floating in his mind. Absurdly, it was a line from “Johnny Cope”: “It’s best to sleep in a hale skin; for ’twill be a bluidy morning.” Weirder still, he could hear—could almost feel—himself singing it, in his old voice, full of power and enthusiasm.
“Not that I’m ungrateful,” he said to the whitewashed ceiling beams, his morning voice cracked and rough. “But what the hell?”
He wasn’t sure whether he was talking to God or to his own unconscious, but the likelihood of getting a straight answer was probably the same in either case. He heard the soft thud of a closing door somewhere below and someone outside whistling through his or her teeth—Annie or Senga, maybe, on the way to the morning milking.
A knock came on his own door: Jenny Murray, tidy in a white pinny, dark curly hair tied back but not yet capped for the day, with a jug of hot water, a pot of soft soap, and a razor for shaving.
“Da says can ye ride a horse?” she said without preamble, looking him up and down in an assessing sort of way.
“I can,” he replied gruffly, taking the towel-wrapped jug from her. He needed badly to clear the phlegm from his throat and spit but couldn’t bring himself to do that in front of her. Consequently, he just nodded and muttered, “Taing,” as he took the razor, instead of asking why.
“Breakfast’ll be in the kitchen when you are,” she said matter-of-factly. “Bring the jug down, aye?”
AN HOUR LATER, filled to bursting with hot tea, parritch, bannocks with honey, and black pudding, he found himself on an autumn-shaggy horse, following Brian Fraser through the rising mist of early morning.
“We’ll go round to the crofts nearby,” Fraser had told him over breakfast, spooning strawberry preserves onto a bannock. “Even if no one’s seen your lad—and to be honest,” his wide mouth twisted in apology, “I think I should ha’ heard already if anyone had seen a stranger in the district—they’ll pass on the word.”
“Aye, thanks very much,” he’d said, meaning it. Even in his own time, gossip was the fastest way of spreading news in the Highlands. No matter how fast Rob Cameron might travel, Roger doubted he could outpace the speed of talk, and the thought made him smile. Jenny caught it and smiled back sympathetically, and he thought again what a very pretty lass she was.
The sky was still low and threatening, but impending rain had never yet deterred anyone in Scotland from doing anything and wasn’t likely to start now. His throat felt much better for the hot tea, and the odd sense of calm with which he’d waked was still with him.
Something had changed in the night. Maybe it was sleeping in Lallybroch, among the ghosts of his own future. Perhaps that had settled his mind while he slept.
Maybe it was answered prayer and a moment of grace. Maybe it was no more than Samuel Beckett’s bloody existential I can’t go on; I’ll go on. If he had a choice—and he did, Beckett be damned—he’d go with grace.
Whatever had caused it, he wasn’t disoriented any longer, thrown off-balance by what he knew about the futures of the people around him. There was still a deep concern about them—and the need to find Jem still filled him. But now it was a quiet, hard thing in his core. A focus, a weapon. Something to brace his back against.
He straightened his shoulders as he thought this and, at the same time, saw Brian’s straight, flat back and the broad, firm shoulders under the dark sett of his tartan coat. They were the echo of Jamie’s—and the promise of Jem’s.
Life goes on. It was his job above all to rescue Jem, as much for Brian Fraser’s sake as for his own.
And now he knew what had changed in him and gave thanks to God for what was indeed grace. He’d slept—and waked—in a whole skin. And however bloody the mornings to come, he had direction now, calmness and hope, because the good man who rode before him was on his side.
THEY VISITED MORE than a dozen crofts in the course of the day and stopped a tinker they met along the way, as well. No one had seen a stranger recently, with or without a red-haired lad, but all promised to spread the word and all without exception offered their prayers for Roger and his quest.
They stopped for supper and the night with a family named Murray that had