A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [101]
Tom Christie was a townsman, from Edinburgh—he had been imprisoned in Ardsmuir as a Jacobite supporter, but had never been a fighting man. He had been a commissary officer. In fact, I realized with surprise, he had likely never even seen a real military battle, let alone engaged in the daily physical conflict with nature that Highland farming entailed.
I became aware of Jamie, still standing in the shadows, sipping wine and watching with a faintly ironic dispassion. I glanced up quickly at him; his expression didn’t alter, though he met my eyes and nodded, very slightly.
Tom Christie’s lip was fixed between his teeth; I could hear the faint whistle of his breath. He couldn’t see Jamie, but knew he was there; the stiffness of his back said as much. He might be afraid, Tom Christie, but he had some courage to him.
It would have hurt him less, could he have relaxed the clenched muscles of arm and hand. Under the circumstances, though, I could hardly suggest as much. I could have insisted that Jamie leave, but I was nearly finished. With a sigh of mingled exasperation and puzzlement, I clipped the final knot and laid down the scissors.
“All right, then,” I said, swiping the last of the coneflower ointment across the wound and reaching for a clean linen bandage. “Keep it clean. I’ll make up some fresh ointment for you; send Malva for it. Then come back in a week and I’ll take the stitches out.” I hesitated, glancing at Jamie. I felt some reluctance to use his presence as blackmail, but it was for Christie’s own good.
“I’ll take care of your right hand, then, too, shall I?” I said firmly.
He was still sweating, though the color in his face had begun to come back. He glanced at me, and then, involuntarily, at Jamie.
Jamie smiled faintly.
“Go on, then, Tom,” he said. “It’s naught to trouble ye. No but a wee nick. I’ve had worse.”
The words were spoken casually, but they might as well have been written in flaming letters a foot high. I’ve had worse.
Jamie’s face was still in shadow, but his eyes were clearly visible, slanted with his smile.
Tom Christie had not relaxed his rigid posture. He matched Jamie’s stare, closing his gnarled right hand over the bandaged left.
“Aye,” he said. “Well.” He was breathing deeply. “I will, then.” He rose abruptly, knocking the stool aside, and headed for the door, a little off-balance, like a man the worse for strong drink.
At the door, he paused, fumbling for the knob. Finding it, he drew himself up and turned back, looking for Jamie.
“At least,” he said, breathing so hard that he stumbled over the words, “at least it will be an honorable scar. Won’t it, Mac Dubh?”
Jamie straightened up abruptly, but Christie was already out, stamping down the corridor with a step heavy enough to rattle the pewter plates on the kitchen shelf.
“Why, ye wee pissant!” he said, in a tone somewhere between anger and astonishment. His left hand clenched involuntarily into a fist, and I thought it a good thing that Christie had made such a rapid exit.
I was rather unsure as to exactly what had happened—or been happening—but relieved that Christie was gone. I’d felt like a handful of grain, trapped between two grindstones, both of them trying to grind each other’s faces, with no heed for the hapless corn in between.
“I’ve never heard Tom Christie call you Mac Dubh,” I observed cautiously, turning to tidy away my surgical leavings. Christie was not, of course, a Gaelic-speaker, but I had never heard him use even the Gaelic nickname that the other Ardsmuir men still called Jamie by. Christie always called Jamie “Mr. Fraser,” or simply “Fraser,