NO BETTER COMPANION THAN THE RIFLE
September 15, 1777
BY EARLY SEPTEMBER, we had reached the main army, en-camped on the Hudson near the village of Saratoga. General Horatio Gates was in command, and received the ragtag and bobtail refugees and random militia with pleasure. For once, the army was tolerably well supplied, and we were equipped with clothes, decent food—and the remarkable luxury of a small tent, in honor of Jamie’s status as a colonel of militia, in spite of the fact that he had no men.
Knowing Jamie as I did, I was reasonably sure this would be a temporary state of affairs. For my part, I was delighted to have an actual cot to sleep on, a tiny table to eat from—and food to put on it on a fairly regular basis.
“I’ve brought ye a present, Sassenach.” Jamie plumped the bag down on the table with a pleasantly meaty-sounding thump and a waft of fresh blood. My mouth began to water.
“What is it? Birds?” It wasn’t ducks or geese; those had a distinctive scent about them, a musk of body oils, feathers, and decaying waterweeds. But partridges, say, or grouse … I swallowed heavily at the thought of pigeon pie.
“No, a book.” He pulled a small package wrapped in tattered oilcloth from the bulging sack and proudly set it in my hands.
“A book?” I said blankly.
He nodded encouragingly.
“Aye. Words printed on paper, ye’ll recall the sort of thing? I ken it’s been a long time.”
I gave him an eye and, attempting to ignore the rumbling of my stomach, opened the package. It was a well-worn pocket-sized copy of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman—Vol. I, and despite my disgruntlement at being presented with literature instead of food, I was interested. It had been a long time since I’d had a good book in my hands, and this was a story I’d heard of but never read.
“The owner must have been fond of it,” I said, turning the little volume over gently. The spine was nearly worn through, and the edges of the leather cover were rubbed shiny. A rather nasty thought struck me.
“Jamie … you didn’t… take this from a, er, a body, did you?” Stripping weapons, equipment, and usable clothing from fallen enemies was not considered looting; it was an unpleasant necessity. Still …
He shook his head, though, still rummaging in the bag.
“Nay, I found it at the edge of a wee creek. Dropped in flight, I expect.”
Well, that was better, though I was sure the man who had dropped it would regret the loss of this treasured companion. I opened the book at random and squinted at the small type.
“Sassenach.”
“Hmm?” I glanced up, jerked out of the text, to see Jamie regarding me with a mixture of sympathy and amusement.
“Ye need spectacles, don’t ye?” he said. “I hadna realized.”
“Nonsense!” I said, though my heart gave a small jump. “I see perfectly well.”
“Oh, aye?” He moved beside me and took the book out of my hand. Opening it to the middle, he held it in front of me. “Read that.”
I leaned backward, and he advanced in front of me.
“Stop that!” I said. “How do you expect me to read anything that close?”
“Stand still, then,” he said, and moved the book away from my face. “Can ye see the letters clear yet?”
“No,” I said crossly. “Farther. Farther. No, bloody farther!”
And at last was obliged to admit that I could not bring the letters into focus at a distance of nearer than about eighteen inches.
“Well, it’s very small type!” I said, flustered and discomfited. I had, of course, been aware that my eyesight was not so keen as it once had been, but to be so rudely confronted with the evidence that I was, if not blind as a bat, definitely in competition with moles in the farsight sweepstakes was a trifle upsetting.
“Twelve-point Caslon,” Jamie said, giving the text a professional glance. “I will say the leading’s terrible,” he added critically. “And the gutters are half what they should be. Even so—” He flipped the book shut and looked at me, one eyebrow raised. “Ye need spectacles, a nighean,” he repeated gently.
“Hmph!” I said. And on impulse picked up the book, opened it, and handed it to him. “So—read it yourself, why don’t you?”
Looking surprised and a little wary, he took the book and looked into it. Then extended his arm a little. And a little more. I watched, experiencing that same odd mix of amusement and sympathy, as he finally held the book nearly at arm’s length, and read, “So that the life of a writer, whatever he might fancy to the contrary, was not so much a state of composition, as a state of warfare; and his probation in it, precisely that of any other man militant upon earth—both depending alike, not half so much upon the degrees of his WIT—as his RESISTANCE.”
He closed it and looked at me, the edge of his mouth tucked back.
“Aye, well,” he said. “I can still shoot, at least.”
“And I can tell one herb from another by smell, I suppose,” I said, and laughed. “Just as well. I don’t suppose there’s a spectacle-maker this side of Philadelphia.”
“No, I suppose not,” he said ruefully. “When we get to Edinburgh, though, I ken just the man. I’ll buy ye a tortoiseshell pair for everyday, Sassenach, and a pair wi’ gold rims for Sundays.”
“Expect me to read the Bible with them, do you?” I inquired.
“Ah, no,” he said, “that’s just for show. After all”—he picked up my hand, which smelled of dill weed and coriander, and, lifting it to his mouth, ran the point of his tongue delicately down the lifeline in my palm—“the important things ye do by touch, aye?”
WE WERE INTERRUPTED by a cough from the door of the tent, and I turned to see a large, bearlike man with long gray hair loose upon his shoulders. He had an amiable face with a scar through the upper lip and a mild but keen eye, which went at once to the bag on the table.
I stiffened a little; there were strict prohibitions against the looting of farms, and while Jamie had taken these particular hens scratching in the wild, there was no way of proving that, and this gentleman, while dressed in casual homespun and hunting shirt, bore himself with the unmistakable authority of an officer.
“You’d be Colonel Fraser?” he said, with a nod toward Jamie, and extended a hand. “Daniel Morgan.”
I recognized the name, though the only thing I knew about Daniel Morgan—a footnote in Brianna’s eighth-grade history book—was that he was a famous rifleman. This wasn’t particularly useful; everyone knew that, and the camp had buzzed with interest when he had arrived at the end of August with a number of men.
He now glanced with interest at me, and then at the bag of chickens, flecked with incriminating tufts of feather.
“By your leave, ma’am,” he said, and without waiting for my leave, picked up the sack and pulled out a dead chicken. The neck flopped limp, showing the large, bloody hole through its head where an eye—well, two eyes—had once been. His scarred mouth pursed in a soundless whistle and he looked sharply up at Jamie.
“You do that a-purpose?” he asked.
“I always shoot them through the eye,” Jamie replied politely. “Dinna want to spoil the meat.”
A slow grin spread over Colonel Morgan’s face, and he nodded. “Come with me, Mr. Fraser. Bring your rifle.”
WE ATE THAT night at Daniel Morgan’s fire, and the company—filled with chicken stew—raised cups of beer and hooted to toast the addition of a new member to their elite corps. I hadn’t had a chance of private conversation with Jamie since Morgan’s abduction of him that afternoon, and rather wondered what he made of his apotheosis. But he seemed comfortable with the riflemen, though he glanced now and then at Morgan, with the look that meant he was still making up his mind.
For my part, I was extremely pleased. By their nature, riflemen fought from a distance—and often a distance much greater than a musket’s range. They were also valuable, and commanders were not likely to risk them in close combat. No soldier was safe, but some occupations had a much higher rate of mortality—and while I accepted the fact that Jamie was a born gambler, I liked him to have the best odds possible.
Many of the riflemen were Long Hunters, others what they called “over-mountain men,” and thus had no wives with them here. Some did, and I made instant acquaintance with the women by the simple expedient of admiring one young woman’s baby.
“Mrs. Fraser?” one older lady said, coming to plump down on the log beside me. “Are you the conjure-woman?”
“I am,” I said pleasantly. “They call me the White Witch.” That reared them back a bit, but the forbidden has its own strong appeal—and after all, what could I do in the middle of military camp, surrounded by their husbands and sons, all armed to the teeth?
Within minutes, I was dispensing advice on everything from menstrual cramps to colic. I caught a glimpse of Jamie, grinning at sight of my popularity, and gave him a discreet wave before turning back to my audience.
The men, of course, continued drinking, with outbreaks of raucous laughter, then the fall of voices as one man took over a story, only to have the cycle repeat. At one point, though, the atmosphere changed, so abruptly that I broke off an intense discussion of diaper rash and looked over toward the fire.
Daniel Morgan was rising laboriously to his feet, and there was a distinct air of anticipation among the watching men. Was he about to make a speech, welcoming Jamie?
“Oh, dear Lord,” said Mrs. Graham under her breath beside me. “He’s a-doing it again.”
I hadn’t time to ask her what he was a-doing, before he a-did it.
He shambled to the center of the gathering, where he stood swaying like an old bear, his long gray hair wafting in the wind of the fire and his eyes creased with amiability. They were focused on Jamie, though, I saw.
“Got something to show you, Mr. Fraser,” he said, loudly enough that the women who had still been talking stopped, every eye going to him. He took hold of the hem of his long woolen hunting shirt and pulled it off over his head. He dropped it on the ground, spread his arms like a ballet dancer, and stumped slowly round.
Everyone gasped, though from Mrs. Graham’s remark, most of them must have seen it before. His back was ridged with scars from neck to waist. Old scars, to be sure—but there wasn’t a square inch of unmarked skin on his back, massive as it was. Even I was shocked.
“The British did that,” he said conversationally, turning back and dropping his arms. “Give me four hundred and ninety-nine lashes. I counted.” The gathering erupted in laughter, and he grinned. “Was supposed to give me five hundred, but he missed one. I didn’t point it out to him.”
More laughter. Obviously, this was a frequent performance, but one that his audience loved. There were cheers and more toasts when he finished and went to sit beside Jamie, still naked to the waist, his shirt wadded casually in his hand.
Jamie’s face gave nothing away—but I saw that his shoulders had relaxed. Evidently he had made up his mind about Dan Morgan.
JAMIE LIFTED THE LID of my small iron pot, with an expression somewhere between caution and hope.
“Not food,” I informed him, rather unnecessarily, as he was wheezing in the manner of one who has inadvertently inhaled horseradish into the sinuses.
“I should hope not,” he said, coughing and wiping his eyes. “Christ, Sassenach, that’s worse than usual. D’ye mean to poison someone?”
“Yes, Plasmodium vivax. Put the lid back on.” I was simmering a decoction of cinchona bark and gallberries, for the treatment of malarial cases.
“Have we got any food?” he asked plaintively, dropping the lid back in place.
“In fact we have.” I reached into the cloth-covered pail at my feet and triumphantly pulled out a meat pie, its crust golden and shimmering with lard.
His face assumed the expression of an Israelite beholding the promised land, and he held out his hands, receiving the pie with the reverence due a precious object, though this impression was dispelled in the next instant as he took a large bite out of it.
“Where did ye get it?” he asked, after a few moments of blissful mastication. “Are there more?”
“There are. A nice prostitute named Daisy brought them for me.”
He paused, examined the pie critically for signs of its provenance, then shrugged and took another bite.
“Do I want to know what it was ye did for her, Sassenach?”
“Well, probably not while you’re eating, no. Have you seen Ian?”
“No.” The response might have been abbreviated by the exigencies of eating pie, but I caught the slightest shiftiness in his manner and stopped, staring at him.
“Do you know where Ian is?”
“More or less.” He kept his eyes fixed firmly on the meat pie, thus confirming my suspicions.
“Do I want to know what he’s doing?”
“No, ye don’t,” he said definitely.
“Oh, God.”
IAN MURRAY, having carefully dressed his hair with bear grease and a pair of turkey feathers, removed his shirt, leaving this rolled up with his tattered plaid under a log, and told Rollo to guard it, then walked across a small stretch of open ground toward the British camp.
“Hold!”
He turned a face of bored impassivity toward the sentry who had hailed him. The sentry, a boy of fifteen or so, was holding a musket whose barrel shook noticeably. Ian hoped the numpty wouldn’t shoot him by accident.
“Scout,” he said succinctly, and walked past the sentry without a backward glance, though he felt a spider strolling to and fro between his shoulder blades. Scout, he thought, and felt a small bubble of laughter rise up. Well, it was the truth, after all.
He strolled through the camp in the same manner, ignoring the occasional stare—though most of those who noticed him merely glanced at him and then away.
Burgoyne’s headquarters was easy to spot, a large tent of green canvas that sprouted like a toadstool among the neat aisles of small white tents that housed the soldiers. It was some distance away—and he didn’t mean to get any closer just now—but he could glimpse the comings and goings of staff officers, messengers … and the occasional scout, though none of these was Indian.
The Indian camps were on the far side of the army encampment, scattered in the forest outside the neat military grid. He was not sure whether he might meet some of Thayendanegea’s people, who might in turn recognize him. This wouldn’t be a difficulty, as he had said nothing regarding politics during his ill-fated visit to Joseph Brant’s house; they would likely accept him on sight without any awkward questions.
If he were to encounter some of the Huron and Oneida that Burgoyne employed to harass the Continentals, that might be a wee bit touchier. He had complete confidence in his ability to impress them with his identity as a Mohawk—but if they were either too suspicious or too impressed, he wouldn’t learn much.
He had learned a few things simply from his walk through the camp. Morale was not high; there was rubbish between some of the tents, and most of the washerwomen among the camp followers were sitting in the grass drinking gin, their kettles cold and empty. Still, the atmosphere in general seemed subdued but resolute; some men were dicing and drinking, but more were melting lead and making musket balls, repairing or polishing their weapons.
Food was short; he could sense hunger in the air, even without seeing the line of men waiting outside the baker’s tent. None of them looked at him; they were focused on the loaves that emerged—these broken in half before being handed out. Half rations, then; that was good.
None of this was important, though, and as for troop numbers and armament—these were well established by now. Uncle Jamie and Colonel Morgan and General Gates would like to know about the stores of powder and ammunition, but the artillery park and powder magazine would be well guarded, with no conceivable reason for an Indian scout to be nosing round there.
Something tugged at the corner of his vision and he glanced cautiously round, then hastily jerked his eyes forward, forcing himself to walk at the same pace. Jesus, it was the Englishman he’d saved from the swamp—the man who’d helped him get wee Denny free. And—
He clamped down on that thought. He kent it well enough; no one could look like that and not be. But he felt it dangerous even to acknowledge the thought to himself, lest it show somehow on his face.
He forced himself to breathe as usual and walk without concern, because a Mohawk scout would have none. Damn. He’d meant to spend the remaining hours of daylight with some of the Indians, picking up what information he could, and then after dark come quietly back into camp, stealing up within earshot of Burgoyne’s tent. If yon wee lieutenant was wuthering round, though, it might be too dangerous to try. The last thing he wanted was to meet the man face-to-face.
“Hey!” The shout ran into his flesh like a sharp splinter. He recognized the voice, knew it was aimed at him, but didn’t turn round. Six paces, five, four, three … He reached the end of an alley of tents and sheared off to the right, out of sight.
“Hey!” The voice was closer, almost behind him, and he broke into a run, heading for the cover of the trees. Only one or two soldiers saw him; one started to his feet but then stood, uncertain what to do, and he pushed past the man and dived into the trees.
“Well, that’s torn it,” he muttered, crouched behind a brush shelter. The tall lieutenant was questioning the man he’d shoved past. Both of them were looking toward the wood, the soldier shaking his head and shrugging helplessly.
Christ, the wee loon was coming toward him! He turned and stepped silently through the trees, working his way deeper into the wood. He could hear the Englishman behind him, crashing and rustling like a bear just out of its den in the spring.
“Murray!” he was shouting. “Murray—is that you? Wait!”
“Wolf’s Brother! Is that you?”
Ian said something very blasphemous under his breath in Gaelic, and turned to see who had addressed him in Mohawk.
“It is you! Where’s your demon wolf? Did something finally eat it?” His old friend Glutton was beaming at him, adjusting his breechclout after having a piss.
“I hope something eats you,” Ian said to his friend, keeping his voice low. “I need to get away. There is an Englishman following me.”
Glutton’s face changed at once, though it didn’t lose either its smile or its eager expression. The wide grin widened further, and he jerked his head behind him, indicating the opening to a trail. Then his face went suddenly slack, and he staggered from one side to the other, lurching in the direction Ian had come.
Ian barely made it out of sight before the Englishman called William came rushing into the clearing, only to run slap into Glutton, who clutched him by the lapels of his coat, gazed up soulfully into his eyes, and said, “Whisky?”
“I haven’t any whisky,” William said, brusque but not impolite, and tried to detach Glutton. This proved a difficult proposition; Glutton was much more agile than his squat appearance suggested, and the instant a hand was removed from one spot, it clung limpetlike to another. To add to the performance, Glutton began to tell the lieutenant—in Mohawk—the story of the famous hunt that had given him his name, pausing periodically to shout, “WHISHKEE!” and fling his arms about the Englishman’s body.
Ian spared no time to admire the Englishman’s own facility with language, which was considerable, but made off as fast as possible, circling to the west. He couldn’t go back through the camp. He might take refuge in one of the Indian camps, but it was possible that William would look for him there, once he’d escaped from Glutton.
“What the hell does he want with me?” he muttered, no longer bothering with silence but cleaving the brush with a minimum of breakage. William the lieutenant had to know he was a Continental, because of Denny Hunter and the deserter game. Yet he had not raised a general alarm upon seeing him—only called out in surprise, and then as one wanting conversation.
Well, maybe that was a trick. Wee William might be young, but he was not stupid. Couldn’t be, considering who his fath—and the man was chasing him.
He could hear voices fading behind him—he thought that William had perhaps now recognized Glutton, in spite of the fact that he had been half dead with fever when they met. If so, he would know Glutton was his, Ian’s, friend—and instantly detect the ruse. But it didn’t matter; he was well into the wood by now. William would never catch him.
The smell of smoke and fresh meat caught his nose, and he turned, going downhill toward the bank of a small stream. There was a Mohawk camp there; he knew it at once.
He paused, though. The scent of it, the knowledge of it, had drawn him like a moth—but he mustn’t enter. Not now. If William had recognized Glutton, the first place he would look for Ian was the Mohawks’ camp. And if she should be there…
“You, again?” said an unpleasant Mohawk voice. “You don’t learn, do you?”
Actually, he did. He’d learned enough to hit first. He turned on his heel and swung from somewhere behind his knees, continuing up with all the power in his body. “Aim to hit through the bugger’s face,” Uncle Jamie had instructed him when he began to go about in Edinburgh alone. It was, as usual, good advice.
His knuckles burst with a crunch that shot blue lightning straight up his arm and into his neck and jaw—but Sun Elk flew backward two paces and crashed into a tree.
Ian stood panting and gently touching his knuckles, recalling too late that Uncle Jamie’s advice had begun with, “Hit them in the soft parts if ye can.” It didn’t matter; it was worth it. Sun Elk was moaning softly, his eyelids fluttering. Ian was debating the merits of saying something of a dismissive nature and walking grandly away, versus kicking him in the balls again before he could get up, when William the Englishman walked out from the trees.
He looked from Ian, still breathing as though he’d run a mile, to Sun Elk, who had rolled onto his hands and knees but didn’t seem to want to get up. Blood was dripping from his face onto the dead leaves. Splat. Splat.
“I have no wish to intrude upon a private affair,” William said politely. “But I would appreciate a word with you, Mr. Murray.” He turned, not waiting to see if Ian would come, and walked back into the trees.
Ian nodded, having no notion what to say, and followed the Englishman, cherishing in his heart the last faint splat! of Sun Elk’s blood.
The Englishman was leaning against a tree, watching the Mohawk camp by the stream below. A woman was stripping meat from a fresh deer’s carcass, hanging it to dry on a frame. She wasn’t Works With Her Hands.
William switched his dark-blue gaze to Ian, giving him an odd feeling. Ian already felt odd, though, so it didn’t really matter.
“I am not going to ask what you were doing in the camp.”
“Oh, aye?”
“No. I wished to thank you for the horse and money and to ask you whether you have seen Miss Hunter, since you so kindly left me in the keeping of her and her brother.”
“I have, aye.” The knuckles on his right hand were already puffed to twice their size and starting to throb. He’d go and see Rachel; she’d bandage them for him. The thought was so intoxicating that he didn’t at first realize that William was waiting—not all that patiently—for him to expound on his statement.
“Ah. Aye, the… er… the Hunters are wi’ the army. The… um… other army,” he said, a little awkwardly. “Her brother’s an army surgeon.”
William’s face didn’t change but seemed somehow to solidify. Ian watched it in fascination. He’d seen Uncle Jamie’s face do the exact same thing, many times, and knew what it meant.
“Here?” William said.
“Aye, here.” He inclined his head toward the American camp. “There, I mean.”
“I see,” William said calmly. “When you see her again, will you give her my kindest regards, then? And her brother, too, of course.”
“Oh… aye,” Ian said, thinking, Like that, is it? Well, ye’re no going to see her yourself, and she’d have nothing to do wi’ a soldier anyway, so think again! “Certainly,” he added, belatedly aware that his only value to William at this point lay in his supposed role as messenger to Rachel Hunter, and wondering just how much that was worth.
“Thank you.” William’s face had lost that look of iron; he was examining Ian carefully, and at last nodded.
“A life for a life, Mr. Murray,” he said quietly. “We’re quits. Don’t let me see you next time. I may not have a choice.”
He turned and left, the red of his uniform visible for some time through the trees.
ONE JUST MAN
September 19, 1777
THE SUN ROSE invisible, to the sound of drums. Drums on both sides; we could hear the British reveille, and by the same token they must hear ours. The riflemen had had a brief skirmish with British troops two days before, and owing to the work of Ian and the other scouts, General Gates knew very well the size and disposition of Burgoyne’s army. Ko?ciuszko had chosen Bemis Heights for a defensive position; it was a high river bluff, with numerous small ravines down to the river, and his crews had labored like madmen for the last week with shovels and axes. The Americans were ready. More or less.
The women were not, of course, admitted to the councils of the generals. Jamie was, though, and thus I heard all about the argument between General Gates, who was in command, and General Arnold, who thought he should be. General Gates, who wanted to sit tight on Bemis Heights and wait for the British attack, versus General Arnold, who argued vehemently that the Americans must make the first move, forcing the British regulars to fight through the thickly wooded ravines, ruining their formations and making them vulnerable to the riflemen’s sniper fire, falling back—if necessary—to the breastworks and entrenchments on the Heights.
“Arnold’s won,” Ian reported, popping briefly up out of the fog to snag a piece of toasted bread. “Uncle Jamie’s away wi’ the riflemen already. He says he’ll see ye this evening, and in the meantime …” He bent and gently kissed my cheek, then grinned impudently and vanished.
My own stomach was knotted, though with the pervasive excitement as much as with fear. The Americans were a ragged, motley lot, but they had had time to prepare, they knew what was coming, and they knew what was at stake. This battle would decide the campaign in the north. Either Burgoyne would overcome and march on, trapping George Washington’s army near Philadelphia between his forces and General Howe’s—or his army of invasion would be brought to a halt and knocked out of the war, in which case Gates’s army could move south to reinforce Washington. The men all knew it, and the fog seemed electric with their anticipation.
By the sun, it was near ten o’clock when the fog lifted. The shots had begun some time earlier, brief, distant pings of rifle fire. Daniel Morgan’s men were taking out the pickets, I thought—and knew from what Jamie had said the night before that they were meant to aim for the officers, to kill those soldiers wearing silver gorgets. I hadn’t slept the night before, envisioning Lieutenant Ransom and the silver gorget at his throat. In fog, in the dust of battle, at a distance… I swallowed, but my throat stayed stubbornly closed; I couldn’t even drink water.
Jamie had slept, with the stubborn concentration of a soldier, but had waked in the deep hours of the night, his shirt soaked with sweat in spite of the chill, trembling. I didn’t ask what he had been dreaming about; I knew. I had got him a dry shirt and made him lie down again with his head in my lap, then stroked his head until he closed his eyes—but I thought he hadn’t slept again.
It wasn’t chilly now; the fog had burned away, and we heard sustained rattles of gunfire, patchy, but repeated volleys. Faint, distant shouting, but impossible to make out who was shouting what at whom. Then the sudden crash of a British fieldpiece, a resounding boom that struck the camp silent. A lull, and then full-scale battle broke out, shooting and screaming and the intermittent thud of cannon. Women huddled together or set about grimly packing up their belongings, in case we should have to flee.
About midday, a relative silence fell. Was it over? We waited. After a little, children began whining to be fed and a sort of tense normality descended—but nothing happened. We could hear moaning and calls for help from men wounded—but no wounded were brought in.
I was ready. I had a small mule-drawn wagon, equipped with bandages and medical equipment, and a small tent as well, which I could set up in case I needed to perform surgery in the rain. The mule was staked nearby, grazing placidly and ignoring both the tension and the occasional burst of musketry.
In the middle of the afternoon, hostilities broke out again, and this time the camp followers and cook wagons actually began to retreat. There was artillery on both sides, enough of it that the continuous cannonading rolled like thunder, and I saw a huge cloud of black powder smoke rise up from the bluff. It was not quite mushroom-shaped, but made me think nonetheless of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I sharpened my knife and scalpels for the dozenth time.
IT WAS NEAR evening; the sun sank invisibly, staining the fog with a dull and sullen orange. The evening wind off the river was rising, lifting the fog from the ground and sending it scudding in billows and swirls.
Clouds of black powder smoke lay heavy in the hollows, lifting more slowly than the lighter shreds of mist and lending a suitable stink of brimstone to a scene that was—if not hellish—at least bloody eerie.
Here and there a space would suddenly be cleared, like a curtain pulled back to show the aftermath of battle. Small dark figures moved in the distance, darting and stooping, stopping suddenly, heads uplifted like baboons keeping watch for a leopard. Camp followers; the wives and whores of the soldiers, come like crows to scavenge the dead.
Children, too. Under a bush, a boy of nine or ten straddled the body of a red-coated soldier, smashing at the face with a heavy rock. I stopped, paralyzed at the sight, and saw the boy reach into the gaping, bloodied mouth and wrench out a tooth. He slipped the bloody prize into a bag that hung by his side, groped farther, tugging, and, finding no more teeth loose, picked up his rock in a businesslike way and went back to work.
I felt bile rise in my throat and hurried on, swallowing. I was no stranger to war, to death and wounds. But I had never been so near a battle before; I had never before come on a battlefield where the dead and wounded still lay, before the ministrations of medics and burial details.
There were calls for help and occasional moans or screams, ringing disembodied out of the mist, reminding me uncomfortably of Highland stories of the urisge, the doomed spirits of the glen. Like the heroes of such stories, I didn’t stop to heed their call but pressed on, stumbling over small rises, slipping on damp grass.
I had seen photographs of the great battlefields, from the American Civil War to the beaches of Normandy. This was nothing like that—no churned earth, no heaps of tangled limbs. It was still, save for the noises of the scattered wounded and the voices of those calling, like me, for a missing friend or husband.
Shattered trees lay toppled by artillery; in this light, I might have thought the bodies turned into logs themselves, dark shapes lying long in the grass—save for the fact that some of them still moved. Here and there, a form stirred feebly, victim of war’s sorcery, struggling against the enchantment of death.
I paused and shouted into the mist, calling his name. I heard answering calls, but none in his voice. Ahead of me lay a young man, arms outflung, a look of blank astonishment on his face, blood pooled round his upper body like a great halo. His lower half lay six feet away. I walked between the pieces, keeping my skirts close, nostrils pinched tight against the thick iron smell of blood.
The light was fading now, but I saw Jamie as soon as I came over the edge of the next rise. He was lying on his face in the hollow, one arm flung out, the other curled beneath him. The shoulders of his dark blue coat were nearly black with damp, and his legs thrown wide, booted heels askew.
The breath caught in my throat, and I ran down the slope toward him, heedless of grass clumps, mud, and brambles. As I got close, though, I saw a scuttling figure dart out from behind a nearby bush and dash toward him. It fell to its knees beside him and, without hesitation, grasped his hair and yanked his head to one side. Something glinted in the figure’s hand, bright even in the dull light.
“Stop!” I shouted. “Drop it, you bastard!”
Startled, the figure looked up as I flung myself over the last yards of space. Narrow red-rimmed eyes glared up at me out of a round face streaked with soot and grime.
“Get off!” she snarled. “I found ’im first!” It was a knife in her hand; she made little jabbing motions at me, in an effort to drive me away.
I was too furious—and too afraid for Jamie—to be scared for myself.
“Let go of him! Touch him and I’ll kill you!” I said. My fists were clenched, and I must have looked as though I meant it, for the woman flinched back, loosing her hold on Jamie’s hair.
“He’s mine,” she said, thrusting her chin pugnaciously at me. “Go find yourself another.”
Another form slipped out of the mist and materialized by her side. It was the boy I had seen earlier, filthy and scruffy as the woman herself. He had no knife but clutched a crude metal strip, cut from a canteen. The edge of it was dark, with rust or blood.
He glared at me. “He’s ours, Mum said! Get on wi’ yer! Scat!”
Not waiting to see whether I would or not, he flung a leg over Jamie’s back, sat on him, and began to grope in the side pockets of his coat.
“ ’E’s still alive, Mum,” he advised. “I can feel ’is ’eart beatin’. Best slit his throat quick; I don’t think ’e’s bad hurt.”
I grabbed the boy by the collar and jerked him off Jamie’s body, making him drop his weapon. He squealed and flailed at me with arms and elbows, but I kneed him in the rump, hard enough to jar his backbone, then got my elbow locked about his neck in a stranglehold, his skinny wrist vised in my other hand.
“Leave him go!” The woman’s eyes narrowed like a weasel’s, and her eye-teeth shone in a snarl.
I didn’t dare take my eyes away from the woman’s long enough to look at Jamie. I could see him, though, at the edge of my vision, head turned to the side, his neck gleaming white, exposed and vulnerable.
“Stand up and step back,” I said, “or I’ll choke him to death, I swear I will!”
She crouched over Jamie’s body, knife in hand, as she measured me, trying to make up her mind whether I meant it. I did.
The boy struggled and twisted in my grasp, his feet hammering against my shins. He was small for his age, and thin as a stick, but strong nonetheless; it was like wrestling an eel. I tightened my hold on his neck; he gurgled and quit struggling. His hair was thick with rancid grease and dirt, the smell of it rank in my nostrils.
Slowly, the woman stood up. She was much smaller than I, and scrawny with it—bony wrists stuck out of the ragged sleeves. I couldn’t guess her age—under the filth and the puffiness of malnutrition, she might have been anything from twenty to fifty.
“My man lies yonder, dead on the ground,” she said, jerking her head at the fog behind her. “ ’E hadn’t nothing but his musket, and the sergeant’ll take that back.”
Her eyes slid toward the distant wood, where the British troops had retreated. “I’ll find a man soon, but I’ve children to feed in the meantime—two besides the boy.” She licked her lips, and a coaxing note entered her voice. “You’re alone; you can manage better than we can. Let me have this one—there’s more over there.” She pointed with her chin toward the slope behind me, where the rebel dead and wounded lay.
My grasp must have loosened slightly as I listened, for the boy, who had hung quiescent in my grasp, made a sudden lunge and burst free, diving over Jamie’s body to roll at his mother’s feet.
He got up beside her, watching me with rat’s eyes, beady-bright and watchful. He bent and groped about in the grass, coming up with the makeshift dagger.
“Hold ’er off, Mum,” he said, his voice raspy from the choking. “I’ll take ’im.”
From the corner of my eye, I had caught the gleam of metal, half buried in the grass.
“Wait!” I said, and took a step back. “Don’t kill him. Don’t.” A step to the side, another back. “I’ll go, I’ll let you have him, but…” I lunged to the side and got my hand on the cold metal hilt.
I had picked up Jamie’s sword before. It was a cavalry sword, larger and heavier than the usual, but I didn’t notice now.
I snatched it up and swung it in a two-handed arc that ripped the air and left the metal ringing in my hands.
Mother and son jumped back, identical looks of ludicrous surprise on their round, grimy faces.
“Get away!” I said.
Her mouth opened, but she didn’t say anything.
“I’m sorry for your man,” I said. “But my man lies here. Get away, I said!” I raised the sword, and the woman stepped back hastily, dragging the boy by the arm.
She turned and went, muttering curses at me over her shoulder, but I paid no attention to what she said. The boy’s eyes stayed fixed on me as he went, dark coals in the dim light. He would know me again—and I him.
They vanished in the mist, and I lowered the sword, which suddenly weighed too much to hold. I dropped it on the grass and fell to my knees beside Jamie.
My own heart was pounding in my ears and my hands were shaking with reaction, as I groped for the pulse in his neck. I turned his head and could see it, throbbing steadily just below his jaw.
“Thank God!” I whispered to myself. “Oh, thank God!”
I ran my hands over him quickly, searching for injury before I moved him. I didn’t think the scavengers would come back; I could hear the voices of a group of men, distant on the ridge behind me—a rebel detail coming to fetch the wounded.
There was a large knot on his brow, already turning purple. Nothing else that I could see. The boy had been right, I thought, with gratitude; he wasn’t badly hurt. Then I rolled him onto his back and saw his hand.
Highlanders were accustomed to fight with sword in one hand, targe in the other, the small leather shield used to deflect an opponent’s blow. He hadn’t had a targe.
The blade had struck him between the third and fourth fingers of his right hand and sliced through the hand itself, a deep, ugly wound that split his palm and the body of his hand, halfway to the wrist.
Despite the horrid look of the wound, there wasn’t much blood; the hand had been curled under him, his weight acting as a pressure bandage. The front of his shirt was smeared with red, deeply stained over his heart. I ripped open his shirt and felt inside, to be sure that the blood was from his hand, but it was. His chest was cool and damp from the grass but unscathed, his nipples shrunken and stiff with chill.
“That… tickles,” he said in a drowsy voice. He pawed awkwardly at his chest with his left hand, trying to brush my hand away.
“Sorry,” I said, repressing the urge to laugh with the joy of seeing him alive and conscious. I got an arm behind his shoulders and helped him to sit up. He looked drunk, with one eye swollen half shut and grass in his hair. He acted drunk, too, swaying alarmingly from side to side.