Chapter One

Question of the year for Mr. Jacob Frost, surgeon in the British Army: When does a war end? The guns had been silent since July of the Year of Our Lord 1815, but that wasn’t the conclusion of Jake’s war, oh no. Others could pack up with their regiments that had seen hard warfare in the Peninsula since 1809 and return to parades, honors and families.

This was not war’s end for the Medical Corps…never the Medical Corps. Maybe earlier in the war Jake might have felt sorry for himself to miss out on returning with the regiment, but he had matured since then, forced into maturity by constant, noisy warfare. If he had learned anything from Napoleon beyond hatred, it was endurance.

The best thing about this November in peaceful Belgium? Silence. There was the usual hospital ward noise, but the guns that filled those hospitals were still now, as peace covered Europe for the first time in a generation. Napoleon’s “lovely daughters” had been spiked and sent to foundries to be melted down. Napoleon himself was on his way to an exile much farther away than mere Elba. At least that was the rumor.

Jake counted his blessings. One was the satisfying sight of more empty beds, not because men were dying now, or even that over-eager commanders had sent the slightly better ones back to their companies to die there before they were well enough to die in battle. Many of these slightly better lads were on their way home to Yorkshire, or Dorset, or any number of villages and shires that despaired of ever seeing them again.

Some remained. Many of these warriors would never leave Belgium, some to be tended in loving silence by nuns devoting their own lives to patients wandering in that shadowland between life and death. It pained Jake mightily to write “comatose” on those charts. He was already inured to the fact that for the rest of his life, he would wonder if there was something more he could have done for those nearly dead/not quite alive soldiers.

Others – professional soldiers – waited more or less impatiently for their own orders to come through. “Maybe we’ll be posted to Canada,” was a common wish. Jake used to wonder why Canada. He decided Canada was a choice destination because it was far away from noisy Europe. No one ever heard much about it, beyond freezing winters.

Surgeons and physicians, Jake Frost among them, waited for signatures on their letters requesting release from the British Army that had owned them until war’s end. They were not commissioned officers as such, but they were in the Medica1 Corps until the end, no matter how long. For years, Europe had danced to Napoleon’s tune, but now the dance was over.

The British Army physicians still in Belgium months after Waterloo had trotted to that gavotte. Their dance cards had been full to overflowing, and now they wanted to leave the party. One surgeon broke down and cried in the ward when his release letter came back to him approved and signed. The other doctors cheered. Waiting for that release letter became something not to speak about, as if it would cast an evil spell on the ones who waited.

Jake had formerly been the philosophical sort, happy for those on whom Dame Fortune smiled. The son of a vicar in a small Yorkshire parish, he knew it was some sort of sin to wish ill on those lucky “early-outers,” as they came to be known. In truth, what was his hurry? His father had died mid-sermon six years ago, when the British Army was experiencing its own peril of retreat towards the Spanish coast at Corunna. When Jake got the news, he was too busy to mourn, which Papa probably would have considered a sin, anyway. It was hard to tell with Papa.

Gentle Mama had survived until last year, during the triumph that was Toulouse and the Corsican Beast’s first exile to Elba. Jake missed her letters most of all, and their hearty good cheer that buoyed him up as men died around him. Jake’s older brother was a minor official in the East India Tea Company and living in Benares. Jake never felt the loss. There was no sorrow that he never got a letter from remote India. Truth to tell, Abner Frost had always bullied his younger brothers. Jake’s sister Amelia had followed her ambitious husband to Massachusetts, America. Little Ben died of a wasting disease at home.

Jake Frost was alone, but that never meant he had no plans. He had always been too busy to spend much of his salary, so there was enough and to spare to start a practice in some small Yorkshire village, because he did love and miss the Dales.

Now it was mid-November. He was almost alone in this convent/hospital; his former cheerful attitude hardened now into something he didn’t like, but could abolish if he tried. His letter had not been endorsed and countersigned, releasing him from medical bondage to the British Army. Even the nuns were starting to regard him with pity. He thought he knew the problem, but was unsure of a remedy. He could ask the nuns to pray for his exit, but all those years of fighting and dying had made him wary of the Lord Almighty, who obviously played favorites. Better the nuns didn’t know that.

Like too many problems, Dame Experience nudged his shoulder to remind him his current dilemma began with the less competent officers who bought their commissions. General Sir David Baldwin, a minor baronet with a modest amount of wealth, was one. In actual fact, Sir David had proved to be a reasonably good commander of the Yorkshire Fifth Foot. His blind side, and what rendered him a threat to Jake, was his son and ADC Captain George Baldwin, who still lay injured…well, sort of injured.

To refer to George Baldwin as injured would be an exaggeration. Hypochondria was his disease of choice. He had endured a minor flesh wound at Mont St. Jean, generally known now as Waterloo. A French ball had entered and quickly exited his right calf when Captain Baldwin was running away to hide in the center of the square formed to ward off approaching French cavalry.

When the battle finally ended, Baldwin was dropped at Surgeon Frost’s aid station, literally dropped there by Fifth Foot soldiers who had endured that fool as long as they could bear it. There were seriously wounded men in the overloaded aid station who needed Frost’s ministrations. Sadly, but true to form, General Baldwin ordered him to treat his son first, making George Baldwin Jake Frost’s problem. This also put a period to Jake’s ordinary good will.

After years of dealing with both father and son, Jake knew which side his hard bread was buttered on. He treated Captain Baldwin promptly and efficiently, then quickly returned to the serious business of dealing with the truly injured, which were literally piled up at the forward station. He forgot Captain Baldwin.

That was his mistake. Captain Baldwin became Jake’s cross to bear. Here it was, months and months later, and still Captain Baldwin languished and moaned in the best room in the Convent of the Sacred Heart, where Jake and others of his profession continued their medical care among those who really needed it.

Knowing full well that George Baldwin could leave anytime he wanted––as Jake had gently reminded him several times––Jake knew better than to appeal to the captain’s better nature, because he had none. He tried the route of Cupid next. “Sir, haven’t I heard that you have a fiancée back in Yorkshire?” he asked one morning, when he had been called upon yet again to clean the captain’s now non-existent wound. “Surely she is eager to see you.” Far more than I, was his personal opinion, wisely left unsaid.

George Baldwin tossed his head from side to side. “She wouldn’t be able to bear the strain of seeing me in this low state,” he managed to gasp out, before faking a faint. He opened his eyes quickly enough and glared at the physician, when Jake held an ammonia pad under his nose.

“I am certain she would be delighted to see you, Captain Baldwin,” Jake said. “I mean, who wouldn’t? You’re a war hero.” I will have to wash my mouth out for saying such a lie , Jake thought , but I am desperate .

There the matter stood, until Jake’s own desperation to be rid of this useless human baggage shouldered aside his typical reluctance to rock a boat too hard. He knew General Sir David Baldwin liked to make his own stately way amongst his troops, and waylaid him one morning.

“Sir David, I have been wondering when you will sign my release from my commission,” he said, after an inspection that had included a number of Yorkshire Fifth Foot who were preparing to leave Belgium in a rumored troop transport waiting in Antwerp. “The wars are over and Napoleon has been defeated. I have fulfilled all that is required of me, except for your endorsement and signature.”

“My own son is still your patient,” the general reminded him.

“He has had my permission to rejoin his regiment and return to England for more than a month now, sir,” Jake replied, trying to be as obsequious as possible without actually kissing the man’s hairy bum. “I believe it has been longer, sir. I am certain he can accompany you home to Yorkshire with no ill effects.”

“A bit premature, wouldn’t you say?”

“Actually, he’s been ready for months, Sir David,” Jake repeated, already feeling desperation sweat on his back.

“He is still suffering,” General Baldwin said with some serenity. “So he tells me. As you were, Mr. Frost.”

So that’s how he was, until even the calmest of natures rebelled and the worm turned. That was when Jake knew it was time to sidle around his immediate commander. He fired off a letter to Lord Wellington himself, requesting his service be abrogated, which it was promptly, accompanied by a scrawled note of congratulations from the great man himself. “’My ADC reminds me that you were ever faithful all across Spain and up to Mont St. Jean,’” he wrote, which pleased Jake and almost made up for General Sir David’s serene denial of his release.

Still General Baldwin refused to agree to Jake’s release. “How can he hold up my release?” Jake fumed to a fellow physician who was even now packing, the traitor. “The wars are over, but I’m a hostage.”

“And a little over-dramatic, Jake?”

Perhaps, perhaps. “I suppose,” he admitted, “but Whittaker, have you ever had that patient who simply wouldn’t go away?”

“Aye, laddie. You’ll survive.”

He did. He minded his mouth, knowing better than to swear fluently in several languages around the nuns. Merde , uttered softly, became his current password, in a world where passwords had become unnecessary.

He had nearly resigned himself to taking Orders and becoming a Dominican––he hadn’t found the time to bed a woman in ages––when some evidence of glacial movement became apparent. It came in the form of the Bishop of Brussels, who visited the convent then issued an ultimatum to General Baldwin, a lapsed member of the Anglican Church, whose only god was money and acclaim, he being short on both.

Jake only learned of it when the general paid his daily visit to his son, who still languished in a bed––long gone were the iron cots––even though only the faintest scar remained of his wound. The general stood over his son and shook his head. “Poor, poor boy,” he said, “I fear we must chance a trip across the channel with you.”

Jake could have fallen down in gratitude, except that years in the thrall of this general and his prissy offspring had shown the uselessness of drama among the self-centered. He merely crossed his fingers under the chart in his hands.

The general turned to him. “You, Surgeon Frost, will of course accompany him to my manor in Brierton, near Kirkby.”

C aptain Hypochondria is perfectly capable of finding his way home , Jake wanted to say, but this was the closest he had come to escape so he merely nodded. “I’ll be happy to take him home,” even came from Jake’s mouth.

“And remain there with him through the end of the year,” the general added. “I will arrive at my estate before Christmas.”

I n a pig’s eye , Jake thought. “Certainly, Sir David.”