Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [133]
“Long enough,” I said, with the smug self-assurance of one in Bouton’s good books. “What would you have done with him, once you’d got him wrapped up in your plaid?”
“Thrown him out the window and run like hell,” he answered, with a brief glance of awe at Mother Hildegarde’s imposing form. “Does she by chance speak English?”
“No, luckily for you,” I answered. I switched to French for the introductions. “Ma mère, je vous présente mon mari, le seigneur de Broch Tuarach.”
“Milord.” Mother Hildegarde had by now mastered her sense of humor, and greeted him with her usual expression of formidable geniality. “We shall miss your wife, but if you require her, of course—”
“I didn’t come for my wife,” Jamie interrupted. “I came to see you, ma mère.”
* * *
Seated in Mother Hildegarde’s office, Jamie laid the bundle of papers he carried on the shining wood of her desk. Bouton, keeping a wary eye on the intruder, lay down at his mistress’s feet. He laid his nose upon his feet, but kept his ears cocked, lip raised over one eyetooth in case he should be called upon to rend the visitor limb from limb.
Jamie narrowed his eyes at Bouton, pointedly pulling his feet away from the twitching black nose. “Herr Gerstmann recommended that I consult you, Mother, about these documents,” he said, unrolling the thick sheaf and flattening it beneath his palms.
Mother Hildegarde regarded Jamie for a moment, one heavy brow raised quizzically. Then she turned her attention to the sheaf of papers, with that administrator’s trick of seeming to focus entirely on the matter at hand, while still keeping her sensitive antennae tuned to catch the faintest vibration of emergency from the far-off reaches of the Hôpital.
“Yes?” she said. One blunt finger ran lightly over the lines of scribbled music, one by one, as though she heard the notes by touching them. A flick of the finger, and the sheet slid aside, half-exposing the next.
“What is it that you wish to know, Monsieur Fraser?” she asked.
“I don’t know, Mother.” Jamie was leaning forward, intent. He touched the black lines himself, dabbing gently at the smear where the writer’s hand had carelessly brushed the staves before the ink had dried.
“There is something odd about this music, Mother.”
The nun’s wide mouth moved slightly in what might have been a smile.
“Really, Monsieur Fraser? And yet I understand—you will not be offended, I trust—that to you, music is…a lock to which you have no key?”
Jamie laughed, and a sister passing in the hallways turned, startled by such a sound in the confines of the Hôpital. It was a noisy place, but laughter was unusual.
“That is a very tactful description of my disability, Mother. And altogether true. Were you to sing one of these pieces”—his finger, longer and more slender, but nearly the same size as Mother Hildegarde’s, tapped the parchment with a soft rustling noise—“I could not tell it from the Kyrie Eleison or from ‘La Dame fait bien’—except by the words,” he added, with a grin.
Now it was Mother Hildegarde’s turn to laugh.
“Indeed, Monsieur Fraser,” she said. “Well, at least you listen to the words!” She took the sheaf of papers into her hands, riffling the tops. I could see the faint swelling of her throat above the tight band of her wimple as she read, as though she was singing silently to herself, and one large foot twitched slightly, keeping time.
Jamie sat very still upon his stool, good hand folded over the crooked one on his knee, watching her. The slanted blue eyes were intent, and he paid no attention to the ongoing noise from the depths of the Hôpital behind him. Patients cried out, orderlies and nuns shouted back and forth, family members shrieked in sorrow or dismay, and the muted clang of metal instruments echoed off the ancient stones of the building, but neither Jamie nor Mother Hildegarde moved.
At last she lowered the pages, peering at him over the tops. Her eyes were sparkling, and she looked suddenly like a young girl.
“I think you are right!” she said. “I cannot take