CHAPTER ONE #3
Once the lean-to had been negotiated, it thankfully proved a good deal simpler to carry the man upstairs and set him down upon the bed, ready prepared by Jemima.
Bidding the farmhands strip the Frenchman to the waist, Grace sent the maid for a bowl of warm water and went herself to fetch scissors from her bedchamber, before removing an old sheet from the linen press kept in this spare chamber.
With the wound laid bare, she found fresh blood induced by the recent exertions.
Using cuttings from the sheet, she swabbed it clean as gently as she could, and gazed with dismay at the gaping hole just above the heart, in the Frenchman’s left shoulder.
Instructing Jemima to rip strips from the sheet, she took a square of linen and fashioned a pad to lay to the wound.
With an improvised bandage in place to hold the pad stable, Grace had felt ready to grapple with the next step.
Jemima had brought up a jug of cold water and a glass. “He’ll be thirsty when he wakes — if he does.”
But Grace would tolerate no ifs. “He has lost a great deal of blood, but he must have a strong constitution to have lasted the night. Only it is vital he is seen as soon as may be, for I strongly suspect there is a bullet in him.” A little argument had broken out upon the subject of who to call.
“Don’t see as how even Doctor Ffrith can help him,” was Clem’s verdict. “Seemingly he’s done for, Miss Grace.”
“We had ought to bring in Mr Holwell to him instead, so’s he can measure him for a coffin,” came from Samuel.
Grace dealt summarily with these gloomy prognostications, and decided to send Clem for the doctor a mile away at Rainham, and Jemima to the marginally nearer East Hall for Dunmow the apothecary.
“Mr Dunmow is also a surgeon and he may at least extract the bullet. And he will certainly be found at home, whereas there is no saying when Doctor Ffrith may be called out upon an emergency.”
“Clem had best tell him this is an emergency,” said Jemima. “If the poor feller live long enough for him to get here.”
“Don’t say that,” Grace scolded. “Off you go to Mr Dunmow now, Jemima, and don’t come back without him. Clem, do you start for Rainham at once, and I will square it later with Mr Mayberry that you are not at your work.”
Jemima sped away, but Clem hesitated in the doorway. “Seemingly Sam could tell master, seeing as Mr Mayberry is parish officer. Parish business is this.”
“Sam may tell him presently. For the moment, I need him here.”
Samuel was shocked when Grace insisted upon removing the lower half of the patient’s garments. Grace overbore him.
“They are damp, Samuel, like the rest of his clothes. Now we don’t want him dying of pneumonia, do we?”
“But it ain’t seemly, miss. ’Sides that, he’s good as dead anyhow.”
Scolded for the last remark, he at last consented to do as Grace asked.
To assuage his sensibilities, she consented to turn her back when it came to the fellow’s drawers, the farmhand warning her not to look until he had drawn the covers up over the man’s nakedness.
Requesting him to remove all the man’s clothes from the chamber and take them down to the lean-to, where Jemima might later attend to them, Grace at last dismissed him, giving him a message — albeit with reluctance — for Mr Mayberry.
Then she settled down to wait for the arrival of the apothecary.
While Grace knew there was no keeping this affair secret, she sighed at the certainty the local figures of authority would descend upon her.
If one thing was more certain than another, it was that officialdom would attempt to wrest the Frenchman from her care.
Grace determined to resist them to the utmost of her power, for she could not but blame herself that the poor man had come to this.
Had she investigated the noise last night, she would have found him at once.
Instead she had ignored it, and as a result, he had lost enough blood to kill any ordinary man several times over.
She felt little better than a murderess.
That he had survived was a miracle, and Grace could only suppose him to be possessed of superhuman strength.
She had at least the consolation he’d had the benefit of the residual heat from the fire in Jemima’s makeshift laundry.
Had he remained out upon the marshes where he was shot, he would undoubtedly have died in the night.
She eyed the lean cast of his white-featured face where he lay on the pillow, abnormally motionless.
Grace clung to the certainty he was breathing, watching intently for the slightest lift and drop of his chest. She reached under the covers and sought for his wrist, trying to find a pulse.
Relief shot through her, and tears started to her eyes. It was very faint, but it was there.
Releasing him, she withdrew her hand, smoothing the covers about him.
The pale countenance drew her and she rose from her chair, leaning over him.
Like a marble statue, and as classically beautiful as any god of the ancient world.
She remembered the green eyes, and wondered if she would ever see their colour again. An unbidden sob shook her.
“Live, pray! You must live,” she besought him in a voice of throbbing need.
But no flicker came to relieve the staining guilt. She had not shot him, but if he died, Grace could not acquit herself of complicity. Which led her to a realisation, and a breathless question. Who had wanted him dead?
He was running, the breath tight in his chest. Behind him in the darkness, the blundering progress of his pursuers threatened. When he turned, the light carried by one of them bobbed like a dancing firefly, a harbinger of doom. If they caught him, his life was not worth a moment’s purchase.
The burden of breathing was almost too much to bear. It would be easier to let go, give himself up to the marsh and the mire. Give himself up to Robespierre.
He was moving through a doorway. The room was large, the single desk set close by the window, a pool of light from the candelabrum to one side augmenting the fading dusk that came in at the tall windows.
The familiar bewigged neatness of the man’s head was bent over the desk, his busy quill scratching on the papers.
Jean-Marc was standing silently beside him, waiting.
Waiting, waiting. Le Directeur always kept one waiting. It was a part of his strategy.
Jean-Marc looked up and saw him. An expression of hatred entered his eyes, burning even at this distance. Jean-Marc lifted a hand and one finger traced a quick line across his throat, a gesture readily understood.
He backed out of the room, and the boat on the water enveloped him.
He lay hidden under its narrow sides while the fellow rowed him across the Seine.
He should have been able to trust him, but one never knew these days.
What he paid the man might be doubled, trebled.
By Jean-Marc? By Etienne or Augustin? His friends once, but there was no longer room for comradeship in this lawless land.
The shadow of the great ship loomed above him.
Next instant, he was on its deck, and the unseen eyes were watching.
He toyed with the notion of dropping overboard.
Could he swim so far? Or would he drown in the dark waters before ever he reached the shores of England?
Perhaps it was better so. Why cling to a life both wretched and hopeless?
He was moving in water, sheltered among reeds. Awareness grew of the ache in his shoulder. Had he been hit? He could hear them casting about, hear their voices. They were close. But why were they speaking in English?
“Seems to me, Miss Grace, as how it ain’t nobbut a waste of time messing with it. He’s nigh on dead already, far as I can see.”
A woman’s voice intervened, a throbbing anger detectable within it. “But he is not yet dead, Mr Dunmow, as you can very well see. That he is alive after what he has undergone is surely testament to a strong constitution. I must therefore request you to remove the bullet forthwith.”
There was vague familiarity in the timbre of her voice. That she was speaking of himself was logical, if unlikely. He understood most, if not all the words, thanks to that education he had been at pains to keep secret. Was it possible he had made it? Was he indeed in England?
The man in the case was protesting. “Thing is, Miss Grace, as it’s a tedious difficult job to get a ball out of him, and I dunno if it’ll be worth the doing.”
“Then do it to oblige me, Mr Dunmow, if you please. I will recompense you for your trouble, I promise you.”
“Seems to me as you’d best wait for Doctor Ffrith, miss,” came the grumbling response. “I don’t say as I couldn’t take it out, but I know as it’s likely he’ll die for taking it out, and it ain’t to my taste to be responsible for it.”
“I have sent for Doctor Ffrith,” replied the woman, and he could hear determination in her tone. “But he may come too late. So will you please take the ball out now?”
The other voice became harassed. “It ain’t to say as he won’t die if I do take it out!”
“But he will certainly die if you don’t!”
He wanted to add his voice to the argument, to assure the woman, whoever she might be, that he was ready enough to die if it came to it.
Had he not been in danger of his life for weeks past?
But he had not the strength for speech. Hazy dreams were all he had to fathom how he had come to be hit.
It did not surprise him, and he tried to drag his eyes open to see who insisted upon saving his life.
And succeeded only in sending waves of blackness skittering into his mind.
Jean-Marc was calling him, his name echoing strangely across the misted darkness of an alien land. Hen-ri! Hen-ri-i-i-i-i…