The shock brought every soul in the room upright. Mrs. Cunningham, Roger saw, already was as upright as it was possible for someone with a backbone to be. She sat rigid and immobile, her face turned away.
“He spoke to me,” the captain said, and his voice was husky. “He said, ‘Don’t worry, Father. I’ll see you again. In seven years.’” He cleared his throat again, harder. “And—then he closed his eyes and … was dead.”
It took several moments for the murmurs and gasps to die away, and Cunningham stood patiently until the silence returned.
“As I rose from my son’s side,” he said, “I realized that the Lord had given me both a blessing and a sign. The knowledge—the sure knowledge,” he emphasized, “that the soul is not destroyed by death, and the conviction that the Lord had called me to go forth and give this message to His people.
“So I have come among you in answer to God’s call. To bring you the word of God’s goodness, to humbly offer guidance where I may do so—and to honor the memory of my son, First Lieutenant Simon Elmore Cunningham, who served his King, his country, and his God always with honor and fidelity.”
Roger rose for the final hymn in a flurry of feeling. He’d been with Cunningham through every word, totally absorbed, filled with sorrow, pride, warmth, uplifted—and even putting aside the purely emotional aspects of the captain’s sermon, he had to admit that it was a really good bit of work in terms of religion.
Roger turned to Brianna, and under the rising song, said, “Jesus Christ,” meaning no blasphemy whatever.
“You can say that again,” she replied.
I DID WONDER just how Roger proposed to follow Captain Cunningham’s act. The congregation had scattered under the trees to take refreshment, but every group I passed was discussing what the captain had said, with great excitement and absorption—as well they might. The spell of his story remained with me—a sense of wonder and hope.
Bree seemed to be wondering, too; I saw her with Roger, in the shade of a big chinkapin oak, in close discussion. He shook his head, though, smiled, and tugged her cap straight. She’d dressed her part, as a modest minister’s wife, and smoothed her skirt and bodice.
“Two months, and she’ll be comin’ to kirk in buckskins,” Jamie said, following the direction of my gaze.
“What odds?” I inquired.
“Three to one. Ye want to wager, Sassenach?”
“Gambling on Sunday? You’re going straight to hell, Jamie Fraser.”
“I dinna mind. Ye’ll be there afore me. Askin’ me the odds, forbye … Besides, going to church three times in one day must at least get ye a few days off purgatory.”
I nodded.
“Ready for Round Two?”
Roger kissed Brianna and strode out of the shade into the sunlit day, tall, dark, and handsome in his best black—well, his only—suit. He came toward us, Bree on his heels, and I saw several people in the nearby groups notice this and begin to put away their bits of bread and cheese and beer, to retire behind bushes for a private moment, and to tidy up children who’d come undone.
I sketched a salute as Roger came up to us.
“Over the top?”
“Geronimo,” he replied briefly. With a visible squaring of the shoulders, he turned to greet his flock and usher them inside.
Back inside, it was noticeably warm, though not yet hot, thank God. The smell of new pine was softer now, cushioned by the rustle of homespun and the faint scents of cooking and farming and the messy business of raising children that rose in a pleasantly domestic fog.
Roger let them resettle for a moment, but not long enough for conversations to break out. He walked in with Bree on his arm, left her on the front bench, and turned to smile at the congregation.
“Is there anyone here who doesna ken me already?” he asked, and there was a slight ripple of laughter.
“Aye, well, the fact that ye do ken me and ye’re here anyway is reassuring. Sometimes it’s the things we know that mean a lot, in part because we ken them well and understand their strength. Will ye be upstanding then, and we’ll say the Lord’s Prayer together.”
They rose obligingly and followed him in the prayer—some, I noticed, speaking it in the Gàidhlig, though most in variously accented English.
When we all sat down again, he cleared his throat, hard, and I began to worry. I was sure that his voice was better than it had been, whether from natural healing or from the treatments—if something so simple and yet so peculiar as Dr. McEwan’s laying on of hands could be dignified by the name—I’d been giving him once a month. But it had been a long time since he’d spoken at length in public, let alone preached—let alone sung, and the stress of expectation was a lot to deal with.