A Breath of Snow and Ashes (30 page)

“Aye,” he said. “Well. D’ye want your hand mended, Tom?”

Christie went on looking mulish, cradling the crippled hand protectively against his chest. After a moment, though, he nodded slowly.

“Aye,” he said. He gave me a deeply suspicious look. “But I shall not be having any of this Popish nonsense about it!”

“Popish?” Jamie and I spoke at the same time, Jamie sounding merely puzzled, myself deeply exasperated.

“Aye, and ye need not be thinking ye can cod me into it, either, Fraser!”

Jamie shot me an “I told ye so, Sassenach” sort of look, but squared himself to give it a try.

“Well, ye always were an awkward wee bugger, Tom,” he said mildly. “Ye must please yourself about it, to be sure—but I can tell ye from experience that it does hurt a great deal.”

I thought Christie paled a little.

“Tom. Look.” Jamie nodded at the tray of instruments: two scalpels, a probe, scissors, forceps, and two suture needles, already threaded with gut and floating in a jar of alcohol. They gleamed dully in the sunlight. “She means to cut into your hand, aye?”

“I know that,” Christie snapped, though his eyes slid away from the sinister assemblage of sharp edges.

“Aye, ye do. But ye’ve not the slightest notion what it’s like. I have. See here?” He held up his right hand, the back of it toward Christie, and waggled it. In that position, with the morning sun full on it, the thin white scars that laced his fingers were stark against the deep bronze skin.

“That bloody
hurt,
” he assured Christie. “Ye dinna want to do something like that, and there’s a choice about it—which there is.”

Christie barely glanced at the hand. Of course, I thought, he would be familiar with the look of it; he’d lived with Jamie for three years.

“I have made my choice,” Christie said with dignity. He sat down in the chair and laid his hand palm-up on the napkin. All the color had leached out of his face, and his free hand was clenched so hard that it trembled.

Jamie looked at him under heavy brows for a moment, then sighed.

“Aye. Wait a moment, then.”

Obviously, there was no further point in argument, and I didn’t bother trying. I took down the bottle of medicinal whisky I kept on the shelf and poured a healthy tot into a cup.

“Take a little wine for thy stomach’s sake,”
I said, thrusting it firmly into his upturned hand. “Our mutual acquaintance, St. Paul. If it’s all right to drink for the sake of a stomach, surely to goodness you can take a drop for the sake of a hand.”

His mouth, grimly compressed in anticipation, opened in surprise. He glanced from the cup to me, then back. He swallowed, nodded, and raised the cup to his lips.

Before he had finished, though, Jamie came back, holding a small, battered green book, which he thrust unceremoniously into Christie’s hand.

Christie looked surprised, but held the book out, squinting to see what it was.
HOLY BIBLE
was printed on the warped cover,
King James Version.

“Ye’ll take help where ye can, I suppose?” Jamie said a little gruffly.

Christie looked at him sharply, then nodded, a very faint smile passing through his beard like a shadow.

“I thank you, sir,” he said. He took his spectacles out of his coat and put them on, then opened the little book with great care and began to thumb through it, evidently looking for a suitable inspiration for undergoing surgery without anesthetic.

I gave Jamie a long look, to which he responded with the faintest of shrugs. It wasn’t merely a Bible. It was the Bible that had once belonged to Alexander MacGregor.

Jamie had come by it as a very young man, when he was imprisoned in Fort William by Captain Jonathan Randall. Flogged once, and awaiting another, frightened and in pain, he had been left in solitary confinement with no company save his thoughts—and this Bible, given to him by the garrison’s surgeon for what comfort it might offer.

Alex MacGregor had been another young Scottish prisoner—one who had died by his own hand, rather than suffer the further attentions of Captain Randall. His name was written inside the book, in a tidy, rather sprawling hand. The little Bible was no stranger to fear and suffering, and if it wasn’t ether, I hoped it might still possess its own power of anodyne.

Christie had found something that suited him. He cleared his throat, straightened himself in the chair, and laid his hand on the towel, palm up, in such a forthright manner that I wondered whether he had settled on the passage in which the Maccabees willingly present their hands and tongues for amputation at the hands of the heathen king.

A peek over his shoulder indicated that he was somewhere in the Psalms, though.

“At your convenience, then, Mistress Fraser,” Christie said politely.

If he wasn’t to be unconscious, I needed a bit of extra preparation. Manly fortitude was all very well, and so was Biblical inspiration—but there are relatively few people capable of sitting motionless while having their hand sliced into, and I didn’t think Thomas Christie was one of them.

I had a plentiful supply of linen strips for bandaging. I rolled back his sleeve, then used a few of the strips to bind his forearm tightly to the little table, with an additional band holding back the clawed fingers from the site of operation.

Though Christie seemed rather shocked at the notion of drinking liquor while reading the Bible, Jamie—and, just possibly, the sight of the waiting scalpels—had convinced him that circumstances justified it. He had consumed a couple of ounces by the time I had him properly secured and his palm thoroughly swabbed with raw alcohol, and was looking significantly more relaxed than he had upon entering the room.

This sense of relaxation disappeared abruptly when I made the first incision.

His breath rushed out in a high-pitched gasp and he arched upward out of the chair, jerking the table across the floor with a screech. I grabbed his wrist in time to prevent his ripping the bandages away, and Jamie seized him by both shoulders, pressing him back into the chair.

“Now then, now then,” Jamie said, squeezing firmly. “You’ll do, Tom. Aye, you’ll do.”

Sweat had popped out all over Christie’s face, and his eyes were huge behind the lenses of his spectacles. He gulped, swallowed, took a quick look at his hand, which was welling blood, then looked away fast, white as a sheet.

“If you’re going to vomit, Mr. Christie, do it there, will you?” I said, shoving an empty bucket toward him with one foot. I still had one hand on his wrist, the other pressing a wad of sterilized lint hard onto the incision.

Jamie was still talking to him like one settling a panicked horse. Christie was rigid, but breathing hard, and trembling in every limb, including the one I meant to be working on.

“Shall I stop?” I asked Jamie, giving Christie a quick appraisal. I could feel his pulse hammering in the wrist I grasped. He wasn’t in shock—quite—but plainly wasn’t feeling at all well.

Jamie shook his head, eyes on Christie’s face.

“No. Shame to waste that much whisky, aye? And he’ll not want to go through the waiting again. Here, Tom, have another dram; it will do ye good.” He pressed the cup to Christie’s lips, and Christie gulped it without hesitation.

Jamie had let go of Christie’s shoulders as he settled; now he took hold of Christie’s forearm with one hand, gripping firmly. With the other, he picked up the Bible, which had fallen to the floor, and thumbed it open.

“The right hand of the Lord is exalted,”
he read, squinting over Christie’s shoulder at the book. “
The right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly.
Well, that’s appropriate, no?” He glanced down at Christie, who had subsided, his free hand clenched in a fist against his belly.

“Go on,” Christie said, voice hoarse.

“I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord,”
Jamie went on, his voice low but firm.
“The Lord hath chastened me sore, but he hath not given me over unto death.”

Christie seemed to find this heartening; his breathing slowed a little.

I couldn’t spare time to look at him, and his arm under Jamie’s grasp was hard as wood. Still, he was beginning to murmur along with Jamie, catching every few words.

“Open to me the gates of righteousness. . . I will praise thee, for thou hast heard me. . . .”

I had the aponeurosis laid bare, and could clearly see the thickening. A flick of the scalpel freed the edge of it; then a ruthless slice, cutting hard down through the fibrous band of tissue . . . the scalpel struck bone, and Christie gasped.

“God is the Lord which has showed us light; bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar. . . .”
I could hear a tinge of amusement in Jamie’s voice as he read that bit, and felt the shift of his body as he glanced toward me.

It did look rather as though I had been sacrificing something; hands don’t bleed as profusely as head wounds, but there are plenty of small vessels in the palm, and I was hastily blotting away the blood with one hand as I worked with the other; discarded wads of bloodstained lint littered the table and the floor around me.

Jamie was flipping to and fro, picking out random bits of Scripture, but Christie was with him now, speaking the words along with him. I stole a hasty glance at him; his color was still bad, and his pulse thundering, but the breathing was better. He was clearly speaking from memory; the lenses of his spectacles were fogged.

I had the hindering tissue fully exposed now, and was trimming away the tiny fibers from the surface of the tendon. The clawed fingers twitched, and the exposed tendons moved suddenly, silver as darting fish. I grabbed the feebly wiggling fingers and squeezed them fiercely.

“You mustn’t move,” I said. “I need both hands; I can’t hold yours.”

I couldn’t look up, but felt him nod, and released his fingers. With the tendons gleaming softly in their beds, I removed the last bits of the aponeurosis, sprayed the wound with a mixture of alcohol and distilled water for disinfection, and set about closing the incisions.

The men’s voices were no more than whispers, a low susurrus to which I had paid no attention, engrossed as I was. As I relaxed my attention and began to suture the wound, though, I became aware of them again.

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. . . .”

I looked up, wiping perspiration from my forehead with my sleeve, and saw that Thomas Christie now held the small Bible, closed and pressed against his body with his free arm. His chin jammed hard into his chest, his eyes tight closed and face contorted with pain.

Jamie still held the bound arm tight, but had his other hand on Christie’s shoulder, his own head bent near Christie’s; his eyes, too, were closed, as he whispered the words.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. . . .”

I knotted the last suture, clipped the thread, and in the same movement, cut through the linen bindings with my scissors, and let go the breath I’d been holding. The men’s voices stopped abruptly.

I lifted the hand, wrapped a fresh dressing tightly around it, and pressed the clawed fingers gently back, straightening them.

Christie’s eyes opened, slowly. His pupils were huge and dark behind his lenses, as he blinked at his hand. I smiled at him, and patted it.

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,”
I said softly.
“And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

24

TOUCH ME NOT

C
HRISTIE’S PULSE WAS a little rapid, but strong. I set down the wrist I had been holding, and put the back of my hand against his forehead.

“You’re a bit feverish,” I said. “Here, swallow this.” I put a hand behind his back to help him sit up in bed, which alarmed him. He sat up in a flurry of bedclothes, drawing in his breath sharply as he jostled the injured hand.

I tactfully affected not to notice his discomposure, which I put down to the fact that he was clad in his shirt and I in my nightclothes. These were modest enough, to be sure, with a light shawl covering my linen night rail, but I was reasonably sure that he hadn’t been anywhere near a woman in
dishabille
since his wife died—if then.

I murmured something meaningless, holding the cup of comfrey tea for him as he drank, and then settled his pillows in comfortable but impersonal fashion.

Rather than send him back to his own cabin, I had insisted that he stay the night, so I could keep an eye on him in case of postoperative infection. Intransigent as he was by nature, I didn’t by any means trust him to follow instructions and not to be slopping hogs, cutting wood, or wiping his backside with the wounded hand. I wasn’t letting him out of sight until the incision had begun to granulate—which it should do by the next day, if all went well.

Still shaky from the shock of surgery, he had made no demur, and Mrs. Bug and I had put him to bed in the Wemysses’ room, Mr. Wemyss and Lizzie having gone to the McGillivrays’.

I had no laudanum, but had slipped Christie a strong infusion of valerian and St. John’s wort, and he had slept most of the afternoon. He had declined any supper, but Mrs. Bug, who approved of Mr. Christie, had been plying him through the evening with toddies, syllabubs, and other nourishing elixirs—all containing a high percentage of alcohol. Consequently, he seemed rather dazed, as well as flushed, and made no protest as I picked up the bandaged hand and brought the candle close to examine it.

The hand was swollen, which was to be expected, but not excessively so. Still, the bandage was tight, and cutting uncomfortably into the flesh. I snipped it, and holding the honeyed dressing that covered the wound carefully in place, lifted the hand and sniffed at it.

I could smell honey, blood, herbs, and the faintly metallic scent of fresh-severed flesh—but no sweet whiff of pus. Good. I pressed carefully near the dressing, watching for signs of sharp pain or streaks of vivid red in the skin, but bar a reasonable tenderness, I saw only a small degree of inflammation.

Still, he
was
feverish; it would bear watching. I took a fresh length of bandage and wound it carefully over the dressing, finishing with a neat bow at the back of the hand.

“Why do you never wear a proper kerch or cap?” he blurted.

“What?” I looked up in surprise, having temporarily forgotten the man attached to the hand. I put my free hand to my head. “Why should I?”

I sometimes plaited my hair before bed, but hadn’t tonight. I had brushed it, though, and it floated loose around my shoulders, smelling pleasantly of the hyssop and nettle-flower infusion I combed through it to keep lice at bay.

“Why?” His voice rose a little.
“Every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven.”

“Oh, are we back to Paul again?” I murmured, returning my attention to his hand. “Does it not occur to you that that man had rather a bee in his bonnet when it came to women? Besides, I’m not praying at the moment, and I want to see how this does overnight, before I risk any prophesying about it. So far, though, it seems—”

“Your hair.” I looked up to see him staring at me, mouth curved downward in disapproval. “It’s . . .” He made a vague movement round his own clipped poll. “It’s . . .”

I raised my brows at him.

“There’s a great deal of it,” he ended, rather feebly.

I eyed him for a moment, then put down his hand and reached for the little green Bible, which was sitting on the table.

“Corinthians, was it? Hmm, oh, yes, here we are.” I straightened my back and read the verse:
“Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him? But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering.”
I closed the book with a snap and set it down.

“Would you care to step across the landing and explain to my husband how shameful
his
hair is?” I asked politely. Jamie had gone to bed; a faint, rhythmic snoring was audible from our room. “Or do you expect he knows that already?”

Christie was already flushed from drink and fever; at this, an ugly dark red washed him from chest to hairline. His mouth moved, opening and closing soundlessly. I didn’t wait for him to decide on something to say, but merely turned my attention back to his hand.

“Now,” I said firmly, “you must do exercise regularly, to make sure that the muscles don’t contract as they heal. It will be painful at first, but you must do it. Let me show you.”

I took hold of his ring finger, just below the first joint, and keeping the finger itself straight, bent the top joint a little inward.

“Do you see? Here, you do it. Take hold with your other hand, and then try to bend just that one joint. Yes, that’s it. Do you feel the pull, down through the palm of your hand? That’s just what’s wanted. Now, do it with the little finger . . . yes. Yes, that’s very good!”

I looked up and smiled at him. The flush had faded a little, but he still looked thoroughly nonplussed. He didn’t smile back at me, but glanced hastily away, down at his hand.

“Right. Now, put your hand flat on the table—yes, that’s the way—and try to raise your fourth finger and little finger by themselves. Yes, I know it isn’t easy. Keep trying, though. Are you hungry, Mr. Christie?”

His stomach had given a loud growl, startling him as much as me.

“I suppose I might eat,” he mumbled ungraciously, scowling at his uncooperative hand.

“I’ll fetch you something. Keep trying those exercises for a bit, why don’t you?”

The house was quiet, settled for the night. Warm as it was, the shutters had been left open, and enough moonlight streamed through the windows that I didn’t need to light a candle. A shadow detached itself from the darkness in my surgery, and followed me down the hallway to the kitchen—Adso, leaving off his nocturnal hunt for mice, in hopes of easier prey.

“Hallo, cat,” I said, as he slithered past my ankles into the pantry. “If you think you’re having any of the ham, think again. I might go as far as a saucer of milk, though.” The milk jug was white earthenware with a blue band round it, a squat, pale shape floating in the darkness. I poured out a saucer and put it down on the floor for Adso, then set about assembling a light supper—aware that Scottish expectations of a light meal involved sufficient food to founder a horse.

“Ham, cold fried potatoes, cold fried mush, bread and butter,” I chanted under my breath, shoveling it all onto a large wooden tray. “Rabbit dumpling, tomato pickle, a bit of raisin pie for pudding . . . what else?” I glanced down toward the soft lapping noises coming from the shadows at my feet. “I’d give him milk, too, but he wouldn’t drink it. Well, we might as well keep on as we’ve started, I suppose; it will help him to sleep.” I reached for the whisky decanter and put that on the tray, as well.

A faint scent of ether floated in the dark air of the hallway as I made my way back toward the stairs. I sniffed suspiciously—had Adso tipped over the bottle? No, it wasn’t strong enough for that, I decided, just a few wayward molecules seeping around the cork.

I was simultaneously relieved and regretful that Mr. Christie had refused to let me use the ether. Relieved, because there was no telling how it might have worked—or not. Regretful, because I would have liked very much to add the gift of unconsciousness to my arsenal of skills—a precious gift to bestow on future patients, and one I should very much have liked to give Mr. Christie.

Beyond the fact that the surgery had hurt him badly, it was very much more difficult to operate on a conscious person. The muscles were tensed, adrenaline was flooding through the system, heart rate was vastly speeded up, causing blood to spurt rather than flow. . . . For the dozenth time since the morning, I envisioned exactly what I had done, asking myself whether I might have done better.

To my surprise, Christie was still doing the exercises; his face was sheened with sweat and his mouth set grimly, but he was still doggedly bending the joints.

“That’s very good,” I said. “Do stop now, though. I don’t want you to start bleeding again.” I picked up the napkin automatically and blotted the sweat from his temples.

“Is there someone else in the house?” he asked, irritably jerking his head away from my ministrations. “I heard you speaking to someone downstairs.”

“Oh,” I said, rather embarrassed. “No, just the cat.” Prompted by this introduction, Adso, who had followed me upstairs, leapt onto the bed and stood kneading the covers with his paws, big green eyes fixed on the plate of ham.

Christie turned a gaze of deep suspicion from the cat to me.

“No, he is not my familiar,” I said tartly, scooping up Adso and dumping him unceremoniously on the floor. “He’s a cat. Talking to him is slightly less ridiculous than talking to myself, that’s all.”

An expression of surprise flitted across Christie’s face—perhaps surprise that I had read his mind, or simple surprise at my idiocy—but the creases of suspicion round his eyes relaxed.

I cut up his food with brisk efficiency, but he insisted upon feeding himself. He ate clumsily with his left hand, eyes on his plate and brows knotted in concentration.

When he had finished, he drank off a cup of whisky as though it were water, set down the empty cup, and looked at me.

“Mistress Fraser,” he said, speaking very precisely, “I am an educated man. I do not think ye are a witch.”

“Oh, you don’t?” I said, rather amused. “So you don’t believe in witches? But there are witches mentioned in the Bible, you know.”

He stifled a belch with his fist and regarded me fishily.

“I did not say I do not believe in witches. I do. I said ye aren’t one. Aye?”

“I’m very much obliged to hear it,” I said, trying not to smile. He was quite drunk; though his speech was even more precise than usual, his accent had begun to slip. Normally, he suppressed the inflections of his native Edinburgh as much as possible, but it was growing broader by the moment.

“A bit more?” I didn’t wait for an answer, but poured a solid tot of whisky into his empty cup. The shutters were open and the room was cool, but sweat still gleamed in the creases of his neck. He was clearly in pain, and wasn’t likely to sleep again without help.

He sipped it this time, watching me over the rim of the cup as I tidied up the supper leavings. In spite of whisky and a full stomach, he was increasingly restive, shifting his legs beneath the quilt and twitching his shoulders. I thought he needed the chamber pot, and was debating whether I ought to offer to help him with it, or simply leave promptly so he could manage by himself. The latter, I thought.

I was mistaken, though. Before I could excuse myself, he set down his cup on the table and sat up straight in bed.

“Mistress Fraser,” he said, fixing me with a beady eye. “I wish to apologize to ye.”

“What for?” I said, startled.

His lips pressed tight.

“For . . . my behavior this morning.”

“Oh. Well . . . that’s quite all right. I can see how the idea of being put to sleep must seem . . . quite peculiar to you.”

“I dinna mean that.” He glanced up sharply, then down again. “I meant . . . that I . . . could not keep myself still.”

I saw the deepening flush rise up his cheeks again, and had a sudden pang of surprised sympathy. He was truly embarrassed.

I set down the tray and sat down slowly on the stool beside him, wondering what I could say that might assuage his feelings—and not make matters worse.

“But, Mr. Christie,” I said. “I wouldn’t expect
anyone
to hold still while having their hand taken apart. It’s—it’s simply not human nature!”

He shot me a quick, fierce glance.

“Not even your husband?”

I blinked, taken aback. Not so much by the words, as by the tone of bitterness. Roger had told me a bit of what Kenny Lindsay had said about Ardsmuir. It had been no secret that Christie had been envious of Jamie’s leadership then—but what had that to do with this?

“What makes you say that?” I asked quietly. I took his injured hand, ostensibly to check the bindings—in fact, merely to give me somewhere to look other than into his eyes.

“It’s true, aye? Your husband’s hand.” His beard jutted pugnaciously at me. “He said ye’d mended it for him.
He
didna wriggle and squirm when ye did it, now, did he?”

Well, no, he hadn’t. Jamie had prayed, cursed, sweated, cried—and screamed, once or twice. But he hadn’t moved.

Jamie’s hand wasn’t a matter I wanted to discuss with Thomas Christie, though.