Outlander 03 - Voyager полностью

“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.”

“Why, that perverted little beast!”

Jamie laughed at my indignation.

“Aye, well, that’s about what the crew thinks, too. Of course, he canna get quite the same effect wi’ a European woman, but I gather he…tries, now and then.”

I began to understand the general feeling of hostility toward the little Chinese. Even a short acquaintance with the crew of the Artemis had taught me that seamen on the whole tended to be gallant creatures, with a strong romantic streak where women were concerned—no doubt because they did without female company for a good part of the year.

“Hm,” I said, with a glance of suspicion at Mr. Willoughby. “Well, that explains them, all right, but what about him?”

“That’s what’s a wee bit complicated.” Jamie’s mouth curled upward in a wry smile. “See, to Mr. Yi Tien Cho, late of the Heavenly Kingdom of China, we’re the barbarians.”

“Is that so?” I glanced up at Brodie Cooper, coming down the ratlines above, the filthy, calloused soles of his feet all that was visible from below. I rather thought both sides had a point. “Even you?”

“Oh, aye. I’m a filthy, bad-smelling gwao-fe—that means a foreign devil, ye ken—wi’ the stink of a weasel—I think that’s what huang-shu-lang means—and a face like a gargoyle,” he finished cheerfully.

“He told you all that?” It seemed an odd recompense for saving someone’s life. Jamie glanced down at me, cocking one eyebrow.

“Have ye noticed, maybe, that verra small men will say anything to ye, when they’ve drink taken?” he asked. “I think brandy makes them forget their size; they think they’re great hairy brutes, and swagger something fierce.”

He nodded at Mr. Willoughby, industriously painting. “He’s a bit more circumspect when he’s sober, but it doesna change what he thinks. It fair galls him, aye? Especially knowing that if it wasna for me, someone would likely knock him on the head or put him through the window into the sea some quiet night.”

He spoke with simple matter-of-factness, but I hadn’t missed the sideways looks directed at us by the passing seamen, and had already realized just why Jamie was passing time in idle conversation by the rail with me. If anyone had been in doubt about Mr. Willoughby’s being under Jamie’s protection, they would be rapidly disabused of the notion.

“So you saved his life, gave him work, and keep him out of trouble, and he insults you and thinks you’re an ignorant barbarian,” I said dryly. “Sweet little fellow.”

“Aye, well.” The wind had shifted slightly, blowing a lock of Jamie’s hair free across his face. He thumbed it back behind his ear and leaned farther toward me, our shoulders nearly touching. “Let him say what he likes; I’m the only one who understands him.”

“Really?” I laid a hand over Jamie’s where it rested on the rail.