39
TO RANSOM A MAN’S SOUL
In the morning, I went as usual to check Jamie, hoping that he had managed some breakfast. Just short of his room, Murtagh slid out of a wall alcove, barring my way.
“What is it?” I said abruptly. “What’s wrong?” My heart began to beat faster and my palms were suddenly wet.
My panic must have been obvious, for Murtagh shook his head in reassurance. “Nay, he’s all right.” He shrugged, “Or as much all right as he’s been.” He turned me with a light hand under the elbow and began to walk me back down the corridor. I thought with a moment’s shock that this was the first time Murtagh had ever deliberately touched me; his hand on my arm was light and strong as a pelican’s wing.
“What’s the matter with him?” I demanded. The little man’s seamed face was as expressionless as usual, but the crinkled eyelids twitched at the corners.
“He doesna want to see ye just yet,” he said.
I stopped dead and pulled my arm from his grasp.
“Why not?” I demanded.
Murtagh hesitated, as though choosing his words carefully. “Weel, it’s just…he’s decided as it would be best for ye to leave him here and go back to Scotland. He—”
The rest of what he was saying was lost as I pushed my way rudely past him.
The heavy door swung shut with a soft thump behind me. Jamie was dozing, facedown on the bed. He was uncovered, clad only in a novice’s short gown; the charcoal brazier in the corner made the room comfortably warm, if smoky.
He started violently when I touched him. His eyes, still glazed with sleep, were sunk deep and his face was haunted by dreams. I took his hand between both of mine, but he wrenched it away. With a look of near-despair, he shut his eyes and buried his face in the pillow.
Trying not to exhibit any outward sign of disturbance, I quietly pulled up a stool and sat down near his head. “I won’t touch you,” I said, “but you must talk to me.” I waited for several minutes while he lay unmoving, shoulders hunched defensively. At last he sighed and sat up, moving slowly and painfully, swinging his legs over the edge of the cot.
“Aye,” he said flatly, not looking at me, “aye, I suppose I must. I should have done so before…but I was coward enough to hope I need not.” His voice was bitter and he kept his head bowed, hands clasped loosely around his knees. “I didna used to think myself a coward, but I am. I should have made Randall kill me, but I did not. I had no reason to live, but I was not brave enough to die.” His voice dropped, and he spoke so softly I could hardly hear him. “And I knew I would have to see you one last time…to tell you…but…Claire, my love…oh, my love.”
He picked up the pillow from the bed and hugged it to him as though for protection, a substitute for the comfort he could not seek from me. He rested his forehead on it for a moment, gathering strength.
“When ye left me there at Wentworth, Claire,” he said quietly, head still bowed, “I listened to your footsteps, going away on the flags outside, and I said to myself, I’ll think of her now. I’ll remember her; the feel of her skin and the scent of her hair and the touch of her mouth on mine. I’ll think of her until that door opens again. And I’ll think of her tomorrow, when I stand on the gallows, to give me courage at the last. Between the time the door opens, and the time I leave this place to die”—the big hands clenched briefly and relaxed—”I will not think at all,” he finished softly.
In the small dungeon room, he had closed his eyes and sat waiting. The pain was not bad, so long as he sat still, but he knew it would grow worse soon. Fearing pain, still he had dealt with it often before. He knew it and his own response to it well enough that he was resigned to endurance, hoping only that it would not exceed his strength too soon. The prospect of physical violation, too, was only a matter of mild revulsion now. Despair was in its own way an anesthetic.
There was no window in the room by which to judge the time. It had been late afternoon when he was brought to the dungeon, but his sense of time was unreliable. How many hours could it be until dawn? Six, eight, ten? Until the end of everything. He thought with grim humor that Randall at least had done him the favor of rendering death welcome.
When the door opened, he had looked up, expecting—what? There was only a man, slightly built, handsome, and a little disheveled, linen shirt torn and hair disarranged, leaning against the wood of the door, watching him.
After a moment, Randall had crossed the room unspeaking and stood beside him. He rested a hand briefly on Jamie’s neck, then bent and freed the trapped hand with a jerk of the nail that brought Jamie to the edge of fainting. A glass of brandy was set before him, and a firm hand raised his head and helped him to drink it.
“He lifted my face then, between his hands, and he licked the drops of brandy from my lips. I wanted to pull back from him, but I’d given my word, so I just sat still.”
Randall had held Jamie’s head for a moment, looking searchingly into his eyes, then released him and sat down on the table next to him.
“He sat there for quite a time, not saying anything, just swinging one leg back and forth. I had no idea what he wanted, and wasn’t disposed to guess. I was tired and feeling a bit sick from the pain in my hand. So after a time I just laid my head down on my arms and turned my face away.” He sighed heavily.
“After a moment, I could feel a hand on my head, but I didn’t move. He began to stroke my hair, very gently, over and over. There wasn’t any sound but the big fellow’s hoarse breathing and the crackle of the fire in the brazier, and I think…I think I went to sleep for a few moments.”
When he woke, Randall was standing in front of him.
“Are you feeling a bit better?” Randall had asked in a remote, courteous tone.
Wordless, Jamie had nodded, and stood up. Randall had stripped him, careful of the wounded hand, and led him to the bed.
“I’d given my word not to struggle, but I did not mean to help, either, so I just stood, as though I were made of wood. I thought I would let him do as he liked, but I’d take no part in it—I would keep a distance from him, in my mind at least.” Randall had smiled then, and gripped Jamie’s right hand, hard enough to make him sink onto the bed, sick and dizzy with the sudden stab of pain. Randall had knelt then on the floor before him, and taught him, in a few shattering minutes, that distance is an illusion.
“When he rose up, he took the knife and drew it across my chest, from one side to the other. It was not a deep cut, but it bled a bit. He watched my face a moment, then reached out a finger and dipped it in the blood.” Jamie’s voice was unsteady, tripping and stammering from time to time. “He licked my blood off his finger, with little flicks of his tongue, like a c-cat washing itself. He smiled a bit, then—very kind, like—and bent his head to my chest. I was not bound at all, but I could not have moved. I just…sat there, while he used his tongue to…It did not hurt, precisely, but it felt verra queer. After a time, he stood up and cleaned himself careful with a towel.”
I watched Jamie’s hand. With his face turned away, it was the best indicator of his feelings. It clenched convulsively on the edge of the cot as he went on.
“He—he told me that….I was delicious. The cut had almost stopped bleeding, but he took the towel and scrubbed it hard over my chest to open the wound again.” The knuckles of the clenched hand were knobs of bloodless bone. “He unbuttoned his breeches then, and smeared the fresh blood on himself, and said it was my turn now.”
Afterward, Randall held his head and helped him to be sick, wiped his face gently with a wet cloth, and gave him brandy to cleanse his mouth of foulness. And so, by turns vicious and tender, bit by bit, using pain as his weapon, he had destroyed all barriers of mind and body.
I wanted to stop Jamie, to tell him that he didn’t need to go on, must not go on, but I bit my lip hard to keep from speaking and clasped my own hands tight together to keep from touching him.
He told me the rest of it, then; the slow and deliberate whipstrokes, interspersed with kisses. The shocking pain of burns, administered to drag him from the brink of a desperately sought unconsciousness to face further degradations. He told me everything, with hesitations, sometimes with tears, much more than I could bear to hear, but I heard him out, silent as a confessor. He glanced quickly up at me, then away.
“I could have stood being hurt, no matter how bad it was. I expected to be…used, and I thought I could stand that too. But I couldn’t…I…he…” I dug my nails fiercely into my palms in the struggle to keep quiet. He shook soundlessly for a time, then his voice came again, thick, but desperately steady.
“He did not just hurt me, or use me. He made love to me, Claire. He hurt me—hurt me badly—while he did it, but it was an act of love to him. And he made me answer him—damn his soul! He made me rouse to him!” The hand bunched into a fist and struck the bedframe with an impotent rage that made the whole bed tremble.
“The…first time, he was verra careful with me. He used oil, and took a long time, rubbing it all over me…touchin’ me gentle in all my parts. I could no more stop myself rising to his touch than I could stop myself bleeding when he cut me.” Jamie’s voice was weary and wretched with despair. He paused, and looked directly at me for the first time since I had come in.
“Claire, I did not want to think of you. I couldna bear to be there, naked, and…like that…and to remember loving you. It was blasphemy. I meant to wipe you from my mind, and only to…exist, so long as I must. But he would not allow it.” Wetness shone on his cheeks, but he was not crying now.
“He talked. All during it, he talked to me. Partly it was threats, and partly it was love talk, but often it was you.”
“Me?” My voice, unused for so long, came out of my strained throat as little more than a croak. He nodded, looking down at the pillow again.
“Aye. He was most terribly jealous of you, you know.”
“No. No, I didn’t know.”
He nodded again. “Oh, yes. He would ask me—while he touched me—he would ask, ‘Does she do this for you? Can your woman r-rouse you like this?” His voice trembled. “I wouldna answer him—I couldn’t. And then, he’d ask how I thought you would feel to see me…to see me…” He bit his lip hard, unable to go on for a moment.
“He’d hurt me a bit, then stop and love me ‘til I began to rouse…and then he’d hurt me fierce and take me in the midst of the hurting. And all the time, he would talk of you, and keep you before my eyes. I fought, in my mind…I tried to keep myself from him, to keep my mind apart from my body, but the pain broke through, again and again, past every barrier I could put up. I tried, Claire—God, I tried so hard, but…”
He sank his head in his hands, fingers digging hard into his temples. He spoke abruptly. “I know why young Alex MacGregor hanged himself. I’d do the same, did I not know it to be mortal sin. If he’s damned me in life, he’ll not do so in heaven.” There was a moment’s silence while he struggled to control himself. I noticed automatically that the pillow on his knees was blotched with dampness, and wanted to get up and change it for him. He shook his head slowly, still gazing down at his feet.
“The…it’s all linked for me now. I canna think of you, Claire, even of kissing you or touching your hand, without feeling the fear and the pain and the sickness come back. I lie here feeling that I will die without your touch, but when you touch me, I feel as though I will vomit with shame and loathing of myself. I canna even see you now without…” His forehead rested on knotted fists, knuckles dug hard into his eyesockets. The tendons of his neck were sharply etched with strain, and his voice came half-muffled.
“Claire, I want you to leave me. Go back to Scotland, to Craigh na Dun. Go back to your place, to your…husband. Murtagh will take you safe, I’ve told him.” He was silent for a moment, and I did not move.
He looked up again with desperate bravery, and spoke very simply.
“I will love you as long as I live, but I cannot be your husband any longer. And I will not be less to you.” His face began to break apart. “Claire, I want you so badly that my bones shake in my body, but God help me, I am afraid to touch you!”
I started up to go to him, but he stopped me with a sudden motion of his hand. He was half doubled up, face contorted with internal struggle, and his voice was strangled and breathless.
“Claire…please. Please go. I’m going to be verra sick, and I don’t want you to see it. Please.”
I heard the pleading in his voice and knew I must spare him this one indignity, at least. I rose, and for the first time in my professional life, left a sick man to his own devices, helpless and alone.
I left his chamber, numbed, and leaned against the white stone wall outside, cooling my flushed cheek against the unyielding blocks, ignoring the stares of Murtagh and Brother William. God help me, he had said. God help me, I am afraid to touch you.
I straightened and stood alone. Well, why not? Surely there was no one else.
At the hour when time began to slow, I genuflected in the aisle of the chapel of St. Giles. Anselm was there, elegant shoulders straight beneath his habit, but no other. He neither moved nor looked around, but the living silence of the chapel embraced me.
I remained on my knees for a moment, reaching out to the quiet darkness, staying my mind from its hurry. Only when I felt my heart slow to the rhythms of the night did I slide into a seat near the back.
I sat rigid, lacking the form and ritual, the liturgical courtesies that eased the brothers into the depths of their sacred conversation. I did not know how to begin. Finally, I said, silently, bluntly, I need help. Please.
And then I let the silence fall back in waves around me, lapping me like the folds of a cloak, comforting against the cold. And I waited, as Anselm had told me, and the minutes passed by uncounted.
There was a small table at the back of the chapel, covered with a linen cloth, bearing the stoup of holy water, and beside it, a Bible and two or three other inspirational works. For use by adorers for whom the silence was too much, I supposed.
It was becoming too much for me, and I rose and got the Bible, bringing it back to the prie-dieu with me. I was hardly the first person to have recourse to the sortes Virgilianae in time of confusion or trouble. There was sufficient light from the candles for me to read, turning the flimsy pages carefully and squinting over the lines of fine black type.
“…and he smote them with emerods, and they were very sore.” No doubt they were, I thought. What in hell were emerods? Try Psalms, instead.
“But I am a worm, and no man…I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.” Well, yes, a competent diagnosis, I thought, with some impatience. But was there some treatment?
“But be not thou far from me, O Lord: O my strength, haste thee to help me. Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog.” Hmm.
I turned to the Book of Job, Jamie’s favorite. Surely if anyone was in a position to offer helpful advice….
“But his flesh upon him shall have pain, and his soul within him shall mourn.” Mmm, yes, I thought, and turned the page.
“He is chastened also with pain upon his bed, and the multitude of his bones with strong pain….His flesh is consumed away, that it cannot be seen; and his bones that were not seen stick out.” Spot on, I thought. What next?
“Yea, his soul draweth near unto the grave, and his life to the destroyers.” Not so good, but the next bit was more heartening. “If there be a messenger with him, an interpreter, one among a thousand, to shew unto man his uprightness: Then he is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit: I have found a ransom. His flesh shall be fresher than a child’s: he shall return to the days of his youth.” And what was the ransom, then, that would buy a man’s soul, and deliver my darling from the power of the dog?
I closed the book and my eyes. The words muddled together, blurring with my urgent need. An overriding misery struck me when I spoke Jamie’s name. And yet there was some small peace there, a lessening of tension when I said, as I did over and over again, “O Lord, into thy hands I commend the soul of your servant James.”
The thought came to me that perhaps Jamie would be better off dead; he had said he wanted to die. I was morally sure that if I left him as he wished, he would be dead soon, whether from the aftereffects of torture and illness, from hanging, or in some battle. And I was in no doubt that he knew it as well. Ought I to do as he said? Damned if I will, I said to myself. Damned if I will, I said fiercely to the sunburst on the altar and opened the book again.
It was some time before I became aware that my thread of petition was no longer a monologue. In fact, I knew it only when I realized that I had just answered a question I had no memory of asking. In my trance of sleepless misery, something had been asked of me, I wasn’t sure just what, and I had answered without thinking, “Yes, I will.”
I stopped all thought abruptly, listening to the ringing silence. And then, more cautiously, repeated, voiceless, “Yes. Yes, I will,” and thought fleetingly, The conditions of sin are these: first, you must give your full consent to it….And the conditions of grace as well, came an echo of Anselm’s quiet voice.
There was a feeling, not sudden, but complete, as though I had been given a small object to hold unseen in my hands. Precious as opal, smooth as jade, weighty as a river stone, more fragile than a bird’s egg. Infinitely still, live as the root of Creation. Not a gift, but a trust. Fiercely to cherish, softly to guard. The words spoke themselves and disappeared into the groined shadows of the roof.
I genuflected to the Presence then, and left the chapel, never doubting, in the eternity of the moment when time stops, that I had an answer, but having no idea what that answer was. I knew only that what I held was a human soul; my own or another’s, I could not tell.
It did not appear to be an answer to prayer, when I woke to the resumption of ordinary time in the morning to find a lay brother standing over me, telling me that Jamie was burning with fever.
“How long has he been like this?” I asked, laying a practiced hand on brow and back, armpit and groin. No trace of relieving sweat; only the dry stretched skin of persistent parching, fiery with heat. He was awake, but heavy-eyed and groggy. The source of the fever was plain. The shattered right hand was puffy, with a foul-smelling ooze soaking the bandages. Ominous red streaks ran up the wrist. A bloody infection, I thought to myself. A filthy, suppurating, blood poisoning, life-threatening infection.
“I found him so when I came to look in on him after Matins,” replied the serving brother who had come to fetch me. “I gave him water, but he began to vomit just after dawn.”
“You should have fetched me at once,” I said. “Still, never mind. Bring me hot water, raspberry leaves, and Brother Polydore, as quickly as possible.” He left with the assurance that he would see some breakfast was brought for me as well, but I waved such amenities aside, reaching for the pewter jug of water.
By the time Brother Polydore appeared, I had tried the internal application of water, only to have it violently rejected, and was applying it externally instead, soaking the sheets and wrapping them loosely over the hot skin.
Simultaneously, I set the infected hand to soak in fresh-boiled water, as hot as could be stood without burning the skin. Lacking sulfa drugs or modern antibiotics, heat was the only defense against a bacterial infection. The patient’s body was doing its best to supply that heat by means of high fever, but the fever itself posed a serious danger, wasting muscle and damaging brain cells. The trick was to apply sufficient local heat to destroy the infection, while keeping the rest of the body cool enough to prevent damage, and sufficiently hydrated to maintain its normal functions. A bloody three-tier balancing act, I thought bleakly.
Neither Jamie’s state of mind nor his physical discomfort were relevant any longer. It was a straightforward struggle to keep him alive until the infection and the fever ran their course; nothing else mattered.
In the afternoon of the second day, he began to hallucinate. We tied him to the bed with soft rags to prevent his hurling himself to the floor. Finally, as a desperate measure to break the fever, I sent one of the lay brothers out to bring in a bushel basket of snow, which we packed around him. This resulted in a violent shivering fit that left him drained and exhausted, but did briefly bring his temperature down.
Unfortunately, the treatment had to be repeated at hourly intervals. By sunset, the room looked like a swamp, with puddles of melted snow standing on the floor, tussocks of sodden sheeting mounded among them, and steam like marsh gas rising from the brazier in the corner. Brother Polydore and myself were sodden, too, soaked with sweat, chilled with snow water, and near to exhaustion, in spite of the helpful assistance of Anselm and the lay brothers. Febrifuges such as coneflower, goldenseal, catnip, and hyssop had been tried, without effect. Willowbark tea, which might have helped with its content of salicylic acid, could not be consumed in amounts large enough to matter.
In one of his increasingly rare lucid intervals, Jamie asked me to let him die. I answered curtly, as I had the night before, “Damned if I will,” and went on with what I was doing.
As the sun went down, there was a stir of approaching men in the corridor. The door opened and the abbot, Jamie’s uncle Alex, came in, accompanied by Brother Anselm and three other monks, one carrying a small cedarwood box. The abbot came over to me and blessed me briefly, then took one of my hands in his.
“We are going to anoint the lad,” he said, his deep voice kind. “Do not be frightened.”
He turned toward the bed and I looked wildly to Anselm for explanation.
“The sacrament of Extreme Unction,” he explained, moving close so that his low tones would not disturb the monks gathered around the bed. “The Last Anointing.”
“Last Anointing! That’s for people who are dying!”
“Ssh.” He drew me farther away from the bed. “It might more properly be called anointing of the sick, though in fact it is usually reserved for those in danger of death.” The monks had turned Jamie gently onto his back, arranging him tenderly so that he might lie with the least hurt to his raw shoulders.
“The purpose of the sacrament is twofold,” Anselm went on, murmuring in my ear as the preparations went on. “First, it is intended as a sacrament of healing; we pray that the sufferer may be restored to health, if that be God’s will for him. The chrism, the consecrated oil, is used as a symbol of life and healing.”
“And the second purpose?” I asked, already knowing.
Anselm nodded. “If it is not God’s will that he should recover, then he is given absolution of sins, and we commend him to God, that his soul may depart in peace.” He saw me tighten in protest, and laid a warning hand on my arm.
“These are the last rites of the Church. He is entitled to them, and to whatever peace they may bring him.”
The preparations were complete. Jamie lay on his back, a cloth modestly draped across his loins, with lighted candles at the head and the foot of the bed that reminded me most unpleasantly of grave lights. Abbot Alexander sat at the bedside, accompanied by a monk who held a tray with a covered ciborium, two small silver bottles containing holy water and chrism, and a white cloth draped across both forearms. Like a bloody wine steward, I thought crossly. The whole procedure unnerved me.
The rites were conducted in Latin, the soft antiphonal murmuring soothing to the ear, though I did not understand the meaning. Anselm whispered softly to me the meaning of some parts of the service; others were self-explanatory. At one point, the Abbot motioned to Polydore, who stepped forward and held a small vial under Jamie’s nose. It must have contained spirits of ammonia or some other stimulant, because he jerked and turned his head away sharply, eyes still closed.
“Why are they trying to wake him?” I whispered.
“If possible, the person should be conscious in order to give assent to the statement that he is sorry for any sins committed during his life. Also, if he is capable of receiving it, the Abbot will give him the Blessed Sacrament.”
The Abbot stroked Jamie’s cheek softly, turning his head back to the vial, speaking quietly to him. He had dropped from Latin into the broad Scots of their family, and his voice was gentle.
“Jamie! Jamie, lad! It’s Alex, lad. I’m here wi’ ye. Ye must wake a bit now, only for a bit. I shall be givin’ ye the absolution now, and then the Blessed Sacrament of Our Lord. Take a wee sup, now, so ye can answer me when ye must.” The monk called Polydore held the cup against Jamie’s lips, carefully pouring the water a drop at a time, until the parched tongue and throat could take more. His eyes were open, still heavy with fever, but alert enough.
The Abbot went on then, the questions in English, but pitched so low that I could scarcely catch them. “Do ye renounce Satan and all his works?” “Do ye believe in the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ?” and so on. To each one, Jamie answered “Aye,” in a scratchy whisper.
Once the sacrament had been given, Jamie lay back with a sigh, closing his eyes once more. I could see his ribs as the deep-sprung chest moved with his breathing. He had wasted dreadfully, between the sickness and the fever. The Abbot, taking the vials of holy water and chrism in turn, made the sign of the Cross on his body, anointing forehead, lips, nose, ears, and eyelids. Then, in turn, he made the sign of the Cross with the holy oil in the hollow of the chest over the heart, on the palm of each hand, and the arch of each foot. He lifted the injured hand with infinite care, brushing the oil across the wound lightly and laying the hand back on Jamie’s chest, where it lay below the livid slash of the knife scar.
The anointing was quick and immeasurably gentle, a feather touch by the Abbot’s rapidly moving thumb. “Superstitious magic,” said the rational side of my brain, but I was deeply moved by the love on the faces of the monks as they prayed. Jamie’s eyes were open once more, but very calm, and his face was peaceful for the first time since we had left Lallybroch.
The ceremony concluded with a brief prayer in Latin. Laying his hand on Jamie’s head, the Abbot said in English, “Lord, into thy hands we commend the soul of your servant, James. Heal him, we pray, if that be Thy will, and strengthen his soul, that he may be filled with grace, and know Thy peace throughout eternity.”
“Amen,” replied the other monks. And so did I.
By dark, the patient had lapsed into semiconsciousness again. As Jamie’s strength waned, it was all we could do to rouse him for the sips of water that were keeping him alive. His lips were cracked and peeling, and he could no longer talk, though he would still open glazed eyes when shaken roughly. He no longer recognized us; his eyes stared fixedly, then gradually closed as he turned his head away, moaning.
I stood by the bed looking down at him, so exhausted from the rigors of the day that I felt no more than a sort of dull despair. Brother Polydore touched me gently, bringing me out of my daze.
“You cannot do any more for him now,” he said, leading me firmly away. “You must go and rest.”
“But—” I began, then stopped. He was right, I realized. We had done everything possible. Either the fever would break soon of itself, or Jamie would die. Even the strongest body could not endure the consuming ravages of high fever for more than a day or two, and Jamie had little strength left to see him through such a siege.
“I will stay with him,” Polydore said. “Go to your bed. I’ll summon you if…” He didn’t finish the sentence, but waved me gently in the direction of my own chamber.
I lay sleepless on my cot, staring at the beamed ceiling. My eyes were dry and hot, and my throat ached, as though I were coming down with a fever as well. Was this the answer to my prayer, that we would die here together?
At last I rose, and took up the jug and basin from the table by the door. I set the heavy pottery dish in the center of the floor and filled it carefully, letting the water swell up over the thickened rim into a trembling bubble.
I had made a short detour to Brother Ambrose’s stillroom on the way to my chamber. I undid the small packets of herbs and scattered the contents into my brazier, where the myrrh leaves gave off a fragrant smoke, and the crumbs of camphor flamed with tiny blue tongues between the red glow of the charcoal sticks.
I set the candlestick behind my reflecting pool, took my place before it, and sat down to summon a ghost.
The stone corridor was cold and dark, lit at intervals by dimly flickering oil lamps hung from the ceiling. My shadow stretched forward under my feet as I passed beneath each one, lengthening until it seemed to dive headfirst and disappear into the dark ahead.
In spite of the cold, I was barefoot and wearing only a coarse white cotton nightrobe. A small envelope of warmth moved with me under the robe, but the chill from the stones crept up my feet and legs.
I knocked once, softly, and pushed open the heavy door without waiting for an answer.
Brother Roger was with him, sitting by the bed, telling beads with bowed head. The wooden rosary rattled as he looked up, but his lips continued to move silently for a few seconds, finishing the Ave Maria before acknowledging my presence.
He met me near the door, speaking quietly, though it was clear that he could have shouted without disturbing the motionless figure on the bed.
“No change. I’ve just put fresh water in the hand bath.” A few drops gleamed on the sides of the small pewter kettle on the brazier, freshly filled.
I nodded and put a hand on his arm in thanks. It was startlingly solid and warm after the imaginations of the last hour, and somehow comforting.
“I’d like to stay with him alone, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course. I’ll go to the chapel—or should I stay near in case…” His voice trailed off, hesitant.
“No.” I tried to smile reassuringly. “Go to the chapel. Or better yet, go to bed. I can’t sleep; I’ll stay here ‘til morning. If I need help, I’ll send for you.”
Still dubious, he glanced back at the bed. But it was very late, and he was tired; there were shadows under the kind brown eyes.
The heavy door squeaked on its hinges, and I was alone with Jamie. Alone and afraid, and very, very doubtful about what I proposed to do.
I stood at the foot of the bed, watching him for a moment. The room was dimly lit by the glow of the brazier and by two enormous candlesticks, each nearly three feet tall, that stood on the table at the side of the room. He was naked, and the faint light seemed to accentuate the hollows left by the wasting fever. The multicolored bruise over the ribs stained the skin like a spreading fungus.
A dying man takes on a faint greenish tinge. At first just a touch at the edge of the jaw, this pallor spreads gradually, over the face and down the chest as the force of life begins to ebb. I had seen it many times. A few times, I had seen that deadly progress arrested and reversed, the skin flush with blood once more, and the man live. More often…I shook myself vigorously and turned away.
I brought my hand out of the folds of my robe and laid on the table the objects I had collected in a surreptitious visit to Brother Ambrose’s darkened workshop. A vial of spirits of ammonia. A packet of dried lavender. Another of valerian. A small metal incense burner, shaped like an open blossom. Two pellets of opium, sweet scented and sticky with resin. And a knife.
The room was close and stuffy with smoke from the brazier. The only window was covered with a heavy tapestry, one showing the execution of Saint Sebastian. I eyed the saint’s upturned face and arrow-punctured torso, wondering afresh at the mentality of the person who had chosen this particular decoration for a sickroom.
Indifferently rendered as it was, the tapestry was of heavy silk and wool, and excluded all but the strongest drafts. I lifted the lower edge and flapped it, urging the charcoal smoke out through the stone arch. The cold, damp air that streamed in was refreshing, and did something to calm the throbbing that had started in my temples as I stared into the reflecting water, remembering.
There was a faint moan behind me, and Jamie stirred in the draft. Good. He was not deeply unconscious, then.
Letting the tapestry fall back over the window, I next took up the incense burner. I fixed one of the opium pellets on the spike and lighted it with one of the wax tapers for the candlesticks. I placed it on the small table near Jamie’s head, careful not to inhale the sickly fumes myself.
There was not much time. I must finish my preparations quickly, before the opium smoke drove him too far under to be roused.
I unlaced the front of my robe and rubbed my body quickly with handfuls of the lavender and valerian. It was a pleasant, spicy smell, distinctive and richly evocative. A smell that, to me, conjured the shade of the man who wore its perfume, and the shade of the man behind him; shades that evoked confusing images of present terror and lost love. A smell that, to Jamie, must recall the hours of pain and rage spent wrapped in its waves. I rubbed the last of it vigorously between my palms and dropped the fragrant shreds on the floor.
With a deep breath for courage, I picked up the vial of ammoniacal spirits. I stood by the bed a moment holding it, looking down at the gaunt, stubbled face. At most he might last a day; at the least, only a few more hours.
“All right, you bloody Scottish bastard,” I said softly. “Let’s see how stubborn you really are.” I lifted the injured hand, dripping, from the water and set the soaking dish aside.
I opened the vial and waved it closely under his nose. He snorted and tried to turn his head away, but didn’t open his eyes. I dug my fingers into the hair on the back of his head to prevent his turning away, and brought the vial back to his face. He shook his head slowly, swinging it from side to side like an ox roused from slumber, and his eyes came open just a crack.
“Not done yet, Fraser,” I whispered in his ear, trying as best I could to catch the rhythm of Randall’s clipped consonants.
Jamie moaned and hunched his shoulders. I grasped him by both shoulders and shook him roughly. His skin was so hot I nearly let go.
“Wake up, you Scottish bastard! I’m not done with you yet!” He began to struggle up onto his elbows with a pitiful effort at obedience that nearly broke my heart. His head was still shaking back and forth, and the cracked lips were muttering something that sounded like “please not yet” over and over again.
Strength failing, he rolled to one side and collapsed facedown on the pillow again. The room was beginning to fill with opium smoke and I felt mildly dizzy.
I gritted my teeth and plunged my hand between his buttocks, gripping one curving round. He screamed, a high breathy sound, and rolled painfully sideways, curling into a ball with his hands clasped between his legs.
I had spent the hour in my chamber, hovering over my pool of reflection, conjuring memories. Of Black Jack Randall and of Frank, his six-times-great-grandson. Such very different men, but with such startling physical similarities.
It tore me to think of Frank, to recall his face and voice, his mannerisms, his style of lovemaking. I had tried to obliterate him from my mind, once my choice was made in the circle of stone, but he was always there, a shadowy figure in the recesses of my mind.
I felt sick with betrayal of him, but in the extremity I had forced my mind to clear as Geilie had shown me, concentrating on the flame of the candle, breathing the astringency of the herbs, calming myself until I could bring him from the shadows, see the lines of his face, feel once more the touch of his hand without weeping.
There was another man in the shadows, with the same hands, the same face. Eyes filled with the candle flame, I had brought him forward, too, listening, watching, seeing the likenesses and the differences, building a—a what? A simulacrum, a persona, an impression, a masquerade. A shaded face, a whispered voice, and a loving touch that I might bring to deceive a mind adrift in delirium. And I left my chamber at last, with a prayer for the soul of the witch Geillis Duncan.
Jamie was on his back now, writhing slightly against the pain of his wounds. His eyes were fixed and staring, with no sign of recognition.
I caressed him in the way I knew so well, tracing the line of his ribs from breastbone to back, lightly as Frank would have done, pressing hard on the aching bruise, as I was sure the other would have. I leaned forward and ran my tongue slowly around his ear, tasting and probing, and whispered, “Fight me! Fight back, you filthy scut!”
His muscles tightened and his jaw clenched, but he continued to stare upward. No choice, then. I would have to use the knife after all. I knew the risk I was taking in this, but better to kill him myself, I thought, than to sit quietly by and let him die.
I took the knife from the table and drew it firmly across his chest, along the path of the freshly healed scar. He gasped with the shock of it, and arched his back. Seizing a towel, I scrubbed it briskly over the wound. Before I could falter, I forced myself to run my fingers over his chest, scooping up a gout of blood which I rubbed savagely over his lips. There was one phrase that I didn’t have to invent, having heard it myself. Bending low over him, I whispered, “Now kiss me.”
I was not at all prepared for it. He hurled me half across the room as he came up off the bed. I staggered and fell against the table, making the giant candlesticks sway. The shadows darted and swung as the wicks flared and went out.
The edge of the table had struck me hard across the back, but I recovered in time to dodge away as he lunged for me. With an inarticulate growl, he came after me, hands outstretched.
He was both faster and stronger than I expected, though he staggered awkwardly, bumping into things. He cornered me for a moment between the brazier and the table, and I could hear his breath rasping harshly in his throat as he grabbed for me. He smashed his left hand toward my face; had his strength and reflexes been anything like normal, the blow would have killed me. Instead, I jerked to one side, and his fist glanced off my forehead, knocking me to the floor, mildly stunned.
I crawled under the table. Reaching for me, he lost his balance and fell against the brazier. Glowing coals scattered across the stone floor of the chamber. He howled as his knee crunched heavily into a patch of hot coal. I seized a pillow from the bed and beat out a smoldering nest of sparks in the trailing bedcover. Preoccupied with this, I didn’t notice his approach, until a solid clout across the head knocked me sprawling.
The cot overturned as I tried to pull myself up with a hand on the frame. I lay sheltering behind it for a moment, trying to get my senses back. I could hear Jamie hunting me in the semidarkness, breath rasping between incoherent phrases of Gaelic cursing. Suddenly he caught sight of me and flung himself over the bed, eyes mad in the dim light.
It is difficult to describe in detail what happened next, if only because everything happened a number of times, and the times all overlap in my memory. It seems as though Jamie’s burning hands closed on my neck only once, but that once went on forever. In fact, it happened dozens of times. Each time I managed to break his grip and throw him off, to retreat once more, dodging and ducking around the wrecked furniture. And once again he would follow, a man pulled by rage from the edge of death, swearing and sobbing, staggering and flailing wildly.
Deprived of the sheltering brazier, the coals died quickly, leaving the room black as pitch and peopled with demons. In the last flickers of light, I saw him crouched against the wall, maned in fire and mantled in blood, penis stiff against the matted hair of his belly, eyes blue murder in a skull-white face. A Viking berserker. Like the Northern devils who burst from their dragon-ships into the mists of the ancient Scottish coast, to kill and plunder and burn. Men who would kill with the last ounce of their strength. Who would use that last strength to rape and sow their violent seed in the bellies of the conquered. The tiny incense burner gave no light, but the sickly smell of opium clogged my lungs. Though the coals were out, I saw lights in the darkness, colored lights that floated at the edge of my vision.
Movement was becoming harder; I felt as though I were wading through water thigh-deep, pursued by monstrous fish. I lifted my knees high, running in slow motion, feeling the water splash against my face.
I shook off the dream, to realize that there was in fact wetness on my face and hands. Not tears, but blood, and the sweat of the nightmare creature I grappled with in the dark.
Sweat. There was something I should remember about sweat, but I couldn’t recall it. A hand tightened on my upper arm and I pulled away, a slick film left on my skin.
Around and around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel. But something was wrong, it was the weasel chasing me, a weasel with sharp white teeth that pierced my forearm. I hit out at it and the teeth let go, but the claws…around and around the mulberry bush…
The demon had me up against the wall; I could feel stone behind my head and stone beneath my grasping fingers, and a stone-hard body pressing hard against me, bony knee between my own, stone and bone, between my own…legs, more stony hardness…ah. A softness amidst the hardness of life, pleasant coolness in the heat, comfort in the midst of woe…
We fell locked together to the floor, rolling over and over, tangled in the folds of the fallen tapestry, washed in the drafts of cold air from the window. The mists of madness began to recede.
We bashed into some piece of furniture and both lay still. Jamie’s hands were locked on my breasts, fingers digging bruisingly into the flesh. I felt the plop of dampness on my face, sweat or tears, I couldn’t tell, but opened my eyes to see. Jamie was looking down at me, face blank in the moony light, eyes wide, unfocused. His hands relaxed. One finger gently traced the outline of my breast, from slope to tip, over and over. His hand moved to cup the breast, fingers spread like a starfish, soft as the grip of a nursing child.
“M-mother?” he said. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. It was the high, pure voice of a young boy. “Mother?”
The cold air laved us, whirling the unhealthy smoke away in a drift of snowflakes. I reached up and laid the palm of my hand along his cold cheek.
“Jamie, love,” I said, whispering through a bruised throat, “Come then, come lay your head, man.” The mask trembled then and broke, and I held the big body hard against me, the two of us shaking with the force of his sobbing.
It was, by considerable good luck, the unflappable Brother William who found us in the morning. I woke groggily to the sound of the door opening, and snapped to full consciousness when I heard him clear his throat emphatically before saying “Good morning to ye,” in his soft Yorkshire drawl.
The heavy weight on my chest was Jamie. His hair had dried in bronze streaks and whorled over my breasts like the petals of a Chinese chrysanthemum. The cheek pressed against my sternum was warm and slightly sticky with sweat, but the back and arms I could touch were as cold as my thighs, chilled by the winter air gusting in on us.
Daylight streaming through the uncurtained window revealed the full extent of the wreckage I had only dimly realized the night before; smashed furniture and crockery littered the room, and the massive paired candlesticks lay like fallen logs in the midst of a tangle of torn hangings and scattered bedclothes. From the pattern of indentations impressing itself painfully into my back, I thought I must be lying on the indifferently executed tapestry of St. Sebastian the Human Pincushion; no great loss to the monastery, if so.
Brother William stood motionless in the doorway, jug and basin in hand. With great precision, he fixed his eyes on Jamie’s left eyebrow and inquired, “And how do you feel this morning?”
There was a rather long pause, during which Jamie considerately remained in place, blanketing most of me from view. At last, in the hoarse tones of one to whom a revelation has been vouchsafed, he replied, “Hungry.”
“Oh, good,” said Brother William, still staring hard at the eyebrow, “I’ll go and tell Brother Josef.” The door closed soundlessly behind him.
“Nice of you not to move,” I remarked. “I shouldn’t like us to be responsible for giving Brother William impure thoughts.”
Dense blue eyes stared down at me. “Aye, well,” he said judiciously, “a view of my arse is no going to corrupt anyone’s Holy Orders; not in its present condition. Yours, though…” He paused to clear his throat.
“What about mine?” I demanded.
The bright head lowered slowly to plant a kiss on my shoulder. “Yours,” he said, “would compromise a bishop.”
“Mmmphm.” I was, I felt, getting rather good at Scottish noises myself. “Be that as it may, perhaps you should move now. I don’t suppose even Brother William’s tact is infinite.”
Jamie lowered his head next to mine with some care, laying it on a fold of tapestry, from which he peered sideways at me. “I dinna know how much of last night I dreamed and how much was real.” His hand unconsciously strayed to the scratch across his chest. “But if half what I thought happened really happened, I should be dead now.”
“You’re not. I looked.” With some hesitation, I asked, “Do you want to be?”
He smiled slowly, eyes half-closing. “No, Sassenach, I don’t.” His face was gaunt and shadowed with illness and fatigue, but peaceful, the lines around his mouth smoothed out and the blue eyes clear. “But I’m damned close to it, want to or not. The only reason I think I’m not dying now is that I’m hungry. I wouldna be hungry if I were about to die, do ye think? Seems a waste.” One eye closed altogether, but the other stayed half-open, fixed on my face with a quizzical expression.
“You can’t stand up?”
He considered carefully. “If my life depended on it, I might possibly lift my head again. But stand up? No.”
With a sigh, I wriggled out from under him and righted the bed before trying to lever him into a vertical position. He managed to stand for only a few seconds before his eyes rolled back and he fell across the bed. I groped frantically for the pulse in his neck, and found it, slow and strong, just below the three-cornered scar at the base of his throat. Simple exhaustion. After a month of imprisonment and a week of intense physical and mental stress, starvation, injury, sickness and high fever, even that vigorous frame had finally come to the end of its resources.
“The heart of a lion,” I said, shaking my head, “and the head of an ox. Too bad you haven’t also got the hide of a rhinoceros.” I touched a freshly bloodied weal on his shoulder.
He opened one eye. “What’s a rhinoceros?”
“I thought you were unconscious!”
“I was. I am. My head’s spinning like a top.”
I drew a blanket up over him. “What you need now are food and rest.”
“What you need now,” he said, “are clothes.” And shutting the eye again, he fell promptly asleep.