The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [603]
“It’s all right,” he said, a little gruffly, and cleared his throat again. It felt as tight and painful as it had in the weeks just past the hanging, and his hand involuntarily sought the scar, smoothing the ragged line beneath his jaw with the tip of a finger.
“You know,” he said, seeking at least a momentary diversion, “you should do a self-portrait, next time you go to see your aunt at River Run.”
“What, me?” She sounded startled, though, he thought—perhaps a bit pleased at the idea.
“Sure. You could, I know. And then there’d be . . . well, a permanent record, I mean.” For Jem to remember, in case anything should happen to you. The words floated above them in the dark, striking them both momentarily silent. Damn, and he’d been trying to reassure her.
“I’d like a portrait of you,” he said softly, and reached out a finger to trace the curve of cheek and temple. “So we can look at it when we’re very old, and I can tell ye that you haven’t changed a bit.”
She gave a small snort, but turned her head and kissed his fingers briefly, before rolling onto her back. She stretched, pointing her toes until her joints cracked, then relaxed with a sigh.
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
The room was quiet, save for the murmur of the fire and the gentle creak of settling timber. The night was cold, but still; the morning would be foggy—he had felt the damp gathering in the ground when he’d gone outside, breathing from the trees. But it was warm and dry within. Brianna sighed again; he could feel her sinking back toward sleep beside him, could feel it coming for him, too.
The temptation to give in and let it carry him painlessly away was great. But while Brianna’s fears were eased for the moment, he still heard that whisper—“He wouldn’t remember me at all.” But it came now from the other side of the door in his mind.
Yes, I do, Mum, he thought, and shoved it open all the way.
“I was with her,” he said softly. He was on his back, staring up at the pine-beamed ceiling, the joins of the rafters barely visible to his dark-adapted eyes.
“What? With who?” He could hear the lull of sleep in her voice, but curiosity roused her briefly.
“With my mother. And my grandmother. When . . . the bomb.”
He heard her head turn sharply toward him, hearing the strain in his voice, but he looked straight upward into the dark roof-beams, not blinking.
“Do you want to tell me?” Brianna’s hand found his, curled round it, squeezing. He wasn’t sure at all that he did, but he nodded a little, squeezing back.
“Aye. I suppose I must,” he said softly. He sighed deeply, smelling the lingering scents of fried corn-mush and onions that hung in the corners of the cabin. Somewhere in the back of his nose, the imagined scents of hot-air registers and breakfast porridge, wet woolens, and the petrol fumes of lorries woke silent guides through the labyrinth of memory.
“It was at night. The air-raid sirens went. I knew what it was, but it scared the shit out of me every time. There wasn’t time to dress; Mum pulled me out of bed and put my coat on over my pajamas, then we rushed out and down the stairs—there were thirty-six steps, I’d counted them all that day, coming home from the shops—and we hurried to the nearest shelter.”
The nearest shelter for them was the Tube station across the street; grubby white tiles and the flicker of fluorescent lights, the thrilling rush of air somewhere deep below, like the breathing of dragons in nearby caves.
“It was exciting.” He could see the crush of people, hear the shouting of the wardens over the noise of the crowd. “Everything was vibrating; the floors, the walls, the air itself.”
Feet thundered on the wooden treads as streams of refugees poured into the bowels of the earth, down one level to a platform, down another, yet another, burrowing toward safety. It was panic—but an orderly panic.
“The bombs could go through fifty feet of earth—but the lower levels were safe.”
They had reached the bottom of the first stairway, run jostling with a mass of others through