Carla Kelly Read online

  Carefully Elinore explained to the woman that she should take Daniel with her. Don’t argue, she pleaded silently as the woman hesitated. My Spanish can’t stand up to much nuance. She held her breath while a variety of emotions—principal among them anxiety—crossed the woman’s face. Finally she nodded. Elinore released her breath slowly as the woman started off at a trot down one of the dark streets. Dan watched her go, then looked at Jesse, a question in his eyes and some considerable trepidation.

  “Just observe. I have taught you that.” He paused, then his words came out more crisp. “So did the Chief.”

  “But I have never…”

  Jesse shook his head, then groaned. “Observe, then tell me. Go on.”

  When Dan followed the woman, Jesse leaned against Nell’s shoulder, as though his neck was not strong enough to support his head. “Call Harper over here, my dear. Prop me against the fountain, too, and see what you can do for our men.”

  A thousand objections came to her mind. Let me do something for you, she wanted to tell him. Instead, she indicated for Harper to help her move Jesse. He did better than that. As she watched, the big man gently plucked her husband off her lap and carried him to the fountain, where he leaned him against the tiles. She hurried after him, gathering up his leather medicine satchel where he had dropped it when the men grabbed him. She propped it on one side of him, and the bandages and plasters on the other side.

  He smiled at her, his eyes less confused. “Wilkie will stay here with us. You take Harper and see if you can find a place for the night. Surely there is a priest.”

  With Harper—face so serious now—hovering over her like a man with a mission, Elinore took her courage in both hands and approached the circle of men. In a moment she was in the center of it, speaking as carefully as she could, almost willing them to understand her. To their credit, the men were trying to understand her as hard as she was desperate to be understood. “We are all that remains of a British hospital, and we were left behind through an error,” she concluded. “Please help me find a place for our wounded.” She thought a moment, piecing through her Spanish grammar like a beggar at a rag bag. “If you can do this, my husband the surgeon will hold a clinic in the morning for any of you who are sick.” And if you do not, our retreat will end right here, hardly before it began, she told herself.

  The men were silent for a long moment, and Harper looked about, as if gauging their chances for a hasty withdrawal. She touched his arm and whispered, “That is the way they are, Private. Be patient.” She thought of all the tradesmen she had argued with on her mother’s behalf from her youngest years, and the quiet women with gold hoops in their ears who washed the soldiers’ clothes and sometimes bedded them. She knew they would think, then talk among themselves, then act.

  “We will help you, senora,” one of the men said finally. With a few words, he indicated that she should follow them back to the fountain. Despite the mud and damp that weighed down her skirts, and a weariness so deep that there was no name for it, she thought she could have skipped across the plaza. In another moment, Jesse was directing them through her to find the men blankets, and feed them soup, if there was any.

  “Y usted, senor?” asked the spokesman.

  “Elinore, please tell him I must stay here until Dan returns. Can you ask him to take the Chief into the church?”

  She did as he requested, and two men picked up Sheffield and moved him from her sight. Everyone worked quickly, and soon the plaza was nearly deserted. “I hope I can find my patients in this rabbit warren,” Jesse murmured to her. He looked over at the man who was sitting now on the fountain’s rim. “Alcalde?”

  He shook his head, and looked at Elinore. “Please tell him our alcalde is dead.” His expression hardened. “We were visited by the British earlier.”

  Elinore stared at him. “Surely you mean the French.”

  “I do not, senora.” He shrugged, but there was no lessening of the bitterness in his eyes. “I think our priest is with the alcalde’s family.”

  “I…I don’t understand,” she began.

  “He can explain it to you. He speaks a little English, I think.”

  That will be welcome, she thought. Even though her breath came in little frosty puffs, her back was wet with perspiration from the exertion of speaking even her imperfect Spanish. She prepared to compose another sentence to ask for a blanket for Jesse and some food, when she saw Dan hurrying toward them. She stood up from her own perch on the fountain’s rim. “Dan, thank goodness! Now you can help me with Jesse.”

  Dan didn’t even look at her. He knelt in front of her husband, touching his face to make sure he was awake. “Sir, we have a problem.”

  She wasn’t even sure he was awake, but Jesse managed a faint chuckle. “Dan, we have enough problems right now.”

  “Here’s another,” the steward insisted. “The woman’s daughter has been in labor over twenty-one hours—that’s veinte y un, isn’t it, Elinore?—and I can’t figure out where the baby is.”

  “Oops,” Jesse said, and Elinore wondered only briefly at his mental state. “Which means that little niño must be lying crosswise. They do that, Dan, but only at highly inopportune times, I think. A dry presentation?”

  Dan nodded. “I think the mother said it had been ten hours since the water broke.”

  “Worse and worse.” It pained her to watch how slowly he turned his head in her direction. “Elinore, help me to my feet. Dan, I trust you can find this place again.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Elinore looked at them both in disbelief. “Jesse! You can hardly turn your head!”

  She might as well have said nothing, for all the attention either man paid her. She looked at Harper, and he shrugged. She knew she was defeated. After a glance from Dan, Harper slung the bag of medicines on his shoulder and eased his other arm around the surgeon. A few shaky steps, a pause, and a few more steps saw them across the plaza. By the time they reached the narrow street, Jesse walked with minimal assistance.

  Elinore hurried to catch up with them, her fear lessening as a Spaniard from the plaza accompanied her, carrying a lamp high now. They walked silently until they reached a house that was better lit than those on either side. “Your husband is a stubborn man, no?” he said.

  “He is, indeed,” she replied, wondering why she had never really noticed that about Jesse Randall before. Do men change when they become husbands? she asked herself. Has he always been this way? Why didn’t I notice?

  The door opened. She went inside, grateful for the warmth. The man who had escorted her remained in the doorway. He bowed to her. Every man a king, her father had once said. “Thank you,” she said.

  “Por nada,” he replied, and bowed again. “I will remain outside, senora, if you have need of me.” He smiled at her then. “I can look for the priest later, if you wish. He can tell you what a difficult day this has been in our little village, for you and for us.”

  A woman screamed then, the sound a combination of pain and exhaustion that went to Elinore’s heart. And there will be my husband, she thought. “I must help now,” she told the man, and held out her hand. “Thank you.”

  She took a deep breath and followed the sound down the hall. A quick glance around her suggested a house belonging to people of means. She hurried up the low steps to the second floor, where Harper stood outside a closed door, his face ashen, his arms wrapped around himself. She touched his arm. “Oh, miss, how does he do it?”

  “I do not know, Private.” She took another deep breath and entered the room.

  Her husband stood just barely upright, leaning against the mattress. As she watched, he leaned forward until his ear rested against the distended belly of a young woman as ghostly white as Harper. She started to whimper, but Jesse grasped her hand at the wrist and began to gently massage her forearm. In another moment she was silent.

  He leaned away when he finished, and Dan guided him to the chair by the bed. He did not release the woma
n’s hand. Elinore knew she should have gone to his side so she could translate, but she was transfixed in the doorway by the scene in front of her. I have watched this man for years, and it is as though I have never seen him before, she marveled to herself.

  She stood in the doorway and watched suffering of the rawest kind of a woman trying to give birth to a baby that could not be born, and her husband held her arm and calmed her with the force of his presence. She had never seen anything like it.

  She had to let him know she was there. “Jesse,” she said. “What can I do?” She knew she wanted to run away from the struggle ahead; she also knew she would rather die than disappoint this husband of almost two days.

  He looked around at the sound of her voice, quiet as it was, and smiled at her. Oh, please don’t look at me with relief, she thought in terror. Don’t look as though you expect me to be of any earthly use.

  “Thank God you’re here, Elinore,” he said, and there was no denying the relief in his voice. “Dan, you and Harper find our hospital patients and tend to them. We will join you as soon as we can.”

  She expected some argument from Dan, but he offered none. A glance at his stricken face told her that he had no stomach for what lay ahead. She heard the door close behind him, and in the silence, footsteps on the stairs.

  The woman laboring on the bed began to writhe then, and tense herself, then try to dig her bare heels into the mattress as the contractions overwhelmed her. Elinore noticed the woman from the plaza, wrapping her arms around what must be her daughter, breathing along with her. The woman’s cries were fainter now.

  “She’s so tired,” Jesse said.

  And what about you? Elinore wanted to shout. Have you not been through enough this evening? A man we both love is dead, and here you are, perhaps caring for the daughter of his murderer, for all we know? Someone had bound up the laceration on his temple, probably Dan, and she winced to see how swollen it was.

  When the contraction eased and the exhausted woman lay panting, Elinore tentatively reached out and rested her hand on the woman’s arm. Jesse removed his hand and leaned back in the chair, his eyes closed. “Can you do anything for her?” she asked.

  “I think so.” He opened his eyes and leaned carefully forward, trying not to move his head. “Will you tell Sonia’s mother—this is Sonia Ramos—that I am going to try to turn the baby?” He looked at her and Elinore saw the fight in his eyes, even though one of them was quite black now from the blow. “That baby is still breathing, and, by God, we’re going to give it a chance.”

  She leaned close to him. “Can they both live?”

  “I don’t hold out much hope for that, but I would say we are overdue for some good luck, wouldn’t you?”

  “I have never heard you refer to medicine as luck,” she said.

  “Then I have been a magnificent actor,” he replied. “I wonder that Kemble and Keane have not beaten a path to my surgery before now. Translate for me, Elinore, while I see if I can get water to wash off some of this mud. Do you think there might even be a clean shirt in all of Santos?”

  It was then that Elinore noticed others in the room, servants, apparently, who stood by a large basin with steam rising from it. “I will help you first,” she said, and got to her feet. She unbuttoned his muddy, bloodstained shirt, lamented its destruction briefly, considering what else he had to wear, and tossed it aside. She spoke to the servants, washed her husband’s upper body. The cloths they handed her were hot, but from his sigh, she knew he needed them. She took great care around his face, pausing while Sonia suffered through another racking contraction.

  “Look at me, Jesse,” she ordered when Sonia was silent again, her eyes huge in her white face. He did as she said, and she wiped his face clean.

  When she finished, one of the servants produced a shirt that was too long in the sleeves, but clean. Elinore rolled back the sleeves. “There,” she said.

  “Wash yourself now.”

  “Me?” she asked, startled.

  “Yes. Elinore, I hate to tell you this, but if my hand and forearm won’t fit, you’ll have to do this.”

  I can’t, she wanted to say, even as she rolled up her sleeves well past her elbows and plunged her arms into the same warm water. She had a faraway memory of her mother assuring her that she would meet a man one day who would marry her despite her lack of dowry, and hers would be a life of ease. Poor Mama, she thought as she dried her arms and tried to keep her mind free of what lay ahead. Did I ever believe her?

  She glanced at the surgeon, hoping he would not notice her covert look, because she knew she would feel shy. I wish there was someone I could ask: does any woman ever really know her husband? I thought he was just a mild-mannered man who would see me safely to the Portuguese border, she told herself. I think now that he is rather indomitable. Who would have thought it?

  Willing herself to be calm, she mentally lined up all the words in Spanish that she knew, and tried to explain to Sonia and her mother what would happen. She resorted finally to pantomime, and would have cringed at the look that came into their eyes, except that Jesse was watching, and it was not in her to disappoint him.

  Under his direction, she and Sonia’s mother tugged her down close to the end of the bed. Jesse indicated that the servants add more wood to the brazier. He sat in silence for a moment on a stool at the end of the bed, his eyes closed and his hand to his temple. She thought he was praying. He opened his eyes finally and looked sideways at her.

  “Moments like this, my dear, I wish I had gone into the import-export business, like my wee brother Bob.” She laughed—she couldn’t help herself—and Sonia’s mother gave her a hard stare.

  He sat out another of Sonia’s useless contractions, then rose up enough to pull back the woman’s nightgown, pull down her legs until they dangled off the end of the bed, and directed the servants to hold her shoulders. “Roll my sleeve up again,” he commanded Elinore. “Here I go.”

  She closed her eyes and prayed that he would be successful, not so much that her heart ached for Sonia, so exhausted and so terrified, but that she, Elinore Randall, would not have to push her hand inside the mystery of a woman’s body and try to sort out the confusion within. Jesse probably knows more about women than I ever will, she thought, and I am a woman. Teeth clenched, she watched as her husband, his own face set in a grim mask, gently insinuated his hand inside the woman on the bed.

  His face was turned toward her, and she had a good look at his expression, which went from expressionless to extremely interested. It was a look she recognized, the look he wore when examining intriguing cases. “What have you found?” she whispered.

  “One good thing. The baby’s lying transverse, yes, but it is facedown. I wouldn’t give Sonia a chance if it were faceup. I know there is a mouth somewhere. Yes!”

  She almost winced to think that he had hooked a finger in the baby’s mouth, but knew he had when he smiled. “He’s gumming me, lass,” he told her. “Hang onto Sonia right there, and push with the heel of your hand when I tell you, please.”

  She joined the girl’s mother and the servant, and gripped Sonia around the middle. Sonia was screaming helplessly now, a woman staring at death, but too tired to resist its blandishments. She went limp. “Find her pulse, Elinore,” he said urgently.

  She reached for Sonia’s neck, and there it was. She nodded.

  “Push now and rotate your hand as I pull down,” he ordered.

  She did as he said and felt the baby move. “Keep at it. Ah, there.”

  He pulled out his arm, and she was by him at once with a towel to wipe off the blood and fluid. Sonia began to moan again. He patted her leg and pantomimed that the mother and servant should pull her up slightly from the end of the bed. When they did, he raised the woman’s knees, took a towel from Elinore, and slid it under Sonia’s hips.

  “Now we wait,” he said, “but I think not for long.” He leaned forward suddenly and rested his forehead on Sonia’s upraised knee, his ey
es closed. He stayed that way until Sonia tensed for another contraction, and grunted in surprise when she realized that something was actually happening this time.

  Sonia’s daughter was born a few minutes later, angry at the indignities heaped upon her in a cruel world, and gulping great breaths. A huge bruise had already formed in the corner of her mouth, but her slimy legs jerked and her hands waved about, as if conducting some grand chorus to survival and tenacity.

  “Welcome to Santos,” Jesse said as he held up the wriggling lump in both hands. “I’m sorry I called you a he.” As the baby squalled even louder than Sonia’s mother was crying, Jesse tucked her against his chest and with his little finger gave her mouth a professional swab. He laughed out loud when she made water on him. “Take that, you surgeon, eh? Let me separate you from the tie that binds and give you to your mother without delay. Elinore? Do I see a blanket by that brazier?”

  She couldn’t believe him. He was so animated, so alive with the pleasure of holding that hard-fought-for infant, that he seemed to be unaware of his own pain. “I’ll be damned,” she said softly. “I will never understand the medical profession.”

  He couldn’t possibly have heard her over the wails of the child, the prayers of the new grandmother, or the exhausted tears of the mother, but he looked her way quickly, and winked at her with his good eye. After he cut the cord, he gave Sonia a little tug and then a push that expelled the afterbirth onto the towel under her.

  Her heart full, Elinore held out a blanket, wrapped it quickly around the child. Sonia’s daughter was quiet now, looking around and blinking as though she couldn’t believe the muddle she had landed herself in. Welcome to war and Spain, Elinore thought and felt the tears behind her own eyes. You’ve been dragged here by a rather tenacious man.