With aching arms, he peeled the blanket back and peered down at his body with uneasy eyes, trying to sum up the extent of the damage.
‘Oh sweet Lord above,’ he whispered, struck with shock, ‘I’ve been cut up, I’ve been cut up bad…’
‘You lost a lot of blood, trooper,’ a stern voice announced from behind him, ‘and you’re not to get up for any reason whatsoever.’
William turned over on his shoulder, wincing with pain as he did, and he recognised the elderly man talking to him as the doctor he had seen amputating a young trooper’s leg. The doctor’s bone-thin forearms, formerly a slimy crimson with accumulated gore and blood, were now clean and spotless. He looked up from cleaning his surgical instruments and caught William’s gaze.
‘Did you hear what I said?’ he asked coldly.
‘Yes sir,’ William croaked. ‘No getting up, sir.’
‘Don’t call me “sir”, please. I’m a surgeon and an esquire, but I’m not a military officer. I’m retired, mind you, but I volunteered my services to assist Her Majesty’s armed forces in this campaign.’
‘Oh I see, sir. Um, sorry, I mean…’
The doctor rolled his eyes and shook his head, somewhat melodramatically.
‘You’re not very good at taking advice, are you?’
‘I’m, I’m—’
‘I spent a good few hours stitching up all those sabre cuts of yours,’ the doctor commented dryly, continuing to clean and packing away his instruments with a deft and methodical vigour. ‘Getting that musket ball out of your thigh, now that required some intricate attention, but we managed to extract it in the end, and luckily for you it did not hit the bone; if it had, it would surely have shattered it, and that certainly would have required amputation. The one that hit you in the shoulder was probably fired from a great distance away, as it merely lodged itself in your flesh. If the projectile had not lost so much momentum it would have destroyed the bone and ligaments, and you’d probably never have been able to use your left arm again. Thankfully, though, it didn’t. You’re one of the luckier ones, lad, I can tell you that. Shot twice, cut and stabbed innumerable times … but none of the wounds fatal. Serious yes, but not lethal. Most of your compatriots were not as fortunate as yourself though, I’m afraid. Your Light Brigade has lost half of its horses, and perhaps one fifth of its men, with almost every survivor injured in varying degrees of severity. I expect the tally of dead to rise, unfortunately, as many of the chaps here in the medical tents will not live out the next few days due to the grievousness of their injuries.’
‘Sir—’
‘“Doctor”, lad; get it right please. I have no time to repeatedly correct your ignorance.’
‘Doctor, please, I need word ay my friends. I must ha’ word ay them, please. Their names are Michael—’
The doctor held up a stern finger to silence William.
‘I don’t know anything about them, I can tell you right now. I don’t know their names and I don’t even know your name, and nor do I care to. I apologise if I sound callous, but I have a lot of work to do and many more troopers to attend to on this dark day. I’ve no time for idle conversation with you Private, I’m afraid. My time is very precious, and not just to myself, but to the other wounded who so desperately need my attention. Now you stay in that cot and eat your meals, and do not get up – consider that an order, if that will make you obey it to the letter. There is a bedpan under the cot for when you should need to relieve yourself. Get some rest. Good day to you!’
‘But Doctor, please, my—’
‘I said “good day”, trooper, so do as I’ve instructed. Once more, I bid you good day!’
The elderly doctor hurried out of the tent in a huff, muttering under his breath.
William turned over in his cot and closed his eyes for a few moments. As he began to fall into an uneasy slumber, nightmarish images of his experience on the battlefield came crashing through the gates of sleep, drowning his mind in a deluge of terror and horror, and at once he sat bolt upright in the bed, his eyes white and bulging from their sockets as he gasped in great heaves of panic.
He tried to lean over to get up, but crippling agony ripped through him and he fell back onto the cot with a groan.
‘My friends,’ he whispered to himself. ‘Michael, Paul, Andrew … where are you lads? Where are you? These awful things I see in my head, they cannae be the truth. They cannae be what really happened.’
He reached up to his throat to retrieve the portrait of Aurora that he kept around his neck, but with suddenly panicking fingers he discovered that it was gone.
‘No … no! No no no no no no!’
His heart started racing with a debilitating and chilling fear.
‘Where is it? Where’s it gone? No! Where is it?!’
He rolled over in his cot, oblivious now to the pain, caring only about finding his lost portrait of Aurora. With a heaving sigh, relief coursed through his body like a shot of morphine as he saw, on the ground, a freshly folded uniform, upon which his personal effects had been placed. The portrait of Aurora was there, as was the letter from Captain Liversage, and a few other things.
William reached over, grunting with pain, and picked up the blood-stained portrait. He kissed the painted face with soft lips, and clasped the portrait in his palms.
‘At least you’re here with me,’ he whispered. ‘At least you’re here…’
With that, he faded out of consciousness and sank back into the realm of
