The Summer Fields

  Elen lays it on the palm of her hand. It is a miniature portrait, surrounded by a halo of brilliants. It depicts not a face, but a single eye, painted in exquisite detail. The delicate arch of the brow and the single lock of golden hair, leaves her in no doubt that the eye depicted is that of a woman. The colour of the iris is the softest grey, paler than the feathers of a pigeon, but the eye’s expression speaks of a sophisticated sexuality.

  ‘Whose lover’s eye is this?’ she says sharply, although she already knows.

  Sarah presses her lips together.

  ‘The captain’s?’ Elen says.

  Sarah nods.

  ‘Where did you get it?’ Elen says, diverting her shock at seeing the image on to Sarah for having it in her possession.

  ‘It was in the pocket of his justacorps.’

  ‘You went through his pockets?’ Elen says, fury building in her chest.

  ‘Of course I did. I wanted to make sure no valuables had been left behind when Mr Barker took him away.’

  ‘Oh, is that so? You expect me to believe that? You were looting. You are no better than Ned Harley.’

  Sarah listens to Elen’s cruel words with that irritating look of pity on her face. ‘You can rail and shout at me as much as you like, Elen. It is not I with whom you are furious.’

  ‘It most certainly is.’

  Unperturbed, Sarah looks out across the water.

  Hot with anger, Elen glares at her friend’s profile but Sarah maintains a sad and tranquil expression as she gazes into the middle distance. With no resistance to fight against, Elen feels her rage abating and a creeping sense of doom slipping in to take its place.

  She looks at the keepsake in her hand. The wanton eye stares back at her. With shaking fingers, she turns the jewel over. The reverse is engraved with a bluebell and the initials A and C.

  ‘I know the bluebell signifies everlasting love,’ Sarah says, although she still gazes out across the water. ‘I imagine the A stands for the lady you mentioned to me, Lady Arabella.’

  When Elen speaks her voice is curiously high. ‘The captain’s first name is Crispin.’

  Sarah turns to face her, reaching out to take her hand. Meekly, Elen lets her. ‘I am so sorry, my dear.’

  They sit together in silence, listening to the sounds of the lake, the purr of wind through the sedge and the plop of a fish breaking the surface of the water. After a few minutes Elen gives a deep sigh and says, ‘It doesn’t change anything.’

  ‘I think it probably does. It’s unlikely he would carry such a token into battle with him if he did not intend returning to her.’

  Elen looks away to dash a tear from her eye. Throughout all her waking dreams, she never allowed herself to imagine a real life with Mordiford. She may have imagined quitting the fields and the dairy to take on the role of governess or teacher but a countess? Organising the social running of Duntisbourne? That was a ludicrous notion.

  She has allowed herself to live for the day, to dream of the next step she would take in their developing intimacy. She imagined she would be satisfied and at peace if she only knew he felt the same, but from the moment he threw that kiss to her as she drove away all those months ago, it ceased to be enough. She began to dream of his embrace, certain it would leave her fulfilled and calm. She slept in his arms the night before and still she yearns for more.

  As if she can read her thoughts, Sarah says, ‘Desire is like an itching fleabite – the more you scratch, the worse it gets.’

  ‘That’s a crude analogy,’ she says. Sarah shrugs and stays silent. Elen studies the initials. She hears a family of ducks quarrelling on the opposite bank. Eventually she says, ‘What am I to do?’

  ‘Do you want to know what you should do or what you could do?’

  ‘I don’t think I know any more.’

  ‘Then I will start with what you should do. You should make your way to England as swiftly as possible, go back to your family and put this behind you as a great adventure.’

  Elen shakes her head and cries vehemently, ‘I cannot leave him and I cannot forget him.’

  ‘Of course you can’t, but time will round the corners of your pain and one day, maybe many summers in the future, you will see him riding out on the estate. Then you’ll reflect on these brief months when you had a loving connection and the memory will bring you happiness.’

  ‘That could never make me happy.’

  ‘How can you possibly know, Elen? Passion of every kind has only so much energy, whether it is love, or grief, or revenge. It’s difficult to keep it fresh and keen for longer than a few years.’

  ‘Just a year together would be enough,’ she says in despair.

  Sarah squeezes her hand and continues, ‘As time passes, passion cannot help but change. Occasionally it becomes an obsession which can eat into any man’s heart, but for the rest of us, we lay the fervour aside as a memory – a thought quite stripped of any emotion.’

  Elen cannot imagine such an outcome, and shakes her head. ‘I cannot bear to stifle a flame so recently lit.’

  Sarah takes a deep breath and lets it out with a sigh. ‘Then you could indulge it, give yourself to him, swive away until the lust is spent…’ Sarah raises a finger of warning. ‘If you take that path, one day, many summers from now, you will see him riding out on the estate and all you will remember is the way your love faltered and how the affair died.’

  ‘I would not.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you would. You would remember the missed meetings, the disappointments, the angry words, the pain of the captain putting his real life – perhaps his real family – before you. Eventually you would know that the occasional moments of joy are not worth the days and months of unhappiness. You will part as bitter enemies.’

  ‘If the path of love is so bleak, why are you still with Mr Barker?’

  ‘Oh, my dear, that is a quite different situation. Of course the frantic lust that nabbed us when we first clapped eyes on each other was quite worn out after a few years of furious swiving but we were able to replace it with real love and true affection.’

  ‘What I feel for the captain is real love.’

  ‘No, it is not. At the moment you are mad with the feeling of love. That’s not real love at all. It may turn into real love, but not unless he can take you as his wife in the eyes of God and society.’

  ‘That is so false. Love is not about convention.’

  ‘But traditions exist because real love survives in them, otherwise we’d never marry. We’d take what we wanted, whenever we wanted it and we’d live in a fever of lust or misery. It’d be a terrible life of extremes.’

  ‘I cannot give him up. I’ll live each day as it comes. If I have to suffer pain in the end, it will be worth it because I cannot do otherwise.’

  Elen gets to her feet and stalks off across the meadows in the direction of the barns, grinding the keepsake into the palm of her hand as she walks.

  The heat unsteadies the air. Sarah’s words blister in her mind, but soon they are replaced by an even greater anxiety. If Mordiford rode into battle with that keepsake in his pocket, he must indeed have affections for Lady Arabella. It is this thought, above all others, which causes her the greatest pain, and yet she cannot believe it to be true. Whatever feelings he had for that sophisticated lady back in England, they cannot compare to the emotions Elen has shared with him. She has seen him at his worst and loves him still.

  * * *

  The barns are a good half hour walk from the lake. By the time they appear on the horizon, Elen is burning up. The sun has heated her bones, her shoulders, her skull. Her chemise presses between her legs, holding her back, the fabric cracking in the dry heat as she strides along. She breaks into a run, lifting her skirt free of her ankles. As she nears, sounds of distress reach her ears. In alarm, she rushes into the barn.

  Mr Barker looks up from his work with a frown on his face. She freezes, appalled that in her anguish she has done the very thing Mordiford begged her not to do. Mr
Barker twitches the head of a bloody saw in the direction of the stable.

  ‘All done, Miss Griffiths,’ he says cheerfully, before returning to his work on the struggling patient before him.

  Elen runs out and across the yard, tripping on the rough cobbles. When she enters the stables she is momentarily blinded by the sudden gloom. She creeps across the hay and swings herself into the stall where Mordiford lay that morning.

  There he is, pale and weak. As her eyes become accustomed to the shadows, she sees that Mr Barker has not relieved him of his leg, and calming herself, she comes towards him.

  Mordiford opens his eyes as if he senses her, for she has made no noise at all. He smiles wearily and holds his hand out to her. ‘There you are,’ he says, his voice deep and ragged. ‘Come to me, my angel.’

  She takes his hand, hot and damp from his ordeal. She kneels beside him, lays her face against his chest and listens until she hears his heart beating strong and true. In the quiet of the stable, she lets her silent tears moisten the linen of his shirt beneath her cheek.

  Chapter 2

  September 1704

  Donauwörth, Bavaria

  With the campaign season almost at its end, the Duke of Marlborough’s army march towards Landau to support the Margrave of Baden in his siege. It was said that once the fortress fell, Marlborough would establish a good position in the Moselle valley for the following year and then quit for England.

  Elen, Dr Argyll and the Barkers volunteered to stay behind at the barns with the intention of following on to the hospital at Nördlingen, as soon as the rest of the wounded were pronounced fit enough for the journey.

  In pairs or in groups, some on foot if they could walk, others on transport when it became available, the wounded moved on. The lime pits were filled in, the bloodied straw burned and the Prussian surgeons bidden farewell. As the days passed the collection of buildings along the highway to Donauwörth began to look less like a field hospital and more like a farm again.

  Elen is tired of this devastated countryside and the flat, featureless plains. She wants to walk through the Lugg valley, climb over the flat stones of the river and watch the trout. Whenever an ox cart of soldiers departs, Elen goes down to the roadside to see her brave charges off, silently sending her love back to her family with them. Some of the soldiers will convalesce over the winter and return in the spring to fight again with the Duke of Marlborough, others will be obliged to quit the army for good due to their injuries, but each one of those young faces, who cheer as they wave her goodbye, have had the good fortune to survive and embark on their journey home.

  The news for the captain is not so good.

  ‘I cannot understand it,’ Dr Argyll says. ‘I thought the countryside at this time of year teemed with flies. Yet not a single one will do me the service of laying a few eggs in that man’s wound.’

  The day has been fine and dry and Elen is taking her supper in the yard with the doctor, the surgeon and his wife. Mr Barker sucks at his teeth and says, ‘He should have let me have the damned thing away. If we wait much longer, he will lose more than his leg.’

  ‘You cannot take his leg now when he has suffered so much to keep it,’ Elen says.

  Mr Barker shrugs and takes another piece of bread. ‘I had a sergeant’s wife who was nurse on one of my wards,’ he says, tearing the bread with his fingers and wagging the crust at Elen. ‘She snagged her thumb and caught an infection. She delayed and by the time she let me relieve her of the thumb, the sluff had reached the hand. She delayed again and when the hand came off, the sluff reappeared in the stump, but she refused another operation, and in consequence she died.’

  ‘Mr Barker! Watch that tongue of yours,’ his wife says, nodding her head in Elen’s direction.

  ‘Sooner rather than later, is all I say,’ Mr Barker concludes.

  ‘Another day,’ Dr Argyll says. ‘Let us wait until tomorrow evening before we make a decision.’

  A gloomy silence descends and Elen watches a swallow dive above the barn’s roof. ‘Perhaps there is a reason the flies are not interested in the stable,’ Elen says.

  ‘Flies are always interested in stables.’

  ‘There have been no animals in there for weeks,’ she says, ‘and all the other soldiers have moved on. It is as far away from the camp garbage and the latrines as it can be. Perhaps the flies, roundabout, have too much to glut on. Those charnel fields are only a few leagues way.’

  The medical men ponder her theory.

  ‘She could be right,’ Dr Argyll says. ‘There would be little harm in moving the captain closer to where the kitchen waste is piled.’

  ‘Dump him down by the latrines, why don’t you?’ Mr Barker says. ‘There is a swarm of the little blighters round there.’

  ‘I’m not certain a fly who spends time around the latrines is quite the right fellow to lay a handful of eggs in a wound,’ the doctor says.

  Elen pushes her bowl of beef and potatoes away uneaten. Despite all she has experienced, she loathes the idea of using maggots. She trusts Dr Argyll’s judgement, but finds it hard to believe that a creature so associated with decay could bring any succour to the captain, however, she is acutely aware that he is rapidly becoming very sick and that his leg is causing him a great deal of pain.

  Once supper is finished, the doctor and the surgeon organise a couple of orderlies to move the captain across to a small hay barn a hundred yards away from the farm building, out in the meadows. Elen makes him as comfortable as she can. He is listless with fever and alcohol, drifting in and out of sleep. Much of the waste has been flung into a tributary, which runs along the boundary of the grassland. The stream’s flow has not been sufficient to keep it clear and the waste has formed a dam, creating a small lake of foul slurry.

  Dr Argyll opens the barn’s hay shutters to let the evening air in. ‘The brook is black with flies,’ he says, looking out across the darkening field, ‘and the wind is blowing up from that direction.’ He turns to Elen and says, ‘This is a capital idea, Miss Griffiths.’

  The light is failing fast. Elen busies herself lighting a lamp, which she carries over to where the captain lies, his eyes closed. But when the doctor takes it from her hand and holds it over Mordiford’s leg, she sees his buoyant mood ebb.

  Elen stares at the wound in the captain’s shin, running her eyes down to his ankle and over the mottled flesh across his high instep. She sees a look pass between the two medical men. When Mr Barker has examined the wound, Dr Argyll hangs the lantern on a nail in the beam and makes the smallest movement of his head, a nod of invitation towards the door, meant only for the surgeon. Mr Barker follows the physician and Elen creeps to the end of the stall to catch their words.

  Mr Barker paces slowly, head dropped, speaking at the ground. ‘The sluff has begun,’ he says. ‘When I pressed the edge of the wound I felt it crackling beneath the skin. I’m sorry, Argyll, but surely you could smell the corruption.’ The doctor nods. ‘The leg must come off.’ Elen presses her cheek against the wall, the rough planks still warm from a day of hot sun. She feels such a rush of grief. It is the confirmation of all her fears. For days she has known his fever is rising. She’s caught the scent of pears on his breath, not an unpleasant smell, but she knows it means his body is battling the evil miasmas.

  ‘Can it wait until the morning?’ Dr Argyll says.

  ‘No longer,’ Mr Barker replies gravely.

  Elen waits, poised to flit out of sight when the doctor turns, but he remains gazing out across the fields. He draws himself up and inhales. When he turns back, she doesn’t hide. He has arranged his face into a mask of reassurance, which is not wholly successful.

  ‘Ah, Miss Griffiths,’ he says. ‘I shall send an orderly down presently to sit with you and the patient for the night.’

  ‘No, thank you, sir. I need no help this evening.’

  ‘You have everything you need?’

  ‘I have, sir.’

  ‘Very well. Good night, Miss Gr
iffiths.’

  When she turns, Mordiford is watching her, his eyes bright with fever. His gaze never leaves her face as she walks back from the door towards him. ‘It seems my poor leg has lost the battle,’ he says.

  ‘I didn’t think you heard.’

  ‘I heard.’

  He rolls his head away. She reaches across to move the hair from his forehead. When he feels her touch, he takes her hand and presses it to his lips. He sighs heavily. ‘Soon there will be little left of me for you to nurse.’

  ‘There will be more than enough of a man left for me to care for.’

  He gazes up at her with such a look of despair it makes her throat ache. She must not cry. If one tear falls she will sob herself dry. He must not see how she suffers when his ordeal is so much worse. Her eyes begin to burn, the muscles around her mouth begin to stretch. She is not up to the task.

  She says, ‘I must quit you for a second.’ She manages a coy look, hoping he will assume she needs to relieve herself.

  Indeed she does. As she walks away from him towards the door, her face is instantly soaked, the torrent of tears hot and salty, pouring down her cheeks, over her lips, which are already snarled in silent misery. She flees into the dusk, knowing that she must control herself if she is to be any help to Mordiford through this long and terrible night.

  * * *

  With sobs catching her breath, Elen flings herself onto the ground, muffling the sound of her grief in the sweet-smelling grass. As she cries, she prays. At first silently, but when she gains some control, she kneels and presses her hands together, looking up at the darkening sky above her head.

  ‘Dear God, take me. He has suffered enough. Let him heal and be well. Let him live. If I have to live in this world without him, I am dead anyway, so take me.’

  The wind soughs through the meadow. In her mind the gusts are like the breath of God sweeping across the land to answer her prayers and heal Mordiford. She lowers her eyes towards the horizon. There’s a movement in the shadows beneath the hedge. The tears in her eyes distort the image. Something is prowling. She blinks her tears away.