There was silence when they finished—the sort of silence a wood gives you, made of wind and the sounds of drying grass and of trees shedding leaves in a yellow rain. The goat’s bell clanked on the far side of the meadow, and a bird he didn’t know chattered to itself in the maple grove. The buck deer was gone; he’d heard it leave sometime while he was praying for William, and he’d wished his son good fortune in the hunt.
Jenny drew breath as though to speak, and he lifted a hand; there was something in his mind and he’d best say it now.
“What ye said about Lallybroch,” he began, a little awkwardly. “Dinna be worrit about it. If ye should die before me, I’ll see to it that ye get home safe, to lie wi’ Ian.”
She nodded thoughtfully, but her lips were pursed a little, as she held them when thinking.
“Aye, I ken ye would, Jamie. Ye dinna need to go to great lengths about it, though.”
“I don’t?”
She blew air out through her lips, then set them firmly.
“Well, see, I dinna ken where I might be, come the time. If it’s here, then o’ course—”
“Where the devil else might ye be?” he demanded, with the dawning realization that she couldn’t have come up here to tell him about Murtagh, because she hadn’t known he needed telling. So—
“I’m going wi’ Ian and Rachel to find his Mohawk wife,” she said, as casually as she might have said she was off to pull turnips.
Before he could find a single word, she held up the rosary in front of his face. “I’m leavin’ this with you, ken—it’s for Mandy, just in case I dinna come back. Ye ken well enough what sorts of things can happen when ye’re traveling,” she added, with a small moue of disapproval.
“Traveling,” he said. “Traveling? Ye mean to—to—” The thought of his sister, small, elderly, and stubborn as an alligator sunk in the mud, marching north through two armies, in dead of winter, beset by brigands, wild animals, and half a dozen other things he could think of if he’d time for it …
“I do.” She gave him a look, indicating that she didn’t mean to bandy words for long. “Where Young Ian goes, Rachel says she’s goin’， too, and that means so does the wee yin. Ye dinna think I mean to leave my youngest grandchild to the mercies of bears and wild Indians, do ye? That’s a rhetorical question,” she added, with a pleased air of having put a stop to him. “That means I dinna expect ye to answer it.”
“Ye wouldna ken a rhetorical question from a hole in the ground if I hadna told ye what one was!”
“Well, then, ye should recognize one when it bites ye on the nose,” she said, sticking her own lang neb up in the air.
“I’ll go and talk to Rachel,” he said, eyeing her. “Surely she’s better sense than to—”
“Ye think I didn’t? Or Young Ian?” Jenny shook her head, half admiringly. “It would be easier to move yon wee mountain there”—she nodded at the bulk of Roan Mountain, looming dark green in the distance—“than to get that Quaker lass to change her mind, once it’s made up.”
“But the bairn—！”
“Aye, aye,” she said, a little irritably. “Ye think I didna mention that? And she did squinch her eyes a bit. But then she said to me, reasonable as Sunday, would I let my husband go alone seven hundred miles to rescue his first wife, and her wi’ three pitiable bairns—one of whom might just possibly be Ian’s?—and that’s the first I heard of it, too,” she added, seeing his face. “I see her point.”
“Jesus.”
“Aye.” She stretched herself, groaning a little, and shook her skirts, which were thick with foxtails by now. Jamie could feel the prick of them through his stockings, dozens of tiny needles. The thought of Jenny’s going was a dirk right through his heart. It hurt to breathe.
He knew she could tell; she didn’t look at him but coiled up the pearl rosary neatly and, taking his hand, dropped it into his palm.
“Keep it for me,” she said, matter-of-factly, “and if I dinna come back, give it to Mandy, when she’s old enough.”
“Jenny …” he said softly.
“See, when ye come to reckon your life,” she said briskly, stooping to pick up the goat’s rope, “ye see that it’s the bairns are most important. They carry your blood and they carry whatever else ye gave them, on into the time ahead.” Her voice was perfectly steady, but she cleared her throat with a tiny hem before going on.