Except among those whom panic had rendered incapable of any rational action, the arrival of the wounded made people forget their own alarms in the more pressing need to do what they could to alleviate the sufferings of the soldiers. Ladies who had never encountered more unnerving sights than a pricked finger or the graze on a child's knee, went out into the streets with flasks of brandy and water, and the shreds of petticoats torn up to provide bandages; and stayed until they dropped from fatigue, stanching the blood that oozed from ghastly wounds; providing men who were dying on the pavements with water to bring relief to their last moments; rolling blankets to form pillows for heads that lolled on the cobbles; collecting straw to make beds for those who, unable to reach their own billets, had sunk down on the road; and accepting sad, last tokens from dying men who thought of wives, and mothers, and sweethearts at home, and handed to them a ring, a crumpled diary, or a laboriously scrawled letter.
Judith and Barbara were among the first to engage on this work. Neither had ever come into anything but the most remote contact with the results of war; Judith was turned sick by the sight of blood congealed over ugly contusions, of the scraps of gold lace embedded in gaping wounds, of dusty rags twisted round shattered joints, and of grey, pain-racked faces lying upturned upon the pavement at her feet. There was so little that could be accomplished by inexpert hands; the patient gratitude for a few sips of water of men whose injuries were beyond her power to alleviate brought the tears to her eyes. She brushed them away, spoke soothing words to a boy crumpled on the steps of a house, and sobbing dryly, with his head against the railings; bound fresh linen round a case-shot wound; spent all the Hungary Water she owned in reviving men who had covered the weary miles from Quatre-Bras only to fall exhausted in the gutters of Brussels.
Occasionally she caught sight of Barbara, her flowered muslin dusty round the hem with brushing the cobbles, and a red stain on her skirt where an injured head had lain in her lap. Once they met but neither spoke of the horrors around them. Barbara said briefly: "I'm going for more water. The chemists have opened their shops and will supply whatever is needed."
"For God's sake, take my purse and get more lint - as much of it as you can procure!" Judith said, on her knees beside a lanky Highlander, who was sitting against the wall with his head dropped on his shoulder.
"No need; they are charging nothing," Barbara replied. "I'll get it."
She passed on, making her way swiftly down the street. A figure in a scarlet coat lay across the pavement; she bent over it, saying gently: "Where are you hurt? Will you let me help you?" Then she saw that the man was dead, and straightened herself, feeling her knees shaking, and nausea rising in her throat. She choked it down, and walked on. A Highlander, limping along the road, with a bandage round his head and one arm pinned up by the sleeve across his breast, grinned weakly at her. She stopped, and offered him the little water that remained in her flask. He shook his head: "Na, na, I'm awa' to my billet. I shall do verra weel, ma'am."
"Are you badly hurt? Will you lean on my shoulder?"
"Och, I got a wee skelp wi' a bit of a shell, that's all. Gi'e your watter to the puir red-coat yonder: we are aye well respected in this toon! We ha' but to show our petticoat, as they ca' it, and the Belgians will ay gi'e us what we need!"
She smiled at the twinkle of humour in his eye, but said: "You've hurt your leg. Take my arm, and don't be afraid to lean on me."
He thanked her, and accepted the help. She asked him how the day had gone, and he replied, gasping a little from the pain of walking: "It's a bluidy business, and there's no saying what may be the end on't. Oor regiment was nigh clean swept off, and oor Colonel kilt as I cam' awa'. But I doot all's weel."