Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [42]
He let the last note die away on “Vhair Me Oh,” and smiled, directly at her, she thought.
“And here’s one from the ’45,” he said. “This one is from the famous battle of Prestonpans, at which the Highland Army of Charles Stuart routed a much greater English force, under the command of General Jonathan Cope.”
There was an appreciative murmur from the crowd, for many of whom the song was plainly an old favorite, quickly shushed as Roger’s fingers plucked out the marching line.
“Cope sent a challenge from Dunbar
Sayin’ ‘Charlie, meet me, and ye daur
An’ I’ll learn ye the art o’ war
If ye’ll meet me in the mornin’.’ ”
He bent his head over the strings, nodding to the crowd to join in the jeering chorus.
“Hey, Johnnie Cope, are ye walkin’ yet?
And are your drums a-beatin’ yet?
If ye were walkin’, I would wait
Tae gang tae the coals in the mornin’!”
Brianna felt a sudden prickle at the roots of her hair that had nothing to do with singer or crowd, but with the song itself.
“When Charlie looked the letter upon,
He drew his sword the scabbard from,
Come, follow me, my merry men,
And we’ll meet Johnnie Cope in the morning!”
“No,” she whispered, her fingers cold on the smooth brown envelope. Come follow me, my merry men … They’d been there—both her parents. It was her father who had charged the field at Preston, his broadsword and his targe in his hands.
“ … For it will be a bluidie morning!”
“Hey, Johnnie Cope, are ye walkin’ yet?
And are your drums a-beatin’ yet? …”
The voices rose around her in a roar of approbation as they joined in the chorus. She had a moment of rising panic, when she would have fled away like Johnnie Cope, but it passed, leaving her buffeted by emotion as much as by the music.
“In faith, quo Johnnie, I got sic flegs,
Wi’ their claymores an’ philabegs,
Gin I face them again, de’il brak my legs,
So I wish you a’ good morning!
Hey, Johnnie Cope, are ye walkin’ yet? …”
Yes, he was. And he would be, as long as that song lasted. Some people tried to preserve the past; others, to escape it. And that was by far the greatest gulf between herself and Roger. Why hadn’t she seen it before?
She didn’t know whether Roger had seen her momentary distress, but he abandoned the dangerous territory of the Jacobites and went into “MacPherson’s Lament,” sung with no more than an occasional touch of the strings. The woman next to Brianna let out a long sigh and looked doe-eyed at the stage.
“Sae rantingly, sae wantonly, sae dauntingly gaed he,
He played a tune and he danced it roond … alow the gallows tree!”
She picked up the envelope, weighing it on her fingers. She ought to wait, maybe, until she got home. But curiosity was warring with reluctance. Roger hadn’t been sure he should give it to her; she’d seen that in his eyes.
“… a bodhran,” Roger was saying. The drum was no more than a wooden hoop, a few inches wide, with a skin head stretched over it, some eighteen inches across. He held the drum balanced on the fingers of one hand, a small double-headed stick in the other. “One of the oldest known instruments, this is the drum with which the Celtic tribes scared the bejesus out of Julius Caesar’s troops in 52 BC.” The audience tittered, and he touched the wide drumhead with the stick, back and forth in a soft, quick rhythm like a heartbeat.
“And here’s ‘The Sheriffmuir Fight,’ from the first Jacobite Rising, in 1715.”
The drumhead shifted and the beat dropped in pitch, became martial in tone, a thundering behind the words. The audience was still well-behaved, but now sat up and leaned forward, hanging on the chant that described the battle of Sheriffmuir, and all the clans who had fought in it.
“… then on they rushed, and blood out-gushed, and many a puke did fall, man …
They hacked and hashed, while broadswords clashed …”
As the song ended she