Kindred Hearts (46 page)

“Careful!”
Tristan shouted to the men in the first-floor window as they levered the man bound to the stretcher through the opening. They’d built a block and tackle arrangement in the overhanging eaves that allowed them to raise the less-wounded up to the bedrooms on the upper story; it was easier than maneuvering up the narrow stairs and less traumatic on the patients. Several other households who were able to shelter the wounded had experimented with similar arrangements. It was risky, but if the wounded were able to be secured to the stretchers and the stretchers carefully attached to the lift ropes, it was faster and simpler to get them into the rooms upstairs. The more seriously wounded were kept on the ground floor; it was a matter there of only a few steps up, and so the dining room and drawing room furniture was carefully stored in the stables. The floors of the two large main rooms were paved with pallets with injured men on them.

Chamberlain said, “That’s the last of the ones for you. There are a few more that the Conynghams will take, and then the rest will have to suffer with tarpaulin cover if it rains.”

Tristan looked up at the sky. “It will,” he said tiredly. “I just hope it doesn’t turn into a flood; the men still in the streets will drown. To survive a battle only to drown in the city would be an embarrassment.”

His friend’s voice was hoarse as he chuckled. “Well, it’s a good sign, rain before a battle. The soldiers call it ‘Wellington weather’—apparently he’s never lost a battle if it’s rained the night before.”

“He should win this one at a walk, then,” Tris said dryly, “considering it looks like those clouds are going to provide us with rain of Ark-like proportions.”

Chamberlain laughed. “Go deal with your patients. I’m off to round up some more tarpaulins for the stragglers. And try and get some rest if you can; you’ll have your work cut out for you tomorrow. How are your supplies holding up?”

“Don’t worry,” Tristan said, “if we need to rip up the contents of the linen closets for bandages, I can afford to replace them.”

“Good thing,” Chamberlain replied. “I’ll have the less-well-off send their bills to you too.”

“Do,” Tristan invited him. “My father has more money than the king; it will do him good to spend some of it.” He saluted Chamberlain, then went indoors to deal with his patients.

It being
June, the day had been hot, but a thunderstorm rolled in shortly thereafter. By then, thankfully, they had gotten the majority of the wounded under some kind of shelter, either in the houses the local residents had generously opened up, or under a huge tent in the street near the Gate. After his guests had been settled, Tristan had returned to the Gate to work with new arrivals, but the incoming volume had died to a trickle, and word had come that there had been little or no activity on the front lines most of the day. With the storm, that quiet state would likely continue through the night. Most of the ambulatory injured had already reached the city or died along the way; there would be few more arrivals until long after the resumption of hostilities on the morrow. Tristan took the opportunity to see about acquiring more medical supplies, pleasantly surprised to discover that the Bruxellois apothecaries had all opened their shops and were providing the Belgian and British physicians with all they had in the way of lint for bandages and medicines. Tristan stocked up on feverfew, butterbur, willowbark, and Charles’s favorite, skullcap, as well, figuring that once the soldiers made it here, fever would be their greatest enemy.

Caught up in his own concerns and fears, he was startled to discover that for the vast majority of the Bruxellois, life went on quite as if nothing were happening. There were couples on the streets strolling among the shops underneath huge umbrellas; the restaurants were full and brightly lit against the dark afternoon; a theater owner in an oilskin coat was pasting up a bill for that evening’s performance; and a waiter in an enormous apron was sweeping the water off the pavement before his café. Tristan walked down the street in a daze, Will behind him carrying his purchases in two enormous sacks. “Are they mad?” he said over his shoulder to Will. “Napoleon not ten miles distant, and they drink and laugh as if it were an ordinary day?”

“Maybe for them ’t is,” Will said practicably. “Boney’s been here before, I heard tell. Mayhap they don’t care who’s in charge. Some of ’em don’t much like the Dutch king, when all’s said and done.”

Tristan stopped and stared at Will. “You’ve got a brain,” he accused.

Will blinked. “Well… yes, sir. Allus did.”

“Huh,” Tristan said. “Well, you’re probably right. Still. It seems… I don’t know. Something.”

“Jenny say kwah,” Will supplied.

“What?”

“Jenny say kwah,” Will repeated. “It’s what Jean-Baptiste the groom from next door says when he don’t know what to say.”

“Oh!” Tristan bit back a laugh. “You mean ‘
je ne sais quoi
’.”

“Yes, sir. That.” Will thought a moment. “Though I might describe ’em as rude, myself.”

“Rude,” Tristan nodded.

“The booj-wah, anyway, most of ’em. The apothecaries seem to be all right, what with givin’ us the supplies and all.”

“Right,” Tristan said, oddly charmed by his footman’s sudden erudition.

They arrived back at the house just as another storm front rolled through and opened up. Tristan opened his umbrella again, and they ran under its dubious shelter to the front door, where Tris ushered Will through unceremoniously. The footman carried the heavy sacks back through to the kitchen to sort out, while Tristan went into his bookroom in search of something to drink.

There was a man sitting there; he leapt to his feet as Tris entered. “Reid?” Tris said uncertainly.

“Sir. I’ve a note for you, sir. From the major.”

“Is he all right?”

“Fine as fivepence, sir.”

“Oh, good. Have you had tea or anything?”

“No, sir. Just arrived.”

“Well, you can go on back to the kitchen when I’ve read this. Is the major expecting a reply?”

“Don’t know, sir. I came to fetch Patch; Betsy’s plumb wore out from yesterday. Major asked me to drop that here but Mr. Reston asked me to wait for you. I’ve got to get back with Patch
pronto
.”

“‘
Pronto
’?” Tris took the note from Reid and opened it.

“Means ‘soonest’ in Spanish, sir.”

The note was brief, scrawled in pencil. “Am well. Thinking of you. Love, C.” Tristan folded it and tucked it into his pocket. “No need for a reply. Just give him my regards. Is he all right?”

“Aye, sir, never a scratch on him. Been back and forth out to Wavre where Blucher retreated to—you’ll have heard that the French broke the Prussians at Ligny? Damn near killed old ‘Marshal Forwards’. Got pinned under his mount and rode over by his own troops before they found him. Back in the saddle again today and just raging about the Frenchies killing his favorite horse.”

“As if Blucher needs another excuse to hate the French,” Tristan said dryly. “Well, tell the major to watch his back and that all is well here. Go down to the kitchen and tell the girl to make you up a bottle of tea to take back with you. And some sandwiches.”

“Won’t turn it down,” Reid said. “It’s going to be a long, wet, hungry night for us. The major’s snug enough for now at headquarters, but the Duke’ll be calling for him soon enough. That’s why I’m in such a bleedin’ hurry—beggin’ your pardon, sir.”

“What the hell for?” Tristan joked, then sent him on his way before collapsing into the cushions of his chair. Charles was all right, and safe. This battle couldn’t last much more than another day, could it? Then that would be all. Another day, and surely Charles could survive another day—he’d survived so many.

Just one more day.

He was
proud of his little household. Parks, the little cook-maid, apparently had a slew of younger siblings at home and when she wasn’t brewing up beef tea and possets, was efficiently acquiring supplies from mysterious sources and stockpiling them for tomorrow’s injured. She’d even found a couple of young assistants who’d lost positions when their employers had fled Brussels on the eve of battle. Will was a willing pair of hands, strong and dependable, and equally adept at finding food as well as medical gear—Tristan suspected him of breaking into abandoned houses and raiding their larders. The grooms Tris had hired locally pitched in just as willingly, dividing their time between helping in the house and guarding assiduously the horses and furniture residing in the stables. And Reston—poor old Reston—managed them all patiently and kept close watch on their condition. If any of them looked the slightest bit weary, he’d cut them out of the herd like a professional border collie, ushering them down to the kitchen for tea and a rest. Even Tristan wasn’t exempt from his eagle eye.

But it was Tristan who, at midnight, sent all of them to bed while he dossed down in the drawing room with his most serious cases. “It will be a long day tomorrow,” he said to them, “and if today is any indication, a longer one the day after. I’ll need you all rested and ready to take on whatever Boney presents to us. Parks, you make sure you and your girls are barricaded in well and the house is locked up; there will be stragglers and deserters wandering the city. Michaels, I want you and Ferrers to sleep in the stables with the horses for the same reason. Sleep late, all of you; I’ll call for you when you’re needed. Get as much rest as you can. That goes for you too, Parks; I can make my own tea and toast my own bread if I’m so inclined, and if I need you, I’ll wake you. Reston!”

“Sir!”

“That goes double for you. Sleep. Will, you’ll bunk in the dining room, if you don’t mind, and keep an ear out for any fussing in there. Call me if any of the men need me. I’ll be in here.” He glanced around at his “troops” and felt a glow of accomplishment, of satisfaction, even through the haze of weariness. “Good men. Good night!”

“Night, sir.” “Good night to you, sir!” “Bonne nuit!” He grinned, then turned to lie, fully dressed, on the pallet waiting for him beneath the window.

It had
been merely a ditch full of water earlier that day when Charles had jumped Patch across it on his way out to the Prussians at Wavre, but who knew how many troops had fought back and forth across it since then, and the ground was torn up and muddy, the water swirling brown and red from churned-up earth and shed blood. Although the action seemed to have moved away for the time being, there were bodies strewn here and there, the action still too fierce to allow for retrieval of the dead and wounded. Smoke from the artillery and Whinyate’s rockets still swirled in patches, making it difficult for Charles to see far enough ahead to mark a safe path through to British lines. At any moment the tide of battle could shift and overrun the stream again, and Charles with it. It wouldn’t be the first time, but it would delay Charles, and he needed to get back to the Duke, to let him know that Blucher was on his way with badly needed reinforcements.

There. A little ways north of where he was now, behind the flash of gunfire and sword blades and the smoke of the guns, the colors of one of the line regiments. He couldn’t make out which, but it didn’t matter. He set Patch at a canter along the stream bank toward the spot; he could cross the stream there behind the front line and given that there was action going on, the chances were as good as any the Duke was somewhere nearby.

He was a bare twenty yards from his chosen crossing point when a shell, off course and spinning wildly, came at them from across the creek. He jerked Patch’s head around to avoid it, but it struck his mount just as Patch rose on his back legs, shearing off the front and sending him over backward with the impact. Years of training betrayed Charles; he automatically stayed in the saddle, and Patch came down hard on his left side. He heard the snap of bone as he and the horse crashed into the mud on the stream bank. Blood fountained up over him as he struggled to get his broken left leg out from under the thrashing horse, but Patch’s dying convulsions only drove him deeper into the mud and closer to the embankment. His chest seized with pain and panic; if Patch went over the edge, he’d slide into the water, his weight dragging Charles with him to a watery death. He threw his upper body across Patch’s withers as far up as he could, to counterbalance the weight; fortunately he’d been leaning forward into Patch’s shoulders as the horse had gone backward, and so he was already half out of the small cavalry saddle. The horse threw his head back, screaming horribly in pain; it was as much to protect himself from being brained by the horse as any other reason that Charles grabbed the thick leather headstall at the top of the bridle. The leather bit at his fingers; but he hung on as Patch convulsed. He was dying, but not fast enough.

Charles’s sword, buckled to the saddle for a cross-draw, was buried, inaccessible in the mud beneath Patch’s left side, alongside Charles’s broken leg. He fumbled for the long knife in its sheath on the right side, but the sheath was empty; he recalled in despair leaving it in the throat of a French cuirassier in a melee on his way out to Wavre hours ago. He clung to the bridle, hoping to still the horse’s movements, but the bank beneath them was already crumbling, clods of earth breaking off to splash in the water below.

Odd how the world was suddenly so silent, the clash of swords and the roar of the guns sounding faint and distant, the only clear sounds the rush of water and Patch’s thin, horrible screams. The ground shifted and Patch seemed to slide, dragging Charles’s useless leg further underneath him; Charles braced himself for the fall, but then they were still again, except for Patch’s frenzied thrashing.

He was going to die. The thought came quietly, dispassionately, from somewhere in the back of his head. Not for him the miraculous survival that Blucher had experienced, pinned for hours beneath his dead horse, ridden over by troops, and still alive, still healthy, full of gin and spit. Not for him even the dignity of death in battle. No, he was going to be drowned—by
his own
horse
. The absurdity of it almost made him grin, wishing he could share it with Tris.

Tris.

A flash of memory in among the throbbing pain from his leg, of Tris kneeling at his feet, looking up at him with that peculiarly Tris expression of lust and love and trust. Kneeling at his feet, sliding
something
into his boot…. The knife. Tris’s birthday present to him.

Twisting, he managed to drag his uninjured right leg up over Patch’s belly, close enough for him to reach for the little knife set in its sheath. His hands were slick with blood, but the hilt was wrapped with blessed wire, the grip sure even in his slippery fingers. He pulled the knife from the sheath. Holding it between his forefinger and thumb, he used his other fingers to find the jugular groove in the side of Patch’s neck. “Sorry, old boy,” he whispered, then he shifted his grip, his fist closing around the wire-wrapped hilt. Bracing himself against the leather headstall, he drove the little blade into Patch’s carotid artery.

Blood spurted, a single great gout; Patch jerked once more, then the big head flopped to the side and he lay blessedly still. Charles managed to shift a little more, sliding his good leg back to brace against the muddy ground behind him. He released the headstall and dug his fingers under the cheek strap, pulling himself as far over his mount’s shoulder as he could, then started trying again to work his leg out from beneath Patch’s belly.

He heard a faint whine, and then something punched him hard in the shoulder, driving him face forward into Patch’s shoulder and knocking the breath out of him. He sucked in air, gasping at the shock; pain blossomed in his chest and back, and there was a patch of blood on the one unbloodied spot of coarse hair on his mount’s shoulder.
A patch on Patch
, he thought, laughing hilariously in his mind, even as his body gasped for breath.

The cheek strap under his fingers grew slippery; he tightened them automatically, his fingers sliding on the leather. Greg’s fingers had slid along the leather on the reins he’d been mending, Charles remembered dreamily, smoothing the wax into the newly stitched repair and along the long strap. The scene was almost as clear now as it had been all those years ago: Greg sitting in the sun, his graceful hands sliding, stroking as he’d once stroked Charles. Charles had stood in the shadow of one of the houses, watching longingly, remembering the touch of those hands on his body; and then Warren had walked by and the world ended. The grief and guilt had haunted Charles ever since.

Now Tris would face the same grief. At least he was spared the guilt. The hand still holding the knife hilt tightened. He couldn’t lose the knife. Tris would want it back.

Tristan. He seemed to feel a touch, a kiss, to smell the brandy and licorice and leather smell that was Tris, to hear the soft, drawling voice murmuring wordlessly. And then it all went away.

Sometimes
there were words, but speaking a language he wasn’t familiar with, and that in itself was odd since he was fluent in Spanish, French, and several of the German dialects, and sometimes there were wordless sounds. Sometimes he heard screaming, and wished irritably that it would stop, but then it would stop and for some reason he then wanted to weep. Sometimes he felt as if he were floating, flying effortlessly, and then other times he was jostled quite unbearably, bounced from pillar to post, banged up against solid objects, pawed and manhandled by unseen hands. And always, always, there was pain: sharp, fierce burning pain in his shoulder and head, piercing pain when he drew breath, and the horrible, deep, dull, throbbing misery in his hip and leg. He lashed out once and heard a grunt of pain from someone else, and was glad someone else was suffering, even though he knew that was wrong. He didn’t care. He
hurt
, damn it, and someone was going to know about it.

And sometimes he’d close his eyes, and when he opened them he would be somewhere else. Sometimes the sky was blue above him, and sometimes gray, and sometimes there wouldn’t be sky, but would be dirty thatch or canvas.

And then, at last, a voice that spoke words he recognized, even if the voice belonged to a stranger. “I’ve patched him up but there’s nothing else to do for him, the poor bastard. The bullet went through his shoulder and I’ve bandaged that, but the rest—there’s nothing for it. The leg needs to come off but if you won’t let me, that’s that. Send him back to Brussels; I’ve other patients to see.”

He wondered who the poor bastard was. He knew the tone, though; when the army surgeons said there was nothing more to do, then it meant they were leaving it up to God, and that, any good soldier knew, was not good news. “Has he a billet in the city?” Again, the dry, weary voice of the surgeon.

“Aye, sir. And better, relatives to care for him.”

That
voice he knew. He didn’t remember the name, but it didn’t matter; he knew the voice, and it comforted him. That voice would take care of him.

Thankfully, he sank back into darkness.

Someone
had gone around lighting lanterns hours ago, then just a little while ago had come back around and refilled them. The yellow light flickered over the ranks of bodies laid out like cards in some cosmic game of Patience. Some of the army doctors had ridden in with the carts of wounded when they could, but they were exhausted and barely standing themselves. Dawn wasn’t far off, but Tris knew the morning would bring no respite; the carts and wagons continued to roll in, and the dead and wounded continued to pile up. Sometimes he couldn’t tell which was which.

“Go home,” a voice said behind him.

Tristan turned to see a gray-faced Bellingham leaning on one of his footmen. “Go home,” the nobleman said again. “You’re swaying on your feet. You’ll do none of them any good if you fall on them.”

“There’s too many of them still need help,” Tristan objected.

A man lying at his feet looked up at him with eyes like great black holes. “This is nothing,” he said in Belgian-accented French. “The fields are piled with bodies, thick with them. Hell has been unleashed, and we cannot stand against it. Piles of bodies. Mountains of bodies.” He coughed, and blood spilled from his mouth. Tristan bent quickly, but the man was already dead.

“Piles of bodies?” Tristan looked up at Bellingham, horrified. “
Mountains
?”

“Go home,” Bellingham said again. “Get some rest. You’ll do more good tomorrow than you will tonight. And you’ve wounded there, as well; they need you too. Go.”

Tristan rose from his crouch and staggered a little; the footman reached out and steadied him. Tris nodded his thanks. “You’re right,” he said, choking back tears of exhaustion and horror. “I’ll do no one good this way. But I shan’t sleep. I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again.”

Bellingham nodded. “I feel the same way. Good night, then. Rest, at least.”

“I’ll try. Good night.”

He stumbled
once or twice on the short walk home, the second time landing hard on his hands and knees and staying a moment, too exhausted to rise. Finally he managed to get to his feet and stumbled to his own door. Will, bless him, opened the door and caught him as he fell in; between the two of them they managed to get him to the pallet in the drawing room. “You should sleep in your own bed, sir,” Will said worriedly, but Tristan waved him away.