“Aye, I did. She was maybe twenty. Then.” And then, for him, was less than a year in the past. And Jenny now was what, sixty? “I thought—I thought I should maybe say something to ye, before I met her again.”
“In case the shock of it knocked her over?”
“Something like that.”
Jamie had turned back to him now, his expression wavering between a smile and a considerable shock of his own, Roger thought. Roger could feel it, the sense of disbelief, disorientation, not knowing where to put your feet down. Jamie shook his head like a bull trying to dislodge a fly. I know the feeling, mate … all of them.
“That’s … very thoughtful of ye.” Jamie swallowed, and then looked up, the next thought penetrating the shock—and renewing it. “My father. Ye said—my family. He …” His voice died.
“He was there.” The voices from the distant fire had settled into the steady hum of women working: clanking and splashing and scraping noises, voices on the far side of hearing, punctuated by small bursts of laughter, an occasional sharp call to an errant child. Roger touched Jamie’s arm and tilted his head toward the path that led up toward the springhouse and the garden. “Maybe we should go somewhere and sit for a bit,” he said. “So I can tell it to ye before your sister comes.” So you can handle it without witnesses.
Jamie let out a deep sigh, compressed his lips briefly, then nodded and turned, leading the way past the big square cornerstone. Which, Roger suddenly thought, looked very much like the clan stones he’d seen on Culloden field, big gray stones casting long shadows in the evening light, each bearing the chiseled memory of one name: McGillivray, Cameron, MacDonald … Fraser.
ROGER STOOD WITH Jamie on a mossy bank above the creek, dutifully admiring the fledgling springhouse on the opposite side of the rushing water.
“It’s no much yet,” Jamie said modestly, nodding at it. “But it’s what I’ve had time for. I’ll need to build a bigger one soon, though—maybe by the spring—the summer rains will flood this one.”
The springhouse was little more at present than a rocky overhang to which rough stone walls had been added on either side, with openings at the foot of each wall to let water pass through. Wooden slats ran between the walls, suspended a couple of feet above the clear brown water of the creek. At the moment, these supported three pails of milk, each covered with a weighted cloth to prevent flies or frogs from dropping in, and half of a waxed wheel of Moravian cheese the size of Roger’s head.
“Jenny’s a fine cheese maker,” Jamie said, with a nod at the latter object. “But she hasna yet found a good starter, so I brought that from Salem.”
Below the slats, a modest array of stoneware crocks were half sunk in the creek, these—Jamie said—holding butter, cream, soured cream, and buttermilk. It was a peaceful spot here, the air cool with the breeze off the water, and the creek busily talking to itself. On the bank beyond the rocky lump of the springhouse, a thick growth of willows let their slender branches flow with the water.
“Like young women washing their hair, aye?” Roger said, gesturing at them, and Jamie smiled a little, but his mind was plainly not on poetry at the moment.
“Here,” he said, turning away from the creek and pushing aside the branches of a red oak sapling. Roger followed him up a small slope and onto a rocky shelf, where two or three more enterprising saplings had established themselves in crevices. There was room enough to sit comfortably at the edge of the shelf, from whence Roger found that they could see the opposite bank and the tiny springhouse, and also a good bit of the trail leading up from the house site.
“We’ll see anyone coming,” Jamie said, settling himself cross-legged, with his back against one of the saplings. “So, then. Ye’ve a thing or two to tell me.”
“So, then.” Roger sat down in a patch of shade, took off his shoes and stockings, and let his legs dangle in the cool draft at the edge of the shelf, in hopes that it would slow his heart. There was no way to begin, except to start.
“As I said, I went to Lallybroch in search of Jem—and of course he wasn’t there. But Brian—your father—”
“I ken his name,” Jamie said dryly.
“Ever call him by it?” Roger said, on impulse.
“No,” Jamie said, surprised. “Do men call their fathers by their Christian names in your time?”
“No.” Roger made a brief dismissive motion. “It’s just—I shouldn’t have said that, it’s part of my story, not yours.”