The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [53]
“A Smeòraich!” One man, peering out from under the sodden brim of his slouch hat, caught sight of them and broke into a broad grin, as shrewd eyes passed over their dishevelment. “It is yourself, Thrush! And the daughter of the Red One, too? What, can you not restrain yourselves until the darkness?”
“No doubt it is sweeter to taste stolen fruit than to wait on a blessing from a shriveled priest.” Another man thrust back his bonnet on his head, and clasped himself briefly, making clear just what he meant by “shriveled.”
“Ah, no,” said the third, wiping drops from the end of his nose as he eyed Brianna, her cloak pulled tight around her. “He’s no but after singing her a wee wedding song, is he not?”
“I know the words to that song, too,” said his companion, his grin broadening enough to show a missing molar. “But I sing it still more sweetly!”
Brianna’s cheeks had begun to blaze again; her Gaelic was less fluent than Roger’s, but she was certainly able to gather the sense of crude teasing. Roger stepped in front of her, shielding her with his body. The men meant no harm, though; they winked and grinned appreciatively, but made no further comment. The first man pulled off his hat and beat it against his thigh, shedding water, then set to business.
“It’s glad I am to be meeting you thus, a Òranaiche. My mother did hear your music at the fire last night, and told it to my aunts and my cousins, how your music was making the blood dance in her feet. So now they will hear nothing but that you must come and sing for the ceilidh at Spring Creek. It is my youngest cousin will be wed, and her the only child of my uncle, who owns the flour mill.”
“It will be a great affair, surely!” put in one of the younger men, the son of the first speaker, by his resemblance to the former.
“Oh, it’s a wedding?” said Roger, in slow, formal Gaelic. “We’ll have an extra herring, then!”
The two older men burst into laughter at the joke, but their sons merely looked bewildered.
“Ah, the lads would not be knowing a herring, was it slapped wet against their cheeks,” said the bonneted man, shaking his head. “Born here, the two of them.”
“And where was your home in Scotland, sir?” The man jerked, surprised at the question, put in clear-voiced Gaelic. He stared at Brianna for a moment, then his face changed as he answered her.
“Skye,” he said softly. “Skeabost, near the foot of the Cuillins. I am Angus MacLeod, and Skye is the land of my sires and my grandsires. But my sons were born here.”
He spoke quietly, but there was a tone in his voice that quelled the hilarity in the younger men as though a damp blanket had been thrown over them. The man in the slouch hat looked at Brianna with interest.
“And were you born in Scotland, a nighean?”
She shook her head mutely, drawing the cloak higher on her shoulders.
“I was,” said Roger, answering a look of inquiry. “In Kyle of Lochalsh.”
“Ah,” said MacLeod, satisfaction spreading itself across his weathered features. “It is so, then, that you know all the songs of the Highlands and the Isles?”
“Not all,” said Roger, smiling. “But many—and I will learn more.”
“Do that,” said MacLeod, nodding slowly. “Do that, Singer—and teach them to your sons.” His eye lighted on Brianna, and a faint smile curled on his lips. “Let them sing to my sons, that they will know the place they came from—though they will never see it.”
One of the younger men stepped forward, bashfully holding out a string of fish, which he presented to Brianna.
“For you,” he said. “A gift for your wedding.”
Roger could see one corner of her mouth twitch slightly—with humor or incipient hysteria? he wondered—but she stretched out a hand and took the dripping string with grave dignity. She picked up the edge of her cloak with one hand, and swept them all a deep curtsy.
“Chaneil facal agam dhuibh ach taing,” she said, in her slow, strangely accented Gaelic. I have no words to say to you but thanks.
The young men went pink, and the older men looked deeply pleased.
“It is good, a nighean,