“You?” The young captain’s head swiveled to stare at me. His jaw hung slackly open, showing the furred tongue and stained teeth of a tobacco-chewer.
“My wife’s a rare healer, Captain,” Jamie said mildly. “If it’s help ye came for, I’d advise ye to answer her questions, and do as she tells ye.”
Leonard blinked once, but then took a deep breath and nodded. “Yes. Well, it seems to start with griping pains in the belly, and a terrible flux and vomiting. The afflicted men complain of headache, and they have considerable fever. They…”
“Do some of them have a rash on their bellies?” I interrupted.
He nodded eagerly. “They do. And some of them bleed from the arse as well. Oh, I beg pardon, ma’am,” he said, suddenly flustered. “I meant no offense, only that—”
“I think I know what that might be,” I interrupted his apologies. A feeling of excitement began to grow in me; the feeling of a diagnosis just under my hands, and the sure knowledge of how to proceed with it. The call of trumpets to a warhorse, I thought with wry amusement. “I’d need to look at them, to be sure, but—”
“My wife would be pleased to advise ye, Captain,” Jamie said firmly. “But I’m afraid she canna go aboard your ship.”
“Are you sure?” Captain Leonard looked from one to the other of us, eyes desperate with disappointment. “If she could only look at my crew…”
“No,” Jamie said, at the same moment I replied, “Yes, of course!”
There was an awkward silence for a moment. Then Jamie rose to his feet, said politely, “You’ll excuse us, Captain Leonard?” and dragged me bodily out of the cabin, down the passage to the afterhold.
“Are ye daft?” he hissed, still clutching me by one arm. “Ye canna be thinking of setting foot on a ship wi’ the plague! Risk your life and the crew and Young Ian, all for the sake of a pack of Englishmen?”
“It isn’t plague,” I said, struggling to get free. “And I wouldn’t be risking my life. Let go of my arm, you bloody Scot!”
He let go, but stood blocking the ladder, glowering at me.
“Listen,” I said, striving for patience. “It isn’t plague; I’m almost sure it’s typhoid fever—the rash sounds like it. I can’t catch that, I’ve been vaccinated for it.”
Momentary doubt flitted across his face. Despite my explanations, he was still inclined to consider germs and vaccines in the same league with black magic.
“Aye?” he said skeptically. “Well, perhaps that’s so, but still…”
“Look,” I said, groping for words. “I’m a doctor. They’re sick, and I can do something about it. I…it’s…well, I have to, that’s all!”
Judging from its effect, this statement appeared to lack something in eloquence. Jamie raised one eyebrow, inviting me to go on.
I took a deep breath. How should I explain it—the need to touch, the compulsion to heal? In his own way, Frank had understood. Surely there was a way to make it clear to Jamie.
“I took an oath,” I said. “When I became a physician.”
Both eyebrows went up. “An oath?” he echoed. “What sort of oath?”
I had said it aloud only the one time. Still, I had had a framed copy in my office; Frank had given it to me, a gift when I graduated from medical school. I swallowed a small thickening in my throat, closed my eyes, and read what I could remember from the scroll before my mind’s eye.
