Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [315]
Turning to go, he reached for the water bottle hanging from the door peg.
“Not that one!” I said.
“Why not?” he asked, puzzled. He shook the wide-mouthed flask, with a faint sloshing sound. “It’s full.”
“I know it is,” I said. “That’s what I’ve been using as a urinal.”
“Oh.” Holding the bottle by two fingers, he reached to replace it, but I stopped him.
“No, go ahead and take it,” I suggested. “You can empty it outside, and fill this one at the well.” I handed him another gray stone bottle, identical with the first.
“Try not to get them mixed up,” I said helpfully.
“Mmphm,” he replied, giving me a Scottish look to go along with the noise, and turned toward the door.
“Hey!” I said, seeing him clearly from the back. “What’s that?”
“What?” he said, startled, trying to peer over one shoulder.
“That!” My fingers traced the muddy shape I had spotted above the sagging plaid, printed on the grubby linen of his shirt with the clarity of a stencil. “It looks like a horseshoe,” I said disbelievingly.
“Oh, that,” he said, shrugging.
“A horse stepped on you?”
“Well, not on purpose,” he said, defensive on the horse’s behalf. “Horses dinna like to step on people; I suppose it feels a wee bit squashy underfoot.”
“I would suppose it does,” I agreed, preventing his attempts to escape by holding on to one sleeve. “Stand still. How the hell did this happen?”
“It’s no matter,” he protested. “The ribs don’t feel broken, only a trifle bruised.”
“Oh, just a trifle,” I agreed sarcastically. I had worked the stained fabric free in back, and could see the clear, sharp imprint of a curved horseshoe, embedded in the fair flesh of his back, just above the waist. “Christ, you can see the horseshoe nails.” He winced involuntarily as I ran my finger over the marks.
It had happened during one brief sally by the mounted dragoons, he explained. The Highlanders, mostly unaccustomed to horses other than the small, shaggy Highland ponies, were convinced that the English cavalry horses had been trained to attack them with hooves and teeth. Panicked at the horses’ charge, they had dived under the horses’ hooves, slashing ferociously at legs and bellies with swords and scythes and axes.
“And you think they aren’t?”
“Of course not, Sassenach,” he said impatiently. “He wasna trying to attack me. The rider wanted to get away, but he was sealed in on either side. There was noplace to go but over me.”
Seeing this realization dawn in the eyes of the horse’s rider, a split second before the dragoon applied spurs to his mount’s sides, Jamie had flung himself flat on his face, arms over his head.
“Then the next was the breath bursting from my lungs,” he explained. “I felt the dunt of it, but it didna hurt. Not then.” He reached back and rubbed a hand absently over the mark, grimacing slightly.
“Right,” I said, dropping the edge of the shirt. “Have you had a piss since then?”
He stared at me as though I had gone suddenly barmy.
“You’ve had four-hundredweight of horse step smack on one of your kidneys,” I explained, a trifle impatiently. There were wounded men waiting. “I want to know if there’s blood in your urine.”
“Oh,” he said, his expression clearing. “I don’t know.”
“Well, let’s find out, shall we?” I had placed my big medicine box out of the way in one corner; now I rummaged about in it and withdrew one of the small glass urinoscopy cups I had acquired from L’Hôpital des Anges.
“Fill it up and give it back to me.” I handed it to him and turned back toward the hearth, where a cauldron full of boiling linens awaited my attention.
I glanced back to find him still regarding the cup with a slightly quizzical expression.
“Need help, lad?” A big English soldier on the floor was peering up from his pallet, grinning at Jamie.
A flash of white teeth showed in the filth of Jamie’s face. “Oh, aye,” he said. He leaned down, offering the cup to the Englishman. “Here, hold this for me while I aim.”
A ripple of mirth passed through the men nearby, distracting them momentarily from their distress.
After a moment’s hesitation,