“It’s a wonder I dinna hear him here, but I never have.”

It was a thoroughly unremarkable spot, a wood-railed gate in the stone fence that paralleled the road.

“Really? What did he used to say here?”

“Usually it was ‘If ye’re through talkin’, Jamie, turn about and bend ower.’ ”

We laughed, pausing to lean on the fence. I bent closer, squinting at the wood.

“So this is where you got smacked? I don’t see any toothmarks,” I said.

“No, it wasna all that bad,” he said, laughing. He ran a hand affectionately along the worn ash fence rail.

“We used to get splinters in our fingers, sometimes, Ian and me. We’d go up to the house after, and Mrs. Crook or Jenny would pick them out for us – scolding all the time.”

He glanced toward the manor, where all the first-floor windows glowed with light against the gathering night. Dark forms moved briefly past the windows; small, quick-moving shadows in the kitchen windows, where Mrs. Crook and the maids were at the dinner preparations. A larger form, tall and slender as a fence rail, loomed suddenly in one of the drawing room windows. Ian stood a moment, silhouetted in the light as though called by Jamie’s reminiscence. Then he drew the curtains and the window dulled to a softer, shrouded glow.

“I was always glad when Ian was with me,” Jamie said, still looking toward the house. “When we got caught at some devilry and got thrashed for it, I mean.”

“Misery loves company?” I said, smiling.

“A bit. I didna feel quite so wicked when there were the two of us to share the guilt between. But it was more that I could always count on him to make a lot of noise.”

“What, to cry out, you mean?”

“Aye. He’d always howl and carry on something awful, and I knew he would do it, so I didna feel so ashamed of my own noise, if I had to cry out.” It was too dark to see his face anymore, but I could still see the half-shrugging gesture he made when embarrassed or uncomfortable.

“I always tried not to, of course, but I couldna always manage. If my da thought it worth thrashing me over, he thought it worth doing a proper job. And Ian’s father had a right arm like a tree bole.”

“You know,” I said, glancing down at the house, “I never thought of it particularly before, but why on earth did your father thrash you out here, Jamie? Surely there’s enough room in the house – or the barn.”

Jamie was silent for a moment, then shrugged again.

“I didna ever ask. But I reckon it was something like the King of France.”

“The King of France.” This apparent non sequitur took me aback a bit.

“Aye. I dinna ken,” he said dryly, “quite what it’s like to have to wash and dress and move your bowels in public, but I can tell ye that it’s a verra humbling experience to have to stand there and explain to one of your father’s tenants just what ye did that’s about to get your arse scalded for ye.”

“I imagine it must be,” I said, sympathy mingled with the urge to laugh. “Because you were going to be laird, you mean? That’s why he made you do it here?”

“I expect so. The tenants would know I understood justice – at least, from the receiving end.”

The field had been plowed in the usual “rigs,” high ridges of piled earth, with deep furrows drawn between them. The rigs rose knee-high, so a man walking down the furrows could sow his seed easily by hand along the top of the rig beside him. Designed for the planting of barley or oats, no reason had been seen to alter them for the planting of potatoes.

“It said ‘hills,’ ” Ian said, peering over the leafy expanse of the potato field, “but I thought the rigs would do as well. The point of the hills seemed to be to keep the things from rotting wi’ too much water, and an old field wi’ high rigs seemed like to do that as well.”

“That seems sensible,” Jamie agreed. “The top parts seem to be flourishing, anyway. Does the man say how ye ken when to dig the things up, though?”

Charged with the planting of potatoes in a land where no potato had ever been seen, Ian had proceeded with method and logic, sending to Edinburgh both for seed potatoes, and for a book on the subject of planting. In due course, A Scientific Treatise on Methods of Farming, by Sir Walter O’Bannion Reilly had made its appearance, with a small section on potato planting as presently practiced in Ireland.

Ian was carrying this substantial volume under one arm – Jenny had told me that he wouldn’t go near the potato field without it, lest some knotty question of philosophy or technique occur to him while there – and now flipped it open, bracing it on one forearm as he groped in his sporran for the spectacles he wore when reading. These had belonged to his late father; small circles of glass, set in wire rims, and customarily worn on the end of his nose, they made him look like a very earnest young stork.

“Harvesting of the crop should be undertaken simultaneously with the appearance of the first winter goose,” he read, then looked up, squinting accusingly over his spectacles at the potato field, as though expecting an indicative goose to stick its head up among the furrowed rigs.

“Winter goose?” Jamie peered frowning at the book over Ian’s shoulder. “What sort of goose does he mean? Greylags? But ye see those all year. That canna be right.”

Ian shrugged. “Maybe ye only see them in the winter in Ireland. Or maybe it’s some kind of Irish goose he means, and not greylags at all.”

Jamie snorted. “Well, the fat lot of good that does us. Does he say anything useful?”

Ian ran a finger down the lines of type, moving his lips silently. We had by now collected a small crowd of cottars, all fascinated by this novel approach to agriculture.

“Ye dinna dig potatoes when it’s wet,” Ian informed us, eliciting a louder snort from Jamie.

“Hmm,” Ian murmured to himself. “Potato rot, potato bugs – we didna ha’ any potato bugs, I suppose that’s lucky – potato vines… umm, no, that’s only what to do if the vines wilt. Potato blight – we canna tell if we have that until we see the potatoes. Seed potatoes, potato storage-”

Impatient, Jamie turned away from Ian, hands on his hips.

“Scientific farming, eh?” he demanded. He glared at the field of darkgreen, leafy vines. “I suppose it’s too damn scientific to explain how ye tell when the bloody things are ready to eat!”

Fergus, who had been tagging along behind Jamie as usual, looked up from a caterpillar, inching its slow and fuzzy way along his forefinger.

“Why don’t you just dig one up and see?” he asked.

Jamie stared at Fergus for a moment. His mouth opened, but no sound emerged. He shut it, patted Fergus gently on the head, and went to fetch a pitchfork from its place against the fence.

The cottars, all men who had helped to plant and tend the field under Ian’s direction – assisted by Sir Walter – clustered round to see the results of their labor.

Jamie chose a large and flourishing vine near the edge of the field and poised the fork carefully near its roots. Visibly holding his breath, he put a foot on the heel of the fork and pushed. The tines slid slowly into the damp brown dirt.

I was holding my own breath. There was a good deal more depending on this experiment than the reputation of Sir Walter O’Bannion Reilly. Or my own, for that matter.

Jamie and Ian had confirmed that the barley crop this year was smaller than normal, though still sufficient for the needs of the Lallybroch tenants. Another bad year would exhaust the meager reserves of grain, though. For a Highland estate, Lallybroch was prosperous; but that was saying something only by comparison with other Highland farms. Successful potato planting could well make the difference between hunger and plenty for the folk of Lallybroch over the next two years.