Voyager - Diana Gabaldon [217]
He gave me a quick blue glance, and the corner of his mouth lifted slightly.
“It gets a bit easier with practice, Sassenach,” he said. “Try living wi’ me for a time, and ye’ll find yourself spinning silk out of your arse easy as sh—, er, easy as kiss-my-hand.”
I burst out laughing.
“I want to see you do that,” I said.
“You already have.” He stood up and craned his neck, trying to see over the wall into the Rectory garden.
“Young Ian’s being the devil of a time,” he remarked, sitting down again. “How can a lad not yet fifteen have that much to confess?”
“After the day and night he had yesterday? I suppose it depends how much detail Father Hayes wants to hear,” I said, with a vivid recollection of my breakfast with the prostitutes. “Has he been in there all this time?”
“Er, no.” The tips of Jamie’s ears grew slightly pinker in the morning light. “I, er, I had to go first. As an example, ye ken.”
“No wonder it took some time,” I said, teasing. “How long has it been since you’ve been to confession?”
“I told Father Hayes it was six months.”
“And was it?”
“No, but I supposed if he was going to shrive me for thieving, assault, and profane language, he might as well shrive me for lying, too.”
“What, no fornication or impure thoughts?”
“Certainly not,” he said austerely. “Ye can think any manner of horrible things without sin, and it’s to do wi’ your wife. It’s only if you’re thinking it about other ladies, it’s impure.”
“I had no idea I was coming back to save your soul,” I said primly, “but it’s nice to be useful.”
He laughed, bent and kissed me thoroughly.
“I wonder if that counts as an indulgence,” he said, pausing for breath. “It ought to, no? It does a great deal more to keep a man from the fires of hell than saying the rosary does. Speaking of which,” he added, digging into his pocket and coming out with a rather chewed-looking wooden rosary, “remind me that I must say my penance sometime today. I was about to start on it, when ye came up.”
“How many Hail Marys are you supposed to say?” I asked, fingering the beads. The chewed appearance wasn’t illusion; there were definite small toothmarks on most of the beads.
“I met a Jew last year,” he said, ignoring the question. “A natural philosopher, who’d sailed round the world six times. He told me that in both the Musselman faith and the Jewish teachings, it was considered an act of virtue for a man and his wife to lie wi’ each other.
“I wonder if that has anything to do wi’ both Jews and Musselmen being circumcised?” he added thoughtfully. “I never thought to ask him that—though perhaps he would ha’ found it indelicate to say.”
“I shouldn’t think a foreskin more or less would impair the virtue,” I assured him.
“Oh, good,” he said, and kissed me once more.
“What happened to your rosary?” I asked, picking up the string where it had fallen on the grass. “It looks like the rats have been at it.”
“Not rats,” he said. “Bairns.”
“What bairns?”
“Oh, any that might be about.” He shrugged, tucking the beads back in his pocket. “Young Jamie has three now, and Maggie and Kitty two each. Wee Michael’s just married, but his wife’s breeding.” The sun was behind him, darkening his face, so that his teeth flashed suddenly white when he smiled. “Ye didna ken ye were a great-aunt seven times over, aye?”
“A great-aunt?” I said, staggered.
“Well, I’m a great-uncle,” he said cheerfully, “and I havena found it a terrible trial, except for having my beads gnawed when the weans are cutting teeth—that, and bein’ expected to answer to ‘Nunkie’ a lot.”
Sometimes twenty years seemed like an instant, and sometimes it seemed like a very long time indeed.
“Er…there isn’t a feminine equivalent of ‘Nunkie,’ I hope?”
“Oh, no,” he assured me. “They’ll all call ye Great-Auntie Claire, and treat ye wi’ the utmost respect.”
“Thanks a lot,” I muttered, with visions of the hospital’s geriatric wing fresh in my mind.
Jamie laughed, and with a lightness of heart no doubt engendered by being newly freed from sin, grasped me around the waist and lifted me onto