A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [228]
As soon as I pushed open the door, though, I saw that Mr. Wemyss was not to blame. There was a tremendous rustle of straw at my feet, and something big moved in the darkness.
I uttered a sharp yelp of alarm, and this time did drop the basin, which fell with a clang, scattering food across the floor and rousing the nanny goat, who started blatting her head off.
“Pardon, milady!”
Hand to my thumping heart, I stepped out of the doorway, so the light fell on Fergus, crouched on the floor, with straws sticking out of his hair like the Madwoman of Chaillot.
“Oh, so there you are,” I said quite coldly.
He blinked and swallowed, rubbing his hand over a face dark with sprouting whiskers.
“I—yes,” he said. He seemed to have nothing further to add to this. I stood glaring down at him for a moment, then shook my head and stooped to retrieve the potato peelings and other fragments that had fallen from the basin. He moved as though to help me, but I stopped him with a shooing gesture.
He sat still, watching me, hands around his knees. It was dim inside the stable, and water dripped steadily from the plants growing out of the cliffside above, making a curtain of falling drops across the open door.
The goat had stopped making noise, having recognized me, but was now stretching her neck through the railing of her pen, blueberry-colored tongue extended like an anteater’s, in an effort to reach an apple core that had rolled near the pen. I picked it up and handed it to her, trying to think where to start, and what to say when I did.
“Henri-Christian’s doing well,” I said, for lack of anything else. “Putting on weight.”
I let the remark trail off, bending over the rail to pour corn and scraps into the wooden feed trough.
Dead silence. I waited a moment, then turned round, one hand on my hip.
“He’s a very sweet little baby,” I said.
I could hear him breathing, but he said nothing. With an audible snort, I went and pushed the bottom half of the door open wide, so that the cloudy light outside streamed in, exposing Fergus. He sat with his face turned stubbornly away. I could smell him at a goodly distance; he reeked of bitter sweat and hunger.
I sighed.
“Dwarves of this sort have got quite normal intelligence. I’ve checked him thoroughly, and he has all the usual reflexes and responses that he should have. There’s no reason why he can’t be educated, be able to work—at something.”
“Something,” Fergus echoed, the word holding both despair and derision. “Something.” At last, he turned his face toward me, and I saw the hollowness of his eyes. “With respect, milady—you have never seen the life of a dwarf.”
“And you have?” I asked, not so much in challenge as curiosity.
He closed his eyes against the morning light, nodding.
“Yes,” he whispered, and swallowed. “In Paris.”
The brothel where he had grown up in Paris was a large one, with a varied clientele, famous for being able to offer something for almost any taste.
“The house itself had les filles, naturellement, and les enfants. They are of course the bread and butter of the establishment. But there are always those who desire . . . the exotic, and will pay. And so now and then the madame would send for those who dealt in such things. La Maîtresse des Scorpions—avec les flagellantes, tu comprends? Ou Le Maître des Champignons.”
“The Master of Mushrooms?” I blurted.
“Oui. The Dwarf Master.”
His eyes had sunk into his head, his gaze turned inward and his face haggard. He was seeing in memory sights and people who had been absent from his thoughts for many years—and was not enjoying the recollection.
“Les chanterelles, we called them,” he said softly. “The females. The males, they were les morels.” Exotic fungi, valued for the rarity of their twisted shapes, the strange savor of their flesh.
“They