An echo in the bone - Gabaldon Diana (читать книги TXT) 📗

I saw his point. In fact, I saw two of them—and him. I blinked and shook my head, momentarily reuniting the two Jamies, but there was no denying that he was right. I’d lost touch with my body again, but my mind, instead of sticking to the job, had simply wandered off somewhere in a daze. I rubbed my hands hard over my face, but it didn’t help appreciably.

“I’ll have to sleep,” I explained to the men, all four of them now watching me with the perfect wide-eyed attention of barn owls. “If you feel the pressure building up again—and I think it will,” I said to Stebbings, “pull the plug out of the tube until it eases, then put it back. If either of you think you’re dying, wake me up.”

With no further ado, and feeling as though I were watching myself doing it, I eased down onto the planking, put my head on a fold of Stebbings’s cloak, and fell asleep.

I WOKE AN UNACCOUNTABLE time later and lay for some minutes lacking coherent thought, my mind rising and falling with the movement of the deck beneath me. At some point, I began to distinguish the murmur of men’s voices from the shush and bang of seagoing noises.

I had fallen so deeply into oblivion that the events prior to my falling asleep took a moment to recall, but the voices brought them back. Wounds, the reek of brandy, the rip of sailcloth tearing, rough in my hands, and the smell of the dye in the bright, wet calico. Jamie’s bloody shirt. The sucking sound of the hole in Stebbings’s chest. The memory of that would have brought me upright at once, but I had stiffened from lying on the boards. A sharp twinge of agony lanced from my right knee to my groin, and the muscles of my back and arms hurt amazingly. Before I could stretch them enough to struggle to my feet, I heard the captain’s voice.

“Call Hickman.” Stebbings’s voice was hoarse and low, but definite. “I’d rather be shot than do this anymore.”

I didn’t think he was joking. Neither did Jamie.

“I dinna blame ye,” he said. His voice was soft but serious, as definite as Stebbings’s.

My eyes were beginning to focus again, as the paralyzing ache in my muscles eased a little. From where I lay, I could see Stebbings from the knees down and most of Jamie, sitting beside him, head bowed on his own knees, tall form slumped against the tea chest.

There was a pause, and then Stebbings said, “You don’t, eh? Good. Go get Hickman.”

“Why?” Jamie asked, after what seemed an equal pause for thought—or perhaps only to gather strength to answer. He didn’t lift his head; he sounded almost drugged with fatigue. “Nay need to rouse the man from his bed, is there? If ye want to die, just pull that thing out of your chest.”

Stebbings made some sort of noise. It might have started as a laugh, a groan, or an angry retort, but ended in a hiss of air between clenched teeth. My body tensed. Had he actually tried to pull it out?

No. I heard the heavy movement of his body, saw his feet curl briefly as he sought a more comfortable position, and heard Jamie’s grunt as he leaned over to help.

“Someone… might as well get… satisfaction from me … dying,” he wheezed.

“I put yon hole in ye,” Jamie pointed out. He straightened up and stretched with painful care. “It wouldna please me overmuch to watch ye die from it.” I thought he must be well past the point of exhaustion, and plainly he was as stiff as I was. I must get up, make him go lie down. But he was still talking to Stebbings, sounding unconcerned, like a man discussing an abstruse point of natural philosophy.

“As for satisfying Captain Hickman—d’ye feel some sense of obligation toward him?”

“I don’t.” That one came out short and sharp, though succeeded by a deep gasp for air.

“It’s a clean death,” Stebbings managed after a few more breaths. “Quick.”

“Aye, that’s what I thought,” Jamie said, sounding drowsy. “When it was me.”

Stebbings gave a grunt that might have been interrogative. Jamie sighed. After a moment, I heard the rustle of cloth and saw him move his left leg, groaning as he did so, and turn back the cloth of his kilt.

“See that?” His finger ran slowly up the length of his thigh, from just above the knee, almost to the groin.

Stebbings gave a slightly more interested grunt, this one definitely questioning. The drooping toes of his socks moved as his feet twitched.

“Bayonet,” Jamie said, casually flipping his kilt back over the twisting, runneled scar. “I lay for two days after, wi’ the fever eating me alive. My leg swelled, and it stank. And when the English officer came to blow our brains out, I was pleased enough.”

A brief silence.

“Culloden?” Stebbings asked. His voice was still hoarse, and I could hear the fever in it, but there was interest there now, too. “Heard… about it.”

Jamie said nothing in response but yawned suddenly, not bothering to smother it, and rubbed his hands slowly over his face. I could hear the soft rasp of beard stubble.

Silence, but the quality of it had changed. I could feel Stebbings’s anger, his pain and fright—but there was a faint sense of amusement in his labored breath.

“Going to … make me… ask?”

Jamie shook his head.

“Too long a story, and one I dinna care to tell. Leave it that I wanted him to shoot me, verra badly, and the bastard wouldna do it.”

The air in the little hold was stale but uneasy, filled with the shifting scents of blood and luxury, of industry and illness. I breathed in, gently, deep, and could smell the tang of the men’s bodies, a sharp copper savage smell, bitter with effort and exhaustion. Women never smelled like that, I thought, even in extremity.

“Revenge, then, is it?” Stebbings asked after a bit. His restless feet had stilled. His dirty stockings drooped and his voice was tired.

Jamie’s shoulders moved, slowly, as he sighed, and his own voice was nearly as tired as Stebbings’s.

“No,” he said, very softly. “Call it payment of a debt.”

A debt? I thought. To whom? To the Lord Melton who had declined to kill him, out of honor, who had instead sent him home from Culloden, hidden in a wagon filled with hay? To his sister, who had refused to let him die, who had dragged him back to life by sheer strength of will? Or to those who had died when he had not?

I had stretched myself enough now to be able to rise, but didn’t, yet. There was no urgency. The men were silent, their breathing part of the breathing of the ship, the sigh of the sea outside.

It came to me, quiet but sure, that I knew. I had glimpsed the abyss often, over someone’s shoulder as they stood on the edge, looking down. But I had looked once, too. I knew the vastness and the lure of it, the offer of surcease.

I knew they were standing now, side by side and each alone, looking down.

PART FOUR

Conjunction

A FLURRY OF SUSPICION

Lord John Grey to Mr. Arthur Norrington

4 February 1777

(Cipher 158)

My dear Norrington,

Pursuant to our conversation, I have made certain discoveries which I think it prudent to confide.I paid a visit to France at the end of the year and, while there, visited the Baron Amandine. I stayed with the baron for several days, in fact, and had conversation of him on a number of occasions. I have reason to believe that Beauchamp is indeed concerned in the matter we discussed and has formed an attachment to Beaumarchais, who is thus likely similarly involved. I think Amandine is not himself concerned but that Beauchamp may use him as a front of some kind.I requested an audience with Beaumarchais, but was denied. As he would normally have received me, I think I have poked a stick into some nest. It would be useful to watch that quarter.Be also alert to any mention in the French correspondence of a company called Rodrigue Hortalez et Cie (I beg you will speak with the person handling the Spanish correspondence, as well). I cannot discover anything amiss, but neither can I discover anything solid regarding them, such as the names of the directors, and that in itself strikes me as suspicious.If your duty allow, I should be pleased to hear of anything you learn concerning these matters.Your servant, sir,