* * *
The cottage had filled up with twenty or thirty men by midafternoon, and my two-woman staff was hopping. The house normally held a family of five or six, and the men able to stand were standing on the plaids of those lying down. In the distance across the small flat, I could see officers coming and going to the manse, the minister’s residence commandeered by the High Command. I kept an eye on the battered door, which hung constantly ajar, but didn’t see Jamie among those arriving to report casualties and receive congratulations.
I batted away the recurrent small gnat of worry, telling myself that I didn’t see him among the wounded, either. I had not had time since early on to visit the small tent up the slope, where the dead of the battle were being laid out in orderly rows, as though awaiting a last inspection. But surely he could not be there.
Surely not, I told myself.
The door swung open and Jamie walked in.
I felt my knees give slightly at sight of him, and put out a hand to steady myself on the cottage’s wooden chimney. He had been looking for me; his eyes darted around the room before they lighted on me, and a heart-stopping smile lit his face.
He was filthy, grimed with black-powder smoke, splattered with blood, and barefoot, legs and feet caked with mud. But he was whole, and standing. I wasn’t inclined to quibble with the details.
Cries of greeting from some of the wounded men on the floor dragged his gaze away from me. He glanced down, smiled at George McClure, grinning up at his commander despite an ear that hung from his head by a sliver of flesh, then looked quickly back at me.
Thank God, his dark-blue eyes said, and Thank God, my own echoed back.
There was no time for more; wounded men were still coming in, and every able-bodied nonmilitary person in the village had been pressed into service to care for them. Archie Cameron, Lochiel’s doctor brother, bustled back and forth among the cottages, nominally in charge, and actually doing some good here and there.
I had arranged that any Fraser men from Lallybroch should be brought to the cottage where I was conducting my own triage, quickly evaluating the severity of wounds, sending the still-mobile down the street to be dealt with by Jenny Cameron, the dying across to Archie Cameron’s headquarters in the church—I did think him competent to dispense laudanum, and the surroundings might provide some consolation.
Serious wounds I dealt with as I could. Broken bones next door, where two surgeons from the Macintosh regiment could apply splints and bandages. Nonfatal chest wounds propped as comfortably as possible against one wall in a half-sitting position to assist breathing; lacking oxygen or facilities for surgical repair, there was little else I could do for them. Serious head wounds were dispatched to the church with the obviously dying; I had nothing to offer them, and they were better off in the hands of God, if not Archie Cameron.
Shattered and missing limbs and abdominal wounds were the worst. There was no possibility of sterility; all I could do was to cleanse my own hands between patients, browbeat my assistants into doing the same—so long as they were under my direct scrutiny, anyway—and try to ensure that the dressings we applied had all been boiled before application. I knew, beyond doubt, that similar precautions were being ignored as a waste of time in the other cottages, despite my lectures. If I couldn’t convince the sisters and physicians of L’H?pital des Anges of the existence of germs, I was unlikely to succeed with a mixed bag of Scottish housewives and army surgeons who doubled as farriers.
I blocked my mind to the thought of the men with treatable injuries who would die from infection. I could give the men of Lallybroch, and a few more, the benefit of clean hands and bandages; I couldn’t worry about the rest. One dictum I had learned on the battlefields of France in a far distant war: You cannot save the world, but you might save the man in front of you, if you work fast enough.
Jamie stood a moment in the doorway, assessing the situation, then moved to help with the heavy work, shifting patients, lifting cauldrons of hot water, fetching buckets of clean water from the well in Tranent square. Relieved of fear for him, and caught up in the whirlwind of work and detail, I forgot about him for the most part.
The triage station of any field hospital always bears a strong resemblance to an abattoir, and this was no exception. The floor was pounded dirt, not a bad surface, insofar as it absorbed blood and other liquids. On the other hand, saturated spots did become muddy, making the footing hazardous.
Steam billowed from the boiling cauldron over the fire, adding to the heat of exertion. Everyone streamed with moisture; the workers with the sticky wash of exercise, the wounded men with the stinking sweat of fear and long-spent rage. The dissipating fog of black-powder smoke from the battlefield below drifted through the streets of Tranent and in through the open doors, its eye-stinging haze threatening the purity of the freshly boiled linens, hung dripping from the mackeral-drying rack by the fire.
The flow of the wounded came in waves, washing into the cottage like surf-scour, churning everything into confusion with the arrival of each fresh surge. We thrashed about, fighting the pull of the tide, and were left at last, gasping, to deal with the new flotsam left behind as each wave ebbed.
There are lulls, of course, in the most frantic activity. These began to come more frequently in the afternoon, and toward sundown, as the flow of wounded dropped to a trickle, we began to settle into a routine of caring for the patients who remained with us. It was still busy, but there was at last time to draw breath, to stand in one place for a moment and look around.
I was standing by the open door, breathing in the freshening breeze of the offshore wind, when Jamie came back into the cottage, carrying an armload of firewood. Dumping it by the hearth, he came back to stand by me, one hand resting briefly on my shoulder. Trickles of sweat ran down the edge of his jaw, and I reached up to dab them with a corner of my apron.
“Have you been to the other cottages?” I asked.
He nodded, breath beginning to slow. His face was so blotched with smoke and blood that I couldn’t tell for sure, but thought he looked pale.
“Aye. There’s still looting going on in the field, and a good many men still missing. All of our own wounded are here, though—none elsewhere.” He nodded at the far end of the cottage where the three wounded men from Lallybroch lay or sat companionably near the hearth, trading good-natured insults with the other Scots. The few English wounded in this cottage lay by themselves, near the door. They talked much less, content to contemplate the bleak prospects of captivity.
“None bad?” he asked me, looking at the three.
I shook my head. “George McClure might lose the ear; I can’t tell. But no; I think they’ll be all right.”
“Good.” He gave me a tired smile, and wiped his hot face on the end of his plaid. I saw he had wrapped it carelessly around his body instead of draping it over one shoulder. Probably to keep it out of the way, but it must have been hot.
Turning to go, he reached for the water bottle hanging from the door peg.
“Not that one!” I said.
“Why not?” he asked, puzzled. He shook the wide-mouthed flask, with a faint sloshing sound. “It’s full.”
“I know it is,” I said. “That’s what I’ve been using as a urinal.”
“Oh.” Holding the bottle by two fingers, he reached to replace it, but I stopped him.
“No, go ahead and take it,” I suggested. “You can empty it outside, and fill this one at the well.” I handed him another gray stone bottle, identical with the first.
“Try not to get them mixed up,” I said helpfully.
“Mmphm,” he replied, giving me a Scottish look to go along with the noise, and turned toward the door.
“Hey!” I said, seeing him clearly from the back. “What’s that?”
“What?” he said, startled, trying to peer over one shoulder.
“That!” My fingers traced the muddy shape I had spotted above the sagging plaid, printed on the grubby linen of his shirt with the clarity of a stencil. “It looks like a horseshoe,” I said disbelievingly.
“Oh, that,” he said, shrugging.
“A horse stepped on you?”
“Well, not on purpose,” he said, defensive on the horse’s behalf. “Horses dinna like to step on people; I suppose it feels a wee bit squashy underfoot.”
“I would suppose it does,” I agreed, preventing his attempts to escape by holding on to one sleeve. “Stand still. How the hell did this happen?”
“It’s no matter,” he protested. “The ribs don’t feel broken, only a trifle bruised.”
“Oh, just a trifle,” I agreed sarcastically. I had worked the stained fabric free in back, and could see the clear, sharp imprint of a curved horseshoe, embedded in the fair flesh of his back, just above the waist. “Christ, you can see the horseshoe nails.” He winced involuntarily as I ran my finger over the marks.
It had happened during one brief sally by the mounted dragoons, he explained. The Highlanders, mostly unaccustomed to horses other than the small, shaggy Highland ponies, were convinced that the English cavalry horses had been trained to attack them with hooves and teeth. Panicked at the horses’ charge, they had dived under the horses’ hooves, slashing ferociously at legs and bellies with swords and scythes and axes.
“And you think they aren’t?”
“Of course not, Sassenach,” he said impatiently. “He wasna trying to attack me. The rider wanted to get away, but he was sealed in on either side. There was noplace to go but over me.”
Seeing this realization dawn in the eyes of the horse’s rider, a split second before the dragoon applied spurs to his mount’s sides, Jamie had flung himself flat on his face, arms over his head.
“Then the next was the breath bursting from my lungs,” he explained. “I felt the dunt of it, but it didna hurt. Not then.” He reached back and rubbed a hand absently over the mark, grimacing slightly.
“Right,” I said, dropping the edge of the shirt. “Have you had a piss since then?”
He stared at me as though I had gone suddenly barmy.
“You’ve had four-hundredweight of horse step smack on one of your kidneys,” I explained, a trifle impatiently. There were wounded men waiting. “I want to know if there’s blood in your urine.”
“Oh,” he said, his expression clearing. “I don’t know.”
“Well, let’s find out, shall we?” I had placed my big medicine box out of the way in one corner; now I rummaged about in it and withdrew one of the small glass urinoscopy cups I had acquired from L’H?pital des Anges.
“Fill it up and give it back to me.” I handed it to him and turned back toward the hearth, where a cauldron full of boiling linens awaited my attention.
I glanced back to find him still regarding the cup with a slightly quizzical expression.
“Need help, lad?” A big English soldier on the floor was peering up from his pallet, grinning at Jamie.
A flash of white teeth showed in the filth of Jamie’s face. “Oh, aye,” he said. He leaned down, offering the cup to the Englishman. “Here, hold this for me while I aim.”
A ripple of mirth passed through the men nearby, distracting them momentarily from their distress.
After a moment’s hesitation, the Englishman’s big fist closed around the fragile cup. The man had taken a dose of shrapnel in one hip, and his grip was none too steady, but he still smiled, despite the sweat dewing his upper lip.
“Sixpence says you can’t make it,” he said. He moved the cup, so it stood on the floor three or four feet from Jamie’s bare toes. “From where you stand now.”
Jamie looked down thoughtfully, rubbing his chin with one hand as he measured the distance. The man whose arm I was dressing had stopped groaning, absorbed in the developing drama.
“Weel, I’ll no say it would be easy,” Jamie said, letting his Scots broaden on purpose. “But for sixpence? Aye, weel, that’s a sum might make it worth the effort, eh?” His eyes, always faintly slanted, turned catlike with his grin.
“Easy money, lad,” said the Englishman, breathing heavily but still grinning. “For me.”
“Two silver pennies on the lad,” called one of the MacDonald clansmen in the chimney corner.
An English soldier, coat turned inside-out to denote his prisoner status, fumbled inside the skirts, searching for the opening of his pocket.
“Ha! A pouch of weed against!” he called, triumphantly holding up a small cloth bag of tobacco.
Shouted wagers and rude remarks began to fly through the air as Jamie squatted down and made a great show of estimating the distance to the cup.
“All right,” he said at last, standing up and throwing back his shoulders. “Are ye set, then?”
The Englishman on the floor chuckled. “Oh, I’m set, lad.”
“Well, then.”
An expectant hush fell over the room. Men raised on their elbows to watch, ignoring both discomfort and enmity in their interest.
Jamie glanced around the room, nodded at his Lallybroch men, then slowly raised the hem of his kilt and reached beneath it. He frowned in concentration, groping randomly, then let an expression of doubt flit across his countenance.
“I had it when I went out,” he said, and the room erupted in laughter.
Grinning at the success of his joke, he raised his kilt further, grasped his clearly visible weapon and took careful aim. He squinted his eyes, bent his knees slightly, and his fingers tightened their grip.
Nothing happened.
“It’s a misfire!” crowed one of the English.
“His powder’s wet!” Another hooted.
“No balls to your pistol, lad?” jibed his accomplice on the floor.
Jamie squinted dubiously at his equipment, bringing on a fresh riot of howls and catcalls. Then his face cleared.
“Ha! My chamber’s empty, that’s all!” He snaked an arm toward the array of bottles on the wall, cocked an eyebrow at me, and when I nodded, took one down and upended it over his open mouth. The water splashed over his chin and onto his shirt, and his Adam’s apple bobbed theatrically as he drank.
“Ahhh.” He lowered the bottle, swabbed some of the grime from his face with a sleeve, and bowed to his audience.
“Now, then,” he began, reaching down. He caught sight of my face, though, and stopped in mid-motion. He couldn’t see the open door at his back, nor the man standing in it, but the sudden quiet that fell upon the room must have told him that all bets were off.