Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [51]
“Well, no,” I said, biting my lip. “I really doubt it.” He moved very slowly, but had almost got the knot in his thong undone; people in the street were beginning to pause, staring.
“Please don’t trouble yourself,” I said. “I do believe I know what that is—it’s an inguinal hernia.”
The wide hazel eyes got wider.
“It is?” He seemed impressed, and not at all displeased by the news.
“I’d have to look—somewhere indoors, that is,” I added hastily “—to be sure, but it sounds like it. It’s quite easy to repair surgically, but …” I hesitated, looking up at the Colossus. “I really couldn’t—I mean, you’d need to be asleep. Unconscious,” I amplified. “I’d have to cut you, and sew you up again, you see. Perhaps a truss—a brace—might be better, though.”
Myers scratched slowly at his jaw, meditating.
“No, I done tried that, ‘twon’t do. Cuttin’, though … You folks be staying here in the town for a spell before you head up to Cameron’s?”
“Not long,” Jamie interrupted firmly. “We shall be sailing upriver to my aunt’s estate, as soon as passage can be arranged.”
“Oh.” The giant pondered this for a moment, then nodded, beaming.
“I know the very man for you, sir. I’ll go this minute and fetch Josh Freeman out the Sailor’s Rest. Sun’s still high, he’ll be not too drunk to do business yet.” He swept me a bow, battered hat to his middle. “And then could be your wife might have the kindness to meet me in yonder tavern—it’s a mite more genteel than the Sailor’s—and have a look at this … this …” I saw his lips try to form themselves around “inguinal hernia,” then give up the effort and relax. “This yere obstruction.”
He clapped the hat back on his head, and with a nod to Jamie, was off.
Jamie watched the mountain man’s stiff-legged retreat down the street, slowed by cordial greetings to all he passed.
“What is it about ye, Sassenach, I wonder?” he said conversationally, eyes still fixed on Myers.
“What is what about me?”
He turned then, and gave me a narrow eye.
“What it is that makes every man ye meet want to take off his breeks within five minutes of meetin’ ye.”
Fergus choked slightly, and Ian went pink. I looked as demure as possible.
“Well, if you don’t know, my dear,” I said, “no one does. I seem to have found us a boat. And what have you been up to this morning?”
Industrious as always, Jamie had found us a potential gem-buyer. And not only a buyer, but an invitation to dinner with the Governor.
“Governor Tryon’s in the town just now,” he explained. “Staying at the house of a Mr. Lillington. I talked this morning wi’ a merchant named MacEachern, who put me on to a man named MacLeod, who—”
“Who introduced you to MacNeil, who took you to drink with MacGregor, who told you all about his nephew Bethune, who’s the second cousin half removed of the boy who cleans the Governor’s boots,” I suggested, familiar by this time with the Byzantine pathways of Scottish business dealings.
Put two Highland Scots in a room together, and within ten minutes they would know each other’s family histories for the last two hundred years, and have discovered a helpful number of mutual relatives and acquaintances.
Jamie grinned.
“It was the Governor’s wife’s secretary,” he corrected, “and his name’s Murray. That’ll be your Da’s cousin Maggie’s eldest boy from Loch Linnhe,” he added, to Ian. “His father emigrated after the Rising.” Ian nodded casually, doubtless docketing the information in his own version of the genetic encyclopedia, stored against the day it would prove useful.
Edwin Murray, the Governor’s wife’s secretary, had welcomed Jamie warmly as a kinsman—if only by marriage—and had obtained an invitation for us to dine at Lillington’s that night, there ostensibly to acquaint the Governor with matters of trade in the Indies. In reality, we were intending to acquaint ourselves with Baron Penzler—a well-to-do German nobleman who would be dining there as well. The Baron was a man not only of wealth but of taste, with a reputation