Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [72]
“It what?”
“ ‘Foeda est in coitu et breois voluptas,’ ” he recited obligingly. “‘Et taedat Veneiis statim peractae. Doing, a filthy pleasure is—and short. And done, we straight repent us of the sport.’ ”
I glanced down at the stained boards under us. “Well, perhaps ‘filthy’ isn’t altogether the wrong word,” I began, “but—”
“It’s not the filthiness that troubles me, Sassenach,” he interrupted, scowling at Ian, who was hanging over the side of the boat, shouting encouragement to Rollo as he swam. “It’s the short.”
He glanced at me, scowl changing to a look of approval as he took in my state of dishevelment. “I mean to take my time about it, aye?”
This classical start to the day seemed to have had some lasting influence on Jamie’s mind. I could hear them at it as I sat in the afternoon sun, thumbing through Daniel Rawlings’s casebook—at once entertained, enlightened, and appalled at the things recorded there.
I could hear Jamie’s voice in the ordered rise and fall of ancient Greek. I had heard that bit before—a passage from the Odyssey. He paused, with an expectant rise.
“Ah …” said Ian.
“What comes next, Ian?”
“Er …”
“Once more,” said Jamie, with a slight edge to his voice. “Pay attention, man. I’m no talkin’ for the pleasure of hearin’ myself, aye?” He began again, the elegant, formal verse warming to life as he spoke.
He might not take pleasure in hearing himself, but I did. I had no Greek myself, but the rise and fall of syllables in that soft, deep voice was as soothing as the lap of water against the hull.
Reluctantly accepting his nephew’s continued presence, Jamie took his guardianship of Ian with due seriousness, and had been tutoring the lad as we traveled, seizing odd moments of leisure to teach—or attempt to teach—the lad the rudiments of Greek and Latin grammar, and to improve his mathematics and conversational French.
Fortunately, Ian had the same quick grasp of mathematical principles as his uncle; the side of the small cabin beside me was covered with elegant Euclidean proofs, carried out in burnt stick. When the subject turned to languages, though, they found less common ground.
Jamie was a natural polygogue; he acquired languages and dialects with no visible effort, picking up idioms as a dog picks up foxtails in a romp through the fields. In addition, he had been schooled in the Classics at the Université in Paris, and—while disagreeing now and then with some of the Roman philosophers—regarded both Homer and Virgil as personal friends.
Ian spoke the Gaelic and English with which he had been raised, and a sort of low French patois acquired from Fergus, and felt this quite sufficient to his needs. True, he had an impressive repertoire of swear words in six or seven other languages—acquired from exposure to a number of disreputable influences in the recent past, not least of these being his uncle—but he had no more than a vague apprehension of the mysteries of Latin conjugation.
Still less did he have an appreciation for the necessity of learning languages that to him were not only dead, but—he clearly thought—long decayed beyond any possibility of usefulness. Homer couldn’t compete with the excitement of this new country, adventure reaching out from both shores with beckoning green hands.
Jamie finished his Greek passage, and with a sigh clearly audible to me where I sat, directed Ian to take out the Latin book he had borrowed from Governor Tryon’s library. With no recitation to distract me, I returned to my perusal of Dr. Rawlings’s casebook.
Like myself, the Doctor had plainly had some Latin, but preferred English for the bulk of his notes, dropping into Latin only for an occasional formal entry.
Bled Mr. Beddoes of a pt. Note distinct lessening of the bilious humor, his complexion much improved of the yellowness and pustules which have afflicted him. Administered black draught to assist purifying of the blood.
“Ass,” I muttered—not for the first time. “Can’t you see the man’s got liver disease?” Probably a mild cirrhosis; Rawlings had noted a slight enlargement