With Horses, 25 May

Obviously. "So ask her in a language she does understand."

"Yes sir." Willoughby turned to the woman. He nodded to her: "The lieutenant wishes to know, what brought you so close to the army." He said in French, fairly easily. He turned towards the lieutenant again, ready to translate when and if the girl was willing to speak.

She was still breathing heavily, but by now her fear had given way to other emotions and angry tears stood in her eyes. She did not answer the question but exclaimed in fury, "They killed my child!" She broke away and rushed on the group of Portuguese to claw at the face of one of them.

"She says they killed her child." Willoughby hurried to translate, watching the woman run at the captive Portuguese. The ones that were guarding them from escaping had now to protect them from the woman's wrath. They didn't hear about the reason of her assault, just saw her fury so reacted more automatically to it.

"Who is they?" He asked, even though he knew by the woman's reaction who she meant. The troopers guarding the irregulars were hard put to contain the woman's spirited resistance.

"Calm her down," the lieutenant snapped. He regretted now that he had no good knowledge of French.

Willoughby had no time to translate the question to the woman as he saw her in a blur of motion and then he could hear a sound of a man being assaulted. At the order he had hurried to help the men, who were already pulling her back. They had to struggle as she seemed as swift and as slippery as an eel, just as she looked just as enraged as a mother bear.

" Calm yourself! " Willoughby had reached for her wrist, and spoke again in French. "Calm yourself, woman! This will not bring you anything but..."One of the troopers had tried to pull the attacked Portuguese from the woman. When their senses had been regained it would be very hard to achieve what she had managed just a moment ago. And that moment was about now.

She tried to fight him off too, scratch at his face or bite at his hands, but he was stronger than she, and he was holding both of her wrists. But he was not trying to harm her. He was speaking to her in French. She looked up and realized it was the same trooper who had helped her from the thorns and had set her on his horse.

Her fear had gone and her fury melted away, but the extent of her emotions could not leave a vacuum by their absence. They were replaced with grief, wholehearted grief, and she folded to the ground weeping, probably for the first time since the death had occurred.

The woman was fiesty, that he could give her. He was lucky not to have lost an eye, just as the Portuguese who had recieved the worse of it ony his face. It was scratched enough that it bled in a few places and probably if he hadn't defended himself, he would also have been blind. The Portuguese man would've very willingly harmer her but he was kept subdued and under control. Willoughby on theo ther hand just wished to calm her and keep her from harming others or herself.

At last it had seemed to work. He'd seen her look up and saw how her expression had changed. She grew limper in his arms (a woman in furry did have quite an amount of strength!) and then she was on the ground. He could hear her weep. He stood at her side, not sure what he should do, or could do. He watched her, curled up, shattered perhaps by something. He guessed, it was that loss. Slowly, awkwardly he still stood, giving her time to cry. He raised his hand as for Forbes who had meant to advance, that he didn't need to do it now.

A longer few moments later, he knelt at her side and then offered her his handkerchief. It was really a small bit of cloth barely worth of such title, with nothing on it, but at least it was clean. "...madmosaile." He said quietly and then still continued in French. "... I'm sorry." He didn't know what else to say. If what he had just said was even right.

William had not really thought much about the sound of baby cry while he had bin riding slowely around their own camp just to see the area before he went to relax he always liked the view from a horse specially after battle was calm and the air fresh.

when the baby cry became worse and louder he tryed to locate it wondering why there'd be a baby out here or if his hearing were fooling him, he rode further away from the camp and saw some white cloth laying in a bunch crying and moving he said "what the damn?" and dismounted and walked over to the white cloth and moved abit seeing there were a baby under it, shocked and very surprised he looked around but saw nothing.

he picked up the baby and mounted up on the horse and rode back to the camp holding the baby in his arm so he rode slower then normal. as he reached the camp he rode over to all the turmoil where he had seen one of the officers and dismounted from his horse a little away and walked over to the lieutenant and said "Sir... sorry to bother but... i found a baby..." William looked almost clueless holding the baby still thinking why the damn there layed a baby out in the wild.

"You found a what?" Trooper Hepburn approached, his curiosity overcoming his respect for the presence of a lieutenant when there was such a strange marvel to be seen. "Lads saw some books 'n cutlery n' rubbish left behind, but you found the prize of all! But hey," he added with a grin. "Shouldn't 'a picked it up, you know. That's looting."

The baby meanwhile continued to cry, held as it was like a sack of potatoes.

Willoughby waited a few moments longer to see that she had wept most of her tears and that the woman calmed down, and only once he was sure he would not be clawed blind he spoke to her again. "Madame.. we need to go." Still in French as he offered his hand to her. Slowly he guided her back to his horse and there waited again. He told her that she ought to get on the horse as it would be easier, and then helped her get a could grip on the saddle and then to sit comfortably in it. He turned to look at the other men, who were also making their way back to camp. He paused and then swung himself into the saddle, behind her. He took hold of the reins and nudged his horse, so that Herrero, albeit with a small bit of protest and reluctance, moved forward.

He kept his gaze ahead, careful to navigate them away from any low branches that would threaten to bring them off the horse again. The camp was close now, and so was the sound. A strange wailing, which made Willoughby arch a brow. They had no babies, and at present he doubted that there was even a woman found at camp, most catered away with the wagons.

The woman in the saddle shrieked, pushing his arms away and trying to scramble off of the horse. She spoke, or screamed rather, in such a rapid jumble that even a native Frenchman would have had difficulty understanding her words. Her actions, however, were easy to interpret, with her eyes straining for where the sound had come from.

William looked at timothy "shall i hand the baby to the frog girl?" still being clueless as to why a baby and why there he had seen some odd things but a baby in all places he sighed and looked at tim waiting for a responds

Before he had a chance to answer, the woman had already scrambled down from the horse and she ran across the clearing to where Ravenwood was.

noticed the french lady moving through the crowd wondering if it was hers? he couldnt know but almost preparing for her to run over and take it he stands in a stance so she can do so with ease also he rather hoped that she would since he had no idea how to hold it.

With tears and smiles and incomprehensible babbling, she took the baby from his arms and cradled it, rocked it, and kissed it countless times. Then she reached up a hand to the young man's face and kissed him on the cheek with many words of gratitude. The baby continued its crying, but to a much lesser extent and at a more moderated volume.

he sees the way she acts and guesses she is the babys mother, as she takes it he is sure it is the babys mother, when he gets a kiss on the cheek he were abit surprised he bowed his head to her and went back towards his horse to place it the proper place.

Matthew knelt near the wagon where he kept his tools and small dispensary, washing his hands and the hoof pick and knife in a bucket of water. His shirtsleeves were rolled up above his elbows, and his clothing was already something of a mess. He had just finished wrapping an iodine and Epsom salt poultice on Catullus' hoof, after draining the abscess in his frog. Catullus now had a neat little bootie on, and was visibly more comfortable as his trooper led him away. There was a lot of satisfaction in a job well done. If the trooper kept his activity restricted, and Matthew changed that poultice twice a day, he ought to be sound again in a few days.

His hands and tools cleaned, he wiped them on a bit of sacking. He had noticed the clamor from the other end of the encampment, but he had been engrossed in his work, it was in the distance, and he hadn't really thought about it yet.

Still laughing and weeping over her child, the woman fretted over its head, looking it over and over in anguish. It had gone quiet once again, fallen asleep in her arms. The light was dim and so she moved toward the fire to get a better look, shouting out questions to the hussars. Then her eye fell on Broderick and she gasped with hope, rushing to the spot where he was tidying his medicines. She babbled a question about "chirurgien?" and handed him the baby, cupping her hand over the back of its head.

The tools in Matthew's hands dropped to the ground - he'd have to clean them again now - as something was pressed into his hands. He stood there completely dumbfounded, his arms automatically going to support and gently cradle the infant. It was an infant. It was a swaddled baby, staring right up at him, and the mother was babbling something at him in something that sounded like French, and he had no idea what was going on. All that he heard was something that ended in 'urgeon,' that might just possibly have been 'surgeon?'

"What on Earth is the meaning of this?" he asked the young trooper nearby - Willoughby, he thought the man was. "Ma'am? Willoughby? Would you explain, please?"

He looked down at the baby with undiminished astonishment. It was asleep, without stirring in his arms, not even with all the noise; the soft-fuzzed head lolled to one side, and he could see where it was swelling slightly. He set his own fingers very gently against the bump, concern beginning to replace his shock.

The woman nodded urgently. He understood, even if he did not speak French. She pointed at the baby's head, pointed back toward the woods from whence she had come, and seemed to give him a long hysterical explanation. At the end, waiting for a reaction, she repeated the last part, then just selected words, "Tombé! Lâché!" illustrating the point by spreading her hands open, apart, looking at the ground and then looking back up at the purported surgeon.

Willoughby slipped out of the saddle of his horse and lifted his reins over the animal's head. He straightened a bit and approached the scene of a woman that spoke as rapid a French as ever a man could hear, with sobs and whimpers wrecking the words so that a Frenchman would plead for her to repeat herself. The lad tried to make heads and tails out of her story, and then sum up what she had said as best he could. He could not tell it in a most literal sense, he did add some that he knew, but in short he explained the jist of what she had told the surgeon in her fast speech.

He took a quick breath, looked at the surgeon and then added the final two words, both spoken in English, no longer elaborating on it though.

"And she is... has been found , as attacked by the Portuguese, nearly took the face off of one, ..." He sighed and shook his head. "That's.. all , I think. " he looked at the girl and added in French. "Please miss, if you wish for me to translate, do speak more slowly.. it will take us less time, and be the better benefit for you."

She gave him an angry impatient look, her face stained with dirt and bloody scratches and rivulets of tears. "Tell him they threw my baby on the ground!" she said in slow emphatic words, miming the action.

With a curt nod, though he must've said that before, he turned towards mister Broderick and spoke: "..Seems.. her baby had been thrown on the ground, and that's where its injury comes from." Well the latter really needn't be added as it was obvious enough. "...Will it be alright?" Not that this was the best person to ask probably.

Matthew still had no idea what the stream of French between the two meant, but even before the Frenchwoman mimed the fall, he understood that the baby had been injured somehow. He was not going to trouble himself over how it had occurred, and even by the time that Willoughby had started to explain what the mother was saying, Matthew had made up his mind as to what he needed to to. It was not, after all, a difficult decision to make.

"We're going to the surgeon," he said at once, stepping away without waiting for Willoughby to explain. He could translate as they went. "Please explain to her that I am the veterinary surgeon, Willoughby. And let her know that her child will be well." She needed reassurance - whether or not the baby would recover quickly from the bump on the head.

He stepped towards his own wagon first. It was only the work of a moment, with the babe held in one arm, to wrap up soft clay in a cloth of thin linen; the materials for a poultice were always on hand. He laid the cooling poultice over the swelling on the infant's head, then turned back towards the other two, heading rapidly for the surgeon's tent.