Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [235]
The incisors and canine on the good side were scarcely worn at all, though. I turned the skull over, to judge the abrasion of the molars, and stopped cold.
Very cold, in spite of the fire at my back. As cold as I had been in the lost, fireless dark, alone on the mountain with a dead man’s head. For the late sun now struck sparks from my hands: from the silver band of my wedding ring—and from the silver fillings in my late companion’s mouth.
I sat staring for a moment, then turned the skull over and set it gently down on the desk, careful as though it were made of glass.
“My God,” I said, all tiredness forgotten. “My God,” I said, to the empty eyes and the lopsided grin. “Who were you?”
“Who do ye think he can have been?” Jamie touched the skull gingerly. We had no more than moments; Duncan had gone to the privy, Ian to feed the pig. I couldn’t bring myself to wait, though—I had had to tell someone at once.
“I haven’t the faintest idea. Except, of course, that he has to have been someone … like me.” A violent shiver ran over me. Jamie glanced at me, and frowned.
“Ye havena take a chill, have ye, Sassenach?”
“No.” I smiled weakly up at him. “Goose walking on my grave, I expect.”
He plucked my shawl from the hook by the door and swung it around me. His hands stayed on my shoulders, warm and comforting.
“It means the one thing else, doesn’t it?” he asked quietly. “It means there is another … place. Perhaps nearby.”
Another stone circle—or something like it. I had thought of that, too, and the notion made me shudder once again. Jamie looked thoughtfully at the skull, then drew the handkerchief from his sleeve and draped it gently over the empty eyes.
“I’ll bury him after supper,” he said.
“Oh, supper.” I pushed my hair behind my ear, trying to get my scattered thoughts to focus on food. “Yes, I’ll see if I can find some eggs. That will be quick.”
“Dinna trouble yourself, Sassenach.” Jamie peered into the pot on the hearth. “We can eat this.”
This time, the shudder was purely one of fastidiousness.
“Ugh,” I said. Jamie grinned at me.
“Nothing wrong wi’ good barley crowdie, is there?”
“Assuming there is such a thing,” I replied, looking into the pot with distaste. “This smells more like distiller’s mash.” Made with wet grain, insufficiently cooked and left standing, the cold, scummy soup was already giving off a yeasty whiff of fermentation.
“Speaking of which,” I said, giving the opened sack of damp barley a poke with my toe, “this needs to be spread to dry, before it starts to mold, if it hasn’t already.”
Jamie was staring at the disgusting soup, brows furrowed in thought.
“Aye?” he said absently, then, coming to consciousness, “Oh, aye. I’ll do it.” He twisted shut the top of the bag, and heaved it onto his shoulder. On the way out the door, he paused, looking at the shrouded skull.
“You said ye didna think him Christian,” he said, and glanced curiously at me. “Why was that, Sassenach?”
I hesitated, but there was no time to tell him about my dream—if that’s what it had been. I could hear Duncan and Ian in conversation, coming toward the house.
“No particular reason,” I said, with a shrug.
“Aye, well,” he said. “We’ll give him the benefit o’ the doubt.”
24
LETTER-WRITING: THE GREAT ART O’ LOVE
Oxford, March 1971
Roger supposed that it must rain as much in Inverness as it did in Oxford, but somehow he had never minded the northern rain. The cold Scottish wind sweeping in off the Moray Firth was exhilarating and the drenching rain both stimulation and refreshment to the spirit.
But that had been Scotland, when Brianna was with him. Now she was in America, he in England, and Oxford