Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [326]
His interest was both professional and personal; his historian’s instincts were roused by their presence, and his loneliness soothed by the homeliness of their talk. Here were the seeds of the new country, the legacy of the old. What these poor emigrants knew and valued, was what would endure to be passed on.
If one were handpicking the repository of Scottish culture, he thought, it might not contain such things as the recipe for warts about which an elderly woman was berating her long-suffering daughter-in-law (“I did tell ye, Katie Mac, and why ye chose tae leave my nice dried toadie behind, when ye could find room to bring all yon rubbish that we be squattin’ on and pickin’ oot from under our hurdies day and night …”), but that would last too, right along with the folksongs and prayers, with the woven wool and the Celtic patterns of their art.
He glanced at his own hand; he vividly remembered Mrs. Graham rubbing a large wart on his third finger with what she said was a dried toad. He grinned, rubbing a thumb across the spot. Must have worked; he’d never had another.
“Sir,” said a small voice by his side. “Sir, may we go and touch the iron?”
He glanced down and smiled at the tiny girl, holding two tinier brothers by their hands.
“Aye, a leannan,” he said. “Get on; yourself will be minding the men, though.”
She nodded and the three of them pattered off, looking anxiously up and down to be sure they were not in the way, before scrambling up to touch the horseshoe nailed to the mast for luck. Iron was protection and healing; the mothers often sent the little ones who were ailing to touch it.
They could have used iron to better effect internally, Roger thought, seeing the rash on the pasty white faces, and hearing the high-pitched complaints of itching boils, of loose teeth and fever. He resumed his job, measuring out water by the dipperful into the buckets and dishes the emigrants held out to him. They were living on oatmeal, the lot of them—that, with dried peas now and then and a bit of hard biscuit, was the sum total of the “provisions” supplied them for the voyage.
At that, he’d heard no complaint; the water was clean, the biscuit was not moldy, and if the allowance of “corn” was not generous, neither was it niggardly. The crew was fed better, but still on meat and starch, with only the occasional onion for relief. He ran his tongue round his teeth, testing, as he did every few days. The faint taste of iron was nearly always in his mouth now; his gums were beginning to bleed from the lack of fresh vegetables.
Still, his teeth were strongly rooted, and he had no sign of the swollen joints or bruised nails that several of the other crewmen showed. He’d looked it up, during his weeks of waiting; a normal adult male in good health should be able to endure from three to six months of prolonged vitamin deficiency before suffering any real symptoms. If the good weather held, they’d be across in only two.
“It will be good weather tomorrow, aye?” His attention recalled by this apparent reading of his thoughts, he looked down to find that it was the bonny brown-haired girl he’d admired on the quay in Inverness. Morag, her friends called her.
“I am hoping it may be,” he said, taking her bucket with an answering smile. “Why do ye say so?”
She nodded, pointing over his shoulder with a small sharp chin. “There’s the new moon in the arms o’ the old; if that means fine weather on the land, I should think it is the same on the sea, no?”
He glanced back to see the pale clean curve of a silver moon, holding a glowing orb in its cup. It rode high and perfect in an endless evening sky of pale violet, its reflection swallowed by the indigo sea.
“Dinna be wasting time chattering, lass—go on and ask him!” He turned back in time to hear this hissed over Morag’s shoulder by the middle-aged woman behind her. Morag glared back.
“Will ye hush?” she hissed back. “I’ll not, I said I won