No. Such a circumstance would be acceptable if they had the working pocket watch, but they didn’t. She must somehow keep track of both pieces of the puzzle. Of all three, she realized suddenly, for Nysell might order Maxwell and William separated. Of all four, for without Maxwell reapplying the chloroform to Freemantle’s nose, he might wake and remember he had a message to deliver. She must keep track of four puzzle pieces, and she must do it dressed as a village boy.
Elizabeth realized with a flash of panic that she could no longer hear rustling ahead of her. She threw caution to the wind and started to run.
Even to her own ears, she sounded like a troop of cavalry crashing through the brush. Bushes and tree roots rose up to trip her, and the thin branch of a sapling hissed as it whipped across her face. She jerked away from it, lost her balance, and came down hard on the side of her foot. She stumbled and fell almost to her knees, and only barely managed to avoid impaling her eye in an inconveniently placed broken tree limb. It seemed the better part of valor to hold still for a moment or two.
Her wild flight had at least brought her to the edge of the forest, where evening-blue sky peeped between the thinning tree branches. She pushed herself to her feet, on the chance she would be able to glimpse something other than sky. Her ankle gave one throb, then subsided—or maybe she only forgot to think about it as she caught sight of Nysell’s horse. His cavalcade had crossed perhaps half the green slope between the forest and the village. They were headed directly for the back of the church, which meant they were almost certainly going to then cross the street to the tavern.
At least it was easier to leave the wood as a boy than as a girl, since there was no reason for a gently born English maiden to be wandering about the Forest of Soignes with a battle taking place on its other side. Elizabeth crossed the expanse of open space as indifferently as she could, fighting the desire to run, feeling very relieved indeed when she fetched up against the back of the town’s general store. Now she could circle around and walk down the main street toward the tavern as though she had not, in fact, been tracking Nysell through the woods.
She peeped around the corner just as Nysell reined his horse in front of the tavern and dismounted. His subordinate followed suit. Elizabeth gave them another breath or so to get inside, and started the walk down Waterloo’s mud-slimed main street.
She might have been walking at midnight instead of supper-time, for all the signs of life that greeted her. The people of Waterloo, the inhabitants of these houses and proprietors of these shops, either had prudently gone elsewhere, had been turned out by Wellington’s commandeering officers, or were shut up behind barricaded doors until the outcome of the battle should be decided. No one hailed her—there might have been no living soul for miles—but Elizabeth could not quite shake the feeling of eyes watching her. From upstairs windows this time, rather than from shadowed glens. She hoped no one would come out to summon a seemingly local lad to join them in safety. She might be able to put them off by pretending to be English—dressed in Belgian boy’s clothing? Why?—but she really did not have time to waste on explanations. She had to get to the inn and find out what Nysell planned to do next.
The green hill and sloping dome of the church rose up on her left side, peaceful and sleepy in the evening light, and across from it sat the coaching inn Wellington had taken for his headquarters. No one seemed to be stirring here either, though at least Nysell and his party must be inside. Elizabeth did not know if the proprietress had fled or had stayed to care for the English soldiers, but if she and her servants were within, they were busy at their work in the back of the house and nowhere near the front door. Should Elizabeth try to get in through the front door? Knock and spin a tale—beg a bit of bread, maybe?—or hope it was unlocked and sneak inside?
Trying to make up her mind, Elizabeth spied a third option. The great swinging iron gates that led to the inner courtyard yawned open. Wellington’s officers had doubtless put the courtyard to some use this morning—the place where coaches stopped for a change of horses would be a fine place for mounted officers to assemble—and no one had locked the gates after them, perhaps thinking there no need. Elizabeth nipped through them before anyone could chance to spot her through the front windows.
The evening sun was too low to cast any rays over the high two-storied walls. The cobblestone courtyard was, in consequence, surprisingly cool—the evening air oddly moist, and smelling of mud and horse. But the heat of the day had only recently lessened, and the shutters of every window surrounding the courtyard were open, threadbare white curtains and mint-green leaves of ivy moving lazily in a breath of air too light to really be called a breeze.
A door slammed like the report of a musket, and Elizabeth jumped nearly out of her skin.
There was no one nearby, she realized after a frantic moment of looking in every direction. No one had come out of the inn; no one had seen her; no one threatened her now. The slamming door had come from inside, the sound carried to her through one of the open windows. She tried not to move at all as she craned her head to see from which. On the south wall, she thought, but it was hard to tell, given how sounds echoed in a courtyard. She wondered if holding still would do her any good at all if the slammer of the door did look out. Would her muddied white shirt hide her against the dingy white wood of the inn? She feared it would not. Certainly the rough brown breeches would give her away.
“—leave him here,” Nysell’s clipped tone came to her ears, and it was from one of the windows on the south wall. Wonder of wonders, Elizabeth could actually see him from where she stood—a flash of green coat and profile, no more, but it did tell her which window. He wasn’t actually facing it, at least, so if she did not move and thereby catch his eye, maybe he would not notice—
“There’s no point in taking him to Mont St. Jean,” Nysell’s voice went on. “Stacked six deep there, and what can a surgeon do for a man who hit his head falling from a horse? He’ll wake or he won’t, so best to leave him here. And it’s not as though—” A hard breath, not laughter. “The Colonel won’t be needing his room tonight, after all.”
An inarticulate rumble in reply. Nysell turned his back to the window, saying something Elizabeth could not catch, and she seized the opportunity to inch her way along the wall, closer to the window. If she were right underneath it, she could hear better. Moreover, he would have to look straight down to see her, and the twining ivy might provide just enough cover. She kept her eyes fixed on the window, waiting for the hook-nosed profile to turn back—and when Nysell did turn, she froze like a rabbit. She hadn’t made it far enough, but at least she had stopped before he could see the movement. He didn’t seem to notice her.
“I’ll leave this nonsense here,” Nysell said, and Elizabeth’s heart leaped at the clink of metal on wood. Could she possibly be so fortunate—“For all we know, some of it is Freemantle’s. We’ll sort it when we sort the prisoners. Right then.” He pivoted. “This is the key to the coal cellar, which you will guard with your life. Give it to no one until I come back myself, or until His Grace returns. Let no one let those men out. There’s more here than meets the eye, and we’ll damned well find out what it is. Otherwise... ” A pause. “Otherwise, stay here. Guard the door. He may wake, and be able to tell us some part of the story.”
“And you, sir?” a second voice asked.
“Back to the line. Can’t let His Grace think I’m as faithless as those Belgian hounds, can I? Don’t worry, he’ll know you’re doing him a service too. Stand fast, private. I’ll see you after sundown.”
The sound of a door opening. The sight of an edge of door sweeping into the square frame of the window. Nysell’s tall, stiff back walking through it. The squatter form of Nysell’s subordinate following him. The sound of a door slamming shut—Elizabeth, expecting it, did not jump so badly this time. And then silence, from all the watching windows with their fluttering leaves and curtains.
Elizabeth thought. The subordinate now stood watch
outside the door. Nysell would be headed for the staircase, and for the front of the inn where his horse waited in the street. There must surely be other people in the inn, but they did not seem to be taking any part in the unfolding drama. If they were soldiers, they would follow orders to leave the prisoners be, and if they were the proprietress and her servants, they would not interfere with the unconscious British officer or the captured spies locked in the coal cellar. Not while there was any chance of the British winning the day, at least. As far as she could tell, no one was watching from any of the windows, and Nysell was safely descending a staircase within, and she might never have another chance like this—
Elizabeth ran for the trellis. As she had long suspected, it was indeed much easier to climb while wearing breeches than while wearing a skirt. A trivial undertaking, in fact, when one compared it to an Orkney cliffside, or out her bedroom window via a bedsheet. Thinking of one of Mirabelle’s novels, she at first tried to hold onto the ivy itself—but Mirabelle’s novel must have featured a different sort of ivy, for the leaves of this plant ripped free as soon as she put any weight on them. After that, she used the latticed trellises for handholds as well as footholds, and if some of those creaked ominously, at least none of them broke.
At last she came level with the open window. She reached out with her right hand, and by leaning and straining, managed to wrap her fingers around the wood of the window frame. Then she lifted her right foot from the trellis and extended it through empty space and to the sill.
The lattice under her left foot groaned.
Her heart pounded like the distant guns as she probed with her right foot for the window sill.
Just as her toes touched the sill, the trellis under her left foot snapped.
Her knee struck the sill hard enough to bring tears to her eyes, but she didn’t lose her grip on the frame. The filmy curtain molded to her face, half-smothering her, as she fought to draw up her left leg without losing her balance. She did not quite fall into the bedroom, but it was an eminently graceless entrance, seat-first and with a curtain wrapped about her. She caught herself before she could fall with an audible thud, and turned, terrified that she had woken the man on the bed.
To her profound relief, Freemantle slept on, fair face slack, mouth open and revealing rabbit teeth. Elizabeth noted nervously that he did shift a little from side to side, hands twitching along the threadbare quilt underneath him. But at least he did not wake.
There was little else in the room beside the bed: a table with a lamp and a jug of washing water set upon it; the kit of whatever officer whose bedroom this had been, stowed neatly in one dark corner; William’s rucksack tossed beside it; a chipped mirror above a chest of drawers, on which sat a heap of glinting paraphernalia. Belgian spoils of war, no doubt—coins, rings, lengths of braid, fine lawn handkerchiefs, a golden locket and a silver one, and several pocket watches. Including two familiar ones.
Elizabeth restrained both the cry of satisfaction and the impulse to dash across the room. She stole to the chest of drawers instead, taking great care with each step. All she needed now was a creaking board. If that or the clink of valuables being removed reached the ears of the guard outside, she was lost.
Her image appeared in the mirror, twisting and wavering with the flaws in the glass—a boy in a mud-streaked shirt, battered cap pulled down low but not quite concealing the seam down one cheek where the branch had left its mark. She thought of sitting before her own glass the day before yesterday—the seventeenth of June—while Sarah brushed her hair. It might have happened a hundred years ago. She watched her pale, mirror-twisted hand steal out toward the glass and the heap of objects piled before it.
The silver locket was on top. She took it, for Maxwell had seemed pained to let it go. She moved slowly lest it clink, extricating its chain from the chain of the nearest pocket watch, and fastened it around her own neck. Her fingers encountered the lump of chloroform bottle in her breast pocket as she did so, and she drew it out and set it on top of the chest of drawers for the moment. Freemantle stirred again, and she glanced sharply in the reflection, but he settled down to sleep once more. All the time she had her ears strained for a sound on the other side of the door, but none came.
She picked up the pocket watch nearest to hand. A piece of glinting braid came with it, and she pulled it free. She snapped the watch open, and the image face flickered reassuringly at her, waves tossing so realistically that she half-expected salt spray. She reached for the other watch.
Just as her fingers touched it, the image on the first watch changed to one she had never seen before. It bore some resemblance to the initial image from 1885, but no construct peered through the fog. Could that possibly mean—? She didn’t have time to waste studying it, not with Freemantle stirring for the third time. She slipped the broken watch into her left-hand trousers pocket and the working watch into the right. Then she took one of the fine white handkerchiefs from the dresser top. A man’s, clearly; an officer’s, by the quality. Freemantle’s? From the bottom of William’s rucksack? Stolen from someone else found in the woods?
The little brown bottle was easy enough to uncork. The scent that rose from it had Elizabeth almost wishing for smelling salts. She held it hastily farther away from her face and poured about half its contents onto the handkerchief. She didn’t know how much Maxwell had used. She didn’t dare underestimate. She stole across to Freemantle, wondering if was only her fevered imagination that made it seem as though his eyelids were fluttering.
She held the square of cloth to his nose and mouth as Maxwell had done, and watched as his face went slack. It seemed much easier to maintain the faint than cause it; Freemantle had struggled wildly in Maxwell’s strong grip for the three breaths it had taken for the fumes to work. And with that thought, Elizabeth realized the flaw in her plan.
She had been thinking to use the chloroform on the guard outside, as Maxwell had on Freemantle—but she would never be able to hold him still, never, not even for three breaths. She looked around the room. She could slip back out the window and—
No. No. He had the key to the cellar. She had to get to him, and she had to make him sleep so she could search his pockets. And she had to do it now. The sun was darker red all the time. Sundown was coming. The battle would end soon, one way or the other, and His Grace would return and demand to see the French prisoners.
Elizabeth took a strangled breath—and nearly fell over from the force of the fumes. Hastily she rose from Freemantle’s side and held the handkerchief as far as possible from her face. That was enough. She couldn’t risk more. He looked to be sleeping soundly now anyway.
Guard the door, Nysell had said to his subordinate. He may wake and be able to tell us part of the story. If the guard heard a sound, then, he would come in. He would come in and go to the man on the bed. Elizabeth eyed the space between the bed and the door—and then looked all around the rest of the room for inspiration. Her eye fell on the table with the water jug, and suddenly she knew what to do.
The jug was empty, and, in fact, very close to bone-dry. It made it easier to heft. Elizabeth took it with her left hand, curling her fingers around the jug handle, pinching the chloroform-soaked handkerchief between the handle and her thumb. With her right hand, she picked up the lamp. Step by careful step, she took all of her plunder to the other side of the bed, behind the door, and she did not creak a single floorboard in the journey.
Her pulse hammered in her veins, making her nearly lightheaded with the force of it. Or maybe that was the chloroform handkerchief—She couldn’t wait. For so many reasons, she couldn’t wait.
Elizabeth threw the lamp with all her strength.
It sailed neatly over the bed, crashing to the floor like an entire crockery set smashing, glass flying in so many directions she could see some of the splinters from where she stood. From the other side of the door came a startled oath, followed by quick footsteps. Elizabeth grasped the jug with both hands.
The
guard entered the room with his eyes already on the bed, expecting to find a man waking from nightmare or delirious from pain. If he had looked toward the mirror he might have seen a flash of Elizabeth’s white shirt in the shadowed corner, but she gave him no chance to look. As soon as he took the step that brought him to Freemantle’s side and into her line of sight, she smashed the jug over his head.
It wasn’t hard enough to stun him—she didn’t think, at least, though she didn’t really know. But it was hard enough to stagger him, and that was all she needed. His knees buckled for a moment, he couldn’t fight her for a moment, and the moment gave her the chance to slam the handkerchief over his face. She pressed her whole hand over his nose and mouth. This had to work. Had to.
One breath, two breaths, three—and a sliver of white showed as his eyes rolled back. His body went limp against her. He might not be as deeply asleep as Freemantle, but he wouldn’t chase her for a few minutes at least, and that was all she needed. And she couldn’t wait, for if there was anyone else in the house, they must have heard the smashing lamp.
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