We passed the rest of the day in pleasant conversation, wandering among his reminiscences of the dear departed days when men were men, and the pernicious weed of civilization was less rampant upon the bonny wild face of the Highlands.
James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser.
A man killed with a musket was just as dead as one killed with a mortar. It was just that the mortar killed impersonally, destroying dozens of men, while the musket was fired by one man who could see the eyes of the one he killed. That made it murder, it seemed to me, not war. How many men to make a war? Enough, perhaps, so they didn’t really have to see each other?
He turned to face the assembled clansmen, raised his arms and greeted them with a ringing shout. “Tulach Ard!” “Tulach Ard!” the clansmen gave back in a roar. The woman next to me shivered. There was a short speech next, given in Gaelic. This was greeted with periodic roars of approval, and then the oath-taking proper commenced.
It’s the anonymity of the war that makes the killing possible. When the nameless dead are named again on tombstone and on cenotaph, then they regain the identity they lost as soldiers, and take their place in grief and memory, the ghosts of sons and lovers.
Until we two be burned to ashes.
As Geilie had spun, white arms stretched aloft, I saw what she had seen when my own clothes were stripped away. A mark on one arm like the one I bore. Here, in this time, the mark of sorcery, the mark of a magus. The small, homely scar of a smallpox vaccination.
It is possible to act in strict accordance with God’s law and with one’s conscience, you comprehend, and still to encounter difficulties and tragedy. It is the painful truth that we still do not know why le bon Dieu allows evil to exist, but we have His word for it that this is true.
Sometimes our best actions result in things that are most regrettable. And yet you could not have acted otherwise.
I reached for a pair of my own, intrigued. “Why not? Did the ancient Gaels not wear undergarments?” Frank leered. “You’ve never heard that old song about what a Scotsman wears beneath his kilts?” “Presumably not gents’ knee-length step-ins,” I said dryly. “Perhaps I’ll go out in search of a local kilt-wearer whilst you’re cavorting with vicars and ask him.” “Well, do try not to get arrested, Claire. The dean of St. Giles College wouldn’t like it at all.” In.
Leaving me to plant the rest of the garlic, Mrs. Fitz sailed away like a galleon, young Alec bobbing in her wake. I worked contentedly through the morning, planting garlic, pinching back dead flower heads, digging out weeds and carrying on the gardener’s never-ending battle against snails, slugs, and similar pests. Here, though, the battle was waged bare-handed, with no assistance from chemical antipest compounds.
We jolted along for a couple of hours in this manner, but the pain grew steadily worse, keeping me shifting in the saddle incessantly.
Jamie replied with what I had come to think of as a “Scottish noise,” that indeterminate sound made low in the throat that can be interpreted to mean almost anything. This particular noise seemed to indicate some doubt as to the likelihood of such a desirable outcome.
I prayed all the way up that hill yesterday,” he said softly. “Not for you to stay; I didna think that would be right. I prayed I’d be strong enough to send ye away.
Really rather fascinating, you know,” he confided, and I recognized, with an internal sigh, the song of the scholar, as identifying a sound as the terr-whit! of a thrush. Harking to the call of a kindred spirit, Frank at once settled down to the mating dance of academe, and they were soon neck-deep in archetypes and the parallels between ancient superstitions and modern religions. I shrugged and made my own way through the crowd to the bar and back, a large brandy-and-splash in each hand.
It’s not what’s happened or what’s about to happen; what’s important is the sense of emotional uncertainty between the characters and the delicacy of the mutual trust being established.
Knowing from experience how difficult it was to distract Frank’s attention from this sort of discussion, I simply picked up his hand, wrapped his fingers about the stem of the glass and left him to his own devices.
He has cat blood, I reflected sourly, no doubt that was how he managed to sneak up on me in the darkness.
Doom, or save. That I cannot do. For I have no power beyond that of knowledge, no ability to bend others to my will, no way to stop them doing what they will. There is only me. I shook the snow from the folds of my cloak, and turned to follow Maisri down the path, sharing her bitter knowledge that there was only me. And I was not enough.
There were a few faint echoes from the common room two floors below, and a brief flurry of noise and movement, but this served only to emphasize my own isolation.