“We died then in numbers. Our zeal to fight was washed away in blood. I ran. We all ran. We stumbled over the bodies of our own. Anything to escape that deadly noise. Somehow they came around our left. Our right? I cannot know. They came quietly, with steel bared. They laughed as they caught us on the points of their blades. A big bastard with mustaches like a hairbrush came at me, and I grabbed his bayonet in my hand.”
Jeannot held up the bandaged hand with a simpering sound.
“It was foolish, but I believe it saved my life. I yanked the blade to one side and shot the man in the throat with Father’s pistol. I stole it from your room a few nights ago, Mama. The Prussian fell atop me. This blood is his.” Jeannot touched fingers to his coat where it was stained as black as ink.
“You need tell us no more,” his mother pleaded.
“I lay beneath him. I felt his last breaths on my face. I lay still and listened to the dying all around me. I did not move as the sortie en masse was slaughtered to a man. I heard women scream and children make sounds like...like... There is no sound like that this side of Hell. I remained under my German, feeling the warmth leave his body, covered with his blood, and acted as one dead. When the sun had gone down, I crawled from beneath him. Crawled...”
Jeannot turned and met his mother’s eyes. His face was white, his skin like wax. Only his eyes, rimmed scarlet, betrayed the life inside the boy. He collapsed then, sobbing on her breast while she patted his head and cooed comforting words the rest could not hear until he fell into a deep slumber there.
“I took the liberty of adding a tincture of laudanum to that last portion of brandy, Madame,” Claude said as he lifted the unconscious boy from the widow’s arms.
“That was quite thoughtful, Claude,” she said with a smile that might have been incongruous considering the tale of horror her son had told them. But her boy was alive, and no one saw anything out of place in her joy.
Claude walked to the foot of the steps, carrying the boy like a child.
“May I help?” Caroline asked.
“Do you know of medicine?” the big man replied.
“I have had training,” she said. Dwayne had shown her some combat medical procedures about treating wounds of all kinds. She was no expert but knew the rudiments, and being from the twenty-first century, she knew more basics about fighting infection than anyone alive in 1871. Hell, one mouthwash commercial on TV was worth more than a university education in this day and age.
With the help of Corrine and Inès, they stripped the boy and washed him. He was bruised along the ribs, and Claude checked for breaks while Caroline cut away the caked cloth tied around Jeannot’s hand. The wound was deep across the palm of the hand, but none of the fingers were threatened, though she could see the white of bone through a gash at the base of the thumb. She cleaned the hand with hot soapy water. She picked tiny remnants of cloth left from his glove out of the sticky crevice of the wound with tweezers.
“What are the strongest spirits you have in the house, Claude?” she asked.
He left the room and returned with a dark bulbous bottle.
“Rum. From Antigua. No one could stand it but the master,” he said and pulled the cork with his teeth.
He held a bowl under Jeannot’s hand while Caroline poured a liberal splash over the wound. The boy winced audibly but did not awaken.
“It should be sewn closed,” she said.
“I will do it if one of the maids will fetch the sewing box and thread the needle for me.” Claude smiled gently and held up his scarred sausage fingers. The man was absolutely a boxer in his day.
“There is a sewing kit in my room,” Caroline directed Corrine. There were several unused needles in her case. They would be far more sterile than whatever was customary for use in this house.
The wound cleaned, closed, and wrapped in fresh muslin, Jeannot was laid in the bed in a laundered nightshirt. Claude would stay with him through the night. The crisis was over, for now.
Down in the dining room, Mme. Villeneuve accepted Caroline’s prognosis with gratitude. The widow was dozy, and confessed that she had helped herself to a cocktail of brandy and laudanum. Caroline helped her up the steps to her room. The maids worked together to see their mistress to bed as swiftly as they could manage.
And so Madame Villeneuve did not update her journal for a second night, thus sparing them from the dark man with the head of ivory hair for one more day.
37
Strangers With Candy
Bat Jaffe never realized how exhausting talking could be.
She stood atop the earthworks of the Roman fort and addressed the clumps of freed slaves milling about the ruined camp. Her voice was hoarse from trying to explain that they were all free to go. No one was listening. She wasn’t even sure most of them could understand her. They weren’t running away as instructed or as expected. They were just poking around through the wreckage, helping themselves to whatever they found there. Others located the cook tent and dragged out baskets of food that they then gorged on. Bat called out to them, but they ignored her. A few were wandering off over the rough ground in the general direction of wherever they thought home lay. But even those few didn’t appear to be in a particular hurry.
“Give it a rest for a minute,” Lee said and wet a bandana from his CamelBak. The big Ranger was carrying the banner of the Twenty-third.
“You taking that with us?”
“Bet your ass. This is gonna look great in my media room.”
“What media room?”
“The
