“God only kens where Murtagh got this—” She poured the rosary from one hand to the other, with a slithering sound. “But the words on the medal are French.”
“Murtagh?” Jamie glanced at the beads and furrowed his brow a bit. “But Da must ha’ kent how he felt about her—about Mam.”
Jenny nodded, rubbing a thumb over the crucifix and the beautifully sculpted, tortured body of Christ. The yaffle called, faint and distant, beyond the maple grove.
“He could see I thought the same thing—why would he send Murtagh on such an errand? But he said he hadna meant to, only he’d told Murtagh what was in his mind, and Murtagh asked to go. Da said he didna want to let him, but he couldna very well go off himself and leave Mam about to burst with Willie and not even a solid roof over her head yet—he’d laid the cornerstones and started the chimneys, but nay more. And—” She lifted one shoulder. “He loved Murtagh, too—more than his ain brother.”
“God, I miss the old bugger,” Jamie said impulsively.
Jenny glanced at him and smiled ruefully. “So do I. I wonder sometimes if he’s with them now—Mam and Da.”
That notion startled Jamie—he’d never thought of it—and he laughed, shaking his head. “Well, if he is, I suppose he’s happy.”
“I hope that’s the way of it,” Jenny said, growing serious. “I always wished he could ha’ been buried with them—wi’ the family—at Lallybroch.”
Jamie nodded, his throat suddenly tight. Murtagh lay with the fallen of Culloden, burnt and buried in some anonymous pit on that silent moor, his bones mingled with the others. No cairn for those who loved him to come and leave a stone to say so.
Jenny laid a hand on his arm, warm through the cloth of his sleeve.
“Dinna mind it, a bràthair,” she said softly. “He had a good death, and you with him at the end.”
“How would you know it was a good death?” Emotion made him speak more roughly than he meant, but she only blinked once, and then her face settled again.
“Ye told me, eejit,” she said dryly. “Several times. D’ye not recall that?”
He stared at her for a moment, uncomprehending.
“I told ye? How? I dinna ken what happened.”
Now it was her turn to be surprised.
“Ye’ve forgotten?” She frowned at him. “Aye, well … it’s true ye were off your heid wi’ fever for a good ten days when they brought ye home. Ian and I took it in turn to sit with ye—as much to stop the doctor takin’ your leg off as anything else. Ye can thank Ian ye’ve still got that one,” she added, nodding sharply at his left leg. “He sent the doctor away; said he kent well ye’d rather be dead.” Her eyes filled abruptly with tears, and she turned away.
He caught her by the shoulder and felt her bones, fine and light as a kestrel’s under the cloth of her shawl.
“Jenny,” he said softly. “Ian didna want to be dead. Believe me. I did, aye … but not him.”
“No, he did at first,” she said, and swallowed. “But ye wouldna let him, he said—and he wouldna let you, either.” She wiped her face with the back of her hand, roughly. He took hold of it and kissed it, her fingers cold in his hand.
“Ye dinna think ye had anything to do with it?” he asked, rising to his feet and smiling down at her. “For either of us?”
“Hmph,” she said, but she looked modestly pleased.
The goats had moved away a little, brown backs smooth amid the tussocked grass. One of them had a bell; he could hear the small clank! of it as she moved. The yaffles had moved off as well—he caught the flash of scarlet as one flew low across the field and disappeared into the black mouth of the trail.
He let a moment go by, two, and then shifted his weight and made a small menacing noise in the back of his throat.
“Aye, aye,” Jenny said, rolling her eyes at him. “Of course I’ll tell ye. I had to fettle my mind, first, ken?” She rearranged her skirts and settled herself more firmly. “Aye, then—this is the way of it. As ye told it to me, at least.
“Ye said”—her brows drew together with the effort of careful remembrance—“that ye’d fought your way across the field in a fury and when ye stopped because ye had to breathe, you—you were … dismayed … to find ye weren’t dead yet.”
“Aye,” he said softly, and with a deep sense of fear, felt the day well up in him. Cold, it had been bitter cold in the wind and rain, but he’d been ablaze with the fighting; he hadn’t felt it ’til he stopped. “What then? That’s what I dinna ken …”