Orden was lying ten feet away, shot through one eye. Jamie froze for an instant, and something whirred close past his cheek. It might be a grasshopper and it might not. He was flat to the earth beside the dead lieutenant, heart pounding in his ears before the thought had fully formed.

Guthrie. He daren’t raise his head to call out—but had to. He got his feet under him as best he could, shot out of the grass, and ran like a rabbit, to and fro, zigging away from the orchard as best he could while still going in the direction he’d sent Guthrie.

He could hear the shots now: more than one sniper in the orchard, protecting the cannon, and the sound was the flat crack! of a rifle. Jaegers? He flung himself down and crawled madly, now shouting for Guthrie.

“Here, sir!” The man popped up suddenly beside him like a groundhog, and Jamie seized Guthrie’s sleeve, pulling him back down.

“Get … your men back.” He gulped air, chest heaving. “Shooting—from the orchard. This side. They’ll be picked off.”

Guthrie was staring at him, mouth half open.

“Get them!”

Shaken out of his shock, Guthrie nodded like a puppet and started to rise. Jamie grabbed him by the ankle and jerked him flat, pressed him down with a hand on his back.

“Don’t … stand up.” His breathing was slowing and he managed to speak calmly. “We’re still in range here. Get your men and retire with your company—back to the ridgeline. Join Captain Moxley; tell him to come round and join me …” His mind went blank for a moment, trying to think of some reasonable place for a rendezvous. “South of the farmhouse. With Woodbine’s company.” He took his hand off Guthrie.

“Aye, sir.” The man scuffed up onto hands and knees, reaching for the hat that had fallen off. He glanced back at Jamie, eyes full of earnest concern.

“Are you hit bad, sir?”

“Hit?”

“There’s blood all down your face, sir.”

“It’s nothing. Go!”

Guthrie swallowed, nodded, wiped his face on his sleeve, and made off through the grass, as fast as he could go. Jamie put a hand to his own face, belatedly aware of a slight sting across his cheekbone. Sure enough, his fingers came away bloody. Not a grasshopper, then.

He wiped his fingers on the skirt of his coat and noticed mechanically that the seam of the sleeve had burst at the shoulder, showing the white shirt beneath. He rose a little, cautious, looking round for Bixby, but there was no sign of him. Maybe dead in the long grass, too; maybe not. With luck, he’d seen what was happening and run back to warn the companies coming up. The horse was still where he’d left it, thank God, tethered to a fence, fifty yards away.

He hesitated for a moment, but there wasn’t time to lose in looking for Bixby. Woodsworth and his two companies would be coming round the orchard in a few minutes, and right into range of the German rifles. He popped up and ran.

Something tugged at his coat, but he didn’t stop, and reached his horse, gasping for air.

“Tiugainn!” he said, swinging up into the saddle. He turned away from the orchard and galloped through a potato field, though it bruised his farmer’s heart to see what the armies’ passing had done to it already.



I DON’T KNOW when physicians began calling it “the Golden Hour,” but surely every battlefield medic from the time of the Iliad onward knows about it. From the time of an accident or injury that isn’t immediately fatal, the victim’s chances of living are best if he receives treatment within an hour of sustaining the injury. After that, shock, continued loss of blood, debility due to pain … the chance of saving a patient goes sharply downhill.

Add in blazing temperatures, lack of water, and the stress of running full out through fields and woods, wearing wool homespun and carrying heavy weapons, inhaling powder smoke, and trying either to kill someone or avoid being killed, just prior to being injured, and I rather thought we were looking at a Golden fifteen minutes or so.

Given also the fact that the wounded were having to be carried or to walk—probably more than a mile—to a place where they could find assistance … I supposed we were doing well to save as many as we were. If only temporarily, I added grimly to myself, hearing the screaming from inside the church.

“What’s your name, dear?” I said to the young man in front of me. He couldn’t be more than seventeen and was precious near to bleeding to death. A bullet had gone through the meat of his upper arm, which would normally be a fortuitous location for a wound. Unfortunately, in this instance the ball had passed through the underside of the arm and nicked the brachial artery, which had been spurting blood in a slow but earnest manner until I’d taken a death grip on his arm.

“Private Adams, ma’am,” he replied, though his lips were white and he was shaking. “Billy, they call me,” he added politely.

“Pleased to meet you, Billy,” I said. “And you, sir … ?” For he’d been brought in staggering, leaning on another boy of about his own age—and nearly as white-faced, though I thought he wasn’t hurt.

“Horatio Wilkinson, ma’am,” he said, dipping his head in an awkward bow—the best he could manage while holding his friend upright.

“Lovely, Horatio,” I said. “I’ve got him now. Would you pour him out a little water, with a splash of brandy in it? Just there.” I nodded at the packing case I was using for a table, on which one of my brown bottles marked POISON stood, along with a canteen full of water and wooden cups. “And as soon as he’s drunk it, give him that leather strip to bite down on.”

I’d have told Horatio to have a tot, too, save that there were only two cups, and the second one was mine. I was sipping water steadily—my bodice was soaked and clung to me like the membrane inside an eggshell, and sweat ran steadily down my legs—and I didn’t want to be sharing the germs of assorted soldiers who didn’t brush their teeth regularly. Still, I might have to tell him to take a quick gulp direct from the brandy bottle; someone was going to have to apply pressure to Billy Adams’s arm while I stitched his brachial artery, and Horatio Wilkinson didn’t presently look equal to the task.

“Would you—” I began, but I was holding a scalpel and a suture needle with a dangling ligature in my free hand, and the sight of these overcame young Mr. Wilkinson. His eyes rolled up in his head and he dropped, boneless, into the gravel.

“Wounded?” said a familiar voice behind me, and I turned my head to see Denzell Hunter looking down at Mr. Wilkinson. He was nearly as pale as Horatio and, with strands of hair come loose and clinging to his cheeks, very much the antithesis of his usual collected self.

“Fainted,” I said. “Can you—”

“They are idiots,” he said, so pale—with rage, I now realized—that he could barely speak. “Regimental surgeons, they call themselves! A good quarter of them have never seen a man wounded in battle before. And those who have are barely capable of anything in the way of treatment save the crudest amputation. A company of barbers would do better!”

“Can they stop bleeding?” I asked, taking his hand and wrapping it round my patient’s upper arm. He automatically pressed his thumb to the brachial artery near the armpit, and the spurting that had started when I took my own hand away stopped again. “Thank you,” I said.

“Not at all. Yes, most of them can do that,” he admitted, calming down just a little. “But they are so jealous of privilege—and so much affiliated with their own regiments—that some are letting a wounded man die because he is not one of theirs and his own regimental surgeon is otherwise occupied!”

“Scandalous,” I murmured, and, “Bite hard now, Private,” as I thrust the leather between his teeth and made a quick incision to enlarge the wound enough to find the end of the severed artery. He did bite, and made no more than a low grunting noise as the scalpel sliced into his flesh; perhaps he was sufficiently in shock that he didn’t feel it much—I hoped not.