Garty can barely understand the words they speak. His ears are ringing loudly. “She may be dead already, or never existed…” he says these words from his heart as he has tried in vain to find the princess. “You have the picture, go and find her yourselves!” he says in a moaning voice.
“Picture?” Black Mack asked. “What picture?”
“In my pocket, the jacket you stole from me!”
“Look in his pocket,” he snarls.
They try to find the pocket and fumble around the clothes lying on the ground, including Garty’s scarlet cape.
“Here it is!” Said Baddy Pin triumphantly.
“Whose picture is this?” Asked Black Mack.
“The Queen, Bianco the Beautiful,” says Garty.
Black Mack throws the picture on the ground and stamps on it.
“This is not the princess, you pair of thumping fools,” he yells at the pair who looked totally frozen with fear.
“We got the gold,” said Baddy Pin. “That’s a lot of gold!” He adds.
“We will need to explain everything to Axemanix, and your heads will be on the chopping block. I order you to come up with a better plan, and a live princess! Find one!”
“Yes, Sir, we will!” Said the pair of thieves immediately.
“Come on, let’s go and get something to eat. I am famished,” said Black Mack. “I think there is an inn near here,” he adds.
“What about him?” Barley Rock asks, longing to give Garty another kick and punch. “I have the strength to demolish him, break him in pieces!”
“Leave him be. If he dies, he dies, and if not, then he lives,” says Black Mack philosophically.
He is human after all! Garty feels relief.
The pair of thieves shrug their shoulders. They like their master and his words are gospel to them. The three ride away with their sulky and horses as if nothing has happened.
Garty hears their sound for a little while, then silence reigns. He reaches for the little, stamped upon picture and holds it in his hand.
He has lost everything except for his life! What must I do to stay alive, he wonders? It is the hardest question he had ever asked himself and he has no answers. Stay calm!
He feels cold and shivers constantly. His breathing is becoming worse every time he moves. Feeling exhausted by staying awake, he closes his eyes and drifts into a restless slumber, huddled in the foetal position.
Voices nearby awake Garty. He wonders if the trio returned to finish him off. He lays on the grassy earth. His mouth is filled with blood.
Am I still alive? Horse’s hoofs appear near his face that he recognised them at once.
A sigh of relief rushes through his veins.
“Brill!” Garty whispers.
Voices come close and he recognises one voice, Bubba, the young stable strapper from Maud’s Inn who took a liking to Brill and the horse reciprocated her kind heart.
Brill and Bubba, he thinks as his emotions overflow with gratitude. Save me!
As the sun slowly sets beyond the horizon, his friend’s long shadows fell over him as angel’s wings. He hears another voice but does not recognise it.
“Hello, can you hear me?” Bubba says, close to his ear. Her hand touches his jugular as she finds a pulse.
“He’s alive, but only just,” she informs her companion. She leans over Garty, who lay in the foetal position on his side, where his vision is limited to things near the ground. He is barely conscious but blinks with his eyes to signal his recognition of her.
“This is Lad, our newest strapper,” she explains. Garty sees the boots of the young man who has long legs, he notices, noting his appearance. He is young, tall and thin, with sandy hair, he notes mechanically, as his face looms close.
“Mrs Bouchée has given me her medical kit and we are going to bandage the wounds that are bleeding, so take a sip of this to help you,” Bubba says. Her young companion kneels down beside Garty and touches his lips with something that tastes like strong gin or whiskey. Garty feels fluid mingled with blood. He finds himself relaxing a little after that, and it numbs his pain. He is grateful to this pair of unlikely paramedics.
“We think that your ribs are broken, so we will be careful getting you into the sulky.” Lad says, examining Garty’s wounds. He is not too sure he can survive a jog in a sulky, but there is nothing else they can do. They placed straw on the floor of the sulky to help with its bounce. Garty is relieved to be away from that area where packs of wolves roaming would have surely attacked him, if not, the highwaymen may have returned to finish him off! Either way, he is doomed to die.
They wash his cuts and bruises in oil, and then wrap his wounds. Also, taking care to wrap his ribs with secure bandaging, to keep his bones intact. His head too is split, pouring blood. The pair use all the bandages Mrs Bouchée had given them and all the medication is dried up as well before they move him into the sulky.
With a heave-ho they manage to haul Garty onto the sulky floor. He grimaces with pain, and tries to be brave. Now, he is too weak to scream or shout. Garty cannot even thank the pair. Bubba covers him in a fine light woollen blanket. It keeps the last remnant of his body heat intact.
“You all right there, Sir?” Asks Lad as he hops into the sulky driver’s seat just in front of Garty’s head.
“We have decided to take you to Saint Benedicts hospital. It’s closer than the inn and they can help you more than we can.”
Garty does not argue. Bubba leaps on Brill and the little group meander along on quiet, rough paths. Garty knew of St. Benedicts. It was near the orphanage he had visited, so braced himself for a two mile ride on bumpy laneways. He hopes they have pistols to defend their position if they meet highwaymen. He prays semi-lucidly for protection. He drifts in and out of consciousness as they move slowly to the hospital gates. Will I survive, he wonders? If so, I will surely thank these young people for coming to my rescue and give Brill the biggest apple I can find.
The stench of disinfectant makes his nostrils twitch. Garty tries to open his eyes. They feel glued down! He forces himself to see a little.
He sees through a sliver of sight. He is being transported through a wide hallway and into a room with a very high ceiling. Everything is painted white, which hurts his eyes. They stop.
A male with a white coat and a female in white stand over him. There is also another man in a dark brown habit, with scapular and cowl. He has something in a little jar and pours it into Garty’s open mouth. His mouth is being prised open by the nurse and doctor in harmony. Garty gulps the peculiar liquid and swallows in agony. He can smell the product but cannot recall its name. He begins to feel extremely drowsy, even a little merry, as if he had been drinking for a whole night.
In a feverish way he sees Joanne looking into his eyes. He cannot touch her for his arms are heavy and tired. The figure of Joanne speaks with a new voice, a sound like running water. He has a momentary thought that he is levitating, and is now in Heaven. They are together in Heaven, he thinks, frantically trying to work out his surrounds and how they got there?
“We have given you something to ease your pain.”
The woman in white moves closer.
Garty looks into her eyes and her face floats before him. He wonders what they have given him and then he sees her big brown eyes. He panics! It is not Joanne! Wrong eyes! They are trying to trick me! But he is in some kind of straight jacket so that he can barely move an inch.
She smiles at Garty and whispers, “You will be fine. Two ribs are fractured in your thoracic cage, and will need time to heal. I am nurse D’ear, This is Doctor O’Manna and our resident chaplain, Padre Byrne.”
“The straight-jacket is simply a precaution.” The nurse intervenes when she notices panic in Garty’s face.
“You will need to be quiet and rest,” says Doctor O’Manna, in such a cool and calm voice that Garty relaxes as if under his spell. His face is long and thin, with droopy eyes of steel. He stares into Garty’s face and pauses. “It is your lungs that are damaged and cause difficulty breathing. That is why you must be still. It is imperative!”
The doctor and nurse share glances. The Padre blesses him with a large brass cross between his stumpy fingers.
Garty feels defeated and his mind sends him strange messages. Dozing, he is running through long grass following a girl with golden hair wearing a red dress. It is a happy yet frustrating dream. I cannot catch her!
The following day he is allowed a warm sup of broth, which tasted salty on his tongue. His mouth has healed quite rapidly and he is able to taste some elements like salt and sugar. He is a little stronger but his breathing has not improved. He still has the straight jacket and is tied to the bed posts, wonders how on earth he can get it off to visit the latrine.
Shortly after 7:00 AM, two burly male orderlies, dressed in white jackets that cannot close over their massive bodies, parade in with a young nurse who has vibrant lips. They work together to untie the straight jacket, held him over a portable latrine, then place the straight jacket back on again and lift him into the bed, tying him to the bed posts. They ask nothing and leave without saying goodbye.
Humiliating! Garty moans.
The room is silent and he is alone. He closes his eyes and dozes off into another dream, where he is still chasing the girl in a red dress. He finally catches up with her and she has turned into a horse. “Brill,” he whispers. That makes him happy and he relaxes and sleeps soundly.
By the third day, Garty is feeling much stronger. His head wound has been sutured, is healing and doesn’t need bandaging, just a little iodine. He is still in the straight jacket as his breathing is not easy. He is still alone in the room, probably because of his fever he decides. He resolves to endure this torture of a kind while he recovers. I need to recover!
Ten days later, he is allowed visitors. The warders remove his straight jacket and dress him in a white gown tied with cords. Garty is so relieved that he walks around his room twice when the doctor and nurse leave after their visitation. He is now allowed to eat and drink other foods besides broth, which is also a relief. That very day he has his first visitor since his attack. A voice in the doorway cheers him, but he feels embarrassed while wearing a hospital gown. He sits stiffly in bed and covers himself with the woollen blanket.
“Come in, Bubba,” he calls out. She sticks her head in first and smiles at him, then hurries towards the bed. It is a large room for one person and it has a hollow sound when people speak. She walks right up to the bed and pulls up a chair standing nearby for visitors.
“Lad came too, so we rode safely here,” she says in her soft sweet voice.
Lad strides into the room carrying a bundle of clothes. He places them on the second chair in the room.
“I expect you need these,” he says with a huge smile.
Garty feels at home with these two.
“Hey, you two, thank you for saving my life!”
Lad holds his hand out.
“It is a pleasure to help, Sir. It was Brill who gave us the alarm, otherwise you would have been left on the side of the track …”
“I know that! I thank you for trusting my dear friend, Brill.”