The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series)

by Heather Blackwood

  “But they don’t even have a hospital here. Where will they take them?”

  “Some of them will be transported by train to Little Rock, or perhaps Monroe or Shreveport. Those who can be transported, that is.”

  “And those who can’t?”

  “Unless my guess is wrong, there will be a field hospital.”

  “Then that’s where I should be.”

  Miss Sanchez was studying to become a doctor before she came through the time rip, and though she was the wrong sex in this era, Seamus knew that she would not be deterred from the duties of her profession.

  “It’ll be little more than a tent, nothing like what you’re used to,” he said. He knew it would not make any difference, but felt like he should at least warn her. A field hospital would not be like the large New Orleans hospital she had seen six years ago.

  “I spent time in one of this era’s hospitals before, and I helped then,” she said. “With the wounded is where I ought to be. I’m no help sitting on the train, waiting.”

  She brushed past him and approached the men walking at the front of the row of carts. They appeared relatively healthy, albeit a little thin and sunken-eyed. Some of them wore ordinary clothes, and the few gray Confederate uniforms in the group were shabby.

  Seamus followed her, not because he had any business being near the wounded, but because it was ungentlemanly to allow a woman to try to negotiate with a band of soldiers. And negotiate she would. He knew well enough how once Miss Sanchez had an idea in her head, especially involving medicine, nothing would stop her. These may be Southern soldiers, fighting for the side she opposed, but wounded were wounded, and Seamus knew that she would not be at peace while there were people to be treated.

  “Excuse me, but are you taking these men to another city?” Miss Sanchez asked the soldier in front with a bushy moustache and wild, unkempt auburn hair.

  “That’s right, ma’am. They’ve cleared a car for them, and they’ll be taken down to a hospital in Monroe.”

  “What about the others? Are there other wounded?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Back at camp.”

  “And is that down this road?”

  “It is, two miles down, but don’t you think of going that way. It’s rough, terribly rough.”

  “Is there still fighting?”

  “No, ma’am. But the wounded are suffering.”

  “I’m a nurse, a highly trained one. I can help the doctors you have.”

  The soldier glanced at her dress, which was a typical style for an upper middle class woman with flounces and a bell-shaped skirt, not an aproned nurse’s uniform.

  “I don’t mean any disrespect, ma’am. But it’s not small wounds back there. Those are the men who couldn’t come, not even in a cart.”

  “All the more reason for me to go.”

  The soldier hesitated, as if he wished to say more, but contradicting a lady didn’t seem to be in his makeup. Already, Miss Sanchez was checking a man in the nearest cart, moving on and speaking with others, checking bandages and giving advice. She had medical knowledge from the future, of germs and vaccines that went into a person’s blood through a tiny needle. She knew of reasons to keep surgical instruments clean, very clean, to keep infections from spreading. Seamus believed her strange claims because he knew her. But she would not have such an easy time with any medical personnel at the camp.

  He trailed behind her as she talked to the soldiers, making her way farther and farther along the road until the parade trickled out and the men were all in town, headed for the railway station.

  When the last soldier had passed, Miss Sanchez turned to Seamus. “You don’t have to come. I believe what the man said. There will be open wounds, amputations, death.” Her expression was anxious and he knew that she would screw her courage up to venture into the camp hospital. She would not forgive herself if she quailed in the face of such suffering.

  “I’ve seen people starve to death, lass. And I’ve seen them bloodied by gunshot wounds. I’ve been in an Irish prison, with men dying and lying in their own filth. I’ll join you.”

  “It’s only for one day,” she said. “We’ll leave in the morning.” She looked out toward the train station, the last rays of evening light illuminating her face and her too-light eyes, making them shine golden topaz.

  Two weeks later, they were still stranded. All of the ways in or out of the area were embroiled in battles, and they were fortunate that Camden was not strategic enough for the Union to want to occupy. All of the horses in the town were either hired out already or confiscated by soldiers. Along with the rest of the train passengers, they could go nowhere.

  The last of the surviving soldiers in the medical field tent were ready to be transported to Monroe, though they had to wait until the way was safe. Most of the men had perished. The lucky ones had died quickly of their injuries, although some lingered in pain as they slowly bled to death from punctured organs or other interior wounds. Some burned with fever, lost in delirium for days before dying. Others perished later from infection, though Miss Sanchez had done everything she could to sterilize the instruments with boiling water and as much whiskey and scotch as Seamus could procure from the town.

  Seamus could do nothing but comfort the dying. Some men asked him to write letters, and he had sat beside them, writing by lamplight. Others had asked him to read to them, some from the Bible, and others from a book of old children’s tales that one of the younger deceased soldiers, a boy of fourteen, had carried in his pack.

  After supper, Seamus trudged back to the tent he shared with McCullen. Lacking a hotel, the three of them had, by necessity, been forced to stay in the military tents. There were two other female nurses, so Miss Sanchez was given a cot and a blanket in the women’s tent. Seamus and McCullen had to share a tent with crates of supplies, but it was better than being woken by the tormented moans and cries of the wounded and the dying. McCullen, who had seen both moldy prison cells and luxurious New Orleans parlors, had not uttered a word of complaint. But he had also not offered to help in any medical duties.

  Now he was studying a map, tracing routes from their location in Arkansas to Los Angeles.

  “I think I can get through the lines on foot,” said McCullen. “I’ll take the machine and wait in California, and you can join me once you can safely travel.”

  “Not on your life. We stay together. No negotiations.” Seamus was in no mood to play games with McCullen. He was wary of the notion that the man had changed, however much he wished it to be so. What little trust existed between them was due to their mutual need of each other’s expertise. He wished it could be otherwise, but the leopard did not change his spots.

  McCullen sighed. “The earthquake is in September, so we have a little under six months. That’s more than enough time, if we can leave soon.”

  To the North, Union soldiers had destroyed a section of track between Camden and Little Rock, cutting off Confederate supply lines to the northern part of the state. Crews were laboring to repair the damage, but Seamus knew it would take time. Rumor had it that tracks to the south were also destroyed. A pair of sisters who had been with them on the train had told him that they might be able to travel west to Texarkana, on the Texas border, and then get another train west. Seamus hoped so.

  “I still don’t understand Miss Sanchez,” said McCullen. “She doesn’t want the South to win, and yet she aids their soldiers.”

  “She doesn’t care which side they’re on. A medic is a medic, she says.”

  “Well, if she’s treating them, then they’re getting the best care possible.”

  Seamus felt a flush of pride at McCullen’s acknowledgment of Miss Sanchez’s capabilities. He was proud of her as well. He had seen the same horrors she had, and understood that unlike the other nurses, Miss Sanchez knew that many of the wound
s were treatable with her time’s equipment and expertise. In her time, they had anesthesia, which was even more effective than either chloroform or ether. Here, Miss Sanchez assisted in amputations, and after the first one, Seamus found her white-lipped and shaking behind her tent. He had tried to speak to her, but she shook her head sharply, straightened her apron and went back in.

  She worked herself to exhaustion, barely ate and as the days wore on, she developed the haunted look of a person who had reached the point of hopelessness. And yet, she did not give up, but worked to treat each man, even the hopeless cases, until they either died or left the hospital tent to be quartered in the barns or homes of local residents.

  Though Seamus didn’t have the skill to treat the sick, he had begun to form an idea while watching some of the men recover from amputations.

  “There’s something we can do while we’re trapped here. With some spare mechanical parts, I think I can put together a false leg. It would have a weight-bearing joint with a spring-loaded knee so it would snap straight when the man moved his leg forward. Then there’s a wide, flat foot and a soft pad for the stump to rest in.”

  “I take it you’ve made a drawing or two?”

  “I have.”

  Chapter 25

  June 27, 1864

  Long Island, New York

  Hub world

  Neil stepped out of the way as the bosun passed, carrying a heavy coil of rope. He was a stout monkey with scarred paws and a perpetual sour attitude, but along with Mr. Escobar and Hazel, he kept the crew functioning. On deck, Hazel spoke with Mr. Escobar about taking on rations in Charleston. She shielded her eyes from the sun with her hand, squinting out over the sea.

  Neil thought it had been a glorious four months, the two of them and the crew of monkeys, sailing out on the open water. After a few days at sea, Hazel had insisted on returning to New Orleans, docking far outside the city where no one would notice the ship. She and Neil had asked around, trying to find any indication of where the Professor, Miss Sanchez and Mr. McCullen had gone. They had no luck, and eventually Hazel was forced to conclude that they were either already in another world, one where she could not follow, or they were in this one, but she had no way to locate them.

  After New Orleans, they sailed to Key West, around the tip of Florida and up the coast. There was money to be made in carrying cargo, both from south to north and back again. The Confederacy was falling, and Southerners paid handsomely for someone to reliably transport Grandmother’s silver or Pa’s gun collection north, or occasionally, to Cuba or the Bahamas. The families would find their own transport, as Hazel did not allow people to travel with them.

  She made one exception, and that was in the case of escaped slaves. After helping a family of two sisters and one of their sons to freedom, word had spread, but only among those who assisted in such things. The term “Underground Railroad” was not used openly, of course, but Neil had informed Hazel that it was the term that would be written in the history books.

  Neil and Hazel had a partnership, and it worked well. She managed the ship, a task she had taken to quickly. She studied maps and learned to use the ancient Viking navigational device, a wooden disk the size of a dinner plate with curved lines carved into its face and zigzags around its perimeter.

  Neil’s job was to make arrangements on land. His ability to read people and to go unnoticed made him ideal for a career in smuggling, and they charged wealthy people exorbitant amounts to transport their goods north. On the trips back south, they brought whiskey, bolts of fancy cloth, lace and ribbons and expensive tea, things that would sell well in the war-ravaged cities. They could have made more money smuggling weapons and ammunition to the Confederacy, but neither of them were willing to do it. Hazel refused on principle, citing Miss Sanchez’s and Mrs. Washington’s influence on her and the common humanity of all men. Neil, although in agreement, hated to be an instrument of death, even a remote one.

  Even with that in mind, he taught Hazel to shoot, using the various weapons that passed through their hands. She was a surprisingly good shot, not as accurate as Neil was, but then he would have been astonished if she had been.

  The monkeys, as it turned out, all spoke English, although with an accent. Most of them were from an island off of Panama and had learned both English and Spanish. They were paid for their services by their former captain, who had been killed. By their own calculations, they still had over a year remaining on their current contract, attached to the ship, and not to the individual who owned or captained her. Being imprisoned in the glass bottle for over a century meant that their kin would be dead and gone and Neil had seen some of the younger monkeys being comforted by older ones when they had learned of it.

  At the end of their contract, Hazel would provide them with a share of the money, and take them home to Panama, since this was their home world. Some would probably choose to leave them and some new recruits would join them. The ship had operated in that way for a few hundred years, passing through various hands. And before the discovery of the New World, it had been a battleship. Mr. Escobar didn’t know much about those times, but he said that the ship missed her past.

  Neil kept busy, learning from the crew how to tie knots while the bosun, Mr. De Leon, taught him to manage parts of the crew. The grizzled old timer had informed him that he would be retiring after this voyage, and Neil thought the bosun’s job wasn’t such bad work. There was the sea air, sunshine and best of all, the feeling of being free, able to make his destiny. Sure, it was dangerous, but little he had done in his life up to that point was not.

  They arrived at Nicoll Bay near midnight. It was an almost uninhabited place on the southern edge of Long Island. Ideally, they would have made port a few miles away from a city with a higher population, giving them more opportunities to purchase quality goods to take south. But one of the escaped slaves they had helped, the sister named Celia, had asked that they return to Nicoll Bay. They sailed up the inlet which curved inland, taking advantage of Skidbladnir’s ability to travel up shallow waterways, and then docked at a pier. Two fishing boats rose and fell with the gentle movement of the water, bumping against the pier’s pilings. On shore stood a wood-framed house, modest and rough, with a few flowers growing in pots near the front door. A single light glowed in the window. Other similar houses were nearby, all of them dark.

  Hazel leapt from the ship to the pier, nimble as a cat, her long brown braid flying out behind her. She had long ago forsaken the skirts that women of this time wore, preferring pants tucked into soft leather boots. A wide belt cinched the pants in tight around her narrow waist, and the vest she wore over a men’s white cotton shirt was often unbuttoned and hanging loose. She had mentioned that though this clothing was more efficient and comfortable, she thought she looked too masculine. But that was only by the standards of this time, Neil thought. In his opinion, she looked every inch the female, especially now when she looked over her shoulder at him and crooked her finger playfully.

  He jumped out behind her, scanning the area to make sure that no people were around to see the strange Viking ship full of monkeys. Celia would have made sure they’d be alone, he was certain. Like all of their passengers, Celia had been shocked by the monkeys. Though this was their home world, creatures like them were rare, and ships like Skidbladnir were rarer still. But a trip to freedom was a trip to freedom, and any revelations about the ship to outsiders would have been written off as a tall tale or the ravings of a delusional mind.

  The door to the lit cottage opened and Celia hurried down the pier. She took Hazel’s hands in hers. “You can’t stay long. Another ship is going to be coming in any minute. But I got word to my Alma.”

  Alma was her daughter, aged twenty-two, who was still a slave in South Carolina. Celia’s dearest wish was to get her free as well. Neil had explained to her that the South would lose the war and Alma would be freed eve
ntually, but Celia was undeterred and had insisted that they return to her at Nicoll Bay. He didn’t blame her.

  “There’s a conductor who will take her,” said Celia. “But she needs a way to get from Savannah to here. Can you bring her?”

  “How long until she’ll be in Savannah?” asked Hazel.

  “Next new moon, when it’s dark. That’s in three weeks.”

  “We can make it to Savannah by then. Yes, we can do it,” said Hazel.

  “It won’t be as easy as with Lucy and me. Our master wasn’t too hard to escape from. He wasn’t friends with the local lawmen, so they didn’t hunt for us too hard. Alma’s owner has many, many slaves and he’s had two of them whipped to death who tried to run away.”

  “We’ll get her,” said Neil.

  “You haven’t even named a price,” said Celia.

  Neil glanced at Hazel who was studying the outside of Celia’s house. “What goods do you have?”

  He knew that they had enough money from their last trip carrying valuables to Richmond. They could easily take on one woman on their way back from their next trip. But Celia would not appreciate being a charity case. While on board, she and her sister had insisted on working, finding occupation cooking and mending, though the monkeys didn’t always like what was prepared and only a few of them wore clothing. If he and Hazel helped Celia’s daughter for nothing, it would create an obligation in her mind, and Neil knew that Celia was a woman who did not like owing anyone.

  Neil took a stroll along around the side of the house as Hazel and Celia negotiated their price. Against the wall stood a few small crates of supplies like hard tack, dried jerky, and one medium crate full of fruit, both dried and fresh. The monkeys would adore the fruit. It must have taken Celia some doing to collect so much of it.