by Sally Watson
From behind her tree—or at least partly behind it—Lark watched with a chalky face. “Please, God!” she murmured over and over. “Oh, God, please!” James would surely be killed against such odds, and— “Oh, God, please!” He was deeper into the skirmish now, so that she couldn’t see him very well. The other Royalists seemed much too occupied even to notice the addition of James. And it occurred to Lark that with things as confused as they were, and James being dressed in Roundhead clothes and with cropped hair, the Royalists might take him for an enemy, so that he might end up fighting both sides at once.
And then, just as Lark really thought she couldn’t bear it an instant longer, there were new sounds from the trees beyond the clearing. She took her eyes off James for just one second. When she looked back, the soldier whom he had disabled was rising, his sword in his left hand, about to plunge it into James’s back.
“Behind you, James!” screamed Lark with all her strength. “Look out behind you!”
15
James’s Hole
James heard. He twisted to one side just an instant too late. And as a reinforcement of Royalist soldiers charged into the clearing, James fell. Lark saw it clearly . . . and then she didn’t see anything else for a minute or two because a kind of mist closed in, and she was sick and dizzy, and her legs would no longer hold her up. James was dead. Lark whimpered like a hurt puppy, and sank shivering into a small huddle behind the tree.
But only for a moment. Then she was stumbling through the undergrowth toward the clearing, sobbing and calling out to the Royalists in a muffled voice that they could not possibly have heard over the renewed din of their skirmish. It was an extremely brief skirmish. By the time Lark reached the clearing, the Royalists were vanishing again on the other side, taking, it appeared, their own dead and all of the wounded with them. Lark gave one last shrill call after them, but with no effect. They were clearly in a great hurry, and in a moment she couldn’t even hear them any longer.
Three or four still figures still lay in the clearing, and among them was the lean brown one of James—now reddened considerably about the middle. Lark had never been able to bear the sight of anyone’s blood except her own, and not much of that; but now she knelt beside James without a thought for her own squeamishness. Tears poured down her face and dripped off her chin, but she had stopped sobbing because it was necessary to find out whether James might still be alive after all, and she could not hear his heart beat over her own noise.
But it was going to be difficult to hear his heart anyway, for he was lying on his face, and Lark was afraid to move him. Instead, she took his outflung arm and felt awkwardly at the wrist with her small fingers. At first she could feel nothing at all and then, suddenly, she found the right place, and there was a pulse that really seemed surprisingly strong. He was alive!
Lark stopped crying altogether and became quite calm. She had to. James’s life might depend on her calmness.
The wound was low at the back of his ribs, and she studied the spreading patch of red on his jerkin for a moment, and then eased the dagger out of his left hand. For surely the logical thing to do first was to stop the bleeding.
Carefully she ripped through the seam of his jerkin and pulled at his shirt until she could see what seemed to her a perfectly huge and deep cut, bleeding steadily. Lark turned a little whiter than she was before, and began muttering to God under her breath. She did not feel capable of dealing with this without His help.
Perhaps God began telling her what to do directly, or perhaps He helped her mind to work with unusual clarity and intelligence. At any rate, Lark swiftly hacked and tore her petticoat until she had cut off a wide strip from the bottom edge. She looked at it doubtfully. It was quite caked with mud, and although no one had ever suggested to her that dirt was bad for wounds, she doubted that it was really good for them. She laid it down, fetched her bag from where it had dropped when the Roundhead grabbed her, and tore a strip from her nightgown instead. Even this might be cleaner, but at least there was no caked mud on it.
She folded it into a thick compress and pressed it firmly upon the cut, her brows knit with anxiety. She hoped this was right. If not, she did not at all know what else to do. The linen was staining around the edges, but then presently the red seemed to spread more slowly. Encouraged, Lark rearranged her legs in a more comfortable position and prepared to stay there for days if necessary.
Presently James stirred. His eyelids flickered and then closed again, and he frowned and sighed.
“James!” whispered Lark, the tears beginning to flood downward again. “Oh, James!”
James opened his eyes for an instant without really seeing anything. “Wurramarra?” he mumbled groggily. He tried to move, winced, and decided hazily that something was biting his back. “Wuzzabagare?” he demanded, moving his arm in a feeble and irritated effort to brush whatever it was away.
Lark promptly stopped crying again. “Stop that!” she commanded briskly. “Hold still, James Trelawney; do you hear me?”
Her imperious tone penetrated the fog of James’s mind. He relaxed again and tried to collect his thoughts. Roundheads . . . a fight . . . Lark . . . Oh yes. And her shriek of warning, and then the pain in his ribs . . . and had there been a blow on his head, too? He rather thought so. Yes, he could remember now, and it was beginning to hurt outrageously just over his left ear. But what had happened next? He blinked and peered at the little he could see with one eye practically buried in the grass.
“Lark?” he managed to say, and tried to look over his own shoulder and down his back.
“Hold still!” repeated Lark worriedly. “Are you all right, James? Does it hurt very much? You don’t think you’re dying, do you?”
James considered the question for a moment, and then decided that he wasn’t. “No,” he said with some difficulty. “Warra you doing, Lark?”
“You’ve got a hole in you, and I’m keeping the blood from all running out,” she told him with masterful simplicity. “If I go on holding it, will it stop, or should I be doing something else to close up the hole?”
James indicated weakly that she was doubtlessly doing the best thing, and then closed his eyes again and tried to clear his head. It felt very muddled, and he didn’t think he was going to be able to offer her much intelligent advice. But Lark could see that this was the case, and she braced herself to carry on alone.
Time passed. The sun was high now, and it was getting hot. But at last, when Lark ventured to lift the pad for a moment, the bleeding seemed to have stopped.
“How do you feel now, James?” she asked, bending closer to his head. “I think I might try to tie a pad on you with another strip of my nightgown to hold it, and then I was wondering if I could help you crawl as far as the stream. I do think you ought to have a drink, and perhaps I could wash your wound, and anyway, you should be out of the sun where it’s cooler.”
James thought he could manage this, and even raised himself enough for her to pass the strip of linen under and around him. Then the two of them set out on the long hard trip of twenty years or so to the coolness of the shaded stream bank.
Lark, fussing like a grandmother, gave him water to drink from her cupped hands—which was harder than it sounded, and took a great many tries. Then she washed out the strip of petticoat and laid it, cold and wet from the stream, across the large lump on his head.
James sighed a little as the coolness of shade and water began to penetrate. He indicated to the hovering Lark that yes he did think he could sleep a little, and closed his eyes. He shouldn’t, of course; he could not afford to be an invalid just now. But after just a short nap he would be himself again. It wasn’t his wound that was really bothering him. He felt sure that was really quite minor, in spite of Lark’s alarm. But if only his head would stop aching! Why was it, he wondered sleepily, that a pain in the head seemed so much worse than a pain somewhere else? One could be a bit detached about a leg or arm or even a back, but a person lived in his head,
didn’t he? Perhaps the soul as well as the mind lived there but James wasn’t sure. Presently he couldn’t quite remember what it was he wasn’t sure about. Things seemed to elude him. He slept.
When he awoke, his head still ached, but it no longer felt as if it were about to shatter into a dozen pieces. And although his wound hurt, it was not at all unbearable. James really had no notion whether it was a bad wound or not. He stirred a little, and became aware that his head was resting on what seemed to be Lark’s bag, or perhaps her cloak, and that he was extremely warm. Possibly it was due to the fact that it was a hot day even under the trees, and he was covered besides with his own cloak. Lark must have gone back and collected the various things left on top of the hill.
He opened his eyes rather quickly, for it occurred to him that he wasn’t hearing any sounds that might be Lark, and if anything—His eyes fell directly upon her small smudgy face and round eyes staring at him as intently as a kitten watching a mousehole. She gave a great sigh and a wavering smile.
James returned the smile, but then shut his eyes again for a minute, because he had a good deal of thinking to do. Once again a new element had entered their situation, causing all of the bits and pieces to fall into a new pattern. He considered it gloomily. Whatever else, it was clear that poor Lark would have to take on a good deal more of the work and responsibility, for James as well as herself. He wondered how far he could travel, and if . . .
An astonishing fact occurred to him. He was free—for the present, anyway—from his horrible dilemma! He no longer had to decide whether to join King Charles’s army, because it was out of the question now. He had fought his battle. Moreover, it had been a clear choice, where he had been sure of his duty. He had helped English Royalists, and his conscience was quite clear. Since it would no doubt be a while before he was fit to fight again, he could devote his attention to getting Lark to safety in the meantime.
He opened his eyes, feeling better already. “What happened, anyway?” he asked. “I mean, after I got hit on the head?”
Lark shook her head. “I’m not sure. It was all so fast and muddled. But some other Royalists came, and I expect they thought you were a dead Roundhead, because they left you there. And nobody heard me shouting at them. They were in an awful hurry!”
James pondered this for some time, trying to figure it out. The little group of Cavaliers had likely been an advance scouting party for King Charles and his Scots, but everything else seemed to be uncertain. At any rate, it did not seem probable that the entire army—for either side—would be marching through this out-of-the-way wooded valley. There would be no point in it.
James resigned himself to probably never knowing exactly what had happened or why, or even whether his help had been of any real importance. He sighed and sat up carefully, wincing just a trifle, for both his head and back objected to this.
“I’m all right,” he said when Lark protested. “I’m tougher than you think. Anyway, I think we’d better move on as soon as possible.” He eyed the sun, which was only halfway down the sky.
“Indeed we shouldn’t!” Lark said with indignation. “You’re wounded, James! You mustn’t move at all!”
James shook his head vigorously and immediately regretted it. “Indeed we must!” he retorted, and added the shrewdest argument he could have used. “It’s for my sake, too, Lark. We must try to find a house where they’ll take us in. You’re a wonderful nurse, but there’s a limit to what you can do with just water and bits of nightgown, you know.” He swallowed and tried to look strong and healthy. “I feel quite good now, so why don’t we get started soon, and perhaps we’ll find a house before dark.”
Lark gave in against her instinct. “Well . . .” she said doubtfully, and eyed him with misgiving. He looked very pale. But when he had moved around a little, and his wound had not started to bleed again, and he insisted that he felt fine, she reluctantly agreed to start.
16
Lark in Command
Late afternoon of the next day found Lark stumbling blindly and despairingly behind James through a tangle of bracken, with no house or human in sight. James was stumbling even more. His face was at hot and red as a stove, and his wits seemed to be wandering, but he would not stop. He had it in his mind that he must find someone to take care of Lark, and he kept muttering about it. But Lark was quite sure that they were going in spirals, further and further into the wild mountains of Wales.
“Please, James,” she begged again. “Please let’s stop! You need to rest.”
James plowed mulishly on, right up a woody hill that couldn’t possibly hold a human being. Lark choked back a sob and followed helplessly. They had found some water that day, which James had drunk greedily, but he seemed not even to notice that they had not eaten. He was going to go on and on, deeper into the mountains, until he just fell down and died; and there was nothing she could do about it.
James reached a clear place near the top of the hill where the slope fell away steeply ahead of him. He tottered for a minute, and if Lark had not dropped her bag and grabbed at him, he would have fallen headlong down it.
“Please, James!” she panted.
James looked at her blankly and allowed himself to lean against a tree. “Should be houses,” he muttered hoarsely. “Houses somewhere. Don’t worry, Lark; I’ll take care of you.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and then tried to straighten up and go on.
Lark grabbed his arm with sudden fury. Enough of being sweet and tactful! This was no time, she realized suddenly, for gentle nudges at the tiller. If the captain was wounded and delirious, it was time to rap his knuckles until he let go, and take over the steering altogether.
“You sit down this minute, James Trelawney!” she exploded so threateningly that James regarded her with bewildered eyes and obeyed. His knees sagged, he slid slowly down the tree trunk, and then gently rolled over on the ground; he was quite unconscious.
Lark looked at him in horror. She stared around wildly at the desolate scene, barren even of water. She put her hand on his burning face and was more frightened than ever. What could she do? She had not the least idea. His wound wasn’t bleeding, and although she had heard vaguely that wounds could kill people in other ways than bleeding, she had no notion what those ways were or what to do about it. She couldn’t even go for help, for James might wander off in his delirium.
Lark wrapped both cloaks around his still figure, put her nightgown under his head, and couldn’t think of anything else. Then, quite at her wits end, she dropped to the ground beside him and wept wildly. Nothing in her life had ever been as bad as this; not when Father was wounded, or when Uncle Jeremiah stole her, or even yesterday when James had fallen in the battle. She cried until her head felt swollen to twice its size, and ached, and she simply hadn’t the strength to cry any more.
Then she lay numbly, with her hand in James’s hot one, not able to think, or even to pray. She ought to pray, no doubt, but she couldn’t. She was a little afraid to, for one thing, in case God might turn out to be Uncle Jeremiah’s. Besides, this wasn’t the same as yesterday, when there was something that needed doing at once, and her mind was alert and ready to receive any suggestions God might offer. This was different. Lark felt that it would take a huge miracle to help James now, and she was afraid to pray for it, because if her prayer was not answered her last hope would be gone, and her faith as well.
But as she lay huddled on the ground, drained and limp, something in her seemed to rise slowly on a wave of love for James, and a willingness to do anything at all for him, and a wish for wisdom so that she might know what to do. She did not know that she was praying; she had thought that prayer came in words, formally addressed to God. Presently she began to feel a sense of calm and new strength.
She raised her swollen face and looked at James again. His burning hand stirred feebly in hers, and he muttered something about having to take care of her—in just a minute now. Lark leaned over him.
“James!” she said urg
ently. “James, can you hear me?”
James opened his eyes briefly, and they were rational. “Lark?” he said painfully through swollen and cracked lips. “Sorry, Lark, I—I’m not being very helpful. I’ll—” “Listen, James!” said Lark. “You mustn’t try to move now. Do you hear? You must stay right here. I’m going to go look around a little to see if I can find a house or some water. Do you understand, James? Don’t move, or I might not be able to find you again. Will you remember?”
In the midst of his fever, James realized that he had to leave everything to Lark now. It was her right, and the only hope for either of them. He nodded weakly, and even managed the ghost of a grin. “I couldn’t—go far,” he muttered, and wanted to add something about Lark finding her way back; but it was too much effort, and anyway, she seemed to know what she was doing.
He watched through half-opened eyes while she rummaged in her bag for the two sets of white collar and cap. She had not worn them since the inn at Shrewsbury, first because they would show more in the dark, and then because of the mud, and finally because there had been too many other things to think about. She stuck them in the front of her bodice for convenience, took off her shoes and stockings, and looked carefully for a tall and easily climbed tree. If she tied the white collars and caps to branches, then surely they would show up enough to guide her back, in case she should get confused. The sun would be up for hours yet, for it was still August and the days were long.
She marched up to the tree she had picked and paused, fighting off a slight feeling of dizziness. It was, she reminded herself, only because she hadn’t eaten for quite a long time. Nothing to get dizzy about, really. Lots of people went for a long time without eating, and still managed to do things. Besides, she had to. There was no one else. With a deep breath, she reached for the lowest branch and began climbing, slowly but steadily, being very careful because if she should fall, then James would be quite helpless.
