The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [66]
She sipped from the bottle, then offered it to him, to his surprise. He shook his head, but she pushed it into his hand.
“I insist, young man—what is your name? I cannot go on calling you ‘young man.’ ”
“Alex MacKenzie, Sister,” he said, and took a token sip of what was clearly excellent brandy, before handing back the bottle. “Sister, I must go back to my work. Let me fetch someone—”
“No,” she said firmly. “You’ve done me a service, Mr. MacKenzie, in seeing me to my fridstool, but you will do me a much greater service by not informing the people in the house that I am here.” She saw his puzzlement and smiled, exposing three or four very worn and yellowed teeth. It was an engaging smile, for all that.
“Are you not familiar with the term? Ah. I see. You are Scotch, and yet you knew to call me ‘Sister,’ from which I deduce that you are a Papist. Perhaps Papists do not have fridstools in their churches?”
“Perhaps not in Scottish kirks, Sister,” he said cautiously. He’d thought at first it might be a sort of closestool or private privy, but probably not if you found them in churches.
“Well, everyone should have one,” she said firmly, “whether Papist or not. A fridstool is a seat of refuge, of sanctuary. Churches—English churches—often have one, for the use of persons seeking sanctuary, though I must say, they aren’t used as often these days as in former centuries.” She waved a hand knobbed with rheumatism and took another drink.
“As I no longer have my cell as a place of private retirement, I was obliged to find a fridstool. And I think I have chosen well,” she added, with a look of complacency about the folly.
She had, if privacy was what she wanted. The folly, a miniature Greek temple, had been erected by some forgotten architect, and while the site had much to recommend it in summer, being surrounded by copper beeches and with a view of the lake, it was an inconvenient distance from the house, and no one had visited it in months. Dead leaves lay in drifts in the corners, one of the wooden lattices hung from a corner nail, having been torn loose in a winter storm, and the white pillars that framed the opening were thick with abandoned cobwebs and spattered with dirt.
“It’s a bit chilly, Sister,” he said, as tactfully as possible. The place was cold as a tomb, and he didn’t want her death on his conscience—let alone laid at his door.
“At my age, Mr. MacKenzie, cold is the natural state of being,” she said tranquilly. “Perhaps it is nature’s way of easing us toward the final chill of the grave. Nor would dying of pleurisy be that much more unpleasant—nor much faster—than dying of the dropsy, as I am. But I did bring a warm cloak, as well as the brandy.”
He gave up arguing; he’d known enough strong-minded women to recognize futility when he met it. But he did wish Claire were here, to give her opinion on the old sister’s health, perhaps to give her a helpful draught of something. He felt helpless himself—and surprised at the strength of his desire to help the old nun.
“You may go now, Mr. MacKenzie,” she said, quite gently, and laid a hand on his, light as a moth’s touch. “I won’t tell anyone you brought me here.”
Reluctantly, he rose.
“I’ll come back for ye, how’s that?” he said. He didn’t want her trying to stagger back to the house by herself. She’d likely fall into the ha-ha and break her neck, if she didn’t freeze to death out here.
She’d pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes at him, but he’d folded his arms and loomed over her, looking stern, and she laughed.
“Very well, then. Just before teatime, if you can manage it conveniently. Now go away, Alex MacKenzie, and may God bless you and help you find peace.”
He crossed himself now, thinking of her—and caught a look of horror from one of the kitchen maids, coming through the back gate of Argus House with a long paper-wrapped parcel that undoubtedly contained fish. Not only a Hielandman in