The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [589]
“An oddity . . .” Jamie said, translating slowly as his finger moved across the page. “I am awake—no, he means ‘I was wakened,’ I think—by sounds in the chamber adjoining that where I lay. I am thinking—‘I thought’—that my patient went to make water, and am risen to follow . . . Why should he do that, I wonder?”
“The patient—it’s Hector Cameron, by the way—had a problem with his bladder. Rawlings would have wanted to watch him urinate, to see what sort of difficulty he had, whether he had pain, or blood in the urine, that sort of thing.”
Jamie gave me a side-long glance, one brow raised, then shook his head and returned to the casebook, murmuring something about the peculiar tastes of physicians.
“Homo procediente . . . the man proceeds . . . Why does he call him ‘the man,’ rather than his name?”
“He was writing in Latin to be secret,” I said, impatient to hear what came next. “If Cameron saw his name in the book, he’d be curious, I expect. What happened?”
“The man goes out—outdoors, does he mean, or only out of his chamber?—outdoors, it must be . . . goes out, and I follow. He walks steadily, quickly . . . Why should he not? Oh, here—I am puzzled. I give—have given—the man twelve grains of laudanum . . .”
“Twelve grains? Are you sure that’s what he says?” I leaned over Jamie’s arm, peering, but sure enough—he pointed to the entry, inscribed in clear black and white. “But that’s enough laudanum to fell a horse!”
“Aye, ‘twelve grains of laudanum to assist sleep,’ he says. No wonder the doctor was puzzled, then, to see Cameron scampering about the lawn in the middle of the night.”
I nudged him with an elbow.
“Get on!”
“Mmphm. Well, he says he went to the necessary house—no doubt thinking to find Cameron—but no one was there, and there wasna any smell of . . . er . . . he didna think anyone had been there recently.”
“You needn’t be delicate on my account,” I said.
“I know,” he said, grinning. “But my own sensibilities are no quite coarsened yet, in spite of my long association with you, Sassenach. Ow!” He jerked away, rubbing his arm where I had pinched him. I lowered my brows and gave him a stare, though inwardly pleased to have lightened the mood for both of us.
“Less about your sensibilities, if you please,” I said, tapping my foot. “Besides, you haven’t got any in the first place, or you’d never have married me. Where was Cameron, then?”
He scanned the page, lips silently forming words.
“He doesna ken. He prowled about the place until the butler popped out of his wee hole, thinking him a marauder of some sort, and threatened him wi’ a bottle of whisky.”
“A formidable weapon, that,” I observed, smiling at the thought of a nightcapped Ulysses, brandishing his implement of destruction. “How do you say ‘bottle of whisky’ in Latin?”
Jamie gave the page a glance.
“He says ‘aqua vitae,’ which is doubtless as close as he could manage. It must have been whisky, though; he says the butler gave him a dram to cure the shock.”
“So he never found Cameron?”
“Aye, he did, after he left Ulysses. Tucked up in his wee white bed, snoring. Next morning, he asked, but Cameron didna recall getting up in the night.” He flipped the page over with one finger and glanced at me. “Would the laudanum keep him from remembering?”
“It could do,” I said, frowning. “Easily. But it’s simply incredible that anyone with that much laudanum in him could have been up marching round in the first place . . . unless . . .” I cocked a brow at him, recalling Jocasta’s remarks during our discussion at River Run. “Any chance your Uncle Hector was an opium-eater or the like? Someone who took a great deal of laudanum by habit would have a tolerance for it, and might not be really affected by Rawlings’ dose.”
Never one to be shocked by any intimation of depravity among his relatives, Jamie considered the suggestion, but finally shook his head.
“If so, I’ve heard naught of it. But then,” he added logically, “there’s no reason anyone would tell me so.”
That was true enough. If Hector Cameron had had the