The Brazen Woman

by Anne Groß

  The sound of a braying animal caused all four of them to turn and look. George Russell was pulling at the lead of his mule, trying to encourage the beast to turn its head away from the lovely patch of grass that it had been dining upon. The diminutive surgeon’s hat had been knocked to one side and a tuft of his red hair protruded out to the left of his head like the lit end of a firecracker.

  “Doesn’t he look just like a tinker?” Bill laughed.

  “Mind your manners,” Thomas admonished.

  Jenkins, ever steady in the presence of his employer’s fiery temper, thoughtfully slapped the mule on its hindquarters and the beast jumped forward. Equipment in the over-packed wicker panniers jangled as they hurried towards the sound of the shots. Elise watched them pass, then jumped to her feet and pulled on her own pack. There were wounded. If the surgeon was running, there were wounded.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Richard asked her.

  Elise didn’t answer. Richard hadn’t earned the right to question her. She looked at Thomas and defiantly lifted her chin, daring him to object. He said nothing. Instead, Thomas stalked away then broke into a run, his pack jangling like the mule. Elise jogged along behind.

  With her skirt hitched up in one hand, she jogged easily along with the doctor, but well out of reach of the frightening mule and its big teeth. She was sure the animal would lunge at her the second she let her guard down, and each time it brayed, she blanched in fear, feeling certain it was itching to take a chunk of flesh off the nearest jerk that was forcing it to run in the heat. The fact that Russell held the mule’s lead so close to its nose did not reassure her of the gentleness of the animal, but further convinced her that the surgeon was an idiot.

  It felt good, running towards danger, purposeful. The whole thing reminded Elise of that shot of adrenaline she used to get when the ER team ran out through double doors to meet whatever was being run in. The hospital she’d worked at in Tucson had its share of victims of violence and she’d seen gunshot wounds before. She tried to review what had happened with each case as she ran along behind the surgeon. In the ER, there were bags of replacement fluid to hang, catheters, suction vacuums, oxygen masks, antibiotics, and anesthesia. There were protocols for the use of each tool, and specialized teams. Now, all she had to help her were two clanking wicker baskets full of torture devices with wooden handles, a couple of thugs to pin patients onto their backs, and a surgeon who didn’t understand the basic principles of contagion. She ran faster, suddenly wanting to leave the others behind.

  The skirmish was over by the time they’d reached the men at the front. The 95th Rifles looked at them in surprise as the small medical team burst in on them, out of breath, sweaty, and looking very much like the tinkers Bill had compared them to, but once their purpose was explained, they were quickly pointed in the direction of three men who’d been shot.

  “It’s Mrs. Ferrington,” hooted one of the wounded. “Hallo! Remember me? Didn’t think I’d be seeing you again—just can’t stay in the back, can you?”

  Elise recognized him right away. The mustache that reached his ears made it easy. “Drake, isn’t it?”

  “In the flesh.”

  “You two have met?” Thomas asked suspiciously.

  “We met in the bushes,” Elise gave the man a sardonic smile as she felt for his pulse. “Didn’t we Drake?”

  Private Drake took one look at Thomas and wisely kept his mouth shut.

  The man’s pulse was hard to feel in his wrist, and he seemed to be getting more pale by the minute. She pressed down on his fingernail and let go, looking for capillary refill. All she saw, however, was that he needed a bath and a large bar of pumice soap to scrub his hands. There was a round circle of blood between his legs. “Shot in the thigh?” Elise was getting a bad feeling.

  “Aye. Grazed likely.”

  “Can you move your leg?”

  He nodded. “It hurts, though.”

  No nerve damage then, that was good. “Let’s have a look.” She motioned for him to pull his trousers down and caused a small explosion of outrage. “Oh, so now your bashful?” Elise said, thinking of how she’d been pinned down by the man. “Fine. Then I’ll just cut a hole in your pants.” Another wave of loud objections assailed her ears as she pulled her knife from its sheath under her skirt. “Look, they’re going to have to come off one way or another.”

  “Over here, Mrs. Ferrington, if you please,” Russell called out.

  Elise left Private Drake and rushed to the doctor, thinking his call was due to a more urgent case. Instead, she found a young man excitedly recounting in detail how his small company of riflemen had come across the enemy while the surgeon examined the pathway that a round had taken through the flesh of his deltoid. “We thought the French were still miles ahead. Imagine our surprise when we saw members of their rearguard. It looked like they were set up for teatime, or some such nonsense.”

  “Mm hmm,” Russell said, uninterested. He motioned for Jenkins to swab more blood away.

  “Did you need me for something?” Elise asked.

  “I believe the others were uncomfortable with your presence, no?” He waved her to move on to the third patient. “See what that man needs.”

  “Have you looked at him already?”

  “No, Mrs. Ferrington,” he said, sounding annoyed. “As you can plainly see, I’m busy at the moment.”

  Elise frowned. Apparently, there was no such thing as triage in nineteenth century medicine. Good to know, she thought.

  “So, Drake there wanted to see if he could put a round through their wine sack, just to scare them a bit,” continued Russell’s patient, “but Drake’s not much of a shot, see?”

  “Mm hmm,” replied the surgeon.

  The third patient was sitting on a stump, trembling and pale. He was holding his left wrist while blood dripped onto the ground. A hole had been shot through his palm. “You’ve got the right idea, sweetie,” Elise said to him, “but hold your hand up. Higher. Good.” She wasn’t sure why everyone’s first instinct was to grab the wrist of their injured hand and hold it between their legs.

  “I can’t be a one-handed farmer. I need to keep my hand,” the man said. He looked frightened. “One-handed farmers starve.”

  “Can I take a look?” Hands were tricky. There was so much going on in a very tiny amount of space: tendons, bones, nerves, vessels, and all of it miniaturized. Hands took specialists to repair. She hoped that the ball had gone through the webbing between his thumb and index finger. It hadn’t. This poor guy was sunk.

  “Elise?” Thomas called. There was an urgency and helplessness to his tone that made her head snap up. He was standing with Private Drake slouched in a faint in his arms. “Where should I put him?”

  “Set him out on the ground,” Russell snapped impatiently. “He’ll come to in a moment. Can’t stand the sight of blood is all.”

  Thomas looked at Elise for confirmation. She pulled a blanket from Drake’s pack and Thomas dragged his charge over to her and laid him down. Elise slit Drake’s pant leg from ankle to hip while Thomas kept Drake’s torso pinned in case he came back from his faint.

  “I can’t see what’s going on,” Elise mumbled. She tried to use the pant leg to wipe up the gore, but that only revealed an entrance and an exit in the man’s thigh, not the true source of the bleeding. The flesh was swelling as blood pooled under the skin. “Mr. Russell,” Elise called, “this man’s femoral artery is cut. He’s bleeding out.”

  Russell turned from his patient, one eyebrow raised in exasperation. “Must I explain everything to you? Put a tourniquet on him. I can’t do anything until I’m finished here.”

  Elise gaped at the surgeon in surprise, then pulled herself together and tied Drake’s bloody pant leg tight around his thigh above the entry wound. Her jaw was set. Since Russell’s reply was nothing but a brush-off, she would have to deal with the matter herself.

  “Get me a clean scalpel, silk thread and a needle,” she ord
ered Thomas.

  He didn’t move.

  “Knife, Thomas. A very, very sharp knife.” He pulled his own knife out from a sheath hung at his belt and offered it to her after wiping the blade on the grass. Elise swallowed hard to keep from screaming at him. “Is there a campfire around? Go hold the blade in the fire. Ten seconds in direct flame, then bring the knife here without touching the blade to a single thing.” Elise sighed and looked at her filthy hands after Thomas had trotted off. There wasn’t much point in trying to keep a sterile field, she thought sadly. Drake was going to have to flip a coin on infection, like everyone else.

  When Thomas returned, she carefully took the hot dagger and motioned for him to pin Drake down again. “Make sure you’ve got his arms. He might wake up swinging and I don’t want to get hit.” She was trembling as she straddled Drake’s thigh to pin that down too.

  Just as she brought the knife down, a shadow fell over her. “What in bloody hell are you doing?” The young surgeon’s eyes flashed angrily. His freckled hand shot out to snatch her wrist causing the knife to skid dangerously across Private Drake’s flesh. “He’s bleeding out,” Elise repeated angrily, checking to make sure she didn’t cut her patient by accident. “We have to do something.”

  “Did you not place a tourniquet as I asked?” he demanded, imperiously pointing to where Elise had cut off the blood flow over the wound.

  “If you stop perfusion for too long, the limb will die. Tourniquets are only fine for the short term—”

  “What’s this stuff and nonsense about perfusion? Private MacEwan, I’m surprised at you. I’d have thought you’d have more sense than to let this woman practice her witchery on my patient.”

  “Your pardon, but Mrs. Ferrington has a real talent for healing,” Thomas said quietly. “She saved the life of one of my regulars.”

  “Your what? Your regular? I hope to God you’re not speaking of an event that happened at a public house. Put that ghastly knife away. Jenkins, get me my scalpel. Out of my way, Mrs. Ferrington.” The scalpel flashed against Private Drake’s flesh, releasing a flood of trapped blood. “So now,” he said, turning back to Elise. “Tell me, what should happen after the first incision.” His eyebrows arched as he awaited the answer to his pop quiz.

  Elise sucked in a breath. The surgeon’s slice had been alarmingly swift. “I’d be damn careful not to cut the femoral nerve,” she said. A muscle in Russell’s jaw twitched—his only acknowledgement to her pointed statement. “And then I’d push my finger inside to look for the artery. Once found, I’d determine where the hole was and sew it up with silk. After that was done, I’d sew the whole thing back up and hope for the best. If you didn’t use a tourniquet, then you could find the artery by feeling for its pulse and tie it off above and below the hole before repairing it, keeping perfusion to the rest of the limb.”

  Russell took a long time to reply, peering closely at the wound he’d opened. Elise pulled the flesh farther apart to give him more room to probe inside, causing Private Drake to scream and buck in pain under Thomas and Jenkins’s strong arms. “You’ve done this before?” he asked.

  “Nope.” She swabbed away more blood, allowing the surgeon a better view. “I’m not an OR nurse, I’m ER, so I never got many opportunities to watch this kind of thing.”

  Russell looked up sharply, then returned to the wound.

  “I’ll admit I would have probably made a mess of it if you hadn’t stepped in,” Elise continued, knowing she was probably saying too much, but too full of adrenaline to shut up. “I didn’t know when you’d be finished with that other guy and I figured if I started there was a chance I could save Drake’s leg. He might die anyway, depending on how much blood he’s lost.”

  “Silk.” Russell held his hand out and was rewarded with a threaded needle from Jenkins. In short order, the artery was repaired. “Sew him up, if you please, Mrs. Ferrington, and release the tourniquet.”

  “Who, me?”

  “I don’t know about this business of tying off the artery above and below the tear, and that bit about an AR or an OE was befuddling, but the rest of your explanation was sound and I’m not in a position to refuse help, even from you.”

  ROLIÇA

  The moon was a pale sliver in the fading light of the evening sky. On its side, it reminded Elise of an irritating smiley-face emoji from an unwanted admirer. And, coincidentally, there directly under the moon on the ridge of the hillside stood her unwanted admirer. Quidico’s leering face delivered the message in person.

  Looking up at him, Elise’s stomach twisted unpleasantly. His long dark hair hung loose over his shoulders, lifting like one of his many scarves in the wind. He stood with his legs splayed, hips thrust forward. His shirt was open to his navel, and he slid one hand slowly up his naked chest as a lascivious smile played at the corners of his mouth in a visual reminder of what she’d promised him. Elise had spent the last few days trying not to think about it, but apparently Quidico had no problem with the idea. Now that the officers had called a halt to the advancing troops, the caravan had finally caught up. Elise hoped that didn’t mean she going to get visits like this one every night until the night of the dirty deed.

  “Is that bloke bothering you?” Collins’s voice made Elise jump.

  “No, he’s okay. I mean, thank you. He’s not bothering me.”

  “You’ll let me know? Me and the lads’ll take care of him on the double. Just say the word and we’ll teach that tinkerer to know his place.” He gave Quidico a two-fingered salute and Quidico retreated, slowly, with a strut. “The man’s got no respect. Someone should teach him better manners.”

  Elise squinted at Peter as he stumbled back to where he’d spread his blanket and sat heavily back down. “You okay, Collins? I mean, are you feeling poorly? You don’t look so hot.” No one seemed to be rehydrating the way she would have liked. She walked over to him and put a hand on his cheek. It was burning hot and damp with sweat.

  He brushed her away. “Don’t fuss. Just a long march, is all. Give me a few moments and I’ll be right as rain.”

  “Have you heard? We’re to have our first battle with the French tomorrow,” he said, changing the subject.

  Elise smiled. It was insane how excited everyone was for the next morning’s fight. “You’re going to make Amanda proud.”

  “Not just Amy, but little Edwina, and if I’m lucky, Edwina’s babies too.”

  “That’s right. You’ll be telling your war stories to generations of Collinses.”

  Elise sighed as she stirred Mrs. Gillihan’s stew. The army had been called to a halt after the 95th’s exchange of shots, even though it was still early, and was now encamped in the fields outside of the ancient stone walls surrounding the town of Óbidos. The French troops were closer than they had anticipated, only a few miles away near the next town of Roliça. Had the English continued, they would have run up against the French rearguard, resulting in many more casualties than just the three men she’d cared for that afternoon. The British Army would camp, resting overnight while the higher-ups decided what the next step would be.

  Only a few more days remained until the new moon. She couldn’t wait. Avó’s spell had to work. The more she heard people talk about the upcoming bloodshed, the more desperately she wanted to go home. Avó was powerful enough to make it happen—she was the scarab, wasn’t she? Elise put a hand to her chest and pressed the emerald into her sternum as she gave the pot another couple of stirs. She couldn’t be sure it wasn’t her own heart, but she thought she felt the scarab pulse.

  She’d taken over the job of cooking when Mrs. Gillihan took a long business trip to a bush after her expression changed in the space of sixty seconds from quiet thoughtfulness, to slow understanding, and settled on the face of a woman who’d be grumpy for the next few days. Elise glanced back at the moon, thankful that her IUD had followed her into the nineteenth century so she didn’t have to deal with the mess of menstruation. She gave the willow bark tea she was steepi
ng for Mrs. Gillihan a quick swirl, and set more water to boil for any other women who might need it.

  Earlier that day, after sewing up Drake’s thigh, Elise had entered Óbidos. She wanted to see it before the main column arrived—the men made it hard to trade for food when they ate everything available. And she needed to buy before the vendors figured out the difference between real currency and flattened buttons.

  She’d managed to hustle a loaf of bread in the marketplace, and a wine skin full of wine from a tavern keeper, and spent the rest of the afternoon wandering cobbled streets hemmed in by white-washed homes. Eventually, she found a road that led her high enough to see beyond the orange tiled roofs to the surrounding countryside. She sat on the steps of a church, near the castle that dominated the town, and stared blankly at the charming homes that spilled down the hillside. She barely tasted the wine and crusty bread as she tried to forget that Drake had died.

  She was going to be so glad when the nightmare was over, she thought as she stared into Mrs. Gillihan’s campfire. Screwing Quidico would be a humiliation, but what was one more humiliation? She shouldn’t have let herself be fooled by Drake’s chirpy talk, or distracted by the doctor’s call for help. She should have put the tourniquet on sooner.

  No one blamed her, even though he died as she was sewing the last stitch on his thigh. Russell had coldly checked her work—a cadaver exercise at that point—and commended her on her “neat hand” in stitching. Jenkins had sniffed and given her more equipment to stuff into her pack, which she took to mean he’d finally resigned himself to her presence. And Thomas had awkwardly nodded at her before walking away. He wasn’t speaking to her anymore anyway, not since she’d run from him that night on the beach.

  Despite the wine that still sloshed in her sour stomach, Elise had been sharp enough to make herself scarce when the town slowly began to fill up with soldiers looking for trouble. In the fields, the women were setting up fire rings, and pulling out provisions. It was a comfort to return and be given practical tasks to do.