A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [536]
Mrs. Tolliver’s narrow face tightened in disapproval, but her eyes twitched toward me, bright in the dim light of the rush dip. I ventured a hesitant gesture toward my pocket, and her lower lip sucked in. She glanced over her shoulder, then took a quick step toward me.
“A shilling, then,” she whispered, hand held open between us. I dropped the coin into her palm, and it disappeared at once beneath her apron.
“You’ve missed supper,” she announced in her normal disapproving tones, stepping backward. “However, as you’ve just come, I shall make an allowance and bring you something.”
“How kind of you,” I said again.
The door closed firmly behind her, shutting out light and air, and the key turned in the lock.
The sound of it set off a tiny spark of panic, and I stamped on it hard. I felt like a dried skin, stuffed to the eyeballs with the tinder of fear, uncertainty, and loss. It would take no more than a spark to ignite that and burn me to ashes—and neither I nor Jamie could afford that.
“She drinks?” I asked, turning back to my new roommate with an assumption of coolness.
“Do you know anyone who doesn’t, given the chance?” Mrs. Ferguson asked reasonably. She scratched her ribs. “Fraser, she said. You aren’t the—”
“I am,” I said, rather rudely. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Her eyebrows shot up, but she nodded equably.
“Just as you like,” she said. “Any good at cards?”
“Loo or whist?” I asked warily.
“Know a game called brag?”
“No.” Jamie and Brianna played it now and then, but I had never acquainted myself with the rules.
“That’s all right; I’ll teach you.” Reaching under the mattress, she pulled out a rather limp deck of pasteboards and fanned them expertly, waving them gently under her nose as she smiled at me.
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “You’re in here for cheating at cards?”
“Cheat? Me? Not a bit of it,” she said, evidently unoffended. “Forgery.”
Rather to my own surprise, I laughed. I was still feeling shaky, but Mrs. Ferguson was definitely proving a welcome distraction.
“How long have you been in here?” I asked.
She scratched at her head, realized that she wasn’t wearing a cap, and turned to pull one out of the rumpled bedding.
“Oh—a month, just about.” Putting on the crumpled cap, she nodded at the doorpost beside me. Turning to look, I saw that it was crosshatched with dozens of small nicks, some old and dark with dirt, some freshly scratched, showing raw yellow wood. The sight of the marks made my stomach plunge again, but I took a deep breath and turned my back on them.
“Have you had a trial yet?”
She shook her head, light glinting off her spectacles.
“No, praise God. I hear from Maisie that the court’s shut down; all the justices gone into hiding. Hasn’t been anybody tried in the last two months.”
This was not good news. Evidently the thought showed on my face, for she leaned forward and patted my arm sympathetically.
“I wouldn’t be in a hurry, dearie. Not in your shoes, I wouldn’t. If they’ve not tried you, they can’t hang you. And while I have met those as say the waiting’s like to kill them, I’ve not seen anybody die of it. And I have seen them die at the end of a rope. Nasty business, that is.”
She spoke almost negligently, but her own hand rose, as though by itself, and touched the soft white flesh of her neck. She swallowed, the tiny bump of her Adam’s apple bobbing.
I swallowed, too, an unpleasantly constricted feeling in my own throat.
“But I’m innocent,” I said, wondering even as I said it how I could sound so uncertain.
“‘Course you are,” she said stoutly, giving my arm a squeeze. “You stick to it, dearie—don’t you let ’em bully-whack you into admitting the least little thing!”
“I won’t,” I assured her dryly.
“One of these days, a mob’s like to come here,” she said, nodding. “String up the sheriff, if he don’t look sharp. He’s not popular, Tolliver.”
“I