Outlander [08] Written in My Own Heart's Blood

by Diana Gabaldon

  I left Clarence tied and went to find out where the hospital tents were to be set up. The camp was milling with non-combatants and support personnel, but I was finally able to locate Denny Hunter, who told me that on the basis of General Greene’s reports, the surgeons were to be dispatched to the village of Freehold, where there was a large church that could be used as a hospital.

  “The last thing I’ve heard is that Lee has taken command of the force attacking the British rear and means to encircle the British,” he said, polishing his spectacles on the tail of his shirt.

  “Lee? But I thought he didn’t think it an important command and wouldn’t take it.” I wouldn’t care one way or the other—save that Jamie and his companies would be engaged in that mission, and I had my own doubts about General Lee.

  Denzell shrugged, putting his spectacles back on and tucking in his shirttail.

  “Apparently Washington decided that a thousand men were insufficient to his purpose and raised the number to five thousand, which Lee considered more appropriate to his … sense of his own importance.” Denny’s mouth twisted a little at this. He looked at my face, though, and touched my arm gently.

  “We can but put our trust in God—and hope that the Lord has his eye upon Charles Lee. Will thee come with the girls and me, Claire? Thy mule will bide with us willingly.”

  I hesitated for no more than a moment. If I rode Clarence, I could take only a fraction of the equipment and supplies he could otherwise carry. And while Jamie had said he wanted me with him, I knew quite well that what he really meant was that he wanted to be assured of where I was, and that I was near at hand if he needed me.

  “Thy husband does trust me with thy welfare,” Denny said, smiling, having plainly divined what I was thinking.

  “Et tu, Brute?” I said rather curtly, and, when he blinked, added more civilly, “I mean—does everyone know what I’m thinking, all of the time?”

  “Oh, I doubt it,” he said, and grinned at me. “If they did, I expect a number of them would take a deal more care in what they said to thee.”

  I rode in Denny’s wagon with Dottie and Rachel, Clarence pacing stolidly along behind, tied to the tailboard. Dottie was flushed with heat and excitement; she had never been near a battle before. Neither had Rachel, but she had helped her brother during a very bad winter at Valley Forge and had much more idea of what the day might hold.

  “Does thee think perhaps thee should write to thy mother?” I heard Rachel ask seriously. The girls were behind Denny and me, sitting in the bed of the wagon and keeping things from bouncing out when we hit ruts and mud bogs.

  “No. Why?” Dottie’s tone was wary—not quite hostile, but very reserved. I knew she had written to tell her mother that she intended to wed Denzell Hunter, but she hadn’t received a reply. Given the difficulties of correspondence with England, though, there was no assurance that Minerva Grey had ever read the letter.

  It occurred to me, with a sudden qualm, that I hadn’t written a letter to Brianna in several months. I hadn’t been able to bear to write about Jamie’s death, and there hadn’t been time since his return even to think about it.

  “It is a war, Dottie,” Rachel said. “Unexpected things may happen. And thee would not wish thy mother to … well … to discover that thee had perished without some assurance that she was in thy heart.”

  “Hmm!” said Dottie, clearly taken aback. Beside me, I felt Denzell shift his weight, bending a little forward as he took a fresh grip on the reins. He glanced aside at me, and his mouth turned up in an expression that was as much grimace as smile, acknowledging that he’d been listening to the girls’ talk, too.

  “She worries for me,” he said very quietly. “Never for herself.” He let go the reins with one hand to rub a knuckle under his nose. “She has as much courage as her father and brothers.”

  “As much pigheadedness, you mean,” I said under my breath, and he grinned, despite himself.

  “Yes,” he said. He glanced over his shoulder and so did I, but the girls had moved to the tailboard and were talking over it to Clarence, brushing flies off his face with the needles of a long pine twig. “Does thee think it a familial lack of imagination? For in the case of the men of her family, it cannot be ignorance of the possibilities.”

  “No, it certainly can’t,” I agreed, with a note of ruefulness. I sighed and stretched my legs a little. “Jamie is the same way, and he certainly doesn’t lack for imagination. I think it’s …” I made a small helpless gesture. “Perhaps ‘acceptance’ is the word.”

  “Acceptance of the fact of mortality?” He was interested and pushed his spectacles back into place. “We have discussed that—Dorothea and I.” He nodded back toward the girls. “Friends live in the certain knowledge that this world is temporary and there is nothing to fear in death.”

  “Some of that, perhaps.” In fact, almost everyone in this time had a very matter-of-fact acceptance of mortality; death was a constant presence at everyone’s elbow, though they regarded that presence in a variety of ways. “But they—those men—what they do is something different, I think. It’s more an acceptance of what they think God made them.”

  “Really?” He seemed slightly startled by that, and his brows drew together in consideration. “What does thee mean by that? That they believe God has created them deliberately to—”

  “To be responsible for other people, I think,” I said. “I couldn’t say whether it’s the notion of noblesse oblige—Jamie was a laird, you know, in Scotland—or just the idea that … that’s what a man does,” I ended, rather lamely. Because “that” was plainly not what Denzell Hunter thought a man should do. Though I did wonder a bit. Plainly the question troubled him a little.

  As well it might, given his position. I could see that the prospect of battle excited him and that the fact that it did troubled him a great deal.

  “You’re a very brave man,” I said quietly, and touched his sleeve. “I saw that. When you played Jamie’s deserter game, after Ticonderoga.”

  “It wasn’t courage, I assure thee,” he said, with a short, humorless laugh. “I didn’t seek to be brave; I only wanted to prove that I was.”

  I made a rather disrespectful noise—I wasn’t in either Jamie’s or Ian’s class, but I had picked up a few pointers—and he glanced at me in surprise.

  “I do appreciate the distinction,” I told him. “But I’ve known a lot of brave men in my time.”

  “But how can thee know what lies—”

  “Be quiet.” I waved my fingers at him. “ ‘Brave’ covers everything from complete insanity and bloody disregard of other people’s lives—generals tend to go in for that sort—to drunkenness, foolhardiness, and outright idiocy—to the sort of thing that will make a man sweat and tremble and throw up … and go and do what he thinks he has to do anyway.

  “Which,” I said, pausing for breath and folding my hands neatly in my lap, “is exactly the sort of bravery you share with Jamie.”

  “Thy husband does not sweat and tremble,” he said dryly. “I’ve seen him. Or, rather, I have not seen him do such things.”

  “He does the sweating and trembling on the inside, mostly,” I replied. “Though he really does often vomit before—or during—a battle.”

  Denzell blinked, once, and didn’t speak for a bit, absorbed—apparently—in steering his way past a large hay wagon whose oxen had suddenly decided they didn’t want to go any farther and stopped dead in the middle of the road.

  At last he took a breath and let it out explosively.

  “I am not afraid to die,” he said. “That isn’t my difficulty.”

  “What is?” I asked, curious. “Are you afraid of being maimed and left helpless? I certainly would be.”

  “No.” His throat moved as he swallowed. “It’s Dorothea and Rachel. I’m afraid I would lack the courage to see them die without trying to save them, even if that meant killing someone.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say to this, and
we jolted on in silence.

  LEE’S TROOPS LEFT Englishtown at about 6 A.M., heading east toward Monmouth Courthouse. Lee arrived at the courthouse at about nine-thirty, to find that the bulk of the British army had left—presumably moving toward Middletown, as that was where the road went.

  Lee was prevented from following, though, by the presence of a small but very belligerent rear guard under the command of General Clinton himself. Or so Ian told Jamie, having got close enough to see Clinton’s regimental banners. Jamie had communicated this information to Lee, but saw no evidence that it affected either that gentleman’s plan of action (always assuming that he had one) or his disinclination to send out more scouts to reconnoiter.

  “Go round this lot and see can ye find out where Cornwallis is,” Jamie told Ian. “The grenadiers ye saw are likely Hessians, so they’ll be close to von Knyphausen.”

  Ian nodded and took the full canteen Jamie offered him.

  “Shall I tell General Lee, if I do? He didna seem much interested in what I had to say.”

  “Aye, tell him if ye see him before ye see me—tell the marquis, too, should ye come within reach of him—but find me, regardless, aye?”

  Ian grinned at him and slung the canteen over his pommel.

  “Good hunting, a Bhràthair-mathàr!”

  Jamie had had two companies blooded by midmorning, skirmishing near Monmouth Courthouse, but no one killed yet and only three wounded badly enough to retire. Colonel Owen had requested cover for his artillery—only two cannon, but any artillery was welcome—and Jamie had sent Thomas Meleager’s Pennsylvanians to deal with that.

  He’d sent one of Captain Kirby’s companies to reconnoiter toward what he thought was the creek and kept back the rest, waiting for orders from La Fayette or Lee. La Fayette was somewhere ahead of him, Lee well behind and to the east with the main body of his troops.

  The sun stood just short of ten o’clock when a messenger appeared, crouched dramatically in his saddle as though dashing through a hail of bullets, though in fact there was not a British soldier in sight. He pulled his lathered horse to a stop and gasped out his message.

  “There’s dust clouds in the east—might be more redcoats comin’! And the marky says there’s redcoat cannon in the cider orchard, sir, and will you do summat about it, please.”

  The sweating messenger gulped air, loosening his rein in obvious preparation for dashing off again. Jamie leaned over and seized the horse’s bridle to prevent it.

  “Where is the cider orchard?” he asked calmly. The messenger was young, maybe sixteen, and wild-eyed as his rawboned horse.

  “Dunno, sir,” he said, and began glancing to and fro, as though expecting the orchard to materialize suddenly out of the meadow they were standing in. A sudden distant boom reverberated in Jamie’s bones, and his horse’s ears pricked up.

  “Never mind, lad,” he said. “I hear them. Breathe your horse, or he’s like to die under ye before the sun’s high.”

  Letting go the bridle, he waved to Captain Craddock and turned his own horse’s head toward the sound of cannon.

  THE AMERICAN ARMY had several hours’ lead on him, and the British army very much more—but a man alone could move a great deal faster than even a company of light infantry. Neither was John burdened with weapons. Or food. Or water.

  You know perfectly well that he’s lying to you.

  “Oh, be quiet, Hal,” Grey muttered to his brother’s shade. “I know Percy a great deal better than you do.”

  I said, you know perfectly well …

  “I do. What am I risking if he is lying—and what am I risking if he’s not?”

  Hal was high-handed, but logical. He was also a father; that shut him up.

  What he was risking if Percy was lying was being shot or hanged out of hand if anyone recognized him. Anyone. If the Americans found him out before he reached the British lines, they’d arrest him for breaking his parole and promptly execute him as a spy. If the British didn’t recognize him in time, they’d shoot him on sight as Rebel militia. He put a hand in the pocket where he’d wadded the LIBERTY OR DEATH cap and debated the wisdom of throwing it away, but, in the event, kept it.

  What he was risking if Percy wasn’t lying was Willie’s life. No great effort required to call the odds.

  It was midmorning, and the air was like treacle, thick and sweet with flowers, sticky with tree sap, and completely unbreathable. His good eye was beginning to itch from the floating pollen grains, and flies were buzzing interestedly round his head, drawn by the scent of honey.

  At least the headache had gone away, dispelled by the burst of alarm—and a brief flare of lust, might as well admit it—occasioned by Percy’s revelation. He wouldn’t begin to speculate as to Percy’s motives, but …

  “ ‘For your beautiful eyes,’ indeed!” he muttered, but couldn’t help smiling at the impudence. A wise man would not touch Percy Wainwright with a ten-foot pole. Something shorter, though …

  “Oh, do be quiet, will you?” he murmured to himself, and made his way down a clay bank to the edge of a tiny creek, where he could throw cold water on his heated face.

  IT WAS PERHAPS eight o’clock in the morning when we reached Freehold, where Tennent Church was to be established as the main hospital. It was a large building, set in the midst of a huge, sprawling churchyard, an acre or more of ground whose headstones were as individual as doubtless their owners had been in life. No neat aisles of uniform white crosses here.

  I spared a thought for the graves of Normandy and wondered whether those rows upon rows of faceless dead were meant to impose a sort of postmortem tidiness on the costs of war—or whether it was meant rather to underline them, a solemn accounting carried out in endless rows of naughts and crosses.

  But I didn’t think long. Battle had been joined already—somewhere—and there were already wounded coming in, a number of men sitting in the shade of a large tree next to the church, more coming down the road, some staggering with the help of friends, some being carried on litters—or in someone’s arms. My heart lurched at the sight, but I tried not to look for Jamie or Ian; should they be among the early wounded, I’d know it soon enough.

  There was a bustle near the church’s porch, where the double doors had been flung wide to accommodate passage, and orderlies and surgeons were coming and going in haste—but organized haste, so far.

  “Go and see what’s happening, why don’t you?” I suggested to Denzell. “The girls and I will unload things.”

  He paused long enough to unhitch his own two mules and hobble them, then hastened into the church.

  I found the buckets and dispatched Rachel and Dottie to find a well. The day was already uncomfortably hot; we were going to need a good deal of water, one way or another.

  Clarence was showing a strong urge to go join Denny’s mules in cropping grass among the headstones, jerking his head against the pull of his tether and uttering loud cries of annoyance.

  “All right, all right, all right,” I said, hurrying to undo the packing straps and lift his burdens off. “Hold your—oh, dear.”

  A man was staggering toward me, giving at the knees with every step and lurching dizzily. The side of his face was black, and there was blood down the facing of his uniform. I dropped the bundle of tenting and poles and rushed to catch him by the arm before he should trip over a headstone and fall face-first into the dirt.

  “Sit down,” I said. He looked dazed and appeared not to hear me, but as I was pulling on his arm, he did go down, letting his knees relax abruptly and nearly taking me with him as he landed on a substantial stone commemorating one Gilbert Tennent.

  My patient was swaying as though about to fall over, and yet a hasty check showed me no significant wounds; the blood on his coat was from his face, where the blackened skin had blistered and split. It wasn’t just the soot of black powder—the skin had actually been burned to a crisp, the underlying flesh seared, and my patient smelled appallingly like a pork roast. I took
a firm grip on my lurching stomach and stopped breathing through my nose.

  He didn’t respond to my questions but stared hard at my mouth, and he seemed lucid, despite his continued swaying. The penny finally dropped.

  “Ex … plo … sion?” I mouthed with exaggerated care, and he nodded vigorously, then stopped abruptly, swaying so far that I had to grasp him by the sleeve and pull him upright.

  Artilleryman, from his uniform. So something big had exploded near him—a mortar, a cannon?—and not only burned his face nearly to the bone but also likely burst both his eardrums and disturbed the balance of his inner ear. I nodded and set his hands to grip the stone he sat on, to keep him in place while I hastily finished unloading Clarence—who was making the welkin ring with frustration; I should have realized at once that the artilleryman was deaf, as he was taking no notice of the racket—hobbled him, and set him loose to join Denny’s mules in the shade. I dug what I needed out of the packs and set about to do what little I could for the injured man, this consisting mostly of soaking a towel in saline and applying it to his face like a poultice, to remove as much soot as I could without scrubbing.

  I thanked God that I’d had the forethought to bring a jug of sweet oil for burns—and cursed my lack of it for not having asked for aloe at Bartram’s Garden.

  The girls hadn’t yet returned with water; I hoped there was a well somewhere close at hand. Creek water so close to an army couldn’t be used without boiling it. That thought led me to look round for a spot where a fire could be lighted and to make a mental note to send the girls to look for wood next.

  My mind was jerked from my rapidly expanding mental checklist, though, by Denny’s sudden emergence from the church. He wasn’t alone; he appeared to be having a passionate argument with another Continental officer. With a brief exclamation of exasperation, I dug in my pocket and found my silk-wrapped spectacles. With these on my nose, the face of Denny’s interlocutor sprang into clear focus—Captain Leckie, diplomate of the Medical College of Philadelphia.