Ethan finished making camp along one of Barton Gibson’s routes
though the wilderness. He was too excited by that accomplishment to yet think about sleep. Lark whickered softly.
“No complaints,” he told his mare. “You’ve gotten me into this.”
It wasn’t strictly true. But his horse’s suffering was the catalyst for his decision to leave the coach road and travel to Pennsylvania on his own. Lark had begun their journey hale and hearty, but was soon suffering in the dust behind the coach’s wheels. That was not fair, was it? Especially when Ethan had the warm coat and excellent maps drawn by the best surveyor in the Commonwealth, and the burning need to present himself to the Quakers simply, something his family did not fully understand.
He was cataloging the reasons for his decision, Ethan realized, as if any had the power to stop him. He was free, he reminded himself, a free American. Of age, not a child, except in his lack of experience on land. That had only presented itself as a problem when he had to send the blasted trunk somewhere, and could not think of a place safe from his family’s knowledge. So he sent it to the edge of the world, where his last sea-born duty still lay.
Ethan detected a sound on the wind. Human, angry. Was there a camp near to his? Or a farmstead? He would not be able to sleep until he knew, so he hastily finished the letter to his mother.
Your obedient
—No, best make it,
Your loving son, E. Randolph,
he decided. Of that sentiment he was sure. He stored the letter in his traveling writing desk.
When he stood, his leg buckled. He recovered, yanked up his walking stick from where its lion’s eyes were intent on the fire. “After dusk, yes, Mother,” Ethan muttered as he trudged through a stand of trees toward the light of another campfire.
Around the fire two men held a third down. Ethan entered the circle of light. “May I assist—”
Only when the two men turned did he realize his mistake. Their expressions were far from companionable. Ethan’s peripheral vision told him the campsite had been sacked. And the man lying beneath the two was deathly still.
Ethan whispered,
“Merde.”
A man with blood on his hands stood.
“Vous parlez français?”
Ethan widened his stance.
“Oui. Pourquoi pas, mon ami?”
He repeated his offer to help in French and in feigned innocence, while trying to get a better look at the still one. The two men spoke to each other in their native language.
“Don’t, François! We were not born to this. Listen, listen to him. His accent, it’s our own!”
“Yours, maybe.”
“He’s a countryman!”
“So?”
Ethan began thinking in French, to make the words come faster. “Is this true? What country? La Rochelle, the finest seaport in all of France?”
Ethan saw the glint in the second man’s hand. A knife. Ethan’s own was tucked inside the case Aaron had made in his right-footed boot.
Try the sharpness of your wits first,
Fayette had taught him.
Both men left their prey and descended on Ethan. He recognized the longing in the bearded, friendlier one’s eyes. “La Rochelle?” he asked. “Incredible! When were you there last?”
The one called François shoved him silent. “Your name?” he demanded of Ethan.
“Maupin.”
“What?”
“Washington Lafayette Maupin.”
The man laughed. “A French-American Alliance baby. Look at him—about twenty! Born during our bloody Terror, I think.”
Ethan tried to project wounded dignity. “You find my name amusing?”
“We meant no offense, my friend,” the bearded one said. “Tell me. In La Rochelle, are the towers still standing?”
“First let me attend your injured friend,” Ethan said, seeing the legs of the downed man stirring. “Perhaps I might—God’s blood,” he whispered suddenly, in English, recognizing the traveling clothes. “Jordan.”
“You know this man?”
“It’s my … my cousin. My American cousin.”
He went down on his good knee, forgetting any notion of his self-protection among the thieves. He pulled the black cloth from the physician’s face.
Jordan’s throat was cut, there, below his beard’s line. Ethan forced his fingers to probe the wound. Bloody, but not deep. Not yet deep enough, was it? The doctor’s hand took his sleeve. Ethan felt the same warmth as the one that comforted him at their first meeting.
“Watch your back, brat,” Jordan Foster whispered.
Ethan spun around. “Countrymen!” he called out to the advancing thieves in Fayette’s French, “I am overwhelmed with gratitude!”
“You are?”
“Of course! What can I do to repay you for caring for my foolhardy kinsman after his run-in with thieves? You are Good Samaritans worthy of the famous hospitality and graciousness of the cobbled streets of La Rochelle!”
“I’m from Marans,” the sour François muttered.
“A beautiful village! Along the canal, is it not?”
The thief still looked suspicious. “Are you Catholic or Huguenot?” he demanded now.
Ethan’s head spun. One affiliation meant brother, the other enemy, and he had no idea which would yield which response, so he resorted to the truth. “A heathen Deist, I fear,” he apologized.
“Deist. Alliance baby,” François muttered, but the threat was gone from his voice. “Your cousin was only being threatened. The knife slipped. If he had kept still—”
“Until our rescue,” the other thief finished quickly.
“I will advise him,” Ethan assured them, “just as you say, for his next encounter with highwaymen.” He hoped he looked even more guileless than he felt. “Please do not trouble yourselves further. I am armed, and have a horse who will break the bones of men unwise enough to cross me. She’s beyond those trees. I need only whistle—”
His fingers went to his mouth as the thieves put up their hands.
“We’ll be on our way, then.”
“Must you go? At least allow me to pay you a reward for your service to my family.”
“Urgent, quite urgent,” they repeated, almost together, ignoring his silver dollars and grabbing their packs. “We wish your cousin a full recovery,
monsieur!”
Ethan watched the pair disappear into the night as he replaced the coins to his pocket. Jordan Foster nudged him with his foot. His voice was weak. “What in hell was that all about?”
“A Frenchman’s honor overriding his desperation.” Ethan gave a shrill whistle and kicked dirt on the sputtering campfire.
“What are you doing?”
“Offering my hospitality. I’d advise you to take it.”
He helped the older man to his feet just as Lark found them.
“I don’t need … I’m able—” The doctor protested as Ethan hoisted him onto the barebacked horse.
“No, you are not. And I cannot carry you.”
“Get my bag.”
“Yes, sir.” Ethan ground his teeth together.
“And use your stick, goddamnit.”
E
than found his camp untouched. He eased Jordan Foster from Lark’s back then gave him his own place by the fire. The doctor allowed him to look under the black cloth at his throat.
“It has stopped bleeding,” Ethan told him.
“Good.”
“What are you doing in these woods?”
“Trying to make camp. Until I was overcome by two brutes who appear to be great friends of yours.”
“You were following me,” Ethan corrected. “At my mother’s behest.”
“I was on my way to Philadelphia, to visit my brother-in-law.” Ethan did not hide his skepticism.
“He’s been begging me to come for years!” the doctor insisted, now avoiding the younger man’s eyes. “The timing of the visit was your mother’s idea, yes,” he finally admitted.
Ethan growled. “Look at you. She will never let either of us out of her sight if she learns of this.”
“The scar will fade. If you sew it correctly.”
Ethan felt the color drain from his face. “I? I cannot—”
“What’s the matter? Can you only spout remedies and pontificate on your Quaker botanical cures? Treat my neck like one of your ship’s sails, my ligature like your Judith’s hair.”
Ethan felt cold, suddenly. He wasn’t ready, not for this.
“Imagine,” Jordan Foster said more kindly. “You have a good head for imagining. I’ve been to a barber. My shave got too close, that’s all.”
“But you don’t shave.”
“Imagine!” Jordan yelled, then took a pained breath and spoke more softly. “You checked the wound when I was on the ground?”
“Yes, sir.” A spasm started in Ethan’s right-hand fingers.
“Then you know there’s no threat to—Stop that!”
The twitching stopped.
The physician resumed. “What’s beyond, Ethan?”
“Beyond?”
“Beyond the muscle wall. I can’t ask you in French, man!” He breathed out. “Come now,” he tried again. “From the back to front, what’s in there?”
“Spine. The spine.”
“Yes, yes. Go on.”
“The pharynx—throat. Next the esophagus.”
“Its common name?”
“Gullet.”
“Yes. Purpose?”
“Digestion.”
“Correct. Now tell me the respiratory apparatus.”
“Trachea—windpipe. It continues downward from the larynx.”
“Undamaged, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. It’s so dark.”
“Ethan, it’s undamaged, or I would be having trouble breathing, wouldn’t I?”
“Oh. Yes, that’s right.”
“Now”—he raised his head to give Ethan a full view of his injury—“what do you have here?”
He was in pain, Ethan could see it.
Think. Think through your own distress,
he told himself. “Oblique wound of the neck. Four inches long, sir. Some muscle damage.”
“And it needs—?” the physician prompted.
“Cleansing of coagulated blood and foreign bodies. Suturing. Adhesive plaster. Bandaging.”
“Good. You have water. Decent firelight. Everything else you need is in my bag.”
The physician remained silent as Ethan brought forth the oil, needle, waxed shoemaker’s thread, plaster, and gauze bandaging.
Dr. Foster’s pale lips compressed into a firm line. “Ligatures, about a half-inch apart. Can you tie a square knot?”
“You are asking this of a sailor?” Ethan used his haughtiest tone, to make his teacher laugh. It did not.
“Begin,” Jordan Foster commanded.
Where was his humor? Perhaps the physician had spent too much time in Scotland, Ethan reasoned. The Scottish seamen he’d known on board the
Standard
were always the most sober.
Jordan Foster remained still, his eyes open, staring at the stars, as Ethan pulled the thread through the broken skin of his wound and tied each ligature with a double knot. Ethan would remind him of his own stillness, he decided, the next time the man wished to put laudanum in his tea. As he wiped the needle in the oil-soaked gauze, the physician swallowed hard.
“Almost finished,” Ethan whispered.
“Yes. Good.”
The pain was there, in his voice. Spilling out the corners of his eyes. But Jordan Foster spoke as taskmaster again while Ethan fitted the strips of adhesive plaster on either side of the stitches. “You will have to remove them tomorrow or the next day. Why?”
“To try to avoid the stage of inflammation.”
“And if the wound becomes inflamed?”
Ethan tried to turn his expression wicked. “Then the world is turned upside down. I get to play your keeper. As such I’ll get you drunk with spirits, or laudanum. Get to hear all your secrets, no?”
Finally, a smile burst across Jordan Foster’s mouth, though it disappeared almost as quickly as it came. “At last, some humor,” Ethan said, winding the bandage around the physician’s throat.
Jordan frowned. “And I suppose it humored you to offer those scoundrels money?”
“It’s what they wanted, I thought.”
“Of course it’s what they wanted. They’re thieves!”
“Desperate. But not real thieves, I think.”
“Ethan?”
“Yes, sir?”
“What if they come back?”
“They will not get a second chance. I will kill them.”
“What?”
“I have a knife.”
“The Frenchman, on your ship. He taught you how to use it.”
“His name was Maupin. Or Fayette. Yes, he taught me. I spent many hours alone. I was small and crippled, easy prey.” Ethan cocked an eyebrow in rueful response to the doctor’s sympathetic expression. “And very handsome, yes?”