Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [284]
“Hot piss sets the dye fast,” one of the women had explained to me as I blinked, eyes watering, on my first entrance to the shed. The other women had watched at first, to see if I would shrink back from the work, but wool-waulking was no great shock, after the things I had seen and done in France, both in the war of 1944 and the hospital of 1744. Time makes very little difference to the basic realities of life. And smell aside, the waulking shed was a warm, cozy place, where the women of Lallybroch visited and joked between bolts of cloth, and sang together in the working, hands moving rhythmically across a table, or bare feet sinking deep into the steaming fabric as we sat on the floor, thrusting against a partner thrusting back.
I was pulled back from my memories of wool-waulking by the noise of heavy boots in the hallway, and a gust of cool, rainy air as the door opened. Jamie, and Ian with him, talking together in Gaelic, in the comfortable, unemphatic manner that meant they were discussing farm matters.
“That field’s going to need draining next year,” Jamie was saying as he came past the door. Jenny, seeing them, had put down the mail and gone to fetch fresh linen towels from the chest in the hallway.
“Dry yourselves before ye come drip on the rug,” she ordered, handing one to each of the men. “And tak’ off your filthy boots, too. The post’s come, Ian—there’s a letter for ye from that man in Perth, the one ye wrote to about the seed potatoes.”
“Oh, aye? I’ll come read it, then, but is there aught to eat while I do it?” Ian asked, rubbing his wet head with the towel until the thick brown hair stood up in spikes. “I’m famished, and I can hear Jamie’s belly garbeling from here.”
Jamie shook himself like a wet dog, making his sister emit a small screech as the cold drops flew about the hall. His shirt was pasted to his shoulders and loose strands of rain-soaked hair hung in his eyes, the color of rusted iron.
I draped a towel around his neck. “Finish drying off, and I’ll go fetch you something.”
I was in the kitchen when I heard him cry out. I had never heard such a sound from him before. Shock and horror were in it, and something else—a note of finality, like the cry of a man who finds himself seized in a tiger’s jaws. I was down the hall and running for the drawing room without conscious thought, a tray of oatcakes still clutched in my hands.
When I burst through the door, I saw him standing by the table where Jenny had laid the mail. His face was dead white, and he swayed slightly where he stood, like a tree cut through, waiting for someone to shout “Timber” before falling.
“What?” I said, scared to death by the look on his face. “Jamie, what? What is it?!”
With a visible effort, he picked up one of the letters on the table and handed it to me.
I set down the oatcakes and took the sheet of paper, scanning it rapidly. It was from Jared; I recognized the thin, scrawly handwriting at once. “ ‘Dear Nephew,’ ” I read to myself, “ ‘…so pleased…words cannot express my admiration…your boldness and courage will be an inspiration…cannot fail of success…my prayers shall be with you…’ ” I looked up from the paper, bewildered. “What on earth is he talking about? What have you done, Jamie?”
The skin was stretched tight across the bones of his face, and he grinned, mirthless as a death’s-head, as he picked up another sheet of paper, this one a cheaply printed handbill.
“It’s not what I’ve done, Sassenach,” he said. The broadsheet was headed by the crest of the Royal House of Stuart. The message beneath was brief, couched in stately language.
It stated that by the ordination of Almighty God, King James, VIII of Scotland and III of England and Ireland asserted herewith his just rights to claim the throne of three kingdoms. And herewith acknowledged the support of these divine rights by the chieftains of the Highland clans, the Jacobite lords, and “various other such loyal subjects of His Majesty, King James, as have subscribed their names upon