by Tamara Gill
In normal circumstances, Sean would have taken a swing at the doctor for that comment, but he couldn’t and he didn’t feel like trading insults with the man just before the bastard cut his arm off.
Kempson extracted a lethal looking instrument from his bag. “Now then, O’Dell, how were you wounded?”
Sean eyed the tool with dismay.
So did Jaclyn. “What the hell is that?”
“A scalpel. You need to mind your mouth, boy.”
“One of your fine volunteers shot me early in the skirmish.”
“It was a battle, Sean, the Battle of Fort Erie. The skirmish was up by the post office.”
Kempson shot her a disapproving look. “I was not talking to you, boy. Kindly do not interrupt.”
“I fell off my horse and had the misfortune to land on the railroad tracks.” Sean said. He figured Jaclyn and Kempson would come to blows in a minute if they continued on the way they were going.
Kempson examined the wound on his head. “Gave yourself a concussion at the same time as you broke your arm,” he said. “Well, there’s not much I can do about the head wound, beyond cleaning it. I’ll deal with the injuries to your arm first.” He turned to Jaclyn, who was hovering nearby. “We need to move the patient to a prone position. I’ll need your assistance, boy.”
Between the three of them they managed to position Sean as Kempson wanted, but his arm was on fire, his head pounded and he was quite sure he was going to lose the contents of his stomach. He wanted nothing so much as to get the operation over with. Jaclyn crouched down beside him and took his good hand. He curled his fingers around hers, drawing strength.
Kempson used the wicked looking scalpel to cut away the cloth surrounding the wound. He worked with surprising gentleness, but he couldn’t help causing pain. Sean closed his eyes knowing that in minutes the doctor would be using the water in the bucket to ease the makeshift bandage from the wound. He didn’t want to see when that happened. The pain would tell him soon enough.
He gritted his teeth and tightened his hand on Jaclyn’s. She said, “Hey, watch it, Kempson!”
The doctor’s voice was testy when he said, “I told you boy, do not interfere.” At precisely that moment he began to work on the bandage. Sean knew because the pain in his arm soared to a savage fire that was beyond anything he had ever had the misfortune to endure before. Scant seconds before oblivion—blessed oblivion—took him, he heard Jaclyn say indignantly, “You’re a total blockhead, Kempson, you know that?”
They were still arguing when he came to.
“No, God damn it! You can’t do that!”
“I have no option but to do it.”
“Have you ever done it before?”
It. What was it?
“No.” There was hesitation in Kempson’s voice. “Look, boy, I know he’s your friend, and it seems a dreadful fate to a lad your age, but losing an arm isn’t the end of the world.”
Sean wished he’d somehow managed to remain cocooned in oblivion until the operation had been done. He didn’t want to know that when he woke he wouldn’t be whole anymore.
“Listen, you poked and prodded in there. Is the bullet still in the wound?”
“No. It went clear through his arm.”
“Okay. Patch it up, set the bone and let it all heal.”
“I told you boy, it’s not that simple.”
“What’s not simple? Is it the break? Is the bone broken so badly it won’t heal?”
“No. It feels like a clean break.”
“You guys need an x-ray machine,” Jaclyn muttered. “Okay, so the break is a clean one. The bone will mend then.”
It was an odd feeling, having someone fight for him, especially when that someone was fighting fiercely, without a care who he was or whom she was fighting. It warmed him deep inside and gave him a sense of purpose he needed right now.
“There’s infection...” Kempson began.
Jaclyn cut him off. “Yeah, so clean the wound out really well and sterilize it before you bandage it. I’ll ask O’Neill if he still has any of that hooch they brought into the camp last night. No self-respecting bug could survive that stuff.”
“I have alcohol I can use to sterilize the wound.”
“So what’s stopping you?”
“What’s the point? He’ll never be able to use the arm. Not after an injury such as this one. There’s too much damage.”
Jaclyn’s voice sounded fierce. “You’d be surprised, doc. Just patch him up and let nature heal him.”
There was a long silence. Sean forced his eyes open. Jaclyn was staring at Kempson as if she could make him to do her bidding through sheer force of will. Kempson’s expression was grave. And reluctant.
Finally the doctor shrugged and said, “Very well. But don’t blame me if he not only loses his arm, but also his life.”
“Screw off,” Jaclyn said.
Sean had no idea what that meant, but from her tone he figured it was an insult. Kempson must have felt the same way, for his expression was set in stern lines as he extracted a bottle from his bag. He shook his head as he poured a liberal dose of liquid over Sean’s arm and shot a look of disapproval at the injury. Oblivion—blessed oblivion—took Sean before he could thank Jaclyn for giving him a chance to be whole.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Sean was shivering, his occasional muttered phrases indicating that he was in the middle of a whopper of a nightmare. Jaclyn could see Kempson, working further down the wall on some Canadian wounded who had been brought in. If the good doctor found out that Sean was muttering in his sleep he’d probably decide he was already feverish, then he’d chop off Sean’s arm for sure. Jaclyn was determined that was not going to happen, so she swallowed her fears and held Sean’s hand, stroking it soothingly, hoping to ease the nightmares that were making him mutter and groan.
There was a lot of pain in Sean O’Dell, if the incoherent sentences were any indication. A certainty that he would be hung for the murder he’d committed in Ireland haunted him, but for all that he was unrepentant. He hated the treatment his family and others in his village had received at the hands of the local landowner and his brutal son. Sean had seen too many people humiliated, too many women frightened of being near the ‘master’, too much coercion to be at peace, even in a new land. He’d carry those scars with him for the rest of his life, Jaclyn thought, and there was nothing she could do about it. She could, however, do her damnedest to make sure that he survived this injury without the loss of his arm.
She looked at the sky, trying to gage the hour. It must be six-thirty or seven o’clock in the evening by now. It was June, so the days were long, but darkness would come eventually and when it did John O’Neill and his Fenian Expeditionary Force would do one of their quick, nighttime flits, only this time they would be returning to the States. The departure would be done on a rusty old scow that would be brought over from Buffalo for the purpose.
The scow would not make it back to Buffalo, however. The USS Michigan, which had been patrolling the Niagara since the previous day, would capture the scow mid-river, tying it to their bow and leaving it there for three days. Eventually the rusty old barge was allowed to return to Buffalo, where the Fenians were charged with invading a sovereign nation with the intent of raising rebellion.
It was the three days that worried Jaclyn. Three days on the scow would increase the danger of infection in Sean’s gunshot wound, ensuring that once he reached Buffalo he would lose his arm. Of course, Captain Bryson, the commander of the Michigan, did eventually invite O’Neill and his senior officers over to the Michigan for a discussion, about mid-afternoon on June 3, if she had the dates right, Jaclyn thought. At that time O’Neill could request that Sean be transported to Buffalo for medical treatment and Bryson would probably send him off. But Jaclyn couldn’t remember any specific references to a badly wounded Fenian officer being sent over to Buffalo for care. The only reference was to Captain King, the Welland Battery’s commander.
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So what happened to Sean? A cold from deep inside washed her in sudden icy fear. Did Sean die? Was Kempson right? Would her well-meaning interference cause him to lose his life instead of his arm? She swallowed hard, forcing down panic.
There had to be another reason he wasn’t mentioned.
He wasn’t there.
When O’Neill loaded his army onto the scow, Major Sean O’Dell must have remained on the Canadian side. But why wasn’t this noted in the records of the Fenian trials? There was no mention of an officer being captured. If there had been the authorities would have had a field day laying blame. So Sean stayed on the Canadian side, but he escaped the net that the Canadian and British troops would throw up around the area when they retook it the next day.
So how did Sean avoid capture? He couldn’t get up and walk away on his own. That meant he had to have had help. From who?
And suddenly it all made sense. Time had opened and swallowed her up. Yesterday she’d pondered why this had happened and had decided it was to help her with her with her assignment. Then events had started to move so quickly that she forgot to wonder why she was here and just enjoyed herself. Now, as she looked at Sean she wondered again, why had time slurped and brought her back here?
Because she was meant to be here. True she’d never found a reference to herself in the records, but then she had never found a reference to a Major Sean O’Dell either, and he was definitely part of this time period. So she must exist here in this time too, because she’d been pestering him since she’d first arrived. That thought was rather cheering in a way. It meant that sooner or later she would bounce back into her own time, otherwise there would have been a record of her. She would disappear and no one would think enough of it to mention her in their letters or recollections. But Sean wasn’t in the records either. That meant he would have to disappear too, but his disappearance would have to be contrived.
And that was where she came in. She was here to make sure Sean O’Dell escaped imprisonment at the hands of the Anglo-Canadian forces. So how was she going to do that?
Somewhere a horse whinnied. Sunny Girl raised her head and pricked her ears. Her head up, her body alert, her red-gold coat gleaming, Sunny Girl could have been an advertising poster for the perfect horse. That made Jacqui think of how much Sean loved horses and the amazing rapport he had with them. From there she visualized him on Sunny Girl, sailing over the gate at the Bailey farm, a glorious picture of athletic manhood and highbred horse at one with each other.
At that moment Sean groaned and moved restlessly. Fear gave Jaclyn’s deductive reasoning an adrenaline boost and suddenly a pattern emerged. The rudiments of a plan followed.
The Baileys. Of course! Old Jim Bailey had worked with Sean today and had expressed respect for him. And Sara liked him a lot. If she got Sean to their place she was sure they would look after him. There was an added benefit to having Sean at the Baileys’ place. If he took a turn for the worse, they might be able to convince Doc Brewster to help without giving him over to the authorities.
She realized it wouldn’t be quite that simple, but there was no one else she could turn to for help. Of the other people she’d interacted with since arriving, Dr. Kempson was out. He’d chop off Sean’s arm and then turn him over to the British without a thought. Thomas Newbigging was still hot about his orchard, his horses and the Fenian presence in general. William Lewis, the man whose wagon she’d helped unload, was the postmaster. By now he was cataloguing the destruction to his house/post office caused by the firefight—skirmish—between the Fenians and the men of the Robb. He’d be only too happy to turn over a stray Fenian. She really had no option but to enlist Grandpa Bailey’s help.
Sean was shivering. He needed to get warm. She wondered what had happened to his pack. He’d had a blanket it... Oh. He’d put the blanket over her last night and she’d lugged it around with her until the battle. She couldn’t remember what she’d done with it, only that she’d lost it by the time she’d found her ancestor, Hugh MacLeod. Well, how about a fire?
She stood up, making much play about feeling chilly, rubbing her arms and stamping her feet. There was a Fenian soldier lounging between Sean’s position and the Canadian prisoners, keeping an eye on things. Jaclyn wandered over to him and said, “You know, now the sun is going down it’s going to cool off pretty quick around here. Any possibility of getting a fire going?”
The Fenian frowned at her. It still had to be about twenty-three or twenty-four degrees and this guy was wearing a heavy wool uniform coat. He was probably boiling. Jaclyn rubbed her arms again, making sure he noticed that she was in her shirtsleeves, then shivered artistically. “The earth is damp. It gets into your bones, you know. I’m sure it’ll get worse as the night goes on. Come on, what do you think?”
The Fenian clearly thought it was a dumb idea and he didn’t show any interest in organizing the necessary firewood. Jaclyn stamped her feet theatrically and slapped her palms against her arms.
After dealing with the last of the Canadian injured, Kempson shut his bag with a snap. “I am finished here.” He headed toward the ruined curtain wall. “The boy is right, for once. You’d do well to keep these wounded men warm through the night. Good evening.”
Doughhead though he was, Kempson had come through for her this time. If he’d been close enough, Jaclyn would have grabbed him and kissed him. He’d have loved that, she thought, stifling a grin. “There’s lots of old stones around, ones that must have fallen from the walls at some point. We could make a rough fireplace with them. Over there,” she added to the Fenian, pointing toward Sean.
For a moment he didn’t respond. Then he shrugged and said, “If it’ll do the man a good turn, I’ll try.”
Jaclyn went back to Sean. He was shivering and mumbling again. More nightmare images of imprisonment and hanging to torture his dreams. “These guys could use some blankets too.”
“You’ll have to talk to Major O’Dell...” The Fenian said, carting rocks for the fireplace. “Oh, you can’t. You’d be best to speak to Captain Haggerty, then.”
Jaclyn shot the Fenian an impatient look that he didn’t notice. She wanted to stay with Sean, but he needed help now. So she knelt beside him, squeezed his hand, said, “I’ll be back,” then went off to find Haggerty.
The bulk of the Fenian army was spread out over the grassy fields surrounding the fort, but O’Neill and his officers had camped on the elevated star-shaped redoubt where there was a good view of the surrounding country, the Niagara River and Buffalo on the other side.
As at Newbigging’s orchard, O’Neill had set up a command post. He was seated in a camp chair, but this time no tent had been set up. Evidently the Fenian commander didn’t plan to stick around long. There were other chairs nearby, set so that the officers could sit close together and discuss issues without being overheard. Seated with O’Neill were Owen Starr and the spy, John Canty. They were deep in conversation.
Just my luck! Jaclyn thought, hesitating.
“You expect me to slink back to the American side like a dog with its tail between its legs? Simply because no reinforcements have been able to cross from Buffalo?”
“It’s finished, O’Neill,” Canty said. His expression was angry and his voice was filled bitter disappointment. “The British are closing on us. Without reinforcements we cannot hope to defeat them.”
“We’re not afraid of the British,” Owen Starr said. The defiant statement sounded like bravado to Jacqui. The Fenian goal of inciting a rebellion had proved to be as insubstantial as a dream. Sooner or later O’Neill and Starr would have to accept that. But not yet.
Canty tried again. “None of the soldiers we fought today were British regulars. They were untried militia, yet they fought hard and held their ground well. We won those battles, but how would we fare against real troops?”
O’Neill’s eyes glittered and his expression was fierce. “We might not win, Major Canty, but I could make this town a charnel house!”
/> Starr eyed O’Neill with something that resembled surprise. Canty shook his head. “We’re done here, O’Neill. Accept it.”
“I will not!”
Starr’s support was quick and passionate. “The reinforcements we were promised are already assembling in Buffalo. They soon will be by our side!”
“Our government has closed the border!” Canty said. Jacqui could hear the frustration in his voice. He knew he wasn’t getting through to O’Neill and Starr and he knew he had to. “Reinforcements will never be sent, but the Brotherhood has secured a ship that will—” He noticed Jaclyn. Alarm shimmered in his eyes, but was quickly masked. “Ah, our young British spy.”
Jacqui moved closer. She felt distinctly uncomfortable at having becoming involved in what was an intensely emotional moment for these men. “Colonel O’Neill, sorry to interrupt, but may I have a word with you, sir?”
After a brief internal struggle O’Neill tamped down his strong emotions so that he was able to say politely enough, “When I’ve finished meeting with Major Canty and Colonel Starr I will give you a moment.”
“It’s about the injured, sir.”
“I will take your report later, boy.”
Jaclyn sighed and looked at the sky, trying to judge the time. O’Neill and his officers were on the edge of making their plans to depart. She needed to get his agreement to move Sean and then get to—and back from—the Baileys’ before the Fenians left Canada West.
“Jack. You are dismissed.”
Jaclyn looked at him. “I can’t be. I don’t have time to wait.”
O’Neill sighed. “How is Major O’Dell?”
“His body has taken a lot of abuse and he’s shivering. It’s cold and dank down in the ditch. He needs a blanket and a fire. All the wounded do.”
O’Neill’s mouth tightened as he sat back in his chair. “We have little for firewood here. As to the blankets, O’Dell can have mine. I’ll see about finding some for the others.”
“Dr. Kempson agreed they needed warmth. Maybe he can rustle up some wood from the townsfolk.”