Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [319]
“He’s gone, Jamie,” I whispered.
He didn’t move for a moment, but then nodded, opening his eyes as though reluctant to face the realities of the night.
“I know. He died soon after I brought him out, but I didna want to let him go.”
I took the shoulders and we lowered him gently to the ground. It was grassy here, and the night wind stirred the stems around him, brushing them lightly across his face, a welcome to the caress of the earth.
“You didn’t want him to die under a roof,” I said, understanding. The sky swept over us, cozy with cloud, but endless in its promise of refuge.
He nodded slowly, then knelt by the body and kissed the wide, pale forehead.
“I would have someone do the same for me,” he said softly. He drew a fold of the plaid up over the brown curls, and murmured something in Gaelic that I didn’t understand.
A medical casualties station is no place for tears; there is much too much to be done. I had not wept all day, despite the things I had seen, but now gave way, if only for a moment. I leaned my face against Jamie’s shoulder for strength, and he patted me briefly. When I looked up, wiping the tears from my face, I saw him still staring, dry-eyed, at the quiet figure on the ground. He felt me watching him and looked down at me.
“I wept for him while he was still alive to know it, Sassenach,” he said quietly. “Now, how is it in the house?”
I sniffed, wiped my nose, and took his arm as we turned back to the cottage.
“I need your help with one.”
“Which is it?”
“Hamish MacBeth.”
Jamie’s face, strained for so many hours, relaxed a bit under the stains and smudges.
“He’s back, then? I’m glad. How bad is he, though?”
I rolled my eyes. “You’ll see.”
MacBeth was one of Jamie’s favorites. A massive man with a curly brown beard and a reticent manner, he had been always there within Jamie’s call, ready when something was needed on the journey. Seldom speaking, he had a slow, shy smile that blossomed out of his beard like a night-blooming flower, rare but radiant.
I knew the big man’s absence after the battle had been worrying Jamie, even among the other details and stresses. As the day wore on and the stragglers came back one by one, I had been keeping an eye out for MacBeth. But sundown came and the fires sprang up amid the army camp, with no Hamish MacBeth, and I had begun to fear we would find him among the dead, too.
But he had come into the casualties station half an hour before, moving slowly, but under his own power. One leg was stained with blood down to the ankle, and he walked with a ginger, spraddled gait, but he would on no account let a “wumman” lay hands on him to see what was the matter.
The big man was lying on a blanket near a lantern, hands clasped across the swell of his belly, eyes fastened patiently on the raftered ceiling. He swiveled his eyes around as Jamie knelt down beside him, but didn’t move otherwise. I lingered tactfully in the background, hidden from view by Jamie’s broad back.
“All right, then, MacBeth,” said Jamie, laying a hand on the thick wrist in greeting. “How is it, man?”
“I’ll do, sir,” the giant rumbled. “I’ll do. Just that it’s a bit…” He hesitated.
“Well, then, let’s have a look at it.” MacBeth made no protest as Jamie flipped back the edge of the kilt. Peeking through a crack between Jamie’s arm and body, I could see the cause of MacBeth’s hesitations.
A sword or pike had caught him high in the groin and ripped its way downward. The scrotum was torn jaggedly on one side, and one testicle hung halfway out, its smooth pink surface shiny as a peeled egg.
Jamie and the two or three other men who saw the wound turned pale, and I saw one of the aides touch himself reflexively, as though to assure that his own parts were unscathed.
Despite the horrid look of the wound, the testicle itself seemed undamaged, and there was no excessive bleeding. I touched Jamie on the shoulder and shook my head to signify that the wound was not serious, no matter what its effect on the male psyche. Catching my gesture with