Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [225]
I swallowed, but my mouth was too dry to talk, despite the brandywine.
Jamie slipped one shoe onto my foot, and then the other. They were damp, but faintly warm from his body.
“I did think ye were maybe dead, Cinderella,” he said softly, head bent to hide his face.
Ian didn’t notice, caught up in the enthusiasm of the story.
“My clever wee dog was for dashing off, the same as when he’s smelt a rabbit, so we caught up our plaids and came away after him, only stopping to snatch a brand from the hearth and smoor the fire. He led us a good chase, too, did ye no, laddie?” He rubbed Rollo’s ears with affectionate pride. “And here ye were!”
The brandywine was buzzing in my ears, swaddling my wits in a warm, sweet blanket, but I had enough sense left to tell me that for Rollo to have followed a trail back to me … someone had walked all that way in my shoes.
I had recovered some remnants of my voice by this time, and managed to talk with only a little hoarseness.
“Did you—see anything—along the way?” I asked.
“No, Auntie,” Ian said, suddenly sober. “Did you?”
Jamie lifted his head, and I could see how worry and exhaustion had hollowed his face, leaving the broad cheekbones sharp beneath his skin. I wasn’t the only one who had had a long, hard night.
“Yes,” I said, “but I’ll tell you later. Right now, I believe I’ve turned into a pumpkin. Let’s go home.”
Jamie had brought horses, but there was no way to get them down into the hollow; we were forced to make our way down the banks of the flooded stream, splashing through the shallows, then to clamber laboriously up a rocky slope to the ledge above, where the animals were tethered. Rubber-legged and flimsy after my ordeal, I wasn’t a great deal of help in this endeavor, but Jamie and Ian coped matter-of-factly, boosting me over obstructions and handing me back and forth like a large, unwieldy package.
“You really aren’t supposed to give alcohol to people suffering from hypothermia,” I said feebly as Jamie put the flask to my lips again during one pause for rest.
“I dinna care what you’re suffering from, you’ll feel it less with the drink in your belly,” he said. It was still chilly from the rain, but his face was flushed from the climb. “Besides,” he added, mopping his brow with a fold of his plaid, “if ye pass out, you’ll be less trouble to hoik about. Christ, it’s like hauling a newborn calf out of a bog.”
“Sorry,” I said. I lay flat on the ground and closed my eyes, hoping I wouldn’t throw up. The sky was spinning in one direction, my stomach in the other.
“Away, dog!” Ian said.
I opened one eye to see what was going on, and saw Ian firmly shooing Rollo away from the skull, which I had insisted he bring with us.
Seen in daylight, it was hardly a prepossessing object. Stained and discolored by the soil in which it had been buried, from a distance it resembled a smooth stone, scooped and gouged by wind and weather. Several of the teeth had been chipped or broken, though the skull showed no other damage.
“Just what do ye mean to do wi’ Prince Charming there?” Jamie asked, eyeing my acquisition rather critically. His color had faded, and he had got his breath back. He glanced down at me, reached over and smoothed the hair out of my eyes, smiling.
“All right, Sassenach?”
“Better,” I assured him, sitting up. The countryside had not quite stopped moving round me, but the brandy sloshing through my veins now gave the movement a rather pleasant quality, like the soothing rush of trees past the window of a railway carriage.
“I suppose we ought to take him home and give him Christian burial, at least?” Ian eyed the skull dubiously.
“I shouldn’t think he’d appreciate it; I don’t believe he was a Christian.” I fought back a vivid recollection of the man I had seen in the hollow. While it was true that some Indians had been converted by missionaries, this particular naked gentleman, with his black-painted face and feathered hair, had given me the impression that he was about as pagan as they come.
I fumbled in the pocket