“How long did this affair go on?” I asked, interested. Lacking a decent syringe for drawing blood, I’d merely pierced the vein inside his elbow with a fleam, and drained off the welling blood into a small vial.
For the better part of two years, apparently.
“I kent I couldna wed her,” he explained earnestly. “Meine Mutter would never . . .” He trailed off, assuming the look of a startled rabbit hearing hounds in its immediate vicinity. “Gruss Gott!” he said. “My mother!”
I’d been wondering about that particular aspect of the affair myself. Ute McGillivray wasn’t going to be at all pleased to hear that her pride and joy, her only son, had contracted a disreputable disease, and furthermore, one which was about to lead to the breaking of his carefully engineered engagement and very likely to a scandal that the entire backcountry would hear about. The fact that it was generally a fatal disease would probably be a secondary concern.
“She’ll kill me!” he said, sliding off his stool and rolling his sleeve down hastily.
“Probably not,” I said mildly. “Though I suppose—”
At this fraught moment came the sound of the back door opening and voices in the kitchen. Manfred stiffened, dark curls quivering with alarm. Then heavy footsteps started down the hall toward the surgery, and he dived across the room, flung a leg across the windowsill, and was off, running like a deer for the trees.
“Come back here, you ass!” I bellowed through the open window.
“Which ass is that, Auntie?” I turned to see that the heavy footsteps belonged to Young Ian—heavy, because he was carrying Lizzie Wemyss in his arms.
“Lizzie! What’s the matter? Here, put her on the table.” I could see at once what the matter was: a return of the malarial fever. She was limp, but shivered nonetheless with chill, the contracting muscles shaking her like jelly.
“I found her in the dairy shed,” Ian said, laying her gently on the table. “The deaf Beardsley came rushin’ out as though the devil was chasing him, saw me, and dragged me in. She was on the floor, wi’ the churn overturned beside her.”
This was very worrying—she hadn’t had an attack for some time, but for a second time, the attack had come upon her too suddenly for her to go for help, causing almost immediate collapse.
“Top shelf of the cupboard,” I said to Ian, hastily rolling Lizzie on her side and undoing her laces. “That bluish jar—no, the big one.”
He grabbed it without question, removing the lid as he brought it to me.
“Jesus, Auntie! What’s that?” He wrinkled his nose at the smell from the ointment.
“Gallberries and cinchona bark in goose grease, among other things. Take some and start rubbing it into her feet.”
Looking bemused, he gingerly scooped up a dollop of the purplish-gray cream and did as I said, Lizzie’s small bare foot nearly disappearing between the large palms of his hands.
“Will she be all right, d’ye think, Auntie?” He glanced at her face, looking troubled. The look of her was enough to trouble anyone—the clammy color of whey, and the flesh gone slack so that her delicate cheeks juddered with the chills.
“Probably. Close your eyes, Ian.” I’d got her clothes loosened, and now pulled off her gown, petticoats, pocket, and stays. I threw a ratty blanket over her before working the shift off over her head—she owned only two, and wouldn’t want one spoiled with the reek of the ointment.
Ian had obediently closed his eyes, but was still rubbing the ointment methodically into her feet, a small frown drawing his brows together, the look of concern lending him for a moment a brief but startling resemblance to Jamie.
I drew the jar toward me, scooped up some ointment, and, reaching under the blanket, began to rub it into the thinner skin beneath her armpits, then over her back and belly. I could feel the outlines of her liver distinctly, a large, firm mass beneath her ribs. Swollen, and tender from the way she grimaced at my touch; there was some ongoing damage there, certainly.
“Can I open my eyes now?”
“Oh—yes, of course. Rub more up her legs, please, Ian.” Shoving the jar back in his direction, I caught a glimpse of movement in the doorway. One of the Beardsley twins stood there, clinging to the jamb, dark eyes fixed on Lizzie. Kezzie, it must be; Ian had said “the deaf Beardsley” had come to fetch help.
“She’ll be all right,” I said to him, raising my voice, and he nodded once, then disappeared, with a single burning glance at Ian.
“Who was it ye were shouting at, Auntie Claire?” Ian looked up at me, clearly as much to preserve Lizzie’s modesty as from courtesy to me; the blanket was turned back and his big hands were smoothing ointment into the skin above her knee, thumbs gently circling the small rounded curves of her patella, her skin so thin that the pearly bone seemed almost visible through it.
“Who—oh. Manfred McGillivray,” I said, suddenly recollecting. “Damn! The blood!” I leapt up and wiped my hands hurriedly on my apron. Thank God, I’d corked the vial; the blood inside was still liquid. It wouldn’t keep long, though.
“Do her hands and arms, would you please, Ian? I’ve got to manage this quickly.”
He moved obligingly to do as I said, while I hastily spilled a drop of blood on each of several slides, dragging a clean slide across each one to make a smear. What sort of stain might work on spirochetes? No telling; I’d try them all.
I explained the matter disjointedly to Ian, as I pulled stain bottles out of the cupboard, made up the solutions, and set the slides to soak.
“The pox? Poor lad; he must be nearly mad wi’ fright.” He eased Lizzie’s arm, gleaming with ointment, under the blanket and tucked it gently round her.
I was momentarily surprised at this show of sympathy, but then remembered. Ian had been exposed to syphilis some years before, after his abduction by Geillis Duncan; I hadn’t been sure that he had the disease, but had dosed him with the last of my twentieth-century penicillin, just in case.
“Did ye not tell him ye could cure him, though, Auntie?”
“I hadn’t the chance. Though I’m not absolutely sure that I can, to be honest.” I sat down on a stool, and took Lizzie’s other hand, feeling for her pulse.
“Ye’re not?” His feathery brows went up at that. “Ye told me I was cured.”
“You are,” I assured him. “If you ever had the disease in the first place.” I gave him a sharp look. “You’ve never had a sore on your prick, have you? Or anywhere else?”
He shook his head, mute, a dark wave of blood staining his lean cheeks.
“Good. But the penicillin I gave you—that was some that I’d brought from . . . well, from before. That was purified—very strong and certainly potent. I’m never sure, when I use this stuff”—I gestured at the culturing bowls on the counter—“whether it’s strong enough to work, or even the right strain. . . .” I rubbed the back of my hand under my nose; the gallberry ointment, had a most penetrating smell.
“It doesn’t always work.” I had had more than one patient with an infection that didn’t respond to one of my penicillin concoctions—though in those cases, I had often succeeded with another attempt. In a few instances, the person had recovered on his own before the second brew was ready. In one instance, the patient had died, despite applications of two different penicillin mixtures.
Ian nodded slowly, his eyes on Lizzie’s face. The first bout of chills had spent itself and she lay quiet, the blanket barely moving over the slight round of her chest.
“If ye’re no sure, then . . . ye’d not let him marry her, surely?”
“I don’t know. Jamie said he’d speak to Mr. Wemyss, see what he thought of the matter.”
I rose and took the first of the slides from its pinkish bath, shook off the clinging drops, and, wiping the bottom of the slide, placed it carefully on the platform of my microscope.
“What are ye looking for, Auntie?”
“Things called spirochetes. Those are the particular kind of germ that causes syphilis.”
“Oh, aye.” Despite the seriousness of the situation, I smiled, hearing the note of skepticism in his voice. I’d shown him microorganisms before, but—like Jamie—like almost everyone—he simply couldn’t believe that something so nearly invisible was capable of harm. The only one who had seemed to accept the notion wholeheartedly was Malva Christie, and in her case, I thought the acceptance was due simply to her faith in me. If I told her something, she believed me; very refreshing, after years of assorted Scots looking at me with varying degrees of squiggle-eyed suspicion.
“Has he gone home, d’ye think? Manfred?”
“I don’t know.” I spoke absently, slowly moving the slide to and fro, searching. I could make out the red blood cells, pale pink discs that floated past my field of view, drifting lazily in the watery stain. No deadly spirals visible—but that didn’t mean they weren’t there, only that the stain I had used might not reveal them.
Lizzie stirred and moaned, and I looked round to see her eyes flutter open.
“There, lass,” Ian said softly, and smiled at her. “Better, is it?”
“Is it?” she said faintly. Still, the corners of her mouth lifted slightly, and she put a hand out from under her blanket, groping. He took it in his, patting it.
“Manfred,” she said, turning her head to and fro, eyes half-lidded. “Is Manfred here?”
“Um . . . no,” I said, exchanging a quick glance of consternation with Ian. How much had she heard? “No, he was here, but he’s—he’s gone now.”
“Oh.” Seeming to lose interest, she closed her eyes again. Ian looked down at her, still stroking her hand. His face showed deep sympathy—with perhaps a tinge of calculation.
“Shall I maybe carry the lassie up to her bed?” he asked softly, as though she might be sleeping. “And then maybe go and find . . . ?” He tilted his head toward the open window, raising one eyebrow.
“If you would, please, Ian.” I hesitated, and his eyes met mine, deep hazel and soft with worry and the shadow of remembered pain. “She’ll be all right,” I said, trying to infuse a sense of certainty into the words.
“Aye, she will,” he said firmly, and stooped to gather her up, tucking the blanket under her. “If I’ve anything to say about it.”
46
IN WHICH THINGS
GANG AGLEY
MANFRED MCGILLIVRAY did not come back. Ian did, with a blackened eye, skinned knuckles, and the terse report that Manfred had declared a set intention of going off and hanging himself, and good riddance to the fornicating son of a bitch, and might his rotten bowels gush forth like Judas Iscariot’s, the traitorous, stinking wee turd. He then stamped upstairs, to stand silent over Lizzie’s bed for a time.
Hearing this, I hoped that Manfred’s statement was merely the counsel of temporary despair—and cursed myself for not having told him at once and in the strongest terms that he could be cured, whether it was absolutely true or not. Surely he wouldn’t . . .