Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

The shock in his voice rooted Elinore to the spot. The anguished look Jesse gave her—one that cried "Please help'' without a word spoken—set her in motion. Despite his obvious need for her, when she reached the doorway he extended both arms to prevent her from crossing the threshold. She could only look over his arm and gasp.

"They're French!" she exclaimed, then pinched her nostrils shut. The odor of putrefaction was almost overwhelming, even though the room was large—it must have been the convent's refectory—and the air cool. The men lay in two rows facing each other. These are the enemy, she thought, then, God help them.

She recognized them immediately for what they were, men whose injuries were too severe for the retreating French to take with them after the battle of Salamanca in July. Only now in cold November were some of them recuperating, while others faded. She looked at them, thought of the three men left behind with Daniel O'Leary in Santos, and wondered all over again why nations fight.

She made no move to follow Jesse when he and the nun began to walk slowly by the wounded men. She was speaking to him in Italian. Hands behind his back, eyes lowered as though he wanted to look everywhere but at the men, Jesse listened, nodding now and then. They turned when they reached the end of the row, and this time he looked at the men. A few more feet, and then he stopped.

Elinore took her fingers from her nose, breathing slowly and evenly, concentrating on the act of breathing, rather than the ferocious stench of the body when it turns on itself. In another moment she felt her heart resume its normal pace. Her hand when she lowered it was steady. She looked at her husband again, not surprised that he had found a stool from somewhere and seated himself beside a man who had propped himself up on one elbow and who gestured as he spoke.

The man appeared near death, his cheeks sunken, but red with fever, his dark eyes so bright they almost glittered. Elinore thought it odd that he should have the energy to gesture until she noticed the satchel with the cross on it at the foot of his cot.

"Monsieur Leger, I think Jesse has found another surgeon," she said.

"He has found the enemy!" Leger hissed.

She stared at him, shocked. "I ... I don't think Jesse sees it that way," she said when she found her voice.

"He is a fool then."

"Elinore, please bring me my shoulder bag. I left it by the door," Jesse called, raising his voice, and yet still speaking softly, in the way that surgeons did when there were patients they did not wish to disturb.

She nodded and found the bag. Leger grabbed her arm. "If he treats these French soldiers, he is a traitor!"

"Monsieur, he is a surgeon," she said quietly. "It is not in his power to be anything else. Let go of me."

She was not sure what she would do if he did not release her, but Harper solved the problem by placing both meaty hands on the Frenchman's shoulders and giving him a shake. He put his face close to Leger's. "Let 'er go. T'wouldn't bother me much to land you in one of them cots."

Jesse was on his feet now, his face pale. "Elinore, are you all right?"

In the middle of hell, he is worried about me, she thought. She knew then that if she lived to be old, she would never forget the peculiar grace of the moment. "Stay here, my dear," she called. "It's nothing."

She took in her surroundings: the nuns who had gathered by now, the French patients, and the look on her husband's face when she called him "my dear." She knew beyond doubt there was no other place in the universe for her.

Leger turned on his heel and left the hall. In another moment she heard the massive door slam. Harper and Wilkie exchanged glances. "D'ye know, Wilkie, there are times I get distressed with me fellows, but I've never seen the profit in hating them all."

"Private 'arper, it does seem a bit uncouth, eh?" Wilkie agreed. "Mrs. Randall, do you understand the workings of the aristocratic mind?"

"I only know there is more sorrow in his life than any of us know," she said quietly. "Where I might have judged earlier, I would not presume so now."

The men were silent then, and she shouldered her husband's medical bag. I do hope I live long enough to appreciate what I have learned on this retreat, she thought. Didn't Jesse promise me some Randall luck? Something tells me I am not the first woman led astray by a husband's promise. The notion made her smile.

"Here you are, Jesse," she said. There wasn't any point in calling him Captain, or even Chief anymore, not after calling him my dear. "Monsieur Leger seems to think you are a traitor for setting foot in this room."

"What a relief that I am not too concerned about his opinion," he replied. He nodded to the man on the cot. "This is Captain Philippe Barzun." He smiled. "What do I learn in a few moments, but he is also a graduate of the University of Milan, although a few years before I matriculated. This is my wife," he concluded in Italian.

She smiled at the surgeon, who put a hand to his chest and managed a bow from his cot that somehow contrived to be elegant. He spoke to Jesse in Italian, and she could not overlook the blush that rose to her husband's face. She raised her eyebrows at him. "He said he did not know that British woman were so beautiful, and what does she see in a surgeon?" he related.

It was her turn to blush. She tried not to look as Jesse raised the blanket off the basket frame at the end of the cot to reveal a leg swollen to grotesque proportions bound in a stained bandage far too constricting. He reached in his bag for his surgical scissors, and listened to Barzun.

"My dear, he wants you to take that basin down the row and toward the end. You will see several soldiers there with fever. They could use a cool cloth."

"He's sending me away, isn't he?" she asked, her voice calm. The odor from the wound was overpowering, now that the blanket had been turned back.

"Yes, and if he didn't, I would. Go now."

She did as he said, walking to the end of the row, and sitting down between two soldiers. One of them must have been a cuirassier, because his chest armor had been upended on the table and doubled as a washbasin. The younger soldier had been burned. She looked closer at his arm. The burn had obviously been cleaned at one time, but not recently. Jaws clenched, she concentrated on wiping his face and neck. In the light of his injury, her act so puny, he still opened his eyes and smiled. "Merci," he whispered.

The other soldier was grizzled, older, and bore the look of someone who had marched many miles in the service of the emperor. His injury was not obvious until she glanced down his blanketed form and noticed that one leg ended abruptly at the knee. His eyes followed her glance. When she looked at his face again, he shrugged.

She wiped his face as well, wishing she could carry on an inconsequential chat in French, or do something, anything, that would cut off the sounds of anguish spilling out of the French surgeon now. The surgeon shrieked, and she leaped to her feet, only to see Jesse on his feet as well, trying to stand back from the pus that foamed from the infection. "Jesse?" she called, and hated how her voice quavered.

"Stay where you are, my dear," he ordered.

"We have tried to do our best."

Elinore looked up from the contemplation of her own trembling hands to see a nun before her, speaking in Spanish. "You have done well," she replied. "The men are well-tended." It was true. Their injuries may have been appalling, but the men were clean, and cots tidy.

The nun stood before her, hands folds in front of her. "There are but two of us here now," she said. "Most of the sisters went with the older children to another convent in Portugal." Her voice hardened. "Others were killed by stragglers from both armies after suffering . . . indignities." She looked down at her own hands. "I fear that despite our vows, this has led to a certain reluctance to help either side."

"I can understand that," Elinore said. "But ... what happened to the surgeon? Was he wounded at Salamanca like the others?"

The nun shook her head. "No. Three weeks ago he was helping us shift a pile of rubble left from an artillery shelling last summer. Part of the outer wall fell on him, and his leg broke in two places with the bone protruding." She reached inside her long sleeve, pulled out her rosary and fingered the beads. "We helped as best we could, but he had to set his own fracture. I fear it did not go well."

"And you have been trying to tend all the soldiers, haven't you?"

"Yes." She looked at the black beads. "We are an order dedicated to teaching the young and educating the privileged daughters of Salamanca. I wish we were a nursing order. I wish ..." She stopped, then rose in one graceful motion and left the hall, glancing neither right nor left.

Elinore looked at her husband again. He had called Harper to help him, and she felt a momentary pang. Doesn't he think I am useful anymore, she asked herself. Have I ever fainted in Number Eight? Complained? Whined? Nagged? Or is that dear man trying to protect me?

It was really no decision for her. She had squeezed the rag in her hand into a knot. Carefully she straightened the cloth, dipped it in the cuirassier's armor again, and made her way on steady feet back to her husband. The French surgeon lay quiet now on his back, his shoulders relaxed with relief from the draining wound. She could see it would be no better, and she knew the task ahead for her husband. She had no doubt that he would fight for the French surgeon's life, but she knew he would lose.

Her glance did not waver as she looked deep into his eyes, then wiped his face. His eyes flickered when she did that, and she put her hands on his neck, holding them there, trying to communicate in a wordless way that he was not alone in this ordeal.

She knew she should say something, but she knew her own shyness. Well, what of it? she asked herself, in the room that had gone so quiet. I will not let my chances pass me by anymore. That would be a shameful waste of time, especially when we do not know from day to day how much time we have.

"Jesse Randall, I love you," she whispered. "I will never go so far as to say that marrying me was the wisest thing you ever did, but it was the best thing that has ever happened to me. Thank you."

She wanted to kiss him, but she knew she was too shy for that. To her gratification, he leaned forward then and rested his cheek against hers until his lips were by her ear. "Elinore, it would astound you if I told you how long I have loved you. You might even call me a liar," he whispered.

"You have never lied to me," she murmured.

"I never will. I want you to take my shoulder bag, get out the bone saws when you are in another room, and wash them. Give them to Harper in a clean towel and ask Sister Maria Josefina to find me a room with thick walls. Wilkie can help Harper move Philippe's cot."

She closed her eyes against what he was saying, but did not flinch. She nodded, and picked up his bag. There was plenty of hot water in the kitchen, and she scrubbed the three bone saws. The wooden handles were smooth from constant use, oiled by Jesse's hands for ten years. Ten years of this! She looked down into the soapy water and remembered how her father and some of the other officers had chuckled over poor, shy Captain Randall.

You have no idea, she thought. If it is true that our guardian angel, or St. Peter, or someone beyond my paltry theology writes our deeds in a book of life, I only hope I am standing close to you, Jesse Randall, when the deeds are read out loud. I want to watch you blush, and stammer, and say it was nothing, while the rest of us plead for second chances.

Harper, his face deadly serious, was waiting for her in the main hall when she came up the stairs from the kitchen. She took the bag from her shoulder and handed him the saws. "Here you are, Private."

He shouldered the bag. "Mrs. Randall, doesn't he know that I am a lazy sneak thief who never thought of anyone but himself?"

It was the same question she had been asking about herself for the entire retreat. "You know," she replied, after a moment's thought, "I don't think Captain Randall sees what we see in ourselves."

He shifted his feet, and she could tell he was uncomfortable with the idea. "Well, well . . . which of us is right?" he asked finally.

"He is, without a doubt. Go on, now. It won't be as bad as you think."

Harper nodded. "Because he thinks I can handle this?"

"He knows you can. I believe that is part of his secret in dealing with us."

She touched his arm and gave him a little push. In another minute Jesse came from the refectory, wiping his hands on a towel, followed by the privates carrying Philippe Barzun on his cot. She blew him a kiss, and was rewarded with a smile.

Sister Maria Josefina and another nun brought dinner for the soldiers, nothing more than barley broth and dark bread to sop it with. There was a bowl for her and Wilkie, who had returned to the refectory and stood against the wall, his eyes stark. When she ate finally, he did, too. She sat on the stool in the space empty now of the French surgeon, willing the time to pass. Although she had never witnessed an amputation, she knew how fast Number Eight's surgeons could operate. Why is this taking so long? she thought.

She wondered where Leger was, and toyed briefly with the idea of looking for him. The urge passed; all she wanted to do was lie down and sleep until the war was over. She dared herself to think of what life must be like in Dundee as the wife of the local surgeon, and found that she had neither the wit nor the energy to conjure up even the slightest image. Dismayed, she tried to imagine a lending library, her favorite daydream, one told her in Lisbon by a major recuperating from Vimeiro. Nothing. I am just tired, she thought, just tired.

As she sat staring at the wall, Wilkie began to sing. She closed her eyes in gratitude for the beautiful sound of his voice. The heavy masonry walls of the refectory were the perfect sounding board for his clear tenor as he sang a lullaby she remembered from her own childhood. Funny how that is, she told herself as she opened her eyes and watched him, smiling at the way his brows came together when he sang, skinny, scrawny, undernourished Wilkie.

When this retreat began, I wouldn't have thought Wilkie had ever even possessed such a thing as a mother, Elinore thought. I am in better company right now than at any time in my life. I suppose Major Bones thought to punish me—punish us all. He is the fool.

When Wilkie finished, she noticed Harper standing in the doorway. She hurried to him, taking in the seriousness of his expression. Poor, dear Harper, she thought. She took his hand. He clung to it, and her heart went out to him. "How can a man do what he does?"

"I'm not sure." Her other arm was around him now. She felt Harper relax a little, but she did not release him from her embrace. "What happened, Private?" she asked, when she thought he could talk. "What took so long?"

"He wanted a priest, so we waited for one to come from Salamanca." He tightened his grip on her. "He confessed and received—what's that called?"

"Absolution?"

"Yes, that. And do you know, Captain Randall did the same thing, only he asked for the priest to make his hands steady-like." He sighed. "I don't want to talk about the operation."

"Then don't. Is the Frenchman still alive?"

Harper nodded and released her, her words obviously reminding him why he had come to the hall. When Wilkie finished singing, he tapped his shoulder. "You're to help me move the surgeon back in here now." He turned to Elinore. "The Chief wants him in here, and he wants another cot so he can lie down beside him. He said you're to ask Sister Josefina if she has another cot."

Careful to keep the cot absolutely level, Harper and Wilkie carried the unconscious French surgeon back into the refectory. Jesse followed them. With a rush of pleasure, Elinore noticed how he looked around the room, as though trying to find her. He nodded to her, then turned his attention to his patient. The other nun in the room handed him a dean sheet, which he placed carefully under Barzun's lower body. While Harper held up the blanket, he repositioned the basket frame above what little remained of the surgeon's leg and then told Harper to drape the blanket again. He took a bottle from his satchel and placed it next to the glass of water already on the little table. When Sister Josefina Maria and Lorenzo the slow boy carried in the extra cot, he pulled it close to Barzun's side.

After speaking in a low voice to Wilkie and Harper, he dismissed them and walked toward her. He answered the question she knew was in her eyes. "He's unconscious now. Elinore, it was a difficult amputation. You saw how swollen his leg was. He has a wife and three little ones in Grenoble, and he insisted that I try. I did the best I could."

"I know that," she told him, taking him by the arm.

He draped his arm across her shoulders, and the weight of it made her realize that he was leaning on her. "Would you like to sit down?" she asked.

"I will eventually. Elinore, we sent to Salamanca for a priest."

"Harper told me."

"The French are already in Salamanca. Clausel's army is seeking to join with Soult and Souham, who probably aren't far behind us. I can't leave until I know Barzun's outcome, but you and the others had better be ready."

"I won't leave you," she said.

"Even if I ordered it?" he asked with a faint smile.

"Even then." She nudged him. "You're not my commanding officer."

"I'm your husband," he reminded her. "Doesn't that pull any ropes with you?"

"Not one that I'm aware of, Captain Randall."

"Captain Randall, is it? What happened to ‘my dear'?" He kissed her cheek and released her. "Go to bed now. I'm going to stay here. Every time he tries to resurface, I'm going to dose Barzun back down with that blessed opium you bought me with your mother's necklace."

She knew she could have skated through this whispered conversation if he hadn't taken hold of her neck then and gazed at her with that intensity she had come to crave from him. "My God, Elinore, did I thank you enough for doing that? Or did I just grouse because you had to give away something so precious?"

"I did exactly what I wanted to do," she assured him, then took a deep breath. "And I am exactly where I want to be right now. Go to Barzun. I will see you in the morning."

"You are more of a martinet than the Chief ever was! I plan to clean that soldier's burn tonight, and look at that man lying so still over there. You will be in charge tomorrow, so don't get any missish ideas about running away from the French." He put his arm around her waist. "Come on and recall me to duty now."

She walked him back to Barzun's cot. "I intend to pray for a monumental rainstorm to keep the French in Salamanca."

"Good." He released his grip on her, and stared down at his patient. "An ice storm would be even better, although it may be a little early in the season." He placed the back of his hand on Barzun's forehead. "Any other miracles would be appreciated, my dearest."

She dreamed of a fierce storm and woke to the sound of ice pellets hitting the heavy leaded glass. The room was cold, but she bounded out of bed and pulled a stool to the high window. She looked at ice-heavy trees, smiled to see the ground glisten and reflect watery light from thousands of tiny prisms, and rejoiced inside.

She hated to think how dirty she was, especially when she compared herself to the cool, efficient nuns of Santa Isabella. The regret lasted no longer than it took to throw on her clothes, comb her hair, and pull up her half boots. She had not intended to sleep so late.

The refectory was so quiet that she hesitated to enter. Braziers glowed and gave off welcome warmth, the coals muted now after a long winter night. She tiptoed into the room, pausing for a moment by her husband asleep on the cot, clothes and shoes on, his army overcoat draped over his body. Philippe Barzun was beginning to stir, to move his head from side to side. She watched, amazed that he still lived. Jesse said you have a wife and children in Grenoble, she thought, and in a moment of total clarity, she understood his will to live to enjoy the fellowship of those he loved. I would fight, too, Monsieur Barzun, oh, how I would fight.

She passed on down the row, her eyes on the soldiers who slept. She stopped at the end of the row to see that Jesse had cleaned the burn at some point during what must have been a long night. Jesse had left the arm exposed to the air, and the makeshift basin of armor was dark with questionable matter. Never mind. When the room lightened, she would empty it and her day of watching would begin. With any luck the ice would continue to make travel from Salamanca impossible. General Clausel, you have better things to do today than go searching for Soult or Souham's armies, she thought. Stay indoors where it is warm, drink some of that sherry you have probably stolen from vineyards to the south, and catch up on your correspondence, please.

Her eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom at the same time she heard someone whisper her name. Surprised, she looked around. "Yes?" she whispered.

"Over here."

She followed the sound and noticed a man sitting between two cots. "Monsieur Leger?" she asked, uncertain.

"Come closer."

She moved slowly toward him, not sure if she was hesitant still about his location, or if she dreaded his presence after his outburst last night. "You are the last person I thought I would find here," she whispered, not wanting to wake anyone, but not willing to move closer.

"Forgive my intemperance last night," he said simply, and motioned her forward. She knelt beside him, and he touched her head. "Elinore, I thought I should do a little penance for my rudeness." He looked to his left, and she noticed that he was holding one of the patient's hands. "He was crying and wanted his mother," Leger explained. "I am a poor substitute, but he did not seem to mind."

"I thought you did not want anything to do with your countrymen anymore," she said. "In fact, weren't you rather adamant on the subject?"

"We are all of us a long way from home," he countered. When she said nothing, he looked down at her. "You'll get cold sitting on the floor."

She shook her head, unwilling to disrupt him.

"I have sat here most of the night, watching this poor man. I watched your husband, too. I need to apologize to him for my rudeness."

"I doubt he is too concerned about it, monsieur." His hand was still on her head, but she decided she did not mind.

‘‘And I have been thinking, cherie." He smiled at her. "Do you mind if I call you that? I used to call Charlotte and Eugenie cherie. How many times I have wished in the last twenty years that I had taken my family to England with me on my diplomatic excursions! But I did not, and you know the results."

He chuckled, and she listened, holding her breath, for any bitterness. There was none this time. ‘That man across the way, the older soldier with but one leg?"

She nodded.

"He says ‘c'est la vie' all the time! Perhaps traipsing all over Europe with Napoleon has made him more philosophical than most. The smart salon set I used to lounge about with would have called him simple, but I say now that he is right. That is life, and haven't the last twenty-five years been an adventure! I daresay we will all make the history books, if someone lives to write them." He lifted his hand from her head and rested it gently on her shoulder. "Perhaps my countrymen do need me. Am I a fool?"

"Not anymore," she replied.

Jesse was sitting up on his cot when she tiptoed back. He scratched at his week-old beard and patted the space beside him. She sat down, supremely content when he put his arm around her.

"A long night?" she whispered, leaning close to him.

He nodded. "You saw that debrided burn. I hate to inflict that much punishment, but I know he'll feel some relief now." He looked toward Leger. "Monsieur Le Gross Complaint actually asked me what he could do to help, so I told him to hold hands with that poor fusilier."

"He cannot be requiring any medical assistance."

"No, more's the pity, but he starts to cry for his ‘maman,' and it upsets the others." He directed his gaze at the cot close to him. "And our surgeon? Elinore, I cannot believe he still lives."

"Why not?" she asked. "He had an excellent surgeon, and you know he wants to see his family again."

He began to massage her neck gently. "Remember when the Chief used to call me Dr. Hackensaw?"

"Now, be fair," she chided him. "As I recall, he referred to both you and him as the Doctors Hackensaw after Ciudad Rodrigo." She closed her eyes with the pleasure of his fingers. He is tired, and I am the beneficiary, she thought. How strange.

"I felt like such a caricature of a surgeon last night!" His fingers left her neck, and he leaned forward on the cot, his hands dangling between his knees. "He broke both his tibia and fibula in two places, but I had to amputate rather high up on his thigh because of the infection." He sighed and gently ran his hand along Barzun's arm. "If he lives, I have rendered him an invalid."

"Would he have lived without your surgery?"

"No."

"Did he want you to operate?"

"He insisted."

"And you did the best you could?"

"The very best." He turned his attention to her, and the weariness in his eyes brought tears to her own. "I suppose you will tell me to go bed down and really sleep?"

"You can trust Monsieur Barzun with me," she said quietly.

He smiled, took her hand, and raised it to his lips. "I've known for years that I could trust you with anything. When the Chief used to ask you to sweep out the tent—I doubt you were more than ten, dear wife—I wish I could have preserved that look of determination in your eyes to do the job well! I would have prescribed a dose of it three times daily to every soldier in Wellington's army."

She laughed softly at the image his words presented, then put her hand to her mouth when Barzun stirred and muttered. Jesse leaned closer and watched him intently. He put his fingers against the surgeon's neck and frowned. "So thready," he said. "I'd give all my back pay for a steady pulse." He took her hand again. "I know I can trust you." He turned on the cot until he was facing her. "Would you trust me with something?"

"You know I will. What is it?" she asked.

"Your heart, my dearest."

She looked at him, so tired that his eyes were half closed; so dirty she could see dried blood under his fingernails. The front of his uniform was flecked with particles better left undescribed. He was a far cry from the quiet, shy surgeon that the other officers from glamorous and famous regiments chuckled over until the dreadful moment when they needed him. I may be the luckiest woman in the world, she thought, the wonder of it so far beyond her imagination that she felt light-headed. How did this good thing happen to me?

She had to say something, because doubt was starting to creep into his eyes. Sitting there in a row of cots with the wounded of Napoleon's army, she couldn't imagine a place farther removed from this setting that a woman in love would wish for a proper declaration. C'est la vie, she thought. "There may be some slight problem with giving you my heart, Jesse," she said simply. "You already have it. How could I possibly give it to you again?"

She closed her eyes when he pulled her into a tight embrace. She locked her arms across his back, unwilling to let him go, even if every patient in the refectory should suddenly demand his attention, or all three French armies burst through the front door.

She would hold him tight until . . . Elinore started to smile. He was breathing deep and even against her shoulder, heavier by the moment as he began to relax against her breast. Gently, so she would not waken him, she kissed his hair and lowered him to the cot. When she had covered him with his overcoat again, she sat on the floor between the two cots, her eyes on Philippe Barzun, her heart on Jesse Randall.