CHAPTER ONE #4
He turned, and the light they carried bobbed on the air.
Henri’s chest was tight, and breathing had become difficult.
He had to go on. If they caught him, he was done for.
Life, despite all his gloomy thoughts, yet beckoned.
He stumbled on, fearful of losing his step and pitching into the murk of the marsh against which he had been warned by the landlord back at the Three Crowns.
A stabbing pain thrust him back into semi-consciousness. There was fire in the vicinity of his shoulder, and Henri protested with all the eloquence at his command. But all that came out of his mouth was a feeble groan. A vicious jab struck at him, and the heavy lids at his eyes sprang open.
Into his swimming vision came a face he did not know, but the voice that accompanied it had familiarity.
“I’m afraid he is hurting you dreadfully. I am so sorry, but it must be done. It will be over directly, I promise you.” He felt his hand taken in a warm clasp, and gentle fingers stroked his brow. “Brace yourself, pray,” the voice besought him, and his hand was squeezed. “Go on, Mr Dunmow.”
The jabbing started up again, and in reflex Henri’s fingers closed tightly on the hand that held them. A breath hissed somewhere near, and he knew instinctively that he had hurt her. He sought her face again, wanting to apologise, but a pang sharper than the rest sent him plummeting into blackness.
Grace eyed the white features anxiously, fearful, despite her fierce insistence upon the operation, that the Frenchman was slipping away.
She cherished the brief moment of wakefulness, recalling that his stillness before had not betokened death.
Nevertheless, she could not resist setting her finger to his parted lips to check for his breathing.
The apothecary uttered a grunt of triumph, and Grace turned her head in time to see him withdraw those horrid tongs from the freshly bleeding wound. Between the pincers that had caused her patient so much agony was held the object responsible for his near demise.
“In deep, it was,” said Dunmow, not without a note of satisfaction. “Wonder it hadn’t done for him, only it missed his heart by a hairsbreadth, seemingly.”
He dropped the bullet into a tin receptacle placed for the purpose on the cabinet beside the bed, and set aside his tongs.
Grace’s anxious eyes turned back upon the Frenchman, grazing the gaping wound but briefly, and moving on to search the pallid face.
She thought she detected a faint furrowing at his brow and experienced a tiny jolt in her breast. He had lived through the ordeal.
“What do you mean to do now?” she asked, glancing to where the apothecary was delving into his little bag of instruments.
“Best I wash the wound with this,” he answered, bringing out a small bottle. “The ball’d leave traces of lead in.”
“Which could poison him,” agreed Grace, unconsciously stroking the hair away from the Frenchman’s moist forehead. “Yes, pray cleanse it thoroughly.”
Dunmow’s method was to wipe away the blood and then pour a judicious amount of the liquid from his bottle directly into the wound.
It spilled about the man’s chest and trickled away into the sheets below.
Grace thanked him, and took it upon herself to pad the wound with a fresh piece of her ruined sheet and, with Dunmow’s help to lift the fellow slightly, bandage it firmly in place about his chest.
“Seemingly Doctor Ffrith will wish to look at it.” Having done the work he had balked at, Dunmow appeared as pleased with himself as if it had been all his own intention. “Don’t see as he’d a’ done better hisself, only he’ll know as how to mend the feller if he gets into a fever.”
“Is there something I may do to prevent that?” asked Grace, a renewal of dismay entering her breast at the thought of further danger to the Frenchman.
The apothecary shrugged. “Only blooding, but he’s near as nothing got rid of most of his blood without that.”
With which Grace was in full agreement. Nothing would induce her to allow anyone to deprive her patient of any more of his precious blood.
She trusted Doctor Ffrith might have a better suggestion, and turned her attention to expressing her gratitude to Dunmow.
He received it, along with her assurance he would be paid presently, with all the air of having done her a favour.
Having learned the value of keeping in well with the locals, Grace refrained from reminding him of his initial reluctance and ushered him out of the chamber with profuse words of thanks.
“Well, I done it, Miss Grace, but I don’t say as it’ll do no good,” stated Mr Dunmow, resuming his pessimistic view as he hesitated on the landing.
“He ain’t out o’ the woods, not by a long chalk, he ain’t.
And so Doctor Ffrith will tell you, I’ll warrant.
Best let him pronounce judgement, for if it fell to me to say it, I’d not fancy his chances.
I wouldn’t vouch for him being alive this night. ”
It was all Grace could do not to thrust him tumbling down the stairs. Her determination to keep the Frenchman alive intensified. But scarcely had she returned to the chamber where her patient lay than she was assailed by a fresh problem.
A heavy tread up the stairs should have warned her, had her attention not been concentrated upon ensuring the Frenchman had not died in the brief period she had been out of the room. Next moment, her old nurse trundled in.
Mrs Mabel Lamport, a stout dame with an ample bosom and a quantity of chins, was apt to forget that her erstwhile nurseling was a woman of eight and twenty, who had been fending for herself for near five years since the death of her last surviving parent, and had held household for some time before that.
From fifteen years of age, Grace had kept house for the Reverend Mr Dovercourt, his wife’s death and his son’s move to the living of Rainham having left him bereft.
The circumstance of her disability having long convinced her that she need not look for marriage, Grace had moved smoothly into her mother’s place and taken over the reins.
Mab had scarcely left off grumbling over the waste of her youth when Mr Dovercourt had passed away.
But her recalcitrant nurseling, instead of seeking protection at her brother’s house, as was right and proper in a woman of gentility, had scandalised Mab by electing to purchase a little house on her own account, where she proposed to live with only the nurse for company. The outcry had been thorough.
“You won’t never, Miss Grace! Lordy, to think what your sainted father the Reverend would say!”
“He would tell me to do just as I chose,” had said Grace obstinately. “You know very well Papa never concerned himself with the proprieties.”
“Well, think of poor Mr Constant then. I’ll lay my life he won’t be suited!”
It had indeed taken some persuasion to make her brother accept her decision.
Having pointed out, to no avail, the added burden of expense she would prove when he already had his wife and a growing family to support, Grace had been obliged to fall back upon the disadvantages attendant upon her short right leg.