“‘For your beautiful eyes,’ indeed!” he muttered, but couldn’t help smiling at the impudence. A wise man would not touch Percy Wainwright with a ten-foot pole. Something shorter, though . . .
“Oh, do be quiet, will you?” he murmured to himself, and made his way down a clay bank to the edge of a tiny creek, where he could throw cold water on his heated face.
IT WAS PERHAPS eight o’clock in the morning when we reached Free-hold, where Tennent Church was to be established as the main hospital. It was a large building, set in the midst of a huge, sprawling churchyard, an acre or more of ground whose headstones were as individual as doubtless their owners had been in life. No neat aisles of uniform white crosses here.
I spared a thought for the graves of Normandy and wondered whether those rows upon rows of faceless dead were meant to impose a sort of postmortem tidiness on the costs of war—or whether it was meant rather to underline them, a solemn accounting carried out in endless rows of naughts and crosses.
But I didn’t think long. Battle had been joined already—somewhere—and there were already wounded coming in, a number of men sitting in the shade of a large tree next to the church, more coming down the road, some staggering with the help of friends, some being carried on litters—or in someone’s arms. My heart lurched at the sight, but I tried not to look for Jamie or Ian; should they be among the early wounded, I’d know it soon enough.
There was a bustle near the church’s porch, where the double doors had been flung wide to accommodate passage, and orderlies and surgeons were coming and going in haste—but organized haste, so far.
“Go and see what’s happening, why don’t you?” I suggested to Denzell. “The girls and I will unload things.”
He paused long enough to unhitch his own two mules and hobble them, then hastened into the church.
I found the buckets and dispatched Rachel and Dottie to find a well. The day was already uncomfortably hot; we were going to need a good deal of water, one way or another.
Clarence was showing a strong urge to go join Denny’s mules in cropping grass among the headstones, jerking his head against the pull of his tether and uttering loud cries of annoyance.
“All right, all right, all right,” I said, hurrying to undo the packing straps and lift his burdens off. “Hold your—oh, dear.”
A man was staggering toward me, giving at the knees with every step and lurching dizzily. The side of his face was black, and there was blood down the facing of his uniform. I dropped the bundle of tenting and poles and rushed to catch him by the arm before he should trip over a headstone and fall face-first into the dirt.
“Sit down,” I said. He looked dazed and appeared not to hear me, but as I was pulling on his arm, he did go down, letting his knees relax abruptly and nearly taking me with him as he landed on a substantial stone commemorating one Gilbert Tennent.
My patient was swaying as though about to fall over, and yet a hasty check showed me no significant wounds; the blood on his coat was from his face, where the blackened skin had blistered and split. It wasn’t just the soot of black powder—the skin had actually been burned to a crisp, the underlying flesh seared, and my patient smelled appallingly like a pork roast. I took a firm grip on my lurching stomach and stopped breathing through my nose.
He didn’t respond to my questions but stared hard at my mouth, and he seemed lucid, despite his continued swaying. The penny finally dropped.
“Ex . . . plo . . . sion?” I mouthed with exaggerated care, and he nodded vigorously, then stopped abruptly, swaying so far that I had to grasp him by the sleeve and pull him upright.
Artilleryman, from his uniform. So something big had exploded near him—a mortar, a cannon?—and not only burned his face nearly to the bone but also likely burst both his eardrums and disturbed the balance of his inner ear. I nodded and set his hands to grip the stone he sat on, to keep him in place while I hastily finished unloading Clarence—who was making the welkin ring with frustration; I should have realized at once that the artilleryman was deaf, as he was taking no notice of the racket—hobbled him, and set him loose to join Denny’s mules in the shade. I dug what I needed out of the packs and set about to do what little I could for the injured man, this consisting mostly of soaking a towel in saline and applying it to his face like a poultice, to remove as much soot as I could without scrubbing.
I thanked God that I’d had the forethought to bring a jug of sweet oil for burns—and cursed my lack of it for not having asked for aloe at Bartram’s Garden.
The girls hadn’t yet returned with water; I hoped there was a well somewhere close at hand. Creek water so close to an army couldn’t be used without boiling it. That thought led me to look round for a spot where a fire could be lighted and to make a mental note to send the girls to look for wood next.
My mind was jerked from my rapidly expanding mental checklist, though, by Denny’s sudden emergence from the church. He wasn’t alone; he appeared to be having a passionate argument with another Continental officer. With a brief exclamation of exasperation, I dug in my pocket and found my silk-wrapped spectacles. With these on my nose, the face of Denny’s interlocutor sprang into clear focus—Captain Leckie, diplomate of the Medical College of Philadelphia.
My patient tugged at my skirt and, when I turned to him, apologetically opened his mouth and mimed drinking. I held up a finger, adjuring him to wait one moment, and went to see whether Denzell required reinforcement.
My appearance was greeted by an austere look from Captain Leckie, who viewed me rather as he might have looked at something questionable on the bottom of his shoe.