A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [439]
No one knew the strength of such bonds better than one who had walked the earth without them, outcast and alone. She had, and he had, and they both knew the truth.
“It’s them,” he echoed softly, and opened his eyes. They were dark with loss, the color of shadows in the deepest wood. “And them.” He turned his head, to look upward, into the trees beyond the creek, above the bones of the mammoth that lay trapped in the earth, stripped to the sky and mute to all prayer. He turned back, raised a hand, and touched her cheek.
“I’ll stay, then.”
THEY CAMPED FOR the night on the far side of the beaver pond. The litter of wood chips and debarked saplings made good kindling for their fire.
There was little to eat; no more than a hatful of bitter fox-grapes and the heel of bread, so hard by now that it had to be dunked in water to chew. It didn’t matter; neither one of them was hungry, and Rollo had disappeared to hunt for himself.
They sat silently, watching the fire die down. There was no need to keep it going; the night was not cold, and they would not linger in the morning—home was too near.
At last, Ian stirred a bit, and Brianna glanced at him.
“What was your father’s name?” he asked very formally.
“Frank—er . . . Franklin. Franklin Wolverton Randall.”
“An Englishman, then?”
“Very,” she said, smiling in spite of herself.
He nodded, murmuring “Franklin Wolverton Randall” to himself, as though to commit it to memory, then looked at her seriously.
“If ever I find myself in a church again, then, I shall light a candle to his memory.”
“I expect . . . he’d like that.”
He nodded, and leaned back, back braced against a longleaf pine. The ground nearby was littered with the cones; he picked up a handful and tossed them, one by one, into the fire.
“What about Lizzie?” she asked after a little while. “She’s always been fond of you.” To put it mildly: Lizzie had wilted and pined for weeks, when he had been lost to the Iroquois. “And now that she’s not marrying Manfred . . .”
He tilted back his head, eyes closed, and rested it against the trunk of the pine.
“I’ve thought of it,” he admitted.
“But . . . ?”
“Aye, but.” He opened his eyes and gave her a wry look. “I’d ken where I was, if I woke beside her. But where I’d be is in bed wi’ my wee sister. I think I’m maybe not so desperate as that. Yet,” he added as an obvious afterthought.
71
BLACK PUDDING
I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF a black pudding when Ronnie Sinclair appeared in the yard, carrying two small whisky casks. Several more were bound in a neatly corrugated cascade down his back, which made him look like some exotic form of caterpillar, balanced precariously upright in mid-pupation. It was a chilly day, but he was sweating freely from the long walk uphill—and cursing in similar vein.
“Why in the name of Bride did Himself build the frigging house up here in the godforsaken clouds?” he demanded without ceremony. “Why not where a bloody wagon could reach the yard?” He set the casks down carefully, then ducked his head through the straps of the harness to shed his wooden carapace. He sighed in relief, rubbing at his shoulders where the straps had dug.
I ignored the rhetorical questions, and kept stirring, tilting my head toward the house in invitation.
“There’s fresh coffee made,” I said. “And bannocks with honey, too.” My own stomach recoiled slightly at the thought of eating. Once spiced, stuffed, boiled, and fried, black pudding was delicious. The earlier stages, involving as they did arm-deep manipulations in a barrel of semi-coagulated pig’s blood, were substantially less appetizing.
Sinclair, though, looked happier at mention of food. He wiped a sleeve across his sweating forehead and nodded to me, turning toward the house. Then he stopped and turned back.
“Ah. I’d forgot, missus. I’ve a wee message for yourself, as well.” He patted gingerly at his chest, then lower, probing