30 July, Une maison renfoncée

"Sir," the sergeant replied, saluting. He knew perfectly well the Spanish peasants were responsible for this, just as he knew they would be nearby, watching, but safely beyond any attempts to catch them. Still, if the grasshopper wanted him to waste time and energy chasing shadows, that's just what he'd do.

Turning away, the sergeant called to four of his lads, all of them Coldstreamers. He'd not trust anyone else with this sort of task. In only a moment, the five redcoats were dispersing to carry out the required search of the immediate area. The four privates had fixed their bayonets, while the sergeant had drawn his sword. It was best to be prepared for anything.

~



He was aware only distantly of words being passed above him. A fog seemed to have descended on his brain, making his thoughts and senses blurry. Something must be happening though. He recognised Kerjean's voice amid the others.

With an effort, Bright opened his eyes to peer upward. There was something large and blocky being held out at him. He had no idea what it was. Was it something good? Belatedly, he noted the presence of a redcoat standing over them, and an ingrained instinct made him shake his head.

"No," he said in French, mustering up the will to sit himself up. Don't trust the redcoats. Or their offerings. He was not even aware of the greenjacket nearby. That man was outside his limited sphere of attention.

Pressing the canteen into Bright's hand, Paol shifted his arm to help prop him up. "Drink," he said, managing to force some measure of steadiness into his voice.

*

Sergeant Duval, crouched on the ground beside one of his men, glanced up at the greenjacket officer's address, regarding him for a long moment before finally pushing to his feet. "Meanin' specifically, sir?" he asked wearily. "No. Though I expect that lot who led the attack will have something to do with it."

*

Matias ducked back into the alley with a fervent curse. It hadn't occurred to him that the English might actually come looking for them. But he was light and fast and quiet; eluding the clumsy soldiers would be child's play. Or would have been, had he not at that moment tripped over something in the darkness of the alley and landed – on what he couldn't have said, only that it seemed to make an inordinate amount of noise when he knocked into it. Shit!

"Who's that?" Charcot asked Paol. He was already lying on the ground, sleep tugging at him insistently, but something in the back of his mind was fighting to be on the alert at the presence of an Englishman. "Wha's he want?"

Despite everything else crowding his brain and otherwise overpowering his ability to process things rationally, Bright's instincts were still able to react to clearly-given orders. And 'drink' more than counted in that category. He blinked, trying to dispel even a little of the fog hanging stubbornly over him, then reached for the canteen.

"It's just water," he remarked, surprised that he was relieved.

~

"Corporal!" Feathers called in a ringing voice, his attention caught by the clatter of noise nearby. "Got a live'n here!"

Sergeant Peters and his chosen searchers were on their way in a twinkling, rather like hounds on a good scent. In keeping with Corporal Hewet's direction, Feathers did not quit his post but instead pointed the other redcoats in the direction of the noise. Catch the buggers, you lads!

"Spread out, in line! Sing out loud if you spot anything," Peters ordered, wishing now that he was not the only one with a lantern.

~

"Sir!" The wide-eyed grenadier sent from the barn came to a sharp stop before the greenjacket officer, managing to make a salute even as he quivered from his abrupt halting. "Corp'l Hewet's got somethin'... ehm... there's somethin' you oughta see in there, sir. Bit urgent, like."

Martin watched the large Frenchman with startled bewilderment. It defied belief that anyone should be afraid of him, yet that was precisely the feeling he got by watching the poor fellow.

"I'm s-sorry," he said to the man, though he had no idea what he'd done to be sorry for.

Water? Paol frowned in confused concern. Of course it was water. That it might have been anything else had never occurred to him. Until now. Idiot -- he ought to have checked.

"He's brought water," he told Charcot, "Here--" Retrieving the canteen once Bright had finished he nudged Charcot's hand. The redcoat's voice caused him to freeze, but the boy, when he looked up, did not seem to be objecting, or even asking for the canteen back. "Thanks," Paol said again. It was all he could think of to say.

With Charcot in possession of the water, he turned his attention back to Bright. The Englishman looked, if possible, worse than he had in the barn. "Lie down," he said, easing him back.

Charcot drank obediently and then held the canteen out vaguely in front of him. "Thank you." He still felt confused, and although he was not afraid, he felt like he probably ought to be. It had been his most constant emotional state for the past several days. "What's wrong with Braillte?" he asked Kerjean.

Vickery was somewhat impressed that the grenadier - he had to be a grenadier from the size of him - actually managed to come to a stop before piling into him. And without forgetting to salute, too - although these were guardsmen who could probably manage to salute a passing officer in their sleep.

"Ah good. Where?" the man opened his mouth to say and Vickery forestalled him. "I'll come if you'll show me where."

He hadn't actually expected them to catch anyone.

Lie down. Right. He needed little enough urging to do that. "Hell," Bright muttered in French as he unsuccessfully tried to curl himself into a loose ball. The pain on his left side had returned with a vengeance and it felt like the fabric of his shirt was sticking to him, but his weariness was complete enough that he didn't care.

~

"This way, sir," the grenadier said, stepping back to point. Then, acutely aware he needed to show the officer where, he led off back toward the barn, his bayonet-tipped musket back at the Shoulder. Corporal Hewet wouldn't thank him if he didn't complete his errand promptly. Then again, the corporal wouldn't thank him even if he did. It was merely assumed that any order Hewet gave would be promptly and competently obeyed.

The darkness inside the barn was tempered by a couple of lanterns, one of which was near where Hewet had sent him off from. Accordingly, the grenadier headed for the hazy, dim light, being mindful where he stepped. Now that he knew what was strewn about the barn's floor, he had no interest at all in stepping in anything. Again.

Carefuly Paol peeled back Bright's coat, revealing the dark, sodden mass beneath. What's wrong with Bright? The question seemed to underscore the severity of the injury and for a long moment Paol simply stared. He ought to know what to do. After nine and a half years, he ought to be able to think of something. But his mind was blank and he was aware only of an overwhelming sense of helplessness.

"He'll be fine," he replied mechanically, though it was a moment more before he turned back to find Charcot still holding out the canteen."Nothing to worry about," he added, taking it from him, "You should try to get some sleep."

He stared down at the canteen in his hand, tightening his hold on it in a largely ineffectual attempt to stop it shaking, then held it out to the redcoat with a murmured thanks.

Matias scrabbled to his feet, making nearly as much noise as he had when he fell. Run. Run! He could hear heavy foot falls closing in on him and bolted in the opposite direction.

Martin accepted his canteen back with a wordless nod, his eyes drawn to the sight of the partially-supine Frenchman's bloodsoaked shirt. It was an awful thing to behold. It had to be a terrible wound indeed to cause so much blood. Fresh blood at that, Martin realised with a sickened shiver.

"A s-s-surgeon?" He asked, surprising himself with the question. But it was the only thing he could think of. Wounds were a surgeon's chief business, after all, and clearly this poor fellow was in dire need of a surgeon.

"Un chirurgien?" Paol repeated stupidly. He couldn't believe that the redcoat was really offering what he seemed to be, but he found himself nodding. "Please."

Was that the French word for surgeon? It sounded like it. Or at least Martin hoped that's what it was.

"Surgeon," he repeated, nodding. Then, almost too hastily, he turned on his heel to dash off to find a surgeon. Whether it was Mister Cresswell, the Coldstream's surgeon, or somebody else, Martin decided he didn't care. So long as it was a sawbones.

"His name's Jacques," Charcot mumbled. "It doesn't matter if he fills it with peas as long as he puts the chair back." And with that pronouncement, he fell asleep.

It was dark in here! Thank goodness for small mercies - the lantern might not be lighting things very well, but it gave Vickery somewhere to aim for in the otherwise unrelieved gloom of the barn.

"All right, Corporal. What have you found?" he asked, wondering if the Corporal had discovered the reason for the panicked exit by the Frenchmen, who looked just about done in and really ought to be asleep and not rushing headlong to get outside to sleep on bare ground.

"Have a look round, sir," Hewet replied, lifting the lantern a bit higher so the grasshopper could see what was scattered around on the floor. It was still easy to recognise the organ that the grenadier had stepped on - this being a heart, if Hewet was any judge. There were also the two fingers he had nearly trod on himself lying nearby. And, doubtlessly, other, similar, grisly bits elsewhere in the barn.

"Is that...? No, don't tell me - I don't think I want to know what it is," Vickery said, suddenly noticing something that very definitely belonged in somebody and not on the floor of a barn. It made him feel a little queasy himself, and he fought the feeling down. He had a job to do, after all.

"Is there any sign of where these.... remains came from?" he asked, looking around. They were not complete bodies, which ruled out this having been used as a hospital and the French being put in with some forgotten patient who'd died.

How had they got in? And, more importantly, who had done it - and why?

Jacques? That was too much to hope for. And what were the odds that he had correctly understood the redcoat? With his grasp of languages? The longer he waited, the less sense any of it seemed to make.

Paol stared into the darkness, dimly aware of the throbbing pain in his arm. He couldn't recall what he'd done to aggravate it. He shook his head. That wasn't the point. What was the point? He could not seem to recall that either. Roux. He needed to find Roux. But that still wasn't the point.

The point was that no one was coming.

For some moments more, he sat without moving, trying to set his thoughts into some kind of order, before getting to his knees and shifting closer to Bright. "I got to get a look at your side, a'right?" he said after some hesitation, "I'm goin' to take your coat off."

"There he goes!" One of the lads cried, springing in the direction of the noise. Peters and the others were hard on his heels. If they were lucky, they could catch whoever the grenadier had spotted.

~

Hewet suppressed a shudder. Barely. "Not from in here, anyway, sir," he said. "Too scattered about. Random like."

Almost as if it had rained body parts and entrails. The thought made him frown. "Maybe from the sky?"

~



There was a long pause before Bright blinked and stirred. "Sure, long's you ain't gonna keep it," he muttered in a sleepy-sounding voice. He offered no resistance to the efforts of whoever it was tugging at his coat.

"Someone was on the roof throwing them in." Vickery shuddered and looked up. "Possibly more than one someone, too. No wonder the prisoners wanted to get out; I think I would have, too."

It didn't bear thinking about. "I don't think we're going to manage to get this place cleared out tonight, and they looked dead on their feet."

He would leave them where they were now and allow them to get some sleep - and hope that the search for culprits was fruitful.

"I think we've seen enough in here," he added, and turned toward the exit, being careful of where he was walking.

He wasn't sure what he had expected to be able to see; the darkness made it possible to distinguish little beyond the contrast of the stained and clean bandages. Still he managed to find the end of the bandage and began awkwardly to unwrap it.

*

Matias was starting to panic. There were a whole pack of them after him now and he had turned so many corners, he was no longer certain whether he was moving away or towards them. Pounding feet and shouts seemed to be coming from everywhere. Bursting into a narrow street he heard a yell from the far end and charged scrambling away from it. An alley opened off to his right and he threw himself into it -- and straight into the solid bulk of one of the grenadiers.

"Yes, sir," Hewet said, immensely relieved by the permission to get the hell out of there. At a word, the handful of men he'd detailed as searchers filtered back outside. Hewet himself was careful to hang back, despite his eagerness to be out of the barn. He was conscious of the necessity to appear calm and unbothered, even by horrors such as this.

~

The unexpected collision was solid enough to knock the startled grenadier backward a step. He flung his arms out, musket in one hand, more interested in keeping his balance than catching hold of whoever had run so forcefully into him.

The man behind him, however, was quicker to react. He lunged around his mate and grabbed at the short fellow's shirt, managing to get a firm grip before the Frog could escape. Again.

~



As muddled as he felt, Bright was still lucid enough to be aware of Kerjean's uncertain efforts to remove the bandage. He knew it had to be necessary or else Kerjean wouldn't be doing it. He also knew that, once the bandage and dressing were off, there would be the inevitable cleaning of his wound. And that was unacceptable. Once had been more than bad enough.

"Leave it out, damn your eyes," he grumbled in French, making an effort to pull himself away from Kerjean's hands.

"Lie still," Paol muttered, tugging another loop of the bandage out from under Bright's uninjured side, "You'll set it bleedin' even worse."

*

"Let go!" Matias cried, thrashing violently in an effort to tear himself from the redcoat's grasp. "English dogs!"

It was obvious that the French could not sleep in there tonight, which would require more men to guard them than if they had been locked up safely.

He waited till all the men had left the barn, and then asked where the Frenchmen were. He had no intention of telling them what had happened, although they probably had a shrewd idea, but he did intend to find out whether any of them were injured and required help.

He could not help thinking ruefully that it was going to be a long night.

"Si quelqu'un est blessé?" he asked the nearest Frenchman who wasn't asleep, once he had found them.