“I’ve almost finished,” the surgeon said finally. “So that you may know what I’ve done so far, I’ll quote from memory of my study, for you’re an educated man and can thereby increase your knowledge: ‘The first is, in careful and diligent taking away all such extraneous bodies as by their interposition may hinder the true agglutination of the disjoined parts, whether they be concrete blood, hair, sand, dust, pieces of bones, cartilages, or pieces of weapons, rags, etc.’ That is, I’ve cleaned your wounds of splinters of bone and scraps of skin and flesh.
“‘The second is, in bringing the lips of the wound even together, which were separated.’ In other words, I’ve made sure I’ve trimmed the lips of the wound such that they will fit together well. ‘The third is, in retaining the lips so brought together, that they may by consolidation be restored to their former figure.’ This should be obvious enough: I’ve sewn you up, one stitch per finger’s breadth of wound. None of the Spaniard’s glover’s stitch for me except in your face, although I see by one of your scars that you were likely once already sewn up this way. By a Spaniard?”
“By a Spaniard.”
“Surely an interesting story; you must tell it to me one day, assuming you survive my ministrations.” The surgeon smiled. “I was a sea surgeon once, thus my gallows humor. But I’m sure you’re more interested in your prognosis than my surgical history. In sum, your shin and ankle are not as bad as thought, though you have two good sword bites to the bone. You were lucky, for the sinews are mostly intact, and none of the bones were broken through. You should heal quickly, in other words. I’ve also removed the swan drops from your leg and buttock, and I’ve sewn up your upper lip where you put your teeth all the way through. I’ve done your vanity a favor and used the glover’s stitch on your lip so the scar won’t be too large. Still, you might have to grow mustachios if you’re vain.” The surgeon pressed on his front teeth. “Not too loose; you likely won’t lose them. Hard teeth, hard head.”
“Are you sure you dinna just push them out?” Edward retorted weakly.
“If I made false teeth in addition to sawing bones and sewing up wounds, I might have considered it, but I don’t. Lie still now and be quiet, sir. I have more still to do.”
The final procedure completed, Edward lay on the table in his shirt, bandages, and splint, soaked in sweat, the pains in his leg and foot almost intolerable. He did not even notice the ache in his teeth.
It’s not that bad, he thought, and in two, three days it will no longer be bothersome. Best to sleep ‘til then.
“How soon before I’m healed?” he asked, his eyes closed.
“Hard to say, but, unless you wake up one morning to find your lower leg missing, you should be able to bear weight on your foot in a month or so, and be completely healed in eight or ten weeks, maybe more, maybe less. You’ll have a bastard gout in the foot and ankle, I dare say, and you may limp to some degree, at least for a few months. Bloodletting, by the way, is a seasonable remedy for the wandering pains you’ll have in ankle and foot. We’ll know better in a few days whether mortification will set in. If it does, I’ll take your leg off below the knee.”
Eight or ten weeks, Edward thought, eight or ten weeks. Much too long, much too long.
Soon he was asleep, the pair of wolfhounds at his feet and Molly eyeing him from the door.
Chapter 13
The Kernes, the Rapparees, those wild Irish, Who are not yet reform’d…
—Solomon Bolton, The Present State of Great Britain, and Ireland, 1745
“We need to get going,” Edward said. “We’ve finished the wine, it’s growing late, and the roads are not safe, no matter what you say. It’ll be dark soon, and we won’t make it to Ballydereen with light to spare even if we leave now.”
“I know,” Molly said with a sigh and a smirk, “there are rapparees and wolves and things that hide in the night. But I’m safe with you, aren’t I, with your sword, handsome furniture, and bad leg?”
He groaned. She had teased him all day, taking nothing he said seriously.
“If we’re confronted, I’m only one man—”
“And I’m but one woman. That’s two of us, and if the sum is greater than the parts, then we two as one would be formidable.”
The clichés, drawn perhaps from bad poetry, annoyed Edward. Somewhere in his head a voice warned, calling him to arms against women with agendas of seduction.
“Poetry is for the fireside, not dangerous roads at dusk,” he said.
“You’re growing cold and boring again, like a winter rain,” she said, continuing the refrain. “Why are you always so serious?” She grinned. “It’s safer to travel by night anyway. People worth robbing travel only by day, because they’re afraid to travel at night.”
“Sir William will flay my hide if anything happens to you,” he said, then limped to the horses. He untied the leather hobbles securing their front legs, stood up, and suddenly Molly was there, an inch in front of him, a horse at his back.
“Don’t move, Edward. If you press the horse he’ll move aside, and then I’ll be your only security. I could let you stand or fall as I please.” Her voice still teased, more subtly, yet with a sharp edge.
He looked at her green-grey eyes, her long hair hanging down about her pretty neck, and thought her a selkie or nereid changed to sylph in the twilight.
She kissed him, then he her. He pulled away.
Inexplicably his hand itched for his sword and he felt eyes upon him again.
“I was going to say that you kiss well enough, even with a fresh scar on your lip,” Molly said after he stepped back.
“We have to go,” he said. “If you’re not concerned about wolves or rapparees, then at least be concerned about your reputation and Sir William’s ire.”
Edward, fool though he often was where women were involved, suddenly realized she had been subtly arranging her activities to coincide with his since the day of the duel. The answer appeared obvious: there were signs that her estate might be seized, so she had abandoned her pretense of letting any and all men woo her until her estate was safe, and resolved to marry one who could save her—either him or any other of the many who best suited her purpose. She was laying a trap, one without malice or ill intent other than self-interest. Yet he could not set aside his growing suspicion that something malicious was at work somewhere.
They mounted their restless horses and trotted down the road.
It had only been a month since the duel, and Edward’s more serious wounds were not yet entirely healed. His leg remained weak, and a corner of one wound still oozed a drop or two of blood each hour. The rest had knit neatly, leaving thick purple scars. He and Sir William made quite a pair when together, limping along, yet no one made too much fun of them, at least not in their presence.
“Another month and you can cast the cane aside,” the surgeon had said, only a week ago, but Edward had proved him wrong within the hour. He had to return to Bristol, and within a week more, wind and tide permitting, he would.
Edward’s recovery, however, had been precarious. On the fourth day the surgeon had been pleased, as laudable pus appeared in his most severe wound, indicating that it was healing. But two days later the wound was greatly inflamed, and the surgeon feared mortification had set in. In order to keep Edward quiet and still, he bled him repeatedly, over Edward’s obscene objections, putting his life more in danger than it had been during the duel. Fever made him hallucinate: a cutlass pierced his throat as he prepared to leap forward from an ambuscade, yet he felt no pain. He barely escaped from a raging sea, an ocean which let him approach the shore, then drew him back, a living being of great water who, as soon as he thought he had escaped, tossed him toward a dark ship. Suddenly he was cornered in Scotland, surrounded by soldiers, then rescued by an officer, whose rescue had a price of service in Ireland, bloody Ireland.
Ireland! he had thought, I must be awake! I remember now, I’m in Ireland!
The ship exploded, and he would have s
worn he was truly awake. Yet as he looked about him he saw nothing but tombstones, barrows, and cairns, and graves in the shape of men, and he was wrapped in a woolen shroud, with shrouds or mists hanging above. He also saw furniture, and sconces on walls, and great beasts lying nearby, and all was gray, and all was real, and he thought himself in the land of the dead.
A horse!
He heard a horse, he found a horse, two horses, and he leapt to them, to and fro, but found neither to his liking as he rode on one then the other, and suddenly he heard the sound of trees again, and out the window he saw green everywhere, and hills, and he smelled air filled with rain, and he knew again that all was well, and he realized he had not been riding two horses but had been shifting his injured foot back and forth, trying to find a comfortable place to rest it.
Edward vaguely remembered Molly visiting while his fever raged and his hallucinations tormented him. She appeared an angel to him as she came to see him during the night, candle in one hand, the other hidden. He thought he had asked her one night not to leave, but perhaps he only dreamed this. In his fever, he thought she touched his wounds, a soft, magical, healing touch. After his delirium began to clear, she became his constant companion, bringing his meals and tending him until he could get back on his feet. He enjoyed the attention, yet it also made him uncomfortable. And when others visited, officers from the garrison at Charles Fort, for example, she was attentive with them instead, even, if he were not mistaken, flirting with some of them.
Curiously, this made him jealous. Sensing his discomfort, she always maneuvered to distract him by having him describe to her the business of merchantmen and privateers, of their comings and goings, of the gossip of Bristol, of all the details of places and things she had no experience of.
Only Jane and the surgeon had come close to being as solicitous of his health. The lady and one or both of her maids—the latter variously giggling and smiling rapturously, the former appearing confident yet vulnerable, and all of them overtly sexual—came every other day to sit at his bedside, engage him in conversation, read to him, play cards with him, and invariably offer to aid him in any way they might. Molly despised their visits. The surgeon came daily, always commenting on Edward’s progress. He changed the dressings only every three days, and once quietly cursed the poultice someone had applied in his absence.
“Still bleeding from one wound, I see, even after cauteries of hot iron and styptic which I only use as a last resort. Well, don’t worry, Scots blood runs thick, so the bleeding will stop eventually. It always does, one way or another, it’s a surgical maxim,” he said one morning, smiling as he squeezed the bandages and watched the blood ooze through the linen fibers. Then, on another morning, “I believe you’re healing, sir; I have brought my saw for nothing.” But Edward knew him to be a fine surgeon in spite of his necrotic sense of humor.
A physician had also once come to visit, to clyster him: “You’ve been long abed, sir, and must be purged of your intestinal irritability.” Notwithstanding that clysters were commonly used in many treatments, Edward clapped a pistol to the man’s breast and invited him to insert the large metal syringe into his own backside. The physician never returned. From a lifetime of adventure Edward knew that he healed best when physicians kept their lancets and clysters at a distance.
Likewise Parson Waters, now employed by Sir William, who never would have ordered prayers for Edward until the parson vowed he would never pray for a heathen Scot who might be a Presbyter or other Nonconformist, or worse, a papist, or worst of all a free thinker. Sir William, anticipating Edward’s reaction, had promptly ordered the parson into Edward’s room to pray. The Scotsman had sent him out, as he had with the physician, never to return. Sir William had smiled for two days. Edward, however, no matter how amused he was with the joke, did not trust the parson. The man in black often hovered nearby, especially when either Molly or Jane was in Edward’s company. The Reverend Waters smelled of something more than a mere busybody or gossip: he had the stench of a troublemaker.
As for the duel, the forms had been followed and the coroner’s inquest had cleared him: he would not stand trial. It helped that he was a Scot and his opponent an army officer, the challenge and fight well-witnessed and honorably fought. Even had there been a trial, Edward would likely have been acquitted.
His thoughts returned to the present. The shadows had grown long and Molly seemed pensive in her irritation.
Is she in love with me, he wondered, or is it something else—the tactics of marrying me to save her estate?
Edward was not in love with her, and now that he was no longer an invalid he considered it unlikely he would fall in love with her; nor did he wish to be inconvenienced by the curious madness of love, or even of mere infatuation. The duel had clearly proved his philosophy, that dallying too closely with women and Fortune often led to ill-fortune.
Molly had met him on the road today, as he returned from receiving the written replies from Lord Brennan and Sir James Allin. She’d told him that she had a mind to ride with him as they had done the day he arrived in Kinsale. She’d seemed a touch jealous, in spite of her blithe manner, saying she had met a messenger who sought Edward in the name of Jane Hardy. Molly had sent him on his way, justifying this to Edward by telling him he ought to keep better company than retired bawds.
As they trotted down the road, Edward noticed that Molly’s mood changed yet again. She was more introspective now, something more than common pensiveness, and wished to walk the horses rather than trot them.
“If there are rapparees on the road, as you suspect, we can hear their approach better if we ride at a walk,” she said to placate his objection.
“And they can more easily catch us,” he replied.
Edward sensed an irritability, or perhaps what he sensed was in his own mind, not hers, and was simply his suspicions taking root.
Twice Edward paused. The second time he was certain he heard the sound of a horse snorting in the distance. His horse’s ears were now in constant motion, much more than usual. But Edward heard nothing else, and so they walked on.
“It’s nothing,” Molly said, each time he halted.
Yet soon Edward thought he heard horses again, and this time voices too, as if they were brief shadows or whiffs of whispers that might exist only in the mind. He slowly turned his mount around, squeezed he horse a few steps forward, and casually gazed about. His eyes noted the wisps of shapes—heads of men and horse, an arm, legs and flanks—of riders in shadows down the road, visible only to someone whose eyes were long accustomed to searching into dusks, dawns, and darkness.
He trotted to Molly where she waited a few yards away.
“We must go, and quickly,” he said, slipping his hand through his sword knot, then drawing his Spanish colichemarde and letting it hang from his wrist. He drew a pistol, brought it to full cock, and passed it to her. “In case you need it. Keep it pointed up until you need to use it. There are riders behind us.”
He drew his other sea pistol, cocked it, and held it pointed toward the night heavens. He made sure his wallet and the letters within were secure beneath his waistcoat. Cued by Rocinante’s ears, he pulled his mount around in time to discern the outlines of two riders spurring their mounts from a walk to a canter.
“Ride!” he shouted at Molly, as he aimed his pistol at the dark shapes of man and horse. “Ride, damn you! Ride! I’ll keep them at bay!” he shouted.
Immediately Edward fired his pistol and tossed it away, spun Rocinante around, grasping his colichemarde as he did, and with the naked blade whipped Molly’s mount—which had yet to move in spite of his order to her—to the gallop.
The two rapparees came at full speed.
Edward spun Rocinante back around, leveled his sword, and spurred hard.
“For King James!” he shouted to confuse his attackers, one of them several yards in front of the other.
After a brief hesitation, a brace of pistols flashed from the lead rider, flame lick
ing several feet from their barrels and illuminating a masked face as Edward, charging, lost his hat and right stirrup. A flash and a crack came from the right, a shout from the left, another flash and noise to the front, hot breath against his cheek, and then the crash and spark of steel on steel as he rode Rocinante upon one of his enemies, then a crash of horse on horse, a thrust and bite of sword into an enemy, foul breath on the air, a cry of pain, another of anger, the sense of something thick and heavy caught on his sword, then of something flung from sword into air, then...
Nothing. The two men were gone into the night. For a moment Edward thought the rhythm or number of hoofbeats changed. Approaching again? Or retiring?
Retiring.
Edward regained his stirrup, cantered off the road, and for several minutes waited in silence, sword in hand. He ought to have ridden already toward Ballydereen, for Molly was alone on the roads with these thieves and murderers. By the light of the moon he could see several inches of his blade smeared with blood, but lightly, as if it had been partly wiped clean.
Soon he heard more vague sounds in the distance, an argument perhaps, or just the wind. Then came a tiny flash, followed by the faint crack of a gun, a pistol he judged it. He considered waiting a few more minutes, but realized this was too dangerous. There was something he had to find, and if it were valuable, the rapparees would soon return for it.
Quickly he dismounted and searched the ground, sword in hand, his heart pounding as he expected to meet the highwaymen again. When he’d realized during the fight that his sword had lifted something from one of the men, he’d thought at first it might be a small pistol; then it occurred to him it might also be a wallet, carried in the same way he carried his own. His guess was correct: he found a small package trampled into the mud. Edward scraped away the wet earth to reveal a leather wallet of the sort used to carry correspondence and other important papers. He had no light by which to examine it, and it would be too dangerous to do so here anyway, so he tucked it under his waistcoat. Moments later he found his empty pistol in the mud. He sheathed his sword, drew the reins over Rocinante’s head, and prepared to mount the suddenly skittish animal.
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