An echo in the bone - Gabaldon Diana. Страница 218

MamaP.S. Your father insists upon adding a few words to this. This will be his first try at writing with his altered hand, and I would like to watch to see how it’s working, but he instructs me firmly that he requires privacy. I don’t know whether this is to do with his subject matter or simply with the fact that he doesn’t want anyone to see him struggle. Both, probably.

The third page of the letter was markedly different. The writing was much larger than usual, and more sprawling. Still identifiably her father’s hand, but the letters seemed looser, less jagged somehow. She felt her heart twist, not only from the thought of her father’s mutilated hand, slowly drawing each letter—but for what he had thought it worth so much effort to write:My Dearest,

Your Brother is alive, and unwounded. I saw him march out from Saratoga with his Troops, bound for Boston and eventually England. He will not fight again in this War. Deo gratias.Your most loving Father,

JFPostscriptum: It is the Feast of All Saints. Pray for me.

The nuns had always told them—and she’d told him. By saying an Our Father, a Hail Mary, and a Glory Be on the Feast of All Saints, you can obtain the release of a soul from purgatory.

“You bloody man,” she muttered, sniffing ferociously and fumbling in her desk for a tissue. “I knew you’d make me cry. Again.”

“BRIANNA?”

Roger’s voice came from the kitchen, surprising her. She hadn’t expected him to come down from the chapel ruins for another hour or two, and she blew her nose hastily, calling, “Coming!” and hoping that the recent tears didn’t show in her voice. It was only as she hit the corridor and saw him holding the green baize door to the kitchen half open that it occurred to her that there had been something odd about his voice, as well.

“What is it?” she said, hastening her step. “The kids—”

“They’re fine,” he interrupted. “I told Annie to take them down to the post office in the village for an ice cream.” He stepped away from the door then and beckoned her to enter.

She stopped dead, just inside the door. A man was leaning back against the old stone sink, arms folded. He straightened up when he saw her and bowed, in a way that struck her as terribly odd and yet familiar. Before she could think why that should be, he straightened again and said, “Your servant, ma’am,” in a soft Scottish voice.

She looked straight into eyes that were the twins of Roger’s, then glanced wildly at Roger, just to be sure. Yes, they were.

“Who—”

“Allow me to introduce William Buccleigh MacKenzie,” Roger said, a distinct edge in his voice. “Also known as the Nuckelavee.”

For an instant, none of this made any sense whatever. Then things—astonishment, fury, disbelief—came flooding into her mind at such a rate that none of them could make it to her mouth, and she simply gaped at the man.

“I’ll ask your pardon, ma’am, for frightening your weans,” the man said. “I’d nay notion they were yours, for the one thing. I ken what weans are like, though, and I didna wish to be discovered before I’d made some sense of it all.”

“All… what?” Brianna finally found a couple of words. The man smiled, very slightly.

“Aye, well. As to that, I think you and your husband may know better than I.”

Brianna pulled out a chair and sat down rather abruptly, motioning to the man to do the same. As he came forward into the light from the window, she saw that there was a graze on his cheekbone—a prominent cheekbone, and one that with the modeling of his temple and eye socket seemed terribly familiar; the man himself seemed familiar. But of course he was, she thought dazedly.

“Does he know who he is?” she asked, turning to Roger. Who, now that she noticed, was nursing his right hand, which appeared to have blood on the knuckles. He nodded.

“I told him. Not sure he believes me, though.”

The kitchen was its usual solid, homely place, peaceful with the autumn sun coming in and the blue-checkered dish towels hung on the Aga. But now it felt like the backside of Jupiter, and when she reached for the sugar bowl, she would not have been at all surprised to see her hand pass through it.

“I should be inclined to believe a good deal more today than I should have been three months ago,” the man said, with a dry intonation that held some faint echo of her father’s voice.

She shook her head violently, in hopes of clearing it, and said, “Would you like some coffee?” in a polite voice that could have belonged to a sitcom housewife.

His face lightened at that, and he smiled. His teeth were stained and a little crooked. Well, of course they are, she thought with remarkable lucidity. No dentists to speak of in the eighteenth century. The thought of the eighteenth century sent her surging to her feet.

“You!” she exclaimed. “You got Roger hanged!”

“I did,” he said, not looking very perturbed. “Not that I meant to. And if he likes to strike me again for it, I’ll let him. But—”

“That was for scaring the kids,” Roger said with equal dryness. “The hanging … we’ll maybe talk about that a bit later.”

“Fine talk for a minister,” the man said, looking faintly amused. “Not that most ministers go about interfering wi’ a man’s wife.”

“I—” Roger began, but she interrupted him.

“I’ll bloody hit you,” Brianna said, glaring at the man. Who, to her annoyance, squinched his eyes shut and leaned forward, features clenched.

“All right,” he said, through compressed lips. “Go ahead.”

“Not in the face,” Roger advised, surveying a bruised knuckle. “Make him stand up and go for his balls.”

William Buccleigh’s eyes popped open, and he looked reproachfully at Roger.

“D’ye think she needs advice?”

“I think you need a fat lip,” she told him, but sat slowly down again, eyeing him. She took a breath down to her toenails and let it out.

“Right,” she said, more or less calmly. “Start talking.”

He nodded cautiously and touched the bruise on his cheekbone, wincing a little.

Son of a witch, she thought suddenly. Does he know that?

“Did ye not mention coffee?” he asked, sounding a little wistful. “I havena had real coffee in years.”

HE WAS FASCINATED by the Aga and pressed his backside against it, fairly shivering with delight.

“Oh, sweet Virgin,” he breathed, eyes closed as he reveled in the heat. “Is it not the lovely thing.”

The coffee he pronounced good in itself but rather feeble—reasonable, Brianna thought, knowing that such coffee as he was used to was boiled over a fire, often for several hours, rather than gently perked. He apologized for his manners, which were actually fine, saying that he hadn’t eaten in some little while.

“How have ye been feeding yourself?” Roger asked, eyeing the steadily diminishing pile of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.

“Stole from cottages, to begin with,” Buccleigh admitted frankly. “After a bit, I found my way to Inverness and was sittin’ on the curb of the street, quite dazed by the huge great roaring things goin’ by me—I’d seen the cars on the road north, of course, but it’s different when they’re whizzin’ past your shins. Anyway, I’d sat down outside the High Street Church, for I knew that place, at least, and thought I’d go and ask the minister for a bite of bread when I’d got myself a bit more in hand. I was that wee bit rattled, ken,” he said, leaning confidentially toward Brianna.

“I suppose so,” she murmured, and lifted an eyebrow at Roger. “Old High St. Stephen’s?”

“Aye, it was the High Church—meaning on the High Street, not Anglican—before it was Old, or joined congregations with St. Stephen’s.” He switched his attention to William Buccleigh. “Did ye, then? Speak to the minister? Dr. Weatherspoon?”

Buccleigh nodded, mouth full.

“He saw me sitting there and came out to me, the kind man. Asked was I in need, and when I assured him I was, he told me where to go for food and a bed, and I went there. An aid society, they called it, a charity, and it surely was.”