Outlander aka Cross Stitch - Gabaldon Diana (библиотека электронных книг txt) 📗

“What exactly is it you’re planning to do, Geilie?” I asked, examining the preparations suspiciously. Off-hand, I couldn’t see much sinister intent in a pan, a candle, and a quilt, but then I was a novice magician, to say the least.

“Summoning,” she said, tugging the corners of the quilt around so that the sides lay straight with the boards of the floor.

“Summoning whom?” I asked. Or what.

She stood and brushed her hair back. Baby-fine and slippery, it was coming down from its fastenings. Muttering, she yanked the pins from her hair and let it fall down in a straight, shiny curtain, the color of heavy cream.

“Oh, ghosts, spirits, visions. Anything ye might have need of,” she said. “It starts the same in any case, but the herbs and the words are different for each thing. What we want now is a vision – to see who it is who’s ill-wished ye. Then we can turn the ill-wish back upon them.”

“Er, well…” I really had no wish to be vindictive, but I was curious – both to see what summoning was like, and to know who had left me the ill-wish.

Setting the pan in the middle of the quilt, she poured water into it from a jug, explaining, “You can use any vessel big enough to make a good reflection, though the grimoire says to use a silver bassin. Even a pond or a puddle of water outside will do for some kinds of summoning, though it must be secluded. Ye need peace and quiet to do this.”

She passed rapidly from window to window, drawing the heavy black curtains until virtually all the light in the room was extinguished. I could barely see Geilie’s slender form flitting through the gloom, until she lit the candle. The wavering flame lit her face as she carried it back to the quilt, throwing wedge-shaped shadows under the bold nose and chiseled jaw.

She set the candle next to the pan of water, on the side away from me. She filled the pan very carefully, so full that the water bulged slightly above the rim, kept from spilling by its surface tension. Leaning over, I could see that the surface of the water provided an excellent reflection, far better than that obtainable in any of the Castle’s looking glasses. As though mind reading again, Geilie explained that in addition to its use in summoning spirits, the reflecting pan was an excellent accessory for dressing the hair.

“Don’t bump into it, or you’ll get soaked,” she advised, frowning in concentration as she lit the candle. Something about the practical tone of the remark, so prosaic in the midst of these supernatural preparations, reminded me of someone. Looking up at the slender, pallid figure, stooping elegantly over the tinderbox, I couldn’t think at first of whom she reminded me. But of course. While no one could be less like that dowdy figure athwart the teapot in Reverend Wakefield’s study, the tone of voice had been that of Mrs. Graham, exactly.

Perhaps it was an attitude they shared, a pragmatism that regarded the occult as merely a collection of phenomena like the weather. Something to be approached with cautious respect, of course – much as one would take care in using a sharp kitchen knife – but certainly nothing to avoid or fear.

Or it might have been the smell of lavender water. Geilie’s loose, flowing gowns smelled always of the essences she distilled: marigold, chamomile, bay leaf, spikenard, mint, marjoram. Today, though, it was lavender that drifted from the folds of the white dress. The same scent that permeated Mrs. Graham’s practical blue cotton and wafted from the corrugations of her bony chest.

If Geilie’s chest was likewise underlaid by such skeletal supports, there was no hint of it visible, in spite of her robe’s low neckline. It was the first time I had seen Geilie Duncan en deshabille; customarily she wore the severe and voluminous gowns, buttoned high at the neck, that were suitable to the wife of a fiscal. The swelling opulence now revealed was a surprise, a creamy abundance almost the same shade as the dress she wore, and gave me some idea why a man like Arthur Duncan might have married a penniless girl of no family. My eye went involuntarily to the line of neatly labeled jars along the wall, looking for saltpeter.

Geilie selected three of the jars from the shelf, pouring a small quantity from each into the bowl of a tiny metal brazier. She lit the layer of charcoal underneath from the candle flame, and blew on the dawning flame to encourage it. A fragrant smoke began to rise as the spark took hold.

The air in the attic was so still that the greyish smoke rose straight up without diffusing, forming a column that echoed the shape of the tall white candle. Geilie sat between the two columns like a priestess in her temple, legs folded gracefully under her.

“Well then, that will do nicely, I think.” Briskly dusting crumbs of rosemary from her fingers, Geilie surveyed the scene with satisfaction. The black drapes, with their mystic symbols, shut out all intrusive beams of sunlight, and left the candle as the only source of direct illumination. The flame was reflected and diffused through the pan of still water, which seemed to glow as though it, too, were a source rather than a reflection of light.

“What now?” I inquired.

The large grey eyes glowed like the water, alight with anticipation. She waved her hands across the surface of the water, then folded them between her legs.

“Just sit quiet for a moment,” she said. “Listen to your heartbeat. Do you hear it? Breathe easy, slow and deep.” In spite of the liveliness of her expression, her voice was calm and slow, a distinct contrast to her usual sprightly conversation.

I obediently did as she instructed, feeling my heart slow as my breathing steadied to an even rhythm. I recognized the scent of rosemary in the smoke, but I wasn’t sure of the other two herbs; foxglove, perhaps, or cinquefoil? I had thought the purple flowers were those of nightshade, but surely that couldn’t be. Whatever they were, the slowness of my breathing did not seem to be attributable only to the power of Geilie’s suggestion. I felt as though a weight were pressing against my breastbone, slowing my breathing without my having to will it.

Geilie herself sat perfectly still, watching me with unblinking eyes. She nodded, once, and I looked down obediently into the still surface of the water.

She began to talk, in an even, conversational way that reminded me again of Mrs. Graham, calling down the sun in the circle of stones.

The words were not English, and yet not quite not English, either. It was a strange tongue, but one I felt that I should know, as though the words were spoken just below the level of my hearing.

I felt my hands begin to go numb, and wanted to move them from their folded position in my lap, but they wouldn’t move. Her even voice went on, soft and persuading. Now I knew that I understood what was being said, but still could not summon the words to the surface of my mind.

I realized dimly that I was either being hypnotized, or under the influence of some drug, and my mind took some last foothold on the edge of conscious thought, resisting the pull of the sweet-scented smoke. I could see my reflection in the water, pupils shrunk to pinpoints, eyes wide as a sun-blind owl’s. The word “opium” drifted through my fading thoughts.

“Who are you?” I couldn’t tell which of us had asked the question, but I felt my own throat move as I answered, “Claire.”

“Who sent you here?”

“I came.”

“Why did you come?”

“I can’t tell.”

“Why can’t you tell?”

“Because no one will believe me.”

The voice in my head grew still more soothing, friendly, beguiling.

“I will believe you. Believe me. Who are you?”

“Claire.”

A sudden loud noise broke the spell. Geilie started and her knee bumped the bassin, startling the reflection back into the water.