The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [524]
Often they talked as they worked, but not this morning. Each man worked alone with his thoughts, tramping to and fro with the endless load. The morning passed in silence, broken only by the far-off calling of the disgruntled crows, and by the thunk and grate of stones, dropped on the growing pile.
It had to be done. There was no choice. He’d known that for a long time, but now that the dim prospect had hardened into reality . . . Roger eyed his father-in-law covertly. Would Jamie agree to it, though?
From a distance, the scars on his back were barely visible, masked by the gleam of sweat. Constant hard work kept a man trim and taut, and no one seeing Fraser in outline—or close enough to see the deep groove of his backbone, the flat belly and long clean lines of arm and thigh—would have taken him for a man in middle age.
Jamie had showed him the scars, though, the first day they went out to work together, after he had come back from the surveying. Standing by the half-built dairy-shed, Jamie had pulled the shirt off and turned his back, saying casually, “Have a keek, then.”
Up close, the scars were old and well-healed, thin white crescents and lines for the most part, with here and there a silvery net or a shiny lump, where a whipstroke had flayed the skin in too wide a patch for the edges of the wound to draw cleanly together. There was some skin untouched, showing fair and smooth among the weals—but not much.
And what was he to say? Roger had wondered. I’m sorry for it? Thanks for the viewing privileges?
In the event, he had said nothing. Jamie had merely turned around, handed Roger an ax with complete matter-of-factness, and they had begun their work, bare-chested. But he had noticed that Jamie never stripped to work, if the other men were with them.
All right. Of all men, Jamie would understand the need, the necessity—the burden of Brianna’s dreaming, that lay in Roger’s belly like a stone. Certainly he would help. But would he consent to allow Roger to finish it alone? Jamie, after all, had some stake in the matter, too.
The crows were still calling, but farther off, their cries thin and desperate, like those of lost souls. Perhaps he was foolish even to think of acting alone. He flung an armload of stones onto the pile; small rocks clacked and rolled away.
“Preacher’s lad.” That’s what the other lads at school had called him, and that’s what he was, with all the ambiguity the term implied. The initial urge to prove himself manly by means of force, the later awareness of the ultimate moral weakness of violence. But that was in another country—
He choked off the rest of the quotation, grimly bending to lever a chunk of rock free of moss and dirt. Orphaned by war, raised by a man of peace—how was he to set his mind to murder? He trundled the stone down toward the field, rolling it slowly end over end.
“You’ve never killed anything but fish,” he muttered to himself. “What makes you think . . .” But he knew all too well what made him think.
BY MID-MORNING, there were enough rocks collected to begin the first pillar; with a nod and a murmur, they set to work, dragging and heaving, stacking and fitting, with now and then a muffled exclamation at a smashed finger or bruised toes.
Jamie heaved a big stone into place, then straightened up, gasping for breath.
Roger drew his own deep breath. It might as well be now; no better opportunity was likely to come.
“I’ve a favor to ask,” he said abruptly.
Jamie glanced up, breathing heavily, one eyebrow raised. He nodded, waiting for the request.
“Teach me to fight.”
Jamie wiped an arm across his streaming face, and blew out a deep breath.
“Ye ken well enough how to fight,” he said. One corner of