“There is one thing that is for sure,” Dr. Otto said, his tone sober. “Wherever we are going, we are going soon. The battle is coming. I can feel it, pricking at my soles.”
Everyone within earshot stopped to listen. Dr. Otto did have a preternatural ability to anticipate the orders that Washington handed down. No one had realized Dr. Otto was getting his intelligence from his feet, however. Mrs. Otto looked down at her husband’s shoes with new respect.
“Don’t stand there gawping, Mr. Chauncey!” After her husband’s prognostication, Mrs. Otto was seized with anxiety and spurred to greater efficiency. “You heard the doctor. You are not pulling a cannon any longer. There is no time for idleness in the hospital service.”
Marcus put down the box of camphor and picked up another. Not every tyrant, he had discovered, was a man. Some wore skirts.
* * *
—
WHEN AT LAST the battle came, at a small town outside Philadelphia on the shores of the Brandywine, the chaos was unspeakable.
Marcus thought he knew what to expect. He had been with Dr. Otto since January, had inoculated hundreds of men, and had seen soldiers die of smallpox, typhus, camp fever, wounds acquired during foraging expeditions, exposure, and starvation.
But Marcus had never been behind the advancing army with the medical service, waiting for the casualties to arrive after the orders to fire had been given. From the rear, it was impossible to tell whether the Continental army was inches from victory or if the British had routed them.
The medical corps set up their first hospital in a mercantile just outside the battle lines, where the surgeons’ mates transformed the dry goods counter into an operating table. They stacked the dead in a small room where extra flour and sugar had once been stored. Those awaiting treatment lay in rows on the floor, filling the hall and the porch outside.
As the battle commenced, and the number of wounded and dying men rose, Dr. Cochran and Dr. Otto decided that a dressing station should be set up closer to the action to evaluate the wounded. Dr. Otto took Marcus to his new field hospital, leaving Dr. Cochran in charge at the store.
“Dressings. Why are there no dressings? I must have dressings,” Dr. Otto repeated in a low mutter as they set up the treatment areas.
But the dressings and bandages that Mrs. Otto had so assiduously rolled and packed had all been used. Marcus and Dr. Otto were forced to use blotting paper and soiled dressings from dead men instead, the blood wrung out into buckets that attracted the summer’s black flies.
“Hold him there,” Dr. Otto said, directing Marcus’s attention with a shift of his eyes. Underneath their hands, a soldier writhed in agony.
Marcus could see crushed bone and raw muscle through torn clothing. His stomach tightened.
“The patient may faint, Mr. Doc, but not the surgeon,” Dr. Otto said sternly. “Go out to the porch and take six lungfuls of air and then come back. It will steel your nerves.”
Marcus bolted for the door but was barred from leaving the farmhouse by a stranger who cast a long shadow in the hall.
“You.” The shadow pointed at him. “Come.”
“Yes, sir.” Marcus wiped the sweat from his eyes and blinked.
A man came into focus, one so large he filled the doorway. He was wearing a dark blue coat with a standing collar, few buttons, and no gold braid. French. Marcus recognized the cut and style from the parades he’d seen on Market Street in Philadelphia.
“Are you a doctor?” The Frenchman spoke perfect English, which was unusual. Most of his countrymen got by with hand gestures and the occasional English word.
“No. A surgeon. I’ll call—”
“There’s no time. You’ll do.” The man reached out a long arm and caught Marcus by the collar. His hands were crusted with blood, and his white breeches were smeared with splashes of red.
“Are you wounded?” Marcus asked his captor. The Frenchman seemed robust enough, but if he were to fall down, Marcus wasn’t sure he would have the strength to lift him to safety.
“I am the chevalier de Clermont—and I am not your patient,” the Frenchman replied, a sharp edge to his voice. He pointed again, his arm long and his fingers fine and aristocratic. “He is.”
Another French soldier lay on a makeshift stretcher, nearly as tall as his friend and covered with enough gold braid to draw the notice of even the most discriminating Philadelphia maiden. A French officer—an important one, by the looks of him. Marcus rushed to his side.
“It is nothing,” the fallen officer protested in a thick French accent. He struggled to sit up. “It is a very little hole—une petite éraflure. You must see to this man first.”
A young private from a Virginia regiment was slung, unconscious, between two friends. Blood poured from his knees.
“A musket ball went through the marquis’s left calf. It doesn’t appear to have hit the bone,” Marcus’s captor said. “His boot needs cutting off, and the wound needs cleaning and dressing.”
God help me, Marcus thought, staring down at the stretcher. This is the Marquis de Lafayette.
If Marcus didn’t call Dr. Otto immediately, Mrs. Otto would hold him down while Dr. Frederick beat him senseless. General Washington doted on Lafayette like a son. He was too important for the likes of Marcus.
“Sir, I’m no doctor,” Marcus protested. “Let me fetch—”
“That you, Doc? Thank God.” Vanderslice was helping Lieutenant Cuthbert hop in his direction. Cuthbert’s eyebrows were nearly singed off, and his face was the color of boiled lobster, but it was his bare, bloody foot that captured Marcus’s attention.
“Doc?” The tall Frenchman’s eyes narrowed.
“In de benen!” Vanderslice whistled as he watched a ball pass overhead. He gauged its trajectory with the quizzical attitude of a seasoned artilleryman. “They’re getting closer—or more accurate. If we don’t get out of the line of fire we’ll all be beyond Doc’s help.”
“Very well, Meneer Kaaskopper.” The French soldier’s bow was mocking.
“Cheesemonger?” Vanderslice bristled and loosened his hold on Cuthbert. “You take that back, kakker.”
“Carry the marquis to the front parlor. Now.” Marcus’s voice cracked like a gunshot. “Put Cuthbert on the porch, Vanderslice. I’ll see to him after Dr. Otto examines the marquis. And for Christ’s sake, get that Virginian to the kitchen. What’s his name?”
“Norman,” one of the Virginians shouted through the rising din. “Will Norman.”
“Can you hear me, Will?” Marcus lifted the Virginian’s chin and squeezed gently, hoping to rouse him. Dr. Otto didn’t believe in striking senseless patients.
“The marquis takes priority.” The chevalier gripped Marcus’s forearm with a bruising hold.
“Not with me, he doesn’t. This is America, kakker,” Marcus retorted. He had no idea what it meant, but if Vanderslice felt this fellow deserved the name, that was good enough.
“The Virginian,” the marquis said, trying to rise from the stretcher. “I promised him that he would not lose his limbs, Matthew.”
De Clermont’s head angled slightly toward one of the marquis’s stretcher-bearers. The man looked miserable, but nodded abjectly before punching Lafayette in the chin. This knocked the French aristocrat out completely.
“Thank you, Pierre.” De Clermont turned and strode into the farmhouse. “Do what the Yankee says until I return. I’m going to find another doctor.”
“Vas ist das?” Dr. Otto demanded of the chevalier de Clermont, who had plucked him off his patient and was dragging him toward Lafayette.
“The Marquis de Lafayette has been wounded,” de Clermont said brusquely. “Attend to him. Now.”
“You should have taken him to the mercantile,” Dr. Otto said. “This is a dressing station. We do not have—”
Dr. Cochran arrived with Dr. Frederick in tow.
“John. Thank God you’re here,” de Clermont said with visible relief.