FicWad

“She never told ye her name!?” asks Doctor Sparrow, dumbfounded.

“No, but there aren’t very many women in the army, an’ I know which army she’s in, so I should be able to find her easy enough.”

“Ye do realize that there are more women in the Western Army than in the rest of the armies combined, right?”

“Feck! D’ye think ‘twas serious or…”

“Well, ye did say she was a virgin, so it probably was. Women don’t take their first time lightly.”

“This one’s worth keepin’, so I hope she finds me.”

“I still can’t believe ye didn’t get her name. D’ye think Miss Kerrigan knows?”

“Doubt it. She’s enlisted. There’s no way Miss Kerrigan knows everyone’s name.”

They are sitting at one end of a large table in a tavern called The Wolf’s Paw. Jack and Var are taking turns singing drinking songs in their native languages. Liam, known for his hard-drinking reputation, is on the floor asleep, a half-empty whiskey bottle in one hand and a half-empty vodka bottle in the other. Despite their best efforts, Captain Fitzmaurice and Doctor Sparrow drink themselves to sleep. Once they have fallen, Kerrigan tells Jack and Var that it is time to stop drinking for the night and go to bed. She personally pays the men’s tabs and leads their horses to the stable. She hires a cab to return them to the cabins. She decides to put the sleeping Tem in Jack’s bed and the fallen, yet conscious, Var into her own. She then makes the four beds in the cabin across the street, putting Captain Fitzmaurice, Doctor Sparrow, and Liam into three of them, and Jack, who is in a state similar to Var’s, into the final bed. She makes a small nest of blankets for herself in the loft of the stable, changes into her nightshirt and goes to sleep with no company but the horses below.

At dawn, Kerrigan wakes, none the worse for wear since she did not drink much the night before. She dons a pretty, yet simple, dress and ventures to the farmers’ market. She has flour and tea, but she must buy milk, butter, eggs, sugar, and fruit. When she returns, she lights a fire in the hearth and heads up her griddle. She begins to make pancakes, stacking them a dozen high and pouring small glasses of liquor to go with them. She then gently wakes each of the men in turn, all of whom are shocked to wake in unfamiliar beds wearing only their undergarments, their clothing having been carefully folded and placed at their feet and their boots having been placed under the bed. Kerrigan helps them to the table and hands them each a drink, a cup of tea, and a stack of pancakes, dressed to their personal tastes. She hands Jack strawberry pancakes with gin and black tea with no sugar, Var raspberry and blueberry pancakes with vodka and black tea with several spoonfuls of sugar, Tem peach pancakes with mead and tea that is mostly cream, Liam apple pancakes with rum and tea with no milk and only a slight hint of sugar, Doctor Sparrow maple pancakes with brandy and tea that has milk and sugar in it, and Captain Fitzmaurice buttered pancakes with whiskey and tea that has milk and more sugar than Doctor Sparrow’s in it. She eats only a couple of small pancakes that she burned. She cleans the men’s dishes while they sit around the little cabin, which is barely large enough for her and Jack, moaning and cursing. She sweeps the cabin around them and goes out to muck the stable. She then brings Var and Tem to the train station to see them off on their journey back to Stankirk. When she returns, she finds Private Callahan standing at the door of the cottage looking confused. She does not know his given name, but he is wearing his uniform, so she knows his rank. His uniform bears his name, but she can tell from his looks that he is a Callahan. Not knowing that it is customary to salute superiors from other armies in the manner of their army, he salutes her as he would an officer in the Southern Army, palm facing downward. She corrects him gently, as a mother would, rather than a superior. He is barely old enough to be a soldier, and she can tell that he misses his mother and his home badly.

“Is there something with which I may assist you, Private?”

“Me brother sent me to find Captains Fitzmaurice an’ Liam an’ Doctor Sparrow, ma’am.”

“They are inside.”

“I see black uniforms, ma’am.”

“They wore black to last night’s ball, Private Callahan.”

“Is that why they’re here?”

“It is.”

“The Colonel says to have them return to the unit at once.”

“Go ahead of them, Private.”

“The Colonel’ll have me arse if I don’t return wi’ them.”

“Believe me, Private you do not want to have to tell Captain Fitzmaurice that he has to return to camp so early in the morning. I know for a fact that he would surely hit you. I also know that he would not likely hit me. Your brother will understand. He must know by now what Captain Fitzmaurice is like when he has had too much to drink.”

“He does ma’am. On’y…the Captain’s been drinkin’ this early?”

“He was drinking last night. Good day Private.”

With that, Kerrigan steps into the cottage, and Private Callahan leaves. Captain Fitzmaurice curses loudly when he hears that his colonel wants him to return to camp. Kerrigan saddles The General and The Admiral, and their riders soon depart. Liam is the last to leave, and, as he has no horse, he will arrive must later than the others. Kerrigan sets about her chores, baking bread and doing laundry for her and Jack for a week. Kerrigan needs to be doing something, whereas Jack needs to rest. Left to his own devices, Jack would drink away his fortune and find himself again wandering the streets of Bridgeton homeless, impoverished, and alone. Money does not make him happy. Opium does not make him happy. It makes him miserable. Alcohol does not make him happy either, but it helps him to deal with everything, so he drinks. He drinks all day until he meets with his generals for four hours in a bar.

When he returns, Kerrigan is reading a novel about the Revolution. She has her historical criticisms of the work, but it is a good literary work. The personalities are horribly romanticized, in her opinion. She knew most of them personally, and, while many of them were certainly handsome, none of them were as clean, well-organized, moral, or dashingly romantic as the novel would suggest. While it is certainly true that the leaders seduced many women during the Revolution, it is unlikely that any of them seduced a princess and didn’t brag about it. It is also unlikely that any of them climbed up the trellis to her bedroom shirtless. Jack, in particular, would never sneak around the back if he could kill the guards in front, would never walk around without a shirt without a very good reason, would never climb up any flimsy, wooden structure covered in plants, considering he was a lot heavier during the Revolution, and it probably would have broken under his weight, and would never sleep with a princess and without telling dirty stories about it in the pubs. No man would ever walk around a garden full of thorny rose bushes with no shirt on either. Kerrigan has come to the conclusion that no work of fiction, however well-written, will ever tell the story of the Revolution the way it really happened in gory detail with grimy men toiling long hours for no pay day after hopeless day until they rose up and fought like dogs for something better. None of the novels Kerrigan reads ever convey the true griminess of the men and their surroundings. This is because none of the writers have ever been to the cities where the Revolution was fought and walked through the poverty-ridden and disease-ridden streets of the shantytowns where their so-called romantic heroes really lived. Most of the writers would be robbed blind by small children before they walked down one street, and many of them would not survive one night in the neighborhoods where their dashing heroes live. Kerrigan knows from the writing that they have never been there or met the men. The general lack of profanity in the dialogue makes it obvious that they do not know Jack at all.

Captain Fitzmaurice and Doctor Sparrow report to Colonel Callahan immediately upon their return to camp. Captain Fitzmaurice, hung-over and sleep-deprived, warns Colonel Callahan that he had better have a very good reason for dragging him back so early on a Sunday morning. He assures him that he does and tells the doctor that two of the enlisted men got into a fight that morning, and one corporal needs stitches over his eye and across his jaw and chin. The doctor runs straight to the medical tent while the colonel tells the captain to bathe, shave, and change into his dress uniform immediately. When he finally returns, the colonel brushes a bit of dust off of his shoulder, straightens his tie, and sends him to the edge of camp. Liam arrives while Captain Fitzmaurice is waiting. Liam is in better spirits than Captain Fitzmaurice since he has a much higher tolerance for alcohol and stopped for a drink on the way back to camp. He jokes that Captain Fitzmaurice must be standing watch as if he were an enlisted man, receiving incoherent grumbles, growls, and curses in reply. When he reports to the colonel, Liam is told to get into uniform and relieve the lieutenant guarding the camp’s makeshift jail. The jail is only guarded by those with a rank of sergeant or higher and only when it is occupied by their direct subordinates. Liam is told that he will be relieved by a sergeant, rather than a lieutenant or Major Moynihan, so he knows that the man being held is either a private or a corporal. He can safely bet that he knows which two corporals were fighting, and he does not look forward to spending the next eight hours trying to keep them from fighting while locked together in a confined area.

Captain Fitzmaurice stands and waits for over an hour before anyone comes looking for him. To his surprise, the nameless woman from the night before runs toward him, her collar flapping in the breeze, and hugs him tightly, resting her head on his shoulder. He again asks her for her name to no avail, though her uniform tells him that she is a sergeant in the Five Hundred Ninety-First Light Infantry and that her surname is Barrett. He thinks he remembers the name from somewhere, but he cannot remember where he heard it. Captain Fitzmaurice brings her to a restaurant for dinner, but she still refuses to discuss her family or tell him her first name. He decides that it would be wiser to stop asking in the hope that she might eventually accidentally tell him. He walks with her to her unit and returns to his own. When he arrives, he finds Doctor Sparrow asleep on his bed. Wondering why the doctor is not in his own tent, Captain Fitzmaurice shakes him by the leg to wake him.

“Why are ye in me bed, Brendan?”

“’Cos I needed to sleep, an’ I kept gettin’ interrupted.”

“By who?”

“Liam, rather, enlisted men Liam sent.”

“What’d he want?”

“Two corporals got in a fight, an’ he’s mindin’ ‘em in the jail.”

“Which is one cell, so they keep fightin’.”

“Aye. He can’t keep ‘em apart unless he hurts ‘em, so I have to keep fixin’ cuts an’ bruises. At least here they think I’m yourself an’ don’t bother.”

“Feel free to hide all ye like.”

“So, did ye bring her back?”

“No.”

“Did ye get her name?”

“Not her first name, but she wore her uniform, so I got her last name, rank, an’ unit information.”

“So…aren’t ye goin’ to tell me?”

“She’s wi’ the Five Nine One, which is a light infantry unit. If memory serves me right, they’re from District One, but wi’ the Western Army, ye can’t tell where someone’s from by where they’re stationed. Then again, District One’s minin’ country. A lot o’ them do serve in their home district. She’s in a light infantry, so she’s probably good wi’ the sword, since women don’t tend to favor spears or hand axes. She’s a sergeant, which means she’s been in at least two years, maybe more. She’s twenty-two. She’ll be twenty-three in October. She told me that. Her last name is Barrett. D’ye know who the Barretts are?”

“Sounds familiar. Don’t know why. Why d’ye ask?”

“I can’t remember why I know that name either. I know I’ve heard it before, though.”

Captain Fitzmaurice takes a book down from his bookshelf and opens it on his bed. Most of his books are maps, military histories, tactical guides, foreign dictionaries and phrasebooks, and weapon guides. He pulls out a particularly dull book detailing the history of the Revolution written by an old professor who never saw any of the events firsthand. Captain Fitzmaurice went to a three-year military officer training school after his collegiate studies. He had his choice between law and the military, and he chose the military. All he and Doctor Sparrow ever dreamed of as children was to join the military and live up to the deeds of their fathers’ generation. Studying the Revolution in military college was entirely pointless, and he slept through most of the classes. He still got the best grades on his exams, since he grew up hearing stories of what really happened during the Revolution from the men who were there, he only opened the book once when he needed a place to hide his drawings of new firearm designs. He rifles through the index, making sure that the book does not snap shut on his hand, and finds the name Barrett. He flips to the page indicated and finds that he remembers exactly where he heard the name before.

He lived in Barrett Hall during his first year of military school. First year students are required to live in an open-bay barracks with twenty-five men to a floor. There are five floors in each building, and there are two such buildings. The top floor of each building comprise the women’s barracks. All of the women live in Barrett Hall. The other first-year barracks is named Gallagher Hall. The second-year students live in either McRae Hall or O’Riordan Hall, where five men share a small apartments with one bedroom. The third-year students live in either Callahan Hall or Shepherd Hall, where they have their own apartments. Captain Fitzmaurice remember stories about how the Barretts got their fortune. Knowing that his mystery woman is a Barrett, he realizes that he is sleeping with the last living descendant and sole heiress of the Barrett fortune. Suddenly, he realizes why she never told him her name. Many a young officer dreams of marrying into the Barrett fortune, since half of those who went through military college lived in Barrett Hall. During their first year apart, Brendan Sparrow traveled frequently to Barrett Hall to visit his friend, since Billy was subject to curfews after which he could not leave his room. Because of his frequent visits, Brendan remembers Barrett Hall very well also.

The next day, they return to battle. Doctor Sparrow does not fight because he is a civilian, so he is asked to mind the two brawling corporals. They have no respect for civilians, so Doctor Sparrow must rely entirely on his wits to keep in control of the situation. He has his revolvers, and they are unarmed by order of the colonel, but if he shoots, he will have to care for them afterward. He knows that the rest of the unit will need their doctor because he knows that the fighting will be particularly bad today. Colonel Callahan always tells Doctor Sparrow where they are fighting and what types injuries and how many casualties to expect in addition to when and whence they will be arriving. The Colonel wants to minimize his casualties, so he lets the doctor know battle information that, strictly speaking, should not be given to enlisted men, let alone a civilian. Doctor Sparrow hates seeing men torn to pieces, and he wishes it could stop, but he knows that it will not. He is very familiar with Death and War, and he knows that he cannot stop one while remaining employed by the other. In order to subdue the two corporals, he uses his skills as a surgeon to tie them each to different trees, within each others’ sight but out of each others’ reach. He then stretches himself out, leaning back in a chair that is really too small for him, and takes a nap, pushing out of his mind the reality that he misses his wife very much and that he is about to find himself knee-deep in blood.

After the battle, Doctor Sparrow, with the help of the few able-bodied men that remain, patches up cuts and saves what limbs he can. The loss of a limb or eye is not a guaranteed discharge. Usually, the loss of one’s dominant hand, both legs or both eyes are the only injuries severe enough to merit an automatic discharge. A man with lesser injuries can request a discharge, at which point his skills will be evaluated by his commanding officer and his doctor. Plenty of men fight without their non-dominant hand, an eye, or a leg. General Murdock has only one leg and one seeing eye. He was blind from birth in one eye and lost his leg serving before the mast on a ship when he was, as he likes to say, merely a slip of a boy. In reality, he was nearly twenty-five at the time. During the Revolution, General Ardal Malone, whose grandson Eamon is currently a Southern Army General, fought through the Revolution after the lower half of his right leg was amputated in a blacksmith’s shop. Despite Doctor Sparrow’s best efforts, not everyone can be saved, and the reality that there are some things that, try as he might, he cannot fix, is killing him slowly. In a few months, he has changed from being an optimistic young doctor to being a cynic, far older than his years, and he does not like his new self. Young men being nailed into pine boxes and shipped back to tearful mothers and hopeless young wives with half a dozen young children at their feet, most of whom will not see their sixteenth birthday, haunt his dreams. His last patient of the night is Captain Fitzmaurice, who has not been injured badly and can easily be saved. A lieutenant is holding gauze over Captain Fitzmaurice’s left eye. Doctor Sparrow fears the worst, but he is pleasantly surprised when he removes the dressing. The Captain suffered a nasty cut just above his eyebrow and a badly-swollen black eye, but he is otherwise fine, despite the fact that the cut has bled considerably.

“Lieutenant, I will be fine. You may leave,” says Captain Fitzmaurice.

“But, sor, I-”

“Leave! Now!” he barks.

“Aye sor,” the lieutenant says as he leaves.

“Doctor, could ye do me a favor?”

“Aye, sor. I can try.”

“Could ye see to it there’s no scar?”

“Let me clean it up, an’ I’ll see what I can do. This is just water.”

Doctor Sparrow gently wipes the blood away from his friend’s eye. Captain Fitzmaurice never cries, not even when he was tortured, so he asks his friend why his eye is watering, to which the Doctor replies that it is a natural response to such trauma and that it should stop once the eye is clean, provided that the internal structures have not suffered major damage or swelling. He carefully feels his friend’s cheekbone, eye socket, and nose for signs of fracture and finds none. After promising that he will not use a syringe, Doctor Sparrow puts a cloth soaked in ether over Captain Fitzmaurice’s nose and mouth. Once the patient is asleep, the doctor carefully stitches the gash over his eye with nearly microscopic stitches, careful to leave no possibility of a lasting scar. He gave his friend a little more ether than he really needed to give him, so he draws the little chair up to the operating table and holds his friend’s hand. He sits patiently smoking a cigarette and waits for his friend to wake.

While Captain Fitzmaurice is still unconscious, Sergeant Barrett walks into camp, her black uniform at complete odds with the sea of green surrounding her. She sees men staring at her hungrily, and she begins to run, terrified by the sight of so many men in bloody bandages staring at her, following her, and calling after her. She trips, and a lieutenant helps her to her feet. He introduces himself as Lieutenant James M. Coffey and gently dusts her off. He has somewhat shorter hair than most of the unit and is somewhat disheveled in his appearance. He is of athletic build and somewhat tall stature and has brown hair and kind blue eyes. He is very young. He did not attend college before military school, and he arrived at the Thirteenth Bridgeton just after he graduated. He is only nineteen, but he has already seen many terrible events. He is one of the youngest officers in the unit, and he was on his way to find his drinking companions when he crossed paths with Sergeant Barrett.

“Don’t mind them, Sergeant. We only have five enlisted women and one female officer assigned to this unit, all of whom share a tent an’, from what I was told, wear spiked chastity belts when they’re not in combat. As ye can tell, this camp doesn’t follow the uniform arrangement ye’re used to in the Western Army. So, who did ye come to see?”

“C-Captain Fitzmaurice, sir.”

“I’ll bring ye to his tent. Don’t mind his tent mates. They can be a little crude when they’re on the bottle, but they’d never hurt ye. I swear. They’re good men.”

“Thankee, Lieutenant.”

When Sergeant Barrett arrives at Captain Fitzmaurice’s tent, Lieutenant Coffey departs on the errand of attempting to find his friends for a trip to the pubs for dinner, and Captain Boland tells Sergeant Barrett that he has no idea where Captain Fitzmaurice is. He takes her to see Colonel Callahan, who personally takes her to the medical tent and tells her that Captain Fitzmaurice is still in surgery. She rushes in and throws herself into Doctor Sparrow’s arms and asks her why he never told her that he was a doctor. He leads her outside and informs her that he is not the Captain. It is only then that she realizes that she is looking up into a pair of green eyes, rather than blue ones.

“Captain Fitzmaurice is my dear friend, Miss Barrett. Aye, I know who your grandfather was. I know o’ your family’s fortune an’ its curse. So does he. Today, the Captain was injured. It was not severe, in fact, he was the least severe injury in the unit. He is still asleep from his surgery. It looks far worse than it is. Believe me, dear lady, he will be fine. Unfortunately, the days rations have run out, an’ neither he nor I got any supper. We’ll be headed to town. Ye’re more’n willin’ to join us, but I’d appreciate it if ye’d wait out here ‘til he’s up.”

“Is it bad luck to have a woman in surgery?”

“No. I jus’ don’ want ye seein’ the worst’ve it. Stay close, though. If the enlisted men don’ know whose girl ye are, ye might just have to fight your way out.”

“Yessir.”

“I’m a civilian, miss. I answered a call for civilian doctors an’ volunteered for this unit, since it was on the list o’ high-casualty units with no attending surgeon, an’ since me best friend’s assigned to it, but I’m no soldier, an’ I’m certainly no officer.”

Doctor Sparrow returns to his solemn vigil beside his friend, and when he is about to give up hope and tell Sergeant Barrett to leave for the night, Billy opens his good eye, and, with a grunt of pain, asks, “Why does it hurt so fuckin’ bad?”

“Ye won’t be able to use that eye for a couple o’ weeks. Here, put this on,” Doctor Sparrow replies, handing Captain Fitzmaurice an eye patch.

“What for?”

“Whatever hit ye messed ye up pretty bad. Ye’ll need to protect it from the light for a couple o’ weeks. Besides, ye wouldn’t want Miss Barrett seein’ that.”

“Can I see it?”

“I don’t see why not,” says Doctor Sparrow, handing Captain Fitzmaurice a scalpel, the blade of which happens to be the nearest reflective surface.

“Jaysus! Does it really look that bad?”

“’Fraid so.”

“’Tisn’t me good eye, but will I be able to…”

“See again? Aye. Give it two weeks rest under the patch. I’ll give it a look then. Ye’ll see again no problem. Oh, an’ ye’re out o’ combat ‘til ye can, same pay, Colonel’s orders.”

Captain Fitzmaurice adjusts the eye patch over his left eye and sets his uniform straight. He fell when he was hit and was carried back to camp, so his uniform is fairly dusty but bloodless. Doctor Sparrow washed the blood off of his face and out of his hair so that he could see the extent of the injuries more clearly, so, aside from the dust, which he carefully brushes off, Captain Fitzmaurice looks relatively unharmed, despite the eye patch. He carefully looks for his glasses, since he was not wearing them when he was hit. Luckily for him, he was cleaning them, else the shattered glass would have destroyed his eye. Doctor Sparrow received Captain Fitzmaurice’s glasses when he received Captain Fitzmaurice. He put them aside for safe keeping while he was performing surgeries. Doctor Sparrow hands Captain Fitzmaurice his eyeglasses and watches him don them over the eye patch. Doctor Sparrow removes his bloody white coat and steps out of the tent beside Captain Fitzmaurice, making sure that the Captain does not trip or walk into anything, since he is not yet accustomed to wearing the eye patch. They find Sergeant Barrett sitting atop a crate of surgical supplies sitting outside the tent.

“Captain! What happened to your eye?”

“Got hit with a rifle. In short, Sergeant Nolan happened.”

“Will ye-”

“Accordin’ to the doctor, I’ll see jus’ fine, well, as fine as I did ‘afore Nolan hit me wi’ his rifle…never did have good eyesight on that side. No scar, neither. I’ll be fine.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

For dinner, Captain Fitzmaurice, wishing to avoid the rest of his unit, leads them to a restaurant in the nicer part of Crosspoint. Unlike Bridgeton, Crosspoint is not divided by rivers. Instead, the main thoroughfares divide the city into sections. Everything meets at the Crossroads, which is the only major market in the area. During wartime, it is flooded with soldiers looking for love, liquor, gifts for their families, and better food than their given rations. Before the war, it was a quaint farmers’ market in the only city placed in the middle of miles upon miles of countryside. Crosspoint is not a large city, and it has been difficult for it to serve the needs of the armies camped around its borders. Most soldiers have avoided the wealthier side of the city, but the officers can easily afford it, provided that they do not have large families to support in Bridgeton. Captain Fitzmaurice has neither a wife nor children to support, has just been paid for the month of September, now earns a small monthly sum for his title, and made a small fortune for escorting Kerrigan to the ball. The wealthier citizens of Crosspoint have heard frightening stories about soldiers’ behavior in bars and brothels, but they have seen relatively few of them personally. Captain Fitzmaurice and Doctor Sparrow both donned clean clothing before making the journey into the city. Everyone notice Captain Fitzmaurice. They recognize his uniform as that of an officer and see his medals. He was careful to wear all of them, just in case his eye patch should prevent entry to the restaurant of his choosing.

When they arrive, the maitre-d looks first at Captain Fitzmaurice’s eye patch. He then glances down and sees the insignia marking him as an officer. His gaze then rests upon the numerous medals, which read like a book, his eyes automatically skipping over the one he has never seen on a living man before, which is the one indicating that Captain Fitzmaurice died in the service of his country. They are not barred entry. They are welcomed graciously, despite outward appearances. After dinner, Captain Fitzmaurice walks Sergeant Barrett back to her camp, but before he leaves, he asks, “Can I have your name now? I know well who your grandfather was. I even lived in Barrett Hall in school. I know who ye are. I jus’ want your name.”

“I suppose. I’m Emily Barrett, after me da’, Emmett Barrett. Ye can call me Emmy for short. That’s what he used to call me before he…”

“Emmy. I like that. Night, Emmy. I love you.”

“Night, Billy. I love you too.”

On their way back to camp, Billy informs Brendan, “Her name’s Emmy.”

“Emmy. That’s cute. It suits her.”

“Now would you tell me what the fuck way me tent is. I can’t see worth a damn wi’ this…this…contraption on me face.”