It was only that night, tossing restlessly in the cramped and chilly confines of my berth, that it occurred to me how odd the morning’s incident had been. Were this Lallybroch, and the Scots Jamie’s tenants, not only would they have had no hesitation in approaching him about the matter, they would have had no need to. He would have known already what was wrong, and taken steps to remedy the situation. Accustomed as I had always been to the intimacy and unquestioning loyalty of Jamie’s own men, I found this distance troubling.
Jamie was not at the captain’s table next morning, having gone out in the small boat with two of the sailors to catch whitebait, but I met him on his return at noon, sunburned, cheerful, and covered with scales and fish blood.
“What have ye done to Innes, Sassenach?” he said, grinning. “He’s hiding in the starboard head, and says ye told him he mustna come out at all until he’d shit.”
“I didn’t tell him that, exactly,” I explained. “I just said if he hadn’t moved his bowels by tonight, I’d give him an enema of slippery elm.”
Jamie glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the head.
“Well, I suppose we will hope that Innes’s bowels cooperate, or I doubt but he’ll spend the rest of the voyage in the head, wi’ a threat like that hangin’ ower him.”
“Well, I shouldn’t worry; now that he and the others have their parritch back, their bowels ought to take care of themselves without undue interference from me.”
Jamie glanced down at me, surprised.
“Got their parritch back? Whatever d’ye mean, Sassenach?”
I explained the genesis of the Oatmeal War, and its outcome, as he fetched a basin of water to clean his hands. A small frown drew his brows close together as he pushed his sleeves up his arms.
“They ought to have come to me about it,” he said.
“I expect they would have, sooner or later,” I said. “I only happened to find out by accident, when I found Innes grunting behind a hatch cover.”
“Mmphm.” He set about scouring the bloodstains off his fingers, rubbing the clinging scales free with a small pumice stone.
“These men aren’t like your tenants at Lallybroch, are they?” I said, voicing the thought I had had.
“No,” he said quietly. He dipped his fingers in the basin, leaving tiny shimmering circles where the fish scales floated. “I’m no their laird; only the man who pays them.”
“They like you, though,” I protested, then remembered Fergus’s story and amended this rather weakly to, “or at least five of them do.”
I handed him the towel. He took it with a brief nod, and dried his hands. Looking down at the strip of cloth, he shook his head.
“Aye, MacLeod and the rest like me well enough—or five of them do,” he repeated ironically. “And they’ll stand by me if it’s needful—five of them. But they dinna ken me much, nor me them, save Innes.”
He tossed the dirty water over the side, and tucking the empty basin under his arm, turned to go below, offering me his arm.
“There was more died at Culloden than the Stuart cause, Sassenach,” he said. “You’ll be coming for your dinner now?”
* * *
I did not find out why Innes was different, until the next week. Perhaps emboldened by the success of the purgative I had given him, Innes came voluntarily to call upon me in my cabin a week later.
“I am wondering, mistress,” he said politely, “whether there might be a medicine for something as isna there.”
“What?” I must have looked puzzled at this description, for he lifted the empty sleeve of his shirt in illustration.
“My arm,” he explained. “It’s no there, as ye can plainly see. And yet it pains me something terrible sometimes.” He blushed slightly.
“I did wonder for some years was I only a bit mad,” he confided, in lowered tones. “But I spoke a bit wi’ Mr. Murphy, and he tells me it’s the same with his leg that got lost, and Fergus says he wakes sometimes, feeling his missing hand slide into someone’s pocket.” He smiled briefly, teeth a flash under his drooping mustache. “So I thought maybe if it was a common thing, to feel a limb that wasn’t there, perhaps there was something that might be done about it.”
“I see.” I rubbed my chin, pondering. “Yes, it is common; it’s called a phantom limb, when you still have feelings in a part that’s been lost. As for what to do about it.…” I frowned, trying to think whether I had ever heard of anything therapeutic for such a situation. To gain time, I asked, “How did you happen to lose the arm?”
“Oh, ’twas the blood poison,” he said, casually. “I tore a small hole in my hand wi’ a nail one day, and it festered.”
I stared at the sleeve, empty from the shoulder.
“I suppose it did,” I said faintly.
“Oh, aye. It was a lucky thing, though; it was that stopped me bein’ transported wi’ the rest.”
“The rest of whom?”
He looked at me, surprised. “Why, the other prisoners from Ardsmuir. Did Mac Dubh not tell ye about that? When they stopped the fortress from being a prison, they sent off all of the Scottish prisoners to be indenture men in the Colonies—all but Mac Dubh, for he was a great man, and they didna want him out o’ their sight, and me, for I’d lost the arm, and was no good for hard labor. So Mac Dubh was taken somewhere else, and I was let go—pardoned and set free. So ye see, it was a most fortunate accident, save only for the pain that comes on sometimes at night.” He grimaced, and made as though to rub the nonexistent arm, stopping and shrugging at me in illustration of the problem.
“I see. So you were with Jamie in prison. I didn’t know that.” I was turning through the contents of my medicine chest, wondering whether a general pain reliever like willow-bark tea or horehound with fennel would work on a phantom pain.
“Oh, aye.” Innes was losing his shyness, and beginning to speak more freely. “I should have been dead of starvation by now, had Mac Dubh not come to find me, when he was released himself.”
“He went looking for you?” Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a flash of blue, and beckoned to Mr. Willoughby, who was passing by.
“Aye. When he was released from his parole, he came to inquire, to see whether he could trace any of the men who’d been taken to America—to see whether any might have returned.” He shrugged, the missing arm exaggerating the gesture. “But there were none in Scotland, save me.”
“I see. Mr. Willoughby, have you a notion what might be done about this?” Motioning to the Chinese to come and look, I explained the problem, and was pleased to hear that he did indeed have a notion. We stripped Innes of his shirt once again, and I watched, taking careful notes, as Mr. Willoughby pressed hard with his fingers at certain spots on the neck and torso, explaining as best he might what he was doing.
“Arm is in the ghost world,” he explained. “Body not; here in upper world. Arm tries to come back, for it does not like to be away from body. This— An-mo—press-press—this stops pain. But also we tell arm not come back.”