The Passionate Prude

by Elizabeth Thornton

  She wanted to ask him so much more, but the wagons had already begun to move off, the medical orderlies impatient to unload so that they might make the return trip to the front and take on a new batch of human cargo. Dr. McCallum called for her to assist him with some of the newer casualties, and for the next hour or so, Deirdre was too occupied to think of anything but what went on within the four walls of the d’Angleterre.

  When Mrs. Dewinters came to relieve her, however, and she had achieved the privacy of her own chamber, her thoughts chased themselves round in her head till she thought she would go mad. Try as she might, she could not make sense of all the flotsam and jetsam that floated about in her brain. Armand was a turncoat. Tony Cavanaugh had come from London to Brussels on a family matter. Lady Caro and Armand had contracted a secret betrothal. Rathbourne hated the French. Armand would never take up arms against his own countrymen. Rathbourne had taken Armand to the field hospital. Armand was wounded but Rathbourne said it was nothing serious. Her thoughts returned to that one fact again and again. Armand was wounded and in a field hospital on the edge of the Forest of Soignes, at the village of Mont St. Jean.

  She moved restlessly around the room, absently picking up first one object then another and carefully returning them to their places. The Forest of Soignes wasn’t so very far away. It was just beyond the Bois de la Cambre, and no farther, really, than Richmond was from London. She and Armand had often exercised their mounts there. If she were a man, she would think nothing of saddling her horse and making for it now.

  The big guns started up again and Deirdre went to the window. A pall of smoke hung on the horizon and the smell of gunpowder and shot wafted in the air. She could smell it. What was happening out there? Where was Rathbourne? What was he doing?

  Tony Cavanaugh had intimated that Rathbourne would look out for Armand, but that notion she rejected as a comforting fiction. Rathbourne did not like the boy, and had never tried to hide it from her. He had misled her—deliberately letting her think that he would send Armand to her when all the time he never had any intention of doing such a thing.

  What game was Rathbourne playing? What did he intend to do with Armand? The solution which came to her mind was immediately rejected. She would not, could not believe it of him.

  She turned back into the room and began a restless pacing. The uncertainty was driving her to the brink of hysteria. The shrieks of infants at play reached her from the courtyard, and she recalled that the Dawson children were enjoying their first outdoor game in two days of almost monsoon rains. Deirdre halted in her tracks. Mrs. Dawson would not be so easily deterred from pursuing her purpose. At this very moment, there were women at the front watching and waiting for word of their loved ones. Mrs. Dawson was one of them.

  She went to the washstand and poured some cold water into a basin from a china pitcher. She stripped naked and as she massaged the rough washcloth over her clammy skin, her thoughts became less frantic, more coherent, focused. By the time she had friction-dried her body with an unbleached linen towel, her skin was glowing and she felt refreshed and ready for almost anything. From the clothes press against the wall she selected her new scarlet pelisse with its gold frogging. She would need its warmth, for after a three-day heat wave, the temperature had dipped drastically. In the drawer of a mahogany dresser, she found a pair of embroidery scissors. She carefully unbound her long tresses and twisted them into a rope. In the mirror, she observed closely as she pulled the rope of hair taut and held it above the crown of her head while her right hand came up and the scissors ruthlessly sheared through the long swathe. Satisfied with the boyish aspect of the reflection which stared solemnly back at her, she negligently swept scissors and the discarded rope of hair into a drawer. Her mind was already racing ahead. Lustre, at all events, she reflected, would welcome the exercise and could be depended upon to find her way to the Forest of Soignes even with blinkers on.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The road out of Brussels toward the Forest of Soignes and the battle zone was thick with traffic moving with all dispatch in a northerly direction. The slight youth in muddied regimentals and mounted on a fresh horse was compelled to turn aside from time to time to permit the passage of heavily laden peasant carts, baggage horses, and wagon loads of army wives and camp followers which threatened to sweep all before them. An hour or so later, well to the rear of the wagon carts, came ragged bands of battle-stained soldiers in the tatters of uniforms of every description. Some looked to be dazed and ready to faint from weariness. Others bent sideways glances on the young dispatch rider, their knowing eyes narrowing on the fresh horse beneath him which would quickly carry them away from the hell they had left behind.

  Deirdre reined in and looked over the weary exodus of motley men which passed before her. She was anxious to set a faster pace but was loath to bring attention to herself lest a closer inspection reveal that beneath the military disguise was a frightened slip of a girl whose nerves were honed to rapier point. Her hand moved to the brace of pistols at her belt which she had “borrowed” along with the other accoutrements of a soldier from a locker at the Hotel d’Angleterre, and confidence returned.

  A foot soldier with a glazed expression left his companions and stumbled toward her. Instinct warned her a second before he leaped for the horse’s head. Simultaneously, she dug her spurs into Lustre’s flanks and whipped out her pistol, grasping it by the barrel. As horse and rider leaped forward, she brought the butt of the pistol down on her attacker’s head. He fell to his knees, but another took his place, and some behind fanned out to prevent her advance. She twisted the gun in her hand as Lustre shot forward and rode straight for the thin line of men. She leveled her pistol and pulled the trigger. One man went reeling backward, but the explosion terrified the horse beneath her. Lustre reared, almost unseating Deirdre from the saddle. For a paralyzing moment, she thought she had lost control. She dug in her spurs and flattened herself over her mount’s neck. Lustre bolted, running down the line of menacing men before they had time to regroup and exact vengeance for their fallen comrades.

  Horse and rider pushed forward and did not slow their pace until the ranks of the departing refugees had considerably thinned. The experience left Deirdre shaken, nor was the horse beneath her eager to pursue the direction her mistress had chosen, for as they entered that part of the road which took them through the Forest of Soignes, the sound and fury of the battle grew louder, stronger, more intimidating.

  Deirdre stroked her mount’s neck and crooned soothingly, though she herself was trembling with alarm. Through the tall stands of beech trees which flanked either side of the road, she caught glimpses of soldiers making their way to the north. It was only later that she discovered they were a small part of the thousands of deserters who had melted like snow into the surrounding countryside when it looked as if Wellington had lost the battle.

  The roar of cannon intensified and Deirdre slowed her mount to a walk. All about her, acrid and tear-blinding, the smoke from the guns cast a gloomy pall, filtering out the purple rays of the setting sun. The road ahead took on a threatening aspect.

  She was almost upon them before she saw them. Line upon line of men in French colors. Her heart leaped to her mouth, and she turned off the road to take refuge among the trees, watching anxiously as they drew level. It seemed to her in those few desperate moments that the road to Brussels was open and the French were advancing. It took some time for her numbed brain to register that the scarlet-coated infantrymen who marched beside the dejected lines of silent French soldiers were escorting a detachment of prisoners of war.

  As the last of them went by, she swung out of the trees and dug in her heels. The road before her lay open, and the villages of Waterloo and Mont St. Jean lay just ahead.

  Waterloo gave every appearance of being deserted except for a few of the local inhabitants, and Deirdre did not linger. A mile or so farther along she came out of the trees and saw a cluster of cottages which made up the hamlet o
f Mont St. Jean. For an agonizing moment, she thought that she had stumbled onto the battlefield. The smoke of cannon at this point was so dense that it took several minutes for her to grasp that the scores of shadowy figures, some mounted, most on foot, were garbed predominantly in British colors. She urged her mount forward and passed unmolested through ragged lines of soldiers who were slumped dejectedly before the thatched hovels. Most of them had sustained injuries and had been brought by comrades to the makeshift field hospital for treatment. She scanned their weary faces. It did seem to her that things were going well for Wellington.

  Beyond the cottages, there was a fork in the road, and on the left a farm with outhouses. She made straight for the stone building, half expecting at any moment to be challenged, but no one tried to stop her. She dismounted and tied the reins of her horse to the hitching post. To the left of the farmhouse, the door of the barn stood open. Four men with a blanket suspended like a litter which cradled a fallen comrade were maneuvering themselves across the threshold. Deirdre put her head down and followed in their wake.

  Inside the huge barn, men were laid out on row upon row of straw pallets. The stench of unwashed bodies was overpowering. Deirdre forced down a sudden, compulsive nausea and tried to shut her ears to the cries and moans that filled the room. As her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, she saw grim-faced surgeons working at long tables, and women holding lanterns above them. Others were moving from pallet to pallet checking on patients. Men were begging to have their wounds attended to or to be put out of their misery. Some were wandering in a daze between the rows of injured and had to be forcibly restrained. Only the most pressing cases were given immediate medical attention. She recalled the orderly wards of the Hotel d’Angleterre which she had fled only hours before and thought that she had now entered Bedlam.

  One of the doctors observed her as she stood irresolute. “You can go back to your unit now, lad,” he said, “unless you’ve been sent here to help us.”

  A few minutes passed and the surgeon looked up from his gruesome task. He was bleeding one of the patients. Deirdre had not moved an inch. She had never before witnessed the operation, not even at the d’Angleterre, since Dr. McCallum was one of the few physicians who did not hold with a practice which he regarded as a useless convention, but which his contemporaries assiduously employed in spite of, so he said, any scientific evidence to show that it was beneficial—quite the reverse.

  “What is it, lad?” the doctor asked in a gentler tone. “Are you looking for someone?”

  “Sir, I was told my brother was here.”

  He gestured into the room. “Take a look around. We don’t have time to ask for identities.”

  It took all her courage to move among the pallets of grotesquely wounded men. Some were already dead. She tried to get a hold of herself, and whispered Armand’s name urgently as she moved like a shadow from pallet to pallet. No one answered her, and she was filled with a sense of despair.

  A shaft of light fell across her path as the door was opened, and a scarlet-coated dragoon stood silhouetted in the doorway. Deirdre looked up and became instantly alert. There was something familiar in the man’s stance. She pulled herself slowly upright and watched with a guarded expression as he took a step or two into the room. She came face to face with O’Toole. His eyes narrowed, then moved indifferently over her, and he strode to a pallet Deirdre had already investigated.

  “What happened to the boy who was here this morning?” she heard him ask one of the women in his soft Irish brogue.

  “St. Jean? Oh, he went back to his unit.”

  Deirdre heard a muttered imprecation, and O’Toole turned on his heel and strode out. She sank back on her heels and covered her face with her hands. Her desperate, terror-filled ride had been for nothing. Armand had slipped through her fingers. Where was Armand? Where was Rathbourne?

  She stumbled to her feet and ran after O’Toole. He was mounted on a huge gray and making for the battlefield. She shouted his name, but little could be heard above the deafening barrage of gunfire. She raced back to the farmhouse to collect her mount, and wheeled to follow him. The guns suddenly ceased and a terrible silence descended. Deirdre reined in. Everywhere, men raised their heads to listen. On her right, she saw the sun low in the sky. Soon it would be too dark to continue the fighting, and she wondered if hostilities had ceased for the day. She moved cautiously forward, although she had lost sight of O’Toole in the thick haze. She looked behind her, and caught a glimpse of men mounting up. Without warning, she came out onto the crest of a broad ridge. And then she heard it.

  Far off to her right, men were cheering. It was taken up and spread all along the ridge, like the blaze of a sudden, windswept forest fire soaring high out of control. Men were cheering, and the jubilant cries of hoarse English voices rose to a tremendous pitch. The battle had turned, and the victors roared their triumph. And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the cheering stopped.

  Deirdre saw that there was no sense in going further. O’Toole had been swallowed up in the dense smoke, and everywhere men and horses were on the move. She pulled on the reins to direct her mount to retrace their steps, her reasons for being there suddenly appearing wild and irrational, the act of a deranged woman. Before she could complete the movement, however, there was a thundering at her back and a dozen cheering Horse Guards with outstretched sabers came dashing out of the smoke.

  “Up and at them,” she heard the leader shout, and Lustre, faltering before the furious onslaught, sprang forward, and horse and rider were swept into the charge.

  They took a low hedge, and the smoke suddenly cleared. Below them lay a valley bathed in the rays of a fine summer sunset, and for one blinding moment, Deirdre felt her spirits soar as the gagging fog was left behind. And then the horror of what lay before her swamped every sense.

  On the fields of trampled rye, beneath the pounding hooves of their charging mounts, were littered the twisted bodies of the dead and dying. On the slopes of the valley was chaos—a mass of surging British infantry with bayonets brutally cutting and thrusting a way through the lines of Napoleon’s retreating Imperial Guard. As their line of escape was cut off by the solid wall of their fleeing comrades, men wheeled and fought with the ferocity of cornered tigers. The ground shook with the hoofbeats of thousands of screaming horses as the French lancers and cuirassiers poured up the muddy incline, their brass helmets gleaming brightly, and engaged their British counterparts in a rearguard action to the mingled roars of “Vive L’Empereur!” “England and St. George!” and “Scotland Forever!” their battle cries rising above the hoarse shouts of the fallen.

  Down the slippery slope of the bloodied field they rode hell for leather, and Deirdre clung helplessly to the saddle, inexorably swept along by the frenzied onrush of horse and rider on either side, and curved sabers flashed cruelly high above men’s heads. From nowhere, fifty feet in front of them, appeared a detachment of French dragoons wheeling to meet them head-on, and men singled each other out, digging in their spurs as they flew at each other’s throats.

  Horses and riders came together on the bone-on-bone grind of straining bodies, and steel beat furiously against steel with no quarter asked or given. Deirdre looked into the maddened eyes of a charging dragoon as he forced his way through to her, his sword sullied with blood, and raised to cut her down. She fumbled in her belt, leveled her pistol, and fired. His eyes widened in shocked surprise, but he pushed forward as if the dark stain which spread across the front of his green tunic was of no consequence.

  Flight was impossible, nor did she think of it. Every sense was heightened, every instinct vibrant and alive to her danger. Without thinking, she dug in her heels and leaped forward to meet her attacker. No plan formed in her mind. Her actions were purely reflex as she swung her feet free of the stirrups, and one leg slid smoothly over Lustre’s neck. Her eyes locked on the dragoon’s raised sword arm and every muscle coiled like a spring. As the saber began its descent, she threw herself bod
ily from the saddle to meet it.

  The impact of her sudden movement threw the charger back on its haunches and both riders went tumbling to the ground in a tangle of limbs. She clung tenaciously to the arm that went rigid beneath her, tensing for the thrust of steel that would end her struggles, but the body beneath her gradually relaxed. Deirdre lifted her head and looked down into the staring eyes of a dead man. A sob rose in her throat.

  She dragged herself to her feet and swung into the saddle, her eyes frantically searching for an escape from the bloody carnage. It was then that she saw him—Armand, mounted, and only a dozen yards to her left, swinging his blade as two French lancers came charging toward him. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came. As if in a nightmare, when limbs become leaden and refuse to obey the urgent commands of the brain, she remained frozen, her eyes staring in horror, refusing to accept what she could plainly see. A fresh burst of French artillery fire kicked up the ground at her feet, and the shock galvanized her into action.

  Screaming her brother’s name as if it were a bloodcurdling battle cry, she leaped forward, her face contorted in fury. She saw the lancer at Armand’s back poise his lance to thrust, and she flung herself at him, her arms twisting around his neck like a vise, and she used every ounce of strength to drag him back. His charger reared and twisted beneath the struggling bodies. Deirdre saw Armand go down and a cry of anguish tore from her throat. Her grip slackened momentarily, and the lancer took full advantage. His elbow connected ferociously with her ribs and sent her flying. She hit the ground with a sickening thud and the breath was knocked out of her. Stars exploded in her head. She raised herself on one shaky elbow, then fell back, sinking into oblivion.