Voyager - Diana Gabaldon [38]
“You did it!” Young Jamie had gotten to his feet, face wet and swollen with tears and rage, and was advancing on the Captain, curly black head lowered like a small ram’s. “You killed my brother, ye English prick!”
The Captain was somewhat taken aback by this sudden attack, and actually took a step back, blinking at the boy. “No, boy, you’re quite mistaken. Why, I only—”
“Prick! Cod! A mhic an diabhoil!” Entirely beside himself, Young Jamie was stalking the Captain, yelling every obscenity he had ever heard used, in Gaelic or English.
“Enh,” said baby Ian in the elder Jamie’s ear. “Enh, enh!” This sounded very much like the preliminary to a full-fledged screech, and in a panic, Jamie let go of his dirk and thrust his thumb into the soft, moist opening from which the sounds were issuing. The baby’s toothless gums clamped onto his thumb with a ferocity that nearly made him exclaim aloud.
“Get out! Get out! Get out or I’ll kill ye!” Young Jamie was screaming at the Captain, face contorted with rage. The Redcoat looked helplessly at the bed, as though to ask Jenny to call off this implacable small foe, but she lay as though dead with her eyes closed.
“I shall wait for my men downstairs,” the Captain said, with what dignity he could, and withdrew, shutting the door hastily behind him. Deprived of his enemy, Young Jamie fell to the floor and collapsed into helpless weeping.
Through the crack in the door, Jamie saw Mrs. Innes look at Jenny, mouth opening to ask a question. Jenny shot up from the bedclothes like Lazarus, scowling ferociously, finger pressed to her lips to enjoin silence. Baby Ian champed viciously at the thumb, growling at its failure to yield any sustenance.
Jenny swung herself to the side of the bed and sat there, waiting. The sounds of the soldiers below throbbed and eddied through the house. Jenny was shaking with weakness, but she reached out a hand toward the armoire where her men lay hidden.
Jamie drew a deep breath and braced himself. It would have to be risked; his hand and wrist were wet with saliva, and the baby’s growls of frustration were growing louder.
He stumbled from the wardrobe, drenched with sweat, and thrust the infant at Jenny. Baring her breast with a single wrench, she pressed the small head to her nipple, and bent over the tiny bundle, as though to protect it. The beginnings of a squawk disappeared into the muffled sounds of vigorous sucking, and Jamie sat down on the floor quite suddenly, feeling as though someone had run a sword behind his knees.
Young Jamie had sat up at the sudden opening of the wardrobe, and now sat spraddled against the door, his face blank with bewildered shock as he looked from his mother to his uncle and back again. Mrs. Innes knelt beside him, whispering urgently in his ear, but no sign of comprehension showed on the small, tear-streaked face.
By the time shouts and the creaking of harness outside betokened the soldiers’ departure, Young Ian lay replete and snoring in his mother’s arms. Jamie stood by the window, just out of sight, watching them go.
The room was silent, save for the liquid noise of Mrs. Innes, drinking whisky. Young Jamie sat close against his mother, cheek pressed to her shoulder. She had not looked up once since taking the baby, and still sat, head lowered over the child in her lap, her black hair hiding her face.
Jamie stepped forward and touched her shoulder. The warmth of her seemed shocking, as though cold dread were his natural state and the touch of another person somehow foreign and unnatural.
“I’ll go to the priest hole,” he said softly, “and to the cave when it’s dark.”
Jenny nodded, but without looking up at him. There were several white hairs among the black, he saw, glinting silver by the parting down the center of her head.
“I think…I should not come down again,” he said at last. “For a time.”
Jenny said nothing, but nodded once more.
6
BEING NOW JUSTIFIED BY HIS BLOOD
As it was,