“She’s not dying!” he turned and bellowed at them. He thought dimly that he must look demented; their blackened faces were aghast. Bixby stepped out and touched his shoulder gingerly, as though he were a lighted grenade that might go off in the next second. He thought he might.
“Can I help, sir?” Bixby said quietly.
“No,” he managed to say. “I—he—” He gestured to Leckie, busy on the ground.
“General,” said the newcomer, at his other elbow. He turned to find a blue-clad regular, a very young man in a baggy lieutenant’s uniform, face set in dogged earnestness. “I dislike to intrude, sir, but as your wife’s not dying—”
“Go away!”
The lieutenant flinched, but stood his ground.
“Sir,” he said stubbornly. “General Lee has sent me urgently to find you. He requires that you attend him at once.”
“Bugger Lee,” said Bixby, very rudely, saving Jamie the trouble, and advanced on the newcomer, fists clenched.
The lieutenant was already flushed with heat, but at this grew redder. He ignored Bixby, though, attention focused on Jamie.
“You must come, sir.”
VOICES . . . I heard words, disjointed, coming out of the fog like bullets, striking randomly.
“. . . find Denzell Hunter!”
“General—”
“No!”
“—but you’re needed at—”
“No!”
“—orders—”
“NO!”
And another voice, this one stiff with fear.
“. . . could be shot for treason and desertion, sir!”
That focused my wandering attention and I heard the reply, clearly.
“Then they’ll shoot me where I stand, sir, for I will not leave her side!”
Good, I thought, and, comforted, lapsed into the spinning void again.
“TAKE OFF YOUR coat and waistcoat, lad,” Jamie said abruptly. The boy looked completely bewildered, but—stimulated by a menacing movement from Bixby—did as he was told. Jamie took him by the shoulder, turned him round, and said, “Stand still, aye?”
Stooping swiftly, he scooped a handful from the horrifying puddle of bloody mud and, standing, wrote carefully on the messenger’s white back with a finger:
I resign my commission. J. Fraser.
He made to fling the remnants of mud away but, after a moment’s hesitation, added a smeared and reluctant Sir at the top of the message, then clapped the boy on the shoulder.
“Go and show that to General Lee,” he said. The lieutenant went pale.
“The general’s in a horrid passion, sir,” he said. “I dassen’t!”
Jamie looked at him. The boy swallowed, said, “Yes, sir,” shrugged on his garments, and went at a run, unbuttoned and flapping.
Rubbing his hands heedlessly on his breeches, Jamie knelt again beside Dr. Leckie, who spared him a quick nod. The doctor was pressing a wad of lint and a handful of skirt hard against Claire’s side with both hands. The surgeon’s hands were red to the elbow, and sweat was running down his face, dripping from his chin.
“Sassenach,” Jamie said softly, afraid to touch her. His own clothes were sodden with sweat, but he was cold to the core. “Can ye hear me, lass?”
She’d regained consciousness, and his heart rose into his throat. Her eyes were closed, shut tight in a furious grimace of pain and concentration. She did hear him; the golden eyes opened and fixed on him. She didn’t speak; her breath hissed through clenched teeth. She did see him, though, he was sure of that—and her eyes weren’t clouded with shock, nor dim with imminent death. Not yet.
Dr. Leckie was looking at her face, too, intent. He let out his own breath, and the tension in his shoulders eased a little, though he didn’t relax the pressure of his hands.
“Can you get me more lint, a wad of bandage, anything?” he asked. “I think the bleeding is slowing.”
Claire’s bag lay open a little way behind Leckie. Jamie lunged for it, upended it on the ground, and snatched up a double handful of rolled bandages from the litter. Leckie’s hand made a sucking sound as he pulled it away from the sopping wad of cloth and grabbed the fresh bandages.
“You might cut her laces,” the doctor said calmly. “I need her stays off. And it will help her to breathe more easily.”
Jamie fumbled his dirk free, hands shaking in his haste.
“Un . . . tie . . . them!” Claire grunted, scowling ferociously.
Jamie grinned absurdly at hearing her voice, and his hands steadied. So she thought she’d live to need her laces. He gulped air and set himself to undo the knot. Her stay laces were leather and as usual soaked with sweat—but she used a very simple granny knot, and he got it loose with the tip of his dirk.
The knot fell free and he jerked the laces loose, wrenching the stays wide apart. Her bosom rose white as she gasped, and he felt an instant’s embarrassment as he saw her ni**les stiffen through the sweat-soaked fabric of her shift. He wanted to cover her.
There were flies everywhere, black and buzzing, drawn by the blood. Leckie shook his head to dislodge one that lighted on his eyebrow. They were swarming round Jamie’s own ears, but he didn’t bother about them, instead brushing them away as they crawled on Claire’s body, over her twitching, pallid face, her hands half curled and helpless.
“Here,” Leckie said, and, seizing one of Jamie’s hands, pushed it down on the fresh compress. “Press hard on that.” He sat back on his heels, grabbed another bandage roll, and unfurled it. With some lifting and grunting and a terrible moan from Claire, together they contrived to pass the cingulum round her body, securing the dressing in place.