Outlander 03 - Voyager

disagreement, was now beginning to rise to a boil.

“We knew as there was meant to be parritch,” MacLeod explained, “for Fergus did say so, when he asked us to come. But it’s been nothing but the meat and biscuit since we left Scotland, which is a wee bit griping to the belly if ye’re not used to it.”

“We didna like to trouble Jamie Roy ower such a thing,” Raeburn put in. “Geordie’s got his girdle, and we’ve been makin’ our own oatcake ower the lamps in the crew quarters. But we’ve run through what corn we brought in our bags, and Mr. Murphy’s got the keys to the pantry store.” He glanced shyly at me under his sandy blond lashes. “We didna like to ask, knowin’ what he thought of us.”

“Ye wouldna ken what’s meant by the term ‘spalpeens,’ would ye, Mistress Fraser?” MacRae asked, raising one bushy brow.

While listening to this outpouring of woe, I had been selecting assorted herbs from my box—anise and angelica, two large pinches of horehound, and a few sprigs of peppermint. Tying these into a square of gauze, I closed the box and handed Innes his shirt, into which he burrowed at once, in search of refuge.

“I’ll speak to Mr. Murphy,” I promised the Scots. “Meanwhile,” I said to Innes, handing him the gauze bundle, “brew you a good pot of tea from that, and drink a cupful at every watch change. If we’ve had no results by tomorrow, we’ll try stronger measures.”

As if in answer to this, a high, squeaking fart emerged from under Innes, to an ironic cheer from his colleagues.

“Aye, that’s right, Mistress Fraser; maybe ye can scare the shit out o’ him,” MacLeod said, a broad grin splitting his face.

Innes, scarlet as a ruptured artery, took the bundle, bobbed his head in inarticulate thanks, and fled precipitously, followed in more leisurely fashion by the other smugglers.

A rather acrimonious debate with Murphy followed, terminating without bloodshed, but with the compromise that I would be responsible for the preparation of the Scots’ morning parritch, permitted to do so under provision that I confined myself to a single pot and spoon, did not sing while cooking, and was careful not to make a mess in the precincts of the sacred galley.

It was only that night, tossing restlessly in the cramped and chilly confines of my berth, that it occurred to me how odd the morning’s incident had been. Were this Lallybroch, and the Scots Jamie’s tenants, not only would they have had no hesitation in approaching him about the matter, they would have had no need to. He would have known already what was wrong, and taken steps to remedy the situation. Accustomed as I had always been to the intimacy and unquestioning loyalty of Jamie’s own men, I found this distance troubling.

Jamie was not at the captain’s table next morning, having gone out in the small boat with two of the sailors to catch whitebait, but I met him on his return at noon, sunburned, cheerful, and covered with scales and fish blood.

“What have ye done to Innes, Sassenach?” he said, grinning. “He’s hiding in the starboard head, and says ye told him he mustna come out at all until he’d shit.”

“I didn’t tell him that, exactly,” I explained. “I just said if he hadn’t moved his bowels by tonight, I’d give him an enema of slippery elm.”

Jamie glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the head.

“Well, I suppose we will hope that Innes’s bowels cooperate, or I doubt but he’ll spend the rest of the voyage in the head, wi’ a threat like that hangin’ ower him.”

“Well, I shouldn’t worry; now that he and the others have their parritch back, their bowels ought to take care of themselves without undue interference from me.”

Jamie glanced down at me, surprised.

“Got their parritch back? Whatever d’ye mean, Sassenach?”

I explained the genesis of the Oatmeal War, and its outcome, as he fetched a basin of water to clean his hands. A small frown drew his brows close together as he pushed his sleeves up his arms.

“They ought to have come to me about it,” he said.

“I expect they would have, sooner or later,” I said. “I only happened to find out by accident, when I found Innes grunting behind a hatch cover.”

“Mmphm.” He set about scouring the bloodstains off his fingers, rubbing the clinging scales free with a small pumice stone.

“These men aren’t like your tenants at Lallybroch, are they?” I said, voicing the thought I had had.

“No,” he said quietly. He dipped his fingers in the basin, leaving tiny shimmering circles where the fish scales floated. “I’m no their laird; only the man who pays them.”

“They like you, though,” I protested, then remembered Fergus’s story and amended this rather weakly to, “or at least five of them do.”

I handed him the towel. He took it with a brief nod, and dried his hands. Looking down at the strip of cloth, he shook his head.

“Aye, MacLeod and the rest like me well enough—or five of them do,” he repeated ironically. “And they’ll stand by me if it’s needful—five of them. But they dinna ken me much, nor me them, save Innes.”

He tossed the dirty water over the side, and tucking the empty basin under his arm, turned to go below, offering me his arm.

“There was more died at Culloden than the Stuart cause, Sassenach,” he said. “You’ll be coming for your dinner now?”

I did not find out why Innes was different, until the next week. Perhaps emboldened by the success of the purgative I had given him, Innes came voluntarily to call upon me in my cabin a week later.

“I am wondering, mistress,” he said politely, “whether there might be a medicine for something as isna there.”