Slipper

by Hester Velmans

  “No!” he barked. Bessie and Lucinda stared at him. “I mean, please—stay. It is you I have come to see.”

  “Me?” said Lucinda.

  “Yes. I have a matter of some urgency to convey to you.”

  “Oh?”

  “I do not wish to distress you, ma’am, but I must warn you.”

  “Of what?”

  “There is a plan—a plot afoot…”

  “Well?” she prompted him, looking at Bessie, then back at him.

  “Concerning your own person.”

  “Concerning me? What sort of plot would that be, sir?”

  He had grabbed the hilt of his sword and was jiggling it nervously in its sheath. “There is talk that—that you will be—er—traded, to Monsieur de Vauban, in return for his favoring the Duke of Monmouth in the matter of the timing of the assault on the citadel.”

  “I don’t understand…” said Lucinda. Bessie just stared, open-mouthed.

  “Forgive me. What I mean is that…” He coughed uncomfortably. “That Vauban has requested you as his prize.”

  “His prize!” Lucinda scoffed. “That crab of a man! What in God’s name would I do with him?”

  “It is not what you would do with him, ma’am. It is what he would do with you that concerns me.”

  “Why—this is nonsense! Henry would never allow it. Have you told him of it?”

  John threw a look of appeal at Bessie. “I am sorry ma’am. Believe me, I am chagrined to be the bearer of such tidings. But—” His eyes closed helplessly for an instant—”I understand the idea came from Captain Beaupree.”

  “No! The captain? How do you mean, the captain!” Lucinda forced laugh. “The captain would never do such a thing!” She whirled around at Bessie. “Did you hear what your friend just said?” she cried, and, gathering her skirts, ran down the hill.

  Bessie stared after her, then turned around to face John, her hands reproachfully on her wide hips.

  He raised his hands helplessly. “It is the truth, madam,” he said. The left hand fell to his side; the right one set to rubbing his nose sheepishly. “I felt it was my duty…”

  39

  DRAGON’S CLAW

  The trenches were opened on June 17. The sappers now ceded their places to the foot soldiers, who took up position within striking range of the fortress. There was one setback, however: heavy downpours had filled the trenches with rain. The drenched troops sat hunched behind their muddy parapets with water up to their waists. But the earthworks were holding up well, and despite some perfunctory shelling by the defenders’ artillery, casualties were negligible.

  Four days later Henry sent for Lucinda again. Monmouth’s troops had just been relieved by General de Lorge and his men, and after twenty-four hours of misery in the pouring rain, Henry was in a foul mood.

  “Help me get out of these sopping things,” he groused at Lucinda. “I’m near death, wench.”

  “Near death!” exclaimed Lucinda. She sank to her knees and began tugging at his boots.

  “Aarrgh…!” he growled, and kicked her away. “You’re no help at all, jade!” He tore the boots off himself and flung them across the tent.

  Lucinda, who had landed on her backside, picked herself up and, trying to hide her mortification, began rubbing at the muddy footprint on her gown.

  “May we…?” It was Lewis and Edward Watson, Lord Rockingham’s sons, and their cousin Francis, the duke’s aide-de-camp.

  “By all means!” said Henry, suddenly gracious. He waved at some stools piled behind the field bed, and his visitors pulled them up to the table. Then he turned to Lucinda, and muttered, “Go, fetch Stickling, and tell him to bring some brandy.”

  When she returned to the tent with the subaltern and the brandy, Henry’s mood had lightened considerably. He even smiled at her, with an “Ah! There you are, my sweet!”

  The other three turned to stare at her, grinning.

  Lucinda blushed, and stood uncertainly just inside the tent flap.

  “Come in! By all means, wench!” Henry said heartily, waving her closer. When she was near enough, he drew her onto his lap, with her back to him. Lucinda had no choice but to sit there foolishly on display, Henry’s hands resting lightly on her breasts, while the men discussed the day’s work.

  “It’s too bad, too bad,” said Edward Watson, shaking his head. “To get within thirty paces of the counterscarp, and then to be thwarted!”

  “The duke is furious,” said Francis. “And very, very disappointed. Although you would never know it to look at him, of course, dear prince! He was certain he could have made a lodgment quite easily, you know.”

  “How long do you think it will take to complete the new sap-works the king has ordered?” asked Henry.

  “Two days, four days, a week…It’s hard to tell,” said Francis. There was a silence.

  “We were so close! If only the French king weren’t so lily-livered!” complained Henry.

  “No, in my opinion, he is right,” put in Lewis Watson. “We all know the Dutch have mines littering the place; they could easily have blown our troops to hell. He was right to halt the attempt.”

  “Pish! I think we could have taken the counterscarp,” said Henry, toying with Lucinda’s sleeve. “I agree with the duke: the Dutch have staked everything upon those mines, but once they are played, they have played their last card.”

  “But think of the casualties…” protested Lewis.

  “A few lives sacrificed for the good of all,” said Francis. “Come, man, whether it is today or one month hence, there will be casualties. Besides, what’s a few men, compared with the glory that should be ours?”

  “And still will be,” said Henry grimly.

  Lucinda blushed, unhappily, for suddenly all the men’s eyes were on her.

  “Monsieur de Vauban? Why him?” asked Lucinda anxiously. “Why does he wish to see me?”

  “He does not wish to see you, per se,” Henry smiled; “he wishes to see me, and I am inviting you to come along. Why, I thought you would be pleased!”

  “Thank you,” stammered Lucinda, “but, actually, I should get back. I must…”

  “No excuses!” laughed Henry. He pinned her waist between his arms, and swung her first this way, then that. “What is it, pigeon? Don’t you want to be seen with me?”

  “Well, I…I just don’t think it’s my place…” she stammered.

  “Your place! Ah, baggage!” he said. “If only you knew!” He looked into her eyes tenderly, charmingly. “And if I were to tell you that it was your place, and that you must not refuse me? Why—what am I to think? Am I to think that if I had a mind to ask something of you—any small favor, really—I should be rejected by you, hard-hearted little minx that you are?”

  “No! Henry! No!” she exclaimed. “Of course not…”

  “Well then!” he said, and pushed her out of the tent.

  Later, after they returned from Vauban’s tent, Henry was in a fine mood.

  “Aahh!” he exclaimed, pulling her close. “My delightful filly! I have grown very fond of you, you know.”

  Lucinda rubbed her eyes.

  “I do believe that you made quite an impression on those frogs,” he said.

  “Oh, really,” she said, and sniffed.

  “What is it?” he asked defensively.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “But. I don’t like to be…paraded.”

  “Paraded? Is that what I was doing, parading you? Oh my cozy baggage, is that what you think I was doing? I was doing nothing of the sort, I assure you.”

  “No?”

  “No. Of course not. The idea!”

  “What were you whispering about, the two of you, all that time?”

  “None of your business. Men’s business. Strategy, that sort of thing. Vauban has taken me into his confidence.”

  “Then what has it got to do with me?”

  “I have already told you, nothing!”

  “How do you think it makes me feel,
having to stand there awkwardly, uselessly, and that Frenchman throwing me looks…”

  “What looks? Oh come, Lucinda, surely you are imagining…”

  “It’s not just my imagination.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “How is that, vixen?”

  “I heard a rumor.”

  “She heard a rumor! Yet again! Well, well!”

  “Yes. I heard…I heard I was to be traded, to Vauban.”

  Without missing a beat, he replied, “You heard that, did you? Who told you?”

  “It doesn’t matter who told me.”

  “I insist on knowing who told you.”

  “I insist on being told the truth.”

  “The truth? Ha! The truth, my pretty miss? Well, the truth is that Vauban has taken a fancy to you.”

  “Ah!” she said sullenly.

  “Yes indeed, and you ought to be flattered. He is a great man, a very great man…”

  “Yes, a great, ugly old man.”

  “Oh come, my turtledove. If he enjoys having a gander, where’s the harm? Don’t you want to help me in my endeavors? As for this rumor about being ‘traded’—whatever that means—it’s all nonsense. I truly wish you would tell me who told you such a pack of lies.”

  On her way up from the pontoon bridge across the river, she spotted Bessie kneeling under a large awning. As she drew near, she saw what she was doing: washing a corpse. There were two more bodies waiting to be packed up and tidily dispatched to their final resting place.

  “Bessie!” she said.

  Bessie turned around. “Not now, lamb, I’m busy. Go on back to the tent, pet. This is no sight for a young lady.”

  “No, I want to help,” she said, gazing at the sorry spectacle. “There must be something I can do!”

  “There is plenty to do,” said a voice in her ear. She spun around. It was the surgeon John Prynce, with blood up to his elbows. He made a rather grim picture.

  “Oh, hello,” she said quickly. “Well, put me to work, then.” She looked at him defiantly. He knew nothing of it, of course, but she had not betrayed him. She had not betrayed him to Henry. She had refused to give Henry the name of the man who had brought her the rumor about Vauban. The Lord knew she had no good reason to be nice to this Mr. Prynce, but she had protected him nonetheless. “What should I do?”

  “This way,” he said, and led her to the other side of the open tent, where a chorus of soft moaning and high-pitched wailing greeted her ears. The wounded, the amputated, the freshly maimed, the blinded and deafened. There were only a dozen or so, lying bandaged around a glowing brazier, but to the stunned Lucinda it looked like a horde writhing in hell. “Just do what you can to make them comfortable,” the surgeon instructed her. “They need to be kept warm. And give them something to drink—there is a bottle of brandy over there, and some ale. Try to keep their spirits up. Make them believe they’ll feel better tomorrow.”

  “But…” she began. But he had already gone back to help Bessie with the corpses.

  To her own surprise, Lucinda proved to be rather good at tending to the casualties—the less severely injured ones, at any rate. At Bessie’s urging, her talent for sketching was resurrected, and proved a useful icebreaker. She was soon much in demand as a portraitist; some soldiers even swore that their suffering was worth it just for the satisfaction of having a likeness of themselves, on a scrap of parchment, to keep.

  “They can be so affectionate, so grateful,” she told Bessie, “it breaks your heart, doesn’t it?”

  “It breaks your heart,” Bessie agreed. “But have you told the captain that you are working here now?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Well, how will they find you, if he sends someone to fetch you?”

  “I don’t care. Let him come and look for me himself,” she said lightly.

  “Aha!” said Bessie. Her lamb was finally beginning to play the game the way Bessie felt it should be played.

  As it turned out, it was several days before anyone came looking for Lucinda, because the siege had taken a serious turn and the officers, even when not engaged in active duty, spent the greater part of the day at their observation posts, following the progress of the sappers digging their way closer to the fortress walls. The evenings were taken up with strategy sessions; this was not the time for wenching.

  In the meantime Lucinda was learning from Bessie how to change a bandage and cleanse a wound, how to talk to an amputee in a manner designed to raise his spirits, or, if that proved impossible, to cheerfully ignore his understandable ill-humor. She even overcame her natural recoil at the constant presence of vomit, putrefaction and excrement. Bessie did not mind the stench; Lieutenant Prynce did not mind it; then why should she?

  She found herself watching, out of the corner of her eye, Lieutenant Prynce’s incessant activity, his firmness, his deftness, his professional geniality. It pleased her very much to see him in action, although she found it necessary to hide this from him. He had insulted her, after all, not once, but twice: first in mistaking her for a whore, the second time in implying that her lover was a pander willing to trade her to another. But the sting of those insults was fading in the filtered light of the infirmary tent, where he walked like an angel, a savior, and everyone looked up to him. She imagined that he too was sneaking covert glances at her: but every time she peeked, he seemed intent on his work. The tables were slowly turning: the more she admired him, the shyer and more tongue-tied she was in his presence. The shyer she was, the more comfortable he grew with her, ragging her easily as if she were a younger sister, winking at her when he did happen to catch her eye.

  Bessie saw the change. At least, she thought she detected it. She could not resist testing her hypothesis.

  “Mister Prynce thinks very highly of you, you know, pet,” she said as they were walking back to their tent one night. She noted that her comment made Lucinda blush.

  “Really? Why? What did he say?” she asked.

  “What I just said, lamb.”

  “No, really, what were his exact words?”

  Bessie smiled, and told her, word for word.

  When they arrived at the infirmary tent early the next morning, Lieutenant Prynce was waiting for them. “There is not much for you to do today. It would be best if you went back to your tent and rested. I do not want to overwork you.”

  “Oh we aren’t tired!” beamed Lucinda. “Are we, Bess?”

  He could not help smiling back. But, composing his face, he went on gravely, “All the same, I think it would be best.”

  Bessie’s hands went up to her mouth. “You think the main assault is imminent, that is what you mean, isn’t it?”

  “I am sorry, ladies. I am not at liberty to…”

  “Come, lamb,” said Bessie, tugging at the disappointed Lucinda’s arm. “Let’s do as Mister Prynce says.”

  “I am happy to report, Sire,” Vauban said to his sovereign late that afternoon, “that the new sap network will be completed before nightfall.”

  “We may go ahead, then?” asked the king.

  “His Majesty may go ahead.”

  “Well then! Very well!” The king looked as excited as a child. “Alert the Duc d’Orléans and Général Montal. And send the Duke of Monmouth to us, with whichever of his generals has the watch.”

  “I believe it is the English duke himself tonight, Sire.”

  “Young James! Well then! Well done, Sébastien. Well done. He shall have our own Regiment of Foot,” he said generously, “under the Marquis de Montbrun. That should give him a sufficient force, should it not?”

  “I trust that it will, Sire, but…”

  “Well?”

  “I hope, Sire, that this, er, young person, the duke, will be able to live up to the immense trust His Majesty has invested in him…”

  “Always the cautious one, my dear Vauban, always so careful! But no, no, we are sure that he will do very well! And he shall have some fine things to say abou
t us when he writes home to our cousin his dear papa, n’est-ce pas!”

  “No doubt, Sire. No doubt.”

  “Very well. Excellent. Indeed.” The king tapped his fine upper lip thoughtfully. “Now. Let us see. As commander in chief, it behooves us, naturally, to consider every eventuality. Naturally. Does it not, my man. But of course. You must never forget this, Vauban. It is our duty. Yes indeed. And so perhaps—yes, perhaps, in addition, we’ll give him our musketeers. The Royal Musketeers. Ah! Most suitable indeed. What say you to our little plan, Vauban? With Captain d’Artagnan at his side, the duke cannot go wrong. Brilliant! Do we not have the solution at our very fingertips, as ever? Our d’Artagnan will keep an eye on that English rapscallion, will he not!”

  “An excellent plan, Sire.” Vauban bowed low.

  “Very well then. We are agreed. In three hours we give the command.”

  Lucinda’s daydreams had grown a bit muddled of late. Instead of focusing on the happy moment when Henry at last realized how much he loved her and made her his wife, the fantasies once again featured the faceless hero who used to rescue her from the tedium of her childhood in the days before she’d met Henry.

  She leaned back against a tent pole and closed her eyes, drifting into a reverie.

  They were galloping away across an arid flatland; behind them, a dragon was bellowing its death-roar. The monster was pinned to the ground by a pike speared through the heart. For a few brief moments more she was flooded with relief. But then…

  “No, no!” she shuddered. “It is too late! Look!” And she peeled back her left sleeve to reveal, where her hand should have been…a gnarled, green, scaly claw.

  Her rescuer sucked in his breath. For a moment he faltered. He looked down into her despairing eyes, then back to the revolting claw. She closed her eyes, and longed for death.

  But suddenly she felt his touch. He was picking up the claw—he picked it up as if it were a velvet glove!—and held it gently to his cheek. “It doesn’t matter,” he whispered. “Nothing matters— nothing except that I have you now, and will never let you go…”