‘Yes.’

‘Turn them over.’

He did, wincing slightly. At the moment, they were no longer such beautiful hands, Elizabeth thought, forcing herself to be dispassionate; they looked as if they had been slammed in several doors. Very gently she examined the right hand.

‘I think you’ll lose the thumbnail anyway, and perhaps the two fingernails as well, although there is something I can do about that. Are they broken?’

Carey was looking at them as well as if seeing them properly for the first time.

‘I don’t think so,’ he said absently. ‘I think they’re just bruised. I can move them.’

Elizabeth pointed at the fingers still splinted together. ‘These two are broken.’

‘Yes.’

‘My husband, no doubt.’

‘And Lord Spynie.’

‘I expect despicable behaviour from Lord Spynie.’

Carey looked up at her woefully, the expression in his blue eyes exactly like a little boy who has fallen out of a tree he was forbidden to climb. Damn him, she wanted to kiss him again.

‘Are you very angry with me, sweetheart?’

Honestly, why was it he could melt her so easily? She took a deep breath and told him the truth.

‘I am extremely angry,’ she said. ‘With my husband, with Spynie and with you.’

She straightened up and went to look around the various bottles that the boy had brought. There was an elderly bottle marked ‘Comfrey bonesetting ointment’ half full of something that smelled just about useable. The bottle marked laudanum had some sticky substance at the bottom and nothing else.

‘There’s no laudanum,’ she said to herself in dismay.

‘Oh.’

‘Can you take your own shirt off, or will I do it for you?’

‘If you undo the ties, my lady.’

She did so, not looking in his face, nursing her anger so she could be cold enough to help him properly. He struggled the shirt over his head and dropped it on the floor, and she kicked it into a corner. It was not the first time she had seen him stripped to the waist. She remembered nursing him alongside Philadelphia when he came back from Tilbury in a litter after fighting the Armada, not wounded, but completely off his head with a raging gaol-fever caught aboard ship. Against all the advice of the doctors they had fought to cool him down. That had been easier than this was going to be, because it was comforting for him to be sponged, even in his delirium. Still, she tried not to look at him too much because it unsettled her, and made her long to run her hands down the muscles of his shoulders and back...

She put the bowl of hot water on the floor by the bed and cold water on the table.

‘Put your hands in the cold water,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘To bring down the swelling.’

She went to the door and shouted through it: ‘Bring me a crewel needle, embroidery snips and eyebrow tweezers and aqua vitae. And food and mild ale.’ There was an answering shout. Carey was looking distinctly nervous when she came back to him, but he had his hands in the water.

The bandage around his side was stained and smelled. She used the small knife to cut it off him and hot water to soak it away from his wound. The wound itself was not bad at all, mostly healed, only one end had opened again and exuded a trickle of blood and white fluid. The skin around Philadelphia’s neat silk stitches was red and angry and Elizabeth tightened her lips with annoyance at the congenital carelessness of men.

There was a knock at the door again, and a page slid round it. He was carrying a small hussif and a leather bottle. He scooted across the floor, put them down on the table by the bowl and scooted out again. Elizabeth wondered what was scaring everyone so much and sat down beside Carey.

With the eyebrow tweezers and embroidery snips she took out the stitches that were actually causing trouble now the rest of the wound had healed. She cleaned the part that had bled and bandaged it all carefully again.

Carey sat in silence, not even wincing. He seemed to be far away, in a kind of daze. She took the withies, measured them, trimmed and cut them to size.

‘Now,’ she said, mentally girding her loins, ‘I’m going to cut off that bit of rag holding your fingers together.’

‘It’s the Earl of Mar’s handkerchief.’

‘I’ll buy him a new one. Take your left hand out of the water, and put it on my lap.’ After a moment’s hesitation, he did. Very carefully she cut the cloth with the small knife. As the fingers came free, Carey sucked in his breath and held it.

The splints and bandages were beside her on the bed. She started by patting his swollen hand dry and examining the thumb, which was bruised, but not broken. There were marks and bruises around his wrists but nothing that needed attention.

‘Let me tell you a story,’ she said, taking his forefinger and feeling it carefully. The swelling was down a little and she could feel the greenstick fracture inside the flesh. It would have needed no more than a splint only someone had twisted it sideways. ‘About two weeks ago, while I was still in Carlisle, my husband called out most of his kin at Widdrington and rode due west to the Border.’ She knew Carey was watching her face intently, trying to ignore what she was doing to his hand. ‘Probably at Reidswire in the Middle March he met his friends from the Scottish court, come south from Jedburgh, and took command of a string of heavy-laden packponies, carrying handguns. Then he rode south and east again and, according to my steward, he met Sir Simon Musgrave and the arms convoy on the Newcastle Road at night. Sir Simon is an old friend of my husband’s, they collect blackrent off each other’s tenants. There they exchanged one set of guns for another.’

He was interested now, listening properly. She held his forearm tightly under her arm, took his forefinger, pulled and stretched it straight, ignoring the jerk and his startled ‘Aahh’, until she felt the ends of bone grate into place. Quickly, she put the splint up against it and bandaged it on.

‘How do you feel?’ she asked. ‘Dizzy?’

His face had gone paper white, but he shook his head.

‘Warn me next time,’ he said, panting a little.

‘Very well.’ The next one would be harder, being the long middle finger. She took it and started stroking it again. This was more of a crushing fracture, badly out of place. Well, all she could do was her best.

‘Try not to clench your hand,’ she said. ‘Ready?’

He nodded, watching anxiously.

‘Robin,’ she said. ‘Look over at the tapestry, over there.’

He did, fixing his eyes on a place where the heavy folds swung gently as if in an invisible breeze. She took the finger, gripped his arm tight against her stays and set the bone into place. It took longer this time to get it to her satisfaction and splint it to the other withy, and at the end she had sweat running down under her smock and stinging the grazes there. Carey was green and clammy, eyes tight shut. She smeared ointment on, splinted the three fingers together, took the little bottle off the table, tasted it to make sure of what it was, and gave it to him.

‘Not too much,’ she warned, watching his adam’s apple bob. ‘I haven’t finished yet.’

‘What the hell else is there to do?’

‘I can make your other fingers feel better if I release the pressure of the blood under the nails.’

He was cradling his left hand against his chest and swaying slightly.

‘How?’ he asked, not looking at her.

‘By making a hole in the nails.’