The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [518]
“Aye, but it’s their future ye change, Sassenach, and perhaps you’re meant to.” He took my hand in his and pulled gently on the fingers. One knuckle popped, making a small sound like a log spitting in the hearth. “Physicians have saved a good many folk over the years, surely.”
“Of course they do. And not just physicians, either.” I sat up, impelled by the force of my argument. “But it doesn’t matter—don’t you see? You—” I pointed one finger at him, “—you’ve saved a life now and then. Fergus? Ian? And here they are, both going about the world doing things and procreating and what-not. You changed the future for them, didn’t you?”
“Aye, well . . . perhaps. I couldna do otherwise, though, could I?”
That simple statement stopped me, and we lay in silence for a bit, watching the flicker of light on the white-plastered wall. At last he stirred beside me, and spoke again.
“I dinna say it for pity,” he said. “But ye ken . . . now and then my bones ache a bit.” He didn’t look at me, but spread his crippled hand, turning it in the light, so the shadow of the crooked fingers made a spider on the wall.
Now and then. I kent, all right. I knew the limits of the body—and its miracles. I’d seen him sit down at the end of a day’s labor, exhaustion written in every line of his body. Seen him move slowly, stubborn against the protests of flesh and bone when he rose on cold mornings. I would be willing to bet that he had not lived a day since Culloden without pain, the physical damages of war aggravated by damp and harsh living. And I would also be willing to bet that he had never mentioned it to anyone. Until now.
“I know that,” I said softly, and touched the hand. The twisting scar that runneled his leg. The small depression in the flesh of his arm, legacy of a bullet.
“But not with you,” he said, and covered my hand where it lay on his arm. “D’ye ken that the only time I am without pain is in your bed, Sassenach? When I take ye, when I lie in your arms—my wounds are healed, then, my scars forgotten.”
I sighed and laid my head in the curve of his shoulder. My thigh pressed his, the softness of my flesh a mold to his harder form.
“Mine, too.”
He was silent for a time, stroking my hair with his good hand. It was wild and bushy, freed from its moorings by our earlier struggles, and he smoothed one curly strand at a time, combing down each lock between his fingers.
“Your hair’s like a great storm cloud, Sassenach,” he murmured, sounding half-asleep. “All dark and light together. No two hairs are the same color.”
He was right; the lock between his fingers bore strands of pure white, of silver and blond, dark streaks, nearly sable, and several bits still of my young light brown.
His fingers went under the mass of hair, and I felt his hand cup the base of my skull, holding my head like a chalice.
“I saw my mother in her coffin,” he said at last. His thumb touched my ear, drew down the curve of helix and lobule, and I shivered at his touch.
“The women had plaited her hair, to be seemly, but my father wouldna have it. I heard him. He didna shout, though, he was verra quiet. He would have his last sight of her as she was to him, he said. He was half-crazed wi’ grief, they said, he should let well alone, be still. He didna trouble to say more to them, but went to the coffin himself. He undid her plaits and he spread out her hair in his two hands across the pillow. They were afraid to stop him.”
He paused, his thumb stilled.
“I was there, keepin’ quiet in the corner. When they all went out to meet the priest, I crept up close. I hadna seen a dead person before.”
I let my fingers curl over the ridge of his forearm, quietly. My mother had left me one morning, kissed my forehead, and slid in the clip that fell out of my curly hair. I had never seen her again. Her coffin had been closed.
“Was it—her?”
“No,” he said softly. His eyes were half-lidded as he looked into the fire. “Not quite. The face had the look of her, but no more. Like as if someone had set out to carve her from birch wood. But her hair—that