The Outlandish Companion Page 15

If the stone and the apparition were mysterious, the skull is more so. Examining it for the first time in the light of day, Claire notes both the severed vertebrum that indicates the victim was beheaded, and the shattered teeth that further betokened a violent end. The real shock, though, lies in the teeth that are whole— the molars of the skull have silver fillings.

  “My God,” I said, all tiredness forgotten. “My God,” I said, to the empty eyes and the lopsided grin. “Who were you?”

  BACK IN THE FUTURE, Roger is grimly wrestling with his own mysteries; his campaign of discouragement is bearing sour fruit. Brianna’s letters keep coming, but the tone is changed—friendly, but increasingly distant. Has his attempt to keep her from looking for her parents succeeded only in driving her away from him?

  ON FRASER’S RIDGE, the peace of daily life has been disrupted; first, by the arrival of a Tuscaroran hunting party, one of whose members is ill with measles, and then by the appearance of a rattlesnake in the privy. Such mundane considerations are overshadowed, however, by another unexpected arrival—Lord John Grey and his son, William.

  Or rather, his stepson. The boy is the son of his wife’s dead sister and the late Earl of Ellesmere. William is now Viscount Ashness, ninth Earl of Ellesmere— so far as the world is concerned.

  Claire is shocked, both by the boy’s appearance—(He did look quite a bit like Jamie, but it was my memories of Brianna that had caused that instant jolt of recognition when I saw him. Only ten years her junior, the childish outlines of his face were much more similar to hers than to Jamie’s)—and by his presence. What has possessed Grey to bring the boy here? For that matter, what is Grey himself doing here?

  Grey’s explanation is plausible enough; his wife, Isobel, en route to join him in Jamaica, has died aboard ship. In consequence of her death, Grey had decided not to remain in Jamaica, but to take Willie— naturally much distressed by the loss of his mother—to Virginia, where his late wife had property. Grey must decide what to do with the property, and hoped that the diversions of the journey might distract William from his grief.

  Claire is not convinced by this; even if it is, as Grey claims, no more than a slight diversion to visit Fraser’s Ridge, it involves some risk. What if William remembers a groom named MacKenzie—or worse, notices the resemblance that is so clear to Claire? While Grey might possibly have meant only to allow Jamie a glimpse of his son, she thinks it much more likely that his purpose is more personal. “Always difficult to harbor warm feelings for a man with a professed homosexual passion for one’s husband, after all,” as she says.

  The visit is uneventful, though, until the Indian in the corncrib dies of his illness. Beyond natural distress at the event, his death presents the Frasers with a delicate problem: how to inform his people of his demise. Claire insists that they cannot take the body to his people for burial; to do so would risk infecting them. But to bury it themselves might arouse suspicion that the Frasers have had a hand in his death, and are concealing it.

  The problem is both compounded and resolved by Lord John’s coming down with measles himself. William cannot be exposed to the illness, Claire says; best for Jamie to take the boy with him to the Tuscarora village. Jamie can enlist Nacognaweto’s help in informing the dead man’s family of his death, and at the same time, remove Willie from danger. The fact that this plan would also give Jamie a few days in the company of his son is one that passes unremarked—though not unnoticed.

  Willie objects fiercely to leaving his beloved stepfather, desperately afraid that John Grey will die, too—like both his mothers, and like the Indian in the corn-crib, whose death Willie has witnessed. Still, he is obliged to go with Jamie, and the two establish wary respect and a tentative liking for each other on the journey— as much, Jamie thinks, as he may ever have with this boy, and a gift for which he is grateful; or tries to be.

  It wasn’t stubbornness, or even loyalty, that had made Willie insist on staying at the Ridge. It was love of John Grey, and fear of his loss. And it was the same love that made the boy weep in the night, desperate with worry for his father.

  An unaccustomed weed of jealousy sprang up in Jamie’s heart, stinging like nettles. He stamped firmly on it; he was fortunate indeed to know that his son enjoyed a loving relationship with his stepfather. There, that was the weed stamped out. The stamping, though, seemed to have left a small bruised spot on his heart; he could feel it when he breathed.

  Back on Fraser’s Ridge, Claire is nursing two sick men—Young Ian having also contracted the measles—and wrestling with her own resentments of John Grey. She finds these tempered, though, by a reluctantly growing liking for the man that is answered by his own for her—equally reluctant.

  Edgy and jealous of each other, Lord John and Claire at last come to a grudging recognition of what they have in common; not only a love for Jamie Fraser, but a deep honesty that forces each to admit the other’s virtues, and see what it is that Jamie values in each of them. Presuming on this honesty, Claire asks bluntly why Lord John has come.

  “You ASKED ME why I came; you questioned my motives; you accused me of jealousy. Perhaps you don’t want to know, because if you did, you could not keep thinking of me as you choose to.”

  “And how the hell do you know what I choose to think of you?”

  His mouth twisted in an expression that might have been a sneer on a less handsome face.

  “Don’t I?”

  I looked him full in the face for a minute, not troubling to hide anything at all.

  “You did mention jealousy,” he said quietly, after a moment.

  “So I did. So did you.”

  He turned his head away, but continued after a moment.

  “When I heard that Isobel was dead… it meant nothing to me. We had lived together for years, though we had not seen each other for nearly two years. We shared a bed; we shared a life, I thought. I should have cared. But I didn’t.”

  He took a deep breath. I saw the bedclothes stir as he settled himself.

  “You mentioned generosity. It wasn’t that. I came to see… whether I can still feel,” he said. His head was still turned away, staring at the hide-covered window, grown dark with the night. There was plenty of the infusion left. I poured another cup and held it out to Lord John. Surprised, he sat upright and took it from me.

  “And now that you’ve come, and seen him—do you still have feelings?” I said.

  He stared at me for a moment, eyes unblinking in the candlelight.

  “I do, yes.” Hand steady as a rock, he picked up the cup and drank. “God help me,” he added, so casual as almost to seem offhand.

  JAMIE AND WILLIE reach the Tuscarora village of Anna Ooka, but something is wrong; the village is in flames, the houses half-burnt and the people gone. Leaving Willie in hiding, Jamie goes cautiously in search of the inhabitants, who he finds encamped not far away. It is not a raid, not war; they have packed their belongings for an orderly withdrawal.

  Sickness, replies Nacognaweto, when asked what has happened. Measles has come into the village, killing nearly half the people. The survivors are leaving, intending to take refuge in another village to the north. Without their shaman, their singer, there was no cure for the sickness. Has Jamie seen her, Nacognaweto asks? Nayawenne had gone to the forest, seeking a vision to help the stricken village, attended by Gabrielle and her daughter, Berthe; none of the women has returned.

  Jamie has no knowledge of the women; there is nothing he can do to help, and his original mission has been lost in the enormity of the catastrophe that has overtaken the Indians.

  He went, the grief of the place clinging to him like the smoke that permeated clothes and hair. And within his charred heart as he left the camp sprang a small green shoot of selfishness, relief that the grief was—for this time—not his own. His woman still lived. His children were safe.

  OR AT LEAST he thinks they are. Willie will go on to his new life in Virginia with Lord John, but in the future, Brianna has been making her own
plans.

  A letter from Bree cancels plans for the summer, telling Roger she intends instead to go to Sri Lanka for a conference, and nearly convincing him that all is lost. At once enraged and depressed at the news, he accepts an offer himself, to lead a seminar in Oxford, rather than returning to the Highlands, where Brianna’s absence would be even more painfully felt.

  Returning to his rooms at the end of the seminar, though, Roger finds unexpected hope. Four heavy boxes, filled with memories: the family silver, old photographs, ancient toys, and jewelry. The note with them reads, “You once told me that everybody needs a history. This is mine. Will you keep it with yours?” The note is signed simply “B,” in Brianna’s strong black hand.

  Roger’s puzzlement increases and his elation abates as he grasps the implications of this delivery. Consternation changes to alarm when he dumps out the contents of Brianna’s jewelry box to find two items missing: his silver bracelet, which she always wears—and her grandmother’s pearls … which she never wears.

  Rushing to the phone, he calls Boston, hoping against hope that his apprehensions are unfounded.

  It took forever to get the international operator on the line, and a longer time yet of vague electronic poppings and buzzings, before he heard the click of connection followed by a faint ringing. One ring, two, then a click, and his heart leapt. She was home!

  “We’re sorry,” said a woman’s pleasant, impersonal voice, “that number has been disconnected, or is no longer in service.”

  A quick call to Joseph Abernathy, Claire’s friend and Bree’s informal guardian, reveals that Brianna has come to the Highlands, and Roger at once heads for Inverness, hot on her trail. The trail leads, as he feared, directly to the stone circle on Craigh na Dun. She has gone back in search of her parents—without telling him.

  Fear for her safety is mixed with rage at her abandonment—and guilt at his own betrayal. Whether she has found the news item he tried to conceal from her, or whether her flight into the past has been impelled by something else, the fact remains: Brianna is gone, and there is only one way to follow—if he can.

  Roger finds unexpected help in Inverness. The granddaughter of Mrs. Graham, the Reverend’s old housekeeper, Fiona has inherited more from her granny than a talent for scones and clotted cream. She is the leader of the group of women who dance on Craigh na Dun at dawn on the Feast of Beltane; she is the caller of the sun. More important, she knows something of Gillian Edgars, the woman who vanished into the past and transformed herself into the witch Geillis Duncan.

  Gillian has left behind her grimoire, her book of magic—or in this case, her speculations as to the means of time travel. Fiona has read it, and knows what Roger means to attempt. A loyal friend, she offers her help and goes with him to the circle on Midsummer’s Eve, the ancient sun feast of Litha. If Geillis was right in her speculations, the door of time stands widest open on fire feast and sun feast—and the stones are buzzing as Roger approaches.

  His first attempt ends in failure—and near death. Entering the time passage, Roger is thinking of his own father, long dead, and wondering whether … The result of this is a brief and ghostly meeting with his father, and an almost catastrophic meeting with himself; by inadvertence, he has crossed his own lifeline, and the impossibility of existing twice in the same time has blown him out of the stones to lie unconscious on the grass, his clothes in flames, where his mother’s garnet-crusted locket, carried for luck, has vaporized in his pocket.

  Still, he is not dead—and many previous time-travelers have ended up that way. Evidently, Geillis’s injunctions regarding the protective benefit of gemstones have merit. Fiona gives him her diamond engagement ring, insisting that he take it. Summoning strength and resolve for another try, he takes farewell of Fiona and walks back through the stones, clinging tightly to his thoughts of Brianna.

  The Bridge at Inverness.

  BRIANNA HAS INDEED reached her destination—at least the first leg of it. Not knowing exactly where her parents may be, she goes to Lallybroch in search of information, and finds more than she bargained for: an unexpectedly large, warm family—and Laoghaire MacKenzie Fraser, her father’s second wife.

  Reeling from Laoghaire’s bitter accusations against her father, she is supported and reassured by Ian and Jenny, who tell her that her parents are both well and safe, though very distant, in the wilds of North Carolina. She insists that she will go to them, no matter how far or how difficult the journey. Eager to help, but dubious about her safety, her uncle and cousin insist that she engage a servant to accompany her.

  The servant is not precisely what Ian and Young Jamie had envisioned; far from the protectively muscular manservant they had in mind, Brianna’s choice falls on a wispy young girl, Elizabeth Wemyss, whose father begs Brianna to buy his daughter’s contract of indenture, in order to save her from the hands of a man whom he fears has dishonorable intentions.

  Sure of her ability to take care of herself and Lizzie, Brianna insists that the girl will be her maid, and the two embark for North Carolina, with Brianna assuring her new servant that they will find Lizzie’s father—himself sold as a bondsman in the Colonies—as soon as they find Brianna’s.

  ROGER’S SECOND ATTEMPT to pass through the stones is successful. Seeking traces of Brianna, he heads at once for Inverness, to consult the shipping registers and—if he can determine where she has gone—to make arrangements to follow her himself.

  She is there—or rather, her name is there, inscribed as a passenger on the Phillip Alonzo, headed for the southern Colonies. Roger takes the first opportunity to follow, shipping as a hand on the Gloriana, bound for the Carolinas—captained by one Stephen Bonnet, who has the reputation of a fair but ruthless man.

  Embarked on the long sea journey, Roger finds his loneliness slightly assuaged by watching the Scottish passengers— themselves embarked on a passage no less hazardous than his own, but willing to forsake home and country for the chance of a better life for themselves and their children.

  This hope will prove vain for some. One night Roger is waked by a terrible commotion near the hold; smallpox has broken out among the passengers, and in an effort to prevent the disease from spreading the sailors are throwing the victims—many of them children—overboard to drown.

  Joining the melee, Roger sees two dark figures crouched in the shadow near the cargo hold; one attacks him—a tall, fair man, whom he had noticed before. Not for the man’s own sake, but for the sake of his wife, a bonny wee girl named Morag MacKenzie, who has a nursing child.

  The passengers’ revolt is subdued and the survivors clapped under hatches. But what of the second figure Roger has seen? He goes unobserved to the cargo hold next day, to make his own investigation. What he finds is what he suspected: Morag MacKenzie, hidden with her child. The boy has a rash on his face; in the panic over the pox he would certainly be dispatched with the rest. But it is not smallpox, Morag insists; nothing but a teething rash. It will clear within a few days; until then she must hide, to save baby Jemmy’s life. Surely Roger will not give her away? Moved by her plight, he promises to keep her secret, and to bring her food, until she can safely come out.

  But a ship is a small place, and little happens that does not come to the attention of the Captain. Coming from the hold in a dense fog next day, Roger meets Stephen Bonnet, who demands to know his reason for hiding the girl—and offers Roger a dreadful gamble: the toss of a coin for the infant’s life.

  Roger wins the toss, and hears the strange story of Bonnet’s early life, and the death of a beggar man who lies under the foundation of a great house in Inverness, killed in Bonnet’s stead by the toss of a coin. A coin the Captain still holds— along with Roger’s fate.

  He opened the hand that held the coin, and held it cupped thoughtfully before him, tilting it back and forth so the silver gleamed in the lantern light.

  “Heads you live, and tails you die. A fair chance, would yez say, MacKenzie?”…

  As in a dream, R
oger felt the weight of the shilling drop once more into his hands. He heard the suck and hiss of the water on the hull, the blowing of the whales—and the suck and hiss of Bonnet’s breath as he drew on his cigar….

  The fog had closed over the deck. There was nothing visible save the glowing coal of Bonnet’s cigar, a burning cyclops in the mist. The man might be a devil indeed, one eye closed to human misery, one eye open to the dark. And here Roger stood quite literally between the devil and the deep blue sea, with his fate shining silver in the palm of his hand.

  “It is my life; I’ll make the call,” he said, and was surprised to hear his voice calm and steady. “Tails—tails is mine.” He threw, and caught, clasped his one hand hard against the back of the other, trapped the coin and its unknown sentence.

  He closed his eyes and thought just once of Brianna. I’m sorry, he said silently to her, and lifted his hand.

  A warm breath passed over his skin, and then he felt a spot of coolness on the back of his hand as the coin was picked up, but he didn’t move, didn’t open his eyes.

  It was some time before he realized that he stood alone.

  SAFELY ARRIVED INWILMINGTON, Brianna faces one more obstacle on her journey to find her parents; her maid, Lizzie, has contracted a mysterious fever that Brianna fears may be malaria; it comes and goes, leaving Lizzie sweat-drenched and shaking with chills. While the recurrent fever traps them in Wilmington for the moment, Lizzie’s sickness merely reinforces Brianna’s urgent need to find the Frasers—she must find her mother, who will know what to do for the fever, before Lizzie dies.

  Leaving Lizzie in the care of the landlady, Brianna goes to sell their horses, in preparation for the journey upriver to Cross Creek; Jocasta Cameron will know where to find Claire and Jamie, she hopes. The fever breaks, as it has before, and Lizzie—weak but clear-eyed—greets Brianna upon her return to the inn with news that she has learned of Jamie Fraser’s whereabouts; he will be in the town of Cross Creek, a week’s travel upriver, come Monday week.