The triage station of any field hospital always bears a strong resemblance to an abattoir, and this was no exception. The floor was pounded dirt, not a bad surface, insofar as it absorbed blood and other liquids. On the other hand, saturated spots did become muddy, making the footing hazardous.
Steam billowed from the boiling cauldron over the fire, adding to the heat of exertion. Everyone streamed with moisture; the workers with the sticky wash of exercise, the wounded men with the stinking sweat of fear and long-spent rage. The dissipating fog of black-powder smoke from the battlefield below drifted through the streets of Tranent and in through the open doors, its eye-stinging haze threatening the purity of the freshly boiled linens, hung dripping from the mackeral-drying rack by the fire.
The flow of the wounded came in waves, washing into the cottage like surf-scour, churning everything into confusion with the arrival of each fresh surge. We thrashed about, fighting the pull of the tide, and were left at last, gasping, to deal with the new flotsam left behind as each wave ebbed.
There are lulls, of course, in the most frantic activity. These began to come more frequently in the afternoon, and toward sundown, as the flow of wounded dropped to a trickle, we began to settle into a routine of caring for the patients who remained with us. It was still busy, but there was at last time to draw breath, to stand in one place for a moment and look around.
I was standing by the open door, breathing in the freshening breeze of the offshore wind, when Jamie came back into the cottage, carrying an armload of firewood. Dumping it by the hearth, he came back to stand by me, one hand resting briefly on my shoulder. Trickles of sweat ran down the edge of his jaw, and I reached up to dab them with a corner of my apron.
“Have you been to the other cottages?” I asked.
He nodded, breath beginning to slow. His face was so blotched with smoke and blood that I couldn’t tell for sure, but thought he looked pale.
“Aye. There’s still looting going on in the field, and a good many men still missing. All of our own wounded are here, though – none elsewhere.” He nodded at the far end of the cottage where the three wounded men from Lallybroch lay or sat companionably near the hearth, trading good-natured insults with the other Scots. The few English wounded in this cottage lay by themselves, near the door. They talked much less, content to contemplate the bleak prospects of captivity.
“None bad?” he asked me, looking at the three.
I shook my head. “George McClure might lose the ear; I can’t tell. But no; I think they’ll be all right.”
“Good.” He gave me a tired smile, and wiped his hot face on the end of his plaid. I saw he had wrapped it carelessly around his body instead of draping it over one shoulder. Probably to keep it out of the way, but it must have been hot.
Turning to go, he reached for the water bottle hanging from the door peg.
“Not that one!” I said.
“Why not?” he asked, puzzled. He shook the wide-mouthed flask, with a faint sloshing sound. “It’s full.”
“I know it is,” I said. “That’s what I’ve been using as a urinal.”
“Oh.” Holding the bottle by two fingers, he reached to replace it, but I stopped him.
“No, go ahead and take it,” I suggested. “You can empty it outside, and fill this one at the well.” I handed him another gray stone bottle, identical with the first.
“Try not to get them mixed up,” I said helpfully.
“Mmphm,” he replied, giving me a Scottish look to go along with the noise, and turned toward the door.
“Hey!” I said, seeing him clearly from the back. “What’s that?”
“What?” he said, startled, trying to peer over one shoulder.
“That!” My fingers traced the muddy shape I had spotted above the sagging plaid, printed on the grubby linen of his shirt with the clarity of a stencil. “It looks like a horseshoe,” I said disbelievingly.
“Oh, that,” he said, shrugging.
“A horse stepped on you?”
“Well, not on purpose,” he said, defensive on the horse’s behalf. “Horses dinna like to step on people; I suppose it feels a wee bit squashy underfoot.”
“I would suppose it does,” I agreed, preventing his attempts to escape by holding on to one sleeve. “Stand still. How the hell did this happen?”
“It’s no matter,” he protested. “The ribs don’t feel broken, only a trifle bruised.”
“Oh, just a trifle,” I agreed sarcastically. I had worked the stained fabric free in back, and could see the clear, sharp imprint of a curved horseshoe, embedded in the fair flesh of his back, just above the waist. “Christ, you can see the horseshoe nails.” He winced involuntarily as I ran my finger over the marks.
It had happened during one brief sally by the mounted dragoons, he explained. The Highlanders, mostly unaccustomed to horses other than the small, shaggy Highland ponies, were convinced that the English cavalry horses had been trained to attack them with hooves and teeth. Panicked at the horses’ charge, they had dived under the horses’ hooves, slashing ferociously at legs and bellies with swords and scythes and axes.
“And you think they aren’t?”
“Of course not, Sassenach,” he said impatiently. “He wasna trying to attack me. The rider wanted to get away, but he was sealed in on either side. There was noplace to go but over me.”
Seeing this realization dawn in the eyes of the horse’s rider, a split second before the dragoon applied spurs to his mount’s sides, Jamie had flung himself flat on his face, arms over his head.
“Then the next was the breath bursting from my lungs,” he explained. “I felt the dunt of it, but it didna hurt. Not then.” He reached back and rubbed a hand absently over the mark, grimacing slightly.
“Right,” I said, dropping the edge of the shirt. “Have you had a piss since then?”
He stared at me as though I had gone suddenly barmy.
“You’ve had four-hundredweight of horse step smack on one of your kidneys,” I explained, a trifle impatiently. There were wounded men waiting. “I want to know if there’s blood in your urine.”
“Oh,” he said, his expression clearing. “I don’t know.”
“Well, let’s find out, shall we?” I had placed my big medicine box out of the way in one corner; now I rummaged about in it and withdrew one of the small glass urinoscopy cups I had acquired from L’Hôpital des Anges.
“Fill it up and give it back to me.” I handed it to him and turned back toward the hearth, where a cauldron full of boiling linens awaited my attention.
I glanced back to find him still regarding the cup with a slightly quizzical expression.
“Need help, lad?” A big English soldier on the floor was peering up from his pallet, grinning at Jamie.
A flash of white teeth showed in the filth of Jamie’s face. “Oh, aye,” he said. He leaned down, offering the cup to the Englishman. “Here, hold this for me while I aim.”
A ripple of mirth passed through the men nearby, distracting them momentarily from their distress.
After a moment’s hesitation, the Englishman’s big fist closed around the fragile cup. The man had taken a dose of shrapnel in one hip, and his grip was none too steady, but he still smiled, despite the sweat dewing his upper lip.
“Sixpence says you can’t make it,” he said. He moved the cup, so it stood on the floor three or four feet from Jamie’s bare toes. “From where you stand now.”
Jamie looked down thoughtfully, rubbing his chin with one hand as he measured the distance. The man whose arm I was dressing had stopped groaning, absorbed in the developing drama.
“Weel, I’ll no say it would be easy,” Jamie said, letting his Scots broaden on purpose. “But for sixpence? Aye, weel, that’s a sum might make it worth the effort, eh?” His eyes, always faintly slanted, turned catlike with his grin.
“Easy money, lad,” said the Englishman, breathing heavily but still grinning. “For me.”