In The Service Of The Queen (The Gunsmith Book 1)

by C. K. Crigger

  Especially if you’d been thinking of yourself as the head honcho.

  Candor didn’t quite force me to admit as much to Caleb. “Like Tonto, for God’s sake,” I said. “Or Robin, or—or Lois Lane.”

  “Who?” Caleb looked thoughtful.

  “Oh, hush,” I said crossly. He couldn’t deprive me of my righteous anger that easily.

  Caleb held up his fingers in the peace sign, though I knew he was laughing at me. “Sorry, sugar. I must say I don’t feel much like a Superman. Maybe you’ll feel a little better if you know I only learned about Sergeant O'Malley when I met him in Princeton this morning. He was a bit of a surprise.”

  I laughed, too, letting go of the brief surge of anger.

  “Out of all the strangeness that’s been going on, this ranks right up front,” Caleb continued. “The second I saw this man, I knew who he was, knew what his orders had been, and expected his report. Kind of gave me a start, you know? Rather disconcerting, not knowing such things in advance.”

  “No kidding!” I could imagine just how startled he must have been.

  I remembered when I found out surprise was the first rule of magical displacement.

  “Am I forgiven?” Caleb asked, looking up at me with a hangdog expression.

  I had to give in. “Oh, I suppose. As long as you don’t keep any more secrets from me. I need to know everything you know.”

  “It’s a deal.” Caleb pulled his silver pocket watch out and checked the time. Not long enough for the sterilization process, I gathered, for he sat back. “About Jonathan,” he said.

  “Yes?” At last, I thought. Time to cut to the chase. “How is he? Is he sick? What does he look like?”

  Caleb raised his hands as if to fend off my rapid-fire questions.

  “He’s been ill, though not with typhoid, thank God. I imagine we’d be wasting our time if he’d had typhoid. From the sound of things, he’s had pneumonia—still has a bad cough. From my viewpoint, the worst problem is his looks. He has a beard. Well, all the prisoners have beards. It helps a little in keeping them warm. Beyond that, he looks very thin and haggard.”

  Caleb must not have looked in a mirror lately. If he had, he would have known he probably looked every bit as haggard as his cousin.

  Even as we talked, I knew his temperature had been rising. I saw the evidence in the peculiar, watery look of his eyes and by the way his cheeks seemed to draw in around his teeth. He must be one of those fortunate people who could ignore the lassitude of a fever. That, or he was a darned good actor.

  “And do you look a lot like him as we were led to believe?” I asked, trying to match his stoicism.

  He shrugged. “Maybe…I don’t know. He doesn’t have a limp, although that addition ought to be simple enough. I told him to shave tonight, and to keep out of sight until he sees us actually come through the gate. I gave him money so he can bribe someone to watch for us, and buy something to have for sale in the yard tomorrow. He knows you’re here and what you look like.”

  “You mean we are going through with the escape?” It was hard to believe we’d gotten this far. After taking so long to reach this point, I had begun to believe we would go on and on forever just trying to find Dartmoor.

  “It’s why we’re here, Boothenay.”

  “I know, I know.” Somehow, beyond Caleb, this whole series of events did not seem real to me. I felt like an actor in a costume play, until Caleb looked at his watch again and focused my attention on the all-too-real job at hand.

  “I think that stuff has been boiling long enough,” he said. “I want you to dip some of that hot water out so you can wash your hands thoroughly, both before and after.”

  I looked at him in queasy alarm. “Before and after what?”

  He put a twisted little grin on his face. “You know very well I can’t operate on the back of my own leg. I’m not a contortionist.”

  “Operate?” I squeaked. “Do you mean for me…? Oh, no. No, no, no, no.” My mind went blank with horror. “Not me. There’s a reason I’m a gunsmith, you know, and not a nurse or a doctor. They have doctors in this day and age. I’ll have Mary call one.”

  “I’d as soon have the stable boy,” said Caleb.

  “I’d as soon you did, too.” Well, not really the stable boy.

  “Come on, Boothenay. There’s no one else who can help me. If I could, I’d take care of it myself. Since I can’t, I’m putting my faith in you.”

  Which is more than I had in myself. I wished he hadn’t said that.

  In the end, I let myself be persuaded. What other choice did I have?

  Worse yet, what other choice did he have?

  Chapter 17

  Caleb gave me strict instructions on how to wash my hands. Silly me! If I’d thought I already knew, he soon taught me differently.

  I began by scrubbing with the skin-melting soap, which I then rinsed off with hot, hot water. Caleb demanded I scour every germ, every smidgen of bacteria from under and around my fingernails, and then I washed yet again. When he was at last satisfied with my efforts, I walked around, flapping my hands in the air to dry them because he wouldn’t let me use a towel.

  Actually, I knew enough not to touch anything in the room, but I didn’t bother to tell Caleb I knew. Nor did I argue with his instructions for I had a hunch he needed to expel his own tension with all this pontification. A nasty, little idea lurked in the back of my mind. An idea that shouted the reason he was being so obsessively thorough was because he was afraid he might not be awake to tell me later. I trust he was thinking unconscious, not dead.

  Lord, if Caleb thought he was nervous, he should have been standing in my shoes.

  “I’m ready,” I told him when I found a chance to interrupt his lecture.

  He inhaled a deep breath and said, “Then let’s get this over with.”

  Caleb lay down on the bed and rolled over onto his belly, so the big, ugly abscess faced me. Propping a pillow under his knee, I washed his leg with more of the soap and hot water, trying to ignore the involuntary flinch of his muscles every time I touched him. Last of all, I poured a half-cup of sticky red wine over the swollen, purplish-colored lump, letting the excess run onto the mattress. The resulting stain looked like blood.

  “These sheets are a mess,” I chattered. My nerves were already shot. “Between the wine and the water, they aren’t fit to sleep in.” As if it mattered.

  Caleb grimaced. “They’ll be worse before we get done. I might as well be prepared to pay for a new set of linens. Damn! I should’ve drunk the wine. I know red wine is supposed to be a good antiseptic, but I’ll bet it works better from the inside out. Here, give me the bottle.”

  “Sheesh.” I handed him the wine. If it didn’t sound so girlish, I would have said he was chattering.

  He swallowed down a good-sized slug of the wine. I put the bottle out of his reach and took up the knife. “Now be still and shut up. If you’re going to talk, then tell me what I’m supposed to be doing—

  again.”

  Caleb eyed the knife, trembling in my grasp and said, “First of all, take a nice deep breath. Take two. Then we’ll begin.”

  I was glad he’d said we.

  One deep breath—if anything, I trembled even more—then I took the second. I called on the power hidden deep in my soul and, like a blessing it came, for once, at my bidding. Thick and heavy, yet with a buoyancy as light as meringue to support me if I faltered.

  When the knife held rock steady, I looked at Caleb and said, “Okay, what next?”

  He watched me with a peculiarly intent expression until I wondered if I underwent a physically visible transformation when the magic came. At any rate, he relaxed a skoshe when he saw I was calmer. He pointed a finger, since he was forbidden to touch his newly cleansed skin, and told me to put the point of the knife just there.

  “You need to cut through until you hit the pus pocket,” he said.

  “Not too far, or you’ll carry the infection deeper—not fa
r enough and it can’t clear out. Normally, if I thought the wound was clean, you’d just make the one thrust and set in a drain, but in this case I’m almost certain something is still in there and you’re going to have to clean it out.”

  “Oh-My-God,” I moaned. Still, the power didn’t let me down, not even when he described what I was going to have to do.

  Caleb swallowed once more, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, and clenched a fistful of blanket in each hand. “Let’s do it,” he said.

  “I don’t think I can,” I said. At the same time, almost as if a mind other than my own was directing operations, the knife sliced through his skin, deep, but not too deep. Pus spurted in a bloody, yellow surge of cheesy looking, foul smelling effluent. It flowed over the lip of the wound.

  Caleb jerked, a strangled grunt caught in the back of his throat.

  “Sorry…I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  With preternatural senses I heard his heartbeat, faster—faster, drumming a counterpoint to my own racing pulse. The sound deafened me, yet in a strange way set me far enough away from his pain and my own fear that I could perform the surgery with confidence, if not precisely aplomb.

  From the puncture I’d made in the abscess, I drew the knife blade straight down until the incision was long enough to spread open.

  Later—I’m not sure how much later—I triumphantly pulled a tiny scrap of barely more than three or four weft and warp threads from the wound. I’d found the culprit.

  What a paltry thing, I thought, to set a man on the path to mortality.

  Quickly, quickly, I washed out the opening, ignoring the sharp hiss of Caleb’s indrawn breath as the hot, soapy water burned in his raw wound. Placing the bit of sterile cord in the cut for a drain, I pulled the edges around it, and wrapped the bandage snug to hold everything in place.

  I did each step precisely the way he’d told me.

  And then I washed my hands yet again.

  He lay so still I thought for a moment I’d killed him, then I saw he had a corner of the blanket caught between his teeth and he was holding his breath. His eyes were closed, his face white.

  “Caleb, I’m finished.” The background thrum of our mingled heartbeats had almost faded out of hearing. My stomach churned, nausea close. How anyone could stand to do this kind of work for a living was more than I could fathom. “Caleb?”

  A shudder racked him. He spat the blanket from his mouth and croaked, “Jesus, that hurt! Worse than when they first dug out the musket ball.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. “I didn’t want to hurt you. If…if…”

  Fortunately, I had a basin handy as my stomach surged.

  “You did well, Boothenay,” Caleb said when I turned back to him.

  “It’s not your fault I’m in this shape. Rather ignoble of your magic though, don’t you think, to send me on a quest when I have a bum leg?”

  “Ethan,” I said. “It’s Ethan who has the bum leg. The magic sent Doc Deane to help him.”

  “Keep him going long enough to see this thing through, you mean?”

  “Maybe—I guess—something like that.”

  Caleb found the strength to roll over onto his back. He smiled faintly. “Funny, isn’t it? Caleb to keep Ethan going, and Boothenay to keep Caleb going.”

  “And Belle to provide the hands.” I feared I, by myself, was far too squeamish to be cutting into wounds. I didn’t tell Caleb that either.

  “Strange.” Caleb took my hand and pressed it against his forehead, holding it there with the back of his wrist. He closed his eyes. “Where is this all going to end, Boothenay? Where and when and how?”

  I shook my head. “I wish I knew. The power got us here and will get us back, but other than that, I don’t know. I’m not clairvoyant.”

  Caleb missed my confession. He’d already fallen asleep. Or fainted.

  Chapter 18

  For the first hour after enduring this primitive surgery, Caleb lay immobile, his every breath an effort. He sprawled across the bed, heavy-limbed and taking stentorian gasps in a half-conscious stupor.

  Later, when he became more wakeful, I changed his bandage and the sheets, both soaked through with blood, then made him drink a cup of willow bark tea. After that, he slept more normally. I didn’t sleep at all.

  When dawn at last lightened the sky, Caleb jerked awake and dragged himself from the bed, pulling his boot on over his swollen foot.

  He swung his caped overcoat around his shoulders and declared himself ready to move out. I can’t begin to explain how he managed this feat of strength and determination. And although his limp had not improved from the day before, at least it had gotten no worse. I felt so relieved upon noting this small consideration that I went weak.

  As for Caleb, his upper lip was so stiff I wonder he didn’t hurt himself on it.

  He left the packing of our scattered possessions to me while he went to the stable and ordered the carriage hitched up. Like a proper gentleman, he gave the stable boy a generous tip to do this for him.

  I tarried a moment longer to drain my coffee cup. I’d discovered by now that, for some peculiar reason, the British seemed to think of coffee as an afternoon drink. I’d had to bribe Mary to bring us a pot this morning. A worthwhile bribe, to be sure, otherwise I’d probably have been too sluggish to leave the inn. Especially after I caught a glimpse of myself in the tiny mirror hanging above the washstand. I couldn’t help seeing I looked distinctly haggard. This adventure was not doing my mediocre looks a particle of good.

  I might as well give up primping for the duration, I decided, and arrived in the yard just in time to catch Caleb deep in conversation with a young man I felt sure must be Mary’s betrothed. Matthew stood beside a laden four-wheeled wagon drawn by two big oxen. He carried a goad and was dressed rather better than the farmers I’d seen.

  Money changed hands from Caleb’s to Matthew’s. No wonder I’d heard at least three different people say they were sorry to see us to leave. A week’s worth of business had been pumped into the local economy while we’d been here.

  Matthew spoke to his oxen and, as they started down the road, I saw Mary rush out the back door of the inn and catch up with him. They talked together for a moment, embracing before Matthew walked on.

  Probably discussing Caleb and me, and commenting on our peculiarities, I thought. I signaled the stable boy to throw my portmanteau into the carriage and went to stand by Caleb.

  “Why did you give Matthew money?” I asked.

  “I asked him a question which he answered. So I paid him.”

  “Just for answering a question? What question?” I persisted.

  “I asked him how the road is this morning. Only for some reason, I find myself reaching into my pocket every time someone speaks to me.

  Don’t ask me to explain. I guess it’s no big deal anyway. Speaking of roads, are you ready to go?” he asked.

  “Are you?” I countered.

  He hadn’t let me look at his leg this morning. I hadn’t believed him when he said he was doin’ good, and I didn’t believe him now though he said, sounding very southern, “Sure enough, sweetheart. I’m fine and dandy, and rarin’ to go.”

  It was an out and out lie if ever I’d heard one. Still, I had to take him at his word. We had to do what we had to do. Time waits for no man, and all that crap.

  “I’m riding up top with you,” I said.

  Caleb’s lips twitched. “You planning on catching me if I fall?”

  “Damn straight,” I told him. “Just don’t count on me driving these stupid horses.”

  He grinned, but his humor faded as soon as he lifted his leg for the first step up to the driver’s perch. I stayed out of his way, in case he had to step back. He accomplished the climb by using the strength in his arms, looking rather like a bear swarming up a honey tree. He didn’t appreciate me pointing the similarity out to him, I noticed.

  “Just for that, don’t expect a hand—or is it a paw?—from me.
<
br />   Boost yourself up here, if you can.”

  Of course I could, though hampered some by the long skirt and cloak I wore. “Jeez, how long until women get enough sense to wear pants?”

  Caleb surreptitiously wiped beads of sweat from his brow, took a deep, shaky breath, and drew the reins threw his gloved fingers. “Too long for us to sit around waiting for it to happen. Hyah,” he called to the team. Obediently, they leaned into their collars.

  The day was fine, though cold, a discomfort the sun didn’t do much to alleviate when it made an appearance through the clouds. Still, after two days of rain pouring out of the sky as if pumped through a hose, I found a bit of sunshine cheering. An incessant wind blew.

  Throughout the morning we climbed, hill after hill, over constantly rising ground. I understood now why Caleb had wanted the horses to rest yesterday. The break had given them new strength to plod through the gummy mud of the road; a road strung out through countryside apparently devoid of people. There were flocks of dirty gray sheep off in the distance, and small herds of dairy cattle. Even I knew Devon was famous for its clotted cream, so farmers and shepherds must live somewhere close on the moors. If so, they were sticking to the hidden valleys. The only signs of life I saw were birds being blown like leaves through the sky.

  For the most part, Caleb remained silent and I was content to let him be. Sometimes he acted as if he were running on automatic, he seemed so far away. Saving his energy, I thought. The reins lay slack along the horse’s backs as they plodded forward without need of a driver at the reins. They followed the road perfectly well on their own.

  Then at last the terrain changed. An edifice, grim and dark, came in sight, looming larger and larger as we approached. I knew this must be Dartmoor Prison. The structure had been built only two or three years before out of stone quarried locally on the moor. Already weathered, the rocks looked as if they had been heaved up by the violence of nature into this strange configuration instead of excavated from the soil.