Fire Along the Sky (43 page)

She started, as she always did, with the worst wounded, the ones no one could help. John Trotter, once a butcher, was in the last stages of the smallpox; an Abenaki who called himself St. John had suffered a blow to the back that had rendered his kidneys incapable of their work; Olivier Theriot, a pig farmer from the Vermont–Canada border, had pneumonia in both lungs and a rage against the Tories that kept him alive far longer than Hannah would have predicted.

And there was the boy. They did not know his name and never would, for the bullet that had destroyed his jaw and burrowed into his head had plunged him into a coma so deep that no pain could rouse him. He lived only because the other prisoners had carried him here, dribbling water and gruel into his mouth. Out of respect for his bravery, they told her, but Hannah knew that it went far deeper: they nursed him for his youth and his beauty and for other reasons none of them could put to words.

The boy was no more than fifteen, slender and sleek, with a perfect face as blank as a doll's. Every day his eyes sank a little deeper in his skull, and soon he would slip beyond their reach and be buried in a pit under a blanket of quicklime.

Hannah spent a few minutes with each of these men, wiping sweaty faces and giving them teas she had brewed not to cure them, but to give them relief from pain, and rest.

While she was busy with them Mr. Whistler brought two more buckets of snow and set them to warm near the oven. He was one of the older prisoners, his freckled skull fringed with hair as stiff and straight as straw. Because he had been an apothecary's assistant in Boston, Mr. Whistler had appointed himself Hannah's majordomo, and had quickly got into the habit of reading her mind, or trying to. Most of the time he was close to right.

He was a strange little man but willing to do the most disagreeable jobs, and cheerfully; he didn't care that Hannah was Indian, or that she wasn't a man. He cared only that she had proper doctor's instruments and a surgeon's kit and medicines, and most of all, that she could name all the bones of the body with their Latin designation.

“A doctor without Latin ain't no doctor at all,” he explained to the men who needed her help, to make sure they understood their good fortune.

“The food's come,” he said to her, first thing.

Under direction from the guards two of the men were carrying in the great cook pot, its contents sloshing.

“Then take this,” Hannah said, pushing one of her baskets toward him and pulling back a rag to show him the day's treasure.

“Eggs!” he said, his eyes flashing surprise and delight. “There must be three dozen of them!” He picked up one of the bigger ones, no bigger around than a silver dollar, but far more precious.

“It's hardly worth the work of cracking them,” Hannah said. “They are so small. But I thought you could stir them into the gruel.”

“Crack them?” Mr. Whistler echoed, looking at the egg in his palm. “Why, we'll swallow 'em whole. Where'd you get eggs?”

“A delivery came from Montreal late yesterday,” she said. “From our good friend.”

She never mentioned Luke's name, and neither did Mr. Whistler ask. But he was looking at her down the curved slope of his long nose.

“Did he send the medicine you wanted?”

“Some of it,” Hannah said. “Enough.”

“You'll do the operation, then?”

Hannah glanced at her brother. “Yes,” she said. “As soon as Mrs. Huntar comes.”

With a grunt of satisfaction Mr. Whistler gathered up the bundle of eggs and trotted over to the men who were gathered around the gruel.

Hannah went to her brother and crouched beside his pallet. He was asleep, a rare thing given the pain he must deal with, day and night. Later he would need all the strength he could muster, and so she did not wake him. Instead she did as she had been trained to do: she observed him.

At twelve Daniel had already been taller than every female in the family, and now his lower legs extended well beyond the end of the bunk. All the bones in his face shone through his skin. Even a full month's beard, dark brown and curly, could not disguise the way his mouth was bracketed with pain lines. His lips were cracked and bloody with fever.

If he had learned only one thing in his brief time as a soldier, it was the meaning of pain. On top of that he was wound up tight in a heavy wool blanket.

No matter how patiently or firmly she explained that a fever was not a fire that could be suffocated, Mr. Whistler could do nothing less than swaddle a fevered man like a newborn. Usually Blue-Jay was able to stop Mr. Whistler by simply making sure that there were no blankets to spare, but this morning Daniel was wrapped as Hannah had swaddled him the day he was born in the middle of a February blizzard.

Without any effort at all she remembered the smell of him, the rosy slick skin, how hot he had felt in her arms, how he had quieted when she held him and spoke to him. How he had opened his eyes and looked at her, eyes green from the start under a mass of damp dark curls. Eyes as green as the sea.

When he was still an infant she had sometimes unwrapped him just to study the shape of his knees or wrists, the curve of his shoulders, the folds of skin at his neck. Her father's son, her brother.

Now if she were to unwrap him she would find the evidence of the lost battle that had brought him here. She had heard the story many times already, and no doubt would hear it again. Every time she had to contain her temper and impatience and listen as if she could never have enough of such things: messengers gone wrong, poorly marked trails, troops waylaid, ammunition lost in whitewater, failed maneuvers, flawed strategies, bullets spent and graves dug.

And the result: her brother's body, a map of the war. Bruises from hip to neck, still dark over the broken ribs but otherwise faded to the yellow-green of a storm sky. Nicks and scratches and the bullet wound, raw and seeping.

The bullet in his side was what concerned her at the moment, but it was not what worried her most. She had dealt with wounds like this one so many times that she had a feel for them, and this one would not get the better of her. She would not allow it.

She could not say as much for his arm. Crouched beside him Hannah studied the curve of his neck where it met his shoulder. A year ago she would have been hard-pressed to remember the names even of the major muscles, but now it seemed she could simply look through cloth and skin and past bone to the heart of the damage caused when he had fallen unconscious from the tree. He had asked her, and she had given him the details he wanted: the brachial plexus, a braid of nerves bedded in the shoulder, protected by bone and muscle, the names of the five trunks that moved down into the arm to branch and branch again. More names he did not need to know and would not recall: radial, ulnar, median, musculocutaneous.

It had taken all her strength to hide her unease when she had first examined his arm and seen how little control he had over elbow and wrist and fingers. The fact that he was not able to lie to her about the pain was just as alarming: this brother, who had once sat still while she stitched a long gash on his leg without uttering a sound.

She made a sling for his arm and told him to keep it still. She used her firmest and most threatening voice, her older-sister voice. As if it were her bossy nature and not the injury that kept him from walking around the room on his hands.

Then he had used his good hand to stop her, catching the fabric of her overdress in his fingers.

“Will you have to take it off?”

The first amputation she had ever done on her own had been of an arm, and somehow Hannah had the sense that he was remembering that, and how it ended.

“There is no sign of gangrene,” she said. Something she had said before, but he must hear it again. “There is sufficient blood flow to your fingers. You see, the color is good and they are warm to the touch.”

“Will you have to take it off?” His gaze never wavered, nor his voice.

“No,” she said. “No, I will not.”

“Will I have the use of it again?”

Another man might have asked when the pain would stop. Hannah wished he had asked that question.

“I don't know,” she said, meeting his gaze. And then, in a firmer voice: “Maybe.”

He had closed his eyes and turned his face away, but not before she saw that he was weeping.

At night, sometimes, Hannah lay awake and wished for the Hakim, who had been her teacher for a while. While the men prayed aloud to Jesus and his mother and the saints, she conjured forth her many teachers out of her memories: her grandmothers Falling-Day and Cora Munro, Curiosity, Richard Todd, Valentine Simon. They came at her bidding and each of them told her what she knew already. There was nothing she could do for her brother; no medicine or knife existed that could mend damaged nerves. They would recover and he would have the use of his arm, or they would not.

She put a palm to Daniel's cheek, and he roused himself to her touch.

He was thirsty. She helped him to water, and then to the gruel. Two of the larger eggs had been put aside for him. He wrinkled his nose at the idea of eating them raw and swallowed them whole, as most of the others did. When he had eaten she helped him lie down again, and then set about unwrapping him.

“There was a package late yesterday, from Luke.”

She studied his face while she worked. From the set of his eyes and mouth she could read how fierce the pain was.

“He sent the medicines you asked for?”

“Yes. Dragon's blood and willow bark and laudanum, and the rest of it. New needles too.”

“Simon?”

“Yes,” Hannah said, not bothering to hide her smile. “If you're in a mood to argue about Simon Ballentyne you must be feeling strong today.”

At that he pushed an impatient breath out through his nose. “My business with Simon Ballentyne is my business,” he said.

“Spoken like a protective brother,” Hannah said.

His mouth twitched, but Daniel did not take up the challenge.

She said, “I think it must be today, Daniel. The bullet.”

Wherever his thoughts had been, he turned his attention back to her.

“I thought you said it would work its way out.”

“I hoped that it would,” she said. “But the infection is worse, and I can't take the chance of leaving it any longer.”

“Today?”

She paused. “Yes. As soon as Jennet is here.”

His gaze flickered toward her and along with it came a faint smile. “You've sent her to see Caudebec.”

“I would not put it like that,” Hannah said. “Jennet can no more be sent on an errand than a cat. She decided what must be done, and she is doing it. I only hope she hasn't lost her touch.”

That made Daniel laugh, at least. A low, deep chuckle that turned into a shallow cough. Hannah did not like the sound of it, but she was a healer before she was a sister, and she kept the full force of her alarm hidden away.

Jennet had only seen Colonel Caudebec from afar once or twice: a man of medium height and build, with nothing out of the ordinary to recommend him except that it was within his power to make the prisoners miserable. Stepping into his quarters, she learned something else: the colonel was a man who appreciated art and beautiful things and the comforts of civilization, and not even war was enough to make him give such things up.

He had taken over the entire upper level of one of the blockhouses for his office and quarters, and filled it with fine things: china and glass and a beautiful India rug. A servant asked her for her muddy boots before she had come more than two steps into the room, and then made them disappear where they would do no damage. A large crucifix dominated one wall, and in a corner was a statue of the Virgin, cast in bronze. Next to that was an ornate chair, carved and cushioned with red velvet, and in the chair sat the tallest priest she had ever seen. Even without an introduction she would have known him from the stories the soldiers told.

The colonel almost simpered, so proud was he of his visitor. “Father O'Neill, may I present Mrs. Huntar, who works among our prisoners.”

He unfolded himself from the chair, a man six and a half feet tall, with a head of black hair going gray at the widow's peak and sharp blue eyes and a smile that spoke more of the ways of the world than those of heaven.

“Mrs. Huntar,” he said, not quite meeting her eye. “Please, sit. I have questions for you.”

“Questions,” she echoed, and wondered if she looked as dim as she sounded.

“About your work here. You must be a very unusual and courageous lady indeed.”

“Ah,” said Jennet. “Weel.”

He was examining her face closely. “Not many have the fortitude or courage to take up missionary work, especially not in time of war.”

Jennet's first assessment of the priest was shifting rapidly. In part because she couldn't place his accent—it was not Irish, not English, not American, but some odd combination of all those with a strong undercurrent of French. Beyond that first and distracting question, there was a crumble of bread at the corner of his mouth, tucked into a crease. And whoever had shaved the priest this morning had been distracted enough to leave a patch of bristle in the thumb-sized indentation under his lower lip. Jennet simply could not look away, though she knew that she must.

If the priest minded he was good at hiding his discomfort. He went on making observations and assumptions and drawing the most incredible conclusions without any encouragement. One part of Jennet's mind wondered where he might end up if he went on like this.

“—known to me.”

She blinked. “I'm sorry, sir. I'm a wee muddleheided the morn.”

And now Scots. It had the habit of pouring out of her at the oddest moments.

“You are a widow, as I understand it? I was asking what brought you to this part of the world.”

Jennet had always been particularly good at making up stories on the spot, and she had polished and refined the gift over the years. A gift that might fail her now; she felt herself blanching.

“I meant to cause you no distress,” the priest said. He put a hand on her wrist where it rested on the arm of the chair, and Jennet started at that: the heat of him, and his closeness, and something else she could hardly name.