I GET BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS 5 страница
Jamie nodded. His eyes were hooded, and I could see that he was looking back into the time he had spent in Ardsmuir.
“Aye. And to shoot a lad in cold blood was nay more than one could expect from either of them. A crueler pair I hope never to meet.” The corner of his mouth turned up, but without humor. “The only thing I ken to Stephen Bonnet’s credit is that he killed one o’ yon lurdans.”
“And the other?” I asked.
“I killed the other.”
The room seemed suddenly very quiet, as though the two of us were far removed from Fraser’s Ridge, alone together, that bald statement floating in the air between us. He was looking straight at me, blue eyes guarded, waiting to see what I would say. I swallowed.
“Why?” I asked, vaguely surprised at the calmness of my own voice.
He did look away then, shaking his head.
“A hundred reasons,” he said softly, “and none.” He rubbed absently at his wrist, as though feeling the weight of iron fetters.
“I could tell ye stories of their viciousness, Sassenach, and they would be true. They preyed upon the weak, robbing and beating—and they were the sort who took delight in cruelty for its own sake. There’s no recourse against such men, not in a prison. But I dinna say so as an excuse—for there is none.”
The prisoners at Ardsmuir were used for labor, cutting peats, quarrying and hauling stone. They worked in small groups, each group guarded by an English soldier, armed with musket and club. The musket, to prevent escape—the club, to enforce orders and ensure submission.
“It was summer. Ye’ll ken the summer in the Highlands, Sassenach—the summer dim?”
I nodded. The summer dim was the light of the Highland night, late in summer. So far to the north, the sun barely set on Midsummer’s Eve; it would disappear below the horizon, but even at midnight, the sky was pale and milky white, and the air was not dark, but seemed filled with unearthly mist.
The prison governor took advantage of the light, now and then, to work the prisoners into the late hours of the evening.
“We didna mind so much,” Jamie said. His eyes were open, but fixed on whatever he was seeing in the summer dim of memory. “It was better to be outside than in. And yet, by the evening, we would be so droukit wi’ fatigue that we could barely set one foot before the other. It was like walking in a dream.”
Both guards and men were numb with exhaustion, by the time the work of the day was done. The groups of prisoners were collected, formed up into a column, and marched back toward the prison, shuffling across the moorland, stumbling and nodding, drunk with the need to fall down and sleep.
“We were still by the quarry, when they set off; we were to load the wagon wi’ the stone-cutting tools and the last of the blocks, and follow. I remember—I heaved a great block up into the wagon bed, and stood back, panting wi’ the effort. There was a sound behind me, and I turned to see Sergeant Murchison—Billy, it was, though I didna find that out ’til later.”
The Sergeant was no more than a squat black shape in the dim, face invisible against a sky the color of an oyster’s shell.
“I wondered, now and then, if I wouldna have done it, had I seen his face.” The fingers of Jamie’s left hand stroked his wrist absently, and I realized that he still felt the weight of the irons he had worn.
The Sergeant had raised his club, poked Jamie hard in the ribs, then used it to point to a maul left lying on the ground. Then the Sergeant turned away.
“I didna think about it for a moment,” Jamie said softly. “I was on him in two steps, wi’ the chain of my fetters hard against his throat. He hadna time to make a sound.”
The wagon stood no more than ten feet from the lip of the quarry pool; there was a drop of forty feet straight down, and the water below, a hundred feet deep, black and waveless under that hollow white sky.
“I tied him to one of the blocks and threw him over, and then I went back to the wagon. The two men from my group were there, standing like statues in the dim, watching. They said nothing, nor did I. I stepped up and took the reins, they got into the back of the wagon, and I drove toward the prison. We caught up to the column before too long, and all went back together, without a word. No one missed Sergeant Murchison until the next evening, for they thought he was down in the village, off-duty. I dinna think they ever found him.”
He seemed to notice what he was doing, then, and took his hand away from his wrist.
“And the two men?” I asked softly. He nodded.
“Tom Christie and Duncan Innes.”
He sighed deeply, and stretched his arms, shifting his shoulders as though to ease the fit of his shirt—though he wore a loose nightshirt. Then he raised one hand and turned it to and fro, frowning at his wrist in the light.
“That’s odd,” he said, sounding faintly surprised.
“What is?”
“The marks—they’re gone.”
“Marks . . . from the irons?” He nodded, examining both his wrists in bemusement. The skin was fair, weathered to a pale gold, but otherwise unblemished.
“I had them for years—from the chafing, aye? I never noticed that they’d gone.”
I set a hand on his wrist, rubbing my thumb gently over the pulse where his radial artery crossed the bone.
“You didn’t have them when I found you in Edinburgh, Jamie. They’ve been gone a long time.”
He looked down at his arms, and shook his head, as though unable to believe it.
“Aye,” he said softly. “Well, so has Tom Christie.”
PART NINE
A Dangerous Business
AURUM
IT WAS QUIET IN THE HOUSE; Mr. Wemyss had gone to the gristmill, taking Lizzie and Mrs. Bug with him, and it was too late in the day for anyone on the Ridge to come visiting—everyone would be at their chores, seeing that the beasts were fed and bedded down, wood and water fetched, the fires built up for supper.
My own beast was already fed and bedded; Adso perched in a somnolent ball in a patch of late sun on the window ledge, feet tucked up and eyes closed in an ecstasy of repletion. My contribution to the supper—a dish Fergus referred to elegantly as lapin aux chanterelles (known as rabbit stew to the vulgar among us)—had been burbling cheerfully away in the cauldron since early morning, and needed no attention from me. As for sweeping the floor, polishing the windows, dusting, and general drudgery of that sort . . . well, if women’s work was never done, why trouble about how much of it wasn’t being accomplished at any given moment?
I fetched down ink and pen from the cupboard, and the big black clothbound casebook, then settled myself to share Adso’s sun. I wrote up a careful description of the growth on little Geordie Chisholm’s ear, which would bear watching, and added the most recent measurements I had taken of Tom Christie’s left hand.
Christie did suffer from arthritis in both hands, and had a slight degree of clawing in the fingers. Having observed him closely at dinner, though, I was nearly sure that what I was seeing in the left hand was not arthritis, but Dupuytren’s contracture—an odd, hooklike drawing-in of the ring and little fingers toward the palm of the hand, caused by shortening of the palmar aponeurosis.
Ordinarily, I should have been in no doubt, but Christie’s hands were so heavily callused from years of labor that I couldn’t feel the characteristic nodule at the base of the ring finger. The finger had felt wrong to me, though, when I’d first looked at the hand—in the course of stitching a gash across the heel of it—and I’d been checking it, whenever I caught sight of Tom Christie and could persuade him to let me look at it—which wasn’t often.
In spite of Jamie’s apprehensions, the Christies had been ideal tenants so far, living quietly and keeping largely to themselves, aside from Thomas Christie’s schoolmastering, at which he appeared to be strict but effective.
I became aware of a looming presence just behind my head. The sunbeam had moved, and Adso with it.
“Don’t even think of it, cat,” I said. A rumbling purr of anticipation started up in the vicinity of my left ear, and a large paw reached out and delicately patted the top of my head.
“Oh, all right,” I said, resigned. No choice, really, unless I wanted to get up and go write somewhere else. “Have it your way.”
Adso could not resist hair. Anyone’s hair, whether attached to a head or not. Fortunately, Major MacDonald had been the only person reckless enough to sit down within Adso’s reach while wearing a wig, and after all, I had got it back, though it meant crawling under the house where Adso had retired with his prey; no one else dared snatch it from his jaws. The Major had been rather austere about the incident, and while it hadn’t stopped him coming round to see Jamie now and then, he no longer removed his hat on such visits, but sat drinking chicory coffee at the kitchen table, his tricorne fixed firmly on his head and both eyes fixed firmly upon Adso, monitoring the cat’s whereabouts.
I relaxed a bit, not quite purring myself, but feeling quite mellow. It was rather soothing to have the cat knead and comb with his half-sheathed claws, pausing now and then in his delicate grooming to rub his face lovingly against my head. He was only really dangerous if he’d been in the catnip, but that was safely locked up. Eyes half-closed, I contemplated the minor complication of describing Depuytren’s contracture without calling it that, Baron Depuytren not having been born yet.
Well, a picture was worth a thousand words, and I thought I could produce a competent line drawing, at least. I did my best, meanwhile wondering how I was to induce Thomas Christie to let me operate on the hand.
It was a fairly quick and simple procedure, but given the lack of anesthesia and the fact that Christie was a strict Presbyterian and a teetotaller . . . perhaps Jamie could sit on his chest, Roger on his legs. If Brianna held his wrist tightly . . .
I gave up the problem for the moment, yawning drowsily. The drowsiness disappeared abruptly, as a three-inch yellow dragonfly came whirring in through the open window with a noise like a small helicopter. Adso sailed through the air after it, leaving my hair in wild disarray and my ribbon—which he appeared to have been quietly chewing—hanging wet and mangled behind my left ear. I removed this object with mild distaste, laid it on the sill to dry, and flipped back a few pages, admiring the neat drawing I had done of Jamie’s snakebite, and of Brianna’s rattlesnake hypodermic.
The leg, to my amazement, had healed cleanly and well, and while there had been a good bit of tissue sloughing, the maggots had dealt with that so effectively that the only permanent traces were two small depressions in the skin where the original fang marks had been, and a thin, straight scar across the calf where I had made an incision for debridement and maggot-placement. Jamie had a slight limp still, but I thought this would cure itself in time.
Humming in a satisfied sort of way, I flipped back farther, idly browsing through the last few pages of Daniel Rawlings’ notes.
Josephus Howard . . . chief complaint being a fistula of the rectum, this of so long a standing as to have become badly abscessed, together with an advanced case of Piles. Treated with a decoction of Ale Hoof, mixed with Burnt Alum and small amount of Honey, this boiled together with juice of Marigold.
A later note on the same page, dated a month later, referred to the efficacy of this compound, with illustrations of the condition of the patient before and after administration. I raised a brow at the drawings; Rawlings was no more an artist than I was, but had succeeded in capturing, to a remarkable degree, the intrinsic discomfort of the condition.
I tapped the quill against my mouth, thinking, then added a careful note in the margin, to the effect that a diet rich in fibrous vegetables should be recommended as an adjunct to this treatment, useful also in preventing both constipation and the more serious complications thereof—nothing like a little object lesson!
I wiped the quill, laid it down, and turned the page, wondering whether Ale Hoof was a plant—and if so, which one—or a suppurative condition of horses’ feet. I could hear Jamie rustling about in his study; I’d go ask him in a moment.
I nearly missed it. It had been jotted on the back of the page containing the drawing of Mr. Howard’s fistula, evidently added as a casual afterthought on the day’s activities.
Have spoke with Mr. Hector Cameron of River Run, who begs me come examine his wife’s eyes, her sight being sadly affected. It is a far distance to his plantation, but he will send a horse.
That bit overcame the soporific atmosphere of the afternoon at once. Fascinated, I sat up and turned the page, looking to see whether the doctor had in fact examined Jocasta. I had—with some difficulty—persuaded her to allow me to examine her eyes once, and I was curious as to Rawlings’ conclusions. Without an ophthalmoscope, there was no way of making sure of the cause of her blindness, but I had strong suspicions—and I could at least rule out such things as cataracts and diabetes with a fair amount of certainty. I wondered whether Rawlings had seen anything I had missed, or whether her condition had changed noticeably since he had seen her.
Bled the smith of a pint, purged his wife with senna oil (10 minims), and administered 3 minims of same to the cat (gratis), I having observed a swarming of worms in the animal’s stool.
I smiled at that; however crude his methods, Daniel Rawlings was a good doctor. I wondered once again what had happened to him, and whether I should ever get the chance to meet him. I had the rather sad feeling that I should not; I couldn’t imagine a doctor not returning somehow to claim such beautiful instruments as his, if he was in any condition to do so.
Under the prodding of my curiosity, Jamie had obligingly made inquiries, but with no results. Daniel Rawlings had set out for Virginia—leaving his box of instruments behind—and had promptly vanished into thin air.
Another page, another patient; bleeding, purging, lancing of boils, removal of an infected nail, drawing of an abscessed tooth, cautery of a persistent sore on a woman’s leg . . . Rawlings had found plenty of business in Cross Creek. Had he ever made it as far as River Run, though?
Yes, there it was, a week later and several pages on.
Reached River Run after a dire journey, wind and rain fit to sink a ship, and the road washed away entirely in places, so was obliged to ride cross-country, lashed by hail, mud to the eyebrows. Had set out at dawn with Mr. Cameron’s black servant, who brought a horse for me—did not reach sanctuary ’til well past dark, exhausted and starving. Made welcome by Mr. Cameron, who gave me brandy.
Having gone to the expense of procuring a doctor, Hector Cameron had evidently decided to make the most of the opportunity, and had had Rawlings examine all the slaves and servants, as well as the master of the house himself.
Aged Seventy-three, of middling height, broad-shouldered, but somewhat bowed in Stature, Rawlings had written of Hector, with hands so gnarled by rheumatism as to make the handling of any implement more subtle than a spoon impossible. Otherwise, is well-preserved, very Vigorous in his age. Complains of rising in the night, painful Micturition. I am inclined to suspect a prurient Distemper of the Bladder, rather than Stone or chronic Disease of the inward male parts, as the complaint is recurrent, but not of long standing on any occasion of its evidence—two weeks being the average duration of each attack and accompanied by Burning in the male Organ. A low fever, tenderness upon palpation of the lower abdomen and a Black Urine, smelling strongly, incline me further to this belief.
The household being possessed of a good quantity of dried cranberries, have prescribed a decoction, the inspissated juice to be drunk thrice daily, a cupful at a time. Also recommend infusion of Cleavers, drunk morning and evening, for its cooling Effect, and in case of there being Gravel present in the Bladder, which may aggravate this Condition.
I found myself nodding approvingly. I didn’t always agree with Rawlings, either in terms of diagnosis or treatment, but I thought he was likely spot-on on this occasion. What about Jocasta, though?
There she was, on the next page.
Jocasta Cameron, Sixty-four years in age, tri-gravida, well-nourished and in good Health generally, very youthful in Aspect.
Tri-gravida? I paused for a moment at that matter-of-fact remark. So plain, so stark a term, to stand for the bearing—let alone the loss—of three children. To have raised three children past the dangers of infancy, only to lose them all at once, and in such cruel fashion. The sun was warm, but I felt a chill on my heart, thinking of it.
If it was Brianna? Or little Jemmy? How did a woman bear such loss? I had done it, myself, and still had no idea. It had been a long time, and yet still, now and then, I would wake in the night, feeling a child’s warm weight sleeping on my breast, her breath warm on my neck. My hand rose and touched my shoulder, curved as though the child’s head lay there.
I supposed that it might be easier to have lost a daughter at birth, without the years of acquaintance that would leave ragged holes in the fabric of daily life. And yet I knew Faith to the last atom of her being; there was a hole in my heart that fit her shape exactly. Perhaps it was that that had been a natural death, at least; it gave me the feeling that she was still with me in some way, was taken care of, and not alone. But to have children slain in blood, butchered in war?
So many things could happen to children in this time. I returned to my persual of her case history with a troubled mind.
No sign of organic Illness, nor external Damage to the Eyes. The White of the Eye is clear, the lashes free of any Matter, no Tumor visible. The Pupils respond normally to a Light passed before them, and to shading of the Light. A candle held close to one side illuminates the vitreous Humor of the Eye, but shows no Defect therein. I note a slight Clouding, indicating incipient Cataract in the lens of the right eye, but this is insufficient to explain the gradual loss of Sight.
“Hum,” I said aloud. Both Rawlings’ observations and his conclusions matched mine. He briefly noted the length of time over which sight had failed—roughly two years—and the process of its failure—nothing abrupt, but a gradual shrinking of the field of vision.
I thought it likely had taken longer; sometimes the loss was so gradual that people didn’t notice the tiny decrements at all, until the sight was seriously threatened.
. . . bits of the vision whittled away like cheese parings. Even the small remnant of sight remaining is of use only in dim light, as patient exhibits great irritation and pain when the eye is exposed to strong sunlight.
I have seen this condition twice before, always in persons of some age, though not so far advanced. Gave it as my opinion that sight would soon be completely obliterated, with no amelioration possible. Fortunately, Mr. Cameron has a black servant capable of reading, whom he has given to his wife to accompany her and warn her of obstacles, likewise to read to her and apprise her of her surroundings.
It had gone further than that now; the light had gone, and Jocasta was entirely blind. So, a progressive condition—that didn’t tell me much, most of them were. When had Rawlings seen her?
It could be any number of conditions—macular degeneration, tumor of the optic nerve, parasitic damage, retinitis pigmentosa, temporal arteritis—probably not retinal detachment, that would have happened abruptly—but my own preliminary suspicion was of glaucoma. I remembered Phaedre, Jocasta’s body servant, wringing out cloths in cold tea, observing that her mistress was suffering from headache “again,” in a tone of voice that suggested this was a frequent occurrence—and Duncan asking me to make up a lavender pillow, to ease his wife’s “megrims.”
The headaches might have nothing to do with Jocasta’s eyesight, though—and I had not inquired at the time as to the nature of the headaches; they might be simple tension headaches or migraines, rather than the pressure-band type that might—or might not—attend glaucoma. Arteritis would cause frequent headache, too, after all. The frustrating thing about it was that glaucoma by itself had absolutely no predictable symptoms—save eventual blindness. It was caused by a failure of proper drainage of the fluid inside the eyeball, so that pressure inside the eye increased to the point of damage, with no warning at all to the patient or her physician. But other kinds of blindness were largely symptomless as well . . .
I was still contemplating the possibilities, when I became aware that Rawlings had continued his notes onto the back of the page—in Latin.
I blinked at that, a little surprised. I could tell that he had written it as a continuation of the earlier passage; quill-writing shows a characteristic darkening and fading of words, as the ink is renewed with each dip of the pen, and the shading of each passage tended to be different, as different inks were used. No, this had been written at the same time as the passage on the preceding page.
But why drop suddenly into Latin? Rawlings knew some Latin, plainly—which argued some degree of formal education, even if not formal medical education—but he didn’t normally use it in his clinical notes, beyond the occasional word or phrase required for the formal description of some condition. Here was a page and a half of Latin, though, and written in scrupulous letters, smaller than his usual writing, as though he had thought carefully about the contents of the passage—or perhaps as though he felt secretive about it, as the Latin itself seemed to argue.
I flipped back through the casebook, checking to verify my impression. No, he had written in Latin here and there—but not often, and always as he did here; as the continuation of a passage begun in English. How odd. I turned back to the passage concerning River Run and began to try to puzzle it out.
Within a sentence or two, I abandoned the effort and went to find Jamie. He was in his own study, across the hall, writing letters. Or not.
The inkstand—made of a small gourd with a cork to keep the ink from drying—stood at hand, freshly filled; I could smell the woody reek of oak galls brewed with iron filings. A new turkey quill lay on the desk, trimmed to a point of such sharpness that it looked more suitable for stabbing than writing, and a fresh sheet of paper lay on the blotter, three words black and lonely at its head. It took no more than a glance at his face to know what they said.
My dear Sister.
He looked up at me, smiled wryly, and shrugged.
“What shall I say?”
“I don’t know.” At sight of him, I had shut the casebook, clasping it under one arm. I came in and stood behind him, laying a hand on his shoulder. I squeezed gently, and he laid his own hand over mine for a moment, then reached to pick up the quill.
“I canna go on saying that I’m sorry.” He rolled the quill slowly to and fro between his thumb and middle finger. “I’ve said it in each letter. If she was disposed to forgive me . . .”
If she was, Jenny would have replied by now to at least one of the letters that he sent faithfully to Lallybroch each month.
“Ian’s forgiven you. And the children.” Missives from Jamie’s brother-in-law arrived sporadically—but they did come, along with occasional notes from his namesake, Young Jamie, and now and then a line from Maggie, Kitty, Michael, or Janet. But the silence from Jenny was so deafening as to drown out all other communications.
“Aye, it would be worse if . . .” he trailed off, staring at the blank paper. In fact, nothing could be worse than this estrangement. Jenny was closer to him, more important to him, than anyone in the world—with the possible exception of myself.
I shared his bed, his life, his love, his thoughts. She had shared his heart and soul since the day he was born—until the day when he had lost her youngest son. Or so she plainly saw it.
It pained me to see him go on carrying the guilt of Ian’s disappearance—and I felt some small resentment toward Jenny. I understood the depth of her loss, and sympathized with her grief, but still, Ian wasn’t dead—so far as we knew. She alone could absolve Jamie, and surely she must know it.
I pulled up a stool and sat down by him, laying the book aside. A small stack of papers lay to one side, covered with his labored writing. It cost him dearly to write, wrong-handed, and that hand crippled—and yet he wrote stubbornly, almost every evening, recording the small events of the day. Visitors to the Ridge, the health of the animals, progress in building, new settlers, news from the Eastern counties . . . He wrote it down, one word at a time, to be sent off when some visitor arrived who would take the accumulated pages away, on the first stage of their precarious journey to Scotland. All the letters might not arrive at their destination, but some would. Likewise, most letters from Scotland would reach us, too—if they were sent.
For a time, I had hoped that Jenny’s letter had simply been mis-sent, misplaced, lost somewhere in transit. But it had been too long, and I had stopped hoping. Jamie hadn’t.
“I thought perhaps I should send her this.” He shuffled through the stack of papers at the side of the desk, and withdrew a small sheet, stained and grubby, ragged along one edge where it had been torn from a book.
It was a message from Ian; the only concrete evidence we had that the boy was still alive and well. It had reached us at the Gathering in November, through the agency of John Quincy Myers, a mountain man who roamed the wilderness, as much at home with Indian as with settler, and more at home with deer and possum than with anyone who lived in a house.
Written in clumsy Latin as a joke, the note assured us that Ian was well, and happy. Married to a girl “in the Mohawk fashion” (meaning, I thought, that he had decided to share her house, bed, and hearth, and she had decided to let him), he expected to become a father himself “in the spring.” And that was all. Spring had come and gone, with no further word. Ian wasn’t dead, but the next thing to it. The chances of us ever seeing him again were remote, and Jamie knew it; the wilderness had swallowed him.
Jamie touched the ratty paper gently, tracing the round, still-childish letters. He’d told Jenny what the note said, I knew—but I also knew why he hadn’t sent the original before. It was the only physical link with Ian; to give it up was in some final way to relinquish him to the Mohawk.
“Ave!” said the note, in Ian’s half-formed writing. “Ian salutat avunculus Jacobus.” Ian salutes his uncle James.
Ian was more to Jamie than one of his nephews. Much as he loved all of Jenny’s children, Ian was special—a foster-son, like Fergus; but unlike Fergus, a son of Jamie’s blood, replacement in a way for the son he had lost. That son wasn’t dead, either, but could not ever be claimed. The world seemed suddenly full of lost children.
“Yes,” I said, my throat tight. “I think you should send it. Jenny should have it, even if . . .” I coughed, reminded suddenly by the note of the casebook. I reached for it, hoping it would distract him.
“Um. Speaking of Latin . . . there’s an odd bit in here. Could you have a look at it, perhaps?”
“Aye, of course.” He set Ian’s note aside and took the book from me, moving it so the last of the afternoon sun fell across the page. He frowned slightly, a finger tracing the lines of writing.
“Christ, the man’s no more grasp of Latin grammar than ye have yourself, Sassenach.”
“Oh, thanks. We can’t all be scholars now, can we?” I moved closer, peering over his shoulder as he read. I’d been right, then; Rawlings didn’t drop casually into Latin for the fun of it, or merely to show off his erudition.
“An oddity . . .” Jamie said, translating slowly as his finger moved across the page. “I am awake—no, he means ‘I was wakened,’ I think—by sounds in the chamber adjoining that where I lay. I am thinking—‘I thought’—that my patient went to make water, and am risen to follow . . . Why should he do that, I wonder?”
“The patient—it’s Hector Cameron, by the way—had a problem with his bladder. Rawlings would have wanted to watch him urinate, to see what sort of difficulty he had, whether he had pain, or blood in the urine, that sort of thing.”
Jamie gave me a side-long glance, one brow raised, then shook his head and returned to the casebook, murmuring something about the peculiar tastes of physicians.