A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [380]
“Perhaps . . .” he said meditatively. “I may find a way. Though I should hate to take another for the purpose.”
Another gem, he meant.
I swallowed a small lump in my throat at the thought. There were two left. One each, if Roger, or Bree, and Jemmy—but I choked that thought off firmly.
“What does it profit a man to gain the world,” I quoted, “if he lose his soul? It won’t do us any good to be secretly rich, if you get tarred and feathered.” I didn’t like that thought any better, but it wasn’t one I could avoid.
He glanced at his forearm; he had rolled up his sleeves for writing, and the fading burn still showed, a faint pink track among the sunbleached hairs. He sighed, went round his desk, and picked a quill from the jar.
“Aye. Perhaps I’d best write a few more letters.”
60
THE PALE HORSEMAN RIDES
ON THE TWENTIETH OF SEPTEMBER, Roger preached a sermon on the text, God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. On the twenty-first of September, one of those weak things set out to prove the point.
Padraic and Hortense MacNeill and their children hadn’t come to church. They always did, and their absence aroused comment—enough that Roger asked Brianna next morning if she might walk round and visit, to see that there was nothing wrong.
“I’d go myself,” he said, scraping the bottom of his porridge bowl, “but I’ve promised to ride with John MacAfee and his father to Brownsville; he means to offer for a girl there.”
“Does he mean you to make them handfast on the spot if she says yes?” I asked. “Or are you just there to keep assorted Browns from assassinating him?” There had been no open violence since we had returned Lionel Brown’s body, but there were occasional small clashes, when a party from Brownsville happened to meet men from the Ridge now and then in public.
“The latter,” Roger said with a small grimace. “Though I’ve some hopes that a marriage or two betwixt the Ridge and Brownsville might help to mend matters, over time.”
Jamie, reading a newspaper from the most recent batch, looked up at that.
“Oh, aye? Well, it’s a thought. Doesna always work out just so, though.” He smiled. “My uncle Colum thought to mend just such a matter wi’ the Grants, by marrying my mother to the Grant. Unfortunately,” he added, turning over a page, “my mother wasna inclined to cooperate. She snubbed Malcolm Grant, stabbed my uncle Dougal, and eloped wi’ my father, instead.”
“Really?” Brianna hadn’t heard that particular story; she looked enchanted. Roger gave her a sidelong glance, and coughed, ostentatiously removing the sharp knife with which she’d been cutting up sausages.
“Well, be that as it may,” he said, pushing back from the table, knife in hand. “If ye wouldn’t mind having a look-in on Padraic’s family, just to see they’re all right?”
In the event, Lizzie and I came along with Brianna, meaning to call on Marsali and Fergus, whose cabin was a little way beyond the MacNeills’. We met Marsali on the way, though, coming back from the whisky spring, and so there were four of us when we came to the MacNeills’ cabin.
“Why are there so many flies, of a sudden?” Lizzie slapped at a large bluebottle that had landed on her arm, then waved at two more, circling round her face.
“Something’s dead nearby,” Marsali said, lifting her nose to sniff the air. “In the wood, maybe. Hear the crows?”
There were crows, cawing in the treetops nearby; looking up, I saw more circling, black spots against the brilliant sky.
“Not in the wood,” Bree said, her voice suddenly strained. She was looking toward the cabin. The door was tightly shut, and a mass of flies milled over the hide-covered window. “Hurry.”
The smell in the cabin was unspeakable. I saw the girls gasp and clamp their mouths tight shut, as the door swung open. Unfortunately, it was necessary to breathe. I did so, very shallowly, as I moved across the dark room and ripped down the hide that had been tightly nailed across the window.
“Leave the door open,” I said, ignoring a faint moan of complaint from the bed