The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [684]
“Of what?” Roger’s voice was calm, hushed from the service, the rasp of it barely audible.
“Of what ye shall do—you and your family. Now that ye ken both that the wee lad can travel—and what it might mean, if ye stay.”
What it might mean to them all. I drew breath, uneasy. War. Battle. Uncertainty, save for the certainty of danger. The danger of illness or accident, for Brianna and Jem. The danger of death in the toils of childbirth, if she was again with child. And for Roger—danger both of body and soul. His head had healed, but I saw the stillness at the back of his eyes, when he thought of Randall Lillywhite.
“Oh, aye,” Roger said, softly, invisible behind me. “I have thought—and am still thinking . . . m’ athair-cèile.”
I smiled a little, to hear him call Jamie “father-in-law,” but the tone of his voice was altogether serious.
“Shall I tell ye what I think? And you will tell me?”
“Aye, do that. There is time still, for thinking.”
“I have been thinking, lately, of Hermon Husband.”
“The Quaker?” Jamie sounded surprised. Husband had left the colony with his family, after the battle of Alamance. I thought I heard that they had gone to Maryland.
“Aye, him. What d’ye think might have happened, had he not been a Quaker? Had he gone ahead, and led the Regulators to their war?”
Jamie grunted slightly, thinking.
“I dinna ken,” he said, though he sounded interested. “Ye mean they might have succeeded, with a proper leader?”
“Aye. Or maybe not—they’d no weapons, after all—but they would have done better than they did. And if so—”
We had come within sight of the house, now. Light was glowing in the back windows as the hearth-fire was stoked up for the evening, the candles lit for supper.
“What’s going to happen here—I am thinking, had the Regulation been properly led, perhaps it would have started here and then; not three years from now, in Massachusetts.”
“Aye? And if so, what then?”
Roger gave a brief snort, the verbal equivalent of a shrug.
“Who knows? I know what’s going on in England now—they are not ready, they’ve no notion of what they’re risking here. If war were to break out suddenly, with little warning—if it had broken out, at Alamance—it might spread quickly. It might be over before the English had a clue what was happening. It might have saved years of warfare, thousands of lives.”
“Or not,” Jamie said dryly, and Roger laughed.
“Or not,” he agreed. “But the point there is this; I think there are times for men of peace—and a time for men of blood, as well.”
Brianna had reached the house, but turned and waited for the rest of us. She had been listening to the conversation, too.
Roger stopped beside her, looking up. Bright sparks flew from the chimney in a firework shower, lighting his face by their glow.
“Ye called me,” he said at last, still looking up into the blazing dark. “At the Gathering, at the fire.”
“Seas vi mo lâmh, Roger an t’oranaiche, mac Jeremiah mac Choinneich,” Jamie said quietly. “Aye, I did. Stand by my side, Roger the singer, son of Jeremiah.”
“Seas vi mo lâmh, a mhic mo thaighe,” Roger said. “Stand by my side—son of my house. Did ye mean that?”
“Ye know that I did.”
“Then I mean it, too.” He reached out and rested his hand on Jamie’s shoulder, and I saw the knuckles whiten as he squeezed.
“I will stand by you. We will stay.”
Beside me, Brianna let out the breath she had been holding, in a sigh like the twilight wind.
111
AND YET GO OUT
TO MEET IT
THE BIG CLOCK CANDLE had burned down a little, but there were still a good many of the black rings that marked the hours. Jamie dropped the stones back into the pool of melted wax around the flame: one, two, three—and blew it out. The fourth stone, the big topaz, was ensconced in a small wooden box, which I had sewn up in oiled cloth. It was bound for Edinburgh, consigned to Mrs. Bug’s cousin’s husband, who, with his banking connections, would manage the sale of the stone,