“Make him stand up,” I said, reaching the waistband of the captain’s breeches. “If he can stand upright for thirty seconds, he can have whisky. If not, give him honey-water and make him lie down flat on the floor. No matter what he says.”
“We’ve already been giving him honey-water,” she said, and looked closely at our patient. “Should the captain maybe have some, too?” I had one hand on the captain’s femoral artery—we’d cut his breeches, jacket, and shirt down the fronts and peeled the cloth away from his body—and the other underneath him. His pulse was surprisingly strong, which encouraged me. So did the fact that while blood was dripping off the table, it wasn’t pulsing out into my hand. I thought the shot hadn’t struck a major vessel. On the other hand … his feet still weren’t moving.
“Yes,” I said. “Bring some; Mrs. Cunningham can give it to him while I … see about this.”
Elspeth laid her son’s bandaged arm gently across his middle and smoothed the wet hair off his forehead, wiping his face with a towel.
“You’ll be all right, Charles,” she said. She spoke gently now, but her voice was rock-steady. “You’ll be warm and dry in no time.”
I closed my eyes, the better to listen to what my hands were telling me. I’d found the wound in his back, and it wasn’t good. A ball had entered between the last thoracic and first lumbar vertebrae. It still was between the vertebrae; I could feel it with my middle finger, a small hard lump, and stuck fast; it didn’t move when I pushed it a little. The flesh of his back was hard and cold, the muscles all in spasm.
He was shivering, though the room was quite warm. I told Elspeth to put a blanket over him, nodding at the vomit-yellow woolen coverlet, folded neatly on top of the cabinet.
The men who had brought him in were still in the hallways, talking in low voices. I recognized the voices; they were Jamie’s trusted men.
“Gilly!” I called over my shoulder, and Gillebride MacMillan peered cautiously round the doorjamb.
“Seadh, a bhana-mhaighister?”
“Is anyone hurt? Beyond the captain and Jamie, I mean?”
“Ach, it’s nay more than a few bruises and cracked ribs, mistress, and I think it may be that Tòmas has the broken nose.”
I had moved to the counter and was choosing my instruments, but was still thinking and talking at the same time.
“What about the others? The men who—were with the captain?”
He lifted a shoulder, but smiled, and I heard a brief laugh from someone in the hall. They’d won, I realized, and the adrenaline of victory was still holding them up.
“I could not say, a bhana mhaighister, save that I broke a shovel over the head of Alasdair MacLean, and there were knives, and two or three who came to grief in the landslide, so …”
“The landslide?” I looked over my shoulder at him, startled, then shook my head. “Never mind; I’ll hear about it later.”
“They will have gone to—to my house.” Elspeth spoke softly. “The wounded Loyalists who didn’t come here. I’ll—I’ll need to go and tend them.” She was holding her son’s hand, though, fingers tightly laced with his, and her face was full of anguish when she looked at him.
I nodded, my throat tight in sympathy. I didn’t need to see the thoughts racing across her face to know what they were: love and fear warring with duty. And I knew the deeper fear that was beginning to bloom within her. Her eyes were fixed on his bare feet, willing them to move.
“Gilly, go to the kitchen, will you, and fetch Agnes?”
He left, and I turned to Elspeth.
“He’s not going to die,” I said, low-voiced but firm. “I don’t know if he’ll walk again—he might, he might not. The ball didn’t go all the way through the spinal cord, but it’s clearly done some damage. That might heal. I’m going to take the ball out and dress the wound, and when the swelling goes down and the bruising heals …” I made a small gesture, equivocating hope and doubt.
She drew a long, quavering breath and nodded.
“Stay while I take the ball out,” I said, and reached to take her hand. “It won’t take long, and you’ll be sure he’s alive.”
111
Morning Has Broken
IT WAS STILL RAINING, but the day was near. I made my way slowly toward the dim glow of the kitchen, not quite leaning on the walls as I passed, but letting my fingertips touch them now and then, to make sure that I was where I thought I was. The house was still and smelled of blood and burnt things, but the air was cool and gray with coming dawn, the desk and chairs in Jamie’s study a monochrome still life painted on the wall—and yet my fingertips passed through empty air as I walked past the doorway, my footsteps inaudible to my own ears, as though I were the ghost who haunted this house.
Most of the men had left for their own homes, but there were a few bodies on the floor of the parlor. I had left Charles Cunningham sleeping on the table, under the influence of a lot of laudanum, and Elspeth dozing in my surgery chair, head nodding on her neck like a dandelion. I wasn’t going to wake her; the Loyalist wounded would have to see to themselves—or their wives would.
In the kitchen, Fanny was sound asleep, sprawled facedown on one of the wide benches, one leg dangling comically to the side. Bluebell was curled up below her, also sound asleep, and Jamie was on his back on the hearth rug, looking like a desecrated tomb effigy in the dying light of the fire. It was smoking and nearly out; no one had smoored it properly. He opened his eyes at the sound of my footsteps and looked up at me, heavy-lidded but alert.
“Come and sit down, Sassenach,” he murmured, and lifted a finger vaguely at a nearby stool. “Ye look worse than I do.”
“Not possible,” I said. But I did sit down. Tiredness flooded up from the aching soles of my feet, closing my eyes as it rose through my body like a spring tide—filled with churning sand and fragments of sharp shell and seaweed. A warm hand curled around my ankle and rested there.
“How do you feel?” I murmured. I did want to know, but was having trouble opening my eyes to look.
“I’ll do. Hand me the wee jar, Sassenach.” The hand left my ankle and rose up to my lap, where I was holding the small jar of alcohol and sutures. “I’ll do it.”
“You’ll do what?” I opened my eyes and stared at him. “Stitch your own chest back together?”
“I thought that might wake ye up.” He dropped his arm. “Help me get up, a nighean. I’m stiff as parritch on the third day and I dinna want ye crouchin’ on the floor to stitch me. Besides, I might wake the wee lassie if ye make me howl.”
“Howl, forsooth,” I said, rather cross. “Serve you right if I did. Let me see it, at least, before I try to get you on your feet.” The floor around him was littered with wadded cloths, rusty with drying blood, and there were smears of it across a wide swath of floorboards. I slid gingerly down onto my knees beside him.
“It smells like an abattoir in here.” He smelled of blood and mud and smoke, but most strongly of the curdled sweat of violence.
He put his head back, sighed, and closed his eyes, letting me look at his chest. The girls had put his wet plaid over him for warmth, and underneath was a folded linen towel soaked in water. A faint scent of lavender and meadowsweet drifted up, along with the sharp copper tang of fresh blood. I was surprised and wondered which one of them had thought to use a wet compress to keep the edges of the wound moist. Whoever it was had also thought to take his shoes off and put the bundle of his rolled-up jacket and shirt under his feet to raise them. Or maybe Jamie had told them, I thought vaguely.