Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [129]
I was paralyzed with fear, and it took some moments for me to realize what my ears had told me. The sound hadn’t come from the blackness across the room, where the crane stood with its hook. It had come from somewhere behind me.
I whirled. The door we had come through was still open, a pale rectangle in the pitch-black. Nothing showed, nothing moved between me and the door. I took a quick step toward it and stopped. Every muscle in my legs strained to run like hell—but I couldn’t leave Jamie.
Again the sound, that same sobbing gasp of physical anguish; pain past the point of crying out. With it, a new thought popped into my mind; what if it was Jamie making the sound?
Shocked out of caution, I turned toward the sound and shouted his name, raising echoes from the roof high above.
“Jamie!” I cried again. “Where are you?”
“Here, Sassenach.” Jamie’s muffled voice came from somewhere to my left, calm but somehow urgent. “Come to me, will ye?”
It wasn’t him. Nearly shaking with relief at the sound of his voice, I blundered through the dark, not caring now what had made the sound, as long as it wasn’t Jamie.
My hand struck a wooden wall, groped blindly, and finally found a door, standing open. He was inside the overseer’s quarters.
I stepped through the door, and felt the change at once. The air was even closer, and much hotter, than that in the mill proper. The floor here was of wood, but there was no echo to my step; the air was dead still, suffocating. And the smell of blood was even stronger.
“Where are you?” I called again, low-voiced this time.
“Here,” came the reply, startlingly near at hand. “By the bed. Come and help me; it’s a lass.”
He was in the tiny bedroom. The small room was windowless, and lightless too. I found them by feel, Jamie kneeling on the wooden floor beside a narrow bed, and in the bed, a body.
It was a female, as he’d said; touch told me that at once. Touch told me also that she was exsanguinating. The cheek I brushed was cool and clammy. Everything else I touched was warm and wet; her clothing, the bedclothes, the mattress beneath her. I could feel wetness soaking through my skirt where I knelt on the floor.
I felt for a pulse in the throat and couldn’t find it. The chest moved slightly under my hand, the only sign of life beyond the faint sigh that went with it.
“It’s all right now,” I heard myself saying, and my voice was soothing, all trace of panic gone, though in truth there was more reason for it now. “We’re here, you’re not alone. What’s happened to you, can you tell me?”
All the time my hands were darting over head and throat and chest and stomach, pushing sodden clothes aside, searching blindly, frantically, for a wound to stanch. Nothing, no spurt of artery, no raw gash. And all the time, there was a faint but steady pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, like the sound of tiny feet running.
“Tell …” It was not so much a word as the articulation of a sigh. Then a catch, a sobbing breath indrawn.
“Who has done this to ye, lass?” Jamie’s disembodied voice came low and urgent. “Tell me, who?”
“Tell …”
I touched all the places where the great vessels lie close beneath the skin and found them whole. Seized her by an unresisting arm and lifted, thrust a hand beneath to feel her back. All the heat of her body was there; the bodice was damp with sweat, but not blood-soaked.
“It will be all right,” I said again. “You’re not alone. Jamie, hold her hand.” Hopelessness came down on me; I knew what it must be.
“I already have it,” he said to me, and “Dinna trouble, lass,” to her. “It will be all right, d’ye hear me?” Pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat. The tiny feet were slowing.
“Tell …”
I could not help, but nonetheless slid my hand beneath her skirt again, this time letting my fingers curve between the limp splayed thighs. She was still warm here, very warm. Blood flowed gently over my hand and through my fingers, hot and wet as the air around us, unstoppable as the water that flowed down