* * *
I took down the bottles from the cupboard, one by one, uncorking one now and then to sniff at the contents. If not thoroughly dry before storage, fleshy-leaved herbs would rot in the bottle; seeds would grow exotic molds.
The thought of molds made me think once more of my penicillin plantation. Or what I hoped might one day be one, were I lucky enough, and observant enough to know my luck. Of the hundreds of molds that grew easily on stale, damp bread, Penicillium was only one. What were the odds of a stray spore of that one precious mold taking root on the slices of bread I laid out weekly? What were the odds of an exposed slice of bread surviving long enough for any spores to find it? And lastly, what were the odds that I would recognize it if I saw it?
I had been trying for more than a year, with no success so far.
Even with the marigolds and yarrow I scattered for repellency, it was impossible to keep the vermin away. Mice and rats, ants and cockroaches; one day I had even found a party of burglarious squirrels in the pantry, holding riot over scattered corn and the gnawed ruins of half my seed potatoes.
The only recourse was to lock all edibles in the big hutch Jamie had built—that, or keep them in thick wooden casks or lidded jars, resistent to the efforts of tooth and claw. But to seal food away from four-footed thieves was also to seal it away from the air—and the air was the only messenger that might one day bring me a real weapon against disease.
Each of the plants carries an antidote to some illness—if we only knew what it was. I felt a renewed pang of loss when I thought of Nayawenne; not only for herself but for her knowledge. She had taught me only a fraction of the things she knew, and I regretted that most bitterly—though not as bitterly as the loss of my friend.
Still, I knew one thing she had not—the manifold virtues of that smallest of plants, the lowly bread mold. To find it would be difficult, to recognize it, and to use it, even more so. But I never doubted it was worth the search.
To leave bread exposed in the house was to draw the mice and rats inside. I had tried setting it on the sideboard—Ian had absentmindedly consumed half of my budding antibiotic incubator, and mice and ants made short work of the rest while I was away from the house.
It was simply impossible, in summer, spring, or autumn, either to leave bread exposed and unguarded or to stay inside to look after it. There were too many urgent chores to be done outside, too many calls to attend births or illness, too much opportunity for foraging.
In the winter, of course, the vermin went away, to lay their eggs against the spring, and hibernate under a blanket of dead leaves, secure from the cold. But the air was cold, too; too cold to bring me living spores. The bread I laid out either curled and dried, or went soggy, depending on its distance from the fire; in either case, sporting nothing but the occasional orange or pink crust: the molds that lived in the crevices of the human body.
I would try again in the spring, I thought, sniffing at a bottle of dried marjoram. It was good; musky as incense, smelling of dreams. The new house on the ridge was already rising, foundation laid and rooms marked out. I could see the skeletal framework from the cabin door, black against the clear September sky on the ridge.
By the spring, it would be finished. I would have plastered walls and laid oak floors, glass windows with stout frames that kept out mice and ants—and a nice snug, sunny surgery in which to conduct my medical practice.
My glowing visions were interrupted by a raucous bellow from the penfold; Clarence announcing an arrival. I could hear voices in the distance, in between Clarence’s shrieks of ecstasy, and I hastily began to tidy away the scatter of corks and bottles. It must be Jamie returning with Fergus and Marsali—or at least I hoped so.
Jamie had been confident of the trial’s outcome, but I worried nonetheless. Raised to believe that British law in the abstract was one of the great achievements of civilization, I had seen a good deal too many of its concrete applications to have much faith in its avatars. On the other hand, I had quite a bit of faith in Jamie.
Clarence’s vocalizations had dropped to the wheezing gargle he used for intimate converse, but the voices had stopped. That was odd. Perhaps things had gone wrong after all?
I thrust the last of the bottles back into the cupboard and went to the door. The dooryard was empty. Clarence hee-hawed enthusiastically at my appearance, but nothing else moved. Someone had come, though—the chickens had scattered, fleeing into the bushes.
A brisk chill ran up my spine and I whirled, trying to look in front of me and over my shoulder at the same time. Nothing. The chestnut trees behind the house sighed in the breeze, a shimmer of sun filtered through their yellowing leaves.
I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that I wasn’t alone. Damn, and I’d left my knife on the table inside!
“Sassenach.” My heart nearly stopped at the sound of Jamie’s voice. I spun toward it, relief being rapidly overcome by annoyance. What did he think he—
For a split second, I thought I was seeing double. They were sitting on the bench outside the door, side by side, the afternoon sun igniting their hair like matchheads.
My eyes focused on Jamie’s face, alight with joy—then shifted right.
“Mama.” It was the same expression; eagerness and joy and longing all together. I had no time even to think before she was in my arms, and I was in the air, knocked off my feet both literally and figuratively.
“Mama!”
I hadn’t any breath; what hadn’t been taken away by shock was being squeezed out by a rib-crushing hug.
“Bree!” I managed to gasp, and she put me down, though she didn’t let go. I looked disbelievingly up, but she was real. I looked for Jamie, and found him standing beside her. He said nothing, but gave me an face-splitting grin, his ears bright pink with delight.
“I, ah, I wasn’t expecting—” I said idiotically.
Brianna gave me a grin to match her father’s, eyes bright as stars and damp with happiness.
“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”
“What?” said Jamie blankly.
PART TEN
Impaired Relations
42
MOONLIGHT
September 1769
She woke from a dreamless sleep, a hand on her shoulder. She jerked and started up on one elbow, blinking. Jamie’s face was barely distinguishable above her in the gloom; the fire had burned down to nothing more than a glow, and it was nearly pitch-black in the cabin.
“I shall be hunting up the mountain, lass; will ye come wi’ me?” he whispered.
She rubbed her eyes, trying to reassemble her sleep-scattered thoughts, and nodded.
“Good. Wear your breeks.” He rose silently and went out, letting in a breath of piercing-sweet cold air as the door opened.
By the time she had pulled on breeks and stockings, he was back, moving just as silently, despite the armload of firewood he carried. He nodded to her and knelt to rekindle the fire; she thrust her arms into her coat and went out herself, in search of the privy.
The world outside was black and dreamlike; if not for the chill, she might have thought herself still asleep. Stars burned coldly bright, but seemed to hang low, as though they might fall from the sky any minute and be extinguished, sizzling, in the mist-damp trees on the ridges beyond.
What time was it? she wondered, shivering at the touch of damp wood on her sleep-warmed thighs. Somewhere in the small hours; surely it was a long time until dawn. Everything was hushed; no insects hummed yet in her mother’s garden, and there were no rustlings, even from the dry corn-stooks propped in the field.
When she pushed open the door of the cabin, the air inside seemed almost solid; a block of stale smoke, fried food, and the smell of sleeping bodies. By contrast, the air outside was sweet but thin—she kept taking large gulps, to get enough.
He was ready; a leather bag was tied at his belt with ax and powder horn, a bigger canvas sack slung over his shoulder. She didn’t come in, but stood in the doorway watching as he bent quickly and kissed her mother in the bed.
He knew she was there, of course—and it was no more than a light kiss on the forehead—but she felt like an intruder, a voyeur. The more so when Claire’s long, pale hand floated up from the quilts and touched his face with a tenderness that squeezed her heart. Claire murmured something, but Brianna didn’t hear it.
She turned away quickly, face hot in spite of the chilly air, and was standing by the edge of the clearing when he came out. He shut the door behind him, waiting for the clunk within as it was barred. He had a gun, a long-barreled thing that seemed nearly as tall as she was.
He didn’t speak, but smiled at her and cocked his head toward the wood. She followed, keeping up easily as he took a faint trail that led through groves of spruce and chestnut. His feet knocked the dew from clumps of grass, and left a dark trail through tussocks of shimmering silver.
The trail wound to and fro, nearly level for a long time, but then began to head uphill. She felt the shift, rather than saw it. It was still very dark, but suddenly the silence was gone. In the next breath, a bird began to call from the wood nearby.
Then the whole mountainside was alive with birdsong, screeches and trills and whirrs. Under the calling was a sense of movement, of fluttering and scratching just below the threshold of hearing. He stopped, listening.
She stopped, too, looking at him. The light had changed so slowly that she was scarcely aware of it; her eyes adapted to the dark, she could see easily by the starlight, and knew the change to daylight only when she glanced from the ground and saw the vivid color of her father’s hair.
He had food in his bag; they sat on a log and shared apples and bread. Then she drank from a trickle that dropped from a ledge, filling her hands with cold crystal. Looking back, she could no longer see any trace of the small settlement; houses and fields were gone, as though the mountain had silently drawn her forests together, swallowing them up.
She wiped her hands on the skirts of her coat, feeling the prickly shape of the conker in her pocket. No horse chestnuts on these wooded slopes; that was an English tree, planted by some expatriate in the hope of creating a memory of home; a living link to another life. She curled her hand around it briefly, wondering whether her own links had been severed for good, then let it go, and turned to follow her father uphill.
At first her heart had pounded and her thigh muscles strained at the unaccustomed labor of climbing, but then her body had found the rhythm of the ground. With the coming of light, she no long stumbled. By the time they emerged at the top of a steep slope, her feet trod so lightly on the spongy leaves that she felt she might float off into the sky that seemed so near, cut free of the earth.
For a single moment, she wished that she could. But the links still held in the chain that bound her to the earth—her mother, her father, Lizzie…and Roger. The morning sun was rising, a great ball of flame above the mountains. She had to shut her eyes for a moment, not to be blinded.