A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [537]
And go where, if you did? I wondered.
With no good answer to that question, I shoved it to the back of my mind and turned my attention back to Mrs. Ferguson, who was still holding out the cards invitingly.
“All right,” I said. “But not for money.”
“Oh, no,” Mrs. Ferguson assured me. “Perish the thought. But we must have some sort of stake to make it interesting. We’ll play for beans, shall we?” She set down the cards, and digging under the pillow, withdrew a small pouch, from which she poured a handful of small white beans.
“Splendid,” I said. “And when we’re finished, we’ll plant them, shall we, and hope for a giant beanstalk to spring up and burst through the roof, so we can escape up it.”
She burst into giggles at that, which somehow made me feel very slightly better.
“From your mouth to God’s ear, dearie!” she said. “I’ll deal first, shall I?”
BRAG APPEARED TO BE a form of poker. And while I had lived with a cardsharp long enough to know one when I saw one, Mrs. Ferguson appeared to be playing honestly—for the moment. I was forty-six beans to the good, by the time Mrs. Tolliver returned.
The door opened without ceremony, and she came in, holding a three-legged stool and a chunk of bread. This latter appeared to be both my supper and her ostensible excuse for visiting the cell, for she shoved it at me with a loud, “This will have to keep you ’til tomorrow, Mrs. Fraser!”
“Thank you,” I said mildly. It was fresh, and appeared to have been hastily dragged through bacon drippings, in lieu of butter. I bit into it without hesitation, having sufficiently recovered from shock now as to feel very hungry indeed.
Mrs. Tolliver, glancing over her shoulder to be sure the coast was clear, shut the door quietly, put down the stool, and drew a squat bottle from her pocket, blue glass and filled with some clear liquid.
She pulled the cork from it, tilted it, and drank deeply, her long, lean throat moving convulsively.
Mrs. Ferguson said nothing, but watched the process with a sort of analytic attention, light glinting from her spectacles, as though comparing Mrs. Tolliver’s behavior with that of previous occasions.
Mrs. Tolliver lowered the bottle and stood for a moment grasping it, then handed it abruptly to me and sat down suddenly on the stool, breathing heavily.
I wiped the neck of the bottle as inconspicuously as possible on my sleeve, then took a token sip. It was gin, all right—heavily flavored with juniper berries to hide the poor quality, but powerfully alcoholic.
Mrs. Ferguson took a healthy guzzle in her turn, and so we continued, passing the bottle from hand to hand, exchanging small cordialities with it. Her first thirst slaked, Mrs. Tolliver became almost affable, her frosty manner thawing substantially. Even so, I waited until the bottle was nearly empty before asking the question foremost in my mind.
“Mrs. Tolliver, the men who brought me—did you happen to hear them say anything about my husband?”
She put a fist to her mouth to stifle a belch.
“Say anything?”
“About where he is,” I amended.
She blinked a little, looking blank.
“I didn’t hear,” she said. “But I suppose they may have told Tolly.”
Mrs. Ferguson handed down the bottle to her—we were sitting side by side on the bed, that being the only place to sit in the small room—nearly falling off the bed in the process.
“S’pose you could ask him, could you, Maisie?” she said.
An uneasy look came into Mrs. Tolliver’s eyes, glazed as they were.
“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head. “He doesn’t talk to me about such things. Not my