The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [280]
He took a stool on the other side of the table Jamie used as a desk, and cut a new quill for the job, taking care with it; he wanted these records to be readable. He didn’t know precisely what use the collection might be put to, but he had been ingrained with the scholar’s instinctive value for the written word. Perhaps this was only for his own pleasure and use—but he liked the feeling that he might be leaving something to posterity as well, and took pains both to write clearly and to document the circumstances under which he had acquired each song.
The study was peaceful, with no more than Jamie’s occasional sigh as he stopped to rub the kinks from his cramped hand. After a while, Mr. Bug came to the door, and after a brief colloquy, Jamie put away his quill and went out with the factor. Roger nodded vaguely as they bade him farewell, mind occupied with the effort of recall and recording.
When he finished, a quarter of an hour later, his mind was pleasantly empty, and he sat back, stretching the ache from his shoulders. He waited a few moments for the ink to be thoroughly dry before he put the book away, and while waiting, went to pull out one of Brianna’s sketchbooks from the bottom shelf.
She wouldn’t mind if he looked; she had told him he was welcome to look at them. At the same time, she showed him only the occasional drawing, those she was pleased with, or had done especially for him.
He turned over the pages of the notebook, feeling the sense of curiosity and respect that attends the prying into mystery, searching for small glimpses of the workings of her mind.
There were lots of portrait sketches of the baby in this one, a study in circles.
He paused at one small sketch, caught by memory. It was a sketch of Jemmy sleeping, back turned, his small sturdy body curled up in a comma. Adso the cat was curled up beside him, in precisely similar fashion, his chin perched on Jemmy’s fat little foot, eyes slits of comatose bliss. He remembered that one.
She drew Jemmy often—nearly every day, in fact—but seldom fullface.
“Babies don’t really have faces,” she had told him, frowning critically at her offspring, who was industriously gnawing on the leather strap of Jamie’s powder horn.
“Oh, aye? And what’s that on the front of his head, then?” He had lain flat on the floor with the baby and the cat, grinning up at her, which made it easier for her to look down her nose at him.
“I mean, strictly speaking. Naturally they have faces, but they all look alike.”
“It’s a wise father that kens his own child, eh?” he joked, regretting it instantly, as he saw the shadow cloud her eyes. It passed, quick as a summer cloud, but it had been there, nonetheless.
“Well, not from an artist’s point of view.” She drew the blade of her penknife at an angle across the tip of the charcoal stick, sharpening the point. “They don’t have any bones—that you can see, I mean. And it’s the bones that you use to show the shape of a face; without bones, there isn’t much there.”
Bones or not, she had a remarkable knack for capturing the nuances of expression. He smiled at one sketch; Jemmy’s face wore the aloof and unmistakable expression of one concentrating hard on the production of a truly terrible diaper.
Beyond the pictures of Jemmy, there were several pages of what looked like engineering diagrams. Finding these of no great interest, he bent and replaced the book, then drew out another.
He realized at once that it was not a sketchbook. The pages were dense with Brianna’s tidy, angular writing. He flipped curiously through the pages; it wasn’t really a diary, but appeared to be a sort of record of her dreams.
Last night I dreamed that I shaved my legs. Roger smiled at the inconsequence, but a vision of Brianna’s shins, long-boned and glimmering, kept him reading.
I was using Daddy’s razor and his shaving cream, and I was thinking that he’d complain when he found out, but I wasn’t worried. The shaving cream came in