Voyager - Diana Gabaldon [423]
“Huh.” The prisoner was still wary, but beginning to relax. “You tell me, mon—what this boy be like?”
Jamie hesitated for a moment, studying the prisoner, but then shook his head.
“No,” he said thoughtfully. “I dinna think that will work. You describe to me such lads as ye saw on the pirate vessel.”
The prisoner eyed Jamie for a moment, then broke out in a low, rich laugh.
“You no particular fool, mon,” he said. “You know that?”
“I know that,” Jamie said dryly. “So long as ye know it as well. Tell me, then.”
Ishmael snorted briefly, but complied, pausing only to refresh himself from the tray of food Fergus had brought. Fergus himself lounged against the door, watching the prisoner through half-lidded eyes.
“They be twelve boys talkin’ strange, like you.”
Jamie’s eyebrows shot up, and he exchanged a glance of astonishment with me. Twelve?
“Like me?” He said. “White boys, English? Or Scots, d’ye mean?”
Ishmael shook his head in incomprehension; “Scot” was not in his vocabulary.
“Talkin’ like dogs fightin’,” he explained. “Grrrr! Wuff!” He growled, shaking his head in illustration like a dog worrying a rat, and I saw Fergus’s shoulders shake in suppressed hilarity.
“Scots for sure,” I said, trying not to laugh. Jamie shot me a brief dirty look, then returned his attention to Ishmael.
“Verra well, then,” he said, exaggerating his natural soft burr. “Twelve Scottish lads. What did they look like?”
Ishmael squinted dubiously, chewing a piece of mango from the tray. He wiped the juice from the corner of his mouth and shook his head.
“I only see them once, mon. Tell you all I see, though.” He closed his eyes and frowned, the vertical lines on his forehead drawing close together.
“Four boys be yellow-haired, six brown, two with black hair. Two shorter than me, one maybe the size that griffone there”—he nodded toward Fergus, who stiffened in outrage at the insult—“one big, not so big as you…”
“Aye, and how will they have been dressed?” Slowly, carefully, Jamie drew him through the descriptions, asking for details, demanding comparisons—how tall? how fat? what color eyes?—carefully concealing the direction of his interest as he drew the man further into conversation.
My head had stopped spinning, but the fatigue was still there, weighting my senses. I let my eyes close, obscurely soothed by the deep, murmuring voices. Jamie did sound rather like a big, fierce dog, I thought, with his soft growling burr and the abrupt, clipped sound of his consonants.
“Wuff,” I murmured under my breath, and my belly muscles quivered slightly under my folded hands.
Ishmael’s voice was just as deep, but smooth and low, rich as hot chocolate made with cream. I began to drift, lulled by the sound of it.
He sounded like Joe Abernathy, I thought drowsily, dictating an autopsy report—unvarnished and unappetizing physical details, related in a voice like a deep golden lullaby.
I could see Joe’s hands in memory, dark on the pale skin of an accident victim, moving swiftly as he made his verbal notes to the tape recorder.
“Deceased is a tall man, approximately six feet in height, and slender in build.…”
A tall man, slender.
“—that one, he bein’ tall, bein’ thin…”
I came awake suddenly, heart pounding, hearing the echo of Joe’s voice coming from the table a few feet away.
“No!” I said, quite suddenly, and all three men stopped and looked at me in surprise. I pushed back the weight of my damp hair and waved weakly at them.
“Don’t mind me; I was dreaming, I think.”
They returned to their conversation, and I lay still, eyes half-closed, but no longer sleepy.
There was no physical resemblance. Joe was stocky and bearlike; this Ishmael slender and lean, though the swell of muscle over the curve of his shoulder suggested considerable strength.
Joe’s face was broad and amiable; this man’s narrow and wary-eyed, with a high forehead that made his tribal scars the more striking. Joe’s skin was the color