"Watch carefully," I said, my voice husky with sleep. "So you can tell me everything."
With a sleepy grunt of assent, he leaned over to kiss me, then shuffled off, candle in hand, to see to the saddling of his horse. The last I heard before sinking back under the surface of sleep was Jamie's voice downstairs, suddenly clear and alert in the crisp night air, exchanging farewells with the groom in the street outside.
Given the distance to Versailles, and the chance—of which Jared had warned—of being invited to lunch, I wasn't surprised when he didn't return before noon, but I couldn't help being curious, and waited in increasing impatience until his arrival—finally—near teatime.
"And how was the King's lever?" I asked, coming to help Jamie remove his coat. Wearing the tight pigskin gloves de rigueur at Court, he couldn't manage the crested silver buttons on the slippery velvet.
"Oh, that feels better," he said, flexing his broad shoulders in relief as the buttons sprang free. The coat was much too tight in the shoulders; peeling him out of it was like shelling an egg.
"Interesting, Sassenach," he said, in answer to my question, "at least for the first hour or so."
As the procession of nobles came into the Royal Bedchamber, each bearing his ceremonial implement—towel, razor, alecup, royal seal, etc.—the gentlemen of the bedchamber drew back the heavy curtains that kept out the dawn, unveiled the draperies of the great bed of state, and exposed the face of le roi Louis to the interested eye of the rising sun.
Assisted to a sitting position on the edge of his bed, the King had sat yawning and scratching his stubbled chin while his attendants pulled a silk robe, heavy with embroidery of silver and gold, over the royal shoulders, and knelt to strip off the heavy felt stockings in which the King slept, to be replaced with hose of lighter silk, and soft slippers lined with rabbit fur.
One by one, the nobles of the court came to kneel at the feet of their sovereign, to greet him respectfully and ask how His Majesty had passed the night?
"Not verra well, I should say," Jamie broke off to observe here. "He looked like he'd slept little more than an hour or two, and bad dreams with it."
Despite bloodshot eyes and drooping jowls, His Majesty had nodded graciously to his courtiers, then risen slowly to his feet and bowed to those favored guests hovering in the back of the chamber. A dispirited wave of the hand summoned a gentleman of the bedchamber, who led His Majesty to the waiting chair, where he sat with closed eyes, enjoying the ministrations of his attendants, while the visitors were led forward one at a time by the Duc d'Orléans, to kneel before the King and offer a few words of greeting. Formal petitions would be offered a little later, when there was a chance of Louis being awake enough to hear them.
"I wasna there for petitioning, but only as a mark of favor," Jamie explained, "so I just knelt and said, ‘Good morning, Your Majesty,' while the Duc told the King who I was."
"Did the King say anything to you?" I asked.
Jamie grinned, hands linked behind his head as he stretched. "Oh, aye. He opened one eye and looked at me as though he didna believe it."
One eye still open, Louis had surveyed his visitor with a sort of dim interest, then remarked, "Big, aren't you?"
"I said, ‘Yes, Your Majesty,' " Jamie said. "Then he said, ‘Can you dance?' and I said I could. Then he shut his eye again, and the Duc motioned me back."
Introductions complete, the gentlemen of the bedchamber, ceremoniously assisted by the chief nobles, had then proceeded to make the King's toilette. As they did so, the various petitioners came forward at the beckoning of the Duc d'Orléans, to murmur into the King's ear as he twisted his head to accommodate the razor, or bent his neck to have his wig adjusted.
"Oh? And were you honored by being allowed to blow His Majesty's nose for him?" I asked.
Jamie grinned, stretching his linked hands until the knuckles cracked.
"No, thank God. I skulked about against the wardrobe, trying to look like part of the furniture, wi' the bitty wee comtes and ducs all glancing at me out of the sides of their eyes as though Scottishness were catching."
"Well, at least you were tall enough to see everything?"
"Oh, aye. That I did, even when he eased himself on his chaise percée."
"He really did that? In front of everyone?" I was fascinated. I'd read about it, of course, but found it difficult to believe.
"Oh, aye, and everyone behaving just as they did when he washed his face and blew his nose. The Duc de Neve had the unspeakable honor," he added ironically, "of wiping His Majesty's arse for him. I didna notice what they did wi' the towel; took it out and had it gilded, no doubt.
"A verra wearisome business it was, too," he added, bending over and setting his hands on the floor to stretch the muscles of his legs. "Took forever; the man's tight as an owl."
"Tight as an owl?" I asked, amused at the simile. "Constipated, do you mean?"
"Aye, costive. And no wonder, the things they eat at Court," he added censoriously, stretching backward. "Terrible diet, all cream and butter. He should eat parritch every morning for breakfast—that'd take care of it. Verra good for the bowels, ye ken."
If Scotsmen were stubborn about anything—and, in fact, they tended to be stubborn about quite a number of things, truth be known—it was the virtues of oatmeal parritch for breakfast. Through eons of living in a land so poor there was little to eat but oats, they had as usual converted necessity into a virtue, and insisted that they liked the stuff.
Jamie had by now thrown himself on the floor and was doing the Royal Air Force exercises I had recommended to strengthen the muscles of his back.
Returning to his earlier remark, I said, "Why did you say ‘tight as an owl'? I've heard that before, to mean drunk, but not costive. Are owls constipated, then?"
Completing his course, he flipped over and lay on the rug, panting.
"Oh, aye." He blew out a long sigh, and caught his breath. He sat up and pushed the hair out of his eyes. "Or not really, but that's the story ye hear. Folk will tell ye that owls havena got an arsehole, so they canna pass the things they eat—like mice, aye? So the bones and the hairs and such are all made up into a ball, and the owl vomits them out, not bein' able to get rid of them out the other end."
"Really?"
"Oh, aye, that's true enough, they do. That's how ye find an owl-tree; look underneath for the pellets on the ground. Make a terrible mess, owls do," he added, pulling his collar away from his neck to let air in.
"But they have got arseholes," he informed me. "I knocked one out of a tree once wi' a slingshot and looked."
"A lad with an inquiring mind, eh?" I said, laughing.
"To be sure, Sassenach." He grinned. "And they do pass things that way, too. I spent a whole day sitting under an owl-tree with Ian, once, just to make sure."
"Christ, you must have been curious," I remarked.
"Well, I wanted to know. Ian didna want to sit still so long, and I had to pound on him a bit to make him stop fidgeting." Jamie laughed, remembering. "So he sat still wi' me until it happened, and then he snatched up a handful of owl pellets, jammed them down the neck of my shirt, and was off like a shot. God, he could run like the wind." A tinge of sadness crossed his face, his memory of the fleet-footed friend of his youth clashing with more recent memories of his brother-in-law, hobbling stiffly, if good-naturedly, on the wooden leg a round of grapeshot taken in a foreign battle had left him with.
"That sounds an awful way to live," I remarked, wanting to distract him. "Not watching owls, I don't mean—the King. No privacy, ever, not even in the loo."
"I wouldna care for it myself," Jamie agreed. "But then he's the King."
"Mmm. And I suppose all the power and luxury and so forth makes up for a lot."
He shrugged. "Well, if it does or no, it's the bargain God's made for him, and he's little choice but to make the best of it." He picked up his plaid and drew the tail of it through his belt and up to his shoulder.
"Here, let me." I took the silver ring-brooch from him and fastened the flaming fabric at the crest of his shoulder. He arranged the drape, smoothing the vivid wool between his fingers.
"I've a bargain like that myself, Sassenach," he said quietly, looking down at me. He smiled briefly. "Though thank God it doesna mean inviting Ian to wipe my arse for me. But I was born laird. I'm the steward of that land and the people on it, and I must make the best of my own bargain wi' them."
He reached out and touched my hair lightly.
"That's why I was glad when ye said we'd come, to try and see what we might do. For there's a part of me would like no better than to take you and the bairn and go far away, to spend the rest of my life working the fields and the beasts, to come in in the evenings and lie beside ye, quiet through the night."
The deep blue eyes were hooded in thought, as his hand returned to the folds of his plaid, stroking the bright checks of the Fraser tartan, with the faint white stripe that distinguished Lallybroch from the other septs and families.
"But if I did," he went on, as though speaking more to himself than to me, "there's a part of my soul would feel forsworn, and I think—I think I would always hear the voices of the people that are mine, calling out behind me."