An echo in the bone

“Sixth—and lastly—that one James Alexander Gordon Fraser Murray, of Lallybroch, shall be trustee for these funds. Are these conditions agreeable, sir?”

“They are,” Jamie said firmly, rising to his feet. “Make it so, if ye please, Mr. Gowan—and now, if no one minds, I am going away and having a wee dram. Possibly two.”

Mr. Gowan capped his inkwell, tidied his notes into a neat pile, and likewise rose, though more slowly.

“I’ll join ye in that dram, Jamie. I want to hear about this war of yours in America. It sounds the grandest of adventures!”

COUNTING SHEEP

AS THE TIME GREW SHORTER, Ian found it impossible to sleep. The need to go, to find Rachel, burned in him so that he felt hot coals in the pit of his stomach all of the time. Auntie Claire called it heartburn, and it was. She said it was from bolting his food, though, and it wasn’t that—he could barely eat.

He spent his days with his father, as much as he could. Sitting in the corner of the speak-a-word room, watching his father and his elder brother go about the business of Lallybroch, he couldn’t understand how it would be possible to stand up and walk away, to leave them behind. To leave his father forever behind.

During the days, there were things to be done, folk to be visited, to talk to, and the land to be walked over, the stark beauty of it soothing when his feelings grew too heated to bear. At night, though, the house lay quiet, the creaking silence punctuated by his father’s distant cough and his two young nephews’ heavy breathing in the room beside him. He began to feel the house itself breathe around him, drawing one ragged, heavy-chested gasp after another, and to feel the weight of it on his own chest, so he sat up in bed, gulping air only to be sure he could. And finally he would slide out of bed, steal downstairs with his boots in his hands, and let himself out of the kitchen door to walk the night under clouds or stars, the clean wind fa

One night he found the door unbolted already. He went out cautiously, looking round, but saw no one. Likely Young Jamie gone to the barn; one of the two cows was due to calf any day. He should go and help, maybe … but the burning under his ribs was painful, he needed to walk a bit first. Jamie would have fetched him in any case, had he thought he needed help.

He turned away from the house and its outbuildings and headed up the hill, past the sheep pen, where the sheep lay in somnolent mounds, pale under the moon, now and then emitting a soft, sudden bah!, as though startled by some sheep dream.

Such a dream took shape before him suddenly, a dark form moving against the fence, and he uttered a brief cry that made the nearer sheep start and rustle in a chorus of low-pitched bahs.

“Hush, a bhailach,” his mother said softly. “Get this lot started, and ye’ll wake the dead.”

He could make her out now, a small, slender form, with her unbound hair a soft mass against the paleness of her shift.

“Speak o’ the dead,” he said rather crossly, forcing his heart down out of his throat. “I thought ye were a ghost. What are ye doing out here, Mam?”

“Counting sheep,” she said, a thread of humor in her voice. “That’s what ye’re meant to do when ye ca

“Aye.” He came and stood beside her, leaning on the fence. “Does it work?”

“Sometimes.”

They stood still for a bit, watching the sheep stir and settle. They smelled sweetly filthy, of chewed grass and sheep shit and greasy wool, and Ian found that it was oddly comforting just to be with them.

“Does it work to count them, when ye ken already how many there are?” he asked, after a short silence. His mother shook her head.

“No, I say their names over. It’s like saying the rosary, only ye di

Especially when ye ken the answer’s going to be no, Ian thought, and moved by sudden impulse, put his arm around her shoulders. She made a small sound of amused surprise, but then relaxed, laying her head against him. He could feel the small bones of her, light as a bird’s, and thought his heart might break.

They stood for a while that way, and then she freed herself, gently, moving away a little and turning to him.

“Sleepy yet?”

“No.”

“Aye, well. Come on, then.” Not waiting for an answer, she turned and made her way through the dark, away from the house.

There was a moon, half full, and he’d been out more than long enough for his eyes to adjust; it was simple to follow, even through the jumbled grass and stones and heather that grew on the hill behind the house.

Where was she taking him? Or rather, why? For they were heading uphill, toward the old broch—and the burying ground that lay nearby. He felt a chill round his heart—did she mean to show him the site of his father’s grave?

But she stopped abruptly and stooped, so he nearly tripped over her. Straightening up, she turned and put a pebble into his hand.

“Over here,” she said softly, and led him to a small square stone set in the earth. He thought it was Caitlin’s grave—the child who’d come before Young Je

Yeksa’a.

“Mam,” he said, and his voice sounded strange to his own ears.

“Is that right, Ian?” she said, a little anxious. “Your da said he wasna quite certain of the spelling of the Indian name. I had the stone carver put both, though. I thought that was right.”

“Both?” But his hand had already moved down and found the other name.

Iseabaíl.

He swallowed hard.

“That was right,” he said very softly. His hand rested flat on the stone, cool under his palm.

She squatted down beside him, and reaching, put her own pebble on the stone. It was what you did, he thought, stu

His own pebble was still in his other hand; he couldn’t quite bring himself to lay it down. Tears were ru

“It’s all right, mo duine,” she said softly. “Go to your young woman. Ye’ll always be here wi’ us.”

The steam of his tears rose like the smoke of incense from his heart, and he laid the pebble gently on his daughter’s grave. Safe among his family.

It wasn’t until many days later, in the middle of the ocean, that he realized his mother had called him a man.

THE RIGHT OF IT

IAN DIED JUST after dawn. The night had been hellish; a dozen times, Ian had come close to drowning in his own blood, choking, eyes bulging, then rising up in convulsion, spewing up bits of his lungs. The bed looked like some slaughter had taken place, and the room reeked of the sweat of a desperate, futile struggle, the smell of Death’s presence.

In the end, though, he had lain quiet, thin chest barely moving, the sound of his breathing a faint rattle like the scratch of the rose briers at the window.

Jamie had stood back, to give Young Jamie the place at Ian’s side as eldest son; Je

Ian’s bony fingers had closed round his with surprising strength. Ian had murmured something, too low to hear, and then let go—not in the involuntary relaxation of death; simply let go, that business done, and let his hand fall back, open, to his children.