To the sounds of the festivities gearing up, the distant rumble of people talking, the fiddles and drums tuning up by Claire’s garden—even the loud nasal drone of a bagpipe in the distance. That was Auld Charlie Wallace, who would pipe the ministers into church—and pipe them out again, their number augmented by one.

He’d been uncertain about the piping, given the Reverend Thomas’s opinions regarding music in church, but Jamie—of all people—had said that he didn’t think the sound of the pipes should really be called music.

“People dance to it,” Bree had said, amused.

“Aye, well, folk will dance to anything, if ye give them enough liquor,” her father replied. “The British government says the pipes are a weapon of war, though, and I’ll no just say they’re wrong. Put it this way, lass—ye ken I dinna hear music, but I hear what the pipes are sayin’ fine.”

Roger smiled, hearing this in memory. Jamie wasn’t wrong, and neither had been the British government.

Fitting, he thought, and closed his eyes. He was under no illusions that what he was about to do wasn’t one—and an important one—of innumerable steps on the road to a great battle.

Yes, he thought in reply to a silent question he’d answered before, would answer again, however often it came—and he knew it would. Yes, I’m scared. And yes, I will. And in the stillness of his beating heart, all sounds faded into a great, encompassing peace.

JAMIE HAD SEEN an ordination once, in Paris, in the great cathedral. He had gone with Annalise de Marillac, whose brother Jacques was one of the ordinands, and consequently had had a place with her family, from which he could see everything. He remembered it vividly—though in honesty, his memories of the early parts of the ceremony were mostly of Annalise’s bosom and her perfumed, excited warmth throbbing beside him. He was sure that getting a cockstand in a cathedral must be some sort of sin, but as he’d been too embarrassed to explain it in Confession, he had let it pass under the guise of “impure thoughts.” He cleared his throat, glanced at Claire, and straightened up.

This ceremony was quite different, of course—and yet at the heart of it, it was strikingly the same.

The words were in English, not Latin—but they said similar things.

Grace to you and peace

from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, we come together with thanksgiving as congregation and

Presbytery to praise the Lord who has brought us to this day of the ordination

Of Roger Jeremiah MacKenzie as Minister of this congregation and parish.

Notre Dame de Paris had a mighty organ and many choristers; he remembered how the sound had shaken the air and seemed to quiver in his bones. Here, there was no music but the calls of birds that came through the open windows, no incense save the smell of pine boards and the pleasant tang of soap and sweat among the people. Brianna, on his left, smelled of flour and apples, and Claire on his right carried her usual varying scent of green things and flowers. From the corner of his eye, he caught a wee movement; a bee had landed on her head, just above her ear.