I curtsied to Colum, gratified to find that I was mastering the art of doing so without falling on my face. He opened his mouth to take a gracious leave, but was interrupted by a sudden crash that came from behind me. Turning, I could see nothing but backs and heads, as people leapt from their benches to gather round whatever had caused the uproar. Colum made his way with some difficulty around the table, clearing aside the crowd with an impatient wave of the hand. As people stepped respectfully out of his way, I could see the rotund form of Arthur Duncan on the floor, limbs flailing convulsively, batting away the helpful hands of would-be assistants. His wife pushed her way through the muttering throng, dropped to the floor beside him, and made a vain attempt to cradle his head in her lap. The stricken man dug his heels into the floor and arched his back, making gargling, choking noises.
Glancing up, Geilie's green eyes anxiously scanned the crowd as though looking for someone. Assuming that I was the one she was looking for, I took the path of least resistance, dodging under the table and crawling across on hands and knees.
Reaching Geilie's side, I grabbed her husband's face between my hands and tried to pry his jaws open. I thought, from the sounds he was making, that he had perhaps choked on a piece of meat, which might still be lodged in his windpipe.
His jaws were clamped and rigid, though, lips blue and flecked with a foamy spittle that didn't seem consistent with choking. Choking he surely was, though; the plump chest heaved vainly, fighting for breath.
"Quickly, turn him on his side," I said. Several hands reached out at once to help, and the heavy body was deftly turned, broad black-serge back toward me. I drove the heel of my hand hard between the shoulder-blades, smacking him repeatedly with a dull thumping noise. The massive back quivered slightly with the blows, but there was no answering jerk as of an obstruction suddenly released.
I gripped a meaty shoulder and pulled him onto his back once more. Geilie bent close over the staring face, calling his name, massaging his mottled throat. The eyes were rolled back now, and the drumming heels began to slacken their beat. The hands, clawed in agony, suddenly flung wide, smacking an anxiously crouching onlooker in the face.
The sputtering noises abruptly ceased, and the stout body went limp, lying inert as a sack of barley on the stone flags. I felt frantically for a pulse in one slack wrist, noticing with half an eye that Geilie was doing the same, pulling up the round, shaven chin and pressing her fingertips hard into the flesh under the angle of the jaw in search of the carotid artery.
Both searches were futile. Arthur Duncan's heart, already taxed by the necessity of pumping blood through that massive frame for so many years, had given up the struggle.
I tried all the resuscitative techniques at my disposal, useless though I knew them now to be: arm-flapping, chest-massage, even mouth-to-mouth breathing, distasteful as that was, but with the expected result. Arthur Duncan was dead as a doornail.
I straightened wearily and stood back, as Father Bain, with a nasty glare at me, dropped to his knees by the fiscal's side and began hastily to administer the final rites. My back and arms ached, and my face felt oddly numb. The hubbub around me seemed strangely remote, as though a curtain separated me from the crowded hall. I closed my eyes and rubbed a hand across my tingling lips, trying to erase the taste of death.
Despite the death of the fiscal, and the subsequent formalities of obsequies and burial, the Duke's stag hunt was delayed by no more than a week.
The realization of Jamie's imminent departure was deeply depressing; I suddenly realized just how much I looked forward to seeing him at dinner after the day's work, how my heart would leap when I saw him unexpectedly at odd moments during the day, and how much I depended on his company and his solid, reassuring presence amid the complexities of life in the castle. And, to be perfectly honest, how much I liked the smooth, warm strength of him in my bed each night, and waking to his tousled, smiling kisses in the mornings. The prospect of his absence was bleak.
He held me closely, my head snuggled under his chin.
"I'll miss you, Jamie," I said softly.
He hugged me tighter, and gave a rueful chuckle.
"So will I, Sassenach. I hadna expected it, to tell the truth—but it will hurt me to leave ye." He stroked my back gently, fingers tracing the bumps of the vertebrae.
"Jamie… you'll be careful?"
I could feel the deep rumble of amusement in his chest as he answered.
"Of the Duke or the horse?" He was, much to my apprehension, intending to ride Donas on the stag hunt. I had visions of the huge sorrel beast plunging over a cliff out of sheer wrong-headedness, or trampling Jamie under those lethal hooves.