We ate in blissful peace, the quiet broken only by the clink of spoons on pewter and the occasional question from Jemmy as to why molasses was sticky, how did milk get into the cow, and when would he get his little brother?
“What am I going to say to Mrs. Bug?” I asked, in the brief hiatus between queries.
“Why ought ye to say anything, Sassenach? It wasna you calling her names.”
“Well, no. But I’d be willing to bet that Brianna isn’t going to apologize—”
“Why should she?” He shrugged. “She was provoked, after all. And I canna think Mrs. Bug has lived sae long without being called a gossiping busybody before. She’ll wear herself out, telling Arch all about it, and tomorrow it will be fine again.”
“Well,” I said uncertainly. “Perhaps so. But Bree and Roger—”
He smiled at me, dark blue eyes crinkling into triangles.
“Dinna feel as though every disaster is yours to fash yourself about, mo chridhe,” he said. He reached across and patted my hand. “Roger Mac and the lass must work it out between them—and the lad did appear to have a decent grip on the situation.”
He laughed, and I joined him, reluctantly.
“Well, it will be mine to fash about, if she’s broken his leg,” I remarked, getting up to fetch cream for the coffee. “Likely he’ll come crawling back to have it mended.”
At this apropos moment, a knock sounded on the back door. Wondering why Roger would knock, I opened it, and stared in astonishment at the pale face of Thomas Christie.
HE WAS NOT ONLY PALE, but sweating, and had a bloodstained cloth wrapped round one hand.
“I wouldna discommode ye, mistress,” he said, holding himself stiffly. “I’ll just . . . wait upon your convenience.”
“Nonsense,” I said, rather shortly. “Come into the surgery while there’s still some light.”
I took care not to catch Jamie’s eye directly, but I glanced at him as I bent to push in the bench. He was leaning forward to put a saucer over my coffee, his eyes on Tom Christie with an air of thoughtful speculation that I had last seen in a bobcat watching a flight of ducks overhead. Not urgent, but definitely taking notice.
Christie was taking no notice of anything beyond his injured hand, reasonably enough. My surgery’s windows were oriented to east and south, to take best advantage of morning light, but even near sunset, the room held a soft radiance—the setting sun’s reflection from the shimmering leaves of the chestnut grove. Everything in the room was suffused with golden light, save Tom Christie’s face, which was noticeably green.
“Sit down,” I said, shoving a stool hastily behind him. His knees buckled as he lowered himself; he landed harder than he had intended, jarring his hand, and let out a small exclamation of pain.
I put a thumb on the big vein at the wrist, to help slow the bleeding, and unwound the cloth. Given his aspect, I was expecting a severed finger or two, and was surprised to find a simple gash in the meat at the base of the thumb, angled down and running onto the wrist. It was deep enough to gape, and still bleeding freely, but no major vessels had been cut, and he had by great good fortune only nicked the thumb tendon; I could mend that with a stitch or two.
I looked up to tell him this, only to see his eyes roll back in his head.
“Help!” I shouted, dropping the hand and grabbing for his shoulders as he toppled backward.
A crash of overturned bench and the thump of running feet answered my call, and Jamie burst into the room in a heartbeat. Seeing me dragged off my feet by Christie’s weight, he seized the man by the scruff of the neck and shoved him forward like a rag doll, pushing Christie’s head down between his legs.
“Is he desperate bad?” Jamie asked, squinting at Christie’s injured hand, which was resting on the floor, oozing blood. “Shall I lay him on the table?”
“I don’t think so.” I had a hand under Christie’s jaw, feeling for his pulse. “He’s not hurt badly; he’s only fainted. Yes, see, he’s coming round. Keep your head down for a bit, now, you’ll be quite all right in a moment.” I addressed this latter remark to Christie, who was breathing like a steam engine, but had steadied a little.
Jamie removed his hand from Christie’s neck, and wiped it on his kilt with an expression of mild distaste. Christie had broken out in a profuse cold sweat; I could feel my own hand slimy with it, but picked up the fallen cloth and wiped my hand more tactfully with that.
“Would you like to lie down?” I asked, bending to look at Christie’s face. He was still a ghastly color, but shook his head.
“No, mistress. I’m quite all right. Only taken queer for a moment.” He spoke hoarsely, but firmly enough, so I contented myself with pressing the cloth hard against the wound to stanch the dripping blood.
Jemmy was loitering in the doorway, wide-eyed, but showing no particular alarm; blood was nothing new to him.
“Shall I fetch ye a dram, Tom?” Jamie said, eyeing the patient warily. “I ken ye dinna hold wi’ strong drink, but there’s a time for it, surely?”
Christie’s mouth worked a little, but he shook his head.
“I . . . no. Perhaps . . . a little wine?”
“Take a little wine for thy stomach’s sake, eh? Aye, fine. Take heart, man, I’ll fetch it.” Jamie clapped him encouragingly on the shoulder, and went briskly off, taking Jemmy by the hand as he went out.
Christie’s mouth tightened in a grimace. I had noticed before that like some Protestants, Tom Christie regarded the Bible as being a document addressed specifically to himself and confided to his personal care for prudent distribution to the masses. Thus, he quite disliked hearing Catholics—i.e., Jamie—quoting casually from it. I had also noticed that Jamie was aware of this, and took every opportunity to make such quotes.
“What happened?” I asked, as much to distract Christie as because I wished to know.
Christie broke off his glower at the empty doorway and glanced at his left hand—then hastily away, going pale again.
“An accident,” he said gruffly. “I was cutting rushes; the knife slipped.” His right hand flexed slightly as he said this, and I glanced at it.
“No bloody wonder!” I said. “Here, keep that up in the air.” I lifted the injured left hand, tightly wrapped, above his head, let go of it, and reached for the other.
He had been suffering from a condition in the right hand called Dupuytren’s contracture—or at least it would be called that, once Baron Dupuytren got round to describing it in another sixty or seventy years. Caused by a thickening and shortening of the fibrous sheet that kept the hand’s tendons in place when the fingers flexed, the result of it was to draw the ring finger in toward the palm of the hand. In advanced cases, the little finger and sometimes the middle finger as well were involved. Tom Christie’s case had advanced quite a bit since I had last had the chance of a good look at his hand.
“Did I tell you?” I demanded rhetorically, pulling gently on the clawed fingers. The middle finger could still be halfway unfolded; the ring and little fingers could barely be lifted away from the palm. “I said it would get worse. No wonder the knife slipped—I’m surprised you could even hold it.”
A slight flush appeared under the clipped salt-and-pepper beard, and he glanced away.
“I could have taken care of it easily months ago,” I said, turning the hand to look critically at the angle of contracture. “It would have been a very simple matter. Now it will be rather more complicated—but I can still correct it, I think.”
Had he been a less stolid man, I should have described him as wriggling with embarrassment. As it was, he merely twitched slightly, the flush deepening over his face.
“I—I do not desire—”
“I don’t bloody care what you desire,” I told him, putting the clawed hand back in his lap. “If you don’t allow me to operate on that hand, it will be all but useless inside six months. You can barely write with it now, am I right?”
His eyes met mine, deep gray and startled.
“I can write,” he said, but I could tell that the belligerence in his voice hid a deep uneasiness. Tom Christie was an educated man, a scholar, and the Ridge’s schoolteacher. It was to him that many of the Ridge people went for help in the composition of letters or legal documents. He took great pride in this; I knew the threat of loss of this ability was the best lever I had—and it was no idle threat.
“Not for long,” I said, and widened my eyes at him to make my meaning clear. He swallowed uneasily, but before he could reply, Jamie reappeared, holding a jug of wine.
“Best listen to her,” he advised Christie, setting it on the counter. “I ken what it’s like to try to write wi’ a stiff finger, aye?” He held up his own right hand and flexed it, looking rueful. “If she could mend that wi’ her wee knife, I’d lay my hand on the block this instant.”
Jamie’s problem was almost the reverse of Christie’s, though the effect was quite similar. The ring finger had been smashed so badly that the joints had frozen; it could not be bent. Consequently, the two fingers on either side had limited motion, as well, though the joint capsules were intact.
“The difference being that your hand isn’t getting any worse,” I told Jamie. “His is.”
Christie made a small movement, pushing his right hand down between his thighs, as though to hide it.
“Aye, well,” he said uncomfortably. “It can bide awhile, surely.”
“At least long enough to let my wife mend the other,” Jamie observed, pouring out a cup of wine. “Here—can ye hold it, Tom, or shall I—?” He made a questioning gesture, holding the cup as though to feed it to Christie, who snatched his right hand out of the sheltering folds of his clothes.
“I’ll manage,” he snapped, and took the wine—holding the cup between thumb and forefinger with an awkwardness that made him flush even more deeply. His left hand still hung in the air above his shoulder. He looked foolish, and obviously felt it.
Jamie poured another cup and handed it to me, ignoring Christie. I would have thought it natural tact on his part, were I not aware of the complicated history between the two men. There was always a small barbed edge in any dealings between Jamie and Tom Christie, though they managed to keep an outwardly cordial face on things.
With any other man, Jamie’s display of his own injured hand would have been just what it seemed—reassurance, and the offering of fellowship in infirmity. With Tom Christie, it might have been consciously meant as reassurance, but there was a threat implied, as well, though perhaps Jamie couldn’t help that.
The simple fact was that people came to Jamie for help more often than they did to Christie. Jamie had widespread respect and admiration, despite his crippled hand. Christie was not a personally popular man; he might well lose what social position he had, if he lost his ability to write. And—as I had bluntly noted—Jamie’s hand would not get worse.