A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [485]
She looked at him in astonishment.
“What are you planning to do? Throw a stag party for Gordon Lindsay?” Gordon, a shy boy of about seventeen, was betrothed to a Quaker girl from Woolam’s Mill; he’d been round the day before to “thig”—beg small bits of household goods in preparation for his marriage.
“No girls popping out of cakes,” he assured her, “but it’s definitely men only. It’s the first meeting of the Fraser’s Ridge Lodge.”
“Lodge . . . what, Freemasons?” She squinted dubiously at him, but he nodded. The breeze had come up, and it whipped his black hair up on end; he smoothed it back with one hand.
“Neutral ground,” he explained. “I didna want to suggest holding meetings in either the Big House or Tom Christie’s place—not wanting to favor either side, ye might say.”
She nodded, seeing that.
“Okay. But why Freemasons?” She knew nothing whatever about Freemasons, save that they were some sort of secret society and that Catholics weren’t allowed to join.
She mentioned this particular point to Roger, who laughed.
“True,” he said “The Pope forbade it about forty years ago.”
“Why? What does the Pope have against Freemasons?” she asked, interested.
“It’s rather a powerful body. A good many men of power and influence belong—and it crosses international lines. I imagine the Pope’s actual concern is competition in terms of power-broking—though if I recall aright, his stated reason was that Freemasonry is too much like a religion itself. Oh, that, and they worship the Devil.”
He laughed.
“Ye did know your father started a Lodge at Ardsmuir, in the prison there?”
“Maybe he mentioned it; I don’t remember.”
“I did bring up the Catholic thing with him. He gave me one of those looks of his and said, ‘Aye, well, the Pope wasna in Ardsmuir Prison, and I was.’”
“Sounds reasonable to me,” she said, amused. “But then, I’m not the Pope. Did he say why? Da, I mean, not the Pope.”
“Sure—as a means of uniting the Catholics and Protestants imprisoned together. One of the principles of Freemasonry being the universal brotherhood of man, aye? And another being that ye don’t talk religion or politics in Lodge.”
“Oh, you don’t? What do you do in Lodge, then?”
“I can’t tell you. Not worshipping the Devil, though.”
She raised her eyebrows at him, and he shrugged.
“I can’t,” he repeated. “When ye join, you take an oath not to talk outside the Lodge about what’s done there.”
She was mildly miffed at that, but dismissed it, going back to add more water to one bowl. It looked as though someone had thrown up in it, she thought critically, and reached for the acid bottle.
“Sounds pretty fishy to me,” she remarked. “And kind of silly. Isn’t there something about secret handshakes, that sort of thing?”
He merely smiled, not bothered by her tone.
“I’m not saying there isn’t a bit of stage business involved. It’s more or less medieval in origin, and it’s kept quite a bit of the original trappings—rather like the Catholic Church.”
“Point taken,” she said dryly, picking up a ready bowl of pulp. “Okay. So, is it Da’s idea to start a Lodge here?”
“No, mine.” His voice lost its humorous tone, and she looked at him sharply.
“I need a way to give them common ground, Bree,” he said. “The women have it—the fishers’ wives sew and spin and knit and quilt wi’ the others, and if they privately think you or your mother or Mrs. Bug are heretics damned to hell, or goddamned Whigs, or whatever, it seems to make no great difference. But not the men.”
She thought of saying something about the relative intelligence and common sense of the two sexes, but feeling that this might be counterproductive just at the moment, nodded understanding. Besides, he obviously had no notion of the kind of gossip that went on in sewing circles.
“Hold that screen steady, will you?”
He obligingly grasped the wooden frame, pulling taut the edges of the finely drawn wire threaded through it, as instructed.
“So,” she said, spooning the thin gruel of the pulp onto the silk, “do you want me to provide milk and cookies for this affair