The Covert Captain, page 15
“In such weight, measure and number, even so perfectly as God made the world?” Eleanor finished. “My lord Sherbourne, I had never a choice.”
He hefted the full buckets away for her, replaced them with empty, and stooped to secure the yokes. It was something to do, besides gaze upon her weariness.
“A great house, and no servants in it to speak of; this command, I was bred to,” Eleanor said wryly. She leant on the pump, stuck her head full beneath the water, and scrubbed at her face. Her shirtlaces had fallen wide, and she had not bothered binding through her long vigil by Harriet’s bed; when she came upright, sputtering and blowing, she was obliged to cuff Sherbourne’s cheek.
“Beg pardon,” said Sherbourne. “I was only… only thinking…”
“Pray don’t, or I will knock you into the trough.”
He shouldered his yoke of full buckets, swaying only a little. “I thought, what a wife you would have made. You may see me into the trough now, Captain, if you like.”
“I should have to fill the buckets again.”
Sherbourne laughed, an echo of his laugh before Genappe had slowed his gait, before pain and drink had paled him. He squinted a bit, to regard her, and spared a hand from the chains to knock wet hair from his brow. “I—I must beg your pardon. Many things—”
Curtailed by the yoke, Eleanor tossed her head, as Malabar might.
“Your bloody brother, for one—”
“I do not blame you for Colquhoun.”
“Beg you let me finish,” Sherbourne got out. He followed her in slow step, with great care not to swing buckets into her knees. “My—Harry is—I should not have parted you.”
Eleanor was silent, lip drawn between her teeth, from emotion or exertion.
“You are my great friend, damn you, damn the whole business! What was I meant to have done?”
“…Major?”
“It put me deuced out of countenance, that you were hermaphrodite, that my sister—but by God, it pricked me to blazes that there should be something about you I did not know.”
The stillroom was cold, but Eleanor worked in rolled shirt-sleeves, folded near in half over the barrel of thieves’-vinegar. No one had fed or decanted it in Sherbourne’s memory, and the barrel was near its dregs, but what remained—she had given herself a penknife-cut to test the acid, and cursed the walls blue for five minutes after—was screaming potent. She went on cramming rosemary, thyme, sage and lavender under the liquid that was left, beating and breaking the stalks with all her weight leant into her hands, until she was almost drunk upon the smell. She thought of her grandmother, Lady Linley, to her last year as every year, filling the barrel at Moorlowe and pouring a dram for the four thieves.
Lady Linley’s black still bag, with its precious bottles all nestled in cotton, was in Eleanor’s campaign chest, and Eleanor’s campaign chest was in London.
“Bring it here, or I shall see you put to burial detail!”
The cornet had his head bound about with bandages stained red, but he saluted her and ran. He was Fraser’s, she thought, poor Jack Fraser’s, but in her pain the young man’s name had left her. The air was close and hot and pungent with blood and bile, and a miserable rain was seeping through the tent.
Eleanor stumbled, swayed, and must have lost her senses. The cornet was pummeling her shoulder, and she was cast forward over Sherbourne’s stretcher. The boy—Blakeleigh? Blackney?—held out the black kit bag, gingerly as he might a grenade.
“Help,” ordered Eleanor, near shivering with pain. The sling was loosening round her right arm, cutting at her neck, and she had not much time to get this right. With her left sleeve she blotted sweat out of her eyes, but the bottles’ neat lettering still swam.
“Be you lettered? The bottles are labeled, all. Hand me—ohh, Almighty—hand me Pyrethrum, and Comfrey-Calendula, and Four Thieves.”
She took them in her left hand and stared, like an idiot.
“Captain?”
“Put this in his flask—all of it—and see he drinks; he shan’t want to.” Eleanor handed over the feverfew powder, wincing as one bottle chinked against another. “Let that busy him while I see to the leg.”
“His leg, Captain! Master Callander has already set it.”
“Does it strike you I could set a man’s leg with one hand? It is the wound I care for, and it has lain too long in its dirt.”
“Course the wound has dirt! He fell in the dirt.”
And the dead weight of Sherbourne’s horse had driven it deep; and the boneset’s hands had touched a hundred dying men. When Eleanor uncovered the major’s leg, the streaks had come, as she had known they must.
“Steady on,” she said to Sherbourne, and emptied the bottle marked Four Thieves over his wound. He screamed, screamed until she shied her face in her coat.
“I am sorry, my dear, my dear, my dear.” Eleanor went at the wound with her left hand wadded in new linen, until nothing black or green or yellow flowed. She packed the rough-edged gash with comfrey and calendula-flower, broken weakly in her fist, and watched while the cornet—Blakeney—rewrapped Sherbourne’s splint.
As she had not done then, Eleanor crouched at the head of the stretcher, and dropped a kiss upon Sherbourne’s soaking forehead. The skin of his brow was so terribly cold that she drew away.
His face was changed. It was unscarred, unstubbled, with rounder cheeks and a chin more pointed. She knew the countenance, still, with its framing curls black and abundant; under her touch the beloved features were set and chill.
“Harry!”
She heard boots ringing near her, though all around was churned mud. Someone dragged at her, drawing her back from the body upon the stretcher, fighting back, hard, when Eleanor fought.
“Captain! Captain, at ease! I’ve no wish to hurt—ow!”
Eleanor’s head was sore from a crack on the stillroom table, and all the room was pungent with brining herbs. Sherbourne stood over her, knocking blood off his lip.
“I own I thought you had seen the devil, woman.”
“Beg pardon,” said Eleanor, brushing lavender from him. “I was…not in myself.”
“You as well, then?” asked Sherbourne. “Lucky bastards we. You might try drinking.”
“Never,” Eleanor shook her head.
“You have ruined it for the rest of us, giving Linton to lock my cellar. I much liked to hear you beg pardon for whaling me, though, just now.” Sherbourne cleared his throat. “May I be of some help here? Harry is waking, and she asks for you.”
She had lost all the high, hectic color as the fever wore at her; a fortnight on, Harriet was pale as paper, but for the blue-gray smears beneath her eyes. The crisis would come by morning, Eleanor thought; or else it was arrived already—it had been easy to ignore with Harriet insensible and moaning. Now she half-sat on the pillows, possessed of near all her wit, and Eleanor had rather a carbine round in the chest. If the fever had slackened sufficient to lend back her mind, then in an hour, or three, it must spike or break. If it broke, then they might collect upon Sherbourne’s promise, in a month or a year when Harriet’s strength came back. If it rose, now, Harriet would not bear it, and Sherbourne must lay out for his last sister’s coffin.
Harry knew.
“Sherry has just run out of here quite…as if the Black Gentleman stood by. Soon, I think—by morning—and I am sorry, Nora, if it does not go our way.”
“Hold your apologies,” said Eleanor, by way of greeting. “I want none.”
“God keep you, madam,” Harriet smiled, ghastly. “Ever a tender word for your beloved!”
She had brought feverfew and white willow up from the stillroom, and steeping them meant her hands must not lie idle; but she could not turn her tongue again to conversation, until Harriet shuddered and balked at the bitter drug.
“How have you forced that down me? I cannot!”
“Please,” said Eleanor, all her fears distilled to a word. Harriet choked through it, half-retching, holding tight to Eleanor’s hand. When half the cup was gone, Eleanor pressed no further.
“Nora, that is a murderous way to save one’s life.”
“Have it out of me in the morning.”
“What, if only I live, you’ll drink the rest of it?”
“If only you live,” Eleanor nodded, and stroked stray droplets from Harriet’s cheek.
“What must it feel like, do you think, to die?”
“Harry, this is morbid.”
“So said Sherry, when I asked him, but he was not in the room when my sisters passed. They were not—not silly, as people think of women, but they were all so much afraid.” Harriet held Eleanor’s wrist, with surprising strength. “You have kept this watch by a hundred men. Why will you not do so, now, for me?”
“I do not think it needful.”
“God, I had forgotten you and he were like to twins!”
Eleanor dug her thumbnail into her palm, and did not shout. “I will tell you my belief, though I nicked it from the Testament; The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”
Harriet gave the shadow of a laugh. “That must be comfort…for a soldier. Sherry has got it—”
“Inked upon his back, like any pirate. I forget, love, you are not always in search of one more fight.” Eleanor sat in her shirt on the edge of the bed and untied her garters, as if it were one night among a thousand others. As if they were in her shabby house in London, and not the death-room of a country seat, she took what pillow Harriet would cede her, and gave over the lion’s share of covers.
Harriet curled close to her as soon as she might, her head and hands afire on Eleanor’s chest. Her eyes had half closed, and her mouth was open, to breathe; her voice came very small and dry. “Have I ever made bold and said so, Nora?”
“Said…?”
“I love you.”
Harriet reached, when no answer came, to brush at Eleanor’s cheek, and had the grace to say nothing more at all.
Eleanor had fallen asleep in a bed, with a blanket, and it was morning. There were birds—horrid birds—playing merry hob with her headache, but no other sounds; the pillows were perfect, the linen smooth and sweet with oil of roses. Not a field hospital. She ventured to stretch and open her eyes.
The bed’s hangings were open, and through the windows the day promised fine. All Harriet’s weight was against Eleanor’s side, and her small, cool hand rested under Eleanor’s shirt-front.
“Harry.” Eleanor jerked upright, dousing them both from the cold cup of willow-bark by the bed. She came awake in a crash of candle-ends, tumblers, and distilling-pots. “Harry, Harry, please—”
Harriet croaked, without opening her eyes, “Christ. Stop shouting, Nora. Water?”
Harriet made a good show of ignoring the riders, fiddling with Melmoth the Wanderer and the biscuits on the tea-tray beside her. Sherbourne did not dismount, only lifted his hat as he held the grey mare’s rein, and hailed her with her Christian name; her brother’s expression was a mix passing strange of discomfiture and pride. Fleming was half across the flagstones before she won Harriet’s glance. Under a hussar’s pelisse she was dressed too finely for riding; she had polished her Waterloo medal, and surely her boots had never rung so with her step before.
“Give you good evening, Harry. I hope you rested?”
“I had it from Linton this morning that you and Sherry had ridden hunting. A gentleman gives his staff good lies. My lord Captain, where have you been?”
Eleanor swept her hat to Harriet, half pleased, half contrite. “I have made my marriage allegation, madam.”
Harriet took up the foolscap. It was much the color of her hand in the afternoon light, and Eleanor could still count all the fine bones. “Made oath in the consistory court…that he is a bachelor of an age of thirty-two years, and prayed a license… Oh, Nora.”
“Dearest, what’s the matter?”
“I never thought of it,” said Harriet, dark brows bending. “This will bind you your whole life.”
“That is rather the gist of a marriage-license.”
“I meant, Nora,” Harriet gestured over Eleanor’s loose-cropped hair, her sabre and breeches. “You might have been free of—of Nathaniel, of all this; now you have gone and sworn to it. You should not have—not without consulting me.”
“Do you not wish to be married?“
“Oh, I am not advanced enough in strength to grace that with an answer.” Harriet rolled the paper and handed it to Eleanor with a smile. “Bend your head down.”
Sherbourne turned his horse broadside when Eleanor obliged her, but did not look as he had in Thaxted Church that morning, when the archdeacon might have sown caltrops beneath his feet.
“I will take you as my mistress, if you like,” Eleanor said when Harriet allowed her breath. “But Sherry has already perjured himself and paid for the paper. I beg you think of his convenience, if it troubles you.”
Harriet laughed, a warm whisper of mirth just at Eleanor’s ear. “You have ever been my comfort, Captain Fleming.”
About the Author
Jeannelle M. Ferreira is a poet, novelist, and lover of all things speculative, liminal, and numinous. She believes in ghosts, believes even harder in the internet, remains a flaming queer, and writes historical fiction because queer stories have always been there waiting in the margins. Her writing can be found in Strange Horizons, The Moment of Change: An Anthology of Feminist Speculative Poetry, Queer Fish: Volume 2, and Steam-Powered 2: More Lesbian Steampunk Stories. She enjoys period-accurate recipes and the NWHL, and lives in Maryland with her wife and daughter.
Jeannelle M Ferreira, The Covert Captain
