I was pleased to be in one place long enough to wash my clothes without risk of being shot, scalped, or otherwise molested. Beyond that, there were a good many casualties from the two battles who still required nursing.
I had been aware, in a vague sort of way, of a man lurking round the edges of our encampment.
I’d seen him several times, but he had never come close enough to speak to me, and I’d put him down as likely suffering from some embarrassing ailment like clap or piles. It often took such men a good while to muster either the courage or the desperation to ask for help, and once they did, they’d still wait to speak to me privately.
The third or fourth time I noticed him, I tried to catch his eye, to induce him to come close enough so that I could arrange to examine him privately, but each time he slid away, eyes downcast, and disappeared into the anthill of seething militia, Continentals, and camp followers.
He reappeared quite suddenly toward sunset of the next day, while I was making a sort of pottage, using a bone—unidentifiable as to animal, but reasonably fresh, and with shreds of meat still clinging to it—given me by a patient, two wizened yams, a handful of grain, another handful of beans, and some stale bread.
“You are Mrs. Fraser?” he asked, in a surprisingly educated Lowland Scottish accent. Edinburgh, I thought, and had a faint pang at the memory of Tom Christie’s similar speech. He had always insisted upon calling me “Mrs. Fraser,” spoken in just that clipped, formal way.
Thoughts of Tom Christie vanished in the next instant, though.
“They call you the White Witch, do they not?” the man said, and smiled. It wasn’t in any way a pleasant expression.
“Some do. What of it?” I said, taking a good grip on my spurtle and staring him down. He was tall and thin, narrow-faced and dark, dressed in the uniform of a Continental. Why had he not gone to his regimental surgeon, in preference to a witch? I wondered. Did he want a love philter?
He scarcely seemed the type.
He laughed a little, and bowed.
“I wished only to be sure I had come to the right place, madam,” he said. “I intended no offense.”
“None taken.” He was not doing anything noticeably threatening, other than perhaps standing too close to me, but I didn’t like him. And my heart was beating faster than it ought.
“You evidently know my name,” I said, striving for coolness. “What’s yours, then?”
He smiled again, looking me over with a careful air that struck me as one inch short of insolence—and a short inch, at that.
“My name doesn’t matter. Your husband is James Fraser?”
I had a sudden strong urge to dot him one with the spurtle but didn’t; it might annoy him but wouldn’t get rid of him. I didn’t want to admit to Jamie’s name and didn’t bother asking myself why not. I simply said, “Excuse me,” and, taking the camp kettle off the fire, set it on the ground and walked off.
He hadn’t expected that and didn’t follow me at once. I walked away fast, whisked round behind a small tent belonging to the New Hampshire militia and into a group of people gathered round another fire—militiamen, some with their wives. One or two looked surprised by my abrupt appearance, but all of them knew me and cordially made room, nodding and murmuring greetings.
I looked back from this refuge and could see the man, silhouetted by the sinking sun, standing by my own abandoned fire, the evening wind lifting wisps of his hair. It was no doubt my imagination that made me think he looked sinister.
“Who’s that, Auntie? One of your rejected suitors?” Young Ian spoke by my ear, a grin in his voice.
“Certainly rejected,” I said, keeping an eye on the man. I’d thought he might follow me, but he remained where he was, face turned in my direction. His face was a black oval, but I knew he was staring at me. “Where’s your uncle, do you know?”
“Oh, aye. He and Cousin Hamish are takin’ Colonel Martin’s money at loo, over there.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the Vermont militia encampment, where Colonel Martin’s tent rose, recognizable by a large tear in the top, which had been patched with a piece of yellow calico.
“Is Hamish good at cards?” I asked curiously, glancing toward the tent.
“No, but Uncle Jamie is, and he kens when Hamish will do the wrong thing, which is almost as good as him doing the right thing, aye?”
“I’ll take your word for it. Do you know who that man is? The one standing by my fire?”
Ian squinted against the low sun, then suddenly frowned.
“No, but he’s just spat in your soup.”
“He
what
?!” I spun on my heel, in time to see the anonymous gentleman stalk away, back stiff.
“Why, that bloody filthy
arsehole
!”
Ian cleared his throat and nudged me, indicating one of the militia wives, who was viewing me with considerable disapproval. I cleared my own throat, swallowed my further remarks on the subject, and gave her what I hoped was an apologetic smile. We were, after all, probably going to be obliged to beg her hospitality, if we were to get any supper now.
When I looked back at our own fire, the man was gone.
“Shall I tell ye something, Auntie?” Ian said, frowning thoughtfully at the empty shadows lengthening beneath the trees. “He’ll be back.”
JAMIE AND HAMISH did not return for supper, leading me to suppose that the loo must be going well for them. Things were going reasonably well for me, too; Mrs. Kebbits, the militia wife, did feed Ian and myself, and very hospitably, with fresh corn dodgers and rabbit stew with onions. Best of all, my sinister visitor didn’t return.
Ian had gone off about his own business, Rollo at heel, so I banked the fire and prepared to set off for the hospital tents for evening rounds. Most of the severely injured had died within the first two or three days after the battle; of the rest, those who had wives, friends, or relatives to care for them had been taken off to their own camps. There were three dozen or so left, men on their own, with lingering but not immediately life-threatening injuries or illnesses.
I put on a second pair of stockings, wrapped my thick wool cloak around myself, and thanked God for the cold weather. A chill had struck in late September, setting the woods afire with a glory of red and gold, but also helpfully killing off the insects. The relief of camp life without flies was marvelous in itself—no surprise to me that flies had been one of the Ten Plagues of Egypt. The lice, alas, were still with us, but without flies, fleas, and mosquitoes, the threat of epidemic illness was tremendously decreased.
Still, every time I came near the hospital tent, I found myself sniffing the air, alert for the telltale fecal stench that might portend a sudden irruption of cholera, typhus, or the lesser evils of a salmonella outbreak. Tonight, though, I smelled nothing beyond the usual cesspit smell of the latrines, overlaid by the funk of unwashed bodies, filthy linens, and a lingering tang of old blood.
Reassuringly familiar.
Three orderlies were playing cards under a canvas lean-to next to the biggest tent, their game lit by a rush dip whose flame rose and flickered in the evening wind. Their shadows swelled and shrank on the pale canvas, and I caught the sound of their laughter as I passed. That meant none of the regimental surgeons was about; just as well.
Most of them were simply grateful for whatever help was offered and thus left me to do what I would. There were always one or two who’d stand on their dignity and insist on their authority, though. Usually no more than a nuisance, but very dangerous in case of emergency.
No emergencies tonight, thank God. There were a number of tin candlesticks and stubs of varying lengths in a bowl outside the tent; I lit a candle from the fire and, ducking inside, made my way through the two large tents, checking vital signs, chatting with the men who were awake, and evaluating their condition.
Nothing very bad, but I had some concern for Corporal Jebediah Shoreditch, who had suffered three separate bayonet wounds during the storming of the great redoubt. By some miracle, none had hit any vital organs, and while the corporal was rather uncomfortable—one thrust having plowed upward through his left buttock—he wasn’t displaying any major signs of fever. There was some sign of infection in the buttock wound, though.
“I’m going to irrigate this,” I told him, eyeing my half-full bottle of tincture of gentian. This was nearly the last of it, but with luck, there shouldn’t be great need again until I was in a position to make more. “Wash it out, I mean, to rid you of the pus. How did it happen?” The irrigation wasn’t going to be comfortable; better if he could be distracted a little by telling me the details.
“Wasn’t retreatin’, ma’am, and don’t you think it,” he assured me, taking a good grip on the edge of his pallet as I turned back the blanket and peeled away the crusty bits of a tar-and-turpentine dressing. “One o’ them sneaky Hessian sons of bitches was a-playin’ dead, and when I went to step over him, he come to life and reared up like a copperhead, bay’net in hand.”
“Bayonet in
your
hand, you mean, Jeb,” joked a friend who lay nearby.
“Nah, that was another un.” Shoreditch shrugged off the joke with a casual glance at his right hand, wrapped in bandages. One of the Hessians had pinned his hand to the ground with a bayonet blade, he told me—whereupon Shoreditch had snatched up his fallen knife with his left hand and swiped it murderously across the Hessian’s calves, felling him, and then had cut the Hessian’s throat—disregarding a third attacker, whose thrust had removed the top part of his left ear.
“Somebody shot that un, Lord be praised, afore he could improve his aim. Speak of hands, Ma’am, is the colonel’s hand a-doing well?” His forehead shone with sweat in the lantern light, and the tendons stood out in his forearms, but he spoke courteously.
“I think it must be,” I said, pressing slowly on the plunger of my irrigating syringe. “He’s been at cards with Colonel Martin since this afternoon—and if his hand was poor, he’d have come back by now.”
Shoreditch and his friend both chuckled at this feeble pun, but he let go a long sigh when I took my hands away from the new dressing, and rested his forehead on the pallet for a moment before rolling painfully onto his good side.
“Thank you kindly, ma’am,” he said. His eyes passed with apparent casualness over the figures that moved to and fro in the darkness. “If you was to see Friend Hunter or Doc Tolliver, might you ask ’em to stop a moment?”
I raised a brow at this, but nodded and poured him a cup of ale; there was plenty now that the supply lines from the south had caught up, and it would do him no harm.
I did the same for his friend, a man from Pennsylvania named Neph Brewster, who was suffering from dysentery, though I added a small handful of Dr. Rawling’s Bowel-Bind mixture before handing over the cup.
“Jeb ain’t meanin’ no disrespect to you, ma’am,” Neph whispered, leaning confidentially close as he took the drink. “It’s only as he can’t shit ’thout help, and that ain’t somethin’ he wants to ask a lady. Mr. Denzell or the Doc don’t come by soon, I’ll help him, though.”
“Shall I fetch one of the orderlies?” I asked, surprised. “They’re just outside.”
“Oh, no, ma’am. Once the sun goes down, they figure as how they’re off duty. Won’t come in, save there’s a fight or the tent catches fire.”
“Hmm,” I said. Plainly attitudes among medical orderlies weren’t that different from one time to another.
“I’ll find one of the surgeons,” I assured him; Mr. Brewster was thin and yellow, and his hand shook so badly that I had to put my own fingers round his to help him drink. I doubted he could stand long enough to manage his own necessities, let alone help Corporal Shoreditch with his.
Mr. Brewster was game, though.
“Shittin’ is somethin’ I can claim to have some skill at by now,” he said, grinning at me. He wiped his face with a trembling hand and paused between swallows to breathe heavily. “Ah …
might you have a bit o’ cooking grease to hand, ma’am? My arsehole’s raw as a fresh-skinned rabbit. I can put it on myself—unless you’d
like
to help, o’ course.”
“I’ll mention it to Dr. Hunter,” I replied dryly. “I’m sure he’d be delighted.”
I finished my rounds quickly—most of the men were asleep—and went in search of Denny Hunter, who I found outside his own tent, bundled up against the cold with a muffler round his neck, dreamily listening to a ballad being sung at a nearby campfire.
“Who?” He came out of his trance at my appearance, though it took him a moment to return fully to earth. “Oh, Friend Jebediah, to be sure. Of course—I’ll go at once.”
“Have you got any goose or bear grease?”
Denny settled his spectacles more firmly on his nose, giving me a quizzical look.
“Friend Jebediah is not constipated, is he? I understood his difficulty to be more one of engineering than of physiology.”
I laughed, and explained.
“Oh. Well. I do
have
some ointment,” he said doubtfully. “But it is mentholated—for the treatment of grippe and pleurisy, thee knows. I fear that will do Friend Brewster’s arse no favors.”
“I fear not,” I agreed. “Why don’t you go and help Mr. Shoreditch, and I’ll find a bit of plain grease and bring it along?”
Grease—any kind of grease—was a staple of cooking, and it took only two inquiries at campfires to procure a cup of it. It was, the donor informed me, rendered possum fat. “Greasier than grease,” the lady assured me. “Tasty, too.” This last characteristic was unlikely to be of much interest to Mr. Brewster—or at least I hoped not—but I thanked her effusively and set off through the darkness, back toward the small hospital tent.
At least I
intended
to head in that direction. The moon had not yet risen, though, and within a few minutes I found myself on a thickly wooded hillside that I didn’t remember, stumbling over roots and fallen branches.
Muttering to myself, I turned left—surely that was… No, it wasn’t. I stopped, cursing silently. I couldn’t be lost; I was in the middle of a campground containing at least half the Continental army, to say nothing of dozens of militia companies. Exactly where I was on said campground, though… I could see the glimmer of several fires through the trees, but the configuration of them seemed unfamiliar. Disoriented, I turned the other way, straining my eyes in search of the patched roof of Colonel Martin’s large tent, that being the biggest landmark likely to be visible in the darkness.