A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [23]
“Oh, aye. He’d fare better wi’ the painter.” His uncle set the rifle down and went to the window. “Shall I close the shutter, or d’ye need the air, lad? You’re that bit peaked.”
“I feel peaked,” Ian admitted. “Aye, leave it, if ye will, Uncle.”
“Shall ye rest, Ian?”
He hesitated. His stomach still lurched uneasily and he felt very much that he would like to lie down again—but the surgery made him uneasy, with its strong smells and the glints here and there of tiny blades and other mysterious and painful things. Uncle Jamie seemed to guess the trouble, for he bent and got a hand under Ian’s elbow.
“Come along, lad. Ye can sleep upstairs in a proper bed, if ye dinna mind Major MacDonald in the other.”
“I dinna mind,” he said, “but I’ll stay here, I think.” He gestured toward the window, not wanting to nod and bother his head again. “Rollo will likely be back soon.”
Uncle Jamie didn’t argue with him, something he was grateful for. Women fussed. Men just got on with it.
His uncle boosted him unceremoniously back into his bed, covered him up, then began rootling about in the dark, in search of the rifle he had put down. Ian began to feel that perhaps he could do with just a wee bit of fuss, after all.
“Could ye get me a cup o’ water, Uncle Jamie?”
“Eh? Oh, aye.”
Auntie Claire had left a jug of water close to hand. There was the comfortable sound of glugging liquid, and then the rim of a pottery cup held to his mouth, his uncle’s hand at his back to keep him upright. He didn’t need it, but didn’t object; the touch was warm and comforting. He hadn’t realized how chilled he was from the night air, and shivered briefly.
“All right, laddie?” Uncle Jamie murmured, his hand tightening on Ian’s shoulder.
“Aye, fine. Uncle Jamie?”
“Mphm?”
“Did Auntie Claire tell ye about—about a war? One coming, I mean. With England.”
There was a moment’s silence, his uncle’s big form gone still against the light from the door.
“She has,” he said, and took away his hand. “Did she tell you?”
“No, Cousin Brianna did.” He lay down on his side, careful of his tender head. “D’ye believe them?”
There was no hesitation this time.
“Aye, I do.” It was said with his uncle’s usual dry matter-of-factness, but something in it prickled the hairs on the back of Ian’s neck.
“Oh. Well, then.”
The goose-down pillow was soft under his cheek, and smelled of lavender. His uncle’s hand touched his head, smoothed the ruffled hair back from his face.
“Dinna fash yourself about it, Ian,” he said softly. “There’s time, yet.”
He picked up the gun and left. From where he lay, Ian could see across the dooryard and above the trees where they dropped from the edge of the Ridge, past the slope of Black Mountain, and on into the black sky beyond, thick with stars.
He heard the back door open, and Mrs. Bug’s voice, rising high above the others.
“They’re no to hame, sir,” she was saying, breathless. “And the hoose is dark, no fire in the hearth. Wherever might they go, this time o’ night?”
He wondered dimly who was gone, but it didn’t seem to matter much. If it was trouble, Uncle Jamie would deal with it. The thought was comforting; he felt like a small boy, safe in bed, hearing his father’s voice outside, talking to a tenant in the cold dark of a Highland dawn.
Warmth spread slowly over him beneath the quilt, and he slept.
THE MOON WAS beginning to rise when they set out, and a good thing, too, Brianna thought. Even with the big, lopsided gold orb sailing up out of a cradle of stars and shedding its borrowed radiance over the sky, the trail beneath their feet was invisible. So were their feet, drowned in the absolute black of the forest at night.
Black, but not quiet. The giant trees rustled overhead, small things squealed and snuffled in the dark, and now and then the silent flutter of a bat passed close enough to startle her, as though part of the night had suddenly come loose and taken wing under her nose.
“The Minister’s Cat is an apprehensive cat?” Roger suggested, as she gasped and clutched at him in the wake of one such leather-winged visitation.