by Susan King
She touched his scarred thumb. “Have,” she insisted. “You could help him. Rebreak the leg, and set it again—”
“That is a great risk,” he said. “I lack the skill for it. And you lack the physical strength. Besides, Gilchrist would never agree to it.” He moved his hand away. “You must think the Dunsheen Campbells a collection of weaklings and grotesques, Mistress Physician.” His droll tone had an underlying sharpness.
“Not at all,” she replied. “I see strength and beauty in each of you.”
He looked puzzled. “Gilchrist is handsome, I know, and Brigit is a pretty child—”
“Gilchrist has the face of an angel,” she agreed. “And Brigit too. But it is the protection and caring they have here that is most beautiful.” Diarmid listened in silence. “I heard you tell MacSween that you refuse to put Brigit in a convent,” she said. “And I saw how angry you and Arthur were when he made remarks about Gilchrist, and about your sister, who seems to have some difficulties. I hope you do not mind me overhearing that,” she finished in a rush.
He shook his head. “I am glad you listened. I want you to consider going to see Sorcha. I know you are angry with MacSween, but I think you can help her.”
She frowned. “Would you set me two miracles to perform, when I have asked but one task of you?” she asked, her tone more curt than she meant.
He held up a hand. “Peace. I just want you to see Sorcha, and help her however you judge best. I know it is difficult for you to go there, but I do not trust the old midwife that Ranald has hired for her. Sorcha needs a younger woman, a friend. That is all I ask. A few days of your time to encourage her. We all worry about her.”
She was touched, as she had been at other times, by the caring and kindness that she sometimes glimpsed in him. He truly loved his kin. And he asked for her expertise this time.
“I will think on it,” she said. She would consider all the implications of going to Glas Eilean later.
“My thanks,” he said quietly.
She nodded, and lifted her hands to tuck the blanket around Brigit. “I want her to walk as much as you do,” she murmured.
“No one can want it as much as I do,” he said fiercely.
“I have seen lame and crippled people treated as if they were less than dogs,” she said. “In many cities in Europe, they live in the streets and beg for food. They are spurned and forgotten, and left to die by those who should show them mercy.” She took Brigit’s limp fingers from her mouth and tucked them under the covers. “My husband Ibrahim tried to help such beggars regain their strength. Some of his colleagues praised him as a Good Samaritan. Others criticized him for a fool.”
“Was he a Saracen, your husband?”
“Ibrahim was from the Moorish part of Spain,” she said. “His mother was a Christian and his father a converted Saracen. He studied medicine and astrology in Istanbul as a young man, and later came to Bologna to practice medicine and to lecture at the university. I met him there.”
“He was your teacher?” he asked, sounding surprised.
She nodded. “He taught anatomy, diseases, and astrology. He also wrote treatises on medical matters—perhaps you have read them. Ibrahim Ibn Kateb was his name.”
He shook his head. “I have read few medical texts. He must have been much older than you.”
“Old enough to be my grandfather, actually,” she answered. “He chose me, along with a male student, to become his assistants. Ibrahim took us both into his home to teach us. I stayed to help him in his practice.”
“And to marry him.”
She looked away as if to protect her secrets. Diarmid’s gaze was too direct, too keen. “Ibrahim was very kind to me,” she said. “He encouraged me and taught me much of what I know.”
“Was he aware of your healing abilities?”
She could not meet his gaze. “He was—he believed that the healing incidents were a sign that I was meant to be a physician. Ibrahim urged me to trust in empirical sciences, and to rely on what I learned through reading and experience. He...felt it was wise for me to abandon my healing abilities.” And she felt safe, just now, saying no more about what Ibrahim had done for her.
“How long were you married?”
“Four years. He died just over a year ago. His heart was not strong—although he did not let me know that until nearly the end.” She bit her lip and looked away.
“You miss him,” Diarmid said gently. “You loved him.”
She shrugged, a vulnerable admission of her affection for Ibrahim. “I admired his kindness, his knowledge. He would have known what to do for Brigit.” She looked up, uncomfortable with the direction of his probing, ready to change the focus. “And what of you?” she asked.
“What? My marriage or my teacher? They are not one and the same,” he added wryly.
She wanted to know about his marriage, but sensed he would hold his secrets back, just as she had kept hers from him. “Where did you learn the art of surgery?”
He combed his fingers through Brigit’s hair, golden strands curling around his hand. “My father sent me to Mullinch priory in the Isles when I was thirteen,” he said. “I was not the eldest. My older brother ran with Wallace and died in battle when I was in the monastery. My father wanted one of his sons to master letters and languages and something of civilization. I studied Latin, French, mathematics, philosophy, and so on, learning them faster than the monks could teach me. The rest of my time should have been filled with prayer and meditation, but I preferred to throw rocks and perfect my hand-grappling skills with some of the other students. I considered myself a warrior, and no scholar or monk.”
She smiled. “The ram, ruled by Mars the warrior,” she said. “Eager for a fair fight, and eager to win. Such lads are keenly intelligent, but often too impatient to be scholars.”
He cocked a brow at her, amused. “Ah, is that what it was? I wish you could have told the prior of Mullinch that. You might have spared me a few punishments.” She laughed. His returned grin was fleeting and slanted, and caused her stomach to flutter oddly.
“Were you punished and dismissed?” she asked.
“The prior decided that I should do penance for my violent urges by treating illnesses and injuries in the infirmary. The infirmarian took me under his tutelage. He owned two books on materia medica and a volume of Galen, which I pored over until I had memorized them. But Brother Colum was old and died when I was nearly sixteen. I left Mullinch and pledged myself in service to Robert Bruce, and ran with his Highland warriors. Shortly after that, my father died and I became Dunsheen’s laird.”
“When I saw you, you were young, but already a fine surgeon.”
He shrugged. “Only an empiric surgeon, without true book-learning and academic instruction as you have. But I learned a great deal through necessity, added to the basics that I had learned at Mullinch.”
“And now?”
He looked away. “I am done with that part of my life.”
She tilted her head. “I do not believe that.”
“Do you not? Is this the hand of a capable surgeon?” He waved his left hand in the shadows.
“It is a gifted hand regardless,” she said firmly. The look he cast toward her was dark. She saw a warning there, as if she trod unsafe ground. “Just look at what your touch has done. Brigit is asleep.” She lightened her tone deliberately.
“Ah, well.” He smiled, resting his long fingers beside hers on Brigit’s back, so close that Michaelmas could feel the subtle heat. “That we did together.” He tilted his head. “Now tell me why you decided to become a book-trained physician. That is an unusual education for any woman, let alone a Scotswoman. Was it because of your healing gift?”
She smiled ruefully. “I once saw a young surgeon save a man’s life on a battlefield,” she murmured. “From that day on, I wanted to do what he did.”
He frowned. “Do not jest with me.”
She shook her head. “I mean that. I watched you that day, and carri
ed the memory of it with me for years. You were so skilled, so compassionate. I never forgot what you did.”
“But you were the one—” Then he half laughed. “We each value that memory, it seems, for different reasons.”
“Value it? I cherished it,” she whispered. “I thought about it for years, Diarmid. My healing gift was wondrous but unpredictable. What I saw you do was masterful, based on skill. I wanted to be able to do that, too.”
Diarmid shifted his fingers over hers, the almond oil slippery and warm between them. “Michael,” he murmured. “Thank you.” He held her hand for a moment, while her heart beat an odd rhythm. Then he let go too quickly. “How did you come to attend an Italian school?”
“I have a friend from childhood, Will MacKerras—his mother married my great-uncle John. Will attended Oxford and then went to Bologna to study canon law. When he came back to Kilglassie to visit his mother and stepfather, he told me about the young women who studied alongside the men there. He said that they earned their certificates as physicians equal to the male students. I knew that Oxford and Paris would never admit a woman, so I begged Gavin to let me go to Italy. Finally he agreed and Will escorted me there the next year. I lived there eight years in all,” she added. “My life took directions that I would never have dreamed. Ibrahim was well-respected. I could not have had a finer mentor.”
“You had a good marriage?” he asked.
“We were suited in many ways. Not in all,” she finished quietly. She looked up, the next question burning within her.
“And yours?”
“My own marriage was—unsuitable.” He paused, looked away. “We were wed five years ago. Anabel is beautiful, intelligent, and willful. She soon found that a husband who was gone for long months with the king was boring. She took a lover.” He shrugged, but she sensed in his posture that he still felt the burden of that pain. “I tried to obtain a divorce, but the bishop’s court declared instead that we should have a divorce et mensa et thoro—we are separated in bed and board, and not required to live together.”
“Where is she now?” Michaelmas asked quietly.
“She lives in a convent as a lay sister. I hear little word of her. She is Ranald’s cousin, and he has word of her now and then. I send a coin and goods twice a year to the convent, but I never see her. And I do not ask.”
“But you are still wed,” she said.
He nodded once, brusquely. She saw the telltale muscle thump in his cheek, and realized that it cost him much to speak of this. “I am resigned to it, but I do regret that I will never have sons. Dunsheen will pass to Arthur, as the eldest of my brothers.”
“I am sorry,” she whispered, stricken by a heaviness in her heart, as if she felt his hopelessness. A laird without a wife, without sons, and no hope for either, was sad indeed.
He smiled ruefully. “Do not be sorry for me. I made a mistake and I am paying for it,” he said. “I was young, and enchanted. Never again,” he added, looking away.
She felt a slump of hope within herself. Until that moment she had not realized that she had even considered the possibility of marriage to the laird of Dunsheen. She reminded herself that she had a widow’s secure status, and did not need to marry again. And Diarmid Campbell was virile and attractive, but far too stubborn and insistent on his own way.
She sighed and tucked the covers again around the sleeping child. “I will rub her legs tomorrow. She should have heat treatments with hot cloths soaked in herbs. I will give the instructions to Lilias.”
He nodded and rose when she did. As she went toward the door, he took her arm in the shadows.
“Michael.” He paused awkwardly. “Thank you. Brigit will do well in your care.”
She looked at the sleeping child in the bed, so small, so fragile beneath the heavy covers. “I wish I could give her the magic she deserves. I understand why you promised it to her.”
His fingers pressed her arm in a brief, comforting gesture. “I could not refuse,” he answered. “Now that I have promised, I must find some way to make it happen.”
She looked away. “I am sorry that I cannot be the answer to your prayers.”
His thumb made heated circles on her shoulder. “You may be yet, Michael girl,” he murmured. “You may be yet.”
The feel of his fingers sent delicate shivers along her throat, into her breasts, along her spine. She looked up. The warm glow of the hearth softened the hard, handsome planes of his face. He tipped his head, his gray eyes as clear as crystal.
“There is more magic in you than you know,” he murmured.
His touch brought back the memory of the brief, compelling kiss they had shared by the healing pool. Michaelmas suddenly wanted his lips on hers so much that she thought she would melt with the urge, thought her knees would buckle beneath her and her thumping heart pound through the silence between them.
The desire he roused in her with the slightest touch stunned her, drew her in. She had never responded to a man’s touch like this. Her body, of its own accord, surged toward him, wanting the vibrancy, the promise that his hands, his body, could offer. She craved that and more, much more, as if he was water for her thirst, warmth for the cold she had felt for so long.
But she drew in a breath and fought against the strong urges of her body. He was wed, hurt. She was lonely, and had been for a long time, even during the years of her marriage. But she would not behave like a wanton. Neither of them would want that, and no good could come of it past the satisfaction of the moment.
She stepped back. “Good night, Dunsheen.”
He nodded. “Micheil,” he said. Even his voice was like a lodestone to her. She loved the way he said the name he himself had given her. She wanted no other name now.
But she had to get away from here, or regret it. Going to the door, she pulled it open and stepped out into the dark corridor. She felt a tug in her heart as she walked away, as if a silver thread linked them together and strained a little as she left him. That glittery thread had begun to stretch between them on the day she had knelt beside him on a battlefield. Now she was moored to him, and did not know how to free herself.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“He is sodden drunk,” Michael said. She frowned at Angus, who grinned back at her. “Does he do this often?”
Diarmid scratched his chin, puzzled. “Only at Yuletide,” he said, wondering what lay behind his elderly cousin’s unusual state. Angus was sprawled on a bench in the great hall, head down on the table, moaning. “I have never seen him do this, in the middle of the night, for no apparent reason.”
“Well, we will have to convince him to tell us the reason,” Michael said.
Diarmid nodded. Iona had knocked on his door quite late, during a wild storm, two days after Arthur and Ranald had left for Ayr. At first Diarmid had mistaken the frantic pounding for thunder outside the walls. Once he had gone to the door, Iona had told him that her grandfather was miserably drunk and moaning in the great hall. She had already fetched Lady Michael, who had sent Iona for Diarmid.
He lifted Angus’s arm over his shoulder. “Ho, man,” he said, shifting Angus’s weight until the man stood. “Off to bed, now. You’ve had enough uisge-beatha for five strong men.”
Angus groaned again and collapsed back down to the bench. Swiping at a winebladder on the table, he spilled some into his mouth. Another moan, long and loud, inspired one of the dogs by the hearth to echo the mournful sound.
“He must be in pain,” Iona said. “Grandfather, what is it?”
Angus and the dog howled again. The old man took another swallow from the bladder, then clapped a hand to his cheek and opened his mouth.
Diarmid leaned forward and swayed back, hit by a foul blast; the man’s breath mixed good amounts of hard spirits with decay. Angus attempted to speak, his reply garbled by the effects of the drink, and by what Diarmid now saw was a swollen cheek.
“Ah,” Diarmid said, nodding sagely. “Bad tooth.”
Angus nodded miserably an
d swished more liquor around in his mouth, spitting it onto the rushes. Then he took another generous mouthful and swallowed it down.
“He’s trying to numb the pain with liquor,” Iona said.
“By the look of him, he should be quite numb,” Michael said. She touched his shoulder gently. “Let me see, Angus.”
He craned his mouth open. Michael peered inside, then felt his jaw and neck. She motioned for Iona to bring a candle and hold it high, then looked again into Angus’s mouth.
“I need to probe to find the bad tooth,” she said. “It will have to come out. The foul humors are causing his face to swell.”
Angus moaned and shook his head, hanging it in his hands. Iona bit her lip and looked fretfully at Michael and Diarmid.
Michael glanced at Diarmid. “I will need some help.”
He nodded evenly and turned to Iona. “We need hot water and a good deal more candles for light.”
“Iona, does Lilias keep oil of wormwood in her kitchen supply?” Michael asked.
“I think so.”
“Fetch me that, and clove oil too, if she has it.” Iona nodded at Michael’s brisk order, and left the room.
Diarmid hauled a protesting Angus off the bench and situated him in the high-backed carved chair, then propped up his feet. Turning toward the hearth, he set a few pine logs on the already glowing peat coals, and coaxed the wood until it blazed brightly.
“I have some surgical tools,” he said. “I’ll get what you will need.” She nodded.
Once back in his bedchamber, Diarmid opened a locked wooden chest beneath the window. He took out a leather bundle and unrolled it to reveal a silk lining and the surgical instruments that he had carried with him, years earlier, when he traveled with Robert Bruce’s army. Golden needles, silver scissors, iron pincers, steel scalpels and small saws gleamed and chinked as he handled them. His hand trembled as he chose a pair of pincers.
