A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [296]
“Where could they have come from?” she asked, also low-voiced—though Jemmy and Germain had begun pelting each other with mudballs, and wouldn’t have noticed if she’d shouted.
“I havena noticed anyone missing a hand, have you?” Jamie glanced up, giving her a half-smile. She didn’t return it.
“Not walking around, no. But if they aren’t walking around—” She swallowed, trying to ignore the half-imagined taste of bitter herbs and burning. “Where’s the rest? Of the body, I mean.”
That word, “body,” seemed to bring the whole thing into a new and nasty focus.
“Where’s the rest of that finger, I wonder?” Jamie was frowning at the blackened smudge. He moved a knuckle toward it, and she saw what he had seen: a paler smudge within the circle of the fire, where part of the ashes had been swept away. There were three fingers, she saw, still swallowing repeatedly. Two were intact, the bones gray-white and spectral among the ashes. Two joints of the third were gone, though; only the slender last phalanx remained.
“An animal?” She glanced round for traces, but there were no pawprints on the surface of the rock—only the muddy smudges left by the little boys’ bare feet.
Vague visions of cannibalism were beginning to stir queasily in the pit of her stomach, though she rejected the notion at once.
“You don’t think Ian—” She stopped abruptly.
“Ian?” Her father looked up, astonished. “Why should Ian do such a thing?”
“I don’t think he would,” she said, taking hold of common sense. “Not at all. It was just a thought—I’d heard that the Iroquois sometimes . . . sometimes . . .” She nodded at the charred bones, unwilling to articulate the thought further. “Um . . . maybe a friend of Ian’s? Uh . . . visiting?”
Jamie’s face darkened a little, but he shook his head.
“Nay, there’s the smell of the Highlands about this. The Iroquois will burn an enemy. Or cut bits off him, to be sure. But not like that.” He pointed at the bones with his chin, in the Highland way. “This is a private business, ken? A witch—or one of their shamans, maybe—might do a thing like that; not a warrior.”
“I haven’t seen any Indians of any kind lately. Not on the Ridge. Have you?”
He looked at the burned smudge a moment longer, frowning, then shook his head.
“No, nor anyone missing a few fingers, either.”
“You’re sure they’re human?” She studied the bones, trying for other possibilities. “Maybe from a small bear? Or a big coon?”
“Maybe,” he said flatly, but she could tell he said it only for her sake. He was sure.
“Mama!” The patter of bare feet on the rock behind her was succeeded by a tug at her sleeve. “Mama, we’re hungry!”
“Of course you are,” she said, rising to meet the demand, but still gazing abstractedly at the charred remnants. “You haven’t eaten in nearly an hour. What did you—” Her gaze drifted slowly from the fire to her son, then snapped abruptly, focusing on the two little boys, who stood grinning at her, covered from head to foot in mud.
“Look at you!” she said, dismay tempered by resignation. “How could you possibly get that filthy?”
“Oh, it’s easy, lass,” her father assured her, grinning as he rose to his feet. “Easy cured, too, though.” He bent, and seizing Germain by the back of shirt and seat of breeks, heaved him neatly off the rock and into the pool below.
“Me, too, me, too! Me, too, Grandda!” Jemmy was dancing up and down in excitement, spattering clods of mud in all direction.
“Oh, aye. You, too.” Jamie bent and grabbed Jem round the waist, launching him high into the air in a flutter of shirt before Brianna could cry out.
“He can’t swim!”
This protest coincided with a huge splash, as Jem hit the water and promptly sank like a rock. She was striding toward the edge, prepared to dive in after him, when her father put a hand on her arm to stop her.
“Wait a bit,” he said. “How will ye ken