Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [259]
“That passes soon enough,” he said. He reached for his sporran, and sorted through the proliferation of small items in it, coming up eventually with the small cloth bag that held the dried mixture of leaves and flowers Claire had given him. He didn’t know how she’d known it would be needed, but he was long past the point of questioning anything she did in the way of healing—whether of heart or of body.
He felt a moment’s passionate gratitude to her. He’d seen her look at the boy, and knew how she must feel. She’d known about the lad, of course, but seeing the flesh-and-blood proof that her husband had shared another woman’s bed wasn’t something a wife should be asked to put up with. Little wonder if she was inclined to stick pins in John, him pushing the lad under her nose as he had.
“It willna take more than a moment to brew up,” he assured the boy, rubbing the fragrant mixture between his hands into a wooden cup, as he’d seen Claire do.
She’d not reproached him. Not with that at least, he thought, suddenly remembering how she’d acted when she’d found out about Laoghaire. She’d gone for him like a fiend, then, and yet when later she’d learned about Geneva Dunsany … perhaps it was only that the boy’s mother was dead?
The realization went through him like a sword thrust. The boy’s mother was dead. Not just his real mother, who’d died the same day he was born—but the woman he’d called mother all his life since. And now his father—or the man he called father, Jamie thought with an unconscious twist of his mouth—was lying sick of an illness that had killed another man before the lad’s eyes no more than days before.
No, it wasn’t fright that made the lad greet by himself in the dark. It was grief, and Jamie Fraser, who’d lost a mother in childhood himself, ought to have known that from the beginning.
It wasn’t stubbornness, nor even loyalty, that had made Willie insist on staying at the Ridge. It was love of John Grey, and fear of his loss. And it was the same love that made the boy weep in the night, desperate with worry for his father.
An unaccustomed weed of jealousy sprang up in Jamie’s heart, stinging like nettles. He stamped firmly on it; he was fortunate indeed to know that his son enjoyed a loving relationship with his stepfather. There, that was the weed stamped out. The stamping, though, seemed to have left a small bruised spot on his heart; he could feel it when he breathed.
The water was beginning to rumble in the kettle. He poured it carefully over the herb mixture, and a sweet fragrance rose up in the steam. Valerian, she’d said, and catmint. The root of a passionflower, soaked in honey and finely ground. And the sweet, half-musky smell of lavender, coming as an afterscent.
“Don’t drink it yourself,” she’d said, casual in giving it to him. “There’s lavender in it.”
In fact, it didn’t trouble him, if he was warned of it. It was only that now and then a whiff of lavender took him unawares, and sent a sudden surge of sickness through his wame. Claire had seen the effects on him once too often to be unwary of it.
“Here.” He leaned forward and handed the cup to the boy, wondering whether forever after, the lad too would feel troubled by the scent of lavender, or if he would find in it a memory of comfort. That, he supposed, might well depend on whether John Grey lived or died.
The respite had given Willie back his outward composure, but his face was still marked with grief. Jamie smiled at the boy, hiding his own concern. Knowing both John and Claire as he did, he was less fearful than the boy—but the dread was still there, persistent as a thorn in the sole of his foot.
“That will ease ye,” he said, nodding at the cup. “My wife made it; she’s a verra fine healer.”
“Is she?” The boy took a deep, trembling breath of the steam, and touched a cautious tongue to the hot liquid. “I saw her—do things. With the Indian who died.” The accusation there was clear; she’d done things, and the man had died anyway.
Neither Claire nor Ian had spoken much of that, nor had he been