Read Isabella Rockwell's War for Free Online

and helped the wound to heal without a trace.
    Once, when
she’d been eleven Abhaya had woken her in the night.
    “Come, child,
you must help me. I need another pair of hands.”
    Quickly they
had trodden through the velvet night, past the parade ground, to
the home of one of the Risaldurs of her father’s regiment. A young
woman lay white and silent on her bed, though sweat beaded her
brow. Isabella never forgot the look of relief on the woman’s face
when she saw Abhaya. Abhaya poured some water onto a cloth and
dropped essence of mint onto it, wiping down the woman’s face and
then her whole body.
    “So then
Sari-Bai, this naughty baby, where is she?” The woman despite the
pain of the contraction, which rocked her, smiled.
    “I do not know
Mother. The pains continue, but with no result.”
    Abhaya felt
Sari’s stomach, handing the cloth to Isabella who tentatively wiped
the woman’s brow.
    “These babies
have their own timekeeping, but let us see if she might arrive
before the dawn. Isabella,” she gestured towards her pouch and
said, “mix me a tincture of four dops of the black Cohosh and seven
of the blue.”
    Isabella’s
fingers moved swiftly, though she was nervous. It was vital not to
get the doses wrong, such was the strength of the two medicines.
Abhaya held the woman’s hand as she swallowed the mixture, then
Isabella helped the woman to turn on her side.
    “Now try and
get some rest.” The woman was asleep in an instant. An hour later
Sari-Bai shuddered.
    “Quickly
Isabella, help Sari to sit up.”
    Isabella put
all of her weight behind Sari-Bai so she would have something to
push against and, just for a moment dared to glance down to where
Abhaya’s hands waited under a clean towel. A tiny dark head was
emerging, and with one more triumphant shout from her mother, a
baby, purple and slippery shot into Abhaya’s hands. Abhaya rubbed
her briskly, and the baby let out an enraged howl, the purple cast
driven from her skin with every breath of air she took. Wrapping
her tightly, Abhaya handed the baby to her mother.
    “Sari-Bai you
have a beautiful daughter, born at a most auspicious hour. She will
be a warrior princess.” Sari-Bai’s smile lit the room.
    They left her
home as grey streaked the sky, but Isabella was not tired.
    “That was the
most amazing thing I have ever seen, Mama-gi.”
    Abhaya
smiled.
    “I am glad you
think so because I think so too. We look for miracles everywhere
not realizing they go on around us all the time. A strange thing I
do not understand.” Isabella took her hand, warm and dry and
smelling of mint.
    “I do not
understand it either.”
    By the time
she was twelve, Isabella could not only swear in Hindi, Pashtu and
English, but she could heal most small ailments and several more
serious ones. For her twelfth birthday Abhaya had made her a
medicine pouch of her own, but in Isabella’s haste to leave the
camp to find her father, she had not packed it.
    She wished she
knew who had returned her father’s satchel; who it was who knew her
well enough to know what Abhaya’s pouch would mean to her. She held
the pouch to her face again and it caught one of the tears, which
trickled down her face.
    When she
returned to India with her money, she would find out who it was and
thank them.
    That evening,
after washing and putting on her cleanest dress, she made her way
down the stairs to Mrs Trotter’s apartments. The stairs were very
grand, with thick crimson carpet held in place by brass rods.
Portraits of tired-looking Moleseys lined the walls, deadening any
sound. Holding up her lantern to look a little closer at a painting
of a London landscape, Isabella paused. There was the click of a
door on the floor just below her. A stream of light came from Mrs
Trotter’s rooms and fell on the carpet in the gloomy hall. Isabella
could hear Lady Molesey’s voice. She would wait here until Lady
Molesey had gone.
    The voices
coming through the crack in the door were muted,