“Left, sir. It’s just over the rise.”
Tristan obeyed, and a few minutes later was dragging Brat to a halt in a small farmyard. A woman was dumping a bucket of dirty water on the grass at the side of the house; she turned and raised a hand to her brow to see who had arrived. “
Qui est-ce
?” she called in Flemish-accented French.
“I’m looking for a wounded British soldier,” Tristan replied, throwing his leg over Brat’s withers and sliding down to the ground
She laughed shortly. “You have your choice,
m’sieur
. We have several.” Then she saw Keighley scramble down from the horse. “Sergeant! You are back.”
“Aye, Missus Pauwels.”
“
Venez
. Come in, then.” She set the bucket on the wooden bench by the side of the door and went inside. Tristan took the bag from Keighley and followed her in.
There were four or five soldiers lying on pallets in the small main room of the cottage, but Tristan only had eyes for one. Charles lay against the wall, asleep or unconscious—Tristan prayed it was only one of those—in his shirtsleeves. His shirt bore patches as scarlet as the coats some of the others wore, and his hair was sticky and dark with blood. An effort had been made to wash his face, but there were brownish stains on his neck and around his ears. No wonder Tristan’s visiting card had been soaked. Surely that couldn’t all be his? No one could live having lost
that
much blood. “Good God,” he prayed as he dropped to his knees beside him.
“It ain’t all his,” Keighley said. “I found him pinned underneath that big ugly piebald of his. Shell’d taken off his forelegs and the major had put him down with a knife. Blood everywhere.”
Tristan barely heard him. He pressed his fingers to Charles’s red-stained throat and felt the pulse: rapid, erratic, but strong enough. There was a thick bandage in the hollow beneath his right collarbone. Without being asked, Keighley said, “I got him behind the lines to a surgeon but all he could do was stitch up the bullet hole. Went through him, so that was good; no ball to dig out. But he couldn’t do nothin’ for the leg. Had him and the others on a cart to get them into town, but it busted an axle a half a mile from here. The farmer and his boys carried all of ’em here.”
“My husband has gone to Wavre for a wagon,” the farm wife said, coming back into the house with a full bucket of water.
“Where’s the captain?” Keighley asked her.
“In the henhouse,” she said. “Killing chickens for soup. He has promised to pay.”
“‘Captain’?” Tris echoed as he stripped the thin blanket from Charles. The left leg of Charles’s trousers had been sliced open to the knee. “Oh,
Christus
,” he said, echoing Derek’s favorite curse, and carefully unwrapped the bloody bandage from around the purple, swollen calf. “Oh, God.”
“Looks worse than it did before,” Keighley observed.
The fracture was compound, the end of the shattered bone visible, poking out against the bloody wrapping. The delay in treatment had meant that the leg had swelled with inflammation. “The surgeon said he couldn’t do anything for it but amputate, but the Captain and I wouldn’t let him. Wouldn’t even try to set it.”
“Thickskulled bloody bastard,” Tristan swore viciously. “Ham-handed fathead. Bacon-brained puddingheart. Bloody hell. Keighley, I need your help. Can you find that captain of yours? We’ll need him too.”
This wasn’t Charles
, he said to himself,
this is a patient. That’s all, just a patient. You can do this.
This is a patient.
He repeated it to himself over and over again, until his hands steadied.
And then the door opened and Francis Randall came in. He stopped and stared at Tristan as if at a revenant, then swore, “Bloody hell!
You
here? Keighley, you idiot, I sent you for a
doctor
.”
“I
am
a doctor,” Tristan snapped. He was. The hell with Crosby and his dismissal; he knew he could do this. A sort of cold peace settled over him, a distance, a disconnection. “And I need your bloody goddamned help, so get your supercilious arse over here and
help me
.”
Startled, Randall obeyed. Tristan had him kneel at Charles’s head, holding his shoulder steady, then bade Keighley kneel beside Charles’s lower leg, and showed him how he needed him to pull: slow, steady, no quick jerks but slowly, gradually increasing the pressure so that Tristan could guide the bone back into place and wrap the leg tightly with the clean bandages from his kit.
To his surprise, when he looked up the farm wife was standing there, holding two pine planks out to him. “Last year, my second-born broke his leg,” she said. “You will need these.”
“I do,” he said, and he took the planks, binding them to Charles’s leg to keep the bone in place and immobilize the knee. Then he carefully removed the pad of lint from the wound in his shoulder. The stitches were sloppy and apparently done in great haste, but the great tear in the skin was ragged enough to account for it, and there was no sign of infection yet. He replaced the dressing with a clean one. “That was the exit wound,” he said. “Did the surgeon do anything about the entrance? I’d like to avoid shifting him if I could.”
“Said the ball was small enough there wasn’t a lot of damage. Bandaged it, told us to watch for more bleeding.” Randall had sat back on his heels. “Where the hell did a dandy like you learn battlefield surgery?”
“Corinthian,” Tristan corrected.
“What?”
“I’m a Corinthian, not a Dandy. I don’t wear my shirt points impossibly high, I wear a reasonable number of watch fobs, and I have never needed sawdust to pad either my shoulders or my calves. And in answer to your question, at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Spitalfields, thanks to this man here.” He reached up and lay a hand on Charles’s brow. He was warm, but not quite feverish. Yet. And he was still unconscious. “Now, what about the rest of these fellows? Yours, I presume?”
“Most of them. Three are from my company, the other from the 22nd. They didn’t report in after the skirmish, and Keighley and I went looking for them.” He glanced down at Charles. “Keighley spotted that ugly piebald of Monty’s; said it couldn’t be anyone else, that nobody else
had
a horse that ugly. Took both of us to move that bloody bastard; thank God for mud slippery enough to help us out. If it had been dry we’d have needed a block and tackle. But I imagine we did more damage to Monty, shifting the horse.”
“Needs must when the devil drives,” Tristan said. “Any of them in need of immediate medical care?”
“Pattinson’s got a wound won’t stop bleeding,” Keighley said. “Most of the rest of them are managing.”
“Let’s take a look at Pattinson, then.” Tristan rose from beside Charles and went to the pallet Keighley indicated. The surgeon’s sloppy needlework was evident here too. “We need to apprentice that lad to my wife,” Tristan said to Pattinson in a cheerful voice. “She’d soon have him taking tidier stitches, I tell you.” He took his needle in hand and set to work. A few minutes later, he redressed the wound on Pattinson’s leg and turned to the next pallet.
When he’d examined and made repairs to the rest of the wounded, he stood up, stretching. “I need some air,” he announced, and went outside.
Sitting on the bench, he quietly went to pieces, drawing his knees up and resting his heels on the bench and burying his face in his arms. He tried to keep his sobs quiet, so the men inside wouldn’t hear, but they wracked his body until he ached from it.
Finally, he came back to himself enough to realize that there was someone sitting beside him. He looked up into Derek Chamberlain’s worried face. “Tris,” he began, but Tristan shook his head.
“He’s alive. Has a shattered shinbone that wasn’t set. I set it, but I don’t know if it will heal properly. He has a bullet wound in his shoulder. He’s unconscious, but he’s not showing signs of shock; how that is I’ll never know. He should be in shock. I know I would be. It’s just—damn it, Derek. Damn it!” and he started to weep again. “I was never a,
hic
, watering pot before I met Charles,” he sobbed. “It’s all his fault.”
“You never cared before you met Charles,” Derek said quietly. “You never loved before you met Charles.”
Tristan jerked his head up and stared at Derek, who gave him a tired smile. “I know, Tris.”
After a moment, Tris said, “How did you find this place? I meant to send Keighley back down to the road….”
“The lad waiting at the crossroads said Keighley had sent him. At least, I assume that’s who he meant by ‘
le petit sergent
’.”
Tristan snorted a laugh. “I’m sure Keighley wouldn’t appreciate being called ‘
petit
’. I wouldn’t repeat that.”
“I shan’t. He may be on the short side, but he has a fierce look about him. I had a sergeant like him in India. Utterly fearless.” Derek trailed off and looked over Tristan’s head.
Tris followed his gaze. Captain Randall stood in the doorway, watching them. Chamberlain rose and held out his hand. “Derek Chamberlain,” he said. “Solicitor.”
“Francis Randall, captain of the 52nd,” Randall said, shaking his hand. “Friend of Northwood?”
“Yes. Came to see if I could help.”
“Mr. Chamberlain has been working with me assisting the wounded in Brussels,” Tristan said distantly, his voice cool.
“Has he.” The captain’s voice was equally cool.
Chamberlain said, “I have the distinct impression a conversation is imminent, and one that does not involve me. So if you will excuse me….” He sketched a bow to them both and went off toward the carriage, now drawn up blocking the lane.
“Am I needed inside?” Tristan asked coldly.
Randall regarded him expressionlessly. After a moment, he said, “I cannot…
approve
of the feelings you have for Major Mountjoy, but I also cannot deny that they seem real enough. Although I have counted him a friend for many years now, I cannot judge what he feels for you—I only hope for the sake of his honor, his career, and his immortal soul that he does not reciprocate. However, he does seem to care for you.” He hesitated, then went on, “That man—Chamberlain—what is he to you?”
“A friend. Nothing more.” Tristan’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“It’s only….” Randall frowned. “I am not sure this makes sense. And I am not sure of how I can explain it. I only feel this: if you hurt Charles in any way, I will
kill
you. Do you understand me?”
“Of course I do,” Tristan said. He cocked his head. “Do you think that I am betraying Charles by having Derek as a friend?”
“‘Derek,’ is it?” Randall’s voice was dry.
“He is a friend. He is not a rival to Charles.”
“I wish he was. That way you would not be tempted to drag Charles down with you,” Randall said savagely.
“I will drag Charles nowhere. Neither would I ever betray him.” Tristan was suddenly very tired, and put his head down on his knees. “Are you quite finished, captain?”
“I suppose there is nothing more to be said,” Randall said. Again, the hesitation. “Under the circumstances, I feel that I should report what I saw in the alley that evening to no one. For now, at any rate. I suppose that is between you and Charles.”