“Is thee quite well, Friend?” The woman of the house leaned near, peering nearsightedly at him in concern.
“A . . . moment,” he managed, trying to do as Claire told him and breathe through the spasm.
“Like labor pains,” she’d told him, amused. He hadn’t thought it was funny the first time and didn’t now.
The pain eased. He extended his leg, then flexed it back under him, very gingerly. So far, so good. But when he once more tried to rise, his lower back was locked in a vise, and a pain that made him catch his breath stabbed down his buttock.
“Have ye . . . anything like . . . whisky? Rum?” If he could just get to his feet . . . But the woman was shaking her head.
“I’m sorry, Friend. I have not even small beer. Not even milk for the children any longer,” she added with a certain bitterness. “The army took my goats away.”
She didn’t say which army, but he supposed it didn’t matter to her. He made a sound of apology, just in case it had been the Continentals or the militia, and subsided, breathing heavily. This had happened three times before—just the same sudden flashing pain, the inability to move. Once, it had taken four days before he could hobble; the other two times, he had got to his feet within two days, and while it had twinged sporadically for weeks, he’d been able to walk, if slowly.
“Is thee ill? I could give thee rhubarb syrup,” she offered. He managed to smile at that, shaking his head.
“I thank ye, ma’am. It’s no but a clench in my back. When it eases, all will be well.” The trouble was that until it eased, he was all but helpless, and the dawning realization of that gave him a sense of panic.
“Oh.” The woman hesitated for a moment, hovering, but then the baby started to wail and she turned away to fetch it. A little girl—five or six, he thought, a stunted little creature—crawled out from under the bed and stared at him curiously.
“Is thee going to stay to supper?” she asked, in a high, precise voice. She gave him an appraising frown. “Thee looks like thee would eat a lot.”
He revised his estimate of the girl’s age to eight or nine and smiled at her. He was still sweating with the pain, but it was easing a bit.
“I’ll not take your food, a nighean,” he assured her. “In fact, there’s a good loaf and some jerked meat in yon bag; it’s yours.” Her eyes went round as pennies, and he amended, “Your family’s, I mean.”
She glanced eagerly at the bag, swallowing painfully as her mouth watered; he could hear the tiny gulp and it wrung his heart.
“Pru!” she whispered, turning urgently toward the table. “Food!”
Another small girl crawled out and stood beside her sister. They were both plain as fence posts, though they otherwise didn’t resemble each other much.
“I heard,” the newcomer told her sister, and turned a solemn gaze on Jamie.
“Don’t let Mam give thee rhubarb syrup,” she advised him. “It makes thee shit like the blazes, and if thee can’t get to the privy, it—”
“Prudence!”
Prudence obligingly shut her mouth, though she continued to look Jamie over with interest. Her sister knelt and rummaged under the bed, emerging with the family utensil, this a homely object of brown earthenware, which she presented gravely for his inspection.
“We’ll turn our backs, sir, if thee should need to—”
“Patience!”
Red in the face, Mrs. Hardman took the piss pot from her daughter and shooed the little girls to the table, where—with a glance at Jamie to be sure he had meant it—she took the bread and meat and apples from his bag, dividing the food scrupulously into three parts: two large portions for the girls, and a smaller one for herself, put aside for later.
She had left the chamber pot on the floor beside the bed, and as she eased him gingerly onto the corn-shuck mattress, Jamie caught sight of lettering painted in white across the bottom. He squinted to make it out in the dim light, then smiled. It was a Latin motto, encircling a vividly executed bee with a jovial expression and a pronounced wink. Iam apis potanda fineo ne.
He’d seen the jest before—the brothel in Edinburgh where he’d once kept a room had been equipped throughout with utensils sporting a variety of Latin tags, most of them prurient, but some merely puns, like this one. It was a Latin sentence, if a foolish one—
“Drink not the bee now”—but if read phonetically in English, ignoring the spacing, it read, “I am a piss pot and a fine one.” He glanced up at Mrs. Hardman in speculation but thought it was likely not her work. The absent Mr. Hardman must be—or have been, he thought, given the obvious poverty of the household, and he crossed himself unobtrusively at the thought—an educated man.
The baby had waked and was fussing in her cradle, making small sharp yelps like a fox kit. Mrs. Hardman scooped the child out, pulling a worn nursing chair toward the fire with one foot. She laid the baby momentarily on the bed beside Jamie, opening her blouse with one hand, the other reaching automatically to save an apple that was rolling toward the edge of the table, nudged by a little girl’s elbow.
The baby smacked her lips, hungry as her sisters. “And this will be wee Chastity, I make nay doubt?” he said.
Mrs. Hardman gaped at him. “How did thee know the child’s name?”
He glanced at Prudence and Patience, who were silently stuffing bread and meat into their mouths as quickly as they could eat. “Well, I havena yet met a lassie named Sobriety or Fortitude,” he said mildly. “The wean’s sopping; have ye a clean clootie for her?”