“Is he breathing?” I asked. I was having trouble breathing myself, and couldn’t sense the patient’s vital signs—save to notice his heart was beating, because blood was pulsing slightly out of the smaller vessels—but Arnold nodded, his head bowed, intent on Tench’s face.
“He’ll do,” he said, his voice firm and loud, and I knew he was speaking as much to Tench as to me. Now I could feel the stir in the upper leg, a violent reflexive urge to move, and Jamie leaned hard on it. My fingers brushed the discarded lower leg, the flesh horribly flaccid and rubbery, and I snatched them back, wiping them convulsively on my apron.
I swiped the bloody apron then across my face and pushed back loosened bits of hair with the back of my hand. It was shaking; they both were.
What the bloody hell are you shaking now for? I thought irritably. But I was, and it took much longer than it should have to cauterize the last few small bleeders—adding the ghastly smell of roasting flesh to everything else in the room; I thought even General Arnold might throw up—stitch the flaps, bandage the wound, and, at last, loosen the tourniquet.
“All right,” I said, and straightened up. “Now . . .” But if I said anything else, I didn’t hear it. The room revolved slowly round me and dissolved into a flicker of black and white spots, and then everything went black.
THE SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS
TENCH LIVED.
“I should have known you would,” I said to him. “If you were determined enough to survive all night in the river, plainly a mere amputation wouldn’t slow you down.”
He hadn’t enough strength to laugh—the journey by litter to Chestnut Street had left him white-faced and gasping—but he did twitch his mouth enough to qualify his expression as a smile.
“Oh . . . I’ll live,” he managed. “Wouldn’t . . . give ’em . . . the satis . . . faction . . . of dying.” Worn out by this, he closed his eyes, chest heaving. I wiped his face gently with my handkerchief, patted his shoulder, and left him to rest.
I had had the litter bearers take him upstairs, to what had been my bedroom, and I closed the door behind me now with a queerly mixed feeling of triumph and depression.
I had spent the morning with Mrs. Figg and the housemaid, Doreen, packing away what remained of Lord John’s furnishings—for many had already been shipped to New York—and rearranging the house to serve as a temporary surgery. Even if we were to leave for North Carolina soon—and the sooner the better—I did have to have someplace to put Tench where he could be looked after in conditions approaching comfort and hygiene. And the patients I had been seeing at the printshop could certainly be taken care of more conveniently here.
At the same time . . . being here again brought back echoes of the numb despair I had lived with all those weeks of believing Jamie dead. I thought the bustle of work and the clean sweep of furnishings would perhaps obviate that distant sense of drowning, but at the moment it was an uneasy swirl around my ankles.
Mental oppression was not the only debilitating condition connected with the new situation. Leaving Number 17 to return to the Shippen house, I had been followed in the street by a gang of young men. Mostly boys, but some big fellows of sixteen or seventeen, big enough to make me uneasy with their glances.
Still more uneasy when they began to draw up close to me, taking a quick step to whisper, “King’s whore!” in my ear before falling back, or to try to tread on the hem of my skirt, sniggering.
I thought I had seen one or two of them in the mob when I’d brought Hal here. Perhaps they’d followed me then and, finding that I was married to Lord John, assumed I was a turncoat, a traitor to the Rebel cause. Or possibly, I thought, stiffening my spine, they were just troublemaking pipsqueaks.
I whirled round to face them, gripping my parasol. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but no physical weapon would have been of use against so many. Even a twelve-year-old boy was likely stronger than I was at the moment.
“What do you want?” I demanded, using the memory of my matron’s voice, whipcrack and steel—or at least I hoped I could still do that.
Some of the little warts blinked and took a step back, but one of the bigger ones took a step toward me, grinning. It took all my control not to recoil.
“I don’t know, hinnie,” he said, looking me up and down with a lazy insolence. “What does a Loyalist lady have that we might want?”
“A swift poke in the eye is all I can offer you,” I informed him crisply, with a meaningful pointing of my parasol. “Apparently I’m walking too slowly and blocking your progress, gentlemen. Do go on ahead of me.” Holding his eye with a menacing stare, I stepped into the street and gestured with my parasol, indicating that they should pass on.
That made some of them giggle, but the big fellow flushed a nasty pink that made his adolescent pimples fluoresce. I stepped back farther into the street, in an imitation of politeness, but actually in hopes of attracting some attention.
I was lucky: a rag-and-bone cart was coming down the road, the horse’s hooves clopping on the cobbles, and I moved still farther, blocking the way. The carter, aroused from semi-somnolence, half-stood, peering out from under his hat.
“What the devil are you idle buggers a-doing in the road? Get your fat arses out my way!” He raised his whip in a menacing fashion, and the boys, who had started to advance on me, quickly retreated.
The carter stood up all the way, took off his hat, and bowed to me.
“Good day, your ladyship; I hopes I sees you well. Can I offer you a ride, mayhap?” He was speaking in jest; I didn’t think he actually knew I had recently been a ladyship. He was certainly surprised when I swept up my skirts and mounted his cart, though.