Voice low, she looked to a clearly distraught Father Harlow, his usual stoicism scuttled. “Is there a doctor nearby?”
He nodded and, without another word, left on the horse he’d just ridden home, the wagoner departing in his wake. Mae andBronwyn began stripping off Rhys’s filthy garments, top to bottom. His breeches were so threadbare they fell apart.
“Bring the washtub nearer and we’ll fill it with warm, soapy water and bathe him as best we can,” Bronwyn said as she tugged off a torn stocking. “His garments are beyond saving so we’ll burn them, all but his boots.”
Mae did as she was told, fetching hot water they’d meant for their own baths from the hearth till the tub was half full and sudsy. She looked him over in all his humbling barrenness but kept returning to his face, trying to reconcile who he’d been with the gravely wounded man before her, his only movement the slight rise and fall of his bare chest.
Cleaning a man so begrimed was not for the fainthearted. And Mae felt both faint and sick at heart. Where was the man she’d fallen in love with? Had he returned not to reunite with her as she’d hoped and prayed but to be buried instead?
“Look away, Mae, while I bathe the wound,” Bronwyn told her quietly. “I would spare you that.”
Mae took a cloth and bathed his face instead, then fetched a basin to wash his shoulder-length hair as he lay there. Soon she was as soap-spattered and damp as he was, but the task helped ground her. When he stiffened then flailed, his arm hitting her middle so hard the baby moved, she pulled back.
“He’s feeling the pain of the wound, which seems to be festering, and I fear—” Bronwyn’s whisper faded, then she continued. “Fetch the whiskey in the medicine cupboard.”
Mae did so, knowing what her sister-in-law had been about to say but didn’t.
Festering.She’d heard Aaron say it with dismay and finality. It usually meant the loss of a limb. Or worse.
fifty-one
For my part I have but one object in view, and that is the success of the cause. God can witness how cheerfully I would lay down my life to secure it!
General Hugh Mercer
“We know little about how he came to be here,” Father Harlow told the doctor. “The wagoner merely said he was well paid at the Alexandria dock to bring him to the valley.”
“Wounded in battle, likely. He may have been alert at first, then worsened on the journey.” Dr. Hardy’s voice continued calm as he examined Rhys, the whiskey they’d dosed him with riding the air. “My guess is that he came to Alexandria by ship from Boston, given New York and Philadelphia are under British control. Wounded as he is, he cannot fight, nor would he likely survive a winter encampment in such a condition. Whoever sent him south was wise indeed.”
Mae wondered about his companion who’d died of fever. James? Jon? Or Isham?
As if reading her thoughts, Father Harlow continued, “Rhys may have no memory of who accompanied him.”
“Memory is often lacking when one is gravely injured or ill,” the doctor replied. “Perhaps in time...”
That night Mae stayed with him, trickling water past his cracked lips as he lay slightly upright on a bank of pillows. A woolen coverlet was pulled back from his wound, which was now bound in clean linen. Dr. Hardy had prescribed a poultice to be applied twice daily, charcoal in the morning and comfrey at night. She’d sensed a reserve about the skilled physician that she feared was hopelessness, though he’d said little other than they must draw the poison out.
Sitting near the head of the bed, she couldn’t keep her hands to herself. Her need of Rhys whole and hearty again rose up and left her breathless. It was no small victory he was home. His washed hair felt like corn silk beneath her fingertips. She traced the sharp line of his cheekbone to his bearded jaw, wondering if he wanted her to shave him, frightened that he hadn’t the voice to ask.
Leaning in, she kissed his rough cheek. “Rhys, you’re home ... and I’m here.” Her voice broke. “Please keep fighting ... if not for me, for our child.”
Though he’d come to them almost lifeless, then restless—from pain, she guessed—he was now frightfully still. Smoothing her voice if not her emotions, she sang a low hymn, careful not to wake Bronwyn and Father Harlow upstairs. A Scripture came to mind, then fled her thoughts like mist.
The Lord will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing.
When her eyes wouldn’t stay open, she joined him ever so carefully on the pallet, close enough to lay her cheek against his shoulder. She could barely hear him breathe. The fire’s pumpkin-orange flames gave a pop as the logs shifted and cast light on all the crags and valleys of him, turning him older than his years. Suffering aged one. Suffering and war and wounds and hovering on the precipice of death.
Would he never get up again? Would she never see him trade his rifle for a plow or scythe in the Harlows’ immense fields? Wouldshe not sit with him at their new table up the hill? Show him the cradle or the tiny garments she’d made? Beg his forgiveness? Doing so seemed a privilege she’d never possess.
Where did the Harlows bury their dead?
Morning came and so did the doctor. There was talk of amputation, but the notion was quickly discarded. Angry red streaks extended from the wound like spokes on a wheel. As Bronwyn tended Rhys, Mae finished the candlemaking abandoned the day before. She could hardly bring herself to look at Rhys’s torn-up flesh.
When she returned from the dyeing shed, his eyes were open and he’d found his voice.
“Where,” he said haltingly, “is she?”
The three words brought the room to a standstill. Mae froze in the doorway, the cold December day at her back. Bronwyn motioned to her while the doctor and Father Harlow stood at the foot of the pallet. Pinched with unease, Mae felt all eyes on her as she stepped nearer and met those eyes that had been ice-gray at Fort Montgomery. They held hers for a few unfathomable seconds before closing again and shutting her out.
