His eyebrows shot up, and he looked me openly up and down, his eyes lingering on the top pockets of my apron, these featuring an unwieldy rolled dressing in the act of coming unrolled and trailing down my front and a jar of asafoetida, whose cork was loose, thus allowing the reek of it to waft gently above the other notable smells of the camp. It was known commonly as “devil’s dung,” and for good reason. I pulled the jar out and pushed the cork in more securely. This gesture seemed somehow to reassure him.
“Oh! The general is a physician, I perceive,” he said.
“No,” I said, beginning to see that I should have uphill work with Captain Leckie, who appeared young and not overbright. “My husband is a soldier. I am a physician.”
He stared at me as though I’d told him I was a prostitute. Then he made the mistake of assuming that I was joking and laughed heartily.
At this point, one of my patients, a young mother whose one-year-old son had an ear infection, poked her neatly capped head hesitantly into the tent. Her little boy was in her arms, howling and red-faced.
“Oh, dear,” I said. “I’m so sorry to keep you waiting, Mrs. Wilkins. Do bring him in; I’ll get the bark for him directly.”
Captain Leckie frowned at Mrs. Wilkins and beckoned her closer. She looked nervously at me, but allowed him to lean down and look at little Peter.
“He has a difficult tooth,” Leckie said, rather accusingly, after running a large, unwashed thumb through Peter’s drooling mouth. “He ought to have the gum slit, to let the tooth come through.” He began to fumble in his pocket, where he doubtless had a highly insanitary scalpel or lancet.
“He is teething,” I agreed, shaking out a quantity of crumbled willow bark into my mortar. “But he also has an ear infection, and the tooth will come through of its own accord within the next twenty-four hours.”
He rounded on me, indignant and astonished.
“Are you contradicting me?”
“Well, yes,” I said, rather mildly. “You’re wrong. You want to have a good look in his left ear. It’s—”
“I, madam, am a diplomate of the Medical College of Philadelphia!”
“I congratulate you,” I said, beginning to be provoked. “You’re still wrong.” Having thus rendered him momentarily speechless, I finished grinding the bark into powder and poured it into a square of gauze, which I folded into a neat packet and handed to Mrs. Wilkins, with instructions as to the brewing of the infusion and how to administer it, as well as how to apply an onion poultice.
She took the packet as though it might explode and, with a hasty glance at Captain Leckie, fled, little Peter’s howls receding like a siren in the distance.
I drew a deep breath.
“Now,” I said, as pleasantly as possible. “If you’re in need of simples, Dr. Leckie, I have a good supply. I can—”
He had drawn himself up like a crane eyeing a frog, beady-eyed and hostile.
“Your servant, ma’am,” he said curtly, and stalked past me.
I rolled my eyes up toward the canvas overhead. There was a small gecko-like creature clinging to the cloth, who viewed me with no particular emotion.
“How to win friends and influence people,” I remarked to it. “Take note.” Then I pushed the tent flap back and beckoned for the next patient to come in.
I HAD TO hurry in order to make my rendezvous with Jamie, who was just about to begin his review when I dashed up, twisting my hair into a mass and pinning it hastily under my broad-brimmed hat. It was a terribly hot day; being in the open sun for only a few minutes had made my nose and cheeks tingle warningly.
Jamie bowed gravely to me and began his advance along the line of men drawn up for review, greeting men, saluting officers, asking questions, giving his aide-de-camp notes of things to be done.
He had Lieutenant Schnell with him as aide-de-camp—a nice German boy from Philadelphia, perhaps nineteen—and a stout gentleman I didn’t know but assumed from his uniform to be the captain in charge of whatever companies we were inspecting. I followed them, smiling at the men as I passed, while looking them over sharpish for any overt signs of illness, injury, or disability—I was sure that Jamie could spot excessive drunkenness without my expert opinion.
There were three hundred men, he’d told me, and most of them were quite all right. I kept walking and nodding, but wasn’t above beginning to fantasize some dangerous circumstance in which I found Captain Leckie writhing in pain, which I would graciously allay, causing him to grovel and apologize for his objectionable attitude. I was trying to choose between the prospect of a musket ball embedded in his buttock, testicular torsion, and something temporarily but mortifyingly disfiguring, like Bell’s palsy, when my eye caught a glimpse of something odd in the lineup.
The man in front of me was standing bolt upright, musket at port arms, eyes fixed straight ahead. This was perfectly correct—but no other man in the line was doing it. Militiamen were more than capable, but they generally saw no point in military punctilio. I glanced at the rigid soldier, passed by—then glanced back.
“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ!” I exclaimed, and only sheer chance kept Jamie from hearing me, he being distracted by the sudden arrival of a messenger.
I took two hasty steps back, bent, and peered under the brim of the dusty slouch hat. The face beneath was set in fierce lines, with a darkly ominous glower—and was completely familiar to me.
“Bloody effing hell,” I whispered, seizing him by the sleeve. “What are you doing here?”