“Can ye no persuade your man otherwise?” Mairi Gordon had asked me, low-voiced and looking round to be sure she wasn’t overheard. “I’ve only my great-grandson, and I’ll be left alone to starve if he’s kilt.” Mairi was near my own age and had lived through the days after Culloden. I could see the fear at the back of her eyes, and felt it, too.

“I’ll … talk to him,” I said awkwardly. I could—and I would—try to persuade Jamie not to take Hugh Gordon, but I knew quite well what his answer would be.

“We won’t let you starve,” I said, with as much confidence as I could muster. “No matter what.”

“Aye, well,” she’d muttered, and let me dress the burn on her arm in silence.

The sense of excitement followed us out of the church. Men were clustering around Jamie; other men were in their own clusters, under the trees, in the shadow of the pines. I looked, but didn’t see Captain Cunningham among them; perhaps he knew better than to declare himself openly.

Yet.

The coldness I had felt in church was a shifting weight in my belly, like a pool of mercury. I went on talking pleasantly with the women and children—and the occasional man with a crushed toe or a splinter in his eye—but I could feel what was happening, all too clearly.

Jamie had split the Ridge, and the fracture lines were spreading.

He’d done it on purpose and from necessity, but that didn’t make the fact of it easier to bear. In the space of three hours, we had gone from a community—however contentious—to openly opposing camps. The earthquake had struck and the aftershocks would continue. Neighbors would be no longer neighbors, but stated enemies.

War had been declared.

USUALLY, PEOPLE WOULD mill slowly after church, groups forming and splitting and re-forming as friends were greeted, news exchanged, cloths spread, food unpacked, conversation rising under the trees like the comforting buzz of a working hive.

Not today.

Families drew in upon themselves, friends who found themselves still on the same side sought each other out for reassurance—but the Ridge had split, and its shattered pieces drifted slowly away along the forest paths, leaving the hot, thick air to settle on the vacant church, empty of peace.

My last patient, Auld Mam, who had (she said) a rheum in her back, was led away by one of her daughters, clutching a bottle of extra-strong tonic, and I heaved a deep, unrefreshing breath and started putting away my instruments and supplies. Bree had taken the children home—plainly there was to be no picnic lunch under the trees on this Sunday—but Roger was still standing outside the church with Jamie and Ian, the three of them talking quietly.

The sight gave me some comfort. At least Jamie wasn’t alone in this.