An echo in the bone - Gabaldon Diana (книги без регистрации бесплатно полностью txt) 📗
THE CAVE
USEFUL HERBS, I wrote, and paused—as usual—to consider. Writing with a quill caused one to be both more deliberate and more economical in writing than doing it with ballpoint or typewriter. Still, I thought, I’d best just make a list here and jot down notes regarding each herb as they came to me, then make a clean draft when I’d got it all straight and made sure to include everything, rather than try to do it all in a single run.
Lavender, peppermint, comfrey, I wrote without hesitation. Calendula, feverfew, foxglove, meadow-sweet. Then went back to add a large asterisk beside foxglove to remind me to add strong cautions about the use, as all parts of the plant were extremely poisonous in any but very small doses. I twiddled the quill, biting my lip in indecision. Ought it to mention that one at all, given that this was meant to be a useful medical guide for the common man, not for medical practitioners with experience in various medicaments? Because, really, you ought not dose anyone with foxglove unless you’d been trained… Best not. I crossed it out but then had second thoughts. Perhaps I’d better mention it, with a drawing, but also with a severe warning that it should be used only by a physician, in case someone had the bright idea of remedying Uncle Tophiger’s dropsy permanently….
A shadow fell across the floor in front of me and I looked up. Jamie was standing there with a most peculiar look on his face.
“What?” I said, startled. “Has something happened?”
“No,” he said, and advancing into the study, leaned down and put his hands on the desk, bringing his face within a foot of mine.
“Have ye ever been in the slightest doubt that I need ye?” he demanded.
It took roughly half a second of thought to answer this.
“No,” I replied promptly. “To the best of my knowledge, you needed me urgently the moment I saw you. And I haven’t had reason to think you’ve got any more self-sufficient since. What on earth happened to your forehead? Those look like tooth—” He lunged across the desk and kissed me before I could finish the observation.
“Thank ye,” he said fervently, and, un-lunging, whirled and went out, evidently in the highest of spirits.
“What’s amiss wi’ Uncle Jamie?” Ian demanded, coming in on Jamie’s heels. He glanced back toward the open door into the hall, from the depths of which a loud, tuneless humming was coming, like that of a trapped bumblebee. “Is he drunk?”
“I don’t think so,” I said dubiously, running my tongue across my lips. “He didn’t taste of anything alcoholic.”
“Aye, well.” Ian lifted a shoulder, dismissing his uncle’s eccentricities. “I was just up beyond Broch Mordha, and Mr. MacAllister said to me that his wife’s mother was taken bad in the night, and would ye maybe think of coming by, if it wasn’t a trouble to ye?”
“No trouble at all,” I assured him, rising with alacrity. “Just let me get my bag.”
FOR ALL IT was spring, a cold, treacherous season, the tenants and neighbors seemed remarkably healthy. With some caution, I had resumed my doctoring, tentatively offering advice and medicine where it might be accepted. After all, I was no longer the lady of Lallybroch, and many of the folk who’d known me before were now dead. Those who weren’t seemed generally glad to see me, but there was a wariness in their eyes that hadn’t been there before. It saddened me to see it, but I understood it, all too well.
I had left Lallybroch, left Himself. Left them. And while they affected to believe the story Jamie put about, about my having thought him dead and fled to France, they couldn’t help but feel I had betrayed them by going. I felt I had betrayed them.
The easiness that had once existed between us was gone, and so I didn’t routinely visit as I once had; I waited to be called. And in the meantime, when I had to get out of the house, I went foraging on my own or walked with Jamie—who also had to get out of the house now and then.
One day, when the weather was windy but fine, he took me farther than usual, saying that he would show me his cave, if I liked.
“I would, very much,” I said. I put my hand above my eyes to shield them from the sun as I looked up a steep hill. “Is it up there?”
“Aye. Can ye see it?”
I shook my head. Aside from the big white rock the people called Leap o’ the Cask, it could have been any Highland hillside, clustered with gorse, broom, and heather, what ground showed in between only rocks.
“Come on, then,” Jamie said, and setting foot on an invisible foothold, smiled and reached a hand to help me up.
It was a hard climb, and I was panting and damp with perspiration by the time he pushed aside a screen of gorse to show me the narrow mouth of the cave.
“I WANT TO go in.”
“No, ye don’t,” he assured her. “It’s cold and it’s dirty.”
She gave him an odd look and half a smile.
“I’d never have guessed,” she said, very dry. “I still want to go in.”
There was no point in arguing with her. He shrugged and took off his coat to save its getting filthy, hanging it on a rowan sapling that had sprouted near the entrance. He put up his hands to the stones on either side of the entrance, but then was unsure; was it there he had always grasped the stone, or not? Christ, does it matter? he chided himself, and, taking firm hold of the rock, stepped in and swung down.
It was just as cold as he’d known it would be. It was out of the wind, at least—not a biting cold, but a dank chill that sank through the skin and gnawed at the bone ends.
He turned and reached up his hands, and she leaned to him, tried to climb down, but lost her footing and half-fell, landing in his arms in a fluster of clothes and loose hair. He laughed and turned her round to look, but kept his arms around her. He was loath to surrender the warmth of her and held her like a shield against cold memory.
She was still, leaning back against him, only her head moving as she looked from one end of the cave to the other. It was barely eight feet long, but the far end was lost in shadow. She lifted her chin, seeing the soft black stains that coated the rock to one side by the entrance.
“That’s where my fire was—when I dared have one.” His voice sounded strange, small and muffled, and he cleared his throat.
“Where was your bed?”
“Just there by your left foot.”
“Did you sleep with your head at this end?” She tapped her foot on the graveled dirt of the floor.
“Aye. I could see the stars, if the night was clear. I turned the other way if it rained.” She heard the smile in his voice and put her hand along his thigh, squeezing.
“I hoped that,” she said, her own voice a little choked. “When we learned about the Dunbonnet, and the cave… I thought about you, alone here—and I hoped you could see the stars at night.”
“I could,” he whispered, and bent his head to put his lips to her hair. The shawl she’d pulled over her head had slipped off, and her hair smelled of lemon balm and what she said was catmint.
She made a small hmp noise in her throat and folded her own arms over his, warming him through his shirt.
“I feel as though I’ve seen it before,” she said, sounding a little surprised. “Though I suppose one cave probably looks a good deal like any other cave, unless you have stalactites hanging from the ceiling or mammoths painted on the walls.”
“I’ve never had a talent for decoration,” he said, and she hmp’ed again, amused. “As for being here… ye’ve been here many nights wi’ me, Sassenach. You and the wee lass, both.” Though I didna ken then she was a lassie, he added silently, remembering with a small odd pang that now and then he had sat there on the flat rock by the entrance, imagining sometimes a daughter warm in his arms, but now and then feeling a tiny son on his knee and pointing out the stars to travel by, explaining to him how the hunting was done and the prayer ye must say when ye killed for food.
