The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle

by Diana Gabaldon

  Once the official introductions were over, Nacognaweto motioned to Berthe, who obediently brought out the large bundle she had carried, and opened it at my feet, displaying a large basket of orange and green-striped squash, a string of dried fish, a smaller basket of yams, and a huge pile of Indian corn, shucked and dried on the cob.

  “My God,” I murmured. “The return of Squanto!”

  Everyone gave me a blank look, and I hastened to smile and make exclamations—thoroughly heartfelt—of joy and pleasure over the gifts. It might not get us through the whole winter, but it was enough to augment our diet for a good two months.

  Nacognaweto explained through Gabrielle that this was a small and insignificant return for Jamie’s gift of the bear, which had been received with delight by his village, where Jamie’s courageous exploit (here the women cut their eyes at me and tittered, having evidently heard all about the episode of the fish) had been the subject of great talk and admiration.

  Jamie, thoroughly accustomed to this sort of diplomatic exchange, modestly disclaimed any pretention to prowess, dismissing the encounter as the merest accident.

  While Gabrielle was employed in translation, the old lady ignored the mutual compliments, and sidled crabwise over to me. Without the least sense of offense, she patted me familiarly all over, fingering my clothes and lifting the hem of my dress to examine my shoes, keeping up a running commentary to herself in a soft, hoarse murmur.

  The murmur grew louder and took on a tone of astonishment when she got to my hair. I obligingly took out the pins and shook it down over my shoulders. She pulled out a curl, drew it taut, then let it spring back, and laughed like a drain.

  The men glanced in our direction, but by this time Jamie had moved on to showing Nacognaweto the construction of the house. The chimney was complete, built of fieldstone like the foundation, and the floor had been laid, but the walls, built of solid squared logs each some eight inches in diameter, rose only shoulder-high. Jamie was urging Ian to a demonstration of the debarking of logs, in which he chopped his way steadily backward as he walked along the top of the log, narrowly missing his toes with each stroke.

  This form of male conversation requiring no translation, Gabrielle was left free to come and chat with me; though her French was peculiarly accented and full of strange idioms, we had no trouble understanding each other.

  In fairly short order, I discovered that Gabrielle was the daughter of a French fur trader and a Huron woman, and the second wife of Nacognaweto, who in turn was her second husband—the first, Berthe’s father, had been a Frenchman, killed in the French and Indian War ten years before.

  They lived in a village called Anna Ooka (I bit the inside of my cheek to keep a straight face; no doubt “New Bern” would have sounded peculiar to them), some two days travel to the northwest—Gabrielle indicated the direction with a graceful inclination of her head.

  While I talked with Gabrielle and Berthe, augmenting the conversation by means of hand-waving, I slowly became conscious that another sort of communication was taking place, with the old lady.

  She said nothing to me directly—though she murmured now and then to Berthe, plainly demanding to know what I had said—but her bright dark eyes stayed fixed on me, and I was peculiarly aware of her regard. I had the odd feeling that she was talking to me—and I to her—without the exchange of a single spoken word.

  I saw Jamie, across the clearing, offering Nacognaweto the rest of the bottle of brandy; clearly it was time to offer gifts in return. I gave Gabrielle the embroidered kerchief, and Berthe, a hairpin ornamented with paste brilliants, over which gifts they exclaimed in pleasure. For Nayawenne, though, I had something different.

  I had been fortunate enough to find four large ginseng roots the week before. I fetched all four from my medicine chest and pressed them into her hands, smiling. She looked back at me, then grinned, and untying the cloth bag from her belt, thrust it at me. I didn’t have to open it; I could feel the four long, lumpy shapes through the cloth.

  I laughed in return; yes, we definitely spoke the same language!

  Moved by curiosity, and by an impulse that I couldn’t describe, I asked Gabrielle about the old lady’s amulet, hoping that this wasn’t an insufferable breach of good manners.

  “Grandmère est …” She hesitated, looking for the right French word, but I already knew.

  “Pas docteur,” I said, “et pas sorcière, magicienne. Elle est …” I hesitated too; there really wasn’t a suitable word for it in French, after all.

  “We say she is a singer,” Berthe put in shyly, in French. “We call it shaman; her name, it means ‘It may be; it will happen.’ ”

  The old lady said something, nodding at me, and the two younger women looked startled. Nayawenne bent her head, slipped the thong off her neck, and placed the little bag in my hand.

  It was so heavy that my wrist sagged, and I nearly dropped it. Astonished, I closed my hand over it. The worn leather was warm from her body, the rounded contours fitting smoothly into my palm. For just a moment, I had the remarkable impression that something in the bag was alive.

  My face must have shown my startlement, for the old lady doubled up laughing. She held out her hand and I gave her back the amulet, with a fair amount of haste. Gabrielle conveyed politely that her husband’s grandmother would be pleased to show me the useful plants that grew nearby, if I would like to walk with her?

  I accepted this invitation with alacrity, and the old lady set off up the path with a sure-footed spryness that belied her years. I watched her feet, tiny in soft leather boots, and hoped that when I was her age, I might be capable of walking for two days through the woods, and then wanting to go exploring.

  We wandered along the stream for some way, followed at a respectful distance by Gabrielle and Berthe, who came up beside us only if summoned to interpret.

  “Each of the plants holds the cure to a sickness,” the old lady explained through Gabrielle. She plucked a twig from a bush by the path and handed it to me with a wry look. “If we only knew what they all were!”

  For the most part, we managed fairly well by means of gesture, but when we reached the big pool where Jamie and Ian fished trout, Nayawenne stopped and waved, bringing Gabrielle to us again. She said something to the woman, who turned to me, a faint look of surprise on her face.

  “My husband’s grandmother says that she had a dream about you, on the night of the full moon, two moons ago.”

  “About me?”

  Gabrielle nodded. Nayawenne put a hand on my arm and looked up intently into my face, as though to see the impact of Gabrielle’s words.

  “She told us about the dream; that she had seen a woman with—” Her lips twitched, then hastily straightened themselves, and she delicately touched the ends of her own long, straight hair. “Three days later, my husband and his sons returned, to tell of meeting you and the Bear Killer in the forest.”

  Berthe was watching me with frank interest, too, twining a lock of her own dark-brown hair around the end of an index finger.

  “She who heals said at once that she must see you, and so when we heard that you were here …”

  That gave me a small start; I had had no sensation of being watched, and yet plainly someone had taken note of our presence on the mountain, and conveyed the news to Nacognaweto.

  Impatient with these irrelevancies, Nayawenne poked her granddaughter-in-law and said something, then pointed firmly at the water by our feet.

  “My husband’s grandmother says that when she dreamed of you, it was here.” Gabrielle gestured over the pool, and looked back at me with great seriousness.

  “She met you here, at night. The moon was in the water. You became a white raven; you flew over the water and swallowed the moon.”

  “Oh?” I hoped this wasn’t a sinister thing for me to have done.

  “The white raven flew back, and laid an egg in the palm of her hand. The egg split open, and there was a shining stone inside. My husband’s gr
andmother knew this was great magic, that the stone could heal sickness.”

  Nayawenne nodded her head several times, and taking the amulet bag from her neck, reached into it.

  “On the day after the dream, my husband’s grandmother went to dig kinnea root, and on the way, she saw something blue, sticking in the clay of the riverbank.”

  Nayawenne drew out a small, lumpy object, and dropped it into my hand. It was a pebble; rough, but undeniably a gemstone. Bits of stony matrix clung to it, but the heart of the rock was a deep, soft blue.

  “My goodness—it’s a sapphire, isn’t it?”

  “Sapphire?” Gabrielle turned the word over in her mouth, tasting it. “We call it …” She hesitated, looking for the proper French translation. “… pierre sans peur.”

  “Pierre sans peur?” A fearless stone?

  Nayawenne nodded, talking again. Berthe butted in with the translation, before her mother could speak.

  “My father’s grandmother says a stone like this, it keeps people from being afraid, and so it makes their spirit strong, so they will be healed more easily. Already, this stone has healed two people of fever, and cured a soreness of the eyes that my younger brother had.”

  “My husband’s grandmother wishes to thank you for this gift.” Gabrielle neatly took back the conversation.

  “Ah … do tell her she’s quite welcome.” I nodded cordially at the old lady, and gave her back the blue stone. She popped it into the bag and drew the string tight about its neck. Then she peered closely at me, and reaching out, drew down a curl of my hair, talking as she rubbed the lock between her fingers.

  “My husband’s grandmother says that you have medicine now, but you will have more. When your hair is white like hers, that is when you will find your full power.”

  The old lady dropped the lock of hair, and looked into my eyes for a moment. I thought I saw an expression of great sadness in the faded depths, and reached involuntarily to touch her.

  She stepped back and said something else. Gabrielle looked at me queerly.

  “She says you must not be troubled; sickness is sent from the gods. It won’t be your fault.”

  I looked at Nayawenne, startled, but she had already turned away.

  “What won’t be my fault?” I asked, but the old lady refused to say more.

  21

  NIGHT ON A SNOWY MOUNTAIN

  December 1767

  The winter held off for some time, but snow began to fall in the night on November 28, and we woke to find the world transformed. Every needle on the great blue spruce behind the cabin was frosted, and ragged fringes of ice dripped from the tangle of wild raspberry canes.

  The snow wasn’t deep, but its coming changed the shape of daily life. I no longer foraged during the day, save for short trips to the stream for water, and for lingering bits of green cress salvaged from the icy slush along the banks. Jamie and Ian ceased their work of log felling and field clearing, and turned to roof shingling. The winter drew in on us, and we in turn withdrew from the cold, turning inward.

  We had no candles; only grease lamps and rushlights, and the light of the fire that burned constantly on the hearth, blackening the roof beams. We therefore rose at first light, and lay down after supper, in the same rhythm as the creatures of the forest around us.

  We had no sheep yet, and thus no wool to card or spin, no cloth to weave or dye. We had no beehives yet, and thus no wax to boil, no candles to dip. There was no stock to care for, save the horses and mules and the piglet, who had grown considerably in both size and irascibility, and in consequence been exiled to a private compartment in the corner of the crude stable Jamie had built—this itself no more than a large open-fronted shelter with a branch-covered roof.

  Myers had brought a small but useful selection of tools, the iron parts clanking in a bag, to be supplied with wooden handles from the forest close at hand: a barking ax and another felling ax, a plowshare for the spring planting, augers, planes and chisels, a small grass scythe, two hammers and a handsaw, a peculiar thing called a “twibil” that Jamie said was for cutting mortises, a “drawknife”—a curved blade with handles at either end, used to smooth and taper wood—two small sharp knives, a hatchet-adze, something that looked like a medieval torture device but was really a nail-header, and a froe for splitting shingles.

  Between them, Jamie and Ian had succeeded in getting a roof on the cabin before snow fell, but the sheds were less important. A block of wood sat constantly by the fire, the froe stuck through it, ready for anyone with an idle moment to strike off a few more shingles. That corner of the hearth was in fact devoted to wood carving; Ian had made a rough but serviceable stool, which sat under one of the windows for good light, and the shavings could all be tossed thriftily into the fire, which burned day and night.

  Myers had brought a few woman’s tools for me, as well: a huge sewing basket, well supplied with needles, pins, scissors, and balls of thread, and lengths of linen, muslin, and woven wool. While sewing was not my favorite occupation, I was nonetheless delighted to see these, since owing to Jamie and Ian’s constantly lurching through thickets and crawling about on the roofs, the knees, elbows, and shoulders of all their garments were in constant disrepair.

  “Another one!” Jamie sat bolt upright in bed beside me.

  “Another what?” I asked sleepily, opening one eye. It was very dark in the cabin, the fire burnt to coals on the hearth.

  “Another bloody leak! It hit me in the ear, damn it!” He sprang out of bed, went to the fire and thrust in a stick of wood. Once it was alight, he brought it back and stood on the bedstead, thrusting his torch upward as he glowered at the roof in search of the fiendish leak.

  “Urmg?” Ian, who slept on a low trundle bed, rolled over and groaned inquiringly. Rollo, who insisted on sharing it with him, emitted a brief “uff,” relapsed into a heap of gray fur, and resumed his loud snoring.

  “A leak,” I told Ian, keeping a narrow eye on Jamie’s torch. I wasn’t having my precious feather bed set alight by stray sparks.

  “Oh.” Ian lay with an arm across his face. “Has it snowed again?”

  “It must have.” The windows were covered with squares of oiled deerhide, tacked down, and there was no sound from outside, but the air had the peculiar muffled quality that came with snow.

  Snow came silently, and mounded on the roof, then, beginning to melt from the warmth of the shingles underneath, would drip down the slope of the roof, to leave a gleaming portcullis of icicles along the eaves. Now and then, though, the roaming water found a split in a shingle, or a join where the overlapping edges had warped, and drips poked their icy fingers through the roof.

  Jamie regarded all such intrusions as a personal affront, and brooked no delay in dealing with them.

  “Look!” he exclaimed. “There it is. See it?”

  I shifted my glassy gaze from the hairy ankles in front of my nose, to the roof overhead. Sure enough, the torchlight revealed the black line of a split in one shingle, with a spreading dark patch of dampness on the underside. As I watched, a clear drop formed, glistening red in the torchlight, and fell with a plop onto the pillow beside me.

  “We could shift the bed a bit,” I suggested, though with no particular hope. I had been through this before. All suggestions that repair work could wait till daylight were met with astonished refusal; no proper man, I was given to understand, would countenance such a thing.

  Jamie stepped down off the bedstead and prodded Ian in the ribs with his foot.

  “Get up and knock at the spot where the split is, Ian. I’ll deal with it on the outside.” Seizing a fresh shingle, a hammer, a hatchet, and a bag of nails, he headed for the door.

  “Don’t you go up on the roof in that!” I exclaimed, sitting up abruptly. “That’s your good woolen shirt!”

  He halted by the door, glared briefly at me, then, with the rebuking expression of an early Christian martyr, laid down his tools, stripped off the shirt, dropped it on the floor,
picked up the tools, and strode majestically out to deal with the leak, buttocks clenched with determined zeal.

  I rubbed a hand over my sleep-puffed face and moaned softly to myself.

  “He’ll be all right, Auntie,” Ian assured me. He yawned widely, not bothering to cover his mouth, and reluctantly rolled out of his own warm bed.

  Thumps on the roof that were definitely not the feet of eight tiny reindeer announced that Jamie was in place. I rolled out of the way and got up, resigned, as Ian mounted the bedstead and jabbed a stick of firewood upward into the damp patch, jarring the shingles enough for Jamie to locate the leak on the outside.

  A short period of rending and banging followed, as the defective shingle was yanked loose and replaced, and the leak was summarily extinguished, leaving no more evidence of its existence than the small heap of snow that had fallen in through the hole left by the removed shingle.

  Back in bed, Jamie curled his freezing body around me, clasped me to his icy bosom, and fell promptly asleep, full of the righteous satisfaction of a man who has defended hearth and home against all threat.

  * * *

  It was a fragile and tenuous foothold that we had upon the mountain—but a foothold, for all that. We had not much meat—there had been little time for hunting, beyond squirrel and rabbit, and those useful rodents had gone to their winter rest by now—but a fair amount of dried vegetables, from yams to squash to wild onions and garlic, plus a bushel or two of nuts, and the small stock of herbs I had managed to gather and dry. It made for a sparse diet, but with careful management, we could survive till spring.

  With few chores to do outside, there was time to talk, to tell stories, and to dream. Between the useful objects like spoons and bowls, Jamie took time to carve the pieces of a wooden chess set, and spent a good deal of his time trying to inveigle me or Ian into playing with him.