A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [645]
No, I wasn’t wrong. I moved her basket to the table, where the warm breeze could play over her, and sat down beside it, laying my fingers gently on her chest.
I could feel it. Just as I had in the beginning, but stronger now that I knew what it was. If I had had a proper operating suite, the blood transfusions, the calibrated and carefully administered anesthesia, the oxygen mask, the swift, trained nurses . . . No surgery on the heart is a minor thing, and surgery on an infant is always a great risk—but I could have done it. Could feel in the tips of my fingers exactly what needed to be done, could see in the back of my eyes the heart, smaller than my fist, the slippery, pumping, rubbery muscle and the blood washing through the ductus arteriosus, a small vessel, no bigger than an eighth of an inch in circumference. A small nick in the axillary vessel, a quick ligation of the ductus itself with a number-8 silk ligature. Done.
I knew. But knowledge is not, alas, always power. Nor is desire. It wouldn’t be me who would save this precious granddaughter.
Would anyone? I wondered, giving way momentarily to the dark thoughts I fought to keep at bay when anyone else was near. Jemmy might not be right. Any baby might grab at a brightly colored shiny thing like a ruby ring—but then I remembered her cooing, batting at my decrepit leather amulet pouch with the raw sapphire inside.
Perhaps. I didn’t want to think about the dangers of the passage—or the certainty of permanent separation, no matter whether the journey through the stones was successful or not.
There were noises outside; I looked toward the harbor, and saw the masts of a large ship, far out to sea. Another, still farther out. My heart skipped a beat.
They were oceangoing ships, not the little packet boats and fishing smacks that sailed up and down the coast. Could they be part of the fleet, sent in answer to Governor Martin’s plea for help to suppress, subdue, and reclaim the colony? The first ship of that fleet had arrived at Cape Fear in late April—but the troops it carried had been lying low, waiting for the rest.
I watched for some time, but the ships didn’t come in closer. Perhaps they were hanging off, waiting for the rest of the fleet? Perhaps they weren’t British ships at all, but Americans, escaping the British blockade of New England by sailing south.
I was distracted from my thoughts by the clumping of male feet on the stairs, accompanied by snorts and that peculiarly Scottish sort of giggling usually depicted in print—but by no means adequately—as “Heuch, heuch, heuch!”
It was clearly Jamie and Ian, though I couldn’t understand what was giving rise to so much hilarity, since when last seen they had been bound for the docks, charged with dispatching a shipment of tobacco leaves, obtaining pepper, salt, sugar, cinnamon—if findable—and pins—somewhat rarer than cinnamon—for Mrs. Bug, and procuring a large fish of some edible sort for our supper.
They’d got the fish, at least: a large king mackerel. Jamie was carrying it by the tail, whatever it had been wrapped in having evidently been lost in some accident. His queue had come undone, so that long red strands frayed out over the shoulder of his coat, which in turn had a sleeve half wrenched off, a fold of white shirt protruding through the torn seam. He was covered with dust, as was the fish, and while the latter’s eyes both bulged accusingly, one of his own was swollen nearly shut.
“Oh, God,” I said, burying my face in one hand. I looked up at him through splayed fingers. “Don’t tell me. Neil Forbes?”
“Ach, no,” he said, dropping the fish with a splat on the table in front of me. “A wee difference of opinion wi’ the Wilmington Chowder and Marching Society.”
“A difference of opinion,” I repeated.
“Aye, they thought they’d throw us in the harbor, and we thought they wouldn’t.” He slung a chair round with his boot and sat down on it backward, arms crossed on its back. He looked indecently cheerful, face flushed with sun and laughter.
“I don’t want to know,” I said,