“Well, it was Jenny—my sister, ye ken?” I did indeed remember Jenny; half her brother’s size, and dark as he was blazing fair, but a match and more for him in stubbornness.
“She said she wasna going to let me die,” he said, with a rueful smile. “And she didn’t. My opinion didna seem to have anything to do wi’ the matter, so she didna bother to ask me.”
“That sounds like Jenny.” I felt a small glow of comfort at the thought of my sister-in-law. Jamie hadn’t been alone as I feared, then; Jenny Murray would have fought the Devil himself to save her brother—and evidently had.
“She dosed me for the fever, and put poultices on my leg to draw the poison, but nothing worked, and it only got worse. It swelled and stank, and then began to go black and rotten, so they thought they must take the leg off, if I was to live.”
He recounted this quite matter-of-factly, but I felt a little faint at the thought.
“Obviously they didn’t,” I said. “Why not?”
Jamie scratched his nose and rubbed a hand back through his hair, wiping the wild spill of it out of his eyes. “Well, that was Ian,” he said. “He wouldna let her do it. He said he kent well enough what it was like to live wi’ one leg, and while he didna mind it so much himself, he thought I wouldna like to—all things considered,” he added, with a wave of the hand and a glance at me that encompassed everything—the loss of the battle, of the war, of me, of home and livelihood—of all the things of his normal life. I thought Ian might well have been right.
“So instead Jenny made three of the tenants come to sit on me and hold me still, and then she slit my leg to the bone wi’ a kitchen knife and washed the wound wi’ boiling water,” he said casually.
“Jesus H. Christ!” I blurted, shocked into horror.
He smiled faintly at my expression. “Aye, well, it worked.”
I swallowed heavily, tasting bile. “Jesus. I’d think you’d have been a cripple for life!”
“Well, she cleansed it as best she could, and stitched it up. She said she wasna going to let me die, and she wasna going to have me be a cripple, and she wasna going to have me lie about all the day feelin’ sorry for myself, and—” He shrugged, resigned. “By the time she finished tellin’ me all the things she wouldna let me do, it seemed the only thing left to me was to get well.”
I echoed his laugh, and his smile broadened at the memory. “Once I could get up, she made Ian take me outside after dark and make me walk. Lord, we must ha’ been a sight, Ian wi’ his wooden leg, and me wi’ my stick, limping up and down the road like a pair of lame cranes!”
I laughed again, but had to blink back tears; I could see all too well the two tall, limping figures, struggling stubbornly against darkness and pain, leaning on each other for support.
“You lived in a cave for a time, didn’t you? We found the story of it.”
His eyebrows went up in surprise. “A story about it? About me, ye mean?”
“You’re a famous Highland legend,” I told him dryly, “or you will be, at least.”
“For living in a cave?” He looked half-pleased, half-embarrassed. “Well, that’s a foolish thing to make a story about, aye?”
“Arranging to have yourself betrayed to the English for the price on your head was maybe a little more dramatic,” I said, still more dryly. “Taking rather a risk there, weren’t you?”
The end of his nose was pink, and he looked somewhat abashed.
“Well,” he said awkwardly, “I didna think prison would be verra dreadful, and everything considered.…”
I spoke as calmly as I could, but I wanted to shake him, suddenly and ridiculously furious with him in retrospect.
“Prison, my arse! You knew perfectly well you might have been hanged, didn’t you? And you bloody did it anyway!”
“I had to do something,” he said, shrugging. “And if the English were fool enough to pay good money for my lousy carcass—well, there’s nay law against takin’ advantage of fools, is there?” One corner of his mouth quirked up, and I was torn between the urge to kiss him and the urge to slap him.
I did neither, but sat up in bed and began combing the tangles out of my hair with my fingers.
“I’d say it’s open to question who the fool was,” I said, not looking at him, “but even so, you should know that your daughter’s very proud of you.”
“She is?” He sounded thunderstruck, and I looked up at him, laughing despite my irritation.
“Well, of course she is. You’re a bloody hero, aren’t you?”
He went quite red in the face at this, and stood up, looking thoroughly disconcerted.
“Me? No!” He rubbed a hand through his hair, his habit when thinking or disturbed in his mind.
