Dragonfly in Amber, Page 76

  Steam billowed from the boiling cauldron over the fire, adding to the heat of exertion. Everyone streamed with moisture; the workers with the sticky wash of exercise, the wounded men with the stinking sweat of fear and long-spent rage. The dissipating fog of black-powder smoke from the battlefield below drifted through the streets of Tranent and in through the open doors, its eye-stinging haze threatening the purity of the freshly boiled linens, hung dripping from the mackeral-drying rack by the fire.

  The flow of the wounded came in waves, washing into the cottage like surf-scour, churning everything into confusion with the arrival of each fresh surge. We thrashed about, fighting the pull of the tide, and were left at last, gasping, to deal with the new flotsam left behind as each wave ebbed.

  There are lulls, of course, in the most frantic activity. These began to come more frequently in the afternoon, and toward sundown, as the flow of wounded dropped to a trickle, we began to settle into a routine of caring for the patients who remained with us. It was still busy, but there was at last time to draw breath, to stand in one place for a moment and look around.

  I was standing by the open door, breathing in the freshening breeze of the offshore wind, when Jamie came back into the cottage, carrying an armload of firewood. Dumping it by the hearth, he came back to stand by me, one hand resting briefly on my shoulder. Trickles of sweat ran down the edge of his jaw, and I reached up to dab them with a corner of my apron.

  “Have you been to the other cottages?” I asked.

  He nodded, breath beginning to slow. His face was so blotched with smoke and blood that I couldn’t tell for sure, but thought he looked pale.

  “Aye. There’s still looting going on in the field, and a good many men still missing. All of our own wounded are here, though—none elsewhere.” He nodded at the far end of the cottage where the three wounded men from Lallybroch lay or sat companionably near the hearth, trading good-natured insults with the other Scots. The few English wounded in this cottage lay by themselves, near the door. They talked much less, content to contemplate the bleak prospects of captivity.

  “None bad?” he asked me, looking at the three.

  I shook my head. “George McClure might lose the ear; I can’t tell. But no; I think they’ll be all right.”

  “Good.” He gave me a tired smile, and wiped his hot face on the end of his plaid. I saw he had wrapped it carelessly around his body instead of draping it over one shoulder. Probably to keep it out of the way, but it must have been hot.

  Turning to go, he reached for the water bottle hanging from the door peg.

  “Not that one!” I said.

  “Why not?” he asked, puzzled. He shook the wide-mouthed flask, with a faint sloshing sound. “It’s full.”

  “I know it is,” I said. “That’s what I’ve been using as a urinal.”

  “Oh.” Holding the bottle by two fingers, he reached to replace it, but I stopped him.

  “No, go ahead and take it,” I suggested. “You can empty it outside, and fill this one at the well.” I handed him another gray stone bottle, identical with the first.

  “Try not to get them mixed up,” I said helpfully.

  “Mmphm,” he replied, giving me a Scottish look to go along with the noise, and turned toward the door.

  “Hey!” I said, seeing him clearly from the back. “What’s that?”

  “What?” he said, startled, trying to peer over one shoulder.

  “That!” My fingers traced the muddy shape I had spotted above the sagging plaid, printed on the grubby linen of his shirt with the clarity of a stencil. “It looks like a horseshoe,” I said disbelievingly.

  “Oh, that,” he said, shrugging.

  “A horse stepped on you?”

  “Well, not on purpose,” he said, defensive on the horse’s behalf. “Horses dinna like to step on people; I suppose it feels a wee bit squashy underfoot.”

  “I would suppose it does,” I agreed, preventing his attempts to escape by holding on to one sleeve. “Stand still. How the hell did this happen?”

  “It’s no matter,” he protested. “The ribs don’t feel broken, only a trifle bruised.”

  “Oh, just a trifle,” I agreed sarcastically. I had worked the stained fabric free in back, and could see the clear, sharp imprint of a curved horseshoe, embedded in the fair flesh of his back, just above the waist. “Christ, you can see the horseshoe nails.” He winced involuntarily as I ran my finger over the marks.

  It had happened during one brief sally by the mounted dragoons, he explained. The Highlanders, mostly unaccustomed to horses other than the small, shaggy Highland ponies, were convinced that the English cavalry horses had been trained to attack them with hooves and teeth. Panicked at the horses’ charge, they had dived under the horses’ hooves, slashing ferociously at legs and bellies with swords and scythes and axes.

  “And you think they aren’t?”

  “Of course not, Sassenach,” he said impatiently. “He wasna trying to attack me. The rider wanted to get away, but he was sealed in on either side. There was noplace to go but over me.”

  Seeing this realization dawn in the eyes of the horse’s rider, a split second before the dragoon applied spurs to his mount’s sides, Jamie had flung himself flat on his face, arms over his head.

  “Then the next was the breath bursting from my lungs,” he explained. “I felt the dunt of it, but it didna hurt. Not then.” He reached back and rubbed a hand absently over the mark, grimacing slightly.

  “Right,” I said, dropping the edge of the shirt. “Have you had a piss since then?”

  He stared at me as though I had gone suddenly barmy.

  “You’ve had four-hundredweight of horse step smack on one of your kidneys,” I explained, a trifle impatiently. There were wounded men waiting. “I want to know if there’s blood in your urine.”

  “Oh,” he said, his expression clearing. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, let’s find out, shall we?” I had placed my big medicine box out of the way in one corner; now I rummaged about in it and withdrew one of the small glass urinoscopy cups I had acquired from L’Hôpital des Anges.

  “Fill it up and give it back to me.” I handed it to him and turned back toward the hearth, where a cauldron full of boiling linens awaited my attention.

  I glanced back to find him still regarding the cup with a slightly quizzical expression.

  “Need help, lad?” A big English soldier on the floor was peering up from his pallet, grinning at Jamie.

  A flash of white teeth showed in the filth of Jamie’s face. “Oh, aye,” he said. He leaned down, offering the cup to the Englishman. “Here, hold this for me while I aim.”

  A ripple of mirth passed through the men nearby, distracting them momentarily from their distress.

  After a moment’s hesitation, the Englishman’s big fist closed around the fragile cup. The man had taken a dose of shrapnel in one hip, and his grip was none too steady, but he still smiled, despite the sweat dewing his upper lip.

  “Sixpence says you can’t make it,” he said. He moved the cup, so it stood on the floor three or four feet from Jamie’s bare toes. “From where you stand now.”

  Jamie looked down thoughtfully, rubbing his chin with one hand as he measured the distance. The man whose arm I was dressing had stopped groaning, absorbed in the developing drama.

  “Weel, I’ll no say it would be easy,” Jamie said, letting his Scots broaden on purpose. “But for sixpence? Aye, weel, that’s a sum might make it worth the effort, eh?” His eyes, always faintly slanted, turned catlike with his grin.

  “Easy money, lad,” said the Englishman, breathing heavily but still grinning. “For me.”

  “Two silver pennies on the lad,” called one of the MacDonald clansmen in the chimney corner.

  An English soldier, coat turned inside-out to denote his prisoner status, fumbled inside the skirts, searching for the opening of his pocket.

  “Ha! A pouch of weed against!” he called, triu
mphantly holding up a small cloth bag of tobacco.

  Shouted wagers and rude remarks began to fly through the air as Jamie squatted down and made a great show of estimating the distance to the cup.

  “All right,” he said at last, standing up and throwing back his shoulders. “Are ye set, then?”

  The Englishman on the floor chuckled. “Oh, I’m set, lad.”

  “Well, then.”

  An expectant hush fell over the room. Men raised on their elbows to watch, ignoring both discomfort and enmity in their interest.

  Jamie glanced around the room, nodded at his Lallybroch men, then slowly raised the hem of his kilt and reached beneath it. He frowned in concentration, groping randomly, then let an expression of doubt flit across his countenance.

  “I had it when I went out,” he said, and the room erupted in laughter.

  Grinning at the success of his joke, he raised his kilt further, grasped his clearly visible weapon and took careful aim. He squinted his eyes, bent his knees slightly, and his fingers tightened their grip.

  Nothing happened.

  “It’s a misfire!” crowed one of the English.

  “His powder’s wet!” Another hooted.

  “No balls to your pistol, lad?” jibed his accomplice on the floor.

  Jamie squinted dubiously at his equipment, bringing on a fresh riot of howls and catcalls. Then his face cleared.

  “Ha! My chamber’s empty, that’s all!” He snaked an arm toward the array of bottles on the wall, cocked an eyebrow at me, and when I nodded, took one down and upended it over his open mouth. The water splashed over his chin and onto his shirt, and his Adam’s apple bobbed theatrically as he drank.

  “Ahhh.” He lowered the bottle, swabbed some of the grime from his face with a sleeve, and bowed to his audience.

  “Now, then,” he began, reaching down. He caught sight of my face, though, and stopped in mid-motion. He couldn’t see the open door at his back, nor the man standing in it, but the sudden quiet that fell upon the room must have told him that all bets were off.

  * * *

  His Highness Prince Charles Edward bent his head under the lintel to enter the cottage. Come to visit the wounded, he was dressed for the occasion in plum velvet breeches with stockings to match, immaculate linen, and—to show solidarity with the troops, no doubt—a coat and waistcoat in Cameron tartan, with a subsidiary plaid looped over one shoulder through a cairngorm brooch. His hair was freshly powdered, and the Order of St. Andrew glittered brilliantly upon his breast.

  He stood in the doorway, nobly inspiring everyone in sight and noticeably impeding the entrance of those behind him. He looked slowly about him, taking in the twenty-five men crammed cheek by jowl on the floor, the helpers crouching over them, the mess of bloodied dressings tossed into the corner, the scatter of medicines and instruments across the table, and me, standing behind it.

  His Highness didn’t care overmuch for women with the army in general, but he was thoroughly grounded in the rules of courtesy. I was a woman, despite the smears of blood and vomit that streaked my skirt, and the fact that my hair was shooting out from under my kertch in half a dozen random sprays.

  “Madame Fraser,” he said, bowing graciously to me.

  “Your Highness.” I bobbed a curtsy back, hoping he didn’t intend to stay long.

  “Your labors in our behalf are very much appreciate, Madame,” he said, his soft Italian accent stronger than usual.

  “Er, thank you,” I said. “Mind the blood. It’s slippery just there.”

  The delicate mouth tightened a bit as he skirted the puddle I had pointed out. The doorway freed, Sheridan, O’Sullivan, and Lord Balmerino came in, adding to the congestion in the cottage. Now that the demands of courtesy had been attended to, Charles crouched carefully between two pallets.

  He laid a gentle hand on the shoulder of one man.

  “What is your name, my brave fellow?”

  “Gilbert Munro…erm, Your Highness,” added the man, hastily, awed at the sight of the Prince.

  The manicured fingers touched the bandage and splints that swathed what was left of Gilbert Munro’s right arm.

  “Your sacrifice was great, Gilbert Munro,” Charles said simply. “I promise you it will not be forgotten.” The hand brushed across a whiskered cheek, and Munro reddened with embarassed pleasure.

  I had a man before me with a scalp wound that needed stitching, but was able to watch from the corner of my eye as Charles made the rounds of the cottage. Moving slowly, he went from bed to bed, missing no one, stopping to inquire each man’s name and home, to offer thanks and affection, congratulations, and condolence.

  The men were stunned into silence, English and Highlander alike, barely managing to answer His Highness in soft murmurs. At last he stood and stretched, with an audible creaking of ligaments. An end of his plaid had trailed in the mud, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “I bring you the blessing and the thanks of my Father,” he said. “Your deeds of today will always be remembered.” The men on the floor were not in the proper mood to cheer, but there were smiles, and a general murmur of appreciation.

  Turning to go, Charles caught sight of Jamie, standing out of the way in the corner, so as not to have his bare toes trampled by Sheridan’s boots. His Highness’s face lighted with pleasure.

  “Mon cher! I had not seen you today. I feared some malchance had overtaken you.” A look of reproach crossed the handsome, ruddy face. “Why did you not come to supper at the manse with the other officers?”

  Jamie smiled and bowed respectfully.

  “My men are here, Highness.”

  The Prince’s brows shot up at this, and he opened his mouth as though to say something, but Lord Balmerino stepped forward and whispered something in his ear. Charles’s expression changed to one of concern.

  “But what this is I hear?” he said to Jamie, losing control of his syntax as he did in moments of emotion. “His Lordship tells me that you have yourself suffered a wound.”

  Jamie looked mildly discomfited. He shot a quick glance my way, to see if I had heard, and seeing that I most certainly had, jerked his eyes back to the Prince.

  “It’s nothing, Highness. Only a scratch.”

  “Show me.” It was simply spoken, but unmistakably an order, and the stained plaid fell away without protest.

  The folds of dark tartan were nearly black on the inner side. His shirt beneath was reddened from armpit to hip, with stiff brown patches where the blood had begun to dry.

  Leaving my head injury to mind himself for a moment, I stepped forward and opened the shirt, pulling it gently away from the injured side. Despite the quantity of blood, I knew it must not be a serious wound; he stood like a rock, and the blood no longer flowed.

  It was a saber-slash, slanting across the ribs. A lucky angle; straight in and it would have gone deep into the intercostal muscles between the ribs. As it was, an eight-inch flap of skin gaped loose, red beginning to ooze beneath it again with the release of pressure. It would take a goodly number of stitches to repair, but aside from the constant danger of infection, the wound was in no way serious.

  Turning to report this to His Highness, I halted, stopped by the odd look on his face. For a split second, I thought it was “rookie’s tremors,” the shock of a person unaccustomed to the sight of wounds and blood. Many a trainee nurse at the combat station had removed a field dressing, taken one look and bolted, to vomit quietly outside before returning to tend the patient. Battle wounds have a peculiarly nasty look to them.

  But it couldn’t be that. By no means a natural warrior, still Charles had been blooded, like Jamie, at the age of fourteen, in his first battle at Gaeta. No, I decided, even as the momentary expression of shock faded from the soft brown eyes. He would not be startled by blood or wounds.

  This wasn’t a cottar or a herder that stood before him. Not a nameless subject, whose duty was to fight for the Stuart cause. This was a friend. And I thought that perhaps Jam
ie’s wound had suddenly brought it home to him; that blood was shed on his order, men wounded for his cause—little wonder if the realization struck him, deep as a sword-cut.

  He looked at Jamie’s side for a long moment, then looked up to meet his eyes. He grasped Jamie by the hand, and bowed his own head.

  “Thank you,” he said softly.

  And just for that one moment, I thought perhaps he might have made a king, after all.

  * * *

  On a small slope behind the church, a tent had been erected at His Highness’s order, for the last shelter of those dead in battle. Given preference in treatment, the English soldiers received none here; the men lay in rows, cloths covering their faces, Highlanders distinguished only by their dress, all awaiting burial on the morrow. MacDonald of Keppoch had brought a French priest with him; the man, shoulders sagging with weariness, purple stole worn incongruously over a stained Highland plaid, moved slowly through the tent, pausing to pray at the foot of each recumbent figure.