by Karen Ranney
“They used nails here, too?”
“Exquisitely,” he said. “The Atavasi are masters of torture.”
“Did they do any damage to your other arm, Hamish? Or your legs?” The question was posed with great calm. She was, after all, a healer. But she’d never before seen such acts of barbarism. The wounds were near joints, calculated to cause the most damage and pain.
“No,” he said, his voice as devoid of emotion as hers. “This was something new. I decided to leave before they made it impossible for me to do so.”
Holding his arm, she pressed delicately against one scar, to see if the muscle flexed in response.
“You must tell me,” she said, “if I cause you any discomfort.”
He only smiled again, as if her statement were foolish.
“Does your arm hurt?” she asked, when his muscles remained flaccid.
“From time to time. But nothing unbearable.”
“Twinges? Or a pulsating pain? In the cold? Or when there’s a chilled breeze?”
“At night, mostly. Did you know that you frown when asking all those questions? You’re very earnest, Mary Gilly. Very intent upon your work.” Glancing over at the table where she’d laid out her instruments, he picked up her extended tweezers. “What’s this used for?”
“For a variety of tasks. To lance a boil, peer down a swollen throat. I’ve even used it upon occasion to aid in childbirth.” He dropped it back on the table, and reached for another.
“Did your husband craft these for you? I’ve never seen such things made of silver.”
“The case was a present from Gordon for our tenth wedding anniversary. He wanted me to have the finest tools, so he created them himself. Some I’ve never used,” she admitted. “He got the idea for them from corresponding with some men in Edinburgh.”
“A doting husband.”
His tone didn’t sound complimentary, even though his words might have been.
Her palm stroked his arm, testing resiliency in the muscle. “Press against my hand,” she told him, but there was little resistance in his fingers.
“If you don’t use your arm soon, it will begin to wither,” she said, the calm tone of her voice hiding the worry she felt.
“How do you propose I do that?”
“Exercise,” she told him. “Even if your arm cannot move on its own, it will help to keep it limber.”
She laid his arm on her lap, reached over, and selected a vial. Smoothing the contents onto her palm, she massaged the ointment into his skin using long slow strokes.
“What’s in that?” he asked, looking down at her hands. “It feels both hot and cold.”
“Cloves, spices, and camphor, in a base of pork fat. Something to stimulate the blood.”
Again, that odd half smile.
“I wish I had Mr. Marshall’s electrical machine. I do not doubt that it would aid in regenerating the nerves in your arm.”
He raised one eyebrow. “Electrical machine?”
She smiled brightly at the cautious look on his face. “I’m very interested in new advances. Mr. Marshall is a proponent of an electrical machine. How it works, I’m not entirely certain. I’ve never seen one, although I’ve read everything he’s written about it. It gives off a jolt of energy, not unlike lightning itself. I think if we could find such an instrument, we might be able to effect some healing in your arm.”
“Shall I extract a promise from you?”
“I won’t hurt you,” she assured him. “I understand there’s only a slight tingling when it’s administered.”
He laughed, the sound encouraging her smile. “I doubt you could do anything to me that I could feel. No, the promise I want is that you not hold out too much hope. I’ve grown used to my infirmity.”
“You don’t seem the type to pity yourself.”
He’d looked as if he would like to say something else but restrained himself. A moment later, however, he evidently thought better of that notion and spoke. “I don’t pity myself, Mrs. Gilly. But neither am I unrealistic. I have two good legs and one good arm, and although I’m not pleased with that, I can accept it.”
“How did you bear being tortured?” It wasn’t a question she’d meant to ask, especially so bluntly, but it had come tumbling free in the silence.
For the longest time, she thought he wouldn’t answer her, but he finally spoke.
“I am blessed with a hearty constitution,” he said wryly. “It enabled me to endure more than I thought.”
“Were you angry?”
He looked surprised at her question.
“I would have been,” she explained. “Anger would have been the only thing to keep me strong, I think.”
“I wasn’t,” he said, surprisingly. “I learned to distance myself from what was happening. I wasn’t angry until I escaped, and then I found it a difficult emotion to control. I needed my energy for survival, and most of it was spent in rage.”
“How did you escape?”
“Across the little desert north toward Aleppo and the Mediterranean. I was fortunate to find Brendan in Rhodes.”
That wasn’t what she meant, and she suspected he knew it well.
Their gazes met and held. Unexpectedly, he smiled at her. A charming man before he’d decided to be a hermit. How many women in how many seaports had thought the very same thing?
She dipped the cloth in the bowl, wrung it out, and laid it over his elbow. A moment later, she removed it, beginning to massage some of the salve from wrist to joint.
“It’s very important that you have a massage often,” she said. “At least three times a day to keep the muscles active.”
“I know why you’re such a successful healer,” he said. “You’re too stubborn to lose a battle with illness.”
She smiled in response.
“How did you make the transition from caring for your mother to becoming a healer?”
“I happened upon Matthew Marshall’s book The Primitive Physick, and began to study. I started with my own notes, and practiced on myself, then took what I’d learned and volunteered to treat the poor.”
“You could not have endeared yourself to the physicians of Inverness.”
She shook her head. “They didn’t care. No one wished to treat someone with little ability to pay. But in my case, I wasn’t earning my living as a physician, so I offered my services where I could.”
She soaked the cloth again, and placed it above his elbow this time.
“Your hands are very strong.”
She smiled at the note of surprise in his voice. “Medicine is for neither the faint of heart nor the weak of limb, Mr. MacRae. I’ve had to set a dislocated shoulder in a man larger than you, and the task required all my strength.”
“How did you become the Angel of Inverness?”
She frowned at that appellation but continued her ministrations. His skin was beginning to warm beneath her palms. “I was called to the home of a prosperous merchant who had a young son. Jack was near death, and the physician who’d been treating him declared his situation hopeless.” She met his eyes. “Dr. Grampian was the same man who also refused to treat any of the poor practically on his doorstep.”
“And you cured him,” he said.
She nodded. “His was not the most desperate case I’ve seen, but he did need treatment or he would have certainly died. The disease had obstructed his breathing. Once his throat was cleared, he recovered in a few weeks.”
“I’m surprised the physician didn’t claim credit.”
She laughed lightly. “He did, but I preferred not to call him a liar. He has nothing good to say about me, and I choose to ignore him. He will never come to believe that a healthy body and mind act together in concert.”
“What treatment would you propose for a burn?”
“Is this a test? I’d advise cold water immediately applied to the affected area.”
“What would you prescribe for me, Mrs. Gilly?”
“A massage of your a
rm three times a day,” she said.
“And your electrical machine?”
“If I had use of one,” she said, nodding. “But there aren’t very many of them in existence.”
Mr. Marshall had published an entire book on the treatment, stating that the apparatus could cure all sorts of conditions. He’d taken Richard Lovett’s work on treating diseases by electricity, and proven that headache, gout, rheumatism could all be cured. Perhaps when she met with Mr. Marshall, she could ask him about the efficacy of using it under such conditions.
“Do you really think it would work?” he asked, looking down at his arm.
“Perhaps it would,” she said matter-of-factly. “But we don’t have it, so it doesn’t matter. We shall have to work with what we do have.”
“Which is?”
“That indomitable will of yours.”
Grabbing his wrist with her right hand, she placed her left above his elbow. Slowly, she bent his arm. His only response was to stare at her intently, his brown eyes never veering from hers. She was the one to look away first. When she glanced back at him, his eyes were closed. That was all the indication he gave that what she was doing was painful.
“You must begin to exercise this arm or it will never work again. I don’t know how much damage the nails did, but we must work on the premise that what has been injured can be healed. If it cannot work on its own, then we’ll help it.”
“I was right, you know. You badger disease away.”
“I don’t care how the result is obtained, Hamish,” she said with a smile. “Only that the patient gets better.”
“That’s twice now,” he said.
She glanced at him, waiting.
“You called me Hamish. I suppose such familiarity is to be expected between patient and healer?”
Her face warmed. “Of course not,” she said, embarrassed. “I’ll address you as Mr. MacRae, if you wish.”
“I’d prefer Hamish. And Mary to Mrs. Gilly. Or would you object?”
She shook her head, repeating the movement of his arm. A few moments later, she could feel some faint resistance, as if the muscles were beginning to come to life. Only a reflex action, she suspected. For another quarter hour, she worked on his arm, a careful silence between them. It was easier to concentrate on her task than on his eyes, now open and fixed on her.
“Does it hurt?” she asked, letting his arm rest finally.
“Less so than when you began.”
She opened the vial and placed more of the camphor ointment on his skin again, massaging it once more.
“I think I should examine your chest. You flinched when I touched you.”
He looked at her for long, solemn moments.
“Will you take off your shirt?” she asked calmly.
Without speaking, he began to unfasten the buttons. When he was finished, she reached over and helped him slide the shirt off his shoulders, then withdrew her hand.
When his chest was revealed, she sat back, biting her lip rather than making a sound.
Chapter 8
H is eyes were on her, she knew it. She could feel his gaze, intent and unrelenting. She blessed her training and the experience she’d had in facing a dying patient’s family. Give me strength. An often uttered prayer, repeated like a never-ending echo now.
What had they done to him?
Welts of blue, green, and vermillion discolored his skin. An even deeper outline of black accentuated the multicolored swirls and lines. The longer she stared, the more she could discern the shape of it. Tattooed on his chest was the figure of a man.
No, not just a man. A bizarre form, depicted dancing, his arms outstretched to wind up to Hamish’s arms, his waist disappearing beneath the fabric of Hamish’s trousers. As if, she thought wildly, his captors had tried to obliterate Hamish beneath the picture of this stylized figure.
“Who is it?” she asked, placing her fingers on the face, realizing that the drawing was so intricate that it must have taken days, if not weeks, to finish. Each color was deeply inscribed into Hamish’s skin as if they’d scored him with a knife to create the design.
“Shiva,” he said expressionlessly.
She glanced up at him. “Shiva?”
“A Hindu god of destruction and birth. All things are created by Shiva, and destroyed by Shiva. Good and evil dwelling together.”
Slowly, she withdrew her fingers.
“How did they do this?”
His gaze didn’t leave hers. “First they cut me,” he said calmly, as if reciting the ingredients for a medicine. “Before the scars healed, they were colored with dye. The smaller areas were done with long copper needles, dipped in dye as well as acid. The procedure was enough to be painful but not enough to kill me all at once. As Shiva was coming to life, I was slowly dying.”
She felt nauseated. “That’s hideous.”
He smiled at her, an almost fond smile for all its humor.
“Yes.”
“Is this why you cannot sleep?”
“No.”
Mary stood and walked around to his back. There, the image was as detailed, the reverse of the god in all his splendor. One shoulder was completely tattooed in brilliant colors, the yellows, oranges, and blacks forming the picture of a snarling animal.
“What is this?” she asked, tracing the outline of the animal’s head.
“A tiger,” he said shortly. “As you can see, I’m a testament to my captors’ artistry. They evidently grew tired of Shiva. Or perhaps I was used as practice like a blank canvas. Like their form of torture on my arm and face.”
“Why did they do this? Why not simply kill you?”
She wrung out the cloth once more, smoothing it over the marks on his skin. She was so close that her skirts covered the legs of the chair in which he sat. Her sleeve brushed against his bare back. The heat of his body was warmly welcoming, as if he was a brazier and she trembling and chilled.
He shrugged. “They wanted to humiliate an Englishman. What better specimen than the captain of a ship? I was the living embodiment of all they’d come to despise, a stranger invading their country.”
“But you aren’t English. Why didn’t you tell them that?”
His laugh echoed throughout the room.
“We didn’t speak the same language, first of all. Everything I learned about Shiva was after the fact, I’m afraid. But even had I told them they’d captured a man born in Nova Scotia, whose family hated the English as much as they, I doubt they would have released me. It would have been easier to simply kill me, and I found that I wasn’t quite ready to die yet. Not then. I became the English trophy that they carried from village to village, letting anyone see me, and their handiwork.”
She moved to the table, dipped the cloth in the warm water, and wrung it out again. All routine actions. Her gaze was on his face, on the distant look in his eyes, as if he saw into the past rather than a small tower room in Castle Gloom.
“I was their sacrifice to Shiva, the Englishman rendered in his image.” His voice held an edge to it. The first time she’d heard him express any emotion about his imprisonment. “They’d captured two other men as well, but I hadn’t known of their existence for months.”
“Did they mark them as well?”
He smiled. “I was the only one to be honored in such a fashion.”
“How were you captured?” she asked, moving around to his back once more, and placing the cloth on the worst of his scars. She could almost feel his pain as they cut him.
He shrugged, dislodging the cloth. She replaced it, smoothing her fingers over his damp skin.
“My ship was attacked and fired. Although we fought them off as well as we could, we were outnumbered and soon overrun. You mentioned my family, Mary, the fact that we were all captains of our own ships. We MacRaes were never reared to believe that we might fail in some venture. It took me weeks to believe it could happen.”
She smiled. “Then you have lived a very fortunate life, Hamish MacRa
e. All of us fail at one time or another.”
“Have you?”
He looked at her directly, the force of his gaze a little too curious. She picked up the basin and walked outside, emptying the cooling water near the curving curtain wall. She took advantage of the time to take a deep breath and calm herself before entering the tower again.
Had she failed? A question she’d prefer not to answer.
Brendan and Micah were repairing the lean-to, the horses left to graze in the courtyard. An almost pastoral scene, and one on which she concentrated rather than the tumult of her thoughts. But all too soon the image of what they’d done to Hamish was at the forefront of her mind.
She’d wanted to know, and now she did.
Entering the tower, she walked to the fireplace, folded a cloth several times, and used it as a pad to lift a bucket from the fire. Moving back to the table, she poured the boiling water into the basin. After placing the empty bucket on the floor beside the table, she dropped a linen bundle tightly tied with a string into the water. Instantly, the room was suffused with the scent of rosemary.
“Another potion?”
“Something to ease your muscles,” she said.
Dipping another cloth into the boiling water, she held it by the corners to squeeze out the excess moisture. She waved it in the air to cool it a little before placing it on his left shoulder. He didn’t even flinch at the heat.
“This should be done at least once a day,” she said. “It might not hurt to do the same on the marks on your back. At least for a few weeks.”
“Will you be here that long, Mary?”
She hesitated. “No,” she admitted reluctantly. “Only a few days. Mr. Marshall is coming to Inverness, and wishes to meet with me. It’s a very great honor.”
“Your mentor?”
“Hardly that. I’m a student, it’s true, but I’ve never thought to have the opportunity to talk with him.”
“When will you be leaving?”