A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [681]
“The ’45, eh? Ever think what it’d be like?” he was saying. “If Bonnie Prince Charlie had won, I mean.”
“Oh, in your dreams, Stan! He’d never a chance, bloody Eyetalian ponce.”
“Naw, naw, he’d have done it, sure, was it no for the effing Campbells. Traitors, aye? To a man. And a woman, too, I expect,” he added, laughing—from which Brianna gathered that the helot’s last name was very likely Campbell.
They passed on toward the shed, their argument growing more heated, but she stopped, not wanting to go after them until she had herself under control.
Oh, God, she prayed passionately, oh, God—that they might be safe! Please, please, let them be safe. It didn’t matter how ridiculous it might be to pray for the safety of people who had been—who had to be—dead for more than two hundred years. It was the only thing she could do, and did it several times each day, whenever she thought of them. Much more often, now that they had come to Lallybroch.
She blinked back tears, and saw Roger’s Mini Cooper come down the winding drive. The backseat was piled high with boxes; he was finally clearing out the last bits of rubbish from the Reverend’s garage, salvaging those items that might have value to someone—a dismayingly high proportion of the contents.
“Just in time,” she said, a little shaky, as he came up the walk smiling, a large box under his arm. She still found him startling with short hair. “Ten minutes more, and I’d kill somebody, for sure. Probably Fiona, for starters.”
“Oh, aye?” He bent and kissed her with particular enthusiasm, indicating that he probably hadn’t heard what she’d said. “I’ve got something.”
“So I see. What—”
“Damned if I know.”
The box he laid on the ancient dining table was wood, as well; a sizable casket made of maple, darkened by years, soot, and handling, but with the workmanship still apparent to her practiced eye. It was beautifully made, the joints perfectly dovetailed, with a sliding top—but the top didn’t slide, having been at some point sealed with a thick bead of what looked like melted beeswax, gone black with age.
The most striking thing about it, though, was the top. Burned into the wood was a name: Jeremiah Alexander Ian Fraser MacKenzie.
She felt a clenching in her lower belly at the sight of it, and glanced up at Roger, who was tense with some suppressed feeling; she could feel it vibrating through him.
“What?” she whispered. “Who is that?”
Roger shook his head, and pulled a filthy envelope from his pocket.
“This was with it, taped to the side. It’s the Reverend’s handwriting, one of the little notes he’d sometimes put with something to explain its significance, just in case. But I can’t say this is an explanation, exactly.”
The note was brief, stating merely that the box had come from a defunct banking house in Edinburgh. Instructions had been stored with the box, stating that it was not to be opened, save by the person whose name was inscribed thereon. The original instructions had perished, but were passed on verbally by the person from whom he obtained the box.
“And who was that?” she asked.
“No idea. Do you have a knife?”
“Do I have a knife,” she muttered, digging in the pocket of her jeans. “Do I ever not have a knife?”
“That was a rhetorical question,” he said, kissing her hand and taking the bright red Swiss Army knife she offered him.
The beeswax cracked and split away easily; the lid of the box, though, was unwilling to yield after so many years. It took both of them—one clutching the box, the other pushing and pulling on the lid—but finally, it came free with a small squealing noise.
The ghost of a scent floated out; something indistinguishable, but plantlike in origin.
“Mama,” she said involuntarily. Roger glanced at her, startled, but she gestured at him urgently to go on. He reached carefully into the box and removed its contents: a stack of letters, folded and sealed with wax, two books—and a small snake made of cherrywood, heavily polished by long handling.
She made a small, inarticulate sound and seized the top