“Well, no,” I admitted. “But—on the off chance that I should encounter trypanosomiasis, at least I’d know what it was, and that might save the patient from being subjected to an ineffective or dangerous treatment.”
“Aye, and give him time to write his will and summon a priest, too,” he said, closing the book and handing it back.
“Mm,” I said, not really wanting to dwell on the possibility—well, the dead certainty, in fact—of diagnosing fatal conditions I couldn’t treat. “What about your books? Do they look interesting?” I nodded toward the stack of thick paperbacks, and his face lit up. He picked up the first volume and riffled the pages, slowly, then turned back to the first page and read in a husky voice:
“Concerning Hobbits. This book is largely concerned with Hobbits, and from its pages a reader may discover much of their character and a little of their history.”
“That’s just the Prologue,” I assured him. “You could skip that, if you like.”
He shook his head, eyes fixed on the page, smiling.
“If the author thought it was worth his writing it down, then it’s worth my reading it. I dinna mean to miss a single word.”
A sharp pang struck me then, seeing the reverential way in which he handled the book, turning over pages with a delicate forefinger. A book—any book—had a meaning well beyond its contents for a man who’d lived years at a time with little or no access to the printed word, and only the memory of stories to provide him and his companions escape from desperate circumstances.
“Have ye read these, Sassenach?” he asked, looking up.
“No, though I’ve read The Hobbit, by the same author. Bree and I read that one together when she was in the sixth grade—about twelve years old, I mean.”
“Ah. So ye wouldna say these are lewd books?”
“What? No, not at all,” I said, laughing. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
“Nothing, from the cover—I’ve never seen so much printing on the outside of a book—but ye canna tell, can ye?” He closed the book with obvious reluctance. “I was thinking, we might read these in the evenings, maybe everyone taking it in turn to read a chapter. Jem and Germain are old enough to manage it. D’ye think Frances can read?”
“I know she can. Her sister taught her, she said.” I rose and came over to him, leaning against his shoulder to look at The Fellowship of the Ring. “That’s a wonderful idea.” We had done that with Jenny and Ian during the brief months of our early marriage spent at Lallybroch: passed firelit hours of peace and happiness in the evenings while one person or another read aloud and the others knitted stockings or mended clothes or small bits of furniture. The rosy vision of such evenings here, our own family in our own home, made my heart glow in my chest.
He made a low Scottish noise indicating content and set the book down, next to the hardcover book Bree had brought for herself. Frank’s book. My already tenderized heart squeezed a little, at once happy and sad that she had brought it to remember him, to bring him with her into this new life.
Jamie saw me looking at the book and made another Scottish noise, this one indicating cautious interest. I nodded at The Soul of a Rebel. “Are you going to read that one?”
“I dinna ken,” he admitted, glancing at it. “Have you read it, Sassenach?”
“No.” I felt a small qualm at the admission. The fact was that while I’d read all of Frank’s articles, books, and essays during what I thought of as our first marriage, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to read any of the books he’d written during our second go, save a brief look at one that dealt with the aftermath of Culloden, when I began to search for the men of Lallybroch.
“This one was published after I … came back,” I said, my throat tight. “It was the last book he wrote. I’ve not even seen it before.” I wondered, for an instant, whether Bree had picked that one because the photograph of Frank on it was what he’d looked like the last time she saw him, or whether she’d chosen it mostly because of the title.
Jamie caught the tone of my voice and looked sharply at me, but he said nothing, and picked up Mandy’s Green Eggs and Ham for further perusal. Jem had taken his own special book, The Scientific American Boy, off to bed with him. He was probably reading it to Germain and Fanny by firelight. Nothing I could do about that, other than hope it didn’t include step-by-step instructions for building a trebuchet.
10
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme
IT WAS A WEEK later when we heard the rest.
Fanny and Germain had gone up to Ian’s place to help comb Jenny’s goats. Jemmy, being barred from this occupation on account of a sprained thumb, and never liking to be a bystander, had decided to stay at home and play chess with Jamie.
Roger was picking out “Scarborough Fair” on a simple sort of dulcimer that he’d made, a counterpoint to the similarly rudimentary conversations that swirled slowly through the kitchen. By the time Bree and I had kneaded tomorrow’s dough and put it to rise, set a haunch of venison to soak in herbs and vinegar, and debated whether the floor need be mopped or only swept, the room had grown quiet, though. The chess match had ended—Jamie, by heroic effort, had managed to lose—the dulcimer had fallen silent, and Mandy and Jemmy both had fallen asleep, slumped like bags of dried beans in the corners of the settle.
By unspoken consent, the four adults gathered together around the table, with four cups and a bottle of decent red wine—the gift of Michael Lindsay for my help in stitching up a couple of long wounds in the flank of his horse, these the result of a run-in with a bear.
“Your dulcimer sounds bonnie, Roger Mac,” Jamie said, raising his cup toward the instrument, this now laid on top of the simples cupboard for safety. Roger raised his eyebrows, surprised.
“You … can make it out?” he said. “I mean—ye ken it’s a song?”
“No,” Jamie said, surprised in turn. “Was it a song? The sound it makes is nice, though. Like wee bells ringing.”
“It’s a song from … our time,” Brianna said, a little hesitant, and glanced at the children.
“It’s all right,” Roger assured her. “The lyrics to that one could have come from any time from the Middle Ages on.”
“That’s good. We have to be careful,” Bree said, with a half smile at me. “We’d just as soon not have Mandy singing ‘Twist and Shout’ in church.”
“Well, not in our church,” Roger said, “though there are certainly more … um … athletic churches now in which that would be more or less appropriate. I wonder if there are any snake-handling churches in the area,” he added, suddenly interested. “I don’t know when that started.”
“Snakes in church … on purpose?” Jamie said dubiously. “Why the devil would anyone do that?”
“Mark 16:17,” Roger said. “And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. They do it—or will do it—to prove their faith,” he explained. “Pick up rattlesnakes and cottonmouths with their bare hands. In church.”