She drew a deep, audible breath.
“Ye were behind the government lines. There were cannon behind ye—pointing the other way, aye? Toward … our men.”
“Aye. I could see—I could … see them. Lying dead and dying, in windrows.”
“Windrows?” She sounded a little startled, and he looked down, still feeling the chill of Culloden in his hands and feet.
“They fell by lines,” he said, his own voice sounding remote and reasonable, detached. “The English guns, the muskets—they’ve a range of … I dinna mind it now, but that’s where we fell, at the end of that range. There were men blown up and crushed by the cannon, but most of it was the muskets. Bayonets later—I heard that, didna see.” He swallowed, and keeping his voice steady asked, “What did I say happened then?”
She exhaled through her nose, and he saw she had closed her hand on the rosary, clenching it as though to draw strength from the beads.
“Ye said ye couldna think what to do, but there was a cannon nearby and the crew had their backs to ye. So ye turned to go after the nearest man—but there was a knot of redcoats between you and the cannon, and when ye wiped the sweat out of your eyes, ye saw one of them was Jack Randall.” Her free hand made an unobtrusive sign of the horns, then folded into a fist.
He remembered. Remembered and felt a lurch in his wame as the image he’d seen in dreams met and merged with memory.
“He saw me,” he whispered. “He stood stock-still and so did I. The shock of it—I couldna make myself move.”
“And Murtagh …” Jenny’s voice came soft.
“I sent him back,” he whispered, seeing his godfather’s face, creased in stubborn refusal. “I made him go. Made him take Fergus and the others—I said he must see them safe to Lallybroch, because … because …”
“Because ye couldn’t,” she said, low-voiced.
“I couldn’t,” he said, and swallowed the growing lump in his throat.
“But he was there, ye said,” Jenny prompted after a moment. “On the field. Murtagh.”
“Aye. Aye, he was.” He’d seen the sudden movement, a jerk of the frozen scene before him, and lifted his eyes from Jack Randall’s face to look, and saw Murtagh running …
And once more the dream came down on him and he was in it. Cold. So cold the voice froze in his throat, rain and sweat plastering wet cloth to his body and the icy wind cutting through his bones as easily as through his clothes. He tried—he had tried—to call out, to stop Murtagh before he reached the English soldiers. But it would have taken more than muskets and British cannon to stop Murtagh FitzGibbons Fraser, let alone Jamie’s voice, and he didn’t stop, bounding over the tumps of the moor grass, water bursting like broken glass under his feet as he went.
“Captain Randall spoke to ye, ye said …”
“Kill me.” He heard his own voice whisper the words. “He asked me to kill him.”
My heart’s desire. The words lay like drops of lead in his ear. The wind had been whistling past his head, whipping the hair out of its binding and across his face. But he’d heard that, he knew he had, he hadn’t dreamed it …
But his eyes had been on Murtagh. There was movement, confusion, someone came toward him, he saw the dark blade of a bayonet, wet with rain or blood or mud, and he pushed it aside and suddenly it was a fight, with two of them pulling at him, bashing, trying to knock him down.
A sudden sound surprised him and he opened his eyes, disoriented, and realized that he’d made the noise, it was the sound he’d made when something took his left leg out from under him, a grunt of impact, impatience, he had to get up …
“And Captain Randall reached down to ye, then, where ye lay on the ground …”
“And I had my dirk in my hand and I—” He broke off and looked down at his sister, urgent. “Did I kill him? Did I say I did?”
She was watching him closely, a look of deep concern on her face. He made an impatient gesture, and she gave him a reproving look. No, she wouldn’t lie to him, he kent better than that …
“Ye said ye did. Ye said it over and over …”
“I said I killed him, over and over?”
Despite herself, she gave a small shudder. “No. That it was hot. The—his—blood. ‘Hot,’ ye kept saying, ‘God, it was so hot …’”
“Hot.” For a moment, that made no sense, and then he caught a glimpse of it: the dim sense of darkness leaning over him, the brush of wet wool across his face, effort, so much effort to raise his arm one more time, trembling, he saw drops of clean rain run down the blade, over his shaking hand, and effort, pushing, pushing up and the thick resisting, rasping cloth, momentary hardness, push, God damn it, then a deep, startling heat that had spilled over his frozen hand, his wind-chilled arm. He’d been desperately grateful for the warmth, he remembered that—but he could not remember the blow itself.