A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [472]
The exclamation reached me together with the scent of singeing molasses. I jerked upright and banged my head on the edge of the dish shelf, hard enough to make me see stars.
These cleared just in time for me to see Jemmy, standing on tiptoe as he reached into the smoking oven in the wall of the hearth, well over his head. His eyes were squinched shut with concentration, his face turned away from the waves of heat coming off the brick, and he had a towel wound clumsily round the groping hand.
Jamie reached the boy with two strides, jerking him back by the collar. He reached into the oven bare-handed and yanked out a tin sheet of smoking cookies, flinging the hot sheet away with such force that it struck the wall. Small brown disks flew off and scattered over the floor.
Adso, who had been perched in the window, helping with the louse hunt, saw what looked like prey and pounced fiercely on a fleeing cookie, which promptly burned his paws. Uttering a startled yowl, he dropped it and raced under the settle.
Jamie, shaking his scorched fingers and making extremely vulgar remarks in Gaelic, had seized a stick of kindling in his other hand and was poking into the oven, trying to extract the remaining cookie-sheet amid clouds of smoke.
“What’s going—hey!”
“Jemmy!”
Roger’s cry coincided with Bree’s. Coming in on Jamie’s heels, Roger’s expression of bewilderment had changed at once to alarm at sight of his offspring crouched on the floor, industriously collecting cookies, and oblivious of the fact that his trailing towel was smoldering in the ashes of the cookfire.
Roger lunged for Jemmy, colliding with Bree on the same course. The two of them cannoned into Jamie, who had just maneuvered the second sheet of cookies to the edge of the oven. He reeled, staggering off balance, and the sheet clanged into the hearth, scattering lumps of smoking, molasses-scented charcoal. The cauldron, knocked askew, swung and shifted perilously on its hook, splashing soup into the coals and sending up clouds of hissing, savory steam.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or run out of the door, but settled for snatching up the towel, which had burst into flames, and beating it out on the stone-flagged hearth.
I stood up, panting, to find that my family had now managed to extricate itself from the fireplace. Roger had a squirming Jemmy in a death grip against his chest, while Bree frisked the child for burns, flames, and broken bones. Jamie, looking rather annoyed, was sucking on a blistered finger, waving smoke away from his face with his free hand.
“Cold water,” I said, addressing the most immediate exigency. I grasped Jamie by the arm, pulled the finger out of his mouth, and stabbed it into the washbowl.
“Is Jemmy all right?” I asked, turning to the Happy Families tableau by the window. “Yes, I see he is. Do put him down, Roger, the child has lice.”
Roger dropped Jemmy like a hot potato, and—in the usual adult reaction to hearing the word “lice”—scratched himself. Jemmy, unaffected by the recent commotion, sat down on the floor and began to eat one of the cookies he had kept clutched in his hand throughout.
“You’ll spoil your—” Brianna began automatically, then caught sight of the spilled cauldron and the puddled hearth, glanced at me, and shrugged. “Got any more cookies?” she asked Jemmy. Mouth full, he nodded, reached into his shirt, and handed her one. She viewed it critically, but took a bite anyway.
“Not bad,” she said, through crumbs. “Hm?” She held the remnant out to Roger, who wolfed it one-handed, using the other to poke through Jemmy’s hair.
“It’s going round,” he said. “At least, we saw half a dozen lads near Sinclair’s, all shaved like convicts. Shall we have to shave your head, then?” he asked, smiling at Jemmy and ruffling the boy’s hair.
The boy’s face lighted up at the suggestion.
“Will I be bald like Grandma?”
“Yes, even balder,” I assured him tartly. I had in fact got a good two-inch crop at the moment, though the curliness made it look shorter, little waves and swirls hugging the curves of my skull.
“Shave his