Chapter 24
“What you did was unspeakably stupid,” Henry growled, stomping after Mary as she stormed toward the hospital tents.
“I did what was necessary,” Mary tried to rationalize.
“Then I returned to lead our troop, as I promised.” After rushing Bjorn, unconscious, to the hospital tent, she’d rallied her shaky courage and galloped back to her position and duty, putting on the uniform coat again.
Her troop had stood another hour, then came to minor blows before the smell of sulfur and iron cleared the sky, their victory declared by the Duke of Marlborough.
“Oh, did you now?” Henry fumed.
Henry. Furious and pimpled and alive. Very much alive, thank the Lord. As Bjorn was when she’d left him with the doctors.
Was he still?
“I escorted a fellow soldier to safety,” Mary said. “Finished out the battle strong without losing a single man in our troop. We won, didn’t we? No one is complaining or filing a grievance. Are you?”
Henry blocked her path. The path to Bjorn.
Mary folded her arms over her blue coat, as if that might keep her battering heart from bursting through her skin.
“Something’s weird with you.”
Mary glared as her head pounded. She massaged her temple. “I don’t have time for your usual games, Henry. I’m tired. Bjo—Van Acker—could be dying as we speak.”
For taking a shot meant for me.
Did he? Take a shot for me?
Henry held out a hand, stopping her.
“You know what the men are whispering now?” he hissed, quiet enough so no one else could hear. “About you and Van Acker?”
She really did not want to know. She could imagine and had stayed up many nights fearing it.
“I’m only trying to protect you,” he said. “Think of your career. Your reputation!”
She shouldered past him, knocking him aside.
“You abandoned us,” Henry called out.
This froze Mary in her tracks. Abandoned? She could understand his anger, but he didn’t know the meaning of the word.
Mary balled her fists. She needed to get to Bjorn. She needed Henry to understand. She whipped around and stared at his torn shirt, the mud stains up to his knees.
“You abandoned me, your best friend,” he said, this time with a hitch in his voice.
Heat rose in Mary’s throat, but she steadied herself. Exhaled.
“I’m sorry, Henry,” she said with intent. Pressure built behind her eyes. This day promised to break her, the emotion rising like a tide. “I hope someday I can explain, but right now, I have to go.”
Bjorn. Get to Bjorn. Henry was here, alive. She could attend to his feelings later.
She turned to leave again. Her aching feet protested every step, but she ran anyway.
Pungent, animal smells assaulted Mary as she barreled into the officer’s hospital tent. She suppressed a gag.
If these were the conditions for the war’s leaders, what were the other tents like?
A doctor passed without giving her notice, rushing to a man strapped down for an amputation. The sight of the soldier’s chewed-up limb, the bite stick between his teeth, caused her insides to revolt. She flew out of the tent to vomit.
Wiping her mouth, the sounds of men screaming, cursing, crying for their mothers like children, came in pummeling waves behind her. She knew which one came from the amputation.
She covered her ears and placed her head between her knees to steady herself. Her whole body shook. Breathe, she told herself. Breathe through your mouth; repress the smell. The dizziness abated. She had to find Bjorn. Even if it meant looking at every half-living body among the hundreds.
He had to be alive.
Mary inhaled, then plunged back into the distress and confusion, checking every cot. One man writhed in agony as a surgeon tried to pry something out of his ruined cheek.
She moved on before the images seared into her mind—the kind she would never tell Ma about. But Mary knew, she knew they would burn like a brand—much like the dreams of earlier battles she’d fought. Lives she’d extinguished.
Her heart pounded as she glanced at the faces. What was left of the faces. The stink of death. Fear.
Inhale. Exhale.
Shattered bone. Next man. Next bed. Where was he? Why did he do it? Why, why, why did he do it?
And then she halted. She’d know that mess of white-blond hair anywhere. He rested on a cot. His boots had been removed but his leg had not yet received attention. Someone had wrapped a cloth, already bloodied, above the shot wound she knew had lodged in his chest.
Mary rushed to his side.
“Who are you?” came a gruff question from a middle-aged nurse—a woman who’d darted in to check the bandage. “Are you trained in medicine?”
Mary took a step back, watching the nurse unroll some fresh cloth more quickly than lightning.
“I …” Mary began, not knowing how to answer.
Who was she to Bjorn? Not kin, not a member of his platoon, not even a fellow countryman.
“I’m his friend,” Mary said at last. “And no.” These confessions sounded small, too small.
She did not blink as the severe nurse with gray-streaked hair checked the dressing and swore.
“Shouldn’t he be awake?” Mary asked. “Do you have anything for the pain?”
“Blood loss. He’s unconscious.”
Mary reached for Bjorn’s hand, then paused. She bit her lip, then cupped his fingers in hers. They were still warm.
“Stanching won’t help for much longer, not with this wound,” the woman growled. She glanced behind. “There aren’t enough doctors. Numbskulls. Did they learn nothing after Blenheim?”
Mary heard the words but not their meaning. It startled her to be talking with a woman like this. A woman who appeared to be an expert, calm in the heat of crisis. Who was she? How did she end up here? Mary recognized her strength, one altogether different yet similar to Ma’s.
To hers.
What did it mean to be a woman? Mary didn’t know, but this one somehow seemed more capable and determined than the many wide-eyed doctors she’d passed.
“I’ll need your help,” the nurse said decidedly. She removed the soaked bandages on Bjorn’s chest, throwing them into a bowl. “Do you have a strong stomach?”
Mary nodded despite her doubts. She stared straight into the angry hole below Bjorn’s collarbone. She could feel his pain like the shot had hit its true target.
“It went clean through the right side,” the nurse said. “He’s lucky. Missed the vein. But we have to cauterize it, front and back. Stand here and stanch. I’ll get the hot iron.”
Mary did as she was told, pressing a new cloth to the wound. She could feel his heartbeat—faint, but present. She studied Bjorn’s face, pale and beautiful despite it all.
“Live,” she said as tears sprung to her eyes. An order.
Mary perched on her cot, staring at Bjorn’s empty one.
Three days had passed. Mary waited, like the rest of the surviving soldiers, for orders from the Duke of Marlborough and the highest leadership—maybe direction from the queen herself.
It was a marvel to consider: a future, more battles, after so much fighting and bloodshed. Who still had an appetite for this war?
Would it go on and on like this, until they were all dead? She couldn’t continue. Never mind the rank and coin it once promised.
Henry had refused to speak to Mary after their argument.
She didn’t blame him. He needed answers—deserved answers.
No one seemed up for talking except for a few soldiers bragging at meal time.
Others huddled by the fires, fingers trembling.
Some of the men from her troop glared at her, whispering as she passed.
Mary’s gaze drifted from Bjorn’s empty bed to his books, an inkpot, his nightshirt crumpled on the floor.
Mary would be with him rather than here if she’d been allowed to stay.
But the nurse had sent her out when Mary began to sway after the cauterizing.
She’d ordered Mary to eat, to not pass out or vomit anywhere near the wounded, and to stay out of the way.
As much as Mary wanted to go on as before, nothing was the same—nothing could ever be the same again.
She removed her bag from under her cot and began packing.
Henry was right. She could not avoid these rumors; they were true.
Her thinking mind had returned, and she had limited options.
The men suspected Mary’s attachment to Bjorn—that much was clear from Henry’s remarks and their sneers.
It was only a matter of time before an official complaint would be filed.
Better to end this on her own terms. She’d be ready to slip out in the haze of the battle’s aftermath—once she’d seen for herself that Bjorn had recovered.
Desertion meant guaranteed death if she was caught, but she would put on women’s attire before they could find her.
Twenty-one was younger than Mary had hoped to quit this masquerade.
But she’d pocket what she had saved, find Ma, and start fresh.
It would hurt, to leave Henry now—after everything. On this bitter note. Her men would be fine, more than fine, under another officer.
As for Bjorn, she’d done what she could. Now she only posed a danger to him. Leaving and protecting his reputation would be her final gift.
Mary stilled as voices approached the tent. In a panic, she dropped her bag and rolled herself under the cot. A medical assistant entered with Bjorn, supporting him with one arm while he leaned against a crutch.
He’s alive.
Mary’s pulse fluttered, and she clamped her teeth together to keep from shrieking with joy. She could slip out undetected now. She’d seen him one last time.
“Is this all right, sir?” the assistant asked, helping Bjorn to his cot.
“Yes,” Bjorn said, masking any pain. “Thank you for your kindness.”
The assistant bowed. “Shall I blow out the candle?”
“No, thank you.”
Mary winced, wishing he’d snuffed it, as she listened to his receding footsteps.
“Read?”
She stilled.
“What in God’s name are you doing down there?”
Mary hit her head on her cot, then pulled herself out. “Dropped something, is all.”