Текст книги "An echo in the bone"

Автор книги: Diana Gabaldon

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Текущая страница: 72 (всего у книги 75 страниц)

There were pathways in the dark. I knew; I had seen people die. Despite physical decay, there was no dying until the pathway was found. I couldn’t—yet—find mine.

NUMBNESS

THE NEW MEDICAL CHEST sat on the table in my room, gleaming softly in the candlelight. Beside it were the gauze bags of dried herbs I had bought during the morning, the fresh bottles of the tinctures I had brewed in the afternoon, much to Mrs. Figg’s displeasure at having her kitchen’s purity so perverted. Her slitted eyes said that she knew me for a rebel and thought me likely a witch; she’d retreated to the doorway of the cookhouse while I worked but wouldn’t leave altogether, instead keeping silent suspicious watch over me and my cauldron.

A large decanter of plum brandy was keeping me company. Over the course of the last week, I had found that a glass of it at night would let me find surcease in sleep, at least for a little. It wasn’t working tonight. I heard the clock on the mantelpiece downstairs chime softly, once.

I stooped to pick up a box of dried chamomile that had spilled, sweeping the scattered leaves carefully back into their container. A bottle of syrup of poppies had fallen over, too, lying on its side, the aromatic liquid oozing round the cork. I set it upright, wiped the golden droplets from its neck with my kerchief, blotted up the tiny puddle from the floor. A root, a stone, a leaf. One by one, I picked them up, set them straight, put them away, the accoutrements of my calling, the pieces of my destiny.

The cool glass seemed somehow remote, the gleaming wood an illusion. Heart beating slowly, erratically, I put a hand flat on the box, trying to steady myself, to fix myself in space and time. It was becoming more difficult by the day.

I remembered, with sudden, painful vividness, a day on the retreat from Ticonderoga. We had reached a village, found momentary refuge in a barn. I’d worked all day then, doing what could be done with no supplies, no medicines, no instruments, no bandages save what I made from the sweat-sodden, filthy clothes of the wounded. Feeling the world recede further and further as I worked, hearing my voice as though it belonged to someone else. Seeing the bodies under my hands, only bodies. Limbs. Wounds. Losing touch.

Darkness fell. Someone came, pulled me to my feet, and sent me out of the barn, into the little tavern. It was crowded, overwhelmed with people. Someone—Ian?—said that Jamie had food for me outside.

He was alone there, in the empty woodshed, dimly lit by a distant lantern.

I’d stood in the doorway, swaying. Or perhaps it was the room that swayed.

I could see my fingers dug into the wood of the doorjamb, nails gone white.

A movement in the dimness. He rose fast, seeing me, came toward me. What was his—

“Jamie.” I’d felt a distant sense of relief at finding his name.

He’d seized me, drawn me into the shed, and I wondered for an instant whether I was walking or whether he was carrying me; I heard the scrape of the dirt floor under my feet but didn’t feel my weight or the shift of it.

He was talking to me, the sound of it soothing. It seemed a dreadful effort to distinguish words. I knew what he must be saying, though, and managed to say, “All right. Just… tired,” wondering even as I spoke them whether these sounds were words at all, let alone the right ones.

“Will ye sleep, then, lass?” he’d said, worried eyes fixed on me. “Or can ye eat a bit first?” He let go of me, to reach for the bread, and I put out a hand to the wall to support myself, surprised to find it solid.

The sense of cold numbness had returned.

“Bed,” I said. My lips felt blue and bloodless. “With you. Right now.”

He’d cupped my cheek, calloused palm warm on my skin. Big hand. Solid. Above all, solid.

“Are ye sure, a nighean?” he’d said, a note of surprise in his voice. “Ye look as though—”

I’d laid a hand on his arm, half fearing that it would go through his flesh.

“Hard,” I’d whispered. “Bruise me.”

My glass was empty, the decanter halfway full. I poured another and took hold of the glass carefully, not wanting to spill it, determined to find oblivion, no matter how temporary.

Could I separate entirely? I wondered. Could my soul actually leave my body without my dying first? Or had it done so already?

I drank the glass slowly, one sip at a time. Another. One sip at a time.

There must have been some sound that made me look up, but I wasn’t aware of having raised my head. John Grey was standing in the doorway of my room. His neckcloth was missing and his shirt hung limp on his shoulders, wine spilled down the front of it. His hair was loose and tangled, and his eyes as red as mine.

I stood up, slow, as though I were underwater.

“I will not mourn him alone tonight,” he said roughly, and closed the door.

I WAS SURPRISED to wake up. I hadn’t really expected to and lay for a bit trying to fit reality back into place around me. I had only a slight headache, which was almost more surprising than the fact that I was still alive.

Both those things paled in significance beside the fact of the man in bed beside me.

“How long has it been since you last slept with a woman, if you don’t mind my asking?”

He didn’t appear to mind. He frowned a little and scratched his chest thoughtfully.

“Oh… fifteen years? At least that.” He glanced at me, his expression altering to one of concern. “Oh. I do apologize.”

“You do? For what?” I arched one brow. I could think of a number of things he might apologize for, but probably none of those was what he had in mind.

“I am afraid I was perhaps not…” he hesitated. “Very gentlemanly.”

“Oh, you weren’t,” I said, rather tartly. “But I assure you that I wasn’t being at all ladylike myself.”

He looked at me, and his mouth worked a bit, as though trying to frame some response to that, but after a moment or two he shook his head and gave it up.

“Besides, it wasn’t me you were making love to,” I said, “and both of us know it.”

He looked up, startled, his eyes very blue. Then the shadow of a smile crossed his face, and he looked down at the quilted coverlet.

“No,” he said softly. “Nor were you, I think, making love to me. Were you?”

“No,” I said. The grief of the night before had softened, but the weight of it was still there. My voice was low and husky, because my throat was halfway closed, where the hand of sorrow clutched me unawares.

John sat up and reached to the table, where a carafe stood along with a bottle and a glass. He poured something out of the bottle and handed it to me.

“Thank you,” I said, and lifted it to my lips. “Good grief, is that beer?”

“Yes, and very good beer, too,” he said, tilting back the bottle. He took several hearty gulps, eyes half closed, then lowered it with a sigh of satisfaction. “Clears the palate, freshens the breath, and prepares the stomach for digestion.”

Despite myself, I was amused—and shocked.

“Do you mean to tell me that you are in the habit of drinking beer for breakfast every day?”

“Of course not. I have food with it.”

“I am amazed that you have a single tooth in your head,” I said severely—but risked a small sip. It was good beer: heavy-bodied and sweet, with just the right sour edge.

At this point, I noticed a certain tenseness in his posture, which the content of the conversation didn’t account for. Slow-witted as I was, it took a moment for me to realize what was amiss.

“Oh. If you need to fart,” I said, “don’t trouble on my account. Go ahead.”

He was sufficiently startled by my observation that he did.

“I do beg your pardon, madam!” he said, his fair skin flushing up to the hairline.

I tried not to laugh, but suppressed amusement jiggled the bed, and he went redder still.

“Would you have any hesitation about it were you in bed with a man?” I asked, out of idle curiosity.

He rubbed his knuckles against his mouth, the color fading a bit from his cheeks.

“Ah. Well, that would depend upon the man. By and large, though, no.”

The man. I knew that Jamie was the man in his mind—just as he was in mine. At the moment, I wasn’t disposed to resent it.

He knew what I was thinking, too.

“He offered me his body once. You knew that?” His voice was dry.

“I take it you didn’t accept.” I knew he hadn’t but was more than curious to hear his side of that encounter.

“No. What I wanted from him was not that—or not entirely that,” he added, with honesty. “I wanted all of it—and was young and proud enough to think that if I could not have that, then I would accept no less. And that, of course, he couldn’t give me.”

I was silent for a time, thinking. The window was open, and the long muslin curtains moved in the breeze.

“Did you regret it?” I asked. “Not taking him up on his offer, I mean?”

“Ten thousand times, at the very least,” he assured me, breaking into a rueful grin. “At the same time… refusing him was one of the few acts of true nobility to which I would lay claim for myself. It’s true, you know,” he added, “selflessness does carry its own reward—for if I had taken him, that would have destroyed forever what did exist between us.

“To have given him instead the gift of my understanding, hard come by as it was,” he added ironically, “left me with his friendship. So I am left with momentary regret on the one hand, but satisfaction on the other. And in the end it was the friendship that I valued most.”

After a moment’s silence, he turned to me.

“May I… You will think me odd.”

“Well, you are a bit odd, aren’t you?” I said tolerantly. “I don’t really mind, though. What is it?”

He gave me a look, strongly suggesting that if one of us was indeed odd, he didn’t think it was himself. Gentlemanly instincts suppressed any remark he might have made to this effect, though.

“Will you allow me to see you? Ah… naked?”

I closed one eye and looked at him.

“This certainly isn’t the first time you’ve slept—I do mean slept with—a woman, is it?” I asked. He had been married, though I seemed to recall that he had spent much of his married life living separately from his wife.

He pursed his lips thoughtfully, as though trying to recall.

“Well, no. I do think it may be the first time I’ve done it entirely voluntarily, though.”

“Oh, I am flattered!”

He glanced at me, smiling slightly.

“So you should be,” he said quietly.

I was of an age, after all, where… Well, on the other hand, he presumably didn’t have the same instinctive reactions that the majority of men did, in terms of feminine attractions. Which rather left open the question …

“Why?”

A shy smile touched the corner of his mouth, and he hitched himself up against the pillow.

“I… am not quite sure, to tell you the truth. Perhaps it is only an effort to reconcile my memories of last night with the … er … actuality of the experience?”

I felt a sharp jolt, as though he had punched me in the chest. He couldn’t have known my first thoughts on waking and seeing him—that sharp, disorienting flash when I had thought he was Jamie, remembering so acutely Jamie’s flesh and weight and ardor, and so urgently wanted him to be Jamie that I had succeeded for an instant in thinking that he was, only to be crushed like a grape at the realization that he wasn’t, all my soft insides spurting out.

Had he felt or thought the same things, waking to find me there beside him?

“Or perhaps it is curiosity,” he said, smiling a little more broadly. “I have not seen a naked woman in some time, bar Negro slaves at the docks in Charleston.”

“How long is some time? Fifteen years, you said?”

“Oh, a good deal longer than that. Isobel—” He stopped abruptly, the smile vanishing. He hadn’t mentioned his dead wife before.

“You never saw her naked?” I asked, with more than idle curiosity. He turned his face away a little, eyes cast down.

“Ah … no. It wasn’t… She did not… No.” He cleared his throat, then raised his eyes, looking into mine with an honesty raw enough to make me want to look away.

“I am naked to you,” he said simply, and drew back the sheet.

Thus invited, I could hardly not look at him. And in all truth, I wanted to, out of simple curiosity. He was trim and lightly built, but muscular and solid. A little softness at the waist, but no fat—and softly furred with vigorous blond hair, darkening to brown at his crutch. It was a warrior’s body; I was well acquainted with those. One side of his chest was heavily marked with crisscrossing scars, and there were others—a deep one across the top of one thigh, a jagged thing like a lightning bolt down his left forearm.

At least my own scars weren’t visible, I thought, and before I could hesitate further, I pulled the sheet away from my own body. He looked at it with deep curiosity, smiling a little.

“You are very lovely,” he said politely.

“For a woman of my age?”

His gaze passed over me dispassionately, not with any sense of judgment but rather with the air of a man of educated tastes evaluating what he saw in the light of years of seeing.

“No,” he said finally. “Not for a woman of your age; not for a woman at all, I think.”

“As what, then?” I asked, fascinated. “An object? A sculpture?” In a way, I could see that. Something like museum sculptures, perhaps: weathered statues, fragments of vanished culture, holding within them some remnant of the original inspiration, this remnant in some odd way magnified by the lens of age, sanctified by antiquity. I had never regarded myself in such a light, but I couldn’t think what else he might mean.

“As my friend,” he said simply.

“Oh,” I said, very touched. “Thank you.”

I waited, then drew the sheet up over both of us.

“Since we’re friends …” I said, somewhat emboldened.

“Yes?”

“I only wondered… have you… been quite alone all this time? Since your wife died?”

He sighed, but smiled to let me know he didn’t mind the question.

“If you really must know, I have for many years enjoyed a physical relationship with my cook.”

“With… your cook?”

“Not with Mrs. Figg, no,” he said hastily, hearing the horror in my voice. “I meant with my cook at Mount Josiah, in Virginia. His name is Manoke.”

“Ma—oh!” I recalled Bobby Higgins telling me that Lord John retained an Indian named Manoke to cook for him.

“It is not merely the relief of necessary urges,” he added pointedly, turning his head to meet my eyes. “There is true liking between us.”

“I’m pleased to hear that,” I murmured. “He, er, he’s…”

“I have no idea whether his preference is solely for men. I rather doubt it—I was somewhat surprised when he made his desires known in re myself—but I am in no position to complain, whatever his tastes may be.”

I rubbed a knuckle over my lips, not wanting to seem vulgarly curious—but vulgarly curious, all the same.

“You don’t mind, if he … takes other lovers? Or he you, come to that?” I had a sudden uneasy apprehension. I did not intend that what had happened the night before should ever happen again. In fact, I was still trying to convince myself that it hadn’t happened this time. Nor did I mean to go to Virginia with him. But what if I should and Lord John’s household then assumed… I had visions of a jealous Indian cook poisoning my soup or lying in wait behind the necessary house with a tomahawk.

John himself seemed to be considering the matter, lips pursed. He had a heavy beard, I saw; the blond stubble softened his features and at the same time gave me an odd feeling of strangeness—I had so seldom seen him less than perfectly shaved and groomed.

“No. There is… no sense of possession in it,” he said finally.

I gave him a look of patent disbelief.

“I assure you,” he said, smiling a little. “It—well. Perhaps I can describe it best by analogy. At my plantation—it belongs to William, of course; I refer to it as mine only in the sense of habitation—”

I made a small polite sound in my throat, indicating that he might curtail his inclinations toward complete accuracy in the interests of getting on with it.

“At the plantation,” he said, ignoring me, “there is a large open space at the rear of the house. It was a small clearing at first, and over the years I have enlarged it and finally made a lawn of it, but the edge of the clearing runs up to the trees. In the evenings, quite often, deer come out of the forest to feed at the edges of the lawn. Now and then, though, I see a particular deer. It’s white, I suppose, but it looks as though it’s made of silver. I don’t know whether it comes only in the moonlight or whether it’s only that I cannot see it save by moonlight—but it is a sight of rare beauty.”

His eyes had softened, and I could see that he wasn’t looking at the plaster ceiling overhead but at the white deer, coat shining in the moonlight.

“It comes for two nights, three—rarely, four—and then it’s gone, and I don’t see it again for weeks, sometimes months. And then it comes again, and I am enchanted once more.”

He rolled onto his side in a rustle of bedclothes, regarding me.

“Do you see? I do not own this creature—would not, if I could. Its coming is a gift, which I accept with gratitude, but when it’s gone, there is no sense of abandonment or deprivation. I’m only glad to have had it for so long as it chose to remain.”

“And you’re saying that your relationship with Manoke is the same. Does he feel that way about you, do you think?” I asked, fascinated. He glanced at me, clearly startled.

“I have no idea.”

“You, um, don’t… talk in bed?” I said, striving for delicacy.

His mouth twitched, and he looked away.

“No.”

We lay in silence for a few moments, examining the ceiling.

“Have you ever?” I blurted.

“Have I what?”

“Had a lover that you talked to.”

He cut his eyes at me.

“Yes. Perhaps not quite so frankly as I find myself talking to you, but, yes.” He opened his mouth as though to say or ask something further, but instead breathed in, shut his mouth firmly, and let the air out slowly through his nose.

I knew—I couldn’t not know—that he wanted very much to know what Jamie was like in bed, beyond what I had inadvertently shown him the night before. And I was obliged to admit to myself that I was very tempted to tell him, only in order to bring Jamie back to life for the brief moments while we talked. But I knew that such revelations would have a price: not only a later sense of betrayal of Jamie but a sense of shame at using John—whether he wished such usage or not. But if the memories of what had passed between Jamie and myself in our intimacy were no longer shared—still, they belonged only to that intimacy and were not mine to give away.

It occurred to me—belatedly, as so many things did these days—that John’s intimate memories belonged to him, as well.

“I didn’t mean to pry,” I said apologetically.

He smiled faintly, but with real humor.

“I am flattered, madam, that you should entertain an interest in me. I know many more … conventional marriages in which the partners remain by preference in complete ignorance of each other’s thoughts and histories.”

With considerable startlement, I realized that there was now an intimacy between myself and John—unexpected and uninvited on both our parts, but… there it was.

The realization made me shy, and with that realization came a more practical one: to wit, that a person with functional kidneys cannot lie in bed drinking beer forever.

He noticed my slight shifting and rose at once himself, donning his banyan before fetching my own dressing gown—which, I saw with a sense of unease, some kindly hand had hung over a chair to warm before the fire.

“Where did that come from?” I asked, nodding at the silk robe he held for me.

“From your bedroom, I assume.” He frowned at me for a moment before discerning what I meant. “Oh. Mrs. Figg brought it in when she built the fire.”

“Oh,” I said faintly. The thought of Mrs. Figg seeing me in Lord John’s bed—doubtless out cold, disheveled, and snoring, if not actually drooling—was hideously mortifying. For that matter, the mere fact of my being in his bed was deeply embarrassing, no matter what I had looked like.

“We are married,” he pointed out, with a slight edge to his voice.

“Er… yes. But…” A further thought came to me: perhaps this was not so unusual an occurrence for Mrs. Figg as I thought—had he entertained other women in his bed from time to time?

“Do you sleep with women? Er … not sleep, I mean, but …”

He stared at me, stopped in the act of untangling his hair.

“Not willingly,” he said. He paused, then laid down his silver comb. “Is there anything else you would like to ask me,” he inquired, with exquisite politeness, “before I allow the bootboy to come in?”

Despite the fire, the room was chilly, but my cheeks bloomed with heat. I drew the silk dressing gown tighter.

“Since you offer… I know Brianna told you what—what we are. Do you believe it?”

He considered me for a time without speaking. He didn’t have Jamie’s ability to mask his feelings, and I could see his mild irritation at my previous question fade into amusement. He gave me a small bow.

“No,” he said, “but I give you my word that I will of course behave in all respects as if I did.”

I stared at him until I became aware that my mouth was hanging unattractively open. I closed it.

“Fair enough,” I said.

The odd little bubble of intimacy in which we had spent the last half hour had burst, and despite the fact that I had been the one asking nosy questions, I felt like a snail suddenly deprived of its shell—not merely naked but fatally exposed, emotionally as well as physically. Thoroughly rattled, I murmured a farewell and made for the door.

“Claire?” he said, a question in his voice.

I stopped, hand on the doorknob, feeling quite queer; he’d never called me by my name before. It took a small effort to look over my shoulder at him, but when I did, I found him smiling.

“Think of the deer,” he said gently. “My dear.”

I nodded, wordless, and made my escape. Only later, after I had washed—vigorously—dressed, and had a restorative cup of tea with brandy in it, did I make sense of this last remark.

Its coming is a gift, he’d said of the white deer, which I accept with gratitude.

I breathed the fragrant steam and watched the tiny curls of tea leaf drift to the bottom of the cup. For the first time in weeks, I wondered just what the future might hold.

“Fair enough,” I whispered, and drained the cup, the shreds of tea leaf strong and bitter on my tongue.

FIREFLY

IT WAS DARK. Darker than any place he’d ever been. Night outside wasn’t really ever dark, even when the sky was cloudy, but this was darker than the back of Mandy’s closet when they played hide ’n seek. There was a crack between the doors, he could feel it with his fingers, but no light came through it at all. It must still be night. Maybe there’d be light through the crack when it got morning.

But maybe Mr. Cameron would come back when it got morning, too. Jem moved a little away from the door, thinking that. He didn’t think Mr. Cameron wanted to hurt him, exactly—he said he didn’t, at least—but he might try to take him back up to the rocks and Jem wasn’t going there, not for anything.

Thinking about the rocks hurt. Not as much as when Mr. Cameron pushed him against one and it … started, but it hurt. There was a scrape on his elbow where he banged it, fighting back, and he rubbed at it now, because it was lots better to feel that than to think about the rocks. No, he told himself, Mr. Cameron wouldn’t hurt him, because he’d pulled him back out of the rock when it tried to … He swallowed hard, and tried to think about something else.

He sort of thought he knew where he was, only because he remembered Mam telling Da about the joke Mr. Cameron played on her, locking her in the tunnel, and she said the wheels that locked the doors sounded like bones being chewed, and that’s just what it sounded like when Mr. Cameron shoved him in here and shut the doors.

He was kind of shaking. It was cold in here, even with his jacket on. Not as cold as when he and Grandda got up before dawn and waited in the snow for the deer to come down and drink, but still pretty cold.

The air felt weird. He sniffed, trying to smell what was going on, like Grandda and Uncle Ian could. He could smell rock—but it was just plain old rock, not … them. Metal, too, and an oily sort of smell, kind of like a gas station. A hot kind of smell he thought was electricity. There was something in the air that wasn’t a smell at all, but a kind of hum. That was power, he recognized that. Not quite the same as the big chamber Mam had showed him and Jimmy Glasscock, where the turbines lived, but sort of the same. Machines, then. He felt a little better. Machines felt friendly to him.

Thinking about machines reminded him that Mam said there was a train in here, a little train, and that made him feel lots better. If there was a train in here, it wasn’t all just empty dark space. That hum maybe belonged to the train.

He put out his hands and shuffled along until he bumped into a wall. Then he felt around and walked along with one hand on the wall, found out he was going the wrong way when he walked face first into the doors and said, “Ow!”

His own voice made him laugh, but the laughter sounded funny in the big space and he quit and turned around to walk the other way, with his other hand on the wall to steer by.

Where was Mr. Cameron now? He hadn’t said where he was going. Just told Jem to wait and he’d come back with some food.

His hand touched something round and smooth, and he jerked it back. It didn’t move, though, and he put his hand on it. Power cables, running along the wall. Big ones. He could feel a little hum in them, same as he could when Da turned on the car’s motor. It made him think of Mandy. She had that kind of quiet hum when she was sleeping, and a louder one when she was awake.

He wondered suddenly whether Mr. Cameron might have gone to take Mandy, and the thought made him feel scared. Mr. Cameron wanted to know how you got through the stones, and Jem couldn’t tell him—but Mandy for sure couldn’t be telling him, she was only a baby. The thought made him feel hollow, though, and he reached out, panicked.

There she was, though. Something like a little warm light in his head, and he took a breath. Mandy was OK, then. He was interested to find he could tell that with her far away. He’d never thought to try before, usually she was just right there, being a pain in the arse, and when him and his friends went off without her, he wasn’t thinking about her.

His foot struck something and he stopped, reaching out with one hand. He didn’t find anything and after a minute got up his nerve to let go of the wall and reach out further, then to edge out into the dark. His heart thumped and he started to sweat, even though he was still cold. His fingers stubbed metal and his heart leaped in his chest. The train!

He found the opening, and felt his way in on his hands and knees, and cracked his head on the thing where the controls were, standing up. That made him see colored stars and he said “Ifrinn!” out loud. It sounded funny, not so echoey now he was inside the train, and he giggled.

He felt around over the controls. They were like Mam said, just a switch and a little lever, and he pushed the switch. A red light popped into life, and made him jump. It made him feel lots better, though, just to see it. He could feel the electricity coming through the train, and that made him feel better, too. He pushed the lever, just a little, and was thrilled to feel the train move.

Where did it go? He pushed the lever a little more, and air moved past his face. He sniffed at it, but it didn’t tell him anything. He was going away from the big doors, though—away from Mr. Cameron.

Maybe Mr. Cameron would go and try to find out about the stones from Mam or Da? Jem hoped he would. Da would settle Mr. Cameron’s hash, he kent that for sure, and the thought warmed him. Then they’d come and find him and it would be OK. He wondered if Mandy could tell them where he was. She kent him the same way he kent her, and he looked at the little red light on the train. It glowed like Mandy, steady and warm-looking, and he felt good looking at it. He pushed the lever a little farther, and the train went faster into the dark.

NEXUS

RACHEL POKED SUSPICIOUSLY at the end of a loaf. The bread-seller, catching sight, turned on her with a growl.

“Here, don’t you be touching that! You want it, it’s a penny. You don’t, go away.”

“How old is this bread?” Rachel said, ignoring the young woman’s glower. “It smells stale, and if it is as stale as it looks, I would not give thee more than half a penny for a loaf.”

“It’s no more than a day old!” The young woman pulled back the tray of loaves, indignant. “There’ll be no fresh bread ’til Wednesday; my master can’t get flour ’til then. Now, d’you want bread or not?”

“Hmm,” said Rachel, feigning skepticism. Denny would have fits if he thought she was trying to cheat the woman, but there was a difference between paying a fair price and being robbed, and it was no more fair to allow the woman to cheat her than it was the other way about.

Were those crumbs on the tray? And were those tooth marks in the end of that loaf? She bent close, frowning, and Rollo whined suddenly.

“Does thee think the mice have been at these, dog?” she said to him. “So do I.”

Rollo wasn’t interested in mice, though. Ignoring both Rachel’s question and the bread-seller’s indignant reply, he was sniffing the ground with great industry, making an odd, high-pitched noise in his throat.

“Whatever ails thee, dog?” Rachel said, staring at this performance in consternation. She put a hand on his ruff and was startled at the vibration running through the great hairy frame.

Rollo ignored her touch as well as her voice. He was moving—almost running—in small circles, whining, nose to the ground.

“That dog’s not gone mad, has he?” the baker’s assistant asked, watching this.

“Of course not,” Rachel said absently. “Rollo … Rollo!”

The dog had suddenly shot out of the shop, nose to the ground, and was heading down the street, half-trotting in his eagerness.

Muttering under her breath, Rachel seized her marketing basket and went after him.

To her alarm, he was already at the next street and vanished round the corner as she watched. She ran, calling after him, the basket bumping against her leg as she went and threatening to spill out the goods she’d already bought.