Текст книги "A Breath Of Snow And Ashes"

Автор книги: Diana Gabaldon

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Текущая страница: 26 (всего у книги 94 страниц)

“You’ll kill him, then?” I said, my lips feeling numb in spite of the hot coffee.

“Oh, yes,” Fergus said very softly. “I expect that we shall.” He met my eyes now, too. There was a bleak, grim look about him, and his deep-set eyes were hard as stone.

“He—it—I mean … it wasn’t him,” I said. “It couldn’t have been. He’d already broken his leg when—” I didn’t seem to have enough air to finish my sentences. “And Marsali. It wasn’t—I don’t think he …”

Something behind Ian’s eyes changed, as he grasped my meaning. His lips pressed tight for a moment, and he nodded.

“As well for him, then,” he said shortly.

“As well,” Fergus echoed, “but I think it will not matter in the end. We killed the others—why should he live?” He pushed back from the table, leaving his coffee undrunk. “I think I will go, cousin.”

“Aye? I’ll come too, then.” Ian shoved his plate away, nodding to me. “Will ye tell Uncle Jamie we’ve gone ahead, Auntie?”

I nodded numbly, and watched them go, vanishing one after the other under the big chestnut tree that overhung the trail leading to the Bugs’ cabin. Mechanically, I got up and began slowly to clear away the remains of the makeshift breakfast.

I really wasn’t sure whether I minded a lot about Mr. Brown or not. On the one hand, I did disapprove on principle of torture and cold-blooded murder. On the other … while it was true enough that Brown had not personally violated or injured me, and he had tried to make Hodgepile release me—he’d been all in favor of killing me, later. And I hadn’t the slightest doubt that he would have drowned me in the gorge, had Tebbe not intervened.

No, I thought, carefully rinsing my cup and drying it on my apron, perhaps I didn’t really mind terribly about Mr. Brown.

Still, I felt uneasy and upset. What I did mind about, I realized, were Ian and Fergus. And Jamie. The fact was, killing someone in the heat of battle is a quite different thing from executing a man, and I knew that. Did they?

Well, Jamie did.

“And may your vow redeem me.” He had whispered that to me, the night before. It was just about the last thing I recalled him saying, in fact. Well, all right; but I would greatly prefer that he didn’t feel in need of redemption to start with. And as for Ian and Fergus …

Fergus had fought in the Battle of Prestonpans, at the age of ten. I still remembered the face of the small French orphan, soot-smeared and dazed with shock and exhaustion, looking down at me from his perch atop a captured cannon. “I killed an English soldier, madame,” he’d said to me. “He fell down and I stuck him with my knife.”

And Ian, a fifteen-year-old, weeping in remorse because he thought he had accidentally killed an intruder to Jamie’s Edinburgh print shop. God knew what he had done, since; he wasn’t talking. I had a sudden vision of Fergus’s hook, dark with blood, and Ian, silhouetted in the dark. “And I,” he’d said, echoing Jamie. “It is myself who kills for her.”

It was 1773. And on the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five … the shot heard round the world was already being loaded. The room was warm, but I shuddered convulsively. What in the name of God did I think I could shield them from? Any of them.

A sudden roar from the roof above startled me out of my thoughts.

I walked out into the dooryard and looked up, shading my eyes against the morning sun. Jamie was sitting astride the rooftree, rocking to and fro over one hand, which he held curled into his belly.

“What’s going on up there?” I called.

“I’ve got a splinter,” came the terse answer, obviously spoken through clenched teeth.

I wanted to laugh, if only as small escape from tension, but didn’t.

“Well, come down, then. I’ll pull it out.”

“I’m no finished!”

“I don’t care!” I said, suddenly impatient with him. “Come down this minute. I want to talk to you.”

A bag of nails hit the grass with a sudden clank, followed instantly by the hammer.

First things first, then.



TECHNICALLY, I SUPPOSED, it was a splinter. It was a two-inch sliver of cedarwood, and he’d driven it completely under the nail of his middle finger, nearly to the first joint.

“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ!”

“Aye,” he agreed, looking a little pale. “Ye might say that.”

The protruding stub was too short to grip with my fingers. I hauled him into the surgery and jerked the sliver out with forceps, before one could say Jack Robinson. Jamie was saying a good deal more than Jack Robinson—mostly in French, which is an excellent language for swearing.

“You’re going to lose that nail,” I observed, submerging the offended digit in a small bowl of alcohol and water. Blood bloomed from it like ink from a squid.

“To hell wi’ the nail,” he said, gritting his teeth. “Cut the whole bloody finger off and ha’ done with it! Merde d’chevre!”

“The Chinese used to—well, no, I suppose they still do, come to think of it—shove splinters of bamboo under people’s fingernails to make them talk.”

“Christ! Tu me casses les couilles!”

“Obviously a very effective technique,” I said, lifting his hand out of the bowl and wrapping the finger tightly in a strip of linen. “Were you trying it out, before using it on Lionel Brown?” I tried to speak lightly, keeping my eyes on his hand. I felt his own gaze fix on me, and he snorted.

“What in the name of saints and archangels was wee Ian telling ye, Sassenach?”

“That you meant to question the man—and get answers.”

“I do, and I shall,” he said shortly. “So?”

“Fergus and Ian seemed to think that—you might be moved to use any means necessary,” I said with some delicacy. “They’re more than willing to help.”

“I imagine they are.” The first agony had abated somewhat. He breathed more deeply, and color was beginning to come back into his face. “Fergus has a right. It was his wife attacked.”

“Ian seemed …” I hesitated, searching for the right word. Ian had seemed so calm as to be terrifying. “You didn’t call Roger to help with the—the questioning?”

“No. Not yet.” One corner of his mouth tucked in. “Roger Mac’s a good fighter, but no the sort to scare a man, save he’s truly roused. He’s no deceit in him at all.”

“Whereas you, Ian, and Fergus …”

“Oh, aye,” he said dryly. “Wily as snakes, the lot of us. Ye’ve only to look at Roger Mac to see how safe their time must be, him and the lass. A bit of a comfort, that,” he added, the tuck growing deeper. “To ken things will get better, I mean.”

I could see that he was trying to change the subject, which was not a good sign. I made a small snorting noise, but it hurt my nose.

“And you’re not truly roused, is that what you’re telling me?”

He made a much more successful snorting noise, but didn’t reply. He tilted his head to one side, watching as I laid out a square of gauze and began to rub dried leaves of comfrey into it. I didn’t know how to say what was troubling me, but he plainly saw that something was.

“Will you kill him?” I asked baldly, keeping my eyes on the jar of honey. It was made of brown glass, and the light glowed through it as though it were a huge ball of clear amber.

Jamie sat still, watching me. I could feel his speculative gaze, though I didn’t look up.

“I think so,” he said.

My hands had started to tremble, and I pressed them on the surface of the table to still them.

“Not today,” he added. “If I kill him, I shall do it properly.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what constituted a proper killing, in his opinion, but he told me anyway.

“If he dies at my hand, it will be in the open, before witnesses who ken the truth of the matter, and him standing upright. I willna have it said that I killed a helpless man, whatever his crime.”

“Oh.” I swallowed, feeling mildly ill, and took a pinch of powdered bloodroot to add to the salve I was making. It had a faint, astringent smell, which seemed to help. “But—you might let him live?”

“Perhaps. I suppose I might ransom him to his brother—depending.”

“Do you know, you sound quite like your uncle Colum. He would have thought it through like that.”

“Do I?” The corner of his mouth turned up slightly. “Shall I take that as compliment, Sassenach?”

“I suppose you might as well.”

“Aye, well,” he said thoughtfully. The stiff fingers tapped on the tabletop, and he winced slightly as the movement jarred the injured one. “Colum had a castle. And armed clansmen at his beck. I should have some difficulty in defending this house against a raid, perhaps.”

“That’s what you mean by ‘depending’?” I felt quite uneasy at this; the thought of armed raiders attacking the house had not occurred to me—and I saw that Jamie’s forethought in storing Mr. Brown off our premises had perhaps not been entirely for the purpose of sparing my sensibilities.

“One of the things.”

I mixed a bit of honey with my powdered herbs, then scooped a small dollop of purified bear grease into the mortar.

“I suppose,” I said, eyes on my mixing, “that there’s no point in turning Lionel Brown over to the—the authorities?”

“Which authorities did ye have in mind, Sassenach?” he asked dryly.

A good question. This part of the backcountry had not yet formed nor joined a county, though a movement was afoot to that purpose. Were Jamie to deliver Mr. Brown to the sheriff of the nearest county for trial … well, no, perhaps not a good idea. Brownsville lay just within the borders of the nearest county, and the current sheriff was in fact named Brown.

I bit my lip, considering. In times of stress, I tended still to respond as what I was—a civilized Englishwoman, accustomed to rely on the sureties of government and law. Well, all right, Jamie had a point; the twentieth century had its own dangers, but some things had improved. This was nearly 1774, though, and the colonial government was already showing cracks and fault lines, signs of the collapse to come.

“I suppose we could take him to Cross Creek.” Farquard Campbell was a justice of the peace there—and a friend to Jamie’s aunt, Jocasta Cameron. “Or to New Bern.” Governor Martin and the bulk of the Royal Council were in New Bern—three hundred miles away. “Maybe Hillsborough?” That was the center of the Circuit Court.

“Mmphm.”

This noise denoted a marked disinclination to lose several weeks’ work in order to haul Mr. Brown before any of these seats of justice, let alone entrust a matter of importance to the highly unreliable—and frequently corrupt—judicial system. I looked up and met his eye, humorous but bleak. If I responded as what I was, so did Jamie.

And Jamie was a Highland laird, accustomed to follow his own laws, and fight his own battles.

“But—” I began.

“Sassenach,” he said quite gently. “What of the others?”

The others. I stopped moving, paralyzed by the sudden memory: a large band of black figures, coming out of the wood with the sun behind them. But that group had split in two, intending to meet again in Brownsville, in three days’ time—today, in fact.

For the moment, presumably no one from Brownsville yet knew what had happened—that Hodgepile and his men were dead, or that Lionel Brown was now a captive on the Ridge. Given the speed with which news spread in the mountains, though, it would be public knowledge within a week.

In the aftermath of shock, I had somehow overlooked the fact that there were still a number of bandits at large—and while I didn’t know who they were, they knew both who I was and where I was. Would they realize that I could not identify them? Or be willing to take that risk?

Obviously, Jamie was not willing to take the risk of leaving the Ridge to escort Lionel Brown anywhere, whether or not he decided to let the man live.

The thought of the others had brought something important back to me, though. It might not be the best time to mention it, but then again, there wasn’t going to be a good one.

I took a deep breath, squaring myself for it.

“Jamie.”

The tone of my voice jerked him immediately from whatever he’d been thinking; he looked sharply at me, one eyebrow raised.

“I—I have to tell you something.”

He paled a little, but reached out at once, grasping my hand. He took a deep breath of his own, and nodded.

“Aye.”

“Oh,” I said, realizing that he thought I meant that I had suddenly arrived at a point where I needed to tell him the grisly details of my experiences. “Not—not that. Not exactly.” I squeezed his hand, though, and held on, while I told him about Donner.

“Another,” he said. He sounded slightly stunned. “Another one?”

“Another,” I confirmed. “The thing is … I, um, I don’t remember seeing him … seeing him dead.” The eerie sense of that dawn returned to me. I had very sharp, distinct memories—but they were disjointed, so fractured as to bear no relation to the whole. An ear. I remembered an ear, thick and cup-shaped as a woodland fungus. It was shaded in the most exquisite tones of purple, brown, and indigo, shadowed in the carved whorls of the inner parts, nearly translucent at the rim; perfect in the light of a sunbeam that cut through the fronds of a hemlock to touch it.

I recalled that ear so perfectly that I could almost reach into my memory and touch it myself—but I had no idea whose ear it had been. Was the hair that lay behind it brown, black, reddish, straight, wavy, gray? And the face … I didn’t know. If I had looked, I hadn’t seen.

He shot me a sharp look.

“And ye think he’s maybe not.”

“Maybe not.” I swallowed the taste of dust, pine needles, and blood, and breathed the comforting fresh scent of buttermilk. “I warned him, you see. I told him you were coming, and that he didn’t want you to find him with me. When you attacked the camp—he might have run. He struck me as a coward, certainly. But I don’t know.”

He nodded, and sighed heavily.

“Can you … recall, do you think?” I asked hesitantly. “When you showed me the dead. Did you look at them?”

“No,” he said softly. “I wasna looking at anything save you.”

His eyes had been on our linked hands. He raised them now, and looked at my face, troubled and searching. I lifted his hand and laid my cheek against his knuckles, closing my eyes for an instant.

“I’ll be all right,” I said. “The thing is—” I said, and stopped.

“Aye?”

“If he did run—where do you suppose he’d go?”

He closed his own eyes and drew a deep breath.

“To Brownsville,” he said, in resignation. “And if he did, Richard Brown kens already what’s become of Hodgepile and his men—and likely thinks his brother is dead, as well.”

“Oh.” I swallowed, and changed the subject slightly.

“Why did you tell Ian I wasn’t to be allowed to see Mr. Brown?”

“I didna say that. But I think it best if ye dinna see him, that much is true.”

“Because?”

“Because ye’ve an oath upon you,” he said, sounding mildly surprised that I didn’t understand immediately. “Can ye see a man injured, and leave him to suffer?”

The ointment was ready. I unwrapped his finger, which had stopped bleeding, and tamped as much of the salve under the damaged nail as I could manage.

“Probably not,” I said, eyes on my work. “But why—”

“If ye mend him, care for him—and then I decide he must die?” His eyes rested on me, questioning. “How would that be for ye?”

“Well, that would be a bit awkward,” I said, taking a deep breath to steady myself. I wrapped a thin strip of linen around the nail and tied it neatly. “Still, though …”

“Ye wish to care for him? Why?” He sounded curious, but not angry. “Is your oath so strong, then?”

“No.” I put both hands on the table to brace myself; my knees seemed suddenly weak.

“Because I’m glad they’re dead,” I whispered, looking down. My hands were raw, and I fumbled while I worked because my fingers were still swollen; there were deep purple marks still sunk in the skin of my wrists. “And I am very much—” What? Afraid; afraid of the men, afraid of myself. Thrilled, in a horrible sort of way. “Ashamed,” I said. “Terribly ashamed.” I glanced up at him. “I hate it.”

He held out his hand to me, waiting. He knew better than to touch me; I couldn’t have borne being touched just then. I didn’t take it, not at once, though I longed to. I looked away, speaking rapidly to Adso, who had materialized on the countertop and was regarding me with a bottomless green gaze.

“If I—I keep thinking … if I were to see him, help him—Christ, I don’t want to, I don’t at all! But if I could—perhaps that would … help somehow.” I looked up then, feeling haunted. “Make … amends.”

“For being glad they are dead—and for wanting him dead, too?” Jamie suggested gently.

I nodded, feeling as though a small, heavy weight had lifted with the speaking of the words. I didn’t remember taking his hand, but it was tight on mine. Blood from his finger was seeping through the fresh bandage, but he paid no attention.

“Do you want to kill him?” I asked.

He looked at me for a long moment before replying.

“Oh, aye,” he said very softly. “But for now, his life is surety for yours. For all of us, perhaps. And so he lives. For now. But I will ask questions—and I shall have answers.”



I SAT IN MY SURGERY for some time after he left. Emerging slowly from shock, I had felt safe, surrounded by home and friends, by Jamie. Now I must come to grips with the fact that nothing was safe—not I, not home nor friends—and certainly not Jamie.

“But then, you never are, are you, you bloody Scot?” I said aloud, and laughed, weakly.

Feeble as it was, it made me feel better. I rose with sudden decision and began to tidy my cupboards, lining up bottles in order of size, sweeping out bits of scattered herbs, throwing away solutions gone stale or suspect.

I had meant to go and visit Marsali, but Fergus had told me during breakfast that Jamie had sent her with the children and Lizzie to stay with the McGillivrays, where she would be cared for, and safe. If there was safety in numbers, the McGillivrays’ house was certainly the place for it.

Located near Woolam’s Creek, the McGillivrays’ home place adjoined Ronnie Sinclair’s cooper’s shop, and enclosed a seething mass of cordial humanity, including not only Robin and Ute McGillivray, their son, Manfred, and their daughter Senga, but also Ronnie, who boarded with them. The usual mob scene was augmented intermittently by Senga McGillivray’s fiancé, Heinrich Strasse, and his German relatives from Salem, and by Inga and Hilda, their husbands and children, and their husbands’ relatives.

Add in the men who congregated daily in Ronnie’s shop, a convenient stopping place on the road to and from Woolam’s Mill, and likely no one would even notice Marsali and her family, in the midst of that mob. Surely no one would seek to harm her there. But for me to go and see her …

Highland tact and delicacy were one thing. Highland hospitality and curiosity were another. If I stayed peacefully at home, I would likely be left in peace—at least for a while. If I were to set foot near the McGillivrays’ … I blenched at the thought, and hastily decided that perhaps I would visit Marsali tomorrow. Or the next day. Jamie had assured me she was all right, only shocked and bruised.

The house stood around me in peace. No modern background of furnace, fans, plumbing, refrigerators. No whoosh of pilot lights or hum of compressors. Just the occasional creak of beam or floorboard, and the odd muffled scrape of a wood wasp building its nest up under the eaves.

I looked round the ordered world of my surgery—ranks of shining jars and bottles, linen screens laden with drying arrowroot and masses of lavender, bunches of nettle and yarrow and rosemary hanging overhead. The bottle of ether, sunlight glowing on it. Adso curled on the countertop, tail neatly tucked around his feet, eyes half-closed in purring contemplation.

Home. A small shiver ran down my spine. I wanted nothing more than to be alone, safe and alone, in my own home.

Safe. I had a day, perhaps two, in which home would still be safe. And then …

I realized that I had been standing still for some moments, staring blankly into a box of yellow nightshade berries, round and shiny as marbles. Very poisonous, and a slow and painful death. My eyes rose to the ether—quick and merciful. If Jamie did decide to kill Lionel Brown … But no. In the open, he’d said, standing on his feet before witnesses. Slowly, I closed the box and put it back on the shelf.

What then?



THERE WERE ALWAYS chores that could be done—but nothing pressing, with no one clamoring to be fed, clothed, or cared for. Feeling quite odd, I wandered round the house for a bit, and finally went into Jamie’s study, where I poked among the books on the shelf there, settling at last on Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones.

I couldn’t think how long it had been since I had read a novel. And in the daytime! Feeling pleasantly wicked, I sat by the open window in my surgery and resolutely entered a world far from my own.

I lost track of time, moving only to brush away roving insects that came through the window, or to absently scratch Adso’s head when he nudged against me. Occasional thoughts of Jamie and Lionel Brown drifted through the back of my mind, but I shooed them away like the leafhoppers and midges who landed on my page, drifting in through the window. Whatever was happening in the Bugs’ cabin had happened, or would happen—I simply couldn’t think about it. As I read, the soap bubble formed around me once more, filled with perfect stillness.

The sun was halfway down the sky before faint pangs of hunger began to stir. It was as I looked up, rubbing my forehead and wondering vaguely whether there was any ham left, that I saw a man standing in the doorway to the surgery.

I shrieked, and leaped to my feet, sending Henry Fielding flying.

“Your pardon, mistress!” Thomas Christie blurted, looking nearly as startled as I felt. “I didna realize that you’d not heard me.”

“No. I—I—was reading.” I gestured foolishly toward the book on the floor. My heart was pounding, and blood surged to and fro in my body, seemingly at random, so that my face flushed, my ears throbbed, and my hands tingled, all out of control.

He stooped and picked the book up, smoothing its cover with the careful attitude of one who values books, though the volume itself was battered, its cover scarred with rings where wet glasses or bottles had been set down upon it. Jamie had got it from the owner of an ordinary in Cross Creek, in partial trade for a load of firewood; some customer had left it, months before.

“Is there no one here to care for you?” he asked, frowning as he looked around. “Shall I go and fetch my daughter to you?”

“No. I mean—I don’t need anyone. I’m quite all right. What about you?” I asked quickly, forestalling any further expressions of concern on his part. He glanced at my face, then hastily away. Eyes fixed carefully in the vicinity of my collarbone, he laid the book on the table and held out his right hand, wrapped in a cloth.

“I beg your pardon, mistress. I wouldna intrude, save …”

I was already unwrapping the hand. He’d ripped the incision in his right hand—probably, I realized with a small tightening of the belly, in the course of the fight with the bandits. The wound was no great matter, but there were bits of dirt and debris in the wound, and the edges were red and gaping, raw surfaces clouded with a film of pus.

“You should have come at once,” I said, though with no tone of rebuke. I knew perfectly well why he hadn’t—and in fact, I should have been in no state to deal with him, if he had.

He shrugged slightly, but didn’t bother replying. I sat him down and went to fetch things. Luckily, there was some of the antiseptic salve left that I’d made for Jamie’s splinter. That, a quick alcohol wash, clean bandage …

He was turning the pages of Tom Jones slowly, lips pursed in concentration. Evidently Henry Fielding would do as anesthetic for the job at hand; I shouldn’t need to fetch a Bible.

“Do you read novels?” I asked, meaning no rudeness, but merely surprised that he might countenance anything so frivolous.

He hesitated. “Yes. I—yes.” He took a very deep breath as I submerged his hand in the bowl, but it contained only water, soaproot, and a very small amount of alcohol, and he let the breath go with a sigh.

“Have you read Tom Jones before?” I asked, making conversation to relax him.

“Not precisely, though I know the story. My wife—”

He stopped abruptly. He’d never mentioned his wife before; I supposed that it was sheer relief at not experiencing agony yet that had made him talkative. He seemed to realize that he must complete the sentence, though, and went on, reluctantly. “My wife … read novels.”

“Did she?” I murmured, setting about the job of debridement. “Did she like them?”

“I suppose that she must have.”

There was something odd in his voice that made me glance up from the job at hand. He caught the glance and looked away, flushing.

“I—did not approve of reading novels. Then.”

He was quiet for a moment, holding his hand steady. Then he blurted, “I burnt her books.”

That sounded rather more like the response I would have expected of him.

“She couldn’t have been pleased about that,” I said mildly, and he shot me a startled glance, as though the question of his wife’s reaction was so irrelevant as to be unworthy of remark.

“Ah … what caused you to alter your opinion?” I asked, concentrating on the bits of debris I was picking out of the wound with my forceps. Splinters and shreds of bark. What had he been doing? Wielding a club of some kind, I thought—a tree branch? I breathed deeply, concentrating on the job to avoid thinking of the bodies in the clearing.

He moved his legs restively; I was hurting him a bit now.

“I—it—in Ardsmuir.”

“What? You read it in prison?”

“No. We had no books there.” He took a long breath, glanced at me, then away, and fixed his eyes on the corner of the room, where an enterprising spider had taken advantage of Mrs. Bug’s temporary absence to set up web-keeping.

“In fact, I have never actually read it. Mr. Fraser, though, was accustomed to recount the story to the other prisoners. He has a fine memory,” he added, rather grudgingly.

“Yes, he does,” I murmured. “I’m not going to stitch it; it will be better if the wound’s left to heal by itself. I’m afraid the scar won’t be as neat,” I added regretfully, “but I think it will heal up all right.”

I spread salve thickly over the injury, and pulled the edges of the wound together as tightly as I could, without cutting off the circulation. Bree had been experimenting with adhesive bandages, and had produced something quite useful in the way of small butterfly shapes, made of starched linen and pine tar.

“So you liked Tom Jones, did you?” I said, returning to the subject. “I shouldn’t have thought you’d find him an admirable character. Not much of a moral example, I mean.”

“I don’t,” he said bluntly. “But I saw that fiction”—he pronounced the word gingerly, as though it were something dangerous—“is perhaps not, as I had thought, merely an inducement to idleness and wicked fancy.”

“Oh, isn’t it?” I said, amused, but trying not to smile because of my lip. “What are its redeeming characteristics, do you think?”

“Aye, well.” His brows drew together in thought “I found it most remarkable. That what is essentially nothing save a confection of lies should somewise still contrive to exert a beneficial effect. For it did,” he concluded, sounding still rather surprised.

“Really? How was that?”

He tilted his head, considering.

“It was distraction, to be sure. In such conditions, distraction is not evil,” he assured me. “While it is of course more desirable to escape into prayer …”

“Oh, of course,” I murmured.

“But beyond that consideration … it drew the men together. You would not think that such men—Highlanders, crofters—that they would find themselves in particular sympathy with … such situations, such persons.” He waved his free hand at the book, indicating such persons as Squire Allworthy and Lady Bellaston, I supposed.

“But they would talk it over for hours—whilst we labored the next day, they would wonder why Ensign Northerton had done as he had with regard to Miss Western, and argue whether they themselves would or would not have behaved so.” His face lightened a little, recalling something. “And invariably, a man would shake his head and say, ‘At least I’ve never been treated in that manner!’ He might be starved, cold, covered in sores, permanently separated from his family and customary circumstances—and yet he could take comfort in never having suffered such vicissitudes as had befallen these imaginary beings!”

He actually smiled, shaking his head at the thought, and I thought the smile much improved him.

I’d finished the job, and laid his hand on the table.

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

He looked startled.

“What? Why?”

“I’m assuming that that injury was perhaps the result of b-battle done on my behalf,” I said. I touched his hand lightly. “I, er … well.” I took a deep breath. “Thank you.”

“Oh.” He looked thoroughly taken aback at this, and quite embarrassed.

“I … erm … hmm!” He pushed back the stool and rose, looking flustered.

I rose, as well.

“You’ll need to have fresh salve put on every day,” I said, resuming a businesslike tone. “I’ll make up some more; you can come, or send Malva to fetch it.”

He nodded, but said nothing, having evidently exhausted his supply of sociability for the day. I saw his eye linger on the cover of the book, though, and on impulse offered it to him.

“Would you like to borrow it? You should really read it for yourself; I’m sure Jamie can’t have recalled all the details.”

“Oh!” He looked startled, and pursed his lips, frowning, as though suspecting it was a trap of some sort. When I insisted, though, he took the book, picking it up with an expression of guarded avidity that made me wonder how long it had been since he had had any book other than the Bible to read.

He nodded thanks to me, and donned his hat, turning to go. Upon a moment’s impulse, I asked, “Did you ever have the chance to apologize to your wife?”

That was a mistake. His face tightened into coldness and his eyes went flat as a snake’s.

“No,” he said shortly. I thought for a moment that he would put the book down and refuse to take it. But instead, he tightened his lips, tucked the volume more securely under his arm, and left, without further farewell.