30
CONVERSATIONS BY THE HEARTH
Whatever rift Jenny’s revelations had caused between her and Ian, it seemed to have healed. We sat for a short time after dinner in the parlor next evening, Ian and Jamie talking over the farm’s business in the corner, accompanied by a decanter of elderberry wine, while Jenny relaxed at last with her swollen ankles propped on a hassock. I tried to write down some of the receipts she had tossed over her shoulder at me as we whizzed through the day’s work, consulting her for details as I scribbled.
TO TREAT CARBUNCLES, I headed one sheet.
Three iron nails, to be soaked for one week in sour ale. Add one handful of cedarwood shavings, allow to set. When shavings have sunk to the bottom, mixture is ready. Apply three times daily, beginning on the first day of a quarter moon.
BEESWAX CANDLES began another sheet.
Drain honey from the comb. Remove dead bees, so far as possible. Melt comb with a small amount of water in a large cauldron. Skin bees, wings, and other impurities from surface of water. Drain water, replace. Stir frequently for half an hour, then allow to settle. Drain water, keep for use in sweetening. Purify with water twice more.
My hand was getting tired, and I had not even gotten to the making of candle molds, the twisting of wicks, and the hanging of candles to dry.
“Jenny,” I called, “how long does it take to make candles, counting everything?”
She laid the small shirt she was stitching in her lap, considering.
“Half a day to gather the combs, two to drain the honey—one if it’s hot—one day to purify the wax, unless there’s a lot or it’s verra dirty—then two. Half a day to make the wicks, one or two to make the molds, half a day to melt the wax, pour the molds and hang them to dry. Say a week altogether.”
The dim lamplight and the sputtering quill were too much to contend with after the day’s labors. I sat down next to Jenny and admired the tiny garment she was embroidering with nearly invisible stitches.
Her rounded stomach suddenly heaved, as the inhabitant shifted position. I watched, fascinated. I had never been close to someone pregnant for a prolonged period, and hadn’t realized the amount of activity that went on inside.
“Would you like to feel it?” Jenny offered, seeing me staring at her middle.
“Well…” She took my hand and placed it firmly on her mound.
“Right there. Just wait a moment; he’ll kick again soon. They don’t like ye lying back like this, ye know. It makes them restless and they start to squirm.”
Sure enough, a surprisingly vigorous push raised my hand by several inches.
“Goodness! He’s strong!” I exclaimed.
“Aye.” Jenny patted her stomach with a touch of pride. “He’ll be bonny, like his brother and his Da.” She smiled across at Ian, whose attention had momentarily wandered from the breeding records of horses to his wife and child-to-be.
“Or even like his good-for-nothing red-heided uncle,” she added, raising her voice slightly and nudging me.
“Hey?” Jamie looked up, distracted from his accounts. “Were ye speaking to me?”
“I wonder was it the ‘red-heided’ or the ‘good-for-nothing’ that caught his attention,” Jenny said to me, sotto voce, with another nudge.
To Jamie she said sweetly, “Nothing at all, mo cridh. We were just speculating on the possibility that the new one would have the misfortune to resemble its uncle.”
The uncle in question grinned and came across to sit on the hassock, Jenny amiably moving her feet, then replacing them in his lap.
“Rub them for me, Jamie,” she begged. “You’re better at it than Ian.”
He obliged, and Jenny leaned back and closed her eyes in bliss. She dropped the tiny shirt on her central mound, which continued to heave as though in protest. Jamie stared entranced at the movements, just as I had.
“Isn’t it uncomfortable?” he asked. “Havin’ someone turn somersaults in your belly?”
Jenny opened her eyes and grimaced as a long swell arced across her stomach.
“Mmm. Sometimes I feel my liver’s black and blue from bein’ kicked. But mostly it’s a good feeling, instead. It’s like…” She hesitated, then grinned at her brother. “It’s hard to describe to a man, you not having the proper parts. I don’t suppose I could tell ye what carrying a child feels like, no more than you could tell me what it’s like to be kicked in the ballocks.”
“Oh, I could tell ye that.” He promptly doubled up, clasping himself, and rolled his eyes back in his head with a hideous gurgling groan.
“Is that not right, Ian?” he asked, turning his head toward the stool where Ian sat laughing, wooden leg propped on the hearth.
His sister put a delicate foot on his chest and pushed him upright. “All right then, clown. In that case, I’m glad I havena got any.”
Jamie straightened up and brushed the hair out of his eyes. “No, really,” he said, interested, “is it just that the parts are different? Could you describe it to Claire? After all, she’s a woman, though she’s not borne a child yet.”
Jenny eyed my midriff appraisingly, and I felt that small pang once more.
“Mmm, perhaps.” She spoke slowly, thinking. “You feel as though your skin is verra thin all over. You feel everything that touches you, even the rubbing of your clothes, and not just on your belly, but over your legs and flanks and breasts.” Her hands went to them unconsciously, curving the lawn under the swelling rounds. “They feel heavy and full…and they’re verra sensitive just at the tips.” The small, blunt thumbs slowly circled the breasts and I saw the nipples rise against the cloth.
“And of course you’re big and you’re clumsy,” Jenny smiled ruefully, rubbing the spot on her hip where she had banged against the table earlier. “You take up more room than you’re used to.”
“Here, though”—her hands rose protectively to the top of her stomach—”that’s where you feel things most, of course.” She caressed the rounded bulge as though it were her child’s skin she stroked, rather than her own. Ian’s eyes followed her hands as they moved from top to bottom of the curving hillock, over and over, smoothing the fabric again and again.
“In the early days, it’s a bit like belly-gas,” she said, laughing. She poked a toe into her brother’s midsection. “Just there—like little bubbles rippling through your belly. But then later, you feel the child move, and it’s like a fish on your line and then gone—like a quick tug, but so soon past you’re not sure you felt it.” As though in protest at this description, her unseen companion heaved to and fro, making her stomach bulge on one side, then the other.
“I imagine you’re sure, by this time,” Jamie remarked, following the movement with fascination.
“Oh, aye.” She placed a hand on one bulge, as though to quiet it. “They sleep, ye know, for hours at a time. Sometimes ye fear they’ve died, when there’s no movement for a long time. Then you try to wake them”—her hand pushed in sharply at the side, and was rewarded immediately by a strong push in the opposite direction—”and you’re happy when they kick again. But it’s not just the babe itself. You feel swollen all over, near the end. Not painful…just so ripe you could burst. It’s as though you need to be touched, verra lightly, all over.” Jenny was no longer looking at me. Her eyes held her husband’s, and I knew she was no longer aware of me or her brother. There was an air of intimacy between her and Ian, as though this were a story often told, but one of which they never tired.
Her voice was lower now, and her hands rose again to her breasts, heavy and compelling under the light bodice.
“And in the last month or so, the milk begins to come in. You feel yourself filling, just a wee bit at a time, a little each time the child moves. And then suddenly, everything comes up hard and round.” She cupped her stomach again. “There’s no pain, then, just a breathless feeling, and then your breasts tingle as though they’ll explode if they’re not suckled.” She closed her eyes and leaned back, stroking her massive belly, over and over, with a rhythm like the invocation of a spell. It came to me, watching her, that if ever there were such a thing as a witch, then Janet Fraser was one.
The smoky air was filled with the trance over the room; the feeling that lies at the root of lust, the terrible yearning need to join, and create. I could have counted every hair on Jamie’s body without looking at him, and knew each one stood erect.
Jenny opened her eyes, dark in the shadows, and smiled at her husband, a slow, rich curve of infinite promise.
“And late in bearing, when the child moves a lot, sometimes there’s a feeling like when you’ve your man inside ye, when he comes to ye deep and pours himself into you. Then, then when that throbbing starts deep inside ye along with him, it’s like that, but it’s much bigger; it ripples all through the walls of your womb and fills all of you. The child’s quiet then, and it’s as though it’s him you’ve taken inside you instead.”
Suddenly she turned to me, and the spell was broken. “That’s what they want sometimes, ye know,” she said quietly, smiling into my eyes. “They want to come back.”
Some time later, Jenny rose, floating toward the door with a glance back that pulled Ian after her like iron to true north. She paused near the door for him, looking back at her brother, who sat still by the fire hearth.
“You’ll see to the fire, Jamie?” She stretched, arching her back, and the curve of her spine echoed the strangely sinuous curve of her belly. Ian’s knuckles pressed hard along the length of her back, and ground into the base of her spine, making her groan. And then they were gone.
I stretched too, arms upward, feeling the pleasant pull of tired muscles. Jamie’s hands ran down my sides and rested on the swell of my hips. I leaned back into him, drawing his hands forward, imagining them cupping the gentle curve of an unborn child.
As I turned my head to kiss him, I noticed the small form curled in the corner of the settle.
“Look. They’ve forgotten small Jamie.” The little boy customarily slept on a trundle in his parents’ room. Tonight he had fallen asleep by the fire while we sat talking over the wine, but no one had remembered to carry him up to his bed. My own Jamie turned me to face him, smoothing my hair away from his nose.
“Jenny never forgets anything,” he said. “I expect she and Ian do not care for company just now.” His hands went to the fastening at the back of my skirt. “He’ll do where he is for the present.”
“But what if he wakes up?”
The roving hands came up under the now-loose edge of the bodice. Jamie cocked an eyebrow at the recumbent form of his small nephew.
“Aye well. He’ll have to learn his job sometime, won’t he? Ye don’t want him to be as ignorant as his uncle was.” He tossed several cushions to the floor before the fire and lowered himself, carrying me with him.
The firelight gleamed on the silvery scars on his back, as though he were in fact the iron man I had once accused him of being, the metal core showing through rents in the fragile skin. I traced the lashmarks one by one, and he shivered under my touch.
“Do you think Jenny’s right?” I asked later. “Do men really want to come back inside? Is that why you make love to us?” A breath of laughter stirred the hair by my ear.
“Well, it’s no usually the first thing in my mind when I take ye to bed, Sassenach. Far from it. But then…” His hands cupped my breasts softly, and his lips closed on one nipple. “I’d no just say she was completely wrong either. Sometimes…aye, sometimes it would be good, to be inside again, safe and…one. Knowing we cannot, I suppose, is what makes us want to beget. If we cannot go back ourselves, the best we can do is to give that precious gift to our sons, at least for a little while…” He shook himself suddenly, like a dog flinging water from its coat.
“Pay me no mind, Sassenach,” he murmured. “I get verra maudlin, drinking elderberry wine.”