Lord of the Black Isle (8 page)

He might have gone on thinking along these lines, had she not stirred and turned in her sleep, her skirt catching beneath her and exposing a long length of leg. He groaned and closed his eyes; then after a few minutes he stood and removed his hauberk, mail shirt, and belt. Then he dropped down beside her and lay there in the sheer agony of inextinguishable desire long after he drew his plaid over them.

At some point during the night, she felt cold and she tried to pull her skirts down to better cover her cold feet, which did nothing to warm the chill of the rest of her. She had a vague thought that she should scoot a little closer to him, when he suddenly turned over and pulled her against him. She put her head on his arm and snuggled close to him, wondering how he managed to be so warm while she was frozen to the core. She was almost asleep when she felt the press of his kiss against her hair, and that one innocent, chaste act endeared him to the core of her and told her what kind of man he was. She knew he desired her to the point he was in torment, for she had seen it in his eyes. He could have easily taken whatever he wanted from her.

But he did not…

That was her last thought until the early dawn, when he prodded her with his boot and she opened her eyes to the glow of a fire reflecting off the cave walls.

“'Tis time to go, Mistress Douglas, or we willna reach Soutra Aisle afore sundown.”

Life is mostly froth and bubble;

Two things stand like stone,

Kindness in another's trouble,

Courage in your own.

—“Ye Weary Wayfarer” (1866)

Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833–1870)

Australian poet

Dere Street was the medieval name for the ancient Roman road Via Regia, which was for centuries the main route from York, England, to the Firth of Forth, near Edinburgh. Close to this main route was one of the biggest and most famous hospitals in Europe, known as the House of the Holy Trinity.

The House of the Holy Trinity, founded in 1160, was a complex of hospital and monastic buildings with a friary run by Augustinian friars. Also known as the Hospice of Soutra, or Soutra Aisle, it was well endowed, powerful, and a refuge for travelers, pilgrims, fugitives, the needy and the sick, with estates that covered twenty square miles.

After another day of travel, Elisabeth got her first glimpse of this famous medieval hospital, and her first impression was how very different it looked from the lone surviving building and scattered rubble that were all that existed of it when she and Isobella visited it in the twenty-first century. But she couldn't very well tell David Murray that. And speaking of David Murray, he didn't exactly drop her, point to where Soutra Aisle was, and ride off, but he came close to it. Although he did deliver her to the hospital, he immediately said, with a brief apology, that he wanted to reach Elcho Priory before nightfall. And then he made ready for his immediate departure.

She did not want him to leave, and she did manage to detain him a moment longer by offering her thanks and appreciation for his chivalrous behavior. “I owe you a debt of gratitude,” she said, “and I truly hope I shall one day have the opportunity to repay you. I shudder to think where I would be now, had you not befriended me. I shall never forget your kindness in coming to my aid.”

“'Twas naught more that any honorable man would do,” he said. “'Tis my hope that all will go well wi' ye during yer time at Soutra Aisle, Mistress Douglas.”

She started to step back to tell him good-bye, but she was almost rendered speechless, for his cool, unassuming words did not, by any means, match the burning coals of desire she saw in his eyes. For a moment she remained in place, her hand on his boot as he looked down at her, for she was trapped in a moment of pure animal magnetism that passed like an electrical current between them. It paralyzed her to know he could mesmerize her by the sheer force of his larger-than-life presence, his desire for her, and the powerful force of knighthood that surrounded him like a mantle. It was as if she were snared in a bubble of time, held by a spider's thread spun in a golden field of stubble.

The purpled dye of his eyes was so hypnotic that she lingered in a neutral state of mental bondage, unable to break the charm of enchanted fascination she was under. She felt helplessly exposed by the liquid heat that seemed to melt away the fragments of her clothing until she was completely nude, standing beside him.

She was not immune to it, for she was suffused with warmth and a desire so powerful that she wanted to ask him to take her with him.
Ask
him… go on. Ask him…
a voice in her head cried out. She moistened her lips, indecision eating away at her.

A cloud gathered overhead and thunder rumbled. The scent of rain hung heavily in the air, and if Sir James had been there, she would have told him to go chase a runaway star and mind his own business.

Maybe
he
was
doing
just
that…

The thought was sobering. “God go with you,” she said, and stepped back. She looked up at him with a smile that was genuinely warm. She was answered with a molten heat of desire that fairly glowed in the depth of his eyes, and for a moment she thought he was going to yank her into the saddle with him and ride away.

Her desire for him matched his and they both knew it, but in the end, honor and duty won out.

Her knees almost buckled when reality set in, and a moment later, he gave her a nod and spurred his horse into a full gallop. She knew that the last she would ever see of David Murray At Your Service was his dark blue cape billowing around him like the flapping wings of some giant, mythical bird, and she watched it until it faded from sight. She found it odd, but she felt a sense of loss, knowing he had come into her life for a brief period and then, just as quickly, passed out of it. Things like that happened all the time in one's life, yet this one left her with a particularly empty feeling, as if she missed him, which seemed absurdly impossible since she never truly knew him.

For some time she stood there, unable to move, for never had she met a man who charmed and captivated her attention as he had. She would always call him dear for filling her with such desire that she knew she had moved beyond the sadness of the past, and she would always think of this moment at Soutra Aisle as very special. For it had healed her broken spirit and rekindled her deep desire to heal. She would never forget him, and then she smiled, recalling genetics and the phenomenon of imprinting, when ducklings and chicks, upon hatching, would follow and become attached to the first moving object they encountered.

Only, in her case, she most assuredly socially bonded with David Murray, and then she watched him ride away, leaving her in a strange place among strange people, and she knew this was home, at least for a while.

With a sigh, she turned back to the friar who came outside to greet her, and she followed him inside. She withdrew the letter of introduction from Alysandir Mackinnon's uncle, Lachlan Mackinnon, and gave it to the Abbot. After learning she was related to the Mackinnons and reading the letter from their uncle, Elisabeth was well received and warmly welcomed by the friars. The Master of the Hospital seemed especially honored to have the opportunity to teach her what they knew, and he began to tell her how much they needed women to help with the smaller hospitals at nunneries, these hospitals being more like the clinics of her time.

This was where her new life began, and she promised herself she would learn as much as she could from the friars regarding methods, medicines, disinfectants, and the general medical and surgical knowledge that was available in this time period. However, she would have to admit that she did feel a sense of continued emptiness over her knight in shining armor and the memory of him riding over the rim of a hill to be absorbed into the bright orb of a setting sun resting there. If she was going to be kidnapped, why it couldn't have been by someone like David Murray?

And speaking of kidnappings, it did seem that since she arrived in Scotland, her life had dealt mostly with kidnappings, disappointments, and losses. She sniffed, having used up her allotted time to feel sorry for herself, and nodded her thanks at Father Andrew Galbraith, who handed her a kerchief. “In case you ha' a need fer it,” he said.

“Thank you. I suppose I am not as good at hiding my emotions as I thought,” she said, smiling up at him.

“Leaving is never easy, lass, because we always leave a part of ourselves behind. But soon we learn to part with the things we can part with and bring with us the things we hold too dear. Sometimes it helps to look forward and not behind, for there is always in front of us something new to be experienced. After all, that is why ye left, is it not… to learn something new?”

How could she not smile at the optimism in his voice and the cheerful manner in which he spoke? “You shall be my new best friend,” she said quite seriously, and Father Andrew laughed.

“I can think of nothing that would pleasure me more, but remember that Job endured everything until his friends offered him comfort.”

She gave him a curious stare, and when he said nothing, she asked, “So, tell me. What happened to him?”

“He grew impatient.”

Oh, if you only know just how impatient I am to see again the knight who just rode away.
She laughed. “You remind me of my father, who always tempered my impatience by telling me ‘Nature, time, and patience are the three great physicians.'”

Father Andrew smiled and said, “A wise man, he.”

She took a deep breath and looked around. The worst was over. She had said her good-byes to Ronan, her sister, all the Mackinnons, and the prince of princes who had rescued her from the clutches of the MacLeans, and now she was at Soutra Aisle, about to begin a brand-new adventure in her life. She had no idea just where it would take her or how it would all play out in the end, but for now, she was elated that it was a brand-new beginning, where she could put the pain and lack of purpose she experienced in the past behind her. She looked up at Father Andrew's round, beaming face and smiled. She considered it a welcoming gift, for she knew she would find in him a boon companion.

She had read much regarding the history of medicine, especially medieval medicine, in college and medical school. After her arrival in Scotland, she learned from Isobella that, because of the advancement of science and technology, archaeological excavations were proving that medieval healers in Scotland were not only aware of but also used much, much more than a few remedial herbs, as previously thought.

In Father Andrew, she had a constant companion who took an inordinate amount of pleasure in helping her, and what he didn't know he was most eager to find out. He was also eager to learn more about her medical abilities and information, but she was careful not to reveal too much, which would make him curious as to how she came to have such advanced knowledge. This was, after all, a religious hospital, and this was the age of suspicion when heretics were burned for nothing more than having beliefs that contradicted the established religious teachings.

Fortunately for her, she was the novice here, and Father Andrew, with his warm brown eyes and funny stories about his childhood, and gentle, blue-eyed Father Geoffrey, who had studied medicine in Italy, did most of her instruction. It was a time of learning for her in just about the most inhospitable place one could conjure up, for the squalls from the sea rolled in without warning and with great frequency. But she was so busy that she did not have much time to dwell on the lonely setting or the inclement weather, for the hospital was on the old Roman Road known as Dere Street, which ran from England to Edinburgh and the friars at Soutra Aisle gave succor to many a traveler.

Father Geoffrey enlightened her: “The Augustinian Order is highly respected for its hospitals.” That went along with Isobella's comment that “they were the greatest practitioners of herbal medicine, and they ran more hospitals in the Middle Ages than any other order.”

Once she rolled up her sleeves and set to work, Elisabeth was truly awed to discover there were so many medicines available. To date, she had identified some 230 plant species with medicinal applications, which Father Geoffrey carefully wrote down for her, complete with a precise and complete recipe for mixing each of them.

“If ye want to ease pain, mix opium with animal grease and rub it on the skin,” Father Geoffrey said, “and when measuring, ye should recite the Ave Maria,” which she decided amounted to about fifteen seconds.

“Next, I will teach ye to mix opium with wine for amputations,” Father Andrew said.

The most astonishing thing was, according to her own conclusions, that the friars might have had more to do with female patients than originally thought, for in their supplies, there was a container of the deadly ergot fungus and berries of the juniper bush. She knew that black ergots were found only in the resting stage of a parasitic fungus that attacked cereal crops. But ergot also contains alkaloids, like ergometrine, which can cause catastrophic uterine contractions.

When she walked in the garden one afternoon with Father Geoffrey, she recognized something she knew. “Juniper bushes!” she said, remembering some that grew on their ranch in Texas.

“Aye, they represent the Tree of Life,” he said.

She nodded and said nothing, but she knew that juniper was also a uterine stimulant and had been mentioned in conjunction with abortions as far back as Dioscorides in first-century Greece, for he wrote that a drug made from the root “is applied as a pessary with honey to draw down the embryo.”

Father Geoffrey did not say such procedures were done at Soutra Aisle, but he did tell her that ergot and juniper were thought to help with childbirth or to end it. She knew this was dangerous territory for him, because Augustinian friars were strictly forbidden to practice midwifery. She did recall also that Isobella once told her that often such things were found during archaeological digs at medieval hospitals, where they unearthed fragments of bones from fetuses, which would suggest it was probably done in some places. Elisabeth pretended not to make the connection, however.

One herb that was very helpful was tormentil, which was used for parasitic worms, and it contained tannin, chinovic acid, and glycosides that could alleviate diarrhea and internal bleeding. Recalling the size of the swords the knights used and the wounds she had seen at Màrrach, she knew anything to help internal bleeding would be a godsend.

One afternoon, while in the apothecary, she did discover some pages that read as if they might have been copied from some ancient book of medicine, so she inquired about it to Father Symon. He was more of a bookworm than the others, and she could tell her curiosity pleased him immensely.

“Aye, 'tis from
De
Materia
Medica
,” he said, “Dioscorides's five encyclopedias on herbal medicine and pharmacopeia. We use many of the herbs he referenced, and we shall teach ye the use of all of them if ye are here long enough.”

And teach them they did, for she learned rhubarb was not only a laxative, as used in modern times, but also was used in this time period for digestive, kidney, bladder, spleen, and liver problems. Skullcap was used as a headache remedy, lungwort for tuberculosis. Wild carrot was good for coughs and convulsions; the teasel root possessed cleansing properties, and by boiling the herb's roots in wine, it was an effective treatment of fistulas as well as warts. The fruit of a yellow-barked shrub was of great value to treat “yellow diseases,” which meant jaundice.