The Spymaster's Lady

by Joanna Bourne

  He did not touch her, but something in her body reached out and greeted his body as if the two were old friends who had not seen one another for a long time. She did not like it that her body chatted to his in this fashion. She cleared her throat. “They were Revolutionaries, you understand. In those days, the radicals did not speak so much of where they came from and their families. It was not safe.”

  “I’d have called you a Celt, myself, with those blue eyes. A Breton, maybe. Stay here a minute.” Twigs crackled under his boots as he walked into the brush.

  She opened herself to a sense of the clearing around her, as she did with new places. Sun warmed her skin. The stream was not so close as to bring a feeling of damp and coolness, but its voice was loud and comforting. The coach jogged behind her as Doyle released the second horse from its harness. He took both horses, hooves clopping on the leaves, in the direction of the water. The air was thick with the pollen of the trees, filled with old smells of charcoal and tobacco and the pomade the women wore in their hair. It was all familiar. This was a camp like the ones of her childhood. This was a home place of the Rom.

  Life had been simpler when she lived among the Kalderesh. If Maman had never come to take her back, perhaps she would have made a life among them. By this time she would have a black-haired baby to dote upon and a swaggering young husband, instead of a kidnapper who was carrying her toward an intricate and unpleasant interrogation in London.

  Grey came toward her. “Take this.” He set a stick against her palm, a good sturdy one. She would call it a sort of quarterstaff, though she had never held a quarterstaff, as they did not figure heavily in one’s daily life. But her father had told her stories of Robin Hood. This was exactly what Little John was accustomed to hitting the sheriff of Nottingham over the head with. Scaled down to her size, of course.

  “This is very fine. Thank you.” Possibly she might give Grey a whack with it at some time. “Will you take the bullet out of Adrian?”

  His voice was tense. “That’s what we’re here for.”

  “I see.” Never could she stop herself saying that. “You have much experience, perhaps, from the army?”

  “None whatsoever. I’m going to unpack. Don’t pick this time to wander off.”

  He was not pleased to be doing this piece of field surgery. He was worried sick. She could hear it in every step he took from the coach to the center of the glade, carrying things. That was where he would work, where Doyle was laying a fire.

  She had not yet made her decision. She walked for a while, tapping with her useful staff, finding the old fire rings, coming to understand how the wagons lined up in this place. It had the feel of a rich camp. There would be, in those flowery fields beyond the wood, berries and many rabbits, even hedgehogs, if one were lucky. Her feet crunched the old shells of beechnuts. One would eat well here without stealing chickens.

  The ground sloped gradually toward the stream. Anywhere she stood, that slope and sound of water told her where she was. It was comforting, that small certainty.

  Once, she tripped, because she was thinking hard, and a tree root had been more clever than she was. She did not hurt herself badly. To fall from time to time is part of being blind. One must be philosophic.

  On the highest side of the clearing were blackberry bushes, which she found by impaling herself upon the thorns. She ate a few and made her decision and went to listen to Doyle and Grey getting Adrian prepared.

  “…repaint the attic rooms the last week of November.”

  “…files into storage in the basement…”

  “…everlasting whitewash. There’s a lack of imagination that…”

  They spoke of inconsequential things. A thousand times she had listened to men before battles, talking just this way. Grey’s voice held nothing but calm confidence. Most certainly, to hear him, one would think he had taken several pounds of metal out of men in the last month, without exception a great success at it. Adrian had an almost French courage, as she had thought before. In his light words, she could hear his resolution to trust Grey, to put his life in those hands. In some time and place, Grey had earned the confidence of that cynical, knowing boy.

  It would be a great pity if she had brought Adrian out of Leblanc’s cellar and all this long way to die.

  Most likely he would. Grey had not the least idea how to remove bullets. If she were entirely loyal to France she would be glad, for of Adrian she had heard some few things that told her he was a master at spying and a formidable enemy to her Republic.

  Metal clattered. Doyle was setting the instruments in place, there, on the ground. She had decided to be disloyal to France in this matter.

  “Grey, I would talk to you,” she said.

  “Later.”

  “Now.” She walked off.

  Tiens. This was the test of him, was it not? If he did not trust her to know what was important, he would not trust her with Adrian’s life.

  Ten paces downhill, she stopped. His steps followed her.

  “I don’t have time for this, Annique.”

  “I can take the bullet out of him.”

  She was treated to one Grey’s long silences. Then he said, “I shouldn’t be surprised. You were with the armies, weren’t you? Where did you learn to take bullets out of people? Milan?”

  “And Millesimo and Bassano and Roveredo and…and elsewhere.” So many battlefields. “The safest place in battle, if one is dressed as a young boy, is in the medical tents. If I am busy mopping up repulsive liquids, no one hands me a gun and expects me to kill people.”

  “I see.” Such a dry tone. She knew this about Grey. He had been an infantry major before they took him for the British Service. He would know about medical tents and the aftermath of battles.

  “I came at first to clean, in those hospitals. When I was there…Grey, there was not one of those orderlies who could be trusted to sew up a pillowcase, let alone a belly. I am clever with my hands. It was not long before the surgeons knew me. By Rivoli they did not even look up when I came in, just pointed where they wanted me to start working. I have taken much shrapnel out of men, little pieces the surgeons had no time to hunt for. And when times became desperate, many bullets.”

  “Many bullets.” She felt his breath on her face.

  “I do not need eyes. Not for this.” She did not know why she was trying so hard to convince him. Perhaps she could not save Adrian. Perhaps it was his inescapable fate to die when the bullet was removed. But it should not be for Grey to have his hands on his friend and feel the life leaking out. She could spare him that. “It is not a matter of looking, you understand. In digging out bullets, when one must cut away at the flesh, there is much blood. One cannot see. It is always necessary to go by touch, to feel within the skin and use a probe to find the path entered upon.”

  “Do it.”

  “I have much experience in—”

  “I said, do it.” He walked away without another word of discussion or question. She did not always understand Grey.

  In the center of the clearing they had spread blankets upon the ground. There, Doyle had disgorged his selection of medical instruments. While she listened to Grey explain the change of plans—not once, for a minute, did his voice show any doubt as to her skill—she knelt and took stock of the fierce assemblage of metal. What dozens of instruments. Most, she swiftly tossed back into the leather bag. She kept only the smallest of the clamps and forceps and one pair of scissors and one little razor-sharp knife. This was enough for what she must do.

  Everything smelled of fishes, for some reason, as well as old blood. She did not even want to set her hands upon these tools when they were so dirty. She sent Doyle to the running stream with soap, to clean them for her. She was feeling Rom at this moment. She would not wash them in a basin. The Rom do not wash in stagnant water.

  Then she turned to touch Adrian, to know what was what with him. He had stripped to the waist. He sat on the ground while Grey cut away the bandage.

 
; “Chère Annique, if I’d known you were going to cut into me, I’d have let you finish your coffee this morning.” He caught her hand and lifted it to his lips to kiss. It was hard to believe he was not a Gascon. “How did Grey talk you into this?”

  “It was entirely the other way around. Grey fought tooth and nail for the privilege of seeking bullets in you. But I was insistent.” He would laugh on the gallows, this one. “If you have not taken the opium, you should do that. We must wait a time, you understand, after you take it. I would not have you discussing with me the price of green beans or the weather when I am working. I am easily distracted.”

  Grey said, “He won’t take it.”

  Adrian’s arm moved. He was shaking his head, she thought. “If I took enough to do any good, I’d be stupid for days. Leblanc’s looking for somebody wounded. Make me groggy, and I’m dead.”

  “I bloody well hate it when he’s right, don’t you?” Doyle said.

  “I’m always right. Annique…Fox Cub…I won’t take opium. If I drank enough brandy to knock me out, it’d probably kill me. So it’s nothing at all. Can you do this?”

  “Oh yes,” she said at once. “I have hunted out bullets, often and often. I am fast as lightning, me.” Mon Dieu, could they know what it would be like? It is the stuff of nightmares to operate with no opium at all. Truly, Adrian was like her in this—the good fairies had not attended his cradle to scatter blessings upon him. “Always they run out of opium before they run out of men with holes in them. One copes.”

  “Nothing like practice. Here’s this lot, clean.” Doyle started laying instruments into her hand, one at a time so she did not slice herself.

  “I am in the medical tents of the losing side, generally, so we have many wounded.” She dried the scissors with a strip of bandage and clipped through the cloth, testing. They were sharp. “I have been diligently spying upon the Milanese and Austrians who lose battles with some regularity. It has been most odd, all these years, dodging so many completely French bullets.”

  There was a good supply of bandages. If she needed more than this, she would have killed Adrian anyway. “If you will lie down, Monsieur Adrian, I will be able to reach you. I am not a giantess.”

  She hitched herself close to Adrian, to a position where she could work. Her tools made a neat row on the blanket. She picked them up and put them down till she could find everything without thought. Then she laid a cloth across. It was better Adrian did not spend his time looking at this. Sharp, shiny metal is wearing to the soul. She lifted a stack of bandages into her lap where they would be handy. She must concentrate now and think only of what must be done.

  Adrian’s upper chest was nearly hairless, with hard muscles, set rigid in pain. He flinched when she first laid hands upon him, then took a deep breath and did not react again while she examined. The skin around the site of entry was noticeably hot. The mouth of the wound was damp and smelled of infection—the ordinary kind, not the rotting, sweet sort that means death.

  Doyle settled on the boy’s right, large and comforting. Grey moved to take the other side. They were not holding him down yet. Soon they would have to. She had operated without opium before.

  “Monsieur Doyle, I will show you where I want your hands.”

  “There’s one thing we’ll do first,” Grey said. “I’m going to talk to Adrian. It’ll take a few minutes. You get comfortable.”

  Almost, she hissed in exasperation. “You have had a whole morning to talk.” Every moment they delayed made it worse. Did they think their Adrian was constructed of imperturbable courage? Did they think she was?

  “We’re going to try something I saw in Vienna. It may help.” He leaned close, talking to the boy. “The way you do this, Adrian, is you just relax and listen to me. That’s how we start, remember. You listen to what I’m saying.”

  It seemed she must wait until this was done. She called to her mind a picture of the blood vessels in the chest. They ran so…and so. With luck, she would avoid them.

  This was her great gift, this memory of hers. Any page she had read, any street she had crossed, any face in a crowd—they all came back to her perfect and exact when she called. Other people forgot things. She did not. That was why Vauban had given her the Albion plans in the small inn in Bruges when Leblanc came to extort and threaten. She had put the plans into her memory and burned each page, one by one, as she read. Her memory was why Maman had taken her everywhere, even when she was a child. Her head was stuffed with the secrets of many nations.

  Fortunately, her memory also contained anatomical charts. The upper chest is far from the worst spot to be hit in, if the bullet is not deep, which must be so, because Adrian still lived.

  Grey plodded on and on with his so-necessary conversation. She did not pay attention, since it did not concern her and was very dull. He was saying, “We’ll try this for a while, the first parts, anyway, and see how it goes. It’s easy to get started. You’re going to breathe slow and listen to what I’m saying.”

  “It feels stupid,” Adrian said. “I’ll try. But the gods know I feel like an idiot.”

  “You’re not going to do anything stupid, Hawker. Only what you want to do. You’re the one in charge. I’m just here to help you with what you’re doing to yourself. You lie there and feel the breathing. That’s how you do it. In and out. Now in. Now out. You feel the breathing. That’s all you feel.”

  Grey repeated himself in an exceedingly boring way, which gave her no very high opinion of his powers of conversation. She finished thinking about the blood vessels in the chest and sat quietly, with her hands resting in her lap, letting her thoughts drift.

  “Your eyes get tired in all this sunlight. You can close them.” Having found another subject of stultifying monotony, Grey droned on and on.

  The next thing she knew, somebody was shaking her. Grey.

  “Yes. You. Wake up, Annique. That’s it. Wide awake. You feel fine, Annique, and you are fully awake.”

  She seemed to have fallen asleep sitting up.

  “Of course I am awake.” Her legs had gone numb beneath her. “I am resting while you chatter so endlessly.” She did not keep sarcasm out of her voice. “I had a difficult night.”

  “You are what is called an excellent subject,” he said, incomprehensibly. “Adrian, on the other hand, is not. I saw this done a couple times in Vienna, but I’ve never tried it. There’s a man there, uses it in surgery. Let’s hope it works.”

  “You are through talking to him?”

  “I’ll keep talking. You ignore what I say and do what you have to. Very definitely ignore me. I don’t want you nodding off again.”

  “Then hold him.”

  She showed them how she wanted him pinned. Doyle held his arm down and the shoulder. Grey took the other side, leaning his full weight on top, all the time talking and talking to Adrian—something about the pain being far away on the other side of a wall. Such bizarre stuff. She would ignore it.

  “Do not let him move.” Then she trusted them to do their work and did not think about it again. There were many thoughts to dismiss from her mind. Most of all she must not think of Adrian. Beneath her hands was muscle and bone and skin. Not Adrian.

  She took a minute to explore the site from outside, testing the surface of the skin with her fingers. Good. That was the bullet. That lump. They had been incredibly lucky. It lay high in the chest, superficial, just below the collarbone, at the second rib, lodged against bone. The entry path was oddly slanted, as if he’d been shot by someone below him. The lead had not torn into the lung beneath.

  The patient was still. Not limp—it was not like working on a man deep under an opiate—but he was most wholly and completely motionless. Good.

  There was nothing more his body could say to her. She sat back on her heels and touched her way from instrument to instrument one last time. She would go in through the entry wound. That would minimize damage and clean it, too. She took up the long, slim forceps. Wordlessly, she rearra
nged Grey’s hold and settled herself at a new angle.

  Her left hand pressed the skin above the site, over the tiny lump of the bullet. Through her palm, she mapped the plateaus and valleys of the ribs. She snicked the forceps open and closed, twice, loosening up her fingers.

  Now to do it. Fast. No hesitation.

  She took a deep breath and went in with the forceps. Push. Spread forceps slightly. Push. Follow the path of the bullet through muscle. All her concentration flowed to the tip of the forceps, sensing the route, nudging along bone and fascia. Warm blood streamed between her fingers.

  Push. Farther. Grit on metal. Her quarry. Open. Soft, soft now. Nibble at it. The tiny, slippery hardness. Catch it. Close the forceps. Yes! She had it. Bring it out. Fast now. She could go fast now. The patient held his breath. His muscles—neck, chest, arms—like steel. Next to her, a voice gave firm orders about a wall of darkness, solid as bricks.

  She dropped the ball in the palm of her hand and rolled it. The lead was flat with impact against the rib. It wasn’t smooth. A chunk was missing. She must return. She made a single, unbroken motion of it, testing the bullet, going back in.

  The missing piece would have been chipped off by the impact with the rib. She must go deep to look for it. Slide in. Keep to the path. Deeper. The patient gasped. Jerked. Go loose on the forceps, ride the movement lest she jab at him. Not her job to keep him still. Think about the metal.

  He was still. Good. At the rib, delicate as a fencer, she probed. Blood vessels all up and down the ribs. Between them. She was searching for a grain of hardness where it should not be. Smooth, soft strokes. Soft…soft.

  Deep on the lateral surface of the first rib, she found the brittle nub of bullet. The placement! Mon Dieu, the placement. It was as bad as could be. The forceps pulsed in her hand. The artery. Close. Deadly close.

  “Do not breathe,” she ordered. The muscles beneath her hand were stone. Quivering. The fragment rested directly against the artery. It pulsed. He must not move. Not move. She eased forward. No pressure. She must take it without the least pressure.