in the skin of a patient who had no time to sit longer.’
‘A pity, that. Not for him, but for me.’
Unexpectedly she laughed out loud, as though everything in her world was right.
Ian stood and sidled closer. ‘Have ye drunk more of the whisky than ye used on him, Izzy?’ he asked and picked up the cask. Snatching it from him, she placed it on the ground and plucked an earthenware container from her bag. Sticks of fragrant summer heal and dried valerian were caught in twists of paper, but it was the rolled and cleaned gut of a lamb that she sought.
Taking the long sinew between her fingers, she wished the stranger might simply faint away and leave her to the job of what had to happen next, for no amount of alcohol would dull this pain.
With the needle balanced across the flame, she dunked the gut in boiling garlic water before threading it, feeling the sting of heat on her skin. A gypsy she had met once from Dundee had shown her the finer points of medical management and she had never forgotten the rules. Heat everything until boiling point and touch as little as you needed to. Alisdair had bought her silver forceps from Edinburgh after they had been married, but they had been lost in the chaos of protecting Ceann Gronna. Just as he had been! She wished she might have had the small instrument now with its sharp clasp and easy handling.
Her patient’s arm glistened in the firelight, the pure strength and hard muscle, defined by the flame, tensing as she came closer.
‘If you stiffen, it will hurt more.’
He smiled and his teeth were white and even. Isobel wished he had been ugly or old.
‘Hard to be relaxed when your needle looks as if it might better serve a shoemaker.’
‘The skins of all animals have much the same properties.’ Pulling the flap of skin forwards, she dug in deep. The first puncture made a definite pop in the silence, but he did not move. Not even an inch. She had never known a patient to sit so still before and she kent from experience just how much it must hurt.
She made a line of stitches along the wound. Blood welled against the intrusion and his other hand came forwards to wipe it away. She stopped him.
‘It is better to let it weep until the poultice is applied.’ She did not wish to tell him again of her need for cleanliness.
He nodded, his breath faster now. On his top lip sweat beaded, the growth of a one-day beard easily seen, though he turned from her when he perceived that she watched him.
‘The woman has the way of a witch. I do not know if we should trust her.’ His friend spoke in French, caution in his words, but the green-eyed one only laughed.
‘Witch or not, Simon, I doubt that the physic at court could have made a better job.’
Court? Did he mean in Edinburgh or Paris?
Flexing his arm as she finished, he frowned when the stitches caught.
‘It would be better to keep still.’ She did not want her handiwork marred by use.
‘For how long?’
Shrugging, she took the powders up from their twists of paper and mixed them on the palm of her hand with spit. A day or a week? She had seen some men lift a sword the next evening and others fail to be able to ever dress themselves properly again. Positioning his arm, she placed the brown paste over the wound and bound it with cloth, securing the ends with a knot after splitting the fabric.
‘By tomorrow you will know if it festers.’
‘And if it does?’
‘Then my efforts will be all in vain and you will lose either your arm or your life.’
‘The choice of Hades.’
‘Well, the Sea Gods let you loose from the ocean so perhaps the Healing God will follow their lead.’
She was relieved as he moved a good distance away.
Everything ached: his arm, his head and his throat. The rain from above was heavy, wetting them with its constant drizzle.
He slept fitfully, curled into the blanket like a child, waking only as the moon waned against the coming dawn. Isobel Dalceann sat upright against the trunk of a tree. Her hair now was bunched under a hat so that the raindrops fell off the wide edge to dribble down the grey worsted wool of her overcoat. One hand played with the beads of an ebony rosary, glass sparking in the fire-flames and the way her lips moved soundlessly suggested an age-old chant. He could not take his eyes away from a woman whose knife lay across her knees, ready to take a life after spending the whole of an evening trying to save one.
‘I know you are awake.’
He couldn’t help but be amused. ‘Hard to sleep with the possibility of losing my arm on the morrow.’
‘How do you feel now?’
‘Sore.’
‘But not sick?’
He shook his head.
‘Then I should imagine you will get to keep it, after all.’
‘Your bedside manner lacks a certain tenderness.’
She smiled. ‘Ian hoped you might be dead by now. We placed the other man back into the outgoing tide and he’d like to do the same with you.’
‘Unshackle us and we will walk away in any direction you choose.’
‘The problem with that is you have the way of our names and our faces, and there are many who would hurt us here in the ancient hunting grounds of the Dalceann clan.’
‘If we gave our word of honour to maintain only silence …?’
‘Words of honour have the unfortunate tendency to become surplus to survival once safety is reached.’
‘Then why did you swim out to us in the first place?’
Her eyes flickered to the empty skin at his wrist.
‘The gold?’ He pushed himself up to a sitting position. Streaks of red-hot pain snaked into his shoulder. ‘You could not have known that we were adorned with such before you reached us.’
He caught the white line of her teeth. ‘But we could hope.’
‘Only that?’
She remained a shadow amongst the trees, her legs against her chest with a blanket around her shoulders. ‘A boat left the Ceann Gronna keep two weeks ago bound south with a dozen of our men aboard and Ian, Angus and I came from the keep to see if we could see any sign of its return. We thought it might be the vessel that had foundered.’ Her hand stilled for a moment on the count of the beads and she switched languages with barely an inflection of change. ‘You spoke with your friend today of a physic at court. Which one do you hail from?’ He was astonished.
‘You speak French?’
‘Fluently.
