Fraser’s Ridge October, 1771. ROGER WAS INSTANTLY AWAKE, in that way that allowed no transition through drowsiness; body inert, but mind alert

ROGER WAS INSTANTLY AWAKE, in that way that allowed no transition through drowsiness; body inert, but mind alert, ears tuned to the echo of what had wakened him. He had no conscious recollection of Jemmy’s cry, but it echoed in his inner ear, with that combination of hope and resignation that is the lot of the more-easily wakened parent.

Sleep dragged at him, pulling him back under the waves of slumber like a ten-ton boulder chained to his foot. A tiny rustling noise kept his head momentarily above the surface.

“Go back to sleep,” he thought fiercely, in the direction of the cradle. “Shhhhh. Hush. Quiet. Go . . . to . . . sleeeeeep.” This telepathic hypnosis seldom worked, but it delayed for a few precious seconds the necessity of moving. And now and then the miracle happened, and his son actually did go back to sleep, relaxing into the warm sogginess of wet diaper and crumb-caked dreams.

Roger held his breath, clinging to the fading edge of sleep, hoarding the cherished seconds of immobility. Then another small sound came, and he was on his feet at once.

“Bree? Bree, what is it?” The “r” in her name fluttered in his throat, not quite there, but he didn’t take the time to be troubled by it. All his attention was for her.

She was standing by the cradle, a ghostly column in the dark. He touched her, took her by the shoulders. Her arms were wrapped tight around the little boy, and she was shuddering with cold and fear.

He pulled her close by instinct; her cold infected him at once. He felt the chill on his heart and forced himself to hold tighter, not to look at the empty cradle.

“What is it?” he whispered. “Is it Jemmy? What’s . . . happened?”

A shiver rose up the length of her body, and he felt the goosebumps rise under the thin cloth of her shift. Despite the warmth of the room, he felt the hair on his own arms rising.

“Nothing,” she said. “He’s all right.” Her voice was thick, but she was right; Jem, waking to find himself uncomfortably squashed between his parents, let out a sudden yelp of surprised indignation, and began to churn his arms and legs like an eggbeater.

This sturdy battering filled Roger with a flood of warm relief, drowning the cold imaginings that had seized his mind at the sight of her. With a little difficulty, he pried Jemmy from his mother’s arms and hoisted him high against his own shoulder.

He patted the solid little back in reassurance—reassurance of himself, as much as Jemmy—and made soft hissing noises through his teeth. Jemmy, finding this accustomed procedure soothing, yawned widely, relaxed into his normal hamlike state, and began to hum drowsily in Roger’s ear, with the rising and falling note of a distant siren.

“DadeeDadeeDadee . . .”

Brianna was still standing by the cradle, empty arms wrapped now around herself. Roger reached out with his free hand and stroked her hair, her hard-boned shoulder, and drew her close against him.

“Shhh,” he said to them both. “Shhh, shhh. It’s all right now, shhh.”

Her arms went around him, and he could feel the wetness on her face through the linen shirt. His other shoulder was already damp with Jemmy’s sleepy, sweaty warmth.

“Come to bed,” he said softly. “Come under the quilt, it’s . . . cold out here.” It wasn’t; the air in the cabin was warm. She came, nonetheless.

Brianna reached for the child, taking him to her breast even before she lay down. Never one to refuse nourishment at any hour, Jemmy accepted the offer with alacrity, curling up into an apostrophe of content against his mother’s stomach as she settled on one side.

Roger slid into bed behind her, and echoed his son’s posture, bringing up his knees behind Brianna’s, curling his body in a protective comma around her. Thus securely punctuated, Brianna began slowly to relax, though Roger could still feel the tension in her body.

“All right now?” he asked softly. Her skin was still clammy to the touch, but warming.

“Yeah.” She took in a deep breath and let it out in a shuddering sigh. “Had a bad dream. I’m sorry I woke you.”

“It’s OK.” He stroked the swell of her hip, over and over, like one gentling a horse. “Want to tell me?” He hoped she did, though the sound of Jemmy’s suckling was rhythmic and soothing, and he felt sleep stealing over him as the three of them warmed, melting together like candle wax.

“I was cold,” she said softly. “I think the quilt must have fallen off. But in the dream, I was cold because the window was open.”

“Here? One of these windows?” Roger lifted a hand, indicating the faint oblong of the window in the far wall. Even in the middle of the darkest night, the oiled hide covering the window was very slightly lighter than the surrounding blackness.

“No.” She took a deep breath. “It was in the house in Boston; where I grew up. I was in bed, but I was cold, and the cold woke me—in the dream. I got up to see where the draft was coming from.”

There were French windows in her father’s study. The cold wind came from there, bellying the long white curtains into the room. The cradle stood by the antique desk, the end of a thin white blanket flickering in the draft.

“He was gone.” Her voice had steadied, but had a momentary catch in it at the memory of terror. “Jemmy was gone. The cradle was empty, and I knew something came through the window and took him.”

She pressed back against him, unconsciously seeking reassurance. “I was afraid of it—whatever it was—but it didn’t matter—I had to find Jemmy.”

One hand was curled up tight under her chin. He folded it in his, and squeezed lightly, embracing her.

“I threw open the curtains and ran out, and—and there was nothing there. Only water.” She was shaking at the memory.

“Water?” He stroked her clenched fist with a thumb, trying to calm her.

“Ocean. The sea. Just—water, lapping up against the edge of the terrace. It was dark, and I knew it went down forever, and that Jemmy was down there, he’d drowned, and I was too late—” She choked, but got her voice back and went on, more steadily. “But I dived in anyway, I had to. It was dark, and there were things in the water with me—I couldn’t see them, but they brushed by me; big things. I kept looking and looking but I couldn’t see anything, and then the water suddenly got lighter and I—I saw him.”

“Jemmy?”

“No. Bonnet—Stephen Bonnet.”

Roger forced himself not to move, not to stiffen. She dreamed often; he always imagined that the dreams she would not tell him were of Bonnet.

“He was holding Jemmy, and laughing. I went to take him, and Bonnet held him up away from me. He kept doing that, and I tried to hit him, and he just caught my hand and laughed. Then he looked up and his face changed.”

She took a deep breath, and took hold of Roger’s fingers, holding on for comfort.

“I never saw a look like that, Roger, never. There was something behind me that he could see, something coming—and it scared him more than I’ve ever seen anyone scared. He was holding me; I couldn’t turn around to look, and I couldn’t get away—I couldn’t leave Jemmy. It was coming—and . . . then I woke up.”

She gave a small, shaky laugh.

“My friend Gayle’s grandmother always said that when you fall off a cliff in a dream, if you hit the bottom, you’ll die. Really die, I mean. You figure the same thing goes for getting eaten by a sea monster?”

“No. Besides, you always wake up in time from dreams like that.”

“I have so far.” She sounded a little dubious. Still, dream told, she was eased of its terror; her body let go its last resistance and she breathed deep and easy against him; he could feel the swell of her rib cage under his arm.

“You always will. Don’t be troubled now; Jemmy’s safe. I’m here; I’ll keep you both safe.” He put his arm gently round her, and cupped his hand around Jemmy’s fat bottom, warm in its linen clout. Jemmy, all his bodily needs met, had relapsed into a peaceful torpor, contagious in its abandon. Brianna sighed and put her hand over Roger’s, squeezing lightly.

“There were books on the desk,” she said, beginning to sound drowsy. “On Dad’s desk. He’d been working, I could tell—there were open books and scattered papers everywhere. There was a paper lying in the middle of the desk, with writing on it; I wanted to read it, to see what he’d been doing—but I couldn’t stop.”

“Mm-hm.”

Brianna shivered slightly, and the movement rustled the corn shucks in the mattress, a tiny seismic disturbance of their small, warm universe. She tensed, fighting sleep, and then relaxed, as his hand cupped her breast.

Roger lay awake, watching the square of the window grow slowly lighter, holding his family safe in his arms.

IT WAS OVERCAST and morning-cool, but very humid; Roger could feel the sweat film his body like the skin on boiled milk. It was no more than an hour past dawn, they weren’t yet out of sight of the house, and his scalp was prickling already, slow droplets gathering under the plait at the base of his skull.

He flexed his shoulders with resignation, and the first trickle crawled tickling down his backbone. At least sweating helped to ease the soreness; his arms and shoulders had been so stiff this morning that Brianna had had to help him dress, pulling his shirt over his head and buttoning his flies with deft fingers.

He smiled inwardly, remembering what else those long fingers had done. It had taken his mind temporarily off the stiffness of his body, and banished the troubling memory of dreams. He stretched, groaning, feeling the pull of muscle on tender joints. The clean linen was already sticking to chest and back.

Jamie was ahead of him on the trail, a damp patch growing visibly between his shoulder blades where the strap of the canteen crossed his back. Roger noted with some consolation that his father-in-law was moving with a good bit less than his usual pantherlike grace this morning, too. He knew the Great Scot was only human, but it was reassuring to have that fact confimed now and then.

“Think the weather will hold?” Roger said it as much for the sake of speaking as for anything else; Jamie was by no means garrulous, but he seemed abnormally quiet this morning, barely speaking beyond a murmured “Aye, morning,” in reply to Roger’s earlier greeting. Perhaps it was the grayness of the day, with its threat—or promise—of rain.

The sky overhead curved low and dull as the inside of a pewter bowl. An afternoon indoors, with rain beating on the oiled hides of the windows, and wee Jemmy curled up peaceful as a dormouse for a nap, while his mother shed her shift and came to bed in the soft gray light . . . aye, well, some ways of breaking a sweat were better than others.

Jamie stopped and glanced up at the lowering sky. He flexed his right hand, closing it to an awkward fist, then opening it slowly. The stiff fourth finger made delicate chores such as writing difficult, but did provide one dubious benefit in compensation; the swollen joints signaled rain as reliably as a barometer.

Jamie wiggled the fingers experimentally, and gave Roger a faint smile.

“No but a wee twinge,” he said. “Nay rain before nightfall.” He stretched, easing his back in anticipation, and sighed. “Let’s get to it, aye?”

Roger glanced back; the house and cabin had disappeared. He frowned at Jamie’s retreating back, debating. It was nearly half a mile to the new field; ample time for conversation. Not the right time, though, not yet. It was a matter to be addressed face-to-face, and at leisure—later, then, when they paused to eat.

The woods were hushed, the air still and heavy. Even the birds were quiet, only the occasional machine-gun burst of a woodpecker startling the silence. They threaded their way through the forest, silent as Indians on the layer of rotted leaves, and emerged from the scrub-oak thicket with a suddenness that sent a flock of crows shrieking out of the torn earth of the new-cleared field like demons escaping from the netherworld.

“Jesus!” Jamie murmured, and crossed himself involuntarily. Roger’s throat closed tight, and his stomach clenched. The crows had been feeding on something lying in the hollow left by an uprooted tree; all he could see above the ragged clods of earth was a pale curve that looked unsettlingly like the round of a naked shoulder.

It was a naked shoulder—of a pig. Jamie squatted by the boar’s carcass, frowning at the livid weals that marred the thick, pale skin. He touched the deep gouges on the flank with distaste; Roger could see the busy movement of flies inside the black-red cavities.

“Bear?” he asked, squatting beside Jamie. His father-in-law shook his head.

“Cat.” He brushed aside the stiff, sparse hairs behind the ear and pointed to the bluish puncture wounds in the folded lard. “Broke the neck wi’ one bite. And see the claw marks?” Roger had, but lacked the knowledge to differentiate the marks of a bear’s claws from those of a panther’s. He looked closely, committing the pattern to memory.

Jamie stood, and wiped a sleeve across his face.

“A bear would ha’ taken more of the carcass. This is barely touched. Cats will do that, though—make a kill and leave it, then come back to nibble at it, day after day.”

Muggy as it was, the hair pricked with chill on Roger’s neck. It was much too easy to imagine yellow eyes in the shadow of the thicket behind him, fixed with cool appraisal on the spot where skull met fragile spine.

“Think it’s still close by?” He glanced about, trying to seem casual. The forest was just as it had been, but now the silence seemed unnatural and sinister.

Jamie waved away a couple of questing flies, frowning.

“Aye, maybe. This is a fresh kill; no maggots yet.” He nodded at the gaping wound in the pig’s flank, then stooped to grasp the stiff trotters. “Come, let’s hang it. It’s too much meat to waste.”

They dragged the carcass to a tree with a low, sturdy limb. Jamie reached into his sleeve and pulled out a grubby kerchief, to tie round his head to keep the sweat from burning into his eyes. Roger groped for his own kerchief—carefully washed, neatly ironed—and did likewise. Mindful of the laundering, they stripped their clean shirts and hung them over an alder bush.

There was rope in the field, left from the stump-pulling of earlier days’ work; Jamie whipped a length several times around the pig’s forelimbs, then flung the free end over the branch above. It was a full-grown sow, some two-hundredweight of solid flesh. Jamie set his feet and hauled back on the rope, grunting with the sudden effort.

Roger held his breath as he bent to help hoist the stiffened corpse, but Jamie had been right; it was fresh. There was the usual fleshy pig-scent, gone faint with death, and the sharper tang of blood—nothing worse.

Rough hair scraped the skin of his belly as he wrapped his arms around the carcass, and he set his teeth against a grimace of distaste. There are few things deader than a large, dead pig. Then a word from Jamie, and the carcass was secure. He let go, and the pig swung gently to and fro, a meaty pendulum.

Roger was wringing wet; more than the effort of lifting accounted for. There was a big smudge of brownish blood over his chest and stomach. He rubbed the heel of his hand over the knot in his belly, smearing the blood with sweat. He glanced casually round once more. Nothing moved among the trees.

“The women will be pleased,” he said.

Jamie laughed, taking the dirk from his belt.

“I shouldna think so. They’ll be up half the night, butchering and salting.” He nodded in the direction of Roger’s glance.

“Even if it’s near, it willna trouble us. Cats dinna hunt large prey unless they’re hungry.” He looked wryly at the torn flank of the dangling pig. “A half-stone of prime bacon will ha’ satisfied it for the moment, I should think. Though if not—” He glanced at his long rifle, leaning loaded against the trunk of a nearby hickory.

He held the pig while Jamie gutted it, then wrapped the stinking mass of intestines in the cloth from their lunch, while Jamie patiently worked at kindling a fire of green sticks that would keep the flies away from the hanging carcass. Streaked and reeking with blood, waste, and sweat, Roger walked across the field to the small stream that ran by the woods.

He knelt and splashed, arms and face and torso, trying to rid himself of the feeling of being watched. More than once, he had crossed an empty moor in Scotland, only to have a full-grown stag erupt from nowhere in front of him, springing by apparent magic from the heather at his feet. Despite Jamie’s words, he was all too aware that some piece of quiet landscape could abruptly detach itself and take life in a thunder of hooves or a snarl of sudden teeth.

He rinsed his mouth, spat, and drank deep, forcing water past the lingering tightness in his throat. He could still feel the stiff coldness of the pig’s carcass, see the caked dirt in the nostrils, the raw sockets where crows had pecked out the eyes. Gooseflesh prickled over his shoulders, chilled as much by his thoughts as by the cold stream-water.

No great difference between a pig and a man. Flesh to flesh, dust to dust. One stroke, that’s all it took. Slowly, he stretched, savoring the last soreness in his muscles.

There was a raucous croaking from the chestnut overhead. The crows, black blotches in the yellow leaves, voicing their displeasure at the robbery of their feast.

“Whaur . . . shall we gang and . . . dine the day?” he murmured under his breath, looking up at them. “Not here . . . you bastards. Get along!” Seized by revulsion, he scooped a stone from the bank and hurled it into the tree with all his might. The crows erupted into shrieking flight, and he turned back to the field, grimly satisfied.

But his belly was still knotted, and the words of the corbies’ mocking song echoed in his ears: “Ye’ll sit on his white hause-bane/and I’ll pick oot his bonny blue e’en. Wi’ ae lock o’ his golden hair/we’ll theek oor nest when it grows bare.”

Jamie glanced at his face when he came back, but said nothing. Beyond the field, the pig’s carcass hung above the fire, its outlines hidden in wreaths of smoke.

They had cut the fencerails already, made from pine saplings they’d uprooted; the rough-barked logs lay ready by the edge of the forest. The fence would have drystone pillars to join the wooden rails, though; not one of the simple rick-rack fences meant to keep out deer or mark boundaries, but one solid enough to withstand the jostling of three- and four-hundred-pound hogs.

Within the month, it would be time to drive in the pigs that had been turned out to live wild in the forest, fattening themselves on the chestnut mast that lay thick on the ground. Some would have fallen prey to wild animals or accident, but there would likely be fifty or sixty left to slaughter or sell.

They worked well together, he and Jamie. Much of a size, each had an instinct for the other’s moves. When a hand was needed, it was there. No need for it just now, though—this part of the job was the worst, for there was no interest to soften the tedium, no skill to ease the labor. Only rocks, hundreds of rocks, to be hoisted from the loamy soil and carried, dragged, wrestled to the field, to be piled and fitted into place.

Often they talked as they worked, but not this morning. Each man worked alone with his thoughts, tramping to and fro with the endless load. The morning passed in silence, broken only by the far-off calling of the disgruntled crows, and by the thunk and grate of stones, dropped on the growing pile.

It had to be done. There was no choice. He’d known that for a long time, but now that the dim prospect had hardened into reality . . . Roger eyed his father-in-law covertly. Would Jamie agree to it, though?

From a distance, the scars on his back were barely visible, masked by the gleam of sweat. Constant hard work kept a man trim and taut, and no one seeing Fraser in outline—or close enough to see the deep groove of his backbone, the flat belly and long clean lines of arm and thigh—would have taken him for a man in middle age.

Jamie had showed him the scars, though, the first day they went out to work together, after he had come back from the surveying. Standing by the half-built dairy-shed, Jamie had pulled the shirt off and turned his back, saying casually, “Have a keek, then.”

Up close, the scars were old and well-healed, thin white crescents and lines for the most part, with here and there a silvery net or a shiny lump, where a whipstroke had flayed the skin in too wide a patch for the edges of the wound to draw cleanly together. There was some skin untouched, showing fair and smooth among the weals—but not much.

And what was he to say? Roger had wondered. I’m sorry for it? Thanks for the viewing privileges?

In the event, he had said nothing. Jamie had merely turned around, handed Roger an ax with complete matter-of-factness, and they had begun their work, bare-chested. But he had noticed that Jamie never stripped to work, if the other men were with them.

All right. Of all men, Jamie would understand the need, the necessity—the burden of Brianna’s dreaming, that lay in Roger’s belly like a stone. Certainly he would help. But would he consent to allow Roger to finish it alone? Jamie, after all, had some stake in the matter, too.

The crows were still calling, but farther off, their cries thin and desperate, like those of lost souls. Perhaps he was foolish even to think of acting alone. He flung an armload of stones onto the pile; small rocks clacked and rolled away.

“Preacher’s lad.” That’s what the other lads at school had called him, and that’s what he was, with all the ambiguity the term implied. The initial urge to prove himself manly by means of force, the later awareness of the ultimate moral weakness of violence. But that was in another country—

He choked off the rest of the quotation, grimly bending to lever a chunk of rock free of moss and dirt. Orphaned by war, raised by a man of peace—how was he to set his mind to murder? He trundled the stone down toward the field, rolling it slowly end over end.

“You’ve never killed anything but fish,” he muttered to himself. “What makes you think . . .” But he knew all too well what made him think.

BY MID-MORNING, there were enough rocks collected to begin the first pillar; with a nod and a murmur, they set to work, dragging and heaving, stacking and fitting, with now and then a muffled exclamation at a smashed finger or bruised toes.

Jamie heaved a big stone into place, then straightened up, gasping for breath.

Roger drew his own deep breath. It might as well be now; no better opportunity was likely to come.

“I’ve a favor to ask,” he said abruptly.

Jamie glanced up, breathing heavily, one eyebrow raised. He nodded, waiting for the request.

“Teach me to fight.”

Jamie wiped an arm across his streaming face, and blew out a deep breath.

“Ye ken well enough how to fight,” he said. One corner of his mouth quirked up. “D’ye mean will I teach ye to handle a sword without cutting off your foot?”

Roger kicked a stone back into the pile.

“That will do, to start.”

Jamie stood for a moment, looking him over. It was a thoroughly dispassionate examination, much as he would have given a bullock he thought to buy. Roger stood still, feeling the sweat stream down the groove of his back, and thought that once more, he was being compared—to his disadvantage—with the absent Ian Murray.

“You’re auld for it, mind,” Jamie said at last. “Most swordsmen start when they’re boys.” He paused. “I had my first sword at five.”

Roger had had a train when he was five. With a red engine that tooted its whistle when you pulled the cord. He met Jamie’s eye, and smiled pleasantly.

“Old for it, maybe,” he said. “But not dead.”

“Ye could be,” Fraser answered. “A little learning is a dangerous thing—a fool wi’ a blade by his side in a scabbard is safer than a fool who thinks he kens what to do with it.”

“A little learning is a dangerous thing,” Roger quoted. “Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring. Do you think me a fool?”

Jamie laughed, surprised into amusement.

“There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,” he replied, finishing the verse. “And drinking largely sobers us again. As for foolish—ye’ll no just be drunk on the thought of it, I suppose?”

Roger smiled slightly in reply; he had given up being surprised by the breadth of Jamie’s reading.

“I’ll drink deep enough to stay sober,” he said. “Will ye teach me?”

Jamie squinted, then lifted one shoulder slightly. “Ye’ve size to your credit, and a good reach, forbye.” He looked Roger head to toe once more and nodded. “Aye, ye’ll maybe do.”

He turned and walked away, toward the next heap of stones. Roger followed, feeling oddly gratified, as though he had passed some small but important test.

The test hadn’t yet begun, though. It was only partway through the building of the new pillar that Jamie spoke again.

“Why?” he asked, eyes on the huge stone he was slowly heaving into place. It was too heavy to lift, the size of a whisky keg. Knotted clumps of grass roots stuck out from under it, ripped out of the earth by the stone’s slow and brutal passage across the ground.

Roger bent to lend his own weight to the task. The lichens on the rock’s surface were rough under his palms, green and scabby with age.

“I’ve a family to protect,” he said. The rock moved grudgingly, sliding a few inches across the uneven ground. Jamie nodded, once, twice; on the silent “three,” they shoved together, with an echoed grunt of effort. The monster half-rose, paused, rose altogether and overbalanced, chunking down into place with a thunk! that quivered through the ground at their feet.

“Protect from what?” Jamie stood and wiped a wrist across his jaw. He glanced up and away, gesturing with his chin at the hanging pig. “I shouldna care to take on a panther wi’ a sword, myself.”

“Oh, aye?” Roger bent his knees and maneuvered another large rock into his arms. “I hear you’ve killed two bears—one with a dirk.”

“Aye, well,” Jamie said dryly. “A dirk’s what I had. As for the other—if it was a sword, it was Saint Michael’s, not mine.”

“Aye, and if ye’d known ahead of time that you might—ugh—meet it—would you not have armed yourself—better?” Roger bent his knees, lowering the stone carefully into place. He let it drop the last few inches, and wiped stinging hands on his breeks.

“If I’d known I should meet a damn bear,” Jamie said, grunting as he lifted another stone into place, “I would have taken another path.”

Roger snorted and wiggled the new stone, easing its fit against the others. There was a small gap at one side that left it loose; Jamie eyed it, walked to the stone pile, and picked up a small chunk of granite, tapered at one end. It fit the gap exactly, and the two men smiled involuntarily at each other.

“D’ye think there’s another path to take, then?” Roger asked.

Fraser rubbed a hand across his mouth, considering.

“If it’s the war ye mean—then, aye, I do.” He gave Roger a stare. “Maybe I’ll find it and maybe I won’t—but aye, there’s another path.”

“Maybe so.” He hadn’t meant the oncoming war, and he didn’t think Jamie had, either.

“As to bears, though . . .” Jamie stood still, eyes steady. “There’s a deal of difference, ye ken, between meeting a bear unawares—and hunting one.”

THE SUN STILL WASN’T VISIBLE, but it wasn’t necessary, either. Noon came as a rumbling in the belly, a soreness of the hands; a sudden awareness of the weariness of back and legs as timely as the chiming of a grandfather’s clock. The last large rock fell into place, and Jamie straightened up, gasping for breath.

By unspoken but mutual consent, they sat down with the packet of food, clean shirts draped across bare shoulders, against the chill of drying sweat.

Jamie chewed industriously, washing down a large bite with a gulp of ale. He made an involuntary face, pursed his lips to spit, then changed his mind and swallowed.

“Ach! Mrs. Lizzie’s been at the mash again.” He grimaced and took a remedial bite of biscuit, to erase the taste.

Roger grinned at his father-in-law’s face.

“What’s she put in it this time?” Lizzie had been trying her hand at flavored ales—with indifferent success.

Jamie sniffed warily at the mouth of the stone bottle.

“Anise?” he suggested, passing the bottle to Roger.

Roger smelt it, wrinkling up his nose involuntarily at the alcoholic whiff.

“Anise and ginger,” he said. Nevertheless, he took a cautious sip. He made the same face Jamie had, and emptied the bottle over a compliant blackberry vine.

“Waste not, want not, but . . .”

“It’s nay waste to keep from poisoning ourselves.” Jamie heaved himself up, took the emptied bottle, and set off toward the small stream on the far side of the field.

He came back, sat down, and handed Roger the bottle of water. “I’ve had word of Stephen Bonnet.”

It was said so casually that Roger didn’t register the meaning of the words at first.

“Have you?” he said at last. Piccalilli relish was oozing over his hand. Roger wiped the relish from his wrist with a finger, and put it into his mouth, but didn’t take another bite of sandwich; his appetite had vanished.

“Aye. I dinna ken where he is now—but I ken where he’ll be come next April—or rather, where I can cause him to be. Six months, and then we kill him. Do ye think that will give ye time?”

He was looking at Roger, calm as though he had suggested an appointment with a banker, rather than an appointment with death.

Roger could believe in netherworlds—and demons, too. He hadn’t dreamed last night, but the demon’s face floated always at the edge of his mind, just out of sight. Time to summon him, perhaps, and bring him into view. You had to call a demon up, didn’t you, before you could exorcise him?

There were preparations to make, though, before that could happen. He flexed his shoulders and his arms once more, this time in anticipation. The soreness had mostly gone.

“There’s mony an ane for him maks mane

but nane shall ken where he is gane.

O’er his white banes when they are bare,

The wind shall blaw forever mair, O—

The wind shall blaw forever mair.”

“Aye,” he said. “That’ll do.”

EN GARDE

FOR A MOMENT, he didn’t think he was going to be able to lift his hand to the latch-string. Both arms hung as though weighted with lead, and the small muscles of his forearm jumped and trembled with exhaustion. It took two tries, and even then, he could do no more than catch the string clumsily between two middle fingers; his thumb wouldn’t close.

Brianna heard him fumbling; the door opened suddenly and his hand fell nerveless from the latch. He had no more than a glimpse of tumbled hair and a beaming face with a smear of soot down one cheek, and then she had her arms around him, her mouth on his, and he was home.

“You’re back!” she said, letting go.

“I am.” And glad of it, too. The cabin smelt of hot food and lye soap, with a clean, faint tang of juniper overlaying the smoke of reed candles and the muskier scents of human occupation. He smiled at her, suddenly a little less tired.

“Dadee, Dadee!” Jemmy was bouncing up and down in excitement, clinging to a low stool for balance. “Da—deeee!”

“Hallo, hallo,” Roger said, reaching down to pat the boy’s fluffy head. “Who’s a good lad, then?” He missed his mark and his hand brushed a soft cheek instead, but Jemmy didn’t care.

“Me! Me!” he shouted, and grinned with a huge expanse of pink gum, showing off all his small white teeth. Brianna echoed the grin, with substantially more enamel but no less delight.

“We have a surprise for you. Watch this!” She went swiftly toward the table, and sank to one knee, a pace from Jemmy. She stretched out her arms, her hands no more than a few inches from his. “Come to Mama, sweetie. Come here, baby, come to Mama.”

Jemmy swayed precariously, loosed one hand, reached for his mother, then let go and took one drunken step, then two, and fell shrieking into her arms. She clutched him, giggling in delight, then turned him toward Roger.

“Go to Daddy,” Brianna encouraged. “Go on, go to Daddy.”

Jemmy screwed up his face in doubtful concentration, looking like a first-time parachutist at the open door of a circling plane. He swayed dangerously to and fro.

Roger squatted, hands held out, tiredness forgotten for the moment.

“Come on, mate, come on, you can do it!”

Jemmy clung a moment, leaning, leaning, then let go his mother’s hand and staggered drunkenly toward Roger, faster and faster and faster through three steps, falling headlong into Roger’s saving grasp.

He hugged Jemmy tight against him, the little boy wriggling and crowing in triumph.

“Good lad! Be into everything now, won’t you?”

“Like he’s not already!” Brianna said, rolling her eyes in resignation. As though in illustration, Jemmy wriggled loose from Roger’s grasp, dropped to hands and knees, and crawled off at a high rate of speed, heading for his basket of toys.

“And what else have ye been doing today?” Roger asked, sitting down at the table.

“What else?” Her eyes went wide, then narrowed. “You don’t think learning to walk is enough for one day?”

“Of course; it’s wonderful, it’s marvelous!” he assured her hastily. “I was only making conversation.”

She relaxed, appeased.

“Well, then. We scrubbed the floor—not that anybody could tell the difference—” She glanced down with some distaste at the rough, discolored boards underfoot, “—and we made bread and set it to rise, only it didn’t, so that’s why you’re having flat-bread with your dinner.”

“Love flat-bread,” he assured her hastily, catching the gimlet gleam in her eye.

“Sure you do,” she said, lifting one thick red brow. “Or at least you know which side it’s buttered on.”

He laughed. Here in the warm, the chill was wearing off, and his hands were starting to throb, but he felt good, nonetheless. Tired enough to fall off his stool, but good. Good and hungry. His stomach growled in anticipation.

“Flat-bread and butter is a start,” he said. “What else? I smell something good.” He looked at the bubbling cauldron and sniffed hopefully. “Stew?”

“No, laundry.” Bree glowered at the kettle. “The third bloody batch today. I can’t fit much in that dinky thing, but I couldn’t take the wash up to the big kettle at the house, because of washing the floor and spinning. When you do wash outside, you have to stay there, to tend the fire and stir it, so you can’t do much else at the same time.” Her lips clamped and thinned. “Very inefficient.”

“Shame.” Roger passed lightly over the logistics of laundry, in favor of more pressing issues. He lifted his chin toward the hearth.

“I do smell meat. You don’t think a mouse has fallen into the pot?”

Jemmy, catching this, let go his hold on a rag-ball and crawled eagerly toward the fire. “Mouzee? See mouzee?”

Brianna grabbed the collar of Jemmy’s smock and turned the glower on Roger.

“Certainly not. No, baby, no mousie. Daddy’s being silly. Here, Jemmy, come eat.” Letting go the collar, she seized the little boy by the waist and lifted him—kicking and struggling—into his high chair. “Eat, I said! You stay put.” Jemmy arched his back, grunting and squealing in protest, then suddenly relaxed, sliding down out of the chair and disappearing into the folds of his mother’s skirt.

Brianna grappled for him, going red in the face with laughter and exasperation.

“All right!” she said, hauling him upright. “Don’t eat, then. See if I care.” She reached for the litter of toys, spilled out of their basket, and plucked a battered corn-husk doll from the rubble. “Here, see dolly? Nice dolly.”

Jemmy clasped the doll to his bosom, sat down abruptly on his bottom, and began to address the doll in earnest tones, shaking it now and then for emphasis.

“Eat!” he said sternly, poking it in the stomach. He laid the doll on the floor, picked up the basket, and carefully turned it over on top of the dolly. “Say put!”

Brianna rubbed a hand down her face, and sighed. She gave Roger a glance. “And you want to know what I do all day.”

The glance sharpened, as she truly looked at him for the first time.

“And what have you been doing, Mr. MacKenzie? You look like you’ve been in the wars.” She touched his face gently; there was a knot forming on his forehead; he could feel the skin tightening there, and the tiny stab of pain when she touched it.

“Something like. Jamie’s been showing me the rudiments of swordsmanship.”

Her brows went up, and he laughed self-consciously, keeping his hands in his lap.

“Wooden swords, aye?”

Several wooden swords. They’d broken three so far, though the makeshift weapons were stout lengths of wood; not twigs, by any means.

“He stabbed you in the head?” Brianna’s voice had a slight edge, though Roger couldn’t tell whether it was meant for him or for her father.

“Ah . . . no. Not exactly.”

With hazy memories of swashbuckling films and university fencing matches, he’d been unprepared for the sheer brutal force involved in hand-to-hand combat with swords. Jamie’s first blow had knocked Roger’s sword from his hand and sent it flying; a later one had split the wood and sent a large chunk of it rocketing past his ear.

“What does ‘not exactly’ mean?”

“Well, he was showing me something called corps a corps—which appears to be French for ‘Get your opponent’s sword wrapped round your own, then knee him in the balls and punch his head while he’s trying to get loose.’”

Brianna gave a brief, shocked laugh.

“You mean he—”

“No, but it was a near thing,” he said, wincing at the memory. “I’ve a bruise on my thigh the size of my hand.”

“Are you hurt anywhere else?” Brianna was frowning at him, worried.

“No.” He smiled up at her, keeping his hands in his lap. “Tired. Sore. Starving.”

The frown eased and her smile flickered back, though a small line stayed between her brows. She reached for the wooden platter on the sideboard, turned, and squatted by the hearth.

“Quail,” she said with satisfaction, raking a number of blackened bundles out of the ashes with the poker. “Da brought them this morning. He said not to pluck them; just wrap them in mud and bake them. I hope he knows what he’s talking about.” She jerked her head toward the boiling cauldron. “Jemmy helped me with the mud; that’s why we had to do another pot of laundry. Ouch!” She snatched away her hand and sucked a burned finger, then picked up the platter and brought it to the table.

“Let them cool a little,” she instructed him. “I’ll get some of those pickles you like.”

The quail looked like nothing so much as charred rocks. Still, a tantalizing steam drifted up through cracks in a few of the blackened lumps. Roger felt like picking one up and eating it on the spot, burned mud and all. Instead, he fumbled at the cloth-covered plate on the table, discovering the maligned flat-bread underneath. Stiff-fingered, he managed to tear off a good chunk, and stuffed it silently into his mouth.

Jemmy had abandoned his ball of rags under the bed, and come to see what his father was doing. Pulling himself upright by the table leg, he spotted the bread and reached up, making urgent noises of demand. Roger carefully tore off another bit of bread and handed it to his offspring, nearly dropping it in the process. His hands were cut and battered; the knuckles of his right hand blood-grazed, swollen, and black with fresh bruising. Half his right thumbnail had been knocked away, and the bit of raw nail bed showed red and oozing.

“Ow-ee.” Clutching his bread, Jemmy looked at Roger’s hands, then up at his face. “Daddy owee?”

“Dad’s all right,” Roger assured him. “Just tired.”

Jemmy stared at the injured thumb, then slowly raised his hand to his mouth and inserted his own thumb, sucking loudly.

It actually looked like a good idea. His thumb stung and ached, where the nail had gone, and all his fingers were cold and stiff. With a quick glance at Brianna’s back, he lifted his hand and stuck his thumb in his mouth.

It felt alien, thick and hard and tasting of silvery blood and cold grime. Then suddenly it fit, and tongue and palate closed round the injured digit in a warm and soothing pressure.

Jemmy butted him in the thigh, his usual signal for “up,” and he grasped the back of the little boy’s clout with his free hand, boosting him up onto his knee. Jemmy made himself at home, rooting and squirming, then relaxed in sudden peace, bread squashed in one hand, sucking quietly on his thumb.

Roger slowly relaxed, one elbow propped on the table, the other arm round his son. Jemmy’s heavy warmth and heavy breathing against his ribs were a soothing accompaniment to the homely noises Brianna was making as she dished the supper. To his surprise, his thumb stopped hurting, but he left it where it was, too tired to question the odd sense of comfort.

His muscles were gradually relaxing, too, coming off the state of tensed readiness in which he’d held them for hours.

His inner ear still rang with brisk instruction. Use your forearm, man—the wrist, the wrist! Dinna move your hand out like that, keep it near the body. It’s a sword, aye? Not a bloody club. Use the tip!

He’d thrown Jamie heavily against a tree, at one point. And Fraser had tripped over a rock and gone down once, Roger on top. As for any actual damage inflicted with a sword, he might as well have been fighting a cloud.

Dirty fighting is the only kind there is, Fraser had told him, panting, as they knelt at the stream and splashed cold water over sweating faces. Anything else is no but exhibition.

His head jerked on his neck and he blinked, coming back abruptly from the grate and crash of wooden swords to the dim warmth of the cabin. The platter was gone; Brianna was cursing softly under her breath at the sideboard, banging the hilt of his dirk against the blackened lumps of clay-baked quail to crack them open.

Watch your footing. Back, back—aye, now, come back at me! No, dinna reach so far . . . keep your guard up!

And the stinging whap! of the springy “blade” across arms and thighs and shoulders, the solid thunk of it driven bruising home between his ribs, sunk deep and breathless in his belly. Had it been cold steel, he would have been dead in minutes, cut to bleeding ribbons.

Don’t catch the blade on yours—throw it off. Beat, beat it off! Come at me, thrust! Keep it close, keep it close . . . aye, good . . . ha!

His elbow slipped and his hand fell. He jerked upright, barely keeping hold of the sleeping child, and blinked, vision swimming with firelight.

Brianna started guiltily and shut her notebook. Getting to her feet, she thrust it out of sight behind a pewter plate, resting upright on its edge at the back of the sideboard.

“It’s ready,” she said hurriedly. “I just—I’ll get the milk.” She disappeared into the pantry in a rustle of skirts.

Roger shifted Jemmy, got a grip, and lifted the small, solid body up to his shoulder, though his arms felt like cooked noodles. The little boy was sound asleep, but kept his thumb plugged firmly into his mouth.

Roger’s own thumb was wet with spittle, and he felt a flush of embarrassment. Christ, had she been drawing him that way? No doubt; she must have caught sight of him sucking his thumb and thought it “cute”; it wouldn’t be the first time she’d drawn him in what he considered a compromising position. Or was she writing dreams again?

He laid Jemmy gently in his cradle, brushed damp bread crumbs off the coverlet, and stood rubbing his bruised knuckles with the fingers of his other hand. Sloshing noises came from the pantry. Moving quietly, he stepped to the sideboard and extracted the book from its hiding place. Sketches, not dreams.

It was no more than a few quick lines, the essence of a sketch. A man tired to death, still watchful; head on one hand, neck bowed with exhaustion—free arm clamped tight around a treasured, helpless thing.

She’d titled it. En garde, it said, in her slanted, spiky script.

He closed the book and slid it back behind the plate. She was standing in the pantry doorway, the milk jug in her hand.

“Come and eat,” she said softly, eyes on his. “You need your strength.”

ROGER BUYS A SWORD