09/28/2024
EXCERPT FROM BOOK TEN (Untitled), Copyright 2024 Diana Gabaldon
The Ridge was a big place, and the surrounding mountains much bigger. If you wanted to get lost for a bit, there was no great difficulty. On the other hand, if you were carrying a suckling child and were not personally equipped to feed it, there were distinct limits to your daundering.
Fortunately, Bree had tanked up the bairn and changed his nappie before handing him over, and wee David was asleep in his sling against his father’s chest, snoring like a drunk on the third day of a bender. Roger supposed that Bree had intended him to park Davy in his cradle and spend the afternoon writing sermons and letters while she was frivoling with Rachel, but it was much too beautiful a day to spend indoors, and after all the wean was portable…
Roger also wanted a bit of time to think. By himself. The close dark of the Spaniard’s cave was still with him, and so were Jamie’s words. _“I’m leaving the care of things to you, Roger Mac. And the gold_.”
Jamie might have meant that as a formality, acknowledging that Roger would mind the shop until the laird’s return. But that wasn’t what he meant, and both of them knew it.
He’d meant, _I have to go and I think I’m maybe not coming back_. But then he’d smiled, and squeezed Roger’s shoulder, and his eyes were filled with light again.
Roger had reached Claire’s garden. She’d gone with Bree to visit the Murrays and see to Ian’s leg, taking a large basket of green stuff. He could be alone for a bit, with nobody but the bees.
He closed the gate behind him and made his way to the garden seat, a bench that Jamie had made so that Claire could sit and shell peas or peanuts or rest from her labors in the rippling shade of the gourd vines that covered that side of the garden palisades. He sat down and eased his left arm, cramped from holding the baby, still sound asleep under his bonnet.
Roger closed his eyes and tried to let things settle.
It wasn’t as though he hadn’t been left in charge of the Ridge before. Granted, on one of those occasions, he’d offered land and refuge to one Thomas Christie, knowing him only as one of Jamie’s fellow prisoners at Ardsmuir. But Tom Christie had had a daughter…
Despite himself, he glanced over his shoulder and cuddled Davy closer. Through the saplings of the deer-fence behind him, he could just glimpse the Old Garden, as folk called it. No one—save Claire, very privately—ever visited the place where Malva Christie had died. The wilderness had been allowed to come in, smothering or marrying with the domestic plants that had been left behind.
Davy gave a sudden soft little burp, and milk drooled down his chin. Roger blotted it, feeling tender. He’d not expected to have another child, and this tiny, round-headed boy with his long lashes and soft, sweet mouth—and loud, well, _very_ loud voice--was a precious gift.
Big things and little things.
Start off with loaves and fishes, and next thing you knew, it was Calvary. Or Heaven.
Well, there was the germ of a sermon. He reached automatically, one-handed, for the pouch on his belt where he kept a few folded sheets of rough paper, a pen-knife and one of Bree’s new graphite pencils, big and round as the ones kids were given in their first year of school, and almost as exciting to use. He remembered the thrill of it, writing his name out for the first time, in big, dark, sprawling letters (he’d remembered to press hard, as the teacher said to) that staggered drunkenly across the page.
_Germ, he scribbled, _wheat barley_ _measles_…_littlebig_…_baby_…_DavyCyrus_…_confound Corinth_…
Ideas were coming thick and fast, and he hoped he’d remember what he was thinking when he read these notes…
Davy made a tiny sound, and Roger looked down automatically, in time to see an enormous _blorp_! of milk erupt and flood everything in sight, including Davy’s front and Roger’s lap. He frantically tried to push his notes out of harm’s way and simultaneously straighten Davy up and bend him over, in case more was to follow.
Immersed in the emergency, he didn’t notice the creak of the garden gate, and was startled when William suddenly appeared before him, knelt on one knee and started gathering the scattered sheets.
“Oh—thanks,” he said.
“My pleasure, sir,” William said, smiling. He drew out a voluminous handkerchief and handed it to Roger, then cupped a hand and twiddled his fingers in invitation.
“And thanks again.” Roger handed Davy over without demur, and set about minor repairs.
“Oh! I didn’t know you were working—I beg your pardon…” William made a gesture of apology and leave-taking, but Roger shook his head, and gestured to him to come and sit on a convenient rock, which William did with exaggerated care, holding Davy as though he were a ticking bomb.
“He won’t mind, so long as you don’t thrash about and scream.”
William nodded, but glanced warily at the row of hives, the air around them thick with bees.
“I think I can keep from it, so long as none of those little buggers stings me.”
“According to Claire, they’re all female, so I suppose they’d have to be buggeresses, and I’m not sure that’s possible in the insect world.”
William pinched his lips on a smile to keep the laugh in, nodded and sat down.
“He seems a good little chap,” he said, nodding at Davy. “The last one I knew—an infant, I mean--could scream to wake the dead.”
“Oh, this one can, too,” Roger assured him. “Though to his credit, he doesn’t really mind a wet nappy. His sister would turn purple and shriek like a-- ” He stopped abruptly, as he’d been going to say “enraged chimpanzee”, and instead gently lifted Davy’s wee bonnet off to cool his head. They were in shade, but he kept a wary eye on the flying insects.
“Ye want to keep an eye out,” he told William. “The honey bees won’t trouble us, but Claire tells me there’s such a thing as a sweat bee, and wee bairns pour wi’ sweat if they’re warm at all.” Davy’s soft cheeks bore a nearly invisible down, and the tiny beads of sweat glowed and trembled.
“There are such things.” William unwound his neckcloth and wiped his own face with it. “If you’re in the fields in the summer, they land on you and if you don’t flick them off, you can see them drink your sweat—for the salt, I think. They’ll not bite if you just let them do it, though.”
“Fields…do you mean battlefields?” Men certainly sweated there…
“A few. I was thinking of to***co fields, though. For a few years, Papa—Lord John, I mean—and I lived on a small to***co plantation called Mt. Josiah. It’s near Richmond, on the Lynch.”
Roger made a small hum of attention, but that appeared to be all William had to say on the subject of agriculture. The bees were filling the garden with their humming busyness, but William wasn’t really watching them; his attention was fixed on something inward.
“Nearly ready?” Roger asked. He easily recognized the signs of a burdened soul in search of something—if only a few moments company. “Jamie said ye’d leave in the morning, if all was in order. And knowing Jamie, it is. Or will be.”
“Yes.” William rubbed Davy’s fat little back, not looking at Roger. “He took me with him…to talk with his tenants. Set things in order, as you say. I hadn’t realized…the scope of things, I suppose.”
“Aye, the Ridge has maybe a hundred souls on it, by now.” Roger was surprised to hear the note of pride in his own voice, and smiled to himself. “And Himself knows them all.”
William nodded, but didn’t look up.
“They depend on him, don’t they?” he said quietly. There was a slightly odd tone to William’s voice, and Roger looked at him more closely. There were lines of worry in his face, but of course there would be, given his step-father’s dangerous situation. _Something more there, though_…
“Well, Jamie’s the sort of man who doesna turn aside from anything he thinks is his job,” Roger said, and shrugged a little. “That includes his tenants—and their livestock,” he added. “Has Brianna told ye about the White Sow?”
That made William smile.
“Yes. I hope to meet this redoubtable beast at some point.”
“I’d recommend meeting that one at the point of a gun.” Something had been niggling at Roger’s memory and the present mention of pigs made it emerge into consciousness.
“Your estate in England,” he said casually. “Have ye many pigs there?”
William’s face went tight, lips pressed together.
_Bulls-eye_…
“I suppose there must be. I—haven’t visited the estate in some time.”
“Aye, well, you’ve had a few other things to concern you. The War, your regiment, your…um…father…”
“Fathers,” William said tersely. “Yes, that’s true. Ellesmere—the estate, I mean—has a good factor. He sends me regular letters regarding the…er…state of things.”
_And you don’t read them_…
William fell silent, eyes on his thumb, which Davy was gnawing in pleasant concentration. Roger had learned the value of silence, and sat quietly, watching young uncle and younger nephew.
“I wanted to ask—well, rather to say…” William started abruptly, then cut off, groping for words. “That is…I’ve seen how many people _do_ depend on Mr. Fraser, including his wife and family. And I feel that it would be wrong of me to—to draw him away from them, only to help me. But…”
“You need him,” Roger said simply. “He knows that.”
“But—but—I’ve just sprung up out of nowhere, he scarcely knows me…and I’m asking him to, well, I don’t even _know_ what I may be asking, but it could well be dangerous.”
“If it weren’t, ye wouldn’t need him,” Roger said dryly. “He’s accustomed to danger, believe me. As for him knowing you--” he leaned forward and tickled Davy’s round soft cheek, and the baby let go William’s thumb with a wet “pop!” and said, “Gwah,” very clearly.
“I’ve known _him_ for five months,” Roger said, and smoothed the small stripe of fine brown hair that ran down the middle of Davy’s round head. “And I’d give up my life for him without a minute’s thought.” He looked up, to see William’s eyes fixed on the sleeping child, his own face soft-eyed.
“D’ye think Jamie didn’t feel that way about ye when you were born?” Roger asked quietly. “Do ye think he doesn’t, now?”
“That’s—” William stopped and swallowed, pressing his lips tight for a moment, thinking. “Forgive me, but do you not think that’s…rather a burden?”
“For you, or for him?”
William frowned in thought, and Roger thought how much he looked like Jamie when he did that—though he tucked in his lower lip in a way that Jamie didn’t, and for the first time, Roger wondered about the young man’s mother.
“I meant, for him,” William said slowly. “But maybe it is, for everyone. At least now and then.”
“Love is a burden,” Roger said, and reached for Davy, who was starting to wriggle. “But it’s not one ye want to put down for long.”
[end section]
[Thanks to Lisa LeVasseur for the lovely photo of bumblebees on lavender chives!]
