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deter-rnining the best time for bleeding. The stranger ignored them. Instead, he studied the subject of all the discussion—the Earl-of Seaforth. Doped with opium—the room reeked of it—the man lay in his bed like one already dead. The pallor of his face was incongruous and frightening in a man who gloried in the hunt, the passage of arms, a tilt at the quattrain, and the breaking of a horse. For the first time, Seamus realized, the earl's famous prematurely silver white hair seemed appropriate, for today the earl looked every one of his forty-one years.
    Seamus's presence was soon noted by the Lady Islean. Tall, lithe, she was so rosy-cheeked that the gap between her own and her husband's age was accentuated. Drawing Seamus close to the bed, she quickly outlined the situation in a low voice.
    "We are all agreed that the wound has mortified." She drew back the quilt of wool from the arm and with a finger disturbed the bandages about the wound to let Seamus see the streaks of red and purple and black radiating out from the wound. The smell of rotting flesh was enough to make a strong man gag, but it seemed to bother the countess not at all.
    "You get used to it," she observed as Seamus paled, continuing with her explanation: "We all agree that the arm must come off."
    Again outwardly she showed no emotion. "But Father Cariolinus insists that such an act needs not only the sanction of the church but the services of the priest's assistant.
    "I had heard," she continued, "that Andrew Boorde—over mere—was in Edinburgh, and just now returned from studying at Montpellier, where he actually spent a week watching a surgeon dissect a dead man. It is an act forbidden by the father...and Father Cariolinus here, in turn, forbids such a man to touch the earl. Boorde was, it seems, once a Carthusian priest and even suffragan bishop of Chichester. The good father fears he would menace not just my Lord's body, but also his soul."
    Seamus said nothing, but looked hard at Boorde, who could not fail to overhear and who returned the look in kind, breaking the stare with a slow, deliberate wink.
    That decided Seamus. "Lady, if he is the man you want, he is the man you'll have. Leave the priests to me."
    In two strides, he crossed the-room to the priest and his assistant, collared one with each hand and quick-marched them toward the door. Totally flustered, Father Cariolinus scurried after, clutching in vain at the giant before him.
    Boorde sprang to open the door before them, allowing the intertwined foursome to leave. Outside the door, Seamus shook his two victims like a terrier with a rat and pushed them down the hall. Gently but firmly he disengaged Father Cariolinus from his arm, picking him up and setting him down from the chamber door. "Go, priest, do what you do best. Say a few prayers for the man on the bed in there."
    Seamus returned to the chamber and took a stand within the door, barring with his body any from entering. The quacks gone, the physician quickly took stock of the men left in attendance. All, he was sure, had seen their share of bloody limbs at the highly popular drawing-and-quartering of traitors and criminals on High Street. If anything, Boorde feared that instead of withdrawing in disgust, they might press too close. He cleared the room of all but Seamus, four gentlemen of the bedchamber, two servers to do the mopping up, and the patient. The Lady Islean he sent to supervise the cooking of a special salve needed when the sawing and burning were done.
    If the earl had been conscious, Boorde would have sedated him with a drink of Malmsey laced with more opium. But an unconscious man might choke on such; thus, a gag was made ready in case they might need it later. Building a fire in a three-legged pot he carried for the purpose, he laid out his tools: lancets, big, small and tiny, plus a medley of cauterers, a handful of which he put to hearing in the little pot. Out of the sack also came needles and tongs of many