Bloodline, Chapter Five - One Step Forward
Chapter One is here: http://community.livejournal.com/housefic/918594.html#cutid1
Chapter Two is here: http://community.livejournal.com/housefic/932770.html#cutid1
Chapter Three is here: http://community.livejournal.com/housefic/956734.html#cutid1
Chapter Four is here: http://community.livejournal.com/housefic/969650.html#cutid1
TITLE: Bloodlines
AUTHOR: maddoggirl
PAIRING: H/W gen
RATING: PG-13 for 19th century cussin’ and one use of the N-word that my Grandma still thinks is acceptable. Oh, and more laudanum use *grin*
SUMMARY: Civil War AU. Even on opposite sides of a war, Fate has a way of bringing them together...
A/N: Thanks once more to maineac, my beta, whose patience is limitless in correcting my abuses of the English language. And also, for this chapter, the French language. Is there nothing she can’t do? And thanks to all you reviewers, who are kindness itself. Next chapter should be up before my birthday (5th March - yay, I’ll be sixteen!).
Perry County, Tennessee - April 13th, 1862
“Wake up.”
“Wake up.” A little louder this time.
“Corporal Wilson!” the voice barked, and a cane was thrust into Wilson’s ribs. His eyes flew open, startled, and he sat bolt upright. It took him a few seconds to remember where he was, wrapped in his blanket by the banks of a narrow creek, of which there seemed to be hundreds in the area, amongst the thick grass and low bushes. House was standing over him, and when he was satisfied that his prisoner was awake, he began to walk away. Wilson rubbed his eyes hard and blinked several times. The sun was coming up, and a fire was already crackling nearby.
House, he noticed, was walking extremely slowly, his gait more uneven than usual. The stench of laudanum was still in the air where he had formerly stood. Wilson smelt it and dragged himself to his feet. He clutched the blanket around himself and moved sleepily to the warmth of the fire. The mules were digging into the oats which had been thrown onto the ground in front of them.
“Last time I cook. Your turn next,” House said, as Wilson settled himself on the opposite side of the flames. The captain had already rigged the cooking pot above the heat.
“All right,” Wilson agreed, distantly. “Is your leg worse?”
“The ground and my leg are engaged in an ongoing dispute.”
Wilson reached into a pocket and pulled out a piece of hardtack. With some effort, he snapped off a corner and ground his teeth into it, growling, “Y’hear the one about the feller that bit into his hardtack and found something soft? A six-inch nail.”
House snorted softly at the joke and stirred the pot. Wilson leaned over and looked into it.
“Beans. How long you had ‘em in there?”
“Few hours.”
Wilson looked up in surprise and House averted his eyes. “Couldn’t sleep. Go get a couple of dishes.”
Wilson fetched the tin plates and spoons from their baggage and set them down by the fire. House spooned the beans onto them, and there was a short silence. A flock of birds passed across the dawn sky, and something rustled in the bushes nearby, but no other sound was in the air.
“If your leg…”
“Tomorrow we’ll be in a boarding house. We got the money.”
“That sounds good,” Wilson said, encouragingly. He got up and carried the pan to the creek. When he had rinsed and refilled it, he shook in sugar and coffee powder from the saddlebags and hung it back over the fire. House picked up a three-day old newspaper and began to read it.
Wilson did not look entirely satisfied. He looked, in fact, decidedly shifty. He saw that House was looking at him hard over the paper.
“What?” he demanded roughly.
“Huh?” Wilson paused, spoon in mouth, then swallowed the beans and said, uncertainly, “What if there ain’t any room in a hotel, or they’re all closed up because of the fighting?”
House grinned wickedly. “Well, what would your dearest mother say if she knew little Jimmy had spent the night in a brothel?”
He watched with pleasure as Wilson blushed furiously and then replied with a flippant, “She’d probably be glad I held a woman down that long.”
House looked at him curiously, and Wilson shook his head and lowered his eyes as though he wished he had not spoken. Looking up to see that House still stared at him, he felt compelled to explain himself.
“I been engaged three times.”
House let out a rude snort of derisive laughter. “Really? Never married any of them?”
Wilson shook his head, looking mortified, and tried to keep his eyes on his plate. It was difficult to maintain cool detachment when House was still grinning in obvious glee. “Oh boy!” he exclaimed in ghastly delight, “What happened? They decided they’d rather throw themselves in the lake than become Mrs. Wilson?”
Wilson’s face began to cloud as embarrassment gave way to anger. House continued blithely, “What an idiot! Anyone stupid enough to say he’ll marry a girl deserves all he gets, but…”
“Hell, you’re one to talk so!” Wilson suddenly shouted, leaping to his feet. “You been married!”
The silence that followed this exclamation was a heavy one, filled only by Wilson’s ragged breathing. A stunned expression on House’s face called the younger man back to his senses immediately. He sat down heavily, suddenly calm and remorseful. “I saw the ring mark on your finger. Ain’t common on a man, so I noticed. I’m sorry I mentioned it. How long ago’d she die?”
House looked as through he had been kicked in the teeth, but admiration for Wilson’s observation skills moved him to give an answer.
“She isn’t dead.” As soon as the words left his mouth, House stood up, gritting his teeth in pain, and stumped across to the mules. He began saddling them and attaching their saddlebags. Wilson stood up and looked after him uncertainly. He wondered whether he should ask any more or whether he had done enough damage to the tentative understanding between them. He decided that things would not be worsened by a natural follow-up question.
“Well…what, then? What happened?”
“Same as with you. Didn’t work out,” House said. He threw a couple of tin cups at Wilson. “Coffee’s ready.”
Wilson picked up the cups but did not move to fill them. “You…divorced?”
“Yeah. Fill those cups.”
“I never met anyone divorced before,” Wilson muttered, pouring the steaming hot coffee into the cups and sipping at his meditatively. He carried House’s to him, which earned him a grunt of appreciation. The captain stopped equipping their mounts to sit on a tree stump and drink. “Oh, for God’s sakes, Wilson,” he snapped, “stop looking at me like I ate your mother. Anyone would think I divorced you.”
They rode for most of the day, with short breaks for the mules to rest. At five o’clock, they came to a small town. As they trotted along the main street, locals came out onto their porches or stared from behind windows. Wilson looked about him uneasily - this was not a town that was used to strangers. Next to him, House clicked softly to get Wilson’s attention.
“Wilson,” he hissed, “try to look a little happier.”
“Huh? Why?”
“The way the locals are looking at us, I get the impression that this is not Union occupied land. In fact,” he mumbled, “I think you ought to do the talking while we’re here. I’ll wait here; you go into that barroom and ask around for somewhere to stay. If possible, somewhere I won’t leave with a steak knife in my back.”
“Right you are,” Wilson muttered, raising his eyebrows and sliding stiffly to the ground. After dusting down his clothes, he took a deep breath and walked into the darkened saloon.
He re-emerged into the sunlight ten minutes later, smelling slightly of liquor, to find House sitting on the edge of the porch, tapping his cane between his ankles. Wilson cleared his throat softly.
“Feller in the bar said there’s a woman in the next street who rents out a room.”
“Good. Let’s go. And that’s one whiskey you owe the Union.”
The woman turned out to be a sprightly widow of about fifty, who was more than happy to put up the two men for a very reasonable fee. The room she showed them to was small, containing two narrow beds and a large wooden dresser and not a lot else. The window looked down into a dusty alleyway, which House now stared out over as Wilson staggered into the room and dumped their baggage on the floor, puffing.
“You know, I think you could have managed some of this…” he mumbled, falling down into a small, low armchair and closing his eyes.
“Maybe, but it wasn’t worth the risk. What if I’d fallen down on the stairs and hurt a leg?” House said, turning from the window and looking at the recumbent Wilson. “You lazy sonofabitch,” he said, almost fondly. “The widow said there’s a room at the end of the hall with a washstand. You can go get clean.”
When Wilson had dug a bar of soap from their luggage and slipped out of the room, House let out a long, ragged breath. The pain he had been hiding for hours seemed to surge through him violently and he shuddered uncontrollably with it. He tried to step forward, his leg burned and he fell to the floor with a wild jerk. He suppressed a cry of pain and reached a hand out along the floorboards. The bags Wilson had brought in were a few inches away from his face. His hand clutched at various pouches and satchels until he grabbed a flat, hard package. He lifted his head from the ground and tore the brown paper with his teeth. Inside was a dark wooden box with a brass clasp on the front. House ground his teeth as he dragged himself into a sitting position against the bed with the box in one hand, then opened it. Inside were a glass syringe and four small glass bottles containing a clear liquid. The pain was so bad now that he barely saw his own hands as they prepared the syringe and his hands shook as he measured the liquid from one of the small bottles and returned it to its case.
His arm seemed to blur before his eyes and he was aware that he was making a strange sound, like an animal mewling. At least he wasn’t screaming. A strong wave of agony passed through him, and, instinctively, he plunged the hand downwards and felt the needle prick his arm. His shaking thumb pushed the plunger down, and then his hand, holding the syringe so tightly that his knuckles were white, fell limply down at his side and he arched his head back, waiting.
As soon as the pain began to fade, House stirred himself into action. He put away the wooden box and began trying to clean himself up before Wilson returned. He washed his face, shaved off most off the three-day growth and combed his hair, checking the red rims around his eyes were nearly gone. He felt shaky and slightly sick, but at least his leg didn’t feel like a hand was gripping his tendons and twisting them, ripping them out. A little light-headed, perhaps, but Wilson couldn’t notice that. He leaned out the window and took some deep breaths as Wilson’s returning footsteps became apparent in the hall. The door opened and Wilson strode in, looking flushed and healthy.
“Can I borrow that comb?”
“Sure,” House said absently. Wilson crossed to the basin, next to the window, and picked the comb up. He squinted into the mirror, but his arm paused halfway to his head. He looked at House’s reflection, and something was not right. He could feel House tense next to him, though he kept his gaze fixed out the window.
“House?” Wilson said hesitantly. House turned his head just slightly; enough to see Wilson’s confused face.
“What?”
“Are you all right?...Your shirt...” Wilson trailed off, and House looked down at himself, puzzled. His shirt was wet, sides and back covered in sweat.
“Oh, God…damn it…I’m going to go wash…” House muttered, grabbing his only other shirt from the pile of luggage and leaving as quickly as he could manage, with Wilson staring after him.
The bathroom at the end of the hall contained a large washstand and a tin bath. The bath was half-full and set before a roaring open fire in the rear wall of the small room. House realised, as he undressed, that Wilson had done this for him, and he half-smiled. This smile soon faded as he peeled off his soaked shirt and threw it down in disgust. He was angry with himself for overlooking something so obvious, so elementary. He had done everything to disguise his activities from Wilson, yet forgotten the most glaringly obvious thing...He stopped himself, telling himself that Wilson wouldn’t make the connection, wouldn’t think any more about it.
House remembered, with a pang, the wedding ring conversation. Maybe Wilson was smarter than he thought.
Wilson looked at his reflection, dissatisfied. His white shirt was depressingly filthy, and the bottoms of his trousers were frayed and encrusted with mud. He dipped his razor in the basin, then carefully raised it to the edge of his untidy moustache. He breathed shallowly, pulling down his upper lip to get a clearer view and gently touched the metal to his skin…
“Shave it off, it’s ugly!” House barked from the doorway. Wilson dropped the razor into the basin with a clang, closed his eyes and exhaled loudly.
“You want me to cut my head off?”
“That’d be a little drastic. Perhaps a paper bag would do the trick…” House replied, settling himself into the armchair.
“Can I have fifty cents?” Wilson asked, tugging at his collar unhappily.
“What for? You gonna buy a shirt?”
“Fixin’ to,” Wilson replied. “You seem better,” he added. House wasn’t sure whether his tone was supposed to be significant or not. He shrugged and nodded.
“Help yourself. Take a dollar and you can get some food. Remember you’re cooking tomorrow - you thought of anything creative you can do with hardtack and salt beef?”
“I was gonna fix us something Cajun,” Wilson said, crossing the room and taking the shabby dollar bill House held towards him. “My grandfather - my mother’s father - was Cajun. He lived with us when I was a boy, taught me some cooking of theirs.”
“He teach you French?” House demanded. Not waiting for a reply, seeing from Wilson’s face that it would be affirmative, he continued, “Speak some.”
Wilson rubbed his sunburned neck thoughtfully, pocketed the dollar, and said hesitantly, “Esker-voo voolay allay avec mwah oo restay ici? Si votrer jamb…” he paused and searched for an appropriate continuation, “ay peer, put-etrer voo devay voo cooshay.”
House looked vaguely horrified by the communication. “What in God’s name was that? I thought French was supposed to be a beautiful language?”
“Not my French,” Wilson grinned.
“Well, what’d you say?”
“I said ‘Do you want to come with me or stay here? If your leg is worse, maybe you should go to bed.’”
“Thanks for the advice, but…” House was cut off by a knock at the door and the sound of the widow’s voice from behind it.
“Gentlemen? Are y’all in there?” There was a silence as House ignored the question. Wilson waited until he saw that he wasn’t planning on replying.
“Yes’m,” Wilson called back finally, walking forward and opening the door a little. “What’s the matter?”
“Two gentlemen from the plantation want to speak to the surgeon. He might oughta come downstairs and see for hisself,” the woman said. Wilson turned to where House sat and raised his eyebrows questioningly. House rolled his eyes and pulled himself out of the armchair, grasping for his cane.
In the small parlour were the two visitors. One sat on the hard purple sofa, a tall man in a black suit and Derby hat with a small blond moustache. The other was a redhead in a rough gray coat and dusty brick-red trousers who stood by the window with his hands behind his back. He turned as House and Wilson entered, with the widow following at a distance, and smiled amiably but did not speak. The man in the suit stood up and held out his hand.
“I’m Al Fosse. This is my brother-in-law, Henry Franklin.”
Wilson shook the proffered hand and nodded politely. “James Wilson. I’m proud to meet y’all.”
The visitors looked expectantly at House.
“Gregory House. I’m not.”
Wilson coughed loudly and attempted to move the conversation on. “Y’all are from the plantation? What’s the matter?”
“Nigger bust a foot,” Franklin spoke for the first time, moving in from the window, “We’d be mighty glad if you’d take a look.”
“No,” House cut in firmly. “Where’s your doctor?”
“The Federal troops took our doctor last month,” Fosse said pointedly. “If you won’t come, we’ll have to ride out to Goshawk City. That’s eight miles away from here, and the buck might be dead by then.”
“Well, if…” Wilson began, but House interrupted with an indignant expression.
“Hey! I’m the boss here! Don’t listen to him, gentlemen, he’s a prisoner. What happened to this feller’s foot?”
“Got crushed in one of the gins. Needs seeing to mighty soon or he’ll be crippled, I reckon.”
“And how awful that would be,” House remarked dryly. “Wilson, the plight of these gentlemen has moved me. Fetch my kit from upstairs.”
“Right you are, boss. Guess I can forget about that new shirt…” Wilson muttered. House grinned wickedly in reply and watched the younger man head for the stairs.
It was a bumpy ride in Fosse and Franklin’s pony trap, over rough farm tracks cut by the frequent passage of carts. The plantation was about two miles out of town, in a wide green valley giving way to fields of darker green stalks. Hunched figures, miniscule at first then getting clearer as they approached, moved in slow lines along the rows of newly growing cotton plants. Men in wide hats sat atop horses at either end of the fields, whips curled over their shoulders. The heat through the canvas wagon cover was intense. House shifted uncomfortably and tapped his cane on the floor of the wagon as a display of his annoyance. Wilson sat next to him on the bench seat and clasped the medical kit. He felt sick from the movement of the wagon over the dried-out, bumpy track. His throat was parched and his stomach was rebelling against him with every jolt of the vehicle. They passed over a track running between two fields, heading for the slave cabins beyond them. Wilson turned his pale, sweating face to the open air and his glassy eyes met those of the slaves, who laboured in the fields on either side of the track. A short woman in a shapeless dress with a baby in a sling over her back unbent herself to look at him. Their eyes locked for a strange moment before a rough call from one of the overseers called her back to work. At the far edge of the field, an overseer uncurled his whip and snapped it at some unfortunate below him. Wilson closed his eyes and tried to block out the sound.
“I know, I know. You’re thinking: ‘Why aren’t they singing?’,” House muttered, next to him.
They came past the fields and into an expanse of cleared ground on which stood many wooden cabins. Perhaps a hundred in all, Wilson thought. On the hill above the huts was a large, white-plastered house with grand Roman-style pillars in front of it. As the wagon halted in the midst of the cabins, the sound of wailing became perceptible. House and Wilson climbed out from the wagon, and Fosse and Franklin jumped down from the driving platform up front. The cries of pain came from one of the nearer huts.
“I’ll show the way,” Fosse said cordially, seemingly oblivious to the distressed groans which Wilson could not ignore.
The cabin was one large room divided by a flimsy partition. The floor was bare clay with a canvas mat which looked like it was made of sacking in the centre of it. On one side of the partition, three little boys and a girl were curled on the floor, two of them crying, with an older woman shushing them. One the other side, the injured man lay on a straw pallet, writhing and gasping, with two women kneeling at his side. One wept, while the other cleaned the blood from the man’s foot with a bowl of water and a rag. His foot was a mess, but Wilson saw immediately that the injury was not so bad as to merit amputation. It needed some shattered bone removal, re-setting, stitching... It needed...a surgeon. He spun to face House, who was looking thoughtfully at the slave.
“Aren’t you gonna help him?” Wilson demanded, growing distressed at the piteous screams filling the room.
“No. You are. You got the kit, you do it.”
Wilson opened his mouth to protest, but House was already walking away. Sighing, Wilson knelt down by the man’s side. Fosse and Franklin had not entered the hut, but the smoke of their cigars drifted through the front door and made the crying children cough. Wilson tried to focus. He quickly opened the wooden box and set it down.
“I’m Jim,” he said loudly, placing a hand on the man’s shoulder, “and I’m gonna be fixing your foot. What’s your name?”
“My name Jim, too,” the slave gasped out as Wilson picked up the wounded foot. It was gashed across the bottom, and some bone was visible in the torn flesh. Wilson picked a pair of forceps from the box.
“The bone is a little broken, Jim. I’m gonna pull out the loose parts, then set the rest back where it oughta be. All right?”
Jim nodded, breathing hard through his nose. The women by his side retreated slightly to let Wilson work.
He rested Jim’s ankle across his knee and squinted into the wound. Then, he slowly moved the forceps to hover just over the tiny white splinters of bone. The children’s’ sobs grew louder, and Wilson flinched. A drop of sweat trickled down his temple. Then, from the other side of the partition, a low voice, House’s voice.
“Listen, you’re gonna have to quit that noise. It makes my buddy nervous, and if he gets nervous he’ll end up killing your Pa.”
“He gonna die?” whispered a frightened young voice.
“No.”
“He gonna get well?”
“Don’t know. You want a bonbon?”
The sobs dried up, and Wilson could concentrate on extracting the thin bone fragments. Jim squirmed and gasped, his bottom lip white where his teeth clamped on it, but he made no noise or complaint. However, when Wilson laid down the forceps and jolted the bent bone into as correct a position as could be managed, he let out a yell that shook the walls, bringing Fosse and Franklin in from the doorway.
“What happened?” Fosse exclaimed, looking suspiciously at Wilson. “Sounds like you near killed him.”
“No, I was just setting the bone. I’m going to stitch the cut up now.”
“Oh, you are, are you? Who the hell are you anyway? I brung the surgeon down here, not you.”
Wilson ignored this and continued sewing up and binding Jim’s foot, a process that took a further fifteen minutes. When he was done, he stood up and turned around. His hands were damp on the kit-box he held. There was dark blood smeared over his trousers from the seeping gash. House was leaning against the wall by the doorway.
“All done. But he won’t be...” Wilson began but stopped when he realised he was being ignored, the plantation owners turning instead to House.
“Well, doc? Will he be fit to work again?”
“Yeah,” House replied “Give him a month or so of light work. He’ll be back in the fields before summer. Let’s go.”
They returned to the wagon, and House and Wilson climbed in the back. As they lurched into motion, Wilson began to doze, the heat getting the better of him, but House roused him with a jab from his cane.
“Wake up, Wilson. You did good with that buck.”
“Hmmm,” Wilson murmured sleepily. “Thanks. Why’d you say he’d be back in the fields? He’ll be crippled for life.”
“And then what would have happened? He’d be sold down the river before you can say three-fifths human.”
“Why, House, I believe you’re a sentimentalist at heart,” Wilson yawned. “And you said I was your buddy.”
House stopped jabbing him with the cane abruptly and let his arm rest at his side. He smiled, glad that Wilson’s eyes were firmly closed.