115

Little Wolf

THE RAIN RESUMED WITH uncommon force, and it was some time before Gilbert Bembridge was completely excavated, cursorily treated for shock, diagnosed with a minor concussion, and his wound—a long but shallow slash over one shoulder blade, where his friend had tried to stab him—field-dressed. Oliver Esterhazy was treated for shock of various kinds and several cracked ribs. Luckily Kenny Lindsay and Tom MacLeod appeared at this point with two canvas-wrapped rifles and a mule, rain pouring from their hats, and took charge of the two lieutenants with the intent of removing them to Kenny’s cabin, which was no more than a mile away.

“Dinna fash, Missus,” Kenny said, wiping the back of his hand under his big red nose. “My wife can see to them until the rain stops. You’d best go home before Himself has an apoplexy, if he hasna already done it.”

“He hasn’t got enough blood left for a good apoplexy,” I said, and Kenny laughed, apparently thinking I was being witty.

Ian’s party, reassembled from the woods, had trooped down to the road where they’d left their wagon, and were huddling—with the unhitched horses—under the meager protection of a broad limestone shelf and a few pieces of waxed canvas.

I had reached the point of total saturation long since, my hands were a mottled blue with cold, and I couldn’t feel my feet. Even so, I felt a surge of joy at seeing Rachel’s face peering out of the tiny shelter. Her look of anxiety flowered into happiness and she ran out into the rain to grasp my frozen hands and tow me into a warm jumble of bodies, which all burst into questions, exclamations, and intermittent shrieks from what seemed like a large number of children.

“Here,” said a familiar voice beside me, and Jenny handed me a canteen. “Drink it all, a leannan, there’s no much left.” Despite being so wet externally, I was parched with thirst and gulped the contents, which seemed to be a dilute spiced wine mixed with honey and water. It was divine and I handed back the empty canteen, now in sufficient possession of myself as to look round.

“Who …?” I croaked, waving a hand. “All the women,” Ian had said—and that’s what he’d meant, allowing for age. In addition to Rachel and Jenny, there was a pale, stick-thin woman huddled beside one of the horses, two round-eyed young girls soaking wet and plastered against her legs, and another, perhaps two years old, in her arms.

“This will be Silvia Hardman, Auntie,” Ian said, ducking into the shelter and handing Oggy off to Rachel. “Uncle Jamie asked me to see to her needs in Philadelphia, and what wi’ one thing and another, I thought she and the bairns had best come along wi’ us. So … they did.”

I caught an echo behind that casual “one thing and another,” and so did Mrs. Hardman, who flinched slightly but then drew herself up bravely and did her best to smile at me, her hands on her skinny little daughters’ shoulders.