“Ian,” I said, taking refuge behind Jamie. “Call off your dog. Skunks are dangerous.”
“They are?” Jamie turned a look of puzzlement on me. “But what—”
“Polecats only stink,” I explained. “Skunks—Ian, no! Let it alone, and come inside!” Ian, curious, had reached out and prodded the skunk with his poker. The skunk, offended at this unwarranted intimacy, stamped its feet and elevated its tail.
I heard the noise of a chair sliding back, and glanced behind me. Jocasta had stood up and was looking alarmed, but made no move to come to the door.
“What is it?” she said. “What are they doing?” To my surprise, she was staring into the room, turning her head from one side to the other, as though trying to locate someone in the dark.
Suddenly, the truth dawned on me: her hand on the butler’s arm, her touching Jamie’s face in greeting, the glass put ready for her grasp, and the shadow on her face when Ian talked of her painting. Jocasta Cameron was blind.
A strangled cry and a piercing yelp jerked me back to more pressing issues on the terrace. A tidal wave of acrid scent cascaded into the room, hit the floor, and boiled up around me like a mushroom cloud.
Choking and gasping, eyes watering from the reek, I groped blindly for Jamie, who was making breathless remarks in Gaelic. Above the cacophony of groaning and piteous yowling outside, I barely heard the small ting! of Jocasta’s bell behind me.
“Ulysses?” she said, sounding resigned. “Ye’d best tell Cook the dinner will be late.”
* * *
“It was luck that it’s summer, at least,” Jocasta said at breakfast next day. “Think if it had been winter and we had to keep the doors closed!” She laughed, showing teeth in surprisingly good condition for her age.
“Oh, aye,” Ian murmured. “Please, may I have more toast, ma’am?”
He and Rollo had been first soused in the river, then rubbed with tomatoes from the burgeoning vines that overgrew the necessary house out back. The odor-reducing properties of these fruits worked as well on skunk oil as on the lesser stinks of human waste, but in neither case was the neutralizing effect complete. Ian sat by himself at one end of the long table, next to an open French door, but I saw the maid who brought his toast to him wrinkle her nose unobtrusively as she set the plate before him.
Perhaps inspired by Ian’s proximity and a desire for open air, Jocasta suggested that we might ride out to the turpentine works in the forest above River Run.
“It’s a day’s journey there and back, but I think the weather will keep fine.” She turned toward the open French window, where bees hummed over a herbaceous border of goldenrod and phlox. “Hear them?” she said, turning her slightly off-kilter smile toward Jamie. “The bees do say it will be hot and fair.”
“You have keen ears, Madame Cameron,” Fergus said politely. “If I may be permitted to borrow a horse from your stable, though, I should prefer to go into the town, myself.” I knew he was dying to send word to Marsali in Jamaica; I had helped him to write a long letter the night before, describing our adventures and safe arrival. Rather than wait for a slave to take it with the week’s mail, he would much rather post it with his own hands.
“Indeed and ye may, Mr. Fergus,” Jocasta said graciously. She smiled round the table generally. “As I said, ye must all consider River Run as ye would your own home.”
Jocasta plainly meant to accompany us on the ride; she came down dressed in a habit of dark green muslin, the girl named Phaedre coming behind, carrying a hat trimmed to match with velvet ribbon. She paused in the hall, but instead of putting on the hat at once, she stood while Phaedre tied a strip of white linen firmly round her head, covering her eyes.
“I can see nothing but light,” she explained. “I canna make out objects at all. Still, the light of the sun causes me pain, so I must shield my eyes when venturing out. Are you ready, my dears?”
That answered some of my speculations concerning her blindness, though didn’t entirely assuage them. Retinitis pigmentosum? I wondered with interest, as I followed her down the wide front hall. Or perhaps macular degeneration, though glaucoma was perhaps the most likely possibility. Not for the first time—or the last, I was sure—my fingers curved around the handle of an invisible ophthalmoscope, itching to see what could not be seen with eyes alone.
To my surprise, when we went out to the stable block, a mare was standing ready saddled for Jocasta, rather than the carriage I had expected. The gift of charming horses ran strong in the MacKenzie line; the mare lifted her head and whickered at sight of her mistress, and Jocasta went to the horse at once, her face alight with pleasure.
“Ciamar a tha tu?” she said, stroking the soft Roman nose. “This will be my sweet Corinna. Is she not a dear lassie?” Reaching in her pocket, she pulled out a small green apple, which the horse accepted with delicate pleasure.
“And have they seen to your knee, mo chridhe?” Stooping, Jocasta ran a hand down the horse’s shoulder and leg to just inside the knee, finding and exploring a healing scar with expert fingers. “What say ye, nephew? Is she sound? Can she stand a day’s ride?”
Jamie clicked his tongue, and Corinna obligingly took a step toward him, clearly recognizing someone who spoke her language. He took a look at her leg, took her bridle in hand and with a word or two in soft Gaelic, urged her to walk. Then he pulled her to a halt, swung into the saddle, and trotted gently twice round the stableyard, coming to a stop by the waiting Jocasta.
“Aye,” he said, stepping down. “She’s canty enough, Aunt. What did her the injury?”
“Happen as it was a snake, sir,” said the groom, a young black man who had stood back, intently watching Jamie with the horse.
“Not a snakebite, surely?” I said, surprised. “It looks like a tear—as though she’d caught her leg on something.”
He looked at me with raised brows, but nodded with respect.
“Aye, mum, that it was. ’Twas a month past, I heard the lass let out a rare skelloch, and such a kebbie-lebbie o’ bangin’ and crashin’, as ye’d think the whole stable was comin’ doon aboot my head. When I rushed to see the trouble, I found the bloody corpse of a great poison snake lyin’ crushed in the straw beneath the manger. The manger was dashit all to pieces, and the wee lassie quiverin’ in the corner, the blood streamin’ doon her leg from a splinter where she’d caught herself.” He glanced at the horse with obvious pride. “Och, such a brave wee creature as ye are, lass!”
“The ‘great poison snake’ was perhaps a foot long,” Jocasta said to me in an dry undertone. “And a simple green gardensnake, forbye. But the foolish thing’s got a morbid dread o’ snakes. Let her see one, and she loses her head entirely.” She cocked her head in the direction of the young groom and smiled. “Wee Josh is none so fond o’ them, either, is he?”
The groom grinned in answer.
“No, ma’am,” he said. “I canna thole the creatures, nay more than my lassie.”
Ian, who had been listening to this exchange, couldn’t hold back his curiosity any longer.
“Where d’ye come from, man?” he asked the groom, peering at the young man in fascination.