The Fiery Cross

by Diana Gabaldon

  lame; one leg dragged, her shoe scraping on the wooden floor.

  There was a bumping and grunting as she fumbled with the bolt; a grating noise, and then a thunk as she dropped it on the floor. The door was warped, stuck in its frame; Jamie put his shoulder to it and it sprang loose and swung in, boards quivering with the shock. How long since it had been opened? I wondered.

  A good long time, evidently. I heard Jamie snort and cough as he went in, and did my best to breathe through my mouth as I followed. Even so, the smell was enough to knock a ferret over. Beyond the reek of the goods, there was an outhouse smell from somewhere; stale urine and a ripe fecal stench. Rotting food, too, but something else besides. My nostrils twitched cautiously as I tried to inhale no more than a few molecules of air for analysis.

  "How long has Mr. Beardsley been ill?" I asked.

  I had picked out a distinct stench of sickness amid the general fetor. Not only the ghost of long-dried vomit, but the sweet smell of purulent discharge and that indefinable musty, yeast-rising odor that seems to be simply the smell of illness itself

  "Oh ... thome time."

  She shut the door behind us, and I felt a sudden surge of claustrophobia. Inside, the air seemed thick, both from the stench and from the lack of light. I had a great impulse to rip down the coverings from both windows and let in a little air, and clenched my hands in the fabric of my cloak to keep from doing it.

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  Mrs. Beardsley turned sideways and scuttled crablike through a narrow passage left between the stacks of goods. Jamie glanced at me, made a Scottish noise of disgust in his throat, and ducked under a jutting bundle of tent poles to follow her. I made my way cautiously after, trying not to notice that my foot fell now and then on objects of an unpleasant squashiness. Rotten apples? Dead rats? I pinched my nose and didn't look down.

  The farmhouse was simple in construction; one big room across the front, one behind.

  The rear room was a striking contrast to the squalid clutter of the front. There was no ornament or decoration; the room was plain and orderly as a Quaker meeting hall. Everything was bare and spotless, the wooden table and stone hearth scrubbed to rawness, a few pewter utensils gleaming dully on a shelf. One window here had been left uncovered, glass intact, and- the morning sun fell across the room in pure white radiance. The room was quiet and the air still, increasing the odd feeling that we had entered a sanctuary of some sort from the chaos of the front room.

  The impression of peace was dispelled at once by a loud noise from above. It was the sound we had heard earlier, but close at hand, a loud squeal filled with desperation, like a tortured hog. Jamie started at the sound, and turnedat once toward a ladder at the far side of the room, which led upward to a loft.

  "He'th up there," Mrs. Beardsley said-unnecessarily, as Jamie was already halfivay up the ladder. The squealing noise came again, more urgently, and I decided not to fetch my medicine box before investigating.

  Jamie's head appeared at the top of the ladder as I grasped it. "Bring a light, Sassenach," he said briefly, and his head vanished.

  Mrs. Beardsley stood motionless, hands buried in her shawl, making no effort to find a light. Her lips were pressed tight together, her plump cheeks mottled with red. I pushed past her, seized a candlestick from the shelf, and knelt to light it at the hearth before hastening upward.

  "Jamie?" I poked my head above the edge of the loft, holding my candle cautiously above my head.

  "Here, Sassenach." He was standing at the far end of the loft, where the shadows lay thickest. I scrambled over the top of the ladder and made my way toward him, stepping gingerly.

  The stench was much stronger here. I caught the gleam of something in the dark, and brought the candle forward to see.

  Jamie drew in his breath, as shocked as I was, but quickly mastered his emotion.

  "Mr. Beardsley, I presume," he said.

  The man was enormous-or had been. The great curve of his belly still rose whalelike out of the shadows, and the hand that lay slack on the floorboards near my foot could have cupped a cannonball with ease. But the flesh of the upper arm hung slack, white and flabby, the massive chest sunken in the center. What must once have been the neck of a bull had wasted to stringiness, and a single eye gleamed, frantic behind strands of matted hair.

  The eye widened, and he made the noise again, his head straining upward urgently. I felt a shudder go through Jamie. It was enough to raise the hair on

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  the back of my own neck, but I disregarded it, pushing the candlestick into Jamie's hands.

  "Hold the light for me."

  I sank to my knees, too late feeling the liquid ooze through the fabric of my skirt. The man lay in his own filth, and had been lying so for quite some time; the floor was thickvNith slime and wet. He was naked, covered by no more than a linen blanket, and as I turned it back, I glimpsed ulcerated sores amid the smears of ordure.

  it was clear enough what ailed Mr. Beardsley; one side of his face sagged grotesquely, the eyelid drooping, and both the arm and the leg on the near side of his body splayed limp and dead, the joints left knobby and weirdly distorted by the falling away of the muscle around them. He snuffied and bleated, tongue poking and slobbering from the corner of his mouth in his vain but urgent attempts at speech.

  "Hush," I said to him. "Don't talk; it's all right now."

  I took the wrist to check his pulse; the flesh moved loosely on the bones of his arm, with not the slightest twitch of response to my touch.

  "A stroke," I said softly to Jamie. "An apoplexy, you call it." I put my hand on Beardsley's chest, to offer the comfort of touch.

  "Don't worry," I said to him. "We've come to help." I spoke reassuringly, though even as I said the words, I wondered what help was possible. Well, cleanliness and warmth at least; it was nearly as cold in the loft as it was outside, and his chest was chilly and pebbled with gooseflesh among the bushy hair.

  The ladder creaked heavily, and I turned to see the outline of Mrs. Beardsley's fluffy head and heavy shoulders, silhouetted by the light from the kitchen below.

  "How long has he been like this?" I asked sharply.

  "Perhapth ... a month," she said, after a pause. "I could not move him," she said, defensive. "He ith too heavy."

  That was plainly true. However ...

  "Why is he up here?" Jamie demanded. "If ye didna move him, how did he get here?" He turned, shedding the light of the candle over the loft. There was little here that would draw a man; an old straw mattress, a few scattered tools, and bits of household rubbish. The fight shone on Mrs. Beardsley's face, turning her pale blue eyes to ice.

  "He wath ... chathing me," she said faintly.

  "What?" Jamie strode over to the ladder, and bending down, seized her by the arm, helping her-rather against her will, it seemed-to clamber up the rest of the way into the loft.

  "What d'ye mean, chasing you?" he demanded. She hunched her shoulders, looking round and homely as a cookie jar in her bundled shawls.

  "He thtruck me," she said simply. "I came up the ladder to get away from him, but he followed. I tried to hide back here in the thadows, and he came, but then . , . he fell. And ... he could not get up." She shrugged again.

  Jamie held the candlestick near her face. She gave, a small nervous smile, eyes darting from me to Jamie, and I saw that the lisp was caused by the fact that her front teeth were broken-snapped off at an angle, just beyond the gums. A

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  small scar ran through her upper lip; another showed white in the hairs of one eyebrow.

  A horrible noise came from the man on the floor-a furious squeal of what sounded like protest-and she flinched, eyes shut tight in reflexive dread.

  rom her to her husband. "Aye. Well. Fetch "Mmphm," Jamie said, glancing f

  up some water, ma'am, and ye will. Another candle and some fresh rags as well," he called after her departing back as she hastened toward the ladder
, only too glad to be given an excuse to leave.

  "Jamie-bring back the light, will your

  He came and stood beside me, holding the candle so it shed its glow on the ruined body. He gave Beardsley a dark look of mingled pity and dislike, and shook his head slowly.

  "God's judgment, d'ye think, Sassenach?"

  "Not entirely God's, I don't think," I said, my voice lowered so as not to carry to the kitchen below. I reached up and took the candlestick from him. "Look."

  A flask of water and a plate of bread, hard and tinged with blue mold, stood in the shadows near Beardsley's head; orts and bits of gluey, half-chewed bread covered the floor nearby. She had fed him-enough to keep him alive. Yet I had seen great quantities of food in that front room as we passed-hanging hams, barrels of dried fruit and salt fish and sauerkraut.

  -and yet the There were bundles of furs, jugs of oil, piles of woolen blankets

  master of those goods lay here in the dark, starved and shivering beneath a single sheet of linen.

  "Why did she not just let him die, I wonder?" Jamie asked soffly, eyes fixed on the moldy bread. Beardsley gargled and growled at this; his open eye rolled angrily, tears running down his face and snot bubbling from his nose. He flailed and grunted, arching his body in frustration, collapsing with a meaty thud that shook the boards of the loft.

  "He can understand you, I think. Can you?" I addressed this remark to the sick man, who gobbled and drooled in a manner that made it clear that he understood at least that he was being spoken to.

  "As to why. . .

  hem. I gestured toward Beardsley's legs, moving the candle slowly above t

  Some of the sores were indeed compression sores, caused by lying helpless for a long time. Others were not. Parallel slashes, clearly made by a knif

  e, showed black and clotted on one massive thigh. The shin was decorated with a regular line of ulcerations, angry red wounds rimmed with black and oozing. Burns, left to fester.

  Jamie gave a small grunt at the sight, and glanced over his shoulder, toward the ladder. The sound of a door opening came from below, and a cold draft blew up into the loft, making the candle flame dance wildly. The door shut, and the flame steadied.

  "I can make shift to lower him, I think." Jamie lifted the candle, assessing the beams overhead. "A sling, perhaps, with a rope put over yon beam there. Is it all fight to move him?"

  "Yes," I said, but I wasn't paying attention. Bending over the sick man's

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  legs, I had caught a whiff of something that I hadn't smelled in a long, long time-a very bad and sinister stink.

  I hadn't encountered it often, but even once would have been enough; the pungent smell of gas gangrene is strikingly memorable. I didn't want to say anything that might alarm Beardsleyif he was capable of understanding-so instead, I patted him reassuringly and stood up to go and fetch the candle from Jamie for a better look.

  He gave it to me, leaning close to murmur in my ear as he did so. "Can ye do aught for him, Sassenach?"

  "No," I said, equally low-voiced. "Not for the apoplexy, that is. I can treat the sores and give him herbs against fever-that's all."

  He stood for a moment, looking at the humped figure in the shadows, now quiescent. Then he shook his head, crossed himself, and went quickly down the ladder to hunt a rope.

  I went slowly back to the sick man, who greeted me with a thick "Haughhh" and a restless thumping of one leg, like a rabbit's warning. I knelt by his feet, talking soothingly of nothing in particular, while I held the light close to examine them. The toes. All the toes on his dead foot had been burned, some only blistered, others burned nearly to the bone. The first two toes had gone quite black, and a greenish tinge spread over the upper aspect of the foot nearby.

  I was appalled-as much by the thought of what might have led to this as by the action itself. The candle wavered; my hands were shaking, and not only with cold. I was not only horrified by what had happened here; I was also worried by the immediate prospects. What on earth were we to do about these wretched people?

  Plainly we couldn't take Beardsley with us-just as plainly, he could not be ),hbors to look ' lcft here, under the care of his wife. There were no near neig in, no one else on the farm to safeguard him. I supposed we might manage to transport him to Brownsville; there might be a wagon in the barn. But even if so, what then?

  There was no hospital to care for him. If one of the homes in Brownsville might take him in for the sake of charity ... well and good, but seeing Beardsley's state after a month, I thought it unlikely that his condition-in terms either of paralysis or speech-would improve much. Who would keep him, if it meant caring for him day and night for the rest of his life?

  The rest of his life, of course, could be rather short, depending on my success in dealing with the gangrene. Worry retreated as my mind turned to the immediate problem. I would have to amputate; it was the only possibility. The toes were easy-but the toes might not be enough. If I had to take off the foot or part of it, we ran a greater risk from shock and infection.

  Could he feel it? Sometimes stroke victims retained feeling in an affected limb, but not movement, sometimes movement without feeling-sometimes neither. Cautiously, I touched the gangrenous toe, eyes on his face.

  His working eye was open, focused on the beams overhead. He didn't glance at nie or make a noise, which answered that question. No, he couldn't feel the foot. That was a relief, in a wayat least he wouldn't suffer pain from the amputation. Nor, it occurred to me, had he felt the damage inflicted on his

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  limb. Had she been aware of that? Or had she chosen to attack his dead side only because he retained some strength on the other, and might still defend himself?

  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 careffilly. 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." nis 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 ... urn . . ." 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 fine 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

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  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 nigbean nagalladh, 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 midmorning, 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 dlittle warm gruel spooned into him, the man was in a dreadfill state. I examined him once more, carefully, in the fight 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.

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  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.