Chapter Four

“Heavens above!” Walter Rousseau rose from his chair as his daughter burst into the house, all color gone from her usually rosy face. “What is it?”

“Come quickly, Father. There’s a man, near death. Bring your bag!” She ran out as quickly as she’d entered, and Walter left his unfinished supper before him on the table.

“Marie, boil water. Lots of it,” he urged his wife, as he rushed past her to retrieve the bag of medical supplies he always carried to his calls. True, he was most often calling on farms to care for animals injured or stricken; but since the death of the local physician from old age two years before, he had been the one that the town turned to when life and death was at stake for animals of the human kind as well.

When he reached the front step of his small cottage, Walter saw Thomas, still holding the injured man in his arms, uncertain what he should do with him. “We have nowhere to begin but the barn, I suppose,” said Walter. “Charlotte, lay down as much hay as you can. Thomas, bring him.

Charlotte ran to the only empty stall in the barn and began piling up hay. She grabbed one of the freshly washed horse blankets and threw it onto the pile, with apologies, as she did so, to Beau. “We’ll have to get you a new one, boy,” she said, and then led the horse as far away from the empty stall as she could; taking him, for now, outside the barn and securing him to the post.

Thomas was finally able to set down his burden, and he did so as gently as he could, given the man was dead weight. The darkened barn, previously lit only by moonbeams coming in through the multitude of holes in the roof, brightened as Charlotte ran from lantern to lantern, igniting them and hanging them upon hooks on the walls.

“Avert your eyes,” Thomas repeated to Charlotte, as he saw that Walter was about to remove the bloodied shawl from the man’s distorted face.

“I must assist him,” Charlotte objected. “If I am going to assist, I have to see.”

“Thomas, there is more you can do to help, if you are willing,” Walter interrupted. “My wife has set about boiling water so I may clean my instruments. Please, would you fetch it and keep bringing more until I tell you to stop?”

Thomas was forced to change his focus from worry about Charlotte’s response to the sight of the man’s hideously injured visage and turn it toward doing all he could to save the poor soul’s life. If that was to fetch water, then that was what he would do. “As you say, sir,” he replied, already on his way back to the house.

Walter instructed Charlotte next. “Fetch the largest pot we have, light a fire beneath, and begin piling my instruments into it. I have cleaned them once, but to use them on a man… I must do my very best to prevent infection.”

The man he spoke of suddenly jolted and cried out in pain.

“Sleep, sir, for your waking now will do neither of us any good,” Walter sighed as he brought a cloth soaked in liquid to the man’s nose and held it there until he once again lay motionless.

“Is there hope?” Charlotte asked, as she settled the large, heavy cauldron upon a bed of wood beside her father. She rushed to empty his bag of the metal instruments therein, and grabbed the first pot of water from Thomas as he carried it in. Without a word Thomas rushed back to the house, and the two continued this method of trading off empty vessels to fill the larger one until there was enough water to satisfy Walter.

“Little,” Walter replied at last. “He is fortunate in that the arrow wound to his chest seems superficial… as if deflected by something instead of hitting with full strength. His face, however…”

Charlotte finally had a chance to see, as her father held the lantern up to the man’s damaged features, just how badly he was hurt. “He’s lost the left eye, there is nothing I can do but sew the wound closed. The same for the gash over his cheek, I can only close it. He will never look the way he did before.”

“His arm?” Charlotte asked, less concerned with the man’s appearance than she was with preserving as much of his body as was possible. “And the leg?”

“His arm, while clearly broken, should heal. The leg, I fear…” He paled. “The leg cannot be saved. He will surely die of infection if I try.”

Charlotte nodded her understanding.

“I need you to sit beside me, Charlotte, and to hand me the instruments I ask for. Fetch them from the boiled water with the tongs and hold them until they cool, then give them to me as quickly as possible. It is going to be a very long night. We will require Thomas’s strength to hold the man down when I do what must be done, in case he should awaken from the pain.”

“Pray that he does not,” Charlotte replied. “I will tell Thomas to hurry.”

* * *

It was a grim task that old Walter had to perform, and he made haste in doing so. Once the young man’s leg had been amputated below the knee, sewn, and bandaged, Walter turned his attention to the damage to the lad’s face. At this point they asked the anxious and tired Thomas to wait outside.

* * *

Father and daughter quickly fell into a pattern of working together in the seamless way that only comes with experience.

When their work was finally done, Charlotte assessed the disaster scene around them, her heart heavy. There was much cleaning up, now, to do. Suddenly her attention was drawn to the one remaining boot the man had been wearing, sitting in a crumpled heap at her feet. They’d had to cut it off of him to assess the damage to his leg, but the bright, golden buckle that adorned it still dangled from the leather. It was ornate and appeared to be valuable, so Charlotte pulled it free from the last of its moorings and tucked it into her pocket. She would keep it safe until the man was ready for her to return it to him.

Meanwhile, Thomas found himself with little to do but await orders to fetch this or that. He hated feeling so helpless, and though he loathed ever seeing any creature in pain, he wished now he had pursued an apprenticeship under the tutelage of Charlotte’s father instead of the blacksmith. Perhaps if he had, he could have done more to help the poor, wounded soul.

For a moment, Thomas felt ashamed. He created the sorts of weapons that injured, as this man was injured. True, they were also used to protect the innocent from those who would inflict such damage given opportunity and incentive; but he still struggled, at times, with his choice of profession. Once again, he sorely wished he could qualify as a knight of the realm…

As he paced his body taunted him with reminders of the limp he so often tried to forget: the very reason that he’d been disqualified from applying for knight’s training. “If only,” he muttered, but he heard his name called once more and was torn from his reverie.

“Yes, sir?”

“Wake the weaver woman across the village. Tell her I need all the bandaging material she has in her possession; what I have here will not be enough. Take Beau. He may be old, but he will get you there faster than running.”

“Understood.” Thomas exchanged a look with Charlotte, who appeared exhausted though there was no end to the night in sight. “I shall return.”

“Hurry,” Charlotte called, as she heard Beau’s whinny of objection to being forced to work so late. “Please, hurry.”

“Steady, my dear girl,” Walter said, as he continued about his work. Charlotte took a cloth and blotted the beads of sweat from her father’s brow. When, exactly, she wondered, had his eyes dimmed and his skin become so wrinkled? “We are gaining ground, and with every hour this fellow’s chances improve.”

“I wonder who he is?”

“Time to wonder will come later, when he can answer,” Walter replied, “Now is the time to pay attention, for there is much left to do.”

* * *

Thomas returned with the bandages, and with all he could do having been done, he followed Walter’s instructions to go home, bathe, and change his clothing.

Now he stretched out upon the soft grass outside the Rousseaus’ barn and closed his burning eyes. His head throbbed and he ached all over from the ride, which, he was certain, the old horse did, too.

Charlotte’s soft, familiar footfalls approached, and just as he was about to look at her, she rushed past in a hurry. “Look away, Thomas, for I am wrapped in a horse’s blanket. My dress could not be saved.”

“Will he live?” Thomas asked, turning in her direction with eyes still closed, as a gentleman would.

“We should know more by morning,” she called. “For now I am to bathe, dress, and return to keep watch while Father sleeps a little. He is destroyed by the rigors of such unthinkable work.”

“I will sit with you,” Thomas answered.

“Sleep now, please, so you might keep watch later if I am unable to stay awake,” Charlotte asked as she opened the door and went inside. Her voice was muffled and barely audible as she added, “Pray I can stay awake.”

* * *

Soon Thomas found himself trying to be quiet as he rifled around the kitchen of the Rousseau family cottage. He did not wish to wake her mother, but he knew it had been a long time since Charlotte had eaten. He found a loaf of bread, a pear, an apple, and set about slicing them and putting them on a plate so they might tempt her, a little.

She returned from bathing, wearing the only dress she had at all now, save the one she had borrowed from her mother’s past for the ball. He would have to see if he could perhaps surprise her with a simple new frock. After all, her birthday was nearly upon them, and he had been saving up for some manner of present.

“Oh, Thomas, you startled me,” she said, then saw him holding the plate of food out toward her. At first she turned her head aside, but then she felt the gnawing in her stomach at the sight of the bread and changed her mind. “I must eat quickly so I can return to sitting vigil. Father must sleep.”

“And sleep I shall, as soon as I am bathed,” Walter Rousseau spoke slowly, appearing before them. “Avert your eyes, I also was forced to burn my clothing and borrow a blanket from poor old Beau.”

“He shall be quite cross with us,” Charlotte said, nodding with eyes closed. “Orders, Father?”

“I only left him for a moment because he is still unconscious. I must rest now if I am to care for him again in the morning. Your instructions are to keep him asleep by means of the medicine I left beside him. You know how.”

“But, based upon his size, Father? How much and how often? He is not, after all, a cow.”

"No, he is not,” Walter nearly smiled. “Treat him with just enough to keep him asleep, and that will suffice. I fear trial and error must be your method to determine the amount and frequency. But I trust your skill, Charlotte. You will make a fine nurse for him.”

“I understand. Sleep well, Father.” She turned to Thomas now and sighed. “So much for my midnight breakfast.”

Thomas shook his head. “You must eat. I will stand beside him until you return. If he wakes, I shall call for you directly. Bring your plate and eat outside, on the step, so you might hear.”

“Thank you for all you have done this night.” She reached out and patted him on the shoulder. “For a certainty, that man owes you his life, whomever he may be.”

“Nonsense,” Thomas placed his hand atop hers in a way that made Charlotte nervous. Slowly, she withdrew, and she watched his expression fall as she did. “If he lives, it is only because of you and your father. All I did was carry him.”

“That, I could not have done,” she replied. “He’d have drowned, or simply died in the water where we found him had you not been there. Do not underestimate your importance.” She hoped that the last remark would restore the glow in his eyes that her extrication from his touch had snuffed; and to some small extent, it did.

“I should go,” he said next. “I will see you directly.”

“As soon as I finish this,” she said, making a note she would eat only until her belly stopped its objections to emptiness, then she would leave the rest of the food on the plate for Thomas.