The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [160]
I glanced up each time I passed the cross, as though expecting it either to have disappeared since my last trip, or to have acquired some explanatory notice, neatly pinned to the wood. If not Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum, then something. But no. The cross remained, two simple sticks of pinewood, bound together by a rope. Nothing more. Except, of course, that a cross is always something more. I just didn’t know what it might be, this time.
Everyone else seemed to share my distraction. Mrs. Bug, disedified by the conflict with Mrs. Chisholm, declined to make any lunch, and retired to her room, ostensibly suffering from headache, though she refused to let me treat it. Lizzie, normally a fine hand with food, burned the stew, and billows of black smoke stained the oak beams above the hearth.
At least the Muellers were safely out of the way. They had brought a large cask of beer with them, and had retired after breakfast back to Brianna’s cabin, where they appeared to be entertaining themselves very nicely.
The bread refused to rise. Jemmy had begun a new tooth, a hard one, and screamed and screamed and screamed. The incessant screeching twisted everyone’s nerves to the snapping point, including mine. I should have liked to suggest that Bree take him away somewhere out of earshot, but I saw the deep smudges of fatigue under her eyes and the strain on her face, and hadn’t the heart. Mrs. Chisholm, tried by the constant battles of her own offspring, had no such compunction.
“For God’s sake, why do ye no tak’ that bairn awa to your own cabin, lass?” she snapped. “If he mun greet so, there’s no need for us all to hear it!”
Bree’s eyes narrowed dangerously.
“Because,” she hissed, “your two oldest sons are sitting in my cabin, drinking with the Germans. I wouldn’t want to disturb them!”
Mrs. Chisholm’s face went bright red. Before she could speak, I quickly stepped forward and snatched the baby away from Bree.
“I’ll take him out for a bit of a walk, shall I?” I said, hoisting him onto my shoulder. “I could use some fresh air. Why don’t you go up and lie down on my bed for a bit, darling?” I said to Bree. “You look just a little tired.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. One corner of her mouth twitched. “And the Pope’s a little bit Catholic, too. Thanks, Mama.” She kissed Jemmy’s hot, wet cheek, and vanished toward the stairwell.
Mrs. Chisholm scowled horridly after her, but caught my eye, coughed, and called to her three-year-old twins, who were busily demolishing my sewing basket.
The cold air outside was a relief, after the hot, smoky confines of the kitchen, and Jemmy quieted a little, though he continued to squirm and whine. He rubbed his hot, damp face against my neck, and gnawed ferociously on the cloth of my shawl, fussing and drooling.
I paced slowly to and fro, patting him gently and humming “Lilibuleero” under my breath. I found the exercise soothing, in spite of Jemmy’s crankiness. There was only one of him, after all, and he couldn’t talk.
“You’re a male, too,” I said to him, pulling his woolen cap over the soft bright down that feathered his skull. “As a sex, you have your defects, but I will say that catfighting isn’t one of them.”
Fond as I was of individual women—Bree, Marsali, Lizzie, and even Mrs. Bug—I had to admit that taken en masse, I found men much easier to deal with. Whether this was the fault of my rather unorthodox upbringing—I had been raised largely by my Uncle Lamb and his Persian manservant, Firouz—my experiences in the War, or simply an aspect of my own unconventional personality, I found men soothingly logical and—with a few striking exceptions—pleasingly direct.
I turned to look at the house. It stood serene amid the spruce and chestnut trees, elegantly proportioned, soundly built. A face showed at one