Terri Brisbin - A Healer For The Highlander

As he listened to her voice as she spoke to Colm, her manner of addressing the boy as though he was in charge surprised Davidh. She did not coddle him or order him. Instead she explained and asked for co-operation. It was how he spoke to the men under his command.

This Anna Mackenzie seemed to know what she was about, even if her suggestions and changes so far were completely the opposite of previous advice he’d received. Watching her now, he understood that she had a plan and he waited to speak to her about that. Even Suisan nodded in agreement as the woman instructed Colm on what he would take and when he would take it.

‘Now, if you would kindly pour some boiling water in that pan and place it here on the table,’ she said, aiming her words at Suisan. ‘Colm and I will play a game.’

Davidh walked to the doorway and leaned against the frame, watching as Anna chose some leaves from a sack in her basket and then retrieved one of the thick blankets from the pallet. She shook it out and folded it in a particular way, repeating her actions until it was as she wished it to be. Curious, he watched without asking any questions—though he had many she would need to answer before long.

Soon, a pan of steaming water sat before his son. Anna crushed the leaves in her hand and sprinkled them over the water. A fragrant aroma filled the cottage within a few moments. Anna tossed one end of the blanket over the pan and then directed Colm to lean over it.

‘This is to see how long you can go without coughing. First, take in slow breaths while I count and try not to cough.’ Then she draped the rest of the blanket over and around his son’s shoulders, creating a tent over the pan. ‘Are you ready, Colm?’ His son’s muffled assent could be heard even through the thick wool over his head.

Davidh could not help it, he found himself inhaling and exhaling to her soft, slow count. As it went on, he waited and listened for signs of distress in his son and heard none. Then it came.

Colm burst out into a coughing fit and Davidh took a step towards him before Anna waved him off. She held Colm’s shoulders to steady him and softly spoke to him, telling him how to let the coughs happen and how to breathe to calm them. Rather than escalating into an uncontrollable wave that would see Colm collapsed on the pallet, with blue lips and bruised eyes, this time the coughs subsided and soon Anna was back to counting. He met Suisan’s gaze over Anna’s head and saw her tentative and yet hopeful expression.

But Davidh dared not hope too much this soon. Other treatments and medicaments had seemed effective in the past, only to stop helping his son. Would these as well? At this desperate point, as long as Colm did not worsen, Davidh would be happy. After a short time, Anna lifted the blanket off Colm and placed it with care to the side of the now-cooled pan.

‘How does your chest feel now, Colm?’ Anna asked his son.

A smile that made it hard for Davidh to breathe settled on Colm’s face and he shrugged. As the boy inhaled, they all waited to see if the coughing had truly been eased by the vapours of whatever those leaves were.

‘Better,’ Colm said, drawing in a deeper breath than he would have dared just an hour ago. ‘It doesna hurt now.’

All three of those observing the boy let out a sigh of relief, even the one who had brought about such a change.

‘I must speak to your father and Suisan about what to do and when to use these,’ she said, sweeping a gesture over the small collection of ingredients there on the table. ‘Will you sit here quietly while I do?’ At the boy’s doubtful glance, she added, ‘I want you to listen so you will know about it, too. Can you do that, Colm?’

The expression on his son’s face was the same as the one Mara would have when concentrating on something important. In the set of Colm’s chin and the tilt of his head, he saw his wife’s face. God, he missed her so. He could not lose their son, too.

‘And I will return in a few days to bring more of the leaves and tinctures and see what else might help you.’

‘A few days?’ Davidh realised he’d not been paying heed to her specific instructions. ‘You will not come on the morrow?’

‘Nay,’ Anna said, stepping back, but not before running her fingers through Colm’s hair in an affectionate way. ‘’Twill take a few days for these to do their work. If they are successful at keeping that cough under control, then I will adjust them as we need to.’ She patted his shoulder and walked to where Davidh stood near the door. ‘As I have said, I have many things to get organised and ready up at the cottage.’ He would have objected, but she shook her head.

‘If he worsens...?’

‘Send for me and I will come,’ she said, meeting his gaze now. ‘I think he will not.’

Suisan moved the supplies to a shelf near the hearth and began preparing for her noon meal. Colm missed little now, watching with an interest that Davidh had not seen in many months. Anna retrieved her basket and put what she would take with her back in it, before taking her leave—first from Colm, then Suisan and then himself. Davidh followed her outside, trying to find the words he wanted to say to her. She stopped after a few paces and turned to face him.

‘I did not wish to say this in front of them, but I cannot know if this will make him better. He may never re—’

His hand covered her mouth before he could stop himself. Her lips were soft against his fingers and he felt her gasp before he heard it.

‘Your pardon, Anna,’ he said. ‘Watching him just then, well, I do not wish to hear words of caution. I have been living with his eventual death for so long, I had not realised the weight of it until just now. Now, when he has more colour in his face and is breathing more smoothly than he has in months and months.’ He dropped his hands to his side then and shrugged. ‘Allow a father a measure of hope before tearing it apart.’

Whatever she was going to say, she did not. Instead he saw the tears filling her eyes before she turned away from him. He’d not meant to drive her to tears, for he’d simply spoken his fears aloud for the first time to someone other than his dead wife or the dark of night.

‘I will come two days hence then,’ she said.

He stood there on the path and watched her until she disappeared from view on the road through the village and towards the north. He went back inside and spoke to Suisan and Colm for a short while before returning to his duties at the castle. For the first time in such a long while, the sound of Colm’s coughs did not follow his steps away.

* * *

Anna used all of the control she could pull together not to fall to her knees and sob over this man and his son. Truth be told, she worried that the lad was too far gone to bring him back from the brink of death. But how could she say that to the man who stood there with both hope and desolation in his gaze? He knew. He knew how dire the situation was. And somehow his own survival depended on that of his son’s.

Nay, he was not ill or stricken by the same lung weakness that assailed the boy, but she thought that his son’s death would tear him apart in other ways. Anna stopped now, at the edge of the village, and turned to look back. He’d been watching her, she could feel his gaze burning into her with each step. Now, though, she did not see him there.

She quickened her pace, wanting and needing to put some distance between herself and the village. But the boy and the man were in the centre of her thoughts all the way back to her cottage. And for the rest of the day as she weeded and pruned the unruly and overgrown plants in her mother’s plot above the falls.

* * *

Davidh and his son remained her concern over the next two days as she prepared concoctions and unguents and even as she and Iain ate and talked. Methods of treating the boy’s lung affliction filled her thoughts. She had kept notes on her mother’s recipes and cures in a precious book and she consulted it as she prepared her basket for her journey back into town. Though Iain wanted to accompany her, she bade him to wait there, in the safety of the shadows.