Jamie snorted briefly, tensing his buttocks, then relaxing as I stroked them lightly.
“Do they, then? I suppose it’s true, if Dorcas says so, but I canna see it, myself. There are a great many more pleasant ways to get a cockstand, if ye ask me. On the other hand,” he added fairly, “perhaps it makes a difference if it’s a bonny wee lassie in her shift on the other end o’ the strap, and not your father—or your nephew, come to that.”
“Perhaps it does. Shall I try sometime?” The hollow of his throat lay just by my face, sunburned and delicate, showing the faint white triangle of a scar just above the wide arch of his collarbone. I set my lips on the pulsebeat there, and he shivered, though neither of us was cold any longer.
“No,” he said, a little breathless. His hand fumbled at the neck of my shift, pulling loose the ribbons. He rolled onto his back then, lifting me suddenly above him as though I weighed nothing at all. A flick of his finger brought the loosened chemise down over my shoulders, and my nipples rose at once as the cold air struck them.
His eyes were more slanted than usual as he smiled up at me, half-lidded as a drowsing cat, and the warmth of his palms encircled both breasts.
“I said I could think of more pleasant ways, aye?”
The candle had guttered and gone out, the fire on the hearth burned low, and a pale November starlight shone through the misted window. Dim as it was, my eyes were so adapted to the dark that I could pick out all the details of the room; the thick white porcelain jug and basin, its blue band black in the starlight, the small embroidered sampler on the wall, and the rumpled heap of Jamie’s clothes on the stool by the bed.
Jamie was clearly visible, too; covers thrown back, chest gleaming faintly from exertion. I admired the long slope of his belly, where small whorls of dark auburn hair spiraled up across the pale, fresh skin. I couldn’t keep my fingers from touching him, tracing the lines of the powerfully sprung ribs that shaped his torso.
“It’s so good,” I said dreamily. “So good to have a man’s body to touch.”
“D’ye like it still, then?” He sounded half-shy, half-pleased, as I fondled him. His own arm came around my shoulder, stroking my hair.
“Mm-hm.” It wasn’t a thing I had consciously missed, but having it now reminded me of the joy of it; that drowsy intimacy in which a man’s body is as accessible to you as your own, the strange shapes and textures of it like a sudden extension of your own limbs.
I ran my hand down the flat slope of his belly, over the smooth jut of hipbone and the swell of muscled thigh. The remnants of firelight caught the red-gold fuzz on arms and legs, and glowed in the auburn thicket nested between his thighs.
“God, you are a wonderful hairy creature,” I said. “Even there.” I slid my hand down the smooth crease of his thigh and he spread his legs obligingly, letting me touch the thick, springy curls in the crease of his buttocks.
“Aye, well, no one’s hunted me yet for my pelt,” he said comfortably. His hand cupped my own rear firmly, and a large thumb passed gently over the rounded surface. He propped one arm behind his head, and looked lazily down the length of my body.
“You’re even less worth the skinning than I am, Sassenach.”
“I should hope so.” I moved slightly to accommodate his touch as he extended his explorations, enjoying the warmth of his hand on my naked back.
“Ever seen a smooth branch that’s been in still water a long time?” he asked. A finger passed lightly up my spine, raising a ripple of gooseflesh in its wake. “There are tiny wee bubbles on it, hundreds and thousands and millions of them, so it looks as though it’s furred all about wi’ a silver frost.” His fingers brushed my ribs, my arms, my back, and the tiny down-hairs rose everywhere in the wake of his touch, tingling.
“That’s what ye look like, my Sassenach,” he said, almost whispering. “All smooth and naked, dipped in silver.”
Then we lay quiet for a time, listening to the drip of rain outside. A cold autumn air drifted through the room, mingling with the fire’s smoky warmth. He rolled onto his side, facing away from me, and drew the quilts up to cover us.
I curled up behind him, knees fitting neatly behind his own. The firelight shone dully from behind me now, gleaming over the smooth round of his shoulder and dimly illuminating his back. I could see the faint lines of the scars that webbed his shoulders, thin streaks of silver on his flesh. At one time, I had known those scars so intimately, I could have traced them with my fingers, blindfolded. Now there was a thin half-moon curve I didn’t know; a diagonal slash that hadn’t been there before, the remnants of a violent past I hadn’t shared.
I touched the half-moon, tracing its length.
“No one’s hunted you for your pelt,” I said softly, “but they’ve hunted you, haven’t they?”
His shoulder moved slightly, not quite a shrug. “Now and then,” he said.
“Now?” I asked.
He breathed slowly for a moment or two before answering.
“Aye,” he said. “I think so.”
My fingers moved down to the diagonal slash. It had been a deep cut; old and well-healed as the damage was, the line was sharp and clear beneath my fingertips.
“Do you know who?”
“No.” He was quiet for a moment; then his hand closed over my own, where it lay across his stomach. “But I maybe ken why.”
The house was very quiet. With most of the children and grandchildren gone, there were only the far-off servants in their quarters behind the kitchen, Ian and Jenny in their room at the far end of the hall, and Young Ian somewhere upstairs—all asleep. We could have been alone at the end of the world; both Edinburgh and the smugglers’ cove seemed very far away.
“Do ye recall, after the fall of Stirling, not so long before Culloden, when all of a sudden there was gossip from everywhere, about gold being sent from France?”
“From Louis? Yes—but he never sent it.” Jamie’s words summoned up those brief frantic days of Charles Stuart’s reckless rise and precipitous fall, when rumor had been the common currency of conversation. “There was always gossip—about gold from France, ships from Spain, weapons from Holland—but nothing came of most of it.”
“Oh, something came—though not from Louis—but no one kent it, then.”
He told me then of his meeting with the dying Duncan Kerr, and the wanderer’s whispered words, heard in the inn’s attic under the watchful eye of an English officer.
“He was fevered, Duncan, but not crazed wi’ it. He kent he was dying, and he kent me, too. It was his only chance to tell someone he thought he could trust—so he told me.”
“White witches and seals?” I repeated. “I must say, it sounds like gibberish. But you understood it?”
“Well, not all of it,” Jamie admitted. He rolled over to face me, frowning slightly. “I’ve no notion who the white witch might be. At the first, I thought he meant you, Sassenach, and my heart nearly stopped when he said it.” He smiled ruefully, and his hand tightened on mine, clasped between us.
“I thought all at once that perhaps something had gone wrong—maybe ye’d not been able to go back to Frank and the place ye came from—maybe ye’d somehow ended in France, maybe ye were there right then—all kinds o’ fancies went through my head.”
“I wish it had been true,” I whispered.
He gave me a lopsided smile, but shook his head.
“And me in prison? And Brianna would be what—just ten or so? No, dinna waste your time in regretting, Sassenach. You’re here now, and ye’ll never leave me again.” He kissed me gently on the forehead, then resumed his tale.
“I didna have any idea where the gold had come from, but I kent his telling me where it was, and why it was there. It was Prince Tearlach’s, sent for him. And the bit about the silkies—” He raised his head a little and nodded toward the window, where the rose brier cast its shadows on the glass.
“Folk said when my mother ran away from Leoch that she’d gone to live wi’ the silkies; only because the maid that saw my father when he took her said as he looked like a great silkie who’d shed his skin and come to walk on the land like a man. And he did.” Jamie smiled and passed a hand through his own thick hair, remembering. “He had hair thick as mine, but a black like jet. It would shine in some lights, as though it was wet, and he moved quick and sleekit, like a seal through the water.” He shrugged suddenly, shaking off the recollection of his father.
“Well, so. When Duncan Kerr said the name Ellen, I kent it was my mother he meant—as a sign that he knew my name and my family, kent who I was; that he wasna raving, no matter how it sounded. And knowin’ that—” He shrugged again. “The Englishman had told me where they found Duncan, near the coast. There are hundreds of bittie isles and rocks all down that coast, but only one place where the silkies live, at the ends of the MacKenzie lands, off Coigach.”
“So you went there?”
“Aye, I did.” He sighed deeply, his free hand drifting to the hollow of my waist. “I wouldna have done it—left the prison, I mean—had I not still thought it maybe had something to do wi’ you, Sassenach.”
Escape had been an enterprise of no great difficulty; prisoners were often taken outside in small gangs, to cut the peats that burned on the prison’s hearths, or to cut and haul stone for the ongoing work of repairing the walls.
For a man to whom the heather was home, disappearing had been easy. He had risen from his work and turned aside by a hummock of grass, unfastening his breeches as though to relieve himself. The guard had looked politely away, and looking back a moment later, beheld nothing but an empty moor, holding no trace of Jamie Fraser.
“See, it was little trouble to slip off, but men seldom did,” he explained. “None of us were from near Ardsmuir—and had we been, there was little left for most o’ the men to gang to.”
The Duke of Cumberland’s men had done their work well. As one contemporary had put it, evaluating the Duke’s achievement later, “He created a desert and called it peace.” This modern approach to diplomacy had left some parts of the Highlands all but deserted; the men killed, imprisoned, or transported, crops and houses burned, the women and children turned out to starve or seek refuge elsewhere as best they might. No, a prisoner escaping from Ardsmuir would have been truly alone, without kin or clan to turn to for succor.
Jamie had known there would be little time before the English commander realized where he must be heading and organized a party of pursuit. On the other hand, there were no real roads in this remote part of the kingdom, and a man who knew the country was at a greater advantage on foot than were the pursuing outlanders on horseback.
He had made his escape in midafternoon. Taking his bearings by the stars, he had walked through the night, arriving at the coast near dawn the next day.
“See, I kent the silkies’ place; it’s well known amongst the MacKenzies, and I’d been there once before, wi’ Dougal.”
The tide had been high, and the seals mostly out in the water, hunting crabs and fish among the fronds of floating kelp, but the dark streaks of their droppings and the indolent forms of a few idlers marked the seals’ three islands, ranged in a line just inside the lip of a small bay, guarded by a clifflike headland.
By Jamie’s interpretation of Duncan’s instructions, the treasure lay on the third island, the farthest away from the shore. It was nearly a mile out, a long swim even for a strong man, and his own strength was sapped from the hard prison labor and the long walk without food. He had stood on the clifftop, wondering whether this was a wild-goose chase, and whether the treasure—if there was one—was worth the risk of his life.
“The rock was all split and broken there; when I came too close to the edge, chunks would fall awa’ from my feet and plummet down the cliff. I didna see how I’d ever reach the water, let alone the seals’ isle. But then I was minded what Duncan said about Ellen’s tower,” Jamie said. His eyes were open, fixed not on me, but on that distant shore where the crash of falling rock was lost in the smashing of the waves.
The “tower” was there; a small spike of granite that stuck up no more than five feet from the tip of the headland. But below that spike, hidden by the rocks, was a narrow crack, a small chimney that ran from top to bottom of the eighty-foot cliff, providing a possible passage, if not an easy one, for a determined man.
From the base of Ellen’s tower to the third island was still over a quarter-mile of heaving green water. Undressing, he had crossed himself, and commending his soul to the keeping of his mother, he had dived naked into the waves.
He made his way slowly out from the cliff, floundering and choking as the waves broke over his head. No place in Scotland is that far from the sea, but Jamie had been raised inland, his experience of swimming limited to the placid depths of lochs and the pools of trout streams.
Blinded by salt and deafened by the roaring surf, he had fought the waves for what seemed hours, then thrust his head and shoulders free, gasping for breath, only to see the headland looming—not behind, as he had thought, but to his right.
“The tide was goin’ out, and I was goin’ with it,” he said wryly. “I thought, well, that’s it, then, I’m gone, for I knew I could never make my way back. I hadna eaten anything in two days, and hadn’t much strength left.”
He ceased swimming then, and simply spread himself on his back, giving himself to the embrace of the sea. Light-headed from hunger and effort, he had closed his eyes against the light and searched his mind for the words of the old Celtic prayer against drowning.
He paused for a moment then, and was quiet for so long that I wondered whether something was wrong. But at last he drew breath and said shyly, “I expect ye’ll think I’m daft, Sassenach. I havena told anyone about it—not even Jenny. But—I heard my mother call me, then, right in the middle of praying.” He shrugged, uncomfortable.
“It was maybe only that I’d been thinking of her when I left the shore,” he said. “And yet—” He fell silent, until I touched his face.
“What did she say?” I asked quietly.
“She said, ‘Come here to me, Jamie—come to me, laddie!’” He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I could hear her plain as day, but I couldna see anything; there was no one there, not even a silkie. I thought perhaps she was callin’ me from Heaven—and I was so tired I really would not ha’ minded dying then, but I rolled myself over and struck out toward where I’d heard her voice. I thought I would swim ten strokes and then stop again to rest—or to sink.”
But on the eighth stroke, the current had taken him.
“It was just as though someone had picked me up,” he said, sounding still surprised at the memory of it. “I could feel it under me and all around; the water was a bit warmer than it had been, and it carried me with it. I didna have to do anything but paddle a bit, to keep my head above water.”
A strong, curling current, eddying between headland and islands, it had taken him to the edge of the third islet, where no more than a few strokes brought him within reach of its rocks.
It was a small lump of granite, fissured and creviced like all the ancient rocks of Scotland, and slimed with seaweed and seal droppings to boot, but he crawled on shore with all the thankfulness of a shipwrecked sailor for a land of palm trees and white-sand beaches. He fell down upon his face on the rocky shelf and lay there, grateful for breath, half-dozing with exhaustion.
“Then I felt something looming over me, and there was a terrible stink o’ dead fish,” he said. “I got up onto my knees at once, and there he was—a great bull seal, all sleek and wet, and his black eyes starin’ at me, no more than a yard away.”
Neither fisher nor seaman himself, Jamie had heard enough stories to know that bull seals were dangerous, particularly when threatened by intrusions upon their territory. Looking at the open mouth, with its fine display of sharp, peglike teeth, and the burly rolls of hard fat that girdled the enormous body, he was not disposed to doubt it.
“He weighed more than twenty stone, Sassenach,” he said. “If he wasna inclined to rip the flesh off my bones, still he could ha’ knocked me into the sea wi’ one swipe, or dragged me under to drown.”
“Obviously he didn’t, though,” I said dryly. “What happened?”
He laughed. “I think I was too mazed from tiredness to do anything sensible,” he said. “I just looked at him for a moment, and then I said, ‘It’s all right; it’s only me.’”
“And what did the seal do?”
Jamie shrugged slightly. “He looked me over for a bit longer—silkies dinna blink much, did ye know that? It’s verra unnerving to have one look at ye for long—then he gave a sort of a grunt and slid off the rock into the water.”
Left in sole possession of the tiny islet, Jamie had sat blankly for a time, recovering his strength, and then at last began a methodical search of the crevices. Small as the area was, it took little time to find a deep split in the rock that led down to a wide hollow space, a foot below the rocky surface. Floored with dry sand and located in the center of the island, the hollow would be safe from flooding in all but the worst storms.
“Well, don’t keep me in suspense,” I said, poking him in the stomach. “Was the French gold there?”
“Well, it was and it wasn’t, Sassenach,” he answered, neatly sucking in his stomach. “I’d been expecting gold bullion; that’s what the rumor said that Louis would send. And thirty thousand pounds’ worth of gold bullion would make a good-sized hoard. But all there was in the hollow was a box, less than a foot long, and a small leather pouch. The box did have gold in it, though—and silver, too.”
Gold and silver indeed. The wooden box had contained two hundred and five coins, gold ones and silver ones, some as sharply cut as though new-minted, some with their markings worn nearly to blankness.
“Ancient coins, Sassenach.”
“Ancient? What, you mean very old—”
“Greek, Sassenach, and Roman. Verra old indeed.”
We lay staring at each other in the dim light for a moment, not speaking.
“That’s incredible,” I said at last. “It’s treasure, all right, but not—”
“Not what Louis would send, to help feed an army, no,” he finished for me. “No, whoever put this treasure there, it wasna Louis or any of his ministers.”
“What about the bag?” I said, suddenly remembering. “What was in the pouch you found?”
“Stones, Sassenach. Gemstones. Diamonds and pearls and emeralds and sapphires. Not many, but nicely cut and big enough.” He smiled, a little grimly. “Aye, big enough.”
He had sat on a rock under the dim gray sky, turning the coins and the jewels over and over between his fingers, stunned into bewilderment. At last, roused by a sensation of being watched, he had looked up to find himself surrounded by a circle of curious seals. The tide was out, the females had come back from their fishing, and twenty pairs of round black eyes surveyed him cautiously.
The huge black male, emboldened by the presence of his harem, had come back too. He barked loudly, darting his head threateningly from side to side, and advanced on Jamie, sliding his three-hundred-pound bulk a few feet closer with each booming exclamation, propelling himself with his flippers across the slick rock.
“I thought I’d best leave, then,” he said. “I’d found what I came to find, after all. So I put the box and the pouch back where I’d found them—I couldna carry them ashore, after all, and if I did—what then? So I put them back, and crawled down into the water, half-frozen wi’ cold.”
A few strokes from the island had taken him again into the current heading landward; it was a circular current, like most eddies, and the gyre had carried him to the foot of the headland within half an hour, where he crawled ashore, dressed, and fell asleep in a nest of marrow grass.
He paused then, and I could see that while his eyes were open and fixed on me, it wasn’t me they saw.
“I woke at dawn,” he said softly. “I have seen a great many dawns, Sassenach, but never one like that one.
“I could feel the earth turn beneath me, and my own breath coming wi’ the breathing of the wind. It was as though I had no skin nor bone, but only the light of the rising sun inside me.”
His eyes softened, as he left the moor and came back to me.
“So then the sun came up higher,” he said, matter-of-factly. “And when it warmed me enough to stand, I got up and went inland toward the road, to meet the English.”
“But why did you go back?” I demanded. “You were free! You had money! And—”
“And where would I spend such money as that, Sassenach?” he asked. “Walk into a cottar’s hearth and offer him a gold denarius, or a wee emerald?” He smiled at my indignation and shook his head.
“Nay,” he said gently, “I had to go back. Aye, I could ha’ lived on the moor for a time—half-starved and naked, but I might have managed. But they were hunting me, Sassenach, and hunting hard, for thinking that I might know where the gold was hid. No cot near Ardsmuir would be safe from the English, so long as I was free, and might be thought to seek refuge there.
“I’ve seen the English hunting, ye ken,” he added, a harder note creeping into his voice. “Ye’ll have seen the panel in the entry hall?”
I had; one panel of the glowing oak that lined the hall below had been smashed in, perhaps by a heavy boot, and the crisscross scars of saber slashes marred the paneling from door to stairs.
“We keep it so to remember,” he said. “To show to the weans, and tell them when they ask—this is what the English are.”
The suppressed hate in his voice struck me low in the pit of the stomach. Knowing what I knew of what the English army had done in the Highlands, there was bloody little I could say in argument. I said nothing, and he continued after a moment.
“I wouldna expose the folk near Ardsmuir to that kind of attention, Sassenach.” At the word “Sassenach,” his hand squeezed mine and a small smile curved the corner of his mouth. Sassenach I might be to him, but not English.
“For that matter,” he went on, “were I not taken, the hunt would likely come here again—to Lallybroch. If I would risk the folk near Ardsmuir, I would not risk my own. And even without that—” He stopped, seeming to struggle to find words.
“I had to go back,” he said slowly. “For the sake of the men there, if for nothing else.”
“The men in the prison?” I said, surprised. “Were some of the Lallybroch men arrested with you?”
He shook his head. The small vertical line that appeared between his brows when he thought hard was visible, even by starlight.