Auld Mrs. Wilson from A Breath of Snow and Ashes
Copyright © 2005 Diana Gabaldon, A Breath of Snow and Ashes. All rights reserved.

A hammering on the door roused Roger just before dawn. Next to him, Brianna made an inarticulate noise that experience interpreted as a statement that if he didn’t get up and answer the door, she would--but he’d regret it, and so would the unfortunate person on the other side.

Resigned, he flung back the quilt and ran a hand through his tangled hair. The air struck cold on his bare legs, and there was a icy breath of snow in the air.

“Next time I marry someone, I’ll pick a lass who wakes up cheerful in the morning,” he said to the hunched form beneath the bedclothes.

“You do that,” said a muffled voice from under the pillow--whose indistinct nature did nothing to disguise its hostile intonation.

The hammering was repeated, and Jemmy--who did wake up cheerful in the mornings--popped up in his trundle, looking like a red-headed dandelion gone to seed.

“Somebody’s knocking,” he informed Roger.

“Oh, are they? Mmphm.” Repressing an urge to groan, he rose and went to unbolt the door.

Hiram Crombie stood outside, looking more dour than usual in the milky half-light. Evidently not a happy riser, either, Roger reflected.

“My wife’s auld mither’s passed i’ the night,” he informed Roger without preamble.

“Passed what?” asked Jemmy with interest, poking his disheveled head out from behind Roger’s leg. He rubbed one eye with a fist, and yawned widely. “Mr. Stornaway passed a stone--he showed it to me and Germain.”

“Mr. Crombie’s mother-in-law has died,” Roger said, putting a quelling hand on Jem’s head, with an apologetic cough toward Crombie. “I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. Crombie.”

“Aye.” Mr. Crombie appeared indifferent to condolence. “Murdo Lindsay says as ye ken a bit of Scripture for the burying. The wife’s wonderin’ would ye maybe come and say a word at the grave?”

“Murdo said...oh!” The Dutch family, that was it. Jamie had forced him to speak at the graves. “Aye, of course.” He cleared his throat by reflex; his voice was desperately hoarse--as usual in the mornings, until he’d had a cup of something hot. No wonder Crombie was looking dubious.

“Of course,” he repeated more strongly. “Is there...er...anything we can do to help?”

Crombie made a small negative gesture.

“The women will have her laid out by now, I expect,” he said, with the briefest of glances at the mound Brianna made in the bed. “We’ll start the diggin’ after breakfast. With luck, we’ll have her under before snow falls.” He lifted a sharp chin toward an opaque sky, the soft gray of Adso’s belly-fur, then nodded, turned on his heel, and left without further congenialities.

“Gaggy--‘ook!” Roger looked down, to see Jem, fingers hooked in the corners of his mouth, pulled down to simulate the inverted “U” of Hiram Crombie’s customary expression. Small red brows wrinkled in a ferocious scowl, making the resemblance startling. Surprised into laughter, Roger gasped and choked, then coughed until he doubled over, wheezing.

“Are you all right?” Brianna had unearthed herself and was sitting up in bed, squint-eyed with sleep, but looking concerned.

“Aye, fine.” The words came out in a thready wheeze, nearly soundless. He took a breath and hawked deeply, expectorating a repellant glob into his hand, for lack of a handkerchief.

“Eew!” said the tender wife of his bosom, recoiling.

“Lemme see, Daddy!” said his son and heir, jostling for a look. “Eeew!”

Roger stepped outside and wiped his hand in the wet grass by the door. It was cold out, so early, but Crombie was undoubtedly right; snow was on the way. The air had that soft, muffled feel to it.

“So old Mrs. Wilson is dead?” Brianna had come out after him, a shawl wrapped round her shoulders. “That’s too bad. Imagine coming so far, and then dying in a strange place, before you’ve even had time to settle.”

“Well, she had her family with her, at least. I expect she wouldna have wanted to be left alone to die in Scotland.”

“Mm.” Bree brushed strands of hair off her cheeks; she’d put her hair into a thick plait for sleeping, but a good bit of it had escaped from captivity and was waving up round her face in the cold, humid air. “Should I go up there, do you think?”

“Pay our respects? He said they’ve laid the old lady out already.”

She snorted, white wisps of breath from her nostrils momentarily making him think of dragons.

“It can’t be later than 7 AM; it’s still bloody dark out! And I don’t believe for a minute that his wife and sister have been laying out the old lady by candlelight. Hiram would balk at the expense of the extra candle, for one thing. No, he felt itchy about asking a favor, so he was trying to get under your skin about your wife being a lazy slattern.”

That was perceptive, Roger thought, amused--particularly as she hadn’t seen Crombie’s eloquent glance at her recumbent form.

“What’s a slattern?” Jemmy inquired, picking up instantly on anything vaguely improper-sounding.

“That’s a lady who’s no lady,” Roger informed him. “And a bad housekeeper, to boot.”

“That’s one of the words that Mrs. Bug will wash out your mouth with soap if she hears you say it,” amended his wife, with ungrammatical acuity.

Roger was still attired in nothing but a nightshirt, and his legs and feet were freezing. Jem was hopping around barefoot, too, but without the slightest sign of being cold.

“Mummy is not one,” Roger said firmly, taking Jem’s hand. “Come on, chum, let’s nip up to the privy while Mummy makes breakfast.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Brianna said, yawning. “I’ll take up a jar of honey or something to the Crombies later.”

“I go too,” Jemmy announced promptly.

Brianna hesitated for a moment, then looked at Roger and raised her brows. Jem had never seen a dead person.

Roger lifted one shoulder. It would have been a peaceful death; and it was, God knew, a fact of life on the mountain. He didn’t suppose that seeing Mrs. Wilson’s body would give the child nightmare--though knowing Jem, it was quite likely to lead to a number of loud and embarrassing public questions. A bit of preparatory explanation might not be out of place, he reflected.

“Sure,” he told Jem. “But first we have to go up to the Big House after breakfast, and borrow a Bible from Grand-da.”

[end section]

He found Jamie at breakfast, the warm oatmeal smell of fresh parritch wrapping him like a blanket as he stepped into the kitchen. Before he could explain his errand, Mrs. Bug had sat him down with a bowl of his own, a jug of honey, a plate of savory fried bacon, hot toast dripping butter, and a fresh cup of something dark and fragrant that looked like coffee. Jem was next to him, already smeared with honey and buttered to the ears. For a traitorous instant, he wondered whether Brianna was perhaps a bit of a sluggard, though certainly never a slattern.

Then he glanced across the table at Claire, uncombed hair standing on end as she blinked sleepily at him over the toast, and generously concluded that it probably wasn’t a conscious choice on Bree’s part, but rather the influence of genetics.

Claire roused at once, though, when he explained his errand, between bites of bacon and toast.

“Old Mrs. Wilson?” she asked with interest. “What did she die of, did Mr. Crombie say?”

Roger shook his head, swallowing oatmeal.

“Only that she’d passed in the night. I suppose they’d found her dead. Her heart, maybe--she must have been at least eighty.”

“She was about five years older than I am,” Claire said dryly. “She told me.”

“Oh. Mmphm.” Clearing his throat hurt, and he took a sip of the hot, dark stuff in his cup. It was a brew of roasted chicory and acorns, but not that bad.

“I hope ye didna tell her how old you are, Sassenach.” Jamie reached across and snared the last piece of toast. Mrs. Bug, ever-vigilant, whisked the plate away to refill it.

“I’m not that careless,” Claire said, dabbing a forefinger delicately into a smear of honey and licking it. “They already think I’ve made some sort of pact with the Devil; if I told them my age, they’d be sure of it.”

Roger chuckled, but thought privately that she was right. Even unkempt and puffy-eyed from sleep, she was more than handsome, with lovely skin, lushly thick curly hair, and an elegance of feature undreamt of among the Highland fisher-folk. To say nothing of the eyes, sherry-gold and startling.

Add to these natural gifts the twentieth-century practices of nutrition and hygiene--she had all of her teeth, white and straight--and she easily appeared a good twenty years younger than other women of her own age. He found that a comforting thought; perhaps Bree had inherited the art of aging beautifully from her mother, as well. He could always make his own breakfast, after all.

Jamie had finished his own meal and gone to fetch the Bible. He came back, laying it beside Roger’s plate.

“We’ll go up with ye to the burying,” he said, nodding at the book. “Mrs. Bug--can ye maybe put up a wee basket for the Crombies?”

“Done it already,” she informed him, and plunked a large basket on the table before him, covered with a napkin and bulging with goodies. “Ye’ll take it, then? I must go tell Arch and fetch my good shawl, and we’ll see ye at the graveside, aye?”

Brianna came in then, yawning but well-groomed, and set about making Jem presentable while Claire vanished to find cap and shawl. Roger picked up the Bible, intending to thumb through the Psalms for something suitably somber but uplifting.

“Maybe the Twenty-Third?” he said, half to himself. “Nice and short. Always a classic. And it does mention death, at least.”

“Are you going to give a eulogy?” Brianna asked, interested. “Or a sermon?”

“Oh, Christ, I hadn’t thought of that,” he said in dismay. He cleared his throat experimentally. “Is there more coffee?”

He’d been to a great many funerals in Inverness, presided over by the Reverend, and was well aware that the paying customers considered such an event a dismal failure unless the preaching went on for at least half an hour. Granted, beggars couldn’t be choosers, and the Crombies couldn’t expect--

“Why do you have a Protestant Bible, Da?” Bree paused in the act of disentangling a piece of toast from Jemmy’s hair, peering over Roger’s shoulder.

Surprised, he shut the cover, but she was right; King James Version, it said, the letters of the inscription nearly worn away.

“It was given to me,” Jamie said. The reply was casual, but Roger glanced up; there was something odd in Jamie’s voice. Brianna heard it, too; she shot her father a brief, sharp look, but his face was tranquil as he took a final bite of bacon and wiped his lips.

“D’ye want a dram in your coffee, Roger Mac?” he said, nodding at Roger’s cup, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to offer whisky with breakfast.

In fact, the notion sounded really appealing, given the immediate prospects, but Roger shook his head.

“No, thanks; I’ll do.”

“Are you sure?” Brianna transferred the sharp look to him. “Maybe you should. For your throat.”

“It’ll be fine,” he said shortly. He was worried about his voice himself; he didn’t need solicitude from the red-headed contingent, all three of whom were giving him thoughtful looks that he interpreted as casting extreme doubt upon his speaking abilities. Whisky might help his throat, but he doubted it would do much for his preaching--and the last thing he wanted was to show up at a funeral reeking of strong drink in front of a lot of strict teetotalers.

“Vinegar,” advised Mrs. Bug, bending to take away his plate. “Hot vinegar’s the thing. Cuts the phlegm, aye?”

“I’ll bet it would,” Roger said, smiling despite his misgivings. “But I think I won’t, Mrs. Bug, thanks.” He’d waked with a slight sore throat, and hoped the consumption of breakfast would cure it. It hadn’t, and the thought of drinking hot vinegar made his tonsils seize up.

He held out his cup for more chicory coffee, instead, and set his mind to the task ahead.

“Now--does anyone know anything about old Mrs. Wilson?”

“She’s dead,” Jemmy piped up confidently. Everybody laughed, and Jem looked confused, but then joined the laughter, though plainly having not the slightest idea what was funny.

“Good start, sport.” Roger reached out and brushed crumbs from Jemmy’s shirt-front. “Might be a point, at that. The Reverend had a decent sermon on something in the Epistles--the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. I heard him give it more than once. What d’ye think?” He raised a brow at Brianna, who frowned in thought and picked up the Bible.

“That would probably work. Does this thing have a concordance?”

“No.” Jamie put down his coffee cup. “It’s in Romans, chapter six, though.” Seeing the looks of surprise turned upon him, he flushed slightly, and jerked his head toward the Bible.

“I had that book in prison,” he said. “I read it. Come along, a bhailach, are ye ready now?”

[end section]