A King's Cutter Read Online Free PDF Page B

relieved exhaustion.
    â€˜Here, one of you, help me . . . 
m’aidez
!’
    Drinkwater found a glass and half filled it with cognac. He swallowed as the elder man came forward. Drinkwater held out the glassand the man took it eagerly.
    â€˜Get his clothes off. Use a knife . . . d’you understand?’ The man nodded and began work. Drinkwater invoked the memory of Surgeon Appleby and tried to remember something of what he had been told, what he had seen a lifetime earlier in the stinking cockpit of
Cyclops
. It seemed little enough so he refilled the tumbler, catching the woman’s eyes and the hostility in them. The fiery liquid made him shudder and he ignored the woman’s hauteur.
    He bent over the Frenchman. ‘Who the devil is he?’ he asked.
    â€˜His name,
m’sieur
,’ said the elder Frenchman working busily at the seam of the unconscious man’s coat, ‘is Le Comte de Tocqueville, I am Auguste Barrallier, late of the Brest Dockyard . . .’ He pulled the sleeve off and ripped the shirt. ‘The young man beside you is Etienne Montholon,
mam’selle
is his sister Hortense.’ From the woman came an indrawn breath that might have been disapproval of his loquacity or horror as Barrallier revealed the count’s shoulder, peeling the coat and shirt off the upper left breast. De Tocqueville groaned, raised his head and opened his eyes. Then his head lolled back. ‘Lost a lot of blood,’ said Drinkwater, thankful that the man was unconscious.
    Barrallier discarded the soaked clothing. Drinkwater swabbed the wound clean and watched uncertainly as more blood oozed from the bruised, raw flesh.
    â€˜The arabs use a method of washing with the wine,
m’sieur
,’ offered Barrallier gently, ‘perhaps a little of the cognac might be spared, yes?’ Drinkwater reached for the bottle.
    â€˜He was shot . . .’ The young man, standing now next to Barrallier, spoke for the first time. He stated the obvious in that nervous way the uncertain have. Drinkwater looked up into a handsome face perhaps twenty years old.
    Drinkwater slipped his hand beneath the count’s shoulder. He could feel the ball under the skin. Roughly he scraped the wound to remove any pieces of clothing and poured a last measure of cognac over the mess. He searched among the apothecary’s liniments and selected a pot of bluish ointment, smearing the contents over the wound, covering it with a pledget and then a pad made from the count’s shirt.
    â€˜Hold that over the wound while we turn him over.’ Drinkwater nodded to Barrallier who put out his bloody hands, then he looked at Montholon. ‘Hold his legs,
m’sieur
, if you would. Cross them over, good. Now, together!’
    Bracing themselves against
Kestrel
’s windward pitch they rolled De Tocqueville roughly over. Drinkwater was feeling more confident, the brandy was doing its work well. An over-active part of his brain was emerging from reaction to the events of the last hours, already curious about their passengers.
    â€˜Your escape was none too soon.’ He said it absently, preoccupied as he rolled the tip of his forefinger over the blue lump that lay alongside the count’s scapula. He did not expect the gasp to come with such vehemence from the woman, cutting through the thick air of the cabin with an incongruous venom that distracted him into looking up.
    She had thrown back the hood of her cloak and the swinging lantern caught copper gleams from the mass of auburn hair that fell about her shoulders. She appeared older than her brother with strong, even features heightened by the stress she was under. She stared at Drinkwater from level grey eyes and again he felt her hostility. Her lack of gratitude piqued him and he thought of the two dead and three wounded of
Kestrel’s
crew that had been the price of her escape.
    Angry, he bent again over