The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [590]
Jamie’s mind was running on other lines.
“Why would a man leave his house in dead of night to piss, Sassenach?” he asked. “I know Hector Cameron had a chamber pot; I’ve used it myself. It had his name and the Cameron badge painted on the bottom.”
“Excellent question.” I stared down at the page of cryptic scratchings. “If Hector Cameron was having great pain or difficulty—passing a kidney stone, for example—I suppose he might have gone out, to avoid waking the house.”
“I havena heard my uncle was an opium-eater, but I havena heard he was ower-mindful of his wife or servants’ convenience, either,” Jamie observed, rather cynically. “From all accounts, Hector Cameron was a bit of a bastard.”
I laughed.
“No doubt that’s why your aunt finds Duncan so congenial.”
Adso wandered in, the remains of the dragonfly in his mouth, and sat down at my feet so I could admire his prize.
“Fine,” I told him, with a cursory pat. “Don’t spoil your appetite, though; there are a lot of cockroaches in the pantry that I want you to deal with.”
“Ecce homo,” Jamie murmured thoughtfully, tapping a finger on the casebook. “A French homo, do you think?”
“A what?” I stared at him.
“Does it not occur to ye, Sassenach, that perhaps it wasna Cameron that the doctor followed outside?”
“Not ’til this minute, no.” I leaned forward and peered at the page. “Why ought it to be anyone else, though, let alone a Frenchman?”
Jamie pointed to the edge of the page, where there were a few small drawings; doodles, I’d thought. The one under his finger was a fleur-de-lis.
“Ecce homo,” he said again, tapping it. “The doctor wasna easy in his mind about the man he followed—that’s why he didna call him by name. If Cameron were drugged, then it was someone else who left the house that night—yet he doesna speak of anyone else who was present.”
“But he might not mention it, unless he’d examined whoever it was,” I argued. “He does put in personal notes, but most of this is strictly his case histories; his observations of his patients and the treatments he was administering. But still . . .” I frowned at the page. “A fleur-de-lis scribbled in the margin doesn’t necessarily mean anything at all, let alone that there was a Frenchman there.” Save Fergus, Frenchmen were not at all common in North Carolina. There were some French settlements south of Savannah, I knew—but that was hundreds of miles away.
The fleur-de-lis could be nothing more than a random doodle—and yet, Rawlings hadn’t made such scribbles anywhere else in his book that I recalled. When he added drawings, they were careful and to the point, intended as a reminder to himself, or as a guide to any physician who should come after him.
Above the fleur-de-lis was a figure that looked rather like a triangle with a small circle at the apex and a curved base; below it was a sequence of letters. Au et Aq.
“A . . . u,” I said slowly, looking at that. “Aurum.”
“Gold?” Jamie glanced up at me, surprised. I nodded.
“It’s the scientific abbreviation for gold, yes. ‘Aurum et aqua.’ Gold and water—I suppose he means goldwasser, bits of gold flake suspended in an aqueous solution. It’s a remedy for arthritis—oddly enough, it often works, though no one knows why.”
“Expensive,” Jamie observed. “Though I suppose Cameron could afford it—perhaps he saved an ounce or two of his gold bars, eh?”
“He did say Cameron suffered from arthritis.” I frowned at the page and its cryptic marginalia. “Maybe he meant to advise the use of goldwasser for the condition. But I don’t know about the fleur-de-lis or that other thing—” I pointed at it. “It’s not the symbol for any medical treatment I know of.”
To my surprise, Jamie laughed.
“I shouldna think so, Sassenach. It’s a Freemason’s compass.”
“It is?” I blinked at it, then glanced at Jamie. “Was Cameron a Mason?”
He shrugged, running a hand through