A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [111]
“Go with God, Seaumais mac Brian.”
LATER IN THE WEEK, I went to the Christies’ cabin, to take the stitches out of Tom’s left hand and explain to him about the ether. His son, Allan, was in the yard, sharpening a knife on a foot-treadled grindstone. He smiled and nodded to me, but didn’t speak, unable to be heard above the rasping whine of the grindstone.
Perhaps it was that sound, I thought, a moment later, that had aroused Tom Christie’s apprehensions.
“I have decided that I shall leave my other hand as it is,” he said stiffly, as I clipped the last stitch and pulled it free.
I set down my tweezers and stared at him.
“Why?”
A dull red rose in his cheeks, and he stood up, lifting his chin and looking over my shoulder, so as not to meet my eye.
“I have prayed about it, and I have come to the conclusion that if this infirmity be God’s will, then it would be wrong to seek to change it.”
I suppressed the strong urge to say “Stuff and nonsense!”, but with great difficulty.
“Sit down,” I said, taking a deep breath. “And tell me, if you would, just why you think God wants you to go about with a twisted hand?”
He did glance at me then, surprised and flustered.
“Why . . . it is not my place to question the Lord’s ways!”
“Oh, isn’t it?” I said mildly. “I rather thought that’s what you were doing last Sunday. Or wasn’t it you I heard, inquiring as to what the Lord thought He was about, letting all these Catholics flourish like the green bay tree?”
The dull red color darkened substantially.
“I am sure you have misunderstood me, Mistress Fraser.” He straightened himself still further, so that he was nearly leaning over backward. “The fact remains that I shall not require your assistance.”
“Is it because I’m a Catholic?” I asked, settling back on the stool and folding my hands on my knee. “You think perhaps I’ll take advantage of you, and baptize you into the church of Rome when you’re off your guard?”
“I have been suitably christened!” he snapped. “And I will thank you to keep your Popish notions to yourself.”
“I have an arrangement with the Pope,” I said, giving him stare for stare. “I issue no bulls on points of doctrine, and he doesn’t do surgery. Now, about your hand—”
“The Lord’s will—” he began stubbornly.
“Was it the Lord’s will that your cow should fall into the gorge and break her leg last month?” I interrupted him. “Because if it was, then you presumably ought to have left her there to die, rather than fetching my husband to help pull her out, and then allowing me to set her leg. How is she, by the way?”
I could see the cow in question through the window, peacefully grazing at the edge of the yard, and evidently untroubled either by her nursing calf, or by the binding I had applied to support her cracked cannon bone.
“She is well, I thank you.” He was beginning to sound a little strangled, though his shirt was loose at the collar. “That is—”
“Well, then,” I said. “Do you think the Lord regards you as less deserving of medical help than your cow? It seems unlikely to me, what with Him regarding sparrows and all that.”
He’d gone a sort of dusky purple round the jowls by this point, and clutched the defective hand with the sound one, as though to keep it safe from me.
“I see that you have heard something of the Bible,” he began, very pompous.
“Actually, I’ve read it for myself,” I said. “I read quite well, you know.”
He brushed this remark aside, a dim light of triumph gleaming in his eye.
“Indeed. Then I am sure you will have read the Letter of St. Paul to Timothy, in which he says, Let a woman be silent—”
I had, in fact, encountered St. Paul and his opinions before, and had a few of my own.
“I expect St. Paul ran into a woman who could outargue him, too,” I said, not without sympathy. “Easier to try to put a stopper on the entire sex than to win his point fairly. I should have expected better of you, though, Mr. Christie.”
“But that’s blasphemy!” he gasped, clearly shocked.
“It is