Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [274]
I was still shaking my head helplessly when a voice spoke sharply from behind me.
“Was ist los?” demanded Lord John, emerging into the dooryard. “Was habt Ihr gesagt?” He had put on his breeches, I was glad to see, though he was still barefoot, with his fair hair streaming loose on his shoulders.
The Pastor gave me a scandalized look, plainly thinking The Worst, but this expression was wiped off his face at once by a further machine-gun rattle of German from Lord John. The Pastor bobbed in apology to me, then turned eagerly to the Englishman, waving his arms and stammering in his haste to tell his story.
“What?” I said, having failed to pluck more than a word or two from the Teutonic flood. “What on earth is he saying?”
Grey turned a grim face toward me.
“Do you know a family named Mueller?”
“Yes,” I said, immediate alarm flaring at the name. “I delivered a child to Petronella Mueller, three weeks ago.”
“Ah.” Grey licked dry lips and glanced at the ground; he didn’t want to tell me. “The—the child is dead, I am afraid. So is the mother.”
“Oh, no.” I sank down on the bench by the door, swept by a feeling of absolute denial. “No. They can’t be.”
Grey rubbed a hand over his mouth, nodding as the Pastor went on, waving his small, fat hands in agitation.
“He says it was Masern; I think that would be what we call the measle. Flecken, so ähnlich wie diese?” he demanded of the Pastor, pointing at the remnants of rash still visible on his face.
The Pastor nodded emphatically, repeating “Flecken, Masern, ja!” and patting his own cheeks.
“But what does he want Jamie for?” I asked, bewilderment added to distress.
“Apparently he believes Jamie might be able to reason with the man—with Herr Mueller. Are they friends?”
“Not exactly, no. Jamie hit Gerhard Mueller in the mouth and knocked him down in front of the mill last spring.”
A muscle twitched in Lord John’s scabbed cheek.
“I see. I suppose he’s using the term ‘reason with’ rather loosely, then.”
“Mueller can’t be reasoned with by any means more sophisticated than an ax handle,” I said. “But what is he being unreasonable about?”
Grey frowned—he didn’t recognize my use of “sophisticated,” I realized, though he understood what I meant. He hesitated, then turned back to the small minister and asked something else, listening intently to the resulting torrent of Deutsch.
Little by little, with constant interruptions and much gesticulation, the story emerged in translation.
There was, as Lord John had told us earlier, an epidemic of measles in Cross Creek. This had evidently spread into the backcountry; several households in Salem were afflicted, but the Muellers, isolated as they were, had not suffered infection until recently.
However, the day before the first sign of measles appeared, a small band of Indians had stopped at the Mueller farm asking for food and drink. Mueller, with whose opinions of Indians I was thoroughly well acquainted, had driven them off with considerable abuse. The Indians, offended, had made—said Mueller—mysterious signs toward his house as they left.
When measles broke out among the family the next day, Mueller was positive that the disease had been brought upon them by means of a hex, placed on his house by the Indians he had rebuffed. He had at once painted antihexing symbols upon his walls, and summoned the Pastor from Salem to perform an exorcism … “I think that is what he said,” Lord John added doubtfully. “Though I am not sure whether he means by that …”
“Never mind,” I said impatiently. “Go on!”
None of these precautions availed Mueller, though, and when Petronella and the new baby succumbed to the disease, the old man had lost what little mind he had. Vowing revenge upon the savages who had brought such devastation to his household, he had forced his sons and sons-in-law to accompany him, and ridden off into the woods.
From this expedition they had returned three days ago, the sons white-faced and silent, the old man