An echo in the bone - Gabaldon Diana - Страница 136

“Oh, I ken ye well enough,” the man said, a rather odd note in his voice. He put out his own hand and shook William’s firmly. “Ian Murray. We’ve met.” His eyes traveled over William’s torn, disheveled clothes, his scratched, sweating face, and his mud-caked boots. “Ye look a bit better than the last time I saw ye—but not much.”

MURRAY LIFTED THE CAMP kettle off the fire and set it on the ground. He laid the knife in the embers for a moment, then dipped the hot blade into the frying pan, now filled with water. The hot metal hissed and gave off clouds of steam.

“Ready?” he said.

“Yes.”

William knelt down by a big poplar log and laid his injured arm flat on the wood. It was visibly swollen, the bulge of a large remnant splinter dark under his skin, the skin around it stretched and transparent with pus, painfully inflamed.

The Mohawk—he couldn’t yet think of him as anything else, despite the name and accent—glanced at him across the log, eyebrows raised quizzically.

“Was that you I heard? Screamin’, earlier?” He took hold of William’s wrist.

“I shouted, yes,” William said stiffly. “A snake struck at me.”

“Oh.” Murray’s mouth twitched a little. “Ye scream like a lassie,” he said, eyes returning to his work. The knife pressed down.

William made a deeply visceral noise.

“Aye, better,” said Murray. He smiled briefly, as though to himself, and with a firm grip on William’s wrist sliced cleanly through the skin beside the splinter, laying it open for six inches or so. Turning back the skin with the point of the knife, he flicked out the large splinter, then picked delicately at the smaller slivers the cypress shard had left behind.

Having removed as much as he could, he then wrapped a fold of his ragged plaid round the handle of the camp kettle, picked it up, and poured the steaming water into the open wound.

William made a much more visceral sound, this one accompanied by words.

Murray shook his head, and clicked his tongue in reproof.

“Aye, well. I suppose I’ll have to keep ye from dying, because if ye do die, ye’re bound to go to hell, usin’ language like that.”

“I don’t propose to die,” William said shortly. He was breathing hard, and mopped his brow with his free arm. He lifted the other gingerly and shook blood-tinged water from his fingertips, though the resulting sensation made him lightheaded. He sat down on the log, rather suddenly.

“Put your heid atween your knees, if ye’re giddy,” Murray suggested.

“I am not giddy.”

There was no response to this save the sound of chewing. While waiting for the kettle to boil, Murray had waded into the water and pulled several handsful of some strong-smelling herb that grew on the verge. He was in process now of chewing the leaves, spitting the resultant green wads into a square of cloth. Extracting a rather shriveled onion from the haversack he carried, he cut a generous slice from this and eyed it critically, but seemed to think it would pass without mastication. He added it to his packet, folding the cloth neatly over the contents.

This he placed over the wound and wrapped it in place with strips of cloth torn from William’s shirttail.

Murray glanced up at him thoughtfully.

“I suppose ye’re verra stubborn?”

William stared at the Scot, put out at this remark, though in fact he had been told repeatedly, by friends, relatives, and military superiors, that his intransigence would one day kill him. Surely it didn’t show on his face!

“What the devil do you mean by that?”

“It wasna meant as an insult,” Murray said mildly, and bent to tighten the knot of the impromptu bandage with his teeth. He turned away and spat out a few threads. “I hope ye are—because it’ll be a good distance to find ye help, and if you’re sufficiently stubborn as not to die on me, that would be good, I think.”

“I said I don’t propose to die,” William assured him. “And I don’t need help. Where—are we anywhere near Dismal Town?”

Murray pursed his lips.

“No,” he said, and raised one brow. “Were ye bound there?”

William considered for an instant, but nodded. No harm in telling him that, surely.

Murray raised an eyebrow.

“Why?”

“I—have business with some gentlemen there.” As he said this, William’s heart gave a lurch. Christ, the book! He’d been so confounded by his various trials and adventures that the true importance of his loss had not even struck him.

Beyond its general entertainment value and its usefulness as palimpsest for his own meditations, the book was vital to his mission. It contained several carefully marked passages whose code gave him the names and locations of those men he was to visit—and, more importantly, what he was to tell them. He could recall a good many of the names, he thought, but for the rest…

His dismay was so great that it overshadowed the throbbing in his arm, and he stood up abruptly, seized by the urge to rush back into the Great Dismal and begin combing it, inch by inch, until he should recover the book.

“Are ye all right, man?” Murray had risen, too, and was looking at him with a combination of curiosity and concern.

“I—yes. Just—I thought of something, that’s all.”

“Well, think about it sitting down, aye? Ye’re about to fall into the fire.”

In fact, William’s vision had gone bright, and pulsating dots of dark and light obscured most of Murray’s face, though the look of alarm was still visible.

“I—yes, I will.” He sat down even more abruptly than he’d risen, a heavy cold sweat sudden on his face. A hand on his good arm urged him to lie down, and he did, feeling dimly that it was preferable to fainting.

Murray made a Scottish noise of consternation and muttered something incomprehensible. William could feel the other man hovering over him, uncertain.

“I’m fine,” he said—without opening his eyes. “I just… need to rest a bit.”

“Mmphm.”

William couldn’t tell whether this particular noise was meant as acceptance or dismay, but Murray went away, coming back a moment later with a blanket, with which he covered William without comment. William made a feeble gesture of thanks, unable to speak, as his teeth had begun to chatter with a sudden chill.

His limbs had been aching for some time, but he had ignored it in the need to push on. Now the burden of it fell full on him, a bone-deep ache that made him want to moan aloud. To keep from it, he waited until the chill relaxed enough to let him speak, then called to Murray.

“You are familiar with Dismal Town yourself, sir? You’ve been there?”

“Now and again, aye.” He could see Murray, a dark silhouette crouched by the fire, and hear the chink of metal on stone. “It’s verra aptly named.”

“Ha,” William said weakly. “I daresay. And h-h-have you met a Mr. Washington, by chance?”

“Five or six of them. The general’s got a good many cousins, aye?”

“The g-g—”

“General Washington. Ye’ve heard of him, maybe?” There was a distinct hint of amusement in the Scottish Mohawk’s voice.

“I have, yes. But—surely that…” This made no sense. His voice trailed off, and he rallied, forcing his drifting thoughts back into coherence. “It is a Mr. Henry Washington. He is kin to the general, too?”

“So far as I ken, anyone named Washington within three hundred miles is kin to the general.” Murray stooped to his bag, coming out with a large furry mass, a long, naked tail dangling from it. “Why?”

“I—nothing.” The chill had eased, and he drew a grateful breath, the knotted muscles of his belly relaxing. But the faint threads of wariness were making themselves felt through puzzlement and the gathering fog of fever. “Someone told me that Mr. Henry Washington was a prominent Loyalist.”

Murray turned toward him in astonishment.

“Who in Bride’s name would tell ye that?”