Seven Stones to Stand or Fall Page 34

  London was a shock. There was bomb damage everywhere. Streets were scattered with shattered glass from shop windows, glinting in the pale sun, other streets blocked off by barriers. Here and there a stark black notice: Do Not Enter—UNEXPLODED BOMB.

  He made his way from Saint Pancras on foot, needing to see, his heart rising into his throat fit to choke him as he did see what had been done. After a while, he stopped seeing the details, perceiving bomb craters and debris only as blocks to his progress, things stopping him from reaching home.

  And then he did reach home.

  The rubble had been pushed off the street into a heap, but not taken away. Great blackened lumps of shattered stone and concrete lay like a cairn where Montrose Terrace had once stood.

  All the blood in his heart stopped dead, congealed by the sight. He groped, pawing mindlessly for the wrought-iron railing to keep himself from falling, but it wasn’t there.

  Of course not, his mind said, quite calmly. It’s gone for the war, hasn’t it? Melted down, made into planes. Bombs.

  His knee gave way without warning, and he fell, landing hard on both knees, not feeling the impact, the crunch of pain from his badly mended kneecap quite drowned out by the blunt, small voice inside his head.

  Too late. Ye went too far.

  “Mr. MacKenzie, Mr. MacKenzie!” He blinked at the blurred thing above him, not understanding what it was. Something tugged at him, though, and he breathed, the rush of air in his chest ragged and strange.

  “Sit up, Mr. MacKenzie, do.” The anxious voice was still there, and hands—yes, it was hands—tugging at his arm. He shook his head, screwed his eyes shut hard, then opened them again, and the round thing became the houndlike face of old Mr. Wardlaw, who kept the corner shop.

  “Ah, there you are.” The old man’s voice was relieved, and the wrinkles in his baggy old face relaxed their anxious lines. “Had a bad turn, did you?”

  “I—” Speech was beyond him, but he flapped his hand at the wreckage. He didn’t think he was crying, but his face was wet. The wrinkles in Wardlaw’s face creased deeper in concern, then the old grocer realised what he meant, and his face lit up.

  “Oh, dear!” he said. “Oh, no! No, no, no—they’re all right, sir, your family’s all right! Did you hear me?” he asked anxiously. “Can you breathe? Had I best fetch you some salts, do you think?”

  It took Jerry several tries to make it to his feet, hampered both by his knee and by Mr. Wardlaw’s fumbling attempts to help him, but by the time he’d got all the way up, he’d regained the power of speech.

  “Where?” he gasped. “Where are they?”

  “Why—your missus took the little boy and went to stay with her mother, sometime after you left. I don’t recall quite where she said…” Mr. Wardlaw turned, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the river. “Camberwell, was it?”

  “Bethnal Green.” Jerry’s mind had come back, though it felt still as though it was a pebble rolling round the rim of some bottomless abyss, its balance uncertain. He tried to dust himself off, but his hands were shaking. “She lives in Bethnal Green. You’re sure—you’re sure, man?”

  “Yes, yes.” The grocer was altogether relieved, smiling and nodding so hard that his jowls trembled. “She left—must be more than a year ago, soon after she—soon after she…” The old man’s smile faded abruptly and his mouth slowly opened, a flabby dark hole of horror.

  “But you’re dead, Mr. MacKenzie,” he whispered, backing away, hands held up before him. “Oh, God. You’re dead.”

  “THE FUCK I AM, the fuck I am, the fuck I am!” He caught sight of a woman’s startled face and stopped abruptly, gulping air like a landed fish. He’d been weaving down the shattered street, fists pumping, limping and staggering, muttering his private motto under his breath like the Hail Marys of a rosary. Maybe not as far under his breath as he’d thought.

  He stopped, leaning against the marble front of the Bank of England, panting. He was streaming with sweat and the right leg of his trousers was heavily streaked with dried blood from the fall. His knee was throbbing in time with his heart, his face, his hands, his thoughts. They’re alive. So am I.

  The woman he’d startled was down the street, talking to a policeman; she turned, pointing at him. He straightened up at once, squaring his shoulders. Braced his knee and gritted his teeth, forcing it to bear his weight as he strode down the street, officerlike. The very last thing he wanted just now was to be taken up as drunk.

  He marched past the policeman, nodding politely, touching his forehead in lieu of cap. The policeman looked taken aback, made to speak but couldn’t quite decide what to say, and a moment later, Jerry was round the corner and away.

  It was getting dark. There weren’t many cabs in this area at the best of times—none at all, now, and he hadn’t any money, anyway. The Tube. If the lines were open, it was the fastest way to Bethnal Green. And surely he could cadge the fare from someone. Somehow. He went back to limping, grimly determined. He had to reach Bethnal Green by dark.

  IT WAS SO much changed. Like the rest of London. Houses damaged, halfway repaired, abandoned, others no more than a blackened depression or a heap of rubble. The air was thick with cold dust, stone dust, and the smells of paraffin and cooking grease, the brutal, acrid smell of cordite.

  Half the streets had no signs, and he wasn’t so familiar with Bethnal Green to begin with. He’d visited Dolly’s mother just twice, once when they went to tell her they’d run off and got married—she hadn’t been best pleased, Mrs. Wakefield, but she’d put a good face on it, even if the face had a lemon-sucking look to it.

  The second time had been when he signed up with the RAF; he’d gone alone to tell her, to ask her to look after Dolly while he was gone. Dolly’s mother had gone white. She knew as well as he did what the life expectancy was for fliers. But she’d told him she was proud of him, and held his hand tight for a long moment before she let him leave, saying only, “Come back, Jeremiah. She needs you.”

  He soldiered on, skirting craters in the street, asking his way. It was nearly full dark, now; he couldn’t be on the streets much longer. His anxiety began to ease a little as he started to see things he knew, though. Close, he was getting close.

  And then the sirens began, and people began to pour out of the houses.

  He was being buffeted by the crowd, borne down the street as much by their barely controlled panic as by their physical impact. There was shouting, people calling for separated family members, wardens bellowing directions, waving their torches, their flat, white helmets pale as mushrooms in the gloom. Above it, through it, the air-raid siren pierced him like a sharpened wire, thrust him down the street on its spike, ramming him into others likewise skewered by fright.

  The tide of it swept round the next corner, and he saw the red circle with its blue line over the entrance to the Tube station, lit up by a warden’s flashlight. He was sucked in, propelled through sudden bright lights, hurtling down the stair, the next, onto a platform, deep into the earth, into safety. And all the time the whoop and moan of the sirens still filling the air, barely muffled by the dirt above.

  There were wardens moving among the crowd, pushing people back against the walls, into the tunnels, away from the edge of the track. He brushed up against a woman with two toddlers, picked one—a little girl with round eyes and a blue teddy bear—out of her arms and turned his shoulder into the crowd, making a way for them. He found a small space in a tunnel-mouth, pushed the woman into it, and gave her back the little girl. Her mouth moved in thanks, but he couldn’t hear her above the noise of the crowd, the sirens, the creaking, the—

  A sudden monstrous thud from above shook the station, and the whole crowd was struck silent, every eye on the high arched ceiling above them.

  The tiles were white, and as they looked, a dark crack appeared suddenly between two rows of them. A gasp rose from the crowd, louder than the sirens. The crack seemed to stop, to hesitate—and then it zigzagged suddenly, partin
g the tiles, in different directions.

  He looked down from the growing crack, to see who was below it—the people still on the stair. The crowd at the bottom was too thick to move, everyone stopped still by horror. And then he saw her, partway up the stair.

  Dolly. She’s cut her hair, he thought. It was short and curly, black as soot—black as the hair of the little boy she held in her arms, close against her, sheltering him. Her face was set, jaw clenched. And then she turned a bit, and saw him.

  Her face went blank for an instant and then flared like a lit match, with a radiant joy that struck him in the heart and flamed through his being.

  There was a much louder thud! from above, and a scream of terror rose from the crowd, louder, much louder than the sirens. Despite the shrieking, he could hear the fine rattle, like rain, as dirt began to pour from the crack above. He shoved with all his might, but couldn’t get past, couldn’t reach them. Dolly looked up, and he saw her jaw set hard again, her eyes ablaze with determination. She shoved the man in front of her, who stumbled and fell down a step, squashing into the people in front of him. She swung Roger down into the little space she’d made, and with a twist of her shoulders and the heave of her whole body, hurled the little boy up, over the rail—toward Jerry.

  He saw what she was doing and was already leaning, pushing forward, straining to reach…The boy struck him high in the chest like a lump of concrete, little head smashing painfully into Jerry’s face, knocking his head back. He had one arm round the child, falling back on the people behind him, struggling to find his footing, get a firmer hold—and then something gave way in the crowd around him, he staggered into an open space, and then his knee gave way and he plunged over the lip of the track.

  He didn’t hear the crack of his head against the rail or the screams of the people above; it was all lost in a roar like the end of the world as the roof over the stair fell in.

  THE LITTLE BOY was still as death, but he wasn’t dead; Jerry could feel his heartbeat, thumping fast against his own chest. It was all he could feel. Poor little bugger must have had his wind knocked out.

  People had stopped screaming, but there was still shouting, calling out. There was a strange silence underneath all the racket. His blood had stopped pounding through his head, his own heart no longer hammering. Perhaps that was it.

  The silence underneath felt alive, somehow. Peaceful, but like sunlight on water, moving, glittering. He could still hear the noises above the silence, feet running, anxious voices, bangs and creakings—but he was sinking gently into the silence; the noises grew distant, though he could still hear voices.

  “Is that one—?”

  “Nay, he’s gone—look at his head, poor chap, caved in something horrid. The boy’s well enough, I think, just bumps and scratches. Here, lad, come up…no, no, let go, now. It’s all right, just let go. Let me pick you up, yes, that’s good, it’s all right now, hush, hush, there’s a good boy…”

  “What a look on that bloke’s face. I never saw anything like—”

  “Here, take the little chap. I’ll see if the bloke’s got any identification.”

  “Come on, big man, yeah, that’s it, that’s it, come with me. Hush, now, it’s all right, it’s all right…is that your daddy, then?”

  “No tags, no service book. Funny, that. He’s RAF, though, isn’t he? AWOL, d’ye think?”

  He could hear Dolly laughing at that, felt her hand stroke his hair. He smiled and turned his head to see her smiling back, the radiant joy spreading round her like rings in shining water…

  “Rafe! The rest of it’s going! Run! Run!”

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  BEFORE Y’ALL GET tangled up in your underwear about it being All Hallows’ Eve when Jeremiah leaves, and “nearly Samhain” (aka All Hallows’ Eve) when he returns—bear in mind that Great Britain changed from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in 1752, this resulting in a “loss” of twelve days. And for those of you who’d like to know more about the two men who rescue him, more of their story can be found in An Echo in the Bone.

  “Never have so many owed so much to so few.” This was Winston Churchill’s acknowledgement to the RAF pilots who protected Britain during World War II—and he was about right.

  Adolph Gysbert Malan—known as Sailor (probably because Adolph was not a popular name at the time)—was a South African flying ace who became the leader of the famous No. 74 Squadron RAF. He was known for sending German bomber pilots home with dead crews, to demoralize the Luftwaffe, and I would have mentioned this gruesomely fascinating detail in the story, had there been any good way of getting it in, but there wasn’t. His Ten Commandments for Air Fighting are as given in the text.

  While the mission that Captain Frank Randall recruits Jerry MacKenzie for is fictional, the situation wasn’t. The Nazis did have labor camps in Poland long before anyone in the rest of Europe became aware of them, and the eventual revelation did much to rally anti-Nazi feeling.

  I’d like particularly to acknowledge the assistance of Maria Szybek in the delicate matter of Polish vulgarities (any errors in grammar, spelling, or accent marks are entirely mine), and of Douglas Watkins in the technical descriptions of small-plane maneuvers (also the valuable suggestion of the malfunction that brought Jerry’s Spitfire down).

  VIRGINS

  INTRODUCTION

  WHILE MANY OF the stories in this book show you an alternate view of events seen in the main novels or explore the stories of heretofore minor characters, “Virgins” is a straightforward prequel. Set about three years prior to the events recounted in Outlander, this story explains what happened to Jamie Fraser after his escape from Fort William. He’s suddenly an outlaw, wounded and with a price on his head, his family and home left in shambles, and his only choice is to seek refuge outside of Scotland with his best friend and blood brother, Ian Murray.

  As young mercenaries in France, neither Ian nor Jamie has yet killed a man or bedded a lass—but they’re trying.

  October 1740

  Near Bordeaux, France

  IAN MURRAY KNEW FROM the moment he saw his best friend’s face that something terrible had happened. The fact that he was seeing Jamie Fraser’s face at all was evidence enough of that, never mind the look of the man.

  Jamie was standing by the armorer’s wagon, his arms full of the bits and pieces Armand had just given him, white as milk and swaying back and forth like a reed on Loch Awe. Ian reached him in three paces and took him by the arm before he could fall over.

  “Ian.” Jamie looked so relieved at seeing him that Ian thought he might break into tears. “God, Ian.”

  Ian seized Jamie in an embrace and felt him stiffen and draw in his breath at the same instant that Ian felt the bandages beneath Jamie’s shirt.

  “Jesus!” he began, startled, but then coughed and said, “Jesus, man, it’s good to see ye.” He patted Jamie’s back gently and let go. “Ye’ll need a bit to eat, aye? Come on, then.”

  Plainly they couldn’t talk now, but he gave Jamie a quick private nod, took half the equipment from him, and then led him to the fire, to be introduced to the others.

  Jamie’d picked a good time of day to turn up, Ian thought. Everyone was tired but happy to sit down, looking forward to their supper and the daily ration of whatever was going in the way of drink. Ready for the possibilities a new fish offered for entertainment, but without the energy to include the more physical sorts of entertainment.

  “That’s Big Georges over there,” Ian said, dropping Jamie’s gear and gesturing toward the far side of the fire. “Next to him, the wee fellow wi’ the warts is Juanito; doesna speak much French and nay English at all.”

  “Do any of them speak English?” Jamie likewise dropped his gear and sat heavily on his bedroll, tucking his kilt absently down between his knees. His eyes flicked round the circle, and he nodded, half-smiling in a shy sort of way.

  “I do.” The captain leaned past the man next to him, extending a hand to Jamie. “I’m le
capitaine—Richard D’Eglise. You’ll call me Captain. You look big enough to be useful—your friend says your name is Fraser?”

  “Jamie Fraser, aye.”

  Ian was pleased to see that Jamie knew to meet the captain’s eye square and had summoned the strength to return the handshake with due force.

  “Know what to do with a sword?”

  “I do. And a bow, forbye.” Jamie glanced at the unstrung bow by his feet and the short-handled ax beside it. “Havena had much to do wi’ an ax before, save chopping wood.”

  “That’s good,” one of the other men put in, in French. “That’s what you’ll use it for.” Several of the others laughed, indicating that they at least understood English, whether they chose to speak it or not.

  “Did I join a troop of soldiers, then, or charcoal-burners?” Jamie asked, raising one brow. He said that in French—very good French, with a faint Parisian accent—and a number of eyes widened. Ian bent his head to hide a smile, in spite of his anxiety. The wean might be about to fall face-first into the fire, but nobody—save maybe Ian—was going to know it, if it killed him.

  Ian did know it, though, and kept a covert eye on Jamie, pushing bread into his hand so the others wouldn’t see it shake, sitting close enough to catch him if he should in fact pass out. The light was fading into gray now, and the clouds hung low and soft, pink-bellied. Going to rain, likely, by the morning. He saw Jamie close his eyes, just for an instant, saw his throat move as he swallowed, and felt the trembling of Jamie’s thigh, near his own.

  What the devil’s happened? he thought in anguish. Why are ye here?

  IT WASN’T UNTIL everyone had settled for the night that Ian got an answer.

  “I’ll lay out your gear,” he whispered to Jamie, rising. “You stay by the fire that wee bit longer—rest a bit, aye?” The firelight cast a ruddy glow on Jamie’s face, but Ian thought his friend was likely still white as a sheet; he hadn’t eaten much.