He paused, frowning, and turned his head to survey the littered field. His nose was straight as a knife blade, just that tiny bit too long. I closed my eyes for an instant, dizzy, sure I was hallucinating—but opened them again at once, knowing that I wasn’t.
“William Ransom?” I blurted, and his head jerked toward me, surprised. Blue eyes, dark blue, Fraser cat-eyes, narrowed to a slant against the sun.
“I, er, beg your pardon.” God, what did you speak to him for? But I couldn’t have helped it. My fingers were pressed against Walter’s leg, holding the bandage; I could feel his femoral pulse against my fingertips, bumping as erratically as my own.
“Do I know you, ma’am?” William asked, with the shadow of a bow.
“Well, yes, you do,” I said, rather apologetically. “You stayed for a little time with my family, some years ago. A place called Fraser’s Ridge.”
His face changed at once at the name, and his gaze sharpened, focusing on me with interest.
“Why, yes,” he said slowly. “I recall. You are Mrs. Fraser, are you not?” I could see his thoughts working, and was fascinated; he hadn’t got Jamie’s way of hiding what he thought—or if he did, wasn’t using it. I could see him wondering—nice, well-mannered boy that he was—what the proper social response to this awkward situation might be, and—a quick glance over his shoulder at the cabin—how the demands of his duty might conflict with it.
His shoulders stiffened with decision, but before he could say anything, I leapt in.
“Do you think it might be possible to find some buckets for water? And bandages?” Most of the women had already torn strips from their petticoats to serve this function; much longer, and we’d all be half naked.
“Yes,” he said slowly, and glanced down at Walter, then toward the road. “Buckets, yes. There’s a surgeon with the division behind us; when I have a moment, I’ll send someone back with a request for bandages.”
“And food?” I asked hopefully. I hadn’t eaten more than a handful of half-ripe berries in nearly two days. I wasn’t suffering hunger pangs—my stomach was in knots—but I was having bouts of light-headedness, spots passing before my eyes. No one else was in much better case; we were going to lose a number of the invalids to the heat and simple weakness, if we weren’t given food and shelter soon.
He hesitated, and I saw his eyes flit over the field, obviously estimating numbers.
“That may be… our supply train is—” His lips firmed, and he shook his head. “I’ll see what can be done. Your servant, ma’am.” He bowed politely and turned away, striding toward the road. I watched him go, fascinated, the soggy dressing limp in my hand.
He was dark-haired, though the sun struck a gleam of red from the crown of his head; he wore no powder. His voice had deepened—well, of course it had; he’d been no more than twelve the last time I met him—and the sheer oddness of hearing Jamie speaking in a cultured English accent made me want to laugh, despite our precarious situation and my worry for Jamie and Ian. I shook my head and returned to the task at hand.
A British private arrived an hour after my conversation with Lieutenant Ransom, bearing four buckets, which he dropped unceremoniously at my side without remark before heading back to the road. Two hours later, a sweating orderly came trundling through the trampled wheat with two large haversacks filled with bandages. Interestingly enough, he headed directly for me, which made me wonder just how William had described me.
“Thank you.” I took the sacks of bandages with gratitude. “Do you—do you think we might get some food soon?”
The orderly was looking over the field, grimacing. Of course—the invalids were likely about to become his responsibility. He turned back to me, though, civil but obviously very tired.
“I doubt it, ma’am. The supply train is two days behind us, and the troops are living off what they’re carrying or what they find as they go.” He nodded toward the road; on the other side, I could see a number of English soldiers making camp. “I’m sorry,” he added formally, and turned to go.
“Oh.” He stopped, and taking the strap of his canteen off, handed it to me. It was heavy and gurgled enticingly. “Lieutenant Ellesmere said I was to give you this.” He smiled briefly, the lines of tiredness easing. “He said you looked hot.”
“Lieutenant Ellesmere.” That must be William’s title, I realized. “Thank you. And please thank the lieutenant, if you see him.” He was clearly on the point of departure, but I couldn’t help asking, “How did you know who I was?”
His smile deepened as he glanced at my head.
“The lieutenant said you’d be the curly-wig giving orders like a sergeant-major.” He looked round the field once more, shaking his head. “Good luck, ma’am.”
THREE MEN DIED before sunset. Walter Woodcock was still alive, but barely. We’d moved as many men as we could into the shade of the trees along the edge of the field, and I’d divided the seriously wounded into small groups, each allocated a bucket and two or three women or walking invalids to tend them. I’d also designated a latrine area and done my best to separate the infectious cases from those who were fevered from wounds or malaria. There were three suffering from what I hoped was only “summer ague,” and one who I feared might have diphtheria. I sat beside him—a young wheelwright from New Jersey—checking the membranes of his throat at intervals, giving him as much water as he would take. Not from my canteen, though.
William Ransom, bless his soul, had filled his canteen with brandy.
I uncorked it and took a sparing sip. I’d poured out small cupfuls for each small group, adding each cupful to a bucket of water—but had kept a bit for my own use. It wasn’t selfishness; for better or worse, I was in charge of the captives for the moment. I had to stay on my feet.
Or my bottom, as the case might be, I thought, leaning back against the bole of an oak tree. My feet ached all the way to my knees, my back and ribs twinged with each breath, and I had to close my eyes now and then to control the dizziness. But I was sitting still, for what seemed like the first time in several days.
The soldiers across the road were cooking their meager rations; my mouth watered and my stomach contracted painfully at the scent of roasting meat and flour. Mrs. Wellman’s little boy was whining with hunger, his head laid on his mother’s lap. She was stroking his hair mechanically, her eyes fixed on her husband’s body, which lay a little way away. We had no sheet or blanket with which to shroud him, but someone had given her a handkerchief to cover his face. The flies were very bad.
The air had cooled, thank God, but was still heavy with the threat of rain; thunder was a constant faint rumble over the horizon and it would probably pour sometime during the night. I plucked the sweat-soaked fabric away from my chest; I doubted it would have time to dry before we were drenched with rain. I eyed the encampment across the road, with its lines of small tents and brush shelters, with envy. There was a slightly larger officers’ tent as well, though several officers had taken up temporary quarters in the commandeered cabin.
I ought to go there, I thought. See the most senior officer present, and beg for food for the children, at least. When the shadow of that tall pine sapling touched my foot, I decided. Then I’d go. In the meantime, I uncorked the canteen and took another small swallow.
Movement caught my eye, and I looked up. The unmistakable figure of Lieutenant Ransom stalked out of the tents and came across the road. It lifted my heart a little to see him, though the sight of him renewed my worry for Jamie—and reminded me, with a small sharp pang, of Brianna. At least she was safe, I thought. Roger and Jemmy and Amanda, too. I repeated their names to myself as a small refrain of comfort, counting them like coins. Four of them safe.
William had undone his stock, and his hair was untidy, his coat stained with sweat and dirt. Evidently the pursuit was wearing on the British army, too.
He glanced round the field, spotted me, and turned purposefully in my direction. I got my feet under me, struggling upward agains
t the press of gravity like a hippopotamus rising from a swamp.
I’d barely got to my feet and raised a hand to smooth my hair when someone else’s hand poked me in the back. I started violently but luckily didn’t scream.
“It’s me, Auntie,” Young Ian whispered from the shadows behind me. “Come with—oh, Jesus.”
William had come within ten paces of me and, raising his head, had spied Ian. He leapt forward and grabbed me by the arm, yanking me away from the trees. I yelped, as Ian had an equally firm grip on the other arm and was yanking lustily in that direction.
“Let her go!” William barked.
“The devil I will,” Ian replied hotly. “You let go!”
Mrs. Wellman’s little son was on his feet, staring round-eyed and open-mouthed into the forest.
“Mama, Mama! Indians!”
Shrieks rose from the women near us, and everyone began a mad scramble away from the forest, leaving the wounded to their own devices.
“Ah, bugger!” Ian said, letting go in disgust. William didn’t, jerking me with such force that I crashed into him, whereupon he promptly wrapped his arms about my waist and dragged me a little way into the field.
“Will ye bloody leave go of my auntie?” Ian said crossly, emerging from the trees.
“You!” said William. “What are you—well, never mind that. Your aunt, you say?” He looked down at me. “Are you? His aunt? Wait—no, of course you are.”
“I am,” I agreed, pushing at his arms. “Let go.”
His grasp loosened a little, but he didn’t release me.
“How many others are in there?” he demanded, lifting his chin toward the forest.
“If there were any others, ye’d be deid,” Ian informed him. “It’s just me. Give her to me.”
“I can’t do that.” But there was an uncertain note in William’s voice, and I felt his head turn, glancing toward the cabin. So far, no one had come out, but I could see some of the sentries near the road shifting to and fro, wondering what the matter was. The other captives had stopped running, but were quivering with incipient panic, eyes frantically searching the shadows among the trees.
I rapped William sharply on the wrist with my knuckles and he let go and took a step back. My head was spinning again—not least from the very peculiar sensation of being embraced by a total stranger whose body felt so familiar to me. He was thinner than Jamie, but—
“D’ye owe me a life or not?” Not waiting for an answer, Ian jerked a thumb at me. “Aye, then—it’s hers.”
“Hardly a question of her life,” William said, rather crossly, with an awkward nod in my direction, acknowledging that I might have a possible interest in this discussion. “Surely you don’t suppose we kill women?”
“No,” Ian said evenly. “I dinna suppose it at all. I ken verra well that ye do.”
“We do?” William echoed. He looked surprised, but a sudden flush burned in his cheeks.
“You do,” I assured him. “General Howe hanged three women at the head of his army in New Jersey, as an example.”
He seemed completely nonplused by this.
“Well… but—they were spies!”
“You think I don’t look like a spy?” I inquired. “I’m much obliged for your good opinion, but I don’t know that General Burgoyne would share it.” There were, of course, a good many other women who’d died at the hands of the British army, if less officially, but this didn’t seem the moment to make an account of them.
“General Burgoyne is a gentleman,” William said stiffly. “So am I.”
“Good,” Ian said briefly. “Turn your back for thirty seconds, and we’ll trouble ye nay more.”
I don’t know whether he would have done it or not, but just then, Indian cries tore the air, coming from the far side of the road. Further frantic screams came from the captives, and I bit my own tongue in order not to scream, too. A tongue of fire shot up into the lavender sky from the top of the officers’ tent. As I gaped, two more flaming comets shot across the sky. It looked like the descent of the Holy Ghost, but before I could mention this interesting observation, Ian had seized my arm and jerked me nearly off my feet.
I managed to snatch up the canteen as we passed, on a dead run for the forest. Ian grabbed it from me, almost draggging me in his haste. Gunfire and screams were breaking out behind us, and the skin all down my back contracted in fear.
“This way.” I followed him without heed for anything underfoot, stumbling and twisting my ankles in the dusk as we threw ourselves headlong into the brush, expecting every moment to be shot in the back.
Such is the brain’s capacity for self-amusement, I was able to imagine in vivid detail my wounding, capture, descent into infection and sepsis, and eventual lingering death—but not before being obliged to witness the capture and execution of both Jamie—I had recognized the source of the Indian screams and flaming arrows without difficulty—and Ian.
It was only as we slowed—perforce; I had such a stitch in my side that I could barely breathe—that I thought of other things. The sick and wounded I had left behind. The young wheelwright with the bright red throat. Walter Woodcock, teetering over the abyss.
You couldn’t give any of them more than a hand to hold, I told myself fiercely, limping as I stumbled after Ian. It was true; I knew it was true. But I also knew that now and then a hand in the dark gave a sick man something to cling to, against the rushing wind of the dark angel. Sometimes it was enough; sometimes it wasn’t. But the ache of those left behind dragged at me like a sea anchor, and I wasn’t sure whether the wetness streaming down my cheeks was sweat or tears.
It was full dark now, and the boiling clouds covered the moon, allowing only fitful glimpses of its brilliant light. Ian had slowed still more, to let me keep up with him, and took my arm now and then to help me over rocks or across creeks.
“How… far?” I gasped, stopping once more for breath.
“Not much,” Jamie’s voice replied softly beside me. “Are ye all right, Sassenach?”
My heart gave a tremendous bump, then settled back in my chest as he groped for my hand, then gathered me briefly against himself. I had a moment of relief so profound that I thought my bones had dissolved.
“Yes,” I said, into his chest, and with great effort lifted my head. “You?”
“Well enough now,” he said, passing a hand over my head, touching my cheek. “Can ye walk just a bit further?”
I straightened, swaying a little. It had begun to rain; heavy drops plopped into my hair, cold and startling on my scalp.
“Ian—have you got that canteen?”
There was a soft pop! and Ian set the canteen in my hand. Very carefully, I tilted it into my mouth.
“Is that brandy?” Jamie said, sounding astonished.
“Mmm-hmm.” I swallowed, as slowly as I could, and handed the canteen to him. There were a couple of swallows left.
“Where did ye get it?”
“Your son gave it to me,” I said. “Where are we going?”
There was a long pause from the darkness, and then the sound of brandy being drunk.
“South,” he said at last, and taking my hand, led me on into the wood, the rain whispering on the leaves all round us.
SOAKED AND SHIVERING, we caught up to a militia unit just before dawn, and were nearly shot in mistake by a nervous sentry. By that point, I didn’t really care. Being dead was immensely preferable to the prospect of taking one more step.
Our bona fides being established, Jamie disappeared briefly and came back with a blanket and three fresh corn dodgers. I inhaled my share of this ambrosia in four seconds flat, wrapped myself in the blanket, and lay down under a tree where the ground was damp but not soggy and so thick with dead leaves that it gave spongily beneath me.
“I’ll be back in a bit, Sassenach,” Jamie whispered, squatting beside me. “Dinna go anywhere, aye?”
“Don’t worry—I’ll be here. If I move a muscle before Christmas, it will be
too soon.” A faint warmth was already returning to my shivering muscles, and sleep was pulling me down with the inexorability of quicksand.
He gave the breath of a laugh, and reached out a hand, tucking the blanket in around my shoulders. The dawn light showed the deep lines that the night had carved in his face, the smudges of dirt and exhaustion that stained the strong bones. The wide mouth, compressed for so long, had relaxed now in the relief of momentary safety, looking oddly young and vulnerable.
“He looks like you,” I whispered. His hand stopped moving, still on my shoulder, and he looked down, long lashes hiding his eyes.
“I know,” he said, very softly. “Tell me of him. Later, when there’s time.” I heard his footsteps, a rustle in damp leaves, and fell asleep, a prayer for Walter Woodcock half finished in my mind.
THE DESERTER GAME
THE WHORE GRUNTED through the rag clenched in her teeth.
“Nearly done,” I murmured, and ran the backs of my knuckles gently down her calf by way of reassurance before returning to the debridement of the nasty wound in her foot. An officer’s horse had stepped on her as they—and a number of other people and animals—had jostled to drink at a creek during the retreat. I could clearly see the print of the horseshoe nails, black in the red puffy flesh of her instep. The edge of the shoe itself, worn paper-thin and sharp as a knife, had made a deep, curved gash that ran across the metatarsals, vanishing between the fourth and fifth toes.
I’d been afraid I was going to have to remove the little toe—it seemed to be dangling by no more than a shred of skin—but when I examined the foot more closely, I discovered that all the bones were miraculously intact—as nearly as I could tell, without access to an X-ray machine.
The horse’s hoof had driven her foot into the mud of the stream bank, she’d told me; that had likely saved the bones from being crushed. Now if I could manage to stem the infection and didn’t have to amputate the foot, she might just be able to walk again normally. Maybe.
With a degree of cautious hope, I put down the scalpel and reached for a bottle of what I hoped was a penicillin-containing liquid brought with me from the fort. I’d salvaged the barrel optic of Dr. Rawlings’s microscope from the house fire and found it very useful indeed for starting fires—but without the eyepiece, staging mechanism, or mirror, it was of limited use in determining the genus of microorganisms. I could be sure that what I’d grown and filtered was bread mold, all right—but beyond that…
Suppressing a sigh, I poured the liquid generously over the raw flesh I’d just exposed. It wasn’t alcoholic, but the flesh was raw. The whore made a high-pitched noise through the cloth and breathed through her nose like a steam engine, but by the time I’d made a compress of lavender and comfrey and bound up the foot, she was calm, if flushed.
“There,” I said, with a small pat to her leg. “I think that will do nicely now.” I started to say automatically, “Keep it clean,” but bit my tongue. She hadn’t any shoes or stockings and was either walking daily through a wilderness of rocks, dirt, and streams, or living in a filthy camp littered with piles of dung, both human and animal. The bottoms of her feet were hard as horn and black as sin.
“Come and find me in a day or two,” I said instead. If you can, I thought. “I’ll check it and change the dressing.” If I can, I thought, with a glance at the knapsack in the corner where I kept my dwindling stocks of medicaments.
“Thank ’ee kindly,” the whore said, sitting up and putting her foot gingerly to the ground. Judging from the skin of her legs and feet, she was young, though you couldn’t tell from her face. Her skin was weathered, lined with hunger and strain. Her cheekbones were sharp with hunger, and her mouth was drawn in on one side where the teeth were missing—lost to decay or knocked out by a customer or another whore.
“Will ’ee be here for a bit, think?” she asked. “I’ve a friend, like, got the itch.”
“I’ll be here for the night, at least,” I assured her, suppressing a groan as I rose to my feet. “Send your friend; I’ll see what I can do.”
Our group of militia had met with others, forming a large body, and within a few days we began to cross paths with other rebel groups. We were running into fragments of General Schuyler’s and General Arnold’s armies, these also moving south down the Hudson Valley.
We were still moving all day but began to feel secure enough to sleep at night, and with food provided—irregularly, but still food—by the army, my strength began to return. The rain usually came at night, but today it had been raining at dawn, and we had been trudging through mud for hours before some shelter came in sight.
General Arnold’s troops had stripped the farmstead and burnt the house. The barn was heavily charred down one side, but the fire had gone out before consuming the building.
A gust of wind blew through the barn, raising eddies of decayed straw and dirt, whipping our petticoats round our legs. The barn had originally had a plank floor; I could see the lines of the boards, embedded in the dirt. The foragers had taken them for firewood, but it had been too much trouble for them to knock down the barn, thank God.
Some of the refugees fleeing Ticonderoga had sought shelter here; more would be along before nightfall. A mother with two small, exhausted children slept curled by the far wall; her husband had settled them here and gone to look for food.
Pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, nor on the Sabbath day…
I followed the whore to the door and stood looking after her. The sun was touching the horizon now; perhaps an hour of light left, but the sunset breeze was already moving in the treetops, night’s skirts rustling as she came. I shivered reflexively, though the day was still warm enough. The old barn was chilly, and the nights were beginning to bite. Any day, we would awake to frost on the ground.
And what then? said the small, apprehensive voice that lived in the pit of my stomach.