Diana Gabaldon - Written in My Own Heart’s Blood

We were beginning to draw a crowd. I kept a wary eye out; we were near enough to Dr. Hebdy’s surgery that he might come out to see the trouble, and the very last thing I needed was that charlatan to materialize, fleam at the ready.

“You have asthma,” I said, returning my attention to the duke. I knelt so that I could see into his face while I monitored his pulse. It was better, noticeably slower, but I thought I could feel the odd condition called “paradoxical pulse,” a phenomenon you sometimes saw in asthmatics, wherein the heart rate speeded up during exhalation and dropped during inhalation. Not that I had been in any doubt. “Did you know that?”

He nodded, still pursing his lips and blowing.

“Yes,” he managed briefly, before breathing in again.

“Do you see a doctor for it?” A nod. “And did he actually recommend sal volatile for it?” I gestured toward the vial in my pocket. He shook his head.

“For fain . . . ting,” he managed. “All I . . . had.”

“Right.” I put a hand under his chin and tilted his head back, examining his pupils, which were quite normal. I could feel the spasm easing, and so could he; his shoulders were beginning to drop, and the blue tinge had faded from his lips. “You don’t want to use it when you’re having an asthma attack; the coughing and tearing will make matters worse by producing phlegm.”

“Whatever are the idle lot of you doing, standing about? Go run and fetch the doctor, lad!” I heard a woman’s sharp voice say in the crowd behind me. I grimaced, and the duke saw it; he raised his brows in question.

“You don’t want that doctor, believe me.” I stood up and faced the crowd, thinking.

“No, we don’t need a doctor, thank you very much,” I said, as charmingly as possible. “He’s just been overtaken by the indigestion—something he ate. He’s quite all right now.”

“He don’t look that good to me, ma’am,” said another voice, doubtful. “I think we best fetch the doctor.”

“Let him die!” came a shout from the back of the gathering crowd. “Fucking lobster!”

An odd sort of shimmer ran through the crowd at this, and I felt a knot of dread form in my stomach. They hadn’t been thinking of him as a British soldier, merely as a spectacle. But now . . .

“I’ll get the doctor, Lady John!” To my horror, Mr. Caulfield, a prominent Tory, had forced his way to the front, being tolerably free with his gold-headed walking stick. “Get away, you lice!”

He bent to peer into the sedan chair, lifting his hat to Hal.

“Your servant, sir. Help will be here presently, be assured of that!”

I seized him by the sleeve. The crowd was, thank God, divided. While there were catcalls and insults directed at Pardloe and at me, there were dissenting voices, too, those of Loyalists (or perhaps merely the saner sorts who didn’t think attacking a sick man in the street part of their political philosophy) chiming in, with reason, protests—and not a few loud insults of their own.

“No, no!” I said. “Let someone else go for the doctor, please. We daren’t leave His Grace here without protection!”

“His Grace?” Caulfield blinked, and carefully unfolding his gold-rimmed pince-nez from a little case, put them on his nose and bent to peer into the chair at Pardloe, who gave him a small, dignified nod, though he kept on assiduously with his breathing exercise.

“The Duke of Pardloe,” I said hastily, still keeping a grip of Mr. Caulfield’s sleeve. “Your Grace, may I present Mr. Phineas Graham Caulfield?” I waved a vague hand between them, then, spotting the chairman coming back at the gallop with a jug, I sprinted toward him, hoping to reach him before he got within earshot of the crowd.

“Thank you,” I said, panting as I snatched the jug from him. “We’ve got to get him away before the crowd turns nasty—nastier,” I amended, hearing a sharp crack! as a thrown pebble bounced off the roof of the sedan chair. Mr. Caulfield ducked.

“Oy!” shouted the chairman, infuriated at this attack upon his livelihood. “Back off, you lot!” He started for the crowd, fists clenched, and I seized him by the coattails with my free hand.

“Get him—and your chair—away!” I said, as forcefully as possible. “Take him to—to—” Not the King’s Arms; it was a known Loyalist stronghold and would merely inflame anyone who followed us. Neither did I want to be at the duke’s mercy, once inside the place.

“Take us to Number Seventeen Chestnut Street!” I said hurriedly, and, digging one-handed in my pocket, grabbed a coin and thrust it into his hand. “Now!” He didn’t pause for thought but took the coin and headed for the chair at the run, fists still clenched, and I trotted after him as fast as my red morocco heels would take me, clutching the coffee. His number was stitched into a band round his sleeve: THIRTY-NINE.

A shower of pebbles was rattling off the sedan chair’s sides, and the second chairman—Number Forty—was batting at them as though they were a swarm of bees, shouting, “Fuck OFF!” at the crowd, in a businesslike if repetitious fashion. Mr. Caulfield was backing him up in more genteel fashion, shouting, “Away with you!” and “Leave off at once!” punctuated with pokes of his cane at the more daring children, who were darting forward to see the fun.

“Here,” I gasped, leaning into the chair. Hal was still alive, still breathing. He raised one brow at me and nodded toward the crowd outside. I shook my head and thrust the coffee into his hands.

“Drink . . . that,” I managed, “and keep breathing.” Slamming the door of the chair, I dropped the locking pin into its slot with an instant’s satisfaction and straightened up to find Fergus’s eldest son, Germain, standing by my side.

“Have ye got a bit of trouble started again, Grand-mère?” he asked, unperturbed by the stones—now augmented with clumps of fresh manure—whizzing past our heads.

“You might say so, yes,” I said. “Don’t—”

But before I could speak further, he turned round and bellowed at the crowd, in a surprisingly loud voice, “THIS’S MY GRANNIE. You touch ONE HAIR on her head and—” Several people in the crowd laughed at this, and I put up a hand to my head. I’d completely forgotten the loss of my hat, and my hair was standing out in a mushroom-like cloud round my head—what wasn’t sticking to my sweating face and neck. “And I’ll do you BROWN!” Germain yelled. “Aye, I mean YOU, Shecky Loew! And you, too, Joe Grume!”

Two half-grown boys hesitated, clumps of filth in hand. Evidently they knew Germain.

“And my grannie’ll tell your da what you’ve been a-doing, too!” That decided the boys, who stepped back a pace, dropping their clods of dirt and trying to look as though they had no idea where they had come from.

“Come on, Grand-mère,” Germain said, grabbing my hand. The chairmen, no slouches on the uptake, had already seized their poles and hoisted the chair. I’d never manage to keep up with them in the high-heeled shoes. As I was kicking them off, I saw plump Dr. Hebdy puffing down the street, in the wake of the hectoring woman who had suggested calling him and who was now sailing toward us on the breeze of her heroism, face set in triumph.

“Thank you, Mr. Caulfield,” I said hurriedly, and, snatching up the shoes in one hand, followed the chair, unable to keep my skirts up off the grubby cobbles but not terribly concerned about that. Germain fell back a little, making threatening gestures to discourage pursuit, but I could tell from the sound of the crowd that their momentary hostility had turned to amusement, and though further catcalls followed us, no missiles came in their wake.

The chairmen slowed a little once we’d turned the corner, and I was able to make headway on the flat brick of Chestnut Street, coming up beside the chair. Hal was peering through the side window, looking considerably better. The coffee jug was on the seat beside him, evidently empty.

“Where are we . . . going, madam?” he shouted through the window when he saw me. So far as I could tell over the steady thump of the chairmen’s shoes and through the glass of the window, he sounded much better, too.

“Don’t worry, Your Grace,” I shouted back, jogging along. “You’re under my protection!”

JAMIE SHOVED THROUGH the brush, heedless of ripping brambles and slapping branches. Anything that got in his way could get out of it or be trampled.

He hesitated for no more than an instant when he reached the two horses, hobbled and grazing. He untied them both and, slapping the mare, sent her snorting into the brush. Even if no one made off with the extra horse before the militia let John Grey go, Jamie didn’t mean to make it easy for the man to get back to Philadelphia. Whatever must be dealt with there would be done much more easily without the complications of his lordship’s presence.

And what would be done? he wondered, nudging his heels into his horse’s sides and reining its head round toward the road. He noticed with some surprise that his hands were shaking, and squeezed hard on the leather to make it stop.

The knuckles of his right hand throbbed, and a white stab of pain where his missing finger had been ran through his hand, making him hiss through his teeth.

“What the devil did ye tell me for, ye wee idiot?” he said under his breath, urging his horse up into a gallop. “What did ye think I’d do?”

Just what ye damn well did was the answer. John hadn’t resisted, hadn’t fought back. “Go ahead and kill me,” the wee bugger had said. A fresh spurt of rage curled Jamie’s hands as he imagined all too well doing just that. Would he have gone ahead and done it, if that pissant Woodbine and his militia hadn’t turned up?