“Qu'est-ce que vous voulez, madame? cried the voice of one grizzled old card player
“Le medecin,” I returned, after an instant's panicked retrieval of my schoolgirl French. “M'sieur Hill. Estil ici?”
A small figure rose up from the floor like Beelzebub, and saluted me with a bow: Mr. Hill, I did not doubt. He was spare of form, with a periwig affixed rather carelessly on a bony head; shirtsleeves turned back, forearms bare, and a heavy black apron over his shirt-front and trousers. I should have known him for a naval surgeon in a moment; his very air suggested shipboard economy.
“You one of the naval ladies, I trust?” he enquired without preamble.
“My name is … Miss Austen,” I stammered. “And you are … Mr. Hill?”
His eyes surveyed me shrewdly; it was a measuring glance, as my brother Edward might assess the points of a prospective hunter, and I quailed at the surgeon's calculation of my fitness or courage. The awful truth of my careless undertaking had fallen full upon me. When Mrs. Braggen proposed the duty this morning, I accepted with the view to a litde French conversation. I thought to soothe a fevered brow, and discover, in the process, whether any of the Manon's crew was held at Wool House. But I found myself in the midst almost of batde. There was nothing of frivolity here; no easy passage for deception. These men represented the harsh spoils of war, in all their misery and deprivation; and however soon they might be exchanged, I should not lightly forget them. I fought the impulse to turn and pound heartily upon the door in expectation of die Marines.
“You are some relation to Captain Frank Austen?” Mr. Hill enquired.
“His sister, sir.”
The surgeon wiped an instrument absently on his canvas apron, and nodded. “I met with the Captain some once or twice, while serving in the Indies. You'll do. Pray follow me.”
I took up the basin he thrust into my hands, and commenced to spoon weak gruel between the cracked lips of one unshaven face after another. And presently— as though I had been no more than an insect that came to light upon a table—I was dismissed from the interest of the French, as care for their own consuming anxieties superseded the novelty of my presence. The card players returned to their gambling, and the sick to their pitiful moaning. I followed Mr. Hill in a sort of macabre dance, stooping and rising, from one sad pallet to the next, and felt that the line of suffering should never come to an end.
The contagion was of a peculiar kind: some of my patients were o'erspread with red spots; others suffered trembling so acute, they could neither stand nor hold a spoon; all were racked with fever. But I detected no inflammation of the lungs—no catarrh, that might be manifest in coughing; whatever the ill, it could not be laid to the account of Southampton's raw weather.
“What ails these men?” I whispered once.
“Gaol-fever,” replied Mr. Hill grimly. “A common enough complaint, when so many are forced to shift together like beasts in a barn. But there is litde a surgeon may do for such a malady. I have bled them; I have given water; and for the rest—God shall provide.”1
From the look of the poor wretches lying about the floor, all that God was likely to provide, I knew, was a foreign grave.
WE WORKED IN SILENCE, BUT FOR THE FEW WORDS OF direction Mr. Hill deemed necessary. I emptied cham
ber pots through the barred windows into the Southampton gutters; I cleaned wounds with rags dipped in hot water; I pressed cold compresses against fevered brows; and once, to my horror, I was required to hold steady the shoulders of a man while Mr. Hill probed his angry flesh for the bullet buried there. Far from interrogating the assembled enemy, I was tongue-tied with pity and horror. At this rate, I thought despondently, I should learn nothing that might support Captain Seagrave's claims of innocence.
My passage among the pallets had revealed one item of intelligence, however. Members of the Manon's crew were certainly among the inmates of Wool House. I learned this not from any words of French that were spoken, but from a lady's skill at observing the fine points of dress. It is a seaman's habit to embroider ribbons upon his shiny tarpaulin hat; the ribbons invariably bear the name, in bright letters, of the ship that he serves. Four at least proclaimed