“Ye’ll take help where ye can, I suppose?” Jamie said a little gruffly.

Christie looked at him sharply, then nodded, a very faint smile passing through his beard like a shadow.

“I thank you, sir,” he said. He took his spectacles out of his coat and put them on, then opened the little book with great care and began to thumb through it, evidently looking for a suitable inspiration for undergoing surgery without anesthetic.

I gave Jamie a long look, to which he responded with the faintest of shrugs. It wasn’t merely a Bible. It was the Bible that had once belonged to Alexander MacGregor.

Jamie had come by it as a very young man, when he was imprisoned in Fort William by Captain Jonathan Randall. Flogged once, and awaiting another, frightened and in pain, he had been left in solitary confinement with no company save his thoughts—and this Bible, given to him by the garrison’s surgeon for what comfort it might offer.

Alex MacGregor had been another young Scottish prisoner—one who had died by his own hand, rather than suffer the further attentions of Captain Randall. His name was written inside the book, in a tidy, rather sprawling hand. The little Bible was no stranger to fear and suffering, and if it wasn’t ether, I hoped it might still possess its own power of anodyne.

Christie had found something that suited him. He cleared his throat, straightened himself in the chair, and laid his hand on the towel, palm up, in such a forthright manner that I wondered whether he had settled on the passage in which the Maccabees willingly present their hands and tongues for amputation at the hands of the heathen king.

A peek over his shoulder indicated that he was somewhere in the Psalms, though.

“At your convenience, then, Mistress Fraser,” Christie said politely.

If he wasn’t to be unconscious, I needed a bit of extra preparation. Manly fortitude was all very well, and so was Biblical inspiration—but there are relatively few people capable of sitting motionless while having their hand sliced into, and I didn’t think Thomas Christie was one of them.

I had a plentiful supply of linen strips for bandaging. I rolled back his sleeve, then used a few of the strips to bind his forearm tightly to the little table, with an additional band holding back the clawed fingers from the site of operation.

Though Christie seemed rather shocked at the notion of drinking liquor while reading the Bible, Jamie—and, just possibly, the sight of the waiting scalpels—had convinced him that circumstances justified it. He had consumed a couple of ounces by the time I had him properly secured and his palm thoroughly swabbed with raw alcohol, and was looking significantly more relaxed than he had upon entering the room.

This sense of relaxation disappeared abruptly when I made the first incision.

His breath rushed out in a high-pitched gasp and he arched upward out of the chair, jerking the table across the floor with a screech. I grabbed his wrist in time to prevent his ripping the bandages away, and Jamie seized him by both shoulders, pressing him back into the chair.

“Now then, now then,” Jamie said, squeezing firmly. “You’ll do, Tom. Aye, you’ll do.”

Sweat had popped out all over Christie’s face, and his eyes were huge behind the lenses of his spectacles. He gulped, swallowed, took a quick look at his hand, which was welling blood, then looked away fast, white as a sheet.

“If you’re going to vomit, Mr. Christie, do it there, will you?” I said, shoving an empty bucket toward him with one foot. I still had one hand on his wrist, the other pressing a wad of sterilized lint hard onto the incision.

Jamie was still talking to him like one settling a panicked horse. Christie was rigid, but breathing hard, and trembling in every limb, including the one I meant to be working on.

“Shall I stop?” I asked Jamie, giving Christie a quick appraisal. I could feel his pulse hammering in the wrist I grasped. He wasn’t in shock—quite—but plainly wasn’t feeling at all well.

Jamie shook his head, eyes on Christie’s face.

“No. Shame to waste that much whisky, aye? And he’ll not want to go through the waiting again. Here, Tom, have another dram; it will do ye good.” He pressed the cup to Christie’s lips, and Christie gulped it without hesitation.

Jamie had let go of Christie’s shoulders as he settled; now he took hold of Christie’s forearm with one hand, gripping firmly. With the other, he picked up the Bible, which had fallen to the floor, and thumbed it open.

“The right hand of the Lord is exalted,” he read, squinting over Christie’s shoulder at the book. “The right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly. Well, that’s appropriate, no?” He glanced down at Christie, who had subsided, his free hand clenched in a fist against his belly.

“Go on,” Christie said, voice hoarse.

“I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord,” Jamie went on, his voice low but firm. “The Lord hath chastened me sore, but he hath not given me over unto death.”

Christie seemed to find this heartening; his breathing slowed a little.

I couldn’t spare time to look at him, and his arm under Jamie’s grasp was hard as wood. Still, he was beginning to murmur along with Jamie, catching every few words.

“Open to me the gates of righteousness… I will praise thee, for thou hast heard me… .”

I had the aponeurosis laid bare, and could clearly see the thickening. A flick of the scalpel freed the edge of it; then a ruthless slice, cutting hard down through the fibrous band of tissue … the scalpel struck bone, and Christie gasped.

“God is the Lord which has showed us light; bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar… .” I could hear a tinge of amusement in Jamie’s voice as he read that bit, and felt the shift of his body as he glanced toward me.

It did look rather as though I had been sacrificing something; hands don’t bleed as profusely as head wounds, but there are plenty of small vessels in the palm, and I was hastily blotting away the blood with one hand as I worked with the other; discarded wads of bloodstained lint littered the table and the floor around me.

Jamie was flipping to and fro, picking out random bits of Scripture, but Christie was with him now, speaking the words along with him. I stole a hasty glance at him; his color was still bad, and his pulse thundering, but the breathing was better. He was clearly speaking from memory; the lenses of his spectacles were fogged.

I had the hindering tissue fully exposed now, and was trimming away the tiny fibers from the surface of the tendon. The clawed fingers twitched, and the exposed tendons moved suddenly, silver as darting fish. I grabbed the feebly wiggling fingers and squeezed them fiercely.

“You mustn’t move,” I said. “I need both hands; I can’t hold yours.”

I couldn’t look up, but felt him nod, and released his fingers. With the tendons gleaming softly in their beds, I removed the last bits of the aponeurosis, sprayed the wound with a mixture of alcohol and distilled water for disinfection, and set about closing the incisions.

The men’s voices were no more than whispers, a low susurrus to which I had paid no attention, engrossed as I was. As I relaxed my attention and began to suture the wound, though, I became aware of them again.

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want… .”

I looked up, wiping perspiration from my forehead with my sleeve, and saw that Thomas Christie now held the small Bible, closed and pressed against his body with his free arm. His chin jammed hard into his chest, his eyes tight closed and face contorted with pain.

Jamie still held the bound arm tight, but had his other hand on Christie’s shoulder, his own head bent near Christie’s; his eyes, too, were closed, as he whispered the words.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil… .”