Dragonfly in Amber (108 page)

"Going to prove yourself some worth, eh?" Lovat leaned back in his chair, folding his hands across his broad stomach like an elderly frog. "A healer, my grandson says. A white lady, aye?" He flicked a basilisk glance at Jamie, who simply went on eating, ignoring his grandfather. Lovat grunted, and tilted his head ironically in my direction.

"Well, I dinna drink, lady, for I canna piss, and I've little wish to blow up like a pig's bladder. And I dinna rest, for I rise a dozen times a night to make use of my pot, and damn little use it gets. So what have ye to say to that, Dame Aliset?"

"Father," murmured Lady Frances, "really, I don't think you should…"

"Could be an infection of the bladder, but it sounds like prostatitis to me," I replied. I picked up my wineglass and took a mouthful, savoring it before letting it slide down my throat. I smiled demurely at his lordship across my glass as I set it down.

"Oh, it does?" he said, eyebrows raised high. "And what's that, pray?"

I pushed back my sleeves and raised my hands, flexing my fingers like a magician about to perform some act of prestidigitation. I held up my left forefinger.

"The prostate gland in males," I said instructively, "encircles the tube of the urethra—which is the passage that leads from the bladder to the outside." I clasped two fingers of my right hand in a circle around my left forefinger, in illustration. "When the prostate becomes inflamed or enlarged—and that's called prostatitis, when it does—it clamps down on the urethra"—I narrowed the circle of my fingers—"cutting off the flow of urine. Very common in older men. Do you see?"

Lady Frances, failing to make any impression on her father with her opinions of proper dinner conversation, was whispering agitatedly to her younger sister, both of them watching me with deeper suspicion than usual.

Lord Lovat watched my little demonstration in fascination.

"Aye, I see," he said. The slanted cat-eyes narrowed, looking speculatively at my fingers. "What's to do about it, then, if ye've so much learning on the subject?"

I thought, frowning as I searched my memory. I had never actually seen—much less treated—a case of prostatitis, as it wasn't a condition that much afflicted young soldiers. Still, I had read medical texts where it was described; I remembered the treatment, because it had caused such hilarity among the student nurses, who had pored in fascinated horror over the rather graphic illustrations in the text.

"Well," I said, "barring surgery, there are really only two things you can do. You can insert a metal rod through the penis and up into the bladder, to force the urethra open"—I jabbed my forefinger through the constricting circle—"or you can massage the prostate itself, to reduce the swelling. Through the rectum," I added helpfully.

I heard a faint choking noise next to me, and glanced up at Jamie. His eyes were still fixed on his plate, but the tide of crimson was creeping upward from his collar, and the tips of his ears blazed red. He quivered slightly. I looked around the table, to find a phalanx of fascinated gazes fixed on me. The Lady Frances, Aline, and the other women were staring at me with varying expressions, ranging from curiosity to disgust, while the men all wore variations of revolted horror.

The exception to the general reaction was Lord Lovat himself, who was rubbing his chin thoughtfully, eyes half-closed.

"Mmphm," he said. "Hell of a choice, there. A stick up the cock, or a finger up the backside, eh?"

"More like two or three," I said. "Repeatedly." I gave him a small, decorous smile.

"Ah." A similar small smile decorated Lord Lovat's mouth, and he slowly lifted his gaze, fixing deep blue eyes on mine with an expression of mockery tinged with challenge.

"That sounds…diverting," he observed mildly. The slanted eyes slid down over my hands, assessing.

"You've lovely hands, my dear," he said. "Prettily kept, and such long white slender fingers, aye?"

Jamie brought both his own hands down on the table with a crash and stood up. He leaned across the table, bringing his face within a foot of his grandfather's.

"And you're needing such attentions, Grandsire," he said. "I'll see to it myself." He spread out his hands on the tabletop, broad and massive, each long finger the rough diameter of a pistol barrel. "It's no pleasure to me to be stickin' my fingers up your hairy auld arse," he informed his grandfather, "but I expect it's my filial duty to save ye from exploding in a shower of piss, no?"

Frances emitted a faint squeak.

Lord Lovat eyed his grandson with considerable disfavor, then rose slowly from his seat.

"Don't trouble yourself," he said shortly. "I'll ha' one of the maidservants do it." He waved a hand at the company, giving notice that we might continue the meal, and left the hall, pausing to look speculatively at a young serving girl coming in with a platter of sliced pheasant. Eyes wide, she turned sideways to edge past him.

There was a dead silence over the dinner table following his lordship's exit. Young Simon looked at me and opened his mouth. Then he glanced at Jamie, and closed it again. He cleared his throat.

"I'll have the salt, if ye please," he said.

"…and in consequence of the regrettable infirmity that prevents me from personal attendance upon Your Highness, I send by the hand of my son and heir a token of the loyalty—nay, make that ‘regard'—a token of the regard in which I have long cherished His Majesty and Your Highness." Lord Lovat paused, frowning at the ceiling.

"What shall we send, Gideon?" he asked the secretary. "Rich-looking, but not so much I can't say it was only a trifling present of no importance."

Gideon sighed and wiped his face with a handkerchief. A stout, middle-aged man with thinning hair and round red cheeks, he plainly found the heat of the bedroom fire oppressive.

"The ring your lordship had from the Earl of Mar?" he suggested, without hope. A drop of sweat fell from his double chin onto the letter he was taking down, and he surreptitiously blotted it with his sleeve.

"Not expensive enough," his lordship judged, "and too many political associations." The mottled fingers tapped pensively on the coverlet as he thought.

Old Simon had done it up brown, I thought. He was wearing his best nightshirt, and was propped up in bed with an impressive panoply of medicines arrayed on the table, attended by his personal physician, Dr. Menzies, a small man with a squint who kept eyeing me with considerable doubt. I supposed the old man simply distrusted Young Simon's powers of imagination, and had staged this elaborate tableau so that his heir might faithfully report Lord Lovat's state of decrepitude when he presented himself to Charles Stuart.

"Ha," said his lordship with satisfaction. "We'll send the gold and sterling picnic set. That's rich enough, but too frivolous to be interpreted as political support. Besides," he added practically, "the spoon's dented. All right then," he said to the secretary, "let's go on with ‘As Your Highness is aware…' "

I exchanged a glance with Jamie, who hid a smile in response.

"I think you've given him what he needs, Sassenach," he had told me as we undressed after our fateful dinner the week before.

"And what's that?" I asked, "an excuse to molest the maidservants?"

"I doubt he bothers greatly wi' excuses of that sort," Jamie said dryly. "Nay, you've given him a way to walk both sides—as usual. If he's got an impressive-sounding disease that keeps him to his bed, then he canna be blamed for not appearing himself wi' the men he promised. At the same time, if he sends his heir to fight, the Stuarts will credit Lovat with keeping his promise, and if it goes wrong, the Old Fox will claim to the English that he didna intend to give any aid to the Stuarts, but Young Simon went on his own account."

"Spell ‘prostatitis' for Gideon, would ye, lass?" Lord Lovat called to me, breaking into my thoughts. "And mind ye write it out carefully, clot," he said to his secretary, "I dinna want His Highness to misread it."

"P-r-o-s-t-a-t-i-t-i-s," I spelled slowly, for Gideon's benefit. "And how is it this morning, anyway?" I asked, coming to stand by his lordship's bedside.

"Greatly improved, I thank ye," the old man said, grinning up at me with a fine display of false teeth. "Want to see me piss?"

"Not just now, thanks," I said politely.

It was a clear, icy day in mid-December when we left Beauly to join Charles Stuart and the Highland army. Against all advice, Charles had pressed on into England, defying weather and common sense, as well as his generals. But at last, in Derby, the generals had prevailed, the Highland chiefs refusing to go farther, and the Highland army was returning northward. An urgent letter from Charles to Jamie had urged us to head south "without delay," to rendezvous with His Highness upon his return to Edinburgh. Young Simon, looking every inch the clan chieftain in his crimson tartan, rode at the head of a column of men. Those men with mounts followed him, while the larger number on foot walked behind.

Being mounted, we rode with Simon at the head of the column, until such time as we would reach Comar. There we would part company, Simon and the Fraser troops to go to Edinburgh, Jamie ostensibly escorting me to Lallybroch before returning to Edinburgh himself. He had, of course, no intention of so returning, but that was none of Simon's business.

At midmorning, I emerged from a small wooded clump by the side of the track, to find Jamie waiting impatiently. Hot ale had been served to the departing men, to hearten them for the journey. And while I had myself found that hot ale made a surprisingly good breakfast, I had also found it had a marked effect on the kidneys.

Jamie snorted. "Women," he said. "How can ye all take such the devil of a time to do such a simple thing as piss? Ye make as much fuss over it as my grandsire."

"Well, you can come along next time and watch," I suggested acerbically. "Perhaps you'll have some helpful suggestions."

He merely snorted again, and turned back to watch the column of men filing past, but he was smiling nonetheless. The clear, bright day raised everyone's spirits, but Jamie was in a particularly good mood this morning. And no wonder; we were going home. I knew he didn't deceive himself that all would be well; this war would have its price. But if we had failed to stop Charles, it might still be that we could save the small corner of Scotland that lay closest to us—Lallybroch. That much might be still within our power.

I glanced at the trailing column of clansmen.

"Two hundred men make a fair show."

"A hundred and seventy," Jamie corrected absently, reaching for his horse's reins.

"Are you sure?" I asked curiously. "Lord Lovat said he was sending two hundred. I heard him dictating the letter saying so."

"Well, he didn't." Jamie swung into the saddle, then stood up in his stirrups, pointing down the slope ahead, to the distant spot where the Fraser banner with its stag's-head crest fluttered at the head of the column.

"I counted them while I waited for you," he explained. "Thirty cavalry up there wi' Simon, then fifty wi' broadswords and targes—those will be the men from the local Watch—and then the cottars, wi' everything from scythes to hammers at their belts, and there's ninety of those."

"I suppose your grandfather's betting on Prince Charles not counting them personally," I observed cynically. "Trying to get credit for more than he's sent."

"Aye, but the names will be entered on the army rolls when they reach Edinburgh," Jamie said, frowning. "I'd best see."

I followed more sedately. I judged my mount to be approximately twenty years old, and capable of no more than a staid amble. Jamie's mount was a trifle friskier, though still no match for Donas. The huge stallion had been left in Edinburgh, as Prince Charles wished to ride him on public occasions. Jamie had acceded to this request, as he harbored suspicions that Old Simon might well be capable of appropriating the big horse, should Donas come within reach of his rapacious grasp.

Judging from the tableau unfolding before me, Jamie's estimate of his grandfather's character had not been in error. Jamie had first ridden up alongside Young Simon's clerk, and what looked from my vantage point like a heated argument ended when Jamie leaned from his saddle, grabbed the clerk's reins, and dragged the indignant man's horse out of line, onto the verge of the muddy track.

The two men dismounted and stood face-to-face, obviously going at it hammer and tongs. Young Simon, seeing the altercation, reined aside himself, motioning the rest of the column to proceed. A good deal of to and fro then ensued; we were close enough to see Simon's face, flushed red with annoyance, the worried grimace on the clerk's countenance, and a series of rather violent gestures on Jamie's part.

I watched this pantomime in fascination, as the clerk, with a shrug of resignation, unfastened his saddlebag, scrabbled in the depths, and came up with several sheets of parchment. Jamie snatched these and skimmed rapidly through them, forefinger tracing the lines of writing. He seized one sheet, letting the rest drop to the ground, and shook it in Simon Fraser's face. The Young Fox looked taken aback. He took the sheet, peered at it, then looked up in bewilderment. Jamie grabbed back the sheet, and with a sudden effort, ripped the tough parchment down, then across, and stuffed the pieces into his sporran.

I had halted my pony, who took advantage of the recess to nose about among the meager shreds of plant life still to be found. The back of Young Simon's neck was bright red as he turned back to his horse, and I decided to keep out of the way. Jamie, remounted, came trotting back along the verge to join me, red hair flying like a banner in the wind, eyes gleaming with anger over tight-set lips.

"The filthy auld arse-wipe," he said without ceremony.

"What's he done?" I inquired.

"Listed the names of my men on his own rolls," Jamie said. "Claimed them as part of his Fraser regiment. Mozie auld pout-worm!" He glanced back up the track with longing. "Pity we've come such a way; it's too far to go back and proddle the auld mumper."

I resisted the temptation to egg Jamie on to call his grandfather more names, and asked instead, "Why would he do that? Just to make it look as though he were making more of a contribution to the Stuarts?"