Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [242]
Blundering out of the stream, I shoved my way through the tangled branches, and burst through into the clear space beyond. A boy was dancing on the bank above me, slapping madly at his legs and howling as he hopped to and fro.
“What—?” I began, and he glanced up at me, blue eyes wide with startlement at my sudden appearance.
He wasn’t nearly as startled as I was. He was eleven or twelve; tall and thin as a pine sapling, with a mad tangle of thick russet hair. Slanted blue eyes stared at me from either side of a knife-bridged nose, familiar to me as the back of my own hand, though I knew I had never seen this child before.
My heart was somewhere in the vicinity of my tonsils, and the chill had shot up from my feet into the pit of my stomach. Trained to react in spite of shock, I managed to take in the rest of his appearance—shirt and breeches of good quality, though splashed with water, and long pale shins blobbed with black clots like bits of mud.
“Leeches,” I said, professional calm descending by habit over personal tumult. It couldn’t be, I was telling myself, at the same time that I knew it damn well was. “It’s only leeches. They won’t hurt you.”
“I know what they are!” he said. “Get them off me!” He swatted at his calf, shuddering with dislike. “They’re vile!”
“Oh, not so terribly vile,” I said, beginning to get a grip on myself. “They have their uses.”
“I don’t care what use they are!” he bellowed, stamping in frustration. “I hate them, get them off me!”
“Well, stop whacking at them,” I said sharply. “Sit you down and I’ll take care of it.”
He hesitated, glaring at me suspiciously, but reluctantly sat down on a rock, thrusting his leech-spattered legs out in front of him.
“Get them off now!” he demanded.
“In good time,” I said. “Where did you come from?”
He stared blankly at me.
“You don’t live near here,” I said, with complete certainty. “Where did you come from?”
He made an obvious effort to collect himself.
“Ah … we slept in a place called Salem, three nights past. That was the last town I saw.” He wiggled his legs hard. “Get them off, I say!”
There were assorted methods of getting leeches off, most of them somewhat more damaging than the leeches themselves. I had a look; he’d picked up four on one leg, three on the other. One of the fat little beasts was already near bloat, gone plump and shiny with stretching. I edged a thumbnail under its head and it popped off into my hand, round as a pebble and heavy with blood.
The boy stared it, pale under his tan, and shuddered.
“Don’t want to waste it,” I said casually, and went to retrieve the basket I had dropped under the branches as I pushed my way through the trees.
Nearby, I saw his coat on the ground, discarded shoes and stockings with it. Simple buckles on the shoes, but silver, not pewter. Good broadcloth, not showy but cut with a deal more style than one saw anywhere north of Charleston. I hadn’t really needed confirmation, but there it was.
I scooped up a handful of mud, pressed the leech gently into it and wrapped the gooey blob in wet leaves, only then noticing that my hands were trembling. The idiot! The deceitful, wicked, conniving … what in hell had made him come here? And God, what would Jamie do?
I came back to the boy, who was bent double, peering at the remaining leeches with a look of disgusted loathing. One more was close to dropping; as I knelt in front of him, it fell off, bouncing slightly on the damp ground.
“Augh!” he said.
“Where’s your stepfather?” I asked abruptly. Few things could have taken his attention off his legs, but that did. His head jerked up and he stared at me in astonishment.
It was a cool day, but a light dew of sweat shone on his face. It was narrower through cheek and temple, I thought, and the mouth was quite unlike; perhaps the resemblance was not really so pronounced as I thought.
“How do you know me?” he asked, drawing himself up with an air of hauteur that would have been extremely funny under other circumstances.
“All I know about you is that your given name is William.