"No help for it," he remarked to me. "Ian's right; there's something stuck in the wheel under the sluice. I'll have to go down and—" Stopped by my gasp, he turned around to where I sat on the bank with my basket.
"And what's amiss wi' you?" he demanded. "Have ye no seen a man in his drawers before?"
"Not… not like… that!" I managed to get out, between sputters. Anticipating possible submergence, he had donned beneath his kilt a short garment of incredible elderliness, originally of red flannel, now patched with a dazzling array of colors and textures. Obviously, this pair of drawers had originally belonged to someone who measured several inches more around the middle than Jamie. They hung precariously from his hipbones, the folds drooping in V's over his flat belly.
"Your grandfather's?" I guessed, making a highly unsuccessful effort to suppress my giggling."Or your grandmother's?"
"My father's," he said coldly, looking down his nose at me. "Ye dinna expect me to be swimming bare as an egg before my wife and my tenants, do ye?"
With considerable dignity, he gathered the excess material up in one hand and waded into the millpond. Treading water near the wheel, he took his bearings, then with a deep breath, upended and submerged, my last sight of him the ballooning bottom of the red flannel drawers. The miller, leaning out of the millhouse window, shouted encouragement and directions whenever the sleek wet head broke the surface for air.
The edge of the pond bank was thick with water plants, and I foraged with my digging stick for mallow root and the small, fine-leaved dropwort. I had half the basket filled when I heard a polite cough behind me.
She was a very old lady indeed, or at least she looked it. She leaned on a hawthorn stick, enveloped in garments she must have worn twenty years before, now much too voluminous for the shrunken frame inside them.
"Good morn to ye," she said, nodding a head like a bobbin. She wore a starched white kertch that hid most of her hair, but a few wisps of iron-grey peeped out beside cheeks like withered apples.
"Good morning," I said, and started to scramble up, but she advanced a few steps and sank down beside me with surprising grace. I hoped she could get up again.
"I'm—" I started, but had barely opened my mouth when she interrupted.
"Ye'll be the new lady, o' course. I'm Mrs. MacNab—Grannie MacNab, they call me, along o' my daughters-in-law all bein' Mrs. MacNabs as weel." She reached out a skinny hand and pulled my basket toward her, peering into it.
"Mallow root—ah, that's good for cough. But ye dinna want to use that one, lassie." She poked at a small brownish tuber. "Looks like lily root, but it isna that."
"What is it?" I asked.
"Adder's-tongue. Eat that one, lassie, and ye'll be rollin' round the room wi' your heels behind yer head." She plucked the tuber from the basket and threw it into the pond with a splash. She pulled the basket onto her lap and pawed expertly through the remaining plants, while I watched with a mixture of amusement and irritation. At last, satisfied, she handed it back.
"Weel, you're none sae foolish, for a Sassenach lassie," she remarked. "Ye ken betony from lamb's-quarters, at least." She cast a glance toward the pond, where Jamie's head appeared briefly, sleek as a seal, before disappearing once again beneath the millhouse. "I see his lairdship didna wed ye for your face alone."
"Thank you," I said, choosing to construe this as a compliment. The old lady's eyes, sharp as needles, were fastened on my midsection.
"Not wi' child yet?" she demanded. "Raspberry leaves, that's the thing. Steep a handful wi' rosehips and drink it when the moon's waxing, from the quarter to the full. Then when it wanes from the full to the half, take a bit o' barberry to purge your womb."
"Oh," I said, "well—"
"I'd a bit of a favor to ask his lairdship," the old lady went on. "But as I see he's a bit occupied at present, I'll tell you about it."
"All right," I agreed weakly, not seeing how I could stop her anyway.
"It's my grandson," she said, fixing me with small grey eyes the size and shininess of marbles. "My grandson Rabbie, that is; I've sixteen altogether, and the three o' them named Robert, but the one's Bob and t'other Rob, and the wee one's Rabbie."
"Congratulations," I said politely.
"I want his lairdship to take the lad on as stable lad," she went on.
"Well, I can't say—"