Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [127]
“This is a verra foolish quarrel, and you know that as well as I do.”
“No, I don’t.” My anger had faded somewhat, but I wasn’t about to let him dismiss it altogether. “It’s maybe not important to you, but it is to me. It isn’t foolish. And you know it, or you wouldn’t be admitting you’re wrong.”
The twitch was more pronounced this time. He took a deep breath, and dropped his hands from my shoulders.
“Well, then. I should maybe have told ye about Byrnes; I admit it. But if I had, ye would have gone to him, even if I’d said it was the lockjaw—and I kent it was, I’ve seen it before. Even if there was nothing ye could do, you’d still go? No?”
“Yes. Even if—yes, I would have gone.”
In fact, there was nothing I could have done for Byrnes. Myers’s anesthetic wouldn’t have helped a case of tetanus. Nothing short of injectable curare would ease those spasms. I could have given him nothing more than the comfort of my presence, and it was doubtful that he would have appreciated that—or even noticed it. Still, I would have felt bound to offer it.
“I would have had to go,” I said, more gently. “I’m a doctor. Don’t you see?”
“Of course I do,” he said gruffly. “D’ye think I dinna ken ye at all, Sassenach?”
Without waiting for an answer, he went on.
“There was talk about what happened at the mill—there would be, aye? But with the man dying under your hands as he did—well, no one’s said straight out that ye might have killed him on purpose … but it’s easy to see folk thinkin’ it. Not thinkin’ that ye killed him, even—but only that ye might have thought to let him die on purpose, so as to save him from the rope.”
I stared at my hands, spread out on my knees, nearly as pale as the ivory satin under them.
“I did think of it.”
“I ken that fine, aye?” he said dryly. “I saw your face, Sassenach.”
I drew a deep breath, if only to assure myself that the air was no longer thick with the smell of blood. There was nothing but the turpentine scent of the pine forest, clean and astringent in my nostrils. I had a sudden vivid memory of the hospital, of the smell of pine-scented disinfectant that hung in the air, that overlaid but could not banish the underlying smell of sickness.
I took another cleansing breath, and raised my head to look at Jamie.
“And did you wonder if I’d killed him?”
He looked faintly surprised.
“Ye would have done as ye thought best.” He dismissed the minor question of whether I’d killed a man, in favor of the point at issue.
“But it didna seem wise for ye to preside over both deaths, if ye take my meaning.”
I did, and not for the first time I was aware of the subtle networks of which he was a part, in a way I could never be. This place in its way was as strange to him as it was to me; and yet he knew not only what people were saying—anyone could find that out, who cared to haunt tavern and market—but what they were thinking.
What was more irritating was that he knew what I was thinking.
“So ye see,” he said, watching me. “I kent Byrnes was sure to die, and ye couldna help. Yet if ye knew his trouble, ye’d surely go to him. And then he would die, and folk would maybe not say how strange it was, that both men had died under your hand, so to speak—but—”
“But they’d be thinking it,” I finished for him.
The twitch grew into a crooked smile.
“Folk notice you, Sassenach.”
I bit my lip. For good or for ill, they did, and the noticing had come close to killing me more than once.
He rose, and taking hold of a branch for balance, stepped out on the gravel and pulled the plaid up over his shoulder.
“I told Mrs. Byrnes I would fetch away her husband’s things from the mill,” he said. “Ye needna come, if ye dinna wish.”
The mill loomed against the star-spattered sky. It couldn’t have looked more sinister if it had tried. Whither thou goest, I will go.
I thought I knew now what he was doing. He had wanted to see it all, before making up his mind; see it with the knowledge that it might be his. Walking through the gardens and orchards, rowing