Naseby, Northamptonshire
June 1645
It was a pale pearl of a
midsummer dawn, and Thankful Russell looked like a dead man.
Sitting on
his bed, he looked fragile and very, very young. As well he might. He'd turned
twenty-one two weeks before the battle at Naseby. He was twenty-one, poor
bugger, and as of three days ago, he was blind.
It had been an accident, or a
case of mistaken identity, or something of the sort that inevitably happened to
Russell. It hadn't even been during the battle. Colonel Hollie Babbitt hadn’t
got to the bottom of it, didn't want to get to the bottom of it. Thank God, he
had spent most of that particular sickening low point in the trajectory of the
New Model Army, laid out cold in a churchyard in the nearby village of Marston
Trussell, perfectly, and literally, unconscious of the vile massacre being
enacted by men he'd fought shoulder to shoulder with. His own troops. One
of the troops under his command, at least. Hollie had been endeavouring to
stand between the ravening ranks of the godly, hellbent on unjustified revenge,
and those poor bloody brave, stubborn, doomed camp-followers. One of the women
had had smacked him in the side of the head with a griddle. Collapse, as Lucey
would put it, of stout party. It had done no good in the end, either. There'd
been over a hundred of those poor women dead or mutilated - hacked apart by
good Parliament men. And there had been nothing Hollie could do to stop it.
Whatever Russell
had been doing to stop it, he ought not to have, because it had ended with
him shot in the head, not to say having been, by the look of him, very badly
beaten. Sitting upright on his bed after three days unconscious, Russell was a
horrible sight, and he hadn’t been that lovely before. The scarred
lieutenant had a stunning black eye, and a series of clotted, black gouges torn
into the cheek that wasn't already marred: his mouth was swollen and torn, and
there was old, dry blood on his top lip and his chin. The funny thing was, the
pistol ball had only grazed his skull - the troop bonesetter had taken it out
from under his skin with no trouble at all. Hollie had always said Russell had
a thick head, and now he had actual, slightly-flattened, lead evidence of same.
It had been enough to leave him senseless for the better part of three days,
though, and it had bled something fierce.
"You can’t do this,
Hollie." Luce was bumping about like a bee in a bottle, trying every way
he knew to deflect Hollie from his stated business of removing Russell to a
place of safety. "You can not expect a man with a serious head wound to
ride sixty miles. You'll kill him."
Russell turned his head to look
in Luce's direction. That was the pitiful thing, that the lad was trying to
look as if he was intact. Looking at the blank wall behind Luce's head, his
head slightly cocked, looking alert and intelligent and facing in just slightly
the wrong direction, his eyes not moving. "I should rather not be left
behind," he said, his voice as cool and accentless as ever it was. "That
would kill me, Cornet Pettitt."
"Hapless!"
"My baggage is packed, sir.
I will ride when the colonel wishes to leave. At first light."
Luce looked at Hollie and his
mouth quivered. It was first light. And proper, impeccable Russell's
baggage was shoved anyhow into a saddle-bag, one forgotten stocking still flung
across the bed where it had been missed. Hollie reached across and very quietly
emptied the bag, smoothing the crumpled shirts and folding them before
replacing them. Russell was frowning very faintly, his head jerking almost
imperceptibly as he tried to pinpoint the sound. "What are you
doing?" he said, and his voice had gone high with anxiety. "Sir? What
-"
Hollie put
his hand on Russell's shoulder. "Nowt, lad. I'm not doing nowt. I just
thought I'd dropped summat a minute ago."
"Colonel Babbitt, sir, I
will not allow the lieutenant to leave my care!"
All he needed, bloody Witless.
The troop bonesetter, who may have been christened Witcombe but who was
definitely Witless, was a fat young man with bad skin who stuttered and blushed
and only had any degree of competency at all when he was bloody to the elbows.
As a plain trooper he was almost wholly useless. He'd managed to put a pistol
ball through the brim of his hat in battle, on one occasion. Clear through,
clear enough to see daylight. Give him a lancet or a fleam and he was
transfigured. The worst thing was, that lummox had trained Luce in his own
image, and now the brat was an eager apprentice in his own right. Frightening.
"Why?
You going to give him a better haircut?"
Russell looked uncomprehending.
Actually, he looked like a lunatic, with a patch of hair cropped to the skin
where Witless had stitched that bloody runnel through his scalp. Witless was
never going to make a gentleman's gentleman. He'd hardly flattered Russell's
vanity, such as he had had in the first place. What the lieutenant was going to
say when he regained his sight - and he bloody well would, Hollie would not
have it any other way - and realised that possibly the only beauty he had
remaining to him was stuck out at crazy angles to his head and matted with
blood. Hollie shook his head, and then remembered that he had a row of stitches
of his own, slightly more considerately put in by Luce, who might only be a
half-trained butcher but at least he had warm hands. Head-shaking,
notwithstanding, made him feel somewhat dizzy.
"I'm not sure you ought to
be racketing about the countryside on your own, either, Hollie," Luce said
gently, and Hollie scowled at him.
"That'd be it, then,
brat." Luce might be his dearest friend in the world, but he was still ten
years, and at least one rank, Hollie's junior. Brat he was and brat he would remain.
"You can come with us. There you go, Witless. Lieutenant Russell's got his
own private physician. There's posh for you, Russell."
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