A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [246]
I glanced at Mrs. Wilson; her face was the same gray as the snow-laden sky, and her eyes were going in and out of focus like the flickering of a candle in a wind.
“I see,” Roger said, though I hadn’t spoken. He took a deep breath and cleared his throat.
The crowd, which had been hissing amongst themselves like a flock of agitated geese, ceased at once. Every eye in the place was riveted on the tableau before them.
“This our sister has been restored to life, as we all shall be one day by the grace of God,” Roger said softly. “It is a sign to us, of hope and faith. She will go soon again to the arms of the angels, but has come back to us for a moment, to bring us assurance of God’s love.” He paused a moment, obviously groping for something further to say. He cleared his throat and bent his head toward Mrs. Wilson’s.
“Did you . . . wish to say anything, O, mother?” he whispered in Gaelic.
“Aye, I do.” Mrs. Wilson seemed to be gaining strength—and with it, indignation. A faint pinkness showed in her waxy cheeks as she glared round at the crowd.
“What sort of wake is this, Hiram Crombie?” she demanded, fixing her son-in-law with a gimlet eye. “I see nay food laid out, nay drink—and what is this?” Her voice rose in a furious squeak, her eye having fallen on the plate of bread and salt, which Roger had hastily set aside when he lifted her.
“Why—” She looked wildly round at the assembled crowd, and the truth of it dawned upon her. Her sunken eyes bulged. “Why . . . ye shameless skinflint! This is nay wake at all! Ye’ve meant to bury me wi’ nothing but a crust o’ bread and a drap o’ wine for the sin-eater, and a wonder ye spared that! Nay doot ye’ll thieve the winding claes from my corpse to make cloots for your snotty-nosed bairns, and where’s my good brooch I said I wanted to be buried with?” One scrawny hand closed on her shrunken bosom, catching a fistful of wilted linen.
“Mairi! My brooch!”
“Here it is, Mother, here it is!” Poor Mrs. Crombie, altogether undone, was fumbling in her pocket, sobbing and gasping. “I put it away to be safe—I meant to put it on ye before—before . . .” She came out with an ugly lump of garnets, which her mother snatched from her, cradling it against her breast, and glaring round with jealous suspicion. Clearly she suspected her neighbors of waiting the chance to steal it from her body; I heard an offended inhalation from the woman standing behind me, but had no time to turn and see who it was.
“Now, now,” I said, using my best soothing bedside manner. “I’m sure everything will be all right.” Aside from the fact that you’re going to die in the next few minutes, that is, I thought, suppressing a hysterical urge to laugh inappropriately. Actually, it might be in the next few seconds, if her blood pressure rose any higher.
I had my fingers on the thumping big pulse in her abdomen that betrayed the fatal weakening of her abdominal aorta. It had to have begun to leak already, to make her lose consciousness to such a degree as to seem dead. Eventually, she would simply blow a gasket, and that would be it.
Roger and Jamie were both doing their best to soothe her, muttering in English and Gaelic and patting her comfortingly. She seemed to be responding to this treatment, though still breathing like a steam engine.
Jamie’s production of the bottle of whisky from his pocket helped still further.
“Well, that’s more like it!” Mrs. Wilson said, somewhat mollified, as he hastily pulled the cork and waved the bottle under her nose so she could appreciate the quality of it. “And ye’ve brought food, too?” Mrs. Bug had bustled her way to the front, basket held before her like a battering ram. “Hmph! I never thought I should live to see Papists kinder than my ain kin!” This last was directed at Hiram Crombie, who had so far been opening and closing his mouth, without finding anything whatever to say in reply to his mother-in-law’s tirade.
“Why . . . why . . .” he stammered in outrage, torn between shock, obvious fury, and a need