Outlander aka Cross Stitch - Gabaldon Diana - Страница 30

He grinned suddenly. “Have ye heard – well, no, ye wouldna. I was goin’ to say had ye heard the grace they say in the crofts.”

“No. How does it go?”

He shook his hair out of his eyes and recited,

“Hurley, hurley, round the table,

Eat as muckle as ye’re able.

Eat muckle, pooch nane,

Hurley, hurley, Amen.”

“Pooch nane?” I said, diverted. He patted the sporran on his belt.

“Put it in your belly, not your bag,” he explained.

He reached out for one of the long-bladed grasses and pulled it smoothly from its sheath. He rolled it slowly between his palms, making the floppy grainheads fly out from the stem.

“It was a late winter then, and mild, which was lucky, or we’d not have lasted. We could usually snare a few rabbits – ate them raw, sometimes, if we couldna risk a fire – and once in a while some venison, but there’d been no game for days, this time I’m talkin’ of.”

Square white teeth crunched down on the grass stem. I plucked a stem myself and nibbled the end. It was sweet and faintly acid, but there was only an inch or so of stem tender enough to eat; hardly much nourishment there.

Tossing the half-eaten stalk away, Jamie plucked another, and went on with his story.

“There was a light snow a few days before; just a crust under the trees, and mud everywhere else. I was looking for fungas, ye know, the big orange things that grow on the trees low down, sometimes – and put my foot through a rind of snow into a patch of grass, growing in an open spot between the trees; reckon a little sun got in there sometimes. Usually the deer find those patches. They paw away the snow and eat the grass down to the roots. They hadn’t found this one yet, and I thought if they managed the winter that way, why not me? I was hungry enough I’d ha’ boiled my boots and eaten them, did I not need them to walk in, so I ate the grass, down to the roots, like the deer do.”

“How long had you been without food?” I asked, fascinated and appalled.

“Three days wi’ nothing; a week with naught more than drammach – a handful of oats and a little milk. Aye,” he said, reminiscently viewing the grass stalk in his hand, “winter grass is tough, and it’s sour – not like this – but I didna pay it much mind.” He grinned at me suddenly.

“I didna pay much mind to the thought that a deer’s got four stomachs, either, while I had but one. Gave me terrible cramps, and I had wind for days. One of the older men told me later that if you’re going to eat grass, ye boil it first, but I didna know that at the time. Wouldn’t ha’ mattered; I was too hungry to wait.” He scrambled to his feet, leaning down to give me a hand up.

“Best get back to work. Thank ye for the food, lass.” He handed me the basket, and headed for the horse-sheds, sun glinting on his hair as though on a trove of gold and copper coins.

I made my way slowly back to the castle, thinking about men who lived in cold mud and ate grass. It didn’t occur to me until I had reached the courtyard that I had forgotten all about his shoulder.

Chapter 7. DAVIE BEATON’S CLOSET

To my surprise, one of Colum’s kilted men-at-arms was waiting for me near the gate when I returned to the castle. Himself would be obliged, I was told, if I would wait upon him in his chambers.

The long casements were open in the laird’s private sanctum, and the wind swept through the branches of the captive trees with a rush and a murmur that gave the illusion of being outdoors.

The laird himself was writing at his desk when I entered, but stopped at once and rose to greet me. After a few words of inquiry as to my health and well-being, he led me over to the cages against the wall, where we admired the tiny inhabitants as they chirped and hopped through the foliage, excited by the wind.

“Dougal and Mrs. Fitz both say as you’ve quite some skill as a healer,” Colum remarked conversationally, extending a finger through the mesh of the cage. Well accustomed to this, apparently, a small grey bunting swooped down and made a neat landing, tiny claws gripping the finger and wings slightly spread to keep its balance. He stroked its head gently with the callused forefinger of the other hand. I saw the thickened skin around the nail and wondered at it; it hardly seemed likely that he did much manual labor.

I shrugged. “It doesn’t take that much skill to dress a superficial wound.”

He smiled. “Maybe not, but it takes a bit of skill to do it in the pitch-black dark by the side of a road, eh? And Mrs. Fitz says you’ve mended one of her wee lads’ fingers as was broken, and bound up a kitchen-maid’s scalded arm this morning as well.”

“That’s nothing very difficult, either,” I replied, wondering what he was getting at. He gestured to one of the attendants, who quickly fetched a small bowl from one of the drawers of the secretary. Removing the lid, Colum began scattering seed from it through the mesh of the cage. The tiny birds popped down from the branches like so many cricket balls bouncing on a pitch, and the bunting flew down to join its fellows on the ground.

“No connections to clan Beaton, have ye?” he asked. I remembered Mrs. FitzGibbons asking at our first meeting, Are ye a charmer, then? A Beaton?

“None. What have the clan Beaton to do with medical treatment?”

Colum eyed me in surprise. “You’ve not heard of them? The healers of clan Beaton are famous through the Highlands. Traveling healers, many of them. We had one here for a time, in fact.”

“Had one? What happened to him?” I asked.

“He died,” Colum responded matter-of-factly. “Caught a fever and it carried him off within a week. We’ve not had a healer since, save Mrs. Fitz.”

“She seems very competent,” I said, thinking of her efficient treatment of the young man Jamie’s injuries. Thinking of that made me think of what had caused them, and I felt a wave of resentment toward Colum. Resentment, and caution as well. This man, I reminded myself, was law, jury, and judge to the people in his domain – and clearly accustomed to having things his own way.

He nodded, still intent on the birds. He scattered the rest of the seed, favoring a late-coming grey-blue warbler with the last handful.

“Oh, aye. She’s quite a hand with such matters, but she’s more than enough to take care of already, running the whole castle and everyone in it – including me,” he said, with a sudden charming grin.

“I was wondering,” he said, taking swift advantage of my answering smile, “seeing as how you’ve not a great deal to occupy your time at present, you might think of having a look at the things Davie Beaton left behind him. You might know the uses of a few of his medicines and such.”

“Well… I suppose so. Why not?” In fact, I was becoming slightly bored with the round between garden, stillroom, and kitchen. I was curious to see what the late Mr. Beaton had considered useful in the way of paraphernalia.

“Angus or I could show the lady down, sir,” the attendant suggested respectfully.

“Don’t trouble yourself, John,” Colum said, gesturing the man politely away. “I’ll show Mistress Beauchamp myself.”

His progress down the stair was slow and obviously painful. Just as obviously, he didn’t wish for help, and I offered none.

The surgery of the late Beaton proved to be in a remote corner of the castle, tucked out of sight behind the kitchens. It was in close proximity to nothing save the graveyard, in which its late proprietor now rested. In the outer wall of the castle, the narrow, dark room boasted only one of the tiny slit windows, set high in the wall so that a flat plane of sunlight knifed through the air, separating the darkness of the high vaulted ceiling from the deeper gloom of the floor below.