"Duty," Jamie repeated. He tapped the missive idly against his leg. "Aye, well. Duty might take ye from Charleston to Virginia, but there are quicker ways to get there."

Hayes started to shrug, but desisted at once, as the movement jarred the shoulder I was bandaging.

"I had the Proclamation to bring, from Governor Tryon."

"The Governor's no authority over you or your men."

"True," Hayes agreed, "but why should I not do the man a service, and I could?"

"Aye, and did he ask ye to do him the service, or was it your own notion?" Jamie said, a distinct tone of cynicism in his voice.

"Ye've grown a bit suspicious in your auld age, a Sheumais ruaidh a Sheumais ruaidh," Hayes said, shaking his head reprovingly.

"That's how I've lived to grow as auld as I have," Jamie replied, smiling slightly. He paused, eyeing Hayes. "Ye say it was a man named Murchison who shot ye on the field at Drumossie?"

I had finished the bandaging; Hayes moved his shoulder experimentally, testing for pain.

"Why, ye kent that, surely, a Sheumais ruaidh a Sheumais ruaidh. D'ye not recall the day, man?"

Jamie's face changed subtly, and I felt a small tremor of unease. The fact was that Jamie had almost no memory of the last day of the clans, of the slaughter that had left so many bleeding in the rain-him among them. I knew that small scenes from that day came back to him now and again in his sleep, fragments of nightmare-but whether it was from trauma, injury, or simple force of will, the Battle of Culloden was lost to him-or had been, until now. I didn't think he wanted it back.

"A great deal happened then," he said. "I dinna remember everything, no." He bent his head abruptly, and thrust a thumb beneath the fold of the letter, opening it so roughly that the wax seal shattered into fragments.

"Your husband's a modest man, Mistress Fraser." Hayes nodded to me as he summoned his aide with a flip of the hand. "Has he never told ye what he did that day?"

"There was a good bit of gallantry on that field," Jamie muttered, head bent over the letter. "And quite a bit of the reverse." I didn't think he was reading; his eyes were fixed, as though he were seeing something else, beyond the paper that he held.

"Aye, there was," Hayes agreed. "But it does seem worth remark, when a man's saved your life, no?"

Jamie's head jerked up at that, startled. I moved across to stand behind him, a hand laid lightly on his shoulder. Hayes took the shirt from his aide and put it slowly on, smiling in an odd, half-watchful way.

"Ye dinna recall how ye struck Murchison across the head, just as he was set to bayonet me on the ground? And then ye picked me up and carried me from the field, awa to a bittie well nearby? One of the chiefs lay on the grass there, and his men were bathin' his heid in the water, but I could see he was deid, he lay so still. There was someone there to tend me; they wished ye to stay, too, for ye were wounded and bleeding, but ye would not. Ye wished me well, in the name of St. Michael-and went back then, to the field."

Hayes settled the chain of his gorget, adjusting the small silver crescent beneath his chin. Without his stock, his throat looked bare, defenseless.

"Ye looked fair wild, man, for there was blood runnin' doon your face and your hair was loose on the wind. Ye'd sheathed your sword to carry me, but ye pulled it again as ye turned away. I didna think I should see ye again, for if ever I saw a man set to meet his death ..."

He shook his head, his eyes half-closed, as though he saw not the sober, stalwart man before him, not the Fraser of Fraser's Ridge-but Red Jamie, the young warrior who had not gone back from gallantry, but because he sought to throw his life away, feeling it a burden-because he had lost me.

"Did I?" Jamie muttered. "I had ... forgotten." I could feel the tension in him, singing like a stretched wire under my hand. A pulse beat quick in the artery beneath his ear. There were things he had forgotten, but not that. Neither had I.

Hayes bent his head, as his aide fastened the stock around his neck, then straightened and nodded to me.

"I thank ye, ma'am, 'twas most gracious of ye."

"Think nothing of it," I said, dry-mouthed. "My pleasure." It had come on to rain again; the cold drops struck my hands and face, and moisture glimmered on the strong bones of Jamie's face, caught trembling in his hair and thick lashes.

Hayes shrugged himself into his coat, and fastened the loop of his plaid with a small gilt brooch-the brooch his father had given him, before Culloden.

"So Murchison is dead," he said, as though to himself. "I did hear"-his fingers fumbled for a moment with the clasp of the brooch-"as how there were two brothers of that name, alike as peas in the pod."

"There were," Jamie said. He looked up then, and met Hayes's eyes. The Lieutenant's face showed no more than mild interest.

"Ah. And would ye know, then, which it was? ..."

"No. But it is no matter; both are dead."

"Ah," Hayes said again. He stood a moment, as though thinking, then bowed to Jamie, formally, bonnet held against his chest.

"Buidheachas dhut, a Sheumais mac Brian. And may Blessed Michael defend you." He lifted the bonnet briefly to me, clapped it on his head, and turned to go, his aide following in silence.

A gust of wind blew through the clearing, with a chilly burst of rain upon it, so like the freezing April rain of Culloden. Jamie shivered suddenly beside me, with a deep, convulsive shudder that crumpled the letter he still held in his hand.

"How much do you remember?" I asked, looking after Hayes, as he picked his way across the blood-soaked ground.

"Almost nothing," he replied. He stood up and turned to look down at me, his eyes as dark as the clouded skies above. "And that is still too much."

He handed me the crumpled letter. The rain had blotted and smeared the ink here and there, but it was still quite readable. By contrast to the Proclamation, it contained two two sentences-but the additional period didn't dilute its impact. sentences-but the additional period didn't dilute its impact.

New Bern, 20 October Colonel James Fraser Whereas the Peace and good Order of this Government has been lately violated and much Injury done to the Persons and Properties of many Inhabitants of this Province by a Body of People who Stile themselves Regulators, I do by the Advice of his Majesty's Council Order and direct you forthwith to call a General Muster of so many Men as you Judge suitable to serve in a Regiment of Militia, and make Report to me as soon as possible of the Number of Volunteers that are willing to turn out in the Service of their King and Country, when called upon, and also what Number of effective Men belong to your Regiment who can be ordered out in case of an Emergency, and in case any further Violence should be attempted to be committed by the Insurgents. Your Diligent and punctual Obedience to these Orders will be well received by Your Obed't. Servant, William Tryon I folded the rain-spotted letter neatly up, noticing remotely that my hands were shaking. Jamie took it from me, and held it between thumb and forefinger, as though it were some disagreeable object-as indeed it was. His mouth quirked wryly as he met my eyes.

"I had hoped for a little more time," he said.

8

THE FACTOR

AFTER BRIANNA LEFT TO RETRIEVE Jemmy from Jocasta's tent, Roger made his way slowly up the hill toward their own campsite. He exchanged greetings and accepted congratulations from people he passed, but scarcely heard what was said to him.

There'll be a next time, she'd said. He held the words close, turning them over in his mind like a handful of coins in his pocket. She hadn't been just saying it. She meant it, and it was a promise that at the moment meant even more to him than the ones she'd made on their first wedding night. she'd said. He held the words close, turning them over in his mind like a handful of coins in his pocket. She hadn't been just saying it. She meant it, and it was a promise that at the moment meant even more to him than the ones she'd made on their first wedding night.

The thought of weddings reminded him, finally, that there was in fact another coming. He glanced down at himself, and saw that Bree hadn't been exaggerating about his appearance. Damn, and it was Jamie's coat, too.

He began to brush off the pine needles and streaks of mud, but was interrupted by a halloo from the path above. He looked up, to see Duncan Innes making his way carefully down the steep slope, body canted to compensate for his missing arm. Duncan had put on his splendid coat, scarlet with blue facings and gold buttons, and his hair was plaited tight under a stylish new black hat. The transformation from Highland fisherman to prosperous landowner was startling; even Duncan's attitude seemed changed, more confident by half.

Duncan was accompanied by a tall, thin, elderly gentleman, very neat but threadbare in appearance, his scanty white locks tied back from a high and balding brow. His mouth had collapsed from lack of teeth, but retained its humorous curve, and his eyes were blue and bright, set in a long face whose skin was stretched so tight across the bone as scarce to leave enough to wrinkle round the eyes, though deep lines carved the mouth and brow. With a long-beaked nose, and clad in rusty, tattered black, he looked like a genial vulture.

"A Smeraich," Duncan hailed Roger, looking pleased. "The very man I hoped to find! And I trust you're weel-fettled against your marriage?" he added, his eyes falling quizzically on Roger's stained coat and leaf-strewn hair. Duncan hailed Roger, looking pleased. "The very man I hoped to find! And I trust you're weel-fettled against your marriage?" he added, his eyes falling quizzically on Roger's stained coat and leaf-strewn hair.

"Oh, aye." Roger cleared his throat, converting his coat-brushing to a brief thump of his chest, as though to loosen phlegm. "Damp weather for a wedding, though, eh?"

"Happy the corpse the rain falls on," Duncan agreed, and laughed, a little nervously. "Still, we'll hope not to die o' the pleurisy before we're wed, eh, lad?" He settled the fine crimson coat more snugly on his shoulders, flicking an imaginary speck of dust from the cuff.

"You're very fine, Duncan," Roger said, hoping to distract attention from his own disreputable state with a bit of raillery. "Quite like a bridegroom!"

Duncan flushed a little behind his drooping mustache, and his one hand twiddled with the crested buttons on his coat.

"Ah, well," he said, seeming mildly embarrassed. "Miss Jo did say as she didna wish to stand up wi' a scarecrow." He coughed, and turned abruptly to his companion, as though the word had suddenly reminded him of the man's presence.

"Mr. Bug, here's Himself's good-son, Roger Mac, him I tellt ye of." He turned back toward Roger, waving vaguely at his companion, who stepped forward, extending his hand with a stiff but cordial bow. "This will be Arch Bug, a Smeraich a Smeraich."

"Your servant, Mr. Bug," Roger said politely, slightly startled to observe that the large bony hand gripping his was missing its first two fingers.

"Ump," Mr. Bug replied, his manner indicating that he reciprocated the sentiment sincerely. He might have intended to expand on the subject, but when he opened his mouth, a high-pitched feminine voice, a little cracked with age, seemed to emerge from it.

"It's that kind, sir, of Mr. Fraser, and I'm sure as he'll have nay reason to regret it, indeed he'll not, as I said to him myself. I canna tell ye what a blessing it is, and us not sure where our next bite was comin' from or how to keep a roof above our heads! I said to Arch, I said, now we must just trust in Christ and Our Lady, and if we mun starve, we shall do it in a state of grace, and Arch, he says to me ..."

A small, round woman, threadbare and elderly as her husband, but likewise neatly mended, emerged into view, still talking. Short as she was, Roger hadn't seen her, hidden behind the voluminous skirts of her husband's ancient coat.

"Mistress Bug," Duncan whispered to him, unnecessarily.

"... and no but a silver ha'penny to bless ourselves with, and me a-wondering whatever was to become of us, and then that Sally McBride was sayin' as how she'd heard that Jamie Fraser had need of a good-"

Mr. Bug smiled above his wife's head. She halted in mid-sentence, eyes widening in shock at the state of Roger's coat.

"Why, look at that! Whatever have ye been up to, lad? Have ye had an accident? It looks as though someone's knocked ye down and dragged ye by your heels through the dung heap!"

Not waiting for answers, she whipped a clean kerchief from the bulging pocket tied at her waist, spat liberally on it, and began industriously cleaning the muddy smears from the breast of his coat.

"Oh, you needn't ... I mean ... er ... thanks." Roger felt as though he'd been caught in some kind of machinery. He glanced at Duncan, hoping for rescue.

"Jamie Roy's asked Mr. Bug to come and be factor at the Ridge." Duncan seized the momentary lull afforded by Mrs. Bug's preoccupation to give a word of explanation.

"Factor?" Roger felt a small jolt at the word, as though someone had punched him just beneath the breastbone.

"Aye, for times when Himself must be abroad or occupied with other business. For it's true enough-fields and tenants dinna tend themselves."

Duncan spoke with a certain note of ruefulness; once a simple fisherman from Coigach, he frequently found the responsibilities of running a large plantation onerous, and he glanced now at Mr. Bug with a small gleam of covetousness, as though he thought momentarily of tucking this useful person into his pocket and taking him home to River Run. Of course, Roger reflected, that would have meant taking Mrs. Bug, too.

"And just the thing it is, too, such such good fortune, and me telling Arch just yesterday that the best we might hope for was to find work in Edenton or Cross Creek, with Arch maybe takin' to the boats, but that's such a perilous living, is it no? Wet to the skin half the time and deadly agues risin' up from the swamps like ghoulies and the air sae thick wi' the miasma as it's not fit to breathe, and me perhaps to be takin' in laundry in the toon whilst he was gone abroad on the water, though I'm sure I should hate that, for we havena been apart one night since we married, have we, my dearie?" good fortune, and me telling Arch just yesterday that the best we might hope for was to find work in Edenton or Cross Creek, with Arch maybe takin' to the boats, but that's such a perilous living, is it no? Wet to the skin half the time and deadly agues risin' up from the swamps like ghoulies and the air sae thick wi' the miasma as it's not fit to breathe, and me perhaps to be takin' in laundry in the toon whilst he was gone abroad on the water, though I'm sure I should hate that, for we havena been apart one night since we married, have we, my dearie?"

She cast a glance of devotion upward at her tall husband, who smiled gently down at her. Perhaps Mr. Bug was deaf, Roger thought. Or perhaps they had only been married a week?

Without his needing to inquire, though, he was informed that the Bugs had been husband and wife for more than forty years. Arch Bug had been a minor tacksman to Malcolm Grant of Glenmoriston, but the years after the Rising had been hard. The estate he had held for Grant having been confiscated by the English Crown, Bug had made do for some years as a crofter, but then had been obliged by hardship and starvation to take his wife and their little remaining money and seek a new life in America.

"We had thought to try in Edinburgh-" the old gentleman said, his speech slow and courtly, with a soft Highland lilt. So he wasn't wasn't deaf, Roger thought. Yet. deaf, Roger thought. Yet.

"-for I had a cousin there as was to do wi' one of the banking houses, and we thought that perhaps it would be that he could speak a word in someone's ear-"

"But I was far too ancient and lacked sufficient skill-"

"-and lucky they would have been to have him, too! But nay, such fools as they were, they wouldna think of it, and so we had to come awa and try if we might ..."

Duncan met Roger's eye and hid a smile beneath his drooping mustache as the tale of the Bugs' adventures poured out in this syncopated fashion. Roger returned the smile, trying privately to dismiss a niggling sense of discomfort.

Factor. Someone to oversee matters on the Ridge, to mind the planting, tend the harvest, deal with the concerns of tenants when Jamie Fraser was away or busy. An obvious necessity, with the recent influx of new tenants and the knowledge of what the next few years would bring.

It wasn't until this moment, though, that Roger realized that he had subconsciously assumed that he he would be Jamie's right hand in such affairs. Or the left, at least. would be Jamie's right hand in such affairs. Or the left, at least.

Fergus assisted Jamie to some extent, riding on errands and fetching back information. Fergus's lack of a hand limited what he could do physically, though, and he couldn't be dealing with the paperwork or accounts; Jenny Murray had taught the French orphan her brother had adopted to read-after a fashion-but had failed utterly to give him a grasp of numbers.

Roger stole a glance at Mr. Bug's hand, resting now in affection on his wife's plump shoulder. It was broad, work-worn, and strong-looking despite the mutilation, but the remaining fingers were badly twisted with arthritis, the joints knobby and painful in appearance.

So Jamie thought that even an elderly, half-crippled man would be better equipped than Roger to handle the affairs of Fraser's Ridge? That was an unexpectedly bitter thought.

He knew his father-in-law had doubts of his ability, beyond any father's natural mistrust of the man bedding his daughter. Totally tone-deaf himself, Jamie would naturally not value Roger's musical gift. And while Roger was decently sized and hardworking, it was unfortunately true that he had little practical knowledge of animal husbandry, hunting, or the use of deadly weapons. And granted, he had no great experience in farming or in running a large estate-which Mr. Bug plainly did. Roger would be the first to admit these things.

But he was Jamie's son-in-law, or about to be. Damn it, Duncan had just introduced him that way! He might have been raised in another time-but he was a Highland Scot, for all that, and he was well aware that blood and kinship counted for more than anything.

The husband of an only daughter would normally be considered as the son of the house, coming only second to the head of the household in authority and respect. Unless there was something drastically wrong with him. If he were commonly known to be a drunkard, for instance-or criminally dissolute. Or feeble-minded ... Christ, was that what Jamie thought of him? A hopeless numpty?

"Sit ye doon, young man, and I'll attend to this this fine boorachie," Mrs. Bug interrupted these dark musings. She pulled on his sleeve, making clicking noises of disapproval as she viewed the leaves and twigs in his hair. fine boorachie," Mrs. Bug interrupted these dark musings. She pulled on his sleeve, making clicking noises of disapproval as she viewed the leaves and twigs in his hair.

"Look at ye, all gluthered and blashed about! Fightin', was it? Och, weel, I hope the other fellow looks worse, that's all I can say."

Before he could protest, she had him seated on a rock, had whipped a wooden comb from her pocket and the thong from his hair, and was dealing with his disordered locks in a brisk manner that felt calculated to rip several strands from his scalp.

"Thrush, is it, they call ye?" Mrs. Bug paused in her tonsorial activity, holding up a strand of glossy black and squinting suspiciously at it, as though in search of vermin.

"Oh, aye, but it's no for the color of his bonnie black locks," Duncan put in, grinning at Roger's obvious discomfiture. "It's for the singin'. Honey-throated as a wee nightingale, is Roger Mac."

"Singing?" cried Mrs. Bug. She dropped the lock of hair, enchanted. "Was it you we heard last night, then? Singin' 'Ceann-rara,' and 'Loch Ruadhainn'? And playin' on the bodhran with it?"

"Well, it might have been," Roger murmured modestly. The lady's unbounded admiration-expressed at great length-flattered him, and made him ashamed of his momentary resentment of her husband. After all, he thought, seeing the shabbiness of her much-mended apron, and the lines in her face, the old people had clearly had a hard time of it. Perhaps Jamie had hired them as much from charity as from his own need of help.

That made him feel somewhat better, and he thanked Mrs. Bug very graciously for her assistance.

"Will ye come along to our fire now?" he asked, with an inquiring glance at Mr. Bug. "Ye'll not have met Mrs. Fraser yet, I suppose, or-"

He was interrupted by a noise like a fire engine's siren, distant but obviously coming closer. Quite familiar with this particular racket, he was not surprised to see his father-in-law emerge from one of the trails that crisscrossed the mountain, Jem squirming and squalling like a scalded cat in his arms.

Jamie, looking mildly harried, handed the child across to Roger. Roger took him and-for lack of any other inspiration-stuck his thumb in the wide-open mouth. The noise ceased abruptly, and everyone relaxed.

"What a sweet laddie!" Mrs. Bug stood a-tiptoe to coo over Jem, while Jamie, looking highly relieved, turned to greet Mr. Bug and Duncan.

"Sweet" was not the adjective Roger himself would have chosen. "Berserk" seemed more like it. The baby was bright red in the face, the tracks of tears staining his cheeks, and he sucked furiously on the sustaining thumb, eyes squashed shut in an effort to escape a patently unsatisfactory world. What hair he had was sticking up in sweaty spikes and whorls, and he had come out of his wrappings, which hung in disreputable folds and draggles. He also smelled like a neglected privy, for reasons which were all too obvious.

An experienced father, Roger at once instituted emergency measures.