He shook his head. “I dinna remember what I said. Or what he said. We shouted at each other, I know that much. And I wanted to hit him, but I couldn’t, because of his leg. And he wanted to hit me, but couldn’t – because of his leg.” He gave a brief snort of laughter. “Christ, we must ha’ looked a rare pair of fools, wavin’ our arms and shouting at each other. But I shouted longer, and finally he shut up and listened to the end of it.
“Then all of a sudden, I couldna go on talking; it just seemed like no use. And I sat down all at once on a rock, and put my head in my hands. Then after a time, Ian said we’d best be going on. And I nodded, and got up, and helped him on his horse, and we started off again, not speakin’ to each other.”
Jamie seemed suddenly to realize how tightly he was holding my hand. He released his grip, but continued to hold my hand, turning my wedding ring between his thumb and forefinger.
“We rode for a long time,” he said softly. “And then I heard a small sound behind me, and reined up so Ian’s horse came alongside, and I could see he’d been weeping – still was, wi’ the tears streaming down his face. And he saw me look at him, and shook his head hard, as if he was still angry, but then he held out his hand to me. I took it, and he gave me a squeeze, hard enough to break the bones. Then he let go, and we came on home.”
I could feel the tension go out of him, with the ending of the story. “Be well, brother,” Ian had said, balanced on his one leg in the bedroom door.
“It’s all right, then?” I asked.
“It will be.” He relaxed completely now, sinking back into the goose-down pillows. I slid down under the quilts beside him, and lay close, fitted against his side. We watched the snow fall, hissing softly against the glass.
“I’m glad you’re safe home,” I said.
I woke to the same gray light in the morning. Jamie, already dressed for the day, was standing by the window.
“Oh, you’re awake, Sassenach?” he said, seeing me lift my head from the pillow. “That’s good. I brought ye a present.”
He reached into his sporran and pulled out several copper doits, two or three small rocks, a short stick wrapped with fishline, a crumpled letter, and a tangle of hair ribbons.
“Hair ribbons?” I said. “Thank you; they’re lovely.”
“No, those aren’t for you,” he said, frowning as he disentanged the blue strands from the mole’s foot he carried as a charm against rheumatism. “They’re for wee Maggie.” He squinted dubiously at the rocks remaining in his palm. To my astonishment, he picked one up and licked it.
“No, not that one,” he muttered, and dived back into his sporran.
“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” I inquired with interest, watching this performance. He didn’t answer, but came out with another handful of rocks, which he sniffed at, discarding them one by one until he came to a nodule that struck his fancy. This one he licked once, for certainty, then dropped it into my hand, beaming.
“Amber,” he said, with satisfaction, as I turned the irregular lump over with a forefinger. It seemed warm to the touch, and I closed my hand over it, almost unconsciously.
“It needs polishing, of course,” he explained. “But I thought it would make ye a bonny necklace.” He flushed slightly, watching me. “It’s… it’s a gift for our first year of marriage. When I saw it, I was minded of the bit of amber Hugh Munro gave ye, when we wed.”
“I still have that,” I said softly, caressing the odd little lump of petrified tree sap. Hugh’s chunk of amber, one side sheared off and polished into a small window, had a dragonfly embedded in the matrix, suspended in eternal flight. I kept it in my medicine box, the most powerful of my charms.
A gift for our first anniversary. We had married in June, of course, not in December. But on the date of our first anniversary, Jamie had been in the Bastille, and I… I had been in the arms of the King of France. No time for a celebration of wedded bliss, that.
“It’s nearly Hogmanay,” Jamie said, looking out the window at the soft snowfall that blanketed the fields of Lallybroch. “It seems a good time for beginnings, I thought.”
“I think so, too.” I got out of bed and came to him at the window, putting my arms around his waist. We stayed locked together, not speaking, until my eye suddenly fell on the other small, yellowish lumps that Jamie had removed from his sporran.
“What on earth are those things, Jamie?” I asked, letting go of him long enough to point.
“Och, those? They’re honey balls, Sassenach.” He picked up one of the objects, dusting at it with his fingers. “Mrs. Gibson in the village gave them to me. Verra good, though they got a bit dusty in my sporran, I’m afraid.” He held out his open hand to me, smiling. “Want one?”
34 THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE
I didn’t know what – or how much – Ian had told Jenny of his conversation in the snow with Jamie. She behaved toward her brother just as always, matter-of-fact and acerbic, with a slight touch of affectionate teasing. I had known her long enough, though, to realize that one of Jenny’s greatest gifts was her ability to see something with utter clarity – and then to look straight through it, as though it wasn’t there.
The dynamics of feeling and behavior shifted among the four of us during the months, and settled into a pattern of solid strength, based on friendship and founded in work. Mutual respect and trust were simply a necessity; there was so much to be done.
As Jenny’s pregnancy progressed, I took on more and more of the domestic duties, and she deferred to me more often. I would never try to usurp her place; she had been the axis of the household since the death of her mother, and it was to her that the servants or tenants most frequently came. Still, they grew used to me, treating me with a friendly respect which bordered sometimes on acceptance, and sometimes on awe.
The spring was marked first by the planting of an enormous crop of potatoes; over half the available land was given to the new crop – a decision justified within weeks by a hailstorm that flattened the new-sprung barley. The potato vines, creeping low and stolid over the ground, survived.
The second event of the spring was the birth of a second daughter, Katherine Mary, to Jenny and Ian. She arrived with a suddenness that startled everyone, including Jenny. One day Jenny complained of an aching back and went to lie down. Very shortly it became clear what was really happening, and Jamie went posthaste for Mrs. Martins, the midwife. The two of them arrived back just in time to share in a celebratory glass of wine as the thin, high squalls of the new arrival echoed through the halls of the house.
And so the year burgeoned and greened, and I bloomed, the last of my hurts healing in the heart of love and work.
Letters arrived irregularly; sometimes there would be mail once a week, sometimes nothing would come for a month or more. Considering the lengths to which messengers had to go to deliver mail in the Highlands, I thought it incredible that anything ever arrived.
Today, though, there was a large packet of letters and books, wrapped against the weather in a sheet of oiled parchment, tied with twine. Sending the postal messenger to the kitchen for refreshment, Jenny untied the string carefully and thriftily stowed it in her pocket. She thumbed through the small pile of letters, putting aside for the moment an enticing-looking package addressed from Paris.
“A letter for Ian – that’ll be the bill for the seed, I expect, and one from Auntie Jocasta – oh, good, we’ve not heard from her in months, I thought she might be ill, but I see her hand is firm on the pen-”
A letter addressed with bold black strokes fell onto Jenny’s pile, followed by a note from one of Jocasta’s married daughters. Then another for Ian from Edinburgh, one for Jamie from Jared – I recognized the spidery, half-legible writing – and another, a thick, creamy sheet, sealed with the Royal crest of the House of Stuart. Another of Charles’s complaints about the rigors of life in Paris, and the pains of intermittently requited love, I imagined. At least this one looked short; usually he went on for several pages, unburdening his soul to “cher James,” in a misspelled quadrilingual patois that at least made it clear he sought no secretarial help for his personal letters.