A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [521]
I stopped into the kitchen before returning upstairs. Partly to reassure myself that the back door was firmly bolted, and partly to see what bits of food Mrs. Bug might have left out. He hadn’t said so, but I knew the pain of the broken finger was making Jamie mildly nauseated—and in him, food generally quelled that sort of disturbance, and made him feel more settled.
The cauldron was still over the coals, but the fire, untended, had burned down so far that the soup had luckily not boiled away. I poked up the embers and put on three sticks of fat pine, as much by way of thumbing my nose at the besiegers outside as from the long-ingrained habit of never letting a fire die. Let them see the spray of sparks from the chimney, I thought, and imagine us sitting peacefully down to eat by our hearth. Or better yet, imagine us sitting by the blazing fire, melting lead and molding bullets.
In this defiant frame of mind, I went back upstairs, equipped with medical supplies, an alfresco lunch, and a large bottle of black ale. I couldn’t help but notice, though, the echo of my footsteps on the stair, and the silence that settled quickly back into place behind me, like water when one steps out of it.
I heard a shot, just as I approached the head of the stair, and took the last steps so fast that I tripped and would have fallen headlong, save for reeling into the wall.
Jamie appeared from Mr. Wemyss’s room, fowling piece in hand, looking startled.
“Are ye all right, Sassenach?”
“Yes,” I said crossly, wiping spilled soup off my hand with my apron. “What in the name of God are you shooting at?”
“Nothing. I only wanted to make the point that the back of the house is nay safer than the front, if they thought of creeping up that way. Just to ensure that they do wait for dark to fall.”
I bound up his finger, which seemed to help a little. The food, as I’d hoped, helped considerably more. He ate like a wolf, and rather to my surprise, so did I.
“The condemned ate a hearty meal,” I observed, picking up crumbs of bread and cheese. “I’d always thought being in danger of death would make one too nervous to eat, but apparently not.”
He shook his head, took a swallow of ale, and passed me the bottle.
“A friend once told me, ‘The body has nay conscience.’ I dinna ken that that’s entirely so—but it is true that the body doesna generally admit the possibility of nonexistence. And if ye exist—well, ye need food, that’s all.” He grinned one-sided at me, and tearing the last of the sweet rolls in half, gave one to me.
I took it, but didn’t eat it immediately. There was no sound outside, save the buzzing of cicadas, though the air had a sultry thickness to it that often presaged rain. It was early in the summer for storms, but one could only hope.
“You’ve thought of it, too, haven’t you?” I said quietly.
He made no pretense of misunderstanding me.
“Well, it is the twenty-first o’ the month,” he said.
“It’s June, for heaven’s sake! And the wrong year, as well. That newspaper clipping said January, of 1776!” I was absurdly indignant, as though I had somehow been cheated.
He found that funny.
“I was a printer myself, Sassenach,” he said, laughing through a mouthful of sweet roll. “Ye dinna want to believe everything ye read in the newspapers, aye?”
When I looked out again, only a few men were visible under the chestnut trees. One of them saw my movement; he waved his arm slowly to and fro above his head—then drew the edge of his hand flat across his throat.
The sun was just above the treetops; two hours, perhaps, to nightfall. Two hours surely was enough time for Mrs. Bug to have summoned help, though—always assuming she had found anyone who would come. Arch might have gone to Cross Creek—he went once a month; Kenny might be hunting. As for the newer tenants . . . without Roger to keep them in order, their suspicion and dislike of me had become blatant. I had the feeling that they might come if summoned—but only to cheer as I was