“I know,” he answered just as softly.
Some men went by in the street outside, singing drunkenly, with torches; the flickering light flowed across the ceiling and was gone. I could feel Jamie watch it go, listening to the raucous voices as they faded down the street, but he said nothing, and after a bit, the big body that cradled me began to relax, sinking once again toward sleep.
“What are you thinking?” I whispered, not sure whether he could still hear me. He could.
“I was thinking that ye’d make a really good whore, Sassenach, were ye at all promiscuous,” he replied drowsily.
“What?” I said, quite startled.
“But I’m glad ye’re not,” he added, and began to snore.
57
THE MINISTER’S RETURN
September 4, 1774
ROGER STEERED CLEAR OF Coopersville on his way home. It wasn’t that he feared Ute McGillivray’s wrath, but he didn’t want to tarnish the happiness of his homecoming with coldness nor confrontation. Instead, he took the long way round, winding his way gradually up the steep slope toward the Ridge, pushing through overgrown parts where the forest had taken back the path, and fording small streams.
His mule splashed out of the last of these at the base of the trail, shaking itself and scattering droplets from its belly. Pausing to wipe sweat from his face, he spotted a movement on a large stone by the bank. Aidan, fishing, affecting not to have seen him.
Roger reined Clarence up alongside and watched for a moment, saying nothing. Then he asked, “Are they biting well?”
“Tolerable,” Aidan replied, squinting hard at his line. Then he looked up, a huge grin splitting his face from ear to ear, and flinging down his pole, sprang up, reaching with both hands, so that Roger could grasp his skinny wrists and swing him up onto the saddle in front of him.
“Ye’re back!” he exclaimed, throwing his arms about Roger and burying his face happily in Roger’s chest. “I waited for ye. Are ye a real minister now, then?”
“Amost. How’d ye know I’d be along today?”
Aidan shrugged. “I’ve been waitin’ the best part of a week, have I no?” He looked up into Roger’s face, round-eyed and quizzical. “Ye dinna look any different.”
“I’m not,” Roger assured him, smiling. “How’s the belly?”
“Prime. Ye want to see my scar?” He leaned back, pulling up his ratty shirttail to display a neat red four-inch weal across the pallid skin.
“Well done,” Roger approved. “Taking care of your Mam and wee Orrie, then, now ye’re mended, I suppose.”
“Oh, aye.” Aidan puffed his narrow chest. “I brought home six trout for supper last night, and the biggest one the size of me arm!” He stuck out a forearm in illustration.
“Ah, get on wi’ ye.”
“I did, then!” Aidan said indignantly, then twigged that he was being teased, and grinned.
Clarence was becoming restive, wanting home, and turned in little circles, stamping his feet and twitching at the reins.
“Best go. Ye want to ride up wi’ me?”
Aidan looked tempted, but shook his head.
“Nah, then. I promised Mrs. Ogilvie as I should come tell her, the minute ye came.”
Roger was surprised at that.
“Oh, aye? Why’s that?”
“She’s had a wean last week, what she wants ye to baptize.”
“Oh?” His heart rose a little at that, and the bubble of happiness he carried inside him seemed to expand a little. His first christening! Or rather—his first official baptism, he thought, with a small pang at the memory of the small O’Brian girl he had buried without a name. He wouldn’t be able to do it until after his ordination, but it was something to look forward to.
“Tell her I’ll be glad to christen the wean,” he said, lowering Aidan to the ground. “Have her send to tell me when. And dinna forget your wee fish!” he called.
Aidan grabbed up his pole and the string of silvery fish—none of them longer than the length of a hand—and plunged off into the wood, leaving Roger to turn Clarence’s head toward home.
He smelled smoke from a good way down the trail. Stronger than chimney smoke. With all the talk he had heard on his way, regarding the recent events in Cross Creek, he couldn’t help a small feeling of uneasiness, and urged Clarence on with a nudge of the heels. Clarence, scenting home even through the smoke, took the hint with alacrity, and trotted briskly up the steep incline.
The smell of smoke grew stronger, mixed with an odd musty sort of scent that seemed vaguely familiar. A visible haze grew among the trees, and when they burst out of the undergrowth into the clearing, he was nearly standing in his stirrups with agitation.
The cabin stood, weathered and solid, and relief dropped him back in the saddle with a force that made Clarence grunt in protest. Smoke rose around the house in thick swirls, though, and the figure of Brianna, swathed like a Muslim with a scarf around her head and face, was dimly visible in the midst of it. He dismounted, took a breath to call out to her, and immediately suffered a coughing fit. The damned groundhog kiln was open, belching smoke like hell’s chimney, and now he recognized the musty scent—scorched earth.
“Roger! Roger!” She’d seen him, and came running, skirts and scarf ends flying, leaping a stack of cut turves like a mountain goat to hurl herself into his arms.
He grabbed her and held on, thinking that nothing in life had ever felt better lid weight of her against him and the taste of her mouth, in spite of the fact that she’d plainly eaten onions for lunch.
She emerged beaming and wet-eyed from the embrace, long enough to say, “I love you!” then grabbed his face and kissed him again. “I missed you. When did you shave last? I love you.”
“Four days ago, when I left Charlotte. I love you, too. Is everything all right?”
“Sure. Well, actually no. Jemmy fell out of a tree and knocked out a tooth, but it was a baby tooth and Mama says she doesn’t think it will hurt the permanent one coming in. And Ian got exposed to syphilis, maybe, and we’re all disgusted with him, and Da was nearly tarred and feathered in Cross Creek, and we met Flora MacDonald, and Mama stuck a needle in Aunt Jocasta’s eye, and—”
“Eugh!” Roger said in instinctive revulsion. “Why?”
“So it wouldn’t burst. And I got paid six pounds in painting commissions!” she concluded triumphantly. “I bought some fine wire and silk to make paper screens with, and enough wool for a winter cloak for you. It’s green. The biggest thing, though, is we met another—well, I’ll tell you about that later; it’s complicated. How did it go with the Presbyterians? Is it all right? Are you a minister?”
He shook his head, trying to decide which part of this cataract to respond to, and ended up choosing the last bit, only because he could remember it.
“Sort of. Have you been taking lessons in incoherence from Mrs. Bug?”
“How can you be sort of a minister? Wait—tell me in a minute, I have to open it up some more.”
With that, she was flitting back across the broken ground toward the gaping hole of the kiln. The tall clay-brick chimney stack rose at one end, looking like a headstone. The scorched turves that had covered it in operation were scattered round it, and the general impression was that of an enormous, smoking grave from which something large, hot, and doubtless demonic had just arisen. Had he been Catholic, he would have crossed himself.
As it was, he advanced carefully toward the edge, where Brianna was kneeling, reaching across with her shovel to remove another layer of turves from the willow-work frame that arched across the top of the pit.
Looking down through a roiling haze of smoke, he could see irregularly shaped objects, lying on the earthen shelves that lined the pit. A few he could make out as being bowls or platters. Most of them, though, were vaguely tubular objects, two or three feet long, tapered and rounded at one end, the other slightly flared. They were a dark pinkish color, streaked and darkened with smoke, and looked like nothing so much as a collection of giant barbecued phalluses, a notion that he found nearly as disturbing as the story of Jocasta’s eyeball.
“Pipes,” Brianna said proudly, pointing her shovel at one of these objects. “For water. Look—they’re perfect! Or they will be, if they don’t crack while they’re cooling.”
“Terrific,” Roger said, with a decent show of enthusiasm. “Hey—I brought ye a present.” Reaching into the side pocket of his coat, he brought out an orange, which she seized with a cry of delight, though she paused for an instant before digging her thumb into the peel.
“No, you eat it; I’ve got another for Jem,” he assured her.
“I love you,” she said again, fervently, juice running down her chin. “What about the Presbyterians? What did they say?”
“Oh. Well, basically, it’s all right. I have got the university degree, and enough Greek and Latin to impress them. The Hebrew was a bit lacking, but if I mug that up in the meantime—Reverend Caldwell gave me a book.” He patted the side of his coat.
“Yes, I can just see you preaching in Hebrew to the Crombies and Buchanans,” she said grinning. “So? What else?”
There was a fleck of orange pulp stuck to her lip, and he bent on impulse and kissed it off, the tiny burst of sweetness rich and tart on his tongue.
“Well, they examined me as to doctrine and understanding, and we talked a great deal; prayed together for discernment.” He felt somewhat shy talking to her about it. It had been a remarkable experience, like returning to a home he’d never known he’d missed. To confess his calling had been joyful; to do it among people who understood and shared it . . .
“So I’m provisionally a minister of the Word,” he said, looking down at the toes of his boots. “I’ll need to be ordained before I can administer sacraments like marriage and baptism, but that will have to wait until there’a Presbytery Session held somewhere. In the meantime, I can preach, teach, and bury.”
She was looking at him, smiling, but a little wistfully.
“You’re happy?” she said, and he nodded, unable to speak for a moment.
“Very happy,” he said at last, his voice hardly audible.
“Good,” she said softly, and smiled a little more genuinely. “I understand. So now you’re sort of handfast with God, is that it?”
He laughed, and felt his throat ease. God, he’d have to do something about that; he couldn’t be preaching drunk every Sunday. Talk of giving scandal to the faithful . . .
“Aye, that’s it. But I’m properly married to you—I’ll not forget it.”
“See that you don’t.” Her smile now was wholehearted. “Since we are married . . .” She gave him a very direct look, one that went through him like a mild electric shock. “Jem’s at Marsali’s, playing with Germain. And I’ve never made love to a minister before. It seems kind of wicked and depraved, don’t you think?”