The Fiery Cross (12 page)

I was a good ten feet from the stool where Murray plied his trade, but could see the man’s eyes, yellow as mustard even in the dim morning light.

“Liver disease,” I said to Brianna, taking no particular pains to lower my voice. “You can see the jaundice from here, can’t you?”

“Bilious humors,” MacLeod said loudly, snapping open his fleam. “An excess of the humors, clear as day.” Small, dark, and neat in his dress, Murray was not personally impressive, but he
was
opinionated.

“Cirrhosis due to drink, I daresay,” I said, coming closer and looking the patient over dispassionately.

“An impaction of the bile, owing to an imbalance of the phlegm!” Murray glowered at me, clearly thinking I intended to steal his thunder, if not his patient.

I ignored him and bent down to examine the patient, who looked alarmed at my scrutiny.

“You have a hard mass just under the ribs on the right, don’t you?” I said, kindly. “Your piss is dark, and when you shit, it’s black and bloody, am I right?”

The man nodded, mouth hanging open. We were beginning to attract attention.

“Mo-therr.” Brianna was standing behind me. She gave Murray a nod and bent to mutter in my ear. “What can you do for cirrhosis, Mother? Nothing!”

I stopped, biting my lip. She was right. In my urge to show off by making the diagnosis—and keep Murray from using his stained, rusty-looking fleam on the man—I had overlooked the minor point that I had no alternative treatment to offer.

The patient was glancing back and forth between us, plainly uneasy. With an effort, I smiled at him, and nodded to Murray.

“Mr. MacLeod has the right of it,” I said, forcing the words past my teeth. “Liver disease, surely—caused by an excess of humors.” I supposed one could consider alcohol a humor, after all; the folk drinking Jamie’s whisky last night had evidently found it hilarious.

Murray’s face had been tense with suspicion; at my capitulation, it went quite comically blank with astonishment. Stepping in front of me, Brianna seized advantage of the moment.

“There’s a charm,” she said, smiling charmingly at him. “It . . . er . . . sharpens the blade, and eases the flow of the humors. Let me show you.” Before he could tighten his grip, she snatched the fleam from his hand and turned to our small surgery fire, where a pot of water hung steaming from a tripod.

“In the name of Michael, wielder of swords, defender of souls,” she intoned. I trusted that taking the name of St. Michael in vain was not actual blasphemy—or if it was, that Michael would not object in a good cause. The men laying the fire had stopped to watch, as had a few people coming to the surgery.

She raised the fleam and made a large, slow sign of the cross with it, looking from side to side, to be sure she had the attention of all the onlookers. She did; they were agog. Towering over most of the gawkers, blue eyes narrowed in concentration, she reminded me strongly of Jamie in some of his more bravura performances. I could only hope she was as good at it as he was.

“Bless this blade, for the healing of your servant,” she said, casting her eyes up to heaven, and holding the fleam above the fire in the manner of a priest offering the Eucharist. Bubbles were rising through the water, but it hadn’t quite reached the boil.

“Bless its edge, for the drawing of blood, for the spilling of blood, for the . . . er . . . the letting of poison from the body of your most humble petitioner. Bless the blade . . . bless the blade . . . bless the blade in the hand of your humble servant. . . . Thanks be to God for the brightness of the metal.” Thanks be to God for the repetitious nature of Gaelic prayers, I thought cynically.

Thanks be to God, the water was boiling. She lowered the short, curved blade to the surface of the water, glowered significantly at the crowd, and declaimed, “Let the cleansing of the waters from the side of our Lord Jesus be upon this blade!”

She plunged the metal into the water and held it until the steam rising over the wooden casing reddened her fingers. She lifted the fleam and transferred it hastily to her other hand, raising it into the air as she surreptitiously waggled the scalded hand behind her.

“May the blessing of Michael, defender from demons, be on this blade and on the hand of its wielder, to the health of the body, to the health of the soul. Amen!”

She stepped forward and presented the fleam ceremoniously to Murray, handle first. Murray, no fool, gave me a look in which keen suspicion was mingled with a reluctant appreciation for my daughter’s theatrical abilities.

“Don’t touch the blade,” I said, smiling graciously. “It will break the charm. Oh—and you repeat the charm, each time you use the blade. It has to be done with the water
boiling
, mind.”

“Mmphm,” he said, but took the fleam carefully by the handle. With a short nod to Brianna, he turned away to his patient, and I to mine—a young girl with nettle rash. Brianna followed, wiping her hands on her skirt and looking pleased with herself. I heard the patient’s soft grunt behind me, and the ringing patter of blood running into the metal bowl.

I felt rather guilty about MacLeod’s patient, but Brianna had been quite right; there was absolutely nothing I could do for him under the circumstances. Careful long-term nursing, coupled with excellent nutrition and a complete abstinence from alcohol, might prolong his life; the chances of the first two were low, the third, nonexistent.

Brianna had brilliantly saved him from a potentially nasty blood infection—and seized the opportunity to provide a similar protection for all MacLeod’s future patients—but I couldn’t help a nagging sense of guilt that I could not do more myself. Still, the first medical principle I had learned as a nurse on the battlefields of France still held: treat the patient in front of you.

“Use this ointment,” I said sternly to the girl with nettle rash, “and
don’t scratch
.”

T
HE DAY HADN’T CLEARED, but the rain had ceased for the moment. Fires smoked like smudge pots, as people hastened to take advantage of the momentary cessation to feed their carefully hoarded coals, pushing damp wood into the kindling blazes in a hasty effort to dry damp clothes and blankets. The air was still restless, though, and clouds of woodsmoke billowed ghostlike through the trees.

One such plume surged across the trail before him, and Roger turned to skirt it, making his way through tussocks of wet grass that soaked his stockings, and hanging boughs of pine that left dark patches of wetness on the shoulders of his coat as he passed. He paid the damp no mind, intent on his mental list of errands for the day.

To the tinkers’ wagons first, to buy some small token as a wedding present for Brianna. What would she like? he wondered. A bit of jewelry, a ribbon? He had very little money, but felt the need to mark the occasion with a gift of some sort.

He would have liked to put his own ring on her finger when they made their vows, but she had insisted that the cabochon ruby that had belonged to her grandfather would do fine; it fit her hand perfectly, and there was no need to spend money on another ring. She was a pragmatic person, Bree was—sometimes dismayingly so, in contrast to his own romantic streak.

Something practical but ornamental, then—like a painted chamber pot? He smiled to himself at the idea, but the notion of practicality lingered, tinged with doubt.

He had a vivid memory of Mrs. Abercrombie, a staid and practical matron of Reverend Wakefield’s congregation, who had arrived at the manse in hysterics one evening in the midst of supper, saying that she had killed her husband, and whatever should she do? The Reverend had left Mrs. Abercrombie in the temporary care of his housekeeper, while he and Roger, then a teenager, had hastened to the Abercrombie residence to see what had happened.

They had found Mr. Abercrombie on the floor of his kitchen, fortunately still alive, though groggy and bleeding profusely from a minor scalp wound occasioned by his having been struck by the new electric steam iron which he had presented to his wife on the occasion of their twenty-third wedding anniversary.

“But she said the old one scorched the tea towels!” Mr. Abercrombie had repeated at plaintive intervals, as the Reverend skillfully taped up his head with Elastoplast, and Roger mopped up the kitchen.

It was the vivid memory of the gory splotches on the worn lino of the Abercrombies’ kitchen that decided him. Pragmatic Bree might be, but this was their wedding. Better, worse, death do us part. He’d go for romantic—or as romantic as could be managed on one shilling, threepence.

There was a flash of red among the spruce needles nearby, like the glimpse of a cardinal. Bigger than the average bird, though; he stopped, bending to peer through an opening in the branches.

“Duncan?” he said. “Is that you?”

Duncan Innes came out of the trees, nodding shyly. He still wore the scarlet Cameron tartan, but had left off his splendid coat, instead wrapping the end of his plaid shawllike round his shoulders in the cozy old style of the Highlands.

“A word,
a Smeòraich
?” he said.

“Aye, sure. I’m just off to the tinkers’—walk with me.” He turned back to the trail—now clear of smoke—and they made their way companionably across the mountain, side by side.

Roger said nothing, waiting courteously for Duncan to choose his way into the conversation. Duncan was diffident and retiring by temperament, but observant, perceptive, and stubborn in a very quiet way. If he had something to say, he’d say it—given time. At last he drew breath and started in.

“
Mac Dubh
did say to me as how your Da was a minister—that’s true, is it?”

“Aye,” Roger said, rather startled at the subject. “Or at least—my real father was killed, and my mother’s uncle adopted me; it was him was the minister.” Even as he spoke, Roger wondered why he should feel it necessary to explain. For most of his life, he had thought and spoken of the Reverend as his father; and surely it made no difference to Duncan.

Duncan nodded, clicking his tongue in sympathy.

“But ye will have been Presbyterian yourself, then? I did hear
Mac Dubh
speak of it.” Despite Duncan’s normal good manners, a brief grin showed beneath the edge of his ragged mustache.

“I expect ye did, aye,” Roger replied dryly. He’d be surprised if the whole Gathering hadn’t heard
Mac Dubh
speak of it.

“Well, the thing about it is, so am I,” Duncan said, sounding rather apologetic.

Roger looked at him in astonishment.

“You? I thought you were Catholic!”

Duncan made a small embarrassed noise, lifting the shoulder of his amputated arm in a shrug.

“No. My great-grandda on my mother’s side was a Covenanter—verra fierce in his beliefs, aye?” He smiled, a little shyly. “That was watered down a good bit before it came to me; my Mam was godly, but Da wasna much of a one for the kirk, nor was I. And when I met up wi’
Mac Dubh
. . . well, it wasna as though he’d asked me to go to Mass with him of a Sunday, was it?”

Roger nodded, with a brief grunt of comprehension. Duncan had met with Jamie in Ardsmuir Prison, after the Rising. While most of the Jacobite troops had been Catholic, he knew there had been Protestants of different stripes among them, too—and most would likely have kept quiet about it, outnumbered by the Catholics in close quarters. And it was true enough that Jamie’s and Duncan’s later career in smuggling would have offered few occasions for religious discourse.

“Aye, so. And your wedding to Mrs. Cameron tonight . . .”

Duncan nodded, and sucked in a corner of his mouth, gnawing contemplatively at the edge of his mustache.

“That’s it. Am I bound, d’ye think, to say anything?”

“Mrs. Cameron doesn’t know? Nor Jamie?”

Duncan shook his head silently, eyes on the trampled mud of the trail.

Roger realized that it was, of course, Jamie whose opinion was important here, rather than Jocasta Cameron’s. The issue of differing religion had evidently not seemed important to Duncan—and Roger had never heard that Jocasta was in any way devout—but hearing about Jamie’s response to Roger’s Presbyterianism, Duncan had now taken alarm.

“Ye went to see the priest,
Mac Dubh
said.” Duncan glanced at him sidelong. “Did he—” He cleared his throat, flushing. “I mean, did he oblige ye to be . . . baptized Romish?”

An atrocious prospect to a devout Protestant, and plainly an uncomfortable one to Duncan. It was, Roger realized, an uncomfortable thought to him, too. Would he have done it, if he had to, to wed Bree? He supposed he would have, in the end, but he admitted to having felt a deep relief that the priest hadn’t insisted on any sort of formal conversion.

“Ah . . . no,” Roger said, and coughed as another fan of smoke washed suddenly over them. “No,” he repeated, wiping streaming eyes. “But they don’t baptize you, ye know, if ye’ve been christened already. You have been, aye?”

“Oh, aye.” Duncan seemed heartened by that. “Aye, when I—that is—” A faint shadow crossed his face, but whatever thought had caused it was dismissed with another shrug. “Yes.”