Freedom's Banner

by Freedom's Banner (retail) (epub)

  ‘Angelina, Harry is far, far too young to consider marriage. It’s absurd!’ The tiniest flicker of panic made Mattie pause to take a deep and audible breath.

  ‘Well, of course – we realize they would have to wait – but we’re perfectly happy about that, my dear. You know how dear Mr Wheeler is about his little girl – what Carolyn wants she must have –’

  ‘Lina!’

  ‘He even suggested the other day that we might talk about a position in the company for young Harry. We have no son of our own, as you know, and we are so very fond of him –’

  ‘Lina!’

  Angelina stopped, astonished.

  ‘I’m – I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so sharp. It’s just –’ the panic had increased, was building, had almost paralysed Mattie’s tongue. Angelina was right; these past, contented years had raced by far too quickly. She wasn’t ready – dear God, she wasn’t ready! When he’s a man, she had told herself, when he’s a man – then I’ll tell him, then I’ll explain, then he’ll understand. They had been so close. She had told him, by inference, so many, many lies – she could not face telling him the truth. Not yet. Not just yet. ‘– it’s just that Harry’s so young yet. I really don’t feel I should be pushing him into something before he knows what he wants.’

  Angelina stood, smiling, hands extended. ‘But, dearest Mattie, it’s as plain as the nose on your face! He wants Caro!’

  ‘No,’ Mattie said. ‘No, you’re wrong.’

  The other woman’s pleasant smile faded. ‘Mattie? Mattie, surely I haven’t upset you, talking of it? We do understand – Harry being all you have, and being so very close to you, closer than most, I know – but, dearest, you must know it can’t last for ever? Children grow up. We have to let them go sometime.’

  ‘It isn’t that. And no, of course you haven’t upset me –’ Mattie stopped as the French doors opened to admit the two young people, faces sunflushed, hands linked.

  ‘Mother, any tea? My throat feels like the Sahara. Aunt Lina, Caro wants one of Sedge’s puppies – may she have one?’

  ‘Oh, please, Mama. They are the very sweetest things.’ Carolyn Wheeler’s forget-me-not eyes turned upon her mother, her pretty lips curved into a coaxing smile. Mattie saw with a suddenly leaden heart the expression in her son’s dark eyes as he watched her, the pink-and-white Dresden beauty of her small face, the little, graceful hands, the tiny waist; oh yes, Lina was right, a handsome pair they made indeed. In God’s name, how had she not seen it? Had her self-induced blindness been deliberate? How had she reached this moment unprepared? As she poured tea and passed biscuits, carried on light and teasing conversation, admired Carolyn’s new dress and hunted out a book of recipes for Angelina, Mattie tried to ignore the rise of panic. How often, in these past eighteen years, had she thought of having to face this moment? How often had she swung from one decision to the other; to tell him, or to take the chance that his father’s blood – Joshua’s blood – would not taint the coming generations? Taint. The brutal word made her feel sick.

  ‘Mother? Are you all right?’ Harry, ever sensitive, was watching her, a faint frown upon his clear, boyish brow. She never could look at him without seeing his father, whom he so much resembled, without remembering those short, fierce days of their love; yet it was a secret she had kept from everyone. So far as the world knew – so far as Harry himself knew – he was the son of Johnny Sherwood, a hero dead in the American war, fighting to defend his brothers and his cause. A cause now enshrined romantically in a past that must seem as distant to the boy as the moon.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine, darling. It’s a little warm in here, that’s all. Perhaps you’d like to open the other window? The breeze is very pleasant.’ Mattie watched him move, lithe and graceful, to the window. His ivory skin took the sun each summer and tanned to gold. His black hair fell in tangled curls that Carolyn often teasingly asserted were wasted on a boy, and his eyes were Joshua’s eyes, dark, long-lashed and lustrous. He was bright, carefree, volatile and hopelessly impulsive in all things. And she loved him more than life itself.

  But she had kept from him all these years the secret of his true parentage; a secret that clearly was no longer hers to keep.

  * * *

  Later, Harry and Mattie sat together, as they often did in the evening. Mattie gave Harry the letter that had arrived from America that morning, and watched him as he read it. She had always felt grateful to Russ for his delicacy in never questioning Harry’s paternity. He no doubt assumed the boy to be the product of rape, as was more than one child in the aftermath of that terrible war.

  Harry folded the letter and handed it back to her. ‘It’s good that Pleasant Hill is still doing so well, despite the difficulties. I should like to meet Cousin Johnny. And little Will. We will visit one day, won’t we?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, stopping the conversation there. Russ had married a local girl, and their two sons had been named after his dead brothers. Fortuitously the third child had been a girl, named Dorcas, after her mother.

  Harry leaned to the fire, holding his hands to the warmth. ‘Mother? You’ve been quiet today. Is anything wrong?’

  So well did they know each other. Mattie smiled a little, shook her head. Her hand moved softly upon Jake’s shaggy head. ‘I’m a little tired, that’s all.’

  He turned, smiling. ‘Caro’s taking two of the puppies.’

  ‘What will she call them?’ She watched his quick, restless movements; he was never still.

  ‘Byron and Shelley.’ He caught her swift glance and coloured a little beneath his tan. ‘We were reading that little book you gave me – that Father took to the war –’

  ‘Were you indeed?’ What are all these kissings worth, If thou kiss not me?

  Harry ducked his head, shaking his hair out of his eyes, scooped a piece of well-chewed wood from the floor and spun it in the air, catching it deftly as it fell. ‘Honestly, that dog – you let him get away with more than I can! Supposing I hauled a bit of chewed old wood onto your favourite carpet, what would you do?’

  ‘Shoot you, probably. Or send you to your kennel.’

  He grinned.

  ‘Harry? You’re – very fond of Carolyn – aren’t you?’ She tried to keep her voice quietly neutral.

  He glanced at her in surprise, and a little shyly. ‘Well, of course I am. As a matter of fact –’ He stopped, and again that tell-tale colour lifted in his dark cheeks. He spun the piece of splintered wood again. Memories of the kiss he had stolen under the willow by the water – by no means the first and he fervently hoped not the last – filled him with an odd and delightful confusion of feelings; and when he allowed himself to dwell on the feel of the creamy-smooth skin of her shoulders beneath his hands, the bright eagerness of her blue eyes – he tossed the wood again, and missed it.

  Mattie took a long, sighing breath. ‘Harry –’

  ‘She’s a marvellous girl, isn’t she? Don’t you think? I mean, she isn’t just pretty like most other girls. Caro’s – well, she’s different. She’s fun. And – nice. Don’t you think? Ma?’ he added, softly, when she did not reply. ‘Don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh, Harry,’ she said, ‘you are so very young.’

  He dropped to his knees beside her chair. Jake nudged him companionably. Harry ignored him. The dog, resigned, spread himself upon the floor like an untidy rug.

  Harry was watching his mother intently. ‘Not that young, Ma. Not any more. I’m eighteen next Thursday –’

  ‘You must know it can’t last for ever? Children grow up. We have to let them go some time.’ The words had echoed in her head ever since Lina had so innocently spoken them.

  Mattie took his hand. ‘Harry – darling – I’m sorry. There’s something I must tell you – something I think – I know – I should have explained to you a long time ago –’

  * * *

  When he left her, the terrible storm of disbelief and recrimination had not blown itself out. Mattie sat, shaking, as
darkness closed in on the room, seeing before her Harry’s young face, tear-marked, incredulous; blazing with hurt and accusation.

  ‘Why did you have to tell me?’ he had shouted at last, still not understanding. ‘You’ve lied to me for this long – why tell me now?’

  ‘Because,’ she had said, steadily, ‘don’t you see? Any child you may have –’ and had stopped, stricken to silence by the horror in his eyes.

  ‘Oh God! Oh, dear God!’ It was then he had fled, sobbing, leaving her here alone, in silence, with her helpless regrets, her bitter self-reproach.

  ‘Mrs Sherwood?’ A small, frightened face had appeared around the door. Betsy, the parlour maid, was not the staunchest of beings at the best of times; raised voices were enough to terrify her. ‘Shall I light the lamps, Ma’am?’

  ‘No, Betsy, thank you.’

  The door closed softly. She sat on in the twilight, living Harry’s distress with him, knowing she deserved his anger, his contempt. She should have told him long, long ago. She should not have lied to him, and to herself; in refusing to face the problem she had in the end made it worse for him. Her prevarication had done nothing but harm to them both.

  And now, she knew, she had lost him.

  The old dog, sensing her unhappiness, came to her, resting his nose on her knee.

  Somewhere in the house a door slammed, very loudly.

  * * *

  He spoke of it only once more. The following evening, after avoiding her all day, he came to where she was pruning the roses in the garden. She felt his presence, clipped on with steady hands, not looking round until, without preamble, he spoke. ‘You said that – the men who came – who killed him – you said they –’ He stopped.

  ‘Raped me,’ she said calmly, watching him. ‘Yes.’

  His young face, marked still by the aftermath of tears, was defiant. ‘Then how do you know – how can you know –?’

  ‘That you are his child? Because you are his living image.’ Mattie waited. Harry said nothing. ‘Were you hoping,’ she asked, ‘that you were the product of rape?’

  The bitter confusion in his face answered her.

  ‘Oh Harry,’ she said, quietly, ‘I am so very sorry.’

  Three miserable days later, on the eve of his eighteenth birthday, Harry Sherwood left home, leaving no word as to where he was going. A month after that he donned his first uniform.

  Part Four

  Egypt

  1898-1899

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘Sir?’ Captain – lately and lamentably briefly Major – Harry Sherwood stood meticulously to attention and addressed, as was expected of him, the smoothly polished panelling just to the right of his commanding officer’s ear. He put a cautious question into the word.

  The colonel waited, not without a certain – and, Harry felt, faintly alarming – patience.

  Beyond the windows of his office the teeming, stinking, often squalid but always colourful world of Cairo went about its devious and noisy business.

  Harry, mindful of recent indiscretions, chose his words with care. ‘Sir, I am of course most flattered that you would consider placing your niece in my care.’ He saw the flicker of grim amusement in Colonel Standish’s eyes, and wished he had phrased it a little differently. The thought of the briskly capable Hannah Standish in anyone’s care did not exactly ring true. His heart sank further. ‘But – I wonder – would it not be better to use someone with a little more knowledge of the river and its –’ he hesitated ‘– its archaeological attractions? With respect, Sir, I’m a soldier, not an Egyptologist. In fact I have to admit that the more arcane pleasures of the country have rather passed me by. Lieutenant Windsor, on the other hand, is a positive expert on these Pharaoh chappies and their ruins – he’s never happier than when he’s poking round in the sand and picking up bits and pieces. Knows what he’s looking for too, so they tell me. Doesn’t seem to me – Sir? – that I’m really the best man for the job.’ He ended the sentence on a note of qualified hope.

  The colonel tapped his desk top with a pencil, the sound small and sharp in the quiet room. ‘My niece,’ he said, pensively, ’said much the same thing. She too mentioned young Windsor. Appears they’ve been on a couple of sand-scraping expeditions together already.’

  Harry cheered up a little. ‘Well, then, Sir?’

  ‘No, Harry.’

  ‘No, Sir?’

  The colonel shook his head. ‘No.’ He waited for a moment, added blandly and without the least attempt to disguise the implied threat, ‘As a matter of fact young Windsor’s being assigned to the railway project in the south. Of course, I suppose once the leg’s better, arrangements could be made –?’ He left the sentence hanging in the air.

  ‘Er – no, Sir. Thank you, Sir.’ Of all the postings in this country, the protection of the builders of the railway that was cutting deep into the southern desert to carry troops and arms into the Sudan was, with reason, the least popular. Thirteen years before, the Sudan had been abandoned to the Mahdi and his fanatical followers after the fall of Khartoum and the killing of General Gordon; now, however, the territory was of renewed interest to the European powers, who were battling for their own interests in Africa. With the Mahdi himself dead, but his followers led equally ably by their new leader, known as the Khalifa, Britain, using the power and influence she already wielded in Egypt, had decided to reconquer the barren desert state, thus avenging the murder of Gordon – of whom the British public had made an unlikely national hero and martyr – salvaging British pride and, most important of all, securing the crossroads of Nubia against the African ambitions of the old enemies France, Belgium and Italy. It was an open secret that nothing would suit those countries better than that the Anglo-Egyptian army sent against the Khalifa should be bloodily annihilated, as the one sent against the Mahdi had been.

  Silence had settled upon the room for a moment. The colonel stood up and walked to the window, unshuttered in the relative cool of the early morning, stood with his back to Harry, looking down onto the wide, dusty parade ground, where a small squad of native troops marched in less than perfect time to the exasperated bawling of their British non-commissioned officer.

  Years of discipline kept Harry standing like a well-turned-out statue, eyes and stance perfectly steady despite the thumping of his head and the furred thickness of his tongue. The still-uncomfortable twinges from his healing thigh he hardly noticed. The summons from his commanding officer had taken him by surprise: the suggestion that had just been made – or to put it more bluntly the orders he had just been given – had surprised, and dismayed, him further. Like the rest of the relatively small garrison, he had heard of Hannah Standish’s intention to travel up the Nile to visit the various sites and antiquities in the steps of her heroine and one-time mentor Florence Nightingale – it had, after all, been her declared aim in coming to visit her uncle a few weeks before – and had assumed that some hapless officer or other would be detailed to accompany her. But the possibility that the unfortunate might be himself had, for many cogent reasons, never so much as crossed his mind. It was by no means a duty for which he would have volunteered; the thought of a month, possibly two, prowling around every bloody ruin between here and Nubia at the beck and call of the formidable Miss Standish was not the most appealing he had ever entertained. Its one and only recommendation was that it would get him away from Cairo for a while; away from Cairo and from Fenella and her incessant and increasing demands. He winced a little at the thought, and his head thumped harder.

  Colonel Standish returned from his survey of the world outside and stood leaning against his desk, arms folded, shrewd blue eyes upon the subordinate officer. Harry Sherwood was one of those soldiers, not uncommon in the colonel’s experience, who were at once the blood and bone of the British army and the bane of their commanders’ lives. In a tight corner, or given a whiff of the smoke of battle, the man was a wonder; a born fighter, a fierce, intelligent and brave officer whose men would follow him a
nywhere, and whose loyalty was unquestioned and unquestioning, all of which had been proven beyond doubt in the south just a couple of months earlier. However, convalescent and bored, kicking his heels in camp or barracks, it was an exasperatingly different story. A quiet life did not suit Harry Sherwood, and if there were no ready-made excitements to keep him happy, then with cheerful disregard for his own or other’s comfort or safety he would make his own in as entertaining a manner as he could devise. Old enough to know better, he could be the most subversive of bad influences on some of the more impressionable young officers, his reputation alone enough to ensure their eager attention and – worse – desire to emulate. His effect on the apparently equally impressionable garrison wives could be even more marked. A professional soldier to his fingertips and to the elegant, shining toes of his boots, yet the very qualities that made him such a good man in a fight – as the Dervishes had so recently encountered to everyone’s cost, not least Harry’s – tended to make him a disruptive influence in the well-ordered administration of a posting such as this. Promotion on the field had proved, not for the first time, an experiment ending in failure. Now the colonel had a new idea. And even if nothing concrete came of it, it possessed two clear benefits: it ensured that Hannah and her relentless organizational abilities were set afloat on the Nile and thus, to her affectionate uncle’s relief, as far away as possible from him, and it removed Harry Sherwood from the vicinity of Major Hampshire’s wife, Fenella, before real mayhem could ensue, as most certainly it would if Harry remained in Cairo.

  ‘The leg – it’s mending, Harry?’

  ‘Yes, Sir. Mended, I’d say. Good as new.’ Harry looked hopeful. ‘Ready to get back to the fight any minute, Sir?’ Again he imbued the statement with a hopeful question.