The English Descendants

2

Author's note: I am relying on the summary of the novelization compiled by TheSirThomasSharpe on tumblr for a good chunk of the backstory for the Sharpe family. I do not have access to the novelization beyond the Google Books excerpts and, owing to the quality of writing, I'm not sure I'd want to spend money on it. But this particular tumblr user does a very good job and I am grateful for their work- it has been immensely helpful in both planning and writing this fic. I wil be happy to provide the link in a PM upon request.

Alan is sleeping comfortably when Edith wakes early in the grey light of morning. They are staying with the preacher's brother in one of the few houses with a guest room in the village. He sleeps on the bed, and she has a straw mattress on the floor. This was her insistence. She would not leave him, but could not accept that her injured friend would sleep on the floor, no matter how warm the room or comfortable the straw.

His bandages still seep blood, but only a little and only when he moves. She insisted on watching as the village nurse tied them and there are fresh linens boiled only the night before hanging on a drying rack in front of the fire. After he wakes, she will change them and boil the ones he is currently wearing with the hope that the doctor will arrive before too long.

There is a bathrobe left for her near the bathtub and a simple day dress waiting for her in the guest room. The nightshift she is wearing barely keeps her warm, and she soaks long in the bath before returning to the guest room to keep watch on her friend. She has no idea how both of them are alive. She does not want to return to the house, but there are things she must retrieve. Her handwritten manuscript, for one, that is tucked in the writing desk, and her clothes. She chuckles to herself- the book comes first, not the clothing. Clothing, she reasons, can always be borrowed, or purchased, but her writing is something only she can create. That it is her handwritten copy is even more dear to her. This is the copy her father read. The copy he saw such promise in. She regrets that his pen is somewhere in the house, likely never to be returned to her. The blood, she thinks, can always be washed from it until it is as new. It bought her a few moments, enough to get a real weapon, no matter how small, and enough to run with the devil at her heels.

Alan rouses as she is wrapping her ankle and she sits on the edge of his bed, gently placing a hand on his chest to keep him still. He winces, then sighs, relaxing back into the pillows.

"Good morning, Edith."

"Don't talk. You know it only hurts."

"Yes, but talking seems like the only thing I can do."

"This is true."

"I made it in time."

"Yes, you did. Now rest. We will have plenty of time to talk of yesterday when we are better rested."

Alan shakes his head, "I don't want to wait. If this were to become infected, I could quickly become delirious with fever and then we would have missed our chance."

"That isn't going to happen. They said the doctor should be here later today."

"You know, though, that we doctors make terrible patients. He might give up just to be rid of me." He smiles, a little joke that isn't really funny, but it is the best he can do at the moment.

"I'm sure he'll take your advice well- your patients always do."

"Most of them, yes. It's more the questions I'm likely to drive him mad with."

"I'll remind you if you get too inquisitive."

"Of course you will, Edith. We have always looked out for one another, haven't we?"