Текст книги "Written in My Own Heart's Blood"

Автор книги: Diana Gabaldon

Соавторы: Diana Gabaldon
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Текущая страница: 41 (всего у книги 74 страниц)

He didn’t try to shout above the noise; it wasn’t necessary. His men were going nowhere, as riveted to the spectacle before them as he was.

Lee’s long-nosed face was pinched with fury, and Jamie saw him for a brief instant as Punch, the furious puppet in a Punch-and-Judy show. An unhinged urge to laugh bubbled up, as the necessary corollary irresistibly presented itself: George Washington as Judy, the mobcapped shrew who belabored her husband with a stick. For an instant, Jamie feared he had succumbed to the heat and lost his mind.

Once envisioned, though, he couldn’t escape the thought, and for an instant he was standing in Hyde Park, watching Punch feed his baby to the sausage machine.

For that was what Washington was very clearly doing. It lasted no more than three or four minutes, and then Washington made a furious gesture of disgust and dismissal and, wheeling his horse, set off at a trot, circling back to pass the troops who had clotted along the roadside, watching in fascination.

Emerging from his own fascination with a jolt, Jamie put a foot in the mare’s stirrup and swung up.

“Ian—” he said, and his nephew nodded, putting a hand on his knee—as much to steady himself, he thought, as to reassure his uncle.

“Give me a few men, Uncle Jamie,” he said. “I’ll see to … his lordship.”

There was barely time to summon Corporal Greenhow and detail him to take five men and accompany Ian, before Washington came close enough to spot Jamie and his companies. The general’s hat was in his hand and his face was afire, anger and desperation subsumed in eagerness, and the whole of his being radiating something Jamie had seldom seen, but recognized. Had felt himself, once. It was the look of a man risking everything, because there was no choice.

“Mr. Fraser!” Washington shouted to him, and his wide mouth stretched wider in a blazing grin. “Follow me!”



PATER NOSTER

WILLIAM CAME AWAKE slowly, feeling terrible. His head hurt and he wanted to vomit. He was horribly thirsty, but the thought of drinking anything made his gorge rise and he retched feebly. He was lying in grass and bugs; there were bugs crawling on him… . He saw, for one vivid moment, a line of tiny ants climbing busily through the dark hairs on his wrist and tried to dash his hand against the ground to dislodge them. His hand didn’t move, though, and his consciousness faded.

It came back with a throbbing rush and jounce. The world was jigging dizzily up and down, and he couldn’t breathe. Then he made out the dark things that went in and out of his field of view as being a horse’s legs and realized that he was belly-down over a saddle, being carried somewhere. Where … ?

There was a lot of shouting going on nearby, and the noise hurt his head very much.

“Stop!” shouted an English voice. “What are you doing with him? Stand! Stand or I’ll kill you!”

“Leave him! Push him off! Run!” A vaguely familiar voice, Scottish.

Then a confusion of noise and somewhere in it the Scottish voice again, shouting, “Tell my—” But then he hit the ground with a thud that knocked out both wit and wind, and slid back into darkness, headfirst.



IN THE END, it was simplicity itself. John Grey walked down a cattle track, following the hoofprints toward what must be water, and walked straight into a startled group of British soldiers filling their canteens at a muddy ford. Light-headed from thirst and heat, he didn’t bother trying to identify or explain himself, just put his hands in the air and gave himself up with an intense feeling of relief.

The soldiers gave him water, at least, and then he was marched off under the guard of a nervous boy with a musket and into the yard of a farmhouse that appeared to be deserted. No doubt the owners had fled upon realizing that they were in the middle of twenty thousand or so armed troops bent on mayhem.

Grey was hustled over to a large wagon half filled with cut grass, made to sit down on the ground with several other captured prisoners—in the shade, thank God—and left there under the guard of two middle-aged privates, armed with muskets, and a nervous child of fourteen or so in a lieutenant’s uniform, who twitched every time the sound of a volley echoed off the trees.

This might be his best chance. If he could shock or intimidate the boy into sending him to Cornwallis or Clinton …

“Sir!” he barked at the boy, who blinked at him, startled. So did the captured Americans.

“What is your name, sir?” he demanded, in his command voice. That rattled the young lieutenant badly; he took two involuntary steps backward before stopping himself. He flushed, though, and rallied.

“You be quiet!” he said, and, stepping forward, aimed a cuff at Grey’s ear.

Grey caught him by the wrist by reflex, but before he could release the boy, one of the privates had taken a stride toward him and brought down the butt of his musket on Grey’s left forearm.

“’E said be quiet,” the private said mildly. “I’d do it, was I you.”

Grey was quiet, but only because he couldn’t speak. That arm had been broken twice before—once by Jamie Fraser, once by a cannon explosion– and the third time was definitely not the charm. His vision went black for a moment, and everything inside him contracted into a ball of hot lead. Then it started to hurt, and he could breathe again.

“What’s that you just said?” the man sitting next him said under his breath, eyebrows raised. “ ’Tain’t English, is it?”

“No,” said Grey, and paused for another breath, clutching the arm against his belly. “It’s German for ‘Oh, shit.’”

“Ah.” The man nodded understandingly and—with a wary glance at the guards—brought a small flask out from under his coat and pulled the cork before handing it to Grey. “Try that, friend,” he whispered.

The scent of overripe apples surged directly into his brain and very nearly made him vomit. He managed to swallow, though, and handed back the flask with a nod of thanks. Sweat ran down his face in streams, stinging his good eye.

No one spoke. The man who’d given him the applejack was a Continental regular, middle-aged, with a haggard face and only half his teeth remaining. He sat hunched, elbows on his knees, eyes fixed on the distance, where the sound of fighting was. The others were doing the same thing, he realized—all craning toward the battle.

Colonel Watson Smith popped into his mind, doubtless summoned up by the fumes of applejack, but appearing so suddenly that Grey jerked a little, and one of the guards stiffened, giving him a hard look. Grey looked away, though, and the man relaxed.

Shocked with pain, exhausted and thirsty, he lay down, nursing his throbbing arm against his chest. The buzzing of insects filled his ears, and the volley of muskets retreated into the meaningless rumble of distant thunder. He let himself lapse into a not unpleasant catatonia visualizing Smith shirtless, lying on the narrow cot under a lantern, cradling Grey in his arms, stroking his back with a comforting hand. At some point, he drifted into an uneasy sleep, punctuated by the sounds of guns and shouting.

He woke suddenly, with a mouth like cotton, to find that several more prisoners had been delivered and that there was an Indian sitting beside him. Grey’s working eye was gummy and bleared, and it took a moment before he recognized the face under the remnants of black and green war paint.

Ian Murray gave him a long, level look that said plainly, “Don’t talk,” and he didn’t. Murray raised an eyebrow at his wounded arm. Grey lifted his good shoulder in a brief shrug and focused his attention on the water cart that had come to a halt on the nearby road.

“You and you, come with me.” One of the privates jerked a thumb at two of the prisoners and led them off toward the cart, from which they returned shortly, carrying buckets of water.

The water was blood-warm and tasted of sodden, half-rotted wood, but they drank greedily, spilling it down their clothes in their haste. Grey wiped a wet hand across his face, feeling somewhat more settled in his mind. He flexed his left wrist experimentally; perhaps it was only a brui—no, it wasn’t.

He’d drawn in his breath with a hiss, and Murray, as though in response, closed his eyes, steepled his hands together, and began to intone the Pater Noster.

“What in b-buggery is that?” the lieutenant demanded, stamping over to him. “Are you talking Indian, sir?”

Ian opened his eyes, regarding the child with a mild stare.

“It’s Latin. I’m sayin’ my prayers, aye?” he said. “D’ye mind?”

“Do I—” The lieutenant stopped, baffled as much by being addressed in a Scottish accent as by the circumstance. He stole a glance at the privates, who looked off into the distance. He cleared his throat.

“No,” he said shortly, and turned away, pretending absorption in the distant cloud of white powder smoke that hung low over the trees.

Murray cut his eyes at Grey and, with a slight nod, began the Pater Noster again. Grey, somewhat puzzled, joined him, stumbling a bit. The lieutenant stiffened, but didn’t turn round.

“Do they not know who you are?” Murray asked in Latin at the end of the prayer, not varying his intonation.

“I told them; they don’t believe me,” Grey replied, adding a random “Ave Maria” at the end for verisimilitude.

“Gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Shall I tell them?”

“I have no idea what comes next. I suppose it couldn’t hurt.”

“Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesu,” Murray replied, and rose to his feet.

The guards swung round immediately, raising their muskets to their shoulders. Murray ignored this, addressing the lieutenant.

“It’s maybe no my business, sir,” he said mildly. “But I shouldna like to see ye ruin your career over a wee mistake.”

“Be qui—what mistake?” the lieutenant demanded. He had taken off his wig because of the heat but now crammed it back on his head, evidently thinking it might lend him authority. He was mistaken in this impression, as the wig was a good deal too large and immediately slipped sideways over one ear.

“This gentleman,” Murray said, gesturing to Grey, who sat up straight and stared impassively at the lieutenant. “I canna imagine what’s brought him here or why he should be dressed as he is—but I ken him well. This is Lord John Grey. The, ehm, brother of Colonel Grey, the Duke of Pardloe?” he added delicately.

The hue of the young lieutenant’s face changed noticeably. He glanced quickly back and forth between Murray and Grey, frowning, and absently shoved his wig back into place. Grey rose slowly, keeping an eye on the guards.

“That’s ridiculous,” the lieutenant said, but without force. “Why should Lord John Grey be here, looking like—like that?”

“The exigencies of war, Lieutenant,” said Grey, keeping his voice level. “I see you belong to the Forty-ninth, which means that your colonel is Sir Henry Calder. I know him. If you will be so kind as to lend me paper and pencil, I will write him a short note, asking him to send an escort to fetch me. You can send the note via the water carrier,” he added, seeing a wild look come into the boy’s eyes, and hoping to calm him before he panicked and decided that the simplest way out of this imbroglio was to shoot Grey.

One of the privates—the one who had broken Grey’s arm—coughed gently.

“We’m goin’ to need more men, sir, in any case. Three of us with a dozen prisoners … and doubtless more comin’?” The lieutenant looked blank, and the private had another go. “I meantersay … might be you’d mean to send for reinforcements anyroad.” The man caught Grey’s eye and coughed again.

“Accidents happen,” Grey said, though with no great charity, and the guards relaxed.

“All right,” the lieutenant said. His voice broke on it and he repeated, “All right!” in a gruff baritone, looking belligerently around. No one was foolish enough to laugh.

Grey’s knees were wanting to tremble, and he sat down rather abruptly to prevent it. Murray’s face—well, the faces of all the prisoners—were carefully blank.

“Tibi debeo,” Grey said quietly. I acknowledge the debt.

“Deo gratias,” Murray murmured, and only then did Grey see the trail of blood that streaked Murray’s arm and side, staining his breechclout—and the stub of a broken arrow protruding from the flesh of his right shoulder.



WILLIAM CAME round again lying on something that didn’t move, thank God. There was a canteen being pressed to his lips, and he drank, gulping, lips reaching for more water even as it was drawn away.

“Not that fast, you’ll be sick,” said a familiar voice. “Breathe once, and you can have more.” He breathed and forced his eyes open against a glare of light. A familiar face appeared over him, and he reached up a wavering hand toward it.

“Papa …” he whispered.

“No, but the next best thing,” said his uncle Hal, taking a firm hold on the groping hand and sitting down beside him. “How’s the head?”

William closed his eyes and tried to focus on something other than the pain.

“Not … that bad.”

“Pull the other one, it’s got bells on,” his uncle murmured, cupping William’s cheek and turning his head to the side. “Let’s have a look.”

“Let’s have more water,” William managed, and his uncle gave a small snort and put the canteen back to William’s lips.

When William stopped to breathe again, his uncle set the canteen down and inquired, in a perfectly normal tone of voice, “Can you sing, do you think?”

His vision was going in and out; there were momentarily two of his uncle, then one, then two again. He closed one eye, and Uncle Hal steadied.

“You want me to … sing?” he managed.

“Well, perhaps not right this minute,” the duke said. He sat back on his stool and began to whistle a tune. “Recognize that, do you?” he asked, breaking off.

“’Lillibulero,’” William said, beginning to feel rather cross. “Why, for God’s sake?”

“Knew a chap once who was hit on the head with an ax and lost his ability to make out music. Couldn’t tell one note from another.” Hal leaned forward, holding up two fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Two. Stick them up your nose,” William advised him. “Go away, will you? I’m going to be sick.”

“Told you not to drink too fast.” But his uncle had a basin under his face and a strong hand on his head, bracing him while he heaved and coughed and shot water out of his nose.

By the time he had subsided back onto his pillow—it was a pillow, he was lying on a camp cot—he’d recovered enough of his senses to be able to look around and determine that he was in an army tent—probably his uncle’s, judging from the battered campaign chest and the sword that lay across it—and the glare of light was coming from the low afternoon sun flooding in through the open tent flap.

“What happened?” he asked, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

“What’s the last thing you recall?” Uncle Hal countered, handing him the canteen.

“The—er—” His mind was full of confused bits and pieces. The last thing he truly remembered was Jane and her sister, laughing at him as he stood bare-arsed in the creek. He sipped water and put cautious fingers to his head, which seemed to be wrapped in a bandage. It felt sore to the touch. “Taking my horse down to drink at a creek.”

Uncle Hal raised one eyebrow. “You were found in a ditch, near a place called Spottiswood or some such thing. Von Knyphausen’s troops were holding a bridge there.”

William started to shake his head, but thought better of it and closed his eyes against the light.

“Don’t remember.”

“It will likely come back to you.” His uncle paused. “Do you happen to remember where you last saw your father?”

William felt an unnatural calm come over him. He just bloody didn’t care anymore, he told himself. The whole world was going to know, one way or another.

“Which one?” he said flatly, and opened his eyes. His uncle was regarding him with interest, but no particular surprise.

“You’ve met Colonel Fraser, then?” Hal asked.

“I have,” William said shortly. “How long have you known about it?”

“Roughly three seconds, in the sense of certainty,” his uncle replied. He reached up and unfastened the leather stock around his neck, sighing with relief as it came off. “Good Lord, it’s hot.” The stock had left a broad red mark; he massaged this gently, half-closing his eyes. “In the sense of thinking there was something rather remarkable in your resemblance to the aforesaid Colonel Fraser … since I met him again in Philadelphia recently. Prior to that, I hadn’t seen him for a long time—not since you were very small, and I never saw him in close conjunction with you then, in any case.”

“Oh.”

They sat in silence for a bit, gnats and black flies caroming off the canvas and falling onto William’s bed like snowflakes. He became aware of the noises of a large camp surrounding them, and it occurred to him that they must be with General Clinton.

“I didn’t know you were with Sir Henry,” he said at last, breaking the silence. Hal nodded, pulling his worn silver flask out of his coat pocket before tossing the coat itself over the campaign chest.

“I wasn’t; I’ve been with Cornwallis. We—the regiment, that is—arrived in New York about two weeks ago. I came down to Philadelphia to see Henry and John and make inquiries about Benjamin. I arrived just in time to leave the city with the army.”

“Ben? What’s he done that you’re inquiring about?”

“Got married, had a son, and been mug enough to be captured by the Rebels, evidently,” his uncle replied lightly. “Thought he might do with a bit of help. If I give you a sip of this, can you keep it down?”

William didn’t reply, but reached for the flask. It was filled with good brandy; he breathed it in cautiously, but it seemed not to trouble his wobbly stomach, and he risked a sip.

Uncle Hal watched him for a bit, not speaking. The resemblance between him and Lord John was considerable, and it gave William an odd feeling to see him—something between comfort and resentment.

“Your father,” Hal said after a few moments. “Or my brother, if you prefer. Do you recall when you saw him last?”

Resentment sparked abruptly into anger.

“Yes, I bloody do. On the morning of the sixteenth. In his house. With my other father.”

Hal made a low humming noise, indicating interest.

“That when you found out, was it?”

“It was.”

“Did John tell you?”

“No, he bloody didn’t!” Blood surged to William’s face, making his head throb with a fierce suddenness that made him dizzy. “If I hadn’t come face-to-face with the—the fellow, I don’t suppose he’d ever have told me!”

He swayed and put out a hand to keep from falling over. Hal grabbed him by the shoulders and eased him back down onto the pillow, where he lay still, teeth clenched, waiting for the pain to ebb. His uncle took the flask from his unresisting hand, sat down again, and took a meditative sip.

“You might have done worse,” his uncle observed after a moment. “In the way of sires, I mean.”

“Oh, really?” William said coldly.

“Granted, he is a Scot,” the duke said judiciously.

“And a traitor.”

“And a traitor,” Hal agreed. “Damned fine swordsman, though. Knows his horses.”

“He was a fucking groom, for God’s sake! Of course he knows horses!” Fresh outrage made William jerk upright again, despite the thunder in his temples. “What am I bloody going to do?!”

His uncle sighed deeply and put the cork back in the flask.

“Advice? You’re too old to be given it and too young to take it.” He glanced aside at William, his face very like Papa’s. Thinner, older, dark brows beginning to beetle, but with that same rueful humor in the corners of his eyes. “Thought of blowing your brains out?”

William blinked, startled.

“No.”

“That’s good. Anything else is bound to be an improvement, isn’t it?” He rose, stretching, and groaned with the movement. “God, I’m old. Lie down, William, and go to sleep. You’re in no condition to think.” He opened the lantern and blew it out, plunging the tent into warm gloom.

A rustling as he raised the tent flap, and the searing light of the sinking sun outlined the duke’s slender figure as he turned.

“You are still my nephew,” he said in a conversational tone. “Doubt that’s much comfort to you, but there it is.”



AMONG THE TOMBSTONES

THE SUN WAS LOW and shining directly into my eyes, but the casualties had come so fast that I couldn’t take time to move my equipment round. They’d fought all day; it was still going on—I could hear it, close by, but saw nothing when I glanced up, blinking against the sun. Still, the shouts and banging of muskets and what I thought must be grenades—I’d never heard a grenade explode, but something was making a sort of irregular hollow poong! that was quite different from the boom of cannon or the slow percussion of musket fire—were loud enough to drown the sounds of groaning and crying from the shade trees and the relentless buzzing of the flies.

I was swaying with weariness and heat and, for my own part, was nearly indifferent to the battle. Until, that is, a young man in militia brown staggered in, blood streaming down his face from a deep cut in his forehead. I had stanched the bleeding and half-wiped his face before I recognized him.

“Corporal … Greenhow?” I asked dubiously, and a small spurt of fear penetrated the fog of fatigue. Joshua Greenhow was in one of Jamie’s companies; I’d met him.

“Yes, ma’am.” He tried to bob his head, but I stopped him, pressing firmly on the wad of lint I’d slapped on his forehead.

“Don’t move. General Fraser—have you …” My mouth dried, sticky, and I reached automatically for my cup, only to find it empty.

“He’s all right, ma’am,” the corporal assured me, and reached out a long arm to the table, where my canteen lay. “Or at least he was last time I saw him, and that was no more ’n ten minutes gone.” He poured water into my cup, tossed it into his own mouth, breathed heavily for an instant in relief, then poured more, which he handed to me.

“Thank you.” I gulped it; it was so warm that it was barely discernible as wet, but it eased my tongue. “His nephew—Ian Murray?”

Corporal Greenhow started to shake his head, but stopped.

“Haven’t seen him since about noon, but I haven’t seen him dead, either, ma’am. Oh—sorry, ma’am. I meant—”

“I know what you meant. Here, put your hand there and keep the pressure on.” I placed his hand on the lint and fished a fresh suture needle threaded with silk out of its jar of alcohol. My hands, steady all day, trembled a little, and I had to stop and breathe for a moment. Close. Jamie was so close. And somewhere in the midst of the fighting I could hear.

Corporal Greenhow was telling me something about the fighting, but I was having trouble attending. Something about General Lee being relieved of his command and—

“Relieved of command?” I blurted. “What the devil for?”

He looked startled by my vehemence, but replied obligingly.

“Why, I don’t quite know, ma’am. Was something to do with a retreat and how he oughtn’t to have told them to do it, but then General Washington come up on his horse and cursed and swore like the dickens—saving your presence, ma’am,” he added politely. “Anyway, I saw him! General Washington. Oh, ma’am, it was so …” Words failed him, and I handed him the canteen with my momentarily free hand.

“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” I murmured under my breath. Were the Americans winning? Holding their own? Had bloody Charles Lee cocked things up after all—or not?

Corporal Greenhow luckily hadn’t noticed my language, but was coming to life like a flower in the rain, enthused by his account.

“And so we rushed straight after him, and he was all along the road and the ridgeline, shouting and waving his hat, and all the troops trudging back down … why, they all looked up with their eyes staring out of their heads and then they turned round and fell in with us, and the whole army, we just—we just threw ourselves on the damned redcoats… . Oh, ma’am, it was just wonderful!”

“Wonderful!” I echoed dutifully, catching a trickle of blood that threatened to run into his eye. The shadows of the tombstones in the graveyard stretched out long and violet, and the sound of the flies buzzed in my ears, louder than the ringing of the shots that still came—were coming closer—to the frail barrier of the dead. And Jamie with them.

Lord, keep him safe! I prayed in the silence of my heart.

“Did you say something, ma’am?”



JAMIE RUBBED a blood-wet sleeve across his face, the wool rasping his skin, sweat burning in his eyes. It was a church they’d chased the British into—or a churchyard. Men were dodging through the tombstones, vaulting them in hot pursuit.

The British had turned at bay, though, an officer shouting them into a ragged line, and the drill began, the muskets grounded, ramrods drawn …

“Fire!” Jamie bellowed, with all the power left in his cracked voice. “Fire on them! Now!”

Only a few men had loaded weapons, but sometimes it took only one. A shot rang out from behind him, and the British officer who was shouting stopped shouting and staggered. He clutched himself, curling up and falling to his knees, and someone shot him again. He jerked backward, then fell over sideways.

There was a roar from the British line, which dissolved at once into a rush, some men pausing long enough to fix their bayonets, others wielding their guns like clubs. The Americans met them, mindless and shrieking, with guns and fists. One militiaman reached the fallen officer, seized him by the legs, and began to drag him away toward the church, perhaps with the notion to take him prisoner, perhaps to get him help… .

A British soldier threw himself upon the American, who stumbled backward and fell, loosing his hold on the officer. Jamie was running, shouting, trying to gather the men, but it was no use; they’d lost their wits altogether in the madness of fighting, and whatever their original intent in seizing the British officer, they’d lost that, too.

Leaderless, so had the British soldiers, some of whom were now engaged in a grotesque tug-of-war with two Americans, each grasping the limbs of the dead—for surely he must be now, if he hadn’t been killed outright—British officer.

Appalled, Jamie ran in among them, shouting, but his voice failed altogether under strain and breathlessness, and he realized he was making no more than faint cawing noises. He reached the fight, grasped one soldier by the shoulder, meaning to pull him back, but the man rounded on him and punched him in the face.

It was a glancing blow off the side of his jaw but made him lose his grip, and he was knocked off-balance by someone shoving past him to grab some part of the hapless officer’s body.

Drums. A drum. Someone in the distance was beating something urgent, a summons.

“Retreat!” someone shouted in a hoarse voice. “Retreat!”

Something happened; a momentary pause—and suddenly it was all different and the Americans were coming past him, hasty but no longer frantic, a few of them carrying the dead British officer. Yes, definitely dead; the man’s head lolled like a rag doll’s.

Thank God they’re not dragging him through the dirt was all he had time to think. Lieutenant Bixby was at his shoulder, blood pouring down his face from an open flap of scalp.

“There you are, sir!” he said, relieved. “Thought you was taken, we did.” He took Jamie respectfully by the arm, tugging him along. “Come away, sir, will you? I don’t trust those wicked buggers not to come back.”

Jamie glanced in the direction Bixby was pointing. Sure enough, the British were retiring, under the direction of a couple of officers who had come forward out of a mass of redcoats forming up in the middle distance. They showed no disposition to come closer, but Bixby was right: there were still random shots being fired, from both sides. He nodded, fumbling in his pocket for his extra kerchief to give the man to stanch his wound.

The thought of wounds made him think of Claire, and he recalled suddenly what Denzell Hunter had said: “Tennent Church, the hospital’s set up there.” Was this Tennent Church?

He was already following Bixby toward the road but glanced back. Yes, the men who had the dead British officer were taking him into the church, and there were wounded men sitting near the door, more of them near a small white—God, that was Claire’s tent, was she—

He saw her at once, as though his thought had conjured her, right there in the open. She was standing up, staring openmouthed, and no wonder—there was a Continental regular on a stool beside her, holding a bloodstained cloth, and more such cloths in a basin at her feet. But why was she out here? She—

And then he saw her jerk upright, clap a hand to her side, and fall.



A SLEDGEHAMMER hit me in the side, making me jerk, the needle dropping from my hands. I didn’t feel myself fall but was lying on the ground, black and white spots flashing round me, a sense of intense numbness radiating from my right side. I smelled damp earth and warm grass and sycamore leaves, pungent and comforting.

Shock, I thought dimly, and opened my mouth, but nothing but a dry click came out of my throat. What … The numbness of the impact began to lessen, and I realized that I had curled into a ball, my forearm pressed by reflex over my abdomen. I smelled burning, and fresh blood, very fresh. I’ve been shot, then.

“Sassenach!” I heard Jamie’s bellow over the roaring in my ears. He sounded far off, but I heard the terror in his voice clearly. I wasn’t disturbed by it. I felt very calm.

“Sassenach!” The spots had coalesced. I was looking down a narrow tunnel of light and spinning shadow. At the end of it was the shocked face of Corporal Greenhow, the needle dangling by its thread from the half-sewn gash in his forehead.

PART FIVE



Counting Noses



EVEN PEOPLE WHO WANT TO GO TO HEAVEN DON’T WANT TO DIE TO GET THERE

I SWAM DIZZILY TO the surface of consciousness, thinking, What was it Ernest Hemingway had said, about how one is supposed to pass out from the pain but you don’t? I just had, but he was more or less right; the unconsciousness hadn’t lasted more than a few seconds. I was curled into a tight ball, both hands pressed against my right side, and I could feel the blood welling between my fingers, hot and cold and sticky, and it was beginning to hurt … very much …