The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [172]
“Don’t forget your guitar!” Bree called after him as he headed for the door. He glanced back at her, surprised.
“What?”
“Da wants you to sing. Wait, he gave me a list.”
“A list? Of what?” To the best of Roger’s knowledge, Jamie Fraser paid no attention whatever to music. It rankled him a bit, in fact, though he seldom admitted it—that his own greatest skill was one that Fraser didn’t value.
“Songs, of course.” She furrowed her brow, conjuring up the memorized list. “He wants you to do ‘Ho Ro!’ and ‘Birniebouzle,’ and ‘The Great Silkie’—you can do other stuff in between, he said, but he wants those—and then get into the warmongering stuff. That’s not what he called it, but you know what I mean—‘Killiecrankie’ and ‘The Haughs of Cromdale,’ and ‘The Sherrifsmuir Fight.’ Just the older stuff, though; he says don’t do the songs from the ’45, except for ‘Johnnie Cope’—he wants that one for sure, but toward the end. And—”
Roger stared at her, disentangling Jemmy’s foot from the folds of his plaid.
“I wouldn’t have thought your father so much as knew the names of songs, let alone had preferences.”
Brianna had stood up and was reaching for the long wooden pin that held her hair in place. She pulled it out and let the thick red shimmer cascade over shoulders and face. She ran both hands through the ruddy mass and pushed it back, shaking her head.
“He doesn’t. Have preferences, I mean. Da’s completely tone-deaf. Mama says he has a good sense of rhythm, but he can’t tell one note from another.”
“That’s what I thought. But why—”
“He may not listen to music, Roger, but he listens.” She glanced at him, snigging the comb through the tangles of her hair. “And he watches. He knows how people act—and how they feel—when they hear you do those songs.”
“Does he?” Roger murmured. He felt an odd spark of pleasure at the thought that Fraser had indeed noticed the effect of his music, even if he didn’t appreciate it personally. “So—he means me to soften them up, is that it? Get them in the mood before he goes on for his own bit?”
“That’s it.” She nodded, busy untying the laces of her bodice. Escaped from confinement, her breasts bobbed suddenly free, round and loose under the thin muslin shift.
Roger shifted his weight, easing the fit of his plaid. She caught the slight movement and looked at him. Slowly, she drew her hands up, cupping her breasts and lifting them, her eyes on his and a slight smile on her lips. Just for a moment, he felt as though he had stopped breathing, though his chest continued to rise and fall.
She was the first to break the moment, dropping her hands and turning to delve into the chest where she kept her linen.
“Do you know exactly what he’s up to?” she asked, her voice muffled in the depths of the chest. “Did he have that cross up when you left?”
“Aye, I know about it.” Jemmy was making small huffing noises, like a toy engine struggling up a hill. Roger tucked him under one arm, his hand cradling the fat little belly. “It’s a fiery cross. D’ye ken what that is?”
She emerged from the chest, a fresh shift in her hands, looking mildly disturbed.
“A fiery cross? You mean he’s going to burn a cross in the yard?”
“Well, not burn it all the way, no.” Taking down his bodhran with his free hand and flicking a finger against the drum head to check the tautness, he explained briefly the tradition of the fiery cross. “It’s a rare thing,” he concluded, moving the drum out of Jemmy’s grasping reach. “I don’t think it was ever done in the Highlands again, after the Rising. Your father told me he’d seen it once, though—it’s something really special, to see it done here.”
Flushed with historical enthusiasm, he didn’t notice at once that Brianna seemed slightly less eager.
“Maybe so,” she said uneasily. “I don’t know . . . it sort of gives me the creeps.”
“Eh?” Roger glanced at her in surprise. “Why?”
She shrugged, pulling the crumpled shift off over her head.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that I have seen burning crosses—on the evening