The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [512]
It was Roger who seized her flailing wrists and held them tight against her straining, letting her shriek herself to hoarseness before she collapsed at last in tears.
The slave, who had watched all this with an expression between shame and anger, lifted his hands a little toward her. It was the slightest of movements, but enough; she turned at once from Roger and flung herself into her lover’s arms, sobbing against his chest. He wrapped his arms awkwardly around her and held her close, rocking back and forth on his bare heels. He looked sheepish, but no longer angry.
Roger cleared his throat, grimacing at the soreness. The slave looked up at him, and nodded.
“You go, man,” he said softly. Then, before Roger could turn to go, he said, “Wait . . . true, man, de child fix good?”
Roger nodded, feeling unutterably tired. Whatever adrenaline or sense of self-preservation had been keeping him going was all used up. The blazing sky had gone to ashes, and everything in the hollow was fading, blurring into dark.
“She’s all . . . right. They’ll take . . . good care of her.” He groped, wanting to offer something else. “She’s . . . pretty,” he said at last. His voice was nearly gone, no more than a whisper. “A pretty . . . girl.”
The man’s face shifted, caught between embarrassment, dismay, and pleasure.
“Oh,” he said. “Dat be from de mama, sure.” He patted Fanny Beardsley’s back, very gently. She had stopped sobbing, but stood with her face pressed against his chest, still and silent. It was nearly full dark; in the deep dusk, all color was leached away; her skin seemed the same color as his.
The man wore nothing but a tattered shirt, wet through, so that his dark skin showed in patches through it. He had a rope belt, though, with a rough cloth bag strung on it. He groped one-handed in this, and drew out the astrolabe, which he extended toward Roger.
“You don’t mean . . . to keep that?” Roger asked. He felt as though he was standing inside a cloud; everything was beginning to feel far away and hazy, and words reached him as though filtered through cotton wool.
The ex-slave shook his head.
“No, man, what I do wid dat? Beside,” he added, with a wry lift of the mouth, “maybe no one come look you, man, but de masta what own dat ting—he come look, maybe.”
Roger took the heavy disk, and put the thong over his neck. It took two tries; his arms felt like lead.
“Nobody . . . will come looking,” he said. He turned and walked away, with no idea where he was, or where he might be going. After a few steps, he turned and looked back, but the night had already swallowed them.
84
BURNT TO BONES
THE HORSES SETTLED SLIGHTLY, but were still uneasy, pawing, stamping, and jerking at their tethers, as the thunder rumbled hollowly in the distance. Jamie sighed, kissed the top of my head, and pushed his way back through the conifers to the tiny clearing where they stood.
“Well, if ye dinna like it up here,” I heard him say to them, “why did ye come?” He spoke tolerantly, though, and I heard Gideon whinny briefly in pleasure at seeing him. I was turning to go and help with the reassuring, when a flicker of movement caught my eye below.
I leaned out to see it, keeping a tight grip on one of the hemlock’s branches for safety, but it had moved. A horse, I thought, but coming from a different direction than that in which the refugees had come. I wove my way down the line of conifers, peeking through the branches, and reached a spot near the end of the narrow ledge where I had a clear view of the river valley below.
Not a horse, quite—it was—
“It’s Clarence!” I shouted.
“Who?” Jamie’s voice came back from the far end of the ledge, half-drowned by the rustle of the branches overhead. The wind was still rising, damp with returning rain.
“Clarence! Roger’s mule!” Not waiting for a reply, I ducked beneath an overhanging branch and balanced myself precariously on the lip of the ledge, clinging to a rocky outcrop that jutted from the cliff where it met the ledge. There were serried ranks