The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [241]
“Thanks a lot,” I said, wrinkling my nose. Jamie grinned at me, and turned Duncan up the path, resuming their conversation.
“Hum,” I said, sniffing cautiously. “Finished, are you? No, I thought not.” Jemmy closed his eyes, went bright red, and emitted a popping noise like muffled machinegun fire. I undid his wrappings sufficiently to peek down his back.
“Whoops,” I said, and hastily unwound the blanket, just in time. “What has your mother been feeding you?”
Thrilled to have escaped his swaddling bands, Jemmy churned his legs like a windmill, causing a noxious yellowish substance to ooze from the baggy legs of his diaper.
“Pew,” I said succinctly, and holding him at arm’s length, headed off the path toward one of the tiny rivulets that meandered down the mountainside, thinking that while I could do without such refinements of life as indoor plumbing and motorcars, there were times when I sincerely missed things like rubber pants with elasticated legs. To say nothing of toilet rolls.
I found a good spot on the edge of the little stream, with a thick coating of dead leaves. I knelt, laid out a fold of my cloak, and parked Jemmy on it on his hands and knees, pulling the soggy clout off without bothering to unpin it.
“Weee!” he said, sounding surprised as the cold air struck him. He clenched his fat little buttocks and hunched like a small pink toad.
“Ha,” I told him. “If you think a cold wind up the bum is bad, just wait.” I scooped up a handful of damp yellow-brown leaves, and cleaned him off briskly. A fairly stoic child, he wiggled and squirmed, but didn’t screech, instead making high-pitched “Eeeeee” noises as I excavated his crevices.
I flipped him over, and with a hand held prophylactically over the danger zone, administered a similar treatment to his private parts, this eliciting a wide, gummy grin.
“Oh, you are a Hieland man, aren’t you?” I said, grinning back.
“And just what d’ye mean by that remark, Sassenach?” I looked up to find Jamie leaning against a tree on the other side of the streamlet, arms folded as he smiled at me. The bold colors of his dress tartan and white linen sark stood out bright against the faded autumn foliage; face and hair, though, made him look like some denizen of the wood, all bronze and auburn, with the wind stirring his hair so the free ends danced like the scarlet-maple leaves above.
“Well, he’s apparently impervious to cold and damp,” I said, concluding my labors and discarding the final handful of soiled leaves. “Beyond that… well, I’ve not had much to do with male infants before, but isn’t this rather precocious?”
One corner of Jamie’s mouth curled up, as he peered at the prospect revealed under my hand. The tiny appendage stood up stiff as my thumb, and roughly the same size.
“Ah, no,” he said. “I’ve seen a many wee lads in the raw—Jenny’s three boys, at least. They all do that now and again.” He shrugged, and the smile grew wider. “Now, whether it’s only Scottish lads, I canna be saying.…”
“A talent that improves with age, I daresay,” I say dryly. I tossed the dirty clout across the streamlet, where it landed at his feet with a splat. “Get the pins and rinse that out, will you?”
His long, straight nose wrinkled slightly, but he knelt without demur and picked the filthy thing up gingerly between two fingers.
“Oh, so that’s what ye’ve done wi’ your petticoat,” he said. I had opened the large pocket I wore slung at my waist and extracted a clean, folded rectangle of cloth. Not the unbleached linen of the clout he held, but a thick, soft, often-washed wool, dyed a pale red with the juice of currants and persimmons.
I shrugged, checked Jemmy for the prospect of fresh explosions, and popped him onto the new diaper.
“With this lad, little Joanie and Germain all in clouts, and the weather too damp to dry anything properly, we were rather short of clean