Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [192]
While I talked with Gabrielle and Berthe, augmenting the conversation by means of hand-waving, I slowly became conscious that another sort of communication was taking place, with the old lady.
She said nothing to me directly—though she murmured now and then to Berthe, plainly demanding to know what I had said—but her bright dark eyes stayed fixed on me, and I was peculiarly aware of her regard. I had the odd feeling that she was talking to me—and I to her—without the exchange of a single spoken word.
I saw Jamie, across the clearing, offering Nacognaweto the rest of the bottle of brandy; clearly it was time to offer gifts in return. I gave Gabrielle the embroidered kerchief, and Berthe, a hairpin ornamented with paste brilliants, over which gifts they exclaimed in pleasure. For Nayawenne, though, I had something different.
I had been fortunate enough to find four large ginseng roots the week before. I fetched all four from my medicine chest and pressed them into her hands, smiling. She looked back at me, then grinned, and untying the cloth bag from her belt, thrust it at me. I didn’t have to open it; I could feel the four long, lumpy shapes through the cloth.
I laughed in return; yes, we definitely spoke the same language!
Moved by curiosity, and by an impulse that I couldn’t describe, I asked Gabrielle about the old lady’s amulet, hoping that this wasn’t an insufferable breach of good manners.
“Grandmère est …” She hesitated, looking for the right French word, but I already knew.
“Pas docteur,” I said, “et pas sorcière, magicienne. Elle est …” I hesitated too; there really wasn’t a suitable word for it in French, after all.
“We say she is a singer,” Berthe put in shyly, in French. “We call it shaman; her name, it means ‘It may be; it will happen.’ ”
The old lady said something, nodding at me, and the two younger women looked startled. Nayawenne bent her head, slipped the thong off her neck, and placed the little bag in my hand.
It was so heavy that my wrist sagged, and I nearly dropped it. Astonished, I closed my hand over it. The worn leather was warm from her body, the rounded contours fitting smoothly into my palm. For just a moment, I had the remarkable impression that something in the bag was alive.
My face must have shown my startlement, for the old lady doubled up laughing. She held out her hand and I gave her back the amulet, with a fair amount of haste. Gabrielle conveyed politely that her husband’s grandmother would be pleased to show me the useful plants that grew nearby, if I would like to walk with her?
I accepted this invitation with alacrity, and the old lady set off up the path with a sure-footed spryness that belied her years. I watched her feet, tiny in soft leather boots, and hoped that when I was her age, I might be capable of walking for two days through the woods, and then wanting to go exploring.
We wandered along the stream for some way, followed at a respectful distance by Gabrielle and Berthe, who came up beside us only if summoned to interpret.
“Each of the plants holds the cure to a sickness,” the old lady explained through Gabrielle. She plucked a twig from a bush by the path and handed it to me with a wry look. “If we only knew what they all were!”
For the most part, we managed fairly well by means of gesture, but when we reached the big pool where Jamie and Ian fished trout, Nayawenne stopped and waved, bringing Gabrielle to us again. She said something to the woman, who turned to me, a faint look of surprise on her face.
“My husband’s grandmother says that she had a dream about you, on the night of the full moon, two moons ago.”
“About me?”
Gabrielle nodded. Nayawenne put a hand on my arm and looked up intently into my face, as though to see the impact of Gabrielle’s words.
“She told us about the dream; that she had seen a woman with—” Her lips twitched, then hastily straightened themselves, and she delicately touched the ends of her own long,