The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [173]
“The Ku Klux Klan?” Roger was less interested in fanatical bigots than in the sight of Brianna’s bare breasts, but made an effort to focus on the conversation. “Oh, aye, heard of them. Where d’you think they got the notion?”
“What? You mean—”
“Sure,” he said cheerfully. “They got it from the Highland immigrants—from whom they were descended, by the bye. That’s why they called it ‘Klan,’ aye? Come to think,” he added, interested, “it could be this—tonight—that’s the link. The occasion that brings the custom from the Old World to the New, I mean. Wouldn’t that be something?”
“Something,” Brianna echoed faintly. She’d pulled on a fresh shift, and now shook out a clean dress of blue linen, looking uneasy.
“Everything starts somewhere, Bree,” he said, more gently. “Most often, we don’t know where or how; does it matter if this time we do? And the Ku Klux Klan won’t get started for a hundred years from now, at least.” He hoisted Jemmy slightly, bouncing him on one hip. “It won’t be us who sees it, or even wee Jeremiah here—maybe not even his son.”
“Great,” she said dryly, pulling on her stays and reaching for the laces. “So our great-grandson can end up being the Grand Dragon.”
Roger laughed.
“Aye, maybe so. But for tonight, it’s your father.”
24
PLAYING WITH FIRE
HE WASN’T SURE what he had expected. Something like the spectacle of the great fire at the Gathering, perhaps. The preparation was the same, involving large quantities of food and drink. A huge keg of beer and a smaller one of whisky stood on planks at the edge of the dooryard, and a huge roast pig on a spit of green hickory turned slowly over a bed of coals, sending whiffs of smoke and mouthwatering aromas through the cold evening air.
He grinned at the fire-washed faces in front of him, slicked with grease and flushed with booze, and struck his bodhran. His stomach rumbled loudly, but the noise was drowned beneath the raucous chorus of “Killiecrankie.”
“O, I met the De-ev-il and Dundeeee . . .
On the brae-aes o’ Killiecrankie-O!”
He would have earned his own supper by the time he got it. He had been playing and singing for more than an hour, and the moon was rising over Black Mountain now. He paused under cover of the refrain, just long enough to grab the cup of ale set under his stool and wet his throat, then hit the new verse fresh and solid.
“I fought on land, I fought on sea,
At hame I fought my auntie, Oh!
I met the Devil and Dundee . . .
On the braes o’ Killiecrankie-O!”
He smiled professionally as he sang, meeting an eye here, focusing on a face there, and calculated progress in the back of his mind. He’d got them going now—with a bit of help from the drink on offer, admittedly—and well stuck into what Bree had called “the warmongering stuff.”
He could feel the cross standing at his back, almost hidden by the darkness. Everyone had had a chance to see it, though; he’d heard the murmurs of interest and speculation.
Jamie Fraser was away to one side, out of the ring of firelight. Roger could just make out his tall form, dark in the shadow of the big red spruce that stood near the house. Fraser had been working his way methodically through the group all evening, stopping here and there to exchange cordialities, tell a joke, pause to listen to a problem or a story. Now he stood alone, waiting. Nearly time, then—for whatever he meant to do.
Roger gave them a moment for applause and his own refreshment, then launched into “Johnnie Cope,” fast, fierce, and funny.
He’d done that one at the Gathering, several times, and knew pretty much how they’d take it. A moment’s pause, uncertainty, then the voices beginning to join in—by the end of the second verse, they’d be whooping and shouting ribald remarks in the background.
Some of the men here had fought at Prestonpans; if they’d been defeated at Culloden, they’d still routed Johnnie Cope’s troops first, and loved the chance to relive that famous victory.