Outlander 03 - Voyager

somewhere on the plantation?

“Ye can get the powdered stones from a London apothecary,” she was saying, frowning slightly as she pushed at the sliding lid. “But they’re mostly poor quality, and the bhasmas doesn’t work so well. Best to have a stone at least of the second quality—what they call a nagina stone. That’s a goodish-sized stone that’s been polished. A stone of the first quality is faceted, and unflawed for preference, but most folk canna afford to burn those to ash. The ashes of the stone are the bhasmas,” she explained, turning to look up at me. “That’s what ye use in the medicines. Here, can ye pry this damn thing loose? It’s been spoilt in seawater, and the locking bit swells whenever the weather’s damp—which it is all the time, this season of the year,” she added, making a face over her shoulder at the clouds rolling in over the bay, far below.

She thrust the box into my hands and rose heavily to her feet, grunting with the effort.

It was a Chinese puzzle-box, I saw; a fairly simple one, with a small sliding panel that unlocked the main lid. The problem was that the smaller panel had swollen, sticking in its slot.

“It’s bad luck to break one,” Geilie observed, watching my attempts. “Else I’d just smash the thing and be done with it. Here, maybe this will help.” She produced a small mother-of-pearl penknife from the recesses of her gown and handed it to me, then went to the window ledge and rang another of her silver bells.

I pried gently upward with the blade of the knife. I felt it catch in the wood, and wiggled it gingerly. Little by little, the small rectangle of wood edged out of its place, until I could get hold of it between thumb and forefinger and pull it all the way loose.

“There you go,” I said, handing her back the box with some reluctance. It felt heavy, and there was an unmistakable metallic chinking as I tilted it.

“Thanks.” As she took it, the black servingmaid came in through the far door. Geilie turned to order the girl to bring a tray of fresh tarts, and I saw that she had slipped the box between the folds of her skirts, hiding it.

“Nosy creatures,” she said, frowning toward the departing maid’s back as the girl passed through the door. “One of the difficulties wi’ slaves; it’s hard to have secrets.” She put the box on the table, and pushed at the top; with a small, sharp skreek! of protest, the lid slid back.

She reached into the box and drew out her closed hand. She smiled mischievously at me, saying, “Little Jackie Horner sat in the corner, eating her Christmas pie. She put in her thumb, and pulled out a plum”—she opened her hand with a flourish—“and said ‘What a good girl am I!’”

I had been expecting them, of course, but had no difficulty in looking impressed anyway. The reality of a gem is both more immediate and more startling than its description. Six or seven of them flashed and glimmered in her palm, flaming fire and frozen ice, the gleam of blue water in the sun, and a great gold stone like the eye of a lurking tiger.

Without meaning to, I drew near enough to look down into the well of her hand, staring with fascination. “Big enough,” Jamie had described them as being, with a characteristic Scottish talent for understatement. Well, smaller than a breadbox, I supposed.

“I got them for the money, to start,” Geilie was saying, prodding the stones with satisfaction. “Because they were easier to carry than a great weight of gold or silver, I mean; I didna think then what other use they might have.”

“What, as bhasmas?” The idea of burning any of those glowing things to ash seemed a sacrilege.

“Oh, no, not these.” Her hand closed on the stones, dipped into her pocket, and back into the box for more. A small shower of liquid fire dropped into her pocket, and she patted it affectionately. “No, I’ve a lot o’ the smaller stones for that. These are for something else.”

She eyed me speculatively, then jerked her head toward the door at the end of the room.

“Come along up to my workroom,” she said. “I’ve a few things there you’ll maybe be interested to see.”

“Interested” was putting it mildly, I thought.

It was a long, light-filled room, with a counter down one side. Bunches of drying herbs hung from hooks overhead and lay on gauze-covered drying racks along the inner wall. Drawered cabinets and cupboards covered the rest of the wall space, and there was a small glass-fronted bookcase at the end of the room.

The room gave me a mild sense of deja-vu; after a moment, I realized that it was because it strongly resembled Geilie’s workroom in the village of Cranesmuir, in the house of her first husband—no, second, I corrected myself, remember the flaming body of Greg Edgars.

“How many times have you been married?” I asked curiously. She had begun building her fortune with her second husband, procurator fiscal of the district where they lived, forging his signature in order to divert money to her own use, and then murdering him. Successful with this modus operandi, I imagined she had tried it again; she was a creature of habit, was Geilie Duncan.

She paused a moment to count up. “Oh, five, I think. Since I came here,” she added casually.

“Five?” I said, a little faintly. Not just a habit, it seemed; a positive addiction.

“A verra unhealthy atmosphere for Englishmen it is in the tropics,” she said, and smiled slyly at me. “Fevers, ulcers, festering stomachs; any little thing will carry them off.” She had evidently been mindful of her oral hygiene; her teeth were still very good.

She reached out and lightly caressed a small bottle that stood on the lowest shelf. It wasn’t labeled, but I had seen crude white arsenic before. On the whole, I was glad I hadn’t taken any food.

“Oh, you’ll be interested in this,” she said, spying a jar on an upper shelf. Grunting slightly as she stood on tiptoe, she reached it down and handed it to me.

It contained a very coarse powder, evidently a mixture of several substances, brown, yellow, and black, flecked with shreds of a semitranslucent material.

“What’s this?”

“Zombie poison,” she said, and laughed. “I thought ye’d like to see.”