She nodded eagerly.

“Aye, I see. So ye’d know were they getting better or worse. What else, then?”

“Well, the most important reason,” I said slowly, seeking the right words, “is so that another doctor—someone who might come later—so that person could read the record, and see how I’d done this or that. It might show them a way to do something they hadn’t done themselves—or a better way.”

Her mouth pursed up in interest.

“Ooh! Ye mean someone might learn from this”—she touched a finger to the page, delicately—“how to do what it is ye do? Without ’prenticing himself to a doctor?”

“Well, it’s best if you have someone to teach you,” I said, amused at her eagerness. “And there are things you can’t really learn from a book. But if there’s no one to learn from—” I glanced out the window, at the vista of green wilderness swarming over the mountains. “It’s better than nothing,” I concluded.

“Where did you learn?” she asked, curious. “From this book? I see there’s another hand, besides yours. Whose was it?”

I ought to have seen that one coming. I hadn’t quite bargained on Malva Christie’s quickness, though.

“Ah … I learned from a lot of books,” I said. “And from other doctors.”

“Other doctors,” she echoed, looking at me in fascination. “D’ye call yourself a doctor, then? I didna ken women ever could be.”

For the rather good reason that no women did call themselves physicians or surgeons now—nor were accepted as such.

I coughed.

“Well … it’s a name, that’s all. A good many people just say wisewoman, or conjure woman. Or ban-lichtne,” I added. “But it’s all the same, really. It only matters whether I know something that might help them.”

“Ban—” She mouthed the unfamiliar word. “I haven’t heard that before.”

“It’s the Gaelic. The Highland tongue, you know? It means ‘female healer’ or something like.”

“Oh, the Gaelic.” An expression of mild derision crossed her face; I expected she had absorbed her father’s attitude toward the Highlanders’ ancient language. She evidently saw something in my face, though, for she instantly erased the disdain from her own features and bent over the book again. “Who was it wrote these other bits, then?”

“A man named Daniel Rawlings.” I smoothed a creased page, with the usual sense of affection for my predecessor. “He was a doctor from Virginia.”

“Him?” She looked up, surprised. “The same who’s buried in the boneyard up the mountain?”

“Ah … yes, that’s him.” And the story of how he came to be there was not something to be shared with Miss Christie. I glanced out of the window, estimating the light. “Will your father be wanting his dinner?”

“Oh!” She stood up straight at that, glancing out the window, too, with a faint look of alarm. “Aye, he will.” She cast a last look of longing toward the book, but then brushed down her skirt and set her cap straight, ready to go. “I thank ye, Mrs. Fraser, for showing me your wee book.”

“Happy to,” I assured her sincerely. “You’re welcome to come again and look at it. In fact … would you—” I hesitated, but plunged on, encouraged by her look of bright interest. “I’m going to take a growth from Grannie Macbeth’s ear tomorrow. Would you like to come along with me, to see how? It would be a help to me, to have another pair of hands,” I added, seeing sudden doubt war with the interest in her eyes.

“Oh, aye, Mrs. Fraser—I’d dearly like it!” she said. “It’s only my father—” She looked uneasy as she said it, but then seemed to make up her mind. “Well … I’ll come. I’m sure I can talk him round.”

“Would it help if I were to send a note? Or come and speak with him?” I was suddenly quite desirous that she should come with me.

She gave a small shake of the head.

“Nay, ma’am, it’ll be all right, I’m sure.” She dimpled at me suddenly, gray eyes sparkling. “I’ll tell him I’ve had a keek at your black book, and it’s no by way of being spells in it, at all, but only receipts for teas and purges. I’ll maybe not say about the drawings, though,” she added.

“Spells?” I asked incredulously. “Is that what he thought?”

“Oh, aye,” she assured me. “He warned me not to touch it, for fear of ensorcellment.”

“Ensorcellment,” I murmured, bemused. Well, Thomas Christie was a schoolmaster, after all. In fact, he might have been right, I thought; Malva glanced back at the book as I went with her to the door, obvious fascination on her face.

23



ANESTHESIA

I CLOSED MY EYES AND, holding my hand a foot or so in front of my face, wafted it gently toward my nose, like one of the parfumeurs I’d seen in Paris, testing a fragrance.

The smell hit me in the face like an ocean wave, and with approximately the same effect. My knees buckled, black lines writhed through my vision, and I ceased to make any distinction between up and down.

In what seemed an instant later, I came to, lying on the floor of the surgery with Mrs. Bug staring down at me in horror.

“Mrs. Claire! Are ye all right, mo gaolach? I saw ye fall—”

“Yes,” I croaked, shaking my head gingerly as I got up on one elbow. “Put—put the cork in.” I gestured clumsily at the large open flask on the table, its cork lying alongside. “Don’t get your face near it!”

Face averted and screwed into a grimace of caution, she got the cork and inserted it, at arm’s length.

“Phew, what is yon stuff?” she said, stepping back and making faces. She sneezed explosively into her apron. “I’ve never smelt anything like that—and Bride kens I’ve smelt a good many nasty things in this room!”

“That, my dear Mrs. Bug, is ether.” The swimming sensation in my head had almost disappeared, replaced by euphoria.

“Ether?” She looked at the distilling apparatus on my counter in fascination, the alcohol bath bubbling gently away in its great glass bubble over a low flame and the oil of vitriol—later to be known as sulfuric acid—slicking its slow way down the slanted tubing, its malign hot scent lurking below the usual surgery smells of roots and herbs. “Fancy! And what’s ether, then?”

“It puts people asleep, so they won’t feel pain when you cut them,” I explained, thrilled by my success. “And I know exactly who I’m going to use it on first!”



“TOM CHRISTIE?” Jamie repeated. “Have ye told him?”

“I told Malva. She’s going to work on him; soften him up a bit.”

Jamie snorted briefly at the thought.

“Ye could boil Tom Christie in milk for a fortnight, and he’d still be hard as a grindstone. And if ye think he’ll listen to his wee lass prattle about a magic liquid that will put him to sleep—”

“No, she isn’t to tell him about the ether. I’ll do that,” I assured him. “She’s just going to pester him about his hand; convince him he needs it mended.”

“Mm.” Jamie still appeared dubious, though not, it seemed, entirely on Thomas Christie’s account.

“This ether ye’ve made, Sassenach. Might ye not kill him with it?”

I had, in fact, worried considerably about that very possibility. I’d done operations frequently where ether was used, and it was on the whole a fairly safe anesthetic. But homemade ether, administered by hand … and people did die of anesthetic accidents, even in the most careful settings, with trained anesthetists and all sorts of resuscitating equipment to hand. And I remembered Rosamund Lindsay, whose accidental death still haunted my dreams now and then. But the possibility of having a reliable anesthetic, of being able to do surgery without pain—

“I might,” I admitted. “I don’t think so, but there’s always some risk. Worth it, though.”

Jamie gave me a slightly jaundiced look.

“Oh, aye? Does Tom think so?”

“Well, we’ll find out. I’ll explain it all carefully to him, and if he won’t—well, he won’t. But I do hope he does!”

The edge of Jamie’s mouth curled up and he shook his head tolerantly.