Chapter Seventeen
“Ma’am, I’m more sorry than I can say, but there is no point searching for anything but their bodies.”
I didn’t waste my breath. “Then search. But do it quickly. He is not dead, Carier. I’d know it. Or rather, I’d know if he were dead.” My hands curled into fists. “Oh, I don’t know, I can’t explain it properly, but, Carier, he is not dead. Go and look. No, go and rest. I’ll go and look.”
He opened his mouth, but I wouldn’t let him deny me this. “If he’s dead, then I need to see it, to know it. If he isn’t, I want to be there when we find him. You say it’s dangerous—I’ll carry a weapon. Several. We have men to guard me, men we can trust absolutely.”
He glanced at me. “There is something else. When you were recovering, the first night after we learned you would live, he ordered me to put your life above mine.” He made a sound, a cross between a laugh and a growl. “As if I hadn’t already. You mean everything to him, ma’am.”
“As if you had to tell me that,” I said, echoing his words deliberately. “But did you notice something else? You said ‘mean’, not ‘meant’. We have to do this, Carier. If you want to protect me, then fine, you will. But I am going, now I know the children are safe. You will not keep me away.”
He promised to eat and rest. I had to swear to wait for him, but it nearly broke me to make that promise. Every minute counted. Only Carier’s assurance that the men wouldn’t stop digging until they found him gave me the patience to prepare.
Four hours later, I was ready, wearing a riding-habit jacket and shirt with a pair of Richard’s breeches, hitched up at the waist by a broad leather belt I’d filched from one of the gardeners. I wouldn’t have passed any arbiters of fashion, but I could clamber over rocks and walk through piles of rubbish. I rarely wore breeches, and they felt strange. I had thought of wearing a skirt and employing an old trick used by the women at home in Devonshire, pulling the tail of the skirt through my legs to the front and fastening it at the waist, but breeches would do. I had a spare pair in a small pack, with a towel and a blanket, and a basic medical kit. I might have to sleep there because privately I determined not to return here until I knew, one way or the other. Until we found him. Them.
My mind had reverted to a primitive state. I no longer thought about the others buried with Richard, dear though one of them was. He was all that mattered. Nothing else, no one else.
When the door opened, I expected Carier, but I got Lizzie. Dressed in sombre colours, dark blue, which happened to become her exceedingly, she stopped when she saw my unusual attire. “You meant it? You’re going?”
“I can’t stay. He’s not dead, Lizzie.”
“Oh, Rose!” She heaved a sigh and crossed the room to me. I took her hands. “You have to face it, love. The chances of them living are remote.” Her voice shook, and she bit her lip, hard, denting the soft flesh with her sharp teeth. “You need to see him, I understand that, but you have children to care for.”
“They’re safe here with you and Joaquin. They won’t be any safer if I stay here. But I know Richard, I can almost feel him. I don’t know, Lizzie, but I have to do this. Or live with the knowledge that I didn’t for the rest of my life. I have to go.”
“It’s not safe.”
I indicated the breeches. “Thus I will bundle my hair up under a cocked hat, and while I won’t pass as a man in polite society, nobody will be looking at me particularly, and so they won’t bother me. Besides, I have a few extras.” I patted my pocket, allowing the knives to clink. “He taught me how to use them.” With a great deal of love and laughter. I had my pistols in each pocket too. One in each, so as not to weigh me down unevenly. I had food packed in saddlebags, durable stuff like cheese and apples, and I had three tinderboxes. A comb was my sole offering to the goddess of vanity. And my old necessaire, the battered one I’d had when I met Richard, the one I wore to my wedding and had with me at all times. It would come in useful, if only for me to touch, to reassure myself some things in the world remained constant.
My love for my husband and my children, my loving family and the talisman I took everywhere.
Nichols entered the room. My stately, middle-aged maid had found an old riding habit, and she too had chosen breeches in preference to skirts. She stood silently, hands folded before her.
I gave her a wry smile. “You want to come.”
“I can hardly leave you to do this on your own, ma’am.”
I had never heard a sweeter demonstration of loyalty. Nichols, tight-lipped, the woman with a wonderful way with hair and clothes, impeccable taste, but who dressed more like a kitchen maid half the time. And she wouldn’t leave me.
“Without you, I shall have to seek another position, my lady. It’s in my interest to ensure you are cared for.” A glimmer in her eyes, the slightest of twitches to her mouth, told me she felt more than employer loyalty. She cared for me.
The consideration rocked me. Maids didn’t have that kind of relationship with their mistresses—everything militated against it. They might come to an understanding, and most employers would balk at any sign of affection from a body servant, but now it warmed me. It was what I needed. Someone to support what I was about to do, not fight it.
Lizzie half-screamed, “How could you even consider it? We have so much to prepare for, and with Lisbon in ruins, few people to call on to help. I have to secure the estate here, and the others. Joaquin and I need to discuss what we should do next, and I want time—time to remember him.” Her lip trembled and she bit it again, this time hard enough to draw blood.
“I’ll bring him back, Lizzie. I swear it.” I didn’t say if I’d bring Paul back alive or dead, because I didn’t know. But Richard wasn’t dead. I knew it. I wouldn’t believe it until I saw his body laid out before me.
He was alive.
“Ma’am, Carier says he has the horses ready downstairs. If you’re ready.”
“More than ready.” I seized Lizzie’s shoulders, dragged her to me and kissed her on both cheeks. “I trust you to do what is right. But if there are any problems, if I don’t come back, I’ve written our wishes out for you. They are enforceable by law. I want you to keep the children safe until their guardian arrives to take charge of them. And in case you had any illusions, that guardian is Gervase. Under no circumstances are you to give them up to my motherin-law. Keep them in Portugal if you have to, but don’t give them to her. Understand?”
Lizzie smiled, though it was strained and watery. “I can at least do that for you.”
The road to Lisbon was more ordered than I’d seen it before. People straggled out of the city, and some were going in, but not many. The authorities had taken control, it seemed, because I saw a few officious-looking people around. I didn’t approach them and I kept my hat brim pulled low.
Riding astride was the worst part. I hadn’t done that since I was a child, and what came naturally to me as a woman, didn’t in my male attire. It took some getting used to. I wanted to avoid unnecessary attention, which could include notice from marauding mobs, so I made the effort. Nichols took to it better than I did, but by the time we reached the city, my thighs were aching. I gritted my teeth and hid my discomfort.
Fires still raged, but most were extinguished. Of the royal palace, very little remained. Carier told me that there were rumours that the mob did it, rather than the natural disasters that had devastated the city. Looters were, luckily for us, concentrating their efforts on that area, by the harbour, rather than here, deeper in the city, although some had picked over the houses nearby.
Men were digging. A lot of men. I’d brought gold, sewn into my clothes and in purses, and I would pay them as long as they continued to work, but some looked exhausted.
Carier set to, and I realised the identity of the canvas rolls he and Nichols had brought in. Tents. Rudimentary, but once erected they formed an adequate shelter. He tapped the men who’d slowed down almost to a crawl and pointed at the tents. They left.
Carier had pitched the tents on the grounds of one of the houses.
Here, a few walls and buildings stood, but some lurched in a drunken way, proclaiming their unsafe nature, and others were interior walls, fireplaces and shelves clinging to the wreckage. The remains of a civilised society, all that persisted after nature had decided to take things in hand and deliver a lesson. Though what the lesson could be, I couldn’t tell. Innocents had perished along with the guilty; the poor had lost everything along with the wealthy. Priests and sinners, all fell before this tide of destruction.
The pervasive stench didn’t belong to one thing alone. Cesspits had been disturbed, food was rotting in the kitchens underground and so were people, trapped below the buildings, dead and decaying. I breathed normally, hoping I would grow accustomed to the stink soon.
The ground was uneven with rubble, and when I kicked a stone aside, it was damp underneath, a remnant of the wave that had come so close on the quake. It would have swamped the cellars, the kitchens.
Carier was right. If Richard survived, it would be a miracle. But I couldn’t stop now.
I set myself to helping in the ways I could do best. I patched up grazes and scrapes sustained by the diggers, ensured they had food and fresh water, and wandered around. The worst of it was that we didn’t know where, precisely, the house had stood. We hadn’t been in it long enough to know for sure which one it was—we couldn’t recognise the details of the garden or the décor. And there were few landmarks left. This had been a terrace of fashionable houses, all similar to each other, built to the same pattern, many of them on short-term leases to people visiting Lisbon for the season or attending court.
Now gone, tumbled into the street like houses made of cards.
I had tethered my horse to the remains of a tree in one of the gardens. Only the lower branches remained, but they were enough to ensure my beast stayed there. That and the grass that it cropped. Carier and the men had pitched the tents close-by, on the softer ground where they wouldn’t have to dig.
A cry came from one of the men, and the sound of stones and bricks being tossed aside stopped. “Listen!”
I hurried over and heard it for myself. Scrabbling. Something, someone, was alive below that pile of broken bricks and timber. The men gathered around, passed the bits from hand to hand to join a pile they had begun in the street. Something scrambled out and hurtled away. A rat, big, black and fat. I wanted it dead. It had no right to survive when I—
Without pausing to consider, I dragged out my weapon, cocked it and fired. The rat screamed, and its body flew into the air, tail whipping up, before it dropped to the ground.
I shrugged. “One less to eat the dead.” It had to have grown fat on something. I moved, but as I did, I saw a glint reflected from watery beams of the sun. It was overcast, as it had been every day since the disaster, but the sun had done its best to give us some light today. Something sparkled, a cold, clear light. I knew what that meant. Crystal, glass or…
A moment later I had my answer. Ignoring the body of the rodent I’d just dispatched, I plucked an item from between what looked like the undisturbed stones and bricks. A pin, a diamond pin. I turned it over. I couldn’t be more sure. “Here! Drop everything else and come here!”
Carier was the first to reach me. I held out the pin on the flat of my palm, and he stared at it. “His lordship’s solitaire.”
Richard’s favourite ornament, the one he used to secure the folds of his neckcloth.
The world stood still, and all I could hear was Carier’s quickened breathing. With a visible effort, he straightened and waved to our four helpers. Two were resting, but at his cry of “Here!” their heads appeared between the folds of the tents, and they emerged to share in the renewed effort.
I didn’t stand by, and neither did Nichols. We tossed bricks and stones aside, on to the new pile the men had begun. I understood the necessity to be methodical. Other people, engaged in similar pursuits to ours in different parts of the street, ran over to help. Soon we’d cleared a patch of ground, discarded the shattered remains of a door and started on the opening to what was clearly a flight of stone steps leading down.
Richard was here, I knew it, I felt it. Carier organised the men. Either they were too tired to protest, or they had worked long enough to recognise they needed to keep order. If too many of them had stood over the cellar, it could have caved in. So we formed two lines, radiating away from the stairs, and passed buckets of rubble hand to hand, slowly clearing the area.
One step appeared, then two, but no sign of a person. After the third, Carier glanced up, exchanging a brief smile with me. Reassurance and hope. I had made him do this, and I was right.
The fourth step, and then someone cried out. I left my place in the line and raced forwards, falling on my knees to see what they’d uncovered.
A hand. A hand that moved. It had pushed through a gap in the stones, and the fingers twitched as we stared in stunned disbelief.
They cleared a space around it, and we heard a few stones fall under our feet. That meant a cavity, an opening. An air trap. Or a place that could fill with water.
Once we realised that, we stepped even more carefully. Two lines thinned to one, and it fanned out over the street, not the spot where the kitchen must be. We’d tramped over that point, clambered over the pile of rubbish to get to other parts of the area. Had we made it worse, pushed more stones into the space?
I remained, standing to one side, hopefully where the wall that supported the stairs had been. I couldn’t leave him. Not now. I talked, not knowing if he could hear me, but I needed to, babbling nonsense, promising him a good meal, a bath, my love, anything, uncaring what the others thought, only that he should hear me and come back to me.
They cleared the person, brushing away the choking dust, and as soon as they could, they hauled him up.
Paul. It was Paul. His dark hair tangled about his face, clogged with brick dust and filth. He moaned. Alive. I blinked, forced myself to concentrate. He needed help. But I couldn’t move.
Carier put his hand on my arm. “I’ll see to him, ma’am. Stay here. He’ll need you when we bring him up.” He didn’t mean Paul.
The men climbed down the stairs, disappearing into the stinking depths below. They brought out a man, bloated with water and death. Not Richard. They placed him some distance away. We’d see to him later, but he was beyond our help, had been for days.
Then they brought Richard out.
Chapter Eighteen
His hair was almost as dark as Paul’s, matted with filth and blood. His limbs were limp, his eyes closed. They carried him over to the tents and laid him on a bed of blankets that they made just outside them. I sank to my knees by his side, heedless of the stones digging into my flesh, and I grabbed his wrist. I held my breath.
Small, erratic thuds against my forefinger rewarded me. He was alive. Oh, thank God, alive.
My senses rushed back, blood coursing through my veins once more, and my damned-up emotions threatened to break free.
I caught my breath, forced myself to calm down, to think. The last thing he needed was a sobbing, hysterical woman. He needed help, not tears.
His clothes were soaked through—they needed to come off. My hands steadier now, I stripped off his clothing and grabbed the damp cloths and the dry ones that Nichols handed me. I should have realised she’d be there, waiting to serve me. His body, so pale and defenceless, lay on the dark blankets. For a second I realised I could have been laying out his corpse, and cold chills chased through me. But I wasn’t, I wasn’t.
I scanned him, searching for any irregularities. Hands, limbs in awkward positions, indicating breaks; unnatural swellings, indicating something wrong under the skin. I turned him on his side, and passively, he went.
I wasn’t surprised to find Carier with me. “Nothing,” I concluded, laying Richard on his back. I lifted the edges of the blanket and wrapped it around him. He was covered in bruises, purple and livid against his
pale skin.
Carier went to his bare foot, which was sticking out of my extemporised cover. “Except this.” He’d seen something I missed, most likely because tears misted my vision, the tears I’d fought back for days now. He probed, and I felt Richard wince, but he said nothing. He was barely conscious, but I guessed he’d been floating in and out of awareness. “It’s a bad wrench,” Carier said. “Nothing else.” His voice was completely steady, almost a monotone, a sign that he too was keeping his emotions rigidly under control.
Richard opened his eyes. His gaze went straight to me. I stared in amazement when he smiled. “I knew you’d come.”
I tried to smile back, and again amazed myself by succeeding. “Of course you knew. Why would you doubt that?”
He was alive, I was alive. In the middle of terrible devastation, we were happy. Later I’d feel regret and horror for the almost total destruction of a city and many of its inhabitants, but now all I could feel was blessed relief and a desperate need to thank someone for sparing the person who made my life real.
I looked up, my eyes blurred by the tears I’d refused to let fall. And then, at a short distance, I saw John, his blond hair glinting in the light of the sun, his grey eyes steady as he took aim.
I didn’t hesitate. I dragged a pistol from my belt and shot. John fell forwards like a stone. I knew he was dead, I felt it. And I couldn’t be sorry.
“My lady?” a man close to me asked.
I tossed my discharged weapon to the ground. “Just another rat. Ensure that’s reloaded, would you?”
Numbness enclosed me. All I felt was a slight relief that another threat had left us. Perhaps the shock had rendered me unable to feel anything more, or maybe the natural disaster had put the machinations of one youth back where it belonged—into obscurity. I wouldn’t make myself care. I had more things to concern myself with now.
“My lady, we have to see to the marquês.” Carier’s gentle words reminded me that there were more people to care for, and I had the skills to assist. By his lack of reaction I knew he cared as little about John’s last act as I did. Hardly worth discussing when we had more important matters at stake.
Lisbon: Richard and Rose, Book 8 Page 21