“Ah, bugger!” Ian said, letting go in disgust. William didn’t, jerking me with such force that I crashed into him, whereupon he promptly wrapped his arms about my waist and dragged me a little way into the field.
“Will ye bloody leave go of my auntie?” Ian said crossly, emerging from the trees.
“You!” said William. “What are you—well, never mind that. Your aunt, you say?” He looked down at me. “Are you? His aunt? Wait—no, of course you are.”
“I am,” I agreed, pushing at his arms. “Let go.”
His grasp loosened a little, but he didn’t release me.
“How many others are in there?” he demanded, lifting his chin toward the forest.
“If there were any others, ye’d be deid,” Ian informed him. “It’s just me. Give her to me.”
“I can’t do that.” But there was an uncertain note in William’s voice, and I felt his head turn, glancing toward the cabin. So far, no one had come out, but I could see some of the sentries near the road shifting to and fro, wondering what the matter was. The other captives had stopped running, but were quivering with incipient panic, eyes frantically searching the shadows among the trees.
I rapped William sharply on the wrist with my knuckles and he let go and took a step back. My head was spinning again—not least from the very peculiar sensation of being embraced by a total stranger whose body felt so familiar to me. He was thinner than Jamie, but—
“D’ye owe me a life or not?” Not waiting for an answer, Ian jerked a thumb at me. “Aye, then—it’s hers.”
“Hardly a question of her life,” William said, rather crossly, with an awkward nod in my direction, acknowledging that I might have a possible interest in this discussion. “Surely you don’t suppose we kill women?”
“No,” Ian said evenly. “I dinna suppose it at all. I ken verra well that ye do.”
“We do?” William echoed. He looked surprised, but a sudden flush burned in his cheeks.
“You do,” I assured him. “General Howe hanged three women at the head of his army in New Jersey, as an example.”
He seemed completely nonplused by this.
“Well … but—they were spies!”
“You think I don’t look like a spy?” I inquired. “I’m much obliged for your good opinion, but I don’t know that General Burgoyne would share it.” There were, of course, a good many other women who’d died at the hands of the British army, if less officially, but this didn’t seem the moment to make an account of them.
“General Burgoyne is a gentleman,” William said stiffly. “So am I.”
“Good,” Ian said briefly. “Turn your back for thirty seconds, and we’ll trouble ye nay more.”
I don’t know whether he would have done it or not, but just then, Indian cries tore the air, coming from the far side of the road. Further frantic screams came from the captives, and I bit my own tongue in order not to scream, too. A tongue of fire shot up into the lavender sky from the top of the officers’ tent. As I gaped, two more flaming comets shot across the sky. It looked like the descent of the Holy Ghost, but before I could mention this interesting observation, Ian had seized my arm and jerked me nearly off my feet.
I managed to snatch up the canteen as we passed, on a dead run for the forest. Ian grabbed it from me, almost draggging me in his haste. Gunfire and screams were breaking out behind us, and the skin all down my back contracted in fear.
“This way.” I followed him without heed for anything underfoot, stumbling and twisting my ankles in the dusk as we threw ourselves headlong into the brush, expecting every moment to be shot in the back.
Such is the brain’s capacity for self-amusement, I was able to imagine in vivid detail my wounding, capture, descent into infection and sepsis, and eventual lingering death—but not before being obliged to witness the capture and execution of both Jamie—I had recognized the source of the Indian screams and flaming arrows without difficulty—and Ian.
It was only as we slowed—perforce; I had such a stitch in my side that I could barely breathe—that I thought of other things. The sick and wounded I had left behind. The young wheelwright with the bright red throat. Walter Woodcock, teetering over the abyss.
You couldn’t give any of them more than a hand to hold, I told myself fiercely, limping as I stumbled after Ian. It was true; I knew it was true. But I also knew that now and then a hand in the dark gave a sick man something to cling to, against the rushing wind of the dark angel. Sometimes it was enough; sometimes it wasn’t. But the ache of those left behind dragged at me like a sea anchor, and I wasn’t sure whether the wetness streaming down my cheeks was sweat or tears.
It was full dark now, and the boiling clouds covered the moon, allowing only fitful glimpses of its brilliant light. Ian had slowed still more, to let me keep up with him, and took my arm now and then to help me over rocks or across creeks.
“How … far?” I gasped, stopping once more for breath.
“Not much,” Jamie’s voice replied softly beside me. “Are ye all right, Sassenach?”
My heart gave a tremendous bump, then settled back in my chest as he groped for my hand, then gathered me briefly against himself. I had a moment of relief so profound that I thought my bones had dissolved.
“Yes,” I said, into his chest, and with great effort lifted my head. “You?”
“Well enough now,” he said, passing a hand over my head, touching my cheek. “Can ye walk just a bit further?”
I straightened, swaying a little. It had begun to rain; heavy drops plopped into my hair, cold and startling on my scalp.
“Ian—have you got that canteen?”
There was a soft pop! and Ian set the canteen in my hand. Very carefully, I tilted it into my mouth.
“Is that brandy?” Jamie said, sounding astonished.
“Mmm-hmm.” I swallowed, as slowly as I could, and handed the canteen to him. There were a couple of swallows left.
“Where did ye get it?”
“Your son gave it to me,” I said. “Where are we going?”
There was a long pause from the darkness, and then the sound of brandy being drunk.
“South,” he said at last, and taking my hand, led me on into the wood, the rain whispering on the leaves all round us.
Soaked and shivering, we caught up to a militia unit just before dawn, and were nearly shot in mistake by a nervous sentry. By that point, I didn’t really care. Being dead was immensely preferable to the prospect of taking one more step.
Our bona fides being established, Jamie disappeared briefly and came back with a blanket and three fresh corn dodgers. I inhaled my share of this ambrosia in four seconds flat, wrapped myself in the blanket, and lay down under a tree where the ground was damp but not soggy and so thick with dead leaves that it gave spongily beneath me.
“I’ll be back in a bit, Sassenach,” Jamie whispered, squatting beside me. “Dinna go anywhere, aye?”
“Don’t worry—I’ll be here. If I move a muscle before Christmas, it will be too soon.” A faint warmth was already returning to my shivering muscles, and sleep was pulling me down with the inexorability of quicksand.
He gave the breath of a laugh, and reached out a hand, tucking the blanket in around my shoulders. The dawn light showed the deep lines that the night had carved in his face, the smudges of dirt and exhaustion that stained the strong bones. The wide mouth, compressed for so long, had relaxed now in the relief of momentary safety, looking oddly young and vulnerable.
“He looks like you,” I whispered. His hand stopped moving, still on my shoulder, and he looked down, long lashes hiding his eyes.
“I know,” he said, very softly. “Tell me of him. Later, when there’s time.” I heard his footsteps, a rustle in damp leaves, and fell asleep, a prayer for Walter Woodcock half finished in my mind.
THE DESERTER GAME
The whore grunted through the rag clenched in her teeth.
“Nearly done,” I murmured, and ran the backs
of my knuckles gently down her calf by way of reassurance before returning to the debridement of the nasty wound in her foot. An officer’s horse had stepped on her as they—and a number of other people and animals—had jostled to drink at a creek during the retreat. I could clearly see the print of the horseshoe nails, black in the red puffy flesh of her instep. The edge of the shoe itself, worn paper-thin and sharp as a knife, had made a deep, curved gash that ran across the metatarsals, vanishing between the fourth and fifth toes.
I’d been afraid I was going to have to remove the little toe—it seemed to be dangling by no more than a shred of skin—but when I examined the foot more closely, I discovered that all the bones were miraculously intact—as nearly as I could tell, without access to an X-ray machine.
The horse’s hoof had driven her foot into the mud of the stream bank, she’d told me; that had likely saved the bones from being crushed. Now if I could manage to stem the infection and didn’t have to amputate the foot, she might just be able to walk again normally. Maybe.
With a degree of cautious hope, I put down the scalpel and reached for a bottle of what I hoped was a penicillin-containing liquid brought with me from the fort. I’d salvaged the barrel optic of Dr. Rawlings’s microscope from the house fire and found it very useful indeed for starting fires—but without the eyepiece, staging mechanism, or mirror, it was of limited use in determining the genus of microorganisms. I could be sure that what I’d grown and filtered was bread mold, all right—but beyond that …
Suppressing a sigh, I poured the liquid generously over the raw flesh I’d just exposed. It wasn’t alcoholic, but the flesh was raw. The whore made a high-pitched noise through the cloth and breathed through her nose like a steam engine, but by the time I’d made a compress of lavender and comfrey and bound up the foot, she was calm, if flushed.
“There,” I said, with a small pat to her leg. “I think that will do nicely now.” I started to say automatically, “Keep it clean,” but bit my tongue. She hadn’t any shoes or stockings and was either walking daily through a wilderness of rocks, dirt, and streams, or living in a filthy camp littered with piles of dung, both human and animal. The bottoms of her feet were hard as horn and black as sin.
“Come and find me in a day or two,” I said instead. If you can, I thought. “I’ll check it and change the dressing.” If I can, I thought, with a glance at the knapsack in the corner where I kept my dwindling stocks of medicaments.
“Thank ’ee kindly,” the whore said, sitting up and putting her foot gingerly to the ground. Judging from the skin of her legs and feet, she was young, though you couldn’t tell from her face. Her skin was weathered, lined with hunger and strain. Her cheekbones were sharp with hunger, and her mouth was drawn in on one side where the teeth were missing—lost to decay or knocked out by a customer or another whore.
“Will ’ee be here for a bit, think?” she asked. “I’ve a friend, like, got the itch.”
“I’ll be here for the night, at least,” I assured her, suppressing a groan as I rose to my feet. “Send your friend; I’ll see what I can do.”
Our group of militia had met with others, forming a large body, and within a few days we began to cross paths with other rebel groups. We were running into fragments of General Schuyler’s and General Arnold’s armies, these also moving south down the Hudson Valley.
We were still moving all day but began to feel secure enough to sleep at night, and with food provided—irregularly, but still food—by the army, my strength began to return. The rain usually came at night, but today it had been raining at dawn, and we had been trudging through mud for hours before some shelter came in sight.
General Arnold’s troops had stripped the farmstead and burnt the house. The barn was heavily charred down one side, but the fire had gone out before consuming the building.
A gust of wind blew through the barn, raising eddies of decayed straw and dirt, whipping our petticoats round our legs. The barn had originally had a plank floor; I could see the lines of the boards, embedded in the dirt. The foragers had taken them for firewood, but it had been too much trouble for them to knock down the barn, thank God.
Some of the refugees fleeing Ticonderoga had sought shelter here; more would be along before nightfall. A mother with two small, exhausted children slept curled by the far wall; her husband had settled them here and gone to look for food.
Pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, nor on the Sabbath day …
I followed the whore to the door and stood looking after her. The sun was touching the horizon now; perhaps an hour of light left, but the sunset breeze was already moving in the treetops, night’s skirts rustling as she came. I shivered reflexively, though the day was still warm enough. The old barn was chilly, and the nights were beginning to bite. Any day, we would awake to frost on the ground.
And what then? said the small, apprehensive voice that lived in the pit of my stomach.
“Then I’ll put on another pair of stockings,” I muttered to it. “Hush up!”
A truly Christian person would doubtless have given the spare stockings to the barefoot whore, remarked the sanctimonious voice of my conscience.
“You hush up, too,” I said. “Plenty of opportunity to be Christian later, if the urge should strike me.” Half the people fleeing needed stockings, I dared say.
I wondered what I might be able to do for the whore’s friend, if she did come. “The itch” might be anything from eczema or cowpox to gonorrhea—though given the woman’s profession, something venereal was the best bet. Back in Boston, it would likely have been a simple yeast infection—oddly enough, I almost never saw those here, and speculated idly that it might be owing to the nearly universal lack of underclothes. So much for the advances of modernity!
I glanced at my knapsack again, calculating what I had left and how I might use it. A fair amount of bandages and lint. A pot of gentian ointment, good for scrapes and minor wounds, which occurred in abundance. A small stock of the most useful herbs for tincture and compress: lavender, comfrey, peppermint, mustard seed. By some miracle, I still had the box of cinchona bark I had acquired in New Bern—I thought of Tom Christie and crossed myself, but dismissed him from mind; there was nothing I could do about him and much too much to think of here. Two scalpels I had taken from Lieutenant Stactoe’s body—he had succumbed to a fever on the road—and my silver surgical scissors. Jamie’s gold acupuncture needles; those might be used to treat others, save that I had no idea how to place them for anything other than seasickness.
I could hear voices, parties of foragers moving through the trees, here and there someone calling out a name, searching for a friend or family member lost in transit. The refugees were beginning to settle for the night.
Sticks cracked near at hand, and a man came out of the woods. I didn’t recognize him. One of the “greasy-stockinged knaves” from one of the militias, no doubt; he had a musket in one hand and a powder horn at his belt. Not much else. And yes, he was barefoot, though his feet were much too big to wear my stockings—a fact that I pointed out to my conscience, in case it should feel compelled to try to prod me into charitable behavior again.
He saw me in the door and raised a hand.
“You the conjure-woman?” he called.
“Yes.” I’d given up trying to make people call me a doctor, let alone a physician.
“Met a whore with a mighty fine new bandage on her foot,” the man said, giving me a smile. “She said as there’s a conjure-woman up to the barn, has some medicines.”
“Yes,” I said again, giving him a quick once-over. I saw no obvious wound, and he wasn’t sick—I could tell that from his color and the upright way he walked. Perhaps he had a wife or child, or a sick comrade.
“Hand ’em over to me now,” he said, still smiling, and pointed the muzzle of the musket at me.
“What?” I said, surprised.
“Give me the medicines you’ve got.” He made a small jabbing motion with the gun. “C
ould just shoot you and take ’em, but I ain’t wanting to waste the powder.”
I stood still and stared at him for a moment.
“What the devil do you want them for?” I’d been held up once before for drugs—in a Boston emergency room. A young addict, sweating and glassy-eyed, with a gun. I’d handed them over instantly. At the moment, I wasn’t inclined.
He snorted and cocked his gun. Before I could even think about being scared, there was a sharp bang and the scent of powder smoke. The man looked terribly surprised, the musket sagging in his hands. Then he fell at my feet.
“Hold that, Sassenach.” Jamie thrust the just-fired pistol into my hand, stooped, and took the body by the feet. He dragged it out of the barn into the rain. I swallowed, reached into my bag, and took out the extra stockings. I dropped these in the woman’s lap, then went to set down the pistol and my sack by the wall. I was conscious of the eyes of the mother and her children on me—and saw them shift suddenly to the open door. I turned to see Jamie come in, soaked to the skin, his face drawn and set with fatigue.
He crossed the barn and sat down by me, laid his head on his knees, and closed his eyes.
“Thank you, sir,” said the woman, very softly. “Ma’am.”
I thought for a moment that he had fallen instantly asleep, for he didn’t stir. After a moment, though, he said, in an equally soft voice, “Ye’re welcome, ma’am.”
I was more than pleased to find the Hunters when we reached the next village; they had been in one of the barges that had been captured early, but had succeeded in escaping by the simple expedient of walking into the woods after dark. As the soldiers who had captured them had not bothered to count their captives, no one noticed they had gone.
Overall, things were looking up somewhat. Food was becoming more abundant, and we were among regular Continentals. We were still only a few miles in front of Burgoyne’s army, though, and the strain of the long retreat was telling. Desertion was frequent—though no one knew quite how frequent. Organization, discipline, and military structure were being restored as we came under the sway of the Continental army, but there were still men who could melt away unobtrusively.
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