Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [270]
“Usually it was ‘If ye’re through talkin’, Jamie, turn about and bend ower.’ ”
We laughed, pausing to lean on the fence. I bent closer, squinting at the wood.
“So this is where you got smacked? I don’t see any toothmarks,” I said.
“No, it wasna all that bad,” he said, laughing. He ran a hand affectionately along the worn ash fence rail.
“We used to get splinters in our fingers, sometimes, Ian and me. We’d go up to the house after, and Mrs. Crook or Jenny would pick them out for us—scolding all the time.”
He glanced toward the manor, where all the first-floor windows glowed with light against the gathering night. Dark forms moved briefly past the windows; small, quick-moving shadows in the kitchen windows, where Mrs. Crook and the maids were at the dinner preparations. A larger form, tall and slender as a fence rail, loomed suddenly in one of the drawing room windows. Ian stood a moment, silhouetted in the light as though called by Jamie’s reminiscence. Then he drew the curtains and the window dulled to a softer, shrouded glow.
“I was always glad when Ian was with me,” Jamie said, still looking toward the house. “When we got caught at some devilry and got thrashed for it, I mean.”
“Misery loves company?” I said, smiling.
“A bit. I didna feel quite so wicked when there were the two of us to share the guilt between. But it was more that I could always count on him to make a lot of noise.”
“What, to cry out, you mean?”
“Aye. He’d always howl and carry on something awful, and I knew he would do it, so I didna feel so ashamed of my own noise, if I had to cry out.” It was too dark to see his face anymore, but I could still see the half-shrugging gesture he made when embarrassed or uncomfortable.
“I always tried not to, of course, but I couldna always manage. If my da thought it worth thrashing me over, he thought it worth doing a proper job. And Ian’s father had a right arm like a tree bole.”
“You know,” I said, glancing down at the house, “I never thought of it particularly before, but why on earth did your father thrash you out here, Jamie? Surely there’s enough room in the house—or the barn.”
Jamie was silent for a moment, then shrugged again.
“I didna ever ask. But I reckon it was something like the King of France.”
“The King of France.” This apparent non sequitur took me aback a bit.
“Aye. I dinna ken,” he said dryly, “quite what it’s like to have to wash and dress and move your bowels in public, but I can tell ye that it’s a verra humbling experience to have to stand there and explain to one of your father’s tenants just what ye did that’s about to get your arse scalded for ye.”
“I imagine it must be,” I said, sympathy mingled with the urge to laugh. “Because you were going to be laird, you mean? That’s why he made you do it here?”
“I expect so. The tenants would know I understood justice—at least, from the receiving end.”
32
FIELD OF DREAMS
The field had been plowed in the usual “rigs,” high ridges of piled earth, with deep furrows drawn between them. The rigs rose knee-high, so a man walking down the furrows could sow his seed easily by hand along the top of the rig beside him. Designed for the planting of barley or oats, no reason had been seen to alter them for the planting of potatoes.
“It said ‘hills,’ ” Ian said, peering over the leafy expanse of the potato field, “but I thought the rigs would do as well. The point of the hills seemed to be to keep the things from rotting wi’ too much water, and an old field wi’ high rigs seemed like to do that as well.”
“That seems sensible,” Jamie agreed. “The top parts seem to be flourishing, anyway. Does the man say how ye ken when to dig the things up, though?”
Charged with the planting of potatoes in a land where no potato had ever been seen, Ian had proceeded with method and logic, sending to Edinburgh both for seed potatoes, and for a book on the subject of planting. In due course, A Scientific Treatise on Methods of Farming, by Sir Walter O’Bannion Reilly had made its appearance, with a small section on potato planting as presently practiced