A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [347]
“. . . and the ball had gone straight through the testicle; it had left the most perfect hole. . . . You could look quite through it, I assure you.” Plainly he regretted the loss of this interesting specimen, and it was with some difficulty that I got him to tell me what had become of the gentleman to whom it belonged.
“Well, that was odd. It was the horse, you see . . .” he said vaguely. “Lovely animal . . . long hair, like a woman’s, so unusual . . .”
A Friesian horse. The doctor had recalled that the planter Phillip Wylie was fond of such horses, and had said as much to his patient, suggesting that as the man had no money—and would not be capable of riding comfortably for some time, in any case—he might think of selling his animal to Wylie. The man had agreed to this, and had requested the doctor to make inquiry of Wylie, who was in town for the Court Sessions.
Doctor Fentiman had obligingly gone out to do so, leaving his patient cozily tucked up on the chaise with a draught of tincture of laudanum.
Phillip Wylie had professed himself most interested in the horse (“Yes, I’ll wager he was,” I said, but the doctor didn’t notice), and had hastened round to see it. The horse was present, but the patient was not, having absconded on foot in the doctor’s absence—taking with him half a dozen silver spoons, an enameled snuffbox, the bottle of laudanum, and six shillings, which happened to be all the money the doctor had in the house.
“I cannot imagine how he managed it,” Fentiman said, eyes quite round at the thought. “In such condition!” To his credit, he appeared more distressed at the notion of his patient’s condition than his own loss. He was a terrible drunkard, Fentiman, I thought; I’d never seen him completely sober—but not a bad doctor.
“Still,” he added philosophically, “all’s well as ends well, is it not, my dear lady?”
By which he meant that Phillip Wylie had purchased the horse from him for a price sufficient to more than compensate for his losses, and leave him with a tidy profit.
“Quite,” I said, wondering just how Jamie would take this news. He had won the stallion—for it must of course be Lucas—from Phillip Wylie in the course of an acrimonious card game at River Run, only to have the horse stolen by Stephen Bonnet a few hours later.
On the whole, I expected that Jamie would be pleased that the stallion was back in good hands, even if they weren’t his. As for the news about Bonnet . . . “A bad penny always turns up,” had been his cynical opinion, expressed when Bonnet’s body had failed to be discovered after Brianna had shot him.
Fentiman was openly yawning by now. He blinked, eyes watering, patted about his person in search of a handkerchief, then bent to rummage in his case, which he had dropped on the floor near his chair.
I had pulled out my own handkerchief and leaned across to hand it to him, when I saw them in the open case.
“What are those?” I asked, pointing. I could see what they were, of course; what I wanted to know was where he’d got them. They were syringes, two of them, lovely little syringes, made of brass. Each one was composed of two bits: a plunger with curled handles, and a cylindrical barrel, drawn out at the narrowed end into a very long, blunt-tipped needle.
“I—why—that is . . . ah . . .” He was terribly taken aback, and stammered like a schoolboy caught sneaking cigarettes behind the toilets. Then something occurred to him, and he relaxed.
“Ears,” he declared, in ringing tones. “For cleansing ears. Yes, that is what they are, indubitably. Ear clysters!”
“Oh, are they really?” I picked one up; he tried to stop me, but his reflexes were delayed, and he succeeded only in grabbing at the ruffle of my sleeve.
“How ingenious,” I said, working the plunger. It was a little stiff, but not bad at all—particularly not when the alternative was a makeshift hypodermic composed of a leather tube with a rattlesnake’s fang attached. Of course a blunt tip wouldn’t do, but it would be a simple matter to cut it to a sharp angle. “Where did you get them? I should like very much