The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [208]
He was breathing hoarsely, loud enough to hear from a distance. I came silently and offered him the gourd of water, along with a clean handkerchief. He didn’t meet my eyes, but drank, coughed, drank again, handed back the gourd, and blew his nose, gingerly. It was swollen, but no longer bleeding.
“We won’t sleep here tonight, will we?” I ventured to ask, seating myself on the chopping block that stood under the ash tree.
He shook his head.
“God, no,” he said hoarsely. His face was blotched and his eyes bloodshot, but he had firm hold of himself. “We’ll see him decently buried and go. I dinna mind if we sleep cold in the wood again—but not here.” I agreed wholeheartedly with that notion, but there was one thing more to be considered.
“And . . . her?” I asked delicately. “Is she in the house? The back door is open.”
He grunted, and thrust in his shovel.
“No, that was me. I’d forgot to leave it open when I came out before—to let the soul go free,” he explained, seeing my upraised eyebrow.
It was the complete matter-of-factness with which he offered this explanation, rather than the fact that it echoed my own earlier notion, that made the hairs prickle along my neck.
“I see,” I said, a little faintly.
Jamie dug steadily for a bit, the shovel biting deep into the dirt. It was loamy soil and leaf mold here; the digging was easy. At last, without breaking the swing of the blade, he said, “Brianna told me a story she’d read once. I dinna recall all about it, quite, but there was a murder done, only the person killed was a wicked man, who had driven someone to it. And at the end, when the teller of the tale was asked what should be done, he said, ‘Let pass the justice of God.’ ”
I nodded. I was in agreement, though it seemed a trifle hard on the person who found himself required to be the instrument of such justice.
“Do you suppose that’s what it was, in this case? Justice?”
He shook his head; not in negation, but in puzzlement, and went on digging. I watched him for a bit, soothed by his nearness and by the hypnotic rhythm of his movements. After a bit, though, I stirred, steeling myself to face the task awaiting me.
“I suppose I’d best go and lay out the body and clear up the loft,” I said reluctantly, drawing my feet under me to rise. “We can’t leave that poor woman alone with such a mess, no matter what she did.”
“No, wait, Sassenach,” Jamie said, pausing in his digging. He glanced at the house, a little warily. “I’ll go in with ye, in a bit. For now”—he nodded toward the edge of the wood—“d’ye think ye could fetch a few stones for the cairn?”
A cairn? I was more than slightly surprised at this; it seemed an unnecessary elaboration for the late Mr. Beardsley. Still, there were undoubtedly wolves in the wood; I’d seen scats on the trail two days before. It also occurred to me that Jamie might be contriving an honorable excuse for me to postpone entering the house again—in which case, hauling rocks seemed a thoroughly desirable alternative.
Fortunately, there was no shortage of suitable rocks. I fetched the heavy canvas apron that I wore for surgery from my saddlebag, and began to trundle to and fro, an ant collecting laborious crumbs. After half an hour or so of this, the thought of entering the house had begun to seem much less objectionable. Jamie was still hard at it, though, so I kept on.
I stopped finally, gasping, and dumped yet another load out of my apron onto the ground by the deepening grave. The shadows were falling long across the dooryard, and the air was cold enough that my fingers had gone numb—a good thing, in view of the various scrapes and nicks on them.
“You look a right mess,” I observed, shoving a disheveled mass of hair off my own face. “Has Mrs. Beardsley come out yet?”
He shook his head, but took