The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [338]
“It isn’t serious,” Claire announced firmly, straightening. “We must put him in a croup tent, though. Bring him down to the kitchen. Phaedre, will you find me a couple of old quilts, please?”
She moved toward the door, shooing the women before her like a flock of hens.
Obeying an impulse that he didn’t stop to question, Roger reached for the baby, and after a instant’s hesitation, Brianna let him take him. Jemmy didn’t fuss, but hung listless and heavy, the limp slackness a terrible change from his normal India-rubber bounce. The baby’s cheek burned through the cloth of Roger’s shirt as he carried the little boy downstairs, Bree at his elbow.
The kitchen was in the brick-walled basement of the house, and Roger had a brief vision of Orpheus descending into the underworld, Eurydice close behind him, as they made their way down the dark back stair into the shadowy depths of the kitchen. Instead of a magic lyre, though, he bore a child who burned like coal and coughed as though his lungs would burst. If he didn’t look back, he thought, the boy would be all right.
“Perhaps a little cold water wouldn’t come amiss.” Claire put her hand on Jemmy’s forehead, judging his temperature. “Have you got an ear infection, sweetheart?” She blew gently into one of the baby’s ears, then the other; he blinked, coughed hoarsely, and swiped a chubby hand across his face, but didn’t flinch. The slaves were bustling round in a corner of the kitchen, bringing boiling water, pinning the quilts to a rafter to make the tent at her direction.
Claire took the baby out of Roger’s arms to bathe him, and he stood bereft, wanting urgently to do something, anything, until Brianna took his hand and clutched it hard, her nails digging into his palm.
“He’ll be all right,” she whispered. “He will.” He squeezed hard back, wordless.
Then the tent was ready, and Brianna ducked under the hanging quilt, turning to reach back for Jemmy, who was alternately coughing and crying, having not liked the cold water at all. Claire had sent a slave to fetch her medicine box, and now rummaged through it, coming up with a vial filled with a pale yellow oil, and a jar of dirty white crystals.
Before she could do anything with them, though, Joshua, one of the grooms, came thumping down the stairs, half-breathless with his hurry.
“Mrs. Claire, Mrs. Claire!”
Some of the gentlemen had been firing off their pistols in celebration of the happy event, it seemed, and one of them had suffered some kind of mishap, though Josh seemed uncertain as to exactly what had happened.
“He isna bad hurt,” the groom assured Claire, in the Aberdonian Scots that came so peculiarly from his black face, “but he is bleedin’ quite free, and Dr. Fentiman—well, he’s maybe no quite sae steady as he might be the noo. Will ye come, Ma’am?”
“Yes, of course.” In the blink of an eye, she had thrust vial and jar into Roger’s hands. “I’ll have to go. Here. Put some in the hot water; keep him breathing the steam until he stops coughing.” Quick and neat, she’d closed up her box and handed it to Josh to carry, heading for the stair before Roger could ask her anything. Then she was gone.
Wisps of steam were escaping through the opening in the tent; seeing that, he paused long enough to shed coat and waistcoat, leaving them in a careless heap on the floor as he bent and ducked into the darkness, vial and jar in hand.
Bree was crouched on a stool, Jemmy on her lap, a big white pudding-basin full of steaming water at her feet. A swath of light from the hearth fell momentarily across her face, and Roger smiled at her, trying to look reassuring, before the quilt dropped back into place.
“Where’s Mama? Did she leave?”
“Aye, there was some sort of emergency. It’ll be fine, though,” he said firmly. “She gave me the stuff to put in the water; said just to keep him in the steam until the coughing stops.”
He sat down on the floor beside the basin of water. It was very dim in the tent, but