A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [384]
‘Now and at the hour of our death, amen. Hail Mary, full of grace . . .”
Lizzie’s soft voice went on mechanically, repeating her words of prayer as mindlessly as I had said mine earlier. I held Hortense’s wrist, checking for the pulse, but it was mere formality. Marsali curled over the tiny body in grief, rocking it against her breast. Milk dripped from the swollen nipple, coming slowly, then faster, falling like white rain on the small still face, futilely eager to nourish and sustain.
The air was still stifling, still thick with odor and flies and the sound of Lizzie’s prayers—but the cabin seemed empty, and curiously silent.
There was a shuffling noise outside; the sound of something being dragged, a grunt of pain and dreadful exertion. Then the soft sound of falling, a gasp of breath. Padraic had made it back to his own doorstep. Brianna looked to the door, but she still held the older girl in her arms, still alive.
I set down the limp hand that I held, carefully, and went to help.
61
A NOISOME PESTILENCE
THE DAYS WERE GROWING SHORTER, but light still came early. The windows at the front of the house faced east, and the rising sun glowed on the scrubbed white oak of my surgery floor. I could see the brilliant bar of light advancing across the hand-hewn boards; had I had an actual timepiece, I could have calibrated the floor like a sundial, marking the seams between the boards in minutes.
As it was, I marked them in heartbeats, waiting through the moments until the sun should have reached the counter where my microscope stood ready, slides and beaker beside it.
I heard soft footsteps in the corridor, and Jamie pushed the door open with his shoulder, a pewter mug of something hot held in each hand, wrapped with rags against the heat.
“Ciamar a tha thu, mo chridhe,” he said softly, and handed one to me, brushing a kiss across my forehead. “How is it, then?”
“It could be worse.” I gave him a smile of gratitude, though it was interrupted by a yawn. I didn’t need to tell him that Padraic and his elder daughter still lived; he would have known at once by my face if anything dire had happened. In fact, bar any complications, I thought both would recover; I had stayed with them all night, rousing them hourly to drink a concoction of honeyed water, mixed with a little salt, alternating with a strong infusion of peppermint leaf and dogwood bark to calm the bowels.
I lifted the mug—goosefoot tea—closing my eyes as I inhaled the faint, bitter perfume, and feeling the tight muscles of my neck and shoulders relax in anticipation.
He had seen me twist my head to ease my neck; Jamie’s hand came down on my nape, large and wonderfully warm from holding the hot tea. I gave a small moan of ecstasy at the touch, and he laughed low in his throat, massaging my sore muscles.
“Should ye not be abed, Sassenach? Ye’ll not have slept at all the night.”
“Oh, I did . . . a bit.” I had dozed fitfully, sitting up by the open window, roused periodically by the startling touch on my face of the moths that flew in, drawn to the light of my candle. Mrs. Bug had come at dawn, though, fresh and starched, ready to take over the heavy nursing.
“I’ll go lie down in a bit,” I promised. “But I wanted to have a quick look first.” I waved vaguely toward my microscope, which stood assembled and ready on the table. Next to it were several small glass bottles, plugged with twists of cloth, each containing a brownish liquid. Jamie frowned at them.
“Look? At what?” he said. He lifted his long, straight nose, sniffing suspiciously. “Is that shit?”
“Yes, it is,” I said, not bothering to stifle a jaw-cracking yawn. I had—as discreetly as possible—collected samples from Hortense and the baby and, later, from my living patients, as well. Jamie eyed them.
“Exactly what,” he inquired cautiously, “are ye looking for?”
“Well, I don’t know,” I admitted. “And in fact, I may not find anything—or anything I can recognize. But it’s possible that it was either an amoeba or a bacillus that made the MacNeills