A Breath of Snow and Ashes (14 page)

“Have I?” Jamie was coldly polite. “I’d no idea.” He bowed to Bobby Higgins with his best French-court manner, then straightened, gesturing to the Browns. “Mr. Higgins, may I present Mr. Richard Brown and Mr. Lionel Brown. Gentlemen, my guest, Mr. Higgins.” The words “my guest” were spoken with a particular emphasis that made Richard Brown’s thin mouth compress to near invisibility.

“Have a care, Fraser,” he said, staring hard at Bobby, as though daring him to evaporate. “Keeping the wrong company can be dangerous, these days.”

“I choose my company as I will, sir.” Jamie spoke softly, biting off each word between his teeth. “And I do not choose yours. Joseph!”

Lizzie’s father, Joseph Wemyss, appeared round the corner, leading the two renegade mules, who now seemed docile as kittens, though either of them dwarfed Mr. Wemyss.

Bobby Higgins, flabbergasted by the proceedings, looked wildly at me for explanation. I shrugged slightly, and kept silence as the two Browns mounted and rode out of the clearing, backs stiff with anger.

Jamie waited ’til they’d disappeared from view, then blew out his breath, rubbing a hand viciously through his hair and muttering something in Gaelic. I didn’t follow the finer points, but I gathered that he was comparing the character of our recent visitors to that of Mr. Higgins’s piles—to the detriment of the former.

“Beg pardon, sir?” Higgins looked bewildered, but anxious to please.

Jamie glanced at him.

“Let them awa’ and bile their heids,” he said, dismissing the Browns with a flip of the hand. He caught my eye and turned toward the house. “Come ben, Bobby; I’ve a thing or two to say to ye.”

I FOLLOWED them in, both from curiosity and in case Mr. Higgins should feel faint again; he seemed steady enough, but still very pale. By contrast with Bobby Higgins, Mr. Wemyss—fair-haired and slight as his daughter—looked the picture of ruddy health. Whatever was the matter with Bobby? I wondered. I stole a discreet look at the seat of his breeches as I followed him, but that was all right; no bleeding.

Jamie led the way into his study, gesturing at the motley collection of stools and boxes he used for visitors, but both Bobby and Mr. Wemyss chose to stand—Bobby for obvious reasons, Mr. Wemyss from respect; he was never comfortable sitting in Jamie’s presence, save at meals.

Unhampered by either bodily or social reservations, I settled myself on the best stool and raised one eyebrow at Jamie, who had sat down himself at the table he used as a desk.

“This is the way of it,” he said without preamble. “Brown and his brother have declared themselves head of a Committee of Safety, and came to enlist me and my tenants as members of it.” He glanced at me, the corner of his mouth curling a little. “I declined, as ye doubtless noticed.”

My stomach contracted slightly, thinking of what Major MacDonald had said—and of what I knew. It was beginning, then.

“Committee of Safety?” Mr. Wemyss looked bewildered, and glanced at Bobby Higgins—who was beginning to look substantially less so.

“Have they, so?” Bobby said softly. Strands of curly brown hair had escaped from their binding; he fingered one back behind his ear.

“Ye’ve heard of such committees before, Mr. Higgins?” Jamie inquired, raising one brow.

“Met one, zur. Close-like.” Bobby touched a finger briefly below his blind eye. He was still pale, but beginning to recover his self-possession. “Mobs they be, zur. Like they mules, but more of them—and more wicious.” He gave a lopsided smile, smoothing the shirt-sleeve over the bite on his arm.

The mention of mules reminded me abruptly, and I stood up, putting a sudden stop to the conversation.

“Lizzie! Where’s Lizzie?”

Not waiting for an answer to this rhetorical question, I went to the study door and shouted her name—only to be met by silence. She’d gone in for brandy; there was plenty, in a jug in the kitchen, and she knew that—I’d seen her reach it down for Mrs. Bug only the night before. She must be in the house. Surely she wouldn’t have gone—

“Elizabeth? Elizabeth, where are you?” Mr. Wemyss was right behind me, calling, as I strode down the hall to the kitchen.

Lizzie was lying in a dead faint on the hearth, a limp bundle of clothes, one frail hand flung out as though she had tried to save herself as she fell.

“Miss Wemyss!” Bobby Higgins shouldered his way past me, looking frantic, and scooped her up into his arms.

“Elizabeth!” Mr. Wemyss elbowed his way past me as well, his face nearly as white as his daughter’s.

“Do let me
look
at her, will you?” I said, elbowing firmly back. “Put her down on the settle, Bobby, do.”

He rose carefully with her in his arms, then sat down on the settle, still holding her, wincing slightly as he did so. Well, if he wanted to be a hero, I hadn’t time to argue with him. I knelt and seized her wrist in search of a pulse, smoothing the pale hair off her face with my other hand.

One look had been enough to tell me what was likely the matter. She was clammy to the touch, and the pallor of her face was tinged with gray. I could feel the tremor of oncoming chills that ran through her flesh, unconscious as she was.

“The ague’s back, is it?” Jamie asked. He’d appeared by my side, and was gripping Mr. Wemyss by the shoulder, at once comforting and restraining.

“Yes,” I said briefly. Lizzie had malaria, contracted on the coast a few years before, and was subject to occasional relapses—though she hadn’t had one in more than a year.

Mr. Wemyss took a deep, audible breath, a little color coming back to his face. He was familiar with malaria, and had confidence that I could deal with it. I had, several times before.

I hoped that I could this time. Lizzie’s pulse was fast and light under my fingers, but regular, and she was beginning to stir. Still, the speed and suddenness with which the attack had come on was frightening. Had she had any warning? I hoped the concern I felt didn’t show on my face.

“Take her up to her bed, cover her, get a hot stone for her feet,” I said, rising and addressing Bobby and Mr. Wemyss briskly in turn. “I’ll start some medicine brewing.”

Jamie followed me down to the surgery, glancing back over his shoulder to be sure that the others were out of earshot before speaking.

“I thought ye were out of the Jesuit bark?” he asked, low-voiced.

“I am. Damn it.” Malaria was a chronic disease, but for the most part, I had been able to keep it under control with small, regular doses of cinchona bark. But I had run out of cinchona during the winter, and no one had yet been able to travel down to the coast for more.

“So, then?”

“I’m thinking.”

I pulled open the door of the cupboard, and gazed at the neat ranks of glass bottles therein—many of them empty, or with no more than a few scattered crumbs of leaf or root inside. Everything was depleted, after a cold, wet winter of grippe, influenza, chilblains, and hunting accidents.

Febrifuges. I had a number of things that would help a normal fever; malaria was something else. There was plenty of dogwood root and bark, at least; I had collected immense quantities during the fall, foreseeing the need. I took that down, and after a moment’s thought, added the jar containing a sort of gentian known locally as “agueweed.”

“Put on the kettle, will you?” I asked Jamie, frowning to myself as I crumbled roots, bark, and weed into my mortar. All I could do was to treat the superficial symptoms of fever and chill. And shock, I thought, better treat for that, too.

“And bring me a little honey, too, please!” I called after him, as he had already reached the door. He nodded and went hurriedly toward the kitchen, his footsteps quick and solid on the oak floorboards.

I began to pound the mixture, still turning over additional possibilities. Some small part of my mind was half-glad of the emergency; I could put off for a little while the necessity of hearing about the Browns and their beastly committee.

I had a most uneasy feeling. Whatever they wanted, it didn’t portend anything good, I was sure; they certainly hadn’t left on friendly terms. As for what Jamie might feel obliged to do in response to them—

Horse chestnut. That was sometimes used for the tertian ague, as Dr. Rawlings called it. Did I have any left? Glancing quickly over the jars and bottles in the medicine chest, I stopped, seeing one with an inch or so of dried black globules left at the bottom.
Gallberries,
the label read. Not mine; it was one of Rawlings’s jars. I’d never used them for anything. But something niggled at my memory. I’d heard or read something about gallberries; what was it?

Half-unconsciously, I picked up the jar and opened it, sniffing. A sharp, astringent smell rose from the berries, slightly bitter. And slightly familiar.

Still holding the jar, I went to the table where my big black casebook lay, and flipped hastily to the early pages, those notes left by the man who had first owned both book and medicine chest, Daniel Rawlings. Where had it been?

I was still flipping pages, scanning for the shape of a half-remembered note, when Jamie came back, a jug of hot water and a dish of honey in hand—and the Beardsley twins dogging his steps.

I glanced at them, but said nothing; they tended to pop up unexpectedly, like a pair of jack-in-the boxes.

“Is Miss Lizzie fearfully sick?” Jo asked anxiously, peering around Jamie to see what I was doing.

“Yes,” I said briefly, only half paying attention to him. “Don’t worry, though; I’m fixing her some medicine.”

There it was. A brief notation, added as an obvious afterthought to the account of treatment of a patient whose symptoms seemed clearly malarial—and who had, I noticed with an unpleasant twinge, died.

I am told by the Trader from whom I procured Jesuit Bark that the Indians use a Plant called Gallberry, which rivals the Bark of Cinchona for bitterness and is thought capital for Use in tertian and quartan Fevers. I have collected some for Experiment and propose to try an Infusion so soon as the Opportunity presents itself.

I picked out one of the dried berries and bit into it. The pungent taste of quinine at once flooded my mouth—accompanied by a copious flood of saliva, as my mouth puckered at the eye-watering bitterness. Gallberry, indeed!

I dived for the open window, spat into the herb bed beneath and went on spitting, to the accompaniment of giggles and snorts from the Beardsleys, who were most diverted at the unexpected entertainment.

“Are ye all right, Sassenach?” Amusement was fighting with worry for dominance of Jamie’s face. He poured a bit of water from the jug into a clay beaker, added a dollop of honey as an afterthought, and handed it to me.

“Fine,” I croaked. “Don’t drop that!” Kezzie Beardsley had picked up the jar of gallberries and was sniffing cautiously at it. He nodded at my admonition, but didn’t put the jar down, instead handing it off to his brother.

I took a good mouthful of hot, honeyed water, and swallowed. “Those—they have something like quinine in them.”

Jamie’s face changed at once, the worry lessening.

“So they’ll help the lass?”

“I hope so. There aren’t many, though.”

“D’ye mean you need more o’ these things for Miss Lizzie, Mrs. Fraser?” Jo glanced up at me, dark eyes sharp over the little jar.

“Yes,” I said, surprised. “You don’t mean you know where to get any, surely?”

“Aye, ma’am,” Kezzie said, his voice a little loud, as usual. “Indians got ’em.”

“Which Indians?” Jamie asked, his gaze sharpening.

“Them Cherokee,” Jo said, waving vaguely over one shoulder. “By the mountain.”

This description might have suited half a dozen villages, but evidently it was a specific village that they had in mind, for the two of them turned as one, obviously intending to go directly and fetch back gallberries.

“Wait a bit, lads,” Jamie said, snagging Kezzie by the collar. “I’ll go along with ye. Ye’ll be needing something to trade, after all.”

“Oh, we got hides a-plenty, sir,” Jo assured him. “’Twas a good season.”

Jo was an expert hunter, and while Kezzie still hadn’t sufficiently keen hearing to hunt well, his brother had taught him to run traplines. Ian had told me that the Beardsleys’ shack was stacked nearly to the rooftree with the hides of beaver, marten, deer, and ermine. The smell of it always clung to them, a faint miasma of dried blood, musk, and cold hair.

“Aye? Well, that’s generous of ye, Jo, to be sure. But I’ll come, nonetheless.” Jamie glanced at me, acknowledging the fact that he had made his decision—but asking for my approval, nonetheless. I swallowed, tasting bitterness.

“Yes,” I said, and cleared my throat. “If—if you’re going, let me send some things, and tell you what to ask for in trade. You won’t leave until morning, surely?”

The Beardsleys were vibrating with impatience to be gone, but Jamie stood still, looking at me, and I felt him touch me, without words or movement.

“No,” he said softly, “we’ll bide for the night.” He turned then to the Beardsleys. “Go up, will ye, Jo, and ask Bobby Higgins to come down. I’ll need to speak with him.”

“He’s up with Miss Lizzie?” Jo Beardsley looked displeased at this, and his brother’s face echoed his expression of slit-eyed suspicion.