Dragonfly in Amber, Page 77

  “Perpetual rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.” He crossed himself mechanically, and moved on to another corpse.

  I had seen the tent earlier, and—heart in mouth—counted the bodies of the Highland dead. Twenty-two. Now, as I entered the tent, I found the toll had risen to twenty-six.

  A twenty-seventh lay in the nearby church, on the last mile of his journey. Alexander Kincaid Fraser, dying slowly of the wounds that riddled his belly and chest, of a slow internal seepage that couldn’t be halted. I had seen him when they brought him in, bleached white from an afternoon of bleeding slowly to death, alone in the field among the bodies of his foes.

  He had tried to smile at me, and I had wetted his cracked lips with water and coated them with tallow. To give him a drink was to kill him at once, as the liquid would rush through his perforated intestines and cause fatal shock. I hesitated, seeing the seriousness of his wounds, and thinking that a quick death might be better…but then I had stopped. I realized that he would want to see a priest and make his confession, at least. And so I had dispatched him to the church, where Father Benin tended the dying as I tended the living.

  Jamie had made short visits to the church every half-hour or so, but Kincaid held his own for an amazingly long time, clinging to life despite the constant ebbing of its substance. But Jamie had not come back from his latest visit. I knew that the fight was ending now at last, and went to see if I could help.

  The space under the windows where Kincaid had lain was empty, save for a large, dark stain. He wasn’t in the tent of the dead, either, and neither was Jamie anywhere in sight.

  I found them at length some distance up the hill behind the church. Jamie was sitting on a rock, the form of Alexander Kincaid cradled in his arms, curly head resting on his shoulder, the long, hairy legs trailing limp to one side. Both were still as the rock on which they sat. Still as death, though only one was dead.

  I touched the white, slack hand, to be sure, and rested my hand on the thick brown hair, feeling still so incongruously alive. A man should not die a virgin, but this one did.

  “He’s gone, Jamie,” I whispered.

  He didn’t move for a moment, but then nodded, opening his eyes as though reluctant to face the realities of the night.

  “I know. He died soon after I brought him out, but I didna want to let him go.”

  I took the shoulders and we lowered him gently to the ground. It was grassy here, and the night wind stirred the stems around him, brushing them lightly across his face, a welcome to the caress of the earth.

  “You didn’t want him to die under a roof,” I said, understanding. The sky swept over us, cozy with cloud, but endless in its promise of refuge.

  He nodded slowly, then knelt by the body and kissed the wide, pale forehead.

  “I would have someone do the same for me,” he said softly. He drew a fold of the plaid up over the brown curls, and murmured something in Gaelic that I didn’t understand.

  A medical casualties station is no place for tears; there is much too much to be done. I had not wept all day, despite the things I had seen, but now gave way, if only for a moment. I leaned my face against Jamie’s shoulder for strength, and he patted me briefly. When I looked up, wiping the tears from my face, I saw him still staring, dry-eyed, at the quiet figure on the ground. He felt me watching him and looked down at me.

  “I wept for him while he was still alive to know it, Sassenach,” he said quietly. “Now, how is it in the house?”

  I sniffed, wiped my nose, and took his arm as we turned back to the cottage.

  “I need your help with one.”

  “Which is it?”

  “Hamish MacBeth.”

  Jamie’s face, strained for so many hours, relaxed a bit under the stains and smudges.

  “He’s back, then? I’m glad. How bad is he, though?”

  I rolled my eyes. “You’ll see.”

  MacBeth was one of Jamie’s favorites. A massive man with a curly brown beard and a reticent manner, he had been always there within Jamie’s call, ready when something was needed on the journey. Seldom speaking, he had a slow, shy smile that blossomed out of his beard like a night-blooming flower, rare but radiant.

  I knew the big man’s absence after the battle had been worrying Jamie, even among the other details and stresses. As the day wore on and the stragglers came back one by one, I had been keeping an eye out for MacBeth. But sundown came and the fires sprang up amid the army camp, with no Hamish MacBeth, and I had begun to fear we would find him among the dead, too.

  But he had come into the casualties station half an hour before, moving slowly, but under his own power. One leg was stained with blood down to the ankle, and he walked with a ginger, spraddled gait, but he would on no account let a “wumman” lay hands on him to see what was the matter.

  The big man was lying on a blanket near a lantern, hands clasped across the swell of his belly, eyes fastened patiently on the raftered ceiling. He swiveled his eyes around as Jamie knelt down beside him, but didn’t move otherwise. I lingered tactfully in the background, hidden from view by Jamie’s broad back.

  “All right, then, MacBeth,” said Jamie, laying a hand on the thick wrist in greeting. “How is it, man?”

  “I’ll do, sir,” the giant rumbled. “I’ll do. Just that it’s a bit…” He hesitated.

  “Well, then, let’s have a look at it.” MacBeth made no protest as Jamie flipped back the edge of the kilt. Peeking through a crack between Jamie’s arm and body, I could see the cause of MacBeth’s hesitations.

  A sword or pike had caught him high in the groin and ripped its way downward. The scrotum was torn jaggedly on one side, and one testicle hung halfway out, its smooth pink surface shiny as a peeled egg.

  Jamie and the two or three other men who saw the wound turned pale, and I saw one of the aides touch himself reflexively, as though to assure that his own parts were unscathed.

  Despite the horrid look of the wound, the testicle itself seemed undamaged, and there was no excessive bleeding. I touched Jamie on the shoulder and shook my head to signify that the wound was not serious, no matter what its effect on the male psyche. Catching my gesture with the tail of his eye, Jamie patted MacBeth on the knee.

  “Och, it’s none so bad, MacBeth. Nay worry, ye’ll be a father yet.”

  The big man had been looking down apprehensively, but at these words, transferred his gaze to his commander. “Weel, that’s no such a consairn to me, sir, me already havin’ the six bairns. It’s just what my wife’d say, if I…” MacBeth blushed crimson as the men surrounding him laughed and hooted.

  Casting an eye back at me for confirmation, Jamie suppressed his own grin and said firmly, “That’ll be all right, too, MacBeth.”

  “Thank ye, sir,” the man breathed gratefully, with complete trust in his commander’s assurance.

  “Still,” Jamie went on briskly, “it’ll need to be stitched up, man. Now, ye’ve your choice about that.”

  He reached into the open kit for one of my handmade suture needles. Appalled by the crude objects barber-surgeons customarily used to sew up their customers, I’d made three dozen of my own, by selecting the finest embroidery needles I could get, and heating them in forceps over the flame of an alcohol lamp, bending them gently until I had the proper half-moon curve needed for stitching severed tissues. Likewise, I’d made my own catgut sutures; a messy, disgusting business, but at least I was sure of the sterility of my materials.

  The tiny suture needle looked ridiculous, pinched between Jamie’s large thumb and index finger. The illusion of medical competence was not furthered by Jamie’s cross-eyed attempts to thread the needle.

  “Either I’ll do it myself,” he said, tongue-tip protruding slightly in his concentration, “or—” He broke off as he dropped the needle and fumbled about in the folds of MacBeth’s plaid for it. “Or,” he resumed, holding it up triumphantly before his patient’s apprehensive eyes, “my wife can do i
t for ye.” A slight jerk of the head summoned me into view. I did my best to look as matter-of-fact as possible, taking the needle from Jamie’s incompetent grasp and threading it neatly with one thrust.

  MacBeth’s large brown eyes traveled slowly between Jamie’s big paws, which he contrived to make look as clumsy as possible by setting the crooked right hand atop the left, and my own small, swift hands. At last he lay back with a dismal sigh, and mumbled his consent to let a “wumman” lay hands on his private parts.

  “Dinna worry yourself, man,” Jamie said, patting him companionably on the shoulder. “After all, she’s had the handling of my own for some time now, and she’s not unmanned me yet.” Amid the laughter of the aides and nearby patients, he started to rise, but I stopped him by thrusting a small flask into his hands.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “Alcohol and water,” I said. “Disinfectant solution. If he’s not to have fever or pustulence or something worse, the wound will have to be washed out.” MacBeth had plainly walked some way from where the injury had occurred, and there were smears of dirt as well as blood near the wound. Grain alcohol was a harsh disinfectant, even cut 50/50 with distilled sterile water as I used it. Still, it was the single most effective tool I had against infection, and I was adamant about its usage, in spite of complaints from the aides and screams of anguish from the patients who were subjected to it.

  Jamie glanced from the alcohol flask to the gaping wound and shuddered slightly. He’d had his own dose when I stitched his side, earlier in the evening.

  “Weel, MacBeth, better you than me,” he said, and, placing his knee firmly in the man’s midriff, sloshed the contents of the flask over the exposed tissues.

  A dreadful roar shook the walls, and MacBeth writhed like a cut snake. When the noise at last subsided, his face had gone a mottled greenish color, and he made no objection at all as I began the routine, if painful, job of stitching up the scrotum. Most of the patients, even those horribly wounded, were stoic about the primitive treatment to which we subjected them, and MacBeth was no exception. He lay unmoving in hideous embarrassment, eyes fixed on the lantern flame, and didn’t move a muscle as I made my repairs. Only the changing colors of his face, from green to white to red and back again, betrayed his emotions.

  At the last, however, he went purple. As I finished the stitching, the limp penis began to stiffen slightly, brushed in passing by my hand. Thoroughly rattled by this justification of his faith in Jamie’s word, MacBeth snatched down his kilts the instant I was finished, lurched to his feet, and staggered away into the darkness, leaving me giggling over my kit.

  * * *

  I found a corner where a chest of medical supplies made a seat, and leaned against the wall. A surge of pain shot up my calves; the sudden release of tension, and the nerves’ reaction to it. I slipped off my shoes and leaned back against the wall, reveling in the smaller spasms that shot up backbone and neck as the strain of standing was relieved.

  Every square inch of skin seems newly sensitive in such a state of fatigue; when the necessity of forcing the body to perform is suddenly suspended, the lingering impetus seems to force the blood to the perimeter of the body, as though the nervous system is reluctant to believe what the muscles have already gratefully accepted; you need not move, just now.

  The air in the cottage was warm and noisy with breathing; not the healthy racket of snoring men, but the shallow gasps of men for whom breathing hurts, and the moans of those who have found a temporary oblivion that frees them from the manly obligation of suffering in silence.

  The men in this cottage were those badly wounded, but in no immediate danger. I knew, though, that death walks at night in the aisles of a sick ward, searching for those whose defenses are lowered, who may stray unwittingly into its path through loneliness and fear. Some of the wounded had wives who slept next to them, to comfort them in the dark, but none in this cottage.

  They had me. If I could do little to heal them or stop their pain, I could at least let them know that they didn’t lie alone; that someone stood here, between them and the shadow. Beyond anything I could do, it was my job only to be there.

  I rose and made my way slowly once again through the pallets on the floor, stooping at each one, murmuring and touching, straightening a blanket, smoothing tangled hair, rubbing the knots that form in cramped limbs. A sip of water here, a change of dressing there, the reading of an attitude of tense embarrassment that meant a urinal was needed, and the matter-of-fact presentation that allowed the man to ease himself, the stone bottle growing warm and heavy in my hand.

  I stepped outdoors to empty one of these, and paused for a moment, gathering the cool, rainy night to myself, letting the soft moisture wipe away the touch of coarse, hairy skin and the smell of sweating men.

  “Ye dinna sleep much, Sassenach.” The soft Scottish voice came from the direction of the road. The other hospital cottages lay in that direction; the officers’ quarters, the other way, in the village manse.

  “You dinna sleep much, either,” I responded dryly. How long had he gone without sleep? I wondered.

  “I slept in the field last night, with the men.”

  “Oh, yes? Very restful,” I said, with an edge that made him laugh. Six hours’ sleep in a wet field, followed by a battle in which he’d been stepped on by a horse, wounded by a sword, and done God knows what else. Then he had gathered his men, collected the wounded, tended the hurt, mourned his dead, and served his Prince. And through none of it had I seen him pause for food, drink, or rest.

  I didn’t bother scolding. It wasn’t even worth mentioning that he ought to have been among the patients on the floor. It was his job to be here, as well.

  “There are other women, Sassenach,” he said gently. “Shall I have Archie Cameron send someone down?”

  It was a temptation, but one I pushed away before I could think about it too long, for fear that if I acknowledged my fatigue, I would never move again.

  I stretched, hands against the small of my back.

  “No,” I said. “I’ll manage ’til the dawn. Then someone else can take over for a time.” Somehow I felt that I must get them through the night; at dawn they would be safe.

  He didn’t scold, either; just laid a hand on my shoulder and drew me to lean against him for a moment. We shared what strength we had, unspeaking.

  “I’ll stay with ye, then,” he said, drawing away at last. “I canna sleep before light, myself.”

  “The other men from Lallybroch?”

  He moved his head toward the fields near the town where the army was camped.

  “Murtagh’s in charge.”

  “Oh, well, then. Nothing to worry about,” I said, and saw him smile in the light from the window. There was a bench outside the cottage, where the goodwife would sit on sunny days to clean fish or mend clothes. I drew him down to sit beside me, and he sagged back against the wall of the house with a sigh. His patent exhaustion reminded me of Fergus, and the boy’s expression of confused bewilderment after the battle.

  I reached to caress the back of Jamie’s neck, and he turned his head blindly toward me, resting his brow against my own.

  “How was it, Jamie?” I asked softly, fingers rubbing hard and slow over the tight-ridged muscles of his neck and shoulders. “What was it like? Tell me.”

  There was a short silence, then he sighed, and began to talk, haltingly at first, and then faster, as if wanting to get it out.

  “We had no fire, for Lord George thought we must move off the ridge before daylight, and wanted no hint of movement to be seen below. We sat in the dark for a time. Couldna even talk, for the sound would carry to the plain. So we sat.

  “Then I felt something grab my thigh in the dark, and near jumped out of my skin.” He inserted a finger in his mouth and rubbed gingerly. “Nearly bit my tongue off.” I felt the shift of his muscles as he smiled, though his face was hidden.

  “Fergus?”

  The ghost of a laugh fl
oated through the dark.

  “Aye, Fergus. Crawled through the grass on his belly, the little bastard, and I thought he was a snake, at that. He whispered to me about Anderson, and I crawled off after him and took Anderson to see Lord George.”

  His voice was slow and dreamy, talking under the spell of my touch.

  “And then the order came that we’d move, following Anderson’s trail. And the whole of the army got to its feet, and set off in the dark.”

  * * *

  The night was clear black and moonless, without the usual cover of cloud that trapped starlight and diffused it toward the earth. As the Highland army made its way in silence down the narrow path behind Richard Anderson, each man could see no farther than the shuffling heels of the man before him, each step widening the trodden path through wet grass.

  The army moved almost without noise. Orders were relayed in murmurs from man to man, not shouted. Broadswords and axes were muffled in the folds of their plaids, powder flasks tucked inside shirts against fast-beating hearts.