Or sometimes, the nightmare image of a bundle of rotting clothes hanging from a tree limb, deep in the forest, with no mourners save the crows who came to pick the flesh from his bones. And despite everything, I could not find it in my heart to hate Ute McGillivray, who must be thinking the same thoughts.

The sole bright spot in this ruddy quagmire was that Thomas Christie, quite contrary to my expectations, had allowed Malva to continue to come to the surgery, his sole stipulation being that if I proposed to involve his daughter in any further use of the ether, he was to be told ahead of time.

“There.” I stood back, gesturing to her to look through the eyepiece of the microscope. “Do you see them?”

Her lips pursed in silent fascination. It had taken no little effort to find a combination of staining and reflected sunlight that would reveal the spirochetes, but I had succeeded at last. They weren’t strongly visible, but you could see them, if you knew what you were looking for—and despite my complete conviction in my original diagnosis, I was relieved to see them.

“Oh, yes! Wee spirals. I see them plain!” She looked up at me, blinking. “D’ye mean seriously to tell me that these bittie things are what’s poxed Manfred?” She was too polite to express open skepticism, but I could see it in her eyes.

“I do indeed.” I had explained the germ theory of disease a number of times, to a variety of disbelieving eighteenth-century listeners, and in the light of this experience had little expectation of finding a favorable reception. The normal response was either a blank stare, indulgent laughter, or a sniff of dismissal, and I was more or less expecting a polite version of one of these reactions from Malva.

To my surprise, though, she seemed to grasp the notion at once—or at least pretended to.

“Well, so.” She put both hands on the counter and peered again at the spirochetes. “These wee beasties cause the syphilis, then. However do they do that? And why is it that the bittie things ye showed me from my teeth don’t make me ill?”

I explained, as best I could, the notion of “good bugs” or “indifferent bugs” versus “bad bugs,” which she seemed to grasp easily—but my explanation of cells, and the concept of the body being composed of these, left her frowning at the palm of her hand in confusion, trying to make out the individual cells. She shook off her doubt, though, and folding up her hand in her apron, returned to her questions.

Did the bugs cause all disease? The penicillin—why did it work on some of the germs, but not all? And how did the bugs get from one person to another?

“Some travel by air—that’s why you must try to avoid people coughing or sneezing on you—and some by water—which is why you mustn’t drink from a stream that someone’s been using as a privy—and some … well, by other means.” I didn’t know how much she might know about sex in humans—she lived on a farm, clearly she knew how pigs, chickens, and horses behaved—and I was wary of enlightening her, lest her father hear about it. I rather thought he’d prefer her to be dealing with ether.

Naturally, she pounced on my evasion.

“Other means? What other means are there?” With an internal sigh, I told her.

“They do what?” she said, incredulous. “Men, I mean. Like an animal! Whyever would a woman let a man do that to her?”

“Well, they are animals, you know,” I said, suppressing an urge to laugh. “So are women. As to why one would let them …” I rubbed my nose, looking for a tasteful way of putting it. She was moving rapidly ahead of me, though, putting two and two together.

“For money,” she said, looking thunderstruck. “That’s what a whore does! She lets them do such things to her for money.”

“Well, yes—but women who aren’t whores—”

“The bairns, aye, ye said.” She nodded, but was plainly thinking of other things; her small, smooth forehead was wrinkled in concentration.

“How much money do they get?” she asked. “I should want a lot, I think, to let a man—”

“I don’t know,” I said, somewhat taken aback. “Different amounts, I expect. Depending.”

“Depending … oh, if he was maybe ugly, ye mean, ye could make him pay more? Or if she were ugly …” She gave me a quick, interested look. “Bobby Higgins told me of a whore he kent in London, that her looks was spoilt by vitriol.” She looked up at the cupboard where I kept the sulfuric acid under lock and key, and shivered, her delicate shoulders quivering with revulsion at the thought.

“Yes, he told me about her, too. Vitriol is what we call a caustic—a liquid that burns. That’s why—”

But her mind had already returned to the subject of fascination.

“To think of Manfred McGillivray doing such a thing!” She turned round gray eyes on me. “Well, and Bobby. He must have been, mustn’t he?”

“I do believe soldiers are inclined—”

“But the Bible,” she said, squinting thoughtfully. “It says ye mustna be whoring after idols. Does that mean men went about sticking their pricks into—did the idols look like women, d’ye think?”

“I’m sure that’s not what it means, no,” I said hastily. “More a metaphor, you know. Er … lusting after something, I think it means, not, er …”

“Lust,” she said thoughtfully. “That’s to want something sinful bad, is it not?”

“Yes, rather.” Heat was wavering over my skin, dancing in tiny veils. I needed cool air, quickly, or I’d be flushed as a tomato and drenched with sweat. I rose to go out, but felt I really mustn’t leave her with the impression that sex had to do only with money or babies—even though it well might, for some women.

“There is another reason for intercourse, you know,” I said, speaking over my shoulder as I headed for the door. “When you love someone, you want to give them pleasure. And they want to do the same for you.”

“Pleasure?” Her voice rose behind me, incredulous. “Ye mean some women like it?”

47



BEES AND SWITCHES

I WAS BY NO MEANS SPYING. One of my hives had swarmed, and I was looking for the fugitive bees.

New swarms usually didn’t travel far, and stopped frequently, often resting for hours in a tree fork or open log, where they formed a ball of humming conference. If they could be located before making up their collective mind about where to settle, they could often be persuaded into a temptingly empty basket hive, and thus hauled back into captivity.

The trouble with bees is that they don’t leave footprints. Now I was casting to and fro on the mountainside, nearly a mile from the house, an empty basket hive slung on a rope over my shoulder, trying to follow Jamie’s instructions regarding hunting, and think like a bee.

There were huge blooming patches of galax, fireweed, and other wildflowers on the hillside far above me, but there was a very attractive dead snag—if one was a bee—poking out of the heavy growth some way below.

The basket hive was heavy, and the slope was steep. It was easier to go down than up. I hitched up the rope, which was beginning to rub the skin off my shoulder, and began sidling downward through sumac and hobblebush, bracing my feet against rocks and grabbing at branches to keep from slipping.

Concentrating on my feet, I didn’t take particular notice of where I was. I emerged into a gap in the bushes from which the roof of a cabin was visible, some distance below me. Whose was that? The Christies’, I thought. I wiped a sleeve across the sweat dripping from the point of my chin; the day was warm, and I hadn’t brought a canteen. Perhaps I would stop and ask for water on the way home.

Making my way at last to the snag, I was disappointed to find no sign of the swarm. I stood still, blotting sweat from my face and listening, in hopes of picking up the bees’ telltale deep drone. I heard the hum and whine of assorted flying insects, and the genial racket of a flock of foraging pygmy nuthatches on the slope above—but no bees.