Outlander 03 - Voyager

Captain comes.”

“Aye, that’ll do; lick it up. Quick, now!” The first man moved a step nearer the seated figure, his shadow falling on the page like a blot. Mr. Willoughby’s lips tightened just a shade, but he didn’t look up. He completed the second column, righted the ink cake and dipped his brush without taking his eyes from the page, and began a third column, hand moving steadily.

“I said,” began the first seaman, loudly, but stopped in surprise as a large white handkerchief fluttered down on the deck in front of him, covering the inkblot.

“Your pardon, gentlemen,” said Jamie. “I seem to have dropped something.” With a cordial nod to the seamen, he bent down and swept up the handkerchief, leaving nothing but a faint smear on the decking. The seamen glanced at each other, uncertain, then at Jamie. One man caught sight of the blue eyes over the blandly smiling mouth, and blanched visibly. He turned hastily away, tugging at his mate’s arm.

“Norratall, sir,” he mumbled. “C’mon, Joe, we’re wanted aft.”

Jamie didn’t look either at the departing seamen or at Mr. Willoughby, but came toward me, tucking his handkerchief back in his sleeve.

“A verra pleasant day, is it not, Sassenach?” he said. He threw back his head, inhaling deeply. “Refreshing air, aye?”

“More so for some than for others, I expect,” I said, amused. The air at this particular spot on deck smelled rather strongly of the alum-tanned hides in the hold below.

“That was kind of you,” I said as he leaned back against the rail next to me. “Do you think I should offer Mr. Willoughby the use of my cabin to write?”

Jamie snorted briefly. “No. I’ve told him he can use my cabin, or the table in the mess between meals, but he’d rather be here—stubborn wee fool that he is.”

“Well, I suppose the light’s better,” I said dubiously, eyeing the small hunched figure, crouched doggedly against the mast. As I watched, a gust of wind lifted the edge of the paper; Mr. Willoughby pinned it at once, holding it still with one hand while continuing his short, sure brushstrokes with the other. “It doesn’t look comfortable, though.”

“It’s not.” Jamie ran his fingers through his hair in mild exasperation. “He does it on purpose, to provoke the crew.”

“Well, if that’s what he’s after, he’s doing a good job,” I observed. “What on earth for, though?”

Jamie leaned back against the rail beside me, and snorted once more.

“Aye, well, that’s complicated. Ever met a Chinaman before, have ye?”

“A few, but I suspect they’re a bit different in my time,” I said dryly. “They tend not to wear pigtails and silk pajamas, for one thing, nor do they have obsessions about ladies’ feet—or if they did, they didn’t tell me about it,” I added, to be fair.

Jamie laughed and moved a few inches closer, so that his hand on the rail brushed mine.

“Well, it’s to do wi’ the feet,” he said. “Or that’s the start of it, anyway. See, Josie, who’s one of the whores at Madame Jeanne’s, told Gordon about it, and of course he’s told everyone now.”

“What on earth is it about the feet?” I demanded, curiosity becoming overwhelming. “What does he do to them?”

Jamie coughed, and a faint flush rose in his cheeks. “Well, it’s a bit…”

“You couldn’t possibly tell me anything that would shock me,” I assured him. “I have seen quite a lot of things in my life, you know—and a good many of them with you, come to that.”

“I suppose ye have, at that,” he said, grinning. “Aye, well, it’s no so much what he does, but—well, in China, the highborn ladies have their feet bound.”

“I’ve heard of that,” I said, wondering what all the fuss was about. “It’s supposed to make their feet small and graceful.”

Jamie snorted again. “Graceful, aye? D’ye know how it’s done?” And proceeded to tell me.

“They take a tiny lassie—nay more than a year old, aye?—and turn under the toes of her feet until they touch her heel, then tie bandages about the foot to hold it so.”

“Ouch!” I said involuntarily.

“Yes, indeed,” he said dryly. “Her nanny will take the bandages off now and then to clean the foot, but puts them back directly. After some time, her wee toes rot and fall off. And by the time she’s grown, the poor lassie’s little more at the end of her legs than a crumple of bones and skin, smaller than the size o’ my fist.” His closed fist knocked softly against the wood of the rail in illustration. “But she’s considered verra beautiful, then,” he ended. “Graceful, as ye say.”

“That’s perfectly disgusting!” I said. “But what has that got to do with—” I glanced at Mr. Willoughby, but he gave no sign of hearing us; the wind was blowing from him toward us, carrying our words out to sea.

“Say this was a lassie’s foot, Sassenach,” he said, stretching his right hand out flat before him. “Curl the toes under to touch the heel, and what have ye in the middle?” He curled his fingers loosely into a fist in illustration.

“What?” I said, bewildered. Jamie extended the middle finger of his left hand, and thrust it abruptly through the center of his fist in an unmistakably graphic gesture.

“A hole,” he said succinctly.

“You’re kidding! That’s why they do it?”

His forehead furrowed slightly, then relaxed. “Oh, am I jesting? By no means, Sassenach. He says”—he nodded delicately at Mr. Willoughby—“that it’s a most remarkable sensation. To a man.”