Going Potty from The Fiery Cross
Copyright © 2000 Diana Gabaldon, The Fiery Cross. All rights reserved.

Cold wind blew from the east tonight; he could hear the steady whine of it past the mud-chinked wall near his head, and the lash and creak of the wind-tossed trees beyond the house. A sudden gust struck the oiled hide tacked over the window; it bellied in with a crack! and popped loose at one side, the whooshing draft sending papers scudding off the table and bending the candleflame sideways at an alarming angle.

Roger moved the candle hastily out of harm’s way, and pressed the hide flat with the palm of his hand, glancing over his shoulder to see if his wife and son had been awakened by the noise. A kitchen-rag stirred on its nail by the hearth, and the strings of his guitar hummed faintly as the draft passed by. A sudden tongue of fire sprang up from the banked hearth, and he saw Brianna stir as the cold air brushed her cheek.

She merely snuggled deeper into the quilts, though, a few loose red hairs glimmering as they lifted in the draft. The trundle where Jemmy slept was sheltered by the big bed; there was no sound from that corner of the room.

Roger let out the breath he had been holding, and rummaged briefly in the horn dish that held bits of useful rubbish, coming up with a spare tack. He hammered it home with the heel of his hand, muffling the draft to a small, cold seep, then bent to retrieve his fallen papers.

O will ye let Telfer’s kye gae back?

Or will ye do aught for regard o’ me?

He repeated the words in his mind as he wiped the half-dried ink from his quill, hearing the words in Kimmie Clellan’s cracked old voice.

It was a song called “Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead”--one of the ancient reiving ballads that went on for dozens of verses, and had dozens of regional variations, all involving the attempts of Telfer, a Borderer, to revenge an attack upon his home by calling upon the help of friends and kin. Roger knew three of the variations, but Clellan had had another--with a completely new subplot involving Telfer’s cousin Willie.

Or by the faith of my body,‘ quo’ Willie Scott,

I’se ware my dame’s calfskin on thee!’

Kimmie sang to pass the time of an evening by himself, he had told Roger, or to entertain the hosts whose fire he shared. He remembered all the songs of his Scottish youth, and was pleased to sing them as many times as anyone cared to listen, so long as his throat was kept wet enough to float a tune.

The rest of the company at the big house had enjoyed two or three renditions of Clellan’s repertoire, began to yawn and blink through the fourth, and finally had mumbled excuses and staggered glazen-eyed off to bed en masse, leaving Roger to ply the old man with more whisky and urge him to another repetition, singing the verses with him over and over, until the words were safely committed to memory.

Memory was a chancy thing, though, subject to random losses and unconscious conjecture that took the place of fact. Much safer to commit important things to paper.

’I winna let the kye gae back,

Neither for thy love, nor yet thy fear...

The quill scratched gently, capturing the words one by one, pinned like fireflies to the page. It was very late, and Roger’s muscles were cramped with chill and long sitting, but he was determined to get all the new verses down, while they were fresh in his mind. Clellan might go off in the morning to be eaten by a bear or killed by falling rocks, but Telfer’s cousin Willie would live on.

But I will drive Jamie Telfer’s kye,

In spite of every Scott that’s...

The candle made a brief sputtering noise as the flame struck a fault in the wick. The light that fell across the paper shook and wavered, and the letters faded abruptly into shadow as the candle-flame shrank from a finger of light to a glowing blue dwarf, like the sudden death of a miniature sun.

Roger dropped his quill, and seized the pottery candlestick with a muffled curse. He blew on the wick, puffing gently, in hopes of reviving the flame.

“But Willie was stricken owre the head,” he murmured to himself, repeating the words between puffs, to keep them fresh. “But Willie was stricken owre the head/And through the knapscap the sword has gane/And Harden grat for very rage/When Willie on the grund lay slain...When Willie on the grund lay slain...”

A ragged corona of orange rose briefly, feeding on his breath, but then dwindled steadily away despite continued puffing, winking out into a dot of incandescent red that glowed mockingly for a second or two before disappearing altogether, leaving no more than a wisp of white smoke in the half-dark room, and the scent of hot beeswax in his nose.

He repeated the curse, somewhat louder. Brianna stirred in the bed, and he heard the corn shucks squeak as she lifted her head with a noise of groggy inquiry.

“It’s all right,” he said in a whisper, with an uneasy glance at the trundle in the corner where Jemmy slept. “The candle’s gone out. Go back to sleep.”

But Willie was stricken owre the head...

“Ngm.” A plop and sigh, as her head struck the goose-down pillow again.

Like clockwork, Jemmy’s head rose from his own nest of blankets, his nimbus of fiery fluff silhouetted against the hearth’s dull glow. He made a sound of confused urgency, not quite a cry, and before Roger could stir, Brianna had shot out of bed like a guided missile, snatching the boy from his quilt and fumbling one-handed with his clothing.

“Pot!” she snapped at Roger, poking blindly backward with one bare foot as she grappled with Jemmy’s clothes. “Find the chamber pot! Just a minute, sweetie,” she cooed to Jemmy, in an abrupt change of tone. “Wait juuuuust a minute, now...”

Impelled to instant obedience by her tone of urgency, Roger dropped to his knees, sweeping an arm in search through the black hole under the bed.

Willie was stricken owre the head...And through the...kneecap? nobskull? Overwhelmed by the situation, some remote bastion of memory clung stubbornly to the song, singing in his inner ear. Only the melody, though--the words were fading fast.

“Here!” He found the earthenware pot, accidentally struck the leg of the bed with it--thank Christ, it didn’t break!--and bowled it across the floor to Bree.

She clapped the now-naked Jemmy down onto it with an exclamation of satisfaction, and Roger was left to grope about in the semi-dark for his fallen candle while she murmured encouragements.

“OK, sweetie, yes, that’s right...”

Willie was struck about...no, stricken...

He found the candle, luckily uncracked, and sidled carefully round the drama in progress to kneel and relight the charred wick from the embers of the fire. While he was at it, he poked up the embers and added a fresh stick of wood. The fire revived, illuminating Jemmy, who was making what looked like a very successful effort to go back to sleep, in spite of his position and his mother’s urging.

“Don’t you need to go potty?” she was saying, shaking his shoulder gently.

“Go potty?” Roger said, this curious locution pushing the remnants of the verse from his mind. “What do you mean go potty?” It was his personal opinion, based on current experience as a father, that small children were born potty, and improved very slowly thereafter. He said as much, causing Brianna to give him a remarkably dirty look.

“What?” she said, in an edgy tone. “What do you mean, they’re born potty?” She had one hand on Jemmy’s shoulder, balancing him, while the other cupped his round little belly, an index finger disappearing into the shadows below to direct his aim.

“Potty,” Roger explained, with a brief circular gesture at his temple in illustration. “You know, barmy. Daft.”

She opened her mouth to say something in reply to this, but Jemmy swayed alarmingly, his head sagging forward.

“No, no!” she said, taking a fresh grip. “Wake up, honey! Wake up and go potty!”

The insidious term had somehow taken up residence in Roger’s mind, and was merrily replacing half the fading words of the verse he had been trying to recapture.

Willie sat upon his pot/the sword to potty gane...

He shook his head, as though to dislodge it, but it was too late--the real words had fled. Resigned, he gave it up as a bad job and crouched down next to Brianna to help.

“Wake up, chum. There’s work to be done.” He drew a finger gently under Jemmy’s chin, then blew in his ear, ruffling the silky red tendrils that clung to the child’s temple, still damp with sleep-sweat.

Jemmy’s eyelids cracked in a slit-eyed glower. He looked like a small pink mole, cruelly excavated from its cozy burrow and peering balefully at an inhospitable upper world.

Brianna yawned widely, and shook her head, blinking and scowling in the candlelight.

“Well, if you don’t like ‘go potty,’ what do you say in Scotland, then?” she demanded crabbily.

Roger moved the tickling finger to Jem’s navel.

“Ah...I seem to recall a friend asking his wee son if he needed to do a poo,” he offered. Brianna made a rude noise, but Jemmy’s eyelids flickered.

“Poo,” he said dreamily, liking the sound.

“Right, that’s the idea,” Roger said encouragingly. His finger twiddled gently in the slight depression, and Jemmy gave the ghost of a giggle, beginning to wake up.

“Pooooooo,” he said. “Poopoo.”

“Whatever works,” Brianna said, still cross, but resigned. “Go potty, go poo--just get it over with, all right? Mummy wants to go to sleep.”

“Perhaps you should take your finger off of his...mmphm?” Roger nodded toward the object in question. “You’ll give the poor lad a complex or something.”

“Fine.” Bree took her hand away with alacrity, and the stubby object sprang back up, pointing directly at Roger over the rim of the pot.

“Hey! Now, just a min--” he began, and got his hand up as a shield just in time.

“Poo,” Jemmy said, beaming in drowsy pleasure.

“Shit!”

“Sit!” Jemmy echoed obligingly.

“Well, that’s not quite--would you stop laughing?” Roger said testily, wiping his hand gingerly on the kitchen rag.

Brianna snorted and gurgled, shaking her head so the straggling locks of hair that had escaped her plait fell down around her face.

“Good boy, Jemmy!” she managed.

Thus encouraged, Jemmy took on an air of inner absorption, scruched his chin down into his chest, and without further ado, proceeded to Act Two of the evening’s drama.

“Clever lad!” Roger said sincerely.

Brianna glanced at him, momentary surprise interrupting her own applause.

He was surprised himself. He had spoken by reflex, and hearing the words, just for a moment, his voice hadn’t sounded like his own. Very familiar--but not his own. It was like writing the words of Clellan’s song, hearing the old man’s voice, even as his own lips formed the words.

“Aye, that’s clever,” he said, more softly, and patted the little boy gently on his silky head.

He took the pot outside to empty while Brianna put Jemmy back to bed with kisses and murmurs of admiration. Basic sanitation accomplished, he went to the well to wash his hands before coming back inside to bed.

“Are you through working?” Bree asked drowsily, as he slid into bed beside her. She rolled over and thrust her bottom unceremoniously into his stomach, which he took as a gesture of affection, given the fact that she was about thirty degrees warmer than he was after the sortie outside.

“Aye, for tonight.” He put his arms round her and kissed the back of her ear, the warmth of her body a comfort and delight. She took his chilly hand in hers without comment, folded it and tucked it snugly beneath her chin, with a small kiss on the knuckle. He stretched slightly, then relaxed, letting his muscles go slack and feeling the tiny movements as their bodies adjusted, shaping to each other. A faint buzzing snore rose from the trundle, where Jemmy slept the sleep of the righteously dry.

Brianna had freshly smoored the fire; it burned with a low, even heat and the sweet scent of applewood, making small occasional pops as the buried flame reached a pocket of resin or a spot of damp. Warmth crept over him, and sleep tiptoed in its wake, drawing a blanket of drowsiness up round his ears, unlocking the tidy cupboards of his mind and letting all the thoughts and impressions of the day spill out in brightly colored heaps.

Resisting unconsciousness for a last few moments, he poked desultorily among the scattered riches thus revealed, in the faint hope of finding a corner of the Telfer song poking out; some scrap of word or music that would allow him to seize the vanished verses and drag them back into the light of consciousness. It wasn’t the story of the ill-fated Willie that emerged from the rubble, though, but rather a voice. Not his own, and not that of old Kimmie Clellan, either.

Clever lad! it said, in a clear warm contralto, tinged with laughter. Roger jerked.

“Whaju say?” Brianna mumbled, disturbed by the movement.

“Go on--be clever,” he said slowly, echoing the words as they formed in his memory. “That’s what she said.”

“Who?” Brianna turned her head, with a rustle of hair on the pillow.

“My mother.” He put his free hand round her waist, resettling them both. “You asked what they said in Scotland. I’d forgotten, but that’s what she used to say to me. ‘Go on--be clever!’ or ‘Do ye need to be clever?’”

Bree gave a small grunt of sleepy amusement.

“Well, it’s better than poo,” she said.