Carla Kelly (12 page)

He looked around and his unease increased to see dark forms gathering on each narrow street they passed. No one spoke, and he hoped they chose not to follow. He looked at the wagon, wanting to say something. I am too timid, he thought. He opened his mouth to speak again, but the wagon stopped; they were in the plaza.

“It is awfully dark,” he ventured as Sheffield, with Harper’s assistance, clambered awkwardly down from the high-sided cart.

“It is November!” Sheffield hissed, but in a low voice that made Jess wonder if the mood of the village was now on him, too. The Chief gestured for Elinore. “Come, my dear, lend me your arm. I am stiff with sitting.” He glared at Jess. “Nell and I will bravely go find the alcalde and ask his assistance.” He paused. “We would invite your husband, Nell, but he is too shy. He may tend to the wounded.”

Experience told him that there was no reasoning with Sheffield when he was in a black mood. Instead, he nodded to Harper. “Private, I am in his black book. Give me a hand up into…”

“No.”

He stopped, startled. He made to say something stern for once, but Harper was not looking at him. The soldier stared over his shoulder into the center of the plaza.

“No, please,” Harper said again, and there was no overlooking the pain and pleading in his voice, a far cry from his usual wheedling tone.

Jess turned around to see a flash. He winced and instinctively braced himself for the explosion, which reverberated in the square, surrounded as it was by buildings. His stomach dropped below his shoes when Elinore screamed. “Oh, God, no,” he said, and ran toward his wife, who stood
grasping the chief surgeon. He heard Harper shouting at him to wait, but he could not. Not until he was only a few feet from the two of them did he see the neatly drilled hole in the exact middle of Sheffield’s forehead.

What happened next happened fast. Sheffield dropped first to his knees and then facedown in the mud, dragging Elinore with him. Sobbing out loud and calling his name, she tried to turn him over as she struggled to rise into a sitting position.

He did not see the two men who came out of the plaza’s gloom, probably because his eyes were still dazzled by the flash and report of the musket. They grabbed his arms as Elinore shrieked at them in Spanish, the sound of her terror utterly foreign to his ears. He looked down to feel the muzzle of a pistol jammed just above his belt. He braced himself again, wishing simultaneously for a priest, and for more time, more time. His life did not flash before his eyes; he knew that the breath he drew next would be his last, and he would be as dead as Jenks in the wagon. He closed his eyes, dreading the flash more than the ball that he knew would eviscerate him.

Click. Another click. Elinore gasped, and then she was pleading with the men who held him, even as she crawled toward him. “I love you,” he whispered, but she did not seem to hear him above her own voice. She was telling them he was a doctor, saying it over and over, first in Spanish, then English, then French, as if seeking, in her desperation, to find the common language of chaos.

No one seemed to listen. The pistol clicked once more against his belly, then the pressure on his stomach ceased as the weapon was withdrawn. He took an experimental breath, and then another. His eyes dull now, he watched as the pistol flashed back in a wicked swing. It came forward against his head, and he remembered no more.

E
linore held her breath in horror as her husband hung in the grip of the men who held him, then dropped insensibly to the ground when they let him go. “I tell you, he is a doctor!” she screamed. “And so is this man you have killed!”

To her unutterable relief, someone finally seemed to understand. As she watched, crouched there on her hands and knees, a woman ran forward and spoke rapidly to the men who stood so close around Jesse. She gestured, she spoke, and then the men murmured to each other and backed away. One of them turned Jesse over, and wiped the blood from his face with the back of his hand. He hardly looked in Elinore’s direction.

She tried to stand, but her legs felt like jelly. Harper came to her then, pulling her to her feet and steadying her until she found her balance. She wanted to tell him thank you, but he was looking beyond her to Sheffield, who would never move again.

“Gor, miss,” Harper said, his voice subdued. “I doubt he knew what hit him. What do you suppose is the matter with these people? If they’re supposed to be allies, pray God we never run into the Frogs on this retreat.”

“Something must have happened here,” she said. “Oh, please turn the Chief over. At least get his face out of the mud.” Elinore, you goose, she chided herself, why should that possibly matter now? But it did.

While Harper did as he was told, Elinore approached the woman who had come from the darkness, and who now held a bloody cloth to Jesse’s temple. “I do not know that
you will forgive us for this,” she said in Spanish. “The old man was a doctor, too?”

“A surgeon, and you in this village have killed him. For shame,” she murmured, declining to say one more word. She knelt by her husband’s head and raised him to rest in her lap. Elinore felt his head cautiously. To her relief, she felt no grating bones, no jagged edges. She gathered him close, numb at what happened in less than five minutes. She sat there in the dark plaza, wet to the bone, and more alone than at any point in her life.

Then Dan O’Leary knelt beside her, his hand on her shoulder. Like her, his other hand went to Jesse’s head, only his probings were more expert. “He can probably use a suture or two,” he said calmly, his voice so prosaic that she felt the cloud on her heart lift. “I’ll wave this under his nose, and we’ll see if he chooses to rejoin….” He paused, and shook his head, then gave her an apologetic look. “I was going to say, ‘rejoin the human race,’ but I’m not so sure they’ve progressed that far in this village.”

Dan held the vial under Jesse’s nose. In another moment he was groaning and trying to move away from the pungent odor. His eyelids fluttered open, and he stared as though trying to focus his gaze. “Chief?”

Elinore shook her head. “Oh, Jess,” she whispered, and held him closer to her. “One moment he was grumbling to me, and the next…Oh, Jess.”

He closed his eyes again, and she thought in a panic that he had gone under and left her alone again. “Please stay here, Jess!” she pleaded with him. “Dan, do something!”

Dan took Jess’s face gently in his hands. “Captain? Do you hear me?”

“I do.”

“Do you know where you are?”

Jesse was silent for a moment, his eyes still closed. “Not heaven, I’ll wager.” He shivered. “Too cold for hell. I’ll bite, Dan. Where?”

Dan smiled at him, the worried look gone from his eyes. “It’s not the last line to a quip, sir. I just wanted to know if you were lucid.”

“I wish I weren’t.”

Don’t we all, Elinore thought, and looked around. The circle of men seemed smaller, or perhaps they were just
standing farther away now, in itself a comforting sign. The woman remained where she was. Elinore realized that she had never stopped talking.

Jess must have noticed it, too. He frowned up at her. “Elinore, tell her…stop. My head…”

“
Por favor
,” Elinore said. “
Por favor, senora. Le duele la cabeza
.”

It seemed like a polite hint to Elinore, but the woman did not stop importuning. She tugged at Elinore’s dress now, not mindful of the mud, and came even closer to Jesse, even though he had closed his eyes again and turned his face toward Elinore’s breast, as if wanting to block out everything. She held him close, watched the woman, and then tried to make sense of what she was saying so persistently.

Gradually her mind calmed, and she began to understand. She looked around for Dan, who had returned to the wagon and with Harper and Wilkie’s help was lifting out the wounded men. She could not help but see the body of her dear surgeon, who lay so still in her line of sight. “You have made a terrible mistake,” she said out loud.

“Eh, my dear, I hope you’re not referring to me,” Jesse said. “Even though I did promise you the Randall luck.”

“So you did,” she replied, and didn’t know what else to say. Long ago I taught myself not to have any expectations, she thought. I shan’t start now, no matter what he promises. I wonder if we will leave this village alive. She called to Dan, who came to her side as soon as the patients were leaning against the fountain in the plaza’s center.

“Dan, would you go with this woman? She is saying something about her daughter. I think there is a baby.”

“Never my strong suit,” Dan said. He looked at the woman, who had transferred her pleading gaze to him now. “Let us bargain with her first, Nell. Tell her I will go as soon as these men are safe under a roof.”

“You will go now.”

Elinore looked down in surprise. Jesse was trying to struggle into a sitting position. She helped him up. He looked at Dan until his eyes focused. “I never bargain with desperate people,” he said simply. “Go with her. We’ll see how persuasive Harper can be with our patients. Call him over, Elinore. It’s time he became a force for good.”

Carefully Elinore explained to the woman that she should take Daniel with her. Don’t argue, she pleaded silently as the woman hesitated. My Spanish can’t stand up to much nuance. She held her breath while a variety of emotions—principal among them anxiety—crossed the woman’s face. Finally she nodded. Elinore released her breath slowly as the woman started off at a trot down one of the dark streets. Dan watched her go, then looked at Jesse, a question in his eyes and some considerable trepidation.

“Just observe. I have taught you that.” He paused, then his words came out more crisp. “So did the Chief.”

“But I have never…”

Jesse shook his head, then groaned. “Observe, then tell me. Go on.”

When Dan followed the woman, Jesse leaned against Nell’s shoulder, as though his neck was not strong enough to support his head. “Call Harper over here, my dear. Prop me against the fountain, too, and see what you can do for our men.”

A thousand objections came to her mind. Let me do something for
you
, she wanted to tell him. Instead, she indicated for Harper to help her move Jesse. He did better than that. As she watched, the big man gently plucked her husband off her lap and carried him to the fountain, where he leaned him against the tiles. She hurried after him, gathering up his leather medicine satchel where he had dropped it when the men grabbed him. She propped it on one side of him, and the bandages and plasters on the other side.

He smiled at her, his eyes less confused. “Wilkie will stay here with us. You take Harper and see if you can find a place for the night. Surely there is a priest.”

With Harper—face so serious now—hovering over her like a man with a mission, Elinore took her courage in both hands and approached the circle of men. In a moment she was in the center of it, speaking as carefully as she could, almost willing them to understand her. To their credit, the men were trying to understand her as hard as she was desperate to be understood. “We are all that remains of a British hospital, and we were left behind through an error,” she concluded. “Please help me find a place for our wounded.” She thought a moment, piecing through her
Spanish grammar like a beggar at a rag bag. “If you can do this, my husband the surgeon will hold a clinic in the morning for any of you who are sick.” And if you do not, our retreat will end right here, hardly before it began, she told herself.

The men were silent for a long moment, and Harper looked about, as if gauging their chances for a hasty withdrawal. She touched his arm and whispered, “That is the way they are, Private. Be patient.” She thought of all the tradesmen she had argued with on her mother’s behalf from her youngest years, and the quiet women with gold hoops in their ears who washed the soldiers’ clothes and sometimes bedded them. She knew they would think, then talk among themselves, then act.

“We will help you, senora,” one of the men said finally. With a few words, he indicated that she should follow them back to the fountain. Despite the mud and damp that weighed down her skirts, and a weariness so deep that there was no name for it, she thought she could have skipped across the plaza. In another moment, Jesse was directing them through her to find the men blankets, and feed them soup, if there was any.

“
Y usted, senor
?” asked the spokesman.

“Elinore, please tell him I must stay here until Dan returns. Can you ask him to take the Chief into the church?”

She did as he requested, and two men picked up Sheffield and moved him from her sight. Everyone worked quickly, and soon the plaza was nearly deserted. “I hope I can find my patients in this rabbit warren,” Jesse murmured to her. He looked over at the man who was sitting now on the fountain’s rim. “Alcalde?”

He shook his head, and looked at Elinore. “Please tell him our alcalde is dead.” His expression hardened. “We were visited by the British earlier.”

Elinore stared at him. “Surely you mean the French.”

“I do not, senora.” He shrugged, but there was no lessening of the bitterness in his eyes. “I think our priest is with the alcalde’s family.”

“I…I don’t understand,” she began.

“He can explain it to you. He speaks a little English, I think.”

That will be welcome, she thought. Even though her
breath came in little frosty puffs, her back was wet with perspiration from the exertion of speaking even her imperfect Spanish. She prepared to compose another sentence to ask for a blanket for Jesse and some food, when she saw Dan hurrying toward them. She stood up from her own perch on the fountain’s rim. “Dan, thank goodness! Now you can help me with Jesse.”

Dan didn’t even look at her. He knelt in front of her husband, touching his face to make sure he was awake. “Sir, we have a problem.”

She wasn’t even sure he was awake, but Jesse managed a faint chuckle. “Dan, we have enough problems right now.”

“Here’s another,” the steward insisted. “The woman’s daughter has been in labor over twenty-one hours—that’s
veinte y un
, isn’t it, Elinore?—and I can’t figure out where the baby is.”