The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [566]
“I did hear ye say as how ye’d not enough mold on hand,” she started in, anxious but bright-eyed, “so I said to Arch, I said, we must go round to the houses nearabouts, and see what we can fetch back wi’ us for Mrs. Fraser, for after all, bread does go bad so quick when it’s damp, and the good Lord kens that Mrs. Chisholm is a slattern, for all I’m sure she’s a good heart, and what goings-on there may be at her hearth I’m sure I shouldna like even to think about, but we—”
I wasn’t paying attention, but was staring at the results of the Bugs’ morning raid on the pantries and middens of the Ridge. Crusts of bread, spoilt biscuit, half-rotted squash, bits of pie with the marks of teeth still visible in the pastry . . . a hodgepodge of gluey orts and decaying fragments—all sprouting molds in patches of velvet-blue and lichen-green, interspersed with warty blobs of pink and yellow and dustings of splotchy white. The keg was half-filled with decaying corn, the resultant murky liquid rimmed with floating islands of blue mold.
“Evan Lindsay’s pigs,” Mr. Bug explained, in a rare burst of loquacity. Both Bugs beamed at me, begrimed with their efforts.
“Thank you,” I said, feeling choked, and not only from the smell. I blinked, eyes watering slightly from the miasma of the corn liquor. “Oh, thank you.”
IT WAS JUST AFTER DARK when I made my way upstairs, carrying my tray of potions and implements, feeling a mixture of excitement and trepidation.
Jamie was propped on his pillows, surrounded by visitors. People had been coming by the house all day to see him and wish him well; a good many of them had simply stayed, and a host of anxious faces turned toward me as I came in, glimmering in the light of the candles.
He looked very ill, flushed and drawn, and I wondered whether I ought to have chased the visitors away. I saw Murdo Lindsay take his hand, though, and squeeze it tight, and realized that the distraction and support of his company through the day was probably much more helpful to him than the rest that he wouldn’t have taken in any case.
“Well, then,” Jamie said, with a good assumption of casualness, “we’re ready, I suppose.” He stretched his legs, flexing his toes hard under the blanket. Given the state of his leg, it must have hurt dreadfully, but I recognized that he was taking what he thought would be the last opportunity to move the limb, and bit the inside of my lip.
“Well, we’re ready to have a go at something,” I said, smiling at him with an attempt at confident reassurance. “And anyone who would like to pray about it, please do.”
A rustle of surprise replaced the air of dread that had been sprung up at my appearance, and I saw Marsali, who was holding a sleeping Joan with one hand, grope hastily in her pocket with the other to pull out her rosary.
There was a rush to clear the bedside table, which was littered with books, papers, candle-stubs, various treats brought up to tempt Jamie’s appetite—all untouched—and, for some unfathomable reason, the fret-board of a dulcimer and a half-tanned groundhog hide. I set down the tray, and Brianna, who had come up with me, stepped forward, her invention carefully held in both hands, like an acolyte presenting bread to a priest.
“What in the name of Christ is that?” Jamie frowned at the object, then up at me.
“It’s sort of a do-it-yourself rattlesnake,” Brianna told him.
Everyone murmured with interest, craning their necks to see—though the interest was diverted almost at once as I turned back the quilt and began to unwrap his leg, to a chorus of shocked murmurs and sympathetic exclamations at sight of it.
Lizzie and Marsali had been faithfully applying fresh, hot onion and flaxseed poultices to it all day, and wisps of steam rose from the wrappings as I put them aside.