’re a white lady,” Maisri observed suddenly. I could feel her watching me intently, but with none of the nervousness that seemed common to such an observation.

“They do say that,” I agreed.

“Ah.” She didn’t speak again, just stared down at her feet, long and elegant, stockinged in wool and clad in leather sandals. My own toes, rather more sheltered, were growing numb, and I thought hers must be frozen solid, if she’d been here any time.

“What are you doing up here?” I asked. The Priory was a beautiful, peaceful place in good weather, but not much of a roost in the cold winter sleet.

“I come here to think,” she said. She gave me a slight smile, but was plainly preoccupied. Whatever she was thinking, her thoughts weren’t overly pleasant.

“To think about what?” I asked, hoisting myself up to sit on the tomb beside her. The worn figure of a knight lay on the lid, his claymore clasped to his bosom, the hilt forming a cross over his heart.

“I want to know why!” she burst out. Her thin face was suddenly alight with indignation.

“Why what?”

“Why! Why can I see what will happen, when there’s no mortal thing I can be doin’ to change it or stop it? What’s the good of a gift like that? It’s no a gift, come to that—it’s a damn curse, though I havena done anything to be cursed like this!”

She turned and glared balefully at Thomas Fraser, serene under his helm, with the hilt of his sword clasped under crossed hands.

“Aye, and maybe it’s your curse, ye auld gomerel! You and the rest o’ your damned family. Did ye ever think that?” she asked suddenly, turning to me. Her brows arched high over brown eyes that sparked with furious intelligence.

“Did ye ever think perhaps that it’s no your own fate at all that makes you what ye are? That maybe ye have the Sight or the power only because it’s necessary to someone else, and it’s nothing to do wi’ you at all—except that it’s you has it, and has to suffer the having of it. Have you?”

“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “Or yes, since you say it, I have wondered. Why me? You ask that all the time, of course. But I’ve never come up with a satisfactory answer. You think perhaps you have the Sight because it’s a curse on the Frasers—to know their deaths ahead of time? That’s a hell of an idea.”

“A hell is right,” she agreed bitterly. She leaned back against the sarcophagus of red stone, staring out at the sleet that sprayed across the top of the broken wall.

“What d’ye think?” she asked suddenly. “Do I tell him?”

I was startled.

“Who? Lord Lovat?”

“Aye, his lordship. He asks what I see, and beats me when I tell him there’s naught to see. He knows, ye ken; he sees it in my face when I’ve had the Sight. But that’s the only power I’ve got; the power not to say.” The long white fingers snaked out from her cloak, playing nervously with the folds of soaked cloth.

“There’s always the chance of it, isn’t there?” she said. Her head was bent so that the hood of her cloak shielded her face from my gaze. “There’s a chance that my telling would make a difference. It has, now and then, ye know. I told Lachlan Gibbons when I saw his son-in-law wrapped in seaweed, and the eels stirring beneath his shirt. Lachlan listened; he went out straightaway and stove a hole in his son-in-law’s boat.” She laughed, remembering. “Lord, there was the kebbie-lebbie to do! But when the great storm came the next week, three men were drowned, and Lachlan’s son-in-law was safe at hame, still mending his boat. And when I saw him next, his shirt hung dry on him, and the seaweed was gone from his hair.”

“So it can happen,” I said softly. “Sometimes.”

“Sometimes,” she said, nodding, still staring at the ground. Lady Sarah Fraser lay at her feet, the lady’s stone surmounted with a skull atop crossed bones. Hodie mihi cras tibi, said the inscription. Sic transit gloria mundi. My turn today, yours tomorrow. And thus passes away the glory of the world.

“Sometimes not. When I see a man wrapped in his winding sheet, the illness follows—and there’s naught to be done about that.”

“Perhaps,” I said. I looked at my own hands, spread on the stone beside me. Without medicine, without instruments, without knowledge—yes, then illness was fate, and naught to be done. But if a healer was near, and had the things to heal with…was it possible that Maisri saw the shadow of a coming illness, as a real—if usually invisible—symptom, much like a fever or a rash? And then only the lack of medical facilities made the reading of such symptoms a sentence of death? I would never know.

“We aren’t ever going to know,” I said, turning to her. “We can’t say. We know things that other people don’t know, and we can’t say why or how. But we have got it—and you’re right, it’s a curse. But if you have knowledge, and it may prevent harm…do you think it could cause harm?”

She shook her head.

“I canna say. If you knew ye were to die soon, are there things you’d do? And would they be good things only that ye’d do, or would ye take the last chance ye might have to do harm to your enemies—harm that might otherwise be left alone?”

“Damned if I know.” We were quiet for a time, watching the sleet turn to snow, and the blowing flakes whirl up in gusts through the ruined tracery of the Priory wall.

“Sometimes I know there’s something there, like,” Maisri said suddenly, “but I can block it out of my mind, not look. ’Twas like that with his lordship; I knew there was something, but I’d managed not to see it. But then he bade me look, and say the divining spell to make the vision come clear. And I did.” The hood of her cloak slipped back as she tilted her head, looking up at the wall of the Priory as it soared above us, ochre and white and red, with the mortar crumbling between its stones. White-streaked black hair spilled down her back, free in the wind.

“He was standing there before the fire, but it was daylight, and clear to see. A man stood behind him, still as a tree, and his face covered in black. And across his lordship’s face there fell the shadow of an ax.”

She spoke matter-of-factly, but the shiver ran up my spine nonetheless. She sighed at last, and turned to me.

“Weel, I will tell him, then, and let him do what he will. Doom him or save him, that I canna do. It’s his choice—and the Lord Jesus help him.”

She turned to go, and I slid off the tomb, landing on the Lady Sarah’s slab.

“Maisri,” I said. She turned back to look at me, eyes black as the shadows among the tombs.

“Aye?”

“What do you see, Maisri?” I asked, and stood waiting, facing her, hands dropped to my sides.

She stared at me hard, above and below, behind and beside. At last she smiled faintly, nodding.

“I see naught but you, lady,” she said softly. “There’s only you.”

She turned and disappeared down the path between the trees, leaving me among the blowing flakes of snow.

Doom, or save. That I cannot do. For I have no power beyond that of knowledge, no ability to bend others to my will, no way to stop them doing what they will. There is only me.

I shook the snow from the folds of my cloak, and turned to follow Maisri down the path, sharing her bitter knowledge that there was only me. And I was not enough.

Old Simon’s manner was much as usual over the course of the next two or three weeks, but I imagined that Maisri had kept her intention of telling him about her visions. While he had seemed on the verge of summoning the tacksmen and tenants to march, suddenly he backed off, saying that there was no hurry, after all. This shilly-shallying infuriated Young Simon, who was champing at the bit to go to war and cover himself with glory.

“It’s not a matter of urgency,” Old Simon said, for the dozenth time. He lifted an oatcake, sniffed at it, and set it down again. “Perhaps we’ll do best to wait for the spring planting, after all.”

“They could be in London before spring!” Young Simon glowered across the dinner table at his father and reached for the butter. “If ye will not go yourself, then let me take the men to join His Highness!”

Lord Lovat grunted. “You’ve the Devil’s own impatience,” he said, “but not half his judgment. Will ye never learn to wait?”

“The time for waiting’s long since past!” Simon burst out. “The Camerons, the MacDonalds, the MacGillivrays—they’ve all been there since the first. Are we to come meachin’ along at the finish, to find ourselves beggars, and taking second place to Clanranald and Glengarry? Fat chance you’ll have of a dukedom then!”

Lovat had a wide, expressive mouth; even in old age, it retained some trace of humor and sensuality. Neither was visible at the moment. He pressed his lips tight together, surveying his heir without enthusiasm.

“Marry in haste, repent at leisure,” he said. “And it’s more true when choosing a laird than a lass. A woman can be got rid of.”

Young Simon snorted and looked at Jamie for support. Over the last two months, his initial suspicious hostility had faded into a reluctant respect for his bastard relative’s obvious expertise in the art of war.

“Jamie says…” he began.

“I ken well enough what he says,” Old Simon interrupted. “He’s said it often enough. I shall make up my own mind in my own time. But bear it in mind, lad—when it comes to declaring yourself in a war, there’s little to be lost by waiting.”

“Waiting to see who wins,” Jamie murmured, studiously wiping his plate with a bit of bread. The old man looked up sharply, but evidently decided to ignore this contribution.

“Ye gave your word to the Stuarts,” Young Simon continued stubbornly, paying no heed to his father’s displeasure. “Ye dinna mean to break it, surely? What will people say of your honor?”

“The same things they said in ’15,” his father calmly replied. “Most of those who ‘said things’ then are dead, bankrupt, or paupers in France. But I am still here.”

“But…” Young Simon was red in the face, the usual result of this sort of conversation with his father.

“That will do,” the old Earl interrupted sharply. He shook his head as he glared at his son, lips tight with disapproval. “Christ. Sometimes I could wish that Brian hadna died. He may have been a fool, too, but at least he knew when to stop talking.”

Both Young Simon and Jamie flushed with anger, but after a wary glance at each other, turned their attentions to their food.

“And what are you looking at?” Lord Lovat growled, catching my eye on him as he turned away from his son.

“You,” I said bluntly. “You don’t look at all well.” He didn’t, even for a man in his seventies. No more than middle-height, slumped and broadened by age, he was normally still a solid-looking man, giving the impression that his barrel chest and rounded paunch were firm and healthy under his linen. Lately he had begun to look flabby, though, as if he had shrunk a bit within his skin. The wrinkled bags beneath his eyes were darkened, and his skin had a sickly pallor to it.

“Mphm,” he grunted. “And why not? I get nay rest when I sleep, nor comfort when I’m awake. No wonder if I dinna look like a bridegroom.”

“Oh, but ye do, Father,” said Young Simon maliciously, seeing a chance to get a bit of his own back. “One at the end of his honeymoon, wi’ all the juice sapped out of him.”

“Simon!” said Lady Frances. Still, there was a ripple of laughter around the table at this, and even Lord Lovat’s mouth twitched slightly.

“Aye?” he said. “Well, I’d sooner suffer soreness from that cause, I’ll tell ye, lad.” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and pushed away the platter of boiled turnips being offered. He reached for his wineglass, raised it to his nose for a sniff, then morosely put it down again.

“It’s ill-mannered to stare,” he remarked coldly to me. “Or perhaps the English have different standards of politeness?”

I flushed slightly, but didn’t drop my eyes. “I was just wondering—you don’t have an appetite, and you don’t drink. What other symptoms have you?”

“Going to prove yourself some worth, eh?” Lovat leaned back in his chair, folding his hands across his broad stomach like an elderly frog. “A healer, my grandson says. A white lady, aye?” He flicked a basilisk glance at Jamie, who simply went on eating, ignoring his grandfather. Lovat grunted, and tilted his head ironically in my direction.

“Well, I dinna drink, lady, for I canna piss, and I’ve little wish to blow up like a pig’s bladder. And I dinna rest, for I rise a dozen times a night to make use of my pot, and damn little use it gets. So what have ye to say to that, Dame Aliset?”

“Father,” murmured Lady Frances, “really, I don’t think you should…”

“Could be an infection of the bladder, but it sounds like prostatitis to me,” I replied. I picked up my wineglass and took a mouthful, savoring it before letting it slide down my throat. I smiled demurely at his lordship across my glass as I set it down.

“Oh, it does?” he said, eyebrows raised high. “And what’s that, pray?”

I pushed back my sleeves and raised my hands, flexing my fingers like a magician about to perform some act of prestidigitation. I held up my left forefinger.

“The prostate gland in males,” I said instructively, “encircles the tube of the urethra—which is the passage that leads from the bladder to the outside.” I clasped two fingers of my right hand in a circle around my left forefinger, in illustration. “When the prostate becomes inflamed or enlarged—and that’s called prostatitis, when it does—it clamps down on the urethra”—I narrowed the circle of my fingers—“cutting off the flow of urine. Very common in older men. Do you see?”

Lady Frances, failing to make any impression on her father with her opinions of proper dinner conversation, was whispering agitatedly to her younger sister, both of them watching me with deeper suspicion than usual.

Lord Lovat watched my little demonstration in fascination.

“Aye, I see,” he said. The slanted cat-eyes narrowed, looking speculatively at my fingers. “What’s to do about it, then, if ye’ve so much learning on the subject?”

I thought, frowning as I searched my memory. I had never actually seen—much less treated—a case of prostatitis, as it wasn’t a condition that much afflicted young soldiers. Still, I had read medical texts where it was described; I remembered the treatment, because it had caused such hilarity among the student nurses, who had pored in fascinated horror over the rather graphic illustrations in the text.

“Well,” I said, “barring surgery, there are really only two things you can do. You can insert a metal rod through the penis and up into the bladder, to force the urethra open”—I jabbed my forefinger through the constricting circle—“or you can massage the prostate itself, to reduce the swelling. Through the rectum,” I added helpfully.

I heard a faint choking noise next to me, and glanced up at Jamie. His eyes were still fixed on his plate, but the tide of crimson was creeping upward from his collar, and the tips of his ears blazed red. He quivered slightly. I looked around the table, to find a phalanx of fascinated gazes fixed on me. The Lady Frances, Aline, and the other women were staring at me with varying expressions, ranging from curiosity to disgust, while the men all wore variations of revolted horror.

The exception to the general reaction was Lord Lovat himself, who was rubbing his chin thoughtfully, eyes half-closed.

“Mmphm,” he said. “Hell of a choice, there. A stick up the cock, or a finger up the backside, eh?”

“More like two or three,” I said. “Repeatedly.” I gave him a small, decorous smile.

“Ah.” A similar small smile decorated Lord Lovat’s mouth, and he slowly lifted his gaze, fixing deep blue eyes on mine with an expression of mockery tinged with challenge.

“That sounds…diverting,” he observed mildly. The slanted eyes slid down over my hands, assessing.

“You’ve lovely hands, my dear,” he said. “Prettily kept, and such long white slender fingers, aye?”

Jamie brought both his own hands down on the table with a crash and stood up. He leaned across the table, bringing his face within a foot of his grandfather’s.

“And you’re needing such attentions, Grandsire,” he said. “I’ll see to it myself.” He spread out his hands on the tabletop, broad and massive, each long finger the rough diameter of a pistol barrel. “It’s no pleasure to me to be stickin’ my fingers up your hairy auld arse,” he informed his grandfather, “but I expect it’s my filial duty to save ye from exploding in a shower of piss, no?”

Frances emitted a faint squeak.

Lord Lovat eyed his grandson with considerable disfavor, then rose slowly from his seat.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” he said shortly. “I’ll ha’ one of the maidservants do it.” He waved a hand at the company, giving notice that we might continue the meal, and left the hall, pausing to look speculatively at a young serving girl coming in with a platter of sliced pheasant. Eyes wide, she turned sideways to edge past him.

There was a dead silence over the dinner table following his lordship’s exit. Young Simon looked at me and opened his mouth. Then he glanced at Jamie, and closed it again. He cleared his throat.

“I’ll have the salt, if ye please,” he said.

“…and in consequence of the regrettable infirmity that prevents me from personal attendance upon Your Highness, I send by the hand of my son and heir a token of the loyalty—nay, make that ‘regard’—a token of the regard in which I have long cherished His Majesty and Your Highness.” Lord Lovat paused, frowning at the ceiling.

“What shall we send, Gideon?” he asked the secretary. “Rich-looking, but not so much I can’t say it was only a trifling present of no importance.”

Gideon sighed and wiped his face with a handkerchief. A stout, middle-aged man with thinning hair and round red cheeks, he plainly found the heat of the bedroom fire oppressive.

“The ring your lordship had from the Earl of Mar?” he suggested, without hope. A drop of sweat fell from his double chin onto the letter he was taking down, and he surreptitiously blotted it with his sleeve.

“Not expensive enough,” his lordship judged, “and too many political associations.” The mottled fingers tapped pensively on the coverlet as he thought.

Old Simon had done it up brown, I thought. He was wearing his best nightshirt, and was propped up in bed with an impressive panoply of medicines arrayed on the table, attended by his personal physician, Dr. Menzies, a small man with a squint who kept eyeing me with considerable doubt. I supposed the old man simply distrusted Young Simon’s powers of imagination, and had staged this elaborate tableau so that his heir might faithfully report Lord Lovat’s state of decrepitude when he presented himself to Charles Stuart.

“Ha,” said his lordship with satisfaction. “We’ll send the gold and sterling picnic set. That’s rich enough, but too frivolous to be interpreted as political support. Besides,” he added practically, “the spoon’s dented. All right then,” he said to the secretary, “let’s go on with ‘As Your Highness is aware…’ ”

I exchanged a glance with Jamie, who hid a smile in response.

“I think you’ve given him what he needs, Sassenach,” he had told me as we undressed after our fateful dinner the week before.

“And what’s that?” I asked, “an excuse to molest the maidservants?”

“I doubt he bothers greatly wi’ excuses of that sort,” Jamie said dryly. “Nay, you’ve given him a way to walk both sides—as usual. If he’s got an impressive-sounding disease that keeps him to his bed, then he canna be blamed for not appearing himself wi’ the men he promised. At the same time, if he sends his heir to fight, the Stuarts will credit Lovat with keeping his promise, and if it goes wrong, the Old Fox will claim to the English that he didna intend to give any aid to the Stuarts, but Young Simon went on his own account.”

“Spell ‘prostatitis’ for Gideon, would ye, lass?” Lord Lovat called to me, breaking into my thoughts. “And mind ye write it out carefully, clot,” he said to his secretary, “I dinna want His Highness to misread it.”

“P-r-o-s-t-a-t-i-t-i-s,” I spelled slowly, for Gideon’s benefit. “And how is it this morning, anyway?” I asked, coming to stand by his lordship’s bedside.

“Greatly improved, I thank ye,” the old man said, grinning up at me with a fine display of false teeth. “Want to see me piss?”

“Not just now, thanks,” I said politely.

It was a clear, icy day in mid-December when we left Beauly to join Charles Stuart and the Highland army. Against all advice, Charles had pressed on into England, defying weather and common sense, as well as his generals. But at last, in Derby, the generals had prevailed, the Highland chiefs refusing to go farther, and the Highland army was returning northward. An urgent letter from Charles to Jamie had urged us to head south “without delay,” to rendezvous with His Highness upon his return to Edinburgh. Young Simon, looking every inch the clan chieftain in his crimson tartan, rode at the head of a column of men. Those men with mounts followed him, while the larger number on foot walked behind.

Being mounted, we rode with Simon at the head of the column, until such time as we would reach Comar. There we would part company, Simon and the Fraser troops to go to Edinburgh, Jamie ostensibly escorting me to Lallybroch before returning to Edinburgh himself. He had, of course, no intention of so returning, but that was none of Simon’s business.

At midmorning, I emerged from a small wooded clump by the side of the track, to find Jamie waiting impatiently. Hot ale had been served to the departing men, to hearten them for the journey. And while I had myself found that hot ale made a surprisingly good breakfast, I had also found it had a marked effect on the kidneys.

Jamie snorted. “Women,” he said. “How can ye all take such the devil of a time to do such a simple thing as piss? Ye make as much fuss over it as my grandsire.”

“Well, you can come along next time and watch,” I suggested acerbically. “Perhaps you’ll have some helpful suggestions.”

He merely snorted again, and turned back to watch the column of men filing past, but he was smiling nonetheless. The clear, bright day raised everyone’s spirits, but Jamie was in a particularly good mood this morning. And no wonder; we were going home. I knew he didn’t deceive himself that all would be well; this war would have its price. But if we had failed to stop Charles, it might still be that we could save the small corner of Scotland that lay closest to us—Lallybroch. That much might be still within our power.

I glanced at the trailing column of clansmen.

“Two hundred men make a fair show.”

“A hundred and seventy,” Jamie corrected absently, reaching for his horse’s reins.

“Are you sure?” I asked curiously. “Lord Lovat said he was sending two hundred. I heard him dictating the letter saying so.”

“Well, he didn’t.” Jamie swung into the saddle, then stood up in his stirrups, pointing down the slope ahead, to the distant spot where the Fraser banner with its stag’s-head crest fluttered at the head of the column.

“I counted them while I waited for you,” he explained. “Thirty cavalry up there wi’ Simon, then fifty wi’ broadswords and targes—those will be the men from the local Watch—and then the cottars, wi’ everything from scythes to hammers at their belts, and there’s ninety of those.”

“I suppose your grandfather’s betting on Prince Charles not counting them personally,” I observed cynically. “Trying to get credit for more than he’s sent.”

“Aye, but the names will be entered on the army rolls when they reach Edinburgh,” Jamie said, frowning. “I’d best see.”

I followed more sedately. I judged my mount to be approximately twenty years old, and capable of no more than a staid amble. Jamie’s mount was a trifle friskier, though still no match for Donas. The huge stallion had been left in Edinburgh, as Prince Charles wished to ride him on public occasions. Jamie had acceded to this request, as he harbored suspicions that Old Simon might well be capable of appropriating the big horse, should Donas come within reach of his rapacious grasp.

Judging from the tableau unfolding before me, Jamie’s estimate of his grandfather’s character had not been in error. Jamie had first ridden up alongside Young Simon’s clerk, and what looked from my vantage point like a heated argument ended when Jamie leaned from his saddle, grabbed the clerk’s reins, and dragged the indignant man’s horse out of line, onto the verge of the muddy track.

The two men dismounted and stood face-to-face, obviously going at it hammer and tongs. Young Simon, seeing the altercation, reined aside himself, motioning the rest of the column to proceed. A good deal of to and fro then ensued; we were close enough to see Simon’s face, flushed red with annoyance, the worried grimace on the clerk’s countenance, and a series of rather violent gestures on Jamie’s part.

I watched this pantomime in fascination, as the clerk, with a shrug of resignation, unfastened his saddlebag, scrabbled in the depths, and came up with several sheets of parchment. Jamie snatched these and skimmed rapidly through them, forefinger tracing the lines of writing. He seized one sheet, letting the rest drop to the ground, and shook it in Simon Fraser’s face. The Young Fox looked taken aback. He took the sheet, peered at it, then looked up in bewilderment. Jamie grabbed back the sheet, and with a sudden effort, ripped the tough parchment down, then across, and stuffed the pieces into his sporran.

I had halted my pony, who took advantage of the recess to nose about among the meager shreds of plant life still to be found. The back of Young Simon’s neck was bright red as he turned back to his horse, and I decided to keep out of the way. Jamie, remounted, came trotting back along the verge to join me, red hair flying like a banner in the wind, eyes gleaming with anger over tight-set lips.

“The filthy auld arse-wipe,” he said without ceremony.

“What’s he done?” I inquired.

“Listed the names of my men on his own rolls,” Jamie said. “Claimed them as part of his Fraser regiment. Mozie auld pout-worm!” He glanced back up the track with longing. “Pity we’ve come such a way; it’s too far to go back and proddle the auld mumper.”

I resisted the temptation to egg Jamie on to call his grandfather more names, and asked instead, “Why would he do that? Just to make it look as though he were making more of a contribution to the Stuarts?”

Jamie nodded, the tide of fury receding slightly from his cheeks.

“Aye, that. Make himself look better, at no cost. But not only that. The wretched auld nettercap wants my land back—he has, ever since he was forced to give it up when my parents wed. Now he thinks if it all comes right and he’s made Duke of Inverness, he can claim Lallybroch has been his all along, and me just his tenant—the proof being that he’s raised men from the estate to answer the Stuarts’ call to the clans.”

“Could he actually get away with something like that?” I asked doubtfully.

Jamie drew in a deep breath and released it, the cloud of vapor rising like dragon smoke from his nostrils. He smiled grimly and patted the sporran at his waist.

“Not now he can’t,” he said.

It was a two-day trip from Beauly to Lallybroch in good weather, given sound horses and dry ground, pausing for nothing more than the necessities of eating, sleeping, and personal hygiene. As it was, one of the horses went lame six miles out of Beauly, it snowed and sleeted and blew by turns, the boggy ground froze in patches of slippery ice, and what with one thing and another, it was nearly a week before we made our way down the last slope that led to the farmhouse at Lallybroch—cold, tired, hungry, and far from hygienic.

We were alone, just the two of us. Murtagh had been sent to Edinburgh with Young Simon and the Beaufort men-at-arms, to judge how matters stood with the Highland army.

The house stood solid among its outbuildings, white as the snow-streaked fields that surrounded it. I remembered vividly the emotions I had felt when I first saw the place. Granted, I had seen it first in the glow of a fine autumn day, not through sheets of blowing, icy snow, but even then it had seemed a welcoming refuge. The house’s impression of strength and serenity was heightened now by the warm lamplight spilling through the lower windows, soft yellow in the deepening gray of early evening.

The feeling of welcome grew even stronger when I followed Jamie through the front door, to be met by the mouth-watering smell of roasting meat and fresh bread.

“Supper,” Jamie said, closing his eyes in bliss as he inhaled the fragrant aromas. “God, I could eat a horse.” Melting ice dripped from the hem of his cloak, making wet spots on the wooden floor.

“I thought we were going to have to eat one of them,” I remarked, untying the strings of my cloak and brushing melting snow from my hair. “That poor creature you traded in Kirkinmill could barely hobble.”

The sound of our voices carried through the hall, and a door opened overhead, followed by the sound of small running feet and a cry of joy as the younger Jamie spotted his namesake below.

The racket of their reunion attracted the attention of the rest of the household, and before we knew it, we were enveloped in greetings and embraces as Jenny and the baby, little Maggie, Ian, Mrs. Crook, and assorted maidservants all rushed into the hall.

“It’s so good to see ye, my dearie!” Jenny said for the third time, standing on tiptoe to kiss Jamie. “Such news as we’ve heard of the army, we feared it would be months before ye came home.”

“Aye,” Ian said, “have ye brought any of the men back with ye, or is this only a visit?”

“Brought them back?” Arrested in the act of greeting his elder niece, Jamie stared at his brother-in-law, momentarily forgetting the little girl in his arms. Brought to a realization of her presence by her yanking his hair, he kissed her absently and handed her to me.

“What d’ye mean, Ian?” he demanded. “The men should all ha’ returned a month ago. Did some of them not come home?”

I held small Maggie tight, a dreadful feeling of foreboding coming over me as I watched the smile fade from Ian’s face.

“None of them came back, Jamie,” he said slowly, his long, good-humored face suddenly mirroring the grim expression he saw on Jamie’s. “We havena seen hide nor hair of any of them, since they marched awa’ with you.”

There was a shout from the dooryard outside, where Rabbie MacNab was putting away the horses. Jamie whirled, turned to the door and pushed it open, leaning out into the storm.

Over his shoulder, I could see a rider coming through the blowing snow. Visibility was too poor to make out his face, but that small, wiry figure, clinging monkeylike to the saddle, was unmistakable. “Fast as chain lightning,” Jamie had said, and clearly he was right; to make the trip from Beauly to Edinburgh, and then to Lallybroch in a week was a true feat of endurance. The coming rider was Murtagh, and it didn’t take Maisri’s gift of prophecy to tell us that the news he bore was ill.