by Baird Wells
“No.” She pulled out his notes. “I came to discuss these.”
“Have you completed them already?” he asked, looking pleased.
Arms flailing, she sputtered. “No! I haven't completed anything. My day has been spent reading your instructions or penning my reply.”
“With little work in between.” He nodded. “We are in sympathy on that score.” Fists came to rest on his hips. “Such is the nature of government. I chafe as much as you Miss Foster, but when the division's inventory is off by a single jar of preserves, the war machine must grind to a halt until it can be accounted for.”
She sighed, annoyance starting to drain away. “How do you accomplish anything?”
Before he could respond, he was thrown into her with such force that it dragged them both to the ground. A spasm, a twisted ankle; Kate's mind wrestled with the question, winded half underneath Matthew's limp body.
A rifle's report was the unmistakable answer, echoing over the hills from a sharpshooter, concealed in any one of the copses dotting the slopes around them.
Feet thundered past her head, the company reanimating, scrambling into formation. She struggled to hear Matthew's breathing, what the men were shouting, but for a moment the chaos deafened her.
“Form up to the east! Cover the general!” Someone hammered out orders, bringing two lines of men to shield them. “Make ready...fire!” Major Burrell's command was drowned by the bark of twenty rifles launching at once. Their volley drove across the field, into the groves, choking her in a pungent sulfur cloud of black powder.
He was dead. It was her prevailing thought, wriggling from under Matthew's prone form. More infantry were already swarming them, muskets at the ready, but no one stopped to help. Kate dug with an elbow, heels working at the loose soil until she pried free. As her hands grasped Matthew's coat, he doubled up and yelled. “God...damn...Christ Jesus...”
She yanked at Matthew's fists balled hard against his right flank, relieved to be wrong. She smiled through tears of relief. “I would not have guessed you for an overly religious man.”
When he still wouldn't cooperate with her efforts to examine the wound, she waved over the biggest bull of a man she could single out from the company. “Hold him.”
“By God don't...touch me,” Matthew panted, thrashing, stubborn even after being shot.
His protest gave the soldier pause. She snatched his coat, jerking the private in closer. “You can hold him or bury him, but be quick about your choice.”
He knelt at the general's head, grabbed his arms and heaved, extracting an animal cry. She jerked open Matthew's heavy coat, jammed a finger into the crimson tear of his shirt and inspected the wound, dabbing ineffectually at blood oozing out around a spent ball.
It might have hit the gall sack, a kidney, or simply perforated the flesh. She offered thanks that he probably wouldn't die, at least not from the ball alone.
There was no examining him here without equipment and with marksmen lying in wait. “Get him up and to the surgery!” She bellowed over the shouts, musket reports, and six pairs of hands obeyed. They slid beneath Matthew's writhing frame, hefting him without grace.
Major Burrell was beside her now, half crouched and skimming the horizon beyond the aim of his men. “How bad?”
“I don't know. Find me in an hour.” She ran with augmented speed, the rush in her veins propelling her across the field, past the general's bearers, putting her in the hospital tent almost before Kate knew where she was. Porter must have been on her heels; he brushed past, immediately stoking the flames beneath an already steaming pot.
She threw back the battered lid on her surgeon's chest. Astley had left it a mess, probably pawning half its contents. Giving silent thanks for whatever forethought had encouraged her to put it back together just days earlier, she began snatching out instruments.
“Linens, Kate.”
“Thank you, Porter.” She handed off the small steel probe and bullet forceps. Porter tossed them into the boiling water.
Searching the chest, she took a mental inventory. “The suture case, if you would. And wadding, lots of wadding. I'll get the good whiskey.”
The men shuffled in under a raised flap, bearing their charge. Matthew was calmer now, panting and groaning, leg spasming as the wound throbbed. Kate was well aware of all the sensation. It was nearly the same spot where she'd been hit years before.
Porter bundled Matthew on his shoulder, suddenly the target of an artfully constructed swear. He turned Matthew onto the table, pinning him so he could not thrash himself off.
She uncorked the green glass bottle with her teeth, giving a sideways glance to the soldiers filling her tent. “You're not allowed to stand around sniffling unless he's dead.” She waved a hand, shooing them out so she had space to work. A pair of critical eyes was a surgeon's definition of hell. “Sit him up,” she ordered.
Porter's large hand cupped Matthew's neck, bending him sharply at the waist. Matthew cried out, legs kicking. Teeth buried themselves deeper in his lip, muzzling his gasps.
She raised the bottle. “Drink.”
Matthew's head shook violently. “Hmm mm.”
If he died, it would damn well be of stubbornness before anything else. “I'm not asking, I'm telling you. Drink.”
His jaw finally relaxed. Kate poured with a free hand, until a sputter and a cough told her to stop. She grabbed the hard leather sole of each of his boots, shucking them from his legs and tossing them aside. Porter filled a basin with steaming water, and she scrubbed her fingers while the liquor went to work on Matthew's senses.
By the time she dried and Porter had retrieved the tools from the kettle, Matthew was relaxed against the table, breathing heavy but mostly still. His coat was gone, probably taken off by his men, making her job that much easier.
“Porter, his trousers.”
Matthew jerked up his knees and winced. “Absolutely not.”
They could argue anywhere. No situation was sacred, apparently. “Are you wearing your small clothes?”
A nod.
“Then you've done your duty to modesty.” She pointed. “Porter, trousers.”
Porter tugged them down, while she grabbed the tail of Matthew's shirt, working it up his torso.
He had a tattoo.
Kate paused in the middle of handing the garment off to Porter. It was completely incongruous with what she thought she knew of the general. A rampant tiger swiped his paw deftly across Matthew's well-defined left pectoral muscle. When, why?
Kate snapped herself to attention, brain cataloging the information for a later time.
Porter finished examining the shirt's entry hole, and tossed it with the boots. “It's all there.”
“That's good news at least.” Fabric scraps, along with splinters and dirt, all equaled infection.
She grasped the handles of her pitted iron forceps. “The ball is almost through, so this is going to hurt. A lot.”
“I know,” he bit out. His left index finger jabbed at a corded scar across his ribs.
“Deep breath,” she warned, taking one herself.
Porter clamped hands on Matthew's shoulders. Kate plunged the forceps in after the ball, ignoring Matthew's grunts, his strangled cries when she was forced to retreat and try again. He thrashed against the table, legs thrusting as she worked to find a grip. Ignore it, she repeated. He was a soldier, a patient. His blood oozed hot onto her palms, spilling down her fingers and making it nearly impossible to gain traction on the handle.
Porter darted from one side of the wound to the other, swiping a chunk of the cotton wadding in a losing battle to get her a look at the progress. Finally, the prongs knocked dully against lead, deep in the hole. There was no making the process comfortable, but at least a sensible approach could make it fast. Withdrawing a fraction, she took aim again, digging the tips in around the rifling grooves. Matthew strangled a cry in his throat, arching clean off the table. Kate bit her lip, braced her foot against th
e table leg for purchase with eyes pressed shut, and tore the lump free. She dropped the mushroomed bit of lead into the collection tray, panting and swiping damp strands of hair from her forehead.
Porter let go of his limp, clammy patient, taking up a pitcher and dousing the hole with a mix of water and whiskey. Matthew hung across the table top, feeding his lungs with small gasps, eyes squeezed shut.
Grabbing the cotton wadding, Kate pushed it in, packing the wound. Using the heel of her hand, she applied steady pressure, Matthew's abdomen tightening against the pain. New blood oozed out against her palm, mingling with the water and old blood, making her hand slip against the shelf of his rib cage. He barely flinched.
Matthew was still for long enough, with eyes closed, that Kate thought he'd lost consciousness and began to worry in earnest.
“Water,” he croaked out after a minute. Porter obliged, raising the general up to sip from a small jar.
Kate slumped over her instrument tray, relieved. “Porter, will you take word to Major Burrell? He can tell the men and maybe they'll stop crowding my door. And the flap on your way out, if you would.” In her haste Kate realized she had forgotten to close it. The light had been appreciated, but she had gained a nervous audience. It wasn't doing her or the general any good.
Snipping off half an arm's-length of silk cord, she poked the end at an impossibly tiny eye on the suture needle, then stuck it through her apron strap. “Get up on your side for me.”
If her instruction had been for him to lie there, arching in a useless, inebriated fashion, Matthew would be following it perfectly. He was going to need help in order to turn, and she regretted sending Porter away so quickly. Matthew was a good foot taller and a great deal more muscled than her, and Kate had the sense of rolling over a cart-load of wet sand. Uncooperative wet sand.
At last she got him onto his hip, with a good deal of discomfort on both sides, stuffing the heavy canvas drape against the small of his back for cribbing before she lost ground.
“How bad?” The words barely escaped his grimace.
“I haven't looked yet.” She leaned over the entry wound above his right hip, palpating gently for bone and debris. Through the sweat and coppery odor of blood, she caught the scent of him, the same combination that had teased her the first night outside the tent. A smell she identified now as uniquely belonging to him. Kate brushed her thumb over his skin. He was a patient, a voice chastised. Treat him like any other.
She smacked her stool against the dirt in front of him, pounding against her annoyance. Now was most certainly not the time. Right elbow resting against the surgery table, Kate tried to ignore that her forearm was braced against the crotch of his small clothes as she began to stitch.
“How bad?” he repeated, eyes half-closed in a fuzzy squint while he studied her.
Kate snorted, and steadied her hand. He looked as though, if she told him he was dying, he wouldn't bother opening them all the way. “Not so bad at all. You won't even die from infection. Probably.”
He relaxed deeper against the table, surprising her with a slow smile. “I'm not worried.” Liquor weighed down each word.
“No?” Kate pierced his flesh with the needle, feeling it twitch under her fingers.
“Not a bit.” He winced as she seated the point again. “If your tongue hasn't killed me, a rifle won't.”
* * *
She slept fitfully in a chair set unobtrusively in the corner of the surgery, wanting to be handy but not overbearing. Porter had volunteered to bring her old cot, but she had brushed away the offer. It was a silly amount of effort on his part just so she could get up and down twenty times during the night. There was a bed for her next door if she was willing to leave Matthew, but she wasn't.
Besides, someone had to stand guard against visitors. The whole afternoon had resembled a state funeral, a snake of men as far as the mess tent shuffling in to commiserate and see with their own eyes how their general fared.
It had nearly incited a riot when she declined more well-wishers. Men began inventing excuses to come to her tent, and three intrepid souls shimmied in under the canvas wall while she was indisposed. At wits' end, she had climbed into the back of an empty ammo cart, split the din with a whistle and threatened to suture the lips of the next man who disturbed her patient. They had all looked properly contrite, but she knew better. They were hardly done.
Wrapped in Matthew's coat with her feet on a small crate, Kate watched his chest rise and fall in the dim candlelight. At first, she had dug it from the pile out of necessity, against the night's chill. Now, with the garment reversed, Kate poked her arms into his enveloping sleeves, collar at her chin, to inhale the scent of him there. It helped her ignore the smell of a new batch of salve she'd made to treat his wound. She hated the memories it evoked.
Slouching further down in the chair, she scooted the box with her heel and tried to get comfortable.
“Kate.”
Kate thought she had imagined her name, until Matthew spoke again. She stood and leaned over to see his face. Cupping his forehead, she pressed knuckles to his cheek, feeling only warm, dry skin. “How do you feel?”
He inhaled slowly, considering the question. “Fine. I feel good.”
“Truly?” she asked, surprised.
Matthew stiffened. “Wait, no. The laudanum is wearing off. I feel terrible.”
Laughter relaxed the knotted muscles in her neck and shoulders. “I'll change your dressing and then get you another dose. I'd like you sensible enough to tell me how you're doing as I go.”
“Porter can change bandages.”
She nodded. “Expertly.”
“Then he can sit up with me.”
His modesty was amusing, but she refused to inconvenience two people when one was sufficient. Besides, she was not giving up her spot beside him. “There's no waking him,” she fibbed. “That man sleeps like the dead. Besides, you don't have anything I haven't seen before.”
“That's not true.” His laugh escaped as a loud sigh.
Obviously not all the laudanum had worn off.
Kate shook her head. “Just scoot up and let me lift your shirt.” She got hold of the tail, fingers scratching over blood dried to the inside of the linen. “Arms up, slowly. I'll find you something else to wear.” She brushed over the skin of his ribs.
Matthew jerked, moaning.
“Hurt?”
His eyes stayed shut. “No.”
She stared, waiting. He blinked back, offering no explanation.
Kate shook off her confusion, pressing on. The crusted wad of linen at his hip was likely stuck despite the salve and needed to be pulled free. With the bleeding stopped, it was also time to fully wrap him, but neither process was going to be pleasant.
She took a roll of bandage from the supply trunks, the pitcher and some salve, and set them on the blanket against his leg. Kneeling beside her tools, she thought up questions to distract him as she worked. One in particular would conveniently satisfy her curiosity. “You have a tattoo. I thought that was frowned upon for men of your position.”
His head lifted from the head rail, showing her a murky scowl. “Generals?”
“Viscounts.”
“Oh.” His head fell back. “I was a soldier before I was a viscount. And a sodding wild lad, at that.”
Kate tried to reconcile that admission with the stoic, disciplined general in front of her. As she unwound the bandage, his breathing slowed to even inhalations, and she thought he had fallen asleep. Then he wriggled up higher against the rail. “I got the tattoo after Assaye.”
She blew an airy whistle. “India. That is a distinguished victory.”
“I didn't expect anyone to make a fuss. Got it,” he patted his chest, “to commemorate the battle myself.”
Kate didn't look. There was something mesmerizing about the tiger's fluid lines that made her finger itch to trace its attack. She strangled the pitcher handle and lightly doused the bandage with cold water. Matthew suc
ked a breath between his teeth. “Well, someone took notice. Here you are, a general.”
“Mmhmm. By then, I had branded myself.”
“I wouldn't say that.” She frowned, picking at the linen. The mark was taboo, but it would hardly ostracize him.
“My wife finds it repulsive.” There was a twist to the last word, and he spit it out.
She stayed quiet, peeling up the wet wadding. She could treat a fair number of ailments, but marital discord was certainly not on the list, not even for herself.
“You have a family, Miss Foster?” His words were slurred, coming slower now, but he looked perfectly attentive.
“I do. My younger sister Elisabeth Frances. Fann, as I call her, and as she detests being called. She will pass her twenty-second birthday soon. This week, as a matter of fact.” Kate frowned. She had forgotten to put anything about it in her letter home. “Her husband William is in government and textiles, so half his trade is honest, at least. Cotton, not politics.”
“Are you two close?”
“We are now.” She chuckled. “Only two years between us, so my father had his hands full more often than not. She has a boy, Henry. He makes clever little drawings for me, and my sister sends them along now and then. He is my favorite, and we are certainly kindred souls.”
His left arm had slid from the bed at some point, and Matthew's warm fingers rested against her shoulder. Kate tried to ignore the comfort from even that small bit of human contact. She blotted the rag up and down his side with slight pressure.
“No one else at home who looks for your return?”
“A husband, you mean? No. I married at eighteen, was widowed at nearly twenty, and was very, very unhappy in between.” She hated to think back on how naive she had been, how disappointed, and how obvious the conclusion when viewed through the lens of hindsight. She had known Patrick from the age of six. His abundant charm and shallow attachments were not new traits when they wed, nor his popularity with the female population of Albany. Their marriage was unquestionably a mistake; hers for thinking he could change his colors, and his for believing her content to stay a placeholder. Kate shook off the memory.