91
DOMESTIC MANAGEMENT
I’ve never seen anything like that in my entire life.” I leaned closer, peering. “That is absolutely bizarre.”
“And you a healer half your life,” Jamie muttered crossly. “Ye canna tell me they’ve no got snakes in your time.”
“They haven’t got many in downtown Boston. Besides, they wouldn’t call out a surgeon to deal with a case of snakebite. Closest I came was when a keeper at the zoo was bitten by a king cobra—a friend of mine did the autopsy, and invited me to come and watch.”
I refrained from saying that Jamie looked a lot worse at present than the subject of the autopsy had.
I set a hand gingerly on his ankle. The skin was puffy, hot and dry under my hand. It was also red. Bright red. The brilliant color extended from his feet up nearly to his rib cage; he looked as though he’d been dipped in boiling water.
His face, ears, and neck were also flushed the color of a plum tomato; only the pale skin of his chest had escaped, and even that was dotted with pinpricks of red. Beyond the lobsterlike coloration, the skin was peeling from his feet and hands, hanging in wispy shreds like Spanish moss.
I peered closely at his hip. Here, I could see that the redness was caused by a denser version of the rash on his chest; the stipple of tiny dots showed up clearly on the stretched skin over the ilial crest.
“You look like you’ve been roasted over a slow fire,” I said, rubbing a finger over the rash in fascination. “I’ve never seen anything so red in my life.” Not raised; I couldn’t feel the individual spots, though I could see them at close range. Not a rash as such; I thought it must be petechiae, pinpoint hemorrhages under the skin. But so many of them …
“I shouldna say ye’ve much room to criticize, Sassenach,” he said. Too weak to nod, he cut his eyes at my fingers—stained with huge blotches of yellow and blue.
“Oh, damn!” I leaped to my feet, threw the quilts hastily on top of him, and ran for the door. Distracted by Jamie’s dramatic arrival, I had left a vat full of dyeing to mind itself in the side yard—and the water had been low. Christ, if it boiled dry and burned the clothes …
The hot reek of urine and indigo hit me in the face as I shot out the door. In spite of that, I drew a deep breath of relief, as I saw Marsali, red in the face with the effort of levering a dripping mass from the pot with the big wooden clothes-fork. I went hastily to help her, snatching the steaming garments one by one from the sopping pile and flinging them onto the blackberry bushes to dry.
“Thank goodness,” I said, waving my scalded fingers in the air to cool them. “I was afraid I’d ruined the lot.”
“Weel, they’ll be a bit dark, maybe.” Marsali wiped a hand across her face, plastering back the fine blond strands that escaped from her kerch. “If the weather keeps fine, though, ye can leave them in the sun to fade. Here, let’s move the pot before it scorches!”
Crusts of indigo had already started to crackle and blacken in the bottom of the pot as we tipped it off the fire, and clouds of acrid smoke rose up around us.
“It’s all right,” Marsali said, coughing and fanning smoke from her face. “Leave it, Mother Claire; I’ll fetch up water so it can soak. Ye’ll need to see to Da, aye? I came down at once when I heard; is he verra poorly?”
“Oh, thank you, dear.” I was overwhelmed with gratitude; the last thing I had time to do just now was to haul several buckets of water from the spring to soak the pot. I blew on my scalded fingers to cool them; the skin under the splotches of dye was nearly as red as Jamie’s.
“I think he’ll be all right,” I assured her, suppressing my own fears. “He feels dreadful, and looks worse—I’ve never seen anyone look like that in all my born days—but if the wound doesn’t get infected …” I crossed my sore fingers in superstitious prophylaxis.
“Ah, he’ll do,” Marsali said confidently. “Fergus said as they thought he was dead when they found him and Roger Mac, but by the time they crossed the second ridge, he was makin’ terrible jokes about the snake, so they didna worry anymore.”
I wasn’t quite so sanguine myself, having seen the state of his injured leg, but I smiled reassuringly.
“Yes, I think he’ll be fine. I’m just going to make an onion poultice and clean out the wound a bit. Go and see him, why don’t you, while I fetch the onions?”
Luckily there were plenty of onions; I had pulled them two weeks before, when the first frost came, and dozens of knobbly braided strings hung in the pantry, fragrant and crackling when I brushed against them. I broke off six large onions and brought them into the kitchen to slice. My fingers were tingling, half-burned and stiff from handling the boiling clothes, and I worked slowly, not wanting to slice off a finger accidentally.
“Here, I’ll do that, a leannan.” Mrs. Bug took the knife out of my hand and dealt briskly with the onions. “Is it a poultice? Aye, that’ll be the thing. A good onion poultice will mend anything.” Still, a worried frown puckered her forehead as she glanced toward the surgery.
“Can I help, Mama?” Bree came in from the hallway, also looking worried. “Da looks awful; is he all right?”
“Ganda full?” Jem popped into the kitchen after his mother, less worried about his grandfather than interested in the knife Mrs. Bug was using. He dragged his little stool toward her, face purposeful under his coppery fringe. “Me do!”
I brushed the hair out of my face with the back of my hand, eyes watering fiercely from the onions.
“I think so.” I sniffed and blotted my eyes. “How’s Roger?”
“Roger’s good.” I could hear the small note of pride in her voice; Jamie had told her Roger had saved his life. Possibly he had. I just hoped it stayed saved.
“He’s asleep,” she added. Her mouth curved slightly as she met my eyes, with complete understanding. If a man was in bed, at least you knew where he was. And that he was safe, for the moment.
“Jem! You leave Mrs. Bug alone!” She scooped him off his stool and whirled him away from the chopping board, feet kicking in protest. “Do you need anything, Mama?”
I rubbed a finger between my brows, considering.
“Yes, can you try to find me some maggots? I’ll need them for Jamie’s leg.” I frowned, glancing out the window at the bright autumn day. “I’m afraid the frost has killed all the flies; I haven’t seen one in days. Try the paddock, though; they’ll lay eggs in the warm dung.”
She made a brief face of distaste, but nodded, setting Jemmy down on the floor.
“Come on, pal, let’s go find ickies for Grannie.”
“Icky-icky-icky-icky!” Jemmy scampered after her, enchanted at the prospect.
I dropped the sliced onions into a bowl made from a hollowed gourd and scooped a little of the hot water from the cauldron into it. Then I left the onions to stew, and went back to the surgery. In the center of the room was a sturdy pine table, serving as examination table, dentist’s chair, drug preparation surface, or auxiliary dining table, depending on medical exigencies and the number of dinner guests. At the moment, it was supporting the supine form of Jamie, scarcely visible under his heap of quilts and blankets. Marsali stood close to the table, head bent toward him as she held a cup of water for him to sip.
“You’re sure you’re all right, Da?” she said. One hand stole toward him, but she stopped, clearly afraid to touch him in his present condition.
“Oh, aye, I’ll do.” I could hear the deep fatigue in his voice, but a big hand rose slowly out from under the quilts to touch her cheek.
“Fergus did braw work,” he said. “Kept the men together through the night, found me and Roger Mac in the morning, brought everyone home safe across the mountain. He’s a fine sense of direction.”
Marsali’s head was still bent, but I saw her cheek curve in a smile.
“I did tell him so. He’ll no give over berating himself for lettin’ the beasts get away, though. Just one would ha’ fed the whole Ridge for the winter, he said.”
Jamie gave a small grunt of dismissal.
“Och, we’ll manage.”
It was plainly an effort for him to speak, but I didn’t try to send Marsali away. Roger told me Jamie had been vomiting blood as they brought him back; I couldn’t give him brandy or whisky to ease the pain, and I hadn’t any laudanum. Marsali’s presence might help to distract him from his wretchedness.
I opened the cupboard quietly and brought out the big lidded bowl where I kept my leeches. The pottery was cold, soothing to my scalded hands. I had a dozen or so big ones; somnolent black blobs, half-floating in their murky brew of water and cattail roots. I scooped three into a smaller bowl full of clear water, and set it by the brazier to warm.
“Wake up, lads,” I said. “Time to earn your keep.”
I laid out the other things I would need, listening to the murmured conversation behind me—Germain, baby Joan, a porcupine in the trees near Marsali and Fergus’s cabin.
Coarse gauze for the onion poultice, the corked bottle with its mixture of alcohol and sterile water, the stoneware jars of dried goldenseal, coneflower, and comfrey. And the bottle of penicillin broth. I cursed silently, looking at the label on it. It was nearly a month old; caught up in the bear hunt and the autumn chores upon our return, I had not made a fresh batch for weeks.
It would have to do. Pressing my lips together, I rubbed the herbs between my hands, into the beechwood brewing cup, and with no more than a faint sense of self-consciousness, silently said the blessing of Bride over it. I’d take all the help I could get.
“Are the cut pine-fans ye find on the ground verra fresh?” Jamie asked, sounding slightly more interested in the porcupine than in Joan’s new tooth.
“Aye, green and fresh. I ken weel enough he’s up there, the wicked creature, but it’s a great huge tree, and I canna spot him from the ground, let alone fire on him.” Marsali was no more than a middling shot, but since Fergus couldn’t fire a musket at all with his one hand, she did the family’s hunting.
“Mmphm.” Jamie cleared his throat with an effort, and she hastily gave him more water. “Take a bit o’ salted pork rind from the pantry and rub it ower a stick of wood. Set it on the ground, not too far from the trunk of the tree, and let Fergus sit up to watch. Porcupines are gey fond o’ the salt, and of grease; they’ll smell it and venture down after dark. Once it’s on the ground, ye needna waste shot; just bat it ower the head. Fergus can do that fine.”
I opened the medical chest and frowned into the tray that held saws and scalpels. I took out the small, curve-bladed scalpel, its handle cool under my fingers. I would have to debride the wound—clean away the dead tissue, the shreds of skin and bits of leaf and cloth and dirt; the men had plastered his leg with mud and wrapped it with a filthy neckerchief. Then I could sprinkle the penicillin solution over the exposed surfaces; I hoped that would help.
“That would be grand,” Marsali said, a little wistfully. “I’ve no had such a beast before, but Ian did tell me they were fine; verra fat, and the quills good for sewing and all manner o’ things.”
I bit my lip, looking at the other blades. The biggest was a folding saw, meant for field amputation, with a blade nearly eight inches long; I hadn’t used it since Alamance. The thought of using it now made cold sweat spring out under my arms and inch down my sides—but I’d seen his leg.
“The meat’s greasy,” Jamie said, “but that’s good—” He stopped abruptly as he shifted his weight, with a muffled groan as he moved his leg.
I could feel the steps of the process of amputation, echoing in the muscles of my hands and forearms; the tensile severing of skin and muscle, the grate of bone, the snap of tendon, and the slippery, rubbery, blood-squirting vessels, sliding away into the severed flesh like … snakes.
I swallowed. No. It wouldn’t come to that. Surely not.
“Ye need fat meat. You’re verra thin, a muirninn,” Jamie said softly, behind me. “Too thin, for a woman breeding.”
I turned round, swearing silently to myself once more. I’d thought so, but had hoped I was wrong. Three babies in four years! And a one-handed husband, who couldn’t manage the man’s work of a homestead and wouldn’t do the “women’s work” of baby-minding and mash-brewing that he could handle.
Marsali made a small sound, half-snort, half-sob.
“How did you know? I havena even told Fergus yet.”
“Ye should—though he kens it already.”
“He told you?”
“No—but I didna think it only the indigestion that troubled him, whilst we were hunting. Now I see ye, I ken what it is that’s weighin’ on him.”
I was biting my tongue hard enough to taste blood. Did the tansy oil and vinegar mixture I’d given her not work? Or the dauco seeds? Or, as I strongly suspected, had she just not bothered to use either one regularly? Well, too late for questions or reproaches. I caught her eye as she glanced up, and managed—I hoped—to look encouraging.
“Och,” she said with a feeble smile. “We’ll manage.”
The leeches were stirring, bodies stretching slowly like animated rubber bands. I turned back the quilt over Jamie’s leg, and pressed the leeches gently onto the swollen flesh near the wound.
“It looks nastier than it is,” I said reassuringly, hearing Marsali’s unguarded gasp at the sight. That was true, but the reality was nasty enough. The slashmarks were crusted black at the edges, but still gaped. Instead of the sealing and granulation of normal healing, they were beginning to erode, the exposed tissues oozing pus. The flesh around the wounds was hugely swollen, black and mottled with sinister reddish streaks.
I bit my lip, frowning as I considered the situation. I didn’t know what kind of snake had bitten him—not that it made much difference, with no antivenin for treatment—but it had plainly had a powerful hemolytic toxin. Tiny blood vessels had ruptured and bled all over his body—internally, as well as externally—and larger ones, near the site of the wound.
The foot and ankle on the injured side were still warm and pink—or rather, red. That was a good sign, insofar as it meant the deeper circulation was intact. The problem was to improve circulation near the wound, enough to prevent a massive die-off and sloughing of tissue. The red streaks bothered me very much indeed, though; they could be only part of the hemorrhagic process, but it was more likely that they were the early signs of septicemia—blood poisoning.
Roger hadn’t told me much of their night on the mountain, but he hadn’t had to; I’d seen men before who’d sat through the dark with death beside them. If Jamie had lived a night and a day since then, chances were he would go on surviving—if I could control the infection. But in what condition?
I hadn’t treated snakebite injuries before, but I’d seen sufficient textbook illustrations. The poisoned tissue would die and rot; Jamie could easily lose most of the muscle of his calf, which would cripple him permanently—or worse, the wound could turn gangrenous.
I stole a look at him under my lashes. He was covered with quilts and so ill he could barely move—and yet the lines of his body were drawn with grace and the promise of strength. I couldn’t bear the thought of mutilating him—and yet I would do it if I must. To cripple Jamie … to leave him halt and half-limbed … the thought made my stomach clench and sweat break out on my blue-blotched palms.
Would he wish that himself?
I reached for the cup of water by Jamie’s head and drained it myself. I wouldn’t ask him. The choice was his by right—but he was mine, and I had made my choice. I wouldn’t give him up, no matter what I had to do to keep him.
“You’re sure you’re all right, Da?” Marsali had been watching my face. Her eyes darted from me to Jamie and back, looking scared. I hastily tried to rearrange my features into a look of competent assurance.
Jamie had been watching me, too. One corner of his mouth turned up.
“Aye, well, I did think so. Now I’m none so sure, though.”
“What’s the matter? Do you feel worse?” I asked anxiously.
“No, I feel fine,” he assured me—lying through his teeth. “It’s only, when I’ve hurt myself, but it’s all right, ye always scold like a magpie—but if I’m desperate bad, ye’re tender as milk. Now, ye havena called me wicked names or uttered a word of reproach since I came home, Sassenach. Does that mean ye think I’m dyin’?”
One eyebrow rose in irony, but I could see a true hint of worry in his eyes. There were no vipers in Scotland; he couldn’t know what was happening to his leg.
I took a deep breath and laid my hands lightly on his shoulders.
“Bloody man. Stepping on a snake! Couldn’t you have looked where you were going?”
“Not whilst chasing a thousand-weight of meat downhill,” he said, smiling. I felt a tiny relaxation in the muscles under my hands, and repressed the urge to smile back. I glared down at him instead.
“You scared bloody hell out of me!” That at least was sincere.
The eyebrow went up again.
“Maybe ye think I wasna frightened, too?”
“You’re not allowed,” I said firmly. “Only one of us can be scared at a time, and it’s my turn.”
That made him laugh, though the laughter was quickly succeeded by coughing and a shaking chill.
“Fetch me a hot stone for his feet,” I said to Marsali, quickly tucking in the quilts around him. “And fill the teapot with boiling water and bring that, too.”
She darted hastily toward the kitchen. I glanced toward the window, wondering whether Brianna was having any luck in finding maggots. They had no equal in cleaning pustulant wounds without damage to the healthy flesh nearby. If I was to save his leg as well as his life, I needed more help than Saint Bride’s.
Wondering vaguely if there were a patron saint of maggots, I lifted the edge of the quilt and stole a quick look at my other invertebrate assistants. Good; I let out a small sigh of relief. The leeches worked fast; they were already swelling into plumpness, sucking away the blood that was flooding the tissues of his leg from ruptured capillaries. Without that pressure, healthy circulation might be restored in time to keep skin and muscle alive.
I could see his hand clenched on the edge of the table, and could feel the shuddering of his chill through my thighs, pressed against the wood.
I took his head between my hands; the skin of his cheeks was burning hot.
“You are not going to die!” I hissed. “You’re not! I won’t let you!”
“People keep sayin’ that to me,” he muttered, eyes closed and sunken with exhaustion. “Am I not allowed my own opinion?”
“No,” I said. “You’re not. Here, drink this.”
I held the cup of penicillin broth to his lips, steadying it while he drank. He made faces, squinching his eyes shut, but swallowed it obediently enough.
Marsali had brought the teapot, brimful of boiling water. I poured most of it over the waiting herbs, and left them to steep, while I poured him a cup of cold water to wash away the taste of the penicillin.
He swallowed the water, eyes still shut, then lay back on the pillow.
“What is that?” he asked. “It tastes of iron.”
“Water,” I replied. “Everything tastes of iron; your gums are bleeding.” I handed the empty water jug to Marsali and asked her to bring more. “Put honey in it,” I said. “About one part honey to four parts water.”
“Beef tea is what he needs,” she said, pausing to look at him, brow furrowed with concern. “That’s what my Mam did swear by, and her Mam before her. When a body’s lost a deal o’ blood, there’s naught like beef tea.”
I thought Marsali must be seriously worried; she seldom mentioned her mother in my hearing, out of a natural sense of tact. For once, though, bloody Laoghaire was right; beef tea would be an excellent thing—if we happened to have any fresh beef, which we didn’t.
“Honey water,” I said briefly, shooing her out of the room. I went to fetch reinforcements from the leech department, pausing to check on Brianna’s progress through the front window.
She was out by the paddock, barefoot, skirts kilted up above the knee, shaking bits of horse dung from one foot. No luck so far, then. She saw me at the window and waved, then motioned to the ax that stood nearby, then to the edge of the wood. I nodded and waved back; a rotted log might be a possibility.
Jemmy was on the ground nearby, his leading-strings securely tied to the paddock fence. He certainly didn’t need them to help him stay upright, but they did keep him from escaping while his mother was busy. He was industriously engaged in pulling down the remains of a dried gourd-vine that had grown up over the fence, crowing with delight as bits of crumbled leaf and the dried remains of frostbitten gourds showered over his flaming hair. His round face bore a look of determined intent, as he set about the task of getting a gourd the size of his head into his mouth.
A movement caught the corner of my eye; Marsali, bringing up water from the spring, to fill the crusted cauldron. No, she wasn’t showing at all yet—Jamie was right, she was much too thin—but now that I knew, I could see the pallor in her face, and the shadows under her eyes.
Damn. Another glimpse of movement; Bree’s long pale legs, flashing under her kilted skirts in the shadow of the big blue spruce. And was she using the tansy oil? She was still nursing Jemmy, but that was no guarantee, not at his age …
I swung around at a sound behind me, to find Jamie climbing slowly back into his nest of quilts, looking like a great crimson sloth, my amputation saw in one hand.
“What the hell are you doing?”
He eased himself down, grimacing, and lay back on the pillow, breathing in long, deep gasps. The folded saw was clasped to his chest.
“I repeat,” I said, standing menacingly over him, hands on my hips, “what the hell …”
He opened his eyes and lifted the saw an inch or so.
“No,” he said positively. “I ken what ye’re thinking, Sassenach, and I willna have it.”
I took a deep breath, to keep my voice from quivering.
“You know I wouldn’t, not unless I absolutely had to.”
“No,” he said again, and gave me a familiar look of obstinacy. No surprise at all that he never wondered who Jemmy looked like, I thought with sour amusement.
“You don’t know what may happen—”
“I ken what’s happening to my leg better than you do, Sassenach,” he interrupted, then paused to breathe some more. “I dinna care.”
“Maybe you don’t, but I do!”
“I’m no going to die,” he said firmly, “and I dinna wish to live with half a leg. I’ve a horror of it.”
“Well, I’m not very keen on it myself. But if it’s a choice between your leg and your life?”
“It’s not.”
“It damn well may be!”
“It won’t.” Age made not the slightest difference, I thought. Two years or fifty, a Fraser was a Fraser, and no rock was more stubborn. I rubbed a hand through my hair.
“All. Right,” I said, between clenched teeth. “Give me the bloody thing and I’ll put it away.”
“Your word.”
“My what?” I stared at him.
“Your word,” he repeated, giving me back the stare, with interest. “I may be fevered and lose my wits. I dinna want ye to take my leg if I’m in no state to stop it.”
“If you’re in that sort of state, I’ll have no choice!”
“Perhaps ye don’t,” he said evenly, “but I do. I’ve made it. Your word, Sassenach.”
“You bloody, unspeakable, infuriating—”
His smile was startling, a white grin in the ruddy face. “If ye call me a Scot, Sassenach, then I know I’m going to live.”
A shriek from outside kept me from answering. I swung round to the window, in time to see Marsali drop two pails of water on the ground. The water geysered over her skirt and shoes, but she paid no attention. I glanced hastily in the direction she was looking, and gasped.
It had walked casually through the paddock fence, snapping the rails as though they were matchsticks, and stood now in the midst of the pumpkin patch by the house, vines jerking in its mouth as it chewed. It stood huge and dark and wooly, ten feet away from Jemmy, who stared up at it with round, round eyes and open mouth, his gourd forgotten in his hands.
Marsali let out another screech, and Jemmy, catching her terror, began to scream for his mother. I turned, and—feeling as though I were moving in slow motion, though I was surely not—snatched the saw neatly from Jamie’s hand, went out the door, and headed for the yard, thinking as I did so that buffalo looked so much smaller in zoos.
As I cleared the stoop—I must have leaped; I had no memory of the steps—Brianna came out of the woods. She was running silently, ax in her hand, and her face was set, inward and intent. I had no time to call out before she reached it.
She had drawn back the ax, still running, swung it in an arc as she took the last step, and brought it down with all her strength, just behind the huge beast’s ears. A thin spray of blood flew up and spattered on the pumpkins. It bellowed and lowered its head, as though to charge forward.
Bree dodged to one side, dived for Jemmy, was on her knees, tugging at the strings that bound him to the fence. From the corner of my eye, I could see Marsali, yelling Gaelic prayers and imprecations as she seized a newly dyed petticoat from the blackberry bushes.
I had somehow unfolded the saw as I ran; I cut Jemmy’s strings with two swipes, then was on my feet and running back across the dooryard. Marsali had thrown the petticoat over the buffalo’s head; it stood bewildered, shaking its head and swaying to and fro, blood showing black on the yellow-green of the fresh-dyed indigo.
It stood as tall as I at the shoulder, and it smelt strange; dusty and warm, gamey but oddly familiar, with a barn-smell, like a cow. It took a step, another, and I dug my fingers into its wool, holding on. I could feel the tremors running through it; they shook me like an earthquake.
I had never done it, but felt as though I had, a thousand times. Dreamlike and sure, I ran a hand under slobbering lips, felt warm breath blow down my sleeve. The great pulse throbbed in the angle of the jaw; I could see it in my mind, the big meaty heart and its pumping blood, warm in my hand, cold against my cheek where it pressed the sodden petticoat.
I drew the saw across the throat, cut hard, and felt in hands and forearms the tensile severing of skin and muscle, the grate of bone, the snap of tendon, and the slippery, rubbery, blood-squirting vessels, sliding away.
The world shook. It shifted and slid, and landed with a thud. When I came to myself, I was sitting in the middle of my dooryard, one hand still twisted in its hair, one leg gone numb beneath the weight of the buffalo’s head, my skirts plastered to my thighs, hot and stinking, sodden with its blood.
Someone said something and I looked up. Jamie was on his hands and knees on the stoop—mouth open, stark naked. Marsali sat on the ground, legs splayed out in front of her, soundlessly opening and closing her mouth.
Brianna stood over me, Jemmy held against her shoulder. Terror forgotten, he leaned far over, looking down in curiosity at the buffalo.
“Ooo!” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “Very well put.”
“You’re all right, Mama?” Bree asked, and I realized she had asked several times before. She put down a hand and rested it gently on my head.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think so.”
I took her hand and laboriously worked my leg free, leaning on her as I stood up. The same tremors that had gone through the buffalo were going through her—and me—but they were fading. She took a deep breath, looking down at the massive body. Lying on its side, it rose nearly as high as her waist. Marsali came to stand beside us, shaking her head in awe at its size.
“Mother of God, how on earth are we going to butcher that?” she said.
“Oh,” I said, and dragged a trembling hand through my hair. “I suppose we’ll manage.”