Chapter Text
1780, New Jersey
Clarke heard the gunshot as if it came from within her own home, it was just so loud. It echoed through the woods that surrounded her house, ripping through the silence that had become the backdrop of her life. Clarke flinched and her hands shook; the sounding of only one, solitary shot not lessening the fear she felt blossoming in her breast.
There were no homesteads around for miles; only empty hunting shacks and lazily disassembled camps. Clarke was a good walk from the road that cut through this part of the forest, alone in her house with naught but animals for company. Isolation from other people was part of her punishment, away from the towns and the bustle she had once scorned, but now dearly missed. Deliveries of necessities were made only once a month – her mother keeping up on her familial duties – and the two maids that were chosen to join Clarke in her banishment with had long since fled. Not that Clarke blamed them; if she had anywhere to run to, she’d have long left her lonely house in the woods.
So she’s utterly alone out here, and someone with a gun was close enough that she could hear them.
Carefully, as if any sound she made would draw marauders to her doorstep, Clarke set down the shirt she had been darning. Her heart beat wildly in her chest, and her hands tremored like new leaves in a gust. It was dark out, the sun only a few hours away from setting and already gloom was settling over the landscape. Clarke’s tapers had been lit a while, and her supper cooked over the fireplace – her house was a veritable beacon in the dark. Hurriedly, she set about shutting the curtains, wincing at every scrape and scratch as she tugged the material across its metal runners.
Clarke spared a thought on how glad she was that in this house she had so few windows; in her old home in Philadelphia it took a whole army of servants to shut the house at night. Here, she only had three rooms, which was only half a dozen windows to cover. And here, in the sticks, she needn’t bother with a candle-snuffer, just blow them out and never mind the wax splatters. Clarke extinguished all but two of her lights.
She stayed by the window in the front room, the curtain half-raised warily as she peered out into the night. There was a rifle above the door, and a pistol hidden somewhere amongst her petticoats, and Clarke toyed with the thought of grabbing one of the weapons in preparation. She was a half-decent shot with either, her father had seen to that at least.
Clarke sat, huddled with worry, in a chair pressed close to the window for what felt like hours. The flintlock rifle had long since made its way into her clammy hands, loaded and ready. The animals behind her house were quiet and abed, settled in since the shot had ruptured their peace.
Which was how Clarke heard the rustling so easily.
She pulled down the curtain in panic, heart hammering once again. Outside, an indeterminable distance away, heavy footfalls crushed the debris of the forest floor and laboured grunts followed each step. Clarke held her breath, and flinched when the footsteps gave way to a loud thump. The breaths turned into a wheeze, and for a few heartbeats that was all the noise there was.
Clarke steeled herself, readying the rifle against her shoulder as she nudged the curtain out of the way so she could see the front of her property. Barely two dozen feet away lay a man-shaped lump, unmoving apart from the heave of his shoulders.
Clarke lowered the rifle to unlatch the door that led outside, but it was soon readied again, pointing at the collapsed man. It was not wrong to be afraid by the sight of an unknown man on her land, especially not after the commotion that happened only a short time ago. But Clarke was not the sort to let a man die without first asking how he came to be here.
There was a whole host of reasons why, all of which flitted through Clarke’s mind as she eyed the man-lump. News was one reason, a chance to learn something new of the world. Then the thought came that he might be an interesting conversation maker – or a murderer. Even still, it’d been too long since she’d last seen another human being to just let one die in front of her.
Her steps towards the man were not strides, but her legs were unhindered by the breeches she wore instead of a dress – if she had to live the rest of her life by herself, she might as well do it in comfort. Clarke found that she could no longer deal with bustles, hoops, and the endless amounts of layers that formed the voluminous skirts of the city. Pilfered men’s clothing and badly tailored shirts would do her just fine.
The man on the ground was a particularly large man, Clarke observed as she drew closer, far too large for her to fight off if things were to go awry. He was on his side, curled in onto himself like a child, head tucked to his chest. But he didn’t move the slightest bit, even as she began to speak to him.
“You there, man on the ground,” Clarke paused, body poised, ready to turn on her heel and flee back to her house. “Can you hear me?”
Clarke moved her finger from the trigger to the guard as she lowered the muzzle to poke the man’s shoulder. He wheezed and grunted, but didn’t open his eyes. His face was dirtied and half-hidden by shadow, but Clarke could see the pain that caused his features to crease. She leant closer, eyes tracing over his features – as if she could tell by countenance alone if he was friend or foe. He was too muddied for her to tell.
His clothes were plain, not that of a soldier of any army, nor indicating that he was a man of means. His thick, woollen jacket was sturdy and well made, but several years out of fashion and irretrievably worn. Clarke used the musket to push him fully onto his back, and the well-worn jacket fell open to reveal a shirt heavily soaked with blood.
Clarke gasped, nearly dropping her rifle. At least now she knew that he wasn’t the one who had done the shooting, but the one who had been shot – which was neither a comfort nor a relief. She glanced at the man’s face again, witnessing the pain there. Clarke froze for a moment, her teeth worrying at her lip, sense warring with instinct. This man could be no good; he could be a thief or a criminal, a deserter from one of the armies. Or he could be a man who was simply caught by those sorts of bad people.
Either way, she couldn’t just let him die.
“Oh, hell.” She swore.
Her mind made up, Clarke shouldered her rifle and began the struggle of getting the man to her house. He was just so large. And heavy. Even as she wedged her arms under his shoulders and locked her fingers across his chest, she could barely keep him up. Clarke was huffing and grunting as she dragged him across the forest floor, strands of pale hair escaping her braid and sticking to her sweaty forehead. She muttered and cursed (bad words she’d delightedly started using often now she was a woman of the wilds) as she struggled with the bulk of him. Her heels dug into the soft ground and she nearly slipped several times, her grip around the man tightening as she stumbled.
Inside the house, she left a muddy trail behind her as she pulled him towards her bedroom, and it was almost beyond her strength to get him up onto her bed. Clarke sat on the bed next to him, holding him against her as she worked to strip off the old, woollen coat. When he fell back down against her quickly dirtying covers, Clarke ran back into the front room, diving for the cabinet that held all her sewing equipment, then rummaged through the cupboard that hosted her meagre supply of liquor. She threw it down on the rug by the bed, then ferried in the lit tapers, lighting a few more on the way. The soft light the candles gave out did little to soften the sight before her, and Clarke had to shake herself to avoid becoming transfixed by the sight of so much blood.
“Hold yourself together, woman. He’s bleeding to death in your house.” Clarke reprimanded herself, rolling up her shirt-sleeves and readying herself. Even under all the grime, Clarke could see the man quickly becoming paler as she dithered.
Clarke threaded the needle before her hands could become slippery with blood, biting off the thread with her teeth. She pulled up the man’s shirt to inspect the wound, quickly taking in the circular musket-ball hole in his abdomen and the blood quickly fleeing his body, but when she slipped her hand under his body to find the exit wound she swore loudly.
There wasn’t one.
The ball was still inside him.
“Oh, good lord,” Clarke muttered, half-worried that the man before her might die, and half-annoyed that whoever shot him didn’t such a bad job of it. She was quickly growing attached to the idea of having a person to talk to, and the thought that someone might dangle him in front of her - only for him to die before they could exchange words - was enough to gain her ire.
Now, Clarke knew how to see to most injuries, her mother had made sure of that. ‘No matter how high a woman’s station, she ought to know how to soothe hurts’ was one of the many lessons that Clarke’s mother had forced upon her. As a result, Clarke’s embroidery was always clinical rather than beautiful, that skill so pivotal to healing not quite translating to Clarke’s ideals of art. But as well as Clarke could sew and concoct poultices, she’d never gone fishing for a musket-ball.
A grimly-humorous thought flitted through Clarke’s mind; it would be quite like stuffing a turkey in reverse.
She splashed brandy on her hands, on the wound, then down her neck - grimacing all the while at the man’s groans - and before she lost her nerve she plunged her fingers into his side.
He gasped immediately, pain no doubt ricocheting through him. Clarke apologised out loud and in her own mind, closing her eyes so she could concentrate on feeling for the ball and not on the anguished face beneath her. It was an awful feeling, to be messing about with someone’s innards, yet she persisted, bracing one hand on the man’s chest as she fished about. He was groaning and moaning beneath her, unconscious still but shrinking away from her touch.
Clarke yelled in triumph when she finally grasped the ball, withdrawing it as quickly as she could whilst still being gentle. As soon as the ball was clear of his body, the man relaxed, the lines on his mucky face easing out. But he was still pale and clammy, losing far too much blood – all of it fleeing onto Clarke’s sheets.
Clarke’s sewing was quick and neat, her stitches even and well placed as she pulled the wound close. It was a simple matter to pad the wound with a fresh sheet from the trunk under Clarke’s bed, ripping half of it into strips to hold the padding in place. The first few layers turned red almost immediately, but when Clarke was finished only pristine white bandages looked back at her.
For a while after she’d finished the operation, Clarke simply sat and watched the man sleep, each breath slowly getting stronger. Pain flashed across his face randomly, but he didn’t wake. But if she’d done her job properly, which she was sure she had, he would recover. Clarke very nearly joined him in sleep, the urge to close her eyes growing stronger with every moment that passed. She slumped back on her bed, exhausted from the initial panic and then the rush of activity – from the terror of holding a man’s life in her hands.
But then she became aware of the blood drying on her hands and arms, and of the feel of it across her face. It startled her, and she launched herself back into action, stepping towards the tall, free-standing looking-glass and gazing at the blood-stained woman it showed.
“I look like a wild woman,” she told herself quietly, squinting at her reflection, “Or one of those Scottish witches who dance naked around standing stones.”
Clarke scrubbed a hand across her face, grimacing as dried blood flaked and crumbled under her touch. Her shirt was most likely ruined, but her breeches were dark enough to weather the damage. She snagged a fresh set of clothes from her room, then ventured back into the front room.
A great, muddy trail had been left where she’d dragged the man through her house, and Clarke’s nose wrinkled at the sight of it. But that was a task for the morning; right now she had other things to deal with.
She removed the cooking pot from the fireplace, wrapping the handle and setting it to rest on a covered part of the dining table. Then Clarke went to the store room, fetching one of the casks she left out every time it rained. It was only half full, but more than enough to fill a few pots to put over the fire. She left them to warm as she fed herself, eating straight out of the cookpot instead of using some of her energy to fetch a bowl. The stew had thickened overmuch, but Clarke was currently too tired to care. She slumped into one of the chairs around the table and cradled her head in her hands, tiredness creeping on her quickly. She could feel the blood under her nails.
Clarke raised her head after a while, fairy certain she’d dozed off, and checked the water. It was hot, revealing that she had, in fact, fallen asleep at the table. Clarke stripped off every garment that had been touched by blood, dumping it into one of the pots, and took another off the fire to wipe herself down. The water coloured quickly in each, and Clarke tried not to think about it. The hot water didn’t quite wake her up, but she felt oddly aware of it as it trickled down her neck. Clarke stood, mostly naked, in her front room and spared a thought for how truly awful her evening had been.
Then she carried on scrubbing herself until she was free of blood.
She pulled on the fresh clothes and snagged her apron from by the fire, and heaved the third pot of water into her bedroom. The fireplace opposite her bed needed stoking, and she set to that as she let the water cool down slightly. Then she turned her attention to the unconscious, potentially dangerous man in her bed.
Clarke had no idea of who he was; whether he was a gentleman or a rouge; whether he might thank her for her services or murder and rob her. She had no idea whether she was right in saving him, or if she should have left him to die in the woods.
But such thoughts were useless now. He would live, and Clarke was responsible for that recovery. And as he was now her patient, Clarke would see him treated well.
The woollen coat she had tossed to the floor was picked up and folded neatly, and Clarke carefully set about removing the rest of the man’s clothing – all of it bloodied and dirtied beyond anything she’d ever seen. Blood that was older than what was on his shirt speckled his outfit, and Clarke had to firmly banish all thoughts to the back of her mind as she carried the garments out and added them to the pot containing her own sullied articles.
Then she set about washing her patient.
The cloth she used came away nearly black on its first pass of his body, and did very little to lift the grime. Clarke wrung it out with a grimace, and went back to work, pleased in her work every time she revealed an inch more of clean skin.
It was dark skin, she noticed as she wiped, the colour of apple cider or an almond nut, and freckled liberally. Especially on his face, which was quite handsome beneath the dirt. Clarke moved her cloth carefully as she swept the muck from his angular jaw and plump lips, indecent thoughts springing to mind. She chastised herself, but more thoughts appeared as her eyes flickered down to strong shoulders and a well-defined chest. After all, she’d be one her lonesome for quite some time.
“He is my patient,” Clarke murmured softly as she wrung the cloth out a final time, having cleaned the man as much as she could in such dark light, “and injured at that.”
Clarke dressed him, still muttering even as she covered his admirable chest and his pleasing features were marred by the pain caused by the movement. She strode to the front door to toss out the dirtied water, hissing at the cool night air that greeted her.
“This isn’t Philadelphia anymore, Clarke,” she reminded herself firmly, “the men in these parts aren’t as the men in the city.”
“But they are still men,” she mused as she tidied up her sewing kit and replaced the brandy, “and men are the same no matter where they are.”
“I realise it’s quite lonely in these woods, and that you no longer have the men chasing you as you did in Philadelphia, but there is still such a thing as standards,” Clarke told herself as she covered the stew and put out the fire.
“Besides which, he is wounded – quite gravely. And that’s if he even expresses any sort of interest.” Clarke paused as she checked her rifle over, snorting lightly, “Which he will, obviously. This might not be Philadelphia but he certainly isn’t blind.”
“I don’t think so, anyways.” She added as she pulled a blanket from the end of her bed,
“Though I suppose I won’t be able to tell until he wakes up. If he ever wakes up.” She pursed her lips as she tied her guests hand to the bedframe, knotting a spare strip of linen gently but firmly around his wrist.
“Of course,” she murmured as she settled down in the armchair in the bedroom, a blanket over her knees and the musket balanced on top, “none of this could matter anyways. He might murder me come morning.”
Then she went to sleep.