The branches were thick, scratching at her arms as she struggled through them. She found, however, that merely being on their other side was insufficient to alleviate her embarrassment. Perhaps in time she would learn not to mind, but—She picked her way further into the underbrush. It was darker here, the thicker trees screening more of the evening light. Darkness seemed to offer a more complete privacy, or at least the illusion of same. She stopped when she could no longer hear Maxwell and William’s quiet conversation, because that meant they could also no longer hear her. Then she went a little farther anyway.
It was, indeed, an inconvenient and annoying business. She found it necessary to remove the breeches completely, and then she found it necessary to devote attention to preventing undergrowth from rasping against skin not usually exposed to such dangers. Elizabeth had her teeth set in thorough irritation by the time she had resumed and resettled her garments. She began to pick her way back through the brush to her companions, toying with imprecations that might best describe her sense of frustration with this situation.
Maxwell’s voice came to her ears sooner than she expected—that was her first clue as to what lay ahead. The timbre of the voice provided the second, for there was more changed than just the volume. It was deliberately calm, deliberately soothing, overly reasonable. And, Elizabeth realized with a sick spasm in her middle, he was speaking French.
Chapter 19
Waterloo, Belgium, June 1815
Leaves tickled Elizabeth’s cheek, and a sharp weed pierced into the flesh just above her ankle. She held absolutely still, not even breathing, straining her ears to make out words.
“Vous ne voulez pas le faire,” Maxwell said calmly. Elizabeth had studied French, of course, had spoken it with governesses and read it in books, but she could not make her brain detangle these sounds into understandable words. Maxwell’s voice told her enough of what she wanted to know, however. It was too calm, a note off from being believably so, a violin expertly played but with one string mis-tuned.
“Tais-toi!” That voice was harsher. Louder. A different instrument altogether, Elizabeth thought wildly. A drum, possibly? “Je suis fatigué de vous bâtards britanniques me dire ce que je ne peux pas faire!”
“La désertion est sans importance,” Maxwell went on, still soothing. “Mais si vous nuire officier britanniques—”
There was a sound like a branch cracking, and he broke off—not with a cry, nothing so overt, but all at once and completely, and Elizabeth could guess. The air vibrated with the sound of the snapped violin string.
“Main il plus,” a third voice said. This one was higher-pitched, reedy. “Ou nous allons vous tuer a la fois. Peut-être que ma poudre mouille, peut-être pas, eh?”
“All right,” Maxwell said, in a voice shaky with pain. “All right, je suis d’accord.”
Elizabeth’s heart was hammering so loudly she was half-surprised the men did not hear it, did not plunge through the brush to seize her. But they were making some noise of their own now, rustling and muttering. No one said, “Qu’est-ce que c’est?” or gave any other indication they knew she was there.
She picked up one foot and put it down very gently into the underbrush. Slow and careful, she told herself. It sounded almost like Katarina’s voice. No noise. You can’t make noise. She raised her other foot and put it down in turn. You can’t make a speck of noise, or they’ll know. With great care she lifted her arm and eased a branch out of her way. If you rustle the brush, they will know you are here. And if they learn you are here...She shivered at the thought, and knew she ought to keep still—Maxwell would doubtless tell her to keep still—but she didn’t see how she possibly could. She had to know what was happening.
One step, and one more, and she was close enough to hear clearly, though she still could not manage to decipher the French. A final step, and a careful parting of branches, and she could see.
A swarthy man in the dark blue coat of the French infantry held William immobile, forced to his knees and with his good arm twisted behind him. William’s mussed hair and blackened eye, not to mention the blood leaking from the Frenchman’s nose, suggested that William had put up a valiant struggle, but the Frenchman had to outweigh him by three or four stone and had full use of all his limbs. The opportunity for struggle had passed, in any case, for one large brown hand held a knife so that the blade just touched the skin of William’s throat. Late afternoon sun struck sparks off the steel, shifting and glinting as though the hand holding it kept tightening with eagerness or nerves.
There were—Elizabeth looked quickly—something like fourteen or fifteen other men similarly attired, all dark-haired and French-looking, most as large as the first, and all armed with blades or muskets. The second one crouched on the forest floor, rummaging through William’s rucksack with cheerful abandon. He pulled out one of Elizabeth’s gowns and then the other, and whistled through his teeth. “Pour ta putain, hein?” he said, and his was the harsh, gravelly voice she had heard before. “Pour ma putain maintenant!”
On the far side of the clearing, a third man searched Freemantle’s slumbering body, tearing off decorative trim and ripping open pockets. The remainder stood about, watching the show. Six of them held muskets pointed nonchalantly at Maxwell’s head, and perhaps it was that which made Maxwell look so much smaller than usual. Or perhaps the blood running down his face had something to do with it, or maybe it was just the threat to William. Elizabeth could see how Maxwell’s eyes kept going to the knife blade at William’s throat, even as he retrieved coins and a pocket-knife and a snuff-box from his pockets and handed them over to the little weasel of a man beside him.
Where could the Frenchmen have come from? The Forest of Soignes was well behind British lines. How could French infantrymen have so quickly crossed the disputed valley, marched through the British guns, and eluded the two thin rows of British soldiers upon the ridge? For a moment Elizabeth imagined the worst, but then she listened hard and decided artillery still pounded in the distance. The battle still raged. So she was left with her first question: how could French infantry be here, and why would they be here robbing British officers when there was a battle still to fight?
“Est-ce tout?” the weasel-faced man demanded, reedy voice sharp. This time Elizabeth’s brain made the leap—well, no wonder, the words were simple enough. Is that all?
“Oui,” Maxwell said. Yes.
“C’est impossible!” The weasel looked down at the coins in his hands in his disgust. “Il est presque pas la peine!” It is almost not worth the bother.
“La montre?” suggested one of the men with the muskets. It took Elizabeth a minute to place that word—La montre? What was montre?
Watch. The watch.
Oh, no.
The man with the gravel voice looked up from the rucksack at the chain that stretched across William’s waistcoat. “Oui,” he said, “les montres!” He reached up and pulled the broken watch free of its fob.
Elizabeth clenched her hands and lips so she would not make a sound. The weasel man raised his eyebrows at Maxwell and held out his hand expectantly.
“No,” Maxwell said, “wait. S'il vous plaît, monsieur. Ma montre n'est pas valable.” Elizabeth found herself able to follow him now. Please, my watch is not valuable. “C'était un cadeau de mon père et tout ce que j'ai de lui.” It was a gift from my father and all that I have of him. “Tenez, prenez ce lieu, et laissez-moi regarder mon père.” Here, take this instead, and leave me my father’s watch. Maxwell slipped his hands inside the collar of his shirt and drew out a locket on a silver chain—a little thing, so finely made that it had hidden unseen all this time beneath his coat and waistcoat. His hands shook as he undid the clasp, and Elizabeth wondered whose face the locket held, what lost love might be commemorated inside it—and in what year the woman might have been born. What a very odd life Maxwell led, indeed…
The weasel snatched the chain with one hand, yanking the pocket watch free from Maxwell’s waistcoa
t with the other. “Je vais avoir les deux!” he said. I’ll have them both! “Allez, mes garcons, nous allons sortir d’ici!” Come, lads, let’s get out of here.
It doesn’t matter, Elizabeth told herself fiercely. It doesn’t. We’ll manage somehow. We’ll follow them, or we’ll—we’ll—something. But it doesn’t matter, not even losing the watch matters, not as long as they leave William and Maxwell unharmed...She held her breath, hoping they would do just that, trying to think what she could do if they made a move to act otherwise. She still had the little bottle of chloroform tucked inside her shirt. Was there anything she could...
“Drop your weapons!” a voice boomed in English from the path that led back to the battlefield, and Elizabeth could have fainted in sheer relief. She saw the musket barrels jerk away from Maxwell as the men whirled in surprise; she saw the eyes of William’s captor widen in alarm. “Vos armes!” the voice repeated in French with a note of impatience. “Lâchez vos armes maintenant!”
The voice was accompanied by the sound of several rifles cocking in unison. William’s captor shoved William hard into the man pawing through the rucksack, and bolted through the trees.
A thump and a cry proclaimed he had not gotten very far, and the others had no chance to even attempt to follow him. Men in dark green jackets were appearing as if from thin air. The hands of the remaining Frenchmen rose in jerky unison, puppets pulled by an unseen thread.
“On your feet! Battalion will form ranks!” the voice continued. “Formulaire rangs!” Elizabeth shifted just slightly to one side, in hopes of catching a glimpse of the speaker.
He stood on the path that led back to the field of Waterloo—a thin, sallow man, dark hair shot with gray, arms folded across his chest in an attitude almost of boredom. He might have been calling a group of unruly subordinates to order on a parade ground, rather than facing down an enemy force that outnumbered his own something like two to one. His hatchet-narrow face was lined and weathered, the texture and color of the tree trunks surrounding him on every side, and his jacket was the same dark green as the pines—so he was a Rifleman, a member of the odd 95th Regiment, the skirmishers and sharpshooters who were so different from the usual red-coated officers. “Sergeant,” the man continued briskly, “you will shoot the next man who attempts to flee.”
“Yessir,” one of the green-coats answered with relish, though the Frenchmen did not look to have flight in mind.
The hatchet-faced man strode forward, steely eyes flicking everywhere at once. “What in the bloody hell is going on here? Not bad enough you gutless bastards had to run and His Grace had to send me to fetch you back, now I find you molesting British officers? On your feet, Sergeant,” he added—to Maxwell, Elizabeth realized in a moment. “Lieutenant.” Maxwell staggered upright, holding a hand out to William. The hatchet-faced man’s cold eyes went to Freemantle, and forbore to issue any orders to a man obviously unconscious. “What were you about in the woods to let these Belgian cowards get the drop on you?”
Belgian. Oh. Elizabeth exhaled. Now it made sense. The robbers were not Frenchmen at all—or, at least, they were, in very meaningful ways, but they were part of the Anglo-Allied army. They must be from the Dutch-Belgian brigade that Maxwell said had deserted. Of course they had run; they were after all more French than anything else; they had been part of the French empire until the year before. Even now, they spoke French rather than Dutch, and still wore uniforms almost indistinguishable from those of the men on the other side of the valley. Elizabeth presumed that not all Belgians were useless as allies, but these men plainly were—dishonorable as well as cowardly. It was a sign of the Duke’s desperation, Elizabeth thought, that he had sent Riflemen to round up the runaway Belgians in the hopes of more men to plug the gap in the line.
“I asked you a question, Lieutenant,” the Rifleman said sharply.
“You must excuse him, sir,” Maxwell interposed. “The Lieutenant was knocked on the head in the scuffle and hasn’t quite regained his wits. We—”
“Ces deux ne sont pas ce qu'elles semblent être,” the weasel-faced Belgian piped up. Those two aren’t what they seem.
“Silence.” The Rifleman snapped it out in English and without sparing him a glance.
“Ils ne sont pas,” the weasel persisted. “Nous sommes tombés sur les attaquer que pauvre officier britannique.” We came upon them attacking that poor British officer there.
“That’s ridiculous,” Maxwell said. “One of them flung a rock that knocked the Lieutenant Colonel from his horse, and then they rushed—”
“Ils ont essaye de l’etouffer.” They were trying to smother him.
“Major, are you going to believe some Belgian riffraff over a sergeant in your own—”
“Je pense qu'ils sont des espions français. Nous étions seuls les subjuguer comme c'était notre devoir.” I think they’re French spies. We were only subduing them as was our duty.
The Rifleman’s cold eyes swept sideways. “And what call of duty led you to be out here in the wood instead of with your allies on the line? Not another word.” But when he looked back at Maxwell and William, it was suspiciously. “Your name and regiment, Lieutenant.”
William hesitated a bare instant. “Carrington, sir, from the 52nd Foot.”
“And what business has a lieutenant of the 52nd Foot here in the forest, with that regiment stationed far front and on the right? In company with a ‘sergeant’ who speaks like he went to Eton with the quality?” The steel eyes flicked over them, probably taking in the ill fit of the uniforms. “I heard a rumor of a French spy dressed as a Coldstream Guard sergeant, and here you are with one of His Grace’s aides, conveniently unconscious...No, don’t bother answering, I don’t want to know. You’re something far more interesting than deserters.” He raised his voice. “Private Prentiss, bring me those trinkets the Belgians took off these men. Good. Now search them for weapons. Baker and Willis, you will keep your rifles pointed at their heads, if you please. Not another word, sir—” That to Maxwell, who was still protesting. “Or I assure you it will be your last. Sergeant, can you spare us a bit of rope? Prentiss, bind their hands. Excellent. Now then. Sergeant, you will take these Belgian cowards to join those of their compatriots we have already located, and see the lot of them back to the line where they belong. My compliments to the Colonel, and tell him I am conveying French spies back to the village, to be held until His Grace is at leisure to interview them. I shall return once I have secured them.”
“Yessir, Major Nysell,” the Sergeant said. “A’right, lads, you heard the Major.”
“Baker, stay with me,” Nysell added. “Prentiss, before you go, give me a hand with the Lieutenant Colonel—”
Nysell arranged it with what Elizabeth supposed was admirable speed and efficiency. He mounted Freemantle’s horse, which submitted to him willingly enough, settling Freemantle’s limp body before him on the saddle. William and Maxwell were commanded to walk in front of him, hands tied behind their backs, a length of rope attaching them to each other and its other end looped through Baker’s belt. Baker walked between the horse and the prisoners, rifle at the ready, and Nysell was precise in his instructions. “If they make any sudden movements,” Nysell said, “or utter so much as a syllable, do not wait for my order. Shoot them dead. Right then, m’sieurs, forward march, double quick!”
They left the clearing in a blur of sound and color. From her hiding place, Elizabeth caught a glimpse of William and Maxwell’s white shirts and slumped shoulders, the fluidly moving dark green coat of the Rifleman Baker, the bay flank of Freemantle’s horse, Freemantle’s lolling fair head. She heard the harness jingle, and quickly moving boots stumble over tree roots, and then she was alone in the woods.
Chapter 20
Waterloo, Belgium, June 18, 1815
It was all she could do not to dash off after them. She clenched fistfuls of breeches in both hands instead, forcing herself to remain still until they had moved off at least a short distance. She cou
ld still hear them, but if she was careful, they would not hear her. She took a deep breath and the first step in pursuit.
It would be better to follow them if she could. She could get to Waterloo from here, following the road, but she didn’t know where in Waterloo Nysell was headed. So she would have to follow him, and then...And then what?
It was the first time, ever, that she would have had more options dressed as a woman than as a boy. If she could have presented herself to Nysell as an officer’s wife—or even mistress—he might have allowed her to nurse Freemantle, and then at least she would be in the same building as William and Maxwell...not to mention the pocket watch…
But maybe she wouldn’t be. Maybe Nysell was intending to convey Freemantle to one place and the prisoners somewhere entirely different, and if she were trapped by Freemantle’s side, she wouldn’t know where. Maybe it was better that her female clothing was in the rucksack and she was forced to continue her role as a boy. She could...pretend to have a message for Nysell? What other entrée might be available to a boy who seemed to be from the village? She would have to be careful, for his suspicions were already aroused, and if he thought her another spy—but even that might not be so bad, if they confined her with Maxwell and William—
Timepiece Page 30