“Well!” said the king at last. As soon as he opened his mouth, everyone else fell silent. “Very well, Vauban.” The king pursed his thin upper lip in a semi-amused expression. There was a grateful response of pleased nods, expressions of agreement, and sighs of approval all around.
The monarch held up his hand. You could have heard a pin drop. He cleared his throat. “Well then. Very well. Continue, continue!” he said gravely, slapping the palm of his left hand with the buskin gloves in his right.
This was the signal for everyone to start bowing again, and soon the king was leading his retinue out of the clammy ditch.
When it was finally safe to straighten up, there was yet another interruption.
“Monsieur!” A red coat lined with yellow—one of the English officers. The fellow who had brought the young woman, he saw. “Henry Beaupree, Monmouth’s Regiment of Horse, at your service. May one have a moment of your time?”
“Mais certainement,” said Vauban. What else could he say? At least the fellow had the good sense to carry an honest French name, Beaupré. And the little baggage with him was certainly worth a closer look.
In his halting French, Henry began outlining a crafty plan he had dreamed up, of digging a false trench, a trench that led to nowhere, and luring the enemy into it, leaving the abandoned fort wide open to an assault. Vauban listened respectfully to this nonsense (he could barely understand this foreigner anyway, where did these people learn their French? This one’s accent was un scandale), and when the Englishman was done, he nodded thoughtfully. “Très intéressant,” he said, “Oui, oui, très intéressant, very interesting, tout à fait.” Then he took him by the elbow and made him turn around so that his back was to the wench. “Combien?” he mouthed confidentially.
“Combien? How many?” repeated Henry, astounded that the great man should not only take the time to listen to his plan but, indeed, ask him what sort of manpower he would need to carry it out. Suppose Henry’s plan was adopted by Vauban! He’d like to see the look on Churchill’s face!
“Pour la petite,” Vauban said, nudging him, “The little one. How much?”
Startled, Henry looked over his shoulder at Lucinda, who was trying very hard not to let on that she could overhear this exchange.
“Ah!” he laughed. “The little one! No, I regret, Monsieur, but that one is not for sale.”
Ah no, they never were, for Vauban. That’s what stunk around here. The precious beribboned boys sucked up to him when they needed him, but did they ever come through for him when he needed something from them? Never. The thought of sharing a little morsel with someone like old Vauban made them puke into their scented handkerchiefs.
“Bien. Bien!” he exclaimed. He had already wasted so much time. “Veuillez m’excuser…”
He made Lucinda think of a crab as he scurried away sideways, his wig slapping at his cheeks, his face florid, one arm akimbo, his broad body bent double over the other arm, bowing in the fashion of the court.
36
SUCH TINY FEET
“Ah, quels petits petons! Such tiny little feet!”
Lucinda stared at the beaded slippers in her lap. She was sitting around the campfire with her new friends. Henry had not sent for her tonight. He had not sent for her the previous night either. Or the night before that. Her slippers had just been passed all around the circle, after Blanchette, who’d asked to borrow them, discovered they were too small for her feet, and challenged the others to try them on. There were clownish contortions and screams of laughter: no one else could get the slippers on.
“Just wait until you’ve had a couple of brats, my dear,” sighed Geneviève Culelvaye, who was herself big with child. “It splays the feet.”
“I met a Chinawoman, once,” said Zéfine. “And she had the most precious little feet. It was so bad she couldn’t walk normally, she could only hobble.”
“They bind the feet,” nodded Madame Bézée. “From the time they are very young. The Orientals, they spit on the woman with the big feet.”
“It’s fortunate, then, that we’re not in China!” giggled Henriette. “Or none of us would have any customers, save Lucinda!”
“Henriette!” Zéfine admonished her. “You know Lucinda’s officer is not a customer, he’s her lover. She’s a lady!”
“Not much of a lover, is he,” sniffed Henriette, “keeping her waiting like this, with not a word…”
Lucinda hung her head.
Zéfine grabbed her hands and gave them a consoling squeeze, as a discussion began about Lucinda’s predicament.
“Englishmen tire more easily, you know,” said Blanchette wisely. “They have less endurance than our men. Your Frenchman, now, he’d just keep going, wouldn’t he, he wouldn’t even know he was tired. No he wouldn’t. But your Englishman, he is smart, that one, he knows his limits, he knows he must save his strength for battle.”
The others voiced their agreement.
“Well…” Lucinda defended her lover uncertainly, “It’s not—I mean he always seems to have enough…”
“It’s not at all unusual, chérie,” clucked Mme Bézée, “for a man to conserve his powers on the eve of war.”
“And the king keeps them all very busy, of course,” said another. “Poor things.”
Lucinda nodded, because she didn’t want them to think she didn’t share their compassion for the men and their silly war games. Secretly, however, she knew that Henry’s silence was something different. It meant—it had to mean—that he was struggling with a weighty decision, a long-overdue declaration of true love.
Yes, as soon as it finally dawned on him that he was smitten, he would send for her, he would fall to his knees and beg her for forgiveness—nay, beg for her hand in marriage. And of course she would forgive him and say yes, although perhaps with a bit less alacrity than if it had taken him less time to get there; for she was starting to lose patience with him. She wished that he would conform a little more readily to the lover of her fantasies. All this recalcitrance was beginning to cool her own ardor somewhat.
She caught Henriette and Sabine—two of the highest-paid camp followers, who, although not fine enough to be considered courtesans, did count some courtiers among their clientele—exchanging a look. They were sisters, pouting bosom-buddies, and had a way of making you feel uneasy, shut out.
“What?” she said defiantly.
“Oh, nothing,” they said. But in their faces you could read a thousand condolences.
Lieutenant Prynce paid Bessie another visit that week.
Bessie put her hands to her mouth, her eyes twinkling. “Sir, you have missed her again, I’m afraid. She is not here.”
“Ah—you mean—the other lady…” he stammered.
“The lady. My mistress.”
“Indeed, yes. But you are mistaken. It is you I came to see.” He laughed, crushed that she should have spotted his disappointment.
“To see me?”
“Yes.”
“Well!” said Bessie.
“I…”
She noticed that he had a habit of shutting his eyes a second before speaking, as one who stutters, although his speech was fluent enough. There was just enough hesitation to convey an earnestness, a desire to be sincere, that was rather endearing.
“I have a proposition to make to you, ma’am.”
“A proposition!” Bessie repeated.
“Indeed.” He looked around, and spotted a pile of folded blankets. He looked at her quizzically.
“Of course,” said Bessie. “Please, sir. Sit down.”
“Thank you. You see, it occurred to me that, since you seem to have some success in healing the sick and wounded—”
“I do,” she said modestly.
“And I have made it my calling to do the same…”
His eyes strayed to a pile of neatly folded linens and lace. Next to it a basket of gay ribbons with a pair of embroidered slippers resting on top captured his attention.
Bessie coughe
d. He turned back to her guiltily. “I just thought—I was hoping, you see, that—”
“Yes?” said Bessie.
“That we might join forces. You and I.”
“Oh!” Bessie exclaimed.
“If there is to be an assault, and it is my understanding that it is not far off, then we may expect a great number of casualties. And I thought, I could use your assistance…”
“Oh!” breathed Bessie again. She was flattered.
“The remuneration would not be great, of course, but I would see what I could do…”
“I know you would,” she said quickly.
“Fine then!” said John, getting to his feet. “Then you agree?”
“Well…” said Bessie. She hesitated.
There was a silence. John sat down again uncertainly. “How might I persuade you?”
“I have one condition.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. And I’m afraid…well, I’m afraid it may anger you.”
“Madam. Please know how respectful I am of your ability. Do not be afraid of angering me.”
“Well, sir, there are certain things I like to do my way. It’s a little different from what you surgeons are used to.”
“I am aware of that. That is precisely why I have come to you. I should like to learn from you.”
“But then you’ll…I fear I may be accused of satanic ways—”
“My dear lady! Of course not!” laughed John.
“If we are to work together, I will want to—well, do it my way, you see…”
John got up and squatted down before her. He was so close to her that she caught a whiff of his smell—a sober, candid odor of liniment, onions and blood. “That is what I wish, too. If your methods are better than mine, and I suspect that some of them may be, then I must be your pupil.”
“Oh!” said Bessie, delighted. “Well, in that case, I agree.”
37
OF FROGS AND ENGLISHMEN
Young women will sometimes go to any length to make their dreams come true. Take, for instance, the belief that if a fair damsel kisses a frog, hey presto, the frog will turn into a handsome prince. Who wouldn’t want to give it a whirl? Many are tempted to try it—surreptitiously, of course, just as an experiment.
Before you go rushing down to the pond, however, be warned. For it is also said that touching a frog will give you warts.
Which isn’t the only trick those great pranksters, Fate and Fortune, have in store for damsels who pin their hopes on old wives’ tales.
As a young boy, John Prynce always loved to fix things. His tutors had despaired of teaching him anything useful, because instead of applying himself to his Latin, fencing or dancing lessons, he frittered away his time tinkering with broken spits, timepieces, or wagon wheels. Nothing made him so happy as to tackle something lads of his class would not normally attempt: he enjoyed building a fire in the hearth before the maid had a chance to do so, assisting the grooms in the birthing of a foal, or helping a carpenter mend a leaky roof. It should have come as no surprise to his disapproving relatives, then, that despite a comfortable legacy from his father, making it unnecessary for him to earn a living, he chose for himself a pastime that resembled—scandalously—a career.
It was some years, however, before he found his vocation. As a hotheaded adolescent, he had killed a rival in a duel, an act for which he suffered deep remorse, and which was to mark him for the rest of his life. His relatives fortunately managed to spare him from the gallows by buying him a commission in Sir John Reynolds’ troop, at that time bound for Dunkirk to fight under the command of France’s General Turenne. In Dunkirk the young cornet had witnessed the decimation of the English force, not in battle, but in the unhealthy damp and unsanitary privations of a winter in Mardyke. Three years later, when the English monarchy was restored and King Charles decided to let his army cut its teeth on a prize at a safe distance from Whitehall, John had volunteered for service with the Portuguese Brigade. It was in Portugal that he saw his first active service, and was struck not by the glory of war, but the gore. After watching several of his closest comrades bleed or suppurate to death, he became acquainted with a Swiss barber who was having some success in stemming the bleeding of amputated limbs. The man’s method was to ligature the cut blood vessels, instead of the more accepted practice of cauterizing the wound with boiling oil, which, despite the imposing agony it caused, seemed to save few lives. John was sufficiently impressed to apprentice himself to the Swiss barber, having resolved to dedicate himself to tending to the wounded as a way of atoning for his youthful offense. Upon mastering the ligaturing technique, he spent the next several years touring Europe’s medical institutions, supplementing his barber-surgeon’s skills with a thorough grounding in anatomy (cutting up cadavers), comparative anatomy (dissecting birds, toads and other animals), pathology (memorizing the symptoms of a multitude of deadly and sadly incurable diseases), and the Latin he had eschewed as a boy.
“I decided,” he told Bessie, “that it was better to save lives than to take them.”
“So it is,” agreed Bessie. She sighed. “I wish your colleagues would see it that way too.”
“We all have the best of intentions, ma’am,” he protested.
“Of course, of course! I mean no offense…”
“And now,” he went on, “where were we? Ah yes, you were about to give me the ingredients of your styptic.”
“My recipe to stop the bleeding? Well, just a pinch of lime, a dash of vinegar, a drop of arsenic. And alumroot, finely ground. To bind it, the egg white I told you of before.”
“Yes, I have heard tell of the alum. You have found it efficacious?”
“If you wish to stop the bleeding, yes. If you believe in encouraging it, as most of your physicians do, then not.”
“There is a time for flushing out the blood,” he said stiffly, “and there is a time for stemming it.”
Bessie pursed her lips. “I think you might find that giving your patient some strong wine or broth to drink—I can give you my recipe—does a body a world more good than lancing or cupping.”
“Ah! Confortantia, of course, are a boon—”
Bessie looked puzzled.
“Tonics, ma’am. Such as the broth you describe.”
“Yes,” said Bessie.
“I am curious to hear your recipe.”
“Well. I might take some leaves of rosemary…” Bessie began. Seeing him nod encouragement, she went on, “…singe them over a flame, and let them steep in the broth for four and twenty hours. Then I’ll take a hunk of stale bread, with a good touch of the mold growing on’t—”
“Mold? Why not fresh, ma’am?”
“It is the recipe, sir,” she said, pursing her lips. “I cannot say why.”
“Well, why not! If it was newt’s tongue, perhaps, or bat’s wing, I might be forgiven for drawing the wrong conclusion…”
Bessie looked at him in alarm, but his face had broken into a roguish grin, and her heart softened. She was just beginning to understand the gentleman’s difficult sense of humor.
Before she could go on, the tent flaps parted. A water nymph burst in, strings of wet vegetation dripping from her hair.
“Bessie! What have we here? You, entertaining an officer in our tent? Oh fie, fie, fie!”
It was Lucinda, damp and apple-cheeked from a dip in the river. She couldn’t wait to tell Bessie about the afternoon’s activity. It had been such fun! They’d all gone to bathe in the river, and Zéfine had caught a frog, and then Blanchette and the others had made her kiss it, because, they said, if you kissed a frog, you would be married within the year. At first she had protested, squealing that she would never do such a thing, but in the end, persuaded by all the flattering attention, she had entered into the spirit of thing. She’d screwed up her nose and planted a kiss on the slimy creature’s back, and then they had all petted her and made a fuss over her, and presented her with a bridal garland of water lilies for her head.
“Oh pet!” scolded Bessie, “This is Lieutenant…”
“Prynce. John Prynce, at your service, ma’am,” stammered the lieutenant, bowing.
Lucinda, startled, recognized him. “Sir!” she said. She ripped the garland out of her wet hair and made a face at Bessie, who shrugged apologetically.
“I have been plying your companion, dear lady,” John said hastily, “for her medicinal secrets.”
“Aha,” said Lucinda laconically.
“Yes.” He laughed, trying to coax a smile out of her, “And I am unable to decide which name best suits her: Panakeia, Hygeia or Iaso.”
Both women looked blank. John kicked himself. They’d think he was being pompous; when he most wanted to sound charming and glib. He tried to explain, which only made it worse.
“Panakeia, Hygeia and Iaso were the daughters of Aesculapius…”
“Ah.” Lucinda was already looking bored; Bessie, anxiously confused.
“Aesculapius was the father of medicine,” he went on hurriedly, “a Greek.” He had no choice but to continue, lamely: “Zeus killed him. With a thunderbolt, because he was a mortal, and he was treading on the gods’ toes—”
“The Lord God’s toes,” Bessie repeated, nodding devoutly.
“No, I meant the Greek gods…” He gave up when he saw Lucinda starting to back out of the tent. “I do trust,” he interrupted himself, too loudly and too quickly, “that, uh, good mother Goose has conveyed to you my most sincere apologies?”
“She has,” said Lucinda coldly. “But don’t let me keep you. I leave you to your learned talk.”
“Lucinda! Lamb!” exclaimed Bessie, but the lamb had already escaped.
“That wasn’t very kind,” she said to Lucinda later, when they were alone.
“Ha! Was it kind of him to take me for a whore?”
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