A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [299]
“English canaille,” Germain amplified, breaking off his song. “They are the ones who cut off my papa’s hand, too.”
“They were?” Jemmy’s head lifted in momentary attention, then fell back between Jamie’s shoulder blades with a thump that made his grandfather grunt. “Did you kill them with your sword, Grandda?”
“Some of them.”
“I will kill the rest, when I am big,” Germain declared. “If there are any left.”
“I suppose there might be.” Jamie hitched Jem’s weight a little higher, letting go Germain’s hand in order to hold Jemmy’s slackening legs tight to his body.
“Me, too,” Jemmy murmured, eyelids drooping. “I’ll kill them, too.”
At the fork in the trail, Jamie surrendered her son to her, sound asleep, and took back his shirt. He pulled it on, brushing disheveled hair out of his face as his head came through. He smiled at her, then leaned forward and kissed her forehead, gently, putting one hand on Jemmy’s round, red head where it lay against her shoulder.
“Dinna fash yourself, lass,” he said softly. “I’ll speak to Mordecai. And your man. Take care of this one.”
“THIS IS A PRIVATE BUSINESS,” her father had said. The general implication being that she should leave it alone. And she might have, save for a couple of things. One, that Roger had come home well after dark, whistling a song he said Amy McCallum had taught him. And two, that other offhand remark her father had made about the fire on the Flat Rock—that there was a smell of the Highlands about it.
Brianna had a very keen nose, and she smelled a rat. She also had recognized—belatedly—what had made Jamie say what he had. The odd smell of the fire, that tang of medicine—it was iodine; the smell of burned seaweed. She’d smelled a fire built of sea wrack on the shore near Ullapool, in her own time, when Roger had taken her up there for a picnic.
There was certainly seaweed on the coast, and it wasn’t impossible that someone, sometime, had brought some inland. But it also wasn’t impossible that some of the fisher-folk had brought bits of it from Scotland, in the way that some exiles might bring earth in jar, or a handful of pebbles to remind them of the land left behind.
A charm, her father had said. And the song Roger had learned from Amy McCallum was called “The Deasil Charm,” he said.
All of which was no particular evidence of anything. Still, she mentioned the small fire and its contents to Mrs. Bug, just from curiosity. Mrs. Bug knew a good deal about Highland charms of all sorts.
Mrs. Bug frowned thoughtfully at her description, lips pursed.
“Bones, ye say? What sort—the bones of an animal, were they, or a man?”
Brianna felt as though someone had dropped a slug down her back.
“A man?”
“Oh, aye. There’s some charms that take grave dust, ken, and some the dust of bones, or the ashes of a body.” Evidently reminded by the mention of ashes, Mrs. Bug pulled a big pottery mixing bowl from the warm ashes of the hearth, and peered into it. The bread starter had died a few days before, and the bowl of flour, water, and honey had been set out in hopes of snaring a wild yeast from the passing air.
The round little Scotswoman frowned at the bowl, shook her head, and put it back with a brief muttered verse in Gaelic. Naturally, Brianna thought, slightly amused, there would be a prayer for catching yeast. Which patron saint was in charge of that?
“What ye said, though,” Mrs. Bug said, returning both to her chopping of turnips and to the original subject of conversation. “About it bein’ on the Flat Rock. Seaweed, bones, and a flat rock. That’s a love charm, lass. The one they call the Venom o’ the North Wind.”
“What a really peculiar name for a love charm,” she said, staring at Mrs. Bug, who laughed.
“Och, now, do I remember it at all?” she asked rhetorically. She wiped her hands upon her apron, and folding them at her waist with a vaguely theatrical air, recited:
“A love charm for thee,
Water drawn through a straw,
The warmth of him thou lovest,
With love to draw on thee.
“Arise betimes on Lord’s day,
To