A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [99]
“No, mistress. I’m quite all right. Only taken queer for a moment.” He spoke hoarsely, but firmly enough, so I contented myself with pressing the cloth hard against the wound to stanch the dripping blood.
Jemmy was loitering in the doorway, wide-eyed, but showing no particular alarm; blood was nothing new to him.
“Shall I fetch ye a dram, Tom?” Jamie said, eyeing the patient warily. “I ken ye dinna hold wi’ strong drink, but there’s a time for it, surely?”
Christie’s mouth worked a little, but he shook his head.
“I . . . no. Perhaps . . . a little wine?”
“Take a little wine for thy stomach’s sake, eh? Aye, fine. Take heart, man, I’ll fetch it.” Jamie clapped him encouragingly on the shoulder, and went briskly off, taking Jemmy by the hand as he went out.
Christie’s mouth tightened in a grimace. I had noticed before that like some Protestants, Tom Christie regarded the Bible as being a document addressed specifically to himself and confided to his personal care for prudent distribution to the masses. Thus, he quite disliked hearing Catholics—i.e., Jamie—quoting casually from it. I had also noticed that Jamie was aware of this, and took every opportunity to make such quotes.
“What happened?” I asked, as much to distract Christie as because I wished to know.
Christie broke off his glower at the empty doorway and glanced at his left hand—then hastily away, going pale again.
“An accident,” he said gruffly. “I was cutting rushes; the knife slipped.” His right hand flexed slightly as he said this, and I glanced at it.
“No bloody wonder!” I said. “Here, keep that up in the air.” I lifted the injured left hand, tightly wrapped, above his head, let go of it, and reached for the other.
He had been suffering from a condition in the right hand called Dupuytren’s contracture—or at least it would be called that, once Baron Dupuytren got round to describing it in another sixty or seventy years. Caused by a thickening and shortening of the fibrous sheet that kept the hand’s tendons in place when the fingers flexed, the result of it was to draw the ring finger in toward the palm of the hand. In advanced cases, the little finger and sometimes the middle finger as well were involved. Tom Christie’s case had advanced quite a bit since I had last had the chance of a good look at his hand.
“Did I tell you?” I demanded rhetorically, pulling gently on the clawed fingers. The middle finger could still be halfway unfolded; the ring and little fingers could barely be lifted away from the palm. “I said it would get worse. No wonder the knife slipped—I’m surprised you could even hold it.”
A slight flush appeared under the clipped salt-and-pepper beard, and he glanced away.
“I could have taken care of it easily months ago,” I said, turning the hand to look critically at the angle of contracture. “It would have been a very simple matter. Now it will be rather more complicated—but I can still correct it, I think.”
Had he been a less stolid man, I should have described him as wriggling with embarrassment. As it was, he merely twitched slightly, the flush deepening over his face.
“I—I do not desire—”
“I don’t bloody care what you desire,” I told him, putting the clawed hand back in his lap. “If you don’t allow me to operate on that hand, it will be all but useless inside six months. You can barely write with it now, am I right?”
His eyes met mine, deep gray and startled.
“I can write,” he said, but I could tell that the belligerence in his voice hid a deep uneasiness. Tom Christie was an educated man, a scholar, and the Ridge’s schoolteacher. It was to him that many of the Ridge people went for help in the composition of letters or legal documents. He took great pride in this; I knew the threat of loss of this ability was the best lever I had—and it was no idle threat.
“Not for long,” I said, and widened my eyes at him to make my meaning clear. He swallowed uneasily, but before he could reply, Jamie reappeared, holding