by A. W. Exley
Grayson shifted his bag to his other hand and waved to the nurse. “I need you to stay here, Marjory, in case others need your help. Lettie and I will see if we are needed at Ocram and Lawson.”
An invisible force assaulted them as soon as they stepped out the front door. Grayson kept a tight hold on Lettie’s hand, and they both bent into the gale howling from the North Sea as they made their way down to the beach. As they grew nearer, sand picked up by the storm peppered their faces like thousands of tiny, stinging bees.
At the shipyard, men on the narrow walkways continued to hammer and rivet even as the wind pulled at their bodies and tried to snatch their tools. Their mouths opened as they yelled at each other, but the gale whipping off the ocean stole their words.
Byron Ocram stood on a balcony jutting out from the second level of the main building. He was the eye of the storm, a centre of peace and stillness. Not a hair on his head moved, despite the force of the wind, and not a single twitch or wrinkle disturbed the fabric of his jacket.
“Damn waste of energy to save his clothing. He should be easing his men down off the scaffolding,” Grayson shouted in her ear.
Words of defence rose to Lettie’s lips. It could be entirely involuntary for the sylph to still the air around him. It seemed harsh to judge him for being enveloped by his element, although he seemed disinterested in the chaos around him. Or was he absorbing the air like Lettie gathered rain to her? A brutal gust of salty air drove the retort back down her throat.
Grayson tugged on her hand and pulled her toward the large building.
As they sheltered in the lee of the building, a group of men approached. Two helped a third man slung between them, his arms draped over their shoulders and his toes scraping along the ground. Blood marred one side of his face, but his eyes were open.
“What happened?” Grayson asked as he handed the bag to Lettie. He took the man’s head in his hands and inspected the wound.
“Flying piece of timber hit him,” the man on the left said.
Grayson lifted one eyelid and waved his finger before the injured man. Pupils tracked the movement. “It’s not a deep cut and won’t need stitches. Head wounds always bleed profusely. Take him inside and get someone to clean it up. Keep an eye on him, but it doesn’t look like there is any concussion. I’ll check on him again before I leave.”
A man rushed from the main doors and nodded to them.
“Mr Ocram has given his consent for the men to come in,” he yelled and rushed toward the hulls, waving his arms to attract the attention of the workers.
“About damn time,” Grayson muttered as men began to climb down the scaffolding and head for the shelter of the main building. As they filed past, the doctor checked them all for injuries from the pieces of wood and debris flying around them.
The howling wind whipped the ocean waves higher, and they crashed harder into the shore. A massive wave struck the support timbers at the end of the hull, knocking the end one away.
“Look out!” men screamed over the pound of surf and roar of wind. The heavy hull lurched to one side. Men clung to the scaffolding as the boards beneath their feet shifted. Some cracked and snapped. The dislodged support timber smashed into the one next to it, and like falling dominos, knocked that one over. Then retreating water snagged another beam and dragged it out to sea.
The entire hull shook and groaned as it rolled to one side. Timbers gave way with sharp reports like pistol fire. Men fell to the sand, and like cats dropped in water, scrambled to their feet and ran.
A boom shook through their feet, and a high-pitched scream closely followed. Grayson and Lettie stared at each other for a moment, then they both ran toward the noise. Lettie clung to the black bag as Grayson homed in on the unlucky man. It was the clerk who had delivered the news to lay down tools. He lay on the ground as the hull heaved and shuddered like a groaning beast above him. He tried to rise but a large beam was wedged tight between hull and ground and the poor devil’s arm, or what was left of it, was underneath that.
Grayson knelt at the man’s side and probed around his right arm. “Can you move it at all?”
The man gritted his teeth and shook his head. “No.”
Lettie placed the black bag next to the doctor and then dropped to her knees on the other side. Her hands scraped away sand and wood chips from the construction as she tried to free his trapped limb. “Can we dig under to free his arm?”
Her nails hit something solid.
“Slipway … concrete. Won’t be digging … miss,” the injured man managed to stutter out.
“What’s your name?” Grayson asked as he tore the man’s shirt sleeve away to examine the point of impact.
He screwed up his eyes against the pain and huffed short breaths, shooting out his words in bursts. “George. Ocram’s clerk. Only came … tell lads … pack it in … get to safety. Didn’t expect … boat to fall … on me.”
Another groan ran through the hull and it dropped another inch. George cried out as the timber bit deeper into his flesh and bone. Blood stained the sand beneath the wood support.
Grayson opened his bag and withdrew a leather strap. He looped it around George’s upper arm and pulled it tight. “We need to get you out before the hull falls.”
George groaned and shook his head. “Get going. No point … in all of us … getting squashed.”
Grayson met Lettie’s gaze over George’s torso, but she spoke before he could. “Don’t you dare try to tell me to leave you two. Tell me what I can do to help to make this faster.”
The doctor glanced up to where Byron watched on from his perch, not a hair out of place on his head. “Get bloody Ocram the hot air blower to help.”
Lettie rose to her feet and waved her arms in his direction. She wasn’t one to leap around after a man but would make an exception in this case. She carried on jumping and arm waving until he turned his head in her direction. He arched one eyebrow, either asking what she wanted or amused by her antics. There was no hope he would hear her over the roar of the wind. She pointed to the hull looming over them and mimed pushing it back over.
For a long moment he did nothing except stare at her. Then he heaved a sigh as though what she asked was a massive interruption to his plans for the day. He stepped off his balcony and strolled down invisible stairs to the sand.
A worker leaned over Grayson and shouted in his ear. “What can we do?”
“Find a stretcher. We need to get him to the cottage either with or without his arm.”
The man nodded and took off at a run.
Lettie cast an anxious glance at the hull that towered over them as the waves continued to crash and nip at its base. She reached out with her mind to touch the surging ocean and urge it to retreat and stay away. But the salty water was too powerful, and in the grip of its rage, it simply laughed at the freshwater undine. The tide ignored her as it continued to lick at the lurching structure.
Byron stopped nearby and tugged his jacket sleeves up his arms slightly as though he intended to partake of a bout of fisticuffs. Then he raised his arms and stretched out his palms. Nothing happened and a frown flitted across his handsome face. He seemed to push against an invisible barrier that refused to yield to him, his body pitched forward as he leaned all his weight against the air.
Lettie dropped back to George’s side. Grayson had a small saw in his hand, ready to remove George’s arm. Then the hull groaned and fought both storm and sylph.
“It’s going to topple over!” a man yelled, and those near them scurried back a few feet.
“Sorry, George, but this is going to hurt,” Grayson said, then at a nod from the prone man, he rested the saw blade just below the imprisoned elbow.
“Wait!” Lettie screamed as a shudder ran through the hull.
With a creak like an enormous wooden door opening on rusty hinges, the boat righted itself a few inches. The enormous pressure on the support timber that held George trapped eased off. Grayson tossed the saw back in
to his bag.
“Now!” Grayson yelled. Men scrambled to the felled support beam and lifted the far end, while Grayson and Lettie hauled the injured clerk out.
A deep thud rattled along the concrete slipway as the men dropped the beam and it slammed back to the ground.
They picked up George and laid him on the canvas stretcher. The clerk groaned and his eyes rolled back in his head as his lids fluttered shut.
Grayson patted his shoulder. “We have you now.”
He pointed back toward Whiterock and the men nodded. Two men picked up the handles of the stretcher at each end, and they set off for the cottage.
“Thank you,” Lettie yelled as they jogged past the sylph.
Byron inclined his head in her direction, sweat running down his flushed face. Then he dropped his hands, and the hull slammed back into the slipway with a crash that reverberated through her feet.
The trip back to the cottage was faster with the wind pushing them from behind. Soon they all burst into the doctor’s rooms and Grayson directed them to lay George out on the bed within.
Marjory took one look and then took charge.
“Is there anything we can do?” one of the men asked.
“If he has a wife or family, let them know that he is under Dr Day’s care,” Marjory said as she pushed them out the door and closed it on their retreating backs.
With a scalpel, Grayson slit the remains of George’s jacket and shirt from his body, leaving only the tourniquet around his upper right arm. Marjory carefully eased the ruined fabric away from the man’s body and tossed the clothing in a basket on the floor.
“I cannot save it, there is no solid bone left to set,” Grayson murmured to himself.
Lettie tried not to look directly at the mangled piece of meat that had once been a forearm and hand. Splintered bone punctured the flattened flesh, and blood mingled with sand coated the whole.
Marjory gathered supplies from the shelves and laid them out on a tea trolley at the doctor’s elbow. Working without instruction, she poured garlic-infused water into a bowl. Next she laid out scalpels, needles and last, the small bone saw.
Grayson glanced up at Lettie. “We’ll need chloroform; it will make this easier for him. Can you do that for me please, Lettie, while Marjory helps with the surgery? There is a cloth to place over his face to administer it. We need only a few drops. It must be carefully controlled so he does not overdose.”
She nodded and took the folded fabric from Marjory. Her hand was unsteady, but her touch with her element was not. First she laid the cloth over the man’s nose and mouth, then she pulled the cork from the small blue vial with the skull on the outside. The sickly sweet odour hit Lettie’s nostrils and made her nose twitch.
With a gentle caress, she pulled one drop from the small vial. It floated from bottle to cloth and distributed itself evenly over the mask. A second drop followed the first, and then a third glided through the air on Lettie’s command.
George let out a long groan, and his eyes moved back and forth behind the lids.
Grayson worked swiftly, with Marjory handing him implements as requested or mopping up the blood. Lettie concentrated on George. His chest rose and fell with each inhale. The man’s life was in her hands—one drop too many of the chloroform, and he would never awaken from his slumber. She pulled a drop from the vial only when Grayson nodded in her direction, signalling that the injured man was at risk of rousing too soon.
A dull thud made her look up as Marjory placed the ruined lower limb on a tray. It was barely recognisable as an arm and hand after being squashed by the shoring timber and the enormous weight of the hull.
“At least you’re not squeamish,” Grayson said, his attention never faltering from the patient’s arm.
“I have seen heads roll away from Madame Guillotine. An arm is … harmless by comparison.” She shook her head to dispel memories of fleeing Paris with Jasper and Julian when the revolution started. That was a lifetime ago, and she was no longer that carefree woman.
“Could you give this a good clean please, Lettie? We need to make sure there is no sand left in the wound,” Grayson asked as he finished stitching a flap of skin over the end of bone.
She called forth the garlic-infused water and swirled it around the stump. The water swept away every last trace of sand, blood, and grit. It burrowed between the small, tidy stitches to ensure nothing was left behind to rot. Then the bloody liquid flowed into a bowl that Marjory held in her hands.
“You are handy for cleaning up.” Marjory set down the bowl and picked up a clean bandage.
Soon George’s arm was wrapped, and his breathing deepened as he moved from being unconscious to asleep.
Grayson wiped his hands on a cloth. “Thank you, ladies. Now all we can do is hope the wound heals cleanly.”
They left George sleeping and headed out to the kitchen for a well-deserved cup of tea. Marjory poured hot water into the sink, and the doctor scrubbed his hands and nails clean before sitting down.
The doctor frowned into his drink, dark thoughts swirling above him.
“You blame Byron,” Lettie said over the top of her mug.
He glanced at her, a rare frown pulling his brows together. “Of course. If he had released his men earlier, George would never have been trapped.”
Lettie was marshalling her thoughts when a woman’s call of “George?” made them all look to the closed door.
“That will be his wife, I suspect,” Marjory said as she rose from her chair.
The three of them walked out to find an anxious-looking young woman. She wore an apron stained with flour over a plain blue linen dress as though she had run straight from the kitchen. Her long brown hair was snarled and wild after her battle through the fierce wind to find her man. Worry lined her face as her chocolate gaze scanned the room.
“I’m Sarah, George’s wife. Where is he?” she asked on seeing them.
“Here, but he is asleep.” Grayson pushed open the door to his surgery.
Relief flowed over the woman’s features as she approached her husband’s slumbering form. Then her line of sight fell on the bandaged stump. One hand went to her mouth as she gasped. Wide eyes turned to Grayson, standing just inside the door.
“I couldn’t save his arm, I’m sorry. But he is young and strong and will recover.”
She nodded and placed her hand on his chest, as she reassured herself that he still breathed. After a few minutes she leaned down and kissed his forehead.
“Can I stay here until he wakes up?” she whispered.
“Of course.” Grayson gestured to the parlour.
She followed them back out to the other room.
“We’ll all be staying the night, by the sound of the storm, and I want to be on hand when George stirs,” Grayson said.
They settled in for the night. Grayson returned to the consulting room-turned-surgery and pulled his armchair around to watch over George. The women made themselves comfortable in the parlour. Lettie curled up in another armchair and tucked her feet under her. The storm battered the small cottage, but they all snatched sleep eventually.
Sunlight was creeping through the thick glass of the window when Grayson appeared from the other room. The women all stretched and Sarah leapt to her feet.
“He’s awake and asking for you,” the doctor said to the young wife.
11
Marjory
* * *
The day after the storm dawned clear and still. Aprons were shaken out and tied on as women knuckled down to clearing out wind-blown debris and sweeping out the dust and sand that crept through all the cracks in their homes. Men checked on fishing boats and livestock, and life resumed its normal pace in the small village of Whiterock.
Only a few souls arrived at the doctor’s cottage to have minor wounds tended, so most of the day was spent worrying about the injured George. That night, when the group returned to the Warder’s home, they all fell into bed early.
Over brea
kfast the next day, they discussed their plans.
“If you can do without me for the day, I’d like to go back to Sunderland and try again to find Ellen Bassett.” Marjory had spent some time in the larger town, enquiring in shops and of passers-by if they knew the woman, but to no avail.
“I’m sure Lettie and I will muddle through on our own, and we have George to watch,” the doctor said.
Samuel drove Marjory to town and halted the horse not far from her destination. Then the old gentleman helped her down to the ground. “Will you be all right asking questions and finding this woman on your own?”
Marjory swiped a hand at him. “Pish! An old woman like me can nose around and ask questions, and I can take care of myself. Don’t worry about me, I’ll meet you back here this afternoon.”
“Old? Nonsense. You are like a fine wine, aged to perfection and full of depth and complexity.” Samuel captured her hand and placed a kiss on her knuckles.
Marjory’s breath left her with a whoosh and a blush threatened under her skin. She smiled at the ancient Warder’s rugged face. “For a grumpy old gargoyle, you certainly know how to turn a woman’s head.”
“I’ve had decades to practice my best lines on the sheep.” He winked and hopped back up into the gig.
Marjory watched the horse trot off toward the port, and a sigh worked its way loose from her chest. A little attention from a man went a long way. When she lost sight of Samuel amid the crowd, she turned her attention to the bustling life around her. Sunderland had exploded as the shipbuilding industry boomed. She stood quiet for a moment to absorb the assault on her senses.
An almost monastic life at Ravenswing for forty years hadn’t prepared her for the changes wrought elsewhere in the world. The city was larger than anything she’d seen as a girl. Carriages and carts filled the streets. Horses pulled trams as they carried passengers from one place to another. The trams resembled train carriages and even possessed metal wheels that ran in tracks, but horses took the place of a puffing engine. A bell would ring out to alert unwary pedestrians of the vehicle creeping up behind them.