The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [477]
Her mother glanced up at her, surprised. “Aren’t you clever—look.” She plucked a small, papery brown object from the floor and held it out. Bending to look closer, Brianna could see that the thing that looked like a crumpled dried leaf was in fact a fragment of a tiny bat’s wing, the fragile leather dried to translucence, a bone slender as a needle curving through it like the central rib of a leaf.
“Eye of newt, and toe of frog/ Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,” Claire quoted. She spilled the handful of bones onto the counter, looking at them with fascination. “I wonder what she meant by that?”
“She?”
“Nayawenne—the woman who gave me the pouch.” Crouching, Claire swept up the crumbled bits of leaf—at least Brianna hoped they were real leaves—into her hand, and sniffed them. There were so many odors in the air of the surgery that she herself couldn’t distinguish anything beyond the overwhelming sweetness of honey, but evidently her mother’s sensitive nose had no trouble in making out individual scents.
“Bayberry, balsam fir, wild ginger, and Arsesmart,” she said, sniffing like a truffle-hound. “Bit of sage, too, I think.”
“Arsesmart? Is that a comment on what she thought of you?” In spite of her distress, Brianna laughed.
“Ha bloody ha,” he mother replied tartly, dusting the little heap of dried plant matter onto the table with the bones. “Otherwise known as water-pepper. It’s a rather irritating little thing that grows near brooks—gives you blisters and smarts the eyes—or other things, I imagine, if you happen to carelessly sit on it.”
Jemmy, rebukes forgotten, had got hold of a surgical clamp and was turning it to and fro, evidently trying to decide whether it was edible. Brianna debated taking it away from him, but given that her mother always sterilized her metal implements by boiling, decided to let him keep it for the moment, since it had no sharp edges.
Leaving him with Claire, she went back to the kitchen to fetch hot water and some cloths with which to deal with the honey. Mrs. Bug was there but was sound asleep, snoring gently on the settle, hands folded on her rounded stomach, her kerch comfortably askew over one ear.
Tiptoeing back with the bucket of water and a handful of cloths, she found most of the debris already swept up, and her mother crawling round on hands and knees, peering under things.
“Have you lost something?” She glanced at the bottom shelf of the cupboard, but didn’t see anything missing, bar the honey-jar. The other bottles had been neatly stoppered and replaced, and everything looked much as usual.
“Yes.” Claire crouched lower, frowning as she peered under the cupboard itself. “A stone. About so big”—she held out a hand, thumb and index finger circled, describing a sphere about the diameter of a small coin—“and a sort of grayish-blue. Translucent in spots. It’s a raw sapphire.”
“Was it in the cupboard? Maybe Mrs. Bug moved it.”
Claire sat back on her heels, shaking her head.
“No, she doesn’t touch anything in here. Besides, it wasn’t in the cupboard—it was in there.” She nodded at the table, where the amulet’s empty pouch lay beside the bones and plant debris.
A quick search—and then a slower one—of the surgery revealed no sign of the stone.
“You know,” Claire said, running a hand through her hair as she looked thoughtfully at Jemmy, “I hate to suggest this, but do you think . . .?”
“Shi—I mean rats,” Brianna said, concern escalating to mild alarm. She stooped to look at Jemmy, who loftily ignored her, concentrating on the job of inserting the surgical clamp into his left nostril. “There were crumbs of dried plant matter stuck to the honey around his mouth, but surely that was just rosemary or thyme . . .”
Offended at the close scrutiny, he tried to whack her with the clamp, but she seized his wrist in a grip of iron, removing the clamp from his grasp with her other hand.
“Don’t hit Mummy,” she said automatically, “it’s not nice. Jem—did you swallow Grannie’s rock?”
“No,” he said, just