A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [295]
“Good for your kiln?” he asked, peering dutifully at it.
“Worth a try.” She had made several less-than-successful experiments with the kiln so far, producing a succession of malformed plates and bowls, most of which had either exploded in the kiln or shattered immediately upon removal. One or two survivals, deformed and scorched round the edges, had been pressed into dubious service, but it was precious little reward for the effort of stoking the kiln and minding it for days.
What she needed was advice from someone who knew about kilns and making earthenware. But with the strained relations now existent between the Ridge and Salem, she couldn’t seek it. It had been awkward enough, her speaking directly to Brother Mordecai about his ceramic processes—a Popish woman, and speaking to a man she wasn’t married to, the scandal!
“Damn wee Manfred,” her father agreed, hearing her complaint. He’d heard it before, but didn’t mention it. He hesitated. “Would it maybe help was I to go and ask? A few o’ the Brethren will still speak to me, and it might be that they’d let me talk wi’ Mordecai. If ye were to tell me what it is ye need to know . . . ? Ye could maybe write it down.”
“Oh, Da, I love you!” Grateful, she leaned to kiss him, and he laughed, clearly gratified to be doing her a service.
Elated, she took another drink of cider, and rosy visions of hardened clay pipes began to dance in her brain. She had a wooden cistern already built, with a lot of complaint and obstruction from Ronnie Sinclair. She needed help to heave that into place. Then, if she could get only twenty feet of reliable pipe . . .
“Mama, come look!” Jem’s impatient voice cut through the fog of calculation. With a mental sigh, she made a hasty note of where she had been, and pushed the process carefully into a corner of her mind, where it would perhaps helpfully ferment.
She handed the bottle back to her father, and made her way down the bank to where the boys squatted, expecting to be shown frog spawn, a drowned skunk, or some other wonder of nature appealing to small boys.
“What is it?” she called.
“Look, look!” Jemmy spotted her and popped upright, pointing to the rock at his feet.
They were standing on the Flat Rock, a prominent feature of the creek. As the name suggested, it was a flat shelf of granite, large enough for three men to occupy at once, undercut by the water so that it jutted out over the boiling stream. It was a favorite spot for fishing.
Someone had built a small fire; there was a blackened smudge on the rock, with what looked like the remnants of charred sticks in the center. It was much too small for a cooking fire, but still, she would have thought nothing of it. Her father was frowning at the fire site, though, in a way that made her walk out onto the rock and stand beside him, looking.
The objects in the ashes weren’t sticks.
“Bones,” she said at once, and squatted down to look closer. “What kind of animal are those from?” Even as she said it, her mind was analyzing and rejecting—squirrel, possum, rabbit, deer, pig—unable to make sense of the shapes.
“They’re finger bones, lass,” he said, lowering his voice as he glanced at Jemmy—who had lost interest in the fire and was now sliding down the muddy bank, to the further detriment of his breeches. “Dinna touch them,” he added—unnecessarily, as she had drawn back her hand in instant revulsion.
“From a human, you mean?” Instinctively, she wiped her hand on the side of her thigh, though she had touched nothing.
He nodded, and squatted beside her, studying the charred remains. There were blackened lumps there, too—though she thought these were the remains of some plant material; one was greenish, maybe a stem of something, incompletely burned.
Jamie bent low, sniffing at the burned remains. Instinctively, Brianna drew a deep