Slipper

by Hester Velmans

“The reason I am glad that I came is that you seem to have so little…”

  “So little what?”

  “Sense.”

  “Oh, Bess! Can’t you see how happy I am?”

  “Pet, I don’t think you have the sense to see that Captain Beaupree really might not be quite as…”

  “You mean because he seemed surprised to see me here? Well, that was only because…”

  “Surprised? Yes, and—well, pet, not particularly pleased.”

  “But you don’t understand! As a matter of fact he was pleased—later, in his tent, I mean. After he got over the surprise. I mean, that’s why he laughed so. It was only because he was so surprised to see me here. If only I could make you understand how…”

  “I do understand, lamb. I understand very well. You needn’t describe it to me,” Bessie said quickly. Then she let out a deep breath. “But you are so young! There is so much for you to learn!”

  “What, for instance?” said Lucinda, with a certain amount of belligerence.

  “About men, for instance.”

  “Oh please, Bessie, don’t start.”

  “I mean—you are convinced that he loves you, don’t you, because of—what you two did last night, in his tent…”

  Lucinda blushed, and looked down at her hands.

  “But has he acted like a gentleman? Has he proposed marriage? Has he—respected your virtue?”

  “…”

  “I didn’t think so. No, you see, pet, gentlemen don’t usually behave like gentlemen with the women they…why, the women who want them, who run after them, who make it easy for them.”

  “But Bessie! This is different! You don’t understand!”

  “Yes, pet.”

  “No, really, this really is different! I know it is!”

  “Every woman who has ever been in love thinks that, lamb.”

  “But it is! It is!” Her voice rang out a little too loudly with jubilant conviction. “Because I am going to make him love me, don’t you see? I can make him, I know that I can!”

  “Pet,” said Bessie, getting to her feet. “Pet. Listen to me. Love is not made. You know that? You cannot make love. Love—is. It just is.”

  “That’s what you think. But I know better. Just watch me!” Lucinda cried.

  But it came out as a rather half-hearted crow, an anticlimactic cheer.

  Their tent was located on the outer ring of the baggage train. Bessie and Lucinda had expected to find only men here, and were surprised to find hundreds of women in their sector. Most of the women made no bones about their calling. Their petticoats were red; their cheeks were rouged. Their nipples were rouged too: you could tell because their breasts often spilled over the tops of their fashionably pinched bodices.

  There was another category of woman as well, more soberly dressed. They were the businesswomen—sutlers who ran some of the canteens; dungwomen who shoveled manure; laundresses who fought over the privilege of washing the officers’ linens; and gypsies who made fortunes telling nervous soldiers they were born under a lucky star. And then of course there were the faithful soldiers’ wives, to whom the prospects of mud, rape and death were less fearful than the perils of staying home alone.

  Bessie decided she had to make it clear that she did not belong to the first category of camp follower. “I think I’ll have to take up laundering or some such occupation,” she sighed to Lucinda the next day, “else they’ll take me for a bawd, as that unpleasant English officer did when we arrived. I do have to find a way to make some money, there’s not much left, that wicked, wicked ship’s captain charging us twice what we’d agreed in Dover, and not letting us off the boat until I’d paid…”

  “You could cook, Bess!” suggested Lucinda. “Cooks make a fortune here.”

  “Where would I get the provisions, lamb?” said Bessie. “From what I can see, these sutlers survive by stealing pullets and hogs, and pulling up cabbages in the dead of night. That’s not for me, pet. I just couldn’t. These poor people—is it not enough that they have their fields trampled into mud, their crops ruined, their hay and grain confiscated…”

  “True,” said Lucinda. “It is a shame.”

  “But,” Bessie went on suddenly, “what I could do, lamb, is sell my salves. I can gather my herbs and roots in the wild, and I am sure the soldiers will need healing…”

  “What a super idea!” said Lucinda, suppressing a yawn. Because she really had not been getting much sleep these past two days, and even though she was concerned for Bessie, she could not help feeling smug about the fact that she herself had nothing to worry about. As the captain’s woman, she had a legitimate position here.

  The captain. She let out a contented sigh. His men adored him—he had a company of five hundred men who had sworn to lay down their lives for him. And he was so dashing! His legs were legendary in the Regiment. He had pretty, velvet lips and a fine, narrow nose. But the lower half of his face was seductively shaded with stubble, his eyebrows were bushy enough to be called manly, and he had a lopsided grin that was quite irresistible. Every woman who laid eyes on him desired him—Aunt Margaret, Sarah, possibly even Aunt Clarissa; and now she saw that it was the same among the women in this camp. She had already caught a few envious glances. What wouldn’t the other women give to be in her shoes! And they were for the most part older than Lucinda too, and dressed in dazzling garments. But it was Lucinda, Lucinda who had won him! He could not get enough of her, he said. He kept comparing her to the French harlots, and saying what a breath of fresh air she was. His English primrose, he called her. He boasted about her to the other officers. He paraded her before them, and whispered nonsense in her ear just to make them jealous. He had made a great show of retiring to his tent with her. Oh, she was in heaven!

  “That really is a super idea, Bessie,” she repeated, patting her chafed cheeks and lips with the back of her hand.

  Bessie looked more cheerful than she had in days. “I’ll have to see about finding some sort of kettle, and a pestle and mortar.”

  “And I can help you gathering herbs.”

  “You will, lamb?”

  “I will. At least, until the captain sends for me.”

  “So! I see that you have taken up with that little English harlot, Captain,” John Prynce casually said to Henry Beaupree that evening. The officers of the English contingent were hanging around outside the Duke of Monmouth’s tent, waiting to be briefed.

  “Ha! The little English piece. Yes indeed I have,” laughed Henry. “Only you know, my dear fellow, she’s not really a harlot.”

  “No?” said John.

  Henry made a wry face. “She’s a lady, don’t you know. Met her on a hunting party in the country. She threw herself at me. She’s a runaway; followed me all the way here. What could I do?”

  “You could have sent her back,” said John mildly.

  “Ah no, old fellow! She is wild about me! Absolutely besotted! Besides, she has nowhere to go. A poor relation, don’t you know. And despoiled. Seems her guardian had already enjoyed her. Well, there it is, she prefers me, and now she’s here. I truly have no control over the situation.”

  “That’s exactly what ails you, man,” interrupted Edmund Mayne, a lieutenant-captain in Henry’s regiment. “No control, no control at all.”

  “Sirrah!” exclaimed Henry, jumping to his feet and unsheathing his sword with a flourish. “Watch your tongue!” He swished his sword back and forth under Mayne’s chin. Mayne leaned back, laughing.

  “Let me know when you’re finished with her,” he winked. “I don’t mind used goods myself.”

  “Sirrah!” Henry threatened again, waving his sword in the air. Mayne grabbed Captain John Churchill, who was standing next to him, to use him as his shield.

  “Nay, spare me, sir, I beg you!” he mocked.

  “Aargh…enough of your childish pranks!” Churchill irritably shook himself loose. He was approximately the same age as Mayne and Beaupree, but cultivated an air of gravity.


  “Hullo, Churchill,” clucked Henry. “What’s the matter? Can I help it if the lady in question doesn’t fancy you?”

  “You know I have no time for your nonsense,” said Churchill primly, “womanizing and playing the infatuated fool, when there is work to be done.”

  “Ha!” exclaimed Henry. “Work—is that what you call it? Is that what you do? I call it toadying, sir!”

  “Explain your meaning, sir!”

  “Did we ever see you playing the ranterish prig at Whitehall? I seem to recall you weren’t above playing the infatuated fool when the Duchess of Cleveland called you to her bed! And now, suddenly, you’re the model of restraint, aren’t you, pure as snow! Pah! You think of nothing but your own preferment!”

  The two men glared at each other. There was a dangerous silence.

  John Prynce coughed. “No, but Beaupree,” he intervened, returning to the earlier subject. “Do you really think it was the honorable thing to do—to encourage a young lady of good family…”

  “A young la-dy of good fa-mily!” mimicked Henry, turning on him. He was now thoroughly irritated. “’S-truth, you have been living among these frogs for too long, my friend. Those Frenchified expressions of yours!”

  “Frenchified? Who here is Frenchified, sirs?” inquired the Duke of Monmouth, their commander, who had just stepped out of his tent. “Lord knows we have enough frogs in our midst.” He drew an oversized handkerchief out of his coat sleeve and wafted it lazily in the air. “Do not forget we are here to wave the English flag, gentlemen! Else what will His Majesty our dear Papa say?” He pirouetted full circle, making sure all eyes were on him. “We cannot have any turncoats in our own ranks, sirs! No no! We’ll rout the Frenchies out! We’ll have ’em run the gantelope! We’ll make them ride the wooden horse!”

  “It was just Prynce here, sir,” smirked Churchill, “our esteemed surgeon.”

  “Indeed,” said Monmouth. He turned away, and shelved his little joke. If the man had been one of his favorites, he would have had some fun with him. But chirurgeons were beneath his notice, and this John Prynce was a strange rogue anyway. What was it Watson had told him about him again? That he had been a successful field officer in Portugal, and at Dunkirk. But for some reason the fellow had willingly given up his military command to serve as an amputator. Monmouth could not understand why any Englishman would give up the glory of battle for such a paltry post. Lost his nerve, probably. And unlike the other officers crowded around Monmouth, this Prynce was not exactly what you would call a courtier. Indeed, he had remained here in Courtrai all through the winter, with the troops, while Monmouth and his braves regaled their friends back in Whitehall with stories of the previous season’s campaign. The only reason the man’s presence was tolerated at all at these staff briefings was in deference to his lineage—he was a kinsman of that great wit, the Earl of Rochester—and to his past gallantry on the battlefield.

  “Gentlemen! I have news!” he announced.

  “An attack!” exclaimed Churchill, always the most eager.

  “Not yet, sir!” smiled Monmouth. “Not yet. But it seems our uncle Louis is expected here forthwith. His mistress has had her whelp. We shall soon be on the march, gentlemen, causa belli, iter bellicosum, don’t you know.”

  Despite all the fawning and scraping around him, the duke seemed to possess an endless need to reaffirm his royal connections, which only served to remind everyone that he was the English king’s illegitimate son.

  “When, sir?” asked Beaupree.

  “Ah, that I cannot tell you yet,” said Monmouth. He turned to his most senior officers. “Sir Thomas. My Lord Duras,” he ordered. “Sir Harry. You too, Vernon. Please be so good as to step inside.”

  John leaned back against a tree-stump, aware of the sudden silence. For the other junior officers had gone quiet, struggling, as he knew they must, with the conflicting emotions of excited anticipation and unexpected dread.

  34

  THE MARCH

  The entire army was on the move, a rolling river of lurching humanity, and Bessie and Lucinda two tiny drops in its wake.

  Most of the cavalry, with the king and his entourage, had gone on ahead. The infantry (well drilled by Captain Martinet, who had lost his life in the previous summer’s campaign but whose influence was still felt) proceeded at an orderly pace, six abreast. Next came the big guns, some of them so heavy that they required eight horses apiece to draw them; the wagons with the ammunitions and stores; and then, pell-mell, the officers’ carriages, the mules loaded with baggage, and the camp-followers with their carts and goats and mules. The entire army, stretched out like this, measured several miles from end to end. If the vanguard took a shortcut through a field, the soft brown earth was packed to granite ruts by the time the last carts had passed. With trampled crops, polluted ponds and ruined orchards in its wake, the army cut a swath of destruction through the gentle countryside like hungry moths in an angora pullover.

  Cornet Stickling had negotiated a place for Bessie and Lucinda in one of the carriages. It was owned by a French officer, the Marquis de la Faience, and was packed with a portion of the marquis’ campaign furnishings—a pair of silver candelabra, brocade hangings for his tent, a large polished-silver mirror, two casks of brandy and a rolled-up carpet. There were besides these several boxes and trunks lashed to the roof and onto the back, leaving very little room for passengers. But the two women were too grateful to mind the discomfort.

  “Mind you, I could have gone on foot,” said Lucinda, gazing out the window at the phalanx of women struggling with large bundles on their backs, some of them loaded down with infants as well, “but you’d never have kept up, Bess.”

  Bessie shook her head. “I’m glad we have the carriage, pet. Look at those poor souls. I would that we could help them. It’s a wonder they put up with this. I wonder why they don’t stay home.”

  “Profit. Or else survival,” said Lucinda succinctly, and Bessie once again wondered how and where her lamb could have picked up so much unpleasant wisdom, so fast.

  During the march, camp was an abbreviated affair. There was no time to erect tents or build huts, so the soldiers slept where they sank to the ground in exhaustion. There was no fraternizing now between troops and camp followers: a warning had been issued that any woman who came too close to the army proper whilst on the march would be drummed out of camp. Fires were kept to a minimum because of the munitions’ proximity, and the ovens, which took six hours to assemble, were functional just twice a week. And so the troops had to make do with rations of rock-hard bread, whatever water or ale they could carry in their own canteens, and male companionship.

  Bessie and Lucinda tried sleeping inside the carriage on the first night, but it was so cramped and uncomfortable that they decided to spend the following night outdoors, as did most of their traveling companions. As long as the competition for the soldiers’ attentions and money was suspended, the baggage-train people were a much friendlier lot, enjoying the camaraderie that comes of being embarked on a communal adventure. Perfect strangers shared food and huddled close for warmth. Seated in circles around their allotted fires, the camp followers sang sad songs, told tall tales, traded gimcracks, puffed at their pipes, picked each other over for lice, and stared into the swelling-ebbing embers until their eyeballs stung.

  Word had already got out that Bessie knew something of physic, and she dealt very kindly with the first requests for help, explaining as best she could (her French consisting of very loud English, slowly articulated and accompanied by flamboyant gestures) that she had not yet had the time to amass a stock of basic ingredients, but giving out comforting advice nonetheless.

  Lucinda found herself gravitating toward the fanciest French whores. She sat down just outside their exclusive circle, craning her neck to see what they were up to, trying to overhear their conversation. The whores fascinated her: they were so glamorous, and seemed so self-assured. They showed their teeth when they laughed, and they often laughed
raucously, or derisively. They lent each other powders and pomatums, tried on each other’s patches, and showed off trinkets they had stolen or received as gifts.

  Occasionally one of them would catch Lucinda’s gaze, and look away coldly, or turn her back. There were whispers and cackles of laughter. Lucinda knew that she did not belong in their world, that she shouldn’t even desire to belong there. They were harlots, after all, and she was a lady. And yet how she wished she could be a part of that seductive coterie, even if it was just as an observer…

  There was one whore who intrigued her even more than the rest; she found herself staring furtively at her. Indeed, this woman attracted many stares. She was African, as brown as the freshly tilled soil. Lucinda had seen a blackamoor child once, the pet of a lady who had visited the manor years ago; but never before had she seen anything as exotic as this.

  The African woman stood almost a head taller than the other women, and her voice was low, foreign and musical. Her dark skin made a startling contrast to the whites of her eyes and the brilliant round teeth she hid behind her pink palms when she laughed. It was the woman’s extraordinary gait, however, that intrigued Lucinda most. She wished she could walk like that, so liltingly insolent, so alluringly untouchable. The woman kept her torso perfectly still, the shoulders back, the neck elongated. There was no bounce, no movement up and down; just a sideways sway, the hips and rump pivoting smoothly around the immobile waist. It was this beautiful bearing, this regal gliding, with the lowered eyelids and the pouting lower lip, Lucinda decided, that gave the impression of a supremely confident being, a woman who knew exactly where she was going…

  “Stop!” she therefore shouted to their driver, “Arrêtez!” when they passed what was unmistakably the African woman huddled in a ditch, spattered with mud, her head hidden in her lap. It was the fourth day of the march, and the rain was beating down mercilessly on the sodden baggage train.