Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [306]
Claire was called to provide the Honeycomb, and with her usual eye for such Matters, perceived that one of our guests was Unwell, being heavy-eyed, coughing, and distracted in Appearance. Claire says he is also Flushed with fever, though this is not obvious to look at him. He being too ill to continue with his Companions, we have laid him on a pallet in the corncrib.
The sow has Most Incontinently farrowed in the pantry. There are a dozen piglets, all healthy and of a Vigorous Appetite, for which God be thanked. Our own Appetites bid fair to be impoverished for the present, as the Sow viciously Attacks anyone who opens the door of the Pantry, roaring and gnashing her Teeth in Rage. I was given one egg to my supper, and informed that I shall get no more until I have Contriv’d a solution to this Difficulty.
Saturday, 1 October
A great Surprise today. Two Guests have come …
“It will be a wild place.”
Brianna looked up, startled. Jenny nodded at the letter, her eyes fixed on Brianna.
“Savages and bears and porpentines and such. It’s no much more than a wee cot, where they live, Jamie told me. And all alone, up in the high mountains. Verra wild, it will be.” She looked at Brianna a little anxiously. “But ye’ll still wish to go?”
Brianna realized suddenly that Jenny was afraid she would not; that she would be frightened by the thought of the long journey and the savage place at the end of it. A savage place rendered suddenly real by the scrawled black words on the sheet she held—but not nearly as real as the man who had written them.
“I’m going,” she assured her aunt. “As soon as I can.”
Jenny’s face relaxed.
“Oh, good,” she said. She held out her hand, showing Brianna a small leather pouch decorated with a panel made of porcupine’s quills, stained in shades of red and black, with here and there a few quills left in their natural grayish color for contrast.
“This is the present he sent me.”
Brianna took it, admiring the intricacy of the pattern, and the softness of the pale deer’s hide.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Aye, it is.” Jenny turned away, busying herself with unnecessary tidying of the small ornaments that stood on the bookshelf. Brianna had just turned her attention back to the letter when Jenny spoke abruptly.
“Will ye stay a bit?”
Brianna looked up, startled.
“Stay?”
“Only for a day or two.” Jenny turned around, the light from the window halo-bright behind her, shadowing her face.
“I ken ye’ll wish to be gone,” she said. “I should wish so much to talk wi’ ye for a bit, though.”
Brianna looked at her, puzzled, but could read nothing in the pale, even features and the slanted eyes so like her own.
“Yes,” she said slowly. “Of course I’ll stay.”
A smile touched the corner of Jenny’s mouth. Her hair was deep black, streaked with white like a magpie.
“That’s good,” she said softly. The smile spread slowly as she looked at her niece.
“Dear Lord, you’re like my brother!”
Left alone, Brianna returned to the letter, rereading the beginning slowly, letting the quiet room around her fade, disappearing as Jamie Fraser came to life in her hands, his voice so vivid in her inner ear that he might have stood before her, the sun from the window glinting on his red hair.
Saturday, 1 October
A great Surprise today. Two Guests have come from Cross Creek. You will recall, I think, my Telling you of Lord John Grey, whom I knew in Ardsmuir. I have not said that I had seen him since, in Jamaica, where he was Governor for the Crown.
He is perhaps the last Person one should expect to find in this Remote Place, so far Removed from all Traces of Civilization, let alone those Luxurious Offices and Trappings of Pomp to which he is Accustomed. Surely we were Most Astonish’d by his appearing at our door, though we at once made him Welcome.
It is a melancholy Event that has led him here, I am Sorry to say. His wife, embarked from England with her son, contracted a Fever on the voyage,