The Highlander’s Healer (Blood of Duncliffe Series) Read online

  “Exactly.”

  Alexander glanced once more down at his stalwart sergeant, and turned away his horse. He had no more to explain. They couldn't stop here. They had to reach the fields.

  “And it would be nice if we did it before we were all soaking wet.”

  He led the way, shivering under the green and navy of his cloak. Behind him, dozens of wet, dolorous men walked slowly behind.

  They reached the end of the path. Alexander looked around, apparently lost in a forest where each way seemed identical to the last. Then, from his position just on his right, Jenkins spoke up.

  “Look, sir! Tracks. To the cottages.”

  Alexander sighed. It looked like they weren't going to avoid going that way after all. “Fine,” he said. “You lot?” he called back, trying to make sure he was loud enough for all to hear, but soft enough that the villagers wouldn't observe them.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “We're going down there. Stick together. Stay close. And if anyone says anything to anybody, I will make sure he can't sit down for a week. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What'd he mean?” someone whispered as they set off.

  “He means he'll have your arse whipped.”

  Alexander bit back a grin. That was precisely what he'd meant, though he hadn't said in such florid terms. Trying not to laugh, he rode on into the rain.

  They came to the cottages ten minutes later. The place was not as large as Alexander had thought it to be – a mere hamlet, just inside the woodlands. He sniffed sharply, smelling wood-smoke and peat-ash, and bread. He sighed. His men would cheerfully kill for a loaf of bread. So would he.

  “Come on,” he whispered. “Let's carry on.”

  That was when Jenkins shouted. “Hey! Whoa, there!”

  Alexander whipped round, furious. He was about to strike the fellow – how dare he shout, when he'd given explicit orders requiring silence? – when he saw what he meant. Randell's horse had bolted.

  “Splendid.”

  Alexander watched helplessly as chaos broke loose among his troops. The men with Randell hied off after him, while Jenkins rode ahead to try and cut them off. The fellows walking on either side of him tried to stop the horsemen – which was impossible – to keep up – also impossible – or simply to avoid being run over by them.

  Alexander, on the edge of the chaos, could have wept.

  He paused, unsure what would be his best plan of action, and decided to wait. Jenkins rode up.

  “He got away, sir.” He shook his head. “I tried to stop him, but...” He shrugged, desultorily.

  “Everyone! To me!”

  Alexander waited while his men reassembled. Thinking quickly, he made a plan of action. Randell was somewhere amongst the cottages, and he didn't fancy the idea of leaving him there. A wounded man had clearly been in conflict, and he would be hard put not to pass on some information to the village-folk, in which case, when their pursuers – the ones who'd ambushed them and shot Randell in the beginning, after all this – finally caught up, they would be completely betrayed.

  “Alright,” he said to the men, raggedly. “You lot are going to follow Jenkins down the hill. Single file, no talking. I am going into the village to find Randell and bring him back. Anyone thinking to object?”

  “No, sir.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good,” Alexander said tersely, and swiftly turned his horse toward the village. Cursing his men, the weather and the rain under his breath, he headed toward the smoke and scent and warmth.

  “Don't blame the fellow if he bolted on purpose,” Alexander muttered. In some ways, it was better if Randell simply stayed with the villagers. That way, he stood a chance of recovery. In addition, his men would no longer be burdened by his presence, which was no negligible thing. Looking around, Alexander wondered why he was even coming back to fetch the fellow.

  “The orders were to be as secretive as possible.”

  That was the reason why he found himself riding between the ramshackle houses in the dusk, keeping to the shadows.

  Someone looked out from a window. Alexander cleared his throat to call. “You seen a horseman?”

  The fellow looked at him, round-eyed. Alexander repeated the question, more slowly, broadening his accent to make it more dialectic. The people up here all spoke Gaelic, and a regional variant of it that made it almost impossible for him to fathom.

  “Aye,” the fellow said, and jerked his head northwards. “That way.”

  “Thanks,” Alexander muttered, and headed up the hill again.

  It was getting dark now, the dusk strengthened by the rain. He narrowed his eyes as he faced the drizzle and stared upward. There was one last house up here. It stood apart from the rest, and he wondered if anyone lived there, likely since smoke was coming from the chimney in a thin gray line.

  Muttering imprecations to himself, he rode on toward the cottage.

  It didn't take him long to spot the horse. Randell rode a white horse, quite a beautiful specimen too, a big carter's horse with wide hoofs and stocky forelegs. He had noticed it immediately. He saw it now. Randell, however, was conspicuously elsewhere.

  “Damn that man!”

  Swearing again, Alexander dismounted and led his own horse to the gate. The cottage, though isolated, had recently been repaired, he noticed, for the soil in the front garden was turned fresh and things had been planted there. He headed around the back.

  There, he stopped.

  Randell was in the doorway of the cottage.

  Standing over him, a wad of white linen pressed to his wound, was a woman.

  With hair as pale as winter-wheat, a cream-colored dress clinging to her shapely body, hazel eyes level, she made him draw in a breath. She was the most beautiful creature he'd ever seen, but that made her no less dangerous to their mission.

  “Hey, you,” he challenged, in Gaelic. “What're you doing? Leave that man alone.”

  She simply stared at him, neither afraid, seemingly, nor solicitous.

  “What did you say?” she asked, in Lowland Scots.

  Alexander sighed. All he needed right now was someone loyal to the cause of Hanover. And that, it seemed, was precisely what he'd found. What else was a lowland lass doing up here, alone in a cottage in the woods?

  Randell drew in a calming breath and planned to confront them both.

  AN UNEXPECTED MEETING

  Prudence levelly regarded the man who had just walked into her garden. Then she looked down at her patient. “Easy, lad,” she whispered, pressing the absorbent cloth tight against his wound. “Easy, now.”

  She had no idea if he understood not. Perhaps he, like the brute who had just appeared in her garden, could only speak Gaelic.

  Wild men, come down from the hills. Probably driven off their flocks by raiders.

  The man opposite her had, she admitted, a rather different look to the herdsmen and crofters she had encountered before. The cloak was of good stuff, and his red hair shone under the darkness of the drizzle. He had a clean-cut face, a narrow jaw and two of the most stunning eyes she had ever seen. Hawk-like, golden-brown, they regarded her with impulsive arrogance.

  She shivered.

  “I don't ken who you are, sir,” she said slowly, in Lowland Scots, which was, after all, not too far from her native English. “But I request you to get off my land. This man is wounded, and needs help.”

  “Yes, he's wounded,” the man snapped back, in the same tongue. “Which is why I'm taking him home. His wife can look after him.”

  “He needs help now,” she said slowly but firmly. “Try to take him down the hill in this?” she asked and shrugged. “He'll not last the night. He's fevered already.”

  “I can see,” he said again, though she could hear a hesitance in his voice that hadn't been there.

  “Listen,” she said suddenly, even as the wounded man groaned piteously. “Let me take care of him. If you return for him in three days' time, I believe
he'll be ready to ride.”

  “I don't have three days,” the man ground out. The eyes regarded her levelly. “I give you tonight.”

  “Tonight?” She looked down at the man who lay on the threshold.

  His eyes were closed and he sat, propped up against the side of the doorway, breathing slowly. She could see, within his wound, the shattered edges of his collar-bone, protruding. He only needed a sudden bump in the road for one of them to move and sever the great vessels that pulsed blood in his neck. Then he'd be dead in minutes.

  “I don't think I can do this in a night,” she said slowly. The bone, broken like it was, would take weeks to heal. The wound she could stitch, perhaps remove the bullet, pack it with herbs to stop it festering. However, that alone would take all night, and she was tired. If she succeeded in doing all that without wounding him further, he would need a week at least to recover his strength.

  “Fine,” the man snarled. “Then you can give him to me. Or leave him in the shed overnight. If he's still alive come morning, send him down to me. I'm going back.”

  Prudence stared at him. He spoke with the callous commanding air of a senior officer. He had, if she looked closely, a cavalry blade such as those the men in the Scots Regiment wore, except that this fellow wore no uniform, but native tartan, and proudly-so. A Jacobite soldier! She guessed it instantly. Her mistress's husband was a Jacobite fighter himself, though he was not taking an active role at present, due to his child’s impending birth.

  “Sir, you cannot expect me to let him die,” she said, her heart suddenly aching for the poor man who sat, breath grunting, on her doorstep.

  “I don't expect you to let him die,” the man said firmly. “I expect you to do what he needs in the next few hours, or he'll probably die anyway. He's been like that almost a day already.”

  “I see,” Prudence whispered. She looked down again at that gaping wound. He was right – the blood had clotted in places and the fevered warmth of his brow was more than an hour in the making.

  He looked at the red-haired individual, imploring. Then he said something Prudence couldn't understand.

  Red-hair snorted. “He says,” he translated for her into Lowland Scots, “that I must let you try. He'll stay a day and come back to join us.”

  “Fine,” Prudence said, swallowing. She looked at the man, looked at the wound, and suddenly the enormity of what she was trying to do struck her. She hadn't ever dealt in shot-wounds before, had only watched her grandmother on some occasions, mostly with illnesses encountered by the villagers yearly – croup, coughs, fever – and she was not prepared.

  “I can't lift him alone.”

  The man looked at her, mouth quirking. She had no idea what he thought. At length, the arrogant countenance lifted. “I'll help you.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  She stepped aside while the fellow bent and, lacing one arm under the heavier man's legs, the other under his arm, he lifted him.

  Prudence, shivering, led the way into her kitchen. “Put him down,” she said, pointing to the table. It didn't occur to her to be surprised at her peremptory manners – after all, this was her cottage, and her task. She was the healer here, or trying to be. She had to be assured.

  The man did as he was bidden, wordlessly.

  “I need water,” she said. “And to gather my herbs. And a knife, a needle and thread.”

  “Fine,” the man said. He didn't move, just stood in the midst of her cottage, leaking rainwater and mud onto her clean flagstones.

  “You can get the pail there and fill it,” she said tonelessly as she walked past toward the other room, already lost in thoughts and plans. There, in the room which served as a parlor and workroom, she kept her sewing-kit. She gathered it, selected herbs from the kitchen shelf, and then turned to the fire.

  “If you can fill that pail? The metal one? We'll boil it in that. I need it hot.”

  “Fine.”

  He filled the big pan and hefted it onto the fire. He worked soundlessly, but efficiently, and, when Prudence had collected a small, sharp knife from the kitchen drawer, he had already got a fine blaze going.

  “I'm going to take out the bullet,” she said to the man, slowly. She had no idea if he understood. “Then, I'll stitch up the wound. I'll pack it with herbs and bandage it. You can sleep then.”

  He looked at her with wide eyes.

  “He speaks Gaelic,” the man said peremptorily. He turned to the soldier. He said a string of fluid syllables, sounding like music as Prudence listened. The man looked at her with a mix of fear and wonderment in his wide, staring eyes.

  “I hope you told him he can rest afterward,” she murmured, and bent to the linen and other things she'd gathered on the side-board.

  Red-hair muttered something, but she didn't let it bother her.

  Surly, arrogant type.

  She would barely have exchanged three words with the fellow, but that she had him in her kitchen and she couldn't manage alone. He was useful, she admitted. He had, without her asking, gone to the fire and drawn the water, pouring it into a clay bowl. He brought it to the table.

  “Thanks,” she murmured.

  The man grunted.

  Prudence bent over the water and dipped a cloth into it, then turned to her patient.

  His relief as she sponged down the wound was evident. Prudence winced as the wound gaped, showing her the shattered bone and, just visible, the leaden ball that had shattered it, within the wounded flesh.

  “I need the knife,” she murmured. “And a spoon, or something metal and thin. Clean them before you give them to me. In the boiling water.”

  Wordlessly, the soldier – he must be a soldier, he was too used to discipline and command – did as she requested.

  “Thank you.”

  He said nothing this time, not even a grunt, but stood back and watched her.

  Taking a steadying breath, she bent over the wound. “I need someone to hold him down,” she said.

  Wordlessly, the soldier nodded. He stepped up. Muttering something to his comrade, he bent down and braced himself against him, pushing him back against the table.

  Prudence, at the same time, used the knife and spoon-end together, like tweezers, to slip around the bullet and drag it up. It was far from ideal, but it was the best she had. She needed exquisite care: any wrong move and she could so easily nick too far into his shoulder and make him bleed.

  “Got it. Easy, now...you're very strong...” she whispered admiring nonsense as she felt the spoon-end grate on lead and then, as she dragged, the bullet started to slide. The flesh was bound to it, tight with a clinging suction that meant it had been in there more than a few hours already. Prudence held her breath as the acrid, meaty smell of blood wafted to her nose, and tried not to think about it.

  The soldier, to give him credit, lay as still as any man could while another human probed into his shoulder causing, what she knew, was probably unbearable pain. She tightened her eyes, set her jaw, and tried not to notice how he gasped and shivered as she worked.

  “Easy, now,” she whispered. “Easy! And...There!”

  She let out a sigh as the bullet came up, followed by a rising of blood. As it came, she staunched it, pressing down tight against the wound, holding her breath and praying that she hadn't released a flow that would bleed him dry.

  “Easy, lad,” she murmured, feeling hot wetness seep through the bandage and onto her hands. She looked around. “Get me a towel.”

  The man nodded silently and went into the second room of the house. Prudence shut her eyes and prayed. When he returned, she grabbed the linen wadding that was her bathing-flannel and bunched it against the wound. Then she looked at the man.

  “We're going to strap it,” she said.

  The man shrugged. “As you say,” he said.

  Was it her imagination, or was there a grin there, one that didn't reach his mouth, quite, but shone hastily in his eyes?

  “Fine,” she said softly. He came
and stood beside her, without having to be told, and, when she passed him a length of linen binding, he moved to loop it about the patient's shoulder, holding the towel in place.

  “We'll make it tight,” she said, indicating that he must wrap it further, and then taking both ends from him. “Turn this.”

  He nodded, and, really straining with the effort to pull, wound the two ends of the bandage tightly, pressing a knot against the wound, the pressure of which would stop the bleeding. Or so she hoped. On the table, her patient was white, sweat beaded on his brow. The soldier worked, muscles bunching in his jaw and shoulders as he fastened it.

  I suppose he is quite handsome.

  Prudence blinked, surprised that she could have such a thought at such a time as this. She watched him curiously. With his red hair cropped to just shorter than chin-length, a high forehead and fine nose, he was handsome in an aquiline, noble way.

  I suppose I don't usually think things like that.

  She was four-and-twenty, but had never really considered men as prospects for herself. She had always considered the idea of marriage – as she saw it practiced in the village of her birth – somewhat unpleasant. At the age of eighteen or so, the family of a girl would set about trying to find a match for her, and – in most cases anyway – whether she liked the idea or not, the most financially-viable prospect would end up being forced on her. She shuddered. She herself had little interest in such things. And with five of us to consider, Father wasn't all too interested in the matter.

  She had been left entirely to her own devices and, a week or two after her sixteenth birthday had left, in any case, to work at the manor house.

  “It's finished,” the man said, interrupting her considerations. “Now what do we do?”

  Prudence raised a brow. He, who was used to giving commands, was waiting for her to direct?

  “Now we wait. If...when...the bleeding finishes,” she said, averting the bad luck of even mentioning another eventuality, “we will remove the bandage from it and try to stitch the wound. Then we'll re-bandage it, though not as tightly this time, and let him sleep.”

  “You'll put him in the shelter?” he jerked his head at the lean-to where she sheltered growing plants and stored kindling for fires.