Time and Tide by Shirley McKay

out.
    â€˜Ah, yes, I do recall . . . there was a little matter of the rule, that wanted some adjusting. Yet I fear, tis broken now.’
    â€˜Perhaps it was the wind?’ said Hew.
    Giles coughed and cleared his throat. ‘Go to, where is the finger? Set it in the light, and on the flesher’s block. It will not be affected, by the taint of blood. You may move the foot.’
    â€˜
You
may move the foot,’ corrected Hew.
    Giles spread out a square of gauze upon the blank dissecting board, setting out his instruments. The sunlight dipped and flickered, bouncing off the blades. ‘Make haste now, or the sun will damage it,’ he warned.
    â€˜That seems a vain precaution,’ Hew remarked, ‘when this remnant is already so decayed.’
    He untied the pouch and shook out the blackened contents. ‘Here is a pocket that I will not want to fill again.’
    â€˜Do not stop to fret about the puddle in your handkerchief. Twill come out in the wash.’
    â€˜Twill come out in the furnace,’ answered Hew.
    â€˜You are too meticulous,’ his friend complained. ‘Patience, if you will, and we will make this finger back into the man.’
    â€˜As in a puff of smoke.’
    â€˜We are philosophers, not conjurers,’ Giles replied severely. ‘I think you are not suited to the task.’
    â€˜I commend it, I assure you. Tis only that I find it rather grim,’ admitted Hew.
    â€˜Then you shall turn your wits, to finding out the ring, and leave the rest to me.’
    Giles held the putrid finger closely, teasing out the metal from the bone. He wiped the ring clean on his shirt sleeve, handing it to Hew. ‘You want a
glass perspective
. Back there, on the shelf,’ he gestured indistinctly, returning to his prize. ‘This putrefaction came on by degrees,’ he commented, ‘and by degrees, in turn, gives up to us its secrets, that we may hope to learn from them.’
    Hew searched among the book shelves that lined the turret tower, through almanacs and pickle jars, bones and broken clocks, until at last he found the hidden box of spectacles. He picked up a crystal, cut into a prism shape, and held it to the sun, captured in the colours he saw dancing in the glass.
    The doctor grumbled mildly, ‘Let the colours lie, Hew! Feckless as a bairn! We want a cunning optic glass, that shows the world writ large.’
    â€˜I am a bairn, distracted by the sunlight in the glass,’ Hew admitted openly. He took the lenses from the box, and tried them one by one. ‘I have not met with optics such as these.’
    â€˜They are of the most common kind,’ said Giles dismissively. ‘There are more special glasses I have not acquired and several others yet, that I never seen.’
    â€˜Such as what?’ asked Hew.
    â€˜Hhm?’ Giles was scraping at the relic on the gauze. ‘There is a glass magicians use,’ he mentioned thoughtfully, ‘wherein a man may look and see an image not his own. That is the sort of looking glass that I have never seen, much as I would like to. I fear our optics here are of the simple kind. You want the glass that shows the world writ large. It is the plainest, at the back.’
    â€˜I see it,’ Hew confirmed. He held the ring up to the light to scrutinise it through the glass. ‘This is a costly piece, for a man in workday clothes, and something rich and rare. It is an Antwerp diamond, fashioned like a flower, they call the rose, or Holland cut.Tis wrought of yellow gold, a little scratched and worn, which signifies a metal of the purest kind.’
    Giles set down his scalpel in astonishment. ‘In truth, I did not count your taste in diamonds so refined, that you might ken the setting from the stone,’ he commented.
    Hew said, a little poignantly, ‘It is no great passion of mine. But when I was apprenticed to the bar with Richard Cunningham, I came to know a little of the