Jamie gave the terrace a bleak look. Sure enough, Allan MacDonald was stepping up—merely onto a stool; no doubt the hogshead seemed extreme—and a number of people—far fewer than had attended his wife, but a respectable number—were clustering round attentively.
“Will ye no come and hear him?” Mrs. Bug was already in flight, hovering above the ground like a hummingbird.
“I’ll hear well enough from here,” Jamie assured her. “You go along then, a nighean.”
She bumbled off, buzzing with excitement. Jamie gingerly touched both hands to his ears, testing to be sure they were still attached.
“It was kind of you to bring her,” I said, laughing. “The dear old thing probably hasn’t had such fun in half a century.”
“No,” he said, grinning. “She likely—”
He stopped abruptly, frowning as he caught sight of something over my shoulder. I turned to look, but he was already moving past me, and I hurried to catch up.
It was Jocasta, white as milk, and disheveled in a way I had never seen her. She swayed unsteadily in the side doorway, and might have fallen, had Jamie not come up and taken quick hold of her, one arm about her waist to support her.
“Jesus, Auntie. What’s amiss?” He spoke quietly, not to draw attention, and was moving her back inside the house even as he spoke.
“Oh, God, oh, merciful God, my head,” she whispered, hand spread over her face like a spider, so that her fingers barely touched the skin, cupping her left eye. “My eye.”
The linen blindfold that she wore in public was creased and blotched with moisture; tears were leaking out from under it, but she wasn’t crying. Lacrimation: one eye was watering terribly. Both eyes were tearing, but much worse on the left; the edge of the linen was soaked, and wetness shone on that cheek.
“I need to look at her eye,” I said to Jamie, touching his elbow, and looking round in vain for any of the servants. “Get her to her sitting room.” That was closest, and all the guests were either outside or traipsing through the parlor to see the Prince’s looking glass.
“No!” It was almost a scream. “No, not there!”
Jamie glanced at me, one brow raised in puzzlement, but spoke soothingly to her.
“Nay, Auntie, it’s all right. I’ll bring ye to your own chamber. Come, then.” He stooped, and lifted her in his arms as though she were a child, her silk skirts falling over his arm with the sound of rushing water.
“Take her; I’ll be right there.” I’d spotted the slave named Angelina passing through the far end of the hall, and hurried to catch her up. I gave my orders, then rushed back toward the stairs—pausing momentarily to glance into the small sitting room as I did so.
There was no one there, though the presence of scattered punch cups and the strong scent of pipe tobacco indicated that Jocasta had likely been holding court there earlier. Her workbasket stood open, some half-knitted garment dragged out and left to dangle carelessly down the side like a dead rabbit.
Children perhaps, I thought; several balls of thread had been pulled out, too, and lay scattered on the parquet floor, trailing their colors. I hesitated—but instinct was too much for me, and I hastily scooped up the balls of thread and dropped them back into the workbasket. I stuffed the knitting in on top, but jerked my hand back with an exclamation.
A small gash on the side of my thumb was welling blood. I put it in my mouth and sucked hard to apply pressure to the wound; meanwhile, I groped more cautiously in the depths of the basket with my other hand, to see what had cut me.
A knife, small but businesslike. Likely used to cut embroidery threads; there was a tooled-leather sheath for it, loose in the bottom of the basket. I slipped the knife back into its sheath, seized the needle case I’d come for, and closed the folding tabletop of the workbasket before hurrying for the stairs.
Allan MacDonald had finished his brief speech; there was a loud clatter of applause outside, with shouts and whoops of Gaelic approval.
“Bloody Scots,” I muttered under my breath. “Don’t they ever learn?”
But I hadn’t time to consider the implications of the MacDonalds’ rabble-rousing. By the time I reached the top of the stair, one slave was close behind me, puffing under the weight of my medicine box, and another was at the bottom, starting more cautiously up with a pan of hot water from the kitchen.
Jocasta was bent double in her big chair, moaning, lips pressed into invisibility. Her cap had come off and both hands moved restlessly to and fro through her disordered hair, as though looking helplessly for something to seize. Jamie was stroking her back, murmuring to her in Gaelic; he looked up with obvious relief as I came in.
I had long suspected that the cause of Jocasta’s blindness was glaucoma—rising pressure inside the eyeball that if untreated eventually damages the optic nerve. Now I was quite sure of it. More than that, I knew what form of the disease she had; she was plainly having an acute attack of closed-angle glaucoma, the most dangerous type.
There was no treatment for glaucoma now; the condition itself wouldn’t be recognized for some time. Even if there had been, it was far too late; her blindness was permanent. There was, however, something I could do about the immediate situation—and I was afraid I’d have to.
“Put some of this to steep,” I said to Angelina, grabbing the jar of goldenseal from my box and thrusting it into her hands. “And you”—I turned to the other slave, a man whose name I didn’t know—“set the water to boil again, fetch me some clean rags, and put them in the water.”
Even as I talked, I’d got out the tiny spirit lamp I carried in my case. The fire had been allowed to burn down on the hearth, but there were still live coals; I bent and lit the wick, then opened the needle case I’d taken from the sitting room and abstracted the largest needle in it, a three-inch length of steel, used for mending carpets.
“You aren’t …” Jamie began, then broke off, swallowing.
“I have to,” I said briefly. “There’s nothing else. Hold her hands.”
He was nearly as pale as Jocasta, but he nodded and took hold of the clutching fingers, pulling her hands gently away from her head.
I lifted away the linen bandage. The left eye bulged noticeably beneath its lid, vividly bloodshot. Tears welled up round it and overflowed in a constant stream. I could feel the pressure inside the eyeball, even without touching it, and clenched my teeth in revulsion.
No help for it. With a quick prayer to Saint Clare—who was, after all, patroness of sore eyes, as well as my own patron saint—I ran the needle through the flame of the lamp, poured pure alcohol onto a rag, and wiped the soot from the needle.
Swallowing a sudden excess of saliva, I spread the eyelids of the affected eye apart with one hand, commended my soul to God, and shoved the needle hard into the sclera of the eye, near the edge of the iris.
There was a cough and a splattering on the floor nearby, and the stink of vomit, but I had no attention to spare. I withdrew the needle carefully, though as fast as I could. Jocasta had stiffened abruptly, frozen stiff, hands clawed over Jamie’s. She didn’t move at all, but made small, shocked panting sounds, as though afraid to move enough even to breathe.
There was a trickle of fluid from the eye, vitreous humor, faintly cloudy, just thick enough to be distinguishable as it flowed sluggishly across the wet surface of the sclera. I was still holding the eyelids apart; I plucked a rag from the goldenseal tea with my free hand, squeezed out the excess liquid, careless of where it went, and touched it gently to her face. Jocasta gasped at the touch of the warmth on her skin, pulled her hands free, and grasped at it.
I let go then, and allowed her to seize the warm rag, pressing it against her closed left eye, the heat of it some relief.
Light feet pounded up the stairs again, and down the hall; Angelina, panting, a handful of salt clutched to her bosom, a spoon in her other hand. I brushed the salt from her damp palm into the pan of warm water, and set her to stir it while it dissolved.
; “Did you bring laudanum?” I asked her quietly. Jocasta was lying back in her chair, eyes closed—but rigid as a statue, her eyelids squeezing tight, fists clenched in knots on her knees.
“I couldna find the laudanum, missus,” Angelina murmured to me, with a frightened glance at Jocasta. “I dinna ken who could be takin’ it—hain’t nobody got the key but Mr. Ulysses and Miz Cameron herself.”
“Ulysses let you into the simples closet, then—so he knows that Mrs. Cameron is ill?”
She nodded vigorously, setting the ribbon on her cap a-flutter.
“Oh, yes, missus! He be bleezin’, if he find out and I hain’t told him. He say come fetch him quick, she want him—otherwise, I tell Miz Cameron she hain’t to worry none, he take care every single thing.”
Jocasta let out a long sigh at this, her clenched fists relaxing a little.
“God bless the man,” she murmured, eyes closed. “He will take care of everything. I should be lost without him. Lost.”
Her white hair was soaked at the temples, and sweat dripped from the ends of the tendrils that lay over her shoulder, making spots on the dark blue silk of her gown.
Angelina unlaced Jocasta’s gown and stays and got them off. Then I had Jamie lay her down on the bed in her shift, with a thick layer of towels tucked round her head. I filled one of my rattlesnake syringes with the warm salt water, and with Jamie gingerly holding the lids of her eye apart, I was able to gently irrigate the eye, in hopes of perhaps preventing infection to the puncture wound. The wound itself showed as a tiny scarlet spot on the sclera, a small conjunctival bleb above it. Jamie couldn’t look at it without blinking, I saw, and smiled at him.
“She’ll be all right,” I said. “You can go, if you like.”
Jamie nodded, turning to go, but Jocasta’s hand shot out to stop him.
“No, be staying, a chuisle—if ye will.” This last was strictly for form’s sake; she had him clutched by the sleeve, hard enough to turn her fingers white.
“Aye, Auntie, of course,” he said mildly, and put his hand over hers, squeezing in reassurance. Still, she didn’t let go until he had sat down beside her.
“Who else is there?” she asked, turning her head fretfully from side to side, trying to hear the telltale sounds of breathing and movement that would inform her. “Have the slaves gone?”
“Yes, they’ve gone back to help with the serving,” I told her. “It’s only me and Jamie left.”
She closed her eyes and drew a deep, shuddering breath, only then beginning to relax a little.
“Good. I must tell ye a thing, Nephew, and no one else must hear. Niece”—she lifted a long white hand toward me—“go and be seeing as we’re truly alone.”
I went obediently to look out into the hall. No one was visible, though there were voices coming from a room down the hall—laughter, and tremendous rustlings and thumpings, as young women chattered and rearranged their hair and clothing. I pulled my head back in and closed the door, and the sounds from the rest of the house receded at once, muffled into a distant rumble.
“What is it, then, Auntie?” Jamie was still holding her hand, one big thumb gently stroking the back of it, over and over, in the soothing rhythm I’d seen him use on skittish animals. It was less effective on his aunt than on the average horse or dog, though.
“It was him. He’s here!”
“Who’s here, Auntie?”
“I don’t know!” Her eyes rolled desperately to and fro, as though in a vain attempt to see through not only darkness, but walls, as well.
Jamie raised his brows at me, but he could see as well as I that she wasn’t raving, incoherent as she sounded. She realized what she sounded like; I could see the effort in her face as she pulled herself together.
“He’s come for the gold,” she said, lowering her voice. “The Frenchman’s gold.”
“Oh, aye?” Jamie said cautiously. He darted a glance at me, one eyebrow raised, but I shook my head. She wasn’t having hallucinations.
Jocasta sighed with impatience and shook her head, then stopped abruptly, with a muffled “Och!” of pain, putting both hands to her head as though to keep it on her shoulders.
She breathed deeply for a moment or two, her lips pressed tight together. Then she slowly lowered her hands.
“It started last night,” she said. “The pain in my eye.”
She’d waked in the night to a throbbing in her eye, a dull pain that spread slowly to the side of her head.
“It’s come before, ken,” she explained. She had pushed herself up to a sitting position now, and was beginning to look a little better, though she still held the warm cloth to her eye. “It began when I started to lose my sight. Sometimes it would be one eye, sometimes both. But I kent what was coming.”
But Jocasta MacKenzie Cameron Innes was not a woman to allow mere bodily indisposition to interfere with her plans, let alone interrupt what promised to be the most scintillating social affair in Cross Creek’s history.
“I was that disgusted,” she said. “And here Miss Flora MacDonald coming!”
But the arrangements had all been made; the barbecued carcasses were roasting in their pits, hogsheads of ale and beer stood ready by the stables, and the air was full of the fragrance of hot bread and beans from the cookhouse. The slaves were well-trained, and she had full faith that Ulysses would manage everything. All she must do, she’d thought, was to stay on her feet.
“I didna want to take opium or laudanum,” she explained. “Or I’d fall asleep for sure. So I made do wi’ the whisky.”
She was a tall woman, and thoroughly accustomed to an intake of liquor that would have felled a modern man. By the time the MacDonalds arrived, she’d had the better part of a bottle—but the pain was getting worse.
“And then my eye began to water so fierce, everyone would ha’ seen something was wrong, and I didna want that. So I came into my sitting room; I’d taken care to put a wee bottle of laudanum in my workbasket, in case the whisky should be not enough.
“Folk were swarming thick as lice outside, trying to catch a glimpse or a word with Miss MacDonald, but the sitting room was deserted, so far as I could tell, what wi’ my head pounding and my eye fit to explode.” She said this last quite casually, but I saw Jamie flinch, the memory of what I’d done with the needle obviously still fresh. He swallowed and wiped his knuckles hard across his mouth.
Jocasta had quickly abstracted the bottle of laudanum, swallowed a few gulps, and then sat for a moment, waiting for it to take effect.
“I dinna ken if ye’ve ever had the stuff, Nephew, but it gives ye an odd feeling, as though ye might be starting to dissolve at the edges. Take a drop too much, and ye begin to see things that aren’t there—blind or not—and hear them, too.”
Between the effects of laudanum and liquor and the noise of the crowd outside, she hadn’t noticed footsteps, and when the voice spoke near her, she’d thought for a moment that it was a hallucination.
“ ‘So here ye are, lass,’ he said,” she quoted, and her face, already pale, blanched further at the memory. “ ‘Remember me, do ye?’ ”
“I take it ye did, Aunt?” Jamie asked dryly.
“I did,” she replied just as dryly. “I’d heard that voice twice before. Once at the Gathering where your daughter was wed—and once more than twenty years ago, in an inn near Coigach, in Scotland.”
She lowered the wet cloth from her face and put it unerringly back into the bowl of warm water. Her eyes were red and swollen, raw against the pale skin, and looking terribly vulnerable in their blindness—but she had command of herself once more.
“Aye, I did ken him,” she repeated.
She had recognized the voice at once as one known—but for a moment, could not place it. Then realization had struck her, and she had clutched the arm of her chair for support.
“Who are ye?” she’d demanded, with what force she could summon. Her heart was pounding in time to the throbbing in her head and eye, and her senses
swimming in whisky and laudanum. Perhaps it was the laudanum that seemed to transform the sound of the crowd outside into the sound of a nearby sea, the noise of a slave’s footsteps in the hall to the thump of the landlord’s clogs on the stairs of the inn.
“I was there. Truly there.” Despite the sweat that still ran down her face, I saw gooseflesh pebble the pale skin of her shoulders. “In the inn at Coigach. I smelt the sea, and I heard the men—Hector and Dougal—I could hear them! Arguing together, somewhere behind me. And the man wi’ the mask—I could see him,” she said, and a ripple went up the back of my own neck as she turned her blind eyes toward me. She spoke with such conviction that for an instant, it seemed she did see.
“Standing at the foot of the stair, just as he’d been twenty-five years ago, a knife in his hand and his eyes upon me through the holes in his mask.”
And, “Ye ken well enough who I am, lass,” he’d said, and she had seemed to see his smile, though dimly she had known she only heard it in his voice; she’d never seen his face, even when she had her sight.
She was sitting up, half doubled over, arms crossed over her breast as though in self-defense and her white hair wild and tangled down her back.
“He’s come back,” she said, and shook with a sudden convulsive shudder. “He’s come for the gold—and when he finds it, he will kill me.”
Jamie laid a hand on her arm, in an attempt to calm her.
“No one will kill ye while I’m here, Aunt,” he said. “So this man came to ye in your sitting room, and ye kent him from his voice. What else did he say to ye?”
She was still shivering, but not so badly. I thought it was as much reaction to massive amounts of laudanum and whisky as from fear.
She shook her head in the effort of recollection.
“He said—he said he had come to take the gold to its rightful owner. That we’d held it in trust, and while he didna grudge me what we’d spent of it, Hector and me—it wasna mine, had never been mine. I should tell him where it was, and he would see to the rest. And then he put his hand on me.” She ceased clutching herself, and held out one arm toward Jamie. “On my wrist. D’ye see the marks there? D’ye see them, Nephew?” She sounded anxious, and it occurred to me suddenly that she might doubt the existence of the visitor herself.
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