I tried to ready myself for anything, including the worst. I had no idea what preliminaries Tryon might have engaged in, or how much time might elapse between condemnation and execution. Not bloody long, I thought. I’d known Tryon long enough to see that he acted with thought, but also with dispatch—and he would know that if such things were done, ’twas best they were done quickly.
As to the why of it … imagination failed completely. I could only hope that the woman was wrong; that she had mistaken someone else for Roger. And yet I didn’t think so; neither did Brianna, urging her horse through a boggy patch ahead with an intensity that suggested she would be better pleased to leap off the horse and drag it bodily through the mud.
The afternoon was fading, and clouds of small gnats surrounded us, but Jamie made no move to brush them away. His shoulders were set like stone, braced to bear the burden of knowledge. It was that as much as my own fears that told me Roger was likely dead.
The thought beat against me like a small, sharp hammer, the sort meant for breaking rocks. So far, I felt only brief, recurrent shocks of imagined loss, each time I glanced at Brianna’s white face, thought of tiny Jemmy orphaned, heard the echo of Roger’s soft, deep voice, laughing in the distance, singing through my heart. I did not try to push the hammering thoughts aside; it would do no good. And I would not truly break, I knew, until I saw his body.
Even then, the break would be internal. Brianna would need me. Jamie would stand like a rock for her, would do what must be done—but he, too, would need me, later. No one could absolve him of the guilt I knew he felt, but I could at least be confessor for him, and his intercessor with Brianna. My own mourning could wait—a long time, I hoped.
The ground opened, flattening into the edge of a wide meadow, and Jamie kicked Gideon into a gallop, the other horses streaming after him. Our shadows flew like bats across the grass, the sound of our hoofbeats lost in the sounds of a crowd of men who filled the field.
On a rise at the far end of the meadow stood a huge white oak, its spring leaves bright in the slanting sun. My horse moved suddenly, dodging past a group of men, and I saw them, three stick-figures, dangling broken in the tree’s deep shadow. The hammer struck one final blow, and my heart shattered like ice.
Too late.
It was a bad hanging. Without benefit of official troops, Tryon had had no one to hand with a hangsman’s gruesome—and necessary—skills. The three condemned men had been sat on horses, the ropes round their necks thrown over tree branches above, and at the signal, the horses had been led out from under them, leaving them dangling.
Only one had been fortunate enough to die of a snapped neck. I could see the sharp angle of his head, the limpness of his limbs in their bonds. It wasn’t Roger.
The others had strangled, slowly. The bodies were twisted, held by their bonds in the final postures of their struggle. One man—one body—was cut down as I rode up, and carried past me in the arms of his brother. There was not much to choose between their faces, each contorted, each darkened in its separate agony. They had used what rope was to hand; it was new, unstretched. Roger’s toes trailed in the dust; he had been taller than the rest. His hands had come free; he had managed to hook the fingers of one hand beneath the rope. The fingers were nearly black, all circulation cut off. I couldn’t look at his face at once. I looked at Brianna’s, instead; white and utterly still, each bone and tendon set like death.
Jamie’s face was the same, but where Brianna’s eyes were blank with shock, Jamie’s burned, holes charred black in the bone of his skull. He stood for a moment before Roger, then crossed himself, and said something very quietly in Gaelic. He drew the dirk from his side.
“I’ll hold him. Cut him down, lass.” Jamie handed the knife to Brianna, not looking at her, and stepping forward, took hold of the body round the middle, lifting slightly to take the strain off the rope.
Roger moaned. Jamie froze, arms wrapped tight, and his eyes flicked to me, huge with shock. It was the faintest of sounds; it was only Jamie’s response that convinced me I had indeed heard it—but I had, and so had Brianna. She leapt at the rope, and sawed at it in silent frenzy, and I—stunned into temporary immobility—began to think, as fast as possible.
Maybe not; maybe it was only the sound of the body’s residual air escaping with the movement—but it wasn’t; I could see Jamie’s face, holding him, and I knew it wasn’t.
I darted forward, reaching upward as Roger’s body fell, to catch and cradle the head in my hands, to steady him as Jamie lowered him to the ground. He was cold, but firm. Of course, if he were alive, he must be, but I had prepared myself for the flaccid-meat touch of dead flesh, and the shock of feeling life under my hands was considerable.
“A board,” I said, breathless as though someone had just punched me in the stomach. “A plank, a door, something to put him on. We mustn’t move his head; his neck may be broken.”
Jamie swallowed once, hard, then jerked his head in an awkward nod, and set off, walking stiffly at first, then faster and faster, past the knots of sorrowing kin and eager gawkers, whose curious gaze was turning now in our direction.
Brianna had the dirk still in her hand. As people began to come toward us, she moved past me, and I caught a glimpse of her face. It was still white, still set—but the eyes burned now with a black light that would sear any soul so reckless as to come too near.
I had no attention to spare for interference—or anything else. He wasn’t breathing visibly; no obvious movement of the chest, no twitch of lips or nostrils. I felt vainly for a pulse in his free wrist—pointless to poke at the mass of swollen tissue in his neck—finally found an abdominal pulse, beating faintly just below the breastbone.
The noose was sunk deep in his flesh; I groped frantically in my pocket for my penknife. It was a new rope, raw hemp. The fibers were hairy, stained brown with dried blood. I registered the fact faintly, in the remote part of my mind that had time for such things while my hands were busy. New ropes stretch. A real hangsman has his own ropes, already stretched and oiled, well-tested for ease of use. The raw hemp jabbed my fingers, stabbed painfully under my nails as I clawed and pried and ripped at it.
The last strand popped and I yanked it free, heedless of laceration—that hardly mattered. I daren’t risk tilting his head back; if the cervical vertebrae were fractured, I could cripple or kill him. And if he couldn’t breathe, that wouldn’t matter, either.
I gripped his jaw, tried to sweep my fingers through his mouth, to clear mucus and obstructions. No good, his tongue was swollen, not sticking out, but in the way. Air takes less room than fingers do, though. I pinched his nose tight, breathed two or three times, as deeply as I could, then sealed my mouth on his and blew.
Had I seen his face as he hung, I would have realized at once that he wasn’t dead; his features had gone slack with loss of consciousness and his lips and eyelids were blue—but his face wasn’t black with congested blood, and his eyes were closed, not bulging. He’d lost his bowels, but his spinal cord wasn’t snapped, and he hadn’t strangled—yet.
He was, however, in the process of doing so before my eyes. His chest wasn’t moving. I took another breath, and blew, free hand on his breast. Nothing. Blow. No movement. Blow. Something. Not enough. Blow. Air leaking all around the edges of my mouth. Blow. Like blowing up a rock, not a balloon. Blow again.
Confused voices over my head, Brianna shouting, then Jamie at my elbow.
“Here’s the board,” he said calmly. “What must we do?”
I gasped for breath, and wiped my mouth.
“Take his hips, Bree his shoulders. Move when I tell you, not before.”
We shifted him quickly, my hands holding his head like the Holy Grail. There were people all around us now, but I had no time to look or listen; I had eyes only for what must be done.
I ripped off my petticoat, rolled it and used it to brace his neck; I hadn’t felt any grinding or crackling in the neck when we lifted him, but I needed a
ll the luck I had for other things. By stubbornness or sheer miracle, he wasn’t dead. But he had hung by the neck for the best part of an hour, and the swelling of the tissues in his throat was very shortly going to accomplish what the rope itself hadn’t.
I didn’t know whether I had a few minutes or an hour, but the process was inevitable, and there was only one thing to do about it. No more than a few molecules of air were seeping through that mass of crushed and mangled tissue; a bit more swelling would seal it off altogether. If no air could reach his lungs by means of nose or mouth, another channel must be provided.
I turned to look for Jamie, but it was Brianna who knelt beside me. A certain amount of racket in the background indicated that Jamie was dealing with the spectators.
A cricothrotomy? Fast, and requiring no great skill, but difficult to keep open—and it might not be sufficient to relieve the obstruction. I had one hand on Roger’s sternum, the soft bump of his heart secure under my fingers. Strong enough … maybe.
“Right,” I said to Brianna, hoping I sounded quite calm. “I’ll need a bit of help.”
“Yes,” she said—and thank God, she sounded calm. “What shall I do?”
In essence, nothing all that difficult; simply hold Roger’s head pulled well back, and keep it steady while I slit his throat. Of course, hyperextending the neck could easily sever the spinal cord if there were a fracture, or compress it irreversibly. But Brianna needn’t worry about that—or know about it, either.
She knelt by his head and did as I told her, and the mediastinum of the trachea bulged into view as the skin and fascia over it tightened. There it was, neatly lined up—I hoped—between the great vessels on either side. If it wasn’t, I could easily lacerate the common carotid or the internal jugular, and he’d bleed to death right under my hands.
The only virtue to hideous emergency is that it gives one license to attempt things that could never be done in cold blood.
I fumbled for the small bottle of alcohol that I carried in my pocket. I nearly dropped it, but by the time I had poured the contents over my fingers and wiped both my scalpel and Roger’s neck, the surgeon’s trance had come over me, and my hands were once more steady.
I took a moment, hands on his neck, eyes closed, feeling for the faint throb of the artery, the slightly softer mass of the thyroid. I pressed upward; yes, it moved. I massaged the isthmus of the thyroid, pushing it out of the way, hard toward his head, and with my other hand, pressed the knife blade down into the fourth tracheal cartilage.
The cartilage here was U-shaped, the esophagus behind it soft and vulnerable; I must not stab too deeply. I felt the fibrous parting of skin and fascia, resistance, then the soft pop as the blade went in. There was a sudden loud gurgle, and a wet kind of whistling noise; the sound of air being sucked through blood. Roger’s chest moved. I felt it, and it was only then that I realized my eyes were still shut.
70
ALL IS WELL
The blackness cradled him, comforting in its warm completeness. He felt some faint stirring of something outside it, a painful, intrusive presence, and shrank back into the shelter of the dark. It was melting away around him, though, slowly exposing parts of him to light and harshness.
He opened his eyes. He couldn’t tell what he was looking at, and struggled to understand. His head throbbed and so did a dozen smaller pulses, each one a brilliant, tender burst of pain. He felt the points of pain like pins that nailed him like a butterfly to a board. If he could but pry them free, he might fly away …
He closed his eyes again, seeking the comfort of the darkness. He felt a dim recollection of terrible effort, his rib-muscles tearing with the struggle for air. There was water somewhere in his memory, filling his nose, wetness ballooning the hollows of his clothes … was he drowning? The idea sent a faint flicker of alarm through his mind. They said it was an easy death, drowning, like falling asleep. Was he sinking, falling into a treacherous and final ease, even as he sought the beguiling dark?
He jerked, flailing with his arms, trying to turn and reach the surface. Pain burst through his chest and burned in his throat; he tried to cough and could not, tried to gulp air and found none, struck something hard—
Something seized him, held him still. A face appeared above him, a blur of skin, a blaze of reddish hair. Brianna? The name floated into his mind like a bright balloon. Then his eyes focused a little, bringing a harsher, fiercer face into view. Jamie. The name hung in front of him, floating, but seeming somehow reassuring.
Pressure, warmth … a hand was clasping his arm, another on his shoulder, pressing hard. He blinked, his vision swimming, gradually clearing. He felt no air moving in mouth or nose, his throat was closed and his chest still burned, but he was breathing; he felt the soreness of the tiny muscles between his ribs as they moved. He hadn’t drowned then; it hurt too much.
“You are alive,” Jamie said. Blue eyes stared intently into his, so close he felt warm breath on his face. “You are alive. You are whole. All is well.”
He examined the words with a sense of detachment, turning them over like a handful of pebbles, feeling the weight of them in the palm of his mind.
You are alive. You are whole. All is well.
A vague feeling of comfort came over him. That seemed to be all he needed to know just then. Anything else could wait. The waiting black rose up again, with the inviting aspect of a soft couch, and he sank gratefully upon it, still hearing the words like plucked harpstrings.
You are alive. You are whole. All is well.
71
A FEEBLE SPARK
“Mrs. Claire?”
It was Robin McGillivray hovering in the doorway of the tent, his dark wiry hair standing up on end like a bottle-brush. He looked like a harried raccoon, the skin round his eyes wiped free of sweat and soot, the rest still blackened with the smoke of battle.
At sight of him, Claire rose at once.
“Coming.” She was on her feet, kit in hand and already moving toward the door before Brianna could speak.
“Mother!” It was no more than a whisper, but the tone of panic brought Claire round as though she had stepped on a turntable. The amber eyes fastened on Brianna’s face for a moment, flicked to Roger, then back to her daughter.
“Watch his breathing,” she said. “Keep the tube clear. Give him honey-water, if he’s conscious enough to swallow a bit. And touch him. He can’t turn his head to see you; he needs to know you’re there.”
“But—” Brianna stopped dead, her mouth too dry to speak. Don’t go! she wanted to cry. Don’t leave me alone! I can’t keep him alive, I don’t know what to do!
“They need me,” Claire said, very gently. She turned, skirts whispering, to the impatiently waiting Robin, and vanished into the twilight.
“And I don’t?” Brianna’s lips moved, but she didn’t know whether she had spoken aloud or not. It didn’t matter; Claire was gone, and she was alone.
She felt light-headed, and realized that she had been holding her breath. She breathed out, and in, deeply, slowly. The fear was a poisonous snake, writhing round her spine, slithering through her mind. Ready to sink its fangs in her heart. She took one more breath through gritted teeth, seized the snake by the head, mentally stuffed it wriggling into a basket, and slammed down the lid. So much for panic, then.
Her mother would not have left, were there any immediate danger, she told herself firmly, nor if there were anything more that could be done medically. So there wasn’t. Was there anything she could do? She breathed, deep enough to make the boning of her stays creak.
Touch him. Speak to him. Let him know you’re with him. That was what Claire had said, speaking urgently but somehow absentmindedly, during the messy proceedings following the impromptu tracheotomy.
Brianna turned back to Roger, looking in vain for something safe to touch. His hands were swollen like inflated gloves, stained purple-red with bruising, the crushed fingers nearly black, raw rope-weals sunk so deep in the flesh of hi
s wrists that she was queasily sure she could see white bone. They looked unreal, badly-done makeup for a horror play.
Grotesque as they were, they were better than his face. That was bruised and swollen, too, with a ghastly ruff of leeches attached beneath his jaw, but it was more subtly deformed, like some sinister stranger pretending to be Roger.
His hands were lavishly decorated with leeches, too. He must be wearing every leech available, she thought. Claire had sent Josh rushing to the other surgeons, to beg their supplies, and then sent him and the two Findlay boys splashing down the creek banks in hasty search of more.
Watch his breathing. That, she could do. She sat down, moving as quietly as she could, from some obscure urge not to wake him. She laid a hand lightly over his heart, so relieved to find him warm to the touch that she gave a great sigh. He grimaced slightly at the feel of her breath on his face, tensed, then relaxed again.
His own breath came so shallowly that she took her hand away, feeling that the pressure of her palm on his chest might be enough to stop its labored rise. He was breathing, though; she could hear the faint whistle of air through the tube in his throat. Claire had commandeered Mr. Caswell’s imported English pipe, ruthlessly breaking off the amber stem. Rinsed hastily with alcohol, it was still stained with tobacco tar, but seemed to be functioning well enough.
Two fingers of Roger’s right hand were broken, all his nails clawed bloody, torn, or missing. Her own throat tightened at this evidence of just how ferociously he had fought to live. His state seemed so precarious that she hesitated to touch him, as though she might startle him over some invisible edge between death and life. And yet she could see what her mother meant; the same touch might hold him back, keep him from stumbling over just such an edge, lost in the dark.
The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle Page 539