Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [254]
“Sing, Auntie,” Ian urged, low-voiced. “Tantum ergo, maybe; it sounded a wee bit like that.”
There was nothing else I could do, after all. Rather helplessly, I began.
“Tantum ergo, sacramentum …”
Within a few seconds, my voice steadied, and I sat back on my bare heels, singing slowly, holding his hand. The heavy brows relaxed, and a look of what I thought might be calm came into the sunken eyes.
I had been present at a good many deaths, from accident, warfare, illness, or natural causes, and had seen men meet death in many ways, from philosophical acceptance to violent protest. But I had never seen one die quite this way.
He simply waited, eyes on mine, until I had come to the end of the song. Then he turned his face toward the door, and as the rising sun struck him, he left his body, without the twitch of a muscle or the drawing of a final breath.
I sat quite still, holding the limp hand, until it occurred to me that I was holding my breath, too.
The air around me seemed queerly still, as though time had stopped for a moment. But of course it had, I thought, and forced myself to draw breath. It had stopped for him, forever.
“What are we to do with him?”
There was nothing further to be done for our guest; the only question at the moment was how we might best deal with his mortal remains.
I had had a quiet word with Lord John, and he had taken Willie to gather late strawberries on the ridge. While the Indian’s death had had nothing even faintly gruesome about it, I could wish Willie hadn’t seen it; it wasn’t a sight for a child who had seen his mother die no more than a few months before. Lord John had seemed upset himself—perhaps a little sunshine and fresh air would help both of them.
Jamie frowned and rubbed a hand over his face. He hadn’t shaved yet, and the stubble made a rasping sound.
“We must give him decent burial, surely?”
“Well, I don’t suppose we can leave him lying about in the corncrib, but would his people mind if we buried him here? Do you know anything about how they treat their dead, Ian?”
Ian was still a little pale, but surprisingly self-possessed. He shook his head, and took a drink of milk.
“I dinna ken a great deal, Auntie. But I have seen one man die, as I told ye. They wrapped him in a deerskin and had a procession round the village, singing, then took the body a ways into the wood and put it up on a platform, above the ground, and left it there to dry.”
Jamie seemed less than enthralled at the prospect of having mummified bodies perched in the trees near the farm. “I should think it best maybe to wrap the body decently and carry it to the village, then, so his own folk can deal with him properly.”
“No, you can’t do that.” I slid the pan of newly baked muffins out of the Dutch oven, plucked a broomtwig and stuck it into one plump brown cake. It came out clean, so I set the pan on the table, then sat down myself. I frowned abstractedly at the jug of honey, glowing gold in the late morning sun.
“The trouble is that the body is almost certainly still infectious. You didn’t touch him at all, did you, Ian?” I glanced at Ian, who shook his head, looking sober.
“No, Auntie. Not after he fell sick here; before that, I dinna recall. We were all together, hunting.”
“And you haven’t had measles. Drat.” I rubbed a hand through my hair. “Have you?” I asked Jamie. To my relief, he nodded.
“Aye, when I was five or so. And you say a person canna have the same sickness twice. So it willna injure me to touch the body?”
“No, nor me either; I’ve had them too. The thing is, we can’t take him to the village. I don’t know at all how long the measles virus—that’s a sort of germ—can live on clothes or in a body, but how could we explain to his people that they mustn’t touch him or go near him? And we can’t risk letting them be infected.”
“What troubles me,” Ian put in unexpectedly, “is that he isna a man from Anna Ooka—he’s from a village further north. If we bury him here in the usual way, his folk may hear of it and think we had done him to death in some fashion, then buried