The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [166]
It was auld, he’d said, one of the ways that had been followed for hundreds of years, no one quite knowing where it had started, who had done it first or why.
“When a Hielan’ chief will call his men to war,” the old man had said, deftly running his gnarled hand through a knotted mane, “he has a cross made, and sets it afire. It’s put out at once, ken, wi’ blood or wi’ water—but still it’s called the fiery cross, and it will be carried through the glens and corries, a sign to the men of the clan to fetch their weapons and come to the gathering place, prepared for battle.”
“Aye?” Jamie had said, feeling excitement hollow his belly. “And who do we fight, then? Where do we ride?”
The old man’s grizzled brow had crinkled in amused approval at that “we.”
“Ye follow where your chieftain leads ye, lad. But tonight, it will be the Grants we go against.”
“It was, too,” Jamie said. “Though not that night. When darkness came, Dougal lit the cross and called the clan. He doused the burnin’ wood wi’ sheep’s blood—and two men rode out of the courtyard wi’ the fiery cross, to take it through the mountains. Four days later, there were three hundred men in that courtyard, armed wi’ swords, pistols, and dirks—and at dawn on the fifth day, we rode to make war on the Grants.”
His finger was still in the baby’s mouth, his eyes distant as he remembered.
“That was the first time I used my sword against another man,” he said. “I mind it well.”
“I expect you do,” I murmured. Jemmy was beginning to squirm and fuss again; I reached across and lifted him into my own lap to check—sure enough, his clout was wet. Luckily, I had another, tucked into my belt for convenience. I laid him out across my knee to change.
“And so this cross in our dooryard . . .” I said delicately, eyes on my work. “To do with the militia, is it?”
Jamie sighed, and I could see the shadows of memory moving behind his eyes.
“Aye,” he said. “Once, I could have called, and the men would come without question—because they were mine. Men of my blood, men of my land.”
His eyes were hooded, looking out over the mountainside that rose up before us. I thought he did not see the wooded heights of the Carolina wilderness, though; rather, the scoured mountains and rocky crofts of Lallybroch. I laid my free hand on his wrist; the skin was cold, but I could feel the heat of him, just below the surface, like a fever rising.
“They came for you—but you came for them, Jamie. You came for them at Culloden. You took them there—and you brought them back.”
Ironic, I thought, that the men who had come then to serve at his summons were for the most part still safe at home in Scotland. No part of the Highlands had been untouched by war—but Lallybroch and its people were for the most part still whole—because of Jamie.
“Aye, that’s so.” He turned to look at me, and a rueful smile touched his face. His hand tightened on mine for a moment, then relaxed, and the line deepened again between his brows. He waved a hand toward the mountains around us.
“But these men—there is no debt of blood between them and me. They are not Frasers; I am not born either laird or chief to them. If they come to fight at my call, it will be of their own will.”
“Well, that,” I said dryly, “and Governor Tryon’s.”
He shook his head at that.
“Nay, not that. Will the Governor ken which men are here, or which ones come to meet his summons?” He grimaced slightly. “He kens me—and that will do nicely.”
I had to admit the truth of this. Tryon would neither know nor care whom Jamie brought—only that he appeared, with a satisfactory number of men behind him, ready to do the Governor’s dirty work.
I pondered that for a moment, patting Jemmy’s bottom dry with the hem of my skirt. All I knew of the American Revolution were the things I had heard at second hand from Brianna’s schoolbooks—and I, of all people, knew just how great the gap could be between written history and the reality.
Also, we had lived in Boston, and the schoolbooks naturally reflected local history. The general impression