The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle (518 page)

There was a soft rustle behind me. Mrs. Beardsley was back. She set down a bucket of water and a pile of rags, then stood behind me, watching in silence as I began to sponge away the filth.

“Can you cure him?” she asked. Her voice was calm, remote, as though she spoke of a stranger.

The patient’s head lolled suddenly back, so his open eye fixed on me.

“I think I can help a bit,” I said carefully. I wished Jamie would return. Aside from need of my medical box, I was finding the company of the Beardsleys rather unnerving.

The more so when Mr. Beardsley inadvertently released a small quantity of urine. Mrs. Beardsley laughed, and he made a sound in reply that made the goose bumps rise on my arms. I wiped the liquid off his thigh and went on with my work, trying to ignore it.

“Have you or Mr. Beardsley any kin nearby?” I asked, as conversationally as possible. “Someone who might come to lend you a hand?”

“No one,” she said. “He took me from my father’s house in Maryland. To thith place.”
This place
was spoken as though it were the fifth circle of hell; so far as I could see, there was certainly some resemblance at the present moment.

The door opened below, and a welcome draft of cold air announced Jamie’s return. There was a clunking noise as he set my box on the table, and I hastily rose, eager to escape them, if only for a moment.

“There’s my husband with my medicines. I’ll just … er … go and fetch … um …” I edged past Mrs. Beardsley’s bulk, and fled down the ladder, sweating in spite of the chill in the house.

Jamie stood by the table, frowning as he turned a length of rope in his hands. He glanced up as he heard me, and his face relaxed a little.

“How is it, Sassenach?” he asked, low-voiced, with a jerk of the chin toward the loft.

“Very bad,” I whispered, coming to stand beside him. “Two of his toes are gangrenous; I’ll have to take them off. And she says they’ve no family near to help.”

“Mmphm.” His lips tightened, and he bent his attention to the sling he was improvising.

I reached for my medical chest, to check my instruments, but stopped when I saw Jamie’s pistols lying on the table beside it, along with his powder horn and shot case. I touched his arm and jerked my head at them, mouthing, “What?” at him.

The line between his brows deepened, but before he could answer, a dreadful racket came from the loft above, a great thrashing and thumping, accompanied by a gargling noise like an elephant drowning in a mud bog.

Jamie dropped the rope and shot for the ladder, with me at his heels. He let out a shout as his head topped the ladder, and dived forward. As I scrambled into the loft behind him, I saw him in the shadows, grappling with Mrs. Beardsley.

She smashed an elbow at his face, hitting him in the nose. This removed any inhibitions he might have had about manhandling a woman, and he jerked her round to face him and struck her with a short, sharp uppercut to the chin that clicked her jaws and made her stagger, eyes glazing. I dashed forward to save the candle, as she collapsed on her rump in a pouf of skirts and petticoats.

“God … dab … that … womad.” Jamie’s voice was muffled, his sleeve pressed across his face to stanch the flow of blood from his nose, but the sincerity in it was unmistakable.

Mr. Beardsley was flopping like a landed fish, wheezing and gurgling. I lifted the candle and found him flailing at his neck with one splayed hand. A linen kerchief had been twisted into a rope and wrapped round his neck, and his face was black, his one eye popping. I hastily seized the kerchief and undid it, and his breathing eased with a great whoosh of fetid air.

“If she’d been faster, she’d have had him.” Jamie lowered his blood-streaked arm and felt his nose tenderly. “Christ, I think she broke my dose.”

“Why? Why did you thtop me?” Mrs. Beardsley was still conscious, though swaying and glassy-eyed. “He thould die, I want him to die, he mutht die.”

“
A nighean na galladh
, ye could ha’ killed him at your leisure any time this month past, if ye wanted him dead,” Jamie said impatiently. “Why in God’s name wait until ye had witnesses?”

She looked up at him, eyes suddenly sharp and clear.

“I did not want him dead,” she said. “I wanted him to
die
.” She smiled, showing the stubs of her broken teeth. “Thlowly.”

“Oh, Christ,” I said, and wiped a hand across my face. It was only mid-morning, but I felt as though the day had lasted several weeks already. “It’s my fault. I told her I thought I could help; she thought I’d save him, maybe cure him altogether.” The curse of a reputation for magic healing! I might have laughed, had I been in the mood for irony.

There was a sharp, fresh stink in the air, and Mrs. Beardsley turned on her husband with a cry of outrage.

“Filthy beast!” She scrambled to her knees, snatched up a hard roll from the plate, and threw it at him. It bounced off his head. “Filthy, thtinking, dirty, wicked …” Jamie seized her by the hair as she hurled herself at the prone body, grabbed her arm, and jerked her away, sobbing and shrieking abuse.

“Bloody hell,” he said, over the uproar. “Fetch me that rope, Sassenach, before I kill them both myself.”

The job of getting Mr. Beardsley down from the loft was enough to leave both Jamie and me sweat-soaked and streaked with filth, reeking and weak in the knees with effort. Mrs. Beardsley squatted on a stool in the corner, quiet and malevolent as a toad, making no effort to help.

She gave a gasp of outrage when we laid the big, lolling body on the clean table, but Jamie glared at her, and she sank back on her stool, mouth clamped to a thin, straight line.

Jamie wiped his bloodstained sleeve across his brow, and shook his head as he looked at Beardsley. I didn’t blame him; even cleaned up, warmly covered, and with a little warm gruel spooned into him, the man was in a dreadful state. I examined him once more, carefully, in the light from the window. No doubt about the toes; the stink of gangrene was distinct, and the greenish tinge covered the outer dorsal aspect of the foot.

I’d have to take more than the toes—I frowned, feeling my way carefully around the putrefying area, wondering whether it was better to try for a partial amputation between the metacarpals, or simply to take the foot off at the ankle. The ankle dissection would be faster, and while I would normally try for the more conservative partial amputation, there was really no point to it in this case; Beardsley was plainly never going to walk again.

I gnawed my lower lip dubiously. For that matter, the whole business might be moot; he burned with intermittent fever, and the sores on legs and buttocks oozed with suppuration. What were the chances of his recovering from the amputation without dying of infection?

I hadn’t heard Mrs. Beardsley come up behind me; for a heavyset woman, she moved with remarkable silence.

“What do you mean to do?” she asked, her voice sounding neutral and remote.

“Your husband’s toes are gangrenous,” I said. No point in trying not to alarm Beardsley now. “I’ll have to amputate his foot.” There was really no choice, though my heart sank at the notion of spending the next several days—or weeks—here, nursing Beardsley. I could hardly leave him to the tender care of his wife!

She circled the table slowly, coming to a stop near his feet. Her face was blank, but a tiny smile appeared at the corners of her mouth, winking on and off, as though quite without her willing it. She looked at the blackened toes for a long minute, then shook her head.

“No,” she said softly. “Let him rot.”

The question of Beardsley’s understanding was resolved, at least; his open eye bulged, and he let out a shriek of rage, thrashing and flailing in an effort to get at her, so that he came perilously near to falling onto the floor in his struggles. Jamie seized him, shoving and heaving to keep his ponderous bulk on the table. As Beardsley at last subsided, gasping and making mewling noises, Jamie straightened up, gasping himself, and gave Mrs. Beardsley a look of extreme dislike.

She hunched her shoulders, pulling her shawl tight around them, but didn’t retreat or look away. She raised her chin defiantly.

“I am hith wife,” she said. “I thall not let you cut him. It ith a rithk to hith life.”

“It’s certain death if I don’t,” I said shortly. “And a nasty one, too. You—” I didn’t get to finish; Jamie put a hand on my shoulder, squeezing hard.

“Take her outside, Claire,” he said quietly.

“But—”

“Outside.” His hand tightened on my shoulder, almost painful in its pressure. “Dinna come back until I call for ye.”

His face was grim, but there was something in his eyes that made me go hollow and watery inside. I glanced at the sideboard, where his pistols lay beside my medicine chest, then back at his face, appalled.

“You can’t,” I said.

He looked at Beardsley, his face bleak.

“I would put down a dog in such case without a second’s thought,” he said softly. “Can I do less for him?”

“He is not a dog!”

“No, he is not.” His hand dropped from my shoulder, and he circled the table, until he stood by Beardsley’s side.

“If ye understand me, man—close your eye,” he said quietly. There was a moment’s silence, and Beardsley’s bloodshot eye fixed on Jamie’s face—with undeniable intelligence. The lid closed slowly, then rose again.

Jamie turned to me.

“Go,” he said. “Let it be his choice. If—or if not—I will call for ye.”

My knees were trembling, and I knotted my hands in the folds of my skirt.

“No,” I said. I looked at Beardsley, then swallowed hard and shook my head. “No,” I said again. “I—if you … you must have a witness.”

He hesitated a moment, but then nodded.

“Aye, you’re right.” He glanced at Mrs. Beardsley. She stood stock-still, hands knotted under her apron, eyes darting from me to Jamie to her husband and back. Jamie shook his head briefly, then turned back to the stricken man, squaring his shoulders.

“Blink once for yes, twice for nay,” he said. “You understand?”

The eyelid lowered without hesitation.

“Listen, then.” Jamie drew a deep breath and began to speak, in a flat, unemotional tone of voice, his eyes steady on the ruined face and the fierce gaze of its open eye.

“Ye ken what has happened to you?”

Blink.

“Ye ken that my wife is a physician, a healer?”

The eye rolled in my direction, then back to Jamie. Blink.

“She says that you have suffered an apoplexy, that the damage canna be mended. You understand?”

A huffing sound came from the lopsided mouth. This was not news. Blink.

“Your foot is putrid. If it is not taken off, you will rot and die. You understand?”

No response. The nostrils flared suddenly, moist, questing; then the air was expelled with a snort. He had smelled the rot; had suspected, perhaps, but not known for sure that it came from his own flesh. Not ’til now. Slowly, a blink.

The quiet litany went on, statements and questions, each a shovelful of dirt, taken from a deepening grave. Each ending with the inexorable words, “You understand?”

My hands and feet and face felt numb. The odd sense of sanctuary in the room had altered; it felt like a church, but no longer a place of refuge. A place now in which some ritual took place, leading to a solemn, predestined end.

And it was predestined, I understood. Beardsley had made his choice long since—perhaps even before we arrived. He had had a month in that purgatory, after all, suspended in the cold dark between heaven and earth, in which to think, to come to grips with his prospects and make his peace with death.

Did he understand?

Oh, yes, very well.

Jamie bent over the table, one hand on Beardsley’s arm, a priest in stained linen, offering absolution and salvation. Mrs. Beardsley stood frozen in the fall of light from the window, a stolid angel of denunciation.

The statements and the questions came to an end.

“Will ye have my wife take your foot and tend your wounds?”

One blink, then two, exaggerated, deliberate.

Jamie’s breathing was audible, the heaviness in his chest making a sigh of each word.

“Do ye ask me to take your life?”

Though one half of his face sagged lifeless and the other was drawn and haggard, there was enough of Beardsley left to show expression. The workable corner of the mouth turned up in a cynical leer.
What there is left of it
, said his silence. The eyelid fell—and stayed shut.

Jamie closed his own eyes. A small shudder passed over him. Then he shook himself briefly, like a man shaking off cold water, and turned to the sideboard where his pistols lay.

I crossed swiftly to him, laying a hand on his arm. He didn’t look at me, but kept his eyes on the pistol he was priming. His face was white, but his hands were steady.

“Go,” he said. “Take her out.”

I looked back at Beardsley, but he was my patient no longer; his flesh beyond my healing or my comfort. I went to the woman and took her by the arm, turning her toward the door. She came with me, walking mechanically, and did not turn to look back.

The outdoors seemed unreal, the sunlit yard unconvincingly ordinary. Mrs. Beardsley pulled free of my grip and headed toward the barn, walking fast. She glanced back over her shoulder at the house, then broke into a heavy run, disappearing through the open barn door as though fiends were after her.

I caught her sense of panic and nearly ran after her. I didn’t, though; I stopped at the edge of the yard and waited. I could feel my heart beating, slowly, thumping in my ears. That seemed unreal, too.

The shot came, finally, a small flat sound, inconsequent amid the soft bleating of goats from the barn and the rustle of chickens scratching in the dirt nearby. Head, I wondered suddenly, or heart, and shuddered.

It was long past noon; the cold, still air of the morning had risen and a chilly breeze moved through the dooryard, stirring dust and wisps of hay. I stood and waited. He would have paused, I thought, to say a brief prayer for Beardsley’s soul. A moment passed, two, then the back door opened. Jamie came out, took a few steps, then stopped, bent over, and vomited.