The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [604]
“There was a wall round the head of the stair; I could hear Gran worrying that I’d be crushed against it—people were pouring down from the street, pressing from behind.”
He could just see over the wall, standing on his toes, chest pressed against the concrete. Down below, emergency lights shone in interrupted streaks along the walls, striping the milling crowd below. It was late night; most of the people were dressed in whatever they had been able to seize when the siren went, and the light glowed on unexpected flashes of bare flesh and extraordinary garments. One woman sported an extravagant hat, decorated with feathers and fruit, worn atop an ancient overcoat.
He had been watching the crowd below in fascination, trying to see if it was really a whole pheasant on the hat. There was shouting; an air-raid warden in a white helmet with a big black “W,” beckoning madly, trying to hasten the already rushing crowd toward the far end of the platform, making room for those coming off the stair.
“There were children crying, but not me. I wasn’t really afraid at all.” He hadn’t been afraid, because Mum was holding his hand. If she was there, nothing bad could happen.
“There was a big thump nearby. I could see the lights shake. Then there was a noise like something tearing overhead. Everyone looked up and began to scream.”
The crack through the slanted ceiling hadn’t looked particularly frightening; just a thin black line that zigzagged back and forth like a jigsaw snake, following the lines of the tiles. But then it widened suddenly, a gaping maw like a dragon’s mouth, and dirt and tiles began to pour down.
He had long since thawed, and yet every hair on his body rippled now with gooseflesh. His heart pounded against the inside of his chest, and he felt as though the noose had drawn tight about his neck again.
“She let go,” he said, in a strangled whisper. “She let go my hand.”
Brianna’s hand gripped his in both of hers, hard, trying to save the child he’d been.
“She had to,” she said, in an urgent whisper. “Roger, she wouldn’t have let go unless she had to.”
“No.” He shook his head violently. “That’s not what—I mean—wait. Wait a minute, OK?”
He blinked hard, trying to slow his breathing, fitting back the shattered pieces of that night. Confusion, frenzy, pain . . . but what had actually happened? He had kept nothing save an impression of bedlam. But he had lived through it; he must know what had happened—if he could bring himself to live through it again.
Brianna’s hand clutched his, her fingers still squeezing tight enough to stop the blood. He patted her hand, gently, and her grip relaxed a little.
He closed his eyes, and let it happen.
“I didn’t remember at first,” he said at last, quietly. “Or rather, I did—but I remembered what people told me had happened.” He had had no memory of being carried unconscious through the tunnel, and once rescued, he had spent several weeks being shuttled round Aid shelters and foster homes with other orphans, mute with terrified bewilderment.
“I knew my name, of course, and my address, but that didn’t help much under the circumstances. My dad had already gone down—anyway, by the time the Aid people located Gran’s brother—that was the Reverend—and he came to fetch me, they’d pieced together the story of what happened in the shelter.
“It was a miracle that I hadn’t been killed with everyone else on that stair, they told me. They said my mother must somehow have lost hold of me in the panic—I must have been separated from her and carried down the stair by the crowd; that’s how I ended on the lower level, where the roof hadn’t given way.”
Brianna’s hand was still curled over his, protective, but no longer squeezing.
“But now you remember what happened?” she asked quietly.
“I did remember