A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [251]
“Hiram? French?”
“Oh, aye.” He grinned at me. “Hiram’s set upon the idea that he must go and preach to the Indians, and he thinks he’ll be best equipped to manage if he’s got some French as well as English. Ian’s teaching him a bit of the Tsalagi, too, but there are so many Indian tongues, he’d never learn them all.”
“Will wonders never cease,” I murmured. “Do you think—”
I was interrupted at this point by Mrs. Bug bellowing up the stairs, “If Certain Persons are wantin’ to let a good breakfast be spoilt, I’m sure they’re welcome!”
Like clockwork, Major MacDonald’s door popped open, and his feet clattered eagerly down the stairs.
“Ready?” I said to Jamie. He seized my hairbrush and tidied himself with a few licks, then came to open the door and bowed, ushering me ceremoniously out.
“What ye said, Sassenach,” he said as he followed me down the stair. “About it starting in two years. It’s already well begun. Ye know that, aye?”
“Oh, yes,” I said, rather grimly. “But I don’t want to think about it on an empty stomach.”
ROGER STOOD UP straight, measuring. The edge of the kiln pit he stood in came just under his chin. Six feet would be just about at eye level; only a few more inches, then. That was heartening. Setting the shovel against the dirt wall, he stooped, grabbed a wooden bucket full of earth, and heaved it up over the rim.
“Dirt!” he yelled. There was no response to his shout. He rose on his toes, peering balefully round for his so-called assistants. Jemmy and Germain were meant to be taking it in turn to empty the buckets and pass them back down to him, but had a tendency to vanish abruptly.
“Dirt!” he shouted as loudly as he could. The wee buggers couldn’t have gone far; it took him less than two minutes to fill a bucket.
This call was answered, but not by the boys. A cold shadow fell over him, and he squinted up to see the silhouette of his father-in-law, stooping to grab the handle of the bucket. Jamie strode two paces and flung the dirt onto the slowly mounting heap, then came back, hopping down into the pit to return it.
“A tidy wee hole ye have here,” he said, turning round to survey it. “Ye could barbecue an ox in it.”
“I’ll need one. I’m starving.” Roger wiped a sleeve across his forehead; the spring day was cool and crisp, but he was drenched with sweat.
Jamie had picked up his shovel and was examining the blade with interest.
“I’ve never seen the like. Is it the lass’s work?”
“With a bit of help from Dai Jones, aye.” It had taken roughly thirty seconds’ work with an eighteenth-century shovel to convince Brianna that improvements could be made. It had taken three months to acquire a chunk of iron that could be shaped to her directions by the blacksmith and to persuade Dai Jones—who was Welsh and thus by definition stubborn—into doing it. The normal spade was made of wood, and looked like nothing so much as a roof shingle attached to a pole.
“May I try?” Enchanted, Jamie drove the pointed end of the new spade into the dirt at his feet.
“Be my guest.”
Roger scrambled up out of the deep part of the pit into the shallower end of the kiln. Jamie stood in the part where the fire would go, according to Brianna, with a chimney to be raised over it. Items to be fired would sit in the longer, relatively shallow part of the pit and be covered over. After a week of shoveling, Roger was less inclined to think the distant possibility of plumbing was worth all the labor involved, but Bree wanted it—and like her father, Bree was difficult to resist, though their methods varied.
Jamie shoveled briskly, tossing spadesful of dirt into the bucket, with small exclamations of delight and admiration at the ease and speed with which dirt could be dug. Despite his dim view of the occupation, Roger felt a sense of pride in his wife’s implement.
“First the wee matchsticks,” Jamie said, making a joke of it, “now shovels. What will she think of next?”
“I’m afraid to ask,” Roger said, with a tinge of rue that made Jamie laugh.
The bucket filled, Roger picked it up and took it to empty, while Jamie