Voyager - Diana Gabaldon [291]
Sometime later, he came back up, sweating profusely, with a small bundle tucked under his arm. Young Ian’s shirt, coat, shoes and stockings, with his knife and the small leather pouch in which the lad kept such valuables as he had.
“Do you mean to take them home to Jenny?” I asked. I tried to imagine what Jenny might think, say, or do at the news, and succeeded all too well. I felt a little sick, knowing that the hollow, aching sense of loss I felt was as nothing to what hers would be.
Jamie’s face was flushed from the climb, but at my words, the blood drained from his cheeks. His hands tightened on the bundle.
“Oh, aye,” he said, very softly, with great bitterness. “Aye, I shall go home and tell my sister that I have lost her youngest son? She didna want him to come wi’ me, but I insisted. I’ll take care of him, I said. And now he is hurt and maybe dead—but here are his clothes, to remember him by?” His jaw clenched, and he swallowed convulsively.
“I’d rather be dead myself,” he said.
He knelt on the ground then, shaking out the articles of clothing, folding them carefully, and laying them together in a pile. He folded the coat carefully around the other things, stood up, and stuffed the bundle into his saddlebag.
“Ian will be needing them, I expect, when we find him,” I said, trying to sound convinced.
Jamie looked at me, but after a moment, he nodded.
“Aye,” he said softly. “I expect he will.”
It was too late in the day to begin the ride to Inverness. The sun was setting, announcing the fact with a dull reddish glow that barely penetrated the gathering mist. Without speaking, we began to make camp. There was cold food in the saddlebags, but neither of us had the heart to eat. Instead, we rolled ourselves up in cloaks and blankets and lay down to sleep, cradled in small hollows that Jamie had scooped in the earth.
I couldn’t sleep. The ground was hard and stony beneath my hips and shoulders, and the thunder of the surf below would have been sufficient to keep me awake, even had my mind not been filled with thoughts of Ian.
Was he badly hurt? The limpness of his body had bespoken some damage, but I had seen no blood. Presumably, he had merely been hit on the head. If so, what would he feel when he woke, to find himself abducted, and being carried farther from home and family with each passing minute?
And how were we ever to find him? When Jamie had first mentioned Jared, I had felt hopeful, but the more I thought of it, the slimmer seemed the prospects of actually finding a single ship, which might now be sailing in any direction at all, to anyplace in the world. And would his captors bother to keep Ian, or would they, on second thoughts, conclude that he was a dangerous nuisance, and pitch him overboard?
I didn’t think I slept, but I must have dozed, my dreams full of trouble. I woke shivering with cold, and edged out a hand, reaching for Jamie. He wasn’t there. When I sat up, I found that he had spread his blanket over me while I dozed, but it was a poor substitute for the heat of his body.
He was sitting some distance away, with his back to me. The offshore wind had risen with the setting of the sun, and blown some of the mist away; a half-moon shed enough light through the clouds to show me his hunched figure clearly.
I got up and walked over to him, folding my cloak tight about me against the chill. My steps made a light crunching sound on the crumbled granite, but the sound was drowned in the sighing rumble of the sea below. Still, he must have heard me; he didn’t turn around, but gave no sign of surprise when I sank down beside him.
He sat with his chin in his hands, his elbows on his knees, eyes wide and sightless as he gazed out into the dark water of the cove. If the seals were awake, they were quiet tonight.
“Are you all right?” I said quietly. “It’s beastly cold.” He was wearing nothing but his coat, and in the small, chilled hours of the night, in the wet, cold air above the sea, that was far from enough. I could feel the tiny, constant shiver that