Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [312]
“Christ, did ye see ’em scutter like wee mousies wi’ a cat on their tails?” said one patient to another, seemingly oblivious of the nasty powder burn that had singed his left arm from knuckles to shoulder.
“And a rare good many of ’em missin’ their tails,” answered his friend, with a chortle.
Joy was not quite universal; here and there, small parties of subdued Highlanders could be seen making their way across the hills, carrying the still form of a friend, plaid’s end covering a face gone blank and empty with heaven’s seeing.
It was the first test of my chosen assistants, and they rose to the challenge as well as had the warriors of the field. That is, they balked and complained and made nuisances of themselves, and then, when necessity struck, threw themselves into battle with unparalleled fierceness.
Not that they stopped complaining while they did it.
Mrs. McMurdo returned with yet another full bottle, which she hung in the assigned place on the cottage wall, before stooping to rummage in the tub that held the bottles of honey water. The elderly wife of a Tranent fisherman pressed into army service, she was the waterer on this shift; in charge of going from man to man, urging each to sip as much of the sweetened fluid as could be tolerated—and then making a second round to deal with the results, equipped with two or three empty bottles.
“If ye didna gie them so much to drink, they’d no piss sae much,” she complained—not for the first time.
“They need the water,” I explained patiently—not for the first time. “It keeps their blood pressure up, and replaces some of the fluids they’ve lost, and helps avoid shock—well, look, woman, do you see many of them dying?” I demanded, suddenly losing a good deal of my patience in the face of Mrs. McMurdo’s continuing dubiousness and complaints; her nearly toothless mouth lent a note of mournfulness to an already dour expression—all is lost, it seemed to say; why trouble further?
“Mphm,” she said. Since she took the water and returned to her rounds without further remonstrance, I took this sound for at least temporary assent.
I stepped outside to escape both Mrs. McMurdo and the atmosphere in the cottage. It was thick with smoke, heat, and the fug of unwashed bodies, and I felt a bit dizzy.
The streets were filled with men, drunk, celebrating, laden with plunder from the battlefield. One group of men in the reddish tartan of the MacGillivrays pulled an English cannon, tethered with ropes like a dangerous wild beast. The resemblance was enhanced by the fanciful carvings of crouching wolves that decorated the touch-hole and muzzle. One of General Cope’s showpieces, I supposed.
Then I recognized the small black figure riding astride the cannon’s muzzle, hair sticking up like a bottle brush. I closed my eyes in momentary thankfulness, then opened them and hastened down the street to drag him off the cannon.
“Wretch!” I said, giving him a shake and then a hug. “What do you mean sneaking off like that? If I weren’t so busy, I’d box your ears ’til your head rattled!”
“Madame,” he said, blinking stupidly in the afternoon sun. “Madame.”
I realized he hadn’t heard a word I’d said. “Are you all right?” I asked, more gently.
A look of puzzlement crossed his face, smeared with mud and powder-stains. He nodded, and a sort of dazed smile appeared through the grime.
“I killed an English soldier, Madame.”
“Oh?” I was unsure whether he wanted congratulation, or needed comfort. He was ten.
His brow wrinkled, and his face screwed