The skin of his neck is curiously pale in the lamplight, protected from the filth of the battlefield. Her fingers move around his throat. She feels the bounce of his pulse in his neck. It is fast. Leaning closer to him, her hands move onto the firm muscles at the back of his neck. It is almost an embrace.
She is so close to his face, she could lift his head just a little and press her lips to his. She tries so hard not to look down into his eyes, but she knows he watches her. His body is still tensing, bracing himself for the next injury that Sarah’s practised fingers discover. Elen moves her hands to his throat, feels along the ridge of his collarbone, walking her fingers onto his chest. She cannot keep her eyes away from him for any longer. She flashes a glance at him. He gives her a rueful smile.
Sarah reaches his leg. Elen leaps back as he gives an animal roar, his shoulders rising off the stretcher. He twists, trying to dash Sarah’s hands away, sweat springing from his forehead. Elen grasps him by the arms, feels the muscles fluttering and cramping as he fights the pain. Sarah joins her, pressing Mordiford back down, her teasing ended for the night.
‘Your leg is fractured, sir,’ Sarah says.
Dear God, Elen prays, stop now. How bad a sinner could this man have been for You to punish him so? I beg You, stop testing him. Stop testing me.
‘It is a bad break,’ Sarah is saying. ‘Even under this poor light it is plain that the bone has broken the skin.’
‘It will heal,’ he says, panting with pain. His hope compresses Elen’s heart. She grasps his hand in both of hers and holds it against her. He does not notice. He is overwhelmed.
Sarah shakes her head and says, ‘You have lain in mud and dirt with an open wound for many hours. It will be quite corrupt by now. Elen will fetch you some brandy. Lie still for the next few hours. The surgeon will deal with it in the morning.’
‘He shall not have my leg,’ he says through gritted teeth.
‘There is no other choice,’ Sarah says. ‘Elen, get that brandy.’
‘Wait,’ and Elen squeezes his hand, rocks his arm to make him look at her. ‘I will be with you. All night. We have faced worse nights together, worse horrors.’ He opens his mouth to protest, but she hurries on, ‘In this heat, it will not be many days before the wound begins to sluff. At present, you will lose the leg below the knee, nothing more.’
‘Leave it and you will lose it all,’ Sarah says, ‘including your life.’
He turns his face to the wall. Elen thinks, he is trying imagine it. He cannot.
‘We can’t leave you perched up there all night,’ Sarah says. ‘Think you can get down if we help?’
Mordiford looks at Elen and nods. He lets go of her hand, struggles onto his elbows, the movement making him draw down his chin and snarl with pain.
They help him off the manger. Sarah bustles and bosses around them, but Elen listens to Mordiford’s breathing, hears the strain in his chest and steadies him, whispers to him. The words do not matter. We are all animals, she thinks. I can calm a horse, a cow, a dog in pain. These whispers are the same – you are not alone. I am here.
She makes a bed of hay for him in the stall, piles stooks against the wall as a pillow, lowers him down, props him up and tells him she is going to fetch brandy and will be back soon for the rest of the night.
‘You should sleep too,’ Sarah says to Elen as she walks with her to the door of the stable.
‘I could not even if I tried. I have sat with him through far worse.’
Sarah takes a steadying breath and looks out across the yard. ‘This is not real life, Elen, and this is not real love.’
Elen is too drained to argue. ‘To sit with him is enough.’
Sarah raises a disbelieving eyebrow, but then she grasps her by the shoulders and gives her a quick peck on the cheek. ‘Goodnight, my dear,’ she says.
When Elen returns with the brandy Mordiford is staring morosely at the ceiling. His face is very white in the lamplight. He hears her and smiles wearily at her. She pours a large measure of brandy into a cup and kneels beside him.
‘Oh, Miss Griffiths,’ he says with a sigh, ‘how dearly I wish you had known me when I was a fine figure of a man instead of a scarred and useless cripple.’
‘I did know you then and I did not like you.’
‘You do say the most extraordinary things. Whatever can you mean? I was an Adonis. I needed neither wit nor conversation for women to swoon in my company.’ He knocks the brandy back in several large gulps and holds the cup out to be refilled. ‘Alcohol is a truly wonderful medicine. How I used to love to drink it.’
‘Are you in much pain?’ she says, sitting on the hay beside him.
‘It hurts damnably to tell you the truth.’ He takes several more gulps of brandy. ‘But trauma is a simple pain to endure. There is another, far more agonising.’
‘You mean the pain you must face tomorrow.’
‘No, not that.’
‘What then?’
He does not reply, but raises the cup to his lips, watching her, his eyes as black as plums in the lamplight.
* * *
‘The day was ours,’ Mordiford says, ‘but it was won at a terrible cost.’
Elen sits next to him, leaning back on the stooks piled against the wall of the stable, the captain’s coat covering the hay to stop thistle spines pushing through the muslin of her dress. The lamp has long since burned its last drop of oil, but the doors to the stables stand open, letting in the air of the summer night.
Mordiford’s voice is husked with tiredness and alcohol. Elen knows she should let him sleep, that it is selfish keeping him awake, but she cannot bear to lose him for a moment, not even to his dreams.
‘Tell me about the battle,’ she says. She thirsts for every detail. She wants to live through it with him, imagine everything he saw, experience everything he felt. He pushes himself a little higher in the hay. His profile is silhouetted against the lamplight, so close that she could reach out, trace each feature with her fingertips.
‘It was not until late in the afternoon, that we began to take the upper hand,’ he says. ‘The French command weakened and their horses tired. The duke sent fresh cavalry streaming in, and suddenly all was confusion, French troopers breaking rank, fleeing in panic. We could hardly move. The tracks were clogged with the enemy, desperate to escape the fighting. Some even tried to swim their horses across the Danube. A few may have made it, but many would have drowned.’ Mordiford takes more brandy. He rests his head back and she fears he may fall asleep.
‘What cowards these French are,’ she says. He scoffs softly.
‘Not all of them. I saw such a pitiful sight as I hacked and fought my way through them. As thousands fled, a small group were left out on the plain completely unsupported. I could see they were no more than youngsters. They were either too brave to run away or too foolish to know when to surrender. They faced a storm of canister fire and died where they stood, cut to pieces in rank and file.’
‘How old were these boys?’
‘I do not imagine any of them had seen their twentieth birthday.’
‘And it was all for naught?’
‘Alas, yes because with darkness almost upon us, the French in Blenheim laid down their arms. I was inside the walls by then, the crush so great I thought Bucephalus would be lifted from his hooves and carried along by the mob. The French burned their colours rather than let them fall into our hands.’
‘What a shameful thing to do.’
‘It was. I saw French officers weeping tears of despair and humiliation.’
‘And you came through all this uninjured?’
‘I did by some miracle, but I was soaked in the blood of my fellow dragoons who died beside me.’
He falls quiet again, lost in thought.
‘With the battle over,’ she says presently, ‘how did you manage to injure yourself so comprehensively?’ He laughs quietly and reaches across to where her hand lies on the hay beside him. He lifts her fingers to his mouth and brushes
them with his lips.
‘I am tired. And so must you be. Look, I think I can see the dawn. We have talked all night.’ There is something else in his tone, his manner perhaps, which warns her this is not the reason.
‘Why do you hesitate?’ she says, an anxious worm of an idea forming in her head that war makes animals of men. Does he hesitate because killing has revealed a part of his nature he would prefer to forget?
‘I suppose because today has made me regret that I did not act honourably in the winter.’
‘You did act honourably. You saved me from your father.’
‘Eventually.’ He turns his head away.
‘You were too sick to act earlier.’
‘Was I? If I had been the man I am now, I would have spoken out, warned Argyll and forced you back home.’
‘That may have done me a greater disservice. The doctor made it quite clear that if I refused to come, the earl would punish my whole family. My father would have lost the tenancy of the dairy. We would have been destitute, forced to wander the countryside in search of work, impossible to find in the middle of winter. No, I had to stay. The stakes were too high.’
‘Why was I cursed with such a pitiless wretch of a father?’
She sits forward, holds his hands to her and forces him to look at her. ‘Has the battle brought up these reflections?’
‘Perhaps,’ he sighs. ‘I hesitate to tell you…’ he presses her hands to his forehead as if trying to force the words from his head. ‘I am at a loss. I do not want to shock and frighten you.’
‘What?’ she says, alarm building inside her.
‘The man who brought down Bucephalus and left me on the plains to die was Ned Harley.’
Ned Harley. The man had not entered her thoughts for the whole of the day and now her heart bangs erratically in her chest, a terrible certainty that his revenge will never end. She lets Mordiford’s hands drop from her clasp. He reaches up to stroke her cheek.
‘You understand my remorse now?’ he says.
‘No, not entirely. You must tell me everything that happened between the two of you.’
‘And increase your anxiety about that diabolist?’
‘I am no longer that delicate girl who turned her eyes away from a bowl of spittle. You say you have changed. So have I. You regret that you did not tell me the whole truth in the winter and I agree with you – you were wrong.’ He bows his head, picks at a piece of hay and begins stripping the outer sheath. ‘Do not make the same mistake again. Save no detail from me, I must know everything that occurred and deal with the anxiety myself.’
‘It is an ugly story.’
‘Then start now before we have uglier things to contend with.’
‘By nightfall, the plains were seething with French prisoners under the guard of our soldiers. Everyone was tired and battle-weary. I was moving among the infantry and looked out at that sad corner of the plains where those youngsters had died. It was such a mournful sight to see them lying in their ranks as if they were on parade. But then, to my horror, I saw movement among them, a looter.’
‘Ned Harley.’
‘I was not to know that then. All I could see was a man stripping the boys of their personal effects, stuffing his spoils into a haversack. Despite my exhaustion, I felt my fury rise. I mounted Bucephalus and cantered out to stop this cowardly desecration. I meant to chase the fellow away and as I spurred my horse to a gallop, he did indeed begin to run.’
‘You still had not recognised Ned Harley?’
‘No, not at all. It never crossed my mind it was anyone other than a Frenchman. The darkness had robbed the field of colour. As I neared I shouted out to him, “I am Captain Mordiford of Wood’s Regiment of Horse and I order you to stand fast.” On hearing my shout, he stopped, but as I bore down on him he snatched a musket from the ground and drove the bayonet into the throat of Bucephalus.’
Elen sits bolt upright and presses her fingers against her mouth. To thrust a bayonet into a man bent on slaughtering you in the heat of battle is one thing. To fell a magnificent animal when the battle is done is heinous.
‘I cannot believe it.’
‘Oh, Miss Griffiths. I cannot describe to you the extent of my anguish and that of my poor animal. He would never have thrown me had he not been mad with pain and terror. I tried desperately to calm him, but down we both went. I took his full weight across my leg before he rolled, trapping me beneath him before he died.’
‘And still you did not recognise Ned.’
‘It sounds impossible I know, but as he came close, to my amazement I saw he wore the English scarlet. I imagined he had mistaken me for the enemy and was now coming to my aid, but instead he swung the butt of the musket and struck me a heavy blow to my head. It was when he raised the butt to take a second strike, the terrible vision fused before me…’ Mordiford pauses, staring ahead, his face tight with incredulity. ‘A split second before the final crack, I knew that I looked into the face of the man who served you so despicably last winter.’
‘As he did again, here in Franconia, but a few weeks’ passed.’
He stares at her confused, his brows pulling his forehead into soft folds, then he says, ‘Is that why your friend and champion rushed out to defend you?’
‘Yes. She assumed you were he.’
‘How did he find you?’
‘He engineered circumstances to bring Dr Argyll and myself to Friedberg, where he apprehended me and made a second attempt on my honour.’
At this, Mordiford moves so violently that his leg rolls on the hay and he falls back with a cry.
‘My cursed leg,’ he bellows. Elen takes his hand, holding it to her as his fingers pulse. When the acute torture abates, he turns to her, running his tongue across his parched lips. ‘Why did that brute follow us here?’
‘He is in a most bitter and disturbed state of mind. His dismissal threw him into poverty and degradation. He takes no responsibility for this. He lays the blame for his misfortunes squarely at my feet and is determined to have his revenge.’
‘Now I understand why Mrs Barker saw fit to arm herself with a sickle. How I wish I had her rushing to my aid on that battlefield.’
Mordiford turns her hand and places a lingering kiss in the palm. She feels the roughness of his stubble and the moisture of his mouth on her skin.
‘You are not the only person in danger from that fiend,’ he says. ‘The locus of his revenge no longer lies solely with you. He was set to flee before I shouted my name. He meant to kill me. Indeed, he believes that he already has.’
She hardly hears his words, the sensation of his lips on her palm has quite distracted her. Sensing her stillness, he gazes at her, his eyes shining vividly in the dawn twilight that has crept into the stable.
‘When I awoke, out there on the plains,’ he says, his voice barely a whisper, ‘it was surprisingly cold. The sky above my head glittered with stars. My heart was aching for my poor horse. The pain in my leg was so excruciating I cursed God for creating a body that could feel such agony and yet not die. I feared I would not live to see another dawn. In the winter I would have welcomed it, but I knew that if I died I would never set eyes on you again. That notion caused me far greater pain than my shattered bones.’
She placed a kiss on each of his fingers in turn. ‘You would have seen me again,’ she says. ‘If not in this world, then in the next.’
‘Ha! You think that? I do not share your confidence. You had a poor opinion of me before I fell ill.’
‘I did not know all then. Let me judge you as I see you now, not as the man you might have been, but as the man you have become.’
‘Not as good a man as you may think.’
‘Whatever do you mean by that?’
‘Oh…’ But instead of answering, he yawns and slides a little further down in the hay, all the while holding onto her hand. ‘I feel so tired now. If I was not so cold, I fancy I would sleep.’
‘Let me lay your coat over you.’
‘It is just my warmth.’
‘Perhaps.’
He is silent for a few minutes although she can tell by the pattern of his breathing that he does not sleep.
‘Miss Griffiths,’ he says presently, his voice thick with tiredness. She rests her hand against his chest, raising herself up to look at him. ‘Did you not say that Dr Argyll travels with you still?’
‘I did.’
‘Find him for me when we have rested a while. This poor old body of mine has taken such a pounding of late. I cannot lose a leg as well as everything else.’
‘But you must, sir. You heard the surgeon’s wife. There is no other choice.’
‘Argyll brought me through the pox without shedding a drop of my blood or submitting me to the indignities of purging. Let me at least speak to him before I hand myself over to that good woman’s husband.’
Chapter 14
Elen does not need to seek the doctor. Dr Argyll’s voice rouses her from a fitful sleep.
‘Captain Mordiford,’ she hears him call from the yard. ‘Where are you, my lord?’
She springs up from where she has lain for the last few hours and crams her cap back on her head. She is still smoothing her clothes when Dr Argyll’s genial face appears around the stall.
‘Miss Griffiths. Good morning. This is quite like old times, is it not?’
The doctor strides past her to where Mordiford is stirring and says, ‘I am pleased to see you, my lord although I am sorry to find you in this parlous state.’
As Mordiford struggles to sit up, she slips past the doctor and kneels down, offering him her forearm to pull on. The doctor encourages them both with sympathetic comments until she manages to manoeuvre Mordiford into a reasonably comfortable sitting position.
The Summer Fields Page 26