“Ooh, ye’re well started, then,” he murmured. “Ye’re slick and briny as an oyster, Sassenach. Ye hadna finished yet, though?”
“No, I—how long were you listening?”
“Oh, long enough,” he assured me, and, ceasing operations for a moment, took hold of my disengaged hand and folded it firmly round a very enthusiastic bit of his own anatomy. “Mmm?”
“Oh,” I said. “Well . . .” My legs had taken stock of the situation much more quickly than my mind had, and so had he. He lowered his head and kissed me in the dark with a soft, eager thoroughness, then pulled his mouth away long enough to ask, “How do elephants make love?”
Fortunately, he didn’t wait for an answer, as I hadn’t got one. He rolled over me and slid home in the same movement, and the universe shrank suddenly to a single vivid point.
A few minutes later, we lay under the blazing stars, quilt thrown off and hearts thumping slowly back to normal.
“Did you know,” I said, “that your heart actually does stop for a moment at the point of climax? That’s why your heartbeat is slow for a minute or two after; the sympathetic nervous system has fired all its synapses, leaving the parasympathetic to run your heart, and the parasympathetic decreases heart rate.”
“I noticed it stopped,” he assured me. “Didna really care why, as long as it started again.” He put his arms over his head and stretched luxuriously, enjoying the cool air on his skin. “Actually, I never cared whether it started again, either.”
“There’s a man for you,” I remarked tolerantly. “No forethought.”
“Ye dinna need forethought for that, Sassenach. What ye were doing when I interrupted ye, I mean. I admit, if there’s a woman involved, ye have to think of all sorts of things, but no for that.” He paused for a moment.
“Um. Did I not . . . serve ye well enough earlier, Sassenach?” he asked, a little shyly. “I would ha’ taken more time, but I couldna wait, and—”
“No, no,” I assured him. “It wasn’t that—I mean, I just . . . enjoyed it so much I woke up wanting more.”
“Oh. Good.”
He relaxed with a deep, contented sigh, closing his eyes. There was a waxing moon and I could see him clearly, though the moonlight washed all color from the scene, leaving him a sculpture in black and white. I ran a hand down his chest and lightly over his still-flat belly—hard physical labor had its price, but also its benefits—and cupped his genitals, warm and damp in my hand.
“Tha ball-ratha sìnte riut,” he said, putting a big hand over mine.
“A what?” I said. “A lucky . . . leg?”
“Well, limb, really; leg would be overstating it by a good deal. ‘There is a lucky limb stretched against you.’ It’s the first line of a poem by Alasdair mac Mhaighistir Alasdair. ‘To an Excellent Penis,’ it’s called.”
“Thought highly of himself, did Alasdair?”
“Well, he doesna say it’s his—though I admit that’s the implication.” He squinted a little, eyes still closed, and declaimed:
“Tha ball-ratha sìnte riut
A choisinn mìle buaidh
Sàr-bodh iallach acfhainneach
Rinn-gheur sgaiteach cruaidh
Ùilleach feitheach feadanach
Làidir seasmhach buan
Beòdha treòrach togarrach
Nach diùltadh bog no cruaidh.”
“I daresay,” I said. “Do it in English; I believe I’ve missed a few of the finer points. He can’t really have compared his penis to a bagpipe’s chanter, can he?”
“Oh, aye, he did,” Jamie confirmed, then translated:
“There is a lucky limb stretched against you
That has made a thousand conquests:
An excellent penis that is leathery, well-equipped,
Sharp-pointed, piercing, firm,
Lubricated, sinewy, chanter-like,
Strong, durable, long-enduring,
Vigorous, powerful, joyous,
That would not jilt either soft or hard body.”
“Leathery, is it?” I said, giggling. “I don’t wonder, after a thousand conquests. What does he mean, ‘well-equipped,’ though?”
“I wouldna ken. I suppose I must have seen it once or twice—havin’ a piss by the side o’ the road, I mean—but if so, I wasna greatly struck by its virtues.”
“You knew this Alasdair?” I rolled over and propped my head on my arm.
“Oh, aye. So did you, though ye maybe didna ken he wrote poetry, you not having much Gàidhlig in those days.”
I still didn’t have a great deal, though now that we were among Gàidhlig-speaking people again, it was coming back.
“Where did we know him? In the Rising?”
He was Prince Tearlach’s Gàidhlig tutor.
“Aye. He wrote a great many poems and songs about the Stuart cause.” And now that he reminded me, I thought I did perhaps recall him: a middle-aged man singing in the firelight, long-haired and clean-shaven, with a deep cleft in his chin. I’d always wondered how he managed to shave so neatly with a cutthroat razor.
“Hmm.” I had distinctly mixed feelings about people like Alasdair. On the one hand, without them stirring the pot and exciting irrational romanticism, the Cause might easily have withered and died long before Culloden. On the other . . . because of them, the battlefields—and those who had fallen there—were remembered.
Before I could think too deeply on that subject, though, Jamie interrupted my thoughts by idly brushing his penis to one side.