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I paused before a picture of Je
“My mother painted that,” Jamie said, noting my interest. “She did quite a few of the ones in the stairwell, but there are only two of hers in here. She always liked that one best herself.” A large, blunt finger touched the surface of the canvas gently, tracing the line of the red-leaved vine. “Those were Je
“You’re awful, Jamie,” I said, laughing. “Is there one of you?”
“Oh, aye.” He led me to the opposite wall, near the window.
Two red-haired, tartan-clad little boys stared solemnly out of the frame, seated with an enormous staghound. That must be Nairn, Bran’s grandfather, Jamie, and his older brother Willie, who had died of the smallpox at eleven. Jamie could not have been more than two when it was painted, I thought; he stood between his elder brother’s knees, one hand resting on the dog’s head.
Jamie had told me about Willie during our journey from Leoch, one night by the fire at the bottom of a lonely glen. I remembered the small snake, carved of cherrywood, that he had drawn from his sporran to show me.
“Willie gave it me for my fifth birthday,” he had said, finger gently stroking the sinuous curves. It was a comical little snake, body writhing artistically, and its head turned back to peer over what would have been its shoulder, if snakes had shoulders.
Jamie handed me the little wooden object, and I turned it over curiously.
“What’s this scratched on the underside? S-a-w-n-y. Sawny?”
“That’s me,” Jamie said, ducking his head as though mildly embarrassed. “It’s a pet name, like, a play on my second name, Alexander. It’s what Willie used to call me.”
The faces in the picture were very much alike; all the Fraser children had that forthright look that dared you to take them at less than their own valuation of themselves. In this portrait, though, Jamie’s cheeks were rounded and his nose still snubbed with babyhood, while his brother’s strong bones had begun to show the promise of the man within, a promise never kept.
“Were you very fond of him?” I asked softly, laying a hand on his arm. He nodded, looking away into the flames on the hearth.
“Oh, aye,” he said with a faint smile. “He was five years older than I, and I thought he was God, or at least Christ. Used to follow him everywhere; or everywhere he’d let me, at least.”
He turned away and wandered toward the bookshelves. Wanting to give him a moment alone, I stayed, looking out of the window.
From this side of the house I could see dimly through the rain the outline of a rocky, grass-topped hill in the distance. It reminded me of the fairies’ dun where I had stepped through a rock and emerged from a rabbit hole. Only six months. But it seemed like a very long time ago.
Jamie had come to stand beside me at the window. Staring absently out at the driving rain, he said, “There was another reason. The main one.”
“Reason?” I said stupidly.
“Why I married you.”
“Which was?” I don’t know what I expected him to say, perhaps some further revelation of his family’s contorted affairs. What he did say was more of a shock, in its way.
“Because I wanted you.” He turned from the window to face me. “More than I ever wanted anything in my life,” he added softly.
I continued staring at him, dumbstruck. Whatever I had been expecting, it wasn’t this. Seeing my openmouthed expression, he continued lightly. “When I asked my Da how ye knew which was the right woman, he told me when the time came, I’d have no doubt. And I didn’t. When I woke in the dark under that tree on the road to Leoch, with you sitting on my chest, cursing me for bleeding to death, I said to myself, ‘Jamie Fraser, for all ye ca
I started toward him, and he backed away, talking rapidly. “I said to myself, ‘She’s mended ye twice in as many hours, me lad; life amongst the MacKenzies being what it is, it might be as well to wed a woman as can stanch a wound and set broken bones.’ And I said to myself, ‘Jamie, lad, if her touch feels so bo
He dodged around a chair. “Of course, I thought it might ha’ just been the effects of spending four months in a monastery, without benefit of female companionship, but then that ride through the dark together” – he paused to sigh theatrically, neatly evading my grab at his sleeve – “with that lovely broad arse wedged between my thighs” – he ducked a blow aimed at his left ear and sidestepped, getting a low table between us – “and that rock-solid head thumping me in the chest” – a small metal ornament bounced off his own head and went clanging to the floor – “I said to myself…”
He was laughing so hard at this point that he had to gasp for breath between phrases. “Jamie… I said… for all she’s a Sassenach bitch… with a tongue like an adder’s… with a bum like that… what does it matter if she’s a f-face like a sh-sh-sheep?”
I tripped him neatly and landed on his stomach with both knees as he hit the floor with a crash that shook the house.
“You mean to tell me that you married me out of love?” I demanded. He raised his eyebrows, struggling to draw in breath.
“Have I not… just been… saying so?”
Grabbing me round the shoulders with one arm, he wormed the other hand under my skirt and proceeded to inflict a series of merciless pinches on that part of my anatomy he had just been praising.
Returning to pick up her embroidery basket, Je
“I’m makin’ love to my wife,” he panted, breathless between giggling and fighting.
“Well, ye could find a more suitable place for it,” she said, raising the other eyebrow. “That floor’ll give ye splinters in your arse.”
If Lallybroch was a peaceful place, it was also a busy one. Everyone in it seemed to stir into immediate life at cockcrow, and the farm then spun and whirred like a complicated bit of clockwork until after sunset, when one by one the cogs and wheels that made it run began to fall away, rolling off into the dark to seek supper and bed, only to reappear like magic in their proper places in the morning.
So essential did every last man, woman, and child seem to the ru
There were moments, of course. Those small spaces of time, too soon gone, when everything seems to stand still, and existence is balanced on a perfect point, like the moment of change between the dark and the light, when both and neither surround you.