Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [39]
“What do you mean, don’t press her? Don’t press her? My wife’s been gone for nearly three years, and come back filthy, abused, and pregnant, for God’s sake, and I’m not to ask questions?”
And the doctor’s voice, murmuring soothingly. I caught the words “delusion,” and “traumatic state,” and “leave it for later, old man—just for a bit” as Frank’s voice, still arguing and interrupting, was gently but firmly eased down the hall. That so-familiar voice, which raised anew the storm of grief and rage and terror inside me.
I had curled my body into a defensive ball, pillow clutched to my chest, and bitten it, as hard as I could, until I felt the cotton casing give way and the silky grit of feathers grinding between my teeth.
I was grinding them now, to the detriment of a new filling. I stopped, and opened my eyes.
“Look,” I said, as reasonably as I could. “I’m sorry, I know how it sounds. But it’s true, and nothing I can do about it.”
This speech did nothing to reassure Brianna, who edged closer to Roger. Roger himself had lost that green-about-the-gills look, though, and was exhibiting signs of cautious interest. Could it be possible that he really did have enough imagination to be able to grasp the truth?
I took hope from his expression, and unclenched my fists.
“It’s the bloody stones,” I said. “You know, the standing stone circle, on the fairies’ hill, to the west?”
“Craigh na Dun,” Roger murmured. “That one?”
“Right.” I exhaled consciously. “You may know the legends about fairy hills—do you? About people who get trapped in rocky hills and wake up two hundred years later?”
Brianna was looking more alarmed by the moment.
“Mother, I really think you ought to go up and lie down,” she said. She half-rose from her seat. “I could go get Fiona…”
Roger put a hand on her arm to stop her.
“No, wait,” he said. He looked at me, with the sort of suppressed curiosity a scientist shows when putting a new slide under the microscope. “Go ahead,” he said to me.
“Thanks,” I said dryly. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to start driveling about fairies; I just thought you’d like to know there’s some basis to the legends. I haven’t any idea what it actually is up there, or how it works, but the fact is…” I took a deep breath, “Well, the fact is, that I walked through a bloody cleft stone in that circle in 1945, and I ended up on the hillside below in 1743.”
I’d said exactly that to Frank. He’d glared at me for a moment, picked up a vase of flowers from my bedside table, and smashed it on the floor.
Roger looked like a scientist whose new microbe has come through a winner. I wondered why, but was too engrossed in the struggle to find words that sounded halfway sane.
* * *
“The first person I ran into was an English dragoon in full fig,” I said. “Which rather gave me a hint that something was wrong.”
A sudden smile lighted Roger’s face, though Brianna went on looking horrified. “I should think it might,” he said.
“The difficulty was that I couldn’t get back, you see.” I thought I’d better address my remarks to Roger, who at least seemed disposed to listen, whether he believed me or not.
“The thing is, ladies then didn’t go about the place unescorted, and if they did, they didn’t do it wearing print dresses and oxford loafers,” I explained. “Everyone I met, starting with that dragoon captain, knew there was something wrong about me—but they didn’t know what. How could they? I couldn’t explain then any better than I can now—and lunatic asylums back then were much less pleasant places than they are now. No basket weaving,” I added, with an effort at a joke. It wasn’t noticeably successful; Brianna grimaced and looked more worried than ever.
“That dragoon,” I said, and a brief shudder went over me at the memory of Jonathan Wolverton Randall, Captain of His Majesty’s Eighth Dragoons. “I thought I was hallucinating at first, because the man looked so very like Frank; at first glance, I thought it was he.