A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [252]
Jamie climbed out of the pit and joined Roger on the edge, looking down at their handiwork in satisfaction.
“And if it doesna work well as a kiln,” Jamie observed, “she can make a root cellar of it.”
“Waste not, want not,” Roger agreed. They stood looking down into the hole, the breeze chilly through their damp shirts now that they’d stopped moving.
“D’ye think ye might go back, you and the lass?” Jamie said. He spoke so casually that Roger missed his meaning at first, not catching on until he saw his father-in-law’s face, set in the imperturbable calm that—he’d learned to his cost—generally covered some strong emotion.
“Back,” he repeated uncertainly. Surely he didn’t mean—but of course he did. “Through the stones, do you mean?”
Jamie nodded, seeming to find some fascination in the walls of the pit, where drying grass rootlets hung in tangles, and the jagged edges of stones protruded from the patchy damp dirt.
“I’ve thought of it,” Roger said, after a pause. “We’ve thought. But . . .” He let his voice trail off, finding no good way to explain.
Jamie nodded again, though, as if he had. He supposed Jamie and Claire must have discussed it, even as he and Bree had, playing over the pros and cons. The dangers of the passage—and he did not underestimate those dangers, the more so in light of what Claire had told him about Donner and his comrades; what if he made it through—and Bree and Jem didn’t? It didn’t bear thinking.
Beyond that, if they all survived the passage, was the pain of separation—and he would admit that it would be painful for him, as well. Whatever its limitations or inconveniences, the Ridge was home.
Against those considerations, though, stood the dangers of the present time, for the four horsemen of the apocalypse rode widely here; it was no trick to catch a glimpse of pestilence or famine from the corner of your eye. And the pale horse and its rider were inclined to show up unexpectedly—and often.
But that’s what Jamie meant, of course, he realized belatedly.
“Because of the war, ye mean.”
“The O’Brians,” Jamie said quietly. “That will happen again, ken? Many times.”
It was spring now, not autumn, but the cold wind that touched his bones was the same as the one that had blown brown and golden leaves across the face of the little girl. Roger had a sudden vision of the two of them, Jamie and himself, standing now at the edge of this cavernous hole, like bedraggled mourners at a graveside. He turned his back on the pit, looking instead into the budding green of the chestnut trees.
“Ye know,” he said, after a moment’s silence, “when I first learned what—what Claire is, what we are, all about it—I thought, ‘How fascinating!’ To actually see history in the making, I mean. In all honesty, I maybe came as much for that as for Bree. Then, I mean.”
Jamie laughed shortly, turning round as well.
“Oh, aye, and is it? Fascinating?”
“More than I ever thought,” Roger assured him, with extreme dryness. “But why are ye asking now? I told ye a year ago that we’d stay.”
Jamie nodded, pursing his lips.
“Ye did. The thing is—I am thinking I must sell one or more of the gemstones.”
That brought Roger up a bit. He’d not consciously thought it, of course—but the knowledge that the gems were there, in case of need . . . He hadn’t realized what a sense of security that knowledge had held, until this moment.
“They’re yours to sell,” he replied, cautious. “Why now, though? Are things difficult?”
Jamie gave him an exceedingly wry look.
“Difficult,” he repeated. “Aye, ye could say that.” And proceeded to lay out the situation succinctly.
The marauders had destroyed not only a season’s whisky in the making, but also the malting shed, only now rebuilding. That meant no surplus of the lovely drink this year to sell or trade for necessities. There were twenty-two more tenant families on the Ridge to be mindful of, most of them struggling with a place and a profession that they