“What? What?” I spluttered, clutching my head, too shocked to formulate a complete sentence, and oblivious to the cold water soaking through the sheets. “WHAT?!”
Roger looked nearly as shocked as I felt. He swallowed, searching for words. “I … I … I thought you knew,” he stammered, voice breaking. “Didn’t you …? I mean … I thought … look, it’ll grow!”
I could feel my mouth working, vainly trying different shapes that might approximate words, but there was no connection between tongue and brain—there was room for nothing but the realization that the accustomed soft, heavy weight of my hair was gone, replaced by a fuzz of bristles.
“Malva and Mrs. Bug cut it off, day before yesterday,” Roger said, all in a rush. “They—we weren’t here, Bree nor I, we wouldn’t have let them, of course we wouldn’t—but they thought it’s what you do for someone with a terrible fever, it is what people do now. Bree was furious with them, but they thought—they truly thought they were helping save your life—oh, God, Claire, don’t look like that, please!”
His face had disappeared in a starburst of light, a curtain of shimmering water suddenly coming down to protect me from the gaze of the world.
I wasn’t conscious of crying, at all. Grief simply burst from me, like wine spraying from a wineskin stabbed with a knife. Purple-red as bone marrow, splattering and dripping everywhere.
“I’ll fetch Jamie!” he croaked.
“NO!” I seized him by the sleeve, with more strength than I would have imagined I possessed. “God, no! I don’t want him to see me like this!”
His momentary silence told me, but I kept stubborn hold of his sleeve, unable to think how else to prevent the unthinkable. I blinked, water sliding over my face like a stream over rock, and Roger wavered once more into visibility, blurred around the edges.
“He’s … er … he’s seen you,” Roger said gruffly. He looked down, not wanting to meet my eyes. “It. Already. I mean—” He waved a hand vaguely in the vicinity of his own black locks. “He saw it.”
“He did?” This was nearly as much a shock as the initial discovery. “What—what did he say?”
He took a deep breath and looked back up, like someone fearing to see a Gorgon. Or the anti-Gorgon, I thought bitterly.
“He didn’t say anything,” Roger said quite gently, and put a hand on my arm. “He—he just cried.”
I was still crying, too, but in a more orthodox fashion now. Less of the gasping note. The sense of bone-deep cold had passed, and my limbs felt warm now, though I still felt a disconcertingly chilly breeze on my scalp. My heart was slowing again, and a faint sense that I was standing outside my body came over me.
Shock? I thought, dimly surprised as the word formed itself in my mind, rubbery and melting. I supposed that one could suffer true physical shock as the result of emotional wounds—of course one could, I knew that.…
“Claire!” I became aware that Roger was calling my name with increasing urgency, and shaking my arm. With immense effort, I brought my eyes to focus on him. He was looking truly alarmed, and I wondered, vaguely, whether I had started to die again. But no—it was too late for that.
“What?”
He sighed—with relief, I thought.
“You looked funny for a moment.” His voice was cracked and husky; he sounded as though it hurt him to talk. “I thought—d’ye want another drink of water?”
The suggestion seemed so incongruous that I nearly laughed. But I was terribly thirsty—and all at once, a cup of cold water seemed the most desirable thing in the world.
“Yes.” The tears continued to flow down my face, but now seemed almost soothing. I made no attempt to stop them—that seemed much too difficult—but blotted my face with a corner of the damp sheet.
It was beginning to dawn on me that I might not have made the wisest—or at least not the easiest—choice, when I decided not to die. Things outside the limits and concerns of my own body were starting to come back. Troubles, difficulties, dangers … sorrow. Dark, frightening things, like a swarm of bats. I didn’t want to look too closely at the images that lay in a disorderly pile at the bottom of my brain—things I had jettisoned in the struggle to stay afloat.
But if I had come back, I had come back to be what I was—and I was a doctor.
“The … sickness.” I blotted the last of the tears and let Roger wrap his hands around mine, helping me to hold the new cup. “Is it still—?”
“No.” He spoke gently, and guided the rim of the cup to my lips. What was it? I wondered vaguely. Water, but with something in it—mint and something stronger, more bitter … angelica?
“It’s stopped.” Roger held the cup, letting me sip slowly. “No one’s fallen sick in the last week.”
“A week?” I bobbled the cup, spilling a little down my chin. “How long have I—”
“Just about that.” He cleared his throat. Roger’s eyes were intent on the cup; he skimmed a thumb lightly along my chin, removing the drops I had spilled. “You were among the last to fall sick.”
I took a long breath, then drank a bit more. The liquid had a soft, sweet taste, too, floating over the bitter tang … honey. My mind located the word and I felt a sense of relief at having located this small missing piece of reality.
I knew from his manner that some of the sick had died, but asked no more for the moment. Deciding to live was one thing. Rejoining the world of the living was a struggle that would take strength I didn’t have right now. I had pulled up my roots, and lay like a wilted plant; sinking them back into the earth was beyond me for the moment.
The knowledge that people I knew—perhaps had loved—had died seemed an equal grief to the loss of my hair—and either was more than I could cope with.
I drank two further cups of honey-sweetened water, despite the underlying bitterness, then lay back with a sigh, my stomach feeling like a small, cold balloon.
“Ye want to take a bit of rest,” Roger advised me, putting down the cup on the table. “I’ll fetch Brianna, aye? But you sleep if ye want to.”
I hadn’t strength to nod, but managed a twitch of the lips that seemed to pass muster as a smile. I reached up a trembling hand and brushed it gingerly over the top of my shorn head. Roger flinched, very slightly.
He rose, and I saw how thin and strained he looked—he would have been helping tend the sick all week, I supposed, not only me. And bury the dead. He was licensed to conduct funerals.
“Roger?” It was a terrible effort to speak; so terribly hard to find the words, separate them from the tangle in my head. “Have you eaten anything recently?”
His face changed then, a look of relief lightening the lines of strain and worry.
“No,” he said, cleared his throat again, and smiled. “Not since last night.”
“Oh. Well,” I said, and lifted one hand, heavy as lead. “Do. Get something. Won’t you?”
“Yes,” he said. “I will.” Instead of leaving, though, he hesitated, then took several rapid strides back, bent over the bed, and seizing my face between his palms, kissed me on the forehead.
“You’re beautiful,” he said fiercely, and with a final squeeze of my cheeks, left.
“What?” I said faintly, but the only answer was the bellying of the curtain as the breeze came in, scented with apples.
In point of fact, I looked like a skeleton with a particularly unflattering crew cut, as I learned when I finally gained sufficient strength as to force Jamie to bring me a looking glass.
“I dinna suppose ye’d think of wearing a cap?” he suggested, diffidently fingering a muslin specimen that Marsali had brought me. “Only until it grows out a bit?”
“I don’t suppose I bloody would.”
I had some difficulty in saying this, shocked as I was by the horrifying vision in the glass. In fact, I had a strong impulse to seize the cap from his hands, put it on and pull it down to my shoulders.
I had rejected earlier offers of a cap from Mrs. Bug—who had been vol
ubly congratulating herself on my survival as the obvious result of her fever treatment—and from Marsali, Malva, and every other woman who’d come to visit me.
This was simple contrariness on my part; the sight of my unrestrained hair outraged their Scottish sense of what was proper in a woman, and they’d been trying—with varying degrees of subtlety—to force me into a cap for years. I was damned if I’d let circumstance accomplish it for them.
Having now seen myself in a mirror, I felt somewhat less adamant about it. And my scalped head did feel a bit chilly. On the other hand, I realized that if I were to give in, Jamie would be terribly alarmed—and I thought I’d frightened him quite enough, judging by the hollow look of his face and the deep smudges under his eyes.
As it was, his face had lightened considerably when I rejected the cap he was holding, and he tossed it aside.
I carefully turned the looking glass over and set it on the counterpane, repressing a sigh.
“Always good for a laugh, I suppose, seeing the expressions on people’s faces when they catch sight of me.”
Jamie glanced at me, the corner of his mouth twitching.
“Ye’re verra beautiful, Sassenach,” he said gently. Then he burst out laughing, snorting through his nose and wheezing. I raised one eyebrow at him, picked up the glass and looked again—which made him laugh harder.
I leaned back against the pillows, feeling a bit better. The fever had quite gone, but I still felt wraithlike and weak, barely able to sit up unassisted, and I fell asleep almost without warning, after the least exertion.
Jamie, still snorting, took my hand, raised it to his mouth, and kissed it. The sudden warm immediacy of the touch rippled the fair hairs of my forearm, and my fingers closed involuntarily on his.
“I love you,” he said very softly, his shoulders still trembling with laughter.
“Oh,” I said, suddenly feeling quite a lot better. “Well, then. I love you, too. And it will grow, after all.”
“So it will.” He kissed my hand again, and set it gently on the quilt. “Have ye eaten?”
“A bit,” I said, with what forbearance I could muster. “I’ll have more later.”
I had realized many years before why “patients” are called that; it’s because a sick person is generally incapacitated, and thus obliged to put up with any amount of harassment and annoyance from persons who are not sick.
The fever had broken and I had regained consciousness two days before; since then, the invariable response of everyone who saw me was to gasp at my appearance, urge me to wear a cap—and then try to force food down my throat. Jamie, more sensitive to my tones of voice than were Mrs. Bug, Malva, Brianna, or Marsali, wisely desisted after a quick glance at the tray by the bed to see that I actually had eaten something.
“Tell me what’s happened,” I said, settling and bracing myself. “Who’s been ill? How are they? And who—” I cleared my throat. “Who’s died?”
He narrowed his eyes at me, obviously trying to guess whether I would faint, die, or leap out of bed if he told me.
“Ye’re sure ye feel well enough, Sassenach?” he asked dubiously. “It’s news that wilna spoil with keeping.”
“No, but I have to hear sooner or later, don’t I? And knowing is better than worrying about what I don’t know.”
He nodded, taking the point, and took a deep breath.
“Aye, then. Padraic and his daughter are well on the mend. Evan—he’s lost his youngest, wee Bobby, and Grace is still ill, but Hugh and Caitlin didna fall sick at all.” He swallowed, and went on. “Three of the fisher-folk have died; there’s maybe a dozen still ailing, but most are on the mend.” He knit his brows, considering. “And then there’s Tom Christie. He’s still bad, I hear.”
“Is he? Malva didn’t mention it.” But then, Malva had refused to tell me anything when I’d asked earlier, insisting that I must just rest, and not worry myself.
“What about Allan?”
“No, he’s fine,” Jamie assured me.
“How long has Tom been sick?”
“I dinna ken. The lass can tell ye.”
I nodded—a mistake, as the light-headedness had not left me yet, and I was obliged to shut my eyes and let my head fall back, illuminated patterns flashing behind my lids.
“That’s very odd,” I said, a little breathlessly, hearing Jamie start up in response to my small collapse. “When I close my eyes, often I see stars—but not like stars in the sky. They look just like the stars on the lining of a doll’s suitcase—a portmanteau, I mean—that I had as a child. Why do you suppose that is?”
“I havena got the slightest idea.” There was a rustle as he sat back down on the stool. “Ye’re no still delirious, are ye?” he asked dryly.
“Shouldn’t think so. Was I delirious?” Breathing deeply and carefully, I opened my eyes and gave him my best attempt at a smile.
“Ye were.”
“Do I want to know what I said?”
The corner of his mouth twitched.
“Probably not, but I may tell ye sometime, anyway.”
I considered closing my eyes and floating off to sleep, rather than contemplate future embarrassments, but rallied. If I was going to live—and I was—I needed to gather up the strands of life that tethered me to the earth, and reattach them.
“Bree’s family, and Marsali’s—they’re all right?” I asked only for form’s sake; both Bree and Marsali had come to hover anxiously over my prostrate form, and while neither one would tell me anything they thought might upset me in my weakened condition, I was reasonably sure that neither one could have kept it secret if the children were seriously ill.
“Aye,” he said slowly, “aye, they’re fine.”
“What?” I said, picking up the hesitation in his voice.
“They’re fine,” he repeated quickly. “None of them has fallen ill at all.”
I gave him a cold look, though careful not to move too much while doing it.
“You may as well tell me,” I said. “I’ll get it out of Mrs. Bug if you don’t.”
As though mention of her name had invoked her, I heard the distinctive thump of Mrs. Bug’s clogs on the stair, approaching. She was moving more slowly than usual, and with a care suggesting that she was laden with something.
This proved to be true; she negotiated sideways through the door, beaming, a loaded tray in one hand, the other wrapped round Henri-Christian, who clung to her, monkeylike.
“I’ve brought ye a wee bit to eat, a leannan,” she said briskly, nudging the barely touched bowl of parritch and plate of cold toast aside to make room for the fresh provisions. “Ye’re no catching, are ye?”
Barely waiting for my shake of the head, she leaned over the bed and gently decanted Henri-Christian into my arms. Undiscriminatingly friendly as always, he butted his head under my chin, nuzzled into my chest, and began mouthing my knuckles, his sharp little baby teeth making small dents in my skin.
“Hallo, what’s happened here?” I frowned, smoothing the soft brown licks of baby hair off his rounded brow, where the yellowing stain of an ugly bruise showed at his hairline.
“The spawn of the de’il tried to kill the poor wean,” Mrs. Bug informed me, mouth pulled tight. “And would have done, too, save for Roger Mac, bless him.”
“Oh? Which spawn was this?” I asked, familiar with Mrs. Bug’s methods of description.
“Some of the fishers’ weans,” Jamie said. He put out a finger and touched Henri-Christian’s nose, snatched it away as the baby grabbed for it, then touched his nose again. Henri-Christian giggled and grabbed his own nose, entranced by the game.
“The wicked creatures tried to drown him,” Mrs. Bug amplified. “Stole the puir wee laddie in his basket and set him adrift in the creek!”
“I shouldna think they meant to drown him,” Jamie said mildly, still absorbed in the game. “If so, they wouldna have troubled wi’ the basket, surely.”
“Hmph!” was Mrs. Bug’s response to this
piece of logic. “They didna mean to do him any good,” she added darkly.
I had been taking a quick inventory of Henri-Christian’s physique, finding several more healing bruises, a small scabbed cut on one heel, and a scraped knee.
“Well, you’ve been bumped about a bit, haven’t you?” I said to him.
“Ump. Heeheehee!” said Henri-Christian, vastly entertained by my explorations.
“Roger saved him?” I asked, glancing up at Jamie.
He nodded, one side of his mouth turning up a little.
“Aye. I didna ken what was going on, ’til wee Joanie rushed up to me, shouting as they’d taken her brother—but I got there in time to see the end of the matter.”
The boys had set the baby’s basket afloat in the trout pool, a wide, deep spot in the creek, where the water was fairly quiet. Made of stoutly woven reeds, the basket had floated—long enough for the current to push it toward the outfall from the pool, where the water ran swiftly through a stretch of rocks, before plunging over a three-foot fall, down into a tumbling churn of water and boulders.
Roger had been building a rail fence, within earshot of the creek. Hearing boys shouting and Félicité’s steam-whistle shrieks, he had dropped the rail he was holding and rushed down the hill, thinking that she was being tormented.
Instead, he had burst from the trees just in time to see Henri-Christian, in his basket, tip slowly over the edge of the outfall and start bumping crazily from rock to rock, spinning in the current and taking on water.
Running down the bank and launching himself in a flat dive, Roger had landed full-length in the creek just below the fall, in time for Henri-Christian, bawling with terror, to drop from his sodden basket, plummet down the fall, and land on Roger, who grabbed him.
“I was just in time to see it,” Jamie informed me, grinning at the memory. “And then to see Roger Mac rise out o’ the water like a triton, wi’ duckweed streaming from his hair, blood runnin’ from his nose, and the wee lad clutched tight in his arms. A terrible sight, he was.”
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