Page 80 of The Cornish Mermaid

“Well,” Fitzwilliam’s angry voice boomed out, echoing in Kit’s head. “I’ll leave you to your card game. But mark my words, we’ll be keeping an eye on this little cove from now on. So, if you know of anyone who was down there tonight, you’d best let them know we’re onto them. And next time, make no mistake, we’ll get them.”

A shuffling of feet as the soldiers crowded toward the front door.

Kit tried to lift his head but the room swam again. He gripped the table edge with his good hand, his breathing coming in shallow pants. Please let them go so he could give in to his pain.

The door banged open and the tramp of feet reverberated around the kitchen as the soldiers crowded out. Kit’s grip on the table slackened, the world spun, and darkness swept up to envelop him as he slid sideways onto the flagstone floor.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Morvoren

Morvoren closed the door behind Kit’s cousin Fitzwilliam and the redcoat soldiers just as Kit slid from his seat at the table into a crumpled heap on the floor.

“Put the bar across,” Jago growled at her, and she didn’t dare argue. With fumbling fingers, she lifted the heavy wooden bar and slid it into place. Only then could she run to where Jago and Jenifry were kneeling beside Kit on the flagstones. His right hand was wet with blood and his face had gone a dreadful shade of grey.

“Is he dead?” was all Morvoren could think of to say, her voice high with panic. Please let him not be dead. Please. She’d never been one for church going, but right now, she offered up a silent prayer.

Jago’s fingers slid under Kit’s stock to search for a pulse. Without looking back, he grunted, “No, he’s not dead, you foolish girl. But he’s bleedin’ bad. We need to get him upstairs and into his bed.” He looked up at Sam, the only one left standing, his face near as pale as Kit’s. “C’n you take his legs if’n I takes his head end?”

Swallowing down what looked like nausea, Sam jumped into action. In a moment, he and Jago were struggling up the twisting staircase to the upper floor of the farmhouse with their precious load. Morvoren followed behind, fighting to overcome the panic surging through her. It was an arm wound, the bullet had gone right through, it didn’t seem to have chipped the bone, he was young, he wasn’t going to die. But the thought of what had been written in that museum exhibition wouldn’t leave her. Had she averted the massacre and the hangings but not Kit’s death?

Sam and Jago pulled Kit’s coat off and laid him on his bed. Blood had soaked through the bandages and his sleeve was sodden to the wrist. She had to pull herself together. She was fine in operations on dogs and cats or farm animals. She could detach herself as they were nothing to do with her. But this was a person, a person she cared for. A person she loved.

“Let me see.” She pushed them aside. “I’m a nurse. I know what I’m doing.”

Something about her tone of voice must have told them she meant business, because they moved out of the way and let her bend over Kit where he lay, white-faced and unmoving, on the bed. She could do this.

“Scissors, some of that brandy you’re so proud of, strong cotton and sharp needles.” She looked up at Jenifry as the one able to source all this. “Clean cloths to make a pad, clean bandages, and honey. Hot water in a bowl. And light. Lots of light so I can see what I’m doing. Now.”

Jenifry ran to do her bidding.

“I’ll help you carry it all,” Sam said and hurried after her, his face nearly as grey as Kit’s. It looked like blood might be his phobia, not spiders.

When the scissors came, and with Sam standing well back by the door, his hand to his mouth, Morvoren carefully snipped the old dressing off Kit’s wound. She’d slapped it on with haste to disguise his state, and it hadn’t done its job. A jagged tear in his arm indicated where the bullet had ripped into his flesh from front to back. Blood still pumped sluggishly from it. Morvoren pulled the top sheet from the bed and applied pressure. That was what was needed. She had to stop the bleeding or he’d go into shock, and that could be fatal.

“Will he be all right?” Jago’s voice came out so querulously Morvoren had to turn her head to look at him. His rugged face had lost its outdoor color and his eyes held a mix of fear and worry. Of course. Kit had jokingly called Jago his favorite uncle, and although the older man had tossed the praise away by saying he was his only uncle, there’d been real pride in his eyes back then. It hadn’t occurred to Morvoren till now that Jago might love his nephew like a son.

If only she could say an unequivocal yes, but she couldn’t. That museum exhibition wouldn’t leave her mind. But she tried a nod. “I hope so.”

Taking a deep breath, she relaxed the pressure on the wound and took a peek to see if the bleeding had stopped. It had. Thank goodness it wasn’t arterial. He’d never have made it up from the beach if it had been.

Using some of the clean cloths Jenifry brought, Morvoren carefully cleaned the wound with the warm water and then doused it with the brandy as the next best thing to disinfectant. But what to do about the gaping wound? She’d have to stitch it carefully but leave somewhere for any infection to get out. And all she had for an antibiotic substitute was honey.

She peeked at Kit’s unconscious face. How pale he was, his lashes dark on his cheek and beads of sweat on his brow. This was a time when you could die from the slightest wound or illness… or infection. Please don’t let that happen to Kit.

She soaked the thread and needle in the brandy then, with careful hands, began to stitch the wound together, piecing the broken flesh in the hopes it wouldn’t leave him with too terrible a scar. This took some time.

Over by the door, Sam, his hand over his mouth, finally succumbed to nausea and beat a hasty retreat down the stairs, but Jenifry and Jago maintained a threatening presence as they loomed over her every move.

At last, she was done, and ready to plaster honey onto what had been a gaping hole in Kit’s arm but now looked like a particularly bad jigsaw of bloody flesh. She’d seen wounds like this before on horses, caused by barbed wire and fence posts, or the kick of another horse. But when she’d helped the vet treat them, they’d had modern medicines to fight infection. She applied a clean pad, wrapped his arm in bandages from shoulder to elbow and stepped back from the bloodied bed.

“He can’t lie in all that blood,” Jenifry said.

Morvoren nodded. “We should move him as little as possible in case we start the arm bleeding again. Slide him over to the clean side of the bed. That’ll do.”

Taking great care not to touch his arm, Jago and a returned Sam, still green about the gills, slid Kit to the clean side of his bed and Morvoren pulled the blankets up to cover him.

“Why’s he not wakin’ up?” Jenifry asked.