Blue Damask (20 page)

     “I will help you Monsieur, but I must then rejoin the men who brought me here.”

     “Who brought you here?”

     Elsa knew better than to point rudely.  She nodded toward the men who were watching them closely.

     Descartes raised his voice and said something in Arabic.  He had no qualms about pointing his finger at her.

     “I told them I needed to borrow you for a few hours.  They are Mehmet’s cousins. They know me.”

     “Why are you here, Monsieur Descartes?” she asked him as they picked their way to the edge of the desert where the land fell away to the flood plain of the Euphrates.  She kept an eye and an ear on the sky, but only the sun interrupted the blue expanse.

     “I am a geologist for the French government.”

     “I see.”

     “There they are,” he blew his breath out with relief.  “Below.”  He pointed down into the river valley.  Two dark brown horses stood near the bank of the river, grazing on the green grass that covered the banks for thirty feet on each side.  One was saddled, the other piled high with canvas-covered parcels.

     They made their way down.  Elsa tugged at her hand, but he refused to let her go.  His grip was not that of a gentleman helping her out of a motorcar, or a jailer keeping her in custody.  He held her like he might hold an unruly horse intent on escape.

     “I promised to treat your leg,
monsieur
.  You do not need to worry that I will run off.”

     He released her hand, but looked back at her over his shoulder.  He did fear the gangrene. She glanced down at the back of his leg.  What colored his trousers was not blood but what wept from a raw wound after many days without treatment.  She started itemizing what she would need.

     They reached his horses.  The pack horse did not interrupt its grazing as they approached, but the saddled animal raised its head and pricked its ears and came forward with a nicker.  Descartes patted its neck as he lifted the reins and handed them to Elsa.  “The medical supplies are in the satchel over his rump.”  He reached for the other horse’s halter rope and threw it over his shoulder as if he had done it a thousand times.  He tugged at the leather straps until a large pack fell away.  He caught it and lowered it to the ground.

     “Are we going to do it here?” she asked, looking around.  They were on the banks of the Euphrates in lush grass with plenty of water, soft damp soil, but no shelter.  This was obviously a flood plain, no buildings could be placed here, and only a fool would pitch a tent.  She looked up the rise they had just descended.  The land was dry there, and firm.  One could build a fire up there.

     “I will need to heat water,” she started, looking around for driftwood or anything that might burn.

     “No fires,
fraulein
.  Where would you get firewood? There are no trees here.  I have water and,” he made a sad face, “some Talisker.”

     She touched the bottle he indicated in the pack, “but I will need a fire to sterilize my scalpel if there is necrotic tissue that must be debrided.”

     He grimaced.

     “No scalpel?” She asked.

     “I have a knife,” he moved sideways so she could see the sheath buckled to his right upper thigh.  It was a long hunting knife.  The tip would work if he had a whetstone.  She opened her mouth to ask and he said, “I have a whetstone.”

     “I will have to finish before dark, then.”

     “You will.  It is nearly noon.  We can start now.”  He led the packhorse closer to the edge of the ravine that edged the river valley.

     Descartes hobbled the pack horse which immediately lowered its head and began on the grass again.  He unsaddled the riding horse and tethered him as well.  Elsa dug through the satchel looking for everything she would need.  The bottle of Talisker whiskey she picked up and examined.  “One hundred and fourteen proof” the label read proudly.  She set it carefully against a clump of grass.  Descartes had some rolled bandages and some handkerchiefs that had obviously been used and washed and dried several times.  When he was finished with the horses he came over to her and handed her the knife.  He dug around in a different satchel for the whetstone.

     “Sit down and take off your boots,” she told him.

     He did, then stood and looked around the valley.  They both listened before he obeyed.  He cocked his head at her as he unbuckled his belt. “This is not the place for a man to be caught with his pants down.”

     She laughed despite her anxiety about the plane. “I should say not.  But you seem confident we will be undisturbed for at least an hour.”

     “As I said, the plane must go back to Palmyra.”

     He lay down on his belly facing north, toward El Zor, and raised himself on his elbows.  Elsa positioned herself on the ground near his right knee and turned it to catch as much of the sunlight as possible.  His thighs were well-muscled, the skin above his knees was fair and healthy. But the entire surface of the back of his thigh was abraded with scabbed-over scrapes and small cuts.  Just above the back of his knee gaped a tear in the flesh that was an angry red and was swollen and discolored.  He twisted a little to look back at her.

     “How bad is it?” he asked.

     She used one of the handkerchiefs dipped in his whiskey and wrapped around her index finger to probe it.  The muscles tightened and the wound oozed more pink and cream-colored fluid that tricked into the hollow behind his knee and puddled there.  He sucked in his breath as she moved the lips of the wound to see how deep it went.  “It is not good,” she answered truthfully, “though I do not see signs of necrotic tissue.  How did this happen?”  She asked in order to distract him while she looked inside his little medical kit for a pair of tweezers.  It was obvious how this happened.  He had somehow slid down an embankment or a cliff and rubbed a goodly portion of his skin off the back of one leg, and then something sharp had gouged him for about ten centimeters...she found the tweezers and pressed them into the wound…and four centimeters deep.

     He arched his back and bent his head down over his arms gritting his teeth, but he didn’t move the leg.  He groaned long and loud as she probed it.  Something was in there.  She shifted her weight to improve her leverage and repositioned his leg to get a better grip, then used the tweezers to grip what she assumed was a shard of stone.  She pulled on it carefully, so not to lose it and squeezed the tweezers as hard as she dared.  She did not want it to snap in two.

     Descartes entire body went stiff from his shoulders to his toes and he blew through his nose like one of his horses.  His leg began to tremble, the thick muscles were like cables.  “I have it,
monsieur
.  One moment,” she murmured.  The shard emerged with a final tug and she held it up to the sun and turned it.  It was thin like a wafer with a jagged edge on one side.  It must have been very painful to walk with that behind his knee.  She dropped it in the grass and inserted the tweezers again, looking for another.  Descartes hung his head.  Through gritted teeth he said, “It was a stone, wasn’t it?”

     “Yes.  Though I am no geologist and cannot tell you if it is granite or sandstone.”

     “It is shale,” he answered.  “I have been taking my hammer to rock for years, and this is the first time a rock has hammered me.”

     She smiled grimly and went back in with the tweezers. She found smaller bits that the tweezers could bring out, but there was also fine sand and some gravel driven into the wound that could only come out with a long soak.  She looked at the river.  There was no way that water could clean his wound without being sterilized first.

     “
Monsieur
Descartes, I am going to need gallons of boiled water to clean this wound properly.  It is full of sand.”

     “
Oui
.  I tried to clean it after it happened, but had no water.  I could not get that damned rock out.”  His shoulders heaved with a great sigh.  “Thank you,” he finished.

     “I am not done dressing it.”  The wound began to weep since she had disturbed it, and had torn bits of flesh that had tried to heal around the rock fragment.  She bent the knee to encourage the drainage, and used his other handkerchiefs to catch the fluids.  “Well water is better than river water, certainly, but I could use a great deal of your costly whiskey and it would still need work.”  She pressed the handkerchief into the wound and he shuddered again.  “How far to a well?”

     There was a long pause before he answered, so long that Elsa leaned to the side to try to see his face.  He had gone beet red and beads of sweat stood out on his forehead as well as several veins along his temple.  She asked him again.  “How far to a well?”

     “At least,” he took a deep breath, “a kilometer.”

     She did the calculations in her head.  “I will be back in an hour or less if I take the horse.  Point to where it is.”  She set his knee down gently in the grass and gathered her feet under her to stand.

     “No, you can’t go.” He put a hand on her knee to keep her from standing.  “You don’t know where it is, and one of the Bedouin might find you.  In fact, I’m certain of it.  They will take the horse and then take you.  There is some water in a bag in the pack.”

     Elsa had really wanted to take a detour towards Deir El Zor to see what had happened.  The gunfire and air attack had lasted less than twenty minutes, as Descartes had said, but that did not mean there would not be terrible devastation.  She wondered if Sonnenby had been on one side or the other, or, as is often the case in this kind of conflict, distrusted and punished by both sides.   She reached for the whiskey bottle, pulled the cork and took a good swallow.

     “Let me have some of that,” he said, reaching behind him with effort and opening his hand.

     She gave him the bottle and sat back on her heels, watching him tip it up and swallow great gulps of it.  “Save some for your leg,
monsieur
,” she said.

     He rolled a little on his side to hand the bottle back, then flopped back to his stomach.  He rested his head sideways on bent arms as though he might sleep.  She retrieved the water bag from the pile of supplies and then picked up his leg and got back to work.  She was careful with the water. 

     The sun was halfway to the horizon when she finished.  The wound was cleaned with small streams of water and capfuls of whiskey and much of the sand and stone fragments removed with bare fingers and tweezers.  She folded the last clean handkerchief over the wound and wrapped it tightly with the bandages, tying it up tightly and tucking the ends neatly.

     “Done,” she said and patted his calf.  “You can put your trousers back on,
Monsieur
Descartes, and then your boots.  There was no response.  Elsa set his leg down.  A great snore from his chest and throat told her that he slept.  “
Sehr gut
.  Rest then.” she murmured.  She stood and moved the horses to fresh grass.  She already determined that this would not be a good place to camp for the night.  She looked up at the top of the gorge and saw some of the tribesmen silhouetted against the sky.  If they were standing so exposed, then there must no longer be any danger on the road that followed the river.  Would Sonnenby come looking for her?  Would Ozgur Mehmet?  They would certainly ask these men if they did, and now the tribesmen had seen the two Europeans in the river basin.  If they wanted her, they could find her.  She turned to look down at Descartes.  He continued to sleep deeply, either because he could not hold his whiskey or he was exhausted.  She would have to wake him.  They could not stay here overnight.

     She knelt by his head and shook his shoulder.  “
Monsieur
,” she called.  “Time to go.”

     He woke with a little start and squinted up at her.  “Ah,
Mademoiselle
, are you finished?”

     “I am, and we must get up the banks before dark, or we will have trouble finding a path or good footing for the horses.  Where will we sleep?”

     “I am staying with the family of Ozgur Mehmet.  His house is near here.”

     “How very convenient,” she murmured.  She helped him up.  He tried out his leg with a little shake and rested his weight on it.

     “How does it feel?”  She asked.

     “It burns,” he said.  “But in a good way.”

     She followed him as he limped toward the horses.  She handed him the parcels one by one and he secured them expertly on the pack frame, looping rope and tying knots.  She bent down and froze.  She could swear this next item was her own briefcase.  Her hand paused over it so long Descartes asked, “What is wrong?”

     “What is this case,
monsieur
?” she asked.

     “It is a mail parcel.”

     “Pardon?”

     “I am delivering it to Deir El Zor.  Or I was until that aeroplane interrupted my journey.”

     Elsa did not know what else to ask.  She lifted it and turned it over.  There were many new scuffs and even a thick new scratch along one side, but she recognized the brass closure that was missing a brad and the familiar leather strap with the frayed stitching that was its carrying handle.  It was heavier than she remembered, though.  There was more inside than just Lord Sonnenby’s medical files.

     “What is wrong,
madamoiselle
?”

     “This,” she glanced up at him and the blue eyes under the fedora were curious, “this is my case.”

     “Can you prove it?”  He extended an arm to take it and she gave it to him.  “What is inside?”

     “Lord Sonnenby’s medical files.  Perhaps something more has been added.”

     Descartes nodded as he went down on his good knee in the grass.  His fingers flipped the clasps and opened the case carefully.  On top, neatly folded, was the blue damask beaded gown.  Descartes lifted it off gently and gave her a look that suggested he was starting to believe it was hers.  Underneath was a white blouse, the black skirt, and the beautiful silk stockings but not the shoes, and the thick files with “H. Sinclair” typed and glued to each of them.  He sat back.  “I am inclined to believe you, Nurse Schluss.”

     “Who gave you this case?”

     “A man named Farmadi pulled it from the boot of his car, yesterday, south of Palmyra.  He told me to deliver it to Deir El Zor. He gave me bottles of Talisker in payment.”