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

“Did you regret it that time?”

“Well, I doubled up my fists and glared up at him – he was a tall, scrawny fellow, maybe twenty, I suppose, though he looked quite old to me – and I said ‘I’m not afraid o’ you, and ye can’t make me cry, no matter how hard you hit me!’ ” He drew a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “I suppose it was a bit of a mistake in judgment to tell him that while he was still holding the strap.”

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “He tried to prove you were wrong?”

“Oh, aye, he tried.” Jamie nodded, head dark against the cloud-lit sky. His voice held a certain grim satisfaction on the word “tried.”

“He didn’t succeed, then?”

The shaggy head shook back and forth. “No. At least he couldna make me cry. He surely made me regret not keeping quiet, though.”

He paused for a moment, turning his own face toward me. The cloud cover had parted for a moment and the light touched the edges of jaw and cheek, making him look gilded, like one of Donatello’s archangels.

“When Dougal was describing my character to ye, before we wed, did he by chance mention that I’m sometimes a bit stubborn?” The slanted eyes glinted, much more Lucifer than Michael.

I laughed. “That’s putting it mildly. As I recall, what he said is that all the Frasers are stubborn as rocks, and you’re the worst of the lot. Actually,” I said, a little dryly, “I’d noticed something of the kind myself.”

He smiled as he reined the horse around a deep puddle in the road, leading mine by the checkrein after him.

“Mmph, well, I’ll no just say Dougal’s wrong,” he said, once the hazard had been negotiated. “But if I’m stubborn, I come by it honest. My father was just the same, and we’d get in wrangles from time to time that we couldna get out of without the application of force, usually wi’ me bent over the fence rail.”

Suddenly, he put out a hand to grab my horse’s rein, as the beast reared and snorted. “Hey now! Hush! Stad, mo dhu!” His own, less spooked, only jerked and tossed its head nervously.

“What is it?” I could see nothing, despite the patches of moonlight that mottled road and field. There was a pine grove up ahead, and the horses seemed disinclined to go any nearer to it.

“I don’t know. Stay here and keep quiet. Mount your horse and hold mine. If I call to ye, drop the checkrein and run for it.” Jamie’s voice was low and casual, calming me as well as the horses. With a muttered “Sguir!” to the horse and a slap on the neck to urge it closer to me, he faded into the heather, hand on his dirk.

I strained eyes and ears to discern whatever it was still troubling the horses; they shifted and stamped, ears and tails twitching in agitation. The clouds by now had shredded and flown on the nightwind, leaving only scattered trails across the face of a brilliant half moon. In spite of the brightness, I could see nothing on the road ahead, or in the menacing grove.

It seemed a late hour and an unprofitable road for highwaymen, scarce as these were anywhere in the Highlands; there were too few travelers to make an ambush worthwhile.

The grove was dark, but not still. The pines roared softly to themselves, millions of needles scouring in the wind. Very ancient trees, pines, and eerie in the gloom. Gymnosperms, cone-bearers, winged-seed scatterers, older and sterner by far than the soft-leaved, frail-limbed oaks and aspens. A suitable home for Rupert’s ghosts and evil spirits.

Only you, I thought crossly to myself, could work yourself up into being afraid of a lot of trees. Where was Jamie, though?

The hand gripping my thigh made me squeak like a startled bat; a natural consequence of trying to scream with your heart in your mouth. With the unreasonable fury of the irrationally afraid, I struck out at him, kicking him in the chest.

“Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

“Hush,” he said, “come with me.” Tugging me unceremoniously from the saddle, he swung me down and hastily tethered the horses, who whickered uneasily after us as he led me into the tall grass.

“What is it?” I hissed, stumbling blindly over roots and rocks.

“Quiet. Don’t speak. Look down and watch my feet. Step where I step, and stop when I touch you.”

Slowly and more or less silently, we made our way into the edges of the pine grove. It was dark under the trees, with only crumbs of light falling through to the needle litter underfoot. Even Jamie couldn’t walk silently on that, but the rustle of dry needles was lost in that of the green ones overhead.

There was a rift in the litter, a mass of granite rising from the forest floor. Here Jamie put me in front of him, guiding my hands and feet to climb the sloping crumble of the mound. At the top, there was enough room to lie belly-flat, side by side. Jamie put his mouth next to my ear, barely breathing. “Thirty feet ahead, to the right. In the clearing. See them?”

Once I saw them, I could hear as well. Wolves, a small pack, eight or ten animals, perhaps. No howling, not these. The kill lay in the shadow, a blob of dark with an upthrust leg, stick-thin and vibrating under the impact of teeth yanking at the carcass. There was only the occasional soft growl and yip as a cub was batted away from an adult’s morsel, and the contented sounds of feeding, crunching, and the crack of a bone.

As my eyes grew more accustomed to the moon-flecked scene, I could pick out several shaggy forms stretched under the trees, glutted and peaceful. Bits of grey fur shone here and there, as those still at the carcass pushed and rooted for tender bits overlooked by the earlier diners.

A broad, yellow-eyed head thrust suddenly up into a blotch of light, ears pricked. The wolf made a soft, urgent noise, something between a whine and a growl, and there was a sudden stillness under the trees below.

The saffron eyes seemed fixed on my own. There was no fear in the animal’s posture, nor curiosity, only a wary acknowledgment. Jamie’s hand on my back warned me not to move, though I felt no desire to run. I could have stayed locked in the wolf’s eyes for hours, I think, but she – I was sure it was a female, though I didn’t know how I knew – flicked her ears once, as though dismissing me, and bent once more to her meal.

We watched them for a few minutes, peaceful in the scattered light. At last, Jamie signaled that it was time to go, with a touch on my arm.

He kept the hand on my arm to support me as we made our way back through the trees to the road. It was the first time I had willingly allowed him to touch me since he had rescued me from Fort William. Still charmed by the sight of the wolves, we did not speak much, but began to feel comfortable with each other again.

As we walked, considering the stories he had told me, I couldn’t help but admire the job he had done. Without one word of direct explanation or apology, he had given me the message he intended. I gave you justice, it said, as I was taught it. And I gave you mercy, too, so far as I could. While I could not spare you pain and humiliation, I make you a gift of my own pains and humiliations, that yours might be easier to bear.

“Did you mind a lot?” I said abruptly. “Being beaten, I mean. Did you get over it easily?”

He squeezed my hand lightly before letting it go.

“Mostly I forgot it as soon as it was over. Except for the last time; that took awhile.”

“Why?”

“Ah, well. I was sixteen, for one thing, and a man grown… I thought. For another, it hurt like hell.”

“You don’t have to tell me about it if you don’t want to,” I said, sensing his hesitation. “Is it a painful story?”

“Not nearly as painful as the beating,” he said, laughing. “No, I don’t mind tellin’ ye. It’s a long story, is all.”

“It’s a long way to Bargrennan yet.”

“So it is. Well, then. You recall I told ye I spent a year at Castle Leoch when I was sixteen? It was an agreement between Colum and my father – so I’d be familiar wi’ my mother’s clan. I fostered wi’ Dougal for two years, and then went to the Castle for a year, to learn manners, and Latin and such.”