Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [125]
“Places that are very busy in the daytime always seem particularly spooky at night,” I said, in an effort to break the mill’s silence.
“Do they?” Jamie sounded abstracted. “I didna much like that one in the daylight.”
I shuddered at the memory.
“Neither did I. I only meant—”
“Byrnes is dead.” He didn’t look at me; his face was turned toward the mill, half-hidden by the willow’s shadow.
I dropped the end of the tie rope.
“The overseer? When?” I said, shocked more by the abruptness than the revelation. “And how?”
“This afternoon. Campbell’s youngest lad brought the news just before sunset.”
“How?” I asked again. I gripped my knees, a double handful of ivory silk twisted in my fingers.
“It was the lockjaw.” His voice was casual, unemphatic. “A verra nasty way to die.”
He was right about that. I had never actually seen anyone die of tetanus myself, but I knew the symptoms well enough: restlessness and difficulty swallowing, developing into a progressive stiffening as the muscles of arms and legs and neck began to spasm. The spasms increased in severity and duration until the patient’s body was hard as wood, arched in an agony that came on and receded, came on again, went off, and at last came on in an endless tetany that could not be relaxed by anything save death.
“He died grinnin’, Ronnie Campbell said. But I shouldna think it was a happy death, forbye.” It was a grim joke, but there was little humor in his voice.
I sat up quite straight, feeling cold all down my spine in spite of the warmth of the night.
“It isn’t a quick death, either,” I said. Suspicion spread cold tentacles through my mind. “It takes days to die of tetanus.”
“It took Davie Byrnes five days, first to last.” If there had been any trace of humor in his voice to start with, it was gone now.
“You saw him,” I said, a small flicker of anger beginning to thaw the internal chill. “You saw him! And you didn’t tell me?”
I had dressed Byrnes’s injury—hideous, but not life-threatening—and had been told that he would be kept somewhere “safe” until the disturbance over the lynching had died down. Heartsick as I was over the matter, I had made no effort to inquire further after the overseer’s whereabouts or welfare; it was my own guilt at this neglect that made me angry, and I knew it—but the knowledge didn’t help.
“Could ye have done anything? I thought ye told me that the lockjaw was one of the things that couldna be helped, even in your time.” He wasn’t looking at me; I could see his profile turned toward the mill, head stamped in darker black against the lighter shadow of pale leaves.
I forced myself to let go of my skirt. I smoothed the crumpled patches over my knee, thinking dimly that Phaedre would have a terrible time ironing it.
“No,” I said, with a little effort. “No, I couldn’t have saved him. But I should have seen him; I might have eased him a little.”
Now he did look at me; I saw his head turn, and felt the shifting of his weight in the boat.
“You might,” he said evenly.
“And you wouldn’t let me—” I stopped, remembering his absences this past week, and his evasive replies when I had asked him where he’d been. I could imagine the scene all too well; the tiny, stifling attic room in Farquard Campbell’s house where I had dressed Byrnes’s injury. The racked figure on the bed, dying by inches under the cold eyes of those the law had made his unwilling allies, knowing that he died despised. The sense of cold came back, raising gooseflesh on my arms.
“No, I wouldna let Campbell send for you,” he said softly. “There’s the law, Sassenach—and there is justice. I ken the difference well enough.”
“There’s such a thing as mercy, too.” And had anyone asked, I would have called Jamie Fraser a merciful man. He had been, once. But the years between now and then had been