Written in My Own Heart's Blood (38 page)

COGNOSCO TE

T
HE HEALER ARRIVED
in midafternoon. He was a short man but not slight; he looked like an amateur wrestler, with shoulders nearly as broad as Roger’s own. He didn’t introduce himself but nodded politely to Mrs. MacLaren, his eyes flicking round the room in a brief, all-encompassing glance, then focused on Buck, who had fallen into an uneasy sleep and did not wake even to the disturbance caused by the healer’s entrance.

“He says his heart—” Roger began awkwardly. The man glanced sharply sideways at him, then flicked a hand in dismissal and, walking over, peered closely at Buck for a moment. All the MacLarens waited in breathless silence, clearly expecting something spectacular.

The man nodded to himself, removed his coat, and turned back his shirtsleeves, displaying sun-browned forearms corded with muscle.

“Well, then,” he said, sitting down by the bed and laying a hand on Buck’s chest. “Let me—” His face went quite blank and he stiffened, his hand jerking back as though he’d received an electric shock. He gave a quick, hard shake of the head and pulled Buck’s shirt open, plunging both hands into the opening and laying them flat on Buck’s laboring chest.

“Jesu,”
he whispered.
“Cognosco te!”

Quite suddenly the hairs on Roger’s body lifted, prickling as though a thunderstorm was coming. The man had spoken in Latin, and what he had said was,
“I know you!”

THE MACLARENS ALL
watched the healer work, with great respect and not a little awe. Roger, who had learned a good bit about the psychology of healing from Claire, was just as impressed. And, to be frank, scared shitless.

The healer had stood motionless for a long moment, hands on Buck’s chest, his head thrown back and eyes closed, his face contorted in an expression of the deepest concentration, as though listening to something far, far off. He had murmured what Roger recognized as the Pater Noster—from the looks on the faces of the MacLarens, it might as well have been the Abracadabra. Then, keeping his hands in place, he had raised one thick forefinger and begun to tap, delicately, in a slow, regular rhythm, his finger rebounding each time as though he were striking a piano key.

Thup . . . thup . . . thup
. It went on for a long time, so long that everyone
in the room began to draw breath again—even Buck, whose labored gasping began to ease, his lungs filling naturally again. Then it was two fingers,
Thup-tup . . . thup-tup . . . thup-tup
. Slow. Regular as a metronome. On and on and on and on . . . Soothing. Hypnotic. And Roger realized that the rhythm was that of a beating heart—his
own
heart. Looking round the room at the wide eyes and slightly open mouths of the adenoidal MacLaren clan, he had the most peculiar sense that
all
their hearts were beating to precisely the same rhythm.

He knew they were breathing as one; he could hear the susurrus of indrawn breath and the sea-foam rush of exhalation. He
knew
it—and was helpless to change his own rhythm, to resist the sense of unity that had formed insensibly among all the people in the cabin, from Angus MacLaren down to little Josephine, round-eyed as the rest in her mother’s arms.

All of them were breathing, hearts beating as one—and somehow they were supporting the stricken man, holding him as part of a larger entity, embracing him, bracing him. Buck’s injured heart lay in the palm of Roger’s hand: he realized it quite suddenly and, just as suddenly, realized that it had been there for some time, resting as naturally in the curve of his palm as rounded river rock, smooth and heavy. And . . . beating, in time with the heart in Roger’s chest. What was much stranger was that none of this felt in any way out of the ordinary.

Odd—and impressive—as it was, Roger could have explained this. Mass suggestion, hypnosis, will and willingness. He’d done much the same thing himself any number of times, singing—when the music caught the audience up with him, when he knew they were with him, would follow him anywhere. He’d done it once or twice, preaching; felt the people warm to him and lift him up as he lifted them. It was impressive to see it done so quickly and thoroughly without any sort of warm-up, though—and much more disquieting to feel the effects in his own flesh. What was scaring him, though, was that the healer’s hands were blue.

No doubt about it. It wasn’t a trick of the light—there wasn’t any to speak of, bar the dull glow of the smoored fire. It wasn’t a huge thing; no fiery coruscations or neon. But a soft blue tinge had come up between the healer’s fingers, crept over the backs of his hands—and now spread in a faint haze
around
his hands, seeming to penetrate Buck’s chest.

Roger glanced to one side, then the other, without moving his head. The MacLarens were paying rapt attention but showed no sign of seeing anything startling.
They don’t see it
. The hairs on his forearms lifted silently.
Why do
I
see it?

Thup-tup . . . thup-tup . . . thup-tup . . .
Tireless, regular—and yet Roger became aware of some subtle change. Not in the healer’s rhythm—that didn’t vary at all. But something had shifted. He glanced down involuntarily into his palm, where he still imagined that Buck’s heart lay, and was now scarcely surprised to see it there, a ghostly round object, transparent but pulsing gently, regularly. On its own.

Thup-tup . . . . . . thup-tup . . . . . . thup-tup
. The healer now was following, not leading. Not slowing the beats but pausing for a longer period between them, letting Buck’s heart beat alone between them.

At last, the faint sound stopped, and there was silence in the room for the length of three heartbeats. And then the silence popped like a soap bubble, leaving the onlookers blinking and shaking their heads, as those awakened from dreaming. Roger closed his empty hand.

“He’ll be all right,” the healer said to Mrs. MacLaren, in a matter-of-fact manner. “Let him sleep as long as he can, give him something to eat when he wakes up.”

“Much obliged, sir,” Mrs. MacLaren murmured. She patted Josephine, who had fallen asleep with her mouth open, a glimmering trail of saliva falling from the corner of her mouth to her mother’s shoulder. “Will I make up a pallet for ye by the fire?”

“Ah, no,” the healer said, smiling. He shrugged back into his coat, put on his cloak, and reached for his hat. “I’m staying no great distance away.”

He went out, and Roger waited for a moment, just long enough for people to turn back to their own conversations, and then followed, shutting the door quietly behind him.

THE HEALER WAS
a little way down the road; Roger saw the man’s dark figure kneeling in prayer before a tiny shrine, the ends of his cloak fluttering in the wind. Roger came up to him slowly, hanging back so as not to disturb his devotions—and, on impulse, bowed his own head toward the small statue, so weathered as to be faceless.
Take care of them, please
, he prayed.
Help me get back to them—to Bree
. That was all he had time for, before the healer rose to his feet—but that was all he had to say, in any case.

The healer hadn’t heard him; he rose and turned, surprised at seeing Roger but recognizing him at once. He smiled, a little wearily, clearly expecting some medical question of a private nature.

Heart thumping, Roger reached out and grasped the healer’s hand. The man’s eyes widened with shock.

“Cognosco te,”
Roger said, very softly.
I know you
.

“WHO ARE YE
, then?” Dr. Hector McEwan stood squinting against the wind, his face wary but excited. “The two of ye—who are ye?”

“I think ye maybe ken that better than I do,” Roger told him. “That—the light in your hands . . .”

“You could see it.” It wasn’t a question, and the wary excitement in McEwan’s eyes blazed into life, visible even in the dimming light.

“Aye, I could. Where did ye . . .” Roger groped for the best way to ask, but, after all, how many ways were there? “
When
did ye come from?”

McEwan glanced involuntarily over his shoulder toward the croft, but the door was shut, smoke pouring from the hole in the roof. It was beginning to rain, a premonitory pattering among the mounded heather near the path. He moved abruptly, taking Roger’s arm.

“Come,” he said. “We canna be standing out here, dreich as it is; we’ll catch our deaths.”

“Dreich” was the word; the rain set to in good earnest and Roger was half soaked in minutes, having come out without hat or cloak. McEwan led the way quickly up a winding path through thickets of dark gorse, emerging onto a stretch of moorland where the remains of a tumbledown croft offered some shelter. The rooftree had been burned, and recently; the smell still lingered. A corner of thatch remained, though, and they huddled inside, close beneath its scanty protection.

“Anno Domini eighteen hundred and forty-one,” McEwan said matter-of-factly, shaking rain from his cloak. He looked up at Roger, one thick brow raised.

“Nineteen hundred and eighty,” Roger replied, heart hammering. He cleared his throat and repeated the date; the cold had affected his throat, and the words emerged in a strangled croak. McEwan leaned close at the sound, peering at him.

“What’s that?” the man asked sharply. “Your voice—it’s broken.”

“It’s noth—” Roger began, but the healer’s fingers were already groping behind his head, undoing his neckcloth in nothing flat. He closed his eyes, not resisting.

McEwan’s broad fingers were cold on his neck; he felt the icy touch delicate on his skin as it traced the line of the rope scar, then firmer as the healer prodded gently round his damaged larynx—it gave him an involuntary choking sensation, and he coughed. McEwan looked surprised.

“Do that again,” he said.

“What, cough?” Roger said, hoarse as a crow.

“Aye, that.” McEwan fitted his hand snugly round Roger’s neck, just under the chin, and nodded. “Once, then wait, then do it again.” Roger hacked obligingly, feeling a slight pain with each expulsion of breath where the healer’s hand pressed. The man’s face brightened with interest, and he removed his hand.

“Do you know what a hyoid bone is?”