The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [459]
I could see the man on the card, suspended permanently halfway between heaven and earth. That card always looked odd to me—the man didn’t seem to be at all concerned, in spite of being upside-down and blind-folded.
Deb kept scooping up the cards and laying them out again, and that one kept coming up in every spread.
“The Hanged Man represents the necessary process of surrender and sacrifice,” she said. “This card has profound significance,” she said, and she looked at me and tapped her finger on it. “But much of it is veiled; you have to figure out the meaning for yourself. Self-surrender leads to transformation of the personality, but the person has to accomplish his own regeneration.”
Transformation of the personality. That’s what I’m afraid of, all right. I liked Roger’s personality just fine the way it was!
Well . . . rats. I don’t know how much the D-E-V-I-L has to do with it, but I am sure that trying to look too far into the future is a mistake. At least right now.
74
THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE
IT WAS TEN DAYS before Penelope Sherston’s portrait was completed to her satisfaction. By that point, both Isaiah Morton and Roger had recovered sufficiently for travel. Given the imminence of Morton’s offspring and the danger to him in coming anywhere near either Granite Falls or Brownsville, Jamie had arranged for him and Alicia to lodge with the brewmaster of Mr. Sherston’s brewery; Isaiah would undertake employment as a wagoner for the brewery, as soon as his strength permitted.
“I canna imagine why,” Jamie had said to me privately, “but I’ve grown a bit fond of the immoral wee loon. I shouldna like to see him murdered in cold blood.”
Isaiah’s spirits had revived spectacularly upon the arrival of Alicia, and within a week, he had made his way downstairs, to sit watching Alicia like a devoted dog as she worked in the kitchen—and to pause on his way back to bed to offer comments on the progress of Mrs. Sherston’s portrait.
“Don’t it look just like her?” he’d said admiringly, standing in his nightshirt in the door of the drawing-room where the sitting was in progress. “Why, if you was to see that picture, you’d know just who it was.”
Given the fact that Mrs. Sherston had chosen to be painted as Salome, I was not positive that this would be considered a compliment, but she flushed prettily and thanked him, evidently recognizing the sincerity in his tone.
Bree had done a marvelous job, contriving to portray Mrs. Sherston both realistically and flatteringly, but without overt irony—difficult as that must have been. The only point where she had given in to temptation was in a minor detail; the severed head of John the Baptist bore a striking resemblance to Governor Tryon’s saturnine features, but I doubted that anyone would notice, what with all the blood.
We were ready to go home, and the house was filled with a spirit of restless excitement and relief—except for Roger.
Roger was indisputably better, in purely physical terms. His hands were mobile again, bar the broken fingers, and most of the bruising over his face and body had faded. Best of all, the swelling in his throat had subsided enough that he could move air through his nose and mouth again. I was able to remove the tube from his throat, and stitch up the incision—a small but painful operation that he had borne with body stiff and eyes wide open, staring up at the ceiling while I worked.
In mental terms, I was not so sure of his recovery. After stitching his throat, I had helped him sit up, wiped his face, and given him a little water mixed with brandy as a restorative. I had watched carefully as he swallowed, then put my fingers lightly on his throat, felt carefully, and asked him to swallow again. I closed my eyes, feeling the movement of his larynx, the rings of his trachea as he swallowed, assessing as best I could the degree of damage.
At last I opened my eyes, to find his eyes two inches from my own and still wide open, the question in them cold and stark as glacier ice.
“I don’t know,