Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [231]
The sun touched the skull, too. This stood on my writing table across the room, composing a cozily domestic still life with a clay jug filled with flowers and my casebook.
It was sight of the casebook that roused me from torpor. The birth I had attended at the Muellers’ farm now seemed vague and insubstantial in my mind; I thought I had better record the details while I still recalled them at all.
Thus prompted by the stirrings of professional duty, I stretched, groaned, and sat up. I still felt mildly dizzy and my ears rang from the aftereffects of brandywine. I was also faintly sore almost everywhere—more in some spots than others—but generally speaking, I was in decent working order. Beginning to be hungry, though.
I did hope Ian would come back with meat for the pot; I knew better than to gorge my shriveled stomach on cheese and salt fish, but a nice, strengthening squirrel broth, flavored with spring onions and dried mushrooms, would be just what the doctor ordered.
Speaking of broth—I slid reluctantly out of bed and stumbled across the floor to the hearth, where I poured the cold barley soup back into the pot. Ian had made enough for a regiment—always supposing the regiment to be composed of Scots. Living in a country normally barren of much that was edible, they were capable of relishing glutinous masses of cereal, untouched by any redeeming hint of spice or flavor. From a feebler race myself, I didn’t feel quite up to it.
The opened bag of barley stood beside the hearth, the burlap sack still visibly damp. I would have to spread the grain to dry, or it would rot. My bruised knee protesting a bit, I went and got a large flat tray-basket made of plaited reeds, and knelt to spread the damp grain in a thin layer over it.
“Will he have a soft mouth, then, Duncan?” Jamie’s voice came clearly through the window; the hide covering was rolled up, to let in air, and I caught the faint tang of tobacco from Duncan’s pipe. “He’s a big, strong brute, but he’s got a kind eye.”
“Oh, he’s a bonny wee fellow,” Duncan said, the note of pride in his voice unmistakable. “And a nice soft mouth, aye. Miss Jo had her stableman pick him from the market in Wilmington; said he must find a horse could be managed well wi’ one hand.”
“Mmphm. Aye, well, he’s a lovely creature.” The wooden bench creaked as one of the men shifted his weight. I understood the equivocation behind Jamie’s compliment, and wondered whether Duncan did, as well.
Part of it was simple condescension; Jamie had been raised on horseback, and as a born horseman, would scorn the notion that hands were necessary at all; I had seen him maneuver a horse by the shifting pressure of knees and thighs alone, or set his mount at a gallop across a crowded field, the reins knotted on the horse’s neck, to leave Jamie’s hands free for sword and pistol.
But Duncan was neither a horseman nor a soldier; he had lived as a fisherman near Ardrossan, until the Rising had plucked him, like so many others, from his nets and his boat, and sent him to Culloden and disaster.
Jamie wouldn’t be so untactful as to point up an inexperience of which Duncan was more than aware already; he would, though, mean to point up something else. Had Duncan caught it?
“It’s you she means to help, Mac Dubh, and well ye ken it, too.” Duncan’s tones were very dry; he’d taken Jamie’s point, all right.
“I havena said otherwise, Duncan.” Jamie’s voice was even.
“Mmphm.”
I smiled, despite the air of edginess between them. Duncan was every bit as good as Jamie at the Highland art of inarticulate eloquence. This particular noise captured both mild insult at Jamie’s implication that it was improper for Duncan to be accepting the gift of a horse from Jocasta, and a