Roger and Buck had got it, as well: Dougal had lent them horses for their journey.
But as Roger had said, this wasn’t about his own search for son and father. This was about what he owed to another father and another son. To the shade of Brian Dhu—and to Jamie.
“I’ll tell ye the rest sometime. But for now—we went back to Lallybroch, for Brian had sent word that he’d found a thing that was maybe to do with my business.
“The thing was a sort of pendant sent to him from the garrison commander at Fort William. It seemed odd and it had the name ‘MacKenzie’ on it, so both the commander and Brian thought I should see it.” There was a remembered tightness in his chest as he saw the disks in his mind: pressed cardboard, one red, one green, both imprinted with the name “J. W. MacKenzie” and a string of cryptic numbers—the ID dog tags of an RAF flyer, and proof positive that they were looking for a different Jeremiah.
“We needed to find where those tags had come from, aye? So we went back to Fort William. And—” He had to stop and breathe deep, to get it out. “Captain Buncombe had left; the new garrison commander was a Captain Randall.”
All amusement had vanished from Jamie’s face, which was now blank as a slate.
“Aye,” Roger said, and coughed a bit. “Him.” The new commander had been cordial, personable. “Helpful,” Roger said. “It was—” He searched for a word, then spread his hands, helpless to find it. “It was weird. I mean … I knew … what he’d …”
“Done to me?” Jamie’s eyes were fixed on his, unreadable.
“What he’d do to you. Claire told me—us. When she …” He caught sight of Jamie’s face and hurried on. “I mean, she kent ye were dead, or I’m sure she wouldn’t have—”
“She told ye everything, then.” Jamie’s expression hadn’t changed much, but his face had gone pale.
Oh, shit.
“Well, just the … er … the general outli—” He stopped. Ye’ll never make a decent minister if ye can’t be honest. Buck had said that to him, and he was right. Roger took a breath.
“Yes,” he said simply, and felt his innards hollow out.
Without a word, Jamie got to his feet and, turning away, took several steps into the bushes, stopped, and threw up.
Oh, Jesus. Oh, God. What was I thinking!
Roger felt as though he’d been holding his breath for an hour, and took a sip of air, and then another. He’d been thinking far ahead—to what he needed to say to Jamie, to explain and apologize, to ask forgiveness. He needed to do that, if he and Bree were to live here again. But he hadn’t thought at all that Jamie might not realize that Roger—and Bree, for God’s sake!—knew the intimate details of his personal Gethsemane; had known them for years.
Bloody, bloody, bloody … oh, hell …
Roger sat with his fists clenched, listening to Jamie gulp air, spit, and pant. He kept his eyes fixed on a scarlet ladybug with black spots that had lighted on his knee; it trundled to and fro over the gray homespun, curious antennae prodding the cloth. At last there was a rustling of bushes, and Jamie came back and sat down, back pressed against the sapling. Roger opened his mouth, and Jamie made a short chopping gesture with one hand.
“Don’t,” he said. His shirt was damp with sweat, wilted over his collarbones. All the evening insects had come out now; clouds of gnats floated over their heads, and the crickets had begun to chirp. A mosquito whined past Roger’s ear, but he didn’t lift a hand to swat it.
Jamie sighed and gave Roger a very direct look.
“Go on, then,” he said. “Tell me the rest.”
Roger nodded and met Jamie’s eyes.
“I knew about Randall, and what he was,” he said bluntly. “And what would happen. Not just to you—to your sister. And your father.”
This time Jamie did cross himself, slowly, and whispered something in Gaelic that Roger didn’t catch, but didn’t ask to have repeated.
“I told Buck, then—just, about the—the flogging, not about—” The fingers of Jamie’s maimed hand flickered, as though about to make the chopping motion again. “About your father, and what happened to him then.”
He felt again the cold horror of that conversation. If he did nothing to stop Jack Randall, Brian Dhu Fraser would be dead within a year, dead of an apoplexy suffered while watching his son being flogged to death （as he thought） by Captain Randall. Jamie would be outlawed, wounded in body and soul, bearing the guilt of knowing that his father’s death lay upon him, knowing that he had abandoned his home and tenants to his bereaved and shattered sister. And Jenny, that lovely young girl, left completely alone, without even a brother’s protection.