The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [357]
Jamie swung the gate to, and handed me the lantern.
“What are you doing?” I whispered, hearing the rustle of his clothing. It was so dark by the gate that I couldn’t see him as more than a dark blur, but the faint sound that came next told me what he was doing.
“Pissing on the gateposts,” he whispered back, stepping back and rustling further as he did up his breeks. “If we must, then we will, but I dinna want anything to be following us back to the house.”
I made my own small huffing noise at that, but made no demur when he insisted upon repeating this ritual at the door to the shed. Imagination or not, the night seemed somehow inhabited, as though invisible things moved through the darkness, murmuring under the voice of the wind.
It was almost a relief to go inside, where the air was still, even though the scents of death mingled thickly with the dankness of rust, rotted straw, and mildewed wood. There was a faint rasp of metal as the dark-lantern’s panel slid back, and a dazzling shaft of light fell over the confines of the shed.
They had laid the dead slave on a board across two trestles, already washed and properly laid out, wrapped in a rough muslin shroud. Beside her stood a small loaf of bread and a cup of brandy. A small posy of dried herbs, carefully twisted into a knot, lay on the shroud, just above the heart. Who had left those? I wondered. One of the other slaves, surely. Jamie crossed himself at the sight, and looked at me, almost accusingly.
“It’s ill luck to touch grave goods.”
“I’m sure it’s only ill luck to take them,” I assured him, low-voiced, though I crossed myself before taking the objects and putting them on the ground in a corner of the shed. “I’ll put them back when I’ve finished.”
“Mmphm. Wait just a moment, Sassenach. Dinna touch her yet.”
He dug in the recesses of his cloak, and emerged with a tiny bottle. He uncorked this, and putting his fingers to the opening, poured out a little liquid, which he flicked over the corpse, murmuring a quick Gaelic prayer that I recognized as an invocation to St. Michael to protect us from demons, ghouls, and things that go bump in the night. Very useful.
“Is that holy water?” I asked, incredulous.
“Aye, of course. I got it from Father LeClerc.” He made the sign of the Cross over the body, and laid his hand briefly on the draped curve of the head, before nodding reluctant approval for me to proceed.
I extracted a scalpel from my bag and slit the stitching on the shroud carefully. I’d brought a stout needle and waxed thread, to sew up the body cavity; with luck, I could also repair the shroud sufficiently that no one would realize what I’d been doing.
Her face was almost unrecognizable, round cheeks gone slack and sunken, and the soft bloom of her black skin faded to an ashy gray, the lips and ears a livid purple. That made it easier; it was clear that this was indeed only a shell, and not the woman I had seen before. That woman, if she was still in the vicinity, would have no objections, I thought.
Jamie made the sign of the Cross again and said something soft in Gaelic, then stood still, the lantern held high so that I could work by its light. The light threw his shadow on the wall of the shed, gigantic and eerie in the wavering flicker. I looked away from it, down to my work.
The most formal and sanitary of modern autopsies is simple butchery; this was no better—and worse only in the lack of light, water, and specialized tools.
“You needn’t watch, Jamie,” I said, standing back for a moment to wipe a wrist across my brow. Cold as it was in the shed, I was sweating from the heavy work of splitting the breastbone, and the air was thick with the ripe smells of an open body. “There’s a nail on the wall; you could hang up the lantern, if you want to go out for a bit.”
“I’m