Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (137 page)

“Saddlebags!” he bellowed over his shoulder, and caught a glimpse of Kenny sliding off his own horse, preparing to make a run for the bags. The glimpse took his attention off his own business for a split second and Ulysses hit him hard on the ear and pushed him backward into the creek. The cold water surging up through his clothes was as much a shock as the startling pain in his ear, but he got enough breath back to roll over and scramble clumsily to his feet. There was the boom of a pistol shot at close range; Kenny had fired at Ulysses, but missed, and one of Ulysses’s men dived at Kenny from behind and took his legs out from under him.

The erstwhile butler had got halfway into the saddle. He booted his horse and shot straight into the creek toward Jamie, who leapt to the side, then fell again as a slippery stone rolled under his foot. The horse clipped him in the hip with a hind foot as he tried to rise and knocked him sprawling.

He was too infuriated even to curse coherently. His left eye was watering profusely and he dashed his sleeve over it—to no effect, the sleeve being sodden.

The Lindsays had taken off in pursuit of Ulysses and the small group of his nearby soldiers—the McHughs had chased their own game away from the creek, up into a tangled growth of alders and hemlocks; he could hear shouts and the occasional ring of swords and gun barrels clashing.

He didn’t want any killing, and had said so, but the young McHughs might not remember that in the heat of their first real fight. And Ulysses’s soldiers were likely not under any such proscription. His own horse was still standing where he’d left it,
mirabile dictu.
Phineas wasn’t at all pleased to see his owner still moving, and when he clambered into the saddle sopping wet, the horse tried to bite him in the leg. He snapped the rein smartly across Phin’s nose, pulled the horse’s head round, and turned back uphill, heading for the sounds of affray.

The storm had broken and it was raining hard; he could barely make out the dark traces of a deer’s trail that led upward. But then they burst out suddenly into a small, dark clearing, filled with layers of dead leaves, trampled into the mud by stamping horses. Some of the British soldiers had muskets, but the attackers were keeping them too busy to aim.

For the most part. One gun went off with a
foom!
and a cloud of white smoke, and before he could see was anyone hurt by it, the ground in front of him moved. It bloody
moved
! Phineas had had enough, and when he kept the gelding from turning tail, the horse suddenly changed his mind and, with a furious squeal, charged the moving shape.

An enormous black boar exploded from the leaves under which it had been sleeping, and all of the horses went mad.

THE SOUND OF
horses and men came faintly to me through the trees from the direction of the house. I was in the root cellar, turning over yams and checking for rot, but I dropped the yam I was holding and popped out of the cellar like a groundhog from its hole, listening hard.

Not fighting.
There were several men, but no screaming or sounds of violence. I slammed the cellar door and ran for the house, but slowed a bit when I heard Bluebell barking. Not her hysterical
“Strangers!”
bark, nor yet the view-halloo version reserved for skunks, possums, raccoons, woodchucks, or anything else she might consider worth chasing. It was her delighted yap of welcome, and the dart of terror that had struck me in the cellar dissolved in relief. Probably no one was dead, then.

I trotted up the path, rubbing the dirt off my hands with my grubby gardening apron, and wondering how many men Jamie had brought with him and what in God’s name I could feed them for supper. I also wondered whether Jamie had retrieved Lord George Germain’s ruinous letter.

I arrived just in time to say goodbye to the Lindsays, who were away home, they said; Kenny’s wife would have something on for supper.

“The rest went on afore us,” Murdo said, nodding vaguely toward the eastern side of the ridge. “We only came this way in case Mac Dubh should need a hand.”

A hand with what?
I wondered, but didn’t detain Murdo, who was already mounted and clearly anxious to be away—it was late afternoon and the sky was still black and roiling overhead. I waved them farewell and went inside to see what—or who—Jamie had brought back. Surely not Ulysses…

It wasn’t. I heard him talking to someone in my surgery, in a courteous way, and another man’s reply, but not a man I knew.

I twitched back the curtain—
maybe he’ll be home long enough to build me a proper door one of these days
—and stopped dead in surprise. It wasn’t Ulysses, nor either of the soldiers who had accompanied him to the door, but plainly this
was
one of his soldiers, for the man was black and wore a wet British military uniform, though not one I’d ever seen before: black breeches and a scarlet coat, without decoration beyond the shoulder-knot insignia of a corporal, but sporting a stained white sash that ran from his shoulder across his chest, bearing the embroidered words
“Liberty to the Slaves.”

“Ah, there ye are, Sassenach.” Jamie rose from my workbench stool. His clothes clung to him, obviously wet. “I hoped ye’d be back soon. May I have the pleasure to present to ye Corporal Sipio Jackson—of His Majesty’s Company of Black Pioneers?” He gestured to the man lying on the table. “Dinna mind the courtesies, Corporal; I dinna want to have to pick ye up again.”

“Your mos’ obedient servant, madam.” Sergeant Jackson didn’t rise, but rolled heavily up on one elbow and bowed as deeply as possible to me, eyes wary. He had quite an odd accent: English, but with something softer mixed in.

“How nice to meet you, Mr. Jackson,” I said, looking him over. The reason for his immobility was obvious: his right leg was broken and he was pale as suet. It was a nasty-looking compound fracture, with the jagged end of his tibia protruding through his woolen stocking. Someone had taken his boot off.

“How long ago did this happen?” I asked Jamie, taking hold of the sergeant’s ankle and feeling for the fibula just above the joint. There was bleeding from the torn flesh, but it was only oozing now; the stocking was soaked with blood, but it was rusty at the edges; not that fresh.

Jamie glanced out the window; the clouds were beginning to part, and a sullen red glow lit their edges.

“Maybe two hours. I gave him whisky,” he added, with a nod at the empty cup near the corporal’s hand. “For the shock, aye?”

“I thank you, sir,” the sergeant said. “It was mos’ helpful.” He was gray as a ghost and his face was slick with sweat, but he was awake and alert. His eyes fixed on my hands, one moving slowly up his shin, the other feeling his calf gently. His breath jerked as I touched a spot on his calf an inch or two below the level of the protruding tibia.

“Your fibula’s fractured as well,” I informed him. “Hand me those scissors, will you, Jamie? And give him another tot, but mixed half and half with water. How did this happen, Corporal?”

He didn’t relax as I cut the stocking off—he was thin and rangy, and I could see the muscles in his leg clenched tight—but he took in a little more air, and nodded thanks to Jamie for the fresh tot.

“Fell off my horse, madam,” he said. “ ’Twas frightened by a…pig.”

I looked up at him, surprised at the hesitation. He saw my look, grimaced, and amplified his answer.

“A right
big
pig. Nevah have I seen one so big.”

“ ’Twas,” Jamie agreed. “Not the White Sow herself, but one of her spawn for sure; a boar. It’s in the smoke shed,” he added, with a jerk of his head toward the back of the house. “No a wasted journey,” he added. His eyes were resting on Corporal Jackson’s face, his own expression calm, but I could feel the calculation going on behind those eyes.

I rather thought the corporal could, too; I hadn’t started doing anything overtly painful to his leg, but the hand not holding the whisky cup was clenched in a loose fist, and the wary look with which he’d greeted me hadn’t changed by a hair.

“Is Fanny in the house?” I said to Jamie. “I’ll need help to set and bandage this leg.”

“I’ll help ye, Sassenach,” he said, rising and turning toward my cupboards. “Tell me what ye need.”

I gave him a narrow look and he looked straight back, calmly implacable. He wasn’t leaving me alone with a man who was technically an enemy, no matter how incapacitated.

I was torn between minor irritation and an undeniable sense of relief. It was the relief that bothered me.

“Fine,” I said shortly, and he smiled. Then I paused, a question striking me.

“Jamie—will you come with me for a moment? You’ll be all right here, Mr. Jackson. Don’t move too much.” Corporal Jackson lifted sketchy eyebrows at me, but nodded.

I took Jamie back into the kitchen, closing the baize door that separated it from the front of the house.

“What are you planning to do with him?” I asked bluntly. “I mean—is he your prisoner?” I’d been planning to set the leg, bandage it, and then do what was called in this time the Basra method—augmented by my own small innovations. In essence, light—though fragile—plaster-of-Paris-soaked bandages wound over a stocking and padding (dried moss was all I had at the moment that would answer, but it worked well enough) that would immobilize the limb but let the corporal move about, with a cane and some care. But if Jamie needed him to be immobilized, I would just realign the bones, dress the wounds, and splint the limb.

“No,” he said slowly, frowning in thought. “I canna easily keep him prisoner, and there’s nay purpose in it. I ken well enough what Ulysses means to do, because he told me himself. Holding his man wouldna sway him an inch.”

“Will he come back for Mr. Jackson, do you think? I mean—he’s a British army officer now.”

Jamie looked at me for a moment, then smiled in wry realization.

“Ye still think they’re honorable men, don’t ye, Sassenach? The British army?”

“I—well, some of them
are,
aren’t they?” I said, rather taken aback by this question. “Lord John? His brother?”

“Mmphm.” It was a grudging acquiescence that stopped well short of full agreement. “Did I ever tell ye what His Grace did to me twenty years ago?”

“Actually, no, I don’t think so.” I wasn’t surprised that he should still carry a grudge about it, whatever it was, but that could wait. “As for the army in general…well, I suppose you have
some
small point. But I fought with the British army, you know—”

“Aye, I do,” he said. “But—”

“Just listen. I lived with them, I fought with them, I mended them and nursed them and held them when they died. Just—just as I did when we fought—” I had to stop and clear my throat. “When we fought for the Stuarts. And…” My voice faltered.

“And what?” He stood very still, leaning on his fists on the kitchen table, eyes fixed on my face.

“And a good officer would never leave his men.”

The big room was silent save for the murmur of the fire and the bumping of the kettle, about to boil. I closed my eyes, thinking,
Beauchamp, you idiot…
Because he’d done that. Abandoned his men at Monmouth, in order to save my life. It didn’t matter that the battle was over, the enemy in retreat, that there was no danger to the men at that point, that nearly all of them were militia on temporary enlistment, whose service would be legally up by the next day’s dawn. Many had left already. But it didn’t matter. He’d left his men.

“Aye,” he said softly, and I opened my eyes. He straightened up slowly, stretching his back. “Well, then. D’ye think Ulysses is that kind of officer? Will he come back for his corporal?”

“I don’t know.” I bit my lip. “What will you do if he does?”

He looked down at the tabletop, frowning as though the scrubbed oak planks might be a scrying-glass that would show him the future.

“No,” he said at last, and shook himself. “Nay, he won’t come himself, but he likely will send someone else. He won’t come within my grasp, and me warned, but he’ll not leave the man.” He thought for another moment and nodded, to himself as much as me.

“Can ye mend him so that he can travel, Sassenach?”

“Yes, within limits. That’s why I asked you.”

“Do that, then, if ye will. When it’s over, I’ll talk to Corporal Jackson and make out what to do.”

“Jamie.” He’d turned to go, but stopped and turned round to face me.

“Aye?”

“
You’re
honorable. I know it, and so do you.” He smiled a little at that.

“I try to be. But war’s war, Sassenach. Honor only makes it a bit easier to live wi’ yourself, afterward.”