Waiting to enter Óbidos

Stephen looked down at the offered lancet - utterly clean, glinting red in the setting sun! Or was that a flake of blood? He blinked, squinted - no, utterly clean! He put in back into his pocket and sat back with an offended snort.

It was colder now, and Padstowe had his blanket - he pulled the fresh shirt Marta had given him over his head. Even on his dirty, stained skin, the clean linen felt glorious.

Padstowe ate a few more mouthfuls, glad to be eating something more substantial at last, before lifting his gaze back up to Stephen.

"How are you feeling?"

Stephen stared at him for a moment, wide-eyed and confused, before he began to make a strange creaking noise. "Me?"

Padstowe frowned, irritated by the doctor's apparant scorn at his concern.

"Yes, you."

Stephen took a moment to compose himself, gazing at Padstowe fondly, before he replied, "I am fine, my dear; sure, my head feels fit to split, and my leg is still in a certain degree of pain, but I am not the one who had half the camp in fits of concern for my health. Well, they would have been in fits for your health if they knew the human body as well as I so. Pass me your hand now." He pinched the nail of the index finger and watched closely as it changed from white to pink. "Three seconds."

And yet again the doctor had very neatly side-stepped the question. Padstowe looked at his hand, somewhat embarrassed by the doctor's words - surely he must be exaggerating? He flexed his fingers, curious.

"Why do you keep doing that?"

"It is a rough test to measure circulation - how fast the blood flows back into its vessels. With a man such as myself, having suffered little blood loss, or even Lieutenant Sharpe, with none at all in the most recent history, it should take two seconds for the nail to return to a normal shade, but with yourself, it takes a little over three seconds, indicating a poor perfusion. I will deem you to be recovered of your desanguination once you achieve the time of two seconds, and when your pulse has returned to its full strength and steady pace. For a moment as you tried to awake, it took four seconds for the nail to turn pink - another reason for my worry. I thought that I failed in my care of you - that I had made a mistake during the operation, and that you were bleeding internally."

Padstowe blinked again.

"All because I didn't wake up immediately?"

"You woke up - you'd have had to have been Prometheus himself to not be woken by someone prodding at that wound - you woke up, but you were not awake. You were moaning that you hurt, that you were cold. Your eyes would not focus, you were shivering violently. I do not know how much you could hear, but you lost consciousness, only to wake, confused, to attempt to fall asleep again, and even after you woke fully you would not answer my questions. But whether that was a symptom or your own stubbornness I do not know."

Had there been enough blood in is cheeks to do so Padstowe would have coloured, and he resolutely benthis head to his stew and muttered something unintelligable in a gruff undertone.

"You are looking better now, thank the Dear. If you had been bleeding internally, then-" Stephen looked away. He would have been to blame. "If you were bleeding internally, which you are not, never fear, then all the stews and apples in the world would not have saved you."

Padstowe swallowed another chunk of meat. He did not like to be talked about in such a way, about the 'ifs' and 'whats' of his health and wounds, and it made him uncomfortable.

"Be thankful that I am not then," he murmured, keeping his eyes lowered.

"I am." Stephen looked over the green-jacketed men, whose shapes and stances he was beginning to recognise, even if their faces still swam. "How long will you need to sleep, do you think?"

The captain raised his eyes to gaze directly into Stephen's.

"When do you want to leave?"

"As soon as possible, but only after you have rested."

Somehow Padstowe felt this conversation was going around in circles. He sighed.

"Alright, an hour maybe. After that I doubt we can afford to wait any longer."

Stephen nodded. "Very well - one hour." He switched to Castilian. "Before you sleep, how shall we divide the papers? One of us take the coded, one the uncoded, perhaps? Or maybe I should take all those concerning the sea and intelligence, and you take all those bearing on the military?"

"It depends," Padstowe said. "In the event of pursuit we might as well take the papers that would be of most use to each of us - that way what we salvage will be the most relevant to its carrier. But who is to take the cipher?"

"Can you decode at all?"

"I am not the most practiced of men, but yes."

"If you will sleep for an hour, I can memorise the ciphers, and then you take the booklet."

Padstowe nodded grudgingly.

"Very well. Are you certain you shall be fit to travel?"

"Yes - I slept on the horse this morning, and this afternoon even. Would you like some more stew? I'm sure that boy Perkins could go and buy another bowl with the change."

"No," Padstowe did not wish to overload his stomach if he must travel soon. "No, this will be sufficient."

"I will save your other apple for when you wake up," said Stephen with a wicked grin.