It was bright day when he woke. Sally was shaking his shoulder.
“OK, OK, I’m awake. Has Mr. Furbelow come out yet?”
“I didn’t look. I’ve brought some fruit and bread up for breakfast.”
“Hang on. I’ll just go and see what’s up.”
He ran down the stairs, carrying his leather rope. The hounds were used to him by now. Up the third ladder, which led to the suite overlooking the cottage. He peered through the small, square opening. Mr. Furbelow had already come out, and was lying in an awkward mess at the bottom of the icy steps. He didn’t move.
“Sal!” shouted Geoffrey, realizing in sweaty panic that perhaps the kind old man was dead and he’d murdered him, “Sal!”
She came into the chamber, flushed from running up the ladder.
“Look, Sal, Mr. Furbelow’s slipped and fallen on the steps. You’ve got to crawl out backward with this loop round your foot. Don’t lose it. Then when you’re over the edge you can stand in the loop and hold on to the straps and I’ll let you down; then you can run round and open the door and we can go and see if he’s all right.”
“I’ll take my dress off. Don’t worry, Jeff, I’m sure he’s all right. Anyway it was the only thing you could have done. You’ll have to lift me up.”
It was much more awkward getting her in backwards, and the loop wouldn’t stay on her foot. But then she was slithering down the tunnel, scrabbling at the edge, and then out of sight. The knots snagged on the far sill, so that he had to lower her in a series of jerks. When he was holding the last belt the whole contraption went slack and he heard her calling that she was down. He ran to the doors.
“Jeff, you’ll have to wait. I can’t reach the bar. I’m going to fetch Maddox.”
Silence. A long wait. The hounds scratched and the fire, which he’d never seen fed, hissed sappily. Outside a pigeon cooed its boring June coo. Then the clop of hooves.
“Stop there, Maddox. Good old boy. No, stand still while I climb up. That’s it. Golly, it’s heavy. I don’t think . .
A scratching noise and a clunk. Geoffrey heaved at the door and it swung open.
Mr. Furbelow was lying on one side, with his leg bent back under him. He was breathing snortily, with his mouth open. Geoffrey ran into the cottage, nearly slipping on the icy steps himself, and brought out the sofa cushions. They eased him on to these and straightened him out on his back. His left leg seemed to be broken somewhere above the knee. Geoffrey decided he’d better try and set it while the old man was still unconscious. Trying to remember everything that Uncle Jacob had shown him (“Decide slowly, laddie, and do it quickly and firmly. No room for the squeamishness in a sick bay”) he felt the bones into position. There was one place where they seemed right. Then he used his sword to lever the back off one of the kitchen chairs, bandaged the leg with torn strips of pillowcase from the bedroom, and lashed the uprights of the chairback down the leg with the knotted belts. It was very tiresome to do without unsettling the join, even with the leg propped on cushions, and when he’d finished it looked horribly clumsy, but felt as if it ought to hold the break firm for a bit. Sally went into the hall to fetch a jug of wine, but before she was back the old man blinked and groaned.
“Morphine,” he muttered. “Top right-hand drawer of my desk. Hypodermic syringe, bottle of spirit there too. Don’t touch anything else.”
There was a box of morphine ampuls, three hypodermic syringes and what Geoffrey took to be the spirit bottle. Mr. Furbelow took the things on to his chest, dipped the point of the needle into the spirit and then prodded through the rubber at the end of the ampul, withdrawing the plunger to suck the liquid out. Then he tilted it up, pressed the plunger until a drop showed at the point of the needle, and pushed the point into a vein on the inside of his left arm, squeezing the morphine slowly into his bloodstream. You could see the pain screaming from his eyes. Golly, thought Geoffrey, he's a brave old man and I’ve done a wicked thing. He decided to tell him the truth, but Mr. Furbelow seemed to have fainted again. They watched him for five minutes. Then he spoke, not opening his eyes.
“That’s better. Have you contrived to do anything about my leg?”
“Yes, Mr. Furbelow. I hope I’ve done the right thing. I tried to set it, and it felt as if it was together properly, and then I put splints on it. I am sorry. It must hurt frightfully.”
“What had we best do about him? said Mr. Furbelow.
“If you’ll tell me what to do, I’ll try and do it properly. Sally can talk to him if necessary. If it’s the best we can manage he’ll have to put up with it.”
“He will not like the change, I fear. He is the most conservative of creatures.”
“Would you like us to try and carry you into your house? It won’t be very easy, but I expect I could rig something up.”
“Let us leave that, for the moment. Perhaps he will be so angry that he will destroy us all, or perhaps he will mend my leg. In either case the effort will have been pointless. Oh dear. Well, there’s one comfort. I baked some oatcakes only yesterday. And I’ve put the water on to boil. He insists on water from the well, and I’ve always boiled it, but I haven’t liked to tell him. He won’t make his own food, though he doesn’t mind bringing the oats out of nowhere, and I have to pound them up in a mortar and then cook them. And the bees hive in the stable roof, and I collect their honey every autumn. The honey’s in the cupboard on the left of the passage, and the oatcakes are there too. The kettle’s on the fire in my room.”
He sighed and shut his eyes. Geoffrey started up the steps to look for this primitive meal, thinking how strangely different it was from the elaborate and moldering banquet which they’d thrown to the wolves the evening before.
“Wait,” said Mr. Furbelow. “I’m only resting.” Geoffrey sat on the bottom step, where the sun had melted the ice and dried a patch of stone. The old chemist’s face was gray as ash, the lines on it suddenly deeper, the nose pinched, but the wispy
moustache wavered slightly below his nostrils as his breath went in and out. Geoffrey was wondering whether he’d gone to sleep when he spoke again.
“You must take a clean linen cloth and a clean towel,” he said. “You will find them in the bottom drawer of the chest of drawers in my study. The kettle is a big one, so there will be plenty of water. First you pour about two pints into the silver jug on the mantelpiece; then you put that in the big earthenware jar in the back room to cool off, so that he can drink it. I’ve built a platform of stones in the bottom of the jar, so that you can put the jug in and leave it there, without unboiled water slopping in over the top. Then you can get the other things together — two oatcakes, the little silver bowl on the shelf full of honey, a linen cloth, a towel, and the bowl for the hot water in case he wants to be washed. Shall I repeat that?”
“I think I’ve got it,” said Geoffrey.
“Then you can come back and I'll tell you what to do, while the drinking water is getting cold.”
The oatcakes were not those thin saucer-shaped things you buy in tartan tins in Edinburgh: they were just lumps of cooked oatmeal, with no real shape at all. The honey was the palest yellow, very runny, and smelling of wilder flowers than the garden- and orchard-scented honey which shops sell. And the cloths smelt of mountain streams and sunlight. Mr. Furbelow spoke more drowsily when Geoffrey came back.
“It all depends,” he said. “Sometimes he just lies there and opens his mouth, like a bird in a nest, and you have to break bits off the oatcake, dip them in the honey and pop them in. Other times he sits up on his elbow and feeds himself. Sometimes he’s asleep, and I just put the tray beside him on his stone. About once a week he likes to have his face and hands sponged and dried. But really, you’ll find you know what he wants without his telling you. I should go as soon as the water’s cool enough to drink. I shall try to sleep now.”