“Do ye not fear for him? Takin’ him all that way through a war?”
She didn’t add, “Wouldn’t losing him be worse than death?” but she didn’t need to.
Rachel unfastened her blouse and put Oggy to suck, drawing in her breath as he seized her nipple, then relaxing as her milk let down. Jenny was waiting for her, eyes fixed on Oggy’s head. Rachel spoke evenly.
“Would thee let thy husband go alone seven hundred miles to rescue his first wife and her three children—one of whom might just possibly be his?”
Jenny’s mouth opened, but apparently there were no Scottish sounds appropriate to the occasion.
“Well, no,” she said mildly. “Thee has a point.”
57
Ready for Anything
HE’D HAVE TO TELL her, and sooner rather than later. At least he’d got a plan made, whether she liked it or not.
It was raining, and the solid drops pounded the tin roof of the goat shed like gunfire. Ian ducked inside to find his mother milking one of the nannies and singing a waulking song called “Mile Marbhaisg Air A’ Ghaol” at the top of her lungs. She glanced up at him, nodded to indicate that she’d be with him in a wee bit, and went on singing “A Thousand Curses on Love” and milking.
The goats looked up at him, too, but recognized him and went on munching their grass with nothing more than the twitch of an ear. They seemed to be enjoying the song; they weren’t agitated by the rain—or the thunder, in the distance but growing steadily louder. His mother stripped off the udder with a wee flourish and concluded with “A’ Ghaol!” Ian applauded, which startled all the goats into a belated chorus of mehhhs.
“Hark at ye, ye wee gomerel,” his mother said, but in a tolerant tone. She rose, loosed the goat from the stanchion, and picked up the brimming pail. “Here, carry this into the house, but tell Rachel not to churn it ’til the storm passes—I dinna ken if she knows ye mustn’t churn during thunder; the butter won’t come.”
“I think she kens well enough that ye dinna want to stand on the front stoop doin’ it while the rain’s pissing down, even if ye weren’t like to be struck by lightning.”
“Piff,” she said, and pulled her shawl up over her head. No sooner had she done so, though, than the rain changed abruptly to hail. “A Mhoire Mhàthair!” she said, making the horns. “Dinna go out there now, ye’ll be brained.”
She might have added something about the quality of his brain, but it was impossible to hear a word. Hailstones the size of pig’s knuckles were thundering on the tin roof, bouncing and rolling on the green grass outside the open shed. He set the pail down by the wall, where it wouldn’t be kicked over, and, raising a brow at his mother, crossed his arms and leaned against one of the timbers, prepared to wait. He’d worked himself up for this and he wasn’t doing it over again. Do it and have done; there wasn’t time to haver.
The goats, goatlike, wandered over to him and began to nose him familiarly for anything loose, but aside from his shirttail, which he’d already gathered up in his hand, there was nothing to attract them. Despite the open front of the shed and the cold breath of the passing storm, it was pleasantly warm amongst the inquisitive, hairy bodies, and he felt his anxiety over the coming conversation subsiding a bit.
His mother came over to stand by the goat nosing his buttocks and stood gazing contentedly out at the storm, scratching the goat between the ears. It was a fine view, to be sure; she’d chosen the site for her goat shed and he’d built it so she could look out through a wide gap in the trees and see Roan Mountain in the distance, very dramatic at the moment, its top disappearing into lowering black clouds that sparked and spat lightning. As they watched, a huge thunderbolt split both sky and air and he and the goats all jerked back at the dazzling crash.
As though the lightning had been a signal, though, the hail abruptly stopped, and the rain resumed, more quietly than before.
“It looks like the MacKenzies’ badge, no?” his mother remarked, nodding at the distant mountain. “Fires all over it.” There were in fact three small plumes of smoke rising from the lower slopes, where the lightning had struck something flammable. Nay bother; with this much rain, they wouldn’t burn long enough to matter.
“I’ve never seen a MacKenzie badge,” he said. “A mountain, is it? With fires?”
She glanced up at him, momentarily surprised, but then nodded. “Aye, I was forgetting. All that was gone before ye could walk.” Her mouth tightened, but only for a moment. “Did your da ever tell ye the Murrays’ motto?”