To Hide the Sword - Chapter 1
Combeferre's final verdict was that Enjolras, despite the impressively bleeding scalp wound, mild concussion, superficial gash across the chest, and assorted bruises, was in no real danger. Courfeyrac reacted with deep relief to this discovery, Joly with professional interest; both of them soon rejoined the scuffle outside and left Combeferre to his patient.
Combeferre had not seen fit to mention his first discovery, which was that Enjolras had breasts.
Five minutes before, from his post tending the wounded in the entryway of a building, he had seen Enjolras fall: pierced by a bayonet, then knocked to the ground and half-trampled before Courfeyrac and Joly managed to drag him away. They laid him out unconscious on the hard cobblestones of the entryway, bleeding ominously from a wound in his chest. Combeferre had lost no time about stripping Enjolras' waistcoat off and pulling his shirt up, but the sight of a smooth soft stomach, the hips tapering up to an impossibly narrow waist, stopped him even before he caught a glimpse of the bandages wound around Enjolras' chest. At that moment, with a heavy twist in his gut, he knew without having to see any more. He yanked Enjolras' shirt back down and looked around to make sure Courfeyrac and Joly were still conversing quietly off to the side.
"Clear out the porter's lodge, we need to get him in there where it's warm," he said, the lie coming mechanically and almost independently of his racing thoughts. As Courfeyrac and Joly chased the concierge out and cleared a space on her kitchen table, Combeferre looked back at Enjolras. His features, though slack with unconsciousness, were so familiarly Enjolras that Combeferre started to doubt what he had just seen.
Once they were alone and he had Enjolras shirtless, though, it was undeniable. There was simply no way that torso could be male, even with the yards of bandages flattening the chest. But the dark red stain blossoming over the linen, and Enjolras' shallow steady breathing, reminded Combeferre that he had a job to do. He could deal with the myriad implications of this later.
He cut the bandages away to reveal a four-inch gash on the left breast, just above the nipple. So the point of the bayonet had slid across Enjolras' chest rather than puncturing it. It needed stitches, but not so urgently that he couldn't examine Enjolras' other injuries first: no fractures or depressions in the skull; golden hair dark and matted with blood, which turned out to be from a relatively small but freely-bleeding cut on the scalp; impressive bruising already starting to appear on the shoulder; no limbs visibly broken.
Enjolras was starting to breathe easier with the restrictive bandages gone. He—she—stirred and groaned several times but did not wake while Combeferre was cleaning the wounds and preparing his needle and thread. Combeferre took the opportunity to study—him? her? It was like watching an optical illusion, a bird on one side of the paper and a cage on the other, or perhaps a drawing with two different faces hidden in it. He would look at Enjolras and see the beautiful boy he'd always known, the fierce manly spirit in the frail body of a Greek eromenos. Then his eyes would reach that incongruous bosom, his vision would shift, and he would see a tall, handsome girl. Enjolras as a man was almost too pretty to be real; Enjolras as a woman wasn't quite feminine enough to be pretty, her features just a bit too strong and chiselled, her brow far too severe. Combeferre kept looking back and forth from the male to the female version of Enjolras, hoping the two would blend themselves together into one, or that he would discover the trick that allowed them both to inhabit the same form, but they stayed obstinately separate in his mind.
He began to sew up the wound, and the repeated stinging pain made Enjolras stir and finally wake up. Enjolras' blue eyes fluttered open, hazy and unfocused at first. With the first stirring of life in his face, the girl disappeared, and Combeferre couldn't find any trace of her even though he was holding Enjolras' left breast. Enjolras tried instinctively to recoil from his hand, then finally managed to focus his eyes on Combeferre's face and stilled himself.
"Combeferre?"
"Yes."
"God, my head hurts. Where am I?"
"The porter's lodge of a building in the Rue Mauconseil. Look into my eyes for a moment." Combeferre gazed intently into Enjolras' eyes, then, satisfied that the pupils were dilated but the same size, went back to stitching the gash. "You were knocked out. I need to ask you a few questions to see how bad the concussion is. What's your—" He had been about to ask Enjolras' name, and abruptly realized how absurd that was. "What's today's date?"
"The sixteenth of June, 1831." Enjolras' voice was steady despite the needle traveling in and out of his flesh.
"What's the last thing you remember doing before you were knocked out?"
"Holding off the National Guards who were attacking me, Courfeyrac, and Prouvaire. I don't remember how I went down. What happened to them?"
"Courfeyrac is outside the door waiting to see how you are," said Combeferre. "Prouvaire is still fighting."
"How long was I out?"
"Several minutes. You don't appear to be badly concussed, but the bandages on your chest were restricting your breathing."
Enjolras looked at him; Combeferre didn't ask for an explanation of what was underneath the bandages, and Enjolras didn't provide one.
"They also provided an extra layer of protection against the bayonet," Combeferre continued, "and slowed the bleeding somewhat. As soon as I'm done with the stitches, I'll put fresh ones on—more loosely—and you can put your shirt back on."
"Will I be able to rejoin the fight?"
"Medically speaking?"
"How else?" There was a flash of annoyance in Enjolras' eyes, but it subsided when Combeferre answered without comment.
"In a position of command only. Fencing or hand-to-hand combat might reopen the wound."
"Pistols?"
"They're not shooting out there, it's not a repeat of July yet. But yes, you can use them if necessary."
"Good. Combeferre, does anyone else know about this?"
"No," he answered quietly. "I moved you into a separate room once I realized, and nobody else saw."
Enjolras let out a deep sigh of relief. The accompanying fall of his chest provoked an oath from Combeferre, who did not appreciate a moving target when stitching up a chest wound. He belatedly and stupidly wondered whether to apologize for using foul language in front of a girl, but Enjolras seemed even more relieved that Combeferre was still comfortable cursing around him. Her. It was so difficult to think of Enjolras as a girl. Enjolras didn't seem to want to be thought of as a girl, anyway, and of course Combeferre had always thought of him as a man—had occasionally had some very inappropriate thoughts of him as a man—
And that was not a thought to bring to a half-naked medical examination. Even if, on the basis of a certain sympathy, a few significant looks, a few coded references that he thought had been returned, Combeferre suspected the interest might be mutual. Enjolras was being brusque, taciturn, all business as Combeferre stitched him up, and Combeferre tried his best to emulate that matter-of-factness rather than distract himself by re-evaluating their careful dance of interest in the light of what he had just discovered.
"Combeferre?" came Courfeyrac's voice through the door. "Is he all right?"
"Yes," called Combeferre, tying off his thread. "Give me one more minute." He directed Enjolras to take a few deep breaths and move his hands and feet a little, just in case there were any cracked ribs or sprains he couldn't see, and then to sit up slowly. He pressed some lint against the stitched-up gash and began to wind a bandage around Enjolras' chest, awkwardly trying to flatten down the bosom as he did so.
"Let me do it," said Enjolras. He touched Combeferre's hand lightly and took the bandages, binding his breasts down with practiced ease.
Once his shirt was back on, the illusion of a girl in trousers disappeared completely—or that was what it seemed like to Combeferre, rather than the illusion of a boy becoming complete. Enjolras smiled at him, a warrior archangel in his bloodied shirt and torn waistcoat.
"Why do I find it easier to think of you as a man, even when the evidence to the contrary is right before my eyes?" Combeferre couldn't stop himself from asking.
"Because I think of myself as a man," said Enjolras simply.
"But you—"
"We can discuss it later if you like. Right now there's work to do, and I believe Courfeyrac is anxious to confirm that I'm not dead."
Enjolras' conviction was so convincing that already Combeferre found himself doubting what he had just seen.
Enjolras pressed his hand to Combeferre's shoulder, a brief reassuring gesture before he opened the door. Courfeyrac bounded into the room, followed closely by Joly, and in the ensuing barrage of questions about Enjolras' condition Combeferre forced himself to think only of the medical details of the past five minutes. Enjolras, meanwhile, had ducked outside under the cover of Joly's questioning. Combeferre caught a glimpse of him leading a counter-charge against the National Guard, hair flying and eyes alight with battle-fever. Was Enjolras some sort of shieldmaiden, an Amazon, a latter-day Joan of Arc called to take up arms for the Republic? Combeferre tried to imagine it, but the image eluded him as obstinately as the hidden side of a clever optical illusion, and all he could see was the man he had always known.
He was still trying to see it when someone called "Medic!" and a wounded man was carried into the entryway. Combeferre banished such thoughts from his mind, promising himself he could ponder what he had just witnessed when there was no more battle at hand.