The Fiery Cross (133 page)

M
RS. CLAIRE?”

It was Robin McGillivray hovering in the doorway of the tent, his dark wiry hair standing up on end like a bottle-brush. He looked like a harried raccoon, the skin round his eyes wiped free of sweat and soot, the rest still blackened with the smoke of battle.

At sight of him, Claire rose at once.

“Coming.” She was on her feet, kit in hand and already moving toward the door before Brianna could speak.

“Mother!” It was no more than a whisper, but the tone of panic brought Claire round as though she had stepped on a turntable. The amber eyes fastened on Brianna’s face for a moment, flicked to Roger, then back to her daughter.

“Watch his breathing,” she said. “Keep the tube clear. Give him honey-water, if he’s conscious enough to swallow a bit. And touch him. He can’t turn his head to see you; he needs to know you’re there.”

“But—” Brianna stopped dead, her mouth too dry to speak.
Don’t go!
she wanted to cry.
Don’t leave me alone! I can’t keep him alive, I don’t know what to do!

“They need me,” Claire said, very gently. She turned, skirts whispering, to the impatiently waiting Robin, and vanished into the twilight.

“And I don’t?” Brianna’s lips moved, but she didn’t know whether she had spoken aloud or not. It didn’t matter; Claire was gone, and she was alone.

She felt light-headed, and realized that she had been holding her breath. She breathed out, and in, deeply, slowly. The fear was a poisonous snake, writhing round her spine, slithering through her mind. Ready to sink its fangs in her heart. She took one more breath through gritted teeth, seized the snake by the head, mentally stuffed it wriggling into a basket, and slammed down the lid. So much for panic, then.

Her mother would not have left, were there any immediate danger, she told herself firmly, nor if there were anything more that could be done medically. So there wasn’t. Was there anything
she
could do? She breathed, deep enough to make the boning of her stays creak.

Touch him. Speak to him. Let him know you’re with him.
That was what Claire had said, speaking urgently but somehow absentmindedly, during the messy proceedings following the impromptu tracheotomy.

Brianna turned back to Roger, looking in vain for something safe to touch. His hands were swollen like inflated gloves, stained purple-red with bruising, the crushed fingers nearly black, raw rope-weals sunk so deep in the flesh of his wrists that she was queasily sure she could see white bone. They looked unreal, badly-done makeup for a horror play.

Grotesque as they were, they were better than his face. That was bruised and swollen, too, with a ghastly ruff of leeches attached beneath his jaw, but it was more subtly deformed, like some sinister stranger pretending to be Roger.

His hands were lavishly decorated with leeches, too. He must be wearing every leech available, she thought. Claire had sent Josh rushing to the other surgeons, to beg their supplies, and then sent him and the two Findlay boys splashing down the creek banks in hasty search of more.

Watch his breathing.
That, she could do. She sat down, moving as quietly as she could, from some obscure urge not to wake him. She laid a hand lightly over his heart, so relieved to find him warm to the touch that she gave a great sigh. He grimaced slightly at the feel of her breath on his face, tensed, then relaxed again.

His own breath came so shallowly that she took her hand away, feeling that the pressure of her palm on his chest might be enough to stop its labored rise. He
was
breathing, though; she could hear the faint whistle of air through the tube in his throat. Claire had commandeered Mr. Caswell’s imported English pipe, ruthlessly breaking off the amber stem. Rinsed hastily with alcohol, it was still stained with tobacco tar, but seemed to be functioning well enough.

Two fingers of Roger’s right hand were broken, all his nails clawed bloody, torn, or missing. Her own throat tightened at this evidence of just how ferociously he had fought to live. His state seemed so precarious that she hesitated to touch him, as though she might startle him over some invisible edge between death and life. And yet she could see what her mother meant; the same touch might hold him back, keep him from stumbling over just such an edge, lost in the dark.

She squeezed his thigh firmly, reassured by the solid feel of the long, curving muscle under the blanket that covered his lower body. He made a small sound, tensed, and relaxed again. She wondered for a surreal moment whether to cup his genitals.

“That would let him know I’m here, all right,” she murmured, swallowing a hysterical desire to laugh. His leg quivered slightly at the sound of her voice.

“Can you hear me?” she asked softly, leaning forward. “I’m here, Roger. It’s me—Bree. Don’t worry, you aren’t alone.”

Her own voice sounded strange; too loud, stiff and awkward.

“Bi socair, mo chridhe,”
she said, and relaxed a little.
“Bi samnach, tha mi seo.”

It was easier, somehow, in Gaelic, its formality a thin dam against the intensity of feelings that might swamp her, were they ever set free. Love and fear and anger, swirled together in a mix so strong her hand trembled with it.

She realized suddenly that her breasts were turgid, aching with milk; there had been no time in the last several hours even to think of it, let alone take the time to relieve the pressure. Her nipples stung and tingled at the thought, and she gritted her teeth against the small gush of milk that leaked into her bodice, mingling with her sweat. She yearned toward Roger, wanting suddenly to suckle him, wanting to cradle him against her breast and let life flow into him from her.

Touch him.
She was forgetting to touch him. She stroked his arm, squeezed his forearm gently, hoping to distract herself from discomfort.

He seemed to feel her hand on his arm; one eye opened a little, and she thought she saw a consciousness of her flicker in its depths.

“You look like the male version of Medusa,” she said, the first thing that popped into her head. One dark eyebrow twitched slightly upward.

“The leeches,” she said. She touched one of those on his neck, and it contracted sluggishly, already half-full. “A beard of snakes. Can you feel them? Do they bother you?” she asked before remembering what her mother had said. His lips moved, though, forming a soundless “no,” with obvious effort.

“Don’t talk.” She glanced at the other bed, feeling self-conscious, but the wounded man in it was quiet, eyes closed. She turned back, bent, and quickly kissed Roger, the merest touch of lips. His mouth twitched; she thought he meant to smile.

She wanted to shout at him.
What happened? What in hell did you DO?
But he couldn’t answer.

Suddenly, fury overwhelmed her. Mindful of the people passing to and fro nearby, she didn’t shout, but instead leaned down and gripped his shoulder—that seeming one of the reasonably undamaged spots—and hissed, “How in God’s name did you
do
this?” in his ear.

His eyes rolled slowly toward her, fixing on her face. He made a slight grimace which she couldn’t interpret at all, and then the shoulder under her hand began to vibrate. She stared at him in complete perplexity for a few seconds, before she realized that he was laughing. Laughing!

The tube in his throat jiggled, and made a soft wheezing noise, which aggravated her beyond bearing. She stood up, hands pressed against her aching breasts.

“I’ll be right back,” she said. “Don’t you bloody go anywhere, damn you!”

G
ERALD FORBES WAS A SUCCESSFUL lawyer, and normally looked the part. Even dressed in his campaigning gear, and with the soot of gunpowder staining his face, he still had an air of solid assurance that served him well as a captain of militia. This air had not quite deserted him, but he seemed visibly uneasy, curling and uncurling the brim of his hat as he stood in the doorway of the tent.

At first I assumed that it was merely the discomfort that afflicts many people in the presence of illness—or perhaps awkwardness over the circumstances of Roger’s injury. But evidently it was something else; he barely nodded toward Brianna, who sat by Roger’s bed.

“My sympathies for your misfortune, ma’am,” he said, then turned at once to Jamie. “Mr. Fraser. If I might—a word? And Mrs. Fraser, too,” he added, with a grave bow in my direction.

I glanced at Jamie, and at his nod, got up, reaching by reflex for my medical kit.

There was not a great deal I could do; that much was obvious. Isaiah Morton lay on his side in Forbes’s tent, his face dead-white and sheened with sweat. He still breathed, but slowly, and with a horrible gurgling effect that reminded me unpleasantly of the sound when I had pierced Roger’s throat. He wasn’t conscious, which was a small mercy. I made a cursory examination, and sat back on my heels, wiping sweat from my face with the hem of my apron; the evening had not cooled much, and it was close and hot in the tent.

“Shot through the lung,” I said, and both men nodded, though they both clearly knew as much already.

“Shot in the back,” Jamie said, a grim tone to his voice. He glanced at Forbes, who nodded, not taking his eyes from the stricken man.

“No,” he said quietly, answering an unspoken question. “He wasn’t a coward. And it was a clean advance—no other companies in the line behind us.”

“No Regulators behind you? No sharpshooters? No ambush?” Jamie asked, but Forbes was shaking his head before the questions were finished.

“We chased a few Regulators as far as the creek, but we stopped there and let them go.” Forbes still held the hat between his fingers, and he mechanically rolled and unrolled the brim, over and over. “I had no stomach for killing.”

Jamie nodded, silent.

I cleared my throat, and drew the bloody remnants of Morton’s shirt gently over him.

“He was shot
twice
in the back,” I said. The second bullet had only grazed his upper arm, but I could plainly see the direction of the furrow it had left.

Jamie closed his eyes briefly, then opened them.

“The Browns,” he said, in grim resignation.

Gerald Forbes glanced at him, surprised.

“Brown? That’s what he said.”

“He spoke?” Jamie squatted beside the injured man, a frown drawing his ruddy brows together. He glanced at me, and I shook my head mutely. I was holding Isaiah Morton’s wrist, and could feel the flutter and stumble in his pulse. He would not likely speak again.

“When they brought him in.” Forbes squatted by Jamie, at last setting down the maltreated hat. “He asked for you, Fraser. And then he said, ‘Tell Ally. Tell Ally Brown.’ He said that several times, before he—” He gestured mutely at Morton, whose half-closed lids showed slices of white, his eyes rolled up in agony.

Jamie said something obscene, very softly, under his breath in Gaelic.

“Do you really think they did this?” I asked, equally softly. The pulse thumped and shuddered under my thumb, struggling.

He nodded, looking down at Morton.

“I shouldna have let them go,” he said, as though to himself. Morton and Alicia Brown, he meant.

“You couldn’t have stopped them.” I reached my free hand toward him, to touch him in reassurance, but couldn’t quite reach him, tethered as I was to Morton’s pulse.

Gerald Forbes was looking at me in puzzlement.

“Mr. Morton . . . eloped with the daughter of a man named Brown,” I explained delicately. “The Browns weren’t happy about it.”

“Oh, I see.” Forbes nodded understandingly. He glanced down at Morton’s body and clicked his tongue, a sound mingling reproof with sympathy. “The Browns—do you know which company they belong to, Fraser?”

“Mine,” Jamie said shortly. “Or they did. I havena seen either of them, since the end of the battle.” He turned to me. “Is there aught to do for him, Sassenach?”

I shook my head, but didn’t let go of his wrist. The pulse hadn’t improved, but it hadn’t gotten worse, either.

“No. I thought he might be gone already, but he isn’t sinking yet. The ball must not have struck a major vessel. Even so . . .” I shook my head again.

Jamie sighed deeply and nodded.

“Aye. Will ye stay with him, then, until . . . ?”

“Yes, of course. Will you go back to our tent, though, and make sure everything’s under control there? If Roger—I mean, come and fetch me if I’m needed.”

He nodded once more and left. Gerald Forbes came near, and put a tentative hand on Morton’s shoulder.

“His wife—I shall see that she has help. If he should come round again, will you tell him that?”

“Yes, of course,” I said again, but my hesitation made him look up, brows raised.

“It’s just that he . . . um . . . has
two
wives,” I explained. “He was already married when he eloped with Alicia Brown. Hence the difficulty with her family, you see.”

Forbes’s face went comically blank.