The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [360]
“Can you hand me one of the small empty jars? And the wash bottle, please?”
Jamie hung the lantern on the nail and obligingly knelt to rummage through the bag, while I rummaged further through the stomach. There was some granular material forming a pale sludge in the furrows of the rugae. I scraped gingerly at it, finding that it came free easily, a thick, gritty paste between my fingertips. I wasn’t sure what it was, but a suspicion was growing unpleasantly in the back of my mind. I meant to flush the stomach, collect the residue, and take it back to the house, where I could examine it in a decent light, come morning. If it was what I thought—
Without warning, the door of the shed swung open. A whoosh of cold air made the flame of the lantern burn suddenly high and bright—bright enough to show me Phillip Wylie’s face, pale and shocked in the frame of the doorway.
He stared at me, his mouth hanging slightly open, then closed it and swallowed; I heard the sound of it clearly. His eyes traveled slowly over the scene, then returned to my face, wide pools of horror.
I was shocked, too. My heart had leapt into my throat, and my hands had frozen, but my brain was racing.
What would happen if he caused an outcry? It would be the most dreadful scandal, whether I was able to explain what I was doing, or not. If not—fear rippled over me in a chilly wave. I had come close to being burned for witchcraft once before; and that was one time too often.
I felt a slight movement of the air near my feet, and realized that Jamie was crouched in the deep shadow below the table. The light of the lantern was bright, but limited; I stood in a pool of darkness that reached to my waist. Wylie hadn’t seen him. I reached out a toe and nudged him, as a signal to stay put.
I forced myself to smile at Phillip Wylie, though my heart was stuck firmly in my throat, and beating wildly. I swallowed hard and said the first thing that came into my mind, which happened to be “Good evening.”
He licked his lips. He was wearing neither patch nor powder at the moment, but was quite as pale as the muslin sheet.
“Mrs. . . . Fraser,” he said, and swallowed again. “I—er—what are you doing?”
I should have thought that was reasonably obvious; presumably his question had to do with the reasons why I was doing it—and I had no intention of going into those.
“Never you mind that,” I said crisply, recovering a bit of nerve. “What are you doing, skulking round the place at dead of night?”
Evidently that was a good question; his face shifted at once from open horror to wariness. His head twitched, as though to turn and look over his shoulder. He stopped the motion before it was completed, but my eyes followed the direction of it. There was a man standing in the darkness behind him; a tall man who now stepped forward, his face glimmering pale in the glow of the lantern, sardonic eyes the green of gooseberries. Stephen Bonnet.
“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” I said.
A number of things happened at that point: Jamie came out from under the table with a rush like a striking cobra, Phillip Wylie leaped back from the door with a startled cry, and the lantern crashed from its nail to the floor. There was a strong smell of splattered oil and brandy, a soft whoosh like a furnace lighting, and the crumpled shroud was burning at my feet.
Jamie was gone; there were shouts from the darkness outside, and the sound of running feet on brick. I kicked at the burning fabric, meaning to stamp it out.
Then I thought better, and instead lunged against the table, knocking it over and dumping its contents. I seized the blazing shroud with one hand and dragged it over corpse and upturned table. The floor of the shed was thick with sawdust, already burning in spots. I kicked the shattered lantern hard, knocking