Here Burns My Candle (36 page)

She swept open the curtains, then froze.
Not the prince’s men. The king’s
. As she watched, more than a dozen British soldiers stormed the entrance to Queensberry House, teeth bared, swords drawn, vengeance in their eyes.

Forty-Eight

Ay me! What perils do environ The man that meddles with cold iron!

SAMUEL BUTLER

D
ragoons!” Elisabeth cried, backing away from the window.

She looked to her patients and found they were nearly as horrified as she, with no weapons at hand and their limbs wrapped in bandages and splints.

But they did not give in to fear.

Those who were able to stand, even on one leg, got up from their beds at once and grabbed whatever they could find to defend themselves: water pitchers, chamber pots, wooden crutches, or a sharp iron poker still hot from the fire. Men too injured to move from their beds braced themselves, faces like flint, daring whoever came through the door to meddle with them.

“Behind me, Leddy Kerr!” Alex Baird ordered, his broad chest and thick arms more menacing than the sharpest blade.

Elisabeth did as she was told, grasping the bandage scissors like a dagger and raising them just above her head. She would not be taken without a fight. Nae, none of them would.

She could hear the dragoons in the entrance hall cursing at the surgeon, who valiantly stood his ground. “We have naught but injured soldiers here!” Martin Eccles shouted. “Where is your sense of honor, gentlemen?”

“Honor?” an English voice roared. “Highlanders have no honor.” A sharp cry was followed by an awful thud.

Elisabeth fought down a wave of nausea. She could not succumb to weakness or fear. Not now. She drew strength from the men round her as they silently closed ranks.

“The Jacobites showed no mercy,” shouted another voice in the hall, louder than the first. “Nor will we. Not this day.”

The sound of boot heels striking the marble floor grew closer. Elisabeth’s
heart was in her throat as her small contingent prepared for the onslaught. They did not have to wait long.

Splintered wood flew like sparks from a fire as the door exploded off its hinges. Four dragoons burst into the room, their polished rapiers matched by the lethal gleam in their eyes. Others in their company continued down the hall, blistering the air with their words.

Elisabeth did not flinch beneath their fierce gazes, though she gritted her teeth to keep from crying out.
Help us. Someone
.

“I see no honorable men, do you?” growled their leader, a thick-necked brute.

“Nae, Mr. Morgan,” one of the dragoons behind him said. “But I do see a woman.”

Alex Baird ground out, “Nae, ye see a leddy.”

Standing behind him, Elisabeth watched the muscles in Alex’s shoulders swell, while his arms seemed to turn to solid oak. In his hands a three-legged stool and a heavy pewter plate were formidable weapons. Though his left calf was wrapped in a splint, knee to foot, the dragoons would have to get past the rest of him first.

“Leddy Kerr is in mourning for her brither,” Alex told them, his voice low, like distant thunder. “He was killed by one o’ yer muskets.”

“A well aimed one, apparently,” Morgan said, making the others laugh. All four moved closer, sizing up the Jacobites as if choosing their first victims.

Elisabeth tightened the grip on her scissors. “My brother died a hero. But your men fled from the field.”

It was true, and they all knew it. The dragoons had run for their lives at Gladsmuir, abandoning their horses, red coats tucked between their legs.

“Are the four o’ ye cowards as weel?” Alex taunted them. “Threatening wounded soldiers wha bear nae weapons?”

Morgan suddenly thrust his sword into Will McWade’s round belly. “This man has a weapon.”

With a cry of pain, Will dropped the clay pitcher in his hand. It shattered into jagged pieces on the hardwood floor.

“See that?” Morgan withdrew his sword with a swift jerk. “You could hurt someone with those pottery shards.”

A stunned expression on his face, Will pressed his linen shirt against the wound. The spot of blood quickly bloomed into a dark, red circle. He stumbled back, his face growing ashen as the stain spread.

Elisabeth longed to help him but dared not move.

David Grassie shouted from his bed, “This is an infirmary, not a field o’ battle. By yer ain law, ye canna wound us further.”

“No need to inflict new wounds, really.” Morgan glanced over his shoulder at the others, a murderous look in his eye. “The ones you have now will suffice.”

As if on signal, the four swept through the room like a whirlwind, unleashing their fury, snapping and twisting the soldiers’ recently set bones with their bare hands, using their daggers to slice open wounds not yet healed. The Highlanders fought back however they could, tearing at the men’s coats, clawing at their faces, pulling out their hair in fistfuls. But the dragoons were determined to exact their revenge.

“Stop!” Elisabeth cried, lunging at the smallest of the four men. She’d no more than torn his sleeve before he wrested the scissors from her hands and cast them into the fire, then grabbed her round the neck.

“No one tells Gilbert Elliot whan to stop.” He pushed her to the floor with a vile oath, then bent over her and began fumbling with the buttons on his breeches, leering at her, his breath reeking of brandy. She screamed for help, struggling against her skirts and hoops.

Alex and John responded at once, throwing themselves at the Englishman with a Highland battle cry. The dragoon crumpled to the floor beneath their weight and did not rise when her two rescuers hauled each other to their feet, then kicked the man’s ribs for good measure.

“Are ye hurt, Leddy Kerr?” When Alex turned to assist her, Elisabeth flinched at the sight of his lower leg, newly broken, the bone protruding from his flesh. His hand was cold when he reached down to help her stand, and his face was drenched in sweat. “Milady,” he said hoarsely, then promptly collapsed.

As swiftly as it began, the rampage ended. The three dragoons who could walk dragged out the fourth and summoned the others. Snarling epithets as they departed, the men soon rode off—some downhill toward
Holyroodhouse, some uphill toward the Castle—leaving a battered and bloody mess in their wake.

A collective groan rose from every corner of Queensberry House. Through a veil of angry tears, Elisabeth eyed her Jacobite brothers strewn about the room. She would attend to their needs first. Surely there were nurses elsewhere who’d been spared and could help the others. These eight men were her primary concern.

Elisabeth retied her apron strings and got to work cleansing fresh wounds and applying compresses. Will McWade worried her the most, especially when neither yarrow nor turpentine staunched his bleeding. She could not press hard enough nor tie a bandage tight enough round his soft middle, and Will was too weak to apply sufficient pressure himself.

Since John Hardy lay nearby, she asked for his help, then winced when she saw how much it cost him to move even a few inches. “Can you use your good hand, John, to hold his compress in place?”

“Aye, Leddy Kerr,” he said with a faint smile.

While John helped her, she examined his wound. A heartless dragoon had pierced the skin along freshly formed scar tissue, cutting open John’s thigh nearly to the bone. She was grateful Janet was not with her that morning. Skittish as her sister-in-law was in the presence of blood, and expecting a child besides, Janet would have quickly become her ninth patient.

Elisabeth lost all track of time as she kept busy kneeling, bending, washing, bandaging, and offering whatever words of comfort came to mind. Black-haired young Grant, in somewhat better shape than the others, hobbled about as her assistant, emptying and refilling the basin with hot water. Donald’s heather soap was soon depleted and replaced with a serviceable bar made from lye.

It wasn’t until she heard voices in the hall that Elisabeth remembered the splintered wood hanging from the door hinges. “Have a care!” she called out as Mr. Eccles stumbled through the open doorway, supporting another man in worse condition.

“Lady Kerr,” the surgeon said weakly. “This is Mr. Cunningham. He, too, is a surgeon, though he’ll not be of much help at the moment.”

Nor, she realized, would Mr. Eccles. One eye swollen, his face and hands badly beaten, the surgeon was in no condition to hold a needle. What was to be done when she had a roomful of men requiring stitches? Thomas MacPadden had an especially bad gash on his forearm, and John Hardy’s thigh was oozing blood.

Then there was the matter of resetting Alex Baird’s lower leg. He’d passed out on the floor—a blessing, if only to spare him the pain—but the Highlander was too large for her to move on her own. It seemed the surgeons themselves needed attending first.

“Come and sit, both of you.” Elisabeth guided them to the only chairs that had survived the assault, then bathed their wounds with the last of the heated water. She eyed the long, narrow-necked stoup hanging by the fireplace. The Canongate wellhead was not far from the mansion’s door. Did she dare send Grant Findlay beyond the safety of these walls with the dragoons still abroad?

The lad followed her gaze and guessed her thoughts. “Ye’ll be needing me to fetch mair water.” He lifted the stoup from its peg. “I’ll not be lang.”

Mr. Eccles grimaced as she dabbed his head wounds with powdered alum diluted with water. “I am sorry as any man can be, Lady Kerr. You came as an angel of mercy, only to be burdened with the lowest of duties.”

“I came so I might be useful,” she told him. In truth, she had never felt so alive, as if a glowing branch from the hearth were burning inside her.

“On behalf of the prince’s men, we are most grateful, madam.” Mr. Eccles closed his eyes while she held a warm cloth to his cheek. “’Tis certain the Almighty sent you.”

The surgeon’s comment did not go unnoticed. Did God send people about, like caddies in the street, running errands and delivering messages? If so, she had a request. “We’ll be needing surgeons,” she told Mr. Eccles gently, not wanting to offend him. “Whom might I call upon?”

Mr. Cunningham, silent until now, came to life, lifting his blood-caked head. “You’ll not find a Jacobite surgeon in Edinburgh. The prince took them all to Dalkeith, save us.”

Her busy hands stilled. No surgeons? Whatever was to be done? These men would die without proper care. Yet ’twas against the law for anyone to practice medicine who’d not been approved by his fellow surgeons.

Martin Eccles had little interest in legalities, it seemed. He was studying her hands with marked interest. “Have you any skill with a needle? ’Twill be some time before I can be trusted with anything sharp.” The surgeon held up his badly mangled hands. “One of the dragoons thought it sport to use the butt of his pistol like a hammer.”

She lightly touched his fingers. “I am no surgeon, Mr. Eccles. But I am a seamstress.”

He looked up, mouth agape. “Surely not by trade?”

“Not presently,” she said, thinking of the years she’d sewn for Angus’s customers. Then her heart skipped a beat.
Rob MacPherson
. Aye, he could stitch the men’s wounds. And within the law if Mr. Eccles remained at the patient’s bedside while Rob worked. “Do you know the tailor Angus MacPherson?”

Mr. Eccles nodded. “A loyal Jacobite. Rode out with the prince.”

“His son is here in Edinburgh. I’m sure he would come at once and serve you well.”

“We’d be glad for his help,” Mr. Cunningham admitted. “Might you call upon him, Lady Kerr? We’re neither of us fit for the High Street.”

Mr. Eccles frowned at him. “You ask too much of the lady, sir.”

“Not at all.” Elisabeth untied her apron, casting a wistful gaze round the room. Much as she wanted to nurse each of them to health, they needed a strong man with capable hands, someone who could move them onto their beds and stitch their gaping wounds. If he was willing, Rob was the man for the task. “I shall take a chair to the Luckenbooths,” she told the surgeons, uncertain how that might be managed. Mr. Fenwick had no doubt come and gone by now.

“Take great care in the street,” Mr. Eccles cautioned her. “The dragoons know which families support the prince. And some of them have seen your courage. Even now they may be waiting for you, Lady Kerr.”

Forty-Nine

Idle rumors were also added to well-founded apprehensions.

LUCAN

A
shiver ran down Elisabeth’s spine as if the cold point of a knife were being dragged from the nape of her neck to the curve of her waist. “I shall hide beneath my hooded cape,” she promised the surgeon, “and not emerge from the chair until I reach Mr. MacPherson’s shop.”

Her answer seemed to satisfy him, though she’d not entirely convinced herself. Janet’s words rang more true by the hour.
Whatever has happened to our city?

“Here’s young Findlay with our water.” Mr. Eccles gestured toward the splintered remains of the doorway. “Have you brought a report for us as well?”

“Aye.” The lad emptied the water into an iron pot and swung it over the fire, then hung the stoup on its peg. “Half the toun is blethering on their stairs.”

Elisabeth knew where the other half could be found: hiding behind their doors, Marjory and Janet among them.

“What news, then?” Mr. Cunningham prompted him.

The curtain of black hair across his face did not hide the lad’s discouragement. “The dragoons found Cameron o’ Lochiel’s wife at hame and abused her harshly. Spat in the guid leddy’s face and called her wirds I darena say.” The lad shot a furtive glance in Elisabeth’s direction.

She’d seen the sort of men they were. Their cruel words were not hard to imagine.

“They’ve been to Holyroodhouse as weel,” Grant continued. “Tore doon the silk whaur the prince laid his head, broke all the fine gilded glasses, and took whatsomever they liked from the Duke o’ Hamilton’s rooms. In the Great Gallery they slashed the paintings.” His countenance darkened. “Queen Mary’s worst o’ a’.”