Seven Stones to Stand or Fall

by Diana Gabaldon

  Her face didn’t leave with her, though. He could still see it, frowning down at him from above. It had become attached to the leafy beam, and he now realized that there was a snake up there, a serpent with a woman’s head, and an apple in its mouth—that couldn’t be right, surely it should be a pig?—and it came slithering down the wall and right over his chest, pressing the apple close to his face. It smelled wonderful, and he wanted to bite it, but before he could, he felt the weight of the snake change, going soft and heavy, and he arched his back a little, feeling the distinct imprint of big round breasts squashing against him. The snake’s tail—she was mostly a woman now, but her back end seemed still to be snake-ish—was delicately stroking the inside of his thigh.

  He made a very high-pitched noise, and Ian came hurriedly to the bed.

  “Are ye all right, man?”

  “I—oh. Oh! Oh, Jesus, do that again.”

  “Do what—” Ian was beginning, when Rebekah appeared, putting a hand on Ian’s arm.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, looking intently at Jamie. “He’s all right. The medicine—it gives men strange dreams.”

  “He doesna look like he’s asleep,” Ian said dubiously.

  In fact, Jamie was squirming—or thought he was squirming—on the bed, trying to persuade the lower half of the snake woman to change, too. He was panting; he could hear himself.

  “It’s a waking dream,” Rebekah said reassuringly. “Come, leave him. He’ll fall quite asleep in a bit, you’ll see.”

  Jamie didn’t think he’d fallen asleep, but it was evidently some time later that he emerged from a remarkable tryst with the snake demon—he didn’t know how he knew she was a demon, but clearly she was—who had not changed her lower half but had a very womanly mouth about her. The tryst also included a number of her friends, these being small female demons who licked his ears—and other things—with great enthusiasm.

  He turned his head on the pillow to allow one of these better access and saw, with no sense of surprise, Ian kissing Rebekah. The brandy bottle had fallen over, empty, and Jamie seemed to see the wraith of its perfume rise swirling through the air like smoke, wrapping the two of them in a mist shot with rainbows.

  He closed his eyes again, the better to attend to the snake lady, who now had a number of new and interesting acquaintances. When he opened his eyes some time later, Ian and Rebekah were gone.

  At one point he heard Ian give a sort of strangled cry and wondered dimly what had happened, but it didn’t seem important, and the thought drifted away. He slept.

  HE WOKE FEELING limp as a frostbitten cabbage leaf, but the pain in his head was gone. He just lay there for a bit, enjoying the feeling. It was dark in the room, and it was some time before he realized from the smell of brandy that Ian was lying beside him.

  Memory came back to him. It took a little while to disentangle the real memories from the memory of dreams, but he was quite sure he’d seen Ian embracing Rebekah—and her, him. What the devil had happened then?

  Ian wasn’t asleep; he could tell. His friend lay rigid as one of the tomb figures in the crypt at Saint Denis, and his breathing was rapid and shaky, as though he’d just run a mile uphill. Jamie cleared his throat, and Ian jerked as though stabbed with a brooch pin.

  “Aye, so?” he whispered, and Ian’s breathing stopped abruptly. He swallowed audibly.

  “If ye breathe a word of this to your sister,” he said in an impassioned whisper, “I’ll stab ye in your sleep, cut off your heid, and kick it to Arles and back.”

  Jamie didn’t want to think about his sister, and he did want to hear about Rebekah, so he merely repeated, “Aye. So?”

  Ian made a small grunting noise, indicative of thinking how best to begin, and turned over in his plaid, facing Jamie.

  “Aye, well. Ye raved a bit about the naked she-devils ye were havin’ it away with, and I didna think the lass should have to be hearing that manner o’ thing, so I said we should go into the other room, and—”

  “Was this before or after ye started kissing her?” Jamie asked.

  Ian inhaled strongly through his nose. “After,” he said tersely. “And she was kissin’ me back, aye?”

  “Aye, I noticed that. So then…?” He could feel Ian squirming slowly, like a worm on a hook, but Jamie waited. It often took Ian a moment to find words, but it was usually worth waiting for. Certainly in this instance.

  He was a little shocked—and frankly envious—and he did wonder what might happen when the lass’s affianced discovered she wasn’t a virgin, but he supposed the man might not find out; she seemed a clever lass. It might be wise to leave D’Eglise’s troop, though, and head south, just in case…

  “D’ye think it hurts a lot to be circumcised?” Ian asked suddenly.

  “I do. How could it not?” His hand sought out his own member, protectively rubbing a thumb over the bit in question. True, it wasn’t a very big bit, but…

  “Well, they do it to wee bairns,” Ian pointed out. “Canna be that bad, can it?”

  “Mmphm,” Jamie said, unconvinced, though fairness made him add, “Aye, well, and they did it to Christ, too.”

  “Aye?” Ian sounded startled. “Aye, I suppose so—I hadna thought o’ that.”

  “Well, ye dinna think of Him bein’ a Jew, do ye? But He was, to start.”

  There was a momentary, meditative silence before Ian spoke again.

  “D’ye think Jesus ever did it? Wi’ a lass, I mean, before he went to preachin’?”

  “I think Père Renault’s goin’ to have ye for blasphemy, next thing.”

  Ian twitched, as though worried that the priest might be lurking in the shadows.

  “Père Renault’s nowhere near here, thank God.”

  “Aye, but ye’ll need to confess yourself to him, won’t ye?”

  Ian shot upright, clutching his plaid around him.

  “What?”

  “Ye’ll go to hell, else, if ye get killed,” Jamie pointed out, feeling rather smug. There was moonlight through the window and he could see Ian’s face drawn in anxious thought, his deep-set eyes darting right and left from Scylla to Charybdis. Suddenly Ian turned his head toward Jamie, having spotted the possibility of an open channel between the threats of hell and Père Renault.

  “I’d only go to hell if it was a mortal sin,” he said. “If it’s no but venial, I’d only have to spend a thousand years or so in purgatory. That wouldna be so bad.”

  “Of course it’s a mortal sin,” Jamie said, cross. “Anybody kens fornication’s a mortal sin, ye numpty.”

  “Aye, but…” Ian made a “wait a bit” gesture with one hand, deep in thought. “To be a mortal sin, though, ye’ve got the three things. Requirements, like.” He put up an index finger. “It’s got to be seriously wrong.” Middle finger. “Ye’ve got to know it’s seriously wrong.” Ring finger. “And ye’ve got to give full consent to it. That’s the way of it, aye?” He put his hand down and looked at Jamie, brows raised.

  “Aye, and which part of that did ye not do? The full consent? Did she rape ye?” He was chaffing, but Ian turned his face away in a manner that gave him a sudden doubt. “Ian?”

  “Noo…” his friend said, but it sounded doubtful, too. “It wasna like that—exactly. I meant more the seriously wrong part. I dinna think it was…” His voice trailed off.

  Jamie flung himself over, raised on one elbow.

  “Ian,” he said, steel in his voice. “What did ye do to the lass? If ye took her maidenheid, it’s seriously wrong. Especially with her betrothed. Oh—” A thought occurred to him, and he leaned a little closer, lowering his voice. “Was she no a virgin? Maybe that’s different.” If the lass was an out-and-out wanton, perhaps…she probably did write poetry, come to think…

  Ian had now folded his arms on his knees and was resting his forehead on them, his voice muffled in the folds of his plaid. “…dinna ken…” emerged in a strangled croak.

  Jamie reached out and dug his fingers hard into
Ian’s calf. His friend unfolded with a startled cry that made someone in a distant chamber shift and grunt in their sleep.

  “What d’ye mean ye dinna ken? How could ye not notice?” he gibed.

  “Ah…well…she…erm…she did me wi’ her hand,” Ian blurted. “Before I could…well.”

  “Oh.” Jamie rolled onto his back, somewhat deflated in spirit, if not in flesh. His cock seemed still to want to hear the details.

  “Is that seriously wrong?” Ian asked, turning his face toward Jamie again. “Or—well, I canna say I really gave full consent to it, because that wasna what I had in mind doing at all, but…”

  “I think ye’re headed for the Bad Place,” Jamie assured him. “Ye meant to do it, whether ye managed or not. And how did it happen, come to that? Did she just…take hold?”

  Ian let out a long, long sigh and sank his head in his hands. He looked as though it hurt.

  “Well, we kissed for a bit, and there was more brandy—lots more. She…er…she’d take a mouthful and kiss me and, er…put it into my mouth, and—”

  “Ifrinn!”

  “Will ye not say, ‘Hell!’ like that, please? I dinna want to think about it.”

  “Sorry. Go on. Did she let ye feel her breasts?”

  “Just a bit. She wouldna take her stays off, but I could feel her nipples through her shift—did ye say something?”

  “No,” Jamie said with an effort. “What then?”

  “Well, she put her hand under my kilt and then pulled it out again like she’d touched a snake.”

  “And had she?”

  “She had, aye. She was shocked. Will ye no snort like that?” he said, annoyed. “Ye’ll wake the whole house. It was because it wasna circumcised.”

  “Oh. Is that why she wouldna…er…the regular way?”

  “She didna say so, but maybe. After a bit, though, she wanted to look at it, and that’s when…well.”

  “Mmphm.” Naked demons versus the chance of damnation or not, Jamie thought Ian had had well the best of it this evening. A thought occurred to him. “Why did ye ask if being circumcised hurts? Ye werena thinking of doing it, were ye? For her, I mean?”

  “I wouldna say the thought hadna occurred to me,” Ian admitted. “I mean…I thought I should maybe marry her, under the circumstances. But I suppose I couldna become a Jew, even if I got up the nerve to be circumcised—my mam would tear my heid off if I did.”

  “No, ye’re right,” Jamie agreed. “She would. And ye’d go to hell.” The thought of the rare and delicate Rebekah churning butter in the yard of a Highland croft or waulking urine-soaked wool with her bare feet was slightly more ludicrous than the vision of Ian in a skullcap and whiskers—but not by much. “Besides, ye havena got any money, have ye?”

  “A bit,” Ian said thoughtfully. “Not enough to go and live in Timbuktu, though, and I’d have to go at least that far.”

  Jamie sighed and stretched, easing himself. A meditative silence fell—Ian no doubt contemplating perdition, Jamie reliving the better bits of his opium dreams but with Rebekah’s face on the snake lady. Finally he broke the silence, turning to his friend.

  “So…was it worth the chance of goin’ to hell?”

  Ian sighed long and deep once more, but it was the sigh of a man at peace with himself.

  “Oh, aye.”

  JAMIE WOKE AT DAWN, feeling altogether well and in a much better frame of mind. Some kindly soul had brought a jug of sour ale and some bread and cheese. He refreshed himself with these as he dressed, pondering the day’s work.

  He’d have to collect a few men to go back and deal with the coach.

  He thought the coach wasn’t badly damaged; they might get it back up on the road again by noon….How far might it be to Bonnes? That was the next town with an inn. If it was too far, or the coach too badly hurt, or he couldn’t find a Jew to dispose decently of M. Peretz, they’d need to stay the night here again. He fingered his purse but thought he had enough for another night and the hire of men; the doctor had been generous.

  He was beginning to wonder what was keeping Ian and the women. Though he kent women took more time to do anything than a man would, let alone getting dressed—well, they had stays and the like to fret with, after all…He sipped ale, contemplating a vision of Rebekah’s stays and the very vivid images his mind had been conjuring ever since Ian’s description of his encounter with the lass. He could all but see her nipples through the thin fabric of her shift, smooth and round as pebbles…

  Ian burst through the door, wild-eyed, his hair standing on end.

  “They’re gone!”

  Jamie choked on his ale.

  “What? How?”

  Ian understood what he meant and was already heading for the bed.

  “No one took them. There’s nay sign of a struggle, and their things are gone. The window’s open, and the shutters aren’t broken.”

  Jamie was on his knees alongside Ian, thrusting first his hands and then his head and shoulders under the bed. There was a canvas-wrapped bundle there, and he was flooded with a momentary relief—which disappeared the instant Ian dragged it into the light. It made a noise, but not the gentle chime of golden bells. It rattled, and when Jamie seized the corner of the canvas and unrolled it, the contents were shown to be naught but sticks and stones, these hastily wrapped in a woman’s petticoat to give the bundle the appropriate bulk.

  “Cramouille!” he said, this being the worst word he could think of on short notice. And very appropriate, too, if what he thought had happened really had. He turned on Ian.

  “She drugged me and seduced you, and her bloody maid stole in here and took the thing whilst ye had your fat heid buried in her…er…”

  “Charms,” Ian said succinctly, and flashed him a brief, evil grin. “Ye’re only jealous. Where d’ye think they’ve gone?”

  It was the truth, and Jamie abandoned any further recriminations, rising and strapping on his belt, hastily arranging dirk, sword, and ax in the process.

  “Not to Paris, would be my guess. Come on, we’ll ask the ostler.”

  The ostler confessed himself at a loss; he’d been the worse for drink in the hay shed, he said, and if someone had taken two horses from the shelter, he hadn’t waked to see it.

  “Aye, right,” said Jamie, impatient, and, grabbing the man’s shirtfront, lifted him off his feet and slammed him into the inn’s stone wall. The man’s head bounced once off the stones and he sagged in Jamie’s grip, still conscious but dazed. Jamie drew his dirk left-handed and pressed the edge of it against the man’s weathered throat.

  “Try again,” he suggested pleasantly. “I dinna care about the money they gave you—keep it. I want to know which way they went and when they left.”

  The man tried to swallow but abandoned the attempt when his Adam’s apple hit the edge of the dirk.

  “About three hours past moonrise,” he croaked. “They went toward Bonnes. There’s a crossroads no more than three miles from here,” he added, now trying urgently to be helpful.

  Jamie dropped him with a grunt. “Aye, fine,” he said in disgust. “Ian—oh, ye’ve got them.” For Ian had gone straight for their own horses while Jamie dealt with the ostler and was already leading one out, bridled, the saddle over his arm. “I’ll settle the bill, then.”

  The women hadn’t made off with his purse; that was something. Either Rebekah bat-Leah Hauberger had some vestige of conscience—which he doubted very much—or she just hadn’t thought of it.

  IT WAS STILL EARLY; the women had perhaps six hours’ lead.

  “Do we believe the ostler?” Ian asked, settling himself in the saddle.

  Jamie dug in his purse, pulled out a copper penny, and flipped it, catching it on the back of his hand.

  “Tails we do, heads we don’t?” He took his hand away and peered at the coin. “Heads.”

  “Aye, but the road back is straight all the way through Yvrac,” Ian pointed out. “And it’s nay more than three miles to the cros
sroads, he said. Whatever ye want to say about the lass, she’s no a fool.”

  Jamie considered that one for a moment, then nodded. Rebekah couldn’t have been sure how much lead she’d have—and unless she’d been lying about her ability to ride (which he wouldn’t put past her, but such things weren’t easy to fake and she was gey clumsy in the saddle), she’d want to reach a place where the trail could be lost before her pursuers could catch up with her. Besides, the ground was still damp with dew; there might be a chance…

  “Aye, come on, then.”

  LUCK WAS WITH THEM. No one had passed the inn during the late-night watches, and while the roadbed was trampled with hoof marks, the recent prints of the women’s horses showed clear, edges still crumbling in the damp earth. Once sure they’d got upon the track, the men galloped for the crossroads, hoping to reach it before other travelers obscured the marks.

  No such luck. Farm wagons were already on the move, loaded with produce headed for Parcoul or La Roche-Chalais, and the crossroads was a maze of ruts and hoofprints. But Jamie had the bright thought of sending Ian down the road that lay toward Parcoul, while he took the one toward La Roche-Chalais, catching up the incoming wagons and questioning the drivers. Within an hour, Ian came pelting back with the news that the women had been seen, riding slowly and cursing volubly at each other, toward Parcoul.

  “And that,” he said, panting for breath, “is not all.”

  “Aye? Well, tell me while we ride.”

  Ian did. He’d been hurrying back to find Jamie when he’d met Josef-from-Alsace, just short of the crossroads, come in search of them.

  “D’Eglise was held up near La Teste-de-Buch,” Ian reported in a shout. “The same band of men that attacked us at Bèguey—Alexandre and Raoul both recognized some of them. Jewish bandits.”

  Jamie was shocked and slowed for a moment to let Ian catch him up. “Did they get the dowry money?”

  “No, but they had a hard fight. Three men wounded badly enough to need a surgeon, and Paul Martan lost two fingers of his left hand. D’Eglise pulled them into La Teste-de-Buch and sent Josef to see if all was well wi’ us.”