by Baird Wells
Her patient twisted away at the waist, face pressed so hard into Taylor's forearm that Kate wondered the boy could breath. No part of him touched the chair above the hips. The hot sweat of terror had turned clammy beneath her hand on his leg. The gray shadow passing over the boy's face warned she would have to work quickly. He was going into shock.
A final pull and she had dug her trench all the way around his knee. She tossed the knife to the tabletop in favor of a saw, now going to work in earnest. Horribly, she thought, this was the easy part. The only factor now was how much her bicep trembled, how fast her efforts could eat the bone. Getting on her knees for leverage, Kate wrapped the ivory handle in a two-handed grip. Nearly forty eager, gritty passes later the dead weight fell free, tossed atop an already stinking burn-pile of mutilated limbs.
Jackson pulled a dense, spatula-shaped iron from a nearby brazier, smacking it on the bleeding stump. The boy flailed his arm inside the restraints like a broken-winged bird, despite Taylor's efforts. He was too hoarse and winded for any sound to pass between his gaping lips. Kate breathed through her mouth against the sickly sweet aroma, observing Jackson's progress and pointing out spots to be cauterized while she unwound a length of bandage. The chair rocked up onto two legs, and for a moment Kate was sure the boy would dump himself to the floor. Jackson tossed the iron back into the flames just in time.
The moment he finished, she began to wrap. Thin and loose; no sense wasting bandage that would be changed soon enough. Or soiled by a dead patient, which was a guarantee nearly half the time.
By now the soldier was limp, slung deep in his seat. Kate imagined he was in just as much pain as when he had been dragged in, but having fallen from the crescendo of agony made it bearable.
Taylor and Jackson lifted the poor soul, wrestling him onto a canvas litter and shuffling him out. He would go to recover under an awning hastily erected in the formation yard, and the next brutalized soldier would take his place. Would it be Matthew this time? She had steeled herself with each new patient, dreading the possibility. Flanagan thought the general responsible for carting Major Burrell back to camp, but MacAuley's aide-de-camp was certain Matthew had pushed over the ridge, swearing that hide nor hair had been seen of him since the retreat.
There was no comfort, finding him absent under her knife. He might easily be in the surgery tent next door, bleeding out from a flesh wound. Or lying in the field, fit only for the undertaker's spade. She braced palms on the sticky table-top, gasping against a surge of panic. Bile churned up, burning her throat. Kate ground fingertips to her tired eyes, trying in vain to push the tears back inside. He was not here, a voice reasoned, and that was something. Kate told herself to be calm.
Alexander stuck a head inside, causing her to jump and tip a lantern atop the table. He had unloaded each wagon with Gill before taking up post in the surgery next door, stitching together anyone she did not need to cut apart. Kate pulled the wad of cotton from one ear.
“Miss, Major Burrell is set arights. Flesh wound to the thigh is all. Couple ribs split, from the horse.”
Kate grunted. She tried to feel relief, and somewhere inside registered happiness that Ty would keep his leg, but it was merely a footnote. She was incapable of making more of the news.
Jackson tapped at Gill's shoulder, pushing past into the silent room. “Three or four left miss, but they're a hopeless case,” Jackson explained. “I'd stake my own life on it.” It was a tough skill to possess, knowing a man was dead while he was still alive. Usually they were artillery wounds, and she had seen scores of those tonight. She could see the weight of those life-and-death decisions pinching up Jackson's long face.
Kate nodded, eyes drifting listlessly over the room. “If no one else has need of the butcher, you and Taylor begin on the fatality list. Walk the yard and write down all you can identify. Find help if you come across a stranger.” Soldiers could recognize a man's face and never know his name. Identifying the dead was as much an effort of brotherhood as fighting a battle. And often, it took longer.
The two men swished their hands in a bucket stained with too much red to have been of any real help. Jackson gathered the lists and Taylor stuffed two pencils into his weathered apron, following his partner out.
Gill leaned farther inside, jabbing a thumb towards the tent next door. “We have a handful yet to go in the surgery, miss. I'm back to it.”
She barely nodded. “Let me know when you've finished. It's nearly time to start rounds for the first patients.”
“Yes, miss.” Gill trotted away, leaving her alone.
She should look in on Ty, but guilt would not let her go. It was always this way, after an engagement. She should stay, wait, comb the dying for one last, salvageable soul. Her heart denied the pattern her head knew all too well. Porter came again and again with the wagon, and at the outset each arrival brought wounded men, not men waiting to die. Each body in the cart was a workable injury, even if he did not survive. At some point the wounded he gathered became a fifty-fifty split of beyond hope. Eventually, such as right now, Porter was out scavenging the field in a desperate, mostly fruitless search for patients who in all probability would not last the journey back to camp.
She hefted a washtub, sliding it to the foot of the table, and poured in some hot water from a cast iron kettle she took from over the brazier. Unwrapping a narrow leather thong, Kate opened the mouth of a leather pouch and dumped dried witch elm into the tub, watching crumbling yellow blossoms soften and reanimate. They bobbed to the surface and she inhaled the woody, medicinal scent. The odor was a sad comfort, announcing to Kate's senseless fingers and trembling arms that their trial was over. After the herb steeped a minute or two, she swept the table with one hand, raking the knives, saws, ball pliers and tourniquet-clasps into the wash.
Porter and Flanagan had not returned, and Kate at last gave herself permission to check on Ty.
The sky was fading from blue into silver when she ducked through the battered wooden doorway. She had not been prepared for that. Though she should have realized it would be nearing morning, in the surgery there was no true passage of time. Everything transpired in five-minute increments, cutting, sawing, searing. Somehow the promise of daylight in an hour or so made what happened inside the hospital, even a few minutes earlier, feel abstract.
The command post was a frenzy of activity. Kate could barely make out the motion of figures in the lamplight, aides hunched and scribbling, reading through communiques that were likely obsolete already. Majors and corporals traded information about wounded or prisoners, what to do with captured guns. Kate knew that some would be double-shot to deprive the enemy of future use, but others were added to the inventory. Kate realized she could probably act out the exchanges as a one-woman play, she had heard it all so many times before.
For the first time, she was weary. Weary of the garrison, the war, the bloody cycle. Three years earlier, she had come to Europe expecting to stay a year. The battles were beginning to take their toll.
A figure detached itself from the commotion as she approached. At first she assumed it was a courier, probably off to appraise the field marshal of their victory, and paid little attention. When he mounted, though, the breadth of his shoulders, his shape and straight-backed command of the saddle gave away the rider's identity.
Relief nearly buckled her knees. Kate wondered again at how Matthew's welfare, more than anyone else's, had stood paramount in her thoughts. Too tired to explore her feelings more than that, she simply acknowledged them, then offered a silent prayer of thanks that he had returned unharmed.
She stopped in her path, weighing the distance to the major's tent and the main gate, and realized there was never any question where to go. Kate did not want to cheer or be cheered. She wanted to be with someone who hurt.
* * *
Bremen tread gently over the field, choosing his steps carefully as though even he was aware of the gravity. Seventy-two dead, two-hundred and four men wounded. Both were
rough estimates, too early to take them as fact. He was bound to lose more of them, today or the next.
Matthew picked between a wagon axle and its shattered deck. Its purple-faced driver stared eternally to the heavens, a scream slackened by death frozen to his lips. Tattered strips of uniform hinted at the cannon shot which had claimed nearly half his mangled torso where it protruded above the twisted corpse of his horse.
Some of the dead he recognized, others were strangers. They were all his men. He removed his hat and pressed it to his chest. His finger slipped into a musket-ball hole above the brim that he had not realized was there. He dared a laugh, wondering at Fate's strange designs. Two inches lower and he would be lying out here too.
Further out, contorted bodies clad in Britannia red and Empire blue littered the trampled grass. The charred remnants of gun carriages and supply trains curled smoke into the morning fog, its damp holding the stench of black powder and putrefaction. Matthew felt it penetrate his clothes, his skin, and shivered.
A predawn glow caught the movement of five French soldiers scurrying inside a copse, a hundred yards to his right. One shouldered a musket, aiming for him with a posture that was too frightened to truly consider pulling the trigger. There was an exchange among the party, and Matthew guessed when he did not move to draw his pistol, they found him less of a threat. He had no intention of firing on them; everyone was entitled at least to their dead.
A quiet suggestion interrupted his brooding. “We should move our men, so the French can bring in a wagon.”
He had not absorbed that Kate was behind him, though Matthew realized his ear had caught the tell-tale rustle of grass as he watched the French hunkering across the field. If she were anyone else, he would have ordered her away. This was his way of grieving, making peace. But the moment he had realized she was there, it felt right. He wanted to share this time with her, to find solace in her presence. He searched the field again. “I asked them to hold a moment, so I could ride out.”
She came up beside Bremen and scratched his muzzle slowly. Matthew took her in, bun half unpinned so that tendrils pasted with blood and sweat clung to her face. Her clothes hung rigid, apron and skirt stuck together and drying stiff, matted with telltale chunks and black-on-black where her dress was soaked through. Impossibly, his heart ached more.
“Has something happened?” Her eyes told him that she knew what he was asking. Matthew held his breath, eyes fixed at a spot on the horizon, and waited for her to say that Ty was gone.
“No.” Her head shook slowly, and he exhaled in a rush. “No more than what you see here, anyway.” Kate glanced up, lids red-rimmed by exhaustion. “I wanted to see you, with my own eyes.”
He nodded even as her gaze wandered ahead, over the carnage. Her words, or at least their sentiment, took root in his chest. He was too spent to feel his way through it now, but later, when the callous over his heart had thinned, he would give them the attention they deserved.
“Why do you do it, ride the field?” Kate crossed her arms, hugging herself. “There are plenty of officers who never do. I imagine at least some of them care for their men.”
“My men are not powder or cannon shot. I can order them the same way. Twelve barrels of flour, two-hundred men to fill out a company. They arrive, like any resource.” Matthew shook his head. “But they come from mothers and wives, they leave babies behind who will grow up knowing their father only by stories. No officer should ever forget the value of those he commands or become comfortable with their loss.”
She said nothing, and he had no idea how to read her without seeing her face. Matthew swallowed, finding his voice. “I had your first report. The numbers are low.” He paused a breath. “You deserve the army's gratitude. Without your care, I have no doubt they would be much higher.”
Kate's head fell against his thigh, and she slumped on Bremen's flank. “You do not have to talk. That's not why I came out here.”
His throat tightened, and he nodded, burying fingers as far as he could manage into her stiff hair. She was as brave in that moment as any man in the division, and tougher than half, at least.
A tell-tale sound behind them cut off the moment, and he sighed. “Kate.”
She glanced behind them, where a small detachment filed out from the garrison, spades and canvas tarps in hand. He reached out a hand. “Time to yield the ground.”
She grasped his wrist, and Matthew tugged her into the saddle ahead of him. She crumpled against his chest, bundled side-saddle. Her fingers gathered a fistful of his coat; he squeezed her with forearms in reply. Kate gave as much comfort as she demanded, and Matthew found an island of peace in the carnage all around. As they reached the garrison, he remembered Ty. “Major Burrell...”
“Well, so far,” she murmured into his shoulder. “The ball was deep, but Gill had no real trouble with it. No reason to be anything besides hopeful.”
“Kate –” What did he want to say? He could feel it, but there was no forming into words the impression she made on his heart. “I thank you, truly, for all you've given this night.”
He knew, watching the faces of the men as they passed at the gate, that he was not the only one.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Quatre Bras – 29 May, 1815
Fann,
May I admit to a small bit of hubris? I will, whether you give me leave or no. The number of men recovering satisfactorily under myself and my stolid band of orderlies is astounding. Nearly a fortnight on, and at first blush we boast a twenty-five percent improvement in the number of recovering bodies. Twenty if Doctor Addison were still with is, but none at all under Astley, so I present to you my success with pride.
Porter has been sharing his journal with me. Memoirs, truly. He says after the war he will go to France or England and publish them. If he can get a copy, I told him you and William would like very much to see it. His tale would give any epic a good run. I am convinced he will be famous.
And what of the General, you are asking. Or if you are not, you meant to. Either way, I will satisfy your curiosity. I have not seen him, not in any real sense. He is a face that passes me on the way for supplies, or to the mess. I can tell by his eyes, as he must tell by mine, that he wishes to say something, but there is no time. He is gone often to the Field Marshal's headquarters, and, when he is here, duties hold him hostage until well past my bedtime.
I've grown to miss our spats of the old days. At least then he made time for me. Perhaps I shall revert to making a nuisance of myself...
“Were you aware of this?” Ty appeared over his left shoulder without warning, smacking dog-eared papers onto his desk.
Matthew felt the scowl crease his brows and did not turn around. “Major Burrell.”
Owing to his leg injury, Ty had been doing a great deal of reading, and a great deal more postulating. His theories on French troop movements could fill a volume of dispatches. He nearly had the intelligence office at Whitehall beat for sheer information. The most grating bit, Matthew admitted, was how often Ty was right.
He folded gingerly into his usual chair at the desk, and for once did not put his leg on its top. He tapped the papers with accusation. Bony’s men to the east may have left us a very exploitable opening. Brief, I'll grant you, but enough to make something of the fact.”
He was only half-listening to Ty, finishing a brief letter from Louisa reassuring him that his mother was recovering satisfactorily. “I'm not certain I caught that.”
Ty crossed his arms, clearly not believing the dismissal. “After reading the simple language of these French dispatches, I'll wager you did.”
Major Burrell was accusing him, in no uncertain terms, of missing key intelligence, willfully or otherwise. Tyler was his oldest living friend. Only once had they truly come to blows, over a woman no less, but Matthew pondered whether they might be on the verge of doubling the tally. “You have a concern then, Major?”
Hands flew up in defense. “It's not like you. That's all. You have
the keenest eye for opportunity in the whole division, but for the last week, a fortnight perhaps...”
Ty had no way of knowing. Matthew was under orders not to share that Wellington had instructed him to intentionally forgo the opportunity. If Napoleon believed Matthew's division was weak or unprepared to fight, it might ultimately encourage him to move up beyond the cross-roads, wedging between the British army and her Prussian allies to the east. But that was knowledge reserved for himself, Wellington, and Field Marshal Blucher.
Even so, he was not certain he would have caught the information in the confiscated dispatches no matter how plainly written. For the week-long period challenged by the major, he had been a raw nerve. His body and his mind conspired every waking moment, and a few slumbering ones, to break his sanity. Kate was an itch he could not scratch, and it did not help that he had no spare moments to try. Matthew relaxed with a slow exhalation. He couldn't fault Ty's loyalty or concern. They had saved him more than once. He raked fingers through disheveled hair. “Get to the matter, then.”
Ty frowned. “Are you ill, Matthew?”
“No.” Not precisely.
“Are you drinking again?”
“No.” Unfortunately.
Ty laughed, but the amusement didn't reach his eyes. “You're just not yourself. You never miss a chance to exploit a weak spot.”
He knew what Ty was asking: Was Kate the problem, and if so, what the hell could be done about it? He would have the same struggle, in the major's shoes. Exhausted and irritable, he refused to swallow the bait. “The timing was poor. That's all.” Matthew scrubbed his face with a broad palm. “And I'm bone tired. Sleep will restore my wits.”
Ty nodded slowly, but Matthew felt lingering suspicion as the major stood up. “Make the most of it. We'll have our work cut out for us soon enough.”