Carla Kelly (6 page)

“Hippocrates would be honored,” Jess said, with the ghost of a smile. “At least you did not get out a rattle and dance around him like an aborigine. All right, Dan, spill the rest of this. There has to be more, or you wouldn’t look so glum.”

“There’s more.” He looked Nell in the eye this time. “Oh, Nell, the major offered to find him a grand coffin for your mother. Said he thought he could locate a coffin suitable for a lady.” He sighed and looked down at his hands. “That was all it took.”

How strange are the workings of guilt, Jess thought. When Audrey Mason is gone beyond his reach—or his regret, I suppose—he thinks to honor her. He had been in Spain too long to doubt the next step. Bones will pay some starving
paisano
to dig up a coffin and dump out its occupant. He had seen it before. “We must stop him,” he said.

“Major Bones?” she asked. “Can we take this to General Wellesley?”

He could hear no confidence in her voice now. Well, Captain Randall, he thought, you had better see how convincing an actor you are. He took a deep breath. “No, my dear, I think Sir Arthur will not have time to bother with us today, even if we could find him, which I doubt. Bones would only deny he had ever loaned him money.” He gave her a hug. “No, my dear, we have to make your father a better offer.”

You are quick with the comforting platitude, Jesse told himself sourly as he walked through the rain a few minutes later, shoulders hunched, to the marching hospital. He glanced at Dan, grateful that the steward chose not to comment. They had left Nell with a dubious look on her face, but packing anyhow. He knew she didn’t want them around; a glance around Audrey Mason’s bedchamber as she lay dying had pointed out more eloquently than words that the Masons had very little substance between them
and ruin. He wondered that Nell could have much dignity left, not after her mother’s death, her father’s various stupidities, and Major Bones’ plans. She had seemed calm enough. It is entirely possible that I may still be underestimating her, he told himself.

“It seems unfair,” he said at last to Dan as they slogged along. “Why is it that good people invariably seem to come out on the slimy side of the pond, while wretched specimens like Major Bones rise to the top like someone three days dead?”

Dan’s answer was slow in coming, and when it did, it was not a comment on his inane observation. “How are we going to find ninety-five pounds?” He stopped. “Did I mention that the major told Captain Mason that he had until six o’clock?”

To his credit, Major Sheffield didn’t fly into the boughs when Jess told him the situation. His grip got a little tighter around the bellows he was working for Private Jenks, and he blinked his eyes a few times, but there was no outburst beyond a string of profanity that made Jess stare. “Chief, I wish I knew what to do.”

“Empty out your pockets, lad,” Sheffield said briskly, handing the bellows to Dan, who continued the slow, careful motion. “By God, I am inclined to dump every soldier in here upside down until he coughs up whatever shilling he is hoarding. Hear that, lads?”

It would have been difficult not to. “Oh, Chief, we can’t ask our patients to pony up,” Jess said.

“We can,” Sheffield insisted. “Lads, listen to me. This is the only marching hospital in the whole army with someone as wonderful as Nell Mason in it. Her mother died last night, and she needs help with funeral expenses.”

“Sir, I disremember when most of us were last paid,” one of the men called, even as he sat up and reached for his trousers at the end of his cot. His searching turned up a coin, which he held up for Jess. “Not much, is it, sir? Ah, but she’s a fine one.”

She is, indeed, Jess thought as he circulated down the few rows of men who still remained, touched that they would willingly surrender what remained of their money—a pence here, a shilling there—when His Majesty saw fit to
pay them so little in the first place. Each offering was given with an air of apology, the giver wishing the gift was greater. “You would call these men a rabble, eh, Sir Arthur?” he said softly to himself as he transferred the coins to the sole unbroken emesis basin.

While he had been collecting from his patients, Sheffield must have gone to their shared tent. He returned holding out an unmated stocking. “Eleven pounds, Jesse,” he said, and poured the coin into the basin.

“We’re up to fifteen, then, sir,” Jess said.

“A far cry from ninety-five,” was all Sheffield said. He went to sit by Private Jenks again. Jess went to his tent, relieved at least to see that the rain had stopped, and attempted to perform magic on the footlocker whose contents he knew too well.

He surprised himself. “Well, loaves and fishes,” he said out loud as he lifted out his one remaining good shirt—“good” defined a shirt with all its buttons and no obvious bloodstains—and dress uniform to reveal a leather pouch he had entirely forgotten. Eagerly he dumped the contents onto his cot and counted out fifteen pounds. True son of glen and loch, he had never been a wasteful man, but as he lay back on his cot, he felt only discouragement. Thirty pounds! Sixty-five more loomed as huge a treasure as all of Cortez’s Aztec gold and Balboa’s pearls thrown in for good measure.

“Sir?”

He sat up, on edge immediately. “What is it, Dan?” he asked, wondering if there would ever be a time in his life when he would not be on alert, nerves straining toward whatever it was that waited in the marching hospital.

His steward held out two pounds. Jess took it. “We’re up to thirty-two pounds now,” he said. “Dan, thirty-two pounds or three hundred! It’s all the same, isn’t it?”

Seeing the look on his steward’s face, Jess regretted his words the moment he had said them. “I’m sorry,” he said simply. “You are all trying so hard for Nell, and I am whining about it. I wish I knew what to do.”

Jess indicated the camp stool by his cot, and Dan sat down. “You have something else to say, don’t you?” he asked when a minute passed in silence.

Dan nodded. “It’s really simple, sir. I’m amazed you haven’t thought of it.” He blushed and looked down at his hands. “Maybe it’s because you’re so polite and all.”

“What, call out Bones and duel with him, scalpels at ten paces?” Jess asked, amused in spite of himself.

The hospital steward allowed himself a smile. “No, I mean really.”

Jess sighed. “You’d better enlighten me, Dan. I’m fresh out of clever ideas.”

Dan leaned forward. “We could collect ninety-five pounds from somewhere, but who’s to say that Major Bones wouldn’t offer Captain Mason another twenty or thirty pounds to be Nell’s protector?” he spit out the word as though it tasted bad. “I mean, we have no idea what kind of resources Bones has, and you know Captain Mason’s weakness.”

“All too well. I still don’t know where you’re venturing, Dan, so hurry up. I know we should both be in hospital.”

“If you married Nell, there is not a thing the major could do, is there?”

Jess stared at the hospital steward, who had spoken as calmly as though he were stating that gauge .05 gut was better than gauge 1.0 for suturing a leg wound. I never would have thought of that, he told himself, but what a simple thing! “I…I doubt you could get Miss Mason to agree,” he managed to say.

Dan shrugged. “Do you at least think it is a good idea?”

“Well, yes! Of course! It would certainly solve the problem, wouldn’t it?” And make me the happiest man on all six continents, significant islands, and major peninsulas, he thought. He couldn’t help but smile, until he began to doubt. “There is probably no possible way that Miss Mason would agree to such a harebrained scheme, O’Leary.”

The other man shrugged again. “If you’ll excuse me saying so, Captain, other than the fact that you are a little shy, there’s really nothing about you that would disgust her. I mean, you don’t have any particular noxious habits that I’m aware of, and I’ve been sharing a tent with you and the Chief for three years now. I’m not even sure you snore.”

He knew O’Leary had thrown that in to lighten his mood, and he smiled obligingly, even as reason prevailed. “She will never agree to such a thing.”

“I say she will, Captain, begging your pardon,” O’Leary insisted. “There’s nobody around to help her but us in the marching hospital, sir, especially now, with a retreat on.” He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “And if that damned Bones takes her and ruins her, what choice does she have then?”

Such plain speaking called for an equally honest answer. He looked at the thirty-two pounds on the table between them, and it seemed to shrivel up like apricots under a Spanish sun. “She doesn’t have a choice either way, Dan.”

“Captain, do you think she would even know what to
do
with a choice?”

It was true. He got off his cot and went to the tent opening to stand there and gaze at the organized confusion as the regiment prepared to pull out. Although he would never do it, he knew that he was perfectly free to fork a horse and accompany the 12th Light Artillery passing now. He could resign his commission this minute, return to the Portuguese lines, take the first transport home, and have his shingle hung out in Dundee by the end of next month. He had a lifetime of choices ahead of him, and Nell had none.

“So it’s me or Major Bones?”

“I think so, Captain,” Dan said. “I mean, I like Nell, but she is a lady and I will never be a gentleman. The Chief is fond of her, but I know he sees her as a daughter, or…or maybe a favorite niece. You could at least like her, couldn’t you, sir?”

Oh, could he. Dan, I guess you haven’t noticed how I watch her, and do everything I can to get near her in the hospital tent, he thought. You certainly can’t see my dreams, thank God. “I could at least like her,” he said, still watching the passing artillery. “I could do that, and it would certainly stop Major Bones.”

Dan made a face. “Of course, that would mean Captain Mason for a father-in-law.”

“I’m sure if we put our minds to it, we could think of worse fates, Dan,” he said.

He watched the gunners dismount and put their shoulders to the wheel of the ten-pounder mired in the sludge, then glanced beyond them at a familiar figure hurrying toward the marching hospital, dodging one of Wellington’s
aides-de-camp riding too fast and splattering mud. Nell, you should be home in my house in Dundee, warm and comfortable, with nothing more to worry about than planning dinner with the cook, he thought. Damn this war. “Nell,” he said softly.

“Yes, sir, Nell. I do think you should consider a wedding, even though we are a little busy right now,” O’Leary concluded in a masterpiece of understatement.

Beyond my patients, she has been my chiefest concern these three years, he thought. “Yes, we are a little busy, Dan, but I think you may have something here. Do wish me all success.”

T
he proposal didn’t begin auspiciously. He came into the tent at the same time Nell entered from the opposite end. Her agitation was obvious, and he watched in consternation as Sheffield sat her down beside him. Still wrapped tight in her old cloak, she covered her face with her hands, and Jess’s heart went out to her. For once, he didn’t ask himself if he would be inflicting more pain by a stupid offer of marriage, coming at her like a plummeting meteor. I think I can help, Nell, he told himself.

He started toward her, only to be stopped by one of the other hospital stewards, a harried-looking man named Alcott who usually managed to vanish during crises. As it was, the man all but plucked at his sleeve like a peevish child to get his attention.

“You’re still here, Alcott?” he asked, half in jest. “I suppose we have nothing to fear, then.”

“Captain, two of the patients have gone missing.”

“Oh, I must say this is a rare good time to go missing, Alcott,” he said. “Perhaps you’ve miscounted?”

The man shook his head. “They are missing.” He pointed to two empty cots, and Jess sighed. “Harper and Wilkie.”

Oh, Hippocrates, even you would not want them back, Jess thought as he stifled a groan. Harper and Wilkie, two privates from the Subsistence Department, were slackers of the first order. Harper had been rescued in a drunken fog after a headfirst plunge into a latrine, and Wilkie was recovering from a knife wound inflicted by a local citizen who came home too soon and found the private banging his wife.

“Perhaps they have rejoined Subsistence,” he said, hoping
he didn’t sound too eager. Of the two, he would miss Wilkie more. The knife wound had proved interesting in the extreme, slicing as it did through his stomach lining, but not entirely healing. The sight of the open wound was distressing, but not particularly dangerous, and it fascinated Jess to watch the workings of Wilkie’s stomach.

“Should I go in search of them, Captain?” The steward plucked at his sleeve again as Jess was looking at Nell in her distress. “Captain?”

“By all means, Alcott,” he said. With any luck, we will not find them, he told himself. My blushes, Hippocrates. “Do it now. I will attend in the tent.”

He came close to Sheffield and Nell. “What happened, Nell?”

That she was afraid would have been obvious to a one-eyed man with cataracts. There was no serenity or calmness about her, and he wondered how hard it must be to live continually on the edge of ruin. She tried to speak, then shook her head. “Oh, I can’t,” she managed to say, then looked at Sheffield.

“She was packing out her mother’s household effects when Major Bones’ batman came and took them from her,” Sheffield said, his own voice more agitated than Jess could remember. “He said Bones had told him to take her luggage to his tent.”

“I just left everything else there in the house and bolted out the door,” she said, picking up the narrative, but unable to look at him. “I mean, all I have is this dress and apron.” She patted the apron pocket. “And Mama’s necklace. I can’t go back. I daren’t.”

She took a huge breath then, as though to steady herself, and looked at him, if only briefly. It was long enough for him to see the shame in her eyes. “Captain Randall, I do hate being at the mercy of men!”

“I doubt you are alone in your sex in that,” he replied. Oh, this is a fine beginning for wooing, he thought, instant wooing, at that. He hesitated only briefly, then took her hand. Her fingers were cold and she was shaking, so he increased the firmness of his grip, and covered her hand with his other one.