Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [228]
The sunlight trickled through the cracks between the boards, giving enough light for us to see each other clearly, once my eyes had adapted to the relative dark. He wasn’t, after all, quite as awful-looking as I’d thought at first, but he wasn’t a lot better, either. His beard was as filthy and matted as his hair, flowing past his shoulders onto a shirt ragged as any beggar’s. He was barefoot, and if the term sans-culottes wasn’t yet in common use, it wasn’t for lack of trying on his part.
I wasn’t afraid of him, because he was so obviously afraid of me. He was pressing himself against the wall as though trying to get through it by osmosis.
“It’s all right,” I said soothingly. “I won’t hurt you.”
Instead of being soothed, he drew himself abruptly upright, reached into the bosom of his shirt and pulled out a wooden crucifix on a leather thong. He held this out toward me and started praying, in a voice shaking with terror.
“Oh, bother,” I said crossly. “Not another one!” I took a deep breath. “Pater-Noster-qui-es-in-coeliset-in-terra…” His eyes bugged out, and he kept holding the crucifix, but at least he stopped his own praying in response to this performance.
“…Amen!” I concluded with a gasp. I held up both hands and waggled them in front of his face. “See? Not a word backward, not a single quotidianus da nobis hodie out of place, right? Didn’t even have my fingers crossed. So I can’t be a witch, can I?”
The man slowly lowered his crucifix and stood gaping at me. “A witch?” he said. He looked as though he thought I were crazy, which I felt was a bit thick under the circumstances.
“You didn’t think I was a witch?” I said, beginning to feel a trifle foolish.
Something that looked like a smile twitched into existence and out again among the tangles of his beard.
“No, Madame,” he said. “I am accustomed to people saying such things of me.”
“You are?” I eyed him closely. Besides the rags and filth, the man was obviously starving; the wrists that stuck out of his shirt were scrawny as a child’s. At the same time, his French was graceful and educated, if oddly accented.
“If you’re a witch,” I said, “you aren’t very successful at it. Who the hell are you?”
At this, the fright came back into his eyes again. He looked from side to side, seeking escape, but the shed was solidly built, if old, with no entrance other than the one in which I was standing. At last, calling on some hidden reserve of courage, he drew himself up to his full height—some three inches below my own—and with great dignity, said “I am the Reverend Walter Laurent, of Geneva.”
“You’re a priest?” I was thunderstruck. I couldn’t imagine what might have brought a priest—Swiss or not—to this state.
Father Laurent looked nearly as horror-struck as I.
“A priest?” he echoed. “A papist? Never!”
Suddenly the truth struck me.
“A Huguenot!” I said. “That’s it—you’re a Protestant, aren’t you?” I remembered the bodies I had seen hanging in the forest. That, I thought, explained rather a lot.
His lips quivered, but he pressed them tightly together for a moment before opening them to reply.
“Yes, Madame. I am a pastor; I have been preaching in this district for a month.” He licked his lips briefly, eyeing me. “Your pardon, Madame—I think you are not French?”
“I’m English,” I said, and he relaxed suddenly, as though someone had taken all the stiffening out of his spine.
“Great Father in Heaven,” he said, prayerfully. “You are then a Protestant also?”
“No, I’m a Catholic,” I answered. “But I’m not at all vicious about it,” I added hastily, seeing the look of alarm spring back into his light-brown eyes. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone you’re here. I suppose you came to try to steal a little food?” I asked sympathetically.
“To steal is a sin!” he said, horrified. “No, Madame. But…” He clamped his lips shut, but his glance in the direction of the château gave him away.
“So one of the servants brings you food,” I said. “So you let them do the stealing for you. But then I suppose you can absolve them from the sin, so it all works out. Rather thin moral ice you