The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [464]
Jamie shrugged. Drunkenness was a simple fact of life, and bad brewing was another.
“Thig a seo, a chuisle!” he called, seeing Jemmy, who had lost interest in spoon and cup, making off on hands and knees toward the coffeepot, which had been left to keep hot between the stones of the fire-ring. Jemmy ignored the summons, but was snatched away from danger by Tom Findlay, who snagged him neatly round the waist and delivered him, kicking, to Jamie.
“Sit,” Jamie said firmly to him, and without waiting for a response, parked the child on the ground and handed him his ball of rags. Jemmy clutched this, looking craftily from his grandfather to the fire.
“Throw that in the fire, a chuisle, and I’ll smack your bum,” Jamie informed him pleasantly. Jemmy’s brow contorted and his lower lip protruded, quivering dramatically. He didn’t throw the ball into the fire, though.
“A chuisle?” I said, trying out the pronunciation. “That’s a new one. What’s it mean?”
“Oh.” Jamie rubbed a finger across the bridge of his nose, considering. “It means ‘my blood.’”
“I thought that was mo fuil.”
“Aye, it is, but that’s blood like what comes out when ye wound yourself. A chuisle is more like . . . ‘O, thou in whose veins runs my very blood.’ Ye only say it to a wee bairn, mostly—one ye’re related to, of course.”
“That’s lovely.” I set my empty wine-cup on the ground and leaned against Jamie’s shoulder. I still felt tired, but the magic of the wine had smoothed the rough edges of exhaustion, leaving me pleasantly muzzy.
“Would you call Germain that, do you think, or Joan? Or is it meant very literally, a chuisle?”
“I should be more inclined to call Germain un petit emmerdeur,” he said, with a faint snort of amusement. “But Joan—aye, I would call wee Joanie a chuisle. It’s blood of the heart, ken, not only the body.”
Jemmy had let his rag-ball fall to the ground and was staring in open-mouthed enchantment at the fireflies, which had begun to blink in the grass as darkness fell. With our stomachs full and cool rest at hand, everyone was beginning to feel the soothing effects of the gathering night.
The men were sprawled in the grassy dark under a sycamore tree, passing the wine bottle from hand to hand and exchanging talk in the easy, half-connected fashion of men who know each other well. The Findlay boys were on the wagon-track, that being the only really clear space, throwing something back and forth, missing half their catches as darkness fell, and exchanging genial shouted insults.
There was a loud rustling of bushes beyond the fire, and Brianna emerged, looking damp, but much more cheerful. She paused by Roger, a hand light on his back, and looked over his shoulder at what he was writing. He glanced up at her, then, with a shrug of resignation, withdrew the finished pages of his opus and handed them to her. She knelt down beside him and began to read, brushing back wet strands of hair and frowning to make out the letters by firelight.
A firefly landed on Jamie’s shirt, glowing cool green in the shadowed folds of cloth. I moved a finger toward it, and it flew away, spiraling above the fire like a runaway spark.
“It was a good idea, making Roger write,” I said, looking across the fire with approval. “I can’t wait to find out what actually happened to him.”
“Nor I,” Jamie agreed. “Though wi’ William Buccleigh vanished, what’s happened to Roger Mac is maybe no so important as what will happen to him.”
I didn’t have to ask what he meant by that. More than anyone, he knew what it meant, to have a life kicked out from under one—and what strength was required to rebuild it. I reached for his right hand, and he let me take it. Under cover of darkness, I stroked his crippled fingers, tracing the thickened ridges of the scars.
“So it doesn