The Adventurers

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  Elizabeth clutched the back of a chair as the doctor bent to examine his patient. ‘Well, no wonder.’ He pushed aside the thick fair hair. ‘You would hardly expect him to be dancing the schottische after a blow like that. Look!’

  ‘Good God.’ Elizabeth bent forward to look at the bruised swelling. ‘Will he—’

  ‘He was lucky,’ the doctor interrupted her. ‘A little further forward—here’—gentle fingers touched Denbigh’s temple—‘Anything might have happened…death…madness…loss of memory. With injuries to the head…there is no knowing…’

  ‘He had a similar one, many years ago,’ she said. ‘And has, I believe, suffered from giddy spells ever since. Might there be a connection?’

  ‘There might indeed. Who knows? The new blow may have affected scar tissue left from the old one. Well’—he shrugged and picked up his bag—‘it is in the hands of God.’

  ‘You mean there is nothing you can do?’

  ‘Nothing that you could not do better. Prayer—and cold compresses. Marthe knows…absolute quiet…rest… I’ll come again tomorrow. There may have been a change by then. Frankly, there may never be one.’

  ‘You mean—he might remain like this?’

  ‘It’s possible. I’ve known cases…’ He saw her expression. ‘But just as likely that he’ll be shouting for his breakfast tomorrow morning. But if there is damage to the brain—Well, let me know if there is any change. Don’t leave him alone, of course. Not for a moment. Anything might happen.’ And on this gloomy note, he left.

  ‘Will he die?’ Sonia was standing at the foot of the stairs.

  ‘Not if I can help it. Best let the doctor look at Mr Haverton’s wound while he is here.’ And she returned to sit by Denbigh’s bed, almost as immobile as he. Twelve years ago, she had sat there, but then there had been hope as well as fear. Now—

  ‘Don’t look like that.’ Marthe returned from taking the doctor downstairs. ‘He always expects the worse, that one. I promise you, madame, we’ll have milord right as rain in a day or so. Look, his colour’s coming back already.’

  ‘Oh, Marthe, do you really think so?’

  ‘That’s right, madame, let the tears come, you’ll feel better so. I’ll watch milord. And as for praying, like the doctor said, I’d rather make him a good dish of broth any day. And you can tell him I said so.’

  Amazingly, Elizabeth found her tears giving way to laughter. ‘What should we do without you, Marthe?’

  Chapter Ten

  ‘There!’ Angrily, Sonia adjusted the knot of Philip Haverton’s bandage. ‘If it slips again, you can just fix it for yourself. Anyone would think you were a baby, the fuss you make.’ She had been busy mopping up water in the drenched front hall, and now flounced back to her task, angry with herself for being so angry.

  ‘I‘m sorry. I’m so ashamed of myself—’

  If the abject apology was intended to disarm criticism, it failed. ‘And so you should be.’ It was, somehow, a relief to take out the bad temper that haunted her these days on this easy victim. ‘I’m ashamed of you, I can tell you. You might as well admit that it was all your fault in the first place. I’m sure Lord Denbigh would have had more sense than to risk stirring up trouble by coming to visit us.’

  ‘Visit you! We were coming to protect you. But it’s true; it was my idea.’ He still sounded as if he hoped to be congratulated on it

  ‘That’s just what Elizabeth said. The whole business is your fault. It’s no thanks to you we weren’t killed.’

  ‘I meant it for the best.’ Flushed and wretched, he looked the boy he was. ‘I had no idea…’

  ‘No, of course not. And then, when Lord Denbigh meant to go on by, and draw the crowd away from us, you have to go and get gravely wounded’—her tone mocked him—‘and faint, and have to be brought in, and cosseted and bandaged…and all the time Lord Denbigh was really hurt.’

  ‘I know. I told you I’m ashamed of myself. What more can I say?’

  She pushed the heavy household mop she had been using into his hands. ‘Stop saying and try doing, for a change. Marthe and Elizabeth are busy with Lord Denbigh; it’s the least we can do to begin clearing up this mess. Or are you still too weak?’

  ‘Of course not.’ He took the mop and began awkwardly dragging it across the soaking flagstones of the hallway.

  ‘Not that way!’ she snatched it back from him. ‘Like this I Have you never used a mop before?’

  ‘Why, no. Have you?’

  ‘Of course I have. I wasn’t brought up in luxury, with an adoring mother who spared me the sight of blood. What happened when you were a boy, and grazed your knee?’

  ‘She bandaged it up for me.’ He had got the knack of the mopping now and was moving down the hall away from her. Now he spoke over his shoulder. ‘I love my mother, Miss von Hugel. You may say what you like of me—I deserve it all—but—not my mother.’

  ‘I’m sorry!’ Suddenly, she was in tears. ‘Why am I so horrible? I can’t help it—I don’t mean to be. Sometimes I hate myself!’

  ‘Miss von Hugel—Sonia—don’t say that. It’s my fault; all of it. I deserve everything you said to me. You were right to be angry; absolutely right. You’re so brave, so wonderful, after all you’ve been through—it’s no wonder if you can’t bear to see me such a craven. I can’t bear myself; I’m not worth your tears.’ He had dropped the mop now, and moved down the hall towards her.

  She stamped her foot. ‘I’m not crying for you; I’m crying for me, don’t you understand! No, don’t touch me, I can’t bear it.’

  He withdrew the arm he had wanted to put round her. ‘Then let me fetch Mrs Barrymore to you.’

  ‘How can you be so stupid! Elizabeth is busy; we should be helping her, not quarrelling like children.’

  ‘I’m not quarrelling with you, Sonia. I’d rather die; don’t you know—’

  ‘That’s just it.’ She cut short the declaration. ‘I’m quarrelling with you! Oh God, I wish I was dead!’

  ‘You mustn’t say that; it’s wicked.’ He sounded genuinely shocked.

  ‘Wicked.’ Once again her voice mocked him. ‘We mustn’t be wicked, must we? Not in this best of all possible worlds! I do believe you’re going to start preaching to me. The Reverend Mr Haverton will deliver his well-known sermon on the goodness of God. Oh, God, that’s funny!’ But her laughter was hysterical.

  ‘Don’t say such things.’ He looked wildly round the hall, as if for inspiration. ‘I wish Mr Vincent was here.’

  ‘Charles?’ She stopped laughing as suddenly as she had started. ‘Why Charles? What’s he got to say to anything?’

  ‘Well, after all, your cousin…’ More and more, he felt himself out of his depth with her.

  ‘My cousin! Of course: invaluable Cousin Charles. Who rides off when the enemy attacks and leaves us’—she paused—‘to your protection.’

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘Who said anything about fairness? Do you really think this is a fair world, Mr Preacher Haverton? What a deal you have to learn, haven’t you, besides how to bear the sight of blood.’

  Now, at last, he was angry. ‘That’s enough. You’ll make me ashamed soon of being ashamed.’ And then, with obvious relief, ‘Ah, Mrs Barrymore, how is he?’

  ‘Marthe says he’s better. I think it’s true. His colour’s coming back; he’s breathing more easily; I would almost say he was just asleep.’

  ‘Thank God for that. The doctor seemed to think—’

  ‘Hush,’ said Sonia. ‘No need to frighten Elizabeth with what he said.’

  ‘Was it so bad?’ Elizabeth asked. And then, ‘Don’t tell me—Marthe says he’s always gloomy; it’s his policy. What did he think about your wound, Mr Haverton?’

  ‘I may be marked for life.’ Dramatically.

  ‘You’ll have to pretend it was in a duel.’ Sonia’s voice was unsympathetic. ‘You’d hardly want to plead guilty to a cobblestone flung by an old woman.’

  ‘Sonia!’ Reproving
ly. ‘But how do you feel, Mr Haverton?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with me.’ His glance challenged Sonia. ‘Except guilt. Mrs Barrymore, I don’t know how to apologise—’

  ‘Please don’t try. Things happen…it’s no use—’ She broke off as she got her first full view of Sonia’s face. ‘Sonia, darling, what’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Sonia was crying again. ‘Everything!’ She ran past Elizabeth and upstairs to her room.

  Elizabeth turned back to Haverton. ‘Oh dear, I’d meant to ask her to sit with Lord Denbigh while Marthe makes lunch. We must eat, after all.’

  ‘Let me!’ His voice was eager. ‘He’s used to me.’

  ‘Yes, that will be best, I think. And Mr Haverton, did you hear Caulaincourt ask that you stay here?’

  ‘Yes—I am so sorry. There seems to be no end to the trouble I am causing you.’

  She laughed and shrugged. ‘Never mind that. Besides—I propose to make you useful, and to begin with, if you would sit with Lord Denbigh, Marthe and I can look out some bedding for you. I’m afraid it will have to be a pallet in his room. What happens if Charles comes back, I can’t think, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’

  ‘Has he gone far?’ And then, colouring, ‘Forgive me, I have no right to question you, but it seems strange…’

  ‘That he should leave us now? He was misled, like the rest of us, by the talk of a new Allied advance. Goodness knows where he is by now, or how he will get back. We are much indebted to you, Mr Haverton, for your presence and protection.’

  ‘After what I have brought upon you—you are too good, Mrs Barrymore. Do you not realise—Miss von Hugel certainly does—that it has all been my fault? If we had stayed at home, as Denbigh wished, none of this would have happened. And then, to crown it all, I have to faint, like a baby, at the sight of a little blood. I don’t know how I can bear myself—or you me.’

  She laughed, and handed him a great pile of fusty blankets which she had been pulling out of a deep chest. ‘I shall see to it that it is you who do the bearing. And as for today’s events, how do you know that it’s all your fault? The crowd was in a dangerous mood; anything might have directed them against our house—suppose we had had no one to protect us.’ And then, as he obediently carried the blankets upstairs: ‘You mustn’t too much mind what Sonia says, you know… She has her own troubles. Well, don’t we all—’

  He stood aside to let her pass ahead of him into Denbigh’s room. ‘I can’t imagine you with troubles, Mrs Barrymore. You seem—I don’t know—above them, somehow.’

  She had moved over to the bed. ‘No change?’ To Marthe: ‘Mr Haverton will sit with him a while, so that you and I can put our heads together. Have I thanked you properly, Marthe?’

  ‘I don’t want to be thanked.’ She rose from her stool by the bed. ‘I want to know what in the world we are going to eat today—not to mention tomorrow, and the next day. And milord here should have nourishing broth when he wakes—how, I ask you, am I to make a nourishing broth with nothing in the house but lentils and black bread?’

  Elizabeth smiled her relief. Marthe grumbling was Marthe back to normal. ‘M Caulaincourt left a couple of dragoons on guard at the front, Marthe. I rather think that one of them—well, he looks remarkably like your Jacques. Do you think if we gave him a little money he would find us something to eat. For do you know, I find myself ferociously hungry.’

  ‘Jacques, is it?’ Marthe’s eyes sparkled, but she did not change her grumbling tone. ‘I’ve got a word or two to say to Jacques about the time they took to get here. Here, let me.’ She snatched away the blanket Elizabeth had been laying over the pallet in the corner of the room, and then, beginning to make up the bed with deft, vehement movements, ‘But it’s true, Jacques could find food in the Sahara. Leave it to me, madame. And you, monsieur’—she gestured to her stool—‘sit here, do, and damp milord’s brow, like this, when he stirs. He’ll sleep a day, two days, perhaps, and wake good as new. And why you have to send for that jackanapes of a doctor to frighten you when you have me, Marthe, in the house is more than I can imagine. Jacques shall fetch the herbs for a tisane he shall have when he wakes—he’ll be showing the doctor the door himself. But, madame’—her tone had changed again—‘do you know that mademoiselle is crying her heart out in her room? Listen? Her head’s under the pillow, but you can hear it just the same. No, no, not you, m’sieur,’ for Haverton had started to his feet, ‘but should you not go to her, madame? Leave all to me.’ She pocketed the money Elizabeth had handed her. ‘If we don’t have coq-au-vin for dinner, I’ll never speak to Jacques again.’

  Elizabeth looked quickly round the room. Haverton had settled once more by the bed, with his sponge and aromatic spirits. Marthe, while she talked, had finished making up the pallet in the corner. The room was reasonably warm, since it was over the kitchen and, mercifully, its windows had not been broken as it was at the back of the house. Now, in the silence, she could indeed hear the sound of muffled sobbing from Sonia’s room. ‘Let me know if there is any change.’ She turned towards the door.

  ‘Of course. You will go to her?’ Haverton was returning to normal. She noticed him anxiously rolling up his frilled shirt cuffs.

  ‘Immediately. No need to look so troubled. She’ll get over it. It’s been a hard morning.’

  For the first time, the understatement made him smile. Impulsively, he reached out, caught her hand, and kissed it. ‘You’re a wonder, Mrs Barrymore, an absolute wonder.’

  She smiled down at him. ‘Rather a dishevelled one, at the moment. Sonia and I will both feel better when we have tidied ourselves up a little. It’s wonderful what appearance does for a female.’

  His hand had gone up to the bandage round his face. ‘Mrs Barrymore, before you go—do you—does she—do you think me a complete poltroon?’

  ‘Of course not, Mr Haverton. You had no time to be a hero, that was all. Don’t be too angry with yourself; it’s a terrible waste.’ And she was gone.

  Sonia’s sobs were rather more habitual, by now, than passionate. She was prone on her bed, face in the pillow, arms hanging down beside her, presenting, Elizabeth could not help thinking, a well-composed picture of despair. ‘Well’—she closed the door behind her, and managed her briskest tone—‘crying won’t clean the hall.’

  Sonia turned over and sat bolt upright, revealing a face streaked with tears. ‘I’m hopeless,’ she said. ‘I can’t bear myself. What’s the matter with me, Elizabeth? First I hide while Father’s killed, and then, when I get another chance really to be something—I spend my time looking after a greater coward than myself. And then—’ Elizabeth had begun to speak but her words came pouring on: ‘As if that wasn’t bad enough, I take it out on poor wretched Philip, who behaved no worse than I did. After all, he was hurt.’

  ‘Not very badly,’ said Elizabeth fair-mindedly. ‘Remarkable, isn’t it, to have grown to his age and still faint at the sight of blood. I suppose we should be grateful that Lord Denbigh’s wound didn’t bleed too or we should doubtless have had Haverton collapsing on our hands all over again. As it is, he is sitting with his guardian in as complete a state of guilty conscience as anyone could wish to see. What on earth did you do to him, Sonia?’

  ‘Told him all the things I should have said to myself. I told you—oh, I wish I was dead.’

  ‘You’d make a very unattractive corpse. Come and have a look at yourself. And I must say, I’m not much better—and stop talking nonsense, do. Have you really been feeling guilty all this time because you stayed hidden that day at the castle? What good, pray, could you have done by getting yourself killed—or worse?’

  ‘Like poor Gretchen.’ Sonia shivered uncontrollably. ‘I know; I keep telling myself that; but it still doesn’t make sense somehow. And leaving you like that. How can you expect me to forgive myself that?’

  ‘Well, you thought me dead, didn’t you? There’s not much you can do for the dead.’

  ‘But you
weren’t.’ It was so obviously a relief to Sonia to pour it all out that Elizabeth let her go on, although her mind, all the time, kept racing off after immediate problems. Was Marthe really right about Denbigh? Was Philip Haverton fit to be looking after him? With an effort, she pulled herself back to what Sonia was saying.

  ‘You sent me help, didn’t you? What more could you have done? And marvellously surprised your foster father was when one of his corpses turned over and groaned. And then, be fair to yourself: you found us Charles Vincent. Where would we be now, I wonder, if it were not for him?’

  ‘Charles Vincent!’ Sonia seized a comb and began to tear it angrily through her tangled hair. ‘How can you speak of him! It’s all his fault—all of this: he should never have left us alone. Much he cares what happens to us.’

  ‘I didn’t say he cared, I said he had been very useful to us, and so he has.’

  ‘So long as we were useful to him. But you know as well as I do, Elizabeth, that he’s not really trying to make money at cards any more. Those young Russians the other night—he didn’t bring them to play, he brought them to find out what they knew of the Czar’s plans. And when he’d learned of the new advance, he started off at once, without the slightest thought for us—to tell—who?’

  ‘I wish I knew.’ Elizabeth did not try to deny the truth of what Sonia said. ‘But, to be fair, he did think that the Allies were advancing, and we would be perfectly safe here.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he thought about us at all. And what makes you think he will ever come back to us? Unless, of course, he thinks we may still be useful to him. He makes it pretty obvious that he doesn’t trust us, after all, by telling us nothing about what he is doing.’

  Elizabeth took the comb from Sonia and went to work in good earnest on her hair. ‘Now I look on that as a prime instance of his consideration for us. If he really is a spy—and I confess I find it hard to imagine any other explanation for his actions—do you really want to know about it, and be, therefore, implicated? I must say, even as things are, I feel guilty enough about letting Denbigh and Haverton stay here—suppose they find themselves involved in whatever Charles is doing…’