Indio, watching closely from the side, giggled. “He looks silly. Now his hair is red and brown and black.”
Caliban’s mouth lifted in a wan smile.
Lily frowned, concerned. “How do you know about such things, Maude?”
“Been around theater folk a long, long time,” the maid replied. “A right quarrelsome bunch, they are. Patched up more’n my fair share of young men after an argument got out of hand.”
Indio seemed deeply interested in this bit of information. “Has Uncle Edwin ever been shot in the head?”
“ ’Fraid not, lad. Your uncle is good at wriggling out of such things—likes to keep his skin whole, he does.” Maude tapped Lily’s hand to get her to lift the cloth, and inspected the still-bleeding wound. She nodded her head. “We’ll use your old chemise to wrap this, hinney.”
They tore the chemise up and while Lily held a folded pad over the wound, Maude wrapped strips around Caliban’s head to hold it in place. By the time they were done, he looked as if he’d been shrouded for burial and Indio was in fits of laughter.
“He looks like an old man with a toothache!”
Daffodil yipped and jumped up to nip at her giggling young master, and even Maude broke into a reluctant smile.
The maid hastily repressed it, though. “I’ll have you know, young Indio, that this here is the finest of nursing work.”
“Yes, Maude,” Indio said, more soberly. “Will he be all right?”
“O’ course, lad,” Maude said stoutly. “Best your mother helps him to her bed, though, because he looks like he could do with a nice long sleep.” Her voice softened just a fraction. “Poor man probably hasn’t a decent bed to sleep on, wherever he takes his rest. Come, you an’ I will start the supper.”
Indio leaped at that, always eager to be allowed to help in grown-up endeavors, and both maid and boy went to the fireplace, trailed by a curious Daffodil.
Lily looked into Caliban’s face. He had his eyes closed and was listing slightly in his chair. “Can you walk to the bed?”
He nodded and opened his eyes. They were duller than she was used to now. It reminded her uncomfortably of the time when she’d thought him mentally incompetent. How strange that idea seemed now.
“Can you stand?” she asked softly.
He answered by rising like a drunken behemoth and she hastily dipped a shoulder to bring it under his arm. It wasn’t that she could physically hold him up—he was much too big—but she helped guide him as he stumbled unsteadily toward her little bedroom.
Inside was her bed—a narrow, pathetic thing—and she helped him climb in, drawing the coverlet over his chest. He looked as if he lay in a child’s cot. His feet hung off the end and one arm dangled almost to the ground from the side.
Caliban seemed comfortable enough—his eyes already shut. Was he asleep? She bent over him, whispering urgently, “Caliban.”
He opened his eyes, and though the color hadn’t changed from ordinary brown, they were somehow more dear to her now.
“Who was that man?” she asked. “Why did he attack you?”
He shook his head and closed his eyes again. If he was feigning sleep, he was better than many actors Lily had known.
She blew out a frustrated breath and went around to the foot of the bed. His gaiters and shoes were quite muddy and she wrinkled her nose in disgust, but got gamely to work. She unlaced his gaiters and then unbuckled his shoes, marveling at their size before setting them neatly beneath the bed. Then she found another blanket and pulled it over his upper half, for the one on the bed didn’t come close to his shoulders.
With a last look, Lily shut the bedroom door and went out into the main room.
Maude and Indio were by the hearth as Maude supervised the boy in stirring something in a bubbling pot.
She cast a look over her shoulder at Lily’s entrance. “There’s tea on the table, hinney. Take a seat and have a cup, but first you’ll want to scrub your hands. Go on, then.”
Lily nodded wearily and crossed to the outside door. It was oddly comforting to have Maude instructing her as the older woman had when she was a little girl. As Lily herself did now with Indio.
Outside, the sky had begun to gray and Lily blinked at the passage of time. She’d been so fearful for Indio, then so concerned about tending to Caliban, that she hadn’t noticed.
She went to the barrel of water they kept beside the door, removing the wooden cover and dipping out some water with which to scrub the blood and mud from her hands. She watched the pinkish water run into the dirt at her feet, making little runnels, and remembered another time she’d scrubbed blood from her hands. Kitty’s dear face had been so swollen she couldn’t open her eyes, her mouth turned into an obscene, bloodied mass.
All because of a big, violent man.