And suddenly I had a vivid memory of Mother Hildegarde, who seldom said even “Merde,” but who had told me quite frankly that the King of France would expect to lie with me if I went to beg him for Jamie’s release from prison. And then she’d dressed me in red silk and sent me off to do exactly that.
“Merde,” I muttered, under my own breath. Elspeth didn’t quite laugh—probably because it would hurt her shoulder—but snorted a little.
“It’s been my observation,” she said, “that either sex is much more constrained in language when in the presence of the other than when they are solely in the company of their own kind. Save perhaps in brothels,” she added, with a glance toward the kitchen, where Fanny was singing “Frère Jacques” to herself while rolling quails in clay. “That is a remarkable child, but you must really try to persuade her not to—”
“She knows not to say things like that in public,” I assured Elspeth, and poured some whisky into a cup. “But you’ll be quite free to say anything you like tonight, because I’m not having you go back to your cabin in your condition.”
She gave me a considering look but then shoved a straggle of steel-gray hair behind one ear and acquiesced.
“I’m not sure whether by my ‘condition’ you mean injured or intoxicated, but in either case, thank you.”
“Shall I send Fanny up to your cabin to smother your fire?”
“No. I drowned it before I left, with a pitcher of cold tea. Quite a waste, but I couldn’t tell how soon I should be back.”
“Good.” I took her by her sound arm and helped her off the table. “I’ll help you upstairs to lie down for a bit.”
She didn’t argue, and I saw how much the injury and the journey to reach me had exhausted her. She lifted her feet with slow care, to keep from stumbling on the stairs. I parked her on one of the children’s beds, provided her with a quilt, a pitcher of cold water, and a stiff dram, then went down to help Fanny with the supper preparations.
Brianna had shown her how to pack quails in clay for baking in the ashes, but this was the first time she’d done it alone, and she was frowning at the row of pale clods and smears of mud on the table.
“Do you think that’s enough mud?” she asked me, dubiously. There was a long streak of clay down her cheek, and quite a bit in her hair. “If it’s not enough, Bree says, it will crack before they’re cooked and burn the meat, but if it’s too much mud, they’ll be raw inside.”
“I expect we’ll be too hungry to care much by the time they’re cooked,” I said, but gave one of the little packages a light squeeze and felt the clay give under my fingers. “I think we may have a few air pockets in the clay, though. Squish them—lightly—with your hands all over, to be sure we’ve got rid of all the air—otherwise, when the steam hits an air pocket, the quail—well, the package, not the actual quail—will explode.”
“Oh, dear,” Fanny said, and began determinedly squeezing the embedded quail. I drew breath and rubbed two fingers between my brows.
“Have you a headache?” Fanny asked, brightening. “There’s fresh willow bark; I could brew you some tea in a moment!”
I smiled at her. She was fascinated by herbs and adored all the grinding, boiling, and steeping.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” I said. “I’m fine. Just trying to think what the devil to eat with the quail.” Meals were the daily bane of my existence; not so much the constant work of picking, cleaning, chopping, cooking—though those activities were fairly baneful in themselves—but primarily the never-ending chore of remembering what we had on hand, and balancing the effort required to make it edible against the knowledge of what might spoil if we didn’t eat it right away. Bother nutrition; I crammed apples, raisins, and nuts into people more or less constantly, and poked green stuff down their reluctant gullets whenever I got the chance, and no one had died of scurvy yet.
“We have lots of beans,” Fanny said dubiously. “Or rice, I suppose … or maybe turnips? Er … neeps, I mean.”
“That’s a thought. Bashed neeps aren’t bad, so long as there’s butter and salt, and I know we have salt.” Two hundred and fifty pounds of it sheltering in the smoking shed, as a matter of fact. Tom MacLeod had brought it by wagon from Cross Creek last week—the year’s supply for the entire Ridge, in time for the hunting, butchering, and preserving. A meager eighty pounds of sugar, but I did have honey …
“Right. Baked quail with buttered bashed neeps, and—dried peas boiled with onion? Maybe a little cream?”
In the end, the three of us sat down an hour later to a very reasonable dinner—only one of the quails had exploded, and in fact, the smoky meat was very tasty, and the slightly burnt onions actually improved the creamed peas, I thought. There wasn’t much conversation, though; Fanny and I were tired to the bone and Elspeth Cunningham was old, tired, and in pain.
Still, she made an effort to be civil.
“Do you mean to tell me,” she said, looking round the enormous kitchen, “that there are only the two of you left to run this house?”
“The house and the livestock and garden,” I agreed, stifling a yawn with a jam-spread bannock. “And the butchering.”
“And the bees,” Fanny put in helpfully. “And all of Mrs. Fraser’s medicines to be made, and all the people she puts back togeth … Er … all the people she helps,” she ended, rather more tactfully than she’d begun.
“And the cleaning, too, of course,” Elspeth added, looking thoughtfully at the expanse of foot-marked wooden flooring that disappeared into shadow at the far end of the room. She glanced at me in a way I recognized at once: diagnosis.
Whatever she saw, she was tactful enough to keep it to herself, but she took the whisky bottle I pushed in her direction, nodded her thanks, and said, “I owe you a great deal, Mrs. Fraser. Please allow me to repay you—in part—by sending down one of my son’s lieutenants to take care of the more … manly chores, while your husband is away. Two of them will be coming next week, to stay with us for a time.”
I opened my mouth to refuse politely, but then met her eye—firm, but kindly—and then Fanny’s, pleading and hopeful.
“Thank you,” I said, and topped up her cup.
TALK WAS SMALL and desultory, and within half an hour Fanny had begun to yawn, and so had Bluebell, making a loud creaking noise when she did so.
“I think the dog wants to go to bed, Fanny,” I said, clenching my jaw to contain my own contagious yawn.
“Yes’m,” she murmured, and taking the candlestick I shoved into her hand, she wobbled slowly off to bed, Bluebell trudging in her wake with drowsy determination.
Elspeth made no move to go to bed, though I thought she must be dropping with weariness. I certainly was; too stupid with fatigue to think of any sort of conversational gambit. Luckily, none seemed to be needed. We just sat peacefully by the fire, watching the flames and listening to the wind howl through the empty attics overhead.
Suddenly, a door slammed, and we both jerked upright.
No other noise came down the stairs, though, and after a moment, my heart quit pounding.