Fire Along the Sky
Page 194

They had lost another four of the survivors from the American ship, and soon they would lose Liam Kirby, who was waning visibly, almost from hour to hour. For a while Jennet had wondered if he would prove Hannah wrong and rally, somehow expel the foreign metal out of his chest cavity by pure force of will.
The oddest thing, the most unexpected thing, was the way Daniel had come to life as Liam Kirby slipped away. It was not something to be thankful for, certainly. She told herself that as she caught sight of Daniel. His injured arm was strapped firmly to his side, but with his free hand he was holding a cup to Kirby's mouth.
Behind Jennet a man's low moan rose suddenly into a wail, and she went to see to it.
The thing Hannah feared most of all, more than the idea of a prison ship, was fever, and fever had come to the stockades, as she had known it must. She could smell it in the sweat of the man who tossed in his sleep. Whether it was typhoid or some other prison fever she could not yet tell, but that would show itself by the time the day was out.
Now she stood looking at her medicine stores, or the little that was left of them. There was some laudanum, enough fever tea to get them through today, and nothing beyond tepid water and a quart of vinegar to treat everything else.
Mr. Whistler stood beside her at the little worktable and hummed to himself, something he did when he was uneasy. He had been humming all morning.
“Will you go, then?” He asked the question without looking at her.
“I suppose I must.” It was the last thing she wanted to do, but it seemed as though she could no longer find excuses to avoid visiting the garrison hospital. She would scrub their floors, if it meant the medicines the men must have.
“No hope of a shipment from our friend?” Mr. Whistler asked.
Hannah said, “There is always hope, Mr. Whistler. While I am gone, would you see to it that the fever tea is divided evenly where it is most needed?”
He nodded. “And the laudanum?”
“Mrs. Huntar will see to the laudanum.”
Jennet would try to see to the laudanum, that was true. Daniel would refuse it, insisting that his portion go to Liam Kirby. Unless he died while Hannah was gone.
“Very well.” He paused, and in a lowered voice he said, “You won't let them keep you too long?”
“No,” Hannah said. “I will not.”
She went to Daniel first, to tell him what she was planning. Liam had fallen into a restless sleep, curled on his side. The dressings on his back, changed just hours ago, were already crusted over with blood and discharge.
“His mind is wandering,” Daniel told her. “It's the pain that does it. He thinks I'm Rudy McGarrity.”
Jed McGarrity's son Rudy had died of the scarlet fever long ago.
“He's in the shadow lands,” Hannah said.
If Many-Doves were here she would sing the songs that would help Liam make his way, but right now Hannah could think only of O'seronni medicine, of the laudanum which would make his passing easier.
She crouched down next to them and put a finger to the pulse in Liam's throat. Fast and uneven, it told the rest of the story.
“He told me something this morning. A long time ago, when his brother wouldn't let him go to school, he would look in the window, until our father caught him at it one day. There was something about Ephraim Hauptmann getting himself stuck in an ink bottle.”
Hannah found herself smiling. “I haven't thought of that in years.” Hot tears prickled behind her eyes.
“Go on,” Daniel said. “I'll sit with him. Don't let the French doctors get the best of you.”
“And how do you suppose I should manage that?”
Her brother had eyes the green of a spring forest, and he blinked at her now in the way that said she was being dense.
“Why, speak to them as Curiosity would.”
That made her laugh aloud. “I'll try that,” Hannah promised.
For all the weeks she had spent here, Hannah had managed to avoid the army surgeons who ran the hospital on the far side of the parade grounds. She knew what she would find there, the kind of welcome she could expect, the questions they would ask. Ten years ago she had spent a summer at the Kine-Pox Institution in Manhattan, learning as much about white doctors as she had about vaccinations and anatomy and surgery.
She might help herself by listing her teachers, or at least the teachers these men might have heard about and respect. Some of them had reputations that reached as far as Québec and Halifax and London: Hakim Ibrahim Dehlavi ibn Abdul Rahman Balkhi. Dr. Valentine Simon, Dr. John Ellingham, Dr. Karl Scofield, Dr. Paul Savard. Dr. Richard Todd. Those names might make them listen, at least, to what she had to say; they might win her some of the medicines she must have.
Or they might look at her: muddy hem and bloodstained apron, weary eyed and stinking of the men she cared for, and laugh in her face.
That she would suffer, too, if it resulted in the things she needed, the medicines she must have.
I am Walks-Ahead, she reminded herself. I am the daughter of Sings-from-Books of the Kahnyen'kehàka people. I am the granddaughter of Falling-Day who was a great healer, great-granddaughter of Made-of-Bones who was clan mother of the Wolf for forty years, I am the great-great-granddaughter of Hawk-Woman, who killed an O'seronni chief with her own hands and fed his heart to her sons. I am the stepdaughter of Bone-in-Her-Back.
They might laugh, yes, but they could take nothing away from her. Nothing of importance.
This thought came to her in her stepmother's voice, steady and calm and true, and Hannah stopped where she was and straightened her shoulders.