Outlander - Diana Gabaldon [278]
“What are you doing with the child?” I inquired cautiously.
“I’m teachin’ young James here the fine art of not pissing on his feet,” he explained. “Seems the least his uncle could do for him.”
I raised one eyebrow. “Talk is cheap. Seems the least his uncle could do is show him.”
He grinned. “Well, we’ve had a few practical demonstrations. Had a wee accident last time, though.” He exchanged accusatory looks with his nephew. “Dinna look at me,” he said to the boy. “It was all your fault. I told ye to keep still.”
“Ahem,” said Jenny dryly, with a look at her brother and a matching one at her son. The smaller Jamie responded by pulling the front of his smock up over his head, but the larger one, unabashed, grinned cheerfully and rose from his seat, brushing dirt from his breeks. He set a hand on his nephew’s swathed head, and turned the little boy toward the house.
“ ‘To everything there is a season,’ ” he quoted, “ ‘and a time for every purpose under heaven.’ First we work, wee James, and then we wash. And then—thank God—it’s time for supper.”
The most pressing matters of business attended to, Jamie took time the next afternoon to show me over the house. Built in 1702, it was indeed modern for its time, with such innovations as porcelain stoves for heating, and a great brick oven built into the kitchen wall, so that bread was no longer baked in the ashes of the hearth. The ground floor hallway, the stairwell, and the drawing room walls were lined with pictures. Here and there was a pastoral landscape, or an animal study, but most were of the family and their connections.
I paused before a picture of Jenny as a young girl. She sat on the garden wall, a red-leaved vine behind her. Lined up in front of her along the top of the wall was a row of birds; sparrows, a thrush, a lark, and even a pheasant, all jostling and sidling for position before their laughing mistress. It was quite unlike most of the formally posed pictures, in which one ancestor or another glared out of their frames as though their collars were choking them.
“My mother painted that,” Jamie said, noting my interest. “She did quite a few of the ones in the stairwell, but there are only two of hers in here. She always liked that one best herself.” A large, blunt finger touched the surface of the canvas gently, tracing the line of the red-leaved vine. “Those were Jenny’s tame birds. Anytime there was a bird found wi’ a lame leg or a broken wing, whoever found it would bring it along, and in days she’d have it healed, and eatin’ from her hand. That one always reminded me of Ian.” The finger tapped above the pheasant, wings spread to keep its balance, gazing at its mistress with dark, adoring eyes.
“You’re awful, Jamie,” I said, laughing. “Is there one of you?”
“Oh, aye.” He led me to the opposite wall, near the window.
Two red-haired, tartan-clad little boys stared solemnly out of the frame, seated with an enormous staghound. That must be Nairn, Bran’s grandfather, Jamie, and his older brother Willie, who had died of the smallpox at eleven. Jamie could not have been more than two when it was painted, I thought; he stood between his elder brother’s knees, one hand resting on the dog’s head.
Jamie had told me about Willie during our journey from Leoch, one night by the fire at the bottom of a lonely glen. I remembered the small snake, carved of cherrywood, that he had drawn from his sporran to show me.
“Willie gave it me for my fifth birthday,” he had said, finger gently stroking the sinuous curves. It was a comical little snake, body writhing artistically, and its head turned back to peer over what would have been its shoulder, if snakes had shoulders.
Jamie handed me the little wooden object, and I turned it over curiously.
“What’s this scratched on the underside? S-a-w-n-y. Sawny?”
“That’s me,” Jamie said, ducking his head as though mildly embarrassed. “It’s a pet name, like, a play on my second name, Alexander. It’s what Willie used to call me.”
The faces in the picture were very much alike; all