Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [92]
Suddenly, the truth dawned on me: her hand on the butler’s arm, her touching Jamie’s face in greeting, the glass put ready for her grasp, and the shadow on her face when Ian talked of her painting. Jocasta Cameron was blind.
A strangled cry and a piercing yelp jerked me back to more pressing issues on the terrace. A tidal wave of acrid scent cascaded into the room, hit the floor, and boiled up around me like a mushroom cloud.
Choking and gasping, eyes watering from the reek, I groped blindly for Jamie, who was making breathless remarks in Gaelic. Above the cacophony of groaning and piteous yowling outside, I barely heard the small ting! of Jocasta’s bell behind me.
“Ulysses?” she said, sounding resigned. “Ye’d best tell Cook the dinner will be late.”
“It was luck that it’s summer, at least,” Jocasta said at breakfast next day. “Think if it had been winter and we had to keep the doors closed!” She laughed, showing teeth in surprisingly good condition for her age.
“Oh, aye,” Ian murmured. “Please, may I have more toast, ma’am?”
He and Rollo had been first soused in the river, then rubbed with tomatoes from the burgeoning vines that overgrew the necessary house out back. The odor-reducing properties of these fruits worked as well on skunk oil as on the lesser stinks of human waste, but in neither case was the neutralizing effect complete. Ian sat by himself at one end of the long table, next to an open French door, but I saw the maid who brought his toast to him wrinkle her nose unobtrusively as she set the plate before him.
Perhaps inspired by Ian’s proximity and a desire for open air, Jocasta suggested that we might ride out to the turpentine works in the forest above River Run.
“It’s a day’s journey there and back, but I think the weather will keep fine.” She turned toward the open French window, where bees hummed over a herbaceous border of goldenrod and phlox. “Hear them?” she said, turning her slightly off-kilter smile toward Jamie. “The bees do say it will be hot and fair.”
“You have keen ears, Madame Cameron,” Fergus said politely. “If I may be permitted to borrow a horse from your stable, though, I should prefer to go into the town, myself.” I knew he was dying to send word to Marsali in Jamaica; I had helped him to write a long letter the night before, describing our adventures and safe arrival. Rather than wait for a slave to take it with the week’s mail, he would much rather post it with his own hands.
“Indeed and ye may, Mr. Fergus,” Jocasta said graciously. She smiled round the table generally. “As I said, ye must all consider River Run as ye would your own home.”
Jocasta plainly meant to accompany us on the ride; she came down dressed in a habit of dark green muslin, the girl named Phaedre coming behind, carrying a hat trimmed to match with velvet ribbon. She paused in the hall, but instead of putting on the hat at once, she stood while Phaedre tied a strip of white linen firmly round her head, covering her eyes.
“I can see nothing but light,” she explained. “I canna make out objects at all. Still, the light of the sun causes me pain, so I must shield my eyes when venturing out. Are you ready, my dears?”
That answered some of my speculations concerning her blindness, though didn’t entirely assuage them. Retinitis pigmentosum? I wondered with interest, as I followed her down the wide front hall. Or perhaps macular degeneration, though glaucoma was perhaps the most likely possibility. Not for the first time—or the last, I was sure—my fingers curved around the handle of an invisible ophthalmoscope, itching to see what could not be seen with eyes alone.
To my surprise, when we went out to the stable block, a mare was standing ready saddled for Jocasta, rather than the carriage I had expected. The gift of charming horses ran strong in the MacKenzie line; the mare lifted her head and whickered at sight of her mistress, and Jocasta went to the horse at once, her face alight with