The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [167]
“. . . ready to ride and spread the alarm,” I said, half under my breath, “to every Middlesex village and farm.”
“What?” Jamie’s brows shot up. “Where’s Middlesex?”
“Well, you’d think it was halfway between male and female,” I said, “but it’s really just the area round Boston. Though of course that’s named after the one in England.”
“Yes?” he said, looking bewildered. “Aye, if ye say so, Sassenach. But—”
“Militia.” I lifted Jemmy, who was bucking and squirming like a landed fish, making noises of extreme protest at being forcibly diapered. He kicked me in the stomach. “Oh, give over, child, do.”
Jamie reached over and took the baby under the arms, hoisting him from my lap.
“Here, I’ll have him. Does he need more whisky?”
“I don’t know, but at least he can’t squawk if your finger’s in his mouth.” I relinquished Jemmy with some relief, returning to my train of thought.
“Boston’s been settled for more than a hundred years, even now,” I said. “It has villages and farms—and the farms aren’t all that far from the villages. People have been living there for a long time; everyone knows each other.”
Jamie was nodding patiently at each of these startling revelations, trusting that I would eventually come to some point. Which I did, only to discover that it was the same point he’d been making to me.
“So when someone musters militia there,” I said, suddenly seeing what he’d been telling me all along, “they come, because they’re accustomed to fighting together to defend their towns and because no man would want to be thought a coward by his neighbors. But here . . .” I bit my lip, contemplating the soaring mountains all around us.
“Aye,” he said, nodding, seeing the realization dawn in my face. “It’s different here.”
There was no settlement large enough to be called a town within a hundred miles, save the German Lutherans at Salem. Bar that, there was nothing in the backcountry but scattered homesteads; sometimes a place where a family had settled and spread, brothers or cousins building houses within sight of one another. Small settlements and distant cabins, some hidden in the mountain hollows, screened by laurels, where the residents might not see another white face for months—or years—at a time.
The sun had sunk below the angled slope of the mountain, but the light still lingered, a brief wash of color that stained the trees and rocks gold around us and flushed the distant peaks with blue and violet. There were living creatures in that cold, brilliant landscape, I knew, habitations nearby and warm bodies stirring; but so far as the eye could see, nothing moved.
Mountain settlers would go without question to help a neighbor—because they might as easily require such help themselves at any moment. There was, after all, no one else to turn to.
But they had never fought for a common purpose, had nothing in common to defend. And to abandon their homesteads and leave their families without defense, in order to serve the whim of a distant governor? A vague notion of duty might compel a few; a few would go from curiosity, from restlessness, or in the vague hope of gain. But most would go only if they were called by a man they respected; a man that they trusted.
I am not born either laird or chief to them, he’d said. Not born to them, no—but born to it, nonetheless. He could, if he wished, make himself chief.
“Why?” I asked softly. “Why will you do it?” The shadows were rising from the rocks, slowly drowning the light.
“Do you not see?” One eyebrow lifted as he turned his head to me. “Ye told me what would happen at Culloden—and I believed ye, Sassenach, fearful as it was. The men of Lallybroch came home safe as much because of you as because of me.”
That was not entirely true; any man who had marched to