The Summer Fields

  The duke smiles weakly at the thought. ‘Then I have yet another good reason to draw them into battle. But the cure,’ he says, ‘tell me about the cure. Please let it not be leeches or the letting of my veins. I feel I need all my reserves of strength in the coming days.’

  ‘It is not, Your Grace.’

  Dr Argyll turns to Elen and says, ‘Miss Griffiths, my apothecary box is in the other room. You will need to open the compartment at the back. You remember how?’ He gives her a look of profound gravity.

  He means the poison compartment, released by a clasp in the hinge at the front. ‘You will find the jar of red powder. Would you please be so good as to mix a scant half spoonful, no more, into a small measure of wine and bring it back in here?’

  ‘I will, sir,’ she says.

  ‘Wait,’ the duke says. ‘I must understand what it is you are giving me. Why do my physicians not know about this powder?’

  Elen thinks the doctor shifts his weight a little uneasily. He has not discussed the treatment with her, but she needs to know how he intends to use the poison.

  ‘It has a somewhat surprising origin, Your Grace.’

  ‘Oh, God. Tell me it is not extracted from some foul organ of an animal.’

  ‘Not at all. It is a powder that grows from rye in the north of the Continent, when the harvest is late and the summer has been cool and wet. Too much of it acts like a poison, as do so many of our natural remedies. I have studied its use carefully and have noted that by chance it has a profound effect on hemicranial headaches such as you describe as well as…’ Here the doctor pauses.

  ‘As well as what?’

  The doctor leans nearer to the bed and in a dropped tone says, ‘As well as helping to bring on labour in women, Your Grace.’

  Elen draws the corner of her mouth between her teeth to stop herself from smiling.

  The duke rolls his head slowly on the pillows to look at Argyll then gives a weak laugh. ‘Good God, man. This had better work. But whether it does or not, let no one know you are treating me as a woman in her confinement.’

  ‘I assure you I will not. It will remain a secret, known only to you, myself and my assistant, Miss Griffiths, here.’

  The duke turns his gaze onto Elen. ‘I have your solemn oath?’ he says.

  ‘You do, Your Grace.’

  ‘Then fetch me the draught and we will see if the good doctor here is as brilliant as his reputation.’

  Chapter 5

  ‘Can I fetch you anything, Miss Griffiths?’ Sergeant Hacker says in a quiet voice so as not to disturb the duke in the chamber beyond. Elen has settled down for her nightly vigil now that the doctor has retired for the night.

  ‘I am quite content, thank you, sir.’

  The sergeant gives her a good-natured smile. He is a man in his fifties, solidly built with the weather-beaten face of someone who has spent most of his days outdoors. ‘I see you are a scholar,’ he says, pointing to the book open on her lap.

  ‘Not at all, but my mother believed we should all know how to read. I am glad of it. It helps to pass the night when I am sitting with a patient.’

  ‘What is it that you read?’

  She makes a face of apology. ‘I am afraid it is a rather shocking account of a woman’s captivity by native Americans out in the colonies. One of my fellow travellers thought such a story of hardship and survival would fortify me.’

  ‘And has it?’

  ‘In many ways, yes, although I cannot pretend to suffer as this poor woman did.’

  ‘Each of us has our own cross to bear.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘It is a relief that His Grace sleeps now,’ the sergeant says, plumping and rearranging the cushions on a sofa. ‘He has rested little the past two nights, the sickness has been so severe.’

  ‘It is a horrible condition.’

  She returns to Mary Rowlandson’s narrative but within a few minutes, her concentration is disrupted again by Sergeant Hacker who picks up a camp stool and, carrying it over, seats himself down in front of her. He continues in a hushed tone, ‘I have seen him suffer this horrible affliction often but this time… why, for a while I feared it was apoplexy and we were to lose him on the eve of a great victory.’

  She closes her book. The duke’s orderly is in the mood for conversation. ‘It is not apoplexy,’ she says. ‘The doctor is quite certain of that.’

  ‘I know. He explained everything to me, although I cannot pretend I follow all that he says.’ The sergeant reaches down, grasping one of the legs of the stool to move himself closer. ‘He is certainly a man of courage, your Dr Argyll. There cannot be many country doctors who would feed an unknown medicine to the Commander-in-Chief of the allied forces when the French stand at our door. How did the doctor acquire so much knowledge?’

  ‘Well…’ she thinks for a moment. ‘Dr Argyll is a highly educated man who reads much and follows the writings of medical pioneers. I understand that he travelled extensively during his youth and took a great interest in the way other cultures comprehend and treat disease. He showed a great interest in the folk remedies used by my neighbours, for example. I am sure it is this that has made him so knowledgeable.’

  ‘It was fortuitous that one of your neighbours was on this campaign or the doctor would not have come to the duke’s attention.’

  She smiles at the sergeant. ‘You mean Viscount Mordiford?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘He may use the family name of Sildenstein,’ she volunteers with less confidence.

  Still the sergeant furrows his brow and shakes his head. ‘Which company is he with?’

  ‘I do not know for certain but I would imagine the horse.’

  ‘Ah, perhaps that explains it. The cavalry has been involved in the spoliation of Bavaria over the past few weeks.’ The sergeant pauses, frowning again. ‘No… but wait a minute. The intelligence about the doctor’s skills came to me the day before yesterday and the cavalry is yet to return. Your friend cannot possibly be with the horse.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ She is thoughtful for a few moments but then an idea strikes her. ‘How did this soldier know that the duke was ill?’

  ‘Gossip in camp is always rife and what with the duke taking to his chamber for days on end, there has been much speculation and concern about his health, as you can imagine. It was Corporal Mist who told me about the doctor and he’d heard it from one of the soldiers.’

  ‘A soldier, not an officer?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘How curious.’ The scandal he left behind in England must have made Mordiford determined to keep his anonymity.

  ‘I will hunt the corporal out in the morning and make some enquiries,’ says Sergeant Hacker. He looks at her with an amused and lively interest. ‘And this neighbour of yours? Was he a sweetheart?’

  ‘No, not at all.’ However, she can feel herself beginning to blush.

  Seeing this, the sergeant chuckles and gets to his feet. ‘Well, I suppose I shouldn’t spend the evening chattering. I will leave you to your book and see you first thing tomorrow morning. Unless of course His Grace requires anything during the night. The guards know where to find me. Goodnight, Miss Griffiths.’

  ‘Good night, Sergeant.’

  She returns to her book, but despite the horrors recounted in the pages, she finds she cannot concentrate. If Mordiford, under whichever pseudonym he had chosen to conduct his army life, listened to sufficient gossip to know that the duke was ill and could be helped by Dr Argyll, he must also now know that she has arrived at the duke’s camp. Knowing the doctor’s methods, Mordiford must realise that she will be conducting the same nightly vigil she undertook during his own illness.

  Instead of reading, Elen sits listening to the noises of the evening: snatches of conversation and laughter coming from the thousands of soldiers moving around the camp; the whinny of a horse in the distance; and the steady breathing from behind the curtain at her back that tells her the duke is in a deep and healin
g sleep.

  How she wishes Mordiford slept in the bed behind the curtain, that it is he who will call her to his side when he wakes. She closes her eyes and conjures up the image of his face, turning on his pillow to gaze at her. In her waking dream she moves towards him. When their fingers touch, his hand is warm and dry as he draws her close.

  Just then, she hears a murmur of voices outside the duke’s tent. Someone is talking to the guards. Her heart leaps. Mordiford has waited until the camp is almost asleep before seeking her out and at last he has come.

  Laying her book aside, she creeps towards the deep shadow at the entrance of the tent. Someone is pleading with the guards. There is a cautious agreement before a figure stoops and dips into the darkness. She steps towards him, longing for him to take her in his arms, determined that this time her response will leave him in no doubt as to her feelings for him, or his for her. His strong arm encircles her waist and draws her in.

  Her body submits but his passion is so urgent that, as the restraint around her increases, she has to tense her muscles to protect herself. She takes a quick breath and along with the scents in the tent, the crushed grass, the tarred rope, she catches an unmistakeable tang of cloves.

  She pulls back. The face of her captor catches a shaft of light from the lamp. It is Ned Harley.

  Chapter 6

  ‘Elen,’ Ned says. His grip is so tight she feels a desperate rising panic and pushes her hands against his chest, straining to break the embrace. As she turns her head to one side, his breath booms on her eardrum. ‘How eagerly you rush into my arms. I am quite taken aback.’ She writhes and struggles, she must free herself. ‘Oh… you fight to repel me? Why is that, when you were so eager a second ago?’

  ‘Let me go, Harley.’ She presses down on his arms, pushing herself above the band of pressure that threatens to crush her ribs.

  ‘Harley now, is it? When I was always Ned to you.’

  ‘I will never call you that again.’ She wrenches herself free, stumbling back, deeper into the vast tent. ‘Leave now,’ she says, her voice low and threatening. ‘Or I shall call out for the guards.’

  He takes a stealthy step forward, puts his finger to his mouth. ‘You must not,’ he says quietly, glancing towards the heavy curtain, which hangs across the duke’s chamber. ‘We must not wake the Duke of Marlborough. All I want to do is speak to you, make amends for those terrible things that happened in the winter.’

  ‘You can’t.’ She has moved back into the huge ante-chamber in the centre of the tent now. She knocks against one of the ornate candle stands and snatches at it to steady it. It rocks precariously, a patter of molten wax falling onto maps and parchments spread across the campaign desk beside it. ‘Go, I beg you.’

  ‘I will, I promise. But let me speak to you. Oh, please, Elen. Don’t keep skittering off like that.’

  She slips around the desk, putting it between them. The camp is just beyond the hangings on the walls. She is feet away from salvation if only she could dart behind one of them, slip under the covering skin of canvas to freedom.

  ‘You were pleased to see me just now,’ he says. ‘You were, I know it.’

  ‘I thought…’ but she will not share her hopes with him. He looks at her, his expression dropping, his lower lip loose with fake disappointment.

  ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘you thought I was someone else.’ He gazes around at the chamber and sighs. ‘Have you been waiting for Viscount Mordiford?’ She shakes her head. She cannot trust him, but her need for information is too strong.

  ‘He is here?’ she says.

  His face brightens and he comes towards her. She steps back, feels her calves bump against a leather chair. He raises his hand as if he’s calming a nervous animal and stops on the opposite side of the desk.

  He nods his head at her and says, ‘He’s here all right. Well, not here precisely, of course. I think he rides with the horse and they’re busy plundering the countryside around Munich at the moment.’

  She remains utterly still, her desire to flee overwhelmed by her need to know about Mordiford. Ned lets his hand drop, hitches a hip onto the edge of the desk, his leg swinging beneath.

  His manner is so opposite to the feelings rising up inside her that she feels confused, dizzy. He leans forward, speaking in a conspiratorial tone, ‘He rides with Wood’s Regiment of Horse so that he could lead hundreds of hapless soldiers, with no combat experience whatsoever, to their deaths.’ And he gives a chuckle as if they are sharing a joke together. She wonders if he has gone mad.

  ‘You have seen him?’

  ‘No, and I am heartily glad of it. If he knew I marched with the army, I’d have been recommended for the forlorn hope at Schellenberg. I’m sure he would have loved to push me out of the ruins of Berg to send me up those charnel slopes.’

  ‘Can you blame him?’

  Ned screws his face up and shrugs. ‘Maybe not,’ he says. ‘Mind you, if he knew how much I’d suffered, he couldn’t possibly wish any further misfortune on my head.’

  Can she make a dash around the desk, across the tent and through the exit where the guards stand?

  ‘You see, thanks to you and Mordiford, I am destitute.’ Ned says, intermittently swinging his leg to block her way. ‘How many options do you imagine are open to a young man who’s been run off an estate where he lived and worked since birth?’

  ‘I neither know nor care. I am sure your animal cunning came up with something.’

  The route around the other side of the desk is too cluttered with furniture and trunks for her to run through, but run she must. Despite his appeasing tone, she knows she is in danger.

  ‘So cutting,’ he says. ‘I am quite hurt. No, for a while my animal cunning deserted me. I could not stay in Radnorshire after Mordiford razed the estate with his cleansing fire. I took myself off to London to try my luck at Court. After all, I didn’t lack for contacts after everything I had done over the years to entertain those rich and powerful men. But do you know what? They wanted nothing to do with me.’

  She wonders if perhaps this is all he wants, to show her that he has been punished. He pauses. Does he expect her to answer?

  ‘You were the fool,’ she says, ‘for imagining such men would behave honourably.’

  ‘Hmm. Maybe. But their rejection was so complete. They shook me off as if I were a piece of muck they’d found sticking to the sole of a boot. As far as London society is concerned, without money or an introduction, no one is interested in a fellow. It is very hard to keep one’s dignity when one’s belly and purse is empty. I tried to fall on the mercy of charity but with no settlement rights they threatened to pass me on to my home parish and I could not return there.’

  ‘I am sure you got what you deserve,’ she says. ‘You showed me little mercy.’

  ‘That is unkind but I will not let you irk me. I will finish my story. I tried begging, but found it a very dangerous activity, as I risked daily whipping or imprisonment.’

  ‘You have the army now.’

  ‘I do – but not from choice. In the end, my vagrancy got me conscripted and the army is rather worse than trawling the Strand with the other street walkers, especially when one is fighting hand-to-hand with a Bavarian grenadier who wants to tear one’s eyes out with his fingernails. I often think fondly of my days in London with that ragged bunch of crippled drunks.’

  His tale is getting dreary and his suffering is small consolation for the shame that sours her stomach when she thinks of her former feelings for him. How could she ever have run so trustingly into his arms last winter and not seen the cruelty in his eyes?

  ‘Why do you not go back there, then?’ she says, certain that her safest option is to keep him talking. Something in his manner stops her from angering him.

  ‘You mean desert and risk branding or death? It is a choice I am no longer free to make, thanks to you.’

  ‘If you cannot help yourself, there is little I can do for you – even if I wanted to.’

  ‘
Oh, there is plenty you can do for me.’

  He reaches out. She flinches. He lifts a heavy seal from the desk, studies the base of it for a few moments, then sets it down again. ‘You see, both of us have been carrying a little fantasy. Shall I tell you what mine is?’

  ‘I wish you would not.’

  ‘Very well, I will tell you yours. You think Mordiford has feelings for you.’ He waits for her confirmation but she remains silent. ‘If that’s so, why has he not sought you out?’

  ‘He does not know I am here.’

  ‘You think not? I heard that you and the doctor were travelling with the army weeks ago, which is why, in my roundabout way, I recommended Dr Argyll to the duke.’

  ‘You?’ She frowns. She is conscious of a sucking void opening inside her. She looks down at the ground, forcing herself to reshape her beliefs. With a dropping sense of horror, she knows the dream she has carried since Hellenstein has been based on a disastrous misunderstanding.

  ‘Oh yes. I was so keen to see you that when word got out that the duke was suffering, I made sure that Dr Argyll was recommended to him with all enthusiasm, knowing he would hasten over with you at his side.’

  She shakes her head. She wants to clap her hands to her ears, shut him out. Ned laughs softly, slips off the desk and slinks towards her. She moves further back, deeper into the tent. Her leg bumps up against something and she turns.

  She has reached the back of the chamber. Behind her stands a sofa. He is right in front of her, very close. His voice purrs on, ‘Through all these months of hardship and misery, marching mile upon mile through mud, fighting while musket shot and grenade shower down around me, splattering me with the blood and brains of my comrades, I dreamed of you.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘It’s true. You have never been out of my thoughts. Of course, my dreams have not been free from regret. I realise now I could have saved you myself that night.’

  ‘You tricked and imprisoned me. How can you talk of saving me?’

  His arm shoots out. She tries to swerve away but she is trapped against the sofa. He grips her by the waist, pulling her towards him.