“There’s no time. You’ll do.” The man reached out a long arm and caught Marcus by the collar. His hands were crusted with blood, and his white breeches were smeared with splashes of red.

“Are you wounded?” Marcus asked his captor. The Frenchman seemed robust enough, but if he were to fall down, Marcus wasn’t sure he would have the strength to lift him to safety.

“I am the chevalier de Clermont—and I am not your patient,” the Frenchman replied, a sharp edge to his voice. He pointed again, his arm long and his fingers fine and aristocratic. “He is.”

Another French soldier lay on a makeshift stretcher, nearly as tall as his friend and covered with enough gold braid to draw the notice of even the most discriminating Philadelphia maiden. A French officer—an important one, by the looks of him. Marcus rushed to his side.

“It is nothing,” the fallen officer protested in a thick French accent. He struggled to sit up. “It is a very little hole—une petite éraflure. You must see to this man first.”

A young private from a Virginia regiment was slung, unconscious, between two friends. Blood poured from his knees.

“A musket ball went through the marquis’s left calf. It doesn’t appear to have hit the bone,” Marcus’s captor said. “His boot needs cutting off, and the wound needs cleaning and dressing.”

God help me, Marcus thought, staring down at the stretcher. This is the Marquis de Lafayette.

If Marcus didn’t call Dr. Otto immediately, Mrs. Otto would hold him down while Dr. Frederick beat him senseless. General Washington doted on Lafayette like a son. He was too important for the likes of Marcus.

“Sir, I’m no doctor,” Marcus protested. “Let me fetch—”

“That you, Doc? Thank God.” Vanderslice was helping Lieutenant Cuthbert hop in his direction. Cuthbert’s eyebrows were nearly singed off, and his face was the color of boiled lobster, but it was his bare, bloody foot that captured Marcus’s attention.

“Doc?” The tall Frenchman’s eyes narrowed.

“In de benen!” Vanderslice whistled as he watched a ball pass overhead. He gauged its trajectory with the quizzical attitude of a seasoned artilleryman. “They’re getting closer—or more accurate. If we don’t get out of the line of fire we’ll all be beyond Doc’s help.”

“Very well, Meneer Kaaskopper.” The French soldier’s bow was mocking.

“Cheesemonger?” Vanderslice bristled and loosened his hold on Cuthbert. “You take that back, kakker.”

“Carry the marquis to the front parlor. Now.” Marcus’s voice cracked like a gunshot. “Put Cuthbert on the porch, Vanderslice. I’ll see to him after Dr. Otto examines the marquis. And for Christ’s sake, get that Virginian to the kitchen. What’s his name?”

“Norman,” one of the Virginians shouted through the rising din. “Will Norman.”

“Can you hear me, Will?” Marcus lifted the Virginian’s chin and squeezed gently, hoping to rouse him. Dr. Otto didn’t believe in striking senseless patients.

“The marquis takes priority.” The chevalier gripped Marcus’s forearm with a bruising hold.

“Not with me, he doesn’t. This is America, kakker,” Marcus retorted. He had no idea what it meant, but if Vanderslice felt this fellow deserved the name, that was good enough.

“The Virginian,” the marquis said, trying to rise from the stretcher. “I promised him that he would not lose his limbs, Matthew.”

De Clermont’s head angled slightly toward one of the marquis’s stretcher-bearers. The man looked miserable, but nodded abjectly before punching Lafayette in the chin. This knocked the French aristocrat out completely.

“Thank you, Pierre.” De Clermont turned and strode into the farmhouse. “Do what the Yankee says until I return. I’m going to find another doctor.”

“Vas ist das?” Dr. Otto demanded of the chevalier de Clermont, who had plucked him off his patient and was dragging him toward Lafayette.

“The Marquis de Lafayette has been wounded,” de Clermont said brusquely. “Attend to him. Now.”

“You should have taken him to the mercantile,” Dr. Otto said. “This is a dressing station. We do not have—”

Dr. Cochran arrived with Dr. Frederick in tow.

“John. Thank God you’re here,” de Clermont said with visible relief.

“We came as soon as we heard, Matthew,” Cochran replied. Behind them were Drs. Shippen and Rush, followed by an anxious flock of aides who usually didn’t leave General Washington’s side.

“Where is he?” Dr. Shippen demanded in panic, his nearsighted eyes scanning the darkened room. There were two things on which you could rely with Dr. Shippen: He always chose the most aggressive course of treatment even if it killed the patient, and he never had his spectacles with him.

“At your feet,” de Clermont said. “Sir.”

“That boy needs both legs taken off,” Dr. Rush said, pointing at the Virginian. “Do we have a saw?”

“There are less barbaric alternatives.” De Clermont’s expression darkened.

“Perhaps this is not the best time to discuss them,” Dr. Cochran warned. But it was too late.

“We are in the midst of battle!” Dr. Rush exclaimed. “We must take the legs now or we can wait and take them after gangrene has set in and the flesh is putrefied. In either case, the patient is not likely to live.”

“How do you know? You haven’t even examined him!” de Clermont retorted.

“Are you a surgeon, sir?” Dr. Shippen demanded. “I was not informed that monsieur the marquis was traveling with his own medical staff.”

Marcus knew that when doctors fell out over cures, the patients were forgotten. For the moment, at least, Norman’s legs were safe. While the rest of them argued, he could at least uncover the Marquis de Lafayette’s wound.

“I know my way around a human body,” de Clermont said evenly in his perfect English. “And I’ve read Hunter. Amputation in battlefield settings is not necessarily the best course of treatment.”

“Hunter! You overstep yourself, sir!” Shippen exclaimed. “Dr. Otto is extremely fast. The Virginian may well survive the operation.”

Marcus examined the marquis’s boot. Its leather was soft and pliable, not tough and weather hardened. That would make it much easier to cut through—though it would be a shame to ruin such a fine item of footwear in this army, where so many went poorly shod.

“Here.” The man called Pierre held out a small knife.

Marcus glanced around. Other than this French orderly, no one was paying him any notice. Dr. Cochran was trying to soothe Dr. Shippen, who was threatening to throw de Clermont out of the house for impudence. The chevalier had switched to Latin—at least Marcus was fairly sure it was Latin, since Dr. Otto and Dr. Cochran often conversed in the language when they didn’t want their patients to understand what they were saying—and was probably continuing his lecture on Hunter’s reluctance to amputate. One of the aides was staring at de Clermont with open admiration. Dr. Otto spoke in low tones to Dr. Frederick, who disappeared into the kitchen. Meanwhile the surgeons’ mates quietly exchanged bets on the outcome of the argument between de Clermont and Shippen.

Marcus took the knife and neatly sliced the boot from cuff to ankle. He peeled the leather away from the wound. It had clean edges and there was no sign of protruding bone. No compound fracture, Marcus thought. An amputation would have been necessary had that been the case, no matter what the chevalier said or Dr. Hunter believed.

Marcus probed the wound with his fingers, feeling for the telltale bump that would indicate that the musket ball was still in the wound, or that the bone had been chipped and a piece was lodged in the muscles. No lump, no resistance. That meant there was nothing in the wound that would aggravate the nerves, tendons, or muscles, and no foreign body that might cause the wound to fester.

The marquis stirred. Marcus’s touch was gentle, but the man had been shot and the pain must be intense.

“Shall I hit him again, Doc?” Pierre whispered. Like de Clermont, his English was flawless.