“The point,” she said, gulping air, “is that you’re always gone. Malva Christie, Amy McCallum, Marsali, Lizzie—you even go help Ute McGillivray, for God’s sake!”

“Who else is to do it?” he asked sharply. “Your father or your cousin might, aye—but they’ve to be gone to the Indians. I’m here. And I’m not always gone,” he added, as an afterthought. “I’m home every night, am I not?”

She closed her eyes and clenched her fists, feeling the nails dig into her palms.

“You’ll help any woman but me,” she said, opening her eyes. “Why is that?”

He gave her a long, hard look, and she wondered for an instant whether there was such a thing as a black emerald.

“Maybe I didn’t think ye needed me,” he said. And turning on his heel, he left.

51



THE CALLING

THE WATER LAY CALM as melted silver, the only movement on it the shadows of the evening clouds. But the hatch was about to rise; you could feel it. Or perhaps, Roger thought, what he felt was the expectation in his father-in-law, crouched like a leopard on the bank of the trout pool, pole and fly at the ready for the first sign of a ripple.

“Like the pool at Bethesda,” he said, amused.

“Oh, aye?” Jamie answered, but didn’t look at him, his attention fixed on the water.

“The one where an angel would go down into the pool and trouble the water now and then. So everyone sat about waiting, so as to plunge in the minute the water began to stir.”

Jamie smiled, but still didn’t turn. Fishing was serious business.

That was good; he’d rather not have Jamie look at him. But he’d have to hurry if he meant to say something; Fraser was already paying out the line to make a practice cast or two.

“I think—” He stopped himself, correcting. “No, I don’t think. I know. I want—” His air ran out in a wheeze, annoying him; the last thing he wanted was to sound in any way doubtful about what he was saying. He took a huge breath, and the next words shot out as though fired from a pistol. “I mean to be a minister.”

Well, then. He’d said it out loud. He glanced upward, involuntarily, but sure enough, the sky hadn’t fallen. It was hazed and riffled with mare’s tails, but the blue calm of it showed through and the ghost of an early moon floated just above the mountain’s shoulder.

Jamie glanced thoughtfully at him, but didn’t seem shocked or taken aback. That was some small comfort, he supposed.

“A minister. A preacher, d’ye mean?”

“Well … aye. That, too.”

The admission disconcerted him. He supposed he would have to preach, though the mere notion of it was terrifying.

“That, too?” Fraser repeated, looking at him sideways.

“Aye. I mean—a minister does preach, of course.” Of course. What about? How? “But that’s not—I mean, that’s not the main thing. Not why I—I have to do it.” He was getting flustered, trying to explain clearly something that he could not even explain properly to himself.

He sighed, and rubbed a hand over his face.

“Aye, look. Ye recall Grannie Wilson’s funeral, of course. And the McCallums?”

Jamie merely nodded, but Roger thought perhaps a flicker of understanding showed in his eyes.

“I’ve done … a few things. A bit like that, when it was needed. And—” He twitched a hand, unsure even how to begin describing things like his meeting with Hermon Husband on the banks of the Alamance, or the conversations had with his dead father, late at night.

He sighed again, made to toss a pebble into the water, and stopped himself, just in time, when he saw Jamie’s hand tense round his fishing pole. He coughed, feeling the familiar choke and rasp in his throat, and closed his hand around the pebble.

“The preaching, aye, I suppose I’ll manage. But it’s the other things—oh, God, this sounds insane, and I do believe I may be. But it’s the burying and the christening and the—the—maybe just being able to help, even if it’s only by listening and praying.”

“Ye want to take care of them,” Jamie said softly, and it wasn’t a question, but rather an acceptance.

Roger laughed a little, unhappily, and closed his eyes against the sparkle of the sun off the water.

“I don’t want to do it,” he said. “It’s the last thing I thought of, and me growing up in a minister’s house. I mean, I ken what it’s like. But someone has to do it, and I am thinking it’s me.”

Neither of them spoke for a bit. Roger opened his eyes and watched the water. Algae coated the rocks, wavering in the current like locks of mermaid’s hair. Fraser stirred a little, drawing back his rod.

“Do Presbyterians believe in the sacraments, would ye say?”

“Yes,” Roger said, surprised. “Of course we do. Have ye never—” Well, no. He supposed in fact Fraser never had spoken to anyone not a Catholic, regarding such matters. “We do,” he repeated. He dipped a hand gently in the water, and wiped it across his brow, so the coolness ran down his face and down his neck inside his shirt.

“It’s Holy Orders I mean, ken?” The drowned fly swam through the water, a tiny speck of red. “Will ye not need to be ordained?”

“Oh, I see. Aye, I would. There’s a Presbyterian academy in Mecklenburg County. I’ll go there and speak with them about it. Though I’m thinking it willna take such a time; I’ve the Greek and Latin already, and for what it’s worth”—he smiled, despite himself—“I’ve a degree from Oxford University. Believe it or not, I was once thought an educated man.”

Jamie’s mouth twitched at the corner as he drew back his arm and snapped his wrist. The line sailed out, a lazy curve, and the fly settled. Roger blinked; sure enough—the surface of the pool was beginning to pucker and shiver, tiny ripples spreading out from the rising hatch of mayflies and damselflies.

“Have ye spoken to your wife about it?”

“No,” he said, staring across the pool.

“Why not?” There was no tone of accusation in the question; more curiosity. Why, after all, should he have chosen to talk to his father-in-law first, rather than his wife?

Because you know what it is to be a man, he thought, and she doesn’t. What he said, though, was another version of the truth.

“I don’t want her to think me a coward.”

Jamie made a small “hmph” noise, almost surprise, but didn’t reply at once, concentrating on reeling in his line. He took the sodden fly from the hook, then hesitated over the collection on his hat, finally choosing a delicate green thing with a curving wisp of black feather.

“D’ye think she would?” Not waiting for an answer, Fraser stood and whipped the line up and back, sending the fly out to drift down over the center of the pool, lighting like a leaf on the water.

Roger watched as he brought it in, playing it over the water in a jerky dance. The Reverend had been a fisherman. All at once, he saw the Ness and its sparkling riffles, running clear brown over the rocks, Dad standing in his battered waders, reeling in his line. He was choked with longing. For Scotland. For his father. For one more day—just one—of peace.

The mountains and the green wood rose up mysterious and wild around them, and the hazy sky unfurled itself over the hollow like angel’s wings, silent and sunlit. But not peaceful; never peace, not here.

“Do you believe us—Claire and Brianna and me—about the war that’s coming?”

Jamie laughed shortly, gaze fixed on the water.

“I’ve eyes, man. It doesna take either prophet or witch to see it standing on the road.”

“That,” said Roger, giving him a curious look, “is a very odd way of putting it.”

“Is it, so? Is that no what the Bible says? When ye shall see the abomination of desolation, standing where it ought not, then let them in Judaea flee to the mountains?”

Let him who readeth understand. Memory supplied the missing part of the verse, and Roger became aware, with a small sense of cold in the bone, that Jamie did indeed see it standing on the road, and recognized it. Nor was he using figures of speech; he was describing, precisely, what he saw—because he had seen it before.