The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [165]
“We’re starting a tooth,” I told Jamie. “He wasn’t very comfortable, so I thought perhaps a bit of whisky on his gums . . . there wasn’t any in the house.”
“Oh, aye. We can manage that, I think. There’s a bit in my flask.” Carrying the baby to the spot where his clothes lay, he bent and rummaged one-handed, coming up with the dented pewter flask he carried on his belt.
He sat on a rock, balancing Jemmy on his knee, and handed me the flask to open.
“I went to the mash house,” I said, pulling the cork with a soft pop, “but the cask was gone.”
“Aye, Fergus has it. Here, I’ll do it; my hands are clean.” He held out his left index finger, and I dribbled a bit of the spirit onto it.
“What’s Fergus doing with it?” I asked, settling myself on the rock beside him.
“Keeping it,” he said, uninformatively. He stuck the finger in Jemmy’s mouth, gently rubbing at the swollen gum. “Oh, there it is. Aye, that hurts a bit, doesn’t it? Ouch!” He reached down and gingerly disentangled Jemmy’s fingers from their grip on the hairs of his chest.
“Speaking of that . . .” I said, and reached out to take his right hand. Shifting his other arm to keep hold of Jemmy, he let me take the hand and turn his fingers upward.
It was a very shallow cut, just across the tips of the first three fingers—the fingers with which he had crossed himself. The blood had already clotted, but I dribbled a bit more of the whisky over the cuts and cleaned the smears of blood from his palm with my handkerchief.
He let me tend him in silence, but when I finished and looked up at him, he met my eyes with a faint smile.
“It’s all right, Sassenach,” he said.
“Is it?” I said. I searched his face; he looked tired, but tranquil. The slight frown I had seen between his brows for the last few days was gone. Whatever he was about, he had begun it.
“Ye saw, then?” he asked quietly, reading my own face.
“Yes. Is it—it’s to do with the cross in the dooryard, is it?”
“Oh, in a way, I suppose.”
“What is it for?” I asked bluntly.
He pursed his lips, rubbing gently at Jemmy’s sore gum. At last he said, “Ye never saw Dougal MacKenzie call the clan, did you?”
I was more than startled at this, but answered cautiously.
“No. I saw Colum do it once—at the oath-taking at Leoch.”
He nodded, the memory of that long-ago night of torches deep in his eyes.
“Aye,” he said softly. “I mind that. Colum was chief, and the men would come when he summoned them, surely. But it was Dougal who led them to war.”
He paused a moment, gathering his thoughts.
“There were raids, now and again. That was a different thing, and often no more than a fancy that took Dougal or Rupert, maybe an urge born of drink or boredom—a small band out for the fun of it, as much as for cattle or grain. But to gather the clan for war, all the fighting men—that was a rarer thing. I only saw it the once, myself, but it’s no a sight ye would forget.”
The cross of pinewood had been there when he woke one morning at the castle, surprising him as he crossed the courtyard. The inhabitants of Leoch were up and about their business as usual, but no one glanced at the cross or referred to it in any way. Even so, there were undercurrents of excitement running through the castle.
The men stood here and there in knots, talking in undertones, but when he joined a group, the talk shifted at once to desultory conversation.
“I was Colum’s nephew, aye, but newly come to the castle, and they kent my sire and grandsire.” Jamie’s paternal grandfather had been Simon, Lord Lovat—chief of the Frasers of Lovat, and no great friend of the MacKenzies of Leoch.
“I couldna tell what was afoot, but something was; the hair on my arms prickled whenever I caught someone’s eye.” At last, he had made his way to the stable, and found Old Alec, Colum’s Master of Horse. The old man had been fond of Ellen MacKenzie, and was kind to the son for his mother’s sake, as well as his own.
“’Tis the fiery cross, lad,” he’d told Jamie, tossing him a currycomb and jerking his head toward the stalls.