The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [549]
“You’re sure you’re all right, Da?” she said. One hand stole toward him, but she stopped, clearly afraid to touch him in his present condition.
“Oh, aye, I’ll do.” I could hear the deep fatigue in his voice, but a big hand rose slowly out from under the quilts to touch her cheek.
“Fergus did braw work,” he said. “Kept the men together through the night, found me and Roger Mac in the morning, brought everyone home safe across the mountain. He’s a fine sense of direction.”
Marsali’s head was still bent, but I saw her cheek curve in a smile.
“I did tell him so. He’ll no give over berating himself for lettin’ the beasts get away, though. Just one would ha’ fed the whole Ridge for the winter, he said.”
Jamie gave a small grunt of dismissal.
“Och, we’ll manage.”
It was plainly an effort for him to speak, but I didn’t try to send Marsali away. Roger told me Jamie had been vomiting blood as they brought him back; I couldn’t give him brandy or whisky to ease the pain, and I hadn’t any laudanum. Marsali’s presence might help to distract him from his wretchedness.
I opened the cupboard quietly and brought out the big lidded bowl where I kept my leeches. The pottery was cold, soothing to my scalded hands. I had a dozen or so big ones; somnolent black blobs, half-floating in their murky brew of water and cattail roots. I scooped three into a smaller bowl full of clear water, and set it by the brazier to warm.
“Wake up, lads,” I said. “Time to earn your keep.”
I laid out the other things I would need, listening to the murmured conversation behind me—Germain, baby Joan, a porcupine in the trees near Marsali and Fergus’s cabin.
Coarse gauze for the onion poultice, the corked bottle with its mixture of alcohol and sterile water, the stoneware jars of dried goldenseal, coneflower, and comfrey. And the bottle of penicillin broth. I cursed silently, looking at the label on it. It was nearly a month old; caught up in the bear hunt and the autumn chores upon our return, I had not made a fresh batch for weeks.
It would have to do. Pressing my lips together, I rubbed the herbs between my hands, into the beechwood brewing cup, and with no more than a faint sense of self-consciousness, silently said the blessing of Bride over it. I’d take all the help I could get.
“Are the cut pine-fans ye find on the ground verra fresh?” Jamie asked, sounding slightly more interested in the porcupine than in Joan’s new tooth.
“Aye, green and fresh. I ken weel enough he’s up there, the wicked creature, but it’s a great huge tree, and I canna spot him from the ground, let alone fire on him.” Marsali was no more than a middling shot, but since Fergus couldn’t fire a musket at all with his one hand, she did the family’s hunting.
“Mmphm.” Jamie cleared his throat with an effort, and she hastily gave him more water. “Take a bit o’ salted pork rind from the pantry and rub it ower a stick of wood. Set it on the ground, not too far from the trunk of the tree, and let Fergus sit up to watch. Porcupines are gey fond o’ the salt, and of grease; they’ll smell it and venture down after dark. Once it’s on the ground, ye needna waste shot; just bat it ower the head. Fergus can do that fine.”
I opened the medical chest and frowned into the tray that held saws and scalpels. I took out the small, curve-bladed scalpel, its handle cool under my fingers. I would have to debride the wound—clean away the dead tissue, the shreds of skin and bits of leaf and cloth and dirt; the men had plastered his leg with mud and wrapped it with a filthy neckerchief. Then I could sprinkle the penicillin solution over the exposed surfaces; I hoped that would help.
“That would be grand,” Marsali said, a little wistfully. “I’ve no had such a beast before, but Ian did tell me they were fine; verra fat, and the quills good for sewing and all manner o’ things.”
I bit my lip, looking at the other blades. The biggest was a folding saw, meant for field amputation, with a blade nearly eight inches long; I hadn’t used it since Alamance.