Voyager - Diana Gabaldon [380]
“Are those members of the Dermestidae you have there, Fogden?” Lawrence Stern, having tenderly committed the corpse of his cave fish to a jar of alcoholic spirits, had come to join us. He peered over my shoulder, sunburned features creased in interest.
Inside the cupboard, the white maggot larvae of dermestid beetles were hard at work, polishing the skull of Arabella the sheep. They had made a good start on the eyes. The manioc shifted heavily in my stomach.
“Is that what they are? I suppose so; dear voracious little fellows.” The priest swayed alarmingly, catching himself on the edge of the cupboard. As he did so, he finally noticed the old woman, standing glaring at him, a bucket in either hand.
“Oh, I had quite forgotten! You will be needing a change of clothing, will you not, Mrs. Fraser?”
I looked down at myself. The dress and shift I was wearing were ripped in so many places that they were barely decent, and so soaked and sodden with water and swamp-mud that I was scarcely tolerable, even in such undemanding company as that of Father Fogden and Lawrence Stern.
Father Fogden turned to the graven image. “Have we not something this unfortunate lady might wear, Mamacita?” he asked in Spanish. He seemed to hesitate, swaying gently. “Perhaps, one of the dresses in—”
The woman bared her teeth at me. “They are much too small for such a cow,” she said, also in Spanish. “Give her your old robe, if you must.” She cast an eye of scorn on my tangled hair and mud-streaked face. “Come,” she said in English, turning her back on me. “You wash.”
She led me to a smaller patio at the back of the house, where she provided me with two buckets of cold, fresh water, a worn linen towel, and a small pot of soft soap, smelling strongly of lye. Adding a shabby gray robe with a rope belt, she bared her teeth at me again and left, remarking genially in Spanish, “Wash away the blood on your hands, Christ-killing whore.”
I shut the patio gate after her with a considerable feeling of relief, stripped off my sticky, filthy clothes with even more relief, and made my toilet as well as might be managed with cold water and no comb.
Clad decently, if oddly, in Father Fogden’s extra robe, I combed out my wet hair with my fingers, contemplating my peculiar host. I wasn’t sure whether the priest’s excursions into oddness were some form of dementia, or only the side effects of long-term alcoholism and cannabis intoxication, but he seemed a gentle, kindly soul, in spite of it. His servant—if that’s what she was—was another question altogether.
Mamacita made me more than slightly nervous. Mr. Stern had announced his intention of going down to the seaside to bathe, and I was reluctant to go back into the house until he returned. There had been quite a lot of sangria left, and I suspected that Father Fogden—if he was still conscious—would be little protection by this time against that basilisk glare.
Still, I couldn’t stay outside all afternoon; I was very tired, and wanted to sit down at least, though I would have preferred to find a bed and sleep for a week. There was a door opening into the house from my small patio; I pushed it open and stepped into the dark interior.
I was in a small bedroom. I looked around, amazed; it didn’t seem part of the same house as the Spartan main room and the shabby patios. The bed was made up with feather pillows and a coverlet of soft red wool. Four huge patterned fans were spread like bright wings across the whitewashed walls, and wax candles in a branched brass candelabrum sat on the table.
The furniture was simply but carefully made, and polished with oil to a soft, deep gloss. A curtain of striped cotton hung across the end of the room. It was pushed partway back, and I could see a row of dresses hung on hooks behind it, in a rainbow of silken color.
These must be Ermenegilda’s dresses, the ones that Father Fogden had mentioned. I walked forward to look at them, my bare feet quiet on the floor.