Dragonfly in Amber
Page 69

"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, triumphantly 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 Jamie'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.
"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.