Written in My Own Heart's Blood

26 A STEP INTO THE DARK

October 30, 1980

Craigh na Dun

A BLOTCH OF SWEAT darkened the shirt between William Buccleigh’s shoulder blades; the day was cool, but it was a steep climb to the top of Craigh na Dun—and the thought of what awaited them at the top was enough to make anybody sweat.

“Ye haven’t got to come,” Roger said to Buccleigh’s back.

“Get stuffed,” his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather replied briefly. Buck spoke absentmindedly, though, all his attention, like Roger’s, focused on the distant crest of the hill.

Roger could hear the stones from here. A low, sullen buzz, like a hive of hostile bees. He felt the sound move, crawling under his skin, and scratched viciously at his elbow, as though he could root it out.

“Ye’ve got the stones, aye?” Buck stopped, clinging one-handed to a birch sapling as he looked back over his shoulder.

“I have,” Roger said shortly. “D’ye want yours now?”

Buck shook his head and wiped shaggy fair hair off his brow with the back of his free hand.

“Time enough,” he said, and began to climb again.

Roger knew the diamonds were there—he knew Buck knew, too—but put a hand into his jacket pocket anyway. Two rough pieces of metal clinked together, the halves of an old brooch Brianna had cut apart with the poultry shears, each half with a scatter of tiny diamonds, barely more than chips. He hoped to God they’d be enough. If not—

The day was only cool, but a bone-deep shudder ran through him. He’d done it twice—three times, if he counted the first attempt, the one that had almost killed him. It got worse each time. He’d thought he wouldn’t make it the last time, coming back on Ocracoke, mind and body shredding in that place that was neither place nor passage. It had only been the feel of Jem in his arms that made him hold on, come through. And it was only the need to find Jem now that would make him do it again.

A hydroelectric tunnel

under the Loch Errochty dam

HE MUST BE getting near the end of the tunnel. Jem could tell by the way the air pushed back against his face. All he could see was the red light on the service train’s dashboard—did you call it a dashboard on a train? he wondered. He didn’t want to stop, because that meant he’d have to get out of the train, into the dark. But the train was running out of track, so there wasn’t much else he could do.

He pulled back a bit on the lever that made the train go, and it slowed down. More. Just a little more, and the lever clicked into a kind of slot and the train stopped with a small jerk that made him stumble and grab the edge of the cab.

An electric train didn’t make any engine noise, but the wheels rattled on the track and the train made squeaks and clunks as it moved. When it stopped, the noise stopped, too. It was really quiet.

“Hey!” he said out loud, because he didn’t want to listen to his heart beating. The sound echoed, and he looked up, startled. Mam had said the tunnel was really high, more than thirty feet, but he’d forgotten that. The idea that there was a lot of empty space hanging over him that he couldn’t see bothered him a lot. He swallowed and stepped out of the tiny engine, holding on to the frame with one hand.

“Hey!” he shouted at the invisible ceiling. “Are there any bats up there?”

Silence. He’d kind of been hoping there were bats. He wasn’t afraid of them—there were bats in the old broch, and he liked to sit and watch them come out to hunt in the summer evenings. But he was alone. Except for the dark.

His hands were sweating. He let go of the metal cab and scrubbed both hands on his jeans. Now he could hear himself breathing, too.

“Crap,” he whispered under his breath. That made him feel better, so he said it again. Maybe he ought to be praying, instead, but he didn’t feel like that, not yet.

There was a door, Mam said. At the end of the tunnel. It led into the service chamber, where the big turbines could be lifted up from the dam if they needed fixing. Would the door be locked?

Suddenly he realized that he’d stepped away from the train and he didn’t know whether he was facing the end of the tunnel or back the way he’d come. In a panic, he blundered to and fro, hands out, looking for the train. He tripped over part of the track and fell, sprawling. He lay there for a second, saying, “Crap-crap-crap-crap-crap!” because he’d skinned both knees and the palm of his hand, but he was okay, really, and now he knew where the track was, so he could follow it and not get lost.

He got up, wiped his nose, and shuffled slowly along, kicking the track every few steps to be sure he stayed with it. He thought he was in front of where the train had stopped, so it didn’t really matter which way he was going—either he’d find the train or he’d find the end of the tunnel. And then the door. If it was locked, maybe—

Something like an electric shock ran right through him. He gasped and fell over backward. The only thing in his mind was the idea that somebody had hit him with a lightsaber like Luke Skywalker’s, and for a minute he thought maybe whoever it was had cut off his head.

He couldn’t feel his body, but he could see in his mind his body lying bleeding in the dark and his head sitting right there on the train tracks in the dark, and his head couldn’t see his body or even know it wasn’t attached anymore. He made a breathless kind of a noise that was trying to be a scream, but it made his stomach move and he felt that, he felt it, and suddenly he felt a lot more like praying.

“Deo . . . gratias!” he managed to gasp. It was what Grandda said when he talked about a fight or killing something, and this wasn’t quite that sort of thing, but it seemed like a good thing to say anyway.

Now he could feel all of himself again, but he sat up and grabbed his neck, just to be sure his head was still on. His skin was jumping in the weirdest way. Like a horse’s does when a horsefly bites it, but all over. He swallowed and tasted sugared silver and he gasped again, because now he knew what had hit him. Sort of.

This wasn’t quite like it had been when they’d all walked into the rocks on Ocracoke. One minute he’d been in his father’s arms, and the next minute it was as if he’d been scattered everywhere in little wiggly pieces like the spilled quicksilver in Grannie’s surgery. Then he was back together again, and Da was still holding him tight enough to squeeze his breath out, and he could hear Da sobbing and that scared him, and he had a funny taste in his mouth and little pieces of him were still wiggling around trying to get away but they were trapped inside his skin . . .

Yeah. That was what was making his skin jump now, and he breathed easier, knowing what it was. That was okay, then; he was okay; it would stop.

It was stopping already, the twitchy feeling going away. He still felt kind of shaky, but he stood up. Careful, because he didn’t know where it was.

Wait—he did know. He knew exactly.

“That’s weird,” he said, out loud without really noticing, because he wasn’t scared by the dark anymore; it wasn’t important.

He couldn’t see it, not with his eyes, not exactly. He squinted, trying to think how he was seeing it, but there wasn’t a word for what he was doing. Kind of like hearing or smelling or touching, but not really any of those.

But he knew where it was. It was right there, a kind of . . . shiver . . . in the air, and when he stared at it, he had a feeling in the back of his mind like pretty sparkly things, like sun on the sea and the way a candle flame looked when it shone through a ruby, but he knew he wasn’t really seeing anything like that.

It went all the way across the tunnel, and up to the high roof, too, he could tell. But it wasn’t thick at all; it was thin as air.

He guessed that was why it hadn’t swallowed him like the thing in the rocks on Ocracoke had. At least . . . he thought it hadn’t and, for an instant, worried that maybe he’d gone sometime else. But he didn’t think so. The tunnel felt just the same, and so did he, now that his skin had stopped jumping. When they’d done it, on Ocracoke, he’d known right away it was different.

He stood there for a minute, just looking and thinking, and then shook his head and turned around, feeling with his foot for the track. He wasn’t going back through that, no matter what. He’d just have to hope the door wasn’t locked.

The laird’s study,

Lallybroch estate

BRIANNA’S HAND closed on the letter opener, but even as she calculated the distance involved, the obstacle of the desk between Rob Cameron and herself, and the flimsiness of the wooden blade, she was reluctantly concluding that she couldn’t kill the bastard. Not yet.

“Where’s my son?”

“He’s okay.”

She stood up suddenly, and he jerked a little in reflex. His face flushed and he hardened his expression.

“He’d bloody well better be okay,” she snapped. “I said, where is he?”

“Oh, no, hen,” he said, rocking back on his heels, affecting nonchalance. “That’s no how we’re playing it. Not tonight.”

God, why didn’t Roger keep a hammer or a chisel or something useful in his desk drawer? Did he expect her to staple this jerk? She braced herself, both hands flat on the desk, to keep from leaping over it and going for his throat.

“I’m not playing,” she said through her teeth. “And neither are you. Where’s Jemmy?”

He leveled a long finger at her.

“You’re no longer the boss lady, Ms. MacKenzie. I call the shots now.”

“Oh, you think so, do you?” she asked, as mildly as she could. Her thoughts were slipping past like grains of sand in an hourglass, a slithering cascade of what if, how, shall I, no, yes . . .

“I do, aye.” His color, already high, rose higher, and he licked his lips. “Ye’re gonna find out what it’s like to be on the bottom, hen.”

Cameron’s eyes were very bright, and his hair was clipped so short that she could see beads of sweat glittering above his ears. Was he high on something? She thought not. He was wearing track pants, and his fingers flicked unconsciously across the front, where a substantial bulge was beginning to show. Her lips tightened at the sight.

Not on your life, buddy.

She widened her gaze as much as possible, to take him in without letting his eyes move from hers. She didn’t think he was armed, though the pockets of his jacket had stuff in them. He really thought he could make her have sex with him, without a set of manacles and a sledgehammer?

He twirled his finger, pointing to the floor in front of him.

“Come round here, hen,” he said softly. “And take your jeans down. Might do ye good to learn what it’s like to take it up the arse regularly. Ye’ve done it to me for months—fair’s fair, isn’t it?”

Very slowly, she came around the desk but stopped well short of him, keeping out of reach. She fumbled cold-fingered at the button of her fly, unwilling to look down, unwilling to take her eyes off him. Her heart was beating so hard in her ears that she could barely hear his heavy breathing.

The tip of his tongue showed briefly, involuntarily, as she pushed the jeans down over her hips, and he swallowed.

“The knickers, too,” he said, half breathless. “Take them off.”

“You don’t rape people very often, do you?” she said rudely, stepping out of the puddled jeans. “What’s your rush?” She bent and picked the heavy denim pants up, shook out the legs, and turned as though to lay them on the desk. Then whipped back, clutching the jeans at the ankle, and lashed them as hard as she could at his head.

The heavy cloth with its zipper and brass fly button struck him full in the face, and he staggered back with a grunt of surprise, clutching at the jeans. She let go of them instantly, leapt onto the desk, and launched herself at him, shoulder-first.

They fell together with a crash that shook the hardwood floor, but she landed on top, kneed him hard in the belly, and then grabbed him by both ears and thumped his head on the floor as hard as she could. He let out a cry of pain, reached for her wrists, and she promptly let go of his ears, leaned backward, and grabbed for his crotch.

Had she been able to get a decent grip on his balls through the soft fabric, she would have crushed them. As it was, she managed a glancing squeeze but one hard enough to make him yelp and convulse, nearly dislodging her from her perch.

She couldn’t win a fistfight. Couldn’t let him hit her. She scrambled to her feet, looking wildly round the office for something heavy to hit him with, seized the wooden letter box, and smashed it over his head as he started to rise. He didn’t fall down but bobbed his head, dazed amongst the cascade of letters, and she kicked him in the jaw as hard as she could, her own teeth clenched. It was a sliding, sweaty impact, but she’d hurt him.

She’d hurt herself, too, had kicked him with her heel, as much as she could, but she felt a burst of pain in the middle of her foot; she’d torn or broken something, but it didn’t matter.

Cameron shook his head violently, trying to clear it. He was on his hands and knees now, crawling toward her, reaching for her leg, and she backed up against the desk. With a banshee shriek, she kneed him in the face, squirmed out of his grasp, and ran for the hall, limping heavily.

There were weapons on the walls of the foyer, a few targes and broadswords kept for ornament, but all hung high, to be out of the children’s reach. There was a better one easily to hand, though. She reached behind the coat rack and grabbed Jem’s cricket bat.

You can’t kill him, she kept thinking, dimly surprised at the fact that her mind was still working. Don’t kill him. Not yet. Not ’til he says where Jemmy is.

“Fucking . . . bitch!” He was nearly on her, panting, half blinded by blood running down his forehead, half sobbing through the blood pouring from his nose. “Fuck you, split you open, fuck you up the—”

“Caisteal DOOON!” she bellowed, and, stepping out from behind the coat rack, swung the bat in a scything arc that caught him in the ribs. He made a gurgling noise and folded, arms across his middle. She took a deep breath, swung the bat as high as she could, and brought it down with all her strength on the crown of his head.

The shock of it vibrated up her arms to her shoulders and she dropped the bat with a clunk and stood there gasping, trembling and drenched with sweat.

“Mummy?” said a tiny, quavering voice from the foot of the stair. “Why is you not got pants on, Mummy?”

THANK GOD FOR instinct was her first coherent thought. She’d crossed the length of the foyer, snatched Mandy up in her arms, and was patting her comfortingly before any sort of conscious decision to move had been made.

“Pants?” she said, eyeing the limp form of Rob Cameron. He hadn’t twitched since he’d fallen, but she didn’t think she’d killed him. She’d have to take more-certain steps to neutralize him, and fast. “Oh, pants. I was just getting ready for bed when this naughty man showed up.”

“Oh.” Mandy leaned out of her arms, peering at Cameron. “Iss Mr. Rob! Iss a burglar? Iss a bad man?”

“Yes, both,” Brianna said, deliberately casual. Mandy’s speech showed the sibilance it had when she got excited or upset, but the little girl seemed to be recovering pretty fast from the shock of seeing her mother crown a burglar in the front hall while wearing only a T-shirt and underpants. The thought made her want to stomp on Cameron’s balls, but she choked it back. No time for that.

Mandy clung to her neck, but Brianna set her firmly on the stairs.

“Mummy wants you to stay here, a ghraidh. I have to put Mr. Rob someplace safe, where he can’t do anything bad.”

“No!” Mandy cried, seeing her mother head toward the crumpled Cameron, but Brianna waved in what she hoped was a reassuring manner, picked up the cricket bat as insurance, and nudged her prisoner in the ribs with a cautious toe. He wobbled but didn’t stir. Just in case, she moved round behind him and prodded him rudely between the buttocks with the cricket bat, which made Mandy giggle. He didn’t move, and she drew a deep breath for the first time in what seemed like hours.

Going back to the stairs, she gave Mandy the bat to hold and smiled at her. She pushed a strand of sweaty hair behind her ear.

“Okay. We’re going to put Mr. Rob in the priest’s hole. You go and open the door for Mummy, all right?”

“I hit him?” Mandy asked hopefully, clutching the bat.

“No, I don’t think you need to do that, darling. Just open the door.”

Her work tote was hanging from the coat rack, the big roll of duct tape easily to hand. She trussed Cameron’s ankles and wrists, a dozen turns each, then bent and, clutching him by the ankles, dragged him toward the swinging baize door at the far end of the hall, which separated the kitchen from the rest of the house.

He began to stir as they negotiated the big table in the kitchen, and she dropped his feet.

“Mandy,” she said, keeping her voice as calm as possible. “I need to have a grown-up talk with Mr. Rob. Give me the bat. Then you go right on out to the mudroom and wait for me there, okay?”

“Mummy . . .” Mandy was shrinking back against the sink cabinet, eyes huge and fixed on the moaning Cameron.

“Go, Mandy. Right now. Mummy will be there before you can count to a hundred. Start counting now. One . . . two . . . three . . .” She moved between Cameron and Mandy, motioning firmly with her free hand.

Reluctantly, Mandy moved, murmuring, “Four . . . five . . . six . . . seven . . .” and disappeared through the back kitchen door. The kitchen was warm from the Aga, and despite her lack of clothes, Bree was still streaming with sweat. She could smell herself, feral and acrid, and found that it made her feel stronger. She wasn’t sure she’d ever truly understood the term “bloodthirsty” before, but she did now.

“Where’s my son?” she said to Cameron, keeping a wary distance in case he tried to roll at her. “Answer me, you piece of crap, or I’ll beat the shit out of you and then call the police.”

“Yeah?” He rolled slowly onto his side, groaning. “And tell them what, exactly? That I took your boy? What proof of that d’ye have?” His words were slurred; his lip was puffed out on one side, where she’d kicked him.

“Fine,” she snapped. “I’ll just beat the shit out of you.”

“What, beat a helpless man? Fine example for your wee lassie.” He rolled onto his back with a muffled grunt.

“As for the police, I can tell them you broke into my house and assaulted me.” She pointed one foot at him, so he could see the livid scratches on her leg. “You’ll have my skin cells under your fingernails. And while I’d rather not have Mandy go through it all again, she’d certainly tell them what you were saying in the hallway.” She would, too, Bree thought. Mandy was a very faithful tape recorder, especially where bad language was concerned.

“Nng.” Cameron had closed his eyes, grimacing against the light over the sink, but now opened them again. He was less dazed; she could see the light of calculation back in his eyes. Like most men, she thought, he was probably smarter when he wasn’t sexually aroused—and she’d taken care of that.

“Aye. And I tell them it was just a wee sex game that got out of hand, and you say it wasn’t, and they say, ‘Aye, fine, missus, and where’s your husband, then?’” The undamaged side of his mouth twisted up. “You’re not that swift tonight, hen. But, then, ye’re not usually.”

His mention of Roger made the blood surge in her ears. She didn’t reply but grabbed him by the feet and pulled him roughly through the kitchen and into the back passageway. The grating that covered the priest’s hole was hidden by a bench and several boxes of milk bottles, bits of farm equipment awaiting repair, and other items that didn’t go anywhere else. She dropped Rob’s feet, shoved the bench and boxes aside, and pulled up the grating. There was a ladder leading down into the shadowy space; she pulled this up and slid it behind the bench. That little amenity wouldn’t be needed.

“Hey!” Rob’s eyes widened. Either he hadn’t known there really was a priest’s hole in the house or he hadn’t thought she’d do it. Without a word, she seized him under the arms, dragged him to the hole, and shoved him in. Feetfirst, because if he broke his neck, he couldn’t tell her where Jem was.

He fell with a shriek, which was cut short by a heavy thump. Before she could worry that he’d managed to land on his head after all, she heard him moaning and a rustle as he started to stir. A muttering of very bad language further reassured her that he was in good enough shape to answer questions. She fetched the big flashlight from the kitchen drawer and shone it down into the hole. Cameron’s face, congested and streaked with blood, glared up at her. He curled up and with some difficulty managed to wriggle into a sitting position.

“You’ve broken my leg, you fucking bitch!”

“Good,” she said coldly, though she doubted it. “Once I get Jem back, I’ll take you to a doctor.”

He breathed heavily through his nose, making a nasty snuffling noise, and swiped at his face with his bound hands, smearing the blood across one cheek.

“You want him back? You get me out of here, and fast!”

She’d been considering—and discarding—different plans of action, shuffling through them like a mental pack of cards, ever since she’d duct-taped him. And letting him out wasn’t one she’d considered. She had thought of fetching the .22 rifle the family used to hunt rats and winging him in a few nonessential places—but there was some risk of either disabling him too badly to be of help or killing him accidentally by hitting something vital if he squirmed.

“Think fast,” he shouted up at her. “Your wee lass will hit a hundred and be back any second!”

Despite the situation, Brianna smiled. Mandy had very recently been introduced to the idea that numbers were infinite and had been enchanted by the concept. She wouldn’t stop counting until she ran out of breath or someone stopped her. Still, she wasn’t going to engage in pointless conversation with her prisoner.

“Okay,” she said, and reached for the grate. “We’ll see how talkative you are after twenty-four hours without food or water, shall we?”

“You bloody bitch!” He tried to surge to his feet but fell over onto his side, writhing impotently. “You—you just think about this, aye? If I’m without food and water, so’s your wee lad!”

She froze, the metal edge of the grate digging into her fingers.

“Rob, you’re not bright,” she said. She was amazed that her voice sounded conversational; waves of horror and relief and renewed horror were rippling across her shoulders, and something primitive in the back of her mind was screaming.

A sullen silence from below, as he tried to work out what he’d just given away.

“Now I know you didn’t send Jem back through the stones,” she clarified for him. She carefully didn’t shriek, But you sent Roger back to look for him! And he’ll never find him. You . . . you . . . “He’s still here, in this time.”

Another silence.

“Yeah,” he said slowly. “Okay, you know that. But you don’t know where he is. And you’re not going to, until you turn me loose. I meant it, hen—he’ll be thirsty by now. And hungry. It’ll be a lot worse for him by morning.”

Her hand tightened on the grate. “You had better be lying,” she said evenly. “For your sake.” She shoved the grate back into place and stepped on it, clicking it down into its frame. The priest’s hole was literally a hole: a space about six feet by eight, and twelve feet deep. Even if Rob Cameron hadn’t been bound hand and foot, he couldn’t jump high enough to get hold of the grate, let alone reach the latch that held it down.

Ignoring the furious shouts from below, Brianna went to retrieve her daughter and her jeans.

THE MUDROOM WAS empty, and for an instant she panicked—but then she saw the tiny bare foot sticking out from under the bench, long toes relaxed as a frog’s, and her heart rate dropped. A little.

Mandy was curled up under Roger’s old mac, thumb half in her mouth, sound asleep. The impulse was to carry her to her bed, let her sleep ’til daylight. Brianna laid a soft hand on her daughter’s black curly hair—black as Roger’s—and her heart squeezed like a lemon. There was another child to consider.

“Wake up, sweetheart,” she said, gently shaking the little girl. “Wake up, honey. We need to go and look for Jem.”

It took no little cajoling and the administration of a glass of Coca-Cola—a rare treat, and absolutely unheard of so late at night, how exciting!—to get Mandy into a state of alertness, but once there she was all eagerness to go and hunt for her brother.

“Mandy,” Bree said as casually as she could, buttoning her daughter’s pink quilted coat, “can you feel Jem? Right now?”

“Uh-huh,” Mandy replied offhandedly, and Brianna’s heart leapt. Two nights before, the child had waked screaming from a sound sleep, weeping hysterically and insisting that Jem was gone. She had been inconsolable, wailing that her brother had been eaten by “big wocks!”—an assertion that had terrified her parents, who knew the horrors of those particular rocks all too well.

But then, a few minutes later, Mandy had suddenly calmed. Jem was there, she said. He was there in her head. And she had gone back to sleep as though nothing had happened.

In the consternation that had followed this episode—the discovery that Jem had been taken by Rob Cameron, one of Brianna’s fellow employees at the hydroelectric plant, and presumably taken through the stones into the past—there had been no time to recall Mandy’s remark about Jem being back in her head, let alone to make further inquiries. But now Brianna’s mind was moving at the speed of light, bounding from one horrifying realization to the next, making connections that might have taken hours to make in cooler blood.

Horrifying Realization Number 1: Jem hadn’t gone into the past, after all. While by itself this was undeniably a good thing, it made Horrifying Realization Number 2 that much worse: Roger and William Buccleigh had undoubtedly gone through the stones, searching for Jemmy. She hoped they were in fact in the past and not dead—traveling through whatever sort of thing the stones were was a bloody dangerous proposition—but, if so, that brought her back to Horrifying Realization Number 1: Jem wasn’t in the past. And if he wasn’t there, Roger wasn’t going to find him. And since Roger would never give up looking . . .

She pushed Horrifying Realization Number 3 aside with great force, and Mandy blinked, startled.

“Why you making faces, Mummy?”

“Practicing for Halloween.” She rose, smiling as best she could, and reached for her own duffel coat.

Mandy’s brow creased in thought.

“When’s Halloween?”

Cold rippled over Brianna, and not just from the draft through the crack under the back door. Did they make it? They thought the portal was most active on the sun feasts and fire feasts—and Samhain was an important fire feast—but they couldn’t wait the extra day, for fear that Jem would be taken too far from Craigh na Dun after passing through the stones.

“Tomorrow,” she said. Her fingers slipped and fumbled on the fastenings, shaky with adrenaline.

“Goody, goody, goody!” Mandy said, hopping to and fro like a cricket. “Can I wear my mask to look for Jemmy?”

27 NOTHING’S SO HARD BUT SEARCH WILL FIND IT OUT

HE’D FELT THE DIAMONDS explode. For some time, that was the only thought in his mind. Felt it. One instant, briefer than a heartbeat, and a pulse of light and heat in his hand and then the throb of something going through him, surrounding him, and then . . .

Not “then,” he thought muzzily. Wasn’t any then. Wasn’t any now. Now there is, though . . .

He opened his eyes to find that there was a now. He was lying on stones and heather and there was a cow breathing—no, not a cow. He made to rise and managed to turn his head half an inch. It was a man, sitting huddled on the ground. Taking huge, irregular, gasping sobs of breath. Who . . . ?

“Oh,” he said aloud, or almost. “ ’S you.” The words came out in a mangle that hurt his throat, and he coughed. That hurt, too. “You . . . okay?” he asked hoarsely.

“No.” It came out in a grunt, filled with pain, and alarm got Roger up onto hands and knees, head spinning. He did a bit of gasping himself but crawled as fast as he could toward Buck.

William Buccleigh was curled over, arms crossed, gripping his left upper arm with his right hand. His face was pale and slicked with sweat, lips pressed so tight together that a ring of white showed round his mouth.

“Hurt?” Roger lifted a hand, not sure where or whether to prod. He couldn’t see any blood.

“My . . . chest,” Buck wheezed. “Arm.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Roger said, the last remnants of muzziness stripped away by a blast of adrenaline. “Are you having a bloody heart attack?”

“What . . .” Buck grimaced, then something seemed to ease a little. He gulped air. “How would I know?”

“It’s—never mind. Lie down, will you?” Roger looked wildly round, though even as he did, he realized the sheer pointlessness of doing so. The area near Craigh na Dun was wild and unpopulated in his own time, let alone this one. And even should someone appear out of the stones and heather, the chances of whoever it was being a doctor were remote.

He took Buck by the shoulders and eased him gently down, then bent and put his ear to the man’s chest, feeling like an idiot.

“D’ye hear anything?” Buck asked anxiously.

“Not with you talking, no. Shut up.” He thought he could make out a heartbeat of some sort but had no idea whether there was anything wrong with it. He stayed bent a moment longer, if only to compose himself.

Always act as if you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t. He’d been given that bit of advice by a number of people, from performers he’d shared a stage with to academic advisers . . . and, much more recently, by both of his in-laws.

He put a hand on Buck’s chest and looked into the man’s face. He was still sweating and plainly scared, but there was a little more color in his cheeks. His lips weren’t blue; that seemed a good sign.

“Just keep breathing,” he advised his ancestor. “Slow, aye?”

He tried to follow that bit of advice himself; his own heart was hammering and sweat was running down his back, in spite of a cold wind that whined past his ears.

“We did it, aye?” Buck’s chest was moving more slowly under his hand. He turned his head to look round. “It’s . . . different. Isn’t it?”

“Yes.” In spite of the current situation and the overwhelming worry for Jem, Roger felt a surge of jubilation and relief. It was different: from here, he could see the road below—now no more than an overgrown drovers’ trace rather than a gray asphalt ribbon. The trees and bushes, they were different, too—there were pines, the big Caledonian pines that looked like giant stalks of broccoli. They had made it.

He grinned at Buck. “We made it. Don’t die on me now, you bugger.”

“Do my best.” Buck was gruff but maybe starting to look better. “What happens if ye die out of your time? D’ye just disappear, like ye never were?”

“Maybe ye explode into bits. I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out. Not while I’m standing next to you, at least.” Roger got his feet under him and fought down a wave of dizziness. His own heart was still beating hard enough that he felt it in the back of his head. He breathed as deep as he could and stood up.

“I’ll . . . get ye some water. Stay there, aye?”

ROGER HAD BROUGHT a small empty canteen, though he’d worried about what might happen to the metal in transit. Evidently whatever it was that vaporized gemstones wasn’t bothered about tin, though; the canteen was intact, and so was the small knife and the silver pocket flask of brandy.

Buck was sitting up by the time Roger came back from the nearest burn with water, and after mopping his face with the water and drinking half the brandy, he declared himself recovered.

Roger wasn’t all that sure; the look of the man was a little off-color still—but he was much too anxious about Jem to suggest waiting any longer. They’d talked about it a bit on the drive to Craigh na Dun, agreeing on a basic strategy, at least to start.

If Cameron and Jem had made it through without mishap—and Roger’s heart misgave him at that thought, recalling Geillis Duncan’s careful collection of news reports involving people found near stone circles, most of them dead—they had to be on foot. And while Jem was a sturdy little boy and capable of walking a good distance, he doubted they could make much more than ten miles in a day over rough country.

The only road was the drovers’ track that led near the base of the hill. So one of them would take the direction that would intersect with one of General Wade’s good roads that led to Inverness; the other would follow the track west toward the pass that led to Lallybroch and, beyond it, Cranesmuir.

“I think Inverness is the most likely,” Roger repeated, probably for the sixth time. “It’s the gold he wants, and he knows that’s in America. He can’t be meaning to walk from the Highlands to Edinburgh to find a ship, not with winter breathing down his neck.”

“He won’t find a ship anywhere in the winter,” Buck objected. “No captain would cross the Atlantic in November!”

“D’ye think he knows that?” Roger asked. “He’s an amateur archaeologist, not a historian. And most folk in the twentieth century have trouble thinking anything was ever different in the past, save the funny clothes and no indoor plumbing. The notion that the weather could stop them going anywhere they’d a mind to—he may well think ships run all the time, on a regular timetable.”

“Mmphm. Well, maybe he means to hole up in Inverness with the lad, maybe find work, and wait ’til the spring. D’ye want to take Inverness, then?” Buck lifted his chin in the direction of the invisible town.

“No.” Roger shook his head and began patting his pockets, checking his supplies. “Jem knows this place.” He nodded toward the stones above them. “I brought him here, more than once, to make sure he never came upon it unawares. That means he knows—approximately, at least—how to get home—to Lallybroch, I mean—from here. If he got away from Cameron—and, God, I hope he did!—he’d run for home.”

He didn’t trouble saying that even if Jem wasn’t there, Brianna’s relatives were, her cousins and her aunt. He’d not met them, but they knew from Jamie’s letters who he was; if Jem wasn’t there—and, Lord, how he hoped he was—they’d help him search. As to how much he might try to tell them . . . that could wait.

“Right, then.” Buck buttoned his coat and settled the knitted comforter round his neck against the wind. “Three days, maybe, to Inverness and time to search the town, two or three back. I’ll meet ye here in six days’ time. If ye’re not here, I follow on to Lallybroch.”

Roger nodded. “And if I’ve not found them but I’ve heard some word of them, I’ll leave a message at Lallybroch. If . . .” He hesitated, but it had to be said. “If ye find your wife, and things fall out—”

Buck’s lips tightened.

“They’ve already fallen,” he said. “But, aye. If. I’ll still come back.”

“Aye, right.” Roger hunched his shoulders, anxious to go, and awkward with it. Buck was already turning away but suddenly about-faced and gripped Roger’s hand, hard.

“We’ll find him,” Buck said, and looked into Roger’s eyes, with those bright-moss eyes that were the same as his. “Good luck.” He gave Roger’s hand one sharp, hard shake and then was off, arms outstretched for balance as he picked his way down through the rocks and gorse. He didn’t look back.

28 WARMER, COLDER

“CAN YOU TELL when Jem’s at school?”

“Yes. He goes on da bus.” Mandy bounced a little on her booster seat, leaning to peer out the window. She was wearing the Halloween mask Bree had helped her make, this being a mouse princess: a mouse face drawn with crayons on a paper plate, with holes pierced for eyes and at either side for pink yarn ties, pink pipe cleaners glued on for whiskers, and a precarious small crown made with cardboard, more glue, and most of a bottle of gold glitter.

Scots celebrated Samhain with hollowed-out turnips with candles in them, but Brianna had wanted a slightly more festive tradition for her half-American children. The whole seat sparkled as though the car had been sprinkled with pixie dust.

She smiled, despite her worry.

“I meant, if you played warmer, colder with Jem, could you do it if he wasn’t answering you out loud? Would you know if he was closer or farther away?”

Mandy kicked the back of the seat in meditative fashion.

“Maybe.”

“Can you try?” They were headed toward Inverness. That was where Jem was supposed to be, spending the night with Rob Cameron’s nephew.

“Okay,” Mandy said agreeably. She hadn’t asked where Rob Cameron was. Brianna spared a thought as to the fate of her prisoner. She really would shoot him through the ankles, elbows, knees, or anything else necessary to find out where Jem was—but if there were quieter ways of interrogation, it would be better all round. It wouldn’t be good for Jem and Mandy to have their mother sent to prison for life, particularly if Roger—She choked that thought off and stepped harder on the gas.

“Colder,” Mandy announced, so suddenly that Brianna nearly stalled the car.

“What? Do you mean we’re getting farther away from where Jemmy is?”

“Uh-huh.”

Brianna took a deep breath and made a U-turn, narrowly avoiding an oncoming panel truck, which hooted at them in annoyance.

“Right,” she said, gripping the wheel with sweaty hands. “We’ll go the other way.”

THE DOOR WASN’T locked. Jem opened it, heart pounding in relief, and then it pounded harder, as he realized the lights weren’t on in the turbine chamber, either.

There was some light. The little windows up at the top of the huge space, up where the engineers’ room was: there was light coming from there. Just enough so he could see the monsters in the huge room.

“They’re just machines,” he muttered, pressing his back hard against the wall beside the open door. “Justmachinesjustmachinesjustmachines!” He knew the names of them, the giant pulley hoists that ran overhead with the big hooks dangling, and the turbines, Mam had told him. But he’d been up there then, where the light was, and it had been daylight.

The floor under his feet vibrated, and he could feel the knobs on his backbone knocking against the wall as it shook from the weight of the water rushing through the dam under him. Tons of water, Mummy said. Tons and tons and tons of black dark water, all around him, under him . . . If the wall or the floor broke, it—

“Shut up, baby!” he said fiercely to himself, and rubbed his hand hard over his face and wiped it on his jeans. “You got to move. Go!”

There were stairs; there had to be stairs. And they were somewhere in here, among the big black humps of the turbines that poked up. They stood higher than the big stones on the hill where Mr. Cameron had taken him. That thought calmed him down some; he was lots more scared of the stones. Even with the deep roaring noise the turbines made—that was making his bones twitch, but it didn’t really get inside his bones.

The only thing that kept him from going right back into the tunnel and hoping for someone to find him in the morning was the . . . thing in there. He didn’t want to be anywhere near that.

He couldn’t hear his heart anymore. It was too noisy in the turbine chamber to hear anything. He sure couldn’t hear himself think, but the stairs had to be near the windows, and he wobbled that way, keeping as far as he could from the huge black double humps sticking up through the floor.

It was only when he finally found the door, yanked it open, and fell into the lighted staircase that it occurred to him to wonder whether Mr. Cameron was maybe up there, waiting for him.

29 RETURN TO LALLYBROCH

ROGER HAULED HIS WAY laboriously toward the summit of the mountain pass, muttering under his breath (as he had been doing for the last several miles):

“If you had seen this road before it was made,

You would lift up your hands and bless General Wade.”

The Irish General Wade had spent twelve years building barracks, bridges, and roads all over Scotland, and if that bit of admiring verse was not in fact carved into a stone on one of the general’s roads, it ought to have been, Roger thought. He had picked up one of the general’s roads near Craigh na Dun, and it had carried him as swiftly as he could walk to within a few miles of Lallybroch.

These last few miles, though, had not had the benefit of Wade’s attention. A rocky trail, pitted with small mud bogs and thickly overgrown with heather and gorse, led up through the steep pass that overlooked—and protected—Lallybroch. The lower slopes were forested with beeches, alders, and stout Caledonian pines, but up this high there was neither shade nor shelter, and a strong, cold wind battered him as he climbed.

Could Jem have come this far by himself, if he’d escaped? Roger and Buck had cast round in the vicinity of Craigh na Dun, hoping that perhaps Cameron had stopped to rest after the strain of the passage, but there had been no sign—not so much as the print of a size-4 trainer in a muddy patch of ground. Roger had come on then by himself, as fast as he could, pausing to knock at the door of any croft he came to—and there weren’t many along this way—but he’d made good time.

His heart was pounding, and not only from the exertion of the climb. Cameron had maybe a two-day lead, at the most. If Jem hadn’t got away and run for home, though . . . Cameron wouldn’t come to Lallybroch, surely. But where would he go? Follow the good road, left now ten miles behind, and head west, maybe, into the MacKenzies’ territory—but why?

“Jem!” He shouted now and then as he went, though the moors and mountains were empty save for the rustling of rabbits and stoats and silent but for the calling of ravens and the occasional shriek of a seagull winging high overhead, evidence of the distant sea.

“Jem!” he called, as though he could compel an answer by sheer need, and in that need imagined sometimes that he heard a faint cry in response. But when he stopped to listen, it was the wind. Only the wind, whining in his ears, numbing him. He could walk within ten feet of Jem and never see him, and he knew that.

His heart rose, in spite of his anxiety, when he came to the top of the pass and saw Lallybroch below him, its white-harled buildings glowing in the fading light. Everything lay peaceful before him: late cabbages and turnips in orderly rows within the kailyard walls, safe from grazing sheep—there was a small flock in the far meadow, already bedding for the night, like so many woolly eggs in a nest of green grass, like a kid’s Easter basket.

The thought caught at his throat, with memories of the horrible cellophane grass that got everywhere, Mandy with her face—and everything else within six feet of her—smeared with chocolate, Jem carefully writing Dad on a hard-boiled egg with a white crayon, then frowning over the array of dye cups, trying to decide whether blue or purple was more Dad-like.

“Lord, let him be here!” he muttered under his breath, and hurried down the rutted trail, half sliding on loose rocks.

The dooryard was tidy, the big yellow rose brier trimmed back for the winter, and the step swept clean. He had the sudden notion that if he were simply to open the door and walk in, he would find himself in his own lobby, Mandy’s tiny red galoshes flung helter-skelter under the hall tree where Brianna’s disreputable duffel coat hung, crusty with dried mud and smelling of its wearer, soap and musk and the faint smell of her motherhood: sour milk, fresh bread, and peanut butter.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered, “be weeping on the step, next thing.” He hammered at the door, and a huge dog came galloping round the corner of the house, baying like the bloody hound of the Baskervilles. It slid to a stop in front of him but went on barking, weaving its huge head to and fro like a snake, ears cocked in case he might make a false move that would let it devour him with a clear conscience.

He wasn’t risking any moves; he’d plastered himself against the door when the dog appeared and now shouted, “Help! Come call your beast!”

He heard footsteps within, and an instant later the door opened, nearly decanting him into the hall.

“Hauld your wheesht, dog,” a tall, dark man said in a tolerant tone. “Come ben, sir, and dinna be minding him. He wouldna eat you; he’s had his dinner.”

“I’m pleased to hear it, sir, and thank ye kindly.” Roger pulled off his hat and followed the man into the shadows of the hall. It was his own familiar hall, the slates of the floor just the same, though not nearly as worn, the dark-wood paneling shining with beeswax and polishing. There was a hall tree in the corner, though of course different to his; this one was a sturdy affair of wrought iron, and a good thing, too, as it was supporting a massive burden of jackets, shawls, cloaks, and hats, which would have crumpled a flimsier piece of furniture.

He smiled at it, nonetheless, and then stopped dead, feeling as though he’d been punched in the chest.

The wood paneling behind the hall tree shone serene, unblemished. No sign of the saber slashes left by frustrated redcoat soldiers searching for the outlawed laird of Lallybroch after Culloden. Those slashes had been carefully preserved for centuries, were still there, darkened by age but still distinct, when he had owned—would own, he corrected mechanically—this place.

“We keep it so for the children,” Bree had quoted her uncle Ian as saying. “We tell them, ‘This is what the English are.’”

He had no time to deal with the shock; the dark man had shut the door with a firm Gaelic adjuration to the dog and now turned to him, smiling.

“Welcome, sir. Ye’ll sup wi’ us? The lass has it nearly ready.”

“Aye, I will, and thanks to ye,” Roger bowed slightly, groping for his eighteenth-century manners. “I—my name is Roger MacKenzie. Of Kyle of Lochalsh,” he added, for no respectable man would omit to note his origins, and Lochalsh was far enough away that the chances of this man—who was he? He hadn’t the bearing of a servant—knowing its inhabitants in any detail was remote.

He’d hoped that the immediate response would be, “MacKenzie? Why, you must be the father of wee Jem!” It wasn’t, though; the man returned his bow and offered his hand.

“Brian Fraser of Lallybroch, your servant, sir.”

ROGER FELT ABSOLUTELY nothing for a moment. There was a faint clicking that reminded him of the noise a car’s starter makes when the battery is dead, and for a disoriented moment he assumed it was being made by his brain. Then his eyes focused on the dog, which, prevented from eating him, had come into the house and was walking down the passage, its toenails clicking on the parquet floor.

Oh. So that’s what left those scratches on the kitchen door, he thought, dazed, as the beast reared up and heaved its weight at the swinging door at the end of the passage, then shot through as it opened.

“Are ye quite well, sir?” Brian Fraser was looking at him, thick black brows drawn down in concern. He reached out a hand. “Come into my study and sit. I’ll maybe fetch ye a dram?”

“I—thank you,” Roger said abruptly. He thought his knees might give way at any second, but he managed to follow the master of Lallybroch into the speak-a-word room, the laird’s office and study. His own study.

The shelves were the same, and behind his host’s head was the same row of farm ledgers that he’d often thumbed through, conjuring up from their faded entries the phantom life of an earlier Lallybroch. Now the ledgers were new, and Roger felt himself the phantom. He didn’t like the feeling at all.

Brian Fraser handed him a small, thick, flat-bottomed glass half full of spirit. Whisky, and very decent whisky, too. The smell of it began to bring him out of his shock, and the warm burn of it down his gullet loosened the tightness in his throat.

How was he to ask what he so desperately needed to know? When?! He glanced over the desk, but there was no half-finished letter, conveniently dated, no planting almanac that he might glance casually through. None of the books on the shelf were of help; the only one he recognized was Defoe’s THE LIFE AND STRANGE SURPRIZING ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE, OF YORK, MARINER, and that had been published in 1719. He knew he must be later than that; the house itself hadn’t yet been built in 1719.

He forced down the rising tide of panic. It didn’t matter; it didn’t matter if it wasn’t the time he’d expected—not if Jem was here. And he must be. He must be.

“I’m sorry to disturb your family, sir,” he said, clearing his throat as he set down the glass. “But the fact is that I’ve lost my son and am in search of him.”

“Lost your son!” exclaimed Fraser, eyes widening in surprise. “Bride be with ye, sir. How did that come about?”

Just as well to tell the truth where he could, he thought, and, after all, what else could he say?

“He was kidnapped two days ago and carried away—he’s no but nine years old. I have some reason to think the man who took him comes from this area. Have ye by chance seen a tall man, lean and dark, traveling with a young red-haired lad, about so tall?” He put the edge of his hand against his own arm, about three inches above the elbow; Jem was tall for his age and even taller for this age—but, then, Brian Fraser was a tall man himself, and his son . . .

A fresh shock went through Roger with the thought: Was Jamie here? In the house? And if he was, how old might he be? How old had he been when Brian Fraser die—

Fraser was shaking his head, his face troubled.

“I have not, sir. What’s the name of the man who’s taken your lad?”

“Rob—Robert Cameron, he’s called. I dinna ken his people,” he added, falling naturally into Fraser’s stronger accent.

“Cameron . . .” Fraser murmured, tapping his fingers on the desk as he searched his memory. The motion flicked something in Roger’s memory; it was the ghost of one of Jamie’s characteristic gestures when thinking—but Jamie, with his frozen finger, did it with the fingers flat, where his father’s came down in a smooth ripple.

He picked up the glass again and took another sip, glancing as casually as he might at Fraser’s face, searching for resemblance. It was there but subtle, mostly in the cock of the head, the set of the shoulders—and the eyes. The face was quite different, square in the jaw, broader of brow, and Brian Fraser’s eyes were a dark hazel, not blue, but the slanted shape of them, the wide mouth—that was Jamie.

“There’re nay many Camerons nearer than Lochaber.” Fraser was shaking his head. “And I’ve heard nothing of a wanderer in the district.” He gave Roger a direct look, not accusing but definitely questioning. “Why is it ye think the man came this way?”

“I—he was seen,” Roger blurted. “Near Craigh na Dun.”

That startled Fraser.

“Craigh na Dun,” he repeated, leaning back a little, his eyes gone wary. “Ah . . . and where might ye have come from yourself, sir?”

“From Inverness,” Roger replied promptly. “I followed him from there.” Close enough. He was trying hard not to recall that he’d left on his quest to find Cameron and Jem from the very spot in which he was now sitting. “I—a friend—a kinsman—came with me. I sent him toward Cranesmuir to search.”

The news that he apparently wasn’t a solitary nutter seemed to reassure Fraser, who pushed back from the desk and stood up, glancing at the window, where a big rose brier curved up gaunt and black against the fading sky.

“Mmphm. Well, bide for a bit, sir, and ye will. It’s late in the day, and ye’ll make no great distance before dark falls. Sup with us, and we’ll gie ye a bed for the night. Mayhap your friend will catch ye up with good news, or one of my tenants may ha’ seen something. I’ll send round in the morning, to ask.”

Roger’s legs were quivering with the urge to leap up, rush out, do something. But Fraser was right: it would be pointless—and dangerous—to blunder round the Highland mountains in the dark, losing his way, perhaps be caught in a killing storm this time of year. He could hear the wind picking up; the rose brier beat at the glass of the window. It was going to rain soon. And is Jem out in it?

“I—yes. I thank you, sir,” he said. “It’s most kind of ye.”

Fraser patted him on the shoulder, went out into the hallway, and called, “Janet! Janet, we’ve a guest for supper!”

Janet?

He’d risen to his feet without thinking and came out of the office as the kitchen door swung open—and a small, slender shape was momentarily silhouetted against the glow of the kitchen, rubbing her hands on her apron.

“My daughter, Janet, sir,” Fraser said, drawing his daughter into the fading light. He smiled fondly at her. “This is Mr. Roger MacKenzie, Jenny. He’s lost his wee lad somewhere.”

“He has?” The girl paused, halfway through a curtsy, and her eyes went wide. “What’s happened, sir?”

Roger explained again briefly about Rob Cameron and Craigh na Dun, but all the time was consumed by the desire to ask the young woman how old she was. Fifteen? Seventeen? Twenty-one? She was remarkably beautiful, with clear white skin that bloomed from the heat of cooking, soft curly black hair tied back from her face, and a trim figure that he tried hard not to stare at—but what was most disturbing was that, despite her obvious femininity, she bore a startling resemblance to Jamie Fraser. She might be his daughter, he thought, and then brought himself up short, realizing afresh—and remembering, with a stab of the heart that nearly dropped him to his knees—who Jamie Fraser’s daughter really was.

Oh, God. Bree. Oh, Jesus, help me. Will I ever see her again?

He realized that he’d fallen silent and was staring at Janet Fraser with his mouth open. Apparently she was used to this sort of response from men, though; she gave him a demure, slant-eyed smile, said that supper would be on the table in a few moments and maybe Da should show Mr. MacKenzie the way to the necessary? Then she was walking back down the hallway, the big door swung to behind her, and he found he could breathe again.

THE SUPPER WAS plain but plentiful and well cooked, and Roger found that food restored him amazingly. No wonder—he couldn’t remember when he’d last eaten.

They ate in the kitchen, with a pair of housemaids called Annie and Senga and a man-of-all-work named Tom McTaggart sharing the table with the family. All of them were interested in Roger and, while giving him great sympathy in the matter of his missing son, were even more interested in where he might come from and what news he might bear.

Here he was at something of a loss, as he had no firm notion what year it was (Brian died—God, will die—when Jamie was nineteen, and if Jamie was born in May of 1721—or was it 1722?—and he was two years younger than Jenny . . .) and thus no idea what might have been happening in the world of late, but he delayed a bit, explaining his antecedents in some detail—that was good manners, for one thing, and for another, his birthplace in Kyle of Lochalsh was far enough away from Lallybroch that the Frasers were unlikely to have met any of his people.

Then at last he had a bit of luck, when McTaggart told about taking off his shoe to shake out a stone, then seeing one of the pigs wriggle under the fence and head for the kailyard at a trot. He rushed after the pig, of course, and succeeded in catching it—but had dragged it back to the pen only to find that the other pig had likewise wriggled out and was peacefully eating his shoe.

“This was all she left!” he said, pulling half a shredded leather sole out of his pocket and waving it at them reproachfully. “And a rare struggle I had to pull it from her jaws!”

“Why did ye bother?” Jenny asked, wrinkling her nose at the dank object. “Dinna trouble yourself, Taggie. We’ll slaughter the pigs next week, and ye can have a bit o’ the hide to make yourself a new pair of shoon.”

“And I suppose I’m to go barefoot ’til then, am I?” McTaggart asked, disgruntled. “There’s frost on the ground in the morn, aye? I could take a chill and be dead of the pleurisy before yon pig’s eaten its last bucket o’ slops, let alone been tanned.”

Brian laughed and lifted his chin toward Jenny. “Did your brother no leave a pair of his outgrown shoon behind when he left for Paris? I mind me he did, and if ye havena given them to the poor, might be as Taggie could manage wi’ them for a bit.”

Paris. Roger’s mind worked furiously, calculating. Jamie had spent not quite two years in Paris at the université and had come back . . . when? When he was eighteen, he thought. Jamie would have been—will be—eighteen in May of 1739. So it was now 1737, 1738, or 1739.

The narrowing of uncertainty calmed him a little, and he managed to put his mind to thinking of historical events that had occurred in that gap that he might offer as current news in conversation: absurdly, the first thing that came to mind was that the bottle opener had been invented in 1738. The second was that there had been an enormous earthquake in Bombay in 1737.

His audience was initially more interested by the bottle opener, which he was obliged to describe in detail—inventing wildly, as he had no notion what the thing actually looked like, though there were sympathetic murmurs regarding the residents of Bombay and a brief prayer for the souls of those crushed under falling houses and the like.

“But where is Bombay?” asked the younger of the housemaids, wrinkling her brow and looking from one face to another.

“India,” said Jenny promptly, and pushed back her chair. “Senga, fetch the cranachan, aye? I’ll show ye where India is.”

She vanished through the swinging door, and the bustle of removing dishes left Roger with a few moments’ breathing space. He was beginning to feel a little easier, getting his bearings, though still agonized with worry for Jem. He did spare a moment’s thought for William Buccleigh and how Buck might take the news of the date of their arrival.

Seventeen thirty-something . . . Jesus, Buck himself hadn’t even been born yet! But, after all, what difference did that make? he asked himself. He hadn’t been born yet, either, and had lived quite happily in a time prior to his birth before. . . . Could their proximity to the beginning of Buck’s life have something to do with it, though?

He did know—or thought he knew—that you couldn’t go back to a time during your own lifetime. Trying to exist physically at the same time as yourself just wasn’t on. It had just about killed him once; maybe they’d got too close to Buck’s original lifeline, and Buck had somehow recoiled, taking Roger with him?

Before he could explore the implications of that unsettling thought, Jenny returned, carrying a large, thin book. This proved to be a hand-colored atlas, with maps—surprisingly accurate maps, in many cases—and descriptions of “The Nations of the World.”

“My brother sent it to me from Paris,” Jenny told him proudly, opening the book to a double-page spread of the Continent of India, where the starred circle indicating Bombay was surrounded by small drawings of palm trees, elephants, and something that upon close scrutiny turned out to be a tea plant. “He’s at the université there.”

“Really?” Roger smiled, being sure to look impressed. He was, the more so at realization of the effort and expense involved in going from this remote mountain wilderness to Paris. “How long has he been there?”

“Oh, almost two years now,” Brian answered. He put out a hand and touched the page gently. “We do miss the lad cruelly, but he writes often. And he sends us books.”

“He’ll be back soon,” Jenny said, though with an air of conviction that seemed somewhat forced. “He said he’d come back.”

Brian smiled, though this too was a little forced.

“Aye. I’m sure I hope so, a nighean. But ye ken he may have found opportunities that keep him abroad for a time.”

“Opportunities? Ye mean that de Marillac woman?” Jenny asked, a distinct edge in her voice. “I dinna like the way he writes about her. Not one bit.”

“He could do worse for a wife, lass.” Brian lifted one shoulder. “She’s from a good family.”

Jenny made a very complicated sound in her throat, indicating sufficient respect for her father as to prevent her expressing a fuller opinion of “that woman” while still making that opinion plain. Her father laughed.

“Your brother’s no a complete fool,” he assured her. “I doubt he’d marry a simpleton or a—a—” He’d obviously thought better of saying “whore”—his lips had begun to shape the word—but couldn’t think of a substitute in time.

“He would,” Jenny snapped. “He’d walk straight into a cob’s web wi’ his eyes wide open, if the cob had a pretty face and a round arse.”

“Janet!” Her father tried to look shocked but failed utterly. McTaggart guffawed openly, and Annie and Senga giggled behind their hands. Jenny glowered at them but then drew herself up with dignity and addressed herself to their guest.

“So, then, Mr. MacKenzie. Is your own wife living, I hope? And is she your wean’s mother?”

“Is she—” He felt the question like a blow in the chest but then remembered when he was. The odds of a woman surviving childbirth were no more than even in many places. “Yes. Yes, she’s—in Inverness, with our daughter.”

Mandy. Oh, my sweet baby. Mandy. Bree. Jem. All at once, the enormity of it struck him. He’d managed so far to ignore it by concentrating on the need to find Jem, but now a cold wind whistled through the holes in his heart left by hurtling odds. The odds were that he would never see any of them again. And they would never know what had happened to him.

“Oh, sir.” Jenny whispered it, leaning forward to lay a hand on his arm, her eyes wide with horror at what she’d provoked. “Oh, sir, I’m sorry! I didna mean to—”

“It’s all right,” he managed, forcing the words through his mangled larynx in a croak. “I’m—” He waved a hand in blind apology and stumbled out. He went straight out through the mudroom at the back of the house and found himself in the night outside.

There was a narrow crack of sullen light just at the tops of the mountains, where the cloud had not quite settled, but the yard about him was deep in shadow, and the wind touched his face with the scent of cold rain. He was shaking, but not from chill, and sat down abruptly on the big stone by the path where they pulled the children’s wellies off when it was muddy.

He put his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, overcome for a moment. Not only for his own situation—but for those in the house. Jamie Fraser was coming home soon. And soon after there would come the afternoon when red-coated soldiers marched into the yard at Lallybroch, finding Janet and the servants alone. And the events would be set in train that would end with the death of Brian Fraser, struck down by an apoplexy while watching his only son flogged—he thought—to death.

Jamie . . . Roger shivered, seeing in mind not his indomitable father-in-law but the lighthearted young man who, among the distractions of Paris, still thought to send books to his sister. Who—

It had begun to rain, with a quiet thoroughness that slicked his face in seconds. At least no one would know if he wept in despair. I can’t stop it, he thought. I can’t tell them what’s coming.

A huge shape loomed out of the darkness, startling him, and the dog leaned heavily against him, nearly pushing him off the stone he sat on. A large, hairy nose was thrust sympathetically into his ear, whoofling and wetter than the rain.

“Jesus, dog,” he said, half-laughing in spite of everything. “God.” He put his arms round the big, smelly creature and rested his forehead against its massive neck, feeling inchoate comfort.

He thought of nothing for a little and was inexpressibly relieved. Little by little, though, coherent thought came back. It maybe wasn’t true that things—the past—couldn’t be changed. Not the big things, maybe, not kings and battles. But maybe—just maybe—the small ones could. If he couldn’t come right out and tell the Frasers of Lallybroch what doom was to come upon them, perhaps there was something he could say, some warning that might forestall—

And if he did? If they listened? Would that good man in the house die of his apoplexy anyway, some weakness in his brain giving way as he came in from the barn one day? But that would leave his son and his daughter safe—and then what?

Would Jamie stay in Paris and marry the flirtatious Frenchwoman? Would he come home peaceably to live at Lallybroch and mind his estate and his sister?

Either way, he wouldn’t be riding near Craigh na Dun in five or six years, pursued by English soldiers, wounded and needing the assistance of a random time traveler who had just stepped out of the stones. And if he didn’t meet Claire Randall. . . . Bree, he thought. Oh, Christ. Bree.

There was a sound behind him—the door of the house opening—and the beam of a lantern fell onto the path nearby.

“Mr. MacKenzie?” Brian Fraser called into the night. “Are ye all right, man?”

“God,” he whispered, clutching the dog. “Show me what to do.”

30 LIGHTS, ACTION, SIRENS

THE DOOR AT THE top of the staircase was locked. Jem pounded on it with his fists, kicked it with his feet, and shouted. He could feel it back down there behind him, in the dark, and the feel of it crawled up his back, as if it were coming to get him, and the thought of that scared him so bad that he shrieked like a ban-sìdhe and threw himself hard against the door, over and over, and—

The door flew open and he fell flat on a dirty lino floor, all footmarks and cigarette butts.

“What the devil—who are you, laddie, and what in God’s name were ye doing in there?”

A big hand grabbed him by the arm and pulled him up. He was out of breath from yelling and almost blubbering from relief, and it took a minute to remember who he was.

“Jem.” He swallowed, blinking in the light, and wiped his face on his sleeve. “Jem MacKenzie. My mam’s . . .” He went blank, suddenly unable to remember what Mam’s first name was. “She works here sometimes.”

“I know your mam. No mistaking that hair, laddie.” The man who’d pulled him up was a security guard; the patch on his shirtsleeve said so. He tilted his head to one side and the other, looking Jem over, light flashing off his bald head, off his glasses. The light was coming from those long tube lights in the ceiling Da said were fluorescent; they buzzed and reminded him of the thing in the tunnel, and he turned round fast and shoved the door shut with a bang.

“Is someone chasin’ ye, lad?” The guard reached a hand toward the doorknob, and Jem put his back hard against the door.

“No!” He could feel it back there, behind the door. Waiting. The guard was frowning at him. “I—I just—it’s really dark down there.”

“Ye were down in the dark? However did ye come to be there? And where’s your mother?”

“I don’t know.” Jem started being scared again. Really scared. Because Mr. Cameron had shut him up in the tunnel so he could go somewhere. And he might have gone to Lallybroch.

“Mr. Cameron put me in there,” he blurted. “He was supposed to take me to spend the night with Bobby, but instead he took me to Craigh na Dun, and then he took me to his house and locked me in a room overnight, and then the next morning he brought me here and shut me up in the tunnel.”

“Cameron—what, Rob Cameron?” The guard crouched down so he could frown right into Jem’s face. “Why?”

“I—I don’t know.” Don’t ever tell anyone, Da had said. Jem swallowed hard. Even if he wanted to tell, he didn’t know how to start. He could say Mr. Cameron took him up the hill at Craigh na Dun, to the stones, and pushed him into one. But he couldn’t tell what had happened then, not any more than he could tell Mr. MacLeod—that’s what it said on his badge, JOCK MACLEOD—what the shiny thing in the tunnel was.

Mr. MacLeod made a thinking noise in his throat, shook his head, and stood up.

“Well, I’d best be calling your parents to come and fetch ye home, aye? They can say if they maybe want to speak to the polis.”

“Please,” Jem whispered, feeling his knees turn to water at the thought of Mam and Da coming to get him. “Yes, please.”

Mr. MacLeod took him along to a little office where the phone was, gave him a warm can of Coke, and told him to sit down just there and say his parents’ telephone number. He sipped the drink and felt lots better right away, watching Mr. MacLeod’s thick finger whirl the telephone dial. A pause, and then he could hear ringing on the other end. Breep-breep . . . breep-breep . . . breep-breep . . .

It was warm in the office, but he was starting to feel cold around his face and hands. Nobody was answering the phone.

“Maybe they’re asleep,” he said, stifling a Coke burp. Mr. MacLeod gave him a sideways look and shook his head, pushed down the receiver, and dialed the number again, making Jem say the numbers one at a time.

Breep-breep. . . . breep-breep . . .

He was concentrating so hard on willing somebody to pick up the phone that he didn’t notice anything until Mr. MacLeod suddenly turned his head toward the door, looking surprised.

“What—” the guard said, and then there was a blur and a thunking noise like when cousin Ian shot a deer with an arrow, and Mr. MacLeod made an awful noise and fell right out of his chair onto the floor, and the chair shot away and fell over with a crash.

Jem didn’t remember standing up, but he was pressed against the filing cabinet, squeezing the can so hard that the bubbly Coke blurped out and foamed over his fingers.

“You come with me, boy,” said the man who’d hit Mr. MacLeod. He was holding what Jem thought must be a cosh, though he’d never seen one. He couldn’t move, even if he’d wanted to.

The man made an impatient noise, stepped over Mr. MacLeod like he was a bag of rubbish, and grabbed Jem by the hand. Out of sheer terror, Jem bit him, hard. The man yelped and let go, and Jem threw the can of Coke right at his face, and when the man ducked, he tore past him and out of the office and down the long hallway, running for his life.

IT WAS GETTING late; they passed fewer and fewer cars on the road, and Mandy’s head began to nod. The mouse-princess mask had ridden up on top of her head, its pipe-cleaner whiskers poking up like antennae. Seeing this in the rearview mirror, Brianna had a sudden vision of Mandy as a tiny radar station, scanning the bleak countryside for Jem’s small, pulsing signal.

Could she? She shook her head, not to dispel the notion but to keep her mind from slipping all the way out of reality. The adrenaline of her earlier rage and terror had all drained away; her hands shook a little on the steering wheel, and the darkness around them seemed vast, a yawning void that would swallow them in an instant if she stopped driving, if the feeble beam of the headlights ceased . . .

“Warm,” Mandy murmured sleepily.

“What, baby?” She’d heard but was too hypnotized by the effort of keeping her eyes on the road to take it in consciously.

“Warm . . . er.” Mandy struggled upright, cross. The yarn ties of her mask were stuck in her hair, and she made a high-pitched cranky noise as she yanked at them.

Brianna pulled carefully onto the verge, set the hand brake, and, reaching back, began to disentangle the mask.

“You mean we’re going toward Jem?” she asked, careful to keep her voice from trembling.

“Uh-huh.” Free of the nuisance, Mandy yawned hugely and flung out a hand toward the window. “Mmp.” She put her head down on her arms and whined sleepily.

Bree swallowed, closed her eyes, then opened them, looking carefully in the direction Mandy had pointed. There was no road . . . but there was, and with a trickle of ice water down her spine, she saw the small brown sign that said: SERVICE ROAD. NO PUBLIC ACCESS. NORTH OF SCOTLAND HYDRO ELECTRIC BOARD. Loch Errochty dam. The tunnel.

“Damn!” said Brianna, and stomped the gas, forgetting the hand brake. The car jumped and stalled, and Mandy sat bolt upright, eyes glazed and wide as a sun-stunned owl’s.

“Iss we home yet?”

JEM PELTED DOWN the hallway and threw himself at the swinging door at the end, so hard that he skidded all the way across the landing on the other side and fell down the stairs beyond, bumping and banging and ending up in a dazed heap at the bottom.

He heard the footsteps coming fast toward the door above and, with a small, terrified squeak, scrambled on all fours round the second landing and launched himself headfirst down the next flight, tobogganing on his stomach for a few stairs, then tipping arse over teakettle and somersaulting down the rest.

He was crying with terror, gulping air and trying not to make a noise, stumbling to his feet, and everything hurt, everything—but the door: he had to get outside. He staggered through the half-dark lobby, the only lights shining through the glass window where the receptionist usually sat. The man was coming; he could hear him cursing at the bottom of the stairs.

The main door had a chain looped through the bars. Swiping tears on his sleeve, he ran back in to the reception, looking wildly round. EMERGENCY EXIT—there it was, the red sign over the door at the far end of another small corridor. The man burst into the lobby and saw him.

“Come back here, you little bugger!”

He looked round wildly, grabbed the first thing he saw, which was a rolling chair, and pushed it as hard as he could into the lobby. The man cursed and jumped aside, and Jem ran for the door and flung himself against it, bursting into the night with a scream of sirens and the flash of blinding lights.

“WHASSAT, MUMMY? Mummy, I scared, I SCARED!”

“And you think I’m not?” Bree said under her breath, heart in her mouth. “It’s okay, baby,” she said aloud, and pressed her foot to the floor. “We’re just going to get Jem.”

The car slewed to a stop on the gravel, and she leapt out but dithered for a moment, needing urgently to rush toward the building, where sirens and lights were going off over an open door at the side, but unable to leave Mandy alone in the car. She could hear the rush of water down the spillway.

“Come with me, sweetheart,” she said, hastily undoing the seat belt. “That’s right, here, let me carry you . . .” Even as she spoke, she was looking here, there, from the lights into the darkness, every nerve she had screaming that her son was here, he was here, he had to be . . . rushing water . . . her mind filled with horror, thinking of Jem falling into the spillway, or Jem in the service tunnel—God, why hadn’t she gone there first? Of course Rob Cameron would have put him there, he had the keys, he . . . but the lights, the sirens . . .

She’d almost made it—at a dead run, impeded only slightly by thirty pounds of toddler—when she saw a big man at the edge of the drive, thrashing through the bushes with a stick or something, cursing a blue streak.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she bellowed. Mandy, alarmed anew, let out a screech like a scalded baboon, and the man jumped, whirling to face them, stick raised.

“What the bleedin’ hell are you doing here?” he said, so taken aback that he spoke almost normally. “You’re supposed to be—”

Bree had peeled Mandy off. Setting her daughter down behind her, she prepared to take the man apart with her bare hands, if necessary. Evidently this intent showed, because the man dropped the stick and abruptly vanished into the darkness.

Then flashing lights washed over the drive and she realized that it wasn’t her own aspect that had frightened him. Mandy was clinging to her leg, too frightened even to wail anymore. Bree picked her up, patting her gently, and turned to face the two police officers who were advancing cautiously toward her, hands on their batons. She felt wobbly-legged and dreamlike, things fading in and out of focus with the strobing lights. The rush of tons of falling water filled her ears.

“Mandy,” she said into her daughter’s warm curly hair, her own voice almost drowned out by the sirens. “Can you feel Jem? Please tell me you can feel him.”

“Here I am, Mummy,” said a small voice behind her. Convinced she was hallucinating, she lifted a restraining hand toward the police officers and pivoted slowly round. Jem was standing on the drive six feet away, dripping wet, plastered with dead leaves, and swaying like a drunk.

Then she was sitting splay-legged on the gravel, a child clutched in each arm, trying hard not to shake, so they wouldn’t notice. She didn’t start to sob, though, until Jemmy lifted a tearstained face from her shoulder and said, “Where’s Daddy?”

31 THE SHINE OF A ROCKING HORSE’S EYES

FRASER DIDN’T ASK BUT poured them each a dram of whisky, warm-smelling and smoke-tinged. There was something comfortable in drinking whisky in company, no matter how bad the whisky. Or the company, for that matter. This particular bottle was something special, and Roger was grateful, both to the bottle and its giver, for the sense of comfort that rose from the glass, beckoning him, a genie from the bottle.

“Slàinte,” he said, lifting the glass, and saw Fraser glance at him in sudden interest. Lord, what had he said? “Slàinte” was one of the words that had a distinct pronunciation, depending on where you came from—men from Harris and Lewis said “Slàn-ya,” while far north it was more like “Slànj.” He’d used the form he’d grown up with in Inverness; was it strikingly wrong for where he’d said he came from? He didn’t want Fraser to think him a liar.

“What is it ye do for yourself, a chompanaich?” Fraser asked, having taken a sip, closing his eyes in momentary respect to the drink, then opening them to regard Roger with a kind curiosity—tinged perhaps with a little wariness, lest his visitor be unhinged. “I’m accustomed to know a man’s work at once by his dress and manner—not that ye find many folk truly unusual up here.” He smiled a bit at that. “And drovers, tinkers, and gypsies dinna take much effort to descry. Clearly you’re none of those.”

“I have a bit of land,” Roger replied. It was an expected question; he was ready with an answer—but found himself longing to say more. To tell the truth—so far as he himself understood it.

“I’ve left my wife wi’ the running of things whilst I came to search for our lad. Beyond that—” He lifted one shoulder briefly. “I was trained as a minister.”

“Oh, aye?” Fraser leaned back, surveying him with interest. “I could see ye’re an educated man. I was thinkin’ maybe a schoolmaster or a clerk—perhaps a lawyer.”

“I’ve been both schoolmaster and clerk,” Roger said, smiling. “Havena quite risen—or fallen, maybe—to the practice of law yet.”

“And a good thing, too.” Fraser sipped, half-smiling.

Roger shrugged. “Law’s a corrupt power but one acceptable to men by reason of having arisen from men—it’s a way of getting on wi’ things, is the best ye can say for it.”

“And not a mean thing to say for it, either,” Fraser agreed. “The law’s a necessary evil—we canna be doing without it—but do ye not think it a poor substitute for conscience? Speakin’ as a minister, I mean?”

“Well . . . aye. I do,” Roger said, somewhat surprised. “It would be best for men to deal decently with one another in accordance with—well, with God’s principles, if ye’ll pardon my putting it that way. But what are ye to do, first, if ye have men to whom God is of no account, and, second, if ye have men—and you do, always—who own no power greater than their own?”

Fraser nodded, interested.

“Aye, well, it’s true that the best conscience willna avail a man who willna mind it. But what d’ye do when conscience speaks differently to men of goodwill?”

“As in political disputes, you mean? Supporters of the Stuarts versus those of the . . . the House of Hanover?” It was a reckless thing to say, but it might help him to figure out when he was, and he meant to say nothing that might make it look as though he had a personal stake on either side.

Fraser’s face underwent a surprising flow of expression, from being taken aback to mild distate, this then ending in a look of half-amused ruefulness.

“Like that,” he agreed. “I fought for the House of Stuart in my youth, and while I’d not say that conscience didna come into it, it didna come very far onto the field wi’ me.” His mouth quirked at the corner, and Roger felt again the tiny plop! of a stone tossed into his depths, the ripples of recognition spreading through him. Jamie did that. Brianna didn’t. Jem did.

He couldn’t stop to think about it, though; the conversation was teetering delicately on the precipice of an invitation to political disclosure, and that, he couldn’t do.

“Was it Sheriffmuir?” he asked, making no effort to disguise his interest.

“It was,” Fraser said, openly surprised. He eyed Roger dubiously. “Ye canna have gone yourself, surely . . . did your faither maybe tell ye?”

“No,” said Roger, with the momentary twinge that thought of his father always brought. In fact, Fraser was only a few years older than himself, but he knew the other man doubtless took him for a decade younger than he was.

“I . . . heard a song about it. ’Twas two shepherds met on a hillside, talking about the great fight—and arguing who’d won it.”

That made Fraser laugh.

“Well they might! We were arguing that before we finished pickin’ up the wounded.” He took a sip of whisky and washed it meditatively round his mouth, clearly reminiscing. “So, then, how does the song go?”

Roger breathed deep, ready to sing, and then remembered. Fraser had seen his rope scar and been tactful enough not to remark on it, but no need to make the damage obvious. Instead, he chanted the first few lines, tapping his fingers on the desk, echoing the rhythm of the big bodhran that was the song’s only accompaniment.

“O cam ye here the fight to shun,

Or herd the sheep wi’ me, man?

Or were ye at the Sherra-moor,

Or did the battle see, man?”

I saw the battle, sair and teugh,

And reekin-red ran mony a sheugh;

My heart, for fear, gaed sough for sough,

To hear the thuds, and see the cluds

O’ clans frae woods, in tartan duds,

Wha glaum’d at kingdoms three, man.

It went better than he’d thought; the song really was more chanted than sung, and he managed the whole of it with no more than the odd choke or cough. Fraser was rapt, glass forgotten in his hand.

“Oh, that’s braw, man!” Fraser exclaimed. “Though yon poet’s got the devil of an accent. Where’s he come from, d’ye ken?”

“Er . . . Ayrshire, I think.”

Fraser shook his head in admiration and sat back.

“Could ye maybe write it down for me?” he asked, almost shyly. “I wouldna put ye to the trouble of singin’ it again, but I’d dearly love to learn the whole of it.”

“I—sure,” Roger said, taken aback. Well, what harm could it do to let Robert Burns’s poem loose in the world some years in advance of Burns himself? “Ken anyone who can play a bodhran? It’s best wi’ the drum rattlin’ in the background.” He tapped his fingers in illustration.

“Oh, aye.” Fraser was rustling about in the drawer of his desk; he came out with several sheets of foolscap, most with writing on them. Frowning, he flicked through the papers, picked one, and pulled it from the sheaf, placing it facedown in front of Roger, offering him the blank back side.

There were goose quills, rather tattered from use but well trimmed, in a jar on the desk, and a brass inkstand, which Fraser offered him with a generous sweep of one broad hand.

“My son’s friend plays well—he’s gone for a soldier, though, more’s the pity.” A shadow crossed Fraser’s face.

“Ach.” Roger clicked his tongue in sympathy; he was trying to make out the writing that showed faintly through the sheet. “Joined a Highland regiment, did he?”

“No,” Fraser said, sounding a little startled. Christ, were there Highland regiments yet? “He’s gone to France as a mercenary soldier. Better pay, fewer floggings than the army, he tells his da.”

Roger’s heart lifted; yes! It was a letter or maybe a journal entry—whatever it was, there was a date on it: 17 . . . was that a 3? Had to be, couldn’t be an 8. 173 . . . it might be a 9 or a 0, couldn’t tell for sure through the paper—no, it had to be a 9, so 1739. He breathed a sigh of relief. Something October, 1739.

“Probably safer,” he said, only half attending to the conversation as he began to scratch out the lines. It was some time since he’d written with a quill, and he was awkward.

“Safer?”

“Aye,” he said, “from the point of view of disease, mostly. Most men that die in the army die of some sickness, ken. Comes from the crowding, having to live in barracks, eat army rations. I’d think mercenaries might have a bit more freedom.”

Fraser muttered something about “freedom to starve,” but it was half under his breath. He was tapping his own fingers on the desk, trying to catch the rhythm as Roger wrote. He was surprisingly rather good; by the time the song was finished, he was singing it softly in a pleasant low tenor and had the drumming down pretty well.

Roger’s mind was divided between the task in front of him and the feel of the letter under his hand. The feel of the paper and the look of the ink reminded him vividly of the wooden box, filled with Jamie’s and Claire’s letters. He had to stop himself from glancing at the shelf where it would be kept when this room was his.

They’d been rationing the letters, reading them slowly—but when Jem was taken, all bets were off. They’d rushed through the whole of the box, looking for any mention of Jem, any indication that he might have escaped from Cameron and found his way to the safety of his grandparents. Not a word about Jem. Not one.

They’d been so distraught that they’d scarcely noticed anything else the letters said, but occasional phrases and images floated up in his mind, quite randomly—some of them distinctly disturbing—Brianna’s uncle Ian had died—but scarcely noticeable at the time.

They weren’t anything he wanted to think about now, either.

“Will your son be studying the law, then, in Paris?” Roger asked abruptly. He picked up the fresh dram Brian had poured for him and took a sip.

“Aye, well, he’d maybe make a decent lawyer,” Fraser admitted. “He could argue ye into the ground, I’ll say that for him. But I think he hasna got the patience for law or politics.” He smiled suddenly. “Jamie sees at once what he thinks should be done and canna understand why anyone else should think otherwise. And he’d rather pound someone than persuade them, if it comes to that.”

Roger laughed ruefully.

“I understand the urge,” he said.

“Oh, indeed.” Fraser nodded, leaning back a little in his chair. “And I’ll no say as that’s not a necessary thing to do on occasion. Especially in the Highlands.” He grimaced but not without humor.

“So, then. Why do ye think this Cameron has stolen your lad?” Fraser asked bluntly.

Roger wasn’t surprised. As well as they’d been getting on together, he’d known Fraser had to be wondering just how much Roger was telling and how truthful he was. Well, he’d been ready for that question—and the answer was at least a version of the truth.

“We lived for a time in America,” he said, and felt a pang with the saying of it. For an instant, their snug cabin on the Ridge was around him, Brianna asleep with her hair loose on the pillow beside him and the children’s breath a sweet fog above them.

“America!” Fraser exclaimed in astonishment. “Where, then?”

“The colony of North Carolina. A good place,” Roger hastened to add, “but not without its dangers.”

“Name me one that is,” Fraser said, but waved that aside. “And these dangers made ye come back?”

Roger shook his head, a tightness in his throat at the memory.

“No, it was our wee lass—Mandy, Amanda, she’s called. She was born with a thing wrong with her heart, and there was no physician there who could treat it. So we came . . . back, and while we were in Scotland, my wife inherited some land, and so we stayed. But . . .” He hesitated, thinking how to put the rest, but knowing what he did of Fraser’s antecedents and his history with the MacKenzies of Leoch, the man probably wouldn’t be overly disturbed at his story.

“My wife’s father,” he said carefully, “is a good man—a very good man—but the sort who . . . draws attention. A leader of men, and one that other men . . . Well, he told me once that his own father had said to him that, since he was a large man, other men would try him—and they do.”

He watched Brian Fraser’s face carefully at this, but, beyond the twitch of an eyebrow, there was no apparent response.

“I’ll not go into all the history of it”—since it hasn’t happened yet—“but the long and the short of it is that my father-in-law was left in possession of a large sum in gold. He doesna regard it as his own property but as something held in trust. Still, there it is. And while it’s been kept secret so far as possible . . .”

Fraser made a sympathetic sound, acknowledging the difficulties of secrecy in such conditions.

“So this Cameron learned of the treasure, did he? And thought to extort it from your father-in-law by taking the bairn captive?” Fraser’s dark brow lowered at the thought.

“That may be in his mind. But beyond that—my son kens where the gold is hidden. He was with his grandfather when it was put away safe. Only the two of them ken the whereabouts—but Cameron learned that my son knew the place.”

“Ah.” Brian sat for a moment staring into his whisky, thinking. Finally he cleared his throat and looked up, meeting Roger’s eyes. “I maybe shouldna say such a thing, but it may be in your own mind already. If he’s taken the boy only because the lad kens where yon treasure is . . . well, was I a wicked man with no scruples, I think I might force the information out of the lad, so soon as I had him alone.”

Roger felt the cold slide of the suggestion down into the pit of his belly. It was something that had been at the back of his own mind, though he hadn’t admitted it to himself.

“Make him tell—and then kill him, you mean.”

Fraser grimaced unhappily.

“I dinna want to think it,” he said. “But without the lad, what is there to mark him out? A man alone—he could travel as he liked, without much notice.”

“Yes,” Roger said, and stopped to breathe. “Yes. Well . . . he didn’t. I—I know the man, a little. I don’t think he’d do that, mur—” His throat closed suddenly, and he coughed violently. “Murder a child,” he finished hoarsely. “He wouldn’t.”

THEY GAVE HIM a room at the end of the hallway on the second floor. When his family would live here, this would be the children’s playroom. He undressed to his shirt, put out the candle, and got into bed, resolutely ignoring the shadows in the corners that held the ghosts of giant cardboard building blocks, of dollhouses, six-guns, and chalkboards. The fringed skirt of Mandy’s Annie Oakley costume fluttered at the corner of his eye.

He ached from follicles to toenails, inside and out, but the panic engendered by his arrival had passed. How he felt didn’t matter, though; the question was—what now? They hadn’t gone where they thought, he and Buck, but he had to assume that they had ended up in the right place. The place where Jem was.

How else could they have come here? Perhaps Rob Cameron knew more now about how the traveling worked, could control it, and had deliberately brought Jem to this time, in order to frustrate pursuit?

He was too exhausted to keep hold of his thoughts, let alone string them into coherence. He pushed everything out of his mind, so far as he could, and lay still, staring into the dark, seeing the shine of a rocking horse’s eyes.

Then he got out of bed, knelt on the cold boards, and prayed.

32 “FOR MANY MEN WHO STUMBLE AT THE THRESHOLD ARE WELL FORETOLD THAT DANGER LURKS WITHIN”

Lallybroch

October 31, 1980

BRIANNA COULDN’T open her own front door. She kept trying, rattling the big iron key all over the escutcheon plate, until the WPC took it from her shaking hand and got it into the keyhole. She hadn’t started to shake until the police car turned up the lane to Lallybroch.

“Rather an old lock,” the police constable observed, giving it a dubious look. “Original to the house, is it?” She lifted her head, peering up the white-harled front of the house, pursing her lips at sight of the lintel, with its carved date.

“I don’t know. We don’t usually lock the door. We’ve never had burglars.” Brianna’s lips felt numb, but she thought she’d managed a weak smile. Luckily, Mandy was unable to contradict this bald-faced lie, as she’d seen a toad in the grass by the path and was following it, poking at it with the toe of her shoe to make it hop. Jemmy, glued protectively to Brianna’s side, made a low noise in his throat that reminded her startlingly of her father, and she looked down at him, narrowing her eyes.

He made the noise again and looked away.

There was a rattle and click as the lock opened, and the constable straightened up with a pleased sound.

“Aye, that’s done it. Now, you’re quite sure as you’ll be all right, will you, Mrs. MacKenzie?” the woman said, giving her a dubious look. “Out here by yourself, and your man away?”

“He’ll be home soon,” Brianna assured her, though her stomach went hollow at the words.

The woman eyed her consideringly, then gave a reluctant nod and pushed open the door.

“Well, then, you know best, I expect. I’ll just check to see that your phone’s in order and all the doors and windows locked, shall I, while you have a look round to be sure everything’s as it should be?”

The lump of ice that had formed in her middle during the long hours of questioning shot straight up into her chest.

“I—I—I’m sure everything’s fine.” But the constable had already gone inside and was waiting impatiently for her. “Jem! Bring Mandy inside and take her up to the playroom, will you?” She couldn’t bear to leave the kids outside by themselves, exposed. She could scarcely bear to have them out of her sight. But the very last thing she needed was to have Mandy tagging helpfully along, chatting to Constable Laughlin about Mr. Rob in the priest’s hole. Leaving the door open, she hurried after the WPC.

“The phone’s in there,” she said, catching up with Constable Laughlin in the hall and gesturing toward Roger’s study. “There’s an extension in the kitchen. I’ll go and check that and see to the back door.” Not waiting for an answer, she strode down the hall and nearly threw herself through the swinging door that led to the kitchen.

She didn’t pause to check anything but jerked open the junk drawer and snatched up a big rubber-covered flashlight. Meant to assist farmers lambing at night or searching for lost stock, the thing was a foot long and weighed nearly two pounds.

The .22 rifle was in the mudroom, and for an instant, as she walked through the house, she debated killing him, in a dispassionate way that would probably scare her if she had time to think about it. She had Jem back, after all—but no. Constable Laughlin would certainly recognize the sound of a shot, in spite of the muffling green baize on the kitchen door. And there was apparently more she needed to learn from Rob Cameron. She’d knock him unconscious and tape his mouth.

She stepped into the mudroom and quietly closed the kitchen door behind her. There was a deadbolt, but she couldn’t lock it from this side without the key, and her keys were on the table in the foyer, where Constable Laughlin had left them. Instead, she dragged the heavy bench over and jammed it catty-corner between the door and the wall, concentrating on the logistics. Where was the best place to hit someone on the head so as to render them unconscious without fracturing their skull? She had a vague memory of her mother mentioning that once . . . the occiput?

She’d expected an outcry from Cameron at the sound of her entry, but he didn’t peep. She could hear footsteps above, the confident stride of an adult going down the hall. Constable Laughlin on her tour of inspection, no doubt checking the first-floor windows, ladder-bearing burglars in mind. She closed her eyes for an instant, envisioning the constable sticking her head into the playroom just as Mandy was regaling her brother with the details of her own adventures the night before.

Nothing to be done about that. She took a deep breath, lifted the grate over the priest’s hole, and shone the light down into the shadows. The empty shadows.

For a few moments she went on looking, swinging the torch beam from one side of the priest’s hole to the other, then back, then back again . . . her mind simply refusing to believe her eyes.

The light caught the dull gleam of duct tape—two or three discarded wads, flung into a corner. There was a cold feeling at the back of her neck, and she jerked round, flashlight raised—but it was no more than apprehension; no one was there. The outer door was locked, the mudroom windows secure.

The door was locked. She made a small, frightened sound and clapped her hand hard over her mouth. Like the door between mudroom and kitchen, the mudroom’s outer door locked with a deadbolt—from the inside. If someone had gone out that way and left the door locked behind him—he had a key to the house. And her rifle was gone.

THEY’RE TOO LITTLE, she kept thinking. They shouldn’t know about things like this; they shouldn’t know it’s possible. Her hands were shaking; it took three tries to open the sticky drawer in Mandy’s dresser, and after the third failure, she pounded it in fury with the side of her fist, whispering through gritted teeth, “You goddamned fucking bloody buggering thing! Don’t you dare get in my way!” She crashed her fist on top of the dresser, raised her foot, and smashed the sole of her sneaker into the thing so hard that it rocked back and thumped into the wall with a bang.

She grabbed the drawer pulls and yanked. The terrorized drawer shot out, and she snatched the whole thing free and flung it into the opposite wall, where it struck and exploded in a rainbow spray of underpants and tiny striped T-shirts.

She walked over and looked down at the battered drawer, lying upside down on the floor.

“So there,” she said calmly. “Teach you to get in my way when I have things to think about.”

“Like what, Mam?” said a cautious voice from the doorway. She looked up to see Jemmy hovering there, eyes flicking from her to the mistreated drawer and back.

“Oh.” She thought of trying to explain the drawer but instead cleared her throat and sat down on the bed, holding out a hand to him. “Come here, a bhalaich.”

His ginger brows flicked up at the Gaelic endearment, but he came willingly, cuddling into her arm. He hugged her hard, burying his head in her shoulder, and she held him as tightly as she could, rocking back and forth and making the sorts of soft noises she’d made to him when he was tiny.

“It’ll be all right, baby,” she whispered to him. “It will.”

She heard him swallow and felt his small, square back move under her hand.

“Yeah.” His voice quivered a little and he sniffed hard, then tried again. “Yeah. But what’s going to be all right, Mam? What’s going on?” He drew away a little then, looking up at her with eyes that held more questions and more knowledge than any nine-year-old should reasonably have.

“Mandy says you put Mr. Cameron in the priest’s hole. But he’s not there now—I looked.”

A cold hand stroked her nape as she remembered the shock of the empty hole.

“No, he’s not.”

“But you didn’t let him out, did you?”

“No. I didn’t let him out. He—”

“So somebody else did,” he said positively. “Who, do you think?”

“You have a very logical mind,” she said, smiling a little, despite herself. “You get it from your Grandda Jamie.”

“He said I got it from Grannie Claire,” Jem replied, but automatically; he wasn’t to be distracted. “I thought maybe it was the man who chased me at the dam—but he couldn’t have been here letting Mr. Cameron out at the same time he was chasing me. Could he?” A sudden fear showed in his eyes, and she choked back the overwhelming urge to hunt the man down and kill him like a rabid skunk.

The man had got away at the dam, running off into the dark when the police showed up, but, God help her, she was going to find him one day, and then—but this was not the day. The problem now was to stop him—or Rob Cameron—from getting anywhere near her kids again.

Then she got what Jemmy was saying and felt the chill she’d carried in her heart spread like hoarfrost through her body.

“You mean there has to be another man,” she said, surprised at how calm she sounded. “Mr. Cameron, the man at the dam—and whoever let Mr. Cameron out of the priest’s hole.”

“It could be a lady,” Jemmy pointed out. He seemed less scared, talking about it. That was a good thing, because her own skin was rippling with fear.

“Do you know what Grannie called—calls—goose bumps?” She held out her arm, the fine reddish hairs all standing on end. “Horripilation.”

“Horripilation,” Jemmy repeated, and gave a small, nervous giggle. “I like that word.”

“Me, too.” She took a deep breath and stood up. “Go pick out a change of clothes and your PJs, would you, sweetheart? I have to make a couple of phone calls, and then I think we’re going to go visit Auntie Fiona.”

33 IT’S BEST TO SLEEP IN A HALE SKIN

ROGER WOKE SUDDENLY, but without shock. No sense of abandoned dreams, no half-heard noise, but his eyes were open and he was fully aware. It was perhaps an hour before sunrise. He’d left the shutters open; the room was cold and the clouded sky the color of a black pearl.

He lay motionless, listening to his heart beat, and realized that for the first time in several days it wasn’t pounding. He wasn’t afraid. The fear and turmoil of the night, the terror of the last few days, had vanished. His body was completely relaxed; so was his mind.

There was something floating in his mind. Absurdly, it was a line from “Johnny Cope”: “It’s best to sleep in a hale skin; for ’twill be a bluidy morning.” Weirder still, he could hear—could almost feel—himself singing it, in his old voice, full of power and enthusiasm.

“Not that I’m ungrateful,” he said to the whitewashed ceiling beams, his morning voice cracked and rough. “But what the hell?”

He wasn’t sure whether he was talking to God or to his own unconscious, but the likelihood of getting a straight answer was probably the same in either case. He heard the soft thud of a closing door somewhere below and someone outside whistling through his or her teeth—Annie or Senga, maybe, on the way to the morning milking.

A knock came on his own door: Jenny Murray, tidy in a white pinny, dark curly hair tied back but not yet capped for the day, with a jug of hot water, a pot of soft soap, and a razor for shaving.

“Da says can ye ride a horse?” she said without preamble, looking him up and down in an assessing sort of way.

“I can,” he replied gruffly, taking the towel-wrapped jug from her. He needed badly to clear the phlegm from his throat and spit but couldn’t bring himself to do that in front of her. Consequently, he just nodded and muttered, “Taing,” as he took the razor, instead of asking why.

“Breakfast’ll be in the kitchen when you are,” she said matter-of-factly. “Bring the jug down, aye?”

AN HOUR LATER, filled to bursting with hot tea, parritch, bannocks with honey, and black pudding, he found himself on an autumn-shaggy horse, following Brian Fraser through the rising mist of early morning.

“We’ll go round to the crofts nearby,” Fraser had told him over breakfast, spooning strawberry preserves onto a bannock. “Even if no one’s seen your lad—and to be honest,” his wide mouth twisted in apology, “I think I should ha’ heard already if anyone had seen a stranger in the district—they’ll pass on the word.”

“Aye, thanks very much,” he’d said, meaning it. Even in his own time, gossip was the fastest way of spreading news in the Highlands. No matter how fast Rob Cameron might travel, Roger doubted he could outpace the speed of talk, and the thought made him smile. Jenny caught it and smiled back sympathetically, and he thought again what a very pretty lass she was.

The sky was still low and threatening, but impending rain had never yet deterred anyone in Scotland from doing anything and wasn’t likely to start now. His throat felt much better for the hot tea, and the odd sense of calm with which he’d waked was still with him.

Something had changed in the night. Maybe it was sleeping in Lallybroch, among the ghosts of his own future. Perhaps that had settled his mind while he slept.

Maybe it was answered prayer and a moment of grace. Maybe it was no more than Samuel Beckett’s bloody existential I can’t go on; I’ll go on. If he had a choice—and he did, Beckett be damned—he’d go with grace.

Whatever had caused it, he wasn’t disoriented any longer, thrown off-balance by what he knew about the futures of the people around him. There was still a deep concern about them—and the need to find Jem still filled him. But now it was a quiet, hard thing in his core. A focus, a weapon. Something to brace his back against.

He straightened his shoulders as he thought this and, at the same time, saw Brian’s straight, flat back and the broad, firm shoulders under the dark sett of his tartan coat. They were the echo of Jamie’s—and the promise of Jem’s.

Life goes on. It was his job above all to rescue Jem, as much for Brian Fraser’s sake as for his own.

And now he knew what had changed in him and gave thanks to God for what was indeed grace. He’d slept—and waked—in a whole skin. And however bloody the mornings to come, he had direction now, calmness and hope, because the good man who rode before him was on his side.

THEY VISITED MORE than a dozen crofts in the course of the day and stopped a tinker they met along the way, as well. No one had seen a stranger recently, with or without a red-haired lad, but all promised to spread the word and all without exception offered their prayers for Roger and his quest.

They stopped for supper and the night with a family named Murray that had a substantial farmhouse, though nothing to rival Lallybroch. The owner, John Murray, turned out in the course of conversation to be Brian Fraser’s factor—the overseer of much of the physical business of Lallybroch’s estate—and he lent his grave attention to Roger’s story.

An elderly, long-faced man with rawboned, muscular arms, he sucked his teeth consideringly, nodding his head.

“Aye, I’ll send one of my lads down in the morn,” he said. “But if ye’ve found nay trace o’ this fellow up along the Hieland passes . . . might be as ye should go down to the garrison and tell your tale, Mr. MacKenzie.”

Brian Fraser cocked a dark brow, half-frowning at this, but then nodded.

“Aye, that’s no a bad thought, John.” He turned to Roger. “It’s some distance, ken—the garrison’s in Fort William, down by Duncansburgh. But we can ask along our way, and the soldiers send messengers regularly betwixt the garrison, Inverness, and Edinburgh. Should they hear a thing about your man, they could get word to us swiftly.”

“And they could maybe arrest the fellow on the spot,” Murray added, his rather melancholy countenance brightening a bit at the idea.

“Moran taing,” Roger said, bowing a little to them both in acknowledgment, then turning to Fraser. “I’ll do that, and thanks. But, sir—ye needna go with me. You’ve business of your own to tend to, and I wouldna—”

“I’ll come, and glad to,” Fraser interrupted him firmly. “The hay’s long since in and naught to do that John canna take care of for me.”

He smiled at Murray, who made a small noise, halfway between a sigh and a cough, but nodded.

“Fort William’s in the midst of the Camerons’ land, forbye,” Murray observed absently, gazing off toward the dark fields. They had dined with his family but then come out to the dooryard, ostensibly to share a pipe; it smoldered in Murray’s hand, disregarded for the moment.

Brian made a noncommittal sound in his throat, and Roger wondered just what Murray meant. Was it a warning that Rob Cameron might have relatives or allies to whom he was heading? Or was there some tension or difficulty between some of the Camerons and the Frasers of Lovat—or between the Camerons and the MacKenzies?

That presented some difficulty. If there was a feud of any importance going on, Roger ought already to know about it. He gave a small, grave “hmp” himself and resolved to approach any Camerons with caution. At the same time . . . was Rob Cameron intending to seek refuge or help with the Camerons of this time? Had he maybe come to the past before and had a hiding place prepared among his own clan? That was an evil thought, and Roger felt his stomach tighten as though to resist a punch.

But no; there hadn’t been time. If Cameron had only learned about time travel from the guide Roger had written for his children’s eventual use, he wouldn’t have had time to go to the past, find ancient Camerons, and . . . no, ridiculous.

Roger shook off the tangle of half-formed thoughts as though they were a fishing net thrown over his head. There was nothing more to be done until they reached the garrison tomorrow.

Murray and Fraser were leaning on the fence now, sharing the pipe and chatting casually in Gaelic.

“My daughter bids me ask after your son,” Brian Fraser said, with an air of casualness. “Any word?”

Murray snorted, smoke purling from his nostrils, and said something very idiomatic about his son. Fraser grimaced in sympathy and shook his head.

“At least ye ken he’s alive,” he said, dropping back into English. “Like enough, he’ll come home when he’s had his fill of fighting. We did, aye?” He nudged Murray gently in the ribs, and the taller man snorted again, but with less ferocity.

“It wasna boredom that led us here, a dhuine dhubh. Not you, anyway.” He raised one shaggy graying brow, and Fraser laughed, though Roger thought there was a regretful edge in it.

He remembered the story very well: Brian Fraser, a bastard of old Lord Lovat’s, had stolen Ellen MacKenzie from her brothers Colum and Dougal, the MacKenzies of Castle Leoch, and had ended up at last with her at Lallybroch, the pair of them more or less disowned by both clans but at least left alone by them. He’d seen the portrait of Ellen, too—tall, red-haired, and undeniably a woman worth the effort.

She’d looked very much like her granddaughter Brianna. By reflex, he closed his eyes, breathed deep of the cold Highland evening, and thought he felt her there at his side. If he opened them again, might he see her standing in the smoke?

I’ll come back, he thought to her. No matter what, a nighean ruaidh—I’m coming back. With Jem.

34 SANCTUARY

IT WAS NEARLY AN hour’s drive over the narrow, twisting Highland roads from Lallybroch to Fiona Buchan’s new house in Inverness. Plenty of time for Brianna to wonder if she was doing the right thing, if she had any right to involve Fiona and her family in a matter that looked more dangerous by the moment. Plenty of time to get a stiff neck from looking over her shoulder—though if she was being followed, how would she know?

She’d had to tell the kids where Roger was, as gently and briefly as possible. Mandy had put a thumb in her mouth and stared gravely at her, round-eyed. Jem . . . Jem hadn’t said anything but had gone white under his freckles and looked as though he was about to throw up. She glanced in the rearview mirror. He was hunched in a corner of the backseat now, face turned to the window.

“He’ll come back, honey,” she’d said, trying to hug him in reassurance. He’d let her but stood stiff in her arms, stricken.

“It’s my fault,” he’d said, his voice small and wooden as a puppet’s. “I should have got away sooner. Then Dad wouldn’t—”

“It’s not your fault,” she’d said firmly. “It’s Mr. Cameron’s fault and no one else’s. You were very brave. And Daddy will come back really soon.”

Jem had swallowed hard but said nothing in reply. When she’d let him go, he swayed for a moment, and Mandy had come up and hugged his legs.

“Daddy’ll come back,” she said encouragingly. “For supper!”

“It might take a little bit longer than that,” Bree said, smiling in spite of the panic packed like a snowball under her ribs.

She drew a deep breath of relief as the highway opened out near the airport and she could go faster than 30 mph. Another wary glance in the mirror, but the road was empty behind her. She stepped on the gas.

Fiona was one of the only two people who knew. The other one was in Boston: her mother’s oldest friend, Joe Abernathy. But she needed sanctuary for Jem and Mandy, right now. She couldn’t stay with them at Lallybroch; the walls were two feet thick in places, yes, but it was a farm manor, not a fortified tower house, and hadn’t been built with any notion that the inhabitants might need to repel invaders or stand off a siege.

Being in the city gave her a sense of relief. Having people around. Witnesses. Camouflage. Help. She pulled up in the street outside the Craigh na Dun Bed-and-Breakfast (three AA stars) with the sense of an exhausted swimmer crawling up onto shore.

The timing was good. It was early afternoon; Fiona would have finished the cleaning and it wouldn’t yet be time to check in new guests or start the supper.

A little painted bell in the shape of a bluebell tinkled when they opened the door, and one of Fiona’s daughters instantly popped an inquiring head out of the lounge.

“Auntie Bree!” she shouted, and at once the lobby was filled with children, as Fiona’s three girls pushed one another out of the way to hug Bree, pick up Mandy, and tickle Jem, who promptly dropped to all fours and crawled under the bench where folk left their wraps.

“What—oh, it’s you, hen!” Fiona, coming out of the kitchen in a workmanlike canvas apron that said PIE QUEEN on the front, smiled with delight at sight of Bree and enveloped her in a floury hug.

“What’s wrong?” Fiona murmured in her ear, under cover of the embrace. She drew back a bit, still holding Bree, and looked up at her, squinting in half-playful worry. “Rog playing away from home, is he?”

“You . . . could say that.” Bree managed a smile but evidently not a very good one, because Fiona at once clapped her hands, bringing order out of the chaos in the lobby, and dispatched all the children to the upstairs lounge to watch telly. Jem, looking hunted, was coaxed out from under the bench and reluctantly followed the girls, looking back over his shoulder at his mother. She smiled and made shooing motions at him, then followed Fiona into the kitchen, glancing by reflex over her own shoulder.

THE TEAKETTLE SCREAMED, interrupting Brianna, but not before she’d got to the most salient point of her story. Fiona warmed and filled the pot, purse-lipped with concentration.

“Ye say he took the rifle. Ye’ve still got your shotgun?”

“Yes. It’s under the front seat of my car at the moment.”

Fiona nearly dropped the pot. Brianna shot out an arm and grabbed the handle, steadying it. Her hands were freezing, and the warm china felt wonderful.

“Well, I wasn’t going to leave it in a house the bastards have a key to, now, was I?”

Fiona set down the pot and crossed herself. “Dia eadarainn’s an t-olc.” God between us and evil. She sat, giving Brianna a sharp look. “And ye’re quite sure as it’s bastards, plural?”

“Yes, I bloody am,” Bree said tersely. “Even if Rob Cameron managed to grow wings and fly out of my priest’s hole—let me tell you what happened to Jem at the dam.”

She did, in a few brief sentences, by the end of which Fiona was glancing over her own shoulder at the closed kitchen door. She looked back at Bree, settling herself. In her early thirties, she was a pleasantly rounded young woman with a lovely face and the calm expression of a mother who normally has the Indian sign on her offspring, but at the moment she had a look that Brianna’s own mother would have described as “blood in her eye.” She said something very bad in English regarding the man who’d chased Jem.

“So, then,” she said, picking up a paring knife from the nearby drainboard and examining the edge critically, “what shall we do?”

Bree drew a breath and sipped cautiously at the hot, milky tea. It was sweet, silky, and very comforting—but not nearly as comforting as that “we.”

“Well, first—would you let Jem and Mandy stay here while I go do a few things? It might be overnight; I brought their pajamas, just in case.” She nodded at the paper sack that she’d set down on one of the chairs.

“Aye, of course.” A small frown formed between Fiona’s dark brows. “What . . . sorts of things?”

“It’s—” Brianna began, intending to say, “better if you don’t know,” but in fact someone had better know where she was going and what she was doing. Just in case she didn’t come back. A little bubble of what might be either fear or anger rose up through the sense of warmth in her middle.

“I’m going to visit Jock MacLeod in hospital. He’s the night watchman who found Jem at the dam. He might know the man who hit him and tried to take Jem. And he does know Rob Cameron. He can maybe tell me who Cameron’s mates are outside of work or in lodge.”

She rubbed a hand down over her face, thinking.

“After that . . . I’ll talk to Rob’s sister and his nephew. If she’s not involved in whatever he’s up to, she’ll be worried. And if she is involved—then I need to know that.”

“D’ye think ye’ll be able to tell?” Fiona’s frown had eased a bit, but she still looked worried.

“Oh, yes,” Brianna said, with grim determination. “I’ll be able to tell. For one thing, if someone I talk to is involved, they’re probably likely to try to stop me asking questions.”

Fiona made a small noise that could best be spelled as “eeengh,” indicating deep concern.

Brianna drank the last of her tea and set down the cup with an explosive sigh.

“And then,” she said, “I’m going back to Lallybroch to meet a locksmith and have him change all the locks and install burglar alarms on the lower windows.” She looked questioningly at Fiona. “I don’t know how long it might take. . . .”

“Aye, that’s why ye brought the kids’ nighties. Nay problem, hen.” She chewed her lower lip, eyeing Brianna.

Bree knew what she was thinking, debating whether to ask or not, and saved her the trouble.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do about Roger,” she said steadily.

“He’ll come back, surely,” Fiona began, but Bree shook her head. Horrifying Realization Number 3 couldn’t be denied any longer.

“I don’t think so,” she said, though she bit her lip as if to keep the words from escaping. “He—he can’t know that Jem isn’t there. And he’d never ab-abandon him.”

Fiona was clasping Brianna’s hand in both of her own.

“No, no, of course he wouldna do that. But if he and the other fellow go on searching and find no trace . . . eventually, surely he’d think . . .” Her voice died away as she tried to imagine what Roger might think under those circumstances.

“Oh, he’ll be thinking, all right,” Bree said, and managed a small, shaky laugh. The thought of Roger’s determination, the growing sense of fear and desperation that must inevitably eat away at it, his fight to keep going—because he would; he’d never give up and come back to tell her Jem was lost for good. For if he didn’t find any trace of Jem, what could he think? That Cameron had maybe killed Jem, hidden his body, and gone to America in search of the gold? Or that they had both been lost in that horrifying space between one time and another, never to be found?

“Well, and he’ll be praying, too,” Fiona said with a brisk squeeze of Bree’s hand. “I can help wi’ that.”

That made tears well, and she blinked hard, scrubbing at her eyes with a paper napkin.

“I can’t cry now,” she said, in a choked voice. “I can’t. I haven’t got time.” She stood up suddenly, pulling her hand free. She sniffed, blew her nose hard on the napkin, and sniffed again.

“Fiona . . . I—I know you haven’t told anybody about . . . us,” she began, and even she could hear the doubt in her own voice.

Fiona snorted.

“I have not,” she said. “I’d be taken off to the booby hatch, and what would Ernie do wi’ the girls and all? Why?” she added, giving Brianna a hard look. “What are ye thinking?”

“Well . . . the women who—who dance at Craigh na Dun. Do you think any of them know what it is?”

Fiona sucked in one cheek, thinking.

“One or two o’ the older ones might have an idea,” she said slowly. “We’ve been callin’ down the sun on Beltane there for as far back as anyone knows. And some things do get passed down, ken. Be strange if nobody ever wondered. But even if someone kent for sure what happens there, they’d not speak—no more than I would.”

“Right. I just wondered—could you maybe find out, quietly, if any of the women have ties to Rob Cameron? Or maybe . . . to the Orkneys?”

“To what?” Fiona’s eyes went round. “Why the Orkneys?”

“Because Rob Cameron went on archaeological digs there. And I think that’s what made him interested in stone circles to start with. I know one man named Callahan, a friend of Roger’s—who worked up there with him, and I’ll talk to him, too—maybe tomorrow; I don’t think I’ll have time today. But if there’s anyone else who might be connected with things like that . . .” It was more than a long shot, but at the moment she was inclined to look under any stone she could lift.

“I’ll call round,” Fiona said thoughtfully. “And speak of calling—telephone me if ye’re not coming back tonight, aye? Just so as I know ye’re safe.”

Bree nodded, her throat tight, and hugged Fiona, taking one more moment’s strength from her friend.

Fiona saw her down the hall to the front door, pausing at the foot of the stair, and glanced toward the chatter coming from above. Did Bree want to say goodbye to Jem and Mandy? Wordless, Brianna shook her head. Her feelings were too raw; she couldn’t hide them sufficiently and didn’t want to scare the kids. Instead, she pressed her fingers to her lips and blew a kiss up the stairs, then turned to the door.

“That shotgun—” Fiona began behind her, and stopped. Brianna turned and raised an eyebrow.

“They canna get ballistics off buckshot, can they?”

35 AN GEARASDAN

THEY REACHED Fort William in early afternoon of the second day’s travel.

“How large is the garrison?” Roger asked, eyeing the stone walls of the fort. It was modest, as forts went, with only a few buildings and a drill yard within the surrounding walls.

“Maybe forty men, I’d say,” Brian replied, turning sideways to allow a pair of red-coated guards carrying muskets to pass him in the narrow entry passage. “Fort Augustus is the only garrison north of it, and that’s got maybe a hundred.”

That was surprising—or maybe not. If Roger was right about the date, it would be another three years before there was much talk of Jacobites in the Highlands—let alone enough of it to alarm the English crown into sending troops en masse to keep a lid on the situation.

The fort was open, and any number of civilians appeared to have business with the army, judging from the small crowd near one building. Fraser steered him toward another, smaller one with a tilt of his head, though.

“We’ll see the commander, I think.”

“You know him?” A worm of curiosity tickled his spine. Surely it was too early for—

“I’ve met him the once. Buncombe, he’s called. Seems a decent fellow, for a Sassenach.” Fraser gave his name to a clerk in the outer room, and within a moment they were ushered into the commander’s office.

“Oh . . .” A small, middle-aged man in uniform with tired eyes behind a pair of half spectacles half-rose, half-bowed, and dropped back into his seat as though the effort of recognition had exhausted him. “Broch Tuarach. Your servant, sir.”

Perhaps it had, Roger thought. The man’s face was gaunt and lined, and his breath whistled audibly in his lungs. Claire might have known specifically what was up with Captain Buncombe, but it didn’t take a doctor to know that something was physically amiss.

Still, Buncombe listened civilly to his story, called in the clerk to make a careful note of Cameron’s description and Jem’s, and promised that these would be circulated to the garrison and that any patrols or messengers would be advised to ask after the fugitives.

Brian had thoughtfully brought along a couple of bottles in his saddlebags and now produced one, which he set on the desk with a gurgling thump of enticement.

“We thank ye, sir, for your help. If ye’d allow us to present a small token of appreciation for your kindness . . .”

A small but genuine smile appeared on Captain Buncombe’s worn face.

“I would, sir. But only if you gentlemen will join me . . . ? Ah, yes.” Two worn pewter cups and—after a brief search—a crystal goblet with a chip out of the rim were produced, and the blessed silence of the dram fell upon the tiny office.

After a few moments’ reverence, Buncombe opened his eyes and sighed.

“Amazing, sir. Your own manufacture, is it?”

Brian inclined his head with a modest shake.

“Nay but a few bottles at Hogmanay, just for the family.”

Roger had himself seen the root cellar from which Brian had chosen the bottle, lined from floor to ceiling with small casks and with an atmosphere to it that would have knocked a moose flat had he stayed to breathe it long. But an instant’s thought told him that it was probably wiser not to let a garrison full of soldiers know that you kept any sort of liquor in large quantities on your premises, no matter what terms you were on with their commander. He caught Brian’s eye, and Fraser looked aside with a small “mmphm” and a tranquil smile.

“Amazing,” Buncombe repeated, and tipped another inch into his glass, offering the bottle round. Roger followed Brian’s lead and refused, nursing his own drink while the other two men fell into a sort of conversation he recognized very well. Not friendly but courteous, a trade of information that might be of advantage to one or both—and a careful avoidance of anything that might give the other too much advantage.

He’d seen Jamie do it any number of times, in America. It was headman’s talk, and there were rules to it. Of course . . . Jamie must have seen his da do it any number of times himself; it was bred in his bones.

He thought Jem maybe had it. He had something that made people look at him twice—something beyond the hair, he amended, and smiled to himself.

While Buncombe occasionally directed a question to him, Roger was for the most part able to leave them to it, and he gradually relaxed. The rain had passed, and a beam of sun from the window rested on his shoulders, warming him from without as the whisky warmed him within. He felt for the first time that he might be accomplishing something in his search, rather than merely flailing desperately round the Highlands.

“And they could maybe arrest the fellow,” John Murray had remarked, anent the soldiers and Rob Cameron. A comforting thought, that.

The clan angle, though . . . he didn’t think Cameron could have accomplices here, but—he straightened in his chair. He had an accomplice from this time, didn’t he? Buck had the gene, and while it was clearly less frequent to travel forward from one’s original lifeline—well, Roger thought it was less frequent (his own lack of knowledge was an unnerving realization in itself)—Buck had done it. If Cameron was a traveler, he’d got the gene from an ancestor who could also have done it.

Chill was running through his veins like iced wine, killing the whisky’s warmth, and a sinister tangle of cold worms came writhing into his mind. Could it be a conspiracy, maybe, between Buck and Rob Cameron? Or Buck and some ancient Cameron from his own time?

He’d never thought Buck was telling the whole truth about himself or his own journey through the stones. Could all this have been a plot to lure Roger away from Lallybroch—away from Bree?

Now the worms were bloody eating his brain. He picked up his cup and threw back the rest of the whisky at a gulp to kill them. Buncombe and Fraser both glanced at him in surprise but then courteously resumed their conversation.

In the cold light of his present state of mind, something else now cast new shadows. Brian Fraser. While Roger had taken Fraser’s bringing him to the garrison as purely a helpful gesture toward finding Jem, it had another function, didn’t it? It displayed Roger to Captain Buncombe, in a context that made it clear that he had no claim of clan obligation or personal friendship on Fraser, just in case Roger turned out not to be what he said he was. And it allowed Fraser to see whether Buncombe recognized Roger or not. Just in case he wasn’t what he said he was.

He took a deep breath and pressed his hands on the desktop, concentrating on the feel of the wood grain under his fingers. All right. Perfectly reasonable. How many times had he seen Jamie do the same sort of thing? For these men, the welfare of their own people always came first; they’d protect Lallybroch, or Fraser’s Ridge, above all, but that didn’t mean they were unwilling to help when help was in their power to give.

And he did believe that Fraser meant to help him. He clung to the thought and found that it floated.

Fraser glanced at him again, and something in the man’s face eased at whatever it saw in his own. Brian picked up the bottle and poured another inch into Roger’s glass.

“We’ll find him, man,” he said softly, in Gaelic, before turning to serve Captain Buncombe in turn.

He drank and put everything out of his mind, concentrating on the trivia of the conversation. It was all right. Everything was going to be all right.

He was still repeating this mantra to himself when he heard shouts and whistles from outside. He glanced toward the window, but it showed nothing save a view of the fort’s wall. Captain Buncombe looked startled—but Brian Fraser was on his feet, and moving fast.

Roger followed, emerging into the fort’s drill yard to see a fine-looking young woman mounted on a large, fine-looking horse and glaring down at a small cluster of soldiers who had gathered round her stirrup, pushing one another, snatching at the reins, and shouting remarks up at her. The horse plainly didn’t like it, but she was managing to keep it under control. She was also holding a switch in one hand and, from the look on her face, was plainly choosing a target amongst those presenting themselves.

“Jenny!” Brian roared, and she looked up, startled. The soldiers were startled, too; they turned and, seeing Captain Buncombe come out behind the Scot, instantly melted away, heads down as they hurried off about their business.

Roger was at Brian’s shoulder when he grabbed the horse’s bridle.

“What in the name of the Blessed Mother are you—” Brian began, furious, but she interrupted him, looking straight at Roger.

“Your kinsman,” she said. “William Buccleigh. He sent word to Lallybroch that he’s taken bad and will ye come at once. They said he may not live.”

IT TOOK A good day and a half to make the journey, even in good weather. Given that it was raining, that the journey back was uphill, and that the latter portion of it involved stumbling around in the dark, hunting for a nearly invisible trail, they covered the distance in a surprisingly short time.

“I’ll come in with ye,” Brian had said, swinging off his horse in the dooryard. “They’re no my tenants, but they know me.”

The household—it was a modest crofter’s cottage, dull white as a pebble in the light of a gibbous moon—was closed up tight for the night, shutters drawn and the door bolted. Fraser thumped on the door and shouted in Gaelic, though, identifying himself and saying that he’d brought the sick man’s kinsman to him, and presently the door swung open, framing a squat, bearded gentleman in shirt and nightcap, who peered at them for a long moment before stepping back with a gruff “Come ben.”

Roger’s first impression was that the house was crammed to the rafters with odorous humanity. These lay in small snuggled heaps on the floor near the hearth or on pallets by the far wall, and here and there tousled heads poked up like prairie dogs, blinking in the glow of the smoored fire to see what was to do.

Their host—introduced by Fraser as Angus MacLaren—nodded curtly to Roger and gestured toward a bedstead drawn into the center of the room. Two or three small children were sleeping on it, but Roger could just make out the blur of Buck’s face on the pillow. Christ, he hoped Buck didn’t have anything contagious.

He leaned in close, whispering, “Buck?” so as not to wake anyone who hadn’t waked already. He couldn’t make out much of Buck’s face in the gloom—and it was covered with beard stubble, as well—but his eyes were closed, and he didn’t open them in response to Roger’s saying his name. Nor in response to Roger’s laying a hand on his arm. The arm did feel warm, but given the suffocating atmosphere in the cottage, he thought it likely Buck would feel warm even if he’d been dead for hours.

He squeezed the arm, lightly at first, then harder—and at last Buck gave a strangled cough and opened his eyes. He blinked slowly, not seeming to recognize Roger, then closed them again. His chest heaved visibly, though, and he breathed now with a slow, clearly audible gasping note.

“He says as there’s something the matter wi’ his heart,” MacLaren told Roger, low-voiced. He was leaning over Roger’s shoulder, watching Buck intently. “It flutters, like, and when it does, he goes blue and canna breathe or stand up. My second-eldest lad found him out in the heather yesterday afternoon, flat as a squashed toad. We fetched him down and gave him a bit to drink, and he asked would we send someone to Lallybroch to ask after his kinsman.”

“Moran taing,” said Roger. “I’m that obliged to ye, sir.” He turned to Brian, who was lurking behind MacLaren, looking at Buck with a small frown.

“And thank ye, too, sir,” Roger said to him. “For all your help. I can’t thank ye enough.”

Fraser shrugged, dismissing this.

“I imagine ye’ll stay with him? Aye. If he’s able to travel in the morn, bring him along to Lallybroch. Or send, if there’s aught we can do.” Fraser nodded to MacLaren in farewell but then paused, squinting through the murk at Buck’s face. He glanced at Roger, as though comparing their features.

“Is your kinsman from Lochalsh, as well?” he asked, curious, and looked back at Buck. “He’s the look of my late wife’s people about him. The MacKenzies of Leoch.” Then he noticed the small squat shape of what must be Mrs. MacLaren—glowering under her cap—and he coughed, bowed, and took his leave without waiting for an answer.

Mr. MacLaren went to bolt the door, and the lady of the house turned to Roger, yawned cavernously, then motioned toward the bed, scratching her bottom unself-consciously.

“Ye can sleep wi’ him,” she said. “Push him oot the bed if he dies, aye? I dinna want ma quilts all spoilt.”

HAVING TAKEN OFF his boots, Roger lay down gingerly on the quilt beside Buck—readjusting the position of the small children, who were limp and flexible as cats in sunshine—and spent the remainder of the night listening to his ancestor’s irregular snoring, poking him whenever it seemed to stop. Toward dawn, though, he dozed off, to be waked sometime later by the thick warm smell of porridge.

Alarmed by the fact that he’d fallen asleep, he raised up on one elbow to find Buck pale-faced and breathing stertorously through his mouth. He seized his ancestor by the shoulder and shook him, causing Buck to start up in bed, glaring wildly round. Spotting Roger, he punched him solidly in the stomach.

“Bugger off wi’ that!”

“I just wanted to be sure you were alive, you bastard!”

“What are ye doing here in the first place?” Buck rubbed a hand through his disheveled hair, looking cross and confused.

“Ye sent for me, fool.” Roger was cross, too. His mouth felt as though he’d been chewing straw all night. “How are you, anyway?”

“I—not that well.” Buck’s face changed abruptly from crossness to a pale apprehension, and he put a hand flat on his chest, pressing hard. “I—it—it doesna feel right.”

“Lie down, for God’s sake!” Roger squirmed off the bed, narrowly avoiding stepping on a little girl who was sitting on the floor, playing with the buckles of his boots. “I’ll get ye some water.”

A row of children was watching this byplay with interest, ignored by Mrs. MacLaren and two of the older girls, who were respectively stirring a huge cauldron of parritch and rapidly laying the large table for breakfast, slapping down wooden plates and spoons like cards in a game of old maid.

“If ye need the privy,” one of the girls advised him, pausing in her rounds, “ye’d best go now. Robbie and Sandy’ve gone to tend the kine, and Stuart’s no got his shoon on yet.” She lifted her chin toward a stripling of twelve or so, who was crawling slowly about on hands and knees, with one worn shoe in one hand, peering under the sparse furniture in search of its mate. “Oh—and since your kinsman’s lived the night, Da’s gone for the healer.”

36 THE SCENT OF A STRANGER

SHE’D BROUGHT Jock MacLeod the traditional hospital present of grapes. And a bottle of eighteen-year-old Bunnahabhain, which had brightened his face—or what could be seen of it behind the bandage that wrapped his head and the bruising that narrowed both eyes to bloodshot slits.

“Oh, I’m a bit peely-wally,” he’d told her, wrapping the bottle in his dressing gown and handing it to her to stash in his bedside cabinet, “but no bad, no bad. A wee dunt on the head, is all. I’m only glad the lad got away. D’ye ken how he came to be in the tunnel, lass?”

She’d given him the official version, listened patiently to his speculations, and then asked if he’d maybe recognized the man who hit him?

“Well, I did, then,” Jock had said, surprising her. He leaned back on his pillows. “Which is not to say as I know his name. But I’ve seen him, aye, often. He skippers a boat on the canal.”

“What? A charter boat, or one of the Jacobite cruise boats?” Her heart beat faster. The Caledonian Canal, he meant. It ran from Inverness to Fort William and carried a huge amount of water traffic, much of it visible from the road.

“Nice wee motor sailer—must be a charter. I only noticed because my wife’s cousin has one like it; we went out wi’ him the once. Ten-meter, I think it is.”

“You told the police, of course.”

“I did, so.” He tapped blunt fingers on the coverlet, glancing sideways at her. “I described the man so well as I could—but, ken, he didna really look unusual. I’d know him again—and maybe your wee lad would—but I don’t know as the polis would pick him out easy.”

She’d brought her Swiss Army knife out of her pocket as she talked, playing with it meditatively, flicking the blades open and shut. She opened the corkscrew, testing the sharp end of it with the ball of her thumb.

“Do you think you could maybe describe him to me? I draw a bit; I could make a stab at a picture.”

He grinned at her, eyes disappearing into the bruised flesh.

“Pour me a dram, lass, and we’ll have a go.”

BRIANNA REACHED Lallybroch again in the late afternoon, just in time for her four o’clock appointment with the locksmith. A scrap of white tacked to the door fluttered in the autumn wind; she yanked it off and fumbled it open with chilled fingers.

Had an emergency call in Elgin; won’t be back ’til late. Will call by in the morning. Apologies, Will Tranter

She crumpled the note and stuffed it into her jacket pocket, muttering under her breath. Bloody kidnapping rapist bastards walking in and out of her house like it was the public highway and this wasn’t an emergency?

She hesitated, fingers wrapped around the big antique key in her pocket, looking up at the white-harled front of the house. The sinking sun flashed in the upper windows, glazing them with red, hiding whatever might be behind them. They had a key. Did she really want to go in there alone?

She glanced round, self-conscious, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. The home fields lay tranquil, the small flock of sheep already bedding down in the setting sun. She breathed deeply, turning from side to side as she would when hunting with Da in the North Carolina forest, as though she might catch the tang of deer on the breeze.

What was she looking for now? Exhaust fumes. Rubber, hot metal, unlaid dust in the air, the ghost of a car. Or maybe something else, she thought, remembering the stink of Rob Cameron’s sweat. The scent of a stranger.

But the cold air brought her only the smell of dead leaves, sheep shit, and a hint of turpentine from the Forestry Commission’s pine plantation to the west.

Still. She’d heard her father mention a feeling at the back of his neck when something was wrong, and she felt the hairs on her nape prickle now. She turned away, got back into her car, and drove off, glancing automatically behind her every few minutes. There was a petrol station a few miles up the road; she stopped there to call Fiona and say she’d pick the kids up in the morning, then bought a few snacks and drove back, taking the farm track that circled the far edge of Lallybroch’s land and led up into the pine plantation.

At this time of year, it got dark by 4:30 P.M. Up the hillside, the track was no more than a pair of muddy ruts, but she bumped carefully along until she came to one of the clearings where the foresters piled slash for burning. The air was rough with the smell of wood fire, and a big blackened patch of earth and ember still sent up wisps of smoke, but all the fires were out. She drove the car behind a heap of fresh-cut branches, piled ready for the next day, and cut the ignition.

As she came down out of the plantation, carrying the shotgun in one hand, something large shot past her head in total silence, and she stumbled, gasping. An owl; it disappeared, a pale blur in the dark. In spite of her pounding heart, she was glad to see it. White animals were harbingers of good luck in Celtic folklore; she could use any luck going.

“Owls are keepers of the dead, but not just the dead. They’re messengers between worlds.” For an instant Roger was next to her, solid, warm in the cold night, and she put out a hand by impulse, as though to touch him.

Then he was gone and she was standing alone in the shadow of the pines, looking toward Lallybroch, the shotgun cold in her hand. “I’ll get you back, Roger,” she whispered under her breath, and curled her left hand into a fist, clenching the copper ring with which he’d married her. “I will.” But first she had to make sure the kids were safe.

Night rose up around the house and Lallybroch faded slowly out of sight, a paler blotch against the dark. She checked the safety on the gun and moved silently toward home.

SHE CAME UP the hill behind the broch, as quietly as she could. The wind had come up, and she doubted anyone would hear her steps over the rustling of the gorse and dry broom that grew thick back here.

If they were waiting for her, wanting to do harm, surely they’d be in the house. But if they just wanted to know where she was . . . they might be watching the house instead, and this was the place to do it from. She paused by the wall of the broch and put a hand on the stones, listening. Faint rustling, punctuated by an occasional dovish coo. The bats would have gone out long since, hunting, but the doves were abed.

Pressing her back against the stones, she sidled around the broch, pausing near the door, and reached out a hand, groping for the latch. The padlock was cold in her hand; intact and locked. Letting out her breath, she fumbled the bunch of keys out of her pocket and found the right one by touch.

The sleeping doves erupted in a mad flutter when the wind from the open door whooshed up to the rafters where they roosted, and she stepped hastily back against the wall, out of the way of a pattering rain of panicked incontinence. The doves calmed in a moment, though, and settled down again in a murmurous rustle of indignation at the disturbance.

The upper floors had long since fallen in and the timbers cleared away; the broch was a shell, but a sturdy shell, its outer stones repaired over the years. The stair was built into the wall itself, the stone steps leading up between the inner and outer walls, and she broke the gun over her shoulder and went up slowly, feeling her way one-handed. There was a torch in her pocket but no need to risk using it.

A third of the way up, she took up station by a window slit that commanded a view of the house below. It was cold sitting on the stones, but her jacket was down-filled and she wouldn’t freeze. She pulled a bar of Violet Crumble from her pocket and settled down to wait.

She’d called the Hydro Board and asked for a week’s leave in order to deal with a family emergency. News of what had happened at the Loch Errochty dam last night had spread, so there’d been no difficulty, save in deflecting the flood of sympathetic exclamations and curious questions—all of which she’d claimed not to be able to answer, owing to the ongoing police inquiry.

The police . . . they might be of help. Jock had told them about the man at the dam; they’d be following that up. She’d had to tell them about Rob Cameron. And, with some reluctance, she’d told them about his coming into the house and threatening her, since Mandy would likely blow the gaff about that. She told them about his open disgruntlement over having a woman supervisor and his harassing her at work—though that seemed like a paltry motive for kidnapping a child. She hadn’t mentioned most of the physical stuff, the priest’s hole, or Cameron’s assisted escape, though. Just said she’d hit him—first with the letter box, and then with the cricket bat—and he’d run away. She’d gone with Mandy to find Jem, that being obviously more urgent than calling the police. The police didn’t agree with that assessment, but they were British and thus polite about their disapproval.

She’d said Cameron had told her where Jem was. If the police found him, he wasn’t going to be in any position to contradict her. She did hope they picked him up. It might cause complications, but she’d feel safer if he wasn’t wandering around loose. With her rifle. Possibly lurking in her house.

Her hand curled up in the deep pocket of her jacket, fingering the comforting shapes of a dozen shotgun shells.

37 COGNOSCO TE

THE HEALER ARRIVED in midafternoon. He was a short man but not slight; he looked like an amateur wrestler, with shoulders nearly as broad as Roger’s own. He didn’t introduce himself but nodded politely to Mrs. MacLaren, his eyes flicking round the room in a brief, all-encompassing glance, then focused on Buck, who had fallen into an uneasy sleep and did not wake even to the disturbance caused by the healer’s entrance.

“He says his heart—” Roger began awkwardly. The man glanced sharply sideways at him, then flicked a hand in dismissal and, walking over, peered closely at Buck for a moment. All the MacLarens waited in breathless silence, clearly expecting something spectacular.

The man nodded to himself, removed his coat, and turned back his shirtsleeves, displaying sun-browned forearms corded with muscle.

“Well, then,” he said, sitting down by the bed and laying a hand on Buck’s chest. “Let me—” His face went quite blank and he stiffened, his hand jerking back as though he’d received an electric shock. He gave a quick, hard shake of the head and pulled Buck’s shirt open, plunging both hands into the opening and laying them flat on Buck’s laboring chest.

“Jesu,” he whispered. “Cognosco te!”

Quite suddenly the hairs on Roger’s body lifted, prickling as though a thunderstorm was coming. The man had spoken in Latin, and what he had said was, “I know you!”

THE MACLARENS ALL watched the healer work, with great respect and not a little awe. Roger, who had learned a good bit about the psychology of healing from Claire, was just as impressed. And, to be frank, scared shitless.

The healer had stood motionless for a long moment, hands on Buck’s chest, his head thrown back and eyes closed, his face contorted in an expression of the deepest concentration, as though listening to something far, far off. He had murmured what Roger recognized as the Pater Noster—from the looks on the faces of the MacLarens, it might as well have been the Abracadabra. Then, keeping his hands in place, he had raised one thick forefinger and begun to tap, delicately, in a slow, regular rhythm, his finger rebounding each time as though he were striking a piano key.

Thup . . . thup . . . thup. It went on for a long time, so long that everyone in the room began to draw breath again—even Buck, whose labored gasping began to ease, his lungs filling naturally again. Then it was two fingers, Thup-tup . . . thup-tup . . . thup-tup. Slow. Regular as a metronome. On and on and on and on . . . Soothing. Hypnotic. And Roger realized that the rhythm was that of a beating heart—his own heart. Looking round the room at the wide eyes and slightly open mouths of the adenoidal MacLaren clan, he had the most peculiar sense that all their hearts were beating to precisely the same rhythm.

He knew they were breathing as one; he could hear the susurrus of indrawn breath and the sea-foam rush of exhalation. He knew it—and was helpless to change his own rhythm, to resist the sense of unity that had formed insensibly among all the people in the cabin, from Angus MacLaren down to little Josephine, round-eyed as the rest in her mother’s arms.

All of them were breathing, hearts beating as one—and somehow they were supporting the stricken man, holding him as part of a larger entity, embracing him, bracing him. Buck’s injured heart lay in the palm of Roger’s hand: he realized it quite suddenly and, just as suddenly, realized that it had been there for some time, resting as naturally in the curve of his palm as rounded river rock, smooth and heavy. And . . . beating, in time with the heart in Roger’s chest. What was much stranger was that none of this felt in any way out of the ordinary.

Odd—and impressive—as it was, Roger could have explained this. Mass suggestion, hypnosis, will and willingness. He’d done much the same thing himself any number of times, singing—when the music caught the audience up with him, when he knew they were with him, would follow him anywhere. He’d done it once or twice, preaching; felt the people warm to him and lift him up as he lifted them. It was impressive to see it done so quickly and thoroughly without any sort of warm-up, though—and much more disquieting to feel the effects in his own flesh. What was scaring him, though, was that the healer’s hands were blue.

No doubt about it. It wasn’t a trick of the light—there wasn’t any to speak of, bar the dull glow of the smoored fire. It wasn’t a huge thing; no fiery coruscations or neon. But a soft blue tinge had come up between the healer’s fingers, crept over the backs of his hands—and now spread in a faint haze around his hands, seeming to penetrate Buck’s chest.

Roger glanced to one side, then the other, without moving his head. The MacLarens were paying rapt attention but showed no sign of seeing anything startling. They don’t see it. The hairs on his forearms lifted silently. Why do I see it?

Thup-tup . . . thup-tup . . . thup-tup . . . Tireless, regular—and yet Roger became aware of some subtle change. Not in the healer’s rhythm—that didn’t vary at all. But something had shifted. He glanced down involuntarily into his palm, where he still imagined that Buck’s heart lay, and was now scarcely surprised to see it there, a ghostly round object, transparent but pulsing gently, regularly. On its own.

Thup-tup . . . . . . thup-tup . . . . . . thup-tup. The healer now was following, not leading. Not slowing the beats but pausing for a longer period between them, letting Buck’s heart beat alone between them.

At last, the faint sound stopped, and there was silence in the room for the length of three heartbeats. And then the silence popped like a soap bubble, leaving the onlookers blinking and shaking their heads, as those awakened from dreaming. Roger closed his empty hand.

“He’ll be all right,” the healer said to Mrs. MacLaren, in a matter-of-fact manner. “Let him sleep as long as he can, give him something to eat when he wakes up.”

“Much obliged, sir,” Mrs. MacLaren murmured. She patted Josephine, who had fallen asleep with her mouth open, a glimmering trail of saliva falling from the corner of her mouth to her mother’s shoulder. “Will I make up a pallet for ye by the fire?”

“Ah, no,” the healer said, smiling. He shrugged back into his coat, put on his cloak, and reached for his hat. “I’m staying no great distance away.”

He went out, and Roger waited for a moment, just long enough for people to turn back to their own conversations, and then followed, shutting the door quietly behind him.

THE HEALER WAS a little way down the road; Roger saw the man’s dark figure kneeling in prayer before a tiny shrine, the ends of his cloak fluttering in the wind. Roger came up to him slowly, hanging back so as not to disturb his devotions—and, on impulse, bowed his own head toward the small statue, so weathered as to be faceless. Take care of them, please, he prayed. Help me get back to them—to Bree. That was all he had time for, before the healer rose to his feet—but that was all he had to say, in any case.

The healer hadn’t heard him; he rose and turned, surprised at seeing Roger but recognizing him at once. He smiled, a little wearily, clearly expecting some medical question of a private nature.

Heart thumping, Roger reached out and grasped the healer’s hand. The man’s eyes widened with shock.

“Cognosco te,” Roger said, very softly. I know you.

“WHO ARE YE, then?” Dr. Hector McEwan stood squinting against the wind, his face wary but excited. “The two of ye—who are ye?”

“I think ye maybe ken that better than I do,” Roger told him. “That—the light in your hands . . .”

“You could see it.” It wasn’t a question, and the wary excitement in McEwan’s eyes blazed into life, visible even in the dimming light.

“Aye, I could. Where did ye . . .” Roger groped for the best way to ask, but, after all, how many ways were there? “When did ye come from?”

McEwan glanced involuntarily over his shoulder toward the croft, but the door was shut, smoke pouring from the hole in the roof. It was beginning to rain, a premonitory pattering among the mounded heather near the path. He moved abruptly, taking Roger’s arm.

“Come,” he said. “We canna be standing out here, dreich as it is; we’ll catch our deaths.”

“Dreich” was the word; the rain set to in good earnest and Roger was half soaked in minutes, having come out without hat or cloak. McEwan led the way quickly up a winding path through thickets of dark gorse, emerging onto a stretch of moorland where the remains of a tumbledown croft offered some shelter. The rooftree had been burned, and recently; the smell still lingered. A corner of thatch remained, though, and they huddled inside, close beneath its scanty protection.

“Anno Domini eighteen hundred and forty-one,” McEwan said matter-of-factly, shaking rain from his cloak. He looked up at Roger, one thick brow raised.

“Nineteen hundred and eighty,” Roger replied, heart hammering. He cleared his throat and repeated the date; the cold had affected his throat, and the words emerged in a strangled croak. McEwan leaned close at the sound, peering at him.

“What’s that?” the man asked sharply. “Your voice—it’s broken.”

“It’s noth—” Roger began, but the healer’s fingers were already groping behind his head, undoing his neckcloth in nothing flat. He closed his eyes, not resisting.

McEwan’s broad fingers were cold on his neck; he felt the icy touch delicate on his skin as it traced the line of the rope scar, then firmer as the healer prodded gently round his damaged larynx—it gave him an involuntary choking sensation, and he coughed. McEwan looked surprised.

“Do that again,” he said.

“What, cough?” Roger said, hoarse as a crow.

“Aye, that.” McEwan fitted his hand snugly round Roger’s neck, just under the chin, and nodded. “Once, then wait, then do it again.” Roger hacked obligingly, feeling a slight pain with each expulsion of breath where the healer’s hand pressed. The man’s face brightened with interest, and he removed his hand.

“Do you know what a hyoid bone is?”

“If I had to guess, it’s something in the throat.” Roger cleared his throat hard and rubbed at it, feeling the roughness of the scar under his palm. “Why?” He wasn’t sure whether to be offended at the personal intrusion or—something else. His skin tingled slightly where McEwan had touched it.

“It’s just there,” the healer said, pressing with his thumb, high up under Roger’s chin. “And if it had been here”—he moved the thumb down an inch—“you’d have been dead, sir. It’s a fragile wee bone. Easy to strangle someone by breaking it—with your thumbs or a rope.” He drew back a little, eyes intent on Roger’s; the curiosity was still plain on his face, but the wariness had returned. “Are you and your friend fleeing from . . . something? Someone?”

“No.” Roger felt at once very tired, the strain of everything catching up to him, and looked round for something to sit on. There was nothing but a few dark chunks of rock that had fallen from the cottage’s wall when the burning thatch had been pulled down. He pushed two blocks together and sat on one, knees up round his ears. “I—this—” He touched his throat briefly. “It was a long time ago, nothing to do with what we—we—we’re looking for my son. He’s only nine.”

“Oh, dearie me.” McEwan’s broad face creased in sympathy. “How—”

Roger lifted a hand. “You first,” he said, and cleared his throat again. “I’ll tell ye everything I know, but . . . you first. Please.”

McEwan pursed his lips and glanced aside, thinking, but then shrugged and lowered himself, grunting, to his own rude seat.

“I was a doctor,” he said abruptly. “In Edinburgh. I came up to the Highlands to shoot grouse with a friend. Do folk still do that, a hundred years hence?”

“Aye. Grouse are still tasty,” Roger said dryly. “It was at Craigh na Dun that ye came through, then?”

“Yes, I—” McEwan halted abruptly, realizing what that question implied. “Dear Lord in heaven, do ye mean to be telling me there are other places? Where . . . it happens?”

“Yes.” The hairs rippled on Roger’s arms. “Four that I know of; likely there are others. How many stone circles are there in the British Isles?”

“I’ve no idea.” McEwan was clearly shaken. He got up and went to the doorway, the jamb of it scorched and the lintel burned almost away. Roger hoped none of the stones above it would fall on the man’s head—at least not until he found out more.

Dr. McEwan stayed for a long time, staring out into the rain, which had gone the silvery gray of cat’s fur. Finally he shook himself and came back, mouth set in firm decision.

“Aye, nothing to be gained from secrecy. And I hope nothing to be lost by honesty.” This last was not quite a question, but Roger nodded and tried to look earnest.

“Well, then. Grouse, as I say. We were on the moor, just below that hill where the standing stones are. All of a sudden a fox shot out of the bracken, right by my foot, and one of the dogs lost his head and chased it. Brewer—that was my friend, Joseph Brewer—started after it, but he has—he had,” McEwan corrected, with an expression of mild irritation that made Roger want to smile, because he was so familiar with the feeling that dealing with the phenomenon caused, “a clubfoot. He managed all right with a special boot, but climbing and chasing . . .” He shrugged.

“So you went after the dog, and . . .” Roger shuddered involuntarily at the memory, and so did McEwan.

“Exactly.”

“Did the dog . . . go?” Roger asked suddenly. McEwan looked surprised and vaguely affronted.

“How should I know? It didn’t turn up where I did, I can tell ye that much.”

Roger made a brief gesture of apology.

“Just curious. We—my wife and I—we’ve been trying to puzzle out as much as we can, for the sake of the children.” “Children” caught in his throat, coming out in no more than a whisper, and McEwan’s expression softened.

“Aye, of course. Your son, you said?”

Roger nodded and managed to explain what he could, about Cameron, the letters . . . and, after a moment’s hesitation, about the Spaniard’s gold, for, after all, he’d have to give a reason for Cameron’s taking Jem in the first place, and his sense of Dr. McEwan was one of solid kindness.

“Dearie me,” the doctor murmured, shaking his head in dismay. “I’ll ask among my patients. Perhaps someone . . .” He trailed off, his face still troubled. Roger had the distinct impression that the sense of trouble wasn’t all down to Jem, or even to the staggering discovery that there were other—

He stopped, seeing plainly in his mind’s eye the soft blue glow surrounding McEwan’s fingers—and the look of surprised delight on his face. Cognosco te. I know you. Delight, not just shock. He and Buck weren’t the first time travelers this man had known. But the doctor hadn’t said as much. Why not?

“How long have you been here?” Roger asked, curious.

McEwan sighed and rubbed a hand over his face.

“Maybe too long,” he said, but then pushed that away, straightening up. “Two years, about. Speaking of too long, though . . .” He straightened, pulling the cloak over his shoulders. “It’ll be dark in less than an hour. I’ll need to go, if I’m to reach Cranesmuir by nightfall. I’ll come again tomorrow to tend your friend. We can talk a bit more then.”

He turned abruptly, but just as suddenly turned back and, reaching out, took Roger’s throat in his hand.

“Maybe,” he said, as though to himself. “Just maybe.” Then he nodded once, let go, and was gone, his cloak fluttering like bat wings behind him.

38 THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST

AFTER FRAGGLE ROCK, the telly went to the evening news, and Ginger reached to turn it off but stopped abruptly as Jem’s last year’s school picture flashed on the screen. She stared at the television, mouth half open, then looked incredulously at Jem.

“That’s you!” she said.

“Ken that fine,” he said crossly. “Turn it off, aye?”

“No, I want to see.” She blocked him as he lunged for the screen; Ginger was eleven and bigger than him.

“Turn it off!” he said, then, with cunning inspiration, “It’ll scare Mandy and she’ll howl.”

Ginger shot Mandy a quick glance—she had good lungs, did Mandy—then reluctantly turned the TV off.

“Mmphm,” she said, and lowered her voice. “Mam told us what happened, but she said we weren’t to trouble ye about it.”

“Good,” Jem said. “Don’t.” His heart was hammering and he felt sweaty, but his hands were going cold and hot and cold again.

He’d got away by the skin of his teeth, diving under the bushes planted at the top of the spillway and crawling down the concrete edging ’til he found a ladderway that went down into the water. He’d shoggled down it as far as he could and clung on so hard his hands went numb, with the black water rumbling inches under his feet and surging down the spillway past him, drenching him with cold spray. He could still feel his bones shake with it.

He believed he might throw up if he thought about it anymore, so he turned away and went to look into the wee girls’ toy chest. It was full of girlie toys, of course, but maybe if they had a ball . . . They did. It was pink but one of the good high-bouncy kind.

“We could go out to the garden, maybe, and have a bit o’ catch?” he suggested, bouncing the ball on the floor and catching it.

“It’s dark and rainin’ like the clappers,” Tisha said. “Dinna want to get wet.”

“Ach, it’s no but a saft drizzle! What are ye, made of sugar?”

“Yes,” said Sheena, with a simper. “Sugar and spice ’n everything nice, that’s what little girls are made of. Snips and snails and puppy-dog tails—”

“Come play dollies,” suggested Tisha, waggling a naked doll invitingly at him. “Ye can have GI Joe if ye want. Or would ye rather Ken?”

“Nay, I’m no playin’ dollies,” Jem said firmly. “Canna be doing wi’ the clothes and all.”

“I play dollies!” Mandy muscled her way between Tisha and Sheena, eager hands stretched out for a Barbie in a pink frilly ball gown. Sheena grabbed it away just in time.

“Aye, aye,” she soothed Mandy’s impending screech, “you can play, sure. Ye have to play nice, though; ye dinna want to spoil her dress. Here, sit down, pet, I’ll give ye this one. See her wee comb and brush? Ye can fix her hair.”

Jem took the ball and left. The upstairs hall had carpet, but the landing was bare wood. He popped the ball off it and it shot up and hit the ceiling with a smack, just missing the hanging light fixture. It bounced off the floor and he caught it before it could get away, clutching it to his chest.

He listened for a second, to be sure Mrs. Buchan hadn’t heard. She was back in the kitchen, though; he could hear the sound of her singing along to the radio.

He was halfway down the stairs when the bell over the front door went, and he looked over the banister to see who it was coming in. Who it was was Rob Cameron, and Jem nearly swallowed his tongue.

JEM PRESSED himself back against the wall of the landing, his heart pounding so loud he could barely hear Mrs. Buchan come out of the kitchen.

Should he go get Mandy? There wasn’t any way out of the house but by the stairs; he couldn’t drop Mandy out the lounge window, there wasn’t a tree or anything . . .

Mrs. Buchan was saying hello and she was sorry if the gentleman was wanting a room, because she was booked full every day this week. Mr. Cameron was being polite, saying, no, thank ye kindly, he was only wondering might he have a wee word . . .

“If ye’re selling anything—” she started, and he interrupted her.

“No, missus, nothing like that. It’s a few questions I have about the stones at Craigh na Dun.”

Jem was gasping for air. His lungs were heaving, but he’d pressed a hand over his mouth so Mr. Cameron wouldn’t hear. Mrs. Buchan didn’t gasp, but he could hear her take breath, then stop, deciding what to say.

“Stones?” she said, and even he could tell she was faking puzzlement. “I dinna ken anything about stones.”

Rob made a polite laugh.

“I apologize, missus. I should have introduced myself, first. My name’s Rob Cameron—and—is something wrong, missus?” She’d not only gasped really loud, Jem thought she must have stepped back without looking and hit the wee table in the hall, because there was a thump and an “Ach!” and the splat of picture frames falling over.

“No,” Mrs. Buchan said, getting ahold of herself. “No. Had a wee turn, that’s all—I’ve the high blood pressure, ken. Get that wee bit dizzy. Your name’s Cameron, is it?”

“Aye. Rob Cameron. I’m cousin by marriage to Becky Wemyss. She told me a bit about the dancing up at the stones.”

“Oh.” That “oh” meant trouble for Becky Wemyss, thought Jem, who knew a lot about mothers’ voices.

“I’m a bit of a scholar of the auld ways, see. I’m writing a wee book . . . Anyway, I wondered if I could maybe talk to you for a few minutes. Becky said ye’d know more about the stones and the dancing than anybody else.”

Jem’s breathing slowed down, once he realized that Mr. Cameron hadn’t come because Mr. Cameron knew Mandy and he were here. Or maybe he did and was trying it on with Mrs. Buchan ’til he could make an excuse to use the loo and come poke round in search of them? He looked apprehensively up the half flight of stairs that led from the landing, but the lounge door above was closed, and while he could hear Mandy’s giggling fine through it, probably Mr. Cameron couldn’t.

Mrs. Buchan was taking Mr. Cameron back to the kitchen. Her voice when she’d said, “Come ben. I’ll tell ye what I can,” hadn’t sounded at all friendly. Jem wondered whether she might be going to put rat poison in Mr. Cameron’s tea.

Maybe Mrs. Buchan didn’t have any rat poison, though. He took a step one way, then the other, then back. He really, really wanted to run down the stairs and out the door and keep going. But he couldn’t leave Mandy.

His havering stopped at once when the kitchen door opened, but he could hear it was Mrs. Buchan’s step, and just hers, coming fast and light.

She turned up the stairs but started back when she saw him on the landing, a hand to her chest. Then she ran up to him and hugged him tight, whispering in his ear.

“Bloody heck, lad. What’re you—well, never mind, I was coming to find you. Ye saw him?”

Jem nodded, wordless, and Mrs. Buchan’s mouth pressed flat.

“Aye. I’m going to take ye out the door. Go left out the gate. Two houses down is Mrs. Kelleher. Knock and tell her I sent ye to use the phone. Ye call the polis and tell them the man that kidnapped you is here—ye ken the address here?”

He nodded. He’d seen the number when he visited before with Mam and Dad and remembered it because it was 669; Dad had said it should by rights be 666, but that was the number of the beast. Jem had asked whether it was Mr. or Mrs. Buchan that was the beast, and Mam and Dad both laughed like loons.

“Good,” said Mrs. Buchan, letting go of him. “Come on, then.”

“Mandy—” he started, but she shushed him.

“I’ll mind her. Come!”

He ran down the stairs after her, trying not to make any noise, and, at the door, she stood on her toes and held the little bell so it wouldn’t ring.

“Run!” she whispered.

He ran.

MRS. KELLEHER WAS an old lady and kind of deaf. Jem was out of breath and so scared that he couldn’t put his words together right, so it was a long time before she took him to the telephone, and then the lady at the police station put the phone down on him twice, because she thought he was some bampot wean who’d got hold of the phone and was playing tricks.

“I’m Jeremiah MacKenzie!” he bellowed, next time she answered. “I was kidnapped!”

“Ye were?” said Mrs. Kelleher, very startled. She grabbed the phone away from him. “Who’s this?” she demanded of it. Faint squawking—at least the police lady hadn’t hung up again. Mrs. Kelleher turned and squinted through her spectacles at him.

“Who was it ye were wanting to call, lad? Ye’ve got the polis by mistake.”

He really wanted to hit something, but he couldn’t hit Mrs. Kelleher. He said something very bad in Gaelic, and her mouth fell open. She’d let the phone fall away from her ear, though, and he grabbed it.

“The man that kidnapped me is here,” he said, as slow as he could. “I need somebody to come! Before—” Inspiration struck. “Before he hurts my little sister! It’s 669 Glenurquhart Road. Come right away!” Then he put the phone down, before the lady could ask him questions.

Mrs. Kelleher had plenty of those, and he didn’t want to be rude, so he asked could he use the loo and locked the door against her, then hung out the upstairs window, watching for the police.

Nothing happened for what seemed forever. The raindrops started to drip off his hair and eyelashes, but he was afraid of missing anything. He was rubbing the water out of his eyes when all of a sudden the door of 669 flew open and Rob Cameron came running out, jumped in a car, and drove off with the tires squealing.

Jem almost fell out the window but then rushed back and barreled out of the bathroom, nearly knocking Mrs. Kelleher over.

“Thank you, Mrs. Kelleher!” he yelled over his shoulder, taking the stairs three at a time, and shot out the front door.

There was a lot of screaming and crying going on inside the Buchans’ house, and he felt his chest go so tight he couldn’t breathe.

“Mandy!” He tried to call, but her name came out in a whisper. The front door was hanging open. Inside, there were girls everywhere, but he picked Mandy out of the muddle in the lounge instantly and ran to grab her. She wasn’t crying, but she latched on to him like a leech, burying her black curly head in his stomach.

“It’s okay,” he told her, squeezing the stuffing out of her in relief. “It’s okay, Man. I gotcha. I gotcha.”

His heart started to slow down a little, and he saw that Mrs. Buchan was sitting on the sofa, holding a towel full of ice cubes to her face. Some of the ice had fallen out and was lying on the rug at her feet. Tisha and Sheena were holding on to their mother and crying, and Ginger was trying to pat her mam’s hair and comfort her sisters at the same time, but her face was dead white and tears were running silently down it.

“Mrs. Buchan . . . are ye all right?” Jem asked timidly. He had an awful feeling in the bottom of his stomach. Somehow, he was sure this was his fault.

Mrs. Buchan looked up at him. One side of her face was puffy and the eye on that side was swollen half shut, but the other one had fire in it, and that made him feel a little better.

“Aye, fine, Jem,” she said. “Dinna fash, girls! It’s well enough; no but a black eye. Quit your caterwauling, will ye? I canna hear myself think.” She gave a small, good-natured shake to detach the clinging girls, pushing and patting at them with her free hand. Then there was a knock on the doorjamb, and a man’s voice from the front hall.

“Police, here! Anyone to home?”

Jem could have told Mrs. Buchan what happened once you called the police. Questions, and questions, and more questions. And if there were things you couldn’t tell the police . . . At least Mrs. Buchan wouldn’t let them take Jem or her to the police station to answer questions, insisting that she couldn’t leave the girls on their own. By the time the police gave up, Mandy and Sheena were both asleep on the couch, curled up together like a pair of kittens, and Ginger and Tisha had made everyone tea, then sat yawning in the corner together, blinking now and then to keep awake.

A few minutes after the police left, Mr. Buchan came home for his supper, and all the explaining was to do all over again. There really wasn’t much to it: Mrs. Buchan had sat Mr. Cameron down in the kitchen and told him a bit about the dancing—it wasn’t secret, most folk who’d lived in Inverness for a long time knew about it—but she’d left the radio playing while they were talking, and all of a sudden the newscaster was saying the name “Robert Cameron” and how Robert Cameron was wanted for questioning in the kidnapping of a local boy, and—

“And then the wee bastard jumps up, and so do I, and he must have thought I meant to stop him—I was betwixt him and the door, anyroad—and he belts me one in the eye, pushes me into the wall, and he’s away off!”

Mr. Buchan was giving Jem a hard look now and then and seemed like he wanted to start asking questions, but instead he said they’d all go into the town and have a fish supper as it was so late, and everyone started feeling better at once. Jem could see the looks going back and forth between the Buchans, though, and he kind of wondered whether Mr. Buchan maybe meant to drop him and Mandy off at the police station on the way back. Or maybe just leave them by the side of the road.

39 THE GHOST OF A HANGIT MAN

THE HEAVENS OPENED, and Roger was soaked to the skin by the time he got back to the MacLarens’ cottage. Amid cries of dismay from Mrs. MacLaren and her ancient mother, he was hastily stripped, wrapped up snug in a ragged quilt, and stood to steam before the fire, where his presence greatly impeded the preparations for supper. Buck, propped up on pillows with the two smallest MacLarens curled up in sleep on the bed beside him, lifted a brow at Roger in inquiry.

Roger moved his hand slightly, in a tell-you-later gesture. He thought Buck looked better; there was color in his face, and he was sitting upright, not slumped into the bedding. For a brief instant, Roger wondered what would happen if he were to lay his own hand on Buck. Would it glow blue?

The thought sent a shiver through him, and Allie, one of the MacLaren daughters, pushed the trailing edge of his quilt away from the fire with a squeak of alarm.

“Take care, sir, do!”

“Aye, do,” said Grannie Wallace, pulling the blackened iron spider—this spitting hot grease—well away from his bare legs and making shooing motions. “Take a spark, and ye’ll go up like tinder.” She was blind in one eye, but the other was sharp as a needle and gave him a piercing look. “Tall as ye are, ye’d likely set the rooftree afire, and then where should we all be, I’d like tae know!”

There was a general titter at that, but he thought the laughter had an uneasy note to it and wondered why.

“Moran taing,” Roger said in polite thanks for the advice. He moved a foot or so farther from the hearth, fetching up against the settle on which Mr. Angus MacLaren was sitting, mending his pipe stem. “Since ye speak of rooftrees—there’s a wee croft just over the hill that’s been burnt out. Cooking accident, was it?”

The room went silent, and people froze for an instant, all looking at him.

“Evidently not,” he said, with an apologetic cough. “I’m sorry to make light—were folk killed, then?”

Mr. MacLaren gave him a brooding sort of look, quite at odds with his earlier geniality, and set the pipe on his knee.

“No by the fire,” he said. “What led ye up there, man?”

Roger met MacLaren’s eye directly.

“Searching for my lad,” he said simply. “I dinna ken where to look—so I look everywhere. Thinkin’ what if he’s got away, what if he’s wandering about by himself . . . maybe taking shelter where he can find it . . .”

MacLaren took a deep breath and sat back, nodding a little.

“Aye, well. Ye’ll want to keep well away from that croft.”

“Haunted, is it?” Buck asked, and all heads swung round to look at him—then swung back to Mr. MacLaren, waiting for him to give the answer.

“It might be,” he said, after a reluctant pause.

“It’s cursed,” Allie whispered to Roger under her breath.

“Ye didna go in, sir, did ye?” said Mrs. MacLaren, the permanent worry crease deepening between her brows.

“Och, no,” he assured her. “What was it happened there?” McEwan hadn’t had any hesitation about going into the croft; did he not know whatever they were concerned about?

Mrs. MacLaren made a small “Mmp!” noise and, with a shake of her head, swung the cauldron out on its bracket and began to scoop out boiled neeps with a wooden spoon. Not her place to speak of such goings-on, said her primly sealed mouth.

Mr. MacLaren made a somewhat louder noise and, leaning forward, got ponderously to his feet.

“I’ll just be going to check the beasts before supper, ken,” he said, and gave Roger an eye. “Perhaps ye’d like to come along and be oot the way o’ the lasses and their doings.”

“Oh, aye,” Roger said, and, with a small bow to Mrs. MacLaren, hitched the quilt up higher over his shoulders and followed his host into the byre. He caught Buck’s eye in passing and gave him a brief shrug.

In the usual way, the cattle’s quarters were separated from the people’s by no more than a stone wall with a large space at the top, allowing the considerable heat—along with floating bits of straw and a strong scent of piss and manure—generated by several large cows to percolate into the ben. The MacLarens’ was a snug byre, well kept and piled with clean straw at one end, with three fat, shaggy red cows and a diminutive black bull who snorted fiercely at Roger, nostrils red-black in the dim light and the brass ring in his nose agleam.

The ben of the croft was far from cold—what with nine people crammed into it and a good peat fire on the hearth—but the byre was filled with an encompassing warmth and a sense of peace that made Roger sigh and drop his shoulders, only then realizing that they’d been up round his ears for what seemed hours.

MacLaren made no more than a cursory check of his beasts, scratching the bull between the ears and administering a comforting slap to a cow’s flank. Then he led Roger to the far end of the byre with a jerk of his head.

Ever since his conversation with Hector McEwan, Roger had had an uneasy feeling, caused by something he felt he had heard and not understood. And now, as MacLaren turned to speak to him, it was there suddenly, clear in his head. Cranesmuir.

“Twa strangers built the croft up there,” MacLaren said. “They came from nowhere seemingly; just one day they were there. A man and a woman, but we couldna tell were they man and wife, or maybe a man and his daughter, for he seemed a good bit older than she did. They said they came from the isles—and I think he maybe did, but her speech wasna like any islander I’ve heard.”

“Was she Scots?”

MacLaren looked surprised.

“Oh, aye, she was. She had the Gàidhlig. I’d have said she came from somewhere up northwest of Inverness—maybe Thurso—but there again . . . it wasna quite . . . right.”

Not quite right. Like someone out of their proper place, pretending.

“What did she look like?” Roger said. His voice was thick; he had to clear his throat and repeat himself.

MacLaren’s lips pursed but not in condemnation; it was the sort of soundless whistle of appreciation one gives at sight of something remarkable.

“Bonny,” he said. “Verra bonny, indeed. Tall and straight, but . . . er . . . not so straight in places, if ye take my meaning.” He ducked his head, half embarrassed, and Roger realized that his reluctance to talk in front of the womenfolk perhaps wasn’t due entirely to the scandalous nature of his story.

“I do,” Roger said, lowering his own voice to MacLaren’s confidential level. “Did they keep to themselves, then?” If they hadn’t, surely the whole district would have known about them and quickly discovered whether they were man and wife.

MacLaren frowned.

“Aye, they did . . . though he was friendly enough; I met him now and again, out on the moor, and we’d have a word, and I’d always come away thinkin’ as how he was a good wee fellow, and yet when I came to tell my Maggie about it, I couldna just charge my memory wi’ anything he’d said.”

MacLaren said somehow word got round that the woman was something that wee bit odd—a root doctor, but maybe would give you a bit more than a grass cure, if you found her alone in the house. . . .

There was no light in the byre save the dull glow from the hearth fire next door, but, even so, Roger could see that MacLaren had grown flushed and discomfited. Roger was beginning to feel uncomfortable himself, but not for the same reason.

Cranesmuir. He knew the name, had known it when McEwan said it. The MacLarens had said the healer came from Draighhearnach. Cranesmuir was in the opposite direction—and two miles farther on. Why was he going there tonight?

“There were stories. Always are, about a woman like that.” MacLaren cleared his own throat. “But she was good wi’ the grass cures—and wi’ charms, as well. Or so folk said.”

But then the man had gone, MacLaren said. No one knew where; they just didn’t see him anymore, and the woman went on as before, but now more of her visitors were men. And the women stopped taking their bairns up there, though they’d go sometimes themselves, quietly, in secret.

And then on the day before Samhain, as the sun was sinking and the great fires being built up for the evening, a woman from nearby had gone up to the lonely croft and run down again, screaming.

“She’d found the door o’ the croft standing wide, the woman and her things all gone—and a man hanging from the rooftree, stone dead wi’ a rope around his neck.”

The shock tightened Roger’s own throat. He couldn’t speak.

MacLaren sighed, head bent. A cow had come up behind him, nudging gently, and he laid one hand on her back as though seeking support from the animal, who went on placidly chewing her cud.

“It was the priest who said we should cleanse the place with fire, for it had the smell of evil about it, and no one kent the man. We couldna tell was it just a poor fellow as took his life by despair—or was it murder.”

“I . . . see.” Roger forced the words through the burn in his throat, and MacLaren looked up suddenly at him. He saw the man’s mouth drop open, his eyes bulging, and realized that in the warmth he’d let the quilt slide back on his shoulders. MacLaren was looking straight at his throat, where the livid and unmistakable scar of hanging must show plain in the dim red light.

MacLaren backed away, or tried to, but there was nowhere to go. He plastered himself against one beast’s shaggy flank, making a low gobbling noise. The cow seemed annoyed by this and brought her hoof down solidly on MacLaren’s foot. The consequent anguish and fury at least brought MacLaren out of his fright, and when he had extricated himself—by means of thumps and curses—he turned bravely on Roger, jaw thrust out.

“Why come ye here, a thaibse?” he said, fists clenched but his voice low. “Whatever sin I might have done, I did naught to you. I’d nay part in your death—and I said they must bury your body beneath the hearthstone before they fired the place. The priest wouldna have ye in the kirkyard, aye?” he added, evidently fearing that the ghost of the hangit man had come to complain about the unsancitifed disposal of his mortal remains.

Roger sighed and rubbed a hand over his face, the stubble rasping against his palm. He could see several curious faces, attracted by MacLaren’s cries, peering into the shadows of the byre from the glow of the room beyond.

“Have ye got a rosary in the house, sir?” he said.

IT WAS A long and restless night. Grannie Wallace had snatched the children off Buck’s bed, as though fearing he might devour them the moment her back was turned, and put them to bed with her in the trundle, while the older children slept either with their parents or rolled up in quilts by the hearth. Roger shared the pariah’s bed with Buck, for while his ability to hold the rosary in his hand, kiss the crucifix, and then lead the family in saying the rosary had—barely—kept Angus MacLaren from throwing him out into the night and pissing on the gateposts to keep him from coming back in, it hadn’t made him much more popular.

He doubted Buck had slept much better than himself, for his ancestor had rolled out of bed at first light, declaring an urgent necessity to visit the privy. Roger had as hastily arisen, saying, “I’ll help ye,” and pulled on a still-damp shirt and breeks.

He was pleased to see that Buck didn’t actually appear to need help. He walked stiffly and limped a little, but his shoulders were square and he wasn’t gasping or turning blue.

“If they think ye’re a vengeful ghost, what the devil do they think I am?” Buck inquired, the instant they were clear of the cottage. “And surely to goodness ye could ha’ just said the Lord’s Prayer once and not dragged everyone through five decades o’ the rosary and ruined the supper!”

“Mmphm.” Buck had a point there, but Roger had been too much upset at the time to think of that. Besides, he’d wanted to give them time to recover from the shock. “It wasn’t ruined,” he said crossly. “Only the neeps a bit scorched.”

“Only!” Buck echoed. “The place still reeks. And the women hate ye. They’ll put too much salt in your porridge, see if they don’t. Where d’ye think we’re going? It’s that way.”

He pointed at a path on the left that did indeed lead to the privy, this sitting in plain sight.

Roger made another testy sound but followed. He was off-kilter this morning, distracted. No wonder about why, either.

Now? He wondered, watching the door of the privy close behind Buck. It was a two-seater, but he wasn’t minded to broach what he had to say under conditions of that much intimacy, no matter how private the subject matter was.

“The healer,” he said instead through the door, choosing the simplest place to start. “McEwan. He said he’d come back today to see to ye.”

“I don’t need seeing to,” Buck snapped. “I’m fine!” Roger had known the man long enough to recognize bravado covering fear, and replied accordingly.

“Aye, right. What did it feel like?” he asked curiously. “When he put his hand on you?”

Silence from the privy.

“Did ye feel anything?” he asked, after the silence had lengthened well past any time required for natural functions.

“Maybe,” said Buck’s voice, gruff and reluctant. “Maybe no. I fell asleep whilst he was tapping on my chest like a yaffle after tree grubs. Why?”

“Did you understand what it was he said to ye? When he touched you?” Buck had been a lawyer in his own time; he must have studied Latin.

“Did you?” A slight creak of wood and a rustling of cloth.

“I did. And I said it back to him, just before he left.”

“I was asleep,” Buck repeated doggedly. Clearly he didn’t want to talk about the healer, but he wasn’t going to have a choice about that, Roger thought grimly.

“Come out of there, will ye? The MacLarens are all out in the dooryard, crossing their legs.” He glanced over his shoulder and was surprised to see that in fact the MacLarens were out in the dooryard.

Not all of them—it was only Angus and a tall boy, plainly a MacLaren, too, from the shape of him. He seemed familiar—had he been at the house the evening before? They were bent close together, talking in evident excitement, and the boy was pointing off toward the distant road.

“Come out,” Roger repeated, sudden urgency in his voice. “Someone’s coming. I hear horses.”

The privy door flew open and Buck sprang out like a jack-in-the-box, stuffing his shirt into his breeks. His hair was matted and dirty, but his eyes were alert, and he looked entirely capable; that was reassuring.

The horses had come up over the brow of the hill now—six of them: four of the shaggy Highland ponies called garrons, one indifferent rangy bay, and a startlingly fine chestnut with a black mane. Buck seized Roger’s arm with a grip like a horse’s bite.

“A Dhia,” Buck said, half under his breath. “Who’s that?”

40 ANGELS UNAWARE

ROGER HAD NO IDEA who the tall man with the good horse was, but it was crystal clear what he was, both from the deferential manner of the MacLarens and from the way in which his companions fell naturally into place a step behind him. The man in charge.

A tacksman of the MacKenzies? he wondered. Most of the men wore a hunting tartan with a sett in green, brown, and white, but Roger wasn’t yet familiar enough with the local patterns as to tell whether they came from somewhere close by or not.

The tall man glanced over his shoulder at MacLaren’s nod, and his eyes rested on Roger and Buck with an air of casual interest. There was nothing threatening in his manner, but Roger felt himself draw up to his own full height and wished for an instant that he wasn’t barefoot and unshaven, breeks flapping unbuckled at his knees.

At least he did have someone at his own back: Buck had fallen a step behind him. He hadn’t time to be surprised at that before he came within the stranger’s ken.

The man was an inch or two shorter than himself and close to his own age, dark and good-looking in a faintly familiar sort of . . .

“Good morn to ye, sir,” the dark man said, with a courteous inclination of the head. “My name is Dougal MacKenzie, of Castle Leoch. And . . . who might you be?”

Dear Jesus bloody hell, he thought. The shock rippled through him, and he hoped it didn’t show on his face. He shook hands firmly.

“I am Roger Jeremiah MacKenzie, of Kyle of Lochalsh,” he said, keeping his voice mild and—he hoped—assured, as some compensation for his shabby appearance. His voice sounded nearly normal this morning; if he didn’t force it, with luck it wouldn’t crack or gurgle.

“Your servant, sir,” MacKenzie said with a slight bow, surprising Roger with his elegant manners. He had deep-set hazel eyes, which looked Roger over with frank interest—and a faint touch of what appeared to be amusement—before shifting to Buck.

“My kinsman,” Roger said hastily. “William Bu—William MacKenzie.” When? he thought in agitation. Was Buck born yet? Would Dougal recognize the name William Buccleigh MacKenzie? But, no, he can’t be born yet; you can’t exist twice in the same time—can you?!?

A question from Dougal MacKenzie interrupted this stream of confusion, though Roger missed hearing it. Buck answered, though.

“My kinsman’s son was taken,” he said, looking Dougal over with exactly—oh, Jesus, exactly—the same attitude of insouciant confidence that the other MacKenzie carried. “About a week past, abducted by a man named Cameron. Robert Cameron. Will ye maybe ken such a man?”

Dougal of course did not—not surprising, as Cameron hadn’t existed here until a week ago. But he conferred with his men, asked intelligent questions, and expressed an open sympathy and concern that at once comforted Roger and made him feel as though he was about to vomit.

To this point, Dougal MacKenzie had been no more than a name on the historical page, momentarily, if vividly, illustrated by Claire’s disjunct memories. Now he sat solid in the early-morning sun beside Roger on the bench outside the MacLarens’ cottage, his plaid rough and smelling faintly of piss and heather, two days’ stubble rasping as he scratched his jaw in thought.

I like him, God help me. And, God help me, I know what’s going to happen to him. . . .

His eyes fixed in helpless fascination on the hollow of Dougal’s throat, sun-brown and strong, framed in the open collar of his crumpled shirt. Roger jerked his eyes away, glancing instead at the russet hairs on Dougal’s wrist, these catching the sunlight as he motioned toward the east, talking of his brother, chieftain of the clan MacKenzie.

“Colum doesna travel, himself, but he’d be glad to welcome the two of ye, should you find yourselves near Leoch in your search.” He smiled at Roger, who smiled back, warmed by it. “Where d’ye mean to go now?”

Roger took a deep breath. Where, indeed?

“South, I think. William found no trace of Cameron in Inverness, so I’m thinking that he might be headed toward Edinburgh, meaning to take ship there.”

Dougal pursed his lips, nodding in thought.

“Well, then.” He turned to his men, who had sat down on the rocks that lined the path, and called to them. “Geordie, Thomas—we’ll lend your beasts to these men; get your bags. Ye’d have little chance of catching up to the villain on foot,” he said, turning back to Roger. “He must be mounted himself, and moving fast, or ye’d have found some trace of him.”

“I—thank you,” Roger managed. He felt a deep chill, in spite of the sun on his face. “You must—I mean—that’s very kind. We’ll bring them back as soon as we can—or send them, if—if we should be detained anywhere.”

“Moran taing,” Buck murmured, nodding to Geordie and Thomas, who nodded back, looking dour but philosophical at the prospect of walking back to wherever they’d come from.

Where have they come from? Apparently, Angus MacLaren had sent his son off last night before supper, to summon Dougal to come and have a look at his alarming guests. But Dougal and his men had to have been somewhere close at hand . . .

The chink of metal as Jock dumped an obviously heavy bag on the ground beside Dougal gave him a clue. Quarter Day. Dougal was collecting the rents for his brother—and likely on his way back to Leoch. A lot of the rents would have been paid in kind—hams, chickens, wool, salt fish—probably Dougal’s party was accompanied by one or more wagons, which they’d left behind wherever they’d stayed last night.

Angus MacLaren and his oldest son stood a little to the side, eyes fixed suspiciously on Roger as though he might sprout wings and fly away. Dougal turned to Angus with a smile and said in Gàidhlig, “Don’t trouble, friend; they’re nay more ghosts than the lads and I are.”

“Do not forget to entertain strangers,” Buck said in the same language, “for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

There was a startled pause at that, everyone staring at him. Then Dougal laughed, and his men followed him. Angus merely made a polite noise in his throat but shifted his weight and visibly relaxed. As though this had been a signal—and perhaps it was—the door opened, and Mrs. MacLaren and Allie came out, with a stack of wooden bowls and a steaming pot of parritch. One of the smaller MacLarens came after, carefully bearing a saltcellar in both hands.

In the general hubbub of serving and eating—the women had oversalted his porridge, though not badly—Roger said quietly to Dougal, “Did MacLaren actually send to have you come and see whether I was a ghost?”

Dougal looked surprised but then smiled, one side of his mouth turning up. It was the way Brianna smiled when she wanted to acknowledge a joke she didn’t think was funny—or when she saw something funny that she didn’t mean to share with the company. A searing pang followed the jolt of recognition, and Roger was obliged to look down for a moment and clear his throat in order to get control of his voice.

“No, man,” Dougal said casually, also looking down as he wiped his bowl with a bit of hard journeycake taken from his saddlebag. “He thought I might be of help to ye in your search.” He looked up then, straight at Roger’s neck, and raised one dark, heavy brow. “Not that the presence of a half-hangit man at your door doesna raise questions, ken?”

“At least a half-hangit man can answer the questions,” Buck put in. “Not like him from the croft above, aye?”

That startled Dougal, who put down his spoon and stared at Buck. Who stared back, one fair brow raised.

Holy Lord . . . do they see it? Either of them? It wasn’t warm, despite the sun, but Roger felt sweat begin to trickle down his spine. It was more a matter of posture and expression than of feature—and yet the echo of similarity between the two faces was plain as the . . . well, as the long, straight nose on both faces.

Roger could see the thoughts flickering across Dougal’s face: surprise, curiosity, suspicion.

“And what have ye to do with him above?” he asked, with a slight lift of his chin in the direction of the burnt-out croft.

“Not a thing, so far as I ken,” Buck answered, with a brief shrug. “Only meaning as how if ye want to know what happened to my kinsman, ye can ask him. We’ve nothing to hide.”

Thanks a lot, Roger thought, with a sideways look at his ancestor, who smiled blandly back at him and resumed gingerly eating his salty parritch. Why the bloody hell did you say that, of all things?

“I was hanged in mistake for another man,” he said, as casually as possible, but he heard the voice grate in his throat, tightening, and had to stop to clear it. “In America.”

“America,” Dougal repeated, in open astonishment. All of them were staring at him now, men-at-arms and MacLarens both. “What took ye to America—and what brought ye back, come to that?”

“My wife has kin there,” Roger replied, wondering what the devil Buck was up to. “In North Carolina, on the Cape Fear River.” He very nearly named Hector and Jocasta Cameron, before remembering that Jocasta was Dougal’s sister. Also that it was Culloden that had sent them to America—and Culloden hadn’t happened yet.

And he won’t live to see it, he thought, watching Dougal’s face as he spoke, feeling a state of bemused horror. Dougal would die, hours before the battle, in the attics of Culloden House near Inverness, with Jamie Fraser’s dirk sunk in the hollow of his throat.

He told the story of his hanging and rescue briefly, leaving out the context of the War of the Regulation—and leaving out Buck’s role in getting him hanged, too. He could feel Buck there beside him, leaning forward, intent, but didn’t look at him. Couldn’t look at him without wanting to strangle him. Wanted to strangle him anyway.

He could barely speak by the time he finished, and his heart was thumping in his ears with suppressed rage. Everyone was looking at him, with a range of emotions from awe to sympathy. Allie MacLaren was openly sniffing, her apron hem at her nose, and even her mother looked as though she somewhat regretted the salt. Angus coughed and handed him a stone bottle of what turned out to be beer, and a very grateful beverage it was, too. He muttered thanks and gulped it, avoiding all eyes.

Dougal nodded soberly, then turned to Angus.

“Tell me about the man above,” he said. “When did that happen—and what d’ye ken about it?”

MacLaren’s face lost a little of its natural high color, and he looked as though he wanted his beer back.

“Six days past, a ghoistidh.” He gave a brief, and much less atmospheric, account than he had the night before—but it was the same story.

Dougal looked thoughtful, tapping his fingers gently on his knee.

“The woman,” he said. “D’ye ken where she’s gone?”

“I . . . uh . . . heard as how she’d gone to Cranesmuir, sir.” MacLaren’s color had all come back, with interest, and he carefully avoided his wife’s hard eye.

“Cranesmuir,” Dougal repeated. “Aye, well. Perhaps I’ll seek her out, then, and just have a word. What’s her name?”

“Isbister,” MacLaren blurted. “Geillis Isbister.”

Roger didn’t actually feel the earth shake under his feet but was surprised that it hadn’t.

“Isbister?” Dougal’s brows went up. “From the northern isles, is she?”

MacLaren shrugged in elaborate pantomime of ignorance—and unconcern. He looked as though someone had made a serious attempt to boil his head, and Roger saw Dougal’s mouth twitch again.

“Aye,” he said dryly. “Well, an Orkneywoman maybe won’t be hard to find, then, in a place the size of Cranesmuir.” He lifted his chin in the direction of his men, and they all rose as one when he stood. So did Roger and Buck.

“Godspeed to ye, gentlemen,” he said, bowing to them. “I’ll have word put about regarding your wee lad. If I hear anything, where shall I send?”

Roger exchanged glances with Buck, nonplussed. He couldn’t ask for word to be sent to Lallybroch, knowing what he knew of the relations between Brian Fraser and his brothers-in-law.

“Do ye ken a place called Sheriffmuir?” he asked, groping for some other place he knew that existed at the present time. “There’s a fine coaching inn there—though not much else.”

Dougal looked surprised but nodded.

“I do, sir. I fought at Sheriffmuir with the Earl of Mar, and we supped there with him one night, my father and brother and I. Aye, I’ll send word there, if there is any.”

“Thank you.” The words came half choked but clear enough. Dougal gave him a sympathetic nod, then turned to take leave of the MacLarens. Stopped by a sudden thought, though, he turned back.

“I dinna suppose ye really are an angel, are ye?” he asked, quite seriously.

“No,” Roger said, smiling as best he could, despite the coldness in his belly. And it isn’t you that’s talking to a ghost.

He stood with Buck, watching the MacKenzies depart, Geordie and Thomas keeping up with little effort, as the horses went slowly on the steep, rocky path.

The phrase “Blessed are those who have not seen but have believed” floated through his head. It was maybe not the believing that was the blessing; it was the not having to look. Seeing, sometimes, was bloody awful.

ROGER DELAYED their own departure as long as he decently could, hoping for the return of Dr. McEwan, but as the sun rose high in the sky, it was plain that the MacLarens wanted them gone—and Buck wanted to go.

“I’m fine,” he said crossly, and thumped his chest with a fist. “Sound as a drum.”

Roger made a skeptical noise in his throat—and was surprised. It hadn’t hurt. He stopped himself putting a hand to his own throat; no need to draw attention to it, even if they were leaving.

“Aye, all right.” He turned to Angus MacLaren and Stuart, who’d helpfully filled Roger’s canteen in the hope of hurrying them on their way and was standing with it dripping in his hands. “I thank ye for your hospitality, sir, and your kindness to my kinsman.”

“Och,” said MacLaren, a distinct look of relief coming over his face at what was plainly farewell. “That’s fine. Nay bother.”

“If—if the healer should come along, would ye thank him for us? And say I’ll try to come and see him on our way back.”

“On your way back,” MacLaren repeated, with less enthusiasm.

“Aye. We’re bound into Lochaber, to the Cameron lands. If we find nay trace of my son there, though, we’ll likely come back this way—perhaps we’ll call at Castle Leoch for news.”

MacLaren’s face cleared at that.

“Och, aye,” he said heartily. “Good thought. Godspeed!”

41 IN WHICH THINGS CONVERGE

“NOW, IT’S NOT that I dinna want to be helping your mam,” Mr. Buchan said, for the third time. “But I canna be having ructions going on in my house, and criminals coming and goin,’ not with my girls there, now, can I?”

Jem shook his head obediently, though Mr. Buchan wasn’t looking at him; he was peering into his rearview mirror and looking over his shoulder now and then, like he thought somebody might be following them. It made Jem want to look, too, but he couldn’t see behind without getting up on his knees and turning round, and Mandy was passed out asleep, half on his lap.

It was late, and he yawned, forgetting to cover his mouth. He thought of saying, “Excuse me,” but he didn’t think Mr. Buchan had noticed. He felt a burp coming and did cover his mouth this time, tasting vinegar from the fish and chips. Mr. Buchan had bought an extra fish supper for Mam; it was in a brown-paper bag on the floor by Jem’s feet, so as not to get grease on the seat.

“Ken when your da’s expected back?” Mr. Buchan asked abruptly, glancing down at him. Jem shook his head, feeling the fish and chips rise up in a queasy ball.

Mr. Buchan’s mouth pressed tight, like he wanted to say something he thought he shouldn’t.

“Daddy . . .” Mandy murmured, then pushed her head into his ribs, snorted, and went back to sleep. He felt terrible. Mandy didn’t even know where Da was; she probably thought he was just at lodge or something.

Mam said Da would come back, as soon as he figured out that Jem wasn’t there with Grandda. But how? he thought, and had to bite his lip hard not to cry. How would he know? It was dark, but there was a glow from the dashboard. If he cried, Mr. Buchan would maybe see.

Headlights flashed in the rearview mirror and he looked up, brushing his sleeve furtively under his nose. He could see a white panel truck coming up behind them. Mr. Buchan said something under his breath and stepped on the gas pedal harder.

BRIANNA HAD SETTLED into the hunter’s wait: a state of physical detachment and mental abeyance, mind and body each minding its own business but able to spring into unified action the moment something worth eating showed up. Her mind was on the Ridge, reliving a possum hunt with her cousin Ian. The pungent stickiness and eye-watering smoke of pine-knot torches, a glimpse of glowing eyes in a tree, and a sudden bristling possum like a nightmare in the branches, needle-toothed and gaping threats, hissing and growling like a flatulent motorboat . . .

And then the phone rang. In an instant she was standing, gun in hand, every sense trained on the house. It came again, the short double brr! muffled by distance but unmistakable. It was the phone in Roger’s study, and even as she thought this, she saw the brief glow of a light inside as the study door was opened, and the ringing phone abruptly stopped.

Her scalp contracted, and she felt a brief kinship with the treed possum. But the possum hadn’t had a shotgun.

Her immediate impulse was to go and flush out whoever was in her house and demand to know the meaning of this. Her money was on Rob Cameron, and the thought of flushing him like a grouse and marching him out at the point of a gun made her hand tighten on said gun with anticipation. She had Jem back; Cameron would know she didn’t need to keep him alive.

But. She hesitated in the door of the broch, looking down.

But whoever was in the house had answered the phone. If I was a burglar, I wouldn’t be answering the phone in the house I was burgling. Not unless I thought it would wake up the people inside.

Whoever was in her house already knew no one was home.

“Quod erat demonstrandum,” her father’s voice said in her mind, with a grim satisfaction. Someone in the house was expecting a call.

She stepped outside, with a deep breath of the fresh cold scent of gorse replacing the dank musk of the broch, her heart beating fast and her mind working faster. Who would be calling him—them? To say what?

Maybe someone had been watching earlier, seen her coming down the forestry road. Maybe they were calling to tell Rob she was outside, in the broch. No, that didn’t make sense. Whoever was in the house, they’d been in there when she arrived. If someone had seen her come, they’d have called the house then.

“Ita sequitur . . .” she murmured. Thus it follows: if the call wasn’t about her, it must be either a warning that someone—the police, and why?—was coming toward Lallybroch—or news that whoever was on the outside had found the kids.

The metal of the barrel was slick under her sweating palm, and it took a noticeable effort to keep a firm grip on the gun. Even more of an effort not to run toward the house.

Aggravating as it was, she had to wait. If someone had found the kids, she couldn’t reach Fiona’s house in time to protect them; she’d have to depend on Fiona and Ernie and the City of Inverness police. But if that was the case, whoever was in the house would surely be coming out right away. Unless that bastard Rob means to hang around in hopes of catching me unawares, and . . . Despite the gun in her hand, that thought gave her an unpleasant squirm deep inside—one she recognized as the ghostly touch of Stephen Bonnet’s penis.

“I killed you, Stephen,” she said under her breath. “And I’m glad you’re dead. You may have company in hell pretty soon. Make sure the fire’s lit for him, okay?”

That restored her nerve, and dropping to her haunches, she duckwalked through the gorse, coming down the hillside at an angle that would bring her out near the kailyard, not by the path, which was visible from the house. Even in the dark, she was taking no chances; there was a rising half-moon, though it showed erratically through scudding cloud.

The sound of a car coming made her lift her head, peering over a tuft of dry broom. She put a hand in her pocket, thumbing through the loose shotgun shells. Fourteen. That should be enough.

Fiona’s remark about ballistics flitted through her mind, along with a faint reminder of the possibility of going to prison for wholesale manslaughter. She might risk it, for the satisfaction of killing Rob Cameron—but the unwelcome thought occurred to her that while she didn’t need him to locate Jem anymore, she did need to find out what the hell was going on. And while the police might track down the man from the dam, if there was some sort of gang involved, Rob was likely the only way of finding out who the others were—and what they wanted.

The headlights jounced down the lane and into the dooryard, and she stood up abruptly. The motion-detecting light had come on, showing her Ernie’s white panel truck, unmistakable, with BUCHAN ELECTRICS/FOR ALL YOUR CURRENT NEEDS, CALL 01463 775 4432 on the side, with a drawing of a severed cable, spitting sparks.

“Bloody hell,” she said. “Bloody, bloody hell!”

The truck’s door opened and Jem tumbled out, then turned round to help Mandy, who was no more than a short dark blot in the recesses of the truck.

“GET BACK IN THE TRUCK!” Brianna bellowed, leaping down the slope, skittering on rolling stones and bending her ankles in spongy patches of heather. “JEMMY! GET BACK!”

She saw Jem turn, his face white in the glare of the light, but it was too late. The front door flew open and two dark figures rushed out, running for the truck.

She wasted no more breath but ran for all she was worth. A shotgun was useless at any distance—or maybe not. She skidded to a halt, shouldered the gun, and fired. Buckshot flew into the gorse with a whizzing sound like tiny arrows, but the bang had halted the intruders in their tracks.

“BACK IN THE TRUCK!” she roared, and fired again. The intruders galloped toward the house, and Jem, bless his heart, leapt into the truck like a startled frog and slammed the door. Ernie, who had just got out, stood for a moment gawking up the slope, but then, realizing what had happened, came suddenly to life and dived for his own door.

She reloaded in the glow of the spotlight. How long would the light stay on with no one moving in its range? She racked a fresh shell and ran for Ernie’s truck. More headlights jerked her attention toward the lane. Holy Mary, Mother of God, who was this? Please, God, let it be the police . . .

The light winked out, then on again almost at once, as the second vehicle roared into the dooryard, moving fast. The people inside the house were hanging out of the drawing room casement, yelling something at the new truck—yes, it was another panel truck, much like Ernie’s, save that it said POULTNEY’S, PURVEYOR OF FINE GAME and had a picture of a wild boar.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death . . .” She had to get to Ernie’s truck before—too late. The FINE GAME truck revved up and rammed Ernie’s truck in the side, shunting it several yards. She could hear Mandy’s scream above everything, sharp as an augur through her heart.

“Bloody Mother of . . . Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ!” She couldn’t take time to circle the dooryard. She ran straight across it, took close aim, and shredded the front tire of the FINE GAME truck with a blast of buckshot.

“STAY IN THE TRUCK!” she shouted, chambering the second shell and pointing the gun at the windshield in the same motion. A blur of white as at least two people ducked down out of sight below the dash.

The men—yes, both men—inside the house were yelling at each other, and at the people in the truck, and at her. Useless adjurations and insults, mostly, but one of them was now pointing out to the others that her weapon was a shotgun. Useless except at short range, and only two shots.

“You can’t cover us all, hen!”

That was Rob Cameron, shouting from the Poultney’s truck. She didn’t bother replying but ran to get in range of the house, and the drawing room window dissolved in a shower of glass.

Sweat was running down her sides, tickling. She broke the gun and thumbed two more shells into place. She felt as though she were moving in slow motion—but the rest of the world was moving slower. With no sense of hurry, she walked to Ernie’s truck and put her back against the door behind which Jem and Mandy were sheltering. A strong waft of fish and malt vinegar floated out as the window cranked down a few inches.

“Mam—”

“Mummy! Mummy!”

“Bloody hell, Brianna! What’s going on?”

“A bunch of nutters are trying to kill me and take my kids, Ernie,” she said, raising her voice over Mandy’s wailing. “What does it look like? How about you start the engine, hmm?”

The other truck was out of effective shotgun range from here, and she could see only one side of it. She heard its door open on the other side and saw a flicker of movement inside the shattered window of the house.

“Now would be a good time, Ernie.” She wasn’t forgetting that one of the bastards had her rifle. She could only hope they didn’t know how to use it.

Ernie was frantically turning the key and stomping the gas. She could hear him praying under his breath, but he’d flooded the engine; the starter whirred uselessly. Lower lip tucked under her teeth, she strode round the front of the truck in time to catch one of the people from the FINE GAME truck—to her surprise, this one was a woman, a short, dumpy shape in a balaclava and an old Barbour. She raised the shotgun to her shoulder, and the woman tried to run backward, tripped, and fell on her backside with an audible “Oof!”

She wanted to laugh but then saw Cameron climbing out of the truck, her rifle in hand, and the urge left her.

“Drop it!” She strode toward him, gun at her shoulder. He didn’t know how to use the rifle; he glanced wildly from her to the gun, as though hoping it would aim itself, then changed his mind and dropped it.

The front door of the house slammed open, and she heard running feet coming fast. She whirled on her heel and ran, too, reaching Ernie’s truck barely in time to hold off the two men from the house. One immediately began to sidle round, clearly meaning to circle the other truck and collect his idiot comrades. Rob Cameron was now advancing on her slowly, hands held up to show his non-offensive—ha—intent.

“Look, Brianna, we don’t mean ye any harm,” he said.

She racked a fresh shell in answer to that, and he took a step back.

“I mean it,” he said, an edge in his voice. “We want to talk to you, is all.”

“Aye, pull the other one,” she said, “it’s got bells on. Ernie?”

“Mam—”

“Don’t you dare open that door until I say so, Jemmy!”

“Mam!”

“Get down on the floor, Jem, right now! Take Mandy!” One of the men from the house and the dumpy woman were moving again; she could hear them. And the second man from the house had disappeared into the dark outside the circle of light. “ERNIE!”

“But, Mam, somebody’s coming!”

Everyone froze for an instant, and the sound of an engine advancing down the farm track came clearly through the night. She turned and grabbed the door handle, jerking it open just as Ernie’s engine finally coughed into full-throated life. She hurled herself into the seat, her feet narrowly missing Jem’s head as he peered up from the footwell, eyes huge in the dim light.

“Let’s go, Ernie,” she said, very calmly under the circumstance. “Kids, you stay down there.”

A rifle butt struck the window near Ernie’s head, starring the glass, and he yelped but didn’t, God bless him, flood the engine again. Another blow and the glass broke in a cascade of glittering fragments. Brianna dropped her own gun and lunged across Ernie, reaching for the rifle. She got a hand on it, but the man holding it wrenched it free. Grabbing wildly, she scrabbled at the balaclava’d shape, and the woolly helmet came off in her hand, leaving the man beneath openmouthed with shock.

The spotlight went off, plunging the yard into darkness, and bright spots danced in front of her eyes. It popped back on again as the new vehicle roared into the yard, horn blaring. Brianna lifted herself out of Ernie’s lap, trying to see out through the windshield, then flung herself toward the other side of the truck.

It was an ordinary car, a dark-blue Fiat, looking like a toy as it circled the yard, horn blatting like a sow in heat.

“Friend, d’ye think?” Ernie asked, his voice strained but not panicked. “Or foe?”

“Friend,” she said, breathless, as the Fiat charged three of the intruders who were standing together: the unmasked rifle-wielder, the woman in the Barbour jacket, and whoever the guy who wasn’t Rob Cameron was. They scattered like cockroaches into the grass, and Ernie slammed a fist on the dash in exultation.

“That’ll show the buggers!”

Bree would have liked to stay and watch the rest of the show, but wherever Cameron was, he was undoubtedly too close.

“Go, Ernie!”

He went, with a terrible crunching and screeching of metal. The van lurched badly; the back axle must be damaged. She could only hope a wheel didn’t come off.

The blue Fiat was prowling the dooryard; it honked and flashed its lights at Ernie’s truck, and a hand waved from the driver’s window. Brianna stuck her head out cautiously and returned the wave, then dropped back into her seat, panting. Black spots were swimming in her field of vision and her hair stuck to her face, lank with sweat.

They limped down the lane in first gear, with a horrible grinding noise; from the sound of it, the back wheel well had caved in.

“Mam.” Jemmy stuck his head up over the edge of the seat like a prairie dog. “Can I come up now?”

“Sure.” She took a deep breath and helped Mandy scramble up after him. The little girl plastered herself at once to Brianna’s chest, whimpering.

“It’s okay, baby,” she whispered into Mandy’s hair, clinging to the solid small body as much as Mandy clung to her. “Everything will be fine.” She glanced down at Jem, riding between Ernie and herself. He was hunched into himself and shivering visibly in his checked wool jacket, even though it was warm in the cab. She reached out a hand and took him by the back of the neck, shaking him gently. “Okay there, pal?”

He nodded, but without saying anything. She folded her hand over his, clenched into a small fist on his knee, and held it tight—both in reassurance and to stop her own hand shaking.

Ernie cleared his throat.

“I’m sorry, Brianna,” he said gruffly. “I didna ken that—I mean, I thought it would be okay to bring the bairns back, and after yon Cameron came to the house and hit Fiona, I—” A trickle of sweat gleamed as it ran down behind his ear.

“He what?” After the events of the last hour, this news registered only as a blip on her personal seismograph, obscured by the bigger shock waves that were only now dying down. But she asked questions, and Jem began to come out of his own shell shock, telling about his part, gradually becoming indignant about Mrs. Kelleher and the police dispatcher. She felt a quiver in the pit of her stomach that wasn’t quite laughter but close enough.

“Don’t worry about it, Ernie.” She brushed off his renewed attempts at apology. Her voice rasped, her throat sore from shouting. “I’d have done the same, I expect. And we’d never have got away without you.” They’d never have been there without him in the first place, but he knew that as well as she did; no point in rubbing it in.

“Aye, mmphm.” He drove in silence for a moment, then remarked conversationally, looking in the rearview mirror, “Yon wee blue motor’s following us, ken.” His throat moved as he swallowed.

Brianna rubbed a hand over her face, then looked. Sure enough, the Fiat was trundling after them at a discreet distance.

Ernie coughed. “Ehm . . . where d’ye want to go, Bree? Only, I’m none sae sure we’ll make it all the way into the town. But there’s a petrol station with a garridge bay on the main road—if I was to stop there, they’d have a phone. Ye could call the polis while I deal wi’ the van.”

“Don’t call the polis, Mam,” Jemmy said, his nostrils flaring with disgust. “They’re no help.”

“Mmphm,” she said noncommittally, and raised an eyebrow at Ernie, who nodded and set his jaw.

She was inclined against calling the police herself—but out of concern lest they be too inquisitively helpful. She’d managed to deflect them from the touchy question of just where her husband was last night, telling them he was in London to visit the British Museum Reading Room and that she’d call him as soon as they got home. If the police found out about the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral, there was going to be a lot more scrutiny of her private affairs. And it took no stretch of imagination at all to conclude that the police might really suspect her of having something to do with Roger’s disappearance, since she couldn’t produce him and couldn’t tell them where he was. Might never be able to. She swallowed, hard.

The only recourse would be to claim that they’d had a fight and he’d walked out on her—but that would sound pretty flimsy, in light of recent events. And she wouldn’t say something like that in front of the kids, regardless.

But stopping at the petrol station was the only thing she could see to do at the moment. If the blue Fiat followed them there, at least she might discover an ally. And if it was the police, incognito . . . well, she’d cross that bridge when she came to it. Adrenaline and shock had both left her now; she felt detached, dreamy, and very, very tired. Jemmy’s hand had relaxed in hers, but his fingers were still curled around her thumb.

She leaned back, closing her eyes, and slowly traced the curve of Mandy’s spine with her free hand. Her little girl had relaxed into sleep against her chest, her son with his head on her shoulder, the weight of her children’s trust heavy on her heart.

THE PETROL STATION was next to a Little Chef café. She left Ernie to talk to the garageman while she extracted the kids. She didn’t bother looking over her shoulder; the blue Fiat had fallen back to a respectful distance, not crowding them as they crawled clanking and grinding down the motorway at 20 mph. If the driver didn’t mean to talk to her, he’d have driven off and disappeared. Maybe she’d manage a cup of tea before she had to deal with him.

“Can’t wait,” she muttered. “Get the door, please, Jem?”

Mandy was inert as a bag of cement in her arms but began to stir at the smell of food. Bree gagged at the reek of stale frying oil, burnt chips, and synthetic pancake syrup, but ordered ice cream for Jem and Mandy, with a cup of tea for herself. Surely even this place couldn’t ruin tea?

A cup of barely warm water and a PG Tips tea bag convinced her otherwise. It didn’t matter; her throat was so tight that she doubted she could swallow even water.

The blessed numbness of shock was lifting, much as she would have preferred to keep it wrapped blanket-like around her. The café seemed too bright, with acres of foot-marked white lino; she felt exposed, like a bug on a grimy kitchen floor. Prickles of apprehension sparked unpleasantly over her scalp, and she kept her eyes fixed on the door, wishing she’d been able to bring the shotgun inside.

She didn’t realize that Jem had also been watching the door until he stiffened to attention beside her in the booth.

“Mam! It’s Mr. Menzies!”

For a moment, neither the words nor the sight of the man who had just entered the café made any sense. She blinked several times, but he was still there, striding toward them with an anxious face. Jem’s school principal.

“Mrs. MacKenzie,” he said, and, reaching across the table, shook her hand fervently. “Thank God you’re all right!”

“Er . . . thanks,” she said feebly. “You—was that you? In the blue Fiat?” It was like being keyed up to confront Darth Vader and coming face-to-face with Mickey Mouse.

He actually blushed behind his glasses.

“Ehm . . . well, aye. I—er . . .” He caught Jem’s eye and smiled awkwardly. “You’re taking good care of your mother, then, Jem?”

“Aye, sir.” Jem was quite obviously about to burst with questions. Bree forestalled him with a quelling look and gestured to Lionel Menzies to sit down. He did and took a deep breath, about to say something, but was interrupted by the waitress, a solid, middle-aged woman with thick stockings and a cardigan and an air that indicated that she didn’t care whether they were space aliens or cockroaches, so long as they didn’t complicate her life.

“Don’t order the tea,” Bree said, with a nod toward her cup.

“Aye, thanks. I’ll have . . . a bacon butty and an Irn-Bru?” he asked tentatively, looking up at the waitress. “With tomato sauce?” She scorned to reply but flipped her pad shut and trundled off.

“Right,” Menzies said, squaring his shoulders like one about to face a firing squad. “Tell me the one thing, would you? Was it Rob Cameron there at your house?”

“It was.” Bree spoke tersely, recalling belatedly that Cameron was related to Menzies in some way—a cousin or something? “Why?”

He looked unhappy. A pale-faced man with slightly receding curly brown hair and glasses, he wasn’t remarkable in any way and yet usually had a presence, a friendliness and quiet air of authority about him that drew the eye and made one feel reassured in his company. This was notably lacking tonight.

“I was afraid that it might be. I heard—on the evening news. That Rob was being looked for by the police”—he lowered his voice, though there was no one within earshot—“in connection with . . . well, with”—he nodded discreetly toward Jem—“taking Jeremiah, here.”

“He did!” Jem said, dropping his spoon and sitting up straight. “He did, Mr. Menzies! He said he was going to take me to spend the night with Bobby, only he didn’t, he took me up to the rocks and—”

“Jem.” Brianna spoke quietly, but it was her Shut Up Right Now voice, and he did, though with an audible snort and a glare at her.

“Yes, he did,” she said levelly. “What do you know about it?”

He blinked in surprise.

“I—why, nothing. I can’t imagine why he—” He broke off, coughed, and taking his glasses off, pulled a pocket handkerchief out and polished them. By the time he put them back on, he’d pulled himself together.

“You may remember, Rob Cameron’s my cousin. And he’s in lodge, of course. I was knocked off my perch to hear this about him. So I thought I’d maybe come out to Lallybroch, have a word with you and your husband”—he lifted an eyebrow, but she didn’t respond to this obvious hint about Roger, and he went on—“see that Jem was all right—are ye all right, Jem?” he broke off to ask seriously, glancing at the boy.

“Oh, aye, fine,” Jem replied airily, though he seemed tense. “Sir,” he added belatedly, and licked a smear of chocolate ice cream off his upper lip.

“That’s good.” Menzies smiled at Jem, and Brianna saw a little of his usual warmth light up behind the glasses. The warmth was still in his eyes, though he was serious when he looked at her. “I wanted to ask if there’d maybe been a mistake, but I’m thinking that there likely wasn’t? In light of . . . all that.” He tilted his head in the direction of Lallybroch and swallowed.

“Yes, there was,” she said grimly, shifting Mandy’s weight on her lap, “and Rob Cameron made it.”

He grimaced, drew a deep breath, but nodded.

“I’d like to help,” he said simply.

“You definitely did,” she assured him, wondering what on earth to do with him now. “Ick! Mandy, you’re dribbling all over everywhere! Use a napkin, for heaven’s sake.” She swabbed Mandy’s face briskly, ignoring her daughter’s cranky whine. Could he help? She wanted badly to believe him; she was still shaking internally and all too ready to grab at any offer of assistance.

But he was Rob Cameron’s relative. And maybe he’d come out to the house to talk, and maybe he’d come for some other reason. He might, after all, have intervened to keep her from blasting Rob into bloody shreds, rather than to save her and the kids from Rob and his masked sidekicks.

“I spoke to Ernie Buchan,” Menzies said, nodding toward the plate-glass window. “He, um, seemed to think that you might not want the police involved?”

“No.” Bree’s mouth was dry; she sipped the lukewarm tea, trying to think. It was getting harder by the moment; her thoughts scattered like drops of quicksilver, wobbling away in a dozen directions. “Not—not just yet. We were at the police station half of last night. I really can’t deal with any more questions tonight.” She took a deep breath and stared at him directly.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” she said. “I don’t know why Rob Cameron should have kidnapped Jemmy—”

“Yes, you d—” Jem started, and she whipped her head round and glared at him. He glared back, red-eyed and clench-fisted, and with a jolt of alarm she recognized the Fraser temper, about to go off with a bang.

“You do so know!” he said, loudly enough that a couple of truckers at the counter turned round to look at him. “I told you! He wanted me to—” Mandy, who had started to drop off again, jerked awake and started to wail.

“I want Daddeeeee!”

Jem’s face was bright red with fury. At this, it went white.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” he shrieked at Mandy, who yelped in terror and screamed louder, trying to scramble up Brianna’s body.

“DADDEEE!”

“Jem!” Lionel Menzies was on his feet, reaching for the boy, but Jem was absolutely beside himself, literally hopping up and down with rage. The entire restaurant was gaping at them.

“Go AWAY!” Jem roared at Menzies. “DAMMIT! Don’t you touch me! Don’t touch my mam!” And, in an excess of passion, he kicked Menzies hard on the shin.

“Jesus!”

“Jem!” Bree had a grip on the struggling, bawling Mandy but couldn’t reach Jem before he picked up his dish of ice cream, flung it at the wall, and then ran out of the café, crashing the door open so hard that a man and woman on the verge of entering were forced to leap aside to avoid being knocked over as he rocketed past.

Brianna sat down quite suddenly, as all the blood left her head. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us . . .

The room was silent, save for Mandy’s sobbing, though this was dying down as her panic subsided. She burrowed into Brianna’s chest, burying her face in the padded coat.

“Hush, sweetie,” Bree whispered, bending her head so that Mandy’s curls brushed her lips. “Hush, now. It’s all right. Everything will be all right.”

A muffled mumble ended with a tearful “. . . Daddy?”

“Yes,” Bree said firmly. “We’ll see Daddy soon.”

Lionel Menzies cleared his throat. He’d sat down to massage his shin but left off doing this to gesture toward the door.

“Had I . . . better go after Jem?”

“No. He’s all right . . . I mean . . . he’s with Ernie. I can see him.” They were in the parking lot, just visible in the glow of light from the neon sign. Jem had cannoned into Ernie, who was coming toward the restaurant, and was clinging to him like a limpet. As Brianna watched, Ernie, an experienced father, knelt down and hugged Jem to him, patting his back and smoothing his hair, talking earnestly to him.

“Mmphm.” It was the waitress with Menzie’s butty, her stolid face melted into sympathy. “The wee lassie’s tired, nay doubt.”

“I’m sorry,” Bree said feebly, and nodded at the shattered dish and splotch of chocolate ice cream on the wall. “I’ll, um, pay for it.”

“Och, dinna fash, lass,” the waitress said, shaking her head. “I’ve had weans. I can see ye’ve got enough trouble to be goin’ on with. Let me fetch ye oot a nice cup o’ tea.”

She trundled off. Without speaking, Lionel Menzies popped the tab on his can of Irn-Bru and shoved it in her direction. She picked it up and gulped it. The advertising implied that the stuff was made from rusty iron girders salvaged from Glasgow shipyards. Only in Scotland would this have been considered a good selling point, she reflected. But it was about half sugar, and the glucose hit her bloodstream like the elixir of life.

Menzies nodded, seeing her straighten up like a wilting flower revived.

“Where is Roger?” he asked softly.

“I don’t know,” she said, just as softly; Mandy had given a final hiccuping sigh and fallen heavily asleep, face still buried in Brianna’s coat. She twitched the quilted fabric aside so Mandy wouldn’t suffocate. “And I don’t know when he’s coming back.”

He grimaced, looking unhappy and strangely embarrassed; he was having trouble meeting her eyes.

“I see. Mmphm. Was it—I mean, did he . . . leave because of what Rob . . . er . . . did to Jem?” His voice dropped even lower and she blinked at him. Rising blood sugar had brought her thoughts back into focus, though, and suddenly the penny dropped, and the blood rushed into her face.

He thought Rob had abducted Jemmy in order to—and Jemmy had said, “You know what he did,” and she’d shut him up sharp . . . and she’d said she didn’t want the police involved . . . oh, dear Lord. She took a deep breath and rubbed a hand over her face, wondering whether it was better to let him think Rob had molested Jemmy—and was now trying to murder her in order to cover that up—or to tell him some halfway believable version of some part of the truth.

“Rob came to my house last night and tried to rape me,” she said, leaning over Mandy’s head in order to keep her voice low enough to escape the flapping ears of the truckers sitting at the counter, who were glancing covertly over their shoulders at her. “He’d already taken Jem, and Roger had left to try to find him. We thought he’d taken Jem away to . . . to Orkney.” That seems far enough. “I . . . left messages; I expect Roger’ll be back any time now—as soon as he hears that Jemmy’s been found.” She crossed her fingers under the table.

Menzies’s face went blank, all his previous assumptions colliding with new ones.

“He—he—oh.” He paused for a moment, mechanically took a swallow of her cold tea, and made a face. “You mean,” he said carefully, “that you think Rob took Jem in order to lure your husband away, so that he . . . ehm . . . could—”

“Yes, I do.” She seized on this suggestion gratefully.

“But . . . those other people. With the—” He passed a hand vaguely over his head, indicating the balaclavas. “What on earth . . . ?”

“I have no idea,” she said firmly. She wasn’t going to mention the Spanish gold unless or until she had to. The fewer people who knew about that, the better. And as for the other thing . . .

But the mention of “those other people” reminded her of something, and she groped in her capacious pocket, drawing out the balaclava that she’d snatched off the man who’d broken the window with the rifle. She’d caught the barest glimpse of his face amidst the shifting light and shadow and had had no time to think about it. But now she did, and a fresh qualm went through her.

“Do you know a man named Michael Callahan?” she asked, trying to keep her voice casual. Menzies glanced at the balaclava, then at her, eyes widening.

“Of course I do. He’s an archaeologist, something to do with ORCA—Orkney Research Centre, I mean. Orkney . . . You’re no telling me he was with the people who—”

“Pretty sure. I saw his face for just a second when I pulled this off him. And”—she grimaced in distaste, plucking a tuft of sandy hair from the inside of the balaclava—“apparently that’s not all I pulled off him. Rob knows him. He came out to Lallybroch to give us an opinion on some ruins up behind the house, and stayed to supper.”

“Oh, dearie me,” Menzies murmured, seeming to sink back into his seat. He took off his glasses and massaged his forehead for a bit. She watched him think, feeling increasingly remote.

The waitress hove to and put down a fresh cup of hot, milky tea, already sugared and stirred. Brianna thanked her and sat sipping it, watching the night outside. Ernie had taken Jem off in the direction of the garage, doubtless to check on his van.

“I can see why you don’t want trouble,” Menzies said carefully at last. He’d eaten half his butty; the rest of it lay on the plate, oozing ketchup in a queasy sort of way. “But really, Mrs.—may I call you Brianna?”

“Bree,” she said. “Sure.”

“Bree,” he said, nodding, and one corner of his mouth twitched.

“Yes, I know what it means in Scots,” she said dryly, seeing the thought cross his face. A bree was a storm or a great disturbance.

Lionel’s face broke into a half smile.

“Yes. Well . . . what I’m thinking, Bree—I hate to suggest it, but what if Rob’s done some harm to Roger? Would it not be worth the questions to get the police to look for him?”

“He hasn’t.” She felt unutterably tired and wanted only to go home. “Believe me, he hasn’t. Roger went with his—his cousin, Buck. And if Rob had managed to hurt them somehow, he’d certainly have gloated about that when he . . . well.” She took a breath that went all the way down to her aching feet and shifted her weight, getting a solid hold on Mandy.

“Lionel. Tell you what. Drive us home, will you? If that lot’s still lurking around, then we’ll go to the police right away. If not—it can wait ’til the morning.”

He didn’t like it, but he was suffering from the aftereffects of shock and fatigue, too, and after more argument finally agreed, done in by her implacable stubbornness.

Ernie had telephoned for a ride, after being assured that Lionel would see them home. Lionel was tense on the way back to Lallybroch, hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel, but the Fiat’s headlights showed the dooryard empty, save for a discarded tire lying in the gravel, shredded rubber spraying out like the wings of some gigantic vulture shot out of the sky.

Both the kids were sound asleep; Lionel carried Jem in, then insisted on searching the house with Bree, nailing up laths across the shattered window in the parlor while she combed the rooms—again—suffering déjà vu.

“Had I not better spend the night?” Lionel asked, hesitating at the door. “I’d be happy to sit up and keep watch, you know.”

She smiled, though it took a lot of effort.

“Your wife will already be wondering where you are. No, you’ve done enough—more than enough for us. Don’t worry; I’ll . . . take steps in the morning. I just want the kids to be able to have a good night’s sleep in their own beds.”

He nodded, lips drawn in in worry, and glanced round the foyer, its gleaming walnut paneling serene in the lamplight, even the English saber slashes somehow grown homely and peaceful with age.

“Do you maybe have family—friends—in America?” he asked abruptly. “I mean, it might not be a bad idea to get right away for a bit, aye?”

“Yes,” she said. “I was thinking that myself. Thanks, Lionel. Good night.”

42 ALL MY LOVE

SHE WAS SHAKING. Had been shaking ever since Lionel Menzies left. With a faint sense of abstraction, she held out her hand, fingers spread, and watched it vibrate like a tuning fork. Then, irritated, made a fist and smacked it hard into the palm of her other hand. Smacked it again and again, clenching her teeth in fury, until she had to stop, gasping for breath, her palm tingling.

“Okay,” she said under her breath, teeth still clenched. “Okay.” The red haze had lifted like a cloud, leaving a pile of cold, icy little thoughts under it.

We have to go.

Where?

And when?

And the coldest of all:

What about Roger?

She was sitting in the study, the wood paneling glowing softly in the candlelight. There was a perfectly good reading lamp, as well as the ceiling fixture, but she’d lit the big candle instead. Roger liked to use that when he wrote late at night, writing down the songs and poems he’d memorized, sometimes with a goose quill. He said it helped him recall the words, bringing back an echo of the time where he’d learned them.

The candle’s smell of hot wax brought back an echo of him. If she closed her eyes, she could hear him, humming low in his throat as he worked, stopping now and then to cough or clear his damaged throat. Her fingers rubbed softly over the wooden desk, summoning the touch of the rope scar on his throat, passing round to cup the back of his head, bury her fingers in the thick black warmth of his hair, bury her face in his chest . . .

She was shaking again, this time with silent sobs. She curled her fist again, but this time just breathed until it stopped.

“This will not do,” she said out loud, sniffed deeply, and, clicking on the light, she blew out the candle and reached for a sheet of paper and a ballpoint pen.

WIPING THE TEARS off her face with the back of her hand, she folded the letter carefully. Envelope? No. If anybody found this, an envelope wouldn’t stop them. She turned the letter over and, sniffing, wrote Roger, in her best parochial-school penmanship.

She groped in her pocket for a Kleenex and blew her nose, feeling obscurely that she should do something more . . . ceremonial? . . . with the letter, but other than putting it in the fireplace and touching a match to it so the north wind would carry it, as her parents had done with her childhood letters to Santa, nothing occurred to her.

In her present state of mind, she found it comforting that Santa had always come through.

She opened the big drawer and was groping at the back for the catch that released the secret hiding place when something else did occur to her. She slammed the big drawer shut and yanked open the wide shallow one in the center, which held pens and paper clips and rubber bands—and a lipstick left in the downstairs powder room by some random dinner guest.

It was pink but a dark pink, and it didn’t matter that it clashed with her hair. She applied it hastily by feel, then pressed her lips carefully over the word Roger.

“I love you,” she whispered, and, touching the pink kiss with one fingertip, opened the big drawer again and pushed the spot that unlocked the hiding place. It wasn’t a secret drawer but a space built into the underside of the desk. A sliding panel let you reach up into a shallow hole about six inches by eight.

When Roger discovered it, it had three stamps printed with the head of Queen Victoria in it—unfortunately, all run-of-the-mill late-Victorian postage rather than a helpfully valuable One-Penny Black—and a wispy curl of a child’s fine blond hair, faded with age, tied with white thread and a tiny scrap of heather. They’d left the stamps there—who knew, maybe they would be valuable by the time another few generations inherited the desk—but she’d put the lock of hair between the pages of her Bible and said a small prayer for the child and his—her?—parents, whenever she came across it.

The letter fit easily into the heart of the old desk. A moment of panic: should she have included locks of the kids’ hair? No, she thought fiercely. Don’t be morbid. Sentimental, yes. Morbid, no.

“Lord, let us all be together again,” she whispered, pushing down the fear, and, closing her eyes, shut the panel with a little click.

If she hadn’t opened her eyes right as she withdrew her hand, she’d never have seen it. Just the edge of something hanging down at the back of the big drawer, barely visible. She reached up and found an envelope, far back, attached to the underside of the desk with Scotch tape. This had dried with age; her earlier slamming of the drawer had probably loosened it.

She turned the envelope over with a sense of something happening in a dream and was, dreamlike, not surprised to see the initials B.E.R. written on the yellowed envelope. Very slowly, she opened it.

Dearest Deadeye, she read, and felt each tiny hair on her body rise slow and silent, one at a time.

Dearest Deadeye,

You’ve just left me, after our wonderful afternoon among the clay pigeons. My ears are still ringing. Whenever we shoot, I’m torn between immense pride in your ability, envy of it—and fear that you may someday need it.

What a queer feeling it is, writing this. I know that you’ll eventually learn who—and perhaps, what—you are. But I have no idea how you’ll come to that knowledge. Am I about to reveal you to yourself, or will this be old news when you find it? If we’re both lucky, I may be able to tell you in person, when you’re a little older. And if we’re very lucky, it will come to nothing. But I daren’t risk your life in that hope, and you’re not yet old enough that I could tell you.

I’m sorry, sweetheart, that’s terribly melodramatic. And the last thing I want to do is alarm you. I have all the confidence in the world in you. But I am your father and thus prey to the fears that afflict all parents—that something dreadful and unpreventable will happen to one’s child, and you powerless to protect her.

“What the hell, Daddy?” She rubbed hard at the back of her neck to ease the prickling there.

Men who’ve lived through war usually don’t talk about it, save to other soldiers. Men from my part of the Service don’t talk to anyone, and not only because of the Official Secrets Act. But silence eats at the soul. I had to talk to someone, and my old friend Reggie Wakefield became my confessor.

(That’s the Reverend Reginald Wakefield, a Church of Scotland minister who lives in Inverness. If you’re reading this letter, I’ll very likely be dead. If Reggie is still alive and you are of age, go to see him; he has my permission to tell you anything he knows at that point.)

“Of age?” Hastily, she tried to calculate when this had been written. Clay pigeons. Sherman’s—the shooting range where he’d taught her to use a shotgun. The shotgun had been a present for her fifteenth birthday. And her father had died soon after her seventeenth birthday.

The Service has nothing directly to do with this; don’t go looking in that direction for information. I mention it only because that’s where I learned what a conspiracy looks like. I also met a great many people in the war, many of them in high places, and many of them strange; the two overlap more often than one might wish.

Why is this so hard to say? If I’m dead, your mother may have told you already the story of your birth. She promised me that she would never speak of it, so long as I lived, and I’m sure she hasn’t. If I’m dead, though, she might—

Forgive me, darling. It’s hard to say, because I love your mother and I love you. And you are my daughter forever, but you were sired by another man.

All right, that’s out. Seeing it in black and white, my impulse is to rip this paper to bits and burn them, but I won’t. You have to know.

Shortly after the war ended, your mother and I came to Scotland. Something of a second honeymoon. She went out one afternoon to pick flowers—and never came back. I searched—everyone searched—for months, but there was no sign, and eventually the police stopped—well, in fact they didn’t stop suspecting me of murdering her, damn them, but they grew tired of harassing me. I had begun to put my life back together, made up my mind to move on, perhaps leave Britain—and then Claire came back. Three years after her disappearance, she showed up in the Highlands, filthy, starved, battered—and pregnant.

Pregnant, she said, by a Jacobite Highlander from 1743 named James Fraser. I won’t go into all that was said between us; it was a long time ago and it doesn’t matter—save for the fact that IF your mother was telling the truth, and did indeed travel back in time, then you may have the ability to do it, too. I hope you don’t. But if you should—Lord, I can’t believe I’m writing this in all seriousness. But I look at you, darling, with the sun on your ruddy hair, and I see him. I can’t deny that.

Well. It took a long time. A very long time. But your mother never changed her story, and though we didn’t speak about it after a while, it became obvious that she wasn’t mentally deranged (which I had rather naturally assumed to be the case, initially). And I began . . . to look for him.

Now I must digress for a moment; forgive me. I think you won’t have heard of the Brahan Seer. Colorful as he was—if, in fact, he existed—he’s not really known much beyond those circles with a taste for the more outlandish aspects of Scottish history. Reggie, though, is a man of immense curiosity, as well as immense learning, and was fascinated by the Seer—one Kenneth MacKenzie, who lived in the seventeenth century (maybe), and who made a great number of prophecies about this and that, sometimes at the behest of the Earl of Seaforth.

Naturally, the only prophecies mentioned in connection with this man are the ones that appeared to come true: he predicted, for instance, that when there were five bridges over the River Ness, the world would fall into chaos. In August 1939 the fifth bridge over the Ness was opened, and in September, Hitler invaded Poland. Quite enough chaos for anyone.

The Seer came to a sticky end, as prophets often do (do please remember that, darling, will you?), burnt to death in a spiked barrel of tar at the instigation of Lady Seaforth—to whom he had unwisely prophesied that her husband was having affairs with various ladies while away in Paris. (That one was likely true, in my opinion.)

Amongst his lesser-known prophecies, though, was one called the Fraser Prophecy. There isn’t a great deal known about this, and what there is is rambling and vague, as prophecies usually are, the Old Testament notwithstanding. The only relevant bit, I think, is this: “The last of Lovat’s line will rule Scotland.”

Pause if you will, now, dear, and look at the paper I am enclosing with this letter.

Fumbling and clumsy with shock, she dropped the sheets altogether and had to retrieve them from the floor. It was easy to tell which paper he meant; the paper was flimsier, a photocopy of a handwritten chart—some sort of family tree—the writing not her father’s.

Yes. Well. This bit of disturbing information came into my hands from Reggie, who’d had it from the wife of a fellow named Stuart Lachlan. Lachlan had died suddenly, and as his widow was clearing out his desk, she found this and decided to pass it on to Reggie, knowing that he and Lachlan had shared an interest in history and in the Lovat family, they being local to Inverness; the clan seat is in Beauly. Reggie, of course, recognized the names.

You likely know nothing about the Scottish aristocracy, but I knew Simon Lovat, Lord Lovat that is, in the war—he was Commandos, then Special Forces. We weren’t close friends but knew each other casually, in the way of business, you might say.

“Whose business?” she said aloud, suspicious. “His, or yours?” She could just see her father’s face, with the hidden smile in the corner of his mouth, keeping something back but letting you know it was there.

The Frasers of Lovat have a fairly straightforward line of descent, until we come to Old Simon—well, they’re all called Simon—the one they call the Old Fox, who was executed for treason after the Jacobite Rebellion—the ’45, they call it. (There’s quite a bit about him in my book on the Jacobites; don’t know if you’ll ever read that, but it’s there, should you feel curious.)

“Should I feel curious,” she muttered. “Ha.” Brianna sensed a definite, if muted, note of accusation there and pressed her lips together, as much annoyed at herself for not having read her father’s books yet as at him for mentioning it.

Simon was one of the more colorful Frasers, in assorted ways. He had three wives but was not famous for fidelity. He did have a few legitimate children, and God knows how many illegitimate ones (though two illegitimate sons were acknowledged), but his heir was Young Simon, known as the Young Fox. Young Simon survived the Rising, though attainted and stripped of his property. He eventually got most of it back through the courts, but the struggle took him most of a long life, and while he married, he did so at a very advanced age and had no children. His younger brother, Archibald, inherited, but then died childless, as well.

So Archibald was the “last of Lovat’s line”—there’s a direct line of descent between him and the Fraser of Lovat who would have been concurrent with the Brahan Seer—but clearly he wasn’t the Scottish ruler foreseen.

You see the chart, though. Whoever made it has listed the two illegitimate sons, as well as Young Simon and his brother. Alexander and Brian, born to different mothers. Alexander entered the priesthood and became the abbot of a monastery in France. No known children. But Brian—

She tasted bile and thought she might throw up. But Brian—She closed her eyes in reflex, but it didn’t matter. The chart was burned on the inside of her eyelids.

She stood up, pushing back the chair with a screak, and lurched out into the hallway, heart thundering in her ears. Swallowing repeatedly, she went to the lobby and got the shotgun from its place behind the coat rack. She felt a little better with it in hand.

“It isn’t right.” She hadn’t realized that she’d spoken aloud; her own voice startled her. “It’s not right,” she repeated, in a low, fierce voice. “They left people out. What about Aunt Jenny? She had six kids! What about them?”

She was stomping down the hallway, gun in hand, swinging the barrel from side to side as though she expected Rob Cameron—or somebody, and the thought made her shudder—to jump out of the parlor or the kitchen or come sliding down the banister. That thought made her look up the stairs—she’d left all the lights on when she came down from tucking in the kids—but the landing was empty and no noise came from above.

A little calmer, she searched the ground floor carefully, testing every door and window. And the priest’s hole, whose empty blackness gaped mockingly up at her.

Jem and Mandy were all right. She knew they were. But she still went upstairs, soft-footed, and stood by their beds for a long time, watching the pale glow of the Snow White night-light on their faces.

The longcase clock in the hall below struck the hour, and then a single bong! She drew a deep breath and went down to finish reading her father’s letter.

The current line of Fraser of Lovat is descended from a collateral branch; presumably the Fraser Prophecy isn’t referring to one of them—though there are plenty of heirs in that line.

I don’t know who drew this chart, but I do intend to find out. This letter is in case I don’t. In case of a number of things.

One of those things being the possibility that your mother’s story is true—I still have difficulty believing it, when I wake in the morning beside her and everything is so normal. But late at night, when I’m alone with the documents . . . Well, why not admit it? I found the record of their marriage. James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser and Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp. I’m not sure whether to be grateful or outraged that she didn’t marry him using my name.

Forgive me, I’m rambling. It’s hard to keep emotion out of it, but I’ll try. The essence of what I’m saying is this: if you can indeed go back in time (and possibly return), you are a person of very great interest to a number of people, for assorted reasons. Should anyone in the more shadowed realm of government be halfway convinced that you are what you may be, you would be watched. Possibly approached. (In earlier centuries, the British government pressed men into service. They still do, if less obviously.)

That’s a very remote contingency, but it is a real one; I must mention it.

There are private parties who would also have a deep interest in you for this reason—and evidently there is someone who has spotted you and is watching. The chart showing your line of descent, with dates, indicates that much. It also suggests that this person’s or persons’ interest may be a concern with the Fraser Prophecy. What could be more intriguing to that sort of person than the prospect of someone who is “the last of Lovat’s line” and is also a time traveler? These sorts of people—I know them well—invariably believe in mystic powers of all sorts—nothing would draw them more powerfully than the conviction that you hold such power.

Such people are usually harmless. But they can be very dangerous indeed.

If I find whoever drew this chart, I will question them and do my best to neutralize any possible threat to you. But as I say—I know the look of a conspiracy. Nutters of this sort thrive in company. I might miss one.

“Neutralize them,” she murmured, the chill in her hands spreading through her arms and chest, crystallizing around her heart. She had no doubt at all what he’d meant by that, the bland matter-of-factness of the term notwithstanding. And had he found him—them?

Don’t—I repeat, don’t—go anywhere near the Service or anyone connected with it. At best, they’d think you insane. But if you are indeed what you may be, the last people who should ever know it are the funny buggers, as we used to be known during the war.

And if worse should come to worst—and you can do it—then the past may be your best avenue of escape. I have no idea how it works; neither does your mother, or at least she says so. I hope I may have given you a few tools to help, if that should be necessary.

And . . . there’s him. Your mother said that Fraser sent her back to me, knowing that I would protect her—and you. She thought that he died immediately afterward. He did not. I looked for him, and I found him. And, like him, perhaps I send you back, knowing—as he knew of me—that he will protect you with his life.

I will love you forever, Brianna. And I know whose child you truly are.

With all my love,

Dad

43 APPARITION

THE LOCHABER DISTRICT, according to the North of Scotland Hydro Electric Board (as interpreted by Brianna), is a “high glaciated landscape.”

“That means it goes up and down a lot,” Roger explained to Buck, as they fought their way through what he thought was part of the Locheil Forest, looking for the edge of Loch Lochy.

“Ye don’t say?” Buck glanced bleakly over his shoulder at the distant hump of Ben Nevis, then back at Roger. “I’d not noticed.”

“Cheer up, it’s all downhill for a bit now. And the midgies are all dead wi’ the cold. Count your blessings.” Roger felt unaccountably cheerful this morning—perhaps only because the walking was downhill, after a strenuous week of combing the Cameron clan lands, a bewildering network of corries, tarns, moraines, and Munros, those deceptive summits with their gently rounded tops and their unspeakable slopes. Thank God no one lived on top of them.

Perhaps also because, while they hadn’t found Jem or any trace of him, it was progress, of a sort. The Camerons on the whole had been hospitable, after the initial surprise, and they’d had the luck to find a tacksman of Lochiel, the clan chieftain, who’d sent a man to Tor Castle for them. Word had come back a day later: no word of a stranger matching Rob Cameron’s description—though, in fact, Rob looked like half the people Roger had met in the last few days—or Jem’s, he being a lot more noticeable.

They’d worked their way back along the shores of Loch Arkaig—the fastest way for someone to travel from the Great Glen, if heading for the ocean. But no word of a boat stolen or hired, and Roger began to feel that Cameron had not, after all, sought refuge or help among his ancient clan—a relief, on the whole.

“Blessings, is it?” Buck rubbed a hand over his face. Neither of them had shaved in a week, and he looked as red-eyed and grubby as Roger felt. He scratched his jaw consideringly. “Aye, well. A fox took a shit next to me last night, but I didna step in it this morning. I suppose that’ll do, for a start.”

The next day and night dampened Roger’s mood of optimism somewhat: it rained incessantly, and they spent the night under heaps of half-dry bracken on the edge of a black tarn, emerging at dawn chilled and frowsty, to the shrieks of plovers and killdeer.

He hesitated momentarily as they rode past the place where they might turn toward Cranesmuir; he wanted badly to talk again with Dr. McEwan. His hand found his throat, thumb stroking the scar. “Maybe,” the healer had said. “Just maybe.” But McEwan couldn’t aid them in looking for Jem; that visit would have to wait.

Still, he felt his heart rise as they came over the pass and saw Lallybroch below. It was bittersweet, coming home to a home that was not his and might never be again. But it promised refuge and succor, if only temporarily—and it promised hope, at least in these last few minutes before they reached the door.

“Och, it’s you!” It was Jenny Fraser who opened the door, her look of wariness changing to one of pleased welcome. Roger heard Buck behind him making a small humming noise of approval at sight of her, and, despite his determination not to hope too much, Roger felt his own spirits rise.

“And this will be your kinsman?” She curtsied to Buck. “Welcome to ye, sir. Come ben; I’ll call Taggie to mind the horses.” She turned in a flicker of white apron and petticoats, beckoning them to follow. “Da’s in the speak-a-word,” she called over her shoulder as she headed for the kitchen. “He’s something for you!”

“Mr. MacKenzie and . . . this would be also Mr. MacKenzie, aye?” Brian Fraser came out of the study, smiling, and offered Buck his hand. Roger could see him looking Buck over with close attention, a slight frown between his dark brows. Not disapproval—puzzlement, as though he knew Buck from somewhere and was trying to think where.

Roger knew exactly where and felt again that peculiar quiver he’d felt on meeting Dougal MacKenzie. The resemblance between father and son was by no means instantly striking—their coloring was very different, and Roger thought most of Buck’s features came from his mother—but there was a fugitive similarity, nonetheless, something in their manner. Men cocksure of their charm—and no less charming for knowing it.

Buck was smiling, making commonplace courtesies, complimenting the house and its estate. . . . The puzzlement faded from Brian’s eyes, and he invited them to sit, calling down the hall to the kitchen for someone to bring them a bite and a dram.

“Well, then,” Brian said, pulling out the chair from behind his desk in order to sit with them. “As ye havena got the lad with ye, I see he’s not found yet. Have ye heard any news of him, though?” He looked from Buck to Roger, worried but hopeful.

“No,” Roger said, and cleared his throat. “Not a word. But—your daughter said that you . . . might have heard something?”

Fraser’s face changed at once, lighting a little.

“Well, it’s nay so much heard anything, but . . .” He rose and went to rummage in the desk, still talking.

“A captain from the garrison came by here twa, three days ago, wi’ a small party of soldiers. The new man in charge—what was his name, Jenny?” For Jenny had come in with a tray, this holding a teapot, cups, a small bottle of whisky, and a plate of cake. The smell made Roger’s stomach rumble.

“Who? Oh, the new redcoat captain? Randall, he said. Jonathan Randall.” Her color rose a little, and her father smiled to see it. Roger felt the smile freeze on his own face.

“Aye, he took to you, lass. Wouldna be surprised if he came back one of these days.”

“Precious little good it will do him if he does,” Jenny snapped. “Have ye lost that thing, an athair?”

“No, no, I’m sure I put . . .” Brian’s voice trailed off as he scrabbled in the drawer. “Oh. Erm, aye.” He coughed, hand in the drawer, and, through his shock, Roger realized what the trouble was. The desk had a secret compartment. Evidently Brian had put the “thing,” whatever it was, in the hiding place and was now wondering how to get it out again without revealing the secret to his visitors.

Roger rose to his feet.

“Will ye pardon me, mistress?” he asked, bowing to Jenny. “I’d forgot something in my saddlebag. Come with me, aye?” he added to Buck. “It’s maybe in with your things.”

Jenny looked surprised but nodded, and Roger blundered out, Buck making little grunts of annoyance at his heels.

“What the devil’s wrong wi’ you?” Buck said, the minute they were out the door. “Ye went white as a sheet in there, and ye still look like a fish that’s been dead a week.”

“I feel like one,” Roger said tersely. “I know Captain Randall—or, rather, I know a lot of things about him. Leave it that he’s the last person I’d want to have any knowledge of Jem.”

“Oh.” Buck’s face went blank, then firmed. “Aye, well. We’ll see what it is he brought, and then we’ll go and have it out with him if we think he might have the lad.”

What it is he brought. Roger fought back all the horrible things that phrase conjured—Jem’s ear, a finger, a lock of his hair—because if it had been anything like that, surely the Frasers wouldn’t be calm about it. But if Randall had brought some hideous token in a box?

“Why, though?” Buck was frowning, plainly trying to read Roger’s expression, which, judging from Buck’s own, must be appalling. “Why would this man mean you and the lad ill? He’s never met ye, has he?”

“That,” Roger said, choking down his feelings, “is an excellent question. But the man is a—do you know what a sadist is?”

“No, but it’s plainly something ye dinna want close to your wean. Here, sir! We’ll be taking those in, thank ye kindly.” They’d come right round the house by now, and McTaggart the hired man was coming down the path from the stable, their saddlebags in either hand.

McTaggart looked surprised but surrendered the heavy bags gladly and went back to his work.

“I ken ye just wanted to get us out of there so to give your man a bit of privacy to work the secret drawer,” Buck remarked. “And he kens that fine. Do we need to take in something, though?”

“How do you know about—” Buck grinned at him, and Roger dismissed the question with an irritable gesture. “Yes. We’ll give Miss Fraser the cheese I bought yesterday.”

“Ah, Mrs. Jenny.” Buck made the humming noise again. “I wouldna blame Captain Randall. That skin! And those bubs, come to that—”

“Shut up right this minute!”

Buck did, shocked out of his jocularity.

“What?” he said, in quite a different tone. “What is it?”

Roger unclenched his fist, with an effort.

“It’s a bloody long story; I haven’t time to tell it to ye now. But it’s—something I know from the other end. From my time. In a year or so, Randall’s coming back here. And he’s going to do something terrible. And, God help me, I don’t think I can stop it.”

“Something terrible,” Buck repeated slowly. His eyes were boring into Roger’s own, dark as serpentine. “To that bonnie wee lass? And ye think ye can’t stop it? Why, man, how can ye—”

“Just shut up,” Roger repeated doggedly. “We’ll talk about it later, aye?”

Buck puffed out his cheeks, still staring at Roger, then blew out his breath with a sound of disgust and shook his head, but he picked up his saddlebag and followed without further argument.

The cheese—a thing the size of Roger’s outstretched hand, wrapped in fading leaves—was received with pleasure and taken off to the kitchen, leaving Roger and Buck alone once more with Brian Fraser. Fraser had regained his own composure and, picking up a tiny cloth-wrapped parcel from his desk, put it gently in Roger’s hand.

Too light to be a finger . . .

“Captain Randall said that Captain Buncombe sent word out wi’ all the patrols, and one of them came across this wee bawbee and sent it back to Fort William. None of them ever saw such a thing before, but because of the name, they were thinking it might have to do wi’ your lad.”

“The name?” Roger untied the cord and the cloth fell open. For an instant, he didn’t know what the hell he was seeing. He picked it up; it was light as a feather, dangling from his fingers.

Two disks, made of something like pressed cardboard, threaded onto a bit of light woven cord. One round, colored red—the other was green and octagonal.

“Oh, Jesus,” he said. “Oh, Christ Jesus.”

J. W. MacKenzie was printed on both disks, along with a number and two letters. He turned the red disk gently over with a shaking fingertip and read what he already knew was stamped there.

RAF

He was holding the dog tags of a Royal Air Force flier. Circa World War II.

44 AMPHISBAENA

“YE CANNA BE SURE those things name your father.” Buck nodded at the dog tags, their cord still wrapped round Roger’s hand, the tiny disks themselves folded tight in his palm. “How many MacKenzies are there, for God’s sake?”

“Lots.” Roger sat down on a big lichen-covered boulder. They were at the top of the hill that rose behind Lallybroch; the broch itself stood on the slope just below them, its conical roof a broad black whorl of slates. “But not so bloody many who flew for the Royal Air Force in World War Two. And even fewer who disappeared without a trace. As for those who might be time travelers . . .”

Roger couldn’t remember what he’d said when he saw the dog tags or what Brian Fraser had said to him. When he’d started to notice things again, he was sitting in Brian’s big wheel-backed chair with a stoneware mug of hot tea cupped between his hands and the entire household crammed into the doorway, regarding him with looks ranging from compassion to curiosity. Buck was squatting in front of him, frowning in what might have been concern or simply curiosity.

“Sorry,” Roger had said, cleared his throat, and set the tea undrunk on the desk. His hands throbbed from the heat of the cup. “Rather a shock. I—thank you.”

“Is it something to do wi’ your wee boy, then?” Jenny Fraser had asked, deep-blue eyes dark with concern.

“I think so, yes.” He’d got his wits back now and rose stiffly, nodding to Brian. “Thank ye, sir. I canna thank ye enough for all ye’ve done for me—for us. I . . . need to think a bit what’s to do now. If ye’ll excuse me, Mistress Fraser?”

Jenny nodded, not taking her eyes from his face but shooing the maids and the cook away from the door so he could pass through it. Buck had followed him, murmuring reassuring things to the multitude, and come along with him, not speaking until they reached the solitude of the craggy hilltop. Where Roger had explained just what the dog tags were and to whom they had belonged.

“Why two?” Buck asked, reaching out a tentative finger to touch the tags. “And why are they different colors?”

“Two in case one was destroyed by whatever killed you,” Roger said, taking a deep breath. “The colors—they’re made of pressed cardboard treated with different chemicals—substances, I mean. One resists water and the other resists fire, but I couldn’t tell ye which is which.”

Speaking of technicalities made it just barely possible to speak. Buck, with unaccustomed delicacy, was waiting for Roger to bring up the unspeakable.

How did the tags turn up here? And when—and under what circumstances—had they become detached from J(eremiah) W(alter)MacKenzie, Roman Catholic, serial number 448397651, RAF?

“Claire—my mother-in-law—I told ye about her, did I not?”

“A bit, aye. A seer, was she?”

Roger laughed shortly. “Aye, like I am. Like you are. Easy to be a seer if what you see has already happened.”

What’s already happened . . .

“Oh, God,” he said out loud, and curled over, pressing the fist that held the dog tags hard against his forehead.

“All right, there?” Buck asked after a moment. Roger straightened up with a deep breath.

“Know the expression ‘damned if ye do, damned if ye don’t’?”

“No, though I wouldna think it was one a minister would use.” Buck’s mouth twitched into a half smile. “Are ye not dedicated to the notion that there’s always one sure way out o’ damnation?”

“A minister. Aye.” Roger breathed deep again. There was a lot of oxygen on a Scottish hilltop, but somehow there didn’t seem quite enough just this minute. “I’m not sure that religion was constructed with time travelers in mind.”

Buck’s brows rose at that.

“Constructed?” he echoed, surprised. “Who builds God?”

That actually made Roger laugh, which made him feel a little better, if only momentarily.

“We all do,” he said dryly. “If God makes man in His image, we all return the favor.”

“Mmphm.” Buck thought that one over, then nodded slowly. “Wouldna just say ye’re wrong about that. But God’s there, nonetheless, whether we ken quite what He is or not. Isn’t He?”

“Yeah.” Roger wiped his knuckles under his nose, which had begun to run with the cold wind. “Ever hear of Saint Teresa of Avila?”

“No.” Buck gave him a look. “Nor have I heard of a Protestant minister who has to do wi’ saints.”

“I take advice where I can get it. But St. Teresa once remarked to God, ‘If this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few of them.’ God’s got his own ways.”

Buck smiled; it was one of his rare, unwary smiles, and it heartened Roger enough to try to come to grips with the situation.

“Well, Claire—my mother-in-law—she told Brianna and me a good bit. About the things that happened when she went through the stones in 1743, and about things that had happened before that. Things about Captain Randall.” And in sentences as brief and unemotional as he could make them, he told the story: Randall’s raid on Lallybroch while Brian Fraser was away, his attack on Jenny Murray, and how Jamie Fraser—newly returned from Paris and wondering what to do with his life—had fought for his home and his sister’s honor, been arrested and taken to Fort William, where he had been flogged nearly to death.

“Twice,” Roger said, pausing for air. He swallowed. “The second time . . . Brian was there. He thought Jamie was dead, and he had a stroke—an apoplexy—on the spot. He . . . died.” He swallowed again. “Will die.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Bride.” Buck crossed himself. His face had gone pale. “Your man in the house? He’ll be dead in a year or two?”

“Yes.” Roger looked down at Lallybroch, pale and peaceful as the sheep that browsed its pastures. “And . . . there’s more. What happened later, just before the Rising.”

Buck raised a hand.

“I say that’s more than enough. I say we go down to Fort William and do for the wicked bugger now. Preemptive action, ye might say. That’s a legal term,” he explained, with an air of kindly condescension.

“An appealing notion,” Roger said dryly. “But if we did—what would happen four years from now?”

Buck frowned, not comprehending.

“When Claire came through the stones in 1743, she met—will meet—Jamie Fraser, an outlaw with a price on his head, coming home from France. But if what happened with Captain Randall doesn’t happen—Jamie won’t be there. And if he isn’t . . . ?”

“Oh.” The frown grew deeper, comprehension dawning. “Oh, aye. I see. No Jamie, no Brianna . . .”

“No Jem or Mandy,” Roger finished. “Exactly.”

“Oh, God.” Buck bent his head and massaged the flesh between his brows with two fingers. “Damned if ye do, damned if ye don’t, did ye say? Enough to make your head spin like a top.”

“Yes, it is. But I have to do something, nonetheless.” He rubbed a thumb gently over the dog tags’ surfaces. “I’m going down to Fort William to talk to Captain Randall. I have to know where these came from.”

BUCK LOOKED squiggle-eyed at the tags, lips pressed together, then switched the look to Roger.

“D’ye think your lad’s with your father, somehow?”

“No.” That particular thought hadn’t occurred to Roger, and it shook him for a moment. He shrugged it away, though.

“No,” he repeated more firmly. “I’m beginning to think that maybe . . . maybe Jem’s not here at all.” The statement hung there in the air, revolving slowly. He glanced at Buck, who seemed to be glowering at it.

“Why not?” his kinsman asked abruptly.

“A, because we’ve found no hint of him. And B, because now there’s these.” He raised the tags, the light cardboard disks lifting in the breeze.

“Ye sound like your wife,” Buck said, half amused. “She does that, aye? Layin’ things out, A, B, C, and all.”

“That’s how Brianna’s mind works,” Roger said, feeling a brief surge of affection for her. “She’s very logical.”

And if I’m right, and Jem’s not here—where is he? Has he gone to another time—or did he not travel at all? As though the word “logical” had triggered it, a whole array of horrifying possibilities opened out before him.

“What I’m thinking—we were both concentrating on the name ‘Jeremiah’ when we came through, aye?”

“Aye, we were.”

“Well . . .” He twirled the cord between his fingers, making the disks spin slowly. “What if we got the wrong Jeremiah? That was my father’s name, too. And—and if Rob Cameron didn’t take Jem through the stones—”

“Why would he not?” Buck interrupted sharply. He transferred the glower to Roger. “His truck was there at Craigh na Dun. He wasn’t.”

“Plainly he wanted us to think he’d gone through. As to why—” He choked on the thought. Before he could clear his throat, Buck finished it for him.

“To get us away, so he’d have your missus to himself.” His face darkened with anger—part of it aimed at Roger. “I told her yon man had a hot eye for her.”

“Maybe he does,” he said shortly. “But think, aye? Beyond whatever he may have had in mind with regard to Brianna—” The mere words conjured up pictures that made the blood shoot up into his head. “Whatever he had in mind,” he repeated, as calmly as he could, “he likely also wanted to see whether it was true. About the stones. About whether we—or anyone—really could go through. Seeing’s believing, after all.”

Buck blew out his cheeks, considering.

“Ye think he was there, maybe? Watching to see if we disappeared?”

Roger shrugged, momentarily unable to speak for the thoughts clotting his brain.

Buck’s fists were clenched on his knees. He looked down at the house, then behind him at the rising mountains, and Roger knew exactly what he was thinking. He cleared his throat with a hacking growl.

“We’ve been gone for two weeks,” Roger said. “If he meant Brianna harm . . . he’ll have tried.” Jesus. If he—no. “She’ll not have let him harm her or the kids,” he went on, as steadily as he could. “If he tried anything, he’ll either be in jail or buried under the broch.” He lifted his chin toward the tower below, and Buck snorted in reluctant amusement.

“So, then. Aye, I want to rush straight back to Craigh na Dun, too. But think, man. We ken Cameron went to the stones after he took Jem. Would he not make Jem touch them, to see? And if he did . . . what if Cameron can’t travel but Jem did—to get away from him?”

“Mmphm.” Buck thought that one over and gave a reluctant nod. “So ye’re maybe thinkin’ that if the lad was scairt of Cameron and popped through accidental, he maybe wouldn’t try to come straight back?”

“He maybe couldn’t.” Roger was dry-mouthed and swallowed hard to generate enough saliva to speak. “He didn’t have a gemstone. And even with one . . .” He nodded at Buck. “Ken what happened to you, even with one. It does get worse each time. Jemmy might have been too scared to try.” And he might have tried, not made it, and now he’s lost for good . . . NO!

Buck nodded.

“So. Ye think he’s maybe with your da, after all?” He sounded dubious in the extreme.

Roger couldn’t bear sitting any longer. He stood up abruptly, thrusting the dog tags into the breast pocket of his coat.

“I don’t know. But this is the only solid bit of evidence we have. I have to go and see.”

45 THE CURE OF SOULS

“YE’RE OUT OF YOUR wee pink mind, ye ken that, aye?” Roger looked at Buck in amazement.

“Where the devil did you get that expression?”

“From your wife,” Buck replied. “Who’s a verra bonnie lass and a well-spoken one, forbye. And if ye mean to get back to her bed one of these days, ye’ll think better of what ye mean to do.”

“I’ve thought,” Roger said briefly. “And I’m doing it.” The entrance to Fort William looked much as it had when he’d come here with Brian Fraser nearly two weeks earlier, but this time with only a few people hastening in, shawls over their heads, and hats pulled down against the rain. The fort itself now seemed to have a sinister aspect, the gray stones bleak and streaked black with wet.

Buck reined up, grimacing as the horse shook its head and sprayed him with drops from its soaking mane.

“Aye, fine. I’m no going in there. If we have to kill him, it’s best if he doesna ken me, so I can get behind him. I’ll wait at yonder tavern.” He lifted his chin, indicating an establishment called the Peartree, a few hundred feet down the road from the fort, then kicked his horse into motion. Ten feet on, he turned and called over his shoulder, “One hour! If ye’re not with me by then, I’m comin’ in after ye!”

Roger smiled, despite his apprehension. He waved briefly to Buck and swung off his horse.

Bless me, Lord, he prayed. Help me to do the right thing—for everyone. Including Buck. And him.

He hadn’t actually stopped praying at any time since Jem had disappeared, though most of it was just the frantic, reflexive Dear Lord, let it be all right of everyone facing crisis. Over time, either the crisis or the petitioner wears down, and prayer either ceases or . . . the person praying starts to listen.

He knew that. And he was listening. But he was still taken aback to get an answer.

He had enough experience in the business of prayer to recognize an answer when it showed up, though, however unwelcome. And the pointed reminder, arriving as a random thought in the middle of their mud-spattered, rain-sodden journey—that Jack Randall’s soul was in as much danger as Brian Fraser’s life—was damned unwelcome.

“Well, then,” Buck had said, brightening under the soggy brim of his hat when Roger had shared his disturbance at this insight. “All the more reason to kill him now. Save yon Frasers, and keep the wicked wee sod from going to hell—if he hasn’t done something already as would send him there,” he’d added as an afterthought. “Two birds wi’ one stone, aye?”

Roger had squelched along for a moment before replying.

“Out of sheer curiosity—were you a solicitor or a barrister, when ye did law?”

“Solicitor. Why?”

“No wonder you failed at it. All your talents lie in the other direction. Can ye not have a conversation without arguing?”

“Not wi’ you,” Buck had said pointedly, and kicked his horse into a trot, sending up thumping clods of mud in his wake.

Roger gave his name and asked the army clerk if he might have a word with Captain Randall, then stood by the peat fire, shaking off as much water as he could before the man came back to lead him to Randall’s office.

To his surprise, it was the same office where he and Brian Fraser had had their audience with Captain Buncombe almost two weeks before. Randall was seated behind the desk, quill in hand, but looked up with a courteous expression at Roger’s entrance and half rose, with a small bow.

“Your servant, sir. Mr. MacKenzie, is that right? You’ve come from Lallybroch, I collect.”

“Your most obedient, sir,” Roger replied, adjusting his accent back to his normal Scots-tinged Oxbridge. “Mr. Brian Fraser was good enough to give me the object that you brought. I wanted both to thank you for your kind assistance—and to ask whether you might be able to tell me where the object was discovered.”

He knew about the banality of evil; human monsters came in human shapes. Even so, he was surprised. Randall was a handsome man, rather elegant in bearing, with a lively, interested expression, a humorous curve to his mouth, and warm dark eyes.

Well, he is human. And perhaps he’s not a monster yet.

“One of my messengers brought it in,” Randall replied, wiping his quill and dropping it into a stoneware jar full of such objects. “My predecessor, Captain Buncombe, had sent dispatches to Fort George and Fort Augustus about your son—I am very sorry for your situation,” he added rather formally. “A patrol from Ruthven Barracks had brought the ornament in. I’m afraid I don’t know where they discovered it, but perhaps the messenger who brought it from Ruthven does. I’ll send for him.”

Randall went to the door and spoke to the sentry outside. Coming back, he paused to open a cupboard, which revealed a wig stand, a powdering shaker, a pair of hairbrushes, a looking glass, and a small tray with a cut-glass decanter and glasses.

“Allow me to offer you refreshment, sir.” Randall poured a cautious inch into each glass and offered one to Roger. He picked up his own, his nostrils flaring slightly at the scent of the whisky. “The nectar of the country, I’m given to understand,” he said with a wry smile. “I am told I must develop a taste for it.” He took a wary sip, looking as though he expected imminent death to result.

“If I might suggest . . . a bit of water mixed with it is customary,” Roger said, carefully keeping all trace of amusement out of his voice. “Some say it opens the flavor, makes it smoother.”

“Oh, really?” Randall put down his glass, looking relieved. “That seems sensible. The stuff tastes as though it’s flammable. Sanders!” he shouted toward the door. “Bring some water!”

There was a slight pause, neither man knowing quite what to say next.

“The, um, thing,” Randall said. “Might I see it again? It’s quite remarkable. Is it a jewel of some kind? An ornament?”

“No. It’s a . . . sort of charm,” Roger said, fishing the dog tags out of his pocket. He felt an ache in his chest at thought of the small personal rituals that the fliers did—a lucky stone in the pocket, a special scarf, the name of a woman painted on the nose of a plane. Charms. Tiny bits of hopeful magic, protection against a vast sky filled with fire and death. “To preserve the soul.” In memory, at least.

Randall frowned a little, glancing from the dog tags to Roger’s face, then back. He was clearly thinking the same thing Roger was: And if the charm is detached from the person it was meant to protect . . . But he didn’t say anything, merely touched the green tag gently.

“J. W. Your son’s name is Jeremiah, I understand?”

“Yes. Jeremiah’s an old family name. It was my father’s name. I—” He was interrupted by the entrance of Private MacDonald, a very young soldier, dripping wet and slightly blue with cold, who saluted Captain Randall smartly, then gave way to a rattling cough that shook his spindly frame.

Once recovered, he complied at once with Randall’s order to tell Roger all he knew about the dog tags—but he didn’t know much. One of the soldiers stationed at Ruthven Barracks had won them in a dice game at a local pub. He did recall the name of the pub—the Fatted Grouse; he’d drunk there himself—and he thought the soldier had said he’d won the bawbee from a farmer come back from the market in Perth.

“Do you recall the name of the soldier who won them?” Roger asked.

“Oh, aye, sir. ’Twas Sergeant McLehose. And now I think—” A broad grin at the recollection showed crooked teeth. “I mind me of the farmer’s name, too! ’Twas Mr. Anthony Cumberpatch. It did tickle Sergeant McLehose, bein’ foreign and soundin’ like ‘cucumber patch.’” He sniggered, and Roger smiled himself. Captain Randall cleared his throat, and the sniggering stopped abruptly, Private MacDonald snapping to a sober attention.

“Thank you, Mr. MacDonald,” Randall said dryly. “That will be all.”

Private MacDonald, abashed, saluted and left. There was a moment’s silence, during which Roger became aware of the rain, grown harder now, clattering like gravel on the large casement window. A chilly draft leaked around its frame and touched his face. Glancing at the window, he saw the drill yard below, and the whipping post, a grim crucifix stark and solitary, black in the rain.

Oh, God.

Carefully, he folded up the dog tags again and put them away in his pocket. Then met Captain Randall’s dark eyes directly.

“Did Captain Buncombe tell you, sir, that I am a minister?”

Randall’s brows rose in brief surprise.

“No, he didn’t.” Randall was plainly wondering why Roger should mention this, but he was courteous. “My younger brother is a clergyman. Ah . . . Church of England, of course.” There was the faintest implied question there, and Roger answered it with a smile.

“I am a minister of the Church of Scotland myself, sir. But if I might . . . will ye allow me to offer a blessing? For the success of my kinsman and myself—and in thanks for your kind help to us.”

“I—” Randall blinked, clearly discomfited. “I—suppose so. Er . . . all right.” He leaned back a little, looking wary, hands on his blotter. He was completely taken aback when Roger leaned forward and grasped both his hands firmly. Randall gave a start, but Roger held tight, eyes on the captain’s.

“Oh, Lord,” he said, “we ask thy blessing on our works. Guide me and my kinsman in our quest, and guide this man in his new office. May your light and presence be with us and with him, and your judgment and compassion ever on us. I commend him to your care. Amen.”

His voice cracked on the last word, and he let go Randall’s hands and coughed, looking away as he cleared his throat.

Randall cleared his throat, too, in embarrassment, but kept his poise.

“I thank you for your . . . er . . . good wishes, Mr. MacKenzie. And I wish you good luck. And good day.”

“The same to you, Captain,” Roger said, rising. “God be with you.”

46 BABY JESUS, TELL ME . . .

Boston, November 15, 1980

DR. JOSEPH ABERNATHY pulled into his driveway, looking forward to a cold beer and a hot supper. The mailbox was full; he pulled out a handful of circulars and envelopes and went inside, tidily sorting them as he went.

“Bill, bill, occupant, junk, junk, more junk, charity appeal, bill, idiot, bill, invitation . . . hi, sweetie—” He paused for a fragrant kiss from his wife, followed by a second sniff of her hair. “Oh, man, are we having brats and sauerkraut for dinner?”

“You are,” his wife told him, neatly snagging her jacket from the hall tree with one hand and squeezing his buttock with the other. “I’m going to a meeting with Marilyn. Be back by nine, if the rain doesn’t make the traffic too bad. Anything good in the mail?”

“Nah. Have fun!”

She rolled her eyes at him and left before he could ask if she’d bought Bud. He tossed the half-sorted mail on the kitchen counter and opened the refrigerator to check. A gleaming red-and-white six-pack beckoned cheerily, and the warm air was so tangy with the smells of fried sausage and vinegar that he could taste it without even taking the lid off the pan sitting on the stove.

“A good woman is prized above rubies,” he said, inhaling blissfully and pulling a can loose from its plastic ring.

He was halfway through the first plate of food and two-thirds of the way into his second beer when he put down the sports section of the Globe and saw the letter on top of the spilled pile of mail. He recognized Bree’s handwriting at once; it was big and round, with a determined rightward slant—but there was something wrong with the letter.

He picked it up, frowning a little, wondering why it looked strange . . . and then realized that the stamp was wrong. She wrote at least once a month, sending photos of the kids, telling him about her job, the farm—and the letters all had British stamps, purple and blue heads of Queen Elizabeth. This one had an American stamp.

He slowly set down the letter as though it might explode and swallowed the rest of the beer in one gulp. Fortified, he set his jaw and picked it up.

“Tell me you and Rog took the kids to Disneyland, Bree,” he murmured, licking mustard off his knife before using it to slit the envelope. She’d talked about doing that someday. “Baby Jesus, tell me this is a photo of Jem shaking hands with Mickey Mouse.”

Much to his relief, it was a photo of both children at Disneyland, beaming at the camera from Mickey Mouse’s embrace, and he laughed out loud. Then he saw the tiny key that had fallen out of the envelope—the key to a bank’s safe-deposit box. He set down the photo, went and got another beer, and sat down deliberately to read the brief note enclosed with the photo.

Dear Uncle Joe,

I’m taking the kids to see Grandma and Grandpa. I don’t know when we’ll be back; could you please see to things while we’re gone? (Instructions in the box.)

Thank you for everything, always. I’ll miss you. I love you.

Bree

He sat for a long time next to the cold grease congealing on his plate, looking at the bright, happy photo.

“Jesus, girl,” he said softly. “What’s happened? And what do you mean you’re taking the kids? Where the hell’s Roger?”