“Aye, but I dinna remember much … something about fetters, was it?”
“Furth, Fortune, and Fill the Fetters,” she said succinctly. “Go ye out, and make sure to come back wi’ gold and captives.”
That made him laugh.
“A warlike lot, were they? The auld Murrays?”
She shrugged. “Not as I ever noticed, but ken, your da did go for a mercenary when he was a young man. And your uncle Jamie, too.” Her mouth twitched. “I’m sure Jamie’s telt ye the Fraser motto, more than once. Je suis prest?”
“He has.” Ian smiled, a little ruefully. “I am ready.”
His mother smiled at that, glancing up at him. The shawl had slipped back to her shoulders, and her bound hair glowed like polished steel in the rain-light.
“Aye. Well, there’s a second Murray motto—the first was made by the Duke of Atholl, bloodthirsty auld creature—but the second one’s better: Tout prest.”
“Quite ready? Or ready for anything?”
“Both. I thought o’ that, now and then, whilst they were gone away to France. Je suis prest … Tout prest. And every night, I’d pray to the Virgin that they were. Ready, I mean.” She fell silent, her hand resting on the goat’s brown-and-white head.
He’d not find a better moment. He coughed.
“As for bein’ ready, Mam …” She caught the note in his voice and looked at him sharply.
“Aye?”
“I’ve spoken to Barney Chisholm. Ye’ll be welcome to stay wi’ him and Christina, while—whilst we’re gone. Rachel and me,” he added, swallowing. “We’re going up into the North, to see about—about—”
“Your Indian wife?” she asked dryly. “Dinna trouble yourself; I’ve already asked the MacDonald lassies to care for the goats.”
“You … what?” He felt as though she’d stuck out a foot and hooked his legs out from under him. She gave him a look of mild exasperation.
“Ye dinna think I’d let Rachel follow ye alone through a war, and her wi’ that lolloping great bairn of yours?”
“But …” The words died in his throat. He kent his mother well enough to see that she meant it. And no matter what the Frasers said their motto was, he kent fine that it might as well have been Stubborn as a Rock. He’d seen that look on Uncle Jamie’s face often enough to recognize it now.
“Besides,” she added, pushing the goat’s nose away from the fringe of her shawl, “I dinna suppose ye’ll find much gold wi’ the Mohawk, but I’d just as soon ye didna end up in fetters yourself in a redcoat prison.”
There wasn’t much to do but laugh. He had one last try, though, just so he could tell his da he had.
“D’ye think Da would let ye go do such a daft thing?”
“I dinna see that he’d have much room to talk,” she said, with a one-shouldered shrug. “Here, take this one.” She handed over the full pail and bent for the other one. “Besides, he wouldna try to stop me; wee Oggy’s his blood, as much as mine. Ian Mòr will be right there wi’ me, all the way.”
Ian swallowed a wee lump in his throat, but felt curiosity along with remembered grief.
“Ye feel Da by ye?” he asked. “I—do. Sometimes.”
His mother gave him the second pail and opened the gate across the front of the shed. The rain had let up and the air shimmered round them, silver in the grayness.
“Ye dinna stop loving someone just because they’re deid,” she said reprovingly. “I canna suppose they stop lovin’ you, either.”
“HOW OLD IS thy mother?” Rachel said to Ian. “I’d welcome her company, and to have help with the bairn would be a great relief, but thee knows better than I do what such a journey may be like.”
Ian grinned, not at the question, but at the way she said “bairn,” hesitating for an instant before saying it, as though afraid it might get away before she could clap a lid over it.
“I dinna ken for sure,” he said, in answer to her question. “She’s two years the elder of Uncle Jamie, though.”
“Oh.” Her face eased a bit at that.
“And it’s barely a year since she left Scotland and came wi’ Uncle Jamie, all the way across the ocean, and then makin’ their way hundreds of miles cross-country to Philadelphia. This journey may be a bit longer,” he coughed a little, thinking and just a bit more dangerous, “but we’ll have good horses and enough money for inns, where there are any.