A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [188]
Obviously, Jamie was not willing to take the risk of leaving the Ridge to escort Lionel Brown anywhere, whether or not he decided to let the man live.
The thought of the others had brought something important back to me, though. It might not be the best time to mention it, but then again, there wasn’t going to be a good one.
I took a deep breath, squaring myself for it.
“Jamie.”
The tone of my voice jerked him immediately from whatever he’d been thinking; he looked sharply at me, one eyebrow raised.
“I—I have to tell you something.”
He paled a little, but reached out at once, grasping my hand. He took a deep breath of his own, and nodded.
“Aye.”
“Oh,” I said, realizing that he thought I meant that I had suddenly arrived at a point where I needed to tell him the grisly details of my experiences. “Not—not that. Not exactly.” I squeezed his hand, though, and held on, while I told him about Donner.
“Another,” he said. He sounded slightly stunned. “Another one?”
“Another,” I confirmed. “The thing is . . . I, um, I don’t remember seeing him . . . seeing him dead.” The eerie sense of that dawn returned to me. I had very sharp, distinct memories—but they were disjointed, so fractured as to bear no relation to the whole. An ear. I remembered an ear, thick and cup-shaped as a woodland fungus. It was shaded in the most exquisite tones of purple, brown, and indigo, shadowed in the carved whorls of the inner parts, nearly translucent at the rim; perfect in the light of a sunbeam that cut through the fronds of a hemlock to touch it.
I recalled that ear so perfectly that I could almost reach into my memory and touch it myself—but I had no idea whose ear it had been. Was the hair that lay behind it brown, black, reddish, straight, wavy, gray? And the face . . . I didn’t know. If I had looked, I hadn’t seen.
He shot me a sharp look.
“And ye think he’s maybe not.”
“Maybe not.” I swallowed the taste of dust, pine needles, and blood, and breathed the comforting fresh scent of buttermilk. “I warned him, you see. I told him you were coming, and that he didn’t want you to find him with me. When you attacked the camp—he might have run. He struck me as a coward, certainly. But I don’t know.”
He nodded, and sighed heavily.
“Can you . . . recall, do you think?” I asked hesitantly. “When you showed me the dead. Did you look at them?”
“No,” he said softly. “I wasna looking at anything save you.”
His eyes had been on our linked hands. He raised them now, and looked at my face, troubled and searching. I lifted his hand and laid my cheek against his knuckles, closing my eyes for an instant.
“I’ll be all right,” I said. “The thing is—” I said, and stopped.
“Aye?”
“If he did run—where do you suppose he’d go?”
He closed his own eyes and drew a deep breath.
“To Brownsville,” he said, in resignation. “And if he did, Richard Brown kens already what’s become of Hodgepile and his men—and likely thinks his brother is dead, as well.”
“Oh.” I swallowed, and changed the subject slightly.
“Why did you tell Ian I wasn’t to be allowed to see Mr. Brown?”
“I didna say that. But I think it best if ye dinna see him, that much is true.”
“Because?”
“Because ye’ve an oath upon you,” he said, sounding mildly surprised that I didn’t understand immediately. “Can ye see a man injured, and leave him to suffer?”
The ointment was ready. I unwrapped his finger, which had stopped bleeding, and tamped as much of the salve under the damaged nail as I could manage.
“Probably not,” I said, eyes on my work. “But why—”
“If ye mend him, care for him—and then I decide he must die?” His eyes rested on me, questioning. “How would that be for ye?”
“Well, that would be a bit awkward,” I said, taking a deep breath to steady myself. I wrapped a thin strip of linen around the nail and tied it neatly. “Still, though . . .”
“Ye wish to care for him? Why?