Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [227]
By the time we reached Fraser’s Ridge, it was early afternoon. I had been cold, wet, and without food for nearly two days, and was feeling distinctly light-headed; a feeling exaggerated both by more infusions of brandywine and by my efforts to explain the events of the night before to Ian and Jamie. Viewed in the light of day, the entire night seemed unreal.
But then, almost everything seemed unreal, viewed through a haze of exhaustion, hunger, and mild drunkenness. Consequently, when we turned into the clearing, I thought at first that the smoke from the chimney was a hallucination—until the tang of burning hickory wood struck my nose.
“I thought you said you smoored the fire,” I said to Jamie. “Lucky you didn’t burn down the house.” Such accidents were common; I had heard of more than one wooden cabin burned to the ground as the result of a poorly tended hearth.
“I did smoor it,” he said briefly, swinging down from the saddle. “Someone’s here. D’ye ken the horse, Ian?”
Ian stood in his stirrups to look down into the penfold.
“Why, it’s Auntie’s wicked beast!” he said in surprise. “And a big dapple with him!”
Sure enough, the newly named Judas was standing in the penfold, unsaddled, companionably switching flies head to tail with a thick-barreled gray gelding.
“Do you know who owns him?” I asked. I hadn’t got down yet; small waves of dizziness had been washing over me every few minutes, forcing me to cling to the saddle. The ground under the horse seemed to be heaving gently up and down, like ocean billows.
“No, but it’s a friend,” Jamie said. “He’s fed my beasts for me, and milked the goat.” He nodded from the horses’ hay-filled manger to the door, where a pail of milk stood on the bench, neatly covered with a square of cloth to prevent flies falling in.
“Come along, Sassenach.” He reached up and took me by the waist. “We’ll tuck ye in bed and brew ye a dish of tea.”
Our arrival had been heard; the door of the cabin opened, and Duncan Innes looked out.
“Ah, you’re there, Mac Dubh,” he said. “What’s amiss, then? Your goat was carryin’ on fit to wake the dead, wi’ her bag like to burst, when I came up the trail this morning.” Then he saw me, and his long, mournful face went blank with surprise.
“Mrs. Claire!” he said, taking in my mud-stained and battered appearance. “Ye’ll have had an accident, then? I was a bit worrit when I found the horse loose on the mountainside as I came up, and your wee box on the saddle. I looked about and called for ye, but I couldna find any sign of ye, so I brought the beast along to the house.”
“Yes, I had an accident,” I said, trying to stand upright by myself and not succeeding very well. “I’m all right, though.” I wasn’t altogether sure about that. My head felt three times its normal size.
“Bed,” Jamie said firmly, grabbing me by the arms before I could fall over. “Now.”
“Bath,” I said. “First.”
He glanced in the direction of the creek.
“You’ll freeze or drown. Or both. For God’s sake, Sassenach, eat and go to bed; ye can wash tomorrow.”
“Now. Hot water. Kettle.” I hadn’t the energy to waste on prolonged argument, but I was determined. I wasn’t going to bed dirty, and I wasn’t going to wash filthy sheets later.
Jamie looked at me in exasperation, then rolled his eyes in surrender.
“Hot water, kettle, now, then,” he said. “Ian, fetch some wood, and then take Duncan and see to the pigs. I’m going to scrub your auntie.”
“I can scrub myself!”
“The hell ye can.”
He was right; my fingers were so stiff, they couldn’t undo the hooks of my bodice. He undressed me as though I were a small child, tossing the ripped skirt and mud-caked petticoats carelessly into the corner, and stripping off the chemise and stays, worn so long that the cloth folds had made deep red ridges in my flesh. I groaned with a voluptuous combination of pain and pleasure, rubbing the red marks as blood coursed back through my constricted torso.
“Sit,” he said,